TV Episodes That Annoy Me

There are a few generic TV episode types that almost never fail to annoy the fark out of me (although there are exceptions to every one of these). Note that these apply to single episodes, not entire series. In no particular order, here they are:

The “Acting” Episode: Yes, we get it. You’re actors. You like your job. The rest of us, however, don’t find watching you rehearse and screw around all that entertaining. I don’t care that you’re rehearsing for a con (Firefly: “Ariel”) and not a show or movie, you’re still playing the actor game, and it’s annoying. One of the most baffling examples was where some of Janeway’s idiot crew wound up being drafted into a Space Greek play or Terrible Things would happen for no rational reason.

The “Musicians” Episode: Yes, we get it. You’re theater nerds. You like to pretend you’re rock stars or whatever. When I want to watch singing and dancing, I’ll throw in The Blues Brothers or some music videos. But when I’m watching a show about aliens invading Earth and trying to make humans extinct, I really don’t care about the angst of a hovertank pilot who would rather be a nightclub piano player (see: Armored Space Cavalry Southern Cross, redubbed as Robotech: Southern Cross — I just summed up Bowie Grant’s contribution to most of the episodes he was in). I also don’t really need to see an entire episode of a normally-dramatic show done as a musical.

The “Bigotry” Episode Of A Show Aimed At Adults: Yes, we get it. Racism/homophobia/etc are bad. The only adults who don’t get this are members of the Klan, and you aren’t going to reach them through a TV show. I’m watching the show to be entertained, not sit through a heavy-handed attempt to be “socially aware.” You aren’t impressing me by “dealing with a controversial topic,” because it isn’t controversial for anyone beyond the age of twelve. Save this BS for the kids’ after-school specials.

The “Let’s Be Political” Episode Of A Non-Political Show: Leave your political beliefs out of it, m’kay? If I wanted to be indoctrinated by some political ideology, I’d watch The West Wing or listen to Rush Limbaugh. The worst offenders are “reality TV” episodes where the whole crew “spontaneously” packs up and runs off to a rally or other political event, complete with signs, shirts, and decorations that would have had to be ordered weeks in advance.

The “Zany Hijinks” Episode Of A Serious Show: Comic relief is a good way to lighten the tone, this is true. But watching an episode of a serious show suddenly turn into something on par with Heckle and Jeckle, with “hilarious” antics that aren’t more than mildly amusing to anyone over the age of nine or IQ over 80 is an entirely different animal. Cut it out.

The “Look At How Special Their Religion Is” Episode: If I cared about your religion, I’d research it myself and/or watch 700 Club. I’m an atheist, and I’d be just as annoyed if the show suddenly came to a screeching halt so the main characters could go off on a 15-minute monologue about the glories of atheism. There are other places for THAT too. The only exception to this is when it’s integral to the plot and involves a completely made-up religion (see: Babylon 5 and Stargate: SG-1). However, it’s also easy to push this WAY too far (see: Babylon 5 and Star Trek: Deep Space 9) and turn large chunks of a series into “oh gee, another episode of Sunday School for aliens.” Keep religion a subplot, not the focus of your show.

Note that this specifically doesn’t apply to shows like Big Love, 7th Heaven, etc., where the entire point of the show is in fact “look at how special their religion is,” or even shows like Little House On The Prairie where a major theme is their religious views and how they influence the characters. I’m talking about detour episodes of a show that isn’t explicitly about a religious group, subculture, whatever.

The “Lesbian” Episode: Ladies, we don’t care. Having one of the female characters suddenly get all bi-curious isn’t entertaining for most adults, and it detracts from the story. Easy example: Deep Space 9’s “Mirror Universe” episodes where most women were flamboyantly bi. Honorable mention: the Seinfeld episode where Elaine goes to the lesbian wedding and will not shut up about it for the entire episode.

The “Holodeck” Episode: It was cool once or twice on Next Generation (“11001001”, “Elementary, Dear Data”), but then it got old. This is not to be confused with an episode where an actual plot point uses the holodeck like “The Nth Degree,” where Barclay uses it to build his neural interface simply because it’s a huge replicator and has the necessary data feeds already in place (I have to wonder why this wouldn’t be done more often for prototyping and the like, unless Engineering has its own special setup for it). Usually, we basically end up watching the characters in the show watch TV (see: damn near every episode of Star Trek: Voyager). Even I have better things to do with my time. Even worse is when they decide to use the holodeck episode as a vehicle for a ridiculous bigotry episode like that Voyager episode where they spent half the airtime babbling about “photonic rights” or some such BS.  This also applies to dream episodes and other, similar nonsense.

The “Mirror Universe” or “Evil Twin” Episode: The vast majority of these are just dumb, and come off more as “oh look, the writers didn’t have an idea for a real script this week” or “when did this become a soap opera?” than a cool gimmick.

The “Flashback” Episode: Another “oh look, no script!” episode. It amazes me that advertisers are willing to pay for an “episode” that consists of a skeletal “script” that exists only to string together clips from previous episodes.

The “Aliens/Time Travelers Invented Velcro” Episode: OK, it was mildly amusing in Men In Black, but at least THAT was a comedy. It’s unforgivable in supposedly-serious science fiction like Star Trek. It isn’t like the stuff is all that amazing. A hiker was pulling burrs off his clothes, wondered how they stuck so well, and took a closer look. What kind of a simpleton really thinks this is so mysterious it requires an alien origin?

The “Aliens/Time Travelers Built Stonehenge or The Great Pyramid” Episode: Piling up rocks isn’t exactly rocket science. Yes, they were big rocks, but if you get enough people together with nothing better to do, they can move big rocks. We even have pyramids whose design changed midway through building to reflect developments in engineering.

The “Fanservice Guest Star” Episode: Just because I’m a fan of show X and you take one of the central actors from that show and put him on show Y (which I’m not a fan of) for a while, doesn’t mean I’ll watch that episode. It certainly doesn’t mean I’ll start watching it regularly. While most shows are guilty of this to some extent, Stargate SG-1 is one of the worst offenders for so blatantly transplanting two of the Farscape actors in a transparent attempt to get viewers. I liked Farscape, but no amount of transplanation could save the last couple seasons of SG-1. By that point it had basically turned into a bad Star Trek ripoff with Space Christians(TM) as the bad guys. But they were Completely Different from the Goa’uld — the Ori had RED eyes and were made of magical fire instead of being lizards. That whole “possessing people and pretending to be gods” thing is just a coincidence.

The “Pseudo-Historical” Episode: Star Trek is by far the worst offender here. Whether it’s Captain Kirk dealing with Space Nazis, Captain Janeway’s idiot crew dealing with Space Greeks, or Captain Archer stuck in a Space Western, it’s just silly and hokey. The odds on some alien (or even transplanted human) society developing a culture exactly like one of Earth’s to that degree of similarity without interference (see Stargate) is next to zero (and no, having some idiot crewman remark on the implausibility doesn’t change this or make it acceptable). Even if this society was deliberately planted somewhere as a replica of a human (or other) society, it won’t stay the same for long — cultures adapt to their environment or go extinct.

The “Time Loop” Episode: These almost always follow the same pattern: some Major Incident happens to screw with the timeline. Terrible Things happen as a result, usually resulting in widespread main character death or other Major Changes to the show’s background. Most of the crew Die Horrible Deaths, it Rains On Everyone’s Parade, and at the end they blow up the ship, but just before it blows up (or sometimes as a direct result of it blowing up) the timeline is fixed and it goes back to that Major Incident, which is now magically resolved. It’s just a stupid rehash of the “it was just a dream” episode. Whee.

The “Annoying Roommates” Episode: this seems more common on shows with some kind of institutional setting, whether military, college, or some other situation in which the characters don’t have much choice in their roommate. Then they get the dreaded Annoying Roommates. The usual formula is as follows:

• Main character (or sometimes a prominent second-string character) is in said setting and likes his current living arrangement. 
• The ship takes on temporary crew, the ship is transporting troops, the college needs to house a bunch of students temporarily because the dorm has butt grubs, whatever. 
• Character gets saddled with a couple/few of these people. 
• Said roommates (it’s almost always two or three) are annoying beyond decency. Usually to the point of “why hasn’t their behavior earned them an official reprimand or savage beating yet?” They usually exhibit at least a few of the following behaviors: weird (and usually LOUD) religious rituals at all hours of the day and night; loud, terrible music being blasted at all hours of the day and night; belligerent dominant games including physical intimidation to an extreme that they’d probably spend the rest of the voyage in jail or the equivalent, if not thrown out outright; weird food the core character finds repulsive; bizarre emotional outbursts that make the viewer wonder how they survived to adulthood, much less their current environment; strange culture clashes. 
• Core character has his life turned into a living Hell, with allegedly-hilarious consequences like getting caught sleeping in a closet because his Annoying Roommates are complete assbags. 
• By the end of the episode, they go full After School Special or Get-Along Gang and learn to accept their differences. This is nearly always the result of the core character “learning to accept others” rather than the assbags figuring out they’re the problem. 
• The Annoying Roommates go away and we never hear from them again. Bonus points: in Babylon 5, at least one of them wound up dead in the closing scene.

Don’t confuse this with the Odd Couple plot. The important distinction is that the Odd Couple was a running plotline (and has been used to very good effect as a subplot), the Annoying Roommates is usually a packaged one-shot.

Also don’t confuse this with the episode where the culture clash is the main plot. Notable example: the Star Trek: TNG episode with the low-tech Irish colonists who had to be taken aboard to find a new home.

The “Half Hour Commercial” Episode: you see a lot of this in DIY programs. I get the idea of sponsorship and product placement; watch almost any cooking show and you’ll see a certain amount of it because it’s how they pay the bills. That’s an entirely different animal. I’m talking about home improvement shows where they suddenly and loudly take a detour to Home Depot or Lowe’s and stop just short of prostrating themselves before the front door. Or exercise shows where they suddenly break out some goofy (and useless, like the sit-up cage-ball) fitness product and spend fifteen minutes using it. This one can be easily averted (and usually is) simply by stating “we use X brand (weights, steps, whatever), but you can use Y (half-full milk jugs, concrete blocks and a plank, whatever) to get the same result at home.”