A spinoff if you will :-P of the thread of favorite TV episodes.
What're the worst episodes of shows that, in your opinion, are otherwise great?
Some of mine.
STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION
The Loss - 40 minutes of Troi bitching about losing her powers and not being able to sense people's feelings. Oh boo hoo!
Sub Rosa - from the final season, this felt more like a daytime soap than an episode of Star Trek TNG.
BREAKING BAD
Fly - The only weak episode in the entire series. The pacing is slow, nothing really happens, didn't care for this one and generally skip it on re-watching.
Torchwood, from many years ago: the episode where one of the guys falls in love with an evil cyber-woman (robot/woman mashup in a laughable costume) for no reason other than to get the team in trouble. I stopped watching the show.
The finales of Game of Thrones, Dexter, and Lost.
Chris
Quote from: jayhawkco on May 03, 2021, 12:07:34 PM
The finales of Game of Thrones, Dexter, and Lost.
Chris
Oh man, I can't believe I forgot about Game of Thrones.
I like to pretend the season 6 finale was the end of the series.
Quote from: kurumi on May 03, 2021, 11:41:26 AM
Torchwood, from many years ago: the episode where one of the guys falls in love with an evil cyber-woman (robot/woman mashup in a laughable costume) for no reason other than to get the team in trouble. I stopped watching the show.
I like Doctor Who but I really, really couldn't stand Torchwood. The acting was downright awful.
Quote from: WillWeaverRVA on May 03, 2021, 01:59:00 PM
Quote from: kurumi on May 03, 2021, 11:41:26 AM
Torchwood, from many years ago: the episode where one of the guys falls in love with an evil cyber-woman (robot/woman mashup in a laughable costume) for no reason other than to get the team in trouble. I stopped watching the show.
I like Doctor Who but I really, really couldn't stand Torchwood. The acting was downright awful.
Despite having seen every available episode of Doctor Who, I was very wary of Torchwood. Saw part of that episode finally with the mostly naked cyberwoman and knew I had made the right choice staying away from it.
Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Shades of Gray (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_Gray_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation))". QED.
Quote from: OCGuy81 on May 03, 2021, 11:13:48 AM
A spinoff if you will :-P of the thread of favorite TV episodes.
What're the worst episodes of shows that, in your opinion, are otherwise great?
Some of mine.
STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION
The Loss - 40 minutes of Troi bitching about losing her powers and not being able to sense people's feelings. Oh boo hoo!
Sub Rosa - from the final season, this felt more like a daytime soap than an episode of Star Trek TNG.
BREAKING BAD
Fly - The only weak episode in the entire series. The pacing is slow, nothing really happens, didn't care for this one and generally skip it on re-watching.
Actually ... I am not sure ... at the moment ... I simply want to comment on some of yours.
The Loss by Dennis McCarthy:
Actually not that bad of an episode.
The episode is about Deanna, which is derived from two characters ... one from Star Trek, one from out side of Star Trek, but had many peoples working on it.
The character Deanna is based on Ilia, but the interaction from her mother is partially based on a real life bonding between Marina and The Roddenberrys, as well as Mrs. King's Mother. The interactions between Dreanna and L'Waxana is an extreme version of Amanda and Dotty.
Deanna got few lines. She is supposed to sit there looking very pretty. Unlike Seven, it took a very long time for Deanna to get any actual good episodes. It was not until Face Of The Enemy by Don Davis where she goes against Toreth played by Carolyn Seymour.
Despite The Loss being a Deanna Is Annoying episode, there is Guinan. Guinan is a character that should appear more as well.
I could not stand Sub Rosa by Jay Chattaway. It is one of the weaker episodes by Jay Chattaway. Occasionally Jay Chattaway composed good music such as: Aquiel, Repression, and Human Error. The story is also not good either. There is some annoying creature that irritates every member of Beverly's family. Gates McFadden left the programme after the First Season for many reasons. This episode is one of them. Unfortunately, it got made any ways.
As for the Star Trek episodes I like the least are generally by David Bell and Velton Ray Bunch. ... about Stories: That is all most any Holodeck episode, and any episode about a supposed to be heroic character but ends up being annoying. It is kinda like when Trip and T'Pol got together Out Of The Blue at the last minute just as when Chris and Maggie.
Quote from: OCGuy81 on May 03, 2021, 11:13:48 AM
The Loss - 40 minutes of Troi bitching about losing her powers and not being able to sense people's feelings. Oh boo hoo!
That episode made my wife hate Troi as a character. Apparently, without being able to sense people's feelings, Troi doesn't know how to not be a jerk to everyone.
Quote from: bulldog1979 on May 03, 2021, 08:04:02 PM
Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Shades of Gray (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_Gray_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation))". QED.
Clip show!
The Great Divide from Avatar the Last Airbender.
Dinosaurs; everyone is implied to be doomed to a freezing death as the ice age sets in. I don't know how "bad" it can be considered to be, but it was punch in the face to me as a child. It was one hell of a 180 degree flip for a comedy show.
Quote from: Rothman on May 03, 2021, 07:54:06 PM
Quote from: WillWeaverRVA on May 03, 2021, 01:59:00 PM
Quote from: kurumi on May 03, 2021, 11:41:26 AM
Torchwood, from many years ago: the episode where one of the guys falls in love with an evil cyber-woman (robot/woman mashup in a laughable costume) for no reason other than to get the team in trouble. I stopped watching the show.
I like Doctor Who but I really, really couldn't stand Torchwood. The acting was downright awful.
Despite having seen every available episode of Doctor Who, I was very wary of Torchwood. Saw part of that episode finally with the mostly naked cyberwoman and knew I had made the right choice staying away from it.
They created a radio episode to commemorate the activation of the Large Hadron Collider. I made the mistake of listening to it. The acting is quite possibly the worst I've ever heard...and I've sat through Manos: the Hands of Fate.
Quote from: WillWeaverRVA on May 03, 2021, 09:16:12 PM
Quote from: Rothman on May 03, 2021, 07:54:06 PM
Quote from: WillWeaverRVA on May 03, 2021, 01:59:00 PM
Quote from: kurumi on May 03, 2021, 11:41:26 AM
Torchwood, from many years ago: the episode where one of the guys falls in love with an evil cyber-woman (robot/woman mashup in a laughable costume) for no reason other than to get the team in trouble. I stopped watching the show.
I like Doctor Who but I really, really couldn't stand Torchwood. The acting was downright awful.
Despite having seen every available episode of Doctor Who, I was very wary of Torchwood. Saw part of that episode finally with the mostly naked cyberwoman and knew I had made the right choice staying away from it.
They created a radio episode to commemorate the activation of the Large Hadron Collider. I made the mistake of listening to it. The acting is quite possibly the worst I've ever heard...and I've sat through Manos: the Hands of Fate.
Manos: the Hands of Fate is so bad that it's actually glorious. It is up there with The Room and Birdemic as some of my favorite terrible movies.
I actually liked Torchwood...
TNG piling-on:
Code of Honor, season 1 (it sucks even with the racism issues put aside)
Imaginary Friend, season 5
TOS: Spock's Brain, season 3 - additionally, the entire second half of season 3
VOY: Threshold, season 2. WTF were they thinking? Was this where they just have everybody in the writing room purposely come up with the dumbest possible "shock" moment knowing it just makes you and the show look stupid? "hahaha let's make Tom Paris into a salamander" "hahahahah we should make Janeway one too!" "OH OH I GOT IT LET'S HAVE THEM MATE AND HAVE BABIES! HAHAHAHAHAHA"
Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on May 03, 2021, 10:18:07 PM
TNG piling-on:
Code of Honor, season 1 (it sucks even with the racism issues put aside)
Imaginary Friend, season 5
TOS: Spock's Brain, season 3 - additionally, the entire second half of season 3
VOY: Threshold, season 2. WTF were they thinking? Was this where they just have everybody in the writing room purposely come up with the dumbest possible "shock" moment knowing it just makes you and the show look stupid? "hahaha let's make Tom Paris into a salamander" "hahahahah we should make Janeway one too!" "OH OH I GOT IT LET'S HAVE THEM MATE AND HAVE BABIES! HAHAHAHAHAHA"
There's a difference between some of those. Spock's Brain is so bad it's good. Possibly Threshold too. Code of Honor, however, is just plain bad.
Quote from: Scott5114 on May 03, 2021, 08:19:31 PM
Quote from: OCGuy81 on May 03, 2021, 11:13:48 AM
The Loss - 40 minutes of Troi bitching about losing her powers and not being able to sense people's feelings. Oh boo hoo!
That episode made my wife hate Troi as a character. Apparently, without being able to sense people's feelings, Troi doesn't know how to not be a jerk to everyone.
I saw a really interesting discussion about this. Betazoids are telepathic, but Deanna was half-human and had more limited empathic abilities. Betazoids don't seem to have what I would call human empathy, the ability we have to identify with other people's emotions, because they have telepathic empathy, the ability to experience other people's emotions. Deanna was always aware of how her words and actions made people feel, because she could feel it, too. She didn't need to develop the skills we have to pick up on emotions. Once that telepathic empathy was lost, she became quite unpleasant.
On Voyager, Lon Suder was an extreme case. He was a Betazoid with weak telepathic abilities, and he was a psychopathic killer. He seemed to have no empathy at all. With less telepathic ability, the way they usually identify with others, Betazoids seem to see others as less real. Deanna wasn't that bad, she probably has some human empathy, being half-human, but she didn't know how to use it. It's a very interesting piece of species development.
Yes, Star Trek (TOS), Spock's Brain
Deep Space 9, Move Along Home
Anything in season 10 of Trailer Park Boys.
Quote from: Scott5114 on May 03, 2021, 08:19:31 PM
Quote from: OCGuy81 on May 03, 2021, 11:13:48 AM
The Loss - 40 minutes of Troi bitching about losing her powers and not being able to sense people's feelings. Oh boo hoo!
That episode made my wife hate Troi as a character. Apparently, without being able to sense people's feelings, Troi doesn't know how to not be a jerk to everyone.
My thought on this though is that if one of us was stripped of a key sense we possessed (probably sight or hearing being the best of the apples to oranges comparison to Troi's empathic abilities), most of us would be pretty big time assholes to just about everybody around us while trying to make the likely slow and painful adaptation to the very different world we were suddenly thrust into.
Code Of Honor by Fred Steiner had potential ... but there is one thing that ruined it.
Imaginary Friend by Dennis McCarthy is a Guinan episode. These are hardly bad.
And about Deanna, Suder, and extreme Betazoids ... There is Tam Elbrun from Tin Man by Jay Chattaway. He was born with all of his Telepathy fully developed, and was overwhelmed. He indirectly caused the death of several people, but I Sensed that Deanna was more insecure around him even more than Riker. Eventually, Tam was summoned by a space creature. This is a very good episode for Data, who takes command of the bridge, and advocates for Tam when Deanna would not.
I'll pile on some more with Star Trek - TNG here. For me, although I don't remember its title, that final season episode where Starfleet Command imposed that cosmic speed limit on their ships. IMHO, that was the true 'Jump the Shark' moment of the series, I couldn't force myself to watch any of the final few episodes that followed it.
:banghead:
Mike
Quote from: mgk920 on May 05, 2021, 10:30:54 PM
I'll pile on some more with Star Trek - TNG here. For me, although I don't remember its title, that final season episode where Starfleet Command imposed that cosmic speed limit on their ships.
I remember reading that the writers pretty much immediately realized what a corner they'd written themselves into with that. That's why when Voyager goes to warp the nacelles move into a V shape–this little bit of animation does some sort of technological process that causes it to be okay for them to exceed the "speed limit".
Any crossover episode done with a show of lesser quality. Unless the directors/producers are really good at preserving the appeal of the original show, it just ends up being a failed, sometimes boring mixture of plot lines and character perspectives.
Dallas. Being of it's nature as a continuous episode, I will say the worst storyline. It was when JR was in prison for rape. I mean JR doing hard time was ridiculous even for his character. The whole ordeal was written poorly. The rape was not a real rape, but JR sleeping with the sister of two crazed hillbillies who got pissed off at him from stealing their pure sisters virginity. The sheriff caught the two crazy brothers ready to murder JR, but threw JR in jail instead without due process or a trial. Even with 1800 s rationale which that was based, premarital sex was not rape then either.
JR was bad, but if he were to go to jail let it be for the real crimes he committed or not make him look stupid while in Jail. JR was much smarter than that to be harassed by a kangaroo court.
I've enjoyed 'The Dukes Of Hazzard' for many years, but there was an episode late in the show's run when Hazzard was invaded by a space alien.
QuoteThe Dukes Of Hazzard
This has many bad episodes. It is surprising it lasted as long as it did.
Quote from: mgk920 on May 05, 2021, 10:30:54 PM
I'll pile on some more with Star Trek - TNG here. For me, although I don't remember its title, that final season episode where Starfleet Command imposed that cosmic speed limit on their ships. IMHO, that was the true 'Jump the Shark' moment of the series, I couldn't force myself to watch any of the final few episodes that followed it.
:banghead:
Mike
That happened to me about Season 4 of Star Trek The Next Generation. It was episode In Theory by Jay Chattaway. This episode begins the first episode of when the majority of Jay Chattaway's episodes are difficult to listen to. It was around the time losing Ron Jones and the music started to go down hill after that. A few exeptions, especially with Face Of The Enemy by Don Davis, and then other musicians such as John Debney (of The Orville) and Paul Baillargeon (who worked with Rick Berman before) and Gregory Smith that snuck high quality music in to the episodes. A memorable Jay Chattaway episode is Aquiel. Other than that, his music is mostly bland until Season Seven of Voyager.
As for the story of In Theory is just dumb. It is about Data making a fool of him self with women. This is a retcon, as he had no problem with Tasha. Some people might say that he was intoxicated and could not be in a relationship. How ever, he still remembers even if he was intoxicated. Perhaps it would be less annoying if the woman he was pursuing had one thing in common such as Ard'rian McKenzie. It would have been a much better episode. But the way that episode turned out it is just another Failed Romance episode normally attributed to Wesley and Geordi.
Quote from: roadman65 on May 06, 2021, 11:10:38 PM
Dallas. Being of it's nature as a continuous episode, I will say the worst storyline. It was when JR was in prison for rape. I mean JR doing hard time was ridiculous even for his character. The whole ordeal was written poorly. The rape was not a real rape, but JR sleeping with the sister of two crazed hillbillies who got pissed off at him from stealing their pure sisters virginity. The sheriff caught the two crazy brothers ready to murder JR, but threw JR in jail instead without due process or a trial. Even with 1800 s rationale which that was based, premarital sex was not rape then either.
JR was bad, but if he were to go to jail let it be for the real crimes he committed or not make him look stupid while in Jail. JR was much smarter than that to be harassed by a kangaroo court.
The Original Dark Shadows ... a soap opera ... so it has multiple overlapping arcs ... But towards the end of it ... they say after watching those 1,000 episodes ... none of what you watched probably even happened ... since they went back in time ... and changed every thing. And then they made these incomplete movies with a focus on gore and every body dying.
All In The Family when Mike and Gloria went to a cabin in the woods to rescue their sex life that declined all of a sudden. I know that sex is part of marriage ( or nowadays part of single life or cohabitation) but it's not the only thing that holds a marriage together. You have to have chemistry as well as get along and enjoy your merged life together.
Supernatural: "Bugs" (Season 1)