Superman Syndrome, or Premises that depend on people being Giant Idiots

[taste_is_sweet]

You guys know what I'm talking about--that episode where normally competent, logical and sane characters lose their collective minds in order for a plot to happen. My personal favorite (and by 'favorite' I mean 'most hated') is the Stargate: Atlantis season two episode The Long Goodbye, where the same people who were nearly blown up by a starship commander with an alien entity in his head the episode before, decide to let alien entities into the heads of the military commander and leader of the entire expedition. Naturally this goes just as badly as you'd expect. Hyjinks ensue.

And this kiss, which made all the McKay/Sheppard shippers cry.

There were even worse violations of logic and sense that season (::cough, Michael, ::cough::), but I know SGA is far from the only series of any genre which has given the characters collective brain damage when convenient. A more recent favorite of mine is another second season episode (and is there something about year two?) of Arrow, where despite constant and deadly hijackings, aid trucks continue to be sent into a destroyed and lawless part of the city with no protection and their logos clear on the vehicle sides.

If only we could do something about that!

But nowhere, nowhere, is this example of joint idiocy more prevalent than in any plot requiring a normally intelligent character to somehow not recognize another character in a flimsy disguise.

Arrow, of course, is a perfect example of this. And while I know that the whole show would collapse if Officer Quentin Lance ever noticed how very similar Arrow's height, breadth and the lower half of his face was to Oliver Queen, or if Laurel Lance ever recognized the enormous cleft in The Canary's chin as belonging to her sister, the absolute impossibility of this lack of recognition is both hilarious and irritating as hell.

I mean, we're not talking Batman-esque cowls here. We're talking teeny little eye masks with a wig and/or a hood. As an example, I made a hero of my own:

My husband by day...

And as a badass superhero! Let's call him, 'The Engineer'.

I know that none of you know him as well as I do, but seriously. How long would it take you to recognize him after speaking to him face-to-face day after day for several minutes at a time? And his nifty steampunk goggles actually make his eyes harder to see than the characters' eyes in the show. Quentin is a cop, for Pete's sake. His daughter Laurel is a hotshot lawyer. Presumably they'd be good at noticing stuff, like how similar those two vigilantes are to people they've known for decades.

"I can't help but feel I'm missing something."

Or if that's too much to ask, what about the fact that The Arrow and The Canary only appeared shortly after Oliver Queen and Sarah Lance returned from the dead?

And yet, the selective idiot ball keeps getting passed around. Maybe one day, Starling City's finest (former) Detective will actually detect that that Arrow guy is awfully familiar...

And hopefully he'll deal with it better than these guys.

Comments

[draycevixen.livejournal.com]

Even as a child I remember looking at Superman thinking "nobody's guessed?"

I mean, NO mask at all.

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

I know, right? It's crazy. Apparently Superman also stands/walks differently, but still. Lois, of all people, should at least have been able to figure it out way, way sooner than she did. (Though that may depend on which comic's canon we're dealing with.)

[junnights.livejournal.com]

hehe - nice picks of your husband:) must say that the 'superhero' one looks better though... as the other one is clearly not his best angle... The slight twist to the head gives an illusion that he's way heavier than he actually is (not that I've seen him in real life.. but looking twice at the picture was enough...and also looking at the googles one). As for the superhero thing? hmm... well - I heard somewhere (or read.. most likely a documentary though) that there are 6 people in the world that looks fairly similar to us (not talking close relatives here) so the eyeglasses on/off and people believing it is actually somewhat plausible despite how obvious it seems... (and if the way one holds ones body, facial expressions, behaviour ++ is also extremely different... well...

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

::Shrugs:: I liked the pictures. :)

I will agree that in RL it is certainly plausible--I don't have the best memory for faces, and lots of people have mistaken me for others they know. That said, the main characters of the show interact all the time. I think that eventually anyone would realize that Arrow actually seems so much like Oliver because they're the same person...

[rissabby.livejournal.com]

Your post has the best layout of any I've seen on LJ. It's fun and easy to read.
I've never seen Mystery Men all the way through so I enjoyed the clip.

I think that the secret identity problem is one that we learn to roll with in the comic book universe. It doesn't necessarily translate well into TV and film, but it's so established and integral to the characters that it has to be used.

One of the innovations Marvel comics made in the 1960's was creating the Fantastic Four, who had battle-code names, but no secret identities. Their other superheros were masked iirc.

Also -- cute husband. And cooperative too. Give him a *yay* from me.

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the compliment. :D I chose this LJ layout from the options available for how easy it was to read, as well as the sugary theme (of course). I'm glad that it works for you. :)

Mystery Men was fun, but not brilliant. But it was very good at sending up some of the best-known tropes of the genre.

I knew about the Fantastic Four, but I didn't know that their identities weren't secret (though in retrospect, yeah, how could they have been)? What I never understood, though, was how the X-Men managed to have secret identities when most of them didn't wear anything to cover their faces. I agree that it's just one of those comics things we've come to expect and accept, like costumes that work in drawings but look ridiculous in real life.

I agree, my husband is both cute and awesome. Thank you. :D

[brumeier.livejournal.com]

The Engineer! I love him! LOL! And such a clever disguise, too. I'd never have recognized him. ::winks::

So, this rant sounds familiar. And I agree. It's frustrating when normally smart people act stupid just so some ridiculous plot can take place. They throw caution to the wind and act impulsively and oh goodness! Consequences!

Bah. I hated that ep of SGA with the entities. After two years they'd learned nothing. ::shakes head sadly::

As I mentioned, I also hate when cops are portrayed as idiots. Well, anyone in law enforcement really. NCIS is a prime example of this. DiNozzo is a Senior Field Agent for the top team and the writers seem determined to turn him into a buffoon. Can't he be smart and funny without the brainless stupidity?

I hate when canon turns on a character I like. See also: Super Steve can-do-no-wrong McGarrett on H50. Sigh.

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

You may have had a significant contribution to the rant...

If I had one wish for my favourite genre shows, it would be that the characters all got to be consistent and still managed to avert near-disasters every week. I mean, Rodney was either a crack shot or couldn't even load a gun properly, depending on the needs of the episode. And John was either mockingly charming or a sociopath. Though actually that's not mutually exclusive...

At least Super Steve is, well, super. I don't know why the Hero's Contrasting Buddy has to be such a goof. Why can't Danny/DiNozzo/Rodney be competent too?

[brumeier.livejournal.com]

That's a question for the ages, babes.

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Sage, Brum. Sage.

[popkin16]

Yeah, I've always had issues with Before I Sleep. Leaving aside their previous experience with entities taking people over (which I had never thought of before and am now facepalming over), who the hell thought it'd be a good idea for the two more senior personnel to be the ones to take on the entities? Elizabeth was an accident, so there is leeway there, but Sheppard? Caldwell and Lorne should have protested vociferously.

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Who the hell thought it'd be a good idea for the two more senior personnel to be the ones to take on the entities?

Yes! Exactly! And IIRC, Sheppard's willingness to do this aside (and I personally think is was completely out of character for him, considering he'd already had Wraith messing in his head and is an extremely emotionally private person in general), how could McKay have let it happen, let alone Caldwell? Surely some good-looking grunt would've been able to host the supposedly loving husband just fine. Even Lorne would've been a saner choice. It was just so incredibly stupid of all of them.

I think that someone, somewhere, suggested that Sheppard volunteered because he's a closet romantic. I'm sure the Sheppard/Weir shippers said it was because he wanted to have a plausible reason to kiss her. At least either of those reasons were, well, reasons, as opposed to the complete lack of explanation we got on the show.

[popkin16]

Caldwell especially, you'd think would object. You'd think Rodney would be all about practical thinking, i.e. don't let your military commander let an alien entity into his head. I could see John being a closet romantic, but I don't think that would overrule 1. His need for privacy, 2. His knowledge that letting someone else take over is not a good idea. John's smart, and a tactical thinker. He wouldn't go for it.

But yeah, at least that's a better idea than the nothing the show gives us.

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Oh, I am so very, very with you on that. Maybe the radiation from the capsules affected everyone's brain? ::hopes::

[popkin16]

I like that explanation :D

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

:D

[natsuko1978.livejournal.com]

Seriously, when I am more logical or more intelligent than a character who is supposed to be a genius and/or a military strategist, I DISPAIR. And yell at the telly.

As for the "no one recognises me with my glasses/mask on" - I have worn glasses since I was 7. For a couple of months when I was 17 I wore contact lenses. No one - including all the friends who used to tell me that it would make me look so much better - noticed. After the first couple of days, I actually said to a friend (the one who had once greeted me after the school holidays when I went from an AA-cup to a B-cup without stopping at A, with "Oh My God! Dee! You've got TITS!!", so you know, she did notice some stuff) "So, uh... notice anything different about me?" And it *still* took her five minutes to get it.

Maybe though that's actually *it* - how we encode people by *context* rather than appearance?

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

That's a smart and interesting proposition, and I'm sure your right, that context does have a lot to do with it.

That said, I think that your friends not noticing that you weren't wearing glasses only proves that, say, the glasses to bare face or bare face to mask thing should be even more useless in most circumstances.

[sgamadison.livejournal.com]

*grins*

My favorite: why didn't you see this? moment comes in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

Makes me laugh every time...

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

That is great. Poor Lois--she looks so embarrassed! I love how they hung a lantern on it like that.