Hero Episode

Well, your good ole Villain Protagonist is back for another episode of jolly good death and destruction- ready to teach those no good, rotten goody-two-shoes another lesson about why it's so great to be the bad guy. But wait . . . that's not Bob the Butcher on the screen. . . . it's not even his peppy yet psychotically insane sidekick. It's the heroes, ladies and gentlemen. And the next thirty-plus minutes are all theirs.

The Hero Episode is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and basically what the Villain Episode is called when you've got yourself a villain protagonist. In TV shows where the person who is technically the villain is the main focus, it's interesting to have Something Completely Different for an episode to show what the real heroes of the story are doing. Whether it's just a Villains Out Shopping (villain?) episode, or The Greatest Story Never Told depends on the reason for the episode. Sometimes, the hero has done something so depraved that they need a Breather Episode. Maybe they just wanted something different.

Compare and Contrast: A Day in the Limelight, A Death in the Limelight, The Greatest Story Never Told, Day in the Life, Villain Episode, Hostile Show Takeover, and Sympathetic POV.

Examples of Hero Episode include:

Anime and Manga

Death Note has a constant battle of wits between Villain Protagonist Light Yagami, morally ambiguous Hero Antagonist L, and the pawns they use in that have no compunctions about their actions like Misa or Ryuk. Occasionally arcs will focus on the police detectives who are genuinely good people. Case in point, Matsuda risks his life several times to get intel about the Yotsuba corporation, and later poses as L in a big to rescue Sayu Yagami from a hostage situation.

Comic Books

Joker's Last Laugh is about Joker determined to leave his murderous mark on the world after developing a brain tumor. While he goes on his rampage, Kirk Langstrom and Harley Quinn (under protest) work together to create an antidote for new venom that "jokerizes" its victims. Tie-in comics featuring the Bat-family, Supergirl and the Titans show them handling the physical fallout while their poisoned villains find new ways to smile.

Film

The Japanese film adaptation series of Death Note has a film focused on L helping rescue a girl from a terrorist cell. Note that most of the films are centered around Light's Protagonist Journey to Villain and L has received Adaptational Heroism for the most part.

Web Comics

This occasionally happens in the pre-reboot version of Evil, Inc during the arcs that focus on Captain and Commander Heroic. Though The Cape Captain Heroic is married to supervillain Miss Match, he has so much Incorruptible Pure Pureness that he refused a Reality Warper wish that could solve many of his problems out of fear of the potential consequences, and the one time that superheroes tried to run Evil, Inc., it went horribly because they were too fundamentally good to sell highly evil tech. There was also an arc where a parallel Miss Match, technically a villain but more heroic, ended up stranded in the prime universe.

Western Animation

In BoJack Horseman, "A Quick One While He's Away" serves as the focus for minor characters that Villain Protagonist BoJack hurt over six seasons and counting. Kelsey Jannings tries paying for her daughter's college tuition with Chicken4Dayz commercials, Gina Cazador is suffering PTSD from BoJack choking her, causing her to use arrogance as a defense mechanism while filming another movie, and Peter aka Pete Repeat reveals that he had to see a psychiatrist after BoJack left Pete and his girlfriend Maddie at the ER while she was unconscious from alcohol poisoning, thanks to bourbon and water that BoJack bought for them on prom night. Oh, and indirectly thanks to him, Margo Martindale became a nun briefly.