Too Dumb to Live/Live-Action TV: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{deathtrope}}
* ''[[Andromeda]]'': In [http://andromeda.wikia.com/wiki/Immaculate_Perception "Immaculate Perception"] Tyr says sending the DNA of Tamerlane Anasazi for comparision with Drago Museveni's could not be [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is0JRDsskyY kept a secret]{{broken link}}. He says that he is leaving with his son and wife while the rest of the pride can perish from it's stupidity.
* ''[[1000 Ways to Die]]'' features a lot of deaths that come from sheer stupidity: Some highlights:
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** Spike does a lot of crazy things because he's a little psychologically unbalanced and (from series four onwards) vaguely suicidal, but he gets special props here for constantly setting himself on fire by going out in daylight. He also gets bored and pulls a [[Leeroy Jenkins]] on his own scheme ("I had a plan. A good plan. But then I got bored") and he [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|dated Harmony and invites her along on his schemes]], despite how she messes up every one. Harmony holds the [[Idiot Ball]] everytime the two work together. Also, it's revealed in ''[[Angel]]'' that he was once captured by the Secret Service because they invited him to a ''free virgin blood party''. He tells Angel never to go to one of those parties later because "[[Captain Obvious|it's probably a trap]]". When he tries to stake himself, he goes about it in such a stupid fashion that it obviously won't work, so he might also be Too Stupid To Die. At other times, he's pretty perceptive and comes up with decent schemes, so his shenanigans might have something to do with boredom and his suicidal tendencies rather than terminal idiocy. [[The Ditz|Harmony]] should get special mention, too, for trying to kill Buffy by using nothing but three [[Mook|vampire mooks]], long after much larger groups of vampires had ceased to be a serious threat.
** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in "[[Musical Episode|Once More With Feeling]]" when Xander reads a newspaper with the headline "Mayhem Caused: Monsters certainly not involved, [[Police Are Useless|officials]] say."
** And that's not counting the countless vampires who decide they'll be the ones to kill the Slayer. Special mention goes to the one who attacked her on her way home from working at some Burger Fool. Buffy was caught in such a [[Heroic BSOD]] at the time, she didn't even struggle, but the guy let go of her in disgust because she stunk from working all day. After ''turning his back to her'', he was in the middle of saying he'd come back to eat her later, when a pissed-off Buffy staked him.
* The entire cast of the British comedy ''[[The Young Ones]]'' falls into this trope. The amount they don't know, and then the amount they presume to know, boggles the mind, but it's all harmless fun. Watching them try to sell a nuke to Libyan dictators was especially hilarious.
{{quote|'''Vyvyan''': * hits bomb* Why won't it go off, Mike?}}
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{{quote|'''Tom Servo:''' The cop never said anything about doing ''intensely stupid'' things!}}
** Also mocked in the song "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYuJA0oaw4s&feature=relmfu Danger To Ourself And Others]".
* In a tragic example, the entire Markab race which was wiped out by a plague in episode 18 of Season 2 of ''[[Babylon 5]]''. Instead of going through their own quarantine procedures, they routinely sent out people carrying the plague to different planets, eventually infecting all of their known colonies. Know the reason? For the dark age belief that the disease only targets the 'immoral' and the immoral people are getting divine retribution. Many of the first outbreaks were covered up ''due'' to this dark age belief. Were humans the ''only'' race in this show to go through an Age of Enlightenment and an Age of Reason? Even Doctor Franklin [[
* The new Discovery reality show ''[[The Colony]]'' saw an ''engineer'' say she would rather have toilet paper than electricity. Just proof that having an advanced degree doesn't make you smart.
** That's not "dumb", that's personal choice. Mankind got by for a long time without electricity, people still do it today. Life without toilet paper would be most unpleasant, on many levels.
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** All in all, Sheldon and Howard would not fare well at all in the real world, and they are so lucky to not exist in the real world.
** The show does have an example of Too Dumb to Live, though: When the check engine light is one, that means YOU CHECK YOUR ENGINE!!!! And what does Penny do? She ignores it. Sheldon, Leonard's mom, and Amy all warned her about it, and she just ignored them. Three brilliant minds told her about the check engine light, and she ignored them as if they were crazy about that effecting the car. And when her engine does break down, she doesn't seem to see the connection between it and her ignoring the check engine light.[[What an Idiot!]].
* One [[Girl of the Week]] in the ''[[Star Trek:
** Almost every [[Red Shirt]] on ''[[Star Trek:
* In ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'', [[Red Shirt|Red Squad]] ends up on a ''Defiant''-class ship behind enemy lines during a training mission, and the actual officers are promptly killed, leaving the cadets in command. The ranking cadet, naturally, decides they should just run the ship themselves, despite having ample opportunities to get home. While this in itself is dumb, he later decides to pull a [[David vs. Goliath]] against a new type of Dominion battleship. Never mind that even getting close enough to potentially succeed was a one-way trip, he doesn't even seem ready to give up after the plan fails. Predictably, they all die.
** Even worse, the decision to engage the
** Ensign Nog (and the Red Squad "CO") gets even more [[Too Dumb to Live]] bonus points for not recognizing that an Ensign outranks a Cadet (Acting Commander) when the officer by whose authority the cadet has been acting is deceased, or otherwise removed from the chain of command.
* Also in [[DS 9]], two people were fighting in front of a group of armed, angry Klingons. The first accused the second of being a shapeshifter, with whom the Klingons were at war. The second then shapeshifted his arm to choke the first, promptly getting shot and destroyed by all the Klingons, thus spoiling a yearlong undercover operation.
* From ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'', Seven of Nine's parents. A pair of scientists who plan to study the Borg by ''sneaking onto Borg Cubes''. This could be considered TDTL all on
** The Doctor actually [[
** Also, the Borg themselves could arguably be considered Too Dumb to Live. Namely because of their tendency to ''ignore intruders on their star ships'' until the intruders go out of their way to present an obvious threat (such as by shooting a drone). Of course, this makes it absurdly easy for Star Fleet officers to do stuff like wander right into the very heart of Borg ships, plant a bunch of high explosives, steal valuable Borg technology, and beam safely out.
** And therefore, any ''Star Trek'' captain who fights Borg ship-to-ship (the Borg have repeatedly been demonstrated as ''invincible'' that way) instead of just asking nicely if they might beam over, and then ''setting a bomb and then beaming out.''
* When the victims in the ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' episode "Roadkill" decided to run straight down a highway to get away from a truck trying to run them over, they were Too Dumb to Live.
* The show ''[[Time Commanders]]'': horse archers go in front! Do something about their horse-archers! NO, DON'T CHARGE THEM WITH HEAVY CAV!
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* Happens with disturbing frequency in the 3rd season of ''[[Chuck]]''. Even if the CIA Agent about whom you've BEEN BRIEFED has convinced you that he's harmless, he's still a CIA Agent... perhaps you shouldn't uncuff him before you kill him?
* TruTV's "[[The Smoking Gun Presents: World's Dumbest]]..." The comedians [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJR19aOHb5Y commenting] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l4mNXDDnFs the] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdA_JMsGoME stupidity] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvwuAhREm4k of] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPb7MrNhxHg each] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS0he4yN0Ak episode's] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPUS3XhwEro subject matter] [dumbest crinimals, drivers, partiers, mood swings, competitions, daredevils] also makes the entire series one big crowning moment of funny.
* Animals in the virtual fights in ''[[Animal Face
* ''[[Power Rangers]]' examples:
* In ''[[Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue]]'', there's an episode when a young girl's mom is captured by monsters. When the little girl ask another woman's help, the older woman says that there's no such things as monsters. This was midway through the season, after dozens of monsters had attacked the city.▼
** In the original ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]'', Rita's moronic lickspittles Squatt and Baboo, possibly emphasized the most in the episode "Dark Warrior". Even most ''children'' know enough not to drink from a strange bottle without a label, but that's exactly what they do when she sends them to steal Trini's uncle's invisibility formula. You really couldn't blame her for chewing them out this time; fortunately for them, it only made them sick.
** Not that the Rangers themselves don't fall into this occasionally. Also in the original series, in the second [[Halloween Episode]], Zordon ''specifically'' tells them what the rotted pumpkins are capable of face-hugging, yet all of them except Trini get too close when examining them, pretty much doing what he warned them not to. Fortunately for them, when it did happen, Trini had been smart enough to heed the warning.
▲** In ''[[Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue]]'', there's an episode when a young girl's mom is captured by monsters. When the little girl ask another woman's help, the older woman says that there's no such things as monsters. This was midway through the season, after dozens of monsters had attacked the city. Not to mention that just a [[Power Rangers in Space|few years ago]], Earth was temporarily taken over by monsters. ''And'' this was the team-up episode, confirming that, yes, the last six seasons of monsters attacks did happen... Long story short, it's with good reason that [[Atop the Fourth Wall|Linkara]] named this lady '''"DUMBEST PERSON IN POWER RANGERS EVER."'''
** In the final episode of ''[[Power Rangers RPM]]'' [[Big Bad|Venjix]],
* A particularly stupid example in ''[[Being Human (UK)]]'': Mitchell's ex-girlfriend sends him a DVD of what is essentially vampire porn (a recording of a man having sex with and then being murdered by a female vampire) and, in a moment of weakness, he decides to actually keep it for God-knows-what reason. The moment when he gets ''really'' stupid though is when he opts to hide the DVD in the box for a Laurel and Hardy movie. And then tells a young boy he's befriending to go ahead and borrow any Laurel and Hardy movie he wants. Cue the [[Paedo Hunt]]. George is rightly angry at this all, asking Mitchel "What else have you got up there, some German scat inside Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?"
** A similar story is used in the [[Being Human (USA)|American remake]], with the DVD being amongst [[The Three Stooges]].
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** Arguably this is also [[Too Cool to Live]]. Eddard may be the ''only'' character on the show to behave honorably at all times. His big mistake is he assumes others will do the same.
** There is also that while the queen entirely deserves to be thrown in the dungeon or executed for the shit she's been pulling, her children ''don't''', but the king is extremely likely to just order them all to be sentenced the instant he finds out about this. In addition, the queen's extremely powerful father is quite likely to start a rebellion about two seconds after the queen is dead. So giving her enough advance warning to pack the kids up and get out of town ahead of the posse is a pragmatic act as well as a merciful one -- it still achieves Ned's political goal (end the queen's marriage to the king and disinherit her illegitimate children, which is equally as well accomplished by her self-exile as well as her death), without also having the collateral damage of 'dead kids' and 'civil war'. Unfortunately, Ned underestimated the queen's political ability and didn't realize that she could find an option other than "get out of town while she still can", and so Ned died.
** In addition to the fact that while Ned was entirely aware that Queen Cersei was an adulteress and generally unpleasant and cold-hearted, neither he nor anyone else at the time knew that Cersei was also a ''homicidal psychopath''. Hence Ned's drastic underestimation of exactly how far Cersei would be willing to go to retain power, an underestimation that led directly to the king's death, Ned's death, and eventually the deaths of a whooooole lot of other people.
* ''[[Pretty Little Liars]]'' basically every decision they make dealing with A. Let's not tell the police we're being stalked. Oh, look we have a video that could be evidence in a murder case, let's not make copies when we know A's been breaking into our homes and stealing our stuff.
* In one episode of the hospital drama ''[[ER]]'', a couple is brought in suffering extreme hypothermia ... from driving into a freezing Lake Michigan. [[Sarcasm Mode|In their defense, their GPS directions said it was the shortest route to Canada.]]
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* In the series finale epilogue of ''[[Caprica]]'', Clarice Willow. She may have genuinely believed that it was God's will to convert the "differently sentient" (Cylon robots) to monotheism, but when she outright encourages a robot rebellion and declares that there will be "a day of reckoning" for humanity during her prophecy can be described as misguided at best and suicidal at worst. Or she just forgot what species she belonged to.
* Timmy in ''[[Lassie (TV series)|Lassie]]''. While he never actually feel down a well, he got himself into a LOT of situations (many of which were much worse than falling down a well) to the point where you wonder why he's allowed to go even a few minutes without adult supervision.
* ''[[Canada's
* ''[[Rescue 911]]'' features some rather surprising cases:
** Sealant overdose. A kid huffs butane and scotch guard.
** Three inexperienced cave divers explore a cave without training. Two survive.
* In ''[[M*A*S*H (television)|M*A*S*H]]'', Klinger's constant schemes aimed at getting out of the army (either through a Section-8 discharge or flat out desertion) were usually just absurd, but he did quite a few things that could have killed him. In one episode he tried to purposely make himself obese by eating whole salamis to get a medical discharge - ten of them later, he was ''really'' sick. Another time he claimed he was going to eat a jeep, one bite-sized piece at a time. Again, trying to eat metal and motor oil only made him really sick. And then then there was the time (told in a flashback by Colonel Blake) he tried to go AWOL with a homemade hang glider, the attempt showing he had never tried to hang glide before in his life. The man was lucky he survived long enough to be discharged at all, let alone with a promotion to Sergeant in the final season.
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