Bunny Ears Lawyer / Live-Action TV

"Son, yes, we've got colonels like you and worse."

— US Air Force Chief of Staff General Michael E. Ryan (as quoted by Richard Dean Anderson, in regards to the latter's Stargate SG-1 character Jack O'Neill)

Bunny Ears Lawyers of Live Action TV.

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• Chloe O'Brian on 24. ("I was inappropriately blunt, wasn't I? I do that a lot.") By the end, she's running CTU.
• Diego Soto from Alcatraz has a case of arrested development and had no aspirations beyond running a comic book store until he was drafted to help track down the "63s". This is despite being a genius with PhDs in Criminal Justice and Civil War History in addition to being the world's foremost authority on Alcatraz.
• The Afterparty has Detective Danner, who comes across as a more offbeat cop in the mold of Monk or Columbo. She thinks of each suspect as the star of their own movie and their statements as different film genres, even enjoying a bag of popcorn during the interrogations. Despite this eccentricity, she's able to glean relevant information for the case from each testimony, such as narrowing down the time frame of when the murder occurred.
• All Creatures Great & Small (2020): Siegfried Farnon is eccentric, bombastic, mercurial, frequently outrageously hypocritical, and generally terrible at dealing with the human race, to the point where he absolutely should not have a thriving veterinary practice. But as a veterinarian, he is absolutely superb — steady, wise, knowledgeable, experienced, utterly professional, and always gentle and soothing with his patients. For all his quirks, he is also seen more than once advising James Herriot on some aspect of veterinary medicine as a wise mentor figure, offering sage advice and timeless wisdom about the exigencies of the profession and showing true compassion to his young colleague.
• Ally McBeal:
  • Ally has many brilliant legal maneuvers despite her hallucinations, Nelle is the firm's most productive associate and full of quirks involving a dreaded fear of frogs, and Mark Albert was ridiculously skilled at closing arguments, and was so obsessed with hygiene he had a dentist's chair installed in his office. Even Elaine is shown to be a genius inventor.
  • John "The Biscuit" Cage was painfully shy, had facial and verbal tics (including shouting "Balls! Balls! Balls!"), routinely hung upside-down in his office like a bat to collect his thoughts, had a secret room installed in the office (the only entry to which was in a bathroom stall, by remote control), and harbored a thousand other eccentricities. Yet when he walked into court, or sat down at a conference table, and took a sip of water, everyone present knew that he was about to utterly demolish his opponent.
  • Richard is completely incompetent as a litigator; his mission is actually to destroy the law just for the fun of it, and his arguments are so over the top ridiculous that the judges groan when he starts to talk. He is, though, very good at manipulating clients into hiring the firm.
• Basically the core concept of Alphas. While a neurological mutation allows them amazing powers (reading EM signals, super-strength, amplified senses), it also gives them debilitating mental conditions (autism, severe temper, OCD respectively). They're technically employees of the Department of Defense, but are kept under the supervision of a psychiatrist. While they are extremely useful, "normal" people would have a hard time working side-by-side with them.
• Arrested Development: Tobias actually seems to be a very competent psychiatrist; on the few occasions where he offers advice to Michael, his analysis is pretty spot-on. If only that was his actual job, or if Michael actually listened to him.
• The A-Team: H.M. "Howlin' Mad" Murdock fits this trope to a T. Completely and totally mentally unbalanced, prone to assuming make-believe identities and over-personifying objects and is just flat-out loony. Who happens to be a crack military pilot. Although there's a lot of hints that Murdock is engaged in Obfuscating Insanity when it comes to the authorities and annoying BA when with the team. The fact that it is rumored he fakes at least some of it, and can be serious without a hint of insanity (see the first season finale as an example) makes it even more awesome.
• Awaken: Jung-woo is a very eccentric policeman, doing things like sleeping in the holding-cell. He's also a very good policeman, and the one who decodes the killer's messages.
• Battlestar Galactica:
  • Dr. Baltar is always twitching and rambling on to himself as if he's interacting with an invisible person, but no-one gives him more than a funny look because he's a recognised genius and their Cylon expert — it's not as if he has a Cylon in his head or something. A more straight-up example would be Starbuck, whose flagrant insubordination and conduct unbecoming is only tolerated because she's such a hotshot pilot. When the human race has been reduced to 50,000 individuals and the enemy can respawn indefinitely, throwing away a talented jerkass or Cloudcuckoolander is less of an option.
  • Starbuck is a heavy drinker and has serious anger management issues, which results in her punching her executive officer on one occasion. Still, she is kept flying due to her being so damn good at it... when she's not too drunk or hung over for it. It may help that she has strong ties with the Adama family, though. And that the good commander seems to have somewhat fatherly feelings for her.
  • Baltar's actual lawyer at the end of Season 3, Romo Lampkin, is a kleptomaniac who wears sunglasses for almost an entire season and carries his ex-wife's cat around in a bag. He's also an amazing lawyer who managed to get Baltar cleared of all charges in what was supposed to be a show trial.
  • Saul Tigh. Leave him in charge of the ship with vague orders (such as "Keep everything running smooth until we get this bullet out of Adama's lung"), and you'll find him in the corner curled up in a whiskey-soaked ball wondering where all those dead bodies came from. However, put him in charge of a clearly-defined task, and by the Gods it will get done, even if it means killing 80 of his own men to prevent the loss of the ship or sending men and women on suicide bomber missions.
• The entire staff of Veridian Dynamics on Better Off Ted, but especially Phil and Lem who are uttery unable to function outside of a laboratory setting but are impossibly brilliant. Veronica is also a sociopath who courtship with Mordor the Unforgiving (not Kevin!) involved things like slaughtering a goat.
• The Big Bang Theory: averted by Sheldon Cooper. Despite being allegedly of the most brilliant scientific minds on the planet, he gets fired, is not asked to return (nor is hired by anyone else) and only manages to get his job back because his mother seduced his boss. Most telling, the people he calls friends can barely stand him and usually only go along with his plans because they'd literally never hear the end of it from him. He's constantly having to defend his behavior to his boss, and usually ends having to back down because he knows his boss will be all too happy to fire him again.
• A poker player in Black Books is nick-named "mouse ears", and does in fact, wear huge novelty mouse ears while playing. One of the other players is apparently deaf and blind, but can still apparently play poker quite well.
• Pretty much all the squints on Bones are utterly brilliant but quirky. Brennan and Zack are the smartest people on the show, but extremely people dumb; Hodgins is a conspiracy theorist, and Angela is kind of a nympho. Even Booth likes to jazz up his serious FBI-ness with wacky belt buckles and crazy socks.
• Denny Crane from Boston Legal. Made explicit (in a less humorous way than your usual Lampshade Hanging) in Boston Legal's more serious parent series The Practice, in which someone who'd worked with Denny assured Alan that "the plaque comes off his brain" when he's in the courtroom, and he becomes... well, Denny Crane.
• Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul have the McGill brothers, both of whom are quirky but highly talented lawyers:
  • Saul Goodman: the cheesy ads, dotty persona, silly name, and general shyster vibe all make him seem hugely untrustworthy. However, he's extremely competent and very loyal to his clients. Some of this is suggested to be Obfuscating Stupidity, as his goofy nature keeps him Beneath Notice.
  • Chuck McGill is a fantastic lawyer who goes to great lengths to win cases, helping Hamlin, Hamlin, and McGill become a huge law firm. However, Sanity Slippage has caused him to develop a psychosomatic electromagnetic hypersensitivity, making him feel excruciating pain if he believes himself to be near an electrical device. Despite this, he's so respected that whenever he does visit the HHM office, everyone goes to great lengths to accomodate him, turning off all electronics for his sake.
  • Eduardo "Lalo" Salamanca has a number of odd quirks, some intentional, but many of them genuine that make him stand out in comparison to his, seemingly, more intimidating family members. These quirks can lead to someone letting their guard down at their own peril as, in spite of them, Lalo is in fact the single most competent and dangerous member of his entire family.
• The very first scene in the pilot of Brooklyn Nine-Nine shows detective Jake Peralta in a recently robbed electronics store quoting Donnie Brasco, playing with the displays, and generally goofing off to the annoyance of his straight-laced partner. He then reveals that he solved the case five minutes ago. The series eventually establishes every detective in the precinct as having their own set of bunny ears, and most of them being excellent at their jobs in spite of their eccentricities.
• The Carol Burnett Show: A literal example Played for Laughs.
• Richard Castle is a bestselling writer who helps a homicide squad out with their investigations. One of the things he brings to the table is Connections. Another is money to throw at certain problems, including buying a high-end cappuccino machine. The third, and most important, would be his unusual perspective on the cases, compared to the three cops. He comes up with crazy theories all the time, and they are occasionally proved right. One scene had him explaining his latest wacky idea to Beckett, then instead of rejecting him, she admits she can't come up with anything better.
• Dr. Geiger from Chicago Hope had some quirky habits of playing music in the operating room, dealing with stress by taking off his pants and playing with trains in his office, and just generally being a strange person who was not very easy to get along with. But he was also a brilliant heart surgeon, so people were willing to put up with it.
• The Chosen: John the Baptizer is a raggedly looking preacher wandering the wilds who refuses to eat meat because it's too much effort, jump-scares people arriving to meet with him, and enjoys aggravating government officials and leaders of the religious establishment. He is nevertheless devoted to following the will of God and supporting his cousin Jesus, and has a large following among the people as a teacher.
• Chuck:
  • Jeff & Lester are stated by the title character to be better than the CIA's best computer experts, if they're focused. The kicker? Lester's a somewhat sociopathic egomaniac, and Jeff (At least for the first four seasons, before recovering from carbon monoxide poisoning) is the show's resident Cloudcuckoolander.
  • Chuck himself qualifies, but in his spy career, not his computer repair career. The Intersect gave him encyclopedic knowledge of espionage and international conflict, and the Intersect 2.0 gave him basically any skill that could be useful to a spy in short bursts (such as marksmanship and almost every martial art and language). He'd be a perfect Tuxedo and Martini spy if not for being a Technical Pacifist and very socially awkward.
• LAPD Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson of The Closer had her boyfriend move back out to avoid the fallout with her mom, is constantly breaking off dates to work on a case, is quite possibly the most insecure character on network television, will cheerfully lie to suspects, is generally caustic to anyone she doesn't like, and never takes no for an answer. She is also a brilliant detective and CIA-trained interrogator who manages to close virtually every case to come her way... hence the show title. Chief Pope sums it up:
  Pope: I'm sorry, she sometimes forgets there are other people. In... the world.
• The Cleaner (UK):Although he's quirky and often surly, Wicky is very good at cleaning up crime scenes and takes pride in his abilities.
• Community:
  • Jeff is shown to be one in flashbacks, as although he didn't possess an undergraduate degree and came up with the most ridiculous defenses, he never lost a case. The same goes for everyone else at his old firm.
  • Pierce Hawthorne is a racist, homophobic, sexist, perverted, loony old Jerkass bordering on Psychopathic Man Child, but he has proved on rare occasions to be a competent businessman, even better than his father. That didn't stop his company from firing him after his father's death.
• Rebecca Bunch from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a very good lawyer (she graduated from both Harvard and Yale) and it's shown that she does extremely well at her law firm (she was even going to be made partner in New York). However, she is also obsessed with her ex-boyfriend and moved across the country, even taking a lower paying job and skipping out of work in the middle of the day to "accidentally" bump into him.
• Penelope Garcia of Criminal Minds talks two hundred miles an hour, plays MMORPGs at the office, gets hysterical when people interfere with her workspace, regularly answers the phone with lines like "talk dirty to me," (frequently enough that the BAU opens phone calls with "You're on speaker") and is accustomed to wearing elaborate hairdos and cleavage-enhancing tops (both in colors not normally found in nature) to work at the FBI. She also likes to keep a wide variety of quirky and colorful toys in her workspace. She's the resident computer supergenius.
  • Technically, the FBI hired her because she's one of the most dangerous hackers in the world. In "Penelope", we learn that she joined the FBI rather than go to prison.
  • She also has at least once worn cat ears to work. She's a cat ears hacker!
  • Her key skill is her ability to create search programs that sift through massive databases and correlate the information into something the agents can use to catch the killers. With a few hints she can reduce the suspect pool from millions to just dozens.
• In CSI at least half the cast are deeply messed up despite being good at their jobs. Although downplayed in later seasons, early episodes often emphasize that this is the LVPD crime lab's night crew. Shows with workplace settings often allude to a night shift, who remain off-camera and provide a convenient explanation for mix-ups or miscommunications. On the rare occasion that someone from the night shift appears onscreen, they may well be wearing Bunny Ears — and if a member of the main cast works a night shift, they may be the only one NOT wearing Bunny Ears. This is often Truth in Television: second (3PM to 11PM) or third (11PM to 6AM) shift hours make a normal social life very difficult and anyone who works that schedule long-term is probably a little bonkers. CSI is an entire series about those third-shift oddballs.
  • In a cast full of weirdos, the title definitely goes to Hodges, who starts out so mentally unbalanced that in real life he not only would never be allowed to work with law enforcement in any capacity, but probably wouldn't even be allowed outdoors without some kind of supervision. Even in-universe, he's had trouble holding down a job for exactly those reasons.
  • Before Hodges joined the cast, Grissom held the title. It's clear why he hasn't risen further in the department — races cockroaches for fun, avoids paperwork to the detriment of his subordinates — but he's way more than competent at his job.
• CSI: Miami features Alexx, The Coroner who refers to all of her corpses as "baby". A minor quirk compared to most.
• Dr. Mark Sloan in Diagnosis: Murder occasionally made his rounds on roller skates, made latex gloves into balloons, seemed to take pleasure in driving hospital administrator Norman Briggs into apoplexy and generally acted, well, like a character played by Dick Van Dyke. He's also a brilliant surgeon and diagnostician, and frequent consultant to the police department.
• Dexter:
  • FBI Special Agent Frank Lundy is a chipper and quirky man, who does things like stopping what he's doing at one o'clock exactly every day to have lunch, spending hours looking over evidence while going through various types of music to try and find the type which will put him into the right state of mind to figure out clues, and telling his task force that he'll probably make several food-related metaphors because he "likes food". He is also a legendary investigator who has a reputation for catching serial killers in cases which were considered unsolvable, who comes just short of determining the identity of the Bay Harbour Butcher. Lundy has some quirks but it's not that prominent in general.
  • Dexter's colleague Vince Masuka is a very competent forensic analyst who constantly talks dirty. However, people don't tend to ignore it. They constantly complain until he cuts it and they miss his Bunny Ears Lawyer self.
• Don Konkey of Dirt (2007) is a functioning schizophrenic with a tendency to skip his meds, but it doesn't stop him from being a very talented photographer, and might at times be seen as an asset, as it results in a reckless disregard for his own safety which makes him willing to go to frankly insane lengths in order to get a difficult shot. Would've gone Ax-Crazy at the end of the first season if he had listened to his hallucinations.
• Doctor Martin Ellingham in Doc Martin is abrasive and arrogant, and generally unsociable. He had also developed a blood phobia, which caused him to have to give up his prestigious surgical practice and become the best damned GP (general practitioner) the village of Portwenn ever had.
• Doctor Who: Is the Doctor in the house?
  • The First Doctor routinely abused Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!, repeatedly tried to ditch his first companions Ian and Barbara on any planet that looked like Earth (he eventually grew fond of them) and kept flip-flopping between dangerously capable and dangerously senile.
  • A fun game to play with the Second Doctor, often described by the fandom as an "intergalactic hobo," is to question whether he's using Obfuscating Stupidity to cleverly manipulate everyone in the room or is actually just being an Absent-Minded Professor who has no idea what he's doing and is bumbling through the first three-quarters of the plot, before he gets serious. With most Doctors, the balance is usually on the former. With the Second, it's honestly YMMV.
  • In his days acting as UNIT's scientific adviser, he wore an anachronistic velvet jacket and a cape. Or a scarf long enough to touch both sides of the English Channel. Or a piece of celery on his lapel. Or... whatever the hell this is supposed to be◊. The Brigadier drew the line at his attempt to dress as a Viking warrior or Pierrot, though. While fiddling with the TARDIS console, he also liked to sing opera. He is still on UNIT's payroll, because when there is a crisis, the Doctor is going to involved somehow, and being aligned makes it less likely - although not impossible - that they'll end up working at cross-purposes.
  • The Seventh Doctor was prone to mixing up his metaphors and engaging in physical comedy. He's also a Manipulative Bastard who will give his enemies just enough rope to hang themselves, then encourage them to tie the knot around their own necks while they think they're wrapping it around his.
  • The Eleventh Doctor was a dorky but endearing Genius Ditz and Manchild with a Motor Mouth who got as passionate about children's toys as he did about defending the universe.
  • Even in the relatively serious regenerations, the man saves the universe with psychic paper, a sonic screwdriver, and a time traveling police box, prone to the pun and losing track of his metaphors.
• The main character of Drop Dead Diva comes off as being a bit eccentric due to her secretly being someone else dropped into her current body, but with the old inhabitant's brains and her ingenuity, she's a good lawyer. At one point, she actually wears a pair of bunny ears while making closing arguments.
• Benton Fraser on Due South has conversations with his deaf wolf and his father's ghost, runs around Chicago in his red serge dress uniform, and analyses evidence by licking it, among other quirks. He is, however, a very effective crimefighter.
• Dr. Jacob Hood, the Omnidisciplinary Scientist on Eleventh Hour. He doesn't have any one bunny ears quirk, but he does act quite oddly, melting someone's watch on a hot plate and then dipping it ice cream, entering a school building (not covertly) through the ventilation system instead of the doors, and so on. He always has some valid exploratory or demonstrative reason for doing these things, but it never occurs to him to explain before hand. Also, his eccentricities were sufficient for the FBI to assign him a handler at all times, and it has been implied that several of his previous handlers quit in exasperation.
• The titular character of Eli Stone has the potential to be a partially (or even fully) literal Bunny-Ears Lawyer, if the writers would stop making him the Butt-Monkey of his own show.
• Ari Gold from Entourage. He yells racist homophobic sexist or just degrading insults to pretty much everyone but still (almost) always gets his way. Maybe averted in the end of Season 7.
• ER: Doctor Romano mostly just gets away with being an asshole to everybody but occasionally pulls more bizarre stunts, such as bringing in and operating on his own dog. No one dares suggest that it's inappropriate to operate on a dog and the incident is never mentioned again.
• Pretty much everyone in Eureka but two people stand out in particular.
  • Crazy Survivalist Jim Taggart, who spends most of his time hunting an apparently hyper-intelligent stray dog named Lowjack (whom he maintains is "evil-incarnate"), but is one of the best zoologists in the world.
  • Douglas Fargo, the man who put the Schmuck in Schmuck Bait.
    • Though lacking in social skills and practical knowledge, as well as being a Sarah Michelle Gellar fanboy, he's proven more than once that he deserves to be in Eureka and is long established as the right-hand man of first Nathan Stark, then Allison Blake, the previous and current heads of Global Dynamics respectively.
    • After history is changed by them traveling to the past, Fargo finds himself the head of GD, although this is revealed to be because his grandfather, a prominent Eureka scientist in the old days, was never a Human Popsicle in this timeline and pulled strings to get Doug the position. It's the old version of Fargo who ends up turning the position into more than a Yes-Man job for the DoD. He also finds himself a girlfriend (played by Felicia Day) who's just as quirky and nerdy as him.
• Holly from The Exes is an almost literal example as a divorce attorney.
• In Extraordinary Attorney Woo, Young-woo is on the autism spectrum and hyperfocused on two topics: the law and whales. She uses her encyclopedic knowledge of the law and insights gained from whale biology and behavior to act as an effective litigator.
• River Tam from Firefly is insane and a little knife-happy at times. Half of the reason she has a bunk on the good ship Serenity is Mal's tendency toward Honor Before Reason, but the other half is because of those exceptionally useful Psychic Powers she has. Well and her pilot skills, but only after Wash’s untimely movie death.
  • Simon's upper-class core-world behaviour is a symbol of the very people Mal and Zoe fought bitterly against during the War. Mal mainly lets him stay out of a sense of honor, but he really puts up with Simon's posh mannerisms because Simon's actually a very good doctor but still willing to serve as the ship's physician for a gang of thieves on the run.
  • And very protective of his sister River.
  • Wash also has shades of it, with his loud Hawaiian shirts and playing with dinosaur toys on the bridge. He just also happens to be a heck of an Ace Pilot.
• Forever (2014)'s Dr. Henry Morgan is a skilled Medical Examiner who semi-frequently breaks police procedure — interrupting interrogations to ask his own questions, taking home and occasionally lending evidence, etc. He's skilled at the Sherlock Scan, which weirds out the others, but has little respect for or awareness of many social conventions. He sniffs things, such as a stained shirt or a puddle on the sidewalk, using the trained chemist's technique of wafting the scent toward his nose with a hand instead of sticking his face in things willy-nilly, so often it's practically a Character Tic. Jo usually covers for him with her boss when he does something illegal, and Lieutenant Reece tells Henry she puts up with his eccentricities because he gets results.
• Franklin & Bash: Lawyer Peter Bash has not worn bunny ears, but he has dressed in a Kangaroo character costume (while smoking a fake joint) to win a tort case. In fact, this trope is the overall basis of the series.
• Frasier:
  • Implied with Frasier and Niles Crane. They're both ridiculously neurotic, eccentric, and have personal lives so screwed-up and behavioral tics so shocking that if you'd never met them, you'd wonder why anyone would consent to get therapy from such colorful characters (Frasier, among other breakdowns, once spent several hours on a ledge above Cheers threatening to kill himself after his wife left him, while ranting about her affair at the crowd below; while Niles once had a Heroic BSoD and stripped stark naked in the middle of Cafe Nervosa after enduring several sleepless nights of constant media hounding and Disaster Dominoes when his ex-wife was arrested for a sensational homicide). The answer, of course, is that they're both absolutely brilliant psychiatrists (and they demonstrate it in nearly every episode too — it's not an Informed Ability), mentioned to be among the best in the American northwest, enough to retain their respected standing in Seattle's high society despite their general insanity.
  • Donny Douglas is a prime example. He has his first client meeting with Niles while pantsless and eating a sandwich. He then gets on the phone to Maris' lawyers and after a few minutes he's got them to agree move the hearing date from "six months" to "next week". He then manages to dig up a Dark Secret about Maris' family that gives Niles the leverage he needs to force her to end things once and for all.
• The doctor who delivers Phoebe's babies on Friends is obsessed with Fonzie, brings him up constantly and insists on watching Happy Days every day, even if he's delivering a baby while doing so. He's also the head of the department and delivers triplets without a hitch.
• Walter Bishop of Fringe is released from the loony bin when events similar to the experiments that sent him there start showing up. He's still very intelligent and remembers everything about his work, but his time behind bars had some adverse effects: his first act upon being freed is to wet his pants, he obsesses over various foods he hasn't eaten since being locked up, and he constantly forgets the name or even the entire existence of another member of the team.
  • He also openly experiments with mind-altering drugs while on the job. His insanity is justified at one point, however, as he is literally missing parts of his brain.
  • Olivia Dunham fits this trope as well (albeit a downplayed version), but it's not as obvious because she seems normal compared to the zany Walter Bishop. You almost have to be in the context of the Fringe universe, however.
• In Galavant depending on perspective Chester Wormwood is either a dedicated wedding planner with the downside of also being a scheming sorcerer, or a useful dark wizard who unfortunately insists on cramming a wedding into every plot. This is apparently standard for the setting, as the "Dark Evil Lord" is also a fashion consultant.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Sandor Clegane is a rather dark example. Sandor is a member of the Kingsguard despite refusing to become a knight (he's the first non Knight to ever join) and wear the Kingsguard uniform, he is also blunt and rather crude unlike most other members. However he is such a fierce fighter that people are willing to overlook this and he is one of the most important Kingsguard members.
  • House Targaryen taken as a group across three centuries. It is said that madness and genius are two sides of the same coin, or only a difference of degree. In-universe, a common saying became that every time a Targaryen was born, the gods would flip a coin to see if they'd be insane. Half of them were crazy, the other half were brilliant statesmen, conquerors, and builders of empires. They were all kinds of quirky, though (routinely practicing incestuous marriages to "keep the bloodline pure", which apart from probably causing half of them to be born with mental defects, was also considered an abomination to every major religion in Westeros). Even in the current generation, Aerys II was infamously known as "the Mad King" and his younger son Viserys and his daughter Daenerys weren't far behind (and at the very least, delusionally arrogant); yet on the other hand, Aerys II's elder son Rhaegar was considered one of the most skilled knights of his generation, while Aerys's uncle Maester Aemon is a born leader. A Targaryen might either be a great monster or a great hero but they're never boring.
  • While most of the court of King's Landing cannot stand Tyrion, it's clear to everyone that he is ridiculously competent at whatever he turns his attention to. During the Battle of the Blackwater, Tyrion not only planned the defense of King's Landing, but also was responsible for wiping out nearly all of Stannis' fleet in one fell swoop. In the books, at sixteen, Tywin banned him from taking the Grand Tour of the Nine Free Cities and instead made him head of all sanitation in Casterly Rock. To spite his father, Tyrion revolutionised the drainage and sewer systems, making them work better than they had in centuries. (This is a clear reference to Miles Vorkisigan, another short, aristocratic bunny-ears genius who dabbles in drains.)
• The hyperactive Ray Person of Generation Kill can boast an addiction to legal stimulants, a highly bizarre personality, and a tendency to spout hilarious but politically incorrect rants at the drop of a hat. He's also the best Communications Officer in Bravo Company.
• Get Shorty:
  • Hafdis Snaejornsson is a respected Hollywood film director, but lives like a hobo and at one point gets arrested for driving his car into a hotel pool, forcing him to oversee the read-through of his next film from his jail cell.
  • FBI Agent Clara Dillard chats with her grandkids between meetings, watches news in Arabic in spite of only saying "Sure" when asked if she speaks the language, and ends meetings to take micronaps on her office couch.
• Get Smart: Maxwell Smart is a ditzy Cloudcuckoolander at the best of times, but CONTROL keeps giving him missions because he manages to consistently get results anyway, through a combination of being Born Lucky, having a wide assortment of specific but situationally-useful skills, being an expert in armed and unarmed combat, occasionally catching important details of a situation that everyone else overlooked, and a complete unwillingness to ever give up. That said, he wouldn't be as successful without his more traditionally-competent partner, Agent 99.
• Glee's Brittany Pierce is dumber than a jar of mayonnaise, "thinks the square root of four is rainbows", once took cold medicine and forgot how to leave a room, and still believes in Santa Claus... but she is one of the two best dancers in the glee club. She also has a peerless knowledge of feline illnesses, earning her a spot on the school's Academic Decathlon team.
  • Also, this trope in combination with desperation is the reason why they let Kurt join the football team, even though he's Camp Gay, hated and bullied by the football team and almost everyone else, and can't do it unless he gets to listen to his music meanwhile. The team has had bad enough of a year that, when Kurt shows up, claiming to be auditioning for the role of kicker and actually pulls it off, the coach is more than happy to have him on the team.
    Coach Tanaka: Can you do that, with the game on the line and ten gorillas bearing down on you, wanting nothing more than to taste your sweet virgin blood?
    Kurt: Sounds like fun. Can I have my music?
    Coach Tanaka: If you kick like that you can wear a tutu for all I care!
  • Sue Sylvester may also qualify; she's Crazy Is Cool and possibly Ax-Crazy as well under the right circumstances, but she genuinely is a world-class champion cheerleading coach who brings in Nationals trophies by the bucketload — and funding to her cash-strapped school — so she's generally allowed to go her length. Generally.
• Dorothy in The Golden Girls once dated a lawyer who wanted to retire from law and become a circus clown. He was very serious about this. When the Girls got in trouble over an environmental protest, the lawyer comes to their rescue — wearing part of his clown costume.
• Detective Dan Stark from The Good Guys is a fantastic 1981 cop turned Bunny-Ears Lawyer due to not progressing with the times. Despite this, he still proves himself a fantastic, if unorthodox cop, uncovering and solving major crimes while handling minor ones. He even once managed to cuff himself to the pimp/murderer while being choked out from behind.
• Elsbeth Tascioni of The Good Wife is by far the biggest one in the show. She is quirky, somewhat overactive and does several things that makes her be seen as weird to her peers (she constantly gets lost in tangents, talks and makes questions to herself, her notes are indecipherable even to Kalinda and at one point, she switched the table in her office for a treadmill), but Alicia, Will and Diane all hold her in very high regard, Alicia even calling her one of the most brilliant lawyers she ever met.
• The series Green Wing is loosely based on the premise that hospitals are full of people like this. (Though as they're mostly the doctors who don't do anything, being any good at their job largely falls into an Informed Attribute.)
• Will Graham from Hannibal is a Bunny Ears Profiler thanks to his abnormal empathy. Subverted in that it doesn't make him particularly quirky or cheerful or even liked, but rather more like he's on the brink of going insane.
• In Harrow, everyone agrees that Harrow is a brilliant forensic pathologist. However, his methods are unorthodox, his personal life is a disaster, and he is constantly on the verge of being fired.
• Kuryu Kohei, the protagonist of the 2001-2002 Fuji Television series Hero, is almost literally a Bunny Ears Lawyer. He constantly wears aggressively casual clothes (the entire office mistakes him for a TV repairman on his first day on the job) while his colleagues wear suits, and he indiscriminately buys random items from the shopping channel. His quirks are overlooked however, partly because he is a cunning and successful prosecutor, but mostly because his co-workers are all subtly quirky, too.
• Alan Wachtel in Hill Street Blues is a lawyer who later becomes a judge. At the advice of his psychiatrist, he wears not bunny ears, but a dress in court, which causes a few raised eyebrows but no serious repercussions.
• Hogan's Heroes: USAAF Sergeant Andrew J. Carter is goofy, absent-minded, prone to trip on his own feet and something of a Buttmonkey among the team. He's also their best demolition man who cheerfully subverts the Mad Bomber trope, and has the ability to become someone else entirely when in disguise — including Adolf Hitler.
• Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha: Seong-hyun is a famous production director, but he's very eccentric. He's clumsy, has no sense of direction, must be constantly fed, and tends to run after his whims. While part of his team Du-sik is surprised at his eccentricities.
• Detective Frank Pembleton from Homicide: Life on the Street is a finicky, anti-social Jerkass who happens to be an absolutely brilliant detective.
• The Stonewall Jackson sketch from Horrible Histories is a succinct demonstration of this trope in action: quirks displayed, disbelief from the newbie, and competency proved.
• Is House even a doctor?
  • Like Sherlock Holmes upon whom he was modeled, Dr. Gregory House definitely qualifies as a Bunny-Ears Lawyer. He uses comatose patients as cup holders, watches sports with clinic patients, avoids seeing his own patients as long as possible, has a bedside manner akin to Lex Luthor when he finally does see them^note he gives absolutely zero crap about Doctor-patient confidentiality, always assumes "everybody lies", and he will have your secrets - which, ironically, will hold the clue to save your life - even if he has to break into your home and/or force your to blurt them out in front of your loved ones standing right beside what they think is your death bed… good thing you will be alive to rebuild whatever said reveal destroyed, and he refuses to wear a tie^note  A fun little real life note about the tie. In 2007, Britain's NHS passed rules banning doctors from wearing long-sleeved shirts and ties in state-funded hospitals. The reason? Ties are worn daily but almost never washed, making them travelling petri dishes for hospital infections like MRSA. Perhaps House sees a way to flout convention and, incidentally, save patient lives. A win-win! They also make good handholds when patients turn violent, an occupational hazard even for doctors that lack House's winning personality., plays with his Game Boy/cane/ball while his patients code, and has a running commentary on Cuddy's boobs. He is a jerkass every chance he gets, apparently for his own entertainment. This apparently improves his thinking processes.
  • This is lampshaded in the first episode when Cuddy says, word by word, "The son of a bitch is the best doctor we have."
  • It is Lampshaded by Cuddy and Wilson in the episode Let Them Eat Cake:
    Cuddy: Other doctors actually use their offices for crazy stuff like seeing patients. Not throwing a ball against the wall and calling it work.
    Wilson: It's his process. That ball saves lives.
  • Also Lampshaded in the episode Sex Kills (2x14), when guest star Greg Grunberg says, "I assume House is a great doctor. Because when you're that big a jerk, you're either great or unemployed," after settling their differences, albeit a bit aggressively. Granted, House had it coming for pulling a Manipulative Act on him.
  • Cuddy mentions at one point that the hospital actually has an annual budget which is basically "House is getting sued" funds, the justification being that House, while being a complete asshole loose cannon, is such a damn good doctor that the hospital doesn't really care that he apparently is threatened with legal action on a fairly regular basis. Just to drive it home, she points out that despite all his assholing and loose cannoning and blowing up MRI machines and smacking patients in the gut with his cane and all manner of other abuses... this fund is under budget. So, either the budget is huge, or House's brilliance and the fact that he saves lives means that his patients rarely resort to legal action (or are at least willing to accept small settlements due to successful treatments).
  • His coworkers tend to overlook his quirks partially because House is such a brilliant doctor, but also in large part because eccentricity is the least of his problems.
  • In the episode "Son of Coma Guy", he reveals why he became the best: During his formative years as a Military Brat while in Japan, he and a friend went rock climbing where the friend ended up getting injured. When they entered the hospital through the wrong exit, they came across a janitor who for whatever reason stuck out to House. Later, his friend got an infection that the doctors couldn't make heads or tails out of, so they brought in an expert in the field: that same janitor. The janitor turned out to be a member of one of the lowest grouping of Japan's cultural caste system, the "Burakumin" (untouchable). As such, despite being a fully trained doctor, the janitor couldn't get any work other than as a custodian. However, because he was a very good doctor, when his expertise was needed he was respected despite his cultural status. This taught House that you could be the biggest asshole around, and if you were the best people would listen.
  • House isn't the only one. Doctor Amber "Cutthroat-Bitch" Volakis earns her nickname soon after being introduced; she later gains insight into the fact that since she doesn't care about being liked, she has to be right all the time, or she isn't any good to the people around her who already dislike her.
  • As the series goes on, the trope gets played for drama increasingly because House is such an unrelenting jerk that he destroys everything that surrounds him and all that stay in his orbit for an extended period of time get infected with his jerkishness. He also ends the series with at least one dead patient because of the "bunny ears" - after his whole crew quits on him early in Season 2, House takes on a case solo and going straight to the weird theories and solutions makes him overlook facts that lead to the patient's death.
• Spencer from iCarly is an almost literal example. He spent only three days in law school, but in several episodes, most notably "iPromote Techfoots", he put what he learned in those three days to good use. In general, despite his Manchild eccentricities, he's fairly reasonable, intelligent, and cogent when he really needs to be — he did get into law school after all, and he only dropped out to pursue his career as an artist. He also excels as an artist, where his Cloud Cuckoolander tendencies are helpful in creating his art (which many characters have considered amazing).
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Charlie Kelly is an almost completely illiterate janitor with severely maladjusted social skills and a borderline childlike view of the world, but he's also ridiculously competent at the work that he does to the point that Paddy's Pub, a disgusting rat-infested cesspit with barely functioning appliances and amenities, has NEVER failed a health inspection. The episode "Charlie Work" in particular highlights this by showing that not only was he able to successfully pass a surprise inspection but also do so while taking charge of an overly complicated and falling-apart-at-the-seams scheme the rest of the gang had decided to enact without his knowledge, and all in the span of a couple hours.
• Most of the cast in JAG to some extent, but with Harmon Rabb in particular. He is also very talented in his artwork managing to convert a prop from a Star Wars parody into a fully functioning automobile.
• Jessica Jones (2015): Jessica is an extremely competent private investigator, but nothing about her (including her office) really suggests an air of professionalism. Nonetheless, Jeri Hogarth explicitly keeps hiring her due to her proven track record, and Joy Meachum is also among Jessica's clientele.
• Judge Mike "The Hammer" Reardon from Justified. Man wears little more than a Speedo — and shoulder-holstered .38 — under his judicial robes, and spends his off hours in hot pursuit of hard liquor and loose women. But once court is in session, he's a Hanging Judge who regularly throws, not just the book, but the entire damn Lexington (KY) Public Library, at the guilty.
• Kougami from Kamen Rider OOO. He's a Large Ham who has an obsession with birthdays and seems to spend more of his time baking cakes than running his massive company...and yet is a heroic Chessmaster and Manipulative Bastard who managed to Out Gambit a living embodiment of human Greeed and is pretty much the Big Good of the series. His company has invented hundreds of devices that help the heroes out in the battle with the Greeed and he pretty much knows everything about the Greeed and the events of 800 years ago.
• Shotaro Hidari from Kamen Rider Double also counts. He's obsessed with living the 'hard-boiled' '50s noir way, yet is good enough as a private investigator that his Friend on the Force lets him have full leeway with every case. Example: One of his cases required him to find his client's cat. Reasoning that the best way to find somebody is to think like they do, Shotaro decided to wander around pretending to be a cat until he found the real one. He succeeded.
• Kamen Rider Drive:
  • The entire Special Investigations Unit.You have The Hero who would rather lay on the grass and watch the clouds pass by, his Tsundere partner who tries to keep him in check, an Old Maid and an Otaku as the Unit's researchers, an Only Sane Man who refuses to believe in what the unit is investigating in, even if it's a major phenomenon, and to top it all off, the chief is obsessed with horoscopes and is very superstitious. However, they all manage to get their moment to shine. The Chief's fortune telling obsession helps the team from time to time, the Otaku is able to pull out information faster than people can ask for them, the sane man winds up believing the team and becomes one of their most valued assets, and the Cake invents the weapons that the hero and his partner use. Not only that, but once The Hero tightens his tie, you know he's ready to kick some ass.
  • They later gain a Sitcom Arch-Nemesis in the form of Nira, a higher up who begins keeping a close eye on the unit halfway through the show. When he's not screwing them over, he often jokes around in a silly manner like the unit, though in a way that best insults them. He'd prance around, rub his head up against them, and even laughs hysterically. However, by the endgame of the middle arc, he becomes the Evil Counterpart, in which while he ended up executing a raid on the unit along with attempting to kill two people, including the protagonist himself, he still pulls off his silly antics.
• Kamen Rider Build is another show with a cast full of these. You've got a genius (and unapologetically egotistical) theoretical physicist who frequently gets distracted when he's on the cusp of a new discovery, a Hot-Blooded former prize fighter who's skilled at fighting but Book Dumb, a potato farmer and cook who's also an unapologetic idol fanatic, and a former villain with a preference for Fun T Shirts who dresses like a Rummage Sale Reject. Even the Big Bad is a pretty dandy and jovial trickster, who nonetheless manages to be one of the most dangerous villains in the franchise.
• Law & Order: UK has defense counsel Jason Peters, an obsessive-compulsive germophobe who's never lost a case.
• The closest comparison to Jason Peters from the original Law & Order is Randolph J. Dworken. He makes Jack work hard through a liberal use of tapdancing and oafish charm. Dworken is introduced by objecting to 'the people of the state of New York vs. his client' because he is certain that the twelve jurors seem reasonable people. The character reappears in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit with a similarly bizarre set of arguments.
• Law & Order: Criminal Intent:
  • Detective Zack Nichols is described as this (although not in so many words) by Captain Ross in his debut episode. As is typical of Jeff Goldblum characters, everything about him is a little bit off, and he once left the force for seven years to discover the meaning of life.
  • By comparison, Robert Goren seems like he should be this, but his off-putting quirks appear to make him a more effective interrogator, which puts him closer to Crazy Is Cool.
• Lessons in Chemistry: Dr. Calvin Evans is brilliant enough at chemistry to be considered a Nobel Prize finalist, but he takes showers in the lab, appears to subsist on nuts, and never talks to his coworkers. He bonds with Elizabeth due to both of them being brilliant misfits. Though his coworkers both admire and resent him for this, he's explicitly only tolerated by his boss because he brings in big grants.
• Parker from Leverage. Possibly the best thief on the planet but she has... quirks. Enough so that she spent an entire scene dressed as a nun and nobody asked her why because they figured that either it was part of a scam or her just being herself. When Nate (who has been away from the team for awhile) asks why they didn't press for clarification, the answer was literally "It's Parker." Nate rescinded the question.
• Dr. Cal Lightman on Lie to Me. He sticks his nose into his team's personal business on a regular basis without hesitation, he acts like a jerkass to everyone (clients included), and has a fairly big ego. He's also brilliant at what he does. He never seems to miss a single flinch, even on random passerbys.
• Detective Charlie Crews of NBC's Life who turned to zen Buddhist philosophy after his wrongful imprisonment. Or at least, "Zen-ish" philosophy. Imprisonment left him with a number of quirks, including a complete hatred of furniture, a love of fresh fruit and a slowness to grasp some modern-day technology (usually because it wasn't widespread before he went inside), and yet he keeps his job as a detective. It helps that he's given a certain amount of leeway because he was already wrongfully convicted.
  • Some of his quirks do get him into trouble. His habit of always having a knife on him is used to suggest that he is unstable and still suffering from a 'prison mentality'.
  • It is implied that for a while in prison he actually went insane and the quirks are actually a way for him to stay sane. He has a nasty reputation among prison guards even after they find out he was wrongfully convicted.
• Sam Tyler of Life On Mars frequently looks this way to his 1973 co-workers; the real bunny ears have to be awarded to Alex Drake of Ashes to Ashes (2008), whose firm belief that she's actually trapped inside her own subconscious causes her to be, um, less than restrained in her behaviour — as, for example, openly referring to people as "imaginary constructs," to their faces. The most prominent aversion from both these shows is Detective Gene Hunt. He's a borderline alcoholic who frequently abuses suspects and witnesses both physically and verbally. Why does he get away with it? Well, aside from the fact that he's a bloody good copper, it's also more commonly accepted in the time period.
• Mad Men:
  • Bert Cooper, the elderly co-founder of the Sterling Cooper ad agency. He's a Japanophile who insists on having everyone remove their shoes on entering his office, fires secretaries and then forgets he did so, rhapsodizes about Ayn Rand, and congratulates employees on non-existent birthdays. But he also got where he was with a keen entrepreneurial sense, comes in to the office alone in the middle of the night to personally handle urgent business, and recognizes and rewards good work and loyalty. He also doesn't wear shoes even outside his office. He once fired a secretary because he thought she spat chewing gum onto the floor which got stuck on his socks, making him actually furious. Also, he popped in and said "Happy birthday" to Harry Crane — when they were holding a baby shower for him.
  • Don Draper just walks out of a business trip and disappears for about a month, somehow he holds onto both his job and his marriage (at least for another season) when he gets back. That's in addition to his regular insulting of both clients and pretty much everyone who works at Sterling Cooper — he's just so good at what he does that he gets away with it.
  • Subverted with Michael Ginsberg, who hadn't yet earned the right to get away with his eccentricities. Despite adoring his portfolio, Peggy almost refuses to hire him because of his total lack of professional behavior during his job interview. Don comes within a hair's breadth of firing him after he sells a company on a different, unapproved idea while thinking out loud during a client meeting — a fact which Ginsberg not only doesn't realize, but even chooses to ignore when Ken points out how angry Don was. Then the agency purchases an IBM mainframe that he accuses of giving off electromagnetic waves persuading men to become gay. He professes his love for Peggy and gives her a box with his own nipple in it. He's hauled out of the office restrained to a stretcher.
• Dr. Kylie Johnson on MADtv is a 19-year-old doctor who would often never take her job seriously, doing things like wear belly shirts or play practical jokes. However, she is among the best in the medical field.
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E.:
  • In the fourth season episode "The Summit-Five Affair", U.N.C.L.E.-Northeast head Harry Beldon is pretty much set up as a Bunny-Ears Lawyer. He's a flamboyant playboy who arrives at his Berlin headquarters garishly dressed, in a chauffeur-driven limousine, while drinking champagne with two beautiful women (at least one of whom is married, since Beldon tells her "remember me to your husband"). Something which is remarked on:
    Illya Kuryakin: Hmmm. Harry Beldon... Everything a cautious, unobtrusive, successful secret agent shouldn't be, except he's successful.
  • Illya himself is the third in command of one of UNCLE's most vital bases, and by all rights damn good at his job, but he's also a jazz-playing, shaggy-haired infodumping polymath who routinely pisses off both sides of the Iron Curtain (by being a passionate socialist and patriot while simultaneously openly criticizing the USSR's corruption) and trains by swinging a bat at a block of wood that he embedded with butcher's knives and suspended from his office ceiling.
• The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: Susie is Midge's manager, but she has a bit of trouble actually getting that across to her own family because their first encounters with Susie are of her walking around Steiner Mountain Resort carrying a toilet plunger.
• M*A*S*H:
  • Captains Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre are never in uniform, chase the nurses, drink to excess, gamble, and use medical equipment to prank others. On the TV series, the early years would be filled with episodes where generals and colonels would appear at the 4077 and be appalled at their behavior yet refuse to charge them because they were the best doctors around. Occasionally they really are Bunny Ears Surgeons, dressing in crazy outfits to make patients laugh in post-op.
  • Was somewhat implied in Colonel Potter's first scenes, showing him arriving with a cavalry saddle. He proceeded to order Klinger out of his Section 8 dresses and into uniform and prove himself in the OR.
  • From Real Life: Battlefield surgeons were often able to get away with anything short of treason because if you brought them up on charges they would be taken out of the O.R. with no guarantee of a replacement. (It goes for other medical staff, too.) Even more so in the movie version, in which they tend to be more jerkass.
  • A rare example of this trope working against someone would be Klinger, who is willing to do anything to get out of the army short of shirking his duty. Unfortunately for him, that's all the army really cares about, so he never does get his discharge.
• Filippo Brunelleschi Medici is very much an arrogant and eccentric jerk, and every inch the master architect he believes himself to be.
• Patrick Jane of The Mentalist. He enjoys playing mind games with coworkers and suspects alike, whether or not this will actually get results towards solving the crime, and a lot of his more outrageous stunts are inadmissible as evidence. But the CBI keeps him around because he does always manage to catch the culprit. In fact, after Lisbon's previous boss resigns, her new boss tells her outright that Patrick Jane will never get canned or prosecuted for his shenanigans. Lisbon will. Thus, it's in her best interest to keep Jane in line.
• Merlin (2008):
  • The titular Merlin is a very odd servant, but he is so good at providing support for Arthur, even very publicly saving his life, or even the whole kingdom, often at risk to his own, that Arthur can't get rid of him despite the fact that Arthur thinks he's a complete Cloudcuckoolander. Of course, while not many people know it, Merlin is also an extremely badass and smart self-appointed Court Mage, and has saved Camelot and Arthur many times more than Arthur even knows.
  • Gawain is impulsive, The Alcoholic, the Butt-Monkey, an outrageous flirt and, prior to becoming a knight, was constantly on the run from some angry unpaid bar-owner or another — but with his loyalty to his True Companions and his swordsmanship, Arthur'd be a fool not to include him in the Knights of the Round Table.
• Vince Noir of The Mighty Boosh is an air-headed Camp Bi weirdo obsessed with fashion, fame and Gary Numan. He has no qualifications for working with a zoo, he dropped out of school, he dresses up animals as pop stars and the owner of the zoo he works at hates him to the point of trying to kill him more than once, but he's always allowed back because he has the magical ability to talk to animals and thus understands their needs better than any of the trained keepers.
• This is deconstructed in the Modern Love episode "Take Me as I Am, Whoever I Am". As a student Lexi would miss school but get killer grades, and as a lawyer she'd be brilliant on cases but have spotty attendance records. However, these are actually the highs and lows of her bipolar disorder and not portrayed as a good thing, and her disappearing from work for large stretches of time leaves her unable to hold down a job.
• Adrian Monk's obsessive-compulsiveness sometimes throws off other characters, but it is essential to his investigative abilities (as shown on the "Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome episode). He's one example of a Bunny Ears Lawyer whose weird behaviour has caused him major troubles with employment: his condition became so severely exacerbated after his wife was murdered that he's no longer allowed on the police force, and in one episode he does a compulsion that causes him to accidentally delete important police information, so the commissioner revokes the license he needs to be a private consultant.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000's Gypsy. Illiterate, slow, distracted, obsessed with Richard Baseheart ... just not quite all there. Crow and Servo find her exasperating more often than not. But why isn't she all there? Because she's mainly concentrating on running the rest of the Satellite and ensuring they don't all just deorbit and perish in flaming death; something far beyond the capabilities of the other bots.
• NCIS:
  • The main cast is a ragtag lot that makes the casts of the various CSIs look downright normal. The most obvious case is Abby, the Perky Goth Lab Rat who talks to her lab machines and utterly ignores every dress code ever known to man, woman, or government bureaucracy, but the rest of the team are no less offbeat: Tony covers his considerable talents as an investigator and a leader by acting like an immature Jerk Jock Handsome Lech; Ziva, the Israeli who consistently mangles her English idioms and Drives Like Crazy, started the job as a spy and assassin on loan from Mossad; Ducky talks to the corpses he autopsies (not that uncommon in Real Life) and turns every conversation into rambling stories about his Glory Days; and Gibbs is a stubborn Cowboy Cop who seems to make it a personal mission in life to piss off anyone in authority over him, and anyone working with him or for him, except for Abby and Ducky, who he treats like a beloved niece and sibling respectfully... come to think of it, McGee, best selling author, computer nerd and online gamer, is the most normal member of the team.
  • The team's quirkiness and competence is on display in the Once an Episode scene when they stand around shooting the breeze about whatever personal problem or obsession is on their minds, but when Gibbs walks in and says, "Update!" they all turn and give a clear and detailed rundown of the status of the case, complete with slideshow — implying that they do their jobs so well and quickly that they actually run out of things to do waiting for Gibbs to get back to them.
  • Senior FBI agent and Gibbs's close friend Tobias Fornell sums it up neatly in the third season episode "Frame-Up" when Agent Sacks meets Tony in the interrogation room.
    Agent Sacks: [Tony Dinozzo] is implicated in a homicide and he's making jokes!
    Agent Fornell: You've never worked with NCIS before, have you, Agent Sacks?
• Necessary Roughness centers on a therapist who helps professional athletes and other celebrities whose quirks have started to affect their job to the point that they cannot get away with it anymore. Often enough they have serious problems that were overlooked specifically because they were so good at their profession that people just accepted them as eccentrics and did not seek help for them.
• John Amsterdam of New Amsterdam (2008) has lived for over 400 years, but even though everyone on the police force he works with knows that he claims that, of course nobody really believes him. But, because every so often, a case is solved because, say, Amsterdam knows an underground club because it was a speakeasy during Prohibition, everyone treats him like a Bunny-Ears Lawyer who thinks he's 400 years old.
• Most of the cast of NewsRadio fits this description: for all their quirks, Jimmy James is an excellent businessman, Bill and Catherine are great announcers, Dave is a great news director, Lisa is great reporter, Joe is a great handyman and electrician, and, despite her laziness, Beth is about as good a secretary as the insane people around her could expect. Only Matthew can be said to be legitimately incompetent at his job. (Even then he's hypercompetent at his real job as a dentist, radio is his passion he sucks at.)
• Judge Stone from Night Court. Ironically enough, with all his wacky co-workers & clientele, he often comes off as the Only Sane Man, despite his own undeniable quirks.
• The grubby-looking, abrasive, paranoid ex-spy Adam in Northern Exposure was a world-class gourmet chef.
• Dr. Theodore Morris from CBS's Now and Again. He has a tendency to randomly break out into song, has been known to growl at people who annoy him, and when he's smitten with a woman the normally erudite Theo literally cannot construct a proper sentence. He's allowed mostly free reign over his project because he's so brilliant, though; he literally created a new body for Michael with extraordinary abilities, and even outside of his classified work he's lauded as the founder of the "human construction sciences" movement.
• Larry Fleinhardt from NUMB3RS is a highly eccentric scientist who, among other quirks, has no permanent residence from mid-Season 2 onwards, only eats white food, and once gave up all his possessions and spent several months in a monastery. However, since the latter came about after he got to go into space, he's clearly qualified enough to act however the hell he wants.
• The Office. Michael Scott, a regional manager at Dunder-Mifflin Paper Co., is an eccentric man-child who often says and does things inappropriate for an office setting, but is repeatedly shown to be a prodigious salesman. His superiors handle him like they're handling a child, but they tolerate his quirks and unusual methods because he makes tough sales and his branch does well even when other branches are all struggling.
• While attention isn't brought to the matter, fans have noticed that in Once Upon a Time Regina continues to work as mayor after the curse is broken, using her old office and even doing paperwork. That's right. The Evil Queen who cursed everyone still runs the place. A fan asked if the good guys sucked so much at being in charge that she just took over again, and the creator replied, "Pretty much."
• The Orville: Most of the crew. Ed is sarcastic, often neurotic, and likes to abuse loopholes but he is a master of Confusion Fu and the Indy Ploy. Kelly is pretty much a loose cannon but also an unbreakable Badass Normal. Bortus' Moclan upbringing clashes with the rest of the crew (and the Union in general) but at his post he is a Consummate Professional and a badass in a fight. Alara is way too young and inexperienced to be a department chief but she is a Cute Bruiser who can fold steel like others would fold paper. Gordon is an absolute idiot when it comes to most things except piloting and propulsion technology. His partner-in-pranks LaMarr is Brilliant, but Lazy and a horndog. And finally, Isaac is a Literal-Minded artificial lifeform whose people have a somewhat-earned superiority complex who have exterminated their creators and for a season and a half waged a war of extermination against all organic life. They got better. The only more-or-less normal senior officers are Alara's successor, Talla and Dr. Finn and even they are not free of quirks.
• The Outpost: Janzo is highly eccentric, to put it mildly. He's often bent over, dislikes meeting people's eyes, and very socially awkward. At the same time, he's brilliant with chemicals, so his foster mother puts him to work brewing alcohol. Then, it's shown his knowledge and skill is also useful for far more applications, which renders him essential in aiding the good guys.
• The civilian crew of Primeval. As Lester explained to Becker:
  Lester: You will be dealing with a highly strung and temperamental team of rank amateurs who just happen to be brilliant at what they do.
• Probe: Austin is a genius, holding enough patents and royalties from his inventions that he founded Serendip without any investment help. He's also socially awkward, callous, and, by self-admission, mildly schizophrenic. It becomes Mickey's job to manage Austin's quirks so that he remains a net benefit to his own company.
• Played with in Psych; Shawn Spencer's psychic abilities lead him to indulge in some fairly odd and eccentric behaviour, but almost everyone overlooks it because his visions are nearly always entirely accurate and always help solve the case... except, of course, Shawn isn't psychic at all; he's just highly observant, has an eidetic memory and superior deduction skills (having gotten a perfect score on the police's deductive reasoning exam at the age of 15,) but he enjoys playing up the psychic thing, partly because it does let him get away with doing things that under other circumstances he'd be frowned on (or even arrested) for doing. Of course, he also greatly enjoys the attention.
  • Beyond the need for attention, he shows numerous Genius Ditz tendencies and held literally dozens of jobs within a few years before the start of the show, suggesting an inability to fit in normally in society. Generally speaking, his hyper-observance and ability to come up with a seemingly-insane theory in spite of blatantly obvious (usually fake) evidence allows him to pass off his act as psychic, with Gus, Jules, or his father playing the straight man to explain more mundane things to him. Bad things almost always happen when he does anything on his own.
  • Detective Lassiter also has elements of this, being that he fancies himself a sort of action hero and has had multiple "incidents" that has had him banned from going undercover. But he is also one of the best detectives on the force with an impressive detective exam grade.
  • The other main characters, Gus and Juliet fit this trope as well.
  • Woody the Coronor takes Creepy Mortician and Cloudcuckoolander up to eleven. He is also vital to solving many of the group's cases, sometimes finding forensic evidence even Shawn wouldn't have been able to deduce.
• Biochemist Bob Melkinov of ReGenesis is socially awkward due to his Aspergers syndrome, but his off-the-charts IQ and wiki-like brain more than make up for it. An arc where he was considering leaving to work for a perfume company revealed that he also has an extremely well-honed sense of smell.
• In Royal Pains, Evan Lawson is actually a pretty competent accountant and business manager, despite the fact that he's a shallow, off-putting goofball womanizer who never seems to take the right things seriously and who shirks doing anything difficult. His efforts are one of the primary reasons why Hankmed is such a successful business.
• Schitt's Creek:
  • Flamboyant, fussy and emotional David Rose knows nothing about taxes, inventory or paperwork but he is an exceptional retail marketer. He first transforms dumpy local shop The Blouse Barn into an upscale boutique, and then he opens his own shop, Rose Apothecary, to elegantly rebrand local products and crafts. He does require his more level-headed and business-minded partner/boyfriend to do the paperwork side of things, but the creative side is all him. David is so obsessed with the aesthetics of his store, Patrick placing breath mints where the lip balm should be hits his Berserk Button.
  • Moira Rose doesn't want to be in Schitt's Creek and she doesn't consider herself a politician but when she is elected to town council, she is very successful. Despite her melodramatics and over-the-top wardrobe (or perhaps because of them), the former Soap Opera actress manages to secure funding boosts for the town, initiate town beautification programs and helps organize a successful Singles Week event (the idea of which she stole from her daughter).
  • Alexis Rose knows very little when it comes to...a lot. She calls stamps "stickers of old men" and a journal "an empty book," but her background as a social media starlet allows her to start Alexis Rose Communications, through which she develops a successful marketing and rebranding plan for her father's motel and organizes Singles Week for the town.
• Subverted in School of Rock. Mr Finn is actually terrible at teaching anything but rock.
• Pick a Scrubs character. Any Scrubs character. And yet, they're all excellent doctors. Except for Dr. Murphy, who is merely an excellent clinical pathologist on account of accidentally killing so many patients.
  • The Todd probably takes the biggest slice of the cake, thanks to his constant sexual comments and idiotic behavior, but Dr. Wen once said that Todd's straightforward thought process makes him a talented surgeon. In fact, for a long time he was actually better than Turk. Though in a case of Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards, in the end, Turk becomes chief of surgery. Being more traditionally intelligent is more effective in the long run.
  • Special mention has to go to Dr. Cox. His laundry list of bad behaviors all qualify, but what really tells is his antagonistic relationship with Chief-of-Medicine Dr. Kelso. Kelso even admits that, not only did he keep promoting Cox despite his bad behavior because he was the best man for the job, but that he relied on Dr. Cox's antagonism. If Cox asked Kelso for something, and Kelso said no, and Cox let it go, Kelso knew it wasn't important. If Cox kept hounding him about it, then Kelso knew it was something that needed to be addressed.
• Seinfeld:
  • The Soup Nazi, who is loosely based on true events. He treats his customers ridiculously harshly, but his soup is so good they willingly submit to his regime rather than go without it, thus his business is safe. At least until Elaine steals his recipes.
  • A more literal example would be Frank Costanza's lawyer, whom just happens to wear a cape, and prevents a woman from jumping off of a bridge at the end of the episode.
  • George Costanza as "Assistant to the Traveling Secretary" of the New York Yankees is a subversion. He's hired entirely based on his willingness to tell off owner George Steinbrenner, who takes it for granted that his quirks and his blunt approach are a manifestation of profound intelligence. However, he pretty much Bavarian Fire Drills his way through the whole gig, his brightest idea is trussing the team up in cotton uniforms that inhibit their playing after they shrink in the wash, and after he's finally let go (due to a simple misunderstanding rather than any of the many excellent reasons for letting him go that he provided over his three-year-stint), it's revealed that he did virtually nothing the entire time he was there.
• Sherlock: Sherlock definitely. Self-proclaimed high-functioning sociopath, does weird things to solve mysteries, and keeps a skull. John's not freaked out by him, but is definitely NORMAL in comparison to the guy.
• Geoffrey Tennant from Slings & Arrows, who argues with his Spirit Advisor in public, stores chocolate in the skull of his predecessor, challenges one of his colleagues to a duel (more than once), habitually asks the assistant executive director of the festival (who everyone treats like a secretary) for black coffee with cream and sugar, chews on a razor blade during his rehearsals and meetings, and spends the better part of a season living in a storage closet. He's also a brilliant theatrical director and books plays better than anyone else.
• Sons of Anarchy has an episode centered around the protection of a corrupt accountant who Knows Where The Money Is Hidden, after he completes his jail term where he developed a compulsive tic: unconscious masturbation. The character (Chuck Marstein) has his problem "cured" by a rival gang leader who amputates all but his forefingers. The Sons take him in to prevent his death, which winds up saving their season-long plan when Chuck comes through in a big way for the club in the third-season finale.
  • One of the Sons is a professional Elvis impersonator which seems seriously out of place in an outlaw biker gang. He is also a stone cold killer.
  • Lincoln Potter, the Assistent U.S. Attorney who's investigating the Sons, shows definite signs of this.
• Stargate-verse:
  • Colonel John Sheppard of Stargate Atlantis, for the most part, is a laid-back guy who would rather play with all the cool toys and enjoy the perks of being in another galaxy. He's also an Ace Pilot Colonel Badass who can kick forty different kinds of ass when the safety and lives of Atlantis come under fire, often proving why the position of the military commander of Atlantis rightfully belongs to him.
  • Jack O'Neill of Stargate SG-1 basically paved the way for Sheppard, as Jack's fought off multiple invasions of Earth from the Go'auld and still finds the time for a fishing trip. He's also a thoroughly irreverent Deadpan Snarker with
    • Worth mentioning: Richard Dean Anderson once asked General Michael E. Ryan, then-Chief of Staff of the Air Force, if he had colonels as bunny-eared as O'Neill. Ryan replied that he had colonels who are worse. This happened when Ryan had a cameo As Himself in "Prodigy", and in the actual episode he commented to General Hammond:
      "Got your hands full with that one, eh, George?"
    • Jack pretty much sums it up to Hammond after one particularly bad bout of antics in "Upgrades":
      "Just remember, I retired! You wanted me back!"
  • Rodney McKay of Atlantis fits into this trope as well. He's a raging egomaniac with a hair-trigger temper and a tendency toward hypochondria, but he just so happens to save the day virtually every time, so he's considered one of the most valuable members of the team. Not only that, but as the show progressed, he became more of a "main character" than many of the other "main characters", with quite a few more episodes focusing on him than on them.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • Reginald Barclay, played by Dwight Schultz, who was shy and insecure, had a tendency to stutter, was fearful of being transported, had a holo-addiction problem, and was a hypochondriac. He also saved some lives and the ship at least once. He returned as a recurring guest character in Star Trek: Voyager: his brilliance and scientific insight led to Starfleet finding and establish transgalactic communications with Voyager, though he remained as hopelessly neurotic as ever (initially, the stress of the project and his sympathy for the stranded crew actually made him worse).
    • Many crew members have their own quirks. Riker is a notorious womanizer, Geordie is rather socially awkward, Worf is always trying to live up to what Klingons want outsiders to think about their culture, Data has no emotions, and initially had no understanding of common metaphors or social skills. Despite these, they are the best crew Starfleet has.
  • Star Trek: The Original Series had Pavel Chekov, whose obsession with Glorious Mother Russia did not make him any less one of Starfleet's finest.
• Woody from Sun Trap:
  Woody: Trust me, if there's one thing I'm good at, it's finding parrots; that's if there's one thing I'm good at; and trust me, if there is, it's finding parrots.
  [beat]
  Brutus: [standing next to Woody] I know, I know. But as well as being the most annoying person you will ever meet, he is the best investigator I have ever worked with. Much as I hate to say it, Woody is your man.
• Supernatural has Dean, he of the frequent hitting-on girls, affection for junk food, and daddy issues, and Sam, Dean's brother, who has daddy issues, mommy issues, and isn't exactly the most delicate under the covers. They hunt monsters and pal around with an angel with his own set of quirks. The upper echelons of angels and the King of Hell are scared of them.
  Crowley: Am I the only one who doesn't underestimate those denim-wrapped nightmares?!
• Coach Finstock of Teen Wolf is ambiguously crazy, competent coach and economics teacher. May or may not be talking to a team member that doesn't even exist.
• In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron has her... quirks. Some of them being homicidal rampages. However, she's just too damn useful — being the only one among the Connors' group who can go toe-to-toe with a Terminator.
• Bob Pinciotti from That '70s Show. A cheerful, dim-witted, somewhat immature man who is completely hopeless when it comes to taking care of himself, has the worst fashion sense of anyone on the show, and is given to try some strange quirks alongside his wife Midge (among them nudist and wife-swapping parties). He's also an incredible businessman, owning at least two establishments of his own over the course of the series and well-known to be a rather wealthy bastard throughout it. It's also worth noting that while both businesses eventually went under, it was due entirely to big businesses coming in and robbing him of all his customers with prices he couldn't hope to compete with (specifically noting that Price-Mart sold microwaves for less than the wholesale price Bob had to pay the manufacturers).
• Neatly subverted on This is Wonderland, where no quirk is harmless. One mild example, Elliot Sacks, started out with long hair and a mildly scruffy appearance, but later went through an identity crisis that had him coming to work dressed in a different style every day. Apparently the only person who could get away with that sort of behaviour was Judge Maxwell Frasier, who wore running shoes into court, loudly complained of boredom and hunger, sang while other people were talking, and would occasionally scream.
  It's just a little venting.
• Let's get it out of the way: it was stolen from his Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger counterpart, yes, but the thinking position of Power Rangers S.P.D.'s Bridge Carson (namely, standing on his head) is nice and quirky. "A-Bridged" is an episode all about Bridge using his quirkiness to solve the day's crime.
  • That's the most normal thing Bridge does. Bridge sniffs people's dogs, wears high heels when a case calls for it, enjoys watching female cadets read from inches away, is obsessed with buttery toast, completely avoids his roommate's best friend for no apparent reason (in fairness, the friend was evil and Bridge is psychic), rambles incoherently, and is terrified of everything. Then again, he also IDs a perp by her shoes, helps a friend rebuild an obsolete robot into armor, and manipulates a minor villain into giving up a larger villain by threatening to promote the guy's business. The latter is amazing because Bridge lacks any social graces whatsoever.
  • Just to emphasise this point, by the time of the 15th Anniversary Crossover, Bridge is SPD Red Ranger and field leader of the team.
• In Tomica Hero Rescue Force, Eiji Ishiguro is the most stoic, silent, by the book character in the whole series. When he "Builds up" into R5 he becomes a Hot-Blooded Large Ham who ... you know what, just watch the clip it'll explain it a lot better than I ever could.
• Arguably all three presenters on Top Gear (UK), but the best case can be made for their masked, perpetually silent, possibly non-human "tame racing driver," The Stig.
• All of the members of Torchwood Three on Torchwood. Jack's a pansexual from the future and can't die, Toshiko's a shy technical expert who just happens to cover up murders for a living and has a horrible case of the Cartwright Curse, Ianto makes the coffee, uses a stun-gun and has a Cyberwoman hiding in the basement, Owen's an abrasive medic who is just as handy at giving bullet wounds as healing them and Gwen's an ex-policewoman who is, on occasion, just a bit too idealistic. That said, most of the time, they do a decent job of saving the planet (although it was often their fault in the first place).
• David Creegan in the U.S. version of Touching Evil. After suffering from a bullet to the head, Creegan is literally missing parts of his brain; specifically those that regulate shame. Aside from that (and seizures, and order recognition issues), he's still a brilliant profiler and the place he gets hired at, the Organized and Serial Crimes Unit, he actually helped to found before he was shot. Hilariously, after about the first two episodes, despite the fact that he is the bunniest ear'ed lawyer of all, (rolling cartwheels in the middle of conversations, playing hangman in the middle of a case involving a serial killer who is called the Hangman, hugging people, laying down in the middle of the table while there's a group meeting going on, stripping and shouting in the middle of a flight, interviewing suspects for less than a minute and sending them home, playing with signs and setups, and has an acute schizophrenic as a roommate and generally acting like a two year old in a thirty year old man's body), his behavior is almost never explained to newcomers or people that they're interviewing and is hardly mentioned in the office except when it comes to his clothing. (Occasionally, Creegan will say "I have this thing" and points to his head and doesn't explain anymore than than that.) For the most part, his partner, Susan Branca (and the rest of the OSC) just rolls with his weirdness and she actually starts picking up a few bad habits of her own. Branca even uses it to her benefit ("Tell us what you know and I will totally take him home.") and more often than not, because she doesn't mention it, Creegan actually makes an effort to self-regulate around her as best he can. Don't think that she's a pushover, though, any time Creegan mentions a physical symptom, Branca is quick to go over what his limits and problems are, citing that they have a dangerous job and they need to be clear on his issues. Could be justified in the fact that as profilers, they know that traumatic brain injuries don't actually have a cure and David actually can't control himself because it's biological and not behavioral.
• Twin Peaks:
  • Agent Dale Cooper combines wide-eyed innocence and purity of heart with an array of highly unusual investigation techniques and an openness to the supernatural that makes Fox Mulder look like a hardened skeptic. Of course, from the other agents we see in the series, the entire FBI seems to be made up of people like this.
  • Twin Peaks paints the FBI as a bureau of quirky and talented people. Apart from Cooper, there is Albert who is the opposite of Cooper in terms of personality; obnoxious and rude, yet he is extremely efficient with his forensics work being able to find and deduce details from the smallest pieces of evidence quickly. There's the Regional Director Gordon Cole, who is loud and a bit air-headed, but also a skilled profiler and planner capable of outwitting even the most cunning opponents. There is also Bryson, while technically DEA, she is a cross-dresser with a forte in Sting operations and uses both quirk and talent to quickly formulate a plan to rescue Cooper. She is also played by the actor who plays...
• Unforgettable's Carrie Wells is an incredibly effective homicide detective due in large part to having a highly superior autobiographical memory — i.e., she doesn't forget anything. She's also a Cowboy Cop with a habit of serious risk-taking, including having Sticky Fingers and a gambling addiction (granted, her memory means she usually wins when the game involves anything but pure chance), in large part because she can't forget anything.^*One episode establishes a medical basis for this: risk-taking behavior causes an adrenaline rush that interferes with memory development, which makes it like a drug for people with her condition. One first-season episode has her nearly get caught by Vice at an underground casino (Al covers for her by telling them she was there undercover on an unrelated assignment), while Season 3's "Cashing Out" has Eliot tell her to her face that he knew she was still doing it and let it slide because for all her faults, she's a damn good detective. He does, however, warn her to be discreet, since if word got out it'd be bad for the squad.
• Floki from Vikings generally comes off as a crazy madman, though probably the harmless variety. However, he's a brilliant shipbuilder, a skilled healer... and he is anything but harmless.
• The Voice:
  • In Season 4, it's revealed that, as a coach, Usher has some very... eccentric... ways to train his singers to be better. The best example might be when he gave singer Michelle Chamuel instructions to drop and do push ups, then jump up and start singing, as a means to increase her breath control. Also, he gave Chamuel the Cyndi Lauper classic "True Colors" (a song about never giving up and believing in yourself) for use in a Knockout round performance, and during rehearsals instructed her to sing the song to herself in a mirror, as a way to get her to get her to open up to the audience more. It worked.
  • Likewise, Blake Shelton taking his team of would-be country singers to a Karaoke Bar, where they sang everything but country, was a means to get them to realize that the most important part of being a performing musician is loving the music itself and having fun with it. This also worked.
• Peter Lattimer from Warehouse 13 is a manchild and not very book smart compared to the people he works with, but he has good crime-solving instincts, is physically fit and even has low level psychic ability.
• The West Wing is mostly a realistic and down-to-earth series, with the characters' human quirks overshadowed by a focus on compromise, serious work, and sober political issues. Which makes some characters stand out whose eccentricities would be unremarkable on a more fanciful show.
  • Lord John Marbury is eccentric to the point of being unstable, constantly refers to Leo as "Gerald" and possesses little social grace or decorum around anyone, with the possible exception of The President and even he isn't immune. Despite this, he is a brilliant consultant and easily one of the smartest characters on the show, possessing a very insight into complex issues and always acting in the best interest of Britain and America. He negotiated a deescalation of hostilities between India and Pakistan in a matter of a couple of weeks. This is the same guy who spends most of his screentime drunk, and asked the First Lady if he could touch her boobs in front of her husband.
  • The page quote describes Lionel Tribbey, the White House Counsel, who spends much of his first episode wandering the White House and threatening people with a cricket bat. Which he got as a gift from Elizabeth II.
• Jimmy McNulty of The Wire is an alcoholic womanizer, an irresponsible Manchild, a neglectful father, and overall an asshole. However, he's also natural police, known for coming up with creative solutions for hard cases.
• Harper from Wizards of Waverly Place is intelligent enough that cribbing off her and getting her to do her homework is one of the reasons Alex hangs with her but she is decidedly odd, especially when it comes to fashion choices. Although, in "Dollhouse", her ability to paint incredibly small things precisely (due to her fashion design skill — those are some very strange outfits) helps Justin make a nice chunk of change.
• The X-Files' Agent Fox Mulder comes off as this, as he believes in alien abductions and every other wacky paranormal theory under the sun except the respectable ones, and refuses to shut up or censor himself to make people comfortable. He's such a joke to his peers and headache to his superiors that he is hidden away in the basement at all times. Yet he is kept around, partly because he has some powerful friends and a very competent partner covering for him, but mostly just because he is the most brilliant profiler the FBI has. Somewhat of a subversion in that his crazy theories and beliefs tend to be right.
• You, Me and the Apocalypse: Father Jude has his own approach to things, he smokes like a chimney, swears like a sailor and has a generally casual attitude but he is a devout priest with real faith in his God and a caring man.
• Young Sheldon: Georgie has little interest in school, and comes off generally shallow and unserious. But he's actually pretty skilled with cars, and has a preternatural knack with tires which, in Big Bang results in him building a very successful business under the nickname "Dr. Tire."

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