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  • Accidental Aesop: The show tends to make the victims do something good and end up getting killed as a result. Just to name a few examples, a guy is killed for trying to save a girl he considers a daughter from a prostitution ring, a security guard is nearly killed as a result of respecting two outcasts turned violent shooters, and another tries to confess his role in a crime. Some people have taken this as An Aesop, even though it was likely unintentional.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Has its own page
  • Aluminum Christmas Trees: "Pin Up Girl" has a group singing "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" in a club. If you don't know that the They Might Be Giants version is a cover, this would give you pause.
  • Ass Pull: Lt. Stillman's relationship with FBI Agent Yates. Over the show's history, of all the police personnel, he was the least likely to be involved in any impropriety on or off the job (so much to the point that his first marriage ended due to how dedicated he was to it.) Yet, her introduction retconned this, with the new reason being that an affair they had ruined Stillman's marriage. Granted, it must be difficult to form/keep relationships in their business (Lilly's many abortive romances throughout the series are an example of this), but it really hurt the Lieutenant's reputation as a straight and narrow By-the-Book Cop and undermined how tough he was on even the more sympathetic murderers (in addition to the fact that Yates isn't exactly the definition of a moral center herself...).
  • Base-Breaking Character: Celeste from "Stand Up & Holler". She is either one of the most tragic killers of the show because of the circumstances that led her to wanting to kill herself with a beer full of Liquid X alongside Becca's cruelty towards her after that experience or a murderer worse than Becca due to not stopping the latter from pouring the spiked beer down Rainey's throat in the first place and letting her best friend die thereafter.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: There's a scene in "Justice" where Vera catches a gigantic Jerkass Ball and starts making rape apologist comments that seems to exist for no reason other than the writers needing someone to sound ignorant to make a point. The scene is never mentioned afterward and everyone goes back to being friends again. Even stranger is the fact that in other episodes dealing with rape, Vera is typically the most disgusted, even more than Rush and Miller, due to his botching a high-profile rape case earlier in his career. He's also inexplicably and relentlessly rude to Josie Sutton when she joins the team, despite her consistently showing herself to be a competent detective. For some strange reason he's adamantly opposed to working with anyone new and determined to think that because she's female and attractive, she's going to cause trouble—much like the above example, when vague references are made to her involvement in a sexual harassment incident, he insinuates that she was the one at fault. He never apologizes for his behavior, yet he never acts this way again—he never treats Lilly like this and when Detective Miller joins the staff, has no conflict with her.
  • Complete Monster: See CSI-verse.
  • Designated Villain: In-Universe in both "Family 8108" and "Bad Reputation". The fathers were called "cowards" by their children for not letting Honor Before Reason dictate their actions, despite the fact that doing so would have made a bad situation far worse.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: The mall shooters in "Rampage" are disturbingly popular.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Many of the one-off victims have noticeable fanbases of their own and sometimes even fans who wouldn't have minded seeing them star in a non-murder mystery story, such as Sean "Coop" Cooper ("Forever Blue"), Carrie Swett ("That Woman"), Roy W. Dunn ("The Brush Man"), Daniel Holtz ("A Time to Hate"), Rita Baxter ("The Sleepover"), Rita Flynn ("Pin Up Girl"), Alice Miller ("Factory Girls"), Eve Kendall ("Lovers Lane"), Tom and Della Lincoln ("Badlands"), Daniela ("Daniela"), Greg Vizcaino ("Discretion"), Zeke Williams ("Strange Fruit"), Patrick Bubley's brothers ("Saving Patrick Bubley"), Julian Bellowes ("Libertyville"), Jimmy Tully ("Shore Leave"), Ray Takahashi ("Family 8108"), Sadie Douglas ("The Letter"), Joe Young ("Kensington"), Marlene Bradford ("A Dollar, A Dream), Dexter Collins ("Street Money"), Frank DiCenzio ("Frank's Best"), Gonzalo Luque ("Stealing Home"), Rainey Karlsen ("Stand Up and Holler"), Mike Chulaski ("Cargo"), Sam Randall ("Boy Crazy"), Terrance Carter ("Wunderkind"), Andy Rierdan ("Andy in C Minor"), Maurice Hall ("Shuffle, Ball Change"), Skill Jones and Madison Reed ("8:03 am"), Miriam Forrester ("Wednesday's Women"), Danny Finch, ("One Small Step"), Jane Everett ("Breaking News"), Colin Miller ("Wishing"), Ally Thurston ("Wings"), Laura McKinney ("True Calling"), Pete Doyle, Sr. ("Bad Reputation"), Ben Feldman ("Witness Protection"), Patrick "Rifle" Lennox ("November 22nd"), Jack Chao Lu and Tam Sung ("Chinatown"), Vivian Lynn ("WASP"), Mitchell Baye ("Churchgoing People"), Carlos Espinosa ("Bombers"), Harry Denton ("The Runaway Bunny"), Felicia Grant ("Almost Paradise"), Mike McShane ("Glory Days"), Dana Tucker ("The War at Home"), Missy Gallivan ("Roller Girl"), Tamyra Borden ("Spiders"), Nadia Koslov ("Triple Threat"), Donalyn Sullivan ("Read Between the Lines"), Ellie McCormick ("Revolution"), Laurie Dunne ("The Promise"), Bingo Zohar ("Devil Music"), Billy Sanders ("Soul"), Mia Romanov ("Metamorphosis"), Nash Simpson ("Hoodrats"), Sonny Sandoval ("Dead Heat"), Ed Dubinski ("Lotto Fever"), Billie Ducette and Rose Collins ("Best Friends"), Melanie Campbell ("Fireflies"), and Hank Dempsey ("The House") (the last three of whom turning out to have survived their apparent murders).
    • Even if the killers on the show, particularly the Serial Killers, mostly manage to avoid being portrayed in a positive light, George Marks is considered the most memorable despite his depraved actions. His ruthlessness, surprisingly tragic backstory, ability to actually outwit the detectives, and being played by the quirky John Billingsley made him a standout character and a villain that the show later continuously tried (and failed) to recreate.
  • Esoteric Happy Ending:
    • "Family" can be seen as this. Yes, the killer and the kidnapper do end up being arrested for their crimes, but the fate of the mother and daughter is unlikely to end well; the girl is still damaged from her years of growing up without a father, her knowledge of her mother abandoning her at birth, and being exposed to the harsh world of foster care (or it was in her case). The mother, meanwhile, lives hand-to-mouth in a group home, virtually has no skills to come by, and is seen as still emotionally wrecked by the end of the episode, even with the Hope Spot between the two women reuniting and all.
    • This also applies to the victim's daughter in "Gleen". Her mother was viciously murdered when she was only five years old, it still deeply affects her in the present day, twenty years later, and even with a caring and well-rounded supporter at her side (in the form of her father's fiancée), she outright admits to Lilly that she may as well kill herself if it's found out that her father was the one who killed her mother. He did and Lilly does end up arresting him, but out of respect to the daughter, she can't bring herself to put the cuffs on the killer in front of her.
    • The bastard father from "The Brush Man" is finally arrested for murdering the salesman who tried to intervene with the abusive situation of the man's family. However, this still does little to undo the 40-plus years of torment he inflicted onto his wife, who's nowadays an alcoholic, and his son, who hasn't accomplished much with his life due to all of his underlying issues.
    • The ending of "Ghost of My Child" is supposed to be one of the more moving and happy of the series; it ends with Priscilla, a recovered drug addict and struggling single mother, finally reuniting with her son Max, who she thought had died in a house fire as an infant, which had actually been used to cover up his kidnapping by a childless social worker and her husband. The couple are arrested and Max is removed. Except it's been three years since he was taken from Priscilla and while he seems to recognizes her, he's likely too young to understand that he's being taken from his kidnappers and given back to his rightful parent — from his perspective, he would experience it as being ripped away from the only life, parents, and home he's known and given to a stranger. Returning Max may be right decision (certainly legally, and arguably morally as well), but it's probably going to be a lot more complicated and traumatic for him than the upbeat ending montage would seem to imply. At least Priscilla may now be able to reconcile with her parents, who are willing support her raising her son this time.
  • Fanfic Fuel: The compelling natures of most of the victims' stories, the contrived motives for many of the murders, and the happy Imagine Spot or alternate universe in "Bad Night" make it interesting to imagine the events leading up to the murders in other episodes being avoided due to plot deviations.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • "Late Returns" was based on the real-life murder of Chandra Levy, an intern to a California Congressman, Gary Condit, whom she was also sleeping with. The public opinion of the time pointed the blame at Condit, and the scandal ruined his career. Several years after the episode aired, Condit was found to be completely innocent, although the case remain unsolved after charges against the alleged perpetrator were eventually dropped.
    • In "Love Conquers All" (which is based off of the real-life 1995 Texas Cadet murders), the victim based off of the murdered girl, Adrianne Jones, could be seen as unsympathetic because she cheated on a guy with a girlfriend, although her knowledge of if he had a girlfriend when they got together is left ambiguous. As it was revealed in the real-life trial of one of the killers, David Graham, he never slept with Jones and on top of that, didn't even give her a ride home that night. He only said that to screw around with his girlfriend's head since she was so paranoid about him cheating on her. Update: However, Graham later admitted that he did have sex with Jones; the only reason he lied about it was on his defense lawyer's advice.
    • Watching the season three episode "Death Penalty: Final Appeal", the season four episode "Fireflies", and season five episode "Spiders" end up as this due to the actors in those episodes (Michael Jace playing a character who was innocent of the crime he was executed for, Dee Jay Daniels playing the lead suspect who was exonerated, and Johnny Lewis playing the younger version of the killer) committing murders in real life.
    • One season four episode has Valens catching a pedophile watching children at a park and later he is seen beating said pedophile up and suffering no consequences for it. A later episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has Amaro (who is also a Cowboy Cop portrayed by Danny Pino) in a similar situation, only this time he is arrested, charged and finds himself in danger of losing his badge.
    • The frequency of mass shootings in the United States can make "Rampage" harder to watch now than when it first premiered.
    • Season 3's "The Promise" and Season 5's "Justice" come off as this in the wake of cases such as Brock Turner and the "Me Too" movement.
    • "Strange Fruit", which was based on the lynching of Emmett Till, became this in light of the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in May 2020, following the murder of African American Minneapolis resident George Floyd at the hands of a police officer. Notably, following publicized reactions and calls for justice in the deaths of Floyd, Ahmaud Arbury, Breonna Taylor, and others, Start TV pulled the episode from its airing schedule and aired "Justice" in its place. An especially eerie detail is that the method of murder in the show was altered from the real case it was based on - while the real Emmett Till was shot, his expy in the episode, Zeke Williams, was strangled... as Floyd would be in real life fifteen years later.
    • The victim's utter devotion to disco in "Disco Inferno", to the point where he throws away a dental scholarship to be a professional dancer, in light of what eventually happened to that fad.
    • The episode "Volunteers", specifically the depiction of back-alley abortions in the pre-legal era, became this in light of Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned the decision conferred by Roe v. Wade.
    • The episode "The Boy in the Box" became this after the real Boy in the Box has been identified in December 2022.
    • The episode "Sabotage" became this in light of the Unabomber's suicide in June 2023.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • Anytime Biggie says the word "Management" in the episode "Metamorphosis" is hysterical if you've seen Carnivàle (where Michael J. Anderson plays virtually the same role and Management is a sinister figure).
    • 5 years after "Thrill Kill", an episode about a man who went crazy and killed three kids because of a harmless prank, Ugly Americans produced a season finale involving someone going crazy over a harmless prank and killing everyone involved.
    • Tessa Thompson appeared on the show as a lesbian a full thirteen years before the actress herself came out as bisexual.
    • In "Disco Inferno", lab tech Castillo confirms that the bullet in Mark Rigley matches the one found in the Victim of the Week's skull by quipping "Congrats, it's twins". In 2013 Kathryn Morris and Johnny Messner welcome twin boys in real life.
  • Hollywood Homely:
    • The main victim, Martha, in "Lonely Hearts". We're repeatedly told that she's extremely unattractive and has no chance with men, and even the detectives, in a surprising display of insensitivity, comment that her traditionally-handsome boyfriend "must've had some kind of fetish." In reality, while she's somewhat overweight and by no means supermodel-gorgeous, she comes across as an adorable Manic Pixie Dream Girl type, apart from being an accomplice to a Serial Killer, that is, and in the scene she first meets her lover, she has a flower in her hair and is fairly pretty.
    • The victim's daughter and murderer in "Blackout" is continually put down as "plain" by her drop-dead-gorgeous mother. This is what the actress looks like when not made up to look somewhat frumpy. However, this was probably deliberate on her mother's part, given that the latter was pathologically narcissistic to the point where she molested her own son and attempted to seduce her grandson in order to satisfy her need to be the most alluring woman in every room.
    • Brown hair and drab clothes are apparently enough to make the companion in "The Crossing" the dowdy, matronly alternative to the glamorous, willowy, red-headed victim, even though they're about the same age. She was never described as homely, though. In her case, it would seem to be more of a reflection of personality (contrasting to Darcy's vibrancy and independence) than an attempt to present her as unattractive.
    • The (innocent) frenemy of the victim in "Factory Girls", depicted as pitifully jealous of her popularity at their workplace, as well as her happy marriage, to the point where she blatantly tries to interfere in the victim's relationship by making herself look like the better option. All because she's considered an Old Maid at only 22 (by the standards of when the episode is set) and regarded as a Plain Jane when she is clearly no less attractive than any of the other women seen throughout the episode.
    • The victim in "The Sleepover" is considered unattractive and nerdy by the other girls, who deem her unpopular at school. In reality, she's adorkable and quite cute. Then again, the girls' opinions are clearly not meant to be taken at face value.
    • Tina in "Rampage" is referred to as a butterface (as in everything is hot "but her face") by her meathead ex-boyfriend. She even calls herself a "hit and run queen". Oh yeah, for those of you who haven't seen the episode, this is the aforementioned "butter face".
    • The killer in "Soul" gets this too, despite actually being quite pretty and played by Loretta Devine, and like the character in "The Crossing", suffering from nothing more than plain clothes and a lack of makeup.
  • Ho Yay: The show has many acknowledged gay couples but "One Night" has an ambiguous relationship between Justin (who was almost a victim) and his friend Valentino that is often interpreted as this.
  • Iron Woobie: Many of the show's victims have unhappy lives that leave them in Stepford Smiler mode, but a few of them hide their unhappiness behind stoic expressions and/or manage to find things to be genuinely happy about.
    • Jill Shelby from "Look Again" behaves like a normal, excitable, level-headed teenager despite having an abusive father whose beatings hospitalized her at least twice by the time she was 15 and an abusive boyfriend who degrades her and is rumored to hit her too in addition to cheating on her with her best friend, with said friend either not believing or caring about Jill's mistreatment. Meanwhile, the two people who genuinely care about Jill, her mother and her boyfriend's younger brother, are unable to help or stand up for her, which leads to her death. (If that's not enough, her mother, best friend, and the brother end up unwillingly or unwittingly protecting her killer for over two decades.)
    • Channary Dhiet from "Who's Your Daddy" is an opium-addicted war refugee who lost her royal status and is stuck in an Ethnic Menial Labor job and has a Stalker with a Crush, but is rarely seen without a smile, and is able to pretend that many of her problems don't exist.
    • Roy W. Dunn from "The Brush Man" killed one of his best friends in a fight over the man's Domestic Abuse, lost a sports career after he was sent to prison for manslaughter, and feels torn between helping when he sees people in trouble and feeling like he makes things worse, but rarely displays anything darker than a mild frown.
    • Sonny Sandoval from "Dead Heat" has two failed marriages, is estranged from his son, and is dying of kidney failure, but continues to act like the Life of the Party while trying to build or mend relationships with people around him.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Many suspects, victims, and killers.
    • Alpha Bitch Brandi in "The Sleepover". Is it any wonder that she's a bully with parents like that? Her brother Neil, who committed the secondary murder in the episode, is a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
    • Karen Watson in "The Good-Bye Room". She initially comes across as a violent and crass girl, having been expelled from her school for beating another girl with a rock. Throughout the episode, she repeatedly scoffs at her friend Hilary for looking forward to giving birth to her child, which she personally saw as a nuisance. When Karen finally gave birth to a boy, however, she fell in love with him on sight and was heartbroken to have to give him up for adoption with only fifteen minutes to say goodbye. Hilary attempted to reassure her, hugging her and telling her that he was going to a wealthy lawyer's family and that he would be well taken care of, but Karen only repeated again and again that she "wanted him back in his bassinet". In the present, it's mentioned that she spent decades searching for her son, joining multiple adoption search groups. The final flashback reveals Karen chased after Hilary when the latter tried to escape from the institution with her daughter, jealous that she got to keep her child, and then lost it so completely that she started to think Hilary has her baby, and killed her to get "him" back, not realizing what she'd actually done until Hilary's daughter was taken away too. In the end, Rush arrests her for Hilary's murder, but also gives her a file with information about her son.
    • Cy Tisdale in "The River". Sure he's a louse who has no problem ripping off people or even robbing them to feed his gambling addiction, but Good Lord, this man has had a crappy life. The victim (and Cy's only friend) acknowledges this as a reason why he can't keep going on the way he has, leading Cy to have to Mercy Kill the only person who gives a damn about him.
  • Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Has its own page.
  • Magnificent Bastard: "The House": Hank Dempsey is a charming, likable thief who breaks out of prison to be with the love of his life. A playful trickster, Hank fools and runs circles around the wardens of his prison, carefully escaping from a seemingly inescapable prison twice. Defusing an attempt by another prisoner to kill him, Hank stages his own injuries in order to gain a way to make his final escape from the prison and be with his love. Utterly charming and with a knack for ingenuity, Hank is later able to safely escape justice and continues his days as a happy contended man with his wife. And he cannot be arrested due to the fact that the statute of limitation ran out.
  • Moe:
    • The little smile Lilly often makes and the way she dedicates herself to empathizing with the victims and getting justice for them can make her adorable in some episodes.
    • Plenty of victims in the show are popular for a wide variety of reasons, but some inspire a special amount of protective feelings for an adorable combination of vulnerable moments, occasional excitement, and good intentions through their episodes, such as brave, idealistic, friend-seeking Lovable Nerds Rita Baxter from "The Sleepover" and Danny Finch from "One Small Step", Good Bad Girl Carrie Swett from "That Woman", dog-loving Benevolent Boss and single parent Frank DiCenzio from "Frank's Best", the close-knit and initially optimistic five Bubley brothers (only one of whom survives) from "Saving Patrick Bubley", Deaf Composer and Class Clown Andy Rierdan from "Andy in C Minor", and Defector from Commie Land singer Nadia Koslov from "Triple Threat".
  • Moral Event Horizon:
  • Narm:
    • In "Andy in C Minor", the tension between deaf and hearing people is about as bad as 1960s racial tension, complete with everyone trying to pull apart two lovers because they belong to different worlds. It has all the subtlety of a jackhammer, and just comes across as wangst. Not helping matters being Dean Vivian Harden's attitude sounding uncomfortably similar to segregation, and her overall pretentious behavior.
    • It's hard to take the end montage of "Dead Heat" seriously when some of the people would flash back to them wearing those ridiculous jockey uniforms.
    • The hurricane of poker puns exchanged between the victim and his mercy-killer in "The River" causes his death scene to lose a bit of its bite.
    • Any episode where moderately old people try and fail to act REALLY old, for instance, "Family 8108".
    • The villain in "That Woman" and her bizarre obsession with her high school chastity club, to the point that she's never had sex at all in ten years, not even with her own husband, which costs her her marriage.
    • Some people find the theme song unbearably silly because it takes itself too seriously. It starts with a woman wailing, followed by a heavy, overbearing orchestra. Then it ends with jungle flute noises, for some reason.
    • Thanks to Anachronism Stew and Writers Cannot Do Math, some episodes that would have been otherwise more serious tend to get undermined. Examples include the victim and her classmates in "Stand Up and Holler" being 16-year-old high school juniors yet her class is attending their ten-year reunion with the seniors or how the victim and his first wife in "Two Weddings" apparently have access to MySpace in 2000. The latter may be a case of Most Writers Are Adults, since not only is that not possible, the page in question is very clearly based on Facebook (and leaves in the HTML address that shows it was a prop. Whoops.).
    • In "Detention", Trevor backs out of the plan that involves killing his girlfriend's rapist, abusive stepfather. The other guy, Boris, who intended on murdering him? He simply turns and says "Not cool, man! Not cool!" before leaving the room. Understatement much?
    • The episode "Lonely Hearts" focuses on an attractive conman who targeted unattractive women, knowing that they'd be so desperate for attention, they wouldn't notice him stealing from them until it's too late. The degree to which this works is staggering. One woman gets alerted by his previous mark and then comes home to him stealing her TV; not only is she willing to continue a relationship, she's so desperate to keep his attention that she immediately concocts a scheme wherein her marries and murders his future victims, just so that she won't lose the only man who was willing to date her. When she fears he's going to kill her, she tries to enlist the woman who'd warned her to team up against him, but she's so desperate to get his attention back, she kills her, hoping to take her place as his accomplice, even though she admits he ruined her life.
  • Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize:
  • Retroactive Recognition:
  • Rewatch Bonus: This happens frequently as new evidence and/or the revelation of the killer puts previous flashbacks in a new light.
    • In the opening sequence of "Forever Blue", this is said about the Cowboy Cop victim:
      "Isn't is about time he got married?"
      "You gotta go on a second date for that."
      • In that context, it makes him sound like a womanizer. However, once you realize that he's gay, you realize that he never went on a second date, not because he couldn't be satisfied by only one woman but because he couldn't be satisfied by any woman.
    • In "Blood On The Tracks", Jack, Johanna's own husband, mistakes Sarah for her while they and their friends are reviewing slides from their college days, driving home how much they resemble each other. This is never mentioned again during the episode, but later, after the detectives have figured out that Johanna is the murderer and has been impersonating Sarah for decades, one recalls that we only saw Jack's death, not Johanna's, and that Johanna was present in every one of "Sarah's" flashbacks. It also mentions that "Sarah" abruptly cut off the other friends after that fateful weekend and never saw or spoke to them again. Of course not. They would have recognized her and blown her scheme.
      • From the same episode, there’s a flashback to poor Sarah declaring that "if [she] died tomorrow, no one would notice", and indeed nobody did! It was almost too easy for Johanna to steal her identity.
    • In "It's Raining Men," Paul Kerns constantly displays sadness and bitterness about the homophobia his brother faced, especially from their own father, and has done a lot to honor his memory. This goes beyond simple brotherly love with the reveal that Paul is either gay or bisexual himself, giving him an extra reason to empathize with Jeff and resent their father and society's homophobic attitudes. Also, he's trying to atone for being the killer.
    • In "Stalker", the mom's defensiveness towards her daughter's online activities comes to a new light once it is revealed that the mom was Catfishing someone using her daughter's pictures.
    • "Stand By Me" by Ben E. King is played in "The Good-Bye Room", when Hilary's boyfriend reassures her that he'll marry her after she delivers their baby. A few flashbacks later, it's revealed he's cheating on her.
    • "Shuffle, Ball Change". The victim's brother is clearly very shaken upon being told that his brother's remains have been found. It seems like a perfectly normal reaction... until we learn that HE'S the killer and that he's actually panicking at the realization that after 20-something years, his horrific deed has finally caught up with him.
    • "November 22nd". When we see Patrick Lennox's daughter, Hillary Rhodes, in the present, she mentions Patrick by his first name. This seems like casual dialogue, but foreshadows her not actually being his daughter.
  • The Scrappy:
    • Frankie Rafferty due to her and Scotty's relationship causing a Romantic Plot Tumor of season 6, the reveal that she was cheating with him on her not-quite-yet divorced husband and pulling in mounds of The Unfair Sex to not answer for it.
    • Moe Kitchener also seems to have very few fans even for a villain, owing largely to his Hate Sink personality and his arc being dragged out.
  • Seasonal Rot:
    • Debatable. However, most long-time viewers agree that Season 7 was the point at which the series went downhill, save for the odd good episode. Both Lilly and Scotty went out of character with the former turning rogue against Moe Kitchener and the latter turning rogue against Hector Cruz along with causing the death of his mother's assaulter Jimmy Mota to make him look like a snitch in the penultimate episode that some fans saw as a Moral Event Horizon for him over several episodes causing Arc Fatigue or that some episodes were merely retellings of older episodes.
      • Also, the show's budget was significantly cut at this point resulting in less episodes taking place in past eras and more episodes revolving around cases only a few years old. This didn't sit well with fans who felt that the era-specific episodes were part of the show's major appeal.
    • Some also point to Season 6 with the Scotty-Frankie storyline as another point of decline.
  • Special Effect Failure:
    • In "The Plan", the ending has the Victim of the Week's ghost/reflection appear in a badly superimposed image overlayed in the pool where he was drowned. The difference between the effects seen there and as seen in "Blackout", a later episode also featuring a pedophile drowned in a pool that just has that victim's ghost was seen in a better-received mirror reflection at the bottom of the pool is striking.
    • In "Start Up", Scotty takes Elisa's suicide note and lets it float away in a river before walking away. The problem is he walks past a dam that is clearly not moving water and is just a static photo used as the background.
    • The victim in "Debut" is interested in the moon, and at the end of the episode it appears big and bright above the Philadelphia skyline. Unfortunately, the editing team superimposed it a few frames too early, causing it to appear in the victim's mother's hair in a close-up before fading to the skyline.
  • Spiritual Successor: To Without a Trace, which premiered a year before. Despite the two shows being at the polar opposites of criminal investigation—in WAT, there's tremendous urgency to find the presumably still-alive victim before he/she is killed, whereas in CC, the victim has been dead for years if not decades before the team takes on the case, they followed a very similar format, likely because they were both created by Jerry Bruckheimer and part of the CSI-verse—an opening sequence in which we meet the victim and get a hint of what led to their disappearance/death, victim disappears/is seen dead, the cops are brought in, we get numerous interviews with friends and family that lead to flashbacks (with virtually identical effects) that start to spell out what happened culminating in one that finally tells us everything, then the victim is found dead or alive/killer is found and we get a final montage of the cops and the victim's loved ones.
  • Spoiled by the Format: Anything we see in a flashback can be accepted as 100% true, usually just missing some necessary context. Which means that anything a witness says without an accompanying flashback is immediately suspicious and has a high probability of being a lie. If it's a critical piece of information without a flashback, congratulations, you've almost certainly identified the killer.
  • Squick: Most of the scenes showing the victims' bodies come off as this.
  • Strawman Has a Point:
    • When Moe Kitchener fills a complaint for harassment against Lilly for stalking him. When you think about it, she has no evidence but a Dying Dream to prove he was the one person that tried to kill her in "Into the Blue".
    • When Patrick Doherty points out that Stillman's repetitive actions to protect his team when they keep Jumping Off the Slippery Slope are more counterproductive than anything.
    • Patrick Bubley is portrayed as unreasonable for wanting to perpetuate the Cycle of Revenge against the Latino Gangbangers that killed his brothers; while this is true, the fact is that the cycle only began in the first place because the cops assumed his brothers were Gangbangers themselves and put little effort into their cases, and this aspect of the plot goes strangely unaddressed in the episode.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • Not that it is very important, but Thomas F. Wilson plays a person of interest in an episode about the 1973 murder of a college student... who was already 'old' in 1973, and died before the investigation was reopened in the mid-2000s.
    • James Hoffman's young sister Alexa in "Knuckle Up". She only appears in the opening flashback and in the present, discovering James fighting in a web video and accompanying her father Darren about everywhere he goes. Alexa seemed to be a Morality Pet of sorts for James, especially when he mentions her while Calling the Old Man Out. She could have made an interesting suspect but aside from finding the video, she had little to do with the plot.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • "Saving Patrick Bubley" features a subplot about the police dropping the initial investigation, due to the lead detective and Lilly's first partner, Ben Fulcrum, being a racist who dismissed the victims as gangbangers and thus not worth investigating. Yet Fulcrum only appeared in the flashbacks and was not even interrogated in the current investigation, missing a perfect opportunity to be dressed down by Lilly or Stillman.
    • The killer in "It Takes a Village," rather than targeting innocent children for Misplaced Retribution, could've easily been a sort of Vigilante Man targeting abusers for Revenge by Proxy regarding the guy actually responsible for the killer's own abuse — which would've certainly helped with the Unintentionally Unsympathetic-ism.
    • "Schadenfreude" had a storyline with the wife of a prominent surgeon being killed in her home and the potential of a viable and unique suspect in the widow of a patient that died on the doctor's watch due to medical error. Instead, they just went with the lazy (and seriously overdone) the best friend did it out of jealousy plotline.
    • "Breaking News" and "The Dealer", two episodes from season six, had storylines where the female victims who in spite of being competent in their respective fields (of journalism and car dealing), were still in a sexist world and threatened by their male counterparts. Obviously, it would make perfect sense to let said sexist coworkers be the culprits, (particularly in the latter episode, where it would have paid to see virtually any of those assholes be the doer), yet they pulled a out of left field and rather convoluted twist that left some viewers unsatisfied. To wit, the reporter's non-sexist mentor killed her due to her finding out about some corruption at a nuclear waste station he knew about and wanting to report on it and the car saleswoman's "sympathetic" coworker, an older gentleman who's not treated any better on the job than she is, killed her in the heat of the moment.
  • Unintentional Period Piece:
    • A character in "Frank's Best" wanted to go to the US but was delayed because of the chaos of post-9/11 America.
    • "Knuckle Up" aired in 2006 just as YouTube was gaining popularity. The case starts because the victim of the week was seen in a video sharing website.
    • "Stand Up and Holler" made mention of Britney Spears as a soon-to-be-has-been celebrity. This was in 2007, which was her lowest year personally.
    • Hugh from "Roller Girl" has a MySpace profile.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic:
    • The best friend from "Soul". Granted, everything probably could have been avoided if she had just confessed that she was in love with her friend much earlier, but she still comes off as sympathetic since even though she was talented enough to be a singer, she was insulted in a room full of music producers on how fat and unattractive they viewed her and how they won't even consider her for a career (all while her friend said and did nothing to defend her to them then or later), and her friend later ends up impregnating one of the producers' Sexy Secretary and then telling her about it. In spite of his Oblivious to Love status (as well as other things) and the fact that she still killed him in the heat of the moment and left his body on the street, she was genuinely sorry for killing him, even paying for his tombstone in the end. It shows that women don't like being "friend-zoned" any more than men do.
    • Cameron's parents in "Rampage". The way the detectives treat them would have you believe that they are Abusive Parents whose negligence drove their son to his murderous ways. The few scenes we see of them, however, show them as normal people who, as the dad points out, lost their son too. The bit where they find out that not only is their only son dead but that he was also the shooter is truly heartbreaking. Adding to that, they are immediately labeled as monsters by the media. At the very worst, they could be considered oblivious and Too Dumb to Live or Genre Blind in their choice of weapons, but not evil. The ending montage shows them eating together but not saying a word. You can't help but want to give them a massive hug. Talk about every parent's worst nightmare!
    • Deidre from "The Promise". The poor girl was invited to a frat party, only to be fat-shamed, force-fed alcohol, and sexually assaulted. In her traumatized state, she set the frat house on fire, but unknown to her, the frat president deliberately locked another girl inside, who died of smoke inhalation. She is still arrested at the end of the episode, as if her crime was equal to those of the rapist councilman and frat president.
    • Felton from "World's End". Yes, he does deserve punishment for murdering his wife 70 years ago, but by the time he is arrested, he is in his 90s and suffering from advanced stages of dementia, no longer being mentally capable of admitting guilt. His son practically begged detectives not to arrest him but to let him live out his limited time in peace.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: See here.
  • The Un-Twist:
    • The killers in "A Time to Hate" are the open homophobes.
    • "8:03 AM." The cases are reopened because it was discovered that the murders took place at exactly the same time on the same day, and Kat hoped that a connection could be discovered. Turns out there was none; it was a total coincidence, although the victims did know each other, something that wasn't apparent in the original investigation.
    • Also occurs in "Debut" and "Hubris", in which the killer turned out to be... exactly who everyone thought was the killer. The only reason the cases become as long and involved as they do is due to the villains' attempts to deflect suspicion off themselves. The actual twist in the former episode is that the second killing that triggered the investigation was completely accidental.
    • "The Brush Man": The killer is the only suspect who has nothing positive to say about the victim.
    • Used interestingly in "Creatures of the Night". They know who did it from the beginning; the real challenge is proving it before the guy walks due to a ridiculous deal he took when he confessed to prior crimes.
    • Revealed less than halfway through "Pin Up Girl" in a flashback when the victim's best friend made a sarcastic remark about her charming the people at a party that they were attending by singing and dancing that gave a look at the true nature of how they felt about her.
  • Values Dissonance: While the case flashbacks to other eras often featured Deliberate Values Dissonance (see main page), the present-day scenes are starting to show signs of this trope as of the early 2020s, due to changing views on LGBTQ rights in the years during and since the series aired. In "Daniela" and "Boy Crazy," both about transgender youth, the team crack jokes at the victims' expense and continually use deadnames. This is especially jarring in "Boy Crazy," as the way the team talk about Sam is nearly identical to the way his 1960's contemporaries talk about him, except it's Played for Laughs in the 2000's and Played for Drama in 1963. "A Time to Hate" is noticeable for its use of LGBTQ slurs and the detectives' confusion as to why an older drag queen would continue to fight against discrimination. Lilly also vocally comes out in favor of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policies for the police force. Given that several other episodes are notable for their delicate exploration of LGBTQ themes and no one on the team ever thinks that one's sexuality, gender, or gender expression is an appropriate motive for murder, it could be considered Fair for Its Day. However, the shifting attitudes does make it an Unintentional Period Piece and is a reminder the 2000's are a relic of the distant past.
    • In addition, there is quite a bit of gratuitous smoking by nearly everyone on the show at some point or another; even those who aren't portrayed as regular smokers will light up if they feel it will engender trust with a witness. This likely wasn't even noticeable during the show's original run, but is in the 2020's as rates of smoking among adults has fallen to record lows, and the display of smoking onscreen has fallen out of fashion.
  • Wangst: Many of the doers' confessions and rationale for the stupidity of their actions come off as this.
    • Special mention though goes to Dale Wilson in "Fireflies" and Gibby Hanes's tearful admission in "8:03 A.M.".
    • The killing couple in "Love Conquers Al", who apparently believed their high school romance to be one of the all-time greatest love stories in history, enough to kill an innocent girl to preserve the "purity" of their love story.
    • Lyle in "Willkommen", who literally killed to get a part in a musical. He even begins ranting about how the show got cancelled after the victim was killed, showing he cared more about being denied the chance to be a star than actually killing someone. And the cherry on top? It was All for Nothing anyway, since it turned out that the director was lying that there was a famous talent scout in the audience, meaning it really was just a completely ordinary community theater production and Lyle never could've become a "star".
  • Watched It for the Representation: Not necessarily the show itself, but several individual episodes. Most notably ''WASP" and "Factory Girls", which have a lot of fans due to their portrayal of women in historically accurate World War II support roles. And "A Time to Hate", "Best Friends", "It's Raining Men", and "Forever Blue" for their more nuanced depictions of gay couples.

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