TV Storylines That Came Out Of Nowhere

Television is a fickle mistress. Everything can be going along just fine for years at a time when suddenly she throws a curveball aimed straight for your head. Do you duck, do you catch it, or do you pack your bags and leave in the morning? When something completely unexpected happens on your favorite show, it's time to either express your loyalty, or bid a fond farewell. Here are a few TV show events that just left viewers bewildered. Thar be spoilers...

David Lynch's Twin Peaks is a twisty, surreal TV series known for throwing unexpected events at the viewer, which is exactly why it has such a strong cult following. Lynch intended for the show to be a bizarre take on the soap opera genre, but the supernatural murder mystery he plotted ended up being so much more. Unfortunately, the show suddenly takes a hard left turn into actual mundane soap opera territory when one-dimensional teenage bad boy James Hurley decides to leave Twin Peaks and shack up with a manipulative married lady for a few episodes before leaving the show completely. None of it contributed to the plot of the show, and nobody cared. Smell you later, James.

The final few seasons of Roseanne went so far off the rails that Roseanne Barr actually sat down and apologized in the series finale, implying that the last few seasons never actually happened and were actually Roseanne Conner's terrible fan fiction about her own life. While we always rooted for the Conners to pull themselves up out of their ongoing misery, the show took the family's lottery win overboard. After they appear on TV, a prince from Romania (played by Jim Varney) falls in love with Aunt Jackie. He sends the whole family on a glamorous trip to New York, which includes an appearance by Mike Tyson and a crossover from Absolutely Fabulous. Absolutely terrible.

On HBO's Dexter, Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter played sister and adopted brother, but in real life, they'd been dating since season two. By season three, they were married, and by the end of season five, they were divorced. It wasn't until season six that writers decided to give Carpenter's character, Deb, very confusing romantic feelings for her kinda-brother, making herself and everyone in the audience incredibly uncomfortable. The revelation was quashed after a few more episodes, however, when Deb finally discovered that the bromance was doomed by Dexter's tendency to kill lots and lots of people. Like, a lot of people.

Every single character in Breaking Bad is a compelling study in humanity, and even DEA Agent Hank Schrader's bubbleheaded, oblivious wife Marie lends something to the show by simply existing as a contrast to the serious events of the show. So, it was really completely unnecessary to introduce Marie to a life of low-level crime when she starts stealing collectible spoons from real estate events. It's a small, off-key offshoot from the high drama of the meth trade, and it just kind of disappears without too much mention. We'd have rather seen another trippy montage glorifying the crystalline beauty of making meth.

Viewers don't really watch Star Trek for the romantic subplots, and thankfully, The Next Generation had more alien-of-the-week stories than weird extraterrestrial liaisons. Still, over the course of seven seasons, even Wesley got some action, with Ashley Judd of all people. But fans were pretty surprised when the ship's useless counselor Deanna Troi and resident angry Klingon Worf hooked up during the show's final episodes...especially since Troi's on-and-off squeeze had always been the dashing Will Riker. The whole thing played out awkwardly, and before long, Worf moved on to Deep Space Nine and Riker married Troi after all. Now, where are the aliens that can erase pointless subplots?

The first Heroes series crashed and burned after a few seasons of increasingly terrible writing, but the show's few lingering fans had high hopes when the series' return was announced. Surely the writers had learned from their previous mistakes, right? Alas, when the show returned from a decade-long hiatus, plotlines were as terrible as ever. Whereas most of the titular heroes get their powers from an eclipse or something, Miko is the daughter of a game programmer who is somehow programmed into the real world, and can slip between reality and fantasy by using a magic sword. It's never actually explained in a satisfying way, it makes the entire series cringey, and worst of all, the imaginary video game's graphics look like they belong on a Nintendo 64. Never have we wanted Sylar to eat someone's brains so bad.

Maybe readers of Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries series weren't too surprised by the sudden arrival of Sookie Stackhouse's fairy grandfather in season six, but casual viewers of HBO's supernatural softcore porn series were taken a bit aback. It was revealed in season three that Sookie's telepathic abilities and tastiness to vampires was due to fairy blood in her lineage, but everything comes to a head when flighty Grandpa Niall decides to show up to fight Warlow, a vampire-fairy hybrid who will either save or destroy all vampires. At this point, even Wikipedia gets bored and stops summarizing the plot, but fairy gramps is gone again before long, leaving a trail of hard candies and blood in his wake.

In a moment no one saw coming, meek scientist Jemma Simmons is sucked through a mysterious portal at the end of Agents of SHIELD's second season. Even though the agency retrieves her early on in the subsequent season, the details of her time inside the portal don't come to light until a few episodes later, during an episode called "4,722 Hours." A complete about-face from the show's usual vaguely superheroic spy shenanigans, SHIELD goes full-on classic sci-fi and the Marvel Cinematic Universe takes a very rare trip off-world to explore an alien planet. The events set things up for an incredibly powerful Marvel villain to appear, and the one-shot departure from the usual formula reminds everyone why they watch the show in the first place. It's probably the best hour in the televised arm of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and no one saw it coming.