Bond Villain Stupidity / Live-Action TV

• A few 24 fans weren't too attached to the Affably Evil Jonas Hodges in season 7, because of this trope. At one point in the season, Jones Hodges manages to frame Jack Bauer for the death of a man he tortured by tasering, but could've just as easily killed Jack Bauer in the process. A bit of context: the incapacitated man was lying in the hospital bed recovering from the aforementioned torture when Jack Bauer sneaked back into the room (Bauer wasn't allowed to see him, but had to interrogate him...again). When this happened, Jonas Hodges deployed knockout gas into the room to knock them out for a few brief minutes, which he then sends some men to kill the tortured man, and then leave.
• Batman: This was the setup for almost every two-episode cliff-hanger; the villain would subject Batman and Robin to some ridiculous death trap (being turned into giant ice cream cones, or giant postage stamps, etc.) and then leave. "Tune in tomorrow, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel."
• Battlestar Galactica (2003). During The Mutiny Zarek tries to convince Gaeta he needs to kill Commander Adama and stop screwing around with a Kangaroo Court, as alive he's a rallying point for the loyalists. Gaeta, being less ruthless, and more interested in making Adama acknowledge what he's put them through with his command decisions, doesn't listen.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Lampshade hung in an episode when Harmony captures Dawn in order to get Buffy to attempt to rescue and then capture Buffy. Harmony's minions point out that they could just kill Dawn because as long as Buffy believes Dawn to be alive then she'll come anyway, instead of waiting until Buffy arrives to kill Dawn. Harmony refuses because, “that's not the plan, duh!”.
  • Played slightly straight when the Master, instead of draining Buffy dry, drinks a little blood from her and leaves her to drown in a pond. Though she was clinically dead, she got revived by CPR.
  • Angelus' entire plan throughout Season 2 revolves around this; all he wants to do is psychologically torture Buffy and the Scoobies as much as possible for kicks. This leads to friction between himself and the more pragmatic Spike, who repeatedly urges him to just kill Buffy and be done with it before Angelus pushes her too far and makes her really mad. Spike's concerns are proven right in "Passion" when Angelus kills Jenny Calendar and leaves her body in Giles' bed, sending Giles into a Roaring Rampage of Revenge that leads to their hideout being burned down and Angelus being beaten senseless with a flaming baseball bat. Of course, even that doesn't stop Angelus from dicking around and toying with Buffy.
• Charmed would make use of this sometimes as well. The most blatant example was probably "Engaged and Confused" when, after having two of his associates killed as they tried to kill the Charmed Ones, the demon casually freezes time (an ability he did not attempt to use earlier) so that he and his operative can have a conversation (in front of the Charmed ones) without them knowing about it. He then leaves without attempting to harm the Charmed Ones.
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Dalek Invasion of Earth": The Daleks restrain two Companions and then leave them to die in an explosion.
  • Davros sometimes does this, however he is clearly insane. He also sees the Doctor as an intellectual and seems to enjoy sparring with him. And in "Revelation of the Daleks", he implies he wants to turn the Doctor into a Dalek.
  • Justified in "The Caves of Androzani". Sharaz desires the Doctor's intellectual stimulation as well as Peri's beauty, but makes it clear that he will kill the Doctor if he can't bend him to his will.
  • Defied by the Master in "Utopia":
    "Anyway. Why don't we stop and have a nice little chat while I tell you all my plans and you can work out a way to stop me, I don't think!"
    • Although he makes just this mistake later on with Rassilon, who has near-omnipotent technology at his disposal. Goodbye Master's masterplan!
    • The Master would often have the opportunity but wouldn't take it. Of course, as he says, "A cosmos without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about." And he sometimes tries to pull a We Can Rule Together gambit.
  • "Partners in Crime": Just before being shot, the Doctor says "Wait wait, now hold on!" and his enemies listen to him and hold their fire, allowing him to use his sonic screwdriver and a sonic pen he'd gotten a hold of to create a sonic wave to disable the bad guys.
  • "Planet of the Ood":
    • The sadistic overseer Mr. Kess falls into this when the Doctor and Donna's cover is blown. After Donna is capture, Kess specifically orders the armed guards back so he can have the pleasure of chasing the Doctor around a warehouse with a giant claw arm instead of shooting him. For bonus points, he says "I've always wanted to do this."
    • Justified later on by Mr. Halpen when the Doctor and Donna end up captured (again). He says that he can't risk shooting them because of the likelihood that the authorities are going to investigate Ood Operations due to what's been happening, so the two are left handcuffed where the Ood will get them, so they'll just look like all of the other deaths by Ood that have happened. However, the Doctor and Donna are able to get the Ood to spare them when they do get attacked by reminding them of the "circle" and that they're friends.
  • "Robot of Sherwood": The Sheriff of Nottingham captures the Doctor, Clara, and Robin Hood, only for them to subsequently escape. Late in the episode, after they uncover his secret spaceship... he puts the Doctor back in irons and dumps him into a different dungeon. This time, he and Maid Marian foment a slave revolt and destroy most of the remaining robots, setting up the Sheriff and Robin Hood's inevitable showdown.
• Falling Skies. In the final S4 episode Tom Mason and Lexi face against the Espheni commander on his ship, the commander knocks down Tom and is more focused in burning Lexi, while his back is turned Tom stabs him with a poisoned syringe that can kill him.
• Game of Thrones:
  • There's a rare heroic example in The Mountain and the Viper, where Oberyn Martell gains the advantage in his fight with Gregor Clegane and has the opportunity to finish him off, but instead delays while demanding his opponent confess to the rape and murder of Oberyn's sister. Unfortunately for him, he gets a little too close to the downed Gregor and gets pulled off his feet, at which point his foe gleefully delivers the desired confession, while simultaneously crushing Oberyn's head with his bare hands.
  • The Last of the Starks has both a villainous and a heroic example. Daenerys, her last surviving dragon and several subordinates come to the gates of King's Landing to meet with Cersei (standing on the wall above the gate), which ends with Cersei having Missandei executed. During this, Daenerys' group is within range of the countless scorpions (ballistae) on the walls of King's Landing. Cersei could literally just order the scorpions to shoot, thus wiping out the leadership and strongest weapon of her enemies on one go. Sure, it would be dishonorable, but since when did Cersei care about honor? And on the heroic side, Missandei is standing right next to Cersei and knows she (Missandei) is going to die, so why not grab Cersei and jump off the wall while she's at it?
• Subverted in Get Smart when KAOS kidnaps Max, plants a Manchurian Candidate-style hypnotic suggestion in him, then allows for him to escape, making it absurdly easy - and he stubbornly resists escaping several times, convinced he's outsmarting some clever attempts to kill him.
• MacGyver uses this constantly, usually in the form of the Big Bad securing the title hero (and usually a pretty lady) in some form of death trap that always has plenty of "useless" items lying around for MacGyver to use for escape. Lampshaded in the episode "The Ten Percent Solution", where a Nazi-lady tries to use a gas chamber on the heroes while a henchman ponders, "Why not just shoot them?"
• Patrick Jane from The Mentalist has been saved by this trope quite a few times. Often involves Holding the Floor till Lisbon arrives.
• Morgana in the BBC series Merlin is guilty of so many examples of this that the only way the series manages to work is to provide the good guys with an equal amount of Plot-Induced Stupidity to balance her out.
• In Obi-Wan Kenobi, Inquisitor Reva is revealed to be a former Jedi youngling who survived Anakin's destruction of The Order by Faking the Dead, and had been plotting revenge ever since. When she finally makes her move, Vader effortlessly defeats her in a Curb-Stomp Battle and runs his saber through her stomach, leaving her for dead with a relatively minor, cauterized wound, especially since she'd already survived it once.
• Power Rangers:
  • Most Power Rangers villains aren't renowned for their intelligence, but were most guilty of Bond Villain Stupidity during Power Rangers Jungle Fury, where a constant stream of new villainous overlords continued to defeat the Power Rangers then walk away, only to complain later about not being able to defeat the Rangers. By about the 20th time this happened in a 32-episode show, it was very hard to keep caring.
  • Of course, many fans point out that the Rangers could be accused of "Bond Hero Stupidity" at times. For instance, during Power Rangers Zeo, they could have prevented a lot of trouble had they opened fire on Klang and Orbus, a duo who were instrumental in a key part of Mondo's plans. The two were pretty easy targets who were always there, seemed to have very few fighting skills, and as such, a weak link in the overall chain that the heroes never considered trying to break.
• Pretty Little Liars is full of this. A, despite clearly having it in for the all-girl team and having more than enough fodder to ruin their lives with, she takes her sweet, sadistic time. This gives the girls the leeway they need to try and find out who A really is. Most of the time this winds up getting them to fall into A's traps, giving A even more fodder, but it does work to their advantage sometimes.
• Happened all the time on Robin Hood. The worst examples were Guy using a half-dead lion to try and kill Robin instead of ordering the fully-armed elite soldiers to just shoot him dead; and later trapping Robin in a dungeon that was slowly filling with water and then...wandering away mid-execution. Robin survives both attempts on his life.
• In the Smallville episode "Arrival", two evil Kryptonians confront Clark Kent. They open a portal to the Phantom Zone and shove Clark into it. At the last second, Clark grabs a piece of rebar and tries desperately to hold on as the portal sucks him in. Instead of doing something like cutting the bar with their heat vision, the villains just smirk and start walking away, only for Clark to Flash Step up to them, and shove them into the portal.
• The Sopranos: In the episode "Pine Barrens", Paulie and Chris take Valery into the woods, intending to kill him. To twist the knife, Paulie orders Valery to take a shovel and dig his own grave. As soon as Paulie and Chris are distracted, Valery makes predictable use of the weapon he's just been handed, and escapes.
• In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "cold station 12": "Five minutes after we leave, every stasis field in this station will shut down, releasing hundreds of pathogens. I wonder which one will kill you first".
• Star Trek: The Next Generation had an act of stupidity worthy of a true Bond villain. Commander Sela had captured Spock, Data, and Picard, and was within minutes of conquering Vulcan. Then, she left them alone in her office after describing in detail her entire evil plan. She didn't even bother to tell the guards to stay in the room to watch them.
• The Walking Dead: Negan has many opportunities to kill Rick and deliberately throws them away. Justified at first, in that he wants to break Rick so he has an example for the rest of the communities to stay in line. But later when he decides he's had enough of Rick's disobedience, he still wastes time crowing and strutting before killing him. Almost immediately a 600-pound tiger punishes Negan for his arrogance.

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