A Day in the Limelight: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

Sometimes the limelight is given to a guest character of note, often a character so outrageous that he/she upstages the regulars, or a nobody with a touching, moving story. This is occasionally done in comedies where the focus is less on the regular characters usual antics and hijinks and more on the guest character. In such cases, the regular characters may be temporarily demoted to [[Straight Man]] status (The Soup Nazi from Seinfeld for example). In some cases, the regular characters are just present either to provide moral support or to be the recipients of [[An Aesop]]. Such episodes may be of the [[Very Special Episode]] variety and may focus on a serious issue facing the guest character.

* The ''[[Full Metal Panic!]]: The Second Raid'' OVA focuses on Tessa Testarossa, in a humorous [[Day in the Life]] story with no advancement of plot.

* ''[[Gash Bell]]'' had these episodes from time to time, which usually began with Gash wondering what a particular demon was up to, and cut to said demon doing something interesting. Brago, Ted and Wonrei have had episodes centered around them in this fashion.

* Knuckles and Rouge receive their own episodes early on in ''[[Sonic X]].''

* [[Kare Kano|His and Her Circumstances]] has an episode near the end which focuses on Yukino's two little sisters, Tsukino and Kano, that takes a delightful turn away from the romantic melodrama toward a very light hearted comedy.

* ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'' and ''[[Digimon Adventure 02|Adventure 02]]'' do this quite a bit. Generally in episodes where one of the Digimon evolves the episode centers around them and their human partner or if said partner finds a crest/Egg which generally goes hand in hand with the evolving bit. There are a lot of main characters which is probably why. Villains tend to get one if they're about to do a [[Heel Face Turn]] ie Gatomon in ''Adventure'' and Ken in ''02''.

* In the ''[[Ranma ½]]'' anime, Nabiki and Kuno got A Day in the Limelight episode when a fortune teller persuaded Kuno that his true love was Nabiki. The usual cast only appeared in three scenes.

* ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'' gave the first episode of World Series over to [[Ensemble Darkhorse]] and [[Fountain of Memes]] Prussia, including him expressing a complaint that he hasn't had more screen time.

* ''[[Future GPX Cyber Formula]]'' does this with some of the characters (like Shinjyo, Randoll, Osamu and others) in both the TV series and OVAs. And ''SIN'', the last OVA, focuses on Kaga and his rivalry with Hayato.

* ''[[Inazuma Eleven]]'' did this with Megane in the match versus Shuuyou Meito (episode 9); up until then his main contributions to the team were naming techniques and holding the bench down so it doesn't fly up into the air. While he obviously doesn't get [[A Death in the Limelight]] at the end of the episode, he does {{spoiler|injure himself in a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] where he bounces the ball off his face to redirect it into the goal and score the game-winning point}}, after which he returns to being a benchwarmer.

 

 

* In the French [[Alternate Universe]] ''Pokémon'' [[Fanfic]] [[Pokemon X Terra]], pretty much every chapter does this for some character or another. At first, Lucas was the lead, but because there are so many other characters that all have relevance to the plot somehow, and the fact that they all do different things and go at different places from each other, each chapter is split into sub-chapters, focusing on one character/group of characters. And most of the time, one of them gives a chance to the focused character to show what he/she can really do if he/she hasn't been able to prove him/herself before. Somehow subverted with Palmer, whose running gag is that he always want to be useful, but when given the occasion, fails for reasons like showing up when the emergency is already over or simply because his opponent his too powerful for him, which is easy since he himself isn't really a good fighter.

* The ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' fandom is so large that for any significant character, there is a complete saturation of limelight fics. No one even thinks of, for example, a Ginny fic as shedding light on her character since she has already been so thoroughly explored in previous fics that every possible interpretation of her has already been used thousands of times (maybe ''literally'' thousands of times). In fact, by now the process is mainly viewed as simply choosing your favorite preexisting interpretation (slut!Ginny, innocent!Ginny, tomboy!Ginny, etc.) and running with it. Even when all that's known about the character is a name, a house and a plot point, expect several fics focusing on them and expanding on what little canon tells us.

* [[Super Mario Bros.|Larry Koopa]] stars in an episode called "The New Kid" in ''[[Calvin at Camp]]''.

* In ''[[The Tainted Grimoire]]'', Clan Gully may be the main characters but they are not the only ones the story focuses on.

 

== Literature ==

* Each book in the ''[[Star Trek: Typhon Pact]]'' series focuses on one member state (sometimes two) of the titular Typhon Pact. Many of these nations were previously underexplored or left as minor players in the ''[[Star Trek]]'' [[Myth Arc]].

* There are two significant ones in ''[[Warrior Cats]]''. The first is ''Moonlight'', which gives spotlight to Stormfur as he journeys through the mountains. The second is ''Night Whispers'', which is about Flametail struggling to figure out the secrets of a mysterious omen from StarClan, {{spoiler|which fortells his death.}}

{{quote|"I wanted to give them a spot to shine in the sun, but it turned out to be a full blown tropical vacation."}}

 

* In the ''[[Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip]]'' episode "The Disaster Show", Matt and Danny don't feature at all. Instead it was ''A Day in the Limelight'' for Cal, the director.

* While the ''[[CSI]]'' episode "Lab Rats" brings background lab techs Archie Johnson, Mandy Webster, Henry Andrews, and Wendy Simms to the fore and gives them each some time in the spotlight, the episode is actually A Day in the Limelight for Trace Evidence expert David Hodges. It was, after all, his lucky day.

** Depending on whether you consider Hawkeye to be the show's lead character or just one part of the ensemble, than any number of episodes centering on the other regulars - Margaret, Radar, Father Mulcahy, etc. - could be regarded as this.

*** Hawkeye himself gets one in the season 4 episode "Hawkeye", where he's the only one of the main characters to appear in the entire episode.

* The new ''[[Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series)|Battlestar Galactica]]'' has done this a few times, especially in its third season:

** 3.10 "The Passage" is about Kat's past.

* [[Tom Petty]], on some tours, would let one of the other Heartbreakers sing. You can see this on the 1992 VHS "Take the Highway."

* "Rock Me" and "Does Your Mother Know" are among the few songs from [[ABBA]] where one of the male members, in this case Bjorn, is the one who sings lead.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** This is actually [[Girls' Night Out Episode|its own subtrope]] now.

** The Box Ghost also gets one in one episode, when he takes control of ''[[Oh Crap|Pandora's Box]]''.

* The ''[[Pucca]]'' television series has several of these. The one for [[Santa Claus]] is probably the most notable, solely for establishing the... unique character history that he was a former ninja thief that, after realizing it was wrong to steal things out of people's houses, decided to use his skill in stealth and infiltration for bringing presents ''into'' people's houses instead.

* ''[[South Park]]'' has had a few, such as "Pip" (which was about [[Great Expectations|Pip]]) and "Butters' Very Own Episode" (which is Butters' very own episode). Other examples include "Erection Day" and "Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset", which focused on Jimmy and Wendy, respectively.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Pandering to the Base]]

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