Great TV Shows With Terrible Storylines

Homeland: Dana and Finn’s Wild Ride

Okay, I’m cheating. This is an ongoing subplot (so spoilers) that’s only two episodes deep at the time of this writing, so it might be premature to call a dud out of something that could turn out to be genius. But, like Landry using a lead pipe to knock some sense into a guy, Homeland following up its sublime first season with an accidental murder (via a couple teens running over a pedestrian) seems like a twist so far out of left field, it’s coming from another channel.

The show’s writers found themselves with the unique issue of having too good a cast following season one, as the terrific performance from Morgan Saylor as the daughter of a Marine turned terrorist became to rich to leave out. Considering Homeland’s delicate subject matter, this posed a problem: how can you realistically incorporate a teenage girl into a nation-threatening conspiracy in a way that’s both organic, and not a rehash of season one.

Thus far, giving the supporting players random adventures separated from the core plot doesn’t seem like the right solution. The writers have proven themselves exceptional at moving their main story along logical beats, and at a rip-roaring pace too, but figuring out what to do with a more open-ended plot is something else entirely. The show has certainly earned the benefit of the doubt at this point, but its future viability might depend more on how it handles all the stuff surrounding the golden story at its center, than that story itself.

**Update**

If you smell something funny in the air, it’s probably just the rather large plate of crow I’m presently dining on. As hoped, Homeland not only found a reasonable end to this plotline, but did so by weaving it into the important threads with a directness that was simultaneously unexpected, and painfully obvious, given how consistently the writers have shown that they know what the show is really about. Now let’s just hope they can do the same for the Ninja-Terrorist-S.W.A.T. team from two weeks ago.

So there you have it, great shows that gave fans some really terrible plotlines. Do you have any picks of your own? Let us know in the comments below.