There's a specific version of this I call "artificial conflict." Any kind of conflict between characters that would never have occured in a natural human interaction. Mostly this comes from characters going out of their way to be vague with each other for no reason. Example:
>Girl walks in on man doing something incriminating
>Man, rather than immediately explaining exactly what is going on says "It's not what it looks like!"
>Instead of confronting, asking questions, yelling, making demands, or anything else a reasonable or unreasonable person would do, girl runs out of the room
>The two are now have an artificial conflict until the writer contrives up an opportunity for the man to say to her what literally anyone else would've said the first time around.
It's fucking boring.