No Social Skills / Live-Action TV

Characters with No Social Skills in Live-Action TV series.

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• 7 Yüz: The mousy Pınar of "Hayatın Musikisi" demonstrates a basic lack of conversational skills, which makes her a social outcast at the office and the subject of ridicule. Her awkwardness and shy nature consequently prompt her boss, Arzu, to sideline her from taking the lead on projects, which would necessitate presenting to a client.
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Grant Ward. Maria Hill gave him the lowest rating in this department, even drawing a small porcupine (which Coulson mistook for a "little poop with knives sticking out of it") on his assessment sheet. Completely subverted when Ward turns out to be The Mole, however. He's actually very good at reading and manipulating people, and had crafted the "socially awkward Ineffectual Loner" facade to endear himself to the team.
• Gary Bell from Alphas, justified as he is outright stated to be autistic. He can be very sweet, but tends towards Brutal Honesty, literal-mindedness, and he Cannot Tell a Lie... though he's working on the latter.
  Gary: I do lie, I've been practicing. It's a social skill. Like the other day when I said I was gonna have a pudding pop, I was lying 'cause I don't like pudding pops... that was a lie, I do like pudding pops. I just knew we didn't have any.
• Arrowverse:
  • Arrow: Felicity has her moments. In particular, her mouth tends to run away from her. On one of her guest appearances on The Flash (2014), shortly before Barry's wedding, she starts rambling about how statistically most marriages end in divorce. Harry (who, it should be noted, got kicked out of his universe because he's so annoying) tries to signal for her to shut up.
  • The Flash (2014):
    • Dr. Harrison Wells, despite being a popular and seemingly well-loved celebrity scientist (before the particle accelerator explosion, that is), was described in his biography as "arrogant, prickly, brusque [and] at times contemptuous". He admits to Barry that he's not very fond of the vast majority of people, but he does describe Barry, Caitlin and Cisco as his "closest friends". (Although, given his lack of anything approaching a social life, it's likely that they're his only friends.) In fact, this Wells is really Eobard Thawne, the Flash's enemy.
    • Harry Wells, the Harrison Wells from Earth-2, is worse. He is constantly acerbic, talks down to absolutely everyone, and constantly blunt. After his daughter became a superhero, he was unfailingly supportive, helped her recruit a team to help her, and worked to make her the greatest hero in the world. He was still so blunt and annoying that the team eventually voted him out, and he came back to Earth-1 since there was no where else to go.
      Cisco: You'd think the serial killer version of him would be the bigger dick...

• Angel: Illyria. Can't talk to me during your meeting? Then I'll kill everyone at the meeting.

• Astrid: Title character Astrid Nielsen is autistic, and like many autistic people, she just doesn't get many nuances of social interactions, as a consequence of which she often gives offense when she hadn't meant to. She describes Raphaelle Coste as her "thimble", since the neurotypical detective makes an effort to understand Astrid and explain the bits she misses, protecting her like a thimble. She also does better with her Japanese-born grocer and his son, since the nuances of Japanese social interactions follow very strict traditional rules that are ironically much easier for her to grasp than for Raphe.
• Most of the humor in The Big Bang Theory is about how utterly inept the four main characters are at functioning outside their own nerdy society. Leonard is probably most well-adjusted but still has serial foot-in-mouth tendencies, Sheldon shows some autistic tendencies and is also a Jerkass, Raj cannot speak around attractive women unless drunk, and Wolowitz is best left unsaid. ^note Characterization Marches On; later in the series, Wolowitz drops the more pervy tendencies once he gets married and Raj eventually learns to talk around women without being hammered.
  • Fast forward a bit in the series and you have Sheldon's Distaff Counterpart Amy, who doesn't quite understand that making weird pseudo lesbian comments about her "bestie" Penny is a tad bit uncomfortable for her, and Leonard's mother who is also just like Sheldon—the irony being that she's a psychologist and frequently calls out social problems in others.
  • Sheldon's mother, too, in her own way. She's the sweetest, kindest, most caring person on the planet—but she lives so much in her own little bubble that she doesn't realize how offensive the things she says are. (To her credit, when the offensiveness of something she says is pointed out to her, she'll try to avoid saying it, although it is clear she doesn't quite understand why.)
• Bones:
  • Temperance Brennan is a loner, a workaholic, and completely ignorant of pop culture (she responds to most movie and television references with "I don't know what that means"). Her grasp on social niceties is also tenuous, but she sets herself apart from most TV characters by being willing and able to learn how to deal with people. She seems to be a combination of a mild degree of Asperger's and an academic detachment from reality.
  • Zack Addy is another one with No Social Skills, a textbook loner nerd who understands that social politics are occurring, but can't figure out what to do with this information.^note In the Pilot episode, Zack acted more like a very smart but slightly awkward young guy, and even made sarcastic jokes and used slang. He also exhibits Asperger's Syndrome; which made the revelation that he was Gormagon's apprentice completely and totally out of character.
• The Brittas Empire: The titular Gordon Brittas has no understanding of the idea of subtext, will go up to people whilst they're having a shower and getting dressed to try to talk to them, will spy on people for non-creepy reasons without any apparent understanding of the concept of privacy, and generally annoys people through his tactlessnesss.
• Saga from The Bridge (2011) is an extreme By-the-Book Cop with no apparent understanding of jokes, unwritten laws or comforting lies. She refuses to promise a missing girl's relative that they'll find her alive, picks up a guy in a bar by asking if he wants to have sex, and has no idea why her partner's weirded out when his eighteen-year-old son spends the night at her place. She doesn't even get why she should tell him they didn't actually have sex until a co-worker suggests it — at which point she explains in front of everyone.
• When it comes to anything outside of work (and even inside it at times), the detectives in Brooklyn Nine-Nine run the line from "functional but have some slightly odd quirks" to "don't appear to understand how humans work at times". Each character has their own eccentricities which tend to interfere with social interaction; Jake is an immature Cloud Cuckoolander, Captain Holt is an impassive robot with several odd tastes, Amy is easily flustered and tends to babble nervously, Rosa combines Holt's offbeat impassivity with added anger issues, Charles has no verbal filter and seems determined to find the creepiest way to express every thought he's ever had, Gina is a Narcissist with no interest in anyone else whatsoever, and Scully and Hitchcock basically live in their own odd, rather stupid world. About the only character who seems capable of interacting with other adults with a consistent level of social competence is Terry, which frequently puts him in the Only Sane Man role when it comes to social interaction.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Anya was very much one of these characters. She was a 1000-year-old demon trying to learn how to be a passable human. At least, at first it was that simple; later on, it was revealed that she was born human (1,000 years ago in Sjornjost). Still later, it was shown that she'd always talked and acted like an eccentric, even in her original human life.
  • BuffyBot also exhibited this behavior, though, obviously, it was because her programming was too limited to give her natural responses.
• Spencer Reid in Criminal Minds has a hard time fitting in with people other than the team, being a mix of an Insufferable Genius and Child Prodigy. However, his knowledge of pop culture is varying and extensive, though he doesn't know about Twilight.
• Daredevil (2015): For a powerful crime boss, Wilson Fisk is not a very social person, almost stumbling his way through asking Vanessa out to dinner when he first meets her, and having to rely on James Wesley for wine reccomendations.
• DI Helen Morton from DCI Banks, to the extent that she asks Banks' advice on how to better fit in with the team, and then takes notes as he is talking. She is gradually getting better, but it is a slow process.
• Doctor Who:
  • The Doctor has moments of acting like this, more so in some incarnations than others. It's partly Obfuscating Stupidity, partly the fact that a time-travelling alien can hardly be expected to understand the social mores of every time and place he visits, and sometimes just the way he is:
    • The First Doctor is like this in a more subtle way — instead of coming across as demented, like later Doctors, he comes across generally as a very rude Grumpy Old Man, but we slowly realize that he's making a real effort to be nice to people, and just isn't very good at it. His gestures tend to be very small and shy compared to later Doctors, and when he tries to reconcile with Ian after nearly getting everyone killed in "The Edge of Destruction", there's a brief scene where he reaches out to touch him affectionately, but then has second thoughts and just lets his hand drop, staring at Ian awkwardly. At the end of "The Sensorites", Ian makes one sarcastic comment about the Doctor's driving skills, and the Doctor loses his temper and tries to drop Ian off at a random point in time, but soon realizes this was an overreaction. In "Planet of Giants", he spends a whole scene snapping at Barbara for no reason, but goes up to her at the end of the conversation and apologises for being so rude, explaining he misjudged his own tone. And then there's the scene in "The Aztecs" where he gets accidentally engaged to someone...
    • The Fourth Doctor pretends to have no social skills as Obfuscating Stupidity and offers people jelly babies as a kind of social litmus test but actually has a very calculating social intelligence, and is just a bit of a weird person, with a nasty sense of humour. Generally, when he does react in a completely inappropriate way to a situation, it is Blue-and-Orange Morality or disgust with the idea of behaving appropriately in general.
    • Particularly strong with the Eleventh Doctor — his interpersonal skills are actually very, very good, especially by Doctor standards, but his understanding of human culture and what kind of behavior is inappropriate in the setting is minimal. For a classic example, see "The Lodger".
    • The Twelfth Doctor is even worse than the Eleventh, by some magnitude. For starters, unlike the Eleventh Doctor, he tends to be unintentionally very rude to people and has extreme difficulty saying encouraging words or apologizing (Clara issues him with cue cards; they don't help). He doesn't understand how faces work and he has trouble recognizing people if they have changed their clothing or hairstyles, thinking that putting on an orange coat instead of a blue one would make him unrecognizably disguised. He treats humans with occasional naked contempt and sees no point in hiding the fact that he's an alien. He doesn't understand why, if someone asks you to get them coffee, you don't give it to them a week later. He is by far the least socially human incarnation yet — as if this was now the time to stop pretending he could ever be anything other than a Time Lord. It was intentional: the Eleventh Doctor spent nine hundred years on one planet prior to his regeneration, outliving the people he knew there again and again, being strongly reminded he wasn't human, and he let that show through in his next incarnation. However, by Series 10, at least seventy-odd years into this incarnation, he's apparently learned how to deal with faces and his social skills have developed to the point he now comes off as a stern but compassionate old man.
  • First Doctor companion Steven Taylor was living in a People Zoo, cut off from anyone of his own kind, with only a stuffed panda toy and emotionless, faceless robots for company for two years, and his social skills have suffered. Though he's good at bluffing people, when he's himself he repeatedly struggles to phrase reasonable opinions in non-confrontational ways and tends to interrupt people or accidentally upset them. His skills notably improve as his run goes on, until he's eventually Put on a Bus as a mediator between two feuding groups on a distant planet.
• Jayne in Firefly. Joss Whedon compared him to Anya in that they both said things that everybody else might be thinking but would not dare say out loud.
• Walter Bishop in Fringe is awkward as a central character trait: he's locked up in a mental institution, completely isolated from the world for the past seventeen years. And he is missing key parts of his brain — that he had someone else take out.
• Game of Thrones: Stannis, as he is acutely aware. Whenever Shireen hugs him, he looks awkward and surprised.
• Hymie the robot from Get Smart. Despite having superhuman abilities, he has the tendency to follow orders too literally.
• In The Girl From Plainville, Michelle isn't entirely without social skills, but she's oblivious to Conrad's family and friends feeling uncomfortable with her inserting herself as she's essentially a stranger. She struggles to really connect with her friends at school, overwhelming them with her emotional neediness.
• Dr. Sean Murphy on The Good Doctor is on the autism spectrum and struggles with interacting with colleagues and patients.
• Poor Ed Nygma on Gotham, as part of his mental issues. He's blissfully unaware of how weird his Nightmare Fetishist tendencies come across, and he usually fails to notice basic social cues, often standing around smiling after people have stopped speaking to him, not realizing that they non-verbally want him to leave. He only has this to say to a visibly upset coworker after invading her work space and rearranging her things: "Ok...I'm getting the sense that this was somehow inappropriate." Interestingly, he becomes far more capable of interacting with people after his Face–Heel Turn, even though he keeps his dorky and eccentric personality.
• Homicide: Life on the Street:
  • Frank Pembleton is an excellent detective who almost always gets a confession, but he struggles with interacting with people outside of the interrogation room. Part of this is because he feels like he's Surrounded by Idiots, but he genuinely does have trouble connecting with people and expressing his emotions.
  • One of the recurring medical examiners, Dr. Scheiner, tends to be quite awkward about interacting with people. He does make efforts to socialize, but it frequently comes across as quite creepy.
• Roy and Moss in The IT Crowd, being rather "standard nerds" running an IT department, naturally fall into this trope more often than not, Moss in particular. Jen is supposed to subvert this, seeing as her role is supposed to be the sociable one who can help the other two actually connect with other people, but actually she's just as socially inept, awkward, and consumed with her obsessions as the other two. The only real difference is that Jen's obsessions are considered more socially mainstream, which enables her to get away with it more.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider Kiva: Wataru Kurenai is a violin loving Hikikomori, who starts out capable of leaving the house only when wrapped up in protective gear like someone going grocery shopping in 2020 and using a notebook with written phrases to communicate. In the first episode, he gives a written apology to a cat after taking stinky fish bones from it to make lacquer for violin repair. Naturally, getting excited over experimenting with making and using weird, smelly concoctions doesn't make him any more appealing to outsiders, who consider him to be an obsessive creep.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: Hiiro Kagami is the best surgeon in the hospital, always perfect specimen of his profession despite his pragmatically awful and brutally honest bedside manner. Try to rope him into anything remotely personal and he has absolutely no idea what to do, because he is basically a singleminded sweets-fueled surgery bot. It's never explained whether this is a result of some undiagnosed condition, spending his life studying or just trying to hide natural awkwardness to the point of Becoming the Mask.
  • Kamen Rider Zi-O: Geiz Myokoin /Kamen Rider Geiz is dour and brutally straight forward with Hair-Trigger Temper, though he can definitely do better around Tsukuyomi. Despite his intelligence, he is mostly unaware of why he sents people running just by trying to approach them with the intent of normal conversation. The lack of awareness and planning puts him at disadvantage against Sougo Tokiwa / Kamen Rider Zi-O, a socially capable Cloud Cuckoo Lander.
  • Kamen Rider Saber: Rintaro is polite and friendly bookworm, but his idea of what that entails can be hilariously off the mark sometimes. He has a fair share of theoretical knowledge, but due to the sheltered upbringing inside Sword Of Logos, his actual experience in the real world is limited to fighting Megid and occasionally wandering around like a tourist. Unsurprisingly, it is easy to manipulate him into remaining loyal to the concept of the Guild even when others start questioning the actual authorities behind it.

• Parker from Leverage. Quite possibly the world's greatest cat burglar; requires cheat sheets and extensive coaching to carry on a passing-for-normal conversation, and doesn't see why her male teammates freak out whenever she whips her shirt off in front of them to execute a quick-change. As a child, she thought that being buried alive was an appropriate way to get over her fear of the dark. As an adult, she compared it to Eliot locking himself in a shed for a few nights to get over his claustrophobia. "That's NOT the same thing. What's wrong with you?" Word of God is she has Asperger's, explaining her behaviour. In the show itself, it's mentioned that Parker is capable of acting relatively normally (such as a wine-dispensing member of the wait staff at a formal party), but only when she's fully aware that it's an act designed purely to deceive a mark.
• Charlie Crews in Life, having spent the last twelve years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. The most common is his unfamiliarity with things like cell phones and instant messaging.
• In Li'l Horrors, Duncan Stein is friendly, but also dim-witted and sorely lacking in social skills. Of course, he has only been "alive" for a relatively short period of time.
• Lost: Ana-Lucia openly admits that she's not very good at connecting with other people. She's blunt, irritable and usually makes people think she doesn't like them. Unfortunately, this trait worked a little too well and many viewers struggled to enjoy her as a character.
  Ana-Lucia: People don't like me. I tried to get them to most of my life. I guess I just gave up a while back. I mean, I am what I am.
• May I Please Enter?: The Cowboy acts very oddly, from demanding entry into other people's homes, to alternating between moments of deadpanned seriousness to casual humor, and being overly curious in general about Amy and John's place and lives, making his hosts seem uncomfortable or put-off by his strange behavior at several points.
• Dash in Minority Report (2015). He's only come into the public world in the past few weeks — and the fact that he was imprisoned for most of his life and never saw anything but visions of murder certainly didn't help matters.
• Monk:
  • Monk struggles to have a normal conversation even with cue cards. A few episodes have subverted this, though, by showing that he can actually be reasonably personable at times, it's just buried under layers of neuroses. For example, a large part of the plot of "Mr. Monk Is On The Air" is devoted to Monk's concerns about his deficient sense of humour. The episode ends with him watching his wedding video, and in it, he's laughing uproariously. It doesn't help that Monk's mother is shown to have been far more obsessive compulsive, and raised her sons to fear and obey her obsessions. Monk's father left the family because of her obsessive behavior, leaving the two sons to be Raised by Wolves.
  • His brother Ambrose is even worse, to the point of being a shut-in.
  • Interestingly, there are rare times when Monk seemingly forgets his phobias and awkwardness and just acts like a normal person. However, this happens rarely, and he has no memory of it. This is revealed when a rapper (played by Snoop Dogg) shows up to ask for Monk's help in clearing his name. Monk starts acting gangsta and eagerly accepts the case. After the rapper leaves, Monk goes back to his old self and assumes he said "no".
• Mr. Bean: Mr. Bean himself lacks a knowledge of social conventions, never demonstrates normal human thought processes, and even occasionally shows a lack of natural fear (shushing people while he's on a rollercoaster). In one set of titles he is beamed down from space, but possibly this is metaphor for his unearthliness.
• Mr. Mayor: Arpi's default ranges from Brutal Honesty to simply insulting people, sometimes even those supporting her views. She's an elected LA city council member and passionate progressive activist however, so there are enough people who like her very blunt style it seems.
• There's one My Name Is Earl episode where he found a guy he left out in the woods who seemed completely wild (even though he was a full grown adult when it happened). Part of the reasons for his behavior was eating berries in the forest, and things had gotten so bad that he married a raccoon. It drew comparisons between him and Tarzan, until the end when it turns out that the man had an acute case of schizoid or avoidant personality disorder and would never be able to assimilate into regular society without drugs. Earl decided the best thing to do would be to release him into the wild where he was happiest.
• NCIS: Ziva David is ridiculed by moviephile DiNozzo for her unfamiliarity with pop culture references and idioms: she once wanted to take a quick "bat nap" and referred to a rare mistake as "once in a blue lagoon". It's hinted in one of the later seasons that she actually is learning these idioms, but keeps it up as Obfuscating Stupidity, leading people to underestimate her.
• Many of the characters on The Office are... awkward, but on the American version, Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute seem tangentially acquainted with human society at best. Michael was clearly raised by pop culture, and expects everything to work out in real life the way it does in movies and on television. Dwight was raised on an insular beet farm without most of the niceties of civilization:
  Dwight: She introduced me to so many things. Pasteurized milk. Sheets. Monotheism. Presents on your birthday. Preventative medicine.

• In The Outer Limits (1995):
  • In "The Haven", people have become so heavily dependent on the artificial intelligence Argus, which provides for all of their needs, that they can largely avoid social interaction. Many choose to do so insofar as possible.
  • In "Skin Deep", Sid Camden is a socially inept, lonely accountant with only one friend, his former co-worker Deb Clement. He believes that life has dealt him a bad hand. When he begins to use a Holographic Disguise to imitate his fellow accountant Chad Warner, it goes to his head and the experience brings out the worst in him to the point that he threatens Deb when she says that she will tell Chad what he is doing.
  • In "The Human Operators", a sentient spaceship keeps a lone human man as a slave to repair and maintain it when needed. One day, a female slave is brought on board and the ship orders them to mate and beget the next generation of slaves. The man, having lived on the ship his whole life, has no idea what to do and has to be coached by the female. There's a scene where, after the woman guides his hand over her breasts, the man double takes and looks down at his first erection.
• The Outpost: Janzo is quite socially awkward, having a great reluctance to meet people's eyes at first, standing hunched over, and has little knowledge of how to interact with people, let alone romantically approach them. Naya in Season 2 tries to help him get more adept.
• Pandora:
  • Ralen is a Zatarian with very limited knowledge of Earth's social norms.
  • As a clone, Atria had a very sheltered upbringing by her master, who would not let her attend formal education, as is customary for the Adari masters. As a result she is hopelessly naive or clueless about many things on Earth (such as that casually having a threeway with a man and woman after she starts dating Tom would upset him).
• Mark Corrigan in Peep Show is a neurotic mess in social situations of any kind. His flatmate Jez is much better when compared to Mark, but has plenty of neuroses of his own which can also lead to this trope kicking in for him from time to time.
• Power Rangers RPM has Doctor K, who was raised in a top-secret government think tank where her entire life consisted of research ever since she was a toddler. It shows.

• Jarod, the eponymous character from The Pretender, is a super-genius who was raised in a lab. When he escapes, he has to learn about common everyday things like Pez at roughly age 35. While his talents include picking up new skills quickly, he tends to be over-analytical about things like The Three Stooges (which he eventually decided was funny anyway).
• Maura Isles of Rizzoli & Isles is very much this trope. She's also very sweet. Luckily, she has her street smart best friend Jane Rizzoli to help:
  Jane: Did you ever like the same boy as your best friend?
  Maura: No.
  Jane: Did you ever have a best friend?
  Maura: [beat] No.
  Jane: [laughing] You would tell me if you were a cyborg, wouldn't you?
  Maura: [thoughtfully] No, I don't think I would.
• Luke Smith from The Sarah Jane Adventures is at a loss in social situations. Thankfully he becomes more sophisticated so as time goes on. After all, he's being raised in a "normal" high school environment and is a quick learner due to both his age and his genes. He was grown by aliens: human but created to be a "Human Archetype" so that they could do tests on him. He has the absorbed intelligence of the thousands of people but not their social skills.
• The four supergeniuses who comprise two-thirds of the cast of Scorpion have enough brain power for seven ordinary people and enough social skills for maybe one.
• Sherlock: The main character himself. Although handsome, intelligent and insufferable about it and the world's greatest detective, he's no good at dealing with other people, even his friends, at times. However, he awkwardly (and genuinely) acknowledges his friend's bravery after the whole bomb vest thing.
• On Silicon Valley, billionaire investor Peter Gregory is portrayed as this. He thinks on a completely different level from other people and doesn't seem to care about how they react to him. He loudly hacks if anything goes even the slightest bit out of whack. Additionally, most computer programmers are portrayed as being either overly abrasive or overly timid with little in between.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • Data's android "daughter" Lal from "The Offspring". She's well-versed in "book learning", but not in social interaction. When she sees a couple kissing in Ten Forward, she exclaims "That man is biting that female!" Data has No Social Skills himself, during the early series.
  • "Suddenly Human" features a human boy raised by aliens with a violent culture who can't fit in with human society.
  • In his youth, Worf was unskilled when visiting his family in the Klingon Empire, after being raised by humans. He's apparently gotten better as an adult, but is still considered rather uptight and overly serious. When he acts according to Federation values (like mercy, democracy, humility, etc) he tends to get odd looks and confused reactions though. He also learns about Klingon culture largely by reading about it, which shocks him when he starts to interact more with actual Klingons, who are far less noble, honorable, and stoic than he expects. During the Klingon civil war, he has trouble grasping the idea of sharing a drink with the other side's soldiers in the lull between the fighting.
• Star Trek: Voyager:
  • The Holodoc, whose bedside manner in the early seasons could be boiled down to "Please identify type of pain: burning, stabbing, stinging..."
  • Icheb is even worse than Seven, having been assimilated as a baby. When working close with B'Ellana, he misinterprets her behavior and several physiological readouts as indications that she wants him. Later, when she faints, he scans her with a tricorder and diagnoses her with a parasite of some sort. Seven (slightly more versed) explains that this "parasite" is called a fetus.

• Star Trek: The Original Series: The episode "Charlie X" featured a human child raised by incorporeal aliens who has no concept of how to interact with his fellow humans, especially women.
• Stranger Things:
  • Seeing as she's a psychic child prodigy raised from infancy as a secret government scientific experiment to develop a perfect human weapon, Eleven does not exactly have a strong grasp of social cues or appropriate social behaviour... as witnessed in the second episode when, after being offered a clean change of clothes by Mike, Lucas and Dustin, she prepares to strip off in front of them much to their mortification. She gradually gets a bit better, however. It should also be noted that several of the previously mentioned boys, being rather dorky social outcasts, also have their moments of poor or inappropriate social behaviour without the benefit of this excuse (particularly Dustin).
  • Jonathan Byers is a rather shy introvert, who lives through observing other people and taking pictures of them. Working with Nancy to find Will and investigate Barb's disappearance slowly gets him to come out of his shell.
• Supernatural:
  • Castiel is an angel who hasn't spent a lot of time down on earth, so he tends to lack basic knowledge of human etiquette, as well as failing to grasp the concepts of sarcasm, rhetorical questions, and metaphor when he's first starting out. He also doesn't quite get the point of goodbyes or even of ending conversations in a conclusive manner. Once he's done saying what he wants to say, he goes poof, even if the other person isn't done yet. And he takes it the other direction, too — popping up next to people or behind them, or often in the passenger seat of Dean's car while Dean is driving, consistently ignoring the startled reactions to his sudden appearances.
  • Jack is a newborn that looks like a teenager. Because of his looks, people assume he can be interacted with normally. But because of his actual age and life experience, he doesn't understand slang, subtlety or pop cultural references which results in very literal and awkward responses. He often mimics those around him as he tries to figure out the appropriate response, sometimes with comical effect.
• Super Sentai has several characters lacking basic social skills. Most of them are either not human or haven't had much interaction with people during their childhood. Examples are:
  • Sion in Mirai Sentai Timeranger, an alien who was raised on Earth in a laboratory. He has a strange sense of what's socially appropriate, including, in one memorable incident, stating that he "loves" Domon—right in front of a crowd of girls that Domon was trying to pick up.
  • Jan Kandou from Juken Sentai Gekiranger, raised by pandas and tigers. He calls himself a "tiger boy" and demonstrates incredible strength, such as having a tree fall on him with no effect. It takes him a few episodes to master the concept of things like doors. His defining trait, though, is that, while he can speak proper Japanese, he colors it with made-up babytalk words such as "nikiniki" (happy) and "zowazowa" (danger).
  • The Gosei Angels in Tensou Sentai Goseiger suffer from this to some extent, though the Landicks are slightly less affected than the other three. They come from different sort of reality and didn't get to interact with people so much before being stranded on Earth. They get better through their stay.
  • Hiromu Sakurada in Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters, who is blunt, rude and Brutally Honest often with no idea that he's said or done anything wrong; and has little idea of how to interact with others. Interestingly, he is the only team member who grew up outside of EMC, whereas Ryuji and Yoko (who have spent most of their lives there) are fairly normal. However, they do show occasional signs of this, such as in one episode where they don't seem to know how to dress outside of uniform and wear very outdated clothes to go to an amusement park.
  • Uchu Sentai Kyuranger has two examples, both dramatic and hilarious:
    • Naga Ray, who comes from Spock expy race that supressed their emotions to achieve peace. Naga himself wants to have emotions and tries to learn how to express them and be as good with people as his partner, Balance. He practiced smiling in the mirror and tried to match up the correct expressions and feels to the situation at hand. The effort payed off in the end.
    • Stinger. Suicide mission? No problem. Apologize to his team? Impossible without stuttering and looking like anxiety eats him from inside out. He Used to Be a Sweet Child, but being bullied by other tribesmen and watching his formerly kind brother slide towards becoming a power hungry Blood Knight messed him up a bit even before the really bad stuff happened. Opening up to his team and spending time with them helped him become less awkward as time passed.
• Cameron from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, since she is a terminator. Skynet's human disguise program: hot on the visuals, crap with the chat.
  • Interestingly, in the pilot, before she is revealed as a Robot Girl, she seems like a normal teenage girl, trying to make friends with John Connor. Then in the next episode Cameron is electrocuted and given a forced reboot, awakening as emotionless and socially awkward, meaning she possibly forgot how to behave convincingly.
    • Cameron's shown the ability to fake human interaction long enough to get information out of people. It's only when she's being herself that she struggles.
• The Thick of It contains several examples. Olly, himself book-smart but not streetwise, asks hapless press officer John Duggan "I'm not being horrible, but are you actually autistic?". Further along the autism spectrum is unseen Prime Minister Tom Davis, whose social skills are so lacking that the press officers doubt that they should let him out in public.
• Artie of Warehouse 13 has spent so much of his career in the Artifact Warehouse that he is often considered uncouth by the new agents Pete and Myka. One episode reveals that he deliberately gives himself appendicitis every year in order to see a doctor he likes, until it nearly kills him and he finally has the guts to ask her out properly.
  • Claudia also has a lot of social awkwardness and has no idea how to behave with a boy she likes. Being locked up in a mental institution for years probably has something to do with it, as well as her being a genius.
• An episode of The X-Files features the monster of the week as an entire feral family. It's hinted that the family has lived down through the centuries like this, and are the source of the legend of the Jersey Devil.
• Young Sheldon: In "A Research Study and Czechoslovakian Wedding Pastries", Sheldon's lack of social awareness is highlighted in the second round of the study, when he's shown drawings of people and animals acting like people while being asked to interpret their situations, and gets frustrated when his literal answers aren't enough. Missy, in comparison, identifies all of the depicted situations perfectly but is then a tad too forward asking the doctor testing her about their relationship with another doctor.

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