This thread is in response to the Lana Effect thread, to focus on the other side of the story: The good characters who get left in the lurch because the producers want to focus on their favorites, or because the writers can't seem to connect with them, or who knows why? Chloe's the perfect example of this - one of the most interesting characters on the show Season 1, but after that just about dropped off the map. They couldn't even be bothered to give her a romantic interest of her own, just kept her pining after Clark but never doing anything about it (which makes no sense for her character anyway). Then in Season 4 they actually made it worse by having her learn Clark's secret but do nothing but drop dumb hints about it. And now, after a good start to the year, it's back to listen to Clark whine about Lana, and even worse, how he's afraid to have sex with her. Yuck.

Of course, if the writers and producers really hate the character, they'll just kill them off, but there's alread a thread for that.

Some other examples of potentially good characters who never seemed to go anywhere include Charlie on The West Wing, Paris on Gilmore Girls, who should be more than just comedy relief, and Sandy and Kirsten on The O.C. since Season 1.

Love the threads named after Smallville characters. First and foremost Julie Mayer of Desperate Housewives is a prime example of the Chloe Sullivan Corollary. A fantastic minor character in DH her role (which was never large to begin with) has been dimnished dramatically in season 2. She is critical because she makes Susan Mayer more bearable. I am not saying the whole show should revolve around her (that would be overkill) just give her some consistent screentime. I would also nominate Sun from Lost. I wouldn't say she's being ignored by the writers but she is just not having enough to do on that show. Why does everyone else get to do the cool stuff while Sun is stuck talking to her husband and gardening?

Can I talk about my tv girlcrush Merrin Dungey from Alias here. She played Francie on Alias and Suzanna on Summerland. On Alias she was killed off and replaced by the blandest girl that walked the face of the earth and on Summerland if she got two lines I jumped for joy. She's beautiful and talented so why won't they give her any lines.

Don't even get me started on Dixon and Jack Bristow.

I have to vote for Hoshi Sato on Enterprise. I wasn't a big fan of hers in Season One, but as the show went on I realized that Linda Park was pretty cool, and so was her character. But we never got to see enough of her. Whatever miniscule screentime the character got was priceless. "Through a Mirror Darkly" was great because her character finally got integrated into an interesting storyline.

But ultimately, the show had - what? Maybe four Hoshi-centered episodes at best? And ten million crack-ho T'Pol episodes?

What a waste.

ETA: Tahitian Moon, WORD! I used to tell my friends that if they made "Alias" with Jack, Dixon, Sloane and Spy Mommy, it would run a million years.

The first time I saw Merrin was when she did stand-up on Comedy Central. I thought she was so funny. I had no idea she was not just a comedian so it shocked the hell out of me when I saw her on Alias. And she was seriously underused on Summerland.

She was also on Malcom in the Middle and King of Queens where she made me laugh so hard playing the straight-laced mother of Stevie that always kep her emotions in check until she blew up at some incompetent waiter. I don't see how anyone can not love her after watching her in "The Best Girl-Fight Ever" and on Summerland. No doubt that she had talent in varying forms.

I wouldn't call Chloe Sullivan an ignored character. After all she is the second most prominent female character from Smallville and the fact that she knows Clark's secret made her even more important to the plot. I mean she has saved Clark a lot of times this season. Now, Lois Lane in the other hand...

I would say Edie is the biggest example from DH. She's of the same generation, so it's not like she would be expected to be a minor character like the old lady neighbors, but since she's considered a bad person who's not one of the 4 buddies, she gets shuttled to the side.

I think Anya suffered hardcore from the Chloe Sullivan Corollary. She had an entire redeption arc DROPPED in the 7th season of Buffy. She would disappear for episodes in the later seasons and reappear, with little to no time paid to the motivations for her actions.
Then, to top it off, her death is an unceremonious minute in the last episode, and her ex-fiancee doesn't even cry for her.

On Desperate Housewives, yeah, Edie does get underused, but I don't know if there's much you can do with her character unless you were going to change her a lot. But I agree about Julie, last season she had a lot of good little moments, and it seemed things could develop, but this year she's barely been on screen.

Anya got ignored a lot on season 7, but Xander really didn't have much going on either, especially once they decided Andrew was funny.

Also, last year on 24, Michelle basically showed up and hung around CTU until they decided it was time for her and Tony to make up.

I wouldn't say she's full out ignored but Smallville has a pretty small cast compared to a show like Desperate Housewives. There are so many things she could do that would make since plotwise but the writers just underutilize her. This season she has been reduced to being Clark's sounding board when she is such an intelligent and resourceful character. She always takes a back seat to Lana and is always being treated like a second class citizen on Smallville. Lois gets ignored a lot too but we just notice the slights on Chloe more because she is more liked.

How about Oz? I get that Seth Green needed time off for his film career, but they couldn't have brought him back for just one episode after season four to give the character some closure?

Oh how could I have forgotten Pete from Smallville?! He is a textbook case of the CS Corollary. I was never a big fan of his but his gradually dimishing role through 4 seasons followed by the show letting him go was just fascinating to witness. Poor Pete, poor product placement Pete...........

That's what ticks me off the most about how Alias turned into the "Sydney & Vaughn Show" from the moment they got together until Vaughn disappeared this season.

Jack still gets some good stuff, and it is obvious that the writers like him because they give him the most kick-ass things to do and say. But they way he got shoved aside so Syd and Vaughn could get all schmoopy was irritating.

However, what happened to Jack pales in comparison to what happened to Dixon. He used to be Syd's partner and a huge part of the show. Then - again - Vaughn pretty much took over the role of Syd's partner and Dixon was reduced to standing around in the background a few scenes her episode. That was truly a crime.

David Rees Snell on The Shield has continually gotten the shaft. At least he's in the opening credits finally now that we're in the fifth (and rumored last) season. S4 was all about Shane and his problems with Antwon Mitchell and even Lem got a storyline way back in either S1 or S2 (and now the whole IAD thing is about him). But poor Ronnie (DRS) gets shunted to the side.

I agree with the poster upthread who mentioned Charlie from The West Wing. It's a moot point now but I would've loved some backstory as to how he raised his little sister after his cop mom was killed in the line of duty.

I'd love to see an ep in S2 of Rome devoted to Posca. That'd be great!

Dude, over half of the bloated cast is underused. That's one of the things that pisses me off the most about Lost. They just don't know how to juggle these characters properly. Fuck, they had issues with that in the first season. So what's the solution? Well, add even more characters, of course! I got my mother into watching this season, and every now and then they'll show a cast member and she'll be like, "Who the hell is that?"


Posca is the shit!

Especially Kirsten, who has very interesting unresolved issues but the fact that she's a recovering alcoholic is ignored completely by the writers, and her role this season has been reduced to just decorate the set. She barely gets 4 minutes of screen time per episode. And no, I did not forget Kelly Rowan's emmy-worthy performance last season, so it irritates me that her talent is being wasted on meaningless scenes, while Mischa Barton takes over the show with all of her suck.

ETA: How could I forget about Andrea Zuckerman from 90210? At first her role was bigger (IIRC they were about to start an affair or something between her and Brandon, but I could be wrong), but later her role was reduced to minimun until she was written off and came back in a later season for a small appearence.

Word. Yes, she can be under-utilized in terms of potential, but that's pretty much par for course for almost every single character on the show. Heck, even the main characters like Clark & Lex play second fiddle to Lana at times. I think Poor Product Placement Pete truly deserves the title of the thread - he suffered the most from the Being-Ignored Character Syndrome. Guy was barely there most of the time, and whatever negligible screen-time he had was often wasted on trivial, non-important/nonsensical C-plots. The role of plucky side-kick was usually filled by Chloe, and even when he found out the Big Sekrit, he was still shoved to the side for more lovely Clana/Chlark passive-agressive pining.

I would have liked to see more development for the Kents & Lois Lane from the writers. Clark's parents used to play significant roles, but their dwindling screen-time and importance after the first two seasons saddens me (since AT and JS are both solid actors and two of the prettiest parents on TV). I wish they hadn't dropped the Martha-Kent-spying-on-Lionel-Luthor plot, or the Miscarriaged-Baby-Kent plotlines so abruptly. I like Erica Durance's Lois Lane (an unpopular TWOP opinion, I realize), and so I would love to see greater time and more careful attention spent to Clark Kent's future wife - it's annoying that the writers waste so much of her potential and have her just drop in every now-and-then without giving her a clearer overall purpose in the story.

Elena from Felicity was so underused, they killed her off in the dream sequence and never explain how she was brought back to life! Dr. Chen was way underused on ER, she would be absent for whole series of episodes. GayMatt on Melrose was underused. The entire cast of Ally McBeal was underused. Rebecca on The Practice had nothing to do. And I always wondered how Eric Roberts could get a full paycheque and top billing on Less Than Perfect.

Also, the poor firefighters on Third Watch. It became another cop show.

Everyone became underused on E.R. following the advent of the Age of Abby, but Romano (always a more minor character anyway) became positively invisible in favour of Abby and her scenery chewing mother. Then when there were virtually no repercussions after his death? Pah!

I don't want to depress the Posca lovers - but didn't he get stabbed along with Caesar in the last episode?

Anya Anya Anya. Thank you so much for mentioning her. The way they did away with her and basically killed her off before she died pissed me off. She was excellent...then she wasn't. And she turned into a bit of a shrew. Nasty stuff. I think they brought her in as a Cordelia replacement and then decided that they weren't sure how to use her.

And Pete from Smallville...lordy. The creators just weren't sure what to do with him at all. So they shipped him off to wherever he went to instead. Great storylining there, guys.

No. He got whacked in the back of the head by Quintus with the soap-in-a-sock (or whatever it is they used back in the day).

I'll add my vote as well. Unlike Anthony Montgomery, Linda Park could hold an episode because she could act. And when she was in a Hoshi-centered episode, they tended to be poor episodes. One of my biggest TV hell yeah moments came at the end of the "In a Mirror, Darkly II." I scared my poor dogs by jumping off the couch and pumping my fists in the air.

Word to the infinite degree. Andrea was my sole reason for watching 90210 when they were in high school. After they minimized her role it became the Donna and Kelly Show. That was awful.

Poor Andrea became the one ethnic character who seemed to exist to lust after Brandon and and date the token other ethnic characters that appeared once in a while.

Pete Ross owns this thread. He was a canon character and knew Clark's secret and he was written out in favor of Lois Lane.

L&O SVU - Munch, Finn and Lt. Cragan have disappeared into the black hole of Olivia Angst.

God, when the Stabler/Benson started getting stale, how did they remedy the situation? Increase Munch/Finn screentime? Nope, they split up Stabler and Benson to do stand alone episodes.

Chakotay essentially vanished in the later seasons of Voyager.

I really love the few moments we get Deakins and Carver on L & O CI but they are so few and far between, even for L & O. I am not asking for personal information, but the characters are about as deep as a piece of paper. We had a moment where Jamey had to deal with Bell's Palsy in real life, and Deakins had an eye patch and it was passed off in one line.
Jamey is a GREAT actor and the show never shows us that side of him at all, and less for Courtney. Everything is Goren, Eames even gets shoved under the rug quite a bit these days.

With the Oscar nominations out, I have to include the terrible act of cruelty that the Dawson Creek writers committed against Michelle Williams. But she now has an Oscar nomination and Katie Holmes' career is falling to pieces. Awesome!

I would have to say Lindsay on AD. She really has nothing to do on the show. They have tried to improve that recently, but last season she was usually MIA. It isn't the same thing to have screen time when you don't have an intriguing story line.

In a way I'm glad that he was underused because he was such a dullard. But at the same time, had they given his character something interesting to do, I wouldn't have minded some more screentime thrown his way. I think the problem with him, was that they couldn't show any of the steamy sex stuff that the rest of the cast got to play off of, given the time that the show came out.


I never really watched the Creek, but Williams getting an Oscar nod while Holmes is sponging off of Cruise for fame, is in fact awesome.

The queen of this thread is Edie Britt. She is a compelling, intriguing character, IMO, and do we see enough of her, or her personal life (Her son? What happened to that plotline?). No, we just get more Wacky Hijinks™ from Susan, who is surely a contender for most pointless character of all time.

Chloe Sullivan has way more screentime than a crappy "Gee Willikers!" exposition character like her really deserves. If anything, she belongs in the other thread, named after Lana Lang... She's a less-than-tertiary character that has come to the forefront of the show as little Miss Saint Mary Sue because the producers seem to think she's cute or something.

At the moment, the character getting ignored the most on Smallville is probably Lois Lane.

And yeah, Francie and Will on Alias totally got the shaft in favor of flashier characters. Will, especially. They were what grounded the show in something closer to reality, and when they left and the show became all conspiracies and all spies all the time, so left my interest.

And I always thought BtVS and Angel balanced their large ensembles pretty well, even in the end.

yes and she got to breed with Heath Ledger instead of a wacko named Tom.

Believe me I am so happy for Michelle's recent success, but Katie's career certainly is by no means failing. There are a lot of good actresses out there who would love to have the indie/commercial success of Katie's career. (Again, Please feel free to snark about her upcoming marriage to Tom, but the career is pretty solid.) I just hope she doesn't become another Nicole Kidman (Not the present oscar winning, good script getting Kidman, but the one who lived in the shadow of Tom's career when they were married.

ED as Lois Lane was not good casting. She's by far the weakest actor on that show.

I'd put Allison and Kristin both far below her.

Also, I think acting is usually a valid reason to push a character into the background or the foreground. I think that's why Spike/JM became so central to Buffy, and why they were totally fine with sending off Charisma Carpenter to a show that had every chance of falling on its face and failing.

Thing is all other characters tend to equally be shoved aside and left to languish off-screen, when TPTB "play favorites"


I can't agree with the name of the thread, though,this season, if not before, Chloe Sullivan has been glorified, sanctified, shoe-horned into everything and Mary Sued almost as much as Lana has, I just don't comprehend the degree of worship that character gets and never will, guess I should take that to the unpopular opinions thread. :P

I think this applies to Meg from Family Guy.
Guess the writers don't know how to handle a teenage girl.
Maybe that's for the best...
Pretty much just tends to let the family snark on her.

Counselor Troi owns this thread, as does Geordi LaForge.

Deanna got very few storylines, and was basically written as a cosmic cheerleader, although her character's background provided so much potential. Instead, she ended up being either the damsel in distress, the person who gets possessed, or "oy, my mother." And then, in the crew's final send off in Nemesis, she gets fucking raped (telepathically). What an insulting way to treat what could have been an amazing character.

And Geordi? Geordi had two episodes. Two. Compare that to the 130+ that centered around Data.

Alex from Roswell. They even admitted that they had no idea what to do with his character so they killed him off.


(Or maybe because Katherine Heigl, the Lana Lang, didn't want him around)

That's a good thing. Shelby's a better actor and more deserving of screentime IMO. And I'm dead serious about that.

Poor Alex. I always liked him.

Amen for small(ville) miracles! I never thought I would watch a show where the future ace-reporter is a lazy, stupid bimbo. Erica Durance is an okay actress, but the character SUCKS.

ETA: Most underused character on Smallville (besides Chloe)? Let's see, Martha, Lionel, Pete, Whitney (whoops too late for those last two!), Professor Fine,
Bo Kent (too late again!)...

First thing that popped into my mind when I saw this thread. I loved Alex and his death was definately one of the things that killed my interest in the show.

Lane on GG. I know this show is about Rory and Lorelai foremost but the number of times that I can see places to utilize Lane that the writers ignore breaks my heart.



I agree with that wholeheartedly. And I do think that Portia and the writing are finally starting to click. She was always the only one that I couldn't fully throw myself behind to say "Emmy" but this season she's been quite funny.

Weevil from Veronica Mars is criminally underused, even though people rave about his scenes with fan-favorite Logan. Worse, he tends to be pushed aside in favor of erratically-recurring characters and/or characters who were added to the full-time S2 cast for no discernable reason.

It feels like TPTB never had a clear plan for his character and are unsure where to go with the 'criminal with a heart of gold' thing, so they use him as little as possible...and then mostly as an easy wrong-side-of-the-tracks plot device.

Meaning, Dick, Beaver, and Jackie?

Yeah. Needless to say, I was unspoiled for tonight's episode (which was very Weevil-centric). Bitch and you shall receive, I guess. ;)

You know I always wondered if the reason her screen time diminished was because she looked too damn old. She was able to pull it off for a while, but once they entered college, the suspension of belief was impossible.She was nearly 40 years old playing a young twentysomething. You don't see many, or any, young women with hanging jowls and crow's feet.