Distressed Dude / Live-Action TV

Distressed Dudes in live-action TV.

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• 24's Jack Bauer gets captured and tied up several times a season. Of course, as mentioned above, it's usually to prove how much of a badass he is when he gets free.
• Alex Rider (2020):
  • In Episode 2, Alex is knocked off his bike by a van. He's drugged and shoved into the van and spends most of the episode being subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques before escaping. It's all a Secret Test of Character by Blunt.
  • In Episode 6, Tom is lured to Roscoe Media for a supposed job interview, where he's ambushed and held prisoner by Duplicate!Parker and Yassen Gregorovitch. He's tied to a chair and interrogated, accidentally blowing Alex's cover as he's forced to unlock his phone. He's on the verge of being murdered by Duplicate!Parker when he's rescued by Mrs. Jones.
  • In the same episode, Alex's cover is blown. He's Strapped to an Operating Table and pumped full of Truth Serum.
  • In the final episode, poor Tom gets this again when Duplicate!Alex attacks him with a pole, breaking his arm, and takes him hostage to draw out the real Alex.
• Will Tippin in Alias. The first real incident was in "Rendezvous". Will, a Muggle who is gradually losing his status via investigating SD-6, and Sydney saves him in France. He doesn't know about her high-kicking spy job and screams when he sees her. He is then kidnapped by Julian Sark. Will ends up in China being tortured by a Depraved Dentist, and then gets rescued by Jack. Jack later needs to be rescued by Sydney from Sloane's replacement John Ryder. Marshal is up next when he is tortured by the same Depraved Dentist, who threatens to fill Marshal's guts with a gel that will expand and crush his internal organs, and then threatens Marshal's mother. Vaughn and Dixon are also rescued by Sydney to a lesser extent a couple of times.
• Face got captured more than anyone else on The A-Team. Bad guys loved to tie him up.
• Austin & Ally: In "Videos & Villains", Austin ends up being held hostage by Brooke, who has evolved into Psycho Ex-Girlfriend territory, right when he is to perform on Video Countdown Live; she even obscures all means of contact with the outside world and won't let him out unless he writes a song about her.
• The 1960s Batman TV series. In a number of cases, Robin was the sidekick in distress needing to be rescued by Batman, but Bats himself was usually in equal danger.
• As Saul Goodman was kidnapped by Walt and Jesse in his intro Breaking Bad episode and was terrified, it was probably inevitable that Jimmy McGill was in distress a fair amount in Better Call Saul, either as a hostage, handcuffed in jail or just getting in over his head and needing to be saved by Mike. Whatever you want to do to him, don't take him to the desert.
• Booth has to be rescued by Brennan and her dad Max early in Bones. The other times (when Brennan and Hodgins get buried alive and when Booth is trapped on a sinking ship) are downplayed as the captured characters help a lot with rescuing themselves.
• Jake Peralta from Brooklyn Nine-Nine. He gets into danger more than anyone else in the show. He's been held hostage a few times and has been held at gunpoint several times in the show.
• Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: Episode plots are usually driven by Buck's capture. He often manages to escape on his own, but Wilma usually plays a part in pulling his fat out of the fire.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Xander had a tendency, eventually lampshaded, to get Chained to a Bed by the Monster of the Week and get rescued by Buffy.
  • In earlier seasons, Giles the apparent Non-Action Guy had a knack for stumbling into trouble and needing Buffy to come to the rescue, but as his Dark and Troubled Past was revealed (and as he became more of a Papa Wolf to his slayer), he started regaining some of his lost Levels of Badass. The Taps On The Head never completely vanished, though.
  • Hell, this even happened to Angel once. Nearly an entire episode of Angel tied up, shirtless, and whimpering.
  • This happened to Spike once, in the Season 4 episode "Something Blue", where he is chained in Giles' bathtub and looking pouty. Now, why on earth would they do that?
    • And again (but quite a bit rougher) in the Season 5 episode "Intervention", where he is captured and tortured by Glory. He halfway escapes (by goading her into literally kicking him out of his chains) and then is rescued the rest of the way when Buffy and the Scoobies arrive. Ironically, they were actually intending to kill him to keep him from talking.
    • Oh, Spike does this all the damn time. In particular; a good chunk of Season 7 features him chained to a wall, at least 10 episodes on-again-off-again chained.
  • This trope was also lampshaded in "Once More, With Feeling". In the opening number, Buffy rescues a tied-up young man with a distinct resemblance to Fabio, then brushes him off:
    Buffy: Will I stay this way forever? Sleepwalk through my life's endeavor?
    Young Man: How can I repay—
    Buffy: Whatever.
  • Even the stoic Oz ends up captured by the US military in "New Moon Rising".
• Chuck:
  • The series features a hapless electronics-store worker who gets thrown into the world of spies and danger. He tends to get thrown into car trunks quite a bit, forcing him to await rescue from his Action Girl partner.
  • Casey and Sarah also get captured a lot and need to be rescued. More than one would expect, given that they are the trained professional elite spies and Chuck is the schmuck they're supposed to be guarding, but he is the title character... And he never stays in the car when they tell him to...
    Chuck: "It's never safer in the car!"
• The Colbert Report: Stephen Colbert chains himself to his desk in an early 2010 episode during a word segment where Obama's advocating bipartisanship - the word was 'siren song' and he was kindly demonstrating.
• Criminal Minds. Poor Spencer Reid. He ends up separated from the rest of the team and in danger very frequently, especially in early seasons. Let's count, shall we?
  • In "Derailed", back from season one, he didn't start out in danger but ended up in it during an attempt to rescue Elle who was being held hostage on a train with an unstable man.
  • Shortly prior in "LDSK" he got bashed in the face with a sniper rifle and taken hostage alongside Hotch and the population of a hospital emergency room.
  • In the two-parter "The Big Game"/"Revelations" from Season 2, he was actually held kidnapped for several days and ended up addicted to Dilaudid.
  • In the Season 3 episode "Minimal Loss", he and Prentiss were held in a cult compound while investigating child abuse.
  • In another Season 3 episode ("Damaged"), he and Hotch were trapped in a cell with a serial killer during the guard's shift change.
  • And all that's not even mentioning all the times he gets held at knife-point, held at gunpoint, actually shot, trapped alone with an unsub, nearly blown up, infected with anthrax...
  • This has gotten so bad, Matthew Gray Gubler (Reid's actor) has commented on it:
    Gubler: I'm always getting held hostage by teen idols — first James Van Der Beek was a guest star and held Reid hostage, and this time it's Luke Perry. I actually saw Scott Baio out front, and I swear he looked at me. I want George Michael to hold me hostage in Season 8.
• CSI had Nick Stokes kidnapped and buried alive during the two-part episode "Grave Danger" in Season 5.
• CSI: NY:
  • For being a former Marine and the head CSI of the series, Mac Taylor has a nasty habit of being duped and/or captured by the very criminals he's trying to capture. (Downplayed in "The Untouchable" when he frees himself.)
  • Danny and Adam both got this in the Season 3 finale ("Snow Day") when they were taken hostage and beaten by the Irish gang intent on getting their seized drug hoard back.
  • Don's former CI, Terrence, had to rescue him from a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on the subway in Season 6's "Cuckoo's Nest."
  • Later, Sheldon got it when he was caught up in a prison riot in Season 6's "Redemptio." He even ended up getting locked in a cell for a while, and the team had to help rescue him because the authorities were taking too long & they feared for his life.
• In The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Rian is caught by the Hunter, and only saved from a gruesome end by the Chamberlain stepping in. He's later rescued from the Chamberlain by Gurjin and Naia.
• In Doctor Who, the Doctor gets tied up all the freaking time.
  • The First Doctor is held prisoner by pirate in "The Smugglers". He does trick and overpowers the pirate guarding him and the innkeeper, though. You Have Failed Me ensues. He also has to be rescued by Ian after getting Strapped to an Operating Table to undergo a form of artificial death in "The Space Museum".
  • There was only one Third Doctor serial in which he wasn't tortured, strangled, or held in bondage. Plus, the Third Doctor is the only Doctor to have been tied up and gagged too. (The Fifth Doctor came close with being blindfolded and chained in "The Caves of Androzani"). This may have been due to his companion Jo Grant. Originally written as an Emma Peel-type character, she became The Ditz in a miniskirt instead, but one aspect of her backstory — her training in escapology — was kept. The Third Doctor also holds the current record for "number of times entrapped/bound to a wall by alien tentacles". (Twice, incidentally.) The Third Doctor is also memorably tied to a maypole by homicidal Morris dancers.
  • The Fourth Doctor managed to get tied to a pole in two consecutive serials (and partially stripped in the latter one — also, it was by an all-female civilisation, ooh). He also gets tied up with his own outfit quite often, on account of it including a ridiculously long scarf.
  • Five definitely spent more time sprawled on the floor (or on his knees, or strapped to something, or being manhandled) than he did, well, standing upright.
  • The Sixth Doctor didn't do any better. Out of his 11 stories, he was tied up or locked up (and held hostage once) in six of them. In fact, he was tied up three times alone in "The Mysterious Planet".
  • Even Eight gets in on the action in the Made-for-TV Movie, what with the Master chaining him up to steal his regenerations, and putting this weird spikey crown-thing on his head that looks like a cross between something out of The Passion of the Christ and A Clockwork Orange. Fridge Logic kicks in when you have to wonder why the hell he had all that stuff on the TARDIS in the first place.
  • The Ninth Doctor seemed to get cornered by enemies much more often than the other Doctors of the 2005 revival. And he seems to be the only Doctor who has been chained and shirtless (concurrently) in an episode ("Dalek"). You'd think one of the writers had a Fetish for Christopher Eccleston or something.
  • Episodes where the Tenth Doctor isn't tied up, possessed or otherwise hurt are few and far between.
    • He gets possessed for the first time in "42", spending a good third of the episode fighting off the Mind Rape while in total screaming agony.
    • In "The Sound of Drums"/"Last of the Time Lords", he gets aged up to an old man and kept in a dog kennel by the Master. Later, the Master ages him up even further until he's a weird, shrunken imp-like thing the size of a toddler, and locks him in a birdcage.
    • When he gets arrested in "Voyage of the Damned", he's physically dragged out of the ballroom area by two stewards, screaming about how the ship is about to be hit by a meteor storm.
    • In "Planet of the Ood", he and Donna get handcuffed to pillars, and are then left behind to be slaughtered by the rabid Ood.
    • He also got handcuffed by River Song at the end of "Forest of the Dead". Why did she have handcuffs? "Spoilers!" No really, spoilers: either the Doctor told her to, or she learned they were used before by her mother. Although as a much more simple explanation, Brains and Bondage just seems to be River's favourite trope.
    • "Midnight" has him possessed by... something, leaving him completely paralyzed and forced to repeat whatever the creature says as it eggs the other passengers on to throw him off the bus and into the vacuum of Midnight.
    • He got strapped to a chair designed for use as a restraint and very thoroughly gagged by the Master at the same time in "The End of Time" Part 2. Bonus points for fleeing the scene (down a flight of stairs!) with the Doctor still tied to the wheeled chair, finally un-gagged and screaming bloody murder the whole way.
    • Ten got his fair share of it in the comics as well. Here◊ and here◊ are just two such examples.
  • The Eleventh Doctor has been getting in on the action from the get-go, getting handcuffed to the heater by Amy Pond right away in "The Eleventh Hour", and being strapped into the Pandorica by most of his usual foes in "The Pandorica Opens"/"The Big Bang".
  • In "Robot of Sherwood", the Twelfth Doctor, Robin Hood and Clara Oswald are chained up in the Sheriff of Nottingham's dungeon. Thanks to the Doctor and Robin's constant bickering, Clara is assumed to be the leader and escorted to see the Sheriff. The Doctor and Robin are then forced to arrange their own escape, a task made more difficult when, after luring the guard into the cell and knocking him out, they knock the key to their chains down a grate because they're still arguing. The two are forced to carry the block with the loop their chains are passed through to the forge to get them off.
  • Let us not limit the discussion to the Doctor's incarnations. Many a male companion or innocent bystander got this.
    • Steven is taken captive, tied up, or otherwise incapacitated at least once per serial, on average.
    • Ian fared slightly better, but not by much. He also once got tied up in the desert, stripped to a see-through shirt and smeared with honey as a means of torture in some footage that is sadly lost.
    • "The War Machines": Ben is captured by the enemy and saved only because Polly, under mind-control, insists that he be used to work; he escapes only because Polly, despite the mind control lets him. (Later she, still mind-controlled, is baffled as to why, barely managing to remember they were friends.) More subtly, most of the mind control victims are male.
    • "The Macra Terror": Ben gets mind-controlled by the Macra and Polly has to snap him out of it.
    • "The Krotons": The male chosen, the Doctor, and Jamie all fall into the Krotons' hands. To be sure, the latter two escape on their own power, but it's close.
    • Harry Sullivan's tendency towards this was virtually lampshaded in his first story, "Robot", in which the Doctor proposed he spy on UNIT's behalf on the Scientific Reform Society. Sarah Jane teases him by asking him if he's going to be James Bond. He accomplishes absolutely nothing, gets tied up to the captured Sarah Jane, and she disdainfully tells him, "James Bond." In fact, Harry's Establishing Character Moment in the same story is getting captured and tied up by the Doctor.
    • In "State of Decay", Adric is captured to be made a vampire, and he spends most of "Castrovalva" strung up in a web inside the Master's TARDIS.
    • In "Enlightenment", Turlough was chained up by Captain Wrack.
    • In "The Caves of Androzani", the commander's aide was taken captive by the villain of the piece, who kept him about for someone to talk to.
    • In "Vengeance on Varos", the Doctor and Peri arrive just in the nick of time to save a man being executed for his work in La Résistance.
    • In "Last of the Time Lords", Jack was chained up, tortured and repeatedly killed by the Master for a full year.
    • "The Hungry Earth"/"Cold Blood": The story begins with Mo, an employee of a drilling project alone on the night shift, getting pulled underground to become a captive of the Silurians.
  • And on the Torchwood side of things:
    • Jack managed to get himself captured by Torchwood and killed repeatedly for a while as a science experiment in the 19th century, which is how he joined the organisation in the first place.
    • At the end of Season 2, Jack agrees to let himself be buried underneath Cardiff as punishment for a mistake he once made. For close to 2000 years. Leading up to that, his ex-boyfriend John has him nicely tied up and tortured for a bit.
    • In Torchwood: Miracle Day, Jack makes the mistake of revealing his immortality to a deeply Catholic boyfriend. His boyfriend thinks he's the devil, kills him, tells the rest of Little Italy, and Jack spends a few very uncomfortable days strung up and murdered continuously. Involving a lot of Camera Abuse.
    • Their archivist Ianto Jones spends a fair bit of time getting caught unawares, threatened and tied up in the first series, but after Jack leaves between series 1 and 2 he gets more field experience and avoids this trope more frequently.
• This seems to be a very popular trope in the Whedonverse. In Firefly, Wash and Mal get tied up and tortured by Niska and are saved by Zoe and the crew.
• Demetri Noh on FlashForward (2009), who was captured and placed in a ridiculously elaborate Death Trap so that the crazy villain could test his timey-wimey theories. It took a combination of his FBI partner Mark carrying the Hero Ball and his girlfriend pulling an I Did What I Had to Do in order to save him.
• Forever:
  • Henry is taken hostage by the killer in "Look Before You Leap" with a blade held to his throat, with the extra stress of security cameras that will record him vanishing if he dies. Jo ends up shooting the killer.
  • In "The Frustrating Thing About Psychopaths" Henry is stabbed fatally, then when he tries to fight off the killer anyway he's thrown against a wall, moving the knife still embedded in his back, then tumbles down a flight of stairs, breaking his neck and leaving him unable to move. This time, it's Adam who comes to his rescue, sort of.
  • Henry gets shot in "New York Kids," leaving Jo to chase after the suspect.
  • Henry is kidnapped and tortured in "The Ecstasy of Agony," shackled to a Saint Andrew's Cross, choked repeatedly, then electrocuted. Jo, Hanson, and several other cops come to the rescue, distracting the killer enough for Henry to grab ahold of him with a free hand, thus sending the electric current through him as well, causing him to collapse and drop the cable he was trying to kill Henry with.
  • Adam traps Henry in the back of an out-of-control taxi which then sinks into the Hudson with Henry still inside in "Skinny Dipper." Henry leaves some horrific scratch marks on the inside of the taxi in his desperate attempts to escape.
• In season 3 of the TV series "Riviera", Gabriel Hirsch (played by Rupert Graves) is often rescued by the main female character Georgina Clios (played by Julia Stiles). In episodes 2 and 8, she finds him bound and gagged, at the mercy of different antagonists, and unties him.
• Peter Bishop from Fringe is constantly getting rescued or saved by Olivia Dunham.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Smalljon Umber betrays Rickon to Ramsay, who takes the boy as a hostage and taunts Jon about it.
  • Tyrion Lannister spends a large amount of time as a prisoner or captive for a wide range of factions and people. First he's captured by the Starks, and later is a prisoner of the Vale. Then he's imprisoned by his own family after falsely being accused of killing his king. After that, he gets captured by Jora Mormont, who takes him to queen Daenerys, but on the way there they both get captured by slavers. He still manages to get a meeting with Daenerys, who captures him until deciding to release him and make him her advisor. But just before the end of the series, he gets imprisoned by Daenerys again for turning against her.
• Good Omens (2019):
  • Angel Aziraphale gets in trouble several times throughout history. His demon Crowley saves him every time.
  • It is revealed in season 2 that Aziraphale does it on purpose, in order to make Crowley happy:
  Aziraphale: Crowley will be back in a moment. He will have a plan.
  Nina: Why don't you stand up for yourself? Make your own plans.
  Aziraphale: I am. But rescuing me makes him so happy.
• Intrepid reporter Mike Axford in The Green Hornet is kidnapped and held as some kind of leverage tool on the Hornet on pretty much every third episode. Lampshaded lightly in "Eat, Drink, and Be Dead" at the closer when Mike insisted on a raise after being kidnapped yet again.
• Despite Hannibal Lecter's status as the chief villain of Hannibal, he's been held captive several times. In Savoreaux, Will forces Hannibal to drive him to Minnesota at gunpoint, and he's narrowly rescued by Jack. In Mukozuke, Matthew Brown knocks Hannibal unconscious with a tranquilizer dart, then arranges him in a crucifixion pose with a noose around his neck. Jack and Alana shoot Brown and narrowly rescue Hannibal.
• The Invisible Man: Darien gets tied up a lot either because his enemies don't want to lose track of him or because they are attempting to steal the gland from his head.
• Sportacus in LazyTown is often a victim of the "Evil Dude". The reason is that sometimes Stephanie is in distress.
  • Also Bill Thompson a bounty hunter is a dude in distress. Sometimes with the "Evil Dudette", he is mostly for love.
• On Leverage, Hardison often fills this role given his status as a Non-Action Guy.
• MacGyver (1985) is legendary for this, with escape skills surpassing even those of Jack Bauer — and sometimes Houdini.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Theo is taken as a hostage by the Orcs after returning in Tirharad to gather some food. He is saved by Arondir.
• At least one of protagonists of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. would usually be tied up by the villain(s) in just about every episode, often while confined in a Death Trap.
• Happens pretty much every second episode in The Mentalist - Jane gets himself into all sorts of scrapes; but as he's not allowed a gun and has no physical defence training whatsoever, he has to resort to reasoning with his enemies until Lisbon and the team arrive.
• If you're a male on Merlin, chances are you needed to be rescued at some point. Even the title character, who is easily the most dangerous character on the show, has had his turn at this. Arthur, (yes, that Arthur) is easily the most notorious for this, as Merlin has long since lost track of the number of times he needed to be rescued. Merlin even lampshades this in the Series 3 finale.
  Arthur: Maybe just this once we won't have any trouble. [gets tranquilized]
  Merlin: If past experience is anything to go by. [gets tranquilized]
  [some time later...]
  Merlin: [wakes up in the middle of a slave market] What was that you were saying again?
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters "Departure": Bill gets pinned under debris when the Ion Dragon starts attacking and the USS Lawton begins toppling around them, forcing Keiko and Lee to work urgently to get him free.
• Murdoch Mysteries:
  • In "The Prince and the Rebel", Murdoch and Prince Albert Victor are taken captive by the prince's aide and held hostage by Irish terrorists. They are rescued by Inspector Brackenreid and most of the rest of Station Four's contingent.
  • In "Murdoch Air", inventor James Pendrick is rescued by Murdoch from his kidnappers, American agent Alan Clegg and his associates. Murdoch starts a smoky fire as a distraction, and together they use the inventor's stolen plane to escape.
  • Murdoch is rescued from "The Murdoch Trap", literally a cage in a lair set up by the infamous James Gillies, by Inspector Brackenreid and Constable Crabtree, backed by most of the rest of the men of Station Four. He's carried out by his colleagues since he's unconscious from carbon monoxide pumped into the room.
  • Late in "Murdoch Ahoy", Murdoch is helping to rescue the ship owner's daughter from a cargo hold fast filling with water when a falling trunk knocks him out and he sinks below the water. Dr. Ogden goes to his rescue, aided by Inspector Brackenreid.
• NCIS has a designated "damsel" named Tony DiNozzo, though he usually rescues himself.
• Once Upon a Time reveals, near the end of the pilot, Prince Charming stuck in a coma much the same way Snow White was at the beginning when he rescued her.
• 'Once Upon a Time in Wonderland' Cyrus, until a wish to end Alice's suffering finally frees him from being a genie. Will becomes both the new genie of the bottle and the Distressed Dude in his place.
• Power Rangers/Super Sentai:
  • Tommy Oliver is a magnet for getting his powers stolen/getting Brainwashed and Crazy/turning into a Sealed Good in a Can. Currently, his most egregious brush with this trope happens in Power Rangers: Dino Thunder, where he is frozen in amber, stuck in his Black Dino Ranger form, turned invisible, and put into a deathly coma, all in that order, in the course of 15 episodes.
    • He was also once strapped to a lab table in the Big Bad's lair with a dangerous pointy object descending toward him...
  • The number of times the cast of Power Rangers in Space wound up Bound and Gagged is insane.
  • In Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger, it happens pretty frequently to Sixth Ranger Tetsu.
• The Prisoner (1967) episode "The Girl Who Was Death" plays inexplicably like a loopy spy-adventure movie. Number Six is eventually caught in the villain's lair and is bound to a chair.
  The Girl: Mountaineering rope — it'll hold an elephant!
  No. 6: I must remember that next time I go climbing with one.
• Rimmer in the Red Dwarf episode "Terrorform":
  "My god, are you gonna take a flying leap?"
• Nigel Bailey of Relic Hunter epitomizes this trope. Sydney rides to his rescue at least every other episode.
• Will Zimmerman from Sanctuary constantly gets kidnapped or stuck in a situation where Helen Magnus (and sometimes her team as well) generally has to come to his rescue. So much so that some fans have even dubbed him the "Dude in Distress".
• Sheena (2000) - Matt Cutter is constantly being saved by Sheena- be it from killer hybrids, cannibalistic ants, game hunters, dictators, and terrorists. While also capable of fulfilling sidekick duties, we are aware of how physically fit he is, as we see him without a shirt, and often rendered shirtless (i.e. "Children of the La Mistas").
• John Watson from Sherlock has a tendency to fall into this. He gets threatened by Moriarty twice and once by Magnussen. Also, he got thrown in a bonfire!
  • Sherlock is this too, sometimes. He and John generally end up coming to each other's rescue.
• Smallville had this in its early years to the point of being female Fanservice. Ads for the premiere showed Clark tied to a cross with his shirt ripped off and a big "S" painted on his chest in what seemed to be blood. Not to mention during the first four seasons or so, Lex needed Clark to save him as many times, or perhaps even more, than Clark's official love interest, Lana!
• The boys of Stargate SG-1 invoke this trope fairly often. Daniel winds up kidnapped disproportionately often in the first season or two. He's also the Woobie, so...
  • After turning into a Prior, Daniel gets put in a bondage chair by his own side.
  • Mitchell also gets to carry the distress ball a lot. Although he's tied up now and then (and once to a bed), his forte seems to be getting beaten up rather that tied up. Since anyone replacing O'Neill was staring Replacement Scrappy status in the face, having him get hurt a lot may have been a ploy to mitigate or even acknowledge the situation.
• Star Trek: The Original Series:
  • James T. Kirk not only gets manacled but stripped to the waist and rubbed down with oil. Several times. Fanservice, anyone?
  • Quite often, Spock and/or McCoy would get captured with him, also. But they never got the oil treatment, though we did get to see Spock shirtless and whipped in "Patterns of Force".
• Star Trek: Enterprise: Captain Archer got thrown into a cell and/or beaten up by interrogators so many times it became a series cliché.
• Star Trek: Picard:
  • In "The End Is the Beginning", the sole surviving Romulan commando at Picard's chateau is tied to a chair and he can't free himself from his bonds.
  • In "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1", Narek is captured and imprisoned by the androids on Coppelius.
  • In "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2", Picard is under house arrest at Coppelius Station. Narek is subdued by the synths again and taken into their custody, but we don't see what happens to him afterwards.
• Poor Will Byers of Stranger Things. Both seasons of the show have revolved in some way around trying to save him, whether it's from the interdimensional man-eating monster who kidnapped and hunted him, or from the interdimensional evil overlord who possessed him and tried to make him lead all his friends and family to their deaths.
• Both of the guys on Supernatural have been tied/chained up so often that sooner or later you start to think someone on the writing team has a fetish.
• In Season 2 of Veronica Mars, when Logan gets kidnapped by the PCH gang, who threaten to castrate him.
• White Collar has Neal often ending up as a distressed dude. In the Season 1 episode "Vital Signs", he's tied up and drugged.
• Tony Hill from Wire in the Blood has a tendency to get into this kind of thing.
• Wonder Woman: Steve Trevor's very existence depends on this. His job is to get into trouble that Wonder Woman saves him from. Once he stopped filling this role in the series, his part was Demoted to Extra until being written out entirely by the end of Season 3. Behold the distressed dude in-action:
  • "The New, Original Wonder Woman": Captured by his secretary's gang. Until Wonder Woman breaks down the door, makes a pile-o-mooks, and unties him.
  • "Wonder Woman Meets Baroness Von Gunther": Tied up by The Baroness. Until Wonder Woman breaks the chains that are "unbreakable, even by elephants".
  • "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman": Captured by Fausta and saved by Wonder Woman - twice.
  • "Beauty on Parade": Caught in an ambush. Until Wonder Woman saves him by catching a bazooka shot and throwing it back at the bad guys.
  • "The Feminum Mystique": Pinned down by gunfire. Until Wonder Woman arrives. He still lost his jet, though.
  • "Last of the $2 Bills": Locked in a cell and later left to die via bomb. He saves himself both times!
  • "Judgment from Outer Space": Trapped in a Nazi base and surrounded by Nazi guards. Until Wonder Woman forges an escape route by out-muscling all of the Nazis in two shoves.
  • "Formula 407": Trapped in a root cellar with a gassed Wonder Woman. She turns out to be a very convenient cellmate for a prisoner looking to escape.
  • "The Bushwhackers": Trapped in a hole covered by a huge boulder. But not big enough to stop Wonder Woman from lifting it off the hole.
  • "Wonder Woman in Hollywood": Captured by Bremmer with the coerced help of Private Jim Ames. Saved by both Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl!
  • "The Return of Wonder Woman": Knocked out by a group of thugs. That Wonder Woman beats up and interrogates.
  • "Anschluss '77": Mugged and attacked by thugs. Until Wonder Woman drags them off of him and chases them away.
  • "The Man Who Could Move the World": Takeo Ishida specifically tells him that he's the bait for Wonder Woman. She talks Ishida into a Heel–Face Turn.
  • "The Bermuda Triangle Crisis": Knocked out and hanging in a tree close to Manta's base after a plane crash. Wonder Woman lowers him out of the tree.
  • "Knockout": His magnum opus of distressed dudehood. He spends the entire episode in the clutches of the evil gang of terrorists! Which dooms their organization to be destroyed by Wonder Woman.
  • "The Queen and the Thief": His cover blown, he ends up tied up and trapped. Diana Prince leaves him captured at his insistence to further the mission. As an added bonus, he's held at gunpoint by Ambassador Orrick (John Colicos). Until Wonder Woman disarms the Ambassador by knocking the gun from his hand by throwing her tiara while hanging upside down over a poison gas deathtrap.
  • "Flight to Oblivion": Trapped in a hypnotic state in the back of the Dante's (John Van Dreelen) bus. While Wonder Woman stops the bus with her bare hands, Steve breaks the trance himself!
• Joxer, the Loser Protagonist warrior wannabe and part-time sidekick to Xena and Gabrielle in Xena: Warrior Princess.
  • Similarly, in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (the series that Xena was the spin-off of), Hercules' sidekick Iolaus, while a warrior in his own right, is regularly put into the role of the Distressed Dude, beaten, killed (a couple of times) and in need to be rescued by his big buddy Herc. When you're up against enemies who can present a semi-credible threat to Hercules, after all, merely being a competent warrior doesn't quite cut it.
• The X-Files: Fox Mulder ends up in this role a lot, though this was more due to his inability to think before charging in than a need to show off Scully's competency. Scully's awesomeness was kind of self-evident.
• Yellowjackets: A high school girls' soccer team is flying out to nationals, but their plane crashes. One of their coaches survives, but his leg is crushed and has to be amputated. He can't walk and the girls have to carry him when they hike out.
• Zero (2021): Omar, after rescuing Anna from her kidnappers, is overpowered by one and in grave danger before she hits the guy over the head with a chair.

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