Adults Are Useless / Live-Action TV

Useless adults in live-action TV.

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A-H

• In 3-2-1 Contact's "The Bloodhound Gang" segments, the adults who are the targets of con artists are typically complete idiots to the point where one easy mark has his own child have control of his own finances.
• The entire premise of Absolutely Fabulous is that the adults are completely drug addled and useless, while the child, Saffy, is intelligent, capable and down-to-earth.
• Are You Afraid of the Dark? featured the Cassandra Truth variety, as the parents will never believe the neighbors are vampires. However, there are some exceptions, where the adults actually believe the kids and assist them (most memorably the janitor in "The Tale of the Dead Man's Float".
• Arrested Development: While all of the adults in the show constantly make terrible decisions and ruin any good thing that they get, George-Michael is running a relatively successful business and Maeby cons her way into a job as a movie studio executive. This is further highlighted by the fact that one of Maeby's better ideas as an executive is ruined by Michael.
• Awkward. has every adult on the show be some form of stupid, ignorant or actively hostile when dealing with the main character teenagers.
  • The staff at the school are well aware of Sadie's extremely bullying. This includes taking and publically posting a nude picture of Jenna and outing a gay student. But they do absolutely nothing to prevent it or reprimand her for it. The only time that Valerie threatens Sadie with consequences happens when she steals the private counsellor files, and instead of going to the principal so they can get rid of her for good, Valerie stupidly tries to hold it over Sadie's head, then takes the file back which Sadie recognises means there's no proof, thus losing her leverage.
  • Jenna's parents are well meaning doofuses who don't really know how to properly relate to Jenna, who is less popular and more introspective than they were, and on several occasions, they go way over the top with their punishments, making things worse.
  • Sadie is abandoned by her parents and then they allow her to be adopted by a woman who is clearly unsuitable for the task.
  • Matty's parents kick him out because they find out about him having sex with Jenna.
  • The worst offender is guidance counselor Valerie, who rarely provided straightforward, forthright advice and would often make make things worse for Jenna by misunderstanding whatever it is Jenna's telling her about. In Se1Ep2 where a nude photo of Jenna is circulated. And it's Jenna who points out that it's illegal, not Valerie. Valerie's failures and idiocy is eventually made into a plot point where Jenna reveals all the terrible things she had done, which causes Valerie to be fired. But because the other adults on the show are also stupid, Valerie eventually gets her job back.
  • Ming's parents are stereotypically overbearing Asian helicopter parents, with one example being her mother driving into the school to get her to leave a school function/party, and another where they force Ming to take a random girl to a Winter Formal because they refuse to let Ming go with a boy as her date. They get better in their final appearance, having given up their overly strict parenting to allow Ming to have no curfew on prom night.
• Beetleborgs: The trio of Kid Heroes seem to be the only competent characters in the show when it comes to dealing with the enemies that escaped from the comic book world. The adults in this series are either incapable of dealing with this threat, due to a lack of weapons or would just flee at the first sign of trouble. The only exception to this trope is the writer of the Beetleborg comics, Art Fortunes, who sometimes supplies the heroes with new powers and weapons.
• Beverly Hills, 90210, for some extent, with the obvious exception of Brandon and Brenda's parents (who were originally part of the main cast). As the series progressed, teens got into, or were affected by, much more serious troubles (guns, paedophilia, addiction, mafia, rape) and their parents were either oblivious or useless. The '90210' sequel also has that a bit: drugs, a hit-and-run death, stalking... and only Annie's and Dixon's folks actually do something (and only occasionally).
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • The show has a curious take on this. While Giles and Jenny Calendar are undeniably useful, and Buffy's mother proves quite smart and sensible once she finds out the truth about her daughter (though she still can't do much and it's just not realistic to help out a super-powered daughter), adult society is thoroughly useless. There is no adult organization which is not either evil (the mayor and his administration), staggeringly incompetent (the Watchers), or both (the Initiative). The only possible exception is the coven which sends Giles to stop Willow at the end of season six; but they didn't get much, or indeed any, screen time. If they had, no doubt they'd have turned out to be a front organization for some kind of demonic cult.
  • Snyder. And how.
  • Did anyone else watch all those kids dying all the time on the show and ask themselves 'Don't these people have parents?!'
  • The one time the parents decided they should do something about the way at least one of their children dies every week, it was because a demon was influencing them.
  • The worst case was in the season 6 premiere when demon bikers attacked the town and there was no one to defend it. No cops, firemen or rescue personnel accounted for.
  • Xander's parents are drunks, Buffy's father is rarely around, Willow's mother shows up once, getting in her way, and Willow's father is mentioned in reference, with Willow worrying what "Ira Rosenberg will think of his only daughter nailing a crucifix to her wall."
  • Played up in Season 3's "Band Candy," where a certain brand of chocolate makes adults who eat it revert to teenage maturity levels.
  • In one episode, Buffy is searched for murder. At first, she can escape only on account of her special powers, but then she returns to the scene of the crime unharmed, without being started by the police. In the hospital, two policemen practically run past her without recognizing her, and lastly, she can leave the city even in the bright day, in a public transport.
  • Gunn and his (on the street living) friends are also teenagers who have to fight constantly against vampires. The comics show that a group of teenagers is much more effective in the fight against vampires, than a military unit of the US army, which is suffering large losses, and cannot defeat the vampires.
• Cobra Kai: Counselor Blatt is quite incompetent, and utterly fails to keep West Valley High's bullying epidemic under control. It's Played for Drama, as her ineptitude leads many of the bullied students to turn to the Cobra Kai dojo, and in many cases to eventually become the kinds of bullies that once tormented them, because for all his faults, Johnny provides them with a form of empowerment that Blatt simply cannot. She gets worse in the third season, as her insistence on appearing PC at all costs over actually paying attention to situations enables Hawk to play her like a fiddle against Team Miyagi-Do.
• Control Z: Quintanilla, the school principal, doesn't do almost anything useful to track down the hacker, although he keeps on telling Sofía to back out when she offers to assist. The same applies for Susana who becomes this authority figure by the second season when it comes to the avenger, although she does implement a lot of controversial measures.
• This is the standard thought process of basically anyone in the Criminal Minds universe who has a job involving teenagers or children: "Hmm, one of the kids it's my job to watch over is clearly being bullied/abused to a frightening and dangerous degree, perhaps I should report this or do something about it? Nah, it's cool, it's not like the abuser/bully might actually kill the kid, and the victim sure as hell isn't going to snap and go on a killing spree. I am awesome at my job!"
• The Crystal Maze: Some children who applied to be on the show declared that they could do better than the adults. At the beginning of the fourth series, they did indeed do better than most of the adult teams, winning with eight crystals. They also thought of an innovative solution to one of the games (see "Weight and Switch" below).
• Played straight in Daybreak (2019). After the Apocalypse, all adults are ghoulies, except for the Big Bad and Mrs. Crumble, which is also an exception among the otherwise useless adults. But even before the apocalypse, very few of the teenagers had any adult role models that were actually useful and did not neglect them or were completely incompetent. At one point, the teenagers find that the adults triggered the disaster in the first place.
• Degrassi Junior High:
  • This was actually part of the creators' intent, as this show was designed as a backlash of sorts to the heavily moralistic, saccharine teen-oriented TV shows of the time, including putting the kids and their feelings front and center without adults telling them what is right and what is wrong. Throughout the whole show there are only three recurring adults: the teachers, and they are just there to teach their subjects, not moral lessons. As for parents, they only sporadically appear as a means of portraying the character's home life, and some of them are actually abusive, or alcoholics. Others, like the mother of teen mom Christine "Spike" Nelson, are very sweet and supportive, but not in a way that's meant to teach you anything.
  • Downplayed in Degrassi: The Next Generation. Because four of the adults in the show are characters from the original series, including Spike (whose daughter Emma is a central character), they aren't portrayed in the same disposable way as the adults in Degrassi Junior High, and even are involved in more storylines. Apart from that, original teacher-cum-principal Mr. Raditch is pretty much portrayed as a Principal Vernon type who is later kicked out because of his failure to stop a school shooting.
• Doctor Who: In "Fear Her", this is Trish, mother of Creepy Child Chloe, in a nutshell. Despite being warned repeatedly to not leave her daughter alone so she can't trap people in drawings, she does just that. Rose calls her out on her stupidity.
• Drake & Josh: Audrey and Walter tend to be pretty clueless, especially about Megan.
• The teacher from Everybody Hates Chris is probably a frontrunning example in this section. She's witnessed Chris attacked by Caruso, but usually does nothing to stop or even acknowledge it. In one moment bordering on Lawful Stupid, she gave Chris a 0 on a test, despite the fact that he got every question right, but because he entered each answer on the wrong line. It didn't look to be a scantron, where it would be justified, either.
• Euphoria: One thing most of the main cast has in common is how their parents fail them in unique, various ways, from causing didn’t mean to break ups to barely being able to track their children on what they do:
  • Nate's dad Cal has left his son with various misogynistic ideals and explosive anger issues as a result of his problematic teachings of masculinity in his childhood (along with his own internalized homophobia).
  • Meanwhile, Jules' dad means well but is probably a bit too lenient with her, paying little mind to her late-night journeys out of the house or her obvious changes in behavior throughout the show. The same can also be said for Cassie and Lexi's mom Suze, who genuinely loves her daughters but is also so lax in her parenting style that she's barely able to discipline them (particularly Cassie).
  • That being said, Rue's mother Leslie is a heartbreaking deconstruction. While she’s both responsible and kind, her husband died several years prior to the series, forcing her to work herself to the bone to keep the family out of poverty; she's so busy that she's barely able to keep an eye on Rue's chaotic and dangerous behavior until she's already gone too far.
• In The Facts of Life, the only adult who serves a purpose is Mrs. Garrett, the school's nutritionist.
• Several examples in Friends:
  • In "The One After the Super Bowl," it's revealed that Chandler pulled up a girl's skirt during a school play, so the entire school saw her underwear. Where were the teachers, faculty and parents when he did this? It was during a school play, so surely, they witnessed this and reprimanded him for it (which, ironically, would've been far more likely to be the focus of the kids' attention than seeing the girl's underwear).
  • Chandler's childhood in general, as he apparently received very little support during his parents' divorce and Dad coming out as gay.
  • In "The One with the Halloween Party," none of the trick-or-treaters are with their parents or guardians.
  • Phoebe's entire backstory. You have to question how an orphaned 14-year-old ended up on the streets and not in care or a foster home.
• Glee:
  • There don't seem to be any repercussions for "slushie facials," or really any of the bullying. Even when Kurt is being constantly harassed for his sexuality (eventually leading to a threat against his life), the only adults willing to help seem to be his father and Sue Sylvester. Not that it works. This trope is most strongly embodied in Principal Figgins, though all the other staff members in the school have these moments. The stupidity of Figgins really stands out in the fact that he believes that Perky Goth Tina is a vampire, as well as having a father who is "King of the Asian Vampires". Tina routinely uses this ruse to get Figgins to do what she wants.
  • Lampshaded in the episode "On My Way". When Karofsky tries to kill himself the faculty of McKinley conference in the principal's office. Among the things said, Sue says that she should've seen it coming, because she was principal when he was bullying Kurt and she knew something was up. Will says that they were all hard on Dave because they thought he'd hurt Kurt; they just didn't imagine that he'd hurt himself.
    Principal Figgins: It wasn't our job to know.
    Emma: Then whose job was it?
• In Gossip Girl almost every significant adult, one way or another, is irresponsible, clueless, idiotic, indifferent about the whereabouts of the teen characters, or those adults are incapable of controlling the teen actions.
  • To break this down a little: Lily Van Der Woodsen is shown to care more about the family's status than her children and is constantly shown as clueless to the point where her son and youngest child often has to spell things out to her. Bart Bass is a womanizing hard-ass who serves mostly to remind Chuck of all the ways in which he isn't good enough when he's not getting in the way of Lily and Rufus' feelings for one another. Eleanor Waldorf is rarely home and when she is seems only to be able of criticizing Blair and Nate's parents are a drug-addicted man arrested for embezzlement and his wife who blindly persists in the view that everything will be okay even when all their assets are seized. Even Rufus Humphrey, who compared to the others is something of a model parent, is often shown as stubborn to the point of pig-headed and unable to accept that his children are capable of making their own choices and dealing with the subsequent consequences. His ex-wife disappeared to Hudson and only came back when her teenage daughter showed up on her doorstep and demanded she did so.
  • On the other hand, certain of the more minor adults fare better. The prime example being Cyrus Rose who, although constantly berated by Blair as being annoying, constantly shows himself to be supportive and useful on occasion.
• The Haunting Hour:
  • The parents are so unhelpful in this series that whenever their child is stalked by the Monster of the Week or haunted by a supernatural force their kid usually ends up dead or worse off by the end because they didn't listen.
  • The dad in "Really You" is an exception. He's depicted as competent and finding Lily D. and his wife's obsession with her supremely unnerving. To get around this, the script has him go on a business trip, effectively removing him from a large chunk of the plot.
• Henry Danger:
  • Based on the end of the episode "Jasper's Real Girlfriend", one would wonder how Charlotte's parents have not heard the commotion involving their guest attacking their daughter with a mini chainsaw in Charlotte's room.
  • Henry's parents in general. They never realize their son is Kid Danger in spite of some very obvious hints and are too spineless to discipline their daughter Piper when she misbehaves or causes trouble.

I-Z

• iCarly: Lampshaded in multiple episodes. Each adult has his or her own brand of eccentricity. Subverted by Principal Franklin, who's competent, if overly lenient, and occasionally by Spencer. Spencer and Carly's grandfather, who only appeared in one episode, was almost freakishly competent.
• Incredible Crew plays this trope for laughs in the "Cola Thief" sketch, where a teacher keeps her class after school because someone stole and drank nearly sixty sodas from her cabinet and won't let anyone leave until the thief confesses. One of the students points out that a boy named Wyatt, who's very plainly going out of his mind from a sugar rush, probably did it. The teacher just says they can't accuse someone without proof.
• LazyTown: In "Defeeted", while the kids try and help Sportacus control himself, the Mayor and Miss Busybody simply stand around doing absolutely nothing back at the stage.
• The Little House on the Prairie episode "The Bully Boys" sees the adults "turning the other cheek" (at the reverend's request) in the face of the increasingly menacing behaviour of the recently arrived Galender brothers, such as ripping off businesses and beating up Charles when he takes offense to their harassing Caroline. It takes the town's children delivering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to the youngest brother on the schoolyard to wake everyone up, leading to the brothers being escorted out of town.
• In Lockwood & Co. (2023), many adult supervisors are incompetent cowards and don't care about the teen ghost-hunters in their charge except as a source of profit. Lucy actually says that adults are useless... to an adult client, and has to explain it's because of their lack of ghost-sensing talent.
• Malcolm in the Middle: The Wilkerson boys are generally able to outwit and overpower their teachers and neighbors, the vast majority of whom are petty and slow-witted: however, in a subversion of this trope, their mother Lois sees through all of their schemes and rarely fails to nail them.
• Per the docuseries Menudo: Forever Young Edgardo Díaz, the group's creator had the members' parents sign away their parental rights, effectively putting them in this position so that they could not interfere with his management.
• Merlin (2008): Uther Pendragon. All this guy does is make everything worse, he is an egomaniac, massive hypocrite and lacks the competence to make up for his flaws.
• Mirror, Mirror (1995) manages an odd variant, where, aside from the Old Man, who was managing what has to be one of the most epic Gambit Roulettes ever, all the adults were at least plausibly incompetent (if not outright evil), mainly because only a few of them had any idea of exactly what was going on. For the record: The adults in Louisa's family had no idea, and their tutor was in the pay of their rather nasty neighbour, who was hiding the son of Tsar Nicholas II, in a ploy to sell him back to Russia. As for Jo, her father gets clued in, but can't use the mirror. The worst offender would have been Dr Coigley, who was unknowingly working for the Old Man.
• Odd Squad: Having incompetent, idiotic adults is the squad's modus operandi. The titular organization is kid-only because adults are often viewed as either villainous, too stupid to do anything efficiently, or both (although adults who are clients of the organization are a bit of a different story). As a result, a majority of adults, up to and including the villains, are very dimwitted, while kids are seen as the smart ones.
• Power Rangers: The earlier series do this to frightening levels. Not only do they have a team of six teenagers saving the world, there never seemed to be any kind of competent adult to help even with non-monster related things. This is perfectly shown in the season 2 episode "The Ninja Encounter", where a baby in a stroller is rolling down a hill. The adults jump out of the way, as if the baby stroller was a runaway train, meaning it's left to the main cast of teenagers to rescue the infant.
  
  In later seasons the adults started to have a major supporting role, especially in Lost Galaxy, Lightspeed Rescue, Time Force and RPM as the rangers belong to or are assisted by military organizations created to deal with supernatural threats.
• Riverdale has a variation: The adults are criminals, evil, crazy, or all three, like Veronica's parents. The only reasonable adults appear to be Archie's dad (who unfortunately died along with his actor), Archie's mom, and Jughead's dad after he got the town sheriff job.
• In Round the Twist, only Nell can regularly provide the kids with any real help whatsoever. Tony Twist, and particularly Mrs James, and Mr Snapper, aren't much help.
• Fear of this trope led to Mr. Snuffleupagus graduating from Big Bird's Imaginary Friend to a real character on Sesame Street. The writers realized that adults not believing Snuffy was real because he always walked off-set before they arrived was sending kids the message "Grownups won't believe you when you tell them something important", with potentially dire consequences.
• In Shadowhunters, while they mean well, the adults of the Institute tend to get in the way more than they help because of their very strict adherence to their laws. The younger characters are the ones that are actually getting close to stopping Valentine by bending some of the more restrictive laws.
• The extent that the adults in the Japanese drama Shōkōjo Seira simply lets the bullying and torment happen to poor Seira can be extremely frustrating to watch. They could be downright evil and cruel, like Mimura Chieko who runs the school. Or they could be clueless and utterly incompetent, like Mimura Emiko, sister of Chieko. Or sometimes they gleefully take advantage of Seira and Kaito and bully them around, like the chef and his wife. Or perhaps they could be like Aran Yukio, a French teacher, who does want to help Seira, but lacks the power to really change anything. He isn't around all the time at the school to help Seira.
• Space Cases. The two present adults on the show are unable to pilot the ship and almost seem to be the Butt-Monkey characters. The former may actually be a bit explained, since one can assume that since they didn't touch the walls as long as the kids did (in the first episode) or that they were the last two to board the ship that the living spaceship saw the kids as the "Complete" crew. The android Thelma is also worthless to Cloud Cuckoo Lander levels - then again, she's not really an adult to begin with.
• Parents in Spellbinder nurture inexplicable reluctance to believe in their teenage children's stories about parallel words and intruders therefrom. However, once presented with undeniable proofs, they become much more competent.
• Stranger Things: Zig-zagged.
  • Naturally the policemen, scientists, and other qualified grown-ups have no role in resolving the mysterious happenings around Hawkins when compared to the role of our five child protagonists. It comes to a natural conclusion in the Season Finale to Season 1: it's not the trained government soldiers that can damage the Demogorgon, but three teenagers with improvised weapons. The Demogorgon easily defeats said soldiers, but it is brought down by Eleven with help from Mike, Lucas, and Dustin instead.
  • On the other hand, Joyce and Hopper are the competent adults in the cast; they're the ones who enter the Upside Down and save Will. Season two also adds Bob and Dr. Owens, who prove very useful in the home stretch. Season 3 adds Murray Bauman and Alexei.
  • Mike and Nancy's parents are a straight example. Their son hides his esper girlfriend in their basement for almost a week without them ever even noticing. This carries over to season 2, as the Wheelers spend the last few episodes blissfully unaware of where their kids are and simply assume they're with their friends somewhere. Considering the town has a habit of disappearing children, you'd think they would be more concerned.
    Dustin: [to Ted] Son of a bitch. You know, you're really no help at all, you know that?
    Ted: Hey, language!
• Teen Wolf: Played straight and averted, depending on the episode and season. Most of the teens have to check in with their parents on a regular or semi-regular basis. And once Scott's mother finally learns about her son's werewolf issues, she becomes much more involved and informed in the kids' activities. She is also an Action Mom and The Medic for virtually everyone in town (to the point that it is a fandom joke that she is the only full-time caregiver at Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital).
  • The Argents are very effective as werewolf hunters and Stiles' father is constantly popping up as the sheriff. Sheriff Stilinski is shown to be a awesome marksman and an effective investigator once the supernatural nature of the problems in Beacon Hills is revealed to him.
  • Dr. Deaton and Ms. Morrell could count as aversions as well.
  • By Season 3B, all the adult characters except for Lydia's mother and Mr McCall know about the supernatural and do their best to help out when they can.
• On The Troop, when someone turns 18, they lose their courage and can no longer fight monsters.
• The Vampire Diaries:
  • The one teacher we see at the school has zero understanding for Elena or Jeremy despite their loss; Elena's aunt is clueless; even after Vicki is attacked, her parents are nowhere to be seen, and her brother's the only one at her bedside in the hospital.
  • The founder's council is also not all that useful. When the most competent member of the town's anti-vampire defense force is DAMON there is a problem
  • This is not the case with Alaric
  • Subverted with Sheriff Forbes and Mayor Lockwood, as of season three.
  • Also subverted with Professor Shane as of Season 4.
• In Wizards of Waverly Place, all of the Russo children, but neither of the parents, have magical powers. This works out about as well as you'd expect.
• Yellowjackets's Coach Ben Scott loses his leg when the team's flight crashes in the wilderness. While that makes him more dependent on the girls, he still tries to maintain some semblance of authority and uses his hunting experience to assist in obtaining food. As the season goes on, it's played straight; he cannot stop Laura Lee from trying to fly off using the discovered plane or Jackie from being exiled from the cabin, resulting in both their deaths. In the second season, he's completely helpless to stop the survivors from cannibalizing Jackie's roasted corpse or to assist when Shauna goes into labor, despite teaching sex ed.
• You Can't Do That on Television: all of the characters played by Les Lye and Abby Hagyard (Ross, the Pervert family). Series creator Roger Price had come out of The '60s counter culture, and wanted all his shows to carry the message that adults did not always know best
• Young Sheldon: Sheldon's parents when they failed to stop a bully from tormenting Sheldon in "Jiu-Jitsu, Bubble Wrap, and Yoo-Hoo". Even the bully's parents have no idea how much she torments Sheldon. Though they tried.

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