The original post: /r/television by /u/artmalique on 2025-02-16 15:13:30.
I don’t mean good shows with bad endings (that topic has been discussed a million times already). I am talking about specific storylines which were hugely anticipated, but were horribly botched by flaky writers.
You know the deal. A story is hinted at, which has fans waiting in excitement (sometimes for years), only for the writers to lose their nerve and/or make a complete mess of the delivery, leaving everyone bitterly disappointed. A few examples:
- Dexter: season 7 ended with everything in place for Debra to end up just like Dexter, as a killer working for the police… only for the show to do a six month time-jump and have Debra quit the force, thus denying viewers a chance to see the immediate repercussions. As if that wasn’t enough of a bottle job, fans were expecting Dexter to be exposed… but instead he faked his death and fled with nobody finding out the truth (until 10 years later when the writers brought the show back in a far-too-late attempt to repair the damage).
- Luther: years of red-hot chemistry between John Luther & Alice Morgan. Will they or won’t they…? The writers then gave them a meaningless hook-up in a flashback (not even showing how they briefly got together), then made them go back to how they were in the present day. Though their final scene together was powerful.
- Grimm: what was the connection between Nick & Trubel? Long-lost siblings perhaps? A big reveal has to happen! One which will no doubt have a huge impact on their lives… Nope. Just a “20 years later” voice-over telling us they were second-cousins.
- House of the Dragon: anyone who read the book was expecting Blood and Cheese to be the biggest TV shocker since the Red Wedding. And it would have been if the writers simply stuck to the book. Instead they chickened out and removed all the psychological horror and aftermath (and Maelor), and left us with a watered-down let-down.
- Game of Thrones: why was Beric Dondarrion brought back to life six times? No reason other than to be a Beric-cade.
Any other writer cop-outs that upset you in TV shows?