We Want Our Jerk Back / Live-Action TV

Times where characters want their jerk back in Live-Action Television Series.

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• Abbott Elementary: After two seasons of the cast complaining about how bad Ava is at her job, she spends a summer learning how to be a good principal and returns strict and by-the-book. The Abbott teachers are clearly not satisfied with how micromanaging and unrelenting the new Ava is, so they conspire to reset her by using her old vices.
• Played very straight in the fourth season of Angel. Wesley tortures a woman for information on Angelus' whereabouts and tells Faith that this is the sort of thing she should be doing, because if she's to be a match for Angelus, she needs to be the Faith who brutally tortured him two seasons earlier.
• The Brittas Empire: In "Wake Up The Lion Within", Brittas briefly resigns and makes Carole the new Manager. However, Carole decides to switch around everyone's roles in the centre, and is eventually considered to be so bad a boss that everyone is striking so that Brittas can come back and take back the role.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: One story arc has stoic hardass but still A Father to His Men Captain Holt temporarily replaced by the ridiculously chill and laid-back Nice Guy Captain Stentley. Initially the squad enjoys having him give them whatever they ask for, but eventually they remember that Holt was the one who pushed them to improve and become better cops.
• Dans Une Galaxie Près De Chez Vous averts this, after causing blunt trauma to Brad, the Token Evil Teammate scientist, he develops a kind-hearted and supportive personality called Linda. The only reason they have to bring Brad back is that Linda doesn't know science at all and they'll die in a few minutes if they don't find a safe planet to repair their ship, even then some are willing to take their chances at picking a planet at random. When Brad comes back and it's revealed they could have chosen a planet at random since they are all safe the Captain has to stop the psychologist from smacking Brad's head again.
• In Dexter , Quinn tells Masuka, the Lovable Sex Maniac, that the reason nobody came to his speech on his newly-published work is because of how perverted he is. As a result, Masuka starts dressing nicely and cleans up his act. This freaks out Debra immensely. It's only after they stand up for him in front of Miguel's brother that he eventually returns to his normal self, lampshaded by Debra's triumphant "And he's back!"
  • Masuka is also left quipless while Angel is in critical condition after being stabbed. Debra is sympathetic, but relieved when he snaps out of it.
• The Dick Van Dyke Show:
  • "Buddy, Can You Spare a Job": Invoked by Rob and Sally. When Buddy gets himself fired, Rob and Sally get a nightclub comic to replace him, instructing the guy to abuse Mel ten times worse than his predecessor. After several minutes of hardly anything but concentrated insults, Mel screams, "GET ME BUDDY!"
  • In "The Bottom of Mel Cooley's Heart", Alan fires Mel for finally standing up to him, and Rob convinces Alan to rehire him. At first Rob isn't sure why he's sticking his neck out for Mel, who he's always found irritating. He finally decides that Mel's irritating quality is precisely what makes him good at his job.
• Dinosaurs — In one episode, Baby Sinclair is named king of the dinosaurs and taken away to 'fulfill his destiny'. While the entire family is noticeably upset, Earl especially has trouble returning to a life without Baby to say "Not da mama!" and hit him with a frying pan. Robbie tries to substitute, but just can't do it right.
• Doc Martin: After Martin resigns to go to London at the end of season 4 he is replaced by the lovely, sweet, and patient Dr Dibbs. While the town doesn't miss Martin's surly personality, Dr Dibbs is so incompetent that they're very happy to have Martin back as their doctor.
• Taken to an extreme and subverted on The Drew Carey Show when Lewis has a religious experience and fancies himself a holy man. The thing is that he's as much of a Jerkass while devout as he is normally, and in fact goes moreso, to the point of decrying official religions as not holy enough and declaring himself a new prophet. When confronted by his friends who he's been berating for their sinful ways, he shouts, "If God doesn't like it, he can tell me so!" ...whereupon he's struck by lightning. "Could have been just coincidence!" The next two direct strikes convince him, though, to the point that he breaks down and says "Fine! Fine, I'll smoke, I'll drink, I'll masturbate! If someone will help me, I'll do all three at once!"
• Happens twice to Sally Smedley on Drop the Dead Donkey. The first time, in Series Two, the conversion is religious after the death of her grandmother, and increases in intensity until she ends up being jerked out of it two or three episodes later by a perverted evangelist (just as George approaches her for spiritual guidance on his marriage breaking down). The other characters attempt to shock her out of it. The second time, later on in the 1990s, she falls pregnant from a one-night-stand, decides to keep the baby, gets broody, and then miscarries, all in the space of two or three episodes. The others decide to be a bit more sympathetic to her this time round, only for her to decide the day after the grief over the miscarriage that she has given up feeling anything whatsoever and is happy to go back to being a cold-hearted slapper.
• This is done in Entourage when they fired Ari Gold.
• In Everybody Hates Chris, our eponymous hero HAS to do this to his bully Caruso when Caruso gets a (painful) lesson in humility. The word HAS is used because Chris is a Cosmic Plaything and in losing Caruso as a bully, he gets many more as a result. He lampshades it heavily:
  (Older Chris narrating) "Caruso was feared above all else. Kids feared him yet wanted to be like him. When he lost that power, the school went into chaos as kids tried to gain power and also a piece of me. (Mob of kids surround Chris)"
  (at a fixed fight to help Caruso)
  Chris: (walks away)
  Greg: "Where you going man? Don't you wanna see the end of the fight?"
  Chris: "Why? No matter who wins, I'm still gonna get my ass kicked."
• Father Ted — episode New Jack City. Smelly drunk Father Jack develops Hairy Hand Syndrome and is shipped off to an old priests home. His replacement is a terrible bastard which causes Ted and Dougal to mount a rescue mission. With hilarious results!
• Frasier:
  • Frasier Crane once got rid of his agent Bebe, an extremely successful but comically amoral Heroic Comedic Sociopath often compared by the other characters to Satan, in favor of a nice, mellow and family-oriented agent who turned out to be utterly incompetent. In the end, he had to swallow his pride, and his scruples, and ask Bebe to come back and clean up the mess his new agent made of things. She did so with gusto, and he learned better than to ask how (murder and blackmail may or may not have been involved).
  • In the episode "Love Bites Dog", jerkass and intense womanizer Bulldog steals a date that Frasier is on from right under his nose. A few days later, Frasier and Roz find out that Bulldog has fallen in love with this woman. They are both shocked at his changing personality, particularly Roz. However, Bulldog is heartbroken when she dumps him on the phone right before his sports show. Afterwards he cries on the air and leaves the station, resulting in Frasier filling in for him. Feeling out of place, Frasier realizes that he has to revert Bulldog back to his usual self and quickly.
• Friends:
  • Subverted when Chandler makes a New Year's Resolution not to be sarcastic. His personality really doesn't change, but he finds that he has to snarkily comment on his friends' various foibles.
  • Played straight with Monica's alcoholic boyfriend Fun Bobby. He's awfully dull when reformed and sober. "There is a reason Fun Bobby is so fun."
• Happens several times over the run of Full House:
  • When Stephanie's teacher criticizes her for talking too much she stops talking altogether, driving her parental figures crazy. She snaps out of it at the end of the episode.
  • Danny overhears the family complaining about his obsession with cleaning. After a ride on a burro to the mountains and some soul-searching he decides to embrace being dirty, only that just scares everyone. An apology and a pep talk bring him back down, prompting him to try to find a balance between Neat Freak and The Pig-Pen.
  • Joey gives up comedy to be a businessman after his act is upstaged by Phyllis Diller. Jesse tricks him into going back to the jokes by mangling his act at the same club a few nights later, and when Joey picks up where Jesse left off the crowd loves it.
• In the episode "You Snooze, you Bruise" of Happy Endings, Penny tries to get Control Freak Jane, president (and near tyrant) of her condo's Home Owners Association to be nicer to the other homeowners and consider their ideas, by sleeping on it. This turns Jane into a total softy (at one point she says 'I'm being held in a chair against my will...but I'm cozy') who neglects most everything in her life, forcing Alex to stage an intervention and get her back to being, as Jane would say, aggressively helpful. This one is also a parody as the man who challenged her for president wants her back because he can't control the other tenants flouting of the rules. Like wanting a novelty gazebo on the roof, and one girl who is offering math tutoring in the building against the zoning regulations.
• Happens in the first episode of Hardware (2003) after Mike drives a customer to attempt suicide and resolves to start being nicer to everyone.
  Anne: Sorry to seem ungrateful, it's just that you've been thoughtful and considerate for.. how long is it?
  Mike: A day.
  Anne: God, is that all? But... it's like living with a new person, that's all. It's not you.
  Mike: God, you know, that is actually incredibly smart of you, because, see, all this is about scraping away the layers of crap and finding the real me.
  Anne: But the crap is the real you!
• House:
  • Subverted in an episode in which House tricks the other doctors into thinking he has syphilis, which can cause personality changes. The rest of the cast then tries to treat him with penicillin, thinking that the syphilis is what made him a Dr. Jerk — as if the syphilis itself isn't enough of a reason. He, then, in order to mess around with them, pretends to be nicer, but also purposefully acts like a way more crappy doctor. Cue the chorus.
  • Same thing happens when Foreman recovers from a near death experience and decides to spread sunshine around, since he's grateful to be just alive. House torments him (What's new?) to get him back to his familiar ways, because his doctor skills are not so useful when he's happy.
  • There was also that time House switched to methadone, and while he was happier and pain-free, he ended up convincing himself that his diagnostic skills are seriously compromised as a result of being nice (he agrees to a "pointless MRI" to please the parents because he doesn't feel like being a jerk to them; resulting in the dye almost killing the dehydrated boy who otherwise would have been completely fine), and he's back on Vicodin by the end.
• Used in How I Met Your Mother when Barney tries to sleep with Robin again: after Lily points out that Nice Guy Ted dated Robin for a year, Barney spent the whole dinner being nice and polite, even ignoring other women. This had the opposite effect, freaking Robin out and she spent half the dinner trying to get him 'act like Barney' again. However, it's averted for the series as a whole. During the course of the show, Barney has become increasingly mature and sensitive.
• In an episode of The League, Taco sobers up for the first time in years after he loses his marijuana stash. Sober Taco ends up making the rest of the gang feel annoyed by him pointing out just how awful or lazy they all are, as well as his sudden competence both in life in general and in their Fantasy Football league (they generally viewed playing him as a free win due to a mix of his Insane Troll Logic and his general apathy for the game, both of which were gone when he sobered up). In the end, they end up pinning him to the ground and forcing him to get high again.
• In the Lizzie McGuire episode "The Rise and Fall of the Kate Empire", when Kate dislocates her shoulder and Claire takes her position as captain, Lizzie and friends consider Claire worse than Kate. This prompts Lizzie to help Kate gain back her popularity and spot as cheer captain.
• An episode of Lucky Louie has Kim getting mad at Louie because he never helps out around the house, complains when she asks him to, and doesn't seem to care about his appearance. The next day she wakes up to find that he's dressed very nicely, has gotten Lucy ready for school, made breakfast, and is making an obviously concerted effort to be cheerful. She finds it creepy and tells him to stop.
• Malcolm in the Middle:
  • After he loses a wrestling match to a girl, resident bully Reese becomes gentle and kind, but without Reese as the "alpha-jerk" and his "even-handed bullying," the school descends into total anarchy. Seeing Stevie (whom he declared off-limits) getting bullied prompts Reese to go back to his old ways — first beating up everyone who actually deserves it.
  • When Reese turns nice after going to Bible study class in "Daycare", Dewey finds it creepy and demands Reese's teacher to release him.
  • Subversion: Malcolm himself had an episode where he bit his tongue and resisted the urge to insult everyone for being idiotic, but everyone liked this new persona, and he often got his way. Unfortunately, Malcolm developed an ulcer in only a few weeks due to his gross superiority complex and his inability to express it.
• Meet the Browns: When Mr. Brown got hit on the head his whole personality changed: suits and sweaters instead of loud 70's clothing, courteous and kind, instead of whiny and rude, and (for some reason) speaking in a British accent. At first family and friends enjoyed the new Mr. Brown, but when he began to be brutally honest about their actions and character, they decided that the original Mr. Brown wasn't that bad after all.
• Merlin isn't quite a jerk, but he is an extremely inefficient servant that Arthur spends half his time complaining about. But when Merlin was missing, and replaced by a servant that actually did his job, Arthur's priority was finding him.
• On one Monk episode, Monk takes medication for his OCD, and it causes him to lose his great detective skills.
• At the start of Mystery Science Theater 3000 Episode 424, Joel has installed "protocol modules" in Crow and Tom to make them nicer. While he notes they're easier to deal with, their incessant praise of him leaves him "kind of hollow". He removes the modules just prior to the Invention Exchange, with Tom immediately criticizing Joel's hygiene.
  *modules are removed*
  Crow: Don't touch me, don't ever touch me.
  Tom: *sniff, sniff* Jeez, Joel, did a small animal crawl inside your jumpsuit and die?
  Joel: There's the bots I know and love!
• Done seriously in NCIS where after Kate dies Gibbs becomes subdued and not nearly as much of a jerk, freaking out the rest of the team.
  • Promptly subverted when McGee timidly pipes up that he kinda likes the new Gibbs . . . only to be glared into submission by his teammates.
  • This also happens during his "retirement" phase, when he came back from Mexico with a mustache. Shaving the mustache marked Gibbs' return to normal.
  • And more recently, Tony grows unexpectedly professional for an episode, which gets all the other characters wondering if this is an elaborate prank or if there's something seriously wrong. It's the latter.
• In New Girl, this occurs in the episode Control when Jess forces Schmidt to stop being so controlling and OCD only to find that the house devolves into an unclean mess, and must try to restore his old self.
• Night Court performed an extended version of this trope during most of its eighth season and the early part of its nineth season with a subplot where Casanova Wannabe Dan Fielding became a virtuous do-gooder after being placed in charge of a charitable organization. Even after he left the charity job behind, Dan still remained nice, thoughtful and respectful to women... until he was slapped by a woman who had hoped to enjoy the pleasures of the old Dan. The slap awakened the long-repressed lecherous urges of the Old Dan who proceeded to give the woman what she wanted... and then some.
  
  There was also once a flashback scene where it's revealed that Dan (real name Reinhold) was actually a prudish gentleman, until a sophisticated (but slutty) Southern Belle takes his virginity, resulting in his subsequent chicanery.
• The Office (US):
  • Dwight is fired and replaced by Andy, who is just as annoying and doesn't even have Dwight's various eccentricities that made him so much fun to wind up. Jim: "I miss Dwight. Congratulations universe, you win." A bit of a twist as when Dwight returns Andy stays in the office, becoming a little more likable in the process.
  • Another episode has Dwight becoming a nice guy after suffering a concussion. Averted in that the rest of the office doesn't necessarily want "old Dwight" back, so much as that they realize his newfound friendliness is a manifestation of a serious condition that needs medical attention. Pam even says goodbye to Nice Dwight when she realizes she'll likely never see him again after he gets back from the hospital.
• Parks and Recreation:
  • When Tammy 1 returns and gets Ron back under her thumb, he turns into a friendly, hardworking, clean-shaven version of himself. His friends don't even briefly entertain the thought of keeping this Ron — he terrifies them. When he starts expressing trust for the government, Leslie actually slaps him. (She herself loves the government, but coming from Ron, this is mirror-universe stuff.)
  • Tom loves fancy status-symbol products and always focuses on empty flash over substance, so naturally, he drove his first company into the ground with overspending. He decided to be more serious with his next venture, but ended up taking it way too far, forcing his friends to point out that both him and his new clothing store were no fun at all.
• Red Dwarf
  • "Queeg", Holly is replaced by the super-strict emergency backup computer Queeg, leaving the regular cast to beg for good ol' Holly to come back. It turns out that Holly was Queeg, teaching them a lesson.
  • Implied in Series 7, when the uptight Rimmer supposedly dies (actually his counterpart Ace Rimmer died and he filled in for him), the other crew members sincerely mourn him (if in a somewhat passive aggressive way), since being allied against his pompous anal retentiveness at least kept them going and, even with the relatively more competent Kochanski in his place, the rest of the crew's own neuroses and flaws become much more apparent within a short time without him. Come to a head in the episode "Blue" where Lister finds himself, to his shock, missing Rimmer. Kryten tries to appease that by creating a virtual reality experience recreating Rimmer based on his diaries and log entries (all expectedly with a whopping amount of Self-Serving Memory), with Lister promptly deciding he never wants to see the smegger ever again.
• A couple of examples from Seinfeld:
  • In the episode "The Serenity Now," Jerry's then-girlfriend wanted him to be more in touch with his emotions. She created a monster.
  • "The Beard" has a bit of a spin on it. Elaine says that she didn't like George's toupee because "it made him act like a jerk," even though George is one with or without hair. So in this episode's case, it's more like "We Want Our Slightly Less of a Jerk Back."
• Stargate Atlantis:
  • In the episode "McKay and Mrs. Miller", McKay has a alternate reality counterpart show up. The entire cast seems to get along with Rod (even his sister), until he returns to his reality. They invite the original over to their table in the mess hall and tell him the alternate was kinda creepy and he would never be replaced.
    • And yet Rod admires his jerkish counterpart, pointing out that Rod is a people person and is obsessed with people liking him, while Rodney doesn't care and just speaks what's on his mind.
  • Played with later in the episode "Vegas". It is set in an alternate Rodney's universe. Shepard has the same personality, but as a detective his personality causes him problems. Of course, alternate Rodney knows he has potential...
• The Ferengi Grand Nagus on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine turns over a new leaf and tries to make altruism rather than greed as the new guiding principle of Ferengi society. Quark, who very much agrees with the status quo, is horrified — not the least because trying to implement such a radical and unpopular change would likely get them both killed — and spends the rest of the episode trying to figure out what caused the Nagus's change of heart so he can reverse it.
• In the Supernatural episode "What Is And What Should Never Be" (S02, Ep20), Wishverse!Sam seem disturbed by the new caring Dean who wants to be part of his life.
• In Ted Lasso, Ted manages to turn primadonna star striker Jamie into a humble and well behaved team player, but as Roy points out, this causes Jamie to lose his edge and be a merely good player as opposed to a great one. Played with in that the other characters don't miss him being a prick to them, they just miss his Jerkass attitude on the pitch. They eventually come to an agreement where Jamie can be a prick but only to the opposing team and when Roy tells him to.
• That '70s Show:
  • Subverted when Red had a dream about his own (empty) funeral. He decided to be kinder and socialize more, but then, after having another dream where his funeral was crowded with annoying people, he went back to his old ways.
  • In one of the final episodes of the show, Hyde, following a marijuana induced freak out, cleans himself up, stops doing drugs, exercises, eats healthy, and becomes generally insufferable to all of his friends. Cue a hilarious inversion of your standard drug intervention at the end where they convince him to resume smoking pot.
• In Titus, Papa Titus decides to give up drinking. Sober, he realizes what a horrible father he's been and spends all his time crying, never leaving the house, he ignores attractive women and almost loses his job as a salesman because he stops having fun with his clients. The other characters hold a reverse intervention to get him to start drinking again, and he does, but then gets angry at the things they said and starts playing mindgames to get revenge.
• In Waiting for God, Diana finally drives the odious Bayview manager Harvey Baines into an asylum or so everyone thought; he was just faking it, and while everyone hates Harvey, they are still mad at her for doing it.
• In The West Wing, whenever Toby Ziegler isn't acting like like the abrasive, self-righteous, pompous and short-tempered jerk he usually is, people get worried fast. Of course, the nature of working in the White House means that the other characters either don't have time or don't have to worry about whether he'll switch back, because something inevitably comes up to ruin his mood anyway.
• Wings: Roy undergoes de-jerkification with help from Joe but is back to normal by the end of the episode thanks to being partnered with Lowell during a game of Trivial Pursuit.
• On Wizards of Waverly Place, Harper does this to Alex in "Positive Alex".
• On the WKRP in Cincinnati episode "Chances", Herb Tarlek is tutored to make him less offensive, abandoning his usual loud plaid suits and obnoxious salesman persona. However, the only clients Herb was ever successful with were also loud, obnoxious and disreputable and don't like the "normal" Herb. Herb reverts to his former persona to keep his clients.