In an ensemble show, episodes frequently center around a single character in the cast. Episodes which center around a character who is in general poorly written, poorly acted, or otherwise
disliked by the fans, are almost always themselves poor episodes.
The exception — when an episode centered around a poor character actually turns out to be a good episode — is a Good Troi Episode. For any given character, this happens no more than once in the entire series. The canonical Good Troi Episode, featuring 's Counselor Troi herself, is "Face of the Enemy".
A
Bottle Episode, which has to use good writing to cover for a reduced budget, may end up as a Good Troi Episode. Compare this to
The Greatest Story Never Told.
Examples:
- Also in Star Trek The Next Generation, "The First Duty" has been called a good Wesley episode.
- Another Star Trek example - Quark in Deep Space Nine. Armin Shimerman, the actor who played Quark, once noted that when his character was in the A-story, his IQ seemed to jump by about 50 points.
- Arguably applies to Beast Boy in Teen Titans. Because he's the self-admitted comic relief, his dramatic episodes tend to be inferior to his comedic ones.
- Eventually the writers embrace this and allow Beast Boy episodes to be wacky. Like the one featuring our Vegan hero taking a job at a a burger joint to pay for a moped and ends up saving the earth from sentient tofu.
- Which is, arguably, his best Good Troi episode.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer subverts and lampshades this to an extent in the episode "The Zeppo," where Xander Harris is outed as one of Buffy's close friends with neither the intelligence nor talent to fight a vampire like the others. So while not a disliked character, he is still given his own episode in which he saves the day. Most fans think "The Zeppo" is one of the series' best episodes.
- The Lost episode "Exposé" is the only episode that focuses on the intensely loathed pair Nikki and Paulo. It's basically a Filler episode, but it's a very fun Filler episode. And it features the deaths of the two characters! And the fans rejoice.
- Though Charlie was a popular character, his flashback episodes were poorly received until "Greatest Hits."
- Digimon Tamers had a very cute and funny episode called "Juri's Partner? My Leomon-sama!", in which Juri wandered around the city being pursued by Culumon, chasing after the afromentioned Leomon, declearing (in the dub, at the very least) that it was thier destiny to be Tamer and Partner, making googly eyes at Leomon and other such nonsence.
- The Doctor Who episode "Earthshock", in which companion Adric is killed by performing a Heroic Sacrifice, is generally considered a great triumph for a character that was The Scrappy in his previous appearances.
- In the animated Justice League Unlimited, "The Greatest Story Never Told" was Booster Gold's "The Zeppo".
- While James Bond fandom is split over the "glitz-and-gadgets" Roger Moore era, pretty much everyone agrees that For Your Eyes Only is his best work, being one of the more serious and down-to-earth Bond films. Plus, he gets to kick a car over a cliff. Bad. Ass.
- Matsuda from Death Note, a comic relief if there ever was one in the series, had his one spotlight episode, aptly named "Matsuda". This troper was expected to hate it and was pleasantly surprised when it was actually pretty good.
- Outlaw Star has one in it's beach episode, (Which infamously never aired on Cartoon Network) which goes from your standard hot springs episode into a comedic quest for both booty and magic gun bullets.
