Maybe they could have done the same with Heroes’ entire Season 2. Or I could have done the same, so I could get back the time I wasted watching the thing.
Sounds like a break up to me. But you’re right, they never officially break up on screen, though JD does say something like “If there’s nothing else besides the drama, it’s time to move on”
This bothers me so much. It wasn’t a dropped plotline, it was an incident in a one-off episode and you could tell it was that kind of episode from the first few minutes. It was a setup to put Chris and Paulie in a weird situation and explore their relationship. The Russian didn’t come back for the same reason we never find out what’s in Marcellus Wallace’s suitcase: it doesn’t matter. From the show’s standpoint, he did what he was supposed to. And if he’d come back for revenge or something it would have been really unbelievable. I can’t believe anybody ever expected this, or even though we were going to hear another two words about the guy. I loved the episode, but it was supposed to be a diversion, not the setup for The Revenge of Some Russian Guy.
If you want a dropped plot on the Sopranos, I’d say the wiseguys were awfully incurious about the disappearance of guys like Richie Aprile. And I guess the illegal airline ticket investigation went away when Livia died, but I don’t know if the FBI would have really let it go that easily.
The reason people thought there would be more is because of the TV/movie rule of if you don’t see the body the guy isn’t dead. They very deliberately left it open and even added to it when you see that Paulie’s car is stolen at the end. It’s clear that they wanted people to speculate on what happened to the guy. Personally I hoped they’d never resolve it but I can hardly blame people who thought there would be a resolution.
Richie was unliked had no support and had approached a few people about wacking Tony. They were incurious because they didn’t care and they could probably guess what happened.
I thought they mentioned the Airline tickets being rolled into the later Rico case but I may be wrong. With Livia dead they lost their big witness and probably the only solid connection between Tony and the tickets.
Not exactly a plotline, but in The Wire, there’s a scene that takes place in a gay bar. The camera pans across the room and focuses very briefly but very deliberately on a middle-aged man, William Rawls, a major character who up until point has shown no sign of being gay. It’s never mentioned in the show again. I have no idea what the writers were trying to say.
This was talked about in a thread a while ago - we were discussing whether he was gay and the consensus was that that scene had been played for the sake of ambiguity. Apparently the writers have said he might be, and that it would definitely play well with his alpha dog persona at work. Apparently (I’ve not scene them watching it) there are some other clues dropped in on this issue, like some graffitti saying “Rawls sucks cock” written in one of the station locker rooms, but then who doesn’t write that kind of stuff about their superiors? 
That was a funny line. Paulie said that because the guy worked for the interior ministry and he misheard it over a bad cell phone connection.
On Star Trek TNG, when Guinan first met Q, they spoke of something in happening between them in the past and they both stood as though they were about to fight. For Q to be in that position, he would had to have known Guinan had some kind of power, but they never told why they hated each other or why he felt she was a threat to him.
I’ve heard rumours that there were plans for an episode with one or both of them if Enterprise had been renewed for a 5th season.
On “The King Of Queens” Doug has a sister played by Ricki Lake, who is featured in a handful of episodes, and then she vanishes into thin air, never to be mentioned again.
Apparently on the pilot episode Carrie also has a sister who only appears in that one single episode, after which it is mentioned over ond over during the course of the series that Carrie is an only child.
Neither dropped character detracts much from this mostly mediocre (though occasionally funny) series; it never really tried too hard at being realistic, which was fine for what was trying to be—just another by-the-numbers TV sitcom…
Wow, I totally don’t remember that part at all. And I’ve seen the series at least two or three times the whole way through. (That is to say, I remember what happened, but not the potential way out you’re referring to.)
According to this wiki, that’s what would have happened if Andrea had stayed with the series.
On that note – the end of season 2 (of the same show).
Mandy initiates “Plan B” – giving President Palmer the poison handshake of death.
Season 3 starts, blowing right past that plot point with barely a mention (other than something like “once the instigators were rounded up” or some such thing).
Oh, okay, I remember that now. I think my confusion was that I never realized (or forgot) that it was her entire personality; I thought it was more specifically just a record of her worst fears, which wouldn’t make a particularly useful backup for a restore.
Related: At some point in the Shadow War, some Shadow ships are captured, with human telepaths wired into them as cyborg guidance-systems. One of these slave-pilots, it turns out, is Bester’s love interest. He promises to help and support Sheridan and his team if they will try to restore her to her original condition. She is never mentioned again, AFAIK.
Also, Emmet spent tens thousands of dollars buying his friends presents - a diamond bracelet for Debbie, a trip to Italy (I think) for Justin, an entire season of designer suits, a car, etc. How the hell did he pay all that off? I would assume the family wouldn’t just let him keep the money he’d already spent, they didn’t seem like the type.
I get why the writers might not have wanted to do a long, drawn-out plotline with a court case and all that, but at least some mention of what happened would’ve been nice.
She is - when they realise the telepaths can be used to fight the shadow ships they start to do so and Bester is told that his lover wasn’t one of them. We don’t find out exactly what did happen to her but we should probably assume she was left with the other telepaths not used in the fight who at that point were beyond Earth’s medical science to actually help (so they intended to keep them frozen until they knew how to do so).
I thought she went off on some mission with G’kar?
In The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the subplot around John Connor’s troubled female chemistry partner, Cheri Westin, was abandoned when the first season was cut short due to the writer’s strike.
That was Lyta Alexander (played by Patricia Tallman).