As rpb reiterated, his point is that later shows suffered because they couldn't replace the characters they killed off. I'm pretty sure that Susan and Maude didn't ruin the series when they left.

Things changed with GoT, Walking Dead, and to some degree Sons Of Anarchy. Even BB didn't really kill off any true main characters until the last season.

I didn't say that characters never died. From what I understand from those shows, most of those characters would be labeled as supporting at best. A few shows had characters "killed" for non story reasons because they were leaving the show too.

Prior to the last round of shows, it was very rare for main characters to be killed off for story reasons. Your list, even though I haven't seen every show, shows that. Half of that list were characters that were only slightly meaningful. ER didn't even kill off many of the characters when they left the show.

Compare that to the body count of major characters in GoT and honestly tell me that it's the same as a show having someone fall down an elevator shaft.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Well Game of Thrones is a show about a warring world and LA Law was a show about lawyers. Of course the body count is gonna be higher.

Main characters died plenty of times prior to GoT. It wasn't a new phenomenon.

That's all.

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Come up with a real list though of the biggest characters that died. Before recent times, it is mostly this:
1) Side characters/short term characters.
2) Guys who simply left the show and got a quick exit.
3) Main characters who died as part of the final storyline or episodes.

TV has changed in the last few years.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Not to mention half the shows these guys listed suck. Big Chicagoan had a good one though with law n order season 2( fat detective shot)

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The thing about String vs Ned though is that even though both were main characters who were great, Ned is the only one of the two that had a "shocking" death, at least to those of us who hadn't read the books. I think most people knew String was gonna die very shortly after his rooftop chat with Avon. I remember expecting it the first time I watched the series.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

i know you want to believe that to preserve your point of view, but you don't watch a lot of TV and haven't historically if you think this is true. like i said, joss whedon pretty much made it his artform to kill off fan favorites and major characters (buffy's mom comes to mind), and as i cited before, guys like Col Blake in "M*A*S*H*" were central characters to the show. For a good amount of time. And his death changed the tone of the show from that point on.

Deep Throat's death in "The X-Files" was also a shock, seeing as how he was just becoming a big part of Mulder & Scully's inroad to discovering the mass conspiracy and cover-up that the government was doing. He died in the first season, just as he was becoming more important.

"Game of Thrones" is ushering in a new era of this kind of storytelling for TV, but it isn't new.

so everyone can move on now.

First day posting here?

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Zack has spoken!

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60 Minutes killed off Mike Wallace, Harry Reasoner, Ed Bradley, Morley Safer, and Andy Rooney.

And they actually killed them dead - boo hoo Stringer.

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You know me like that.

McLean Stevenson wanted off MASH. I don't think that was a bold writing choice.

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You know me like that.

Buffy?

Deep throat from x files?

Not making a strong case here.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I've never watched a minute of Buffy but most critics I've read agree it was a great show.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

BRick starts to become more unhinged as the laughing emoticons pile up like a body count. The only thing missing is the trademark indignant exlamation point.

There are a lot of great shows, but to cite Buffy's mom as a reason that big characters often died in tv shows is funny.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Quality response.

I think we can move on now.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I think I finally get what Rick means.

While the "death of a main character" trope has been prevalent in TV since time immemorial, GoT was one of the only ones where the character positioned as the main character is killed off early in the series.

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What about Jon-Erik Hexum on Cover Up?

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You know me like that.

you couldn't divine that from this post:



As I said, "great" is subjective. But major or main characters have been offed in the history of TV well before GoT, and not just ancillary characters.

What GoT did was bring it to the new landscape of TV, and I agree that it has been copied again recently. But I believe even TWD's source material also had main characters killed off pretty early...one of the biggest, in fact...that i believe was changed *for* the show.

Gus Fring doesn't qualify as a main character?

Even Tuco, at the time of his death, was a major player in the show.

Just to clarify in regards to L.A. Law, Rosalind dying in the elevator shaft was a huge shocker and she was the main antagonist on the show at the time.

Killing Ned would be like killing Hank in BB..Tuco wasnt a main character, Gus was though.

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Didn't you counter with Maude Flanders? Was she a "great" character?

Just be honest. You took it that I meant that characters weren't killed off prior to GoT and other recent shows. I know you don't think I'm very educated on television per your previous post but the list of "great" characters that were killed off prior to the recent run of shows is not very big. There were deaths, and it was mostly supporting characters with a few exceptions as listed.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Tuco was not a major character. You seem to be confusing being important at the time and being a major character.

Gus would be a borderline main character, but his story was almost all simply in support of other characters storylines. If we want to count him that is fine but BB was recent enough that it probably helps my point more than hurts it.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

At the time of his death, Tuco was absolutely a main character.

You can't judge characters years after their deaths. BB could have been canceled after season 2 and then Tuco would have been the main bad guy.

The death has to be judged at the time. At the time, Tuco was a main character without question. Of course if the show goes on to have many more seasons the early stuff doesn't get as much emphasis.




Ok, I'm done.

Rick, which main characters died on GoT?

This is pretty close to the truth. Prior to this generation of television, however you want to define it, the big stars of the show almost always survived at least until the part of the show where it was starting to reach the end. Many times when a star did leave early it was because they were choosing to leave the show and those people often just got written out in other ways. This is what happened with shows like NYPD Blue and ER.

LOST, a show about people who were literally dead(or whatever they were) kept pretty much everyone around outside of Charlie, and the brother and sister who were pretty much useless anyways.

That's why I said to make the list and people like Maude Flanders and a girl from the Sopranos made the list. There are more major character deaths that aren't part of the end story with TWD and GoT than probably every other show combined and all of those were done on purpose and not because someone was leaving the show to do other stuff.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I think that is a good question. If we consider Tuco a main character in BB, who lasted from episode 6-9 in BB, then I'll pretty much just copy and paste the entire cast list and subtract Ed Sheeran.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Answer the good question.

Your formula for who is a main character seems flawed. Under your system, it seems Marie from Breaking Bad was a main character and Gus was not?

Was Shane a main character in TWD?