Best And Worst TV Series Endings

[locustsofdeath!]

Worst ending for me goes to Firefly. Because, well, it shouldn't have ended.

Honorable mention goes to the X-Files. Still my favorite TV series ever, I felt after so much quality build up for the first 6 seasons it went out with a relative whimper.

Best ending might be Spartacus. I had a huge man-crush on Andy Whitfield, so after what I consider a brilliant first season, I didn't like the next couple of seasons half as much, with Liam McIntyre being a main reason for this. But damned if he didn't go out like a man in that series finale. Great stuff, with a lot of unexpected emotional moments.

[GrinningChimera]

Honorable mention goes to the X-Files. Still my favorite TV series ever, I felt after so much quality build up for the first 6 seasons it went out with a relative whimper.

The X-Files ended with the first movie. Seasons 1 -5 were pure gold. The only episode that I felt was up to the standard set by the first 5 seasons was Drive. I still remember to this day the first time I watched it with my mum. No intro, no titles, just straight into news footage of a car chase. I don't own S6 because the rest of the season was a disappointment in my eyes, but I may well have to shell out just for that one episode. Plus Bryan Cranston was brilliant in it too. (up to that point I only knew him as Hal)

As for everything after that, it wasn't worthy of the X-Files name. Especially the Robert Patrick stuff (great actor, but didn't fit the show) Oh, and the Lone Gunmen spin-off was great too. The foreshadowing of 9/11 - spooky!

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Mad Dogs.

Baffling. Bewildering. Cop out. Sell out. Shite.

[Professor Bear]

Mad Dogs.

Baffling. Bewildering. Cop out. Sell out. Shite.

I EXPECTED BETTER OF SKY ONE.

[Devons Daddy]

Life on Mars (bloody great)
Blake's 7 (no spoilers back then so it was a shock for me)
Indiana jones last crusade( let's say that was end)

[Dark Jimbo]

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]

Silver was the key - he was going to do something clever with the diner's cutlery (or perhaps have done something clever, seeing as he slips out of the place just before the end).

[The Doctor Alt 8]

Blake's Seven has to be the best ever.

I agree!

[Keef Monkey]

This seems the best place to put this -

Watching it on UK telly, so just got round to the How I Met Your Mother finale and oh boy, did they fluff that.

Seems like the main problem is they were sticking doggedly to an idea they had back before the original pilot, when between then and now things had gone somewhere else. We'd been talking for a couple of seasons now about how we expected it to end, and it did go there, and that could have been perfect...but then it immediately rushed through a quick five minute (if that) resolution that felt tacked on, unearned, tone deaf and totally undid a lot of what had come before it.

Seems silly to get this bothered by the last episode of a show, particularly the last episode of a sitcom I get largely mocked for watching, but you get a bit attached to this stuff and this really felt disrespectful to the story they'd been telling and to the characters. Just...urgh.

[Frank]

I can't think of a single final episode of a sitcom that I thought was anything other than awful *. The whole format of sitcoms is setup, punchline, setup, punchline, and then everything basically goes back to how it was before in time for next week's episode. Deviating from that to introduce whatever inelastic plot developments are going to bring the show to a definite end just means that episode is mostly absent of the elements that made you enjoy the show in the first place.

Ideally, the final episode of a sitcom would be just another episode with no definite ending, but no broadcaster's going to pass up the huge potential audience attracted to an event show where you find out what finally happens ... in a show where nobody cares what actually happens, just as long as the gags are funny. I blame the fad for season arcs not on Buffy and Whedon, but on Jennifer Aniston and her hair her on-off thing with the giraffe from Madagascar.


* except the flippant and sardonic Blackadders 2, 3, and 4. Yeah, I know the ending of ... Goes Fourth is poignant, but that episode is just as mordantly funny as every other episode until the last few minutes, which is what gives the ending its impact

[Keef Monkey]

A lot of that might be true, the problem here is that most of that wasn't true for this show.

It was telling an overarching story which you always knew had a beginning and an end, it was told by an occasionally unreliable narrator who would go off on tangents meaning it wasn't linear, so the whole thing was constantly jumping all over the time line of the characters' lives.

Episodes would obviously have a focus or a mini-story to tell, but the events weren't wrapped up and forgotten about the following week - the way the flashbacks and flash-forwards worked some stories were told in little chunks over the course of different seasons and would still pop up and be revisited again from time to time, some things were cleverly set up years in advance and some gags would be overarching in-jokes that spanned the entire length of the show. Crucially as well, people did care how it was going to end up - besides just wanting to see where the characters wound up it had the hook that one day, eventually you were going to get to the point of the story.

A lot of people sneer at it for being very commercial, but I think within the framework of the sitcom it was doing a lot of very smart things. Which is why it's particularly upsetting for them to botch their finale.

[Daveycandlish]

Friends, Frasier, Will and Grace, How I Met Your Mother; none of these had a good ending. All were look backs,or poignant but more likely cloying in the end. The best final episode I can think of is Porridge - Lennie Godber gets released but Fletch still flicks the V's at MacKay as a final insult. No lessons learned. No kissing and making up and letting bygones be bygones. Just, yeah, life goes on and up yours. Porridge was brilliant. 

[Theblazeuk]

Spaced ended well. And surprised no one's mentioned Black Adder, and I don't mean just the famous Goes Forward finale.

[Frank]

surprised no one's mentioned Black Adder, and I don't mean just the famous Goes Forward finale.

Goes Fourth. Ahem:

* except the flippant and sardonic Blackadders 2, 3, and 4. Yeah, I know the ending of ... Goes Fourth is poignant, but that episode is just as mordantly funny as every other episode until the last few minutes, which is what gives the ending its impact

[shaolin_monkey]

Has anyone mentioned the BBC adaptation of John Christopher's The Tripods?

A three book series was reduced to two books worth of series, with a ridiculously downbeat ending.

I still shake my fist at the BBC for that one, 'cos up to that point it was going really well!

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

I find the problem with a lot of American Sit-cons is that they end long after they've outstayed their welcome and the once lovable characters are parodies of their former selves. I found HIMYM to be mildly amusing to begin with, but by about the 4th seasons I foun all the main cast to be thoroughly unlikeable, in fact they had turned into such terrible, horrible people, I wanted Ted to end up alone and unloved