A few days ago I was watching an E.R. from, oh, six years ago, and it struck me that a significant number of the characters in this episode had died in the course of the series:
specifically Mark Greene, Robert Romano, and Lucy Knight.
That, in turn, made me wonder what TV shows have the highest mortality rates–which is, naturally, the question I’d like to put to the group.
Here’s a couple of rules.
First, to keep shows like E.R. and *Buffy * (in which a minor character dies pretty much every week) from skewing the tally, let’s just consider deaths of major characters–by which I mean featured regulars (identified in the opening credits) and significant recurring characters --appearing in at least ten episodes and in more than one season. Thus, for, say, Angel, Cordelia, Lindsey, and Lorne would count as major, but Faith and Hamilton would not.
Second, only permanent deaths count. A character who dies in a fantasy show only to be later resurrected does not count in the mort rate; so Gabrielle’s multiple deaths on *Xena * do not count.
Third, only deaths during the course of the series counts; for example (Buffy/Angel/Firefly spoilers ahead)
Cordelia does not add to the Buffy mortality rate, because though both died on Angel, neither was dead at the time of the *Buffy * series finale. Likewise, Book & Wash’s death in Serenity do not add to Firefly’s total, as they were alive when the series went off the air.
Lastly, we’re looking for deaths as a fraction of the total cast.
I’ll start with my candidate: Angel. By my count, there were fifteen major characters over the course of the series, and
by the last moment of the last scene of hte finale, all but five were dead.
That’s a 2/3 mortality rate. Can anybody do better?
Plenty of major characters before this have been offed:
face