People Break Down The Worst Examples Of A TV Show Dumping A Major Cast Member And Trying To Continue

People Break Down The Worst Examples Of A TV Show Dumping A Major Cast Member And Trying To Continue
Pexels from Pixabay

We're all aware television shows are fake and, heck, even the ones pretending to be real have a certain level of fabrication permeating throughout. That's not why we watch, though, we watch because we want to be invested into believing in a show's characters and their journeys.

So when a character is mysteriously removed from a show with zero explanation it can leave a bad taste in our mouths that never goes away.

Also, in case it isn't clear, SPOILERS ahead for all these shows.


Redditor jsakic99, wanted to hear about:

"What's the most egregious example of a TV show losing a major cast member, but still trying to continue on?"

Not Gone, Just Reborn

"Top Gear"

SleazyP_317

"Came here to say this. Top Geat BBC is nothing w/o Jezza, Crash and Mr. Slowly."

"I watched a few episodes of the reboot and its a total joke."

"On the other hand i bought amazon prime because of Grand Tour."

InfraredDiarrhea

No More Troy & Abed In The Morning

"Community"

DystopianTruth

"It definitely lost some of its charm without Troy, but Hickey, Elroy, and Frankie were decent. It was still a good show without Troy, just not as good."

emueller5251

Fired For Good Cause


"Criminal Minds comes to mind for me. Thomas Gibson definitely deserved to be fired, but once he was gone the show felt completely different. They should have stopped there instead of trying another season."

PaladiinDM

"To be fair, they pulled it off once before, when Mandy Patinkin left. Hotch was very much the solid center of the group, after that though, and they never really found someone to fill that role. I love Prentiss, but she doesn't fill that void, and Rossi wouldn't really do either. They would need to find someone that had chemistry with the other characters but still had the darkness that Hotch brought."

Irishpanda1971

How Does Your Family Work?

"Dukes of Hazzard for one season tried to replace Bo and Luke with two other Duke cousins."

heelspider

"The Coy and Vance situation made the whole Duke family tree even more suspicious. Bo, Luke, Daisy, Coy and Vance all called each other cousin, and called Jesse "uncle". None of them were siblings. Were these all just random children that Jesse "found" and raised? Did Jesse have 5 siblings who each had a child that they were unwilling/unable to care for? Did they all leave their kids with Jesse because a moonshine runner was considered the most respectable? There probably aren't too many social workers in Hazard County, but someone really needs to look into this."

thalanos42

Yeeeeeah!

"CSI after Grissom left was never the same"

gk101991

"I thought Liev Schreiber's short guest-stint standing in for William Petersen was good, but Grissom was kind of integral."

Reciprocity2209

Just Stop Dying

"Grey’s Anatomy used to be good, now everyone’s either dead or left due to various reasons"

trickyfelix

A Magical Missing Sister! Of Course!

"So what always hit me as funny was in the TV Show Charmed."

"Basically the entire concept was about three sisters being the chosen triad that together could do amazing magic."

"After a couple seasons all three of them were on the floor "Dying" and it cut off."

"Next season apparently two of the sisters had been saved, but the last one had died off screen and the entire thing was skipped over. "You saved me, X saved Y, but that left Z to die!""

"But how can a show that's entirely about the power of three sisters being the chosen ones continue with one of them gone? Easy, they find a long lost sister and activate her magic!"

ericbomb

Steve? Joe?

"Blues Clues"

SonicFanBOI0655

"As a child I remember being very confused and not realizing right away it was a different person."

CardWitch

Giphy

Can't Keep A Look Out For Him

"I hated it when Sharona left in Monk. Natalie just wasn’t the same."

mom_for_life

I Want To Believe

"The X-Files after David Duchovny left."

KungFu-omega-warrior

"Something was missing when Mulder was gone. Scully and Mulder dealing with the monster of the week type episodes were the best."

adumberscully

It's A Teaching Hospital...Get It?

"Scrubs final season was so bad that even Dr Cox couldn't save it."

TheGodDamnLobo

"It was meant to be a spinoff series but wasn't allowed to be branded as such."

Shirley_Schmidthoe

For Perhaps Good Reason?

"T.J. Miller as Erlich Bachman in Silicon Valley. He was so much of the soul of that show, it really flagged in the later seasons."

"Definitely worth sticking it out to the end though, the series finale was brilliant"

Arendyl

Your Interest Fades With The Character

"The last season of The Office was terrible."

"Scrubs was never the same."

"Stargate SG1 was just ok after Richard Dean Anderson left. If he was never Col. O'Neill and I started watching the show after he left, I would have watched to the end. Once RDA left so did my interest in the show."

harceps

Everything Changes And You Hate It

"Nobody has mentioned the show Valerie? It was named after the main character, Valerie Harper (of Rhoda fame), but she tried to play hardball for more money after a couple of seasons, so they killed her off and changed the name to "Valerie's Family.""

"As if that wasn't enough to swallow, they brought in Sandy Duncan to be the mom-type character, and changed the name AGAIN to "The Hogan Family." I didn't know who Valerie Harper was at the time, but I watched it because the guy who played Ricky Stratton's bad-boy friend on Silver Spoons was on it: Jason Bateman."

Pinchaz0

We ALL Hate Randy

"That '70s Show"

dottmatrix

"We all hate Randy"

BelichickRockneGOATS

"Randy embodies everything people hate about late series main cast replacements. He's a buff pretty boy, unlike Eric, but is still marketed as being a sensitive, nerdy guy, which is what made up a big part of Eric's appeal. He bonds with Red like Eric never could, he immediately takes Eric's place as Donna's love interest and is shunted into the main group without pretense and with little defined character. He's basically Poochie, from the Simpsons, but unironically."

AReluctantEssayist

Perhaps The Biggest Of All

"The Office comes to mind, though I enjoy the later seasons too."

FievelWentWest

"This is the one for me. I'm fine with folks enjoying the last few seasons (and I guarantee there's post-Carrell episodes I enjoy as well) but by and large, it lost a lot of its magic without him. That said, I imagine some key writers departing were also responsible for the tonal shift (where some characters turned into the cartoon versions of themselves while others were seemingly reinvented on the fly)."

rake2204

Spoilers

"Vikings , after Ragnar died there was nothing left for me tbh , the other actors are all amazing but there aren’t enough developed characters for the show to be interesting anymore "

DOCTORE2

Yeah, So Sad...

"John Ritter, from 8 Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter."

"The main character died in the beginning of the second season*. It's a family sit-com, but I remember liking it. And it was starting to build a bit of a following when it happened."

ConneryFTW

"John Ritter. Died from aortic dissection. So sad."

werdzishard

Giphy

"Worse, he started having the fatal symptoms when he was on set rehearsing for the next episode. The crew had to rush him to the hospital."

res30stupid

A cast change can work for or against a series.

Did your "worst" make the list?

Want to "know" more?

Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.

Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again.

Hands catching falling water
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Everyone has a different relationship with hygiene.

While some people wash their hands every time they enter a new room, and never leave home without a bottle of hand sanitizer, others might not care where their hands have been as they bust open a bag of chips.

However, one thing that both parties have in common is that over time, they might have developed certain practices related to their own personal hygiene that are unique to them.

Helping them either make sure their hands, teeth, and body are as clean as can possibly be or help them get things done as speedily, if not as effectively, as possible.

Keep reading...Show less

I have seen many a scary movie.

A horror movie done right can haunt you forever.

Have you seen "The Exorcist?"

Good Lord.

I don't know if I'm ready for the new sequel.

I love to be a little frightened by a movie.

But haunted for life is a different story.

Plus, I can't sleep with the lights on...

Keep reading...Show less
gold-colored desert
Photo by Holden Baxter on Unsplash

We all want to believe we are perfectly safe, but the fact is, the world can be a scary and dangerous place sometimes.

For the most part, we can protect ourselves, but sometimes we end up in dangerous situations through no fault of own (or anyone else's).

Redditors are no strangers to situations like these. In fact, some of them have been in actual near-death situations, and they are ready to share those stories.

Keep reading...Show less

People are required to have a license to drive, fish, and have certain jobs.

So it boggles my mind that people aren't required to have a license to have kids.

Some of the cruelest and most vicious things I've ever heard were words uttered by a parent to a child.

As an adult, I was haunted by a few thigs.

I can't imagine the scaring of an adolescent.

Keep reading...Show less