History UnintentionallyUnsympathetic / LiveActionTV

* ''Series/H2OJustAddWater'': Will's behavior when he decides to learn Bella's secret. He notices that she flees from water, so he dumps a glass of water on her when he's sure she can't easily run away from him. As a result, he discovers she's a mermaid by violating her trust and forcing it out of her. To make matters worse, a few episodes later, Rikki gets kidnapped, and Will is the only one who knows where she might be, information he withholds until he confirms that Rikki and Cleo are mermaids as well. Bella still gets together with him after that, and he implies that her being a mermaid is the most attractive part about her.

** In "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS06E23ProfitAndLace Profit and Lace]]", Ishka spends much of the episode being incredibly ungrateful to Quark about everything up until she her heart attack. Never mind that Quark had made an honest effort to accommodate her with her feminist agenda despite personally disagreeing with it. And this is not long after [[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS06E10TheMagnificentFerengi Quark risked his own life to rescue her from the Dominion]].

** In "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS4E22HalfALife Half a Life]]", Lwaxana Troi tries to persuade Timicin (who had dedicated his life to researching a method to [[SolarCPR rejuvenate the dying sun]] of his homeworld Kaelon II) to reject his cultire's tradition of euthanasia on his 60th birthday. The Kaelons are portrayed as rightfully offended by Lwaxana interfering in their culture, but it's hard to grant them any sympathy when they make it feel as though [[HonorBeforeReason they'd rather go extinct that compromise their traditions even slightly]]. They refuse to allow Timicin any more time to continue his work, even while acknowledging that anyone else trying to learn his method might take too long to properly refine it, and go so far as to state that their scientific community will reject his work if he refuses to kill himself as per tradition.

* ''Series/H2OJustAddWater'': Will's behavior when he decides to learn Bella's secret. He notices that she flees from water, so he dumps a glass of water on her when he's sure she can't easily run away from him. As a result, he discovers she's a mermaid by violating her trust and forcing it out of her. To make matters worse, in the same episode, the gang finds out that Rikki has been kidnapped, and Will is the only one who knows where she might be, information he withholds until he confirms that Rikki and Cleo are mermaids as well. Bella still gets together with him after that, and he implies that her being a mermaid is the most attractive part about her.

* ''Series/TheGeorgeLopezShow'': During Benny's trial, George brought in Benny's mother to the stand and try and make Benny sympathetic to the jurors. While on the stand, she proceed to mock Benny and shows how bad a mother she was to Benny. This was done to make Benny seem like a JerkassWoobie at the most since how bad she grew up in a broken home and being a single mother. The problem was that Benny was just as bad at raising George. Being emotionally and physically abusive to him, being neglectful of his feelings, disregarding his learning disability, not supporting his goals, and lying to him constantly. And as an adult she still a {{Jerkass}} to him and his family. It pretty hard to sympathize with her.

* On an episode of ''Series/PromisedLand'', a woman becomes completely convinced that Russell Greene has divine healing powers after witnessing him rescue and revive a drowning girl. From then on, no matter how many times he tells her otherwise, she refuses to listen, insisting that he's just being modest. The conflict increases when she begs him to cure her cancer and stops seeing her doctor and offering him money, again, over his numerous protests. When she inevitably collapses, she and her husband have the gall to blame Russell for supposedly having scammed them, completely overlooking that they ignored his repeated denials. It's hard not to feel sorry for a cancer patient, but not given this one's thoroughly stupid actions.

* Drucilla Winters from ''Series/TheYoungAndTheRestless''. At one point in her tenure, she became estranged from her husband Neil after he discovered that she cheated on him with his brother and that he was actually the uncle of the daughter he'd raised for 15 years. When Dru returned to town, she was enraged to discover that Neil had become involved with another woman, Carmen Mesta. She promptly broke into Carmen's apartment and trashed it. When Carmen filed charges and a restraining order against Dru, somehow SHE was made into the bad guy. Her and Neil's mutual relationship was suddenly [[{{Retcon}} retconned]] as her being TheVamp out to wreck a blissfully happy marriage and her filing a complaint against Dru was made to look like the vindictive act of a WomanScorned. When Dru put her in a headlock following another argument and she filed new charges regarding the physical assault and violation of the restraining order, this attitude was ramped up even more until Carmen became the supposed AssholeVictim in a murder mystery that had every member of the Winters' family as a suspect. Dru was clearly supposed to be the sympathetic person in the whole mess but her hypocrisy paired with her borderline deranged and illegal actions had the opposite effect.

*** Hook and Emma kissing after Hook saves her father is supposed to be sexy and romantic, but a lot of fans find it a bit hard to swallow on Hook's end. The sticking point is Hook seemingly pressing Emma for the kiss due to saving her dad, basically asking for a reward for doing the right thing, even if that was not the intention. While it's meant to be a flirty little back and forth between the two, some of Hook's dialogue, such as "That's all your father's life is worth to you?", reads as accidentally manipulative. Add to this Emma originally turning down kissing him, and you have the reason a lot of fans see it as creepy instead of romantic.

* ''Series/ControlZ'': Rosita threw a birthday party at her house, ignoring Sofía's warnings to call it off because that's where the avenger would attack next. Since the perpetrator tampered with a vodka bottle, Sofía's attempts to save the day were misinterpreted by Rosita as excuses of wanting to ruin everyone's night. Also, Rosita showed no concern for María's wellbeing, only telling her that if she needed to throw up she could use the bathroom. It doesn't help that she rushes over to María alongside the others just after she overdoses. In short, she should've taken Sofía's advice.

* On an episode of ''Promised Land'', a woman becomes completely convinced that Russell Greene has divine healing powers after witnessing him rescue and revive a drowning girl. From then on, no matter how many times he tells her otherwise, she refuses to listen, insisting that he's just being modest. The conflict increases when she begs him to cure her cancer and stops seeing her doctor and offering him money, again, over his numerous protests. When she inevitably collapses, she and her husband have the gall to blame Russell for supposedly having scammed them, completely overlooking that they ignored his repeated denials. It's hard not to feel sorry for a cancer patient, but not given this one's thoroughly stupid actions.

** In "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS04E11Homefront Homefront]]", O'Brien discusses the recent bombing of a diplomatic conference on Earth, lamenting on how frustrating it can be to see something you care about in danger and be powerless to help. Quark attempts to empathize by talking about the dwindling of his financial investments during a. economic crisis, but O'Brien and Bashir dismiss it as typical Ferengi greed. Yet for someone who does not live in a post-scarcity utopia, living through an economic crisis actually can be a severely stressful experience (just ask anyone who lived through the 2008 recession). As such, the reactions of O'Brien and Bashir come off as insensitive.

* Occurs in ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' when The Janitor, after losing a bet to Dr. Cox, has to watch his van being crashed into a wall, and the viewer is meant to feel sorry for him. Except that The Janitor has in the past done a number of similar actions, and many that were worse and show outright lack of regard for people that might get hurt and gotten away with them, with the only difference being that his actions were PlayedForLaughs. It doesn't help that The Janitor won the bet by tricking Elliot, only to have it blow up in his face in a FawltyTowersPlot. If he had been honest with her, she might've played along since they're good friends.
** It's obvious from the way her stories tend to end that the writers think Elliot is supposed to be sympathized with. Yet sometimes, she does end up looking like a jerk so [[AesopCollateralDamage other people can learn their Aesops]]. An early episode has her berating Carla for underestimating her, and not apologizing, and another has her acting high-and-mighty at her new private practice job so J.D. and Cox could learn to deal with their jealousy. In the end, even the writers noticed they had taken this too far with Elliot and Keith's relationship, where she's practically just using and abusing him, breaks up with him when they are engaged and then laughs it off at work - they had her give a big apology to Keith a few episodes afterwards but to many viewers it was too little, too late.

** The Tollan were an advanced race who made some mistakes during their first ever "first contact". After the neighboring aliens used the technology given to them to blow themselves all up, the Tollans decided to strictly adhere to a policy of never sharing ''any'' advanced technology with any alien race less advanced than their own (as opposed to, say, being more careful about ''which'' technology they share). This came back to bite them hard when this policy ([[{{Pride}} combined with their lack of upgrading their defensive technology]]) led to them being blackmailed and later wiped out as a whole.

* Several zombies in ''Series/IZombie''. Unlike most depictions of zombies, these zombies retain their sentience if they regularly eat brains, making them collectively more of a TragicMonster. However, a lot of zombies do not show an interest in assimilating with society, preferring to eat the brains of murdered humans instead of tubes of donated humans brain mush provided for them, and their feelings of oppression feel hollow because, as stated before, they eat human brains they know were collected through less than savory means. It gets especially bad in seasons 4 [[spoiler: after Seattle is cut off from the rest of the world to contain the zombie outbreak]], when people willingly turn themselves into zombies even though they know the brain supply is very limited.