It’s not his fault the show was cancelled soon after, but Cousin Oliver’s name will still live on forever in TV infamy. Still, the addition of Cousin Oliver - Carol’s never-before-mentioned nephew who came to stay with the Bradys while his parents lived in South America (?!?) - was a transparent attempt to add a cute kid to the cast at a point when the rest of the Brady kids were nearly grown up, and he never quite fit in. It’s probably not fair to pin the demise of a beloved TV show on a nine-year-old boy child actor Robbie Rist only joined the show for the final six episodes of Season 5, when the ratings were already dwindling. Almost all of his storylines were meandering and painstaking, and don’t even get us started on that icky Cordelia/Jasmine/Connor biz. Vampire dad deals with angsty half-demon teenage son? No, thanks. He may have been adorable as an itty, bitty baby in Season 3, but after he was kidnapped and raised in another dimension, the Connor that returned wasted no time getting on our nerves. Come Noah’s move to Los Angeles in Season 4, Juliette was never seen, or mentioned, again. It’s one thing to introduce a new love interest on a show called The Affair it’s another to assume the audience is going to want to spend entire chunks of episodes seeing stories from her perspective. The addition of Noah’s post-prison Parisian fling is only second to killing Alison Bailey on the list of dumb things this frothy drama did over the course of its five-season run. Her unhealthy obsession with Liz was more unsettling than funny, and her arrival goes down as one of the show’s rare misfires. But for some reason, when she joined the cast in Season 6 as deranged NBC page Hazel Wassername, it just… didn’t work. This is a tough one: 30 Rock is a first-ballot Hall of Fame sitcom, and Kristen Schaal has been a comedy delight on everything from Flight of the Conchords to What We Do in the Shadows. He spent the entirety of Season 6 either comatose or floundering in his decision-making, becoming the franchise’s worst fictional president ever… which is saying a lot, considering one of them was a treasonous supervillain! After serving as President Palmer’s chief of staff starting in Season 3, Wayne proved to be both underqualified and lacking any real leadership skills by the time he took the Oval Office. Let’s face it: Wayne Palmer could never come close to filling his brother David’s shoes. So we guess you could say he served his purpose. He only seemed to exist so that Lucy had someone to yell at who wasn’t a blood relative. He recited his dialogue about as naturally as… a doormat would. Read on to see who made our list of the worst cast additions ever - and if you think we missed a big one? Feel free to remind us in the comments below.ĭebuting in Season 6, Lucy’s husband had the personality of a doormat and the charisma of… a doormat. We’ve picked out bad apples from all-time great shows like Game of Thrones, The Office, Lost, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and ER, proving that even a host of Emmy wins doesn’t guarantee immunity from the dreaded Cousin Oliver Syndrome. Join us as we look back at the worst TV characters who joined their shows after the first season - and really should’ve stayed away entirely. We’re calling them the Cousin Oliver All-Stars, in honor of the patron saint of this category: the mischievous little tyke who got blamed for ruining The Brady Bunch when he arrived late in the series’ run. (Check out our list and our readers’ suggestions for prime examples of that.) Some cast additions, however, actually turn out to be subtractions, threatening to drag down their entire shows with their resounding lack of appeal. It’s not unusual for a long-running TV show to shuffle up its cast in an effort to freshen things up, and a few lucky shows have actually struck gold with new cast members. We’ve already celebrated the best TV characters who joined their shows late… but unfortunately, there’s a flip side to that.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |