During the life of a TV series many characters come and go. They use different manners to leave. Some are promoted to a different duty and location like Gavin Troy, Brenda Leigh Johnson or Fidel Best.
Some simply move away like Libby Chessler or Valerie Birkhead.
Some retire like DI Tom Barnaby.
Some, however, disappear without a trace, like Judy Winslow, Mr. Eugene Pool, Jenny Kelley and Drell, never to be mentioned again.
Here are some of the characters killed by the series screenwriters that should have never been killed in the first place. Characters whose death cast a damning shadow over the rest of the series, if any.
This generally happens in police and detective TV series, because dealing with crime is the best way to be killed.
DS George Toolan, played by John Lyons, was a long-time friend and right hand of DI Jack Frost. He was Frost’s confidant and Frost often entrusted him with tasks that should be done while he himself followed other leads with one of his (temporary) DCs and DSs. And these (DCs and DSs, not tasks) were many, among them Maureen Lawson, the beautiful Ronnie Lonnegan, Robert Presley, chain-smoker Terry Reid, Billy Sharpe, Jasper Tranter, and Hazel Wallace. Toolan wore the most conspicuous moustache this side of Hércule Poirot’s[1]. He has been in a critical health condition after falling from a flight of external stairs in the episode Near Death Experience, but he survived and returned to work. However, at the end of the two-part episode If Dogs Run Free he was killed by a jealous ex-husband of Frost’s fiancée, aiming to kill Frost. Toolan’s death only strengthened Frost’s decision to retire, as he no longer saw the office as a safe haven to escape his outside troubles without George there, but at the same time estranged many fans who found his death unnecessary and damaging to the image of the whole series. Toolan was one of the mainstays during the whole duration of the series, from 1992 until 2010.
Kitty, played by an unknown feline actress, was inherited by Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson, head of the LAPD Priority Murder Squad > Priority Homicide > Major Crimes Division, with the house she moved in in the first episode of The Closer in 2005[2]. Kitty was a he until she gave birth to kittens, but Brenda Leigh continued to refer to her as “he” while her boyfriend > husband Fritz Howard equally persistently corrected her with a “she”. Kitty got very sick and in the 2009 episode Blood Money she is put to sleep, much to Brenda Leigh’s grief. This could hardly ever happen in a UK series!
Willie Rae Johnson, played by Frances Sternhagen, is another exception. Although appearing in a police TV series, The Closer, she is not part of the force, but the principal character’s mother, and she is not killed, but dies of natural causes. Although Brenda Leigh Johnson’s father is an imposing figure, it is her mother who governs the family and balances his and her daughter’s strong wills. After appearing for the first time somewhere in season one (2005) she dies in the antepenultimate episode of the series, the 2012 Last Rites. Her death probably facilitates Brenda Leigh’s decision to leave Priority Homicide Division and accepts the job of Chief of the Los Angeles County District Attorney Bureau of Investigation (decision helped by the constant persecution and oppression from both repulsive captain Sharon Raydor and her Internal Affairs as well as lawyers).
Lance Sweets, Ph.D., Psy.D., played by John Francis Daley, first appeared thrice in 2007 as a guest psychological profiler in Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan’s lab at the Jeffersonian Institute in Washington, D.C., first appearing in the episode The Secret in the Soil. He joined the regular crew in the 2007 episode The Santa in the Slush. Sweets’s youthful looks (in accordance with his family name) and non-intruding manner made his interaction with the rest of the team somehow difficult at the beginning. A group of scientist and police officers looked him down their collective nose. However, they eventually accepted him (although Dr. Brennan was always distrustful of stuff of the mind) and he became a regular squad member. Unfortunately, he was killed off in 2014 in The Conspiracy in the Corpse, the first episode of the show’s tenth season. However, he was not the first character of the series to die. This doubtful honour belongs to Vincent Nigel-Murray, played by Ryan Cartwright, one of several Dr. Brennan’s rotating interns. Still, his killing did not resonate as grievously as Sweets’s. Sweets was allegedly killed because Daley wanted time off to direct a movie, and producer Stephen Nathan was concerned that Daley’s absence would be too long, especially if the directing job led to other jobs.
Here we come to the most unwanted death of them all! DI Richard Poole, masterfully played by Ben Miller, arrived from Croydon to the Caribbean island Saint Marie in 2011 to investigate the previous DI’s murder. To his chagrin, he was so successful that the local commissioner Selwyn Patterson agreed with Poole’s UK bosses for him to stay as the island’s new DI. He is paired with DS Camille Bordey, played by Sara Martins, and two PCs, the unambitious but streetwise Dwayne Myers and the more by-the-book Fidel Best. Despite his dislike for the island, its tropical weather and the French in general[3], and despite the DI and DS starting as adversaries, him and DS Bordey gradually built a great relationship as well as an incredible chemistry. It was obvious that the two of them felt love to each other, and although Camille’s often teasing him[4], he seemed to stay unable to express his feelings to her openly. He won her over, among other, with his psychological genius, making decisions based on minimal information and random events. DI Poole was murdered in the 2014 episode Death of a Detective. He was replaced by a less charismatic British DI, who came to investigate his murder just as he came to investigate his predecessor’s murder, and the series started its steady decline. Ben Miller decided to leave the series because long shootings in Guadeloupe meant months of separation from his family which was too much for him.
DS Annie Cabbot, played by Andrea Lowe, met DCI Alan Banks while investigating for Professional Standards the apparently extreme assault on Marcus Payne, who has died from his injuries in the first two-part episode[5] Aftermath of the series in 2010. She became not only the principal character’s closest collaborator, but an on-again off-again love relationship was evolving between them too. The relationship never developed to its fullest because in the penultimate episode, the 2016 A Little Bit of Heart, she is stabbed and died from the injuries. The final episode of the series deals with finding who killed her. It killed the series as well.
On the other hand, some deaths of characters were motivated by external reasons. The actors portraying them died, so the character could not survive. Sometimes they are replaced by other characters like in the case of Granddad Trotter, whose replacement was uncle Albert Trotter.
Paul Hennessy, played masterfully by John Ritter, was the main reason of the series 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter. A protective father who can hardly cope with the fact that his baby girls are grown up teenagers now and that this status of theirs brings with it different not-childhood-anymore problems. As a newspaper columnist he works from home, which enables him to be involved into different teenage problems like popularity, boyfriends, dating, kissing and the like. Too involved indeed. The series was one of the rare USA sitcoms that managed to be funny while at the same time based on a very mundane everyday situation. Alas, during the filming of season three, Ritter suddenly fell ill and died misdiagnosed. Consequently, Paul died in the series as well and was grieved by his family. However, as the show MUST go on, the producers brought in two new characters, his wife’s father and nephew (the latter played by serial sitcom killer David Spade), shortened the title to the now utterly meaningless 8 Simple Rules and drove the show into a completely different direction. Total wreck, that is.
Another great performance… The legal medic Dr. Pasquano, played flawlessly by Marcello Perracchio, was famous for two things, his acerbic personality and his gluttony for sweets, especially traditional Sicilian cannoli, cassata siciliana and buccellato (among others). His relation with commissioner Montalbano was a complex one. Although constantly accusing him of «scassamento di cabasisi», somewhere deep inside the doctor respected him as a good copper. Nonetheless, he allowed himself to be corrupted by Montalbano’s gifts of aforementioned cakes. The actor died before the shooting of series 12, but they kept the character (unseen, unheard) alive in the following episodes. However, with him the series’s charm died as well. The character was allowed to die off-screen only in the next series. After the funeral, the most beautiful wordless eulogy to the character (and to the actor that played it for so long) was held in the police station. Montalbano called all his closest collaborators to his office, opened a pack of cannoli, offered one to each member of the team and they all ate them in silence. No words were necessary. We all knew what exactly does it mean.
[1] Have you noticed how Poirot’s moustache changed over the series? As if it were constantly shrinking.
[2] That house previously belonged to a murder victim whose case she solved.
[3] Some typical exchanges:
Comm. Selwyn Patterson: Sainte-Marie was colonized by the French, who lost it to the British, who lost it to the Dutch. The Dutch lost it back to the French. The French then handed it back to the British in the mid 70’s. So, about 30 percent of the population is still French.
DI Richard Poole: French. Great. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse.
or:
Camille Bordey: Voodoo has been part of this island for hundreds of years.
DI Richard Poole: So have cholera and TB – and the French – and we managed to get rid of them in the end!
Camille Bordey: I am half French!
DI Richard Poole: There’s no such thing as half French!
[4] DI Poole sleeps in full pyjamas.
DS Bordey: Don’t you get hot at night wearing all that?
DI Poole: Yes.
DS Bordey: Then you should sleep naked.
DS Bordey: I do.
[5] All DCI Banks episodes are two-part ones.
Linguist's eye on things 