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

* Niles Crane on ''[[Frasier]]'', in stark contrast to his (and Frasier's) frequent, minor, [[Played for Laughs]] [[Break the Haughty]] moments, get ''several'' of these. Ignoring his [[Trauma Conga Line]] of [[The Woobie|smaller bouts of torture]]: he seems to already be broken by his mother's death, Frasier's long absence, and a stifling, emotionally-abusive marriage at the series' beginning and gets ground into progressively smaller pieces by the latter during the first two seasons. Then his marriage falls apart and he manages to build himself up again, but Daphne, with whom he is smitten, is utterly oblivious to his feelings and unknowingly shatters his heart over and over. Devastated by this, he eventually gives up and then naively returns to his unstable, [[Jerkass]] wife after she "promises" that she'll treat him better this time, only for her to turn around and cheat on him with their marriage counselor weeks later. He eventually pulls himself up by the bootstraps, but then, after he rejects his wife's offer to reconcile again, she tears up their unsigned divorce settlement and proceeds to slowly torture and financially ruin him over several months. Then, when he finally gets rescued from Maris by a savvy divorce lawyer and is about to put his life back together, said lawyer immediately starts dating Daphne, and ''then'' broken once more, he flees into the arms of a manipulative carbon-copy of his ex-wife...etc, etc, etc...Thankfully though, this all turns out to be an [[Earn Your Happy Ending]], as Daphne falls in love with him, and heals him after [[They Do]].

* The critiques, especially from Randy Jackson, after Haley Reinhart's first performance in Top 4 week of ''[[American Idol]]'' Season 10. [[It Got Worse]] after the round was over and Ryan Seacrest called the four finalists out for an overall Round 1 assessment. To top it off, they ruined the surprise of what she was wearing for her second performance (which epitomized [[Crowning Music of Awesome]] and showed that the "breaking" didn't quite work). Nigel Lythgoe couldn't have scripted it better...oh, wait...he admitted that he DID script it that way!

** Not to mention being told by the man thought to be her father {{spoiler|that part of the reason for him leaving him was her deafness. Especially after being by Regina told that was the reason him leaving your entire life. Only for Regina to change her views about that to Daphne when Angelo came back.}}

* Several characters on ''[[Breaking Bad]]'', but most notable among them Jesse. While he didn't exactly start as the most idealistic person, he was getting by making sub-par meth and his worst experiences were a few arrests. Since agreeing to partner with Walt, however, he's inadvertently gotten his girlfriend hooked onto drugs again, leading to her death; seen several other people die in front of him, most of them pretty brutally; and killed a decent man in cold blood on Walt's orders to prevent Gus from killing Walt. At times it seems the writers' main goal is to come up with new ways to break Jesse even further.