9 Times TV Shows Failed To Hide The Passage Of Time
7. Nancy Marchand Died Between Seasons & Was Replaced With A TERRIBLE CGI Double - The Sopranos
Between filming of the second and third seasons of The Sopranos, actress Nancy Marchand - who played Tony Soprano's (James Gandolfini) mother Livia - died in real life.
This forced creator David Chase to abandon a planned season three plot where Livia would testify against her son, but rather than simply have Livia die off-screen, the decision was made to create a final scene between mother and son with the help of then-primitive CGI technology.
In season three's second episode "Proshai, Livushka," unused takes of Marchand from previous episodes were combined with VFX replacements to create a double of Livia - an unfortunately unconvincing one which was widely mocked by fans even at the time of the episode's release.
While it's easy to appreciate Chase's intent here, to give Livia a fitting send-off, ultimately his attempt to fight the wheels of time and deny Marchand's death just proved intensely distracting.
As a result, the terrible CGI doubling is by far the most memorable aspect of an episode that should've been a powerful exploration of Tony's conflicted grief.