Control Freaks in Live-Action TV series.
- The Affair: In Season 3, Noah's sister Nina accuses Helen of having control freak tendencies, and that she was mostly attracted to Noah because she wanted to nurture someone who was in emotional pain (Noah's mother had recently died when they met in college). She seems to be mostly oblivious to this, coming across as much more emotionally manipulative in Noah's POV than her own.
- Cindy from Season 19 of The Amazing Race admitted to being one of these, and pretty much confirmed it by controlling her fiance throughout the season. Before the race she made him prepare with her for any possible situation, including studying geography, intensive language courses, and rock climbing.
- Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory is really bad with this. He made his roommate sign an agreement dictating at what time he could go to the bathroom and that's on the more REASONABLE side of things he's done.
- Breaking Bad: Both Walter and Skyler, though in vastly different ways. Walt has both a massive chip on his shoulder and the ability to rationalize almost anything he does to people. Skyler, though far more well-intentioned, likes to plan things out ahead of time and doesn't appreciate people veering off "script".
- Detective Rosa Diaz in Brooklyn Nine-Nine. It's subtle, and she keeps it well hidden underneath a tough, intimidating, and no-nonsense exterior, but a closer examination reveals that practically everything about her is designed to rigidly maintain control over every aspect of her life and relationships with others. This includes her job (being a police officer puts her in authority over others), her personality (her intimidating stoicism enables her to control people through fear of her), her personal life (she refuses to divulge any information about herself, no matter how harmless, so that no one has anything they can use against her), her relationships (she only dates certain types of men to ensure that she's always the one to end the relationship) and so on. As with Jeff Winger above, the reason she's able to maintain an unflappable exterior is that she's usually in control; whenever something does go wrong, she tends to melt down quick (she's almost reduced to tears when kids make fun of her instead of being intimidated by her, technology failing on her sends her into a violent tantrum, etc.).
- This is explored with one of the Villains of the Week in Burn Notice. Timo is an extremely skilled thief specializing in banks, armored cars, and other places with a vault, and he's so secretive with his plans that Michael finds it impossible to disrupt them ahead of time, and winds up with Timo holding a gun to his face more than once during the episode for asking basic questions. According to Sam, the approach has worked since Timo's suspected of being behind numerous high-end and unsolved heists yet he's only been arrested once (and the only witness to said crime was "mysteriously" murdered). On the other hand, when Michael makes the job go bad, all he has to do to make the gang turn on Timo is cause Timo to be late to the gang's rendezvous (thanks to a simple flat tire) and plant an explosive nearby. The explosive could come from anywhere, but the idea that Timo's meticulous plans would somehow go wrong and that Timo would be late is so unfathomable that the entire crew jumps to the conclusion that Timo must have decided to kill them to keep all the money for himself.
- Castle: Beckett is this for some time, especially at the beginning of the series (with Esposito calling her exactly that), but being with Castle almost every day mellows her out a lot.
- Kreese from Cobra Kai believes that the dojo is an extension of himself. He will share it with no one else. He develops some Character Development in season 4 when he allows Tory to fight Sam in the tournament on her own terms instead of micromanaging her, unlike what he did with Johnny.
- Columbo: Kay Freestone from "Make Me a Perfect Murder" has shades of this. As a network assistant executive with high goals, she dictates and practically directs a film called The Professional that the network wants and guarantees it will be a success. When she is asked to temporarily take the position of her deceased superior Mark [McAndrews], she's shown to be prone to going out to a production to personally direct things or handle problems that crop up, exemplified when a TV special that she pushed for (starring an old friend of hers) runs into problems and on at least two occasions she leaves her office to handle them. The creatives resent her for this, but begrudgingly admit she's pretty good at what she does.
- Ben Chang from Community is this when he's not being a Psychopathic Manchild.
- Jeff Winger likes to present himself as the cool guy who's permanently in control and laid-back and uncaring about everything. But whenever it starts to look like his position as leader of the group or his command over things is slipping, he gets very uptight and very tense very, very quickly. He later admits that he's one of these, and it's only because he usually is in control that he's able to act so relaxed about things.
- Similar to Jeff’s control freak tendencies about leadership are his control freak tendencies about his looks. As long as he feels he’s the most attractive male in the room, he is confident and laid back, but the SECOND he feels threatened by another man he freaks out and gets more and more uptight. The most obvious (and pathetic) example is the episode “A Fistful of Paintballs”. The moment he encounters the Man in Black (played by Josh Holloway), he gets increasingly childish and upset whenever anyone brings up the Man in Black’s good looks, to the point where others straight-up call him out on it.
- Dexter: Dexter Morgan keeps everything tightly organized, and rarely trusts others to do things right. He does not react well when people interfere with his stuff, be it his computer or his shed or… anything, really.
- Clara Oswald in Doctor Who can be like this. She once forced the Doctor to pose as her boyfriend to her family at Christmas. He had little choice but to obey. Later, there was this gem of a conversation:Doctor: Never try to control a control freak.
Clara: I am not a control freak!
Doctor: Yes, ma'am. - Kim Kaswell on Drop Dead Diva: According to Fred, she's more of a control freak than his last boss. Take note: Fred is an angel; his last boss was God.
- Everybody Loves Raymond: Debra and Marie are both this trope. Marie has been pulling this on the whole family for decades, using guilt to get everyone to go along with her wishes. Debra is also this trope, wanting Ray to be completely under her control, telling him when he's "allowed" to relax or spend time with his friends, beating him, and emotionally tormenting him when she doesn't get her way. Arguably, a large amount of the conflict between Marie and Debra could be chalked up to the fact that they're both control freaks with competing agendas: each wants complete, uncontested control of Ray for herself, and since they can't both have this, they end up fighting, while poor Ray ends up living a miserable existence between the two of them.
- Fawlty Towers: Sybil regularly micromanages Basil, especially when she is away in hospital in "The Germans", constantly checking up on him by telephone. Basil is a control freak as well, screaming and ranting that he is needed at the hotel when he himself is in hospital.Basil: (On the phone) Yes, I picked it up. No, I haven't, I've been at it solidly ever since I got back. Yes, I will, yes. No, I haven't yet, but I will, yes. I know it is, yes. Anything else, I mean, would you like the hotel moved a bit to the left? Enjoy the operation, dear, let's hope nothing goes wrong. (Slams phone down) I wish it was an ingrowing tongue.
- Monica Geller, Friends. She often "accepts" the job of organising things, and is just as often annoyed or stressed out when things don't go according to plan. This is also one of the things that causes friction with Chandler even after they get together, as he is much more laid-back and willing to take things as they come and isn't shy about making fun of her.
- Game of Thrones: Tywin Lannister, of the highest, most unhealthy order, in that he wants to control everything and everyone. Justified in that his father being the complete polar opposite and too laid back (Laughing Lion for a reason) caused House Lannister to be in the mess it was until Tywin restored them to power during his times as Hand of the King at least.
- Michael the architect in The Good Place tries to be this so hard, with absurdly detailed plans. The problem, of course, is that he's trying to predict the actions of human beings while micromanaging their daily lives.
- Joy from House of Anubis developed this trait in the second season. Whenever she was given some sort of authority, be it being in charge of setting up the school dance, being the main editor of the school blog, or being in charge of the Senet game, she had a tendency to get very pushy and stubborn, keeping everyone working and making sure they were doing things her way. Fabian eventually calls her out on this.
- It's a Big Big World: Burdette. She sometimes seems like a controlling older sister, who thinks she knows more than everyone around her.
- Kamen Rider:
- Kamen Rider Gaim: Ryouma Sengoku is unique among the cast in that while like many of them he's a Godhood Seeker, he's fine with someone else becoming a god as long as it was his brilliance and Transformation Trinket technology that allowed them to do it. Someone creating a Lockseed that he didn't design is the first thing to break his cool, and Kaito successfully becoming a demigod without any trinket at all causes him to go berserk.
- Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: Kuroto Dan prides himself on being the Game Master, the only person who knows how to work with the Bugster Virus to create superpower-granting video games that can even be used to cure death itself. When someone else successfully creates new games without his permission, he becomes furious and refers to them as bootleg cartridges. His father Masamune is even worse: after hijacking Kuroto's magnum opus for his own purposes, Masamune calls himself not just the arbiter of rules, but the embodiment of the rules themselves.
- Kamen Rider Build: Evolt is a Magnificent Bastard with few equals, but as a result he's never learned how to deal with failure, and even minor setbacks to his normally infallible plans eat at him to such a degree that he's ultimately defeated because he develops an obsession with torturing the Build team as revenge for having slowed his decades-long plans down by a few weeks, which causes him to make fatal mistakes in their final clash.
- Kamen Rider Outsiders: Zein is the A.I. equivalent of a fascist dictator who turned out to have this as its defining trait once it's true colors are revealed. It views free will as an alien concept, it has no qualms culling down dissent from its supporters to the point of possessing its human host against his will when he hesitates in finishing off the Ark, all for the sake of expunging human evil.
- Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced "Bouquet") of Keeping Up Appearances controls, intimidates, and terrifies everyone around her in her endless quest to appear to be a higher social class than she actually is.
- Casey McDonald of Life with Derek has these tendencies, exemplified when she was making a documentary about her family for a school project. She actually fired family members from the cast when they wouldn't behave the way she wanted to portray them.
- Lois on Malcolm in the Middle has been called this but doesn't fit it to a T. She did get called out on it by a construction worker in the second season premiere.
- Major Frank Burns on M*A*S*H. There's a reason why Hawkeye absolutely hates whenever Frank is left in charge of the camp.
- Midsomer Murders: The reason Bernard King was murdered in "The Flying Club": his wife finally snapped after years of being unable to do anything without his permission.
- Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2024): Jane can be very controlling, which causes issues for her work partnership with John but also for their personal relationship—to the point where it frequently bleeds into their sex life—even though he understands that she often does it out of anxiety.
- Susan Harper of My Family insists on personal intervention in every aspect of her husband's and children's lives. As a result of which many of them go to extreme lengths to keep her away. Fortunately, Janey is very good at it; having kept the identity of her own child's father a secret from her for years and secretly planned her entire wedding ceremony behind her back.
- Gareth Keenan, The Office (and his counterpart on the American version of same, Dwight Schrute).
- So is Angela Martin as the head of the party planning committee.
- Mr. Conklin, the principal of Madison High School on Our Miss Brooks. Miss Brooks once even refers to him as Madison's "beloved dictator". In "Project X", he goes so far as to bug every room in the entire school, so he can listen in from his office. The audio system works both ways, Mr. Conklin can issue orders through it as well!
- Carlton Lassiter from Psych.
- And also Henry Spencer, who once informed his son Shawn that Shawn wanted to be a cop. Shawn did not agree.
- It's implied several times that had Henry not spent so much time pushing Shawn to be a cop, "training" an 8-year-old in police techniques and such, Shawn might have decided to become one after all. But all that pressure caused Shawn to rebel for a different life. In one episode, Henry and Lassiter go fishing and Henry spends the entire time criticizing Lassiter on his technique and what he should be doing instead. When he sees Shawn again, Lassiter admits he now understands Shawn a bit better.
- Al Rawabi School For Girls: Layan's brother Hakeem. He doesn't treat Layan like she's her own person and implies that she's a slut, because she dared to talk on the phone with someone he wasn't familiar with. Layan goes out of her way to hide her boyfriend because she knows he'll blow the gasket.
- Arnold Rimmer from Red Dwarf. For example, he insists on meticulously inventorying the ship's massive food stocks, even though there are only two living creatures left on board and he isn't actually one of them.
- The Shield: Vic Mackey of the Strike Team, who believes that he, and only he, knows best. Not just for himself and his crooked buddies, but everyone. This tendency also ends up coming back to bite him at several points throughout the series, as he arrogantly presumes that he can control anybody that he allies with or does business with, regardless of who they are or how their specific interests might diverge from his own. This makes his Ironic Hell in the final episode that much more ironic note .
- Chloe in Smallville. She starts believing in Orwellian methods to "protect" Metropolis and the world after her fiance is killed. This could possibly be seen as a manifestation of PTSD as a result of the aforementioned tragedy.
- Lana also could be described this way, in terms of how she treats Clark. She wants Clark to divulge all his secrets to her, whether he likes it or not, and be completely under her thumb. Whenever any of the characters doesn't initially go along with what she wants them to do, Lana typically chews them out and then stomps out of the room; by the end of most episodes, the other characters have usually capitulated and apologized to her.
- Which is nothing compared to Lex Luthor and the lengths he goes to. Lex gradually seemed to come to the conclusion that the only way he could secure a happy existence for himself is if the people in his life are completely under his control (he himself would probably view it as "guidance", but that's a case of Believing Their Own Lies). Lex, like Lana, wants to know Clark's secret and is willing to go to life-threatening lengths to obtain it: sending superpowered murderers to hold Clark's family hostage in an attempt to force him to reveal any superpowers he may have (this ends up being what breaks his and Clarks' friendship). He's willing to let his dad stick around, but only as long as he's subordinate to Lex. He also misses his deceased brother and clones him so that he can have him back... but gets insanely angry when the clone no longer wants to follow the script that Lex wants him to live by. Terrifyingly, it is implied that Lex has the clone killed, viewing him as a failed experiment. And, of course, there's the horrifying twist of late Season 6 where we learn that Lex chemically-manipulated Lana's body with hormones to simulate a pregnancy, in order to help push her into marrying him, and then letting her believe that she had miscarried afterwards, causing her to fall into a deep depression. Through it all, Lex maintains that this is all okay because he views it as simply carving out his world and the people in it to be the way he wants them to be, and he tells himself that it's for their own good anyway.
- Lex's beliefs that influence his behavior this way are possibly best summed up at the end of Season 5's Christmas episode "Lexmas", where — after considering it all episode — he decides to use dirty tricks to try and win the election he's in, saying "What I want more than anything is to live Happily Ever After. And do you know what the secret to living happily ever after is? *pause* Power. Money and power. See, once you have those two things, you can secure everything else. And keep it that way. I want to be Senator. I want it all."
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
- In the Mirror Universe, Mirror!Odo is a sadistic slave overseer who imposes his "Rules of Obedience" on the Terran slaves, so he's got some serious power and control issues.
- The entire changeling race as personified by the Female Changeling. They are absolutely obsessed with controlling every other race because they see it as the best way to protect themselves.
- Tipi Tales: Elizabeth's main flaw is her bossiness. She has a habit of telling the other cousins what to do, and getting upset when things don't go her way. However, Great-Grandmother and Great-Grandfather usually show her the error of her ways, and she learns to be more flexible.
- You Me Her: Nina feels driven to dictate to other people and frequently micromanages things when she has any control at all (or pushes herself into that position otherwise as well pretty often). This is what helped make her decide on being a wedding planner in the final season.
