Wrong Genre Savvy/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
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Examples of Wrong Genre Savvy characters in Live-Action TV include:

  • Alex Drake from Ashes to Ashes is an especially interesting case: having been aware of Sam Tyler's experience, she thinks she's starring in Life On Mars. Of course since Ashes To Ashes is the sequel to Life on Mars some of what she thinks is right, and some isn't.
  • In the American version of The Office, Michael Scott often attempts to be Genre Savvy about real life, much to the confusion of the rational people around him.
    • Dwight Shrute often treats real life as if it were a different genre of fiction. He treats the threat of layoffs as if he were participating in a competitive reality TV show like Survivor, keeps hidden weapons as though violent attacks were imminent, and a robbery plan that would be Genre Savvy if he existed in a crime thriller.
      • Also, he uses the vampire tropes when he thinks Jim was bitten by a bat (sharpened stake,etc). In fact, Jim's pranks use this a lot, like the way he recruited Dwight to the CIA.

Jim: I discovered that Dwight placed a listening bug in the wooden duck he gave me. I think that if I play my cards right, I can have him replay the plot of National Treasure.

    • Michael usually goes with comedy or romantic wrong genre tropes, such as muttering something under his breath so that the microphone picks up while the other characters don't hear it. They always hear it and call him out on whatever he just muttered. When he has to do anything resembling spy or infiltration movies (such as spying on a competing paper company), he assumes a thinly-veiled variation on his own name such as "Michael Scotch" or his recurring "Agent Michael Scarn" character.
  • In the Torchwood episode "Countrycide," the team investigates a series of killings by predatory aliens. They don't know that aliens had nothing to do it. A clan of cannibalistic Serial Killers committed the murders.
    • In another episode the team is investigating mysterious disappearances on a road, and both Tosh and Ianto up disappearing as well, waking up in a cellar of some sort. They, being paranormal investigators, assume it's aliens. Turns out it was just normal crazy people.
  • Arthur in Merlin believes that he is the main character, any Monster of the Week can be defeated with his sword, Merlin is just his dumb sidekick, and his Knight Templar father has the right idea overall in trying to eliminate all wizards and witches.
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus occasionally features an army colonel who comes so very close to being genuinely Genre Savvy. He knows he's in a comedy sketch show all right. Unfortunately he doesn't realise which one, and so he thinks that sketches should have clearly-defined jokes in them, with vaguely plausible premises, and punchlines. As a result he calls an end to many a sketch which he considers to be far too silly, generally to provide at least some kind of closure to a sketch that is, frankly, totally off the rails by the time he appears with no stopping place in sight.
  • In the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode "The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis," the characters try to figure out a Five-Man Band configuration which, if they stick to it, will lead to their inevitable success. This being Sunny, it obviously fails miserably.
  • Maxwell Smart once did this in an episode of Get Smart. He was kidnapped by KAOS and hypnotised to kill the Chief, put in a cell, and left to escape. Every time the KAOS agents tried to help him, he misinterpreted it as an attempt to kill him.
  • In an episode of Friends, Joey receives a visit from an unhinged, obsessed fan. Anticipating violence, he grabs a frying pan. Chandler suggests that he comes up with a backup plan in case she isn't a cartoon character.

Joey: I'm not Drake.
Ross: That's right, he's not Drake, he's Hans Remore, Drake's evil twin.
Erika Ford (Stalker): Is this true?
Rachel: Yes, yes it is true. And I know this because... because he pretended to be Drake too, to sleep with me.
[Rachel throws water in his face]
Monica: And then he told me he would run away with me, and he didn't.
[Monica throws water in his face]
Chandler: And you left the toilet seat up, you bastard.
[Chandler throws water in his face]

  • Flight of the Conchords had a weird example when Bret tried to woo a woman with techniques he'd seen in a sitcom. Now, Bret is in a sitcom, but he did stuff that never works even in sitcoms. At one point, Jemaine asks whether what Bret is planning on doing worked in the sitcom he saw it in. Bret says that it didn't, but as this is real life, his chances are better.
  • In the last episode of Firefly, Wash gives us this exchange:

Wash: Psychic, though? That sounds like something out of science fiction.
Zoe: You live in a spaceship, dear.
Wash: So?

    • Crow was convinced that he was the recurring Dragon to Niska, who would face the heroes as a recurring enemy. Nope.
  • Lost: Although Hurley usually fills the role of the Genre Savvy, he sometimes ends up wrong as well. Early on, he feared a body he was burying would rise as a zombie, killing him first because he weighed too much to run quickly. He was wrong. Years later, one of his friends did rise from the dead, and many others visited him as ghosts, but by that time, the show itself has shifted genres.
  • In the short-lived NBC series Something Is Out There, the female alien Ta'Ra is constantly puzzled by her human partner saying things like "Where's the Self-Destruct Mechanism on this spaceship?" and "Can't you set that raygun on stun?"
  • Contestants on Hell's Kitchen will use the usual Reality Show tropes such as alliances, sabotage, and backstabbing... while apparently forgetting that the man they're trying to please is Gordon Ramsay, who has repeatedly ignored the "standard" rules and eliminated whoever he felt like despite all the Survivor-style plotting and their delusions that they're clever. Particularly baffing on the later sesons, when people who claims to be fans of the show and as such should have catched it still retort to standard Reality Show backstabbing antics in misguided attempts to please Ramsey.
  • Likewise, in The Apprentice contestants will often try to rig the boardroom in their favor by bringing back the person that they intend to get fired, along with whoever was the strongest person on their team—or even someone that has immunity from being fired—in an attempt to manipulate the boss into firing the other person. This strategy almost never works.
    • In The Celebrity Apprentice 2, Scott Hamilton actually told Donald Trump that he had brought back Tom Green, who he wanted to be fired, and Herschel Walker because he thought that Walker probably wouldn't be fired and would support him in getting rid of Green. Honesty was most definitely not the best policy here though, as this revelation led pretty much directly to Hamilton's firing.
    • This strategy actually did work for Ivana in the second regular season of The Apprentice, albeit in a completely different manner to what she intended. She brought back Stacie, who was her intended victim, along with Bradford and Jennifer, who had been the best two salespeople in the task, thinking that this would result in Stacie's firing. Her original strategy failed, because Trump didn't think Stacie had caused the team to lose, but Ivana was saved by the fact that Bradford had stupidly decided to surrender his immunity (which he claimed he didn't need) earlier in the boardroom, resulting in Trump firing him instead.
  • Castle: While Richard Castle's Genre Savvy skills are often an asset to his crime fighting, he also likes to play with being Wrong Genre Savvy. In one recent example, he acts as though he's in a vampire show instead of a They Fight Crime procedural:

Castle: Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Lanie: What is wrong?
Castle: If he's a vampire and you pull that [stake] out, he comes back to life!
Lanie: If he does, then we can all go home early.

  • When Sisko was trying to catch the rogue officer Eddington in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, he realised that Eddington saw himself as a heroic figure for the Maquis, which Eddington pretty much confirmed by likening himself to Jean Valjean in Les Misérables. Sisko ended up having to become genre savvy himself and forced Eddington to become a martyr for his beliefs.
    • Edith Keeler thinks she's on a utopian, anti-war science fiction show. Unfortunately, her episode was guest written by Harlan Ellison, and applying Star Trek ideals there doesn't work.
      • The in-universe explanation is that she had the right idea with her utopian, anti-war ideals... but in the wrong time, leading to it all going horribly wrong.
  • Ant, a moderately good singer, brought his brother, Seb, an utterly hopeless singer to the pre-auditions of The X Factor, with Seb's terrible performance ensuring they'd get to the actual judges. The duo hoped that the judges would just put through Ant, as they had often done with groups with only one good singer; unfortunately that year the show started only putting through groups as a whole and not individual members, stopping the plan dead in its tracks.
  • On an episode of The Avengers, a famous bullfighter sees a cart rolling toward him and, assuming that his skills are being tested, whips out his cape. It turns out he's right that the cart was sent against him by the villain but wrong about how it's going to kill him.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Musical Episode "Once More With Feeling". The person who tries to change the town's genre to a happy musical. Turns out people are dancing themselves to death. Oops.
    • Relatedly, when Jonathan turns himself into the main character, actually forcing the show itself to shift from a horror-spoof to an over the top action-spoof at the same time. This means that he actively chose to be Wrong Genre Savvy, then forced the genre to change to suit him. Surprisingly, it works out for most of the episode, before he has to give it up to stop the monster of the week.
    • Anya says to Xander (paraphrased) "If you're ever thinking of leaving me, I want it to be like one of those movies where the bomb is counting down, and at one second to go I cut the wire and you don't leave." Wrong genre savvy since this is a Joss Whedon production, so the 'bomb' goes off at the most tragic possible time.
    • In a season 4 episode, Willow falls out with Buffy when Buffy attempts to instruct her on the course of action, claiming "I'm not your Sidekick!" despite her clearly being so.
    • The Trio are an example of this trope; they attempt to be stereotypical comic book supervillains inside a story that's more nuanced and mature than that. The season 7 episode "Storyteller" is about confronting Andrew with this fact.
    • In a conversation with Angel, Spike once mentions "the old Anne Rice routine"—telling a woman you're a vampire, convincing her you're a tortured soul who only wants to overcome your curse and be good, then eating her when she lets her guard down.
  • The eponymous Remington Steele is a classic movie buff, and every case he and Laura Holt solve together reminds him of a classic movie. Often the wrong one...
  • A recurring sketch in The Armstrong And Miller Show features a butler who thinks he's in a Jeeves and Wooster-esque Edwardian comedy of manners, except that his Upper Class Twit boss is less of a Dogged Nice Guy getting into amusing misunderstandings, and more of a Soap Opera-style Magnificent Bastard who needs someone to hide the bodies.
  • In the Stargate SG-1 episode "Bad Guys", SG-1 accidentally take a bunch of hostages in an alien museum, and find themselves having to continue playing the role of terrorists until they can get the Stargate open again. Unfortunately, they also end up convincing the incompetent night watchman that he's just become the hero of a Die Hard on an X movie...
  • On the reality show Chef Academy, the chefs can be "eliminated" if they fail three tests over the course of the academy. It's made clear that it's perfectly possible that the entire class could graduate. Unfortunately, some of the chefs have seen too much reality TV, leading them to inexplicably act like they're on a competitive elimination show (a la Hell's Kitchen). At one point, one of the chefs actually says, "It's like I'm the only one who understands that this is a competition!" It's really not.
  • Abed, usually anything but this trope, but in the Community episode English as a Second Language he thinks Troy's subplot is inspired by Good Will Hunting. It isn't; it's a parody of Good Will Hunting.
  • Magnum, P.I.: An old enemy of Higgins has a habit of setting up complicated schemes based on classic movies, so Magnum spends most of the episode trying to figure out what movie he's supposed to be in, eventually settling on the 40s serial Perils Of Nyoka. The viewers knew it was Raiders of the Lost Ark from the very first scene. This whole episode was an Actor Allusion to Tom Selleck being Spielberg and Lucas's first choice for playing Indiana Jones, but he had to turn it down because of his commitment to do Magnum.
    • A clip from Tom Selleck's audition is included in the special features of the Raiders of the Lost Ark boxset, proving that Selleck would have made a damn fine Indiana Jones.
  • On Heroes, Hiro Nakamura lives his life as though he lives in The Silver Age of Comic Books. Unfortunately, the world he lives in is much, much closer to The Dark Age of Comic Books. As a result, the single most powerful character in the show spends much of each season holding the Idiot Ball.
  • Clark Kent spends the first few seasons of Smallville thinking he's in a teen drama when he's really a superhero.
  • Sansa Stark of Game of Thrones. If she really lived in an idealized fairytale romance, she'd be just fine. But she actually lives in a Crapsack World with Black and Grey Morality where Anyone Can Die, and her inability to see that leads to her father's death.
    • In fairness, even her own father pointed out that Sansa's behavior was what would be expected of a young woman in her position, even by the genre rules Westeros actually runs under. The instant she became betrothed to the Crown Prince, Sansa's duty would be to support her fiancée's position rather than her father's should the two ever come into conflict.
    • Likewise, Sansa's quixotic beliefs on what 'true knights' should act like, as compared to what the knights in Westeros actually did act like, are less absurd when you consider that up until the start of the events in the novels, literally every knight she had met in her life (specifically, her father, her older brother, and her father's guard captain) actually did act like storybook chivalrous figures. Her ignorance of the real world was less a function of stupidity and more a function of overly sheltered upbringing.
  • In Primeval a zoo keeper who has secretly raised a Smilodon, thought that the crew from Home Office cloned it and are trying kill it. But they are there to capture the beast, and try to put it back from where it came. She ends getting killed by it when she though it won't attack her, as it would view her as its mother.
  • Who Wants to Be a Superhero?: Harder to be a superhero than it looks, isn't it?
  • In an episode of Supernatural, the Winchesters are protecting a family in a house from a lady called, the "Lady in the Walls", at first they assume she was a ghost, but she is in fact an Ax Crazy deranged human who has spent her entire life living under the house.


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