Poor Communication Kills Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

Working Title: Plot necessary poor communication skills: From YKTTW

Anonymous - Purely in the interest of wordplay, in addition to Poor Communication Kills, there should also be Poor Communications Kills, telling the countless tales of woe and last minute rescue when "the baddies have jammed our signal", someone trashed the radio and it's raining bombs, or there's a "disturbance in space, our signal can't penetrate". (This as opposed to the third page for the drama genre, Poor Communication Skills, covering non-talkative grunts in non-lethal situations, good-intentioned autists and/or their friends (which ones are the miscommunicating ones?), etc.)

Bob: I spoiler tagged the Avatar example because, personally, I think it's a little Too Soon to be revealing the entire plot of the latest episode

Earnest: I'm toying with the idea of making this an index for the listed tropes below. Comments?

Idle Dandy: Moving this here to discussion, though it maybe should go in Just Bugs Me.

I find that the most aggravating thing about Lost is the characters' inability to either explain vital things, or ask questions about things they desperately want to know. Or when they do, occasionally, ask, they don't persist. Even when they have a gun to the head of the person who could answer their questions (e.g. Ben). When Locke wants his fellow castaways to come with him and do something with him, why don't they insist on a reason before they cooperate? Also, in Season 4, why didn't Locke look all through the Barracks for anything that might give him clues about Ben and his plans? All these things are by far what strain my suspension of disbelief on Lost.

I also changed the example given. Ben actually did tell everyone that the freighter folks were bad guys who intended to kill them all; they didn't believe Ben because he'd spent a season and a half lying to them. Crying Wolf covers that.

Lale: Page quote was much too long to work as a crowning example worthy of page quote status.

Master TMO: Truth In Television example that probably doesn't really need to be put on the page, but I feel like venting it anyways, and no one from my family reads these pages. ;) This would be of the Cassandra variety...

My wife was experiencing a whole range of heartburn and stomach upset. It was the exact same symptoms that her mother and grandfather had had with their gallbladder. Every attempt to tell any doctor resulted in a response similar to "that's not typical gallstone symptoms" and a diagnosis of the current medical fad (IBS, etc). Several months later, when we finally got a referral to a specialist for gallstones, he was shocked to find out nobody had even bothered to do an ultrasound (I think that's the right test), which takes all of 10 minutes. Before we could get that done, she was in the emergency room, where it was discovered that she had LOTS of tiny gallstones, and her gallbladder was removed.
Just recently my wife's sister started having similar symptoms. My wife told her to go get her gallbladder checked. 2 months later, after ignoring the advice, she was admitted into the emergency room via ambulance with a severely infected gallbladder.

[[Lots42]]: I seem to remember this is why several G.I.Joes got horribly shot to death in the comic book. No, really. They did. The Crimson Twins, bad guys, confuse orders from Cobra Commander, the head bad guy. C.C. didn't want the prisoners killed, the Twins thought he said they did, they wussed out and a Mook did the deed. Surrivors escaped, several SURVIVORS died...all horrible. Then several issues later, Cobra Commander orders the destruction of an industrial facillity he knew more Joes were in. More deaths ensued. Joy.

Semiapies: Does anyone have any substantiation for this?

"The defeat of the Vikings in what is now the southern east coast of the United States. They traded milk, furs, and forged weapons for meat, grain, and crafts made by the indigenous people only to find out that the people with whom they traded were lactose intolerant. This lead the native people to believe that they had been poisoned, so both sides went to war. If only they knew about allergies. Really it was poor communication, and of course explosive diarrhea."

I've never heard this story, and the disputed evidence of Vikings reaching the North American mainland always suggests they reached Southeastern Canada.

...following up - OK, just removing that bit.

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