Frequently in a TV show (or, less often, a movie franchise), some event will happen that makes a drastic change in one or more characters or their relationships, or some fundamental logistical difference that ought to change everything from there on out… but when the writers get sick of the new situation, they come up with some excuse why everything goes back to the status quo. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s lampshaded (I’m looking at you, Armin Tanzarian)… what are to you the most glaringly implausible examples?
For me, it’s (spoilers for seasons 4 and 5 of The Office in case anyone cares) the fact that after the very entertaining arc in which Ryan the Temp got Jan’s old job, created Dunder Mifflin Infinity, became a drugged up club guy, and was eventually arrested for fraud… he somehow ended up with his old job, as a temp again. Even for The Office, that pushes way past the bounds of any kind of believability. Sure it’s kinda in character for Michael to be that forgiving, particularly given his man-crush on Ryan, but (a) corporate would never allow it, and (b) there would have been a mutiny, given how much of a douche Ryan was while he was the boss, how badly he treated Jim in particular. It would be one thing if there was a big “ha ha, now everyone mocks him and spits on him and reminds him of how low he’s fallen” vibe, but there was never really that much of it… things just mostly went back to the way they were.
The part about the Ryan/Office thing that I didn’t initially accept was corporate agreeing to it. Sure Michael had them over a barrel (or so they thought) but I felt the CEO would have drawn the line at including Ryan in the deal to buy-out the Michael Scott Paper Co. He cost Dunder Miflin a fortune.
But then again, maybe they figured since he’s going to be the freakin’ receptionist the other executives would appreciate the ironic, humiliating payback! And I never had a problem with the others at the local branch not ‘mutinying’ over him coming back. The only one who really hated him was Jim (with good reason). And although Jim was the kind of guy who would appreciate Ryan’s humiliation, Jim was also the type who would be ‘the better man’ and not want to really rub his face in it.
I have to say though, this example from The Office is all hardly what I’d call a series ‘reset’ thing…
The hilarious (at least as I recall as a 13-year-old) cop show spoof Sledge Hammer ended Season One with Sledge destroying the city while trying to defuse a nuclear bomb. The show was supposed to have been cancelled after that season, so when it was unexpectedly renewed for Season Two, the writers found themselves in a tight spot. So, Season Two begins with the notice that it takes place five years before Season One.
The revolving Beckies in Roseanne (“Where the hell have YOU been?”)
*One Day at a Time * had to invent several convoluted plot twists to deal with Mackenzie Phillips’ drug problems. What the producers didn’t have to do was invent a plot where Ann Romano dates a divorced man, who dies in a car crash, leaving Ann to raise his teenage son. That dragged on across parts of two seasons, until the kid’s mother finally shows up and takes him back.
Maybe the very worst was Good Times writing Esther Rolle out of the cast by having her get married and move to Arizona – leaving her three children back in the projects in Chicago with their next-door neighbor as caretaker. A season later, Rolle came back and it was almost as if her marriage and leaving her kids never happened.
That reminds me of the really excellent 1980s NBC series Crime Story. In the final episode of the first season, Ray Luca and Pauli Taglia are hiding out in a shack in the Nevada desert that happens to be located in an area used for testing of atomic bombs. Somehow they managed to survive the explosion of an atomic bomb and appeared in the second season. (BTW, when they hide out in the shack, Ray Luca already has a gunshot wound.)
“Due South”, a buddy cop show featuring a bend the rules Chicago detective (Ray) and a straight arrow by the book Canadian Mountie (Frasier), was a great show but its contrived resetting took the cake. When the show was revived in syndication after it had been canceled, the actor who played Ray was already committed to another show. The new actor played a cop (Kowakski) who impersonated Ray. Kowalski was nothing like Ray and looked nothing like Ray, but everyone in the police precinct acted like he was Ray. The explanation was that the real Ray was under deep cover with the Mafia, and replacement Ray/Kowalski was supposed to fool the bad guys into thinking that the real Ray hadn’t gone anywhere. Who would buy that cockamamie story, I’ve got no idea.
In the 80s there was this ‘gritty’ cop show that was set in Las Vegas in the 50s and somehow the whole thing along with the cast got moved to modern day Miami (I think it was Miami). I can’t remember how that transition happened, but there’s no way it made sense.
Not a TV show but it’s a series of movies so I’ll count it: Star Trek.
In any realistic military, people get reassigned and promoted, especially people as competent as the crews we see on the various Enterprises. But trekkies don’t want to see that - they want their favorite crew to stick together forever.
The first Star Trek movies made attempts to move on. People had been promoted and assigned to other ships. But the writers ended up having to invent ways to get everyone back doing their old job on the Enterprise. The most contrived resetting was when Admiral Kirk was court-martialed and his punishment was to be demoted back to being Captain of the Enterprise.
I don’t think that was contrived at all. It was inevitable (character and plot-wise; it may not have been as predictable to the Starfleet Admiralty) that Kirk would willingly sacrifice his career to save Spock’s soul and McCoy’s sanity in Trek III; even though he had no idea that he’d be able to bring Spock by to life by stealing the Enterprise, or that he’d have to destroy the ship in the process, I don’t think it even occrrred to him not to do it. The notion that he could stand by while McCoy suffered was literally inconceivable to him. Likewise, the core officers were nearly as certain to do it with him.
They went into the situation expecting to at least be cashiered afterwards.
In a different way, it was inconceivable, both in-universe and to the audience for him to face prison time or even forced dismissable after he returned. He literally saved the Earth in the process. It would have been political suicide for Earth’s government to do anything truly punitive to him. They had to do something of course, but busting him to captain works. Yeah, it surely pissed off the Klingons, but so what? The Federation was in a cold war (that frequently became a hot one) with the Klingons at that point, and there’d be no point in trying to placate them, and not much will to do so. The Klingons had just offed a starfleet vessel, anyway. Not even Jimmy Carter would be nuts enough to think there was a point to pleasing them at that point.
Not just the Enterprise, but Enterprise A. Which was, according to STIII, an old design being mothballed. I guess the A is the last hull of that design and may still be good for a few years. But even that fanwank is contrived.
The first season of Wonder Woman was set during World War Two. The second season (which aired on a different network) was set during in the present day (ie the '70s). It sucked. IIRC Lyle Waggoner thought the same thing.
Don’t worry; the reboot is even worse.
Not only was Kirk classmates with Uhura and a student of Spock’s goes directly from being a 4th yr cadet to Captain of a starship. And Chekov, while still younger than him, manged to get commisioned before him.
Oh, and they manged to make the women’s uniforms even more revealing & impracticle than in TOS.