Break the Cutie/Live-Action TV: Difference between revisions

** O'Neill losing his son really takes the cake, though.

* Randy Wagstaff of [[The Wire]]. {{spoiler|Starts out as a sweet, likeable kid trying to make the best of life in his surroundings but gets fucked over by Herc, causing him to be wrongfully branded a snitch. His house is burned down and his foster mother badly burned such that he has to go back to the group home, where takes numerous beatings from the other kids. By the next time he's seen, he become mean and violent just to survive.}}

** The next two season finales do arguably worse:

*** In ''Journey's End'', the Doctor has to literally wipe the mind of Donna Noble or risk having the Time Lord thoughts destroy her mind. She is not particularly pleased about this turn of events, and the Doctor is crushed by it too.

**** A madcap [[Bow Ties Are Cool|bow-tie]]-wearing, [[Nice Hat|hat-loving]] [[The Woobie|perma-Woobie]].

**** During the more [[Foe Yay|"serious"]] scenes between the Doctor and the Master, you can see the Master himself suffers this because of the drums. Suffers it horribly, in fact. Which means that ''everything the Master has ever done'' was the fault of {{spoiler|Rassilon and the Council}}; he started out as a completely normal child. Poor mad Master.

** In ''A Good Man Goes To War'', both Amy and the Doctor get pretty broken. First, {{spoiler|Amy gets her baby taken away, the baby she hadn't even known she was pregnant with until a month before; then, the Doctor saves her and Melody, only to realize that his entire plan has led them all into a massive trap. Melody is not really Melody but is Flesh!Melody, who then dissolves in Amy's arms. Amy, understandably, freaks out. The Doctor tries to hug her, but she won't let him. [[Tear Jerker|That broke him, hard.]] And then, just to pour salt into his open wound, River shows up and gives him an interestingly inverted version of a [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]] in which she tells him he's getting too good at what he does and becoming a mighty warrior, exactly the opposite of what he wanted, and because of this, it's his fault that Melody was taken. Ouch.}}

** There's a subversion with Rory. First his girlfriend snogs another bloke, next they get trapped in some creepy dream world where you can't tell fiction from reality, he discovers the happy home he's been building with Amy is all a big lie and dies while he's there, then he gets killed ''again'' before being erased from history, and to top it all off {{spoiler|his [[Tomato in The Mirror|Plastic Auton self who he somehow remembers being]] watches over an incredibly powerful reality altering box for two thousand years because his not quite dead yet girlfriend is stuck inside and he wants to stay there and protect her}}. And yet in spite of all this, he still comes out of it fighting.

*** And then [[It Got Worse|it gets worse]]. At the end of season five, Dean has to let his brother {{spoiler|[[Heroic Sacrifice|throw himself]] into hell to stop Lucifer,}} in season six, he {{spoiler|has to deal with [[Came Back Wrong|soulless Sam]], loses the family he'd always wanted,}} ''and then'' in season seven Dean has to deal with Sam going crazy and [[Eldritch Abomination|monsters]] they can't kill trying to eat the world {{spoiler|because his like-a-brother buddy Cas [[Jumped Off the Slippery Slope|betrayed them all]] [[Knight Templar|trying to save the world]], [[Moral Event Horizon|killed his angelic allies]], and [[Kick the Dog|broke Sam's mind]] before taking in [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|dangerous power]] that [[A God Am I|pushed him over the edge]] and released those monsters.}} Just when it seems like Dean has lost nearly everything and everyone, {{spoiler|with Bobby dead, Cas apparently dead, and Sam dying because of his memories of hell, Cas returns only to sacrifice his mind to save Sam's.}}

** Sam Winchester got broken down courtesy of having a demon infect him with its blood, his mother die because of him, having a crappy childhood/life, his father disown him, his girlfriend die just to set him on the path to evil, having demonic powers, having his father die, and having to watch his brother break down before his eyes and then pretty much commit suicide for him ''and then'' be killed in a hundred different ways '''''and then''''' get ripped apart by hellhounds.<br /><br />Over half of that was a [[Corrupt the Cutie]] plot aimed ''directly at Sam'', which pretty much ''worked''--at least to the extent that they managed to [[Despair Event Horizon|manipulate]] [[Unwitting Pawn|him]] into alienating his resurrected brother and doing [[The End of the World As We Know It|exactly what]] [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|the bad guys wanted]]. Then he began a [[Redemption Quest]] to [[Must Make Amends|prevent Lucifer from razing the world]] by taking him back to hell, and even his brother didn't believe in him. [[Be All My Sins Remembered|Not that Sam believed in himself either]].

** We can now add John to this list. Once upon a time, he was a naive, innocent, sweet little himbo and look what happened to him. But unlike his sons, who have been broken slowly and horribly over the past few seasons due to numerous events, he just snapped from the one event (his wife dying) and became the borderline abusive, jerkass parent who was so at the end of his rope that he committed suicide for Dean in the most self-righteous way possible.

** Castiel now qualifies. Oh, how cute, a good little soldier angel that loves his daddy (God), gets nervous around whores, thinks humans are God's works of art, and he just made some new friends (Sam & Dean)! Here's what we'll do: Have his brother murder and corrupt his garrison, then turn on him too; rip him out of his vessel so he can be ''taught a lesson'' (No, you may ''not'' be friends with Dean!); force him to choose between Heaven and mankind; have his brother smite him to death; resurrect him with most of his powers gone (not particularly helpful in the middle of the apocalypse); then he spends nearly an entire season searching for God (for help, for guidance), only to find out that his daddy doesn't care about him and won't help {{spoiler|cue Cas drinking an entire bottle shop... understandably}}; then we have Dean surrender to the angels, essentially throwing all of Castiel's efforts and friendship back in his face. {{spoiler|cue Cas beating the living crap out of Dean in a back alley... again, understandably}}

*** {{spoiler|Because of Earth, could be applied to the entire fleet.}}

**** {{spoiler|According to the [[Word of God]] , as handed out in the weekly podcasts by the Executive Producer, the Earth arc is intended to be a [[Break the Cutie]] for the ''audience''.}}

** One Name: Cally. Shown as the cute deck hand and gofer girl to the chief, she stays cute and relatively innocent (like Kaylee from ''[[Firefly (TV)|Firefly]]'') up to Kobol and from there takes worse. {{spoiler|It wasn't too bad until Nikki started playing up, her marriage was falling apart (like all bsg ones seem to) Then she tried to commit suicide but was murdered instead. This was one uber woobie moment.}}

* Happens in a completely mundane, underplayed, and painful way to Peggy Olsen on ''[[Mad Men]]''. In the pilot, she's tiny, wide-eyed, hopeful, and naive; since then, she's had a disastrous affair with a [[Jerkass]] coworker (which he initiated just days before his wedding), been mocked and sexually harassed on an hourly basis, and {{spoiler|gotten pregnant, denied it ''until she went into labor'', been declared an unfit mother, and been forced to hand the kid over. Then her boss came and told her to just go on pretending it'd never happened. Yeah, that'll work.}} Granted, she's made some great strides on the career front, and become miles more confident than she was in the pilot, but... to sum it up in one heartbreaking word? Playgrounds.

** President Allison Taylor began her run in ''24: Redemption'' as an idealistic President-Elect who won by a landslide. Since then, her son was murdered, Dubaku corrupted every department of her government, Juma landed on US soil, she was taken hostage, a bomb went off in the White House, her husband was shot and almost killed, the infrastructure of the entire United States was breached, two planes were crashed into each other just outside her window, a biochemical plant was just barely not blown up, her Chief of Staff resigned, she hired her manipulative bitch of a daughter to replace him, her Secretary of State quit, Juma's forces slaughtered most of the Secret Service, Senator Mayer and his traitorous Chief of Staff were murdered (by Jack Bauer, except not), she almost got into a civil war with Starkwood, her daughter also wound up going to Prison for having {{spoiler|Jonas Hodges (Starkwoods boss)}} killed, and her husband divorced her because of it.

*** [[It Gets Worse]] in Day 8, in which a peace on which she had built her entire administration implodes and her own inner circle turns against her, leaving her with precisely two people she can truly trust that aren't CTU - Secretary of Homeland Security Tim Woods and Secretary of State Ethan Kanin. Not to mention all the other things that go wrong. Poor, poor Allison has had some really godawful days in the first two years of her administration...

* ''[[Smallville]]'', end of S7 and so far all of S8, seems to be doing this with Chloe Sullivan. Fired, wedding ruined by Doomsday's attack, marriage ruined by her manipulation by Doomsday, new friend and one ray of sunshine in this mire is a serial killer. She actually had a [[Lampshade Hanging]] moment at her birthday party when she recounted much of what is listed previously (and more), but it was dropped somewhat by the end of the episode.

** The series began by breaking three year old Lana while in her fairy princess costume. Every so often we hear about the hole in her heart where her parents used to be.

* Any number of characters in ''[[Eastenders]]'', although Aidan Brosnan (promising young footballer to homeless drug addict) and Zoe Slater (statuesque beauty to murdering drug-addled prostitute) spring to mind. And we won't even mention what they did to poor bloody Joe Wicks.

* Gabrielle in [[Xena: Warrior Princess]]. The loss of blood virginity (killing someone), non-consensual impregnation by an immortal, having to kill her own daughter, domestic violence, killing her daughter (again) and grandson, crucifixion, killing an innocent teenager, and the death of her partner.

* Serial killers Mr. Yang and Mr. Yin attempt to break Shawn in [[Psych]]. In the season three finale Yang kidnaps a waitress, and sends Shawn a series of taunting clues warning that is Shawn does not solve them the girl will be killed. Yang then abducts Shawn's mother and straps her with explosives. Shawn realizes that Yang was watching him the entire time and was even in his office, which scares him. In the season four finale, Yang's partner Mr. Yin emerges and sets his sights on Shawn as well. Yin kills two people before kidnapping Shawn's longtime crush Detective Juliet O'Hara and his childhood sweetheart Abigail. Yin arranges for both girls to be killed, and calls Shawn with the information that he has time to save only one girl and that he must choose who means more to him. Shawn chooses to save Abigail; Juliet is saved by Detective Lassiter. When Shawn arrives to rescue Abigail, he finds himself face to face with Yin - he must let Yin go in order to get to Abigail in time. Losing Yin clearly shakes Shawn, as does his guilt at nearly sacrificing Juliet. It's hard to say if this will have any lasting effect, given the nature of the show, but since Yin is still at large Shawn will likely face him again in the future.

** Shawn is also shot, kidnapped, and held in a trunk in the episode "Shawn Takes a Shot in the Dark."

* [[The Woobie|Seira]] from [[Shokojo Sera]], a Japanese drama based on [[A Little Princess]]. She had always been [[Nice to The Waiter|kind]] to everyone around her, whether they are poor or rich. But when her father [[Parental Abandonment|dies]], nearly everyone at the school set the wolves on her. From making her into a servant and taking every opportunity to announce her displeasure of Seira ([[Sadist Teacher|Mimura Chieko]] the school director) to treating Seira like crap and [[Kick the Dog|shooting down]] every attempt Seira tries to please them (the chef and his wife) to making snide remarks every time Seira was in the same room as her, even going as far as to [[Moral Event Horizon|throw tomatoes]] at Seira when she was practically on the floor, admitting defeat ([[Rich Bitch]] Maria).

* After he went to jail, [[Johnny Depp|Tom Hanson]] was a lot darker of a character in [[21 Jump Street]]

* Played with in a season two episode of [[Queer As Folk|Queer as Folk]], when they have some sort of annual "fun for the whole family" day at Michael's job, and the newest employee have to stand all day, dressed up as a clown, handing out balloons to the children.

{{quote| '''Michael:''' So who's the victim this year?<br />