Worst Single Episodes Of Otherwise Well Written Series

I realize the term “well written” is subjective but we’ll assume that if you say it is well written it is, though others may disagree.

So list your series and the ONE single worst episode of that series. You only get to choose one.

For start I’ll take “the Mary Tyler Moor Show.”

I think that was a very well written series consistently throughout its run.

But the worst single episode I think was the episode where Ted tried out to be a game show host and got the job. Then at the resolve part, Ted decided he didn’t want to go and Murray, Mary and Lou all wanted Ted to stay.

To me it made little sense. Ted was overly cheap and greedy. He wouldn’t stay if he got a chance for more fame and much more money. And Lou, Murray and even Mary were never overly fond of Ted and they all thought HE was the reason for the shows low ratings. So why would they stop him.

I think as well written as “the Mary Tyler Moor Show,” was this was the worst episode.

Nah, the worst episode of that show was the one where Iago convinces Othello that his wife has been cheating on him, so Othello kills her.

I love the series but hate the “Heart of Gold” episode of Firefly.

Well, that episode of The Simpsons where Bleeding Gums Murphy died was a pretty huge pile of shit.

Also, the “very special episode” feel of the WKRP one where the Who concert disaster occurred.

“TKO” and “Infection” from Babylon 5. Both of them advance the overall plot arc in no way, have little to no character development, and are also pretty shitty on their own.

I looked over the Futurama episode list and aside from Bender’s excessive annoyingness in “Jurassic Bark” which almost ruined the episode for me, I can’t find anything.

“Omega Glory”

I liked that one. The one I didn’t like was 'Shindig".

I loved **Law and Order **up the point where the episode revolved around the cast’s reaction to a death penalty being carried out. It was the crime and law that made the show interesting, not the character’s personal feelings.

Hollywood,” the episode of Happy Days where Fonzi “jumped the shark.”

Jumping the shark is now a well-known term that denotes the point in a TV show or movie series’ history where the plot veers off into absurd story lines or out-of-the-ordinary characterizations. This usually corresponds to the point where a show with falling ratings apparently becomes more desperate to draw viewers in. In the process of undergoing these changes, the TV or movie series loses its original appeal. Shows that have “jumped the shark” are typically deemed to have passed their peak.

the fourth episode of Cowboy Bebop… it’s hard to explain, but it was so totally out of the blue, and pointless, and just utterly ridiculous in a way the show wasn’t (it was utterly ridiculous, but in other ways and other times). I saw it without that episode by someone who admanantly hated it, then again later, and had to agree. The entire series would have been better off without it.

Likewise, you can make a case for the last episode. The series was cut late, and they knew there wasn’t going to be another, so they basically ended it in the worst possible way short of “Rocks fall, everybody dies.” But it was close, because (and even the characters sorta recognized this, perhaps as a shout-out to the audience to say, “yeah, we know, but we got no choice”) the series was clearly not meant to go that way. The characters had changed and grown a bit - subtley, but definiteively, and the ending shoved them back into the boxes they were in at the start of it.

TNG, Wes goes on spirit quests and eventually evolves into a Traveller.

Oldie but baddie: Star Trek (the original series), “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”.

Unwatchably bad. It makes “Spock’s Brain” look positively Shakespearean in comparison, it’s so awful.

Missed the edit window. YouTube has it.

I love every episode of every season of Red Dwarf (yes, even Meltdown), with one exception. The one episode I just can’t stand, is Camille. I keep trying to make myself watch it but I find myself getting irritated and I stop paying attention.

I once read a series companion book on TMTMS that expressed this same view of that episode, and I disagreed. I always thought that the permanently-grouchy Lou Grant actually enjoyed having something to complain about. Ted was like that sore tooth that Lou couldn’t stop touching.

There was another episode where the station hired a ridiculously snobbish cultural critic who went as far as to slam WJM on the air for being philistine. When he came in off the air, Lou was waiting with a cake. But the critic sneered that Lou wouldn’t hit him with the cake, because “only an idiot” would do that. As Lou appeared to grudgingly agree and backed off, Ted barged in and spontaneously slammed the cake in the critic’s face. Sometimes, you need an idiot, and Ted was the idiot of the WJM village. It wouldn’t have been the same without him. And Lou knew it.

The worst episode of the show The Outer Limits (a series that I loved when it showed originally) is “The Children of Spider County.” The stupidity of it is apparent in the opening. Four important young scientists have just disappeared without a trace. In investigating this, it’s discovered that they were all born in the same county in the same month and were all born two months prematurely. Furthermore, they all have the same middle name - Eris. The show opens with two investigators discussing these coincidences. One of them asks, “So why Eris?”. The other says, “It’s the name of an obscure planet in the galaxy Krell.” (I’m guessing how Krell is supposed to be spelled.) So we’re supposed to be able to know the names of planets (yes, even obscure planets) in other galaxies. At that point I turned the TV off.

The worst episode of Friends is The One With Ross and Monica’s Cousin. The plotline with the cousin goes nowhere (and makes Ross look like a sexual predator), and Monica and Joey’s story about needing to find a fake foreskin is just stupid beyond belief. That one is so stupid it’s like a Three’s Company plot. This episode is the only one I regularly skip on the DVDs.

Have you blocked out the steaming pile that was, “Grey 17 is missing”?

Jeez that was bad.

Blasphemy, heretic, blowtorch, blah blah blah.

Similarly, the “Isaac and Ishmael” very special episode of The West Wing. Almost any very special episode is a bad idea.