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Captain Obvious / Live-Action TV

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  • Local newsreaders generally stick to reading what's on their teleprompter, but they'll often have to ad-lib, during transitions from live shots back to the studio, transitions to weather and sports, filling in time, breaking news, etc. Unfortunately, most anchors aren't very good at ad-libbing, leading to lots of Captain Obvious moments.
  • Inadvertently inverted by one-time BBC snooker commentary: "For those of you watching in black and white, the blue's the one behind the pink." Actually, this was not inadvertent. It is commonly cited as a mistake, but is actually helpful when the blue ball has been knocked off its starting position, but the pink has not. And it was repeated whenever that case presented, further dispelling the myth that it was an error.
  • A major part of Demetri Martin's stand-up routine ("Large Pad"), and by extension, Important Things with Demetri Martin. Likewise, a recurring gag in Bill Engvall's stand-up. "Here's your sign."

  • Once on Air Farce Live: seen here
    Lisa LaFlamme: Dr Blide, are you sick?
    Dr. Blide: Am I sick? Oh! Stop the press! The Nobel Prize for Medicine goes to Lady Obvious!
  • The Nickelodeon show All That has a sketch called "Vital Information for your Everyday Life" that was built around this trope, amongst other things. Some kernels of Vital Information include:
    • "When it rains it pours. When it's snows it's cold!"
    • "If your dog sniffs you, it wants to get to know you. If your friend sniffs you, you've got a weird friend."
    • "If you accidentally flush your friend down the toilet... you either have a huge toilet or a really tiny friend!"
  • In a video from America's Funniest Home Videos, a kid discovers he was born on his birthday and tells his mom.
  • Anyone can (and will) take this role in Angie Tribeca for the sake of a gag.
    Tanner: How'd he die?
    Scholls: His brain and heart stopped. After that, he had no chance.
  • The Aquabats! Super Show!: "ManAnt!":
    ManAnt: Crash McLarson, we meet again!
    Crash: You're tiny.
    (ManAnt's henchmen gasp)
    ManAnt: You're tiny, Captain Obvious!
  • Babylon 5 spoofed Troi's solemn pronouncements with a similar moment where supercharged telepath Lyta Alexander simply commented, "Captain, they're pissed."
  • Battlestar Galactica ("Daybreak") after Cavil's forces realise Boomer has taken Hera back to the Colonials.
    Cavil: Time for us to go on the offensive.
    Simon: We must be cautious. Too much force could risk killing the child.
    Cavil: Really? You think? Please continue stating the perfectly obvious; it fills me with confidence.
  • Played for laughs in The Big Bang Theory with Sheldon's hilarious attempts to make sense out of human emotions involving remarks like "You're upset" or "You're unhappy" followed by the inevitable reply: "What was your first clue?" which often turns out to be a Rhetorical Question Blunder.
    • There's also this instance:
      Leonard: Interesting. We're being accused of making you do things you don't like, and here you are doing the same thing to poor Amy.
      Sheldon: You should point out the hypocrisy of that!
      Leonard: ...that's what I was doing.
  • The editors of Big Brother tend to be this for the audience. In just about every episode, they will show recaps of previous episodes right before the titles. Then, after the titles, they will show the scene again, accompanied by a Diary Room excerpt of one of the Houseguests explaining what we just saw and are seeing again. A Houseguest in danger of being voted out will try to convince the others to keep them by saying "I don't want to go home."
  • Blackadder:
    • In a season 4 episode, Edmund, George and Baldrick have come under heavy machine-gun fire in no-man's-land:
    George: They're firing, sir, they're firing!
    Blackadder: Yes, thank you Lieutenant. If they hit me, you'll be sure to point it out?
    • And in the second series episode Bells:
      Crone: Two things, my lord, must thee know of the Wisewoman. First, she is... a woman! ...and second, she is...
      Edmund: Wise?
      Crone: You do know her then?
  • In Breaking Bad, the phone rings. Walt's voice says, "Skyler, it's me." Skyler announces, "It's him!"
    • Another example of this trope lies in one of Saul Goodman's commercials: "Hi, I'm Saul Goodman. Did you know you have rights? The Constitution says you do."
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Subverted and lampshaded often, severely, and, on occasion, simultaneously. The best example likely being when Spike is nearly tearing his hair out by the unbleached roots telling the Scoobies over and over that the Hell Goddess Glory just turned into Joyce's caregiver Ben. They miss the point every time. Darn that memory spell... What makes the situation funnier is that the other Scoobies (save for the comatose Buffy) actually get it near the end of the first go-around with a little help from Spike:
      Willow: So... Ben and Glory... a-are actually the same person?
      Xander: Glory can turn into Ben, and Ben turns back into Glory.
      Anya: And anyone who sees it instantly forgets.
      (about a half a minute later)
      Giles: Excellent. Now. Do we suspect there may be some kind of connection between Ben and Glory?
    • It kind of makes you wonder how many times he tried to get them to figure it out if he considered bitch-slapping Xander upside the head worth the pain. He's pretty close to thinking that most of the time anyway.
    • Every so often, Oz dips into this, as part of his Deadpan Snarker routine.
      Oz: Our lives are different than other people's.
    • When Xander is split in two: "If Xander kills himself, he'll die!". It Makes Sense in Context. "If Xander kills himself, he's dead," could also be taken as a rather empty threat.
    • Faith shoots a guy through the heart with a bow and arrow:
      Vampire minion: You killed him!
      Faith: What are you, the narrator?
    • Vi upon arriving at a demon bar: "They're demons! It's a demon bar! It's like a gay bar, only with demons."
  • Played for laughs in CNNNN, in Charles Firth's report on teenage drug use. At one point he holds up a human brain to the camera and says "This is the brain from a kid who took drugs. Guess what happened to him? He’s now dead. Our investigation shows that every single drug user who’s had their brain removed is now dead."
  • In the Corner Gas episode "Full Load", Davis pulls Hank over for having a broken taillight. He says he'll follow as Hank drives his truck to the police station to be impounded. Hank agrees, but says, "Hey. Don't rear-end me. My taillight's broke."
  • CSI
    • Upon finding a severed head in the trunk of a car, Grissom delivered a particularly groan-worthy one-liner:
      Grissom: [...] six to eight hours ago, somebody lost his head. And then... somebody lost his head.
    • In one episode, they find a mutilated corpse. After someone else says "someone wanted her ugly", Grissom one-ups with "Ugly and dead".
  • Attending to a stabbing victim, an EMT on CSI: Miami checked her blood pressure, then told his co-worker that the woman was hypotensive. Not how low her BP had fallen, just that it was lower than normal: something that would be self-evident from how she'd been bleeding all over the floor for several minutes.
  • Jack from Days of Our Lives has his moments.
    Jack: Now that he's dead, there's no way he could be alive.
  • Dragons' Den narrator Evan Davis has a habit of doing this, so much so that he was mocked on The IT Crowd for it. A few reality TV narrators also follow a habit of this.
  • In later seasons of Dexter, our Villain Protagonist would frequently describe what is happening in front of him in his Inner Monologue, to his dead father, out-loud, to no one in particular, or all three. By the time of season 8, it's not even unusual to have this kind of situation (paraphrasing):
    (Dexter runs a DNA test; the results show that Oliver Saxon is Dr. Vogel's son)
    Dexter: (thinking) Oliver Saxon is Dr. Vogel's son!
    Harry's ghost: Dexter, Oliver Saxon is Dr. Vogel's son! It must be the child she mentioned once!
    Dexter: (out loud) You're right, Oliver Saxon is Dr. Vogel's son! She's his mother!
  • Doctor Who:
    • "The Three Doctors":
      [John Benton enters the TARDIS for the first time]
      The Doctor: Well, Sergeant? Aren't you going to say, "It's Bigger on the Inside than it is on the outside?" Everybody else does.
      Benton: Well, it's... pretty obvious, isn't it?
    • "The Ark in Space": After hearing the commander of the Ark rant about how he's losing control of himself now that he's infected by the Wirrn, Harry Sullivan says, 100% without irony, "The chap sounds in a bad way." Sarah Jane can only roll her eyes in response.
    • And in the unfinished story, "Shada":
      Romana: [To the unconscious Professor Chronotis] Professor!
      K9: No response, Mistress.
    • "The Parting of the Ways":
      [Daleks fire missiles at the TARDIS, after Rose says she can't predict what the Doctor's going to do]
      Rose: You can't! The TARDIS doesn't have any defences, you're gonna kill 'im!
      Dalek: You have predicted correctly.
    • K9 has his moments as well, such as in "School Reunion" with Mickey Smith.
      Mickey: Okay, no time to explain, we need to get inside the school. Do you have, like, I don't know, a lock-picking device?
      K9: We are in a car.
      Mickey: Maybe a drill attachment?
      K9: We are in a car.
      Mickey: Fat lot of good you are!
      K9: We are in a car.
      Mickey: Wait a second. We're in a car.
      K9: Affirmative.
    • "Daleks in Manhattan": The Doctor backs away from a friendly Pig Man when a group of hostile ones appears, and they follow him.
      Martha: They're following you.
      The Doctor: Yeah, I'd noticed, thanks.
    • "Evolution of the Daleks": "They killed them, rather than let them live."
    • "The Eleventh Hour": "Do you know what the crack is? ...It's a crack!"
    • "Amy's Choice":
      Dream Lord: Now then, the prognosis is this: if you die in the dream, you wake up in reality, healthy recovery in next to no time. Ask me what happens if you die in reality.
      Rory: What happens?
      Dream Lord: [withering] You die, stupid, that's why it's called "reality"!
    • "The Rebel Flesh":
      • The Doctor determines that "something corrosive" is flowing through the pipe marked "DANGER: CORROSIVE".
      • And again after the storm causes leaks. To be fair, he did just almost get a face-full of Hollywood Acid.
        The Doctor: It is too dangerous in here with acid leaks!
    • "Night Terrors": The resident Muggle has a real insight to add to the conversation.
      The Doctor: I'm not just a professsional, I am the Doctor.
      Alex: What is that supposed to mean?
      The Doctor: It means that I have traveled a long way to get here, Alex. A very long way. George sent a message. A distress call, if you like. Whatever that is inside that cup-board is so terrible, so powerful that it amplifies the ordinary fears of a ordinary little boy across all the barriers across time and space. Through crimson stars and silent stars and tumbling nebulosas on fire, empires of glass and civilizations of pure though. And a whole terrible, wonderful universe of impossibilities. You see these eyes? They are old eyes. And one thing I can tell you, Alex? Monsters are real.
      Alex: ... you're not from Social Services, are you?
    • "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship": The Doctor, Rory and Rory's dad are trapped in a cave with pterodactyls outside:
      Rory: What do we do now? There's no way back out there.
      The Doctor: Through the cave. Come on. [he hears big footsteps] That suggestion was a work in progress.
      Brian: We're trapped.
      The Doctor: Yes. Thanks for spelling it out.
      [footsteps getting louder]
      Rory: Doctor, whatever's down there is coming this way.
      The Doctor: Spelling it out is hereditary. Wonderful.
    • "Oxygen": After the Doctor and companions are cut off from the TARDIS by having to seal the door because the section of the space station they're onboard that the TARDIS was in opened to the vacuum of space, Nardole feels the need to point out that the TARDIS is on the other side of a sealed door and opening it will expose everyone to the vacuum of space. The Doctor responds appropriately.
    • Nardole then deliberately takes this role in "Extremis" and "The Pyramid at the End of the World" so as to let the Doctor know what's going on around him while concealing his blindness.
    • "Demons of the Punjab": Upon landing in the Punjabi countryside, Graham, who seems to have been expecting to land in Lahore in their search for Yaz's grandmother, notes that this is definitely not Lahore, as he thought that was a city. (Yes, it is.)
    • "Spyfall":
      • The reaction of the MI6 agent driving an SUV carrying the Doctor and her companions when the sat-nav begins glitching due to attempted Murder by Remote Control Vehicle is to state that it "shouldn't be doing that".
      • Graham states what is going on so frequently that O comments about it. Graham then needles Ryan about doing the same thing later.
  • On Family Matters, Harriet gets a call that will tell whether or not she got a job. As the family huddles around the phone, the grandmother walks in and asks what happened. Carl responds, "She either got the job or she didn't." Grandma replies, "Those would be the choices."
  • Parodied in Fawlty Towers:
    Basil: Could we get you on Mastermind, Sybill? Next contestant Sybill Fawlty from Torquay, special subject; the bleedin' obvious!
  • Firefly:
    • "It's a post holer. You dig holes for... posts." Well, yes, Kaylee. You could say it's justified, considering the good doctor's background (or lack thereof).
    • Inara telling naked Mal that he’s naked in “Trash”.
  • Played with on Frasier.
    • A couple of times, someone points out a psychological observation to another psychiatrist and the psychiatrist's response is the equivalent of "Duh".
      (after Niles is trying unsuccessfully to get a hold of Maris)
      Frasier: Honestly, Niles, by calling her so many times you've given her all the power. You're much better off coming from a position of strength.
      Niles: Don't pour that sherry on your shirt — it will stain.
      Frasier: What?
      Niles: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought this was the portion of the afternoon where we gave each other patently obvious advice.
    • "I feel... hot. And foamy." "My hot and foamy must have exploded!" "He used to be a detective, you know."
  • Friends has this a lot. Dim-witted Joey is often the one being densely obvious, and Chandler the one answering humorously.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Robert and his beleaguered squire Lancel:
      Robert: What do you mean it's empty?
      Lancel: There's no more wine.
      Robert: Is that what empty means?! So. Get. More!
    • Tywin's miffed line, "You shot me?!" in "The Children." The snarky reply he gets is omitted.
    • Sansa and Jon argue about whether urging him to "not do what Ramsay wants" in the upcoming battle is too obvious to be useful advice.
    • When happening upon a siege, Podrik announces, "It's a siege!" Brienne retorts, "You have a keen military mind, Pod."
    • In the final episode, Arya says that she knows a killer when she sees one in reference to Daenerys. Other people might have also noticed this character was a killer by the way she slaughtered the entire population of King's Landing from dragonback in the previous episode.
  • Grey's Anatomy
    • In an episode where Christina is "helping out" in Ped's. She is told to play Hide and Seek with a patient and look in strange places while all the while the kid is hiding underneath the blankets.
      Arizona: She might be hiding in your pocket!
      Christina: No she's right here.
      [pulls up bedsheet covers]
    • A particularly dark one when Dr. Percy is shot. Want to guess what he said after that to the people that witnessed it?
      Percy: (clutching his gunshot wound) He shot me— He shot me! I've been shot!
  • The Hannah Montana episode where Miley needs some money we see Rico's stand with a tent up.
    Lily: What's going on at Rico's?
    Oliver: Oh there's a tent up.
  • Heroes:
    • "So, you're here to kill me," says Arthur Petrelli, after his son's been pointing a gun at his face for a minute or so.
    • "Gabriel, you're here."
  • Home Improvement has Tim doing an Enforced Plug on his Show Within a Show: "If it doesn't say Binford on it... someone else makes it."
  • House:
    • This exchange:
      Tritter: You're rude.
      House: Wow. You're, like, a detective or something.
    • House also gave us this gem:
      Chase: He has a partial HPRT enzyme deficiency. That means he could have Kelley-Seegmiller Syndrome.
      Cameron: But it's a partial deficiency. So it doesn't have to be Kelley-Seegmiller.
      House: Yeah, those are the two options. It either is or it isn't.
    • House loves this trope...
      Cameron: That's it. It's gotta be one of those [five diseases].
      House: You know what would be even better? Narrowing it all the way down to one.
    • He sure does...
      Student: You're reading a comic book.
      House: And you're drawing attention to your bosom by wearing a low-cut top. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought we were having a state-the-obvious contest. I'm competitive by nature.
    • Another one, though not from House this time:
      Nurse: (after House spits on a surgeon to prevent him performing a needless operation) We can't do this operation now!
      Surgeon: Ya think?!
  • Interview with the Vampire (2022):
    • "...After the Phantoms of Your Former Self": Just after Louis de Pointe du Lac pukes as he adjusts to his new vampire body, Lestat de Lioncourt unnecessarily adds, "And then there's the retching."
    • "Is My Very Nature That of a Devil": Invoked by Jonah Macon after Louis notices his military uniform.
      Louis: You're enlisted?
      Jonah: Ain't you good at noticing what's plain?
    • "A Vile Hunger for Your Hammering Heart": After Daniel Molloy is attacked by Louis' People Puppets skill because he wouldn't back down about the missing pages in Claudia's diary, Rashid elucidates why Louis reacted the way he did, as if Daniel didn't already know.
      Rashid: Mr. du Lac occasionally finds it difficult to talk about Claudia.
      Daniel: (has a "No shit, Sherlock" expression as he glares at Rashid) Got that.
  • Kamen Rider Kabuto: They seem to be worried that we're going to forget what Clock Up does, because every couple of episodes a voice-over jumps in to tell us (paraphrasing): "You see how everything else is moving in slow motion? That's because they're moving really, really fast."
  • In the Law & Order episode "Mammon", Ed Green looks at the body of a man who has been brutally beaten to death and says, "Somebody didn't like this dude."

  • Legion: In the astral plane in "Chapter 27", Charles Xavier forcibly moves David Haller to a Blank White Void in order to prevent his son from killing Past Amahl Farouk, who was close to being asphyxiated with David's hands squeezing his throat. David then furiously states what his father had just seen.
    David: I had him!
    Charles: (deadpan) Yes, I saw the blood.
  • Kai, who filled the Spock/Data role in the cast of Lexx, has Captain Obvious duties.
    Zev: Who is "Poet Man"?
    Kai: A poet, perhaps.
  • In one episode of Lie to Me, the team comes across a dead body in the trunk of a car. Foster asks what happened to the victim, to which Lightman replies, "He died."
  • Live Forever As You Are Now with Alan Resnick: Alan's Schrader Clot graphic states such helpful information, such as that "people who look at this graphic see a blue brain" and "diagram shows clot in slightly different shade and with extra lines".
  • The Magicians (2016): Margo complains of Julia telling them blatantly obvious things in figuring out how to use the god-killing knife against the Beast in the last episode of season one.
  • On M*A*S*H, Radar presents a homesick Col. Potter with a beautifully appropriate gift on his wedding anniversary. There in plain sight, standing right next to Radar, is Sophie, a live horse.
    Radar: It's a horse, sir.
  • Jason in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers combined Captain Obvious with No Indoor Voice to hilarious effect.
    WHOA, THAT DUDE'S HUGE!
    IT'S GREEN RANGER!
    OH MAN, HE FROZE THE ZORDS. WE'RE HISTORY!
  • Nathan's "The probation worker's gone mental!" line from Misfits, when he'd already been warned about the probation worker's mentality and refused to believe it. In his defence, you probably wouldn't believe that your supervisor had suddenly turned into a murderous axe-wielding maniac until you saw it with your own eyes. Especially if you're The Ditz.
  • The narrator of Monsters Inside Me, a documentary series about parasites, has an annoying tendency to ask things like "But might this apparent spider bite be something more sinister...?". To which the answer is self-evident to anyone who knows what show they're watching.
  • Mythbusters often has someone reiterating what they've been doing, just in case you missed it. It alternates between individuals. Probably because there is a sizable segment of viewers who watch just for the kaboom. They need to be reminded how it works.
  • The Noddy Shop has two groups of characters whose personalities are based off this trope: The Ruby Reds and the Do-Wop Penguins. Often, they will repeat a statement that someone had already said seconds earlier or just tell the audience that a song or Noddy story is about to begin.
    • In "The Magic Key", one of the kids says that they'll name one of the dolls they found Big Ears because he has big ears.
  • Odd Squad:
    • In "Behind Enemy Mimes", when looking for the first clue O'Donahue left behind at an abandoned building, Oprah touches the wall and finds that it was freshly painted, and says this:
    Oprah: I found a clue. The paint's still wet. I can tell because I just touched it. And it was wet.
    • In "The Cherry-on-Top-inator", Otis and Olympia recite how they managed to stop the Puppy Master and Evil Knight from destroying the world by eavesdropping on them and getting wind of their plan. When they're finished, Ocean asks them if they stopped the plan, causing Otis to respond aptly with, "Is the world still here?"
    • Although it's justified since he is Obfuscating Stupidity, in the Season 2 finale "Odds and Ends", Ohlm, who is named the new Director of Precinct 13579 following Oprah's firing and exile, brings up ideas for a couple of changes, with one of them being only allowing kids to work at the precinct. Cue less-than-favorable reactions from the rest of the agents, with Oona pointing out that kids already do work at the precinct.
    • In "Portalandia", Oswald, Opal and Omar assemble a rectangular portal made of square tiles while Orla departs to do some strength training to prepare for action. She comes back a short while later to find the portal completely assembled, and this exchange ensues:
    Oswald: Pretty exciting, eh, Orla?
    Orla: It is a rectangle.
  • Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: While sinking in the Mallow Marsh:
    Alice: Knave, we need to get out of here.
    Knave: Really?
  • Parks and Recreation
    • Chris says that his "secret" to setting people up on dates is finding one person's best qualities, then finding someone else with those same qualities, and putting them together.
    • Ron hates making speeches so much that he'll only make a series of obvious statements:
      Ron: Welcome to "Visions of Nature". This room has several paintings in it, some are big, some are small. People did them and they are here now, I believe that after this is over they'll be hung in government buildings.
    • This is the Running Gag of Perd Hapley, the local news anchor, who combines this with Department of Redundancy Department:
      Perd: Issue number one is the first issue we're going to talk about.

      Perd: I have an update that contains new information.

      Perd: There you have it, where "it" is the thing Leslie Knope just said about this situation.

      Perd: Let's begin the show by starting it.

      Perd: There are some statistics that I want to share with you now, and they are numbers.
  • Justified Trope in the 1992 Australian mini-series Phoenix. Some hours into the investigation into a car bomb explosion that killed two police officers, Inspector Jock Brennan asks forensic scientist Ian "The Goose" Cochrane what he's come up with.
    Goose: We know it was a bomb, and it was planted in that car.
    Jock: (quietly) You having me on?
    Goose: No...
    Jock: There was a bomb in that car... It's taken you all this time to work that out?!
    Goose: Yes, as a certainty. I mean, it might have been an artillery shell... It might have been a bomb planted in a manhole under the car... I mean the car might have had nothing to do with the bomb—there ​are all sorts of alternatives to the obvious.
  • The 11/4/2016 episode of Pointless has this from Richard when giving Pointless answers to the most powerful people in the world:
    Richard: King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, he's the King of Saudi Arabia.
  • In QI, when Clive Anderson was trying to compare restaurants that would be bad for fire-eaters because they don't serve fire to vegetarian restaurants.
    Clive: There are vegetatrion restaurants aren't there, where you can't get meat.
    Stephen: All vegetarian restaurants, I think...
    Clive: Yes. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that sentence so far.
    Rob:: "There are vegetarian restaurants were you can't get meat". To quote the great John Cleese, 'what's your specialist subject? The bleedin' obvious'.
  • Red Dwarf:
    • Plenty of comedic mileage comes from it:
      Holly: A stasis leak is a leak, right, in stasis. Hence the name "a stasis leak".

      Rimmer: (trying to save his past self) I've come to warn you, in three million years you'll be dead!
      Past Rimmer: Will I really?

      Cat: (examining an arrow) Yep, this came from a bow all right.
    • And it should be noted that at the very start of the series, the main character Lister comes out of a stasis and the computer tells him all crewmembers are dead. Lister promptly continues to ask of every single crewmember if they are dead, and the computer keeps saying that yes, that member of the crew is dead, too.
  • Rush Hour has this exchange:
    Detective Lee: I saw my landlord smoking in the lobby. The lobby is a no smoking zone, so I wrote him a citation. The next day, my rent was raised to ten million dollars a month.
    Gerald Page: You know what? I don't think that was a coincidence. I think he did that to get back at you! Right?
    Detective Carter: I think you're a genius.
  • Sabrina the Teenage Witch invoked this trope with Salem Saberhagen. In one episode he announced, in a completely blasé tone of voice, that the phone was ringing. Later in the same episode, when a small tornado was tearing through the house, he said, "Tornado in the house" in the same tone.
  • Saturday Night Live: During Norm Macdonald's tenure as the host of Weekend Update, he would sometimes report a recent event with a predictable outcome or an obvious statement made by a notable person, then tell the audience that they could read more about it in Duh magazine.
  • Sharpe gives us this gem:
    (after being run through with a sword) "You have killed me, sir..."
  • Spartacus: Blood and Sand: When Batiatus enters Spatacus into the Pit, both fighters receive random weapons. Spartacus gets old-school brass knuckles, while his opponent receives giant, spiked cesti. Barca observes that Spartacus's opponent has the advantage, which causes the irritable Batiatus to snap at him for stating the obvious.
  • Stargate:
    • Stargate SG-1:
      • Samantha Carter, in her position as SG-1's designated Ms. Exposition, has more than a few moments of this. Which was somewhat amusing during the first two seasons, where she actually held the rank of Captain.
      • In "Children of the Gods", the pilot episode of SG-1, a doctor is performing an autopsy on a Jaffa, and pulls out the Goa'uld symbiote.
        Doctor: It's not human!
        Jack: You think?
      • O'Neill used his snarky, "You think?" quite often in the series to lampshade Captain Obvious moments. It became one of his Catch Phrases.
      • In the season seven episode "Birthright, Part 1", Bra'tac and Teal'c walk through a battlefield filled with dead Jaffa. Teal'c notes that there were two Goa'uld there with their respective armies. Bra'tac replies "This meeting did not go well." Really? Because when we see dead guys, we assume things were going great!
    • Zelenka on Stargate Atlantis is often dismissed as a Captain Obvious by McKay after coming up with some incredibly complex science idea which McKay already came up with. McKay, though, also has his share of these, to the point that in one episode, somebody called him Captain Obvious.
    • Varro in Stargate Universe presumably held the rank of Captain Obvious in the Lucian Alliance. In the episode "The Hunt", after an attack by a creature other than the one they're hunting, he chimes in with "there's more than one of them." His wisdom doesn't end there, though; he soon follows up with the equally astute observation that "the fact that we're dealing with more than one of them reduces our chances of finding T.J. and Reynolds alive."
  • Star Trek:
    • Counselor Troi from Star Trek: The Next Generation does this a lot. An alien will appear on the viewscreen and rant, rave, posture and threaten the Enterprise. Troi will lean over to the Captain and murmur, "I sense hostility..."
      • Sometimes lampshaded:
        Troi: You're upset.
        K’Ehleyr: Your finely honed Betazoid senses tell you that?
        Troi: That, and the table. (which K’Ehleyr just destroyed with her bare hands)
        (K'Ehleyr smiles faintly)
    • Troi was following in the footsteps of Leonard McCoy of Star Trek: The Original Series, who spat contemptuously at the medicine of previous eras, and yet, despite the miraculous 23rd-century technology that he possessed, seldom gave a diagnosis more detailed than "He's Dead, Jim!"
    • Also, in multiple Trek series, an enemy ship will go to warp, while the Enterprise (Voyager, Defiant, etc.) is damaged, busy, or just not fast enough to keep up. After watching this happen, someone will always say "they're gone," even if they've also just reported the enemy ship's departure. Once every third episode, you were liable to see a situation like this:
      (Zip! Phoom! Villains disappear as everyone watches on insanely big viewscreen)
      Paris: They went to Ultrawarp Factor Eleventy-Zillion, Captain. [Pause] They're gone.
    • This is often supposed to indicate that the departing vessel has slipped beyond sensor range which is supposed to be impressive given the range of Starfleet sensors.
    • In the original series episode "The Changeling", a space probe called Nomad, convinced that its mission is to destroy all "biological units", mistakes Kirk for its creator. This buys the crew some time until Kirk lets slip that he is a biological unit. Nomad declares it needs to "re-evaluate" and floats off. Spock's response?
      Spock: Captain, it may have been unwise to admit to Nomad that you are a biological unit.
    • In "The Savage Curtain", Kirk is told "if you and Spock survive, you return to your vessel. If you do not... your existence is ended."
    • Kirk also has a tendency to repeat what was just said. From "Amok Time":
      Kirk: By Vulcan biology, do you mean the biology of Vulcans?
      • Justified here in that this was probably the only way Spock's particular problem in this episode could be brought up on 1960s television. What makes the line even funnier is that technically, the phrase "Vulcan biology" is syntactically ambiguous. "Vulcan biology" can refer to either the biological knowledge of Vulcans (as a body of work), or the actual biological functions of Vulcans. A request for clarification might have been completely justified... if the supplied alternative wasn't exactly as ambiguous as the original statement.
    • Here's another. Justified in-universe, as Kirk is saying that Spock's standard response, "Insufficient data", is not good enough as an answer. Because it's obvious.
      Kirk: Insufficient data is not sufficient, Mr. Spock.
    • In the TOS episode "Catspaw," Kirk and a few of the other main characters beam down to a planet only to have a set of witchy apparitions chant spooky doggerel at them, warning them of their impending death if they do not leave. After the apparitions disappear, Kirk asks his accompanying crew-members for their observations. His first-officer doesn't miss a beat.
      Spock: Very bad poetry, Captain.
    • In another episode of The Next Generation, a computer gone haywire causes an interface to nearly electrocute Geordi. Data's observation in the aftermath?
      Data: This is yet another example of how our actions have random results.
      Geordi: Thanks, Data. I noticed.
    • In Star Trek: Voyager, a female Q pegs this trope as a trait of the entire Vulcan species.
      Female Q: The Vulcan talent for stating the obvious never ceases to amaze me.
    • Captain Kathryn "Obvious" Janeway of Star Trek: Voyager demonstrated an incredible grasp of temporal physics when Harry Kim was teleported to a whereabouts the crew was unable to ascertain.
      Janeway: How long until we have to leave?
      Bridge: I'd say we're safe for another two hours.
      Janeway: That gives us two hours to find Mr. Kim.
  • On Supernatural, it seems at least Once an Episode that either Dean or Sam will point out to the other that the two of them are brothers. Then during an episode in which they were in an alternate reality and didn't know each other, darned if Dean didn't say to Sam, "I don't know you."
  • Lampshaded on Teen Wolf, when Scott and Stiles chase the Kanima into a club.
    Scott: Dude, everyone in here's a dude! I think we're in a gay club.
    (pan over to Stiles, surrounded by drag queens, one of whom is petting the side of his head)
    Stiles: Man, nothing gets past those keen werewolf senses, huh, Scott?
  • Midge from That '70s Show loves these.
    Midge: Bob, if you tell them, they'll know!
  • The Thick of It: "If somebody mentions my name, then my name will be mentioned." "Well, that's obvious."
  • Many of the headlines featured on Jay Leno's run on The Tonight Show, such as this gem: "Starvation leads to health hazards." (Jay Leno's response: "Really? I find I'm feeling hungry all the time.")
  • The Torchwood episode "Dead Man Walking" gave us this scriptwriting gem: "What happened to the town when death walked among them?" "People died."
  • From the Victorious episode "Survival of the Hottest" (a.k.a. "Stuck in an RV"):
    Jade: We... we gotta get out of here.
    Tori: Yeah... Thank you! Catherine Obvious!
    Jade: The expression is 'thank you, Captain Obvious'.
    Tori: It's not 'Catherine'?
    Trina: No...
    Beck: Who would Catherine be?
    Tori: (upset) Catherine could be a captain!
  • Wellington Paranormal: In 'Mt Vic Hooters', Minogue brings up the question of whether or not you're allowed to keep on being a cop if you're dead. Sgt Maaka brings the logic:
    Maaka: Once you're dead, you—you're not employed anymore, because you're dead.
  • From The West Wing, after CJ falls into a pool:
    Toby: CJ, you fell into the pool there.
  • In one sketch on the comedy-improv show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Colin Mochrie was given the job of playing a superhero named, literally, Captain Obvious. "I'm standing. I'm looking around. That's air going into my lungs..."
  • In The X-Files episode "The Erlenmeyer Flask", a microbiology expert explains the rudiments of genetics — material taught in any high school's freshman biology class — to Agent Scully, a fully qualified doctor. While some viewers of the show might have needed the refresher course, Scully absolutely should not have, and turning her into The Watson for this kind of material just does her a disservice. The episode "Humbug" has something similar, with Mulder telling Scully what ichthyosis is.
  • From The Young Ones:
    Maggie: And now, I'm gonna be looking at what it's like to be a young unemployed adult! Because — more young adults are becoming unemployed on account of they can't find work! Basically, the problem is this: if you haven't got a job, then you outta work! And that means only one thing — unemployment!
  • Young Sheldon: Georgie tends to make statements that are fascinating to him but obvious to everyone else, including his realization that E.T.'s human friend Elliott has a name starting with an E and ending with a T.


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