The 5 Most Maddeningly Unresolved TV Plotlines
Writing TV shows is hard. We think. Actually it probably depends on the show.
Either way, with all those characters and plotlines going on it's apparently really easy to lose track of what you're doing. That's why even good shows have plotlines that they've just discarded like so many Egg McMuffin wrappers on the street.
#5.
Peter from Heroes Dumps his Girlfriend... in the Future
In season two of Heroes, superpowered protagonist Peter Petrelli and his girlfriend Caitlin time-travel to a virus-riddled, post-apocalyptic New York City.
Peter's time travel powers conveniently wonk out, stranding Caitlin in the future. Once back in the present, Peter thwarts the world-ending pandemic, thereby altering the timestream, saving humanity and scoring another cheap victory for bullshit TV physics.
But wait! Before you uncork that champagne, Peter, we have one big elephant in the room to address: Where the hell is your time-displaced girlfriend?
Why It's Maddening:
Who knows? And frankly, who cares? Certainly Peter doesn't, seeing as how he never mentions Caitlin again.
It's not actually Peter's fault here. Caitlin was a casualty of the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike. NBC aired only half the season's episodes, effectively shelving Heroes' spring storylines.
When the next season rolled around, Heroes creator Tim Kring was eager to jump-start the flagging series, sans time travel and pointless tertiary love interests. When asked if Caitlin would ever return, he blithely responded, "No, we passed it, we leapfrogged it."
Fair enough, but Peter's total lack of concern for Caitlin raises some disturbing implications for his character. At best, he's left her in a hellish alternate reality where 93 percent of humanity is dead. At worst, he's erased her from existence, or at least consigned her to some unfathomable living death.
Any way you cut it, he's whatever the diametric opposite of a hero is. What's that term? Oh right: douchetard.
Though if NBC had renamed the show Heroes (and One Huge Douchetard) it would probably still beat Chuck in the Nielsen ratings.
"For the last fucking time, I am NOT Jim from The Office."
#4.
A Loose End Bugs Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Early in season one, Xander Harris, Buffy's endearingly pathetic sidekick, catches the eye of a substitute teacher who's really a giant, sex-hormone-secreting praying mantis. Sadly, this fling is the apex of Xander's sexual competence throughout the entire series.
She mates with virginal men and kills them post-coitus, thereby sparing them either the embarrassment of losing one's virginity to a giant insect, or at least the burden of a lifelong giant insect fetish, Spider-Woman notwithstanding.
We know spiders aren't insects. We just felt like posting some classy art.
Luckily, Buffy saves the day and preserves Xander's innocence. Unluckily for Sunnydale High, the episode ends with a cache of hidden she-mantis eggs hatching in the science room!
Why It's Maddening:
We never see the creepy sex-mantises again.
Plenty of lesser shows allow minor plots to meander off into nothingness, but this is Buffy, a show notorious for never, ever letting plot threads die, no matter how mind-bendingly convoluted (see: Dawn, Buffy's magical, whiny real-not real hallucination of a sister).
So yeah, Joss Whedon, we're calling you out on this: Where the hell are our sex bugs? And while we're at it, can we have Eliza Dushku too?
Scratch that. You can keep the sex bugs.
We get that the episode's statutory rape subplot may not have jibed with the WB's family-friendlier fare, but this is Buffy. Every other week some vampire/demon/yeti tries to kill Buffy/enslave mankind/take Willow to a gay pride parade. In Sunnydale terms, some Mary Kay Letourneau action would register on the low end of the weird-o-meter.
#3.
Mr. Turner Eats Pavement on Boy Meets World
During the season five finale, Cory's motorcycle-riding "cool" teacher Mr. Turner discovers that sometimes, despite the charm of that old Irish saying, you really don't want the road to rise up to meet you. Indeed, he crashes his bike off-screen and ends up in critical condition.
As far as season finales go, it's a doozy. The episode concludes with Mr. Turner still laid up, a young Ben Savage blissfully unaware of his future unemployment, and Topanga looking equal parts totally hot and totally like Janice from The Muppets.
Our libidos have no idea what to make of this.
Like getting gored in the torso with a flaming scimitar, this finale is heartwarming and heartrending. Surely, Mr. Turner will make a full recovery!
Why It's Maddening:
Aaaaaaand that's the last we hear of Mr. Turner. Ever.
In most cases we'd accept this turn of events, as characters on sitcoms vanish all the freaking time. Hell, Topanga's older sister Nebula had already disappeared from the Boy Meets World cast.
The crazy thing here is that Mr. Turner was one of Cory's favorite teachers and an important, recurring character on the show. By the time the season six premiered, Mr. Turner's name was completely verboten. It's like everyone discovered he was a kiddy-fiddler during the off season.
"Your summer reading is Nabokov's Lolita, literature's most famous endorsement of pederasty."
How about "My name is Earl?" Did he finish The List? Did Joy explain about the children? Hard to end a series with a nervous woman who promises to explain and never does
ReplyIn 24, it does become very clear based on the timeline that Keeler did in fact die. The most amount of time a single person can legally be President (at the current time) in the United States is 10 years. This is because a Vice can take office for two after the President is killed, and then be elected or reelected twice after. (4 years each time) it's explained in season 5 that we're about a year and a half away from the day in season 4, and at least once they mention that Logan's term is almost up, and he may not be capable of reelection (being relatively unpopular, and a near meaningless pick by Keeler). So it is explained, just not directly. - As in, no bad exposition. So that's good, IMO.
ReplyI know all this because I watched every season of 24 for the first time ending about a week or two ago. I was trying to figure out what was going on anyway, so it's all fresh in my mind.
Boy Meets World: actually in the end of season 5 when they all graduate they run into Minkus, an old classmate, he says hes been on the other side of the school. which is everything on the 4th wall side so it's why we never see it. and he goes, "Oh Mr. Turner! wait up!" so there you go all settled now!
ReplyAlright, here's one that always bugged me (pardon the pun)... Star Trek: The Next Generation. Episode: "Conspiracy". Early into the second season and the writers are finally starting to get their s**t together. They spin a great tinfoil-hat yarn about little parasitic creatures infesting and controlling the upper echelon of Starfleet Commaand, slowly and quietly moving into positions of power.
ReplyAt the end, Picard and Riker fry a bunch of co-opted Starfleet brass, then follow one of the critters down the hall to find an old nemesis has been taken over by their "queen". After handily dispatching him, they discover that he's sent a message, a beacon of sorts, "into deep space". Finally we're shown an view of distant stars with some ominous sound effects as we fade to black, making it very clear that that little nasties should soon be on their way to invade the human race once again.
Except... we never hear from them again. Ever. Not a hint. In six more seasons and four feature films (and two parallel spinoff series), there's never a mention of the incident. Even Voyager, which was terrible for recycling old Trek ideas and villains from half a galaxy away, never came across these little crawlies.
Or maybe the writers are too smart of all of us and are saving that storyline for "Star Trek: The Next, NEXT Generation", coming to 3DTV screens in 2019...?
Since this is 3 years old I'm not sure if anyone mentioned this, but you can go back to some teacher on Boy Meets World and you couldn't even give a hat tip to Family Matters' Winslows' missing third child??? I know what happened to the actress at the time, and why all of a sudden she disappeared (Greedy parents to keep it short), but they didn't even give that child a throwaway line. She went upstairs one season, and the next the Winslows just went on as if they always had two children...SMH
Replywell that happens a lot though, same happened to the little sister on boy meets world, she wasn't getting ratings so why have her...
X-Files: Two MAJOR unresolved things (if you don't count the abortion of the second XF movie, which I don't, and even then it's still rather unresolved or at very least depressing)
ReplyIn an episode of X-Files in the 7th season, I think I am WAY too tired to go look at my collection let alone remember the name of the episode (though it's on the tip of my tongue) Scully meets a guy who is essentially immortal cause when death came for him, he looked away and not into the face of death, leaving this guy to be able to tell when people will die. After surviving several attacks, and Scully as a doctor not being able to figure out how he did it, he concludes he is immortal. Then the man has a premonition of Scully's death. When she ends up getting shot by her comically mismatched sub of a partner for the episode, the man tells Scully to look away from death so that he can take her place and look instead so he'll die. So yeah, basically Scully is now immortal? And this is never mentioned again. WTF?
Also I guess the series finale leaves too much open, everyone searching for Mulder and Scully and them giving up hope on the government and all of man kind. Oh and Mulder sees dead people, that's fun too.
WTF? I'll stick to classic XF (seasons 1-5) With a few favorite episodes from the rest, though not many!
THAT was totally my reaction to that episode as well. Howev's, I like to think that the immortal guy dying set things right so Scully isn't immortal. And based on the latest film, I gathered that they ran and ran and got tired of running so they settled down in a nice country house and got paid to never mentioned their FBI work to anyone else.
"Impeach" is an interesting euphemism for "air assault."
Replywhat about Doctor Who's "daughter"? she wakes up after the doctor tearfully says goodbye. She steals a ship, blasts off into space, and than nothing...
Replythats like 20% of the actual number of presidents. no way would i run for president in the 24 universe.
ReplyPlus an episode of 24 is a day, so... 9 presidents in 5 years? About?
Replythere would be all KINDS of martial law and full military operations all over the world. anybody involved would get their country invaded!
the US would go into full WWII mentality. a full-on war economy
Speaking of bug monsters we never saw again, how 'bout the ones from the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation? One of Trek's best cliffhangers, but they never came back to it.
Reply100% agree. That was the best episode from the first season. It was awesome how Picard and Riker grabbed their phasers and shot up Starfleet HQ. The episode ends with them finding a homing beacon being aimed at unexplored space. And instead of a conclusion, we get Troi getting impregnated for the Season 2 premier... :(
Don't forget the finale to Twin Peaks long, long ago!
ReplyHoly crap! I started watching Boy Meets World when it was already only playing in re-runs, and after I saw the episode with Mr. Turner I was always wondering when I was gonna catch the episode that explained what happened to him. I always assumed it was the first of a two-part episode.
ReplyHow dare you insult Chuck? That's a great show.
ReplyTo he fair though, I've only just got into it and I'm halfway through the second series. It might get worse from here.
Oh and the Buffy one always annoyed me. The first series had a lot of cliffhangers.
it does start to suck. just gets really formulaic and and borderline absurd. really boring.
OK, so with the "Unkillable Russian" he had been beaten and shot in the head.
ReplyYeah, he stole Chris' car but chances are he was hallucinating, drove the car off into the woods and died of exposure or bled to death.
That's just my take at least.
Russians don't die of exposure. And I hardly think they can bleed to death.
You need blood in order to bleed to death. The Russians replaced theirs long ago with vodka. Now when they get cut, they get sober.
That episode of Buffy is from the beginning of the first season, before it grew into the show that everyone knows and loves. It's not the only episode like that, either; the Invisible Girl is another.
ReplyThe reason is that the show was brand new and no one knew what to make of it yet.
One way it was pitched at the network was as "X-Files with teenagers". It wasn't, but that first season (which was only 13 episodes; it was brought in as a mid-season replacement) still contains some of the trendy plottisms of 1997, like the X-Files ending. Those went away in the second season, which was a full season and much more under the control of Joss Whedon.
Chuck was cool for the first couple of years. Then I guess they changed writers or something; and all of the sudden Chuck has awesome spy super-powers, without so much as a training montage or anything. They kind of hung a lantern on it by saying the computer in his head gave him that ability. But, I'm like, really? Why didn't it do that when he first got it? That's like how Michael Westin is a coward of a spy who manages with his training and encyclopedic knowledge of spy stuff; then all of the sudden he's a scary badass who's like the boogeyman to Russian spetznaz. Burn Notice is still an awesome show though, even with that inexplicable character shift.
ReplyGood God, he only mentioned Chuck one f*****g time in the whole article...
Burn Notice is not an awesome show. Not only is there the whole 'scary badass' thing going on there is way too much relationship drama and mom being involved in stuff. Panders to way too many audiences to be good.
W/R/T #4, I think half the episodes of season one left similar loose ends. Chill.
ReplyChristopher and Paulie weren't shaking down the Russian, he simply owed Sil money and they were picking it up. And it was Paulie's car that was stolen, not Christopher's.
ReplyLas Vegas- Danny and Delinda's baby! The show ended when they were having a memorial for AJ Cooper, then he walks in. Delinda starts screaming "Danny!The baby!ohhh! Danny Danny!" And the show ends, never to return! What's up with that??
Reply