Why Do TV Shows Do This?
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Do television show writers really think their audiences are that dumb? Even shows that started off as something brilliant and beautiful can eventually turn into something ugly and ridiculous. Looking at you, Lost.
Glee
The worst offense was when Glee suddenly made Coach Beiste transgender. Her whole original character arc was that not being feminine doesn’t make you any less of a woman, which they then completely contradicted for the sake of tokenism. They tried to make that show a pillar of progressivism with a new national controversy being taken on by high schoolers every week. However, we think the change was not needed.
Dot-Marie Jones, the actress who portrayed Coach Beiste on the show, was initially hesitant to follow through with the change, as she told People magazine ahead of the premiere of the sixth and final season of the Fox hit.
“I just didn’t want to let down the girls who are straight and tomboys that my character represented the last four seasons,” Jones said. “But I got the script and I was, like, ‘Oh my God. This is amazing.'”
Pretty Little Liars
Fans of Pretty Little Liars were witness to numerous absurdities, from crazy to truly horrendous and criminal. Rosewood has some of the most incompetent cops in the world, but the worst part of the show was definitely the big reveal of the character “A.” They built up to this reveal for six years, and then we find out that it’s Cece Drake. Cece. Effing. Drake.
Making her “A” demonized the only transgender character on the show and used her gender identity and people’s inability to accept it as an excuse for torture. NOTHING ABOUT THAT IS OKAY. On top of that, just before the big reveal episode aired, the producer, Marlene King, said that the audience would feel bad for “A” once we found out who it was. NO, MARLENE. I FEEL BAD FOR MYSELF. I CAN’T BELIEVE I WAITED SIX YEARS FOR THIS!
Heroes
Everything after season one of _Heroes _was terrible, and there’s actually a legit reason why. Not only did the 2007-2008 writer’s strike start immediately after the first season aired, but the show also lost its best writer when he decided to pursue his own show and didn’t come back until the second half of season four, which is why things kind of start getting better again towards the end of the series.
Lost
The first couple seasons of Lost were great and were truly addicting. But as the show went on, more and more unanswered questions piled up and I started wondering whether or not the writers knew what they were doing.
Well, the finale quickly answered that question. The writers basically told the audience that the whole show was a big joke, nothing that happened was actually real, and the island was purgatory.
The whole split reality concept made me mad. I stuck by this show for so long, through all the time-travel and smoke monsters and crappy love triangles. Now I wish I could get back all the time I wasted on the show.
Under the Dome
The plot of Under The Dome had so many holes, you could use it as a strainer. The over-explanation of every single thing they were doing through expository dialogue made me want to destroy my television set.
There was one scene in particular, where they were trying to track down the source of a wifi signal only to find a secret tunnel behind one of the lockers at their school. It showed a close-up visual of the phone screen–a wifi signal connected, and it showed an email notification on the screen. The phone dinged, and a character said, out loud, to the person holding the phone and also looking at it, “Oh, look, the wifi signal’s back, and there’s an email!” The show would have been golden if they left it as a mini-series as it was supposed to be.
Smallville
Does anyone remember all the product placement in Smallville? Clark literally said, “Quick, get in my Yaris!” during a scene in which he was being pursued.
I burst out loud laughing when I heard it and to this day it’s the only line I still remember. Like, who even says that?
Well, it turns out that the Warner Bros. Television Group, which produced the series, entered into an agreement with Toyota Motors for what both parties called an “integrated marketing and promotional campaign” in April of 2007, according to a press release produced by the car company’s ad firm, Saatchi & Saatchi.
“We are excited to be partners with Toyota in this multiplatform brand enhancement experience for ‘Smallville,'” said Lisa Gregorian of Warner Bros. “We are committed to creating unique and compelling experiences for the fans of our shows and our network, The CW.”
Yeah. That quote says it all.
Arrow
The Olicity fiasco the writers of Arrow pulled in season three was just horrendous. The worst line of the whole ordeal still rings in my head: “You thought I would abandon you? Not a chance.”
I never thought I would get so infuriated by a line of dialogue, but here I am. Aside from the fact that Felicity has proven that she would, actually, on multiple occasions leave, in the comics, she literally up and leaves the city and Oliver. The entire season was insulting to any fans of the comics.
One Redditor on the Arrow subreddit had some advice to fans of the show who hadn’t quite made it that far in the season:
“If you are watching Arrow season one or two, or maybe halfway through three, or haven’t started the show yet: End it while you’re still ahead. Finish season two, watch three up to like episode 13, and then stop,” Punitor567 said. “If you’re in season 4: stop. You should have realized why we are all so done with the show. The finale was practically a crime to good television and storytelling.”
How I Met Your Mother
They spent YEARS building up the reveal of the mother, made the audience really like her, and then killed her just so the main character could get with a woman he has no business being with.
Basically, the mother just ended up being an incubator so Ted could have kids that Robin didn’t want to have. So maddening. Robin was awesome, but not as Ted’s spouse. The mom was so well written and well cast, and it was a shame that she received that kind of treatment.
Game Of Thrones
The Sand Snakes arc in Game of Thrones could have been something great, but instead, it was filled with bad dialogue and a lazy plot, which is probably why they axed the plot so clumsily in season six.
They took such a diverse part of Westeros and made it completely and utterly stupid. And the fact that they wasted Alexander Siddig (Prince Doran) in that role and didn’t even let him do his great monologue from the books is just sad. But the part that really gets me is how Oberyn said that “Dorne doesn’t hurt little girls.”
It’s true. In the books, Dorne values women–they are equal to men–and operate on a different, often better moral system than the rest of Westeros. It was a snipe at the Lannisters. A way of telling them that they wouldn’t harm a girl entrusted to their care, a girl who is by all counts innocent. But what did the show do? They killed Myrcella because they gotta shock the audience.
Gossip Girl
The series Gossip Girl was never a quality show, but at least in the first few seasons, it was entertaining. Once all the kids went off the college, things got bad, fast. Also, you can’t just kill a character off and then be all like “just kidding” and bring them back on the show with some lame excuse (looking at you Bart Bass).
Chuck and Blair may have been the most interesting characters on the show, but it got tough watching them break up and make up again in almost every episode. Somewhere along the way, the ridiculous plot just got boring.
The Wire (It’s Not What You Think)
Watching The Wire ruined a lot of TV shows for me because it was the first show I saw that didn’t cater to the audience.
Now every time I see two characters explain something that they should both know, it’s really obvious that they are actually talking to the audience. Even things like, “Oh, you’ve not been the same since that accident with your dad and sister.” No one in real life would say that. They would just stop at the accident. If the writers can’t find a natural way to let the audience find out it involved the dad and sister, the cheapest way is to get the characters to speak to the audience.
CBS
All shows on CBS must be geared directly towards old people because they always have to over explain anything relating to technology.
They’ll say things like: “I’m just encrypting these files,” “English, please,” or they’ll insert some stupid metaphor.
There’s a drinking game called “Yeah, I know, I work here too,” where you drink whenever a character explains something to a character when it is that character’s job to know that already.
It’s the only way I can stand to watch CBS.