Neutral Female characters in Live-Action TV series.
- The typical gun moll in Adam West's Batman (1966), who usually stands around during the fights like a complete ninny. Even Catwoman does it to a lesser extent. Never worse than in the episode "Walk the Straight and Narrow", which has the moll, for no explicable reason, switch sides in the middle of the fight!
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- Xander usually got this role, despite being male. Justified as Xander has no special powers, and attempting to go up against the demons Buffy tends to be fighting would simply put him and his friends in harm's way, if not getting killed outright.
- The Season 3 finale does this, except the Neutral Female is Wesley. It's the final battle, and everybody gathers to rush at the Big Bad; a few seconds later, we see Wesley get knocked down, and he is pathetically unable to get up for the rest of the fight. Wesley gets far better in Angel when he finds a way to be useful in fights — by bringing pistols and shotguns.
- The opening episode of Season 3 ("Anne") subverted this with Lily. She spends most of the episode completely useless, and during her and Buffy's daring escape from the demon world, she gets captured by the villain and threatened in order to stop Buffy from fighting. Then, in the middle of his villainous monologue, she pushes him off the balcony they're standing on. Later episodes (on Buffy's sister show Angel) show her as being far more independent, to the point of taking care of at-risk children.
- Daredevil (2015): Karen Page takes every step to defy this trope. After Wilson Fisk tries to have her framed up and twice attempts to have her killed for exposing corruption at Union Allied, she becomes feverishly devoted to bringing down Fisk and ending corruption in Hell's Kitchen, single-handedly pushing Foggy and Ben into helping her uncover Fisk's secrets and expose him. She ends up feeling guilty later on about Ben though, since she's blames herself for pushing Ben into writing about Fisk and therefore his death at Fisk's hands, but it doesn't stop her from fighting on.
- Inverted, subverted, and played with in the "A Spy in the House of Love" episode of Dollhouse. Female Echo fights Dominic who has been discovered as the titular spy. Meanwhile, male Topher dives behind a couch to get out of the way of the fight. Ivy joins him there, but immediately suggests they try and help Echo. Topher then insists that he has already helped Echo by imprinting her with the ability to fight very effectively.
- Played Straight in the Firefly pilot "Serenity", where River has been captured by Dobson and Simon comes to save her. Once he intervenes, she stumbles out of the way and hides behind a stack of crates while they face off. Justified in that River just woke up from cryogenic storage a few hours previously, has been unconscious for most of the episode, and is completely confused, disoriented, and still recovering from three years of having her brain cut up. It doesn't help that she's a psychic who can't filter her perceptions and is surrounded by people who are scared or outright hostile.
- And again in "Ariel", while escaping from the Feds. Simon and Jayne attack the guards together, but River just stands by the door sobbing. Again, this is justifiable, for much the same reasons as above. Simon still hasn't found a way of treating her for the aforementioned cut-up brain, and so River cannot intervene. Once he is able to begin treating her, she becomes a lot more effective, as seen in "Objects in Space" and "Serenity".
- "War Stories" has Mal's fight with a torturer, while Zoe initially tries to stay out of it:
Zoe: Jayne. This somethin' the Captain has to do for himself.
Mal: No! No, it's not!
Zoe: [surprised] Oh. [shoots the torturer] - Game of Thrones: Craster's wives and daughters-turned-wives. There's around two dozens of them, he's been raping and abusing them and sacrificing their infant sons to White Walkers, and when he actually dies the women seem confident they can survive without him. Yet it apparently didn't occur to them to get rid of him earlier. This is actually lampshaded in the novels.
- Deconstructed in C-Drama The Holy Pearl: Heroine Yao lacks kung fu skills but still gets chewed out for not realizing she can contribute to the fight via Magic Music. When Yu Die, who also lacks combat or magical skills, also tries to intervene in another fight, she explicitly makes things worse for the combatants and ends up fatally injured.
- Done in Robin Hood with Kate. The problem was that Kate, as the Designated Victim of the gang, would always be the one to get captured, with the rest of the boys running in to save her. Kate would often try to free herself from whatever situation she was in (and was very vocal about Unwanted Rescues), but one of the other outlaws would always burst in right as she was on the verge of rescuing herself. As such, her continual insistence that she was "not some stupid girl" and that she "could take care of herself" came across as an Informed Attribute, and therefore qualifies.
- In the Supernatural episode "Like A Virgin", the brothers possess an ancient sword, the only thing they have capable of killing the dragons that have kidnapped a group of virgins. During the fight, the sword falls through the grate under which the virgins are trapped, but are not restrained in any other way. At which point every one of them fails the absolute minimum requirement of having agency in their own survival by not handing Dean the damn sword when he can't reach it. Instead Sam, who has longer arms, grabs it.
- Tower Prep to frustrating degrees. Any time Ian got in a fight, his three friends (CJ, Suki, and Non-Action Guy Gabe) would merely stand there, even when time was a factor and they needed to get past the goon in question quickly (made worse by the fact that the fight scenes were often framed badly, showing the three standing in the background, doing nothing.) Granted, Ian had abilities that made him an exceptional fighter, but even he needed help occasionally. CJ finally averted this when she hauled off a walloped a guy who ruined a dance she planned.
