The “Dumb” Character That Isn’t Really Dumb

I think Patrick Star would've been a good addition. His original character wasn't dumb, the entire joke was that he "lived under a rock." He was naive but not an idiot like he is now.

Cosmo from fairly odd parents is the epitome of this trope, he started our street smart but just became dumber than a box of rocks.

I like how in Avatar The Last Airbender, Sokka kinda had the opposite happen. To be fair, he never really got portrayed as dumb as any of the characters in this video, but as the show went on, you can clearly see he makes less and less dumb decisions and ends up as the strategist of the group.

I prefer the jack sparrow trope where the character is clearly not as intellegent as they try to convince other characters they are but then they continue to get outrageously lucky to the point where you realize their persistence and over estimated self importance is their real skill.

The Cat Valentine problem is definitely a Dan Schneider problem.

Seeing a character get stupid over time is kind of creepy in a way. It feels alarming. Like someone terrible has happened to them.

Kat being more sexualized is so creepy knowing what we know about dan schneider. I lowkey feel bad for her tbh

It's interesting how often an example of "These two characters have different kinds of smarts" gets simplified to "Smart and not smart" due to how linear intelligence is seen by much of society

max russo is my favorite example because he goes from regular little brother to dumb, but then later admits hes just faking being dumb so no one would believe him if he said hes a wizard

What really gets me about Joey is that in the first episodes, he is smart enough that he is explaining words and concepts to other characters, but by season 10, he can't even spell the word BABY. He says to Chandler and Monica "you can't have S E X in front of the B A B I E" and the joke is supposed to be "Haha. Joey dumb. He can't spell simple words". But if that happened to someone irl - where their intelligence degraded THAT much - you would probably take them to the doctor and get them tested for a brain tumor

Another example of this is Emma from the show Jessie. When we first meet her she is making an impressive solar system diorama and has no problem getting good grades, but soon she can't even do basic addition. It always makes me sad

Honestly you could argue that Homer Simpson is also a victim of this. In the first season he wasn't super stupid and he had more heart for his family. But as the show went on he would care less and less about his family. Its really sad to see.

i swear the change in drake's character was because josh lost weight and subsequently became less awkward and more successful with girls so they needed to dial up drake's stupid to contrast their characters further

I think the most believable dumb character who keeps getting dumber is Charlie Kelly from Always Sunny. Because he keeps literally drinking paint and he's usually drunk.

London's goodbye with moseby never fails to make me cry 😭

I didn't fully understand London's whole arc and character as a kid, but yeah, it's pretty clear that Mr. Tipton may have been her father, but Mr. Moesby was her dad. Really, those two characters embody a very similar juxtaposition to what London herself has with Maddie, as well as embodying the two ways she could go with her mentality, the genuine connection vs the material wealth being used as a substitute for that.

I think it’s always because most shows base it solely on being dumb and as seasons progress they can only develop their character in the dumber direction and never think to make them have a hobby or something to make them more interesting like in s1 cat had textiles hobbies but then completely integrated it in season 2

my personal headcanon for cat is that she noticed that people seemed to like her more and be nicer to her when she was clueless so she just hyped it up. like in that clip where she actually says something smart and andre points it out and she literally apologizes and gets anxious, she's scared that they don't like her. and it's not like it doesn't work, the entire group is overall nicer to her in season 3 but in season 1 everyone just agreed that "cat has problems".

I grew up watching these shows and I actually remember a girl in my year group when I entered high school specifically modelled some of her personality on Cat from victorious. Not just a guess btw, she told me herself. I think her younger mind saw Cat getting all the attention (which was actually just sexualisation) in the show and thought that personality was the most desirable to guys (as shown in the show) so she moulded her own in Cats’ image. There were many moments when the poor girl made an absolute fool out of herself as a result, and that’s me using generous language. I saw a fair few examples like this. Nickelodeon and Disney have so much to answer for.

My favorite line from Cat was "did you know mirror has six letters and half of them are r's?" She said this pretty much at random in the middle of other people having a conversation. I like the idea that her attention slipped from the conversation, she either noticed this thing about a word, or remembered noticing it earlier or being told about it earlier, and wanted to share it with the group. That's relatable to me. And while the statement isn't particularly smart, dumb people don't care about things like that in my experience, so it does hint at a smart person.