# Sorry. That episode simply never happened, and you'll not convince me otherwise. (spoilers likely) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 22, 2010, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995 "2010-01-22T15:45:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/21 "2010-01-22T17:24:21Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > What was the Simpsons’ religion revealed as, incidentally? I haven’t seen any newer eps in the last few years, so I’m curious I thought they were Presbylutherans. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/22 "2010-01-22T17:27:17Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > The Principal and the Pauper ep of Simpsons. Hell, even the show writers pretend it didn’t happen. Under penalty of TORTURE. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/23 "2010-01-22T17:28:34Z")
These Are the Voyages, the series finale of **Star Trek: Enterprise**. It’s bad enough that the show was starting to get really good in season 4 (when Bermaga stepped back), but the finale was an atrocity. Hell, it was a fucking lost episode of TNG. The entire show took place in the holodeck. Even the actors hated it. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/24 "2010-01-22T17:28:35Z")
> [@bouv](#): > > For _Angel_, I nominate the first season episode “She.” > > Yeah, there might be episodes that for plot or story reasons (or ick factor, like Cordy sleeping with Connor) that might better have not existed, but this episode had a stupid guest star that can’t act (Bai Ling) as some sort of demon from a dimension where the women are all, like…super horny, or something? Because of a growth on the back of their neck? And also, they are hot…like, phyiscally hot and burn people unless theyare kept on ice? Or their demon slave masters kidnapp them and cut off the thing off the back of their neck to make them sex slaves, cause I guess they still stay horny but they don’t burn people and lose their free will for some reason? > > God, I hate that episode. Yup. This was Joss’ Very Special Episode on Female Genital Mutilation, I’m pretty sure. I was mildly surprised there wasn’t a URL for an appropriate NGO webpage at the end. Sometimes, Joss tries a little too hard to be The Best Feminist Dude Ever. ---
**Author:** ![cuberdon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/45deac/32.png) [@cuberdon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cuberdon)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/25 "2010-01-22T17:30:59Z")
No one has mentioned the episode of Dallas where “it was all a dream”? ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/26 "2010-01-22T17:36:18Z")
> [@bouv](#): > > For _Angel_, I nominate the first season episode “She.” > > Yeah, there might be episodes that for plot or story reasons (or ick factor, like Cordy sleeping with Connor) that might better have not existed, but this episode had a stupid guest star that can’t act (Bai Ling) as some sort of demon from a dimension where the women are all, like…super horny, or something? Because of a growth on the back of their neck? And also, they are hot…like, phyiscally hot and burn people unless theyare kept on ice? Or their demon slave masters kidnapp them and cut off the thing off the back of their neck to make them sex slaves, cause I guess they still stay horny but they don’t burn people and lose their free will for some reason? > > God, I hate that episode. Bai Ling was not in that episode to act. She was there to be hot. She did that very well, I thought. Anyway, I’m in the minority that views “She” as a glorious failure. I don’t think we were meant to believe the women of the other world were super-horny. Rather, it was that they lived in an oppressive society in which the men hated the idea of women having independent sexuality (or independent anything). The growth the men sought to excise was basically the women’s equivalent of our frontal lobes; they were getting lobotomized. I will agree, though, that the episode went wrong in presenting human men as being irresistably drawn to the alien women. It should have been made clearer that this was because humans weren’t use to such effects, as the men of that world would have been; in other words, the men of the alien world would not lose all control over their own genitalia. They’d have done better to just skip the bit about human men being aroused by the women. But there’s still good stuff in the episode. Bai Ling is hot, as I have already opined, and appropriately mysterious. Angel is badass & goofy at the same time. I love his casual jump from a three story roof because he just can’t be arsed to take the stairs, and his spontaneous art lecture, and his inability to use a cell phone efficiently. > [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](#): > > The pandas have always been the enemy - got it. Also, we have always been at war with Eurasia. > [@LouiseE](#): > > No one has mentioned the episode of Dallas where “it was all a dream”? How can we? It doesn’t exist. Also, I am not currently prepared to watching any episode of Dallas, though I will concede to having once or twice glimpsed Victoria Principal in a swimsuit. ---
**Author:** ![LiveOnAPlane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3d9bf3/32.png) [@LiveOnAPlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LiveOnAPlane)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/27 "2010-01-22T17:39:34Z")
I don’t recall the episode exactly, but the one on Little House on the Prarie where Albert is addicted to morphine (I think) and gets over it, and then in her closing voiceover, Laura says something like, “Until Albert returned to Walnut Grove as Doctor Ingalls.” [spoiler]Now,there’s nothing wrong here, actually, but later on, when they were doing the TV movie specials, there is one where Albert is studying to become a doctor, and has nosebleeds and finds out that he has some seemingly fatal disease. All through it, I’m confidently going yeah, but he’ll beat it because he hasn’t become a doctor yet!! Ha, ha. …and at the end…he DIES! WTF??? I was almost as incensed as some of the Dopers here were at the Battlestar Galactica finale. [/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/28 "2010-01-22T17:41:17Z")
> [@LouiseE](#): > > No one has mentioned the episode of Dallas where “it was all a dream”? Episode? Wasn’t it a whole season? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/29 "2010-01-22T17:42:58Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > I do remember there was an ep where someone kind of rolls their eyes and calls him Mr. Tanzarian or something like that…but I guess other than that. > > It just bothered me because all of his weird POW 'Nam flashbacks basically mean nothing since he wasn’t actually in a POW camp at all. It kind of screws with the whole character. I don’t know if that specifically means he was never in a camp, but yes, I always liked the Vietnam flashbacks. > [@](#): > > What was the Simpsons’ religion revealed as, incidentally? “The Western Branch of American Reform Presbylutheranism.” In another episode it was revealed that the head of their sect is The Parson, which was also not particularly funny. At least one good joke did come out of it: the Presbylutherans split from another church in the 16th century because the Presbylutherans wanted to have the right to go to services with wet hair. They later abolished that right anyway. > [@LouiseE](#): > > No one has mentioned the episode of Dallas where “it was all a dream”? It wasn’t an episode. It was _Season 9_. I think this is widely accepted as the worst retcon in TV history. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/30 "2010-01-22T17:46:22Z")
> [@LouiseE](#): > > No one has mentioned the episode of Dallas where “it was all a dream”? That episode wasn’t so bad - it was the remainder of the series after that which sucked sweaty donkey balls. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/31 "2010-01-22T18:21:08Z")
The entire 8th season of _That '70s Show_. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/32 "2010-01-22T19:02:05Z")
Spider-man never sold his marriage and his unborn child to the devil. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/33 "2010-01-22T19:06:54Z")
> [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](#): > > Funny, that’s one of my favorites. I liked the way it questioned the entire basis of reality, while at the same time, left open the possibility that the crazy Buffy was the hallucination. I’ve frequently argued that that episode should have been the finale, with no real resolution as to whether it was real or not :). ---
**Author:** ![In\_Winnipeg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a8b319/32.png) [@In\_Winnipeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/In_Winnipeg)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/34 "2010-01-22T19:19:03Z")
That episode of _Bones_ last season where Booth thought he was talking to Stewie from _Family Guy_. That was just stupid. ---
**Author:** ![PookahMacPhellimey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pookahmacphellimey/32/3175_2.png) [@PookahMacPhellimey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PookahMacPhellimey)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/35 "2010-01-22T19:43:25Z")
ST DS9’s Sacrifice of Angels. I’ve always been partial to Gul Dukat as acharacter and I really him as the cool. collected and devious baddie, I liked him even better as the slightly ambiguous baddie, but I did NOT like him as the red eyed batshit insane Evil Maniac baddie. That was neither fun nor believable. In fact I don’t like how they ramped up the series into a goodies against baddies War with lots Violence, Actions and Guns, when it had previously been so good at depicting all kinds of grey areas. But “The Rules” state one episode only, so that would be mine. ---
**Author:** ![zamboniracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e9a140/32.png) [@zamboniracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zamboniracer)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/36 "2010-01-22T20:12:01Z")
The Buffy ep where Xander stood up Anya at the alter. While it had some hilarious bits and pieces (the hideously ugly bridesmaids dresses & Buffy juggling in order to stall the ceremony) I just don’t buy it. Xander was a stand-up guy when the chips were down, not a stand-up the woman you love kind of guy. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/37 "2010-01-22T20:25:21Z")
Another subject covered by [TV Tropes](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisContinuity). ---
**Author:** ![Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swallowed_My_Cellphone)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/38 "2010-01-22T20:41:10Z")
Okay, I hate to have to bring up Highlander movies, and no, this is not going where you think it’s going. The _Highlander TV Series_ with Duncan McLeod (who came along several decades after Connor McLeod, the movie dude. So they are not supposed to be the same guy, they are just distant kinsmen), this stupid show was a guilty pleasure for me and my roommates at the time. They had a key character, Duncan’s girlfriend Tessa. A very likeable character too, our Tessa. Important plot point for the history of the series is an episode called “The Darkness”. A psychic bumps into Tessa and freaks out because she sees darkness and death in Tessa’s future. This reminds Duncan of ::cue flashback:: decades ago he was dating a fortune teller, she dumps him when she reads his palm and sees he will never marry, ergo, he’s not serious about her. Duncan protests, but she insists: “You will _never_ marry, Duncan McLeod!” Duncan proposes to Tessa, and of course the psychic’s vision comes true, major character killed off. Duncan never marries. In one of those piss-poor movies, they introduce you to an immortal… Duncan’s ex-wife? An ex-wife who pre-dates Tessa even! Pissed me right off! The canon is “Duncan never marries.” In fact, it was set up so his marriage proposal is what practically sealed Tessa’s fate. Jerks! ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/39 "2010-01-22T21:27:18Z")
It’s not exactly an “episode”, but Ursula K. LeGuin’s original Earthsea trilogy did not gain anything from some of the revisionist ideas in her subsequent books in the series (_Tehanu_, _Tales from Earthsea_, _The Other Wind_). There are still lots of pieces of genuine Earthsea in the later books, but they come through like bits of old historical archives that have been heavily rewritten by a PC court historian. I would be more specific, but I’m embarrassed to admit that I never figured out how to do a spoiler box. I’m going to go learn that and maybe come back later with details, unless this print-media digression is too far OT for this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995/40 "2010-01-22T21:53:16Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I would be more specific, but I’m embarrassed to admit that I never figured out how to do a spoiler box. I’m going to go learn that and maybe come back later with details, unless this print-media digression is too far OT for this thread. It works like this: [noparse]OMG I’m totally spoiling thisalert![/noparse] So without the noparse tags, you get something like this: > [@](#): > > The vampires in Twilight are… Shiny! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sorry-that-episode-simply-never-happened-and-youll-not-convince-me-otherwise-spoilers-likely/525995.md?page=3)