Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26181378-20151122023857/@comment-24330788-20151211084259

TheMisteriousDrB wrote:

No arguments about the CJ fans here, you're talking to one of them. As for Thomas, that's a good point and I agree. While JG did personally acknowledge some fan criticism with Thomas, yeah, they probably wouldn't remove him just for that. The writers must have their own reasons as well.

That being said, I don’t think the decisions they make with these episodes are completely devoid of fan influence either. Look at episodes like Real Date and Just Friends, in some of those scenes the characters all but directly reference the more outspoken opinions from the fanbase (you know, that matchmaker guy trying to get Mordecai and CJ to break up and Mordecai asking why "the whole universe" wants him and Margaret to get back together). Sure those episodes mostly poked fun at said opinions but they clearly made an impact if they were included. So what’s to say those same opinions didn't have some sway in what eventually happened to the Mordecai’s love triangle? Even a little? I get this is all just speculation though so feel free to take it with a grain of salt. And for what it's worth, I whole-heartedly agree CJ's good character, even on her own, so it would be good to see her back regardless.

Wattamack4 wrote:

You're right, actually I regret my wording on that. They wouldn't have written him off just cause some fans were complaining about him. As for Thomas being a fugitive, I personally think there are ways around it, like if the writers wanted to, they could have made him a double agent working for the US government, or maybe he could arrange a deal to exchange Russian intel for his freedom. It is possible to write around the whole espionage thing and still have him on the show. So in my opinion I don't think that was it. (That being said, it is just my opinion so each to their own.)

The reason why I linked Thomas with CJ before was because in both cases I thought it was a combination of audience backlash and the writers running out of directions to take the character in their current state. That's not to say I throught they were bad characters, quite the opposite. But temporary or not, they wouldn't have needed to announce their apparent exits if all was going well. If I had to guess, I'd say with Thomas it might have been because they'd run out of things to do with him as an intern, and with CJ, like you said it was most likely to end the love triangle story arc and re-establish Margaret as Mordecai's end game.