Other Me Annoys Me / Live-Action TV

Instances of Other Me Annoys Me in Live-Action TV series.

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• Babylon 5: When Dr. Franklin takes a leave of absence to work out his addiction to stims, he embarks on a spiritual exercise inspired by Australian Aboriginals called a "walkabout", where on the premise that he has lost "himself", he wanders until he runs into himself, and can have a lengthy conversation working out their differences and subsequently reunite with himself again. A few episodes later, in "Shadow Dancing", he gets stabbed in Downbelow, and as he lies bleeding on the verge of death he literally sees "himself" — and that self gives him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech chastising him sternly for always running away from his problems, with this "walkabout" being one more example of that. He later remarks to Garibaldi that he did indeed "run into himself", and found he didn't like him very much.
• Buffyverse:
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • In "Doppelgangland, Vamp Willow thought that the regular Willow was too wimpy, and regular Willow thought Vamp Willow was too skanky and evil.
      Willow: It's horrible. That's me as a vampire? I'm so evil, and skanky... and I think I'm kinda gay.
      Buffy: Willow, just remember, a vampire's personality has nothing to do with the person it was.
      Angel: Well, actually—(Buffy glares at him) ...that's a good point.
    • In "The Replacement", the Xander who seems to the audience to be regular Xander is annoyed at the suave, confident Xander, but it is ultimately revealed that they are both the "real" Xander, just split into two distinct forms. One Xander is assertive, self-confident and suave, the other is panicky and self-critical.
  • When Angelus returns on Angel we eventually discover how annoying the vampire with a soul is to his alter ego. The fact Angelus had to endure rescuing puppies and listening to Barry Manilow completely drives him up the wall, much to Faith's amusement.
• In the Season 2 finale of Continuum, Alec travels back in time to save his girlfriend's life. In Season 3, the Alec of the new timeline inherits his father's company and learns said girlfriend has a secret past. New Timeline Alec sees Original Alec as a naive romantic fool; Original Alec sees New Timeline Alec as a power-hungry sellout. They end up trying to kill each other.
• Doctor Who can play this trope straight or avert it, depending on the story. Many multi-Doctor stories feature current and past regenerations bickering with each other. As a show primarily about time travel, there are plenty of examples of this trope between different incarnations of the Doctor, the Master and other supporting characters, which can be found in its own folder in the main apge.
• In Dollhouse, Topher imprints his personality onto Victor. The two bond a bit fanboying over how hot Bennett is, but when they actually meet, the two quickly get on each other's nerves, talking over each other.
• In The Flash (2014), some characters end up facing their doubles from parallel Earths. Not all of them get along, such as Cisco/Vibe from Earth 1 not getting along too well with his evil double Cisco/Reverb from Earth 2, and Caitlin from Earth 1 disliking her sexualized version from Earth 2, calling herself Killer Frost. There's also Harrison Wells from Earth 2, who tries to help Cisco and Caitlin find a double to replace him, and ends up disliking several versions of himself from other worlds, including "H.R." from Earth 19. When Harry and H.R. meet up later, Harry is downright hostile, annoyed that there's a version of him that's not a brilliant scientist. He's dumbfounded that Team Flash chooses to keep H.R., even though the latter does prove his worth in the same episode with a totally non-scientific observation that everyone else missed.
• In Friends, Rachel dates Russ, a guy who's remarkably like Ross. Ross finds him completely annoying, being totally unaware that he's basically criticizing himself.
• Fringe:
  • Walter and Olivia do not like their counterparts in the alternate universe. Walter doesn't like Walternate, because basically, Walternate was hellbent on destroying our universe (and also reminds Walter of how succesful Walter could have been, had he not been institutionalized). Walternate doesn't like Walter because Walter kidnapped his son and caused significant damage to the alternate universe. Olivia doesn't like Fauxlivia because Fauxlivia basically took over her life, committed several murders and slept with Peter, while she was forcibly implanted with Fauxlivia's memories and thought she was her, and Fauxlivia is annoyed with Olivia because Olivia's general demeanor is not as upbeat as Fauxlivia's.
  • Both versions of Agent Lincoln Lee, on the other hand, really get along. The main difference between their personalities is that "main" universe Lee is an introvert and a bit nerdy while "alternate" Lee is an extravert and more confident. They have fun trying to compare their early lives to see what made them turn out so different.
  • There is a lot of variations on this on Fringe due to characters meeting their counterparts. One episode involved hunting down a serial killer with the help of his alternate counterpart (who happened to be an expert criminal profiler). The episode hinged on the divergence between the two men.
• Kaamelott: A minor example, where Perceval somehow manages to clone himself with Merlin's magic. The Stinger has him introduce the clone to Arthur saying "But for some reason, he's a real dumbass."
• Living With Yourself has Miles and clone!Miles hating each other for different reasons. Miles hates his clone for being too perfect, while clone!Miles hates original Miles because he has nothing but memories of Miles, which are not his own. This eventually results in both Miles attacking each other which is largely Played for Laughs until the real Miles kills his clone and has a My God, What Have I Done? reaction and has to resuscitate him and the two seemingly bury the hatchet... before the perfect clone points out that the original Miles is gaining weight. Miles angrily yells at him ruining the moment.
• Loki: The protagonist Loki, having watched years of Character Development of his main timeline self in minutes and then getting even more himself, including falling in love for the first time, looks embarassed and annoyed watching a bunch of Loki Variants backstab each other for a pointless throne.
• This is referenced in Murder, She Wrote where fictionalized characters closely resemble real people but with negative characterization. Anger ensues.
  • A similar plotline in an episode of The Father Dowling Mysteries, in which a novelist adapts one of Father Dowling's cases as a book. Dowling's Expy is depicted as a brawling Irish stereotype, while the nun standing in for the normally tomboyish Sister Stevie repeatedly faints at the sight of blood. Sister Stevie describes her as "a wimp in a wimple".
• McGee, of NCIS, wrote a novel somewhat based on people he knew. As each member of the team learned about how their counterpart was portrayed, they took offense at the idea. Tim made it very clear that the fictional versions weren't the same, but almost everyone said methinks thou doth protest too much. Except Gibbs, who didn't mind because "Special Agent Tibbs" was awesomeness incarnate, did not have sex with cadavers, and was not shipped with the counterpart of another agent because McGee thought they'd make a nice couple.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In "In Another Life", both the project manager and killer versions of Mason Stark dislike the Eigenphase Industries CEO Mason.
• Parallax: Comes up most promenantly with Ben's best friend Francis, who early on cannot stand his counterpart. This is partially out of jealousy that his counterpart is considerably more outgoing than he is, partially out of seeing running into other selves as "like looking at a mirror, only it talks back", and mostly because Francis 'Thief' is at least initially a cheerful thief and liar.
• Red Dwarf:
  • In "Parallel Universe", Cat is pretty excited to meet his alternate dimension counterpart as he thinks it will be a female cat person - it turns out to be a male dog person.
    • Rimmer, contrarily, came to hate his counterpart because they were too much alike - she displayed the same creepy sexual behavior Lister called male-Rimmer on earlier in the episode - only directed toward him.
  • This happens to Rimmer several times. When he has Holly make a copy of himself, they hate each other so much that Lister is forced to delete the duplicate. After being stranded on a terraforming world and creating some clones for company, they build their society around his weaselly, petty, and cowardly traits and throw him in the dungeon for not being awful enough. When he meets his parallel-universe self Ace Rimmer, Rimmer resents him for being so brave, competent, and handsome (and thereby countering Rimmer's belief that he couldn't help but turn out to be such a smeghead). The disgust is mutual, and after Ace leaves for more dimensional exploration a text-over states that he never finds a Rimmer as loathsome as this one.
• Subverted in a Saturday Night Live Weekend Update segment featuring a point/counterpoint argument between Jerry Seinfeld As Himself and Jimmy Fallon as a second Jerry Seinfeld. At first Jerry 1 is visibly irritated by the second Jerry (who disagrees with him about the merits of The Gap), but the two quickly become delighted with each other and end the segment by adjourning to catch a movie.
  Jerry Seinfeld: You're funny!
  Jerry Seinfeld 2: So are you! So are you!
  Colin Quinn: Hey, uh, fellas, you seem to have found a lot of common ground. Perhaps in the future we shouldn't have a person debate himself.
  Jerry Seinfeld: But—but he makes a good point!
  Jerry Seinfeld 2: I like what this guy has to say!
• Inverted and then played straight in Seinfeld when Jerry falls for his Distaff Counterpart, Jeannie Steinman. He's initially obsessed with her because her personality and interests are indistinguishable from his ("I've been waiting for me to come along and now I've swept myself off my feet!"), but, shortly after impulsively proposing to her, realizes that his own characteristics severely grate on him after long exposure. It's resolved in the following episode when they both blurt out that they hate each other at the same time, in what Jerry speculates may be the first truly mutual breakup in history.
  Jerry: All of a sudden it hit me, I realized what the problem is: I can't be with someone like me. I hate myself!
• A constant on Sliders. Every member of the team has met at least one (or five) alternate versions of themselves on different Earths who they can't stand. They range from a Quinn who's a corrupt "mathalete" to an Arturo who tries to take his double's place to a ditzy Wade to an arrogant Rembrandt and more. And that's not counting the versions who are flat-out evil.
• Stargate:
  • In the Stargate Atlantis episode "McKay and Mrs. Miller", an alternate universe version of Rodney McKay appears. This version is charming, extraverted and socially skilled. The regular Rodney ends up disliking him because everyone seems to like him better. At the end of the episode Teyla, Sheppard, and Ronan reveal that they weren't terribly fond of the alt-universe Rodney, either. Interestingly, "Rod" actually envies Rodney, claiming that the latter doesn't care what people think about him, while the former is too socially-conscious to do that.
  • In an episode of Stargate Universe, Doctor Rush gets sent back in time through "a freak of physics" and warns everyone that the very risky plan they were about to attempt was going to fail miserably. The non-time-travelling Rush (who's been very vocal about the risks inherent in the plan) is very smug about this, to the point of completely disregarding time-travelling Rush's ordeal. Time-travelling Rush is not impressed.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series:
    • The premise of "The Enemy Within" involves Kirk being duplicated, with his personality split between the two bodies. Naturally, each of his halves despises the other.
    • The ultimate example of this trope comes in "The Alternative Factor". The prime universe version of Lazarus despises his alternate-universe self and wants him dead, even if he destroys all of reality in the process. For his part, the alternate Lazarus was perfectly happy to live in harmony with his counterpart until said counterpart became obsessed with destroying him.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • In "Hollow Pursuits", the main characters are offended by Lt. Barclay's versions of them in his fantasy holodeck adventure. Troi tells them to relax and just take them as amusing homages, until she happens upon her alternate self — a soppy "goddess" in love with Barclay. Riker immediately seizes the opportunity for an Ironic Echo.
    • In "Galaxy's Child", Geordi is excited to finally meet Dr. Leah Brahms, the designer of the Galaxy class engineering systems seen as a hologram in the earlier episode "Booby Trap", as she's here for an inspection. During her visit, she encounters her holographic self, repeating that episode's closing lines "Every time you look at this engine, you're looking at me. Every time you touch it, it's me." She feels understandably violated, and at that point, nothing La Forge could say would convince her that he didn't do more than collaborate with her holo-self.
    • "Second Chances" is basically an entire episode of this trope, alternating between Future Me Scares Me and I Hate Past Me. Riker discovers that a transporter accident duplicated him seven or eight years ago, he got out, the other him was stranded on a planet they were surveying, and despite all of this, both men are equally William T. Riker. Riker is annoyed by the youthful attitudes and social difficulties of the other. The other Riker chafes at seeing the man who had the career he should have had and who gave up the woman he still loves (Troi).
    • In "Time Squared", the Enterprise picks up a shuttlecraft carrying an alternate Picard from six hours in the future, in a timeline where the Enterprise was destroyed and everyone else was killed. The present-timeline Picard becomes frustrated with his future self and the possible fate that future Picard represents, and it's made worse by the fact that future Picard's mind is jumbled by the time change and he annot communicate clearly.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In "Treachery, Faith, And The Great River", after Weyoun clone #5 is killed in a Teleporter Accident (at least, they never proved that it wasn't an accident), Weyoun 6 defects to The Federation. Weyoun 7 is pissed at him for betraying the Dominion and shaming the Weyoun line.
  • Star Trek: Voyager:
    • In "Author, Author", this happens to every character when they see the Doctor's holoplay "Photons Be Free", since he portrays them as anti-holographic racists. He relents and changes the characters to not be so obviously stand-ins for his real life friends after Tom "revises" the program to paint the Doctor as an arrogant and unethical Jerkass so he sees how offensive his first draft was.
    • There was surprisingly little argument in "Deadlock", because each Captain Janeway knew what the other would do in their situation, though there was an argument about being More Hero than Thou. The conflict comes in "Endgame", when Captain Janeway meets her future self Admiral Janeway, due to their different experiences and agendas.
    • This happens in "Life Line" when the Emergency Medical Hologram meets his identical-looking creator, Dr. Lewis Zimmerman (or a diagnostic program based on him, in an earlier episode). Of course, it doesn't help that Zimmerman is a Dr. Jerk who regards the EMH Mark One as an embarrassing failure.
    • In "Faces", B'Elanna is split into two separate people: a Klingon and a human. The Human B'Elanna is weak and fearful, while the Klingon B'Elanna is hyper-aggressive. Neither likes the other, but in the end, the Klingon version is killed, while the human one is told that her body needs both sets of genes in order to survive, so she ends up being reintegrated.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise, episode "In a Mirror, Darkly". In the Mirror Universe, evil Archer comes across a database listing the achievements of his alternate self as a famous captain, diplomat and explorer. As Archer is still only Number Two on Enterprise he's furious, and as he lapses into insanity and paranoia is taunted by hallucinations of this alternate Archer, goading him into a reckless grab for power and fame. Hoshi makes it clear that she doesn't want to know anything about her own alt-self, clearly finding the idea of another "her" disturbing.
  • Star Trek: Discovery revisits the Mirror Universe. While few characters actually encounter their doubles, Tilly is visibly uncomfortable with playing the part of her Evil Doppelgänger, who is a mass-murdering psychopath. Ditto for Burnham, when she's forced to play an her equally-terrible double nearly 24/7. In the one case, where a character encounters his double, Prime Voq's personality finally reawakens in Tyler's body, causing him to attack Mirror Voq for the perceived betrayal of Klingon values.

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