Top 10 Television Show Cliches

Few of our lives are as exciting, or filled with as much conflict and strife, as people on television. Each episode puts the show’s characters through more stuff than most of us deal with in a year. This may seem par for the course though; after all, TV is built on drama. Even so-called “reality” shows inject conflict to spice up their content and to create dramatic weight to ostensibly authentic events. Nevertheless, overly dramatic situations are a cliché, meaning that audiences need to buy into an awful lot. Wouldn’t it be nice to see more ordinary events reflected onscreen?

A lot of us have a place, like a restaurant or a bar, where we like to spend time with friends, but TV characters take it a step further, treating their hangout spots like their second homes. The reason for this is usually the result of production necessities. While some shows can afford to show characters eating out at a new place every week, many cannot, so it’s easier and more cost-effective to have just a few standing sets or locations for the characters to hang at. These hangouts are often iconic parts of their respective shows though, so this is one cliché we’re definitely willing to live with.

Even in today’s largely computer-literate society, there are still things we don’t know about them. However, TV shows continually treat the machines like they’re borderline magical, or at the very least capable of doing things they can’t do in real life. Cop shows and other procedurals are usually guiltiest of this cliché. Yeah, sorry, enhancing camera footage with no resolution drop is not feasible. Also, according to TV, hacking is something you can do in minutes flat, and never requires the use of a mouse. We’re no experts, but even we’re rolling our eyes at these errors, so this is one trope we’d love to see deleted.

We’ve all seen this one before. In an attempt to seem relatable to every possible audience member, show producers will try to form a cast of specific ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, or other defining features. The classic example is a largely white cast, with a single or a few token ethnic minority characters. Some shows have wised up to the trope, and will make self-aware comments, or even flip the ratio to have a token white character. Other common setups include a token gay character, or a token female, if the cast is primarily male. Ultimately, it just comes across as disingenuous, and pandering for the sake of it.

Spoiler alert: they will. Television loves to toy with the idea that maybe the love interests on programs won’t end up together. There are obstacles thrown in to delay the inevitable, like ex-lovers, big arguments, or misunderstandings galore, but we all know it’ll happen at some point; give or take a character’s death, or the show’s cancelation. It’s gotten to the point where it would honestly be refreshing to see things not work out between those two crazy kids. After all, love doesn’t always mean everyone stays together in reality. Still, we realize that TV is largely an escape from the real world, so it’s understandable why this trope has remained popular.

Many sitcoms feature people with apartments or houses far larger than what people of their economic means would realistically be able to afford. Come on: it’s not too hard to figure out how expensive the cost of living would be in the major cities where the characters live. This discrepancy is rarely addressed in shows, leaving the audience to suspend their disbelief. From a production standpoint, however, it makes sense. Filming in a larger space offers more opportunities for movement and greater variety of camera placement. So, despite not making much sense in the narrative, this cliché likely won’t be disappearing any time soon.

Nothing rounds out a TV episode quite as tidily or, some might argue condescendingly, as a summation of what we’re supposed to have learned from what we just watched. This form of storytelling has been around for quite some time, and either features a narrator summing up the message, or a character expressing, either aloud or in an inner monologue, what they – and therefore the audience – have taken away from the events they’ve experienced. The real world is rarely quite so easy to understand, but it’s nice to imagine it is when we watch TV. Plus, some shows have gotten adept at parodying the practice, which can be pretty funny.

In the case of television, writers will intentionally have a character repeat a phrase, hoping it will become associated with the person who says it, and even with the show as a whole. Thing is, catchphrases are a very delicate thing to play with. Sure, a line might get a laugh the first few times, but if used too liberally, it can become incredibly tiresome to hear every episode every time a character makes an appearance. Sometimes, though, it’s music to our ears, and that’s when you know you have something special. You can’t really have TV without the catchphrases.

She’s way out of his league. Time and again, TV has depicted less attractive men paired with more attractive female partners. The reverse, to be honest, is a rarity. It was a tossup between this cliché and the dumb dad trope, but this one’s annoying for both sexes. The origin of the gender hotness disparity is possibly due to more men being in charge of casting roles for television, meaning they were more likely to cast attractive women. We’re not saying this cliché doesn’t happen in real life – it does – but TV portrays it happening far more often than in reality.

Before we get to our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions:

- A Failure to Communicate

- Love Triangles

- The Guest Star Is the Killer

Nothing is guaranteed to get an audience to throw up their hands and groan more than discovering they have to wait to find out how things turn out. Cliffhangers are the handiest weapon in a show’s back pocket to keep people tuning in, whether it’s for any old episode, or a season finale. By leaving off on a moment of excitement or uncertainty, we’re left waiting with bated breath until the next episode airs – which can sometimes be a painfully long time. Is it a little manipulative? Absolutely. But it works, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. As long as there’s TV, there will probably still be cliff-…