Best And Worst TV Series Endings

[JamesC]

You've never had that experience where you try something and don't like it and then people say 'but you must like it, it's so great'. So you try it again and you don't like it so you leave it alone, and then someone says 'so you like it now right?' And you say, 'No, it's not for me', and they get more and more drunk on 90s booze like fucking Caffrey's and keep telling you why you're wrong not to like it and you end up wanting to punch them?

No.

I can understand it being ever so slightly annoying having people evangelise stuff to you - I know several people who refuse to watch Breaking Bad because of the hype for example. But I'd think nearly twenty years later they'd have let it go.

Well to be honest, and without adding obvious exaggeration, that's about all it would take for me to make an ill advised quip (on an internet message board, in a thread specifically designed to provoke discussion about our likes and dislikes of past programmes).

Merry Christmas.

[JamesC]

And sorry to double post, but saying 'if you're one of those people that hates something purely because it's popular', is the worst kind of arrogance and far worse than anything I've said on this thread.

[Spikes]

Wasn't SAPPHIRE AND STEEL another bummer of an ending?

What turned out to be the final episode to Sapphire and Steel was originally meant to be a cliffhanger ending, and the series was going to return the following year. Alas.....

How did they ever get out of that particular pickle? Well the audio drama's from a few years ago gave the answer - [spoiler]They just did OK, now move along please...[/spoiler]

[Greg M.]

What turned out to be the final episode to Sapphire and Steel was originally meant to be a cliffhanger ending, and the series was going to return the following year. Alas.....

The same is almost true of Blake's 7 - there was a chance, at the time, that it might have got a fifth series - the fourth series itself was completely unexpected and announced before anyone actually making it knew it was even going to happen. If there'd been another series, anyone Chris Boucher wanted to have survived would have - apart from Blake, as Gareth Thomas insisted that he be definitively killed off, hence all the blood and his being shot with a different sort of gun. (Oh, and Josette Simon never intended to return either, hence Dayna doing some terminal eye-rolling as she's shot.)

[GrinningChimera]

One that I feel deserves a notable mention is Captain Scarlet. All those amazing adventures and in the end [spoiler]it was all a dream![/spoiler] I refuse to this day to buy into the last episode as canon. Second biggest disappointment of my childhood. Maybe third.

[Daveycandlish]

No-one mentioned The Prisoner yet? As endings go that was both great and shite - utterly bonkers!

[Professor Bear]

I liked This Life well enough at the time, if only for the outrage it tried to provoke by showing that gay men liked to cuddle, but the ending was pretty shite.  The anniversary special at least dropped the pretense of not being yet another BBC show about middle class privilege and got on with things, so I thought that drew a line under it a lot better than the actual series finale managed.

I thought Star Trek: Enterprise had a great ending: action-packed, emotional, the characters moved forward, the fictional universe moved back in line with its prequel remit - I didn't really like it at the time, but I've been able to re-evaluate it without preconceived ideas of what the show should or shouldn't have been like and I've come around to thinking it was a great place to leave things, without the false pretense of closure that an episodic sci-fi prequel could never really deliver because it's merely a footnote in something larger.
Unfortunately then there was another episode that pooed all over everything.
Magnum: PI had a great series finale, but then they made another season of it and the first episode was just the character going "Whoa - I nearly died there" and acting all bummed out until he isn't.  I hear the definitely for-real final episode was pretty good, too, but haven't got that far yet.
Cowboy Bebop had a great finale that captured the soul of the show perfectly.
Neon Genesis Evangelion had a really good series finale and then they remade it and Not So Much.  Then they remade it again and it was just the worst kind of wank.  They are currently remaking it yet again.
Probably Cheers, too.  There's something really bittersweet about Sam's coming to terms with being a washed-up joke who tends bar for a living and accepting that the women he chases are transient distractions rather than something he actually wants as a permanent part of his life.  A lot of tv works on the basis that everyone wants to be part of a couple, but Cheers left us with the knowledge that Sam, for all his faults, was just a people guy and the patrons of his bar - and his bar - were all he really needed.

Worst series finales for me have probably been Lost, BSG, Buffy, Alias, and Dexter.  Not for being outright terrible so much as just failing to satisfy.

[radiator]

I liked This Life well enough at the time, if only for the outrage it tried to provoke by showing that gay men liked to cuddle, but the ending was pretty shite.  The anniversary special at least dropped the pretense of not being yet another BBC show about middle class privilege and got on with things, so I thought that drew a line under it a lot better than the actual series finale managed.

Ugh, I despised +10. It just didn't seem to take place in the same universe that the series did. Classic example of a writer returning to their most beloved creation after some time away, and promptly turning out something that seemed like fan fiction.

You can't go wrong with the original ending imo. *wallop!* "Outstanding!". Freeze Frame. Had a lot more balls than some ill-advised bunkum about Egg's novel (Egg would so never have written a successful novel) and a reality TV show.

At the risk of drawing further criticism, I'll put forward Only Fools and Horses* as having a good, and latterly godawful ending. The 1997 specials were a nice send-off that aired just as the wheels were coming off, but the followups they did in the early 2000s were simply unwatchable.

Always hate it when they try to add more after something has unequivocally ended. Was watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade the other day and remarked that I couldn't believe they made another one after that. I mean, Indiana Jones literally finds the Holy Grail in that film, and then rides off into the sunset.

*Love it or loathe it, I think it's some kind of classic.

[Ghost MacRoth]

Just don't really understand how anyone can 'hate' a drama series and feel compelled to slag it off,

Ugh, I despised +10.

Always hate it when they try to add more after something has unequivocally ended.

 

[Theblazeuk]

Hah!

BSG had a great final episode, spoiled by the realisation that actually [spoiler]they did not have a plan and its all gone a bit metaphysical[/spoiler]. But cmon, ramming the Galactica into a space station - that was cool.

Wasn't too keen on the JLU finale where they made Batman Beyond a clone-offpsring of Bruce Wayne. In fact I really hated that particular twist.

The Shield has a great, slightly open (but as with all things in the life of the characters, catastrophically fixed into a downward spiral) ending. Everything came to a head and when the doodoo finally hit the fan, it sprayed far and wide.

[CrazyFoxMachine]

I was fond of the "ending" to The Wire and I anticipate something similar with David Simon's soon-to-be-finished other masterpiece Treme which is my favourite series of all time I think. They are both realist and the endings are really a reflection on reality they are attempting to mimic and the nature of continuation - as John Goodman's character from Treme says: "Don't think in terms of a beginning and an end - in real life there is no closure"

HUZZAH

[Buttonman]

'Seinfeld' suffered from an over-hyped ending that couldn't live up to expectations. They went full circle and maintain the point that no one developed at all but it just felt like a damp squib. In contrast 'The Larry Sanders Show' ended on a real high with Larry allowing that we now could flip. Great Jim Carrey guest spot too.

I also liked 'Arrested Development' having a 'Save the Bluths' charity event which mirrored the show's imminent, but not permanent, demise.

Also another vote for 'Blackadder 4' and 'The Office' although I liked the end of the series rather than the X-mas specials "And people say she's just a big pair of tits".

[HdE]

And sorry to double post, but saying 'if you're one of those people that hates something purely because it's popular', is the worst kind of arrogance and far worse than anything I've said on this thread.

You've no idea how often I encounter this. It's what comes from living in a town full of hipsters.

[Ancient Otter]

I'll throw this out to the board - where do ye stand on the ending of Oz?

[Jim_Campbell]

I'll throw this out to the board - where do ye stand on the ending of Oz?

"There's no place like home..."

Worked ok for me

Cheers

Jim