Karma Houdini/Live Action TV

• Laura Collins in Dark Shadows, a phoenix-like being who appears every hundred years and then burns herself to death, preferring to take any offspring with her. She's prevented from killing her son David, but still presumably goes on to try again every hundred years.
• Happens on at least two occasions in Star Trek: Voyager: Both the Akritirians in "The Chute" and the unnamed alien from "Persistence of Vision" come off none the worse for their crimes.
  • Actually, there are countless examples in Voyager (and a few other of the later Trek series) of villains being let off with, at most, a severe telling off or minor setback. One of the most obvious examples is Verin in "Friendship One" who murders a popular recurring character in cold blood and gets off scot free at the end. Well, okay, he gets deposed (although even that's ambiguous) but he still gets cured of radiation poisoning and lives out a long and happy life.
  • The Viidians who stole Neelix's lungs. Janeway catches them, but then lets them go with a warning... and with the lungs.
  • Their second appearance is even worse: They abduct three crewmembers, experiment on one, use them all as slave workers and murder one of them (the non-regular) and Janeway's response? Grab the ones that are left alive and make a run for it, leaving several other guest characters, including one that provided incidental help to the crew, behind as slaves.
• Several of the defendants on Law and Order manage to wriggle out of well-deserved punishments. Not uncoincidentally, most of those who do are filthy rich. Truth in Television, sadly. Though the show would sometimes push the Rule of Drama to ensure a complete victory, where the exonerated defendant would've been professionally and socially wrecked in real life ("Seed" and "Black Tie" are glaring examples of this).
  • SVU doesn't let this happen often. If a criminal does get off, they're going to have a Vigilante Execution performed on them five seconds later.
    • Actually, it does happen in SVU. Usually with rich folk as well. Perhaps not as common as the other L&O's, but it does happen plenty of times. In "Sick", for example, Billy Tripley, a rich pedophile isn't punished because the other villains' actions make the case impossible to prosecute. The episode actually ends with the frustrated squad vowing to get him eventually, but the story was never revisited.
      • This, thankfully, doesn't apply to the episodes other villains. The dad of the first real victim is sent to jail for witness tampering, so he's unable to enjoy the money he made off of his sons molestation, and the grandmother of the "second victim", who not only ruined the case by lying about her granddaughter's molestation, but had been keeping her sick to the point where she literally had only a month to live, is charged with fraud and attempted murder.
    • A good (and not rich) SVU example is Darius. He sets up The Plan to seek revenge on his family and ensure that he gets away with at least one murder. He still fully expects to go to jail, but he knows he won't get nearly as much time as he should. In the end he is found not guilty and walks away scot-free. That said, it was a Pyhrric Victory, as revelations from the trial - namely that Darius was a product of father/daughter rape - left Darius even more emotionally screwed up than before.
• Harmony, the soulless vampire from Angel has killed people, and even betrays Angel in the end. But since she was so predictable about it and useful in an Affably Evil way, he not only let her go but types up a written letter of recommendation. (She was his secretary.)
  • A far worse example from the Buffyverse would be Drusilla. Even after killing slayer Kendra and forcibly turning Darla into a vampire again, she was never staked and is still at large as both series closed.
  • Russel Winters in the Angel pilot "City Of..." openly brags about being a Karma Houdini who can, as he puts it, "do whatever I want". Then Angel asks him "Can you fly?" Unlike some movie vampires, he can't, especially not in the sunlight.
  • Andrew Wells is an arguable example. His list of crimes include being a willing member of Warren's Trio in Season 6, being willing to abandon Jonathan in one scheme, denying any responsibility throughout the whole arc, and stabbing Jonathan in the back in Season 7 in a ritual that could have unleashed a caveman vampire apocalypse if Jonathan hadn't been anemic. He was tricked into doing this though. But while he doesn't suffer much direct punishment for it, he is forced to confront what he did by Buffy and feels horrible about it, and he works to redeem himself by helping the crew against The First Evil in whatever way he can.
  • Willow - she murdered Warren by skinning him alive, tried to kill Andrew and Jonathan despite them not being involved in Tara's death, as well as casually killing a warlock who sold her magic, then tried to destroy the world. She was being influenced by dark magic at the time, but then, she absorbed it on purpose. Her punishment? A couple months in England learning to better use her world-destroying powers.
  • A really interesting example is The First Evil. Being incorporeal and essentially a force of nature, it actually cannot be defeated. The only thing the Scoobies were able to do was to destroy the Hellmouth, eliminating The First Evil's army, but not The First itself. Oh well.
  • Spike. He is more popular than the rest of the characters combined and people tend to forgive him everything, but he is arguably the most blatant example of this trope in the entire Buffyverse. Even before he was chipped Buffy let him walk away a few times for no reason (like in the episode "Halloween"). Then he gets chipped and everyone is suddenly trusting this chip literally with their lives, never mind that the organization that made it soon proved to be both evil and incompetent. Willow actually comforts Spike for his "impotence" - i.e. the inability to kill her! He starts killing people once more (against his will) in Season 7 - Buffy's reaction is "He must be being framed". Whatever, "Slayer"...
    • Spike wasn't allowed to walk away in 'Halloween', he ran. Buffy chose not to pursue, but given that they had a roomful of small kids who needed an escort home across Sunnydale late at night, her decision to stick with them is understandable.
  • Anya's centuries of killing men at the wishes of scorned women is ignored by the main cast, despite her open desire to return to her demonic identity after becoming human and putting several lives at risk pursuing it. Though this helped by the fact that for the most part, when she became human, she stopped killing humans. Falling in love with Xander helped cement her as an ally among the Scoobies. Ultimately, she was killed by a Bringer while helping to save the world.
  • The protagonists go through considerable trouble to make vampire Willow into one of these. Even after she tries to murder dozens of innocent people succeeding with few, the Scooby gang just let her leave back to her own world, even giving goodbye hugs and advice "try not to kill people". The hand of karma is swift in her case, as she gets staked seconds after her return, but not for the lack of trying.
  • Wolfram and Hart is the last example of this from the spin-off series Angel. Despite the horrors they commit, the Armageddon they have planned, the misery and devastation they have sowed, all of the team's efforts are only enough to inconvenience them, leading to a Bolivian Army Ending. To be clear, this refers to the Senior Partners and the organization as a whole, not individual employees. Almost every single evil employee ended up paying for their actions in one way or another.
• In the M* A* S* H series, the exit story of Major Frank Burns is so horrible - for everybody save himself. After acting as the ultimate jerk for five seasons, he got promoted and got his own command - stateside!!!
  • Amusingly, the exit story of Major Burns in the book and movie is also an example of sorts, in the other direction. After Hawkeye, Trapper, and Duke pester him into flipping out and trying to kill them, Major Burns gets hauled away in a straitjacket. After that, Colonel Blake calls them in, tells them flat out that he knows what they did, but the only disciplinary action he's going to give them is not making Trapper chief surgeon for another week because it would look bad. Mostly because he can't afford to lose more people who actually know what they're doing, granted...
    • One of the protagonists (either Hawkeye or Duke, depending on the version of the event) asks if he can go home if he has sex with Hot Lips and punches out Trapper.
• Foyle's War is one of the ultimate sources of this trope; set during the Second World War, many of the murderers and criminals Foyle exposes are also somehow essential to the British war effort, and thus manage to wriggle out of punishment entirely and literally get away with murder. In some cases, the British government actually actively helps them escape justice. This actually prompts Foyle to quit at the end of the fifth season, frustrated that too many people escape justice and use the war as an excuse.
  • Neatly played with in one episode - the murderer, a prominent American businessman, manages to escape punishment because he is an essential figure in a movement to eventually bring the United States into the Second World War. Before he leaves for America, Foyle comes to see him off. The businessman gloatingly triumphs over Foyle, but is quickly cut down to size when Foyle informs him that he's only postponing justice, not escaping it; he's free because of the war, but the war will end one day, and when it does he'll still be a proven murderer - and Foyle will bring him to justice then.
    • And the last episode of the series, does indeed end with Foyle boarding a ship headed for post-war America.
  • And subverted in the first episode, in which the killer expects that Foyle will let him go because his work is essential to Britain's code-breaking efforts. Foyle arrests him anyway, reasoning that this isn't Nazi Germany and he doesn't get to decide who gets away with murder because of how important/vital they are.
  • Of course, this is largely an example of Truth in Television. Many Nazi scientists, notably Wernher von Braun, were pardoned by both sides of the Cold War in return for their expertise.
• Colonel Maybourne in Stargate SG-1. Initially introduced as a corrupt shadowy figure and the primary opponent of the SGC on Earth, he quickly suffered Flanderization and finally, after facing a court martial, fleeing to Russia and leaking information about the Stargate program, being brought back, facing a death sentence, being taken out of prison by O'Neill, being put back, escaping, helping SG-1, tricking SG-1 into taking him off-world, being brought back and then exiled by the Tok'ra... he eventually led a primitive nation claiming to be a prophet. And then, even after his deception was exposed (by SG-1, of course), his people left their "King Arkhan I" in power anyway.
  • To be fair, Maybourne turned out to be a pretty decent king anyways, and he wasn't "exposed" by SG-1; he confessed and apologized for lying. His people still served him because apparently he was a good king, despite lying.
  • It is implied that he's not that evil and generally wants to help the planet too. (Example: "Foothold") Even at his slimiest, his opposition to the SGC never appeared to be personal, whereas Simmons and Kinsey gave the impression that while they did think their ideas were sound, they also just wanted to belittle and hurt SG-1.
  • And Jack did get to shoot him before he got shipped off to the Tok'ra.
  • It helps that Maybourne went from being a cowardly Jerkass and Obstructive Bureaucrat to being an amusing Lovable Traitor that hedges into Magnificent Bastard territory. Besides, next to Simmons, Maybourne is positively cuddly.
• The titular Dexter averts this trope. His victims are would be Karma Houdinis, except Dexter gets 'em. Dexter himself (at least for season 1) seems pretty Houdinistic, though.
  • At least until he's forced to kill his own brother, his friend and the only person who understands him. Karmas a bitch.
    • And then when his wife is murdered just as he's finally getting in touch with his humanity, leaving him as a single parent. Dexter may have actually endured more than his share of karma.
• The TV adaptation of House of Cards (British series) switches out the book's ending of a redemptive suicide for the Magnificent Bastard Francis Urquhart, in exchange for his murdering the unlikely love interest, and going on to be Prime Minister for two more series.
  • The author tried again in the sequel; in the novel To Play the King, Urquhart is Prime Minister but is still ultimately defeated at the end. In the TV adaptation, Urquhart comes out unquestionably on top.
  • And curiously, the positions were reversed in the final installment, The Final Cut; in both, Urquhart is assassinated, but in the TV adaptation Urquhart's fate is portrayed as being entirely out of his hands and stage-managed by his wife and bodyguard, thus rendering Urquhart impotent and powerless against forces outside of his control. In the novel, however, Urquhart is aware of what is happening but knowingly meets his fate in order to secure his enduring legacy, thus proving his Magnificent Bastardness without doubt by allowing him to have the last laugh against his critics and enemies by ending his life on his own terms and, for all his sins, as a much-beloved and admired martyr.
• Subverted in The Wire: After everything he's been responsible for over the last three seasons, Marlo avoids a jail sentence entirely and gets to keep all his money and connections, with the seemingly minor stipulation that he's not allowed to return to dealing drugs on the streets...but it turns out that he can't imagine any other life, so this is actually a fitting punishment for him.
  • Played straight with Stan Valchek, the most useless and venal character in a useless and venal hierarchy.
  • Scott Templeton. Despite the fact that he fabricated quotes and information about the supposed serial killer roaming around Baltimore in season five, and even though almost everyone involved knows he's lying (McNulty asks how the lie will benefit Templeton in the end, and it's implied the Baltimore Sun brass know what he did but are intentionally looking the other way), he not only gets away with it but receives a prestigious award for his work.
  • The Wire seems to be 50/50 with its Karma victims. While the above is probably the best example for the series, there are numerous other complete bastards (criminal or otherwise) who get away scot free. Life goes on, presumably is the message.
• Unsurprisingly, Sheriff Buck of American Gothic is a Karma Houdini for the entire run of the series. Among the most notable things he gets away with are: killing Merlyn Temple in the very first episode and blackmailing his failed Bastard Understudy Ben Healy to keep quiet about it; imprisoning, torturing, and eventually causing the death by neglect of an out-of-town reporter (complete with removing from his belongings the evidence that might convict Buck of various crimes, all while Dr. Matt and Gail look on helplessly); tormenting Dr. Matt about his alcoholism, nearly getting him expelled at the hospital due to his tragic past, and eventually setting him up to look like an insane vigilante so he could be locked up in a mental ward; manipulating Gage Temple into killing Gail's parents (from which he escapes only by revealing to her how awful her parents really were); and summoning the spirit of the Boston Strangler to kill Merlyn (only to have him go after Gail as well). He even seems to win at the end of the series. This would be enough to constitute a Downer Ending and a reason to wash your hands of the show, if not for the suitably vague ending, which implies the victory might not be all it seems, and how deliciously this Magnificent Bastard pulls most of this off.
• HBO's Oz, being tilted toward the cynical side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, had several unrepentant criminals escape any kind of justice for their evil deeds. Notably, Jason Cramer got his murder rap overturned (he'd decapitated his lover and mailed the guy's body via FedEx) and waltzed out of the prison scott-free.
  • Conversely, genuinely repentant Miguel Alvarez runs afoul of the vindictive head of the parole board who tells him to his face that he will never be paroled though they will continue to go through the motions every year.
• Sylar on Heroes. His continued survival defeats the entire purpose of the first season arc, there are newer and better villains on the show such as Adam Monroe, and the only person who seems to think that his presence continues to be necessary is creator Tim Kring. Fans in general are sick of him and his continued survival. In the third season premiere he obtained Claire's power without killing her - admittedly when Sylar got her power in the alternate timeline of season one's "Five Years Gone" we never saw her dead,^[1] but it still kind of makes the whole "save the cheerleader, save the world" thing a little pointless.
  • Also, he had some ability (Empathic Mimicry) used on him that forced him to feel all the pain he's caused other people. Which is a lot. Sure, he's not dead, but he's definitely suffered for his crimes.
    • Doesn't count. He doesn't suffer permanent consequences, and is right back to being, well, Sylar.
    • He didn't have an ability used on him. It was revealed that he had ANOTHER ability that allowed him to copy a person's powers through empathy, like his nemesis Peter Petrelli. And since he immediately started using THAT ability to steal powers in a more subtle way when he had to, it REALLY doesn't count. Particularly since they're now ignoring the pain he is supposed to feel from using that power that way.
  • It became a full blown Shaggy Dog Story in Chapter Three (first half of Season 3) when Sylar discovered he had the ability to steal powers through Empathy AND through cutting people's heads open to look at their brains, trying to reform and getting a girlfriend. Then we had a nonsensical flashback episode which dismissed any culpability Sylar had for any of his past crimes since he was pushed into killing more people by his current girlfriend (Elle Bishop) and by Noah "HRG" Bennet. Of course all of this was Ret Conned by the end of the chapter and Sylar killed Elle, went back to his wicked ways with even MORE power and was dead for about five minutes before being brought back, fresh as a daisy for Chapter 4
  • And then Sylar received full-blown Joker Immunity in Chapter Four (second half of Season 3) when he suddenly went back to his Season One motivation of wanting to be the most special person in the world and/or President of the USA after spending half the season angsting over his biological father. Newly motivated, he picked up even more superpowers, gaining the ability to become anyone using a combination of shape-shifting and the power to instantly learn the history of anything and anyone by touching them. He somehow convinced the violent, anti-social and anti-mutant government-sponsored assassin heading the US Government's "specials containment team" to partner up with him.
    • And even though his plan ultimately failed, Sylar was STILL saved after the two most manipulative planners on the show (Noah Bennet and Angela Petrelli) proved unable to think of any better plan to disable the government's anti-mutant programs than to try and convince Matt Parkman (one of the last people in the world who should have any sympathy for Sylar) to use his telepathic powers to make Sylar think he is a now deceased Nathan Petrelli. Which, of course, doesn't last. In the next season, after he's gotten his identity back and acquired yet another new motivation, Matt traps him in a Year Inside, Hour Outside nightmare and has very nearly permanently sealed him behind a wall in his basement when Peter of all people saves him. The nightmare allows him to go through years of Character Development, win Peter's forgiveness, and still have time to help save the day from the Big Bad and become a hero. And then the show is canceled.
• Despite his Heel Face Turn, Paul Kellerman from Prison Break arguably has too much blood in his past to deserve what is probably one of the sweetest ends a character from that series can get, and this is without having needed to go through nearly as much adversity as the rest of the cast.
  • T-Bag also counts. While he may not have gotten the "classy" end that he really wanted, the fact remains that almost all of his villainous peers got what's coming to them in one form or another, while he gets to go back to the relative comfort of his Fox River lifestyle that he basked in the start of the series. The fact that he ultimately outlives Michael Scofield is a testament to this injustice.
    • Actually, T-Bag had it pretty rough throughout the show. He gets beaten up twice by Abruzzi's henchmen, his hand is hacked off and he's left to die, his plan of Becoming the Mask with his Cole Pfeiffer identity blows up in his face and in the end he's the only one to get sent back to prison. For life. And sees someone reading a GATES book reminding him of Cole Pfeiffer. He may not have died like others, but he didn't get away with anything.
• In Babylon 5 the Vorlons and the Shadows spent thousands - possibly millions - of years manipulating the younger races into fighting their ideological war. Both were willing to (and did!) wipe out entire planets of civilians just to marginally weaken the other's position. And in the end... they get to leave the galaxy and happily reunite with the other First Ones. And they don't even have to clean up any of the messes they made first!
  • Also the Minbari, who launch a genocidal war that nearly wipes out humanity only to go all, "Oops, sorry about that," and stop just before frying Earth. Delenn too, for casting the deciding vote that starts the war in the first place.
    • The Minbari weren't really apologetic or remorseful at all, since they stopped the war because they discovered that Minbari souls were being reincarnated into humans. Without that, they would've marched right on to Earth. But what stopped the war was arguably Karmic in the sense that the Minbari discovered that they'd basically killed a whole bunch of their own. But as a whole, they didn't even do that. Only a handful were informed.
    • The Minbari were definitely regretful of their actions. In the prequel movie, even the most hard-lined warrior caste leader is forced to admit that he's begun to loathe the one-sided war, and wishes only that it would be over, in one way or another.
    • Bear in mind that the Minbari surrendered to the Earth Alliance when they stopped at the end of the war, and would have had to accept whatever penalties or restitutions (within reason) that the Earthlings chose to impose on them.
• In season 2 of Degrassi the Next Generation, Paige raped by Dean. After several incidents where he taunts her about the ordeal, she presses charges against him, but the trial doesn't take place until season 4. However, Dean is found not guilty due to the lack of evidence. Paige gets a small measure of revenge by wrecking Dean's car by deliberately crashing Spinner's car into it.
  • Unfortunately, this is a case of Truth in Television, as it is rather rare for a rape victim to see their rapist get convicted.
• Jean Paul in The West Wing. Introduced in season four as Zoe's new boyfriend from France, he spends a lot of it acting like a smug rich bastard. Things get taken up a notch in the season's second to last episode, when he slips Zoe a roofie after her graduation, either part of his genius plan to date rape the president's daughter, or to aid terrorists that later kidnap her. After he's nearly beaten to within a inch of his life by an enraged Charlie, he's never seen again after, besides a brief mention that he's stonewalling the authorities with info about his dealer, or possible connection to the terrorists. This may be due to Aaron Sorkin leaving the show, and the new producer trying to avoid his old storylines.
• Servalan in Blake's 7, presumably.
• In Doctor Who, back in the first season, (as in, the first first season) when they drop in on The Aztecs, the Bad Priest ends up in charge and the Good Priest is exiled. Also, the Doctor's girlfriend gets her heart broken...
  • In Let's Kill Hitler we meet a group dedicated to punishing these. They travel to the end of a war criminal's established timeline and torture them to death. Ironically, they become Karma Houdinis themselves.
  • A few episodes have had the classic horror-movie "that creature is no threat to us!" character who immediately gets eaten or whatever, but often the Doctor saves the contrarians along with everyone else. The 2007 Christmas special "Voyage of the Damned" subverts it with a plot where nearly every likable character dies, but rude, unhelpful, selfish coward Rickston Slade not only survives the disaster, but turns out to have financially benefited from it. One character even comments on this to the Doctor, saying it's not fair, but you can't choose who lives and who dies.
• Denise in the Torchwood' miniseries Children of Earth. The politician who suggested that the elite protect their own and select the lowest achieving schools gets to be in charge at the end.
  • Though by taking over, Denise is denying this status to Prime Minister Green (the guy who willing and quickly agreed to sell out ten percent of the world's children, ordered his loyalist employee to hand over his own children for the sake of the cover up - leading to said employee's familicide/suicide - and attempted to blame everything on the Americans). So, it's a glass half-empty sort of situation.
  • The people in the episode "Meat" who were harvesting the meat of a live alien. They cut off slabs of the alien's meat while the alien was still alive just so that they could profit from it. Their punishment? They had their memories erased and were allowed to return to their normal lives. As Jack remarks, what else could they do?
• Nip Tuck: The Carver, a masked serial rapist who disfigures his victims after raping them, and even once kills a woman. Most of the third season revolved around catching the Carver. The Carver's last appearance was lounging around on a beach with his girlfriend/sister, looking for their next victim.
• Megan on Drake and Josh. Just one reason many fans hate her guts. Treated her brothers like crap. Managed to hide evidence when Drake and Josh almost got her. Blackmail all over the place. Tricks her parents. Her pranks (which is a 'soft' word for the stuff she inflicts on them) almost always end with her brothers in trouble. When she was exposed in one episode, nothing happened.
  • Dan Schneider apparently loves this type of character. Currently, we have Sam in iCarly and Jade in Victorious." Neither of which seem to ever get any kind of retribution despite slowly becoming more and more horrible as time goes on. Sam at least, seems to be frequently put in detention or arrested, but that happens too frequently, she actually seems proud of it. Jade, on the other hand, doesn't seem to even get that.
• CSI had an episode dealing with the murder of an unpleasant TV star, where the CSIs figure out the murderer is another actress on the show. When confronted, however, the actress gives a Dangerously Genre Savvy speech about the crime show genre, and points out that the CSIs don't have any real evidence, and if they're hoping for her to panic and confess based on their circumstantial evidence then they're highly mistaken. She then walks away scott free, with the closing line being Brass telling Grissom "Forget it Grissom, it's Burbank." The whole episode was one big in-joke about TV shows in general.
• In the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica Reimagined, Gaius Baltar managed to avoid truly paying for his numerous crimes (his part in the complete destruction of the Twelve Colonies for starters), despite him continuing to act in such a way that ensures the viewer fantasies about pummeling the shifty little bastard. It doesn't really help that he gets an implausible amount of sex from practically every woman in the show (Laura Roslin being an honorable exception) despite being an all-around weasel. He then manages to become the president of the fracking colonies despite the extremely noticeable handicap of wandering the halls talking to himself. Lets not even mention the religious cult set up around him by, you guessed it, hot young women. The man even manages to get a Happily Ever After with Caprica!Six in the Grand Finale.
  • Then there is Caprica-Six herself. Baltar started out only knowing that he was guilty of letting a hot blonde spy poke around illicitly in the Defense Mainframe to give her company an edge. Six knew that her actions would lead to untold deaths. She was obviously conflicted, hence mercy-killing that baby in the marketplace, but still went through with it. Her attempt to make up for it failed spectacularly on New Caprica, leading to even more human suffering, though Cavil and Tigh shoulder a lot of the blame for that. She gets to spend life on Earth as a farmer with Baltar and his dreamy hair.
  • Cavil/One qualifies. Personally responsible for wiping out two entire Cylon lines (Daniel/Seven out of jealousy and D'Anna/Three because one of them was too close to remembering who the Final Five were and his role in why the other Skinjobs didn't remember). Instigated the Colonial Holocaust out of a twisted sense of justice for his Cylon ancestors. Not to mention the stuff he did to Ellen and Saul Tigh. His fate? Goes the gun-in-mouth route when an attempt at a truce goes pear-shaped, with only Ellen explicitly knowing the full story. And she never tells anyone else, on screen.
  • Kara "Starbuck" Thrace also counts, especially in Season 4. She causes Gaeta to lose his leg via Anders' gun because of a Leoben-inspired head trip ("Lets paint pretty pictures on the bulkhead while the crew mutters mutinously behind us!") and doesn't even have the decency to be sorry about it (or visit him in sickbay. Then again, almost no one does). She even mocks him about it later (well, in her defense, Gaeta is the one who starts the argument).
  • Oddly (given the character's history), Sharon Agathon in regards to her murder of Natalie. She does spend about an episode and a half in the brig, but that's hardly adequate punishment for the cold-blooded murder of an unarmed woman.
• A subversion worth mentioning occurs in My Name Is Earl. While making up for a bathroom robbery, Earl has to work at a fast food restaurant where the boss is a distinct Karma Houdini. He has a successful life, a beautiful devoted wife, a beautiful devoted mistress, many awards, and is successfully embezzling a fortune out of the store, whose employees he routinely tortures for petty mistakes. Earl is horrified that karma has not punished him yet, but is sure it will eventually. When it becomes apparent that karma is not going to punish him and he continues to push Earl's buttons, Earl snaps and punches him in the face, knocking him out. Karma swoops in and while he's in the hospital both women visit him at the same time and find out about each other. The wife destroys all his trophies and awards and in the process finds out about his embezzling and reports it, sending him to jail, and allowing the man Earl was trying to help in the first place, become the new manager and everybody is happy. Debatably, Karma was trying to teach Earl that he can't just rely on karma to fix everything all the time, but the only lesson Earl learned was that karma could use his fist as a weapon.
  • What's the difference?
• Benjamin Linus on Lost. His body count from "The Man Behind the Curtain" ALONE was at least a couple dozen, shot Locke and left him for dead in the same pit that the aforementioned dead bodies were unceremoniously dumped, and recently actually KILLED Locke (but he comes back to life). His punishment has been the occasional beating, but he's always been forgiven (somehow).
  • Beatings in Lost are the equivalent of a slap of the wrist, considering that many of the characters have died horrible, horrible deaths, some of which include being buried alive, blown up while holding sticks of dynamite, shot down with flaming arrows, presumably eaten by a mysterious smoky monster, being blown up in a massive tanker explosion, getting accidentally shot while being pretty, and getting blown up. For some reason, explosions tend to happen a lot on that island.
    • I think it's a mistake to discount the sheer amount and viciousness of the beatings Benjamin Linus received. One might argue that this is a perfect example of karmic retribution - the bad guy never escapes un-blooded by his victims. And from Season 4 onwards, he's faced much worse than beatings as a result of his villainy. His acknowledgment of these misfortunes as the just consequence of his evil deeds is part of his final Heel Face Turn and ultimate redemption. Notably, in The End, he is the one character who waits outside the church because he knows he has not yet earned his happy ending.
  • Principal Reynolds in Lost episode, "Dr. Linus" lets his school fall into disrepair, carries on an inappropriate relationship with the school nurse, and threatens to ruin Alex's future. He's not punished for any of this.
    • None of that really happened as it was all a dreamworld constructed by Ben Linus and the rest of the characters, a cosmic "waiting room" of sorts where they waited for the last of their friends to die before they all moved on to whatever comes next.
• George Hearst in Deadwood is a hair-tearing example of the historical figure type of this trope; he is a textbook Complete Monster who has anyone who stands in his way of obtaining gold extorted or murdered, and forces the town to sell pretty much everything to him. He does have a token comeuppance of losing Captain Turner, but he's a pretty heartless prick when it comes to people anyway. His last act is to demand the death of Trixie, a whore who tried to assassinate him. Al murders Jen instead because he loves Trixie and knows Hearst won't be able to tell the difference between the bodies. When satisfied, he rides out of the town that he owns onto his next conquest. Then the series ends.
• One Life to Live has Todd, whose rap sheet includes three separate rapes, multiple kidnappings, a bombing he tried to pin on someone else, setting another bomb at a police station, and baby theft. No, he's not in jail. And he's just got his kids back...
  • And then there's Cole, who had just barely turned 18 and was still in High School when he got high and caused a car crash that left the son of the police chief and the DA paraplegic (only for a few months, as it turned out) and got a slap-on-the-wrist rehab deal. This kid has a bright future ahead of him!
• Highlander the Series had an episode starring Joan Jett as an immortal named Felicia Martin on the run from a brutal hunter named Devereaux...it later turns out she's a remorseless murderer who, centuries earlier, killed Devereaux's wife and baby son. How does this end? She beheads the guy trying to avenge his family, reveals that to get someone's trust and murder their loved ones to throw them off their game is her MO and fights hero Duncan MacLeod. He wins...and spares her life at his idiot sidekick's request. She lives and we never hear from her again, despite immortals portrayed far more sympathetically losing their heads when they murder just one person as opposed to the hundreds Felicia has presumably slaughtered.
  • Other example: the immortal Kenneth, who appears 9 years old. His MO is getting people to take him in and beheading them when their guard is down. If anyone gets in his way, he murders them, human or no. After betraying just about everyone and attempting to kill the heroes...he gets threatened by his teacher/foster mother and waltzes out of town, no punishment. Granted, losing her hurts him, but still.
• The cops on Homicide: Life on the Street often had to watch murderers they brought in escape punishment. In the finale, another Karma Houdini goes free, and it's the last straw for Tim Bayliss, who resigns his commission and kills the criminal.
• On The League of Gentlemen, Hilary Briss escapes to the Caribbean with no punishment whatever for whatever it was he was doing, although the Big Damn Movie of vague canonicity eventually averts this with Redemption Equals Death). Similarly, we have Papa Lazarou, who never pays in the slightest for any of the horrifying stuff he did.
• Alpha from Dollhouse. He murdered a ton of people, rendered Ballard brain-dead and in the end Echo just lets him walk out? She should have just killed him then and there. That's the last we ever see of him. (Granted they may have been planning to resolve the Alpha plotline at a later time but couldn't because the show got canceled).
  • Echo couldn't bring herself to kill him knowing that he had Ballard inside him. He does show up again in "Epitaph Two: Return", having undergone a Heel Face Turn, but doesn't receive any comeuppance.
• The third Blackadder. Unlike the first, second, and fourth incarnations of him, he rarely gets the punishment the world's biggest Jerkass should. He often takes advantage of his boss and the Prince of Wales, George, to escape karma at the last minute, even going so far as assuming his identity in the season finale. The modern and distant future Blackadders take after the third.
  • Whilst not exactly a villain, nothing at all happens to Colonel 'Insanity' Melchett in Blackadder Goes Forth after all the other major characters (including Smug Snake Captain Darling) die in another attempted push.
• In the second season of Burn Notice,an entire episode revolves around trying to extradite a criminal bastard in exile back to Haiti so he can answer for his crimes. He looted the nation's treasury and fled into hiding. Halfway through the episode, we learn that his dead father, also a criminal and a thief, is nowhere near as dead as suspected, but also escaped into hiding. While the target is apprehended and shipped off to Haiti, his equally guilty partner stays in hiding in the states and it, apparently, never occurs to the heroes to ship HIM back for judgment as well.
• Demetrius Harris from Playmakers fits the bill. He implicates a person for murder that his friend committed, is a drug addict, dumps a girl at a hospital who is overdosing, and even steals pain medication from a cancer patient he is visiting. Yet he never sees the consequences of his actions and his transgressions are overlooked by the team owner, who wants him to be the face of the franchise.
• Yes Minister:

Hacker: In private industry, if you screw things up, you get the boot; in the civil service, if you screw things up, I get the boot.

• Mandy the assassin on 24. In her very first appearance, she blows up an airliner full of civilians, then follows it up by attempting to kill President Palmer (and almost succeeding) at the end of the second season. Then there's the video game, where Tony Almeida watches as she slashes the Governor of California's throat and walks off. She then goes on to execute a CTU field agent (and blow up an innocent couple in their car) in the fourth season before being subdued by Jack Bauer. Better yet, the government knows about all of her past crimes...so, what do they do? Give her full immunity for revealing Marwan's location. She gets to walk away scot-free. By the end of the series, she is the only recurring antagonist to remain at large.
  • There's also Jonathan, the assassin from season one. He's last seen fleeing the scene after Jack wrecks the initial attempt to kill Senator Palmer, and never mentioned again.
  • How about Miles Papazian in season 5? Not only did he impede Jack and Chloe several times, but he eventually switched sides to work for Charles Logan and helped him destroy evidence proving him responsible behind David Palmer's death that Jack had spent several episodes struggling to get, meaning he'd done it all for nothing. Miles then gets transferred to a nice new government job and the worst he gets is a slap in the face from his disgusted now-ex partner Karen Hayes.
• Lots of characters on Intelligence get away with their evil deeds, but Ted Altman is actually rewarded for his villainy as the series goes on.
• Creed from The Office, who confesses to the camera that he is a kleptomaniac and never gets called on his repeated theft of office supplies (among other things). When he fails in his quality assurance duties by letting slip through a large batch of printer paper with a dirty drawing on every page, he quickly finds a scapegoat in the paper manufacturer's employ and gets her fired, then collects gift money to help her out of this tough spot and pockets all the cash before throwing out the card without delivering it to her. He is seen on camera doing this but is never caught by anyone in either company.
  • He also gets temporarily promoted to interim manager after Dwight screws it up. Karma Houdini extrodinaire, ladies and gentleman.
• In The Monkees episode "The Picture Frame", the boys get off the hook for the robbery they were Film Felons for, but the real crooks aren't shown getting in trouble for it in the end.
• The Big Bad for the last quarter of season four of Chuck, Vivian Volkoff, is this. She's told she can meet with her father if she helps with a mission, but in the end Beckman doesn't hold up her end of the bargain. Most people would be pissed. Most people would also agree that taking over her father's company, hiring someone to blow up Castle, manipulating the team into retrieving a deadly weapon for her and then leaving them to die is a slight overreaction. After being told Chuck's parents were responsible for her father becoming Volkoff, she tries to kill Sarah to hurt Chuck. She hands over the cure in the end, but only after Chuck gives her a blank identity so that she can start a new life, meaning she not only suffers no retribution from Team Bartowski, but is guaranteed not to have to deal with any consequences from anyone else, either.
• Happens to several major villains from The Shadow Line. Gatehouse, Patterson, Jay Wratten, Ratallack and Lia Honey not only all remain at large at the end of the series, they're all in better positions than when they started and are ready to start over with a new incarnation of Counterpoint.
• While they're not villains at all (or even intentionally antagonistic), the kids from Outnumbered will generally get away with causing general mischief and chaos every episode. One of the bigger offenders is when Karen almost ruins a wedding.
• Leverage: Sterling. Never. Loses.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • Vulcan ambassador T'Pel who was really a Romulan spy called Sub-Commander Selok in "Data's Day".
• Lex Luthor in Smallville. It looked like Karma had finally caught up with him in Season 8, when Green Arrow blew him up, but as of the Grand Finale, he's been resurrected, regained all his old holdings, and is set to become President Evil at some point in the future.
• The dating service female head, after being arrested in The Mentalist, hints at the possibility that she'll be pardoned of murdering her husband in cold blood because her accomplice (who decided to testify against her after she made the mistake of admitting that she never cared for him) is unstable and thus not a verifiable source to her guilt.
• Drew Torres in the series "Degrassi" has a long list of offenses (blackmail and hate crime in his first appearance, cheating and several classic Jerkass moments) but rarely suffers any real consequence for that behavior. In fact, it's often the other characters around him that bear the brunt of the fallout from his misdeeds, including former teammates Riley and Zane, former girlfriends Alli and Bianca and even his own step-brother Adam. Drew has yet to apologize or try to make up for any of his crimes. The character Owen Milligan also qualifies by going from "evil" bully to romantic lead between seasons without explanation or punishment. Degrassi has a long history of complicated characters who often behave badly but in most cases it is part of their storyline and evolution of their character. However in these cases it appears to have no motivation save simple Fan Service.
• In the episode of A.N.T. Farm entitled " you're the one that I wANT." Lexi says to Fletcher that if she sabotages the play, everyone will suspect her, so she talks Fletcher into doing her dirty work. During the play, its Lexi who sabotages the play while operating the spotlight, in plain sight to everyone. Not only does she get away with it, no one seems to care who the culprit is.
  • She even says "this is worst news ever" with a smile on her face. Yet no one catches on.
  • However, she does mention getting rid of Chyna would be blamed on her, but getting rid of Jared would be blamed on Fletcher, even if she does it. But no blame is placed on Fletcher either. So they both are in this case.
• Mayor Worth from Black Scorpion is political example. Despite being the cause of most of the city's problems and the reason for most of its super villains, he remains free and the mayor. It's even lampshaded.

Darcy: "Doesn't matter what happens, he always survives."

• Averted on Criminal Minds 99% of the time; the main unsub of the episode has gotten away with it a grand total of once. Occasionally played straight with minor characters only tangentially related to the crime, however, a good example being the General Ripper responsible for the unsub's Start of Darkness in "Dorado Falls."
• The Argentine Los Exitosos Pells had a magnanimous writer: Happy Ending for all. For all the good guys, of course, but also for all the bad guys. The evil assistant who wanted to rule the TV channel got a TV channel for her own, the journalist who wanted to replace the news presenter of the channel is in charge of the new channel news program... and even the Corrupt Corporate Executive that was jailed. Last episode, the bad guy has been revealed as such, captured and held behind bars... the end? No! He was freed some months afterwards because of a legal technicism, and began a political career.
• Adelai "I Torture People to Death For Laughs" Niska in Firefly manages to escape from Serenity's vengeful crew in "War Stories", a fact they lampshade with Inara telling Mal, "I just wish you'd killed that old bastard." Of course, it's entirely possible that Joss Whedon intended for Niska to get his comeuppance later, but the show was Raped to Death By the Network before that could happen.
• In the Wonder Woman TV series, this happens a lot. If someone is participating in a crime and seems to not really want to do it, or better yet does anything to thwart the rest of the criminals, they will never be punished at the end for the crimes they committed. Also some villains escaped: Mariposa in Screaming Javelins, Count Cagliostro in Diana's Disappearing Act, and... Gault's brain in Gault's Brain
• This trope is most definitely in play when it comes to the wife, Debra, on Everybody Loves Raymond. While it's true that her mother-in-law Marie was smug towards her, there really was no justification for her to treat her husband Ray the way she did, subjecting him to physical and verbal abuse on many occasions in the mid-to-later seasons of the show. On one occasion, she's annoyed at him and shoves him at full force into a bunch of bookshelves, so hard that the books actually fall off the shelves. On another occasion, she's irritated at him for making a joke about her food, so she pours piping hot marinara sauce--right off the stove, mind you--onto Ray's crotch. But perhaps the worse was the episode where we learn that Debra actually encourages Ray's own kids to make fun of him behind his back and see him as less of an authority figure. Throughout all this, Ray always ends up being the one to be humiliated in every episode, and keeps coming back to Debra, who maintains a rather smug attitude, bragging about her supposed superiority to Ray on many occasions. Mind you, if the roles had been reversed, and Ray treated Debra the way she treats him, it clearly would not fly.
• Several visitors to Gilligan's Island who know all about the Castaways do nothing to help them get rescued, including the Mosquitoes, Wrong-Way Feldman and Harold Hecuba. Hecuba even steals their idea for a musical Hamlet. None of these people suffer the slightest retribution for their callous treatment of the seven castaways.
• Regina from Once Upon A Time definitely fits the trope. Doesn't matter what Emma or anyone else does, she comes out on top. Recent revelations suggest she was preemptively hit by Laser-Guided Karma, but at this point her karmic ledger is definitely in the red.
• Brittany on Glee. She cheats on Artie with Santana for months in season 2, yet Artie is the one portrayed as a villain after confronting her and calling her 'stupid'. In season 3, she releases flashy campaign posters for Kurt's school president race against his wishes, and then runs herself (and wins!) after he balks. This could be because she's Too Dumb To Live, though.
• Though she commits not one arson, murder, or jaywalking, ER's Jen Greene, the controlling harpy of a wife of protagonist Dr. Mark Greene, certainly qualifies. From close to the beginning she makes it clear that it's her way or the highway in the Greene household, threatening to leave Mark and take their daughter when he stands up to her for a little of what he wants. Then it comes out she's boinking her filthy rich law partner, following which she sues Mark for divorce, marries said filthy rich law partner, and proceeds to live a more comfortable life than Mark could in his wildest dreams. And as the final twist of the knife, it's heavily implied that after Mark's death she gets custody of the aforementioned daughter, whom she had neglected so badly said daughter turned to drugs.

1. ↑ and it's not the last time this would happen to someone played by Hayden Panettiere