In other words, storylines in TV shows you've seen that either have made no sense, completely made other storylines pointless/make no sense, or were just insanely stupid?

Family Ties, "All in the Neighborhood." The uber-progressive Keatons have failed to notice that over the last 15 years their neighborhood has been filled with violent segregationists.

This one is really ridiculous. Horrible show for the time and neighborhood.

On Friends, the Rachel and Joey dating arc from seasons 8-10.

This one is really ridiculous. Horrible show for the time and neighborhood.

Yeah, I hated that ep. !:p

I've got two good examples from the same episode of Married...With Children. Al Bundy builds a boat in his basement! Not only would it be next to impossible to build a boat in such a small place, but what is he gonna do when the boat is finished? It's not like he can knock down a wall, it's in the damn basement. This episode took place in season 1. The main story was almost as bad. Steve and Marcy adding a room to their house. They already live in a big two-story home and have no kids or pets.

On Roseanne, Roseanne fighting terrorists with a tampon on a train.

On Full House, Michelle Tanner falling off a horse and getting amnesia in a special two-part episode.

“Family Ties”: “A, My Name Is Alex”, when Alex has a nervous breakdown over the death of his “best friend” Greg, whom we’ve never seen or even heard about in the previous five seasons.

When Mary Ellen's husband Curt who supposedly died at Pearl Harbor was found alive on The Waltons.

In Oliver the jinx ,when the Brady's went on a tour of Paramount studios and were selected to participate in an old silent movie type of thing and than they realized Oliver wasn't a jinx after all cause without him they wouldn't have hit the lucky number as guests to the studio to be selected !! :rolleyes:

Like why in the hell would they even want to do that? Greg and Marcia , even Peter and Jan as young teenagers would have thought that was so corny ! And it would be an embarrassment doing that with your family, maybe with friends would be a better,but too much corny family activity togetherness in this ep. !! The kids were too old for this!:rolleyes:

When Mary Ellen's husband Curt who supposedly died at Pearl Harbor was found alive on The Waltons.

Bingo! I second this one.

When Mary Ellen's husband Curt who supposedly died at Pearl Harbor was found alive on The Waltons.

It's been several years since I saw this, but wasn't Curt MIA and presumed to have been killed at Pearl Harbor? If that's the case then it certainly wasn't unusual since many did survive. I also seem to recall that he went into hiding because his injuries made it impossible for him to have any kind of physical relationship with Mary Ellen. The presumed dead and later found alive scenario is as old as television itself, I'm just trying to figure out what was so dumb about this one. :confused:

Season 2 episode of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries "Will the Real Santa Claus...?" George O'Hanlon Jr.'s version of Ned Nickerson is absent from the second season, then in this episode Ned ([played by Rick Springfield) is reintroduced as a whole new character, working for the FBI, completely ignoring the original Ned.

On Growing Pains, there's an episode called Carol's Carnival. Carol was left behind at the carnival when her blind date stood her up. She met a carnival worker who showed her an unbelievable time and when it was over it was over. Her parents were worried sick about her and when they came to pick her up she was dressed like a Gypsy. It was incredibly weird and made no sense. I don't know what they were trying to accomplish with this episode.

In the Frasier episode Freudian Sleep, they all go to a mountain cabin where they all have strange dreams. Frasier dreams he kills Niles and marries Daphne and she has his baby. Niles dreams he won't be a good father and ends up killing his baby in different ways. Daphne dreams she's gained a lot of weight and Niles cheats on her with a bunch of gorgeous women. Martin dreams that he's no longer crippled and can dance and sing. Very weird episode.

It's been several years since I saw this, but wasn't Curt MIA and presumed to have been killed at Pearl Harbor? If that's the case then it certainly wasn't unusual since many did survive. I also seem to recall that he went into hiding because his injuries made it impossible for him to have any kind of physical relationship with Mary Ellen. The presumed dead and later found alive scenario is as old as television itself, I'm just trying to figure out what was so dumb about this one. :confused:

I'm with Zoneboy on this one. As already stated, this exact scenario has happened in real life after war before.

The Family Ties "best friend" episode ABH mentioned sticks out in my mind. Since they knew they were producing this episode at the beginning of the season, couldn't they have had the actor make a few appearances on the show, establishing him as a good friend of Alex's, before killing him off?

The final season of the original Roseanne was a trainwreck, with nearly every episode being awful and lame.

Some of the TV soap opera story-lines were the most ridiculous things ever. I seem to recall one about a lost underground city, and another about a weather-altering machine. I think I have blocked the details from my mind.

In other words, storylines in TV shows you've seen that either have made no sense, completely made other storylines pointless/make no sense, or were just insanely stupid?

OMG--that episode of The Jeffersons when Florence wailed on some guy because he wanted to show her "the nice things in life." She was insulted he started taking her to fancy dinner dates and buying her luxury items so she could feel like she was special. Absolutely nothing about her reaction made any sense. Even the audience sounded confused and didn't know how to react. :lol:

Some of the TV soap opera story-lines were the most ridiculous things ever. I seem to recall one about a lost underground city, and another about a weather-altering machine. I think I have blocked the details from my mind.

Yes. Those storylines were why I quit soap. It's okay to be goofy but there's goofy and then writing storylines that are so stupid and off the wall that they're insulting your intelligence.

The one that made me quit happened on Young and the Restless. There was a guy on the show (Cane) who was a grifter pretending to be someone's son or something. Then he became a fan favorite, so the writers said he was really that person's son the entire time, and even wrote episodes in which he took a DNA test that showed a match.


But fans complained about this retcon because they remembered distinctly a scene in which he said he was a scammer. So the writers tried explaining that he faked his DNA tests by keeping a cooler full of someone's frozen blood from a lab the entire time, for months on end.

That's when I bailed. :rolleyes:

It's been several years since I saw this, but wasn't Curt MIA and presumed to have been killed at Pearl Harbor? If that's the case then it certainly wasn't unusual since many did survive. I also seem to recall that he went into hiding because his injuries made it impossible for him to have any kind of physical relationship with Mary Ellen. The presumed dead and later found alive scenario is as old as television itself, I'm just trying to figure out what was so dumb about this one. :confused:

I agree, I didn't think that was so bad. I haven't seen the episode since I was a kid, but when it was discovered he was alive and Mary Ellen visits him to try and reunite with Curt if I remember there seemed to be a mention of psychological trauma he'd suffered too from the things he'd experienced in the war (post traumatic stress syndrome I suppose) but they didn't have that term back then.

Ed.

The Waltons episode where The Waltons and Elizabeth in particular are tormented by a poltergeist in their house. :rolleyes: Now that was dumb.

Ed.

Family Matters. Steve Urkel makes a robot that resembles him, and calls it "Urkelbot". Thankfully that was only one episode. But then there's also the continuing storyline of Urkel cloning himself, the clone of him being named Stefan and he was much more smooth and sophisticated than Urkel, that was so stupid. Never mind that earlier in the series Carl and Harriet's daughter Judy just disappears from the show without explanation and they just go on like she never even existed. Which I guess was the point.

Ed.

Happy Days: Where Fonzie jumps over a shark on water-skis which led to the popular term "Jumping the Shark".

Yes. Those storylines were why I quit soap. It's okay to be goofy but there's goofy and then writing storylines that are so stupid and off the wall that they're insulting your intelligence.

The one that made me quit happened on Young and the Restless. There was a guy on the show (Cane) who was a grifter pretending to be someone's son or something. Then he became a fan favorite, so the writers said he was really that person's son the entire time, and even wrote episodes in which he took a DNA test that showed a match.


But fans complained about this retcon because they remembered distinctly a scene in which he said he was a scammer. So the writers tried explaining that he faked his DNA tests by keeping a cooler full of someone's frozen blood from a lab the entire time, for months on end.

That's when I bailed. :rolleyes:

:lol:

Yeah, that sounds really, really bad.

Family Matters. Steve Urkel makes a robot that resembles him, and calls it "Urkelbot". Thankfully that was only one episode. But then there's also the continuing storyline of Urkel cloning himself, the clone of him being named Stefan and he was much more smooth and sophisticated than Urkel, that was so stupid. Never mind that earlier in the series Carl and Harriet's daughter Judy just disappears from the show without explanation and they just go on like she never even existed. Which I guess was the point.

Ed.

The moment little Judy Winslow disappeared from the show, and no-one in the family even noticed, was when I stopped watching.

The clones/robots/whatever that happened after that moment were truly bizarre.

The presumed dead and later found alive scenario is as old as television itself, I'm just trying to figure out what was so dumb about this one.

There's a lot reasons why I thought it was a stupid storyline and some of them aren't appropriate discussion for this site, but there's something about that story that feels insulting or dismissive of WWII veterans to me. Anyway, it really soured me on the show.

On the sitcom All In The Family when there was the attempted rape of Edith...on her birthday! I'll just never understand what on earth they could've possibly been thinking when they did that. :eek::confused:

Ed.

I just remembered a really stupid (and offensive) storyline from daytime soap.

Decades ago, All My Children had this groundbreaking storyline in which Erica Kane had an abortion. As you can imagine, for its time, it was very controversial.

Anyway, a new batch of writers decided to "resurrect" her son by claiming that a doctor rescued her aborted fetus, brought it to term and raised it to adulthood. (Yeeesh.)

How about 'The Phantom Of The Courthouse' storyline from Night Court?

I just remembered a really stupid (and offensive) storyline from daytime soap.

Decades ago, All My Children had this groundbreaking storyline in which Erica Kane had an abortion. As you can imagine, for its time, it was very controversial.

Anyway, a new batch of writers decided to "resurrect" her son by claiming that a doctor rescued her aborted fetus, brought it to term and raised it to adulthood. (Yeeesh.)

omg:

Wow.

How about 'The Phantom Of The Courthouse' storyline from Night Court?

I'm a big Night Court fan and that storyline was horrible. I also hated the whole Christine-Tony storyline. Why would a bright lady like Christine fall for that loser? Tony had no redeeming qualities. He always called her by her last name only. What a jerk.

The X-Files had a few dumb episodes. Can't think of the name this episode however, one that comes to mind is where an alien wanted to play baseball.

Another dumb X-Files episode was an episode called, "The Post-Modern Prometheus" which was filmed in black and white. They take some man who looks like a monster to a Cher Concert.

Buffy "The Vampire" Slayer had a musical episode that was really dumb called, "Once More, With Feeling". I've never been able to make it through that episode.

In Coach's final season they did an entire episode where Coach and all of his assistants sit down to watch a Monday Night Football game. If the underdog Lions beat the 49ers, the Orlando Breakers would make the playoffs for the first time ever. It would of been a great and believable storyline, as this exact scenario has played out dozens of times in real life.

Only problem is, if the Lions won, the Breakers were set to play the Buffalo Bills in round 1. The Breakers and Bills are AFC teams and the Niners and Lions are NFC teams, so there is no possible way a game between two NFC teams could possibly effect an AFC team making the playoffs!! They couldn't be bothered to hire a technical advisor.

I never watched an original episode of Coach after that and the show was canceled a couple of months later.

omg:

Wow.

Yeah. This is why I rolled my eyes at all the AMC fans who were throwing temper tantrums when the show was canceled. How can you watch a show that insults your intelligence to that extent and be upset that you can't watch it anymore? :confused:

Yeah. This is why I rolled my eyes at all the AMC fans who were throwing temper tantrums when the show was canceled. How can you watch a show that insults your intelligence to that extent and be upset that you can't watch it anymore? :confused:

I didn't start watching AMC until the 90s/00's however, I never knew about that story line involving Erica Kane. That is maybe the dumbest story line I have ever heard of.

And I thought the Dallas Pam Ewing's dream season was crazy.

Yeah. This is why I rolled my eyes at all the AMC fans who were throwing temper tantrums when the show was canceled. How can you watch a show that insults your intelligence to that extent and be upset that you can't watch it anymore? :confused:

:lol: Thanks so much for sharing this example, Dee. I thought the "underground hidden city" and weather machine" storylines were preposterous, but "doctor secretly raises aborted baby" is even one step beyond that! :eek:

I didn't start watching AMC until the 90s/00's however, I never knew about that story line involving Erica Kane. That is maybe the dumbest story line I have ever heard of.

That s/l was maybe five, six years before the show got (mercifully) canceled.

:lol: Thanks so much for sharing this example, Dee. I thought the "underground hidden city" and weather machine" storylines were preposterous, but "doctor secretly raises aborted baby" is even one step beyond that! :eek:

Well, if you thought that was dumb, it gets even dumber. :lol: The doctor (Greg Madden) wound up getting buried alive by another member of the show out of revenge for some other indiscretion. So for weeks, audiences were subjected to scenes of the guy begging for his life while trapped inside a box. :crazy: