Blessed with Suck/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Blessed with Suck in Live-Action TV include:

  • The mermaids on H2O: Just Add Water. If you think about it, turning into a mermaid when you are exposed to water sucks major ass if you have to keep up The Masquerade. What happens if it's a rainy day, or if you have the power but live in a really rainy area? What happens if it's summer and you and your non-mermaid friends/family want to go swimming? What happens if you need to shower or wash your hands? What if you want to join the swim team or be a life guard? Remember when the one girl got hit full-on by a sprinkler when out and about? Maybe you could hide it for a short time, but not forever, and not without some kind of consequence.
    • Even if you live in a hot area, you're screwed: sweat is mostly water. As is saliva, so be careful not to drool or have any kind of... oral activities.
  • River Tam from Firefly (and its sequel movie, Serenity) is an obvious case. Government experiments gave her mind-reading abilities and Waif Fu ... the side effect? She can't turn them off. She's traumatized and schizophrenic.
    • It is also implied that she had latent psychic powers before being "recruited." That and her genius-level intellect led to her being selected for the Academy, which leads to a double-whammy of being Blessed with Suck.
  • Hurley from Lost sees his ability to communicate with dead people as a curse, until Jacob manages to convince him otherwise. He becomes way more cheerful from then on.
    • In addition, his winning the lottery using The Numbers. Yes, he's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but bad things happen to the people around him.
  • Non-superpowered example: In New Tricks, Brian 'Memory' Lane is a brilliant detective with an instant-recall Photographic Memory that allows him to rattle off not only the details of long-unsolved crimes but also the full career histories of the investigating officers involved and makes him a near-flawless investigator... if not for the crippling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that it stems from, which if he doesn't adequately medicate himself leaves him a manic depressive and obsessive paranoiac who is almost entirely unable to function, and even when fully medicated at the best of times renders him an anti-social and anal (if essentially decent) pedant.
  • Very similarly, Adrian Monk from Monk is a brilliant detective, but suffers a moderate case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (and many, many other problems). Unlike Brian, he does not need medications to function normally, but must overcome or circumvent issues that directly interfere with his need for everything to be clean, sanitary, and perfectly arranged by shape, size, and color. Monk fulfills the Blessed With Suck trope in that, if he does take medication to suppress his OCD, his investigative brilliance goes with it.
    • Not to mention his brilliant detective skills made him an enemy, resulting in the death of his wife, the only thing in life that ever really made him happy.
      • The death of his wife Trudy did have a major impact on Monk, but it was because of Trudy's past, not him. In the series finale, Trudy reveals that she had an affair and a child with her law professor who later became a judge and had her (and the midwife, and the doctor who worked at the clinic who was updating records that would have revealed the existence of said child) killed to cover up the affair.
  • A similar thing happens to Dr. Gregory House in House MD. If he does anything to take away the pain in his damaged thigh muscle, he loses his brilliant diagnostic ability.
    • He believed that's why he couldn't take stronger/safer drugs to dull his pain, however...it's actually more that his injury made him more open to using his cynicism and lack of trust in people as tools in his diagnostic work. Now he's actively trying to NOT be a jerk, still with severe leg pain (he claims it's numbed by obsessing on things like cooking or medicine) and the same human petri dish of lying patients. Ouch. It's basically his own discomfort he's choosing to create at this point.
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer being the Slayer has granted Buffy incredible levels of physical strength and endurance to the point where she's almost a superhero at times - however, the duties that come with being the Slayer have destroyed any chance she has of living a normal life and almost guarantee that she will die a premature and most-likely painful death at the hands of her enemies.
    • And then there's the time Buffy gains the ability to read minds, with less pleasant effects than she expects at first.
    • In the Buffyverse, the vampire soul can be seen as a form of meta-Blessed With Suck; its acquisition is the cause of Badass Decay, after all.
      • Angel is definitely Blessed with Suck (or cursed) after he's given his soul back. His soul makes him human again (personality-wise)and prevents him from being a total monster and torturing and killing everyone he comes across like he does when he's Angelus, but the point of the curse was to force him to live with the horrible guilt of all the destruction he's caused for an eternity, and when he finally experiences true happiness (which he only does thanks to the curse), he loses his soul.
    • Season 8 has Buffy become Superman. Everyone's happy about this, except for Dawn, who expects more power will lead to bigger consequences.
      • "Monkey's Paw!"
  • Many of the superpowered characters of Heroes seem blessed with suck (which, due to the almost divine nature of evolution in the series, may very well be literally true):
    • Nikki/Jessica is possessed by a Super-Powered Evil Side.
    • Ted uncontrollably emits deadly radiation when feeling emotion, which results in the death of his wife. He could also destroy an entire city, the aversion of which becomes the main plot of season one.
    • Peter is one of the few (well, two, the other being Hiro) Heroes who knew how his power had the potential to help people...until it's revealed that being able to absorb so many powers could make him unstable and explode. He then becomes another Blessed with Suck believer.
    • Heck, having any superpower means that it's only a matter of time before either Sylar or Primatech Paper tracks you down, so anyone without truly awesome powers to fight them off has been royally Blessed with Suck.
    • Speaking of Sylar, you'd think that someone who got to pick their powers would be able to avoid this, but no, he saddled himself with super-hearing, giving him a crippling weakness to loud noises. Despite the fact that the woman he took it from told them what a nuisance she found it, he still chose to blow his cover stealing it.
      • She told him it was a bit of a nuisance, yes, but she also told him that she wouldn't give it away for anything, because of how awesome it was to use.
      • Whether or not it was intentional we'll never know, but the note below about season 3 actually rationalises away the Idiot Ball. Clever.
    • In Season Two, we meet Maya and Alejandro. Maya's ability is, essentially, to kill everyone within ten feet of her if she gets upset. She once kills a whole town when he power first manifests. At a wedding. Alejandro's ability somehow reverses this... sometimes. A few fans have therefore dubbed them the "Blessed With Suck Twins".
    • Adam's power seems to be Blessed with Suck as well given that he's immortal and can't die, and in the second volume finale Hiro left him inside of a buried coffin, despite the fact that Hiro originally planned to chop off Adam's head (which would have killed him for real). Just more proof that you should Beware the Nice Ones.
    • Season 3 reveals that Sylar's original powers fit here as well. It turns out that his power to instantly understand how something works also comes with a hunger to understand things. For Sylar, this means being obsessed with Mega Manning as many powers as possible, fitting right into With Great Power Comes Great Insanity. Seems just about every power has some Suck to it.
    • Or how about Hiro himself? In the first season, he can handle freezing time okay - but takes an insane amount of concentration or a good motivation, but he was unable to teleport WITHOUT accidentally travelling in time as well.And we learn in Season 4 that extensive time travel will give you a tumor. Arnold, Samuel's resident time-traveller, died from a tumor, and Hiro has a few months left to live.
  • Done to a particularly nerve wracking degree in Charmed. All good witches have some sort of supernatural power, a power that can be used to make life easier, right? Wrong! For those of the good alignment, personal gain is strictly forbidden, and abusing one's powers can have the potential of them being taken away. Evil is free to do whatever they want however.
  • It's actually one of the points of Wizards of Waverly Place. The Russo siblings possess power every youth would wish to possess. Problem? Only one of them can keep it, so that generated a rivalry who broke their harmony. You can say than because of that, the whole series is a fable about family bond and responsibility.
  • Jack Bauer of 24 could qualify despite not having a superpower (other than the power to be Badass). He's an incredibly talented CTU agent, the best in the field, the goto guy for every problem concerning National Security. At the cost of his family, friends and co-workers getting killed, being a wanted man by terrorists and foreign nations, and virtually having no chance at a normal life because when he tries, he always gets sucked back in.

James Heller: "You're cursed, Jack. Everything you touch, one way or another, winds up dead."

  • Speaking of touching and death, the main character of Pushing Daisies has the power to return the dead to life with a touch... but, he can't ever touch them again if he doesn't want them Killed Off for Real. Of course, since he brought his true love back from the dead, this is sort of problematic...
    • And if Ned doesn't re-kill someone again with a second touch within one minute, someone else nearby has to die in their place.
      • Even after this period, he STILL can't touch whoever he first re-animated.
    • Don't forget that Ned's ability also caused him to accidentally kill both his mom and the dad of his childhood sweetheart.
    • On top of all this? He can never eat his own pies, which he makes by buying rotten fruit on the cheap, "reanimating" it, and making it into filling without touching it again.
    • Not to mention that he is, out of necessity, a vegetarian...
    • He can't even date someone who doesn't know about his ability. At one point, he explains that on his last date (whenever that was), it ended with "intimate relations on a bearskin rug." So yeah...
  • Sam from Reaper started out Cursed with Awesome, but after the first couple of episodes wound up Blessed with Suck.
  • Sam Winchester from Supernatural could be considered Blessed With Suck. As one of a group of psychic children, some of whom have powers such as super strength, mind control, telekinesis, and the ability to electrocute people with a touch, he gets uncontrollable, painful visions of violent deaths. As one of the other psychics put it: "Dude, sucks."
    • The electrocuting-with-a-touch girl didn't have it so great either. She killed her girlfriend because she was unable to turn her power off.
    • Then there's the demon blood thing.
    • Then there's both Sam and Dean being the vessels of both Lucifer and Michael respectively, meaning they're up against the combined powers of heaven and hell one way or another, and if they fold they will not only become meat puppets that will fight to the death against each other, but the entire world will end. At least demons won't kill Sam and angels won't kill Dean, though.
  • The fact that Telepaths are Blessed with Suck is a major plot point of Babylon 5. Telekinetics have it even worse; the majority are clinically insane, and the rest aren't too stable either.
  • John from New Amsterdam saves the life of an Indian woman, who in return grants him eternal life and youth until he finds his soul mate, who he will know by feeling it in his heart. Unfortunately, this means he suffers a heart attack that would normally be fatal once he gets near her.
  • In Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Tommy Oliver joined the team as the Green Ranger and was considered the strongest ranger at first. However, due to manipulation of his powers by the villains, his powers were weakened and had to be constantly recharged.
  • Gwen Raiden of Angel has a massive dose of this. Sure, her ability to manipulate electricity makes her a fearsome weapon, gets her in a lot of places she could never otherwise go, and makes her oodles of money as a professional thief...but at the expense of even the smallest human intimacies and any semblance of a normal life. Not to mention the trauma of getting regularly struck by lightning and accidentally injuring and killing people who are actually nice to her.
    • Doyle also of Angel suffers crippling headaches due to his visions which are never very clear to begin with.
      • Cordelia gets these later, and they nearly kill her. She becomes part demon to survive, rather than giving them up.
      • Hell, even Doyle being half-demon can count as Blessed with Suck. He is stronger in demon form and can survive having his neck broken, but he can't cope with being half-demon, leading him to be very distant from both humans and demons, and leading him to basically have a pretty crappy life.
  • Echo's growing ability to retain the personalities uploaded into her during the two seasons of Dollhouse prove a decidedly mixed blessing emotionally, as shown in the series finale "Epitaph Two: Return." Subtly (or not-so-subtly) treated as a freak even by her allies because of her abilities, she cannot open herself up fully to anyone - not even Paul Ballard, her comrade-in-arms (during the apocalyptic future times) and would-be lover. As Paul succinctly puts it, "A hundred personalities, and you're the loneliest person I know."
  • In Early Edition, a TV series where a magical mysterious (but otherwise normal) cat delivers tomorrow's newspaper (a Chicago Sun Times) today, Gary Hobson views it as a curse rather than a blessing. He feels morally obliged to stop tomorrow's bad news, and similarly morally obliged to not to look up tomorrow's lottery numbers and stock tips. Subverted in one episode where a man from New York who gets tomorrow's newspaper from a parrot lives rich and happy, and has employees doing his work for him.
    • It later turns out that they are officially Blessed with Suck when The guy with the parrot tries to unload some stocks that would crash the next day, but only because he had sold them, thus bankrupting the small inventing company Gary was supposed to have saved and throwing the entire future into turmoil.
  • Some of the returnees in The 4400 are Blessed with Suck. While some get cool abilities like healing and seeing the future, others get lame powers (talking to plants) or horrible afflictions (Sherilyn Fenn's character grows toxic spores all over her body which kill everyone who comes near her.)
  • The Greatest American Hero had a comical example of Blessed with Suck. Granted, it's technically Ralph's fault for losing the instructions to his supersuit in the first place. Just imagine having unlimited power at your command... and you can't even figure out how it works! There's this, and also the embarrassment of having to wear what looks like red pajamas out in public.

Ralph: I mean, I could kill the guy that designed this suit! Why couldn't it have narrow lapels and a cutaway jacket? Why'd it have to be long johns and a cape?

  • In Stargate SG-1, Daniel Jackson gets ascended to a higher plane of existence. The catch? He is not allowed to do anything to interfere with our level so he must sit by and watch the series' actual Big Bad (actual because the show takes Evil Power Vacuum to its extreme logical conclusion) destroying his home galaxy. He decides to get better (worse?) then... at the cost of losing all most of his memories about his time ascended.
  • Tommy Dawkins from Big Wolf on Campus falls under this trope. Sure, being a werewolf does have its benefits... but not when one also has to deal with cravings for chicken, transformations for reasons OTHER than a full moon, and the fact that everyone else (save for his two best friends and a few monster allies) thinks he's an evil monster.
  • As a Time Lord, the Doctor of Doctor Who has a potential lifespan of millennia and can view the flow of time, "everything that is, was, will be, can be and can't be" (paraphrased), the former causing Who Wants to Live Forever? (especially as he's the only Time Lord still around) while the latter means he is both obligated to interfere when the timeline is screwed with and can't stop disasters that are meant to occur.
    • And then Captain Jack Harkness, from Doctor Who and the spin-off Torchwood. He's immortal, giving him some wonderful Who Wants to Live Forever? issues as he watches every friend, lover and family member he has dies. And technically- he can die, he just comes back to life. Painfully. And while that's certainly useful, how would you like to be buried alive, suffocating to death and being pulled harshly back to life, for two-thousand years?
      • In Torchwood Series 2, Owen Harper is killed, then resurrected by the resurrection glove. He is essentially a walking zombie. The main cause of his ensuing depression is, in his own words (paraphrased) "I can't sleep, drink or shag, and those are 3 of my favourite things." Any damage to his body is permanent, as well, since his injuries don't heal, so while a large cut on his hand doesn't bleed, the gaping wound will always be around to quick out everyone else.
  • Dead Last focuses on a band that is blessed with the ability to see ghosts thanks to a magical amulet, thus forcing them to accomplish their various Ghostly Goals. They are rarely ever happy to discover that the person whose existence they just acknowledged is actually a ghost.
  • In an episode of Outer Limits called The New Breed. Dr. Andy Groening was dying from cancer and so he injected some nanomachines that has not been approved in himself to save himself. At first, his cancer disappeared, his senses improved, and he is stronger and faster than the average man. The Suck came when the nanomachines made him grew two more eyes, gills, and turned him into a freak who is in constant pain from all the changes.
  • In the E4 series Misfits, a group of ASBO-serving teenagers develop superpowers after being caught in a freak lightning storm. Among them, Alisha has the unenviable power of inducing uncontrolled lust in anyone who comes into contact with her bare skin (regardless of gender). This leads to several hilariously uncomfortable moments where people who touch her will attempt to rape her, while spouting lines like "I'm going to own you, I'm going to shag you so hard" and "I'm going to rip off your clothes and piss on your tits".
    • Much as Alisha's power is hugely inconvenient and depressing for her (and is the most limited of the five protagonists' special abilities in terms of scope and functionality), it's hardly the most useless power the show has to offer. At least it's not hilariously awful like the "I'm a Jack Russell by night" dude, or the "I can make people go bald just by looking at them" girl. Hell, even the characters with awesome powers can't use them properly! Pretty much every character in this show is Blessed With Suck to some degree, although that's undeniably the whole point.
      • Let's see... Alisha, as mentioned, provokes uncontrolled lust with a touch and therefore finds it impossible to have a meaningful sexual relationship. Curtis can rewind time, but only subconsciously -- which results in him having to break up with his girlfriend over and over again because he feels guilty when she inevitably cries. Plus he has the whole Butterfly of Doom thing to contend with. Kelly can read minds, but has no filter between her own and her mouth, and having to hear what people think of her makes her even more paranoid, insecure and aggressive than she already was. Simon initially can't control his Invisibility, and even once he can he remains something of a pervert and socially isolated - in fact, he gets worse because his power allows him to indulge his voyeuristic fantasies, and generally hide from reality. While that might sound pretty awesome, it sends him nuts in the end. And even though Nathan is effectively immortal, he apparently has no superhuman healing factor, resulting in him waking up in his own coffin some time after his funeral at the end of the series. So... yeah.
  • Parodied in a That Mitchell and Webb Look sketch, wherein a man bitterly angsts and curses about his supernatural ability... to levitate biscuits. It's a curse, apparently.
  • Stephen Baxter, from Russell T. Davies's The Second Coming, who suddenly discovers that he's the son of God. He does seem rather happy with it at the beginning (if unbalanced), being able to perform miracles and suddenly getting huge crowds of followers. However, it gets his best friend murdered, his father insane, and it turns out the whole plan is to have him killed by his lover so God can truly die and humans can take their fate in their own hands. He accepts it in the end, but ouch.
  • Anybody who possesses an Object in the miniseries The Lost Room. They can accomplish powerful and bizarre things, but anybody who comes to have one becomes more paranoid of losing it or becomes a Doom Magnet.
  • The Vampire Diaries. Bonnie, especially in Season 1. She's a witch, but apart from mind-whammying Damon, using any of her other abilities mainly seem to cause her to lose consciousness.
    • Elena's even worse. Her only power is looking like the original Petrova. The only time that her power is useful at all is when she manages to use her supernatural status to kill Alaric who was already dying and activate his ring.
  • The Ocampa from Star Trek are one of the most powerful races in its history. Eventually once they reach the peak of their powers they're capable of pyrokinesis, telepathy, shape-shifting, reality bending... unfortuantly the key word there was eventually. Before they reach the very unlikely outcome of this great power, they have to cope with possibly one of the suckiest examples of anatomy and society in TV history. They can only naturally live nine years - which if you take into account their first year as children and last year as pensioners they really only have 7 years of decent life. They can only reproduce once in their entire lives using a complicated system of mating that involves attatching their hands together for a week. Ocampans apparently don't even produce litters - which for a race who can only reproduce once would be pretty damn essential. There are also only two known Ocampan societies - one underneath a completely barren desert planet in enemy territory and the other on a space station commanded by an insane creature that was one half responsible for turning that aforementioned planet into a barely habitable rock.
  • Ben from Carnivale has the power to heal with a touch, but this power comes with a price, and naturally something else has to die in return. Growing up with an addled and emotionally abusive mother who told him he was "marked by the beast" didn't help, either. In addition, he suffers from terrifying prophetic visions which grow progressively worse as the series continues. Sofie and Justin are also blessed with their own versions of suck, as in this series no one who has avataric ability has it without a price.
  • In the Sanctuary episode "Hero", Walter makes contact with a parasite that shields him like a suit and grants him extraordinary superhero powers, such as flight, super strength, bullet proof, and a host of other goodies. However, like most parasites, it is actually feeding off him and (unlike most parasites) slowly killing him.
  • An episode of The Golden Girls featured a Kavorka Man who professed to view his status this way -- he's inexplicably sexually attractive and great in bed, but he's so ugly and boring that his relationships devolve into meaningless sex that any woman worth actually having eventually grows tired of.
  • In Kamen Rider Agito, people who begin to develop psychic powers are targeted and killed by monsters before they're even aware of their own powers, much less able to use them for anything practical. Also, the monsters will hunt down their families as well, just to be thorough.
  • Kaylan Amnell, the Mother Confessor from Legend of the Seeker can tell when people are lying and can turn people into her slaves. However, when she takes over people, they have to stay that way until they or she DIES! Also, prior to her becoming Mother Confessor, Kaylan would faint when she used her power often in the MIDDLE OF BATTLE!
  • One episode of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction? had a story about a guy who could kill people by painting their portrait. He used this "gift" on terminally ill hospital patients, which seems like the only possible way it could be used, since it would be the most inefficient murder weapon ever. "Yes, just stand right there for a few more seconds while I get a better profile of your face..."
  • There's a reason people with superpowers in Haven are called "Troubled".
    • On a similar note - and to a lesser degree - are Alphas. While they can control their powers, it makes it difficult for them in daily life (such as one with Winds of Destiny Change, who became a paranoid Conspiracy Theorist since he never grasped that people don't have the same control over probability he does). Or similar to the Living Lie Detector who has a hard time socializing as he can easily tell if someone is lying to him. Of the girl who has extreme sensitivity to where even passionately kissing someone for too long causes her body to overheat.
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