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Woobie of the Week - TV Tropes

  • ️Mon Mar 01 2010

So we have Mystery of the Week, where the heroes solve a new mystery every week. And we have Monster of the Week, when the heroes fight a new bad guy every week. We even have Patient of the Week, when the heroes are doctors and they help out a new sick person every week.

And then there's this guy. He's not dead or in danger of dying— he's just troubled in some way. Maybe he's angry at God because his wife died, or he's in debt and needs help, and so forth. Whatever the problem, our main character has to figure out how to help him. And then the Woobie promptly disappears, and next week our hero finds someone like him all over again.

These series tend toward being spiritual and glurgey, but really it's up to the skill of the writer.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga 

  • In Ballad Of A Shinigami, Momo the shinigami finds some way to relieve the pain of the dead or the ones they are leaving behind each week.
  • Dr. Ramune: Mysterious Disease Specialist combines this with Patient of the Week, as the eponymous doctor deals with people suffering from spiritual afflictions that manifest as strange symptoms that normal medicine can't cure. These afflictions are often caused by abuse, trauma, toxic relationships, etc.
  • Each Hell Girl episode would focus on various troubled characters who is tormented by someone else, and how they are eventually driven to make a Deal with the Devil to send their tormentors to hell.
  • In Hibiki's Magic, each chapter focus on a different random person whose life tends to be either improved or ruined by magic and its applications, one of whom is Hibiki herself.
  • Mushishi combines this with Mystery of the Week. Most episodes feature people in incredibly unfortunate circumstances due to the effects of various mushi. Then Ginko arrives, figures out what kind of mushi he's dealing with, and sees if he can help. Sometimes, he can't.
  • The first half of Princess Tutu has frequent episodes where the heroine helps different people solve their issues through dancing.
  • The Sailor Moon anime frequently features the Sailor Scouts befriending people who subsequently need saving from the Monster of the Week, many of whom never appear again.
  • Characters in Paranoia Agent are this, except most of them don't get happy endings, while others receive Gainax endings.
  • Wonder Egg Priority has, on average, one suicide victim per episode whom one of the girls must "save" (unfortunately, the victims are already dead, and the girls are simply helping their souls find peace).
  • xxxHolic: The heroes go about helping addicts of various types.
  • This trope is one of two main gimmicks of Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches, along with Magic Kisses. Every arc revolves around at least one character with a hard life (usually one of the titular witches) that Yamada needs to help. The series is not afraid to play the Jerkass Woobie card, though—many of the woobies of the week are rather uncooperative or even outright villainous until Yamada finds out what's troubling them and redeems them.

Literature 

  • Parker Pyne Investigates is a series of short stories starring the titular Parker Pyne, who runs an agency that claims to solve unhappiness. Each story features a character struggling with various issues (usually relationship problems), which they eventually resolve with Pyne's help.

Live-Action TV 

  • The majority of episodes in the first three seasons of Burn Notice feature Mike and the others helping someone in need. The standard formula is Two Lines, No Waiting with the Woobie being the A Plot and the progress of the Myth Arc being the B Plot, or sometimes vice versa.
  • On Fantasy Island, each week features a different group of guests who visit the island and learn some sort of life lesson.
  • Done briefly in the third season of The Good Place, where the main cast tries to help a new person every episode become good enough to get into The Good Place when they die. However the premise is quickly dropped.
  • The Incredible Hulk (1977) sees David Banner coming to the aid of a new character in each episode. The characters are typically people who have found themselves getting caught up in messes, which Banner helps them get out of. To name a few:
    • "Final Round' has Banner talk a boxer out of continuing to fight because if he does, he will likely end up being killed in the ring.
    • "A Child in Need" sees Banner make an abusive father understand the physical and emotional harm he's causing his wife and young son, ask for their forgiveness, and seek help.
    • In "King of the Beach", Banner assists a partially deaf bodybuilder (Lou Ferrigno in a double role) with not only trying to win a local contest in spite of the contest being fixed, but also fulfilling his dream of opening a restaurant.
  • Kamen Rider Fourze has an interesting twist on this trope, combining Monster, Victim, and Woobie of the Week into a single package. The MOTW is created by a human "Switcher" using a device called an Astro Switch; the Switcher is someone with a grudge who's so hell-bent on revenge that they're blinded to the fact that the Switch will eventually kill them. So instead of just beating up the MOTW, Fourze and his team reach out and try to befriend the Switchers so that they know there's somebody who cares.
  • Its predecessor Kamen Rider Den-O had a similar format where the monsters of the week were Jerkass Genies who took the victim's wish and warped it for their own ends, usually Woobie-fying the victim in the process. Protagonist Ryotaro would try to help the victims, initially taking some flak from some of his allies who insisted his only job is to protect the timestream, but his response was that helping the victims was part of that job too.
  • Joan of Arcadia: Joan helps a new stranger every week at the suggestion of God Himself.
  • The Love Boat has a new set of guests every week, all of them looking for love on the cruise ship.
  • Every Midnight Caller episode has at least one, since it's about a radio host who gets involved in his listeners' problems. Even the villains are usually somewhat sympathetic.
  • Quantum Leap has this built into its premise: Bakula jumps into a new body every episode, and that person, or someone around him, is always in distress. The series' catchphrase (and Bakula's mission) is to Set Right What Once Went Wrong; once that's accomplished, he leaps into the next body. It's heavily implied to be the result of divine intervention.
  • Twice in a Lifetime, where an angel allows a one-shot character to revisit a moment in his life when things started going wrong.
  • Wonderfalls: A bunch of animal figurines that may or may not be God annoy heroine Jaye into helping strangers on a weekly basis.

Western Animation 

  • Care Bears episodes often consist of a bear or group of bears going to Earth to help a child that is having difficulties in their life and teach them to care.
  • In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, after the fourth season finale where the main cast obtains their new castle with its map, several episodes feature the Mane Six using the map to be alerted to ponies and other creatures in trouble who need to learn a lesson about friendship, and travel to the place indicated to help out.
  • Smiling Friends is a Deconstructive Parody of this. The Smiling Friends' job is to help troubled people smile, but while their clients are often legitimately sympathetic and troubled, their issues tend to be too complex and deep-rooted for the main characters to really fix, and their issues are often solved by accidents or circumstance that the Smiling Friends had nothing to do with. And while some of their clients are decent people just struggling with things the main characters aren't equipped to deal with, some of them are legitimate terrible people whose misery is their own fault.