10 TV Plotlines You Forgot Were Completely Abandoned
Oh yeah, what ever happened to that?
Television is an ever-changing medium, and that can often be exciting or infuriating. It's exciting when you get to spend dozens of hours bonding with characters and learning about them, but it's infuriating when the writers flat out abandon major storylines and hope you'll be too forgetful to notice.
Worst of all, half the time it actually works. The average show is so freaking long and there are so many things to keep track of that you won't notice as the writers sweep a whole plot under the rug never to be seen again. If you do notice and were hoping for any sort of closure at all, too bad. This is the wonderful world of television, where things can vanish into thin air and you're expected to pretend they never happened.
Usually it's a result of actors suddenly quitting, fans negatively responding to a story, or the writers just plain getting bored. Either way, since there was so much else going on, the average person will finish the series without even realizing a storyline was completely dropped.
From relationships that never went anywhere to season finale cliffhangers that were promptly ignored, here are 10 TV plotlines you totally forgot were dropped from the show.
10. Abed's Girlfriends (Community)
Community isn't as obsessed with romance as some other sitcoms, but it still allows its characters to date when appropriate. Usually these relationships have clear beginnings and endings, yet any time a love interest for Abed is introduced, it's instantly dropped from the show.
The first instance of that was in Season 2 when Abed sparks a romance with Secret Service Agent Vohlers. It's tremendously cute and everyone thinks so, yet Vohlers is never mentioned again after this episode. The same thing happens in Season 4 when Abed meets a girl named Rachel (Brie Larson) at a school dance. They're insanely perfect together, but that's the only time she appears that year.
This is rectified in Season 5 when Rachel actually becomes a recurring character, and she and Abed date throughout the season. That's a major plot point in some episodes, so it seems she's now pretty important to the series, right? Then, in Season 6, Rachel completely disappears. It's not like she and Abed even broke up; her storyline is just abandoned.
Of course, Community lampoons this in a typical Community way by having Abed ask the question the audience is asking: "What happened to that girl I was dating?" Still, referencing it doesn't make it any less annoying that the show has just wrapped up its final season, and Rachel was apparently just banished into the Phantom Zone.