Most people have felt like fish out of water at some point in their lives, feeling like the one person who was different in some way. While it doesn’t feel great to experience this, it’s a pretty great catalyst for a TV show. Not only can audiences relate to the main character’s experience, but they enjoy watching how the character deals with this new environment.

Since the fish out of water trope is very present in media, it’s hard to decide who does it best. It’s been done so often, from a New York Jewish doctor moving to rural Alaska in Northern Exposure to New Age FBI agent investigating rural Washington in the game-changing Twin Peaks, along with a spoiled rich family moving to Schitt’s Creek and a 20th century dork waking up a millennium later in Futurama.

It is definitely up for interpretation and personal preference, but the shows listed below have been able to entice fans for decades, despite using the same screenwriting trope of a fish out of water. The fish out of water often is also the underdog of their story, since they tend to be the odd person out as well. Considering how many people the fish out of water concept can relate to, it’s no wonder the trope is so popular in Hollywood. Here’s some of the best TV shows to utilize the storytelling device.

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5 3rd Rock From the Sun

     Carsey-Werner Distribution

Was school a hard place for you to fit in? Imagine being an alien and having to fit in at school and everywhere else you went. Welcome to 3rd Rock From the Sun, a show where a family of aliens must assimilate to American life. While the main plot of the show is the fish out of water trope, not every episode centers around that. If you as a viewer didn’t know the family were aliens, it may just seem like a slightly off-kilter family sitcom.

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However, the inclusion of the fish out of water trope makes the show more appealing. The basic family comedy is overdone, but when you throw in the fact that our main characters are not human, it brings a whole new element to an overplayed genre. Bringing new life to agenre is a challenge and often fails. 3rd Rock From the Sun is able to bring a common trope and a common genre together and make them something new that no one has seen before, thanks largely to great performances from John Lithgow, a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt, French Stewart, Jane Curtin, and Kristen Johnston.

4 Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

     NBC Universal Television Distribution

It’s hard to say if anyone on the planet can relate to Kimmy Schmidt. In Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Kimmy is a “mole woman” who has been trapped in an underground apocalyptic bunker for the last 15 years at the hands of a fundamentalist cult leader. Kimmy and the other women have missed the opportunity to normally grow up and now must live in the modern world. We may not think of the world we live in as confusing and unknown, but for someone who missed 15 years leading up to now, the world can be pretty confusing.

As previously stated, Kimmy is not supremely relatable but she sure as hell is hilarious. Viewers can’t help but feel for the endlessly optimistic Kimmy and enjoy watching her grow in the world we all know. Considering Kimmy is a bit naive, it shocks no one that the cast of characters in this show is a rag-tag bunch and wacky as well, including a phenomenal turn from Tituss Burgess.Her relationships and confusion are actually what ends up making Kimmy relatable in some way; everyone has some friendships in this wild world that make absolutely no sense to anyone but you, and that’s what makes Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt great.

3 The Nanny

     Sony Pictures Television

The new water for a fish can be a lot of things, but for Fran Fine in The Nanny, it was a new job (that she may or may not have been qualified for). Fran wants to move up in life and grow, thus she must integrate into this new life. Despite the fact that the popular show occurs in New York City, the areas that Fran and the Sheffield family inhabit are very different. Fran is from Flushing, Queens while the Sheffield family lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Anyone who has been to both places can attest to the fact that they are two different worlds, giving the show a sense of class consciousness that separates fish into different ponds.

While this is not inherently a bad thing, it does pose a challenge for Fran (played by the endearing Fran Drescher) when she goes to live with the Sheffields. The societal universe surrounding these locations are polar opposites, causing Fran to reevaluate how she sees herself and those around her. At the end of the day, Fran’s qualification for her job may be up for debate, but she always looks good while doing it.

2 The Beverly Hillbillies

     CBS

When most people think of a classic fish out of water story, they think of The Beverly Hillbillies. The show follows a family who finds oil on their property and then moves to Beverly Hills with their newfound wealth. Who doesn’t want to be one of the Beverly Hillbillies? Everyone wants to find a bunch of money buried in their backyard, a treasure chest in their basement, or oil on their property. How great would it be to come into a ton of money suddenly? (Or maybe not.)

The Beverly Hillbillies not only addresses the highs of this newfound wealth but also the lows. Not everything is great all the time, and challenges come with being thrown into a very new, very different environment. While the Hillbillies fit into the Beverly Hills mold money-wise, they don’t exactly fit in personality-wise. This causes nine seasons’ worth of hijinks that have influenced comedy and television ever since they aired.

1 Ted Lasso

     Apple TV

Nothing is more like a fish out of water than literally putting the fish on the other side of the ocean (or across the pond, as some may say). When choosing where to put your “fish” after you take it out of the “water,” an easy and logical option is to put them in a foreign country. You really can’t get more out of water than that. Ted Lasso is the perfect example of this opposite environment. Ted was a joyful Division II Football Coach in the middle of Nowherem America, and was dropped in a London, cow coaching a Premier League Soccer team. Not only does Ted know nothing about soccer (a more global ‘football’), but he also knows nothing about the country he now inhabits.

While not everyone can relate to moving to a new country, many people can relate to getting a new job or moving with a significant other for their job, or even just leaving the place they’ve always lived. This experience is applicable to people everywhere, which is a large part of what makes Ted Lasso, currently filmin season three, such a success. Ted’s exact experience is one that seems scary but fantastical to many, but isn’t that what getting out of the water is all about?