You know those episodes in the shows you love that you could not stand? Well post them here. I searched and searched through the forum and did not find one like this. If there is one covering this topic, sorry for the error and please delete this thread.

LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE: Could have done without any of the Nancy episodes. She was not needed. It was a chance to try and revive the whole Laura/Nellie drama again. But it didn't work.

Carrie dreaming she is in some enchanted forest with a look-a-like. Alrighty then.

Any episodes centering around the two adopted Ingalls children, Jason and his sister Cassandra.

The episode about Joe Kagan wanting to court Hester Sue. Boring!

The Halloween/dream episode about the indians going after Albert and Laura. WTF?

The blind boy who wanted to play football.

HAPPY DAYS: Of course, the one that started this whole jump sharking business, the episodes of the family in Hollywood.

ROSEANNE: the family winning the lottery. That episode was the beginning of the end.

I LOVE LUCY: the Scotland/dream episode. Ugh!

On "Lost" - a show I love deeply - I could easily do without at least half the Jackbacks. Why is it that the greatest number of flashback episodes were given to, IMHO, the most limited, incapable of learning from his experiences, boring and annoying major character on the island?

On "Night Gallery", I believe the show was at its best when going for real emotion, whether terror, love, regret, religious belief, grief, madness... whatever. Therefore, I think the series was severely damaged by the 'comic' short sketches inserted by the showrunner who took control from Rod Serling. For one thing, they marred the carefully established mood of the show, sometimes within the hour. For another, they were almost never funny.

Ugh! those flashbacks. One reason why I stopped watching the show.

LAVERNE & SHIRLEY: The California episodes without Shirley.

ONE DAY AT A TIME: The episodes featuring Alex and his dad. These characters were brought in to help the show. It didn't. Also the episode that helped to explain Julie's absence towards the end of the show. It was said she had an affair and left her husband and baby. So wrong.

HAPPY DAYS: Let me add another episode that I found horrid. The one where Potsie is failing his biology class I believe and the whole class sings that stupid song about the heart pumping blood. Ugh!

BRADY BUNCH: The Shirley Temple episode.

The Great Divide from Avatar: The Last Airbender. One of only two episodes of the show that's pure filler, with zero impact on any other episode (the other is The Painted Lady, where at least the story is good enough to justify its existence). And a lame story whose only purpose is to ram the lesson down our throats that you should try to get past old grudges and forgive, but lying is perfectly fine.

Also The Warriors of Kyoshi; I really wish Suki and the other Kyoshi Warriors had been introduced better. Another one that largely exists for a pat moral (in this case little more than "girls are awesome") and destroys the character of Sokka to do it.

Star Trek: Voyager: The episode where Tom Paris breaks Warp 10, turns into a lizard creature, kidnaps Captain Janeway, breaks Warp 10 again, turns her into a lizard creature, and they have a litter on some alien planet that nobody ever talks about.

(And you wish I was kidding....)

Arrested Development: The Martin Short episode. The only real blight on the show's 3 seasons.

Friends: Not that I watched or treasured every single episode... but I really could have done without the "Chandler jerks off watching sharks" episode.

Wasn't Chandler jerking off to porn, but flipped the channel to a documentary about sharks when Monica came in? But meh, that's the episode with Ross making up a story to Mike about a guy named Vicrum because Phoebe has never had a serious relationship, while Joey's on a date with some woman, the go back to her place who looks familiar because he has slept with her roommate that he kinda forgot about. Yeah, that episode didn't have a point.


Great minds think alike. I was coming here to post about Jack and his neverending flashbacks, but there's no need. You said it all.

Yes. I thought my capsule description (which is what Monica thinks for most of the episode) was funnier. Sorry.

Moral Orel could've done without "Help" - pointless and seemed like it was covering ground we'd already tread upon. Knowing that he only had half of his planned episodes to be filmed, I wish Dino Stamatopolous had made "Raped." After the agonizingly brilliant "Alone," what the heck did he have to lose?

I still have nightmares about Gilmore Girls' S7 episode "Go Bulldogs." Was anyone else even still watching the show by then, or am I alone in my post-viewing trauma?! Granted, there had been a lot of sub-par episodes prior to Go Bulldogs, but somehow this one hour of TV managed to highlight and exacerbate the very worst things about the show while systematically eliminating all that was good about it.

And, while I love Buffy more than I could (or should!) ever love another TV show, I have five words that still upset many fans: Lies My Parents Told Me. Even for those of us who saw some things to like about S6, this S7 episode was almost enough to make me give up the series for good. So painfully, offensively bad.

What happened in "Go Bulldogs"?

I love Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but when they sucked they well and truly sucked. So I could have done without the "Quark gets boobies" episode, the "Worf turns into the Church Lady on Risa" episode, and "Melora." I would easily rather watch the infamous salamander episode of Voyager than any of those three, hands down, because at least that one was hilarious.

As much as I love the show, I really wished the S2 premiere of Friday Night Lights did not exist. Matt going back to the studdering wimp, Julie becoming a massive brat, Smash going back to a one-dimensional, trash-talking jock, Coach being seperated from the younger cast, and of course, Landy killing Tyra's attempted rapist, and both of them covering up. It recovered a little bit, and I'm looking foward to the next season, but I remember watching it, and wondering what happened to the show I loved last season.



True, but as lame as those where, nothing can beat Next Generation's infamous "Candle possesed by a Ghost, causes Crusher to Masterbate" episode. And when Picard walked in on it, I have to imagine Patrick Stewart was wondering how did ST become this.

I have a couple:

Friends: The one with Phoebe's Twin doing the Buffy the Vampire Slayer porn. Especially as Ursula's co-star looks a lot like Matt LeBlanc. "Are you going to stick that in my dark places?" Blech...

Silver Spoons: The one where Ricky and his 'tween gang discover porn on their cable box. Or the one with Ricky in drag. You choose.

M*A*S*H*: The whole first hour of "Goodbye, Farewell, Amen". Hawkeye becomes a mental case, right before the whole mess is over... and he's miraculously cured! Everyone walks on eggshells...over the phone!

Star Trek TNG:



ITA. It retroactively almost took all of the fun out of "The Naked Now", in which Lt. Tasha Yar and Lt. Cmdr Data get down.

Dark Shadows: Elizabeth Stoddard, after having been blackmailed for months by Jason Maguire for allegedly murdering her husband, is further blackmailed into marriage by him. He keeps threatening ALL. DURING. THE. CEREMONY., in front of the judge performing the service. Her daughter, meanwhile, is packing a gun in her purse, in order to shoot Maguire. However, it's all for naught: Elizabeth confesses, to which Jason admits that the coffin buried in the cellar contains nothing but clothes, and that Mr. Stoddard is living well off her blackmail money. Jason is killed immediately afterward by the friendly neighborhood vampire. The End. Thereby negating a whole season of the show! All in one episode!

Sex and the City: The Jon Bon Jovi episode. Carrie's friends demand that she quit mourning Big and get some therapy. She does, and meets JBJ there. They have a romance, but as soon as they hit the sheets, he's a distant asshole and is gone. What a waste of Jon Bon Jovi!

As the World Turns: In the 80's, different actors played Emily Stewart and Paul Ryan, namely Melanie Smith and Andy Kavovit, respectively. Emily and Paul had a one-night-stand in one particular episode, which resulted in Paul losing his virginity. What was gross was not only that Emily had been Paul's dad's mistress, but that actor Andy Kavovit was a baby-faced teenager at the time! It was something we could have done without.

Bold and the Beautiful: Sheila's striptease in Eric's office. Stephanie acted like a right ass, making fun of Sheila, telling her to get a job in a strip club on the off-ramp. Which may or may not have reignited Sheila's murderous impulses.

DALLAS: The episode with the second actress playing Jenna Wade (not Priscilla Presley). No reason whatsoever for that episode to play out. Bobby had already been done with Jenna in the earlier episode. Jenna comes back into town just as Bobby's wife, Pam leaves town, leaving Bobby and Jenna alone to ponder things. Jenna then approaches Pam and tells her how much she wants her husband. Stupid!

The choice for this actress was horrible. She was old and ugly. Bobby would never ever think of an affair with that ugly broad while having such a beautiful wife as Pam who was faithful and loving to him.

Awww! I kinda liked that ep - if anything because it showed how people could learn using less than traditional methods. Not to mention the song came back in an asprin commercial recently!

Now the episode about Chachi selling his soul to Satan's nephew (aka "Melvin Scratch")... there's one I refused to watch during reruns! Worst part that ep was a backdoor pilot about an angel who comes to Earth to care for a bunch of orphan siblings.


Laverne & Shirley:

Everything from the season before the girls moved to California to the bitter end when Shirley "left" to marry someone we'd never met onscreen (save for the ceremony when he was head to toe in bandages). She didn't marry Carmine - that was unforgiveable!



Charmed:

• Season Two: "That Old Black Magic". An episode ripping off the "Blair Witch Project" - by name! This is one of many witches which can do lots of tricks the Halliwells never got to do.
  
  
  
• Season Three - "Wrestling with Demons". The sisters have to go into a wrestling ring to fight demonic wrestlers. LAME!
  
  
  
• Season Five - "Valhalla of the Dolls". The Halliwell sisters become Valkyries.
  
  
  
• Season Six - "Witchstock". The established timeline for the first 5 seasons is thrown out the window all because Finola Hughes wasn't available and TPTB didn't want to throw out the script.
  
  
  
• Season 7 - "The Bare Witch Project". Apparently someone thought we'd love to see the character of Phoebe imitate Lady Godiva in the name of breastfeeding rights. We didn't.
  
  
  
• Season 7 - "Once in a Blue Moon". Witchy women get their periods. Witchy women get their periods during the full moon. Witchy women turn into hideous dogs during the full moon... with their periods. No explanation mentioned as to how this could happen since there was never a precedent of this in the family.
  
  
  
• Most of Season 8. Billie and her long lost sister (aka the "Ultimate Power" and her long lost sister) are introduced and the Charmed Ones are practically afterthoughts.

Any episode of Daria featuring Tom. I just could never believe that Daria would go behind her best (only) friend's back to cheat with such a lump of nothing.

Of course, that might be because I see far too much of my younger self in Daria and I like to think I'd never do such a thing.

No, I agree with you, henrysmom, and I was probably moral-less enough to do something like that. Daria and Jane had such a solid relationship, and Tom was just...bleh. No personality whatsoever. I couldn't for the life of me understand what either of them saw in him. They both could have done a lot better.

Babylon 5 fans love to pick on Grey 17 is Missing, but that's really only half a bad episode, with the storyline of Neroon trying to assassinate Delenn being really good. Instead, I'll say Exogenesis, which truly could be removed without affecting the story in the slightest (it does include a passing reference to a package Garibaldi ordered arriving in a week, but that's clearly just a desperate attempt to give it some purpose) and features incredibly annoying "villains" who could have cleared the whole thing up in five minutes if they'd just explained what they were really doing, instead of skulking around acting like evil parasitic aliens.

I think because the song got stuck in my head, it made it so annoying and I couldn't get into the episode besides. Yeah, I remember the commercial and when I heard that song, I was like, "Oy vey." I thought that song had long been gone. ; )

Oh yes! that Chachi/devil episode. Oh God I totally forgot about that one. That was horrible!

ITA regarding Laverne & Shirley. Can't argue with you there. There were two great episodes that occurred in California that I really liked. Too bad they were so few and far between.

I think most Simpsons fans agree that "Homer Vs. Dignity" (featuring the infamous panda scene) is a episode we could all have done without.

For Buffy, I could have done without the Double Meat Palace episode.

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I had the opposite reaction to Daria and Tom--I was ecstatic that Daria had a boyfriend because I identified with her so strongly, that if she got a boyfriend then there was hope for me to get one too.

King of the Hill might as well retroactively erase the episode where Luanne announces she is pregnant. Three seasons have passed and she isn't even showing yet. They only refer to her pregnancy once ever several episodes. The only change is that I think she's gotten dumber since then.

When watching my Sliders DVDs I always skip over "Invasion" because of what it did to the show. The concept of parallel worlds is interesting enough. They didn't need to introduce eye-eating bad guys. They could have also done without about half of the two-parter "Exodus." This was the episode in which they killed off the Professor, introduced the dreadful Maggie Beckett, and started the whole thing with chasing Colonel Rickman (played by Roger Daltrey at first and then . . . not. But it makes sense because he steals peoples faces!) The fansite Earth Prime actually made their own edited one-hour version of the episode without most of the aggravating stuff and an ending in which Maggie doesn't become a Slider.

I am including all episodes from this season of 24. Thing of it is, I'm being an asshole because I'm not even watching this season, and in fact, for me this season is not happening.

Tony Almieda is not a bad guy. I absolutely refuse to acknowledge this as the remotest possibility.

Someone told me that in this Sunday's episode of 24, it is established that Tony is not, in fact, a bad guy, and he and Jack team up to save the world again.

Yeah, it was dumb, gross, and depressing because it was right after Buffy came back from the dead and had to get a crappy job.

However, seeing her get it on with Spike in the breakroom in front of the "TEAMWORK" sign was priceless.

But I'll raise you the episode in which the three nerdy guys kill the girlfriend and blame it on Buffy. Just stupid.

Season 6-7 of Buffy had a LOT of crappy episodes, but I agree with Batman Beatle, Double Meat Palace wins hands down. I also pretty much hated Hells Bells. It broke off Xander and Anya, which made no sense, IMO. It just came out of nowhere.

Hell, how about Chosen? The absolute nadir of Joss Whedon's philosophy that "emotional truth" should trump logical sense. I've always thought that it was total bullshit since a good writer (which I think Whedon is) should be able to make the audience feel any emotion they want without breaking their own rules. It does suck for him that the television medium doesn't let you go back and fix things when they get in the way of your later ideas, but look how much J. Michael Straczynski was able to make Babylon 5 a coherent whole without contradicting himself. The whole gang taking down dozens of Turok-Han after Buffy took two episodes to kill just one? That's just stupid.

Another reason for me to dislike Joss Whedon, despite his good shows.


As far as The Simpsons goes, I don't mind Homer vs. Dignity, but the episode in which Homer becomes the "Pie Man" is agonizingly horrible.

The Simpsons: "Last Tap Dance In Springfield"
I could live six trillion lifetimes without the memory of Homer's eyes being crusted over after his lasik surgery, thank you. And the fact that I had to see that will never let my resentment fade!

Oh, I'm so glad I've found this thread. I could perhaps spend a long time compiling a list of episodes that could have been left out of my favorite shows. However, don't want to bore you all to tears, so I'll just nominate an episode from season 2 of Metalocalypse: the one in which Toki's dad dies.

I understand that from there on, Toki's alcoholism became more intense and he generally was affected by the death quite a bit, but I'm not sure I could deal with the subject. Perhaps because I know so many people struggling with their dads having 'the big k, cancer' and it's just not something I find funny at all, even if I've come to expect that the show jokes about other serious things too.

But isn't that the episode that gave us "Tappa tappa tappa"? We couldn't live without "tappa tappa tappa"! It's life affirming!

I guess you would also rather leave out "Children of a Lesser Clod" where Homer's scab heals over Ralph's hand. *shudder*

One Simpson episode I could have done without is the death of Maude Flanders. I found the way they handled it crass and distasteful. Even if Maude was only a bit character.

Another one I could have done without: Family Guy's episode in which Peter Griffin is obsessed with "Surfin' Bird" by the Trashmen.

They play the song over and over and over until your brain is scarred.

The only shining moment is when Brian and Stewie take his only copy into the backyard and destroy it, "Office Space copy machine-style".

I'm going to have to add the Scrubs episode where Brendan Fraser dies. It's an outstanding episode, and very well-acted (I love John C. McGinley so hard), but I just wish it hadn't happened. I loved that character, and I do wish they hadn't killed all hope of ever seeing him again.

Also, I get why the episode was played the way it was, but it bugs me that we never really found out how or why he died. (Or if we did, I missed that episode.)

He had leukemia. The episode where they revealed that kinda played out the same way - all sorts of misdirection type stuff, except from JD's point of view.

Dr. Cox had a line chiding Ben because turns out luekemia is the kind of thing you occasionaly want to check up on, so it always seemed pretty heavily implied he wasn't being careful about his health and had a relapse.

True, but I was curious about his actual death - what would have killed him immediately and so fast when he'd been feeling fine for two years.

I believe the episode itself references a cardiac issue (meant to make people think they were talking about the old guy with the bad heart); I don't know if that's a possible side effect of leukemia or leukemia treatment or just a random incident.

Speaking of Scrubs episodes we could have done without, Comedy Central just replayed the clip show episode, by far the worst episode of the series. They even try to hang a lampshade on the fact that the clips/memories were completely gratuitous, but it falls flat on many levels and with great intensity.

One of my least favorites is "My own Point of No Return" in which it appears that JD and Elliott cheat on Kim and Keith. They didn't, but you don't find it out until the beginning of the next season.

I'll see you and raise you when it was revealed that Edna left Frank. That just sucked.

Great idea for a thread. I've been harboring these two resentments for thirty years:

Star Trek, original recipe: "The Conscience of the King". Way too much focus on guest characters, horrible acting by the girl who played Karidian's daughter, and one of the big reasons I still hate Shakespeare to this day. And wouldn't ya know it, I spent one night at Christmas at my dad's house, he's Netflixing Star Trek from beginning to end, and the eppy in line that night was... yeah, okay, you guessed it. I love my dad so I didn't say anything, but my teeth hurt from gritting them so hard by the end.

The Avengers: "Epic". I don't know what the hell was wrong with the writers on this one. The Avengers was an out-there show, and it was great, but this one was absolutely unwatchable. The bad guys were morons and there's no way it should have taken Mrs. Peel more than four minutes to get the jump on them, but they menaced her for the entire hour in a very distasteful way. The best part of the show was Mrs. Peel and Steed working together, but this eppy kept them apart the entire hour, which seriously cut down on the fun. Dumb, stupid, idiotic "story" that was so far from their usual fare that it almost seemed to have been written for another series entirely.

Bones: "The Pain in the Heart" -- Starts off with Booth's "resurrection," done in the dumbest way possible. (Why weren't his kid and kid's mama at the fake funeral? Why did no FBI agents -- not to mention the numerous Marines standing around -- do anything when the bad guy showed up, esp. after he started whaling on Booth? Don't tell me all those macho guys would stand around twiddling their thumbs while Bones saved Booth. Oh, and they did it all because some random baddie we've never seen before made an idle comment once about coming to Booth's funeral? Please!) Note that all this stupidity occurs before the revelation of Gormagon's apprentice, which is dumb on many MORE levels.

How I Met Your Mother: "Do I Know You" and "I Heart NJ" -- 1) Barney falls for Robin, and 2) Barney holds his arm up in the air for an entire episode because no one will fist-bump him. In the space of a few episodes, every single character on the show was assassinated, one of TV's awesomest characters became one of its lamest, and one of my favorite shows irrevocably jumped the shark.

Veronica Mars: "One Angry Veronica" -- Way to get the justice system backward! The point of 12 Angry Men was that if you can come up with a plausible, convincing narrative in which the defendant didn't do it, you must vote "not guilty." I guess the VM writers thought they'd be clever and reverse it: If Veronica can come up with a plausible, convincing narrative in which the defendants did it, the jury must vote "guilty." Except THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS.

From the same show: "Papa's Cabin" -- Singlehandedly destroyed my love for the show with its inept revelations of cliched plot twists. I know, the network slashed the show's episode order; the same thing happened to Arrested Development in its final season, and they responded by becoming better than ever. VM just crashed and burned.

Great point about Edna leaving Frank. Ugh! Just unfathomable.

Thank you. I am glad you were able to get those resentments out.