10 Things Television Fans Found Too Distracting
7. Episodes Aired Out Of Order
A lot of thought and energy goes into determining the order in which a story is told, and that's especially true when it involves a lot of different characters. As a result, it's incredibly important for a TV series to air its episodes in the correct sequence, but they don't always manage to do so.
Every so often, a series will end up with its episodes airing out of their production order, and when it happens, it can leave the viewers distracted and confused. This is especially true when the series first debuts, and it usually leads to early cancellation.
After all, airing a series out of order can leave the character arcs confusing, and it can mess with their relationships since the writers clearly developed the episodes in a linear way. One of the highest-profile series to suffer this fate was Firefly.
The first episode that aired was "The Train Job," but it wasn't the first episode, so viewers were introduced to a world with absolutely no explanation of who the people were, why they were there, or what they were doing. That was all covered in the episodes that should have aired beforehand, but the executives at Fox stepped in and tanked the series.