Misaimed Fandom/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Misaimed Fandom for characters in Live Action TV include:

  • In the 1990s, many teenagers took Mike Myers' and Dana Carvey's Wayne's World shtick to be a cry of adolescent affirmation, not realising they were in fact being lampooned, albeit affectionately.
  • Many will say that 24 promotes the use of torture and advocates violence against Middle-Easterners, no matter how much the producers themselves state otherwise. Of course, they kind of bring this on themselves with how many times they feature it in an episode, and never actually got around to condemning Jack's tortuous methods in-show.
    • The fact that 24 was explicitly referenced by soldiers as an influence during the investigations into torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay and was later attacked by both the FBI and US Military for overstating the efficacy of torture as an interrogation technique also didn't help.
    • Nor did their casting a human rights lawyer who advocated due process and a fair trial as a villain who Jack asked "how do you sleep at night!?"
    • The writers deserve some credit. In-show characters and events subverted the "evil Muslims" assumptions on a few occasions - as early as season two, in fact, and a season seven subplot had local terrorists intentionally frame their acts on an Arab, simply because Americans would find it easier to believe - and a few torture sessions produced only red herrings or were very dragged out with no sound results. Unfortunately, these moments were too seldom done, and too few in number to convince non-fans that 24 is anything but anti-Muslim propaganda and torture porn.
  • Alf Garnett of Till Death Us Do Part and his Trans-Atlantic Equivalent, Archie Bunker of All in The Family, often got flak for this. The characters' bigotry was used to demonstrate why prejudice is bad; unfortunately, the people who needed to learn this most didn't understand it. The writers, especially on All In The Family, weren't eager to court controversy by making their main characters genuinely bigoted -- and so Archie came across as stubborn and ignorant instead of vicious and hateful, and the audience's sympathies turned against annoying author-proxy Meathead. And even then, Archie himself became more sympathetic in later seasons, since Mike and Gloria both moved on and the show focused solely on Archie and Edith (and eventually, that kid they adopted).
    • Unlike Archie, Alf Garnett was absolutely bigoted, unfortunately in a way which made bigotry funny.
    • Misaimed Fandom for Alf Garnett led to a real life Crowning Moment of Awesome. Warren Mitchell, who played the character and is Jewish himself, was once greeted on the street by a fan who applauded Garnett's opinions. Mitchell got in the man's face and told him the character was designed to make fun of idiots like him.
    • Jonny Speight eventually gave up writing the character because people thought Garnett was a hero. It takes quite a lot of self control when you are sitting with your in-laws who are stating Garnett was taken off TV 'because he was right'.
  • Essentially the same applies to Al Bundy, with the added bonus of his being a supposedly Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist. A good cause of this is the fact that often, the universe would go out of its way to screw him over, even when he didn't deserve it.
    • Perhaps as a Take That to this trend, Al Bundy is shown to have in-universe Misaimed Fandom to the Show Within a Show Psycho-dad.
    • The show in general found an unexpected fan in socially conservative National Review columnist John Derbyshire, who argued (with some persuasiveness, admittedly) that it was actually a "celebration of marriage" in disguise.
      • He married and is unwaveringly faithful to a woman he got pregnant in what seemed to be a shotgun wedding, and she, despite being ridiculously attractive, only wants to have sex with him and him alone. All of the time. Also, he's supportive and protective of his children. When an older, attractive woman sleeps with his teenage son he considers it a horrible, perverted act and declares she should be ashamed of herself.
        • In short, he's very misogynistic (mostly as a product of literally working at the feet of women his entire life) but incredibly forthright and just. The final episode is him desperate to recover his station wagon when it is lost. Why? The final shot: he opens the trunk revealing to the audience a framed photograph of his family from the first season of the show. (However, this is presented as an appeal to the Emmy nomination committee, and possibly not something to be taken seriously.)
    • As an extension of that, Al's neighbor and sometimes antagonist Marcy has been seen as a straw liberal and a Straw Feminist, which may or may not be justified depending on the episode (especially in the later seasons). However, people forget that at least a couple of times in the earlier seasons she's flat-out stated to be a Republican, and the real joke is that while she promotes various middle-class social justice ideas just under the surface she's really focused on money, material status symbols, and ways to lord those things over people more poor than she is.
  • Nathan Barley was intended as a satire of surrealism-loving internet trendies, but in the end that was the group that most enjoyed the show. Nathan Barley himself made his debut on TV Go Home as the eponymous star of a fictional series entitled "Cunt". As the name implies, Nathan Barley's portrayal in Cunt was much harsher than his portrayal in the later show. Viewers remarked that the character was not particularly hateful, perhaps even a bit loveable, and he ended up too sympathetic to offend the people he was based on. It also didn't help that the other main characters were themselves rather pretentious, self-obsessed and smug, but just happened to be misanthropic hypocrites on top of it -- not a particularly appealing combination either.
    • Perhaps even more notable for the fact that the show revolved around a main character who, in trying to speak out against the kind of surrealism-loving internet trendies the show attempted to satirize, in an article titled 'Rise of the Idiots', was praised and beloved by those same idiots for an article they did not understand to be about them.
  • Part of the premise of Jimmy MacDonald's Canada was the within-show application of this trope. Between segments, we'd see clips of either 'ordinary Canadians' or Canadian icons like then-Prime Minister Paul Martin, Don Cherry, Joe Clarke, or Paul Henderson discussing how erudite, politically savvy and influential Jimmy was, in keeping with the Mockumentary tone. Then we'd return to the actual show, where Jimmy would be spewing hatred against Automatic Teller Machines, The Beatles, or whatever it was this time.
  • An unusual example where the fans praised the writer because they read in too much satiric intent: Doctor Who had "Bad Wolf", an episode featuring Deadly Game Show versions of Big Brother and The Weakest Link where losing contestants were slaughtered. Many fans lauded these as brilliant parodies that point out the vapidity of such shows. New series producer Russell T. Davies likes these shows, and put that in as a tribute to them.
    • Played straight with some fans who have latched on to the Master, particularly his John Simm incarnation, especially where the Foe Yay was flowing thick and free; plenty of Fan Fics featuring the Master tend to treat him as a quirky, slightly sarcastic guy who just wants to hook up with the Doctor. Never mind that he's also a vicious psychopath who conquers the world, wipes out a tenth of the population, destroys Japan, enslaves the survivors of the human race, and beats his wife.
    • Some fans who recognise how evil the John Simm version was now tend to write the Roger Delgado or Anthony Ainley versions as Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains simply because they weren't so glaringly Ax Crazy and sadistic. This, despite, for example, the Delgado version manipulating Earth's two native sentient species into a genocidal war just because the Doctor liked one of them, and the Ainley version once (possibly by mistake) destroying a third of the universe. (Apart from that, the new Master didn't exactly win, either.)
  • Mad Men seems to be susceptible to this. While the show's ostensible intent is to examine the social inequity, dyfunction, and unhappiness underlying the supposedly idyllic era of late '50s/early '60s white-collar life, some people seem to be so bedazzled by all the nifty vintage clothes, cars, furnishings, and music that they actually have a nostalgic longing for those "good old days".
  • The members of the Strike Team on The Shield could be the poster boys for Misaimed Fandom. Most grievous, in particular, was the way that some real life police officers told Shawn Ryan and members of the rest of the cast that Vic Mackey's murder of his fellow police detective Terry Crowley was justified under the logic that he was a "rat" and as such, deserved his fate. Shawn Ryan's response was to have the series end with Vic himself becoming a "rat", cold-bloodedly betraying his only remaining friend and colleage (and fan favorite supporting cast member) Ronnie Gardocki in exchange for full immunity for himself and his ex-wife, who as viewers knew but the the character of Vic didn't, had been working with the LAPD to bring Vic down once and for all and already had been granted immunity.
    • The above mention betrayal also ties into the misaimed fandom of the character of Ronnie Gardocki. Even though Vic's betrayal made sense in the context of him being shoved against the wall and having to chose between Ronnie and his wife, general fan sympathy was with Ronnie and not Vic in the end. And while his final scene spells out to fans why Ronnie is a bad person, via his Villainous Breakdown, general opinion held that Vic's betrayal was a Moral Event Horizon-level act of villain, given that Ronnie was the least corrupt of the group as well as being the one member of the Strike Team who's loyalty to Vic never wavered, as far as believing that Vic protect him as he always claimed that he would.
    • On a fandom issue, it's funny to see how many fans of The Shield will eagerly agree that Vic and Shane are complete monsters but go out of their way to rationalize how Ronnie and Lem were simply good guys caught up in the wrong crowd. Granted, compared to Shane and Vic, Ronnie and Lem were choirboys in comparison. But both men did bad things and made decisions/statements that would damn them as bad guys.
    • While fans still debate Vic Vs Ronnie, fans of Lem have mostly rejected Shawn Ryan's denouncement of his character via having him posthumously denounced on live TV as a corrupt cop whose death was karma catching up to him. One can see why.
    • Shane Vendrell had occasional Pet the Dog moments but was hated by fans so much that actor Walt Goggins often spent most of the interviews he did to promote the show discussing why Shane wasn't THAT bad and explaining how all of the bad things his character did (such as murdering his best friend Lem) made sense in a moral context of doing what he had to do to stay out of jail and be a father to his son.
    • These issues are not new to the crew of The Shield. Early in production of the first season, one of the police consultants assured the cast and crew that, while every cop from the rank of captain on up would denounce the show in public, they would all go home and enjoy it on TV. During the run of the fifth season, Forest Whitaker was told by many viewers (more than a few police among them) that, while they loved his performance, they absolutely hated his character. Whitaker later made some bemused comments to the effect of "Chiklis' character shot another cop in the face. How am I the bad guy here?"
  • People too young to have seen the original movie (where it was sung) often do not realize that the theme song of Mash is entitled "Suicide Is Painless", and every verse is about the futility and pain of life, and how suicide looks like a better option all the time. This made it an especially disturbing choice as the theme song for the MASH (Make a Smile Happen) toy drive for underprivileged children. Even more disturbing is the fact that such despair-laden lyrics were written by a 15 year old.
    • The rabbit hole goes even deeper. According to an interview with the song's composer, Johnny Mandel, on NPR, director Robert Altman told Mandel that the song should be "the stupidest song ever written" in order to frame a particularly absurd opening scene. Neither Altman nor Mandel could come up with sufficiently overwrought and melodramatic lyrics, so Altman assigned the lyrics to his 15 year old son.
    • Because "Suicide is Painless" became the theme for the TV show, Altman's son made more in royalties off the song than Altman did directing the film.
  • David Chase, creator of The Sopranos has spoken out against the many viewers who would cheer Tony on, stating that he was written to be an unlikable, hypocritical character.
  • Going by the vision of the series creators we're supposed to root for Rory in Gilmore Girls to overcome her obstacles and become the best journalist ever. Then came Paris Geller, a character we were supposed to hate and root against, but instead became the main comic relief and because of her dysfunctional family and academic life, we all wanted to just hug tightly because Rory treats her awfully for a best friend.
  • Wizards of Waverly Place. Alex's and Justin's relationship is probably supposed to be a serious case of Sibling Rivalry and it's interpreted this way just by fans who are 12 or younger. The other part of the fandom sees (or likes to see) a Cain and Abel antagonism, full of revenge and loathing, bordering on *ahem* Foe Yay.
  • Subtle in-story example; this poster [dead link], which is a critique of the Bush administration and suggesting that Bush is evil by comparing him to a vampire sucking the life out of Liberty, was hanging on the wall of Fangtasia, a vampire bar in True Blood.
    • A frequent occurrence in True Blood fandom. Many female fans strongly support the Sookie/Eric relationship despite the fact that onscreen he has committed multiple acts of physical and emotional abuse against her and other people. Whether such things as chaining a person in one's basement would be considered even remotely acceptable were the perpetrator not a handsome vampire is open to debate.
      • Although his main rival, Bill, kills random strippers just to fit in with his vamp buddies. So...
  • The Thick of It's Malcolm Tucker is loved by the very New Labour spin doctors he is based on. The series has so many fans at Number 10 that the cast and crew were even allowed to film scenes for the The Movie, In the Loop there. They arrived to find the "real Malcolm Tuckers" queuing up to be photographed with the fictional one.
    • This kind of misaimed fandom is very common with British political satire. Yes Minister and Spitting Image are two other examples of political comedies which had a lot of fans in Whitehall.
      • And, of course, standard viewers are split between those who want to see Tucker twist in the wind and those who cheer him on. He has strange powers.
    • With regards to The Thick of It and certainly Yes Minister, it's questionable how much the appreciation on the part of the people the shows were mocking was simply not getting that they were the butt of the joke versus very much realizing that they were but finding the joke so well done and close to their actual experiences that they appreciated it nonetheless. Certainly, one of the frequent praises that Yes Minister received from fans within the British political sphere was that the show's depictions were almost entirely spot-on, and the British in general are largely a people with a healthy appreciation for good Self Deprecating Humor.
    • Yes Minister also never made Jim Hacker or Humphrey out to be completely unsympathetic; they were both flawed but well-meaning characters who both wanted to do right by their country but had different ideas about how to go about it.
  • The New Statesman went one better and actually inverted the trope. The writers received a great deal of assistance with their research from Michael Portillo, despite being a rather vicious parody of Thatcher's Conservative Party and Britain in the 1980s. To what extent the character of Villain Protagonist Alan B'Stard was inspired by Portillo himself is unclear, though the man himself is on record as saying he chose to take "a very long holiday" around the time the media started to wonder who the real B'stard was.
  • In an in-universe example, Barney Stinson of How I Met Your Mother roots for Johnny in Karate Kid, Hans Gruber in Die Hard, and the Terminator in the first Terminator movie.
    • And ironically, many people think of Barney as their favorite character in the show, while in real life he would really be a bastard. And that's only his attitude and actions towards women, we're not even talking about his supposed job.
      • Barney is an anomaly, because his actions toward women and at his job are reprehensible, but he consistently shows that he deeply loves his friends and is fiercely loyal to them when they are in a crisis - although he still screws them over at times when they aren't.
  • Some people applaud Dexter's "vigilantism". Too many die-hard fans wish someone like Dexter really existed, simply because they hate the justice system that much. This feeling goes up exponentially, depending on how much the fan hates cops and if said fan has been victimized at one point in his/her life or knows someone who has. Their passionate replies, to say the least, are a little frightening. Lampshaded in-universe during the "Bay Harbour Butcher" story arc; most notably with the "Dark Defender" comic book character.
    • Many people who actually work in law enforcement also root on Dexter; the way they see it, he can go to the lengths that they wish they could but are forbidden to.
  • Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties was written by liberal writers and was intended to be a conservative Strawman Political to his more sensible (from their perspective) former hippie parents. Due to bad writing for the parents and the show in general, and great acting by Michael J. Fox, Alex became a Breakout Character that many people (especially the conservatives the writers were attempting to mock) found to be the most sympathetic on the show.
    • The fact that Ronald Reagan himself referred to Family Ties as his favorite show didn't help matters, either.
    • While it may have started that way, creator David Goldberg has said multiple times that he's a registered independent with a great respect for the "true" conservative point of view, calling it "a powerful and proud strain of American political thought."
  • From Robin Hood, the relationship between Guy and Marian was never meant to be seen as romantic or healthy, and in hindsight, it is actually a complete Deconstruction of the idea that a "virtuous" young woman can "save" a Cute but Troubled Bad Boy. Marian is far from being an angel, and though she does express some hope that Guy will become a better person, it is never the driving force of her character; likewise, when Guy seems to be on the path to "redemption" due to Marian's influence, it is always tempered by the fact that he doesn't really give a shit about anyone except Marian (ie, in Lardner's Ring Guy leaps to Marian's rescue when he thinks she's in danger, but earlier in the episode, was seconds away from slicing off an old woman's finger). Guy himself builds up Marian as a paragon of virtue who would "wash away (his) sins" with her pure heart, hanging his entire salvation on her ability to love him, and when she flat-out tells him that she has no intention of marrying him and that she's in love with another man he stabs her to death. People still shipped them!
  • Rimmer in Red Dwarf is a thoroughly unlikable individual based by the writers on a thoroughly unlikable individual they went to college with. He's amassed an embarrassingly large female fandom who, probably because of the character's sad upbringing, just want to hug him and tell him everything will be okay. A difficult task, considering he spends more than half of the show's run as a hologram without a physical presence...
    • It was unavoidable as Rimmer was given more character development. He had a horrible childhood, and his life has pretty much gone downhill since then. Even death provided him no respite. As the show went on, he does show that he has some good attributes, even though they are usually hidden by his many neuroses. While Rimmer does make everyone around him miserable, it's pretty obvious that he's even worse off.
    • It also probably wasn't helped by a certain notorious shirtless scene that Chris Barrie was given in season five.
  • Glee has 2 major ones in terms of Crack Pairing.
    • The first is the writer's own damn fault. They put Puck and Rachel together for one episode with nothing attracting them to each other than Matzo Fever simply to poke fun at and deconstruct the Token Minority Couple. However Puck is a Draco in Leather Pants Mr. Fanservice while Rachel is a Possession Sue so people latched onto them with great fervor (It didn't help that they played a Token Minority Couple completely straight with Tina and Mike the next season).
      • A lampshaded token ship. They got together at Asian Camp, and when they're having relationship troubles Mike suggests they go to the ASIAN COUPLES THERAPIST!
      • Lampshaded by Tina herself when, upon hearing Mike's suggestion, she angrily says "Why does everything have to be Asian?"
  • Apparently, according to the episode "iStart A Fan War", the fans of iCarly who enjoy Shipping are crazy, insane people with no lives and they should be watching the show for the comedy and not which girl Freddie ends up with. Delivered via Author Tract by Carly on behalf of Dan Schneider.
    • Guess what the 2nd episode after that one is about? Completely and utterly about Shipping.
  • In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Cardassian villain Dukat was intended to come across as a narcissistic sociopath, complete with delusional rationalizations of his evil actions both during the Bajoran Occupation and after. However, partly due to Marc Alaimo's strong, charismatic performance, many fans defended his actions as justified under the circumstances.
    • Doesn't help that Dukat embracing his genocidal ambitions is a direct result of the hero prodding him into it when Dukat is mentally unstable and emotionally destroyed. Moments like Dukat giving up everything to spare a half-breed daughter don't hurt either.
    • And it definitely didn't help that the show ran on Grey and Gray Morality, Deconstructing Starfleet and the Federation's ideals.
    • The same also goes for the Maquis, which Deep Space Nine gave the Designated Villain treatment many times, while many people saw them as taking reasonable action to defend their homes.
  • Girls have tried to get pregnant to audition for Sixteen and Pregnant.
  • Among the Merlin fandom there is a surprising number of viewers that see Morgana as a great feminist icon. On the surface, it works: she's a beautiful, powerful, forceful woman whose main goal in life is to destroy a tyrannical ruler and become Queen. However, on closer inspection, this reputation simply doesn't hold up. In the first season of the show, she is a Faux Action Girl who is certainly spunky and spirited, but fails in almost everything she sets out to do. In season two, she is a shell of her former self, relying on men to guide her actions and terrified of her own power (if she's even on-screen at all). By season three, she is a rather one-dimensional villainess who certainly has goals and the abilities to see them though, but whose choices are all based on her own grievances and thirst for vengeance rather than any "greater good" mentality (and she's still almost laughably inept). Basically, she goes from ineffectual, to disempowered, to pure evil.
    • It gets complicated when one takes into account the Alternative Character Interpretation, (one which is shared by actress Katie McGrath) in which Morgana is not evil at all, but anything from a Well-Intentioned Extremist to Axe Crazy, but the single most blatantly feminist moment in the entire show belongs to Guinevere, who demands on behalf of all the women in the village that they have a right to defend their home against bandits.
      • It all seems to stem from a desire for Morgana to be a feminist icon, when in fact her entire story is rife with Unfortunate Implications about how women can't handle power. But because Morgana has magical powers, speaks her mind, and sometimes fights with a sword, she's is deemed "the strong female character", whilst Guinevere, who fits the bill in substance, though not in style (she's much more passive and feminine), is largely ignored.
  • The satirical puppet show Spitting Image used Margaret Thatcher as the main target of all their vile satire, hoping that she might be voted out of office. Yet Rob Grant, one of the writers of the show, actually said in the "The Best Of Spitting Image Documentary" that depicting her as an evil bully unfortunately had the opposite effect: it made seem her more powerful and "Iron Lady"-like.
  • This is one of two big reasons why Dave Chappelle ran off the set of his Comedy Central hit show during season three's production (the other being extensive Executive Meddling). Too many viewers misinterpreted the social commentary as black people simply acting like buffoons, and only wanted to recite the meme-worthy quotes ad nauseum. After knowing this, after not exactly adjusting to his new found fame, and after in-house difficulties, Dave Chappelle walked out, $50 million contract be damned. Oddly enough, Comedy Central doesn't seem to hold any of this against Chapelle, since the network still shows re-runs of the show to this day.
  • Some parts of the Once Upon a Time fandom think of The Curse as salvation for the citizens of the fairy tale world from its medieval culture and introduced them to the magnificent wonders of the modern world, such as cool clothes and video games. So, because she enacted such a liberating spell and suffered from an abusive mother who promoted sexist medieval values, Regina is also seen as a feminist heroine who rescued the people from the same oppressive forces and customs she suffered from. This would have been a fine interpretation if one doesn't forget some important facts:
    1. Regina enacted the Curse to ruin Snow White's life and make everyone in the fairy tale world suffer just to get her happy ending. Kinda shooting down the interpretation that she had everyone's best interests in mind.
    2. The Curse was designed to separate them from their loved ones, deprive them of their free will, strip of their original personalities, keep them in a haze with false memories and keep them frozen in time if Emma didn't come to Storybrooke.
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