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  • A.N.T. Farm: Fletcher had been this for Chyna when she came to the A.N.T. program in the 1st episode of the show, "TransplANTed", to the point that he even said "You're beautiful."
  • Arrow. Perhaps not love, but Oliver Queen says that Felicity Smoak was the first person whom he saw as an actual person—instead of a potential threat or target—after his return to Starling City. Years later he even recalls the color of the pen tip she was chewing when he first laid eyes on her.
  • Avocado Toast: Molly relates that she was immediately smitten by her girlfriend on first seeing her.
  • In Babylon 5, John Sheridan is visibly, instantly smitten with Minbari ambassador Delenn from the instant he sees her. By the end of the fourth season, they're married.
  • Battlestar Galactica: Lee Adama and Kara Thrace. Which is trickier than it seems when you consider the fact that she's his younger brother's girlfriend at the time.
  • Bridgerton: Anthony Bridgerton falls head over heels in love with Kate Sharma from the moment they meet while having an impromptu horse race at dawn in a London park. An entire season, at least one panic attack, an astonishing amount of Belligerent Sexual Tension, a couple of Love Triangles, and one intervention by the Queen later, they finally end up Happily Married.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Castle: Castle insists that this was the case for Beckett. She insists it was opposite: "I couldn't stand you!" Note that this conversation takes place after their Relationship Upgrade.
  • Cobra Kai: Miguel is smitten with Sam from the moment he sees her at lunch on his first day at West Valley High. In turn, she becomes smitten with him when he stands up to Kyler for her later in the year when Kyler begins spreading rumors about her at school.
  • Cold Case: "Best Friends" has Billie and Rose. Despite an antagonistic first meeting, Billie shows up outside of her school, reciting a love poem, essentially apologizing and declaring her feelings. Rose soon falls for Billie too.
  • The Company You Keep: Charlie and Emma fall in love after spending only thirty-six hours together in a hotel.
  • There are indications of this with Grissom and Sara on CSI from the stories told about their college lecture meeting, although relationship did not ensure for years afterward.
  • Daredevil (2015):
    • Matt Murdock and Karen Page have an instantaneous crush from the moment they first meet. Matt can't help but flirt with Karen in her presence. Karen spends all of the first season fawning over two different versions of Matt, the lawyer and the Devil of Hell's Kitchen even before she knows they're one and the same, constantly casting starry-eyed looks or blushing in his presence. Even when she's alone with Foggy, Karen can't stop thinking about Matt, from asking Foggy to feel her face so she can know what Matt would see if he felt her face, to immediately thinking that Elena Cardenas is referring to Matt when talking about the "handsome lawyer" she works with. It is partway through season 2 before Matt and Karen begin dating. The fact that they reminisce about the night they first met during one episode of season 2 suggests that it's meant to be a love at first sight type romance.
    • Wilson Fisk is immediately smitten with Vanessa Marianna when he first visits her art gallery.
  • Dharma & Greg meet and get married in the pilot episode. They first saw each other on a subway train when they were children. About twenty years go by, and they see each other again on the same train and get married later that day. The show is very heavy on the Idealism side of the scale. Though to be fair, their relationship does have issues. (They start fighting less than a day into their marriage!) And they did a cameo as the same characters on Two and a Half Men - still together but he wants to kill himself because he can't stand her anymore.
  • A flashback episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show reveals that this was Rob's reaction the first time he met Laura. It took her a little longer to reciprocate.
  • Doctor Who:
    • "The Empty Child": This seems to be happening to Rose when she meets Jack. It then turns out that this is most people's reaction.
    • "The Doctor's Wife": The Doctor fell in love with the TARDIS as soon as he laid his eyes on her.
      "And you said–"
      "I said you were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen."
  • Even Stevens: As show in Season 1's finale "A Weak First Week" (which incorporated scenes from the unaired pilot), Louis Stevens was in love with Tawny Dean the instant he first saw her. She reveals later that the feeling was mutual.
  • Fellow Travelers: Early in the series premiere, Hawkins Fuller is captivated by Timothy Laughlin, a Pretty Boy, when he first notices the young man on election night. Episode 2 confirms that Hawk was struck by Cupid's arrow.
    Hawk: I fell for you the first moment I laid eyes on you. Right away, I was taken by your beauty.
  • Averted on Firefly, when we see a flashback of happily-married Zoe and Wash meeting and she can't stand him.
    • Played with in that Mal fell in love with Serenity as soon as he laid eyes on her. The look on his face is beatific.
  • Forever: The first time Henry sees Abigail, holding baby Abraham as snowflakes drift around them, he's clearly smitten and can barely take his eyes off her. It's later implied they have both been just as quickly taken with baby Abe, ready to turn their lives upside-down to adopt him and save him from an unknown fate in an orphanage.
    Abigail: Uh oh, you're in trouble. I don't think he's going to let you go!
  • Subverted in Friends with Monica and Chandler. Monica had a Crush At First Sight...then Chandler called her fat. Later Chandler fell into Lust At Second Sight...then she cut off his toe. It took them almost ten years of being best friends to finally fall in love properly! They ended up Happily Married. Sheesh.
  • In Frasier, Niles Crane is clearly smitten with Daphne Moon practically from the moment he lays eyes on her. He claims this is also how he fell for his first wife, Maris.
  • Game of Thrones: Sansa thinks she has this with Joffrey until he turns his sadism on her.
  • Gilmore Girls: Jess tells Rory he knew they were meant to be together the first time he saw her during an Anguished Declaration of Love at her dorm room in season 4. Given Jess's introduction on the show as a cynical, Troubled, but Cute bad boy with a Hilariously Abusive Childhood, the mere idea he still believes in love at first sight is both heartwarming and tear-jerking.
    • It apparently runs in the family, since Luke reveals to Lorelai on their first date that he carries around a horoscope she gave him the day they met, that told him to give her coffee and she'd go away.
  • Glee: Although Blaine doesn't clue into it for months, the looks on his and Kurt's faces during "Teenage Dream" proclaim louder than any words what exactly happened between the two of them as soon as they laid eyes on each other.
  • Good Luck Charlie: PJ Duncan and Skyler, Teddy's friend, stop to openly stare at each other in awe at first sight in the episode "Battle of the Bands".
  • Good Omens (2019):
  • Gotham: 12-year-old billionaire Bruce Wayne is smitten with street thief Selina Kyle pretty much the instant he sets eyes on her. The longing looks between them don't stop there.
  • Hannibal: Lead actor Mads Mikkelsen confirms that Hannibal Lecter was in love with Will Graham from their first meeting, although it takes almost the entire show for Will to fully reciprocate his feelings.
  • Home Improvement: Tim and Jill Taylor.
    Tim: The first time I looked at you I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.
  • Homicide: Life on the Street: Subverted and then played straight in "A Model Citizen" - Lewis feels this for Emma as soon as he first sees her (when she's carrying a model from her car), but Emma tells him kindly but firmly she doesn't feel the same way about him; however, as soon as she and Bayliss lock eyes on each other, it's love (or at least lust) at first sight for them.
  • How I Met Your Mother:
    • Deconstructed. Ted really, really wants this to happen, and when he meets Robin, he really believes it has, but more because he's In Love with Love than anything else. Though they do end up together for a while, she wasn't, as we learn from the start, The One.
    • This is also how Marshall and Lily claimed their first meeting went, although, as Future!Ted points out, that story's gone through quite a few versions over the years.
    • Reconstructed twice in the ninth season. This is what the Mother experiences when she sees Ted enter her course’s lecture hall by mistake, though Ted does not notice her. After three more years of near-misses, the Grand Finale confirms this to be what Ted realizes toward the Mother.
  • iCarly: Carly confirmed during "iSaved Your Life" that Freddie had been in love with Carly since he first met her.
  • Interview with the Vampire (2022):
  • Played with in iZombie: Lowell, a fellow zombie, is completely, single-mindedly focused on wooing Liv from the moment they make eye contact from a distance — but, as he explains to her at the end of the episode, it's because he recognized her as a zombie and realized that he still had a chance at a normal relationship.
    Lowell: So here's the speech. The zombie thing is a bitch. Your world shrivels down to a dot, you know this, and all you think about is how to get your next meal, and keeping your secret. And no one can really know you now. Kissing, touching, sex, love, yelling at someone for stealing the blankets, out of the question. Forever. But then one day I see this beautiful woman. She's the only thing in color. Odd, 'cause she's so pale. And then there's hope again. That's all I'm saying. Who knows if we'll even like each other? But I like everything I've seen so far, and... what have we got to lose?
  • The creator of Killing Eve confirmed that Eve and Villanelle had this for one another when they met in the bathroom. It's more obvious on Villanelle's end, since she calls a woman she's having sex with "Eve," watches Eve from a distance, and is in general completely obsessed with the woman, but Eve's got her fair share of hints, too. The clearest is when she gives a vivid, downright poetic description of Villanelle to a sketch artist, despite having seen her for, at most, twenty seconds. Bill outright asks Eve if she's bisexual after hearing Eve describe Villanelle.
  • The robothead 790 was subjected to the Love-Slave mind treatment in LEXX, and the first person it laid eyes on was none other than Zev whom he immediately fell in love with. Later in Season 3, 790 had an accident, and it immediately fell in love with Kai who subsequently fixed it.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Galadriel relates to Theo how Celeborn fell in love with her at first sight after seeing her dancing among flowers.
  • Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure: Sirena and David fall in love at second sight, which is understandable because during their actual first meeting, Sirena was tired and cranky from walking around for hours on her new legs, and David had customers to attend to and couldn't dwell on the girl who only asked for a place to sit. When they meet again with no distractions, they're unable to keep their eyes off each other.
  • Lancelot for Guinevere in Merlin. She measures him for a suit of armour and it's clear that he's completely smitten. When they meet again in a life-or-death situation in season 2, he's more than willing to die for her.
  • The Middle: Axl is immediately attracted to Sue's roommate and best friend Lexie when they first encounter each other. She is apparently interested in him too, but his snarkiness (as well as him later on getting interested in another girl and pretending not to have feelings for Lexie) keeps her from realizing she has feelings for Axl until much later.
  • In the first episode of Mimpi Metropolitan, Bambang falls in love with Melani the moment he sees her face. The same goes for Alan with Pipin. Alexi also tries to woo Melani in their first meeting, although Alexi's moment is less pronounced since he doesn't get a romantic music.
  • In the ninth season of Modern Family, Alex's favorite professor is initially annoyed by Haley, Alex's sister. (Albeit, slightly flustered by her beauty, which isn't unusual.) However, not even an hour after meeting her, he approaches them and tells Haley that he's run through hundreds of hypothetical scenarios in his head — and every single one ends with them together. He goes off on a tangent about fate and destiny, and how sometimes the universe just pushes certain people together for whatever reason, and basically proposes to her on the spot. Alex is utterly horrified, and Haley simply laughs him off, dismissing it as one of the weirder pickup lines she's heard. However, at the end of the episode, Haley accepts his contact request and gives a fond smile, implying that she's decided to give him a shot.
  • Davy Jones on The Monkees almost every time he met a girl. In one episode, All four Monkees fell in love at first sight with the same girl at the same time.
  • Mr. Young: No doubt that Adam was head over heels for Echo the moment she walked into his classroom.
  • No Tomorrow: Kareema falls for Sofia from the moment she first sees her, but attempts to suppress it since she's her brother's fiancée. It turns out that their engagement is only for Sofia to get citizenship though, and Sofia's attracted to her as well.
  • In Once Upon a Time, Prince Charming catches up to the person that has just robbed him and his fiancée... and he's struck as soon as he lays his eyes on Snow White's face.
  • Luke and Prudence on One Big Happy, who were able to get married within a day, seemingly without any problems.
  • In One Tree Hill, Lucas and Peyton both openly admit they fell in love with each other at first sight.
    Lucas: Peyton, I've loved you since the first time I saw you.
    Peyton: I love you, Lucas and I think I have since the first moment we ever locked eyes.
  • Our Miss Brooks: In The Movie Grand Finale, Miss Brooks falls in love with Mr. Boynton the first time they meet. Miss Brooks and Mr. Boynton marry at the end of the film.
  • The Outpost: Janzo tells Talon he's loved her since the moment he saw her.
  • Lassie and Marlowe on Psych - granted, she starts out trying to con him, but it all works out in the end.
  • Red Dwarf: Kryten meets Camille, who appears to be a female mechanoid of the same model as Kryten himself. They rapidly declare their "advanced mutual compatibility on the basis of a primary initial ident".
  • Skins has to be the most cynical show to end this trope with a Happily Ever After, what with The Reveal in the S4 finale. With this speech:
    Naomi: I loved you from the first time I saw you. I think I was twelve.
  • Smallville:
  • Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms:
    • Yan Zhi and Li Jing both fall in love with Bai Qian at first sight.
    • Sang Ji and Shao Xin fall in love when they first meet. It doesn't end well.
  • The Twilight Zone (1959): In "The Long Morrow", Commander Douglas Stansfield and Sandra Horn are both instantly smitten the moment that they meet. After knowing each other for only three and a half hours, they proclaim their love.
  • The Twilight Zone (1985): In "Song of the Younger World", Amy Hawkline and Tanner Smith fall madly in love immediately after their first meeting, which involves only a very brief conversation.
  • Played on The Vampire Diaries with Stefan and Elena. Both felt an indescribable, immediate connection with each other.
  • On The Vicar of Dibley, Harry says when proposing to Geraldine that he loved her from the second he laid eyes on her. The feeling appears to have been entirely mutual, despite the fact that right up until he opened the door Geraldine was ranting about 'townie tossers' moving into Dibley and was absolutely determined to hate him.
  • War and Peace (2007): This adaptation has Andrei & Liza attend Natasha's Name Day Party in 1805, adding a brief accidental meeting between Natasha and Andrei that sets her holding a torch for him years before the novel's canonical meeting.
  • ''Yellowstone: The series all but states this is what happened with Kayce and Monica.
    Kayce: “Trying to remember what I was wearing the day I met you.”
    Monica: “All I remember is you weren’t wearing it for long.”
  • In Zoey 101, Chase reveals he fell in love with Zoey the moment he saw her when she first came to P.C.A. while he was riding his bike and crashed into the flag pole since he was distracted by her. He even states, "I was in love with Zoey before I hit the ground."


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