Designated Villain / Live-Action TV

• 24: The seventh season introduces Senator Blaine Meyer, an Obstructive Bureaucrat leading a Senate hearing on human rights violations at the now-disbanded CTU, and hauls Jack Bauer before a committee to explain his actions. Meyer's behavior and dialogue indicates that he's already all-but-convicted Bauer, and acts smug and short-tempered as he accuses the latter of inhuman treatment of suspects. The problem is that Meyer is absolutely right. Not only was CTU an absolute failure as an agency — it was the site of at least two takeovers by terrorists, the site of a nerve gas attack, several workplace shootings, a bombing, multiple incidents of workplace violence and numerous fatalities — but other CTU members routinely tortured suspects, with diminishing success as time wore on and the previous season proving it didn't even work (CTU spent hours torturing an employee who was revealed to have no knowledge about what they were investigating). Jack himself assaulted and tortured multiple suspects, with the showrunners doing very little to dissuade viewers that his methods weren't needed. In light of all this, it's no wonder why Meyer is abrupt and smug towards Jack (though this lessens right before the Senator is killed by an assassin midway through the season).
  • Downplayed in the case of David Weiss, a civil rights lawyer who objects to the proposed torture of a terror suspect. His viewpoint isn't presented as invalid, just unimportant, and his presence is seen as an unnecessary irritant. It turns out that Weiss was hired by the Big Bad, who is afraid of what his underling might say as a result of torture. Being hired in bad faith by a terrorist might present some ethical issues, but so would ignoring a potential 8th Amendment violation. As with Blaine Meyer, Weiss is right, and Jack proves his point by having the suspect released as theatre for Weiss's benefit and then intercepting and torturing him later.
• All My Children:
  • Adam Chandler frequently got this treatment. Granted he wasn't exactly a saint and did do some pretty horrible stuff, but a lot of people in Pine Valley (particularly Tad Martin) equally did terrible things to Adam. It more or less became an unofficial rule amongst Pine Valley residents that Adam wasn't allowed to have children, and that if he did then he wasn't allowed to raise them because they didn't want the children tainted by the "Chandler Influence". So when he fathered both JR and Colby on separate occasions, he was barred from having a relationship with either one of them. Colby was even kidnapped by Liza and spirited away, and Adam never met her until she was a teenager!! But all of these actions were shown as justified because of the fact they happened to Adam. More poignantly is the fact that the show somehow managed to blame Adam for the switching baby fiasco with JR and Bianca's babies, just for the mere fact that he threatened Paul Cramer—the actual kidnapper—to tell him where his grandchild was!!
    • Or when he sues ex-wife Dixie for custody of JR, after discovering that Dixie has been sleeping around and that her latest conquest is a barely-legal teenage boy (his daughter Hayley's ex)—and he is the one vilified in the whole thing, to the point where even Hayley eventually takes Dixie's side, while Dixie's promiscuous, irresponsible behavior is glossed over. This borders on The Unfair Sex if not outright hypocrisy, as Dixie frequently tried to wrest custody from Adam over far lesser issues, including his multiple wives and girlfriends.
  • True to Chandler fashion, JR also received this treatment after he married Babe Carey. Babe, a young woman who'd committed bigamy, was found to have slept through high school to get her diploma, and had an affair with JR's own brother Jamie the night of their wedding. The stress of his marriage to Babe resulted in JR becoming an alcoholic — ironically, this was used by the other characters to "prove" what a monster he'd become. Granted both JR and Babe were also victims of the baby-switch (they didn't know initially that their daughter Bess was actually Bianca's daughter Miranda), but Babe found out eventually and kept the secret from both JR and Bianca for well over a year—until she found out their son was actually alive. However she kept the lies rolling, telling JR their son was dead and Miranda was ripped from his arms by the citizens of Pine Valley to be returned to Bianca. And when all the truths came out—that his son was really alive and Babe had started most of the lies—most of the residents in Pine Valley didn't see a problem with it. They felt Babe was perfectly justified in lying to JR in such a way and denying him his son for the exact same reason they'd denied Adam his children. And when JR started fighting for custody of his son, he was vilified by the town and the show for daring to go after Babe and separate their child from his mother. The only people who sided with JR in any of this were Adam, Bianca's mother Erica, and Bianca's sister Kendall. Even Kevin Buchanan, the man who'd been raising the baby as his son and whom Babe kidnapped him from, sided with Babe against JR!! Even Bianca, the one person more victimized by Babe's lies than JR, inexplicably sided with Babe against JR!! The show even expected viewers to be outraged when JR did win full custody and Babe only got minor visitation rights!!
• In the early Babylon 5 episode "Survivors", Leanna Kemmer is the Designated Villain for most of the episode...because, after a witness names Garibaldi as a saboteur, and plans for a bomb are found in his quarters along with a whole lot of alien money, Ms. Kemmer (who is in charge of security for an impending visit by the President of Earth) wants to lock him up. Yes, she has a personal grudge against him, but anyone in her position would want to lock Garibaldi up and would be right in doing so. Seriously, Garibaldi, Ivanova, and Sinclair should all have been court-martialed for their efforts to obstruct her.
• The school administration in Beverly Hills, 90210's infamous "Donna Martin Graduates" storyline. Before the senior prom, it is explicitly stated that anyone having or consuming alcohol at the dance will be suspended, not allowed to attend graduation, and have to attend summer school. So Donna gets drunk, gets caught, gets punished, and somehow, the viewer is supposed to see the administration as the bad guys. Donna's mother Felice was also frequently portrayed as an overbearing bitch, and she was portrayed this way again during this storyline. But she has every right to be angry at the parents who served her underage daughter alcohol and at Donna herself, who drank the champagne.
• For all the crap she gets, Priya from The Big Bang Theory isn't as bad as she's often claimed to be. True, she was a bit more serious and less accepting of Leonard's more nerdier hobbies (a description that could also apply to Penny as well) and, while she didn't want him hanging around Penny during the time they dated, it's not such an unreasonable request to ask your boyfriend to not pal around with a former flame. Yet all the girls act like she's a terrible person, despite her not doing anything bad outside of dating Leonard and Sheldon disliked her for finding loopholes in his "Roommate Agreement," which was intentionally biased to favor him anyway. Though her reconciling with her ex after moving back to India, despite still being in a relationship with Leonard, can be seen as a real dick move, that comes off as more Derailing Love Interests than any inherent nastiness on her part.
• Bonanza:
  • In "The Saga of Annie O'Toole", Gregory Spain is this. When he comes to claim a piece of land that the eponymous Annie is illegally squatting on, he is immediately made out to be the villain by everyone involved, particularly Annie, who recounts how Spain scammed her father out of profits in the bar they worked in. Unfortunately, the events of the episode suggest that Annie is far more dishonest than Gregory: Spain provides proof of ownership, and various pieces of circumstantial evidence point to Spain's ownership of the plot. When the matter is brought to Miner's Court, Spain obeys every command the judge gives without question. Even when he goes to attempt to take the claim by force, he does so within the bounds of the law, and only uses the required force needed to take the claim (as he can by rights have everyone on the claim shot, but he merely holds them up). For Annie's part, she forges papers to confuse the issue, destroys the circumstantial evidence to remove any corroborating proof, and in Miner's Court, shows contempt for the judge at every turn. Also, when cooking meals for the miners, she raises the prices for meals like ham and eggs from a reasonable 1.50 in 1860's money (about 25 bucks today), to over 15 dollars by episode's end (over 350 bucks in today's currency). But somehow, we're supposed to think that Spain is the crook...
• Bones: Oliver Wells is a perfect example of this trope. The audience is supposes to dislike him because everyone in the cast does, even Dr. Brennan. He is portrayed as having a wide range of interests, ranging from Physics to Psychology, and considers himself to be very open-minded, even on subjects like time travel or if there is life after death. In fact the only reason Dr Brennan doesn’t like him is because he’s smarter than her. Not only does he repeatedly correct her mistakes but he doesn’t let her derail a conversation with him by introducing unrelated topics. In the end she proves herself by finally stumping him.
  • The writers stressed his social awkwardness during his second appearance focusing on all of his negative traits and repeatedly stating he had no friends even though he and Dr. Hodgins got along really well last time. However in the end it showed the same thing the cast don’t like him because he treats them the same way they treat everyone else they meet. Talking down to then, correcting their mistakes, congratulating them when they get something correct, and refusing to dumb himself down.
• Charmed:
  • A cafe owner in the incredibly Anvilicious episode "The Bare Witch Project" gets a verbal putdown from Phoebe at the end in public while dressed as Lady Godiva, claiming that "he wants women to be barefoot and pregnant". His crime? Asking Piper politely to not breast feed her son in his cafe after customers had complained about it. That's right, the customers complained yet Phoebe shoots the messenger instead. She also specifically puts him down as a sexist pig, but there were many customers in the cafe, and a good number of women. It's just as likely that some of the women complained about it than only men. (Ironically, as Values Dissonance kicks in and many countries accept that breastfeeding in public is a basic right, the cafe owner's behaviour seems more unreasonable than on first broadcast.)
  • Cole in Season 5 got hit with this especially hard after he came back from the dead. For most of the season the sisters, Phoebe especially, felt that he was evil and planning on killing them or seducing her into evil. The problem is that most of the time Cole never did anything wrong, repeatedly used his powers to protect innocent people, and if he did do something morally dubious it was usually to help the Charmed Ones in some way. Yet despite saving their asses time and time again he would continually get shit on by everyone around him. It's especially Anvilicious when the show tried to justify their behaviour by saying that Cole became the Source, despite the fact that he unwillingly became the Source due to the Seers' Batman Gambit and tried his hardest to get rid of the Source's powers—but Phoebe willingly joined evil, knowingly foiled Cole's attempt to give those powers away, blames him for her becoming the Queen of the Underworld (again, something she forced on him) but is never called out on it. What's more, Cole was prepared to leave after Phoebe rejected him, until Paige cast an Emotion Bomb spell to convince him to stay and help save Phoebe again, and the show quickly resorted to having the Siren and Barbas subject Cole to traumatic mental manipulation until he was in a bad enough state to act like a villain again. Obscurus Lupa more or less pointed out that it seems when Cole finally did become evil it was more because he was brow beaten into doing it rather then actually being evil. Yeah, there's a reason that Phoebe became The Scrappy to a lot of fans.
• Coach: Hayden's agent that he hires to help him become a pro coach in part of season seven. Yes, she did tell the press ahead of time that he was leaving Minnesota to coach another team without his consent (resulting in him deciding to stay) but he fires her and decides the pros aren't worth it because she convinced him he couldn't make it to them without winning constantly, resulting in an incident that traumatized one of his players and put an opposing player into a coma, which was his own fault. At worst, she was frank about things, but that doesn't make one evil.
• Cold Case: In-universe in both "Family" and "Bad Reputation". The fathers were called "cowards" by their children for not letting Honor Before Reason dictate their actions, despite the fact that doing so would have made a bad situation far worse.
• Elvin on The Cosby Show was this when he was first introduced as a Straw Misogynist. Sure, he did and said a few stupid things (like forgetting he had a date with Sondra, or claiming that baking and cooking was a "women's job"). But really, the guy was a harmless doofus, who never would have hurt Sondra on purpose. And yet, her parents treated him as if he was the biggest scum on Earth. But it later got better, and Elvin got married to Sondra.
• Doctor Who
  • Roderick from "Bad Wolf", the winner of the deadly future version of The Weakest Link. While he is a bit of a jerk, he is, like all the other players, just trying to survive the game. And while Rose treats him as horrible because of the way he is voting, he points out he wants to go against her, the least knowledgeable player, at the end so that he doesn't get disintegrated. Bear in mind it's very likely all the contestants were forced into this game. Slightly justified, however, since he doesn't show any regret about killing other participants, but is actually quite gleeful about it. Every other participants we see is stressed and scared of the situation, and we even see them being supportive to each other, while Roderick only thinks about how much money he's going to win. It could be argued that he is basically just a Pragmatic Villain.
  • The Metacrisis Doctor from "Journey's End". The Doctor treats him as wrong for wiping out the Always Chaotic Evil Daleks after Donna had temporarily incapacitated them just after they attempted to destroy the universe. Bear in mind, it's never made clear exactly how else the Doctor intended to deal with the Daleks, and the Metacrisis Doctor says this Dalek army has the capacity to slaughter the cosmos. And the fact that the few Daleks who survive this are able to rebuild their Empire and bring more death and misery to the universe just proves he was right. The Doctor's mentality comes across as bizarre considering that in the Daleks' previous appearance, the Doctor not killing the last Dalek (Dalek Caan) caused the events of "Journey's End".
• Emily in Paris: Sylvie is treated as stuck up because she dared to be disappointed that the American employee sent to work with her company has no experience in luxury fashion, no knowledge of French, and very little desire to understand French culture.
• ER had Recurring Character Roger McGrath, stepfather to Peter Benton's son Reese. When Carla, Peter's ex and Roger's wife, dies in a car accident, Roger sues Peter for custody. We're supposed to side with Peter, despite the fact that he has very few arguments as to why he would be a better father beyond First Father Wins, and at one point forces his current girlfriend, Dr. Cleo Finch, to commit perjury to help his case. Even stranger is the fact that Roger's actor was also one of the shows producers, so you'd think he could've changed things to make the playing field a bit more even.
• Everybody Loves Raymond: Jerry Musso in "Somebody Hates Raymond". While definitely arrogant, he nonetheless doesn't even dislike Ray personally; the former just doesn't find the latter's work entertaining, something which falls under freedom of opinion instead of anything actually evil, and though he does come across as rather harsh towards Ray when forced to tell the truth, it's mostly because he loses patience with Ray nagging him about the reason for his disliking. Furthermore, Musso has every right to decide who's allowed to guest-host his show and who's not. Nevertheless, the episode seemingly vilifies him as someone so bad that even Robert, himself at odds with Ray throughout most of the episode, is ultimately appalled enough to give him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech for Ray's sake (granted, it is awesome and heartwarming at the same time, though).
  • However, even though Musso does have a right to not like Ray, and despite the fact that he was polite to Ray before admitting the truth, it should be noted that he also told Ray that he should be the co-host of his show, while completely denying that he wasn't a fan of Ray's. With that said, Robert may not have been justified in standing up to Musso so much because he hated Ray as because of his insincerity about the whole matter, as while Musso did try to be nice, it may as well have been a setup to humiliate Ray in the future, which, judging by Musso's attitude, may not have been very beneath him.
• Extraordinary Attorney Woo: Tae Soo-mi is presented as an undue candidate for South Korea's Minister of Justice because her husband is the head of a company, but is never actually shown acting corrupt apart from this. Other things intended to paint her in an unsavory light, such as her giving up Woo as an infant have pretty reasonable justifications considering she was under a lot of pressure from her family to succeed her father in a legal career and originally was going to abort her pregnancy early on, but only relented for Gwang-ho's sake as he wanted to keep the child, not to mention she went out of her way to put her legal studies on hold to give birth Woo. It's also worth noting she's one of the few characters in the series to not show any prejudice to Woo and even offers her a place at Taesan based solely on her merits, whereas even Han primarily recruited Woo to use her as a pawn against Soo-mi.
• The Facts of Life: Andy in "Adventures in Baileysitting". It was Blair's job to babysit her sister and take her to a movie, but since she wanted to go to a luncheon for underclassmen, she left Jo and Natalie in charge. Then they had to leave because of a bomb threat at a community center (well, Jo had to leave to pick someone up; Natalie left because it was a good news story and she wanted the scoop) and they leave Andy in charge. Unfortunately, he accidentally brings the wrong girl home and everyone gets mad at him. This is forgetting that he's just a kid, it was Blair's responsibility to watch her sister and at least one of the girls should have stayed with her. While the former did admit to her bad decision, neither Jo nor Natalie ever admitted that they were wrong. Worst, if not for Bailey repeatedly saying "they lost me", it's likely they wouldn't have admitted their guilt.
• Griffin Grey from Season 2 of The Flash (2014). Unlike other Villains of the Week who have their legitimate share of villainy, the only thing he did was kidnapping Dr. Wells, which he did because his metahuman power (Super-Strength Cast from Lifespan) was killing him, and he wanted Wells to make an antidote. It's not even like he kidnapped some random scientist, he kidnapped Wells specifically because he thought that Wells was responsible for his condition in the first place (correctly, but he didn't know he got the wrong Wells). Despite this he's treated just like every other Villain of the Week, and ultimately dies from overusing his power while fighting the Flash.
• From the Earth to the Moon has one of the better examples of this trope in Senator Mondale in the episode Apollo 1. At first, Mondale seems like someone who wants to stop the space program and focus on things other than landing a man on the moon simply as a political maneuver, but as the episode progresses, it becomes clear that he isn't doing this just to for political ends and that he seriously believes the money NASA receives could be put to better use by feeding and educating those less fortunate.
• The Golden Girls: Blanche's sister Virginia in "Ebb Tide". She is portrayed as being irrational in trying to block Blanche from their father's funeral, but given the latter's well-known self-centered nature and her wild libido causing her parents' heartache throughout the years, she had every right to be alarmed (especially when both women brought up her various shenanigans in several episodes and her mostly rejecting her father's younger wife in "Big Daddy's Little Lady"). Granted, Blanche did deserve sympathy for her regret in not seeing her father one last time which her sister should not have thrown in her face, but Virginia and the rest of the family weren't exactly in the wrong for fearing an incident she could have made at the services.
• The Good Doctor: Danica is not exactly a fan-favorite character and while they don't condone her morally questionable decisions and history of defiance during her time as a resident, she doesn't do absolutely anything villainous other than advising Lim against taking the surgery that allowed her to walk again (and rekindle her friendship with Shaun, whom she blamed for causing her paralysis) and feeling ZERO guilt about it. The episode "Hot and Bothered" has Shaun treating Danica out of pure pettiness when he finds out she was the one who talked Lim out of taking his surgery, especially when they have to work together on a case. The two actively disagree on how to treat their patient, to the point that Shaun has had enough of Danica and removes her from the case, accusing her of undermining his authority by acting like if she knew more than he did. Shaun eventually reinstates her (per the patient's demands) and they both manage to be on equal footing thanks to their knowledge of ancient surgical history and part on good terms. While Shaun's frustration of Lim rejecting the surgery (and Danica's role in it) is quite understandable, Shaun blowing it out of proportion on Danica was totally out of line and unnecessary.
• Used in an unfortunate manner with Holly Lindsay in Guiding Light, during her feud with her daughter Blake. Blake decided to steal Holly's boyfriend Ross just to spite her, though it's quickly rewritten that Blake loved Ross all along. Holly is then vilified for being angry about it, and she's told repeatedly by Ross and other people that she didn't deserve to be angry because Ross "never made her any promises". They were boyfriend and girlfriend and had been longtime friends—one would think promises didn't need to be made. Furthermore she is emotionally blackmailed by both Ross and Blake to keep their affair a secret from Holly's ex-husband and Blake's father, Roger Thorpe, because Ross was Roger's bitter rival and because of the substantial age difference between Ross and Blake. The stress of the situation has Holly turning to alcohol, and she's written as a drunk lunatic—any confrontational scenes she has with Blake makes Blake look like an innocent victim of her raving drunk mother. Even though Blake up to that point had already made history by breaking up marriages and sleeping her way through the Spaulding family, the viewers were expected to believe that Holly had always been emotionally abusive to Blake and that was why Blake turned out the way she did and deserved to be happy. Longtime friends of Holly, and people who'd been victims of Blake's manipulations in the past, championed for Blake's happiness. Granted, Blake finally did make her peace with Holly and Ross and Blake became a supercouple of the show, but their beginnings were at the expense of Holly's happiness, much to the indifference of Springfield and the writers.
• H₂O: Just Add Water: Charlotte, who before going all-out evil doesn't really do anything wrong. Can you really blame her for getting a tad upset and suspicious when Lewis continually lies to her, or runs off or stands her up with little to no explanation to go and hang out with three other girls? To Charlotte's credit, in the beginning the show presents it more as Cleo being petty than anything else, and she does plenty of legitimately nasty things as part of a Face–Heel Turn to become a true villain.
• The Haunting Hour:
  • Abigail Raven from "The Red Dress" is just a simple, if not ominous, businesswoman who charges the protagonist Jamie the titular red dress for $400, but instead of paying for it, Jamie just steals it from her while Abigail stalks and harasses her until she pays her compensation for what she stole. From her perspective, Abigail is just a businesswoman who was robbed and giving Jamie fair warning to return it now or suffer the consequences.
  • The government agents from "Bad Egg" are intended to be seen as bad guys for trying to make money off of the experimental egg monsters, but when you get down to it, they are completely in the right for attempting to recapture all the beasts because as far as they (and the audience) know, the test animals might be dangerous and are a threat to the world's ecosystem since they were bred for military purposes. However, the episode plays them up as an obstacle for our heroes to comically outwit.
• On Haven, Duke starts out this way. He's a Venturous Smuggler who used to bully the town's lead detective when they were kids, so Nathan's got a bit of a chip on his shoulder. In the pilot, Duke is arrested for the murder of a local man, and Nathan refuses to release him even after someone else comes and confesses to the murder. This lessens as the series goes on and they end up more as Vitriolic Best Buds than anything else, but it's almost comically ridiculous in the first couple seasons.
• iCarly: In some episodes, Freddie comes across as this, most jarringly in "iMeet Fred" where he is ostracised and nearly killed for saying he didn't think Fred was that funny, and no one seems to have a problem with it.
• Dr. Alfred Bellows from I Dream of Jeannie. He's not a bad person, and doesn't seem to dislike Major Nelson, quite the opposite, actually. In fact, the worst you could say about him is he's a tad arrogant. However, most episodes usually have him trying to expose whatever weird crap Jeannie did that week, which puts him in the position of antagonist, and frequently sees him humiliated and /or thinking he's going crazy simply because he's trying to do his damn job! This appears to be a case of Characterization Marches On as, in the first season especially, he takes gleefully smug pleasure in trying to get Tony in trouble for the weird things he witnesses around him.
• Maximus, the main villain of Inhumans. What's his motivation? To end a Fantastic Caste System in his society. Okay, but surely the good guys agree with him and just disagree with his methods? Actually, they're the primary benefactors of the system and want it to stay in place for good. Getting pretty suspect here, but maybe his plan itself is evil? Nope: it's a largely bloodless coup deposing (not even killing) the smallish royal family of the show's protagonists and executing or exiling the people who were responsible for the system to begin with. But maybe that's just his Start of Darkness and he becomes progressively more violent and extreme as the show goes on? Er... not really. The only truly selfish and harmful thing he does would probably be an act of self-preservation against the wishes of the people he liberated (which happens in the last episode), and everything else is just killing people who were either murderers themselves or actively plotting to kill him. The show does such a spectacularly bad job of making him seem evil (not helped by the protagonists themselves being far worse) that many reviewers claimed to be rooting for him!
• In The House: While Maxwell is a jerk with a heart of gold many of the antics of Marion and Tonia put him into this role. Not only does he not get any say in the clinic that he’s a partner of because they work against him, but many of the pranks they play on him are incredibly cruel. When Mercedes proposes to Maxwell is a perfect example. At first Max was perfectly content with this development; however Marions repeated shots at his manhood eventually caused him to think up some ridicules scheme to redo the proposal, which almost ruined their relationship. However in the end Maxwell was the only one who had to apologize.
  • Marion and Maxwell are this with respect to Tonia. Like SpongeBob Tonia can be incredibly destructive and annoying yet Marion and Maxwell wanting to spend sometime away from her is depicted as incredibly selfish.
• Kickin' It: Erika from Jack Stands Alone. She may have stolen a live animal belonging to the school and had Frank take the blame, but it's been mentioned that Frank sabotages all the school dance events she plans, yet Frank is never shown getting punished, which justifies her actions to some extent. This also technically makes Jack a Designated Hero since he's defending a bully who was innocent for this one prank but guilty in several others.
• Las Vegas: In season 3, the new owner Monica brings in a supervisor with completely reasonable criticisms of the main cast and their job performances (Sam gives away so many freebies to her "high roller" that the casino only made 81 dollars off his stay, Delinda completely flips out over a suggested wardrobe change in her restaurant, and Ed quits because Monica, the owner, isn't running "his" casino the way he would prefer). The cast never brings any counterpoints to justify their management decisions, they immediately run to Ed to overrule her. Ed himself only offers half-assed "that's how we do things" excuses and complains that the supervisor is creating problems for him to fix instead of telling his staff to stop acting like children and take it up with her. All of this just highlights that the staff are way too tightly knit and think of the casino as their personal fiefdom.
• The treatment of Internal Affairs (aka "The Rat Squad") in Law & Order, especially. They also treat defense attorneys this way on the courtroom side of the show all the time. Presenting them as smooth talking con artist that only care about making headlines by defending their clients, instead of having a genuine passion for the job. Prosecuting attorneys are also sometimes shown this way, if they refuse to bring charges against someone, just because the protagonist police think they are guilty.
• Dawn Buckets, the older sister of the titular Kirby Buckets, is supposed to be the main antagonist of the show, and she was indeed presented as a Big Sister Bully and Killjoy to Kirby during the beginning of the show's run. However, she usually was involved in her own plots on the show, leaving her most villainous traits not working without Kirby as a foil, and they were for the most part dropped pretty quickly, with her original personality only occasionally showing up since then. Since then, Dawn was usually portrayed as a Cosmic Plaything in her universe who always felt she was getting the short end of the stick both at home and out in public, and she is clearly a Jerkass Woobie.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
  • The show often veers into this, presenting the officers of the division as little more than self-important, vindictive assholes targeting the main characters purely out of spite, despite their usually deserving far more censure than they inevitably end up getting. The audience is often expected to dislike them for investigating cops for crimes we the audience know they didn't commit, even though they have sufficient evidence to look into it (in spite of the fact that the detectives often investigate the lives of innocent people all the time- it's just part of the job). And the fact that the police on the show have a tendency to do not-entirely-legal things doesn't help.
  • Defense attorneys, too. In Real Life their job is to make sure the prosecution has proven its case beyond reasonable doubt, whereas Law and Order would have you believe they're all smug social-climbers who'll do anything up to and including knowingly let murderers go free for a bit of publicity. The bad guy's lawyer in the SVU episode "Hate" is a particularly striking example: he's perfectly okay - happy, even - with letting a serial hate-murderer walk if it means his Chewbacca Defense that racism is genetic gets on the books. (The show gets better about this one in later seasons.)
  • Several guest characters on SVU qualify for this, often of the There Should Be a Law variety. One guy was the normal-looking boyfriend of a young woman with Turner Syndrome, who thus looked like a young child despite being (barely) legal. The detectives spend most of the episode trying to find something to nail the guy on, even hauling him into court several times, only to have all their attempts turned down by judges. We're supposed to side with them. Admittedly, the age gap is still significant verging on creepy (he's still literally ), but one wonders if they would have paid that much attention if she actually looked 17 instead of like a little kid.
• Legend of the Seeker:
  • In the episode "Broken", Cara is on trial for the atrocities she committed as a Mord'Sith. To her defense, it is revealed that Mord'Sith are actually abducted as young girls, then horribly tortured and brainwashed until they become heartless killing machines. They were unwilling victims of the D'Haran more than anything else. Cara is ultimately forgiven for this reason. However, during the trial, they arrest another Mord'Sith hiding in the audience: Cara's mentor, the one who abducted and trained her. They then proceed to condemn this woman to what is described as the most painful death in existence. Everybody seems oblivious that, as a Mord'Sith, this woman endured the same fate as Cara, and so is every bit as much of a victim... (It could be argued that Cara was forgiven because she was a victim AND repented, while the other Mord'Sith did not repent and would have gone on killing. This does not make the Mord'Sith any less of a Designated Villain, but the death of Cara's mentor is at least somewhat justified.)
  • Cara also helped overthrow the evil overlord who was in charge of the brainwashing. So, it could be argued that she had broken her brainwashing and was already helping people without anyone forcing her to. Cara was also happy for them to kill her.
  • Panis Rahl is also treated as a big villain in the episode where he appears. Why? Because Zedd's brother reveals that Panis murdered their father while disguising himself as Zedd. The problem? Their father admitted to Panis (thinking it was his son) that he was trying to murder Panis's infant son. Yes, said boy would grow up to become the Big Bad Darken Rahl, but what father wouldn't do anything he could to protect his child? And he definitely felt remorse for the act, especially since Panis and Zedd were good friends back in the day. Of course, there's also the business of seducing Zedd's daughter while also in disguise, resulting in Richard. The series clearly paints him as a villain in such a way as to make Redemption Equals Death the only way out.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: At least for Season 1, Sauron with a lot of help from Offstage Villainy and well-done deceiving, comes out as less villainous to the people than the show tries to paint him, in contrast to Galadriel. When Galadriel meets him, he is a Retired Monster in his repentant phase, at his lowest point after getting betrayed by Adar and killed temporary, having given up for good his ambitions and goals. While he hides from her his true identity, Sauron also kept on telling her that he is not the hero she seeks and even makes her aware he did some very dark things in the past, something Galadriel doesn't bother to suspect. In the prison, he tells her the truth that he found the pouch on a dead man, but she assumes he is lying and insists on installing him as king of the Southlands; is this moment when he goes along with what Galadriel believes. On the moment of the reveal, when Galadriel asks him if he makes any difference between healing and ruling Middle-earth, he says he sees no difference.
• Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure: In the first season, Evie is cast as Lyla's romantic rival for Zac's affections, and is treated as an obnoxious nuisance by the mermaid trio à la Miriam or Charlotte. Problem is, Evie is not the generic Alpha Bitch that Miriam was, nor the Control Freak that Charlotte was, instead being Zac's established girlfriend getting increasingly alarmed by how this strange girl apparently related to her school principal has managed to get in between them despite his assurances he hasn't strayed from her. To top it off, their hostility initially came directly from Lyla; Evie only treated her accordingly afterward. The show continues to push Zac and Lyla's Will They or Won't They? until the last few episodes of the season, where Evie is finally brought into The Masquerade, and any romantic subplots are cleared by Lyla's actress not returning for season 2.
• Merlin (2008):
  • Several Monster of the Week would fall under this category. Most of them are magical beings that just want revenge on Uther, who admittedly did commit genocide, even if they usually take it too far by jeopardizing his son Arthur or the rest of innocent citizens of Camelot.
  • Mordred, who, in this version, is played by a child. We're supposed to view Mordred as a Creepy Child because the show plays ominous music over extreme close-ups of his large blue eyes, but all that's played out on screen is a kid who's been hunted, persecuted, and had everyone he's ever loved killed by the people who are generally considered "the good team". He uses his magical powers to kill a group of knights advancing on him with swords drawn, clearly preparing to kill him - this was apparently meant to prove to the audience that he's evil incarnate, even though the good guys make self-defensive kills all the time.
    • When Mordred reappears as a young adult in series 5, the results are...muddled. At first, he very much fits this trope: He saves Merlin and Arthur's lives more than once and proves his loyalty to them, yet Merlin insists on seeing him as evil to the point of twice leaving him to die (even choosing to encourage Arthur to continue persecuting magic users rather than save Mordred). When Mordred's Face–Heel Turn finally comes, it's because Arthur has the woman he loved executed. Understandable but perhaps unfair, since she had tried to murder Arthur and he was prepared to show her mercy if she had shown any sign of wanting peace. (Although Merlin didn't help by abruptly deciding the best way to reconcile Arthur and Mordred was to foil Mordred's attempts to take her away from the area peacefully.) In the end, Mordred dies after less than two episodes as a Type II Anti-Villain, during which he only really qualifies as a villain because he's on Morgana's side and shows clear distaste at her more ruthless acts.
  • Morgana in the first two series. What she has done is no worse than what Merlin has done to his own kind, including her, yet he is viewed as the hero and she the villain. Like Mordred, at first she is only a villain because Merlin believed the dragon when he said she was.
• Moesha: Dee on many occasions. Even as a stepmother and not even a Wicked Stepmother, at that, but a Reasonable Authority Figure who was at times unintentionally insensitive to her stepdaughter, she was hated by Moesha simply because she wasn't her mother (needless to say, it must have hurt for her father to remarry so soon after her mother's death, but Moesha still came off as too much of a brat.)
• Played for Laughs in the Monty Python's Flying Circus episode "Mr. Neutron." The narrator and the other characters repeatedly describe Mr. Neutron as a terrifyingly evil intergalactic conqueror who's planning on destroying the Earth as well, but we never see him actually do anything even remotely evil, except flirt with a married woman, and is actually a pretty nice (albeit eccentric) fellow.
• The Christmas special in the Norwegian sitcom Mot i Brøstet has Karl set up as the bad guy since he insists that they should celebrate Christmas in the old fashioned way, much to the other's displeasure, but even before that the rest were shamelessly demanding expensive gifts from him since he earned a lot of money on the stock market.
• The security guard in the Muppet special The Muppets at Walt Disney World is already on his last chance after a number of past mistakes (including losing many of the keys to the park). When the Muppets break in without paying, he sets out to capture them. Eventually, he does capture them all, but it turns out Kermit and Mickey Mouse are old friends, so the Muppets don't get in trouble, while in his last scene the guard is shown scraping gum off the bottom of a bench, presumably demoted for his actions, even though he did capture characters who broke in without paying (and had no idea his boss was friends with one of them).
• In The Office:
  • The conflict between Andy and Dwight: both were trying to get each other fired, but we're supposed to side with Dwight.
  • Andy started out as a jerk in season 3 but became more sympathetic over time, especially with regards to his Will They or Won't They? relationship with Erin, which received a great deal of screen time following Jim and Pam's wedding. He even becomes the regional manager and de facto main character after Michael leaves. In season 9, due to his actor filming The Hangover Part III, he leaves on a boat trip for several episodes and returns a massive Jerkass, worse than in season 3. Nellie becomes more sympathetic due to being the constant target of his rage and distaste, even though she basically stole his job and got him fired, and Erin breaks up with him, acting like she never liked him at all even though they had Ship Tease for four seasons.
  • When it comes to clashes with Dwight and Jim, we are always to see Dwight as a villain and Jim as sympathetic, despite the fact that it's been made pretty clear that Jim has made Dwight's life hell for many years without ever being punished or discouraged. In season two it's revealed that Dwight has made at least three hundred complaints against Jim, exactly none of which were taken seriously. While Dwight's demeanor doesn't do him any favors, Jim's pranks really do come across as distracting and childish at best and borderline bullying at worst. This is lampshaded by Jim when he realizes that his pranks don't really sound funny when listed in rapid succession.
  • Jan is often treated as the true villain of the show for being a selfish megalomaniac. Granted, she is, but so are several other characters; Jan gets away with it less because her cruelty isn’t played for laughs.
  • The UK version of The Office features this trope in regards to Neil Godwin (Brent's boss) who, according to Word of God, we are not supposed to like. His crimes are neatly summed up in The Other Wiki as "He is dismissive towards David's dog and shared a joke with Chris Finch at the expense of David's Christmas party date, Carol." The Christmas party in question doesn't happen until the very last episode.
• Once Upon a Time: Medusa, a recurring theme for her character. In "The New Neverland", Snow and Charming's decision to kill her has nothing to do with her, they merely want to obtain her head as a way to fight Regina. Alternatively, it made for an interesting honeymoon. We never see her do anything to innocent people, she's only ever fighting people who are actively trying to kill her.
• In Stargate Atlantis, Bates, Kavanaugh, and Ellis tend to end up in this role. They usually have legitimate concerns or complaints, but because these are against the main cast of characters (Bates seeing Teyla as a security risk, Kavanaugh complaining to Weir about Weir degrading him in public, Ellis wanting McKay to cut the exposition and get to the point), the characters are presented as reactionary jerkasses. There is also a trend of portraying Kavanaugh, in his few appearances, as a coward, even though, every time, he is up against a situation in which his fear is perfectly understandable...up to a point. In each case, however, the three in all circumstances REFUSE to consider any alternative viewpoints other than their own, which causes problems and conflict for everyone else as they metaphorically throw their hands up and quit trying to resolve the problems, only throwing up more roadblocks instead.
  • In his initial appearance, Kavanaugh's supposed "cowardice" was due to his pointing out his concern that McKay mucking around with the Jumper's drive-pods while the cockpit was demolecularised could cause a feedback surge that would cause the entire Jumper to explode, sending the fragments back through the gate with the force of a bomb! He's treated as being in the wrong despite his entire team, Zelenka and McKay himself admitting that this was a very real possibility and if it did happen, they'd only have a few seconds of warning to raise the shield before it took out the gate room. The mitigating factor, however, was both the delivery of this warning, where it was in clear disrespect for his boss and his peers, and that this warning about what could go wrong was enough justification for him to give up and not offer ways to do what they were suggesting safely, which WOULD have been helpful.
• Star Trek:
  • A particularly controversial character in the Star Trek: The Next Generation fandom is Captain Edward Jellico from the two-part episode "Chain of Command". Commanding the Enterprise-D when Captain Picard was off on an espionage mission, he apparently was supposed to come off as a martinet, as evidenced by his changing everything for no good reason other than because he could, disregarding perfectly valid advice, and generally acting like a jerk. However, when the chips were down, he proved an outstanding commanding officer who singlehandedly stopped a war, recovered the captured Picard (who, caught red-handed as a spy, had no expectation of being returned), and refrained from tossing Riker out the nearest airlock which the character badly deserved it for his childish petulance during the two-part episode. He could certainly be seen as a Jerkass, but when a guy who can at worst be said to be a jerk, successfully defeats an enemy who has no problem setting up a trap so that they could capture Picard and brutally torture him for information necessary to invade the Federation it seems rather petty to complain about how he changed the schedule around.
  • The entire Vulcan race suffers from this in Star Trek: Enterprise. One problem is that the writers would often try to make the humans look good by making the Vulcans look bad; which unfortunately falls flat as the Enterprise crew often come across as so reckless and foolish in the first two seasons, the Vulcans honestly seem right in their belief that their species shouldn't have left the cradle yet.
• Mr. Moseby in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody is the hotel manager who is often viewed as the antagonist for scolding the titular twins when the latter two treat the hotel as a playground when he is only doing his job to keep the hotel under control. This gets even more egregious in the episode where Zack and Cody turn into superheroes and Moseby is the villain who uses a ray that turns children into adults.
• Louis Litt in Suits in the early seasons, very similar to Dwight above. Louis is treated as the Token Evil Teammate of Pearson-Hardman, and to be sure he is undeniably a Jerkass and a Drill Sergeant Nasty to the associates, as well as a shameless Social Climber hungerring to get his name on the wall. However at the same time, he's also shown to be nice to Donna, who is the only person who treats him with the bare minimum of respect, whereas Jessica and Harvey openly insult him to his face and push him around, and it often came across like we were supposed to side with Harvey for being a handsome, charming asshole, while Louis is a homely, awkward asshole. The creators seem to have realised that they made him more sympathetic than they intended and as time went on he got a lot more episodes exploring his softer side, and a flashback shows that when Louis and Harvey first met Louis was a kindhearted young lawyer who saw Harvey as a friend, and it was Harvey climbing over him that made Louis who he is. He eventually Heel Face turned when his rougher edges had been smoothed off and the series ends with him essentially getting everything he ever wanted.
• Possibly used in Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains, where people like Sandra and Coach could hardly be considered villains (lampshaded when Jeff Probst asks if anyone thinks they were put on the wrong team); and Rob, who (shockingly) played the game more heroically than most of the Heroes, to the point where he outright states he's "not a good villain".
• That '70s Show:
  • Kelso occasionally. He was a jerk, but sometimes he was portrayed as the bad guy when he was really being reasonable. When he lent Jackie his van and she smashed it, he reasonably wants her to pay to have it fixed, but Jackie refuses because she bought him gifts while they were together. However, as Hyde points out, Kelso did set Jackie's house on fire at one point, which trumps anything Jackie did to the van.
  • Eric himself, especially in regards to his relationship with Donna. The show tries to display him as an idiotic pervert at times who believes too much in old fashioned ways^note Mostly thanks to Red, but more often than not he makes far more convincing arguments than the writers intended, especially when some of the points Donna tries to make border-line on flatout domestic/emotional abuse.
    • When Eric breaks up with Donna, the show treats it as though it was his fault and everyone believes Donna actually broke up with him despite Eric's protests. Then when Donna breaks up with Casey and immediately wants to get back together with Eric, his refusal is treated as selfish and idiotic by Red and Kitty. Regardless what one thinks of Eric's old-fashioned values, the fact is that he and Donna had very different visions for the future and if neither was willing to compromise for the other then it's for the best they broke up, and when Donna wanted to hook up again she was clearly on the rebound from Casey (which Eric called her on), and none of the underlying problems that had led to them breaking up in the first place had been resolved.
  • Red can get this treatment, despite his thorough "Well Done, Son" Guy and The Unfavorite relationship with Eric, his supposedly hard-line modes of discipline can seem rather reasonable and far from severe (and whenever it does stray to Kick the Dog territory he's always called out on it). Given this makes sense since it's often an In-Universe reaction from Eric.
• The Twilight Zone: In a particularly famous episode, "Time Enough At Last", Burgess Meredith plays a bookworm type who spends the whole episode being abused by every person he meets, and only wants to be alone with his books. Then a nuke wipes out the entire city while he's safe in a bank vault, and he's finally free to read his books in peace...until his reading glasses break. Unfair Cruel Twist Ending? No, Word of God says that this was his just punishment for his misanthropy.
• Diana Marshall (played by Jane Badler of V (1983)) was heavily publicized as a villain prior to her introduction on Neighbours, on the basis of her ruthlessness in her quest to bring down Paul and Rosemary. But given that Paul was responsible for embezzling thousands of dollars from his business and Rosemary's willingness to let her nephew get away with it, it's not hard to see Diana as justified in her actions and to want her to win.
• The West Wing:
  • Former Vice President John Hoynes. The writers obviously want us to view him as a sleazy backstabber desperately clinging his way back to the top. Instead he comes across as a broken man venting his anger at years of disrespect and mistreatment at the hands of the President and White House staff. The fact that Hoynes was almost a lock for the nomination before Bartlet came along (only at the pestering of Leo and others) and swept the primaries goes without mention, as does the work Hoynes put in to help the House get bills passed (using methods far less devious than what Josh had employed). He even resigned as Vice President to spare the office and his family any more bad publicity. Not exactly the devious Smug Snake he's constantly painted as.
  • Admittedly, this often depends on the episode. Josh and Leo like or at least respect Hoynes, and several episodes give him acknowledged Pet the Dog moments, like inviting Leo to his AA meeting or taking his name off an education bill he sponsored to ensure its passage. Leo himself says that the staff respects Hoynes, they just don't trust him.
  • His successor, "Bingo Bob" Russell, fares no better and for even less cause. At least Hoynes caused a sex scandal (that is, he did something wrong) which could justify the main cast's hatred of him (if they'd known about it before it was exposed). Russell is never shown to have done anything wrong, most of the cast just dislikes him because they consider him to be a lightweight who was forced onto the ticket by political pressure. In fact, Russell is generally shown to be good-natured and reasonable, but most of the senior staff still resent him.
• Wizards of Waverly Place: Stevie in Season 3. Her ultimate villainous goal is to end the system where only one child per-family gets to keep their magic into adulthood... and that's it. The show treats her like a Toxic Friend Influence who wants to corrupt Alex into evil, but we're never given a clear reason why what she's doing is wrong. In fact, the Wizard Competition, if anything, is repeatedly shown to break up families (as it did with Jerry's siblings and nearly did many times with Alex, Justin, and Max) so it's very understandable why anyone should want it overturned. There's no indication that her plan will hurt anybody or be detrimental in any way other than that it seriously changes a long-established norm. Shrug of God on the matter doesn't help.
• The Young and the Restless. When Carmen Mesta came to town, she quickly took up with Neil Winters, who was estranged from his wife Dru, having just discovered that she cheated on him with his brother and that he's actually the uncle of the daughter he's raised for 15 years. When Dru returned to town, she was enraged to discover Neil and Carmen's fling and promptly broke into Carmen's apartment and trashed it. When Carmen filed charges and a restraining order against Dru, all of sudden SHE was made into the bad guy. Her and Neil's mutual relationship was suddenly spun as her being The Vamp out to wreck a blissfully happy marriage and her filing a complaint against Dru was made to look like the vindictive act of a Woman Scorned. 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 Asshole Victim in a murder mystery that had every member of the Winters' family as a suspect. No one ever thought to call Dru out for her crazed—and hypocritical—behavior and Carmen was made out to be a vengeful bitch out to ruin Dru's life rather than someone who had every right to do what she did, given Dru's actions.
• Logan on one episode of Zoey 101. After screaming at Dustin over the phone because Dustin made a mistake, Logan was enrolled in anger management classes. He gets out of them early, but needs to be monitored by his teacher. If he can go a day without getting angry, he gets to be out of the classes. So what do the main characters do? Play tons of cruel tricks on him to get him to snap, tricks that anyone would rightfully get mad at (such as attacking him with paint-filled balloons). Logan manages to go the entire day without getting angry at anyone, until the teacher finally leaves. He then, of course, yells at the others, and is taken back to anger management.