Wall Banger/Live-Action TV

""God. I've watched this episode several times now, and I still just wince in pain at this scene every time.""

- Agony Booth's recap of "Threshold"

It's kinda hard to "just relax" when something bad happens in a TV show that could easily have been fixed in other ways.

'''No Real Life examples including news broadcasts, Executive Meddling and Fan Dumb. The former is just asking for trouble and the latter two should be posted on their own pages.'''


 * Babylon 5
 * Battlestar Galactica
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer
 * Angel
 * CSI
 * Deadliest Warrior
 * Disney Sitcoms
 * Doctor Who
 * Torchwood
 * Friends
 * Heroes
 * House
 * Law and Order
 * Lost
 * Nickelodeon Sitcoms
 * I Carly
 * The Office
 * Power Rangers
 * Seinfeld
 * Smallville
 * Stargate SG-1
 * Stargate Atlantis
 * Stargate Universe
 * Star Trek
 * Star Trek Enterprise
 * Star Trek the Next Generation
 * Star Trek Voyager
 * Supernatural

Other Series, Part 1

 * Dark Shadows: After watching nearly an entire series of vengeful witch Angelique trying to undermine EVERY piece of happiness Barnabas Collins gets, Barnabas decides that he loves her based on a vision where he saw Josette's son making out with a woman who bears a physical resemblance to Angelique, never mind that Angelique is RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATH OF JOSETTE, AS WELL AS MOST OF HIS FAMILY, along with several Kick the Dog moments thrown in there as well.
 * Myth Busters with their first Viewer's Choice special. The myths were all so easy to test that they could easily have been used as "extra scenes" on the Discovery website. That doesn't make the average viewer look good.
 * The Mythbusters can't exactly control what their viewers request. What would it say if they asked viewers for myths, and then ignore the responses they get because they don't like them?
 * The producers of Myth Busters admitted to trying to make sure something is destroyed dramatically in every episode. Because we poor drooling fans can't be happy unless we see a "big boom" every week.
 * Sssshhhhh! We're trying to watch the 'splosions!
 * The scientific method is still present. It's just that most of the experimentation gets edited out in favor of Adam hurting himself or things being blown up.
 * Some viewers would love to see more science. And then promptly see how it can be applied to blowing stuff up.
 * Certainly, the underlying science has become less and less important as time progresses - as has the engineering and much else. Big explosions are nice but more explanation would be nice...
 * Landry and Tyra killing a man who had tried to rape Tyra and then dumping the body in the second season premiere of Friday Night Lights. Within minutes, fans were lighting up message boards about how this development completely went against the realistic, intimate portrayal of small town life the show's first season had done so well. It was highly unpopular with critics, also; not one has yet come forward to defend it.
 * One episode of My Wife and Kids involves the Kyle women inventing a holiday, "Sweethearts Day", expressly for the purpose of forcing their men to buy them diamonds. Michael gets Jaye pearls when she displays a bad attitude over the phone and encourages the other men to do the same; of course, they don't, and Michael spends the rest of the episode attempting to apologize. What made the episode a Wall Banger was that it made Jaye look completely faultless, ignoring the fact that she invented the whole thing because, as she declared, Michael needed to prove how much he loved her by buying her diamonds -- completely ignoring the years of happy marriage and their three children. Quite aside from making Michael look like an idiot for going along with such bullshit, Jaye comes off as an ungrateful materialist, and is held up as the protagonist in the story for it. What an uplifting message for female viewers. And it isn't like he got her feces. Pearls cost money too. Should given her a homemade gift. A liquid home made gift.
 * The problem with this one is that Michael's Jerkass actions gave Jay a valid point, but they chose to have her act even worse. She implied that diamonds compared to pearls was equivalent to a damn near endless supply of family-legendary blueberry pancakes compared to a few strips of raw bacon. Actually no, it wasn't equivalent. The pearls compared to diamonds was a 3/10 compared to a 10/10. The latter was a 4/10 compared to a 10/10.
 * The 1998 Merlin miniseries climaxes with the Good Guys defeating the Evil Queen, who had just fought Merlin to a stalemate in a cool magical battle, by turning their backs and disbelieving. It is set up, but it's still an anticlimax.
 * Kamen Rider Faiz contained a running rivalry between hero Takumi (and his alterego, Kamen Rider Faiz) and Kiba (and his alterego, the Horse Orphenoch). This began as a case of Living With the Villain (even though both are basically nice guys), but soon descended into pure farce. The Faiz Transformation Trinket was frequently stolen and used by the bad guys just long enough for Kiba to assume that THE Faiz had done it. Eventually, they each found out who the other was; even then, the rivalry wouldn't stop. At one point, they're trying to make up with each other, but things just get worse because their friends can't be bothered to accurately memorise one simple message. By the fifteenth skirmish between Takumi and Kiba, it starts looking a bit contrived.
 * Made all the worse by the fact that just two years before, Kamen Rider Agito had a similar Rider rivalry storyline that was resolved with actual logic and intelligence: one person believes that Agito is a murderer while befriending him in his civilian identity. When he learns they're one and the same, he drops the murderer idea because he knows the man behind the mask well enough to realize that he'd never do such a thing.
 * In the show Brainiac Science Abuse: One episode had a viewer mail question, "Will those things that make your bike sound like a motorcycle make it run faster". They did a test of it. When they did the bike run with the motorcycle sound device, the run was faster by the previous run (without the device) by one second. They instantly stated that the device will make your bike run faster. Yeah. Studies include margins of error for a reason...
 * They tested the Brown Note and outright lied about the results to make it funnier. They gave up any shadow of being a scientific or educational show right there.
 * They also faked the results of dropping Alkaline Metals in water, as proven on Myth Busters. (The one that, in theory, should've produced the biggest explosion was so heavy that it produced only a little explosion. So Brainiac Science Abuse goosed it with another explosive when they filmed it...)
 * The X Files season 9 episode "Jump The Shark" (one can only presume the title was meant to be ironic) gave the initial appearance of being a tongue-in-cheek comedy episode centred on fan favourites The Lone Gunmen, only to in the most shamelessly moronic manner imaginable. They quite clearly , and yet they didn't even try. And if for some reason that wasn't possible, why would  ? And what the hell was the point the bad guys' plan in the first place:  just for kicks?
 * "Audrey Pauley", from the same season, the one where Reyes spends most of the show in a dollhouse. Seems to have been filmed from five completed pages of script. Nor does it help that the villain may as well have the word "EVIL" tattooed on his forehead, yet no one suspects him.
 * On the trail of a cannibal killer, the third season of Bones ended with the Character Derailment of Zack, in a last-second reveal that he was an apprentice cannibal killer. With no lead-in or explanation whatsoever. The writers admitted they made their decision at random, and it was hastily written in two months before the shooting. Next season, it will be revealed that Booth is an Iraqi transvestite prostitute during the season finale, no doubt.
 * Jossed. Booth only had a brain tumor that let him see Stewie from Family Guy, among other problems. There are a few who were furious that  The producers said it would not be All Just a Dream, but they appear to have used a loophole -- apparently, it isn't just a dream if Booth is acting on the memories of his hallucinations in real life...
 * The tumor is in and of itself a major Wall Banger. It was used to explain Booth's "hallucinations" in earlier episodes, even though they were clearly portrayed as having happened! When Booth sees the ghost of an old friend who died, Brennen thinks it's ridiculous. Then later, without knowing it's a ghost, she sees him too and has a conversation; then when she looks away, he disappears. This strongly suggests that the ghost was real. The point was to show one of Brennan's flaws -- that she couldn't understand how Booth could have faith in something less tangible. But they ruined that by Doing in The Wizard and having Booth have a brain tumor. They may have meant for the ghost to still be real and just do in everything else, but One Shot Revisionism (or one-shot non-revisionism) is hard to keep out of this section.
 * In a recent episode of The Unit, the Unit is called in to help defuse a hostage situation. Instead of bringing in a team of expert soldiers to clear the building out like expected, they send a few troops to train the local SWAT team in basic room-clearing tactics. When the issue comes up about shooting around hostages, the Unit has the SWAT officers train to deal with this by firing between their moving teammates with live ammunition(!). Then, when the time comes for the assault on the terrorists, the Unit troops (who are supposed to be advising the SWAT team and haven't participated in any of their clearing exercises up until this point) lead the way wearing civilian clothing and armed with pistols when the rest of the SWAT officers are properly armored and armed with submachineguns. Isn't this show supposed to be somewhat realistic?
 * In another episode, terrorists used chlorine gas pumped through the municipal water system. The average municipal water system already has some chlorine pumped into it. And chlorine is neither tasteless nor odorless -- people would smell it before it could kill them (else no one could chlorinate the municipal swimming pools). And if the pipes were completely dry, it would take an obscene amount of chlorine to get it to ground level. Chlorine hugs the ground, which is why it was used in WWI to target trenches. Combine with it being an open air environment, and.... ouch! Understood, they don't want to give real terrorists any ideas that would work, but still...
 * There is an episode of Wishbone in which Wishbone is wrongly accused of knocking over trash cans and covering yards with their contents. The culprit is a much larger, more foul-smelling dog (though in the humans' defense, Wishbone is the only character who specifically mentions the smell, so it's possible that only his sensitive nose can detect it). His primary accuser is a female dog catcher who appears married to the idea of "he was there; therefore, he is guilty." The height of the stupidity in that episode is a scene in which Wishbone, chasing after the other dog, passes in front of the porch ... and immediately, the dog catcher steps down, snaps a photo, and says "They always return to the scene of the crime!" The closeup shot of Wishbone, sitting there and staring up at the camera, without any of the garbage visible, is treated as conclusive proof by the other human characters. This is exacerbated by the fact that the tip of the actress's shoe was visible in the shot of the porch as Wishbone passed in front of it. So she only saw Wishbone, and didn't notice the much larger brown dog right in front of him, and didn't even consider the possibility that it might be someone else? It gets better, though -- when Wishbone finally catches up with the other dog, and contrives that the humans see it at the same time as a garbage-covered yard ... really ...
 * The episode was meant to illustrate the dangers of relying on circumstantial evidence. If memory serves, Wishbone's human "friends" began to collect hard evidence which strongly suggested that a larger dog had made the messes, such as bite marks clearly much larger than Wishbone's mouth. Guess how far that got them.
 * In Walker Texas Ranger, the whole 2-part episode about AIDS -- especially Haley Joel Osment saying, completely deadpan, "Walker told me I have AIDS." At least it made for a great Walker, Texas Ranger Lever.
 * That one episode about Satanism. A boy is setting up Halloween decorations. His mother goes inside and turns on the TV. AT ONCE (as usual on the show) the desired program comes on without a channel change or a commercial. The news guy says something to the effect of "CRAZY KIDNAPPING SATANISTS ARE KIDNAPPING AND SACRIFICING PEOPLE" in about three seconds. The mom panics and runs outside immediately. In the twenty seconds (maximum) she's gone, the satanists grab the boy, paint a perfect pentagram verrrry slowly, and drive off slowly without being seen and while cackling.
 * There was one episode where teenage girls are being auctioned off over the internet. If you know ANYTHING about computers, then this may be more hilarious than the average Guilty Pleasure "Walker"... The auctioning page was encrypted. The method? All the letters and symbols were randomly switched. No multiple redundant passwords -- just random gibberish. They spend upwards of forever figuring that out -- but then, who wants to use an encryption system that has no decryption system? How would the bidders get at the site?
 * The heroes also have to guess a password. You'd think that an international slave ring's site would, after three incorrect password guesses AT MOST, activate a kill-switch or send fake information. It wouldn't be that hard, even when the show was running. After all, the alternative is life in prison.
 * "Mr. Monk and the Astronaut", on Monk. Civilians are allowed to wander around an air force base and handle live missiles (which aren't left lying around like that) without being shot; one of the Air Force security personnel wields an AK- series rifle, even though the rest hold M4s and AK=whatevers are a Russian type of rifle; Monk runs right behind an active jet engine without being fried... They get pretty much everything else wrong, too.
 * But at least it had Burn Notice's Michael Westen as the astronaut. That counts for something.
 * One of the subplots in The West Wing episode "The Women Of Qumar" features C.J's bad reaction upon hearing that the United States is selling arms to Qumar, a Quracian Throwaway Country with a poor record for observing women's human rights. Whilst the overall point that the episode is making - that women in several Middle Eastern countries are subject to outrageously barbaric and inhumane treatment as second-class citizens, and that the United States' record of maintaining relations with these nations means that it shares some degree of complicity in this - is valid, the writers unfortunately choose to stress this point by having C.J behave in an unreasonably immature and unprofessional near-Straw Feminist manner about it to her male colleagues in general and to Toby in particular - who she seems to blame for the treatment of women in this region, despite his sole connection to the arms deal in question being that he informed her that it was happening; he had not displayed any kind of pleasure about or sympathy with what is going on. She gatecrashes a completely unrelated meeting Toby is having with some World War II veterans to beat her drum further about the issue with a simplistic application of Godwin's Law and tells Toby to screw himself before he can not-entirely-unreasonably call out her unprofessional behaviour. And it seems that we are supposed to agree with C.J here, since Toby is a man and therefore directly to blame for what is happening. This all has the effect of less making us consider what effect U.S foreign policy is having on women in developing nations, and more on what an irrational and unlikeable person C.J is. The slightly Narmy ending where C.J wails that "They beat the women!" doesn't help.
 * "The Long Goodbye." Class reunion! Family repression! Fly fishing! Alzheimers is sad! Wait, what show is this?
 * In an early season 5 episode (while they were still adjusting to Sorkin's abrupt departure) where Leo has ordered the EPA to edit a memo in order to promote "clean coal" and downplay the findings of environmental damage because they might hurt the industry. Now, editing scientific findings for political reasons seems like a prime example of corruption, and since when does the Bartlet administration fight to protect the coal industry? But when CJ confronts him, saying "We have a responsibility to the country," Leo responds: "We are the country." Louis XIV couldn't have said it better... The show eventually recovered, and had a very good final season, but I'm not sure anyone post-Sorkin ever wrote Leo right.
 * Life On Mars, American vs., "Things to Do in New York City when You're Thinking You're Dead." Or does the equivalent British episode also introduce a paint gun from left field? If it were a literal Deus Ex Machina, it wouldn't be here, but it's played like a step in an unspoken Plan of Sam's.
 * There's no paint gun in that episode. Gene fires his gun into the empty air and they use Angel's paint to fake a blood stain on his shirt. Dude was a painter, that's why he hung out on the roof all the time.
 * Okay, it's explained now, but ouch! The ending of the US version of Life On Mars counts. The finale episode was awesome until the last five minutes, when the writers pull an All Just a Dream (or rather, All Just a Matrix) ending on us and leave it uncertain how much of what we got invested in meant anything. It's full of incredibly lame puns to boot - some of which the characters know are lame. Still, it's a lovely Voodoo Shark because it explains all possible previous Wallbangers.
 * The ending of the UK Life On Mars counts as a Wall-Banger when you find out that you're supposed to consider it a happy ending. Should we be happy to see Sam so deluded and unhappy with his life that he would fall to a painful death just so he could get back to a fantasy? Especially since he had spent the last fifteen episodes whining about how he wanted to go home? This is not the way to manage a "Friend or Idol?" Decision.
 * Both shows spend ~15 episodes showing Sam in the throes of an existentialist crisis. The UK ending posits that it was up to Sam to choose which reality was real. In the US ending, Sam does choose a reality, but his choice is overturned by those in a third, realer reality. EXISTENTIALISM FAIL. In the US version, Sam's choice ultimately didn't matter; in the UK version, it was all that mattered.
 * And the doesn't even cover the epic misuse of the title. Life On Mars is both a metaphor for Sam's alienation and reference to the popular David Bowie song of the era. He. Doesn't. Go. To. Mars.
 * Home Improvement, towards the end, when the eldest son has to make a "Friend or Idol?" Decision between going to college straight out of High School and accepting an offer to play pro soccer in England. Everyone acts as though the former was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and the latter could wait four years. If anything, the opposite is true.
 * It proved to be even more of a Wall Banger when you remember that Jill, the boy’s mother, re-entered college successfully as a middle-aged woman, thus making the claim that college is a once-in-a-lifetime a total lie.
 * Oliver Beene. The first episode establishes that Lenny Bruce is Oliver's idol. We're then treated to Oliver re-enacting one of Lenny's routines in front of his delighted classmates. The bit? The celebrated 'Tits and Ass' routine, lampooning censorship, bowdlerism and all forms of hypocrisy regarding sexual expression. The Wall Banger? Oliver delivers a routine about... "Boobs and Ass." It appears that the writers didn't get the skits... Yes, "tits" is one of the seven words that can't be said on television, but still...
 * On All My Children, the writers retconned Erica Kane's abortion (which occurred right after Roe v. Wade) by saying that the ob/gyn who performed the procedure saved the fetus by implanting it in his infertile wife. Who then carried it to term and gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Even putting aside the sheer absurdity of such a procedure being performed in the mid 1970's, it retconned out of existence one of the show's signature and most groundbreaking stories.
 * Among many, MANY, examples found on 7th Heaven - one of the most troubling occurs in Season 6 when Mary returns to Glenoak following her banishment to Buffalo, New York. Annie welcomes her back with open arms as "the prodigal daughter," even offering her the apartment above the garage. When Matt, Lucy, Simon and Ruthie all raise the legitimate, reasonable concern that maybe Mary hasn't changed for the better and is taking advantage of Annie's kindness, Annie responds by banishing all four of them to the (unfinished) garage apartment, refusing to care for them at all until they apologize to her and Mary. It's a week before they do. Keep in mind, both Simon and Ruthie are minors (which makes this a matter for Child Protective Services). Eric does nothing at all to put a halt to this act of child abuse at the hands of his insane wife.
 * In the first-season finale of Farscape, the crew of Moya inadvertently allow their mortal enemy Krais to steal Moya's baby spaceship (don't ask), with Aeryn earlier having given him a tour of the ship's interior. Krais has broken his word, killed his second in command despite her obvious and illogical loyalty towards him, and thrown his career in the bin to get revenge on Crichton for killing his brother despite his knowing it was an accident. But they still let him walk around Moya as much as he wants and then act surprised when he screws them over once again.
 * No, no: Crais spent most of his first stay onboard Moya in a prison cell or under guard. They were largely surprised because he'd chosen to steal a ship that's not mature enough to go to hyperspace, which is suicidal, considering that the new mortal enemy was patrolling the area in a massive battleship - one of the reasons he had to return to help the crew again in the next episode.
 * Yes, it was suicidal, but why is that surprising? This is Crais. Crais already had a history of malicious idiocy, including trying to kill Crichton in circumstances that would end up making Maldis, a being that lives off misery and death, more powerful. Despite there being every likelihood Maldis would kill Crais afterward. They let Crais out of his cell and then stopped even watching what the maniac was doing.
 * Several moments in the seventh season of Two Pints of Lager and A Packet of Crisps count as Wall Bangers, including the incredibly forced relationship between Gaz and Janet. These two did indeed sleep together a couple of seasons back, but it was firmly established that it was a one-time thing; they both regretted it immensely afterwards, and they felt nothing romantic for each other - it was purely a moment of lust brought on by the two of them feeling lonely. It is also established that they feel no attraction towards each other afterwards (aside from Gaz being his usual pervy self). It also severely damaged Gaz's relationship with Donna, but they later reconcile after they realise just how much they love each other. The affair is rarely mentioned from that point onward (aside from the whole "who-is-the-father-of-Janet's-baby" dilemma). Until the seventh season, that is. Cue the Wall Banger when, pretty much immediately after, Gaz and Janet start feeling attracted towards each other again, completely out of the blue. Gaz and Donna get married, but their relationship fizzles out, also pretty much out of the blue, and then Gaz and Janet suddenly realise that they are in love with each other, sleep together again, and, instead of reacting furiously like she did the first time around, Donna just accepts the whole thing... and moves to London to be with Wesley, who she had, at the time, only known for a short while. The Gaz/Janet relationship does work, and is a major plot point (two-thirds of a triangle), once it's forced into existence; but still...
 * 2008 revival of Knight Rider. Pilot movie? Not bad. Could've done without the nanites; then again, turning KITT's CPU off disables the nanites. Then the series itself starts ... with the worst misuse of fire ever, capped by a person who inserted the key to an unbreakable code into his own DNA. "Genes don't work that way!!" KITT is armed in this series, but he steadfastly does not use his bevy of guns even when they would be useful. Apparently, having events proceed in a logical fashion is less a concern of the writers as padding out 60 minutes' worth of Shelby Cobra commercial - which is why the show didn't get canceled after four episodes.
 * Firefly, "The Message": How do you retrieve valuable artifical organs? Apparently, if you're in this show's universe, you send men with lethal weaponry and apparent orders to shoot the target specifically in the priceless organs. Idiot Ball or Joss taking his anti-corporate wankery too far? You decide.

Other Series, Part 2
""A vampire only cares about one thing... drinking... your... blood!""
 * New BBC series of Robin Hood. Specifically, the Series 2 finale. Can you say Character Derailment?
 * To be even more specific, the S2 finale is one awful, inexplicable decision after another. Out of nowhere, Marian decides to kill the sheriff in cold blood. Instead of immediately executing her for this, the sheriff drags her along on a covert mission to assassinate the king. Robin travels all the way to the Holy Land for just this one episode, and it only takes him five minutes to get there. King Richard turns out to be a complete imbecile who condemns Robin and his men to exposure in the desert after he takes the word of a shifty-eyed Saracen spy that Robin has come to kill him. Popular guest-star Carter returns only to . The sheriff shoots the king with an arrow but doesn't make sure the job is done before galloping away. And then IT happens. A weaponless Marian runs up to Guy and, for no reason at all, starts shouting: "I could never marry you! I love Robin Hood!" Guy responds by
 * To be fair, the often given description of events (as shown above) is slightly inaccurate; she tells him to 'stop' initially, and only when it is clear that he intends to carry on and take her for himself whether she likes it or not does she begin shouting "I could never marry you, etc."; it also doesn't mention that Marian puts herself between Guy and the injured, helpless King. It's still a wall banger by all accounts, but not quite as bad as described above.
 * There are Wall Bangers galore throughout the third season, culminating in the tenth episode, in which  (who has never been spoken of before and was presumed dead by both Robin and the audience) drugs both Robin and Guy with blow-darts as all three of them just happen to come across each other in the forest. He then tells the men the story of their past, revealing that  . He wants them to team up to save him. Why would Gisbourne care about any of this? (Does he look like the sort of fella who'd  ?) Why would Robin need Gisbourne's help? And why on earth would Robin agree to team up with the man who  ? No one knows, least of all the writers.
 * What makes matters worse is that the introduction of this was to make Robin Hood a Legacy Character and ensure that the series could continue; but since the show was cancelled after the season 3 finale, the whole contrived mess becomes a complete waste of time.
 * Let us not forget Kate, a character who deserves a seat of honor next to Lana Lang and Bella Swan in the Mary Sue hall of fame. The Replacement Scrappy of Maid Marian, Will Scarlett and the Saracen Djaq, a Faux Action Girl who is always getting kidnapped or injured as well as a Damsel Scrappy for always having to depend on a man to extract her from the situation, not to mention The Load who never does anything that could not have been achieved just as easily by one of the other outlaws, the Shallow Love Interest and Clingy Jealous Girl who follows Robin around like a demented cheerleader, a victim of Dawson Casting considering a thirty year old woman was being asked to play the part of a teenager, making her seem an odd Adult Child, storylines that constantly pushed her into center-stage at the cost of the original cast members and were usually started by having her act Too Dumb to Live. As the Creator's Pet, a huge amount of shilling went on, most of it to do with Kate's Informed Attributes, and to top it all off, no one could ever figure out why she was even necessary in the story itself. She wasn't even a character in the Robin Hood legends!
 * In an episode of The Famous Jett Jackson, Jett goes to his first day of school. (He was previously home-schooled because he was a highly-paid television teen actor). Long story short, he makes friends with a guy who used to be the popular kid in school until Jett came. The old popular kid wants Jett out of the way, and so he forms a half-assed revenge scheme. His plan is to frame Jett for stealing Jett's own cell phone, which a teacher had confiscated earlier. Not only is this beyond stupid, but it also works; Jett gets "caught" and is suspended, all before lunch. WTF!?! Even the character questions the sheer idiocy of his crime to his father later, in a montage scene.
 * In a late-season episode of M*A*S*H, "The Joker Is Wild," BJ, tired of hearing of the prankster exploits of Trapper, sets Hawkeye up in a major way. Problems abound:
 * Trapper was never a solo prankster and was Hawkeye's second banana. And neither of them could have pulled off their greatest stunts without Radar.
 * Pierce is undone by the 'joke that is never pulled'. Cool, except it was supposed to be BJ's physical prank that got him. No eggs in helmet, no victory.
 * BJ pulled this off with the aid of almost everyone. Not a solo prank.
 * Potter is also in on it. All in good fun, except his Chief Surgeon is now exhausted and has slept out in a field with no cover from shell or sniper fire, protected only against BJ's prank. This, from a man who ripped Pierce those few times he wasn't on the ball for surgery, in a place where, lull or cluster shelling, massive amounts of wounded can arrive at any time.
 * During Desperate Housewives otherwise fine season 5 finale: Susan has had her fair share of wallbanging moments, but her Dethroning Moment of Wallbangery is this:  And now...* bang* * bang* * bang*
 * Add on to that her actions in season 8, where she's acting like  was an unforgivable sin, and started moping around and committng petty crimes to get herself punished. really Susan, why don't you just wear a shirt that says "I am a  ?"
 * Season 6 finale had a tremendously embarrassing Wall Banger. Sam has found out that Andrew  and blackmails Bree in order to get her catering company. Keep in mind that: 1) Every evidence has probably gone lost, since the housewives even  ; 2) Sam learned the fact from a drunken Danielle; 3) Despite having done several questionable deeds, Bree is re-asserting her strict moral code. So, of course, what does she do?   Orson even pointed out how stupid and out-of-character that thing was. No wonder he left her.
 * The new show on A&E, The Cleaner, features a main character who FORCES people to go into rehab. Problem is that people only get clean when they admit that they have hit rock bottom and are willing to get help. If you apply Fridge Logic, those that the main character "helps" will likely just wind up being tortured by withdrawal symptoms before going back to the drugs.
 * On Wings, Joe the Butt Monkey/Doormat suffers a moment that even his wishy-washy nature can't fully account for. His and Brian's mother returns years after she abandoned them, having finished serving prison time for embezzlement. Brian is mostly just happy to see her; Joe, much less so. She casually ascribes this to Joe being 'tight-cheeked, even in the womb'. Later, Joe calls her out, saying his uptight nature came from having to take care of Brian and their addled father when she left. She responds that she is 'just a lousy mother,' and she is forgiven. So, to review: It is all right to spring up unannounced after two decades, deride a child you abandoned, and then squirm out of being responsible for the thing you derided them for by merely admitting your painfully obvious deficiencies as a parent. Yeah, Joe could stand to man up a degree or two, but the writers forced him to carry an Idiot Ball here.
 * A similiar wall-banger is when Helen forgives her mother for gambling away her wedding fund because... Helen is independent and doesn't need her mother as much or something and therefore losing 10,000 dollars in Vegas meant for your daughter is okay.
 * What's worth noting for both examples, by the way, is that neither mother ever appears again. The Hackett brothers' mother is forgiven for being a lousy mother and then makes no effort to be involved in their lives, even though the two were receptive to the idea in the end. Talk about Karma Houdini. Helen's mother also isn't for the wedding she lost the money to. Of course, maybe that is Fridge Brilliance - suggesting that Helen didn't forgive her after all.
 * In an episode of Family Matters, Carl hires a maid who happens to be very attractive. His wife Harriet doesn't like this and, at the end of the episode, manages to convince Carl that it's wrong for them to have an attractive maid, even though Harriet herself admits there was nothing wrong with her work. In the happy ending, Carl agrees to fire the maid. Apparently, attractive people deserve to be punished for their appearance regardless of whether they've done anything wrong.
 * Not to mention that they treat the maid drawing Carl's bath as if she was sponge bathing him.
 * What really hits this one is the Double Standard shown in other episodes, where Carl was just as wrong when a guy comes into their house to teach Harriet piano lessons and is hitting on her and laying it on as thick as he could without outright saying what he wanted.
 * What about every episode where Steve gets yelled at/thrown out/disparaged by Carl, Laura or Eddie? All in good fun early on, when Steve was being a pest. Sure, Status Quo Is God, but it started to wear thin - especially after all the times Steve went out of his way to help out the Winslows (including saving their lives on separate occasions). Yeah, Steve could be the most annoying person on the planet, but he genuinely didn't mean any harm. Can't say the same about certain members of his favorite family.
 * Greys Anatomy was a guilty pleasure until the 3-part season 2 finale, in which one of the characters goes ballistic and kills a patient on purpose. Do her coworkers try to stop her? Do they report her to the authorities? No, they all play along and cover for her when it goes foul.
 * That's a little unfair. She didn't kill him "on purpose", in fact, she broke all the rules to try and save someone she loves. Okay, it was a stupid plan, and completely insane, but Love Makes You Crazy and Love Makes You Dumb. Despite all this, the plan nearly worked...except for that pesky blood clot. There are plenty of Wallbangers on Grey's, but this isn't one of them...it's just a storyline about The Power of Friendship between the residents and The Power of Love between Izzie and Denny.
 * She killed the other patient who was supposed to get the heart.
 * ...who later becomes a tumour-hallucination who sleeps with Izzie. THAT was a wallbanger.
 * Other wallbanger related to Denny is what happened after his death - Izzy got suspended for a ridiculously short amount of time and after she goes back to the hospital... which shouldn't happen at all... she's all surprised and angry when the chief tells her that she will be watched and controlled for some time. And it is shown as perfectly understandable that she's furious, hurt and whiny about it! Yeah girl, you've just stolen a heart which was supposed to be given to another, sicker patient who probably died because of it, to give it to your Tru Wuv (because we all know that he is more deserving!), then you put said Tru Wuv in danger on purpose, you broke practically every existing rule of medical ethics, so why are they so mean to you? Those bastards!
 * Basically anything involving Izzy, Denny, and Alex. After Izzy recovers from her brain cancer and Denny goes away, she and Alex get married. Even though she was still obviously love with her dead hallucination/ghost fiance who she imagined she had sex with regularly. While still involved with Alex. It's not wonder that when she comes back to him after she abandons him, he tells her, basically, to get the hell away from her. And fans rejoiced because that meant Katherine Heigl was gone forever!
 * And then Lexie chooses Alex over Sloan. Even though Sloan had obviously matured and was ready to be her husband, she picked Alex, who decided they were officially dating in that episode. Oh and Alex is still a jerk.
 * The abrupt death of George. Why didn't you kill off Izzy instead? She was three times as annoying as George and at least George didn't screw up all the time. And how is it in character for George at ALL to up and decide that he wanted to be in the army?? He failed his intern test the first time, finally became a resident, and then decided to leave...?
 * Hahn's No Bisexuals moment, so gloriously quoted and documented on said page.
 * In True Blood, how the hell is the Fellowship of the Sun not on the list of most wanted terrorist organizations after sending a suicide bomber to a vampire gathering and then gloating about it in public television? It's clear that vampires are considered people under the law, and there were many human participants as well. How the hell is FBI not on their tail with charges of domestic terrorism?
 * Also there was that one ad for the show that said...


 * ...despite the fact that the show's entire premise is basically that vampires are people too.
 * People who are nonetheless capable of doing and often do do incredibly bad things. Perhaps the idea is to deliver a message from an in-universe perspective, that of the people bigoted against vampires.
 * In Two and A Half Men, Alan's mistreatment goes beyond horrible, like his ex-wife going more evil bitch, his son being an asshole no one would love, his brother always considering him a burden, etc., but for an entire episode plot! even everyone bet on how long till his stupid second ex-wife would kick him out! Does Chuck Lorre purposely do these things to every buttmonkey on his own shows?
 * The episode where Alan attempts to have sex with a hooker (and, being Alan, naturally fails). This was the point where Alan became no better than his brother.
 * The episode where he gets back with Judith after she kicks her husband, Herb, out. He seems to ignore the fact that she meddled in his relationship with Kandi in cruel intent and later gave her the divorce lawyer she used to screw him over even more and it ends with Judith deciding to break it up again because of how annoying he is in stead of a mutual breaking up or Alan having the balls to reject her in the first place. "The Unfair Sex" seems to be Lorre's favorite card to play when writing relationships.
 * Charlie Harper's funeral. Yes, there was the whole saga with Charlie Sheen insulting showrunner Chuck Lorre (and subsequently being let go by CBS for drug use and erratic behavior), but did he really need to go out like this? At his character's funeral, many of his ex-girlfriends (including several he helped out personally or financially on multiple occasions) take the opportunity to disparage him, almost the entire cast look like they'd rather not be there, and Rose (the woman he went to Paris with just before he died) refers to him as "blowing up like a balloon full of meat". The entire scene is an excuse for Lorre and the writing staff to take potshots (no pun intended) at Sheen - it's not funny or sentimental, just mean-spirited.
 * The newest episode the latest season. Its an episode where both plots are run on stupidity. The first plot has Walden freaking out because he and his girlfriend Zoey almost crashed their plane. Why was he freaked out? Because when they thought they were going to die, he told her "I love you!" while she screamed "I don't want to die!" which is an appropriate response for when you think you are going to die. When she goes on a trip out of country later and doesn't have time to talk to Walden about it, he assumes they're broken up, meets a girl in Zoey's building, and decides to take her back home. By the end, however, Zoey ends up apologizing for not saying "I love you", basically taking responsibility for him seeing another women. However, it has got nothing on the second subplot, which runs completely on Squick. Lindsay admits to being an alcoholic and spends most of the episode throwing up. We are forced to watch shots of Walden and Alan having to listen while she heaves in the bathroom, a shot of poor Alan cleaning up a puke covered toilet, and a whole sequence where Lindsay throws up on both Alan and Walden in a plane, with Alan slipping in a puddle of vomit. Even worse is at the end, when Lindsay admits to Alan that she loves him, despite all the crap she gives him, she ends up puking in his mouth. Just to remind us how awful the episode is, right before the episode ends, we hear her heave one last time. It was so awful that this troper's father, who has been a long time fan of Two and A Half Men, declared that he will never watch it again.
 * Spike TV's Surviving Disaster seems to like to use the Goofus and Gallant style of teaching the viewer what they should and shouldn't do during a crisis, with the dumbasses getting debilitatingly injured or killed for doing the wrong thing. Some of them you could marginally believe (like a whole crowd of panicked office workers getting flash-fried when trying to escape a building fire through its elevators), but the idiot halfway into their Earthquake episode has to take the Too Dumb to Live cake: seeing an SUV full of people tangled up in downed and possibly live power lines, what does he do? He calmly walks up to the driver's side door and tries to open it, all without making a single sound to let the people inside know he's coming, or to see if they're alright. Naturally, he gets electrocuted. What's worse, the five or so people in the car didn't even try to warn the guy until he was literally two seconds away from grabbing the door handle.
 * Speaking of which, during their Pandemic episode, one of the members of the group being focused on accidentally contracts the deadly flu by helping one of their neighbors unpack. To keep him isolated from the rest of the household, it's determined (and shown) that a quarantine room needs to be made. One problem: the quarantine room is made upstairs. Ignoring that the safest thing to do in that situation would be a dick to your friend and bar him from your house, having the quarantine room upstairs not only means you're forced to expose the rest of the household to your possibly sick friend for a longer period getting him up there than you would if the room was downstairs or in the garage or something, but it also means you'd have unnecessary and possibly lethal complications with disposing of the guy's body when he dies of the virus (as he does, in the scenario).
 * Let's not also forget about the two highly illegal tips that the show gives its viewers: how to break into and hotwire a car (complete with breaking the steering wheel lock and manually shifting the car into gear), and how to build a one-shot homemade silencer out of carpet and duct tape. Yes, they do give a token warning that the tips shown should only be used in the life-threatening disasters shown, and at your own risk, and they were used in appropriate ways (escaping from nuclear fallout and taking down a mall sniper, respectively), but really, it's rather hard to believe that even a channel that regularly treat its viewers like morons (Manswers, anyone?) would think showing you how to do stuff like that would be a good idea and not consider that maybe someone wouldn't heed their warning of Do Not Try This At Home.
 * One particular episode of Future Weapons features the "revolutionary IAR" meant to replace the M249 SAW due to multiple deficiencies such as an open bolt design, the light 5.56mm NATO round, horrifically unwieldy belt-feeding, overheating problems, and rounds cooking off in the barrel. How did they fix this? They slapped a heavier barrel on the M4 and Future Weapons decides the weapon is brilliant. The IAR is just as long and unwieldy as the SAW, still uses the 5.56mm NATO round, fires off an open bolt when in full auto, gets just as hot as a regular M4 (they just didn't "test" it the same way), and has 170 less rounds worth of suppressive fire than the original SAW (which, by the way, is designed to take M4/M16 magazines already). BRILLIANT!!! One wonders how much the network is paying the "ex-Navy SEAL" to lie through his teeth so badly.
 * Quite a bit less then it must have cost to bribe the United States Marine Corp to adopt either it or a very similar worthless piece of shit on a massive scale. The Army out and out said an automatic rifle with a magazine would lower the effectiveness and firepower of a squad. The SAW is supposedly going to be retained in smaller numbers for use "at the company commanders discretion" in the Marine Corp. If it really is left to them then will probably be mean "The SAW is still carried and used at all times with the automatic rifle being used only to replace a riflemen normal weapon". This was a lesson we learned 60 years ago in World War II: a bulky select fire automatic rifle is NOT an effective replacement for a real light machine gun. How the normally sensible Marines managed to come up with the utterly daft idea that less firepower at the squad level during an ongoing low intensity conflict were most combat happens at that level with only the weapons on hand readily available is a good idea escapes me!
 * The first episode of Monster Tracker, whose premise involves the host exploring animal traits and combining them to create realistic versions of mythical animals, had him investigating what it would take to build an anatomically correct dragon. Pretty intriguing stuff...until the final product was revealed: a perfect replica of a wyvern, a pseudo-dragon and its own entity in medieval mythology. And this guy is supposed to be a world-class artist specializing in these kinds of creatures.
 * The fact that Russell Hantz of Survivor: Samoa will claim how easy it is to win Survivor, ignoring the fact that he was rather lucky to not only be the Fan Favourite (and therefore have the producers trying to slant the show to keep him around), was fortunate enough to have found a hidden fruit tree that nobody else found, was lucky enough to not be caught emptying canteens and burning Jaison's sock, and most egregiously, had one of the stupidest casts in Survivor history. (First season not counting - they didn't know) Lessee how many errors they made...Galu decided to vote off Erik before touching Foa Foa who they had a 100% Majority over (Nevermind that even the minority tribe has made it to the end several times-That's the Aitu Four on the telephone right now), John changing his vote, Shambo voting personally, Brett, John, and Laura not taking the opportunity of practically being shown a map TO the idol and letting Russell find it again, Erik not using his idol, Shambo jumping ship, etc. Yep - it's definitely quite easy considering how often Survivor recruits maybe one or two Genre Savvy folks and a bunch of people who have never at all sen the show.
 * And regarding one of those bone-headed mistakes, John mentioned he did it because of the Purple Rock. The fact that Surivivor still does the Purple Rock despite how much controversy followed the one time they DID use it is definitely a Wall Banger. You'd think that they would try and give something like a nature quiz or a firemaking tiebreaker challenge...both of which have been done before. (Remember in Africa? Yeah - they had a nature quiz tiebreaker because they didn't have any vote countbacks) Apparently, they either don't realize how much of an impact the Purple Rock has on the game, or they do and want to keep it on in hopes of slanting the show towards the ratings machine. (Several players have betrayed their alliance in order to keep a purple rock from being drawn - Most notably shown in All Stars in which Rupert was voted out to avoid the Purple Rock)
 * What just recently transpired may possibly be the king of reality show Wall Bangers fused with an overwhelming Dethroning Moment of Suck; two players quitting within minutes of each other, with only 9 people and 11 days left, all basically because they couldn't stand a little rain. Their tribemates, both current and former, were well within their rights to be visibly disgusted with them. At least Jeff got yet another Crowning Moment of Awesome out of it by not only delivering a stealth "The Reason You Suck" Speech to both of 'em at once, but then put their torches on display at the Tribal Council site to remind them of their Epic Failure for the rest of the season.
 * In the fourth season The Man From UNCLE episode "The Prince of Darkness Affair, Part II", the villain steals a U.S. military rocket being transported by railroad. As if that wasn't enough, the plot really hit the wall hard when the villain sets up his launch complex on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, in a medium sized office building (using the interior as a missile silo). Not only that, he sets up his control consoles literally 25 feet or so away from the rocket (attempted justification was that the villain, an genius engineer, had created a miracle alloy and used it in a shield around the rocket exhaust, however that shield was only about 6 feet or so tall). But the plot starts to ricochet all over the room when Napoleon Solo, after a last second, nail-biter fight scene on the rocket gantry, dashes to safety approximately 10 feet away from the missile when it launches.
 * On Criminal Minds, in the episode where Reid got kidnapped, Hankel spies on people through their webcams. This troper may not be computer-savvy enough to judge how silly that part is, but even I know that sensible people close up their laptops when they're not using them, to protect the keyboard from dust, cat footsteps, etc. Yet the screens in Hankel's hideout shows views from laptops which have evidently been left sitting open, conveniently positioned to catch sight of their owners' transgressions. Did Mr. Tech Support convince them that closing the screens would wear out the hinges or something?
 * Reality Is Unrealistic as seen here.
 * At one point in "Zoe's Reprise" they suggest the copycat's latest murder was based on Altemio Sanchez ("The Bike Path Rapist"). Sanchez raped women in the woods, and manually strangled some of them. The copycat's victim was a man garroted with a wire on or near a bridge, dumped in the water, and discovered fully clothed. The way they conclude the copycat's first victim was based on The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run was also highly questionable, since the butcher never shot any of his victims, and there's nothing really supporting the assumption he lured his male victims from gay bars.
 * "Proof" is an overall good episode, yet at one point Reid states en passant that sulphuric acid is used to turn fat into soap. Anyone who has studied chemistry knows that sodium (or potassium) hydroxide has this effect on fat, while sulphuric acid digests organic matter. What makes this a Wall Banger is that: 1) Reid has a Ph.D. in Chemistry; 2) The effects of sulphuric acid on human tissues are shown correctly later in the episode.
 * Various episode have shown the team talking on their cell phones while on in the air, which is a federal crime. That's right federal agents committing a federal crime, multiple times.
 * The short-lived series Reaper featured a particularly painful Banger, when Sock developed feelings for his native-Japanese step-sister. Rather than work it out in a mature or even remotely commendable way, Sock basically told his sister "Your culture is too repressed, America is better because we're sexually licentious, come sleep with me." It more or less ended up as a hybrid of racism, xenophobia, and sexism. Nice job writers!
 * This has nothing to do with the writers and everything to do with characterization. This is Sock we're talking about. He never does anything in a mature or commendable way. Ever. Given the choice between emotional maturity or using his inexplicable silver tongue to get his way, (even in the most sexist, xenophobic manner possible,) he'll choose the latter 11 times out of ten.
 * On Rob & Big they hook Drama up to a lie detector to ask him a few questions. Drama says he heard that it doesn't actually detect lies and you can beat it, at which point the professional lie detector operator says this is complete crap and questions why law enforcement and the government would still use it if it could be beaten and didn't actually detect lies (as well as stating that a polygraph is 90% effective). Hmm... well, let's tackle this one at a time. The reason the still use it if it can be beaten is the same reason they still use speed cameras (which can also be beaten), yes you can do it, but it's not easy to do (lie detectors can be tricked by sending false signals, among other things, which isn't easy to do or common knowledge. Speed cameras can be beaten by going around 170 mph, which isn't possible in most cars and isn't exactly subtle). And no, lie detectors don't detect lies themselves but rather the physiological responses that go with it (which can be faked if you know what you're doing and only show up if you're consciously lying). And no, it's far from 90% effective due to various issues that can lead to false readings. Note that this troper literally wallbanged upon hearing the professional's response.
 * In one episode of Coronation Street, Graeme flirted with Rosie and told her she was "premiership material" (she'd recently been fooled into thinking her boyfriend was a local football star when he worked in a fast food restaurant) and she ignored him. Later on he flirted with Natasha as well and used the same line on her. She didn't give him the time of day either and she and Rosie compared stories casually and both were enraged to find this out. Never mind the fact it was just a pick up line, that neither of them swallowed it or that Rosie can apparently act like a tease to all the boys in the country, what they do next is a Dethroning Moment of Suck. Natasha calls Graeme up and accepts his date only to meet him in the pub and have Rosie pour a pint over his head. This whole skit was presented as two girls getting their own back on a sleazy guy when Graeme had done nothing wrong. And to top the moment off, Michelle made Graeme mop up the mess despite Rosie pouring the pint.
 * The Molly/Kevin affair storyline was just one long Wall Banger after another. Kevin did have affairs in the past but he and Sally had gotten back together for the sake of their two kids. And Molly had been portrayed as a sensible enough woman who would do anything for her man. Forget continuity, we need draaaaaaaaaamaaaaa. Insert Character Derailment and you have six months of an awful storyline which culminated in Sally getting breast cancer and Kevin opting to leave Molly to support her. Molly's reaction is one of shock that he's leaving her and she later accuses him of lying. It gets worse: she gets pregnant and she's not sure whether it's Kevin's or Tyrone's (her husband) and Kevin demands she have an abortion. This troper has yet to find a person who thought the storyline was good.
 * It Got Worse. Following Molly's death in the tram crash and everyone finding out that Molly's son was Kevins, Sally and the girls throw him out of the house. They're kind enough to let him back in for Christmas, but he leaves again to his own place. The Wallbanger comes in in the new year, he has an estate agent value the house, freezes his and Sally's joint bank account, and says he's divorcing her over her unreasonable behaviour! He completely fails to take any responsibility for what he's done, and appears to have no problem with making his two daughters homeless.
 * Charmed got a huge one in the fifth season. Phoebe suddenly decided Cole was the reason for all her problems and after a while never gave him another chance. She blamed him for being The Source of All Evil but conveniently forgot he was about to exchange the powers with someone else and she killed said person meaning Cole kept the powers and had to be killed. When he returned with a whole array of new demon powers resulting in him being invincible Phoebe decided he had to be vanquished without provocation purely after having a bad dream. Although later on he did bring it on himself. In fact Phoebe's entire character over the next three seasons was so unbearable that fans have even dubbed her PhoeME. She got better in the eight season though.
 * What makes this even worse is that Season 4 made it quite clear that Cole didn't choose to be the Source at all. The old Source possessed Cole to save himself after the sisters seemingly vanquished him. Cole's true mind was quickly suppressed and the Source merely pretended to be him until the time was right. The Source even referred to Cole as a (technically) separate person from himself. What sends this into Wall Banger territory is that the sisters eventually learned this - a wizard (without naming names) explicitly told them that the old Source had found an "escape hatch." After everything goes down and the Source is defeated, Cole is still referred to in a positive light... until Season 5. Then all of a sudden, the sisters acted like Cole had willingly betrayed them and was evil. Negative Continuity on a truly epic scale.
 * One from Glee, It's amazing that anyone (bar the cheerleaders) took Sue Sylvester's power trip seriously in the episode where she becomes glee club co-director. They act as if her group, "Sue's Kids", is some elite club that's a big deal, instead of a corral for the minorities (which she OUTRIGHT SAID it was.) The auditory rape they call "Keep Holding On" didn't help.
 * And then there's the fact that the entire episode was about how the majority of the glee club was pissed off that Finn and Rachel get all the solos. And in the end Mr. Schu gives a big speech about how they are all wonderful people. And the show ends with the aforementioned "Keep Holding On." Sung entirely by Finn and Rachel. Even though it's supposed to be about Quinn. Head. Wall. I believe you two are acquainted.
 * Quinn found out the sex of her baby at the ten week ultrasound. And then gave a month premature to a six month old. And she went through labor so fast that Rachel was able to tell Shelby that the baby was "a beautiful baby girl" before the next glee club was finished their performance. And despite Mercedes being in the delivery room when Beth was born she's able to get back to the competition in time for the results to be announced. Someone seriously needs to buy the writing staff a copy of "What to Expect When You're Expecting."
 * Not exactly. The child would have been conceived in September. Quinn gave birth at the end of the school year, so the baby would have been born at 8 months, approximately. I can't defend the rest though. The writers have obviously never taken a sex-ed course that covered pregnancy.
 * The Will and Grace episode "A Gay/December Romance" contains two wall-banging scenes in a row. In the episode, Will goes to an event at an art gallery, even though Jack tells him that it's known as a pick-up spot for young, attractive gay men who are looking for rich, older "sugar daddies," and vice/versa. Will is approached at the event by an older man named Alan (played by Hal Linden), who mentions right away that he's rich, and offers to take Will to all sorts of posh destinations. Will agrees, and starts spending all of his time with Alan, who buys him more and more extravagant gifts, and it gets to the point where Alan takes Will to a stable and buys him a racehorse. Will keeps justifying the situation to Grace, insisting that the two of them are "just friends," but when he mentions that Alan bought him a designer swimsuit and then insisted on staying in the dressing room when he tried it on, he FINALLY realizes that Alan is a sugar daddy who wants more than just friendship. But when he confronts Alan and very, very gently says he hopes that Alan isn't expecting anything, Alan acts shocked and outraged, and insists that he's just a generous man who likes being generous with his friends. Not only does Will buy this hook, line, and sinker, but the audience is expected to believe that Will was a jerk for even suggesting otherwise. That's the first Wall Banger, but the next scene is even worse. Will runs into Alan, who has a new, younger boy toy, and the boy toy is wearing an outfit identical to the one that Alan bought Will earlier. One might reasonably conclude that now, Will has realized that Alan really is a sugar daddy, and he'll call him out on it. No...instead we're supposed to think that this encounter is humiliating for Will, who now has to accept that not only did he ruin a worthwhile friendship, but that there are plenty of guys who are younger and more desirable than him who are glad to take his former place. Wait, what?
 * In the NCIS episode "Jeopardy", Ziva is suspected of accidentally killing a druglord's brother. How does Gibbs, who has been shown to care for the team like a second family react? Does he back Ziva up? NO! He completely turns on her, treating her like absolute garbage for almost the entire episode. And no one ever calls him on it.
 * In Gibbs' defense, he was dealing with a very dangerous agent who only came to his team recently, who often makes off-hand comments about killing someone or breaking bones/doing large amounts of damage to them (often to her fellow agents), and who he doesn't entirely trust- when he found out that the brother died, he probably thought that Ziva killed him intentionally or didn't realise that the blow she gave him was fatal- meaning that he was dealing with someone who might kill or hurt someone on his team, who he's known for a lot longer and does trust.
 * Plus, things got a lot more out of hand once the Director was abducted. If that'd happened in conjunction with another case, things would have gone differently, but Ziva killed someone they really needed- yes, she didn't know they'd need him and it was an accident, but the fact remains that she killed the one person they needed more than anyone.
 * I always thought the bigger problem with this episode was the fact that, at the end, the inconclusive autopsy indicates that Ziva likely was responsible for the suspect's death, but this is brushed aside by Director Shepard, and Ducky and Gibbs appear to have no problem with it. There is never any implication that Ziva suffers any consequences for striking a handcuffed man in her custody, regardless of death resulting.
 * IIRC, that episode had a scene where Ducky gives Gibbs his conclusions on the cause of death, and he says that he can't make a definite statement as to the cause as the condition the dead man had could have been set off by a number of natural things such as a cough or a sneeze. Gibbs then asks 'A blow to the throat?' and Ducky reluctantly says something like 'Well, yes, but we can't be sure...' and what I got from that was that no matter what, Gibbs would always think of Ziva as the cause of death, even if he couldn't prove it.
 * On an episode of Cheers the protagonists, who are ordinarily so wary of a trick from Gary (especially when they're in the midst of a feud with him as they are now) that they'll err on the side of jumping at their own shadows seeing tricks where they are not, do not consider for one single instant that the stranger randomly showing up after they won a basketball match with Gary's Tavern, showing a supposedly real X-ray for an injury they could be sued for (after he provides no references or credentials proving he's a real doctor, no less) and claiming that he'll settle for a check right now--for a sum that just happens to be exactly twice the sum they won in the match--just might be an imposter sent by Gary. Even the recurring regulars in the background don't speak up or find anything wrong with this situation. Can you say "out of character?"
 * "The Big Bang Theory" Season 3. A central pairing that didn't quite come out of nowhere, but it was previously extremely one-sided. There had even been a couple of disastrous 'dates' that never really got off the ground. Then, after three months hiatus, Penny just launched herself abruptly at Leonard. Lacking chemistry and credibility, this horrible trainwreck limped on, and every other character in the show appeared to be sucked down into some kind of Character Derailment in an effort to make the pairing actually work. It looked like it might all be over, and then the finale went for a really degrading and pathetic cliche. She got drunk (again) and dragged him into bed. Even Sheldon complained about it starting up again. Nasty.
 * The season 2 finale strongly implied that Penny had a Love Epiphany, so her reaction wasn't all that random really. The finale gave major build up for it. However, the aftermath of their break-up was handled badly. As a Penny/Leonard shipper, I'm ok with her struggling with the break-up, but Leonard sleeping with a slutty scientist is major Character Derailment. ESPECIALLY his "explanation" for it. Leonard has ALWAYS been shown to be much more considerate than that. He obviously still cared about her, so he should have known that sleeping with someone else would bother her! Have the writers forgotten how to properly write him?
 * Strongly implied? I had to rewatch it to find that bit, and it still came a bit out of nowhere, with the previous events. There isn't enough decent writing to account for it, seriously - there is still no credible explanation for why Penny would like him in the first place. But then, everyone has suffered appalling character decay this season.
 * The episode right before the season 2 finale had a major plot point about Penny saying Leonard's name while making out with Stuart. I'd say that that's sufficient evidence that she had feelings for him. It's likely that the 3 months he was gone were an example of absence makes the heart grow fonder. Unfortunately, the relationship wasn't executed well. Which is frustrating as it could have given some depth to the characters. Instead we get the trainwreck.
 * The Lily Kane murder trial from Veronica Mars. Even the shows most strident fans can't defend the ways the show bent over backwards to make sure  got away with Lily's murder. From  inexplicably arranging to have the smoking gun sex tape stolen (A tape which the cops never copied, BTW. Nor was it in a vault at the local's DA's office), to the charges for   trying to kill Veronica dropped as a case of "He said, she said," to the Defense destroying Veronica's credibility as a witness by revealing her medical records (a move that is patently illegal under American law and should've garnered a mistrial and criminal charges). The only thing they even tried to explain was why the owner of the home  tried to burn down to kill Veronica didn't testify (He as "suddenly moved away", suggesting he was bought off). Yes,  died a Karmic Death thanks to , but people still think he was a Karma Houdini since he got away with the murder.
 * I'm pretty sure it was stated that the tapes were copied but Logan got a hold of them too.
 * While not as bad,there is the the entirety of the serial rape case in season three. The Pi Sigma fraternity is suspected of the rapes by Straw Feminists, who want every single fraternity kicked off campus because of it. Then a girl finally accuses a Pi Sig of raping her - only for Veronica to discover she completely lied about it. This leads the dean of students to not only expel the lying accuser but sack the editor of the student paper for covering up the lie while stirring up the propaganda against the Pi Sigs. Despite this, the regents still vote to ban the frats. Let's summarize: The university kicks out the entire Greek system because ONE fraternity is suspected of rape, and even then the only outright accusation against them was false. Find wall, bang head, repeat.
 * Season 5 of The A-Team. Especially how the A-Team ended up working for the government in order to earn a pardon under General Stockwell's terms. The show's whole point was that they were running from the government. If the writers wanted them to get pardoned, they should have saved that whole arc for the series's last couple of episodes, not the beginning of a season.
 * Eureka pulled a wallbanger that even the show's limitless Phlebotinum couldn't excuse. When a temporal disruption causes objects from the 1940s to appear in present-day Eureka, these objects are specifically stated to displace existing 21st-century objects in their path, not overlap or merge with them. Places where these time-displaced objects appear include the chest of a living woman, who has a massive aircraft-ammo bullet appear close to her heart. She inexplicably doesn't hemorrhage to death in seconds, even though the bullet's arrival should've displaced several large blood vessels as well as sizeable chunks of lung.
 * In one episode of Haven, the killer of the week is making drawings of people, and killing them by doing things to the drawings. Someone drawn and then the paper folded up, folds him up as well. Someone draws a man, and then erases his eyes and mouth, he loses his eyes and mouth. Near the end, a drawing of a man is thrown in the water. The man falls over, starting to drown while out of water. The paper is nearby a dock, a man has time to heft up a long stick and try and draw the paper out. He stops however, and says rather blandly, "I can't get it." He then watches quietly as it drifts down into the deep. I cannot be the only one that shouted "JUMP INTO THE WATER AND GRAB IT!" Head. Wall. Pain.
 * All for the better, really. By the time he got that paper out it would be so manhandled that the guy would have died from his injuries anyway. The slightest touch can send someone across a room. Imagine the damage from wet paper. He totally deserved it, though.
 * Manny's decision to return to her parents house after her father threw her out because she got drunk and took her top off in front of a guy with a camera who made the video go viral around the school and called her a slut. Granted he had clearly mellowed in the year since, the fact that she later spends time trying to live up to his standards is particularly wallbang-inducing.
 * Degrassi the Next Generation: The second movie. Since the show no longer focuses on Degrassi grads, they needed a send-off for Spinner and Emma. This resulted in one of the worst cases of being Strangled By the Red String in TV history: Spinner and Emma, who have barely even interacted during their years on the show have a drunken Accidental Marriage. This wouldn't be as much of a wall banger if they had decided to dissolve the marriage immediately, but they actually decide to STAY MARRIED. What's really bad about this is that Spinner had JUST broken up with Jane, who he was head over heels for, yet he gets over her in about two seconds for Emma (probably because the writers believe she can do no wrong, despite being the poster child for the Jerk Sue). They seriously couldn't think of a better and REALISTIC send-off for these characters?
 * Season 6 of Degrassi the Next Generation begins with Sean coming back to Toronto to be with his middle-school girlfriend. The last time they broke up, he stole her dad's laptop and she perjured herself. It gets worse. Ever wanted to see an all-yandere love triangle? Yeah. It gets worse still. Jay getting a blowjob from Emma is so much worse than Jay's role in the school shooting that traumatized Sean so badly, you know, when Sean killed somebody?
 * Purplefish : This troper knows that any seasons past the second of Sliders can be considered a Wall Banger, but as he's currently watching the first one, they definitely didn't wait that moment for having wallbanger-y moments. Take for instance that episode where they arrive in a world where the gender statuses are reversed : women dominate, men are relegated to an inferior position. But worse, while the feminist movement appeared during the 60's and allowed for an evolution of mentalities in our world, a similar movement of gender equality never happened on this world. Arturo ends up becoming the first male candidate in an election IN HISTORY. At first, it was for somewhat selfish reasons, as he just couldn't adjust to this world's value (and as he's definitely a real macho), but as time passes, he really starts to believe in his fight, as he witnesses that no man in this world has a chance - or even the will - to get past the cliches about gender in their world. This makes for good Character Development, and this could make a good aesop about gender equality (it doesn't matter who's oppressed : oppression is fundamentally wrong). So where's the wallbanger ? The only female member of the group grabs the Idiot Ball and becomes a harpy that constantly say that Arturo is wrong, and that this world is way better than ours. Easy to say for her, she gets a respected position in this world with a good paycheck while her companions are stucked as receptionists or as "that-guy-I-fucked-because-I-felt-like-it-and-then-threw-away-like-a-tissue". Arturo's fight is perfectly legitimate, but she keeps telling him he's wrong. When a man tries to assassinate him, as Arturo mourningly comment on his gender, she replies in the most serious tone "Of course ! Have you ever seen a woman assassinate somebody ?" Uh, yeah, it happened, girl, more than once. The worst part ? Looking at the final scene, SHE NEVER GETS ANY KIND OF PUNISHMENT FOR ACTING SO DICKISHLY. Note to the writers : reversing sexism doesn't make it more tolerable.
 * Season 3 introduced the dubious idea that Rembrandt had been in the Navy. This ran counter to what had been established about Rembrandt's past, with fans questioning when he could have possibly found time to serve. This goes beyond Characterization Marches On, however, because of one thing that was definitively established in Season 1: per "Summer of Love," Rembrandt doesn't know how to swim. Good grief. Additionally, rather than commit to this change in character, the writers dealt with it in poor fashion - just having one odd line about it inserted arbitrarily into random episodes. Unsurprisingly, this was quietly dropped by Season 4.
 * In "Slither," snakes knock down a door. No, you read that right. Snakes knock down a door. In an interview, Cleavant Derricks would later say that he interrupted a script reading to complain about the implausibility of such an action. According to him, the explanation given was that the snakes possessed "a force."
 * In "Revelations," after supposedly finding Kromagg Prime, what does Quinn do after finding his parents? Seek out the anti-Kromagg weapon to free the conquered Earth Prime, thus fulfilling the point of Season 4? No, he's perfectly content to settle down, as are Maggie and Colin. Oh, but Rembrandt isn't willing to abandon Earth Prime. Too bad all he gets for his good will is the timer itself - no anti-Kromagg weapon, no help from his friends, not even a damn handgun! Worst of all, Rembrandt completely accepts this and acts touched by the "passing the torch" moment. Thud, thud...
 * In No Ordinary Family, the parents made a huge fuss out of the daughter wanting to tell her best friend that she can read minds, supposedly because they need to keep their abilities secret even though they've told their friends. And yet the hero-wannabe dad jumps around the city in broad daylight without any sort of disguise, leaving behind mysterious craters. He even did this right in front of a popular, packed restaurant. Are we supposed to believe that thousands and thousands of people never once looked up, looked out a window, or just plain notice a man flying off in the middle of the road?
 * Sea Quest DSV: In the first season episode "Nothing But The Truth", the nearly-deserted SeaQuest is taken over by a group of commandoes looking to get vital codes out of her systems. Lieutenant Hitchcock is taken hostage on the bridge, whereupon Commander Ford, who's evaded capture, gives her a direct order to truthfully answer anything her captors ask. He somehow justifies this as "controlling what they know", but nothing he does after this is based on the commandoes having accurate information--instead Hitchcock has to keep endangering him and everyone else when asked about the things he is doing. Even worse, she'd declared her intention to escape at the first opportunity, and he orders her to stay put and do this instead--so he's risking her life for no good reason. Nice one, Commander.
 * Blossom's mother left her kids because she needed to fulfill her own dreams, and didn't get considered a terrible mom for it. People seemed very understanding of her personal needs, instead of considering that once you have kids, THEIR needs come first.
 * The final episode of the first season on the otherwise rather brilliant Sherlock. We get an exciting plot, beautiful cinematography, tight writing... and then Moriarty shrieks all of his dialogue and is utterly, jaw-droppingly ridiculous. There was nothing wrong with the writing itself, but the fact that the production team felt this was actually menacing... dear lord. Of course, the fact that half the fandom squeed over the performance was even more baffling, as it's doubtful whether they'd take anyone seriously IRL if they came up to them and shRIEked aT ThEMM liKE THaT iN vaRYINg pITCHes. It's the vocal equivalent of forks on a plate for the other half.
 * In Skins, Freddie's death at the hands of John Foster.
 * Also, the finale leaving pretty much 50% of the storylines completely unresolved.
 * Season Six. The first episode was pretty much a giant retcon of everything that had been established before, with exactly zero explanation. Franky turned from a Bifauxnen to being very feminine with no explanation (despite her episode in S5 focusing on her wish to be herself, and her androgynous style representing that), as well as turning into a pretentious bitch. Alo turned from a Lovable Loser to a self-entitled, arrogant douche. Mini forgot her established crush on Franky and hooked up with Alo (also conveniently forgetting all her issues surrounding sex, intimacy, and her body). And the season just gets worse from then on, leading the fans to abandon the show in droves.
 * Twenty Four has had it's share of wall bangers. One that sticks out is toward the end of season 3, during a round of Xanatos Speed Chess in which the only leverage CTU had against Saunders was his daughter. To get his daughter back, he had Michelle kidnapped to force Tony to bring his daughter to him and arrange a hostage exchange. Jack manages to catch up with Tony who reluctantly agrees to have CTU show up at the hostage exchange in the vain hope of catching Saunders (who could have easily just sent his goons to the trade). Luckily, Michelle escapes custody of the terrorists and relays back her location. You'd think that would be a golden opportunity to catch the villain, but Jack Bauer, who is usually very smart thought it would be a better idea to tell her Michelle to let herself get recaptured to let the trade go through. And the kicker?
 * V-2009: In "Pound of Flesh", Anna presents Visitors who failed an empathy test with instant-death pills, the idea being that her mindless drones will swallow them while the Fifth Columnists won't. That's exactly what happens. Now, ask yourself, what kind of moron doesn't swallow an instant-death pill when they know they'll be executed by being SKINNED ALIVE if they don't?
 * A scene from "Heretic's Fork" in which Kyle attempts to read some names stored in a hard drive. According to him, most data "has been wiped" and then he hands Jack a paper with whatever data he has managed to retrieve, in text form. First off, the page is mostly black for no conceivable reason, making it a horrible waste of ink (although the paper does look a little cooler). Then, if the data had been "wiped", the whole page would have been filled with zeros or ones (and not random combinations of them), which clearly isn't the case (unless that part of the disk hadn't been wiped). But under no circumstances could an output that is obviously in binary form (as one can deduce by the background binary digits) possibly contain anything else but zeros and ones, like other digits or letters, not to mention (heaven forbid) color information for the "important" pieces of data. Although the colors could have been added by Kyle, the content of the page is just wrong.
 * And this was supposed to be his big Face Heel Turn moment. Ugh.
 * The Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode Dennis gets Divorced. In the last episode, Dennis married his High School girlfriend and at the end realises he probably made a bad desicion. One night he comes back from drinking with Mac and she doesn't like him drinking at all. What does she do? Tells him he's got to leave HIS HOUSE (yes, his house and she doesn't make money at all) or she'll call the cops saying he hit her, then proceeds to hit herself to "have evidence against him". And takes his apartment. It gets worse, the lawyer that hates the gang takes Dennis' wife's case and, here's the big Wall Banger: He can only have the apartment back if he pays her not only alimony but pays HER debt that she's accumulated over the years. I'm sorry, but what? I'm hoping Dennis took it to court and got it revoked. Especially since the next episode has him buying a fishing boat with Mac.
 * Body of Proof has Megan and one of the guys discussing their Victim of the Week. Spermless semen was found inside her, and Megan asks her guy if he can think of any single man who'd have a vasectomy instead of just using a condom. The guy of course says no, there's no way that any single man would ever have a vasectomy, and they conclude that she absolutely must have been having an affair with a married man (which she was, but it's their logic that causes foreheads to be introduced to hard objects). Single guys never have vasectomies, riiiiiiight...
 * How I Met Your Mother: Ye Gods, the sixth season of How I Met Your Mother. Namely, the interminable Zoey/Arcadian arc. Here's the gist: Zoey tries to disrupt Ted's life and career to save a condemned, rat-infested building. Instead of reacting with anger and annoyance, somehow Ted falls for her (and apparently, the fans were supposed to as well) despite the fact that she's married. Then, her husband turns out to be a perfectly decent older gentleman with a boat fixation and who is (rightfully) concerned about his wife's new friendship, and somehow that's supposed to be "creepy" and "unsettling" enough for the audience to justify Ted becoming a homewrecker in order to facilitate the upcoming romance. Then she ramps up her self-indulgent, sanctimonious campaign (right before we're treated to a Narm-y backstory which was supposed to justify her obsession with said building) all while passive-aggressively manipulating Ted and his friends, ultimately resulting in  as the writers choose to ignore years of character development just to further prop Zoey. And then,   WHAT?!? Seriously, who in their right mind actually does something like that? And then, as the excrement icing on the turd cake, in the season finale,   Excedrin Headache #96, coming up! -- TVsTim1
 * "Little Minnesota" from Season 4 makes no sense. Ted's irresponsible teenaged sister is in town, and she apparently hooks up with Barney, despite promising Ted that she wouldn't. Ted calls her on it, and she reveals that she and Barney didn't sleep together but rather made it appear as though they did in order to teach Ted a lesson. Then she gives Ted an earful for not trusting her. All of this is completely moronic. First, how does pretending to sleep with Barney prove any kind of point? Second, Ted does start to accept that she has grown into a trustworthy person and only goes back on that when he finds out about her apparently having sex with Barney. Third, why does Ted instantly believe her and Barney when they say the fling was faked? "We were just pretending to sleep together" is such a farfetched claim, especially coming from two characters who have lied to Ted in the past and who have no proof that what they say is true. The whole thing just makes no goddamn sense!
 * I know this is an easy Handwave, but The Bro Code declares sisters and mothers off limits.
 * Then again, the Bro Code declares ex-girlfriends off limits as well, and we saw how that worked out.
 * The episode where Marshal and Lily debate wether they should have children or not. I don't deny it clashes with my personal views, but damn me if it wasn't one of the most Anvilicious episode I've seen so far. By the end of the episode, every single character who said they didn't want to have children is either secretly hiding their wish for babies (yes, even Barny) or too ugly to ever get laid. As subtle as a brick.
 * The characters do not say that at all. Robin and Barney reveal that, yeah, babies are not completely despicable to them and maybe, maybe they could entertain the idea of having them. They do not in any way say that they are all secretly pining for babies. It's called writing nuanced characterization, instead of turning Robin and Barney into cartoonishly unrealistic baby-haters who somehow know with absolute conviction that they will never want a baby as long as they live.
 * While YMMV on whether the Ted/Robin arc in late season 7 is wallbanging or out of character, Victoria's foreshadowing of it in "Ducky Tie", telling Ted that Robin's the reason his relationships never worked out, certainly is. Lets go through the stupid shall we? Victoria knew Robin for a couple months, over five years ago, during which time Victoria and Ted were dating, and also during which time Robin hated her guts because she (Robin) was secretly in love with Ted. In "Ducky Tie", she barely interacts with Robin at all, nor observes her and Ted together, and Ted does not discuss Robin extensively in any way during the episode. Victoria has had absolutely zero contact with the gang since she left and had not observed Not to mention the fact that Victoria is completely biased because Ted left her for Robin. Yet somehow she magically "knows" that Robin's been messing up all Ted's relationships (and she gains no credibility points whatsoever by acting extremely closed-minded and dismissive of the idea of exes being platonic friends earlier in the episode). All of this could be handwaved with the excuse that Victoria was just talking out of her ass and just coincidentally happened to be right...except there is not one shred of evidence in the show that her claim is true. Robin has never screwed up one of Ted's relationships, Ted has never screwed up any of his relationships because of any feelings for Robin (in fact, they have been particularly insightful and helpful towards each other's relationships: when Ted didn't listen to Robin's warnings about Stella, he wound up getting left at the altar, and he actively encouraged her during her relationship with Barney). It has also been repeatedly shown that Robin and Ted's friendship defied predictions: Stella tells Ted she's upset about inviting exes to their wedding because she thinks he has lingering feelings for Robin? Turns out Ted has absolutely zero romantic feelings for Robin (he doesn't even realize that Robin could be uncomfortable with attending his wedding because his feelings for her are so platonic) and it's Stella who was in love with her ex. Lily warns Ted and Robin that someone's gonna redevelop romantic feelings if they keep up their friends with benefits arrangement? Turns out Ted and Robin had no problematic feelings at all, even when they accidentally kissed out of habit -- it was Barney who was hurt by the arrangement because he was in love with Robin. Not one single moment in the entire show could be used to support the idea that Robin is the reason Ted's still single, except for the utterly circumstantial evidence that Ted hasn't found "the one" yet. Ted and Robin redeveloping feelings for one another could be plausible given the general shittiness of their lives in season 7 and their crippling terror and loneliness over drifting away from Marshall and Lily, but the idea that it has been an active factor in their lives all this time is a 100% pure unsupported and illogical Retcon.
 * On General Hospital Jax leaving Brenda at the altar in 2003. Why, why would he do that, especially since he knew what had happened the last time someone (Sonny) had left her at the altar years earlier!?! Full stop.
 * The 2nd season premiere of Mork and Mindy, "Mork in Wonderland," combined outlandish fantasy with tragic drama in an attempt to change the tone of the show. All it did was confuse new viewers, and the writers quickly returned to the more sitcomesque complications that the show remains renowned for.
 * A few in a new Terra Nova episode which had flying reptiles attack Terra Nova. First off when they're discussing them with the person trying to figure out why they're attacking they leave out how they only attacked when the person they attacked threw a rock at them. Second they decided to build their colony where it is after they found eggshells in the dirt
 * In the Robo Cop: The Series episode Robo Vs. Commander Cash, a scene has OCP employee Rex Jones (posing as Commander Cash) telling kids at a toy store to take everything for free, over the protests of the toy store's owner. When Robo arrives on the scene and attempts to arrest Jones, the store owner goes behind the cash register, pulls out a shotgun and shoots Jones in the chest - in front of a group of kids. Several questions arise: why would the owner need a shotgun in a toy store, why would he endanger the lives of children by firing it in their proximity, and why does he shoot Jones right in front of Robo? He should have been arrested on the spot, but he instead gets off scot-free.
 * The Detroit featured in the Robo Cop series is an extremely violent Crapsack World, so a toy store manager probably would need a shotgun for protection, but that still doesn't explain how he's able to whip it out in front of Robocop and shoot a guy.
 * Raising Hope season 2 finale, "I Want My Baby Back, Baby Back Baby Back"'s entire premise. Lucy