I hated that episode at the time, but on my most recent re-watch it was just a fun romp through what we all though Virtual Reality would/could be, “we’ll all wear tiny sunglasses and Motocross armor, it’ll be great!”
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That one season of GamesMaster where they replaced the host Dominic Diamond with Dexter Fletcher was just totally awful. Thankfully Dom was back in place for the following season.
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I asked Dom about it once, he said he didn’t do the show because of the McDonalds sponsorship, and a few personal issues.
I didn’t watch the Dexter Fletcher episodes, because I had stupid Maths Club when it was on, and had to learn numbers and stuff instead, tcht!
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“Lassie Jerky” from Psych.
Now, I love the hell out of Psych, but this one was insufferable. Parodying found footage movie stuff made this a tough sell to begin with; having one of the most irritating, annoying, and insufferable guest characters in the show’s history constantly trying to upstage everyone and everything didn’t help matters, either.
I’ll just watch an episode that I love in its place, like “Dual Spires” or “Extradition: British Columbia” or “Last Night Gus.”
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Was waiting for someone to mention “Fear Her.” Abysmally bad.
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Here’s one where the TV show’s normal quality may be questioned, but still:
Any Inspector Gadget episode that included Corporal Capeman.
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I don’t question the normal quality of Inspector Gadget. It owned.
But yeah, Corporal Capeman was… regrettable.
Fear Her is tedious, and honestly, the worst part is the child actor mumbling through her lines that I can’t understand her. Okay and the singing. It’s an interesting premise, though, with poor execution.
But Love & Monsters … that’s just bad. Bad, bad, bad. Your girlfriend is turned into a slab of concrete and you think that’s a good thing? I’ll give the monster some slack as it was created by a kid, but, if I was forced to sit through one or the other, I’ll suffer Fear Her before Love & Monsters.
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the Problem with Capeman was the fact that he was redundant. We already had a dumb character in gadget. having two dummies around was one too many.
the new gadget show suffers from this same problem, turning claw into a dummy.
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Awww… I love that one. It’s an obvious homage to The Return of Martin Guerre (a great movie) and that’s what makes it such a hoot.
The Simpsons never really exploits or even acknowledges a lot of its own history, which gives most episodes a self-contained feel. Of course, the characters never age, either. In a different kind of show without those limits, I could see finding this episode dismaying and a problem, but not here.
Season 3 is when TNG started working. The first two seasons had multiple showrunner changes and they went through dozens of writers, many of whom never got anything on the screen. Too much holdover material from TOS-era people and the aborted Star Trek: Phase II (some of which also went into The Motion Picture). There were also problems with Gene Roddenberry starting to lose it and insist on ridiculous stuff, and his quack lawyer doing episode rewrites in his name. (A lot of the early problems are documented in Shatner’s “Chaos on the Bridge” documentary.
Once Michael Piller took over as show runner from seasons 3 through 5 (after which he left to develop DS9 and VOY) it got much better, although never clunker free, of course. Star Trek, like the Twilight Zone tends toward 1/3 excellent, 1/3 OK, and 1/3 Dear God, Why? (Starting with Voyager, those proportions go out the window though and for VOY and ENT it’s more 1/8 pretty good, 1/4 decent, 1/4 soporific, and 3/8 WHYYYYYY?)
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What’s the next level after for Threshold?
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It’s fine and fun until the end, a bit of campy nonsense, made on the cheap to get space for the big finale… but yeah, that ending is the worst. It’s so creepy!
But Fear Her is worse.
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The final episode of Battlestar Galactica (2004 reboot) did a terrible disservice to the otherwise excellent reboot of the series. Really, the final 3-episode arc was on a downhill trajectory, setting up some mysteries that would never be answered, and absolutely betraying the moral quandaries the main characters faced throughout the series. Despite being an emotional train wreck of a person, it turns out Starbuck was an Angel all along! Humans and Cylons can procreate, they just need to add love as the secret ingredient! And of course the entire idea that the show did not take place in the future, but the distant past, and Hera is “Eve” in the garden of Eden… who’s “Adam”? Oh, nevermind, it doesn’t matter, we are just going to invoke God, and transport several characters into the modern day anyway.
It is the only sci fi series I enjoyed as it aired, that I cannot watch again due to the disrespect they showed for the audience at the end. And they had all of the time in the world to prepare for that ending. Maybe the re-reboot will set things right, and I can pretend that whatever they do there is the actual continuation of season 4, minus the last 3 episodes.
NewsRadio, “The Wedding.” S5 would never be as good as the previous seasons after Phil Hartman’s loss, though I love some of the episodes. This one pains me. It could be a random sitcom ep. NBC had their irritating theme nights all through the 90s; each sitcom on some given night had to HAVE A TRIP TO UNIVERSAL STUDIOS!!! OR A BOAT ACCIDENT!!! In a previous season the evening’s theme was ‘Three Weddings and a Funeral.’ NewsRadio presented us with “Rat Funeral.” The NR showrunners may not care for that one, but I cherish it. “The Wedding” is the showrunners giving up. A main character acts against her nature to propel a weak plot.
The show’s creator, Phil Simms, had left to work on a pilot that year. Had NewsRadio been picked up for a sixth season, Simms would have returned. On the DVD commentaries he stated he would have had Lisa Miller awake from a yearlong bender and get an annulment. Bless you, Simms.
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That one episode of Murder She Wrote where Jessica Fletcher wasn’t even in it.
I loved BSG, but those elements were there by mid-S3. I had growing suspicions the Cylons really didn’t have a plan after all. S4 had some fantastic episodes, but I hated anything to do with Gaius and his cult. I understood his motivations more than those of the original Snidely Whiplash version, but he should have been airlocked, devil, craven coward, whatever he was. Starbuck as a messed-up pilot wracked with guilt? Loved her. An angel? No, I like the scifi in my scifi. The threads were fraying in the cloth far above the hem.
Agreed. I keep thinking maayyybbeee they’ll come back to that or something?
“Coming 2024, Stranger Blings! Follow the characters you didn’t like 5 years ago as they appraise, buy, and sell amazing items in their Las Vegas pawn shop!”
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