Shows that Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot

[Nimcha]

Glee. Basically everything. Every single interesting idea the show ever had was ruined by the writers. Everything that had just the tiniest bit of potential was either used in completely the wrong wayor forgotten by the next episode. It's uncanny, really.

 

[EternallyBored]

3. Highschool of the Dead.

The initial premise; Dawn of the Dead meets Lord of the Flies when a group of highschoolers find themselves stuck in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, and need to struggle to survive while society breaks down around them.

What the series became:


So, what shows do you think wasted a perfectly good plot for the sake of fanservice/pandering to the lowest common denominator.

I've got to ask, is that video representative of the series overall? I ask because it's the only example from the show that anyone ever uses, and usually when there's a big hate-off on something because of fanservice or female characters not wearing the right amount/type of clothing for someone's feminist sensibilities and only one example ever gets used, it's because that one example isn't representative, but makes for good rage bait.

That clip is used so much because of the sheer ridiculousness of the matrix boobs that move at supersonic speeds, but yes, it is indicative of the rest of the anime, if anything it undersells the sheer amount of fanservice in the anime. Here's a review that talks about it with a decent compilation of some of the fanservice scenes in the series.


Skip to the 5 minute mark or so if you just want to see the extent the series goes to with its fanservice, the rest of the review is pretty decent though, and sums up the series pretty well by calling it the Michael Bay version of an anime. It does also go into the weird breast physics that the anime displays.

EDIT: For anyone that does watch the video, they censor the one scene of actual nudity, but, in case you can't tell from the intro pic the video probably isn't something you want to get caught watching at work, so use some common sense before you click play.

 

[soren7550]

Castle - After a string of murders that copy the ones in his books, bestselling mystery author Richard Castle is signed on as a consultant to the NYPD to help them solve their murder cases while doing research for his new series. Hilarity ensues.

Great! I absolutely loved the first two or three seasons, and would frequently marathon them. Something happened after that though. Show was going on too long, head writer too full of himself, whatever it was, Castle started sucking a lot. Story threads went on too long and got too insane (Johanna Becket's murder, I'm look right at you), episodes were getting too kitschy and outlandish, and in Castleland, everything is real! Laser pistols, ghosts, psychics, bigfoot, telekinetics, time travel, parking right in front of the place you want to go to all the time in Manhattan, anything can and will be real in Castleland!

Several characters stopped acting like themselves as well, or just focused on one trait of theirs and multiplied it by eleven.

Once Upon A Time - Fairy tale characters are trapped in our world with no memories of their old lives, and the child of Snow White and Prince Charming (who was sent away before they were cursed) needs to free them from the curse. Only thing is, she doesn't believe the whole 'the fairy tales are real' thing, so she needs to believe before she can save them.

Alright, color me interested. Only, most of the characters are plum dumb, the show's extremely black and white views on morality get grating fast, true love is not only overly abundant, but it's also the cure all for damn near everything, storylines drag on far too long when they can be resolved in half or less of the time, and most everything ties back to one or two sets of characters.

 

[Neonsilver]

3. Highschool of the Dead.

The initial premise; Dawn of the Dead meets Lord of the Flies when a group of highschoolers find themselves stuck in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, and need to struggle to survive while society breaks down around them.

What the series became:


So, what shows do you think wasted a perfectly good plot for the sake of fanservice/pandering to the lowest common denominator.

I've got to ask, is that video representative of the series overall? I ask because it's the only example from the show that anyone ever uses, and usually when there's a big hate-off on something because of fanservice or female characters not wearing the right amount/type of clothing for someone's feminist sensibilities and only one example ever gets used, it's because that one example isn't representative, but makes for good rage bait.

It is probably the most ridiculous example that you can find of the anime, but the fanservice is rather extreme.

Here a different example, the intro already has fanservice:

 

[gandhi the peacemake]

Trying to indoctrinate a bunch of mostly adults into an entirely new culture is an entirely different beast than raising a handful of kids within that culture or teaching one teenager how to air bend. He's out of his depth and isn't coping well. He didn't cope well with Jinora being better than him at the spiritual stuff at first, either.

I admit there's more reason for him to be overbearing than not, but it's more a criticism of his character from the very beginning. That is to say, for a supposed master of airbending and what are essentially Buddhist teachings, he doesn't conduct himself in a manner befitting his monkhood. Instead of trying to force people of Fire/Earth/Water cultures to Air Nomad ways, a monk would simply make regular pilgrimages to the individuals and offer his assistance (with airbending training/gardenwork/etc.), maybe suggest coming back to the temples to get more effective training. But you'd expect someone as wise as Tenzin to understand what they're asking.

From a storytelling and/or worldbuilding perspective, it would be more interesting, too, to see what airbending becomes now that it isn't chained to one specific worldview. Zaheer sort of starts to explore this territory, but he's still a bit of a non-character.

 

[FPLOON]

Glee. Basically everything. Every single interesting idea the show ever had was ruined by the writers. Everything that had just the tiniest bit of potential was either used in completely the wrong wayor forgotten by the next episode. It's uncanny, really.

Oh my glob! You're absolutely right! And it has been happening even before the FIRST graduation episode!!

Huh... and to think some of the writers worked better on Nip/Tuck (I guess, since I've never actually sat down to watch it fully) and American Horror Story (well, slightly better overall, but still), but yeah... Great ideas with execution that so poor that you're better off having the narrator narrating everything that even significantly relevant to the overall plot of the series...

Although, I will give the writers some credit on how they handled the "Finn Tribute" episode... but, even then, the episodes that came before and, especially, after the fact almost ruins something that could have just be viewed as a pretty decent standalone episode in and of itself...

 

[ExDeath730]

Imma have to keep bashing Naruto with others. It's ironic how far the show has fallen from it's premise. It's appeal was to see an absolute zero rising in power and earning other's trust with hard work, but instead it that whole arc has now been turned into "because you were destined to" -story. Also, powercreeping has ruined the show's appeal as well. I truly enjoyed the fights in the first series because of the different and interesting techniques used as well as the tactics that played a part in them. And now it's been turned into Dragonball Z...

Same. I don't know if i'm the only one who loved the Shikamaru fights in the first series and at the start of the second. Seriously, they are awesome, this is a guy who relies in being smart to win, and not on using the latest super OP asspull. Hell, even Naruto had some moments, the Neji and Gaara fight were awesome because of that, specially the Gaara one. Now? The premise is so streched it broke.

Another one? Heroes. A lot of people have already talked about it, but...Why coudn't they let Sylar die? Really...I liked the character, but damn...

 

[Ryan Hughes]

True Blood

I watched the show up through to the end of season two, and completely gave up on it right in the middle of the season finale. There was a girl involved in my intent to watch the series, so it is complicated, but at that point I gave up and never went back.

The initial concepts and set-up of the show are wonderful: Take a metaphor for a disenfranchised minority and set it in the deep south. This can allow the viewer to perhaps see the struggles and plight of minorities in a new light, and challenge their preconceptions and prejudice. In this case, the "minority" in question is Vampires, but it could be "Mutants" like in X-Men, or any number of arbitrary metaphors that the creators can come up with. The main point would be to draw parallels between this metaphor and the civil rights movement or the gay rights movement, which still face quite a bit of resistance in the south. Moreover, you can play into this expectation in order to challenge many prejudices that urban and more "enlightened" people may have about the deep south as well. For example, you could have a "redneck" character who assists or champions the cause of tolerance and equality, etc, etc. Or, subvert all of these expectations and just make the Vampires evil. I could go on.

I was actually impressed when I read a brief synopsis of the plot, but from the very first minutes of the show, it squandered whatever interest I may have had in it by gratuitous nudity and ridiculous shark-like sex scenes of such underlying violence that they would make the Marquis de Sade blush. I mean, I have not seen anything in my entire life that was quite as bad as True Blood. The characters are universally generic, with dialogue that goes from morally stilted to thoughtlessly cliche and nowhere in between. The one gay character is obviously a drug dealer and pornographer, because of course he is. The "sassy black woman" is so aggressive and annoying that I feel that the audience was intended to dislike her. The main character is a hapless mish-mash of coming-of-age cliches, while her love interest is an idealized and entirely non-believable "southern gentleman" fantasy.

One genuinely interesting character appeared in the second season, a vampire who had come to terms with the idea that all living things must die as a natural part of the cycle of life. I found this idea to be very interesting, and wanted to get to know the character better, but then the show promptly killed him off. All in order to go back to its own fascination with its inability to distinguish between sex and violence, and its insane non-characters bouncing off of and crashing into one another like pinballs.

Good Lord that was simply the most awful thing that I have ever sat through, and I have no regrets about quitting the show, in fact, I am completely sure that I am a smarter, happier person for doing so.

 

[beastro]

Stargate, and yes, even the show.

IMO, it's a show that should have taken place in the middle of WWII Egypt with the British and North Afrika Korps finding themselves having to team up to stop an alien invasion.

 

[Necron_warrior]

Been waiting for a thread like this.

~Ahem~

The God-damned let down that is ROBOTIC;NOTES


We knew you couldn't top stein's;gate, I just wish you had realised that too
Even the premise was interesting enough, it didn't have to have a full blown OMG HUEG CONSIPRACY (BIGGER THAT THE LAST ONE YOU GAIZ) theme in it. It is one premise that I hope gets re-done as it deserves it.

 

[Eddie the head]

I think Star Treks mirror universe kind of falls under this. I mean in TOS it was fine it was a one off. But when they keep coming back to it in DS9 it not only became boring it kind of ruined the ambiguity of the TOS episode. Witch wasn't grate or anything but just a case of, damn I never really wanted to know that. See also Klingon forehead ridges.

 

[laggyteabag]

Sword Art Online. Sure, I really enjoyed my time with what we got, but the first story arc was severely underused. You would think that the series would focus more on the series' namesake, but nope. We got a half a season of Sword Art Online with half-baked characters that appeared only once after their own dedicated episode, then the story arc ended in favour of the Alfheim Online story arc that was nowhere near as cool or interesting.

Alien₃ and Alien Resurrection. Screw it, im doing a movie. I loved Alien and Aliens, but 3 and Ressurection were just horrible. 3 had no likable characters other than Ripley and Clemens (who lasted a good 3 seconds after the Alien started doing it's thing), a fairly boring setting, it killed off Newt and Hicks (WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE LIVED? WHAT IS THE 'COLONIAL MARINES' GAME OF WHICH YOU SPEAK?), had god awful CGI that replaced the Alien's physical prop, and had a stupid-ass story with stupid-ass characters that did stupid-ass things. It would have been much better if they had gone with one of the scrapped scripts. And the less said about Resurrection, the better.

 

[Mangod]

Sword Art Online. Sure, I really enjoyed my time with what we got, but the first story arc was severely underused. You would think that the series would focus more on the series' namesake, but nope. We got a half a season of Sword Art Online with half-baked characters that appeared only once after their own dedicated episode, then the story arc ended in favour of the Alfheim Online story arc that was nowhere near as cool or interesting.

Alien©ý and Alien Resurrection. Screw it, im doing a movie. I loved Alien and Aliens, but 3 and Ressurection were just horrible. 3 had no likable characters other than Ripley and Clemens (who lasted a good 3 seconds after the Alien started doing it's thing), a fairly boring setting, it killed off Newt and Hicks (WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE LIVED? WHAT IS THE 'COLONIAL MARINES' GAME OF WHICH YOU SPEAK?), had god awful CGI that replaced the Alien's physical prop, and had a stupid-ass story with stupid-ass characters that did stupid-ass things. It would have been much better if they had gone with one of the scrapped scripts. And the less said about Resurrection, the better.

It's actually sort of funny, in a depressing-in-hindsight-way, when you look at Resurrection, and see the movie for what it truly is; not an Alien movie, but a proto-Firefly movie.