10 Awesome TV Twists You Never Saw Coming

Great moments that had us talking at the water cooler the next day.

It's easy to praise the great twists in cinema - something like The Sixth Sense, where it turns out that...yeah, we've all seen it. However, some of the great twists that always get overlooked come from our masters of television.

Picture, for a second, that The Sixth Sense were actually a TV show. The Bruce "Casper" Willis twist would come at the end of the pilot, but then they'd have to keep the narrative flowing and turning for six or seven seasons to come; Casper McClane would have to go to a psychic and maybe learn how to return to his corporeal form. Hell, at some point in Season 3, the writers would probably send some kind of ghostbuster after him, more than likely one that's being played Zeljko Ivanek.

So, in praise of the great twists in recent television history, let's do a countdown of some great moments that had us talking at the water cooler the next day. Needless to say, there are immense, terrible, awful, meddling, pulsating spoilers to follow (for Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Reaper, Lost, Justified, The Americans, Homeland, Arrested Development, Heroes, and Orphan Black).

10. God Wants Sam To Keep Working For The Devil - Reaper

Reaper TV Show
The CW

Reaper is one of those tragically-cancelled television shows renowned for two things - being the only good thing the CW has ever created, and the complete and utter lack of people watching it.

This is a shame, because the show is one of those splendid "buddy shows", with a whip-smart cast and a premise with lots of potential. The show spun us the yarn of Sam, a ne'er-do-well who discovers on his 21st birthday that his parents sold his soul to the Devil, and that he would be charged with working as the Devil's bounty hunter, recapturing Hell's escaped souls until the time he died.

For some reason, this deal didn't much appeal to a slacker whose sole source of exertion is trying to sleep with his coworker, so Sam spends much of the series trying to find a loophole in his contract to get out of his deal. After a long and complicated series of events too intricate to explain here - and that you should just probably watch on Netflix for yourself - Sam ends up challenging the Devil, Charlie Daniels-style, to a game of quarters, the winner leaving with control of Sam's soul.

Things seem to be going great for Sam until the moment an angel comes down from Heaven and breaks Sam's wrist, telling him that God has a plan for him. Erm, what? Yeah, that was my reaction, too. It was actually pretty intriguing when placed in context, but the show was promptly cancelled after this episode aired, so we never truly got to see the fallout from this divine intervention.

What was a comedy adventure show produced by pot-master Kevin Smith ends with our hero having a broken wrist and an indefinite contract with Satan. So...yay?

9. Nathan Is Claire's Dad - Heroes

Nathan Heroes
NBC

As you may be able to recall from the ramblings of that friend or coworker you had who never shut up about the show for about a year but then was strangely silent during the last three seasons, Heroes is about what happens if people with superpowers actually existed in modern day society and had about two characters that didn't make you want to drown something.

If it had stayed at the quality of its first season for the course of its entire run, it probably would have been a hugely influential piece of TV, but is sadly now only something you pass on your DVD shelf and go, "Oh yeah...." Heroes didn't have a great many narrative twists, opting instead to just work with catchphrases, but it did have one or two shockers in its time.

It turns out that Nathan (the show's flying politician that no one likes) was the father of Claire (the titular cheerleader of "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World"). Whoa! That doesn't sound like much, but that was huge news back in the day.

The twist never really amounted to an awful lot besides Claire throwing a brick at Nathan's car once, but boy oh boy, when we nerds found out who it was that was on the other end of that phone, we all gasped at once... and then cried ourselves to sleep for the next four years.

8. Philip Kidnaps Amador - The Americans

The Americans

Odds are you don't watch The Americans, which means that you are both missing out on the strongest first-year drama in years, and that you're part of the problem. The Americans takes place in the 1980s, when the Cold War was getting hot (if you know what I mean) and stars two very hot Russian sleeper agents masquerading as Americans, trying to take down the country from within. It's light family fare. With a premise like that, it was only a matter of time before one of our agents kidnapped an FBI agent. Too bad it didn't happen on purpose. While deep undercover as the fiancée of a woman who could inadvertently give the Russian high command some privileged information, Philip runs afoul of her ex-boyfriend, a lonesome FBI agent named Amador. Trying to avoid suspicion, Philip opts to stab the man and put him in his trunk. Things spiral even more out-of-control from that point, and the show turned promptly into something you absolutely need to be watching.
In this post: 
Lost Justified
 
First Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Kevin Lanigan is a fun-loving Sagittarius who enjoys long walks on the beach and sunsets. While running a popular blog called Chekhov's Gunman, Kevin hopes to one day write the best movies and television you can complain about on the Internet. One of those movies, entitled IT DIDN'T TAKE, just opened up on Indiegogo and would appreciate all donations. Rosebud is a sled.