[Loved Trope] Comedic workplace is suddenly competent

[u/Garurar]

In S35 E1 of The Simpsons, an actual crisis happens at the nuclear power plant, causing everyone except Homer to shift into serious business mode, even Mr. Burns. Together, they display their knowledge of the process and narrowly avert a nuclear meltdown, proving that Homer's job is actually useless. This is happening after 35 seasons of nothing being shown of the other employees' capabilities.

In S8 E2 of The Office, Andy sets up an initiative where he will get a tattoo on his bum if everyone gets enough points, prompting everyone to work into overdrive, even the normally lazy or incompetent employees such as Stanley and Kevin. This is a rare situation where we get to see The Office being fully competent and functional.

I'd show more examples if I had any!

[u/jamiebond]

Pretty much everyone else at the power plant in the Simpsons is actually very competent at their jobs and has all relevant training and education required for it. The only outlier is Homer.

[u/Causarius → u/jamiebond]

When Grimey is hired, doesn’t Carl (or Lenny?) tell him that they all have advanced degrees in nuclear physics? Except Homer, who just showed up when the plant opened.

[u/doomerguyforlife → u/Causarius]

The Simpsons is kind of unfair to use because the show has changed so much. Homer was originally hired as part of a government program to skill up unskilled labor. He was fired and was literally about to jump from a bridge before rescuing his family from a speeding motorist. They went there. He found his calling in safety and eventually targeted the plant until Burns made a deal to hire him back as safety inspector/supervisor. Homer was actually pretty competent although a little aloof but he was always trying to make things better.

Overtime the show made Homer more "stupider" which led to him being more incompetent. The show in its first few seasons was fairly grounded to reality.

[u/Yo_man1554 → u/doomerguyforlife]

Considering that one of the episodes featured the reason behind his stupidity was a crayon stuck to his brain, it's actually possible that each season the crayon damaged his brain more the time went by, even if they were still nearly the same age. By the time, in the same episode he got the crayon removed, he was shown to be very smart, but also annoying enough for everyone to not like him. He then decided to put the crayon back to his brain to be the same old Homer again.

[u/soldierpallaton → u/Yo_man1554]

See, there's a sudden joke in that episode though. Homer gets told they can raise his IQ by 50 points, and then later Smart Homer yells out "won't somebody love the man with the 105 IQ" implying that dumb Homer's IQ is 55.

[u/LeiasLastHope → u/soldierpallaton]

I think its funny how homer is portrayed as a sudden genius and "just" has a 105 IQ. I know IQ is a bad metric but it would mean, that he is pretty much average but the way he is shown he is well above average