Wrong Genre Savvy / Live-Action TV

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• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Over the course of the pilot episode, Skye initially thinks herself the hero in a Conspiracy Thriller, with S.H.I.E.L.D. being the sinister government organization whose evil secrets she and her organization of hackers called The Rising Tide are trying to expose to the world for the greater good. In reality, she's in a superhero action comedy, and S.H.I.E.L.D. are actually the good guys. And while she initially takes advantage of the opportunity to spy on S.H.I.E.L.D. from within after getting captured and subsequently recruited by them, she eventually grows out of it and becomes a loyal agent to the organization once she's spent enough time with them to learn how she and the Rising Tide misjudged them, and with that information the fact that there are far worse threats out there that she could be devoting her energy against.
• Band of Brothers: When Capt. Winters and Capt. Nixon are discussing possible replacement commanders for Easy Company, Winters dismisses Lt. Shames as a viable option because he's "seen too many war movies" and thinks he needs to yell at his subordinates like a Drill Sergeant Nasty all the time.
• Better Call Saul: In the season six episode "Plan and Execution," as Howard Hamlin arrives at Jimmy and Kim's house to give them a big "The Reason You Suck" Speech over ruining his life, he realizes far too late that he's no longer in the Black Comedy Law Procedural side of the show once Lalo Salamanca shows up, resulting in Lalo unceremoniously killing Howard.
• Breaking Bad:
  • When Walter sets up a meeting with a drug dealer at a garbage dump, both Jesse and Tuco mock him for watching too many movies. Sure enough, meeting with a dangerous psychotic in a remote location where no one can hear you scream turns out to be a very bad idea.
  • When Lydia has a meeting with Mike at a diner, she tries to cover up her identity with tactics she likely knows from spy movies (wearing a face-concealing hat and sunglasses, conversing in back-to-back booths, using fake names), all of which just makes them more and more conspicuous.
• Castle: While Richard Castle's Genre Savvy skills are often an asset to his crime-fighting, he also likes to play with being Wrong Genre Savvy.
  • In one example, he acts as though he's in a vampire show instead of a police procedural:
    Castle: Whoa, whoa, whoa!
    Lanie: What is wrong?
    Castle: If he's a vampire and you pull that [stake] out, he comes back to life!
    Lanie: If he does, then we can all go home early.
  • After tracking down a serial killer who supposedly rose from his grave:
    Castle: We're going to a cabin in the woods, in the middle of nowhere?
    Beckett: Yeah, so?
    Castle: So... it's like the coed, checking out the strange noise in a basement in a slasher fic. It's a recipe for disaster.
    Beckett: It's not a slasher fic, it's a murder investigation.
  • In one episode, Castle confided that he only pretends to believe he's in the wrong genre because it annoys Beckett.
• Dr. Drew has stated many of the patients on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew thought they were just doing another celebrity reality show and took a long time to adjust to the fact that they were in an actual rehabilitation center and actually had to do all the things that go along with it.
• In Cobra Kai, this happens with Amanda LaRusso. At first she's the Straight Man and Only Sane Man, constantly Stating the Simple Solution like "rather than beat each other up, let's just talk it out" or "rather than beat each other up, let's just go to the cops". Problem is, she's not in a series that's rooted in reality: she's in a karate series based on The Karate Kid films rife with Arrogant Kung Fu Guys where the only real solution to any problem is either Let's You and Him Fight or winning the Inevitable Tournament. Naturally the effectiveness of her "solutions" drops lower and lower with every season, and even she ends up slapping Kreese across the mouth at one point and encouraging Daniel to kick Silver's ass.
• Community:
  • In "Regional Holiday Music", Abed thinks he's in a Very Special Christmas Episode where, with help from a life-affirming musical mentor, he has to stop his killjoy friends from forgetting The True Meaning of Christmas through the Power of Song. He's actually in a Black Comedy parody of Glee where trying to force his friends to be cheerful is played out like an alien mind control Assimilation Plot where they become soulless Stepford Smilers, and the life-affirming musical mentor is a complete maniac who straight up murdered his previous roster of students for failing to even win sectionals during the last competition season.
  • Another episode had Abed thinking he's in a Whole-Plot Reference to Good Will Hunting with Troy and a gift for plumbing standing in for Will's gift for math... but in reality, he's in a parody and when he tries to convince Troy to drop out and become a plumber by paraphrasing Ben Affleck's speech about "the best moment of my day is when I hope you've left town (and this crappy lifestyle) without saying goodbye", Troy is instead utterly hurt and insulted that Abed thinks of their friendship that way.
• In one episode of Continuum, a sci-fi fanboy finds a powered armor suit from the future, and upon accidentally discovering its powers, decides that it makes him a super-hero. Too bad for him, despite the nigh-invulnerability granted by the suit, he's actually in a fairly realistic sci-fi, and the villains, who are looking for said armor, find him and beat him up quite badly before the actual heroine (who has a suit *and* knows how to use it) shows up.
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend:
  • The entire Central Theme of Seasons 1 and 2 is the main character Rebecca Bunch believing that she’s the heroine of a romantic comedy. Many of the tropes seen in classic rom-coms are deconstructed in this show. A major example is that she assumes that she and Josh were meant to be together, making his girlfriend Valencia the enemy, meaning that she's justified in trying to break them up. Eventually, she realizes that Valencia, while flawed, is not evil, and that trying to sabotage a relationship for her own ends makes ''her'' the villain
  • Likewise, Rebecca’s best friend, Paula, also embraces the romantic comedy trope, casting herself as the spunky friend who supports Rebecca with her zany schemes. Those schemes go wildly overboard, and even Rebecca is horrified when she learns all the things Paula has done. In the end, Paula realizes she's been fixating on Rebecca's love life to avoid her own problems, and loses interest in such capers once she starts to get her life together.
    Paula: I broke into Josh's old high school and I made copies of his grades. I "bumped into" Lourdes at Starbucks and suggested you be a bridesmaid. I blackmailed Valencia's boss, so now I control when she teaches — that's right, I make yoga class schedules! There's no limit to where my reach is.
  • After realizing he wants her back in Season 4, Nathaniel asks for advice on how to win Rebecca away from Greg with a big, fun romantic gesture. Paula suggests he take a page from Rebecca’s favorite rom-com where “some kinda powerless nerdy underdog with a wacky best friend who feels invisible but then comes up with this scheme and then the underdog makes a big grand gesture and wins the person of their dreams”. Nathaniel then binge-watches classic big-name rom-coms and falls into a daydream where he is the “powerless nerdy underdog” of his own Romantic Comedy with George as his “wacky best friend” who only cares about sports and his love life. Nathaniel’s daydream is full of rom-com references and tropes like the Makeover Montage, the Jerkass Romantic False Lead, the Fake Relationship, the “quirky but cute” coworker with a dead mom, the big event where he’s supposed to make his grand gesture, and countless other rom-com elements from too many movies to list here alone. Nathaniel schemes to win Rebecca back, but in the end, he realizes that if he really loves Rebecca, he should let her be happy with Greg.
• Doctor Who: In "The Vampires of Venice", when Amy and Rory are accosted by the "vampire" Francesco, Rory attempts to use two candlesticks to form a cross to drive him away. Francesco just swats them aside, and Amy calls Rory out on that because they already knew the "vampires" were actually fish aliens who wouldn't have that weakness.
• In Elsbeth, the rotating pack of detectives in each episode all think they're in a standard CBS-style Police Procedural where cases are pretty clear and obvious. They don't grasp they're really in a Reverse Whodunnit Mystery of the Week where the quirky titular lawyer character is the real crime-solver.
• Farscape: In early episodes, Crichton often allowed himself to be influenced by Captain Kirk and being one of the few members of the crew to do the “right”, more ethical option. He quickly learns how wrong he is, and after a prolonged period of being tortured by the Peacekeepers, he adopts a far more pragmatic and less naive mindset, though he never stops trying to do the right thing.
• Flight of the Conchords had a weird example when Bret tried to woo a woman with techniques he'd seen in a sitcom. Now, Bret is in a sitcom, but he did stuff that never works even in sitcoms. At one point, Jermaine asks whether what Bret is planning on doing worked in the sitcom he saw it in. Bret says that it didn't, but as this is real life, his chances are better.
• In an episode of Friends, Joey receives a visit from an unhinged, obsessed fan. Anticipating violence, he grabs a frying pan. Chandler suggests that he comes up with a backup plan in case she isn't a cartoon character.
  • In another episode, after watching porn non-stop for too long, Joey and Chandler find that they're surprised when pizza delivery women don't try to have sex with them after giving them their order.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Sansa Stark was raised on heroic ballads of noble knights and fair ladies, and often justifies this or that course of action because it's how they would do things "in the songs." She thinks she is in a fairy tale with herself as the Princess Classic and Joffrey as the Prince Charming. Petyr Baelish calls her on this rather early, telling her "life is not a song, sweetling. You may learn that someday, to your sorrow." She gets more savvy and cynical as her experiences show her the error of her ways, such as when Joffrey executes her father. In Season 3, she begins to slip back into this a little as a defense mechanism. However, this is shattered when she learns of the Red Wedding.
  • Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish recounts the story of how, as a boy, he challenged the older and stronger Brandon Stark to a duel for the hand of Catelyn Tully because he had a head full of songs and stories of the small underdog emerging triumphant over the big bully. Unfortunately for him, he's in a much darker sort of fantasy story, and Brandon nearly kills him. Petyr takes the lesson to heart and resolves not to fight his battles through honor and violence (both of which he's very bad at) but through underhanded trickery (which he's very good at).
• On The Good Guys Dan thinks he's a Cowboy Cop in a high-octane action movie (in-universe there actually was such a movie made based on an old case of his), while Jack thinks he's in a Police Procedural. They're both wrong, they're actually in a buddy-cop action-comedy.
• Grey's Anatomy had a young foster kid who thought herself a superhero, reasoning that she was an orphan who could do things normal people couldn't. However, her "super-power" is an inability to feel pain and she is badly injured as a result.
• Have Gun – Will Travel has this as Paladin's defining character moment. In essence, he thought he was the White Hat hired by the local leader-type to fight off the Desert Bandits. In reality, he was the muscle hired by the evil fat cat Cattle Baron to put pressure on the Determined Homesteaders.
• Some Hell's Kitchen contestants have tried to pull a number of reality show stunts in an attempt to win the prize of being head chef of a new restaurant, only for Gordon Ramsay to turn it against him. You will not woo him with Sex Sells (he’s Happily Married) and attempts to try and vote out the strongest will, nine times out of ten, have him send them back and pick the one he feels needs to be eliminated. This last one was subverted in the first season as Ramsay didn't have control of who got to leave back then, but once he did, this trope would be in play.
• Nobuo from Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger, being an Otaku in a show that directly parodies Super Sentai , has been Wrong Genre Savvy on multiple occasions, including the first episode where he expects Make My Monster Grow to take place, only for he and the other Akibarangers to be sitting around waiting till sunset, and when the ghost of Yumeria's mother comes to visit her for her birthday, Nobuo thinks she'd disapprove of Yumeria's hobbies, and that they'll have to hide everything in her apartment and create an elaborate ruse, but then when Yumeria's mother actually arrives, she turns out to be an even bigger Cosplay Otaku Girl (okay, maybe "Cosplay Otaku Woman") than Yumeria herself!
• On The Inside Man, AJ seems to think he's in a major Hollywood action or drama movie and not the Edutainment Show about IT security that he's in. He mentions in the first episode, "The New Guy," having been inspired by Enemy of the State. In a later installment, when Erica gets a flash drive that contains a "logic bomb," AJ races to her action-movie style and dives to try to keep her from inserting into her laptop, only for her to reveal that Mark is already on the phone with her telling her not to use it.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
  • The entire gang are almost constantly under the wrong impression of what kind of story they're in over the course of the series. Dennis thinks of himself as The Ace, a suave ladies man who succeeds at everything; Mac sees himself as a John McClane style badass action hero; Sweet Dee believes she's a witty, quirky social woman similar to those on Sex In The City; and Charlie thinks he's a lovable down-trodden nice guy. In reality, they're all a group of selfish, morally-bankrupt sociopaths. Frank appears to be the only member of the gang aware of who he really is. Additionally, all of them believe that, should they desire it to, the universe will bend itself to follow the structure of whatever movie or TV series they currently wish to emulate. Similarly, they tend to act as though the world is governed by Negative Continuity similar to TV shows, and that nothing they do will ever have any lasting consequences.
  • Played with in "The Gang Hits the Slopes" when the gang treat a ski trip like it's a 1980s comedy...and for once, they're actually right and are able to fit in well amid the antics. Until the last second where everything winds up deconstructed. The reason everyone could have wild, anonymous sex is that Frank had hired hookers all around the mountain (and everyone who had sex with them should probably be tested for sexual diseases), the wild 1980s party-hero is actually a sexual predator whose '80s movie-style pranks get him arrested by the police, and a single botched landing while skiing breaks both of Dennis's ankles, showing that skiing is dangerous if you don't know what you're doing.
• The basic premise of The Joe Schmo Show. The non-actors think they are on some wacky run-of-the-mill reality show contest show, when in fact they ARE the show, everyone else is an actor specifically playing a character to the genre, the game is rigged to them, and the main idea of the show is to see how far they can take it without the Joe finding out. In Season 2, one contestant subverted this by being Genre Savvy enough to figure out the show was not what it seemed; they ended up doing The Reveal to her early in the show (there was another Joe on the show and another Joe, er Jane, brought in to replace her) and convinced her to keep playing along.
• Legends of Tomorrow: Mona thinks that her Star-Crossed Lovers relationship with a wolfman demigod is an epic romance with a happy ending, like the Rebecca Silver novels she reads. Mick, the one who actually writes those novels, has to explain that the relationship does not end well, and hers won't either.
• In Lost Girl, Bo at one point encounters a Lich. After being told that he stores his soul in something, she suspects that he did so in a picture of himself ala Dorian Gray. When she destroys the picture, he just laughs at her. Fortunately, she figures out where it actually is later.
• Magnum, P.I.: An old enemy of Higgins has a habit of setting up complicated schemes based on classic movies, so Magnum spends most of the episode trying to figure out what movie he's supposed to be in, eventually settling on the 40s serial Perils Of Nyoka. The viewers knew it was Raiders of the Lost Ark from the very first scene. This whole episode was an Actor Allusion to Tom Selleck being Spielberg and Lucas's first choice for playing Indiana Jones, but he had to turn it down because the studio wouldn't let him out of his contract. (A clip from Tom Selleck's audition is included in the special features of the Raiders of the Lost Ark boxset, proving that Selleck would have made a damn fine Indiana Jones.)
• Meredith from Mad Men is sure she's in a Romantic Comedy about Sleeping with the Boss once she's assigned to be Don's secretary. Nothing could be further from the truth.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus occasionally features an army colonel who comes so very close to being genuinely Genre Savvy. He knows he's in a comedy sketch show all right. Unfortunately he doesn't realize which one, and so he thinks that sketches should have clearly-defined jokes in them, with vaguely plausible premises, and punchlines. As a result, he calls an end to many a sketch which he considers to be far too silly, generally to provide at least some kind of closure to a sketch that is, frankly, totally off the rails by the time he appears with no stopping place in sight.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: Kinga wants to create big sweep weeks style ratings events, hoping to use the show's ratings to sell to Disney and make a billion dollars. She can't seem to understand that Netflix doesn't use traditional ratings and so her network-style ratings stunts are pointless, no matter how many times it's pointed out to her.
• Nowhere Boys: Andy's first hypothesis is that everyone has forgotten the kids because of a mass hysteria, however this is quickly shown to be wrong.
• The Office (US):
  • Dwight Schrute is apparently convinced he's in an action movie of some sort. Some specific occasions:
    • He calls upon vampire tropes when he thinks Jim was bitten by a bat (sharpened stake, etc).
    • He panics when people start calling Voldemort by name, afraid it will make him appear.
    • His family beet farm doubles as a survival training camp, where he's prepared for every After the End scenario you can imagine, from nuclear war to a zombie breakout. There's weapons stashed everywhere, and a crossbow range. He's also concealed weapons all over the office.
    • When some Human Resources executives arrive to the office on one episode, he assumes that the means through which they will decide who stays and who gets fired will involve elimination tests, a la Survivor.
  • Michael Scott is partly correct in that he acts like the lead character in a comedy, but it's the wrong genre of comedy. At the office, he sees himself as the lead in a Robin Williams-style feelgood comedy, punching up the morale of his employees with jokes and impressions. In dealing with women, he sees himself as the charming Manic Pixie Dream Guy lead of a Romantic Comedy. The height of his RomCom delusion comes when he proposes in public in front of a group of strangers to his girlfriend on just their ninth date, clearly thinking this would be an irresistible grand gesture. Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs and she says no.
  • Kelly Kapoor is a twofer, as she quotes and acts out romantic movie tropes, and on her interviews to the camera, she acts as if they're making a Kardashians/Real Housewives-style reality show about beautiful glamorous people living beautiful glamorous lives in beautiful glamorous settings and engaging in beautiful glamorous bitchiness and backstabbing, of which she is of course the star. As opposed to being a relatively minor player in a fly-on-the-wall documentary, part of a Cringe Comedy.
• Once Upon a Time: In the first couple seasons, Henry understood he was living in a town full of displaced storybook characters, and practically weaponized Genre Savvy to try and help others. But when he met Peter Pan? Well, Peter turned that against Henry. Peter Pan set up circumstances and told enough of the truth to make Henry believe that he was the doomed hero who needed to sacrifice his life to save the world of Neverland when Henry's real role in the story (which, by that point, was a Deconstruction of Disney Animated Canon) was the Unwitting Pawn and Distressed Dude, with his family racing to try and save him before he killed himself.
• Israel "Izzy" Hands of Our Flag Means Death. Who would perfectly fit into a gritty, bloody pirate story like Black Sails. Unfortunately for him, he's in a quirky Taika Waititi pirate romcom. Most of his agitation comes from not realizing he's stuck in the wrong kind of show.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In "Abduction", Jason draws on his knowledge of science fiction and speculates that he and the other four students have entered an Alternate Universe or become Unstuck in Time. Instead, it turns out that they have been abducted by aliens.
• This is extremely common in Person of Interest, as hardly anyone outside of the main characters recognize that they are in a work of Post-Cyberpunk. The two big categories are government agents who believe themselves to be in post-9/11 Spy Fiction, and criminals who believe themselves to be in a work of Crime Fiction.
  • The first major character to show this flaw is Sameen Shaw, a covert operative who believes that the source of their secretive intelligence is Guantanamo. Root mocks her for this, pointing out that torture is an unreliable source of intelligence at best. The actual source is The Machine.
  • Shaw's boss Control has the same tendency, ignoring the threat posed by Decima Technology and Samaritan until it is too late in favor of going after traditional terrorists.
  • Peter Collier similarly believes that The Machine is a simple government conspiracy, and acts as if he is in a conspiracy thriller. It turns out he is a mere pawn of those with real authority, who are using him to bring Samaritan online.
  • We later see this tendency in the battle between Elias and Dominic, who act as if they are straight out of The Godfather and The Wire respectively, focusing on the interplay between their warring gangs. Even after being arrested, Elias plots to escape while Dominic discusses his control of the prison system. They are both removed from power by Samaritan, an artificial intelligence that is cleaning house and that neither were even aware of. While Elias survives initially, he is still eventually killed by Samaritan's agents.
• Detective Carlton Lassiter on Psych is best summed up by a promo showing how he goes through cases believing he's in a dead-serious procedural drama, complete with sexual tension with partner Jules (who has no feelings for him whatsoever).
• Used hilariously on Scrubs when J.D. tries to escape the hospital in a body bag and Doug, the pathologist, wheels him into an elevator.
  J.D.: Can you press Lobby, please?
  [Doug screams, and beats on J.D. with a fire extinguisher until J.D. unzips the bag]
  J.D.: Doug! Why were you hitting me?
  Doug: 'Cause I thought you were a dead guy coming back to life!
  J.D.: [beat] Then why were you hitting me?!
  Doug: Dead people should be dead!
• Christopher Moltisanti from The Sopranos tends to live his life like he's in a gangster movie. Technically he is (or rather a gangster television show), but The Sopranos is a series that deconstructs most of the genre's tropes rather than plays them straight. In the very first episode, after murdering a rival of the family, he wants to place the body in one of their waste management bins to send a message, a la the Luca Brasi scene from The Godfather. Big Pussy tells him all that would do is bring on a desire for revenge from the family as well as heat from law enforcement and they need to hide the body. He also thinks that once he's a made man, he'll be living on easy street like the characters in The Godfather and Goodfellas. Instead, he discovers that it's just like any other full-time job where he has a lot more responsibilities and is under more pressure to earn money. The other gangsters even chastise him for watching 'too many movies'' on a few occasions, like when he thought his made ceremony was a ruse to whack him.
• In the Stargate SG-1 episode "The Quest, Part 2", Cam Mitchell decides to throw a large chunk of C-4 under a dragon since "that's where dragons are weakest". It's not that kind of dragon.
• Stranger Things:
  • In season two, Bob Newby gives what would be considered excellent advice to Will about facing his fears... if he were in an Afterschool Special. Unfortunately, the Mind Flayer is no schoolyard bully. And the moment Will tries to face it as Bob suggested, the creature swiftly seizes the opportunity to possess him.
  • Jason Carver in season four believes he's in a Religious Horror story about a Satanic cult terrorizing a community and unleashing the forces of Hell, with him as the brave hero fighting back and liberating his town from their influence. He's right about being in a horror story... the problem is, it's a sci-fi horror story with Lovecraftian overtones in which the power of Christ does nothing to protect against inhuman monsters from beyond our world. As a result, he nearly ruins the protagonists' efforts to stop Vecna and ultimately gets brutally killed.
• Supernatural:
  • The Winchester brothers and other Hunters occasionally encounter amateur hunters or Vampire Vannabes who base their knowledge of monsters on popular books like The Twilight Saga. The Hunters treat these amateurs with derision and reveal real monsters are nothing like their books, so they'll likely get themselves killed.
  • In "Frontierland", the Winchester brothers have to time travel to 1861 Wyoming. Dean is a massive fan of Clint Eastwood western movies like A Fistful of Dollars and tries to blend in by wearing a serape like The Man With No Name. He gets embarrassed when a cowboy calls him out for looking ridiculous.
• Survivor: Danny Massa from 44 assumes that the season he's playing on is one with a frantic and more chaotic merge like Cambodia or Cagayan where it's every man for themselves and alliances are only temporary and plays accordingly, leading to him needlessly backstabbing people who were loyal to him. However, it turns out he's on a season with a heavy focus on alliances, and, more importantly, tribal loyalty, as the Tika 3 exploits his mindset to turn him into their Puppet King and then vote him out the second he tries to target one of them.
• Taskmaster: In Series 7, Rhod Gilbert approached it as more of a Panel Game show and focused primarily on trying to be funny rather than attempting to actually win, which caused some tension with the contestants who were taking the competition seriously (especially during team tasks).
• The Witcher (2019): Joey Batey, who plays Jaskier, has said that he intentionally played the character like he's in a sitcom instead of in a serious fantasy show.
• The central premise of You is how Joe believes he's the hero in a rom-com with a little drama thrown in. He's really in a psychological thriller... where he's the sociopathic stalker and killer.
  • The series excels in showing how scores of situations rom-coms play for laughs can be easily twisted into a darker theme as Joe's pursuit of Beck crosses the line of "romantic gestures" into outright criminal actions.
  • When he's nearly caught while in Beck's apartment, Joe notes he's seen enough romantic comedies where the protagonist gets out of this okay when he just broke in.
  • When he runs to see Beck, Joe thinks of the moment in a rom-com where the hero races through the rain to proclaim his love. It's not raining and when he throws a rock at her window, it smashes through it.
  • Beck uses this in the finale after being held prisoner by Joe by tricking him into letting her out by saying this is the part where they'd kiss with swelling music.
  • Season 2 has Joe once more thinking himself the nice guy getting with the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Love...only to learn in the finale that Love is just as twisted a killer as he is and was using him all along. Joe thus finally does grasp he's in a dark thriller...only he considers himself the "victim" in it all.

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