Damned By Faint Praise / Live-Action TV

Damned by Faint Praise in Live-Action TV series.

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• In 30 Rock, Liz explains that whenever Jenna performs in a horrible production she always finds some small point to legitimately compliment so that it can seem like she enjoyed it. When she tries it in "The Rural Juror", however, Jenna describes it as Liz being mocking by highlighting some small point. There are two sets of flashbacks in the episode, one from each of their perspectives; Liz's depicts her as attempting to be kind, while Jenna's emphasizes the condescension and insulting aspect.
• In season one of Angel Angel and Wesley describe Cordelia's acting as having "good projection" and said that she had "taken the role and made it her own."
• On The Big Bang Theory, Leonard and Penny pull this on themselves while trying to write a Christmas letter. As they try to list their accomplishments over the previous year, they end up with items like "still married" and "still employed."
• Big Wolf on Campus episode "That Swamp Thing You Do!", possibly combined with Stealth Insult:
  Tommy: So, what did you think of my acting skills?
  Merton: I think you combined the articulation of Arnold Schwarzenegger with the emotional range of Jean-Claude Van Damme.
  Tommy: Thanks, man!
• Blackadder Goes Forth: Blackadder reviews one of Baldrick's poems with, "Well, it started badly, trailed off a little in the middle, and the less said about the end the better, but apart from that, excellent."
• An episode of Black Books has Manny, suddenly missing his job at the bookshop, trying to find a nice thing to say about the place. He eventually concludes that there was no love, freedom, or largeness of heart, but "I was not contractually obligated to have sex with foreign businessmen, and that's not nothing!"
• On The Blacklist when Reddington tried to convince the judge to allow Glen on his jury, his argument amounted to saying that none of Glen's obvious flaws meant he couldn't be a juror.
  Judge: I'm not sure if you're damning him with faint praise or praising him with faint damnation.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Willow's excited to hear that since Angel came to our fair shores about eighty years ago, there are no reports of him hunting ("Angel"). She reads this as proof that he is a good vampire. "I mean, on a scale of one to ten, 10 being someone who's killing and maiming every night, and 1 being someone who's... not."
  • In "Prophecy Girl ", Xander takes the plunge and asks out Buffy. She's at a loss for words. "Well, you're not laughing, so that's a good start."
  • In "School Hard", Joyce wonders what Buffy's teachers will have to say about her scholastic performance. "Well," Buffy declares, "I think they'll all agree that I always bring a pen to class, ready to absorb the knowledge."
  • Willow congratulates Buffy from moving on from Angel... then makes the mistake of asking the Scoobies if they approve of the new guy, Scott. "He didn't try to slit our throats or anything," quips Cordelia. "It's progress." ("Faith, Hope, and Trick")
  • Buffy concedes that she's not popular. But she's not exactly unpopular! ("Homecoming")
    Buffy: A lot of people came to my Welcome Home party.
    Willow: But they were eaten by zombies.
  • In "Earshot", Hogan feigns excitement at Percy's improved verbal skills. "I actually heard him complete a sentence," he tells Willow. "It had a clause and everything."
  • At a pep rally in the same episode, Oz muses that the cheerleaders' spelling has improved.
  • In "Graduation Day pt. 2", Snyder congratulates the Class of '99, saying that they were "more or less adequate."
• An episode of Dexter has the Trinity Killer receive faint praise from his family on Thanksgiving. He catches on, which goes poorly for his family.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "Flesh and Stone", River arguably gives one about the Doctor. The army captain asks her "Do you trust this man?" She replies, "I absolutely trust him." "He's not some kind of madman?" In the exact same tone as before: "... I absolutely trust him." He catches on, though, and warns her that he doesn't like it.
  • In "The Night of the Doctor" the Eighth Doctor tries to convince Cass that he's not one of those Time Lords, who have wrought destruction upon the universe during the Time War, by saying that he's "one of the nice ones." This doesn't work, and she chooses to die rather than trust him. He refuses to leave her side and dies too.
• Fawlty Towers: Major Gowen appears to leap to the defence of the hotel when a dissatisfied customer is chewing out Basil Fawlty.
  Mr. Hamilton: What I'm suggesting is that this place is the crummiest, shoddiest, worst-run hotel in the whole of Western Europe!
  Major: NO! No, I won't have that! There's a place in Eastbourne...
• Family Matters: When Carl is asked to testify during an in-school "court session" about Steve's destructive tendencies, the only positive thing he can say is, "... I still have my health!"
• From an early episode of Frasier:
  Frasier: Niles, you're a good brother and a credit to the psychiatric profession.
  Niles: You're a good brother too.
• The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air:
  • In one, Ashley is afraid that she won't make any friends at her new school. Phil says that she has a great personality. Her response? "Great! Now I'm ugly."
  • In another episode, the characters are arguing over who is Phillip Banks' favorite child and will inherit his fortune. In the end, Phillip tells each one that he loves them equally and the reason why. When he gets to Hilary, he can't think of anything better than "Nice earrings!"
  • Played for Drama in "Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse," where Will's deadbeat dad comes back into his life, then leaves just as quickly after getting Will's hopes up that he'd changed his ways. As he angrily processes his father's actions, Will says, "Why should I be mad? At least he said goodbye this time."
• Friends:
  • The characters argue over what faint praise they could offer Joey's awful T.V. show: "The lighting was O.K."
  • Ross promises to play rugby. Rachel reassured him that he was the toughest paleontologist that she knew.
  • In "The One With The Butt," the friends struggle to give Joey's play faint praise before Chandler breaks the ice by bluntly declaring it "awful."
  • A review for Joey's newest play begins by saying that while his performance was "uneven" it wasn't the worst part of the production. Joey is actually pleased to hear this and asks if he can keep the newspaper containing the review.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Catelyn agrees for one of Lord Walder Frey's daughters to marry her son Robb. She relays that Lord Walder said that several of them would be suitable for marriage. When asked to describe them she starts "One was..." and stops, apparently unable to think of a compliment and settling for confirming she's "suitable."
  • Jaime Lannister ends up being forced to undergo an extremely painful surgical procedure in order to prevent an infection from spreading. For extra creepiness, the doctor presiding over this treatment is Qyburn, a mildly-psychotic Maester stripped of his rank and chain of study for immoral experimentation. Fortunately, the treatment works, and Jaime eventually compliments him on being "far better at this sort of work than Grand Maester Pycelle." He actually meant this as a genuine compliment, but Qyburn clearly doesn't think much of his former colleagues among the Maesters and even less of the admittedly corrupt Grand Maester, and only replies: "Faint praise, my Lord."
  • Shae mentions in "What Is Dead May Never Die" that every man she cooks for compliments what a good whore she is.
  • In "Mockingbird", Jaime praises Tyrion's epic "The Reason You Suck" Speech from the previous episode as something all of King's Landing will be talking about for days to come. He's furious that Tyrion, by giving this speech and demanding a trial by combat, derailed Jame and Tywin's plans to have Tyrion sent to the Night's Watch in exchange for Jaime leaving the Kingsguard to inherit Casterly Rock.
  • After Tywin's death, Loras has to give his condolences to Cersei and he painfully struggles to say something nice about her father. He finally calls the deceased lord 'a force to be reckoned with', then pauses for a moment, then rephrases it, then pauses again and finally repeats the original phrase. While the moment is awkward, the departed would find the words highly praising because that's precisely the image Tywin cultivated and relished.
  • Varys notes that the main thing Robert had to recommend was that he wasn't as bad as Aerys II and Joffrey, being neither mad nor cruel. He simply didn't want to be king.
  • After Hizdhar zo Loraq waxes nostalgically about the greatness of the fighting pits, Tyrion quips dryly, "My father would have liked you." Hard to imagine a more damning statement, coming from him.
  • When Jaime and Bronn are tasked by King Tommen to aid House Frey in retaking Riverrun, they arrive and end up witnessing a pittance of a siege, prompting Bronn to remark that the Frey besiegers need to be taught how to dig trenches. Jaime agrees and suggests Bronn should do it, much to the latter's annoyance, justifying as that Bronn has better instincts than anyone in the Lannister army. Bronn's response?
    Bronn: That's like saying I have a bigger cock than anyone in the Unsullied army. ^note  To be clear, the Unsullied are castrated as young boys and don't have cocks.
    • Considering Tywin's irritation with his generals in season 2 in the War of the Five Kings in the campaign against Robb, Bronn may be right.
  • During the Long Night, Sansa remarks to Tyrion that out of all her husbands, he was the best of them. While Tyrion is touched by the statement, he also notes that she is comparing him to Joffrey Baratheon and Ramsay Bolton, who were rather monstrous individuals who would be easier to be better people than others. In particular, Tyrion is the only one of Sansa's husbands who neither raped Sansa (Ramsay) nor threatened to do so (Joffrey).
• GLOW (2017): After Ruth directs an opening sequence for the show, cameraman Russell hits on her by saying she has a "decent eye." Ruth makes a sarcastic comment about the faintness of the praise.
• The main premise of an iCarly episode: Carly's webshow lands a sponsorship from a new type of wonder shoe. When the shoe fails to deliver, the team piles on "faint praise" to fulfill the contract without lying to their fans.
• In the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode, "The Gang Dines Out", Mac forces Dennis to say something nice to him. This is the best Dennis could come up with:
  Dennis: ...Your hair looks small.
• In The IT Crowd, the main characters go to see Gay! A Gay Musical. When they see the poster, the review blurbs consist of "The audience applauded", "More than tolerable" and "Not as long as some musicals."
• In Jessie, while seeing a horrible performance by officer Petey and being asked for an opinion. Zuri says that he is a "better actor than policeman."
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Daredevil (2015): Irish criminal Elliot "Grotto" Grote is killed by the Punisher despite Nelson & Murdock's best efforts to protect him. Only Matt Murdock, Karen Page and Foggy Nelson show up for his funeral. Father Lantom doesn't sugarcoat Grotto's life or attempt to avoid speaking ill of him. The most positive thing he can say about Grotto is that he went to and donated to the church with whatever loose change he had on hand and explains to Matt afterward that if they ignore his criminal past, there was no learning from it.
  • Jessica Jones (2015): Trish tried to become a pop singer at one point, with a song called "I Want Your Cray Cray". The one good thing Jessica has to say about this terrible song and its equally terrible music video is that it takes the It's Patsy theme song out of her head.
• Mr. Show:
  • In one sketch, the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) attempts to bolster their public image with an ad campaign reminding the public that they're not serial killers. When presented at the Awards for Advertising American Ads, it wins the award for Best Improved Image. The audience is so disgusted with the pro-NAMBLA PSA that even a member of NAMBLA takes offense.
  • Some of the vox pops reviewing Coupon: The Movie include "We saw the shit out of it!" and "It was a movie!"
• The opening of The Muppets Go to the Movies includes hilariously-vague faux reviews saying things like "One of the T.V. programs ever made" and "Even better than that."
• In an episode of Murphy Brown, Frank, Murphy, and Jim attend the premiere of a movie made by Corky's husband, and come out having utterly hated it. Frank then tells Murphy and Jim that in these circumstances he usually complements the movie's cinematography. Phil then walks in:
  Phil: So how was the movie?
  Frank: The cinematography was excellent!
  Phil: ...that bad, huh?
• My Family: In one episode, Susan is trying to put a positive spin on her relationships with all her children while being undercut by Description Cuts of the kids acting exactly the opposite of how she's described them. After describing Michael as her "rock" and Janey as her "angel", she comes to Nick, a Lazy Bum who's spent his entire life moving from Zany Scheme to Zany Scheme...and after a significantly longer pause, all she can manage is, "He's our eldest."
  Ben: He's a pillock.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000:
  • "The Land That Time Forgot":
    Jonah: This is my fourth-favorite submarine movie.
    Servo: Really?
    Jonah: Well, I only know of three others, so it's also my least favorite submarine movie.
  • In the episode "Monster A-Go-Go", Joel tries to get the Bots to come up with good things to say about the movie. They come up with "you couldn't hear some of the bad dialogue" and "at least nobody involved went on to do anything else".
• Murdoch Mysteries: Following the murder of Recurring Character Roger Newsome, a Dirty Coward and Upper-Class Twit (followed by a prolonged Of Corpse He's Alive deception to draw out the killer), there are only two good things Murdoch can think to tell the reporters about him when they ask. First, that Roger's last words were spent trying to deliver a message which cracked the case once it was understood. Second, that when he dined with Roger (which happened during the period Roger was dead but they were pretending he wasn't) the man had excellent table manners.
• In The Nanny episode "Deep Throat", C.C. wants Maxwell to be her date at a sorority reunion:
  C.C.: [enthusiastically] I just can't wait to show you off to all my old friends, [becoming embittered] with their handsome doctor husbands and their 2.5 perfect children they juggled while earning multiple PhDs...
  Maxwell: C.C., there's no need to be jealous. You have a successful career and, uh... a successful career.
  Niles: Yes, how do you balance them both?
• In Newsradio, a whole episode is devoted to the news staff getting angry over a review describing their station as "adequate." When Jimmy James hears about it, he admits that the reviewer is on his payroll and he wrote the review himself, believing that "adequate" is a good compliment.
• Our Miss Brooks: In "The Model Teacher", a Snap magazine reporter "compliments" Miss Brooks' clothes: "That's a very nice suit... One can tell at a glance that it's worn you for years."
• Parks and Recreation: Inverted when Ron moves Anne to tears by matter-of-factly telling her that interacting with her had not always been entirely unpleasant. This is due to Ron being extraordinarily spare in his praise.
• In Power Rangers RPM, after being informed that she's been cold to the Rangers, K turns to each in term, gives them (incredibly awkward and unintentionally backhanded, but well-meaning) compliments, calls them by name (which she previously hadn't done much), and gives them an (equally awkward) hug. Then she turns to Ziggy, the one character most likely to accept this, and all she does is nod and say "You too, Series Operator Green," and walk off. Ziggy is outright insulted by this. Implied to be a subversion, at least in intent; she actually seems to have a crush on Ziggy and has no idea how to express it.
• Reboot: Hannah has glowing things to say about Reed's acting and Clay's standup, but to Zack, she can only say that her little cousin might have seen some of his movies.
• Red Dwarf: When an amnesiac Lister asks Kryten to describe something laudable about himself, Kryten pauses for a moment, and states that Lister sometimes turns his underpants inside out, allowing him to go without washing them for another few months.
• Roseanne: Beverly used this trope often. When Roseanne disapproves of her daughter moving into a trailer park, she intentionally sends Beverly in with the directions to "be as nice as possible."
  Beverly: Well, it must be nice being able to vacuum the entire home without having to change outlets.
• Schitt's Creek: During an audition, Alexis touts her "critically reviewed" reality show A Little Bit Alexis.
• Seinfeld: Elaine's boss, Mr. Peterman, does this on returning after her disastrous attempt at running his company for him:
  Kudos, Elaine, on a job [beat] done.
• Six Feet Under: Russell, Claire's then soon-to-be boyfriend, complains to Claire that nobody ever considers him "hot." At best he gets "cute", and it doesn't help that most people think he's gay, and he's constantly hit on by guys.
• Of Oliver's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Slings & Arrows, the janitor diplomatically says, "The production values are very high." And they are; it's just a shame that half the actors are crap and the blocking means you can't actually hear the delivery of the good ones. In the audience, the minister of culture is listening to the hockey game on a portable radio — and in the tech booth, the stage manager and Oliver himself are watching it on TV.
• The Sopranos: At Livia's wake, Janice tries to have everyone, or just anyone, reminisce on fond memories of her mother. Everyone stays stoney silent, until Janice directly asks Hesh Rabkin, who had known Livia for many years. After thinking for a moment, he says that Livia "didn't mince words". After several more incredibly awkward attempts to stir conversation from the other guests, Carmela just comes out and says what everyone was thinking, that Livia was a horrible, detestable person in every respect and nobody liked her.
• In Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • "Tapestry" has Picard changing the past and not getting involved in the fight that caused him to need to get his heart replaced with an artificial one. Without that brush with death driving him, he became a Lieutenant Junior Grade paper pusher instead of a legendary starship captain. When he goes to Troi and Riker asking about his performance, they end up falling into this.
    Riker: You're a good worker, reliable... punctual.
  • In the episode "The Chase", Picard's old archaeology professor describes one of his papers as "informative", to which Picard himself replies "Damning with faint praise."
  • Inverted in the episode "Sarek." After Vulcan Ambassador Sarek has reviewed Captain Picard's service record, he deems it "satisfactory." Picard is pleased, recognizing this as high praise coming from a Vulcan.
  • Faint praise is considered a grave insult in Klingon culture as it implies the recipient is too weak to handle criticism. In "Sins of the Father", visiting Klingon officer Kurn berates most of the crew but is dismissively polite towards Worf, resulting in a confrontation. It turns out this was a Secret Test of Character to see if Worf, raised by humans, is still Klingon enough to avenge the insult.
• Succession: When people make cracks about Shiv's unexceptional boyfriend Tom, she defensively protests, "He's a nice guy!" On their wedding night, her toast to him is limited to, "You're a great guy and I like hanging out with you."
• In Strangers with Candy, Teacher Chuck Noblet to protagonist Jerri Blank's stepmother Sara: "Jerri certainly is one our of students."
• Former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson lampshaded this trope reviewing a minivan. "This is a Renault Espace, probably the best of the people carriers. Not that that's much to shout about. That's like saying ‘Oh good, I've got syphilis, the best of the sexually transmitted diseases!'"
• Yes, Minister: When it looks like Hacker's about to be Reassigned to Antarctica, he fishes for compliments. Through the episode, all anyone - Sir Humphrey, Bernard, his wife, his driver - can say is he "did alright". In the case of Sir Humphrey, though, that's not even praise. "Doing alright" means he's a threat to the Department of Administrative Affairs, and they'd prefer a minister who couldn't even muster that.

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