Inspired by this article that appeared in the Onion’s AV Club recently:
Anyway, I have to agree with the Seinfeld pick from that article. I love Seinfeld, but I cringe at the Puerto Rican Day episode, which was actually the second to last episode of the series. It got a lot of flack at the time because it featured Kramer accidentally burning a Puerto Rican flag. But for me, the problem is that it’s just not that funny. It seemed to me like at that point they had just run out of steam and stopped trying, so they just cobbled together a bunch of contrived situations and executed them in a half-assed manner.
The Columbus Day episode of the Sopranos also makes me cringe. It was basically little more than a ham-handed FU from David Chase to the critics who complained about the Italian stereotypes on the show. It didn’t really fit in with anything else going on that season. Not to say that the critics didn’t have an FU coming to them, but Chase could have done it in a much more sophisticated manner.
To make a murder mystery interesting – well, look, at a minimum on this show you should kill the victim when no one can see you, right? Dick Van Dyke did that and went a step further by framing someone else, sure as Jack Cassidy did it and readied a second alibi in case his first got cracked. So, okay, we need Columbo.
Or you could hide the method. Robert Conrad did it while no one was looking and made it look like an accident while setting up an alibi; Martin Landau did it while no one was looking and made it look like a heart attack, setting up an alibi and framing someone else just in case. Thing of beauty. We need Columbo.
Or you could hide the body. Patrick O’Neal did that while no one could see, messing with passports and airline tickets so the guy would still seem alive; he then duped Columbo into expensively digging in the wrong place. Or you could hide the weapon; Robert Culp killed a guy while no one could see, hiding the weapon so cleverly even Columbo couldn’t find it; he then framed someone else and duped a roomful of witnesses into believing he was with 'em the whole time. Yikes.
With no frame or alibi to unravel, Eddie Albert shot a guy in broad daylight next to a plate-glass window; anybody could’ve seen him; somebody did. He hid the body, but did a crap job of it; the cops found it without Columbo’s help. He kept the weapon where anyone could spot it; someone did.
Is that really a job for Columbo, or for the big guy on Mission: Impossible who lifted stuff?
Exactly what I would have said. Jayne’s lines are the only bright spots in this episode. I can’t put my finger on why it doesn’t work, but it’s the only episode I haven’t rewatched if I can help it.
Lost - Stranger in a Strange Land, AKA the Jack’s Tattoos episode. Of a season that was basically a filler (minus the last few eps that set up Season 4) for the rest of the series, this was the filler episode of that season. I just rewatched the entire series over the last couple weeks. This was the only episode I skipped.
Seinfeld episode where Jerry, Elaine and George spend the day at the car dealership. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Elain trying to get Puddy to get Jerry a deal, George freaking out over a vending machine, Kramer taking an extra long test drive… Felt like it was written by an intern who sort of knew the characters, but exaggerated them waaaaay too much.
Fourth Doctor - Doctor Who. Warriors Gate. Seriously. What the hell was going on? Oh, and Romana’s snerk-inducing attack on the evil captain’s shoulders with a clipboard. While he’s strangling the Doctor. Whap, whap, whap. Thanks, Romana, you’re a big help.
The “Han” episode from West Wing. I can’t even put into words why I loathe it so - it just struck me, the first (and only) time I watched it, that the characters were all acting completely out of the characters they’d developed over the past four seasons.
I’d actually say that “The Message” was worse. Of course, that’s still the episode with the “alien” and Jayne’s hat, which is a tribute to the quality of Firefly, that even its worst show had great moments. To be fair, of course, it didn’t have time to accumulate very many outliers.
The worst episode of Babylon 5 is “TKO”, with “Gray 17 is Missing” a close second. Yeah, I know many folks would put them in the other order, and I’m sure I had some reason why I disagree, but I’m not going to watch either of them again to remember what that reason was.