Unwanted Assistance / Live-Action TV

Unwanted Assistance in Live-Action TV.

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• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: In season 3, after Coulson puts him on the bench, Hunter starts going around trying to find something to do, and winds up in the science lab trying to "help" Fitz until he gets asked to leave. He then adds himself to Daisy and Mac's mission to tail Banks, and again begins making unsolicited suggestions before finally taking matters into his own hands, much to their annoyance (although it could be argued that he saved them a lot of trouble).
• All in the Family: At least a third of the plots of the series involve Archie Bunker trying to help people. Archie Bunker, who is so loaded with Deliberate Values Dissonance that the other two thirds of the plots of the show revolve around him learning that time has marched on, sensitivities have marched on, and he should learn to be less of a jerk.
  Edith Bunker: Archie was just trying to help.

• Comes up in Angel, too, after Wesley kills an android disguised as his father, fully believing at the moment when he pulled the trigger that it WAS his father. His friends attempt to comfort him by telling stories about times in the past when they've had to kill their own parents as well. ("You know, I killed my mum. Well, first I made her a vampire, and then she tried to shag me, and THEN...") It isn't terribly comforting.
• Seems to happen fairly frequently in Arrested Development. Usually they're just out for personal gain but occasionally they're sincerely trying to be useful. One obvious example is with Michael's girlfriend Rita, whom his family ultimately kidnaps, drugs, and beats. And that's when they were trying to be helpful.
  • Another lesser example is when George Michael plans a surprise party for Maeby. This causes her to lose the lucrative profession she'd only barely fallen into in the first place.
  • Anything to do with Lindsay being a stay-at-home mother. George Michael has to perpetually hover over her to keep her from destroying the house.
  • Tobias' brief and clueless stint as "The Mole". He does a pretty poor job and screws everything up for everyone.
  • Any doctor. Any doctor at all.
  • Almost any time a character save for Maeby (who, in this show's rare example of a subversion of this trope, actually helps when she tries to) attempts to be helpful, they fail abysmally.

• Being Human:
  • In one episode, Tully gives George advice on how to get a date with Nina. Said advice pretty much boils down to crudely hitting on her (Tully...isn't the most refined person) and George does not realize why that might offend a girl. Nina, being her Deadpan Snarker self, has a few words in return.
  • Later in the season, Annie tries to help Mitchell get a new job by sitting in on his interview and coaching him nonstop. All this does is distract him and make him look insane, since he, as a vampire, can see Annie but the human woman he's interviewing with can't. Annie's next attempt at helping him (forging a letter of recommendation) actually does help him get the job.
• In The Beverly Hillbillies, as Jed tries to soothe the raging Granny, this exchange occurs:
  Jed: Why don't ya sit on the porch an' rock a spell...
  Elly May: And play your harp!
  Jethro: Yeah, that generally cools your temper!
  Granny: WHAT TEMPER?!?
  Jethro: Well, even Uncle Jed says you's a savage beast...
  Jed: Don't help me, boy.

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Season 3, episode "Dead Man's Party".
    Cordelia: Put yourself in Buffy's shoes for just a minute, okay? I'm Buffy: Freak of Nature, right? Naturally, I pick a freak for a boyfriend, and then he turns into Mr. Killing Spree, which is pretty much my fault—
    Buffy: Cordy! Get out of my shoes!
    Cordelia: I'm just trying to help.
  • And later that season, in the episode "Doppelgangland", when Buffy and Xander try to cheer Willow up.
    Willow: Old Reliable? Yeah, great, there's a sexy nickname.
    Buffy: Well, I-I didn't mean it as...
    Willow: No, it's fine. I'm Old Reliable.
    Xander: She just means, you know, the geyser. You're like a geyser of fun that goes off at regular intervals.
    Willow: That's Old Faithful.
    Xander: Isn't that the dog that— that the guy had to shoot...
    Willow: That's Old Yeller!
    Buffy: Xander, I beg you not to help me.
  • Similarly, Buffy tells Xander "Maybe you shouldn't help" in "Amends", after his hilarious attempt to threaten Willy the Snitch. (Afterwards, Willy deadpans "You did great, by the way. I was very intimidated by you." Xander buys it.)
  • Season 4, Spike becomes something of a good guy and assists during a fight with demons trying to open the Hellmouth. He picks up one of the demons and throws him into the Hellmouth (unaware that was their goal all along). When everyone calls him out on it his response is a heartfelt "What? I was helping!"

• A tweaking of this has appeared on The Daily Show in the recurring segment "You're not helping!", in which Jon lambastes someone for an idiotic statement or action that counteracts what their expressed purpose is.
• Doctor Who:
  • "Midnight": The Doctor is trying to persuade the other passengers on a stranded shuttle bus on a Death World not to throw out a woman whose body has been taken over by an alien entity, and points out the lethal sunlight as a deterrent. This is his reaction when Dee Dee points out that there is a brief window to throw someone outside safely.
  • "The Lodger": The Doctor, temporarily posing as a human and renting a room, makes several attempts to help his landlord Craig. However, all of these attempts make him look like Always Someone Better, hampering Craig's relationship with his crush Sophie.

• Frasier: Frasier himself usually tries giving his friends and family advice, which often tends to make situations worse. After a while, his brother Niles catches on.
  Frasier: If you want my advice-
  Niles: You really need to stop doing that.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Jaime loves fighting and wants to test himself against his Worthy Opponent Ned Stark, so he doesn't appreciate it when a guardsman steps in behind Ned and hobbles him, ending the fight before it could be resolved. Jaime reacts by punching the guard in the face.
  • Brienne isn't happy about being saddled with Podrick, insisting she doesn't need a squire at all. At first it seems she was right to be so hesitant as Podrick is quite inexperienced with knightly activity and often makes more work for Brienne. Eventually he becomes more useful, thanks in no small part to her begrudging training.
  • Sansa stops trusting Littlefinger's efforts to "help" her, since the last one got her into an abusive marriage with Ramsay. He does come through one more time, though, but after that...
  • Both Sansa and Arya reject Brienne's initial offers to take them to safety. Sansa changes her mind later due to Littlefinger's above screw-up. In Arya's case, it certainly didn't help at all that Brienne is carrying an expensive sword with a gold lion hilt given to her by the Kingslayer himself, not to mention that Podrick Payne is with her (Pod is a distant relative of Ser Ilyn Payne, one of the men on Arya's death list; the man who beheaded her father).
  • Yara and the ironborn storm Winterfell to rescue Theon, who by now has become so psychologically tortured by Ramsay that he freaks out at the idea of leaving him, forcing Yara to go back without him.

• The Great British Bake Off: Mel and Sue float among the contestants during the challenges, and appear to be allowed to offer limited physical support in addition to their morale-boosting chores. This usually results in leftovers or random bits of cut off food being eaten at the table, but at least once a genuine component of a bake that had merely been set aside for later use was eaten.
  • A particularly funny example happened in the finale of series 4 with Mel, Sue, and Mary(!) scarfing as much of Frances' asparagus as they could while Frances was busy elsewhere in the tent.
  • Poor Frances had already been 'helped' during the Biscuit week of that same series, when Mel tried to assist with keeping her towering showstopper balanced. To be fair, it's not clear whether it was technically Mel's fault or just coincidence... but the instant she touched the delicate tower, it collapsed in utter ruins.
  • Meanwhile, in one technical challenge earlier in series 4, Sue leant on what she thought was just a bit of cloth on a contestant's bench—it was actually a bit of cloth with his English muffins underneath. When it came to the judging, she had to confess to Paul and Mary that it was her fault a couple of them were somewhat squashed.
  • Happened again in series 6 when Sue accidentally squashed the top of Nadiya's biscuit box. Once again, she was very apologetic and admitted it when Paul and Mary asked what went wrong. Though it did lead to this gem from Nadiya to Sue:
    Nadiya: ...if I leave, you're coming with me.
• The trope comes up in House a few times:
  • One patient suffered severe damage to one half of his brain, making him a musical genius while cutting his IQ in half. He's held back by the damaged half preventing the other half taking over.
  • In another case, House uses the metaphor of a tennis player playing with a really bad doubles partner. In this case, the patient has leftover genetic material from a stillborn twin.
  • Subverted in the episode "Recession Proof". When Cuddy is to receive an award, she's afraid House will embarrass her at the ceremony even if his intentions are good. Wilson finds out that House has hired a mariachi band and assumes that he's trying to embarrass her intentionally, but in fact Cuddy loves mariachi bands and House knew it.
• One of the 'Adventure Call' sketches from Limmy's Show features Jingle the Jester, a condescending assistant with an Annoying Laugh who speaks entirely in rhyme. The player uses his first command to kill her, and while this costs him the game, he says it was worth it.
• Little House on the Prairie Carrie tries to help Caroline with the laundry, but ends up dropping some linens onto the soil. Needless to say, Caroline tells Carrie to please stop helping.
• The Magicians: One of the resident gods decides to remove the amnesia curse on Julia. Without permission. The one that was preventing a traumatic rape memory from driving her insane right before the big fight next to a nexus of unparalleled power. "No need to thank me." And he wonders why gods in his universe are going extinct.
• M*A*S*H: In the episode "Promotion Commotion", many of the enlisted men were up for promotion and were trying to ingratiate themselves to Hawkeye and BJ, who were on the promotions committee. While Hawkeye was chatting up a nurse, Sergeant Rizzo joined the conversation and tried to talk Hawkeye up, but made him sound like a Lothario, prompting the nurse to leave and Hawkeye to yell at Rizzo that he didn't want his help.
  • In another episode, a soldier whom Hawkeye operated on insists on paying him back for saving his life. Unfortunately, the soldier is a hulking bruiser whose idea of repayment is to intimidate and bully anyone who isn't unfailingly nice to Hawkeye.
• In That Metal Show, Eddie Trunk can't stand when the co-hosts and guests "help" him when he's trying to puzzle out a Stump the Trunk answer, mainly because said "help" is anything but.
• Mimpi Metropolitan: Since they think Bambang won't confess his love to Melani on his own, Alan and Prima try to help by faking a "meet me at the park" message from Melani to Bambang. It results in Bambang waiting in the middle of a rain for hours, Melani rejecting Bambang, and embarassment in him. Bambang is enraged when he finds out about the forgery later and insists that his relationship with Melani would go smoother without it.
• Odd Squad:
  • In "Training Day", Otto tries to help his partner deal with the sudden return of her old partner, but she brushes him off with every attempt he makes. Eventually she cracks and begins to tell Otto the entire story of how her old partner made a Face–Heel Turn.
    Otto: I wanna help you. But I can't help you unless I know the whole story.
  • In the Season 2 premiere "First Day", Olympia outright states that Odd Squad agents, such as herself and her new partner Otis, shouldn't need help and should be able to solve problems on their own because agents are supposed to be strong, intelligent and fearless. Of course, she ends up learning that the complete opposite is true thanks to Otis himself giving a heartfelt speech to her after she rescues Oprah from floating up into space.
  • In "Failure to Lunch", Otis lampshades the trope by admitting to Olympia that he most definitely could have called for backup to deal with a loose laser chicken so he could have a quiet lunch with her, but wanted to battle it on his own because battling a laser chicken seemed cool. What's more, he's far more beat-up than the laser chicken is, showing that turning down assistance from his fellow agents hasn't been working out as well as he thought.
  • In "Three's Company", Oprah is forced to work downstairs in the bullpen due to her office being overrun with oddness at Olympia's suggestion. This manages to unnerve everyone from the get-go as they try to work their hardest to impress her, but their anxiety only grows worse when she decides to make improvements to the precinct that are more hindrances to her employees than anything else, including Olympia, who begins to regret ever suggesting her boss move downstairs.
• The Partridge Family: In "Go Directly to Jail", the prison warden is setting up the band's equipment. Reuben tries to provide advice, but everything he says is something the warden already knows, and he only succeeds in slowing him down.
• In Red Dwarf series IV episode "Justice," Rimmer is put on trial for killing the entire crew of the Red Dwarf. Kryten serves as Rimmer's defense attorney. His argument is that Rimmer exaggerated his own importance in the events.
  Kryten: I simply have to establish that you're a neurotic, under-achieving emotional retard whose ambition far outstrips his miniscule ability, and consequently blames himself for an accident for which he could not possibly have been responsible..
  Rimmer: You're going to prove that I was innocent of negligence on the grounds that I'm a half-witted incompetent?
• In one episode of The Red Green Show, the title character's nephew Harold does multiple projects for his school's science fair. Red insists on helping his nephew at every turn, against Harold's continuous objections, eventually producing for him the numerous projects he was doing, such as a telescope made from car mirrors and an extremely large crystal radio set. Eventually, Harold decides to enter the fair with something that Red can't help him with: sex, by way of a "frank and explicit look at the germination of soybeans".
  Red: Sex? I can't help you there, Harold. You're on your own. 'Course, you're used to that, aren't you?
• Schitt's Creek: Jocelyn accuses Alexis of plagiarizing her term paper, and Alexis realizes that Johnny must have written-edited it without her knowledge. Johnny seems incredulous that this kind of help is against the rules, while Alexis insists her sub-par work was just fine, a point on which she and her teacher agree.
• Sports Night: In the first season episode "Dear Louise", Dan has writer's block, and Natalie attempts to help him through what she calls shock therapy, which mostly seems to involve throwing a glass of water in his face, or, at one point, blowing an air horn behind him as he's sitting at the anchor desk trying to drink his coffee.
  Dan: Natalie, I don't have the hiccups. Writer's block doesn't go away just by- (Natalie throws another glass of water at his face)
• Star Trek: Enterprise: In "Canamar", Trip and Archer have been arrested on bogus charges and are en route to prison when two other prisoners, Kuroda and an unnamed Nausicaan, break free and take over the ship, eventually freeing the humans to make use of their expertise. Turns out the plan is to escape while destroying the ship with the other prisoners on it so the authorities will think they're dead. The extremely annoying alien who was seated next to Trip refuses to believe this when Trip explains why he knocked out the Nausicaan, and shouts a warning to Kuroda before Trip can shoot him. When Trip comes to, the alien says he did him a favor by not screwing up their chances of escaping, with a chirpy "You're welcome!" Trip looks like he wants to strangle the idiot.
• In the early episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Data has a habit of giving out information that's either more detailed than needed (prime example is giving out even the milliseconds of a time span) or not even asked for (like defining a term he heard along with listing related terms and information). He's usually interrupted by the annoyed Picard as sort of a Running Gag. This happens in the later episodes as well, but less often due to Data catching on to the more obvious cases. Some specific examples:
  • From "Up The Long Ladder", regarding the name of a ship:
    Data: Mariposa. The Spanish word for "butterfly".
    Picard: Thank you, Data.
    Data: I thought it might be significant, sir.
    Picard: It doesn't appear to be, Data.
    Data: No, sir.
  • In one instance, the ship's computer cut in while he was talking and said, "Thank you, sir. I comprehend."
• Young Sheldon: In "A Stolen Truck and Going on the Lam", some of Sheldon's and Georgie's inputs about the situation are not appreciated by their parents. When Georgie "consoles" them by saying that being ignored by them isn't so bad, as he enjoyed getting away with most things, George angrily exclaims: "Stop helping!".

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