10 Idiotic Decisions By TV Characters Who Should Have Known Better

How many times have you been watching your favorite show, only for a character to make a decision so stupid you wanted to throw your remote at the TV screen?

Television characters are definitely more prone to making poor choices than actual people - that's just the nature of driving narrative. In many instances, such idiotic decisions resulted in unfortunate outcomes, but it's fair to say that it was not feasible for the characters to show foresight of them, and as such they can be forgiven.

There's a special breed of TV idiot though who definitely knew of the possible consequences beforehand. Even without external stimuli - immediate threats or strange, specific motivation - they marched, fully-aware and blissfully ignorant towards their own doom.

Whether through their own knowledge of themselves or others, the context of the world that they live in, or just common sense they'd previously shown, these are people that had all the resources required to make the smartest decision, and instead did something else entirely. Much to the chagrin of their fans.

Obviously, beware of spoilers ahead...

Zoe Barnes, intrepid reporter, knew exactly how dangerous Frank Underwood could be. After all, she had spent almost an entire season essentially doing Frank's bidding in order to aid his rise to power, despite eventually turning on him near the end of Season 1. She knew what he was capable of.

Furthermore, Zoe, unlike many of the other characters in the series, had reason to suspect that Frank could be guilty of murdering a man, even if she was somewhat reluctant to believe that. So, that begs the question: why would she ever think meeting with him anywhere remotely private was a good idea?

To restate: Zoe (correctly) thought that the Vice President of the United States, who had shown no restraint in bringing down every political enemy around him, had murdered someone in order to launch his own political career even higher. So she decided to meet this same man discreetly in order to question him. At a train station. The meeting does not end well.

To be fair, perhaps Zoe did not expect to be immediately thrown in front of a train. The viewers certainly didn't see it coming. However, she definitely should have known that accusing the second most powerful man in the country with homicide would have put a target on her back.

The assassination just came quicker than anyone expected.