The Tropes That Refuse to Die

What’s the most annoying trope in books or movies?

Wow, where to begin? I have a lot of these? But before I get into my list, I wanna talk a little bit about something. I read about the movie seven. At one point, before the big scene at the end, where Brad Pitt’s character opens up the box to find… What’s in the box… An earlier draft of the script had Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman‘s characters racing to the scene doing the whole cliché car chase, driving on the sidewalk, taking out parking meters as they go tired ass trope that we’ve seen so many times and so many movies over the years

Here’s a few of my most overdone tropes, and no particular order:

The precocious kid who later turns into a blank slate of a teenager because they’re snarky remarks are no longer considered cute and they’re just obnoxious.

How many sitcoms have we seen over the last 30 or 40 years, at least, where writers assigned to make the youngest kid in the family, the smart ass? However, the only problem with that become as the kid gets a little older, the things that seemed precocious make hear she look like a prick. So then they have to almost make the character go completely tabula rasa as a teenager.

The idiot dad trope – I’ve talked about this one more than once on this blog. I think that there were some sort of cultural shift as part of the women’s equality movement. The pendulum shifted so far in the opposite direction, however that for a lot of sitcom writers, it wasn’t just enough to show the wife or the woman as a capable independent, strong character. They felt that in order to accomplish that, they had to make the husband/dad/boyfriend look like an absolute idiot.

The happy ending – look, I know that movies and television and even books to a degree or escapism. We want to forget about the harsh rails of real life for a while, but more often than that when you go into a movie, it’s a little bit anti-climactic, knowing that whatever situation your protagonist gets themselves into, they’re going to find a way out of it. There have been a few exceptions over the years, however like a movie, such as rogue one where not only do the protagonist accomplish their mission, but they all die in the process.

The disposable supporting character as comic relief. So many television shows rely on this lazy dynamic. The writers create a vibrant, larger-than-life supporting character whose sole job is to provide comedic heavy-lifting while the actual “leads” get the straight-laced, low-stakes romantic plots. Look at Will & Grace: Jack and Karen essentially carried the comedy engine of the entire show, while Will and Grace played the structural, straight-laced support beams. Yet in too many shows, these characters are treated like mere seasoning rather than the main meal, given zero real narrative growth just so the primary couple can hem and haw over their boring love lives for seven seasons.

As an English teacher, and as an English student as well, I know that with most narrative, the question isn’t “will there won’t they?” It’s more of a question of “what steps will the characters take in order to reach their final destination?” still it’s a little jarring at times.

How about you? What are, in your opinion, so truly tired tv, book or movie tropes?

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The article “The Tropes That Refuse to Die” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.

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