History DamselInDistress / LiveActionTV

* ''Series/{{Castle}}'': As the one on the show who puts himself in situations he's not equipped for, Rick Castle is usually the one in distress, but in the fifth season episode "Target", [[spoiler:his daughter gets kidnapped.]]

* Alex Cahill is kidnapped in almost every other episode of ''Series/WalkerTexasRanger''.

*** Everybody is Distressed sooner or later. There's even episodes where Buffy takes this role. In the first few seasons, Willow is the main Distressed Damsel. In second two, she and Xander share the role. As Willow grows in power in seasons three and four, Xander, Giles, and Spike end up in this position more often than the others. In seasons 5 and 6, it's Dawn. In season 7, it's the potentials.

*** Fred aka Winifred is the Damsel more frequently than Cordelia, first she's trapped as a slave in a Pylea the demon dimension and then she's nearly executed before being saved by Angel causing her to fall in unrequited love with him. Fred does gets a bit better throughout the episodes and becomes a crack shot with a gun like Wesley. In "[[Recap/AngelS05E15AHoleInTheWorld A Hole in the World]]", Fred tries to fight her status as DistressedDamsel:

** She showed some signs of her impending badassery earlier on in the episode "War Stories" when she gunned down three of Niska's men with her eyes closed in order to save Kaylee, who would have shared DistressedDamsel duty had the series actually continued. Joss Whedon has said something to the tune of, "Whenever we wanted to up the suspense, we just put the [[WrenchWench cute engineer]] in danger."

* AgentScully from ''Series/TheXFiles'' spends a worrying amount of time (especially in seasons 1 to 4) being kidnapped, tied up and drooled over by freaks and fruitcakes. Her partner AgentMulder does get captured/injured/drugged/whatever in a fair share episodes as well (the show was one of the earliest to divvy up the proportion of Distressed Damsel and DistressedDude pretty equally between the male and female protagonists), but ultimately it's Scully who gets BoundAndGagged more often than Mulder, Doggett, or any of the other main characters.

* ''Series/{{Willow}}'': Dove gets kidnapped by Ballantine. She escapes briefly, but is recaptured. She's rescued later by the others.

* ''Series/{{Willow}}'': Dove gets kidnapped by Bellantine. She escapes briefly, but is recaptured. She's rescued later by the others.

* ''Series/StrangerThings'' does this with [[spoiler: Max]] in the Season 4 [[Recap/StrangerThingsS4E4ChapterFourDearBilly "Dear Billy"]], requiring all the Hawkins characters to focus on working out how to save her from [[spoiling: becoming Vecna's third victim. She ends up pretty distressed and ends up being tied up with tentacles before escaping with the help of Kate Bush.]]

** Mary Tamm was initially leery of taking a companion role in the series for this very reason, but she was assured that her character, Romana, would be an intellectual equal to the Doctor and a competent woman to boot. Supposedly, she left the role later on because she felt it had reverted to this trope (although possibly she left because she was having a baby — the internet is not very clear on the matter).

* Used not infrequently with Gwen in ''Series/{{Merlin|2008}}''. It hasn't started becoming annoying ''quite'' yet, but the jury is still out on how many more times a plot can revolve either around her putting herself in a situation (however morally justifiable) that requires Arthur to half-kill himself just to get her out of it (a la ''The Last Dragonlord''), or around her being rescued successfully, only to ''fall over'' about seven seconds later and end up needing saving all over again, before things start getting really tiresome. She's the only main character in the show to lack either magic powers, or having been trained to be a KnightInShiningArmour since childhood. And, like ''Series/{{Smallville}}'', every character that's not Merlin ends up with the role in at least one episode, including the future Myth/KingArthur.

* Used not infrequently with Gwen in ''Series/{{Merlin|2008}}''. It hasn't started becoming annoying ''quite'' yet, but the jury is still out on how many more times a plot can revolve either around her putting herself in a situation (however morally justifiable) that requires Arthur to half-kill himself just to get her out of it (a la ''The Last Dragonlord''), or around her being rescued successfully, only to ''fall over'' about seven seconds later and end up needing saving all over again (''Lancelot and Guinevere'', I'm looking at you.), before things start getting really tiresome. She's the only main character in the show to lack either magic powers, or having been trained to be a KnightInShiningArmour since childhood. And, like ''Series/{{Smallville}}'', every character that's not Merlin ends up with the role in at least one episode, including the future KingArthur.

* ''Series/GuardianTheLonelyAndGreatGod'': Eun-tak on occasion (kidnapped by loan sharks, pursued by grim reapers, involved in weird accidents...). Partly justified by her status as a missing soul, which means the universe tries [[BalacingDeathsBooks to self-correct by killing her.]]