Individuals who expect to be rewarded for showing basic decency to others in Live-Action TV.
- In the Arrow episode "Tribute", Anatoli tells Oliver that he's a good man for not targeting his son, even though he has just murdered a hostage in cold blood just to spite Oliver. Naturally, Oliver doesn't buy it, but he still lets Anatoli go.
- Babylon 5: In season 4, while Londo doesn't regret ending the Centauri subjugation of the Narn and knows it was the right thing to do, he's initially annoyed at how G'Kar isn't grateful to him for keeping his promise to do so even though the occupation may not have happened in the first place without Londo.
- The Big Bang Theory:
- Raj starts developing feelings for Bernadette, who is engaged to his best friend Howard. Raj fell for her because she was nice to him and when Howard and Bernadette find out about this, Howard feels threatened and paranoid about whether or not the two are actually having an affair. While Bernadette berates Raj because her kindness towards him was not exclusive or in any way romantic, she's nice to everyone while Raj was just interacting with her as a friend. It's both justified and inverted in this case: Raj has such low self-esteem that he'll misread the most basic forms of kindness for attraction, while the humour of the show is based on cruelty towards the characters so when a character is being nice or showing basic decency (like Bernadette), it's believed they have an ulterior motive in doing so.
- In a later episode, the characters all reflect on how far they've come since the start of the series, i.e. marriage, kids, major professional accomplishments, etc. Raj accuses the others of rubbing it in because his life has barely progressed. Stewart tries to console him by pointing out that he's also no better off, which Raj says is worse because despite his education and intelligence "I'm exactly as awesome as the pasty-faced owner of a comic book store". Sheldon admonishes him for denigrating Stewart like that, while also revealing that he also has a low opinion of the guy, "...those are things we think but never say", then turns to Leonard and clearly expects praise. On the other hand, being aware enough to not just insult someone right to their face actually is major personal growth for Sheldon.
- In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Triangle", Spike, the erstwhile evil vampire, tries to impress Buffy by helping people injured in a roof collapse, and wants credit for not drinking their blood. This disgusts Buffy, but he actually has a point: he is a soulless monster who feeds on humans so restraining himself from drinking their blood really is a noteworthy effort from him.
- Cloak & Dagger (2018) has the supernatural villain D'Spayre, who uses a community center to run an underground sex trafficking ring. He did this so that he could feed on his victims' despair to take his daily pain away, and seems confused that actually helping "90%" of his clients doesn't make up for his crimes.
- Doctor Who: In "Boom Town", Blon Slitheen has a nice chat with a young pregnant woman about family instead of killing her. The Doctor doesn't fall for it.Blon: I spared her life.
The Doctor: You let one of them go, but that's nothing new. Every now and then, a little victim's spared... because she smiled, cause he's got freckles, cause they begged. And that's how you live with yourself, that's how you slaughter millions, because once in a while, on a whim, if the wind's in the right direction, you happen to be kind. - Inverted to the point of parody in Everybody Hates Chris. Julius, the hard-working father struggling to take care of his family, tries hard to impart to his children that you're absolutely not owed a cookie for anything you do right, but have to do it anyway. Played for laughs because it means, in practice, he'll never praise his kids no matter how many good things they do.Drew: I was just wondering... Can I have a hockey jersey? Since I got an A on my test?
Julius: You're supposed to get an A!
Chris's Narration: (Cheerily) My father never rewarded good behavior! - In The Flash episode "Don't Run", Caitlin's former boss Amunet expects Caitlin to be grateful that Amunet hasn't tried to kill her... today.
- In the Frasier Christmas Episode "Miracle on 3rd or 4th Street", a caller to Frasier's show wants to talk about the time he was filled with the Christmas spirit:Don: Okay. Well, you see, I was driving home from the gym, and I suddenly realized I had left my favorite old pair of sneakers on the roof of the car. So, I look back and there's this homeless guy, and he'd already picked them up, and he's putting 'em on. So I just thought, what the hell, and kept on driving.
Frasier: So your experience of the Christmas spirit would be that you didn't slam the car into reverse, speed back there, and rip a pair of smelly old sneakers out of a homeless man's hand? Well, Roz, this is special, I think we've got Santa Claus himself on the line! - Played for Laughs in an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Uncle Phil tasks Will and Carlton with replacing a clasp on one of Aunt Viv's bracelets, but they pawn the jewelry to try to buy stock instead. The boys then take to stripping at a club to raise the cash they need to buy the bracelet back. When they finally come clean to Uncle Phil and admit that, after all of their scheming, they never fixed the clasp, Phil starts laughing and asks them what he should do. Will jokingly suggests that, instead of giving them a well-deserved punishment, he reward them for their honesty:Will: It worked for the Beav!Phil: (Laughing, then abruptly stopping) DO I LOOK LIKE A WHITE GUY NAMED WARD?
- Game of Thrones:
- In the final episode of Season 3, Tywin Lannister angrily refers to his act of not drowning his infant son, who was born with dwarfism, but instead raising him and acknowledging him as his son as an example of how he makes personal sacrifices for the good of his family. Tyrion is so horrified by the declaration that he fails to make the slightest retort... a very rare moment for him. Especially as he was the infant in question. The realization that his father despises him with every fiber of his being and the only reason he's still alive is because his father couldn't find a way to legally kill him is the turning point of his life to that point — which ultimately leads Tyrion to kill Tywin after he finds Tyrion guilty of Joffrey's murder (actually carried out by Olenna Tyrell with help from Littlefinger).
- Daenerys, according to Mirri Maz Duur. For context, Daenerys enlists the Mirri Maz Duur's help in a Blood Magic ritual to save Daenerys' husband Khal Drogo (who had led the attack mentioned below), only for Drogo to be reduced to a Soulless Shell and the life of Daenerys' unborn child to be used as payment. Daenerys is furious at Mirri Maz Duur betraying her after she helped her, only for Mirri Maz Duur to tell Daenerys what she thinks of the "help."Daenerys: I spoke for you. I saved you.
Mirri Maz Duur: Saved me? Three of those riders had already raped me before you saved me, girl. I saw my god's house burn. There, where I had healed men and women beyond counting. In the streets, I saw piles of heads. The head of a baker, who makes my bread. The head of a young boy, that I had cured of a fever just three moons past. So, tell me again exactly what it was that you saved...?
Daenerys: Your life!
Mirri Maz Duur: What is life, when all the rest has gone?
- The Good Place is a show built around discussing concepts of morality and altruism, with a Celestial Bureaucracy in place that designates where people will go based on a points system. So this trope comes up quite frequently.
- It's revealed that good deeds and actions can be negated if they're performed for less than altruistic reasons. Moreover, the Judge of the afterlife states plainly that goodness is worthless if it's being done for the expectation of a reward. This is key to Tahani's situation, as her life was centered around enormous charitable donations but it was all a front behind a massive inferiority complex against her sister, trying to prove something to her parents and maintaining her rich and famous connections.
- Eleanor is so excited by her action of letting someone else move ahead of her in line without complaining that she rushes to tell Chidi about it, taking it as proof that his morality lessons really are helping her become a good person. Chidi is rather less impressed when he hears about it. It doesn't help her case that in her rush to get praise for this simple act, she forgot to get Chidi coffee, i.e. the actual reason she was in line to begin with. It especially doesn't help Eleanor's case that her lists of terrible things she's never done usually are not 100% truthful.Eleanor: Look, I might not have been a saint, but it's not like I killed anybody. Wasn't an arsonist. I never found a wallet outside of an IHOP and thought about returning it but saw the owner lived out of state so just took the cash and dropped the wallet back on the ground.
Chidi: Okay, that's really specific, and that makes me think that you definitely did do that.
- In an episode of The Hogan Family, Willie confesses to his mother Valerie that he took her car out joyriding and had an accident. Valerie is furious, and even more so when Willie asks why he isn't getting any credit for being honest, telling him that something like that is already expected of him.
- In Jessica Jones (2015), Kilgrave acts like he deserves credit for not treating people like insects (although, in his 'defense', his powers have left him with a warped sense of social interaction where it's completely impossible for him to relate to other people as he's never had to develop true social skills).
- In Justified, when Raylan catches up to a fugitive (Ava), she pleads with him by pointing out how she's reformed and has been living clean for the last four years. A less than impressed Raylan replies that every time he's ever caught up to a long-time fugitive, they try to make a big deal out of doing the bare minimum that they're supposed to be doing in society.Raylan: Every long-time fugitive I've ever run down expects me to congratulate them for not doing what no one's supposed to be doing anyhow.
- Last Man Standing: After Ryan comes back to help Kristin raise Boyd, he thinks he should be Easily Forgiven for abandoning them to go to college and people should commend him for owning up to his responsibility. As Mike continually points out, he's just doing what he's supposed to be doing (and not even doing that great a job of it) and he still left a five-year gap where Kristin was on her own to struggle with being a single parent and depend on Mike and Vanessa to help her. It took years for the family to start accepting Ryan as committed to being a dad to Boyd and a renewed relationship with Kristin.
- One episode of Lucifer (2016) ends with Detective Decker drunkenly throwing herself at Lucifer after thinking that her ex-husband was leaving her and Trixie for good (he'd actually been kidnapped.) Lucifer is too freaked out to take advantage of her and instead lets her sleep it off at his place. The very next episode has him crowing about how good he is just because he didn't take advantage of Chloe. Of course, this is the literal Devil we're discussing here, so his standards of "basic decency" are arguably somewhat skewed to begin with.
- The L Word: Alice thinks she deserves credit as a result of wanting to cheat, though not doing it. Her girlfriend Tasha scoffs at this.
- In a Thanksgiving episode of Malcolm in the Middle, Malcolm goes into a huge drunken rant about how he was too nice a guy to sleep with a girl who was barely conscious when she came on to him. His family is unimpressed.
- My Name Is Earl: Zig-zagged in the second season, Earl has a birthday party and he is excited because he has redeemed relationships and created new friendships in the year since he found karma, but found many of the people at the party just remind him of some other slight against them that Earl has yet to make up for. Depressed he decides to bail out of the party but later found that this was part of a collective scheme by the partygoers for a birthday present, they bring up some past mistake one last time and then they personally cross it off Earl's list so he doesn't have to deal with it later. While he still has numerous things to work on, everyone does appreciate his efforts and good example.
- Schmidt on New Girl harangues his friends to say he's a good person for saving a man from choking on gum (after crashing his bike and breaking both legs, for which Schmidt didn't even bother to call 9-1-1). This after he had just cheated on CeCe with Elizabeth and vice-versa and tried to break up Jess and Nick because he thinks they were to blame for the former.
- Odd Squad: In "Friends of Odd Squad", Party Pam, who is in charge of the precinct while Oprah and the other agents are away on a company picnic, manages to solve a problem without bothering Oprah, and in return, she expects the Director to rethink and revise her "only kids can be Odd Squad agents" rule.
- Parodied in the Saturday Night Live sketch "Rami Wants a Treat."
Rami Malek visits the guys of Please Don't Destroy and says that since he's been on his best behavior during rehearsals, he deserves a treat "like a cookie or toy." Martin, Ben, and John are confused and give him a mouse pad, which seems to work. But Rami keeps demanding more presents just for doing his job as guest host and becomes violently destructive when he doesn't get them.Rami Malek: It just feels like, if there's no reward, why should I be on good behavior at all? - Scrubs: How "basic decency" changes per situation is examined in the episode. For example, in "My Big Bird," J.D. tracks down a patient named Mr. Sutton, whose life he saved by finding a blocked artery that initially caused heartburn. The patient did not thank him and J.D. travels to his house to get the recognition he feels he deserves. Mr. Sutton points out that J.D. is a doctor and that makes saving lives his job, so he does not deserve any more special treatment or thanks for his actions than Mr. Sutton does for being a garbageman.
- The Sopranos
- Anthony is constantly telling A.J he should be grateful for not being kicked out of home. He also brings up his childhood, saying that his Dad would have "beaten the shit out of him" if he behaved the way A.J did.
- Meadow throws a party at her grandmother's abandoned house, which gets completely trashed. When her parents later take her to task for it, she complains that they aren't giving her any credit for not trying Ecstasy at the party, which she totally could've done. A.J argues something similar in a later season, when he only drank beer but could have used drugs.
- Gul Dukat of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine shows continual annoyance that the Bajorans didn't give him any admiration or love for being a more merciful prefect during the military occupation of their world (which caused the deaths of 50 million Bajorans compared to 5 million under his rule as prefect), and later even rants to Captain Sisko about how just he was in ordering proportional executions of alleged suspects in response to Cardassian deaths from a terrorist attack.
- Star Trek: Discovery:
- In a flashback, the leaders of the Vulcan Science Academy congratulate themselves on being open enough to accept either Sarek's adopted human daughter Michael, or his half-human son, Spock, as both have proven to be exceptional despite not being "real" Vulcans. Forced into a Sadistic Choice, Sarek goes with Spock, only for Spock to then enroll in Starfleet Academy instead. It's implied this is one of the main reasons they aren't on good terms in TOS and TNG.
- In the season 1 finale, the main cast actually get the prize: they effectively blackmail the Klingons into surrendering by planting a superweapon that would cause an Earth-Shattering Kaboom on their home planet, handing the trigger to L'Rell so she can pull a Military Coup against the Great Houses and force them to make peace in exchange for not triggering it themselves. They're collectively awarded the Medal of Honor by Starfleet basically because they didn't actually blow up the planet as had been originally intended.
- Wizards of Waverly Place features an episode where Alex is forced to join the "Happy Helpers Club" as punishment; however, they turn out to mostly be people doing basic politeness like pushing elevator buttons for other people, or throwing away litter, and then rewarding themselves for it. Despite not wanting to be there in the first place, even Alex is genuinely offended by their behavior and takes a stand against it.
