Suzanne Somers, Farrah Fawcett, Bitty Schram…there are a lot of performers who were sure the show couldn’t go on without them, or that they were on top of the world, and could do whatever they wanted; you can have your pick.
I do think there’s a difference between leaving a good gig after three or four years, especially if you brought some chops in with you, and being a no name actor who decides one hit year is enough. coughcarusocough
Who’s Bitty Schram?
My example is another non-character death moment and is also from Buffy, but a different thing. I was completely WTF! when Dawn showed up at the beginning of season 5. I didn’t catch the show until after it had finished airing so I was binge watching it and when Dawn showed up at the very end of the episode I was like, “Wait! What? What was that? Buffy doesn’t have a sister”.
So I put on the next episode and there she was again. The way they wrote her into the show was like she’d always been there and I was totally confused. I was starting to wonder how I’d managed to miss a sister for 4 seasons.
She (Elizabeth Schram) played Monk’s personal assistant in the first 2 1/2 seasons of the show. In the middle of the 3rd season, she and 2 other actors tried to renegotiate their contracts and sat out the 10th episode. Schram was fired.
She was also the ball player in A League of Their Own to whom Tom Hanks yelled “Are you crying? There’s no crying in baseball.”
Jimbuff314, thank you.
You know, it wasn’t a shock, because it wasn’t withheld from audiences, but one plot-twist that caused a show to pretty much reboot was Ellen Morgan coming out on Ellen. It went from just another show about a group of friends, and not even the best one, to the only show, ever, with a central gay character (Soap was too unrealistic to count, and anyway, Jody wasn’t the central character).
Again, Henry Blake’s death was shocking, but it didn’t change the show at all, because he was leaving anyway-- except maybe to tell the audience that anything was fair game now, and maybe adding some tension to the show, but they had always killed off peripheral characters, and they never killed off another major character that I can remember.
RE: Bitty Schram; I ended up liking Natalie better.
Yeah, there’s two versions of that story, and one viewpoint was that if your name wasn’t on the show you weren’t worth shit.
I’m sure people were shocked when Perry Mason lost his first case.
He didn’t “lose,” exactly. The case was thrown out on a very convoluted technicality after the preliminary hearing. I’ve seen that episode, and I’m still trying to make sense of it: Someone they thought was murdered wasn’t murdered after all, and the person who was murdered was an impostor whom no one could identify… You get the drift. :rolleyes:
You gotta wonder what she was thinking. “It’s not like they can find another pretty, young actress to replace me in Hollywood.”
mine would be finding out that Audrey and Aki from gossip girl (REBOOT 2021-23) were cheating on eachother…
WITH THE SAME FUCKING GUY-
The same actress (Diana Mulder?) played the slightly-annoying-but-moreso-if-you-liked-Gates-McFadden-who-she-was-filling-in-for doctor on ST:TNG.
I kept hoping they’d pull a TurboLift™ malfunction…
Likewise
Speaking of Twin Peaks, the other big surprise was that Mr. Tojamura was played by Piper Laurie
Was it Knots Landing? Where the redheaded actress took her wig off and was bald?
I love threads like this, where I get halfway through and think it’s weird that nobody has mentioned the same ones that always get mentioned (in this case, the end of the first season of The Good Place and the bent-neck lady in The Haunting of Hill House)… and then realize most of the thread was from 2014. Plot twist!
I think there’s a distinction to be made on a season or series finale, especially if a show ended before the planned end point or if the show was angling to be renewed. Things that happen in the middle of the series and un-telegraphed are IMHO more interesting.
But picking something slightly more modern, I’ll go with the ending episode of Farscape in Season Four to make my point. Spoilers of course, second spoiler is to wrap up the first. I have tried to leave the specifics vague because I love the show and encourage you to watch it if you like Sci-Fi.
Spoiler 1:
At the end of season 4, they’ve resolved all immediate risks to themselves and to earth, although lots of issues are unresolved, and there’s still plenty of problems they’d likely face. Meanwhile, the two main characters are out on a rowboat in the middle of a lovely peaceful sea to resolver their relationship issues. Both speak their peace and the situation is resolved happily (this has been somewhat expected, so does not qualify). Then as they are embracing each other, an alien craft rapidly approaches and more or less disintegrates them both as their friends watch in horror. End season and series.
Spoiler 2 if you have to know what happens when they eventually released a Farscape Micro-series (Farscape: Peacekeeper Wars) to resolve the end of the story:
The aliens that disintegrated them have re-integration technology, they’re saved, with some temporary consequences, and everything that would have taken a full season to actually resolve was crammed into a few hours, bringing the male and female lead’s relationship to completion, the death of a favorite character, and a forced (and likely eventually unstable) galactic peace brought about.
Anyway, lots of shows do twists at or near the season or series end. By the nature of the trope, they tend therefore to be less shocking for me, than one that shows up earlier.
One that did surprise me happened in another series that left us too soon, my much loved Brimstone (urban dark fantasy / detective show). While not a perfect show, it was full of tropes, including one seen in other such series - the main character has multiple interactions with a smart, attractive detective of the opposite sex, but is torn due to their own supernatural circumstances, so rebuffs the attraction with much regret.
Major Spoiler:
It turns out that rather than the on-again, off again love interest for the series, they’re one of his supernatural targets, just far better adapted to living in reality than everyone else! But she is honeslty interested in him, and when he spurns her because of an endearing existing love, she ends up seducing his ex-wife. Which he doesn’t realize until the last moment as she’s male while doing so (supernatural beings, go figure). Note, this is only a partial subversion, as the last bit was a series and season finale, as the show only ran one season of 13 episodes
Okay, I’ve addressed the OP and plugged some of my favorite series. My mission is done.
From the under-appreciated Joss Whedon show Dollhouse: “There are three flowers in a vase…”
If you know, you know. There were several more moments like that in the show but that one was a big surprise.
I think the reveal of not only who the villain is, but that they have been the villain the whole time(not brainwashed) was kind of bold and incredible. And for me, completely worked.
Note: To be honest, everyone but the Dolls are villains, but I mean “uber-villain”.