< Oblivious to Love

Oblivious to Love/Live-Action TV

This page needs visual enhancement.
You can help All The Tropes by finding a high-quality image or video to illustrate the topic of this page.

Examples of Oblivious to Love in Live-Action TV include:

  • Mr. Boynton is either shy or downright oblivious throughout the radio/television series Our Miss Brooks.
  • Sonia and Astrov in Uncle Vanya.
  • My So-Called Life: Angela is less oblivious to Brian as Brian never really tells her.
    • Unless you count the time he took her to the dance, and suggested they might go off together. In a subversion of the Anguished Declaration of Love, she is completely disgusted by the idea.
      • On the other hand, when she asked him to ride with her, he dumped Delia, then lied about it to Angela. When Angela saw Delia at the dance, the jig was up. In other words, he was just as oblivious to Delia's crush as she was to his. Maybe even more so.
  • Seems to be the set up for Barney and Robin in How I Met Your Mother -- Barney actually tells Robin that he loves her in "Benefits", but she thinks that he's commenting on Ted's neediness.
    • In season seven, it's Barney's turn to be the oblivious one.
  • Clark regarding Chloe's feelings for him in Smallville. But under the influence of Red Kryptonite or other forms of Phlebotinum, Kal-El repeatedly taunts her with the truth that Clark just doesn't feel that way for her.
  • Niles and Daphne started out this way on Frasier.
  • Ross and Rachel during the first season of Friends.
    • And the roles are reversed in the second season.
  • There are two examples of this in Season One of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Xander develops a huge crush on Buffy, who is oblivious to his advances, while he himself is unaware of Willow's feelings.
    • There are hints that Buffy is aware, just uninterested. Xander, on the other hand, is oblivious to Willow's feelings feelings for him.
      • Hints nothing. Season 2's opener makes it unambiguous that Buffy is aware of Xander's interest, when she deliberately cockteases him in order to make Angel jealous.
    • In Season 5 Buffy is unaware of Spike falling for her despite their past Foe Yay and his recent Stalker with a Crush behaviour—it's her little sister Dawn who points out the obvious. Even then Buffy can't quite believe it until Spike's Anguished Declaration of Love.
  • In the Season 5 Angel episode "Smile Time," Wesley is the one who informs Angel that Nina obviously has feelings for him, all while ignoring the hints that Fred loves him. It takes a direct kiss from Fred for Wesley to notice, but he reciprocates quickly.
    • ...which makes sense, since a few seasons before he had been crushing on her. Oblivious Love Switcheroo?
    • Indeed. Wesley had made his try for Fred previously, got shot down in flames, and then had her hook up with one of his best friends. So he did the gentlemanly thing and stayed as far away from that as he could. Even after Fred and Gunn broke up Wesley would still be consciously disregarding any signals coming from her direction, as he'd believe they were just his own wishful thinking and not actually present. Fred finally has to just flat-out grab him and kiss him before he finally believes its real.
  • In Pushing Daisies, it was a while before Ned twigged that Olive had romantic feelings for him, despite some really blatant flirting on her part in the first episode.
  • A psychiatrist on Bones tells Dr. Sweets that only one of the Booth/Brennan pairing is aware of their mutual feelings. Since Booth is normally the best with emotions and has shown more signs of being possessive and jealous, we're left to assume that Brennan is the oblivious one. Entirely in keeping with her nature, though.
  • It is implied that this may partially be the cause of Mal and Inara's UST in Firefly, at least on Mal's side. The episode "Heart of Gold" very strongly indicates that while Mal is attracted to Inara, he is unaware she is attracted to him.
    • It's a fair enough assumption on his part. I mean, let's face it, is there anyone here who wouldn't be attracted to Inara? So it's natural for Mal to assume he's just one of many and she's basically as uninterested in him as she is in Jayne. Well, maybe not quite as uninterested as she is with Jayne, but - you get the idea!
    • It's very possible Mal is a rare male version of the Broken Bird variant of this trope, and despite his insults and Hypocritical Heartwarming doesn't think he's worthy of her. It's why her calling him a petty thief hurts his feelings so much.
  • Maxwell is completely oblivious to CC's crush on The Nanny.
  • Star Trek: Voyager. Commander Chakotay has subtly hinted a number of times to Captain Janeway that he's attracted to her; she's either oblivious, prefers loneliness to the problems of becoming involved with a subordinate, or may just be remaining faithful to her fiance.[1]
    • Umm, her fiance got married because he thought Janeway was dead.
  • And Kira is oblivious to Odo in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
    • Word of God revealed that Bashir is oblivious to Garak.
    • It takes awhile for Worf to realize Jadzia is into him.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: Picard is in industrial strength denial about his feelings for Lwaxana. Either that, or he genuinely isn't into her due to her sexual harassment levels of forwardness and her position as a powerful diplomat prevents him from telling her to go find someone else (in less diplomatic terms).
    • Forget Lwaxana, what about Beverly? It took an alien mind-linking device for her to realize how he felt. Not that it helped much.
  • Stargate Universe: Chloe at least acts like this for most of the first season, until the finale episode, where it's made clear she isn't quite oblivious as she appears.
  • The Doctor to Martha in Doctor Who. He describes to her a device that keeps them hidden from the hypnotised public to her as "It's like when you fancy someone, but they don't even know you exist." He rushes off, and Captain Jack reads her expression: "You too, huh?"

Amy: "I nearly died! I was alone, in the dark, and I nearly died. And it made me think."
Doctor: "Ah, yes... Natural. I think sometimes. Well... lots of times."
Amy: "About what I want. About who I want. You know what I mean?"
Doctor: "Yeah. ...... No."
Amy: "About who... I want."
Doctor: "Oh right, yeah. ...... No. Still not getting it." [2]

    • It goes the other way in "The Lodger", when the Doctor is able to immediately recognise the UST between two other characters who are both afraid to admit it out loud. This and other cues in the series suggest that he is aware of his companions' feelings, but ignores them to avoid relationship issues (or possibly just because he has issues).
    • Or perhaps he is only oblivious when it directly involves him.
    • He may deliberately suppress romantic attraction, since any human he gets involved with will age and eventually die, in what would appear to him to be no time at all. Avoiding being reminded of this might even be why most of his companions are young. (Which the Dream Lord enjoyed pointing out to him.)
    • Amy was oblivious to Rory for years, assuming he was gay when he never showed interest in any (other) girls.
      • And Rory was oblivious to the fact that Amy really loved him; originally, he assumed she was in love with the Doctor.
  • The X-Files. At the end of "Triangle" Mulder flat-out says "I love you" to Scully. Her only response is to mutter an exasperated "Oh brother" and walk off. Admittedly Mulder had just been raving about how he and Scully had just saved the world from the Nazis back in 1939, so Scully clearly felt Mulder had hit his head too hard, not realising it was actually a matter of her hitting Mulder too hard.
    • And it's not like he was really keeping it a secret before that. Several characters had mentioned it or assumed they were together.
    • Conversely, Doggett tends to be oblivious to Agent Reye's feelings for him.
  • Robin was more or less oblivious to Kate up until the time they got together - and then for most of the time after that as well.
  • On Parks and Recreation Andy is oblivious to April's crush on him.
    • As of Season 3, April and Andy are in a relationship, but now it's Leslie who doesn't seem to notice Ben's growing crush on her.
      • Though by Season 3's "Soulmates", Leslie is the one who asks him out first, though to her dismay Ben turns her down due to Chris's anti-fraternization rules. He does initiate their first kiss, though.
  • On Zoey 101, Zoey is oblivious to Chase's feelings for her. This gets painful when it drags on for three years, despite multiple attempts by Chase to tell her his feelings. She's oblivious even after she is told flat-out by her friends that Chase is in love with her, and had been since he met her. Lola even goes so far as to pull a random student from the hallway. And Zoey still doesn't believe it!

Lola: Ginny, could you come here a minute?
Ginny: What's up?
Lola: 'Blank' is in love with Zoey. Fill in the blank.
Ginny: (as though it were the most obvious answer in the world) Chase.
Lola: Thanks for playing.

    • On iCarly, one of Zoey 101's spiritual successors, it's inverted, with Carly completely aware of Freddie's love for her. It's mentioned in their first scene together with Carly asking Freddie to get over the crush he has, but it fails to fade away, and as they grow up, his crush blooms into a serious case of Just Friends love for Carly.
  • Lizzie is completely oblivious to Gordo's feelings for her, despite him dropping quite a few hints throughout the show's run. Lizzie didn't get it until the final season when Kate got fed up with this trope and flat out told Lizzie that everyone else in the school knew Gordo liked her.
  • On Glee, Blaine had no clue that Kurt saw him as anything more than a friend. And Kurt's not exactly subtle when it comes to his crushes. It got to the point where (after helping Blaine serenade another guy on Valentine's Day), Kurt flat out told Blaine that he thought he was the one about to be swept off his feet. Blaine seemed plenty sympathetic... until the next episode, when he expected Kurt to be perfectly fine with him dating Rachel, and the one after that, where he tried to give Kurt sex advice and told him that his seductive faces looked like he had gas. Face Palm.
  • On Castle, Beckett is guilty of this in the first season finale. Castle himself is guilty of this in the second season finale and again in the third season opener, when he can't understand why Beckett is so upset with him for not calling immediately when he got back into town. By season three's finale, neither one is oblivious anymore. It goes something like this:

Castle: *Concerned* I'm your partner, Kate. I'm your friend.
Beckett: *Angrily* Is that all we are?
Castle: *Angry* Yes. No. I don't know. We kiss and then we never talk about it, so no, I don't know what the Hell we are.

    • In the last scenes of the third season finale after Kate is shot, Castle outright declares to her that he loves her. Whether she'll remember is another story.
    • Leave it to a show like Castle to make the drama even cheesier. She remembers all right. She's just faking amnesia.
  • Sergeant Bruce Hornsby is completely oblivious to Corporal Angie Ogden's interest in Red Cap.
  1. ↑ who didn't return the faithfulness, ultimately, marrying someone else while Janeway was far from home
  2. ↑ he wises up after she kisses him
This article is issued from Allthetropes. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.