The Single WORST Episode Of Your Favourite TV Series

[Markxxx]

What is your favourite show? Got it down, OK...Now what is the ONE single episode of that series that is horrible.

I don't mean an episode that you midly dislike, but the one single episode that you feel should NEVER have been made.

And episode of the TV show that you think ruins the whole series.

The one rule for this thread is I will discount pilot and last episodes of the series. Because the pilot is often changed significantly and often the last episode of a TV series is made for the purposes of providing a wrap of of a storyline.

For me my favourite show is "The Simpsons," and like a lot of other people I have to say the worst episode of that, for me, is the episode where we find out Principal Skinner is really Armand Tanzarian

[minlokwat]

I'm going to go back a ways and choose one from the Brady Bunch --not my all time favorite series but one that I've seen every episode of.

In the final season, there is one show where the Brady's virtually don't appear at all in which instead features a guy and his wife who adopt three boys, one black, one white and one Asian. The couple has to fend off some mildly racist observations from the nosy old lady neighbor which is overheard by one of the boys. The three then decide to run away and make their way over to the Bradys who naturally save the day. The episode was going to be a springboard to its own series as the dad was also a vaudeville actor or something but it fortunately never made it any further. But the implausible set-up, the shameless promoting of one show from another, and the fact that the show's cast members appear in less than 10% of the air time make it an absolute rock bottom low point not just for the Brady Bunch but for any television series ever created or aired since the dawn of television.

Let's see someone top that!

[Mahaloth]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

Bad Eggs

I hate that one, enough to skip it when we watch the show through.

[Drain Bead]

One of my favorite TV shows in recent memory was Battlestar Galactica. Three words that should make any BSG fan shudder are "The Woman King."

[dhkendall]

Principal Skinner is really Armand Tanzarian

Nit: Armin Tamzarian.

I'll start off by discussing two "single WORST episodes" of TV shows that I like, but by no means are my favourites. One of which, making use of the available segue, is The Simpsons. Can't remember the episode name but it's where, after the death of his wife (a few months or so, less than a year I'm sure), Ned meets an attractive lady (later discovered to be a famous movie star) and he dates, and eventually beds, her. (In one scene all his excuses not to sleep with her "blow away", literally).

The other show is Family Guy. IMHO, it constantly denigrates from the pinnacle of writing that was the first season or so (before the first cancellation) into sophomoric scatological jokes, but every now and then it shows some of that clever writign and spot-on wit that I fell in love with it for. One episode that does not fall into that category is where the Griffins become a singing group, touring all over, and Meg has a major makeover in relation to this (becoming a blonde). Near the end of the episode, they go on SNL, and Meg falls for Jimmy Fallon, who eventually beds her (only to reveal her defloration was actually part of a opening skit).

The reason I hated these two episodes were what they had in common. No, not sex, although you're close (in a way, I mean come on I like watching,l and having, sex as well as the next red-blooded male). I'm talking about a fundamental shift in a hard and fast aspect of a character's makeup - these kind of shows continuity is often played fast and loose, and is usually done well with comedic effect (heck, my favourite Simpsons episodes are usually the Halloween and other "trilogy" ones where continuity is thrown out the window completely to tell a story), but there are still hard and fast rules that must be obeyed. Flanders is a deeply religious person who does not believe in pre- or extra-marital sex (not stating my views on it, just Flanders'). Having him do it pretty much makes him a hypocrite. Meg is an "ugly girl" (personally, I've always found her very cute, but the standard gag is that "she's so ugly her momma won't kiss her goodnight") who can't get a date and will always be a virgin. Even after the Jimmy Fallon incident, while I don't think they've mentioned it specifically, she seems to be viewed as a virgin. Those were two rule breakings "up with which I did not put", and was soured on both shows for a while. (It'd be like having Wile E. Coyote catch and eat the Road Runner, that kind of thing.)

Now, to my two favourite shows, Corner Gas (which recently ended its run) and Mythbusters (still on the air). Why do I like them? Well, in part because there is not a single episode I can describe as "the single WORST" episode, that's why I like them by definition I suppose. If I don't like an episode vehemently, like I did with Simpsons and Family Guy, it definitely won't be my favourite show (although they never were), but I'd probably still watch.

[jtgain]

For me my favourite show is "The Simpsons," and like a lot of other people I have to say the worst episode of that, for me, is the episode where we find out Principal Skinner is really Armand Tanzarian

We aren't to mention that under penalty of torture.

[YogSosoth]

There was an episode of Married with Children that apparently was supposed to be a test pilot for a spinoff show or something, except it wasn't for any of the main family or friends or acquaintances, but for some never-before-seen-friend of Al's named Charlie Verducci. His son Vinnie, played by Matt Le Blanc, were featured in the episode. Al steals their TV at the end for some reason. Hated it, it had nothing to do with Married with Children and I resent networks trying to piggyback crappy spinoffs on more popular shows.

[dropzone]

"Spock's Brain."

[Annie]

I don't know if I'd call it my favorite show, but the one where there is a huge nexus between 'like the show' and 'find the producer and burn the master tape of the episode!':

A Night in Sickbay, Enterprise. I honestly wonder if Scott Bakula was screwing around with a writer's wife and/or teenage son and this was inflicted upon him in retaliation. This review doesn't convey the full horror, (http://www.jammersreviews.com/st-ent/s2/sickbay.php)but this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWz9onFebHA)promo gets close. TWOP has 14 pages to try to explain it all. (http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/enterprise/a_night_in_sickbay.php) We need Joel, Mike and the 'bots for this one

I think I've completely blocked out that episode of Heroes that involved Elle, Sylar, the worst acting I've ever seen on film committed by Robert Forster, baked ziti and suicide.

[wedgehed]

"Spock's Brain."

Nah. Spock's Brain is golden compared to Miri.

First, you have an exact duplicate of Earth for no reason whatsoever.

Second, you have annoying brats going BONK!, BONK!, BONK! every five minutes.

Nuke'em from orbit, Captain. It's the only way to be sure.

[Ponch8]

There was an episode of Married with Children that apparently was supposed to be a test pilot for a spinoff show or something, except it wasn't for any of the main family or friends or acquaintances, but for some never-before-seen-friend of Al's named Charlie Verducci. His son Vinnie, played by Matt Le Blanc, were featured in the episode. Al steals their TV at the end for some reason. Hated it, it had nothing to do with Married with Children and I resent networks trying to piggyback crappy spinoffs on more popular shows.

I was going to say the exact same episode.

On The Simpsons, the worst is the one where Bart and his friends form a boy band as a recruiting tool for the Navy. The second worst is probably the one where they adopt Duncan the racehorse.

[salinqmind]

There was an episode of Married with Children that apparently was supposed to be a test pilot for a spinoff show or something, except it wasn't for any of the main family or friends or acquaintances, but for some never-before-seen-friend of Al's named Charlie Verducci. His son Vinnie, played by Matt Le Blanc, were featured in the episode. Al steals their TV at the end for some reason. Hated it, it had nothing to do with Married with Children and I resent networks trying to piggyback crappy spinoffs on more popular shows.

This. Was just insultingly bad. Absolutely painful. And "the daughter" on this was one of the ugliest, most emaciated, repellant skanks I've ever seen anywhere. Like the total opposite of the beautiful Christina Applegate.

I wouldn't say it was one of my favorite shows, but I did watch Private Practice, up until the cliffhanger last episode last season. Wherein a mentally ill woman drugged pregnant Violet so she was paralyzed, punched her in the nose, "heard" the baby asking to come out, and proceeded (with textbook in hand and weary instructions from Violet) to begin to cut the baby out of the womb. I don't think something so evil and ghastly should be fodder for a humping-doctors show. It was so appalling I can't ever watch Private Practice again.

[wedgehed]

The episode of Gilligan's Island where Gilligan screws up the rescue.

[Annie]

Nah. Spock's Brain is golden compared to Miri.

First, you have an exact duplicate of Earth for no reason whatsoever.

Eh, weird ass coincidences, the all-Nazi planet, gangsterland, all par for the Trek course, but then:

Second, you have annoying brats going BONK!, BONK!, BONK! every five minutes.

Dammit Jim, just smack that kid! The child protection workers on that planet died 300 years ago- the only person who'd give you shit about it is Rand, and you get to tell her to shut up since you're her CO.

I honestly thought he was going to throw the little one at the Bonk Bonk kid when I saw that

[The Other Waldo Pepper]

There was a Columbo episode - "Dead Weight" - where the guy killed someone in broad daylight, while standing in front of a plate-glass window; anyone could've seen it, and someone who did promptly called the police. I'd give the killer points for hiding the body, except (as per the title) he didn't weigh it down enough; it washed up on the shore all by itself, which means the cops presumably didn't need our hero.

But play along with the concept for a minute and pretend they do need a murder weapon to make the charges stick; other episodes include that bit along with framing someone else while arranging a clever alibi, but this guy doesn't have anything else going for him and so absolutely needs to pin all his hopes on hiding the gun. Okay. I'm with you, writers. Go make this plot sing.

"What, that gun right there? I assure you, it wouldn't match the bullet."

Columbo wonders if the guy is lying.

He is! It's a perfect match!

Yay for Columbo!

[RealityChuck]

ST:TNG: Family (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_%28Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation%29) The show was hated, and, as was usual, the producers took the wrong lesson from that. They thought the problem was that there were no action sequences. But, no, the problem was that it was a mass of third-rate cliches and by-the-book heart-tugging revelations. Not a single moment of it rang true (especially absurd was the Picard vs. his French brother -- both with English accents -- solving things after a bit of mudwrestling).

For Doctor Who, I'd go with "Kinda." Really awful pseudopsychological mumbo jumbo, with a solution that is just plain stupid.

[Superhal]

A Million Little Fibers, Season 10, South Park.

It's so bad, Matt and Trey apologized for it on the DVD commentary.

[Chronos]

Well, I'm not going to try to figure out precisely what my "favorite show" is, but Babylon 5 has to be high on the list. There's one episode, "TKO", where a washed-up human boxer decides to compete in some alien Ultimate Fighting sport from which humans had previously been excluded. After 43 minutes of tribulations and really bad fighting form, he manages to get allowed in the ring with the galactic champion at this sport, and fights until the other guy agrees to a tie and to let humans compete from now on. There's no broader significance to the episode at all, nor any connection whatsoever to any of the grand overarching storylines that were woven throughout the series. Every single other episode of the show, without any other exception, at least has Kosh show up for a scene and say something cryptic, or something.

[Intergalactic Gladiator]

Not my favorite show, but the first series of The Sarah jane Adventures ended with a bit of a wimper imo, with The Lost Boy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Boy_(The_Sarah_Jane_Adventures)).

What makes the Slitheen an amusing enemy is all thrown out the window. Yeah, I thought the fat suits and the farting were funny and it set them apart from other enemies in the Whoniverse. Sure, they're a menace, but that's all tapered with the fat farting.

Then it all turns out to be a plot by the computer Mr. Smith to crash the moon into the Earth. Fortunately, they were able to infect him with a virus and rebuild him so he wouldn't want to do it any more. Yay, we're saved.

I thought the series was pretty good, but suffered from fairly uninspired bookends if you include the pilot.

[Happy Scrappy Hero Pup]

There was an episode of Married with Children that apparently was supposed to be a test pilot for a spinoff show or something, except it wasn't for any of the main family or friends or acquaintances, but for some never-before-seen-friend of Al's named Charlie Verducci. His son Vinnie, played by Matt Le Blanc, were featured in the episode. Al steals their TV at the end for some reason. Hated it, it had nothing to do with Married with Children and I resent networks trying to piggyback crappy spinoffs on more popular shows.

Would that be Vinnie Verducci, of "Top of the Heap" and "Vinnie and Bobby" fame?

:D

[Kyla]

Buffy: Where the Wild Things Are, aka "that stupid episode where Buffy and Riley can't stop having sex because of some spell."

Supernatural: Route 666, aka "the racist truck episode". Racist truck? WTF?!

[Zsofia]

I'm not super-proud, but I like Bones, okay? I still like it. But they lost all my respect when the writer's strike happened and they yanked our emotions around like a kid with an abused puppy for the first ten minutes and then got onto the business of "solving" the season-long mystery with some made up stupid shit, where the apprentice was somebody it couldn't really be and the master was nobody at all and they wrapped up what could have gone on for seasons in half an hour flat. A stupid half an hour.

[John DiFool]

"Beer Bad" is also a candidate. For Angel it has to be the muppet episode-I've never had my willing suspension of disbelief as smashed, folded, spindled, and mutilated as it was the instant Angel appears on screen as a muppet, and then starts wrestling with Spike.
<oy vey......>

As far as Trek goes, CBS.com finally got all their TOS eps up there, and I tried "The Way to Eden," on a lark, but unlike "Spock's Brain" it had no "so bad it's good" moments. Dr. Cauliflower Seven Sevrin was lame and uncompelling as a loony villian, and the space hippies...ackkkk.

[Ephemera]

Buffy: Where the Wild Things Are, aka "that stupid episode where Buffy and Riley can't stop having sex because of some spell."

I like Beer Bad, and Bad Eggs isn't horrible, but this is the worst episode related to anything Joss has ever done. Even the movie is better than this.

[Kyla]

I like Beer Bad, and Bad Eggs isn't horrible, but this is the worst episode related to anything Joss has ever done. Even the movie is better than this.

I feel like anyone who responds differently has repressed their memory of WTWTA.

[Annie]

For Angel it has to be the muppet episode-I've never had my willing suspension of disbelief as smashed, folded, spindled, and mutilated as it was the instant Angel appears on screen as a muppet, and then starts wrestling with Spike.
<oy vey......>


Wee little puppet man, wee little puppet man! I'll have your share, that was frigging awesome!

For Angel, there was something in the first season about neo nazi aliens. Ran away screaming

[Green Bean]

On The Simpsons, the worst is the one where Bart and his friends form a boy band as a recruiting tool for the Navy.Dammit! Now I have "Yvan Eht Nioj" stuck in my head. :(

[Fenris]

Well, I'm not going to try to figure out precisely what my "favorite show" is, but Babylon 5 has to be high on the list. There's one episode, "TKO", where a washed-up human boxer decides to compete in some alien Ultimate Fighting sport from which humans had previously been excluded. After 43 minutes of tribulations and really bad fighting form, he manages to get allowed in the ring with the galactic champion at this sport, and fights until the other guy agrees to a tie and to let humans compete from now on. There's no broader significance to the episode at all, nor any connection whatsoever to any of the grand overarching storylines that were woven throughout the series. Every single other episode of the show, without any other exception, at least has Kosh show up for a scene and say something cryptic, or something.

It had the really good subplot about Ivanova, her unresolved daddy issues and the rabbi which I really liked and there's one bit of foreshadowing.


The boxer tells Garibaldi that Garibaldi's weakness is that he trusts his friends too much and never watches his back. Which comes into play about 5 episodes later


I'd argue that "Grey 17 is Missing" is a much worse episode.

[Dallas Jones]

Nah. Spock's Brain is golden compared to Miri.

First, you have an exact duplicate of Earth for no reason whatsoever.

Second, you have annoying brats going BONK!, BONK!, BONK! every five minutes.

Nuke'em from orbit, Captain. It's the only way to be sure.

Are either of those episodes worse than The Way to Eden? With the groovy, singing 'space hippies', really, Herbert?

[dhkendall]

Well, I'm not going to try to figure out precisely what my "favorite show" is, but Babylon 5 has to be high on the list. There's one episode, "TKO", where a washed-up human boxer decides to compete in some alien Ultimate Fighting sport from which humans had previously been excluded. After 43 minutes of tribulations and really bad fighting form, he manages to get allowed in the ring with the galactic champion at this sport, and fights until the other guy agrees to a tie and to let humans compete from now on. There's no broader significance to the episode at all, nor any connection whatsoever to any of the grand overarching storylines that were woven throughout the series. Every single other episode of the show, without any other exception, at least has Kosh show up for a scene and say something cryptic, or something.

ST:TNG: Family (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_%28Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation%29) The show was hated, and, as was usual, the producers took the wrong lesson from that. They thought the problem was that there were no action sequences. But, no, the problem was that it was a mass of third-rate cliches and by-the-book heart-tugging revelations. Not a single moment of it rang true (especially absurd was the Picard vs. his French brother -- both with English accents -- solving things after a bit of mudwrestling).

It seems like sci-fi and wrestling do *not* go together (I mean, are there any Trekkies who are also UFC fans?). Star Trek: Voyager's Tsunkatse (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Tsunkatse_%28episode%29) was a very thinly veiled attempt to have "The Rock" guest star on the show. The plot device was as contrived as a standard Gilligan's Island episode (oh, the Harlem Globetrotters just happened to appear on the island, eh?) but at least Gilligan's Island is entertaining and you're more apt to suspend disbelief for that show.

[Erdosain]

As a Simpsons fan, there are (unfortunately) a limitless number of options from seasons 12-21. As bad as Yvan Eht Nioj and Duncan the Race Horse were, there were still some redeeming moments. Lately, it's been like panning for gold.

[fiddlesticks]

Hmmmm...The Wire didn't have a WORST episode. :) Ok, to be fair, pick one at the tail end of the final season.

[Chronos]

OK, I'll grant that "Gray 17 is Missing" was pretty awful, too, but I still maintain that the lack of connection to other episodes made "TKO" worse. OK, there was the thing with Ivanova and her dad, but that was introduced as the C plot in a single earlier episode, and never brought up again after TKO, so it's not really much of a connection. And while "watch your back" might count as foreshadowing if Kosh or someone said it (heck, everything Kosh says counts as foreshadowing, no matter what it is), when some punch-drunk idiot wannabe who only appears in one episode says it, it doesn't mean anything.

Mind you, I can't actually remember what connection to the plot "Gray 17" had, but I know it had more than that.

[Ranchoth]

Well, I don't know if it's my favorite series—though it's gotta be close. How couldn't it be?—but I've got another ST:TNG nomination: "Emergence" (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Emergence_%28episode%29). That was the one from the seventh season where the ship got nicked by a space-storm (offscreen, apparently) which apparently mutated it so it starts evolving into an intelligent lifeform, and you could see the elements of it's subconscious incarnated as characters on a train in the Holodeck, and it built a really mediocre CGI effect "offspring" which flew off into space in the end and then everything went back to normal. Or some damn thing like that.

The whole sorry thing was just an indication that the series really wrapped up just in time, instead of trying to plow on for more seasons. It felt like a Voyager episode more than anything else—but at least it had Picard discussing The Tempest, in-character, which was neat and actually tied in with the episode. Voyager probably would have had Paris tinkering with an Edsel or someone mooning over their annoying love life or practicing being self-righteous or something.

[Maiira]

[Anime geek]

The Davyback arc in One Piece. It read like filler in the manga, and wasn't any better in the anime. Stupid, pointless episodes. I hope that the Foxy pirates don't play some sort of key role later, because they were such worthless villains. I also wasn't a fan of Thriller Bark, though the anime portrayed it slightly better than the manga, I think.

[/Anime geek]

[FordTaurusSHO94]

There's two episodes of Futurama that stick out to me. The first one is That's Lobstertainment. There's a lot of funny jokes in the episode, but I just can't buy there being another silent movie era in black and white. The next one is the one where Bender becomes joins All My Circuits. As with That's Lobstertainment, I just can't stand episodes of shows where a non-famous group of people suddenly gets famous, then in the next episode they act like it never happened.

[DWMarch]

Buffy's "Bad Eggs" gave us Cordelia in a black leather miniskirt, vest and boots. The plot was bad you say? Didn't actually notice. For my money the worst is either S1's "Nightmares" or S6's "Doublemeat Palace".

Angel didn't have a lot of really bad episodes per se but "She" is only barely redeemed by the hilarious dancing scene at the beginning. "Why We Fight" brought the season 5 story to a grinding halt so we could have Angel on a submarine in WWII. How anyone cannot love "Smile Time" is a mystery to me.

The Shield was another show that had very few bad episodes but one I really didn't like was where Vic gets played by the hooker that was friends with Connie.

24: in the first season, Elisha Cuthbert's girlfriend has survived being beaten and tortured by the bad guys and being hit by a car. She goes through a long surgery and just as we're starting to think she's going to be ok, a bad guy comes in and suffocates her. That was friggin' harsh.

Also on 24, in the seventh season a dozen commandos from Africa take over the White House in about five minutes. This is because 1) there is a nice easy access underground tunnel to a White House broom closet that the terrorists can access 2) they have sophisticated equipment to bypass the puny photoelectric beams and cameras that protect the White House and 3) no one responsible for White House security packs anything more powerful than a pistol. The President has a panic room but it's nowhere near the Oval Office, does not have any means of communicating with the outside world and has no weapons or body armor in it but does have several canisters of explosive gas. I know 24 requires extensive suspension of disbelief but this was going way too far.

[Gyrate]

For Doctor Who, I'd go with "Kinda." Really awful pseudopsychological mumbo jumbo, with a solution that is just plain stupid.Worse than "The Unicorn and The Wasp"?

[Ephemera]

It seems like sci-fi and wrestling do *not* go together (I mean, are there any Trekkies who are also UFC fans?). Star Trek: Voyager's Tsunkatse (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Tsunkatse_%28episode%29) was a very thinly veiled attempt to have "The Rock" guest star on the show. The plot device was as contrived as a standard Gilligan's Island episode (oh, the Harlem Globetrotters just happened to appear on the island, eh?) but at least Gilligan's Island is entertaining and you're more apt to suspend disbelief for that show.

Not MMA, but professional wrestling and Star Trek were my two passions as a pre-teen and teen, and though I'm not a huge fan of either nowadays, I still follow both to some degree.

[bouv]

Mind you, I can't actually remember what connection to the plot "Gray 17" had, but I know it had more than that.

The B plot involved Delenn going through a ceremony to officially become "The One," and Neroon was Hell bent on stopping it (by murdering her, if necessary) because he believed someone from the Warrior Caste should lead the Rangers. Marcus stops him by challenging him to a fight to the death. He almost kills Marcus, but stops himself because he realizes that even if he were The One, none of the Rangers would care about him the way they do about Delenn, so he sacrifices his honor by not killing Marcus and confessing to Delenn.

This DOES come up later, too, as when the civil war break out among the Mibari,
Neroon sacrifices himself to save Delenn, saying that his true calling was religion, not warrior.

[joebuck20]

The Columbus Day episode of the Sopranos. I get what David Chase was trying to do - take a swipe at all the people who said the show was anti-Italian - but it just came off as overly preachy and very clumsily done.

[dhkendall]

I just can't stand episodes of shows where a non-famous group of people suddenly gets famous, then in the next episode they act like it never happened.

My #1 beef with the Simpsons since about, oh, season 3 or so ...

(Interestingly, when it happened with Bender and Zoidberg on Futurama, I was much more willing to suspend disbelief than I am with the Simpsons.)

[Hampshire]

The Expose' episode from LOST.
It was a watchable episode but so completely out of place from the rest of the series. To follow two secondary characters, Nikki and Paulo, for one episode on their own storyline felt like an odd experimental show that they never tried again.

[Cumberdale]

The Expose' episode from LOST.
It was a watchable episode but so completely out of place from the rest of the series. To follow two secondary characters, Nikki and Paulo, for one episode on their own storyline felt like an odd experimental show that they never tried again.

I liked that one. It didn't advance the plot or anything but it was nice seeing the point of view from some of the background characters.

My vote is the Seinfeld episode where George's fiance died from licking envelopes. It so turned me off I stopped watching the show until the final season which I only saw a couple of episodes.

It seemed to me the writers were stuck on resolving the story line and just decided to take the easy way out. Also, it just felt excessively mean spirited and unnecessary.

[Annie]

For my money the worst is either S1's "Nightmares" or S6's "Doublemeat Palace".

Angel didn't have a lot of really bad episodes per se but "She" is only barely redeemed by the hilarious dancing scene at the beginning.

Doublemeat Palace, yup, blacked that one out too. A few episodes later when Willow was describing it to Tara: "Yeah, it looked like a giant penis. If I wasn't a lesbian before..."

[silenus]

BtVS was like the girl with the curl...when she was good, she was very good, but when she was bad she was horrid. "Doublemeat Palace" just edges out "Where The Wild Things Are" in my personal pantheon of Buffy suckitude.

"Smile Time" rocked! In addition to Puppet-Angel we get Naked-Nina. What's not to love?

[Annie]

At least in WTWTA, Buffy got some quality sex. Who said Riley wasn't good for anything!

[Small Hen]

Nah. Spock's Brain is golden compared to Miri.

First, you have an exact duplicate of Earth for no reason whatsoever.

Second, you have annoying brats going BONK!, BONK!, BONK! every five minutes.

Nuke'em from orbit, Captain. It's the only way to be sure.

BONK BONK was annoying, but it occupied, what, a grand total of a minute of screen time? The iceburg of Miri was Kirk's relationship with the pubesant Miri herself - the way he kept hugging her and making lovey faces at her like he pretending to be her boyfriend was creepy enough. And then we get the "You're turning into a WOMAN, Miri!!!" speach. :eek:

But it did have Bones and Spock once again arguing for the right to commit suicide for the crew, so it wasn't a total failure. The Alternative Factor or The Lights of Zetar (aka Scotty turns into a creepy stalker) were far worse. And, of course, Spock's Brain is just hilarious.

Futurama: A Leela of her Own. Did we really care to learn about Blernsball? Or watch a Futurama episode without jokes?

Buffy: Bring on the Night. It's like the writers said, "This show's popular enough that we don't actually have to have anything happen, right?" There were other episodes that were nearly as bad, but I believe that BOTN was the closest thing to a television void that has ever aired.

Supernatural: ...yeah, racist truck. Nothing's going to top that. Kripke, this is not a dare.

[MsWhatsit]

The West Wing, "Isaac and Ishmael," aka "A Very Special Episode About the September 11 Attacks." It was preachy and lame and happened outside the "reality" of the regular series. At the time I only found it mildly cringe-worthy, but in retrospect it was just completely awful.

[BrotherCadfael]

Are either of those episodes worse than The Way to Eden? With the groovy, singing 'space hippies', really, Herbert?All three are golden compared to "Turnabout Intruder", where Kirk's body is taken over by a Woman Scorned. Terrible. Also the very last episode broadcast.

[Xavier T. Nougat]

Nobody mentioned Stranger in a Strange Land from Lost yet?

After weeks of watching aggravating, soap opera bullshit between Kate, Sawyer, and Jack while we slowly forget about all the cool stuff that they were building up to featuring Ben and the Others, the network advertises that "Three Big Mysteries Will Be Revealed!"

Then we get 45 minutes of EVEN MORE soap opera bullshit, which now slows the show down from it's crawling, tedious pace to a stone-cold coma, while Jack grimaces at the camera and has memories about.... his tattoos.

Yes, Lost. We tuned in because we didn't care about mysteries or intrigue or interesting characters. We wanted to get 45 minutes of extra behind-the-scenes footage of television's dullest character, who has already had 15 episodes devoted to his daddy issues and emotional problems, just to find out about a couple of shitty tattoos that we never noticed before and which will never come up again or be relevant in any meaningful way.

Fortunately, the show got significantly better after this episode. It marks the end of the season 3 slump.

[Icerigger]

All three are golden compared to "Turnabout Intruder", where Kirk's body is taken over by a Woman Scorned. Terrible. Also the very last episode broadcast.


Trek Geek nitpick. Eden was last broadcast, Intruder was last filmed.

[Fenris]

OK, I'll grant that "Gray 17 is Missing" was pretty awful, too, but I still maintain that the lack of connection to other episodes made "TKO" worse. OK, there was the thing with Ivanova and her dad, but that was introduced as the C plot in a single earlier episode, and never brought up again after TKO, so it's not really much of a connection.
Quibble--many episodes, not just "a single earlier episode".

There's the 2-3 episode sub-arc with Garibaldi trying to figure out who's sending messages on the uber-forbidden Gold Channel. Then there's the "Dad Dies" ep. Then the TKO/Rabbi subplot. Then there's four or five other eps where Ivanova talks about her relationship with dad and brother and how she's dealing with their deaths. Despite her talking more about her mom, more actual screen time (IMO--I haven't counted. :) ) is spent on Dad+Brother.

And while "watch your back" might count as foreshadowing if Kosh or someone said it (heck, everything Kosh says counts as foreshadowing, no matter what it is), when some punch-drunk idiot wannabe who only appears in one episode says it, it doesn't mean anything.
No--I meant "foreshadowing" in the standard way: the author is foreshadowing--it's not "oracular warning" like Kosh says. And it gets to the fact that Garibaldi is too trusting of friends and doesn't cover his ass.

Mind you, I can't actually remember what connection to the plot "Gray 17" had, but I know it had more than that.
IIRC, none at all. There's an entire section ring of B-5 that no-one noticed. No maintenence bots, etc. And the wrap-up was A) stupid and B) stolen from Brown's short story "Arena" (which was also stolen for a Star Trek ep)--only stupider. Garibaldi's solution wouldn't have worked. (He dumps a bunch of bullets in a metal tube and lights the back of the tube on fire. This has the effect of turning the tube into a machine gun (firing each bullet one at a time)).

There's no actual "B" plot, but there's like a 3 minute bit where Delenn becomes head of the Rangers and Neroon is pissed off...but it's just a bookmark--nothing actually happens

Plus, the punch-drunk fighter was Sir Lawrence Oliver compared to Jerimiah the cult leader.

PLUS JMS apologized for Grey-17.
Grey 17" is the same thing, for me. There are bits in that I like a lot. And some parts of it just fell down dreadfully. That's simply the nature of the beast. I thought I'd try something different in the tone of "Grey" and while most of the writing works (mostly), the production fell down on a couple of aspects. It happens. It doesn't mean anything.
<snip>
Where it falls down, for me, is the Zarg...I just have this constant desire to go to everyone's house and personally apologize....
:D

That said, if you and I are in agreement that one of those two are "the worst" out ...um...110 eps, B5 did pretty damned good. :)

[Promethea]

I think I've completely blocked out that episode of Heroes that involved Elle, Sylar, the worst acting I've ever seen on film committed by Robert Forster, baked ziti and suicide.

I suspect my own blocking out has been a bit too effective so, at the risk of opening up old wounds, which episode from S3 IS that? (I always thought Robert Forster performed pretty well considering the piss poor quality of the material he was given to work with, btw. )

My own Heroes pick is Episode 3.04 "I Am Become Death" in which Peter travels to the future in the company of his saturnine future incarnation. And from there, the show decides to not only piss all over every bit of characterisation of every character, it also decides to throw out such things as narratives that make any sense. Plus, they introduced a bunch of plotpoints which were never heard of every again, which, as they all stunk was probably no bad thing but did mean they were a massive waste of time.

Close runner up: The 'Villains' flashback episode for adding nothing worthwhile and yet undoing a lot of the loveliness of the far superior previous flashback episode "Six Months Ago". Bad enough that the current season stunk, they didn't have to go back and try and make that earlier ep retroactively dumb. (Is this in fact the episode you are talking about, Annie?)

[Kyla]

For Heroes, can I just pick "every episode where Hiro and Ando are in medieval Japan"? Jesus christ that was a boring storyline.

[Voyager]

Eh, weird ass coincidences, the all-Nazi planet, gangsterland, all par for the Trek course, but then:



Dammit Jim, just smack that kid! The child protection workers on that planet died 300 years ago- the only person who'd give you shit about it is Rand, and you get to tell her to shut up since you're her CO.

I honestly thought he was going to throw the little one at the Bonk Bonk kid when I saw that

Miri tried for a little emotional depth. Spock's Brain had the cave babes. The Alternative Factor on the other hand had a hero/villain looking like the guy running into the camera shouting "It's, it's" at the beginning of many Monty Pythons, a spaceship that looked less spaceworthy than Ray Walston's in My Favorite Martian, the hero/villain choking himself in the middle of special effects that were awful even for 1967, and the supposed lead characters standing around looking confused and not contributing to the story in any way. And extra demerits for it being on during the first season when Roddenberry was supposed to care.

[StoutHearted]

Lost: "Stranger in a Stange Land," for all the reasons Xavier T. Nougat mentioned. I think this is even worse than the Nikki/Paolo episode.

The Office: The pilot was pretty bad, but as for a bad episode after the show hit its stride, "Chair Model" comes to mind. Michael gets himself all worked up over a furniture catalog model? Meh.

[Speak to me Maddie!]

Recently we added the original series to the DVR list. My wife enjoys TNG and had come to appreciate DS9, but she had never seen any of the original series episodes.

So the first two episodes that show up on the list are: The Way to Eden and Turnabout Intruder. I'll give her credit, she sat through both episodes, but decided the original series was sillier than The Monkeys. I tried to explain. The reruns reset and we started getting some first season goodness, but it is hard to lose a first impression.

But yes, both of those are terrible. I guess the space hippies one is worse, imo.

[Gangster Octopus]

I can't recall any I don't like from Futurama but that is probably b ecause I am suffering from a case of explosive amnesia.

[lisiate]

As Fiddlesticks pointed out it's hard to think of one for The Wire so I'll nominate one for Firefly instead. For me it's The Message with it's over-elaborate plot and sappy ending.

[Chronos]

As Fiddlesticks pointed out it's hard to think of one for The Wire so I'll nominate one for Firefly instead. For me it's The Message with it's over-elaborate plot and sappy ending. Though it did have some good bits at the beginning: The alien, "My food is problematic", and Jayne's hat. I'm not actually disagreeing with you, that was my least-favorite episode, too, but "worst episode of Firefly" is still pretty good.

Fenris, are we also agreed that the third-worst episode of B5 was the one with the organic technology doohicky that turned the archaeologist into an unstoppable killing machine? Though I think that was the first or second episode after the pilot, so we can maybe make allowances for the show not yet having hit its stride.

[MacTech]

Blackadder the entire Season 1, sorry, just can't get into it, none of my Cunning Plans seem to work

Farscape;
Season 1; Jerimiah Crichton (http://www.farscapeworld.com/episodes/synopsis/10114.php) - John gets stranded on some backwater planet for 3 months, when he's rescued, Rygel is seen by the native population as some form of "God", which Fluffy tries to exploit to the fullest, but fails as is normal for him

Season 2; Taking the Stone (http://www.farscapeworld.com/episodes/synopsis/10204.php) Not even the comely presence of Gigi Edgely's Chiana character could save this one, pity, as it had a strong opening and lots of potential (plus, I just frelling *love* Chiana ;) ), the scene opens to an obviously visibly distraught Chi, sad, heartbroken about something, she needs someone to talk to, she hopes that Crichton (whom she's secretly been carrying a torch for) would be able to talk to her, spend time with her, make her feel better, help heal her broken heart, crichton, however, is arms deep in Moya's control hardware and he gives her the cold-shoulder brushoff

Heartbroken, abandoned by her closest freind, she steals Aeryn's prowler and storms off to a nearby planet, populated by drugged-out "space hippie" teenagers who turn out to be adrenalin-junkie-suicide-fanatics

the rest of the episode consists of Chi being a spoiled brat and wanting to live with the Space-Hippies, even though they live in a cave with radioactive rock that's slowly killing them.....

watch the first few minutes, up to Chiana nicking Aeryn's prowler, then forget the rest....

Season 3; can't think of a one, S3 was pretty frelling solid

Season 4; hmm, what to choose, there's so many, could it be the "Vomit-O-Rama" episode Coup By Clam (http://www.farscapeworld.com/episodes/review/10410.php), or the frelling stupid "Aeryn gets religion while being tortured by the Scarrans" Prayer (http://www.farscapeworld.com/episodes/review/10418.php), or even "I hate it only because it was the last episode of the series even though it was a great episode" Bad Timing (http://www.farscapeworld.com/episodes/review/10418.php)

Let me set things up here, imagine, you've spent four years with John Crichton and the crew of Moya, you know them well, they're your "friends", your "family" (for lack of a better term), they're more than actors and animatronics playing roles onscreen, they feel like real, actual people.....

Aeryn is pregnant with John's child
Chiana has been blinded (possibly permanently) by using her "Bullet-Time" vision to help the crew escape to this point in the series, she is also madly in love with John, even though John is unaware of this (watch her expression seamlessly shift from joy to sadness as she realizes what's happening with John and Aeryn, joy for him getting married to Aeryn, sadness when she realizes she's lost him.... (3:15 to 3:40)
D'Argo has forgiven Chiana for her infidelity, and they look to be getting back together
D'argo and John have become more than freinds, D actually considers him a brother, something Luxans never do to non-Luxans
Pilot and Aeryn have shared DNA (through the efforts of a mad-scientist trying to create a Sebecean-Pilot hybrid) and think of each other as family (extended family)

keep all that in mind when you watch this.... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAZxGIkTkMY) and keep in mind that at the time, Farscape had just been cancelled, and there was no provisions for the Peacekeeper Wars miniseries, this ending sequence was the *final* episode of Farscape for all we knew.....

[ryobserver]

My Worst Episode of The X-Files was "Eve" until the very last season managed to top it (bottom it?) with "Scary Monsters". Not a great idea to start with and VERY badly executed, with everyone behaving in ways that made me want to kick them, and the established characters behaving badly in ways that were out of character.

The two worst scenes (I'm not sure which was more appalling): Doggett gratuitously terrorizing the "villain" when he could have just cold-cocked him and gotten the same results; and Scully opening her door to a midnight visitor who just shows up unannounced at her apartment, carrying a box that for all she knows contains the head & genitals of the last woman who was dumb enough to open her door to a total stranger in the middle of the night. (This was supposedly the same Scully who in a first-season episode greeted an unexpected midnight caller with a drawn pistol.)

[Sampiro]

Roseanne may not be my favorite show but it's on the short list (the number 1 spot varies). The single worst episode was in the final season when Roseanne and crew are flown to Europe by a prince played by Jim Varney; if winning the lottery (which could have worked) hadn't already made them jump the shark that most certainly did. The writing was ridiculous and silly (a European prince from a tiny country falling in love with a middle aged American woman he sees in a news clip), you never got over the fact it was Ernest speaking in an English accent, and it set in motion a long series of increasingly dreamlike and absurd episodes.

[enalzi]

The Expose' episode from LOST.
It was a watchable episode but so completely out of place from the rest of the series. To follow two secondary characters, Nikki and Paulo, for one episode on their own storyline felt like an odd experimental show that they never tried again.

Are you kidding me? That's a great episode! Not only did we get to see more Arzt, but they killed off two of the most hated characters of all time by burying them alive.

And I third Stranger in a Strange Land being the worst, for all reasons mentioned. Plus that Other's Sheriff character that never appeared again. Lost is normally pretty good about minor characters coming back, but that didn't happen.

[breezman]

This. Was just insultingly bad. Absolutely painful. And "the daughter" on this was one of the ugliest, most emaciated, repellant skanks I've ever seen anywhere. Like the total opposite of the beautiful Christina Applegate.


There was no daughter on Top of the Heap. Are you maybe thinking of Unhappily Ever After?

[fluiddruid]

ST:TNG: Family (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_%28Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation%29) The show was hated, and, as was usual, the producers took the wrong lesson from that. They thought the problem was that there were no action sequences. But, no, the problem was that it was a mass of third-rate cliches and by-the-book heart-tugging revelations. Not a single moment of it rang true (especially absurd was the Picard vs. his French brother -- both with English accents -- solving things after a bit of mudwrestling).I actually kind of like this episode (except for the mudwrestling epiphany, which was admittedly silly).

I liked ST:TNG an awful lot, but man there are some crap episodes. Any of the holodeck episodes are strong contenders for awfulness, especially the Professor Moriarty ones, but I just watched "Force of Nature" a few weeks ago and yikes, what a stinker. A very, very thinly veiled metaphor for environmentalism -- Jesus, I hated when they tried to make shows "topical", a completely confusing and anticlimactic message ("uh, yeah, our starships are fucking this shit all up, so let's just, uh, study it and only use Warp 4. Except only Federation ships will actually follow this rule anyway, and nobody can make the Ferengi or Romulans or anyone else do it, and ... yeah"), and an excess of boring technobabble, even for Star Trek. Oh, and let's not forget someone killing themselves just to prove a point, and the completely wooden response of not only the regular cast but the individual's own brother seems to barely notice. Booooooo.

X-Files: Well, practically everything towards the end. The one when Mulder was resurrected from the dead, I guess, but I stopped paying attention after that.

[Kolga]

The West Wing, "Isaac and Ishmael," aka "A Very Special Episode About the September 11 Attacks." It was preachy and lame and happened outside the "reality" of the regular series. At the time I only found it mildly cringe-worthy, but in retrospect it was just completely awful.

I am a completely indiscriminate lover of The West Wing, even the seasons after Aaron Sorkin left, and I actually do not mind the episode you mentioned.

But I cannot, will not, absolutely refuse to ever watch again the episode "Han," the 4th episode from the 5th season. I will not watch it for any reason, for any amount of money. It OFFENDS ME, it's so ridiculous horrifically unrealistic in the context of the already-established characters. NONE of those people would allow that to happen, or be complicit in it. It's egregiously WRONG.

[Lute Skywatcher]

M*A*S*H: "Major Fred C. Dobbs". Hawkeye & Trapper drive Frank to request a transfer, which results in Hot Lips also requesting a transfer. Rather than go on double shifts until replacements are found, they concoct a scheme to have Frank reconsider by relying on his greed and some gold paint.

Even Larry Gelbart considered this the worst of the series.

[Clothahump]

Star Trek: TOS is one of my favorite shows for the promise that it held. But my word, was it ever plagued by bad writing. And "The Way to Eden" was the worst of the bunch. Space hippies take over the Enterprise? Spock jams with them on his harp? Somebody was smoking some bad shit to come up with that script.

[salinqmind]

There was no daughter on Top of the Heap. Are you maybe thinking of Unhappily Ever After?

Probably. Both were awful, though - because they were trying to be Married With Children II, they get mixed up in my mind.

Mr. Salinqmind wishes to advise that the worst LOOKING episode of NYPD Blue was the one where Sipowitz practically mooned the viewing audience as he and the Mrs. took a shower :eek:.

[HPL]

One of my favorite TV shows in recent memory was Battlestar Galactica. Three words that should make any BSG fan shudder are "The Woman King."

Well, "Black Market" might give it a run for it's money in the "Useless episode" department.

But "The Woman King" was pretty bad. It might have been otherwise if they had actually set up the premise and then followed through. Instead, we just got an episode that doesn't really go anywhere and seemingly comes out of nowhere.

[HPL]

Right now I'm really into the new Dr. Who and having just finished the 4th season, I'd have to say I thought "Fear Her" was one of the weakest episodes. I don't know why, but it's probably because it never explains how the whole alien drawing power thing is supposed to work or what it does. I also got rather annoyed by the whole "Draw the Earth" and everyone will be affected thing.It felt like a cheat, even by this shows standards.

[olivesmarch4th]

You know that episode in the last season of Star Trek: TNG where Wesley goes off with the Native Americans and became a time traveler or whatever?

(Journey's End (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey%27s_End_%28TNG_episode%29)).

That episode makes my soul hurt.

[Ranchoth]

I just watched "Force of Nature" a few weeks ago and yikes, what a stinker. A very, very thinly veiled metaphor for environmentalism -- Jesus, I hated when they tried to make shows "topical", a completely confusing and anticlimactic message ("uh, yeah, our starships are fucking this shit all up, so let's just, uh, study it and only use Warp 4. Except only Federation ships will actually follow this rule anyway, and nobody can make the Ferengi or Romulans or anyone else do it, and ... yeah"), and an excess of boring technobabble, even for Star Trek. Oh, and let's not forget someone killing themselves just to prove a point, and the completely wooden response of not only the regular cast but the individual's own brother seems to barely notice. Booooooo.

Phil Farrand, who wrote the Nitpickers Guide books, noted that the person who killed themselves to prove their point was like an environmentalist protesting the danger of a nuclear planet near a town by...blowing up the nuclear plant.

And according to the tech backstory of Voyager, Voyager's engine's were a newly developed type that wouldn't damage subspace when used (maybe it was the tilting that helped). So they just shot that plot point down, for good measure. Whats worse is that is was Voyager that wrote off a stupid technobabble point from TNG. That's only slightly humiliating. :o

[MsWhatsit]

You know that episode in the last season of Star Trek: TNG where Wesley goes off with the Native Americans and became a time traveler or whatever?

(Journey's End (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey%27s_End_%28TNG_episode%29)).

That episode makes my soul hurt.


I can't believe you reminded me of the existence of this episode. I had previously been successfully able to block it from my memory. :mad:

Although actually my vote for worst TNG episode is that god-awful one where Troi gives birth to the star baby.

[whiterabbit]

Star Trek: TOS is one of my favorite shows for the promise that it held. But my word, was it ever plagued by bad writing. And "The Way to Eden" was the worst of the bunch. Space hippies take over the Enterprise? Spock jams with them on his harp? Somebody was smoking some bad shit to come up with that script.

Perhaps it's just my age -- 33 -- but I find that one so bad it's horribly entertaining. I mean, space hippies???? Bwahahahahahahaha!!!!!!! My mom who saw the eps in first run might have a different view on that one, I'll try to remember to ask. But really the entire show has gotten, for me, so dated it's kinda cool again. But oy, it's dated. The sexism makes me want to scream.

[tumbleddown]

But I cannot, will not, absolutely refuse to ever watch again the episode "Han," the 4th episode from the 5th season. I will not watch it for any reason, for any amount of money. It OFFENDS ME, it's so ridiculous horrifically unrealistic in the context of the already-established characters. NONE of those people would allow that to happen, or be complicit in it. It's egregiously WRONG.
Okay, refresh our collective memories on this one? Episode guides online are useless in relation to your specific complaint about mischaracterization.

[Gyrate]

What - no hate for Genesis from ST:TNG? Troi turns into a frog-person, Picard starts becoming a lemur and - yes really - Spot "devolves" from a cat into an actual iguana.

Also, at the end they're laughing off Beverly's little "oops, I accidentally created a plague that contaminated the whole crew" gaffe. Um...didn't the proto-Worf actually kill a couple of crewmembers along the way? Hilarious! But hey! We didn't know them, so that's okay.

[Kolga]

Okay, refresh our collective memories on this one? Episode guides online are useless in relation to your specific complaint about mischaracterization.

In order to do justice, I would have to watch it again. However, the gist of the story is that an incredibly talented North Korean pianist passes a note to Bartlet & Co. that he wants to defect. Because the U.S. is about to enter the possible beginnings of disarmament talks with North Korea, they refuse to help him and Bartlet tells him basically to sacrifice himself on the altar of potential world peace. Later, the North Koreans cancel the talks (independently of the defect plotline).

The way that I remember thinking about it is that the characters were all acting absolutely diametrically opposed to the way they'd been acting for the last four seasons, not only in the sense of denying Han (the titular pianist) defection (these were people who'd arranged a breakout of about 100 Chinese stowaways from a California National Guard holding center a few seasons before) but in their interactions with each other. But again, specific examples would require that I watch the episode to refresh my memory.

[Fenris]

Fenris, are we also agreed that the third-worst episode of B5 was the one with the organic technology doohicky that turned the archaeologist into an unstoppable killing machine? Though I think that was the first or second episode after the pilot, so we can maybe make allowances for the show not yet having hit its stride.


I didn't think it was actually...bad. It set up the whole "shadow" thing (with the organic tech) and gave us a few hints about organic tech. Although the ending just sucked donkey balls. (The sentinal-bots killed everyone who wasn't genetically pure and wiped out the whole race because no-one's 100% genetically pure? A) It was a blatant swipe from X-Men 57-59. and B) the X-Men ended it better: Sheridan does a Cap'n Kirk "confuse the robot" gambit. Boring. Cyclops tells the "Wipe out impure people" that the sun is the source of all mutations so go attack the sun". Much better)

The one with the lady Dr. Mengele (G'kar's first assistant went nuts and tried to kill her) was in the same category--not good or anything, but not to the status of actually being bad.

Or the one (that cemented my dislike for Dr. Franklin*) where he just casually ignores a patient's wishes (the Space-Jehovah's Witness Kid) and his parent's wishes AND the Captain's wishes and performs surgery on him against his will "for his own good".

There's a bunch in the first half of the first season that aren't good but aren't actually bad either.



*I hate the character--he's an arrogant, smug, pompous, self-righteous prick (which is wonderful characterization and the actor was fantastic)

[TruCelt]

South Park was my favorite show.

Then came Lemmiwinks. [shudder]

I haven't watched it since.

[Greg Charles]

Nit: Armin Tamzarian.

I was going to nit back that it should be Armen, a popular Armenian name. How hard is that? Armenia => Armen. However, it seems the Simpson writers misspelled it. Now I really hate that episode.

Greg (of the Zamanigian clan)

[Lethal Babydoll]

Wesley Crusher and the Indians. Oh lordy lordy.

[cerberus]

The Enterprise finale sucked - come on, take the prequel and spend huge amounts of time on a stupid, dead end Riker B plot that not even TNG really cared about. And end the series in a holodeck in Enterprise D? And close the series using TNG stock shots?

Stupid

[Icerigger]

Although actually my vote for worst TNG episode is that god-awful one where Troi gives birth to the star baby.

The Child?

I believe this episode was written for the defunct Star Trek Phase II series that was cancelled when they decided to make ST TMP. They simply crossed out Ilia's name and put Troi in it's place.

[Intergalactic Gladiator]

The Child?

I believe this episode was written for the defunct Star Trek Phase II series that was cancelled when they decided to make ST TMP. They simply crossed out Ilia's name and put Troi in it's place.

And by the time it was used in TNG, the idea of a mysterious prenancy for a character became a cliche.

[ads95]

I am a completely indiscriminate lover of The West Wing, even the seasons after Aaron Sorkin left, and I actually do not mind the episode you mentioned.

But I cannot, will not, absolutely refuse to ever watch again the episode "Han," the 4th episode from the 5th season. I will not watch it for any reason, for any amount of money. It OFFENDS ME, it's so ridiculous horrifically unrealistic in the context of the already-established characters. NONE of those people would allow that to happen, or be complicit in it. It's egregiously WRONG.

I would actually go with the entire 5th Season of TWW. So much character assasination happens that season that its hard to stomach. It has a few bright spots, such as "The Supremes", but not much else.

[DSYoungEsq]

Trek Geek nitpick. Eden was last broadcast, Intruder was last filmed.

Incorrect, sort of.

Turnabout Intruder was shown roughly two months after it was originally scheduled to air. It aired in June of 1969, the last of the episodes to get its original airing.

It may be that The Way to Eden was actually the last broadcast episode during the summer's re-runs, but I haven't been able to confirm that or disprove it.

[BrotherCadfael]

The third season of TOS makes me kind of glad that Firefly and Dead Like Me only lasted as long as they did.

The second season of Joan of Arcadia kind of does that for me too, except for the Zombie Musical episode, which was awesome.

[not_alice]

Not saying this is my favorite show, but it might be someone's!

Last night I was watching, with my gf who was not in the US at the time of the original airing, a DVD I picked up at the 99 cent store - a collection of episodes of Chico and the Man starring the late Freddy Prinze.

In the last episode of 6 on the DVD, Prinze was noticeably spaced out, and missing lines, ad-libbing others, and even seemingly ad-libbed a knife to his throat gesture for comedic effect.

Since I didn't recall the details of his death, I looked it up this morning so I could share with my gf.

Turns out, he killed himself hours after taping that show.

While it may not be the worst show in the series, killing yourself surely raises the bar of self-critiquing to an entirely new level!

[Kolga]

I would actually go with the entire 5th Season of TWW. So much character assasination happens that season that its hard to stomach. It has a few bright spots, such as "The Supremes", but not much else.

It's the worst season, true, although I can still watch most of the episodes on DVD. It improves after that (although never again to the Sorkin level). That particular episode of the 5th season just fills me with GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

[Steve MB]

I don't know if I'd call it my favorite show, but the one where there is a huge nexus between 'like the show' and 'find the producer and burn the master tape of the episode!':

A Night in Sickbay, Enterprise. I honestly wonder if Scott Bakula was screwing around with a writer's wife and/or teenage son and this was inflicted upon him in retaliation. This review doesn't convey the full horror, (http://www.jammersreviews.com/st-ent/s2/sickbay.php)but this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWz9onFebHA)promo gets close. TWOP has 14 pages to try to explain it all. (http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/enterprise/a_night_in_sickbay.php)

Or, as the Agony Booth recap (http://www.agonybooth.com/recaps/Star_Trek/Enterprise/A_Night_in_Sickbay.aspx) sums it up:

Can we all agree that, if this is not the worst dialogue ever written for a Star Trek character, it's certainly way down there? There have been times when I've disagreed with a character's choices. There have been times I've disliked a character. There have been times when I think the writers ruined a character, or undid a lot of a character's development, purely out of laziness. But this... this is all-out character destruction the likes of which I have never seen before. It takes active, aggressive hatred for your own creations to annihilate them to this degree.

At less than eight minutes into the episode, I'm actually angry enough to just stop the recap here. I rarely get pissed off when I recap stuff, because deep down, I really love the awful stuff that I recap. But this episode is something quite different. It's not terrible in the way most of the movies featured on this website are terrible, in that the filmmakers didn't know what they were doing, and just stumbled into making a horrible movie as a result of their own incompetence. It's terrible in that Epic Movie kind of way, where it seems everybody knew better, but the writers just hated the characters, hated themselves, hated their jobs, and most of all hated you for wanting to watch the shit they write.

Unfortunately though, I have to keep going. After building up anticipation for five years, there's no way I can bail on this episode now....

[Morbo]

C'mon - any discussion about the worst TNG episode has to begin and end with the "Riker gets stabbed by a thorn" episode. It wasn't even an episode - it was a clip show with more clips than any clip show I can recall. I'd say it was about 95% previous footage, with about two minutes of Riker, Troi and Pulaski. Complete waste of time.

Going back a ways, there was an episode of Nothern Exposure where Shelly couldn't stop singing. She would sing instead of talk, while everyone else just talked. Unwatchable.

[Drain Bead]

Well, "Black Market" might give it a run for it's money in the "Useless episode" department.

But "The Woman King" was pretty bad. It might have been otherwise if they had actually set up the premise and then followed through. Instead, we just got an episode that doesn't really go anywhere and seemingly comes out of nowhere.

At least Black Market, as bad as it was, fit in with the plot somewhat later. The Woman King was useless, preachy, and awful.

[Fair Rarity]

The West Wing, "Isaac and Ishmael," aka "A Very Special Episode About the September 11 Attacks." It was preachy and lame and happened outside the "reality" of the regular series. At the time I only found it mildly cringe-worthy, but in retrospect it was just completely awful.

At the time it pissed me off because I got what they were trying to do, but it was too preachy and condescending to me even then. It's the only episodes I will not watch in reruns.

I liked the episode Han and just watched it a couple weeks ago. The actor playing the pianist had such heart-breaking expressions on his face, like noble resignation.

I had forgotten about South Park's Lemmiwinks. That was pretty bad. The musical Joseph Smith/Mormon one was excruciating. So was the lice one. I think Lemmiwinks though is the worst.

[Annie]

Man, Trek sure dropped some plutonium-laced turds in its time(s) didn't it?

My dear gawd almighty ick! vote from TNG:http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/The_Game_%28episode%29 (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/The%20Game) The Game (format impaired, sorry) Orgasmatron video game. 'nuff said

My own Heroes pick is Episode 3.04 "I Am Become Death" in which Peter travels to the future in the company of his saturnine future incarnation. And from there, the show decides to not only piss all over every bit of characterisation of every character, it also decides to throw out such things as narratives that make any sense. Plus, they introduced a bunch of plotpoints which were never heard of every again, which, as they all stunk was probably no bad thing but did mean they were a massive waste of time.
[/quote]
Redeemed only slightly by waffle Sylar (but that hair! Ugh) and a nuclear detonation.

Close runner up: The 'Villains' flashback episode for adding nothing worthwhile .........(Is this in fact the episode you are talking about, Annie?)Bingo. Some slap ass retconning contrivance to get Sylar and Elle together, and rehabilitating Meredith into a competent agent-just so she could become a cheating, blackmailing ditz when Claire meets her a few (weeks, months) later? Then becomes cool agent chick again when she tries to waterboard Claire? Did not compute.

The Enterprise finale sucked - come on, take the prequel and spend huge amounts of time on a stupid, dead end Riker B plot that not even TNG really cared about. And end the series in a holodeck in Enterprise D? And close the series using TNG stock shots?

That episode never existed and you can't make me believe it did.

[Annie]

Sorry, Promethea, I balled up your quote in my reply.

[Pulp Friction]

The Office. I don't know the episode - or even the season - but I speak of the one where there is a dinner party at Michael and Jan's new condo. The entire episode was full of awkward anger. It was painful to watch.

[madmonk28]

Arrested Development is by far my favorite show, but the six episodes with Charlize Theron were dreadful. The series was falling apart because the network kept messing with it, so I understand what happened, but it was like watching a different show.

[Smeghead]

Arrested Development is by far my favorite show, but the six episodes with Charlize Theron were dreadful. The series was falling apart because the network kept messing with it, so I understand what happened, but it was like watching a different show.

No, the winner for that series was the one with Martin Short. That was one of those really badly thought out stunt casting moments. Stuck out like a sore thumb.

[Hazle Weatherfield]

Almost anytime a sitcom tried to deal realistically with a "serious issue" or was promoted as "A Very Special.....Family Ties, Blossom, whatever."

[Recliner]

I was going to say the exact same episode.

On The Simpsons, the worst is the one where Bart and his friends form a boy band as a recruiting tool for the Navy. The second worst is probably the one where they adopt Duncan the racehorse.

Nah, although its a cheap shot, whats the episode type everyone hates? Right, clip shows. And what's the worst clip show? Exactly. "All singing, all dancing" -- ie, the one where Snake breaks in and they rehash all the music clips. Even though I usually love the Simpsons' musical numbers, this episode is truly grating. As for real shows, well, I know the penalty (apologies to whomever first mentioned that). But beyond that one, hmm...some of the first couple seasons simply aren't all that funny -- pick one. Call me a philistine, but seriously -- the first couple seasons bite. The show gets good in Season 3.

[fluiddruid]

No, the winner for that series was the one with Martin Short. That was one of those really badly thought out stunt casting moments. Stuck out like a sore thumb.Absolutely agreed. I liked the Charlize Theron episodes, but the Martin Short character did not fit within the series at all, were painfully unfunny and frequently wince-worthy (and not in a good way).

I'm sorry but Martin Short is not funny. I will tolerate him in one thing, and one thing only, and that is The Three Amigos.

[fluiddruid]

The Office. I don't know the episode - or even the season - but I speak of the one where there is a dinner party at Michael and Jan's new condo. The entire episode was full of awkward anger. It was painful to watch.Funny, that's my favorite episode! There are so many incredibly funny things. I get that it's awkward and uncomfortable, and usually that genre bothers me, but it was done masterfully.

So many amazing things, large and small:
- Jan's giant Andy Warhol-style portrait of herself in the entry
- The "oops", we left a camera in the bedroom moment
- Michael Scott's little sleeping bench... I cried laughing.
- Jan's increasingly full glass of wine.
- Michael flat screen TV ('if I have some people over and need more space'... <moves screen an inch toward the wall)
- Michael cheating terribly at the party game and Jim ruining it
- Jan playing Hunter's song and Andy's sad attempt to harmonize
- The story about Michael running through a plate glass window because he thought he heard the ice cream man
- Dwight showing up with a homeless woman and claiming that their relationship is "entirely carnal and that's all you need to know"
- Jan's defiant comment that "In Spain, they only start eating at midnight" when Pam asks when dinner will be, and then accusing Pam of wanting to sleep with Michael (and Angela agreeing)
- Michael dipping his meat in his wine because he has "soft teeth"
- The increasingly hostile screaming match where every sentence is concluded with "babe"
- "MY TV!!! GOOD LUCK PAYING ME BACK ON YOUR ZERO DOLLARS A YEAR PLUS BENEFITS, BABE!!"
- The police being called and Michael attempting to take the fall for Jan. "You don't need to go to jail, you could just be more quiet."

Most of all, it's Pam and Jim's responses. They just have this increasingly terrified expression. It's the embodiment of Pam's quote from another episode: "You know those trainwrecks where it's bad but you can't look away? This is like a trainwreck, but you want to look away, only you can't, because your boss is making you."

Oh, so many more. It's classic from beginning to end. I love that episode.

[Jim's Son]

There was an episode of "The Untouchables" where Edward Asner was at a bar, drunk, talking about an argument about whether Hack Wilson was going to break Babe Ruth's home run record. He was in four episodes, I think it was "The Night they shot Santa Clause." I remember that as a pretty bad one.
Lots of "Lost in Space" fans talk about "The Great Vegetable Rebellion" as the worst episode ever. Pretty bad, but I thought the one with the knight (played by the usually great Hans Conried) and a female dragon was terrible beyond belief.
Star Trek TOS. Hippies was bad. But somehow the one with the supercomputer M5 going beserk was horrible. At the end everyone is all smiles because Kirk has outwitted a computer that has destroyed one starship, probably killed 1,000 people and a scientist has gone insane.
Star Trek TNG: anything with Wesley Crusher. Besides the "American Indian" episode, there was one with The Space traveler saying he was a genius in the order of Mozart.
The less said about Voyager's "The 37ers", the better. Aliens from the farside of the galaxy captured Amelia Earhart, her co pilot and other people and brought them back to put in suspended animation for 400 years.

[heavybuhbuh]

I keel over and die everytime I see any episode from the last season of Roseanne after she had won the lottery.

I get excited when I see Roseanne on the program guide, then roll my eyes when I find out its from "the lottery years". UGG. Waste of a good tv series.

[madmonk28]

No, the winner for that series was the one with Martin Short. That was one of those really badly thought out stunt casting moments. Stuck out like a sore thumb. Was that season 3 as well? The show just kind of took on this desperate edge which was heartbreaking because the first and most of the second season were so well crafted.

[rowrrbazzle]

In The Dick Van Dyke Show, the episode where Buddy stays with Rob and Laura for a few days while Pickles is out of town. It was just uncomfortable.

[pulykamell]

Funny, that's my favorite episode! There are so many incredibly funny things. I get that it's awkward and uncomfortable, and usually that genre bothers me, but it was done masterfully.

Oh, so many more. It's classic from beginning to end. I love that episode.

I agree. That's probably my favorite episode as well.

As for Arrested Development, I honestly can't think of a bad episode. The Charlize Theron ones I thought were hilarious, especially the Little England (or whatever it was called) bits. I can't remember the Martin Short episode (or is it more than one) offhand, though. What character was he?

[Smeghead]

I agree. That's probably my favorite episode as well.

As for Arrested Development, I honestly can't think of a bad episode. The Charlize Theron ones I thought were hilarious, especially the Little England (or whatever it was called) bits. I can't remember the Martin Short episode (or is it more than one) offhand, though. What character was he?

They called him Uncle something. He was the old film star that had to be carried around by his helper. He played "The Bullet" or something like that, and occasionally had his helper throw him at people.

[WOOKINPANUB]

In my area they play back to back episodes of "Everybody Loves Raymond" and last night they happened to play my favorite episode (Robert's mother-in-law is revealed to be a smoker)and the worst, where Raymond has to get his adenoids removed and there's some medical complication and everyone turns into a giant pussy and it is utterly unfunny and doesn't even seem as though it's part of the series. Actually, I think it was the series finale which makes it even suckier.

[FordTaurusSHO94]

The Seinfeld finale was pretty bad. I've only seen it three times, even though I've seen the rest of the episodes numerous times. On both repeats, I was surprised that I didn't remember the episode until it's almost half way over.

[salinqmind]

No one is going to know what I'm talking about, but though there are several bad episodes of Lexx, two stand out, from the final season. 1) Stan is offered a job as a 'fluffer' for a porn movie (not understanding what a 'fluffer' does) and 2) CGI alien life forms that resemble carrots invade Earth, and yes, take over/destroy people by, yes, shooting themselves into people's butts! :eek: Too much talk of butts in that episode.

[Speak to me Maddie!]

They called him Uncle something. He was the old film star that had to be carried around by his helper. He played "The Bullet" or something like that, and occasionally had his helper throw him at people.

Uncle Jack, who was part of the radio comedy Red McGibbon and Bullit *shoot me*. And it was season 2.

I agree that the character didn't fit well with the show, but Ready, Aim, Marry Me is a great episode, especially the last third that takes place at the spa.

I also loved the Wee Britian episodes. Heck, I loved the whole show. The only thread I didn't like was the Maybe-as-studio-executive stuff. It was too over the top and it was boring. The episodes that feature that story line are my least favorite.

[Lamia]

No one is going to know what I'm talking about, but though there are several bad episodes of Lexx, two stand out, from the final season.I know what you're talking about, although I'd say that EVERY episode of Lexx was bad.

[zamboniracer]

Angel- She (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She_%28Angel_episode%29) and Judgment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_%28Angel%29) were both pointless stinkers.

Buffy - Hell's Bells (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell%27s_Bells_%28Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer%29) aka Xander & Anya's wedding crash and burn. Despite some funny moments - Buffy's juggling act - this is just a terribly depressing episode.

The Rockford Files - any episode where Rita Moreno guest starred. Gawd, was her character ever annoying. I don't know why Jimmy put up with her.

[Annie]

But "Judgment" had jousting! Real horsies!

[zamboniracer]

But "Judgment" had jousting! Real horsies!

Sorry, but horsies don't do anything for me unless they're in the Kentucky Derby. :D

[An Gadaí]

As a Simpsons fan, there are (unfortunately) a limitless number of options from seasons 12-21. As bad as Yvan Eht Nioj and Duncan the Race Horse were, there were still some redeeming moments. Lately, it's been like panning for gold.

People usually pan for gold with hope of actually finding some gold.

[pbbth]

I keel over and die everytime I see any episode from the last season of Roseanne after she had won the lottery.

I get excited when I see Roseanne on the program guide, then roll my eyes when I find out its from "the lottery years". UGG. Waste of a good tv series.

I actually like the 9th season with the caveat that you have to watch the entire thing in 1 day. It doesn't work as 16 separate episodes but as one long episode the final two shows really pull it back into focus and remind you of how incredible the writing actually was for that series.

I actually own all 9 seasons of Roseanne on DVD and the only episode I ever skip is the one where she fantasizes about having the bathroom to herself for 10 minutes.

[Omgalion]

I love Scrubs and have seen every single episode, but the episodes in season 5 with JD fantasising about himself as the floating-head doctor were just awful.

[Gyrate]

I know what you're talking about, although I'd say that EVERY episode of Lexx was bad.

I liked Lexx.

No, let me rephrase that: I liked the experience of watching Lexx, which consisted of me going "Wait, what?" "Wait, what?" "Ewww!" "Wait, what?"

It was disgusting and bizarre, but rarely predictable. That said, I've never seen the final season so am willing to concede that the awfulness factor could have exceeded my tolerance level.

[PunditLisa]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

Bad Eggs

I hate that one, enough to skip it when we watch the show through.

Bzzt! Nope!

That would be the monstrosity known as "Go Fish." Horrible premise with really horrible rubber costumes.

[PunditLisa]

"Angel" - "I Fall to Pieces" - the episode where a brilliant doctor, Dr. Ron Melzer, discovers a way not only to detach and reattach his body parts, but to animate them as well. He uses them to stalk a woman who has rejected him. I suppose we were supposed to be horrified when the detached hand strangled the damsel in distress. Me? I couldn't help wondering how the hand got its strength absent, you know, a forearm muscle. Or its electrical impulses absent a spinal cord.

I'm all for suspending disbelief, but the science is this episode was so bad that it required a suspension of intelligence. I'll accept that a detached eyeball can see even with a severed optical nerve. I'll accept that this ball of tissue can transmit images to a brain in another room. I'll even accept that it can just be popped back into socket and all the nerves and tiny little vessels will magically reunite.

What I can't accept, even in the world of "Angel," is that the eyeball could fly.

Sorry, but if the doctor was so gifted, so brilliant, he wouldn't need to stalk women. He'd be so famous, so rich, so lauded, that beautiful women would be spilling themselves at his feet. Next on Oprah: Dr. Ron: the brilliant doctor who cured the blind! The lame! Burn victims! Heart patients!

[silenus]

Bzzt! Nope!

That would be the monstrosity known as "Go Fish." Horrible premise with really horrible rubber costumes.


On behalf of my wife, I must defend this episode with 5 words: Nicky Brendon in a Speedo.

[Small Hen]

On behalf of my wife, I must defend this episode with 5 words: Nicky Brendon in a Speedo.

Second.

[Trans Fat Og]

Star Trek TOS. Hippies was bad. But somehow the one with the supercomputer M5 going beserk was horrible. At the end everyone is all smiles because Kirk has outwitted a computer that has destroyed one starship, probably killed 1,000 people and a scientist has gone insane.Meh. Both shows had their flaws and problems, but they don't come close to my top three.

"Eden" was terribly cliched, making it practically a parody of itself, but I really want to know why people hate it so much. The biggest plot hole is that the scruffies locate their "Eden" within the Romulan Neutral Zone, and after taking over the Enterprise, have no hesitation in invading it. Of course they wouldn't care about the treaty; they've just sentenced their new allies to a slow, painful death. But they should care about getting their asses fried. If "Doc Seven-up" and "Addams" had some super-scientific way of concealing themselves from the Romulans, it was never even referenced.

Okay, for that and a lot of reasons it really, really STANK. But even so...

"Wink of an Eye" had an extremely silly premise that we normal-speed humans would have a chance against humanoids that move too quicky to be seen. Kirk didn't even seem hurried when he made the tape for Spock, although each additional second he delayed finishing it would be- how many weeks, at the minimum?

"Alternative Factor" had the very silly idea that matter/antimatter explosions would only occur if exactly matching shapes met. Uh huh. And when did Kirk even meet the sane one, to make the comparison at the end? Or Spock, for that matter?

And the winning loser is...

-

-

-

"Menagerie I and II"

Based on from the first piolt, it has many production problems, no doubt more than even "Alternative" and leaves many questions unanswered. I don't have library time to go into them all.

Maybe just a bad concept, reworking parts of the piolot, to begin with. Maybe it simply could have been executed better.

Oh well.

[Robot Arm]

The Rockford Files - any episode where Rita Moreno guest starred. Gawd, was her character ever annoying. I don't know why Jimmy put up with her.No way, Rita was great. There's a fifth season episode, Local Man Eaten By Newspaper, that's pretty weak; spends most of it's time on a power struggle within a crime family, with one of the participants egged on by his whiningly insane wife.

Re: Star Trek, TOS - Has everyone forgotten "The Empath"?

[Small Hen]

Re: Star Trek, TOS - Has everyone forgotten "The Empath"?

I like that one a lot. It demonstrates the Kirk, Spock, and Bones dynamic well, and shows how much they care for one another. I found the scene where Kirk and Spock sit with dying McCoy to be genuinely moving. Deforest Kelley said it was one of his favorite episodes (I'm sure it helped that he got to play the hero for once).

Lights of Zathar, or whatever, was the worst. It's the only episode of TOS that made me actively angry. I was kinda hoping that the girl died in the end, if only to free her from Scotty's stalking. I think LoZ is also the only ep that made me truly hate a major character, if only for a while (the interigation scene from Enemy Within comes close, though).

[Icerigger]

Speaking of The Way to Eden again does anybody like the music?


Hey, out There!

Lets say Brother.....

Spock's jam session....

Going to eat all the fruit and throw away the rine....

I'm gonna crack my knuckles and jump for joy, I got a clean bill of health from Dr. McCoy!

On second thought, I guess not.

[typoink]

Worse than "The Unicorn and The Wasp"?

Odd, I rather like that episode. Not one of my favorites, but not even close to being on my "worst" list. Some good laughs, charmingly cheesy CGI wasp monster, and I'm always a sucker for episodes with quasi-historical tie-ins.

Not sure which episode I'd peg as my least favorite new Who, but the "Daleks in Manhatten" two-parter is up there. Cheesy characters, dumb rubber pig masks, crappy plot devices, and an hour's worth of story stretched into a two-parter because it has Daleks.

[typoink]

Holy cow, am I seriously going to be the one to bring up TNG's "The Icarus Factor?"

Riker and his daddy work out their family issues by playing blindfolded American Gladiators while Worf goes emo because everybody forgets his Klingon Tazer Quinceanera.

It's an episode composed of two B-plots stapled together, either one of which would rank as "worst ever B-plot" when attached to any given A-plot.

[pepperlandgirl]

I would watch the Hippie episode of ST:TOS a million times before I'd sit through And The Children Shall Lead again. Oh my god, what a horrible, horrible, horrible episode. You need heavy duty drugs just to get through it.

[ivylass]

Friends.

The Holiday Armadillo episode.

I know the actors had Warner bent over a barrel, but yeesh, the stuff they had to put up with.

And there was an episode of Voyager, I don't remember the title, where Janeway et al got sucked into some 50s Sci Fi show that Paris was watching. I remember thinking Kate Mulgrew must have hated the whole thing, because as she was playing the villian in the holosuite, she kept rolling her eyes in disgust.

[salinqmind]

I liked Lexx.

No, let me rephrase that: I liked the experience of watching Lexx, which consisted of me going "Wait, what?" "Wait, what?" "Ewww!" "Wait, what?"

It was disgusting and bizarre, but rarely predictable. That said, I've never seen the final season so am willing to concede that the awfulness factor could have exceeded my tolerance level.

I LOVED Lexx. The last season was a total satire. I don't think I'm spoiling anything by telling you the crew bought a house in the suburbs, they kept Kai in an ordinary freezer, and their desperate housewife neighbor was Britt Ecklund!

And I know everyone hated the Nikki and Paolo stand alone episode of Lost, including me, but it's always bugged me, those other totally anonymous castaways just milling about in the background. They were never used for anything and they might just as well have gone with Jack/Kate/Locke - the core group.

[Lamia]

I liked Lexx.

No, let me rephrase that: I liked the experience of watching Lexx, which consisted of me going "Wait, what?" "Wait, what?" "Ewww!" "Wait, what?"I understand what you mean. I was in college at the time, and we had a weekly Lexx-watching party every week for most of the second season.
It was disgusting and bizarre, but rarely predictable. That said, I've never seen the final season so am willing to concede that the awfulness factor could have exceeded my tolerance level.I never saw the third season either. Some of my friends continued to watch it for a while but said it got boring. Personally I'd had enough by the end of the second season, and when I heard the third season wasn't even in space anymore I decided I really didn't care to watch it at all.

[Taenia spp.]

I can't recall any I don't like from Futurama but that is probably b ecause I am suffering from a case of explosive amnesia.

I vote one from Season 3: Bendin' In The Wind. That one was just awful; many jabs and jokes about a band I've never heard nor care. Bender for the most of the episode acts out of character, being a 'touchy-feely' musician rather than a crass robot.

[Argent Towers]

Starsky and Hutch has one episode (I think it's called Huggy Bear and the Turkey) where Starsky and Hutch are only in it at the very beginning and the very end, and the whole rest of the episode features some other guy as the protagonist. I have no idea why they did this, other than to try to give the audiences something "different," but it was just stupid.

I really love Starsky and Hutch. Watching it is a fascinating exercise in how much the pacing of television shows has changed between the 1970s and today. A show like S&H would not be tolerated by modern television audiences; it just moves too slowly. There are 15 and 20 minute stretches of time where there's nothing happening except a bunch of guys in plaid suits sitting around in wood paneled rooms, smoking cigarettes. No way would people sit still for that kind of stuff today. The action on that show is very sparse compared to the scenes establishing the plot; the storylines were given a ridiculous amount of attention.

Chasing It was the worst episode of The Sopranos and a lot of fans agree. It was not believable that Tony would all of a sudden become a degenerate gambler, after six seasons of lecturing everyone else about how they should never gamble. And it is not believable that Tony would strain his relationship with Hesh over a few thousand dollars of gambling debts. This is not consistent with Tony's character at all, and excuses like "well, it demonstrates how Tony is losing control of himself" do not explain it away. It was a pointless storyline and bad writing, plain and simple.

[panache45]

I have only vague recollections of these two. Please tell me I dreamed them both:

The Voyager ep in which Janeway and Paris visit a planet and become giant slugs . . . and mate with each other.

The House ep in which a guy (cop?) has unrequited love for someone (his partner?), so they give him a lobotomy.

[DWMarch]

No, sorry you didn't dream the Voyager episode. It was called "Threshold" and is near universally regarded as the worst Voyager episode.

Not only was the plot ridiculous, there was also the little point of them going warp 10... which means they were occupying all points in the universe simultaneously... which would be problematic for any number of reasons.

[Small Hen]

The House ep in which a guy (cop?) has unrequited love for someone (his partner?), so they give him a lobotomy.

Was that in the later seasons? I kinda vaguely remember something like that, but I stopped watching in season 4. The worst House episode I saw was "One Day, One Room". I wanted to shoot that suicidal pregnant rape victim by the end. Uhg.

[AWB]

ST:TNG: Family (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_%28Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation%29) ...

For Doctor Who, I'd go with "Kinda." Really awful pseudopsychological mumbo jumbo, with a solution that is just plain stupid.

Even though I loved TNG, there were some notable episodes that I skip:
- Shades of Gray - cheap clip show that was even badder because it was the season finale.
- Masks - just too weird
- When The Bough Breaks
- The Icarus Factor

[pancakes3]

The House ep in which a guy (cop?) has unrequited love for someone (his partner?), so they give him a lobotomy.

-Firefighter.
->(female) Partner is marrying his brother. Cameron thinks it's broken heart syndrome.
->Electroshock therapy
->cameron offers condolences to partner for taking away from the wedding.
->partner isn't in a relationship with partner
->spinal meningioma is messing with his brain, creating false memories.

you probably got the plot mixed up because there was a lot of House/Cuddy/Drugs drama as well as the culmination of the trial brought on by House being a dick to the cop in the clinic.

[Cuckoorex]

Supernatural "Bugs" was so bad that even the show itself slammed it a few years later in "the monster at the end of this book" last season.

[Kyla]

Supernatural "Bugs" was so bad that even the show itself slammed it a few years later in "the monster at the end of this book" last season.

I thought about mentioning this episode in my first post in this thread, but I feel that Route 666 really blows it out of the water in badness. It is still terrible, though. Magical Indian! Night only lasts 10 minutes! BUGS?! WHAT?

Also, something went terribly amiss in the writing and everyone mixes up the words "calvary" and "calvary". Horrible.

I think these are the only two episodes of the show I've never rewatched. Even when I got my friend into the show and watched a lot of stuff for the second time with her, I told her that if she wanted to watch Bugs or Route 666, she could do it by herself. (Fortunately, she did go ahead at watch Red Sky at Morning on her own before I could give her an ultimatum on that one also. The third worst episode ever, and the other episode they later mocked in The Monster at the End of This Book. Even the tuxes couldn't save that one.)

[Ronald C. Semone]

There was an episode of Married with Children that apparently was supposed to be a test pilot for a spinoff show or something, except it wasn't for any of the main family or friends or acquaintances, but for some never-before-seen-friend of Al's named Charlie Verducci. His son Vinnie, played by Matt Le Blanc, were featured in the episode. Al steals their TV at the end for some reason. Hated it, it had nothing to do with Married with Children and I resent networks trying to piggyback crappy spinoffs on more popular shows.

I had forgotten that episode. There is a similar one in season ten called "Enemies" which is a parody of Friends. Except for a few of the regular cast members in the opening and closing scene, the characters and the plot have nothing to do with Married With Children. It was almost unwatchable.

[Fionn]

Well, "Black Market" might give it a run for it's money in the "Useless episode" department.

But "The Woman King" was pretty bad. It might have been otherwise if they had actually set up the premise and then followed through. Instead, we just got an episode that doesn't really go anywhere and seemingly comes out of nowhere.

I opened the thread just to mention "The Woman King." The idea of Helo trying to get back in the crew's good graces makes total sense, but I can't believe no one-a fellow writer, an actor, the director, an assistant director, the person who ran the craft services table-ever pointed out how ridiculous the main premise was.

[Merijeek]

Odd, I rather like that episode. Not one of my favorites, but not even close to being on my "worst" list. Some good laughs, charmingly cheesy CGI wasp monster, and I'm always a sucker for episodes with quasi-historical tie-ins.


I'm sorry, but the part where the Doctor is poisoned and he has to play charades with Donna made the episode worthwhile to me.

-Joe

[3waygeek]

I had forgotten that episode. There is a similar one in season ten called "Enemies" which is a parody of Friends. Except for a few of the regular cast members in the opening and closing scene, the characters and the plot have nothing to do with Married With Children. It was almost unwatchable.
I caught a couple minutes of that very episode early this AM when flipping through channels -- it was on TBS, as they often run a strip of MWC episodes at that time.

[Mr. Miskatonic]

The ST:TOS Space Hippy episode could have been redeemed at the end if the pretty acid planet had burned a few dozen of the freaks to crisps. But sadly they decided just to burn a few of their feet instead.

[randwill]

In The Dick Van Dyke Show, the episode where Buddy stays with Rob and Laura for a few days while Pickles is out of town. It was just uncomfortable.
A worse Dick Van Dyke is "The Twizzle". Produced at the height of the Twist dance craze, it's very embarrassing to watch.

[Lumpy]

Let's say you were a fan of the original Battlestar Galactica. Now suppose that the very last episode of the original series had been a setup for Galactica 1980. An episode which basically said "the show you knew is dead; here's what's going to take its place".That is how bad the last episode of the first season of Dark Angel was. I watched the first episode of season Two, discovered that the season One cliffhanger wasn't an aberration, and never watched it again.

[Snooooopy]

Starsky and Hutch has one episode (I think it's called Huggy Bear and the Turkey) where Starsky and Hutch are only in it at the very beginning and the very end, and the whole rest of the episode features some other guy as the protagonist. I have no idea why they did this, other than to try to give the audiences something "different," but it was just stupid.

It was a backdoor pilot. I guess Huggy Bear didn't have enough mojo to earn his own show.

[Ranchoth]

-Firefighter.
->(female) Partner is marrying his brother. Cameron thinks it's broken heart syndrome.
->Electroshock therapy
->cameron offers condolences to partner for taking away from the wedding.
->partner isn't in a relationship with partner
->spinal meningioma is messing with his brain, creating false memories.

God, that one was...I mean, first, they're going with the idea that ECT can be used to create such severe, permanent retrograde amnesia that it would leave (as they said in the episode) the guy not only unable to remember someone, but erase all the skills he'd ever learned to perform his job, but that they were still going to do it to him. To treat a heart problem.

Jesus, Walter "Icepick to the Brain!" Freeman would have thought that was excessive. A witch doctor wearing a skull for a hat would probably think that was irresponsible medicine. I mean, my God...when *I* think a medical procedure is unconscionable butchery, you KNOW something is seriously wrong!

(...)

Oh, and about the Star Trek Hippie episode...didn't the Space Hippies program the ship's computer to find Eden for them? How was that supposed to work, exactly? Was that like Jet Jaguar programming himself to grow into a giant?

[Intergalactic Gladiator]

Even though I loved TNG, there were some notable episodes that I skip:
- Shades of Gray - cheap clip show that was even badder because it was the season finale.

I'd be willing to give Shades of Gray a pass because of the writers strike. They needed a show and yes, showing clips was lame, but there was a reason. I haven't watched it in a while, but I was impressed with Frakes' acting in the beginning when he calmly explains that he's been stabbed by that thorn. You're right though, they could have done far better for a finale.

I'd throw Skin of Evil up there with the bad TNG eps mentioned. Basically after a year, Denise Crosby decides she wants out so they write an episode where she dies because an animated puddle of evil goo threw her across the set. Then the resolution at the end? Picard beams down and says "You're evil, we're leaving."

[Bryan Ekers]

On The Simpsons, the worst is the one where Bart and his friends form a boy band as a recruiting tool for the Navy.

I loved that one, myself.

Bart: Dad! L.T.'s gone crazy! [Homer loooks up and sees L.T. leaned over the wheel with gritted treeth and wide staring eyes]

Homer: [knowingly] Yeah, that's the look all right!


Homer's implied expertise kills me every time.


If I had to pick a worst, it'd be that sappy Michael Jackson episode, or possibly the Lisa-goes-vegetarian one. Lisa episodes generally.

[Robot Arm]

If I had to pick a worst, it'd be that sappy Michael Jackson episode, or possibly the Lisa-goes-vegetarian one. Lisa episodes generally.The one where Lisa goes vegetarian is one of the best episodes ever. That's the one with the Flanders family reunion ("Buenos-ding-dong-didlyos, senor"), Ralph eats a worm and Miss Hoover tells him to take a nap ("Oh boy, sleep, that's where I'm a Viking"), and the Troy McClure educational film about eating meat.

There's even a flying pig over the closing credits. What more could you want from an episode, man.

[typoink]

The one where Lisa goes vegetarian is one of the best episodes ever.

People listing "The Simpsons" episodes from the heyday of that series really suggests to me that said folks haven't watched an episode in, oh...five seaons, at least.

[pancakes3]

The one where Lisa goes vegetarian is one of the best episodes ever.

i've invoked references from that episode almost every week of my life stretching back to 1995.

-you don't win friends with salad.
-the (colored chalk) was forged by lucifer himself
-when pigs FLY! ... um... no... i'd still prefer not to
-when i grow up, i'm going to BOVINE university
and most often:
-it's just a little (dirty/slimy/airborne/etc) it's still good it's still good.

[Justin Credible]

For Futurama, I nominate The Cryonic Woman. I'd have to see it again to be sure, but I can't recall any funny moments from that one.

[independentminded]

I'm going to go back to the mid-1980's and say that Cagney and Lacey was my favorite TV Series. So was Life Goes On, which went on from the late 1980's to the early 1990's.

The worst episode in Cagney and Lacey was the final episode, where Cagney develops a severe drinking problem, which totally hampers her relationship with everybody, as well as her job. After that episode, the show went off the air completely.

The worst and most depressing episode in Life Goes On is when Becca, the youngest in the family, has broken her friendship off with the arrogant, snobbish Rona Lieberman after she has who has changed her name to Sonya, and then sort of spies around on her with Tyler, out of envy. After that, the show went off the air.

[Jolly Roger]

And by the time it was used in TNG, the idea of a mysterious prenancy for a character became a cliche.

Even though I am a Trek fan, TNG had a lot of bad episodes, IMO. Troi giving birth to a star baby? Bad....but they tried to trump it with the episode where Troi wakes up to ind that she's been surgically altered to look like a romulan and is aboard a romulan ship for some reason.

I had an issue with that for the same reason I had a problem with the episode where Star Fleet sends Picard, Worf and Crusher on a secret commando mission against the cardassians.Oh, how I hated that episode. Working completely from memory, here's why:


Picard is picked for this mission because he's an expert on the radiation or whatever the cardassians are using for their weapon? Wow. What isn't this guy an expert on? Thats thin enough, but he's a starship captain, he's no spring chicken and one would guess that Picard would be too valuable an assett to use on such a mission.
You can crowbar Worf into that episode because he is a security officer, but Crusher? What, Star Fleet doesn't have any special ops commandos? They have to send a medical doctor with little to no combat training? What a pussy universe.
Ronny Cox as Captain Jellico is in temporary command of the Enterprise during this mission. He makes changes to staff rotations, etc. Riker then thinks he's an asshole for it, and we, the audience, are supposed to feel that Jellico is a jerk. Again, what a bunch of pussies. Riker's been working for the same boss too long. New CO's almost always make changes to thier commands when they take over. I don't recall Jellico doing anything so jerkish to deserve derision.


You can throw in the entire first season of TNG in the bad category, especially since Wesely was prominent in a lot of 'em.

[Jolly Roger]

Oh, and about the Star Trek Hippie episode...didn't the Space Hippies program the ship's computer to find Eden for them? How was that supposed to work, exactly? Was that like Jet Jaguar programming himself to grow into a giant?

Heh. You win the thread for that obscure Godzilla movie reference!

I saw that movie in a theater as a kid! Hell, I named my cat "Jet Jaguar". :)

[Odesio]

Ronny Cox as Captain Jellico is in temporary command of the Enterprise during this mission. He makes changes to staff rotations, etc. Riker then thinks he's an asshole for it, and we, the audience, are supposed to feel that Jellico is a jerk. Again, what a bunch of pussies. Riker's been working for the same boss too long. New CO's almost always make changes to thier commands when they take over. I don't recall Jellico doing anything so jerkish to deserve derision.


There was another episode from the Pulaski season where a tactical expert is aboard the Enterprise to give them some sort of evaluation/training in case they ever meet the Borg in the future. Picard and Riker are hostile towards this idea because Starfleet is supposed to be an exploratory organization and not an actual military. This episode pissed me off for a few reasons.

#1. A few episodes back you faced the Borg for the first time and Guinan warned you that you might meet them sooner than expected because they were now aware of the Starfleet's existence. Maybe training is a good idea.

#2. Starfleet isn't a true military organization? Excuse me, Captain, but when the Federation went to war against the Klingons, the Romulans, and, much later, the Dominion it wasn't the Vulcan Science Academy that did the fighting. To not call Starfleet a true military organization is pretty lame. They still hold courts martial for Christ's sake. Well, not for his sake on account of religion being almost non-existent unless it's Native American or some exotic alien religion.

#3. It was never really explained what value there was in a combat situation between an 80 year old obsolete ship and the flag ship of the Federation. I don't even recall them saying the exercise was an attempt to figure out some tactics the Federation could use against the technologically superior Borg which would have made some sense.

Damn, that episode pissed me off. Maybe it wasn't as stupid as some of the TNG episodes but it was stupid in its own way. Could have a whole thread for my hatred of Star Trek I think.

[Jolly Roger]

#2. Starfleet isn't a true military organization? Excuse me, Captain, but when the Federation went to war against the Klingons, the Romulans, and, much later, the Dominion it wasn't the Vulcan Science Academy that did the fighting. To not call Starfleet a true military organization is pretty lame. They still hold courts martial for Christ's sake. Well, not for his sake on account of religion being almost non-existent unless it's Native American or some exotic alien religion.



Yeah, the entire Starfleet isn't miltary is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard in Trekdom. I don't know why or how that came about (since in TOS SF was definitely military) but would love your Trek hate thread for the fact that I could rail on about it.

[Voyager]

I'd throw Skin of Evil up there with the bad TNG eps mentioned. Basically after a year, Denise Crosby decides she wants out so they write an episode where she dies because an animated puddle of evil goo threw her across the set. Then the resolution at the end? Picard beams down and says "You're evil, we're leaving."

Good one. I've been watching TNG in order now. I knew they killed her off, but never had seen that episode before. I had always assumed she died in the last episode of the season doing something heroic. Heh, not quite. Has any show killed a major character on-screen so randomly?

[Gangster Octopus]

People listing "The Simpsons" episodes from the heyday of that series really suggests to me that said folks haven't watched an episode in, oh...five seaons, at least.

There is the the "Jazzman" episode (whatever it is called) where Bleeding Gums Murphy dies. A horrible early episode.

[Merijeek]

Good one. I've been watching TNG in order now. I knew they killed her off, but never had seen that episode before. I had always assumed she died in the last episode of the season doing something heroic. Heh, not quite. Has any show killed a major character on-screen so randomly?

Well, if we're going to play "one degree of seperation", Pulaski was killed on LA Law when she stepped into an open elevator shaft.

So, yeah, kinda.

-Joe

[Trans Fat Og]

Yeah, the entire Starfleet isn't miltary is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard in Trekdom. I don't know why or how that came about (since in TOS SF was definitely military) but would love your Trek hate thread for the fact that I could rail on about it.It seems from what others have said on the boards that good old Gene had influenced TNG with his raving Utopianism. But there were plenty of items in the later shows to counter the non-military insanity.

Take the first new encounter with the Romulans. Picard did make himself as laid-back as possible and he didn't go for a pre-emptive firing on the Neutral Zone-violators. He was only too happy that the reappearing * Romulans were willing to engage in a fresh conversation. All the same, he did take the advice of Riker and raise shields. He was no doubt ready to defend the Enterprise, up to destroying the Romulans if it came to that. Everything says that SF is a military organization and that the Enterprise, along with other starships, has authorization to use military force when necessary.

- - -

One problem with a certain universal tenet in all the shows is that Star Fleet military vessels are armed to the teeth, but yet proclaim themselves to be on a peaceful general mission. :dubious: Someone pointed out to me the fundamental contradiction in this to me.

I think it would be one thing to have some modest level of weaponry to defend the ship. But the starships, at least, have enough firepower to raze every city on a planet comparable to earth. :eek: That would not strike most new civilizations, if they could scan for weaponry, as very friendly.

- - -

* "reappearing" - Hmmm....

[Mahaloth]

My Worst Episode of The X-Files was "Eve" until the very last season managed to top it (bottom it?) with "Scary Monsters". Not a great idea to start with and VERY badly executed, with everyone behaving in ways that made me want to kick them, and the established characters behaving badly in ways that were out of character.


I rather like Eve.

I, however, do not like Space, the one where Mulder is continually having to explain the space mission.

[Poysyn]

People listing "The Simpsons" episodes from the heyday of that series really suggests to me that said folks haven't watched an episode in, oh...five seaons, at least.


I am going to nominate Panda Love.

Nauseates me

[Soylent Juicy]

The CSI:LV one that was written by those guys that write "Two And A Half Men." Long story short, they tried to make CSI into a comedy. It was excruciating. I was surprised that Grissom (William Petersen) even agreed to that crap.

[Chronos]

Riker's been working for the same boss too long. As also evidenced by the episode where he's offered a promotion and his own independent command. He spends the whole episode agonizing about it, and then decides that he'd rather continue being the second in command on the flagship than the boss of any lesser ship.

Real militaries do, in fact, allow officers to turn down the chance at independent command. Any officer who does so, however, is from then on given the absolute most insignificant jobs possible for their rank. In a real organization, Riker's choice would not have been "Become captain of an insignificant ship, or stay XO of the flagship". His choice would have been "Become captain of an insignificant ship, or XO of an even more insignificant ship". If he judges himself unworthy of independent command, then the top brass is going to conclude that he's likewise unworthy of anything else important.

This was one of the things I liked about Babylon 5: The cast stayed mostly consistent, but people did rotate in and out as they got orders to other assignments.

[Intergalactic Gladiator]

As also evidenced by the episode where he's offered a promotion and his own independent command. He spends the whole episode agonizing about it, and then decides that he'd rather continue being the second in command on the flagship than the boss of any lesser ship.

Real militaries do, in fact, allow officers to turn down the chance at independent command. Any officer who does so, however, is from then on given the absolute most insignificant jobs possible for their rank. In a real organization, Riker's choice would not have been "Become captain of an insignificant ship, or stay XO of the flagship". His choice would have been "Become captain of an insignificant ship, or XO of an even more insignificant ship". If he judges himself unworthy of independent command, then the top brass is going to conclude that he's likewise unworthy of anything else important.

This was one of the things I liked about Babylon 5: The cast stayed mostly consistent, but people did rotate in and out as they got orders to other assignments.

I could see maybe turning down a command once, but Riker was offered several ships, as I recall. Career suicide.

[StusBlues]

I'll take the "Dreams" episode of M*A*S*H. They were going for profound; the result was jumbled and redundant.

[Bryan Ekers]

People listing "The Simpsons" episodes from the heyday of that series really suggests to me that said folks haven't watched an episode in, oh...five seaons, at least.

I'm talking an episode that had a specifically negative impression on me (i.e. me thinking Lisa was being a self-righteous mini-bitch and Homer was a coward for not telling her so) while many recent episodes have been simply neutral in their forgetability.

[Odesio]

I'm talking an episode that had a specifically negative impression on me (i.e. me thinking Lisa was being a self-righteous mini-bitch and Homer was a coward for not telling her so) while many recent episodes have been simply neutral in their forgetability.

Yeah, Lisa admitted at the end of the episode that she had been wrong. Not about the vegetarianism thing but about her disruption of Homer's BBQ and the destruction of the main course.

[Carmady]

I rather like Eve.

I, however, do not like Space, the one where Mulder is continually having to explain the space mission.


The X-Files has a lot of candidates for this thread, having gone from my favorite show of all time in the early seasons to a terrible show in the later ones.

I'll go with First Person Shooter as the worst.

[Bryan Ekers]

Ronny Cox as Captain Jellico is in temporary command of the Enterprise during this mission. He makes changes to staff rotations, etc. Riker then thinks he's an asshole for it, and we, the audience, are supposed to feel that Jellico is a jerk. Again, what a bunch of pussies. Riker's been working for the same boss too long. New CO's almost always make changes to thier commands when they take over. I don't recall Jellico doing anything so jerkish to deserve derision.

Actually, I watched that episode with some army buddies and the consensus was that this one of the very few moments that TNG's Starfleet resembled an actual military system, in that everybody goes whining to the second-in-command when the new chief starts imposing his new rules.

I liked Jellico. He was the only part of the episode that wasn't inherently ludicrous.

[Merijeek]

I could see maybe turning down a command once, but Riker was offered several ships, as I recall. Career suicide.

Maybe for Riker. For Frakes, on the other hand...

-Joe

[ryobserver]

I rather like Eve.

I, however, do not like Space, the one where Mulder is continually having to explain the space mission.

"Space" is certainly not one of the better episodes (the scene where the NASA woman rolls her car is particularly bad), but I've never quite understood why it tops the "worst" list for so many X-Files fans. It's not THAT bad. I wonder how much of its bad reputation is due to its having a happy ending, something the show is not exactly known for.

As for Mulder's bad explanations, how about the scene in "Eve" where Mulder, the psychologist, explains to Scully, the physician, what digitalis is? And is horribly and thoroughly wrong? Scully doesn't even notice, which makes this one of my favorite "Scully is a doctor???" moments from the show, another being the above-mentioned scene in "Space" when she encourages the crash victim to crawl out of the car. My all-time favorite is at the end of "The Erlenmeyer Flask" when she feels for Mulder's pulse with her thumb.

[BrotherCadfael]

I'll take the "Dreams" episode of M*A*S*H. They were going for profound; the result was jumbled and redundant.Like, oh, I don't know...a dream?

[Sampiro]

Three episodes of FRASIER that vie for worst:


1- When Roz and Frasier hook up was I thought unrealistic and lazy of the writers. To me they never even had a chemistry or tension.

2- During Roz's "we can't decide what else to do with her so let's get her pregnant" plot that the actress herself didn't like. It's the episode when you learn she got pregnant by a coffee shop employee half her age during a lapse in judgment and protection. They'd made many jokes about Roz's busy sex life over the years so obviously she used birth control and condoms, plus she was 40 (or at least well over 35) when she became pregnant (an age when most women don't conceive as easily as they once did) plus Roz is not the type to shack up with a kid about half her age without using protection and if she did she'd probably have an abortion and never mention it to him or to Frasier. It just didn't fit the character for many different reasons. (And like most sitcom babes it didn't hamper her life at all when it was born- no problem finding babysitters or anything like.)

3- Frasier is dating an attractive Jewish lady whose mother mistakenly thinks Frasier is Jewish (when she met him he was buying a menorah for his son) and is thrilled her daughter is dating an eligible Jewish psychiatrist. There's some very funny mix-ups as he attempts to stop her from finding out (Niles dressed as Jesus standing in the bathroom with a Christmas tree being the funniest) but the whole thing falls apart because it never would have happened; he'd probably have just said "I'm not Jewish, my son is" and that would have been okay (it lets the mother know that if her daughter marries him he's okay with the kids being Jewish and he himself is hardly an arch conservative Christian), and if he insisted on keeping up the charade (the girlfriend knew IIRC) then all he'd have to say was "I'm not kosher" since the mother didn't seem to be ultra conservative herself (as evidenced by among other things that the mother doesn't have a problem with him buying Christmas gifts in the same episode or with the fact that he's divorced).

[Bryan Ekers]

3- Frasier is dating an attractive Jewish lady whose mother mistakenly thinks Frasier is Jewish (when she met him he was buying a menorah for his son) and is thrilled her daughter is dating an eligible Jewish psychiatrist. There's some very funny mix-ups as he attempts to stop her from finding out (Niles dressed as Jesus standing in the bathroom with a Christmas tree being the funniest)

It was a dumb premise, but I chuckled at Niles' Yiddish sarcasm: "Your kvetching is giving me tsuris."

On a related note, the current Newsweek has an article in which the author felt compelled to define "putz", which struck me as utterly superfluous.

[bouv]

It's by no means my favorite series, but I can't stand any King of the Hill episode that deals with Bill's...Billness. By which I mean the ones that focus on how shitty his life is, how he's depressed, can't get a girl, etc...

Examples include:
The one where he plays Santa, befriends a woman from the orphanage/foster care, but then keeps being Santa well into February and a bunch of teenagers take advantage of him.
The one where everyone else has to watch him because they're afraid he'll commit suicide.
The one where he goes crazy and thinks he's his ex-wife, Lenore.

[FordTaurusSHO94]

King of the Hill is one of my favorite series and I'll agree that Bill episodes are terrible.