What's an X Like You Doing In a Y Like This?

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

When a character (usually female) is captured by the Big Bad or seen in a suspicious place by other characters. Also used as a (bad) pickup line.

The traditional wording is "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"

Examples of What's an X Like You Doing In a Y Like This? include:


Film - Live Action

  • George of the Jungle has Ape's book on "human courtship rituals" (Coffee, Tea or Me, a real-life book about two lusty young fictional stewardesses) offer this pickup line: "What's a nice girl like you doing in a plane like this?"
  • A short by Martin Scorsese is titled "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"
  • Evie from The Mummy 1999 gets the line mixed up while drunk. "I know what you're thinking. What is a place like me doing in a girl like this?" Rick responds, "Something like that."
  • Following:

The young man: So what's a nice girl like you-
The blonde: Doing in a place like this?
The young man: -doing with a bald old cunt like that?

Film - Animation

Bull #1: What are a couple of ladies like you...
Bull #2: Doing on a drive like this?

Literature

  • Inverted in the Robert A. Heinlein novel The Number of the Beast, when a dissection of a dead female alien who had been posing as a male human leads to the discovery that her legs each had two knees, one bending forward and one bending backwards. Cue the quip, "What's a nice joint like you doing in a girl like this?"

Live Action TV

  • In the Doctor Who story "The Web of Fear", someone asks a female scientist "What's a girl like you doing in a job like this?". She's not impressed.
  • In The Pretender episode A Stand-Up Guy, Jarod strikes up a conversation with a woman whose restaurant has become a gang hangout, and asks her in a joking tone what a nice girl like her is doing in a place like this.
  • In the Star Trek: The Next Generation first-season episode "11001001", said by Riker to a hologram: "What's a knockout brunette like you doing in a computer-generated gin joint like this?"

Magazines

  • Parodied in "Movie Dialogue We'd Like To Hear" from Mad Magazine:

"Ever since I came in here tonight, somethin's been puzzlin' me... what's a crummy girl like you doin' in a nice place like this?"

Music

  • Bob Dylan: "What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?"
  • The Spanish band Burning references the line in the song "¿Qué Hace Una Chica Como Tú En Un Lugar Como Éste?"
  • Frank Zappa loved this line and used it in at least five different songs.
  • John Schneider's "What's A Memory Like You(Doing In A Love Like This)"

Newspaper Comics

  • In a cartoon by Swedish artist Beverloo:

Girl at party: What a nice girl like me is doing at a place like this? I'm a hooker, of course!

Garfield: What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?
Arlene: But this is a nice place.
Garfield: Like I said... What's a girl like YOU doing in a place like THIS?

Theatre

  • There was a musical revue in the 1970s called "What's a Nice Country Like You Doing in a State Like This?"
  • City of Angels:

Stone (to Bobbi): "Let me take you away from all this," is that the routine? "What's a nice kid like you, et cetera?" What is a nice kid like you, et cetera?

Video Games

“What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
“Uh heh… Waiting desperately for someone to use that pathetic line on me.”

  • Guybrush says this to De Singe in Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal: "So, how'd a dazzling urbanite like yourself wind up in a sleepy pirate island like Flotsam?"

Western Animation

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/What%27s_an_X_Like_You_Doing_In_a_Y_Like_This%3F?oldid=1623596"