Most Shocking/Upsetting TV Deaths

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by johnaltman, Jul 11, 2015.

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  1. Avenging Robot

    Avenging Robot Senior Member

    ...and I remember thinking what the heck are they going to do now with the storyline, in retrospect they should have ended the series right then and there.
     
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  2. vegafleet

    vegafleet Forum Resident

    Agree. In an earlier Dexter season they hint for a second that the teenage Dexter had sexual feelings (at least an attraction) towards his stepsister (by adoption). They never did anything with that, but I thought that could have been a character/plot frisson for after Rita's dead.

    Instead, they later went the other way, with the stepsister falling in love (her words) with Dexter. If that wasn't a chance for the show to become sicker and kinkier than before, with the intimation of incest, I don't know what was. They make the point many times that they both were such damaged individuals that nobody else understood them. Instead the show went all milquetoast and limp after that.
     
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  3. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Naw, she's really dead. The character has reappeared in flashbacks -- and once (memorably) as a ghost -- but she's really, most sincerely dead.
     
  4. SMcFarlane

    SMcFarlane Forum Resident

    Location:
    Montreal
    To me ... it was Thomas Magnum's death ... it seemed at the time like he had died but we learned later that he didn't. I remember my college roommates and I sitting there at the end of the episode really shocked & bummed thinking that he had died in a shootout.
     
  5. Jim T

    Jim T Forum Resident

    Location:
    Mars
    ----------------------
    My wife and I didn't like it when they killed her off, but dead is dead. Thanks for the heads up as I'll sleep better tonight.
     
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  6. Trashman

    Trashman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    Doctor Who - Adric's death in Earthshock: The death of a regular traveling companion on that show was relatively rare...especially at that point in the series. Even if he was a somewhat unpopular companion in certain respects, his death was a gut punch to many fans...especially those of us who were still fairly young at the time.

    Blake's 7 - Nearly every major character, including Blake: No character was safe on this show, in a time when television series rarely killed off important regular characters. The only one left standing at the end was Avon...and some argue that he was killed too as we heard shots during the closing credits of the final episode.
     
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  7. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    Hollywood, USA
    Taraji Henson got a big role on Empire as well as an Emmy nomination, so she's doing great. She said that the showrunner on Person of Interest had told her when she was hired, "hey, this role is only going to be for a couple of years, and then we're going to kill you off in a spectacular way." She was good with that and kept the secret for a long time. Even the other cast members were caught by surprise. I think it actually added some unexpected depth to the show, and she did have a very good character.
     
  8. Jim T

    Jim T Forum Resident

    Location:
    Mars
    ---------------------------
    We didn't see it coming, so they kept a good secret. Very interesting show.
     
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  9. hbbfam

    hbbfam Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chandler,AZ
    With the most disappointing last season they could possibly have contrived.

    Another disappointing last season (not in the Dexter category) with unexpected deaths was The Sopranos. I really didn't expect or care for everyone getting wiped out in the last two episodes.
     
  10. Captain Groovy

    Captain Groovy Senior Member

    Location:
    Freedonia, USA
    He and Sandra Dee were good friends. Talk about tragedy...

    Jeff
     
  11. Captain Groovy

    Captain Groovy Senior Member

    Location:
    Freedonia, USA
    Not a surprise, but Arnold Rothstein. The "jump ahead" made me realize before watching their would be no Rothstein...

    But the most fascinating character had to be "mentioned away".

    If the show didn't cost so much to produce, I would have done anything for a Rothstein/Chicago spin-off with Michael Stuhlbarg. His story, in itself, is amazing. And Stuhlbarg was fantastic (as he is in all his roles, though he still isn't a "star").

    Jeff
     
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  12. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    Hollywood, USA
    Or even worse, the handful of characters whose fate was left in the air, like Tony's sidekick Silvio who was wounded and left for dead. Is he alive? Is he dead? Is he brain-damaged? Now we'll never know.

    Hell, I still want to know about the dying Russian mobster in the woods...

    It seems a lot of these "caper" shows have one Achilles' heel. With Mission:Impossible, it was those silly rubber masks, which would never work in real life. With Person of Interest, it's that little app they have that instantly clones somebody's phone and allows you to hear every single thing they do, which is absolutely ridiculous.

    I gotta hand it to the people in Mr. Robot: they established that the only way to listen in and spy on everything somebody is doing with their phone is to physically get the phone and load a spyware program on it (which they actually showed in an early episode). That was 100% real. You definitely can't clone somebody's phone merely by walking close to them in a crowd.
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2015
  13. Bingo

    Bingo Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Bronx
    We're a few years behind here in the States with the showing of The Eastenders. They show it on ch 21 in NYC. Man, tonight was the episode where Dennis got killed. I did not see that coming from what happened minutes earlier.
    Dennis was one of my favourite people on that show. I'm still shaking my head. Damn.
     
  14. guy incognito

    guy incognito Senior Member

    Location:
    Mee-chigan
    Hawkeye's pal Tommy Gillis, in "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet".

    [​IMG]
     
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  15. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    Easily one of the best episodes of M*A*S*H ever. Nominated for a Writers Guild award (but didn't win). And it had Ronnie Howard as a guest star as a young shoulder, a year or two before Happy Days. Very moving episode.

    "Rule Number One is young men die... and Rule Number Two is, doctors can't change Rule Number One."
     
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  16. JamieC

    JamieC Senior Member

    Location:
    Detroit Mi USA
    Tara Maclay on Buffy
     
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  17. sixtiesstereo

    sixtiesstereo Senior Member

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    And I saw it live, as it happened. I always remember sitting on the living room floor (at 13 years old) watching the live coverage from Dallas, and seeing the whole thing. I also remember, my mother being in
    the kitchen, and me going in and saying "Mom, that Oswald guy just got shot........"
     
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  18. sixtiesstereo

    sixtiesstereo Senior Member

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    At this point, that's certainly true. But back in Season 2 (?), when Shane turned and was killed (by Carl no less) it was big news everywhere, since he was the first major character to die on the show, and no one
    expected it (even though he was going psycho and a real pain in the a$$). But seeing him turning, from
    inside his mind, was a real shocker.
     
  19. 93curr

    93curr Senior Member

    See, I can understand Chase wanting to leave that unexplained, but what bothers me is that Tony had dealing with the Russians. He was actually funneling huge amounts of cash through a guy who considered the missing mobster to be like a brother. Paulie and Christopher only went over to the guy's apartment in the first place because Tony had dealings with his friend.

    I didn't need a scene explaining what happened to him but I DID need a scene where we learned how Tony dealt with the guy's friend. Did the OTHER Russian guys never learn what happened to him? Were the other Russian guys suspecting foul play from Tony's crew? How were no one asking questions?

    I love the idea of leaving a character's fate hanging like that, if only to leave both Paulie and the audience waiting for the other shoe to drop forever. (Or the cat to come out of the box, if you prefer) But you have to set it up in advance so there are no other connections, and they didn't do that.
     
  20. Bryan

    Bryan Starman Jr.

    Location:
    Berkeley, CA
  21. Bryan

    Bryan Starman Jr.

    Location:
    Berkeley, CA
    Yes, that was very disappointing, as was the entire shortened final season, in many ways.
     
  22. 93curr

    93curr Senior Member

    He wasn't asked back for season three of 'Hannibal' either.
     
  23. phenri

    phenri Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis, MO
    This was back in the days when M*A*S*H was truly a great show.
     
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  24. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    The first 4 or 5 seasons was pretty good. But it got very preachy and heavy-handed after that.
     
  25. AveryKG

    AveryKG Sultan of snacks

    Location:
    west London
    Okay, so it's not a "well loved character" and it's not even a human, but Dutch strangling that cat in The Shield was pretty shocking.
     
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