My Greatest Failure / Live-Action TV

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• 24: Jack's failure to protect Teri from the inherent dangers of his profession.
• On The 100, it's hard to say which is Bellamy's greatest failure: letting his sister get discovered by the Ark, indirectly causing the deaths of 300 people, or overlooking a supply of guns and bullets that could have protected his people from the Grounders. They all have a pretty big impact on him and drive his transformation into a more responsible and altruistic character.
• Angel:
  • Wesley Wyndam-Pryce committed his greatest failure when he falsely abducted Angel's only child in order to save both from demise. The prophecy which led Wes to believe this was altered, however, and was never meant to come true.
  • Charles Gunn's greatest failure was when he made a deal with Dr. Sparrow to make his legal upgrade permanent in exchange for signing to release an ancient curio stuck in customs. This results in the death of Fred and the resurrection of the demon Illyria. Gunn becomes so guilt-ridden that he offers to take Lindsey's place in a hell dimension to get information to stop the Senior Partners.
  • Allen Francis Doyle refusing to lend aid to a group of pacifist Brachen demons who were trying to escape The Scourge. Later that night, Doyle experienced his very first vision — that of the entire Brachen clan being slaughtered.
• Babylon 5:
  • Delenn's greatest self-recognized failure was ordering the complete annihilation of the entire human race over an accident that killed her teacher. Despite what they claim, Minbari are extremely compulsive and bloodthirsty.
  • Londo Mollari had two greatest failures:
    • Giving a family heirloom to his mistress (the only person he ever really loved) to wear, making her an easy target for Morden to find and murder.
    • Getting involved with Morden and his "associates" in the first place, thus kick-starting the entire Shadow war. Londo's life was one long string of incredibly bad choices, motivated by self-interest and fear. By the time he discovered he was on the wrong path and began walking the right path, it was far too late for him to save himself.
  • G'kar had at least one greatest failure: Torturing Londo and submitting him to literal Mind Rape to discover how completely Londo fistfucked the Narn people with the Shadows' help. It took Kosh's intervention to show G'kar that he would eventually fall as low as Londo had, before setting G'kar back on the path to redemption.
  • The Soul Hunter in the first season was tasked with retrieving the soul of Dukhat when he was killed during the first contact with Earth, but the Minbari prevented him from accomplishing that, which damaged his already fragile state of mind. After that, he decided he would no longer wait for death, he would simply take worthy souls by force.
• Better Call Saul: In various flashbacks of the Series Finale episode, it cuts to instances of Jimmy/Saul asking various characters what's one moment they would change in their life if they had a time machine, which also shows each character's innermost motivations.
  • Mike (during the events of the episode "Bagman") initially says he'd go back to December 8th, 2001 (the night before his son was murdered by dirty cops), before changing his mind and saying he'd go back to March 17th, 1984, when he took his first bribe as a cop, starting his long, dark road into the criminal underworld. Jimmy says he'd go back to 1965 to invest in Berkshire Hathaway before it became huge, which Mike chastises for being shallow. Jimmy refuses to answer when Mike asks him if there's anything in his life he'd change.
  • Walt (during the Breaking Bad episode "Granite Slate") angrily dismisses the possibility of time travel and insists that Saul refer to the question as their greatest "regret", to which he states his own greatest regret is leaving the company he helped found before it hit it big, although he frames the situation as though his coworkers manipulated him into doing so rather than it having been his own free choice (however, the fact the camera zooms in on the watch Jesse gave Walt for his birthday right before he answers suggests the true answer has something to do with the horrible way he treated Jesse). Saul lies and says his biggest regret was when he broke his leg during one of his many "slip-and-fall" scams as a kid. Walt openly expresses his disappointment to learn Saul was always a greedy conman.
  • The last example is more indirect, but Chuck (shortly before the pilot episode "Uno") is genuinely curious and trying to be supportive of Jimmy's budding law career and trying to have a heart-to-heart as a fellow lawyer, but the adversarial relationship between the two brothers leads Jimmy to think Chuck is just being dismissive of him again and rebuffs his advice. Although it's never stated out loud, it's made clear that this is Jimmy's real time travel moment; he wishes that he had been more open with his brother, so that he might never have spiralled into the Amoral Attorney of Saul Goodman, leaving so many ruined lives in his wake, including the death of Chuck.
• The Boys (2019): Dr. Vogelbaum thinks of Homelander as this for him, saying he should have raised him with affection, not like a test subject in his lab, so that he might have been different.
• El Caso: Policeman-turned-journalist Jesús Expósito never caught the man who murdered his girlfriend and other four girls, which still haunts him.
• Diablero: Elvis used to have an apprentice and still blames himself for the case which got him killed. The apprentice is actually alive and working for the Corrupt Church, but Elvis doesn't know that.
• Doctor Who:
  • The Doctor felt great guilt over not having the guts to assassinate Davros, creator of the Daleks, when he had the chance. He also tends to feel this whenever he fails to stop the Daleks, since they always come back.
  • Adric's death. Really, the loss of any companion usually wound the Doctor deeply and has them beating themselves up for a good while afterwards.
  • He's also convinced that he ruins his companions' lives. When the TARDIS voice interface takes his form in "Let's Kill Hitler", he tells it to "give me someone I like." Holograms of Rose, Martha, and Donna are met with a response of "guilt", "also guilt", and "more guilt." He finally settles on the image of little Amelia, "before everything went wrong."
  • In between the original and new series, the Time Lords and Daleks fought a war that annihilated both sides. The Doctor's greatest failure is letting his people die and surviving himself.
    • It is revealed in "The End of Time", the Tenth Doctor's Grand Finale, that the Doctor really had no choice whatsoever. The war had brought out the worst in the Time Lords and had made them into Omnicidal Maniacs as bad as the Daleks, and they were going to destroy all of time and space while cheating death by becoming beings of pure consciousness. So the Doctor chose to lock them and the Daleks and everything else involved in the war outside of normal time and space where they would annihilate themselves while keeping the universe safe.
  • In the Series 7 finale, "The Name of the Doctor", it is revealed that a previously unknown regeneration of the Doctor committed an act so heinous that it went against everything the Doctor stands for. The act was so horrible that the other regenerations refuse to even acknowledge his existence and he isn't believed to be worthy of the name Doctor. However, this same "Doctor" claims I Did What I Had to Do, "without choice, in the name of peace and sanity." Eleven counters "But not in the name of the Doctor." The 50th Anniversary special, "The Day of the Doctor" revealed the act in question was this regeneration of the Doctor was the one who ended the aforementioned Time War.
    The Doctor: My name — my real name — that is not the point. The name I chose is the Doctor. It's like a promise you make. He's the one who broke the promise.
  • After the 50th-anniversary special has him saving Gallifrey in the war, rather than destroying it, the Doctor believes he's "achieved" this in both the opening and closing stories of Series 9. In "The Magician's Apprentice"/"The Witch's Familiar", he comes to believe he is responsible for setting Davros on the path that led him to create the Daleks, but in fact he's actually the reason Daleks understand the idea of mercy. In "Face the Raven"/"Heaven Sent"/"Hell Bent", he blames himself for Clara being Killed Off for Real in a Senseless Sacrifice due to his "bad", unchecked influence on her tragically dovetailing with the fallout of several recent choices he's made. This temporarily turns him into a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, almost destroying all of space and time in an attempt to undo this tragedy. His return to sanity requires realizing that, among other things, it isn't his fault and thus not an example of this trope.
• One of the defining moments for Firefly's lead character, Malcolm Reynolds, was the complete, total, and utter defeat he suffered at the Battle of Serenity Valley. By the time the battle was over, he had lost his faith and had been turned from a chipper, patriotic, and energetic soldier into the tired, cynical bastard he is in the series.
• Henry Morgan of Forever:
  • "Dead Men Tell Long Tales" reveals Henry was secretly attempting to free the slaves aboard a shipping vessel, but being shot (his first death) and thrown overboard aborted his plan. He blamed himself for the deaths of those three hundred enslaved people when the ship was lost at sea, and he believed it to be the reason for his "curse." He later learns that, upon being shot, he dropped the key to the slave pen within direct reach of one of the African men inside, enabling them to free themselves and take control of the ship. Though the ship did eventually sink, the survivors of the uprising were able to steer it North enough to land in non-slaveholding territory, according to a story told to Henry by one of their descendants.
  • Also, Henry abandons medicine after he makes the choice to give up his efforts to save a man who has been shot, as he himself has been shot and is dying. He chooses his own secret (avoiding others seeing him die and vanish) over a man's life, thus violating the oath he took as a doctor. He never forgives himself for this and believes he's no longer worthy of being a practicing physician.
• Sandra from For the People sees her loss in the Pilot this, as she failed to protect a young man from being found guilty of terrorism even though he was clearly a victim of entrapment.
• From:
  • For Boyd, it's his wife's death. He was so focused on exploring the forest around the town that he failed to notice her Sanity Slippage until she went on a shooting rampage, and he had to kill her to protect their son from her.
  • Father Khatri ended up in the town right after his greatest failing. Namely, not protecting a young boy in his congregation from the boy's abusive father, who ended up beating him to death, followed by Khatri giving the man a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
• Game of Thrones:
  • For Catelyn Stark, it was saving Littlefinger from Brandon Stark, though it's downplayed as she never does find out how instrumental Littlefinger was in instigating Ned's death.
  • Davos's reaction to his son's death in the wildfire explosion at Blackwater has shades of this trope.
  • Brienne perceives her failure to protect Renly from a magical Humanoid Abomination as this.
  • Jon Snow does not take his inability to save all the Wildlings at Hardhome well, not at all.
  • The almost total destruction of the Targaryan dynasty under Barristan's watch drives him to seek redemption by serving Daenerys.
• In Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, the first episode had Hera murder Herc's wife and children. While Hercules initially lashes out by destroying Hera's temples and turns away a man looking for his help against the She-Demon, he eventually realizes that revenge isn't the answer. (The episode wasn't titled "The Wrong Path" for nothing.) After killing the She-Demon and saving her victims, Hercules vows to honor his family's memory by Walking the Earth and performing heroic deeds.
• In Homicide: Life on the Street, Detective Bayliss is haunted by his failure to solve his very first case, the murder of a little girl called Adena Watson. Although he makes numerous efforts to put it behind him, and later develops from the rookie he was when he caught the case to a competent, seasoned homicide investigator, his obsession persists throughout the entire series, even after it seems that the girl's family has moved on.
  
  The case is based on the real-life unsolved murder of Latonya Kim Wallace, the "Angel of Reservoir Hill", the investigation into which is covered in the book upon which the series is based. As noted in the book, the real-life detective in charge of the investigation grew fixated on the case, but the epilogue stated that at the time of writing he was beginning to accept it and move on.
• House: House declines to fire Thirteen after a careless mistake resulted in a patient's death, knowing that it would be this trope for her, and she would be that much more careful.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): In "In Throes of Increasing Wonder...", although Louis de Pointe du Lac believes he's a failure in many ways, the one that haunts him the most was his inability to keep his promise to their dying father to look after his younger brother Paul, who committed suicide in front of Louis' eyes.
  Louis: What was Paul's life worth to [Storyville]? What was my life worth? The big man of Liberty Street, trailing the satin-lined evidence of his failure.
• JAG: For Admiral Chegwidden, it is not having been with his daughter Francesca (who grew up in Italy with her mother and stepfather), during her childhood and adolescence.
• Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story: A number of those interviewed, including reporters and former police officers, express regret that all of the pieces about Jimmy Savile's crimes were in plain sight, but they were never able to put the big picture together while he was alive. Savile's victims also regret not coming forward sooner, as they all felt they were the only one he abused.
• Characters motivated by this do occasionally pop up in Kamen Rider.
  • Kamen Rider Double: Shotaro Hidari blames himself for the death of his boss, Sokichi Narumi, primarily because he ignored Sokichi's orders on a particularly dangerous job, which lead to guards chasing them and gunning Sokichi down. As a result of this and Sokichi's last words, Shotaro lives his life trying to achieve the "hard-boiled detective" ideal his boss embodied.
  • Kamen Rider Gaim: Once he finds out about it, killing Yuuya is this for Kouta. Likewise, his buddy Mitsuzane treats his Chronic Backstabbing Disorder as this when he finds out that trusting the wrong people while hurting the ones who would legit help him ended up with Mai and Kouta being killed by his actions, indirectly and directly. They both became The Atoner and it would take a while for them to get over it.
  • Kamen Rider Drive: Shinnosuke feels like he is to blame for the Game-Breaking Injury of his partner as he accidentally shot at a gas valve that blew up and wound up hurting his partner. It's made worse because around that time, the entire world was going through a global slow down, so he got to see everything unfold in slow motion, unable to do anything but watch.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: Failure to save a patient suffering from Game Disease haunts Hiiro Kagami and Taiga Hanaya for most of the story. The former blames himself for causing her infection and the latter for not treating it in time. Moving on required them to understand and stop blaming both themselves and each other.
• In Leverage, Nate Ford's son died because the insurance company he worked for refused to pay for lifesaving treatment. And, just to twist the knife, when he turns to crime he becomes a multi-millionaire almost immediately.
• The Mentalist's Patrick Jane taunted serial killer Red John on live TV. Red John retaliated by murdering the two most important people in Jane's life; his wife and daughter. Although he rarely speaks of it, it's clear when he does that this tortures him daily.
• The title character of Merlin is an Iron Woobie turned up to eleven. But when he fails to heal the king and quite possibly turns Arthur away from magic forever, he very nearly crosses the Despair Event Horizon and only stops because he's reminded that Arthur will need his support as king.
• Detective Monk has solved every case he has come across. However, he's been stuck for a long time on that little case of his wife Trudy being blown up by a car bomb. He also blames himself, as he believes it was him being a police detective that made her a target. In fact, her murder had nothing to do with him and everything to do with a daughter she had out of wedlock with an influential judge before meeting Monk, who was running for a higher office and wanted to remove any trace of his infidelity. The worst thing is, Monk had the answer all this time in the form of a videotape that his wife left him as a gift, except he couldn't bring himself to open the gift until the series finale.
• Motherland: Fort Salem: Bridey is haunted by her inability to save her sister from a deadly attack.
• Rumplestiltskin in Once Upon a Time only broke one promise, the one he made with his son Baelfire. He was given the chance to live with his son in another world without magic to free him from the power of the Dark One, but was unable to let go of his power and lost his son as a result. He set out making the Dark Curse so he could find a way to fix this.
  • Jiminy Cricket saw what happened to Geppetto's parents as this for him. He sets himself as The Atoner to repent.
  • Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: Alice's father blames himself for not believing Alice and helping her when she needed him. Also, Anastasia blames herself for ruining her relationship with Will, and is willing to change the laws of magic in order to fix things.
• Parks and Recreation: A rare example from a comedy series, Ben Wyatt bankrupted his hometown when he was elected mayor at age 18. In present-day he's incredibly cynical, cautious, and spent his career working as a state auditor to make up for his past mistakes and save other towns from collapsing like his did. At one point he openly admits to Leslie that the event ruined his life and he'd love to run for office again someday but has to prove he's responsible now. With Leslie's help, he gradually moves past it, but his hometown still hates him and the media frequently rip him apart over the debacle.
• Person of Interest:
  • Finch was the first person to deem the Numbers as irrelevant in the grand scheme. When he discovered Nathan had started trying to help them, Finch shut down the backdoor he was using. The next day Nathan was killed and Finch was horrified to discover Nathan had been listed as a Number. This was what convinced him to protect the Numbers and led him to Reese.
  • Reese broke up with his girlfriend Jessica when he decided to reenlist following 9/11. Years later he has become a government assassin while Jessica married a man who turned out to be violently abusive. She calls Reese for help and he tells her that he will come as soon as he can. Unfortunately, right after the phone call, he is sent on a mission to China and by the time he gets back to the US, the ex-girlfriend has been murdered by the abusive husband. Reese gets revenge on the husband and then reaches a Despair Event Horizon and becomes a homeless bum on the streets of New York. Finch finds him there and offers to save people in situations like the one that killed Jessica.
• Power Rangers:
  • Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Failing to retrieve the Green Candle in Season 1, thus saving Tommy from losing his powers, was shown to have haunted Jason for a long time, to the point where he even makes reference to it in Zeo.
  • Andros. Dear Lord, Andros. First, he loses his sister as a child and she grows up to become one of the Big Bads, then his best friend Zhane is nearly killed during a battle and Andros puts him in cryogenic stasis to keep him alive. They both get better.
• School:
  • Go Namsoon he breaks his former best friend Heungsoo's leg, while he and the rest of his gang were beating Heungsoo up as part of the process and punishment for him leaving. Heungsoo had been told by his coach that if he had serious aspirations of playing football professionally he couldn't be part of the gang any longer, but this injury meant he could no longer play. After this Namsoon experiences Heroic BSoD and spends a year eating, sleeping, and crying.
  • Kang Sechan His student commits suicide because he doesn't set aside the time to talk to her when he comes to him. This causes him to give up teaching in school for fear of failing another student.
• The Sherlock episode "The Six Thatchers" ends with a take on "Norbury", but instead of the location where he made a stupid mistake that ultimately didn't matter, it's the name of the criminal he allowed to kill Mary Watson because he was showing off.
• Sliders:
  • Arturo considered his work on traveling to parallel universes his greatest failure until Quinn Mallory discovered how to do it.
  • Quinn himself for the group's travels. In the Pilot Movie, he wanted to show off his discovery to Wade and Arturo, but he didn't fully understand it. He accidentally uses too much power, which causes the vortex to suck in the three of them and Rembrandt (who was just driving by). On the next world, they're forced to slide early, which erases their home Earth's coordinates and leaves them lost in the multiverse. Quinn can only blame himself and is determined to get the others home no matter what. His guilt is compounded in Season 3 when Arturo is killed Taking the Bullet for him.
  • In-between Seasons 3 and 4, Wade and Rembrandt were captured by the Kromaggs and held in a detention facility. The Kromaggs eventually moved Wade to a different facility on another Earth, which Rembrandt blames himself for and says that he has to live with every single day. "Genesis" has him claim to Quinn and Maggie that he tried to fight off the guards to save her and got beaten down, but "Requiem" reveals that was a lie. Instead, Rembrandt ignored her pleas for help, due to the Kromaggs' penchant for mental trickery. It was only when Wade was practically out the door that he realized it wasn't an illusion.
• In Smallville, Clark has had several, including when he reversed time (a one-use-only deal) to save Lana's life, only for his dad to suffer a heart attack and die at the end of the day. Also, John Corben/Metallo blames him for his turn to evil, because when Clark saved a bus from crashing, a passenger from that bus went on and murdered Corben's sister the next day. But in his opinion, his greatest failure is probably in the Season 8 finale when a complex chain of actions leads to the death of Jimmy.
• The Spy: Israeli spymaster Dan Peleg has never gotten over allowing an extremely talented field agent to get assigned to deep cover because he knew the man was too eager to please and would take excessive risks. The agent was almost immediately captured and killed. Peleg is motivated to not let history repeat itself when dealing with a similarly enthusiastic Eli Cohen.
• Stargate:
  • Stargate SG-1:
    • Lt. Col. Cameron Mitchell's is when he bombed a truck he thought was carrying enemy soldiers, but was instead carrying civilians.
    • Jack O'Neill's is the fact that his son shot himself with Jack's gun.
  • Stargate Atlantis. Rodney McKay's unintended destruction of a solar system (well, five-sixths) is brought up occasionally by Sheppard, though usually as a joke, seeing as the system was uninhabited.

• Super Sentai:

  • Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger vs Super Sentai has one given for 4 of the 5 returning heroes, told in order to motivate the Gaorangers back to form.

  • GoGo Sentai Boukenger: Satoru Akashi has the time his friends died in a cave-in, never once losing faith that he would save them.
  • Similar to the aforementionedOne Piece, some of the heroes in Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger have this.
    • Captain Marvelous has his failure to prevent Basco from dismantling the Red Pirates from within, leading to the (apparent) death of AkaRed.
    • Joe Gibken has the fact that his best friend was captured and Reforged into a Minion on his mind for most of the series. He gets over it after a conversation with Yellow Lion, who went through a similar experience.
• Supernatural:
  • Dean is unable to keep Sam safe and protected, with Sam eventually being killed. Dean then breaks the first seal, which ultimately leads to the apocalypse.
  • Sam fails to save Jessica. Later he drinks demon blood and allows himself to be manipulated by Ruby, which leads to the breaking of the last seal, the start of the apocalypse, and the release of Lucifer. In Season 8, Sam fails to close the Gates of Hell.
  • Castiel kills thousands of his brethren and assumes the role of God after consuming the souls of purgatory. He later is manipulated by Metatron to banish all the angels from heaven.
• Torchwood. Jack's inability to find (or redeem) Grey.
  • Jack. "Day Four" with Ianto's death. This, in combination with his decision in "Day Five" to save the day by killing his grandson (although this doesn't count as a failure, despite how tragic it was) was enough to convince him that he had to completely leave the Earth, despite Gwen's best efforts.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): In "The Arrival", the disappearance of Flight 107 is the only case that the FAA investigator Grant Sheckly was never able to solve in 22 years on the job. He was so traumatized by his failure that he repressed his memory of the case.
• The Twilight Zone (2002): In "Azoth the Avenger is a Friend of Mine", the title character reveals that in his youth, he fled a demonic attack that killed his whole family. His shame over his action continues to motivate him.
• Ultra Series
  • Ultraman Mebius: Ultraman Hikari's failure to protect the planet Aarb from Bogal, which was what drove him to become the vengeance-hungry warrior Hunter Knight Tsurugi.
    • Mebius has one connected to his human form, Mirai. When he first arrived at Earth, he spotted a spaceship being sucked into a wormhole, but failed to get the ship and its pilot out before the wormhole closed. Thus, he chooses to take on the form of the pilot to give himself a reason to improve as a hero.
  • Ultraman X: The title hero's failure was causing the Ultra Flare incident by throwing Greeza into the Sun at the start of the series, since it caused giant monsters to appear all over Earth, creating worldwide destruction and costing the lives of his human host Daichi's parents.
• In the UK version of The Voice, Will.i.am. (one of the coaches for the UK series) called himself an idiot for not hitting his button during seventeen-year-old self-trained opera prodigy Shansel Husayin's note-perfect performance of "Nessum Dorma", and profusely apologized to her for not doing so, stating that he realized too late that she was an opportunity to "reinvent pop radio." As late as a mid-2013 interview, he's apparently still kicking himself in the butt for letting her slip through his fingers.
• In Warehouse 13, Myka is wracked with guilt over the death of her partner and lover, while she was in charge of the mission. For Pete, it's the death of his firefighter dad in the line of duty, when Pete decided not to tell him that he had one of his bad feelings. One episode serves to get both characters to come to terms with their respective guilts and realize they're not at fault. Myka's partner disobeyed her orders and got himself killed, while Pete's dad would've done his job no matter what his son said. Everything H.G. Wells does is because of the death of her daughter during a home invasion a century ago, while she was out of town.
• The X-Files: Fox Mulder is plagued by guilt over not protecting his younger sister Samantha from abduction when they were children, despite the fact that it involved circumstances well beyond his control. His parents don't help assuage his guilt over it; at one point, a clone claiming to be his sister is killed, and his father is upset and tells Mulder that he has to tell his mother that he lost his sister... again. As a result, he becomes obsessed with protecting Scully, especially after her abduction in Season 2. He ditches her several times, to her annoyance, and at times demands she stay out of a case for fear of her life. And woe is you if you're the one who hurts Scully.

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