Series / Without a Trace

You may be looking for Without a Trace, a 1983 drama film directed by Stanley R. Jaffe.

Another show (2002-2009) in the CSI-verse from the CSI-SVU school of "let's focus on a lesser-known faction of the criminal investigation world"; this one takes a look at the FBI's missing persons unit. It's hip and gritty and hyper-edited like its contemporaries, with a similar focus on the cases rather than investigators; it sets itself apart, however, by having a more emotional interest in the cases than procedural, which is greatly helped by a top-drawer performance from Anthony LaPaglia.

It should be noted that while the investigation should stop with the discovery of a body, the unit very frequently ends up investigating murders along the way as well as that of the missing person, should that scenario appear.

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Without a Trace provides examples of:

• Accidental Murder: In several instances when the Victim of the Week turns up dead. An especially heartbreaking example is of a woman who fell asleep while nursing her infant daughter and consequently smothered her.
• Adults Are Useless: Happens a lot whenever a kid disappears as the parents would prefer to deny that their kids might have been involved in something they shouldn't have.
• Ailment-Induced Cruelty: One of the two missing people in "In The Dark" is Kelly Corcoran, a teenage girl who recently went blind. Her introductory scene and one flashback depict her as being very bitter about her situation and especially prone to lashing out at her parents.
• The Alcoholic: Danny is a recovering one. Martin develops an addiction to painkillers after being shot.
• All Abusers Are Male: A school counselor assumes a student is being beaten by his father and is tight-lipped about it. To be fair, she was basing her assumption around her own experiences with parental abuse where her father killed her mother in a drunken rage when she called him out on it, and eventually the boy opens up to correct her and state that it's his mother who is the abuser. Thankfully the episode is a subversion because both the counselor and the agents respond in the same negative way you'd expect to the mother for this.
• All Just a Dream: "John Michaels" turns out to be this, with the missing person and many key elements of his life representing JACK'S life.
• And Starring: Eric Close (Martin Fitzgerald) gets this distinction in the opening credits, although it's just simply "and".
• …And That Little Girl Was Me: In "Pentinence", the agents investigate the disappearance/possible escape of an inmate named James MacAvoy. Martin and Vivian interview a guard who says that MacAvoy and another inmate escaped through a gate while the guard that was supposed to be guarding it was trying to break up a prison fight. When Vivian says they need to see that guard, the one they are talking to reveals that he was the guard in question.
• Beta Couple: Danny and Elena. True to form, their relationship has much less drama than the other two (Sam/Martin, Sam/Jack) and actually lasts, with them getting married in the finale.
• Big "NO!": Martin lets out one of these (unusually, the audience doesn't hear it, but it's obvious from reading his lips and body language) when a Middle Eastern doctor suspected of being a terrorist is sniped by the police. In truth, the guy was trying to warn people about an impending attack and Martin had almost convinced him to surrender when the cops mistook something he did as a threatening gesture.
• Bittersweet Ending: Sometimes even finding the victim alive isn't enough:
  • In "Snatch Back", the child is rescued, but the Tragic Villain who took her—she was a disturbed woman desperate to replace the child she miscarried—kills herself.
  • "Maple Street". Two girls are abducted. One is found alive, but the other has been murdered.
  • "The Source". The Victim of the Week, a friend of Jack's, is dead, (and her body has yet to be found) but thanks to her work, several bad guys are going to prison, while an innocent man will be freed.
  • "Hang On To Me": Chet Collins finally finds his missing son Sean after searching for him for six years. But in the interim, his parents' marriage has fallen apart and he was so young when he was abducted—2—that he doesn't even remember them.
• Bottle Episode: A great deal of the episode "Doppelganger" was an intense mind game interrogation scene.
  • The same could be said of the episode that focuses mostly on Jack's deposition for his parental custody dispute.
  • A good chunk of episodes, despite their multiple locations, have taken place over only a day.
• Bowdlerize: Season 2, Episode 6, "Our Sons And Daughters", is often skipped over in syndication, undoubtedly because of the frequent depiction of graphic sex among teenagers.
• Busman's Holiday: In "Shadows", Martin and Samantha search for his missing aunt on what should be their day off.
  • In "Manhunt", he witnesses a boy's abduction while simply out for his morning run.
• Call-Back: Some episodes will refer to past events:
  • In "Fallout", Jack removes his gun and jacket and enters a bookstore, determined to rescue the injured Samantha from a hostage situation, offering to take her place. Two years later, in "Manhunt", Martin does the exact same thing to rescue a kidnapped boy.
    Jack: That was a pretty risky move, getting in the car.
    Martin: Well it's not exactly by the book, but I've seen it before.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Chet Collins appears briefly in one episode before being the focus of one several weeks later (He's been searching for his missing son for six years).
  • Delia Rivers appears in several episodes as a reporter friend of Jack's before vanishing herself in "The Source".
• Chilly Reception: Martin joining the team was the subplot of the series premiere. Jack lampshades this trope when introducing him, declaring, "Let's give him the frosty welcome every rookie deserves." He does get a bit of this—his father is a high-ranking official and it's assumed he got his position via Nepotism and that he's merely using it as a stepping stone into a more prestigious assignment—to the point that Jack has to outright order Danny to be nicer to him (which ultimately pays off, as the two become great friends).
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Black Boss Lady Paula Van Doren vanishes after Season 2 with nary an explanation.
• Cliffhanger: The end of the Season 3 finale finds Martin and Danny transporting a detainee when a van pulls in front of them. The doors suddenly fly open, two men armed with machine guns jump out and open fire . . .
• Coitus Uninterruptus: The episode "In The Dark" opens with Martin and Samantha going at it until her phone rings, alerting her about a case. He stops, um, moving, but remains on top of—and presumably inside—her even as she talks to Vivian, sneaking in kisses in between words. They get back at it after she hangs up and not until his phone rings do they stop.
• Corrupted Contingency: "The Damage Done" involves the disappearance of Julia Martik the girlfriend, Albanian mob boss Sadik Marku, and their son Pedros. Julia is found but Pedros remains missing. It is revealed that Julia hadn't actually been kidnapped; she was planning to leave Sadik and take their son in order to protect him from Sadik's influence. She bought a gun for protection, but Pedros found it while she was packing and accidentally shot himself while playing with it.
• Cousin Oliver: Despite being an adult, Elena is arguably this when she joins the team in Season 4. Her daughter is a straighter example, even being the focus of an episode.
• Cowboy Cop: Jack Malone. While he's nominally Da Chief of the unit, he's got a well-deserved reputation for various degrees of Perp Sweating (from Lying to the Perp up to Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique) which he's used both on witnesses as well as suspects, along with ignoring all kinds of protocol. His team usually follows suit, but Jack is the primary offender.
• Crime Time Soap: Every character gets some drama at some point, but Jack Malone takes the cake. His utterly horrific personal life came to dominate the series for a time. When he's killed off temporarily, rather than being tragic it comes as more of a relief, because at least he finally has some peace.
• Cross Through: They did one with CSI first where first CSI broadcast their part and then the story continued with Without a Trace's part.
• Cult: Features in a pair of episodes:
  • In "Risen", a missing woman's trail leads to a cult. In the course of their investigation, the team works to rescue others unable to escape.
  • In "The Beginning", the victim disappeared just after joining a cult.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Samantha, as revealed in Season 5.
  • Danny also.
  • A lot of the supposedly squeaky-clean victims turn out to have this too.
• Death Seeker: Jack eventually becomes one for reasons that are obvious to any longtime viewer.
• Descent into Addiction: Martin develops an addiction to painkillers after being shot at the beginning of Season 4.
• The Determinator: One could say that all the agents are this, but Chet Collins takes the cake. In his first episode, it's revealed that he's been searching for his missing son for six years and he refuses to give up until he either knows for certain that he's dead, or finds him alive. And indeed, in his next episode, he finally does.
• Dislikes the New Guy: Danny's attitude towards Martin for the first few episodes for the reasons cited in the "chilly" post.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Martin snaps at anyone who he feels is coddling him when he returns to work after being shot.
• Downer Ending: And how. Half of the time the missing end up dead.
• Driven to Suicide: Occasionally, it turns out that the Victim of the Week has employed this.
• Eagle-Eye Detection: Cases are solved mostly through interrogation and clues such as things left behind at a scene.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The headquarters set in the premiere is completely different from what it is in subsequent episodes.
  • A throwaway line in an early episode indicates that Danny is or was married, but this was never mentioned again.
• Engineered Heroics: Elena's ex-boyfriend Carlos hires an ex-con to kidnap their daughter. The plan was for Carlos to fake rescuing her from the kidnapper, whose identity was to remain unknown. Unfortunately, the babysitter that was taking care of Elena was able to see the kidnapper's face and her description of him matched a crook Elena had put away years back. This only strengthened her conviction that Carlos was involved.
• Fanservice: Elena, played by the beautiful Roselyn Sánchez, went undercover as a stripper in one episode.
• Fatal Attractor: Towards the end of the seventh season, Martin hooks up with a woman who's a victim/witness in the case of the week. This is bad enough, but it gets worse when viewers learn—but he's still unaware—that she's actually one of the criminals in question, and still worse when he does learn but doesn't immediately turn her in. By the finale, he's confessed all to Jack and is facing a severe reprimand (which we don't learn, as the show was cancelled after that).
• Flash Back: Every episode and sometimes a Flash Back within a Flash Back.
• Flashback Effects: The ubiquitous fade-to-white.
• For Want Of A Nail: The first Victim of the Week in the episode "Maple Street" wouldn't have been abducted had she not missed her school bus. Footage from a camera she always carried with her shows she was picked up and abducted by a Bad Samaritan (presumably, she turned it on when she realized she was in trouble and threw it out the window in the hopes that it would help the police). The second victim is abducted in much the same way, heavily implying that the guy is someone both girls knew and that she was taken to prevent her from telling the cops.
• Formula-Breaking Episode:
  • "Malone vs. Malone" doesn't feature a missing persons case, but Jack's deposition regarding his divorce and custody hearing. Though we get flashbacks in the same manner as typical episodes.
  • No one disappears in "Showdown" either. Instead, it's about the team's hunt for the gunmen who killed a detainee and injured Martin in the process.
  • Several other episodes have featured the re-opening of a cold case rather than the typical "hot" ones.
  • In "Deep Water", we know from the very beginning that the Victim of the Week is dead, as we see her being murdered, though there is still the customary suspense as to who her killer is.
• Good All Along: A number of victims appear to be up to no good, only to actually be innocent.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Samantha—who admits to having had one in the past—never considers one despite previously having been ambivalent about having kids, conceiving from a one-night stand, and not even remembering the guy's name.
  • Jack's girlfriend Anne also refuses to have one, citing that unlike him, she doesn't already have kids, and given her age, it's her last chance to do so. She eventually miscarries, making the debate moot.
  • In another episode, we learn that the Victim of the Week told his girlfriend to "take care of it" when she told him she was pregnant. He's stunned when she resurfaces 18 years later with his teenage son, telling him "This is how I "took care of it"!"
  • In one instance, the Victim of the Week tried to get one but she was too far along and tried to miscarry using pills before her mother caught her, so she hides the pregnancy and ends up having the baby.
• Grief-Induced Split: Chet Collins's son Sean went missing when he was two. Though he locates Sean six years later, his marriage fell apart in the interim.
• Heroic BSoD: Everyone at one point or another, for a variety of reasons.
• Hide Your Pregnancy: An in-universe example in the episode "4.0" when the agents learn that the Victim of the Week, a teenage girl, is pregnant. Suddenly, every one of the flashbacks gets a Rewatch Bonus as they (and the audience) realize that she was employing this trope—baggy clothes, quitting the swim team, etc.
• Hope Spot: In one episode, they find the victim alive. He's then immediately shot and killed by his abductor.
  • Pretty much any time it seems like they might get to the victim in time, only to find out that he/she is already dead.
• Hypocrite: Cowboy Cop Jack is usually the first to criticize any member of his team who bends or breaks the rules to get the job done. Case in point, he blasts Martin and Vivian for lying to him about the former's shooting of a suspect, to which the latter coolly asks him, "And how many times have I covered for YOU?"
• I Am the Noun: In one of the later episodes, Jack's girlfriend Anne must have surgery following a miscarriage. Jack is in the waiting room and starts to get annoyed, rather loudly, that nobody has the courtesy (his words) to tell him what's going on. The nurse tells him that she'll call the police if he doesn't quiet down and he replies "I am the damn police!" She tells him that she'll see if she can get a doctor.
• Imperiled in Pregnancy: Several episodes have featured pregnant women disappearing, with an extra sense of urgency to find them because of additional medical conditions. Ironically, in no instance was the woman's husband/boyfriend responsible (in Real Life, Domestic Abuse is the number one reason a pregnant woman will end up in the hospital or the morgue) even though in one instance, the man was indeed abusive (the woman had vanished in order to escape from him).
• Improbable Infant Survival: Both averted and played straight. Children and teens turn up missing in quite a few episodes, and their turning up alive is never guaranteed.
• In Medias Res: One of the basic foundations of the show. The story typically begins just before the disappearance and the remainder of the show is spent fleshing out the back-story through the use of flashbacks during interviews.
  • "Crossroads" does this even more, beginning with a suspect grabbing Jack's gun, shooting up the office, and taking Agent Cassidy hostage. After the opening credits, that's when we get the story of the victim's disappearance.
• Internal Affairs: Known as OPR (Office Of Professional Review), they show up occasionally to cause trouble for the team—in particular in the episode "Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been. . ."
  • Another storyline has them coming very close to polygraphing Martin and Vivian (which would have gotten them fired had they failed) because they're suspicious—correctly—of their account of Martin's shooting of a suspect.
• It's Personal
• Life/Death Juxtaposition: Martin and Danny get word that Vivian has made it through her heart surgery just seconds before they're ambushed by gunmen, with the witness they're transporting being killed and Martin being badly injured and nearly dying himself.
  • Paired with Mood Whiplash—Danny outright says "At least we're ending the day on an "up" note" not two seconds before the gunfire erupts.
  • And Black Dude Dies First—the witness is an African immigrant.
• Love Triangle: Repeatedly, between the different members of the squad.
• Lower-Deck Episode: "A Day in the Life," which is told entirely from the POV of the parents of a missing teenage boy. The customary flashbacks are memories they have of their son growing up, rather than anything relevant to the case. They get questioned about their son's involvement in drugs and gambling and asked about potential suspects, but the team doesn't take the time to clear up the Red Herring leads, so the audience is kept in the dark about what's happening until end of the episode when the boy is found. The entire climax happens offscreen, with a few radio calls being all the details we get. It serves to highlight how helpless and disorienting it is to be in that situation.
• Mama Bear: Elena is willing to go as far as to disobey direct orders and hold a corrupt cop at gunpoint in his car to rescue her daughter Sophie.
• Manly Tears: After a day spent searching for his cancer-stricken aunt, along the way learning that she's been committing mercy kills of people in her support group and finally finding her near death (she'd decided to kill herself upon learning that she herself didn't have much time left), an exhausted and grieving Martin breaks down in Samantha's arms.
  • Danny's on the verge of these when Martin gets shot.
  • Jack sheds some of them occasionally too.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: While someone disappearing is hardly minor, the investigation always reveals that the reasons behind it are far more complicated than hinted at in the opening sequence.
• Missing White Woman Syndrome: Noted in a number of episodes, but heavily discussed (and ultimately deconstructed) in "White Balance", which focuses on two missing teens: a black male and a white female. The disparity in media coverage is heavily featured, as well as the boy suddenly getting more media attention, but only when it looks like he might be behind the girl's disappearance. Famous for its ending - a No Ending in which it's revealed only one of the teens was found alive, but not which teen.
• Mistaken for Cheating:
  • "Midnight Sun" features as the victim Greg Pritchard, supposedly a loving family man but whom witnesses soon report having seen at a diner in the company of an attractive young woman. However, a trace on the woman's credit card reveals the truth: she is a deputy U.S. Marshal, and Pritchard's handler in the Witness Protection Program.
  • One episode has a woman follow her husband on one of his "hunting trips" and see him flirting with a woman outside a diner. When she attempts to contact the woman a few days later, she learns the woman was killed. She quickly realizes her husband isn't a serial cheater, he's a serial killer.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: Any episode where the Victim of the Week was a child featured an instance where a suspect was this (though in several incidents, a pedophile was indeed responsible for the child's disappearance). Particularly in "Manhunt", when they learn that the kidnapper was fired from his teaching job for inappropriate behavior with his students (bringing them to his house to watch movies). It turns out that his son died and he's been searching for a Replacement Goldfish ever since.
• Multitasked Conversation: During the episode "Fallout", when Samantha is held hostage in a bookstore. When Jack calls, without alerting the gunman, who thinks she's merely assuring him that no one is hurt, she manages to tell him how many hostages there are, how many weapons the guy has, etc.
  • In "In The Dark", she also manages to have a normal phone conversation with Vivian even though she and Martin are having sex, with them even sneaking in kisses between words.
  Samantha:(to Vivian on the phone while looking at Martin, who's on top—and likely also inside—of her) "No, I'm fine."
  (Martin grins and tries not to laugh)
• murder.com: "Party Girl"
• Naïve Newcomer: Martin's had only two years of experience investigating white collar crimes (which seems to be viewed by many as a easy assignment) before being transferred to the Missing Persons Unit and in the first episode, makes a critical error due to underestimating a dangerous situation—going to a suspect's apartment alone and nearly getting himself and the Victim of the Week killed.
  • Elena too when she joins the squad. Despite several years of experience as a cop, she isn't used to how the FBI does things and chafes under being treated like a rookie.
• Nepotism: Despite his father being the deputy director of the FBI, Martin Fitzgerald makes it clear from the first episode that he neither wants nor expects any special treatment, to which Jack bluntly replies, "Good, because you're not getting any." However, for the duration of the show, he had to fight accusations of it—it's assumed that he got such a plum position because of this and he occasionally overcompensates to prove his worth—his father's attempts at displaying it—protecting him from an Internal Affairs investigation—and people determined to bring him down to prove that it wasn't happening.
• No Ending: "White Balance" might be the most famous example, but it happens in "Two Families" also—the agents are sitting in the office, waiting to hear if a scheduled execution has been halted (the Victim of the Week, the inmate's father, disappeared while searching for the real killer) They find him—and the real criminal—but we never learn if it was in time to stop the execution of the innocent man.
• Noodle Incident: Samantha and Vivian briefly discuss the fact that Samantha was married once. Few details are given aside from her being very young and that it was short and apparently abusive.
  • Her once-mentioned abortion gets this too. We never even learn if it was the result of said marriage.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: A lot of the missing turned out to have been (a) trying to be The Atoner for something they did in the past, (b) trying to extricate themselves from a current situation, or (c) trying to help someone. Sadly, these were often those who ended up dead.
  • An especially cruel example in "Our Sons And Daughters", where the victim not only ends up dead, he was killed by the father of the very person he was trying to help.
• Not What It Looks Like: Quite often the agents come to the wrong conclusion based on the evidence available to them at the time.
• Office Romance: Twice:
  • Samantha slept with both Jack Malone (see Sleeping with the Boss below) and Martin Fitzgerald (third season).
  • Danny Taylor and Elena Delgado. They get involved in season 4 and they get married in the series finale
• Once per Episode: The Cold Open consists of a few minutes where we meet the victim and get a little backstory before they fade away. This is what makes the moment when a second victim disappears halfway through the episode "Maple Street" so shocking.
• One of Our Own: "Showdown". Although Martin has been shot, rather than disappearing like a typical victim.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Poppy Montgomery's accent has racked up enough frequent flyer miles over the Pacific that it will never need to buy a plane ticket again.
• Pædo Hunt: A more literal application of the trope happens in one episode. A young looking woman poses as underage bait, a fledging, wheelchair bound unofficial cop (an accident prevented him from getting a badge), and a cameraman (who was later revealed to have been raped during a home invasion when he was 12) set up a sting operation to catch pedophiles, a la To Catch a Predator. Unlike the Chris Hanson manned operation, this version is more vigilante based and not exactly fool-proof to prevent people from escaping, which one guy managed to do. The cop goes after him and gives him a "Reason You Suck" Speech, which drove the pedophile to shoot himself with the cop's gun. To make things even better, when the cameraman realized the cop was about to tell the police about what happened, he tried to kill him to shut him up, though was unsuccessful. By episode's end, the cop survived the assault but by killing the cameraman.
• Perp Walk: Pretty much whenever the Missing Persons case leads to an arrest.
• Poor Communication Kills: Lots of victims could have saved themselves a lot of misery if they were willing to talk to their loved ones about their problems.
• Posthumous Character: Whenever the missing turns up dead, their flashback appearances make them this.
• Prison Episode: "Penitence", where the Victim of the Week is a convict who may have escaped or met with foul play within the prison.
• Proscenium Reveal: Security guard sees suspicious car. He looks inside and sees a bomb, which explodes, setting him on fire. Turns out this security guard is actually a stuntman, participating and shooting of B-Movie. Then he walks away from the set and never comes back.
• Public Service Announcement: Every Episode Ending was a blurb on a real missing persons case, narrated by a cast member, resulting in at least five people being found. (Episodes that aired in foreign countries—Australia, Hong Kong, etc.—featured their own cases).
  • In one episode, where it turned out that the Victim of the Week had committed suicide, viewers were directed to a suicide hotline.
• Punny Name: Samantha "Sam" Spade, named for the hero of The Maltese Falcon.
• Race Against the Clock: As Jack tells Martin in the first episode, "Usually, after 48 hours, they're (the victim's) gone." From the moment the victim disappears and the agents get involved, the viewer is given a time stamp of how long they've been missing—ranging from as little as 27 minutes to as much as 4 days—continually updated throughout the episode to heighten the sense of urgency and the need to find them. This is explicitly cited in an episode where the Victim of the Week is found dead and Martin blasts his supervisor for pulling him off the case to focus on another one—"Twenty minutes. I missed her by twenty minutes. I wanted you to know that."
  • Other episodes make it even more urgent, with a person needing to be found because of medical issues.
  • In "Two Families", the urgency comes from the fact that the missing person is the father of a death row inmate due to be executed in 2 days, given that the man may have discovered information that will exonerate his son.
• Rape as Backstory: Samantha's sister was raped by a local man. Sam beat him to death with a shovel, and the sisters buried him in the woods.
• Rape Discretion Shot: Seen in two episodes, both during flashback sequences. In one episode, a blind girl recounts how she and her female tutor were kidnapped by two teens, one of whom proceeded to rape the tutor while the blind girl listened with terror on her face. The other episode uses this during the revelation of Samantha's Dark and Troubled Past.
• Red Herring: The agents will often find something or someone who seems to be relevant to the victim's disappearance, only for it/them to turn out to have nothing to do with it.
• Revisiting the Cold Case: A few episodes have been this instead of the usual "hot" ones. Surprisingly, these were sometimes the ones where the victim turned up alive.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Every so often, the team gets called in because someone insists the victim would never leave without telling someone unless they were in serious trouble, only for it to turn out that the missing person did indeed leave of their own free will. Occasionally, the person then runs into trouble anyway.
  • "Transitions" had a woman's pastor report her missing because she'd requested a specific hymn be played at that Sunday's mass and then failed to show up for it. It turns out that she'd wanted to sing that hymn because it would be played at her estranged father's funeral, which would be happening at the same time, and since she wasn't welcome there, it was her way of honoring him; singing the hymn at choir rehearsal made her emotional enough to skip out on mass to attend the memorial anyway. After that, she attempted to reach out to her ex-wife^note She was transgender and got divorced when she transitioned, which is also why she's estranged from her family., whose abusive new husband ran her off the road.
• Ripped from the Headlines:
  • "Maple Street" is based on the 2002 disappearance and murder of Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis. With a slightly happier ending—in Real Life, both girls were found dead months later, whereas on the show, one was found alive.
  • "The Bus" is based on the Chowchilla kidnapping.
  • "Taken" is based on the abduction of Steven Stayner.
  • The show premiered in the fall of 2002, after a summer full of infamous kidnapping cases^note  Although networks typically announce their fall lineups in the spring, meaning that the show was pitched and developed well before any of these incidents occurred., including that of Elizabeth Smart, whose story was profiled at the end of the ninth episode "In Extremis", which itself could be considered an example—with 9/11 having happened only a year earlier, the possibility of the Victim of the Week (a Saudi immigrant) being involved in terrorism is seriously contemplated.
  • Another episode was based off the infamously horrible reality show The Swan, with the missing person being a contestant on a Swan-like show, "American Goddess" and later realizing she shouldn't have changed.
• Roguish Romani: An episode has a clan of "gypsy" con artists involved in a kidnapping, with Tarot, and wandering, and insular secretiveness.
• Rhyming Title:
  • "Upstairs, Downstairs"
  • "Fight/Flight"
• Secret Relationship: Martin and Samantha in Season 3 (because of her prior relationship with Jack, she doesn't want to be known as the office pump), though everyone figures it out eventually.
• Seeking the Missing, Finding the Dead: Many episodes end this way.
• Serial Killer: A few episodes have the agents realizing that they're dealing with one of these. One had it turning out that the woman had vanished on her own in order to escape after discovering this about her husband.
• Ship Sinking: Both of Samantha's relationships get this—Martin because he gets fed up with her not wanting to tell anyone about them and her keeping him at arm's length, as well as suspecting that she isn't over Jack ^note Quite bad considering that Word of God is that TPTB intended for a relationship between them from the get-go, and Jack himself because she's decided to make things work with her son's father.
• Ship Tease: The first two seasons spend a lot of time establishing the attraction between Samantha and Martin before they consummate it at the end of Season 2.
  • All seasons make it clear that Jack and Samantha have never stopped caring about each other despite their affair having ended a year before the show began, paving the way for their reconciliation in Season 7.
• Shipper on Deck: Danny picks up on Martin's attraction to Samantha fairly quickly and is genuinely happy to realize that they've embarked on a relationship in Season 3.
  Danny: (to Martin, as they inspect a victim's house) I can just see you and Samantha in a place like this, "Uncle Danny" coming by to teach the kids to play hoops. . ."
• Shout-Out: In the episode "Light Years", a friend of the Victim of the Week, a man who believes he was once abducted by aliens, refers to Martin and Samantha as "the real Mulder and Scully". after Martin skillfully plays along with their alien conspiracy theories, implying that he might be an Agent Mulder-type himself.
  • A Season 1 episode is titled "Maple Street"
• Sleeping with the Boss: Samantha Spade had a brief sexual affair with her supervisor, Jack Malone. It resulted in his marriage dissolving. They rekindled their relationship in the last season.
• Status Quo Is God: As long it was known that an actor wasn't leaving the show, there was no need to fear that their character was going to quit/be fired/transfer/be killed, no matter what the storyline or episode indicated.
• Suicide by Cop: The Victim of the Week in "Gung Ho" commits this at the end—an Iraqi war veteran who accidentally kills a woman in a bank heist he pulled to get enough money to keep his house from being repossessed and his girlfriend from leaving him. After taking the girlfriend and Danny hostage in his home, he agrees to come out. He unloads the gun he's holding (out of view of the SWAT officers that surrounded his house) and walks right out the front door, pointing the gun at the officers, who open fire. The final scene is a Downer Ending: Danny holding the hysterical, sobbing girlfriend back from running after him and into the line of fire as he sheds a few tears himself.
• Taking the Kids: Eventually getting fed up with him always putting his FBI work ahead of his family, Jack's wife, Maria, accepts a job offer in Chicago and takes their daughters, Hannah and Kate, with her, leaving him alone in NYC.
• That One Case: The Sean Collins case is this for Jack, with his father Chet having hounded Jack and investigated on his own for six years. Vivian—who herself has an example of this, as seen in the episode "Risen"—explains the circumstances to then-newcomer Martin, "We all have our Chet Collinses. You will too."
• Time Skip: While the fourth season premiere was an Immediate Sequel to the third season finale, the next episode takes place 6-8 weeks later to allow for Vivian and Martin to have recovered from their respective surgeries and returned to work.
• Town with a Dark Secret: A favorite trope of the show, especially in "Our Sons and Daughters".
• Two Girls to a Team: Vivian and Samantha until Elena joined the team in Season 4.
• Tragic Hero: Quite a few Victims of the Week are good people trying to do the right thing, only to be undone by circumstances beyond their control.
• Uncool Undies: In the episode "Cloudy with a Chance of Gettysburg," a man named Kirby Morris is suspected in the kidnapping of a man named Ben Coleman, partly because of a prank that Ben had pulled on Kirby when they had been in high school together about a decade earlier. In a flashback, it is revealed that Ben and another student had donned masks and stripped Kirby of most of his clothing just as Kirby was about to go onstage to receive an award. Kirby was then pushed onstage by Ben and the other student in nothing but his underwear, which happened to be a pair of Jockey briefs (or "tighty-whities"). The flashback was set in the late '90s, a time when boxer shorts were considered the acceptably "cool" type of underwear for young men in high school and tighty-whities had mostly been deemed nerdy and outdated. The whole school laughs at the humiliated Kirby, who has no choice but to run offstage in embarrassment. It is subsequently revealed that, as a result of his uncool underwear choice, Kirby was saddled with unflattering nickname "Fruit of the Loom" for the rest of high school (despite the fact that his briefs are clearly Jockey brand).
• Vigilante Injustice:
  • "The Damage Done" sees the team investigating the disappearance of Albanian mob boss Sadik Marku's girlfriend and son. The team come to suspect an Aryan Brotherhood gang member is behind the kidnapping as revenge for Sadik screwing him over a weapons deal in the past. When they arrive at the man's apartment, they find him being tortured by Sadik. Not only does the gang member turn out to be innocent of the kidnapping, but he is also revealed to be an undercover cop and Sadik is now in major trouble for torturing him.
  • "The Bogie Man" focuses on the disappearance of Daisy Horne. Everyone in town believes the culprit to be Curtis Thorpe who was also suspected but never proven to have murdered a girl named Amber Bryce seven years ago. When Curtis is found dead, the team learns that he was confronted by a mob that included Amber's father, but they aren't the ones who killed him. It is ultimately revealed that Daisy ran away from home because her father had been sexually abusing her. She had confided this in Curtis who refused to tell her father where she was going, resulting in him being killed. To make matters worse, the team learn that the sheriff had discovered and unintentionally tampered with evidence that could have proven Curtis's innocence.
• Vomiting Cop:
  • Jack, paired with a Vomit Indiscretion Shot after forcing himself to sink to the level of a pedophile so that the guy will tell him where he's stashed a missing teenage boy—"I understand you. I envy you. I'll give you fifteen minutes to do whatever you want with him, as long as you tell me where he is".
  • Martin upon finding a missing child alive, but horribly mutilated. He's so enraged that he actually provokes the culprit into attacking him so as to have a reason to shoot him.
  • He gets ill in another episode, due to being in withdrawal from painkillers, though he tries to play it off as not feeling well. Due to being a recovering alcoholic himself ^note  As well as his father and brother being drug addicts , Danny doesn't buy his excuse—"I know what an addict looks like."
• Wham Shot: Roughly halfway through the episode "Maple Street", after a young girl has vanished on her way to school, another girl is walked to the same bus stop. . . and disappears just like her friend did, instantly making an already dire situation even moreso.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • In the Season 4 episode "White Balance," Jack gets this from both Vivian and the mother of a teenage black boy who's gone missing at the same time as a teenage white girl—the reason being that, under pressure from his superiors, Jack has placed more emphasis on finding the girl. When the mother confronts him in his office, Jack tries to explain that the directives for the case are out of his hands, but she fires back:
    Mother: Let me tell you what the real issue is here, Mr. Malone. My black son's life isn't half as important as that white girl's!
  • Vivian also gives this to Jack regarding his treatment of Samantha, his wife, and herself—returning to his job and consequently costing her her much-desired promotion not two seconds after she got it.
  • In a later episode, Samantha brings Jack to task for doing an unauthorized background check into the past life and criminal history of her child's father, which results in the guy waiving his parental rights to the unborn child.
    Jack: I was just trying to do what I thought was right.
    Samantha: How long are you going to keep using that as an excuse to screw people over?
  • Vivian gives this to Martin after he loses control with a suspect and provokes the guy into attacking him so that he'll have a reason to shoot him. Aside from having lost his temper, she blasts him for killing the guy before he could tell them where the victim is, as well as doing something that will bring the wrath of Internal Affairs on the team and jeopardize their careers.
  • Martin also gets this from Danny after his erratic behavior nearly gets the two of them and the Victim of the Week killed, telling him that he needs to get help for his drug addiction.
• White Sheep: Danny appears to be the only member of his family who has his act together—his father was an abusive addict and criminal and his brother followed suit. He's so determined to avoid any association with them that he even changed his last name.
• Will They or Won't They?:
  • Martin and Samantha for the first two seasons. They do, although sadly, it doesn't last.
  • Jack and Samantha for seven years, although it's more "Will They Or Won't They Again", given that they already had a relationship before the show started. They do, but it doesn't last either.
• Witness Protection:
  • Digging into the past of one victim, they can't find record of him before a certain point. Turns out, he was in the program, which not even his wife knew. He saw he was being followed, assumed the man he was testifying against had found him, and ran off with his daughter so that they wouldn't kill him. He had been reluctant to testify at a retrial, so his handler had sent a few agents to "stalk" him, hoping that he'd run begging to testify in return for more protection. Oops. Jack's team winds up faking his death—which they hide even from the marshals—so that he can start over again for real.
  • In one episode, a father and his two children go missing. The team learns that the son and one of his friends witnessed a mob hit on the way to school and the killer saw the son (but not the friend). The father attempted to protect his children by having them disappear, but they quickly get in over their head. After barely surviving a shootout, the father agrees to have his son testify and enter the program. The mobsters show up again, but the family doesn't, so they did a better job of it that time.
• Working with the Ex: Samantha, after her relationships with Jack and Martin end. For the most part, despite the lingering feelings, they're able to keep things professional.
• X Called; They Want Their Y Back: In "Two of Us", a girl disappears on prom night. The last person to see her handed her a glass of alcohol laced punch, and then added more alcohol at her urging. She then downed the whole cup in a single draught, causing him to remark:
  The navy called. They want their sailor back.