A Day In The Limelight - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Day In The Limelight

Her moment to shine.

"You know, I've rather enjoyed having my own episode. It almost makes up for being thoroughly neglected for the past two and a half years."
— Yami Bakura, Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series

A character, not the lead, gets the primary focus for an episode. This can be used to give the lead a rest, both for the actor and for the audience. It can also be used to explore the possibility of an expanded role for a Recurrer or secondary character, or to set up a Spinoff.

Fanfics frequently do this as well, exploring minor characters to flesh out their backstory and their contribution to the overall story.

Expect the rest of the regular cast to chip in a Mandatory Line at the very least, however.

The Greatest Story Never Told is a Subtrope of this.

Hostile Show Takeover is the most extreme version.

Compare to Lower Deck Episode, Villain Episode; contrast with Day In The Life, A Death In The Limelight.

Examples:

Anime

Quite common in anime, although some studios (notably Gainax) loath to do so.
The One Piece manga features "mini-arcs" on the title pages of issues. These detail the fates of villains and minor characters. Only two of them have been animated: Buggy's search for his crew and body and Coby's and Helmeppo's marine training.
Gundam is infamous for this, with a cruel twist: a day in the limelight usually ends in your death. When a minor character suddenly gets a episode focused on him and characterization, he usually will not be alive by the end of the episode.
Mahou Sensei Negima has so many main characters, it tends to have A Day In The Limelight chapters/episodes for them between (or even within) major story arcs.
Yu-Gi-Oh: Seto Kaiba got an entire arc (half a season) in the limelight- the Virtual Nightmare Arc that explored his Back Story and featured a face-off with his step-father. Too bad it didn't happen in the manga.
- Common in Yu-Gi-Oh GX: In Season 1, Manjyome got his own episode and an abridged Heroic Journey at the North School. Kaiser got his own episode (culminating in his Freak Out) in Season 2, and Sho stepped into the spotlight once in Season 3.
  - Since GX is ostensibly an ensemble piece (although Judai tends to hog the spotlight by the end of the show), it arguably doesn't really qualify for this trope. Sho, Manjoume and Kaiser have all had their fair share of episodes.
Sometimes, Tokyo Mew Mew padded out its episode count by recycling scripts for different characters. For example, Minto and Zakuro both got Ten Minute Retirement episodes. It also occasionaly had episodes more or less focused on relatively minor characters — such as Keiichiro and Masha.
Full Metal Alchemist spent one episode focusing on the travails of Roy Mustang and his five aides (and Black Hayate◊).
Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex devoted an entire episode to one of the Tachikomas, its sentient robot tanks.
- Other episodes (and in the subsequent series 2nd Gig) have spotlighted the members of the team who don't usually get it such as Saito and Pazu. Unfortunately, they never got around to flesh out Borma.
In the second season of Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, this was generally the only way the Out Of Focus characters got any attention.
Naruto's Shikamaru became the de facto main character of the series for most of the Immortal's arc.
- Lampshaded in the anime Naruto Shippuden with an aftershow omake where Shikamaru jokes that the show will be renamed Shikamaru Shippuden.
Urahara Kisuke from Bleach became the focus of a flashback arc set one hundred years prior to the series proper. Other characters prominantly featured include: Yoruichi, Tessai, Aizen, Gin and The Vizards.
Suzumiya Haruhi's Yuki Nagato will have her spotlight in the second season. In fact, its more of an Hostile Show Takeover, even after that arc. And Mikuru in the novel chapter "The Melancholy Of Mikuru Asahina".
Matsuda gets one of these in Death Note. The episode is even named after him.
When Hayate The Combat Butler does these with recurring minor characters, the fact is usually stated enthusiastically by said charaters. Sometimes with the main characters complaining that they've been pushed to the sidelines. Of course, this is a given since the series has No Fourth Wall.
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.
Very common in Shinkon Gattai Godannar. There are 4 teams of pilots belonging to bases in other countries that occasionally show up to help Goh, Anna, and company. Each of those teams get at least an episode centered mostly around them. Most semi-major characters around the main base get an episode or two dedicated to them as well.
Knuckles and Rouge receive their own episodes early on in Sonic X.
His and Her Circumstances has an episode near the end which focuses on Yukino's two little sisters that takes a delightful turn away from the romantic melodrama toward a very light hearted comedy.
Pretty much the entire point of the Chronicles sideseries of Pokemon.
About five episodes in Baccano work as such (although, with three plots going on, nobody gets the episode entirely to themselves), usually indicated by the title with a general statement about the character in question. The most memorable of these episodes is probably "Ladd Russo likes talking a lot and killing a lot"
School Rumble does this a lot.
Revolutionary Girl Utena had a season of this, where pretty much every minor character gets their own episode, has their backstory explored, and then has that backstory exploited by the villains in an attempt to destroy Utena.
The Cowboy Bebop episode Mushroom Samba was this for Ed (and Ein).

Comic Books

In Watchmen, each of the six main characters get an issue in the limelight, which illustrates their backstory and relations with other characters. The Comedian's is in Chapter 2, Dr. Manhattan's is in Chapter 4, Rorschach's is in Chapter 6, Nite Owl II's is in Chapter 7, Silk Spectre II's is in Chapter 9 and Ozymandias' is in Chapter 11. They vary from being an in-depth look at their origins, to showing various important events from their lives, to simply being a way of getting better to know a character. The reason for the inclusion of the issues was the fact that Alan Moore plotted the story for six issues, but was contracted for twelve. So he mixed in six character based issues.
An issue of Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight focused on virtually forgotten c-lister "the Spook" after his release from Arkham. He winds up being so paranoid that Batman is stalking him that he commits a crime just to go back to Arkham where he has peace of mind.
- The Bat-Books have loads of these. Off the top of my head:
  - "Mr Freeze": a retelling of his origin with narrated by Freeze himself. Written, of course, by Paul Dini, who created the modern Mr Freeze.
  - "Scarface: A Psychodrama" focuses on the Ventriloquist as he attempts to go straight and also, creepily, on the puppet that still causes death and pain even without him.
Jim Crowe received one of these in The Invisibles which also doubled as his debut appearance.
Jubilee got more than a couple over the course of her original appearances in X Men and Wolverine.
In the Sonic X comic, most of the later issues star Dr. Eggman.

Literature

In the webfiction Whateley Universe, there are over a dozen canon authors, so this is becoming typical. There has been an entire story on the side character The Grunts (the superpowered kids who are in a version of JROTC and plan to go into military service); one with them, plus Folder, plus one of the school sociopaths; a Combat Final featuring a student who's the daughter of a notorious supervillain, ...
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Remnants #13, Survival. Kinda-sorta Recurrer Tate was friends with Jobs and Mo'Steel and had passages from her POV, but remained firmly in the background until the second-to-last book. She ends up saving the entire world, making the 're-greening' of Earth possible by going back in time and crashing Mother into the Earth, killing herself instantly. Jobs and Echo named their second daughter after her.
Story sections within the books of Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40000: Gaunt's Ghosts often focus on one of the Ghosts, such as Larkin or Bragg.

Live Action TV

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.
- And was later done again with the Lab Rats in the episode "You Kill Me". Fitting one reason for doing such an episode the actor playing Hodges is now a main character with title credit.
"Harm's Way" from Angel season five.
"The Zeppo" from Buffy The Vampire Slayer season three, where Xander gets the limelight.
- And "Selfless" from season seven, which is Anya-centric.
- And "Superstar" in season four, which is so Jonathan-centric it even features a new title sequence.
- Don't forget Doppelgangland in series three for Willow, and Giles' 'A New Man' in season four.
- Joss Whedon seems to enjoy giving these to minor villains. Andrew ("Storyteller") and Harmony ("Harm's Way") each had one, in Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel, respectively.
- The Dream Episode 'Restless' gave each of the four main characters a ten-minute dream which focused solely on their characters.
The X Files did a number of A Day In The Limelight episodes later in its run, including "Zero Sum" (focused on Skinner), "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man" (CSM), "Unusual Suspects", "Three of a Kind" and "Jump the Shark" (Lone Gunmen).
Scrubs has done this on multiple occasions, in the episodes "His Story" (I-IV), "Her Story, (I-II) and "Their Story". These episodes feature the inner monologues of characters other than JD, often alluded to in-character with phrases like "Now that I have this tape recorder, I won't need to be in my head as much". They also include a whooshing sound as JD makes physical contact with the focus character right before the voice over switches, as though the ability to narrate is the result of some sort of communicable disease.
- This also works backwards near the end of the episode, often including similiar phrases.
Degrassi The Next Generation, "Don't Believe the Hype." This episode took Hazel, who was previously just a flunky for The Libby, and revealed her secret: she's a Somali Muslim immigrant who was bullied at her previous school for being a "terrorist." She's been pulling an elaborate Masquerade so the popular girls will accept her. While The Reveal was well-done, it never answered the question of how she got into the in-crowd when she could never let them visit her house. And none of this came up in any other episode, ever again, aside from an offhand comment by Paige in "Holiday".
Happens at least once a season on Law and Order: SVU, when Stabler and Benson, the lead detectives, step aside and allow the secondary team of Munch and Fin to be the primary focus of the episode.
- Or the time when Fin got an entire episode to himself.
Even My So Called Life had one: "Life of Brian".
The TV show JAG was known for giving each of the supporting characters an episode of their own once a season.
Subverted in the Star Trek The Next Generation episode "Lower Decks" where one guest character, who'd appeared in a single episode in an earlier season, was the focus of the show. It seemed to be setting her up as a recurring character, right up to the point where she dies at the end.
- It was originally planned that the character would return on DS9, but the writers decided that would "diminish" the ending of Lower Decks.
The modern Star Trek series all have had limelight episodes for various characters, but Star Trek Deep Space Nine was the clear champion in this category thanks to its large cast of secondary, minor, and recurring characters. By the end of the series the recurring villains were getting as much screen time and focus on their problems and schemes as the heroes were.
- At that point, this troper wonders if there actually were any "heroes", considering how characters like Garak, Quark and Odo got loads of screen time. Not to mention that there was a huge cast even very early on.
  - Quark and Odo got loads of screen time due to being two of the main characters, thus not falling into this trope.
Lost, despite having a huge main cast, does this occasionally, giving recurring characters full spotlight episodes:
- "SOS" focused on Rose & Bernard.
- "Live Together, Die Alone" (a season finale) focused on Desmond, who was made a main character next season
- "Expose" focused on Nikki & Paulo, who were meant to be major in the series' arc and were billed as main characters, but instead ended up being universally despised and only appeared in about five episodes each before dying in their lone centric.
- "Confirmed Dead" unusually gave a day in the limelight to four characters (three main, one recurring) who had just been introduced in that episode, plus a dead minor character.
- "Follow the Leader" focused on Richard.
- "The Incident", though containing flashbacks from almost every living character, focused on Jacob and also featured a Ilana flashback (both characters were also the focus of one of the episode's two plotlines).
Supernatural had Ghostfacers, which featured two characters from a first season episode and their friends. You either loved it or loathed it.
- And The Rapture, which told the backstory of Castiel's vessel.
Babylon Five with "A View From The Gallery" , which centers upon repairmen Mack and Bo and how they interact with all the main characters over the course of a usual Babylon 5 day of disaster.
- To clarify, Mack and Bo were played by guest actors who were not in any other episodes. The point being that even the unknown extras have tales to tell.
Torchwood had perhaps several of these- "Cyberwoman" for Ianto, "Greeks Bearing Gifts" for Tosh, and in season two, "A Day in the Death" for Owen. Of course, this was after he died. But it was also before he stopped moving.
The Doctor-lite episodes that tend to happen once per season in the new series of Doctor Who could be examples of this. Turn Left is definitely one.
- "Love and Monsters" may not count as the character it focuses on had never appeared until that episode. Same goes for Blink which again focused on an original character (albeit one who may become recurring if the fans get their way).
In a show that wavers between Two Lines No Waiting and Four Lines All Waiting, the episode "Company Man" in Heroes Volume 1 almost completely focused around HRG (aka Mr. Bennet) and his very messed-up relationship with his job and family. Up to this point, he was just an Overprotective Dad In Black, but this greatly expanded backstory and explanation of his motives permanently cemented his Ensemble Dark Horse status.
- HRG gets another one in "Cold Wars" while both Tracey and Sylar are going to be getting a few in Volume 4. And "The Year of Our Lord" focused more or less entirely on Peter/Future Peter. ("Five Years Gone" did the same for Hiro/Future Hiro.)
The M*A*S*H episode "Hey, Look Me Over" centers on Nurse Kellye, who's usually strictly a background character.
- That's actually a rather nice story...actress Kellye Nakahara's "Nurse Kellye" had more appearances and lines over the years than any of the other nurse characters (strictly bit parts, though), and she was well-liked by the cast. Alan Alda felt she deserved an episode where she could really shine, and surprised her with the script for "Hey, Look Me Over."
- "Dear Sigmund", which is told from the point of view of psychiatrist Sidney Freedman, a recurring guest character.
The new Battlestar Galactica has done this a few times, especially in its third season:
- 3.10 "The Passage" is about Kat's past.
- In 3.14 "The Woman King", Helo investigates a potential murder among civilian refugees.
- In 3.16 "Dirty Hands", Chief Tyrol becomes the focus of a labour dispute.

Music

Hello Project members sometimes only get to lead a single once. An example is Morning Musume`s Namida ga Tomaranai Houkago, but there are plenty more.

Video Games

In General: GaidenGames tend to take this idea and run with it, for obvious continuity reasons.
Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen has 5 chapters — 4 of which are Days In the Limelight for the various henchmen and side-characters that join you in chapter 5.
Super Mario Bros usually has Luigi as player two or absent completely, until Luigi's Mansion gave him a starring role.
- Luigis Mansion was Luigi's second day in the lamplight. His first was 8 years ealier in an educational game called Mario Is Missing!
- Same with Peach in Super Princess Peach (she and her magic parasol are pictured above).
- Don't forget Yoshi and Wario's games. Kind of funny that Bowser still hasn't had a game yet.
  - Well it seems like Bowser might be getting one pretty soon. Mario And Luigi RPG 3, despite the name, seems to have a lot of focus on Bowser as the main character, as well as some Character Development for him. This Troper has his fingers crossed.
Gau's lost father and Strago's hunt for the Hidon sidequests on Final Fantasy VI.
Knuckles from the Sonic The Hedgehog games got his own game called Chaotix, which was also a day in the limelight for the titular Chaotix group. Interestingly, despite Metal Sonic's presence in the game, Sonic does not appear until the very end. Tails has also gotten two games of his own, Tails' Adventures and Tails' Sky Patrol, but both were very obscure Game Gear games. Dr. ~~Eggman~~ Robotnik's game was actually a cleverly-hidden clone of the Japanese-only Puyo Puyo (likewise, Kirby's Avalanche is just an Kirby-fied version of Puyo Puyo). Shadow also got his own game, which went in a different direction by being primarily a Third Person Shooter with only some of the more familiar Sonic elements mixed in.
- In Sonic Heroes, each team gets an arc. Teams include Sonic Team, Amy Rose Team (though this might just be to get the controls down), Chaotix Team, and Shadow Team.

Web Animation

The King Of Town's Very Own Quite Popular Cartoon Show in Homestar Runner. Initially subverted in that when it was originally released, it was just a well-disguised Strong Bad Email, but they actually released one a year later. There's also No Hands on Deck, which is fanservice to those who think Strong Bad is hogging Homestar's spotlight (not only does neglected Pom Pom appear, but Strong Bad doesn't appear at all).

Web Original

Red Panda Adventures introduced Harry Kelly in "When Darkness Falls" in this manner.

Webcomics

Sluggy Freelance has done this several times. Zoe got the "28 GEEKS LATER" storyline all to herself, as well as most of "Fire and Rain." Bun-Bun took center stage for the epic "Holiday Wars" and "Oceans Unmoving" arcs. Oasis went from being an occasional guest star to the focal character during the "Phoenix Rising" arc. And the B Side Comics "Meanwhile in the Dimension of Pain" and "No Content On Saturdays" focused on the adventures of the Dimension of Pain demons and Kiki, respectively. Oddly enough Sasha did not get one of these, even in the "Bikini Suicide Sasha Days" arc.
The Wotch had an arc focusing on Ally Taverner, the centaur shopkeeper.

Western Animation

Avatar The Last Airbender with "Zuko Alone", "Appa's Lost Days" and "Sokka's Master". The first showed what the main antagonist (well, by that point, he wasn't quite that anymore) did and thought about when he wasn't, well, antagonizing; the second told a story that explained where the main character's pet had been and who he met along the way since his four-week disappearance following his kidnapping; and the third depicted Plucky Comic Relief character Sokka taking a level in badass through sword training.
- There was also "The Beach" for the Zuko, Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee, which served as a means of exploring the dynamics between the four and what makes them tick cleverly disguised as a Beach Episode.
Hey Arnold! deserves props for having several stories where a secondary character is spotlighted ("Timberly Loves Arnold" with Gerald's younger sister and "Career Day" with the neighborhood ice cream man, for example).
Kids Next Door also did this with "Op TRAINING", focusing on Numbuh 2's younger brother, Tommy, going through training at the KND Arctic base, without the regulars appearing at all. In fact, the only other character who had appeared in a previous episode was the villain, Father.
80's cartoons that had heavy merchandise and toy lines behind them (GI Joe, M.A.S.K., Transformers) did this all the time, devoting episodes here and there to otherwise minor or gimmicky characters. Obviously, kids won't buy an action figure for a character that never does anything on the show except stand in the background.
- The G.I. Joe example is marvellously parodied in a Robot Chicken episode - angry that he's left out of all of the missions because his white costume is too noticable in a jungle environment, Snowjob is called up by the "President of Switzerland" to help flush out some yeti in the Swiss Alps. After a transport montage include ski-sleds, dog sleds and tobogganing, it turns out the yeti claim was a hoax for the normal G.I. Joes to throw snowballs at and mock Snowjob.
Several Justice League Unlimited episodes, most notably Booster Gold's "The Greatest Story Never Told"
What It's Like Being Alone often got up to this sort of thing over its mercifully short run, and, if "Sammy's Episode" was anything to go by, was well aware of it.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The 2003 series had an episode entitled "Hun on the Run", centering around Shredder's minion Hun. Although the Turtles also appear, Hun is the main focus of the episode, giving hints as to his background.
Danny Phantom had the episode "Girls' Night Out" which focused heavily on the major female cast while main character Danny is out fishing, though not without his problem.
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 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.
While Kim Possible is the main character of the series, the sidekick Ron Stoppable gets many episodes focusing on him while leaving Kim as a background character. One of the worst examples of this is the episode where Ron goes to a Japanese Ninjutsu school where he meets this really cute girl, learns Kung Fu, learns Mystical Monkey Kung Fu, battles with the villain of the episode, being all heroic and stuff. Kim on the other hand spends the entire episode at home doing nothing more than crushing on some random Japanese Purity Sue. Doy...
- Ron might be the "sidekick" but he's clearly equal in status in the actual show, especially in Season 3 and 4. Better examples of this trope would be the episode where Ms Dr Possible goes on a mission against Shego, ones where the Tweebs save the day after Kim gets mind controlled. Wade comes out of Mission Control a few times, and a atrociously poor episode involving Ron's father.
  - The villains often get a few episodes to shine in as well. in fact Drakken and Shego, the two most well known heroes on the show arguably end up the real heroes of the series finale as they're the ones who supply the means to thwart the alien invasion.
Most American Dad episodes either focus on Stan or at the very least feature him prominently. Two major exceptions are "The One That Got Away", whose plot focuses exclusively on Roger, with the rest of the family getting only a token B story. They don't even get that in "Escape from Pearl Bailey"; the plot is driven entirely by Steve, while the rest of the family has a grand total of two lines in the entire episode.
- "It sure was nice that Steve acknowledged us at all this week, even though it was just once."