Being Good Sucks / Live-Action TV

Examples of Being Good Sucks on Live-Action TV.

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• Doc: Played With in "Busy Man". Nate's police partner asks him to lie about a second crook at a crime scene to cover up his theft of $20,000 and threatens to make him pay if he tells the truth. Under interrogation, having been prevented from going on patrol and asked to turn in his gun, Nate affirms that there was no second crook and says that he didn't know his partner had claimed there was in the report. It turns out that others had been investigating Nate's partner for crookedness. However, the fact that Nate's honesty saved him is cold comfort, given that Nate has known and been close to the guy for years.
• Smallville: Clark Kent has had many hard decisions, but he always makes the difficult and right ones.
  • Touched on in "Nemesis". Lex Luthor is trapped in some underground tunnels rigged to explode. Clark and Chloe are sorely tempted to leaving him to die for what he did to Chloe and her mother before, but she reminds him that he doesn't get to choose whom to save, or otherwise he won't be Clark Kent.
  • When Chloe ran away with Davis Bloome so she could keep Doomsday in check and protect Clark, seemingly forever, there was this exchange:
    Clark: But what about you, Chloe? Chloe, I'm gonna spend every second looking for you. I will find a way to save you!
    Chloe: Clark, you're not here to save one person, you're here to save all of us.
  • Then...
    Chloe: I must have thrown a million green rocks away and I've never really saved you. Now, I can.
    Clark: Chloe, listen to me, this is your life that we're talking about. Don't do this!
    Chloe: Clark, if there's one lesson I've learned from you, it's that choosing the greater good is never a sacrifice.
  • She gets a small one in "Sacrifice" when she clearly doesn't like her decision to save Tess.
• Supernatural:
  • Dean, Sam, Cas, Bobby, and everyone else fighting to protect the world from malevolent forces get no reward for all they do and endure seemingly endless suffering for their heroism.
  • The bad guys lampshade this. Meg, a demon, is in the process of what could have been a Heel–Face Turn (if she hadn't been killed by Crowley later that same episode), and complains, "I'm... kinda good. Which sucks."
• Battlestar Galactica:
  • Roslin, Tory, Tigh, and Dualla help rig the presidential election so that Roslin wins. A Baltar presidency was thought by most intelligent characters to be potentially disastrous because his platform was for settling the fleet permanently on a less-than-ideal planet rather than continuing looking for Earth. Adama finds out and calls out Roslin on it. Despite her less-than-stellar moral record, she was a champion of democracy for much of the series (despite her veering dangerously close to authoritarianism at times), so this gets her to tearfully confess and call off the fraud as a matter of principle.
  • In the pilot miniseries, Helo gave up his seat on a Raptor ride off of Caprica to Dr. Baltar, thus condemning himself to an almost certain death, because Baltar was one of the Colonies' most brilliant scientists and thus Helo thought Baltar was more important to the human race's survival. The same Baltar who, unbeknownst to any other human, had given Number Six access to the Colonial defense mainframe, causing the holocaust in the first place. It doesn't turn out that bad for Helo afterward, but in the Miniseries itself this is definitely the trope played.
  • Also during the Pegasus story arc. It was obvious that Admiral Cain was going to take over and completely undermine everything Adama and Roslin believed, and yet Adama was reluctant to do anything about it. (Probably because he had faced many of the difficulties she had.) Roslin has to practically order him to have her assassinated. Both Adama and Cain make plans to off the other, but wind up calling it off. Fortunately, Baltar released a Cylon prisoner who really hated Cain, and she did the job.
• Joss Whedon is the patron saint of this trope. It's one of his defining characteristics as a writer that he will put the hero/heroine through the wringer, deconstruct their struggles using cruel real-world logic, make their life utterly fall to pieces, and occasionally force them to fight their former friends or loved ones to the death, and yet still have them stand up and be the best damn hero they can be.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Buffy constantly angsts about having to shoulder a hero's burden and fight the tough fight alone, brushing off her friends and acting in her own words — well, lyrics — "brave and kind of righteous". It's pretty much a compulsion with her....or a form of self-flagellation, if we're being less charitable. The one time she actually thinks she gave up, when Dawn is taken by Glory in season five, it's enough to render her catatonic.
    • Season six juxtaposes Buffy's financial hardships with the nefarious yet (mostly) harmless exploits of the supervillain Trio as they use magic and sci-fi gadgets to rob banks and steal diamonds. This trope got significantly darker as the season went on, which led some viewers to cry "Seasonal Rot!" and others to claim it was one of the best.
  • Angel:
    • Angel also gets some of this on his own show. Once a horrific vampire, he was given a soul and forced to deal with the accumulated guilt of more than a century of evil deeds. In combination with his constant struggle against his vampiric urges, never-ending struggle against the forces of evil, constant loss of hopes for a Happily Ever After, he knows for a fact the bad guys Wolfram & Hart, an evil law firm who regularly employ Screw the Rules, I Have Money! and Connections!, don't have to play fair at all, like he does. Season two chronicled his slow descent into ruthlessness and depravity as he said, "Screw the Rules, They Broke Them First!," and tried to strike the coup de grace against the Senior Partners.
    • Angel and Cordelia's nascent romance in season three is nipped in the bud by the arrival of Groo, leaving Angel waiting miserably in the wings, while at the same time bearing the heartache of having his son stolen from him by an old vampire hunter nemesis who is unmoved by Angel's reformation.
    • Season five was made of this trope, as Angel tries to reform Wolfram & Hart from within and turn it into a force for good. He finds himself listless and directionless, and has to contend with the fact that vampiric upstart Spike may be a better champion than he is.
  • Firefly:
    • Simon got rewarded for rescuing his sister by having to live a life on the run for the rest of his life, where he periodically gets threatened with gunshots and being burnt to death.
    • Mal and Wash get kidnapped and tortured for refusing to steal medicine from a planet where an epidemic had broken out. (Then there's the time and fuel they wasted without even getting paid.)
    • In Serenity, Mal refuses to hand River over to the Operative, knowing he'll either kill her or send her back to the Academy for more Mind Raping. The Operative responds by slaughtering as many of Mal's friends and associates as he can find, including Sheppard Book.
• In 24, if Jack Bauer would simply let someone else worry about national security, he might have a good day. Being Jack Bauer, this will never happen.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: All of the main cast, except Gina, have suffered for their good actions. It is subverted some of the time, as they receive a solace from an unexpected place, but it is more played straight than not:
  • Jake gets hit with this the hardest. He always makes the selfless decision, even when it costs him something as big as the precinct being shut down, and gets chewed out for things he isn't even responsible for, such as the complications of Sharon's childbirth in "Ava", where he's the only person actively trying to help her give birth and gets yelled at by Terry and Sharon, or his going to prison under a false accusation of bank robbery orchestrated by the ''actual'' culprit of the robberies that he was investigating in the season 4 finale.
  • Holt also gets this a lot, just in his backstory: he's a black gay man who wanted to be a police officer to help those in need of help, but he was repeatedly hindered in the pursuit of his goal by heavy discrimination and tokenism in an attempt to look progressive from the NYPD. He gets the worst of this in Season 5: he makes a deal with Seamus Murphy to get Jake and Rosa out of prison to spare Amy this choice. Afraid of what Murphy'll ask him to do if he gets the job, he chooses to refuse to apply for the commissioner's office, his dream since he joined the NYPD, and sabotages the road trip so he can't apply in time for the interview. After his crew convinces him not to refuse the job, Murphy asks him a permit to throw a block party, which would have been a cover for an armoured car heist, which he gives him, but uses his nephew, Kyle to plant a bug on him. After that, he and Jake choose to protect Kyle, who was suspected of being The Mole by Murphy. The latter then threatens Holt's husband, Kevin, and ends up kidnapping Jake and Holt for his revenge on the theft being averted by the police, although they were saved in the end. In addition to that, because of his progressive policies on how to run the NYPD, all of his opponents but one had to be removed (either because of bad health or that they gave up) for him to have a chance for the commissioner post, which he didn't even get, in favour to the much more conservative John Kelly.
• In Doctor Who:
  • The Doctor has to deal with this all the time, in particular during his tenth incarnation. He's constantly trying to do the right thing, often though, his over objectivity causes more trouble than it seems worth (see what he did to Harriet Jones career - by ruining her career because she made a choice he considered immoral, he unintentionally paved the way for the Master to become prime minister and turn Earth into a dystopia in a prequel to destroying it completely). People also tend to get killed trying to save him, leaving him with one hell of a Guilt Complex. In particular...
  • The Twelfth Doctor's Myth Arc (Series 8-10) embodies this trope. Having lost so much to his Chronic Hero Syndrome and Samaritan Syndrome by this incarnation, he is perhaps too determined to hold himself to his chosen name and save others. In Series 9 he ends up betrayed by Ashildr/Me and the Time Lords — who owed their lives to him (with, granted, huge downsides as a result) — and his companion Clara ends up dead when the plan goes awry thanks to her Chronic Hero Syndrome. And then he endures a torture chamber; in the aftermath, a man distinguished by compassion for others doesn't receive it when he's been Driven to Madness. He becomes a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds in "Hell Bent", seeking Revenge against his enemies and risking all of space and time to get Clara back. Thankfully he repents... but Redemption Equals Affliction: he loses her and crucial memories of her via Mind Rape. He has a better stretch for a while, but the Series 10 Story Arc begins when he decides not to execute insane, murderous Missy and thus has to take The Slow Path guarding a vault that contains her, rather than her corpse for 1,000 years. As "Extremis" puts it, a true hero isn't truly good unless they're willing to stay that way "Without hope, without witness, without reward." But his efforts to do right, kind things despite the risks to him and those who choose to help him eventually leave him completely alone, unsure if anyone he cares about is okay, and longing for death instead of impending regeneration. However, Throw the Dog a Bone comes in with his Grand Finale, in which he helps his original self accept regeneration (see below), performs one final act of kindness for another by saving a man who turns out to be the Brigadier's ancestor, learns Bill did not die as a Cyberman but was rescued by her seemingly-lost sweetheart, and has his memories of Clara restored. Although he still wants his final rest, he decides helping others is still Worth Living For — even as he acknowledges this particular self has to die to do so — and regenerates into Thirteen.
  (From "Heaven Sent") "I can't keep doing this. I can't! I can't always do this! It's not fair! Clara, it's just not fair! WHY CAN'T I JUST LOSE?!"
  • Jack Harkness has a case of this in the Ninth Doctor's run. When he goes into a suicide mission against the Daleks, he says that he was better off a coward.
  • In the 2017 Christmas episode, "Twice Upon a Time", the First Doctor holds this view. To him, by any objective measure Evil should prevail, as Good simply requires too many things, like self-sacrifice, that make for bad survival traits. Yet good is often the victor in the end. He acknowledges that figuring out why this is was one of the factors that led to his leaving Gallifrey. When the person he's telling this to suggests that maybe what keeps it all together is a single bloke timing around helping where he can, the Doctor proves Oblivious to His Own Description and dismisses the idea as a fairy tale. It ends up being the Twelfth Doctor who helps him understand that "The universe generally fails to be a fairy tale. But that's where we come in." This is critical to One choosing to regenerate (allowing subsequent selves to exist and thus avoiding a Reality-Breaking Paradox) instead of dying for good, despite having seen a glimpse of the sorrows in his future over the course of the story.
• Highway to Heaven: Jonathan the angel and his sidekick Mark Gordon both dislike the fact that they have to do God's will when they'd rather beat someone up. In one episode, Jonathan goes against God's will and beats up a group of guys for stealing a guy's lunch.
• Blackadder: A Blackadder's Christmas Carol seemingly confirms this trope, showing the main character just how much Being Good Sucks and how improved his life and the lives of his descendants will be if he turns evil. Then it goes and inverts it at the end by having Blackadder's newly acquired nasty behavior cost him a knightship and a large sum of money. (Although said behavior did finally get all of his leeching freeloaders off of his back, so that accounts for something.)
• Bones:
  • In "A Man on Death Row", Booth and Bones spend the episode dealing with the case of a death-row convicted murderer, Howard Epps, whose lawyer claims he'd be exonerated with new evidence. Booth is suspicious from the start and only goes along with it to make absolutely sure, given that he originally arrested the guy. It turns out that Epps wanted them to find at least two other women he murdered. Booth, frustrated, realizes that he intended this all along; if the bodies came to light, he'd have to be tried for those murders before he could be executed, and that could take years. Booth contemplates not phoning in the discovery, but Bones urges him to do so, saying that the women they found deserve justice. It doesn't make either of them feel better.
  • Booth's boss, the Deputy Director of the FBI has a teenaged daughter who's dying from lung cancer. Bones refuses to let it lie (as that's very unusual) and discovers that her broken leg the previous year was grafted not with a 20-year old donor's body part, but the bone from a 60+-year-old woman who was riddled with cancer. On learning this, and that it doesn't in any way change his daughter's death sentence, Booth's boss thanks them for the information, informs them that the FBI isn't his personal police force, tells them to hand the information to the appropriate agency, and walks back into his daughter's hospital room, fighting off Manly Tears.
• Jeff Winger comes to this conclusion in the season 4 premiere of Community after deciding to turn over a new leaf and abandon his self-serving ways.
• Shinji Kido in Kamen Rider Ryuki tries his damndest to stop the other participants of the Rider War from killing one another. It does horrors for his emotional well-being. Towards the finale, he even decides to outright participate in the Rider War. Then, he dies.
• Game of Thrones:
  • This is a main theme in the show. Many of the characters that try to do the right thing end up suffering for it in the end while the characters who plot and scheme against others typically get their way. However, this gets deconstructed later in the series when it turns out being the Doomed Moral Victor can also lead to Undying Loyalty of one's subjects as a Universally Beloved Leader. This is perhaps best exemplified by ten-year-old Lyanna Mormont's declaration when Stannis demands the capitulation of the northern noble Houses early in Season 5: "Bear Island knows no king but the King in the North, whose name is Stark."
  • Most of everything Jon does, he does for the good of the Watch and Westeros, but he faces much hardship for it — some of it from a faction of his Watch brothers — and he ends up feeling increasingly isolated from them. Being killed in a mutiny by a group of Watch men and hanging them in return, including the boy — Olly — who helped murder him, is the last straw for him, and he leaves the Watch in Season 6 thoroughly disillusioned with them and sick of fighting.
• In That '70s Show, Red give an epic Cluster F-Bomb rant after he gets guilt tripped into taking Hyde into his home after his mother abandoned him.
  Red: You know I'd like to help him. We don't have the money.
  Kitty: Well I suppose we could call Social Services.
  Red: Yeah, now see, that's sensible.
  Kitty: Yeah, they'll know what to do. After all, they take thousands of cases every year. So many in fact that have to house them in gymnasiums!
  Red: Kitty!
  Kitty: With no heat!
  Red: Goddamnit! I am tired of being fucking Santa Claus! (Hyde comes back into the room) Steven, you get your shit together, and you get your ass in the Goddamned car! We're going, fucker! Now Goddamnit. Move it!
  Hyde: (terrified) Okay! (runs out the room)
  Kitty: You are just the sweetest man alive. (follows after Hyde)
  Red: (takes one last look around the room) FUCK!
• In episode 1836 of Sesame Street, Mr. Snuffleupagus enters the New York Marathon, which only Big Bird is aware of, due to the adults not yet believing in his existence. Eventually, Big Bird waits for Snuffy, who comes in last, long after the race ended, while Gordon and Susan agree to wait in their car, falling asleep by the time Snuffy shows up. Big Bird wants to wake them up so they can see Snuffy, but Snuffy tells Big Bird not to since it's not nice to wake people up. Big Bird remarks, "it's not easy being good. Sometimes I wish I was a grouch."
• On Good Luck Charlie, Gabe feels this way whenever he is forced to do something good.
• Earl Hickey on My Name Is Earl. Making up for mistakes is not easy. Sometimes people are too angry with him for his former misdeeds to accept his efforts to make up to him, or are just plain selfish. Sometimes making up for list items (or even helping people not on the list!) costs every dime he has. Although he always gets the money back eventually. Sometimes (OK, most of the time) Randy doesn't understand what he's doing or why and/or screws up Earl's mission. Sometimes Earl doesn't know how to make things right, especially since the problem is usually a lot more complicated than it's written on the list.
• This comes up frequently in the short-lived early '00s sitcom Do Over, in which 30-something Joel Larson is given the chance to relive his adolescence. He takes the opportunity to fix the mistakes he made in the past, but also runs into the temptation to use his knowledge of the future for profit or glory, such as taking credit for Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)", which he always ends up resisting.
• In The Flash (2014), Barry Allen feels duty-bound to use his super-speed to save as many lives as possible. Captain Cold exploits this in order to ensure his escape. It also complicates his personal life by making him seem aloof and unreliable.
• In Friends, Richard wants to get back together with Monica after their rough break up years before. He's helped by the fact Monica thinks Chandler - her current boyfriend - has decided never to commit to their relationship, however Chandler confesses to Richard it's a misunderstanding and he's actually about to propose. Richard agrees to step aside but invokes this trope while doing so.
  Chandler: (relieved) You really are a good guy.
  Richard: I know. I hate that.
• The cops in DCI Banks seem to be treated very coldly by the general public in Eastvale; absolutely thankless when cases are cracked, and apportioning blame and scorn when even the smallest thing goes wrong.
• Wonder Woman (1975): Wonder Woman stays on Earth instead of exploring the stars with Andros. Additionally, her World War II romantic interest in Steve Trevor Sr. remains unrequited.
• Better Call Saul: Believed by the Villain Protagonist Amoral Attorney Jimmy McGill. His kind-hearted but naive father gave out money to every grifter with a sob story, even deliberately ignoring Jimmy's warning that one such guy is a con man; the 11-year-old Jimmy's Start of Darkness was embezzling money from his father's store because he'd lost all respect for the man. Generally speaking, the series gives a fairly nuanced view of the trope, showing how doing things the "right" way is often dull, slow, and monotonous, but while doing things the "wrong" way may have immediate and large benefits, it will often have terrible consequences down the line. For a conman-turned-lawman like Jimmy, the constant temptation to go behind the law while trying to go straight is just too strong.
• A common recurring theme in The Good Place is that being a good person is a really difficult endeavor, especially in today's world (but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try still).
  • By the end of Season 2, the main four humans' deaths are averted for the purpose of making them improve upon themselves after having a Near-Death Experience. Eleanor has a Jerkass Realization after her experience and is shown making an honest effort to be a better person, but it isn't too long before she winds up going back to her old self-serving ways. When she meets with a disguised Michael in a bar, she says this trope word-for-word, prompting him to find a way to keep her on the right track.
  • In the Season 3 episode "Don't Let the Good Life Pass You By", Michael and Janet visit Doug Forcett, the only human to most closely accurately figure out how the afterlife functions while tripping on magic mushrooms. They quickly discover that his vision of the afterlife has ruined his earthly life, as it's made him utterly terrified of doing anything that could jeopardize his chances of getting into the Good Place and consequently, he's become a complete and total Extreme Doormat who is obsessed with being absolutely morally perfect to the detriment of his own well-being. Janet herself even describes him as a "happiness pump" - he subsists solely on lentils, radishes from his home garden, and recycled water, lets a preteen boy push him around, volunteers himself as a human test subject for various products so that they won't be tested on animals, breaks down when he accidentally calls Michael "Mark", and becomes utterly distraught when he accidentally steps on a snail and later gives it a full-fledged funeral when he's unable to save its life. What's worse, this still isn't good enough to get him into the Good Place, a fact Michael uses to persuade the Judge that it's impossible for modern people to pass a test created in a world preceding modern technology, creating a very Easy Road to Hell.
• Miami Vice: Several instances in the later seasons, which contribute to Crockett and Tubbs eventually quitting the force, show that, for all their attempts to do the right thing, the villains often get off on technicalities and innocent people get caught in the crossfire.
• Jessica Jones (2015) has this in spades.
  • In Season 1, Jessica is compelled to punch a lady to death on Killgrave's orders, and in the end has to snap his neck to end the mayhem he causes. At the very end she questions whether she deserves to be the hero, despite practically everyone around her saying she did the right thing.
  • Season 2 has the main villain be her own mother Alisa, who lost control of her temper as her Super-Strength became stronger. Jessica risks becoming a fugitive by trying to flee with her, only for Alisa to be shot by Trish.
  • Season 3 forces Jessica to turn on Trish, the only real family she has left due to Trish being drunk on her own powers and sense of heroism. Her broadcast to alert the public to the danger Trish poses puts it nicely.
    Jessica: Don't try to be the hero. Trust me, it's a really shitty job.

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