TV Fanatics Share Abandoned Plots Television Writers Hoped We'd Forgotten

Judy?

Judy Winslow went up the stairs and never came back down on Family Matters.

- Hat_Skeleton

Ain't No Mountain High Enough

I remember in The X-Files where the main characters find a stash of government secrets hidden in a mountain, then next episode they're back at the FBI building ... and it's never mentioned again.

Pissed me off. It took like 60 episodes to get them to the climax in that mountain, just to pretend in the following episode and season that it never happened.

- hightide89

Dog Or Wife?

Brooklyn Nine-nine: is Kelly Skully's dog or his wife? We still don't know!

- totalst8ofeuphoria

Great Friends, Terrible Parents

Every time a character had a child on Friends. They would pop up whenever convenient then vanish. With Ross' son it kind of made sense because his ex had custody, but then Rachel and Ross had their baby and it seemed to barely impact on their lives.

- little_beanpole

Casual Pirates

In Hamlet, Hamlet casually gets kidnapped by pirates. Mentions it once and never again.

- Rose__Queen

All A Dream

In Married with Children season 6, Peggy and Marcy are pregnant. This is a big element of the first half of the season. Then actress Katey Sagal, who was pregnant in real life as well, had a miscarriage and rather than have her work through the remainder of the storyline, they scrapped it altogether. It was explained away in an episode in which Al dreamed he was a detective. At the end, it is revealed that everything up until that point in the season, including the pregnancies, was a dream.

Also, in season 7, the Bundy family adopts their little nephew Seven. He has some small parts in half a dozen episodes, before he mysteriously disappears and is never seen again.

- Jack-A-Roe33

Ghosted By Ghost

Ghost literally just disappeared from the last season of Game of Thrones with no explanation. I had his character for a fantasy league, ugh.

- sydvaca

Zuko's Mom

Avatar: The Last Airbender totally abandons the story of Zuko's mom. I know they wrapped it up in the comics, but still they paved so much of the back story in the series and then just completely dropped it. We got a whole episode about her disappearance and everything. Also, they mention the Zukos grandfather was Avatar Roku, but aside from one line we don't learn anything else about any of that at all and it's completely irrelevant.

There's even a joke about it in the sequel, Legend of Korra. One of Tenzin's kids asks Katara what happened to Zuko's mom. Katara says something like, "Aahhhh yes, it's an amazing story, it all started when--" but she's immediately interrupted and it's never mentioned again.

- SenecaRoll

Trade With Mexico

In Handmaids Tale, there's an entire episode where June learns that handmaids are going to be traded to Mexico for valuables, since Gilead's economy will only work if they trade. Gilead doesn't have anything of value but Handmaids, since they abandoned all factories and whatnot. Only this super crucial plot point gets abandoned and all we get from the episode is that June learns her husband is alive. They probably could've done more with that.

- CapriciousSalmon

Chicago

In the failed backdoor pilot for a Supernatural spinoff called Bloodlines, it's revealed that Chicago is being run by five monster families. That just never gets mentioned again. Chicago is full of monsters! Shouldn't they be checking up on that?!

- violue