The original post: /r/television by /u/AporiaParadox on 2026-02-21 13:13:08+00:00.
Characters in TV shows often go through more crap in one episode than a normal person goes in a lifetime. So many horrible traumatic events that would traumatize most people for years. But in TV shows they don’t really want to deal with that so usually they’ll be fine by the next episode.
For example, Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation goes through a lot of shit, but because of the episodic nature of the show things that should be a big deal are mostly brushed off. He gets mindraped and turned into a machine by the Borg and forced to help murder thousands of people, he is put in the mind of another person and lives out several decades of life where he’s married with children and then is just returned back to his real life like nothing ever happened, he is tortured by Cardassians for several days… All of this stuff is brushed aside and by the next episode he’s back in command of the Enterprise no worse for wear outside of very occasional references.
So what other characters go through horrible traumatizing shit but they get over it way too fast?