The Best of 2014: Worst TV Trend

Giving away plot twists by casting recognizable actors in important roles -- and then having their names in the "guest starring" credits right after the first commercial break. How many people immediately guessed that Burn Gorman would be Henry's stalker on Forever after they saw his name?

Naming a very important episode can be really difficult. When a show plans on killing off a main character and gives it away by way of the title, it's a tad annoying. The two I'm thinking of are Coda for The Walking Dead and Spacewalker for The 100. I kept thinking they wouldn't be so obvious, but was disappointed in the end.

It seems more shows will be casting "named" actors in their pilots to attract viewers only to kill them off by the end of the first hour. Z Nation took the chance killing Harold Perrineau before the credits rolled, and there are others on the way!

The whole air a show for 3 months and then take it off for a bazillion months before airing the second half. It's not new, per say, but it's annoying. All the momentum a show has built is just stopped and I think it really turns off the casual fan. When "one season" is split with a year in between the halves airing for the purpose of awards, how about they're just a whole new season?

Advertising another show in the bottom THIRD of the screen during the show I'm watching. Here is one of the best examples... notice in the image how Rabbits animation turned out. Really, covering nearly 1/2 of main character?

Another trend that is the promos that give away plot twists (and now I am looking at you Parenthood/NBC). While I am one to look at spoilers there are some shows that I want to be surprised about and revealing crucial plot points/twists in the promos just gets me so irritated. On the other hand, tying together inacurate scenes to make you think something will happen can sometimes be worse! Parenthood remains the winner in this category.

As long as we're complaining about promos, I hate that CBS put a commercial break between the end of the episode and the promo instead of just airing the promo immediately after the episode like everyone else. I usually don't even watch them.

Has anyone said planting a backdoor pilot in the middle of your regularly scheduled series? As in, what Bones did with "The Finder," what Supernatural did with its atrocious entry, "Bloodlines." I'm not sure if there are other shows that recently committed this same kind of prime-time atrocity. But I ask of them: Can we please make it stop?

Suddenly, TV rating images are being plastered on the action. They're extremely large and intrusive. I started noticing it generally and then more often, until it looked like Charleston Tucker was having such a bad day she needed a bit TV-14 ice pillow on her furrowed brown on State of Affair. This must end.