Discussion DethroningMoment / LiveACtionTV

Tyler FG: The George Lopez Show: Ok, so George finds out his daughter is dating someone he doesn't like. So after arguing with her a bit, she says she is almost a woman and she can do whatever she wants. What does he tell her? He basically tells her to get out and he won't come looking for her. Ok, so she runs away and he starts to feel like crap. What does his wife tell him? It wasn't his fault and he was trying to protect her. If I was her, I would've fucking kicked him out. Let me remind you everyone was acting like it was no big deal, and nobody called him out on it at all. How he's even likeable as a character anymore is beyond me.

Did this troper even watch the episode? The boy George had a problem with was a sociopath who not only vandalized his dad's factory/George's work, but wanted to use Carmen for sex, even admitting that IN FRONT OF GEORGE. So yeah, George was protecting Carmen, and Carmen was being completely immature about it.

Unsigned DMOS for Smallville

• 'Up to this point while there were a few things I didn’t like but Smallville was generally an enjoyable show. Then came Bound, the episode was filled to the brim with the The Unfair Sex and Informed Wrongness to bring across its Antivicious message that woman are the fairer sex that it completely ignores continuity. I generally don’t nitpick a show even with tv tropes if I like the show I like it and if I don’t I don’t. but this episode made it impossible to watch Smallville without doing it. Basically they’re trying to show that Lex has finally started his journey to the dark side because he likes to have meaningless flings. Despite the fact that one: every relationship he’s ever had with a woman physical or other wise have betrayed him. And two: the only woman who were shown to have a problem with this were a crazy stalker and a woman who cheated on her fiancé with a man she met at a bar both of whom were presented as more sympathetic then Lex. Finally Lex never manipulated any of these woman in fact they wee both shown to be completely compliant in fact they sought him out. It reach the point where the Clark trusted the man who tried to kill his friends and family over Lex because of how he treated those woman.

Unsigned DMOS posts:

Malcolm in the Middle

• What makes this so infuriating is that the show already went over the stress Malcolm is put through because of his family. Heck the entirety of season two lampshades the final.
  • In Therapy Malcolm fakes an emotional breakdown in order to get out of the Krelboyne class' Medieval Week. He did this because in addition to his high class schedule Lois keeps signing him up for extra curricular activities while making him help Reese and Dewey with their homework. In the end they have a tearful makeup however in stead of stopping this unrealistic course load she starts punishing him if he doesn’t work faster as seen in Evacuation. And in Tutoring Reese she forces him tutor Reese to improve his lousy grades. Season 5 ended when Malcolm steals Reese’s girl friend. Everyone repeatedly mentions how Malcolm betrayed Reese and likely killed him yet last season when Reese stole Malcolm’s girl a season earlier no one bat an eye. Finally the clincher was Grandma Sues the family can get tired of Malcolm and exclude him from their activities yet in Reese vs Stevie it’s not fair that Malcolm spends more time with his friends and takes their side over his own brother.

That '70s Show

• Jackie and Hyde break-up, the biggest reason concerning Hyde not being able to commit to marriage. Then when they are about to get back together a stripper shows up and claims to be his wife. And he stays married to her! Now the only reason they brought this character on was for a new Ms. Fanservice (On a show with Mila Kunis!) and to set up Jackie/Fez. Now you can set up Jackie/Fez... however the show hadn't brought up this pairing in a good four seasons. If Jackie/Fez was supposedly endgame, why put her with Hyde in the first place? Besides a lot of people liked Jackie/Hyde and they didn't even get a dignified break-up. Honestly Hyde's actions felt like just a big Fuck you to Jackie. (Plus his wife's actress was awful).

30 Rock

• "Double Edged Sword" for the Liz/Carol (Matt Damon) breakup. He was an OK guy, but this episode had him take a level in jerkass to make a point, a point that is invalid, about "dating yourself is a double edged sword". Carol feels like Liz doesn't respect his job as an airline pilot, which devolves into a borderline abusive route that makes him force the passengers to wait at the gate for hours and hours unless she apologizes. There's rule of funny and then there's just being a mean spirited writer. Every passenger was suffering and Carol wanted Liz to respect him. No, you have a job you fucking asshole, you are abusing passengers because you're fighting with your girlfriend. No one points this out and his crew is supporting him on this. Is the aesop just "You never question your captian or crew, just lay back and take it while they make you suffer for petty reasons"? Also worse is when he pulls out a gun on Liz for "Sky Law" and she pulls a senior citizen as a body shield. What the fuck is wrong with them!? They're both a Karma Houdini (Granted Liz was defending herself) and Carol is still employed! This is why I like My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and shows that don't rely on being mean, horrible people to be funny.

Breaking Bad

• At the end Walt admits he doesn't need to kill the fly. This episode shows how obsessive Walt is becoming, now things are going well for him he won't accept the smallest flaw.

fluffything: My DMOS for Pawn Stars is when it's revealed that Corey has never seen any of the Star Wars films. Now, I can understand if he's not a fan. I can understand if he had never seen the films in general. My main problem is that he didn't know the basic plot of the film. Considering that Star Wars is a huge franchise and that the plot in general is essentially It Was His Sled due to the numerous parodies, references, homages, and whatnot that have occured over the years, it's very difficult (if not impossible) to not know the basics of the films (The only exception being if you lived in some remote location far from any access to Star Wars-related media). How...Just, how?

I find this one to have a very filmsy reason for being disliked, and I say it because I know a lot of people who doesn't know the basic plot of Star Wars.

Cut entries:

• Buscemi: Sportsnation: Basketball's 101 Most Disrespectful Moments may be the worst thing that's ever aired on any ESPN network (worse than The Decision). For one, most of the clips are simply dunks (apparently it's "disrespectful" to get an easy basket) instead of something like a flagrant foul or a brawl. Also the commentary is awful (it's mostly just the two hosts saying "That's disrespectful" for an hour), the music consists solely of ten-second loops of the same two songs, half of the clips feature Duke or North Carolina, the audience consists of brain-dead teenagers who will react to anything and no one in the room seems to know what disrespectful means. This is a clear example that ESPN will air anything nowadays, no matter how low quality.

• Balmz: Americas Funniest Home Videos: One video had a kid with diarrhea crying in the toilet while the mom is filming and laughing. How is that funny? The only sympathy for the kid in the clip was from the family dog. Worse it won the 10,000 dollars. Yeah good thing you have the money because the kid will need it for therapy after this. Also how are kids or people vomiting funny? Laughing at someone who is sick and humiliated is just wrong.
  • fluffything: Now, I may be in the minority when I say that I tolerated the Fuegelsang/Fuentez era of AFV and found some moments pretty funny. That being said, their "Seven Deadly Sins" special contained a moment so awful and disgusting it nearly made me swear off the series forever. The episode in-and-of itself is fine at first with each segment of clips focusing on a different sin (a pretty clever idea, I must admit). But, then we get to the theme of "Pride". What sort of clips do they decide to show their audience? Why, babies vomiting of course. I want to watch people getting into wacky situations. Not change the channel the moment "Junior" decides to literally show us what he had for breakfast. Have the producers forgotten the show is called Americas Funniest Home Videos and not "Babies Barf-O-Rama"?

• sillygolem: Over time, Top Gear has veered more toward scripted "reality" that now James May says he now plays a character instead of himself. However, this came to a head with the test of the Tesla Roadster, which included a fake break-down. Tesla is now suing the show over this segment. The icing on the cake? It was immediately followed by a segment declaring a hydrogen-powered Honda the real future of cars, even though hydrogen development has been all but dropped over fuel supply issues.

The entries were cut because the shows are not works of fiction, and in the case of the first entry was complaining about an entire programme.

Shadow200: I don't normally bother watching late night talk shows but recently I found out that The Jimmy Kimmel show had a segment where Parents sent in videos as pranks of them telling their kids that they eat all their Halloween Candy. And the kids none of the appear to be older than six. How do the kids react? Upset and crying over what happened and the audience is laughing at them. WHAT THE FUCKING HELL!! These are little kids! We're suppose to find them crying funny?!

Another entry which haves to be cut as it's not a work of fiction. It's also wrong, because everyone knows that making little kids crying are the funniest thing in the world.

Can we split the Star Trek Voyager and Star Trek Enterprise examples into two different parts? As it is, you can only post 1 dethroning moment of suck for the ENTIRE franchise.

Examples are meant to be from works of fiction. This doesn't read like one. Never mind the fact it's complaining about an entire programme:

• Dynamite XI: The Fox 25th Anniversary Special was a Dethroning Moment for the Fox Network. I will admit that parts of it were quite nice, including the Fox Sports segment; and I liked that Firefly, Dollhouse, and The Sarah Connor Chronicles each got a Shout-Out for their respective fanbases. That said, long-running Fox shows such as Malcolm In The Middle, King of the Hill, Cops, America's Most Wanted, and Mad TV each got VERY minimal screentime; and they didn't even mention favorites like Parker Lewis Cant Lose or Futurama (each of which had three seasons on Fox), despite showing clips from a TON of reality shows cancelled after only one season.*
  I almost complained about the lack of Fox Kids recognition, including the failure to recognize what a boon Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was for the network, but then I remembered that other companies now own most of those shows, and it would have been legal hell if Fox had mentioned the block.

Okay, is there some kind of rule against elaborating beyond one or two sentences about what makes a moment suck?

If iCarly gets its own page, what other shows should, as well? Doctor Who and Buffy, perhaps?

Deleted this on June 21,

• Gyrobot: Just airing it out, the curbstomp final between the Bruins and Canucks. The subsequent riots and depressing news is just salt in the wound.

Then again today:

• Gyrobot: The Humiliation Conga that is 2011 playoffs for Vancouver, a Curbstomp match followed by a riot which tarnishes their reputation on ice and the city? Nothing more humiliating than that.

I don't watch "the playoffs", but why would what sports teams get up to be exempt from the "No Real Life Examples"?

Some things that were removed from the page when I was bringing it into line with the new guidlines:

• The ending of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. It was a show that was surprisingly down-to-earth and realistic despite being set on a spaceship and following humanity as they desperately ran from a bunch of robots intent on finishing the job they started when they nuked the shit out of the humans, and even as the series went onand more and more spiritual elements entered the fray never seemed too out of hand. It ended with a nice, big, UTTERLY FUCKING RIDICULOUS Deus ex Machina in the form of Starbuck, accompanied by two more (Head Baltar and Head Six), who jumped the fleet to the planet that would become Earth, revealed she was an angel of God then fucked off forever. It was an utterly horrid ending to one of the best science fiction series on TV.
  • While the ending was indeed a huge leap away from the gritty realism, the most baffling part for this troper was the resolution of the 'secret of the opera house'. They spend two fracking seasons foreshadowing it with prophetic dreams, as something where Hera gets abducted by 6 and Baltar, and what comes off it in the end? Not only is it a minimal threat for Hera (the abduction she was just rescued from was a lot longer and more serious, and Cavil using a girl 1/4th his size as a human shield is pointless, even if he could have reasonably killed her without totaly screwing his own race), it is not only over in a few minutes (lengthened by a forgettable speach from Baltar that really shouldn't have impressed Cavil), but also has NO effect on the story whatsoever. Before the scene, the Cylons wanted to destroy Galactica. During the scene, they call a truce, but it's blown and they go right back to wanting to destroy Galactica.
  • Most egregiously, the end of the otherwise quite decent second-season episode Epiphanies, in which Laura Roslin was essentially shot in the cancer was the original point at which the show turned away from its Darker and Edgier "naturalistic science fiction" premise and willingness to take risks. It's unsurprising that the show's quality suffered a major dip for the rest of the season.
  • I thought the destruction of the spiritual stuff as ambigious was a bad move, but what really pissed me off was the survivor's utterly fucking ridiculous decision to abandon all technology. Yeah good luck surviving without medication for your chronic illnesses, you utter morons! Not to mention the fact that the inevitable collapse means the loss of all records from the events of the series, letting the whole shebang happen again, whereas building a new civilization founded on the knowledge of the journey would actually, I don't know, stand a chance at subverting the cycle?
  • The destruction of the Pegasus always left a bad taste in my mouth, because of the utterly fucking stupid tactics Lee Adama used. Leaving all your Vipers behind? Taking Pegasus right into the middle of the Cylon fleet? And then losing it, after Pegasus had previously escaped a Cylon trap involving three basestars and being hit by multiple nuclear missiles? Under Lee's command, no less? It's true that the Status Quo Is God, but sacrificing a Battlestar that's bigger, more heavily-armed and boasting a better tactical advantage (the ability to make new Vipers) is just stupid all around. Nice job breaking it, Lee.
  • Sacrifice. Just... Sacrifice - or rather, its final scenes: after nearly two seasons of Billy and Dualla's on/off relationship and the episode's opening scene where he gives her his graduation ring, Billy gets gunned down by the terrorists. So in the end, while Billy lies on a slab at the morgue with no one but Laura to mourn him, Dualla goes and checks on poor Lee who wasn't even hurt badly. Granted, Billy's actor wanted out to star in his own series - which didn't really go anywhere for him - but the horrible lack of setup for this development (scenes teasing Lee and Dualla's future relationship were filmed but cut for time) coupled with how little Dualla had interacted with anyone else at a personal level made her look like a cold, heartless bed-jumper who seemed all too glad Billy was removed from the picture so the Lee/Dualla pairing could unabashedly burn on-screen time. This troper was just too glad to see her blow her brains out - again, little to no foreshadowing to that twist either - nearly two seasons later after serving no purpose other than as Lee's obstacle to overcome before hooking up with Starbuck... again.
    • Removing Billy was the biggest case of WRITER-INDUCED Die for Our Ship this troper has ever seen in a show. And they expected you to take it completely seriously! Billy was one of the few genuinely kind-hearted characters, and he's gone with barely a word. The kicker: They never mention him more than once or twice afterwards, EVER again. Throughout the entire series. They act like he was never there and Lee/Dualla were supposed to be a couple from the get-go.
    • Anastasia Dualla is one of the series' biggest D Mo S given human form. At least the third season finale made Lee Adama's formerly unbearable character more dimension. That other bitch never had a chance.
  • This troper was hooked on the original "Battlestar: Galactica", when Cmdr. Adama had a scene in the original episode where he was heartsick about leaving people behind to die because he simply didn't have room on the ships for them. Then I stopped watching the show completely when about 6-8 episodes later, they re-did "The Dirty Dozen" with a crew of "the worst criminals in the galaxy" who were being held on the "prison ship". If Adama had known about the prison ship in the original episode, he would have spaced these guys in a heartbeat to make room for more women and children. It represented a complete D Mo S on the part of the writers and producers of the show.

• And then sent her little sister to him for safety! In the same episode! Seriously!
  • As someone who can't get past that aspect of the Thomas Covenant books, I feel the need to defend Spike. In his mind, he wasn't raping Buffy. He was trying to engage in the same rough sex they had been having the entire season. I think the hypocrisy of this was only realized after the fact which is why it's not really addressed much after this episode. If everyone involved really felt he had been trying to rape her, don't you think Willow would have blown him the frack up?
• And you want to know what the worst part is? The very next episode, she was worrying about where he had gone to! Remember when this used to be a feminist show?
• From that same episode, Tara's cruel, meaningless and wasted death.
  • Tara was my favorite character. I felt betrayed for days after that.
  • Made even worse by the fact that she was moved to main cast credits for that episode. This troper threw an impromptu "Tara's a main character celebration" before she died. Afterwards I had a terrible bout of denial before an breaking down into an epic bitch fit.
  • Personally, I didn't mind. Her personality throughout S6 just annoyed me to no end.
  • At least that Season Six monstrosity was over in three minutes, how about a six hour stream of suck?... Smashed. Wrecked. Gone. Doublemeat Palace. Dead Things. As You Were. C-C-C-COMBO!
• That entire, sick Willow-is-a-junkie plotline. How could they do that to Willow? Let me just say "Bored now."
  • The worst thing about that plotline is the underlying idea was actually good: Willow gained a great deal of power very quickly, and the idea of both having it go to her head and having her use it carelessly were set up well. And then they went from metaphor to literal, and... yeah.
  • About how Willow was there for Buffy after she was crying about Parker who she knew for like a week maybe, and then Buffy was bored about Willow being upset that Oz, Willow's longtime boyfriend left her. I know Buffy is supposed to be self centered but JESUS CHRIST, that is so awful.
  • Not to mention it adds a further Wall Banger to the Spike/Buffy thing. You'd think after the Parker ordeal Buffy would come to be a little more choosy about who she sleeps with.
• Get It Done. Not to mention that the Slayer's origins are actually based in what looked like rape, Buffy-Stalin's speech really got to me. Buff, honey, a scared, young girl who never wanted this just killed herself. Would you mind showing her a little respect and not call her an idiot? Please and thank you.
  • This was a horrible speech from a horrible episode. Not only does Buffy essentially mock the girl's death, but decides to tear the entire group down and dismisses even her core group's contributions throughout the show's run. It really showed that Buffy at best could be oblivious to the contributions of her group, but at worst could disregard or be downright ungrateful for her friends' help. For me, Buffy's speech in this episode and her refusal in Empty Places to hear any alternative to her plan to fight it out at the vineyard (a plan that didn't seem to work out too well for the gang in the previous episode) made the mutiny against her seem somewhat justified.
    • Somewhat? Logically, it was definitely justified! She was being a terrible leader, and the fact that she turned out to be right, against all logic, was a moment of this for sure.
      • Even so, and all that may be true, however, after everything Buffy did for her and even committed suicide rather than allow Dawn to die, that ungrateful little brat turned against her sister and made her leave her own house. This troper barely tolerated Dawn to start with, but that was just unforgivable.
        • So, just because someone died for you means you should let them lead you all to a painful death?
          • Well it's not like Dawn was going to be involved in the campaign. Fine, she could have voted against the plan if she didn't agree with it, but she had no right to tell Buffy to leave the house. That coming from your own sister is a bitter pill to swallow. If one of the other girls had asked her to leave, Buffy could have defended her position, but because it was Dawn, Buffy was kind of powerless against it and it robbed her of any further willpower to keep fighting her corner. A bit of a low blow.
            • But Dawn didn't even tell Buffy to leave. Buffy threw a hissy fit and told her that she had to be in charge of everything or she would leave, Dawn just said "OK then".

Buffy: I can't stay here and watch [Faith] lead you into some disaster...

Dawn: Then you can't stay here.

• The "loan shark" with a fucking shark head, bad suit and stereotypical Mafioso accent, trying to collect kittens from Spike to pay off Spike's gambling debts. The exchange from an earlier episode about playing poker with demons - with kittens as the stakes - was hilarious. How the idea of turning that joke into an actual plot-point (not to mention the fish-headed Mafioso demon) got past the story conference stage remains a mystery to me. "Aw, hell," someone may have said, "if we're gonna jump the shark, we might as well put the shark in the episode, too!"
  • If I'm not mistaken, that same episode also featured a Batman TV show-worthy freeze-ray, frosting a museum security guard who was featured on the TV news but yet was just being carried out as both Buffy and Spike arrived at the museum after walking across town to get there. All the good writers and show-runners must have been working on Firefly when that script got the green light... although how such howlers also made it past the cast and director is a riddle for the ages.
    • I don't think that was the same episode.
• Xander leaving Anya at the altar was the episode that did it for this troper. Seriously Joss Whedon, just because you think 'gritty' writing means making sure none of your characters ever get real happy endings doesn't justify welding an Idiot Ball to Xander's face big enough for some serious Character Derailment. His later bs justifications of "taking it too fast" don't fit very well with other facts like how long the two had been living together, that they got a house together, and that XANDER made the proposal in the first place! This troper personally had to Handwave the whole episode as Xander suffering from magically-induced stupidity to get past it.
  • His fear for how it "might" turn out, if you think about it, are pretty much justified, seeing as his parents/the rest of his family came to the wedding...
  • This troper was FURIOUS after watching "Hell's Bells." Breaking up a marriage that you asked for just because you * might* turn out to be a jerk when you're older does not a good reason make. On top of that, in later episodes Anya is treated as if SHE'S the unreasonable one.
    • That's not to say that it was completely Xander's fault, either. Asking Xander to be perfectly okay with getting married after basicly being mind-raped is a little unreasonable. But then, it was expected that he'd be okay sharing a house with someone who tried to rape and kill him.

• In "Once More With Feeling", Buffy sings "So one by one, they turn from me. I guess my friends just can't face the cold. But why I froze, not one of them knows... and never can be told." What? Why you complaining about your friends not knowing how you feel when you don't tell them! They're not mind readers!
  • Um... wasn't it obvious that she just didn't want them to feel guilty? She felt alone because no one knew, but she also didn't want to burden them with the knowledge.

Does an entire season of 24 constitute as a single arc?

Can we resolve this here and not on the main page please:

• This troper has something of a love/hate thing for Sex And The City. The hate tends to bubble up during the moments that are blatant product placement for overpriced designer shit, but the absolute nadir was in "A Woman's Right to Shoes". Carrie loses her $500 Manolo sandals at a friend's kid's birthday party, and when the mother says that she can't afford to replace them (and since when is it custom to offer to pay for something lost or stolen at your place through no fault of your own?) Carrie gets all indignant at the implication that she's living a frivolous lifestyle. She rants about how as a single woman she doesn't get wedding presents, so she badgers the cash-strapped mother into buying replacement sandals as a "gift" for being single. This is a woman with a fucking warehouse full of shoes, who lives this lavish lifestyle ALREADY, and who will promptly forget about those shoes once she gets another pair next week. In any other show this would be treated as a George Costanza-like Kick the Dog moment but we're supposed to be happy that a stressed out mother is out 500 bucks so Carrie Fucking Bradshaw can have another pair of fucking shoes.
  • Seconded. This troper has hated Carrie and her whining "I'm getting married-to me" ever since that episode.
    • But the problem with hating Carrie for this is that it was her friend's responsibility. She forced Carrie to take off her shoes (something about not wanting dirty floors or something), and did absolutely nothing to help figure out who stole them or what else could have happened. Carrie wasn't just "indignant" for no good reason, either. The woman was utterly and completely rude to her on the phone. She basically said that she doesn't care at all that Carrie lost her very expensive shoes, and because she has kids, anything Carrie worries about is completely pointless. And it wasn't that she couldn't AFFORD the shoes (like all of Carrie's friends, she was wealthy), it was that she thought they were pointless, despite meaning a lot to Carrie.