7 TV Shows That Suddenly Dropped Major Plot Threads

1. Alias Thrives On This Crap. Over and Over.

The second season of Alias ended with one of the craziest cliffhangers in recent memory, with lead character Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) being knocked unconscious, waking up in Hong Kong, and discovering she was missing for two years. Oh, and her boyfriend, Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan) was now married.

The show was unable to live up to the potential of the twist and the mystery was unraveled mid-season as Sydney having her memories removed so she could properly hide magical ancient sperm that she didn't want the bad guys to impregnate her stolen eggs with - and I swear I didn't make that up. So the next stage was getting her back together with Vaughn.

First step? Make his wife, Lauren (Melissa George) a villain since the audience already hated her. Vaughn is badly injured at the end of the season, and while he's in the hospital, it's somehow revealed that he was brainwashed by Lauren into marrying her. Well, almost. That scene was cut from the final episode. It was left in such a late cut of the episode that not only did the ABC website's episode summary include a mention of the brainwashing until someone noticed the problem, but Vaughn addresses the brainwashing in the next episode.

The show was a complete mess at this point, and it got worse. In the season finale, Vaughn kills Lauren to save Sydney's life, but not before she tells Sydney about a safe deposit box she needs to investigate. Sydney finds a bunch of documents she needs a black light to read, and all we see is: The CIA project written about on the pages in the box is named SAB-47 - Sydney's initials and the show's magic mythological number. SAB-47 started on Sydney's date of birth and was signed off on by her dad. Sydney crying as she reads everything. Then her dad shows up and says she was never supposed to find those pages. Smash to credits. Yes, it looked like Sydney's whole life was a secret CIA project run by her dad. The internet was abuzz, and that was amplified, when, AGAIN, ABC posted a summary that included references to deleted footage:

In Wittenberg, Syd opens the safe deposit box and finds a top secret document. She cries as she learns that Jack wasn't in prison after Irina betrayed him, that Vaughn's father William worked for him, and that he has documented her entire life, as well as Nadia's. Jack appears and says she was never supposed to have found these documents

That was edited to read like this:

In Wittenberg, Syd opens the safe deposit box and finds top secret documents. She cries as she peruses files documenting her life, each one bearing Jack Bristow's signature. Jack enters and says she was never supposed to have found these documents.

Not too bad, right? Hey, they only cut out what they decided to save for the next season...right? Wrong. Worried they made her dad too much of a bad guy, the cliffhanger was retconned so that it turned out the documents revealed Sydney's dad killed her mom because her mom had hired someone to kill her. And that was the end of SAB-47.

Which unresolved TV plot threads annoyed you the most? Let us know down in the comments.