The Worst Single Episode

[Judge Holden]

As a shameless ripoff of the already existing "Best Single Episode" thread, this one deals (naturally) in the worst single episode of any TV series that is not only wretchedly bad but does an active disservice to the series/franchise as a whole.

To start us off I will pick out the worst single episode of......DOCTOR WHO!!!!

Love and Monsters: A story of one proto brony/loveshy/furry/otherkin social reject and freak obsessed with finding the Doctor because of some barely explained bullshit gathers a group of even more irritating freaks to sperg about the Doctor and engage in activities that make on pine for the subtle comedy and quiet dignity of Jar Jar Binks, until a morbidly obese "Fat Bastard" rip off absorbs them all except the protagonist until the Doctor shows up to dispose of the monster and turn a woman into what an internet reviewer succinctly summised as a Blowjob Dispensing Slab of Concrete (and yes, this is explicitly stated in the episode) at which point the episode mercifully stops.

Featuring the very worst writing and dialogue every put to Doctor Who (and the doctor being absent for almost all of it), the most irritating and obnoxious characters ever shown in the series over the past 50 years who do retarded and utterly pointless bullshit for 40 minutes on behest of the shittest villain in the series run played by the most godawful stand up comedian ever birthed in Britain, and the absolute most wretched story ever concieved by any series ever, this episode pretty much put me off the revived series for months, and is easily the worst doctor who episode ever made.

 

[Watcher]

Star Trek TNG's Shades of Grey

It was a clip show made of prior episodes entirely because they went over-budget on Elementary Dear Data and Q Who. It's a really lazy episode and it contributes absolutely nothing in terms of story.

"Piece of shit. It was supposed to be a bottle show. Terrible, just terrible, and a way to save some money. I was on the way out the door."

 

[Some JERK]

As a shameless ripoff of the already existing "Best Single Episode" thread, this one deals (naturally) in the worst single episode of any TV series that is not only wretchedly bad but does an active disservice to the series/franchise as a whole.

To start us off I will pick out the worst single episode of......DOCTOR WHO!!!!

Love and Monsters: A story of one proto brony/loveshy/furry/otherkin social reject and freak obsessed with finding the Doctor because of some barely explained bullshit gathers a group of even more irritating freaks to sperg about the Doctor and engage in activities that make on pine for the subtle comedy and quiet dignity of Jar Jar Binks, until a morbidly obese "Fat Bastard" rip off absorbs them all except the protagonist until the Doctor shows up to dispose of the monster and turn a woman into what an internet reviewer succinctly summised as a Blowjob Dispensing Slab of Concrete (and yes, this is explicitly stated in the episode) at which point the episode mercifully stops.

Featuring the very worst writing and dialogue every put to Doctor Who (and the doctor being absent for almost all of it), the most irritating and obnoxious characters ever shown in the series over the past 50 years who do retarded and utterly pointless bullshit for 40 minutes on behest of the shittest villain in the series run played by the most godawful stand up comedian ever birthed in Britain, and the absolute most wretched story ever concieved by any series ever, this episode pretty much put me off the revived series for months, and is easily the worst doctor who episode ever made.

i hate that episode, and so does everyone i know. I get why the production schedule required them to do an episode with minimal screen time by Tennant/Piper, but why not write one that's still related to the main storyline? The high point of that episode was Jackie talking about how she misses Rose and feels left behind and unimportant sometimes. Why not just follow her around for an episode and explore that? It would develop an already established secondary character a little more, and more importantly, would have given a great opportunity for us to learn more about Rose than she would have normally given up about herself in the course of normal dialogue.

oh and my vote goes for that episode of TNG where the Enterprise is undergoing a "baryon sweep" to remove baryon particles from the ship. Since protons and neutrons are both baryon particles, they were basically saying that they were planning to blast the ship into stray electrons. Great plan.

...Picard beating people up with a saddle was pretty dumb too.

 

[Picklepower]

I cant think of many worst episodes, of shows I like. A lot of episodes that are commonly put on worst of lists, of the original Star Trek, are still entertaining enough that I enjoy them. The are episodes of shows I watch where I'm like, "Well that was a forgettable one" but its hard to think of a bad ep that really sticks out. I've said this before but, I don't like the recent, "based on the headlines this week" episodes of South Park, like I remember a month or so ago, the Tiger Woods ep was on Tv and I didn't laugh at all I was like, "Everyone has already stopped caring about his scandal." When I think of great South Park eps I usually think around the
90s-2006 or so seasons. It's gone down in quality since 2008, and that isn't a slam on Obama, I just notice that's when they really started going overboard with celebrity gossip bullshit.

-While I didn't hate it, that ep of the 90s Spiderman cartoon with the Rocket Racer was pretty corny, and had my favorite awkward line Spidey: "I allways wanted to hang with the homeboys!"

-The episode of X men Evolution, where the female members decide to start their own secret girl club, was really dumb.

-Oh the episode of Quantum Leap where Sam when leapt into a vampire, that one felt really out of place, and didn't have any of the conflict of a regular episode. I think that was just a goofy thing for Halloween.

 

[Uzumaki]

i hate that episode, and so does everyone i know. I get why the production schedule required them to do an episode with minimal screen time by Tennant/Piper, but why not write one that's still related to the main storyline?

Exactly. All I have to say about the "it was one of the no-Doctor episodes, what do you expect" argument is one word: Blink.

 

[sparklemilhouse]

The Office - Mafia

This is the episode after Jim & Pam's disappointing wedding episode. An old, tired "omg could someone i know be in the mafia?" storyline straight out of 2000, and Pam being a complete cuntrag (via phone).

Oh, and the episode of South Park where oprahs vagina talks and holds up a bank. So stupid.

 

[Uzumaki]

Oh, and the episode of South Park where oprahs vagina talks and holds up a bank. So stupid.

That's the B plot from an episode where the moral of the A plot is "don't come up with ideas while you're high".

 

[sparklemilhouse]

I was watching the Simpsons marathon today, and realized the very first episode of Simpsons I didn't like was "Burns, Baby Burns", where Burns' deadbeat son comes to town, and finally meets his dad. The Rodney Dangerfield one, it wasn't him that made it bad, it was the storyline. It's all downhill after the cider factory. So that's my "worst single episode".

 

[SteelPlatedHeart]

Star Trek TNG's Shades of Grey

It was a clip show made of prior episodes entirely because they went over-budget on Elementary Dear Data and Q Who. It's a really lazy episode and it contributes absolutely nothing in terms of story.

I haven't watched the show, but wasn't there a TNG episode where a woman got impregnated by some kind of light being/alien that fans of the series don't exactly look too favorably on?

As for an episode of a show I HAVE seen, I'm gonna go with the series finale of How I Met Your Mother. Man, was that not handled well at all, basically using the finale they had planned when the show was only going to be two-three seasons long and keeping it as the ending even though the show lasted nine seasons.

 

[Watcher]

I haven't watched the show, but wasn't there a TNG episode where a woman got impregnated by some kind of light being/alien that fans of the series don't exactly look too favorably on?

Yeah there was a fairly silly episode where Deanna Troi gets impregnated by this space alien. I wouldn't say it was the worst episode of TNG (especially compared to the one I mentioned). Nevertheless SF Debris did a good review of that specific episode.

http://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/t127.php

 

[SteelPlatedHeart]

Yeah there was a fairly silly episode where Deanna Troi gets impregnated by this space alien. I wouldn't say it was the worst episode of TNG (especially compared to the one I mentioned). Nevertheless SF Debris did a good review of that specific episode.

http://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/t127.php

Yeah, the way it treated woman in this episode is definitely what I'd heard was bad about it. Linkara mentioned a bit about it on his tumblr, but man o man, I didn't realize it was this bad

 

[Da Pickle Monsta]

Yeah there was a fairly silly episode where Deanna Troi gets impregnated by this space alien. I wouldn't say it was the worst episode of TNG (especially compared to the one I mentioned). Nevertheless SF Debris did a good review of that specific episode.

http://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/t127.php

Interesting factoid: this episode was originally drafted for Star Trek: Phase II, the ultimately cancelled series that never got into production. Rodenberry recycled several plot lines from Phase II into The Motion Picture and several other TNG episodes. And yeah, that episode was pretty abysmal.

More Star Trek problems.

Star Trek: The Original Series: Season Three. Pretty much Season Three. Seasons One and Two had given us episodes that would eventually become sci-fi staples, like "Mirror, Mirror" or "The City on the Edge of Forever" or "Miri" or "The Trouble with Tribbles." Season Three, conversely, saw Kirk getting amnesia and thinking he was a Native American and Kirk having his body switched with an old woman and Spock having his brain kidnapped (yeah, that's a real episode, and it was so bad that it's rumored that the script was originally made as a prank but somehow got green-lit for production).

Oh, and Voyager. I'm probably in the minority in that I like Voyager. But there are some real dogs of episodes in there. Like the episode, "The '37s". Basically, the crew finds humans who were kidnapped by aliens in the year 1937 hanging out on a planet. This includes a Japanese soldier and Amelia Fucking Earhart. And then there's "Threshold." Oh God, Threshold. In this episode, Tom Paris turns into a salamander and rapes Janeway.

 

[Watcher]

Interesting factoid: this episode was originally drafted for Star Trek: Phase II, the ultimately cancelled series that never got into production. Rodenberry recycled several plot lines from Phase II into The Motion Picture and several other TNG episodes. And yeah, that episode was pretty abysmal.

Well technically the recycling didn't stop there.

Phase 2 was very similar to TNG in terms of concept. It had Kirk on a brand new ship with a first officer named Decker who was in love with this girl with psychic powers called Ilia. Then they recycled those two characters for Star Trek the Motion Picture.

However for TNG they simply renamed Kirk to "Picard", Decker to "Riker" and Ilia to "Deanna Troi".

One thing I noticed while watching TOS and TNG back to back was that Picard and Kirk came off like very similar characters in their early episodes. Very stoic by the book captains who believed very strongly in the Federation and never made anything as pedestrian as mistakes. Whereas Shatner injected some humanity into his performance as the series went on (and was likely forced to by Paramount to make the series more exciting), Patrick Steward truly showed off the tragedy of such a character off really well. Like his inability to have personal relationships. And the series only got better once Roddenberry was promoted to management and away from having creative control over it.

 

[ThatNigga]

The Best Burgers in the World from Regular Show. Benson was a complete prick in this episode even for his standards. And it extremely hurts that Mordecai and Rigby never got to taste one of those burgers because they're made every 100 years.

 

[KillThemCrackasBabies]

The 'Whale" episode of Community in season 4. That season gets shit, but this one is actually a particularly toned down, straight forward one but sucks absolute ass. It's some fat kid Greendale is trying to impress because not unlike Pierce, it turned out the school made a bulk of it's income by enticing wealthy people to come and essentially make it a college themed playground where they would spend years and thousands of dollars. Sounds simple enough right? They somehow make it the least funny, most over the top, laughless 22 minutes of a show I can imagine. It was like they had watched 2 Broke Girls and Big Bang Theory, and thought they needed to make an episode in the vein of those shows, but then remembered that Community is "wacky!" and just dumped on embarrassing over the top horseshit on top of it.

The one saving grace is that some of the episode if Jeff bonding with Pierce, then already pretty much a ruined character, at a barbershop which helped flesh him out again, but that wasn't much at all. In a season of dogshit of a show already by that point infatuated by it's own perceived wit, that episode was the bottom of the barrel by far. Even the puppet episode was better.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

Holy shit this is some stale bread. Anyway, Doctor Who has long since topped Love and Monsters what with throwing out 50+ years of lore for "we wuz kangz, time lordz stole our culcha and took rejenuhrayshun from melinated bodies!" Oh and the first Doctor wasn't stinky old White Anglo William Hartnel, it was some mysterious black girl in space found by the first female Gallifreyan space pilot. Who experimented on the girl to figure out regeneration after she fell off a cliff iirc and regenerated. Can't wait for Chinballs to tell us how the Gallifreyans found the Doctor's original homeworld and buck broke them all to death.

 

[starborn427614]

Since I'm like one of maybe three SUfags on the board I guess I'll nominate Onion Gang.

- Art is shit even by Rough Draft standards (if you've seen one of those bad SU art memes it's 99% a Rough Draft episode)
- Steven's usually naïve, but one of the boarders for the episode has a tendency to dial it up to 11 whenever he boards and it's especially grating here
- Zero gem presence. I like some townie episodes without them but let me move onto the next point and you'll see why this is worse
- None of Onions' friends talk, so it's Steven narrating the entire episode essentially. I like Zach's voice acting but fuck me a balance is nice too.
- Plot is essentially "Onion misses his friends when they leave"...and that's it.

Overall the episode really only exists to introduce a new location (the forest) that would appear in the season 4 finale. Not fun, not interesting and very dull. The single worst SU episode.

 

[Valstrax]

I don't really watch TV anymore, so I guess I'll just talk about MLP because that's one of the few shows I watched religiously as an autistic kid. Please take into note that not only do I consider this my least favorite episode, but one that I watched the most because I watched Rogers on Demand as a child and didn't like commercials, there weren't many episodes to choose from so I decided to pick none other than Fall Weather Friends.

- TLDR: The plot is basically Applejack and Rainbow Dash having an argument over who's better.
- The actual "Running of the Leaves" is never mentioned again after this episode (I think, I haven't watched the show in years)
- If Rainbow Dash is supposed to be the "Element of Loyalty" then why does she fight her friends at every opportunity she gets like an autistic child?
- The episode's really boring, not much else to say.
- This was one of the few MLP episodes I could watch besides like the couple few, and it wasn't fun.

It's far from bad but I guess I can call it the worst. A close contender being One Bad Apple and The Ticket Master.

 

[66andtwothirds]

Sopranos "mergers and acquisitions". Subplot is one of the capos chasing down the principal of his old school because the principal's mum is bullying his mum at a nursing home, A plot is Tony wanting to have sex with a woman but he feels gross about it because someone he hates already had "penisary contact with her Volvo". then when Tony finds out they did not have real sex (by asking his sister) he is okay with it.

WWE Raw - either the Raw Strike episode in 2011 or Christmas Eve 2012 where alberto del rio runs over santa claus.

Family Guy - Brian and Stewie locked in a bank or the second episode of Brian and Quagmire's dad's love story where it's "Family Guysplaining" how the show is totally not transphobic guys, basically apologising for the original episode. just cowardly.

 

[Pokemonquistador2]

As a shameless ripoff of the already existing "Best Single Episode" thread, this one deals (naturally) in the worst single episode of any TV series that is not only wretchedly bad but does an active disservice to the series/franchise as a whole.

To start us off I will pick out the worst single episode of......DOCTOR WHO!!!!

Love and Monsters: A story of one proto brony/loveshy/furry/otherkin social reject and freak obsessed with finding the Doctor because of some barely explained bullshit gathers a group of even more irritating freaks to sperg about the Doctor and engage in activities that make on pine for the subtle comedy and quiet dignity of Jar Jar Binks, until a morbidly obese "Fat Bastard" rip off absorbs them all except the protagonist until the Doctor shows up to dispose of the monster and turn a woman into what an internet reviewer succinctly summised as a Blowjob Dispensing Slab of Concrete (and yes, this is explicitly stated in the episode) at which point the episode mercifully stops.

Featuring the very worst writing and dialogue every put to Doctor Who (and the doctor being absent for almost all of it), the most irritating and obnoxious characters ever shown in the series over the past 50 years who do retarded and utterly pointless bullshit for 40 minutes on behest of the shittest villain in the series run played by the most godawful stand up comedian ever birthed in Britain, and the absolute most wretched story ever concieved by any series ever, this episode pretty much put me off the revived series for months, and is easily the worst doctor who episode ever made.

Wasn't Love and Monsters a show that featured a fan-designed character from a contest? I remember watching Nash's review of it years ago and him mentioning something like that.

Anyway, I'd nominate "The Principal and the Pauper" from the Simpsons as being a divisive episode that nobody liked. It was so hated, even by the showrunners, that they pretty much disregard it as canon.