Watching the most recent episodes of 24, I’m once again struck by the writers twisting the plot into some frustrating mess because they’re obsessed with having a bunch of “What a twist!” moments.
And this has been happening for years:
[spoiler]The worst offender is probably the massive cast purge at the beginning of season 5. Killing off Michelle, Palmer, Tony (seemingly) and Edgar absolutely gutted the cast, making the show much worse off. Making the President of the United States the man behind the conspiracy was just the topping on a shit sandwich.
And now there’s season 8. Making Dana a mole (after spending 12 episodes where her big secret is that she was a trailer trash prom queen) was stupid and killing off Renee is just twisting the knife when they know the end is near.[/spoiler]
And then there’s the infamous season 3 of Bones:
Making Zack the cannibal serial killer’s apprentice was cooked up at the last minute. The writers admitted they did it just to screw with the audience. Poor fucking form.
So what other shows have been ruined by stupid twists? I ask you please be considerate of other posters by naming the show and then putting the twist in a spoiler box.
Spoilers for the first two seasons of Veronica Mars. Yes, I know it’s old but there are still people who haven’t seen it and get on it, people.
Veronica’s rape was solved by the end of Season 1, part of the cap of one of the best seasons of TV ever, IMO. Then S2 rolls along and goes, “Oh, that? Yeah, this guy also raped her.”
The hell? S2 was a quality drop from S1, but it didn’t need to poke its ass backward in time to mess with S1.
Didn’t they kill off… Maid Marian …in the recent Robin Hood series, basically for shock value? While it was still running, and they had at least a season more to go?
I mean, there’s challenging yourself as a writer, there’s being daring and unformulaic, and there’s just shooting yourself in the foot.
Actually, make that “hacking your legs off with a spike maul.”
“Moonlighting” really went downhill once Maddie and David had sex. Although there were off camera things such as Shepherd’s pregnancy and the time needed to film an episode that hurt it.
King of the Hill is a favorite of mine, but I didn’t really like it when they gave Hank a long lost brother. I absolutely hated when he discovered that he was born in NYC. I like to pretend that episode doesn’t exist.
Personally, I think that season 5 is the only one to compare to the first. Yes, it’s somewhat of a shame to lose some cast members, but I thought that they fully made up for that by not shackling themselves to the limits of previous seasons. S5 is the only one where they tried something new. Instead of having Jack + some random secondary plot that is blatantly for the sake of killing time and terrorists with no particular goal beyond being Evil, S5 had a secondary storyline that was actually meaningful and involved something other than “run run run”, and the bad guys actually had some sort of ultimate goal that was meaningful.
Trek Deep Space 9 went off the rails in two ways. One was surprise, surprise Dr Bashir is “genetically enhanced” and now has super powers and super ramped up brain function, he is now smarter than Dax, give me a break. This contradicted several earlier episodes about his character, comes too late in the series to matter and ruins past bonding scenes with the chief like when he lost at darts. Lost, no way he could have won every game but was holding back! A small plot point to be sure but are we to believe in the first five seasons Dr Bashir was taking a dive and faking it all along. Please.
The second and more serious was the conversion of “The Prophets” as worm hole aliens the way starfleet including Sisko saw them into real gods that Sisko believed in and followed. No Way! This as well contradicted several episodes including what was established in the very first show. The prophets just making the Dominion fleet disappear, the ridiculous Gul Ducat complete with glowing red eyes casting spells and incantations to summon the “evil prophets”. This was utter garbage it’s like they had a conference and deiced the best ways to ruin a great show. I will never forgive them!
…can’t disagree more. Debroah is FULL of daddy issues. Her issues with her father define her at every turn. Her relationship with Lundy has been the only sensical realtionship she’s been involved in on the show.
I am still really irked with the twist that Supernatural threw into last week’s episode. (Hopefully it won’t turn out to be a major plot point.)
[spoiler]Dean is at the end of his tether, so he pretty much runs away at the very end of the episode. I’m going “ooh, where’s Dean going, this is interesting” - until it turns out that he’s going to see an old hook-up from like, ten years ago. WTF? We know this because she was in an episode two seasons ago, and it’s implied that her son MAY be a product of this hook-up. Dean gets all teary - as is par for the course - and says that whenever he imagines being happy, it’s with her and her son.
WTF?!?! I can see that Dean would like to settle down and have a family. This I can buy. But with a woman he had a fun weekend with TEN YEARS AGO who has only been mentioned TWICE over the course of the whole series? This is the love of his life? Ugh, it is the shittiest, most pathetic retconning ever. I get what the writers were trying to show, but it’s totally unbelievable.
And this woman tries to get him to come in and starts crying, too? I’m sorry, what woman, upon opening the door to see a guy she had a one-night stand with years and years ago, doesn’t totally freak out when he says that he’s always dreamed of having a life with her? Even Dean Winchester isn’t that good-looking.[/spoiler]
I seriously just gaped in astonishment at the television. What the fucking fuck was that?
Plus, Lundy was super-smart, confident, charming and played by Keith Carradine. I can totally see an insecure unmarried thirtyish woman with major daddy issues throwing herself at him, and I can see a lonely fiftyish guy like him appreciating the affection.
Kyla, how is that retconning? Dean got attatched to the kid and the idea of being with Lisa and Ben, and maybe it was more of him being in love with the idea itself, but Lisa’s friends knew of Dean from Lisa talking about him (obviously made a lasting memory there) and Dean did save Ben’s life; that sort of thing leaves an impression.
It’s retconning because they’re trying to make it look like Dean has always loved Lisa, but that’s pretty clearly not the case. He never mentioned her to Sam until the Season 3 episode she’s in, and then, when he does, does he say that he really liked her? No, he points out that she’s a yoga teacher and says that “it was the bendiest weekend of my life!”. So, the sex was good (Lisa seemed to agree), but there’s no hint of a deeper, emotional connection.
And then…she’s the one he runs off to when he’s falling apart? That just came out of NOWHERE. If they’re trying to make it look like she’s the love of his life, that is a total retcon.
Now, I agree that he might be more in love with the idea of having a family than actually being in love with Lisa, but there isn’t really any hint of that. I think we’re genuinely supposed to believe that he’s been in love with her all of this time…despite the fact that she’s only been mentioned one other time on the show, in a dream sequence.
Maybe Sam can gently point this out and Dean will realize he’s being a bit delusional. I would be okay with that.
