I quit watching most of the decent shows from America (Oz, Six Feet Under, Lost and many, many more) because they were airing on Channel 4 here in the UK, and that channel cannot keep shows on at the same time or day from one week to the next. I missed so many episodes of so many US shows they put on that I gave up trying. Pushing Daisies looked good, but that aired on ITV here and that channel wanted the whole series aired before the Euro 2008 championship started - so they missed one of the earlier episodes entirely, then got snooty when viewers suggested they may want to see the whole thing if they were seriously expected to invest time in it.
(NOTE - Euro 2008 was a football tournament, and that’s football as in soccer – the game where the feet usually do something to the FOOTball – not American football, where blokes use their hands to move a rugby ball around. Just to make that clear for everyone – thanks)
My list of characters that should have lost their jobs (the Scrappy Doo characters, as it were) would include:
Dr. Mark Sloan (Diagnosis Murder) – for spending far too much time running around solving crime instead of being a doctor (and for looking like the sort of man who could still mangle cockney to an still terrifying degree);
Inspector Morse (Inspector Morse) – for solving crimes only after the killer was done or was being stopped by someone else (up until his death, when he entrusted his life to a murderer – genius). He would always act superior to the non-alcoholic, likable and professional people around him. RIP moron;
Captain Janeway (Star Trek Voyager) – For constantly allowing mentally disturbed beings to make horribly ill-judged, frequently tragic decisions in order for some sort of dire event to happen in which she could assume mantle as leader, watch whilst other people tidied up, then sat back and waited to be treated with respect, rather than a slap and a place in the queue at the nearest employment agency;
Nanny (The Nanny) – the only thing I can remember about this show is that no child should have ever been put near the damn woman, let alone left in her care;
and
Becca Dean (Hollyoaks) – first, she was a terrible student and seemed too busy crying or getting into near fatal accidents to ever actually find the time to study. Secondly, having a relationship with her meant death (and the abortion of your baby), emigration, being crippled and going insane (followed by emigration), or – to make sure no-one missed what it would say about you character and health if you were happy to slip it into the whiney cow – assisting in the spread of a sexually transmitted disease followed by marriage (!) followed by psychotic tendencies, domestic violence, mental collapse, alcoholism and your (achieved) rape of her young sister.
Thirdly, in case people thought she would be unlikely to find a worse man than her husband, she was also so terrible in her job as a teacher that, having found one student that would pay any attention to her, she slept with the boy shortly after his release from a Young Offenders Institute. Having conceived a child with him, she chose to end her failed marriage but only after several failed attempts at a divorce and a failed suicide attempt whilst pregnant SO THAT NO AUDIENCE ON EARTH COULD POSSIBLY LIKE THIS CHARACTER!!!!! Her relationship with the student failed (SURPRISE!), he had her arrested and falsely charged with child grooming and statutory rape. She failed to prove her innocence then (successfully, somehow) gave birth.
After several days (spent in a needless custody battle), it was a few more minutes before the baby was kidnapped from the safe home she had found for him - living with the violent ex-husband that would later rape her sister – and it was several months before the child almost died of leukemia.
The writers ended Becca and her many, many miserable years on the show by having her choose her last day in prison as the perfect time to pick a fight with her violent, blade wielding cellmate.
She did lose her job when she deserved to, but she deserved to lose that – and her life – a lot faster than the writers could manage, and how the hell did she find employment in the first place?
