Puppy Dog Eyes / Live-Action TV

• Teen Wolf:
  • The main character, Scott McCall has the most goddamn adorable big brown puppy-dog eyes. Add to that his heart-melting smile, and you have to either be A) heartless, or B) Mama McCall to not succumb to it. Kate Argent, the most heartless character on the show, cannot resist them and says, "you, with the adorable brown eyes(, drop your bike, you're staying for dinner) " and "...because I really do love those adorable brown eyes." Although once Kate finds out Scott's secret, well...if you saw Code Breaker, you'd know.[1]◊ [2]◊[3]◊ [4]◊ [5]◊
  • Puppy enjoying a ride in the Jeep: [6]◊ and Puppy Head Tilt: [7]◊ Not even Jackson is immune - this is basically what Scackson's relationship would be: [8] Seriously, Scott McCall is sunshine and puppies in human form.
  • Despite having more hazel-green eyes, Derek Hale is quite skilled at this.
  • Isaac; especially when Derek kicks him out of his pack, and after Allison dies and he goes home with her dad. (Mr. A. goes on about how he can compartmentalize his emotions, and Isaac says, "But I can't!" It would take a meaner person than Mr. A. not to hug him.
• Supernatural:
  • Nobody◊ can resist Sam's◊ Puppy◊ Dog◊ Eyes Of Doom◊, nobody. And that little shit knows it, too.
  • Dean is no slouch in the puppy-eyed-and-pouty department either when he's feeling particularly angsty.
  • Castiel pulls off◊ this look◊, particularly when he's confused by something, from his very first appearance—probably one of the main reasons he's so popular in the show.
  • I'm not kidding, Lucifer is good at this. He's literally the Devil, and yet he's (mainly) an adorable little kitten.
• The Vampire Diaries:
  • Jeremy◊ Gilbert.◊ Someone please◊ protect him◊ and keep◊ him◊ happy◊ like◊ he deserves.◊
  • Tyler◊ Lockwood, Kol Mikaelson and even big bad hybrid Klaus◊ Mikaelson◊ are all highly skilled at this.
  • Daniel Sharman (who played Isaac in TW) once again gets to show his off as Kaleb, who is actually Original Vampire Kol
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Buffy's puppy-dog eyes are legendary, especially when coupled with the pout. Lampshaded in the show premiere of Angel, where Doyle refers to Buffy as "Miss Young Puppy Eyes" when giving Angel's back story.
  • Giles was accused of this once by Jenny Calendar. And when he replies "I didn't mean to make 'dog-eyes' at you..." it has the same effect on her.
  • Buffy tries the wounded look on Giles, to get out of training and go to a party. He resists, but just barely.
  Giles: And, and don't think sitting there pouting is gonna get to me, because it won't...
  Buffy: (sits there pouting)
  Giles: It's not getting to me.
  • Part of Willow's Woobie appeal is her ability to do this. Must be something about Alyson Hannigan. As Joss Whedon put it — "There is nothing more painful in the world than Aly when she makes her big eyes."
  • Angel. At least one review of the show placed at least part of the show's success on David Boreanaz's ability to always look like a slapped puppy.
  • Connor inherited this look from Angel.
• Merlin: Arthur. Someone hug him already please.
• In 8 Simple Rules, Kerry is so good at this that the other characters actually gave a name for it: "The Kerry Face".
• House:
  • Dr. Cameron has big eyes and looks like a sad little kitten quite often, usually when somebody points out she takes things way too personally and that she should act more like a doctor, not a friend, when dealing with patients.
  • Dr. Wilson has big chocolate eyes. Cynical House, MD sometimes laughs at him for it.
  • Dr. House isn't exactly adverse to looking like a kicked puppy when someone hurts him in one of his weak spots, either. His initial reaction to his cane snapping in half in "Safe" and his emotional moments with Stacy are good examples.
    Cuddy: I'm here if you need me.
    House: ...I need you.
    • For a more deliberate (and hilarious) version of this trope, see "Deception", where House needs a lab technician to run twenty-nine tests on one cc of blood. She refuses. House compliments her eyes. She starts to say something sardonic and turns—House, chin on a nearby centrifuge, slight sad smile, eyebrows up, gives her a soulful blue look. She did the tests.
• Lt. George from the fourth season of Blackadder can do a particularly heart-rending version. Hugh Laurie has a talent for looking like a kicked puppy.
  Lt. George: Permission for lip to wobble, sir?
• Heroes:
  • Despite being a self-described shark and a Magnificent Bastard (at least initially), Nathan Petrelli has one of the most effective, soul-melting puppy-faced looks in the business (case in point: Into Asylum). ...Damn you, Adrian Pasdar.
  • Sylar manages to pull off this look on occasion, when he's not being completely psycho.
  • Peter, when he's trying to convince Nathan to go along with one of his ideas.
• Star Trek: Voyager
  • Captain Janeway has what fans have dubbed the "Gooey Look", given whenever a crewmember has done something she approves of.
  • In "The Q and the Grey", Q tries to seduce Janeway by making a puppy appear in her quarters. Janeway initially fawns over it, then realizes what's going on and declares, "It's not going to work, Q." Q appears, picks up the puppy and asks, "How can you resist that face?" then gives her the same expression.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Major Kira has a pair of absolutely enormous, soulful brown eyes, and as such was also quite good at these, although she used them much more rarely.
• We have Bertram Wilberforce Wooster from Jeeves and Wooster. He doesn't even really try, he's just like that. Actually, most of Hugh Laurie's characters are guilty of this.
• Lampshaded on Hannah Montana, where both Miley and Jackson use it.
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • Barney has been known to use them.
  • Lily. Definitely an Alyson Hannigan thing.
  • Ted in "Crazy Eyes" (also known as "Swarley"), where he reveals he has a tailored look for impressing women: Head down, eyes looking up, hands in pocket, shoulders up, head slightly tilted, conveying shy vulnerability. He teaches is to Marshall who unfortunately doesn't quite get it right.
  • Robin has her look, but she doesn't use it that often. It goes like this: biting her lower lip, shyly looking away and thrusting her chest. It's a combination of sad eyes and Coy, Girlish Flirt Pose.
• Michael Westen from Burn Notice. Accomplished spy, brilliant fighter, master of the puppy eyes. In the pilot episode he was talking with an old friend Lucy for some help (helping a burned spy would not be good for her reputation). As she continued to say "No" he just kept staring at her, eventually making himself look like a puppy putting his paws on the table. Lucy eventually caved.
• Djaq (Anjali Jay) and Much (Sam Troughton) from the BBC's Robin Hood were the undisputed masters of the Puppy Dog Eyes. All it took was for either one of them to look sad.
• iCarly: Freddie cannot resist when Carly follows up a request, or asking for a favour with a pouting "Please, for me?"
• Chuck
  • Chuck does this without even knowing whenever he's let down by Sarah, or when he needs to persuade her to help him. Specifically the season 1 finale, when he even had the watery eyes.
  • Sarah does it. Chuck is basically Chuck and Sarah making Puppy Dog Eyes at each other throughout the series.
  • Casey makes the face after Chuck blows up his precious Crown Vic, and right after his flashback to when Ilsa "dies".
• Mac on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia flashes this look whenever he's ashamed, confused, sympathetic or trying to manipulate someone.
• Cassidy Casablancas from Veronica Mars. He doesn't even really try and use them, but he just always looks like that.
• Misfits
  • One of the main reasons why Nathan is deemed a Jerkass Woobie instead of a plain old Jerkass, is the fact that he keeps giving everyone looks like THIS◊. Damn him.
  • Averted with Simon.◊
• Top Gear:
  • Occasionally Richard Hammond. Might not be deliberate: his eyes are naturally large and he quite literally looks up to the very tall Jeremy Clarkson. Clarkson likes to lampshade it by pointing out Hammond's resemblance to "that cat in Shrek 2."
  • Clarkson gets in an epic puppy-dog mope of his own in the S12E6 news segment when he has lost his voice and both his fellow presenters and the audience are merciless.
• Tim McGee on NCIS, more so in the first few seasons, was prone to looking like a lost little pup more than a federal agent. Fan fiction writers have picked up on this and several stories simple revolve around different characters receiving the puppy eyes.
• Smallville:
  • Chloe sometimes does this with her bright green eyes that makes your heart melt, usually on Clark when she needs his help, most noticeably in Lexmas.
  • Davis Bloome played by Sam Witwer in Smallville. Sure when he hulks out he could tear you limb from limb but when he's normal he's got the biggest, most endearing puppy dog eyes in the cast.
• In Degrassi, Campbell has such a strong case of this that he has garnered the nickname of "puppy" by the fandom.
• Doctor Who:
  • The Tenth Doctor as played by David Tennant has possibly the hugest puppy dog eyes to ever exist in the show (well, until Clara, anyway).
  • The Fifth Doctor was capable of this look, although in his case it was often more of a Heroic BSoD than puppy-dog eyes.
  • Eleven isn't bad at this either◊; but then, that could be because his entire persona reflects that of a Jack Russell Terrier.
  • With him being a Cosmic Plaything, Rory's big eyes can look permanently sad.
  • The Seventh Doctor has a magnificent pair of these, combined with a truly adorable overbite and pout.
  • The Eighth Doctor puts on a particularly hammy show of puppyish begging at one point in the movie, when Grace introduces him to a guy who could possibly help get him to the MacGuffin. Also useful for getting Grace to go along with his ridiculous bullshit for the next five minutes until she freaks out and stops believing him again.
  • Donna's eyes look like this when she's greatly sad and distressed, as seen in "The Fires of Pompeii" and "Planet of the Ood".
  • Occasionally used by the Delgado incarnation of the Master when his own evil schemes get him into trouble and he needs the Doctor to bail him out.
  • Clara's big brown eyes were set in a more-or-less permanent state of this, to the point where it annoys/disturbs the Doctor:
    The Doctor: Stop it with the eyes! Don't do that with the eyes, how do you do that anyway? It's like they inflate.
    • Clara's puppy dog eyes are set to stun in her final episode, "Hell Bent".
  • Jodie Whittaker picks up this torch and runs with it from the moment she debuts as the Thirteenth Doctor. Happy!Thirteen will melt your heart; Sad!Thirteen will shatter it.
• Annie in Community uses this often to manipulate the group. Jeff explains this look as her "Disney Face" when she uses it to try to keep the group from being mad at her when she does something that might have made them have to retake a class.
  • Abed has pretty expressive puppy eyes for a character so often compared to an aloof robot.
    Troy: (having just lost at basketball) Don’t gloat, it’s impossible to guard you, your eyes are too gentle and mysterious.
• Glee:
  • Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer) can make grown men cry with a mere look.
  • Blaine Anderson (Darren Criss) has puppy eyes that can make you coo more than if you were watching bunnies and kittens cuddle.
  • And Emma Pillsbury (Jayma Mays), which led to a funny scene where a drunk Kurt confused her with Bambi.
• The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: DS Barbara Havers, whose large, expressive sage green eyes are more than capable of this, and clue the audience in to her vulnerability when she's covering it up with a scathing remark. It is, in fact, largely because of her eyes that Barbara is such a sympathetic character; if her eyes didn't provide a window into just what a good reason she has to be defensive and prickly, she would come off as a complete bitch in early episodes.
• The Wire: Ziggy. Take a look at any scenes where he's upset, but particularly scenes involving Frank, his neglectful and rather disdainful father. For all Ziggy's faults, the jailhouse scene dialogue coupled with his big sad browns is a reason, why some viewers finally warmed up to him.
• James Ransone's character in miniseries adaptation of Generation Kill.
• M*A*S*H: Col. Potter pleads with Hawkeye and B.J. to make Maj. Burns feel like part of the gang, and the two consent to it. Hawkeye says "How can I resist those big Colonel eyes?"
• The Woobieness of Niles Crane in Frasier at least partly owes itself to the masterful skills of David Hyde Pierce's huge, sad, brown eyes. He does pull off that look with great success (occasionally earning an exasperated "Don't look at me like that!" from Frasier).
• Josh Lyman of The West Wing absolutely owned this trope, particularly the facial expressions that go along with the eyes. He was outmatched only by the even more heartbreaking puppy dog eyes of his assistant, Donna Moss. Josh once explicitly told Donna that he couldn't bear to tell her a particular piece of bad news because her sad eyes haunted him.
• Sherlock:
  • Moriarty, the main villain, has large brown eyes that can range from murderous to really cute in the span of two seconds.
  • Sherlock himself. Benedict Cumberbatch is inhumanly talented at this look.
    • He does it deliberately in "His Last Vow" when he "proposes" to Janine.
• From Criminal Minds, Badass Adorable Spencer Reid. This is the face that made many fans want to cry...or tackle hug.◊
• Christopher Tietjens from Parade's End. Unsurprising given that he's also played by Benedict Cumberbatch.
• The X-Files: Fox Mulder could pull off the vulnerable and hurt look very well. However, slightly unusually for the trope, there was no indication that he would be doing it on purpose.
• Leonard uses them on Penny in The Big Bang Theory.
• Mason, in Dead Like Me, manages to look like he's almost about to cry whenever he wants to have something or get out of doing something, even though it rarely works.
• Justified 's resident Woobie Ellen May.
• In Firefly, River Tam sometimes has these in her more vulnerable and traumatized moments. Her other look is usually very close to "crazy eyes".
• Game of Thrones:
  • Subverted with Arya Stark who uses this for Troubling Unchildlike Behavior. In this gif◊ she's imploring a Professional Killer to bump someone off then and there. Later she does it to put a soldier off his guard before stabbing him to death.
  • Ser Jorah Mormont. Every time he gets "friendzoned", has a rival for Daenerys' affections, and when he was banished.
  • Tyrion Lannister and Jon Snow have this as their default expression in seasons 7-8.
• In Emily Owens, M.D., a blind patient tries to convince Emily to treat his dog. She tries to resist, telling herself that all dogs have sad eyes and that she mustn't look, but she does look and she's in. She then gets her colleague and friend Will to help her. She talks about those sad eyes, and Will agrees — Emily's look did it for him.
• In Sex and the City, Charlotte York uses her vulnerable look on her fiancé Tray when they pick up their china, and his obnoxious mother is with them and tries to have her way.
• In Psych, nearly all of the characters (with the exception of Henry Spencer) were capable of this trope. Most notably, Gus◊, who is also a sympathetic cryer.
• Regina Mills of Once Upon a Time may be the Evil Queen with buckets of bad, wrong, and downright evil deeds to her name, but you try staying angry at her when Lana Parrilla is looking out of the screen with enormous, wounded, tear-filled eyes. Fortunately, she gets better.
• In an episode of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Martin Qwerly used this effect with his brown eyes to convince Ned of helping him with different school activities.
• On Black Sails, Calico Jack insists that a prostitute in a brothel he's currently running isn't paying rent. After outlying how ruthless and unfeeling he is, she turns on the Puppy-Dog Eyes (amidst helpless sobbing) and he recoils at how powerful they are.
• Person of Interest.
  • Subverted when John Reese puts his on, as he's usually being sardonic. Played straight with Bear, as he's an actual dog.
  • Annoyed as she usually is with Root's flirting, in "The Devil You Know" Sameen Shaw doesn't hesitate to try this trope when trying to convince Root to reveal Reese's location. Root thinks it's cute, but doesn't yield.
• Just Shoot Me!. Maya tries this on Dennis. It works, but not for the usual reason - seeing Maya try to be cute is just so horrific to him that he'll do anything to make it stop.
• Quantico:
  • When Simon is upset and his eyes get teary, it's all but impossible to not feel bad for him.
  • Raina's huge, dark eyes lend themselves very well to this trope.
• In Lucifer (2016), Lucifer displays this trope when he stops Chloe from touching the scars in his back where his wings used to be.
• Speaking of angels, Aziraphale in Good Omens uses the eyes on Crowley a couple of times, most notably to get Crowley to clean his paint-spattered coat for him.
• In The Big Bang Theory Penny is going to break up with Leonard, but sleeps with him instead. She says to Bernadette and Amy it was because of the sad puppy-dog look he gave her, and demonstrates. Amy replies it's a good thing Penny doesn't have a dog.
• This is basically the default expression of The Child from The Mandalorian. It's so effective that Mando, the bounty hunter sent to bring him in, decides to adopt him instead.
• In Our Flag Means Death, Blackbeard is uncannily good at this, and does it more-or-less constantly when in the company of Stede Bonnet, to the point where when he stops doing the puppy-eyes at the end of the season after Stede abandons him it is genuinely unsettling.
• In Better Call Saul, Jimmy McGill is not above using his Innocent Blue Eyes to get out of trouble, and as the series goes on and he amasses more trauma, it's his default setting.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): In the fourth episode, Louis de Pointe du Lac urges Lestat de Lioncourt to turn Claudia into a vampire, but Lestat turns him down because "Elle est trop jeune" ("She is too young"). Louis then gazes at Lestat with his soulful, pleading eyes while touching his lover's chest and whispering "Please" twice. Lestat is so moved by how vulnerable and pretty Louis looks that he caresses his boyfriend's face before proceeding with the Emergency Transformation even though it goes against the vampire rules.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power:
  • Halbrand every time he tries◊ to act innocent around Galadriel. After Galadriel starts to ask him about his true identity, he stops doing the puppy-eyes at the end of the season and the sudden change in expression is genuinely unsettling.
  • Elrond has soulful brown eyes◊ and looks like he about to cry immediately◊.
• Bones: Brennan tries hers on Booth when he doesn't want her to buy an 800 dollar baby stroller.
  Booth: Oh, you were never able to do this look before the baby. What did the baby do to you?

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