The Ditz

The Ditz is a character whose defining characteristic is profound stupidity. Female ditzes tend to be sweet and naive, while male ditzes tend to be oafish but lovable. The Ditz is written to appear unintentionally funny. In drama series, he or she provides comic relief.

A good looking Ditz (of either sex) might be The Brainless Beauty. An independently wealthy Ditz is an Upper-Class Twit. A Ditz that's a Mighty Glacier (Most commonly as The Big Guy or The Brute) is a Dumb Muscle.

A more competent Ditz will often become The Fool. Taken to its extreme, the Ditz can evolve into a Cloud Cuckoolander.

One reason you can find The Ditz on so many TV shows is that it gives the audience someone to feel superior to. No matter how stupid you might be, you are smarter than The Ditz.


In extreme cases, if the character puts himself in mortal danger because of his/her stupidity, he/she becomes Too Dumb to Live. If the character puts others in danger because of his/her stupidity, he/she becomes Lethally Stupid.


Examples


Lindsay and Tyler(the two characters above) and Owen from the Total Drama series.

Disney character Goofy is a classic example.

Ed Edd N Eddy: Ed: Also May (averted in the Valentine's Day Episode).

Cosmo from The Fairly OddParents. He certainly qualifies better as Too Dumb to Live. If he weren't immortal, he'd be so dead.

Big Dog and Little Dog from 2 Stupid Dogs.

Gir, from Invader Zim, is amazingly ditzy. He often heads into Cloud Cuckoo Lander territory, depending on the local humidity and/or piggy count.

Da-da-da-da-da - Inspector Gadget.

Lola Bunny from The Looney Tunes Show. Daffy also has his ditzy moments.

Johnny Bravo, especially in seasons two and three, where a lot of the humor was based around his stupidity, sometimes to the point of making him Too Dumb to Live.

Dee Dee from Dexters Laboratory, trope namer for "What Does This Button Do?".

Pokémon:

Ash, at least initially. He was just plain stupid: "Hey, that Mankey just stole my hat!" *screams and climbs up a tree after it, while the others just stare at him* He's gotten a lot better since then.


The Team Rocket trio seems to have become cursed to this position ever since encountering Ash, but this tapered off after the beginning of the Best Wishes series.

May and Dawn when they first started as trainers - May was a bit less competent because she didn't really want to train Pokemon, which was before the anime introduced Contests. This even passed on her starter Torchic, who Took a Level in Badass and evolved into Combusken in the middle of Hoenn, eliminating this trait.

Luffy from One Piece easily falls into this trope.