Will they/won't they couples

[Clownbaby]

These are always an iffy area for me. It's annoying when you like a show and then two characters you're not particularly interested in have an endlessly "titillating" on and off thing that lasts the whole run of the series. Ross and Rachel in Friends are this for me. Rooted for them at first but now I'm into the 5th season and it's just grating. The will they/won't they thing can only go so long,  I wonder why so many shows stretch it out over the whole run, because most of the time a pairing that starts off being intriguing and sweet eventually becomes whiny and a bit toxic, but we're still, as viewers, supposed to be hanging on to it. Nah. Not my thing.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I'm bored by it now, especially as 99% they will and it's just drawn out for ages until they do. And when they do get together it's normally even more tedious, so yeah, not my kind of thing at all.

Edit: Bar Nathan Fielder and that prostitute. I really hoped they would hit it off!

[lankyguy95]

It's the love triangles that drive me nuts. The Office US was probably the worst for this - they did it really well with Roy-Pam-Jim, a little less well with Pam-Jim-Karen, and then turned it into a trope that got increasingly tedious by the episode. i haven't counted but there must have been about fifteen different love triangles in the whole show.

[a duncandisorderly]

david & maddy in 'moonlighting'. really only solved by bruce willis leaving to become a hollywood legend. but dear god it was tedious, & really the only thing that kept us tuning in every week was the parallel goings on between herbert viola & agnes dipesto.

'thirtysomething' did it better, by having the frisson (between gary & melissa) be because of a relationship in the past.  no-one's been clever enough to think of that since, I don't think.

[DrGreggles]

Daphne + Niles = killed the show

[up_the_hampipe]

I'm such a sucker for those generally, but American sitcoms tend to drag it out over 10 seasons until it's preposterous and draining.

[chveik]

Parks and Recs is full of this shit

[gmoney]

My abiding memory of Parks and Rec is they would hook couple up and then the writers would seem to regret doing so, undo it, then go back to it again at some point. That might be a bit off as I watched it ages ago in a big bulk, but it seemed like Anne was with all the males at least twice.

[Rolf Lundgren]

'thirtysomething' did it better, by having the frisson (between gary & melissa) be because of a relationship in the past.  no-one's been clever enough to think of that since, I don't think.

Seinfeld did it later.

Daphne + Niles = killed the show

I'll stick up for the later series of Frasier, there's still a lot of good episodes in there. The execution of the Daphne and Niles getting together storyline however was poor. We had to accept that Daphne's character completely changed from one series to the next. There was no indication that she would have any interest in Niles and all of a sudden she just does because...well she just does.

The Donny storyline is equally as infuriating and Saul Rubinek is totally miscast playing him. His subsequent portrayal, along with Mel who played Niles' second wife, who both have their obnoxiousness ramped up to make us think Niles and Daphne are the good guys despite them doing horrible things to their partners is hard to accept. 

[up_the_hampipe]

They usually get them together early on to satisfy the fans, then they break them up, have them both fuck other people and generally move on with their lives, then expect us to want them back together. They're always very different people by the end of it, so the coupling feels forced.

[DrGreggles]

I'll stick up for the later series of Frasier, there's still a lot of good episodes in there. The execution of the Daphne and Niles getting together storyline however was poor. We had to accept that Daphne's character completely changed from one series to the next. There was no indication that she would have any interest in Niles and all of a sudden she just does because...well she just does.

The Donny storyline is equally as infuriating and Saul Rubinek is totally miscast playing him. His subsequent portrayal, along with Mel who played Niles' second wife, who both have their obnoxiousness ramped up to make us think Niles and Daphne are the good guys despite them doing horrible things to their partners is hard to accept.

There's some decent stuff later on, but I don't think any of it was Niles-heavy.
He was my favourite character and his unrequited love for Daphne was my favourite running theme.
Once that was gone the whole show lost something - and adding Daphne's Australian family into the mix didn't help...

[magval]

Didn't Newsradio get this out of the way in its second or third episode?

[Wentworth Smith]

Worked in Cheers cos Diane cleared off after series five but even then they had gone through most of the permutations and it felt a bit strained (will they/won't they, they will, they won't, they will). Also had a nice coda in the last episode when they realised it wouldn't work. Probably still the best example of it done well though with real chemistry between Danson and Long.

[Clownbaby]

Daphne + Niles = killed the show

It wasn't quite the same when they properly got together. Also, as happy as I was for Niles, I didn't totally buy that Daphne would be so oblivious and disinterested in Niles for so long and then suddenly decide to elope with him. It seemed to come out of nowhere.

[Clownbaby]

It's the love triangles that drive me nuts. The Office US was probably the worst for this - they did it really well with Roy-Pam-Jim, a little less well with Pam-Jim-Karen, and then turned it into a trope that got increasingly tedious by the episode. i haven't counted but there must have been about fifteen different love triangles in the whole show.

Oh my god, the Andy/Erin/Gabe thing grated on me because it was like an odder retread of the Jim and Pam pattern. There had already been a dominating love triangle and to be honest I think it would have been quite nice if Andy and Erin just got together fairly soon and established a pleasant but odd relationship. The whole Andy being engaged thing and then the messy breaking off of that was just a massive awkward pain in the arse.

[Icehaven]

Agree Niles and Daphne's coming together was quite badly paced in terms of Daphne's feelings, but I was still rooting for them (well for Niles anyway.) However I don't think the weight gain storyline that followed almost immediately helped. I get it was to accommodate Jane Leeves' pregnancy at a time when they could hardly just write her out for months on end (although she vanished to 'fat camp' for a while) but it was just a bit daft.
Edit: Just checked Jane Leeves Wikipedia page to make sure I got that right, and noticed she was 32 when Frasier started and 43 when it finished! She's actually only 2 years younger than David Hyde Pierce.

[Clownbaby]

Don't suppose anyone on here has watched Ugly Betty right through? The Betty/Henry thing was sickening.

[bigfatheart]

Didn't Newsradio get this out of the way in its second or third episode?

Gargh, was hoping I'd be the first one to bring that up! Yep, NBC insisted on it, explicitly saying that they wanted a Sam and Diane-style romance. To this end, they added a scene to the pilot of Dave and Lisa flirting, and then had them get together in the second episode.

Truth be told, while it makes for a good 'sticking it to the network' story, the first and second series are still pretty full of relationship drama, which I can't really imagine was the original plan if the relationship was NBC's idea. Still a great show though.

[Gulftastic]

I thought Spaced got it pretty right with Tim & Daisy. Friends who realise how important they are to each other and then realise they are in love.

And this, of course...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnCp3bMbjFo

[Satchmo Distel]

Man About The House. Richard O'Sullivan and Paula Wilcox. She turned him down but he got a snog on her wedding day.

[Thursday]

Futurama was an odd one in this regard, where they did the will they won't they thing with Fry and Leela, (although it was mostly just him begging her) and then they ended that movie on a "They Will" and then when it got brought back on Comedy Central it seemed like they couldn't decided if they had or not.

[Clownbaby]

What made me like Community was the swerving away from Jeff/Britta or Jeff/Annie. Especially Jeff/Annie, that was very clearly a dead end that a duller writing team would have went down and stayed in for the whole run. They very smartly recognised that Troy and Abed was the true love story.

[bgmnts]

I thought Scrubs did it decently with JD and Elliot.

[Clownbaby]

I thought Scrubs did it decently with JD and Elliot.

Maybe it's cause I found JD a bit annoying but I'll have to disagree with you there. I was okay with it at first but I felt like he got more and more indecisive and self-indulgent as the series went on. He doesn't seem to learn from past relationship dilemmas and he's such a needy bugger. Very unappealing. I've got a funny relationship with Scrubs though.

[a duncandisorderly]

mork & mindy, though....

[madhair60]

Maybe it's cause I found JD a bit annoying but I'll have to disagree with you there. I was okay with it at first but I felt like he got more and more indecisive and self-indulgent as the series went on. He doesn't seem to learn from past relationship dilemmas and he's such a needy bugger. Very unappealing. I've got a funny relationship with Scrubs though.

Rewatching the series on and off last year I was struck by just how much of a cunt J.D. is.

[Clownbaby]

There's a lot of on/off relationship stuff in 3rd Rock From The Sun that, oddly for me, I dont mind. With Dick/Mary it's totally understandable that she'd repeatedly get exasperated with him because he's a hell of a handful, but it's also believable that she'd get back together with him again because he so obviously adores her and I can imagine he's exciting to be around.

And with Sally/Don, that's fairly plausible as well because again we've got a very unpredictable but passionate "woman" (from Don's perspective) in Sally, and he can't believe his luck that his tubby dull self has landed a gorgeous tall intellligent blonde in her 20s. And she's discovered for the first time the allure of a man in uniform. I feel like a bunch of aliens have a genuine excuse for their emotions being relentlessly all over the place, and a lot of their weirdness or insensitiveness stems from innocent alien misunderstanding rather than being noncommittal or selfish.

[Clownbaby]

Rewatching the series on and off last year I was struck by just how much of a cunt J.D. is.

I could have done without him to be honest. I'm convinced it's down to casting though, Zach Braff is a bit of a strange one.

[thenoise]

Didn't Newsradio get this out of the way in its second or third episode?

And Jonathan Creek, who bedded Maddie in - was it the first episode? Or second? I think Renwick said something like he knew everyone would be questioning whether they would do he decid d to get it over and done with.

[bgmnts]

Maybe it's cause I found JD a bit annoying but I'll have to disagree with you there. I was okay with it at first but I felt like he got more and more indecisive and self-indulgent as the series went on. He doesn't seem to learn from past relationship dilemmas and he's such a needy bugger. Very unappealing. I've got a funny relationship with Scrubs though.

Kinda why I like it a bit, to be honest. It's very real.