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Living Emotional Crutches in Live-Action TV series.


  • Liz was this to Jenna in early seasons of 30 Rock, but it mostly fell by the wayside after Jenna was Flanderized into a crazy Attention Whore.
  • Angel:
    • Fred becomes this to Wesley after getting his throat slashed, nearly killed by Angel for stealing Connor and temporarily alienated from the gang. After Fred dies, Wesley was never the same.
    • Cordelia for Angel during Season 3. She stuck with him after his son was kidnapped by Holtz and served as a steady, reliable source of companionship when Angel had spells of doubt and hopelessness.
  • Arrow:
    • Laurel Lance was this for Oliver Queen during his five years away from home. Right before the voyage, she gave him a picture to remind him of her while he was gone. Oliver never once parted with it, using it as a reminder that people were waiting for him back home. At one point, the memory/a hallucination of her talks him out of committing suicide. When Laurel dies a few years after his return from home, Oliver is pushed to the absolute brink, regressing back to killing and left on the teetering point of a breakdown. It is made very clear that, with her gone, Oliver Queen really can't take any more tragedy in his life before he falls apart completely.
    • Laurel is also this to her father Quentin, being the one person who never turned their back on him or stopped believing in him. He even outright says, "She's my rock", and the Dollmaker says, "She's your heart, your very soul". Oliver even lists this as a reason she shouldn't become the Black Canary, pointing out what would happen to her father if he lost her. Sure enough, her murder catapults him over the Despair Event Horizon. Actress Katie Cassidy at one point commented she feels Laurel is this to most of the characters, calling her a "backbone" and referencing her tendency to support everyone and try to see the best in them.
    • Felicity Smoak is passed the trope baton starting in Season 2 when she's Promoted to Love Interest at the expense of Laurel (despite the emphasis in Season 1, Oliver and Laurel's relationship fell flat to critics and fans alike, so the showrunners pivoted away from comic lore to the new fan favorite). Throughout Oliver's life as the Green Arrow, he is constantly fighting his urge as a vigilante executioner or trying to avoid the Despair Event Horizon when things look too hopeless even for him. And it's Felicity that pulls him back from one internal brink after another, whether it's to challenge him to be a better person or to remind him of all the good he's done and that no one has thrown a catastrophe at him he couldn't stop. Even years before she becomes his wife, any time a villain wants to hurt Oliver Queen personally, Felicity is almost always the primary target because of this trope.
    • Oliver's little sister Thea as well — in Season 3 after Sara is murdered and he pushes Felicity away, eventually causing her to leave him for Ray Palmer, Oliver falls into a Heroic BSoD that's only fixed by him traveling to Corto Maltese and convincing Thea to return to Starling City. It's only several years later when Oliver is in a stable relationship with Felicity that he encourages her to leave again with Roy Harper, even though both acknowledge they'll miss each other intensely.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Giles for Buffy in the first half of Season 6. Giles eventually leaves to force her to become independent.
    • Willow's girlfriend Tara was this extremely. After Tara gets shot and dies right in front of her, Willow goes insane with grief and literally almost ends the entire world.
    • Buffy for Spike. His love for her makes him depend on her for everything, whether hopes of reciprocation, general companionship, or redemption. Buffy's still the only person besides Dawn in the entire Scooby Gang he hangs out with outside of parties and slaying.
    • For the majority of S7, Spike was this for Buffy. Under pressure of organizing potential slayers and the threat of the First Evil, she relied on Spike as a source of connection and stability, even to the point of believing he was the only person she could fully trust.
      Buffy: No, you have to stay.
      Spike: Why?
      Buffy: Because I'm not ready for you to not be here.
    • Buffy also functioned like this for Angel, who fell in love with her. She gave him connection where he had none and revived his hopes of redemption and being a champion. However, after he leaves for L.A., Buffy becomes more of a Morality Pet than a living crutch, given how Angel becomes used to being away from her.
  • Ida Lenze in Charite is prepared to become this for Doctor Emil Behring, a man with rather severe psychological and emotional issues, when they make plans to marry. Ida's friend warns her that she can't save Behring from himself — she replies: "No, but perhaps give him support."
  • Josh is this for Rebecca in Season 1 of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend — almost everything in her life revolves around him, and when she can't pursue him, she doesn't even know who she is. After Season 1, the person in question varies, but in general, Rebecca has a tendency to cling to her closest romantic relationship and rely on them for her basic mental stability. Justified in Season 3 when she is officially diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, which often does induce this behavior in the real world.
  • Wild Bill Hickock is one for Calamity Jane in Deadwood. Then he gets shot in the back of the head, and she goes on a drunken binge that lasts about a year.
  • In Degrassi: The Next Generation, when Ellie starts dating Sean, she insists on bringing her Pet Homosexual Marco with her on their dates, and he is explicitly called her security blanket. This is largely because she's never been in a real relationship before, and had only been someone's beard up till then.
  • In Elementary, Joan Watson is this to Sherlock Holmes, and he flat out admits this to her and his brother when they are in the imminence of being apart.
  • As with the above examples, in Sherlock, Sherlock depends on John to be there for him and honestly, John needs him too. They definitely didn't have it easy at the start of the series and don't take it too well when the other's threatened, which proves that you're screwed if you do try it. Also, Sherlock doesn't want his friend to lose faith in him. Luckily, he doesn't.
  • Doctor Who:
    • Rose was this to the Doctor in Series 1 and 2. When they were separated the Doctor spent the next season depressed and implicitly suicidal. The last time we saw the Tenth Doctor genuinely happy for any extended period of time was during Series 2!
    • All the companions, to a certain extent. They work as a combination of friendship, a Morality Chain, and helping the Doctor see the beauty of the universe again. In the new series, although he loved Rose, he was just as disappointed when Martha left him, completely devastated when Donna's memory was wiped, and became a virtual recluse when he lost Amy and Rory (not to mention going into pure fury when Amy was kidnapped). Even in the classic series, the death of Adric tore him apart. In fact, the Doctor seems to be dependent on these crutches, but unlike many of the other examples on this page, is doomed to outlive all of them. And this reaches an apex with...
    • Clara Oswald, companion of first the Eleventh and then Twelfth Doctors, over Series 8 and 9. Twelve has No Social Skills and is Creepy Good, embodying Good Is Not Nice and Pragmatic Hero. As he does not get on well with most people — even Clara has trouble with him initially — his relationship with her is one of the few things that keeps him grounded, and grows stronger after they experience mutual tragedies at the end of Series 8. Now she's using him as a crutch too, outright saying he's essential to her in "Before the Flood". Anyone threatening or harming Clara will find they've pressed a Berserk Button hard; in Series 9 he openly laments that he has no idea how he'll move on from her when the time comes, even bringing up how much he's already lost. And then comes "Face the Raven", in which she is Killed Off for Real. As she prepares for this, Clara knows he will have a very hard time handling this, and warns him before they're parted not to let this change him. Alas, he doesn't even have a chance to process his anguish before he's dropped into a torture chamber by his enemies, where he spends the next 4.5 billion years basically lamenting Clara in the episode "Heaven Sent". In the season finale "Hell Bent", he has firmly become a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, willing to risk the safety of the universe to save her, heedless of what she wants. In the end, he realizes how badly he's gone astray, and accepts that they cannot stay together because their relationship is too strong for anyone's health. In the end, he even accepts being Mind Raped and losing most of his memories of her in the service of returning to his best self and making a fresh start. The story that follows, "The Husbands of River Song", sees him initially broody and traveling solo, but his actions show how far he's come emotionally thanks to what he's learned from his recent experiences.
    • In the Expanded Universe Big Finish audios, this trope holds especially true for the Eighth Doctor and Lucie Miller after "Orbis".
  • Euphoria: When Rue and Jules get together, Rue centers herself around her new girlfriend, glowingly indicating she can stop drug use because 'she's met someone'....but at the cost of making herself rather codependent on Jules.
  • Firefly:
    • Simon to his sister River. It's very much reciprocated, as the movie Serenity shows us exactly how dangerous River can get when Simon's life is threatened.
    • Every person on Serenity to Mal. They each represent some emotional aspect or part of his life he's become dissociated from.
    • Also Wash to Zoe. We see how quickly she goes into her hardened military persona when he dies in the movie.
  • Fleabag is a dark comedy about what happens when an It's All About Me character with multiple living emotional crutches loses them one by one.
  • Peter to Walter in Fringe. Peter can somewhat focus Walter, calm him down, and ground him in reality. However, Peter is very critical of Walter (and oddly overprotective), leading to bouts between them or Olivia.
  • Despite his stated belief that Love Is a Weakness, Ed Nygma/the Riddler has this in his Only Friend Oswald Cobblepot/the Penguin on Gotham. When he thought Penguin was dead, Nygma spends no less than an entire episode in a spiraling depression and existential crisis, to the point of taking drugs just to keep a hallucination of his friend around.
    • Oswald himself had this in his mother. After her death, he was fully planning on giving up his quest for revenge, his throne and life of crime, and leaving Gotham, all usually unthinkable acts for the Determinator that is Penguin. He snaps out of his Villainous BSoD, but the fact that he was considering it at all showed just how much his mother meant to him.
  • In House, Wilson is this for House. And while their relationship may appear to be of the All Take and No Give variety, it actually goes both ways as Wilson is not as well-adjusted as he seems, and probably needs House just as much as he is needed by him.
  • Inspector Lynley and his partner, Sergeant Havers. They are both incredibly screwed-up people, but over the course of the show regain something resembling normal emotional stability because they happen to balance each other perfectly. Separate them again, and the results aren't pretty (although not as bad as they were before they met each other, thanks to a healthy dose of character development).
  • Kamen Rider Blade: Hajima Aikawa becomes a big brother figure to Amane Kurihara after the death of her father. He acknowledges that she clings to him too much, but doesn't do anything to discourage her. That is until he leaves her sometime before Blade's crossover with the anniversary series Zi-O about 14 years later. It was revealed that he wanted the then-adult Amane to adjust to living on her own and for herself.
  • Nico Saiba and Taiga Hanaya in Kamen Rider Ex-Aid. He is a broken shell of a man that just can't function without lashing out against the world in an effort to make his life matter at all, even if it's in a bad way. She is a hellspawn on a quest for petty revenge, who decided to use him to her means (it didn't work). Nico lessened Taiga's jerkish tendencies and became a surrogate little sister of sorts and he taught her responsibility. Unfortunately, the need to keep her safe blends with his own self-destructive tendencies, so chaos ensues occasionally. Nico doesn't do much better at being responsible without creating more problems than she wanted to solve.
  • The center example of Kamen Rider Build is Sento Kiryu to Ryuga Banjou. Ryuga starts the story as a fugitive with nothing. No life, no friends, no family, on the run from terrorists and Mad Scientists. To say that Sento helped him would be a massive understatement. He gave him a new life, family, a place to stay, and hope. It was a while before Ryuga acknowledged this, but from then it became increasingly obvious that he values Sento's life more than his own. Unfortunately, the Big Bad needs to manipulate Ryuga's emotions for his own plans, so he abuses the heck out of this relationship. Sento ends up nearly beaten to death and poisoned in very short order.
    • The whole nascita gang is this to Sento. Despite appearing as strong and self-assured as he could be, he actually has feet of clay due to his identity issues (and everything else) and needs them to make himself feel like a person. Granted, it doesn't stop him from trying to ditch them for their protection, an effort they don't appreciate. It's also what makes Evol's manipulation of Sento an absolute gut punch. He took his original identity and gave him a different one, all so he could rip it apart and leave him to pick up the piece.
  • Detective Bobby Goren of Law & Order: Criminal Intent can't really function without his partner and best friend, Alexandra Eames. When she goes on maternity leavenote , he's nearly impossible to work with, and only gets better once she's back.
  • Legion: Gabrielle is emotionally fragile, and she's only stable when her husband Charles Xavier is present. When he goes on a trip to Morocco on his own, she's left at home with their newborn son. Her mental health starts to deteriorate, and she eventually relapses into a catatonic state.
    Gabrielle: (to Charles) This world makes no sense when you're not in it.
  • Jin is this for Sun in Lost. Notice Sun's reaction when she thought Jin died.
  • Despite their bickering, Vince is Howard's crutch in The Mighty Boosh. In "Tundra", when Howard thought Vince had died, his instant reaction was to try to kill himself. When Vince was revealed to be alive, Howard was so happy he made a dramatic love confession.
  • Merlin is this for Arthur on Merlin. Without Merlin and his influence, it's been shown that Arthur cannot function that well on his own.
  • In Monk, Sharona is this for Adrian, until she leaves the show; the very next episode shows him finding her replacement, who continues in this role for the rest of the series. It's heavily implied that neither of them is a patch on his late wife Trudy, around whom he was genuinely happy and almost neurosis-free; her murder caused the Sanity Slippage that turned him into a Defective Detective.
  • Otto is this to Olive, and vice versa, in Odd Squad, due to Olive's last partner being less than stellar. Her being paired with other partners, as seen in "Switch Your Partner Round and Round", proves to be disastrous, as she has no chemistry with Orchid, Oren, or Oksana (and the same can be said for Otto with Owen, Olaf, and Orson) and she and Otto become fast friends at the end of the episode after being banished to Blobsylvania. When Olive leaves for another precinct due to being promoted to the Management department and becoming an Odd Squad Director in "O is Not For Over", Otto is saddened and can't form a tight bond with Ohlm when he gets partnered with him as a result of losing Olive, which culminates in Otto being promoted to the Management department and becoming an Odd Squad Director alongside her.
  • Second Chance (2016): Otto has such a relationship with his twin sister Mary. He was an incredibly introverted but brilliant child, to the point that he invented his own language to share with her and only spoke to other people through Mary. This dynamic continued into adulthood, so when she is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he goes to extreme lengths to find a cure for her.
  • Supernatural:
    • The Winchester brothers are this for each other. They definitely have their troubles when they are together, but when Sam is gone, Dean falls apart. Case in point: the beginning of "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 2" (S02, E22). Dean is also this for Sam to an equal extent: when Dean went to Hell, Sam practically destroyed himself (and probably would have ended up killing himself had Ruby not stepped in) trying to get Dean back. It's lampshaded as early as Season 5 (out of 15).
    Zachariah: You know Sam and Dean Winchester are psychotically, irrationally, erotically codependent on each other, right?
    • This is eventually deconstructed. Sam and Dean become too reliant and dependent on each other, and this behavior ends up becoming self-destructive for both of them. Their refusal to let go of the other leads both brothers to make some very poorly thought and selfish decisions that harm each other and drives them apart. Things come to a head at the end of Season 10 when Dean calls himself evil for bearing the Mark of Cain and calls Sam evil for the lengths he'll go to save him.
    • Reconstructed when Sam admits at the start of Season 11 that they have to save people other than each other and makes an effort to spare lives. This lasts about a handful of episodes before Sam appears to die on a hunt and Dean's willing to kill himself to get him back, with the Reaper Billie Lampshading his dependency. That said, they manage to be somewhat more aware of this trope, enough that in the series finale Sam specifically survives without Dean after Dean asks him not to bring him back and ask him to live on.
    Billie: It's cute, though. You pretending you're trying to save Sam for the greater good, when we both know you're doing it for you. You can't lose him.
  • On Teen Wolf Scott McCall is this for Derek Hale, Stiles Stilinski, and Allison Argent.
  • On Torchwood Jack Harkness emulates the Doctor by also assembling his own teams of people who help to ground him and give him purpose. He is virtually immortal and without companionship tends to go into bouts of depression and self-destruction.
  • The Vampire Diaries:
    • Stefan Salvatore employed this role frequently in the series with more than one character. He largely fulfilled this role for his older brother Damon Salvatore and formerly Elena Gilbert. In Elena's case, he was her crutch that caused her to be glad to be alive after the death of her parents, but her dependence on him gradually lessened in that aspect until he disappeared altogether when she fell in love with Damon. However, his influence on Damon remained, shown by how he would become extremely violent, impulsive, and bitter without Stefan around him.
    • Later in the series, Damon replaces Stefan's role for Elena. After she was turned into a vampire, Elena was taught to enjoy the perks of her new transformation and feel happiness again. Elena even admitted, in her love confession to Damon, that he was the one that made her feel most alive.
      Elena: I'm not sorry that I met you. I'm not sorry that knowing you has made me question everything, that in death you're the one that made me feel most alive. You've been a terrible person. You've made all the wrong choices and out of the choices I have made, this will prove to be the worst one. But I'm not sorry that I'm in love with you! I love you, Damon. I love you.
    • Yet, unexpectedly, Stefan takes up this aspect again in the extreme for his sometimes lover, Katherine Pierce. After she's dying of old age due to the loss of The Cure, she reconnects with Stefan when he stopped her from killing herself. As her impending death draws closer, Katherine latches on to Stefan's compassion and falls in love with him all over again. She becomes surprisingly dependent on him, admitting to Nadia that Stefan is the only reason she wants to live.
      Nadia: I see. So when you were asking about forgiveness, you were talking about him. Not me.
      Katherine: Maybe I don't want to die a sad, lonely 538-year-old. If I have to bow out, knowing Stefan still cares might not be the worst way to go.
    • Gaius is also this for Merlin.
  • Vision is a mix of this trope and The Lost Lenore to Wanda in WandaVision. His death in Avengers: Infinity War completely devastates her, to the point that she accidentally created a magical construct of him, whom she is now keeping trapped in the sitcom world just so she can be with her dead lover. Her mental health takes a nosedive in the episodes where Vision is absent, and when Agatha Harkness reveals herself and manipulates Wanda, she very obviously tries to keep Vision from reaching her and out of the way -– and explicitly states that in his absence, Wanda has no one to “pull her back.”
  • The X-Files: Mulder and Scully act as this to each other during the series proper. It's portrayed largely as a positive, as they're both "in the know" on the conspiracy and that allows them to act as the proper support to deal with all of the trauma they go through as a result. Deconstructed in the reboot, however, when it's revealed this dynamic became unhealthy in the absence of the conspiracy's life-or-death circumstances. In the 2008 movie, Mulder has become cynical and depressed over having to hide from authorities in a rural area, and by the time the 2016 reboot picks up, Scully has left him because of his refusal to treat his depression and inability to continue being his only support. She has begun to build a life separate from him, though they still have feelings for each other.


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