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."
What about what happened to Spock in Star Trek: Generations? It mentions what happened to Kirk, and Scotty, and Sulu, and Chekov, but no mention of Spock at all, and Vulcans live really long, so you'd expect some mention of him...
ReplyMeh, he's just the leader of the 'free world'. No biggie.
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ReplyWhat about Star Trek:TNG? The episode with those Bug/Parasite things that were taking over federation officers. The episode ended with a coded message apparently having been sent out to wherever the bugs were from
ReplyThis is not the last time we hear of mr. turner, he is mentioned in the high school graduation episode with minkus
ReplyEXACTLY! It was said he was teaching in another wing of the high school.
"Sadly, this fling is the apex of Xander's sexual competence throughout the entire series."
ReplyI seem to recall him bedding Faith in The Zeppo... so no.
Not to mention Anya....
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Xander is a pathetic sidekick especially with an eyepatch.
ReplyThe Buffy thing doesn't bother me. That kind of thing - "... and they were never heard from again" - is really common (as just a creepy way to end an episode) and it probably happened a lot more on Buffy, too. I suppose in smaller ways, though, since you pointed out that - yes - Buffy is quality. :-)
ReplyWell, on the Buffy one, I realize part of it is that the show was new and hadn't really committed to being "that show that never lets anything die" yet, but another part of it is quite possibly that the egg sac wasn't really hatching at the end of the episode, but decomposing (although the sound effect is added to suggest otherwise). As is stated in the episode several times, a mantis lays her eggs then finds a mate to fertilize them. As the only person confirmed to have been party to the mating, Blayne, said he mated with her in the basement of her house, then the only person who could have fertilized the eggs in the science room is the teacher that the mantis-lady kills by decapitation at the beginning of the episode, which makes little sense, as mantises bite the head off of a mate during copulation because the body of the mate fertilizes more vigorously without a head. Humans... don't work that way... (although, I can't find any definitive proof otherwise). Since no one else is missing, the eggs probably weren't fertilized and thus are just breaking down at the end of the episode.
ReplyI love you. :-) As a friend.
Awesome job with your thoughts!
What happened to Richie's older brother on Happy Days? He was in season one and never mentioned again, Very odd.
ReplyHe is never mentioned, not even in the very last episode when Joanie and Chachi got married. Ritchie was there and Mr. Cunningham mentions that he is "proud of his 2 children", but NEVER mentioned Chuck. Supposedly, according to IMDb, his character supposedly went to college on a scholarship. Fonzie was pretty much the surrogate big brother after that point.
Boy Meets World gave a nod to Mr. Turner's dissaperance and a few other charactors we never saw again. Upon graduation the nerd, Minkus, from the early elementry school seasons appears at graduation with a hint that once they entered high school he was in "gifted" classes which Sean and Cory were not in. Then at the end of the conversation he looks down the hall past the camera and yells "Hay, Mr. Turner". Sean and Cory look at eachother for a second and then just go on to another conversation. Better resloution than any of the other shows on this list.
ReplyYerp, they gave much better closure to these characters unlike Nebula, Shawn's brother from the trailer park, and Shawn's mentioned-once-but-never-seen sister.
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
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesThat doesn't really apply, since the shows on this list all continued after their unresolved plots. My Name Is Earl unfortunately just got cancelled. However, a throwaway line in Modern Family implies Earl eventually completed his list.
That was an awesome show. :-( ... Throwaway line in Modern Family? How could they know something we don't?
The show Raising Hope, which takes place in the same universe as My Name is Earl, has a line in the very first episode that implies Earl finished his list.
In 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.
Maybe so but Keeler was killed in a terrorist attack. And then just fades from everyone's memory.
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...?
Actually, this isn't ignored, it was an aborted attempt to foreshadow the Borg. The problem was they went back and decided to revise what the Borg were going to be. But that left this inadvertently hanging/no longer effective. It was less that they didn't care or forgot, they were just hoping the viewers would forget.
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
Reply Hide All See All 3 Replieswell that happens a lot though, same happened to the little sister on boy meets world, she wasn't getting ratings so why have her...
WTF?!
There were issues with her family and contract I think, and she quit. She eventually ended up a porn star, no joke.
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)
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesIn 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.
The creators will tell you that Scully is in fact immortal and that's all there is to that! Just a fact and accept it lol
I would presume that you didn't watch the finale too closely if you thought they were giving up? That whole last scene with them on the bed in the motel was Mulder talking about how when he found out the end of the world was coming he kind of gave up. But seeing Scully again reminded him that changing the future is worth fighting for. Faith is what they both need in each other and in humanity to prevent the alien apocalypse. He holds her cross (representing faith, not necessarily religious faith but faith none the less) and then they curl up with each other. Also Mulder seeing dead people wasn't really a ghost thing it was more of a plot tool to have dead characters come back for one last cameo and give him some insight into his own life.
Also the last film they don't really explain why Scully can be out in the open, I always just assumed they could never prove she had anything to do with Mulder's escape and so she just had to leave the FBI. And Mulder is just in hiding like he was for season 9 and the FBI is just glad to have him out of the way. I actually loved that movie :D although I love Dogget and Reyes too so you can shoot me now lol
immortal plots never work out well in shows or movies that continue. Makes me think of The Last Crusade and the grail. They all drank from it, but he still aged and his dad still died when you see the 4th one.
I kinda lost interest in X-files when it seemed to focus exclusively on aliens.
"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...
ReplyIt's a big universe.
@philosophizeme: Thank you for mentioning that! I've always wanted to know what happened to Jenny, and they just never mention her again.
@AtheneApatouria: Yeah, it's a big universe, so we'll probably never see her again, but now The Doctor is no longer "The Last of the Time Lords." Do they really think no one is going to notice that?