Shows that have one WTF? Episode

Cafe Society
121

As is typical for a Sci-Fi show with significant comedy elements, Lexx introduced many unusual plots. The unusual was usual.

However what left me most confused on first viewing was the two consecutive episodes The Web and then The Net.

In The Web the crew of the spaceship The Lexx journey to the centre of the universe, are attacked and escape a giant spider like creature and then discover they never escaped, the creature was controlling their minds making them think they had escaped. They discover the deception, kill the creature and escape for real.

In the next episode, The Net, about 99% of the previous episode is repeated with no “Previously on Lexx” style explanation. It’s simply the exact same footage with only minor editing differences.

I watched it initially convinced the TV company had made an error and broadcast the same episode twice. I’m guessing it’s supposed to be an extension of the “Spider Creature Controlling Their Minds” narrative although my suspicion is it was just a way of making a very, very cheap episode.

TCMF-2L

122

I wonder if they had a hard time affording writers on that show? There were another two back to back episodes where in one episode the vampire guy wakes up and kills all the guests on the ship then in the next episode the crew appear on some reality show and the vampire kills all the contestants.

123

As you probably recall the initial ‘TV Movie’ episodes managed Rutger Hauer, Malcolm McDowell, Tim Curry and Barry Bostwick as guest stars. Those were the all too brief glory days.

Then, like many shows, it faded away… But it was fun at times.

TCMF-2L

124

There was an episode of The Time Tunnel based solely on Nero’s ghost. He traveled through time to haunt the Complex, and at the end of the episode he inhabited the body of a WWI Italian infantryman (Benito Mussolini). Given the number of historical and scientific inaccuracies on the show, this was actually less of a “WTF?” scenario than it might seem.

There was a second-season episode of Crime Story where Torello actually handed a hood over to the Mafia for execution, rather than take a chance he might get off if prosecuted legally. That would never have happened in the first season, which shows how quickly that series went downhill.

This was in addition to bringing back Luca and Pauli after they had presumably died in an H-bomb test.

125

The weirdest episode of Twin Peaks I ever saw was the second-season one directed by Diane Keaton. It was filled with all kinds of bizarre shots and background scenarios that surpassed everything seen up to that point. I thought maybe I was hallucinating from lack of sleep or something.

126

What was WTF about the final Larry Sanders episode? For a final episode, it seemed pretty normal to me. Is it that Gary Shandling is talked about?

127

You know there was one film where the kid tries to talks the cops into believing the guy next door is a vampire (which he is). Now if instead he just said “he is some crazy guy who thinks he’s a vampire and is killing people to drink their blood” that would work much better. Fright Night I think.

128

Even with the wonderfully acerbic cringe factor driving a lot of that show, I still thought the cynicsm was laid on quite thick (almost forced?) with intense rebuff after intense rebuff, starting with (well, can’t remember chronologically) locking horns with a writer culminating in his firing; a four-person line-up backstage of former co-workers that left Larry basically with pie in his face; his quite desperate plea to Warren Beatty to be on his last show, only to be met with a stone-cold “goodbye” as WB tries to drive away from LS; and as far as Jim Carrey setting the record straight during the commercial break is concerned, that seemed way over the top how thoroughly dickish JC was.

Again, I acknowledge part of the show’s specialness lay with the sandpaper-y, somwetimes back-stabby culture of that livlihood, and how all of it’s sent up in a realistic (and funny as shit!) way - basically how LS has to contend with so many fractious dealings with guests / colleagues.

I also realise there could be much worse, less appropriate ways for a LS finale, like daring to incorporate any feel-good elements, or positive bodings for the future kinda thing. (blech!)

YMMV, but I thought all the shitting-down on Larry’s world just came across as heaped on for the sake of heaping on.

129

Well, Twin Peaks had a lot of weirdness, and Keaton embraced it wholeheartedly.

130

Excessively, I’d say. It was already weird enough without another layer of weirdness.

Mind you, this was just building up to the ultimate degree of weirdness in the finale.

131

I LOVED Lexx…it was truly weird…I can never forget the season that crew (who, after having awesome space adventures on a gigantic living dragonfly spaceship,) descend to earth and buy a house in the suburbs! Stan strikes up a ‘relationship’ with a hot-to-trot neighbor (Britt Eklund!), Zev decides to get a job, and poor Kai (who has to be frozen most of his down time to keep his ‘proto-blood’ from being wasted) - sleeps in a chest FREEZER. Among the popsicles and Birdseye frozen peas! I marvelled at the adventures in suburbia.

132

“The Newsroom” (the CBC comedy series, not the HBO drama series) ended its first season with some kind of Fellini homage that just kept piling weirdness atop weirdness. I vaguely recall that it ends with the news anchor character stepping out onto a dark stage, wearing whiteface makeup and a tuxedo…then the recurring “beautiful mysterious woman” character slowly walks in, followed by a smash cut to black.

133

Buffalo Bill was on in 1983-4. Besides the China Beach episode 74westy mentioned, in a sitcom called Anything But Love (1989-93), Ann Magnuson’s character had an abortion. She was not the main character and it was not the focus of the episode, and actually, I can’t remember anything but the fact of it. But yeah, that was one, and in a one-hour drama called Nothing Sacred (1997-8), which was set in an inner-city Boston Catholic church, a teenage girl had an abortion and afterwards said to the priest, the main character, “Well, I guess this is it for me and God, huh?” I forget his exact words, but it was to the effect that she could move on and she wasn’t excommunicated* and God didn’t hate her.

Askua
Fairly certain there was an episode of Roseanne where they had to write a character out of the show, and they decided to just have him randomly get abducted by aliens. And the final shot of the episode is literally said guy happily hanging out with two aliens in their space ship, and the guy is never talked about again in the rest of the show.

Starting with that season, tag scenes on Roseanne were non-canon**. Arnie left a note (Dan, trying to decipher it, “Who are the Allens and why are they out of spies?”) claiming to have been abducted by aliens, but it was clear he’d taken off for the same reason he did anything: laziness. Arnie did show up again for one episode in the next season, and the tag scene was again in the alien craft. Only this time, Michael Fishman was also there: “I didn’t get enough lines this week.” Meta.

*Excommunication was shown to be a nuclear threat in an earlier episode, maybe the pilot. Some community hotshot had pledged a large and much-needed amount of money, but kept not paying. Father Kevin called him at his office and threatened to excommunicate him, and the guy coughed up. It was implied that he wasn’t so much worried about hell, but that if he was barred from that church, he’d be exposed as the jerk he really was.

**There was another tag scene with Laurie Metcalf polishing her recently-won Emmy. Roseanne grabs for it, then she and John Goodman chase Metcalf off the set and into the studio! And speaking of Arnie, Tom Arnold is already out there to corner Metcalf. And there was the one with Johnny Galecki and Tiny Tim playing ukuleles, and the one with Scott Hamilton and Glenn Quinn skating on the kitchen floor…Anyway, yeah, Arnie didn’t really get abducted, but it was too good not to use for a tag scene.

134

Here’s a list of abortions on American television shows, which other than Maude are fairly recent:

This list gives both movies and television shows:

135

…and of course how some films bravely dealt with that burgeoning reality…

136

Heathen.

Note to self: add Jaycat’s name to THE LIST.

137

These popped up on one of the ‘Premium’ channels :frowning: recently and I set them up to record.

I watched the first three or four, then went online to spoil them (that’s how I roll). The consensus was that the episode you mentiond was the straw that broke the Camel’s back.

I deleted them all after about episode 5. Utter garbage. If I ever come across David Lynch, I’m going to commit an unprovoked crime on him.

138

It dragged on for two episodes, but the otherwise great The Sopranos had an arc where Tony is in a coma and having an extended dream where he is living a different life as traveling salesman Kevin Finnerty. Critics liked it, I did not.

139

He’ll be expecting it.

140

I have a third, with a subplot about a partner at Wards firm getting old and, frankly, pushed out because of his age. Stuff happens and the end of the episode had Wally and the partner ‘starting an office of their own’, and even then I was wondering what the fuck these people did for a living?