Harper's Island/YMMV


 * Alas Poor Scrappy:.
 * Alas, Poor Villain:
 * Alas, Poor Villain:

"Shane: "Boohoo, John Wakefield killed my mommy! Get over it! Now Get out, I gotta pee!""
 * Big Lipped Alligator Death - Cousin Ben's death is shown in the first scene of the pilot and he's never mentioned again.
 * Chloe mentions him when she's making a list of the people who have been killed/people they have not seen for awhile.
 * And later, a goodie-bag with his name on it was left in the lobby for him to pick up when he arrives, and it showed Madison tearing up his name tag.
 * Canon Sue: Abby. So much, Abby. Reinforced by the suggestion that she might be 25-year-old virgin.
 * Complete Monster: Wakefield.
 * To a lot of fans, came across quite sympathetically.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: "Letters from the Sky" by Civil Twilight, during
 * Draco in Leather Pants: has been getting this a lot, creepily enough.
 * Epileptic Trees: Amongst some truly bizarre theories, there was a widespread belief that was alive and the killer until the producers openly refuted it.
 * Fan Preferred Couple: A bizarre number of fans ship.
 * Fanon: Ask the fan base and you'll find that
 * Hilarious in Hindsight: In one of the early episodes, Henry and the groomsmen are entertained by a stripper. Henry is embarrassed by the fact that it's his friend's little sister, which is awkward. Sully says "that's what makes it dirty".
 * Idiot Subplot: The bag of money that the groomsmen find and their efforts to keep it result No one in this sub-plot has any intelligence!
 * To top it all off
 * Memetic Mutation: Among fans: "Who the hell is Beth?!"
 * Uncle Marty is the coolest dude in existence.
 * Narm: This season contains comedy deaths, after comedy deaths, after comedy deaths.
 * Shane is just written as so unrealistically mean, especially in the second episode, that it is hard not to laugh at his lines.
 * Shane is just written as so unrealistically mean, especially in the second episode, that it is hard not to laugh at his lines.


 * Madison's scenes where she is supposed to be ominous and creepy would have worked if the actress was a few years younger, but instead she just ended up looking... a little silly.
 * One-Scene Wonder:, despite getting killed off in the very first episode, is frequently a fan favorite.
 * The Scrappy: Madison and her mother Shea.
 * Shallow Love Interest: Jimmy for Abby.
 * Contestable. He's got indifferent parents in backstory and an unlikely but genuine friendship with Shane. He  but never mentioned it because he doesn't want her to think she owes him, flew off the rails badly enough after Abby left that Sheriff Mills decided to personally keep a close eye on him, and eventually became good friends with the sheriff to the point of calling him "Charlie". As characters on this show go, that's quite a bit of development; at worst, he'd be a Satellite Character because most of his scenes involve Abby.
 * Shocking Swerve:  in the third episode proves to be just a distraction for the viewers and doesn't actually have any impact on the story at all, even though it was supposed to implicate Kelly's tattoo artist boyfriend Shane.
 * Along with all the scenes of Madison and the fortune teller giving prophecies of supernatural doom.
 * Tear Jerker: Sure, it's a murder mystery and there's enough death to go around, but you have to admit you hated the killer a little more when
 * Unfortunate Implications:
 * Woobie: JD is a genuine one. A mentally-troubled and bullied loner whose parents died in the back story, who everyone thinks is dangerous and who is blamed for all the murders. He is finally murdered and refuses to speak to protect Abby. Word of God says.
 * Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds:
 * YMMV a lot on this.