One of my pet peeves is Ally McBeal, esp.the very last season. Ally is suddenly a mother to a ten-year-old. What?! They use an egg cell she donated ten years ago, and now the kid is at her doorstep, saying, "I'm your daughter! Can I come live with you?" Then Ally's plumber, or all ppl, spends all his time at their house, helping mother and daughter to cope. It was soo stupid.

Well, anything that goes on in soap operas is generally just as dumb. But still.

I think "anything" is a bit extreme.

But to prove I can poke fun at my own favorite genre, I think the dumbest plot "twist" had to be when they made Blair from One Life To Live white. In the beginning, she was half-Asian. Now she was Southern.

I don't think the writers wrote that into the script. They just had to get a new actress. For some reason. Maybe after the casting changed they 'reset' the character.

But , from what I saw- the 2 Blairs said & did pretty much the same things.

I think a good example of a non-soap-opera plot twist was Dr Bashir from Deep Space 9. I don't remember what season it was. But, it was awhile into the run of the series that it was revealed ol' Julian was a 'Khan-esque' genetic superhuman. I hated, hated the idea at first but they actually pulled it off pretty well.

Dallas owns this thread with that "It was all a dream" stunt.

On "Dynasty", when Steven Carrington was gay/not gay/ make up your mind! Also when Diahnn Carroll's character turned out to be Blake Carrington's half-sister. Because it was just so lame - god forbid Blake should be interested in a black woman!

Anytime Marlena was kidnapped/possessed/crazy on "Days of Our Lives". (And I don't even watch the show; I learned all this from the freaking commercials!)

When Picard had a son he'd never seen on "Star Trek: TNG". I turned to my sister and said, "First, Kirk; now Picard? Don't people in the future use birth control?"

Hanna-Reeta:

I never saw this show ever, but has anyone ever pointed out that this is exactly like Murphy Brown?

MetropolisGal:

Which turned out to be an even worse plot twist than that, it wasn't even his son. A Ferengi had somehow found out that Picard had a lover 20 years before, faked Picard's DNA somehow, and engineered their meeting, all to screw with his shiny head...not my favorite episode.

Dawn on Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.

Yes, in the tradition of Cousin Oliver on The Brady Bunch- a younger sibling/relative is suddenly introduced into a well-established dynamic.

And while this may inspire all-caps rebukes from some of you: She turned out to be 'okay' in my book.

Dawn was infinitely better than she could have been. What exactly that means can be debated.

How's about them ovaries? My votes are for the "They stole Syd's eggs" plot twist on Alias, and the "Scully's pregnant" crap on the X-Files.

On Due South: Ray Vecchio is suddenly tapped to go deep, deep undercover with The Mob, because it turns out he looks exactly like Armando Langoustini, a mob guy who just died in a car crash (and whose death the FBI kept a secret, I guess). Lest he be missed at home, Stanley Raymond "Ray" Kowalski is brought in to take RayV's place as Ray Vecchio, in case any mob guys start snooping around, I guess. RayV was a tall, thin, dark-haired-but-balding Italian. RayK is younger, shorter, skinny, and has a full head of blond hair. Not only is it never explained how the sudden appearance of a guy who looks NOTHING like RayV yet claims to be him is not going to arouse suspicion in the criminal community, the lack of resemblance forms the very plot of the handover episode!

Now, duesers can debate the relative merits of RayV vs. RayK til the cows come home, but I think we can all agree there are far more elegant ways to execute an actor handoff.

Moonlighting. David is in L.A. Maddie is coming back to LA on a train. They are about to finally begin a romantic relationship together. David waits and waits. Maddie arrives in the office. She is accompanied by a man she met, and married, on the train. David is angry. Maddie is sad. TV sets across America are shattered by thousands of people screaming "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT" at the top of their lungs.

Oh, gosh, word! <TimeWise Addict raising the roof over here.>

Saffy having a baby on Absolutely Fabulous. The 5th season would have been much better had Saffy just moved out and left Edina on her own to finally grow up and learn responsibility...eventually.

Roseanne dreaming the last 4 seasons of her show. I thought that was a real wus way out. Just admit the past few seasons were crappy writing and get on with it.

I suppose. Wasn't the story that Addie got raped by an Asian man? Or am I making this up? I mean, how does Asian go away?

I stopped watching a looong time ago. And even when I did watch- I was but a part-time viewer. But one thing I do know about soaps: they will change actors in a role without batting an eye. Sometimes they'll even do a little VO in the beginning of the show: "The part of so-and-so will now be played by blankity-blank".

Yeah, I know, but usually they get an actor who looks like the former actor, all acting skills aside. Also, wasn't a girl on Y&R changed from black to white?

Yeah, you're right. They do. Maybe Kassie dePavia has a shoebox full of incriminating photos from a OLTL Christmas party or something. : )

That was actually Tyrone Jackson, younger brother of Jazz Jackson who was an associate of Paul's & rival of Nathan "Kong" Hastings. He went undercover as a white man "Robert Tyrone" to infiltrate & bust the mafia. It was a long & drawn out storyline that had a good payoff but Phil Morris makeup was really bad.

I was actually thinking of Keesha. It took me a while to come up with the name. Didn't they make the second actress white, or vice versa?

Huh? I stopped watching about the time that Tom Arnold joined the show (coincidence? I think so!) and way before they won the lottery. I didn't know anything about this "dream." Can you enlighten me?

Big. Fat. Word. And pretty much every single plot twist S5 onward, IMO.

I think that anytime that they make a character "dream" the last bunch of seasons is a lame idea, as if that's the absolute best they can come up with.

Anouther from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, magic becoming a drug. There was no need for it and then they took it back in the first episode of the next season.

I agree. They write themselves into a corner and can't figure a better way out. Geez, I made up better plotlines when I was playing Barbie when I was a kid...

Lauren turning out to be evil on Alias. Well, actually, Lauren's existance in its entirety. It is truly the assiest ass that ever assed (no, seriously, the writers are suffering from a bad case of ASS: Acute Stupidity Syndrome). I don't buy JJ Abrams and Melissa George's constant pimping of Lauren as a 'lovely, wonderful person whom the fans are going to be just as torn up about how to resolve the love triangle as the characters are, and who Sydney will admire' one bit. None of that even happened! Someone really dropped the ball, because Melissa has neither the talent nor the charisma to properly play the character, in the incarnations they've tried and in the way they claimed she was supposed to be.

I guess they're trying to brush off their overly defensive failure of a P.R. campaign as reverse psychology or something for her new eeeeevilness, but I still think it's bull. They tried too hard, when it would have been more advantageous to just shut the fuck up and not tell the fans what they're supposed to think. Come on: casting director, writers, and Melissa... you fucked up royally, and now you're just trying to cover your asses.

I eagerly wait in hopes that she'll be reduced to a whimpering basketcase, and then disappear from my screen.

The final episode ended with Roseanne giving a long-ass monologue in which she revealed that the events of much of the series were actually the character Roseanne writing a 'better' version of her life. Changes included Becky marrying David instead of Mark and Darlene marrying Mark instead of David, Dan actually died from a heart attack at the beginning of the last season, Jackie was really gay and Roseanne's mother who came out in the last season was actually straight.

Ooh, don't forget Dan cheating on Roseanne. WTF?

I nominate two soap whodunnits for Dumbest Plot Twist:

They build up the General Homicide story up for over a year on Port Charles, only to reveal that it's Julie, who really wasn't all that together anyway. Wow. Thumbs down.

Marlena being the Serial Killer on Days of Our Lives really tore it for me, especially since NBC made it no secret, publishing it in Soap Opera Digest and TV Guide almost a full two weeks before the episodes aired.

Actually Dan's cheating on Roseanne was part of the 'fantasy version'. She said something to the effect that she would rather imagine him with another woman than dead. Still, up until we found out it was fake, that was a lame plot twist.

That's really sweet, and sad. Pity it was in such a lame-ass plot.

So er... since I didn't watch the last season or so of Roseanne either... who really married who? Darlene married Mark in the fantasy version or the real one?

A couple.

Virtually everything that's happened on 7th Heaven, but outstandingly that the Camrents are now parents or adoptive parents or foster parents or kidnappers or something to roughly half the population of North America under the age of 25. And the twins, who have zero cuteness quotient between them, a joint I.Q. of a single chimpanzee, and serve no purpose whatsoever other than being irritating.

The whole Chris subplot on Charmed. Yes, they had to do something to provide some further excuse for the T&A, but that? Spare me. And while we're at it, why the whole "elders" thing and getting Holly Marie Combs's character "divorced" from the Whitelighter in the first place?

Finally a blast from the past (not too distant, really): Joel's decamping to NYC through mysticism and bringing in Phil and Michelle Capra on Northern Exposure. Yeh, yeh, I know, it was Rob Morrow's walking his contract that made it necessary, or made something necessary, but they still had choices. They made a bad one there, although Teri Polo was starting to maybe gain some cachet when the show got the axe.

Phishtar, Becky orginally brought David home and Darlene met Mark, but Roseanne switched it. She also allowed herself to win the lottery in her book, as she thought money would have solved all her families' problems. Jackie is really gay, but Roseanne always thought that if Jackie had just found the right guy, she would have been happy. Grandma Harris was not really gay, but Roseanne had her come out in the final season in her book, because she always thought her mother could have been more liberated if she had just allowed herself to be who should could have been if she hadn't always identified herself as Mr. Harris, a married woman.
It was an interesting concept, but not knowing "when" her life was accurate and when it was part of her book was, and still is, difficult to pick apart.
If you'd go to the Roseanne thread, you'll see we talk about the finale and what it change just about every month as the finale airs on TV.


As far as we know, Blair's father has never been revealed, nor has his ethnicity ever been revealed.
The fact was the first Blair sucked. They wrote her off, and brought on Kassie De Paiva later, and she's just better. The fact that the first actor was part Asian, to me, really doesn't matter. They recast a bad actor with a better one.

The Dallas plot twist has never bother me, and actually it's because it's the first of its kind. How to bring back a dead character without making the audience totally pissed off? (a la long-lost twin, new character, same actor). The fact that so many shows, Roseanne in particular, use the "dream" answer is more of a cop-out, if only because [i]Dallas[i/] thought of it first, and they went on from there.
You're either smart or stupid the first time you try something in storytelling, and only time will tell if you're smart. The fact that other shows have copied it makes me think it was pretty smart.

Worst Plot Twist? Spike getting his soul back on Buffy. The show had been sucking before that, but trying to shoe-horn a souled Spike in made S7 unwatchable.Alll of a sudden it became "The Spike and Buffy Show". Giles, Xander and Willow were given no real story arc in the wake of the Spikeathon of S7. There are no words to describe how much that sucked. Suffice it to say it really, really truly sucked.

Ok, you can't bring up One Life to Live, without basking for a moment in the stupidity that is the "Plot Twist" of Jessica and Natalie's paternity. First, Jessica was the Buchanan daughter - father was Clint, mother was Vicki. Then, Natalie showed up with the DNA to prove that she's the real daughter. She was switched at birth. (Not such a big twist, in fact, a fairly common soap staple.) Then through more tests, Jessica is revealed to be Natalie's twin (Vicki forgot she had twins. Another common soap staple. Espescially for Vicki, seeing as how she had already forgotten about giving birth to a completel different daughter. But Megan's a whole other story). Then we find out, that even though Vicky gave birth to both girls, Clint did not father both of them. No, Vicki was had sex with Clint and then was raped by Mitch (another thing she forgot about), so Clint is Natalie's dad, while Mitch is responsible for Jessie. Biologically impossible you say? Not in Lanview, I say. Maybe all that gold in Eterna (the magical lost city) underneath the town mutated their genes to the point that medical miracles are suddenly made possible...

I would tell you all how Mitch married Natalie before revealing himself to be her twin's dad, and then how he tried to cut out her heart to give to Vicki's dying father, while pretending that she was Jessica (because Grandad didn't know they were twins), but I'm afraid you'd think I was crazy...

Thanks soxom2, for mentioning Due South! (Are you reading the Exit Stage Left thread, BTW?) I hate the way DS suddenly went for the surreal after Stanley came on. Ugh. And the ending? Plain silliness. I currently believe the theory that the last season was all a big crazy dream in Fraser's head after he fell off that speeding van.

While I agree with that there was a lot of stupidity and retconning in the Natalie and Jessica Switched at Birth, No, Wait, They're Actually Twins! story, it is possible for (fraternal) twins to have different fathers, although it's obviously very uncommon.

Okay, I saw someone mentioned Lauren being evil on Alias, but how about the whole "I just woke up and suddenly it's two years later" thing. I think I speak for all of us when I say, huh?

I'm not sure if this counts as a plot twist since it came at the very end, but on Average Joe 2 when its revealed that the girl used to date Fabio. I mean, what the fuck?

The "Troi/Worf" romantic subplot on Star Trek: TNG. Not that this was so bad in and of itself, but when they reintroduced Worf on DS9, it was like the relationship had never happened.

In a way, that may be a blessing. I could never buy the idea of this fierce warrior falling for the touchy-feely counselor. Ick.

I agree with the Roseanne ending, but that's really more of a "final episode" problem, and that's another thread. The entire lottery twist was atrocious. I loved the Connors when they were having problems with the mortgage, buying generic food, and thinking of a night at the bar as a big night out. Once they won the money, the show took an unnecessary and certainly unwanted trip to fantasyland. The plots became more outlandish (did I really see her posing for "Playboy" and fighting on the top of a train?), the characters changed unrealistically (Dan cheating? WTF?), and all in all the show became a mockery of its former self. Bad Roseanne. Bad.

You're totally right, MysticGirl. I think I had my head wrapped around the whole identical twin's egg-seals-itself-after-fertilization thing, and forgot that it would be two different eggs.

But it's still really, really dumb. Why can't Vicki ever remember having her children?

Oh, and to comment on Alias. The waking up two years later *could* have been a really good plot twist. They just didn't know how to execute it the following season. A lot of creative stories *could* have been told. And the COW didn't have to exist. And they didn't have to resolve it with some asinine explanation like Syd surgically removed her own memories so she wouldn't know the covenant was trying to harvest her eggs. Or whatever. I still don't quite get that.

So, the plot twist in and of itself didn't suck, but the way they handled it sure did.

She could, back in the days when the writing was good.

Given their respective contrasts to the main plots, I'm still going with the cougar and amnesia storylines from 24.

After finishing my season 7 DVD, yes I saw it all in four days. I think the end of season 7 of Friends was really stupid with Rachel being pregnant. Hearing the commentary they are saying that they needed a twist to it, I just thought it was stupid.

The first daughter that Viki forgot about, Meagan, was because her father, Victory Lord, had her hypnotised after giving birth to forget about it, because she was young, he didn't like the dad, etc.
The second baby that Viki forgot about (it's either Jessica or Natalie, seeing as how they were switched and for a while we were to think that Natalie was the Baby Jessica that was taken away) was explain off as part of her multiple personality disorder. One of her alters was present for the births of both children, and Viki only was present for the birth of one of them.
Talk about stupid. I mean, it was 1984, or 1988, I can't remember. But still, you're gonna tell me that little Ms. Richy Rich didn't ever get a sonogram and find out that she was carying twins?

I didn't watch these shows, so I can't say this for certain. But...

• Cordelia hooking up with Connor on "Angel"
• Ally McBeal suddenly buying the house and apparently forgetting Renee
• Somehow, Florida left her kids to fend for themselves in the ghetto. Then, she came back a year later and conveniently forgot about her new husband
• I stopped watching "Frasier" after he got fired from the radio station.
• OK, this is a cartoon, but There are no real women Smurfs. Gargamel's spell created Smurfette and Sassette. How did a Nanny Smurf appear?

That was around the time Esther Rolle was fed up with Jimmie Walker setting a bad influence for black children. J.J. was in his early twenties by then anyway, so he could have raised them.

I suppose chronologically he could have raised the others, in a "Party of Five" kind of way. But I would not leave a houseplant in JJ's care, much less my other children. Plus, I'm sure Florida wasn't living in the projects when she moved away.

I never understood why Willona decided to move in and help with Michael. Why couldn't Thelma have done it? I guess it's what Florida would've wanted.

She did move in, right?

In any case, I thought the dumbest plot twist was the finale, when everything went right for each member of the cast. It's called Good Times in an ironic sense. They're really not supposed to have good times!

She didn't move in, but she did live right next door.

Speaking of which, how could this woman be a buyer at a boutique and still be able to live in what I assume is public housing? She has so much money that she wore nice clothes, had a nice apartment, got the afore mentioned promotion, and was able to adopt a daughter. But, somehow, she couldn't just move into a regular apartment.

The finale was a stupid plot twist, but we all really wanted them to get out of the ghetto.

How about "Land of the Lost"? Suddenly, Dad was gone, but Uncle was able to replace him.

[off-topicish] Yup sugarfreekelli, and I replied to your reply to me - I think we should meet up in the DS thread![/OT]

Topic: One word for y'all: Paramounties.

"Oh no! We're surrounded and the terrorists outnumber us! What will we do?!"
"Look! Up in the sky!"
"Paramounties! Led by Diefenbaker! We're saved!"

Diefenbaker, I might add, is a dog. (well, a wolf. But still.)

A deaf wolf yet. But he can read lips.

It always bothered me in the last episode of Magnum P.I. he up and rejoins the Navy. He spent 7, 8 seasons pissing off the military, doing his own thing and recovering from Vietnam and then all of a sudden he decides to join the biggest conformist organization in existence. Why? And who was going to look after Lilly if he's posted to a ship for months?

Of course Lilly was another unknown child that suddenly appeared along with the long dead wife, but they didn't really impact the plot much.

Sorry, soxom2. I read so many topics here and I never remember who I respond to, lol. But, yes, paramounties. I had to roll my eyes when I saw that the first time. Poor Dief. I thought all of Turnbull's plot twists were relatively funny, though. Run over by his own campaign bus, huh? And what about the crazy guy (Bolt?) who strapped Fraser and Ray to a bomb and covered them with a poncho? And they were expected to resolve all of the season's issues through that?

Technically, yes. Wanda Acuna, the first one, was black, while Jennifer Gatti, her replacement, was white. But as you can see from the pictures, they actually looked quite similar.


And what made that storyline even more ridiculous was once Viki remembered that she had had a child with Roger Gordon, she knew that it was one of his daughters, Megan or Sarah. She knew when it was born. Yet she wandered around endlessly moaning, "One of Roger Gordon's daughters is my daughter, and I don't know which one!" ASK THEM THEIR AGES, you twit!

Another really ridiculous plot twist from the soap archives: Amy Perkins on Santa Barbara goes to the gynecologist for a routine exam and winds up impregnated with the sperm of the Prince of New Stailand.

I don't know how many people are going to agree with me on this one but killing Tara off at the end of season 6 just pissed me off. Sure, Joss. Not only do you burden the audience with a main character who can barely move she's so depressed about being alive, you kill off the one wholesome gay relationship I've seen in awhile. And for what? It's not like anyone even remembered her next season! It was all Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooul Boy and Drill Sergeant Summers for the rest of season 76 anyway.

If you're going to kill a character that a lot of people love, make sure it has a discernable impact on the plot.