- 5 minutes ago
Exactly what were the producers on these shows smoking?
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00:00Telling a series of stories over several years has pitfalls unique to TV.
00:05Storylines have often been rewritten at the last minute to cover actors who are pregnant, deceased, or who simply chose
00:11to leave,
00:11while changes to executive producers or showrunners can often mean shows switch direction on a dime.
00:18That's nice and all, but none of that actually explains the following stories, which are completely whacked out of their
00:24minds.
00:25I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com, and these are the most insane TV show storylines ever.
00:31Tony Soprano dreams he's a travelling salesman.
00:34Like its spiritual successor Breaking Bad, The Sopranos is littered with dream symbolism and metaphor,
00:40which sometimes actively break into the storyline in the form of actual dream sequences,
00:45as it should be for a TV show which, in its formative years anyway, centred around a middle-aged mobster
00:51undergoing psychoanalysis.
00:52The premiere of season 6 took this one step further though, and saw Tony's uncle, increasingly suffering from dementia,
00:59accidentally shooting the crime boss cold, believing him to be his long-dead nemesis, little pussy, Malagna.
01:06The following two episodes saw Tony in a coma, dreaming he was a mild-mannered travelling salesman
01:11who'd lost his wallet and briefcase in a slapstick mix-up with an individual by the evocative name of Kevin
01:18Finity.
01:18So yeah, that's right, creator and showrunner David Chase used this key part of the narrative
01:23to have Tony address issues of alienation and midlife crisis in an existential near-death experience.
01:30It was the riskiest storytelling gamble in the show's risky history,
01:34and it paid off when the two episodes were cited as two of the best of the entire show.
01:39You know, when the nights get here faster and the temperature starts dropping and I'm in need of something cozy
01:46to pick me up,
01:47there's nothing I want to do more than spend some time with your friend and mine, Pumpkinhead.
01:53As in the 1988 supernatural horror movie Pumpkinhead directed by Stan Winston.
01:58Obviously.
01:59And wouldn't you know it, you can go and do that on Prime Video right now,
02:03and if you sign up using our special link in the description or scan the QR code on screen,
02:08you'll get 75% off your first two months, which is as low as 99 cents per month.
02:14That includes both single subscriptions and bundles,
02:17so you can add on stuff like Apple TV and HBO Max and watch all the movies and shows you
02:22want to your heart's content.
02:24Like, guys, they have all of Columbo on there.
02:27I'm about to go into a winter hibernation and come out talking like Peter Falk.
02:31I can't wait.
02:32How I Met Your Mother's final season covers one weekend.
02:36How I Met Your Mother initially found itself with unfavorable and mostly unfair comparisons
02:41to a similar show about the lives and loves of 20-something friends in New York City.
02:47You probably know the one I'm talking about.
02:49Where How I Met Your Mother parted company from other similar sitcoms though was in its gimmickry.
02:54With the titular framing device detailing the conclusion of the story,
02:57the show is laden with so many references, callbacks, flashbacks, flash-forwards, special episodes, themed episodes,
03:04and odd narrative devices that anyone unfamiliar with it dipping into it in later seasons
03:09would have been forgiven for wondering if some hapless TV executive had lost their minds on hallucinogenics.
03:16Season 9, the final season, was no exception to this rule,
03:19as 24 episodes formed an arc-based narrative taking place over a single weekend.
03:24At 22 minutes per episode, that's nearly 9 hours of situational comedy,
03:29with the situation being a wedding at a hotel.
03:32The majority of viewers concluded that they wasted 9 years of their lives waiting to meet the mother,
03:37only to have the final season take place at a wedding that was undermined in the series finale anyway.
03:44Community's Darkest Timeline Story
03:46How I Met Your Mother may have made its name on gimmick stories,
03:49but community is the real deal.
03:52An off-the-wall sitcom set at a community college that's given the 21st century television audience
03:57some of the wildest and weirdest episodes they'll ever experience.
04:01But one of the best and most popular revolves around a mere dinner party.
04:05Season 3's Remedial Chaos Theory invites us to explore, via a roll of the die,
04:10the various alternate ways in which the evening could have gone had a different member of the group
04:15gone downstairs to collect the pizza.
04:17Each timeline created was hilarious enough,
04:20but the final one, dubbed the Darkest Timeline,
04:23sees Pierce die due to an infected leg wound,
04:26Jeff lose an arm,
04:27Troy lose his larynx,
04:29and Annie be committed while Shirley becomes an alcoholic.
04:33Britta, on the other hand, ends up just dying a blue streak into her hair,
04:36indicating that even the Darkest version of herself is still totally clueless.
04:41And all of this, just because Troy went and got the pizza.
04:45Life on Mars is literally about a trip to Mars.
04:49This adaptation of the hit UK drama series Life on Mars
04:52sees the US version of protagonist Sam Tyler,
04:55also hit by a car in the 21st century,
04:58to wake up inexplicably in 1973.
05:01Where it sharply deviates from the UK version, though, is at the ending,
05:05where producers attempt to explain the seemingly inexplicable.
05:09While the UK version of Life on Mars went for two seasons
05:12and was given the ending that the writers intended,
05:14season one of the US adaptation was cancelled partway through,
05:18and they had to wrap it up quickly.
05:20Instead of following the original end,
05:22this new take took a tragically literal spin on things
05:25and revealed that both the 1973 version of Sam's Life
05:28and the 2008 version are both fakes.
05:32Mere virtual reality stories programmed by a computer
05:35designed to keep him stimulated while in hibernation
05:38on the first ever manned trip to Mars.
05:42Yes, they decided that the title should actually explain the mystery.
05:46The Lost Season 6 Flashes
05:49Avid watchers of ABC's Lost were treated to a whole lot of skipping about in time
05:53during the six-season run of the show,
05:56with flashbacks being prominent, then flash-forwards,
05:59and then actual time travel in Season 5.
06:02Season 6, however, treated us to something entirely different.
06:06Flashes sideways.
06:08The finale of Season 5 saw the survivors trapped in the past
06:11attempt to detonate a hydrogen bomb on the island
06:14in order to prevent the original plane crash that began the series
06:17from actually happening.
06:19And no, I'm not even going to try to explain why right now.
06:23Anyway, with the cast apparently returned to the present day once more
06:26and utterly flabbergasted as to
06:28A. Why they were still on the island
06:31and B. Why if the bomb hadn't reset history,
06:34the blast hadn't just killed them,
06:36the now-traditional intercut flashbacks
06:38began showing viewers a world in which it appeared anyway.
06:42The plane crash actually had not occurred.
06:44The question was,
06:46had the detonation of the bomb instead created an alternate timeline?
06:50Well, no was the less-than-emphatic answer come the series finale.
06:54The apparent alternate timeline sideways flashes
06:57were in fact glimpses of a metaphysical afterlife
07:00that the protagonists had created
07:02in order to find each other after death
07:04and oh my god, I'm going to have to stop there
07:06because my brain is actually cooking itself.
07:09The entire final season of Fringe.
07:11Fringe already dealt on a daily basis
07:14with the kind of strange phenomena
07:15that would make up the oddest X-Files episodes.
07:18But the protagonists had, throughout the first four seasons,
07:21always been visited by strange men,
07:23observers with alien physiologies and mindsets.
07:27Even the episodes which didn't feature these observers
07:29would have them somewhere in the background,
07:32looking around like a mouldy slice of bread
07:34that you definitely left in the cupboard
07:35before going to work this morning.
07:37However, at the end of the show,
07:38we were suddenly yanked into the future,
07:40where in 2035, the observers had subjugated the human race,
07:44revealing themselves to be the human race
07:46from the 27th century.
07:48The entire rest of the show then
07:50would be a dystopian post-apocalyptic guerrilla war
07:53to restore history.
07:55Utterly bananas, utterly awesome.
07:57Dallas wipes out its entire ninth season.
08:00Beginning with the funeral of series' favourite Bobby Ewing,
08:03long-running primetime soap opera Dallas would proceed without him.
08:07However, the season finale of the same season that he died in,
08:11called Blast from the Past,
08:12saw plot threads being brought towards
08:14a devastating explosive conclusion,
08:17only to have heroine Pam Ewing awake in the next scene,
08:20in her own bed.
08:21Hearing the shower running,
08:23Pam went to investigate,
08:24to find her dead husband Bobby wishing her good morning,
08:28as the utterly Balmy finale freeze-framed on his face,
08:31and then just cut to credits.
08:33The beginning of season 10 the following year
08:35would reveal that the entirety of season 9
08:37had been a particularly vivid dream of Pam's,
08:41and the ninth season would henceforth be referred to
08:43as the dream year.
08:45It was certainly a choice, I'll give it that.
08:49Baywatch Nights goes sci-fi.
08:52In 1995, David Hasselhoff produced a spin-off of his hit series
08:56about hot lifeguards in tight-bred swimming costumes,
08:59intending it to be a detective series along the lines of Magnum P.I.
09:03That's exactly what the first season was about as well,
09:06with his lifeguard Mitch starting a detective agency
09:09with a cop character from the main show.
09:11They would follow basic police and detective drama plots
09:14involving unsolved murders,
09:15kidnapped damsels in distress,
09:17and amusing undercover work.
09:19With series ratings plummeting though,
09:21the Hoff decided in his grand wisdom
09:23to go for broke in season 2
09:25and capitalise on the recent runaway success of the X-Files.
09:29Season 2, with no explanation may I add,
09:32premiered as a science fiction and supernatural investigation show.
09:36The pop rock theme tune replaced by one of Hasselhoff's own songs,
09:40the credits full of candles, skulls, screams,
09:43and immense, immense amounts of cheese.
09:46Storylines suddenly included aliens,
09:48demonic possession, mummies, ghosts,
09:50holographic dungeons and dragons games,
09:52vampires, and probably the kitchen sink
09:55made an appearance as well.
09:56Sadly, this unsurprisingly did not help the ratings,
10:00and season 2 would see Baywatch Nights axed.
10:03The horrifying dinosaurs series finale.
10:06For those of you out there who don't remember,
10:08dinosaurs was kind of like the Flintstones or Roseanne,
10:12only with anthropomorphic puppet dinosaurs
10:14as the blue colour sitcom family, the Sinclairs.
10:17Appearing in the early 90s,
10:19dinosaurs saw traditional sitcom storylines
10:21played out for younger viewers to a laugh track.
10:24So far, so fluffy.
10:26Despite the high concept and the puppetry,
10:28it wasn't a million miles away
10:29from the family sitcoms it followed,
10:31and certainly wasn't a parody like the Simpsons or Family Guy.
10:35Then the show was cancelled though,
10:37and the series finale aired in July 1994,
10:40and families all across America were traumatised for life.
10:44In the final episode,
10:45due to an environmental catastrophe
10:47caused entirely by the hubris of the dinosaur population,
10:50an ice age begins to set in,
10:52and everyone we've ever met
10:54during the course of the four seasons
10:55of this kiddie-friendly show
10:57slowly freezes to death.
10:59It was genuinely as horrifying as it sounds.
11:03In fact, the last scene sees the Sinclair family
11:06huddle together in their home for warmth,
11:08while the Anchorman on their television
11:10wishes everyone goodnight, goodbye.
11:13So, yay!
11:14Everyone you love is dead,
11:15and the world is a horrible place.
11:17Enjoy the rest of your life, I guess.
11:20Felicity Travels Back in Time
11:21Created by a then-unknown J.J. Abrams,
11:24each season of Felicity was intended
11:26to specifically represent a year of college,
11:29from freshman and sophomore
11:30through to junior and senior,
11:32and episodes would,
11:33unusually for shows based around college,
11:36actually show the cast attending classes
11:38and, you know, learning things.
11:40It was interesting though, I promise.
11:42Where Felicity differed was in the final season,
11:45which was intended to finish entirely as expected,
11:48with Felicity, our strangely self-obsessed
11:50and mop-headed heroine,
11:52graduating from school.
11:53But then, at the 11th hour,
11:55the network decided to give the show
11:57an additional five episodes.
11:59Consequently, producers decided to give themselves
12:01and their dwindling audience
12:02one last little treat.
12:04Time travel.
12:05Yep, so that meant Felicity would,
12:08through means of a magical spell,
12:09travel back in time and affect her own past,
12:12making a series of different decisions
12:14in an effort to change the place
12:15her life had ended up in,
12:17and in doing so,
12:18completely screw up the lives
12:19of all the people around her.
12:21The series would finally bow out
12:23with her mature and considered reflection
12:25that she'd made the right decisions after all.
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