Tuesday Top Ten: Most Regrettable Deaths in Pop Culture

In true English major fashion, I read several books over Christmas Break.  I found myself opening more books on Christmas morning than I did my entire fall semester (only kidding...except for you, Health book.)  After reading Christopher McDougall's Born to Run, I found myself inspired to run five miles a day in The Woodlands (not as impressive considering half the people in the book are running 50-100 mile marathons in intense weather conditions).  After reading Free Darko's The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac, I found myself inspired to write more about my favorite sport in the future.  And after reading Stephen King's The Green Mile, I found myself inspired to write about the deaths in pop culture that I regret the most.  I know, in true English major fashion...

(*DISCLAIMER: If you don't want to read spoilers for 24, 3:10 to Yuma, Dexter, Alias, Rocky, or Lost, then don't read the rest of the incredibly well-written and compelling post.)





Honorable Mention:
-David Palmer from 24 (although you're still in his good hands with his Allstate commercials)

-Charlie Prince from 3:10 to Yuma (because you know you'd rather see Ben Foster starring in a sequel/spin-off as this great character than seeing him co-star with Jason "I Love Lionsgate" Statham in The Mechanic.)

-Elisha Cuthbert's career (one word: Captivity)

10. Arrested Development

  

The show that spawned and revived the careers of some of the greatest comedic minds of the past ten years was murdered by Fox before its time.  The reasoning?  Ratings.  From every highbrow joke to the plucky theme, this show was in a class of its own when it came to sitcoms (and yes, I'm including Sanford and Son, as well.)  Lately, I've been worried that one of my favorite new shows, Community, might fall to the same fate despite being one of the best written comedies in the past few years.  Rumors of an Arrested Development movie have been in circulation for the past twenty-three years.

9. Michael Vaughn - Alias

 

I stumbled upon Alias several years after it had already ended while I was on summer hiatus from another JJ Abrams show, Lost.  The first couple of seasons were riveting, with great writing and good acting that could only be rivaled by a show like Lost (at this point, even I'm not sure if I believe half the things I say about my old favorite show).  However, things started to tumble after an incredible second season finale and I think Abrams desperately wanted to find a new angle to the show that was slowly becoming stagnant during the next few seasons.  And while Vaughn's death was a move that was bold and dramatic, I slowly lost interest with the newly introduced replacements.  Ben Affleck didn't help the show much either by getting Jennifer Garner pregnant for the last season of the show...just another reason to hate him.

(Editor's Note: When I wrote this, I wasn't aware that they bring him back to life...coming from a show related to Lost, I should have known I would be made a fool for jumping to conclusions..  In my face.)

8. Apollo Creed - Rocky IV

 

Let's forget the fact that Apollo's death resulted in one of the greatest montages in cinematic history, or possibly my favorite quote of all time, but hone in on how seeing Apollo die when I was a kid nearly traumatized me to the point of catatonia.  The guy represented America!  Even the fact that Apollo's death was necessary to bring Rocky out of retirement is regrettable because after his eventual defeat of Drago, Rocky 5 was greenlit, bringing a less-than-motivational brain damage/Tommy Gunn storyline.

7. Nick Drake

I've touched upon this before: in high school I was led to believe that Nick Drake was an up-and-coming musician that would rival Iron & Wine for the rest of my life.  His haunting "Pink Moon" is still one of my favorite songs.  But at a lake house trip the summer after high school, my friend Austin hit me with the sad reality that he died in the early 1970s, only further proof that I am living in the wrong decade.  Drake was right though, there was a pink moon coming.

6. Doakes - Dexter

Anytime the first two seasons of Dexter needed a breath of fresh air, either in the form of comic relief or intriguing storyline, Doakes was there.  While he mainly served as a major foil to the darkly dreaming Dexter, Doakes was seemingly more than that with his quick-talking, no-nonsense persona.  Many of his greatest quotes are unprintable for Charging Interests, but believe me when I say that he was an explosive character.  While his demise in the second season was slightly predictable and mostly warranted in order to keep the show going, it's disappointing to see the same cop-chasing-Dexter storyline with Quinn, a far lesser character than the (almost) immortal Doakes.

5. Rita - Dexter

Season four of Dexter was my personal favorite, seeing as the Trinity Killer was one of the greatest villains ever created.  John Lithgow's chilling portrayal earned him several much-deserved awards.  However, to truly cement his status as one of the best bad guys, he had to do something that would really shock the audience, which he did by killing Rita in the season finale.  I still remember being shocked watching the episode live back at my parent's house, well before Julie Benz would agree to be in the laughable No Ordinary Family.  However, this death makes the list mainly because of the shock value that it caused and not because I find it particularly regrettable, seeing that Rita was never my favorite character.  As my good friend Cale put it, "The only thing I regret about Rita's death is that it took four seasons for it to happen."

4. Michael Myers - Halloween II

Although Rob Zombie's Michael Myers also died in his updated version of Halloween II, both of his contributions to the Halloween series were mainly regrettable so I'll focus mainly on the original sequel.  (One time when I was in Oklahoma I started to watch the first Zombie Halloween with a girl I liked.  After the first thirty minutes we decided to stop watching due to the sheer grossness of it.  Several episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark soon followed.  In related news, we never dated.)  In the original Halloween II, the final standoff has Michael getting shot in both eyes and set ablaze in a gas leak set off by Dr. Loomis.  Despite Michael valiantly trying to walk it off (half of the reason why he made the list was so I could post the above still frame), he collapses and seemingly dies.  A completely Michael Myers-less Halloween III: Season of the Witch followed and I'm still not entirely sure if it was released as a horror or a comedy.  The movie was so terrible that Nicholas Cage couldn't resist making a movie of the same name.  I swear, sometimes Charging Interests writes itself.  Luckily, producers wised up and resurrected Myers for another eight movies before Rob Zombie did his best to kill him for good.

3. Every Attractive Female on Lost













I'm not sure why, but if you were a woman or a minority living on Lost island, you're days were more numbered than the prisoners from The Green Mile.  It seemed as if every month another cute girl on the island was finding themselves six feet under.  First it was Shannon, followed by Ana and Libby, then Nikki, Juliet, and finally Sun.  Yes, everyone may have died by the end of the show, but if you were a girl and your name wasn't Kate or Claire, then you might as well have walked into the jungle and begged for the Smoke Monster to come destroy you, Tom Jane from The Mist-style. 


2. Mr. Eko - Lost

Speaking of Lost, how disappointing was it that Mr. Eko was the one character that wasn't brought back for the final "sentimental" season?  Apparently Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje wanted three times the amount of money that they were offering him to return, which if true is supremely disappointing, seeing that he was one of the best characters on the show back when it made more sense (if any sense at all).  Apparently, the actor originally left the show because he wanted to return to London after his parents' deaths, leaving the writers to ditch their much more grandiose plans for the stick-wielding priest.  Mr. Eko's promise was ultimately unfulfilled and the only way to get your fix was to watch Adewale in GI Joe.  I didn't see it either.  It's also interesting to note that Adewale's character in Oz, Simon Adebisi, also died before his time.

1. Otis Redding

I had a hard time putting real people on this list, feeling pretty low that I would compare fictional characters' deaths with real-life death.  In the big scheme of things, I do know that pop culture is just trivial and people like Nick Drake should be honored before fictional people like Apollo Creed.  that being said, Otis Redding was the inspiration for this list and I had to put him at number one.  At the ripe age of twenty-six, Redding was able to establish himself as one of the premiere voices of the 1960s.  He died in a plane crash just three days after his most well-known song, "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay", was recorded.  If Redding had lived, there is no doubt that he would have continued to be one of the greatest singers of the 20th century and I would have at least three more hours of cool music to play when I jog.  We were born to run, you know. 

-PB - credit to Twhitt and Nick for the song.