Sliders
Outside of the primary plot device there is no internally-consistant plot.
…Spongebob?
I guess this is true of lots of western animation, but it’s particularly egregious. At least with the classic episodes.
…That’s not a rule though. As an example, DCAU and YJ keep a lot of shit straight, somehow.
Rings of Power sure is up there.
Baywatch, especially when you take into account Baywatch: Nights where Hasslehoff works as a private eye and solves x-files.
Heroes.
The first half of the first season was so good. The second half was ok. Every subsequent season gave the impression that it was handed off to a different writer every week, and that those writers hated each other.
They changed the rules constantly, except when they just ignored the rules.
The main character collects new powers as the show goes on, but he never uses them. He just completely forgets that he has them. Kind of like the time he completely forgets he has a girlfriend and never mourns her, mentions her, or even acknowledges that he lost her somewhere in an alternate timeline or something.
That’s not much better than the villain. The entire first season is about stopping him from doing a specific thing, because a time traveler has foreseen that it’ll result in the world ending. Season two opens with him doing that thing, and everything is fine. He has at least three heel-face turns, which are immediately undone when the next writer is up to bat.
One good character undergoes a terrible transformation and murders a bunch of people, but the next season he’s suddenly good and everyone forgot. Again.
Constant retcons. This character is actually that character’s secret brother! This one lady who died was actually triplets! It adds nothing to the story and makes no sense, but there it is!
(I’m not joking either. Secret triplets.)
They did a reboot of the show a few years later and did the exact same thing.
I thought the main character was only able to absorb one power at a time. Wouldn’t make it fit better?
They changed it to that in season 3, with no explanation. Probably because the writers couldn’t be bothered to actually watch the damn show to see what powers he’d had.
In season 1, he could use the powers of anyone he’d been near, but he had to be able to summon up the emotions that person had made him feel.
Ah okay. I need to rewatch it, been a while. Thanks
I remember season 1 having a lot of potential, then there was a writer’s strike that impacted season 2. Must have been piece mealed together from non union writers, and it showed.
My understanding is that the creator wanted each season to follow a new set of characters, with season 2 being the previous generation that founded the organization that horn rimmed glasses guy worked for. But the network said no, and made him slap together a direct follow up. That was already an uphill battle before the writer’s strike.
Kind of unrelated, but season 1 was also supposed to end with all the various characters converging in an epic battle avengers style, but they were over budget and the network weren’t willing to give them more, so instead we got the poochy ending.
The comic might be better for that, when it gets away from the show.
Homer Simpson has forgotten he knows music at least 2 times.
Other than that, I’ve heard Lost is bad, very bad.
Homer should never have been written to have the ability to play an instrument. It doesn’t fit with his character at all. Like, not at all at all.
Wait, what? I know that Lost’s ending was controversial, but this is the first time I’ve heard that it’s not internally consistent. It’s whacky, but it’s SciFi. Do you know any examples of what isn’t internally consistent?
You’re correct. There are things that don’t connect, but there’s not like a ton of internal contradictions.
I watched the whole show. I didn’t notice any glaring issues. It’s confusing but it’s supposed to be.
That’s mostly just because it never explains anything up until the last few episodes when it’s all “Oh, uh… it’s all about god and heaven and hell and stuff I guess!”
I said I heard. I haven’t watched it.
In recent episodes, the middle aged adults are all millennials but the old folks all fought in WWII. There’s apparently no in between.
Oh phuck, I wanted to say Lost, but I figured nobody would get it…
Transformers. Is “energon” a crystal, a liquid, or something more nebulous? Are Primus and Unicron one being? Did the Quintessons create the Transformers? Where do the Go-Bots fit in?
And don’t get me started on the Allspark vs. Vector Sigma…
Oh hey Willis, good to see you on the fediverse. How’s the buffer doing?
Doctor Who. Or is that Dr. Who.
- He is sometimes a She.
- He is an alien of the race Time Lord. Except when he’s half-human.
- The most recent run was Season 2. Or Season 15. Or Series 41.
- The Doctor has reincarnated 15 times. Or 17. Or 18. Or 19. Or 20. Or 28.
- Continuity is just what the writer of the current episode remembers / is convenient.
- The only rule is: There is no such thing as canon.
1899 on Netflix.
Every episode had some big in-universe mechanic reveal which made pretty much every action taken by characters before that even MORE nonsensical.
It just kept getting worse and worse as events cascades into each other.
I always thought the problem with 1899 was that it was missold.
I wanted a genuine set in the early 20th century nautical mystery horror.
spoiler
Instead it was “it’s all just VR” and you discover that early on, and then you just flatout loses interest knowing the people in it can’t really get hurt or they’re not actually people.
After the first 3 episodes, this was my reaction to any choice any character ever made
Supernatural eventually just made it a running gag that things changed when they felt like it.
At least they explained it with the ultimate enemy: “it makes the story better”.
Far from the worst but my funniest example comes from my favourite show. In the first season of Stargate SG-1, they introduced an alien weapon which would go on to become a staple of the series, the Zat Gun. One shot stuns, two shots kill, and three shots… Disintegrates?!
Yeah, it’s so stupidly powerful that the writers pretty much immediately realized the mistake and the show kinda just conveniently forgets that was established in the first season, except for like three other times in the entire ten season run.
Even the first two shots became very nebulous over time.
Edited to add, the disintegration effect is even mocked in-world in a very meta way in later seasons.
They wanted a phaser but couldn’t call it a vaporize setting.
But they didn’t completely abandon it. Disintegration gets used a handful more times when they remember it and it helps them wave away plot holes. Like in the episode where they end up in the 60s they disintegrate a box. A box!
Well, not quite. Iirc the disintegration effect came about last minute when the director decided he needed a way to remove the bodies, to explain why other jaffa wouldn’t see them and get suspicious.
It’s why in the Wormhole Xtreme episode, they mock that exact premise when
O’NeillMarty suggests it.Edited, corrected below!
Technically Martin is the one who suggests it…
Ah you’re right! I was thinking of a little bit later when O’Neill suggests the aliens are dead because they don’t wear camouflage.
Time for a rewatch, I’m getting rusty!
Two boxes stacked against each other, in fact. Sitting in a truck.
The truck does not disintigrate.
Ok but keep in mind I’m speaking to the televised order of release.
Firefly.
They released the series out of order so the very first episode already had you deep into the story without establishing anything or anyone. Once you streamed it or watched it on dvd it made more sense. Plus the choose not to air some episodes at all which also introduced plot points and by not airing those you ruin consistency.
And I’ll add, the series is fantastic and serenity was a very nice bow to the short lived series. Highly recommend if you haven’t seen it.
“They”, here, is fox, and not the show’s creators.
I could say the same for Babylon 5. The original airing of the show was entirely out of order. One of the common things you’d notice is how every othet episode, the crew had different uniforms. They were only supposed to change uniforms once per season.
If I’m being honest with myself, Star Trek.
All of it.
The king of “galaxy-altering implications that are never spoken of again”
Trek isn’t amazingly bad, but it’s definitely got low points.
Futurama freely makes shit up. They’ll invent new math theorems to make a body-swap episode work, but if their cool new backstory for Bender contradicts canon, they do not give a dang.
It’s not the worst plot hole, because it doesn’t affect the extremely episodic show. They’re just willfully apathetic toward consistency.
“I’m 40% consistency!”
-Bender
thunk thunk
I won’t say it’s the worst, but King of the Hill had a habit of contracting itself. Especially when it came to Peggy’s family.
