Stating The Simple Solution / Live-Action TV

Stating the Simple Solution in Live-Action TV series.

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• Angel:
  • In "War Zone", Gunn locks Angel in a meat locker, and Angel takes pains to try to break himself out. Wesley and Cordelia show up and just open the door from the outside, asking why he didn't just call for help on his cell phone.
  • Wolfram & Hart usually send demons and assassins after Angel and go through grandiose Evil Plans. In "Carpe Noctem", Gavin Park points out that they can easily put Angel and his crew out of business by simply informing the government of Angel's ID issues; of course, soon after he points this out, Lilah Morgan gives Angel all the documents he needs just to spite him.
    Gavin: The guy has no social security number, no taxpayer ID, no last name as far as I know. How can he go down to the building department, or anywhere else in officialdom for that matter? He's the rat and we're the maze.
• Arrowverse:
  • Legends of Tomorrow:
    • In Season 1, Vandal Savage prevents Kendra from killing him by revealing that he has her boyfriend, Carter, brainwashed. Savage is the only one who can free him, so Kendra has to let him live and try to force him to free Carter. Rory points out (and Sara and Snart agree) that Carter reincarnates; even if there is no way to save this particular incarnation, they have a timeship and can just find a sane one somewhere else. To make it worse, Carter eventually breaks free of the brainwashing on his own, meaning Savage's threat that Carter would be brainwashed forever without him wasn't even true.
    • In Season 2, the Big Bad Eobard Thawne never really tries to actually kill the Legends, despite being able to do it in the space of a second, frequently coming up with other means to deal with them. His partners Damien Darhk and Malcolm Merlyn keep invoking this trope, but he ignores them. He finally takes the gloves off in the season finale, ripping Ray's heart out (luckily, there's another version of Ray.) Off that, Thawne is constantly running from the Black Flash who can detect him by his speed. When he finally tells this to Darhk and Merlyn, they suggest a very easy answer: Stop running.
    • Likewise with Thawne, when he and the Legion rewrite the world to their own liking, they leave the Legends alive to suffer in various ways. Thawne is greatly annoyed when the Legends end up being a problem after all.
      Thawne: I should have wiped you from existence when I had the chance. Do you have any idea how infuriating it is to know that Merlyn was right?
  • In The Flash (2014), the team are trying to find a country music star who is being hunted by an enemy. They try to figure out ways to track her using their various powers and such but come up short. New teammate Ralph then asks if any of them have checked her website.
• The Big Bang Theory:
  • This is how Amy sets up one of the main plotlines of "The Raiders Minimization". When Sheldon shows her Raiders of the Lost Ark, she says it's an okay movie though she says that Indiana Jones was not necessary to the plot and the film would have ended the same without him. When Sheldon, a huge fan of Raiders, asks her to clarify her position, she says that if Indiana Jones had not interfered, the Nazis would've still taken the ark to the uninhabited island, opened it, and died. As Sheldon looks for something to ruin that Amy likes out of spite, he explains to the guys Amy's realization, but when Raj and Howard point out that the Nazis were digging in the wrong place because Indiana Jones sabotaged their search, Leonard points out that if he wasn't involved, the Nazis would've found the ark the first time, opened it, and killed themselves.
  • In another episode, when Sheldon is sick, he camps out in Penny's section at the Cheesecake Factory in order to have soup. When Penny asks why he didn't just have soup delivered to his apartment (thereby allowing him to stay in bed and rest), he hesitates and admits that he didn't think of it.
• In The Blacklist, an eco-terrorist is flying a helicopter to cause a nuclear accident. Aram uses his hacking skills to get into the helicopter's computer and talks of how he can use a special program to undo the air balance of the copter and drive it off course. Director Ressler angrily asks "can't you just shut down the rotor? Shut the damn thing down?" Adar pauses and realizes he can do that to ground the copter.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • The Judge is said to be a demon so strong that "no weapon forged" can harm him. In "Innocence", Buffy points out that what constitutes a "weapon forged" has changed a lot in six hundred years. To prove her point, Buffy shoots the Judge once — with a rocket launcher. No more Judge.
  • Angelus insists on using his mind games on Buffy, while Spike insists that he finish her off before she gets really mad and kills them all. Guess what? He's right — after what Angelus does to upset Giles, not only do they have to contend with a very pissed-off Slayer, but she's hot on the heels of her Watcher, who is whaling on Angelus with a flaming baseball bat after throwing a molotov cocktail into the factory.
    Spike: Why don't you rip her lungs out? It might make an impression.
    Angelus: Lacks... poetry.
    Spike: Doesn't have to. What rhymes with lungs?
  • In "Earshot", Buffy tries to use her temporary mind-reading powers to get an answer out of Angel without him noticing, only to realize that it doesn't work on vampires:
    Angel: You don't have to play games with me, Buffy. Ever.
    Buffy: Well, you're not exactly Joe-here's-what-I'm-thinking.
    Angel: So ask me.
    Buffy: Oh, but that would have made sense...
  • Warren Mears, after once again having his plans thwarted, finally tries this in "Seeing Red" by bringing a gun and shooting Buffy. It backfires when Buffy survives, and his parting shots cause arguably the show's most shocking case of Anyone Can Die and lead directly and promptly to his very painful death by flaying courtesy of Willow.
    Vampire: [at Willy's bar, watching a news report about Buffy surviving being shot, to Warren] Yeah. I was gonna eat you myself during the commercial, but now I think it'll be more fun to let the Slayer de-gut you. Might wanna get a head start, my friend. 'Cause this girl is gonna be coming for you, big time.

• Burn Notice:
  • Michael could have dealt with any number of cases by shooting the villain of the week, a fact that Fiona never hesitates to point out. Justified, here: depending on the circumstances, Michael will make the point that either they don't want a trail of bodies leading back to them or that if they do things his way they can take a whole gang down. In Michael's words (from the first episode):
    Michael: I'll take a hardware store over a gun any day. Guns make you stupid; better to fight your wars with duct tape. Duct tape makes you smart.
  • Also, when Michael goes undercover one or more of the crook's other associates will often wonder why they don't just shoot Michael when he's pretty clearly lying to them or making unhelpful suggestions that are likely to get them caught and/or killed. Semi-justified here, in that Michael is very good at engineering situations to prevent the decision-making crooks from actually pulling the trigger (most often by making his lies just plausible enough to make him seem useful—and hey, he's a trained spy: the government spent thousands if not millions teaching him how to do just this).
  • Later, when Michael does start to use bullets instead of more complicated solutions, things start to go hairy for him fast, such as when he straight-up murders his former mentor, who is unarmed at this point and is in his own CIA office.
• Cobra Kai: In the third season, both Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence, along with their students, are being harassed by rival sensei and former Sociopathic Soldier John Kreese. Daniel's solution is to re-open his dojo in order to teach the kids of the Valley awesome self-defence karate skills: his wife Amanda's solution is to call the police and get a restraining order. Unfortunately, when they try this, they find that Kreese beat them to it: he already has a restraining order against Amanda from when she went to his dojo and punched him in a fit of anger, and the cop on the desk is unimpressed by how she harassed an innocent veteran. With that option off the table, Amanda gives her full support to Daniel and his dojo.
  • Throughout the series, certain characters (particularly Demitri) say that the solution to bullying (first from generic bullies, then from rival dojos) would be to get a teacher or another adult involved. When the characters try it, it never works, or it makes things worse.
• Subverted as a rule in Criminal Minds. Many of the unknown subjects, or "Unsubs," in the show don't kill indiscriminately—they have deep psychological issues that prompt them to murder their victims in highly specific ways. Heck, some of them don't even want to murder people—they're just trying to soothe some other psychosis, and their methods of doing so prove lethal (case in point: the woman who kidnapped women to turn into life-sized dolls because her real dolls were stolen by her stepfather, who sexually and physically abused her).
• In the CSI episode "Unshockable", when discussing how a victim was poisoned with Sarin when already knocked out, Sara asks:
  "Why didn't he just shoot him?"
• Played straight in Dark Angel when Lydecker is pointing a gun at a sleeping Max and decides to talk instead of shoot, giving her the opportunity to jump up and roundhouse kick him in the face. However, this is justified by a) Max being an expensive asset; and b) Lydecker regarding the X-5s as his children, and not being fond of the idea of them getting hurt.
• In the Dinosaurs episode "Monster Under The Bed", the titular Monster has captured the Sinclair children and plans to eat them in retribution over their family's house being built over his home. At the end of the episode, Baby suggests that they just move their house so it's no longer an issue. Despite newscaster Howard Handupme itching for ratings-worthy fight between it and the police, the Monster agrees.
• Doctor Who:
  • Justified in the episode "Planet of the Ood" when business owner Mr. Halpen declined to shoot the Doctor and Donna, saying that there will likely be a full investigation and their bodies will likely be found. If he did shoot them, it would create many problems for him legally in the future; but by leaving them to the Ood, they'll die just like all the other people around and there's no trouble beyond what's already happened.
  • In "The Day of the Doctor" the 10th, 11th, and War Doctors programmed their sonic screwdrivers to dissolve the wooden door of their cell in the Tower of London. As they are about to so, Clara opens the unlocked door.
    Clara: Three of you in one cell, and none of you thought to try the door?
  • In "The Ghost Monument", Ryan's solution to being pinned down behind cover with alien robots firing lasers at him is to pick up one of their guns and start firing back, as opposed to the Doctor's pacifism. The robots crumple to the ground...and then get back up again, since they were built to be immune to their own weaponry. Ryan promptly hides.
• In the Drake & Josh episode "Number One Fan", Josh takes the Campfire Kids to the movie theater to learn about wilderness navigation. He asks the kids a hypothetical question about them getting dropped off in the middle of nowhere with only a compass and a topographic map as guides, but Megan insists that she could simply call her mother on her cellphone.
  Josh: It's broken! It fell in the lake, a bear ate it, the point is you're lost! And all you have is a compass and a topographical map of the region.
  Megan: So, I have a compass and a topographical map, but I don't have my cell phone?
  Josh: That tears it; we're seeing a movie!
• Played for laughs in El Chavo del ocho. The kids were playing orchestra but they simply sounded horrible. La Chilindra, who was the "coductor", complained that they couldn't play alright, and el Chavo suggested an idea, that instead of playing whatever they were, all of them play the same song.
• Pretty much happens in every episode of Eureka. The super-scientists will cause a problem and go through various complex methods to try and solve it. It's Carter (the one-non genius in the town) who comes up with the solution that's so simple that it never occurs to the geniuses and saves the day.
• In Fargo, Bear Gerhardt makes good arguments about why Floyd should be the one who directs the company.
• Frasier: Often, Frasier or Niles (or Frasier and Niles) will come up with some overly elaborate psychoanalysis of a situation, and someone, either Martin, Daphne or Roz, will offer a much more sensible and practical alternative, which is brushed off because Frasier and / or Niles think they know better. And it all ends in flames. At least one time, a slight justification is given, when Frasier insists on elaborate evasion games with Lilith. Daphne asks why he doesn't just talk to her, and Frasier says they tried that while they were married.
  Frasier: We were better at games.
• Once combined with Dumbass Has a Point in Gilligan's Island. It's been discovered that the Howells' marriage was not legally binding (the officiant being a fraud), which causes friction between them that is driving the other castaways batty. Gilligan says he has a solution, and the Skipper, fed up with Gilligan's Zany Schemes doesn't want to hear it... when Gilligan's solution is to merely have the Skipper, who is considered to have the authority to officiate a wedding when on a craft in water, perform a simple ceremony while standing on a raft in the lagoon. Skipper seems flabbergasted and agrees.
• In the CS Centrl Gag Sub of Hikari Sentai Maskman, Okelampa, the guy who shows up solely to resurrect the monsters as giants when they get shot by the Maskman asks "Why don't the Maskman shoot me first?"
• Subverted in the Horrible Histories about World War II German prisoner-of-war camps, and Allied prisoners continually escaping from them (forcing German troops to be tied up guarding prisoners instead of fighting the war):
  Commandant Klinsman: You give me one good reason why I shouldn't just shoot you right here on the spot.
  Squadron Leader Higgins: Because it's against the Geneva Convention to shoot officers.
  Klinsman: Yes, forgot about that.
• In the Dark: In Season 4, after each is kicked out by Leslie and their car stolen, Felix moans "we are at rock bottom" and have nowhere to go. Max just stares at him before pointing out Felix can simply call his millionaire grandmother to let them stay at her mansion for a while.
• In Inhumans, Karnak needs to suture Jen's wound to prevent her bleeding out. He starts striping a palm frond to use as a makeshift solution. Jen suggests just using her travel sewing kit she keeps on her. Clothes tend to catch and rip on the trees.
• In Kamen Rider Build, protagonist Sento's Transformation Belt runs off of "Full Bottles" which contain the essence of animals, machines, etc. He tries to identify Best Matches (pairs with high compatibility) because they're more powerful and does so with a testing device built into the wall of his Elaborate Underground Base. After being told all this, Dumb Muscle Ryuga tries it out and the very first pair of Bottles he tests turns out to be a Best Match, to Sento's amazement. Ryuga explains that his logic was "living creature plus inanimate object", something that Sento had dismissed as too obvious in spite of the fact that the Best Matches he had already discovered followed this pattern^note like Rabbit Tank and Gorilla (Dia)Mond.
• Invoked in the past tense on Law & Order, when a character asks an investigator why, if the convicted killer's pleas that he'd not intended to commit murder were untrue, he didn't shoot the woman he'd struck with a tire iron. "The noise" is the reply.
• In Person of Interest, Harold Finch realizes a USB drive he needs is on the person of one of Reese's targets. He begins contriving a rather complex plan to get it, or the data, when Reese simply walks past the man, shoulder-checks him, and grabs the USB drive out of his pocket when the man is distracted.
• MacGyver (1985): In "Deadly Silents", Karl's partner Neil keeps urging to just shoot Mac and Pinky and dump their bodies somewhere. After multiple attempts to Make It Look Like an Accident fail, Karl gives in and agrees to just shoot them. It fails.
• Displayed in Major Crimes: Captain Sharon Raydor is attempting to get psychiatrist Dr. Joe to break confidentiality on his sessions with her foster son, first as the police officer in charge of his safety ^note He's a material witness in a serial killer's murder trial., then as his legal guardian. Dr. Joe politely shoots her down on both counts, lays out the legal requirements for breaking confidentiality, and suggests an alternative: Just talk to her foster son.
• In his review of the first season of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Linkara noted a plot-point that if Rita Repulsa knows the identities of the Rangers, why didn't she just blow up their houses?
• NUMB3RS: In the episode "Hot Shot", Colby watches Megan analyze a victim's whole room, deduce her personality, and finger a potential suspect in her ex-boyfriend. Then he holds up his phone and tells her that David figured out the same thing by talking to the neighbor, but it was fun watching her work anyway.
• In Pushing Daisies, the murderers will never use mundane methods to either kill their victims or in their attempts to kill the heroes when they have the heroes captured (which they almost always do). This trope is eventually lampshaded in the episode "Smell of Success":
  Emerson Cod: Death by scratch and sniff. What the hell happened to people shooting each other with guns?
• Red Dwarf:
  • In "Rimmerworld" (which provides the page quote), Lister details an elaborate escape plan involving a brick from the wall, disguises, etc. Kryten says that they could do that, or they could use the teleporter.
  • A similar moment happens in the Back to Earth special. Taking a cue from Blade Runner, Rimmer obtains the phone number of somebody they're looking for using an extremely long-winded and complicated form of Zoom and Enhance on a photograph, by bouncing off the reflections of various objects in the picture (and some that aren't) until they get the man's number on the back of his business card by seeing a reverse angle of the original photo. After the whole charade, Kryten bluntly asks:
    Kryten: Sir, wouldn't it have been easier to look him up in the phone book?
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World: In "Camelot", Roxton gets challenged to a joust by the villain Vordred, who accepts even though he has never done this before. As they prepare, Malone asks, "Wouldn't it be easier just to shoot him?" Roxton thanks him for the idea, but decides to play by their rules for now. He wins anyway.
• In Smallville, when Clark is talking to Oliver about dealing with Doomsday and saying he is going to the Fortress to find a way of sending it away, Oliver does this.
  Oliver: I can tell you how to conquer the beast. Kick his ass, Clark.
• Stargate-verse:
  • Stargate SG-1:
    • In "The Serpent's Lair", the team is standing at the top of a long shaft, looking down at their target, the ship's shield generator. Bra'tac details a plan for them to fight their way through a series of corridors to reach the bottom of the shaft, at which point, they'll disable the generator. O'Neill doesn't actually say anything, he just removes a couple of grenades from his equipment, pulls the pins, and drops them down the shaft. It should be noted this is the moment where Bra'tac starts seeing the Tau'ri as warriors worthy of respect.
    • Invoked in the episode "Small Victories". Thor borrows Major Carter specifically because humans would think of the simple solutions that the Asgard would overlook. In this case, it was the idea to fly the Asgard's newest ship remotely so the Replicators would chase it, then blowing up the ship, destroying the Replicators with it.
    • In "Wormhole X-Treme!", O'Neill is acting as the military advisor to Martin's TV show, and when the question is brought up of "How can they defeat the giant alien without being weightless?", O'Neill says "Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?", and is commended for his innovative thinking. Martin was not impressed.
    • When the team discover Khalek, a genetically engineered clone of Big Bad Anubis, it is Daniel of all people who simply suggest killing him right then and there, because he is too powerful to risk his escape, and eventually his ascension.
  • Stargate Atlantis:
    • This is frequently Ronon's job. For example, in one episode McKay's complex plan to stop the Asuran Replicators falls through and he starts panicking, Ronon's response is that they have guns that can kill Replicators... why not just shoot them all?
      Todd: I was going to write a program that would trigger a slow overload in the primary capacitor, but I don't think we have time for that now.
      Ronon: I was just gonna blow it up.
      Todd: Naturally.
    • Used to highlight the incompatibility of Ronon and Keller. When the two are hiding from the Wraith who have taken over their ship, they agree that they need to disable the ship so the Wraith can't get to their destination. Keller muses about how to hack into the security system and disable the various systems one-by-one. Ronon just starts shooting out control panels.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • In "Apocalypse Rising", suspecting that Gowron, supreme leader of the Klingon Empire, is a Changeling infiltrator, General Martok allows Sisko and co. to expose him — by killing Gowron. Worf attacks Gowron and the two fight; at this point, Martok invokes this trope. Martok's suggestion is quite uncharacteristic (and dishonorable) for a Klingon warrior, tipping Odo to the fact that he, not Gowron, is the real changeling.
    • In another episode, the Defiant is captured in battle by the Dominion. Sisko and crew are kept alive, though, because the Dominion ship has a different mission to perform elsewhere. The Jem'Hadar contingent left in control of the ship is led by the arrogant first of a new batch of clones with a seasoned veteran of an older generation as his second-in-command. The veteran brings this trope up repeatedly to his superior, saying that the value of the crew helping with repairs is surely outweighed by the fact that they're no doubt scheming of a way to take back control of the ship (because he's smart enough to know that's exactly what he would do in their place), but he's ignored. At the end of the episode, Sisko lampshades this, telling the dying veteran "Your leader should have listened to you." The Jem'Hadar is resigned — his purpose, after all, was to serve the Founders' will, and they put the new young leader in charge.
  • Star Trek: Voyager: "Timeless" involves a Bad Future where Chakotay and Harry are the sole survivors of Voyager after a newly installed slipstream drive malfunctioned mid-warp and the ship crash-landed on an ice planet outside the Alpha Quadrant, killing everyone aboard (Harry and Chakotay were aboard the Delta Flyer mapping Voyager's course). With the help of the Doctor, whose program was still in working order, they try to send new course corrections which would get everybody back to Earth alive. When it doesn't work, the Doctor suggests sending course corrections which would abort the jump while still saving everybody's lives. Sure enough, this plan works and the ship is saved, with the jump still significantly shortening their trip home.
• In The Terror, after the Hickey we've been following for the entire show reveals that he is actually an imposter, who killed the real Hickey to join the expedition:
  Crozier: You could've just joined up!
• That Mitchell and Webb Look:
  • "Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit", a mismatched pair of superheroes who fight crime. In each sketch, BMX Bandit would draw up a complicated strategy involving his BMX tricks, only for Angel Summoner to point out it's easier to just summon some angels to do everything for them. Subverted in the final installment, when it's BMX Bandit suggesting some angel-summoning, rather than risk his life trying to perform an impossible jump and fight a group of terrorists, but Angel Summoner refuses to because of a previous agreement. Then it turns out he summoned some angels anyway.
  • One sketch revolves around a medieval king constantly giving jobs to his Camp Gay underling / crush Lucentio, much to the aggravation of his lords, since Lucentio is pretty useless. Eventually, one of the lords approaches the king and asks why he doesn't just have sex with Lucentio, rather than giving him important jobs and titles. So he does.
• In The X-Files, when the Syndicate discusses killing Mulder to keep him from thwarting their plans, several of the members argue against this, pointing out that such an action would just make Mulder a martyr and draw unnecessary attention to Mulder's investigations into the X-Files. By leaving him alive and not doing anything, they just make Mulder look like a paranoid Cloudcuckoolander who no one outside of UFO circles will take seriously.

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