Just about every long-running or critically acclaimed show has at least one major stinker in its run. It's just inevitable when you have so many episodes, some of them are gonna be duds. Sometimes, these episodes can be just as well-known as the great episodes. I'll start with Code of Honor from TNG. Everything, from the racist undertones thanks to the baffling decision to make the actors playing a primitive alien race who lust after strong women black to the terrible fight scene makes me wonder how anybody involved thought this episode was a good idea.
The Office: Scott's Tots. The only episode of Office I never finished, because the cringe level was just to high.
Exactly 50% of The Mandalorian. Still a pretty cool show, but half of the eps were very cringe worthy and nothing can ever top of the awfulness of Episode 5 in particular. So almost hilariously bad that I still don't believe that one wasn't written & directed by newborn chimps with mental impediments.
"I've Got Batman in My Basement" from Batman: The Animated Series. There are other episodes that aren't so great, but none stink as much as this one...
TCW has a lot of slog and fodder passing time between truly stunning, breathtakingly good stuff. I remember being particularly bored by the early season 3 focus on politics. Yet now you look on clips of it on YouTube and people are swearing up and down that it’s amazing. Nostalgia. Agreed with Incepticon on The Mandalorian. First three are terrific, episode 4 is cliche but enjoyable enough, and 5-6 are pretty mediocre, before the season finale kicks it back into high gear. Having almost completed my rewatch of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh on Disney+, I have to say that the third season is weaker and generally speaking it gets weaker after the first half of the show. The animation quality goes down a bit (to the point not even Disney+ could save it with a restoration), some plots get repeated like Gopher trying to build the ultimate tunnel, and some characters like Eeyore, Kanga, Roo, and Owl get sidelined like hell. I know this is a hot take, but I don’t like Jim Cummings’ Tigger in this show. His voice is fine, but honestly I feel like he didn’t really get his act together until maybe The Tigger Movie. Here, he sounds like any old Jim Cummings 90s wise guy role. And he’s hard to compare to the warmth and whimsy of Paul Winchell’s take. But like I said, he eventually became more than a suitable successor to Winchell. Just not here. Tigger isn’t always the most likable in this show either. He’s not mean, but he gets annoying.
Great topic OP! "Fly" from Breaking Bad. Arguably the most polarizing episode, this one doesn't do it for me at all. G1's "Carnage in C-Minor". While "B.O.T." usually gets all the hate, 'Carnage' will literally hurt your ears. Then to boot toss in all those crazy animation errors. Personally "The Under-dwellers" is on the bottom of my list, but I can't disagree with you on IGABIMB either!
What? Fly is one of the best as it's just flat out hilarious and is a nice break from everything that has been going on at the time. For BTAS, I think both The Underdwellers and I've Got Batman in My Basement are terrible episodes. Same with Critters. Let's see: Beast Wars - Go With the Flow Gargoyles - The Green The Simpsons (classic years) - Secrets of a Successful Marriage, Homerpalooza, Hurricane Neddy, The Canine Mutitny, and King-Sized Homer David Tennnat's Doctor Who run - Love and Monsters and 42 Tom Baker's Doctor Who run - All of Season 6 except City of Death The Twillight Zone - Cavender is Coming Tales from the Crypt - About Face and The Kidnapper
It’s still a wonderful show and some of the best episodes are in the back half of the four season run. But I find myself liking some of the first and second season better. Especially in the animation. I could tell in the last few episodes of Season 4 they were fudging it a bit, probably since they were near the end and needed to make it work.
Batman: The Animated Series has "Moon of the Wolf" for me. Terrible music and animation. The story was also unbelievably boring. How do you make an episode where Batman fights a werewolf boring?! Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes was getting bad in its second half of the second season, but "Powerless" is the worst the show ever got. A dumb episode with a cheesy moral and very ugly animation. It also was full of MCU pandering more than any second season episode. Even Marvel was ashamed of it and didn't carry it on DVD for the longest time. Steven Universe just ended, so I'll have to go with any Ronaldo episode except the one where he interacts with Lars and Sadie. I wonder why the show kept focusing on him when his brother is actually Steven's age and a better friend. Gravity Falls had "Roadside Attraction". It was cool setting an episode outside of Gravity Falls, but its placement was so weird with the show's pacing. The moral was also incredibly confused and probably one that wasn't appropriate to teach through 12-year-olds. The Monster of the Week was also really lame and the humor was worse. A noticeable blemish in an otherwise spotless season.
Spongebob has alot of them. Not because bad voice acting or animation. But just the writing and quality of the episode. Some episodes include "The Splinter" the infamous "One Course Meal" and alot of bad eggs from Season 4-9. Also filler, when the characters stand around and do nothing.
DS9: Move Along Home, Let He Who is Without Sin, Q-Less Spongebob was never the same after the movie.
The orderly world of Mr. Bixby from Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The episode was very poorly written and poorly acted with an ending you can see coming the moment you enter the third act. I feel like even Alfred Hitchcock himself didn't like the episode because he makes a lot of jokes at the episode's expense in his segments. For Tales from the Darkside, it's kind of a toss-up between "Ring around the Redhead" and the one Haley's Comet episode. The Ring around the Redhead one has the creepy trope of a dude falling in love with someone he parents, which always sets off my pedophilia alarms in my head and the Haley's comet one was just a straight shit show of bad everything. I love both shows to death, but they had some rancid stinkers once in a blue moon.
It's slowly improving since Sponge Out of Water. (Even if it wasn't a good movie.) But the show still has it's bad moments. I think Kamp Koral might kill whatever redeeming factor the show has.
"The Mighty Casey" and "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" are pretty bad Twilight Zone episodes but that's not saying too much because the series is so great on average. They're watchable episodes, they just don't feel the same as the rest.
I love South Park overall, even though I have gotten less into it since the fantastic PC Principal season several years ago. That said, I never liked "A Million Little Fibers." It's easily my least favorite episode of the show, ever. Towelie sucks as a main character for an episode without any of the other more regular characters around.
To name a couple from some shows I watch The final episode of Seinfeld Don't watch The Walking Dead anymore. But I can think of a couple of episodes that bored me during the time I did enjoy the show. Supernatural The failed spinoff episode called Bloodlines Grimm The frog episode That Spongebob episode with Ms. Puff wanting Spongebob dead Family Guy Stewie and Brian have babies enough said
Law & Order - S15 | E07 - Gov Love This episode is the most legally and politically abhorrent of the entire series! First, McCoy threatens to indict the Governor of Connecticut for murder with nothing but an assumption knowing full well that he has no solid proof to sustain a murder indictment! Then, McCoy argues that spousal privilege should only apply to straight, married couples to put a murderer in prison in order to get his sole witness to testify after it is discovered that said witness and defendant are legally married! Lastly, McCoy succeeds in invaliding the marriage between the witness and defendant (along with many others) before the State Supreme Court in order to get the witness to testify against the defendant! This episode proves that prosecutors like McCoy (fictional & real) will do whatever it takes to win a case without considering the rights of and negative after effects to the people who do obey the law! Do this day, I've wondered why Dick Wolf would approve of such an abhorrent and terrible episode!
I don't understand how this thread could go three entries before someone mentioned Star Trek: The Next Generation "Sub Rosa." It is an episode that SCREAMS "the actor wanted their character to be the primary focus of an episode, let's throw her a bone." It is awful. It doesn't fit in with the show at all, and none of the events are ever mentioned again.
