This is wonderful. It’s a taxonomy of tropes (not just TV). Wonderful examples are the pages on
- Book Dumb: “Making your child character Book Dumb is seen as a great way to appeal to the masses (because You Suck) without having to show them being outsmarted by other characters on a regular basis”
- Open Heart Dentistry: “When a character is shot or has some other lethal wound, but the next hospital is 100 miles away or the police are after them, an alternative is needed. It doesn’t matter if they find a vet or a dentist; as long as he knows how to hold a needle, he will do. And he will do just fine! In most cases, not even a scar will remain.”
- Never Tell Me The Odds: “A character is told by the Smart Guy that If His Calculations Are Correct then it’s a Million To One Chance of them succeeding and/or surviving. Naturally, the Determinator presses on anyway. Naturally, he succeeds, proving statistical analysis to be useless.”
- Achilles In His Tent: “A member of a team (often The Lancer) gets into a fight with everybody else and quits, vowing to never, ever return to the people whom they now hate so much. A threat then comes that is precisely suited to the missing member’s talents. The other team members beg the quitter to come back, but with no success. The team head out without their ex-member, and are about to all be killed horribly. Then the ex-member, seeing them about to die, realizes that he still cares about them after all. He leaps in with a Foe Tossing Charge, saves everybody, and all are reconciled. An Aesop about friendship and teamwork ensues.”
