No Sympathy in Live-Action TV series.
- In Being Human, this was one of the signs that Tully was having a bad influence on George. George came home to find Annie scared and quiet and Mitchell furiously kicking Tully out (both of which were drastically out of character for the two, and should have tipped him off that something really upset them) and instead of asking what happened, declares that he won't let Tully be sent away. Mitchell eventually outright tells George why Tully is being sent off - because he sexually harassed and frightened Annie. George still sides with Tully, much to the shock of Annie and Mitchell. (George later comes around, thankfully, and apologizes.)
- Bernard Black, the bookshop owner in Black Books, has a deep contempt for Manny Bianco, his assistant, and responds to almost anything he does with anger:Bernard: So you admit you deliberately stepped in front of the bullet?
Manny: [softly] Yes.
Bernard: And wantonly sprayed blood from your head wound across the shop?
Manny: [softly] Yes.
Bernard: Before going to waste time writhing around on an 'emergency operating table'?
Manny: [softly] Yes.
Bernard: [hands Manny an affidavit and a pen] Sign here. No wages for seven years. - Breaking Bad: Ed Galbraith the vacuum repairman and Saul's "disappearer", who takes his job of giving criminals new untraceable identities seriously and purely as business, and doesn't show the slightest affection to any of his clients, because as he sees it, someone looking for a new untraceable life probably did some really bad things in their current life to require it. Walt offers him ten-thousand dollars to stay with him for two hours because he's going stir-crazy isolated in his cabin, but Ed will only stay for one. After Jesse bails on his first disappearing before it even starts, Ed demands double the normal fee when Jesse needs it again in El Camino because he never got the money for the first time, which he still counts, and isn't at all swayed to lower the price by Jesse's torturous sob story.
- Buffyverse
- Angel: In mid-Season 3, Wesley is duped by a fake prophecy that claims Angel will kill his newborn son Connor, so he conspires with Angel's old enemy Daniel Holtz to kidnap him and spirit him away. When he enacts this plan, however, he winds up in the hospital with a Slashed Throat courtesy of Holtz's Dragon Justine, kick-starting a series of events that lead to Holtz and Connor being trapped in the demon dimension Quor'toth. Despite acknowledging and accepting that Wesley was tricked and did it with the best intentions, Angel is still pissed as hell at Wesley and tries to kill him with a Vorpal Pillow in the hospital, and the rest of the Angel Investigations crew agrees with him and boots him from the team. Cordelia and Gunn in particular openly state that they don't care about Wesley's side of the story or why he stole Connor; all that matters to them is he betrayed them.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- The Scoobies and Joyce all suffer this in "Dead Man's Party". Buffy was tormented for months by Angelus, kicked out of the house, expelled from school, accused of murder, and had to sacrifice her boyfriend to save the world. So, it's only natural that she leaves Sunnydale. But none of the Scoobies, or even her own mother, actually care about her emotional turmoil and spend most of their time ignoring her out of spite for running away, before openly calling her out on it during the party.
- Xander is the worst of them all in that regard during Seasons 2 and 3. Having always hated Angel, Xander is ecstatic that now that he's evil, he finally has an excuse and repeatedly urges Buffy to kill him, uncaring that Buffy still loves him and it's very hard on her. When she returns in "Dead Man's Party," rather than be even remotely sympathetic for her need to mourn Angel, he gripes about how she "ruined his life" by running away and dismisses the months of Mind Rape she suffered at Angelus' hands as "boy troubles."
- In Season 4, Spike is captured by the Initiative and implanted with a cerebral microchip that prevents him from harming humans; he turns to the Scoobies for help, and they all take great delight in tormenting him and mocking him to his face, except for Willow, who pities him. It reaches a head in "Doomed": Xander is pissed that Spike tried to commit suicide simply because he wanted to stake Spike himself, and Buffy's line when they go to the high school says it all for her:
Buffy: Why is he even here? It's not like he can fight.
Willow: If we leave him alone, he'll stake himself.
Buffy: And that's bad because...?- Willow herself gets this in "Something Blue", which focuses on her moping around after her boyfriend Oz leaves Sunnydale. Despite the fact that Willow was cheated on and left by her first main relationship and neither of them are strangers to long bouts of moping, Buffy and Xander end up complaining they're tired of putting up with her self-pity.
- Cheers:
- In "Let Me Count The Ways", Diane spends the episode in a bad mood, until she hijacks a Celtics game to demand sympathy from the bar over a death in the family, which lasts up until she reveals it's the death of her cat, at which point all sympathy vanishes.
- No-one in the bar shows much concern for Rebecca's emotional breakdowns, including one where she spends an entire night sitting there crying, merely commenting that she seems okay.
- On The Dick Van Dyke Show, Laura gets called out for this in the Whole Episode Flashback "The Attempted Marriage." Rob is waylaid on the way to their wedding and goes through hell to get there. When he finally arrives late, all Laura can do is bawl him out over his supposed utter insensitivity. Rob takes a surprisingly large amount of abuse before announcing that he's decided not to marry a woman who — when her fiance' arrives disheveled, covered in mud, and hopping around on one foot from a sprained ankle — can't be bothered to even ask what happened before piling on. After piling on, she tries to leave, but he physically prevents her from doing so in order to explain himself. By the time he's finished, she is a bit more forgiving.
- The Devil Judge: One of the victims' relatives comes up to Yo-han after a trial to thank him for bringing justice to her relative and even starts sobbing. Ga-on sees him yawn while comforting her. Ga-on then wonders if it's possible for someone to yawn while tearing up implying that Yo-han isn't as humane as he seems.
- In Doc Martin, the title character has a tendency to miss appointments or other important meetings because the villagers of Port Wenn seem to time their medical emergencies to happen at the least convenient moment. This does not stop the people he no-showed from complaining about having their time wasted, even if he was performing lifesaving first aid (which is usually what happens).
- Doctor Who: In "The Long Game", the Doctor has no sympathy for Adam Mitchell after what he does in the episode. The Doctor is tolerant of companions who pick up the Idiot Ball because they're Constantly Curious. After all, he's made a career out of it; in this very episode he says that making mistakes is part of the fun of time travel. A companion who's more interested in lining his pockets than exploring the wonders of the universe, on the other hand, gets dumped back on Earth with technology in his head that would get his brain dissected by The Men in Black if anyone found out.
- Frasier: Daphne tries to defy this one in "Daphne Does Dinner"; after trying to throw a normal dinner party without the Cranes screwing it up as usual, she of course manages to screw it up, but when the offended guests start to collect their coats, she gives an impassioned speech about trying to salvage a nice, civilized dinner despite all the hijinks. Just as she's talked them round, a bed falls through the ceiling.
- House seems to go out of his way to invoke this in other people, just so he can protect his ego. For example, take the Tritter thing; being tripped was humiliating, sure, but the other characters might have had more sympathy for him if he had actually told them about that instead of keeping it to himself. (Of course, he also tends not to show sympathy for others; sometimes it's a deliberate act, and sometimes it's, well, the premise.)
- Subverted in "97 Seconds" when House asks for sympathy after electrocuting himself and being hospitalized... even though he electrocuted himself deliberately as part of a self-indulgent experiment involving near death experiences.
- This does happen a lot to him. He's addicted to Vicodin because he's in chronic pain, but it was established in the first season that House was an addict with a history of drug-seeking behavior already when he had his infarction. Cuddy and Wilson already knew him then. But nobody else seems to think of the pain when they criticize his addiction and tell him what a jerk he is, either.
- In season four finale, he had been in an accident and had a head injury, but still Wilson asked him to do a potentially fatal test on himself to save Amber's life, since Wilson was dating her. When House did it anyway, and Amber died anyway, Wilson stopped being friends with him for a while (although this is suggested to be just Wilson dealing with the grief).
- In "On Our Side" from The Inside Man, Mark tells the Handler that it isn't easy for him because in addition to trying to get the dirt on the merger, he's having to do the actual IT security job.Handler: (sarcastic) Oh, you're breakin' my heart. I don't care how you do it. Just get it done.
- It's Awfully Bad for Your Eyes, Darling...: When Virginia finds a hungover Clover in her bed in "A New Lease", she cares little for her troubles and more that she's in her bed rather than her own.
- Frances from The Librarians (2007) lives and breathes this trope. Particularly towards Dawn. Whom she was responsible for crippling.
- Little House on the Prairie: Several times, Nels Oleson to his wife, Harriet, after she has gotten her comeuppance and she tries to cry on her husband's shoulder, insisting that she had been treated unfairly and horribly. Nels will simply remind her that she got what she deserved. This happens in "Harriet's Happenings" (when Laura and Albert give her a taste of her own medicine by switching the printing plates to create inaccurate stories about her (Mrs. Oleson) and Nellie; he simply reminds her that she had a duty to report the truth) and "Crossed Connections" (when Mrs. Oleson is convinced to place the entirety of her savings into the stock market and invest in a failing company ... which goes bankrupt in short order; Nels makes her go back to work to earn her money back, this as penance for her having spread a rumor that nearly ruins the marriage of one of Nels' closest friends, Jonathan and Alice Garvey).
- Married... with Children: The characters in general usually have little to no sympathy for others, including and especially each other, but Al and Peg are most likely to display this attitude. One episode has Al obsessed with learning the name of an old song he loves and listens to the radio to try and catch it, but at one point he complains about the DJ "whining" about a massive and deadly car pile-up ("12 dead! 12 dead! 12 dead!"). Another episode has Al gaining success as a topless bartender until Jefferson shows him up and he winds up fired. As he cries to Peg about the embarrassment he suffered, she instead complains about him losing his job, being broke and expecting her to be a sympathetic ear ("God, what a woman you are!")
- The use of this trope is often detrimental to the characters of NCIS (making them occasionally come off as unlikeable sociopaths) because of the way the show shifts between comedy and drama, the tone determining whether there will be sympathy or not and the audience disagreeing with the writers' sense of humor.
- The heroes of Once Upon a Time, often display this to Rumplestiltskin, following his Heel–Face Turn in the middle of the fourth season; regardless of how involved he actually is in a Big Bad's plot...
- Psych sometimes if not often have the characters show shades of this, and the entire thing is usually played for laughts whatever misfortune it is. However, Psych is primarily a comical show so laughing at bullet wounds/kidnapping/near death escapes is pretty common. In short, the characters seem to mysteriously know whether the danger is real or not.
- Also very much subverted whenever the show decides to get serious (such as the Yin-Yang trilogy.) Whenever things get serious, there is a definite level of camaraderie and support, especially when some of the protagonists reach their limits in dealing with the crises. Examples include Lassiter comforting Juliet after her kidnapping in the Season 4 finale during her breakdown, Juliet trying to keep Shawn out of harm's way when he is on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge when an old family friend is revealed to be a Dirty Cop who shot his dad and even Lassiter gives Shawn some support because of that.
- The Cat in Red Dwarf, as a result of his belief that "It's All About Me", is largely incapable of giving a shit about anyone but himself, no matter what state they're in. In "Confidence and Paranoia", Lister comes down with a mysterious illness, and the Cat not only won't interrupt his lunch to pick Lister off the floor, but eats the gifts he got him and steals his pillow and blanket when he wants a nap.
- Kate from Robin Hood spends a lot of time whining about her dead brother, who was killed by Guy of Gisborne after her botched rescue attempt. She doesn't seem to care that she is surrounded by fellow outlaws who have also suffered at the hands of Gisborne: Little John had his wife and son tortured, Much lost the woman he loved, Allan had to watch his brother get executed, and Robin's own wife was murdered. But, nooo, all Kate can moan is: "E keeled mah bruvvah!"
- Scrubs:
- JD and Turk both seem to be frequent victims of this. Carla, and most of the girls JD dates, seem ready to pounce on any perceived failure or flaw, regardless of the circumstances.
- There was another rather bizarre instance of this in season six, where J.D's friends were getting frustrated at his apparent whininess (although they didn't say this to his face). This felt a little odd given that what they viewed as Wangst was caused by the apparent death of his unborn child, his losing his girlfriend, his lack of an apartment and having to sleep on a deck, his developing an odd medical condition which caused fainting spells, and his getting a DUI (admittedly, the last two took place a bit later). Granted, a lot of his complaints took place offscreen, so it's hard to judge how annoying it would be in real life, and it's possible that a lot of time had passed within the show since what happened with Kim, but considering that Elliot never provoked any hostile reactions from her friends when she was going through similar problems in the earlier seasons, it still seems a tad unfair.
- The X-Files: In "Bad Blood", Mulder comes in late at night, exhausted and covered in dust. Scully shows a reasonable amount of curiosity and sympathy in her version of events, but in Mulder's version she whines about being hungry and tells him not to sit on her bed.
