Current Events > Worst example of shows writing themselves into a corner?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Maybe the entirety of the show Lost?

Ive never watched it myself by my brother says the Mentalist essentially did this and the core mystery the show was built on ended unsatusfyingly

Star Trek: the Next Generation

they wrote an episode where warp travel was causing damage to the fabric of space. After that, there was a new speed limit on warp travel. If the starship Enterprise wanted to go faster than the speed limit, they had to request special permission from the Federation. Then every other show featured Captain Picard requesting permission from the Federation to exceed the speed limit. It added nothing to the drama of the show, and was merely a waste of time. Eventually the writers discarded the warp speed limit, without saying anything about it

The lost writers literally said they were making it up as they went.

xue1 posted...

It added nothing to the drama of the show, and was merely a waste of time. Eventually the writers discarded the warp speed limit, without saying anything about it

They explained it away in Voyager.

Season 5 of Breaking Bad. The Nazi plot was fucking pathetic after the high of Gus Fring.

The Blacklist - just kept trying to stretch the mystery of the relationship between Red and Keene further and further

Blindspot - When they finally revealed the purpose of the tattoos and her origin everything afterwards felt underwhelming

OudeGeuze posted...

Season 5 of Breaking Bad. The Nazi plot was fucking pathetic after the high of Gus Fring.

It could have been better, but I'm used to the fact that rise-and-fall crime stories typically hit their peak around the middle; unless the criminal protagonist goes out in a blaze of glory a la Scarface, the 'fall' is typically a slow, sad descent.

xue1 posted...

Star Trek: the Next Generation

they wrote an episode where warp travel was causing damage to the fabric of space. After that, there was a new speed limit on warp travel. If the starship Enterprise wanted to go faster than the speed limit, they had to request special permission from the Federation. Then every other show featured Captain Picard requesting permission from the Federation to exceed the speed limit. It added nothing to the drama of the show, and was merely a waste of time. Eventually the writers discarded the warp speed limit, without saying anything about it

Yeah, iirc it was some kind of social commentary about the environment. You'd think with such a big change in the rules they'd think ahead of a general idea on how to solve that in the series.

At the very least they could've added a throwaway line of using a more durable form of warp travel. Wouldn't be thank unthinkable either, since the Federation had also convinced the other major factions in the Alpha Quadrant to limit their warp speed.

Family Matters

OudeGeuze posted...

Season 5 of Breaking Bad. The Nazi plot was fucking pathetic after the high of Gus Fring.

Tbf, I saw that story arc as more of an epilogue than anything.

OudeGeuze posted...

Season 5 of Breaking Bad. The Nazi plot was fucking pathetic after the high of Gus Fring.

One of the worst offenders of ruining shows is having to "scale up" every season. I much rather have what we got and see Gus as the peak antagonist, while showing the power vacuum his death left, rather than have S5 be Walt vs "evil german international businessman". Walt beating Gus was already a huge stretch.

The 1st half of Season 5 of Breaking Bad sucked.

But the 2nd half was fucking awesome tho!

Star Vs.
So many things happen that either serve no point, or are undone by the end of the episode.

The Walking Dead comes to mind imo

Tote_All_ posted...

One of the worst offenders of ruining shows is having to "scale up" every season. I much rather have what we got and see Gus as the peak antagonist, while showing the power vacuum his death left, rather than have S5 be Walt vs "evil german international businessman". Walt beating Gus was already a huge stretch.

This. Plus it showed how low Walt got with dealing with scuzzy neo Nazi bikers.

Kim_Seong-a posted...

Ive never watched it myself by my brother says the Mentalist essentially did this and the core mystery the show was built on ended unsatusfyingly

This is a pretty good one. They fucked up by one particular reveal. Spoilers for the whole show, only click if you've watched The Mentalist or don't care about it being spoiled:
They revealed that the big bad shook the main character's hand in the past. Presumably they did this before they knew who they were going to write in, and didn't think that Jane shaking someone's hand was going to narrow things down a bit. Anyway, in the end the identity is just desperately random.

I feel like the Lost writers had no fuckin clue how to wrap up the show and the final season was a complete disaster because of it

Seth Rollins vs. Rey Mysterio in a match where they had to rip out their opponent's eyeball to win.

Twin Peaks solving the death of Laura Palmer in the middle of the series due to network interference

Kim_Seong-a posted...

Ive never watched it myself by my brother says the Mentalist essentially did this and the core mystery the show was built on ended unsatusfyingly

I can agree with that, but it was at its core a cop procedural, so while the series arc may have ended on an unsatisfactory note, the individual episodes were still quite good, at least in my opinion. Probably the last procedural show I actually enjoyed.

The Fiend is introduced and is an unstoppable monster. He starts feuding with Seth Rollins. They don't want Seth to get destroyed but they can't have Fiend losing right after he got introduced so they both lose.

Kim_Seong-a posted...

Ive never watched it myself by my brother says the Mentalist essentially did this and the core mystery the show was built on ended unsatusfyingly

I'd like to know, I actually watched enough of the mentalist to know the basic premise

Lost is a near perfect example. Dexter is a good one. Any show that does a big change to the status quo never has any follow through later on.

obsolete posted...

The Fiend is introduced and is an unstoppable monster. He starts feuding with Seth Rollins. They don't want Seth to get destroyed but they can't have Fiend losing right after he got introduced so they both lose.

Similarly putting Ryback in a Hell in a Cell against CM Punk when he was still too new to be a world champion but also in the middle of a squash match winning streak. Brad Maddox interfered and sabotaged the match to get them out of it.

MC_BatCommander posted...

I feel like the Lost writers had no fuckin clue how to wrap up the show and the final season was a complete disaster because of it

Giving them too much credit, they didn't have a clue how to anything the show, not just wrap up. There was never a goal or gameplan. This is Lindelof basically:

https://youtu.be/q7R5B77iYXo

COVxy posted...

This is a pretty good one. They fucked up by one particular reveal. Spoilers for the whole show, only click if you've watched The Mentalist or don't care about it being spoiled:
They revealed that the big bad shook the main character's hand in the past. Presumably they did this before they knew who they were going to write in, and didn't think that Jane shaking someone's hand was going to narrow things down a bit. Anyway, in the end the identity is just desperately random.

Very much this. The person who eventually turned out to be Red John just knew way too much for the sake of plot convenience, even if you take his connections with the Tiger Tiger network into account.
I remember that in one of the final episodes Patrick Jane had deduced the identity of Red John to seven possible suspects that only Jane himself knew about, and Red John guessed them all correctly, which they never explained at the end aside from "yeah that was a good trick."

COVxy posted...

This is a pretty good one. They fucked up by one particular reveal. Spoilers for the whole show, only click if you've watched The Mentalist or don't care about it being spoiled:
They revealed that the big bad shook the main character's hand in the past. Presumably they did this before they knew who they were going to write in, and didn't think that Jane shaking someone's hand was going to narrow things down a bit. Anyway, in the end the identity is just desperately random.

Yes but did they reveal who was the mentalist?

no seriously who was red john? Or let me guess robin tunney was the villain all along? Or are you saying that it was just a random actor they brought in to play the big bad?

obsolete posted...

The Fiend is introduced and is an unstoppable monster. He starts feuding with Seth Rollins. They don't want Seth to get destroyed but they can't have Fiend losing right after he got introduced so they both lose.

Yeah that's what came to mind.