Commonality Connection / Live-Action TV

Commonality Connections in Live-Action TV series.

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• In All in the Family, while Archie Bunker and George Jefferson are a pair of old bigoted racists who despise each other, if there's one thing they both agree on it's "white ought to stay with white and colored ought to stay with colored." Them agreeing on this point is pretty much the only bit of levity the two ever share, where the two of them quietly sit together without arguing.
• Bar Rescue: This was the key reason Jon Taffer brought chef Nick Liberato and mixologist Mia Mastroianni to Plush in Glenside, Pennsylvania. Their respective family trees were in the same region of Italy as the owner's: Calabria, or the "toe of the boot."
• In Bones, Sweets and Daisy are in a Friends with Benefits situation but Sweets doesn't want casual sex; he insists that if they're going to be together they should be together. But they can't find anything to bond over: She likes Indian food, he only went there because she likes it. She loves dogs, he's allergic. They finally find a commonality: they both have issues with the final season of Saved by the Bell.
• In season 5 of Cobra Kai, Johnny Lawrence and Chozen are heading to face a common enemy. As they do, the men swap stories on Danny LaRusso and find a bond in how they each hated him when younger but now respect what a great guy he is and share some of the badass moments they saw Daniel pull off.
• The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: Rian bonds with Brea over their troubled relationship with their parents who have both died, during Brea's mother's funeral.
• In Dinosaurs, Earl was initially hostile to a family of mammals staying with them at the time. But he and the mammal father quickly bond over how annoying their kids can be at times.
• Doctor Who:
  • The First Doctor gets off on the wrong foot with his companions, to say the least. After enduring a "The Reason You Suck" Speech too many and nearly getting the crew all killed due to the paranoia his meanness was causing, the sign he is prepared to reconcile with his main enemy, Ian, is through a short discussion with him in which they express mutual appreciation for Victorian clothing.
  • "The Ghost Monument": Graham O'Brien has a moment of sympathy with alien race contestant Angstrom over the fact that they both lost their wives to the Stenza, a race of conquering aliens.
• Fellow Travelers: When they meet for the first time, Timothy Laughlin is able to relate to Jackson Fuller in a way that the latter's father Hawkins cannot because they both feel lost and struggle with trying to find their place in the world.
  Tim: Where would you go?
  Jackson: Anywhere. Like the hobos who ride the trains. I just want to get away from here. Sounds stupid, but—
  Tim: No, no, it doesn't. Sometimes it's hard to know where we belong.
• Forever (2014): Henry and Jo have both lost someone they loved recently and aren't yet over them; Jo's husband died less than a year ago and Abigail left Henry and was never seen or heard from again (although Henry doesn't share all the details). In "The Art of Murder" they bond over how happy memories can make it hard to go someplace they associate with their lost love even more than sad ones do. In the second half of the season, they also share the fact that they've both killed someone for the first time.
• Frasier and Niles are surprised to learn that their father is as big a fan of Antiques Roadshow as they are. The three of them end up watching together and even come up with a Drinking Game where they take sips whenever "veneer" is mentioned.
  Daphne: Wow, I don't see you three watching the same show very often. What's going on? Pavarotti jumping the Grand Canyon?
• Friends:
  • An early scene has Monica and Chandler joking about their Hilariously Abusive Childhood.
    Monica: Chandler you were an only child, so you didn't have this problem?
    Chandler: No, though I had an imaginary friend... who my parents actually preferred. (Monica laughs and hugs him)
  • Parodied when Phoebe meets her birth mom. Initially hostile, Phoebe bonds with her when she learns they have so much in common: they both like pizza and The Beatles and think puppies are cute...
• Game of Thrones:
  • Sansa starts to form this with Loras in "The Climb", as they are both extremely depressed after losing a loved one (Ned for Sansa and Renly for Loras), plus they find life in King's Landing intolerable.
  • Sansa begins to bond with Tyrion over their outcast status. Then she learns of the Red Wedding.
  • How Davos persuades Lyanna, as both know what it is to suddenly be in charge of a position they never expected to have.
  • Daenerys with Tyrion, as they discuss their abusive fathers and terrible childhoods.
• Gilmore Girls: Jess and Rory strike up an Odd Friendship that baffles everyone in town, as he's an underachieving n'er-do-well sent to Luke because he was getting into too much trouble at home, and she's an Ivy League-bound prep school student. Lorelai even goes so far as to guess the Wrong Genre Savvy All Girls Want Bad Boys. In reality, they form an immediate connection as members of the Genius Book Club when he steals her copy of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg's Howl and returns it to her with his thoughts in margins. They form a bond over a shared love of literature, music, and pop culture.
• In Here Come the Brides, Jeremy bonds with his Love Interest Candy over the fact that he stutters and she bites her nails.
• Ricky and Gina in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. Both are "outsiders" in the Drama Club because he just joined and she just moved to Salt Lake, and both have unstable home lives. They bond over this in the back half of the first season.
• Janda Kembang: When Jufri wants to fire Rais and other methods fails to convince Jufri otherwise, Rais begins to say that he is in desperate need for money to make sure his beloved doesn't go back to her ex-husband. Since Jufri also has been desperately trying to get his ex back, Jufri is touched and decides to keep his fellow "love warrior" service.
• LazyTown: Part of the reason that Robbie's so good at manipulating the kids, as well as getting along with them on occasion, is that he shares their vices—Trixie's mischief, Stingy's greed, Pixel's laziness, and Ziggy's love of sweets.
• Legion: In "Chapter 22", when Charles Xavier and Gabrielle socialize for the first time, they bond over their love for cherry pie and their struggles with their mental health issues.
  Gabrielle: I'm not well, you know.
  Charles: Neither am I.
• My Left Nut: Mick and Rachael have their first bonding moment when they share their experiences about having fights with their parents.
• "Jack Frost" from season eight of Mystery Science Theater 3000 has Professor Bobo and Brain Guy get along after discovering something they have in common: their hatred for Pearl.
• This gets is played with in an episode of NCIS. Gibbs is trying to prove that a Medal of Honor recipient did not murder another soldier during the battle of Iwo Jima during World War II. However, the man's memory is failing and he no longer remembers what actually happened. All the other soldiers from the unit are dead so a desperate Gibbs brings in a Japanese war veteran who fought on the opposite side of the battle. Despite the fact that 60 years ago they were mortal enemies, their common connection is just what is needed to help the man remember how his buddy really died. This is then subverted when we find out that the Japanese man was never on Iwo Jima and is just a chef at a restaurant Gibbs eats at. Then it gets double subverted when he reveals that he actually fought on Guadalcanal where the American also served during the war and was injured.
• Charles, Oliver and Mabel in Only Murders in the Building, despite living in the same building, don't have much in common., but they discover and bond over their shared interest in True Crime.
• One Piece (2023):
  • Unlike in the manga/anime, Garp and Zeff meet up face to face and during a meal, they bond over the fact they are father figures for young men who must set out into the world and find their own place in the world.
  • Luffy bonds even more with Sanji in this adaptation as they both share a similar backstory where their mentors sacrifice a limb for them.
• Eliza attempts to invoke this twice on Selfie:
  • In "Un-Tag My Heart", she expresses how much she has in common with her neighbor Bryn when they obviously don't. Eliza tries to form an interest in Bryn's book club, (and avoid just thinking about sex with her current partner), but it doesn't work out when another member of the group points out Eliza's bookmark is eight pages in.
  • Eliza also does this in "With a Little Yelp From My Friends", by stalking co-worker Joan's reviews (after failing to find anything about her on things like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) of places online. Eliza parrots Joan's reviews, buys her favorite pizza but blows it by revealing too much — that Joan's husband was allergic to garlic, which Joan never told her.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: Attempted in the episode "Lower Decks." Ensign Sam Lavelle tries to ingratiate himself with Riker in order to secure a promotion. Ben (the 10-Forward waiter, a lower deck version of Guinan) suggests that Sam find something in common with Riker and mentions that Riker is Canadian. Sam's grandfather was Canadian, so he tries to use that. Turns out, Riker is Alaskan.
• Star Trek: Enterprise: One of the first signs of Shran and Archer's rivalry turning into a genuine friendship occurs in "Babel One", when they bond over learning that both their ships, the Kumari and the Enterprise were named for a long string of famous vessels from the respective homeworlds.
• Star Trek: Voyager: In "Random Thoughts", Tuvok strongly identifies with fellow law enforcement officer Nimira, and the Mari struggle to control the violence in their society, which mirrors that of Vulcan. When he meets Guill, Tuvok uses the "Not So Different" Remark to convince him he's genuine in wanting to exchange violent images. Tuvok even learns to relate to Half-Human Hybrid B'Elanna's struggle against her violent Klingon side.
• Star Trek: Picard:
  • In "Maps and Legends", Picard and Jurati are both fond of Earl Grey tea.
    Picard: Your preference? We have a selection.
    Jurati: Earl Grey?
    Picard: (smiling) I knew there was something about you.
  • In "Stardust City Rag", it's not revealed to what extent Picard and Seven of Nine know each other otherwise (Raffi doesn't recall them having met before), but they have a familiar demeanour due to their time in the Borg Collective Hive Mind.
  • Elnor and Hugh are strangers, but they develop an instant affinity for each other in "Nepenthe" because they're both Good Is Not Soft Nice Guys who dedicate themselves to helping the helpless. This is confirmed by Jonathan Del Arco in this interview, and he even portrayed Hugh as being in love with Elnor because of the selfless qualities they share in common.
    Del Arco: I think there were a lot of things about Elnor that for me resonated as a gay man. You know, I think [Hugh] loved [Elnor]. I think in essence he might've been in love with him in the time that he was there. I think that the hope was really someone loves him. Someone who was idealistic. I think he saw a lot of himself in Elnor. Hugh used to have that sense of innocence, of righteousness. And all those things were hopeful to him, because he hadn't been in a space of hope for all this time. And I think for a minute he thought, 'You know, I think me and the kid can go all the way with this. We could take the cube. We could save it.'
  • In "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2", Rios and Seven of Nine bond over the broken promises they've made to themselves, and they're both hardened, pessimistic Anti Heroes.
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: In "Children of the Comet", Uhura and Spock find common ground because they're both "too honest" and they're knowledgeable about the mathematics of music.
• Supernatural:
  • In the episode "Something Wicked" (S01, Ep18), Dean bonds with Michael, recognizing his need to protect his brother based on Dean having almost failed to protect Sam from the same creature when he was Michael's age.
  • In the Season 10 Episode, "About a Boy", Dean bonds with the Girl of the Week over both of them having stayed at the same seedy motel during their crappy childhoods.
• Two and a Half Men: When both of Alan's major Love Interests, Kandi and Lyndsey, finally meet, they both bond over insulting his bedroom skills and then end up sleeping together.
• Waco: Despite Thibodeau's mother resenting Koresh's mother for the situation that the former's son is in, the two of them connect over being clueless teen mothers and wait out the tail end of the siege together.
• You (2018): Joe and Beck both love literature. Since he's a Yandere he attempts to invoke this trope in other ways, in his stalking of Beck and showing up in places she likes.
• Young Sheldon: In "Gluons, Guacamole, and the Color Purple", Sheldon and Dr. Sturgis immediately befriend each other, not just because of their shared intellect, but also due to things like their favorite color (blue) and dessert (vanilla ice cream).

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