Jump the Spark: TV Couples Who Hooked Up Too Soon

Oh David and Maddie...Why'd you have to have sex and ruin TV forever? Or at least, that's what it felt like when Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepard bumped the bounce after just two and a half seasons of romantic tension, leading to the show promptly getting cancelled. To be fair, people have plugged the cancellation on everything from Willis' budding movie career, to Shepard's pregnancy drawing their attention away, but we all know the truth. And since then, every show has lived in the shadow of Moonlighting, knowing that if they get their main characters to screw too soon, they're, well, screwed.

I don't know if this is "got together too soon", or "got together at all". Once Joss Whedon left after season five new showrunner Marti Noxon gave in to her most slashfictiony impulses and had Buffy yearn for bad-boy vampire Spike. I'm sure there's a large part of the female population that would disagree with me, but man it was gross. Granted, the intial coupling between depressed Slayer and evil bloodsucker was brilliant (when they have sex, a house literally crashes down around them), the aftershocks, which essentially neutered formerly awesome Spike, were straight out of a bodice ripping romance novel and the show never recovered.

Hey, it was just a little peck on the lips - and, you know, a baby - but you can trace the decline of The X-Files directly to the beginning of the shoved-in romantic plotline between the two leads. Given the short shrift the writers gave the actual alien invasion storyline, which two movies later doesn't make sense, they maybe should have spent far less time explaining where Scully's baby came from, and far more time figuring out what was up with all those bees.

The problem with any ongoing soap opera is that, barring introducing new characters, you eventually run out of couplings. So though we may have been into Ross and Rachel's initial get-together, and maybe even the subsequent break-up, by the series finale, the "Ross and Rachel are meant to be" bit felt tiring, played out, and just not that interesting. Especially in light of the surprising Monica/Chandler pairing, which felt natural. Note to producers: let the couplings come out of nowhere, and then figure out how they can work. Less Moonlighting, more Mondler.