Another day at school, another paper being handed back. Lovable Nerd Alice passes an idle boast to her Book Dumb brother Bob, confident in her performance. But what's this? She's received a horrible grade! No mere slip into a B, Alice has failed the project! And what's worse, Bob has passed with flying colors. What's going on?
Alice and Bob have found themselves in the middle of the Grade-Swap Catastrophe, a stock plot common to sitcoms wherein a Book Smart character and a less-academically-inclined character's grades are subject to some kind of File Mixup.
Though typically applied to the Bully and Wimp Pairing, this plot can happen to any two characters, so long as one character gets a high grade they do not deserve.
Frequently, this plot is used as background for A Very Special Episode about expectations. Suddenly, the typical poor performer is doing well, because all he ever needed was to be believed in, and the straight-A student is falling behind because no one trusts them to do well anymore. Maybe Alice even starts to take on Bob's mannerisms, and Bob takes on hers.
Often when Alice has a history of belittling Bob's intelligence, Bob will hurl his own insults and smug comments back at her, and Alice is too taken aback to respond with her usual wit.
When played straight in an actual sitcom, there is typically a moment at the end where the mixup is discovered and rectified. After this happens, the characters return to normal, having learned nothing about understanding circumstance and potential by next week.
Can often mean an Idiot Plot if the grade in question belongs to a handwritten paper, a diorama, or other project that ought to be easily distinguished by the characters who spent hours working on them.
Occasionally subverted when the characters discover that there was no mixup, and the grades were correctly attributed. Which might lead to an Honesty Aesop.
Examples:
- Invoked in School Rumble: During a test, Harima notices that Tenma hasn't put her name on her paper, and if she turns it in that way, it will receive an automatic fail because the test cannot be attributed to her. But if he reveals he's been looking at Tenma's paper, he could be accused of cheating. He opts to erase his own name from his paper and write Tenma's, taking the fail for himself. Unfortunately for Tenma, Harima is Book Dumb, and the test he turned in on her behalf was no better than if she hadn't turned it in at all.
- The Peanuts Movie features this as a subplot, as the much-maligned Charlie Brown gets a taste of popularity due to his perceived intelligence. This proves to be short-lived, as he quickly finds out that the A grade belongs to Peppermint Patty, of all people, who got it seemingly by accident by bubbling in her test to draw a smiley-face.
- Invoked in The Flintstones: Barney willingly switches his aptitude test for becoming a vice-president with Fred's out of friendship and seeing Fred distraught. He keeps it a secret until Fred's stupid management and the Big Bad's scheme to defraud Slate Co. (with Fred as the Fall Guy) get Barney fired as collateral damage.
- Hey Arnold!: In "Aptitude Test", Mr. Simmons' class takes a career aptitude test. However, thanks to Eugene's clumsiness, Helga and Harold's exams get mixed up, resulting in Helga mistakenly believing she's only suited to be a low-skill woodsperson and Harold believing he's a potential genius.
- In The Jetsons episode "Elroy's Mob", Elroy's classmate Kenny Countdown switched their report tapes to make it look like Elroy got bad grades. The Jetsons didn't believe Elroy and George sent him to his room, but they discovered the truth when Kenny was caught by his dad, who called George to tell him what happened.
- Nightmare Ned: One episode had Ned get his report card and see he failed everything. Worried about getting into trouble, he hides the card, until a nightmare guilts him into showing it to his parents in the middle of the night. His father's only response is to ask why Ned is showing him another kid's report card, revealing that the teacher mixed up the cards.
- The Simpsons: In "Bart the Genius", Bart switched his intelligence test with Martin Prince's and ended up transferred to a school for genius kids. However, his new classmates shunned him when they realized he wasn't smart and his old friends wanted nothing to do with him because they thought he was a nerd. Bart eventually confessed at the end and returned to Springfield Elementary.
- Totally Spies!. In "Alex gets Schooled", the whole episode happened as the school accidentally mixed-up Alex's grades with Mandy that forced Alex into an Off to Boarding School plot. Thankfully, they were resolved at the end of the episode and Alex was allowed to stay with Sam and Clover.
