Basic Trope: Christmas lights cause trouble.
- Straight: Carl decides to rig up some Christmas lights. He spends an hour untangling the cord and looking for the one broken bulb that makes them all go out.
- Exaggerated:
- Carl decides to rig up some Christmas lights. He first spends an hour untangling the cords, at one point getting himself wrapped up in the light strings. Then he falls off the ladder multiple times while rigging them up. When he's done, he discovers that the cord is too short. He can't find any extension cords at home, so he goes to buy some. He visits five stores before finally finding one that actually has extension cords. When he finally plugs in the light string, it doesn't work. He then spends a lot of time looking for the broken bulb, replaces it, plugs in the lights again... and blows a fuse.
- Carl plugs in the Christmas lights. Somehow they malfunction badly enough to set his house on fire.
- Downplayed: The light string has one broken light, but the rest still work. Carl spends a few extra minutes arranging the string so that the broken light isn't visible.
- Justified:
- When Carl tries to rig up the lights, he messes up because he's a klutz.
- (from Exaggerated #2) The lights were seriously old and the frayed cord had a short where it arced through the tree… the rest should be obvious.
- Inverted:
- Subverted: Carl has rigged up the Christmas lights, and is about to plug them in when he notices that a light looks broken. He thinks it means the whole string is broken, but plugs it in anyway in desperation. It turns out that the rest of the lights work fine.
- Double Subverted: Unfortunately, Alice is a perfectionist and insists that Carl take down the string and replace it with one where all the lights work.
- Parodied:
- "Acme Christmas Lights — they only take 30 minutes to untangle!"
- A commercial for Acme Christmas Lights tries to pass off the "one light goes out, they all go out" problem as a feature.Are you tired of rigging up your lights, only to discover that one of them doesn't work, and now there's an annoying gap between the lights? Acme Christmas Lights automatically turn themselves off as soon as one light goes out. Never have an imperfect Christmas display again!
- Zig-Zagged:
- Averted: Carl doesn't have any problems rigging up the Christmas lights.
- Enforced: The work is an ad for a simpler Christmas light product. It makes Carl really bad at handling normal light strings in an attempt to make them look hard to use.
- Lampshaded: "How did you even end up covered in Christmas lights?"
- Invoked: Alice wants to sabotage Carl's Christmas display, so she deliberately tangles his Christmas lights and breaks a bulb.
- Exploited:
- Defied: Carl decides to buy other types of Christmas decorations instead.
- Discussed: "Let me guess: Carl is grumpy because the Christmas lights don't work."
- Conversed: Vera and William are watching TV. In the show, Carl tells Alice that he's going to rig up the Christmas lights. Vera says, "$5 says that this will go wrong".
- Implied: Alice asks Carl why he's angry even though it's Christmas. Carl grumbles something about Christmas lights.
- Played for Drama:
- Carl is seriously injured after falling off the ladder while trying to rig up Christmas lights.
- Carl's son Daniel accidentally ruins Carl's light display. Carl then scolds him horribly, which makes Daniel miserable.
Go untangle the lights here.
