Single-Episode Handicap

When the protagonists are struck by a short-lived disability - often blindness - forcing them to rely on other skills for the duration of the episode, but cured by the all-powerful Reset Button, restoring the afflicted parties to normal in time for their next adventure. Sometimes it's intended to teach some sort of moral lesson; sometimes it's treated as just another challenge for the heroes to overcome. Either way, expect much moping around until the heroes come to grips with their situation.

Those experiencing a Single-Episode Handicap will frequently learn to make up for it in other ways, resulting in a (temporary) Disability Superpower. (Of course, since status quo is restored at the end of the episode, the heroes generally lose their Handicapped Badass permits immediately.)

Related: Temporary Blindness and some forms of Soap Opera Disease.

Anime & Manga

 * Akko-chan, from Himitsu no Akko-chan, in the aptly named '_____' episode asks her magic mirror to make her deaf and mute, thus, more empathic to the new deaf kid in her class. After realizing that she just wished herself mute, and her magic mirror could only obey to spoken commands, she spends the whole episode as a non-verbal deaf girl, moving from curiosity to deep rooted depression.
 * Partly averted: not only Akko-chan didn't learn to make up for both her self-inflicted handicaps, but lost every shred of self-reliance and independence, becoming unable to even try to communicate her plight and risking certain death while running blindly (and foolishly) straight in a ravine. She gets however her Aesop when the deaf boy himself, with an impressing (at least to her) show of his abilities manages to track and save her. The Reset Button comes with a lecture about his Handicapped Badass status.

Film

 * Han Solo's hibernation sickness was basically treated this way in Return of the Jedi.

Live Action TV

 * In the MASH episode "Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind," Hawkeye is temporarily blinded by a heater explosion. While he is blind, he comes to rely on his sense of hearing more, to the point where he can replicate The Radar's ability to predict incoming choppers.
 * The same happens to Klinger when he temporarily goes deaf. He regains his hearing just in time to not get a medical discharge.
 * Similarly, in the episode "C*A*V*E", Hawkeye is claustrophobic and refuses to enter a roomy cave, although he's never mentioned this phobia before and has often hidden in tiny spaces, including a nurse's footlocker and small closets.
 * In the Stargate SG-1 episode "New Grounds," Teal'c is blinded by a weapon blast, forcing him to rely on the assistance of a native for the remainder of the episode. (Admittedly, it's a native with a nerve regenerator, so he does all right.)
 * In Stargate Continuum, Daniel Jackson loses a leg to frostbite.
 * "Rules of the Game" from Sliders. Arturo is briefly blinded during a wargame.
 * Happens far too often in Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Sabrina can't use magic, Sabrina can only use a certain type of magic, Sabrina can use magic but it will have a certain negative effect...
 * Happens in Xena: Warrior Princess episode "Blind Faith."
 * A comedy example: in a Friends episode Joey wants to make some money to donate sperm and is therefore forbidden to have sex for a while. Therefore he learns to pleasure his temporary girlfriend by other means and is excited about how good it feels and how it is like a man going blind and improving his other skills. And the end of the episode when he is allowed to have sex again, his friends wonder why he returns to his former behavior. His answer: "When a blind man regains his eyesight, you think he keeps stumbling around with his eyes closed!?"
 * Happened on Monk, and he surprisingly enjoyed being blind for an episode and not seeing things that disturbed him. There was also that episode where he was shot in the leg and confined to a wheelchair.
 * In the Star Trek the Original Series episode "Operation - Annihilate!", Spock is blinded after they blast him with "the complete spectrum of light" to rid him of a parasite that is UV-sensitive. It's okay, though, because Vulcans actually have third eyelids that somehow restored his sight by the end of the episode. This extra set of eyelids is thereafter never mentioned again.
 * In Star Trek the Next Generation episode "The Enemy," Geordi La Forge relies on the help of a Romulan when his VISOR stops working.
 * In the Star Trek the Next Generation episode "The Loss", Counselor Troi temporarily loses her empath powers. Interestingly, although obviously no one has this ability in the real world, the show got fan letters from disabled people saying they related to her struggle.
 * In Star Trek the Next Generation episode "Ethics," Worf is paralyzed when a cargo crate falls on him. He seriously contemplates suicide before another doctor offers a never-before-tested surgery to give Worf a new spine.
 * In The A-Team episode "The Beast from the Belly of the Boeing", Murdock is temporarily blinded by a gunshot and has to guide Hannibal into landing the plane.
 * On Charmed, an evil monkey steals Paige's voice, Phoebe's hearing and Piper's eyesight. (No, really.) They get better, though, of course.
 * On Law and Order: SVU, Stabler is attacked by a perp and smashes his head against a car window, rendering him blind...except that everything's just sort of blurry, and he gets over it in a few days. Seemed to be more of an excuse to show Chris Meloni in glasses than anything else.
 * Clark was temporarily blinded by some sort of laser on Smallville, causing him to develop super-hearing. The episode was not at all derivative.
 * Likewise, when he caught a cold (Green Rocks were involved in both cases), it caused him to develop super-breath, which in this version of the character doesn't actually mean freezing breath like in some of the comics but simply lets him generate massive gusts of compressed air.
 * Sam Beckett leaped into the body of a blind concert pianist, sight intact. After demonstrating his sightedness in front of the wrong person, he is momentarily blinded by a camera flash right before said person tries to make him flinch to prove he can see. His sight is back to normal as soon as she's out of earshot.
 * Darien Fawkes has this happen to him all the time, including a blindness episode. The gland in his head tends to make conditions that afflict him unique, but also makes them surprisingly easy to cure.
 * Confusing "circular incision" for "circumcision" made for a very unhappy Al Bundy.
 * In among the many episodes in which he was temporarily deprived of his various powers, Clark Kent in Lois and Clark was blinded for an entire episode by an evil scientist's laser ray, before being miraculously restored at the end.

Web Comics

 * A bored Sydney in Unintentionally Pretentious buys white Naruto-style contact lenses from Luthor's store to temporarily blind herself in order to relate to her blind roommate better.
 * And later for her Toph cosplay.

Western Animation

 * "Dark Voyage" from Beast Wars. The Maximals are blinded by an Energon explosion, requiring that they explore spirituality to fight off the Predacons.
 * In another episode they wind up trapped in their beast modes, losing access to weaponry and (in most cases) opposable thumbs. Tigatron teaches them to embrace their animal side to avoid being slaughtered by the Predacons.
 * In the sequel, "Beast Machines", the Maximal are, again, trapped into technorganic beast modes, as their current bodies now controlled by embracing their "spiritual" side.
 * Subverted with Rattrap: while the other Maximals can overcome their newfound handicap quite fast, Rattrap spends a bunch of episodes becoming a liability for himself and his allies, even briefly considering a deal with Megatron to buy himself some enhancements. Ultimately, he finds out his new, diminutive form has enhanced hacking abilities, thus becoming useful again.
 * Subverted in Family Guy episode "Blind Ambition," in that a temporarily-blinded Peter only engages in acts of heroism because he doesn't have any idea what's going on.
 * Occurs in another episode when, after denying Joe and other handicaps access to his "fancy restaurant," Peter loses the function of his legs in the ensuing mecha-battle.
 * "Blind as a Bat" from Batman the Animated Series.
 * In one episode of The Simpsons, Bart visits a sequence of doctors who treat him for lazy eye, fallen arches, and other maladies, which turns him into a Jerry Lewis-patterned nerd for the remainder of the episode.
 * Bart also has a case of this in one episode where he's allergic to shrimp, but the allergy is never mentioned before or after the episode.
 * Lisa has at least two of these. In one episode, she's told that her fingers are too stubby to ever be a true jazz musician. This is despite her playing the saxophone quite well in every other episode. There's also an episode where she has no dancing abilities (partly due to clumsiness and lack of coordination), but in another episode, she's a perfect gymnast.
 * In one episode of Darkwing Duck, the title hero was blind for one episode. In another, he had his legs broken.
 * Futurama: Bender was paralyzed from the neck down for one episode.
 * Justified Trope in that Bender's a robot, and such a condition would logically only last until new parts arrive and can be installed...
 * Except that it was explicitly stated that he couldn't be repaired and that his sudden recovery was never explained.
 * King of the Hill has a few:
 * Bill is told by a doctor that he has diabetes, which is cured by the end of the episode.
 * Hank is temporarily blinded after seeing his mom and her new husband have sex.
 * Bobby gets gout from eating too much at a new restaurant in town.
 * The Jackie Chan Adventures episode "The Good, the Bad, the Blind, the Deaf, and the Mute" has Daolong Wong kidnapping Uncle and using a cursed monkey statue to randomly strike people blind, deaf, and mute, including our heroes (Tohru loses his sight, Jade loses her hearing, and Jackie loses his ability to speak).
 * In an episode of The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, Grubby accidentally eats a plant that can make you temporarily mute (the effect is known to last "anywhere from one hour to ten years"). So Leota teaches the Trio sign language, allowing them to communicate not only with each other but also with Leota's deaf student.
 * In one episode of He Man and The Masters of The Universe, He-Man is rendered temporarily blind thanks to some Applied Phlebotinum. Fortunately, it just so happens that this is the same episode in which he befriended a local blind boy, who teaches him how to manage without his sight.