Yahoo News 11 TV shows whose titles stopped making sense
It's a fine art, deciding on a name for a TV show – it needs to be original and memorable, but not showy or pretentious. Tricky. (You can see why so many series take the easy way out and just take their title from the name of the lead character.)
Most of all, the name needs to make sense. Always. But if the show's lucky enough to be a long-runner, in which characters change and situations develop, that's not always as easy as it sounds.
Way back when, all of these show titles must have seemed like a great idea. Now? Not so much.
1. New Girl
Jess has lived with Nick, Winston and Schmidt (and sometimes Coach) for six years. By no definition of the word can she still be considered a "new" addition to their loft set-up.
Girl doesn't have the same ring to it though, huh?
2. Taggart
Of the ONE HUNDRED AND NINE episodes of Taggart that aired on ITV between 1985 and 2010, only 31 of them actually featured Detective Chief Inspector Taggart.
Mark McManus, who played the title role in the Scottish crime series, passed away in 1994, but the show still soldiered on without him for another 16 years. The character's catchphrase ("There's been a muhhrrr-derrrr!") will live forever, though.
3. Doctor Who
"I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord. I'm from the planet Gallifrey in the Constellation of Kasterborous. I'm 903 years old."
After 54 years of romping around time and space, we know everything about the once-enigmatic time-traveller except breakfast preferences. And yes, technically, we don't know The Doctor's name.
4. The Apprentice
Sure, the set-up of whittling down a large batch of business buffoons down to one winner remains unaltered. But, ever since a big change to the format in 2011, the aim of the show hasn't actually been to find Lord Sugar an apprentice at all.
Should be called The Business Partner or The Investment Seeker.
5. Prison Break
FOX's outlandish thriller originally charted the efforts of uber-genius engineer Michael Scofield to break out of a prison he designed. So while the title was a little on-the-nose, it was at least accurate.
The second season followed Michael on the run, so the name still sort of applied, while he ended up back behind bars and planning another prison break the following year.
By the fourth season, though? Nary a prison in sight, and the only thing being broken was the audience's will.
6. Jane the Virgin
Artificially inseminated by accident as part of a 'hilarious' mix-up, Jane Villanueva (Gina Rodriguez) managed to fall pregnant while still technically remaining a virgin.
That original gimmick is long since done with, though. In the third season, Jane actually had sex. At least the show's creators are having a little fun with this one, crossing out the Virgin in the title cards and replacing it with other descriptors.
7. The Last Man on Earth
He isn't.
The title of this FOX sitcom set on a post-apocalyptic Earth manages to be accurate for a total of four episodes. Prior to that, lead character Phil (Will Forte) was accompanied by a woman, Carol, but was still technically the last man on Earth.
With the arrival of Todd (Mel Rodriguez) in 1.05, though, the whole concept went out of the window.
8. Two and a Half Men
Even if we're generous enough to assume that this title made sense to begin with – with young Jake (Angus T Jones) as the "half man" opposite his adult father Alan (Jon Cryer) and uncle Charlie (Charlie Sheen) – it definitely loses any semblance of relevance later on.
Swapping out Sheen for Ashton Kutcher wasn't a problem, but when the show replaced Jake with new character Jenny (Amber Tamblyn), the Two and a Half Men title (and that irritatingly catchy theme song) became a nonsense.
9. 24
24 episodes, charting 24 hours in real-time. We'll call it... 24!
Perfect... until it was decided that 2014 revival 24: Live Another Day would run just half the length of a season of the original show. "Shouldn't it be called 12?" sneered the pedants. (Yes, that's us.)
10. Sabrina the Teenage Witch
Melissa Joan Hart's heroine discovered her powers on her 16th birthday in the show's pilot episode.
By the time her magical adventures wrapped up, 7 years later, Sabrina would have been at least 23, making her a teenage witch for only about half of the series' run.
Hart herself was in her late twenties by the time she filmed the final Sabrina TV movies in 2003. But Sabrina The Millennial Witch isn't as catchy.
11. Lost
Jack, Kate and the rest had no clue where they'd ended up when Oceanic Flight 815 first crashed. But they quite happily made their way to and from Jacob's mysterious island several times across the later seasons.
Lost, and found.
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