10 TV Shows That Completely Wasted Great Characters
8. Once Upon A Time - August
This one was deeply frustrating for fans of ABC’s long-running
“Twin Peaks, but with the denizens of Disneyland as its cast” mystery series.
Some arcs way outstayed their welcome on the show and, despite a stellar,
grounded turn from lead Jennifer Morrison and spectacularly hammy work from
villains Lana Parilla and Robert Carlyle, the series struggled with some
painfully flat characters like Ginifer Goodwin’s thankless role as Snow White.
This fact made it endlessly annoying when the show finally gave a decent love interest to its heroine in the form of charming con man August, a shadowy figure whose decision to help out our heroes in season two is thrown into question when flashbacks reveal tantalizing hints at his morally complex backstory.
That is, until the writers forgot about the character during a season break, leaving him sitting in a hotel room turning to a wooden puppet (it doesn’t make any more sense with context) for half a season and eventually abandoning his burgeoning romance subplot to get rid of the fan favourite. To quote Ryan Reynold’s cameo in Harold and Kumar, But—why?