Top Twenty *real* reasons I watch "Touched by an Angel" and where I would get such ideas

Or, a fan's guide to the series that have traumatized us over the years

by Amilyn and Finabair

With many thanks to Jenni and the mysterious Jill for their input and for being sounding boards.

.	What TBAA won't do	Who did it
20.	The episodes won't be downers. They will generally end happily, or, at least, positively.	Series: An awful lot of 'em. This one was more of a tribute to TBAA than a complaint about anything else.
19.	We will never get entire seasons full of little other than Andrew and Monica staring broodingly into each others' eyes.	Series: "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" (Buffy and Angel; if you weren't totally into their relationship you wound up looking at your watch an awful lot for a season or two.)
18.	Tess will never suddenly become mentally unbalanced and a reckless danger to those under her care, insisting on driving the caddy through every road hazard she can find.	Series: "Star Trek: Voyager" (Captain Janeway)
17.	One of the angels will never behead another angel and wander aimlessly off into the sunset afterwards.	Series: "Highlander" (Duncan kills Ritchie)
16.	The series will never end with all the angels being infected with a deadly, incurable virus, their fates hanging in the balance and forever uncertain.	Series: Both "Earth 2" and "Alien Nation", although AN later redeemed itself with movies that resolved it.
15.	We'll never have to put up with entire seasons' worth of angel imposters.	Series: "Due South" (They replaced Ray with a guy who was pretending to be Ray while Ray was supposedly undercover.)
14.	A psychopath will never torture Monica to death, leaving Andrew to raise the child he never knew they were having.	Series: "Beauty and the Beast" (Catherine was killed by Gabriel. Vincent was suffering from some memory loss and couldn't even remember that they might have a child, so was extremely surprised when a dying Catherine told him about the child. I knew this show was in trouble when they started advertising it with, "It's not a fairy tale anymore...")
13.	Adam will never be turned into a pincushion to justify replacing him with a blonde.	Series: "Robin of Sherwood" (Robin was killed by archers and was replaced with Robert of Huntingdon taking on the 'Robin Hood' name.)
12.	Monica will not suddenly disappear, start dressing strangely and then become mortal accidentally.	Series: "Forever Knight" (Janette)
11.	Andrew and Monica will never suddenly decide to have a one-night stand, after which Monica runs off with some other guy and gets pregnant.	Series: "Moonlighting" (Maddie and David)
10.	Monica will never get pregnant and have to be concerned about what species the child might be.	Series: "The X-Files" (Scully)
9.	Tess will never stalk Monica all over the place, calling, "I need your HELP, Monica" all the while planning to kill her to save her own skin. The dove would never suggest this to Tess, either.	Series: "Blake's Seven" (Avon needed to lighten the ship by 70 kilos or they would crash, and Orac - the computer - pointed out that Vila weighed 73 kilos. The rest is pretty much self-explanatory.)
8.	The series will never end with the angels being trapped in an inescapable time loop.	Series: "Sapphire and Steel" (Sapphire, Steel and Silver are trapped in an endless time loop in a gas station.)
7.	Andrew will never, literally, eat Monica for dinner.	Series: "Forever Knight" (In the final ep, Nick bites Nat and drains too much blood. He probably should have had dinner first, and THEN tried the experiment.)
6.	None of the angels will have a radical personality change and become a paranoid, controlling, homicidal, suicidal ego-maniac.	Series: "Blake's Seven" (Avon, fourth season.)
5.	The series will never end with the phrase, "Monica never returned home...."	Series: "Quantum Leap" (Things weren't going so badly until those words flashed up on the screen. Talk about a real downer...)
4.	None of the angels will be cleverly replaced by a frog-eating clone.	Series: Lois and Clark (Lois, in one of the many almost-wedding episodes.)
3.	The series will never suddenly change gears with an anti-climactic confrontation where Satan says, "Oh, gee, you mean you took that whole good vs. evil thing seriously? So sorry, I was just kidding; I'll just leave you folks alone now."	Series: "Babylon 5" (The Shadows basically did this after building up to what should have been a climactic confrontation.)
2.	The series will never end by airing a cliffhanger, expecting the show to be renewed the next season - then get cancelled, never getting the opportunity to show the viewers what happened next.	Series: As many have pointed out, too many to name all of them. Here's a few: "Now and Again", "The Others", "Alien Nation" (before the movies), "Dark Shadows"
1.	The series will never end with all the characters being violently killed off in one fell swoop in a single episode.	Series:"Forever Knight" (Actually, Vachon and Urs were killed two episodes from the end, Screed was killed midway through third season, and Schanke and Cohen were killed at the start of the third season. Tracy, Nat and Nick were killed in the final episode. Of the season three cast, that left Captain Reese and LaCroix, who's basically the bad guy, alive. Er, undead, in LaCroix's case. And Captain Reese, the only surviving 'good guy', is having a REAL bad week when you think about it - he's just lost two cops and a medical examiner.) "The Others" (Basically, everyone 'loses' to the darkness in the end and dies.) "Blake's Seven" (Blake turns up after being missing for two seasons, betrays everyone to the Federation, and is shot by Avon. Everyone else is shot by Federation soldiers, except for Avon, who in the final scene is standing over Blake's body with his gun, surrounded by Federation soldiers on all sides with their guns levelled at him. Avon looks at Blake, smiles in an extremely insane manner, and raises the gun. They cut to black as we hear shots being fired. The bad 'guy', Servalan/Sleer, is still alive out there somewhere.)