10 Terrible Episodes That Almost Ruined Great TV Shows

10. Lost: Stranger In A Strange Land

This episode is so bad, executive producer Damon Lindelof actually used it as an example of why ABC needed to give the creators an end date to the show. If the network didn’t let them wrap up soon, he said, the writers would have to keep making episodes like this.

In this episode from the show’s third season, the flashback motif has officially been exhausted. We basically know everything important about these people at this point, and so we’re now getting flashbacks filling in details absolutely nobody was asking to be filled in. Here, we find out the thrilling story about how Jack got his tattoos, finally answering the question of what they mean, a question which nobody but Kate was asking.

And what do they mean? His tattoo translates to “He walks amongst us, but he is not one of us”. What a bombshell, right?

It’s not that anything in this episode is terrible, but it’s just such a classic example of a filler episode. Nothing is accomplished at all, and the flashback is pretty much a complete waste of time. After this, it became clear that the creators needed to start working towards an ending as soon as possible.

Luckily for fans, ABC would quickly give the writers that end date they wanted. It only took boring episodes like this to finally accomplish that.