Just like it’s rare for every track on an album to be a classic or for every book in a series to be a literary masterpiece, it’s rare that every single episode of a TV series is a knockout. Even the greatest TV shows ever made have faltered with a couple of weak installments.Seinfeldhas “The Dog,”Stranger Thingshas “The Lost Sister,” andLost,Dexter, andHow I Met Your Motherall culminated in series finales that disappointed a lot of long-time fans. From the timeFamily Guykilled off Brian to the timeBreaking Baddedicated an entire hour to a housefly, many beloved TV shows have polarizing episodes.
“Life Of Brian” Divided Family Guy Fans
Thewriters ofFamily Guyaren’t too concerned with plot or character development. They’ll have one of the Griffins act out of character, do something outlandish like go into outer space, or even die horrifically if it’ll serve one of the show’s signature cutaway gags. And that made it all the more bizarre when the producers chose to kill offthe family’s fan-favorite talking dog, Brian. In season 12’s “Life of Brian,” after a time-traveling adventure gone wrong prompts Stewie to destroy his time machine, a reckless driver runs over Brian during a game of street hockey and there’s no hope of saving him.
Brian ended up returning a few episodes later when Stewie bumped into his time-traveling self, but the writers committed to a heart-wrenching, seemingly permanent death for the beloved character – which, naturally, infuriated a large chunk of the fan base.
“The Long Night” Divided Game Of Thrones Fans
For its first six seasons,Game of Throneswas widely praised forbringing adult themes and storylines into an immersive fantasy setting. But when the writers ran out of densely packed novels to adapt and had to rely on threadbare story outlines, they started racing through plot points without taking the time to flesh them out. Season 7 was an ominous warning sign, but the show really went off the rails inits eighth and final year.
Season 8 first started going downhill with the longest episode of the entire series, “The Long Night,” focused entirely on the climactic battle between the combined forces of the living and the Army of the Dead. Not only does the episode undermine the threat of the White Walkers after years of build-up; its overly dim lighting makes everything difficult to see.
“The Principal And The Pauper” Divided Simpsons Fans
The moment thatThe Simpsons’ golden age ended andthe show jumped the sharkcan be pinpointed with the season 9 episode “The Principal and the Pauper,” in which the residents of Springfield learn that Seymour Skinner stole his identity. The man who’s been running Springfield Elementary all these years is actually Armin Tamzarian, a James Dean-esque ruffian, who assumed his identity after the real Skinner was presumed dead in Vietnam. This episode was a complete betrayal of the loyal fans who had spent nearly a decade of their lives becoming endeared to the straitlaced schoolmaster.
In an interview with theEast Bay Express,Skinner’s voice actor Harry Shearersaid that after reading the script, he told the producers, ”That’s so wrong. You’re taking something that an audience has built eight years or nine years of investment in and just tossed it in the trash can for no good reason, for a story we’ve done before with other characters. It’s so arbitrary and gratuitous, and it’s disrespectful to the audience.” Skinner is one ofthe show’s most widely adored supporting characters, so fans were up in arms when the writers retconned him into a fraud.
“Fly” Divided Breaking Bad Fans
WhenBreaking Badfirst aired, it was lauded as the pinnacle of the so-called Golden Age of Television. In a medium that usually tries to maintain the status quo to keep wringing episode after episode from its cast of characters, Vince Gilligan set out to chart one man’s transformation from a mild-mannered chemistry teacher into a monstrous meth kingpin. The near-perfect series followed that downfall from its masterfully crafted pilot episode to its wildly satisfying finale. From “4 Days Out” to “Crawl Space,” the list ofgreatBreaking Badepisodesis practically endless. But one controversial installment continues to divide fans to this day.
Right in the middle of season 3, the show’s most action-packed chapter up to that point, the ongoing story arcs came grinding to a halt as the writers dedicated a whole hour-long episode to Walt and Jesse’s desperate efforts to kill a housefly that made its way into their meth lab. It’s a strong standalone narrative driven by the series’ central relationship, and the pesky fly offers a poignant symbol of Walt’s guilt, but there’s no denying that this cost-cutting bottle episode only exists as filler to pad out the season.
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