Example drift: Five Man Band

I'm familiar with a number of examples I've seen and most don't seem to apply. I'd like to delete any where it's a group of three, four or any one I know where a character obviously doesn't fit. IMO One character shouldn't be listed as two members of the band. There are plenty of times the trope does apply so it doesn't need to be streched. Are there any that anyone else thinks should be deleted?

Don't we have a set up specifically for three or four persons?

Fight smart, not fair.

The description is pretty clear last time I was there that It didn't necessarily need to be five and people multi-tasked roles. The Five-Man Band was never super strict nor does it need to be now.

See? it's right there on the page:

edited 4th Mar '11 2:56:20 PM by MousaThe14

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On the other hand, there is also the requirement that at least four of the five roles must be unambiguously present, so any case where less than four are listed or there is obvious shoehorning to avoid running afoul of the previous, there is grounds for deletion. In the latter case, I'd suggest bringing it up on the discussion page, since there may actually be a good reason that you just didn't see.

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

All examples of three should fit more into ID Ego Superego, but then again that and this are 2 seperate things, even with definite overlap.

Thing is not every group of three will fit the Power Trio dynamic like how not every group of five fits the Five-Man Band dynamic. The problem is that there's so much wishy washy timey wimey stuff involved in all this where some may interpret tropes based solely on number rather than role/temperament.

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@Sys_32 & Moussa: Yeah. I've always thought that the alternate of Heart Mind Guts  ^*

should be its own separate Trope, especially if an author has referenced it before. The current Power Trio seems to be 3 points on the same line which many trios don't fit.

In the same way, since we do have so many examples, I would also like to take four-man examples that have either one person obviously puling Double-Duty or have the extra role obviously split between two people and put them into their own Trope: the Four-Man Band. (And, again, if it isn't obvious, delete.)

And, yes, we don't have a separate Trope for Five Temperament Ensemble, but we don't have sub-subpages for Four-Temperament Ensemble either.

Also, I don't think that such "roles" as Mission Control ot Team Pet/Tagalong Kid are roles in and of themselves. If a Team Pet is also The Big Guy, great. A Five-Man Band must have a Hero, a Strong Person, and a Smart Person. The Lancer and Token Evil Teammate are usually interchangeable, as are The Chick and The Heart. (Sometimes, a Token Evil Teammate can replace The Chick as a sort of Dark Chick.) But these are the only interchangeable roles. (EDIT: With the possible exception of The Mentor as The Smart Guy or an Old Master as The Big Guy)

Likewise, in a Four-Man Band, Either The Hero or The Lancer has a secondary talent or The Chick has Hidden Depths. Very rarely would one see a Genius Bruiser taking both roles and never shall The Hero and The Lancer be the same person.

Additionally, I am in favor of looking at examples where there are more than 5 people listed and truncating those examples removing people that do not fit any role. (People that can stay include Mission Control kids and pets, and obvious Sixth Rangers. Any "group of Sixth Rangers" that fits a smaller ensemble can be relocated to the appropriate Trope.)

EDIT (Late Night): I've started looking at the Anime teams while waiting for my laundry to dry. It strikes me that any "Band" of Seven or more members should be checked to see if they actually form a Magnificent Seven instead of a Five-Man Band. (The former has 4 of the 5 pillars of the latter, with The Chick being replaced with The Mentor / Shell Shocked Senior, the Comic Relief, and the Naïve Newcomer. Tagalong Kid can sub in for either of the last two if they contribute to the team.)

EDIT 2: Finally, there is a repair discussion regarding The Chick and her relationship with the Five-Man Band. While we're looking at the size vs roles debate, it would be prudent to reexamine what these roles actually are.

edited 6th Mar '11 1:08:13 AM by DonaldthePotholer

Ketchum's corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced tactic is indistinguishable from blind luck.

So to start with it's okay to deleat one where one person obviously doesn't fit like Spencer from iCarly or Carlos from Big Time Rush being the big guy?

I think it's ridiculous to say that a Five-Man Band MUST have "a Strong Person and a Smart Person'', because if the band is only four members (which is perfectly acceptable by the current trope definition), one of those slots is often missing.

Take Xiaolin Showdown. A Four Man Band with a perfect fit of The Hero (Omi), The Lancer (Rai), The Big Guy (Clay), and The Chick (Kimiko). There is no set "Smart Guy". The plot demands a Smart Guy would usually fill are given either to one of the various mentor figures running around, or by handing one of the other characters the Smart Ball for the episode. (Or by letting Jack make a Heel Face Turn that episode.

Similarly, Yu-Gi-Oh. After season one (where it could be argued that Bakura is The Smart Guy), the main band consists of YugiYami (The Idealistic, Save The Villain, Card-Carrying Hero), Joey (The Hot Blooded, Best Friend, Only Other Duelist in the Gang Lancer, Tristan (The Motorcycle-Riding, My Main Contribution is Beating People Up With My Fists and Carrying Comatose People Big Guy), and Tea (The Friendship Will Save Us All Love Interest and Only Female Character to Appear in All Seasons Chick]]). Again, the roles couldn't be clearer. The need for a Smart Guy is negated by use of mentors, having The Hero be pretty darn smart in the first place, and by bringing in part-time Smart Guys (Team ups with The Rival and visits from Rebecca Hawkins) when the mini arc demands one.

Why are either of these examples not a valid Five-Man Band just because they lack The Smart Guy?

edited 7th Mar '11 6:35:26 PM by StarryEyed

Xiaolin Showdown is A Five Man band, it just uses the other enumerated roles i.e. Dojo as Plucky Comic Relief / Team Pet and Master Fong as The Mentor. And Tech Savvy Kimiko double for Smart Guy but it was underplayed.

And you're missing the point here, the Five-Man Band isn't trying to restrict future entries or ones that exist, the issue here is that it's outdated and running out of flexing room similarly to it's rapidly dated sub-trope The Chick.

The thing is the formula is no longer strictly adhered to and people are on some lvele aware of it and mixing it up or finding new ways of making it work.

Nobody's trying to say The Five Man Band is supposed to be some rigid set in stone thing, it's just that is sort of becoming irrelevant.

edited 7th Mar '11 8:50:14 PM by MousaThe14

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But that doesn't meant that we have to change the definition to keep it relevant. It means that we note that it's falling out of common use in its pure forms and that the characters delineations are no longer as clear-cut as they originally were; that the team members are no longer easy to pigeonhole into one and only one main contribution to the team's abilities..

The Five-Man Band isn't changing, a new trope is starting to take its place — the team of multi-specialists.

We document and classify tropes. This includes documenting the decline of a once-popular trope.

edited 7th Mar '11 8:58:41 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Thank you for saying it better than I could. I forgot to say "We don't need to change it".

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So,you're getting rid of Five Man Band and replacing it with a new trope? What is the new trope?

No, we're not getting rid of it. Its a perfectly fine trope, its just almost never played straight anymore.

We're not sure whats replacing it.

It was never going to removed, that's not the point. Tropes exist whether or not they're relevant or not. we do have Dead Horse Tropes/Discredited Tropes for a reason.

Basically the trope isn't played as straight as it used to be and we're not entirely sure that it's new evolution is if there is a definitive one.

I theorize that current mutations are just variations on whatever we have on the Ensembles page.

edited 8th Mar '11 4:50:30 AM by MousaThe14

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I believe this is covered by Beauty, Brains, and Brawn

edited 8th Mar '11 5:37:04 AM by Servbot

Well the original Five-Man Band was made up of the five generic archetypes, with modern incarnations vaguely resembling those archetypes. Too often people try and rationalize the types much like Character Alignments when we really should be making a whole new ensemble tropes for some of these teams. Branching off the idea of the band is where I found the Command Roster, a similar but ultimately distinct ensemble trope. Not everything needs to fit into the band mode, and we should get ourselves away from that mindset.

Lets take a bank heist team and see what comes up.

• The Mastermind- the man with the plan
• The Point Man- watches over the fine details while the Mastermind dreams big
• The Hacker- hijacks the security systems to either disable the alarm or Camera Spoofing
• The Distraction- usually a pretty girl, Ms. Fanservice
• The Con Man- manages to smooth talk their way to get the passcodes, maybe a Master of Disguise
• The Safecracker / Thief- self-explanatory
• The Muscle- takes care of straggling security, often likes guns and carries the loot out
• The Driver- drives the getaway vehicle

Evidently The Hero is the Mastermind, The Big Guy is the Muscle, The Smart Guy of the team could be the Safecracker or the Hacker, the Lancer could be the Con Man, Point Man, the Muscle or even the Driver. But why does it matter how the roles line up? The bank heist team is more specific and probably older than the five man band. We could make a trope out of that and any other similar groups. Already coming to mind is Oceans Eleven, Leverage and an episode of Burn Notice that follows at least 5 of those roles.

KJ, I like The Command Roster. It's a much cleaner fit for those works than trying to shoehorn them into the Five-Man Band.

edited 8th Mar '11 10:27:52 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

So what are we going to do with Five Man Band? Keep the pure examples and call it a Dead Horse Trope, or create seperate pages for the pure examples and the 'mutations' so to speak? Whatever we do, the unmistakable Five Man Bands should distinguished from all the shoe horning.

I'd say keep it pure, cull out the examples that are not-really examples, and note that straight uses are becoming more rare in new works. It's not Dead Horse or discredited yet.

Make new tropes for the variants that are starting to come into prominence on their own.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Good. I can start by cuting out the examples I reconize which is quite a few. I don't know what new tropes you want to create after we already have Beauty, Brains, and Brawn, Three Amigos, Power Trio, Tomboy and Girly Girl with Sensitive Guy and Manly Man, four girl ensemble as well as the Command Roster.

I don't know whether there are really new tropes solidly established yet. The biggest difference I see is that in the newer teams, either the roles are traded around or everybody can be slotted into at least two of the five Leader, Lancer, Big Guy, Smart Guy, Chick roles, depending on how you choose to sort them.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

We probably won't learn what the new version is for a another few years. I mean finding This one out was based on years of a pattern like so many other tropes.

We should probably put this on hold for a while.

So a Five Man Band Stew of sorts or mixing bowl? Or Five-Man Band: The YMMV version?

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Sorry to double post but I think I found the answer to my own question:

....

That's it! That's it! That's what we've been looking for in the other thread, the evolution, them old breaker! We've been trying to figure out for a little bit that since the FMB is a trope that's not too relevant anymore, I've been wondering what the current generation's formula is.

I think Black Humor cracked it!

In fact, it make perfect sense that a Five-Man Band would be like a Power Trio doubled and the divides have just gotten deeper, or more specialized. Now if only we had a name... I should move this to the other thread...

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I think Mousa and Black, er whatever are correct at the current version of a Five-Man Band. Or rather two pairs of foils and then a center (The Leader, Team Mom, or Team Dad).

If, for example, I apply this to some modern five man bands (that people debate over being applied to the trope or not):

Teen Titans: Starfire (super emotional optimist) opposes Raven (emotionless cynic). Beast Boy (funny coward who acts smart but isn't) opposes Cyborg (aggressive offensive fighter who acts dumb but is really smart). Then Robin mediates between the four personalities.

Or say, Animorphs, another group that is hotly debated as to whether they are a five man band. Marco (a funny guy who is secretly a detached ruthless tactician) opposes Rachel (a serious warrior who cannot control her emotions and is the team's Leroy Jenkins). Jake (burdened figurehead warrior with tons of responsibilities who wishes he could run away but still faces responsibility despite his fear who once acted as a hero to Tobias but later "betrays" him or is at least indirectly responsible for a lot of the crap that he goes through) opposes Tobias (who purposefully fled away from life/his responsibilities by becoming a bird instead of dealing with his problems and who idolized Jake but grew more and more disillusioned with him as the series continued) and then Cassie mediates between the conflicting personalities (though she occasionally is a foil to Rachel, it's not often).

Essentially, the current Five-Man Band (post 1980s-ish) is a Four-Temperament Ensemble or two pairs of foils with a negotiator in the middle of the conflicting personalities.

edited 10th Mar '11 10:53:27 AM by Zeta