20 TV Moments You Totally Forgot Happened in 2020

It's been a weird, long year in which time made no sense, but TV never ran out of ways to entertain us.

By Lauren Piester, Jonathan Borge Dec 26, 2020 7:21 PMTags

Sometimes, a year feels more like an entire decade. 

2020 has been one of the strangest years most of us have lived through, with many of us dividing it into the before—January, February and the first half of March—and the after—all the rest. Anything that happened in the before feels like it happened years ago and the passage of time hasn't made sense at any point since. It might still be March, but March might have been five years ago. Who's to say? Maybe it's both! 

Despite the pandemic, a whole lot of things managed to happen on TV this year and we've forgotten most of them. To help both you and ourselves remember, we've come up with a list of 20 TV moments that might have totally slipped your mind, or that you might have thought happened in a fully different year. 

Of course, this is just 20 of them because it's simply impossible to make a list of all the things we forgot. That would be a long list! 

 

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Our Favorite TV Shows of 2020

Anyway, scroll down for 20 2020 TV moments you might have totally forgotten about. 

Alex Karev ruined our lives.

Justin Chambers' final episode of Grey's Anatomy was the 2019 midseason finale, but in March, the show finally revealed where he had gone and why he had fully abandoned his wife. Basically, he discovered that Izzie (Katherine Heigl) had given birth to twins from the eggs he had fertilized when she had cancer, and so he went to live with her and the twins on a farm, never to be seen again. We still feel weird about that whole thing but we feel even weirder about the fact that we only learned his fate this year. Justice for Jo Wilson!

Ezra Miller's Flash met Grant Gustin's Flash.

It was the cameo no one saw coming for a lot of reasons. Up until this moment, when Ezra Miller appeared as the movie version of the Flash on the set of the TV version of The Flash, the DC movies and TV shows existed completely separately from one another and it seemed like that would never changed. We literally screamed out loud and then promptly forgot this ever happened. 

Peter Weber's mess of a Bachelor finale.

Just a couple of days before the pandemic shut down most of the U.S., we watched Peter Weber get engaged to Hannah Ann Sluss, dump her because he was still into Madison Prewett and awkwardly reunite with Madison Prewett while his mother made angry faces from the audience. It was a bit of a disaster, especially considering how Pete then got together with fifth place finisher Kelley Flanagan after the finale, off camera, during the pandemic. A mess! 

Carole Baskin.

Tiger King absolutely took the world by storm in March right as the pandemic took hold. Who knew we'd care so much about wild zoo keepers who wield guns and threaten to, you know, ax their competitors? But one of the most fascinating elements of the docu-series was the mere existence of Carole Baskin, who Joe Exotic repeatedly accused of killing her husband in a meat grinder, then feeding him to her big cats. Carole has since denied those allegations and went on to compete on Dancing With the Stars while Joe is in prison for animal abuse and murder for hire

The success of Unorthodox.

Though not quite as popular as Cheer, Tiger King, or even Selling Sunset, Unorthodox landed in our Netflix queue at the end of March, just as we had nothing to do but stay home and quarantine. The four-part series followed a Hasidic Jewish woman's terrifying and emotional escape from her Brooklyn community, and it earned lead Shira Haas an Emmy nomination for Lead Actress in a Limited Series/Movie.

Love Is Blind happened.

It feels like we've never lived without the Netflix reality series Love Is Blind, but in truth we've only known it since March. The dating show forced people to date behind walls in pods and they didn't even get to see each other before they proposed. We got obsessed with a stained wedding dress and fell in love with Cameron Hamilton and Lauren Speed as they fell in love. It was a simpler time. 

Sherry Pie’s RuPaul’s Drag Race controversy.

The drama on season 12 of Drag Race extended far beyond the workroom. Leading up to the premiere date, allegations that Sherry Pie catfished several men led to her immediate disqualification, prompting producers to edit her out all season and begin each episode with a disclaimer about "recent developments." It made for awkward cuts—especially as she advanced longer into the competition than expected.

Tom Bergeron and Erin Andrews’ Dancing with the Stars exit.

Ahead of season 29, the co-hosts took to social over the summer to announce they'd part ways with the show. In a statement, ABC shared the network's interest in "a new creative direction," which proved to be found in Tyra Banks, their replacement. Did fans love her as their new host? Not so much. 

Demi Lovato was on Will & Grace.

It's not hard to forget that Will & Grace aired a final season this year, let alone a final season that featured Demi Lovato as Will's surrogate. That was before her short-lived engagement to Max Ehrich and before the world shut down but it was a nice reminder that Demi really is multi-talented. 

Pop’s arrest on Gentefied.

The season one finale of Gentefied gave us several happy endings for some Morales family members. But the show brilliantly tackled the subject of deportation in the final few minutes. Pop (Joaquín Cosio), the patriarch and owner of Mama Fina's, gets arrested and placed in the back of an ICE trunk just before the credits roll. The idea of separating him from his loved ones is devastating, however, it was refreshing to see a show tackle the brutal reality of what it means to be undocumented in the U.S.

Lawrence and Issa’s (sort of) rekindled flame on Insecure.

We've been rooting for these two for four seasons, and they seem to have finally found a way to be happy apart. Still, with Issa finding success as an event planner and Lawrence saying yes to an exciting opportunity in San Francisco, it's hard to imagine how, exactly, they'll manage to work it out. Yes, she mentioned potentially moving from L.A. one day, but let's be real. The point is that their relationship always has us in our feelings and season five couldn't come soon enough. 

Arrow ended.

Back in January, the show that launched an entire TV universe said goodbye with Oliver (Stephen Amell) and Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) reunited in the afterlife. How that happened only this year and not at least three whole years ago is beyond us.

The Bachelor presented Listen To Your Heart.

The Bachelor debuted a whole entire spinoff this year! We watched every episode then lived a full lifetime between that finale in May and now. Remember whatsherface and how rude she was to whatshisface? Good times. 

Da’Vonne’s epic Big Brother elimination speech.

Season 22 of Big Brother once against prompted backlash as an all-white alliance successfully eliminated one Black contestant after the next. Throughout the season, Da'Vonne Rogers inspired conversations about the Black Lives Matter movement and the murder of Breonna Taylor. But it was her emotional elimination speech, in which she honored former Black female BB cast members, that marked a shift in the show's tone. It's no wonder she became America's Favorite Houseguest.

 

The Good Place ended.

The Good Place left us in a puddle of tears when it said goodbye at the end of January, and we can't help but think that the fantastic finale might have hit a little different if it had aired a few months later. 

Wendy Williams’ appearance on The Masked Singer.

Just watch it. No one opens the door for a native New Yorker!

The premiere of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.

The women of Salt Lake have already proven to be as rich, dramatic and joyously obnoxious as their Bravo counterparts across the country. And as the first Housewives installment to premiere since 2016, that's all thanks to perfect casting. Some highlights? Heather Gay's thirst for a man. Jen Shah's inability to keep her mouth shut. And Mary Cosby's surprising marriage to her step-grandfather.  

 

The Survivor winners went to war.

Survivor did an all-winner season earlier this year that ended in May with Tony Vlachos winning and somehow we only remembered this by googling our own articles. It was the last Survivor we're getting for a while due to the pandemic, so we thank Jeff Probst for its existence, even if we still can't quite believe that was this year. 

One Day at a Time returned (before its cancellation).

Good news: One Day at a Time returned on PopTV after being canceled by Netflix, making its season four debut in late March. 

Bad news: The coronavirus pandemic forced production to end after only four episodes, and then that end became permanent when Viacom CBS couldn't justify keeping the show around, even after airing some episodes on CBS. Dozens of shows were canceled due to pandemic shut downs, but it was especially painful to see ODAAT, the only Latinx-led show on network television last fall, receive the axe. The silver lining? Its struggle put the spotlight on Untitled Latinx Project, an organization working to open the doors for Latinxs in Hollywood.

Parks and Rec came back for one night only.

Leslie Knope came to the rescue right when we needed her at the end of April, offering us a little Pawnee cheer back when we thought we'd be out of lockdown in just a month or two. That was eight months ago and we wouldn't mind a little more Pawnee cheer if anyone were willing to get back on a Gryzzl call this winter.