Terrible episodes of great shows.

[Sham]

If I recall correctly, seasons 2-4 aren't derived from any source material like season 1. I'm so glad I never watched past season 1. It sounds like each season of that show gets progressively worse.

Yeah 2-4 is the writers own terrible imagination. Season 2 is fine but as you said it got progressively worse

 

[Auraninja]

That was actually one of my favorite episodes because it was like a spoof of the Pokemon phenomenon.

This is late for me to reply to, but just in general, I don't necessarily give episodes a pass because they parody Pokemon.

For example, I didn't like the South Park episode Chinpokomon. It felt like they did little research on what made Pokemon popular, and instead interviewed a conservative WWII veteran who still has anti-Japanaese sentiment.

On the contrary, I usually like the Robot Chicken Pokemons skits. Yes, some of them are dumb, but they usually show that they have at least a minimal concept of the series, and some of the skits are kind of funny, at least in my opinion.

 

[Leonhart]

For example, I didn't like the South Park episode Chinpokomon. It felt like they did little research on what made Pokemon popular, and instead interviewed a conservative WWII veteran who still has anti-Japanaese sentiment.

That was the whole point of the episode: to show an exaggerated take on the Pokemon fad and Japanese stereotypes. It seems like you're implying that the creators have a conservative stance, which I don't think is the case since a lot of what they do pokes fun at conservatives just as much as liberals, if not more.

 

[Auraninja]

That was the whole point of the episode: to show an exaggerated take on the Pokemon fad and Japanese stereotypes. It seems like you're implying that the creators have a conservative stance, which I don't think is the case since a lot of what they do pokes fun at conservatives just as much as liberals, if not more.

I was not implying that. I was instead saying that the episode presents itself as something that came from a Japan-phobic grandfather.
There was nothing in the episode that really gave me the idea that they showed any knowledge about what made Pokemon popular.
The whole episode reeks of, "what if Japan was trying to take over America instead?"

There was one segment of the episode where they are playing a Chipokomon game that was just bombing Pearl Harbor.
If the episode was well written, they could have at least had the player interrogate Lt. Surge or something like that.
Keep in mind, one episode of Robot Chicken had Pryce send out Kissinger to do "war crime attack", so it's not hard to come up with these types of things.

 

[NeganTheSavior]

This is late for me to reply to, but just in general, I don't necessarily give episodes a pass because they parody Pokemon.

For example, I didn't like the South Park episode Chinpokomon. It felt like they did little research on what made Pokemon popular, and instead interviewed a conservative WWII veteran who still has anti-Japanaese sentiment.

On the contrary, I usually like the Robot Chicken Pokemons skits. Yes, some of them are dumb, but they usually show that they have at least a minimal concept of the series, and some of the skits are kind of funny, at least in my opinion.

I think that episode was trying to convey the perspective of adults trying to grasp the whole Pokemon phenomenon.

 

[Auraninja]

I think that episode was trying to convey the perspective of adults trying to grasp the whole Pokemon phenomenon.

Whether if that was its intention or not, I don't give episodes a free pass because of what they were trying to do.

Granted, this is subjective, and some people like the episode, but it wasn't a good one to me.

I wouldn't even call South Park a "great show" like in the title because their episodes are all over the place in terms of what I would like from them.

 

[Nyter]

Yeah 2-4 is the writers own terrible imagination. Season 2 is fine but as you said it got progressively worse

Lol with no context for this at all until I read through a few past posts, I honestly thought you were talking about Riverdale and not 13RW

 

[OwensJB]

The princess episode of Scrubs and the black market episode of Battlestar Galactica are some of the worst ones I've seen.

 

[Nyter]

Idk why people think "Animal Pragmatism" was one of the worst episodes of Charmed (the original one). That one was actually a good one. I think "Magic Hour" was a God-awful stick-a-finger-in-my-mouth-and-gag episode.

 

[TheWanderingMist]

This is late for me to reply to, but just in general, I don't necessarily give episodes a pass because they parody Pokemon.

For example, I didn't like the South Park episode Chinpokomon. It felt like they did little research on what made Pokemon popular, and instead interviewed a conservative WWII veteran who still has anti-Japanaese sentiment.

On the contrary, I usually like the Robot Chicken Pokemons skits. Yes, some of them are dumb, but they usually show that they have at least a minimal concept of the series, and some of the skits are kind of funny, at least in my opinion.

I don't like South Park, but that episode was made during the "it's just a fad" phase of Pokemon (1999). They probably weren't counting on it to be the one 90s fad to not fade from popular consciousness.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

Not really a tv show but something shown on tv often. A lot of the older cartoons from before the 60s are problematic with their imagery with it mostly being negative racial caricatures. I get that they are offensive but then they get heavily edited and censored which leaves a giant chunk missing from the airing and major jump in the episode that you know happened because the rest of the cartoon doesn’t flow as well. The most notable example I can think of is the Tex Avery cartoon Magical Maestro where one cut scene doesn’t affect the cartoon as much but the other cut does and it creates confusion for older viewers. Basically the cut scene has an annoyed audience member spraying ink 8nto the face of the performer and it becomes blackface. Understandable as to why it was cut. But the scene goes on fo4 a minute with an additional blackface performance after an anvil is dropped. The current airing of the cartoon has the singer singing and suddenly out of nowhere rabbits are jacking the guy up and he’s wiping his face which ruins the pacing of the cartoon. There are other racial caricatures that aren’t edited out and I think that this cartoon is probably best not to be aired on tv ever again and to be preserved only on classic cartoon compilations. It isn’t a bad cartoon in terms of its animation style and it does make good use of different types of music as a plot device but the way it is portrayed isn’t good in today’s society.

 

[Joycap]

Not really a tv show but something shown on tv often. A lot of the older cartoons from before the 60s are problematic with their imagery with it mostly being negative racial caricatures. I get that they are offensive but then they get heavily edited and censored which leaves a giant chunk missing from the airing and major jump in the episode that you know happened because the rest of the cartoon doesn’t flow as well. The most notable example I can think of is the Tex Avery cartoon Magical Maestro where one cut scene doesn’t affect the cartoon as much but the other cut does and it creates confusion for older viewers. Basically the cut scene has an annoyed audience member spraying ink 8nto the face of the performer and it becomes blackface. Understandable as to why it was cut. But the scene goes on fo4 a minute with an additional blackface performance after an anvil is dropped. The current airing of the cartoon has the singer singing and suddenly out of nowhere rabbits are jacking the guy up and he’s wiping his face which ruins the pacing of the cartoon. There are other racial caricatures that aren’t edited out and I think that this cartoon is probably best not to be aired on tv ever again and to be preserved only on classic cartoon compilations. It isn’t a bad cartoon in terms of its animation style and it does make good use of different types of music as a plot device but the way it is portrayed isn’t good in today’s society.

hey pal that's great and all but what if I just-

-put this here...

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

hey pal that's great and all but what if I just-

-put this here...

I think it’s slightly better as the cartoons do deserve to be preserved as part of animation history as an art form and not for their subject matters. Some cartoons are just better off not being aired instead of being edited. The Mammy Two Shoes Tom and Jerry shorts should never be aired on tv again but still should be preserved as they are the earliest cartoons for Tom and Jerry and show how much the two have changed over the years but still have the same type o& comedy routine. An adult that appreciates animation as an art form can easily have such offensive cartoons on a DVD aimed for adults but kids can run into some just by turning on the tv which can create some issues so not airing them on tv is a much better solution than heavily editing them.

 

[OwensJB]

Not really a tv show but something shown on tv often. A lot of the older cartoons from before the 60s are problematic with their imagery with it mostly being negative racial caricatures. I get that they are offensive but then they get heavily edited and censored which leaves a giant chunk missing from the airing and major jump in the episode that you know happened because the rest of the cartoon doesn’t flow as well. The most notable example I can think of is the Tex Avery cartoon Magical Maestro where one cut scene doesn’t affect the cartoon as much but the other cut does and it creates confusion for older viewers. Basically the cut scene has an annoyed audience member spraying ink 8nto the face of the performer and it becomes blackface. Understandable as to why it was cut. But the scene goes on fo4 a minute with an additional blackface performance after an anvil is dropped. The current airing of the cartoon has the singer singing and suddenly out of nowhere rabbits are jacking the guy up and he’s wiping his face which ruins the pacing of the cartoon. There are other racial caricatures that aren’t edited out and I think that this cartoon is probably best not to be aired on tv ever again and to be preserved only on classic cartoon compilations. It isn’t a bad cartoon in terms of its animation style and it does make good use of different types of music as a plot device but the way it is portrayed isn’t good in today’s society.

I hate censorship in general. In fact I remember that CN skipped a bunch of Tom and Jerry shorts just because of the Mammy character. That pissed me off because I like watching every episode of any given show.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I hate censorship in general. In fact I remember that CN skipped a bunch of Tom and Jerry shorts just because of the Mammy character. That pissed me off because I like watching every episode of any given show.

Mammy I never really saw as being racist as I always viewed her as the owner of Tom and the house but I get how even saying Mammy nowadays is considered to be offensive because it is a racial slur for an African American nanny. The WB cartoons banned from being aired on tv have ca few that are better off being kept in preservation only for animation history but a couple aren’t nearly as bad as people claim they are. The banned Bugs Bunny short All This And Rabbit Stew is pretty funny because Bugs is actually outsmarting a hunter that isn’t Elmer for once and the ending is probably the most hilarious out of them all. The hunter ends up being naked with a fig leaf and he stands there exclaiming, “Well call me Adam!” And as the Iris is closing, Bugs reaches out and steals the leaf. You have to admit that is genius and Tex Avery managed to be a bit risqué without showing too much. The other one that is really good animation wise is Angel Puss which has your typical Looney Tune plot of an animal outwitting a human through a simple yet very detailed plan and if it had someone like Elmer Fudd instead of the little boy it’d be on tv all the time.

 

[Joycap]

I think it’s slightly better as the cartoons do deserve to be preserved as part of animation history as an art form and not for their subject matters. Some cartoons are just better off not being aired instead of being edited. The Mammy Two Shoes Tom and Jerry shorts should never be aired on tv again but still should be preserved as they are the earliest cartoons for Tom and Jerry and show how much the two have changed over the years but still have the same type o& comedy routine. An adult that appreciates animation as an art form can easily have such offensive cartoons on a DVD aimed for adults but kids can run into some just by turning on the tv which can create some issues so not airing them on tv is a much better solution than heavily editing them.

"some are better off never airing again" If it were only that simple... like, yeah they're offensive, but our history is still the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, so we don't make the same mistakes again. Why do you think it is that we're going through a generation of the professionally offended, and that against their better judgement (if they had one...) we're putting trigger warnings on stuff like Shakespeare, and effectively burning books? Gone with the wind, anyone? Fawlty Towers?

As for that part about what airs on TV, I think there's a degree of truth to it, but without coming off as cheeky, I'd just turn around to you and say 'yeah, that's what parental supervision is'. That being said, I think there's stuff like the up-and-coming 'Owl House' and (I mention this show with a MASSIVE guilty conscience) the pedobait 'Cuties' (...which boils down to middle easterners twerking... I CANNOT believe I just said that in a Serebii post) that throw up some important questions about what can be discussed, how it can be discussed, and how to be 'tasteful' about these kinds of things. I'd say 'agree to disagree' on a time and place, but what we think that entails is half the reason we're having this conversation.

In the case of the former (Owl House) trying to sell supposedly ham-fisted allegories about Bisexuality to it's pre-teen audience, while I understand the concerns of the likes of Gab CEO Andrew Torba when it comes to 'indoctrination' or giving the wrong idea to the children that we don't expect to understand when they're older (to say nothing of the supposed Arthur short that turns around and says 'it's not enough to say you're not racist', some of the dumbest sh*t I've seen all week), I don't think LGB is off-limits as a discussion topic. As you may have figured seeing me around the forums, I do have far more conservative views when it comes to a lot of topics, and I hold no shame in that (COVID thread, for example, where I came off as supposedly 'passive-aggressive' when I tried to explain things to consider in the figures, only for others to wet the bed in response with sentiments that have long since been debunked). But I'm not a 'LGB is the gateway drug to the degenerate far-left!!1!' or one of those kinds of conservatives/C.Right. Y'know why? Because Andy Ngo exists, one of the best journalists on the road when it comes to reporting on ANTIFA violence / state of the nation etc., and is generally revered by conservatives for good reason (seriously, check out this mad lad's twitter page if you're interested). He's also a gay conservative of immigrant descent, and no one bats an eye past that point except for the 'tolerant' leftists that make up ANTIFA, and want him dead for exposing them. See the double standard yet? And if it's not entirely unrelated, I feel safe voicing that opinion, knowing that Torba is not a fundamentalist (as devoted to classical Christianity as he tends to be. I don't blame him, knowing that they tend to be more principled), otherwise he wouldn't be the CEO of Gab, all the while chucking the ban button out almost entirely.
Anyways, getting back on topic, the question we should be asking ourselves is 'when is the right time to discuss this kind of thing?' You might think of those further right on the political spectrum as 'regressive', overly stuck in their ways, or even 'reactionary' (a term that has been beaten to the point of meaning nothing, just like every ist/ism/phobia these days...), whereas while I see the remainders of sane and rational society turning around to the far left with disgusted bemusement that try to sexualize the 3-10 demographic and ultimately normalise the immoral, personally I don't just see that, I see a group of loonies that through perhaps misguided better intention trying to overcompensate for their children, because we turn around to the age of consent as a catch-all (and yes, I know it's there for a reason. We all do) and say nothing when we end up confusing our 13/14/15/16 year old's with stuff we didn't expect them to understand earlier, only for the inevitable response to be some variation of snobbish 'I know better' bravado, or "wait, why didn't you tell me earlier?". So at that point, well... where is the balance?

And another thing that we have to keep in mind is that even if there wasn't controversy about the subject matter, it would still have to compete with other handlings of the subject matter, with it's ratings ebbing and flowing as such. If 90% of people want to turn around and say that Sinji/Kaoru from Evangelion is a better example, well... that's the open marketplace of ideas for you! And in that same spirit, everything has a right to exist, even if it's only purpose is to be ridiculed to high hell. Trust me, we'll get back to that, but for now I point you all in the direction of the Uniquenameosarus video about how all of your character should be bi as a back end writing trick in order to identify which of your characters go together best:

As for 'cuties', the main snag that people are pointing out is that the "themes" it has border so hard on fetishistic, that the supposed point of the series (exposing some of the degeneracies in our millennial generation, and why it happens) get's buried in context. Sophia Narwitz probably explained this the best in her latest video:

Her part timestamped at 1:33 encapsulated how, to paraphrase 'the movie can be often TOO in your face with how it handles its subject matter, as if to make an adult audience uncomfortable'. I couldn't agree more, as this is also a good reason as to why I hate Your Lie in April so much... yes, I'm pivoting to that again... dw it's only a quick one lol.
Point being, I find YLiA to botch it's handling of terminal illness and domestic abuse, because it tries to not only sugarcoat itself with Kaori eating a bunch of cakes and sweets etc. in her final months and wondering why tf she's dying (yes I'll well aware of her supposed 'condition', disclose that and not slapstick, and I'd be a little more sympathetic), but also the fact that a bunch of the filler arcs consist of Kousei pissing himself in a corner, something we're reminded of CONSTANTLY, because Saki was an absolute abortion of a character, and Seto, while not quite as worse off, was complacent to the point of utter idiocy. The fact that neither knew how to be a proper parent made me wonder what block of the woods the writers were from.

Anyways, going back to 'cuties', that anecdote I gave regarding my long and arduous relation with the series of YLiA is very similar to that of the majority when they stick their noses up at this show. Myself included, if word of mouth is anything to go by. But remember what I said a little earlier about everything having the right to exist? Even if it's a load of pedo vomit? Yeah, this is the logical extreme of that, even if it's only application is to be ridiculed. 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant' and all that. Am I supposed to act like the sentiment is any different because one gets spanked over the coals for it's content, while the other gets an 8.8 on MAL? In my opinion... no.

 

[TwilightBlade]

I just remembered how Breaking Bad had some awesome episodes but also a couple of really bad ones. Fly is one of the worst because nothing happened that advanced the plot and Granite State was basically the same it was just setting up the finale but most of the episode was boring. :[

 

[bobjr]

I shouldn’t have to say that supporting Nazi groups and sympathizers is a bad thing, but things happen I guess.

But censoring things like most things can be good or bad. If something was made and intended to treat a group of people negatively careful consideration has to happen when it comes to treating it as entertainment for future generations.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I remember that there was a very short lived sitcom on Fox that is considered to be one of the worst to air on the network but I sort of liked it because it did have some pretty clever humor and plot set ups in it but they weren’t written well enough. The show was called The Pitts and a family cursed with constant literal bad luck is an interesting concept for a series.

 

[malcolm_n]

Great Show: Doctor Who.
Terrible Episode: Love & Monsters (David Tennant)
The episode has little to no actual Doctor in it, focusing instead on a group of people who meet up regularly until they start to disappear. Two of the characters love each other, but won't say it, and by the end they're all basically dead. The episode didn't even factor into the rest of the season's plot. It was not only filler, but just not that good at all. Other than that, I can't really think of other Doctor Who episodes that stand out for me as weak.