| rdfs:comment | - "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" is the thirteenth episode of the ninth season of ER. It first aired on NBC on January 30, 2003. It was written by R. Scott Gemmill and directed by Nelson McCormick. The episode has Greg Pratt dealing with another problem with his foster brother Leon when his so-called friends shot a cop during a robbery as John Carter plans to help Dr. McNulty with his clinic, but learns something about him the hard way.
- We all know that Karma can be a bitch, but sometimes it's a total Jerkass. It's not enough that the bad guy is a Karma Houdini. It's not enough that the good guy ~Can't Get Away With Nuthin'~. It's not even enough that he's a Butt Monkey or Chew Toy, put through the wringer for no reason, not to mention having to deal with The Call Knowing Where He Lives, a Clingy MacGuffin and being constantly threatened with Death By Pragmatism if he dares respond to a problem in the way a normal person would and should. No, sometimes fate isn't satisfied until disaster befalls the good guy purely as a result of his doing the right thing.
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| abstract | - "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" is the thirteenth episode of the ninth season of ER. It first aired on NBC on January 30, 2003. It was written by R. Scott Gemmill and directed by Nelson McCormick. The episode has Greg Pratt dealing with another problem with his foster brother Leon when his so-called friends shot a cop during a robbery as John Carter plans to help Dr. McNulty with his clinic, but learns something about him the hard way.
- We all know that Karma can be a bitch, but sometimes it's a total Jerkass. It's not enough that the bad guy is a Karma Houdini. It's not enough that the good guy ~Can't Get Away With Nuthin'~. It's not even enough that he's a Butt Monkey or Chew Toy, put through the wringer for no reason, not to mention having to deal with The Call Knowing Where He Lives, a Clingy MacGuffin and being constantly threatened with Death By Pragmatism if he dares respond to a problem in the way a normal person would and should. No, sometimes fate isn't satisfied until disaster befalls the good guy purely as a result of his doing the right thing. If this happens because the hero helps people who are ungrateful, it can be a case of All of the Other Reindeer or The Farmer and the Viper. More often, helping out exposes the hero to some other danger, like the wrath of a villain whose plans were disrupted by said good deed, or the wrath of a populace that is opposed to the method of said helping out, such as in many Burn the Witch stories that involve actual witches, or being Arrested for Heroism. Not every hero can handle this, and if it happens often enough or particularly badly enough, a hero may very well fall. If they stick it through even to the end, knowing what's coming to them, it shows who they are in the dark. It should also be noted that this trope is more complicated than it looks. Sometimes good intentions bring unjust punishment, but sometimes good intentions result in very bad results because the good-intentioned person was also foolish, incompetent, or ignorant. In many cases whether a bad outcome was undeserved or not depends on the details. As Robert Heinlein's character Lazarus Long observes in one story, "Good intentions are no substitute for knowing how the buzzsaw works." Which doesn't mean that life is not often cruelly unjust, it merely means that things are often not as simple as they look at first glance. Named for a well-known saying attributed to Clare Boothe Luce. Compare Being Good Sucks, where it's the act of being good (rather than the deeds themselves) that brings suffering, and contrast Laser-Guided Karma where every deed (good or otherwise) gets paid back in spades. Examples of No Good Deed Goes Unpunished include:
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