Misused (titles crowner 10/7/14): Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs

This trope is supposed to be a Recurring Character who changes jobs to fit the needs of the plots of the main characters. So, for example, the Charles In Charge and The Jack Benny Program examples are examples. The Monk, Dragnet, and Battlestar Galactica examples are not, and reflect the main misuse: any character who changes jobs multiple times for any reason, even if the old/new jobs have nothing to do with the current plot. There is more misuse on the main page than listed here, of course.

Is the misuse tropeworthy enough to expand, maybe?

Whew. So many things wrong with this. The name sucks and the definition is murky. I suppose the trope of having a character changing jobs a lot is good. Cut it and rewrite?

Sounds good to me.

500 wicks is way too much for a straight cut. I think a transplant is a better idea; "Character who always has a new job to fit the main characters' needs" is a trope, as is "That one guy who randomly has a new job every time you see him." Let's get a real wick check to see how the examples are spread out.

Clock is set.

OK, wick check, about 30:

Correct, as far as I can tell:

• RenAndStimpy
• ILoveLucy
• TheBoondocks (though note that particular example actually belongs to the animated series)
• Series Continuity Error
• American Dad
• The Pajanimals
• Recurring Extra
• Cathy
• Characters as Device

Misused for main character and/or assuming this trope is Exactly What It Says on the Tin:

• FreshPrinceOfBelAir
• SuperMarioBrothers (wrong in many ways)
• StarTrekTheOriginalSeries (Misused for writers not being able to decide on Sulu's job)
• Renaissance Man (used for a real person in Mythbusters
• Roseanne
• Red Light District
• Promotion to Opening Titles (though the character WAS apparently recurring, I'm counting this as misuse assuming he didn't just stop having this quality)
• Pearls Before Swine (close to ZCE)
• One-Hour Work Week (about Homer Simpson)
• NCIS
• MaryPoppins
• Goofy
• Full House
• Extreme Doormat (potholed for Snoopy)
• CriminalMinds (An aversion, but still displays misunderstanding of the trope)
• BuffyTheVampireSlayerRegulars (duh)
• Barbie
• WillSmith (um...)
• WillAndGrace
• VladimirPutin
• Sesame Street
• Seinfeld
• MegaManClassic (Applied to a Robot Master, who in this case is not recurring)
• JustinTimberlake
• DevilSurvivor2 (She's a PC, and doesn't recur, by my definition)

Zero Context Examples:

• Gamera

Unsure:

• The Garfield Show (I think applying this to "background characters" is misuse, but I'm not 100% sure)
• College Roomies From Hell (I don't know enough to know if he recurs enough to function as this trope)
• CardassianUnion Applied to Gul Dukat... I'm a little torn on this one.

A lot of misuse there, as I suspected. Need more?

edited 21st Jul '14 3:17:06 PM by Leaper

To add clear misuse on the trope page itself (trying not to include ones already in the previous post):

• Donald Duck (main character)
• Dilbert (main character)
• Wallace And Gromit
• Barney Miller
• Monk
• Buffy The Vampire Slayer
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys
• ALL Real Life, by definition

Don't we already have a trope that's "someone changes jobs frequently"?

Does no one else have input? I do want to do something about this. My current inclination is just to expand the damn thing, if we don't already have it.

edited 23rd Jul '14 8:19:46 PM by Leaper

I'm tempted to take unilateral action here. There is clear misuse. Maybe I should just start a crowner? Or would that be an "excuse" to let the topic die?

Crowner. This needs fixing absolutely but there is probably more than one fix (I don't have time right now for a thorough investigation).

What kind is best? I have a thought, but I don't want to follow through and just have it closed because I was wrong.

I would go for page action.

How is Dragnet not an example? Joe Friday's job depends on whatever type of crime they want to feature in the particular episode, with no explanation at all about why he might be working Homicide Division one week, Bunco detail the next week, Juvenile the week after, back to Homicide the next week, etc. etc.

edited 24th Jul '14 4:12:20 PM by Catbert

Done here. Calling for hookup. Please feel free to add options; I feel like I forgot at least one.

Because Joe is not a "recurring character." The definition specifically draws a line between them and "main characters." Joe is a main character.

edited 24th Jul '14 4:11:23 PM by Leaper

I see. It is really that important for how the trope works whether the person is a main character or a recurring character?

IMO, it sort of depends what you want the trope to mean. It's already attracting a lot of misuse for "character who changes jobs for whatever reason." The current is certainly more specific, and is used often enough, from what I can see.

Isn't Joe Friday pretty much always a cop of some kind? At worst he's moving around to different posts within the same organization, which seems fundamentally different to me, and for audiences that don't know how police departments actually work it may well be normal. I'm not sure I would even call it an example of the misused form of the trope.

I think the point of the trope is supposed to be that the character is not well-fleshed out enough and doesn't appear often enough for any job to be "out-of-character" per se. He can show up in any context whenever the show needs someone to fill a certain role; the role comes first, the character later. I'm thinking of some of the more rarely-appearing characters on The Simpsons here, including the Trope Namer-cum-page quote.

edited 24th Jul '14 9:45:44 PM by MorganWick

And that is why I suggested a Page Action crowner - I am not clear if the trope should be limited to recurring characters as opposed to main characters and I am leaning no.

I'd have to agree. I think the important part is that it involves a character whose job changes frequently and is always suspiciously convenient to the plot in some way or another, main character or not.

Crowner's hooked.

One possible wrinkle I just thought of: there are two common reasons characters tend to change jobs a lot: to serve the needs of the plot (as the current definition says) and to be Played for Laughs, or otherwise mark the character as immature, incompetent, or unlucky. Worse, sometimes it's both at the same time,

My question is, should we allow the latter examples to be part of this trope?

I think it needs to be convenient the advancement of the plot, so we might need to go through the page and cut all of the examples that don't fit.

I think the reason the trope excludes main characters and why I would be inclined to do the same but could be convinced otherwise is that a main character is, by definition, more fleshed out than the trope intends. About the only way I can think of that a main character would fit the spirit of the trope is if it were a Commedia dell'Arte-type situation, which seems like it would be something else, though the case of Joe Friday is admittedly tricky (assuming it's more than Fridge Logic). The point of the trope, I think, isn't merely that the character is "changing jobs to fit the needs of the plot", but that this is, to some extent, the character's very reason for being, or at least that's my reading.

Of course, by this definition the misuse started in YKTTW and wasn't caught (I had to use the Internet Archive to find that because the archived discussion didn't carry over for some reason), but the two examples in the OP both fit. The real problem is that the trope wasn't sufficiently fleshed out in YKTTW to begin with; even some of the examples proposed in YKTTW, though not Zero Context Examples, don't necessarily provide enough context to make clear whether they would fit the spirit of the trope even if not strictly "main" characters, and in some cases it would be a judgment call.

edited 26th Jul '14 9:33:41 PM by MorganWick

Calling this one for both of the winning options:

• Expand current definition into any (not just recurring) character who frequently changes jobs in order to meet the needs of the current plot.
• Rename, on the grounds that current attracts misuse.

edited 13th Aug '14 6:35:23 AM by Willbyr

Rewrote the description, but I don't have any other name proposals to fill a crowner with.