Episodes of a
Crime And Punishment show focusing on a particular subculture.
Accuracy is optional, as the only research that goes into the episode is
reading the paper... especially when
the paper wasn't even right.
Not to be confused with the
Smallville-specific term "Freak of the Week", which is that show's fandom's name for
Monster Of The Week. Or the Parliament-Funkadelic song that probably indirectly named both that and this trope.
Also not to be confused with the "Freak of the Week" segment on
Little Steven's Underground Garage
, in which Steven Van Zandt pays tribute to important figures in the history of garage punk culture.
Examples:
- The Bill featured a guy playing an "Assassins" style game using a realistic looking paint gun in public. People who play these sort of games do not use realistic weapons. One guy from the Oxford University Assassin's Guild did that and encountered some armed police...
- The 'armed police' problem also happened with Sheffield University's Assassin's Guild. This Troper knows the people involved.
- Humans vs Zombies players get in basically the same problem.
- All this has led to something called Deathgame, were you "kill" your opponent(s) with fruits and vegetables. From what this troper knows Deathgame is only practised in Sweden.
- The CSI New York episode dealing with Water Wars. Again, someone uses a realistic looking water pistol.
- They also dealt with Le Parkour.
- There was also the 'Down the Rabbit Hole' episode which dealt with Second Life. Surprisingly, this spanned over two episodes rather than the usual one.
- And a recent(?) one about "vampire cults" who drink each others' blood. Surprisingly, no vampires committed the crimes. The episode treated vampirism like an unpopular but venerable religion.
- The famous CSI Episode "Fur and Loathing", set at a furry convention.
- Pretty much every other case in CSI deals with some sexual fetish, subculture, sexual fetish, hobby, sexual fetish or sexual fetish. And they're pretty hung up on kinks too.
- Oddly, Lady Heather actually became a well developed (if only sporadically recurring) character.
- Still, the furry episode is sometimes considered the Jump The Shark moment when the CSI freak-a-week format started.
- The CSI Miami episode dealing with videogames. Coz Gamefaqs does not exist.
- Bones does this quite often. There has been episodes about comic book, role-playing teens, pony play fetishists, and karaoke singers (with actual former American Idol contestants).
- Mostly averted in the episode dealing with black metal, though. Some of the stranger excesses of the subculture are brought to the fore, but Bones's psychiatrist is revealed to have a history in the scene and Booth compares the distaste over it to his dad's distaste for punk.
- The most significant error they made is that, while virtually everything regarding extreme black metal is true to a degree, the death metal subculture really isn't as violent or cult-like as the Norwegian black metal scene that clearly inspired the events of the episode. Furthermore, few death metal bands wear corpse paint, or use fake names, and only a handful are satanic.
- This topic would be remiss without mentioning "Next Stop, Nowhere," a.k.a, "the punk rock episode of Quincy." In the 80's hardcore punk subculture, the episode spawned the slur "Quincy Punk," applied to scene members and bands who personified the sloppy, antisocial, mohawked stereotype. This was at a time when hardcore was about dressing normal, playing tight, and maintaining a positive or at least thoughtful attitude.
- This troper laughed out loud at only one cop on Law And Order having heard of a foot fetish.
- One Pushing Daisies episode focuses on a murder at a rent-a-friend agency. The actual customers are portrayed sympathetically, but Ned eventually decries the whole enterprise as useless, because while the patrons may enjoy it for a time, "deep down they never stop thinking of themselves as weirdoes who need to be fixed".
- Most crime shows can attest to having had a vampire-related episode at some point of time. Criminal Minds even did some namedropping by referencing Twilight.
