16 TV Plots That Deserve An "A" In Buildup And Potential, But A "D" In Execution
🚨 Warning: Spoilers ahead, including for House of The Dragon Episode 6, and the endings of Defending Jacob and Cruel Summer!!! 🚨
Heads up: Some of the following grooming, miscarriages, and gun violence.
1.First, on The O.C., when Marissa began dating Alex (hey, Olivia Wilde!) and moved in with her. It seemed like a pretty major deal, but then they broke up only a couple of episodes later.
Not only was the relationship abruptly cut off, but Alex also just skipped town and disappeared forever after the breakup, despite having been a pretty important character for most of Season 2. Additionally, the subject of Marissa's sexuality was disappointingly never brought up again.
In an interview with Vulture, creator Josh Schwartz revealed that the storyline was actually supposed to last longer, but network executives objected to having a queer relationship on the show. "[The network] made us write Olivia Wilde off the show much, much sooner than we had planned — I wanted her to stick around," he said. "But they told us, 'People are worried about this episode and this storyline and blah blah blah.' So we had to write her out way sooner than we expected, so it just became much more rushed."
2.On House of the Dragon, when it seemed like we were going to get to see Daemon and Laena's relationship, but then the show essentially skipped over their romance with the time jump.
The show also strangely made it seem like Daemon wasn't really in love with Laena and merely settled for their marriage, despite him loving her deeply in the books. Her character's death was sadly expected (although the way it plays out also differs from the books), but the execution of the relationship was just...lacking to me. Laena deserved better!
3.On You, when Season 2 ended with Love revealing she was pregnant with Joe's child and the two of them subsequently getting married.
Their son, Henry, was born at the beginning of Season 3...
...but then the entire "Joe being a dad" storyline was basically dropped from the show altogether when he chose to give up Henry at the end of the season — after he, y'know, killed Love, faked his death, and decided to flee the country.
Leaving his son with Dante and his partner might have been one of the few decent things Joe did, honestly. At least Henry will have a shot at a normal childhood now — let's just hope he doesn't inherit any serial killer genes from his biological parents. I'm not actually too upset about the way this storyline ended (at least in regard to Henry), but it was a little strange to spend all season with Joe adjusting to being a married dad in suburbia only to essentially revert everything back to the Season 1 formula in the end.
4.On Euphoria, when Cassie suddenly began secretly hooking up with her best friend's abusive ex-boyfriend and acting out, only for it to all build up to...pretty much nothing.
Nate Jacobs is absolutely an abusive piece of garbage, but I have to admit that him just being utterly baffled by Cassie's whole rant in this scene makes me laugh.
I kept expecting everything to culminate in a reveal about why Cassie's behavior had changed so drastically over the course of the season, but there was really no explanation. I thought maybe they would finally have her open up about her abortion (which she seemed to have mixed feelings about) and break up with McKay, but nope. I felt like it was also a missed opportunity to dive even deeper into her issues with her father. I just wish there had been some larger character payoff with the whole Cassie/Nate storyline — all it really did, in the end, was derail her character.
5.On Riverdale, when Betty and Archie had a brief affair while they were dating each other's best friends — Veronica and Jughead, respectively — and the impact it had on the friend group was never really explored.
Other than breaking up Archie and Veronica for a while, and being a big factor in Betty and Jughead's decision to split before college, the affair didn't seem to shift the core four's dynamic that much. I mean, they even all went to say goodbye to Archie together when he left for the army.
They clearly all grew apart post-time-jump, but the only outright bad blood seemed to be between Betty and Jughead, as evidenced by that voicemail he left calling her a "stone cold b*tch" (yikes). Betty told Polly she "broke up their friend group before graduation" by kissing Archie, but we never really saw any of this fallout (also, why wasn't Archie considered just as responsible?!). Betty and Veronica clearly weren't BFFs anymore, but they could have done a lot more with this conflict.
I'm a die-hard Barchie shipper, but my biggest gripe with this storyline is that Betty and Veronica literally never directly discuss the affair, at least on screen. Even just one scene of them really talking about their feelings would have been enough to satisfy me, but it just bizarrely didn't happen. The closest we got was this.
I guess this was mature of Veronica, but the conversation still left a lot to be desired. Like, can you imagine if One Tree Hill just NEVER had Peyton and Brooke talk about the whole Lucas situation? It makes no sense!
Additionally, one of my biggest problems with Veronica and Archie dating again post-time-jump is that they also didn't talk about what caused them to break up in the first place. Why was Veronica so willing to immediately forgive Archie for everything and jump right back into a relationship with him, no questions asked? The whole situation also didn't really have any lasting consequences on Archie and Jughead's friendship either, which was weird, too.
6.On Pretty Little Liars, when Ezra dropped the bombshell that he had dated Alison before she went missing, and that he purposefully began seeing Aria and teaching at Rosewood because he was writing a book about Alison's disappearance...
It was also heavily implied for a hot second that Ezra was going to be revealed as A, but that turned out to just be a red herring.
...but then Aria and the Liars basically just forgave him after a few episodes, and Ezria rekindled their (creepy) romance pretty quickly. Barf.
Looking back, Ezra and Aria's relationship was always wildly inappropriate from the start, but this piece of information painted everything in an even WORSE light. Ezra knew from the very beginning that Aria was a teenager! Plus, are we really supposed to believe he didn't at least suspect that Alison might have been younger than she'd claimed? I can't believe this man dated two minors and was somehow still allowed to teach high school English.
7.On Game of Thrones, when Ned heard Bran yelling out, "Father!" and we all thought it was foreshadowing something really significant, but it just...didn't end up actually meaning anything.
The memes about how useless Bran's character turned out to be will never get old, at least.
8.On Glee, when Quinn crashed her car because she was texting and driving on her way to Finn and Rachel's wedding, leaving us with a huge cliffhanger.
I still remember watching this live from my parents' couch and absolutely losing it.
In the next episode, it was revealed that Quinn was alive, but needed to use a wheelchair. It seemed like it was going to be a pretty major storyline for her character. However, a few episodes later, she was apparently just...able to walk again?
I mean, I guess?! But come on, they could have at least dragged it out for the rest of the season. Other than stopping Finn and Rachel's wedding, the accident pretty much had no lasting consequences at all.
9.Also on The O.C., when Theresa lied and told Ryan she had a miscarriage so that he would leave and go back to his life in Newport...
We find out that Theresa is actually lying about miscarrying when, in the next scene, her mom asks if she told Ryan and if Theresa thinks he "believed her." However, Ryan continues to believe she had a miscarriage.
...then, the entire storyline was basically dropped until Season 3, when Kirsten saw Theresa and the baby at the airport.
We also briefly see Theresa with her son later in Season 2, but Ryan and the Cohens remain unaware of the baby's existence until the airport scene.
But in the end, it turned out that Ryan wasn't the father after all! Even though the kid looked an awful lot like Ryan, and Theresa's mom even made a point of saying how much the baby was "looking more and more like his daddy every day."
Josh Schwartz also later confirmed in an Instagram live that Eddie was, in fact, the father of the baby. I'm not mad about Ryan not being the dad — to be honest, I loathed this storyline in the first place — but they dragged this out for SO long just to get to a pretty anticlimactic reveal.
10.On Gossip Girl, when it was revealed that Dan and Serena shared a half-brother, Scott, from Lily and Rufus' prior relationship. Rufus and Lily ended up finding and meeting with Scott's adoptive father, who broke the news to them that their son had died in a sailing accident a year earlier.
However, at the end of the episode, the audience learns that Scott's parents are lying, and it was actually Scott's older brother who died. They apparently don't want to let Lily and Rufus into Scott's life and risk "losing" another son. Lily and Rufus, however, remain in the dark about the truth.
Scott eventually tracked Lily and Rufus down, and the three of them had a long-awaited family reunion, just in time for their wedding...
...only for Scott and his whole existence to just never be mentioned again afterward. Which is pretty wild when you think about it, especially, considering that his half-siblings ended up marrying each other. I wonder if Scott also attended THAT wedding.
The fact that Dan and Serena sharing a half-brother isn't even one of the top five issues I have with them as a ship really says a lot.
11.On Heroes, when Peter left Caitlin stuck in the future, and then just...never went back for her?!
The show never revealed what happened to poor Caitlin, not even if she was alive or dead in the finale.
12.On Degrassi: Next Class, when Miles found out that he had gotten Lola (his sister Frankie's best friend) pregnant and that she had an abortion, but nothing really came of the reveal. Miles just apologized a couple of episodes later for not being there for her, and that was basically it.
Then, in Season 4, Lola finally told Frankie that she lost her virginity to Miles. However, Frankie just laughed and seemingly didn't believe her. The whole thing was never brought up again by any of the characters.
So, I really liked Lola's abortion storyline and thought it was powerful to show a character who didn't have any regrets about her choice at all since that's definitely not something we see portrayed on TV too often. However, I do wish we'd at least gotten a longer conversation between Lola and Miles about it later, or at least gotten some idea of how Miles felt about the pregnancy, considering he had a very complicated relationship with his own father. My biggest gripe though, is that we missed out on SO MUCH potential drama by never having Frankie find out her brother got her best friend pregnant! The best friend's brother trope is one of my favorites, and I think it was such a wasted opportunity not to explore this more. I will concede that Next Class being canceled/not renewed for Season 5 probably played a factor in this, though — maybe the secret would have come out for real the next season. But alas...!
13.On Gilmore Girls, when Jason and Richard became entangled in a MESSY business lawsuit against each other. Lorelai broke up with Jason over it, and Emily even left Richard for a bit because of the whole thing.
But then we never even found out what happened with the lawsuit, and Jason's character kinda dropped off the face of the Earth (or at least, the face of Stars Hollow).
I mean, I never cared for Jason anyways (Lorelai and Luke were always meant to be!), but it still would have been nice to get some resolution here.
14.On Search Party, when Dory impulsively murdered April in the Season 2 finale. April's twin, June, showed up looking for her sister the next season, which led Dory to confess the murder to her friends...
...but then literally nothing happened, there were no consequences for Dory, and everyone essentially forgot this even happened.
15.On Cruel Summer, Kate mentioned an ominous figure named "Annabelle" — whose name was the only thing Kate could remember about her — in Episode 4, which then became a central part of the overall mystery.
In the finale, it was revealed that "Annabelle" was actually just the name of Martin's gun.
The reveal wasn't awful per se, but it wasn't exactly a shocking twist either. I'll always maintain that Season 1 of Cruel Summer was very nearly flawless, but I think one of their biggest mistakes was introducing the idea of Annabelle too early in the season. It gave fans way too long to theorize about all of the possibilities, and then ended up just being kind of...meh?
16.And finally, on Defending Jacob, when the finale literally didn't reveal who actually murdered Ben, or even whether or not Jacob was guilty.
^Literally all of us with this mystery.
