Basic Trope: Doing one relatively simple action would resolve the conflict and therefore make it pointless for the story to keep going.
- Straight: Alice and Bob are living in a loveless, unhappy sitcom marriage. Bob finally gets up the nerve to tell Alice that he wants a divorce. Alice and Bob get divorced, and all the fighting stops, thus ending the season.
- Exaggerated: Alice and Bob get divorced, and the series is literally over; there's no telling what becomes of Alice and Bob (good, bad, or in-between) after the divorce.
- Downplayed: Alice and Bob are constantly having problems with each other being secretive. After both start opening up the marriage becomes happier.
- Justified:
- The entire series focuses on those two characters, with the rocky marriage as their primary conflict; ending the marriage basically ends the plot.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: The actor that plays Bob wants to move onto a new series, so the divorce serves as a Grand Finale to Awful Wedded Life.
- The series is set and/or airing during a time when divorce was scandalous (possibly too scandalous for TV) and/or difficult to obtain, so divorce really isn't as much of an option for Alice and Bob as the audience (especially a modern, Western audience) might be led to believe.
- Bob and/or Alice are would rather stay married than spend their money on a divorce or don't have enough money for a divorce.
- Inverted:
- Alice and Bob divorce, but the divorce makes the arguing worse, as they quibble and quarrel over things like assets and debts, child support, alimony, etc.
- Alice and Bob keep divorcing or breaking up and getting back together.
- Subverted:
- Alice and Bob get divorced, which opens up any number of new plotlines (such as Alice and Bob reentering the dating scene, Guess Who I'm Marrying?, Divorce Assets Conflict, just to name a few.)
- Alice and Bob Take a Third Option, such as going through couples' therapy or a trial separation.
- Double Subverted:
- But then Alice and Bob get back together, and they're back to their old problems again. They get back together the same episode as the divorce.
- The series makes it clear that although they're attending couples' therapy, it isn't working and a trial separation led only to a Green-Eyed Epiphany. Alice and Bob are still anything but Happily Married, and they should have just gotten a divorce.
- Parodied:
- Alice and Bob divorce. Cue Bob lying alone in bed, asking, "Now what?" and hearing only crickets in response.
- After the divorce, Bob's friends throw a "reverse bachelor party" in Hawaii in an attempt to lift his spirits...which (among other things), involves Bob water-skiing over a shark.
- Zig-Zagged: Yo Yo Plot Point
- Averted:
- Alice and Bob's rocky marriage is only one of many Plot Threads in the series.
- Alice and Bob are Happily Married.
- Enforced: "Let's create a Dom Com centered around an unhappily married couple!"
- Lampshaded: "We can't get a divorce! That would ruin everything!"
- Invoked:
- Alice and Bob don't love each other anymore, but have developed a creepy co-dependency on each other, and hesitate to get a divorce for just that reason.
- Alice and Bob really can't afford to get a divorce right now, or are waiting for the real-estate market to improve so they can sell the house.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Alice and Bob decide that they are going to look at the divorce as a new beginning, not an ending, and take advantage of the opportunity, even though it means stepping out of their comfort zones.
- Discussed: "If Alice and Bob are so miserable, why don't they just divorce?"
- Conversed: "Well, for a series focused solely on Alice and Bob and playing their Awful Wedded Life for every laugh it's worth, it would kill the premise, and there's no guarantee a Retool would be more compelling for the audience."
- Played For Laughs: Sitcom
- Deconstructed: Even the alleged "simple solution" brings its fair share of excessively nasty complications and all Alice and Bob got from taking it is jump off one train wreck straight into another.
- Reconstructed: It's a start.
You know, if you just click the link back to Just Eat Gilligan, your life will be so much easier.
