Terrible episodes of great TV shows

[DJ Yung Crunk]

Just got done watching the 30 Rock episode "The One with the Cast of Night Court".

Yikes.

Yikes.

Yikes is all I can say. It's terrible, to put it lightly. About as funny as a cyst. At this point the air of network mandate seems to hang over the show like a bad smell and the stunt guest casting is at an all time high. Not only do we have Jennifer Aniston playing a shrill harpy, but there's a semi-reunion of the not-very-good 80s sitcom "Night Court". I could forgive how blatant it all is if any of it were funny. No luck, I'm afraid. The parody of "sad reunion episodes" just kind of feels like a sad reunion episode and the main characters are so broadly characterised I wonder why they bothered.

It did get me thinking, though. Surely there are very few long running shows of quality that didn't let us down at least once. The constant grind is hard work and quality control can suffer as a result. Let us raise a glass to the episodes of our favourite shows that feel like pale, hollowed out shadows of the real thing. A toast to LOST's "Stranger in a Strange Land", Star Trek: TNG's "Code of Honour" and Doctor Who's "Timelash".

[Tokay]

Jeremiah Crichton.

/thread

[DJ Yung Crunk]

Jeremiah Crichton.

/thread

Well what was so bad about it? I've never seen Farscape

[digiman619]

ST: TNG's The Child and the Voyager one where they claimed that evolution 'dictated' that humans would one day evolve into non-sapient lizards.

[Serpentine]

The episode of Supernatural with the Native American curse with all the bugs. It was nearly a decent episode - and I wanted it to be a good one - but the timing was so awful. The way it's shot and cut, there isn't any point where several hours could have been cut out - it appears to be nearly real-time for the night-of-the-curse scenes... which means the entire night lasted only like 15-20 minutes, maybe an hour or two if you really stretched out the scene cuts.

[SlyGuyMcFly]

I've not watched Avatar past the first few episodes, but apparently The Great Divide is pretty awful.

[Malimar]

ST: TNG's The Child and the Voyager one where they claimed that evolution 'dictated' that humans would one day evolve into non-sapient lizards.

DS9: Profit and Lace, the one where Quark becomes a woman.

[Pex]

Star Trek The Next Generation

Any episode that was primarily about Lwaxana Troi, Alexander, or malfunctioning holodeck*, plus the Robin Hood episode.

*One exception: The episode where a lifeform was trying to create itself and the holodeck was full of fictional characters on The Orient Express.

Star Trek

"Spock's Brain"

Doctor Who

The Slitheen and Adipose episodes

[Peelee]

Voyager

It's "terrible episodes of great shows," now "terrible episodes in already terrible shows."

[Ravens_cry]

Star Trek The Next Generation

Any episode that was primarily about Lwaxana Troi, Alexander, or malfunctioning holodeck*, plus the Robin Hood episode.

*One exception: The episode where a lifeform was trying to create itself and the holodeck was full of fictional characters on The Orient Express.

The one where she was undercover as a spy against the Romulans was pretty good, if I recall.

[Gnoman]

The one where she was undercover as a spy against the Romulans was pretty good, if I recall.

The ship's counselor was Deanna Troi. Lwaxana Troi was her overbearing mother with no sense of mental privacy that sexually harassed Picard in most of her appearances.



On topic, My Wife And Kids was a greatly-above-average sitcom starring Damon Wayans that ran from 2001-2005. The characters were generally believable, the writing was funny, and it made relatively little use of many of the cliche sitcom elements of the era. Except for the 14th episode of the final season "Sweetheart's Day". After the main character's wife is infuriated that she received a pearl (real pearls, not imitation) necklace instead of a diamond necklace for her anniversary, she and her daughters (along with her son's wife) created the eponomys holiday for the explicit purpose of getting better presents.

[Ceiling_Squid]

I've not watched Avatar past the first few episodes, but apparently The Great Divide is pretty awful.

Yup, you heard correctly.

The writers later jokingly take the piss out of it during a breather episode in Season 3. It stands out as a pretty terrible episode in an otherwise-strong show.

The Great Divide has a blatant Aesop, simplistic characterization, and pretty-bad dialogue. Even the humor falls flat. It just feels like it was written for a much younger audience than the show ultimately appealed to.

Heck, Season 1 of Avatar occasionally has this problem, because it hadn't really found a consistent voice yet. The Great Divide was just the lowest point, because it has no real redeeming qualities to temper it.

[Ruslan]

malfunctioning holodeck*I second the entirety of the holodeck episodes being terrible. Why do they even go into that thing, given how often it breaks down and puts the users in mortal peril?? It's like "look, here's a car that randomly explodes on average once a week; let's use it for our daily commute!"

[comicshorse]

I second the entirety of the holodeck episodes being terrible. Why do they even go into that thing, given how often it breaks down and puts the users in mortal peril?? It's like "look, here's a car that randomly explodes on average once a week; let's use it for our daily commute!"

But it enables you to have sex whenever you like :smallsmile:

[Ravens_cry]

The ship's counselor was Deanna Troi. Lwaxana Troi was her overbearing mother with no sense of mental privacy that sexually harassed Picard in most of her appearances.

Oops, my bad! Personally, I love her. :smallbiggrin: She's a horrible person, but I love her. The novel Q-in-Law where Q courts her is awesome.

[Dienekes]

Yup, you heard correctly.

The writers later jokingly take the piss out of it during a breather episode in Season 3. It stands out as a pretty terrible episode in an otherwise-strong show.

The Great Divide has a blatant Aesop, simplistic characterization, and pretty-bad dialogue. Even the humor falls flat. It just feels like it was written for a much younger audience than the show ultimately appealed to.

Heck, Season 1 of Avatar occasionally has this problem, because it hadn't really found a consistent voice yet. The Great Divide was just the lowest point, because it has no real redeeming qualities to temper it.

I'd also put the Footloose episode on the list. The only redeeming thing it has was Wang Fire, which admittedly was awesome but that couldn't save that joke of an episode.

Can I put the majority of season 4 of Community? Man that show went from my favorite sitcom to just painful fast.

[Lethologica]

Episodes featuring Dorne in Game of Thrones.

The Train Job...wasn't bad, but will stand forever in infamy as "what they showed instead of the actual pilot episode."

[Dienekes]

Oh, got another. Firefly, great show, probably not as amazing as the fans always proclaim it, but still really good. But Heart of Gold and The Message were not nearly as good as the rest. The first because of a weird forced drama in a relationship I didn't particularly care about and a super stereotypical villain in an episode that thought it was saying something much more profound than it was. The second because the plot hinged on a poorly misheard phrase that would have taken about 1 second to explain if anyone had bothered to open their mouths, plus trying to force feelings for a character that the audience had no reason to feel feelings for. It did give us Jayne's hat though. But it also had a focus on Kayle/Simon (one of the least interesting parts of the show) with Kayle specifically being a total bitch to him.

I still don't see what anyone sees in that pairing.


Episodes featuring Dorne in Game of Thrones.

The Train Job...wasn't bad, but will stand forever in infamy as "what they showed instead of the actual pilot episode."

I had the pleasure of watching it in order, I quite liked Train Job. Fun little story, interesting villain, and of course the giving the money back scene.

[tomandtish]

Yup, you heard correctly.

The writers later jokingly take the piss out of it during a breather episode in Season 3. It stands out as a pretty terrible episode in an otherwise-strong show.

The Great Divide has a blatant Aesop, simplistic characterization, and pretty-bad dialogue. Even the humor falls flat. It just feels like it was written for a much younger audience than the show ultimately appealed to.

Heck, Season 1 of Avatar occasionally has this problem, because it hadn't really found a consistent voice yet. The Great Divide was just the lowest point, because it has no real redeeming qualities to temper it.

Ahh yes, that episode is pretty bad.

If you read D&D Aangvanced (http://dandaangvanced.tumblr.com/post/124801483684/dd-aangvanced-1-choose-your-own-adventure) (a screenshot web comic set in Avatar the last Airbender), it's explained as follows...

The whole thing is run by a guest DM as a drinking game one-shot adventure.

Have to admit, it explains a lot.

[Pex]

The original "V", entire season

Both miniseries were fantastic. They were hits. They tried a television series sequel and bombed with melodramatic nonsense. The remake was alright. It was an obvious coattails of the Battlestar Galactica remake, but network television was the wrong place for it. Had it been on Syfy, Spike, or USA it would have been a relative success since it would only need niche ratings.

Personal I pretend the original series sequel didn't happen and just let the miniseries be my story fulfillment.

[Mx.Silver]

Well what was so bad about it? I've never seen Farscape

Fascape is a strong ensemble show that relies a lot on character interaction and the dynamics between its main cast. The other half of its charm is the general organic, slight griminess of the setting. A bunch of lost misfits and convicts, usually in a state of running for their lives, bouncing around the under-belly of a galaxy. Jeremiah Crichton throws out all of this in favour of focussing on one of the cast moping around while stuck on an island for a couple of weeks, thinking they've been abandoned but then everyone comes back for them and it's all okay again. It also occurs fairly early-on in the first season, which helps neither it nor the season as a whole.

[Kislath]

I thought that Night Court was a great show.

[JoshL]

Can I put the majority of season 4 of Community? Man that show went from my favorite sitcom to just painful fast.

Well, there was that gas leak....

Seriously though, I like many of these episodes, even though they aren't the best. Jeremiah Crichton, for example, I do like by itself, but it shouldn't have been so soon in the first season. Would have had a better impact if they had more time to establish the ensemble first. Taking The Stone also gets a lot of hate, but I love that episode.

[Reddish Mage]

Every episode after season one of Once Upon a Time.

[An Enemy Spy]

Come Along Home, Fascination, and Profit and Lace are probably the only episodes of Star Trek DS9 that I can't find even one good thing to say about. DS9 is one of my favorite shows ever but man, how did the same people who made episodes like The Die is Cast and In the Pale Moonlight come up with these stinkers?

[Ceiling_Squid]

I'd also put the Footloose episode on the list. The only redeeming thing it has was Wang Fire, which admittedly was awesome but that couldn't save that joke of an episode.


I would consider the Footloose parody the weakest of season 3, but I'm hesitant to put it on the list.

I do indeed blame Wang Fire for this.

I think what saves the episode from the list is only the fact that the cast dynamics and humor were already firing on all cylinders by that point in the show. Even a silly episode with a stupid premise would still manage to be vastly more entertaining than early dreck like The Great Divide.

Flameo, my good hotman.

[Tokay]

Fascape is a strong ensemble show that relies a lot on character interaction and the dynamics between its main cast. The other half of its charm is the general organic, slight griminess of the setting. A bunch of lost misfits and convicts, usually in a state of running for their lives, bouncing around the under-belly of a galaxy. Jeremiah Crichton throws out all of this in favour of focussing on one of the cast moping around while stuck on an island for a couple of weeks, thinking they've been abandoned but then everyone comes back for them and it's all okay again. It also occurs fairly early-on in the first season, which helps neither it nor the season as a whole.

There's also the extremely predictable storyline, where Farscape normally goes out of its way to subvert the normal science fiction tropes.

And then there's the beard...

[Kitten Champion]

Come Along Home, Fascination, and Profit and Lace are probably the only episodes of Star Trek DS9 that I can't find even one good thing to say about. DS9 is one of my favorite shows ever but man, how did the same people who made episodes like The Die is Cast and In the Pale Moonlight come up with these stinkers?

I suspect lack of time/money had a great deal to do with it. DS9 was a really ambitious series, but sometimes because of that you've got little to work with for that week's production money-wise and you can't necessarily write a gem like Duet every time, so you simply have to pull out a script quickly (either from mothballs from deferred Trek scripts or whatever ideas you have been setting aside because they're less than stellar) and you just have to run with it.

Thankfully, when they did have money/time they used it with scripts that warranted it. Which happened very rarely on its sister spin-off unfortunately.

As to the topic, I would say BSG was particularly plagued with such lows, to the point that they've overtook the highs in people's minds.

[Aotrs Commander]

The one that immediately springs to mind is CSI Vegas Episode 200 (Mascara).

The worst episode in the series entire 15-season run. Particular bonus for being a landmark episode directed by a guest director, the guy who did Exorcist. It ought to have been something along lines of Stargate's 200th episode (something so funny I literally threw up laughing1) or at the very least, like that two-parter directed by Quentin Tarentio, which was a good couple of episodes.

Instead, we got something that made me question whether the writer/director had ever even watched the show.

(If anyone is interested in the specifics, I ranted about it (largely to myself, apparently...!) here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?111325-CSI-Episode-200-%28Mascara%29-What-the-frag-Spoilers).



1And as a Lich that's no mean feat to accomplish.

[comicshorse]

'From B5 'Grey 17 is Missing'. I heard JMS has offered to personally apologize to every fan for that episode and quite frankly he should

For me I loved 'The Unit' and so loathe 'The Spear of Destiny' episode because what a relatively realistic show about the Special Forces doesn't need is an episode where they find the Spear of Longinus and the cult that has protected it for thousands of years at the urgings of a sinister cabal of fundamentalist Christians who apparently control the U.S Governemnt

[Wardog]

Any episode of Star Trek that has the Aesop "Letting a sentiant race go extinct is better than interfering in their development".

The Doctor Who episode where the moon was an egg. (Which combined some really weird moralising comparable to the aforementioned ST episodes, with a plot so scientifically stupid even by Doctor Who standards it just made my brain melt).

[comicshorse]

I'd just managed to repress the memory of that episode of Doctor Who and now it all comes flooding back :smalleek:

[Aotrs Commander]

Yeah, Kill the Moon was probably the worst episode of Doctor Who I've ever seen, from either generation. *shudder*

[tensai_oni]

The Great Divide was dumb and forced a conflict between Katara and Sokka in a very predictable way. But the changing style of flashbacks depending on who's speaking was a nice touch, and the moral of the episode was something you don't usually find in a childrens' show. And I can kinda see why but kudos to the writers for having the guts to do it anyway.

I see nothing wrong with Footloose, the episode was fun. The only weak part is that the Gaang is messing around wasting time knowing they are on a time critical mission, but then they do that a lot in season 3.

I was going to mention Firefly but Dienekes already said everything I wanted to.

Steven Universe has two episodes that spring to mind: Island Adventure is a filler set up right in the middle of a quickly developing story arc, except for Steven it only really features Lars and Sadie who are both being horrible people (in character for the former, not the latter), and it frankly doesn't make sense for them to be stuck on the island for so long. At least the song was nice.
Sadie's Song - another borderline filler but this one shows a message that is contrary to what happened in the episode. No, it's not that Sadie never wanted to sing. She was going to on her own terms before her mom and Steven jumped the hype bandwagon and acted like it was all about them. The episode right before this one also dealt about the same thing - overbearing/overprotective parents, and was better about it. I have no problems with the crossdressing though unlike some parts of the internet who go wild about it, and not in a good way.

I came to the conclusion that Sadie and Lars are fine as supporting characters but whenever an episode centers on them it tends to be weaker. Horror Club is the exception.

Gundam Build Fighters is a fun and refreshing show but it has its share of weak episodes and one springs to mind exceptionally: episode 17, Model of the Heart. This is the episode where Mao, who was a rival but a very sympathetic one, has to face the main characters and knows he is going to lose. For the whole episode he desperately tries to find a way to even the odds, he even asks his master for help but the master is being an unhelpful jerk. And then, tired and worn out, he has to fight Sei and Reiji - and loses, and cries. What the hell Sunrise? The fight wasn't even that good. In fact it was one of the, if not THE weakest from the show.

[Kato]

Any episode of Star Trek that has the Aesop "Letting a sentiant race go extinct is better than interfering in their development".

The Doctor Who episode where the moon was an egg. (Which combined some really weird moralising comparable to the aforementioned ST episodes, with a plot so scientifically stupid even by Doctor Who standards it just made my brain melt).


I'd just managed to repress the memory of that episode of Doctor Who and now it all comes flooding back :smalleek:
I'm always baffled when a person tells me KtM wasn't that bad... I mean, er, the idea behind it is... okay. But everything about the execution and the morale and just everything was so bad it makes everything else look great. EVERYTHING.


The Great Divide was dumb and forced a conflict between Katara and Sokka in a very predictable way. But the changing style of flashbacks depending on who's speaking was a nice touch, and the moral of the episode was something you don't usually find in a childrens' show. And I can kinda see why but kudos to the writers for having the guts to do it anyway.

Gundam Build Fighters is a fun and refreshing show but it has its share of weak episodes and one springs to mind exceptionally: episode 17, Model of the Heart. This is the episode where Mao, who was a rival but a very sympathetic one, has to face the main characters and knows he is going to lose. For the whole episode he desperately tries to find a way to even the odds, he even asks his master for help but the master is being an unhelpful jerk. And then, tired and worn out, he has to fight Sei and Reiji - and loses, and cries. What the hell Sunrise? The fight wasn't even that good. In fact it was one of the, if not THE weakest from the show.

... I never really disliked Great Divide. I guess I can see why people do and by Avatar standards it's not great but... really bad? I just never got people's hate over it.


GBF had a few weak episodes... this was an occassion where the writers got themselves in a corner I guess? I can't recall the details but Mao was too aware he had to lose, so...

[DJ Yung Crunk]

Yeah, Kill the Moon was probably the worst episode of Doctor Who I've ever seen, from either generation. *shudder*

It was bad, but let's not go nuts.

Have you seen Time-Flight? Kill the Moon might have been heavy handed and sanctimonious but at least it wasn't searingly incompetent and directed by someone who had completely checked out.

[Aotrs Commander]

It was bad, but let's not go nuts.

Have you seen Time-Flight? Kill the Moon might have been heavy handed and sanctimonious but at least it wasn't searingly incompetent and directed by someone who had completely checked out.

I guess I must have (probably?), since I watched pretty much from the end of Tom Baker to Sylvester McCoy when it was being shown as omnibuses on UK Gold. And I do remember Adric being killed off. But I actually don't really remember much of it. (I would have been about twenty years ago and I only ever saw 'em once.) But evidently, if I did see it, I apparently didn't find it terrible enough to warrent rememberance; but as I would have been in my mid-teens at the time, it's entirely possible that I was not at a stage where I would analyse anything, particularly.

(I think that is a trait I've picked up because of all the Funny Internet Reviewers I watch and also from ponythread.)

(I did say "probably the worst" though...!)

[DJ Yung Crunk]

I guess I must have (probably?), since I watched pretty much from the end of Tom Baker to Sylvester McCoy when it was being shown as omnibuses on UK Gold. And I do remember Adric being killed off. But I actually don't really remember much of it. (I would have been about twenty years ago and I only ever saw 'em once.) But evidently, if I did see it, I apparently didn't find it terrible enough to warrent rememberance; but as I would have been in my mid-teens at the time, it's entirely possible that I was not at a stage where I would analyse anything, particularly.

(I think that is a trait I've picked up because of all the Funny Internet Reviewers I watch and also from ponythread.)

(I did say "probably the worst" though...!)

Opinions range from "the absolute nadir of Doctor Who in every medium" to "okay it was bad but let's keep our heads on".

I am squarely in the former camp.

[Malimar]

Remember when the worst thing whovians had to complain about was Love & Monsters? I miss those days.

(For my money, the worst of Doctor Who is any episode with River Goddamn Song, but I think I'm in the minority in that analysis.)

[Lethologica]

Is Great Divide worse than Cave of Two Lovers? How about Painted Lady?

[Peelee]

Remember when the worst thing whovians had to complain about was Love & Monsters? I miss those days.

(For my money, the worst of Doctor Who is any episode with River Goddamn Song, but I think I'm in the minority in that analysis.)

I'll join that small group, for what it's worth.

[ryuplaneswalker]

Is Great Divide worse than Cave of Two Lovers? How about Painted Lady?

Oh the Painted Lady was painful

"Let halt the plot completely to do an episode about Pollution"

[Androgeus]

Hey guys, Kill the Moon is amazing. It means that the Silurians went into hiding because they were scared of an egg.

Also we should all know Doctor Who is a terrible show with great episodes, not the other way around.

[DJ Yung Crunk]

Also we should all know Doctor Who is a terrible show with great episodes, not the other way around.

http://i.imgur.com/DOLGcpW.jpg

...o-okay...

[GolemsVoice]

X-Files over its long run had a bunch of awful episodes, but the one I always remember was the one where they investigate a rape in a nursing home which was probably committed by ghosts, and Mulder, who is usually prepared to believe even the most absurd nonsense, is totally derisive of the idea and mocks the patients. Way to be a huge idiot, Fox.

[ryuplaneswalker]

Hey guys, Kill the Moon is amazing. It means that the Silurians went into hiding because they were scared of an egg.

You mean just like all those health nuts in the mid 90s when they were told that eggs would give them Super Cancer Aids?

[Kitten Champion]

Is there any episode of Stargate SG-1 remotely comparable to Emancipation in awfulness? I can't think of one, most of their nadir is in my mind just somewhat forgettable that it's hard to point to. Unlike Star Trek where there's usually a fairly big delineation between the bad, the okay, and the good.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Think of any great TV show.

The clip show episode.

[Rodin]

Is there any episode of Stargate SG-1 remotely comparable to Emancipation in awfulness? I can't think of one, most of their nadir is in my mind just somewhat forgettable that it's hard to point to. Unlike Star Trek where there's usually a fairly big delineation between the bad, the okay, and the good.

If I recall correctly, that was the episode where the director had an old Star Trek script that hadn't made the cut and was obsessed with trying to get the episode made. He saw the chance with SG-1 and put Carter in a role that was probably written for Troi.

For my own nomination, Babylon 5's Believers. B5 had its fair share of bad episodes (especially in season 5), but Dr. Franklin went so far off the rails in that episode. From operating on a minor without their parent's consent, to being surprised when said family takes their religion seriously, to being dumb enough to send the kid away with a family that now thinks the kid is a soulless demon. What did you think was going to happen, Mr Xenobiology expert?

[turkishproverb]

Remember when the worst thing whovians had to complain about was Love & Monsters? I miss those days.

...No. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/twindilemma/)

No I do not.

[Fri]

Think of any great TV show.

The clip show episode.

Community have something to say for you.

(The few clip show episodes are some of the best episodes there. But it's Community, so it might be cheating.)

[Kato]

Think of any great TV show.

The clip show episode.

Ah, that's not true. Kill la Kill's recap episode was great. And Supernatural did a decent job with "Clip Show". Or Avatar's clip, er, theater episode.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Ah, that's not true. Kill la Kill's recap episode was great. And Supernatural did a decent job with "Clip Show". Or Avatar's clip, er, theater episode.

Not familiar with Kill la Kill (or Community for that matter) and I can't say I recall the Supernatural episode.

If you mean to imply that what Avatar did was comparable to a clip show, then the term "clip show" has ceased to be descriptive.

[DJ Yung Crunk]

...No. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/twindilemma/)

No I do not.

Not even the worst Sixth Doctor episode.

Yes, I'm talking about you, Timelash!

[Eldan]

Ah, that's not true. Kill la Kill's recap episode was great. And Supernatural did a decent job with "Clip Show". Or Avatar's clip, er, theater episode.

Neon Genesis Evangelion did it alright, too. The first half is basically an Internal Affairs investigation into the first half of the series, and the second half of the episode is actually new content.


Remember when the worst thing whovians had to complain about was Love & Monsters? I miss those days.

(For my money, the worst of Doctor Who is any episode with River Goddamn Song, but I think I'm in the minority in that analysis.)

I don't think you are. There were always a lot of detractors in the thread when she showed up again in around seasons 6 and 7. For my money, The Wedding of River Song is still the worst episode of New Who.

[Dienekes]

Community have something to say for you.

(The few clip show episodes are some of the best episodes there. But it's Community, so it might be cheating.)

Does it really count? Since Community's clip show episodes were specifically to mock clip show episodes. And featured all new scenes.

Man, I loved that show.

[ben-zayb]

Every episode after season one of Once Upon a Time.Ooh! Of course, that statement operates under the assumption that it was a "great TV show" (because the thread specifies "great"). It feels more like a show with a great premise, but okay execution at best. Personally, I think it jumped the shark somewhere between season 2 and 3.

Ugh, when will I get a Fables live-action tv/film series?

[turkishproverb]

Not even the worst Sixth Doctor episode.

Yes, I'm talking about you, Timelash!

I'd argue, but I'm distracted by the avatar.

[Ashen Lilies]

Ah, that's not true. Kill la Kill's recap episode was great. And Supernatural did a decent job with "Clip Show". Or Avatar's clip, er, theater episode.

Legend of Korra's clip show episode from Season 4 was pretty okay too. It wasn't good, but the writers managed to save it from being terrible by announcing up front that they had had to do a clip show episode due to budgetary reasons because they were actively in the process of being screwed by Nickelodeon, and managed to pull together some last minute footage and acting to bring it in with some decent character moments, a little meta-introspection, and a great joke. It was a worthy attempt.

Speaking of, though, I'll nominate 'Endgame' for being a craptacular finale to the otherwise solid (not 'great' yet, but solid) Season 1. I didn't like 'Skeletons in the Closet' because I felt the reveal of Amon's identity, but 'Endgame' was just a total flop that cheapened Lin Beifong's amazing sacrifice from the previous episode, had tons of plot holes and seriously questionable Idiot Ball decisions by both Amon and Hiroshi, and then tied everything together with a rushed deus ex machina that felt cheap and unearned, while simultaneously gutting Korra's character development up to this point.
http://41.media.tumblr.com/9d72229520166ec6512b81ad0bc59d07/tumblr_inline_o63npvVf0f1rku3fs_500.jpg

[Knaight]

I tend not to remember episode titles, but I can remember characters who ruin every episode they're in. So, a brief list:

Every Deep Space Nine episode that features Vick Fontaine in a significant role, with the exception of the heist episode.
Every Next Generation episode that features Q. The Q continuum was a mistake, as far as I'm concerned.
The finale of Season 1 of The Unbreakable Kimmy Shmidt. It's not really great to begin with, but the other episodes are generally enjoyable. That one just sucked. I can go on at length about the specifics of how it sucked.
Every Clone Wars (the 3D animation one) episode in which Jar Jar Binks features really heavily.
The Child-Bartlet episodes of West Wing tend to be weaker, but the character-bad episode correlation is a lot weaker for that show.
Breaking Bad episodes that focus heavily on Skyler, or Elliot and Gretchen tended to be weaker. I'm not sure any of them drop to terrible though, and "The Fly" is weaker than any of them.


If a looser definition of episode is used, Serenity can be called a terrible episode of Firefly. Yes, it's technically a movie, but it pretty much fits.

[DJ Yung Crunk]

I'd argue, but I'm distracted by the avatar.

The Twin Dilemma is awful. But I'm not sure why that one is picked on more than any others. It had some great concepts and the outstanding quality of the novelisation is proof of that. But there are some classic serials that don't even have that slight distinction. Is it really worse than The Dominators or Time and the Rani?

Then there's New Who, and the lion's share of that makes The Twin Dilemma look comparably decent. I can count on my hand the number of New Who episodes better than The Twin Dilemma.

[Ceiling_Squid]

Agreed on "Endgame", mainly because of the deus ex machina at the end completely puncturing my interest in the show at the time.

I actually liked most of the conclusion (Taarlok's murder-suicide of Amon may have been a waste of a villain for both characters, but it was quite an effective, gutpunch way to go). Things were looking sour, the good guys had won the battle at great cost...and suddenly in pops ghost Aang to fix everything.

The last few minutes ruined it for me. Wrapped up way too neatly.

It's less of a problem when you can marathon the show now, but at the time it was a long wait until Season 2. Without a solid dangling plot hook, I had no desire to see what happened next. I've since been watching the rest of the show and love it, but it took me a long time to go back to it.

I suspect it was written that way because there was no guarantee of more seasons being made, but it was still a hasty asspull.

I can even forgive the bungled love triangle, but the last few minutes of your first season are a very bad place to stumble.

[Aotrs Commander]

Agreed on "Endgame", mainly because of the deus ex machina at the end completely puncturing my interest in the show at the time.

I actually liked most of the conclusion (Taarlok's murder-suicide of Amon may have been a waste of a villain for both characters, but it was quite an effective, gutpunch way to go). Things were looking sour, the good guys had won the battle at great cost...and suddenly in pops ghost Aang to fix everything.

The last few minutes ruined it for me. Wrapped up way too neatly.

It's less of a problem when you can marathon the show now, but at the time it was a long wait until Season 2. Without a solid dangling plot hook, I had no desire to see what happened next. I've since been watching the rest of the show and love it, but it took me a long time to go back to it.

I suspect it was written that way because there was no guarantee of more seasons being made, but it was still a hasty asspull.

I can even forgive the bungled love triangle, but the last few minutes of your first season are a very bad place to stumble.

I personally found Korra's first season to be very good up until any point in which Amoron was involved. (Yes, that is the spelling his name deserves.) I found him to be about the worst, mosy ridiculously contrived villain I've had the misfortune to ever see and his every scene caused me to spew profanities of derision at the writers at the screen. I found him less a character and more of a badly-implemented writing construct - so bad, I didn't hate him as a character, I was angry at the writers; he killed my immersion stone-dead with every appearance.

(Which I'm given to understand, was pretty much the exact opposite oif the things everyone else liked and dislkied about season 1.)

I found season 2 to be much more preferable, though the
removal of the chain of former Avatars and release of the spirit-world
I found sufficiently questionable I haven't gotten aroud to tackling the last two seasons yet, though they're ready to go on DVD when I'm set to go.




Is there any episode of Stargate SG-1 remotely comparable to Emancipation in awfulness? I can't think of one, most of their nadir is in my mind just somewhat forgettable that it's hard to point to. Unlike Star Trek where there's usually a fairly big delineation between the bad, the okay, and the good.

No.

Thoguh that episode in the later season where that painfully obviously set them up (some sort of satelite thingy was involved as I recall) so the Ori could blow up the Prometheusor something comes a close second. It was predictable, cliché, dumb and killed off recurring characters for no good reason.

On checking: it was season 9's Ethon.

[Peelee]

Think of any great TV show.

The clip show episode.

Clerks Uncensored.

Their clip show episode was brilliant. Even moreso by how ABC handled it.

[DomaDoma]

I guess "terrible chapters of good books" isn't common enough to get its own listing, but: The Halfling's Gem. I don't remember what it was called, but just calling it "De Worstest Chapter" should suffice to jog everyone's memory.

Bustling Arabian Nights Market: *filled with snake charmers and dancing girls and PEOPLE TESTING CROSSBOWS ON LIVE SLAVES*
Wulfgar: Can I go back to barbarism now?
Drizzt: Wulfgar, have some respect for other cultures.
Most Offensive Sleazy Merchant Ever To Appear in an Arabian Nights Market: Are you interested in falling for the most obvious ambush ever?
Party: Well, in the severely unlikely event he's telling the truth, then we have no time to lose by following his directions! (By the way, we have no idea what camels are.)
Party: *gets ambushed, loses all the time they could have lost rescuing the slaves instead*

[Peelee]

Most Offensive Sleazy Merchant Ever To Appear in an Arabian Nights Market

Elan Sleazebaggano?

[Liquor Box]

I've always disliked episodes that take place mostly in the dreams of the protagonist. In particular those episodes of the Sopranos.

[Serpentine]

The episode of Supernatural with the Native American curse with all the bugs. It was nearly a decent episode - and I wanted it to be a good one - but the timing was so awful. The way it's shot and cut, there isn't any point where several hours could have been cut out - it appears to be nearly real-time for the night-of-the-curse scenes... which means the entire night lasted only like 15-20 minutes, maybe an hour or two if you really stretched out the scene cuts.

And the latest episode totally refers to how crap that episode was :biggrin:

[Hunter Noventa]

SG-1's clip shows were pretty amusing, since they were parsing out missions for the fake show-within-a-show that was a cover for the Stargate program.

[Rodin]

SG-1's clip shows were pretty amusing, since they were parsing out missions for the fake show-within-a-show that was a cover for the Stargate program.

For that matter, there's the first Senator Kinsey episode, which was a clip show. The fact that Kinsey kinda had a point about how inept the Goa'uld were made him a pretty interesting character. At least, until they turned him into an evil dumbass in later seasons.

[Marlowe]

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon was a surprisingly watchable show considering that it's LIVE ACTION Sailor Moon apparently done with the budget of a toothpaste commercial.

But Act 4 featured Usagi, Rei, and Ami crashing a costume party with Usagi wearing a bulky furry suit that lets her neither see properly nor transform when she needs to, Nephrite and Tuxedo Mask having a slo-mo fight scene that looks like a dance-off to two different pieces of music, a monster of the week that replicates itself and which is defeated by the girls using improvised choreography to synchronise their attacks (exactly like the Evangelion episode with Isafel, only without the prep time that made it credible) and Nephrite exiting stage left with the most hilariously terrible attempt at a cape swish in the history of performing arts.

It's still FUN, but it's like every single flaw the show and the entire Toku genre possesses distilled into one episode.

[Legato Endless]

My obligatory Next Gen contribution: The Outrageous Okana. The opening to the episode begins with the absolute worst way to introduce a character, by preaching to us why we should like him. It never gets any better.

Angel's The Girl in Question. The final darkly tragic story arc is interrupted with a bizarre one off episode. The B plot is a depressing tale of ignorant parents being deceived about their daughter's death. The A plot...is a terrible cuckoldry fanfic featuring characters being portrayed by Angel and Spike, whose past depictions are torn asunder to make them the lapdogs of what's either a cloying juvenile fantasy or an outright sexual predator.

[Velaryon]

Speaking of Angel, I would like to nominate the entire arc featuring his son Connor, starting with whatever third season episode features teenage Connor coming back through the portal to Earth, and continuing until he was gone from the show. Seriously, Connor has to be the only character in all of fiction who makes Anakin Skywalker look mature and well-adjusted.


I tend not to remember episode titles, but I can remember characters who ruin every episode they're in. So, a brief list:

Every Deep Space Nine episode that features Vick Fontaine in a significant role, with the exception of the heist episode.
Every Next Generation episode that features Q. The Q continuum was a mistake, as far as I'm concerned.
The finale of Season 1 of The Unbreakable Kimmy Shmidt. It's not really great to begin with, but the other episodes are generally enjoyable. That one just sucked. I can go on at length about the specifics of how it sucked.
Every Clone Wars (the 3D animation one) episode in which Jar Jar Binks features really heavily.
The Child-Bartlet episodes of West Wing tend to be weaker, but the character-bad episode correlation is a lot weaker for that show.
Breaking Bad episodes that focus heavily on Skyler, or Elliot and Gretchen tended to be weaker. I'm not sure any of them drop to terrible though, and "The Fly" is weaker than any of them.


If a looser definition of episode is used, Serenity can be called a terrible episode of Firefly. Yes, it's technically a movie, but it pretty much fits.

I disagree with you about Q - I found him a lot of fun more often than not, though not every appearance of his was great. However, I absolutely agree about the Jar Jar episodes of Clone Wars and to a (slightly) lesser extent about Serenity.

However, my absolute least favorite part of Clone Wars was the entire arc on Mortis with the Father, the Son, and the Daughter. Just... everything about them. There was nothing that could have been changed about those episodes to make me like them. I just wish they'd never been done.

[Knaight]

However, my absolute least favorite part of Clone Wars was the entire arc on Mortis with the Father, the Son, and the Daughter. Just... everything about them. There was nothing that could have been changed about those episodes to make me like them. I just wish they'd never been done.

Oh yes, those episodes. I'm entirely with you here, that was a low point for the show; it was an outlier of terribleness way outside the range that includes every other episode. The concept sucked, the new characters sucked, the changes made to the old characters for the duration of the arc to get them into the arc sucked, the implication on the setting sucked, and it was in general a giant pile of nonsense that didn't even tie into anything else meaningfully and as such could have been cut entirely.

[Legato Endless]

Clone Wars is a funny series in that you can track quality by topic with some success, droid entries are often bad, the political and comedy episodes are constantly painful. My least favorite is rather eclectic. The painfully long Underwater Mon Calamari saga. There are worse entires, but even the really bad ones like R2 being tortured and interrogated are usually one episode.

But the Ackbar story slinks up to you after you have grown complacent and assumed the dregs of season 1 were done. But no, we get 3 full episodes dedicated to what does not maintain interest for one. What is worse, the plot is only maintained because Ackbar insists on everyone following the orders of the new King, a clueless teenager. So we get to wait as our otherwise relatively competent heroes have to wait hand and foot for this brat to have his whole bildungsroman before they can save the world. Because...I guess Ackbar is an ignorant absolute Monarchist?

[Aotrs Commander]

but even the really bad ones like R2 being tortured and interrogated are usually one episode.

As, being on UK TV shedules, my viewing of Clone Wars was somewhat electic, I must have missed that epsiode, but have to ask - how could watching Artoo get totured possibily be BAD...?

[Lethologica]

As, being on UK TV shedules, my viewing of Clone Wars was somewhat electic, I must have missed that epsiode, but have to ask - how could watching Artoo get totured possibily be BAD...?
It does seem kind of stupid, just at the conceptual level. I mean, what even is droid torture?

[comicshorse]

It does seem kind of stupid, just at the conceptual level. I mean, what even is droid torture?

Show them catalogues of this years models and point out how out of date they are ?

[Rogar Demonblud]

Apparently it involves turning them upside down and heating their 'feet'.

Or putting them on a rack and ripping them apart.

Or making them serve drinks on Jabba's sail barge.:smalleek:

[An Enemy Spy]

As, being on UK TV shedules, my viewing of Clone Wars was somewhat electic, I must have missed that epsiode, but have to ask - how could watching Artoo get totured possibily be BAD...?

Are you possibly suggesting that you don't like R2-D2? Because R2-D2 is the best character in all of Star Wars.

[Zevox]

The Show Stoppers, from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I was never a fan of the Cutie Mark Crusaders episodes in general, but that one took the cake, between making it blindingly obvious to everyone but the Crusaders themselves what the talents that they should get their Cutie Marks for are (thereby ruining whatever merit there was to their whole shtick of trying to figure that out) and the incredibly irritating song sequence at the end (yes, I know it was deliberately bad, still doesn't make me like it any more), that's one that I just do not re-watch, ever.


Oh the Painted Lady was painful

"Let halt the plot completely to do an episode about Pollution"
Let's be honest here, the entire first half of season 3 halted the plot completely. The only things that mattered there were Zuko's bits of character development in the middle and Katara learning Bloodbending, and even that wasn't that huge. The plot didn't really start up again until the Day of Black Sun. And really, that's not that different from how most of season 1 worked, with the gang hopping across the world on the way to the North Pole - it's just more frustrating since at that point there was a very serious plot going on, and it wound up feeling like there wasn't enough time after the Day of Black Sun to satisfactorily resolve things. (In particular it was a shame that Zuko had so little time as a member of the gang, and most of the episodes between him joining and the finale had him with just one of the group instead of everybody.)

My own submission for worst episode of Avatar, incidentally, is Nightmares and Daydreams. I never felt so much like I was watching a show aimed strictly at kids as I did watching that one. It really had no redeeming qualities to me. Even The Great Divide I can enjoy some bits of - the action is still good, the way the flashbacks are presented is nice, the characters still have a moment or two here and there. It's one of the weakest of the show, no doubt, but not, I think, the absolute worst.


Think of any great TV show.

The clip show episode.
Nah, The Legend of Korra actually did that well. For part of it Mako got to tell some characters were introduced in seasons 3 and 4 about the godawful love triangle from season 1 and 2, making some good jokes about it along the way, and Varric's complete nonsense retelling of the series in the third part was fun. Korra and Asami's more serious bit was meh, but worth sitting through to see the other parts. I actually don't skip that when I re-watch the show.


Agreed on "Endgame", mainly because of the deus ex machina at the end completely puncturing my interest in the show at the time.

I actually liked most of the conclusion (Taarlok's murder-suicide of Amon may have been a waste of a villain for both characters, but it was quite an effective, gutpunch way to go). Things were looking sour, the good guys had won the battle at great cost...and suddenly in pops ghost Aang to fix everything.

The last few minutes ruined it for me. Wrapped up way too neatly.

It's less of a problem when you can marathon the show now, but at the time it was a long wait until Season 2. Without a solid dangling plot hook, I had no desire to see what happened next. I've since been watching the rest of the show and love it, but it took me a long time to go back to it.

I suspect it was written that way because there was no guarantee of more seasons being made, but it was still a hasty asspull.

I can even forgive the bungled love triangle, but the last few minutes of your first season are a very bad place to stumble.
Yeah, it's not easy to pick a worst episode of Korra's first two books, since there were more than a few bad ones, but I think that distinctly unsatisfying ending does put the finale of season 1 on top.

Though of course the show didn't actually get good until book 3 and 4 anyway, so, trying to think of a worst of those, hm... well, the thing is, even the worst of those don't qualify as terrible in my mind. The episode where Tenzin's kids go looking for Korra might, if it weren't for the fact that the awful of Meelo and lesser-but-still-noticeable annoyance of Ikki are offset by the awesome of Old Toph.


However, my absolute least favorite part of Clone Wars was the entire arc on Mortis with the Father, the Son, and the Daughter. Just... everything about them. There was nothing that could have been changed about those episodes to make me like them. I just wish they'd never been done.
...that sounds vaguely familiar despite me having never watched the show for some reason. Was it the part that was eventually tied into the novels in the form of that godawful totally-not-a-Lovecraft-ripoff villain, Abeloth? I remember I looked up her entry on Wookiepedia way back after finishing those books just to see if there was anything there that the novels didn't cover adequately, and finding out she tied into some episodes of a TV show I hadn't watched.

Looking it up, yes, that's exactly why it sounded familiar. Sheesh, so those episodes were so bad they corrupted other parts of the Star Wars EU...

[Manga Shoggoth]

Think of any great TV show.

The clip show episode.

To add to the exceptions - the Martian Successor Nadesico mid-series clip show, which worked because it was from the point of view of the "show within the show" of Gekiganger, and because it was clearly a spoof of slip shows.

But you are quite right - clip show are generally grim episodes, and we remember the exceptions because they are exceptions.

[Hunter Noventa]

To add to the exceptions - the Martian Successor Nadesico mid-series clip show, which worked because it was from the point of view of the "show within the show" of Gekiganger, and because it was clearly a spoof of slip shows.

But you are quite right - clip show are generally grim episodes, and we remember the exceptions because they are exceptions.

Oh god yes, that was wonderful. But the Nadesico series itself was generally really good.

[Quirinus_Obsidian]

My obligatory Next Gen contribution: The Outrageous Okana. The opening to the episode begins with the absolute worst way to introduce a character, by preaching to us why we should like him. It never gets any better.

Angel's The Girl in Question. The final darkly tragic story arc is interrupted with a bizarre one off episode. The B plot is a depressing tale of ignorant parents being deceived about their daughter's death. The A plot...is a terrible cuckoldry fanfic featuring characters being portrayed by Angel and Spike, whose past depictions are torn asunder to make them the lapdogs of what's either a cloying juvenile fantasy or an outright sexual predator.

Re: The Outrageous Okona. OMGs, you and me both. That episode was the nadir of TNG. There was no going lower than that; except maybe Space Rape (The Child) or Space Racism (Code of Honor). I don't know if you are a fan of internet reviews, but I found this one (http://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/t130.php) of TOO amazing. It's an interesting introduction to SF Debris' reviews. Or maybe you are a fan and wanted a refresher :)

Re: The Girl in Question - This episode was not terrible; it was just in a bad place in the series. I think that this one would have been something from the 6th season, or from before Fred was Illyria-ized.

My votes are the pretty standard stuff; Buffy "Beer Bad" and "Beauty and the Beasts", "Love and Monsters", "Kill the Moon" from Doctor Who, the aforementioned "Code of Honor" and "The Child" from TNG, "Profit and Lace" from DS9, and pretty much 75% of Enterprise. The only redeeming factor in Enterprise was Hoshi. Seemed like she and Reed were the only competent members of the entire crew. I'll also throw in most of S4 of True Blood (Marnie was just insulting to true Wiccans), and yes, I thought that TB was a great series because of it's complete and utter embrace of it's insanity.

[golentan]

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya remains one of my favorite animes.

Endless Eights murdered it for me.

For those who never watched it, Endless Eight the resident Divinity Unaware has trapped the cast in a time loop consisting of the month of august, which they are forced to live through thousands and thousands of times until they meet the unspoken desire of the godlike teenager who controls their destiny.

They made us the audience experience the timeloop. They had 8 episodes of the same episode over and over with different animation, tone, and cinematography. The same damn episode, 8 times, in a season that had been much anticipated but only had a 14 episode run.

I wanted to spit brimstone.

[Hunter Noventa]

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya remains one of my favorite animes.

Endless Eights murdered it for me.

For those who never watched it, Endless Eight the resident Divinity Unaware has trapped the cast in a time loop consisting of the month of august, which they are forced to live through thousands and thousands of times until they meet the unspoken desire of the godlike teenager who controls their destiny.

They made us the audience experience the timeloop. They had 8 episodes of the same episode over and over with different animation, tone, and cinematography. The same damn episode, 8 times, in a season that had been much anticipated but only had a 14 episode run.

I wanted to spit brimstone.

Yeah, that's exactly why I skipped the second series. The books, if i recall, as it's been a while, basically had one or two repeats, then the resolution.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Jeremiah Crichton.

/thread
Funny thing is--it's not a great episode, but I never remembered it being all that terrible.

Now, on the other hand, that Doctor Who episode that pitted Nine against fart aliens? That was a two-parter? That was a special sort of bad.

[Giggling Ghast]

The Principal and the Pauper from The Simpsons, which revealed in a rather nonsensical fashion that Skinner was an imposter.

I know, I know, everything after Season 3/4/7/12/18/46/204 sucked. But this was baaaaaaaaad. It's all but officially retconned out of existence.

[Legato Endless]

Twin Peaks is legendary for a number of things. Among them is how terribly uninteresting the romantic drivel of the middle of the second season was. Worst here is a close contest, but I will nominate The Black Widow, for being one of the most frighteningly staid hours of television history.


Re: The Outrageous Okona. OMGs, you and me both. That episode was the nadir of TNG. There was no going lower than that; except maybe Space Rape (The Child) or Space Racism (Code of Honor). I don't know if you are a fan of internet reviews, but I found this one (http://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/t130.php) of TOO amazing. It's an interesting introduction to SF Debris' reviews. Or maybe you are a fan and wanted a refresher :)

Ah thanks.

[Rysto]

I really enjoyed the anime "Yuki Yuna is a Hero". Now, I'll concede that none of the first 5 episodes were not particularly strong. However, the second episode angers me for just how unnecessarily awful it was. I give the first episode a pass because it's difficult to establish your cast, characters and premise in 30 minutes and tell an interesting story, so I don't expect much there.

The second episode just has nothing going for it. The plot is completely formulaic (a hero refuses the call) and throughly predictable. The conflict between the hero who refused the call and the leader of the group has to be jammed into a single episode, and as a result it's resolved far too quickly to be interesting. Far too much time is spent on characters telling us how they feel rather than having their actions showing us (another side effect of the conflict being rushed -- telling moves things along much more quickly than showing).

Worst of all, almost nothing that happened in this episode was important to the overarching plot. The third and fourth episodes were also formulaic and predictable, but they at least set some characters up for some very important development in the back-half of the series. (Plus, those episodes had cute girls being cute, so they were at least entertaining.) You could drop episode two outright from the series and the story would barely miss a beat. In a 12-episode series, you really want to make every episode count.

[Marlowe]

Oh. Here's a funny one. The question of whether ZZ Gundam is a "great" TV show besides, I think it deserves mentioning that its VERY FIRST EPISODE was a clipshow.

Dedicated to explaining the events of the two previous seasons and the backstory of the Universal Century in general.

Narrated by the two most annoying characters in the franchise and with a script full of bizarre juxtapositions (such as mentioning "Beautiful and graceful Mobile Suits" while showing the hilariously silly-looking Baund Doc.) that suggests it's an attempt at a parody of history documentaries while not being remotely funny.

Granted, even a few seasons in Gundam had already become rather complicated and maybe some backstory was called for. But not like this.

[tensai_oni]

But... the Baund Doc is beautiful...


The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya remains one of my favorite animes.

Endless Eights murdered it for me.

I'd say it's not just Endless Eight, the whole second season was terrible. Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody was a good episode but Sigh is five episodes of Haruhi being at her worst - self-centered and bitchy, and somehow it's Kyon's fault for calling her out on it. So from 14 episodes of new material, there's a single one that's actually enjoyable to watch. Okay, maybe 2-3 if you decide to only watch the first and last of Endless Eight episodes and skip the rest. Still not a very good track record.

At least the movie was great.

[DomaDoma]

But you are quite right - clip show are generally grim episodes, and we remember the exceptions because they are exceptions.

I'll just leave this here. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtGY4G7II6s)

As for the worst episode of Avatar? Because dangit, I actually liked The Great Divide; the whole concept of the canyon crawlers was very clever and frankly, it was a lie well worth telling.

I actually think mine would be Tales of Ba Sing Se. Not to say a single negative about Iroh's portion, but all the adventures involving the Gaang were peppy as anything and involved not one hint of Dai Li creepitude, which immediately after City of Walls and Secrets was pretty jarring. Seriously, it still seems more like one of those light-hearted anime sidelines that isn't regarded as canon by anyone. Particularly as regards Zuko's date.

[Draconium]

I've been lurking on this thread for too long - it's time I post my contribution.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is one of my personal favorite shows. However, even when I was first watching it, there was one episode in particular (barring the clip show) that stood out to me as distinctly more difficult to sit through than any other. It was Episode 4 - I believe the translated title is something along the lines of "Having a Lot of Faces Doesn't Make You Great!"

Now, the reason I feel like this is my least favorite is not because of the voice acting or writing. It was the animation that stood out to me. I recently learned it had a guest director, so maybe that's why, but the animation felt choppy and poorly edited, and a few of the characters just looked... off. It's saying something that I felt the part with the best animation is the stock footage for Gurren Lagann's combination sequence.

Not to mention, I'm not exactly sure what they were thinking with the design of the Beastmen enemies in the episode either...

[Rodin]

I've been lurking on this thread for too long - it's time I post my contribution.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is one of my personal favorite shows. However, even when I was first watching it, there was one episode in particular (barring the clip show) that stood out to me as distinctly more difficult to sit through than any other. It was Episode 4 - I believe the translated title is something along the lines of "Having a Lot of Faces Doesn't Make You Great!"

Now, the reason I feel like this is my least favorite is not because of the voice acting or writing. It was the animation that stood out to me. I recently learned it had a guest director, so maybe that's why, but the animation felt choppy and poorly edited, and a few of the characters just looked... off. It's saying something that I felt the part with the best animation is the stock footage for Gurren Lagann's combination sequence.

Not to mention, I'm not exactly sure what they were thinking with the design of the Beastmen enemies in the episode either...

Ooh! Ooh!

The worst animated episode of Naruto Shippuden ever. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xp9wBqIUQ7g)

This video never fails to make me laugh, but I was furious at the time. In retrospect, definitely worth it for the million memes it launched.

[Draconium]

Ooh! Ooh!

The worst animated episode of Naruto Shippuden ever. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xp9wBqIUQ7g)

This video never fails to make me laugh, but I was furious at the time. In retrospect, definitely worth it for the million memes it launched.

Okay, wow. I'm sort of glad I was never able to watch the show to that point. That was hilariously poor animating. :smallbiggrin:

[Marlowe]

But... the Baund Doc is beautiful...


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51937NWXQXL._AC_UL320_SR232,320_.jpg

The anime was flattering to it.

[Hunter Noventa]

I've been lurking on this thread for too long - it's time I post my contribution.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is one of my personal favorite shows. However, even when I was first watching it, there was one episode in particular (barring the clip show) that stood out to me as distinctly more difficult to sit through than any other. It was Episode 4 - I believe the translated title is something along the lines of "Having a Lot of Faces Doesn't Make You Great!"

Now, the reason I feel like this is my least favorite is not because of the voice acting or writing. It was the animation that stood out to me. I recently learned it had a guest director, so maybe that's why, but the animation felt choppy and poorly edited, and a few of the characters just looked... off. It's saying something that I felt the part with the best animation is the stock footage for Gurren Lagann's combination sequence.

Not to mention, I'm not exactly sure what they were thinking with the design of the Beastmen enemies in the episode either...

That episode was actually done by a very different art team and they quickly learned their lesson.

[LaZodiac]

That episode was actually done by a very different art team and they quickly learned their lesson.

Yeah. It was a limited budget thing. If the episode had good animation it wouldn't be bad at all, but it's how some groups save money. It happens.

[Ceiling_Squid]

I honestly forgot that Gundam ZZ actually started with a clip show. I must have forgotten utterly. I vaguely remember it now that you mention it, but I assumed it was just a promotional thing for the series.

ZZ's quality in terms of thread relevance may be debatable, but I actually didn't mind the slapstick early episodes once I braced for them. The latter half of the show is actually pretty great, but things really got rough around the teens and didn't get better until I hit the twenties.

My goodwill really started to break down after the infamous "Moon-Moon" two-parter, "The Phantom Colony". Neat idea (forgotten colony inhabited by neo-luddites), but so riddled with headscratching logical failures and silliness that it just didn't work. How do these people know how to operate a space dock, but don't know what a "machine" is? Why do they call mobile suits "metal giants", when there could easily be people who remember a time when their enshrined worker suit could still move? For that matter, there's no reason anyone should be so ignorant of technology in so short a period of time. The age of mass colonization isn't even a full century old!

Oddly enough, Moon-Moon didn't bother me much in and of itself (it felt like a goofy Star Trek plot, and it was worth a few laughs), but it came during a patch of really bad episodes. It's just been latched onto as a prime example of ZZ's rough early arcs, because its absolutely ridiculous on its face.

What I hated far more was the following episode, "Melee on the Argama". After how big a threat Neo Zeon had appeared to be in Zeta Gundam, I was sick of seeing nothing but ineptitude from Mashymre's crew. I didn't mind the main man himself, since he was an affectionate, delusional parody of bishounen antagonists. That in mind, his lackey Gottn and the rest of the crew were criminally incompetent, in spite of behaving far more normal than their boss. Clearly, Haman Karn sent her worst soldiers on a fool's errand to pursue the crippled Argama, because holy crap do they suck.

"Melee" was the worst offender, since Gottn was set up to actually be competent for once and countetact his Captain's insanity with a clever plan. Presumably-trained Neo Zeon soldiers board the Argama with some decent planning...and then they are roundly trounced by a bunch of kids.

The show only got better once they finally killed Gottn and wrote out that shrill airhead Chara Soon for a while. Ugh.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Now, on the other hand, that Doctor Who episode that pitted Nine against fart aliens? That was a two-parter? That was a special sort of bad.

Do You mean "The Curse of Fatal Death (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who:_The_Curse_of_Fatal_Death)"? That was a parody for Comic Relief. It was supposed to be bad.

[Giggling Ghast]

No, he means the Slitheen from the "Aliens of London/World War Three" two-parter.

[Manga Shoggoth]

No, he means the Slitheen from the "Aliens of London/World War Three" two-parter.

Fair 'nough. I haven't watched many of the New Who offerings.

[factotum]

'From B5 'Grey 17 is Missing'. I heard JMS has offered to personally apologize to every fan for that episode and quite frankly he should

But even in the worst dreck of Babylon 5 there are gems to be found, and that show is the one that has the huge Marcus-Neroon fight which ends up with one of Marcus' greatest lines in the show: "The next time you want a revelation--could you possibly find a way--that isn't so uncomfortable?" (being said while lying badly injured in a hospital bed, to the person who put him there). Yes, the A plot is garbage and JMS tried far too hard to be clever, but you have to watch the episode for that alone.

[Leewei]

I remember the TKO episode of B-5 as being pretty worthless.

[Legato Endless]

I remember the TKO episode of B-5 as being pretty worthless.

TKO is filler, but Infection is probably the worst of Season 1.

The first season in general has issues, which is why I have a guide for friends when I introduce it, (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?427389-Best-B5-episode-for-a-dip&p=19525954&highlight=babylon#post19525954) but I still find it less offensive than the telepath arc in season 5.

[Rodin]

TKO is filler, but Infection is probably the worst of Season 1.

The first season in general has issues, which is why I have a guide for friends when I introduce it, (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?427389-Best-B5-episode-for-a-dip&p=19525954&highlight=babylon#post19525954) but I still find it less offensive than the telepath arc in season 5.

To be fair, the telepath arc was SUPPOSED to be a B plot to the Shadow War/Civil War, but when they thought they were getting canceled all that stuff got pushed up so they could finish the A plot by the end of season 4.

It made the entire 5th season into a mish-mash of B-plots, C-plots, and filler. The results were...not pretty.

[tensai_oni]

Yeah. It was a limited budget thing. If the episode had good animation it wouldn't be bad at all, but it's how some groups save money. It happens.

That episode was actually done by a very different art team and they quickly learned their lesson.

No. That's just factually wrong.

The fourth episode had a guest director - Osamu Kobayashi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osamu_Kobayashi_%28illustrator%29). It didn't look that way because it was drawn on a budget or by an inexperienced crew, that's an urban legend on the same level as saying Gunbuster's sixth episode was in black and white because they ran out of budget for color. In both cases it was Gainax's deliberate artistic decision. If you're familiar with Kobayashi's other works, that's how they look like.

It still wasn't a very good episode however.


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51937NWXQXL._AC_UL320_SR232,320_.jpg

The anime was flattering to it.

It looks great. I really don't see the problem. The exposed wiring and a mix of thin and thick parts give it an eerie inhuman look similar to Mamoru Nagano's works (even though the design was by Kazumi Fujita actually, my bad). The only bad part is the default color scheme. Jerid's colors look much better than Rosamia's, but they never actually appear in the anime.

[BannedInSchool]

I still find it less offensive than the telepath arc in season 5.
I guess I've always seen Bryon as being to Babylon 5 as Sheridan was to the EA, with the rebellion and all, but being actually more like how the EA thought of Sheridan, or as a dark reflection and example of how it can be screwed up. With that thematic tie-in I can't hate it because I like that idea, and it means you're supposed to want to punch Byron in the face. :smallbiggrin:

Another story I heard about season five was that a hotel maid at a convention threw out all of JMS's notes. :smalleek:

[DomaDoma]

Here's a debate topic for you: worst Animorphs book. Great series as a whole, but boy were a few of the episodic plots stinkers. I'll nominate #24 (first Helmacron book), on the grounds that it made me quit the series for years, despite coming immediately after the wall of classics that was numbers 19-23 and the Hork-Bajir Chronicles. But if not for the personal reaction there, I'd be hard-pressed to choose.

[LaZodiac]

Here's a debate topic for you: worst Animorphs book. Great series as a whole, but boy were a few of the episodic plots stinkers. I'll nominate #24 (first Helmacron book), on the grounds that it made me quit the series for years, despite coming immediately after the wall of classics that was numbers 19-23 and the Hork-Bajir Chronicles. But if not for the personal reaction there, I'd be hard-pressed to choose.

Our heroes recruit a bunch of disabled kids to be used as what are essentially meat shields. Whichever book that was.

[Marlowe]

It looks great. I really don't see the problem. The exposed wiring and a mix of thin and thick parts give it an eerie inhuman look similar to Mamoru Nagano's works (even though the design was by Kazumi Fujita actually, my bad). The only bad part is the default color scheme. Jerid's colors look much better than Rosamia's, but they never actually appear in the anime.

Well, since we're here and we're doing this: let me get us back on topic and nominate ANY and ALL episodes of Zeta Gundam featuring the aforementioned Aard-Duck. The thing is so goofy on every level I found it impossible even to care what was going on. Well, that and "Jerid fights Camille and loses AGAIN" wasn't exactly edge-of-your seat viewing by that point.

And yeah. Gottn was a real joyless, sourfaced, festering albatross around the neck of ZZ Gundam for a while. He's like what you get if you take somebody like Jamaican Daningham, make him operate on a shoe-string budget and minimal resources, and see how he copes. The answer is not well.

I suppose the point needed to be made that Haman's Axis is seriously short of trained, competent, professional personnel and is really just a bunch of eccentric amateurs barely more experienced than the protagonists. Which makes sense as a weakness when you're doing the equivalent of trying to take over the world with the power base equivalent of a decent-sized mining town in Alaska. However, it didn't need to take almost a third of the season to get this across.

[Kato]

I actually think mine would be Tales of Ba Sing Se. Not to say a single negative about Iroh's portion, but all the adventures involving the Gaang were peppy as anything and involved not one hint of Dai Li creepitude, which immediately after City of Walls and Secrets was pretty jarring. Seriously, it still seems more like one of those light-hearted anime sidelines that isn't regarded as canon by anyone. Particularly as regards Zuko's date.
Eh, while the Tales were hit and miss I wouldn't call it terrible. Than again, it takes a lot for me to do so. I think what may be the worst bit of Avatar and that is going a long away... is making Boiling Rock a two parter. That really felt unneccassary and could have been done in one. That, or Painted Lady. Yes, yes, protect the enviroment and the hat guy was funny but otherwise...



Oh. Here's a funny one. The question of whether ZZ Gundam is a "great" TV show besides, I think it deserves mentioning that its VERY FIRST EPISODE was a clipshow.

Dedicated to explaining the events of the two previous seasons and the backstory of the Universal Century in general.

Narrated by the two most annoying characters in the franchise and with a script full of bizarre juxtapositions (such as mentioning "Beautiful and graceful Mobile Suits" while showing the hilariously silly-looking Baund Doc.) that suggests it's an attempt at a parody of history documentaries while not being remotely funny.

Granted, even a few seasons in Gundam had already become rather complicated and maybe some backstory was called for. But not like this.
You do realize ZZ was basically a comedy for the first third or so? Basically everything was more or less parodying previous Gundam stuff. Of course the intro wasn't really serious. (Also, I liked it better before it became serious)

[Marlowe]

Yes. Of course I realise ZZ was a comedy. There are so many little details all the way through that seem to be deliberately sending up silly things that Zeta played straight. The problem is that first third wasn't a very FUNNY comedy, and Gottn in particular was a character not remotely amusing, nor a credible threat, nor likable in any way.

[DomaDoma]

Our heroes recruit a bunch of disabled kids to be used as what are essentially meat shields. Whichever book that was.
The recruitment book was awesome, except for Cassie's decision with Tom at the end. And then, a couple books later when Cassie's decision turns out to make perfect sense but the disabled kids are all sent off on a suicide mission, the tables were turned. K.A. Applegate's horrors-of-war fixation has a way of throwing me like that.

[Knaight]

Another example - there's an episode of West Wing which is just a set of interviews with real political figures, for 45 minutes straight. It's not particularly good for what it is, and it really doesn't fit in with the rest of the series, which is a drama. Yes, it's a drama that heavily involves politics, but it's a drama first and foremost.

[Ceiling_Squid]

Hell, Gundam ZZ utterly wasted Yazan Gable early on. I suppose a humiliating end was expected for such a despicable character, but he was a great secondary villain and a credible threat in Zeta Gundam. Instead, ZZ rendered him deluded and ineffectual right out the gate.

Yazan, Chara Soon, and Gottn were the biggest problems I had with ZZ, and thankfully their nonsense was confined to the first third.

Mashymre Cello was really the only "comedic" element I found genuinely funny. He felt like an affectionate sendup of shoujo anime tropes and bishounen characters in general.

[Cikomyr]

I tend not to remember episode titles, but I can remember characters who ruin every episode they're in. So, a brief list:
[LIST]
Every Deep Space Nine episode that features Vick Fontaine in a significant role, with the exception of the heist episode.


Waaaait. There are THREE:

- His Way (not a good episode. But a landmark of Kira/Odo)
- Its only a Paper Moon (fantastic episode about Nog's PTSD)
- the Heist (fun fluff piece)

His Way was definetly subpar. But nowhere as bad as Profit and Lace, or Fascination. Or If Wishes Were Horses

[An Enemy Spy]

Waaaait. There are THREE:

- His Way (not a good episode. But a landmark of Kira/Odo)
- Its only a Paper Moon (fantastic episode about Nog's PTSD)
- the Heist (fun fluff piece)

His Way was definetly subpar. But nowhere as bad as Profit and Lace, or Fascination. Or If Wishes Were Horses

Vic Fontaine is great. I love the scene where Bashir and Quark are drinking in his bar because Dax is getting married, and he's singing "Here's to the Losers". It's Only a Paper is one of the best episodes in the whole series.

[Cikomyr]

Every Next Generation episode that features Q. The Q continuum was a mistake, as far as I'm concerned.


So i suppose you never watched Tapestry, the story where Q shows Picard how the threads of his life, good and bad, sewed the man Picard turned out to be?

If there is a Quintessential Q episode, its that One

[Velaryon]

Oh yes, those episodes. I'm entirely with you here, that was a low point for the show; it was an outlier of terribleness way outside the range that includes every other episode. The concept sucked, the new characters sucked, the changes made to the old characters for the duration of the arc to get them into the arc sucked, the implication on the setting sucked, and it was in general a giant pile of nonsense that didn't even tie into anything else meaningfully and as such could have been cut entirely.

I could not have put it better myself. This arc has absolutely no redeeming qualities and every single thing about it is terrible. It even connects (loosely) to a series of pretty subpar Expanded Universe novels.


...that sounds vaguely familiar despite me having never watched the show for some reason. Was it the part that was eventually tied into the novels in the form of that godawful totally-not-a-Lovecraft-ripoff villain, Abeloth? I remember I looked up her entry on Wookiepedia way back after finishing those books just to see if there was anything there that the novels didn't cover adequately, and finding out she tied into some episodes of a TV show I hadn't watched.

Looking it up, yes, that's exactly why it sounded familiar. Sheesh, so those episodes were so bad they corrupted other parts of the Star Wars EU...

Yep, they tie in to the Fate of the Jedi series. It would be a big stretch to say I liked those books, but they were a step up from the festering pile of wampa excrement that is the Legacy of the Force series. As much as I loved Aaron Allston's earlier works, even he couldn't save LotF from being some of the worst Star Wars books ever made. I'm so happy those books are no longer part of the SW canon that I'm even willing to lose the Thrawn Trilogy and the X-Wing series to make it happen.

[An Enemy Spy]

So i suppose you never watched Tapestry, the story where Q shows Picard how the threads of his life, good and bad, sewed the man Picard turned out to be?

If there is a Quintessential Q episode, its that One

Q-Who, Deja Q, All Good Things...

Every bad episode with Q takes place in early TNG, which mostly just sucked all around. Aside from a few standout episodes in Season 2, the early stuff was an awful, awful mess. It's amazing the show ever was allowed to continue past that point, and it makes me wonder what Enterprise could have become if it had gotten the same chance.

[Cikomyr]

Q-Who, Deja Q, All Good Things...

Every bad episode with Q takes place in early TNG, which mostly just sucked all around. Aside from a few standout episodes in Season 2, the early stuff was an awful, awful mess. It's amazing the show ever was allowed to continue past that point, and it makes me wonder what Enterprise could have become if it had gotten the same chance.

Meh, Deja Q never really did it for me.

But Q-Who is indeed also awesome. Still, Tapestry is, in my opinion, much more insightful into Q ;)

All Good Things is out-category.

[Knaight]

So i suppose you never watched Tapestry, the story where Q shows Picard how the threads of his life, good and bad, sewed the man Picard turned out to be?

If there is a Quintessential Q episode, its that One

I saw it. I didn't particularly like it, but I saw it.

[Peelee]

Q-Who, Deja Q, All Good Things...

Every bad episode with Q takes place in early TNG, which mostly just sucked all around. Aside from a few standout episodes in Season 2, the early stuff was an awful, awful mess. It's amazing the show ever was allowed to continue past that point, and it makes me wonder what Enterprise could have become if it had gotten the same chance.

Man, screw a large percentage of the population; I loved Enterprise.

[Avilan the Grey]

Thing is that truly great shows have no terrible episodes, just episodes not as great (say "just better than average").
Shows like MASH or Friends never had a bad episode. Less great ones? yes. Truly bad ones? NO.

[Dienekes]

Thing is that truly great shows have no terrible episodes, just episodes not as great (say "just better than average").
Shows like MASH or Friends never had a bad episode. Less great ones? yes. Truly bad ones? NO.

The Rosie's Bar episode of MASH disproves your theory.

That episode sucked. Not just better than average. It sucked.

[Peelee]

Friends

You misspelled Futurama.

[Avilan the Grey]

The Rosie's Bar episode of MASH disproves your theory.

That episode sucked. Not just better than average. It sucked.

No it didn't

And yes Futurama belongs in the list too. And Faulty Towers.

[Dienekes]

No it didn't


Yes it did.

Two can play this game.

[Rodin]

No it didn't

And yes Futurama belongs in the list too. And Faulty Towers.

Fawlty Towers never had a bad episode because there's only like, 12 of them. Which is something I feel a lot of American shows could learn from.

[Cikomyr]

No it didn't

And yes Futurama belongs in the list too. And Faulty Towers.

For MASH, dont go any further than the dream episode. It was a boooore.

[Peelee]

Fawlty Towers never had a bad episode because there's only like, 12 of them. Which is something I feel a lot of American shows could learn from.

Firefly.

Game and set.

[Zevox]

Yep, they tie in to the Fate of the Jedi series. It would be a big stretch to say I liked those books, but they were a step up from the festering pile of wampa excrement that is the Legacy of the Force series. As much as I loved Aaron Allston's earlier works, even he couldn't save LotF from being some of the worst Star Wars books ever made. I'm so happy those books are no longer part of the SW canon that I'm even willing to lose the Thrawn Trilogy and the X-Wing series to make it happen.
Eh... I don't know, both of those series were pretty poor on the whole, hard for me to say which was weaker. And while personally I'd rather have the Thrawn Trilogy and X-Wing series as part of the canon than those books out of it, at this point I've more or less stopped caring about what is and isn't canon, since I wasn't particularly impressed by The Force Awakens and thus feel no connection to the new canon.

[An Enemy Spy]

Fawlty Towers never had a bad episode because there's only like, 12 of them. Which is something I feel a lot of American shows could learn from.

I think the occasional lousy episode is an acceptable price to pay for many more episodes of a good show.

[Mystic Muse]

Thing is that truly great shows have no terrible episodes, just episodes not as great (say "just better than average").
Shows like MASH or Friends never had a bad episode. Less great ones? yes. Truly bad ones? NO.

Give me four hours to get off work, and I'll check over the entire list of Friends episodes and go over which ones are bad.

There are some I literally will not rewatch because of how much I dislike them.

[Rodin]

I think the occasional lousy episode is an acceptable price to pay for many more episodes of a good show.

I think it's more nuanced, actually. For me, Fawlty Towers is actually a little bit short. At the same time though, many other sitcoms go on for FAR too long. MASH was definitely several seasons longer than it needed to be, and that's not even getting into shows like the Simpsons that should have ended 10 years ago. A British example would be Red Dwarf, which really shoulda quit after season 6.

The overall lesson is to know when to let it go. This is even more true of shows with complex plots. I've never watched Lost because everything I've heard about it is that they spun the plot out for far too long when they could have tied it up neatly after only a few seasons. Other shows start out good but degenerate as the writers run out of ideas, like The Walking Dead.

[factotum]

The overall lesson is to know when to let it go. This is even more true of shows with complex plots. I've never watched Lost because everything I've heard about it is that they spun the plot out for far too long when they could have tied it up neatly after only a few seasons.

Or they could have tied it up neatly after the number of seasons they *did* have, rather than giving us a half-baked "Oh, everyone's in Heaven now" ending that explains only two things: jack and squat.

[Knaight]

I think the occasional lousy episode is an acceptable price to pay for many more episodes of a good show.

Length for the sake of length is never a good thing. There's a lot that's good precisely because it's short.

[Pendulous]

That episode of Friends where it's just Ross and Rachel yelling at each other.

That other episode of Friends where it's just Ross and Rachel yelling at each other.

Oh, that season 1 episode of Scrubs where Carla and JD are going to an art museum or something. They're on a bus and JD makes some random silly joke. The rest of the episode is her crying and getting pissed at him for what I still maintain is absolutely zero reason.

[comicshorse]

Other shows start out good but degenerate as the writers run out of ideas, like The Walking Dead.

Y'know for a second there I wasn't sure if you were referring to the show getting worse or zombies rotting :smallsmile:

[Mystic Muse]

That episode of Friends where it's just Ross and Rachel yelling at each other.

That other episode of Friends where it's just Ross and Rachel yelling at each other.

Basically, these, and "let's have this cast member ruin some's day or life. Maybe their own." Or "let's have Ross be a scummy jerk."

[Peelee]

Eh... I don't know, both of those series were pretty poor on the whole, hard for me to say which was weaker. And while personally I'd rather have the Thrawn Trilogy and X-Wing series as part of the canon than those books out of it, at this point I've more or less stopped caring about what is and isn't canon, since I wasn't particularly impressed by The Force Awakens and thus feel no connection to the new canon.

Between Legacy of the Force and Fate of the Jedi, I'd have to ignore both and go eith New Jedi Order as the worst. I think that's what sounded the death knell for the novels to start with. The new books (or at least what I've got so far) seem to be back to a pretty good quality.

Also, i'ma add Canada's Corner Gas both to the list of shows without a bad episode, and an example of a show going on for quite some time without suffering for it.

[Dienekes]

Basically, these, and "let's have this cast member ruin some's day or life. Maybe their own." Or "let's have Ross be a scummy jerk."

For the record I still side with Ross on the whole we were on a break debate.

But yeah, holy crap did I not care about their relationship. Definitely the drag on the series.

[Manga Shoggoth]

I think the occasional lousy episode is an acceptable price to pay for many more episodes of a good show.

Unfortunately, that is only true if you do get many more good episodes. This is a thing that can only be seen in in retrospect, and it is a difficult thing to call in advance.

Looking at Fawlty Tower's contemporaries: The final seasons of Monty Python and The Goodies were both poor compared with the earlier seasons (although Monty Python by its nature tended to be a little hit-and-miss) - in part due to Cleese leaving the team (Monty Python) and the series moving to ITV (The Goodies). There was another series called The Good Life which ran for two seasons. Both seasons were good, but the second season was pushing it and had they made a third season it would have bombed.

On balance, I would prefer a series to leave on a strong note than diminish and fade away.

[Malimar]

Firefly.

Game and set.

Even Firefly had The Message. (And, if you ask people who aren't me, the movie -- but I, for one, like the movie just fine.)

[Peelee]

Even Firefly had The Message.

Jayne's very fine hat saved it. It was cunning.

[Mystic Muse]

For the record I still side with Ross on the whole we were on a break debate.

But yeah, holy crap did I not care about their relationship. Definitely the drag on the series.

That's among the episodes I don't rewatch, but same. I still wish he would have gotten with Emily, because it would have saved us from so many "Ross and Rachel relationship drama" episodes later on, and the two struck me as a substantially better fit than Ross and Rachel.

[Dienekes]

Even Firefly had The Message. (And, if you ask people who aren't me, the movie -- but I, for one, like the movie just fine.)

Message and Heart of Gold I hold up as bad episodes. Message had a funny moment with Jayne's hat, but that doesn't scrape it off the bottom of the barrel.

[Avilan the Grey]

Taste. It cannot be argued.

[Mystic Muse]

Taste. It cannot be argued.

Don't get me wrong, I love Friends. I've probably seen every episode I DO Like at least half a dozen times by now, and probably even the ones I don't like more than once. But every series has episodes that, if not bad, are at least objectively worse than others in some aspect.

"There isn't a single episode of friends I don't enjoy." is a very different thing from "Friends has no bad episodes at all."

[Lethologica]

Avilan didn't say Friends' episodes were of uniform quality, which is basically the position he'd have to take to be disagreeing with "some episodes are worse than others in some respect."

Of course, as someone who has no interest in Friends to begin with, this whole conversation is nigh incomprehensible to me.

[Mystic Muse]

Avilan didn't say Friends' episodes were of uniform quality, which is basically the position he'd have to take to be disagreeing with "some episodes are worse than others in some respect."

Of course, as someone who has no interest in Friends to begin with, this whole conversation is nigh incomprehensible to me.
I think I'm just tired and nitpicking at comments like this for no particular reason as a result. Sorry.

[Gnoman]

On balance, I would prefer a series to leave on a strong note than diminish and fade away.

For every show I've seen that had too many episodes and drastically dropped in quality (and there's more than a few), I can think of at least one or two that had too few, or drastically dropped in quality because it looked like there were going to be too few episodes and things got compressed.

[Legato Endless]

Even Firefly had The Message. (And, if you ask people who aren't me, the movie -- but I, for one, like the movie just fine.)

Given the lack of abysmal failure theaters have experienced with Serenity screenings in the last decade, it is more likely than not the folks who dislike the film are a vocal minority.


Message and Heart of Gold I hold up as bad episodes. Message had a funny moment with Jayne's hat, but that doesn't scrape it off the bottom of the barrel.

Seconding Heart of Gold. Nothing in that episode is redeeming.


For every show I've seen that had too many episodes and drastically dropped in quality (and there's more than a few), I can think of at least one or two that had too few, or drastically dropped in quality because it looked like there were going to be too few episodes and things got compressed.

Indeed. The aforementioned axiom also ignores cases where one season declines precipitous, only to rally into the next.

[Mystic Muse]

It's been a while since I've seen heart of Gold or the Message, and if they're that bad, I don't care to re-see them. Anyone care to explain what's so awful?

[Dienekes]

It's been a while since I've seen heart of Gold or the Message, and if they're that bad, I don't care to re-see them. Anyone care to explain what's so awful?

The Message: Starts out with a focus on Kaylee and Simon, one of the weakest parts of the show. Not only that but Kaylee is fantastically bitchy. I have literally no idea what people see in this pairing. To use the show mentioned above, their relationship is about as interesting as Ross and Rachel. I tolerate it, to get to the good parts of the episodes.

Anyway after that piece of annoyance, we're introduced to the one semi-redeeming feature of the episode: Jayne's hat. That's it. The episode is horrible, but it does at least have Jayne's hat.

We are then introduced to an old war buddy, who is annoying, selfish, and we're supposed to be forced to feel for this guy and his problems despite never hearing of him before. Beyond his annoying personality we're set to deal with more focus on who this new guy may mix up the Simon Kaylee pairing, oooh nooo.

Then of course the guy betrays them, but it's all because of mishearing 1 sentence and no one bothering to explain despite having ample opportunity to do so. The only reason they don't is because the writers decided to make everyone dumb for a couple scenes. Just overall, a dull, bore of an episode. But with a very cunning hat.


Heart of Gold: Doesn't even have a hat to distract us on the bad writing. The villain is so blatantly stereotypical, and it just reeks of someone trying to shove girl power down our throats. Look, I like strong female characters as much as anyone. Zoey? Awesome. The fact she can totally kick Mal's ass is great. Also with her much weaker husband is one of the few romances that take up the show that isn't boring. But anyway, stereotypical completely irredeemable misogynist villain. Who's not even memorable. Like Mischa for all the problems of Train Job, was a great villain that was also completely one-note and irredeemable. It can be done well, but this guy was just a pain. Like the author trying to show how bad he was to spread the message of the episode. But much like Mal says to Shepherd Book, I hate being preached too. Especially if it is done in such a ham-handed way. Poor writing. Inara acting like a complete hypocrite just to set up some more DRAMA all makes this episode shine out as just bad. Other than how dull it is the only real thing that stands out is a scene between Wash and Kaylee, which was funny, because Alan Tudyk has great comedic timing. But a good scene can't save a 45 minute episode.

[Wardog]

I can't remember what happened in The Message (even after reading the synopsis on Wikipedia), but I didn't mind Heart of Gold. Plus, it included the lines:


Inara: It sounds like something this crew can handle. I can't guarantee they'll handle it particularly well, but...
Nandi: If they got guns and brains at all.
Inara: They've got guns...

[Lady_Springtime]

Is there any episode of Stargate SG-1 remotely comparable to Emancipation in awfulness? I can't think of one, most of their nadir is in my mind just somewhat forgettable that it's hard to point to. Unlike Star Trek where there's usually a fairly big delineation between the bad, the okay, and the good.

Personally, while the implications of Emancipation are pretty awful, I thought The Other Guys and Avenger 2.0 were completely unwatchable.

[SZbNAhL]

That episode of Batman Beyond that retconned Barbara's crush on Bruce into the two of them dating. It was the terrible episode of the entire Diniverse and rewatching it years later when I'm old enough to realise the implications was one of those "ruined my childhood" moments.

[Marlowe]

Hm. People have mentioned TTGL's poor 4th episode, I've mentioned PGSM's poor 4th episode, is it just me or is it a tendency for Japanese series to have somewhat "meh" fourth episodes? This seems to be the usual point in the production where the basic concepts of the series have been established, presumably the audience has had its interest grabbed, and the secondary production team get to take over for a bit while the main team take a break and the writers work on the next big idea.

[Aedilred]

Fawlty Towers never had a bad episode because there's only like, 12 of them. Which is something I feel a lot of American shows could learn from.

With that said, and while I don't think any of the Fawlty Towers episodes are bad, per se, the first one (A Touch of Class) is noticeably a lot worse than the rest of the series.

Of course British and American television work quite differently so comparing them directly doesn't always make sense, but I think some of the reason for the vaunted "short, high-quality" British TV shows (mostly sitcoms) is to do with a generally smaller writing team. British sitcoms tend to have somewhere in the region of two writers who write the entire show, with some creative input from other sources but ultimately it boils down to them, while American sitcoms often have a much larger stable of writers. It's both cause and effect of the relatively short seasons, I suspect. I think it lends itself to greater consistency of quality in UK shows, but it also means there's a much smaller well of creative talent and inspiration to draw on, so it runs dry much more quickly. It also means the longevity of the show is much more dependent on the survival of a particular creative relationship, and if that runs into difficulties (as it did with Fawlty Towers) that's basically the end of the show. Not to mention of course the inherent potential flaw that with less creative oversight there's a chance one or two people will come up with a whole show only they think is funny. Who can forget the Horne and Corden sketch show, so bad that it led people to question the future of the entire genre? (The answer, of course, is "everybody"). Is anyone ever going to tell Noel Fielding that surrealism is not a substitute for jokes? What on earth was going on in the second series of Psychoville?

Inasmuch as it's a rule, there are a lot of exceptions in any case. To any who claim that sitcoms that last more than about thirty (let alone fifty!) episodes are bound to tail off, or that a large pool of writers, or even the inherent commercialism of American TV, leads to a lower quality of writing, I would point to the first seven seasons of The Simpsons and say "look ye here and behold". There have been plenty of clunkers throughout British TV history, after all, and even our very own apparently endless undead formulaic sitcom, in Last of the Summer Wine.

[Avilan the Grey]

Also, Fawlty Towers HAS won a number of things over the years declaring it the best sitcom ever. In the world. It's not exactly Two and a Half Men.

[Aotrs Commander]

Also, Fawlty Towers HAS won a number of things over the years declaring it the best sitcom ever. In the world. It's not exactly Two and a Half Men.

By the British Film Industry (in 2000)1, yes, but not the British public (in 2004), where it only came 5th and had only half the number of votes as the winner.

The last big where Dad's Army (4th), Vicar of Dibley (3rd) Blackadder (and) and Only Fools and Horses (1st) (with That One Clip of Del Boy (is that how you spell it?) falling through the bar endlessly shown).

(Red Dwarf was shockingly only 18th, though so what do the rest of the British public know?)

Though - on topic - Red Dwarf had its low points as well, season seven having more of them than most. (Though it ALSO had that extended Ace Rimmer fights Nazis segement and the Arnold Rimmer experience, so it balances out...)



1Which also listed two things I'd never heard of in the top five (so go figure) and Blue Peter, oddly, at number six... (A decade earlier, Blue Peter had still been what it once was, but it largerly petered (aha) out when they slowly phased out the bits like the ones that actually encouraged kids to make things that were really good. Myabe theybroguht it back much later, I dunno, I haven't watched it for twenty years, if it is indeed still going...)

[factotum]

(Red Dwarf was shockingly only 18th, though so what do the rest of the British public know?)

Though - on topic - Red Dwarf had its low points as well, season seven having more of them than most. (Though it ALSO had that extended Ace Rimmer fights Nazis segement and the Arnold Rimmer experience, so it balances out...)


To be fair to the British public, the memory of seasons 7 and 8 of Red Dwarf would have been quite fresh in the mind in 2004 (since they were shown in 1997 and 1999 respectively), so them marking the series as a whole down for that maybe isn't surprising.

Although, having said that, they had yet to see the horror that was "Back to Earth" in 2009...

[Aotrs Commander]

To be fair to the British public, the memory of seasons 7 and 8 of Red Dwarf would have been quite fresh in the mind in 2004 (since they were shown in 1997 and 1999 respectively), so them marking the series as a whole down for that maybe isn't surprising.

Although, having said that, they had yet to see the horror that was "Back to Earth" in 2009...

That is a fair point.



I would say Back to Earth was better than the 7/8 median... But the cost-mandated lack of studio audience (and necessity of setting in on Earth) really hurt it. It just took some of the edge off the guy's usual performances. This sort of comedy is a little bit like panto (something I know very well...), the presence of the audience gives you that little boost extra to play up to.

Fortunately, of course, it did well enough to give us RD 10, 11 and 12 (of which the former was back to the high standard of the earlier seasons, the others obviously pending).

[VoxRationis]

I'm going to go against the crowd and say that Korra's "Endgame," or at least Aang's involvement in it, didn't seem like that much of a problem to me. I considered it rather improbable that a single bloodbender—one who is currently dead, no less—could permanently shut down the bending of a generations-spanning cosmic entity with a thousand past lives to act as backup power. And since Raava hadn't been written in yet (writing her at all was a big mistake in my opinion—I was not fond of the spirit arc one bit), Aang made the most sense to symbolize the connection to the Avatar's past lives. Him giving a speech and Korra's bending being restored was pretty inevitable.

I myself would nominate the equivalent episodes of the second season, which were basically the writers throwing flashy, gimmicky fights and techniques at us without any real sense or continuity (Really? Korra can transform into a giant spirit-kaiju without drawing on anything Avatar-related? Can anyone just do that? If so, why didn't any of the others try it? She could have used the backup.). Plus Korra's decision at the end, which was incredibly poor—given everything the show has taught us thus far about how humans and spirits tend to interact, the expected result of her decision is nothing less than the collapse of human civilization and the return to the "hide on the backs of lion-turtles" way of life—and wasn't questioned by any of the characters, including Tenzin, who has spent his time thus far building up "stern, demanding mentor" cred.

[Cikomyr]

Yes (Prime) Minister is a (subjectively) hilarious series about the problems and challenges of inner government workings. If you are into that sort of thing, its a great series.

They talk about a wide variety of topics, and most of them are easily understandable and you get why each factions care about their positions.

Except for the episode "A Conflict of Interest". Its a completely meaningless and mungled episode, where you cant figure out why you should care either way about who the next Governor of the Bank of England should be, or even why the characters care either way. Its boring, and except for a few bits, the jokes fell completely flat.

[Knaight]

I'm going to go against the crowd and say that Korra's "Endgame," or at least Aang's involvement in it, didn't seem like that much of a problem to me. I considered it rather improbable that a single bloodbender—one who is currently dead, no less—could permanently shut down the bending of a generations-spanning cosmic entity with a thousand past lives to act as backup power. And since Raava hadn't been written in yet (writing her at all was a big mistake in my opinion—I was not fond of the spirit arc one bit), Aang made the most sense to symbolize the connection to the Avatar's past lives. Him giving a speech and Korra's bending being restored was pretty inevitable.

That's the least of the issues with "Endgame" though. Anon hijacked a social movement with a lot of very legitimate criticisms, and while Anon was revealed as a fraud as far as the movement was concerned, those legitimate issues were still there. A period of disunity followed by the emergence of another leader makes sense, the movement balkanizing makes sense, any number of things make sense. The one they picked, where the entire movement just fades away as soon as the leader is gone? The whole concept of a social problem being solved by the leader of the underclass being beaten up by the hero is unbelievable at best.

[Keltest]

That's the least of the issues with "Endgame" though. Anon hijacked a social movement with a lot of very legitimate criticisms, and while Anon was revealed as a fraud as far as the movement was concerned, those legitimate issues were still there. A period of disunity followed by the emergence of another leader makes sense, the movement balkanizing makes sense, any number of things make sense. The one they picked, where the entire movement just fades away as soon as the leader is gone? The whole concept of a social problem being solved by the leader of the underclass being beaten up by the hero is unbelievable at best.

I don't find it to be that implausible. Besides the fact that he doesn't actually give a crap about the movement itself, he is also a bender, so having it succeed at its goal is actively detrimental to him in the long run. Combine that with his general personality and it makes total sense that he would organize the movement such that without himself (let alone the lieutenants that abandoned ship on him), it wouldn't be able to function.

[Peelee]

Yes (Prime) Minister

Stupid question. Is that a spinoff of Yes Minister, or is it the same show and differently titled in the U.S.?

[Lethologica]

I'm going to go against the crowd and say that Korra's "Endgame," or at least Aang's involvement in it, didn't seem like that much of a problem to me. I considered it rather improbable that a single bloodbender—one who is currently dead, no less—could permanently shut down the bending of a generations-spanning cosmic entity with a thousand past lives to act as backup power. And since Raava hadn't been written in yet (writing her at all was a big mistake in my opinion—I was not fond of the spirit arc one bit), Aang made the most sense to symbolize the connection to the Avatar's past lives. Him giving a speech and Korra's bending being restored was pretty inevitable.
Korra's bending being restored was absolutely inevitable. But Korra's lack of spiritual connection to the whole Avatar thing was one of her weaknesses, and a reason she was an interesting foil to Aang. Considering there was a whole book coming up called 'Spirit', it would have been nice to make spiritual growth and regaining her non-Air bending a goal for the second season, and skipping straight to 'connect to the Avatar State and regain bending' felt somewhat unearned. But IIRC the writers weren't sure there would be a second season, so what they did is understandable even if I think they should have done it differently.


including Tenzin, who has spent his time thus far building up "stern, demanding mentor" cred.
My memory of this is that Tenzin spent his time developing from a terrible mentor who was jealous of his own daughter's effortless spiritual connection to someone who admitted he had no idea what he was doing. Which is...not a terrible character arc, but doesn't exactly build mentor cred, or proceed naturally to conflicting with the Avatar's decision.


I don't find it to be that implausible. Besides the fact that he doesn't actually give a crap about the movement itself, he is also a bender, so having it succeed at its goal is actively detrimental to him in the long run. Combine that with his general personality and it makes total sense that he would organize the movement such that without himself (let alone the lieutenants that abandoned ship on him), it wouldn't be able to function.
The movement would fall apart. The sentiment behind the movement wouldn't. I think the writers were trying to sell that there weren't actually any legit sentiments behind the movement, and Amon manufactured anti-Bender sentiment from thin air as part of his cult of personality, so of course it vanished when he was delegitimized. Which is boring and silly, but at least it's consistent. Except, oh wait, there's Tarrlok legitimizing all the anti-Bender sentiment Amon whipped up by turning into the oppressor Amon railed against. So, never mind, it's not consistent, just silly.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Stupid question. Is that a spinoff of Yes Minister, or is it the same show and differently titled in the U.S.?

It's not a stupid question: Yes Prime Minister was a sequel to Yes Minister, with the Right Honourable Jim Hacker promoted to the eponymous post.

[Knaight]

The movement would fall apart. The sentiment behind the movement wouldn't. I think the writers were trying to sell that there weren't actually any legit sentiments behind the movement, and Amon manufactured anti-Bender sentiment from thin air as part of his cult of personality, so of course it vanished when he was delegitimized. Which is boring and silly, but at least it's consistent. Except, oh wait, there's Tarrlok legitimizing all the anti-Bender sentiment Amon whipped up by turning into the oppressor Amon railed against. So, never mind, it's not consistent, just silly.

Even the movement wouldn't. The particular organizations are all pretty much doomed, but a movement is broader than its organizations, and there are a lot of people around who were invested enough to be activists, and then a fair few invested enough to be outright militant (mostly after Tarrlok escalated things). It's just such an unsatisfying ending because of how ridiculously clean it is when it has no business being that way.

[Legato Endless]

The movement would fall apart. The sentiment behind the movement wouldn't. I think the writers were trying to sell that there weren't actually any legit sentiments behind the movement, and Amon manufactured anti-Bender sentiment from thin air as part of his cult of personality, so of course it vanished when he was delegitimized.

Even the movement falling apart is very suspect. Social movements are an informal plurality working from a shared cultural identity. The reveal of Amon wouldn't change any of that. Furthermore, even if it were manufactured, the idea than Amon's revelation would shatter the movement remains ludicrous. It is a trivial task to find dozens of leaders of movements in history who were revealed to be hypocritical frauds in one form or another and that didn't destabilize the moment, or even the individuals base of power one wit.


I don't find it to be that implausible. Besides the fact that he doesn't actually give a crap about the movement itself, he is also a bender, so having it succeed at its goal is actively detrimental to him in the long run. Combine that with his general personality and it makes total sense that he would organize the movement such that without himself (let alone the lieutenants that abandoned ship on him), it wouldn't be able to function.

Hmm, whats that old quote? The Graveyards are full of indispensable men.

What are you describing is cartoonish and bureaucratically impossible. Any social movement of sufficient sweep has never been so organized. Unless this was nothing more than a click, or some other variant of small social club, then no, Amon could not just magically organize ethereal social forces to simply rise and fall with his life. Unless the movement was just entirely daft and held together only by his persona then what occurred is the chief domain of bad juvenile fantasy. No one was a true believer? They were all just in it for the trend? Not anything resembling real life. And if it had no point or justification, then you're left with a trite black and white conflict. Either way, a fairly cloying fable of a real life phenomenon.

[Ceiling_Squid]

The thing is, save for the three-year timeskip between season 3-4, the events of LoK do take place over a relatively-short period, which hardly gives the anti-bender movement much time to reform. I suppose it's safe to handwave the idea that between the water tribe embassy bombing, the giant dark avatar attack, and the spirit world bleeding into the natural world, there's simply too many crises going on for a new cohesive movement to emerge.

Though, season 3 would have been a perfect time to at least mention it again. New benders emerging spontaneously would have brought it boiling back up. The Red Lotus also would have loved to milk the chaos.

Ah, well. I like the show a lot, but it is an exercise in missed opportunities sometimes.

Edit: also, for the sake of saying it aloud, it *is* still a cartoon marketed for a major kid's programming network. I'm not shocked to see the simplicity of only one major threat per season, with loose ends neatly and unrealistically tied up. I suppose we should be glad to see some ongoing consequences at all, in the form of Korra's trauma, Asami's relationship w/ her father being revisited, the public approval for the avatar dropping over time, etc...

[Knaight]

The thing is, save for the three-year timeskip between season 3-4, the events of LoK do take place over a relatively-short period, which hardly gives the anti-bender movement much time to reform. I suppose it's safe to handwave the idea that between the water tribe embassy bombing, the giant dark avatar attack, and the spirit world bleeding into the natural world, there's simply too many crises going on for a new cohesive movement to emerge.

So where is the undirected discontent then? Even if the loss of Amon left the movement with no leadership whatsoever (and I'm not buying that), you'd still see individual and small group action. The really gigantic mass protests and similar would be harder to pull off, but there would still be a lot of people doing something.

[Ceiling_Squid]

So where is the undirected discontent then? Even if the loss of Amon left the movement with no leadership whatsoever (and I'm not buying that), you'd still see individual and small group action. The really gigantic mass protests and similar would be harder to pull off, but there would still be a lot of people doing something.

I said it was a justifiable "handwave", not a logical omission.

The fact is, the second season's story is not about the Equalists anymore, it's about the Water Tribe civil war and the dark spirit shenanigans.

A fragmented Equalist movement could (and should) certainly be surging in the background (and I would have loved for it to get a mention or two), but the plot has no reason to show it.

I realize this is a meta-explanation based purely on economy of script, but jeez. This is just a cartoon show. At some point you have to accept it's limitations and shortcomings.

[Keltest]

So where is the undirected discontent then? Even if the loss of Amon left the movement with no leadership whatsoever (and I'm not buying that), you'd still see individual and small group action. The really gigantic mass protests and similar would be harder to pull off, but there would still be a lot of people doing something.

The important question here is not "where is it", but "is it relevant to the main characters?", and the answer is "not really". The protagonists don't oppose the movement because of what it stood for, they did it because it was hurting people and going after them, specifically, in exceptionally destructive ways. LoK isn't a show about politicians working for reform and equality, so once the movement stops with the armed revolution thing, the protagonists stop caring about it. They might be keeping an eye out to make sure the armed revolt doesn't start up again, but it isn't their jobs to quell civil unrest or enact reforms.

[Cikomyr]

Stupid question. Is that a spinoff of Yes Minister, or is it the same show and differently titled in the U.S.?

Like its been said, its not a stupid question at all. Although i dont feel like the explanation given it 100% accurate.

Yes Prime Minister is.. basically the 2 seasons that immediately followed the first three seasons of Yes Minister. They flowed immediately after the events that ended Yes Minister. I dont feel they are two different series, just the same series that changed name to a more appropriate title when it was relevant.

[VoxRationis]

That's the least of the issues with "Endgame" though. Anon hijacked a social movement with a lot of very legitimate criticisms, and while Anon was revealed as a fraud as far as the movement was concerned, those legitimate issues were still there. A period of disunity followed by the emergence of another leader makes sense, the movement balkanizing makes sense, any number of things make sense. The one they picked, where the entire movement just fades away as soon as the leader is gone? The whole concept of a social problem being solved by the leader of the underclass being beaten up by the hero is unbelievable at best.

You guys are all forgetting that the bender-centric council was dissolved and a (non-bender) President elected between seasons 1 and 2. The Equalist movement isn't resurging because for the moment, it appears that in spite of the failure of the armed revolution, political change was made in the direction that the underclass wanted. Now, it might come back if it's revealed that this didn't address broader aspects of oppression, but in the short period of time we're looking at, it's a satisfactory solution, and the other crises are making more of a difference to people.

[Avilan the Grey]

Again, tastes varies.
A lot of classic British humour series leaves me completely cold.
Only Fools and Horses for example and even more so Father Ted which quite frankly I have never detected any humour in whatsoever.

[Aedilred]

Again, tastes varies.
A lot of classic British humour series leaves me completely cold.
Only Fools and Horses for example and even more so Father Ted which quite frankly I have never detected any humour in whatsoever.

Only Fools and Horses was once described by a friend of mine as "a sitcom where they forgot to include any jokes". I don't think it's quite as bad as that makes it sound, but, in my opinion at least, the greatest sitcom ever it is not.

I do like Father Ted, though. It is, to be fair, somewhat on the "safe" side, which arguably gets it marked down compared to more edgy offerings in today's environment, but I think that's part of its charm: it manages to be funny without ever being shocking or offensive (at least, in my opinion, again). Certainly I prefer it to The Vicar of Dibley, about which I, broadly speaking, share Armando Ianucci's assessment.

Don't vote for The Vicar of Dibley. It's a wasted vote. It's not as funny as Father Ted. Or The Passion of the Christ.

[Aotrs Commander]

Can't say as I'm a fan of Only Fools and Horses myself, to be fair - Blackadder is probably as close to the pinnacle of funny as sitcoms go for me.

Though with the exception of Blackadder the Third, I was never that struck with the endings of the finales for each of the series (yes, yes, even the last one; I know the one at the end of Blackadder Goes Forth was making a meaningful point in what it did and basically, it succeeded at a little too well for my comfort).



(For the absolute height of comedy, though, it has to be parody/stire that really hits the mark, as evidenced by Stargate SG-1's 200, which made me laugh so hard I was physically sick (which for a Lich s no mean feat) and Reboot, most notably the episode where they simultaneously parodied Power Rangers and Thunderbirds and for twenty years (until I got the DVD), I couldn't even remember what the actually jokes were, only that I had laughed SO HARD. And there were so many more of those in that series on the re-watch on DVD...)

[Aedilred]

Can't say as I'm a fan of Only Fools and Horses myself, to be fair - Blackadder is probably as close to the pinnacle of funny as sitcoms go for me.

Though with the exception of Blackadder the Third, I was never that struck with the endings of the finales for each of the series (yes, yes, even the last one; I know the one at the end of Blackadder Goes Forth was making a meaningful point in what it did and basically, it succeeded at a little too well for my comfort).

Actually, I agree. Certainly I think the ending of the first and (post-credits ending of the) second are relatively weak and, at least in the second case, unnecessary. One of the things about Blackadder, I think, is that ultimately you want him to "get away with it", his being a magnificent bastard and all. That's also what, to my mind, lets down the ending of Blackadder's Christmas Carol, although The Cavalier Years works fine. Back and Forth is overall pretty poor, though, so it's not redeemed by the ending to my mind. I have mixed feelings about the ending to Goes Forth; it treads a fine line between touching and mawkish, and the tonal shift is a bit hard to swallow.

Incidentally, if you haven't seen it, the end of it was (imo) brilliantly pastiched, and then mimicked, in the final two episodes of That Mitchell and Webb Look; in the penultimate episode they specifically discuss the ending of Goes Forth and come up with their own contrived version, played entirely for laughs. Then in the final episode they go for an emotional ending, played straight, and it's genuinely quite affecting.

It's difficult for me to judge any more what makes me laugh because it's relatively fresh and/or unfamiliar. I used to think Blackadder was the greatest show ever to take to the air, and while I no longer hold that opinion I can't help but think it's because it's now sufficiently dated in terms of production and style (the last series being over 25 years old at this point) and I've become so familiar with it, that it no longer makes me laugh as it once did, compared to, say, Peep Show, which I haven't had time to get tired of yet - especially the newer episodes. And it goes particularly for British sitcoms which tend to be short. The Simpsons has remained relatively fresh for me through simple volume: I haven't had the time to get overly familiar with any but a handful of episodes. Good sketch shows, by contrast, tend to throw things out there which take me by surprise and make me laugh even on a rewatch, because of the tonal shifts. Even then I think I've watched the first series of Monkey Dust to death.

[Peelee]

Not a British-based show, but Better Off Ted was another series that never had a bad episode. The worst it ever came was Ted's brother coming over, and Lem easily salvaged that by dealing with it. Absolutely stellar show, I can't believe it didn't get ratings good enough to keep it on air.

[Aotrs Commander]

Incidentally, if you haven't seen it, the end of it was (imo) brilliantly pastiched, and then mimicked, in the final two episodes of That Mitchell and Webb Look; in the penultimate episode they specifically discuss the ending of Goes Forth and come up with their own contrived version, played entirely for laughs. Then in the final episode they go for an emotional ending, played straight, and it's genuinely quite affecting.

Oh ye gods, yes.

I remain in awe of that particular sequence. What they conveyed in those last two sentences...

Nevermind about anything else (and to my tragedy, I've only seen That Mitchell and Webb Look in fragments on youtube, because they are VERY funny), that one scene stands on its own as an exceptional piece of television. I found it hit much harder than Goes Forth's did for me. Maybe it was more unequivocal, maybe it was because you could see the reactions, but I tip my helmet to it.

[Avilan the Grey]

When it comes to British comedy series for me, the list varies according to mood, but here are a few definitely in there:

Fawlty Towers
Red Dwarf (I do however vastly prefer the first 2 series. I am one of the few that didn't really like the new expensive set designs or extra characters)
The New Statesman
Vicar of Dibley
Black Adder
The Thin Blue Line
Bottom
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Allo Allo
Keeping Up Appearences

[Peelee]

Have you seen the IT Crowd, or are you mostly interested in older shows?

[Aedilred]

When it comes to British comedy series for me, the list varies according to mood, but here are a few definitely in there:

Fawlty Towers
Red Dwarf (I do however vastly prefer the first 2 series. I am one of the few that didn't really like the new expensive set designs or extra characters)
The New Statesman
Vicar of Dibley
Black Adder
The Thin Blue Line
Bottom
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Allo Allo
Keeping Up Appearences
:smallyuk::smalleek:

I haven't seen a lot of 'Allo 'Allo but what I have seen hasn't pushed me to see any more. Nor have I seen any of The New Statesman. Keeping Up Appearances was kind of alright in its day but desperately safe, in my opinion at least.

With Red Dwarf, I am definitely a fan, but, in retrospect, it was a bit rubbish. And it was always a bit rubbish, not just after the various revamps for series III, VI, VII or VIII. Early seasons are hurt by desperately poor production, not just in terms of wobbly sets and grainy film but dodgy editing, weird pacing, misjudged comic timing and, frequently, just not enough jokes, or at least good ones. I think it peaked during the "middle" series of roughly III-V, when it had the complete cast and an increasingly irreverent approach to its own setting, and the actors, writers and characters had matured to the point where the jokes worked better. But it still has a tendency to veer into the puerile and camp (albeit if you like Bottom and The Thin Blue Line, that might be for you), and an overly ambitious production for its budget still takes its toll (on what is, after all, a sci-fi show). And while Hattie Hayridge is fine, I don't think she's quite as good as Norman Lovett. After series V it loses Holly altogether, after VI it loses Rob Grant, and then during VII it loses Rimmer, and all of those are major blows. For all that I still think there are some good jokes in VII, but it's a longer slog between them with Kris a much less funny "straight" character than Rimmer had been. VIII was a bit of a mess, although it's easy to forget it started strongly, and again I think there are some good sequences in there; it just gets a bit out of control. The first part of Pete (Part 1) is pretty good, for instance, but the end, and Part 2 are weak. Back to Earth was awful, although I did enjoy series X and thought it was probably the best Dwarf series since at least VI, probably V.

If I can say so without appearing condescending, I think ultimately Red Dwarf is a show I've largely grown out of. Between the ages of about 9-17 I thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen, and it also filled that useful niche of being sci-fi comedy which for a geek like me was always going to be a winner, but as I've grown older, experience has led me to be more discerning and the flaws in it have become more obvious. Which isn't to say I don't still appreciate it, but I watch it, even the new stuff, with a heavy nostalgia filter. For years I was surprised at the demands for the return of a show which even its biggest fans would admit hadn't produced any consistently good material for over a decade. But I admit I was pleasantly surprised by X and we do after all live in the Century of the Unnecessary Revival (see: Blackadder Back and Forth*, Still Open All Hours, Only Fools and The Green, Green Grass, even - he says with a heavy heart - AbFab).

*Actually produced last century, of course, but intended to mark the transition

[Avilan the Grey]

Have you seen the IT Crowd, or are you mostly interested in older shows?

The IT crowd IS fairly old by now, isn't it?
I don't really like it, why I don't know.


...As for Red Dwarf:
I find thost things a bit charming actually. Now, shows with real issues I have grown out of: The Young Ones. Definitely.

As for shows that will never ever ever make my list: The Mighty Boosh, Little Brittain, My Hero, Father Ted (as discussed before).

Shows that are on and off again on my list depending on mood: Black Books, Dad's Army, The 19XX Show (don't remember the year), Yes (prime) minister.

[factotum]

I'm not actually a fan of sitcoms in general. I much prefer comedy panel shows like Mock the Week and Would I Lie To You?, because there's just a much greater density of jokes and thus they tend to be funnier even if not all the jokes hit the mark. QI and HIGNFY I watch more because they're witty and informing rather than laugh-out-loud funny, although they both have their moments.

[Aedilred]

The IT crowd IS fairly old by now, isn't it?
I don't really like it, why I don't know.
It ran from 2006-2013, on and off, so it's not that old. But it does have the same writer as Father Ted, so that might go some way to explaining why you don't like it.


...As for Red Dwarf:
I find thost things a bit charming actually. Now, shows with real issues I have grown out of: The Young Ones. Definitely.

As for shows that will never ever ever make my list: The Mighty Boosh, Little Brittain, My Hero, Father Ted (as discussed before).

Shows that are on and off again on my list depending on mood: Black Books, Dad's Army, The 19XX Show (don't remember the year), Yes (prime) minister.
You've grown out of The Young Ones but still like Bottom? :smallconfused::smallwink:

I enjoyed the first couple of series of The Mighty Boosh when it was on, but quickly lost patience, and while I do still think it's better than anything Noel Fielding's done since, as I alluded to before, it tends to rely too heavily on surrealism for its comedy - and indeed plots, although to be fair there are a couple of properly-structured jokes in there too.

I do think it's worth drawing a distinction between sitcoms and sketch shows. They're different formats that have often completely different requirements of the writing, although often not the actors themselves. Python, Not the Nine-o'clock News and Big Train can't really be compared directly with Fawlty Towers, Blackadder and Spaced, for instance. I never got on with Little Britain as much as anything because I felt the sketches were too long. There's a particular type of sketch show which feature large numbers of recurring characters who always make essentially the same jokes (a friend of mine calls it the "repeat until funny" format) and while I have enjoyed shows of that type before (most notably, The Fast Show), one of the things most such shows have is that they're relatively quick. Each sketch is over with quickly enough that even if you don't like the one that's on now there's a chance there'll be something better along in a minute. Little Britain fails on that score because the sketches are just too long. Those that are good are fine, but those that you don't like are excruciating. I guess the question-mark would be over something like The League of Gentlemen which are essentially sitcoms in a sketch-show format (the first two series, at least; the third was different). Still I'd suggest it still falls largely on the sitcom side of the divide.

[Leewei]

The Young Ones seemed grating and juvenile, right up through the Bambi episode. Once I watched that, though, they all seemed hilarious.

[Legato Endless]

I'm not actually a fan of sitcoms in general. I much prefer comedy panel shows like Mock the Week and Would I Lie To You?, because there's just a much greater density of jokes and thus they tend to be funnier even if not all the jokes hit the mark. QI and HIGNFY I watch more because they're witty and informing rather than laugh-out-loud funny, although they both have their moments.

I will second this. Rapid fire witty shows like QI tend to be more genuine and less hamstrung than sitcoms in general. The only sitcoms I usually like are leavened with heavy amounts of satire or parody, even the more juvenile ones. Red vs. Blue for example has an unfortunate amount of broad comedy, but the show was at its cleverest in the early seasons when it was skewering everything about the first person shooter genre.

[danzibr]

Jeremiah Crichton.

/thread
We were talking in another thread about how annoying the /thread thing is.

Anyway. I used to watch a decent bit of anime, and unfortunately many filler episodes are crap. Entire story arcs, actually. None in particular come to mind, especially since it's been a while, but they leave a bad feeling.

[Avilan the Grey]

Just realized I forgot Bean on my list. I am SO very ashamed.

As for Bottom... It's a cross between Beavis And Butthead and Tom & Jerry. Written by experienced writers.
The Young Ones showcases far less experienced actors, a much less focused script, and well... It is a far less quality show.

[Marlowe]

FARSCAPE'S "Jeremiah Crichton" has been mentioned. In fact, FARSCAPE is known, at least by me, as an excellent series with a somewhat indifferent first season (it took a while for the writers to stop following the lead of previous Sci-Fi shows and go their own way) and in particular a weak first six episodes. But the worst episode of FARSCAPE probably isn't any of these. It's probably "Taking the Stone"; the third episode of the second season.

It's meant to be a focus episode for Chiana, who had joined the show late in the first season and was meant to have been killed off on her first appearance except that the actress gelled well and the character sufficiently vivid that they kept her on. It involves Chiana discovering her twin brother has died, going into a uncharacteristic breakdown, and joining some idiot cult that Crichton has to rescue her from.

They lose focus on Chiana almost immediately, the vast bulk of the episode is Crichton trying to get some sensible behaviour out of the aforesaid idiot cult members who look, act, and talk like people who got kicked out of "Mad Max" for being too lame. It's comprehensively tedious, and the one important plot point the episode has (the news of Chiana's brother's death) turns out later to have been a ruse on his part. Insofar as that's important since he never actually features in the show except for one brief snippet much later. It's almost the only episode of seasons 2 and 3 that's completely dispensable. It's boring, it advances nothing, it misses out on the cast's strength as an ensemble and the character it's meant to be developing is out of focus and out of character the whole time.

Thankfully it was followed by one of the shows strongest episodes.