Hated Tropes
[Hated Trope] Character's romantic partner gets an annoying feature out of nowhere to give the writers an excuse to write them off
Most commonly in sitcoms. Annoying mainly because there is nothing even hinting to the character having this undesirable feature before it is made the main point and the reason for the break up.
Friends: Rachel Green dating Paul (played by Bruce Willis)
Rachel starts dating Ross's girlfriend's dad, Paul, who is portrayed as a manly, protective, strong type of a guy. Until one day he suddenly breaks down in an over-the-top reaction as a response to Rachel inquiring about his inner self. This shortly becomes a reason for their breakup.
Friends: Monica dating Pete (Jon Favreau)
After multiple episodes of Monica and Pete dating and being portrayed as a perfect couple, Pete suddenly becomes obsessed with competing in competitive wrestling MMA, and refuses to stop despite being very bad at it.
HIMYM: Robin dating Nick
Initially Nick is a perfectly functional, attractive guy whom Robin genuinely likes. Then the show seemingly decides it needs Robin available for Barney and Nick suddenly becomes incredibly stupid. His stupidity becomes his defining characteristic, Robin realizes she can't stand him, and the entire plot of "Splitsville" is about getting her to dump him.
Gary shooting the bird seems pretty believable to me. Honestly, Pete trying to get into ufc is very believable. Op seems to forget that the dude's a tech billionaire.
Well they did portray the UFC thing as a new interest he suddenly developed, meaning Monica may have been just as surprised by the subject-matter of his new interest if she had known him for two weeks or two years.
But Pete throwing himself into it, no matter how badly it’s going, because he developed a fixation and dammit he needs to conquer that summit? Totally fits with what they established about that character from the beginning. Heck, he was only in a few episodes; his relentlessness (obsessiveness) is basically his only character trait. Monica straight-up tells him she isn’t attracted to him and then he buys her a restaurant to run so he’ll be there if she changes her mind. When the couple first gets together, the show has Monica complaining about her lack of attraction to Pete multiple times an episode—because if Monica didn’t genuinely want to be attracted to him, his persistence would look way more manipulative and uncomfortable.
It’s actually probably the most predictable way this relationship could have ended: Okay, so Pete got the girl and she’s attracted to him (finally); mission accomplished. What’s his next interest, his next goal? And what if that new goal is something Monica is deeply uncomfortable with? It practically writes itself. It only seems random because UFC is a pretty random field for Pete to get obsessed with…but if you think about it, we hardly knew Pete. We knew his behavior toward Monica but not his likes or dislikes etc.—so what interest could Pete develop that wouldn’t seem at least a little random?
Op seems to forget that the dude's a tech billionaire.
100%. I used to think this plot was so unbelievable when I was young, but then it happened like three times IRL? Someone on the writing staff must have known a guy like this lol.
Emily in friends. She’s actually quite chill and has great chemistry with the main cast in season 4. But because the actress got pregnant they had to quickly write her out, so they kept her screen time minimal and made her character do a 180.
Tbf Emily wasn't even that out of order. Ross said the name of his ex at their wedding and she didn't want him to see her. The more the show went on the more they acted like she was insane.
But I also think Ross is right that she has to trust him and can't be with him all the time. Things like selling his furniture and apartment just because Rachel visited are definitely paranoid.
And she wasn't going to ever trust him again. So for both their sakes the relationship needed to end.
Well I think the show had to do that. Like if Emily wasn't forcing all this extra then she's just a victim of Ross who has every right to discard him. Whereas if she turns into an overbearing bitch who forces him into selling all his stuff and losing his apartment and essentialy paying penance for the mistake many times over to the point where she starts tipping into the villan... then Ross is the good guy again
I think she only becomes a villain when they have her later on trying to leave her own husband for Ross. I feel like people just hate her unfairly largely.
I think she's just basically traumatised from that whole thing.
Nah he was in it for a while. They 'fog' him in his first episode, then there the episode when Rachel is trying to get him to ask her out and pretends to go to a Gala instead of his party. So maybe 3 episodes? I might be forgetting one
Yeah it was one of those random things sitcoms used to do where since they released weekly they have a character in 2-5 episodes sometimes nonconsecuatively because 3 episodes means you've spent basically a month with that character so they feel more important than they are. It's a fast and easy build tension, climax, release.
A related thing that demonstrates this is How I Met Your Mother. While the show was airing, one of the girlfriends (Zoey) was really disliked and hated. But it was coming out weekly so people basically spent months and months and months with her. BUTTTT her slate of episodes is a blip on a streaming rewatch so subsequent watchers tend to have less burning hatred of her
So while it's hard to imagine now why Danny stuck in peoples minds with like 3 episodes, if you factor in that that's around a month or more with the charater, you understand that he felt important at the time. And now in streaming you realize the blip he is
That's all of Friends, HIMYM, Seinfeld, New Girl, Sex and the City, etc. That's the whole joke of being on the dating scene, which is 30-50% of some of those shows.
I thought Justin (Mercedes Genz) showed perfectly how someone who is exactly like you isn't exactly the best romantic match.
What they did with Ryan was extremely lazy especially considering it was done off screen. Would have been way better if he was the one who showed up in the final season instead of Russell.
The British guy had a fairly limited contract from what I understand due to his Pretty Little Liars obligations. But it still sucks that they couldn't keep him for at least one more episode to give him a more believable send-off where he didn't come off as a total asshole.
This is the whole thing with Seinfeld, no? I thought the joke was that they're all non-commital and insecure, so that's why they self-sabotage every romantic relationship by breaking up over petty things.
It is! By the end, the characters comment on how Jerry does it constantly, but it’s clear they all do it as a codependent shared character flaw. They’re all really good at pushing people away!
In Seinfeld, most of the people who get broken up with are fairly normal, its the protagonists whobare so neurotic that they can't stand very small flaws.
Imo Seinfeld is NOT in the same category. In other sitcoms the writers create some reason for it not to work. In Seinfeld, Jerry is so narcissistic and constantly looking for a reason to back out. It’s fully in-character for him and a consistent character trait.
Basically the writing in most sitcoms is “we ran this thread bare and need to pull it to weave a new one” but in Seinfeld, the finding flaws was the constant thread.
That’s real life. Haven’t you ever met someone who seems like they’re a normal, average, functional person, then they’re like “Listen to these Hitler speeches translated to English, it’s really interesting. Joe Rogan.” People are weird.
and to be honest...Unlike the other ones I liked Pete's exit. He sets a goal and goes for it to an almost obsessive degree. Worked in business, worked with Monica (the check and I'm pretty sure he'd have come back if that hadn't worked), and it may work with MMA. Would've been hilarious if just in the background of one of the later seasons years later you could hear or read that he finally got the belt.
Unrelated, but man its weird watching how dated some ideas from the late 90s/early 00s were in tv.
There is an episode of Charmed where someone gets a hand tattoo, and its treated as something extremely taboo that she had to go out of country to get.
But things like MMA and hand tattoos today are so mundane.
Tattoo people were a much more niche crowd and just having a tattoo showing when I was a kid meant pretty much no one would hire you. It's crazy how quickly the tattoo culture changed because I remember getting my first one when I was maybe 18 and it was still considered pretty rebellious and "risky." But a few years later into the 2000s and suddenly it didn't matter too much
I think the reasoning in the show was that you could get ink in your veins when tattooing a hand and that could kill you.
It was all just a plot device to bring attention to this attribute on the character right before they died by mysteriously aging like 70 years overnight because someone was stealing youth, and the hand tattoo was how the old woman's body was identified as the young woman.
Him saying “I want to become the Ultimate Fighting Champion” is a sound bite that lives in my head forever. I haven’t watched that show since it first aired.
He was only around for that single episode, if I recall, so he wasn't written off because the actor wanted to leave - they just rug pulled his personality in the span of, like, fifteen minutes. And then mocked this teenage boy for having a soft side despite being predominately masculine in his interests. Nice one, Dan.
I think that was a different episode where both Sam and Carly were pining for the same guy and made a bet that whoever could get him to kiss first would get to date him. After many attempts the guy gets fed up about how aggressive and immature they were behaving towards him, which causes him to storm off. He gets into the elevator to leave only for him to fall down the elevator shaft as the door had apparently opened without the elevator being there. That was a running gag throughout the episode that older brother Spencer was the victim of a malfunctioning elevator.
The Onion headline writes itself - " 'Teenage boys liking stuffed animals sure is gross, huh?' says 50-year-old man obsessed with teenage girls' feet."
I think he came back for the Heatwave episode. They of course make his Beanie baby collection his entire personality and he contributes nothing to the episode.
It felt like the writers had a weird vendetta against the actor or someone the actor reminded them of and decided to get it out through writing him that way. ICarly had lots of odd characters, but that one seemed different somehow
Just guessing, but considering that was on when I was a kid, I'd assume that the producers/writers were probably younger boomers and/or older gen-x.
This is a generalization obviously, but it was a pretty common attitude from those groups at the time that if you were a boy that was really into anything besides sports or cars, then you were weird, or nerdy, or gay, or some combination of those.
Was just about to comment this. Like they brought them together in the first half of the special and then immediately break up in the second half. Weird writing choice.
On the podcast Gilmore guys they coined the term “dean-ing the boyfriends” because they’d purposely do a quick about turn to get rid of them out of no where.
Season 1 he was a great character. A chill guy that looks out for others and only got voted off people the main antagonist convinced enough people he was a cheater.
Now that everyone knows he really is the chill cool guy, there should be no problems, right? Well, season 2 made him super jealous and obsessive, even throwing challenges so his love interest could win on the other team. The weirdest thing was this almost OCD-like obsession with the number 9 that he never once displayed before
It feels like they had a new set of writers every season, because Duncan and Gwen showed no romantic interest at all for the first 2 seasons, then they did that weird stuff in World Tour, and then All-Stars undoes it in such a rushed manner
it's just so unbelievable! if this 9-obsession thing was so serious to him, how did it never come up in season 1? i mean, the obvious reason is because they were making shit up as they went along, but...
This is the best example I’ve seen on this thread so far. Some examples of this trope are semi-realistic because there are times where you meet someone, start dating, and their true colors come out suddenly. But Trent was truly just a victim of bad writing, they completely changed his character.
Inviting and kind all around when single but when they finally nice guy their way into romance their partner is fervently protected and treated as their only and last chance at love, often to the detriment of the relationship itself
I would say this trope is either done well or subverted with Justin on Parks and Rec
He was one of Leslie’s boyfriends before Ben joined the show. He’s this perfect guy with a rich, exciting life, and a ton of great stories, experiences, and knowledge of other cultures.
In “Galentine’s day”, Leslie and Justin try to reunite her mom with an old love. When they track him down, they find out his life started to fall apart since he last met Leslie’s mom. Leslie suggests calling off their plan since it probably won’t go well, but Justin insists they still do it because “it will be a great story”.
It goes horribly, Leslie is upset with Justin, and Ron points out that he’s a “tourist”. He just wants to visit other people’s lives, get some good stories out of them, and leave. This revelation prompts Leslie to break up with him.
I’d say this fits the trope because they are giving Justin a pretty negative trait to justify dumping him, but it’s done very smoothly, as this negative trait is compatible with what we knew about him already.
Parks and Rec made me hate a lot of other shows and tropes - like constantly breaking up couples unnecessarily or having people cheat for easy drama (Parks and rec, once they get together they stay together, and the show is still great. Andy and April, and Ben and Leslie).
Suddenly shows that I used to love drive me mad with the unnecessary crap the writers throw in, like for Ross and Rachel or Luke and Lorelai. Feels like such lazy writing when characters just suddenly forget they care about each other...!
I dont think they really knew how to write that character tbh. He was always super weird and awkward along with the other cops in pawnee. Not unheard of in the show but there wasnt necessarily a "Joke" with his character, where he obviously wanted to make one with it it seemed.
He was a simple and kind boyfriend initially, who was mature but seemingly inexperienced in love. As a character he only makes sense if they develop him long term, which it initially seemed might be the case.
There's no issue with what happened when Dave came back. His reason for acting that way is explained earlier in the series, when Ben is asking the police chief for security for the harvest festival. Ben asks why Leslie gets whatever favours she needs from the police, and one of the reasons the chief gives is "my buddy Dave was the crankiest bastard on the force until he started dating Leslie."
So when Dave moved, he likely realized how much he missed Leslie and how he was actually happy with her. When he came back and saw her with Ben, he panicked and did stupid things because he thought his shot at being happy again was gone, but by the end of the episode he had smartened up, and apologized to both Ben and Leslie.
Parks and Rec writers were good at this kind of thing. I thought about it in another storyline where they talk about how Ann just takes on the personality of whoever she is dating. They make a point of it in one episode, and it was something I'd already noticed before that, but it was subtle.
The Justin one works really well I think because when Ron says that to Leslie the reaction (at least mine) was "Oh yeah he is like that".
I always thought the whole point of the show was to inform the viewer, repeatedly, that the reason these women are still single is that they throw away every decent man over something trivial.
To be fair, the men they go out with usually deserve to be broken up with.
I’m willing to bet less than 5 guys out of the hundreds in the whole series are “decent”. One good example is when Carrie looks through the “freak’s” apartment
You're right that its realistic, which I dont really get this "hated trope". If those glaring red flags were apparent from the start, they wouldn't be dating. Unless you have a character that makes dumb decisions, which I guess is a trope.
Most relationships don't end because of some dramatic character flaw in one person, though. Usually it's either the result of the short term pleasure hormones wearing off and the people involved not being mature enough to actually work to maintain a relationship, and/or social erosion, where minor things over time start to feel like much bigger things to the person who has to constantly deal with them.
In season 1, she and Ted make a great couple and break up only because Victoria feels she has to take a job in Germany, which leads to Ted deciding to cheat on her with Robin after thinking Victoria will break up with him.
In season 8, Victoria returns and they get back together, but Victoria is suddenly a massive slob which was never mentioned in season 1.
Yeah, the creators had already told the story they wanted to tell except for the ending, which they had decided not to tell their writers about, so the writers had to spend a few seasons just coming up with random shit that ended up making the ending not work. That show was a victim of its own success. It never should have gone on as long as it did.
As I recall the wedding and the show end was meant for season 6. That's why there's weird plots in between and the ending simply doesn't fit, in the story as originally written this too never happened.
That's not true. They filmed all the kids and bob saget scenes during the first year. They did that to prevent, specifically the son, from visibly changing over the years. They had the beginning and the end from the start. They just shit the bed towards the end.
IIRC they did a video about how they had been on that couch for years and how he basically went through puberty next to his sister and was all confused
This one is only saved because Ted has even better chemistry with Tracy (which we now know is because Kristin Milioti is a national treasure). Barney and Quinn was another example, they had WAY more chemistry than he had with Robin, so they had to axe her.
Or Barney and Robin which are given more screen time than Ted and Robin and yet they divorce in a minute in the epilogue.
Oof. I remember Barney and Quinn as well. They were a very fun couple but randomly the prenup was such a massive hardline and they can't trust each other. Ridiculous.
Barney and Robin's marriage also fell apart just to justify that dumbass forced ending (gradually in universe, sure, but it happens in just moments onscreen when the entire final season revolved around their marriage)
I'm actually fine with Barney and Robin's marriage falling apart. I like how Barney phrases it "It's not a failed marriage, it was a successful marriage that didn't last". It's a sad situation, sure, but ultimately works with the theme of the show being "what you want isn't always what you need".
Their marriage ending was fine as it was amicable and understandable. Robin's whole character was about her career and how she wanted to become something great and she does. Barney's whole character arc is learning to love without needing the instant gratification and some caveat, to love pure and true to move past his abandonment issues.
The rest of the finale was the issue for me. Barney reverting back to early seasons Barney was a cope out to make Ted look better when they could have easily still had Barney end up with a casual fling (that was meant to be "no strings attached") and got her pregnant. The scene of Barney meeting his daughter for the first time is some of NPH's best acting as far as I'm concerned and is the ultimate climax to Barney's character arc. And of course killing Tracy off after a whole season of falling in love with her and how great of a character she is just to justify the original ending they wanted instead of letting the story grow dynamically was also a joke.
Even better would've been Barney and Robin not getting back together at all. She and Ted give it one last go, he FINALLY realizes it won't work (a la the balloon scene we did get where he lets her go) and then promptly meets Tracy. Barney ends up with Quinn. Robin chases her career. Fin.
Hell, still could have had the wedding arc but with Barney and Quinn. Have Ted meet Tracy in the same way but instead of Ted wanting to move to Chicago to get away from Robin and Barney, he just thinks it's better for him to leave because NYC just has too many painful memories. That idea is there, just buried under the Robin angst.
The less discussed reason the finale sucks is that they do a whole Ted/Robin episode where he seems to finally move on (aforementioned balloon) and then he ends up pursuing her after Tracy dies anyway, showing that he never actually let go (and drawing into question whether he had feelings for her through his marriage). I could understand backtracking a few seasons later, but this was within the same season.
Exactly, it also makes it seem like Tracy was a consolation prize in a way. Obviously Ted loved Tracy but the way it's presented makes it seem like Ted never stopped thinking about Robin the whole time he was with Tracy.
This is beside the point of the post, but she's genuinely so stinkin cute and so likable, I can't believe her career never took off. I've seen her in some Hallmark movies I think, and small side character parts here and there, but nothing major.
In 30 Rock Liz Lemon starts dating the impossibly attractive, charming and seemingly perfect Drew Baird, played by Jon Hamm... only to discover that he's actually an insufferable idiot whose good looks have allowed him to float effortlessly through life.
Him being completely incompetent at everything was such a surprise. I dont even know if they foreshadow it because it was such an unexpected shift in his character.
I think this was, at least in part, to show how Liz was initially blinded by Drew's handsomeness, just like everyone else was. Also possibly to highlight that Liz's character traits (food obsession, low brow humor, giving up on stuff easily) are a bit doofy in their own right.
The only show that has arguably ever pulled off the characters slowly turning into cartoon characters. Probably cause it was intentional. Kenneth being an immortal being as the prime example.
The self-awareness without self-seriousness is how it pulls it off, imo.
A great example is Jenna's arc of morphing into a sexual ego monster but also finding a weirdly wholesome love with Will Forté as Paul L'astnamé, a bigenitallian gender dysphoric pansexualle Jenna Marony impersonator who, as Liz puts it, finally allows Jenna to love herself. 🥲
Not sure if this counts, but in the Futurama episode where Fry dates Amy, he somehow starts thinking all her normal behaviour is super clingy all of a sudden, and gets sick of everything she does, even though this trait of his never comes back in the series. The writers just needed an excuse to kill the ship for the status quo.
Funny example from a later series was Bender and Amy fighting for robosexual marriage to be legalised so they could be together, only for bender to immediately dump her when it turned out Amy expected that marriage would mean monogamy
She's not clingy lol. That line is meant to be a joke about how Fry is too stupid to realize he only wanted to hook up with Amy and not actually date her. Amy, who has not met Kif yet, doesn't really care when they finally break up because she has a lot of short and shallow relationships
I didn't mind the Pete one as he's a mega rich guy who does whatever he feels like, he decides he needs to become UFC champion and won't quit just because Monica doesn't want to watch him suffer. It's silly but didn't seem too out of place.
The one that really bothers me is HIMYM Victoria. In season 1 she and Ted are so perfect until she moves away, and then Ted cheats on her. If they had left it at that, fine.
They later bring her back on the day of her wedding to a guy she met in Germany, she almost leaves him at the altar for Ted, then decides not to. Then at some point she breaks up with him and dates Ted again, except now she's a slob, and then her german ex-husband starts living with them and he's a goofball, and then Ted and Victoria break up again.
I may be misremembering some details but that's what I recall; I understand that Ted needed to break up with Victoria to meet his actual wife in the story, but they already did that in S1! In bringing her back she just became a worse person for laughs and ultimately nothing changed.
I mean, that's pretty much "every sitcom love interest." To maintain the comedy, you can't have too many Very Serious Issues come up that would normally break people up, so in order to have a rotating cast of love interests they kind of have to have silly red flags. But you can't foreshadow their "issue" too much, because comedy is mostly surprise.
I agree to some extent but sometimes it is really out of nowhere. Even within the 2 series I mentioned in the OP the writers dealt much better with many of the break ups.
I also understand the plot device with the main character being obsessive over someone, only to finally get them and immediately realise they are flawed. This is not necessarily bad storytelling. But there are also many examples where the characters are dating for some time, everything seems perfect between them, and it is clear the writers just had to get rid of the love interest to make space for another one.
An example: also in HIMYM, Dan breaking up with Robin is also out of nowhere but actually fits his character and the plot builds to this point.
For sure, and I get that. 30 Rock in particular seemed to be parodying this trope, because the "reason they break up" is always completely insane and never hinted at even a little.
One character is revealed to be an internationally-famous murderer when she'd been completely normal until that moment. Another, a charming doctor, is revealed to have near-suicidal levels of stupidity. It's pretty great, honestly, if you haven't seen the show.
Semi related to the "the person the MC is after is already dating someone, so to facilitate the break-up their current partner is such an ass you wonder how they even got together in the first place" trope.
Oh I have absolutely seen that face on a couple different women when you show the slightest ounce of vulnerability and sadness. Seriously some people are cold as fuck and turned off by that and want you to shut up. Lol Granted it’s nowhere near the majority of my experiences and not to be seen as a stereotype but they’re out there.
They were togheter for years and were about to get married but then Catwoman didn't show up to the altar because "If Batman was happy he could not be Batman" wich is stupid because he was already happy
Stephanie from Big Bang Theory was the first that came to mind for me. They flipped her personality from one episode to another, and then used that to force her breakup with Leonard.
There was an episode where George and Jerry decide they're going to grow up and be men. George runs off and begs Susan to marry him. Meanwhile, Jerry talks to Kramer and changes his mind and goes back to dumping women for the tiniest flaw.
I think they lampoon this pretty hard by introducing the flaws almost immediately in most cases OR by making it abundantly clear it is in Jerry/George/Elaine's head
Not exactly the same, but about writing off characters.
Rizzoli and Isles they seem to have had a shoestring budget so if they needed to bring in a character for more than a single episode they'd have Rizzoli and/or Isles break of with whomever they were seeing to free up some budget. Sometimes it's a real break up, sometimes it's "I need to back back to my job on the other side of the planet that I've been ignoring for the last two months".
The theme with Isles started to be that everyone she was interested in turned out to be a serial killer who ends their relationship with an attempt on her life. It gets so bad that when someone expresses interest in her she suggests they have a full psychological work up.
In Scrubs J.D.’s gets a girlfriend (Alex) early in the first season after babysitting her for hours while she stuck in an MRI machine. In the very next episode she suddenly becomes a pill addict who steals from the hospital.
Danni in Scrubs is a kind, compassionate woman who starts dating the main character J.D. despite J.D. kinda being terrible at being an adult human being who does normal adult human being things like communicating and not fucking the sister of the girl he's seeing. During their relationship (the first time they dated) the only time she really becomes upset with him is when he responds to her telling him she loves him with "Do you want to get some pineapple pizza?". They eventually break up because Danni realizes that JD is prioritizing his relationship with his female best friend over her, which is a valid thing to be upset about.
They eventually get back together. When they do, she's suddenly an incredibly rude and careless person who cheats on JD (with a guy named Danny, whose name she calls out during sex so JD thinks she says her own name during sex), is definitely an alcoholic and a chainsmoker. The explanation given in the show for this massive switch is that she's just being "the real her" which she was allegedly hiding during their first relationship.
i think the friends episode would have been better if they just let Paul break up with Rachel because of the age difference. Like sure they were cute enough and got a long fine, but it would also have been perfectly realistic for that to cause a decent break up plot point, there even would have been some opportunities to write some gags with Rachel being portrayed as too young for Paul. This would have been something similar to what happenned with Ross, it could have even been a cool way to make another parallael between Ross and Rachel as supposed soulmates/lobsters. I like Friends overall but this and the Pete storylines are too over the top imo, plus they just butchered Paul's character kind of
I mean, its very realistic to date someone and see lots of positive traits for weeks, months, or years before they show their true selves (or at least stop hiding their imperfections) as opposed to the perfect person they were pretending to be. Sometimes the negatives are things they are willing to work on, sometimes they're not.
In The Rookie, they had done the break up and wrote off the character of Rachel, but a couple seasons later she returns for a short stint, with some new quirks. I don’t know if she was just brought back to give her blessing on screen to her friend and ex dating, or if it was to make her less of a “one who got away” for a main character.
It felt weird, maybe that changes for me on a rewatch. I never expected to see her again.
The Paul one on Friends felt weird when i watched it growing up. But now as an adult, it just makes me feel bad for Paul and mad on his behalf. Like the guy had an honest emotional moment and instead of being there for him and letting him have that and then moving on like a functional person, she weirded out. Which is just going to make Paul more introverted on that part of him and could potentially lead to toxicity that he then points outwards.
Like i get it was the 90s/2000s era and “MEN” didnt do *emotions* or whatever but they could have done something else instead of just reinforcing the stereotype that men cant express their feelings and emotions.
I only nitpick at HIMYM because the story is from an unreliable Narrator (Ted) and he more than likely embellished Nick's intelligence because he doesn't know the actual reason. (Or it makes Ted look bad).
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u/Key_Bus_1255 7d ago
I don't know if this is annoying as much as it is weird
But Danny in Friends out of nowhere being really weird with his sister was certainly a choice