Jerkass Has A Point / Live-Action TV

Jerkass Has a Point in Live-Action TV.

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Shows with their own pages

• A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon)

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• In 24, on Day 6, Vice President Daniels forcibly tries to prevent President Palmer from retaking office, saying that Palmer hadn't yet fully recovered enough from his assassination attempt. While his motivation isn't nearly as benevolent as he claims, since he covets the Oval Office and is plotting to usurp it, Daniels is proven right mere hours later when Palmer collapses and possibly dies from his wounds.
• 30 Rock creator Tina Fey said that Liz Lemon's boss Jack Donaghy was conceived as a person who was correct just often enough to be infuriating. For example, when Liz claims that she got into comedy to be edgy and push the envelope, Jack correctly tells her that she got into comedy because she's good at it and, more importantly, because it pays well.
  • In a story arch parodying the auto industry bailout, Jack and a number of other microwave manufacturer executives are Hauled Before a Presidential Commission chaired by his nemesis Devon Banks. Devon goes after Jack hard for the waste and borderline embezzlement which GE executives committed, leading to the collapse of the microwave division. It's a nakedly cynical way to attack Jack, not to mention wildly hypocritical as Devon was himself a GE executive at the time and did the same corrupt things as the rest of them, but everything he is accusing them of is true.
• Adam Ruins Everything: This is Adam's defining character trait. He's a very unpleasant person to be around, with many flaws in his arguments, but he's also almost always right.
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
  • In Episode 5, "Girl in the Flower Dress", Miles makes excellent points about SHIELD being a totalitarian behemoth that needs to be brought into the public eye: regardless of what else you can say about SHIELD, at the end of the day, it amounts to Nick Fury running an all-in-one private armed forces, espionage agency, and business that answers solely to him. We've seen them break into people's houses, businesses, and countries, and cart off various pieces of property, make warrantless arrests, and generally blow shit up, simply because they can. They seem to have jurisdiction over the entire world, even though pretty much every country in the world, the US included, are set up with governments and laws that specifically forbid an organization like SHIELD from having ANY jurisdiction on their soil. In the end, Fury does run SHIELD for the good of the world, and generally only steps in when nothing else works, but that's more Fury's own benevolence than any oversight or organizational responsibility. The fact that the entire US, and possibly the entire world, is under a 1 man defacto dictatorship, even if that one man is currently benevolent, should spook people about as much as alien invasion. Keep in mind that this happens around the time that Captain America: The Winter Soldier happens, as proof of the problem with SHIELD's secrecy HYDRA has infiltrated SHIELD, they almost get away with it because a) SHIELD is subject to oversight by no one, and b) SHIELD is basically everything HYDRA wishes it could be, minus the jackboots, goosestepping, and swastikas...by HYDRA's own admission. Yet Miles is made to be the bad guy several sentences later when it's revealed that he has started hacking for profit.
  • Another episode has Coulson trying to appeal to an enemy scientist about how dangerous his experiments are, only for said scientist to throw the point back at him the very valid point that SHIELD has pulled similar boner stunts in the past that nearly destroyed the world. Coulson can only concede the point:
    Dr. Hall: SHIELD?! SHIELD. is just as guilty of the same thing! Experimentation without thought of consequence! Your search for an unlimited power source brought an alien invasion!
    Coulson: ...Fair point.
  • Similarly, when Lance points out an Inhuman's motivation for turning from a normal museum employee to a criminal was simply because she had powers now, he gets some angry glares from everyone in the room, particularly his two Inhuman allies. He counters and he points out how they've seen it happen before and all of them admit he's not wrong.
    Hunter: What? Andrew was a lovely head shrinker before he turned into a not so lovely Inhuman serial killer.
    Mack: Point made.
    Daisy: Fair enough.
    Joey: (Nods)
• In The Alienist, while it didn't justify slapping Sara, when Moore confronted Kreizler about it, Kreizler pointed out that Sara had brought up his disability and Dark and Troubled Past completely unprovoked and had the nerve to call him a "coward" for not facing it after he repeatedly asked her to stop. Sara was right that Kreizler should face his past but what she said to him was way out of line and unnecessarily cruel.
• On All in the Family, Archie and Mike constantly butted heads about everything from race relations to women's liberation to how to best put on socks, with Archie taking on a stereotypically old-fashioned, conservative (read: right-wing) opinion and Mike a liberal, ostensibly more "enlightened" (read: left-wing) one. Creator Norman Lear was clearly a left-leaning liberal himself (as was Carroll O'Connor, who played Archie), but many episodes made it clear that Mike's beliefs were occasionally misguided with Mike being every bit as prejudiced as the people he is criticizing, and that Archie did have good (if brusque) points to argue about certain topics.
  • In one episode, Archie points out that big corporations sold everyone on the idea of electricity for decades (to the point of making life nearly unlivable without it), then, after reaping massive profits, turned around and started to tell people to cut electricity usage, as they now saw value in the "energy-saving" market.
  • One episode has Mike and Archie arguing about stealing, with Mike claiming that only poor and hungry people steal. Archie counters that, during a recent blackout, people made off with new cars from a dealership; Mike blusters that it's society's fault for generating a desire for expensive things and asks "What are they supposed to do?" Archie's Armor-Piercing Response: "They're supposed to go out and work for a buck!"
  • Many is the time Archie fires back against Mike's grandstanding by pointing out that, for all his preaching about making the world a better place and helping others out, Mike isn't actually doing anything and has never helped anyone while Archie has worked an honest living all his life and is taking care of Mike while he's in college. Once when he insults Mike for his preaching and Gloria claims he owes him an apology, Archie replies "Well he owes me two and a half years rent!" Another when Mike laments that he can't get a job until he finishes college and Archie retorts that Mike could work while attending college if he wasn't so lazy and had any ambition; even Edith agrees (albeit accidentally) agrees that Mike couldn't take care of himself and Gloria without living under Archie and Edith's roof. Even Lionel agrees Archie has done more for others than Mike.
  • When Edith is nearly raped in one two-part episode, Gloria immediately wants to call the police and report it. Archie rightfully points out that, when Gloria herself was sexually assaulted, the cops warned her that a lawyer for the defense would twist the story around to make her look like she was leading on the guy, a sadly common tactic in actual rape cases.
    • In the same episode, Edith suffers from severe post-traumatic stress after the attempted rape, and doesn't want to talk or think about the situation. Gloria is eventually forced to provide some Tough Love, pointing out that Edith's silence means that other women are in danger (indeed, the rapist has assaulted another woman by this point), and that she can't begin to heal until she faces the incident head on. She isn't subtle at all about the situation and comes across as rude, but it proves to be the necessary catalyst to help Edith.
• Al fondo hay sitio: No matter how much of an Alpha Bitch Reyna is, she does make a point in that Charo can be really annoying and hypocritical at times.
• In the early years of American Idol, Simon Cowell was very blunt about bad performances, but most people do agree with his decision.
  • America's Got Talent: Piers Morgan-also British, also blunt, also jerkish, also usually right. Also no longer on the show.
    • This is shown in one episode where a guest lashes out at the judges, specifically Mel B, challenging her singing ability and whining about how they weren't giving him good criticism (they were) Piers speaks up and rightfully calls him a brat and rude. Coming from him that's saying something!
    • Surprise!!! Now Simon is on America's Got Talent. Cue throngs of people cheering.
• In America's Next Top Model, sometimes the Alpha Bitch or a Jerkass judge/photographer will have a good point.
  • Bianca from Cycle Nine has a huge fight with Lisa and tells Lisa that her past as a Go-go dancer means she's not going to be considered a good role model for young girls and thus probably won't win. It was a bitchy thing to say, but she ended up being correct about Lisa not winning.
  • In the Cycle Nineteen, College Edition, Kristin is consistently rude, harsh, and hostile towards the other girls (even Lauren), but she does bring up the very good point that Victoria is too emotionally fragile to handle the competition.
• The Star Wars series Andor takes place before the Rebellion against The Empire had coalesced and formed a united front, so at this point it consists of various cells, many of whom are small and limited on funds and supplies, all fighting their own individual campaigns against the Empire. Luthen, who is desperate to get these cells to work together and avoid them being destroyed one at a time by the Empire, tries to get one of the rebel leaders, Saw Gerrera, to work with other cells and one in particular run by a man named Anto Kreegyr on a raid that Kreegyr has planned. Saw has a very counterproductive "I work alone" attitude when it comes to working with these other cells and sneers at them for a variety of reasons, and dismisses Kreegyr in particular as "slow and stupid". Saw's unhelpful attitude would have prevented the Rebellion from ever overthrowing the Empire if everyone felt the same way, but he turns out to be right about Kreegyr, as Kreegyr's plan is discovered by ISB (one of the Imperial spy agencies that tries to identify and clamp down on resistance movements), and Kreegyr ignores a possible warning sign that his plan is compromised and goes ahead with the raid, only to walk straight into a trap set by ISB that wipes out Kreegyr's group.
• Ash vs. Evil Dead: Mr. Roper, manager of the Value Stop where Ash works, is very much a Mean Boss; he's generally dickish, ignorant, and seems to enjoy power-tripping his junior employees like Pablo and Kelly, and considers himself qualified to call people "retards" because his gardener is "a huge one," but his harsh treatment of Ash in particular isn't entirely unjustified; as a senior employee, Ash is basically unfireable, and on top of that, he's a lazy, irresponsible goldbrick who, among other things, has taken multiple phony sick days off on the pretense of caring for his "dear friend," Eli (actually his pet bearded dragon), an excuse Roper has caught on to:
  Roper: Are you really going to use your fucking lizard as an excuse to get out of work again?
  Ash: [Beat] I am.
• Arrow has a "Jerkass (who only pretends to be a jerk) Has a Point" variant. Oliver publicly announces that despite what everyone expects him to do, he refuses to accept a leadership position in his parents' company. His real reason is that he doesn't want to jeopardize his ability to spend his free time scaring the piss out of corrupt rich people, but he's completely correct when he points out that a serial dropout who spent the last five years trapped on an isolated island is probably not the best person to manage an international corporation.
  What, do you think I got my MBA on that island?
• Babylon 5:
  • In the episode "Grey 17 Is Missing", the Warrior Caste member Neroon delivers a rather caustic observation to how he interprets Delenn's breaking of the Grey Council and essentially taking over Minbari leadership for the Greater Good. While everything Delenn claims about the situation turns out to be true and eventually works out for the good of everyone, from Neroon's point of view it's probably the equivalent of how a modern-day American Senator would feel if a fellow Senator broke up Congress, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the Presidency, formed a private army with her own charisma, proceeded to enlist volunteers from a country we were recently at war with (like, say, Iraq), formed a base on an outpost of said country, and claimed that she was on a Mission from God and that all this was necessary to save the world from Alien Invasion. Ultimately subverted because he was then confronted by Marcus, a Human Ranger willing to fight him to the death to protect her. Not fifteen years ago, Humans and Minbari were at war. For a Human to lay down his life for a Minbari like this makes Neroon realize that while he had a point, so did Delenn, and hers was more significant: the circumstances really were that extreme.
  • Delenn's supposed Messiah Complex is also addressed by another Jerkass, Sebastian, in "Comes The Inquisitor". Delenn believes she is The Chosen One as foretold by prophecy, so the Vorlons dispatch an Inquisitor to submit her to a rather cruel process of him asking her philosophical questions- starting with "Who Are You?", and punishing her with electric shocks if she doesn't give the right answers ("Delenn" proves to be incorrect. It's her name, a title, but not who she is.) Ultimately, he concedes that she may be correct because she's willing to sacrifice herself to save Sheridan, and he's willing to do the same of her. Her argument is that if she's wrong about being The One, then the actual One will come along and fulfill the prophecy anyways, indicating that she does in fact have the humility needed to succeed in her mission.
  • Alfred Bester claims that he does much of what he does in order to protect Telepaths from the Mundanes, that without the Psi-Corps's interference in their lives, telepaths would suffer greatly due to discrimination and fear. The thing of it all is, despite Bester being a right manipulative bastard with a casual disregard for the lives of Mundanes or the wishes of the Telepaths who don't want to join, he's absolutely right about how many Mundanes feel towards people who can read or manipulate their minds. Ironically, one of the biggest anti-telepath plots to arise during the course of the show is a direct response to the threat raised by the Psi-Corps being so powerful, and how close they are to certain important members of the government, such as the President.
  • "Rising Star": Earth Alliance Interim President Luchenko forces Sheridan to resign from the military or be Court-martialed, arguing he had the right idea but the wrong execution in openly revolting against ex-President Evil Morgan Clark. Not stated, but implied given the series' general ethos, is that Luchenko doesn't want less scrupulous people in the military than Sheridan getting the idea that Military Coups are okay: democracies historically don't survive long that way.
• Better Call Saul:
  • Chuck McGill can't seem to go a single sentence without being a complete dick to his brother Jimmy, but it never changes the fact that 99% of the time he's absolutely correct about Jimmy's behavior and his lack of desire to change his conman ways. As the show goes on he becomes no better than Jimmy, but at the start, his concerns were completely valid. For example, "Amarillo": Chuck goes out of his way to question Jimmy during the law office's meeting on the Sandpiper case, making it obvious that he thinks Jimmy solicited the extra clients (which the defense will then use against them). Jimmy is offended by the accusation since Chuck has no evidence for it, but Chuck is also spot on.
  • Chuck is also entirely determined to keep Kim from taking a client that would make her practice successful, to the point of putting himself through extreme physical pain, simply because Kim is associated with Jimmy. But the pitch he made was 100% valid, he didn't say anything deceptive, unethical, or even unkind about Kim, and working to retain a large client is a basic part of his job.
  • Howard Hamlin has a tendency to take his Jerkass tendencies too far in the wrong direction, but his points remain valid even if his methods don't. He's the Only Sane Man at the firm, surrounded by the two McGill brothers and their feud putting his firm at risk along with Kim Wexler not helping at all, so when he finally snaps at both of them at the end of Season 3, he's as rude as he can possibly be while giving them a blisteringly accurate "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• The Big Bang Theory: Sheldon is annoying, but he did spend years telling Penny to pay attention to her "check engine" light in her car before it broke down on the road in Season 7.
  • In another episode, Penny gives Howard a blistering Reason You Suck Speech when he yet again sexually harasses her. She does go too far, but her grievance about him constantly making disgusting comments when she's clearly not interested — and has outright said that — is perfectly valid.
• In the second Canadian series of Big Brother, houseguest Ika Wong earned a little bonus but she was given a Sadistic Choice: Either she gives everyone letters from home or shreds a check with her name on it for $5000 CAD, or she shreds everybody's letters and takes the money. Ika chose to take the money, and, knowing the other houseguests were watching her on camera, gave various Take Thats to the alliance that targeted and screwed her over in hopes of rallying the other players to get rid of them. When they were understandably annoyed, one of them (Sarah) pointed out that they (the first five alliance) kind of brought it on themselves with their behaviour and that if she had given them all the letters, they would be saying "What an idiot."
• In the Season 2 finale of Big Little Lies, while Renata isn't helping the Kleins' situation by smashing some of Gordon's model trains and other collectibles with a baseball bat, since many are rare and he has sold them to a collector so he can keep them in the house, she's right to be angry since this was extremely insensitive on her husband's part given that most of their problems are entirely his fault and she had to give up a lot of their former lifestyle.
• Breaking Bad: Walter White fits this trope in Season 4. He becomes increasingly paranoid as the season goes on, thinking that Gus is planning to kill him, partly by driving a wedge between him and Jesse. At one point, he tells Jesse that Mike and Gus are just trying to make him feel important and useful so he'd be willing to abandon Walt, even saying, "No, this is all about me." Jesse is understandably pissed off. Walt is also completely correct.
• Bridgerton:
  • Though Lady Featherington was incredibly furious with Marina for lying about her pregnancy and locks her in her room, her decision to marry Marina off to anyone is understandable since if Marina didn't marry, she and her child would be left destitute and all alone. Not to mention their association with Marina will also ruin Lady Featherington's own daughters.
  • Marina's Brutal Honesty speech to Penelope isn't outright cruel but it does severely hurt Penelope, especially as Marina is absolutely right that Colin thinks of Penelope as a sister despite Penelope's feelings for him. Similarly, she admits she has no problem manipulating Colin into marrying her but because she has so little options, she has to be pragmatic about securing her and her child's future and safety.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • "When She Was Bad" had Buffy, traumatized by her near-death experience at the hands of The Master, acting mean and uncommunicative to her friends. She wound up getting a tongue-lashing from Cordelia.
  • Cordelia fills this role constantly in Buffy and Angel: "Tact is just not saying true stuff. I'll pass". When she joined Angel, the role on Buffy was taken over by Anya, an ex-demon who hasn't learnt which thoughts should be verbalized, and occasionally by Spike who often didn't have time for social skills.
  • Frequently — but extremely reluctantly — with Spike and to a lesser extent with Andrew, though it overlaps with Dumbass Has a Point.
    • Most notably in "Lovers Walk", when he drunkenly explains to Angel and Buffy that the two will tear each other apart but can never be just friends, characterising himself in the process as '...Love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it.'
  • In "Choices", the Mayor (while anything but Jerkassy, he was definitely a vicious villain) provided frank and accurate advice on why Buffy and Angel's relationship was doomed to fail, opening up about his own experiences of a Mayfly–December Romance (his wife ended up old and bitter and cursed him with her last breath) — while he was trying to kill the both of them. Even more remarkably, not only is this point also made to Angel by Joyce Summers, but Angel accepts that the Mayor was right.
  • In "Pangs", the Monster of the Week is a Native American ghost who's killing white people the same way bounty hunters killed his people as revenge. Willow is reluctant to act because she feels really guilty about what the colonists did, and everybody else is trying to convince her that they do have to fight him because he's killing innocent people. It's Spike of all people that finally gets through to her. He points out that the Europeans invaded with better weapons, killed the natives and took their land, which the whole point of conquering new territories. Humans have been doing it for as long as they have been around ("It's what Caesar did, and he's not going around saying, "I came, I conquered, I felt really bad about it"). He then goes on to say that the Team is not going to be able to save anybody if they keep their Political Overcorrectness attitude up, and the ghost does not care if they feel bad for the gruesome actions of their ancestors — it's pissed off and wants them all dead. When Willow then suggests that they could talk to the ghost, he asks her what she could possibly say to make him feel better about white people exterminating his tribe, destroying any and all argument against fighting the ghost. This is especially poignant because Giles made those exact same points earlier. Spike accurately sums up his whole argument in one sentence: “It’s kill or be killed people, take your bloody pick!”
    Xander: Maybe it's the syphilis talking, but some of that made sense.
  • After Willow quit magic because it became an addiction, Amy gave Willow some of her magic as a cheat (the equivalent of spiking a recovering alcoholic's drink to remind them how much they enjoyed being drunk). Willow told Amy she did a horrible thing to her, and Amy replied with a snide remark about Willow taking too long to turn her back into a human. Even though Amy did a rotten thing to Willow, and she was the one who turned herself into a rat, she was right that Willow achieved a level in proficiency in magic that would have allowed her to cure Amy long before she actually did, but didn't bother until she needed someone to enable her unhealthy magic abuse.
  • Kennedy is a self-admitted Jerkass who was talked down when she tried to share her views. Thing was, she was dead right when it came to Buffy's own jerkass behavior, and when the two meet up again in the Season 9 comics, she's ditched the Drill Sergeant Nasty attitude she got off on and genuinely wants to help other Slayers and Buffy, not just with employment but coming to terms with a new unmasqued world and what Buffy had done.
    • She brings up not destroying Tincan might help restore magic and in turn Willow. Even though they split up it doesn't mean Kennedy doesn't still care for her, and it might get some people off Buffy's case for what she'd done. She's even become very much a Reasonable Authority Figure in not firing Buffy (for assault, blowing off missions, and having a massive ego) or Faith (when she attacked a client because he's into underage girls.)
  • Faith made the exact same arguments about Buffy's "my-way-or-the-highway" brand of decision-making not always being the best choice in a delicate situation beforehand. In fact, it was part of the reason Faith had her Face–Heel Turn.
  • One of Spike's best ones was in "Blood Ties" when Dawn found out she was the key and Spike was there with her. Buffy angrily went and began beating Spike up until Spike pointed out that Dawn would have snuck into the Magic Box anyway to find out this information — he just felt it would be better for Dawn to have a former Big Bad as a bodyguard with her.
    • And then adds that if Buffy had been honest with Dawn from the start, they could have avoided this scenario. Buffy later concedes that he was right.
• Centennial: Jake Pasquinel is a hate-filled murderer and bigot, not only against the whites but against Pawnee and other Indians not of his own tribe ... and when he constantly predicts that the U.S. government's greed for Indian land will be insatiable and all negotiations useless, he's absolutely correct.
• Charmed:
  • In the episode "Crimes and Witch Demeanours", Barbas argues his case that the Charmed Ones should be stripped of their powers, due to their recklessness and selfish abuse of their abilities, nearly breaking the masquerade on a regular basis and putting innocents into situations where they've gotten killed. Turns out, the Tribunal actually agree with most of his argument and decide to strip Phoebe's active powers, due to her being the worse repeat offender.
  • Made even more telling when in the very next episode, Paige abuses magic for her own personal gain, which naturally ends up going horribly, horribly wrong. However this time, everyone calls her out on her reckless behaviour and Phoebe is understandably livid.
• Cheers:
  • One episode has Sam's old sports buddy Dave try to break him and Diane up. While Dave's motivation is a mostly sleezy desire to get Sam back to his old hound-dog ways, he also notes how unhealthy Sam and Diane's relationship is, comparing it unfavorably to his own failed marriage, which involved gunfire. Later episodes even have Sam himself admitting if he and Diane had stayed together, he'd likely have ended up killing her.
  • Similarly, in "Simon Says", Dr. Finch-Royce bluntly assesses their relationship and tells them what they should do is break up immediately and never talk to one another again, to save themselves years of misery, since their relationship is utterly unhealthy and totally lacking in trust. Diane goes full Drama Queen and accuses him of being a quack, but at the bar Norm asks her just what she and Sam do have in common. Neither can answer him. Simon even points out that by repeatedly bugging him through the night to "prove" him wrong, in-between overriding Sam's opinion and insulting him, nothing Diane has done has exactly disproved him.
• Chernobyl
  • When Sitnikov reports that the power plant's "good dosimeter" fried as soon as it was switched on, Director Bryukhanov complains that Moscow keeps sending them shit equipment. He then dismisses the fire brigade's own dosimeter reading of 200 roentgen in order to avoid admitting that the accident is serious, but he's not wrong that the shoddy equipment is the cause of their problems. (It's just that it happens to be in the reactor core.) In the flashback about the leadup to the disaster, Bryukhanov also complains of having to delay the safety test because he's getting pushed on by someone else who's getting pushed on by a person even higher up, "not that we'll ever know who," emphasizing the habitual dysfunction of the late Soviet Union.
  • Chief Engineer Fomin attempts to deflect blame from himself by saying it was Dyatlov's fault for changing the test parameters. It's weaselly, but it's also true that Dyatlov did make a lot of unauthorized changes that pushed the reactor into the danger zone.
  • Dyatlov refuses to answer Khomyuk's questions about the timeline in the control room because he knows the government has already chosen him as the fall guy. He's spiteful and rude (and is not nearly as free of responsibility as he believes he is) but he is right that "the truth" won't change the government's course of action because all they want is to close the book on it by a showy punishment for their chosen scapegoats. It takes an extreme act of sacrifice for Legasov to force the full story into the open.
• Cobra Kai: Anoush is a grade-A sleazebag, who only dates women with severe daddy issues... but his knowledge of how daddy issues are created makes him able to give his boss some very good advice on how to not alienate his teenage daughter.
  NO! Do NOT go through her phone, that's how pornstars are made! We're already in the Valley, it's only a five-minute drive to Vixen Videos!
  • Demetri is a straight example that later veers into deconstruction territory. Demetri is intelligent and perceptive, and his observations are often spot-on, but his only two modes of communication are whining and snarking. This leads to people shutting him down or up at every opportunity, even when they know he's right, just because he comes across as so utterly insufferable.
• Community:
  • Chang is correct that if you don't like being called Starburns, you probably shouldn't spend time every day carefully shaving your sideburns into star shapes.
  • In the second season, a recurring plot arc was Pierce Hawthorne's increasingly Jerkass behaviour towards his friends, which eventually reached a point where they were debating whether to throw him out of the group or not. However, while Pierce was shown to be unreasonable and cruel with many of his actions, he was also shown to make the entirely valid point that one of the main reasons that he was acting out in this fashion was that his supposed friends weren't actually that much nicer or better towards him in many ways, often deliberately excluding, mocking or ignoring him. While Pierce is the group's acceptable target in that he's a racist, sexist jackass, his friends were forced to concede that in several ways he had a point. However, the trope is played with in that Pierce is also forced to concede the point that it's in many ways his own fault he's excluded in the first place.
  • In English As A Second Language, Annie's motivations to expose Chang were mainly selfish and her actions ended up harming the rest of the group. But Chang was an incompetent Sadist Teacher who knew nothing about the topic he was supposed to teach and grossly abused his power over his students.
  • Throughout the series as a whole, several characters (some nicer than others) constantly point out to the study group the dangers of constantly spoiling Abed because they don’t want to hurt his feelings. Yes, some of them can be quite rude about it (IE Duncan), however, they are absolutely right that always going along with Abed’s fantasies, coddling him when things don’t go his way, and always doing what he wants just because he’s (possibly) on the autism spectrum is doing him more harm than good. Their constant “spoiling” of him is why, in a nutshell, he always freaks out and makes a scene when things change or don’t go his way. This is true in the real world as well, as people who work with autistic youths are taught to not always give in and stand firm, helping to teach autistic kids and adults that things change and sometimes the world doesn’t work out the way they’d like.
• Control Z:
  • For as much of a detestable bully he is, Gerry isn't wrong in pointing out to Quintanilla, who scolds him for wanting to publicly fight Luis as revenge, that he wasn't and is not doing anything useful to stop the school's hacking, which he is supposed to do as his job as a principal demands it.
  • Raúl had every right to refuse to give up his money, even if someone (Natalia) was kidnapped, to people who aren't even his friends, let alone when it was stolen from him. His points are valid because a) his parents were arrested due to their corruption and b) without that money, he would've been unable to fend for himself.
• Counterpart (2018): Though a jerk to Howard, his wish to have Emily near her mom in case she passes isn't unreasonable.
• In Season 1 of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Valencia is a typical Alpha Bitch type who is immediately hostile towards Rebecca, constantly paranoid that she's trying to steal her boyfriend away. She is also completely right to suspect so, as Rebecca is after Josh and even ends up kissing him late in the season. It's only after this kiss, and overhearing Valencia gleefully describing how she thinks Josh is acting weird because he is planning to propose, that Rebecca realises that she was in the wrong all alone in "The Villain In My Own Story".
• The Crown (2016):
  • Phillip's handling of the coronation is treated as if he is indulging his own arrogance and boredom, but he makes the point to Elizabeth that bringing people in touch with the British monarchy will avoid the fate of his family.
  • The Duke of Windsor is snide and bitter about the Royal Family and his abdication, but he is not entirely wrong to feel that the treatment he and his wife receive from them and the British Establishment can be very spiteful at times.
  • Tommy Lascelles goes behind Elizabeth's back to force her favoured secretary into refusing the position. When she confronts him about this, he argues that breaking long-standing traditions can eventually rot and corrode the heart of the monarchy, as it did with her own uncle's abdication.
• On The Daily Show, John Hodgman's "Deranged Oligarch" character believes that George Bailey is the villain of It's a Wonderful Life, having nearly destroyed his town with risky loans and only being rescued by a massive public bailout. Jon Stewart angrily starts to correct him, then stops mid-sentence to consider.
• Dark Desire: While it's really hard for Alma to trust Esteban after he's released prematurely from jail and Zoe, a very clingy and annoying teenager to put up with, keeps complaining about it, she makes good points concerning the consequences of Alma and Darío's affair. That Alma's family and marriage was wholly screwed up because she hooked up with a 25-year-old man? Valid. Also because of it and being divorced from Leonardo, Alma can no longer get employed and is now forced to live by herself at her parents' old house, even calling that not normal? A bit too far and insensitive.
• Dates: Callum is obliviously rude, but he's right-Erica must stand up for herself, and not hide that she's a lesbian. Eventually she realizes this and does with his encouragement.
• Degrassi: The Next Generation:
  • "Whisper to a Scream" is a great example. Ellie, a Goth Zen Survivor, is the only character all season who has been able to stand up to Paige [the Alpha Bitch]. The episode starts with Ellie fighting Paige's latest scheme...then, due to trouble at home, Ellie begins cutting herself. Paige finds out and tries to help her get counseling.
  • There was also a much less serious episode where Emma has her first period, and Paige tries to convince her that it's great because "You'll get boobs now" And "Boobs aren't that bad... they're really great actually."
  • From our other Alpha Bitch, Holly J, we get a few moments where she gives 'advice.' The first is after Mia finds out Sav likes Anya ("We need men, not boys."), after her fall she gives advice to Spinner and Jane in Season 8. Season 9 she has a wonderful scene with shades of the Paige Emma discussion telling Clare that having an impure thought isn't bad... so long as it doesn't lead to kissing the neck of Holly J's boyfriend.
  • Mrs. Torres, oh wow. She's mad at Snake because her son was shrinkwrapped to a pole. Then she's mad at Snake because her other son who she still isn't quite used to not being her daughter was the victim of a hate crime in school. By this time she's probably wondering what kind of school he's running. Then Vegas Night happens...
  • Another example involving Paige happened in the episode "I Want Candy". Ashley would not get out of bed to go to school after Craig cheats on her with Manny (several months after it's already happened). In an effort to try and cheer her up, Paige and Spinner skip school and take her out on the town. Of course, Ashley does nothing but whine the entire time. Finally, Paige gives Ashley a What the Hell, Hero? speech, telling her that while what Craig did to her was wrong, he was not the issue. The real problem was Ashley because she wouldn't move on with her life.
  • Bianca's gotten her fair share in, pointing out that while she did steal Drew from Alli, it wasn't as bad as Alli kissing Clare's ex-boyfriend/current step-brother. Since Alli is Clare's best friend she should know better, Bianca has no such loyalty to break. Later on, she sets Jake straight that no matter what Clare says, she's not going to be able to separate the sex from the romance she has building in her head, and if he sleeps with her he's royally messing her up. Bianca didn't choose the nicest ways to go about sharing these lessons, but she was right in both counts.
• Derry Girls: Katya, who is rather sour and blunt, points out that the 'religious' element of the Irish civil war made no sense because the sides believed in two different flavors of the same exact religion. Clare is so moved by this realization that she wears a Union Jack shirt to Jenny's party that night.
• Designing Women did this often with Allison, who was so obnoxious that no one ever wanted to give her the satisfaction of agreeing with her. She even spends one episode (Season 6's "I Enjoy Being a Girl") begging the rest of the gang to acknowledge her for making good points.
• Desperate Housewives:
  • Before she died Martha Huber said that Mary Alice "didn't kill herself because I wrote a note". While Martha's attempt at blackmail was the catalyst that made Mary Alice decide to kill herself, it's true that Mary Alice committed multiple crimes that had nothing to do with Martha Huber and then decided to kill herself to cover them up.
  • Edie Britt does this many times over the course of the show. In particular, she rips into Susan about how Susan always plays the Damsel in Distress role to get out of her various troubles (a lot of which are her own fault because of her clumsiness, selfishness, immaturity, etc), and that people do it not because they love her, but because they feel sorry for her.
    • She also tells the other housewives after the hurricane that they have to stop reassuring Lynette that her family (who are trapped beneath a ruined house) will all be fine because they can't promise that and Lynette has to prepare herself to accept the worst.
    • She calls Gaby out on keeping up her Slap-Slap-Kiss with Carlos after he loses his sight, telling her that she can't keep doing it now that Carlos depends on her to see, even if he pretends that he can still handle their old dynamic.
  • Nina, Lynette's boss in Season 2, is abrasive and harsh, but she's not wrong to be annoyed at Lynette constantly trying to leave work to go sort out various problems with her kids, especially since Lynette promised at her job interview she wouldn't let her personal life interfere with her professional one and Tom is already acting as a stay-at-home dad, and Nina points out that the business doesn't care about her children and it's not her problem if Lynette can't handle being away from her kids.
  • Andrew Van de Kamp is a massive Jerkass in Season 2 and 3, but when he lays it out to Bree that they're making each other miserable and it would be much easier to just let him go live with his grandparents, but Bree won't do it because she's too proud to admit she screwed up raising her kids, he's absolutely right. Bree doesn't listen to him and the situation between mother and son only escalates even further.
  • Danielle Van De Kamp brings up the excellent point in Season 4 when she runs away from the Convent to live out the rest of her pregnancy at her grandmother's when she angrily points out to Bree that she doesn't want her baby raised by such a cold, emotionally distant woman and Bree was always mean to both her and to Rex. The fact Danielle's only siding with her grandmother to get a cushy deal doesn't undermine her point about Bree's parenting.
  • Barbara Orlofsky is an Abusive Parent and Lady Drunk, but she's not wrong when she snaps at Lynette (who rebukes her for how she talks to Eddie) that she sees Eddie as a pet project to throw a free meal at and include in family nights to feel good about herself. The usually fiery Lynette can't think of anything to say in response and the next day she tells Tom she doesn't want Eddie living with Barbara anymore. Unfortunately, the neighbourhood's lax response to the blatant Parental Neglect going on right in front of them leads Eddie to become a Serial Killer, with Barbara being his final victim.
  • Paul Young is devastated when his wife shoots herself in the head and when it turns out she intended to donate her kidney to Susan, Paul tells Susan he has no intention of taking Beth off life support despite the fact she has no brain activity, telling Susan she treated Beth with nothing but contempt and suspicion since she arrived on Wisteria Lane when she hadn't done anything wrong except marry Paul. While Mike is furious with this and accuses Paul of only doing it to punish them, Susan concedes she was awful to Beth and tells Paul she respects his decision, which prompts Paul to undergo a change of heart and agree to the transplant after all when it becomes clear Beth isn't going to wake up.
• Dexter: Doakes. He is convinced that something is off about Dexter, who is of course a serial killer. Dexter manages to make sure that no one ever knows he's right, however.
• Doctor Who:
  • The reaction to changing history by the Doctor and Time Lords can often come across as this. It may not seem nice allowing bad events to happen to maintain the timeline, but trying to alter them often makes things worse.
  • The Ninth Doctor is treated as terrible in "Dalek" for wanting to kill the last Dalek. While torturing it was certainly unpleasant, he has a lot of experience in how dangerous the Daleks are and the Dalek, once released, proceeds to kill hundreds of people easily and makes it clear they intend to wipe out humanity.
  • In "Father's Day", Nine is furious at Rose for altering history by saving her father and threatens to leave her behind. His reaction turns out to be right, the paradox allows the Reapers to appear and begin devouring people, and it takes a Heroic Sacrifice from Rose's father to save the world.
  • "Tooth and Claw": Queen Victoria might seem a tad ungrateful by banishing the Doctor and Rose after they saved her life, but she has a point about their attitude towards the werewolf — to attempt to get her to say her alleged catchphrase while people are dying horribly around them, treating it like a game, and this saying nothing of the Doctor's Nightmare Fetishist tendencies, is beyond inappropriate. She also has a point when she wonders how long they'll survive their madcap lifestyle. (And her criticism does have an impact: although the Doctor and Rose continue to laugh in the face of danger in subsequent episodes, they never again act as blasé as they do here, nor does the Tenth Doctor with his later companions Martha and Donna.)
  • "Voyage of the Damned": Rickston Slade is a colossally selfish asshole. However, despite how callous he is, he is correct about the steward being an idiot for opening a door that led to him being sucked into space. And despite his words being mean-spirited and in bad taste, he's also right that when the group has to cross a precarious bridge, Morvin and Foon, the two heaviest members, should go last, which Morvin even agrees with right before falling to his death. Finally, he's right on when he says that the Doctor promising to come back across the bridge for Foon will just get everyone killed, and even the Doctor realizes it.
  • "Midnight": The hostess is the first to suggest that the possessed Sky be thrown out of the bus. By Word of God, she was completely right, as that's the only thing that anyone could have done to deal with the entity that had taken over Sky's body.
  • This concept is important to the Story Arc of Series 8, the debut season of the Twelfth Doctor. For example, his second episode ("Into the Dalek") has him lying to a soldier, telling him taking a pill can save him from internal Dalek defences. When the soldier is killed and the Doctor is criticised, he points out that the soldier would have died anyway and this way he can save the others, the pill enabling him to track the soldier's remains. It isn't until episode eight, "Mummy on the Orient Express", that Twelve's companion Clara Oswald, who previously traveled with the amiable Eleven, finally understands that more often than not his seemingly heartless actions and treatment of others are borne from simple pragmatism and a need to protect and save as many people as he can in desperate situations.
  • There is a lot of this in the Series 9 finale "Hell Bent", in which the Doctor, having been Driven to Madness by capture, imprisonment, torture, and the death of Clara, the woman he loves, decides to give up his principles and violate a fixed point in time himself to undo the spoiled event, despite the grave threat it poses to the space-time continuum. Several appalled characters point out that he can't risk all existence over his own anguish and rage, and he's also only giving someone false hope that he can pull it off. Eventually he admits to one of them, Ashildr/Me, that he knows he's gone too far, but he still feels it is for the best until Clara herself convinces him otherwise and he gives up his Tragic Dream. One reason the other characters' What the Hell, Hero? speeches don't work is that all of them except Clara herself have little or No Sympathy for his recent suffering, and some of them had direct or indirect hands in it to begin with!
  • "Arachnids in the UK": When it's discovered that Robertson's luxury hotel is built over old mineshafts that a waste-disposal company also owned by him used as a landfill, which is the source of the spider problem, Robertson argues that it's an efficient repurposing of land since otherwise the mineshafts would just be empty space, and he's right: it means both less land used for landfill purposes, and it would be cost-effective. It's a pity that Robertson's waste disposal company didn't properly process the waste before dumping it, or bother to deal with the noxious fumes emitted as a result.
  • "It Takes You Away": When Hanne explains that her father has been missing for four days because he was abducted by the monster in the woods, Ryan is skeptical and, due to his own background, suggests that her father has simply run off, like his did. He's quickly told off for being rude, but it turns out that he's right. Erik has run off to an alternate universe where a version of his dead wife exists, and the "monster" is just a recording he set up to keep Hanne in the house.
  • The Thirteenth Doctor's general treatment of her companions makes her come across as cold, distant, and secretive - more so than any of the NuWho and even some Classic incarnations - as she refuses to devolve any of her personal business such as certain aspects of her past in order to keep them safe. By the time this incarnation regenerates, all of her companions have returned home, safe and sound, making herself the first NuWho Doctor to get all her companions home safe, alive, in the right universe, in the right time period with their memories intact.
  • In the Doctor Who Missing Adventures novel "Millennial Rites", the Sixth Doctor ultimately has to concede to the Valeyard’s observation that sometimes the more ruthless course of action is necessary to win when confronted by an aspect of the Valeyard that exists in his present mind. However, the Doctor rejects the Valeyard’s attempt to argue that he has to enjoy such actions to commit them, the Doctor drawing a line between taking the ruthless course of action when it’s necessary and resorting to it as a first option because it’s easier.
  • Big Finish Doctor Who audios;
    • In “We Are the Daleks”, the Seventh Doctor tried convincing MP Celia Dunthorpe that the Daleks are not the good aliens she thinks they are by pointing out that most of their products are as a result of slave labour on other planets. Celia retorts that the same thing happens on Earth.
    • In “Devil in the Mist”, while Tegan is very harsh to Kamelion, she can hardly be blamed for mistrusting him after he had very recently tried to kill them (albeit under the influence of the Master). It’s also perfectly reasonable for her to be annoyed with the Doctor for expecting her to welcome Kamelion with open arms just because he says everything is fine.
• Emily in Paris:
  • Luc (who had been complicit in mocking Emily at her new workplace) gently but firmly calls her out on her arrogance of coming to work for a French firm without speaking a word of French and imposing her ideas on them even though she has zero experience working with luxury brands and expecting people to just go along with it.
  • Emily's ex-boyfriend Doug is written as a Hate Sink but he has a good point that Emily lacks knowledge on the French language and culture as a reason why she shouldn't go to Paris.
• ER: Dr. Kerry Weaver is an absolute stickler for the rules and rubs practically all of her colleagues the wrong way thanks to her abrasive personality. Unfortunately for the rest of the staff, Kerry has two things going in her favor: one, she is a superb emergency physician, and two, she is almost always correct.
• Everybody Loves Raymond: "Pat's Secret" sees Robert discovering that his mother-in-law Pat secretly smokes to deal with her frustrations with her husband instead of talking to him about them. When her habit gets out, all of the married couples except Marie and Frank reveal that they also have odd coping mechanisms for dealing with their spouse's irritating behaviors. Frank and Marie then chime in and explain that when they bother each other, they outright say that they're being annoying, and even bluntly tell each other to shut up. Everyone claims that their dynamic is cruel and insensitive, but Marie rightly points out that it's much healthier than secretive passive-aggression and not talking at all.
• Extraordinary Attorney Woo: Bang Gu-ppong commits assault and kidnapping in pursuit of his goals but he's not wrong in saying that Korea's Cram School industry is harming the children it purports to help. As of 2022, he's used as a symbol of protests in Korea for children's rights.
• The Fall Of The House Of Usher: Camille is one of the nastier siblings of the already dysfunctional Usher family, but she is also the sharpest of them, and as a result drops this with certain frequency.
  • She is right that the Ushers siblings have built almost nothing and would be nowhere without their privilege. Leo is not a game developer, he just pays the actual developers; Tammy and Vic are smart, but too dysfunctional to be efficient and wouldn't be where they are without their father's funding; Perry is too hedonistic to take the time to do anything; and Frederick is just a worse version of the businessman his father is.
  • Her distaste for Vic is nasty and generally not more warranted than it would be for anyone else, but she is right that she is involved in very nasty business and only pretends to be the savior doctor-scientist she presents herself as.
• Len Brennan of Father Ted is often excessively mean and rude to the main characters, but anyone would get fed up with Ted's corruption, Dougal's stupidity and nutjobbery, and Jack's... well, Jack's entire feckin' personality, not to mention the bizarre incidents they were involved in that got them sent to Craggy Island in the first place — all of which Len points out whenever he has the chance.
• Firefly: The episode "Safe" has Jayne thrilled that Simon and River have gotten kidnapped, but he does make the point that not harboring fugitives makes their lives easier, and Zoe and Mal agree with that. Jayne makes a lot of points like this. In Joss Whedon's own words: "He's the guy who will say what everyone's thinking but are too polite to actually say it."
• The Flash (2014): Hartley Rathaway may be a terrible person, but he absolutely had a point when he said that Wells shouldn't go forward with the particle accelerator because they would be putting countless lives at risk.
• Frasier:
  • One episode has Martin take Frasier and Niles to a blue-collar steak restaurant and proceed to get infuriated when they won't stop making snide comments about the place. However, Frasier and Niles are fairly justified in being irritated at the place due to the prank it plays on snobs by cutting off their ties and pinning them to a wall. The restaurant is just as hostile to their high-brow culture as they are to its low-brow culture.
  • The episode "I Hate Frasier" has a columnist write about how he hates Frasier's show. Among his criticisms are that Fras is pompous and sanctimonious. Which is one of the things Frasier rants about on his show.
  • Dr. Nora, who briefly tries taking over Frasier's show, is bullying, sanctimonious and childish to the people that call in for her help. Despite her cruelty, she tells one caller with a toxic mother that sometimes a relationship is so bad you shouldn't bother trying to fix it, but cut that person out completely (having done the same with her own abusive mother). Frasier disagrees, and tries to prove his point by tracking down Nora's mother and bringing her to the studio. The "reunion" ends with Nora running out of the booth screaming as her mother shouts abuse at her, proving that Nora was right to get away from the woman.
• Gilmore Girls:
  • In Season 5, Mitchum Huntzberger sends Rory into an existential crisis by telling her bluntly that he does not think she has got what it takes to succeed as a reporter. In the Distant Finale of the show, we find out that Rory's career as a reporter indeed has never really taken off and she ends up deciding to become an author instead.
  • In Season 6, Rory's ex-boyfriend Jess sums up most of what had been going wrong with the show at that point: Rory abandoning both her mother and her university studies to party and engage in activities that go against all her aspirations. Ironically, Lorelai had been afraid that too much of her parents' luxury would rub off on Rory and it turns out she was right. Rory brings this up to Logan, who retorts that he never forced Rory into any of it and he's basically right.
  • Really, the show as a whole treats anyone that calls Rory out like a jerkass. However, the characters that do call her out are actually entirely correct. Rory Gilmore is so used to being praised and worshipped by the entire town, esp her mother, Luke, and her grandparents, that anytime someone actually criticizes her, she can’t handle it. Despite Rory’s “perfection”, more than one person has pointed out that she is spoiled, sheltered, and not a good writer.
  • In addition to the reason listed above, Logan makes another point to Rory she doesn’t want to acknowledge. In her mind, Rory is an average person who can’t stand stuck-up rich people. Logan accurately points out that she is NOT an average joe, that she is in fact rich, spoiled, and her last name will one day be on one of the buildings at Yale. She does herself no favors by stubbornly refusing to believe him.
• In "Goodbye Tour", the next-to-last episode of Girls, Shoshanna's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to her now-former friends is pretty blunt and not the best note to end things on, but she's right about their past failings and the negative effect they've had on her which she's now gotten past.
• Glee:
  • This show is full of this and most of the Jerkass characters get one or more scenes where they get to tell one of the 'good' characters the plain truth and force them to address their problems.
  • Sue Sylvester tells Will that he shouldn't use demeaning hairography in the glee club's set list. Later, Will thanks her and as required willingly shows her the set list which she promptly leaks to the competing schools.
  • Quinn tells Rachel that Finn does not have the same dreams for the future as Rachel and as such she should stop pursuing him since they will just end up miserable. This makes Rachel realize that she has been too self-absorbed and has not really considered what Finn wants out of life and a relationship. She turned out to be right.
  • Santana is one of the more severe Jerkasses on the show, but she frequently ends up making very good points about other characters while she's raking them over the coals. In one episode, she bluntly tells off Rachel, in front of the entire Glee club, that Rachel has personally sold half of the club down the river in order to get solos or parts in theater and that she probably doesn't even know the names of the other half. When Rachel stammers that it isn't true, Santana hits her with an Armor-Piercing Question while pointing at another student: "Then what's his name?" The answer to which Rachel gets wrong.
  • Will is no doubt a Designated Hero Jerkass, but he had a point when he called out Quinn for blaming her problems on him as well as never showing gratitude for the very people that's been there for her in her hardest times.
  • One interesting example extends over two seasons. A Season 1 episode has Kurt, who has a big crush on Finn, scheme to get his father Burt and Finn's mother to start dating in an effort to get closer to the football player. When the families decide to move in together, Kurt redecorates his and Finn's new shared room without Finn's permission or input, prompting the already-stressed Finn to lose his temper and call the new furniture "faggy." Kurt is justifiably upset, and Burt tells Finn in no uncertain terms that he'll kick him out of the house if he ever uses that kind of language again. However, in a second season episode, Burt later points out that Kurt's manipulative actions to get the (decidedly straight) Finn to reciprocate his feelings — something that he couldn't possibly have done — were outright wrong; that Finn was in a lot of pain and, though the words were cruel, understandable in his anger; and that if Finn was a woman, everyone would have correctly called Kurt's actions sexual harassment — Finn's being a man doesn't change that fact.
• The Golden Girls occasionally used this trope — usually with either Dorothy or Sophia leading the charge.
  • In "On Golden Girls," Blanche's teenage grandson David comes to stay with the girls while his parents take a second honeymoon. He proves bratty, insensitive, and downright rude to the women, and when Sophia has enough, she slaps him across the face. While Dorothy points out that she had no right to hit David, he was being extremely cruel to them and their property, and the smack proves to be a catalyst for David opening up about his problems. In the same episode, the girls (again led by Sophia) give David a big list of chores to do around the house as a combination of punishment and a necessary lesson in responsibility. Blanche disagrees at first but eventually realizes that it's the severe lack of discipline in David's life (largely because his parents neglect him) that's causing all of his issues.
  • In "All That Jazz," Dorothy's son Michael comes to her after his wife kicks him out of the house. Dorothy later laments that Michael seems to be unable to grow up and take responsibility despite being thirty, and Blanche brusquely points out that Dorothy herself is partially to blame, as she coddles Michael and makes excuses for him. She goes on to say that unless Dorothy starts showing some Tough Love, Michael will remain completely dependent on her for his whole life ("You're gonna end up with a sixty-year-old kid!"). Dorothy's stunned expression proves that Blanche's words hit home.
• Gotham Knights (2023): Duela is blunt but has a good point on how Turner can't trust anyone and has to stop thinking like a rich kid to survive. Also, she tells Harper she's "so busy looking out for your little brother, you miss he's a total badass."
• Grace and Frankie: Briana is The Snark Knight, but she's also absolutely right to tell the other three kids that their fathers' affair means that they have been cheating on their mothers for years, and that if they'd left their mothers for anyone else, all four kids would hate them for it.
• In Hell's Kitchen (and later, Kitchen Nightmares), this is basically Gordon Ramsay's selling point. He'll yell, swear, and generally terrorize the chefs/restaurant owners, but he's a very talented chef himself, runs a successful restaurant business, and his critiques always have legitimate points under all the F-bombs. For example, his most famous Berserk Button is raw meat — because food poisoning from undercooked meats can and does kill people. It's hard to fault the man for getting a little pissy when chefs are being careless with customers' lives.
• Homeland: Majid Javadi of all people makes a good point in the Season 3 finale when he tells Carrie she got what she wanted: for everyone else to see Brody the way she did.
• In the second series of Horatio Hornblower, Hornblower and his fellow lieutenants are on trial for mutiny. Of the three judges, Captain Pellew is trying to get his old protegé Hornblower acquitted, Captain Hammond is the Hanging Judge who picks Hornblower as the scapegoat for everything that went wrong on HMS Renown, and Captain Collins (the only neutral judge) moderates as the other two pull the case back and forth. But when going over the attack on the Spanish fort, Hammond picks out the part where Hornblower, realizing there must be a Secret Underground Passage, took his men and left immediately without informing Lt Bush, who thought he'd been abandoned and was on the point of surrender before his comrades returned. No one can make a counterargument to this lapse in judgment on Hornblower's part.
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • After being part of an intervention for their friend Stuart's alcoholism, the gang begins holding several of them themselves for issues such as Robin's addiction to tanning. But then when the gang stages an intervention for Barney and his pyrotechnic magic tricks, he gets annoyed and tells them that interventions are supposed to be for helping a person confront problems that are negatively affecting their livelihood, not to just get them to stop doing things you find annoying. Later on, they did accept that they were doing too many interventions and stopped.
  • Lily had no right to break up many of Ted's girlfriends including Robin because they didn't fit her idea of the front porch test (where she, Marshall, and Ted grow old together). However, she brings up a good point that her intentions were based around Ted's tendency to rush romances and he very well might have married one of those girls for the sake of getting married, only to have a lot more heartache (and financial loss) on the back end due to divorce and general bitterness. She also didn't always intend to break them up but was hoping they would address issues before it was a problem, if Ted and Robin didn't break up they would have remained together but their relationship would have deteriorated. Their current status Better as Friends would not have happened.
• House: This is House's whole deal: He's a colossal dick to just about everyone, but what he's saying is usually at least a little bit right (particularly when the subject is something medical); he could just stand to work on how he says it.
  • In Season 1, Vogler thinks the hospital would be better off without House. His reasons for disliking House are more than a little iffy (basically that House doesn't show him the respect he feels he deserves) and his way of going about it shows him to be controlling and power-hungry, but he's not entirely wrong to suggest that House is a potential problem, particularly in retrospect given the way the character evolves in later seasons.
  • Detective Tritter in Season Three. He wages a campaign of harassment after House basically abuses him during one of House's clinic hours. Tritter is persuing a personal vendetta and abusing his power as a police officer to do it, but all his criticisms of House are valid, most importantly that his addiction makes him a legitimate danger to his patients.
• The Inbetweeners:
  • Though his attempts to hook Simon up with other girls backfires horribly, Jay isn't wrong when he repeatedly points out that Carli just uses Simon to feel better about herself and that his obsession with her only hurts him in the long run.
  • When Jay calls Alistair a dick, Will protests that Alistair has a serious illness and Jay retorts that Alistair was a Jerkass before he got sick and he still is now — Will learns the hard way that Jay was right.
  • Alistair may be a dick, but he's not wrong to call out Will for trying to stage a boycott of a charity fashion event because he personally disagrees with it, or to call him a hypocrite once he abandons his protests when Charlotte asks him to stand in for one of the models.
  • Jay's not wrong when he complains that he and Neil getting a month's detention for saying "Waterside" to Gilbert is a completely ridiculous and unfair punishment.
  • Jay points out more than once that Will doesn't join in with the lad's various rule-breaking escapades because he occupies any kind of moral high ground, it's just that he's a swot who's terrified of breaking the rules.
  • Will gets a turn when he points out that the Fashion Show is just an excuse for the popular kids to show off in front of everyone and pretend it's for a good cause, though he totally throws his stance on the matter out of the window when Charlotte needs a partner for the show and asks him.
  • Mr. Gilbert is not very sympathetic when Will is being bullied by the men at the garage he's meant to be doing work experience with, but as he points out to Will's mum, he did start it by putting his foot in his mouth and telling them he was "too intelligent" to be working a low-class, menial job like working at a garage.
  • Jay's Dad is needlessly cruel to Jay much of the time, but he's not wrong when he calls Jay out on his constant lying about all the birds he's shagged, he just chooses to do so in the most demeaning way possible that just prompts Jay into lying more in a desperate attempt to impress him.
  • In the first movie, when a family at the hotel get mad at the lads for "stealing" their poolside seats they'd reserved, Will goes on a rant about how you aren't allowed to do that and that they aren't entitled to them just because their daughter is in a wheelchair. He takes it too far by adding that "she doesn't even need another chair!", but his point still stands even if he was being a twat about it.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022):
  • Lestat de Lioncourt refuses to turn Claudia at first, saying that she's too young. Considering the troubles that he and Louis de Pointe du Lac face in trying to control a new vampire with the appetite and metabolism of a teenager, and the torment Claudia experiences when she comes to realize that she'll be trapped in a body on the cusp of adolescence forever, Lestat had a point.
  • Daniel Molloy is biased, abrasive and often unsympathetic to Louis and his past, but he does raise some good points about Louis' abusive relationship with Lestat, and he notes that Claudia, while she may be an eloquent writer, still chose to deal with her pain and trauma by becoming a Serial Killer. The way Daniel expresses his arguments is extremely insensitive, especially in matters regarding Claudia, but he is correct about Louis' status as an Unreliable Narrator. As he points out, Louis' habit of lying by omission and having a Self-Serving Memory regarding certain events throws his entire story into question, and makes Daniel rightfully doubt every word he says.
• Living Lie Detector: A non-superpowered example. Because he's an award-winning investigative journalist, Daniel has spent his entire career detecting inconsistencies and falsehoods, so he's able to read Louis like a book. Daniel swiftly picks up on any holes in the narration, and challenges Louis about the so-called truth every single time something doesn't add up.
• JAG: Gunnery Sergeant Granger makes a number of valid observations in "War Cries" about the danger of their security situation when challenged on his unrelenting leadership and training style.
• In the first season of The Joe Schmo Show, Ashleigh tries to warn that season's schmo, Matt, that host Ralph has a crush on Molly, "the virgin," and vice versa, but Matt doesn't really want to hear it from her because of her being the "bitch" for the season, and also because she herself has a crush on Ralph that she claims she would never act on during the show because it wouldn't be professional. When Molly is eliminated, Ralph lets her keep her plate and gives her a kiss. Ashleigh immediately points this out to Matt and he is forced to admit that she has a point.
• Justified: Daryl may have bullied his way into Dewey's brothel, but he did make legitimate observations about Dewey's poor business sense. His criticism of Wendy for being a poor parent was also spot-on.
  • When Markham and Walker arrived at Ava's house to intimidate her, Markham gave her advice on her criminal career. He reminded Ava that successful women in the crime world need to be twice as ruthless as men and willing to take actions that the men will not. Otherwise, Ava would only be a "token" whom other criminals would target to get at Boyd.
• Just Shoot Me!: Jack Gallo is frequently right on occasions where his daughter Maya wishes that he wasn't. For example, Maya's perky assistant is genuinely terrible at her job, and an old friend he screwed out of the business was well and truly incapable of working at the magazine.
• Obi-Wan Kenobi: Owen Lars pointing out to Kenobi that he failed in training Anakin may have been a low blow, but for someone who doesn't have the benefit of knowing the entire situation, it's not unreasonable for him to be skeptical of Kenobi being a good master for Luke.
• In The Kicks episode "Choosing Sides", Mirabelle brutally calls out Devin for waffling on the decision to replace Zoe as goalie, despite her obvious lack of skill at the position. There's nothing nice about her words, but everyone involved, including Zoe, agrees that Mirabelle is right. Devin eventually comes around too.
• In the live action drama of The King's Avatar, An Wenyi is adapted to be more confrontational and rude but he makes good points, especially regarding Yifan.
  • During a practice match of Team Happy against Ye Xiu, he criticizes Yifan for being inflexible and not adapting his commands appropriately when the situation changes, which happens often in Glory matches.
  • When preparing for a tutor match against Yifan's ex-team, Yifan insists on conventional methods such as defending their cleric. An Wenyi points out that Wang Jiexi is known for his unpredictability and he is well aware Team Happy is made up of mostly new Glory players. Therefore, he won't be targeting the cleric but would go after Ye Xiu who is the most experienced. After all, if their captain is killed, the rest of Team Happy would be picked off easily.
• Kingdom (2019): Yeong-shin defends feeding everyone at Jiyulheon human meat by pointing out that people are putting their lives in peril over moral quarrels. In Episode 3, he explains that they should bury or burn the zombies as soon as possible before nightfall, but then the remaining villagers object to burning the bodies because it's culturally disrespectful and the nobles want to separate the peasant corpses from the noble corpses, a difficult task since they would have to destroy the heads, making identification hard.
• In the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Father Dearest", the perpetrator is found to be seeking revenge on a former colleague for ruining his surgical career by trying to frame him for the crimes in question. The other man is an arrogant jerk, and the man in question is just one of two people whose careers he's ruined, but in both cases, he was absolutely right — the other guy was trying to be a surgeon despite having a tremor, and the perpetrator was cheating on an exam and thereby paving the way for someone to enter the field when they might not be qualified; both situations had a very high probability of patient deaths and costly lawsuits if they had hadn't been reported.
• Lizzie McGuire: Late into this show, the Will They or Won't They? between Lizzie and Gordo was getting unbelievably tedious so Lizzie finally got a Sorkin Relationship Moment... from Kate.
• Lost:
  • Christian Shephard was a complete dick in most of his flashback appearances, often acting like a self-involved jerk. But when he tells his daughter Claire that it's not right to keep her mother on life support solely because she is not ready to let her go, it's kind of tough to disagree with Him. Most of his advice to Jack is like this too.
  • Sawyer often points out the harsh truth to people. In the Season 2 finale, when Michael (who was told by the Others to bring them the survivors on the list given to him) is upset at Sawyer for inviting Sayid along (who wasn't on the list) Sawyer points out to Michael if they were going to war against the Others, they should bring the one person who has actually been in a war. Sawyer didn't know about the list at that point, and he has a valid point.
• Lost in Space
  • In a season 1 episode, when Dr. Smith's selfish hijinks once again jeopardize everyone else's chances of getting off of the planet, they essentially make him sweat it out and leave him with the impression that they might very well depart the planet themselves in the Jupiter II and leave Dr. Smith stranded. Dr. Smith then protests about the cruelty of of this course of action, and...he's basically right. Sure, his previous actions were evil, and they did have the potential to harm the others, but as cowardly and inept as Dr. Smith is, leaving him on the planet by himself would inevitably result in his demise by starvation, exposure, or being eaten by aliens—surely a cruel and unusual punishment. The less cruel option would be to leave him in his room guarded by the Robot, or even to tie him up inside the Jupiter II, rather than leave him stranded to die alone on the inhospitable planet.
    • Even if they were just trying to make him think they might leave him behind, with no intention of actually doing so, that sort of tactic is likely to put a narcissistic person like Dr. Smith more at odds with the rest of the group, not less.
• Series/Loudermilk: This is the defining trait of the protagonist Sam Loudermilk. Loudermilk gained fame and made a living off of being a successful rock critic which is about snarky pessimism. Loudermilk is unpleasant and often ruins moments for people. However, he is often right. He simply lacks tact.
• Lucifer (2016):
  • When Lucifer and his until recently antagonistic big brother Amenadiel crash a funeral to speak with the funeral home's owner, Lucifer mocks the whole funeral because the dead man's soul is long since left him and is either up in Heaven or down in Hell being punished. The whole farce is for the living to make themselves feel better about ignoring the person. He turns to Amenadiel for back up and the angel agrees with Lucifer.
  • Chloe outraged at her mother, Penelope, wanting to take Trixie to an audition.
    Chloe: You can't just walk in here like...
    Penelope: Like I own the place? The place you live in, rent-free?
  • Viewers are supposed to see the Ethics Oversight Committee chairman as a bad guy for wanting to take down Dr. Martin, except that she really has committed numerous ethical breaches that absolutely would and should get any professional psychiatrist removed from practice.
• Mad Men: Joan Holloway gets to hand out a lot of this. So does Bobbie Barrett.
• Malcolm in the Middle: Lois and Hal revealing their grand scheme for Malcolm's life will come off to many as little more than the big Kick the Dog finale, but if you think about it, it might actually not have been so much if only they were a lot more reasonable about it towards him. Given how Malcolm consistently exceeded their expectations of him, it indeed would be a waste of potential for him to not even attempt to become a big name like the president. It just is a jerk move for them to expect him to solve all their problems as president because most of their problems are self-inflicted.
• M*A*S*H:
  • As much of a colossal pain in the ass Frank Burns was to the 4077th, there were those rare instances where there was some truth to his words:
    • He was right when he warned Margaret that Donald might not be all that he seems. Yes, he said this in an attempt at getting back into her pants, but in the end, Donald was revealed to be cheating on Margaret, stealing her money, and finally requested a transfer behind her back, leading to their divorce.
    • He is also perhaps the only one to acknowledge the hospital is only three miles from the front line, while everyone else seems to act like it's a vacation between OR sessions.
    • Hawkeye reluctantly points out that Frank is correct in that Trapper needs a physical to diagnose what's wrong with him, which turns out to be an ulcer.
    • Frank gets another one when Radar is accused of stealing a rare gun belonging to a visiting officer. Hawkeye and B.J. suspect Frank immediately and threaten him to confess before Radar gets in serious trouble. Frank points out that Radar is innocent until proven guilty and that Frank himself deserves that same consideration. Of course, Frank did steal the gun himself to impress Margaret, but he's not wrong since they're accusing him without evidence, as even they have to admit.
  • When Col. Potter announces that they will be immunizing all the local prostitutes to try and curb a VD epidemic among the troops, Charles says that any men who get the disease had it coming, which Potter treats as one of the most offensive things ever. While Charles is wrong to dismiss the vaccination program out of hand because of this (curbing an epidemic in any way possible is probably for the best no matter who's to blame) and he could stand to be more sympathetic, he's not wrong that catching an STI from a hooker in the middle of rural Korea is hardly unforeseeable and the infected soldiers aren't exactly innocent victims of circumstance.
  • In one episode, a Korean mother abandons her Amerasian baby girl at the MASH. The 4077 initially plan to hand her over to an orphanage, but when Father Mulcahy points out that in Korea's ethnocentric society she will be a pariah and likely suffer a lifetime of abuse, they try to get her American citizenship but quickly run into a brick wall. Hawkeye and Potter then meet with a South Korean official to get his help, but he also refuses, on the basis that Korea is "one nation and one people", and he doesn't want a mixed-race child diluting that. When the doctors call him out on his bigotry, the official points out the only reason they came to him is that, among the allied nations, America is the only one which doesn't have automatic citizenship for the children of their soldiers and native women — they're just as hostile to these mixed-race children as the Koreans are. Bear in mind that, at the time MASH is set, miscegenation was illegal in twenty-nine states. Ultimately, the 4077 have no choice to give her over to an isolated monastery where she can be raised while being kept away from those who might do her harm and might eventually be able to be relocated out of Korea.
• Masters of Horror: Annie's father in the episode "Cigarette Burns". Kirby treats him like an unreasonable jerkass, but Kirby did get his daughter killed by indulging her drug habit, abysmally failed to get her on the right track despite agreeing with him to do so, is still massively in debt to him, and just evades him whenever the topic of repaying the loan comes up. It's only when he resolves to kill Kirby that he crosses the line into outright villainy.
• Mimpi Metropolitan: While he is an unrepentant jerk about it, Juna is on point when he says that Alexi's acting is terrible and gets the director Akbar to admit it.
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters "Secrets and Lies": Mirelly Taylor's character doesn't pull her punches much when chiding Tim for gallivanting after Bill Randa's files on his and Duvall's own without getting clearance or telling any higher-ups, but nothing she says is wrong at all, and she's right to scold him for his unprofessional and un-orderly conduct which has arguably exacerbated the situation.
• Monday Mornings: Dr. Hooten. Sure, he may be extremely harsh on the doctors at the hospital but he does it because they are doctors — their failures and mishaps can and do result in the deaths of the people under their care. As such, they need to be kept in line.
  • When some of his doctors are surly and hesitant about treating the wounds of a patient who appeared to attempt suicide, only to spring into action when they realize that said patient was actually the victim of an attempted murder, Dr. Hooten commends them on their medical expertise — and then gives them the verbal thrashing of a lifetime for their initial treatment of said patient. Depression and mental illness leading to attempted suicide are considered lethal diseases by the medical community, and suicidal people are considered ill, not losers unwilling to live. While Dr. Hooten is a Jerkass, the What the Hell, Hero? speech he delivered to said doctors was entirely deserved.
• The Office (UK):
  • During the Christmas Special episode, Glenn and the obnoxious Jerkass warehouse employees come to the office party smoking and already drunk and Anne, an obnoxious pregnant woman, yells at them for smoking near her unborn child. Glenn retorts that if she's so bothered about people smoking and drinking around her, she shouldn't have come to a party and that just because she let some guy ejaculate inside her it doesn't mean everybody else gives a shit about her baby. Anne storms out and Tim and Dawn are left laughing in disbelief.
  • Gareth is obviously bitter and jealous about Rachel turning him down over Tim, but it's hard to argue with him when he comments that Tim already made a fool out of himself once when he asked Dawn out and he should probably be a bit more cautious about jumping into another office romance so quickly.
  • David is extremely bitter about Neil being promoted over him, but he does have a point about Neil being Not So Above It All when it comes to messing around in the office, he's just more popular and better at getting away with it than David is, though being David Brent he handles it extremely poorly and only serves to get another lecture when he childishly calls him out on it.
  • Neil gets a turn when he calls David out for constantly showing up at the office when he doesn't even work there anymore and hasn't for two years — he's just disrupting people when they're trying to do their jobs. David may be pitiful but it's hard to argue with Neil's points, especially since it's antics like that which got David made redundant in the first place.
• The Office (US): Dwight's fire drill. While incredibly dangerous (he uses arson as a teaching tool) and actually causing Stanley to have a heart attack, the office's actions demonstrate just how unprepared they are for any emergency. For example, nobody thinks to use their cell phone to call the fire department or to pull the fire alarm, everyone panics immediately, and Michael declares it "everyone for themselves", smashes a window, and yells for help in an uncharacteristically serious way.
  • "Did I Stutter" has Stanley give Michael an accurate "The Reason You Suck" Speech about Michael's obnoxious and time-consuming antics. Michael then counters by saying that he is still Stanley's boss, and Stanley can't just snap at him like that.
  • In an earlier episode, Kelly (who is VERY in love with Ryan) goes on and on about how she can’t wait to get married, essentially saying she wants to marry him. When she asks Ryan what he thinks, he bluntly says he doesn’t think he will get married ever. Hurt, she leaves. When Pam chastises him, telling him he should be more careful with what he says, he replies “I know what I said.” The fact is she was bothering Ryan, and he wanted to make it clear he wasn’t the settling down type.
• In Once Upon a Time, Regina is blamed for reenacting the Dark Curse again. It wasn't her, it was Snow in order to find Emma and defeat Zelena. Regina points out that if it was her she'd have her son, Henry, with her and also warns them that if they continue to treat her like the Evil Queen she was before, that's exactly what they'll get. In both cases, it's hard to argue (Even if she was only faking a Face–Heel Turn).
• The Outer Limits (1995): In the episode "Blood Brothers", a scientist accidentally discovers what appears to be a Panacea and wants to continue the research and share the findings with the world. His executive brother overrides him and cold-heartedly points out that such a thing would drastically cut the global death rate, resulting in overpopulation, worldwide hunger, and the total collapse of civilization. The brother actually plans to secretly produce it for the wealthiest clients, starting with curing his own Huntington's. In the end, the "cure" is revealed to operate by granting a Healing Factor at the cost of Rapid Aging. Many viewers have pointed out that, while assholish and cruel, his stated reason is perfectly valid. A miracle cure without some means of either Population Control or offloading excess population to other planets would be a total disaster. On the other hand, it's also Paranoia Fuel, given the real-life lack of cures to decades-known incurables and space development.
• Peacemaker (2022): In Episode 4, Peacemaker gets into an argument with his father's neighbor after the man says he isn't a real superhero for not having a "coterie of supervillains" he regularly fights, like Batman. While he's certainly a dick about it, Peacemaker raises a valid (and often debated) criticism of Batman’s Thou Shalt Not Kill policy. More often than not, Batman’s insistence on locking the Joker and his other enemies up simply leads to them escaping so they can keep committing crimes, which arguably makes the Dark Knight indirectly responsible for everyone they kill. Peacemaker’s methods may be questionable at best, but at the very least his enemies don’t live to cause more pain and suffering.
• In Peaky Blinders: John and Arthur are aghast when Tommy puts a hit out on the Changretta family, including Mrs. Changretta, their old schoolteacher. When they protest this order, Tommy responds that they can't afford to show any weakness and if they don't nip this in the bud now, their entire business and family will be threatened. He's proven absolutely right when John and Arthur choose to let her go and she promptly gives the information Luca Changretta needs on how and where to find them, which ends up with John being shot dead and Michael badly wounded the next season.
• Queen for Seven Days: Lee Yung is a terrible king to say the least, but he has a point when he criticises the ministers' selfishness.
• Hiba from Al Rawabi School For Girls, twice.
  • While she's an unpleasant person, she's right to be angry at Shams when she finds out that she's been secretly filming the other girls without their consent (even in the bathrooms), especially since some of the girls are underage.
  • She's also not wrong when she tells Farah needs to take the hint and learn that Tasneem doesn't like her, especially as Farah always follows them around and is confused when they don't invite her to things. Tasneem can only look at her apologetically at best after Hiba goes off.
• Radio Enfer: When Jean-Lou tries to come up with ideas for making an invention during a contest, he suggests lights that are on when it's daylight and a car whose engine works with a photoelectric cell. Laplante (the math teacher who doesn't get along at all with the main characters due to his ego), who is forced to help Jean-Lou, points out that the former idea wouldn't work if it's nighttime and that the latter idea wouldn't work either if the sun was covered by a cloud.
• Red Dwarf: The episode "Tikka To Ride" hinges on Lister's willingness to use time travel to restock Starbug's supply of curry. Rimmer insists that they've at this point almost destroyed the timeline through excessive timetravel and can't risk it, especially not for something as petty as a favorite food. Cat opines that:
  Cat: You know I'd rather wear sideways-pressed flares and a clip-on polyester tie than agree with goalpost-head... but this time, he's right.
• Revolution: Zig-Zagging Trope for Miles. He often calls out Charlie for her attitude problems/questionable decisions (Episode 3 and episode 5 are examples of these). While these are generally accurate assessments from a viewer standpoint, no one in-story seems to agree with them. Fortunately, Charlie does improve on her attitude after episode 6.
• Robot Wars: Jeremy Clarkson in Series 1 was disdainful of many of the contestant robots, and on occasion outright hostile towards them. However, the standard of engineering in Series 1 was quite low, especially compared to the later series, and a lot of the robots Clarkson insulted genuinely weren't that good. For example, Prince of Darkness, which he infamously called "the worst robot I've ever seen in my life", took five hours to build, had wooden armour, no weapons, and initially looked like this.
• Schitt's Creek has Ronnie Lee, who constantly snarks on the Rose family and is almost always in the right.
• Scrubs:
  • A teen is admitted to the hospital and Dr. Cox is assigned to treat her. When he learns that she willingly stopped taking the medicine she needs to survive he lays into her. The plot treats him as the bad guy, because even if she is an idiot, that's because she's a teenager, and a treating doctor should know better than that.
  • Dr. Cox also lays into Elliot in "My Journey" for planning on ditching a patient who needs major surgery so she can go on a date, pointing out he's rarely at home and misses out on a lot of his son's first moments, but it doesn't matter — the hospital comes first.
  • JD accuses Dr. Doug Townshend (played by Dick Van Dyke with all of his charm) of forcing him to do an outdated dangerous procedure after Townsend took the heat for JD's flubbing of said procedure. The imagine spot following even has Townsend asking him to pull a knife out of his back. Kelso bawls him out for attacking someone who took the heat for him, but later checks on Dr. Townsend's files and realizes that he has been giving out-of-date treatments to his patients. This probably cost patient lives and JD was right to call attention to it.
• Seinfeld:
  • The hapless George Costanza has many moments like this. In particular, when he asks that a hospital compensate him for the damage done to his car when a suicidal patient landed on it. He may have gone about the wrong way, as was par for the course for him, but he's absolutely right — between their negligence in not monitoring said patient to prevent his actions and the fact that his car was parked on hospital grounds, the hospital is 100% liable for whatever damage was incurred. Another time he was screwed out of an apartment because another guy wanted it who was a survivor of Andrea Doria. While he was very insensitive about the severity of the tragedy, he was right that it was unfair for the guy to milk out that status 40 years later when he came out totally fine.
  • Newman is legitimately correct about Jerry committing mail fraud in "The Package", and while he is pursuing the case for personal reasons, he is still within his right as a member of the post office to investigate him.
  • The "Bubble Boy" acts like a screeching demanding jerk and gets away with it due to being trapped in the aforementioned bubble. Nonetheless both his Trivial Pursuit answer — "The Moors" — and his insistence that the "Moops" written on the answer card is a misprint are correct, although George is fully aware of this and is only arguing with him out of spite because he's fed up with his rudeness.
• Sex and the City:
  • In "I Love A Charade" when the girls are staying at Richard's summer house, there are some obnoxious twenty-somethings also staying there. When Samantha gets mad at two girls for raiding the fridge, they retort it's Richard's fridge and since he invited them there, they have as much right to help themselves as Samantha.
  • Berger is needlessly argumentative and immature throughout the episode, but when Charlotte and Carrie discuss what would make them view a guy as a bad date (such as buying carnations or wearing topsiders), he complains these 'rules' pretty much screw the guy over before he's had a chance to make any kind of impression, though Charlotte does clarify that the little things truly don't matter with the right person.
  • When Charlotte complains that Bunny has no right to start deciding how Charlotte and Trey decorate the apartment, Bunny retorts that Trey could afford the apartment thanks to her money.
  • Carrie becomes extremely defensive in the episode "Critical Condition" when she bumps into Nina Katz, who started dating Aidan after her and makes a face when she realises who Carrie is. Carrie spends the rest of the episode complaining that Nina has no right to judge her and being paranoid that Aidan is spreading stories about her around New York, but the fact is that Carrie did cheat on Aidan and was generally a horrible girlfriend to him, so it's not a surprise neither Aidan nor Nina has a favourable opinion of her.
• She-Hulk: Attorney at Law: In the third episode an old colleague of Jen's sues a Light Elf who conned him by using her shapeshifting power to trick him into thinking he was dating Megan Thee Stallion and getting him to spend thousands of dollars on her. The colleague in question is a sleazy, misogynistic jerk, but even Jen agrees that he's right when he points out that his win is just a slap on the wrist for the Elf. As long as she has her powers there's nothing to stop her from scamming other people the same way.
• Slings & Arrows: Ellen interrupts rehearsal to demand that Oliver reblock a scene because her back is to the audience while she delivers a key monologue. This is incredibly rude and unprofessional — but as Kate points out to Claire, Ellen's right: no one can hear her, and the play suffers for it.
• Spartacus: Blood and Sand: In the Season 1 finale, Oenomaus angrily calls out Ashur for his cowardice, dishonorable tactics, arranging Barca's murder, ruining Crixus and Naevia's relationship, and other slights. Ashur retorts that ever since he arrived in the ludus, everyone gave him a hard time: repeatedly calling him a wimp and a coward even though he won a few matches, and making fun of him when Crixus crippled his leg, so why shouldn't he try to ruin their lives?
  Ashur: My fucking treachery? When did YOU stand forth for Ashur? When did ANY OF YOU GREET ME SHORT OF MOCKERY, AND SCORN?!?!! FUCKING CUNTS!!!
  • Made all the more poignant in Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, where we see exactly how the other gladiators treated Ashur, and that Ashur and Crixus had almost been friends.
• Squid Game:
  • Sang-woo, an old friend of Gi-hun's who becomes increasingly selfish, manipulative and ruthless as the game goes on, is frequently this.
    • He is right when he tells Gi-hun that he brought most of his misery on himself through his own poor life choices. Gi-hun admits this, then fires back that Sang-woo also ended up desperate enough to take part in the game.
    • When Player 069 begs for the other players to vote and quit the game after he lost his wife Player 070^ExplanationThe two paired up for the fourth game, as requested, only to find out that they would hav to play against each other in a game of marbles, with the loser dying and both being killed if there isn't a winner by the time limit. It is unknown whether 070 lost to 69 or intentionally threw the game, Sang-woo shows No Sympathy towards him but he isn't wrong when he says that a) they all chose to willingly come back to the games, knowing there was a very high chance most of them would die and b) by that point, after watching hundreds of other contestants die, they would not stop after one more death. They had all come too far and risked so much to leave with nothing now.
    • While Sang-woo's decision to push Player 017 to his death in the fifth game, thus revealing that the glass plate ahead was the unsafe one and the other one was safe, was morally reprehensible, he was right to point out that if he didn't do that, then Player 017 would have likely caused all their deaths with their indecisiveness.
  • Most of Player 196's lines are insulting Gi-hun's team but he has good reasons. He argues that Il-Nam, an elderly senile man, should save his strength and doesn't trust him to stay awake all night.
    • He also tells the girls that it wouldn't be wise to team up because at that point, most of the challenges relied on strength rather than agility.
    • Finally, he agrees with Player 244 to attack other contestants. Since they are in a Deadly Game, it wouldn't be a bad idea to take out some of the competition.
  • Gi-hun's ex-wife is rude to him and doesn't want him in her life or their daughter's life anymore but her reasoning is understandable. He was on a work strike while she was in labor and his gambling and irresponsible behaviours made it difficult to support her and their daughter, much less take care of himself and his elderly mother, to the point he tries to ask her and her new husband for money when they are barely making ends meet themselves. Moving to America is a way to separate Gi-hun from his daughter entirely but it isn't unreasonable for her to want to give her daughter some more stability.
• Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Balance of Teror"
  • Both Sulu and Spock admit that some of Stiles's jerkass statements are valid. First, Sulu agrees with Stiles that due to them not knowing what Romulans look like, there could be spies onboard ship, so it is reasonable to restrict people’s movements. The second instance is when Stiles advocates launching an attack on the Romulan ship, and Spock agrees - reasoning that if Romulans are Vulcanoids, they will have the same bellicosity that Vulcans once had, and therefore “weakness is something we dare not show.”
  • It was for the wrong reasons, but Stiles' suggestion that the coded Romulan message be given to Spock wasn't unreasonable. The Romulans are clearly an offshoot of the Vulcan people, so Spock really could have some valuable insight into the Romulan language that might aid in decoding the Romulan transmission.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • In "Q Who?", Q returns to annoy the Enterprise crew, only to tell them they're not prepared for the threats out there. Picard and Riker brush him off, so Q decides to put them in the path of the Borg. The result is the death (or worse) of eighteen crewmembers and the Borg now being interested in them. Riker argues the point could've been made without killing any of their crew, but Q brushes him and Picard off by telling them exploration isn't safe. In the end, Picard even admits Q was right to give them a kick in their complacency.
  • In the two-part "Chains of Command", the temporary captain Jellico is seen as a jerkass captain by most of the crew, particularly Riker. Yet most of his decisions are quite valid for the circumstances.
    • Switch from a three-section duty roster to four-section? Gives the crew more time off between duties, making them more well-rested and focused, and Riker dragging his feet would give the crew less time to adjust. Also, even if it had done nothing for actual efficiency, it would at the very least have established that there is a new Captain in charge; the average crewman probably never even sees the Captain, but they will certainly notice when their shift pattern changes.
    • Shut down several science labs to recalibrate the engines? He's completely right when he says the ship is very likely heading into combat where there won't be any research being done when that power could be used to improve combat readiness.
    • Make Troi wear a uniform when she's on duty like the rest of the crew? He does state that there should be a level of formality on the bridge. And given that she wears her uniform for the rest of the series, seems she agrees.
    • Even Picard points out that he's going to keep some of Jellico's changes after he comes back.
    • On the flip side, Riker pushes back against Jellico but he's also right that Jellico is unilaterally making changes and cutting out Riker and the rest of the senior officers like they have nothing of value to offer. In an ideal situation Jellico would have brought his own command staff but he has done little to earn their trust and understand their talents, which would be equally detrimental to the upcoming conflict.
  • In "The Price", Troi discovers that one of the negotiators the ship is hosting is partly empathic and secretly uses his abilities to give himself an advantage. When she calls him out on it, he reminds Troi that she regularly uses her own gifts to aid Captain Picard and give her own side an advantage, asking how it's any different.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • When Sisko accuses Garak of going behind his back in "In the Pale Moonlight", Garak doesn't deny it. Admitting that he had planned to murder the Romulan diplomat to frame the Dominion if things went south, and killed the forger to cover their tracks. However, Garek also reminds Sisko that he came to him because he needed someone willing to do the things he was not, and got exactly what he asked for.
  • In the "Chimera" episode, Laas repeatedly tells Odo things he'd rather not hear. For example, while he's not tactful about it, Laas does bring up legitimate concerns about Odo and Kira's relationship. He reminds Odo that Changelings cannot reproduce with humanoids, which ruptured Laas' relationship with his former Varalan mate. Also, he warns Odo that if he remains with Kira, he will watch her grow old and die because of Changelings' long lifespans. Laas also points out that it is Kira, not duty or morality, that prevents Odo from leaving Deep Space Nine and reuniting with the Changeling Founders.
    Odo: I won't have anything to do with the Founders and their war.
    Laas: Odo, we linked. I know the truth. You stayed here because of Kira. If it weren't for her, you would be with our people. War or no war, you would be a Founder!
    • Odo eventually takes heed once he finds a significant reason to return to his race: to spread a cure for the plague dooming his race and, in doing so, temper their animosity towards the Federation.
  • In "The Siege of AR-558", Quark's comments about humans to his nephew Nog don't seem so unreasonable when you remember just how much dirty work our heroes have done up to this point in the Dominion War. That said, then he discovers why they seem that way: when he comes under fire, Quark discovers that, when it's a matter of life or death, Ferengi are not so different.
  • Not only that, but for all of the times everyone puts the Ferengi down, we have this from a Season 2 episode.
    Quark: I think I figured out why Humans don't like Ferengi.
    Sisko: Not now, Quark.
    Quark: The way I see it, Humans used to be a lot like Ferengi: greedy, acquisitive, interested only in profit. We're a constant reminder of a part of your past you'd like to forget.
    Sisko: Quark, we don't have time for this.
    Quark: You're overlooking something. Humans used to be a lot worse than the Ferengi: slavery, concentration camps, interstellar wars. We have nothing in our past that approaches that kind of barbarism. You see? We're nothing like you... we're better.
    • The thing is, that he's absolutely right from a behind-the-scenes perspective. The Ferengi were created as a statement on twentieth-century earth culture taken to an extreme, to show how much better and more enlightened humans have become since then... but his statement proves especially haunting over the course of the series as characters are forced to abandon high ideals as the realities of war set in.
  • Kai Winn is a major opportunist and self-centered, putting her needs above Bajor constantly. But in "Rapture," Winn does a fine speech to Kira on how Kira shouldn't assume Winn didn't suffer like anyone else during the Cardassian occupation and shouldn't judge Winn's faith.
    Winn: Those of you who were in the Resistance, you're all the same. You think you're the only ones who fought the Cardassians, that you saved Bajor single-handedly. Perhaps you forget, Major, the Cardassians arrested any Bajoran found to be teaching the word of the Prophets. I was in a Cardassian prison camp for five years, and I can remember each and every beating I suffered. And while you had your weapons to protect you, all I had was my faith... and my courage. Walk with the Prophets child... I know I will.
  • In The Maquis Part 2, Quark lectures a Vulcan on how illogical her group's "peace at any cost" stance is.
    Quark: You have weapons, they have weapons, everyone has weapons! But right now no one has a clear advantage, so the price of peace is at an all-time low. This is the perfect time to sit down and hammer out an agreement. Don't you get it? Attacking the Cardassians now will only escalate the conflict and make peace more expensive in the long run! Now, I ask you, is that logical?
  • When Odo is investigating an attempt on Garak's life, he and Garak come face to face with Enabran Tain, who offers Garak his old job back. Garak accepts and Odo is taken prisoner. Odo accuses Garak of betraying him. Garak sarcastically replies "I can see why you would feel that way. After all, I did pledge my Undying Loyalty to Bajor and the Federation, and I know you always considered me a close personal friend." While Odo ended up captured trying to help Garak, it's true that despite being a Consummate Liar, Garak never claimed to be loyal to anyone or anything except Cardassia and no one on Deep Space Nine ever trusted him, and (except for Dr. Bashir) no one ever treated him with anything but open contempt. Why wouldn't he go back to his old job if given the opportunity?
• Star Trek: Voyager
  • In the episode "The Chute", Harry Kim and Tom Paris are thrown into a space prison, and Paris becomes the victim of another prisoner, leaving him severely injured for the rest of the episode. Kim asks for help from another prisoner, who is a clear jackass, as he won't help unless Kim barters with him, and he wants Kim to kill Paris, as he feels Paris is a drain on their resources. However, Kim and the episode go out of their way to make it seem like this prisoner is a bad guy, calling him, and the manifesto that he has written insane at every opportunity. This wouldn't be a problem if everything this guy said wasn't 100% right. The brain implants they have are meant to keep them fighting each other and not thinking, if they are going to be there indefinitely then Paris is holding them back (and indeed, Paris destroys their only foreseeable method of escape). Not to mention that the man, despite his jerkassery, displays the best control over his emotions of any person in the prison, and he had been there for 6 years, while other people were killing themselves or being killed within months, if not weeks, days, or immediately. And to top it all off, despite his sentiments against Paris, he was 100% willing to hold off on killing him, so long as Paris wasn't a complete drag on the escape plan. Given that his observations are correct, and he's relatively the most reasonable person in the place, Harry was an idiot for not taking any time at all to read the man's manifesto, as it probably had useful survival info in it that could have helped in the escape.
• Star Trek: Enterprise:
  • After four years of Vulcans stonewalling and withholding knowledge in human space exploration, Soval explains to Admiral Forrest that Vulcans see all too many similarities between their own violent past and humanity's-except that it took Vulcans 1500 years to pull themselves together and humans have managed it in about 100. Which makes Vulcans worry about what humans might be capable of in the next hundred years. Forrest tries to reassure Soval that humans won't turn out like the Klingons, but of course we know humans will actually found the United Federation of Planets and become a major superpower in the Alpha Quadrant.
• Star Trek: Discovery:
  • In the second season, Michael Burnham, Spock's adoptive sister, had a falling out with her brother many years ago, and had spent the last several years being rebuffed from any attempts at reconciliation. Eventually, he gives a very angry rant as to why; he wasn't hurt by the words she spoke to him, but rather how she had taken up the burden of her parents' deaths, the responsibility of Sarek's family, and the outbreak of the Klingon/Federation War upon her shoulders when she had no reason to do so. In his eyes, this was done purely for selfish reasons. Burnham is hurt by this angry admission, but the next episode reveals that Section 31 head Leeland was in charge of the project her parents were working on for the organization, and he had failed in his duties to protect them. Thus, she admits to Spock he was right, and that she had been carrying a responsibility that was never hers to bear. It's this admission that allows Spock to accept Burnham's apology and helps the two to eventually reconcile.
  • Captain Raynor in the fifth season was initially depicted as a stubborn officer still acting like the Federation was still suffering from the Burn and was a Cowboy Cop refusing to listen to Burnham "correct" orders. There was some of a Protagonist-Centered Morality issue here, as Raynor would both listen and not listen to Burnham's advice and the situation would still end poorly because of how slippery their target was. He ended up The Scapegoat and relieved of command. This was intentional on the writing, as Burnham saw value in his judgement and requested him to be reassigned as her Number Two. He proceeded to be a Commander Contrarian to Burnham and a tough figure to the crew because that is his natural state, but he still serves as a committed officer willing to learn the quirks of his new assignment.
• Star Trek: Picard: In Season 3, Captain Shaw of the USS Titan is presented as the worst kind of regulation-obsessed, risk-averse Starfleet captain, is very rude about Picard and Riker and their "adventures", insists on calling Seven by her former name, and twice refers to "loyalty" as though it's a bad thing (admittedly, in the context of Seven being more loyal to Picard and Riker than to him). When the ship is actually put in danger, however, his risk-aversion doesn't manifest as personal cowardice, but as concern that this unauthorised jaunt has endangered his crew.
• Setrakian in the The Strain is abrasive and very mean at times, but his criticisms of his fellows and cold approach to their mission are almost always right. When Eph voices his skepticism that killing the master will supposedly cause the rest of the infected to die out, Setrakian points out how everything he's said about the Strigoi has proven correct. While Eph, for all his intelligence and scientific knowledge has been wrong up until that point.
• In the second season of Supergirl (2015), CatCo Magazine editor Snapper Carr's criticisms of Kara's journalism skills are very harsh, and she and other characters seem to think he's an unreasonable jerk. But his comments are always right on the money. Kara has zero experience as a reporter... and it shows.
• Supernatural:
  • The Trickster/Gabriel was a big one. Sure, his method was cruel (a time loop within which Dean died every day, and Sam couldn't save him), but he did have a point: Sam had to accept that Dean was going to die, and that sacrificing themselves for each other isn't a good idea. Not that it stopped them... This is The Trickster's MO in general. His methods of teaching people lessons are very cruel and often lethal, but the lessons themselves are perfectly valid.
  • In "The Devil In Details", Lucifer calls out Sam for his actions over the past several seasons, which involve leaving Dean trapped in Purgatory because of a woman and a dog, passing up an opportunity to close Hell's gates for good out of self-preservation, going to incredibly extreme lengths to remove the Mark of Cain from Dean, and generally his Badass Decay, essentially acting as an Audience Surrogate for what the fandom's been complaining about for the past few seasons.
• Ted Lasso: In the pilot episode, team owner Rebecca Welton fires Coach George. Yes, she has ulterior motives for firing him, but she is absolutely right when she says he has lead the team from abysmal season to abysmal season and that he is a raving misogynist (he tells her at one point in the meeting “Go ahead and get it off that magnificent chest of yours.”).
• Teen Wolf: Jackson is a Jerk Jock, but he's right that Scott's using his werewolf abilities on the lacrosse field is cheating.
• True Blood: The Fellowship of the Sun is pretty bigoted in their views and has tried to harm Sookie, Jason, and their vampire friends on multiple occasions. That being said their gospel against vampires is not unfounded as pretty much every vampire we've seen except for a couple have killed humans. Even 'good' ones like Jessica have blood on their hands. The FOTS are perfectly within their rights to be afraid and hate vampires since everything they say about vampires has turned out to be true in one way or the other.
• Victoria: Virtually every "upper-class" character in the series not named Lord Melbourne or one of Victoria's ladies in waiting acts like this to the young queen at some point. But while they may be jerkasses, their points are sound: as monarch one of Victoria's prime duties is the continuation of the monarchy, even if it means marrying and having children when she doesn't want to, and to an "approved" suitor.
• Victorious: In the episode "Prom Wrecker", Tori tries to organize a prom at Hollywood Arts. Unfortunately, this prom is scheduled on the same night as a one-woman show that Jade was putting on, which she had spent weeks preparing for. Jade's show ends up being cancelled, and she tries to take her revenge by sabotaging the prom. While this wasn't the right way to deal with the problem, Jade did have a right to be angry. She did have the space reserved first, after all.
• Vida: Emma's more of an ice queen than a true jerkass but she does have a legitimate (and pretty heartbreaking) reason to speak ill of her deceased mother. After being kicked out — twice — by Vidalia as she's queer (especially while Vidalia was working out her own "gay shame"), can you really blame her for being angry?
• The Walking Dead (2010):
  • Daryl may be a caustic redneck, but he is usually the only one in the group to recognize the gravity of their situations.
  • Shane as well, if it's closer to "The Psychotic Jerkass Has A Point". He warns Rick that the member of a rival gang they captured could lead people to their location if he was released, and since they have guns and their location is not fortified and a lot of people, especially the women, don't know how to defend themselves, it would be disastrous. Rick himself cannot even raise a good logical argument against this and eventually folds. Then he finds himself unable to pull the trigger and refuses to do so or let anyone do so when the resident moral compass of the group is killed after lodging his objections. Shane rightly points out that the two are unrelated and that keeping Randyll around and wasting resources on him while increasing the likelihood that people will grow lax with regards to security and let him escape is a bad idea. And sure enough, when Randyll gets free he shows that he knows where the farm is, relative to his group's position even though he was blindfolded for a while. He also points out just how dangerous it is to have a barn full of walkers in their midst, and a bunch of people that think that they're human.
    • This is lampshaded by Andrea when she tells him that he's frequently right about things (the Sophia search going on too long and his treatment of the zombies in Herschel's barn are other instances) but he's far too nasty in the way he presents his views so people don't listen to him.
  • Spencer bluntly tells Rick that Alexandria's misfortune is a direct result of underestimating Negan, which subsequently caused the death of Abraham and Glenn. Rick remains completely silent, only lashing out at the mention of his deceased friends. However unpleasant he may have been, it's hard to deny Spencer's accusations.
  • Gregory is this for the Hilltop colony. He's a sexist, mean, Dirty Old Man who can barely remember the names of his citizens. He's also absolutely right in refusing to let Maggie and Sasha stay. If the Saviours got wind that the Alexandrians were allied with Hilltop, that would make things twice as bad for everyone involved. He's also justifiably skeptical of Rick's group, on the whole, considering they promised to slaughter all of the Saviours, only to ultimately fail.
• In The West Wing, Will Bailey's decision to leave the President's staff and become the Chief of Staff / chief strategist for Vice President Robert Russell, a nakedly ambitious and generally unimpressive man, is treated by several of the characters (particularly Toby Ziegler) as a betrayal and an abandonment. Will himself, however, frequently points out — not entirely unreasonably — that someone has to think about the future — the election is coming up, the Republicans are going to be fighting furiously to take back the White House, no other viable candidates have (at that point) appeared and if the Democrats want to remain in power they have to start considering that. Furthermore, considering that Will's time in the West Wing frequently saw him being the butt of often mean-spirited hazing and practical jokes (with the main characters themselves tended to participate in), the fact that he might not view working there with the same starry-eyed reverence they do wasn't entirely surprising either.
  • In one episode in particular, Toby and Will — locked together in a room as part of a lockdown of the White House — have an increasingly heated debate about this, during which Toby berates Will for working to get Russell, who he views as a mediocrity, elected as President. Having put up with a lot of crap from Toby about this, Will eventually snaps and accuses Toby of just hating the thought of anyone who wasn't Bartlet being in the White House, and demanding why, if Toby felt so strongly about finding and putting the perfect candidate into power, he didn't go out and find that candidate himself instead of sniping at Will from the sidelines for trying to make the best of what he had. Toby has no reply to this.
  • During the story arc about Bartlet's multiple sclerosis, his wife Abbey, a medical doctor, comes under fire when it's revealed that she secretly gave him injections of medicine to hide his symptoms from the public, and faces the possibility of losing her license to practice because of it. She laments the idea, and most of the staff tries to soothe her hurt feelings. Donna, though, bluntly (albeit accidentally—she's drinking with Abbey and some other employees at the time) remarks that Dr. Bartlet outright committed a crime that goes against every form of medical ethics in the book: "Oh, Mrs. Bartlet, for crying out loud, you were also a doctor when he said 'Give me the drugs and don't tell anyone,' and you said 'OK.'" Donna immediately realizes that she's gone too far, but the frank honesty and rudeness are the only things that allow Abbey to recognize the severity of her actions, and she chooses to voluntarily give up her license for the rest of her husband's term.
• The Wire: William Rawls is a complete asshole that openly hates protagonist Jimmy McNulty. But, when McNulty's partner is shot, Rawls makes it a point to tell Jimmy that the shooting wasn't his fault.
• Yes, Minister:
  • In "Party Games", while their various misdeeds are not the real reason the Civil Service doesn't want either to become Prime Minister (the real reason is that they're both competent reformers who would effectively challenge the power of the Service), the various reasons Humphrey gives to Hacker about why neither the Foreign Secretary nor the Chancellor should get the job are pretty compelling by themselves; one is heavily implied to be a swindler, and the other is implied to have had various sketchy sexual encounters with women implied to be agents of unfriendly powers.
  • In "The Whisky Priest", Bernard is troubled by Sir Humphrey's total lack of moral qualms on the government's policy of secretly selling weapons to terrorists. Humphrey simply replies that as civil servants it's not their job to question or judge government policy, but simply carry it out, which is amoral in this instance but generally true. When Bernard asks him how he can implement a policy he doesn't agree with, Humphrey (correctly) replies that as civil servants serve multiple successive governments of wildly different aims and ideologies, it's impossible to have a career of any length and agree with every government policy, something many career bureaucrats can likely sympathise with.
    Bernard, I have served eleven governments in the past thirty years. If I had believed in all their policies, I would have been passionately committed to keeping out of the Common Market, and passionately committed to going into it. I would have been utterly convinced of the rightness of nationalising steel. And of denationalising it and renationalising it. On capital punishment, I'd have been a fervent retentionist and an ardent abolitionist. I would've been a Keynesian and a Friedmanite, a grammar school preserver and destroyer, a nationalisation freak and a privatisation maniac; but above all, I would have been a stark, staring, raving schizophrenic.
• Y: The Last Man (2021): This goes both ways with the episode 4 argument between Yorick and Agent 355. She's right in how he's been an entitled jerk and risking himself too much trying to find Beth, but he's also correct that her automatically treating anyone around them like a threat and willingness to kill innocent people to keep his secret isn't healthy either.
• Young Sheldon: In "A New Weather Girl and a Stay-at-Home Coddler", Sheldon's not wrong when he points out that Mary's coddling of him growing up likely contributed to the inflated ego he currently possesses.

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