17 Movie Lines and Moments That Thoroughly Failed the Test of Time

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This issue is about TV shows that were too bad to air, the problem with romcoms, trivia, silly secrets, movie lines that don’t hold up, and much more.

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Even the dumbest TV shows take a lot of time, effort and funds to produce. Carpenters got up at the crack of dawn to build sets for ALF, special effects technicians worked tirelessly on Manimal and the vast amount of drug money spent on Charlie Sheen shows could have likely stopped world hunger. So for a TV show to be so bad that its fully-produced, 100-percent finished episodes never see the light of day is a rare occurrence. But it has happened before, with unaired turds such as…

A romantic comedy can present itself in a variety of shapes and tones. Maybe it’s elegant and urbane, like The Philadelphia Story. Maybe it’s raunchy and hilariously gross, like The 40-Year-Old Virgin. What most of them have in common, however, is that the story ends at “they lived happily ever after.” Maybe they did and maybe they didn’t; it’s really none of our business either way. This is why the growth of romcom TV shows — and the contraction of romcom feature films — can result in projects that feel fundamentally ill-conceived. AppleTV+’s Still Up is just the latest example of a romcom series that came to us in the wrong form.

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