TV show decisions that are just WRONG - I'll start with the West Wing.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

There must be loads of these. I'm sure ER is not in fact a Bible to medical correctness (say it isn't so!).

The one that bugs me is the bit the West Wing where the President breaks out into Latin. It makes me cringe. It's bad, bad Latin (IMHO).

And also - of course - the fact Toby never gets a chance to clear his name. I love Richard Schiff for explaining he played it assuming Toby was covering for someone, which is great explanation of a frustrating storyline. But I never believed Bartlett (who seems to me so good at accepting people's different points of view) would have judged him so quickly.

Is there anything that bugs you massively? Either for being factually wrong or just not fitting your sense of the characters.

Oh, bless her.

There was an Australian guest-starring as a British cop on one episode of Castle and he didn't even try AFAICS - just sounded Australian throughout while everyone made "Limey" remarks. It was odd because if they desperately wanted to cast that actor there was no overwhelming plot reason that they couldn't have made the character Australian, while if they wanted an English character there must be plenty of English actors (or even People Who Can Actually Do Accents) available.

Anyway, that was a very wrongily WRONG decision.

I remember that episode of Castle - it made me stabby with rage. Besides his accent, he kept referring to being from Scotland Yard. A quick google search would have told the writers that it's New Scotland Yard.

On the subject of Castle, I really hope that Castle and Beckett getting together isn't a Bad Decision

OI SCRAMBLED
NO SPOILERS!

Oops. Sorry Olivia. Do you want me to report that post?

Olivia, it was on aaaaaaages ago. Do keep up...

Scrambled, well CLEARLY it was a bad decision. He shoukd instead have been laid open to competitive offers from contributors to this thread. But given that they unaccountably weren't going to go for that plotline I think they couldn't string it out any more. And there's still room for lots of tension. And I hope for some Lanie/Esposito will they (again) - won't they speculation.

Erm.

Olivia, look away! There may be spoilers from several seasons ago!

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So, anyway, that Castle episode ... had nothing on the double-ep of Bones where they were in 'Oxford and London'. The best bit for me was looking at episodes guides on a US forum where the viewers were earnestly debating, because someone authoritative had explained Oxford was a suburb of London, and some of the less Brit-educated viewers were not quite sure ...

Dredging up memories of online discussion on BtVS back in the day - for the season with the rape scene in the bathroom, the main showrunner was Marti Noxon (I can't recall what Joss Whedon was doing that year). Apparently, there was concern in the writers' room that nice Spike was becoming too popular a character and they needed to think of a way to not only turn him bad again, but to do it in a way that would lessen his popularity. The way they did it, though, really backfired on them, and there was a lot of anger towards Noxon.

The scenes where Giles is on horseback were actually filmed in England. Tony Head was riding his own horse in countryside around his home (near Bath, I think), and other scenes were filmed in his own garden.

Oh, that makes me feel much better!

I've no idea who Marti Norton is but I do hate heaping up reasons to dislike Whedon.

However, the horse scenes have no excuse, the less so if they are in someone's garden near Bath! They are absurd.

I honestly don't remember the horse episodes. What season was that in?

I did report my post, 'cos pore ole Olivia seemed mightily distressed. She may not have Alibi either, has it been shown on 5 yet?

Oh, that Bones isode was baaaad. But I was more disappointed in Castle because I had higher expectations. Still, it was enlivened by the decision to name the character Colin Hunt.

Gene Hunt would have been interesting, mind you.

Oh, and any US show that has episodes based in Britain seems to get it very, VERY wrong.

Remember Friends and "London Baby!"? Of course the Duchess of York will agree to be in your holiday video because she's just so bloody lovely .

Shark. Jumped.

I think Joss Whedon is quirky, rather than anything else. He attended Winchester College for two years, so probably was influenced by the pubs English wackiness to some extent.

I didn't have a problem with the rape scene. While there had been a tendency to treat Spike as all cuddly and only hypothetically frightening, he was still a vampire with a demon's moral compass. He'd played along with the Scooby Gang because he was backed into a corner or because it was getting him what he wanted. He was evil (albeit slightly conflicted) and when being "good" no longer got him what he wanted he showed that. As per the MN maxim, if someone tells you that he's a bastard, and shows you that he's a bastard, it might be a good idea to believe him.

Did anyone see James Masters & Charisma Carpenter in Supernatural a few weeks ago??
I'm shocked that he's 50 & reminded that I'm no longer 20!!

@ScrambledSmegs

Oops. Sorry Olivia. Do you want me to report that post?

No cos then i have to read it again?!?!

Casey - that's a good point. I think BtVS suffered from starting out as a "teen" show, and although the show itself progressed much further than that, some of the fandom didn't, hence some fans squeeing over Spike without being able to understand that evil contained is still evil.

As time went on, UK TV still showed BtVS in the 6 pm slot, but had to be increasingly heavily edited, to the extent that that the full episode was aired again at 10 pm.

Marti Noxon was the producer singing about the parking ticket
"It isn't right, it isn't fair
there was no parking any where...." etc

Wasn't it her who also introduced the whole sado-masochism thing with Buffy and Spike?

I think the ambiguity about Spike is one of the stronger points of the show. He made some attempt to do good things, even if his motivation was wrong. He withstood torture to protect Dawn. He sent flowers for Joyce (with no name). The writers wanted us on his side, dammit!

I think about this stuff too much. But so do all of you, so hey.

Torchwood went horrifically wrong.

first with the relationship with Harkness and Ianto - just two people who wouldn't have been together.

then killing off Owen - wrong wrong wrong. his character was just getting interesting.

toshiko - also an interesting character - why kill her off?

the new series - way too dark. just not enjoyable.

Even Evil Spike was (at some fucked-up and twisted level) in love with Buffy. Hence he did a lot of good stuff reluctantly for her sake. But it was still at a fucked-up and twisted level, hence the attempted rape and the lack of a conventional romantic ending.

I really need to watch Buffy again. I watch it on bbc2 so did not see much of these storylines.

Veronica mars was brilliant until the third series. I think the storyline was that there was a rapist but one rape was faked by a sorority to put the blame on the fraternity party house and get it shut down. The reasoning being this would stop the rapist. There is actually a YouTube video for a planned 4th season where Veronica is in the FBI.

I love Mandy Patinkin. He's a tony award winner and was the original Che to Patti LuPones Evita on Broadway. He looks very different without his homeland beard though.

The horse was in the first episode of S7, when Willow was having Magic Rehab in England.

Mandy Patinkin was Inigo Montoya (Princess Bride). Did you know that he and Cary Elwes both learnt how to fence to a very high standard in order to look authentic in that brilliant fight scene? The man is awesome.