9-1-1 had an episode involving a bank robbery where the suspect was described as "wearing a mask". This is unhelpful enough on its own, but this episode aired during the COVID-19 Pandemic when literally everyone was wearing masks.
Adam-12 had a woman who could only get out that the guy who shot at her was a Latin male with a yellow shirt. A guy like that is found hiding in the yard and runs, causing Wells to insist he's the one when they catch him. Reed isn't sure and Wells says he trusts too easily. However, Reed was right; the real shooter is found a minute later-the woman's drunk husband.
A hilarious example in The Adventures of Lano and Woodley , when Frank spends about two minutes trying to ask a video shop clerk about a film whose title he can't remember, starring a famous actor whose name he can't remember, leading to him simply calling him "The Actor Guy". It gets worse when he tries to describe "The Actor Guy" to Colin and the clerk:
Frank: You'd know it. See, the thing is... the thing is that you would know him, he's got the hair, and the eyes, bit of a nose, and the mouth there, and he... it's all held together with a... like a face! Clerk:Shut up!
In Babylon 5, "There All the Honor Lies", a witness is Minbari — he is bald and has a bone on his head, which describes the entire race (apart from Delenn, who has hair and a bone on her head). The tone in his voice makes it clear that Sheridan is in Sarcasm Mode when he says it, knowing full well how useless the information is. Garibaldi echoes this sentiment when he mutters "We're going to need a big line-up room."
Kelly: Most armed hold-up victims are so freaked out that all they see is the gun. But George has got these guys down to their "blue on white high-cut joggers." Joss: Who wears high-cut joggers these days? Mark: Funnily enough, Joss, that wasn't the point Kelly was making.
Hank Schrader: So let me see if I'm following you here, Russell: you got this stuff from some guy at Gasparza's who was wearing tan pants, and who you're 80% sure had a mustache. That's it, right? That's your brain working at maximum capacity?
Brooklyn Nine-Nine once had an old lady who couldn't come up with a decent description of the suspect because the guy wasn't Caucasian. Apparently, the cops should be looking for a guy who was either Hispanic, Arab or Mexican, and either way, very Muslim.
Spike escapes from being held as an experimental subject by the Initiative, but is unable to recall any faces. Considering the kinds of things Buffy regularly goes up against, this following bit of information is relevant. Not particularly helpful, but relevant.
Buffy: So you saw their faces but you can't describe them? Spike: Well, they were human. Two eyes each, Kind of in the middle.
After first encountering Glory, the Season 5 Big Bad, all Buffy can tells Giles is that she looks human, acts like Cordelia and recently dyed her hair blonde.
Faith unhelpfully describes a demon as looking "demonic". Even though she'd knocked off his hat to expose his distinctive demon features, making him literally hatless.
Cordy: A nasty looking demon. Didn't recognize it. [Wesley writes 'N. D. U. O.' "Nasty Demon, Unknown Origin." on The Big Board] Angel: There's an awful lot of that in this town. I'm sure he'll feel right at home here.
Castle: Happens to Richard Castle when, owing to a chain of circumstances, he ends up outside while the police are storming a suspect's headquarters only for the suspect to (rather slowly) drive right past him. He misses the license plate, can't see anyone clearly through the tinted windows and ends up only able to vaguely describe the car to the cops, who — given that he's based a very lucrative mystery-writing career on describing things in detail — are less-than-impressed.
Castle: I... it is hard work being a witness. I'm surprised you catch anyone.
Derry Girls: When Uncle Colm is briefly held hostage by two members of the IRA, all he can remember about them is that one of them was slightly taller than the other - and he stresses that the difference was very slight. This comes up later in the episode, with a TV spot appealing for information about "two men of similar height".
El Chavo del ocho: Professor Girafales once gave Quico a cat as a birthday gift. When the cat vanished and Quico went looking for him, the only description he offered what that he had four paws. Don Ramon asked, in Sarcasm Mode, if he had two eyes. Comically Missing the Point, Quico confirmed it in excitement.
This applies to direction giving. In Cheers, Carla complains that Woody's directions to his house are useless because he told her he's in an apartment over a shop with dead ducks in the window. Because he lives in Chinatown, all of the shops have dead ducks in the windows, mutters Carla.
Similarly, an episode begins with Rebecca offering to take a drunk patron home. He can only identify his house as "blue" (also "You'll know it when you see it.")
Sam once tries to describe one of his past sexual conquests, who works for Robin Colcord as a secretary. The only description Sam can give is "blond and wears boots". Robin deadpans that she sounds like one of his employees.
Columbo: In "The Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case", when Columbo asks witnesses about the killer's build, one says he was heavy, another claims he seemed average, and a third claims he was light and possibly even a woman.
Parodied in one episode when the notorious "Ass Crack Bandit" terrorizes Greendale. Duncan (a psychology professor) and Britta (a psych major) are brought in to profile the Bandit, but the best that they can come up with is that "He's angry...OR just fell in love", and that he "Hates money, or loves it, or doesn't care about money, and hates butts or loves them." To show you just how far off they were, the Ass Crack Bandit was almost certainly Annie.
The majority of "Contemporary American Poultry" has Abed explaining how the study group took over the chicken fingers market at the college. At the end, it's revealed that the story was in response to Dean Pelton asking if he knows who stole the hairnets from the cafeteria. Abed suggests that it's "Someone with hair" note which really only eliminates Leonard and the Dean himself .
Occasionally lampshaded when the profilers give an especially vague description.
Local Cop: A white male, between twenty and forty living somewhere in Virginia?
At one point, when a profile turned up something like "middle-aged white man who hates his job," Morgan sarcastically offered to go arrest half of D.C. Fortunately for D.C, they can usually narrow it down eventually.
In "Snake Eyes", the profile indicated that they were looking for a gambler . . . in Atlantic City.
In "Middle Man," the team had a case in an Indiana farming community and their profile suggested that the UnSub was local and worked in agriculture. A local police officer then points out that half of Indiana is farmland.
CSI: NY: In the B case of 'Buzzkill,' Det. Angell presents Mac with quite an incomplete composite sketch of the perp, which looks like it's from a very cheap coloring book. His snarky reply:
Mac: So all we have to do is find everybody with two eyes, a nose and a mouth.
Dragnet episode "The Big Dog" has the cops investigating a purse-snatching dog. The victims give conflicting descriptions about the dog's size, color, etc. Justified of course: the actual crook had multiple trained dogs.
Elementary: Justified in "The Marchioness" when Sherlock is on the trail of a prolific hitman and is frustrated by a witness's useless description. It turns out the description was useless by design: the witness is the killer.
Played for Drama on ER. A rape victim is brought in and Sam tries to keep her conscious long enough to give a description to the police. She can only get out "White guy, dark hair" before succumbing to her injuries, exacerbated by Sam's attempts to keep her awake.
Double Subversion in Everybody Hates Chris where a cookie truck is held up by a man leading a group of scouts. The driver gives a thorough description of the man in question right down to having a limp, however since he started off by saying that the guy was black the police didn't hear anything else.
On Forever Abe thinks that someone stole a statue from his store so he has Henry do a Sherlock Scan to figure out who the thief was. Henry reluctantly takes a look but all he has to go on is a dust void on the table where the statue stood. From this he mockingly concludes that the suspect is someone tall enough and strong enough to pick up the statue without sliding it and thus disturbing the rest of the dust on the table (ie most adults and teenagers in the world).
In the The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episode where Will and Philip's mother sneak off to a rap concert has this exchange in the venue's backstage:
Stage Hand: Where do you think you're going? Philip: Pardon me. Have you seen a kid in wild, colorful clothing with an earring in his ear and the sides of his head shaved? [three young men around Will's age and fitting Philip's description walk right in front of them] Stage Hand: Nope.
This was also used in the second Christmas Episode when the Banks were held up and had all their Christmas presents stolen and the children gave a description of the suspect:
Town sheriff: So let me get this right: the suspect was a short or kinda-tall White man, with dirty-blonde to dark-brown hair, standing about five-feet-five to six-foot tall and weighing somewhere between 125 and 200 pounds. Will: Right. Oh, and dude'll be carrying my boombox! Town sheriff: Huh, right...(leaning over to whisper in the ear of their White Uncle, Frank)...what in the hell is a boombox? Frank:(makes a "I don't know" gesture to the sheriff)
From Full House, when Joey attempts to describe the woman who sold him a stolen car:
Joey: And those eyes, I'll never forget those eyes. [beat] There were two of them.
The Good Place: Chidi was so averse to decision making that he never named his dog. When it ran away, he posted signs saying "responds to long pauses".
The pilot episode of Gotham had a variant. The young Bruce Wayne gives a detailed description of his parents' killer, but since the killer was completely covered up, the description was entirely of the man's wardrobe, which isn't that helpful in identifying someone in an era where most people own more than one change of clothes. But it does provide one useful clue - Bruce pointed out that the killer wore 'shiny shoes', and none of the shoes owned by the original suspect had had a passing relationship with 'shiny' in months, thus proving to Gordon that the man was framed.
On an episode of Grandfathered, Jimmy and Sarah's preschooler granddaughter has been bitten twice on the playground, but the school refuses to name the culprit. So naturally they have to ask the kids for information. Considering the "witnesses" are three years old tops and can't even speak properly, they don't get anywhere. Jimmy's most promising lead is a drawing of the biter: a stick figure with exposed teeth.
Hill Street Blues: Inverted during a story arc involving a lengthy murder investigation, where a supposed witness was giving a description that was so detailed and such a perfect match for their suspect that Captain Furillo was a little suspicious, especially since reward money was involved. He was right; turns out the guy's girlfriend worked for the police department, and coached him with details that they deliberately hadn't released to the media.
When it comes to multi-race incidents, it's true to life according to David Simon, as portrayed in Homicide: Life on the Street. Whites and Hispanics are bad at generally telling Black and Asian people apart, and vice-versa. In Baltimore, about which Simon writes, the police joke that the most useless witness they can get is an Asian Store-Owner:
"All rook arike" is about as much as the detectives expect.
The InBESTigators: In "The Case of the Robot Robbery," the victim, Patrick, saw a mad professor steal his robot costume. Only problem was, half the school had come dressed as a mad professor, a character from a popular movie.
In The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret , Todd suspects that his subordinate Dave has stolen his entire inventory. When he gives a description to the police, he's completely unable to give any helpful information about him. The cop issues a sarcastic APB to lampshade Todd's useless description.
Subverted when Boyd is trying to find out who killed two drug dealers under his protection but the only witness is a big dog person and describes people by comparing them to dog breeds. The fact that the man she saw looked like a husky does not help Boyd much. However, when she mentions that like a husky the man had blue eyes, he realizes that it was Robert Quarles.
In season 4, the Marshals need to locate Drew Thompson who 30 years ago faked his own death. They have no official records of what he looked like and Drew made sure to destroy all photos of himself before he disappeared. They locate his ex-wife but all they get from her is a description of what he looked like 30 years ago and she might be lying about that. In desperation they have her look at DMV photos of local men who are the right age and she points out twenty four men who might be Drew. Boyd Crowder and the Detroit Mob are also searching for Drew but they don't fare much better. They end up resorting to taking photos of the men they think might be Drew and sending them to Theo Tonin who knew Drew in the 80s. It turns out that Drew is the local sheriff who was known to both sides and has been helping the Marshals in their search.
Kojak, "Knockover". The suspect is a tall short man, somewhere between 110-250 lbs. One eye brown, one blue, and a third one green.
Kojak: That's good work, Gallagher. I'll make sure there's something a little extra in your paycheck at the end of the week.
Las Vegas: A patsy who is involved in a fake poker chip scheme doesn't prove to be particularly helpful in identifying the source of the fake chips.
An early episode features an entire street full of people who have been dragged down to the precinct after a murder who can only offer vague, contradictory and nearly-useless descriptions of the victim, the suspect, and exactly what happened between them. Some of the witnesses were standing right next to one or both of these parties. The cops, not surprisingly, are a little exasperated. This episode was a comment on homelessness in New York at the time. Many of the witnesses were mentally ill people who had been dumped on the streets. The one moderately functional one says she didn't see anything because she doesn't have the glasses social services has been promising to get for her, and asks the cops if they can help her with that. Finally, one of the people, who is quite elderly, and was initially dismissed, actually turns out to be the healthiest, sanest person there, with some useful information; she had neighborhood watch training and took down the car's license plate number.
Mike Logan:[to the witness's husband] Can I hug her?
In the episode "License to Kill," the detectives try to get a description of a vehicle that was involved in a serious accident and most of the descriptions contradict each other. The only thing all the witnesses agree on is that the vehicle had a yellow ribbon bumper sticker, which is not useful at all because these bumper stickers are very common (and, usually being magnetic, very easily removed). In a subversion, there turns out to be a good reason for the differing descriptions: there were two vehicles.
In one episode, three people witness a child abduction, and none of the statements they give to police are consistent with each other. For instance, they can't agree on what color the kidnapper's van was, or even what race the kidnapper might have been. In this case, the viewer actually has the whole story, as they saw the abduction as well.
An earlier episode also involving a kidnapping has three witnesses give different descriptions of the car that was used to abduct the victim. One of them ends up being right.
Another episode has a suspect in a rape case be described as a young black man "wearing a hoodie."
In "Raw", Stabler tries to interview a group of children who were present at a playground shooting. Given that they're all young kids (and traumatized at that), the statements end up being...less than helpful; not only do they contradict each other at every turn, none of them turn out to be accurate.
Cragen: Kids give you anything? Elliot: Yeah, about 40 different versions about what happened. Cragen: Well, eyewitness accounts are bad enough with adults, what'd you expect from kids? Huang: Wild imaginations, high suggestibility, and difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality. Elliot: That's pretty much what I got.
In Liquidation, the first that is learned about one of the gang leaders is that he is usually disguised as a Red Army captain. Since the plot is set in 1946 Odessa, it's not much help to the investigation.
Little Lunch: In "The Relationship", the boys try to identify which of the grade 6 girls sent Rory the note. They are told she is the one with the ponytail. Needless to say, all of the grade 6 girls have ponytails.
The rather unhelpful description of Sayid that Shannon gives the security officer in a season 1 episode of Lost.
Shannon: Some Arab guy left his bag here. Officer: Can you describe him? Shannon: Arab?
The recurring MADtv character Miss Swan started out this way, driving cops insane by repeatedly describing a suspect.
Miss Swan: He look-a like a man.
Mindhunter: Holden's profile of the Atlanta child killer is basically just "black man in his 20's to 30's" to the exasperation of the people around him.
In "Mr. Monk and the 12th Man," a serial killer has struck and killed ten random people in random gruesome ways. Randy informs Stottlemeyer that the FBI has sent a psych profile down. Stottlemeyer promptly puts the file to his head and tries to guess what's in it.
Leland Stottlemeyer: Let me guess: the killer is between 30 and 45 years old, white male, does not work in an office, probably spent time in the military, and definitely hates his mother. [hands the file back to Randy] Randy Disher: Yeah. How did you know that? Leland Stottlemeyer: 'Cause that's what they always say. That's scrap paper.
In "Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger," Randy is chasing down a streaker who's been disrupting police press conferences.
Randy Disher:[on radio] We’re on foot, heading south towards Prospect! Dispatcher: Is there a description? Randy Disher: He’s wearing... gray sneakers. Dispatcher: Is there anything else? Randy Disher: He’s not Jewish!note Which under the circumstances is actually not a bad description: he's saying the suspect is uncircumcised.
The episode "Mr. Monk Takes Manhattan" sees Monk provide a detailed description of a suspect's left earlobe.
Murdoch Mysteries: In "Rich Boy, Poor Boy", Inspector' Brackenreid's son is kidnapped. The other boy who was present provides the police sketch artist with a detailed description... of the man's hat.
In one episode of NCIS, the victim's co-worker says that the victim called in sick, but that she saw her just an hour later walking down a street with a man that wasn't her husband, and that she didn't look sick at all. When Ziva asks her to describe the man, she answers that "he was a male." A subversion, though, since it turns out she was Obfuscating Stupidity. In another episode, a man witnesses a close friend being murdered right in front of him and he's so shocked by what he witnesses that the only thing he can remember about the killer is that he was wearing a blue hat.
Palmer's been the witness twice, and boy is he bad at it. In one episode, Ducky is stabbed, and Palmer's description of the woman is "She's wearing a green headscarf." They find the discarded scarf around the corner, so now they're looking for a woman without a headscarf. In the other episode, he sees both the suspect and his passport, but even under hypnosis, he can only describe the suspect as angry and the passport as blue (which, as McGee is quick to point out, is the most common color for passports, so they can't even begin to narrow down a country).
Subverted once, when Ziva gets a witness statement from two teen boys stating that the suspect was driving a Kuruma. Tony snarks that "kuruma" is Japanese for "car," so she just told them to look for a car. McGee steps in and tells them that "Kuruma" is also the title given to a specific make and model in Grand Theft Auto, which would be a familiar point of reference to the witnesses, so Ziva actually got a very good description of the vehicle.
One episode of NCIS: New Orleans had Nick Torres (in a guest cameo from the main series) report that he's in pursuit of a suspect in a harlequin suit. The series takes place in New Orleans, and it was the Mardi Gras episode. There was a party with at least a hundred people in harlequin costumes present less than a block away from the scene of the crime. It doesn't help that when the local cops try to ask people in the area if they'd seen anyone acting suspiciously, the only person who comes to mind turns out to be Nick.
In the series finale of NUMB3RS Don's gun is knocked from its holster when he's knocked down while making an arrest, and someone else picks it up before he can. The next scene begins with Colby relaying a report.
Colby: So, LAPD has a couple bystanders who say they can describe the guy. [pauses, his expression implying it's unhelpful] He was Caucasian, medium build, brown hair.
Surprise, surprise, they don't get the guy (though they do eventually track down the gun).
John Reese is known as "The Man in the Suit" because the official police description of him is "Tall, dark hair, nice suit," a description that probably matches at least 10,000 people in New York City. The police actually have some photos of Reese taken when he was questioned in the pilot episode, but at the time he was homeless, with a bushy beard and shabby clothes. The photos are not useful in identifying how he looks once he cleans up.
In "Pretenders", Walter Dang is a Heroic Wannabe who's posing as a Hardboiled Detective. After he falls afoul of gangsters, a real detective tries to get some details and is not impressed.
John Reese: The man who called you on Abel's phone, could you tell anything about him? Walter Dang: Yeah...he was really, really scary. Detective Fusco:Wow. Good detective work.
In the Psych episode "Psy vs. Psy", Shawn tries to get a look at a suspect on a security camera, but can't see him very well. Later, when trying to "psychically" see the suspect, the best he can come up with is "did not wear corrective lenses".
The Punisher (2017). In "Front Toward Enemy", Frank Castle tells Micro that the man who just set off bombs across New York City is called "Lewis and he drives a cab", and asks Micro if he can find him in a database. Micro points out that this is not a lot to go on. Frank then gives additional details such as Lewis's age range, ethnicity, and his status as an Army veteran, which Micro admits narrows it down.
In an episode of Quantum Leap the only thing the witness to a murder (a young boy who was hiding under a bed) can remember is that the perp "kept money in his shoes," which makes no sense to anyone. Sam eventually realizes that a character who wears penny loafers - complete with pennies - is the killer.
Deliberately invoked in an episode of Rookie Blue when a bank robber has a (fake) baby strapped to his chest specifically so all the witnesses focus on the baby and fail to notice any identifying details. Even Andy, a trained police officer, is not able to give a decent description because her primary concern was that the baby did not get hurt.
One episode of Taggart has a suspect described as being thirtyish, slightly balding, with greasy brown hair and wearing some old and "saggy arse" blue jeans. Taggart immediately counts four guys who meet that description just standing outside in the street.
In the British 1997 Black ComedyUnderworld, a gangster ambushes the protagonists right outside a police station. When they point this out, he says that by the time the witness statements have been correlated, they'll probably end up being described as a bunch of Rastafarians.
In "Implosion", Artie asks Pete to describe a thief he saw walk past immediately after having been basically knocked out by an implosion grenade. All Pete can up with is, "not... female?"
A rare non-person-related from the pilot, in which Artie's description of the artifact Pete and Myka are looking for as "bigger than a bread box... or smaller".
Done to heartbreaking effect in The West Wing. A Secret Service agent knows that a suspicious man in a ball cap has been seen around. After the president is shot, she's in shock and can't remember anything else —not even what logo was on the cap.
A murder victim is asked who shot him shortly before dying was said to have only told a police officer it was "a guy with a gun".
Omar Little and Brother Mouzone kill Stringer Bell and his bodyguard, which is witnessed by developer Andy Krawczyk. During the crime scene investigation, Krawczyk's description of the shooters is, "I told you I saw only the one. I know he was black. Big, I thought. With a large weapon." Or, as Bunk puts it when debriefing Rawls, a classic "BNBG" - "Big Negro Big Gun." This is especially ironic because Omar not only has a distinctive outfit (duster, do-rag and flak jacket) but also a huge facial scar. Not that it means much to Bunk, who immediately knows Omar was behind it due to his past run-ins with him.
Enforced by De'londa Brice, who wants her son Namond to be a drug dealer and urges him cut off his ponytail, as the enormously frizzy hairstyle is so distinctive that she says it'll let even white police officers easily identify him.
In an episode of Wire in the Blood, the resident profiler helps the police unit he is attached to by deducing that the suspect is able to drive a car. That's all he's got.
In The X-Files episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose", a police force has The Stupendous Yappi, a psychic detective on the payroll:
Cop: Look, all I know is that so far, Yappi has provided more solid, concrete leads on this case than you have. Now, if you don't mind, I have to get an A.P.B. out on a white male, age seventeen to thirty-four, with or without a beard, maybe a tattoo... who's impotent. Let's go. Scully:Might as well go home, Mulder, this case is as good as solved.
Young Sheldon: In "German for Beginners and a Crazy Old Man with a Bat", a surveillance camera next door to the laundromat reveals a truck parked there the night of the break-in, but since the footage is in black and white, they have no idea what color it is. Furthermore, as Connie points out, everyone in Texas drives a truck.
in The Adventures of Lano and Woodley , when Frank spends about two minutes trying to ask a video shop clerk about a film whose title he can't remember, starring a famous actor whose name he can't remember, leading to him simply calling him "The Actor Guy". It gets worse when he tries to describe "The Actor Guy" to Colin and the clerk:Frank: You'd know it. See, the thing is... the thing is that you would know him, he's got the hair, and the eyes, bit of a nose, and the mouth there, and he... it's all held together with a... like a face!