I happen to love that episode myself - it’s the only post-Troy ep I’m willing to rewatch. I thought it was a pitch-perfect send-up of 1970s dystopian science-fiction movies (particularly Logan’s Run and Zardoz), and a worthy addition to the Community parody episode ouvre.
Star Trek: The Original Series: “And The Children Shall Lead” (particularly lame “alien menace of the week”), “The Alternative Factor” (a decent story idea that just disintegrated into confusion)
Star Trek: The Next Generation: “Code Of Honor” (the one where they dusted off a “Mighty Whitey visits Darkest Africa” script from the bad old days), “Shades Of Grey” (clip show with a particularly think frame-story excuse), “Genesis” (ridiculous even by Treknobabble-“science” standards)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Pretty much any Ferengi-centered episode, particularly “Profit And Lace” (Quark gets a sex change and gets harassed by a horny CEO, yuk-yuk – and I do mean yuk!)
Babylon 5: “TKO” and “Grey 17 Is Missing” (both of which might have been redeemed if the episodes had reworked and retitled to trim the lame A-plots into the background and emphasize the actual plotline-relevant B-stories)
Every episode of Cheers where the entire plot revolved around Diane. Her “emotional inadequacies” theme was like listening to a broken record.
There was always something happening in that bar but the writers felt, for some reason, that audiences would rather focus on what unpredictable mood Diane’s in today and how it would affect the rest of the characters. “That would be hilarious, right?”
The show improved immensely when Rebecca came along.
Could not disagree more. I stopped watching the series early in Kirstie Alley’s first season. I found her character crude and unfunny. YMMV…
Agreed that Diane’s whining and preciousness could be grating at times. On the other hand, the Sam and Diane “will they or won’t they” dynamic - while perhaps not original - was taken to new heights (and arguably pushed into a trope phenomenon) by Cheers.
Nope, the worst episode of Cheers was Let Sleeping Drakes Lie, where Norm has to rescue Rebecca before she’s caught in Evan Drake’s house. Meanwhile, Sam dances around the bar in an effort to impress one of Frasier’s patients, who’s either a dancer or a pyromaniac.
Any episode that hinges on neurotic Rebecca is worse than an episode that hinges on neurotic Diane.
But at least, as Carla noted, Sam is graceful.
Big Bang Theory’s The Conjugal Conjecture. There was such a promising lead in from the last episode of the previous season and there were a bunch of great guest stars and it was just terrible. It wasn’t funny, too many people wasted because there wasn’t enough time for any of them. And, again, not very funny.
I hate musicals generally, but I was extremely impressed by the accomplishment, which was really amazing in multiple ways, starting with Whedon’s. So while you may not have enjoyed it I think it’s a hard argument to make that it was the series’ worst episode…
This seasons “Fake it till you make it.” and Yakity-Sax" have to be the two worst episodes of My Little Pony I’ve ever seen. The worst part is that these episodes feel like a return to the bad writing of cartoons from the '80’s.
Doctor Who (classic) “Delta and the Bannermen” These are the only episodes of classic Who I hate. It was so bad I can’t even remember what it was about.
I’m the world’s biggest L&O fan, and they did have one stinker: the one based on the Andrew Cunanan case. It’s called “Castoff.” And that was just a regular “ripped-from-the-headlines” ep that just didn’t work. I don’t like “Aftershock” either, but I think it accomplished what the writers were trying to accomplish, albeit, I did read something once where Dick Wolf said he regretted the decision to kill off Jill Hennessy’s character. He said he’d have liked to have her return the way they occasionally had some of the other previous assistants return.
I also love The Big Bang Theory, but for me, the worst episode was the one where they all go to sing karaoke after they find out Bernadette is pregnant. Seriously? that’s the kind of episode I expect during a writers’ strike. That one was so awful, I couldn’t believe what I was watching.
And to bring it all full circle, the actor who played Sergey was the killer in the Bye-Bye Sky-High IQ Murder Case episode of Columbo (which I always confuse with the aforementioned Mind over Mayhem episode), and the actress who played Marie Picard was the killer’s wife.
I’ve pretty much stopped watching the show since it became about “relationships” and “character development.” But it hit rock bottom with the episode about Sheldon’s birthday. Not only was it extremely unfunny, everyone in it was so out of character I felt like I was watching a completely different series.
And poor Adam West! It’s a shame his last gig was this piece of drek. All he did was sit on the couch to be ignored by Sheldon, supposedly one of the world’s biggest ***Batman ***fans. Really?!?
They **finally **got around to Amy and Sheldon’s wedding, thank God, though I could barely sit through it. Can we please end this show **now **and put it out of its misery?
Samantha Eggar? She was in the original Doctor Doolittle, opposite Rex Harrison. For me, it was love at first sight!* :o
*Samantha, not Rex.
I’m watching Person of Interest, and liking it a lot.
But the “Last Call” episode I watched last week was just horrible.
OK, so you’ve just murderated somebody. But she called 911. So you’ve gotta erase that 911 call. So what now? I know! Hire a ruthless killer to kidnap a random boy. Now have him call 911 and threaten to kill the random kid unless they erase the call. Make sure you get the 911 operator who accidentally let a kid die when she was babysitting as a teenager, so you know she’ll feel all responsible. Now force her to delete the recordings. And set off bombs around the city so she knows you mean business. Then she’ll do your bidding, and you’ll get away with yesterday’s murder for sure.
This is a great plan and completely plausible.
I realize Person of Interest takes place on another planet where government officials and businessmen and cops just routinely just murderate people whenever they feel like it for various reasons, usually because they know too much and could talk, so you clean up the loose ends. You could shoot them yourself, but safer to hire a team of professional hitmen to murder them, and yay, no loose ends. But then you’ve gotta hire more assassins to assassinate the assassins to tie up the new loose ends. Next, hire more assassins to assassinate the assassin assassins, because, duh, loose ends. You might detect a pattern here.
I’m not sure how civilization developed on this planet, since everyone just murders everyone the second they’re no longer useful. “Hey Thag, thanks for making me this clay pot. But now that I have the clay pot, you’ve outlived your usefulness. So now I’m gonna club you on the head.” Next week when Og’s clay pot breaks and needs a new clay pot, he looks at the place where he buried Thag and thinks “Yep, I made the right decision.”
Magic exists in the Buffyverse, so those horses are enchanted so they can keep up with the Winnebago.
She is fantastic. Back when you had to search for movies, I looked forever for a copy of* The Walking Stick *(based on a novel by Winston Graham, the same guy who wrote the Poldark books). She was so great in that.
This trick is done very, very well in the suicide squid episode of Red Dwarf, but that’s a very good episode, so doesn’t work here.
Duct Soup is probably the worst Red Dwarf ep for me, because it was the start of a new series and became obvious, to me at least, that the introduction of Kochansky wasn’t going to be funny - the best episode of that series was the one that brought Rimmer back in song.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: “Let He Who is Without Sin”. Worf turns his back on his friends and sabotages the planet Risa’s weather control system, for… reasons? “Meridian”. Dax falls in love waaaaay too fast.
I happen to like “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” and “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang”, though.
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Dear Lord, where do I start with the first season. “Angel One” and “Code of Honor” were both dreadful.
Star Trek TOS — Yes, “Spock’s Brain” is beyond absurd. “And the Children Shall Lead” is embarrassing. “The Omega Glory” beggars belief. BUT … the only episode I was never able to sit through a second time was “The Empath.”
I’ll second (five years later) Normal Again from Buffy. I can tolerate magic junkies, beer turning people into cavemen, the awkward sexism/homophobia of several early episodes, and even Dawn (who isn’t as bad as people say). But you can’t six years into a show just say “actually, even within the show’s universe they don’t exist”. At least not in a show like Buffy. I’m sure there are plenty of sci fi shows where that would work.