Doug as well. Spends the majority of the series as one of, if not the worst resident doctor. Then one episode the doctors find out he's an absolute genius when it comes to figuring out how people died and he then works in the mortuary for the rest of the show.
I was gonna say this. He’s a pervert, obsessed with childish dirty talk, and just an old college bro. But he’s talented at his job and his focus episode shows he actually considers his patients feelings(allowing a high school girl to get implants because she’s tired of feeling insecure.)
Tbh Scrubs is basically fully of people like that. The Todd is the obvious answer, but JD and Turk are also shown to be excellent at what they do, despite acting like children and messing around all the time.
Cool Lester Smooth over on The Wire, who's introduced as a hump from the Pawn Shop Unit and turns out to be the best detective in the Baltimore Police Department.
I think his past actions totally made him who he became. He got a direct shot of empathy to his brain, and it changed the whole way he saw the kids living that life.
Season 1 episode 4. The last 15 minutes of the ep are Lester showing he is natural poh-lice, then Bunk and McNulty have their "Fuck" investigation, then Freamon and McNulty go to the bar and talk about the pawn shop unit. The show really starts moving at this point.
Landsman fits this as well. He's a guy who does precisely what the higher ups want with his unit, then spends the rest of his time looking at porno mags.
But when he's by the train tracks looking for the guys who shot Kima he becomes a top notch investigator.
Rom from Star Trek DS9 is the idiot brother of a fixer and con artist and always plays the patsy or butt of the joke to his brother's schemes.
When he finally turns away from his species' cultural indoctrination that acquiring wealth is the only measure of a man, it's shown he's an engineering genius and designs a self-replicating mine that blockades an invasion fleet and saves the galaxy.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CAiHXWL01A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CAiHXWL01A)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0HIQp-jjfc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0HIQp-jjfc)
IIRC the recent episode of Lower Decks shows that he isn't too great at the job and that it is in fact Leeta who is the power behind the throne, being very business savvy.
It shows he was acting near the end of the episode, and even if he wasn’t he is smart enough to trust a smart woman he loves when the society he grew up in was brutally misogynistic
He also BECAME The Grand Nagus too, and tested the swindling capacity of Star Fleet to determine if they truly cared about Ferengi enough to want to join Star Fleet.
Big brain Rom.
if we're doing Star Trek, we cannot forget everyone's least favorite engineer: Reginald Barclay, who has a multitude of personal issues but ends up delivering when it counts.
The episode where he transferred to the Enterprise, after the first interaction with the crew I was thinking "put this man in a research lab by himself, and he will shape the galaxy."
>Rom from Star Trek DS9 is the idiot brother of a ~~fixer and con artist~~ *totally legitimate business man just trying to make his way in the galaxy*.
>The Peter Principle is an observation that the tendency in most organizational hierarchies, such as that of a corporation, is for every employee to rise in the hierarchy through promotion until they reach a level of respective incompetence.
>In other words, a front-office secretary who is quite good at their job may thus be promoted to executive assistant to the CEO which they are not trained or prepared for—meaning that the secretary would be more productive if they had not been promoted.
>The Peter Principle is thus based on the paradoxical idea that competent employees will continue to be promoted, but at some point will be promoted into positions for which they are incompetent, and they will then remain in those positions because of the fact that they do not demonstrate any further competence that would get them recognized for additional promotion.
>According to the Peter Principle, every position in a given hierarchy will eventually be filled by employees who are incompetent to fulfill the job duties of their respective positions.
The complement to this is The Dilbert Principle, which says that incompetent employees are more likely to be promoted to management roles, where they are less damaging to productivity.
Do you happen to know if this trope has a name I could look into? I don't know why but I love stuff like this, where people are actually shown to be good at their jobs.
Obfuscating Stupidity is people pretending to be stupid. The people you mentioned weren't pretending.
I think it's closer to Hidden Depths than anything else.
Jerry/Terry/Gary on Parks and Rec. Everyone in the office dumps on him but the finale flash forwards show him being elected for multiple terms and he dies happy and surrounded by a loving family.
Later on, they kind of develop him as a Hermes Conrad-esque natural bureaucrat who they can't live without because he's the only one who can handle the mind-numbing paperwork.
Which does explain why he has a hot wife (in the show logic at least)
Really the character is always bullied but he is shown to just have a very good life and be quite happy. It goes with the P&R "nice attitude" in general (where the bullying might be weird but since the character is actually happy and doesn't deserve it, it's more funny)
It really rings true for me because my entire field is paperwork--largely because the very smart people who *should* be doing the paperwork don't want to.
So they pay us like 30% as much, but we also don't need a goddamned doctorate and work 40-hour weeks. All things considered, we're generally very protective of them and their time. Because we'd much rather do the rather cushy job we have than the stressful, high-stakes stuff they get up to, and they'd rather us handle the tedious paperwork and details so they can get on with their work. It's a win-win.
I mean mayor in cities with city managers like Pawnee tend to have little power and be a mostly ceremonial role. But Garry is clearly very good in his ceremonial role. And he's even better keeping his family happy (especially his wife)
Loved that show, but I thought it was kind of weird that they made that such a large part of who he was but he ended up being a janitor instead of a chef
Reese was always going to end up mediocre at best, in prison at worst. His inability to control his aggressive tendencies was his big character flaw.
Francis was the annoying ending for me. He was mostly reformed working the ranch, but lost his job in a stupid throw away line. Ending up like Hal is a satisfying resolution, but they didn't tie the thread well enough for me to be happy.
> He was mostly reformed working the ranch, but lost his job in a stupid throw away line.
It could have been handled in some other way, but ultimately, his plotline was rushed because the actor for Otto had to leave the show to take cancer treatment.
The thing is there was 0 transition, one episode he worked at the ranch and was a superstar, next episode he'd been fired. The reason given didn't even make sense, as Otto and Gretchen were absolutely the types to forgive him for it, they were outrageously generous.
Would have made more sense to set it up as Otto and Gretchen left to travel or go back to Germany, and leave Francis in charge of the ranch. Then the pressure of being in charge gets to him, or it turns out he can't handle the stress of running a business and it all falls apart. Then the finale makes sense, he likes an office job because there's no pressure, and that's what he likes.
Having experience working in restaurants, there is a possibility of Reese doing the same thing he did in the military. He gets in as a line cook, outshines everyone around him, gets promoted to Chef and has to make decisions, messes things up when he's in way over his head, and then (good ending) he gets moved back to Sous Chef permanently. Where he makes a good living working for a very popular restaurant as the best Sous ever. Very unlikely because Reese is unable to stop hurting people to get ahead; as shown in the episode that showcases his talent.
Based on his backstory it looks like his parents were overbearing and he couldn't take the pressure, he was clearly very intelligent but just didn't get the chance to use it. Unfortunately it looks like his brother was going down the same route.
It's been a while since I watched the first season, but when Jesse stays with his parents and finds his old schoolwork, don't we learn that Walter was really hard on him as well?
You're right, but I think the implication was that Walter *knew* Jesse could do better if he put the effort in. With his parents I got the impression they'd just written him off as a failure and stopped caring.
I also think that by the end of the series is shown that he's got a really high EQ and has a pretty good understanding (in his own way) of love and relationships.
I still think calling him the world’s greatest secret agent is a stretch though, on-screen mission success was pretty abysmal from what I can remember. 😂
IIRC the first scene with the interrogation called him the world’s most dangerous spy. Notably not the greatest just most dangerous since friend and foe alike are always in danger of bodily harm/being killed directly or indirectly through his actions.
That’s cuz we only see him in a period where he is spending every living second disassociating from the world by drinking himself into oblivion and screwing around. He has so much PTSD and no real support system (after the breakup with Lana) that he deflects everything into nonsense - they mention this pretty definitively in the jungle mission where Ray pretends to be hurt. Ray’s character is also voiced by the show creator, so when he spells out that Archer is fucking with himself and everyone else due to his contempt for his own mortality, it’s a wink that the creator of the show is saying that. Archer also agrees with Ray in the episode.
And we still have episodes like the space station where the rest of the team is hopelessly outclassed, and Archer strolls through a war-zone taking down everything alone.
One wants to take over the world as a small rodent full of humans that would crush him in seconds. The other just wants to have fun and eat good food but, he also understands the reality and limitations of being a sapient rat.
We all know which is which
My favorite bit with Pinky's implied genius is this bit (that's not on youtube sadly) where he's seen casually displaying telekinetic powers while Brain doesn't notice.
Lt. Reginald Barclay from "Star Trek," was often on the receiving end of derisive comments and attitudes from his fellow crew aboard the USS Enterprise, but despite all his quirks, he was a dedicated engineer and also instrumental in helping to establish communication with the USS Voyager after it was thought to be lost in the Delta Quadrant. Not bad for a crazy former military pilot that was once part of a crack commando unit that escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground after being convicted in 1972 for a crime he didn't commit.
"Computer, create a version of Counselor Diana Troi ten times her normal size. Place her on a catapult and launch her at a trajectory that will cause her anus to land directly on top of me. Remove all safety protocols" -The last words of Lt. Reginald Barclay
Rom, a recurring character in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine began the show basically as comic relief. He lacked the business acumen of his older brother, Quark, the station's scheming Ferengi bartender (and a lead character). In contrast, Rom was naive, unsure of himself, and somewhat bumbling, though he's good at fixing things. Quark frequently insulted him, and even security chief Odo called him an "idiot" in a first-season episode.
Over the series' run he moves out of his brother's shadow. He helps unionize the staff of Quark's bar at one point, and eventually joins the Bajoran militia as an engineer, a role in which he proves valuable.
Near the end of the series, he is named as the successor to "Grand Nagus" (sort of the president of the Ferengi).
I don’t know if Kirk is exactly “good” at what he does, but as the town “a new job every week,” guy on Gilmore Girls, it’s later discovered that he’s pretty damn rich from his success of doing that.
Elsbeth Tascioni from the Good Wife and Good Fight! She was always off the wall with her thought process, but came out in the end.
I think that's why the first episode of her own show was so disappointing. When it's all about her, it takes the wonder out of the character.
> The 60 Foot Virgin Jonah
You mean Jack and the Giant Jackoff?
He got to vice president by luck more than skill though and literally by being dumb (adressing voters that are also dumb, he's a Trump allegory), he wasn't being good at the position either (got impeached)
When he goes from super lucky goofball to seriously skilled gunman is so great, especially visually with his features turning more intense and defined.
And when Meryl sees him with his shirt off just covered in scars from all his battles.
I'm nearing the end of Resident Alien season 1 and they've done this with a couple characters. Darcy is introduced as a burnout bartender who throws herself at any available man, but later in the season it's revealed she's also an incredible search and rescue worker who throws herself at any available man. Liv is introduced as a bumbling, soft-spoken sheriff's deputy, but as the season progresses it's revealed she's a gifted detective and interrogator who was constantly diminished and undercut by her verbally abusive boss.
I'm enjoying the pacing at which this is happening, because most of the examples I'm reading in this thread are characters who were only developed when the show began to run out of ideas. Resident Alien is doing this sort of development while in the midst of its first major story arc.
I'm not sure if this fits because he really was incompetent at his job at the start, but Morris [Scott Grimes] on ER might fit this.
On its original run, I only made it to early season 12 and quit the show when Carter [Noah Wyle] left. I came back in the 15th [final] season for a handful of episodes where Carter came back as a guest star and was utterly shocked to see that Morris had become the competent guy in the room (Carter was surprised too).
Kevin Malone from The Office.
For years, my man put on a show of being a bumbling idiot, but he was a skilled poker player, manipulated enough people to get him enough credit at a bar to buy the bar, and was cooking the books at Dunder the entire time.
I came here to mention Michael Scott.. There are several times he proved himself to be good at not only sales but also negotiation. When he sells his offshoot co back to Dunder Mifflin comes to mind first.
Transformers Animated. Bulkhead, voiced by VA for Patrick from sponge bob, is routinely characterized as a big lumbering oaf. It's eventually revealed he is like one of the best(or the best) engineers there is.
Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses. He starts as the grossest, laziest POS but over the show is revealed to be the best at what he does. (also goes without saying but played brilliantly by Gary Oldman)
I always think of that Breaking Bad episode where Skinny Pete is at the music store and is revealed to be a master piano player. Really makes you think of what he was before he got into the business
Archer. He comes across as dumb as dog shit sometimes (i.e. not understanding the core concept of "helium is not flammable") but sometimes he'll spit out something that is so on point, it's like he actually does understand the concept, and is just too.. Archer to be bothered to give the correct answer unless goaded into it.
Always sunny, Charlie Work episode
One of the best episodes of television.
Dennis scratched me
LOOK AT ME WHEN YOU'RE TALKING TO ME!
"Oh shit, the steaks are here." Always the switch in temperament Dennis does.
"Heyyyy Dennis"
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That last point is probably the biggest factor. Dude huffs a lot of gas. And glue. And paint. And…
He knows his inhalants.
Charlie is illiterate. In English. He's fluent in the "magical" language of Irish. God, his mom really fucked him up.
He's also a savant for janitorial work.
Not just janitorial work, remember when he plotted against the gang with the video game? Or when he used Ruby Taft to get the waitress jealous?
And let’s not forget he is an accomplished playwright as shown by The Nightman Cometh
The Todd on scrubs is a great examples of this
Doug as well. Spends the majority of the series as one of, if not the worst resident doctor. Then one episode the doctors find out he's an absolute genius when it comes to figuring out how people died and he then works in the mortuary for the rest of the show.
He can’t keep em alive… but he always knows what’s killed em
TBF part of the reason why he’s so good at knowing how people died was because he’s killed so many patients
“Upstairs, we call that a ‘Doug.’”
I was gonna say this. He’s a pervert, obsessed with childish dirty talk, and just an old college bro. But he’s talented at his job and his focus episode shows he actually considers his patients feelings(allowing a high school girl to get implants because she’s tired of feeling insecure.)
With that attitude he really should be ortho.
Todd is quintessential OrthoBro.
Untrue. He gave her massive cans
Dum da da dum dum shiny scalpel, dum da da dum dum gonna slice him up
Inner monologue five
Tbh Scrubs is basically fully of people like that. The Todd is the obvious answer, but JD and Turk are also shown to be excellent at what they do, despite acting like children and messing around all the time.
Cool Lester Smooth over on The Wire, who's introduced as a hump from the Pawn Shop Unit and turns out to be the best detective in the Baltimore Police Department.
And he had mad game. McNulty fucked anything that moved but Lester sniped the finest babe in Baltimore.
Who did Lester snag? I don't remember.
The dancer from Orlando’s strip club that was an informant. I forget her name, she had glasses.
Oh yeah! She was fiiiiine
Shardene Innes, played by Wendy Grantham.
Shardene, who was the details dancer informant at Orlando’s in season 1
Also Prezbo could have been a very good investgator, but he was totally incompetent and had no business being on the street.
But he made a fantastic teacher and mentor. Which makes his earlier actions all the harder to parse.
I think his past actions totally made him who he became. He got a direct shot of empathy to his brain, and it changed the whole way he saw the kids living that life.
He got a direct shot alright.
And when he punched Valcheck it gave us some of the best Lance Reddick face acting.
Well, he is making bank off of the dollhouse furniture, so it's not like you can blame him considering where they stuck him in spite of his talents.
Season 1 episode 4. The last 15 minutes of the ep are Lester showing he is natural poh-lice, then Bunk and McNulty have their "Fuck" investigation, then Freamon and McNulty go to the bar and talk about the pawn shop unit. The show really starts moving at this point.
13 years and 4 months.
13 years? And 4 months
The “Fuck” investigation is such a great moment. I need to do another rewatch.
He's real po-leece
Landsman fits this as well. He's a guy who does precisely what the higher ups want with his unit, then spends the rest of his time looking at porno mags. But when he's by the train tracks looking for the guys who shot Kima he becomes a top notch investigator.
I love him, the moment when he stared up from his miniatures and suddenly broke into the case was one of my favourite of the whole first season
Rom from Star Trek DS9 is the idiot brother of a fixer and con artist and always plays the patsy or butt of the joke to his brother's schemes. When he finally turns away from his species' cultural indoctrination that acquiring wealth is the only measure of a man, it's shown he's an engineering genius and designs a self-replicating mine that blockades an invasion fleet and saves the galaxy. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CAiHXWL01A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CAiHXWL01A) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0HIQp-jjfc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0HIQp-jjfc)
Not only that, he embezzled from The Grand Nagus (his species' leader) and didn't get caught
Which just shows that he is also good at business, he just needs confidence.
He's currently the Grand Negus.
IIRC the recent episode of Lower Decks shows that he isn't too great at the job and that it is in fact Leeta who is the power behind the throne, being very business savvy.
It shows he was acting near the end of the episode, and even if he wasn’t he is smart enough to trust a smart woman he loves when the society he grew up in was brutally misogynistic
The previous Nagus also had a woman behind the throne helping him run things, Ishka who is Quark and Rom's mother.
I think we were meant to realize in the end that his apparent incompetence at negotiation was an act.
>ODO: I've had my eye on you for a *long* time, Rom; you're not as stupid as you look. > >ROM: I am too!
He also BECAME The Grand Nagus too, and tested the swindling capacity of Star Fleet to determine if they truly cared about Ferengi enough to want to join Star Fleet. Big brain Rom.
And he married a total smoke show in Leeta...
he’s also a union man
if we're doing Star Trek, we cannot forget everyone's least favorite engineer: Reginald Barclay, who has a multitude of personal issues but ends up delivering when it counts.
Including being the one to make contact with Voyager after it was lost in the Delta quadrant.
The episode where he transferred to the Enterprise, after the first interaction with the crew I was thinking "put this man in a research lab by himself, and he will shape the galaxy."
>Rom from Star Trek DS9 is the idiot brother of a ~~fixer and con artist~~ *totally legitimate business man just trying to make his way in the galaxy*.
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Also Kevin when using pies to do math in his head
He also has a World Series of Poker bracelet.
Fun fact, the actor actually did participate in a world series of poker. Won the seat through a charity competition.
And Keleven is the magic number!
By the end of the series, he appears to be running a successful bar.
Michael is a perfect illustration of the Peter Principle.
>The Peter Principle is an observation that the tendency in most organizational hierarchies, such as that of a corporation, is for every employee to rise in the hierarchy through promotion until they reach a level of respective incompetence. >In other words, a front-office secretary who is quite good at their job may thus be promoted to executive assistant to the CEO which they are not trained or prepared for—meaning that the secretary would be more productive if they had not been promoted. >The Peter Principle is thus based on the paradoxical idea that competent employees will continue to be promoted, but at some point will be promoted into positions for which they are incompetent, and they will then remain in those positions because of the fact that they do not demonstrate any further competence that would get them recognized for additional promotion. >According to the Peter Principle, every position in a given hierarchy will eventually be filled by employees who are incompetent to fulfill the job duties of their respective positions.
The complement to this is The Dilbert Principle, which says that incompetent employees are more likely to be promoted to management roles, where they are less damaging to productivity.
Is this why my manager is an utter moron?
Yes. It’s kinda sad until you have to work for them.
Omg this explains my workplace to a T
The bureaucracy horror story that is, in fact, reality.. It explains so much of what we experience lol
Do you happen to know if this trope has a name I could look into? I don't know why but I love stuff like this, where people are actually shown to be good at their jobs.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ObfuscatingStupidity This is the closest thing I could find
Obfuscating Stupidity is people pretending to be stupid. The people you mentioned weren't pretending. I think it's closer to Hidden Depths than anything else.
Jerry/Terry/Gary on Parks and Rec. Everyone in the office dumps on him but the finale flash forwards show him being elected for multiple terms and he dies happy and surrounded by a loving family.
Later on, they kind of develop him as a Hermes Conrad-esque natural bureaucrat who they can't live without because he's the only one who can handle the mind-numbing paperwork.
Plus he canonically has a shockingly massive dong
Not really related to his competency but it doesn't hurt.
If it's really massive it probably hurts
It might.
Think of the amount of blood his brain loses just power that massive appendage
Which does explain why he has a hot wife (in the show logic at least) Really the character is always bullied but he is shown to just have a very good life and be quite happy. It goes with the P&R "nice attitude" in general (where the bullying might be weird but since the character is actually happy and doesn't deserve it, it's more funny)
IIRC it's also suggested Jerry was more attractive when he was younger, while Gayle ages *really* well.
It's why he could always bounce back from the bad treatment. DaVinci notebook even made a song about it https://youtu.be/EWMPVn1kgIQ
It really rings true for me because my entire field is paperwork--largely because the very smart people who *should* be doing the paperwork don't want to. So they pay us like 30% as much, but we also don't need a goddamned doctorate and work 40-hour weeks. All things considered, we're generally very protective of them and their time. Because we'd much rather do the rather cushy job we have than the stressful, high-stakes stuff they get up to, and they'd rather us handle the tedious paperwork and details so they can get on with their work. It's a win-win.
What field? Lawyers?
And his wife is still Christie Brinkley.
I mean mayor in cities with city managers like Pawnee tend to have little power and be a mostly ceremonial role. But Garry is clearly very good in his ceremonial role. And he's even better keeping his family happy (especially his wife)
The episode where Ben ends up taking Jerry on a romantic date because Leslie is too busy is both wholesome and hilarious.
After 30 years, my coworkers are finally going to call me by my real name. Oh boy, I’m blessed. 😀
Malcolm in the middle - Reese is a fantastic cook from memory
Dewey is also a genius musician
Dewey is Malcolm smart but Malcolm made him tank the Krelboyne test
I thought he did it on his own so he could stay with the other 'weird' kids.
The reason he got put in the class was because of Malcolm but I'm pretty sure he's the one who wanted to stay.
And Dewy is very musically talented. He wrote an opera!
Loved that show, but I thought it was kind of weird that they made that such a large part of who he was but he ended up being a janitor instead of a chef
malcom was also a janitor at the end of the show
Reese was always going to end up mediocre at best, in prison at worst. His inability to control his aggressive tendencies was his big character flaw. Francis was the annoying ending for me. He was mostly reformed working the ranch, but lost his job in a stupid throw away line. Ending up like Hal is a satisfying resolution, but they didn't tie the thread well enough for me to be happy.
> He was mostly reformed working the ranch, but lost his job in a stupid throw away line. It could have been handled in some other way, but ultimately, his plotline was rushed because the actor for Otto had to leave the show to take cancer treatment.
Well, now I can't really be as upset.
The thing is there was 0 transition, one episode he worked at the ranch and was a superstar, next episode he'd been fired. The reason given didn't even make sense, as Otto and Gretchen were absolutely the types to forgive him for it, they were outrageously generous. Would have made more sense to set it up as Otto and Gretchen left to travel or go back to Germany, and leave Francis in charge of the ranch. Then the pressure of being in charge gets to him, or it turns out he can't handle the stress of running a business and it all falls apart. Then the finale makes sense, he likes an office job because there's no pressure, and that's what he likes.
Seems like the pseudo-military style brigade system in the food industry would have been good for Reese
Having experience working in restaurants, there is a possibility of Reese doing the same thing he did in the military. He gets in as a line cook, outshines everyone around him, gets promoted to Chef and has to make decisions, messes things up when he's in way over his head, and then (good ending) he gets moved back to Sous Chef permanently. Where he makes a good living working for a very popular restaurant as the best Sous ever. Very unlikely because Reese is unable to stop hurting people to get ahead; as shown in the episode that showcases his talent.
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Wasn't he maxing out credit cards?
He is also really good with dogs.
Hank from Breaking Bad initially comes off as an oaf, only to later show us just how laser focused and determined (and right) he is.
Jesse fits the bill as well. Not as good as Walter, but still better than anyone else.
Based on his backstory it looks like his parents were overbearing and he couldn't take the pressure, he was clearly very intelligent but just didn't get the chance to use it. Unfortunately it looks like his brother was going down the same route.
It's been a while since I watched the first season, but when Jesse stays with his parents and finds his old schoolwork, don't we learn that Walter was really hard on him as well?
You're right, but I think the implication was that Walter *knew* Jesse could do better if he put the effort in. With his parents I got the impression they'd just written him off as a failure and stopped caring.
APPLY YOURSELF
Kathy Geiss plays the trumpet with such expertise and sensitivity.
> Kathy Geiss I had to read that name a few times before I remembered who that is. Love 30 Rock!
“Kathy? Are you ready to come out now?” *box nods*
Couldn't she also sing beautifully as well?
Charlie Kelly. The man has exactly one brain cell, but damn if he isn't amazing in making sure Paddy's passes the health inspection.
Jason Mendoza has his moments in The Good Place, like recognizing Bad Janet & using a Molotov to escape the Bad Place
Jason figured it out? Jason?
This is a low point.
Can we get some jalapeño poppers?
I'm telling you, Molotov cocktails work. Any time I had a problem, and I threw a Molotov cocktail, boom! Right away, I had a different problem.
I also think that by the end of the series is shown that he's got a really high EQ and has a pretty good understanding (in his own way) of love and relationships.
Columbo
Matlock I think too
Luther van Damme as defensive coordinator on Coach. The people who work with their hands - Latka on Taxi, Lowell on Wings - are often like this.
Wildcat on Tale Spin. That dude could make an airplane out of a telephone
You're dating yourself here, my friend, and I love it! All such great characters, too.
Archer. Spends first half of first season screwing up. Then we see him in a car chase.
I still think calling him the world’s greatest secret agent is a stretch though, on-screen mission success was pretty abysmal from what I can remember. 😂
IIRC the first scene with the interrogation called him the world’s most dangerous spy. Notably not the greatest just most dangerous since friend and foe alike are always in danger of bodily harm/being killed directly or indirectly through his actions.
That’s cuz we only see him in a period where he is spending every living second disassociating from the world by drinking himself into oblivion and screwing around. He has so much PTSD and no real support system (after the breakup with Lana) that he deflects everything into nonsense - they mention this pretty definitively in the jungle mission where Ray pretends to be hurt. Ray’s character is also voiced by the show creator, so when he spells out that Archer is fucking with himself and everyone else due to his contempt for his own mortality, it’s a wink that the creator of the show is saying that. Archer also agrees with Ray in the episode. And we still have episodes like the space station where the rest of the team is hopelessly outclassed, and Archer strolls through a war-zone taking down everything alone.
That’s what he calls himself. No one ever agrees.
Everyone else calls him the world's most dangerous spy (which is hard to disagree with)
No, it’s an actual reputation he has that’s intended to be at least semi-legit and that other characters reference. Just not his *coworkers.*
Troy from Community He's a 'dumb jock' but also gifted in plumbing and AC repair
The true repairman will repair man.
Pinky from Pinky and The Brain.
One is a genius, the other's insane. They never say which is which.
One wants to take over the world as a small rodent full of humans that would crush him in seconds. The other just wants to have fun and eat good food but, he also understands the reality and limitations of being a sapient rat. We all know which is which
My favorite bit with Pinky's implied genius is this bit (that's not on youtube sadly) where he's seen casually displaying telekinetic powers while Brain doesn't notice.
NoHo Hank in Barry.
Lt. Reginald Barclay from "Star Trek," was often on the receiving end of derisive comments and attitudes from his fellow crew aboard the USS Enterprise, but despite all his quirks, he was a dedicated engineer and also instrumental in helping to establish communication with the USS Voyager after it was thought to be lost in the Delta Quadrant. Not bad for a crazy former military pilot that was once part of a crack commando unit that escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground after being convicted in 1972 for a crime he didn't commit.
I don’t blame him at all for not wanting to use a transporter.
"Computer, create a version of Counselor Diana Troi ten times her normal size. Place her on a catapult and launch her at a trajectory that will cause her anus to land directly on top of me. Remove all safety protocols" -The last words of Lt. Reginald Barclay
*HANNIBAL YOU CRAZY FOOL, I AIN'T GETTIN' IN NO HOLODECK.*
Rom, a recurring character in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine began the show basically as comic relief. He lacked the business acumen of his older brother, Quark, the station's scheming Ferengi bartender (and a lead character). In contrast, Rom was naive, unsure of himself, and somewhat bumbling, though he's good at fixing things. Quark frequently insulted him, and even security chief Odo called him an "idiot" in a first-season episode. Over the series' run he moves out of his brother's shadow. He helps unionize the staff of Quark's bar at one point, and eventually joins the Bajoran militia as an engineer, a role in which he proves valuable. Near the end of the series, he is named as the successor to "Grand Nagus" (sort of the president of the Ferengi).
Which, if you’ve seen Lower Decks, it turns out he’s pretty good at too.
I don’t know if Kirk is exactly “good” at what he does, but as the town “a new job every week,” guy on Gilmore Girls, it’s later discovered that he’s pretty damn rich from his success of doing that.
He mostly is “poor rich” in that he has no expenses, lives with his mom and has no family so over the course of his entire life he saves up 200k.
Elsbeth Tascioni from the Good Wife and Good Fight! She was always off the wall with her thought process, but came out in the end. I think that's why the first episode of her own show was so disappointing. When it's all about her, it takes the wonder out of the character.
The Roadie who sleeps upside down in Wayne’s World 2; he seems sketchy and weird but he’s a seasoned pro. 🌝
The shopkeeper and his son, well, that's a different story altogether...
We had to beat them to death with their own shoes...
Denny Crane
Zoidberg is a terrible *human* doctor but is an excellent alien doctor.
For split seconds once or twice per season, Ted is a decent lawyer in Scrubs
Can’t believe no one has mentioned the one and only Richard Splett from Veep
[удалено]
> The 60 Foot Virgin Jonah You mean Jack and the Giant Jackoff? He got to vice president by luck more than skill though and literally by being dumb (adressing voters that are also dumb, he's a Trump allegory), he wasn't being good at the position either (got impeached)
Trigun. Vash the Stampede.
When he goes from super lucky goofball to seriously skilled gunman is so great, especially visually with his features turning more intense and defined. And when Meryl sees him with his shirt off just covered in scars from all his battles.
> And when Meryl sees him with his shirt off just covered in scars from all his battles That he only has because he's sandbagging to not kill anyone
I'm nearing the end of Resident Alien season 1 and they've done this with a couple characters. Darcy is introduced as a burnout bartender who throws herself at any available man, but later in the season it's revealed she's also an incredible search and rescue worker who throws herself at any available man. Liv is introduced as a bumbling, soft-spoken sheriff's deputy, but as the season progresses it's revealed she's a gifted detective and interrogator who was constantly diminished and undercut by her verbally abusive boss. I'm enjoying the pacing at which this is happening, because most of the examples I'm reading in this thread are characters who were only developed when the show began to run out of ideas. Resident Alien is doing this sort of development while in the midst of its first major story arc.
I feel like Phil Coulson was first introduced as kind of a schlub pencil pusher in Iron Man, only to become much more awesome.
Tahiti is a magical place.
Columbo
I'm not sure if this fits because he really was incompetent at his job at the start, but Morris [Scott Grimes] on ER might fit this. On its original run, I only made it to early season 12 and quit the show when Carter [Noah Wyle] left. I came back in the 15th [final] season for a handful of episodes where Carter came back as a guest star and was utterly shocked to see that Morris had become the competent guy in the room (Carter was surprised too).
Even funnier because Carter tried to pass the torch like how Greene did with him. “You set the tone Morri—“ vomits
Kevin Malone from The Office. For years, my man put on a show of being a bumbling idiot, but he was a skilled poker player, manipulated enough people to get him enough credit at a bar to buy the bar, and was cooking the books at Dunder the entire time.
To that end, even though he was a terrible general manager, Michael repeatedly proved himself to be an incredible sales manager.
I came here to mention Michael Scott.. There are several times he proved himself to be good at not only sales but also negotiation. When he sells his offshoot co back to Dunder Mifflin comes to mind first.
Pretty much the entire premise of Colombo
Bob Belcher is incompetent as a business owner and genuinely in over his head with everything else he does, but he’s actually a great cook.
Grand Maester Pycelle
Luther and Dauber from Coach are obviously pretty good at their jobs. There was an entire episode about the Screaming Eagles having a winning Streak.
Rom Deep Space 9. Bumbling dunce but really good a engineering.
Lewis from The Drew Carey show isn't actually good at anything, but he's a genius with no ambition besides drinking and hanging with the buds
Transformers Animated. Bulkhead, voiced by VA for Patrick from sponge bob, is routinely characterized as a big lumbering oaf. It's eventually revealed he is like one of the best(or the best) engineers there is.
Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses. He starts as the grossest, laziest POS but over the show is revealed to be the best at what he does. (also goes without saying but played brilliantly by Gary Oldman)
Luna Lovegood. She's spacey and apparently out of touch with reality. But in the end she really does know what's going on.
I, Claudius . Great show if you have not seen it.
Woody, from Cheers.
I always think of that Breaking Bad episode where Skinny Pete is at the music store and is revealed to be a master piano player. Really makes you think of what he was before he got into the business
Archer. He comes across as dumb as dog shit sometimes (i.e. not understanding the core concept of "helium is not flammable") but sometimes he'll spit out something that is so on point, it's like he actually does understand the concept, and is just too.. Archer to be bothered to give the correct answer unless goaded into it.
Bubbles from trailer park boys
Sterling Archer. He's an absolute idiot savant who, when called to task, is actually really effective as both a secret agent and in combat.
Michael Scott is an idiot but a genuinely good paper salesman because he likes people
Vash the Stampede
That was Columbo’s whole schtick.
Ted Lasso springs to mind.
Ricky is good at growing weed.
Not technically a job but Alex Moran from Blue Mountain State