Fall TV: 5 Characters That Deserve Better This Season

If you feel a chill and smell pumpkin spice in the air, it can only mean one thing: Fall TV is here!  And if you're anything like Small Screen Girl, you spent the summer lamenting about the surprise pregnancies, weddings, break-ups, potential murders, angelic possessions and more.  Finales put our favorite characters through the ringer, and premieres aren't that much kinder either.  

Here are 8 characters who deserve better in the 2018-2019 season.  

Raj Koothrappali, The Big Bang Theory 
Whether you love or hate The Big Bang Theory, I think everyone can say no one expected the show to last for 12 seasons.  This fall marks the last trip around the sun for the nerdiest sitcom on TV.  I'm not necessarily sad to see it go, but I am bummed about the overall trajectory of Raj's character (Kunal Nayyar).  After spending 6 seasons being unable to talk to women, he's spent the next 5 bumbling through relationships and whining about being alone while enduring racist jokes from his friends.  Even worse, while everyone else generated massive leaps in their careers, Raj's has remained mostly stagnant.  No one deserves a come up, both personally and professionally, more than Rajesh.  By season's end, I'd love see to him engaged to an adorkable divorcee with an obsession with rom-coms and a couple of kids, a massive discovery of his own, and maybe a spin-off of his own.  The final season starts on September 24 at 8/7c on CBS.

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Olivia Benson, Law & Order: SVU
It's remarkable that Law & Order: SVU  will be celebrating its 20th season when it debuts on September 27.  While Stabler fled for the luxury and sanity of private security years ago, Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) is still deeply entrenched in the grim and traumatizing world of special victims.  Now a Captain of her squad, she's endured more than a lifetime of hazards that extend far beyond beyond the professional.  Manhattan might be safer with Olivia still brandishing the badge, but she has definitely earn the right to snatch some of the security that Stabler did back in 2013. 

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Everyone, Station 19
Shondaland's Station 19 premiered to lukewarm following, yet its one of my favorite new shows.  During last season's searingly suspenseful finale, almost every main character from Andy's dad to Travis to Jack all found themselves in life-ending peril, thanks to cancer and that horrific office building fire.  I'm NEED everyone, especially my precious cinnamon roll Travis, to not only make it out of that season premiere safely but to be able to save lives another day.  Too bad we'll have to wait until October 4 to find out the fates of the hottest firefights on TV.

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Ian Gallagher, Shameless
It can be painfully frustrating to watch The Gallaghers try to dig their way out of poverty and/or mental illness only to be kicked back down by the snowballing tragedy that is being poor.  This is especially true for my favorite Gallagher, Ian (Cameron Monhagan).  After he managed to recover from a terrifying episode stemming form his bipolar disorder, secure a job as a paramedic and find a relatively cool boyfriend.  Then his meds became unbalanced.  Now he's a viral activist called Gay Jesus who started out protecting gay kids from religious persecution only for the movement to spiral into something violent and dangerous.   

This season has seen Ian actually fight to STAY in prison and now he's searching for messages from God.  It seems like just yesterday, he was dating a hot black fireman or sneaking off for a tryst with his star-crossed lover, Mickey.  If anyone deserves one of those fantastic, hard-fought Gallagher victories, it's Ian.  I'd love to see him have a somewhat peaceful ending to the Gay Jesus drama, a way for Ian to keep his paramedic job, and another rendezvous with Mickey.  Shameless is currently airing on Showtime at 9/8c every Sunday.

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Sam Winchester, Supernatural
This is the second time that Supernatural's Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki) has been included in this somewhat annual article (though I think about making it a weekly series for him).  Season 13 found Sam Winchester desperately searching for his mother, deal with Lucifer being sprung from the Apocalypse-verse and dying horribly (again) only to lose Dean when his body was hijacked by the evil archangel Michael.  Now he will be tasked with saving his brother from a twisted and massively powerful angel while doing to his day job of saving the world. 

Sadly, I don't have much confidence that the writers will give Sam a decent, full-fledged arc that encompasses both the grief of losing his brother to what is literally his worst nightmare, the fight to save him, and Sam forming any kind of bond with his newly-rescued mother, especially since the writers have already expressed the "challenges" of writing the show without Dean.  After several seasons in which it seems that Supernatural was zombie-staggering through the motions, I'm running out of hope that they can conjure up a compelling and scarily emotional arc for our Sammy. Thank god for crossroads demons, amirite?  Supernatural premieres on October 11 on The CW.