History Main / Life

** Though they have an increasingly symbiotic relationship over the course of the show, and they clearly take their partnership seriously.

* TheAtoner: Kyle Hollis who thought he "got right".

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: [[spoiler: How do you stop a CareerKiller who kills people using household objects from escaping? Put the diet soda you asked her for in her gas tank.]] Not to mention the fact that the victim [[spoiler:was a hitman himself, who she killed because the economy was bad and she didn't need the competition.]]

* ArbitrarilyLargeBankAccount: Charlie can buy pretty much whatever he wants on a whim.

* MundaneMadeAwesome: In season one there is a very dramatic sequence in which a thirty-year-old guy and a teenage girl try to play Prince of Persia [[DidNotDoTheResearch to level 10]].

** This may also be a case of DidNotDoTheResearch, as modern ethical guidelines would probably rule out his experimental design in the first place. Maybe not, though, as the professor was shown to be trying to cover his tracks and was ultimately arrested for his behavior.

* PacManFever: See the trope entry for WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome. This part of "A Civil War" was widely mocked on gaming blogs.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome: In season one there is a very dramatic sequence in which a thirty-year-old guy and a teenage girl try to play Prince of Persia [[DidNotDoTheResearch to level 10]].

* FiveBadBand: {{Deconstructed}} in "Everything… All the Time".
** Benny the ComicRelief makes Patrick laugh but knows he's weak and Patrick's right to not trust him.
** Marty TheBrute is actually childish and looks up to Patrick.
** Annabelle the DarkMistress hates Patrick and wants to get away from.
** Patrick the BigBad envies Benny because [[IJustWantToBeNormal "Everyone knows who he is but no one knows who I am"]].
** The psychiatrist thinks she is their TeamMom but as Crews puts it, she's just the help to them.

* FiveBadBand: {{Decontructed}} in "Everything… All the Time".
** Benny the ComicRelief makes Patrick laugh but knows he's weak and Patrick's right to not trust him.
** Marty TheBrute is actually childish and looks up to Patrick.
** Annabelle the DarkMistress hates Patrick and wants to get away from.
** Patrick the BigBad envies Benny because [[IJustWantToBeNormal "Everyone knows who he is but no one knows who I am"]].
** The psychiatrist thinks she is their TeamMom but as Crews puts it, she's just the help to them.

"His strength is his weakness?"\\

* ActionGirl (Dani, Seever to a lesser extent.)

* ADeathInTheLimelight: [[spoiler:Subverted. Bobby's poisoned and almost impaled, but gets better.]]
* AgentMulder (Charlie, sort of. Although he doesn't believe in everything, he acts very mystic and cryptic most of the time. Interestingly enough, though, Dani ''isn't'' an AgentScully)

* [[AreYouPonderingWhatImPondering Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering]] (Deliberately invoked by Crews.)

'''Crews:''' [[ActionGirl Reese]] [[ShowerScene in the shower]]? No.

* BadBoss: Roman. It's probably why nobody really cares that [[spoiler: Charlie killed him]]

* BittersweetEnding: "Canyon Flowers". [[spoiler:The killer is caught but the identity of a serial killer's grandson is leaked to the public turning his life into a media circus and causing his girlfriend to break up with him]].

** Seever is a cop who is also a lawyer. Which means she often ends up talking about the legal aspects of a case in the middle of the investigation.

** When Dani was unavailable during one episode, he called up the technical support help desk for his cell phone, ostensibly because he was having trouble getting it to connect to his car's bluetooth, so he could have someone to talk to about how the case was going.

* DisproportionateRetribution: "3 Women". [[spoiler:An ex-con is framed for murder because he stopped writing his pen pal after getting out of prison]].

* DynamicEntry: [[spoiler:In "One", Charlie does this with ''a car''.]]

* EvilGloating: Not too often, but the hit[[strike:man]] [[strike:woman]] man woman in one episode spends awhile describing the course a poison will take, enough time that she's interrupted before she can deliver a killing blow.
* FauxDocumentary: Season 1 had a series of short clips presented as talking-head interviews between various minor supporting characters and an unseen interviewer. They don't appear to exist within the world of the show.
** It gets weirder: at the beginning of the series finale, the interviewer shows up again, talking to BigBad Roman. [[spoiler:Roman shoots him and uses his camera to send a message to Crews. When the cops raid Roman's compound, they find the interviewer's body, but it isn't mentioned again.]]
*** [[spoiler:Why would they mention it? It was the final episode and they had more important things to think about than yet another random person Roman had killed.]]
** They probably do exist, considering the cameraman and the camera are explicitly real. He'd hardly be the only person to interview people in connection to the case, so they don't find it strange enough to talk about. The documentary wasn't finished, so no one else has seen it yet. The only thing not easily explained is the footage from some of the fights in the prison, but [[spoiler: if he knew that Roman wasn't in prison and how to find him, he probably had a man inside the prison who was slipping him info and that ''could'' include security tapes]]

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Seever [[spoiler:once dropped the statistic that 97% of cops never fire their guns off the range. Guess what she had to do later that episode?]]
** In the season one finale, Mark Rawls says to Crews that it 'feels like earthquake weather'. Next season, there is an earthquake, [[spoiler: leading to the escape from prison of the guy who killed Rawls' son, who proceeds to kill Rawls.]]

* FoundTheKillerLostTheMurderer: Season one ends with [[spoiler: the capture of the man who really killed Crews's busines partner, wife and family. But the Man Behind the Man gets to him in prison, so Crews still doesn't know why they were killed. It was so he would make a Face Heel Turn and become the new commander of the evil forces.]]

* KarmaHoudini: Roman, in the episode "The Fallen Woman," [[spoiler:killed a woman, but is able to get away untouched because he's an informant for the FBI]].
** This starts to fade midway through season two, [[spoiler: and pretty much stops when Charlie kills him in an awesome manner]].

* MeaningfulName: [[spoiler:Subverted by]] Eval (sounds like "evil"), a leading suspect in "Evil...and His Brother Ziggy." He's a sketchy guy illegally importing guns, [[spoiler:but it turns out they're musketoons for use in (historically inaccurate) reenactments for his casino.]]

* OddCouple. Uh... well, ''duh''. Reese and Crews are so completely different, which of course, led to [[{{Shipping}} their being shipped.]]

* SamusIsAGirl: [[spoiler: Ziggy Vadas]]

* ShroudedInMyth: Jude Hays' death. [[spoiler:He didn't]].
* SmugSnake: The couple from season 2 who tried to kill 4 birds with 1 stone: Kill his wife, frame her little sister, use the murder as a springboard for a political career and humiliate the police. ''They failed''.

* SuspiciouslyIdleOfficers: None of the [[spoiler: [[DirtyCop FBI agents who secretly work for Roman]]]] seem to have any duties other than those [[spoiler: he]] gives to them.

* [[TooDumbToLive Too Dumb to Run Psychology Experiments]]: The sociology professor in "Not for Nothing" replicated an experiment specifically known for encouraging abusive behavior in its participants... and then decided that random blackouts with no direct supervision [[spoiler: AND PURPOSEFUL PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE]] were a good idea. [[AlwaysMurder You can guess what happened.]]

* WhatDoTheyFearEpisode: [[spoiler:"Not for Nothing"]] turned out to be this.
* WhatWouldXDo: The dead person variant. [[spoiler:Subverted.]]

* MixedMarriage: Blink and you'll miss it, but one of Tidwell's ex-wives was black. There's actually a surprising number of interracial relationships for show a show otherwise full of white people. Almost every time the show features a black woman or a picture of a black woman, she is somehow romantically or sexually linked to a white man.

Other characters include Dani Reese (his alcoholic ex-drug addict partner), Ted Early (his financial advisor, roommate, and prison friend), Constance Griffiths (his lawyer and with whom he shares UnresolvedSexualTension), Karen Davis (his captain), Bobby Stark (his former partner from before he was convicted) and the father from Grounded for Life as another commanding officer.

* AgentMulder (Charlie, sort of. Although he doesn't believe in everything, he acts very mystic and cryptic most of the time. Interesting enough, though, Dani ''isn't'' an AgentScully)

* BadBoss Roman, it's probably why nobody really cares that [[spoiler: Charlie killed him]]

* CainAndAbel: Though it isn't revealed until the season 2 finale, [[spoiler:Crews and Roman. Crews was being set up so he'd fall in with the conspiracy and become a heir, of sorts. Roman ''wanted'' to be the favored son.]]

* DaChief (Lieutenant Karen Davis. [[SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute Replaced]] in season 2 by Capt. Brian Tidwell, played by Donal Logue. Slight subversion of the SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute in that Davis is demoted to Sergeant, but still appears on the show.)

** Ted says he couldn't go back to jail, and Charlie reassures him "no-one is going back to jail, Ted". Naturally, by end of episode, one of them is framed and arrested.

* MixedMarriage: Blink and you'll miss it, but one of Tidwell's ex-wives was black. There's actually a surprising number of interracial relationships for show a show otherwise full of white people. Almost eveytime the show features a black woman or a picture of a black woman, she is somehow romantically or sexually linked to a white man.

*** There was also a SerialKiller who's room is filled with smiley face memorabilia.

** "Is that zen?"
*** And Charlie saying something OnceAnEpisode that might be zen but turns out not to be. For instance, telling a suspect who is about to hit him that "You strike me and you'll only be striking yourself." The suspect asks "What? Some kind of karmic payback?" Charlie responds "If only. No. My partner will just shoot you in the head."

** The actor who plays Jake Reese is Cuban. There's also Det. Carl Ames and special agent Bodner.

** Averted or subverted? Seever make a speech about the fact this will forcibly comes. Of course, Charlie was not listening, being in one of his ''EurekaMoment''

* WhatDoTheyFearEpisode: [[spoiler:Not for Nothing"]] turned out to be this.

** Kyle Hollis, the man who killed the Seybolts. He and Crews both found some sort of spiritual awakening. Crews wants to [[ClearMyName clear his name]] while Hollis is The Atoner.

* Mixed Marriage: Blink and you'll miss it, but one of Tidwell's ex-wives was black. There's actually a surprising number of interracial relationships for show a show otherwise full of white people. Almost eveytime the show features a black woman or a picture of a black woman, she is somehow romantically or sexually linked to a white man.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome: In season one there is a very dramatic sequence in which a thirty-year-old guy and a teenage girl try to play Prince of Persia to level 10.

* ArbitrarilyLargeBankAccount: Charlie can buy pretty much whatever he wants on a whim.