Preliminary note: Gonna be spoilers for multiple shows all over the place in this one. Proceed at your own risk.
The topic of this week’s conversation is anger. White hot, seething rage. Specifically, the kind directed at your television due to a character arc or plot point in one of your favorite shows. Infuriating endings, questions that get raised loudly and then answered insufficiently (or not at all), decisions that take a show you enjoy and yank it right off the tracks, etc. We want to hear from you. Re-live your pain, let it consume you all over again, then tell us all about it in the comments. It will either be therapeutic or it will ruin your entire weekend. You’re welcome!
As for me, as readers of this site can probably guess, it’s the entire Oliver arc from Season 1 of The O.C., a grudge I have now held for over a decade. God, did I hate that character. Everything about him: hair, attitude, personality, the way he was sloppily plopped into an otherwise great first season of a show to generate unnecessary, over-the-top conflict, all of it. What a wiener. What a stupid, stupid wiener. I hope he’s dead now.
Here are a few from the UPROXX staff.
Vince Mancini:
The first thing that comes to mind for me was that two or three-episode arc in the Sopranos that was all a dream sequence. I can actually handle the finale. Even though that was deliberately screwing with everyone, like No Country For Old Men, if you swap the order of the last two scenes it’s actually the perfect ending. That scene where Paulie Walnuts is tanning himself, shooing away the cat that he thinks is the ghost of Christopher while Sylvio shakes his head? That was the perfect ending, so I choose to remember it that way. But before that there was a dream sequence where Tony imagines himself as this other dude that lasted for like two episodes. Honestly, if you’re going to film a dream sequence, it better have naked chicks hitting each other with cats while it rains cocaine, because if the rules of logic and narrative don’t apply, there’s no reason for me to care about the protagonist having a different haircut or a different job. That entire arc might as well have been a title card that said “we’re treading water!” Ugh. Seriously, f*ck dream sequences.
Ashley Burns:
I don’t know if it’s the angriest I’ve ever been, because I can’t really think back very far without my brain laughing at me, but I’ll stay recent and relevant with the way that Alcide was killed in the dumbest and most disrespectful way possible for a character that had been on True Blood since the beginning. Weredude was shot by some douche who’d never picked up a gun, through a ton of bushes, and right in the heart and head. Perfect f*cking shots! And that’s how the biggest badass (not named Eric Northman) in Bon Temps was sent off into the TV series afterlife. Just plain stupid.
Dan Seitz:
When Buffy didn’t kill Andrew in the seventh season. C’mon, you bump off or seriously injure just about everyone else, and you don’t kill the most obnoxious character in the history of your entire series?
Andrew Roberts:
I know it isn’t a popular choice, but I was pretty peeved at the changes they made to Human Target. Typical of a Fox show though. I enjoyed the stupid, classic format of the first season and hated the tone of it when they brought it back.
Every Family Guy DVD release after the revival has made me angry, the departure of Thomas Haden Church from Wings is foul, and I quite dislike the jail and coma season from My Name Is Earl. Ruined a good show there.
Dustin Rowles:
For such a phenomenal, original, mind-blowing season of television, chock full of brilliant performances, dense literary references, and misdirection, True Detective completely crapped the bed in its finale. It didn’t take anything away from the first seven episodes, exactly, but that finale was some lousy, generic, buddy-cop bullsh*t. By that time, we pretty much knew who the killer was, and the entire episode was a cat-and-mouse game that ended with Rust Cohle — existential nihilist — HEADBUTTING the big bad. And then to tack on that silly hospital scene where both Rust and Marty survive, and everyone lives happily ever after? I WAS FURIOUS. Nic Pizzolatto completely sold out his first seven episodes.
Stacey Ritzen:
I know this is a pretty dumb show to be the most mad about, and I’ve already discussed this to some extent in the past — but hear me out, here. I was really, really into the first season of American Horror Story. Going into the finale, there were SO many questions to be answered. Why are the spirits trapped in the house? And why is the house evil in the first place? What’s the deal with the Infantata, anyway? Are we going to ever see it? How is Ben going to escape from the house now that his wife and daughter are dead and trapped there?
But instead Ryan Murphy was all, f*ck you and your questions. After a touching scene in which ghost Vivian convinces Ben not to kill himself, Kate Mara unceremoniously knocks him off anyway. Then the last 45 minutes of the episode played out like some wacky, screwball comedy as the Harmons attempt to scare the new residents away from the home so no one else gets hurt there, and then they lived happily ever after with their dumb ghost baby. The end. I seethed for weeks about that, especially after the news came out that the following season would pick up an entirely different storyline, so none of the loose ends would ever be resolved. Damn you, Murphy.
Josh Kurp:
Here is my impression of the Sophia season on The Walking Dead:
CORAL.
They find her. OK, maybe that’s not THE angriest I’ve ever been (I was pretty pissed when Sayid ended up with Shannon, not Nadia, in the final episode of Lost), but I’m not ready to admit my actual answer is Mulaney, which has all the ingredients to be a GREAT sitcom, but instead, based on the clips we’ve see so far, looks distressingly bad. I’m angry for not letting me love you, Mulaney.
Yours below.
