Basic Trope: Women outdo men in a traditionally "masculine" activity (such as survival in the wilderness)
- Straight: Alice, Bob, Carol, and Doug go camping. Bob and Doug go on a hike, and insult Alice and Carol by telling them to stay at the tent and make sandwiches. Alice and Carol go on their own hike, just to spite Bob and Doug, who become lost in the woods and get attacked by a bear. Alice and Carol save Bob and Doug just before the two become grizzly-bear-chow.
- Exaggerated: Alice and Carol get out of the woods, and find themselves in a nice little town, and decide to have their own little vacation. Bob and Doug are left behind and the rest of the episode is a juxtaposition montage of the girls' Sex and the City-style partying and the boys' unending pratfalls.
- Downplayed: Alice and Carol know how to identify poison ivy. Bob and Doug do not.
- Justified:
- Alice and Carol are much more experienced hikers/outdoor survivalists/etc.
- Bob and Doug have grabbed the Idiot Ball and done something like split up or picked unfamiliar wild berries.
- Inverted:
- Bob and Doug save Alice and Carol from getting eaten by a grizzly bear.
- Bob and Doug fail at a traditionally "feminine" activity, such as taking care of the house and kids.
- Bob and Doug stay behind and make sandwiches while Alice and Carol go hiking. They make the camping site paradisiacal while Alice and Carol suffer a number of indignities (or "worst" yet, it's a pretty boring hike).
- Subverted: Doug and Bob make their way just fine for the most part...
- Double Subverted: ...But Bob stops to sample some unidentified berries and starts to hallucinate. Doug pushes him in the right direction, but doesn't remember all of the way back. The two eventually return in time to find Alice and Carol having already settled back in from their hike.
- Parodied: Constantly cutting between both expeditions happening at the same time, Alice and Carol's increasingly becomes more of a blatant rip-off of a Disney musical number (with animal helpers and all) while Bob and Doug's becomes a re-enactment of the Bataan Death March.
- Zig Zagged: Alice is better at fishing than Bob, but he is better at tent-pitching than Alice. Likewise, Carol may be better at identifying plants and fungi than Doug, but Doug has a better sense of direction.
- Averted:
- Everyone actually knows what they're doing and nobody grabs the Idiot Ball.
- Both sides grab the Idiot Ball and are ruined in their own way: Alice and Carol either made a tremendous mess of setting up camp or left for town and were mugged while Bob and Doug got lost.
- Enforced:
- Writers and/or executives believe that Women Are Wiser.
- "We can't have Bob and Doug making such sexist comments and get away with it on national TV. Let's give them some ironic Laser-Guided Karma."
- The writers wish to add a "Don't Go Into the Woods" episode to the series, but Alice and Bob is a comedy and so the justification or consequences have to be funny.
- Lampshaded: "Now who should stay at the tent and make sandwiches?"
- Implied: The opening scene of an episode of Dueling Couples has Alice and Carol entering the living room giddy about how awesome the camping trip was and how excited they are for going out again, while Bob and Doug enter dirty, wet, in pain, and with a Thousand-Yard Stare.
- Invoked: Bob and Doug insult Carol and Alice, who are much more experienced with the outdoors.
- Exploited: Eliza suggested the trip in the first place, knowing it would teach the men a lesson.
- Defied:
- The girls vehemently oppose splitting up, pointing out that the boys have no idea what they're doing in the wild. Alternatively, the boys at least never insult the girls in the fashion that is typical to this plot (thus never triggering Laser-Guided Karma), or don't try to do anything that is beyond their skill level (even hiking).
- The cast decides not to go camping after all, knowing that not all of them are up to the task and shit will happen as a result. Waging the battle of the sexes is better without having to worry about hospital bills.
- Discussed:Bob: Is this going to one of those trips like on TV, where we make fools of ourselves and the girls have to save us?Doug: ...Nah.Bear: 'ROAWR!!'
- Conversed:
- "You'd think that the woods are a woman's playground, given the number of 'manly men' characters who can't even walk properly in the wild."
- "Would anybody please tell me which deity I pissed off, that I can't even so much as walk out of my home and into my backyard without it becoming a freaking re-enactment of the Bataan Death March, just because I have a dick?"
- Deconstructed:
- In the aftermath of the expedition, far from hilarity ensuing, the balance of power between sexes goes so tilt that it isn't funny, and either side may go to the most brutal of extremes (in terms of taking up risky activities, a game of extreme-sports chicken... although on some shows murder wouldn't be off the table) to stop feeling emasculated/keep on showing those boys who's boss. Alternatively, just because the women managed to get off better than the boys on one expedition, they may not get as lucky on the next one - the fact that they had it real easy on the one before may even make them feel full of themselves and paint a real big "humble pie" target on their backs.
- Bob and Doug didn't suffered a "funny pratfall"; they suffered an incredibly painful and traumatizing experience, that nearly got them killed several times, and then there's the neverending humiliation courtesy of everybody else thinking it's "funny". Bob and Doug ditch Alice and Carol, their friends, as much of their family as they can, and a few acts of violence provide additional clarity that they are fed up with all the laughing at their expense.
- Reconstructed: Bob and Doug are He-Man Woman Haters. They need the universe to bring them down twenty pegs at least.
- Played For Laughs:
- This is the most common way this trope is represented in media.
- Bob and Doug and Alice and Carol suffer their own chaotic experiences and try to lie about how good the experience was (although Bob and Doug have the more notable physical injuries) and the lies are beginning to convince everybody to go on a camping trip again very much against their collective will.
- Alice and Carol had a literally paradisiacal experience because their wishes were overheard by a genie. When Bob and Doug discover this, they mutter out an exasperated "figures".
- Played For Drama:
- Alice and Carol enjoy a beautiful vacation. Bob and Doug nearly get killed.
- Alice and Carol's paradisiacal experience happens because they were overheard by a genie with a very strong feminine bent, of the "thinks it would be funny if they were castrated by a grizzly" type. Alice and Carol are not happy that their happiness came from the whims of a jackass.
- Played For Horror:
- Alice and Carol enjoy a beautiful vacation. Bob and Doug are torn apart by bears.
- Alice and Carol wish for a pleasant vacation and (sarcastically) that Bob and Doug have a bad one (and only "bad" as in "annoying"). They are overheard by a Jackass Genie, the typical horror-film jackass genie that interprets "bad" as in "fatal" and comes to collect the price of the girls' souls for fulfilling their wish or decides to murder them for their "ungratefulness" when they are shocked about both the guys' deaths and the proof that they are, in a way, directly responsible for their demises.
"I hate to admit it, honey, but you were right. Going back to Macho Disaster Expedition is a lot more dangerous than I thought it would be."
