What TV series has the worst continuity or internal plot consistency?
What TV series has the worst continuity or internal plot consistency?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Yeah, this show had potential, some cool ideas, but just couldn't figure out what the fuck it was doing. No consistency or direction. I think a big part of what really sent it off the rails was the Writer's strike in 2007. But it was already seeing plot issues well before that.
Feels like there were a lot of shows in the mid 2000s that were sold to the public entirely on The Hook™, a clear target or mystery that got you watching it. "Save the cheerleader, save the world." "How I met your mother". "What the fuck is going on this island? Is this like Purgatory or something?" "Guy gets terminal cancer, and decides to cook meth to make money for his family before he dies". Some managed to pivot from that hook into a new hook or a compelling narrative. Some just kept moving the goal post or compounding the mystery. And some just got really boring or contrived after the initial stuggle resolved or the mysteries just never panned out to anything.
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The comic might be better for that, when it gets away from the show.
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They did a reboot of the show a few years later and did the exact same thing.
I don't think I've heard of this. wild googling
All I'm finding is an up and coming remake.
'Heroes' Reboot in Development From Creator Tim Kring - IMDb. A new “Heroes” reboot series is in development from creator Tim Kring, Variety has confirmed. The reboot, titled “Heroes: Eclipsed,” is set years after the events of the original superhero series, as new evolved humans are discovering their powers
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"Heroes Reborn"
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I thought the main character was only able to absorb one power at a time. Wouldn't make it fit better?
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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.
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If I’m being honest with myself, Star Trek.
All of it.
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The king of "galaxy-altering implications that are never spoken of again"
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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.
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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!
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Two boxes stacked against each other, in fact. Sitting in a truck.
The truck does not disintigrate.
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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!
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the disintegration effect is even mocked in-world in a very meta way in later seasons.
Their meta mocking themselves is where I learned the phrase "hang a lantern on it" exactly because the writers "hung a lantern" on how silly the zat was.
Also several of the actors talk about how they're clearly penises. Like the first time they got their hand on one they went:
Also also, like 24 hours or so ago confirmed that new Stargate is being developed.
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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.
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"They", here, is fox, and not the show's creators.
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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.
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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.
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Baywatch, especially when you take into account Baywatch: Nights where Hasslehoff works as a private eye and solves x-files.
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Days of Our Lives
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Lol my mom used to watched Days of Our Lives religiously. The funniest part to me was when people had kids. There was never much of a story in people raising babies, so they would age kids really rapidly. Like, someone had a baby. Next season the baby is 5 years old, next season they were 12, next season they'd be an older teen and then soon they'd be adults having kids of their own.
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To be fair, that's true of pretty much any soap opera.
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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...
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Oh hey Willis, good to see you on the fediverse. How's the buffer doing?
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The only buffer I have is the buffer on a transwarp probe.
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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.
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"I'm 40% consistency!"
-Bender
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thunk thunk
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Supernatural eventually just made it a running gag that things changed when they felt like it.
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Teletubbies
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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.
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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 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.
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After the first 3 episodes, this was my reaction to any choice any character ever made
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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.
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Rings of Power sure is up there.
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Golden Girls.
How many siblings did they all have?!?
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I don't know if anime is allowed, but Dragon Ball Z is pretty bad.
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I thought people consistently get more powerful
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...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.
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SpongeBob is much older than Young Justice and DCAU. The format for cartoons back then was for them not to have any overarching plots/continiuities so that you can air them in any order. With the advent of streaming services this is no longer an issue since VOD doesn't have the drawbacks of network television.
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Sliders
Outside of the primary plot device there is no internally-consistant plot.
Homer Simpson has forgotten he knows music at least 2 times.
Other than that, I’ve heard Lost is bad, very bad.
Oh phuck, I wanted to say Lost, but I figured nobody would get 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.
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 said I heard. I haven’t watched it.
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.