Cutting The Knot / Live-Action TV

Cutting the Knot in Live-Action TV series.

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• 7 Days (1998): In "Head Case", Parker is running around with the president's therapist. During the episode they need to get a piece of mail out of the mailbox. The therapist starts reciting one of her calming exercises as she tries to figure out how to get into the mailbox. Frank just goes over to a nearby road construction crew and asks to borrow a sledgehammer.
• The 10th Kingdom sees a pair of doors near the end, when Tony and Virginia are trying to sneak into the castle. The creature guarding the doors is a talking frog, and he presents a variation of the Knights and Knaves scenario where, of course, one door leads to a horrible death. Tony, by now fed up with the bizarre rules of life in a fairy tale universe, picks up the frog and tosses the protesting amphibian through one of the doors. Moments later there's a loud explosion from beyond the door, prompting Tony's remark that that one must have been the horrible death.
• On All That, this was pretty much the M.O. of Kel Mitchell's Repair Man (Man man man man man...), who would "fix" problematic objects by simply destroying them completely. No more object, no more problem.
• The Amazing Race:
  • In Season 11, Danny became frustrated while doing a Roadblock that involved finding and collecting old newspapers from locals in a Malaysian neighborhood, so he just went to a store and bought a bunch of papers to complete the task (though this would cause them further problems later in the race).
  • On Australia Season 1, when Nathan grew tired of digging through a mine cart full of salt, looking for a key, he just tipped the cart over and sifted through the scattered salt on the ground.
• Angel:
  • Double-subverted in the episode "Double or Nothing". Gunn, having made a Deal with the Devil years ago, is required to give up his soul to the demon Jenoff as part of it. After failing a game for his own soul, Angel has Cordelia stake Jenoff's hand to the table and lops off his head... only for Jenoff to simply grow a new one; Gunn even points out to Angel that if killing Jenoff were that easy, he would have done it himself. Immediately afterwards, Angel asks if anyone else in the casino owes Jenoff anything, and everyone in the place, realizing they're better off with Jenoff dead, gang up on him en masse and tear him apart while Team Angel makes a break for it.
  • Happens again when the group fight the Beast - a nigh invulnerable demon - for the first time. Angel attacks it with his fists and a wooden stake to no avail, and one might expect Wesley being the ex watcher to whip out an enchanted blade or magical spell. Nope. Out come dual pistols. Then a shotgun. Unfortunately...
• In an episode of The A-Team, Murdock must get into a locked clothing store for a disguise to pull off a scam and save the rest of the team. But his companion and episode guest star Boy George simply kicks the thing in.
  Boy George: Who needs honesty?
• The Big Bang Theory:
  • Penny has to get Sheldon's Flash drive from inside a puzzle box. Sheldon starts instructing her over the phone on the convoluted procedure to open it; Penny interrupts him and asks if he has any emotional attachment to the box, and when Sheldon says no she simply smashes it open.
  • Similarly to the above example, another episode features Sheldon & Leonard try to perform the old "strong enough to open jars" routine so that Leonard's girlfriend Stephanie will be impressed with him. When Leonard finds himself unable to open the jar, he just breaks it open on the edge of the table and accidentally stabs his hand with one of the shards in the process.
  • In another episode, Howard tries using a robot hand to pleasure himself and it gets stuck. After Leonard and Rajesh run out of ideas of what to do, they take Howard to the Emergency Room. There, the Nurse suggests simply turning the hand off, and despite Howard's pleas not to do so, she turns it off, and the hand lets go. The reason he didn't do that is the fear it may start "twisting".
  • In the Grand Finale, the gang is heading down from Leonard and Penny's apartment to the airport for the Nobel Prize Ceremony, but they discover that they can't fit all of them and their luggage in the newly-repaired elevator. They resolve the issue by putting all of their luggage in the elevator then walking down the stairs so they can pick it up in the building's lobby.
• One episode of Bones has an actual corpse inside a Halloween maze made out of hay-bales. After spending some time trying to make their way through the maze normally, Booth gets frustrated, asks the policeman standing next to the corpse to toss his flashlight in the air, and barrels his way through walls until he reaches it.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • In the episode "Fear Itself", Anya asks Giles if he can make a door to rescue the trapped Scoobies in the haunted house. He says "I can", and instead of a mystical spell, whips out a chainsaw and starts cutting. In the same episode, as Giles tries to figure how to stop the demon, mentions destroying its symbol ... is not the way to do it, and will bring forth the demon. By the time he finishes telling Buffy, she has already destroyed it, but the demon turns out to be only a few inches tall, so she easily kills it.
  • Buffy does this earlier in the series when fighting a demon called the Judge which is invulnerable to any weapon forged. Cue rocket launcher.
  • In "Entropy", Tara details all the things that need to be done to repair her and Willow's relationship, before offering her preferred solution.
    Tara: "There's so much to work through. Trust has to be built again, on both sides... you have to learn if you're even the same people you were, if you can fit in each other's lives. It's a long and important process and... can we just skip it? Can you just be kissing me now?"
• In Burn Notice, Michael spends most of an episode trying to gather enough evidence to get a war criminal extradited to his home country. When the plan falls through, he simply kidnaps him and ships him back home in a crate.
• In the "Countdown" episode of Castle, Castle and Beckett are faced with a just-about-to-detonate dirty bomb with no sign of the bomb squad. Castle's response to this tricky situation is to simply grab all the wires he can see and yank them under the reasoning that neither of them knows how to do it the "right" way, and if he's wrong, the bomb will just go off two seconds sooner. It works. He's smart enough to do it after kissing Beckett.
• Charmed (1998): In one episode the Halliwells are searching through a demon's apartment and find a hidden safe. When Phoebe wonders how they're going to open it since they don't know the combination, Paige responds by telekinetically Orbing the door off its hinges.
• In Cobra Kai, Kreese challenges his students to kick a bonsai tree off the top of a tall log. After two students fail, Hawk simply kicks the log over, sending the bonsai tree crashing to the floor. Kreese praises him for thinking outside the box.
• Colony: At one point during the second season premiere's long flashback to the day of the Arrival, the Hosts find themselves facing a building full of Retired Badass Special Forces guys. Rather than fight, they simply Colony Drop a giant rock on the whole building.
• Doctor Who:
  • "School Reunion": Mickey urgently needs to break into the locked school, and asks K9 if he has any technology that can get them inside. K9 replies, "We are in a car." He has to repeat it twice more before Mickey realises he is answering the question and not just malfunctioning.
  • "The Poison Sky": While Donna and the Doctor are trying to fiddle with the Nobles' car, locked by alien technology, to get it open and free the trapped Wilfred, Sylvia comes out and smashes the windscreen open with an axe.
  • "Silence in the Library": The Doctor and Donna are trying to get through a stuck door in a hurry, but it turns out that the sonic screwdriver "doesn't do wood". So Donna kicks it open.
    The Doctor: Nice door skills, Donna.
    Donna: Yeah, well, you know. Boyfriends. Sometimes you need the element of surprise.
• On an episode of ER, George Clooney's character is stopped while driving in a rainstorm to help a kid whose friend is stuck in a sewer. He tasks the kid with calling 911 from a nearby shop while he gets a jack and tools from his car to free the trapped child. In front of the shop he meets the kid again, who tells him he couldn't call because the shop is locked up. His response? He heaves the jack through the plate glass window.
• The Expanse: In the first season finale, the Rocinante is stuck clamped in the Eros docking bay in the middle of a lockdown. After a couple attempts to break the codes to unlock the clamps, Alex simply guns the throttle to snap off the clamps, then jettisons the gunship's tanker camouflage that the remaining clamps are attached to.
• Farscape: In one episode, a suicide bomber attaches herself to one of Moya's bulkheads, gloating about how brilliantly she outsmarted Moya's crew. Specifically, one of Moya's detachable bulkheads. Pilot promptly jettisons it, and her, into space.
• In Firefly, the crew is very keen on this approach, especially Mal. In the pilot episode "Serenity", he defuses a hostage situation which he just walked into by shooting the captor in the head without even breaking stride.
  • And this ends up in one of the comics leaving him with a crazy with a mechanical eye (Mal failed to kill the guy, just took his eye) working with the Hands of Blue to kill Mal and capture Simon and River. Needless to say, they fail. Epically.
  • Or the episode "The Train Job", where a Crime Lord's Dragon refuses to take back money from Mal for a job they couldn't complete, instead telling them how he'll come after them until he kills them all. Rather than create a Recurring Boss, Mal kicks the guy into the turbines of his spaceship. When they bring the next mook over to the same spot and restart the process, using the same casually friendly tone of voice from the prior request no less, the mook immediately agrees to do whatever Mal says.
• Game of Thrones: How does Bronn, the Commander of the City Watch, keep peace and order and prevent widespread looting on the eve of a major siege by a hostile power? By having the boys round up all the known thieves and killing them, of course. Tyrion and Varys give each other a glorious look that says, "It can't really be that simple." But yes. Yes, it is.
• Done on the Korean Game Show The Genius: In one game, 10 guests were brought in, and the players were told to find out as much as they could about them and given one hour to interact freely. They were then told to give 3 short^note defined as "12 characters or fewer" statements and would earn a point for each statement that was true for exactly 5 out of the 10 guests according to the guests themselves. At this point, the players generally used statements like "My birthday is in an even month". Then the players were told they would be prompted for 5 more statements (still aiming for a 5/5 true/false split) after a 10-minute break, during which they could again interact freely with the guests. Cue the players frantically running around trying to get all the guests' birthdays, blood types, etc. But midway into the break, Hong Jinho stopped, went up to 5 random guests, rubbed the back of his hand against theirs, called them stupid and pretty, made a V-Sign at them, and told them his brother's name, much to the guests' bemusement. Then he provided statements like "Jinho told me his brother's name" and "Jinho rubbed the back of his hand against mine". He became the only player to earn a perfect score in Round 2 and won the game.
• In a dream sequence on Gilligan's Island, someone tells the Skipper's character "Inspector Whatney", "Use your head, Inspector!" to defeat the vampire. The inspector head butts him. This works.
• In one episode of House of Anubis Sibuna is trying to figure out how to get the crocodile bridge over the chasm in the tunnels. Fabian suggested a complex counterweight lever system. Immediately after, Amber suggested they merely picked the bridge up on it's side and drop it over the hole.
  • In another episode they are trying to get past a dead-end, and Alfie suggests to just smash the wall down with their shoulders. He doesn't smash the wall, but he does disarm the pendulums swinging over the chasm bridge and finds the way across.
• Attempted and botched in one episode of Impractical Jokers. The Jokers pose as waiters in a restaurant, with the challenge being to see who can put the most mashed potatoes on customers’ plates (without permission) before they’re stopped. The person with the least loses. Q, thinking he’s smart, just dumps his entire supply of potatoes on a random person’s plate and walks away... at which point the others inform him that he actually misunderstood the instructions. The goal was to put the most scoops of potatoes on plates, not most potatoes in general. By dumping his bowl, Q left himself with a measly one scoop and thus made himself the loser by default.
• Leverage: Eliot disables a security camera by throwing a rock at it. Unusually, the Magical Security Cam doesn't apply in a show that likes its Hollywood security systems, and the guards come to find out why the camera went out.
  • In "The Boiler Room Job", the team tries to do this to the mark of the episode by having Hardison just straight up hack his accounts, since the Mark is an experienced con artist who knows every trick in the book. When he catches Hardison before he can even get started, the team is forced to create a long, elaborate con as a diversion to give Hardison time to execute the original plan and get the evidence to the FBI.
• In The Mentalist, Patrick pulls a prank on Lisbon by putting her keys in a puzzle box he had trouble solving. She pulls a hammer out of her desk, bashes the lid in, and removes her keys.
  Patrick: You keep a hammer in your desk?
  Lisbon: You only think you know everything about me.
  • In another episode, Patrick hires a professional thief to steal some information from a higher-up at the CBI that will help him in his Red John investigation. When the thief is arrested, he threatens to reveal that Patrick hired him unless the charges against him are dropped. After admitting to Lisbon that he has no idea what to do she finds a practical solution - she punches the thief while he's in a holding cell, leading to an immediate dismissal.
• Midsomer Murders: Confronted by a locked safe in "Orchis Fatalis", Scott gets an axe and chops the back panel off with a single blow.
• Motive: In "Foreign Relations", a computer genius working for a white supremacist Western Terrorist group hacks into air traffic control towers and sets planes on a collision course. When the police bust into her hideout they find that the program is encrypted and they can’t get in to stop it. So they just unplug the computer and stop it that way.
• Murdoch Mysteries: Season 2 Episode 4, "Houdini Whodunit": Inspector Brackenreid, having witnessed the young Harry Houdini's multiple escape of police-issued bindings, takes great pleasure in the man's inability to free himself of the final set in the closer of the show. Houdini rightfully suspects the Inspector had them tampered with, and Brackenreid admits to having glue put in the locking mechanism to make the attempt all the harder.
• Discussed on MythBusters, when they were testing the myth of whether or not it was possible to save a person from being hanged via shooting down the rope. They ultimately concluded that while it was technically possible (albeit not with just one shot, as the myth specified), given the accuracy and number of shots required, it'd probably make more sense to just shoot whoever was carrying out the hanging.
• In one episode of NCIS, Abby's computer is being hacked by a person or system so fast and skilled that she can't stop them, even with super-nerd McGee's help. Gibbs' solution? Unplug the computer from the network, thereby (literally) disconnecting it from the hacker. In another episode, someone has set up an evil supercomputer, and when Abby and McGee are struggling to hack into it and shut it down before a countdown ends, Gibbs ends up just shooting the computer. Many times.
• In The Orville, Claire's kids keep having inane arguments over a stupid video game of theirs that they refuse to share. Isaac tries to just ignore it, but when they start doing it while he's trying to locate a missing Claire, he decides to solve the argument in the most simple way he can; ripping it out of their hands and shooting it to pieces with his gun so they nothing to argue over. He then turns to them and flatly says "the game is never to be spoken of again" before continuing on his way.
• A villainous example in the Person of Interest episode "All In". The Dirty Cop organization "HR" is trying to curry favor with the Russian mob by getting one of their enforcers, arrested in an earlier episode, acquitted. At first they try framing the organized crime detective leading the investigation as a Dirty Cop. After Detective Carter uses Forensic Accounting to reveal the frame-up, HR turns to shooting the detective, and the DA prosecuting the case for good measure.
• On the first episode of Scorpion, Sylvester can only do math if all the chalk on the board is arranged by size. Paige cuts through this by sweeping all of the chalk into a garbage can and only letting him have one piece.
• Sesame Street:
  • An episode had Mr. Hooper present Cookie Monster with a puzzle - make both of these plates (which contained cookies, naturally) look the same. After deliberating for a bit, Cookie Monster proceeded to eat all the cookies from both plates, thereby making both plates look the same (i.e. empty).
  • In his establishing character scene, Cookie Monster works out how to operate a rope-and-pulley system to lift a plastic cover off a plate of cookies, before deciding a better method would be to smash the cover to pieces.
• It's safe to say this is somewhat of a Running Gag in the Stargate 'verse.
  • In the Stargate SG-1 episode "Full Circle", Carter, Jonas Quinn and the ascended Daniel are trying to find the Eye of Ra. They decipher where it is, but can't figure out how to open the compartment...until Carter, noting that they don't have much time, tells the other two to stand back, and shoots it open with her P90.
  • In an earlier episode, as Bra'tac is telling SG-1 of the convoluted series of tasks they have to do to destroy the shield generators, O'Neill busies himself with pulling the pins on a pair of frag grenades and dropping them down the hole.
  • O'Neill does this a lot. In fact one could almost describe cutting knots as his job on the team, just like Carter handles tech and Daniel handles talking and Teal'c handles asskicking.
  • Daniel, of all people, does this. After activating Merlin's library, Mitchell has to battle the Black Knight solid hologram guard outside. After unsuccessfully trying to turn it off, Daniel writes down everything he can and shoots the control crystals.
  • Done memorably by Ronon in the Stargate Atlantis episode "The Lost Tribe". Keller, clearly not knowing much about Ronon, starts rattling off the necessity of an elaborate series of computer commands to shut down systems and then lock the Wraith out. Ronon just starts blasting away at crystal trays until the right thing shuts down.
  • Keller's mind got Freaky Friday Flipped with a thief. When the team locates the Ancient phlebotinum that caused it, McKay starts trying to figure out how it works, but Ronon shoots it and the FFF reverses.
• Star Trek: The Original Series: In "A Taste Of Armageddon", the Enterprise travels to Eminiar VII, which has been at war with the planet Vendikar for 500 years... Except this "war" is completely computerized, with no missiles, no bombs, no ground infantry/army/invasion, and the "attacks" are recorded within the computer, and probable deaths are counted, with casualties sent into disintegration chambers. It's only after Kirk and Spock destroy the computers, with Kirk explaining that war is supposed to be hell, and that the sanitization of it is what has kept it going for so long, that they finally put an end to it.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • In "The Arsenal of Freedom", the crew comes upon an ancient advanced weapon system that appears to have been left on demo mode. After it threatens the lives of both the away team and the Enterprise in orbit... Picard defeats it by telling the sales pitch hologram that he'd like to purchase it. This only partially works, as while the sales pitch hologram does shut off the drone on the surface, the one in orbit continues to function for some reason, forcing the Enterrpise to destroy it. At least it's the last one.
  • In "Brothers", when he's intercepted at the transporter pad, Data simply has the computer erect a force field around the pad and then restores site-to-site transport functionality to get to the planet below.
• Star Trek: Voyager:
  • In "Cathexis", when the alien starts jumping from one crewmember to another, Tuvok solves the problem by stunning everyone on the bridge with a wide beam shot.
  • In "Dreadnought", Torres spends most of the episode trying and failing to circumvent the eponymous rogue missile's systems. As catastrophe draws near, her last-ditch solution to stop it is to break into the reactor core and shoot it until it explodes.
  • In "The Raven": Janeway and Tuvok try in vain to convince the B'omar to let them take a shorter route. In the end Voyager just barges through at Warp 8, pursued by an armada of B'omar warships.
  • Seven of Nine often does this to resolve any problem she faces, being a former Borg drone that thinks very logically.
    • In "The Raven", when faced with a stronger-than-usual force field blocking access to the shuttlebay, Seven just beams directly into a shuttle.
    • In "Night", Tom asks her to fill the role of Constance Goodheart during his "Captain Proton" holoprogram. However, when confronted by Satan's Robot, Seven immediately rips out the robot's wires instead of playing along with the program.
    • In "Think Tank", a light puzzle game that has the Voyager crew stumped as far as the solution is solved by Seven simply scanning the puzzle and then pushing the right buttons. This gives Janeway a "Eureka!" Moment: since it's impossible to outsmart the Think Tank, they'll have to lay a similar "cheating" trap instead.
  • In the two-part episode "Equinox", the USS Equinox EMH, who doesn't have the Doctor's ethical subroutines, forcibly trades places with the Doctor to infiltrate Voyager. In Part II, the Doctor makes it back to Voyager and he orders Voyager's computer to delete the Equinox EMH's files rather than fight him for control of his sickbay.
  • In "Pathfinder", when Cmdr. Harkins fails to shut down Reg Barclay's Voyager holoprogram remotely, and when the security guards lose track of him inside the program, he enters the holodeck himself and sets the ship's warp core to overload.
    Harkins: Computer, disengage primary coolant system.
    Holo-Torres: Are you crazy!? That'll cause a warp core breach!
    Harkins:' Exactly. (shoots her)
• Star Trek: Picard: In "The Impossible Box", while discussing Narek's tan zhekran, Narissa mentions that if it was up to her, she'd just smash it to get the prize inside, rather than take the time to solve the puzzle.
• Supernatural:
  • In one episode the only weapon that can kill the monster of the week is a sword trapped Excalibur-style inside a stone. Dean does at first try just pulling it out, confident that he's the brave knight the legend says can free the sword; when that doesn't work he switches to sticking explosives all over the rock. And manages to break the sword.
  • Killing an okami usually requires stabbing it seven times with a bamboo dagger blessed by a Shinto priest. Not being in possession of such a weapon, Bobby throws the okami into a wood-chipper. Ludicrous Gibs ensue.
  • Earlier, Dean killed a tiny fairy by stuffing it into a microwave.
  • In another episode, the MacGuffin of the week is in a safe at the other end of a classic "step on pressure pads, get shot by poison darts" hallway Booby Trap. The owner of the MacGuffin is an unrepentant Jerkass who's immortal as long as he remains on his property. What do Dean and Sam do? Tie him to a swivel chair and shove him down the hallway to set off all the dart trips. One extremely pissed-off Human Pincushion later and Dean and Sam are at the other end of the hall.
• That Mitchell and Webb Look plays this for laughs in the "Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit" sketches, in which the titular superhero team face a number of crises to which BMX Bandit always offers a lengthy, convoluted BMX-based solution, only for his somewhat more powerful colleague to respond that it would be a lot easier if he just summoned a horde of invincible angels to take care of the problem for them.
  "I ride in through that window using my BMX and spin my rear wheel, kicking some mud up into their faces. While they're distracted, I'll pop a wheelie, knocking the guns out of their hands, then you go in and untie the girl."
  "Or I could just summon a horde of angels to sort it out."
• In one episode of Titus, Titus is trying to formally propose to his girlfriend in the emergency room while both their families are there after a Thanksgiving brawl. Unfortunately, her thieving ex-con older brother has stolen the ring; though tied to a chair by the police officers who dragged him in for treatment, he still refuses to give it up. Titus asks his dad for help:
  Ken: You know, I never hit my boys. Instead, I took years to destroy their self-esteem and mold them into upstanding citizens. With you, I don't have that kind of time. Flicks his cigarette lighter, starts moving it towards Michael's face until Michael relents
• One Top Gear challenge had the team trying to take down housing with military vehicles. First they tried to use the crane, mine clearing spinner, and several other devices to pull the building down. Finally, they gave up and just used them as battering rams.
  • A Top Gear (US) challenge had the hosts trying to break into each other's cheap cars. Rutledge and Tanner try to pick the locks on the door. Adam takes a tire iron and smashes the window, then unlocks the door and drives off.
• Torchwood: In "Meat", when the team tries to break into a warehouse, the following dialogue ensues:
  Ianto: Did you bring the alarm deactivator?
  [Owen shoots the alarm]
  Ianto: Well, that's one way of doing it.
• The Netflix show Travelers, with much of the same creative team as Stargate, has a much darker take on this trope. Muggle Best Friend David is trapped in a locked room with a nuclear bomb that he has to disarm with no tools or training and only three minutes on the clock, with Voice with an Internet Connection Trevor guiding him. They do their best, but when they're only halfway through the procedure time runs out and the bomb makes a whirring sound as it begins to activate — only for Trevor's boss to shout at David to just grab the uranium core and throw it against the ground, shattering it before it can reach critical mass and saving the city. Why didn't they just do that in the first place?... Because, as everyone besides David knows, doing this has exposed him to a lethal blast of radiation and doomed him to an agonizing death over the next few hours.
• Twin Peaks:
  • Sheriff Truman gives Agent Cooper Laura Palmer's diary, saying that they haven't found the key yet. Cooper simply breaks the lock with his hands.
  • In another episode, a character finds a metal puzzle-box which he is supposed to tortuously figure out how to open. He blasts it a few times with a handgun, which opens it right up.
• Lampshaded in an episode of Unforgettable. Faced with an anarchist hacker about to wreck the financial system from his computer who likes to reference Greek myths, Carrie asks him if he's heard of the Gordian knot. After he answers with the Trope Namer, she puts a bullet through his laptop.
• On Untold Stories of the E.R., a patient who desperately needs surgery can't be treated at the small clinic where he's diagnosed, but his insurance won't pay for the ambulance service to take him to a bigger hospital. Unable to cut through the red tape to arrange transport for their patient, the doctors hit upon a counterintuitive solution: they call 911, which the ambulance service is contractually obliged to respond to, even when the call comes from a hospital. The bill from the ambulance service went to the hospital, not the person.
• Savino of Vegas needed to ensure his candidate for mayor came out on top of a televised debate against a far more experienced politician. They prepped a brilliant opening speech and then cut power to the broadcasting antenna so his opponent couldn't tear it apart.
• The Horn of Valere in The Wheel of Time is sealed in a box locked with a mechanical puzzle that the heroes can't figure out. Fortunately, Mat has just gotten his hands on a weapon that can cut through anything.

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