What is the worst decision a TV show /Movie /book has made?

[Fkiolaris]

Going for sitcoms :

1. That 70s show - S08, without Eric and Kelso + breaking up Hyde and Jackie.

One of the worst screenplay decision I ever seen.

2. Friends : Joey and Rachel thing. Out of place.

3. Scrubs - last season. Wtf was that??

Optional : Two and a Half Men. Kutcher isn't bad on himself, but they lost the soul of the show with Sheen's departure.
And they they handled really bad the evolution of the characters (Alan and most of all Jake) : it went from twisted to really creepy and uncomfortable.

How can you make a list for sitcoms and not mention How I Met Your Mother? The whole last season and especially the last episode was a complete abomination that managed to make everything before it irrelevant.

Beyond that, everything in GoT after season 4 where they steadily put the "zombies" (because really, that's what they were aiming for) front and centre as the big bad and thus making everything else irrelevant. The writing going to the dogs didn't help either while as much as people bitch about Daenerys portrayal, she has has nothing on Mr "she's my queen/I don't want it"!

Star Wars going to Disney rounds up the top 3 for me, even if Rogue One and the Mandalorian were ace.

[Dakhath]

That one cop in The Shield who killed a stray cat. When I saw the same actor get killed in Sons of Anarchy S1 I was happy (Jax head shot him).

Before Kurt Sutter created Sons of Anarchy, he was one of the writers on the Shield and he was trying to making Dutch into a serial killer as time went on. There are a ton of subtle and not so subtle nods to this, but the other writers pushed back and it just unraveled.

[shoegazing]

The worst creative decision of all time was when WoW: Legion completely redesigned, and in some cases took a completely different direction with, character classes that players had already invested > a decade of their lives / hundreds of days /played.

I refuse to believe that nobody on the dev team stood up and said "you're making a massive, irreversible mistake that is going to cause huge player resentment and mistrust for years to come"

This is for Movies/TV shows/Books not video games.

[Kyphael]

Introducing the character of Seven in Married with Children.
Sidney's long lost half-brother is the killer in Scream 3, and on top of that, retconned it so he put Billy Loomis up to it.
Killing Professor X in X-Men The Last Stand. It did absolutely nothing but complicate future sequels and had no impact on the story whatsoever.
Turning The Mandarin into a joke in Iron Man 3.
Introducing Doomsday as a Lord of the Rings troll in Batman vs. Superman.
Making Steppenwolf the villain in Justice League.

[minteK917]

A lot of TV shows get the same affliction. They either dont get the time to start and get cancelled right before or when they are finally picking up steam, because of syndication. Others that dont get cancelled instead run for 10 seasons when they already ran dry by the 5th season, also because of syndication. Its a really weird system. Where we promote stuff getting progressivly worse instead of progressivly better.

[Morgaith]

Disney trying to get rid of Johny Depp over false allegations.

[exochaft]

A lot of TV shows get the same affliction. They either dont get the time to start and get cancelled right before or when they are finally picking up steam, because of syndication. Others that dont get cancelled instead run for 10 seasons when they already ran dry by the 5th season, also because of syndication. Its a really weird system. Where we promote stuff getting progressivly worse instead of progressivly better.

Movies have been trending towards this end, as well, and it's probably the insulated bubble that the industry lives in (which the rest of the world does not live in). However, the consumers of these products, i.e. the viewers, have also increasingly been okay with accepting mediocrity and praising it just because it's placed next to trash or they desperately want something to consume.

As an example, The Mandalorian writing is bad... really bad. Season 1 had some serious issues, especially towards the end, but season 2 is riddled with plotholes, everyone acting like idiots, the antagonists being even larger idiots when faced against the protagonists, multiple incredibly lucky things happening to have the conflicts to even exists, inconsistent character behaviors, etc. Season 2 can be summed up as fodder for the Nerd Crew parody that Red Letter Media did for Star Wars: banking on nostalgia and bringing in characters that everyone knows and/or are popular from other series. Now don't get me wrong, the music and production values for The Mandalorian are really good imo, it's just the writing I find completely bad.

Which leads into my point: The Mandalorian's writing gets masked by the production values being good, and after Disney's treatment of the sequal trilogy long-time Star Wars fans are probably trying to latch onto anything with positive points to it. One thing the Mandalorian doesn't do is actively try to butcher established characters, and it leans heavily into fan service... which is perfectly fine on it's own, and a nice change of pace. However, people are ignoring (or are blind to) the issues with the writing because they're getting Star Wars content that doesn't spit in their faces. The long-term issue with this is that Disney will now have the bar set at "fan service is good enough, script be damned!", because much of the positive feedback doesn't even factor in the quality of the writing.

In some respects, I wonder if people have just been exposed to shoddy writing for so long that they don't even recognize when it's actually good. One shouldn't have to turn off their brain for everything in order to get some enjoyment out of a show/movie, and the consumers themselves should be demanding better writing when it's warranted. While the content creators are certainly to blame, the viewers themselves are not blameless as they allow/accept/praise mediocrity when they should be demanding better from content creators who should be capable of so much more.

[Winter Blossom]

Disney trying to get rid of Johny Depp over false allegations.

Yeah, that decision upset me.

[MikeBogina]

well to be fair,a few things in the show were done better than in the books,like ignoring some extremly booring or long winded pointless plotpoints,and the ending is very likely to be the same or mostly similar in the books,the problem was how the show got to those points

Like going to Dorne? What the show did by not exploring some plotlines, or whole arcs of stories is reveal that they're not important in the end, which kinda ruins it for the books. You may not like like some of them, but a lot of the book readers did. For instance one of the ones im most excited for is what's going on with Euron and Victarion Greyjoy in the books. Victarion isn't even a thing anymore and Euron isn't the same character at all in the show, he's just some stupid character who wants to bone a queen.

Things though, like all the stupid decisions in the last season, placement of troops and trebuchets, sending your cavalry into die, returning to Dragonstone like they did, greyworm letting Tirion decide who's king, etc.

You have the handling of Jon's parentage that was bad. It was only ever used to make Dany go more insane in the end because Jon's now against incest and Varys tries to spread the word about it getting himself killed.

And the Night King dying like he did, to Arya of all people... but that aside, it being only like an episode when there was so much buildup.

In the end the winners were Sansa and Bran, both became evil characters and the show never really acknowledged it either, almost like they didn't realize that they did it. The Kid who can see the future makes sure that Jon knows he's the rightful heir and Dany's nephew, ruining that relationship and causing her to go crazy. Sansa who helped get that info to others gets Varys killed and causes more problems for Dany/Jon, she demands the North and Bran gives it to her and Bran gets the whole kingdoms in the south and a dragon.

I'm praying GRRM isn't going down the same path, but if he does, he spends time making it believable.

[ClassicPeon]

I mean, I don't think the dude was the greatest actor. And his story was hard to watch with how quickly he switched to being a sleeper....

..but I agree that the Carrie character just grew more dumb and dumb each season. When someone kills the Vice President and tells you, and you WORK FOR THE CIA, you don't help him escape and become a refugeee...because you "love" him, even though you met him like, a year ago.

- - - Updated - - -



I'd argue LOST started as kind of a weird sci-fi, and then became pseudo-religious/spiritual at the end. I liked the Dharma Initiative stuff, tbh, but the Jacob/Man in Black stuff was just......meh.

You are probably right. He was the main attraction for me though.

[Skizzit]

I'm praying GRRM isn't going down the same path, but if he does, he spends time making it believable.

That's the biggest thing for me. None of the plot points in the last season(s) of GoT were bad in and of themselves, they were just handled so poorly. Stuff like Dany going bad and even Arya being the one to kill the Night King would have been totally fine had the series spent time getting to those moments in meaningful ways. In the series, they just kinda happen out of nowhere.

I can easily see a version of the books that end up in the exact or nearly exact same places but with much more foreshadowing and development to get there and just overall being handled better.

[eschatological]

That's the biggest thing for me. None of the plot points in the last season(s) of GoT were bad in and of themselves, they were just handled so poorly. Stuff like Dany going bad and even Arya being the one to kill the Night King would have been totally fine had the series spent time getting to those moments in meaningful ways. In the series, they just kinda happen out of nowhere.

I can easily see a version of the books that end up in the exact or nearly exact same places but with much more foreshadowing and development to get there and just overall being handled better.

You can kind of see it in the latter seasons. The Hodor thing, for example, makes sense. As the Raven, Bran goes back in time to tell Hodor to "Hold the Door," but Bran, who is literally a child and doesn't understand the consequences of his meddling with time, literally fries his brain so bad that all he can say is "Hold the door" until it disintegrates into the childish babbling of "Hodor." The problem, of course, is how they (D&D) got to that point in the first place - where Bran gets randomly touched by an undead minion of a white walker while.....idk, playing with Jojen outside? And then killing Jojen, a fucking living greenseer, for that mistake that surely D&D wrote, and that touch being enough for the White Walkers to know where Bran is and get through the magical wards set by the Three Eyed Raven. And then the aftermath of that journey is that 3ER dies, Jojen dies, Meera is forgotten, and their father, literally the only living witness to L+R=J in the books, is just completely not introduced. And Bran becomes a powerful warg and...philosopher? after literally nothing. You can see that GRRM gave them the Hodor piece, but not how shit led up to it, or the fallout from it.

Man, I get angry thinking of seasons 5 and onward of that show.

[Skizzit]

You can kind of see it in the latter seasons. The Hodor thing, for example, makes sense. As the Raven, Bran goes back in time to tell Hodor to "Hold the Door," but Bran, who is literally a child and doesn't understand the consequences of his meddling with time, literally fries his brain so bad that all he can say is "Hold the door" until it disintegrates into the childish babbling of "Hodor." The problem, of course, is how they (D&D) got to that point in the first place - where Bran gets randomly touched by an undead minion of a white walker while.....idk, playing with Jojen outside? And then killing Jojen, a fucking living greenseer, for that mistake that surely D&D wrote, and that touch being enough for the White Walkers to know where Bran is and get through the magical wards set by the Three Eyed Raven. And then the aftermath of that journey is that 3ER dies, Jojen dies, Meera is forgotten, and their father, literally the only living witness to L+R=J in the books, is just completely not introduced. And Bran becomes a powerful warg and...philosopher? after literally nothing. You can see that GRRM gave them the Hodor piece, but not how shit led up to it, or the fallout from it.

Man, I get angry thinking of seasons 5 and onward of that show.

Yup. And how the whole warg thing went literally nowhere. Did he ever actually use it for anything? I thought for sure they would have him do something in the battle with the Night King but nope. There was a shot that I guess was to imply Bran warged into a raven or something but did nothing with that. Again, it was almost certainly something GRRM set up for some future event but D&D had no idea what to do with it so just ignored it.

[Ninix]

How can you make a list for sitcoms and not mention How I Met Your Mother? The whole last season and especially the last episode was a complete abomination that managed to make everything before it irrelevant.

Beyond that, everything in GoT after season 4 where they steadily put the "zombies" (because really, that's what they were aiming for) front and centre as the big bad and thus making everything else irrelevant. The writing going to the dogs didn't help either while as much as people bitch about Daenerys portrayal, she has has nothing on Mr "she's my queen/I don't want it"!

Star Wars going to Disney rounds up the top 3 for me, even if Rogue One and the Mandalorian were ace.

Honestly, I,'ve never been bothered by HIMYM' ending.
It felt weird and out of nowhere, but I think the over-reaction of hatred is mostly unjustified.

For GoT, it's a specific situation. The global frame was too complex to be ended properly. It's a very classic problem with heavy fantasy lore like this, even more when so popular, with Internet and all the speculations (hi WoW !)
I think they went where they had to go on a narrative standpoint. But they went there the wrong way, especially regarding character development / flourishing.
For the Zombie Army, they didn't fail it in the end, but they failed them by showing them as a huge topic in the pilot's intro and litterally forgetting about them for 5 years. Their return as the main antagonists felt out of the blue and misplaced regarding everything that happened before.
But it was still absolutely logical than they had to be this final villain.

I'm really not that mad about GoT. 8 years of speculations, hardcore fanatism on forums plus the books which have a different storyline. Could never have been perfectly done. So... i'll take what they gave and move on ^^

[Ivanstone]

Turning The Mandarin into a joke in Iron Man 3.

How do you prevent a movie from turning into snooze fest like it’s predecessor? You completely subvert people’s expectations about what the villain should be.

The real Mandarin will get a second chance next spring. Let’s hope it’s a better movie than IM2.