In Season 3 of 13 Reasons Why, Winston and Monty randomly meet at a party, are attracted to each other, and hook up. Then when Winston tries to chat with him afterwards, he gets the ever-loving crap beaten out of him, with Monty's excuse being he thought people would realize he was gay and he doesn't want to be outed...which is still not a good reason to beat someone up. In spite of this and the fact he barely knows him and that he becomes aware he's been arrested for sexual assault, Winston still falls head-over-heels for Monty, to the point he's willing to transfer schools to investigate Bryce's murder and prove Monty was set up for it. Season 4 even eventually acknowledges this to some extent, indicating that Winston loved the idea of Monty more than anything (especially seeing as the real Monty is a horrible person).
All My Children's: Edmund and Maria. They begin dating in the wake of Edmund and Brooke's breakup and her subsequent marriage to Tad. While not unhappy with Maria, he still spends the entirety of their relationship pining away for Brooke, proposing to Maria only after Brooke has rejected him once and for all, trying to reunite with Brooke twice during his engagement to Maria, even telling Brooke at one point, "What I feel for her doesn't come within a country mile of what I feel for you", and even ditching his rehearsal dinner to be at Brooke's side during an operation. Literally out of nowhere, Edmund one day declares Maria to be the love of his life. While it might actually be one of the better examples of this trope — they go on to have a genuinely blissful marriage until she's "killed" in a plane crash — it's still a glaring Retcon.
Hawkman and Hawkgirl in the two-part The Flash (2014) and Arrow special (which serves as a lead-in for Legends of Tomorrow) have absolutely no onscreen chemistry together. Hawkgirl even acknowledges this to Cisco, whom she'd been dating prior to her remembering who she was (and who was still very much in love with her) but says that she should be with Hawkman Because Destiny Says So. Eventually, even the writers seemed to realize they weren't right for each other; after the Hawks departed in the Season 1 finale, having vowed to start their relationship over, the rest of the Legends commented that it probably wasn't going to last. What makes it most unsatisfying is that it was presented as purely You Can't Fight Fate at work; she was with Cisco in The Flash and Ray in Legends and struggling to resist these past life memories drawing her to a total stranger. She spent her whole time in two shows fighting to live her life on her own terms, making it feel more like a Downer Ending than True Love winning.
The romance between Nate Heywood and Amaya Jiwe in Season 2 of Legends came completely out of left field; prior to that, it seemed that Amaya was going to get together with Mick Rory instead. Unlike with the Hawks, however, fans did eventually come to appreciate their relationship, to the point that their separation in the Season 3 finale was a major Tear Jerker.
The romance between Nate and Zari in Season 4 is even worse. Out of nowhere, Zari becomes irresistibly attracted to Nate despite having little interaction with him and she was supportive of his relationship with Amaya in the previous season. It also doesn't help that Nate spends the bulk of the season out of the team.
Apollo was in a forced and loveless marriage with Dualla. TWoP even coined a term for it: "The Love That All of a Sudden". There were scenes in several previous episodes that showed them growing closer to each other, all of which ended up being cut. Eventually the writers just said "screw it" and threw them together without any buildup. It also didn't help that they hooked up in the very next episode after Dualla's boyfriend Billy was tragically killed, with the writing not being as clear as it could have been that at least a couple of months had passed, making it look like they practically started making out over Billy's corpse.
Chief and Cally. After a Time Skip of one year, they go from being friends and co-workers to being married. The last time they were seen interacting was when Chief smashed Cally's face in after she woke him from a suicidal dream. This one at least had some hints prior to the time skip, as Cally was clearly seen crushing on the Chief on several occasions prior to the beatdown.
Beverly Hills, 90210: Emily and Brandon have a brief, unconsummated relationship that ends after she slips him Ecstasy, resulting in her stalking and harassing him for several weeks after. Several years later, he tells Brenda she was the love of his life, despite the fact that he explicitly told her that he didn't love her when rebuffing her attempts at reconciliation.
Because TPTB decided to write in Gabrielle Cateris' Real Life pregnancy, but didn't want her to get pregnant by the first guy she slept with, her character Andrea abruptly dumped her boyfriend and was rushed into a relationship with a new guy. She got pregnant about two minutes after that and married him about two minutes after that. We're supposed to believe that they're madly in love and ready to spend the rest of their lives together when they've only been dating a few weeks — the very reason she was initially considering an abortion — and would have likely never discussed marriage had she not been pregnant.
Blue Bloods: A rare positive example with Jamie and Edie, who get engaged after a Near-Death Experience finally makes them acknowledge their feelings for each other, opting to skip over all that pesky dating. Which actually makes sense, as they've been friends and partners for years and don't really need to date, as they already know everything about each other.
At the end of the second-to-last season, the title character accepts a proposal from her colleague Dr. Marsham, even though he himself states that he knows she doesn't love him the way he loves her and is only agreeing to marriage to save herself from spinsterhood. Problem is, he made this declaration of love once, several years ago, but immediately took it back and apologized, given that he was married, and never brought it up again, indicating that he'd gotten over his feelings.
Then in the final season, she meets an army major and within a few weeks is cheating on Dr. Marsham with him, engaging in Wall Bang Her sex while at a party. She conceives from this, and the series concludes with them getting married. We're led to believe that this man is the love of Eleanor's life, despite the fact that she barely knows him and probably wouldn't have considered marriage if she weren't pregnant.
Rosa's relationship with Holt's nephew Marcus in the second season often comes off like this. The relationship is supposedly one of the most significant that Rosa's ever had and she is apparently deeply attached to him. However, the fact that Marcus was hardly ever around when he was he didn't really seem that interesting or appear to have many distinguishing characteristics, and the fact that Rosa, by nature The Stoic, didn't really show a lot of emotion in general, made it easy for viewers to wonder exactly what the big deal was supposed to be.
This gets even weirder in Season 3 when Rosa very suddenly falls in love with Adrian Pimento a mere few episodes after the character is introduced. He's a weird and creepy enough character to make it believable that Rosa would have a thing for him, but their sudden leap from "just met" to "we're getting married in a week" is jarring, to say the least. It's possibly lampshaded by the writers in the scene where they get engaged, right in the middle of making an arrest, with no buildup, fanfare, or anything the audience would consider even remotely romantic. Their whirlwind romance ends up being the catalyst for the season-ending cliffhanger, as the Nine-Nine ends up banding together to protect Adrian from a mob hit. One can easily get the impression that the relationship was introduced to keep the audience from wondering why the rest of the precinct would come together so easily in support of an officer they barely know, who is a bit of a loose cannon that most of the rest of them feel incredibly uncomfortable around. The show seems to have realized that this trope was in effect, and the characters later wound up calling off the wedding.
Buffy and Riley had no hope right from the start. Granted, the writers tried but they tried so badly to make Riley "not Angel" that they forgot to give him any interesting character traits of his own — or any that would make him even the slightest bit compatible with Buffy. Beyond that, there wasn't much build-up, and the actors really lacked chemistry, leaving the impression that they liked each other because the script said so. The timing of this relationship didn't help much — shortly after Buffy's dramatic and defining relationship with Angel ends and Angel leaves Sunnydale, the writers tried introducing Buffy into a brand new romantic relationship with a brand new character (Riley) without giving much recovery time for the end of the Buffy/Angel relationship, which had been a primary storyline of Seasons 1-3.
For Willow/Kennedy in Season 7, the writers didn't even try at all. Literally the only reason they started a relationship was that Kennedy was also a lesbian, and Kennedy seemed determined to not have any likable traits whatsoever. It was a huge letdown after Willow and Tara's relationship, which out of the whole show had the most build-up and most development. It may have even been worse in the "too soon" department than Riley had been, as Willow had abruptly lost Tara to a freak accident at the end of the previous season and was still mourning. Intentionally or not, the circumstances really made the relationship ring closer to a rebound than anything else.
Charmed (1998): Phoebe with Coop. The character was introduced 8 episodes before the finale and only seemed to exist to be the handsome hunk that would become her husband. It became incredibly blatant when the audience, and Phoebe herself, had to be outright told that he was the love of her life.
Kevin and Molly's affair from Coronation Street really seemed like just an excuse to have an affair storyline because they hadn't had one in a while. The attraction suddenly developed when the two of them started going running and after about three weeks they were ready to hop in the sack. Bear in mind Kevin was Happily Married with two kids and Molly was also Happily Married, and a key part of her character was how much she valued trust in a relationship. Also there was about a 15-year age gap between them and it apparently developed into true love so much that when Kevin called off the affair because his wife had cancer, Molly couldn't understand why...
Cursed (2020): Arthur and Nimue's romance has been criticized for coming across as contrived and bland. Although they flirt a lot in the first episode, Nimue subsequently spends half the season distrusting Arthur for stealing (then losing) the Sword of Power entrusted to her by her dying mother — which she seems to forget rather quickly — and Arthur was willing to steal from Nimue when she was at her most vulnerable for selfish reasons (then victim-blamed her over it), despite supposedly having a crush on her. They barely spend any quality time together before getting a Relationship Upgrade in the fifth episode. On top of this, some viewers felt they lacked romantic chemistry and have little in common; the only reason they seem to get together is that 'the script says so'.
Degrassi abuses this to an infuriating degree. Probably the worst example is in the movie Degrassi Takes Manhattan. Fan-favorite couple Jane and Spinner end up splitting up. And who does Spinner turn to? Not any of his many exes (all of whom he's turned to comfort before) or even some random one-shot hook-up character. The morning after drunken festivities with his pals, he awakes to find himself married to Emma, who spoke to him a grand total of one time before the movie, and that one time was her telling him off at the very, very beginning of the show when Spinner bullied Innocent!Manny. Instead of getting the marriage annulled, they say "What the hell?" and see if the romance roulette will actually work.
The fourth season's opening episode features a brand-new relationship between Lt. LaGuerta and Sgt. Batista, which apparently developed entirely in the gap between seasons, despite no previous chemistry other than a standard-for-the-precinct friendship. Batista was even involved in an entirely different (and more developed) relationship as of the last episode of the previous season which vanished without a trace sometime in the meanwhile. Overstated drama immediately ensues over everything from policies against office romances necessitating secrecy to overblown arguments over shared bank accounts and Batista fighting in bars to defend LaGuerta's honor. Meanwhile, neither the show's primary nor secondary storyline is even remotely affected by any of this, and the rest of the cast largely ignores it. It just takes a lot of screen time in Seasons 4 and 5. Then in Season 6 they are suddenly divorced.
Season 7 had Dexter and Hannah McKay. They have little chemistry and hook up very suddenly, and pretty much the only thing they have in common is they're both serial killers. It's obviously meant to set up an emotional moment when Deb is forced to arrest Hannah; after all, she was "the only person who'd ever accepted Dexter"...except that the writers apparently forgot about Lila West and Lumen Pierce, both of whom had been perfectly willing to accept Dexter's killing, the latter even helping him out in the exact same way that Hannah did. The whole thing just felt rather forced. It happened again in Season 8, with Hannah showing up again out of nowhere, and she and Dexter back together within two episodes. Even Dr. Vogel, an expert on psychology and human behavior, couldn't stop gushing about how utterly perfect they were for each other.
"The Invasion of Time": Companion Leela decides to stay on Gallifrey and marry the guard Andred, even though there's been nothing romantic between them. While the actors tried to suggest some attraction within the story, the script didn't give them much to work with. It's basically, Doctor: "Come on, Leela, let's go." Leela: "No, I'm going to stay here and marry Andred." Doctor: "Okay, bye." This happened because the actress told the producer she was leaving at the end of the season, and he kept trying to change her mind. The Big Finish audio drama series Gallifrey ends up subverting this relationship in a fairly satisfying way.
The posthumous pairing of Peri with King Yrcanos at the end of "The Trial of a Time Lord". Apparently, Colin Baker was distressed by Peri's death at the end of the "Mindwarp" portion of the Story Arc and mentioned this to producer John Nathan-Turner, who, in his usual subtle way, fixed the problem by giving the Inquisitor a quick line stating that Peri is living happily with Yrcanos as a warrior queen, despite how nothing in the story, apart from the brief clip of his putting his hand on her shoulder that is shown after that line, supports that romance, and doing a Retcon of it makes a hash of the entire end of the story.
Susan, Vicki, and Jo are three other female companions who were written out of the show by perfunctorily marrying them off, though while the relationships had very rapid development (one serial apiece) they weren't as completely out-of-nowhere as the two above. Still, with regards to Vicki in "The Myth Makers", as soon as she's gratuitously renamed "Cressida" by Agamemnon simply because he doesn't like her real name, it should be quite clear to the viewers where this is going.
Martha Jones and Mickey Smith, two characters who before "Journey's End" had never even met, and had only been onscreen together in the scene where everybody from the new series ever flies the TARDIS, are shown in their "happy ending" vignette in "The End of Time"note a story about a year later in-universe, assuming that time travel isn't involved as a married couple, freelancers, and fighting a Sontaran. This is despite the fact that Martha had been shown to be engaged in a previous appearance (though her fiancé never showed up). It ends up looking like a bad case of Pair the Spares, and an even worse case of the Token Minority Couple - or, in the best-case scenario, the writer just flat-out forgetting about things.
Clara Oswald and Danny Pink's romance in Series 8 was criticized for being poorly written and too rapidly developed — in his second appearance, "Listen", they go on a disastrous first date, yet they're firmly a couple by the end anyway. Then a Love Triangle situation with Twelve is brought into the picture two episodes after that, with only half a season to go! Then again, it all ends when Danny is killed in the Season Finale, with a coda in the Christmas Episode afterward. A fan theory is that this storyline was written to maintain an overt romantic plot in the show out of fear that just carrying Clara's relationship with the Eleventh Doctor over to the Twelfth with little change would have alienated viewers due to Twelve being played by a much older actor.
In their early days, River and the Doctor fell into this trope for some fans due to the main gimmick of their relationship being that they meet in the wrong order and therefore one tends to gain affection as the other loses it. Post-"The Wedding of River Song", they were on the same wavelength, alleviating this aspect of their relationship. However, in the 2015 Christmas Episode "The Husbands of River Song", it's revealed that River Song still had doubts that the Doctor truly loved her, not thinking it was in his nature; the story also did a Retcon of the Eleven-era short "Last Night" ( Eleven didn't take her to the Singing Towers after all). Twelve doesn't hide his attraction to her, and the ending of this story reveals Twelve was with River at the Singing Towers, and the "night" they spent there lasted twenty-four years, effectively making him her "true" husband.
The problem with this is that "Husbands" aired just three weeks after the tragic three-part Series 9 finale that saw his long and well-established relationship with Clara Oswald come to a sad end, and many fans felt it was too soon for him to be so attracted to another even with his previous selves' established history with River. In Twelve's defense, however, 1) his relationship with Clara was codependently toxic by the end and they were forced to realize it was doing everyone more harm than good (after all, he risked the space-time continuum to undo her death), and 2) he was effectively mind-wiped of his love for her, so he wasn't brooding (much) over its dissolution by the time he met River again. Also, the Expanded Universe went on to establish he traveled on his own or with Canon Foreigner companions for quite a while between "Hell Bent" and "Husbands", again giving him time to move beyond Clara.
In Ellen, Paige and Spence, who at first hated each other, become passionate lovers after the course of Season 3.
The Expanse has a one-sided example, though due to the strange context, it’s arguably subverted. At the start of the series, private detective Joe Miller is assigned a case to track down Julie Mao, a wealthy heiress and political activist who’s gone missing. Since Miller is a cynical Corrupt Cop and resents privilege, he initially sees it as little more than a monetary gig and cares nothing for the subject. However, over the course of the investigation, he grows to admire her character and heroism and becomes infatuated with her. Tragically, she's killed by the Protomolecule shortly before he finds her. Then things get weird. Due to how the Protomolecule works, Julie’s unconscious mind is absorbed into it and becomes the core of its rapidly growing Hive Mind. Miller manages to reach her at the core, waking her up and calming her by showing her compassion and companionship. The two then kiss right before Julie uses her moment of lucidity to smash the Protomocule hive into Venus. The entire latter interaction between the two lasts five minutes. Needless to say, while developed on Miller's side, it's a bit sudden on Julie's.
Family Matters had Steve being in love with Laura from the beginning, despite how she had never given him any hope that he would win her heart and was even mean to him during the first couple of seasons. And it was clear that she preferred the Jerk Jock type, which was the polar opposite of Steve's nerdy personality. And for a couple of seasons, when Steve had a serious relationship with Myra and he had become friends with Laura, Steve's crush on Laura was almost forgotten about. But then came the 9th and last season, when it seemed like the writers suddenly decided that Steve and Laura just had to end up together, despite how they both were in serious relationships with other people...
Friends: Chandler and Monica are a perfect example of this and Tropes Are Not Bad. In the first four seasons, there were no evident romantic feelings between the characters, they were close friends but just as close as anyone else in the group. They have a few sweet moments ("The One With The Birth", "The One With The Flashback", "The One With The Jellyfish") just like pretty much every girl/guy pairing on the show, but it was always platonic. Also, for most of Season 4, they rarely have a one-to-one interaction... until the last episode when they spend a night together in London: this was the start of the Chandler/Monica era. Luckily, it was very well written and it becomes immediately popular with fans. Their relationship evolved from sexual to romantic and Chandler gradually overcoming his fear of commitment and become Happily Married.
Robb Stark and Talisa Maegyr in the second and third seasons. The show's Four Lines, All Waiting structure meant there wasn't nearly enough time to develop a proper romance between them, but after just a few conversations, Robb is so in love with Talisa that he's willing to risk his entire war campaign falling apart to marry her. It doesn't help that, in the source material, Robb marrying Jeyne Westerling (whom Talisa replaced in the show) had less to do with love and more to do with preserving her honor after they slept together and she lost her virginity to him.
Though their meeting was long-awaited, Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow's romantic relationship ended up being rushed due to the compressed Season 7 episode count. The showrunners, writers, actors, and other characters state from the moment these two meet, Dany and Jon are attracted to one another. Their chemistry is a point of divide among the fandom — some feel Jon and Dany have chemistry, while others feel they lack it. Both have already been involved in serious relationships (Dany for love and politics more than once) and being royalty in a time of crisis, the two of them falling in love with one another can come across as immature to some viewers. Now that it's been confirmed that, as many book readers surmised, Daenerys, Jon, and their eventual relationship are one of the things that the Song of Ice and Fire title refers to, their coming together is a major point of the series and critical to the culminating points of the story. As a result, their relationship is one thing that absolutely should not have been rushed and should have been handled by the showrunners more carefully, a problem that continues into Season 8 as most of the series' plotlines race toward the end.
In Season 8, some feel their relationship still lacks proper development, and the fall-out after The Reveal of Jon's true parentage wasn't sufficiently explored beyond it contributing to Dany's Sanity Slippage. Because of this, the tragic nature when it comes to the culmination of their relationship in which Jon must kill Dany to save everyone else after she torches a surrendered King's Landing doesn't work for these viewers because it wasn't properly built up enough.
Tina and Mike Chang, who never interacted in S1 (Mike only spoke one line), and were basically put together for Asian jokes. Since then they have at least gotten some relationship development, although much of it was offscreen.
Mercedes and Sam. Enforced as Sam's actor temporarily left the series due to contract disputes right after Mercedes and Sam got together. When he returned, the writers treated their relationship like some tragic love story. Because it had next to no development, it was hard for most viewers to buy into that and get invested in the relationship.
Brittany and Artie started off this way and earned the show lots of backlash from angry Brittany/Santana fans. It became clearer over time that Artie was intended as a Romantic False Lead, and the whole relationship was designed to force Santana to realize her feelings for Brittany.
One that carries some Unfortunate Implications: Sam was originally created to be a love interest for Kurt, but was changed to be straight when Ryan Murphy apparently noticed the chemistry between him and Quinn so strong that it just couldn't be denied (and which many fans have been quick to point out doesn't seem to come across onscreen). To his credit, he did also create another character as a love interest for Kurt afterwards.
While the show had teased Kurt and Blaine for a while after Blaine's introduction "Never Been Kissed," after the mid-season break the show seemed to be heading in the exact opposite direction, trying to convince the viewers that the two were Better as Friends by having Blaine fall for other people and turn down Kurt's advances while excelling in a mentor-like role. However, in "Original Song," Kurt's rendition of "Blackbird" causes Blaine to suddenly reverse his feelings and he and Kurt are sucking face just a few minutes later.
More broadly, the show has been criticized for turning to these repeatedly to create tension between its primary couples of Finn/Rachel, Kurt/Blaine, and, to a lesser extent, Brittany/Santana. They'd split up, often by cheating on or to hook up with a Romantic False Lead out of the blue and spend half a season needing to re-realize their true feelings for each other.
Greenhouse Academy: Max and Jackie's Relationship Upgrade at the end of Season 2 comes out of nowhere due to their relationship, while close, having never been depicted as anything but platonic and there being no hint that Max had any romantic feelings for Jackie or that she felt the same. It's especially glaring since Max has another love interest, Emma, who he's had a crush on for the past two seasons and has established chemistry and several things in common with her, whom he rejects in the process. And given that Jackie's actress left the show after the second season, it all ends up serving nothing as the character ended up getting written out of the show.
Hannah Montana: Lilly and Oliver have been friends since kindergarten. They've seen the best and worst of each other, the best and worst of times, and have been there for each other through all of it. Let's not forget that they have numerous common interests. Do the writers use any of these perfectly legitimate story elements as a basis for their Relationship Upgrade? Please, this is the Disney Channel! Instead, we get some contrived story about how her head fit into his neck and how she smelled like apples. And they go from being good friends to all PDA all the time. Even Miley gets sick of the Romantic Plot Tumor, and it's especially odd since the writers seemed to be slowly setting Oliver up with Miley in prior episodes, including one in the same season.
Heroes had Matt Parkman and Daphne in Volume 3, because Matt saw a future vision of himself married to her, and started going after her Because Destiny Says So. She even asked what they had in common. Despite this, people prefer Daphne to Janice, Matt's wife/ex-wife/wife. Them getting back together is kind of an example because she reveals her baby is his and despite her cheating on him with his best friend, he immediately forgives her.
Popular Home and Away pairing Aden and Belle was considered random by a number of fans. Having never interacted prior to the 2008 season, they started working together and established a relationship based purely on insults, which half the audience interpreted as "secretly wanting to rip each other's clothes off" and the other half interpreted as "genuinely not liking each other" until one episode when she insults him, he looks like he's going to cry and her best friend declares that he likes her. A few weeks later, when the closest they've come to a meaningful conversation is her sitting silently while he chats to his surrogate father, he drunkenly climbs through her bedroom window and gets into bed with her, which apparently means they're now a couple.
Foreman and Thirteen on House, who went from "awkward conversations in the locker room" to "awkward kiss in a conference room" to "willing to commit career suicide for this person" in the span of about two weeks. Which is lampshaded by Thirteen herself at one point.
Fabian and Mara. For most of the show, they had only about four lines of dialogue together, and then suddenly started showing signs of romance in the last minute of the Season 3 finale. In The Touchstone of Ra, they suddenly ended up kissing. While it's very true that they are very much alike, it's still very jarring and has only helped fuel Mara's Scrappy status.
Alfie and Willow fit this to a lesser extent. In one episode, out of nowhere, Alfie decided he had feelings for Willow. However, this does not make the pairing bad, as many fans have become attached to this pairing for their relatively drama-free attitude (which is rare for this show), their similarities, and their funny scenes together.
Alfie has this with Piper, which makes sense because Piper was only on the show for three episodes. It's downplayed, in that he had originally believed she was Patricia, her twin, whom he knew for years, and they had a few scenes together that showed them growing closer, which makes their short-lived relationship more believable.
How I Met Your Mother had this with Ted and Robin getting together in the final episode. While they were the Official Couple for most of the show, the previous season had made a whole plotline out of Ted letting go of Robin and accepting that they just weren't meant to be together, opening up room for him to meet The Mother. Who was then killed off, and Robin and Barney got divorced, then Ted and Robin got together, despite it being established that Robin at that point mostly drifted away from the group for years due to just not fitting in anymore, presumably including Ted.
iCarly does this with Sam and Freddie for their brief hook-up in Season 4. Regardless of whether you are a Seddie or Creddie shipper, and while Sam and Freddie's fighting could be (and definitely was by their shippers) interpreted as Belligerent Sexual Tension, the actual hook up comes off like this. Rather than a convincing Slap-Slap-Kiss, as most BST couples get, all the audience gets is Freddie using his very strange mood app (which receives no explanation) to read Sam's mood, which reveals it as "in love", which Freddie thinks applies to Brad, and when he confronts Sam about it, she suddenly kisses him.
Sayid with Shannon, who made him forget the love of his life (which almost borders this trope, since they were childhood friends, but reconnected during the month she was a prisoner of the army he was serving). Doesn't last long, but in the series finale, he hooks up with Shannon again in the afterlife, establishing her instead of Nadia as the love of his life and his soulmate. What.
Sawyer and Juliet hooked up in Season 5 although they barely even spoke to each other for the previous two seasons. However, it worked: the show skips ahead in time and uses their relationship as a surprisingly effective reveal.
Arthur/Guinevere, one that has led to something of a Broken Base among the fandom. Neither Arthur nor Guinevere interacted very much in Season 1, although the scenes that they did share had a strong emotional punch to them (Arthur comforts Gwen after her father's death, Gwen tends Arthur on his sick bed, etc), but come the second episode of Season 2, Arthur stays at Gwen's house for a short period of time and impulsively kisses her when the time comes to leave. From this point, there are several rather overwrought declarations ("I care about her more than anyone!" and "Anyone who spends five minutes with you can see how you feel about each other!") that don't feel particularly earned, as well as violins, slow-motion, and dramatic back-lighting whenever they're together (and at least one True Love's Kiss). Things improved a bit in the third season when Arthur/Gwen were given more of a chance to flirt and have actual conversations.
Merlin/Freya, a Rescue Romance that begins with Merlin saving Freya from a Bounty Hunter, suddenly having the young warlock willing to give up his entire life in Camelot to run away with a girl he’s had exactly three short conversations with. The only reason he doesn’t go through with it is that Freya didn’t survive the episode.
The Nanny: Despite a few moments of Belligerent Sexual Tension (like the kiss in the first Season 3 episode), Niles and C.C. hate each other and Niles loves to insult and torment C.C. for most of the show... until the last season when Niles suddenly reveals that he's actually in love with her and decides he wants to marry her. Then we only know that C.C. turns him down several times and after an argument, Niles gives her a "The Reason You Suck" Speech...however, at the end of the episode, they are discovered in bed together without any explanation. After that, they almost never interact on-screen but it's implied they are having a secret relationship. In the last episode they get married in Fran's DELIVERY ROOM and in the same scene C.C. even learns that she is pregnant with Niles' baby. Even Niles's actornever quite bought it.
NCIS. Following her divorce after her heretofore loving husband was turned into a cheating SOB, within the course of THREE episodes scattered over a few months, Ellie Bishop was revealed to be in a new relationship, to have her new boyfriend killed off, and to have their love story depicted via flashbacks, capped off with the reveal that she would have accepted his proposal had he not died. Aside from the time frame making it unlikely that they could have been involved long enough to be considering marriage, their relationship is glaringly different from nearly all others the show has depicted, where considerable time was spent developing the character and the romance, and as such, his death fails to have any emotional impact.
TPTB are going this same route with her apparent relationship with Torres, inexplicably opting to only hint at it with a few throwaway lines rather than actually show the viewers.
Gibbs has gotten one added to his backstory, with the recent revelation that he lost an ex-fiancée in the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon. The problem is, we know he was in the process of divorcing his third wife at some point in 2001, which leaves a very short period of time for him to have met this other woman, decide to marry her, and break up with her by September.
In Season 3, Robin Hood has been dating Regina for a few days at the most, then when his formerly deceased wife Marian arrives from the past, he and Regina are suddenly madly in love and he cannot seem to choose between a woman he barely knows and his wife whom he previously stated he would do anything to have back. It is resolved after Marian is revealed to be Zelena and Regina and Robin's relationship resumes until his death by Hades.
Season 4 saw Belle hooking up with someone else not long after she forced Mr. Gold to leave Storybrooke. This someone was Will Scarlet, someone who she scarcely interacted with beforehand.
Even more strangely, the entire storyline for Will Scarlet was dropped without much explanation, and the character was Brother Chucked, leaving Belle and Gold free to snap back to Official Couple status, and the mystery of what happened to The Red Queen, who was last shown as Will's wife in the finale of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland completely unresolved, despite a scene earlier in Season 4 hinting that he was still looking for her.
In The Originals Hayley and Elijah interacted once before he's daggered and she's reading his journals and missing him badly, and Elijah has barely been back for one scene before he's chasing after her like a lost puppy.
In Peaky Blinders, Tommy hooks up with Grace towards the end of Season 1 despite the fact he knows very little about her except that she's lied to him several times about herself since they met. When Grace is revealed to be The Mole, he is stunned and angered by the betrayal but continues to moon over her for a long time afterwards despite knowing their relationship was built on lies and she sold him out to his worst enemy.
In Zeo, a future seen in a Christmas Episode had Tommy eventually married to Catherine, when they'd never really shown a romantic attraction before and Tommy's only love interest in the show up until that point had been Kimberly during Mighty Morphin', who'd moved out of Angel Grove by the time that episode had come around.
Samurai/Super Samurai had a forced last-minute hook-up with Mike and Emily in the last episode, despite the fact that they'd never shown a romantic interest in each other prior. The only hint at this eventual hook-up was Scott in Clash of the Red Rangers suggesting Emily looked at him like she had a crush on him, despite no direction, camera shots, or dialogue having suggested it not only the entire season prior, but even in that special itself.
There's also a secondary relationship that Daiyu and Decker had since it was revealed that they'd loved each other hundreds of years prior to the series. The problem? Decker doesn't remember his life before becoming half Nighlok due to amnesia and Daiyu doesn't even remotely try to remind him about their past together. It's not helped that this development wasn't even remotely in Shinkenger, the series' source material, so it didn't have that kind of relationship between their counterparts. The seasons relied so heavily on retelling the Shinkenger storyline that even the changes they did make either didn't add up to much or were to the series' detriment.
Megaforce/Super Megaforce has it arguably worse. Though it's shown Jake has a crush on Gia in the first season, it's an unrequited crush (also trying to be helped by the fact that their counterparts in Goseiger were brother and sister and, thus, they belonged to the same clan, which derived their ground motifs and had their mechs work in tandem a lot). After that, Gia apparently shows reciprocation of his feelings, but doesn't even bother to tell him. By the time Super comes around, the show was way too focused on cannibalizing the Gokaiger footage and plots it was adapting to try to make on seamless continuity between it and the previous season to focus on anything in that direction, not helped by the fact that none of Gokaiger's characters had romantic feelings for each other. By the time the finale came around, there was nothing suggesting that they were going to get together, so when Gia kisses Jake on the cheek, it comes right the hell out of nowhere, which is arguably worse than Samurai's situation, since it was given a bit of development, dropped, then picked back up at the ending of the season, whereas Samurai just had it barely established, then had it dropped into the last episode.
Tellingly, when Judd Lynn took over as showrunner from Jonathan Tzachor for Dino Charge, he instilled a good amount of establishment of Tyler and Shelby's eventual hook-up, not only righting the wrongs of the previous four seasons before it but also its Sentai source material, Kyoryuger, as described below in the Super Sentai section.
Much falls instantly in love with Kate, because...well, the writers never got that far. She treats him like crap, but he never stops mooning over her and eventually goes so far as to (temporarily) abandon the outlaws when he realizes that she has a crush on Robin.
And what about Robin going from “my-true-love-died-in-my-arms-and-I-will-never-love-again” to “Wow, okay, Isabella’s hot, I’ll just go…romp in the bushes with her” thing in Season 3? Maybe there was some sexual tension, but romance? This makes Robin look like an unfaithful jerk after the huge balloon of suicidal angst that was the season opener. There was no explanation as to why Robin suddenly abandoned his angst over his true love for this woman who, incidentally, is the sister of his archnemesis and possibly trying to kill him.
A straight example in the final season of Sabrina the Teenage Witch that ultimately evolves into a Deconstruction. Sabrina falls for Aaron in his debut episode so much that she uses magic to find out what his flaws are. They hook up at the end of the episode and for the rest of the season simply act as a couple that's been together for years, rather than developing slowly. It's never explained why Sabrina literally makes room for him in her heart. However, cracks start to appear as Sabrina initially thinks his proposal is a trick caused by the Monster of the Week and accepts reluctantly. The rest of her actions during their engagement come across as straight-up denial more than anything else. Finally when her wedding day comes, she gets cold feet and dithers between that and denial. She and Aaron ultimately agree to call off the wedding. It's worth noting that this plot wasn't supposed to be an example of this trope. The showrunners originally wanted Sabrina to develop a serious relationship with Josh, a character who'd been on the show since Season 4; the two really had known each other for years, and their back-and-forth feelings for each other were a recurring subplot. The problem — Josh's actor didn't want to come back for the last season, forcing the producers to come up with a last-minute replacement.
Ben and Amy. They had an okay relationship for the first few episodes (if you ignore that a. Ben only originally asked her out because he was hoping to get some sexual experience before going after the real object of his affections, Grace and b. Amy wasn't upfront either, since she didn't tell him she was pregnant). For the most part, they were believable as two earnest, awkward teens in their first relationship. Then Ben proposed to Amy after they'd been dating a few weeks, upon discovering she was pregnant with Ricky's baby. Now the audience was supposed to accept that Amy and Ben had a deep and true love to last their whole lives and they and the other characters wouldn't shut up about how right they were for each other.
In Season 4, Ben got a new love interest named Dylan and this happened again. They were inseparable almost instantly, which included Dylan showing up unexpectedly at Ben's house and school within the first week or so of their relationship.
Smallville's one example that's almost universally agreed upon is the Clana (Clark and Lana) ship, which was arguably kept on way past the point of its usefulness to the plot, interfered with other plotlines that fans wanted to see, and seemed to slow down Clark's growth.
Stargate Atlantis does throw in a few moments that make it clear Keller and McKay are interested in each other, but they go from eating lunch together once (while he was in the infirmary) to him professing his love when he thinks he's going to die. A couple of episodes later, with no intermediate interaction, she says she loves him, too.
In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Parallels", Worf is sent multiverse-hopping, and he briefly winds up in a world where he and Troi are very Happily Married. While he had never considered this before, he decided to give it a try when he got back. This was the starting point of the writers developing a bizarre obsession with hooking them up despite the two never having any kind of romantic chemistry before, as well as Troi having a longstanding Will They or Won't They? with Riker. Jonathan Frakes (Riker) and Marina Sirtis (Troi) apparently disliked the idea as well and were quite happy to have their characters get married in their last film. Michael Dorn (Worf), on the other hand, refused to forget it, and, when given a line about how Riker and Troi's feelings for each other had never gone away, subtexted it like mad. Then Worf went aboard DS9, fell for Jadzia Dax, and acted as if he never even liked Deanna.
Nerys and Shakaar. Nerys even lampshades how sudden the beginning of the relationship was while talking to Odo, solely to make the audience feel sorry for Odo because he just realized he's in love with Nerys.
Considering the above, it's funny how Worf and Jadzia have no romantic chemistry and no common interests besides the Dax symbiont's experiences with the Klingons.
Jadzia and a one-off alien she meets in the Season 3 episode, Meridian. The Defiant encounters a planet that shifts in and out of phase with this dimension, which has about 30 people living on it. Jadzia gets involved with the scientist living on the planet and ends up trying to take a leave of absence for 60 years to stay on the planet with him while it's shifted out of this dimension. Sisko looks like he's about to call her on this but then simply says he's happy for her instead. And then they find out that she can't actually survive the shift, she gets beamed back to the Defiant, and she never mentions or appears to think of him again.
In the final episodes of the show, after spending most of her time trying to sort out her feelings about Worf, Ezri suddenly declares she had a dream about Julian Bashir, and she and Worf decide this means she experiences true love for him... despite not finding many reasons for her feelings besides that he's attractive. There are some scenes of them being awkward around one another, but overall not much build-up before he also decides he loves her "passionately" and they get together. It's a coupling that might have worked if it were framed as more casual, as the characters are in a war and likely happy to be alive, but the "true love" framing left a lot of fans baffled, and feeling like Ezri was a "prize" for Bashir's earlier attraction to Jadzia Dax (after the show spent a season making it clear that Ezri was a different person). It left such a bad taste that even the beta canon writers couldn't wait to break them up, not to mention reams of fanfiction.
Star Trek: Voyager has Seven of Nine/Chakotay. After three and a half seasons of them having only a professional relationship and almost no interaction outside of business, Seven suddenly develops an unrequited attraction to Chakotay in the second half of the final season. In the finale, the two have become romantically involved, with Chakotay having fallen completely head over heels for her in the span of... well, the theme song. Particularly sloppy in that between the episode in which Seven explores romantic interactions with a holodeck-Chakotay and the finale was an episode in which the two of them were trapped together on an alien world. The actors specifically asked if there would be any follow-up to the holodeck romance that they should incorporate into their performances and were given a firm "No" in response.
Step by Step had Dana Foster and Rich, who was her stepbrother's dimwitted friend. After spending two seasons barely able to stand being in the same room as each other, they suddenly started dating in Season 6... and still acted like they could barely stand being in the same room as each other. In some episodes, it really bordered on Informed Relationship.
In Supergirl (2015), several relationships in Season 2 occur almost instantaneously or with very little buildup, such as Winn/Lyra, J'onn/M'gann, and Kara/Mon-El. This can be justified in Winn's case due to how much of a Socially Awkward Hero he is, but Kara, despite being angry at Mon-El, suddenly decides to forgive him and fall in love, even though his Character Development has been spotty at best. The writers even acknowledged that they put them together to give Kara someone to fix. There was quite a bit of They Changed It, Now It Sucks! response, especially since Kara had spent all of Season 1 building up to a relationship with James Olsen, which had been overall better received, but is dumped quickly so that she can fall for Mon-El, and seemingly for no good reason. James himself goes Out of Focus for much of the rest of the season, making it even worse. The writers then shunted him into a short-lived relationship with Lena Luthor, whom he had little prior interaction with and very little in common with. Viewers reacted very negatively, with many of them perceiving a decided lack of chemistry between the two actors, and James was Put on a Bus not long afterward. Then the writers tried it one more time with William, a new colleague of Kara's at CatCo who turned viewers off by pushing Kara to go out with him repeatedly.
At the end of Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger after he returns from what was assumed by the rest of the cast to be a suicide mission, Daigo (Kyoryu Red) gets together with Amy (Kyoryu Pink). The problem with this is that both characters were depicted as Chaste Heroes who had no real relationship chemistry and no romantic interactions prior to their pairing up. The aftereffects of this little twist was foreseeable, not only because it came out of left field, but also because there were two other characters who actually did have romantic character development with Daigo. Of course, considering many fans' opinion on him, this doesn't seem so surprising.
In the same series, it's a running gag that Souji Rippukan never notices that Rin, his kendo team manager, has a huge crush on him (despite his friends' efforts to set him up with her.) The sequel movie 100 Years After retcons events so that Souji had begun dating Rin by the end of the TV series, but he still shows little interest in her and even completely forgets a date they had planned. However, it's revealed that they married shortly afterwards and were deeply in love until Rin died some time before Souji (who lives to be 116 years old.) There is no explanation for the sudden change in Souji's feelings.
A third example from Kyoryuger: in episode 41, Nossan is thrown with Candelira during an arranged marriage interview (where she was posing as a human to harvest emotion from lovelorn men) and they almost instantly fall in love, which is used to spur her into a Heel–Face Turn and leaving Deboss. This is made out to be very important to the plot and their characters, yet the only foreshadowing was a single line of dialogue in an early episode when Candelira said that she could fall for him if they weren't enemies.
In Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger, Emiri and Yukito are suddenly in a relationship at the end of the last episode, with no prior romantic interaction between them. When they return for a team-up with the following year's series Emiri is completely devoted to Yukito and has begun to dress and talk differently to fit in with his upper-class background, becoming very unlike the carefree schoolgirl she was during the show. They reappear for a guest appearance in Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger where they are now married and Emiri is working as Yukito's secretary, but still completely in love with him and with no explanation as to how they got together in the first place or the change in Emiri's character.
A similar example to the above is Sen and Umeko in Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger. They have a close friendship, but no romantic interaction until Episode 41 when Sen suddenly becomes jealous at Umeko getting engaged to another man. He proves that her boyfriend is an evil Alienizer, and Umeko suddenly realizes Sen has been the guy for her all along. Because it was close to the end of the show, there was no further time to focus on their relationship, so it doesn't really come up again until the crossover with Mahou Sentai Magiranger where other characters can't stop gushing about how perfect Sen and Umeko are for each other and how they are obviously in love. However, almost none of their relationship is ever shown to the audience to make this believable.
Sort-of amended by Dekaranger's "10 Years After" movie in which Sen and Umeko have been dating for a long time and have a few scenes together that make their relationship convincing. In the crossover with Uchu Sentai Kyuranger, they are shown to be engaged. The wedding happens in Space Squad: Gavan vs Dekaranger, but is interrupted twice (first by Gavan announcing that the world is in danger and second by Sen suffering nervousness-induced constipation).
This happens In-Universe in when the Angels (with the help of Cupid) arranged for Mary and John to meet and fall in love, even though they didn't get along at first, because they needed Sam and Dean to be born.
Dean and Lisa, in Seasons 3 and 5. She's the Girl of the Week in one episode in Season 3, where Dean suspects he might be the father of her son, Ben. A couple of episodes later, he is briefly shown dreaming about a family life with her and Ben. However, no reference is made to her or Ben in all of Season 4 after Dean returns from Hell and is shown happily hooking up/flirting with other women. Then, out of the blue toward the end of Season 5, Dean arranges for the angels to protect her and Ben during the Apocalypse, and he goes to her after he thinks Sam is dead and tries to start a life with her. Granted, the relationship is developed more in Season 6, but that is after he's been living with her for a year.
Sam/Eileen in the 15th season. They had a flirtatious friendship in Seasons 11 and 12 before she was killed by the BMOL and Sam successfully resurrects her, not knowing that Chuck manipulated circumstances so he could do so. What ensues is a fledgling, mostly offscreen romance where they share one onscreen kiss, go on one date, and grapple with the discovery that Chuck had engineered the whole thing to plant Eileen as an unwitting spy. In the meantime, Dean goes full Shipper on Deck for the first time since Season 1, Chuck implies Sam would become suicidally reckless if Eileen got killed again, and Eileen suffers Badass Decay and turns solely into a Designated Love Interest for Sam, complete with more feminine clothing and makeup than she used to wear and a picture of Sam as her cell phone background. The thing is, apart from the fact that Sam and Eileen seem to barely spend a week together over the course of the season, Sam — while clearly caring about her and enjoying her company — never seems particularly interested in her in a romantic or sexual way, and seems mostly confused or uncomfortable when Eileen or other people bring it up, making it seem like Eileen (and everyone else) are far more invested in the potential romance than he is.
The show played this for laughs with Jackie and Hyde's hookup in Season 5. The two initially don't like each other at all, and it was only through their common friends that they're even in the same vicinity. They become better friends in Season 2 after he shows her how to deal with Laurie stealing Kelso from her. In Season 3, she becomes attracted to him and develops a clingy infatuation with him, which he's annoyed by, but he eventually caves and takes her out on a date. The two share a kiss, but Jackie says it didn't do anything for her and finally realizes Hyde isn't the guy for her. At this point, they seem to have effectively been sunk, and it's not brought up again until the Season 5 premiere when the others leave the room, and the two suddenly start making out and continue to do so. In the next episode, a flashback reveals they were watching TV and complaining about how bored they were when they look at each other for a few seconds and spontaneously started making out. Yet, their relationship comes off as much more believable because they give off a ton of chemistry together, and by the fact that they initially spend a lot of time lampshading how strange it is.
Sadly, the show also played it straight in Season 8, with not one, not two, but three pairings:
The first is Hyde and Sam. In the last episodes of the previous season, Jackie and Hyde had encountered issues with their relationship resulting in Hyde taking a trip to Las Vegas to clear his head. In the first episode of Season 8, he returns, and his and Jackie's great relationship is completely tossed out the window when Sam shows up completely out of the blue and reveals that Hyde got drunk and married her. Jackie spends a total of one episode afterward angsting over this before moving on, and while Sam isn't a bad character, she and Hyde have absolutely no chemistry together.
The second is caused by the first; Jackie and Fez. While Fez had a crush on Jackie since the start of the show, Jackie had never returned his feelings, not to mention Fez is a total horndog who was willing to nail anyone. She had even continuously ruled him out. She did kiss him once and go out on a date with him, but after each of those events she had straight up said it was impossible for anything to happen between them. Then after losing Hyde and getting over him, she makes up a list of qualities she needs in a man, and Fez miraculously turns out to fit it perfectly, and they end up a couple.
The third is Donna and Randy. Eric and Kelso are Put on a Bus for the final season, and both are given a Suspiciously Similar Substitute in the form of Randy. While Eric is in Africa for the final season, there's never any major indication that Eric and Donna's relationship is having issues. (The best the writers could come up with is Eric not talking to her on the phone.) Then, out of the blue again, Donna reveals that off-screen Eric broke up with her. After a Will They or Won't They? tease, she ends up dating Randy. Making this worse is that Donna was clearly attracted to Randy before Eric's break-up. This one gets an Author's Saving Throw twice over, however — most likely once it was known the show wouldn't be coming back for a ninth season. The two ultimately break up rather quickly. Later, Eric returns in the finale, where he admits he's not sure why they broke up in the first place. It's left up to viewers to decide if Eric and Donna get back together officially, which unsurprisingly, many prefer. note And the Sequel SeriesThat '90s Show reveals that it did happen, and also sinks Fez/Jackie, revealing she dumped him for Kelso, again
Ianto accuses Captain Jack of being a monster for killing Ianto's Cyberman-girlfriend (long story) but starts shagging him a few episodes later with no significant on-screen development. Mellows somewhat in Season 3 when the two have more frequent conversations and develop a more emotional relationship.
Owen going bananas over Diane after knowing her for all of a week.
The overly romantic light that Jack and his relationship with the real Jack Harkness was painted in, given they only know each other for a couple of hours.
A curious case with Tosh and Tommy: Tommy has been in suspended animation since the First World War, but is let out for a day once a year to ensure that all is well. This means that he and Tosh have known each other for years, in a way, but in another way, they've known each other for about a week.
Sookie and Bill. The two of them never talk about anything except about how much they are in love with one another or what's currently going on in the plot. In the books Sookie flat-out ADMITS that their love is shallow and that she got into a relationship with him because A.) she couldn't read his thoughts and B.) she's never actually been in a relationship before. She even breaks up with him far earlier than TV Sookie and barely angsts about it at all; the love is SUPPOSED to be shallow but the people making the TV show didn't know that. Later episodes also point out that, for most, drinking a vampire's blood makes you addicted, and if drunk "from the tap" you're also addicted to the vampire. Given that Sookie only starts properly falling for Eric after drinking his blood (since vampire blood speeds human healing), it's speculated in-universe and out that that's the REAL reason he's on her mind.
Sam and Nicole in season 6. After Luna (Sam's previous girlfriend) gets killed in the opening premiere for season 6, the show immediately introduces Nicole as a supernatural rights activist who wants Sam to come out as a shifter to the public. Eventually, through a series of events, the two supposedly fall in love and start a relationship. For many fans, this felt forced for a number of reasons: 1.) Neither character had any chemistry with the other, 2.) The relationship happens 72 hours after the death of Luna and 24 hours after the death of Nichole's boyfriend which made the relationship seem rushed, 3.) Sam is almost twice Nichole's age, which many fans found off-putting, 4.) Nicole is considered to be a Replacement Scrappy for Luna and comes off more like a Damsel in Distress who has to constantly be rescued by Sam. The fact that she makes stupid decisions and shoots her mouth off at inappropriate moments has not endured her to many people, 5.) After Nicole gets pregnant, it comes off to the audience that Sam's reasons for being in this relationship aren't really because he loves Nicole, but because he feels obligated to take care of the kid. Unsurprisingly, this is not a relationship that many fans like.
Twin Peaks had two of these for the price of one; the concurrent romances between Dale Cooper and Annie Blackburn and Audrey Horne and John Justice Wheeler both involved main characters who were suddenly swept off their feet instantly by strangers visiting from out of town. The suddenness of both subplots is explained by Kyle MacLachlan's refusal to allow his character to date a teenager. Especially irking to fans who wanted to see the Fan-Preferred Couple of Cooper and Audrey together.
Stefan and Elena in the first two episodes. Elena meets Stefan, a mysterious new student, they have two awkward conversations, and the next day they both already knew they were meant to be. They agree that "We met. We talked. It was epic" before sharing their first kiss and becoming a couple. However, despite the rushed beginning, the rest of the relationship was well written.
Enzo and Bonnie. In Seasons 5 and 6, they are frenemies at best and The Friends Who Never Hang at worst. Most episodes in Season 6 focus on Bonnie's close platonic relationship with Damon, and her few interactions with Enzo are not very friendly if not outright antagonistic. However, in Season 7, they fall in love during the three-year Time Skip (we only see a flashback of their first date in one episode) and remain madly in love for the rest of the show to the point they can't live without each other.
Happens a few times on The Walking Dead, but the most prominent example is Carol and Tobin, who share a kiss for some inexplicable reason, despite only speaking once in the previous series.
Warehouse 13's six-episode final season, after several seasons avoiding the cliche, lazily shoehorned in a romantic subplot for Platonic Life-Partners Myka and Pete.
The White Queen: In the Starz telecast, King Richard III and Elizabeth of York are meant to be head-over-heels in love, but they hardly interact onscreen (we see them dancing more than speaking to each other), so their romance is poorly developed.
Joe & Helen from Wings despite it being the main pairing. After being childhood friends, they decide to date throughout season 2, until Helen leaves to go to New York to improve her cello skills, despite a declaration of love. After she comes back, Joe already has a new girlfriend, taking her leaving as the relationship being over. For the next few seasons, they show no indication of liking each other, with Helen even mocking their former relationship. Then come the end of Season 7, they sleep together after she gets engaged to a Romantic False Lead and suddenly Joe wants to marry her cause reasons. note It doesn't help that, unlike most Romantic False Leads Davis Lynch was depicted very positively, being a young millionaire whose only real flaw was blowing off dates for his business meetings, and even then, he would make it up to her. It's telling that when Brian makes a video to celebrate their love later in the season, the only clips of their post-season 2 relationships are taken from bad dates they had with other people.
Without a Trace's Samantha Spade conceives after a one-night-stand after which she can't even remember the guy's name (Brian) and needs to use her job skills to track him down and tell him in five minutes that (a) he's going to be a father and (b) that she wants him to sign over his parental rights, meaning that she clearly wants nothing to do with him. While she eventually lets him spend time with his son, there are no real signs of them building a relationship — until the series finale, when Samantha abruptly decides to dump Jack for a literal Last-Minute Hookup with Brian.note Seriously. It is literally in the last minute of the finale that she tells Jack that she's breaking up with him to make it work with Brian. Quite glaring given the notable amount of time that was spent developing her other two relationships (Martin, Jack).
Logan and Quinn are an example that proves this trope does not make a couple bad. The two have little interaction for the first 3 and a half seasons, and the interaction they do have isn't friendly, and that does not mean Belligerent Sexual Tension. It just means unfriendly. Then midway through the final season, her boyfriend Mark leaves her for another girl. While she's sulking, Logan happens to be riding by and sees her looking sad and comes to talk to her. While she initially resists his attempts to cheer her up and even asks why he's doing so, he showers her with compliments and then puts her glasses back on her and says, "There's Quinn." before they share their First Kiss. Then in the episodes after this, they are all over each other; making out very frequently, being intimate, slow dancing. However, these two are actually very good together, give off a great Opposites Attract vibe, and have a lot of chemistry to the point where a viewer might wonder why the writers didn't start building them up earlier. Quinn and Logan both lampshade how weird it is that they are together, and admit that they are embarrassed to be dating and hide it from the other characters, and when they tell Michael about their relationship, he thinks they're joking.
Zoey and James. In the episode that introduces him, everyone instantly loves him, except Michael and Logan, who still miss Chase. So after everyone thought they were dating because they interacted, the episode ends with them getting together despite having no chemistry. Sort of deconstructed as she later realizes she doesn't actually love him. It was still terribly executed and led to the series' Seasonal Rot.
Unfortunate Implications: Sam was originally created to be a love interest for Kurt, but was changed to be straight when Ryan Murphy apparently noticed the chemistry between him and Quinn so strong that it just couldn't be denied (and which many fans have been quick to point out doesn't seem to come across onscreen). To his credit, he did also create another character as a love interest for Kurt afterwards.
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