Plots that Go Askew

[Mewtarthio]

I didn't think going from season 3 to 4 was that bad, some changes needed to be made and so the show changed. From season 5 to 6 was when it really went off, with an extremely anti-climactic big bad and an overal plot that was far too anvilicious.

I agree, it needed a bit of retooling to continue on past season 3. I just don't think the show needed to continue on past season 3 in the first place. Season 4 wasn't the worst season, but it was pretty bland. Speaking of plots going askew, a conflict between Buffy and The Initiative (which they'd been building towards for half the season) would've been far more interesting than the conflict between Buffy and some random demon cyborg that shows up out of nowhere.

[Prime32]

How was the ending to The Incredibles disappointing?

Did you expect a big fight scene against Syndrome? He was just a nerdy kid, not a super. The whole point of the ending was that the family overcame their problems and learned to work together.

Or wait, are you referring to the whole mole men fake sequel-bait cliffhanger ending? If I can get over the one from Super Mario Bros., then I can get over that.

I didn't take that as sequel bait (Underminer himself was barely focused on), I just took it as "look, they're committed to this now".

[KillianHawkeye]

I didn't take that as sequel bait (Underminer himself was barely focused on), I just took it as "look, they're committed to this now".

That's why I used the term "fake sequel-bait."

[Xondoure]

I agree, it needed a bit of retooling to continue on past season 3. I just don't think the show needed to continue on past season 3 in the first place. Season 4 wasn't the worst season, but it was pretty bland. Speaking of plots going askew, a conflict between Buffy and The Initiative (which they'd been building towards for half the season) would've been far more interesting than the conflict between Buffy and some random demon cyborg that shows up out of nowhere.

Agreed. The show just turned grimdark without any real reason. It would have been interesting to watch the scoobies move through college but instead they just threw away the whole balancing of a normal life along with the slayer stuff, and gave everyone an extra dose of angst because drama sells right?

Oh and Angel. 4th season. Time travelling baby plots. Just no.

[Soras Teva Gee]

That's why I used the term "fake sequel-bait."

Well in point of fact the Underminer thread was taken up... in a video game.

[Mystic Muse]

Oh and Angel. 4th season. Time travelling baby plots. Just no.

That wasn't the worst part in my opinion.

The worst part was Connor.

Sweet pony princessess how I hated that kid.

[TheAmishPirate]

For me, it's got to be Heroes. The first season is absolutely fantastic, with an incredible plot, incredible characters, and enough mystery left to promise many more seasons to come.

Then season two happened. I'm not really sure where to start with the trainwreck, so I'ma just dive into this mess. I lost count of the number of conflicts that could've been trivially resolved if characters had just talked to each other. Not even that! Talked intelligently to each other. Instead of saying "Oh, that guy you're traveling with? He's bad and I need to kill him so could you just move aside please?", maybe consider, "Oh, that guy you're traveling with? He's planning to end the world, I can show you all this irrefutable evidence we found, so maybe he's been lying to you? And we should stab him now?" On top of that, characters go through the exact same character arc they went through the previous season (or at least try to) while others hatch convoluted, poorly-explained, and poorly-planned schemes to get nebulous rewards that ultimately escape their grasp. To their credit, they did get one good reveal in, but that was just about the only redeeming factor of the entire season. I stopped watching after that, and I heard that it only got worse from there.

[bloodtide]

How about that last Conan movie. It should have been soooo simple: make a movie about a barbarian warrior with action and drama and pure barbarianism. And Jason makes a good enough Conan(and heck he played a Conan character for 4 years on Stargate.)

It's hard to know where to start with the Conan train-wreck. As soon as daddy Conan dies, I knew it would be a bad movie. The 'orcs killed my parents' background story almost never works. I hate it when a writer feels that a character needs to be motivated but 'the greatest revenge in the world'. It's just so dull and boring.

And you sure did not get the feel that Conan was a 'barbarian'. He should have done much more 'hulk smash' type stuff then all the crazy ninja sword play. (Jason was a better Conan as Ronan then he was as Conan)

[Dumbledore lives]

Agreed. The show just turned grimdark without any real reason. It would have been interesting to watch the scoobies move through college but instead they just threw away the whole balancing of a normal life along with the slayer stuff, and gave everyone an extra dose of angst because drama sells right?

There was some unnecessary angst, some of it due to real life like Seth Green leaving the show, but I think on the whole it wasn't bad, and lead up to season 5 which worked well for finishing off the story, with suitable drama and angst. And yeah, I never really liked Adam, but I accepted him as a villain, even if his whole archetype was done much better with Glory in the next season.

And I had forgot about Heroes, yeah that went way off after Season 1, even reading the plot summaries for later seasons is an exercise in frustration.

[Xondoure]

That wasn't the worst part in my opinion.

The worst part was Connor.

Sweet pony princessess how I hated that kid.

Oh he was what I meant. I liked baby connor. A lot. As a whiny twerp… never.

[irenicObserver]

For me Connor just didn't go anywhere, I mean he just sucked up time and plot; couldn't they have found a different way to bring in Jasmine?

Don't get me started on Heroes, it's like that feeling you get that something is going wrong but you don't know what. It's like watching someone die, not even exaggerating.

[Tiki Snakes]

I knew I'd never need to watch another episode of Heroes when I learnt that somehow and for some reason they brought back Silar. I neither know or care why or how it happened, that was just it for me. All the guilt from having not managed to catch anything past the first couple of episodes of the second season just evaporated instantly.

[Caledonian]

TRON: Legacy.

The initial premise isn't bad, but the details of the Grid start not to make sense*, and then the plot dives right off a cliff. The movie ends up as a nonsensical Daft Punk music video (yay!) with surprisingly good performances and great special effects (yay!) but an absolutely incoherent story.

*by TRON standards, which aren't very high in the first place.

[irenicObserver]

I absolutely disagree with that hyperbole.

[MCerberus]

I think the steady gaining of insanity for sci-fi series is hilarious personally.

Anyone remember Andromeda? Started with the crew lost in time due to a black hole, then very quickly went insane. I think by the 3rd episode there was a civilization of children being poisoned by a nuclear bomb.

[Mx.Silver]

I think the steady gaining of insanity for sci-fi series is hilarious personally.

Anyone remember Andromeda? Started with the crew lost in time due to a black hole, then very quickly went insane. I think by the 3rd episode there was a civilization of children being poisoned by a nuclear bomb.

Honestly, Andromeda didn't really go off the deep end until about midway through series 2, when they kicked the lead-writer off the project, wrote-out one character completely re-wrote a second and mostly abandoned the main arc.

[DigoDragon]

TRON: Legacy.

Yeah, also how they seemed to just gloss over the one character that shares a name with the movie title.

[KillianHawkeye]

For me Connor just didn't go anywhere, I mean he just sucked up time and plot; couldn't they have found a different way to bring in Jasmine?

Really, the whole point of Connor was to make Angel's life kinda miserable (along with the audience). Also, to make Angel start acting more like an adult. Yes, he was angsty (but nothing compared to S6-S7 Buffy), but he basically had "plot device" written all over him from Day 1, before he was even born, so it's not that surprising.

[Xondoure]

Really, the whole point of Connor was to make Angel's life kinda miserable (along with the audience). Also, to make Angel start acting more like an adult. Yes, he was angsty (but nothing compared to S6-S7 Buffy), but he basically had "plot device" written all over him from Day 1, before he was even born, so it's not that surprising.

And Angel as a new dad was great. Connor as a teenager was just… a) saw it coming, b) was screaming "no no no you stupid writers do not do this it isn't worth it you're throwing away a perfectly sound- You did it. Well. At least you can not- now that's just plain creepy. Why would you do that? What was the point? Just. Agh!"

Sad part is the other four seasons are all pretty solid.

[pffh]

How about that last Conan movie. It should have been soooo simple: make a movie about a barbarian warrior with action and drama and pure barbarianism. And Jason makes a good enough Conan(and heck he played a Conan character for 4 years on Stargate.)

It's hard to know where to start with the Conan train-wreck. As soon as daddy Conan dies, I knew it would be a bad movie. The 'orcs killed my parents' background story almost never works. I hate it when a writer feels that a character needs to be motivated but 'the greatest revenge in the world'. It's just so dull and boring.

And you sure did not get the feel that Conan was a 'barbarian'. He should have done much more 'hulk smash' type stuff then all the crazy ninja sword play. (Jason was a better Conan as Ronan then he was as Conan)

Now I haven't seen the new movie (due to horrible reviews) so I don't know how bad it really is but you do know that both in the novels and in the Arnold movies Conan was much more a strong thief swordsman then a hulk smash type character and that the "Someone killed my parents" is also the start of the first Arnold Conan movie.

Hell the first Conan movie is a revenge story and the second is a "I love her so much I'll do anything to bring her back" story.

I think the steady gaining of insanity for sci-fi series is hilarious personally.

Anyone remember Andromeda? Started with the crew lost in time due to a black hole, then very quickly went insane. I think by the 3rd episode there was a civilization of children being poisoned by a nuclear bomb.

Ah Andromeda, so much potential and so crappy after the first season. Shame really, it had an interesting concept and main races but eugh so bad.

[MCerberus]

Ah Andromeda, so much potential and so crappy after the first season. Shame really, it had an interesting concept and main races but eugh so bad.

If I remember correctly it was originally planned to be a Trek spinoff.

[TheThan]

For me, Lost. Started out as a basic castaway story: okay, sounds fun. Then the island is populated by supernatural stuff: okay, that works too. Then there are weird conspiracies, and hidden messages, and codes, and inexplicable stuff, and inhabitants of the island, and people are betraying each other and then they're not actually on the island except they are and . . . what?

I spent the first half of Season 1 trying to figure out the plot. Somewhere around the second half of Season 1 I realised that the writers didn't have a plot. They were just throwing more and more confusing stuff in there with no plan for making it all make sense. So I quit watching.

On a similar theme, the new Battlestar Galactica. It's such an awesome premise: the battlestar with its fleet of civilian ships containing the remnants of the human race, fleeing the Cylons who are trying to wipe them out. All they had to do was play it straight and it would have been an awesome series. But instead we get told over and over again that the Cylons Have A Plan, and this gets used to justify all kinds of inconsistent behaviour until no-one has the faintest idea what these guys are actually doing anymore. Just like Lost, it never gets explained in any way that makes sense.

YES! YES! THANK YOU. FINALLY SOMEONE AGREES WITH ME!

oh sorry for the all caps. I've had far too many people heave undue praise for both of these series (and insult my intelligence for disagreeing with them) that I started to think I was the the only one in the world to see through all their crap at the core of both of these TV shows and see just how poor the show actually are.

[MammonAzrael]

For me, it's got to be Heroes. The first season is absolutely fantastic, with an incredible plot, incredible characters, and enough mystery left to promise many more seasons to come.

Then season two happened. I'm not really sure where to start with the trainwreck, so I'ma just dive into this mess. I lost count of the number of conflicts that could've been trivially resolved if characters had just talked to each other. Not even that! Talked intelligently to each other. Instead of saying "Oh, that guy you're traveling with? He's bad and I need to kill him so could you just move aside please?", maybe consider, "Oh, that guy you're traveling with? He's planning to end the world, I can show you all this irrefutable evidence we found, so maybe he's been lying to you? And we should stab him now?" On top of that, characters go through the exact same character arc they went through the previous season (or at least try to) while others hatch convoluted, poorly-explained, and poorly-planned schemes to get nebulous rewards that ultimately escape their grasp. To their credit, they did get one good reveal in, but that was just about the only redeeming factor of the entire season. I stopped watching after that, and I heard that it only got worse from there.

Season 2? I'm afraid you've been fooled, sir. Heroes was tragically canceled after a single season, there was no second season.

I'll join the Buffy (season 6), Angel, and Lost boats. I've only watched the first 2 seasons of BSG, but from what I hear I'm not sure I want to watch the rest.

As for Andromeda, I remember really enjoying that show, watching it whenever I caught it on air. And then I saw some really weird episodes that seemed to have nothing to do witht he plot and realised I had stumbled into season 4. Read Coda, Robert Hewitt Wolfe's original intentions for the show, some time later, sadly never came to fruition.

[Weezer]

I'll join the Buffy (season 6), Angel, and Lost boats. I've only watched the first 2 seasons of BSG, but from what I hear I'm not sure I want to watch the rest.

I think keeping it to season 2 is the best idea, the first two seasons were some of the best Sci-fi TV I've ever seen. The first bit of 3 was alright, but then it all went to hell after that.

[bloodtide]

Now I haven't seen the new movie (due to horrible reviews) so I don't know how bad it really is but you do know that both in the novels and in the Arnold movies Conan was much more a strong thief swordsman then a hulk smash type character and that the "Someone killed my parents" is also the start of the first Arnold Conan movie.

The 'stereotypical' Conan in the media is the barbarian warrior. I doubt that Hollywood would ever be brave enough to show us the 'strong thief'. And while the 'you dirty rat, you killed my parents' is a classic...it has also been over done to death. I just hoped for something more and different.


How about Green Lantern. The movie starts off OK, you get the long and drawn out 'background/origin story'(and while I hate this part of all first super hero movies, that would be another post...). Then Hal finds the One Ring...and well, nothing happens. The 'bad guy' shows up and kidnaps the girl for no real reason and sort of fights Hal, again for no real reason. Then the Galatics-wnaabe shows up to eat the Earth and Hal flicks his wrist and saves the day. What?

[Soras Teva Gee]

YES! YES! THANK YOU. FINALLY SOMEONE AGREES WITH ME!

oh sorry for the all caps. I've had far too many people heave undue praise for both of these series (and insult my intelligence for disagreeing with them) that I started to think I was the the only one in the world to see through all their crap at the core of both of these TV shows and see just how poor the show actually are.

I actually thought that was a common reaction to at least be aware of.

[TheThan]

You’d be surprised.

I’ve known several people that had nothing but praise for those shows. They thought they were the best written and planned out shows ever. NOTHING could have persuaded them otherwise, despite mountains of evidence the support claims to the contrary. Their rebuttal was that I was an idiot. *sigh*

If they had simply said something like, “I like it despite it’s flaws.” It wouldn’t bother me so much. But apparently I'm insulting them personally for not liking their favorite show, or noticing the (gaping) plot holes.

When the writers of a show say "Even we don't know whats going to happen", that means they're figuring it out as they go. Its not that a good show can't be written that way, its just that there are more room for mistakes.

[Mordar]

The 'stereotypical' Conan in the media is the barbarian warrior. I doubt that Hollywood would ever be brave enough to show us the 'strong thief'. And while the 'you dirty rat, you killed my parents' is a classic...it has also been over done to death. I just hoped for something more and different.

Um...both CtB and CtD* were based on the "strong thief", almost exclusively (Edit: Training montage in CtB aside). There is no "frenzy" to the Howard barbarian...he uses the term reverently to mean someone who has not bowed to the expectations of a (decadent) civilization and remains staunch in their beliefs, independence and personal power. For all of the crap in CtD, at least in the end that holds true..."I will have my own kingdom...".

That being said, I do understand your dislike with the murdered-loved-one cliche...but it is tough to make Conan a hero in this day and age without something that everyone can immediatelly and viscerally agree with as validating a life based on blood-letting and taking things that might not really belong to you.

Save the world (like you mention in Green Lantern)? Not really an intentional Conan deal...it is usually directly the result of saving one of the handful of people he cares about, or him tripping over the plot by accident.

Get rich or die trying? Not going to be a very heroic tale there, even if I (and probably you) might really like that story...but that'd only work as a crappy TV series ala Hercules.

Explore the known world and see what mysteries it holds? Again, not really for a feature film any more...back in the days of Sinbad and Mr. Harryhausen, yes, but not in the era of return-on-investment and focus groups.

So, these are the four common Conan kick-offs I can recall, and really only the first works to initiate a movie (or, had it been successful, series of movies). At the end of the day, I didn't think the new film was as bad as I expected it to be, and as I saw it for free, I did get my money's worth. I just don't know how else to start it as an introduction to a whole lot of people who've never read Howard...or are old enough to have seen an R-rated movie in 1982, or the sequel in 1984.

- M

* - Why, oh why, did we have to suffer the fool Malak? Conan would have put up with him for about 7 seconds...and that's only if he needed 5 to finish his drink and move the wench from his lap.

[Soras Teva Gee]

You’d be surprised.

I’ve known several people that had nothing but praise for those shows. They thought they were the best written and planned out shows ever. NOTHING could have persuaded them otherwise, despite mountains of evidence the support claims to the contrary. Their rebuttal was that I was an idiot. *sigh*

If they had simply said something like, “I like it despite it’s flaws.” It wouldn’t bother me so much. But apparently I'm insulting them personally for not liking their favorite show, or noticing the (gaping) plot holes.

When the writers of a show say "Even we don't know whats going to happen", that means they're figuring it out as they go. Its not that a good show can't be written that way, its just that there are more room for mistakes.

Ugh horrible, I never got into lost but it was obvious for BSG that while still very good the Cylons had less of a plan and more "vague set of goals to establish a method to achieve" and whatever they had went off the rails entirely by New Caprica. Nevermind how they apparently lost interest in creating all the Cylons so decided to make up some nonsense.

[Aotrs Commander]

That wasn't the worst part in my opinion.

The worst part was Connor.

Sweet pony princessess how I hated that kid.

You and me both...

And yet, his final appearence after he'd become a more balanced person were tolerable; though generally the last few seasons of Angel weren't anything to write home about (with the sole exception of Smile Time, which made the entire series worth it for that one episode...)

Honestly, Andromeda didn't really go off the deep end until about midway through series 2, when they kicked the lead-writer off the project, wrote-out one character completely re-wrote a second and mostly abandoned the main arc.

Yeah, Andromeda's first season was awesome (how many starship battles did they have?!) and then sort of steadily deteriorated, before nose-diving in season 5.

As for Andromeda, I remember really enjoying that show, watching it whenever I caught it on air. And then I saw some really weird episodes that seemed to have nothing to do witht he plot and realised I had stumbled into season 4. Read Coda, Robert Hewitt Wolfe's original intentions for the show, some time later, sadly never came to fruition.

That was...interesting. It would probably have been better that what we got... Even if I'm not sure it's what I would have preferred.

Still, a fascinating glimpse into what might have been. Link much appreciated.



@ Nu BSG Never managed to even watch one episode. The original - a childhood favourite of mine - was too deeply ingrained, I didn't like the "no aliens" thing (I liked the alien Cylons). The entire concept of humans and Cylons and *yawn* "mankind has wrought teh evils with technology" and whatnot completely put me off. I consider the original BSG to a good framing device for some shooting and most importanly, some fighter combat. I do not want philosphy or social commentary (etc etc) ruining the pure sanctity of my starship combat, thank you; not now, not ever. Starships are by far the most important thing that can be included in any story; far more so than characters, if push really comes to shove and yes I am being completely serious for once.

And worst of all, the starship battles weren't even any good and that - from me - is the single most damning thing I could ever say.

Heck, the 1980s starship battles were pretty rubbish by modern standards, but at least I could see what was going on. And they had crappy 1980s computer displays and not models on a fragging table like it was World War II. (That was the point I abandoned my attempts to watch it, because there is no reason, no circumstances, no matter how contrived, no justifications or what have you, nothing excuses the writers and world builders and whoever from being that frag-damn STUPID.)