Teeth Clenched Teamwork / Live-Action TV

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• This was a staple of 24. Jack being the kind of guy he is, most of the people who work with him do it with teeth tightly clenched. But it's not just him. Various government agencies will struggle to cooperate, as will individuals on those teams. Even the villains behind the given terrorist plot will be shown to be ready to cut each other at a moments' notice.
• Not every team on The Amazing Race ultimately finds themselves getting along, the separated couple of Tara & Wil (Season 2) being the best example. She actively flirted with another racer in front of him.
• The entire fourth season of Angel, with one exception — that brief period when they were all mind controlled into working together. The depths of distrust, resentment, and betrayal spread through the team meant that imminent apocalypse was pretty much the only thing that could get them in the same room. This was especially noticeable between Gunn and Wesley, due to the latter's betrayal over the Connor affair and his interest in Fred. Furthermore, when pressed, Gunn confesses he can never be friends with Angel, his natural enemy. In Season 5, this happens between Angel and Spike, usually Played for Laughs.
• Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome Hot-headed, rookie, want-a-be ace Adama teams up with weary, tired, just wants to make it out of the war alive Coker. Throw in a top-secret mission and you've got a lot of shouting between the two.
• Blake's 7 has this due to some conflicting strong personalities among the crew.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • The show had Cordelia as a reluctant team member (sort of), it gets worse after her breakup with Xander.
  • Spike could also be an example, especially in Season 4, when he's only working with them so he can get to kill anything at all. Especially prominent with Xander.
  • Xander towards Angel, although not so much Angel towards Xander.
  • Anya winds up behaving this way to the rest of the Scoobies during the end of Season 6 and the beginning of Season 7 when she becomes a vengeance demon again after Xander leaves her at the altar.
• Roy and Brice in the Emergency! episode "The Nuisance." John is hurt and Brice is his temporary replacement. But Brice's lack of people skills and over-fondness for the rulebook irritate Roy to no end. He half jokingly tells the captain at one point that he might have to pop him in the jaw to work with him.
• The Falcon and the Winter Soldier continues the uneasy alliance between the titular characters from the larger franchise, as Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes still barely tolerate one another and struggle to cooperate. Things only get more messy when they're forced to also team up with Baron Zemo, one the Avengers's greatest archenemies who is also clearly working towards his own agenda while helping them. Naturally the team-up between the three is fraught with uncomfortable tension, constant insults, endless bickering, and the occasional death threat.
• Farscape, especially in the earlier episodes, has the theme of highly incompatible beings having to work together to survive. Happens again when Scorpius joins the crew in Season 4 (and again in "The Peacekeeper Wars"). No one wants him around, and with very good reason, but John is especially reticent to keep him aboard.
• Feud: Joan Crawford and Bette Davis utterly despise one another, but they agree to team up on Whatever Happened To Baby Jane in order to stay in the limelight in the face of the collapse of studio system and Jack Valance's efforts to banish Davis from Hollywood.
• Firefly: Firefly is actually fairly mixed about this, as Jayne and Simon are often at odds with everyone else (and each other), and Inara and Book are often at odds with Mal, but other than that everyone seems to get along just fine. Well except for Jayne and River. And Jayne and Inara. Or maybe it's just Jayne.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Jon Snow's unpopular plan of teaming the Night's Watch up with their enemies, the wildlings, against their common foe. No one is particularly happy about it.
  • Loboda, the Thenn who had just spurned Jon's offer of safe passage through the Wall, volunteers to accompany Jon to rescue the dragonglass and even has a Last Stand against a White Walker to buy Jon time.
  • As much as Tywin hates it, he does respect Tyrion as the most capable (or at least most trustworthy) of the lords in King's Landing. While he is harsh and abusive towards Tyrion, he does also speak to him as somewhat of an equal.
  • Grey Worm distrusts Tyrion as a foreigner and hates the diplomatic tactic of appeasing the former slavers, but lends his support because his Queen trusts the dwarf. Later, Dany's new allies don't seem to get along very well. Tyrion despises working with Ellaria Sand because Ellaria poisoned his niece Myrcella while Ellaria blames Tyrion for Oberyn's death. Olenna doesn't seem to trust Tyrion and advises Dany not to always listen to him. When Jon arrives to seek aid in the defense against the Night King, he and Dany spend much of the formative days of their alliance struggling to find a compromise between their goals.
  • Downplayed with Stannis, but it's quite visible that he doesn't particularly like using Melisandre's dark magic, but needs her all the same.
• The Gifted (2017): After John gets captured, Andy and Lorna join up with Marcos, Clarice and Lauren to free him. Naturally, things are pretty tense between them since they went their separate ways.
• Gotham Knights (2023): Turner is not thrilled about working with Duela, Harper and Cullen, nor are they particularly thrilled about working with him. The Rows don't always get along with Duela, either. None of them are excited when Turner brings in Stephanie and Carrie, as they don't think a pair of prep-school girls have the stomach for fighting the Court of Owls; in particular, Harper doesn't like Stephanie due to viewing her as a rich girl who doesn't know what she's doing. They all warm up to each other over time however. Carrie and Stephanie turn out to be very skilled, useful members of the team. Duela and Turner become a couple. Stephanie and Harper do too. Duela also becomes quite fond of Carrie.
• Hawaii Five-O: McGarrett and Danno in the remake hate each other's guts, but make one hell of a team. It should be noted that their everlasting hatred for each other ebbs and wanes as the plot dictates frequently. In the original, Danno was much more of a loyal follower.
  • Mid Season 1 they've become good friends and now, way into Season 5, they are Heterosexual Life-Partners that can barge into each other's house without raising eyebrows and bicker Like an Old Married Couple 24/7.
• House: Dr. House's team falls into this category. The team is polite at best, and Dysfunction Junction at worst. The team does always set aside differences to help the patient, but they never stop sniping at each other. Still, even at their lowest low, they're productive. Then Season 5 grabs a shovel. Up to that point, they were still cooperating, but after Season 5, Episode 13, it's pretty obvious that the team has almost no morals whatsoever, and no one seems to be trying to change that. Foreman has all but fallen from grace, Kutner lacks the gumption to back himself up, and everyone else has pretty much bent to House's will. At this point, they're the poster child for why every Five-Man Band needs The Heart.
  House, being House, seems to prefer that his team be at each other's throats. Hence his signing off on Foreman's thesis and not Cameron's, when Foreman basically cribbed off of Cameron. Among many other things.
• Kamen Rider
  • Kamen Rider OOO: Eiji Hino and Ankh start with a mutual agreement that they work together for as long as they need and try to kill each other the moment they will not.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: The doctors of CR start out hating each other, and all of them hating Emu in particular as the new kid. Their first major upgrade doesn't work unless they all cooperate, graduating them to this trope, while over the course of the rest of the show they gradually become True Companions.
  • Kamen Rider Build: Sento is a genius physicist and Ryuga is a former pro fighter. They initially join forces out of necessity, but develop into Bash Brothers with a dose of vitriol over time. The three nations formed out of the backstory's balkanized Japan are also grudgingly working together at the start of the show, but take the first opportunity to betray one another and start an all-out war.
  • Kamen Rider Zi-O: Sougo is going to grow up into an Evil Overlord, but currently is an idealistic young kid. Geiz traveled back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, but is often talked down from killing someone who hasn't done anything yet. As a result, Geiz puts on this trope being in play, but Sougo almost immediately figures out that his threats are empty and he'll never actually have the guts to take Sougo out for real. The one time he almost tries, Sougo demonstrates Geiz never had even the slightest chance of winning.
  • Kamen Rider Revice: Ikki and his inner demon Vice don't get along, for obvious reasons. Ikki eventually manages to make a contract with Vice to force him into compliance: behave or I'll kill us both, with a demonstration to prove he's not bluffing. Much like Ex-Aid and Build, the pair eventually graduate to Vitriolic Best Buds as Vice becomes less selfish and Ikki more grounded.
• In the Season 1 finale of Legend of the Seeker, Richard and the newly-introduced Mord-Sith Cara are sent by an explosion to the Bad Future, where Darken Rahl and Kahlan's son killed his parents and confessed everyone in the world to worship him. Cara is initially reluctant to help her master's enemy. However, after she finds out that Nicholas Rahl has killed all her Mord-Sith sisters, she agrees to help him find the way to return to the present. In Season 2, she becomes a loyal companion to him, partly because of the revelation that Richard is next in line for the throne of D'Hara.
• Lost has this come up every time three or more people have to cooperate on something, especially if Ben is involved.
• This happens frequently on Misfits, most notably when the group of Fire-Forged Friends kill their probation worker and have to go to extreme lengths to hide the evidence. There are a lot of clashing personalities (and generally appalling attitude problems ^note  yes Nathan, we're looking at you) in the group, plus there's no clear leader, so the bickering never stops and occasionally gets nasty. But they usually manage to stick together when they absolutely have to. That said, when the situation gets really desperate in the Season 1 finale and it looks like a full-scale Misfit Mobilization Moment might be on the cards, the team buckles under the pressure and falls apart completely. In Season 2, the group shows they are also True Companions, whenever one of them is in danger.
• Murphy Brown: The FYI team will almost always be at each other's throats when they need to be working together, mostly instigated by the size of their egos. Although The Power of Friendship comes through beautifully in the end, they'll have to have a free-for-all shouting brawl first.
• This is a common occurrence on all of the various NCIS series, whenever the NCIS team is forced to work with someone from another federal law-enforcement agency. FBI agents are the most common offenders, but CIA agents like Trent Kort and (rarely) BATF ^note Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms - they investigate gunrunning and the like, Army CID, and even Mossad agents have provided the irritant value on occasion.
• Odd Squad:
  • In "Mystic Egg Pizza", Delivery Debbie and Delivery Doug are forced to work together when they are struck by the same odd problem and turn to Odd Squad for help. By the climax of the episode, tensions run high and they break out into a nasty fight, right in front of Olive, Otto, and two villains.
  • While Oren and Olaf regularly serve as Sitcom Arch-Nemeses to Olive and Otto, the episode "The Potato Ultimato" has Olive being forced to team up with them in order to navigate the Potato Room and obtain a Growing Potato to stop a rapidly-shrinking Otto, due to the fact that Olaf, who knows the room well, needs a Translator Buddy in order for her to understand him. While it's made clear that she doesn't like the circumstances even a little bit, it also shows just how strong her bond with her partner is.
  • The trope is invoked by Oprah herself in "Moustache Confidential". She has Olive and Otto team up with Obfusco, who has had his moustache stolen, in order to retrieve it from whomever took it, and even establishes that he's a difficult agent to work with. The end of the episode reveals that she stole the moustache and forced the two agents to team up with Obfusco intentionally in order to teach him that he doesn't need his moustache (which serves as his Security Blanket) to solve cases well.
  • The Season 1 finale "O is Not For Over" has Otto being partnered with Ohlm, a new agent, following Olive being promoted to the Management position and becoming the Director of the precinct that Orville once ran. However, the two have very poor partner chemistry and definitely don't work well together, and Otto finds Ohlm to be nothing but a burden at best due to his ditziness.
  • "Partner Problems" expands on the Season 1 finale and has Ohlm and his new partner Orchid butting heads. Apparently, they've been doing so ever since they were made partners, and Oprah assigns Otis to fix their issue and get them to work together to capture a villain on the loose, lest they both be sent back to the Odd Squad Academy.
• Our Miss Brooks: This happens whenever Mr. Conklin forces Miss Brooks to go along with a scheme of which she does not approve.
• Sliders: This was very much the dynamic between Wade and Maggie during the latter half of Season 3 (before Wade got Put on a Bus to Hell.) Maggie found Wade too weak and easily frightened while Wade didn't like Maggie's tough, uncaring persona. Quinn and Rembrandt managed to get along pretty well with both women (and each other), though.
• Stargate Atlantis: The Wraith and humans have to team up to defeat the Asurans, and do so very reluctantly, both sides constantly watching out for betrayal.
• A frequently recurring theme on Stargate Universe, primarily demonstrated in the Young and Rush characters.
  • Also happens on a national scale on planet Novus, populated by descendants of the Destiny crew from an alternate timeline who were thrown back in time by a gate malfunction. The two countries (Tenara and Futura) are bitter rivals over the philosophies of their founders but have gotten over their differences and pooled their resources together to build numerous Generation Ships to take them to another world when their civilization is threatened by a rogue Black Hole.
  • Played for Laughs when Brody innocently goes to download the Tenaran archive to Destiny, only to receive a withering Death Glare from all the Tenarans present in the room. After a moment of confusion, his colleagues point out that the alternate Brody was one of the chief architects of the Futuran government.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: At the start of the show, this was the relationship between Major Kira and Commander Sisko since Kira felt as though the Federation was just waltzing into the vacuum left by Bajor's departed oppressors (the Cardassians). They eventually become Fire-Forged Friends. At the end of the show, this became the relationship between Major Kira, Gul Damar and Garak: after seven years of mutual loathing and mistrust, the trio are forced to work together to build La Résistance to throw the Dominion off Cardassia because, even though the Federation, Klingons and Romulans have joined forces to fight the Dominion, they still can't defeat it unless they can convince the Cardassians to fight against the Dominion, too. This also leads to Fire-Forged Friends.
  • Just because they enter the coalition to defeat the Dominion doesn't mean the Romulans like the Klingons any more than they didn't before. The feeling's mutual.
  • Dukat and Weyoun have this during the early stages of the war. The latter eventually drops this with Dukat's successor, Damar.
  • In one episode, Garak and Dukat team up to protect the Cardassian government leaders from a Klingon invasion. As they prepare for the battle, Dukat feels the need to remind Garak that when he uses his weapon, he's meant to be aiming at the Klingons.
• Star Trek: Voyager was all about this; what with the Federation and Maquis having to work together while not necessarily trusting each other. This wore off pretty quick by the end of the first season.
  • When Janeway proposed an alliance with the Borg to stop Species 8472, it was clear from the beginning it was going to be a suspect team-up.
• In Star Trek: Enterprise, this makes up the last half of Season 3, once Archer convinces Degra and most of the Xindi Council that they were being manipulated by the Sphere Builders into attacking Humanity, planning to prevent their own defeat in the future at Human and Xindi hands. This comes across hardest for Tucker, who's forced to work with the man who's responsible for designing the weapon that killed 7 million people on Earth, wiped out his hometown and killed his younger sister.
• Star Trek: Picard: In "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2", Elnor doesn't like or trust Narek, a Zhat Vash operative whose sister had murdered Hugh, but he agrees to work with him to destroy the beacon that will summon the extragalactic synthetics.
• Frequently in Supernatural. Especially when Crowley is the person that the Winchesters or Castiel or both is forced to join forces with against a threat much worse than Crowley.
• Top Gear (UK) plays this up for laughs whenever the hosts have to work together. Jeremy's MO is to rush through a job with brute force while James likes to slowly work on a project with intricate/plodding attention to detail. Richard tends to get caught in the middle, not having Jeremy's penchant for raw power or the patience for James' fussiness. They were unnaturally supportive of each other for most of the 24 Hour Britcar Endurance Race, but admitted afterward that working together in a Power of Friendship way had made them "feel dirty". In Real Life, however, they are Vitriolic Best Buds and True Companions.
• The first season finale of Torchwood. Jack summarizes it when he lists what his colleagues did during the season.
• Uchu Sentai Kyuranger: Stinger/Sasori Oranger and Champ/Ouishi Black work together only because they are on the same team and have the same goal. Champ would rather squish Stinger for killing his creator, Professor Anton and Stinger is just antisocial prick. They do develop into True Companions later, helped by the fact that Stinger was not in fact responsible for the crime that Champ accused him of.
• In the second season of Veronica Mars, rich bad boy Logan Echolls, and biker gang leader Eli "Weevil" Navarro, who detest each other for lots of reasons, reluctantly team up to find out who killed Weevil's friend (and fellow PCHer Felix — whose murder Logan was originally suspected of — making this a combination of this trope and Enemy Mine.
• Young Sheldon: In "Stuffed Animals and a Sweet Southern Syzygy", Sheldon suggests getting Dr. Sturgis help with his and Dr. Linkletter's problem, but the two can't stand each other. Sheldon finds, however, that their argumentative relationship is actually bring out the best out of each other.

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