This trope is often employed to make a scene more visually interesting. Plot exposition and heart-to-heart conversations can take a long time, which can get boring if nothing else is going on. Dishwashing, food preparation and cleaning are popular chores used with this trope.
Topics can range from character backstories to life-changing advice sessions. Any conversation that occurs while both participants are doing chores counts for this trope as long as it's important to the characters or the plot.
May overlap with Talk About That Thing if the chore is mostly just a pretext for the conversation. Compare Campfire Character Exploration, Cathartic Chores, and Distressed Woodchopping.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Fire Force: In Chapter 35, Shinra Kusakabe and Lieutenant Takehisa Hinawa are preparing a meal for Company 8 (after a disastrous attempt at cooking by Maki and Tamaki) when Hinawa asks Shinra if everything is okay with him. Shinra, who has been secretly told by an enemy that his lost brother is involved with the White Hood cult, dodges the subject, but the Lieutenant says that Shinra should at least share whatever's bothering him with Captain Obi — and then orders Shinra to not stop working on the food while pointing a knife at Shinra's throat. The scene shows that Hinawa, who was the one member of Company 8 most skeptical of Shinra's stated heroic aspirations, cares more about his subordinates than his stern demeanor and strict treatment of them initially let on.
- My Hero Academia: After the disastrous dinner at their house, Fuyumi and Shoto are cleaning up the table while talking seriously about their feelings on Endeavor. It's not exactly covert, as everyone else manages to overhear them, but the core of the scene is a serious and raw moment between the siblings.
- The Promised Neverland: In episode 3, Norman and Ray discuss whether Mom suspects them while washing dishes together, the chore allowing them an excuse for a covert meeting.
Audio Plays
- In the Big Finish Doctor Who mini-episode "My Own Private Mozart," Evelyn is accidentally abducted by the villain behind Mozart's unwanted immortality and transported back to his secret lair... which turns out to be an enormous kitchen. As it turns out, the villain is actually a servant and has an enormous amount of washing-up to get through, so in exchange for Evelyn helping him out, he agrees to explain his evil plan to her. As it happens, the villain is actually a clone of Mozart - one of an entire series - created in the far future, but thanks to the collapse of the product's popularity, the Mozart clones have been reduced to the level of glorified slaves. The villain was lucky enough to be bought by a master in possession of a time machine, and is trying to make Mozart too unpopular to ever be cloned, namely by keeping him alive until he runs out of creativity and starts producing nothing but uninspired crap. Evelyn is horrified and refuses to dry the dishes until the villain washes them more diligently.
Comic Books
- In Fun Home, when Alison meets up with her dad after realizing he's probably gay, she casually introduces the topic of sexuality while they wash dishes together.
Fan Works
- Junior Officers: In "The Undersea Twister", a crabby Deborah is shelving books in the library with Professor Inkling, and she's grumbling about how Barnacles yelled at her in the previous chapter. When she fears she'll get fired for yelling back at him, Professor Inkling reveals that the only Octonaut who's been fired was Seacliff, the former captain who abused his fellow Octonauts. He also mentions that Barnacles became captain shortly after Seacliff was fired.
- My Ideal Academia: While washing the dish together with Yu, Shirou tells Yu his life from the very beginning, the Fuyuki Great Fire that started it all, the day he was adopted by Kiritsugu, the reason he wanted to become the ally of justice, the day before the Fifth Grail War, and of course Rin the girl that stole his heart.
- Sorrowful and Immaculate Hearts: In "Karen from HR", the day after Corinne is shot in front of Bruce Wayne, they de-stress and open up a bit to each other over the course of making a gratuitous quantity of empanadas for themselves.
- The Wrath of Avelina: Stefanie opens up about missing her birth family while cooking breakfast.
Films — Animation
- In The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Rick talks with Linda about his relationship with Katie while he washes dishes.
Films — Live-Action
- Amélie: In the sex shop where they work, Nino and Eva casually discuss Amelie, while busily putting prices on sex toys. Madeline Wells is seen dusting banisters while Amelie talks to her.
- In But I'm a Cheerleader, Graham and Megan get to know each other better while washing dishes together, establishing their roles in the social hierarchies prior to True Directions.
- Captain Marvel: Near the end of the movie, Carol and Nick Fury discuss their plans for the future while washing dishes together at Maria's house.
- Forrest Gump and Bubba Blue have the overnight watch while the rest of the squad dozes. While the two are back-to-back, Bubba expounds about taking Forrest on as first mate aboard a shrimp boat, forming a 50-50 partnership in what is destined to become the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. Forrest, being a simpleton, says little except to go along.
- Sound of Metal: Lou's father Richard is cooking when Ruben arrives to visit Lou. Richard repeatedly insists that he doesn't need Ruben's assistance as Ruben keeps offering to help out with the chore. The scene provides some Five Minute Foreshadowing that Ruben and Lou have grown apart from their codependent relationship.
- Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory: Just before the song "Cheer Up, Charlie", Charlie and his mother have a sad conversation while working on laundry.
Literature
- Barber Black Sheep: Both viewpoint characters, Oliver and Kittie, have conversations with members of their respective supporting casts while washing dishes that help to flesh out their lives and relationships.
- Danny, the Champion of the World: While Danny and his father spend a few hours preparing two hundred raisins for their great poaching expedition, Danny's father chats about Danny's late mother, including the extraordinary revelation that she always went with him on poaching trips.
- The Kingston Cycle: When Robin and her Wrongfully Committed spouse Zelinde are reunited after twenty years apart, the truth that it's too late for them to have children hits home at dinnertime. Robin flees to the kitchen, Zelinde follows, and they distract themselves with the dishes while they console each other.
- In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry and Ron have an important conversation about Snape while peeling sprouts at The Burrow.
- In The Night Room, Sandra and her mother discuss Sandra's opportunity in Argus and the future while folding sheets together.
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians: In The Sea of Monsters, Tyson, Percy, and Annabeth are assigned to dishwashing duty as punishment. While they wash, Percy talks to Annabeth about the dream Grover sent him, and she explains that Grover likely found the Golden Fleece, which would be able to cure Thalia's tree and strengthen Camp Half-Blood's borders. She also explains what the titular Sea of Monsters is.
- The Secret Garden: Martha chats to Mary while she is lighting Mary's bedroom fire, serving as a reader's intoduction to Martha.
Live-Action TV
- Cluedo: Lots of discussions happen in the kitchen while Mrs White is preparing food, which often involve her using one of the murder weapons.
- Fawlty Towers: At the beginning of "The Anniversary", Polly and Terry are discussing borrowing money from Basil Fawlty while working in the kitchen. Not paying attention to what she is doing, Polly starts washing some artificial flowers.
- House of Anubis: In season 2, two important, relationship-impacting discussions are had while washing dishes. It's justified here, in that the students rotate chore duty in pairs, which can easily set characters up for these moments.
- In the middle of the season, Patricia and Eddie were having some conflict. Eddie blamed her for revealing his secret to the entire school, causing him to start flirting with Mara while also going on a ghost-hunt with her. Meanwhile, Patricia was getting increasingly more jealous while also trying to stop him from learning too much about the ghost, as she'd been tormenting Sibuna for weeks at that point. They don't get to resolve their issues until the dishwashing scene, where they finally start to talk. The conversation makes Eddie realize that Patricia didn't betray him on purpose, makes Patricia encourage his ghost-hunt after hearing him gush over it, and gives their relationship a rare moment of peace and communication.
- Later in the season, Jerome is washing dishes with Mara, who he'd had a massive crush on since the first season. At this point, Mara knew about his feelings for her but was conflicted over them thanks to her long-distance relationship with Mick. In this scene, they ended up addressing his crush on her and he attempted to convince her to break up with Mick, only to have it backfire. While the end of the scene had Jerome's feelings remain unrequited, this conversation set his relationship with Mara into motion, and they eventually ended up together.
- Insecure: After fighting for most of the season, Lawrence and Condola patch up their issues with them being new parents and trying to coparent together while folding laundry in season 5.
- Lucifer: In the episode "Family Dinner", Amenadiel and his father God talk about Charlie's mortality while washing dishes.
- Mortified: At the end of "The Talk", Taylor's mother Glenda takes advantage of Taylor helping her wash the dishes (and having a sprained ankle so she can't run away) to have The Talk.
- The Queen's Gambit: Beltik gives Beth advice about staying sane as a chess player while the two wash dishes at her home in Kentucky.
Theatre
- This trope became overused to the point of decay in European theatre in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Countless plays from that period open with servant characters coming onstage and dusting/arranging furniture/polishing knickknacks/what-have-you while they speak at length about recent events to set up the plot and characters ("It's so strange to think that Madame Ranevskaya is coming back home after all those years abroad!"). Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov were particularly notorious for this, to the point where in the theatre world, this kind of action is still called "The Maid Scene" after their tendency to use maidservants for the job.
- All of August Strindberg's Miss Julie takes place in a small kitchen, and the two main characters (Miss Julie and Jean, a valet) spend much of the play chatting while doing chores and cooking there.
- The stage adaptation of Beauty and the Beast added the song "Human Again" (originally a Cut Song from the movie that was restored in later editions), which features the castle's servants cleaning up the cluttered rooms while singing about their hopes of the Enchantress's curse being broken. In a twist on the trope, since they've all been transformed into human-object hybrids, they are using their own bodies to do the chores.
Video Games
- The Walking Dead: Season Two: In episode three, In Harm's Way, Clementine is forced to work alongside Bonnie in the armory of Carver's compound- they're loading magazines. Bonnie tries to apologise to Clem for ratting out her group of survivors to Carver, from who they were trying to escape. She also says that she was planning to escape with Clem's group before, but chickened out at the last moment, and gives her reasons as to why Carver was better than running away. Before Clem is taken to her next work station, Bonnie gives her a new jacket that she wears for the rest of the season.
Webcomics
- In Freefall, Sam and a stranger get to know each other
while Working Off the Debt by washing dishes at a restaurant.
Western Animation
- The Simpsons: In "Lisa's Substitute", while Marge and Lisa are folding laundry, Lisa talks about how much she likes her new substitute teacher. At one point, their pet cat Snowball II walks onto a sheet, and Marge has to move her out of the way.
- Steven Universe: At the beginning of the episode "Keeping It Together," the gems discuss the risk of Peridot reactivating the Kindergarten and explain to Steven how the Kindergarten makes Gems while helping Steven fold his laundry. Steven asks if Garnet unfusing into Ruby and Sapphire would make the chore go faster, but Garnet insists on staying a single being — foreshadowing her trauma upon discovering the forced fusion of shattered Crystal Gems at the Kindergarten later in the episode.
