Best/Worst/Strangest ending to a TV series.

[redirish28]

Strangest is probably St. Elsewhere (I was a kind when I saw it and it still makes me wonder.)


Worst--(never like the series forced myself to watch the ending.) Steinfield.


Best-- West Wing.

[Kat45]

1. I hated the ending to Roseanne

She talked about how she'd been writing a book, then proceeded to talk about all the things she'd changed about the people and situations from the series. In other words, most of what we'd been watching throughout the series (and everything from the last year) was totally made up. So what the fuck were we watching? I feel that it negated the whole series.

[blueamy66]

11. This is what came to my mind first....

what a mess

[Broken_Hero]

25. Agreed,

the ending seem very far fetched to me, and totally destroyed the previous 8 seasons, and season 9 was weak as hell.

I also hated the ending to Justice League Unlimited...those bastards! :)

Also, X-Files season ender, I can't believe my fave three characters got the shaft....

[kick-ass-bob]

2. Newhart. (the Larry, Darryl and Darryl one)

I still don't know if I liked it or hated it.

[redirish28]

5. my wife loved the ending of the show and she LOVED the larry Darryl and Darryl thing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwYw2i2icNg

[Kat45]

27. I thought that was a good one. n/t

[av8rdave]

38. I LOVED the ending to that Newhart one...

It was perfect I think because of how it typified the real life Bob Newhart's sense of humor.

An interesting factoid: That closing scene was the brainchild of Newhart's real life wife, who had no connection to the show or even the entertainment business. Newhart talks about that in his autobiography, "I Shouldn't Even be Doing This!". Great read.

[Iggo]

3. Sopranos. Seinfeld. Angel.

Great. Great. Great.

[Swede]

7. Angel ending was perfect.

I hope no one messes with the storyline.

[edbermac]

4. I Married Dora was memorable.

Only lasted 13 episodes. Comedy about an American single dad named Farrell marrying his illegal alien maid named Dora Calderon to keep her from being deported.

From Wiki:

"The show had low ratings and was canceled halfway into the first season. The final episode ended with an incident, known as "breaking the fourth wall,"
that ranked number 49 on TVLand's list of The 100 Most Unexpected TV Moments.

Farrell received a two year job offer in Bahrain and the final scene featured him leaving Calderon and his children despite
their pleas and boarding a plane headed overseas. Then, suddenly Farrell reappeared:"



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvVR99yafr8&p=21D243E8CD144389&playnext=1&index=35

[Lindsey]

6. Best: Six Feet Under, I don't have a worst or strangest. n/t

[Hassin Bin Sober]

30. That one still haunts me ..... We're all gonna die!!!

[Initech]

8. Lost takes up the latter two categories, best would be Monk

[XemaSab]

10. I thought LOST pulled it off in some ways

but they should have set up the final season earlier in the series.

[sakabatou]

9. When it comes to cartoons...

Best: Cowboy Bebop
Worst: ReBoot. It didn't really end and the last ep was a cliff hanger.

[AngryOldDem]

12. I didn't particularly care for the MASH finale.

But St. Elsewhere will always be at the top of my worst list. But to be fair, that show had been circling the drain for its last few seasons anyway.

One of the best is definitely Six Feet Under, closely followed by The West Wing.

[BlueIris]

32. I was wondering if anyone would mention that. I thought it was overdone,

maudlin and anti-climactic.

[Brickbat]

13. Strangest, and yet awesome:

The Prisoner.

[TZ]

14. Worst: Twin Peaks

The start and first season of that show was so well done...Then it just went off a cliff. So bad, I never could even bring myself to see the movie which supposedly fleshed out stuff....x(

[BlueIris]

33. I'm still so conflicted about the TP finale.

Frustrating as all hell. I "get" what they were trying to do there, but I don't think they succeeded.

Wanna hear something weird I read about TP the other day (first time I read it, too, after almost ten years of being a Peaker)? Contrary to popular belief, David Lynch and Co. actually did have a couple of seasons of story arcs sorta plotted out--but had to scrap them in favor of basing the first season and a lot of the stuff that grew out of it on the "Who Killed Laura Palmer?" mystery.

Allegedly, they never originally intended to solve the murder; all the characters who were begin the series invested in solving it were eventually supposed to get sucked into other stories within Twin Peaks' murky depths. But someone decided that without the murder mystery to anchor TP's high concept, viewers wouldn't be willing or able to follow along, a decision I think clearly limited the writers' ability to allow the main plot to develop in a sustainable way.

(Oh, and the film "resolves" fucking nothing, BTW. We get maybe a little more insight into why it was all happening, but next to nothing about what went down after the events of the finale.)

[velvet]

35. agreed

I ignored the movie. The series had such promise at first, so original and intriguing and soooo much menace. "Bob" materialising in whatsit's bedroom was one of the most frightening things I've ever seen on screen. A simple idea, but the way it was played was chilling. And the nightclub - so seedy, so sordid, I could feel myself there, an innocent stranger surrounded by danger. And that was the strength of the show, it didn't do simple good vs evil, it was more specific than that. It focussed on innocence and corruption and how we define them.

But by the last season it had totally lost its way. I don't think the thing, taken as a whole, ever reached the degree of dramatic climax it needed. It was like the story built and built and then went straight to a (very) long denouement.

[grace0418]

15. Worst: Seinfeld. Best: Six Feet Under. Strangest. Well I guess I might say "Lost" because

I *still* don't know how I feel about the ending this many months later. I wasn't necessarily surprised by too much of the very end, but neither was I extremely satisfied or dissatisfied. Just kinda went "huh.".

[lukasahero]

18. I'm pretty sure the entire meaning of "Lost" was

dogs are awesome. :)

[LynneSin]

16. Best, without a doubt, was "Six Feet Under". One I loved the best was "Sex and the City"

:D

[NoGOPZone]

17. Best, The Odd Couple. Worst, Cheers. Strangest, The Sopranos nt

[SayitAintSo]

19. St. Elsewhere - hands down............n/t

[Dr Morbius]

20. The strangest ending to a TV series? The Prisoner.

All right, I admit it was kind of a strange show, but only in the sense that it assumed the viewer would be intelligent.

That was easily the strangest ending I've ever seen, loaded with pop symbolism that I still haven't figured out, many years after watching it.

Spoiler: if you ever have an intention of watching the series (and I strongly recommend you do), don't watch this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBmxR1eegxc&feature=related

[BrklynLiberal]

21. I think I agree on all three of your choices...

Of course, the Bob Newhart Show ending was a bit on the weird side as well.

[bikebloke]

22. Life on Mars (UK version) - spoiler

The screen goes black and you expect the credits to roll up. Then Sam appears.

[ScreamingMeemie]

23. Best-Mad About You, Worst-St. Elsewhere...Strangest-Newhart.

I loved that we got to see into the future with what happened on Mad about You, and that their kid/narrator was Janeane Garofalo

[redirish28]

24. My wife also loved that ending too

[ScreamingMeemie]

29. I just thought it was awesome that we got to find out how their lives

turned out. I always figured that they would end up divorced.

[BlueIris]

36. The only thing I didn't like about the Mad About You finale were the time jumps.

Or, rather, the dates they picked for the timeline to jump to.

Mabel Buchman was born in 1997, about a month after Jamie reveals that she was born in 1963. That would make her 34 that spring. That would mean that Jamie's second pregnancy, which was listed on the screen as taking place in 2006, something that happens when Jamie is 44, and "baby" Mabel is 9. But when Paul comes home the day he finds out Jamie has miscarried, he's pushing a two-child stroller and has that idiot line about "Two kids, one great big, happy family." A stroller? One of the kids is 9. Whatever. And the divorce Paul and Jamie are contemplating in the finale? Is happening in 2025, when they are supposedly about 62. Okay.

It would have been better for me if they hadn't chosen to set the events in the finale so far into the future.

[kentauros]

26. Two for Best and both are Sci-Fi:

Battlestar Galactica (the new one)

Babylon 5 - Sleeping in Light (last five minutes, so spoilers if you haven't seen it.)

Makes me bawl every time :cry:

[Alexander]

28. Blake's 7. (spoiler alert)

Everyone dies in an epic gunfight. Including Blake.

Here's the last 10 minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4a68Sv_r5Q

[velvet]

31. this thread makes me sad

Because it reminds me, I watched all of "Six Feet Under" except I missed the final episode, dammit. Felt all uncomfortably series-interruptus for weeks. Nobody I knew watched it (fools) and I never learned how things panned out. So it was good eh? Glad it didn't disappoint, satisfactory endings are hard to write. No, don't tell me. I could look it up on the netz but I'd rather just find the DVD some day and watch it unfold.

"Life on Mars" ended well, with just enough ambiguity. The sequel "Ashes to Ashes" is on again on telly here at the moment. My memory being what it is, or isn't, I have only a vague idea how it ends.

[grace0418]

39. Yes, it ended really, really well.

Get the dvd and watch it. So satisfying.

[BlueIris]

34. Best: Night Court. Worst: Alias. Strangest: Felicity.

I like the Night Court finale because the resolutions for all characters were believable and satisfying, without extremes of bitterness or false cheer for any of them.

I hate the Alias finale. Like much of the atrocious season five, it felt flat and dead. Plus, they killed off one of the best t.v. characters of all time, before setting up the ultra lame possibility of a spin-off.

As for Felicity, the bizarre, sci/fi structure of the whole thing still bugs me. I get that it was supposed to have a Choose Your Own Adventure thing going for it, but I thought it felt too weird to be enjoyable or appropriate for the show.

[woo me with science]

37. Candle Cove

When they brought the cast of Gilligan's Island on and they all left the island together, it was really cool.