I contributed to the WTFness of this one but if you were there you would have agreed.
To begin with I had a super-bad cold. That can make your mind fuzzy at the best of times. Secondly I had done some Nyquil, which has the ability to f up your mind just a bit and finally a woman friend of mine had given me a joint to help deal with the cold (What is the old saying? “Starve a fever and smoke a doobie for a cold?”).
So I am lying in bed looking up at my television (I had it mounted on the top shelf of my bookcase) and I notice Paul Simon doing some sort of stand-up. Then he is joined by basketball great Bill Russell. Then I notice that Simon (5-5 maybe) challenges Russell (almost 7 feet tall) to a game of one-on-one basketball. They begin playing and Russell gets the first couple of points, but Simon starts winning. He ends up winning. The program then breaks for a commercial and the commercial starts talking about rock based breakfast cereal.
I looked at the joint I was holding at the time and put it out (something I had never done before). I knew that I was screwed up in some major way.
It turns out I had turned on a brand-new unheralded television show called Saturday Night Live. There had been no announcement about this program where I was living and know that there was nothing like it anywhere prior to that show. That was truly a WTF moment if you weren’t prepared.
Off on a tangent…I’ve noticed all my life that it’s a Jungle Movie cliche to have that bird sound (oo-oo-o-o-o-AH-AH-AH). And I’ve know all my life what a kookaburra looks like, and that they live in Australia, in the old gum tree, merry merry king of the bush is he…but I only recently found out that the two factoids were related. And I said…WTF?
It took me a moment to parse that–her name is “Elisa”, I believe. As for it being unexpected…well, it didn’t surprise me. The development of their relationship was one of the running themes of the show. I think the episode “The Mirror” settled where things were going for them pretty conclusively.
The only real WTF in the series for me was the last skiff episode (“Future Tense”, I think). It didn’t click until near the reveal.
The very end of the series Cold Squad (progenitor of Cold Case.)
[spoiler]The episode revolves around an obssessive delusional who worships Ali as an avenging angel, and who has been going around murdering sex offenders. At the climax, Ali finds him in his hidey-hole, where he’s holding a serial rapist captive. The rapist is bound and gagged, and the nutter wants Ali to deliver the coup de grace. They go through a set-piece routine where Ali protests about how vigilante justice is wrong, and the guy is confused/needs help/etc. Of course the guy’s fantasy about her is shattered, and now she’s in mortal danger, put in the position of having to uphold the law and protect the rapist.
Things play out pretty much as you’d expect, and soon the psycho is dead and the (previously-smug) bound rapist is weeping with gratitude and apparent contrition.
And then Ali kills him in cold blood. BLAM! She drops her gun and starts sobbing.
Credits roll.[/spoiler]
Definite HOLY CRAP! reaction from me. How they hell are they going to develop this next season?
Answer: There is no next season. That’s just the end of her arc. Seven years of character development negated in an instant.
What about The Omega Glory? An alien planet parallells Earth history down to the development of two tribes, the Yangs and Komms (Yanks and Commies), a flag identical to the American flag, a document absolutely identivcal to the Declaration Of Independence, right down to the handwriting, etc.
Sorry, that wasn’t a WTF moment. That was a moment for cheering and celebrating. I hated that character and that actress. Would that she had fallen down a turbolift as well!
I had a big WTF moment when Romano got his arm chopped off by the helicopter in ER. Everything seemed normal leading up to it and -bam!- the arm was on the ground. I remember just being open-mouthed for the entire commercial break following, trying to figure out where they were going to take having sliced off their best surgeon’s right arm. That scene truly blindsided me.
Nick has just killed Natalie by draining her instead of making her a vampire. He asks his sire, LaCroix, to kill him. LaCroix holds the stake above Nick, preparing to stake him. Credits roll.
Natalie is dead (at Nick’s hand), Nick does NOT become human, and did LaCroix really just kill Nick?!?! Major WTF moment.
