Rescue Romance / Live-Action TV

• Subverted in The 10th Kingdom. Wolf makes his way to the Troll Palace to rescue Virginia, cleverly tricking the idiot Troll children into knocking each other out, then swings in on a vine to free her. Her response when he notes she doesn't seem to trust him? "Of course I don't trust you, you tried to eat my grandmother!" (Yes, they went there. And it was actually rather well done and hilarious.) This was not an auspicious start to the relationship.
• Arrow:
  • Roy Harper saves Thea Queen from Attempted Rape by gang members and gets stabbed while doing it. She understandably freaks out over him being hurt and what could have happened to her had he not saved her, and takes him to get stitched up. He denies that he's her friend but they end up kissing in the hospital room. Thea returns the favor by saving Roy in the season finale, further cementing their relationship.
  • Discussed and defied in regard to Nyssa and Sara Lance. Nyssa comments that she found Sara alone, starving, and frightened, took her in, nursed her back to health, and ultimately trained her to be an assassin. Sara however insists that she wasn't with Nyssa because of the rescue, but because she genuinely loved her.
  • Deconstructed when Oliver Queen saves the life of Carrie Cutter only for her to become obsessed with him, becoming the recurring villainess Cupid.
• In Ashes to Ashes (2008) Gene saves Alex's life no less than seven times, not to mention her soul.
• Invoked in Battlestar Galactica (2003) when the Cylons on Caprica are trying to get Helo to fall in love with Sharon so she'll get pregnant with a hybrid. They stage a Centurion attack wherein Sharon gets "captured" and lead him to track her down and "rescue" her. This gives their already developing relationship a significant push.
• Batwoman:
  • Kate Kane rescuing her ex-girlfriend Sophie Moore is played for maximum romantic subtext. While disguised as Batwoman, she catches her after she's pushed off a building and they fall through the roof of a foreman's trailer onto a bed with their faces very close to each other.
  • Played for laughs in "How Queer Everything Is Today!". After Batwoman gets a Diving Save from a handsome male police officer, the entire city starts shipping them together. As Kate is a lesbian, she just finds this annoying. Later when Kate saves the life of Parker Torres, Kate makes a point of establishing clear boundaries as her mentor so she won't have a smitten schoolgirl on her hands.
• In Beauty and the Beast (1987), Vincent and Catherine first met when he brought her home after she was attacked and left to die in Central Park; given the constraints that Vincent's nonhuman appearance puts on him, it's fair to say they would never otherwise have met.
• In Being Human (UK) between Annie and Mitchell, where the former seems quite keen to romanticise the latter's rescuing of her, and a relationship that had previously been purely platonic is transformed into romance post-rescue.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Though it doesn't immediately lead to romance, the first thing that seems to attract Willow to Oz in season 2 is that he is injured saving her life.
  • Played with when Riley saves Willow — this is an indication that he will later hook up with Buffy, who witnessed the event and is suitably appreciative that he saved her best friend.
  • Angel saving Buffy from three vampire assassins leads to him hiding out in her bedroom and their First Kiss.
  • Spike/Buffy share The Big Damn Kiss at the end of "Once More With Feeling" after Spike stops Buffy from dancing herself to death with a few well-chosen lyrics. Buffy later tries to blame it on Phlebotinum-Induced Stupidity, but Spike knows otherwise and starts pursuing her in earnest.
  • Parodied in "Beer Bad" when Buffy keeps having a Daydream Surprise in which she saves Parker from vampires and earns his eternal gratitude and apologies for dumping her to chase other women. After Buffy drinks some cursed beer and turns into a Nubile Savage she saves Parker from a burning building and gets this, accompanied by the requisite orchestral music...only for Cavewoman!Buffy to club him over the head and walk off.
  • Averted in "When She Was Bad" — Xander saved Buffy's life in last season's finale, but when Buffy returns to school next year she's still traumatized and acting out against all her friends, dancing intimately with Xander purely to make Angel jealous. After several minutes of getting Xander worked up...
  Buffy: Xander, did I ever thank you for saving my life?
  Xander: No...
  Buffy: Don't you wish I would? (walks off)
  • Played straight with Devon saving Billy from a Zompire in Season 9.
• In Chicago Fire, Severide volunteers to donate bone marrow to a woman in need of a transplant, then ends up falling for her.
• In an episode of Cold Case, a woman is involved in a car accident and is rescued from the wreckage by a firefighter. She is rendered paraplegic but goes on to marry said firefighter. However the woman's ex-boyfriend (who was driving the car yet got away with minor injuries) noticed something amiss with the whole accident. After doing some research and recalling that the woman complained about her legs hurting before being taken out of the wreck, he comes to the conclusion that the firefighter used the jaws of life incorrectly and crippled her. He confronts him about this in hopes of getting back together with her, only for the firefighter to murder him.
• In an episode of CSI: Miami, the team encounter an agency that does mock kidnappings with this sort of thing (although the participants are further down the path) in mind. Girl gets "kidnapped", boyfriend "pays ransom" and/or "rescues her", they have sex (because "rescue sex is the best kind of sex"). This being the CSI-verse, it doesn't quite work out like that...
• An episode of CSI: NY also takes a spin on the trope with a woman who, it initially appears, gets back together with her ex after he saves her from being kidnapped and assaulted. It turns out that the "abduction" was a fetish game she and her current partner had knowingly staged, and her ex killed her lover in a fit of jealousy - she just found it hot that he would go that far for her.
• Doctor Who:
  • This is shown to be how the parents of companion Clara Oswald met. A large leaf blew into her father's face and caused him to stumble into traffic, which Clara's mother pulled him out of. Her father even kept the leaf as a memento.
  • Interestingly, all of the Doctor's own long-term love interests in the new series somehow saved his backside during their first adventure together - or the first from his own point of view that he actually remembers, anyways:
    • Rose saved him from a bunch of autons by means of some breakneck gymnastics that required a dangerous jump. By the next episode, he was already displaying the first signs of being somewhat smitten.
    • River stopped him from pulling a Heroic Sacrifice and took his place at the cost of her own life. He goes on to encounter younger versions of her from all throughout her life and becomes her husband. Somewhat downplayed in that it takes a few more encounters (in which she is generally fiercely protective of him) before he gradually stops being suspicious of her ample knowledge about him and his personal future and comes to reciprocate her feelings.
    • In a clear parallel to the above example of her parents, the Doctor first meets - or notices - Clara when she, or one of her echoes, saves his life in Victorian London, leading to much hilarity when he arrives at Clara's doorstep with a poorly concealed crush, only to find that she has no idea who he is and doesn't remember saving him. From her own perspective, she does not actually spawn the aforementioned alternate selves or go on to personally support him at a few key points of his past until they had already been together for a while.
  • EU material says this is how Vastra met Jenny—her future wife. Apparently Miss Flint was being menaced by a Chinese gang, which Vastra was only too happy to drive away. When Jenny didn't respond with revulsion to Vastra's (admittedly quite lovely) reptilian features, she decided to keep her on as a maid and sidekick. One thing turned to another, and, well.
  • In "The Pyramid at the End of the World", the Doctor is about to save not only a woman's life but the entire world, and predicts she'll have a pretty intense crush on him as a result. Unfortunately, he spoke too soon.
• Subverted in Downton Abbey. Matthew Crawley rescues Lady Sybil from a political brawl and her family expect this trope to occur. (Convenient as he's the future Earl.) She's actually interested in the chauffeur Tom, who everyone blames for getting her into trouble originally.
• Forever: When Henry and Jo rescue Molly Dawes from a disturbed student in "Memories of Murder," Molly confesses to Henry that she's always fantasized about this, and she found being rescued by a handsome doctor "kinda hot!" Henry promises not to tell anyone, to preserve her reputation in the Domme community.
• Game of Thrones: Serious Jaime/Brienne Ship Tease starts from when Jaime (without a weapon) leaps into a bearpit to rescue her.
• Ghost Whisperer: It happened before the show started, but Jim and Melinda met when he (a firefighter at the time) rescued her from her burning apartment complex.
• Lampshaded in C-drama Holy Pearl. "Ohh, I get it. Weak woman is saved by strong, handsome man and falls in love with him. There's only one problem—you don't look weak." For added irony points, the speaker is later saved by the man in question...and falls in love with him.
• Deconstructed on iCarly, when Carly and Freddie start dating after Freddie pushed Carly out of the way of a truck, getting severely injured himself in the process. Eventually Freddie realizes (due in part to Sam's advice, for what that may be worth) that Carly might not like really like him for anything other than the rescue, and explains to her that while he hopes they will get back together after some time passes, for the time being they should end their relationship.
• Kingdom (2019): A one-sided version. Lord Beom-pal is in love with Seo-bi after she saved his life from a guard turned zombie. She doesn't return the feeling as his cowardice had led him to abandon the Crown Prince and the peasantry of Dongnae, leading to many innocents dying.
• Similarly, there was a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit where a couple had this as a major fetish. The problem was that the husband was doing increasingly horrible things to the male escorts hired as "attackers."
• Subverted in Merlin in which both Arthur and Lancelot (separately) go to great lengths to rescue Guinevere from a warlord, only for extreme awkwardness to ensue when they realize why the other one is there. Neither one ends up with her (at least, at the end of that particular episode). Played straight with Merlin and Freya, with tragic consequences.
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: During the first chronological scene with Bill Randa and his friends, he and his future wife Keiko are nearly killed during their first Titan encounter with the Ion Dragon, but when Bill is pinned by debris, Keiko refuses to run and leave him behind. Bill admits several years later that he never forgot this, when he's confessing his feelings to Keiko.
• Used as a plot detail in Monk; a nebbish millionaire got his best friend to fake a mugging in college so he could look heroic to his girlfriend (it worked, although he ultimately married someone else, the girl still said she should have married him). It didn't turn out so well later down the road when the friend pulled a gun and shot the millionaire when they did the same thing, for supposedly the same reason, which turned out to be an attempt to hide the friend stealing company money and killing the only guy in the way.
• In The Musketeers Aramis saves Queen Anne by shielding her when there's a shoot-out during a prison escape. She's instantly smitten and their mutual attraction only grows as the pattern repeats.
• In NCIS: Los Angeles, Callen and Sam rescue a Mexican girl during a shootout, and she brings up the rescue as justification for wanting to get closer to Callen (especially as one of her sisters also shows interest in him). Callen's enthusiasm for this is somewhat questionable, especially since he has other problems at the moment.
• NCIS: New Orleans has a possible one starting in the episode "Identity Crisis" in which Sebastian protects a high-school friend from three hired guns, with her admiring how he Took a Level in Badass since they last saw each other. After the dust settles, they decide to go out on a date.
• Jess in New Girl tells her housemates how she lost her virginity. The gang are lead to believe she loses it in a mini-golf structure, but she actually becomes stuck in the entrance to it and can't get out. In an odd turn of events, it's the fireman who rescues her that she first has sex with.
• The Professionals. In "Blind Run", Doyle falls for the Girl of the Week and insists that he stay back and interrogate her...over dinner. Bodie protests that he saved her, so should be the one who gets to interrogate her. Doyle smugly refuses on the grounds that such a rescue makes Bodie emotionally involved.
• In Pushing Daisies, although they'd known each other as kids, Ned and Chuck met again when he brought her back to life.
• Radio Enfer: Carl saves a girl who was knocked out in the chemistry lab after he saw smokes coming from the lab and heard someone coughing loudly from it. Unfortunately, that girl is Manon Boutin, with whom Carl is not attracted to at all and who becomes an Abhorrent Admirer to him, much to his annoyance.
• On the Red Dwarf episode "Stoke Me a Clipper", Ace Rimmer introduces himself after saving a princess and states his intentions to her: "There'll be time for answers later - and hopefully, some sex." And because he's Ace, she doesn't disagree. What a guy!
• Subverted in the pilot of Royal Pains. Hank saves the life of a beautiful model and she falls in love with him. Hank identifies it as the Florence Nightingale Effect and tells her to go back to New York and come back in a few weeks if she still feels this way. She is never seen again so she presumably got over her feelings.
• On Saved by the Bell Denise Richards' character stages this to meet Slater, but like most characters that don't appear in the opening credits is never seen again.
• In the Seinfeld episode "The Invitations," Jerry falls madly in love with a woman who saved him from being hit by a car. Kramer is skeptical.
  Kramer: If a guy saved your life, you'd be in love with him too!
• Sex/Life: Billie and Brad's first interaction was him stopping some street asshole from harassing her. After driving her to his place and showing her around, things heated up very fast.
• In Smallville, in the episode "Relic", Lana's great-aunt falls in love with Jor-El when he saves her from Lex's grandfather.
• Heavily implied in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "E Squared" when Captain Archer meets his great-granddaughter from an alternate timeline. According to her, Archer's future/past wife is an alien woman whose ship he rescues from a Negative Space Wedgie.
• On The Vampire Diaries, Elena falls deeply in love with Stefan before later on discovering that Stefan was the one who miraculously saved her life from the tragic car accident that had claimed both of her parents' lives.
• Played with on Veronica Mars in the episode "Silence of the Lamb"; Leo, a rookie deputy at the police department, actually rescues Keith, Veronica's father, from becoming the Body of the Week, but Veronica becomes smitten nonetheless.
• The West Wing: In the first season episode "Mr. Willis of Ohio", Zoe, the First Daughter, is out at a bar with Charlie, C.J., Josh, Mallory and Sam, and goes to get drinks for them. While she does that, a couple of frat boys try to hit on her. When Charlie sees this, he goes and intervenes, and eventually, the Secret Service has to get involved. While it's debatable whether or not Charlie "rescued" her, it leads Zoey to ask Charlie out later in the season (in the episode "Lord John Marbury"), and they eventually become a couple.
• The White Queen: While Richard of Gloucester and Anne Neville were smitten as youngsters, their mutual attraction reaches new heights after he rescues her not just once but twice. (As a bonus, their courtship even contains a few fairy tale elements.) At the Battle of Tewkesbury, he single-handedly stops a group of would-be rapists who attack her, behaving very much like a Knight in Shining Armor while she's the Damsel in Distress (and a Princess by her first marriage, no less). It's evident from the moment they lock eyes with each other that there's Unresolved Sexual Tension, as they're both much too proper to act upon their feelings, especially considering that Anne has just been widowed. Margaret of Anjou even picks up on the sparks between them, so she dangles Anne like a carrot in front of Richard when she tries to tempt him to join her side. After Anne becomes George of Clarence's ward, he confines her to his dwelling (so in other words, he's an "evil lord" who imprisons a vulnerable Princess in his "tower"). Despite Richard's repeated insistence, George forbids him to visit her for six months, so the Star-Crossed Lovers arrange a secret meeting in a garden where they discuss her plight. During their second garden rendezvous, Richard learns that George will soon send Anne to a nunnery where she'll be cut off from the outside world permanently, so Richard takes the Prince Charming route and asks Anne to marry him, declaring the love that he has long carried for her, and explains that being his wife is the best option for Anne to escape George's custody. After Richard bundles her up with his cloak, Anne happily replies "Yes" (she has dreamed of marrying him since she was a little girl), and they share a True Love's Kiss surrounded by a gorgeous and well-timed snowfall.

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