In an episode of the short-lived ’70s cop show Chopper One called “The Informer”, Dick Van Patten is in police protective custody so he can testify against a mobster. Our mains, Foley and Burdick, use the police helicopter to take him to a safe house…where he later calls his wife and tells her exactly where he is so she can come see him.

It’s a frustratingly stupid decision, one you know that the bad guys will capitalize on by following the wife out to the beach house of hiding. I am on record stating that I wanted something bad to happen to Dick Van Patten for this dipshittery. And yet! We wouldn’t have an episode if he hadn’t made this poor choice. Or we wouldn’t have this episode. Things would have played out much differently for everyone involved otherwise.

And like I said in my recorded statements, I can’t even really be mad about it because people willingly make such terrible decisions in real life.

Making bad life choices is sort of a key component to cop shows. Someone has to make the dubious decision to commit a crime, after all. That’s what gets the ball rolling. If people left the house every morning with the goal of making good choices, our TV cops would be out of work.

It’s not just criminals making poor life choices. There are the bad decisions by the (mostly) law abiding citizens that skitter events in a different direction. Like Dick Van Patten making that ill-advised phone call to his wife. Or the guy in the CSI: Miami episode “Long Gone”. The dad and his family are kidnapped because dear ol’ dad finds drugs buried on his property and decides to go into business for himself.

And then there are the guys (so often they’re men) that compound one bad decision with another. Like the rancher in the Hawaii Five-O episode “Paniolo” who lets his anger get the best of him when dealing with a real estate developer. The physical altercation leads to the developer’s accidental death, and instead of contacting the police, he decides to stage the developer’s death as a car accident. Does it work? No, of course it doesn’t work. It just makes things a whole lot worse.

Or the guy in the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode “Homo Homini Lupus”, who gets in trouble by failing to repay a loan shark in a timely fashion. As a result, his family is kidnapped. Does he accept help from the authorities? Of course not. Why would he do such a thing? That would make sense, at least in the world of TV law enforcement. So, shit gets to go extra pear shaped for his sins.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe people could be such dipsticks. And then you read the latest Florida Man story. We can say all we want that the bad decisions people make on TV are unbelievable, but we know deep down that’s not necessarily true.

I realize I’m focusing on cop shows here, but that’s only because it’s my area of expertise, so to speak. Bad decisions motivate plots in other genres, too. The plot of more than one episode of Stargate: Atlantis was motivated by Dr. Rodney McKay’s ego-driven bad decisions.

Family-oriented sitcoms thrive on the bad choices of their precocious children. With the TGIF line-up, I know I put a slew of bad decisions in front of my eyeballs back in the day. The only one that sticks out in my memory is the Full House episode “I’m Not D.J.”, in which Stephanie allows Kimmy -of all people- to pierce her ears against her father’s wishes so she can impress her friends. It’s a relatable dubious decision because kids don’t have the life experience to know better than to do stupid shit. They’ve got to do the stupid shit to get the experience. Everyone knows that they’re not going to take anyone else’s word for it.

The adults on those sitcoms, though, don’t have that excuse. They’re doing it for the laughs of the live studio audience.

And because adults make dubious life choices, too.

At least on TV, they do it for the plot.