No Antagonist / Live-Action TV

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • "The Replacement" sees Xander freaking out to learn that due to a magical incident he now has an Enemy Without Evil Twin who is taking over his life and seeking out help from his friends to confront and kill the impostor...only it turns he wasn't split into Good and Evil, but Confident and Neurotic, with the "Evil" twin actually being his Confident side and the Xander we follow being the Neurotic, which means the closest to an antagonist the episode has is Xander himself since he nearly murdered his other half out of paranoia, though once the truth is explained to him both Xanders are happy to be reunited and no harm is ever truly done. There is an antagonistic demon who set these events in motion (accidentally: he meant to do this to the Slayer, not one of her sidekicks), but he's actually only a minor plot point in the episode.
  • "The Body" uses this in a heartbreaking manner when Buffy's mother Joyce dies of an aneurysm and, due to the usual happenings of the city, some members of the group desperately seek an alternate explanation for it happening. When they come up with no explanation, Xander says in a rant:
    "Things don't just happen! Not like this!"
  • Season 6 had "The Trio" as actual villains and antagonists, but they were actually pretty harmless (or at least ineffective) for most of the season (right up until they are not of course). The writers have outright stated that the actual "Big Bad" of the season was really just life itself; Buffy struggles more with adapting to the role as the legal guardian of her younger sister (and the threat of losing her to Protective Services if she falls short), earning money at a demeaning job in order to keep their house and pay the bills, coping with her own depression, etc than she does with disrupting any Evil Plan or fighting monsters.
• A few Doctor Who examples:
  • The events of early Bottle Episode "The Edge of Destruction" are caused by nothing more than a spring inside a switch being out of place.
  • "Gridlock" has no sentient antagonist. The Macra at the bottom of the motorway have devolved into simple animals, and even the plague that wiped out the rest of New Earth's population has long since died out because it had no one left to infect.
  • In "Hide", the Doctor tries to rescue a time traveller trapped in a pocket dimension. It first appears that there is a monster in the episode, however it turns out he was simply another traveller trying to reunite with his mate.
  • This may or be not the case in "Listen", as it's deliberately left ambiguous whether the monster capable of "perfect hiding" actually exists. Either way, the conflict in the episode primarily stems from the Primal Fears in each character's — especially the Doctor's — head.
  • The closest things "In the Forest of the Night" has to real antagonists are non-sapient animals and a solar flare.
  • Technically speaking, there is no antagonist in "Hell Bent". Although Rassilon appears to be so, he is dismissed early on, and while the Doctor, due to being in the midst of Love Makes You Crazy and attempting the Tragic Dream of trying to undo the death of Clara Oswald, comes very close to becoming not only an antagonist but potentially a Woobie, Destroyer of Time, he never quite crosses the Moral Event Horizon. As such, "Hell Bent" has no clearly defined antagonist other than time itself.
  • Another Twelfth Doctor example: The big twist in "Twice Upon a Time", his Grand Finale, is that this trope is in play. The Testimony is benevolent and the First and Twelfth Doctors meeting when both are resisting regeneration creates a paradox that interrupts its work, causing the crisis. Upon learning what's really going on, the Doctor acknowledges the rarity of this trope in Who, as seen on the page quote.
  • Similarly, in The Sarah Jane Adventures, there's no antagonist in the main plot of "The Mad Woman in the Attic".
• Most of Emergency!, due to Jack Webb's semi-documentary style and the Medical Drama nature of the show. Most of the struggles were against accidents, injuries, and natural forces. Only a few eps had true antagonists.
• Flashpoint: The first case Team One gets in "A Day In The Life" is a man trying to commit suicide. Though this is the only episode in which the trope appears, it's suggested they routinely get called out to cases like this, it's just that the series doesn't show those calls because they don't make for interesting television.
• Zigzagged throughout The Good Place. Initially, the biggest threat to Eleanor's safety is herself, as her negative influence starts turning Neighborhood 12358w into a World of Chaos. This doesn't remain the case forever:
  • Episode 3 has Eleanor receive an apparently threatening note from someone who knows that she doesn't belong. After Eleanor fails to prove that her neighbor Tahani wrote the note, Chidi convinces her that the note is a physical manifestation of her own guilt and that no one wrote it. At the end of the episode, the silent monk Jianyu reveals that he wrote it, not to threaten Eleanor, but to ask for her help, as he also doesn't belong.
  • After Eleanor confesses that she doesn't belong, the show cycles through a few antagonists. Michael temporarily becomes the antagonist as he has a role in deciding if Eleanor can stay, along with Trevor the demon, who is there to bring Eleanor to the Bad Place. Both of them cease to be antagonists after Michael has a change of heart and refuses to let Trevor take Eleanor. Finally, Judge Shawn is summoned to decide on the case.
  • The show suddenly gains multiple antagonists in the Season Finale, after Michael reveals that his neighborhood is actually part of The Bad Place and almost every character we've met so far is a demon.
  • Season Three starts off with no antagonist excluding Judge Gen, who is so lazy that she is initially unaware that Michael is tampering with the human's lives on Earth. Trevor then reappears, sent by the Bad Place to ruin the experiment, but then he gets shoved into an endless pit by Judge Gen after only two episodes.
• The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special marks the first Marvel Cinematic Universe installment not to have a traditional antagonist. The special is more of a Cheer Up Episode where the Guardians attempt to give Peter “Star-Lord” Quill a Merry Christmas… by kidnapping Kevin Bacon.
• Many episodes of House fit the trope: the "antagonist" of the medical storyline is just some kind of disease or medical condition, whilst in the protagonist's life the "antagonists" are merely his own personal problems, such as drug addiction. At the wishes of the network, the show has had recurring human antagonists (such as Edward Vogler in Season 1 and Michael Tritter in Season 3), but their arcs were resolved rather abruptly, as the creators of the show were well aware that a villain did not really fit the show's dynamic.
• JAG: In "Mishap", Harm's former RIO, Lieutenant Elizabeth Skates, acts as LSO when a crash occurs aboard the aircraft carrier USS Patrick Henry. Skates gets court-martialed for alleged culpability in the incident, but it turns out she was not doing anything wrong but rather that the entire crew was overworked and underfunded (lack of manpower, lack of spare parts, etc.). Captain Ingles acts as the Hate Sink, by charging Skates in the first place and impeding Harm's request for documents; he didn't act maliciously or with any hidden motives.
• MacGyver occasionally had episodes where Mac dealt with a natural disaster or an accident without any nefarious sabotage involved. The second season episode "Hellfire" revolved around trying to put out an oil well fire using aged explosives and faulty equipment, with most of the drama caused by Mac's friend's bad history and trying to preserve his marriage.
• Mad Men. Characters' problems and worries are all caused by their own actions or by traumatic events of the 1960s (such as the Kennedy Assassination and the Cuban Missile Crisis). While a character may occasionally have a rival of some sort, it's never on such a level that the other character could be defined as a Big Bad. Occasionally, but not usually, the ad firm on which the show centers or a character has a rival or competitor that could be called a Villainy-Free Villain, mostly similar to the Opposing Sports Team trope, where a change of perspective would put viewers on the other side. Interestingly, despite usually having no villains, and never having a truly evil villain, the show remains on the cynical side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, because most characters still have a good helping of Jerkass.
• Some episodes of Married... with Children had the characters' Get Rich Quick Schemes ruined by bad luck or a Spanner in the Works.
• A few episodes of M*A*S*H could qualify, unless of course you believe that Kim Il-Sung and Douglas MacArthur are both serving sort of the unseen role of Greater-Scope Villain for waging the war in the first place:
  • "Dreams" from the 8th season, which is an anthology episode of the main characters' nightmares;
  • "Old Soldiers", which is largely a battle between Col. Potter and his mortality;
  • The main plot sequences of "Where There's a Will, There's a War" (many of the flashbacks don't qualify at all), as Hawkeye struggles with his own mortality by writing a will for the other members of the 4077th to read if he's killed at Battalion Aid.
• Masters of Horror: There's no monster or bad guy in the episode "Sounds Like"; the conflict revolves entirely around the main character's acute sense of hearing becoming increasingly unbearable.
• Police, Camera, Action! (a British Genre-Busting Edutainment / Gearhead Show) had a few episodes where there wasn't a criminal as a direct antagonist for the police:
  • The first is "The Liver Run" which aired on 22 April 1996, where it was about an Impossible Task to deliver a liver to a hospital in Kensington, London on 28 May 1987; there was no crime to deal with, the biggest conflict came from getting there on time and congestion. Although there was gridlock, the bewildered drivers were not antagonists for the police.
  • "Crash Test Racers", a two-part episode from 2000 (later Re-Cut into a 60-minute episode with new narration in 2005/2006) didn't have any antagonist at all, it was focused on how the history of motor racing affected new car technology and the police were incidental to the story.
  • "Highway of Tomorrow", a two-part episode from 2000, also Re-Cut into a 60-minute episode in 2006, didn't feature any crime or police-related things; instead, the main issue was about car technology on future cars, Automated Automobiles, and crash-test procedures. The police footage appearance was more of a cameo than plot-relevant.
• Pose doesn't really have a direct antagonist most of the time. Most of the conflict tends to arise from the characters' tribulations being black, gay, and/or trans in the '80s at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
• The Puzzle Place: The closest thing the show gets to having an antagonist is if one of the kids acts mean towards another, but usually this doesn't happen, and they're all good friends.
• Often in Scrubs, the conflicts are with a disease or simply medical bureaucracy rather than with another character.
• Shoestring did have an antagonist as a Villain of the Week providing the conflict, although they were usually never at the level of extremely evil, more often Jerkass types. However, there was a unique episode with no person providing the conflict:
  • "The Dangerous Game", which was both the Series Finale and a Christmas Episode didn't feature a villain causing the conflict. Instead a faulty moon buggy toy, the "Lunar Race 2000" which was prone to fires and injured Mike Johnson, a young boy, was the item causing the conflict, and it was a Race Against the Clock to get them off the market before Christmas. Pete Johnson, the boy's father, is a market trader who deals in stolen and cut-price goods but doesn't do anything villainous, let alone evil and it's a job to provide him and his family with money. At best, he's a Plot-Irrelevant Villain, but not even that malicious. The episode was a Breather Episode after two seasons of particularly strenuous episodes.
• Six Feet Under doesn't feature an antagonist after the Krohener arc. The business seems to be doing fine, the show becomes far more character-oriented.
• Many episodes throughout Star Trek involve the heroes encountering a Negative Space Wedgie that puts them in danger. The wedgie in question isn't malevolent, but it's no less dangerous. From Star Trek: The Next Generation, the seminal episode "The Inner Light" provides a particularly striking example: not only is the wedgie of the week not hostile, it's not even dangerous, with its only real goal being to Fling a Light into the Future.
• In Season One of Ted Lasso, the main antagonists are evil team owner Rebecca Welton and arrogant star striker Jamie Tartt. By Season Two, they have both face turned, and besides the Opposing Sports Teams the main conflict of the season is the various character's mental health struggles and personal issues. Rebecca's ex-husband still exists as a Greater-Scope Villain, and Jamie's Abusive Father shows up in two episodes, but they don't drive the plot.
• In Transparent, the conflicts of the characters are usually caused by their own actions or by their disagreements with each other as a family. The closest thing to a real villain that the show has is probably transphobia.
• Under the Umbrella Tree: This is a Slice of Life show, so no one's truly evil here.

---