A surprise sister who's the key to the apocalypse, and a doctor with an annoyingly
lustful appetite. Even the most popular shows can misfire when introducing new characters!
"Gilmore Girls" fans will never forgive April Nardini for dismantling Luke and
Lorelai's relationship. The grumpy diner owner and the newly minted inn
owner finally get together in Season 4 after years of pining and filler relationships.
Cue the entrance of Luke's daughter April in Season 6. She stumbles into Luke's Diner with
clunky exposition about a science fair and later concludes that Luke is her biological father.
Luke understandably wants to get to know his kid, but he's entirely out
of character when he hypocritically keeps her a secret from Lorelai for months after
hounding her about honesty surrounding her situation with Christopher. Meanwhile,
April's mom Anna is even worse, refusing to allow Lorelai into April's life until
she's married to Luke despite their engagement. Then just a year later,
she fights to have Luke's custody taken away for no reason, crushing April in the process.
After Luke and Lorelai break up for a year when Lorelai gives Luke a marriage ultimatum
and sleeps with Christopher, and the Netflix revival picks up pretty much where the show
leaves off despite taking place a decade later. Before showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino returns
and properly orchestrates their long-overdue emotional journey,
Lorelai and Luke basically waste a decade of their lives.
In "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the show teased Buffy's surprise sister Dawn,
and Buffy's sacrifice for her sister long before her arrival,
especially in the form of bizarre, prophetic dreams.
"Miles to go. Little Ms. Muffet, counting down from seven, three, oh."
"Great, riddles."
At the time, it sounds like rambling nonsense; then, Buffy dies 730 days
later to save her sister in the Season 5 finale. For some reason, Faith is the one
to tease the youngest Summers kid, telling Buffy in another Season 4 fever dream -
"Little sis is coming."
As it turns out, Dawn is a human embodiment of the Key that the villain Glory needs to open
the gates to every dimension and jumpstart the apocalypse. Dawn's arrival is made even
worse when Glory feeds on brains, leaving her victims devoid of sanity. For some reason,
only those individuals can see Dawn's true essence as the Key. So now in addition to everything,
she's also the origin of a problematic storyline. Just three seasons later,
after Buffy sacrifices herself for her sister, Dawn kicks Buffy out of their house.
The departure of Topher Grace and Ashton Kutcher left a gaping Eric-and-Kelso-shaped hole in the
final season of "That '70s Show," and Randy takes the brunt of the blame.
When Josh Meyers joined the cast in Season 8, fans were quick to blame his character
for the show's cancellation. Yet if we're being honest, the series should have made
its bow in Season 7 with the departure of Eric and Kelso. It's no surprise that a show
about a group of six friends can't sustain itself with two of the core group missing.
Yet instead of bringing in someone entirely new, the minds behind "That '70s Show" scrapped the
original plan to recast Eric with Meyers and created the new character Randy — a clumsy
and deeply ill-advised attempt to fuse Kelso and Eric's personalities together,
even going so far as to throw Donna and Randy together to mimic her chemistry with Eric. This
choice really ticked off fans, and it was the final nail in the coffin for "That '70s Show."
Joss Whedon apparently learned nothing from the reaction to Dawn Summers. In Season 3 of "Angel",
the character Connor shows up midway and presents a problem for the "Buffy"
universe's rules for vampires. Somehow, Darla gets pregnant after sleeping with Angel,
even though they're both vampires, and are both technically dead. The concept of magic
can only suspend so much disbelief when it comes to the deceased having babies.
The storyline gets even messier when the show establishes that Darla doesn't want to give birth
and forces her to have the baby anyway. Darla tries and fails to abort the fetus multiple times,
which is pretty gross coming from self-appointed feminist icon Joss Whedon. Darla eventually stakes
herself to protect the child she's forced to have, reducing her to nothing more than a womb.
And because Angel hasn't been tortured enough, apparently,
Connor gets kidnapped and taken to Quor'toth where he's raised to hate
his father and seek revenge and emerges back in the real world as a teenager.
"A couple weeks ago he was wearing diapers. Now he's a teenager?"
"Tell me we don't live in a soap opera."
After awkwardly feuding with the annoying prodigal son, "Angel" fans finally thought
they were free of the kid when Angel has Connor's memories wiped to give him
a normal suburban life. But it doesn't last. Connor's memories come back, and so does he.
The Billie Jenkins addition to the Charmed Ones mix is yet another case of a struggling
show trying to revitalize itself. Rather than spending the show's final season on
the core group of sisters fans know and love, Billie comes into play in a central
arc where she enlists the Charmed Ones' help in finding her sister.
To add insult to injury, Billie has the same power as Prue — an original and fan-favorite
sister who dies early in the show. Plenty of fans are also still outraged that original
series characters like Wyatt only show up for two episodes of the final season.
In an interview with TV Line, showrunner Brad Kern attributed Wyatt's absence to budget cuts, and he
also shot down the rumor that Billie was brought in for a potential spinoff. That hasn't stopped
fans from blaming Billie for taking away screen time and resources from their favorite characters.
In reality, it seems like budgets wouldn't have allowed for anything else to happen.
Kaley Cuoco was a relatively new actor, and the show had to do something to fill in the gaps
of the many missing characters. In hindsight, maybe the show should have ended with Season 7.
Marissa and Ryan can create enough drama for themselves in "The OC" without help
from the local stalker, but that didn't stop the writers from adding Oliver into
the mix toward the end of Season 1 of the show, which had already amassed a dedicated fan base.
Marissa meets Oliver in therapy, where he begins manipulating her, showering her with gifts,
and gaslighting her into spending every waking moment with him. Knowing that Marissa has a bit
of a savior complex, Oliver uses it to his advantage until he finally makes a move.
Marissa turns him down, and he responds by pulling out a gun. Despite the show
being relatively new at the time of Oliver's appearance, the hatred from
fans was so intense that the series later addresses it in a meta moment in Season 3.
"I wouldn't have done it any differently…except maybe Oliver."
By Season 8 of "House," the show had long
since gone off the rails. In an attempt to keep things fresh, "House" incorporated a revolving
door of doctors to assist the titular character in his various career-ending shenanigans.
Yet through it all, no character elicited as much irritation from
fans as Chi Park. There are plenty of awkward characters on TV that fans can't help loving,
but Park isn't one of them. Just go on Reddit on any post where she's mentioned to find a litany
of fans who skipped episodes and almost bailed on the show's final season after she was added.
Even during her few likable moments, she makes everyone in the room uncomfortable,
including the audience, and that level of cringe is impossible to tune out. Her
character becomes downright unbearable when she continually sexually harasses Chase,
thinking that every time he's nice to her, he wants to sleep with her.
Chase has his own issues with pestering Cameron toward the beginning of the series,
which is bad enough. But after six seasons, you'd expect the writers
to grow from this trope. Yet on top of her endless uncomfortable romantic overtures,
fans have to endure creepy daydreams where she hooks up with the object of her fantasy.
Like many ill-advised character additions, Ashley Seaver is a victim of circumstances
on "Criminal Minds." When Rachel Nichols joined the show as Seaver in Season 6,
she only stayed for 13 episodes. Her character's addition came after fan
favorite actors A.J. Cook and Paget Brewster were cut from the show over rumored budget cuts.
However, Brewster cleared up that rumor in an interview with the AV Club, saying -
"Oh, yeah, that wasn't budget cuts. […] CBS had just called Ed Bernero and said,
'I want new women.' So we were fired, the fans were upset."
It's unsurprising that after all of that, fans wouldn't exactly welcome
their replacement with open arms. Eventually, the show brought back both Cook and Brewster.
When it comes to describing Seaver, the word useless seems to come up a lot while
describing her. That being said, a lot of the fan outrage has more to do with the internal
circumstances than the actual character, who admittedly has an intriguing backstory.
There's nothing quite like a hated love interest to get in the middle of a fan-favorite pairing.
In Season 4 of "Friends," Ross' future wife Emily comes into the mix after Ross and
Rachel's breakup. In true Ross fashion, he rushes too fast into a long-distance
relationship with the British woman. Granted, Ross and Rachel are arguably one of the most
toxic TV couples of all time, but that didn't stop the ship from sailing into rough seas.
It's abundantly clear to everyone, including Emily, that Ross isn't over Rachel. Instead
of breaking up with him, Emily gets incredibly controlling over Ross' friendship with Rachel,
and things eventually come to a head during their hastily planned wedding ceremony.
"I Ross…"
"Take thee Emily…"
"Take thee Rachel…"
Now, that would be enough for most reasonable people to call off a wedding with
someone they hardly even know. Instead, Emily goes through with it, demanding that Ross cut
all ties with Rachel. Unsurprisingly, the Ross-Emily relationship isn't long for this
world. Ross deserves more blame in this than Emily, but she really should've demonstrated
some self-respect and kicked Ross to the curb before it got to this point.
Cousin Oliver joins "The Brady Bunch" in its fifth
and final season, and many fans pin the cancellation blame on him. In reality,
the series would have likely ended either way, thanks to low ratings.
If bringing Oliver into the mix was intended to spike viewership, the plan did not pan out.
Though Oliver was only in the show for six episodes before "The Brady Bunch" met its demise,
his appearance led to the coining of the phrase "Cousin Oliver Syndrome," which describes the
addition of a young character in a TV show to shake things up. Of course, the clumsy attempt
to add in random children didn't stop there, and still shows up occasionally on modern shows.
By Episode 6 of the original "Gossip Girl," the series had already amassed a passionate
fanbase. It doesn't hurt that The CW show is one of the more successful book-to-TV
show adaptations, either. However, fans' instant hatred of Vanessa might actually
have something to do with her being equally insufferable in the books.
The great thing about "Gossip Girl" is that fans are actually supposed
to hate all of the characters at some point throughout the show,
par for the course when it comes to a series that opens a curtain to a bunch of entitled,
spoiled teenage brats. However, Vanessa paints herself as a martyr, and she's anything but.
Vanessa spends her days on the show sticking her nose up at the entitlement of those around
her while seeking the same privileges, playing manipulative mind games and ruining people's
lives, all while patting herself on the back for being a good person. At the end of the day,
most of the "Gossip Girl" characters realize how awful they can be. Vanessa, by contrast,
is the biggest hypocrite and drama instigator in the show
and pretends to reject the elitism and cruelty of high society all the while.