Expectation Lowerer/Playing With

Expectation Lowerer: A character that exists to make the audience feel better about themselves, by being worse than the audience.

• Straight: Annette is a brainless shallow vapid naive woman with no ability to think beyond her next manicure. This makes all the women in the audience feel smarter.
• Exaggerated: Annette is a guest on The Jerry Springer Show and people watch her to feel much better about their own (often pathetic) private lives.
• Justified: The show is about a prime-time Sitcom and one of the characters is an Expectation Lowerer.
• Inverted:
  • Mary is much better than the audience in every way. This makes her The Scrappy amongst the fanbase.
  • Alternatively, Edna is an awesome person that the audience easily identifies with, and thus loves.
• Subverted: Annette uses Obfuscating Stupidity to make people underestimate her and pity her, so she can prove herself better than them later.
• Double Subverted: ???
• Parodied: See "Deconstructed," but Played for Laughs
• Deconstructed: The audience watches this show out of Schadenfreude. Those bastards! They get satisfaction by feeling pity!
• Reconstructed: This pity might actually motivate the audience to do some good in Real Life.
• Zig Zagged: ???
• Averted: The character is either a This Loser Is You (i.e. the audience identifies with a terribly flawed character), Escapist Character (i.e. the audience identifies with a highly idealized character), or a Mary Sue (i.e. the audience does not identify with the highly idealized character).
• Enforced: "Okay, Viewers are Morons but we have to make it look like we don't think they're morons... I know, I'll put in a character so stupid they'll feel smart next to them!.
• Lampshaded: "Danny, you're so stupid that you make everyone around you feel smarter!"
• Invoked: ???
• Exploited: Edward realizes Benny is so stupid that other people around him feel smarter. Edward then convinces Benny to become a stand up comedian, and acts as his agent in order to rake in money.
• Defied: ???
• Discussed: ???
• Conversed: ???

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