Rant: Killed off characters

A little warning: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ALL SHOWS MENTIONED!!!!!!! If you haven't seen one of the shows mentioned, you might not want to read this or you will be spoiled. Or you can if you don't care. I originally wrote this as a top ten list, but I decided it would work better as a rant. So, a common practice among evil TV writers is to kill off characters we love. Or hate. Basically, they want to either generate an episode or an emotional response from the audience by having someone kick the bucket. Sometimes it's useful to help break the show down, redefine or reestablish the characters, and get things back on track, or at very least, to crank out a couple of plots and establish a new direction. And other times it just succeeds in pissing off fans and starting "save insert character here" internet campaigns.

Some notable examples of shows with killed off characters are:

Torchwood: After the deaths of Owen and Tosh in the season 2 finale, Russel T. Davies made it a point that from then on, someone would die every season finale. And so it was. In season 3's finale, Ianto died, much to the irritation of fans, as this was the favorite character of quite a few people because he was hilariously Ianto-ish. If you've seen the show you know what I'm talking about. And in season 4, which everyone hated, we had the death of new comer Ester, who everyone hated, so that didn't really get many people upset. But it started with the deaths of Owen, who died before and then got brought back to life as a walking talking corpse, and Tosh, who just got killed for no real reason actually. Either way, if there will be 5th season of Torchwood, which isn't too likely, the we're looking at a pretty small main cast.

Warehouse 13: It sort of starts in season 2 when they killed of Daniel Dickinson. Granted, we hadn't seen him in awhile, but he was important in season 1, so I say he counts. Then, season 3's finale saw them kill Mrs. Frederick, our favorite enigmatic old lady who keeps the warehouse alive, Steve, the recently introduced gay buddhist human lie detector who was universally accepted by fans, and of course HG Wells, the result of an experiment that asked: what if we take one of the greatest writers in history, make it so he's actually a woman (a really hot woman, too), a murderous nutjob, a super genius who actually invented time travel, and have her go from bad guy to good guy to bad guy to good guy to MARTYR in two seasons. There's a chance not all of these's deaths will be permanent, seeing how we're still waiting on season 4 for some answers, but either way, there's some serious blood on the surviving characters hands.

Whedonverse: Technically this is all four of Joss Whedon's shows (Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse) grouped into one category, but believe, the body count doesn't get much higher. Buffy and Angel had whole episodes dedicated to characters dying, from Joyce's death in The Body, one of the finest and most depressing hours of TV ever produced, to that of Winifred "Fred" Burkle, our favorite super hot super funny science geek in A Hole in the World. Of course, then you have Fred's dead body getting possessed by an ancient demon, a plot device used throughout the rest of Angel's time on air.  Plus, you have the martyrdom achieved by Jenny, Doyle, Wesley, Spike (he got brought back to life, though), Anya, Darla (that one's probably up for debate), Wash, Shepard Book, and none other than Buffy herself (she died twice, but got brought back both times, once by CPR, the other by an occult ritual.) Plus, the victim of circumstance incidents that saw Cordelia and Tara eat it. The bottom line: Joss is freaking evil!

Supernatural: Do I even need to explain it? Probably not. All that really needs to be said is "Eric Kripke is one evil writer." From John Winchester to Ash to countless others, Supernatural has become a show with a pretty high body count of recurring characters. It's obvious they're not gonna kill Sam or Dean anytime soon, just because the show wouldn't exist without them, but as for, let's say Bobby, perhaps, his days are always gonna be numbered.

The Walking Dead: This is the type of show that starts out with a large cast, and then spends quite a bit of time thinning the herd. And that is exactly what season 1 did, whether it be by having people eaten by Walkers or blown up by explosives or shot, people died, man. And of course, there's the infamous death of Shane, and few others, in season 2.

Sherlock: Moriarty ends up killing himself. Yes, I know he's a villain, but he was too awesome not to include. He does himself in to make sure Sherlock follows suit, thus completing his nefarious plot. It's a bit confusing, though.

There you have it: my complete rant on characters who get done in by writers. My favorite characters always seem to die, so I guess I needed to make this rant. Bye for now. But wait, there's more! Anyone up for a few epic death scenes: