What do you think of "Made ya look episodes"?

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(xFilipinaBabeex

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What I mean by "Made ya look episodes" is when you think a character is going to develop in an episode, but in the end, nothing changes and you find that you watched thirty minutes of an average episode.

For example: There was an episode of He-man where we discover the sorceress is Teela's mother and when Teela finds out we discover that her memory must be erased, and nothing else was accomplished in the episode.

I, personally, hate these sort of episodes due to the fact that they make me feel like I've wasted 30 minutes of my life (unless the jokes are good.)
 
I never really thought about this before, but I like them. If anything, it is fun to guess whether a major change will become permaneant, and it's fun to try to guess how things will go back to normal in the end (especially if it's something we know won't be permaneant). I kept wondering if the events of last week's Family Guy ("And Then There Were Fewer") would end up being a dream sequence or if the events would end up being staged or something.
 
There are a lot on the FOP movies, when everything that happened for the previous 90-minutes is erased. Channel Chasers and Wishology come to my mind. Butch sure LOVES the old memory wiping trick, doesn't he?:shrug:
 
Oh god, don't get me started on those. We go through all that exposition, all that drama and intensity and we all start from the beginning again. Even the Spongebob movie moved the plot in a way that worked (being the final episode that happens eventually.)
 
"Phineas and Ferb" has done this a couple of times, but as always, they gleefully lampshade it. There have been at least three separate occasions in which Candace busted the boys, only for the events of the episode to be completely nullified at the end, through whatever bizarre means necessary. They've played the "it was all a dream" card (and they even put a twist on that by making it a dream-within-a-dream), but they've also had characters go back in time and change the course of history or inadvertently cause a wrinkle in the space-time continuum in order to keep the show's formula from ever breaking.

Yes, the writers are blatantly pounding the reset button, but they're so arch about it that it remains funny. (And besides, if Phineas and Ferb get busted, then that's pretty much the end of the show right there.)
 
Funny enough, I managed to watch my first episode of Generator Rex yesterday and the episode happen to fall under this category. Rex is on a mission in Hong Kong, ends up meeting a few people that know him, and while he tries to recover his past, he ultimately ends up destroying the biggest archive of his past life and then tells his friends he will probably forgot who they are.

In non-serial shows, episodes like this are the norm. How many times have we seen Squidward appreciate SpongeBob before he goes back to despising him the next episode? Its something I've come to accept and let slide because the most important thing in these shows is the jokes. However, in stuff that has a continuing story like Generator Rex, it really is a huge turn-off and a total tease. It literally makes me feel like the writers wasted my time simply to make me feel bad towards the protag who has to keep shooting in the dark to discover some secrets.
 
I'm neutral. The presence, or absence of the 'Status Quo' doesn't concern me too much. Episodes that do that can be entertaining, or they can be not entertaining.
 
Depends on the type of show.

Action shows have no excuse for leaving things stagnat except for wanting to be lazy writers.

In a comedy show however, it dosen`t matter as long as its funny. i.e. the spongebob examples.
 
I remember an episode of Teen Titans did that it was that Whacky races parady episode they made a big deal out of some suitcase and secret Robin kept and at the end when Robin was going to show his friends it went right to the credits and the case and its contents was never mentioned again. That episode still annoys me to this day.
 
This what made the Danny Phantom episode Reality Trip so annoying. So Danny's secret identity gets revealed to the world including his parents and his parents end up accepting him. Of course at the end up the episode Danny uses the Reality Gauntlet to erase everyone's memory. Now I can see the problem with the whole world knowing his secret, but did they REALLY have to make his parents forget too?! I mean they accepted him and were proud of him even though he was half ghost and it would've been some beautiful character developement not to mention many fans have been waiting for the moment that Danny's parents find out his secret. But noooo, he can't have the plotline progress that much! So now his parents are still trying to kill him like nothing ever happened!!!:mad::mad::mad:
 
Yeah, that was an odd choice for Danny to make right after his parents said that they loved him, regardless of being half-ghost. But I guess that the writers wanted to save it for the series finale, even though it didn't feel nearly as rewarding or touching at the end of Phantom Planet mostly because it had already happened before. I think that there was also a better sense of buildup for their acceptance of Danny's powers in Reality Trip.
 
I usually prefer continuity where changes are permanent but I've seen examples of both good and bad.

- In Batman, the episode "Over the Edge", it was cool to see what would have happened if Batgirl had died but it's better for the show if she lives for future episodes.

- In Spider-man, the "Secret Wars" episodes, in the end nobody except Spidey remembers what happened, though I don't see why, in the comics everbody remembered the Secret Wars. I seem to remember that even though everyone was supposedly returned as if nothing had ever happened, Black Cat's storyline continued on Earth as if she was still missing.

- Invader Zim, an episode ended with Zim and Dib as sausages yet all was back to normal for the next episode. Someone I watched the episode exclaimed at the end that it "couldn't just end that way" but I differ; as Scirel else posted, it's usually okay for comedy episodes to reset so long as it's funny.

- Men in Black reset many times but they did a good explaining them, usually time-travel or super-science of some kind. But then, their organization isn't allowed to use technology that they consider too advanced for Earth, either. For example, in one episode, Jay uses alien technology to expand his mind (accidentally) but through an excellent story, he is able to reverse his situation through time-travel.

- I usually prefer permanent changes, though. For example, Mutant League, Darkstar pretends to sign on with the Monsters so that he can throw the game for Zalgor Prigg. When he realizes that he'd rather join the Monsters for real, they don't reset. He's a member of the team in future episodes.
 
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