Basic Trope: A person vastly underqualified to do a job is drafted to do it for lack of a professional.
- Straight: There are no doctors in a fifty mile radius, so heavily wounded Alice makes Bob, a hobby embroiderer, stitch up her wounds because he knows something about sewing.
- Exaggerated: Bob is an IT specialist and has never had a sewing needle in his hands, not to mention that he's never seen blood before. He's also the only person on Earth who can save Alice.
- Downplayed:
- Bob used to be a surgeon, but he is an old man who retired ten years ago.
- Bob is just a first-year medicine student.
- Bob is a trained vet, but the medical procedure he is asked to perform is something even a fully-educated doctor would consider a difficult task.
- Justified: Alice and Bob are stranded with no way of reaching civilization in time to save her.
- Inverted: It turns out that Bob, about whom we were told nothing so far, is actually a world-famous surgeon.
- Subverted:
- Bob claims that he's just embroidering in his spare time, but it turns out he's actually a full-time surgeon.
- As Bob is preparing to patch Alice up, Charlie, an actual surgeon, shows up.
- Double Subverted:
- He only said that last part to calm Alice down. He really is just a hobby embroiderer.
- Charlie's head is blown off by a sniper, and Bob has to patch Alice up after all.
- Parodied:
- "Bob, I need you to cook us a dinner!" "But I'm a mechanic!" "It'll have to do."
- There are several surgeons in the vicinity of Alice and Bob, including one who specializes in exactly what they need - but Alice still insists that Bob needs to be the one to fix her up.
- Zig Zagged: Alice needs Bob to stitch up her wounds, but he's just an IT specialist who's afraid of blood. It turns out, however, that embroidery is his hobby and he aids Alice. Only after the operation does she learn that he only told her that to calm her down. Upon their return to civillization, however, it turns out that Bob was just trolling her - he's a world-famous surgeon and her wounds weren't as threatening as she made them out to be.
- Averted: Carol, who accompanies Bob and Alice, is a surgeon and thus Bob doesn't have to fill in.
- Enforced:
- The creator of the show wants to add additional drama.
- The author has set up Bob as a Playful Hacker and believes that giving him surgeon's education would be pushing him into Marty Stu territory.
- Lampshaded: "Oh, brilliant! She's dying and the closest we've got is a hobbyst embroiderer!"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Knowing that they're going to a place where medical help may not be available, Alice and Bob take first-aid courses so that they will have the skill in case something happens.
- Discussed: "We've got an IT guy, an engineer and an embroiderer. What if one of us gets badly hurt?" "Well, the last one will have to fill in for a doctor, I guess."
- Conversed: "...and I thought she's going to die, but it turned out that Bob is into embroidering and so he knew how to sew her wound shut."
- Implied: The woman runs out of a house and drags a passer-by inside. A moment later, calls of "I'm not a doctor!" can be heard.
- Deconstructed: Both Bob and Alice are stressed out by the former's lack of experience and Bob's impromptu surgery is not nearly good enough.
- Reconstructed: When paramedic find Alice and Bob later and take them to a proper hospital, Bob is told that his actions have likely saved Alice's life.
- Played For Laughs: To make sure he'll do everything properly, Bob consults a hefty manual on the subject while working on Alice.
