Moving Waterloo road to Scotland , killed the show
Canceling Firefly.
(I would have said canceling Star Trek, but it worked out OK in the end).
Had a baby.
The whole last season of Roseanne where she won the lottery.
That “Twilight Zone” helicopter scene.
Or didn’t.
JACK & BOBBY had as its premise that one of two brothers being raised by a single mom would grow up to be President of the United States. So when we see the older brother get expelled from school upon taking the blame for the drugs found in his kid brother’s locker – wait, what did we just see?
Did that show the self-sacrifice that would someday make the older brother a terrific president, while also starting the story of how he eventually dropped out of school and joined the Army? Or did we just see the kid brother who, if not for that second chance, would never have earned a scholarship as a straight-arrow valedictorian spending the rest of his life trying to pay it forward?
You just saw the key event in the life of a president, and still don’t know what it was!
Say the kid brother, the bookish one who skipped a grade, is organizing a protest; and say it’s going nowhere until his popular-jock brother comes on board to impress a hot chick: again, you know something meaningful just happened; but, again, what did it mean? What story is being told? What the hell is going on?
That’s a weird and interesting hook with tons of possibilities – which got dropped after the first episode, when they revealed which one grows up to be president.
Dallas: It was all a dream.
First star trek movie - the bald woman robot. And then the guy falls in love with her.
The second season of Bob.
In the first season, Bob Newhart played an old-time comic book artist who was brought out of retirement (working on greeting cards) to reboot his comic book, “Mad Dog,” into a dark and gritty avenger, something he thought was completely wrong. His writer was Harlan Stone, and the first name was not chosen at random (series writer Mark Evanier had a background in comic books). It was filled with weird and wonderful characters and got good ratings whenever CBS didn’t move it timeslot.
For the second season, the comic book angle was dropped, as were most of the cast, and Bob went back to the Greeting Card company. Jere Burns and Betty White were added for some star power, but everything that made the show good was gone.
…Ilia wasn’t a robot: she was a Deltan.
That doesn’t make it better.
The whole last season of True Blood. I have always said, I am in it till the bitter end even when my favorite TV shows were running out of steam, but truly that last season was execrable. The finale was SO terrible, SO very terrible.
Revealing Laura Palmer’s murderer.
I’m not sure, however, what the correct answer should have been.
1)They could have made it a two season mini-series right from the start with their plan laid out ahead of time. That would have saved the mess that was the last half of S2
2)They could have never told us. Just kept chugging along, that would have required a lot of creativity to keep people interested. David/Robert may have eventually wanted to go back to movies and who knows what would have happened with the show at that point.
3)They could have done what happens fairly often now, reveal the murderer and then set up a new problem to be dealt with next.
Having said that, it’s still a great show, if you haven’t seen it, go watch it.
…never claimed it did.
Dorne.
You mean Ilia. But really, the entire movie was a mistake, not just her. It’s best to simply disregard it, as WRATH OF KHAN implicitly does.
That said, Decker was in love with Ilia before she got 'botted up.
Continuing without Mulder for 2 seasons.
Sleepy Hollow: Kill the witness.
I’m sure there are many others. That one is just so painfully fresh.
The “Coy and Vance” years of Dukes of Hazzard.
Making Archie Bunker a “nice guy” during the later years of All in the Family and the whole run of Archie Bunker’s Place. Why eliminate the whole purpose of your character?
Turning Amos Burke from a sexy crime drama into a secret agent show.
And far and away the worst, Chico and the Man’s producers refusing to cancel the show after Freddie Prinze committed suicide. So they bring in a previously unheard of orphan kid to be “Chico”. And make Charo his aunt. I’m not making this up.