TV series with the most disappointing ending?
 

Let's take it to the polls!

I didn't watch any of those shows. :lol:

The last episode of "Lois & Clark" was quite possibly the worst in the entire series. Not only a bad place to end the show, but an all-around terrible episode.

If they'd called it quits with the episode before that one, the show would have ended on a cliffhanger of sorts BUT at least it would have been tonally consistent with the rest of the Season.

Before "The Revival" happened, the last episode of Twin Peaks was pretty frustrating. Not for being a bad episode, because I think it's a good episode, but just for how it ended and the fact that for almost 30 years it seemed pretty certain that after All THAT we weren't even gonna get any answers on what happened next. So at least "The Revival" came along. Eventually.

The original Punky Brewster probably deserved better than a clip show about a dog wedding. They got hit with the old Writer's Strike/Summer Break Cancellation double-whammy.

Moesha also had a pretty sh*tty ending. Her kid brother gets kidnapped and then they get cancelled over the break. "Whoops".

I could think of lots more if I tried, probably.

Are you watching the new one?

Not yet, working through the original first. We just finished Season 3, one more Season to go. My wife got Peacock for the WWE Network so we already have the means to watch the reboot. Probably get to it by the weekend.

Old show holds up surprisingly well by 80s sitcom standards! I hadn't watched it since it was first on in reruns, I don't think, so aside from me having a huge crush on her when I was three I didn't remember much about it at all. :lol: It gets surprisingly "dark" and melodramatic at times, and I can see why it was never a big ratings-getter; I can see a lot of parents back then thinking that it was a bit too "heavy" for their kids, especially at 8pm on a Sunday night before they'd have to go to bed for school the next day. It definitely has a lot of "saccharine" moments, but for every moment of Brandon the dog playing cards there's a scene of some punk kid threatening Mike from the youth center with a switchblade, or Punky getting all melodramatic about her Dad walking out and her Mom abandoning her in that shopping center. I read that it also struggled in syndication because some stations just refused to repeat certain episodes due to their subject matter, or otherwise clipped them down. Parents were a lot more over-protective about what Little Timmy watched on TV back in those days, so I can kinda see why even though it was "popular" it didn't do particularly well numbers-wise. I think it's a good show, though.

The cartoon, however, is rather abysmal. I didn't remember much about that, either, but oh man. Not good. :lol: Points for getting the cast of the TV series to reprise all of their roles - sometimes the kids sound a lot more natural doing voices for the cartoon than they do on the live-action show - but Jesus, I wanna feed Glomer to a goddamn wood chipper. :lol:

But yeah, we'll be checking out the new one soon.

I know I caught some when I was like 10... but I don't remember anything about them. I was more of a "Clarissa Explains it All" guy, but I definitely had a crush on Punky as well.

Lost started to disappoint way before the ending.

Yeah, definitely, but that was later on. I don't remember too many of the shows I watched when I was about 3-to-5 years old, aside from He-Man and Ghostbusters, but back then I know I watched the sh*t out of both Punky shows. I even had her coloring book. I figured if I did all that then maybe she'd notice me. :lol: Points for tryin', I guess. :trazz:

Oddly enough, if Soleil Moon Frye hadn't gotten Punky Brewster, it most likely would have been Melissa Joan Hart. Kind of an odd footnote given how they ended up together on the later seasons of the Sabrina show.

Also why the later Seasons of "Sabrina" aren't good for my blood pressure. :lol: Those two together work better than ExtenZe. :trazz:

Game of Thrones.

Smart lady.



And this is even 8 years ago.

The Next Mutation had a clip show, that sucked.

Full House went out with a two-parter of Michelle having amnesia, everyone reminding her who she is, what they mean to one another, boooooo.

The Sopranos finale sucked in my opinion. It's listed, so it'll get my vote. I've read about it extensively, from fan analysis to direct word from David Chase, & I understand it, I appreciate the intention & meaning behind it, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. I think the point could've been made in a better way. My two cents.

Yeah, I'm with you. I'm hesitant to vote myself without more thought... but definitely my knee-jerk is Sopranos for sure. GREAT show... but what a non ending. Which was a little bit muted, I think, for a few years with the hope that "nevermind that series finale for now... we'll get a Sopranos movie that will address things properly." But then Gandolfini died and that was that... and now we get a prequel movie. Which is already shot, I believe. With Gandolfini's son playing his character as a boy.

Mostly I wanted to see some follow up to that Russian guy they detained but got away in the snow. That should have sparked a war.

I'll second that Lois & Clark ending... and add, Quantum Leap. Sam leaps into himself as an adult at the exact moment of his birth and basically revisits actors who played different characters all through the series & then gets a fade to black with text that Al gets the good life while Sam is stuck leaping alone through time, never coming home. One of the few series that could restart with a female lead (Sammie Jo, Sam's daughter) leaping to find her dad and for some reason hasn't... Oh well.

I didn't watch most of those shows but the problem is they go on too many seasons and they don't know how to end them. Surprised to see Seinfeld listed because a lot of people really liked the finale.

Breaking Bad probably had the best series finale anyone could ask for, and we now have a nice epilogue with Jessie in "El Camino" and whatever they do with Saul post-BB as an addition to that.

I think I read recently that the cast and crew of "Full House" didn't know they were cancelled until they were in the middle of shooting what turned out to be the finale.

Looking back, it sure seems like a ton of sitcoms could qualify for this because most of them never had "real" endings, they just got cancelled out of nowhere. Although I guess the "need" for a "real" ending is mitigated somewhat by the fact that most of those shows generally hung on for at least one Season too long, anyway. "Family Matters" hung on WAY too long; those last few Seasons were terrible. Just godawful.

I remember Full House being on thin ice for a while, though, anyways. I used to watch that show obsessively, even the reruns (Every single weekday, 5-6pm on Channel 22, 6-7pm on Channel 11 :lol:), so I was always reading about it in TV Guide and whatnot, and pretty much every season after Jesse and Becky's wedding it was "This is gonna be the last Season." First they were gonna write Jesse out and make him a guest star, because supposedly he had problems with at least one of the Olsen Twins and also he just plain got sick of doing the show, and then they'd wrap the whole show not long afterward since they knew they couldn't keep the show going for long without him. Then at one point they were gonna placate him, supposedly, by getting rid of the "offending" Olsen twin (and also, as they got older they'd started looking less alike, anyway), but the show was still gonna be cancelled.

None of that ever happened (although I do think I read that one of the Olsens did scale back her time playing Michelle in later Seasons a little bit), but for pretty much the whole second half of that show's run those rumors were constant and persistent. So I imagine that it was always really close to getting cancelled for at least the last four or five Seasons. Most or all of those Season Finale episodes would have probably been lousy "series finale" episodes, too.

That's what happened with Married with Children. They had no idea the show was ending and the main actor found out about it through the radio.

TV shows in the 90's weren't really treated with much respect by the studios/channels. Shows were canceled out of nowhere without giving the writers/directors heads-up the show was ending, hence why so many older shows end on cliffhangers. Most modern shows from the 2000's onward were at least given a head up when a series would be coming to an end, giving the writers time to write a proper ending.

Only show I've seen from those in your poll was Seinfeld.

The Seinfeld Finale was funny and all, but I wasn't a huge fan of it because I felt like it went against everything that Seinfeld was about. The main cast going to jail because they were assholes for a decade to others... what made Seinfeld so great was precisely that. They shouldn't get punished for that. Imagine if the eventual Curb Your Enthusiasm Finale ends with Larry David going to jail. That would suck too.

Family Matters left it with Laura and Urkel engaged but never married. With all the 90s reboots I'm kinda surprised a married Laura and Steve has never been done.

I'd go Enterprise since it essentially a TNG episode masquerading as an Enterprise finale.

nice to see How I Met Your Mother up there.

an entire series of stories, and the mother is only in it for a total of 10 minutes of less at the finale...aaaaandd....she dies.

should have been a more 'how I met your STEP mother' considering who it seems like he really wanted.

supposedly they are thinking of a family matters reboot.

Poor Laura didn't age well though. almost un recognizable.

I'm always sad Urkel never guested on big bang theory. he was more popular before that show ever got thought of.

Well, apparently what happened was that they were told they'd be doing a tenth season then some of the sets got destroyed accidentally (coupled with low ratings) so they hastily wrote an ending for Family Matters.

Tbh, it was disappointing not seeing them get married, but the ending shows that their love is strong, and they'd be married eventually anyway. If they ever do a Family Matters revival, I expect Steve and Laura to be married for it.

...Yes, I like Family Matters. :P

As for worst finales...

How I Met Your Mother was just awful, followed by Dexter and Game of Thrones. Maybe I'll write a more detailed comment later.

I'm one of the few people that was ok with the How I Met Your Mother finale. I thought it made sense.

To answer the question though, the tv series that I was probably most disappointed with its finale is Buffy the Vampire Slayer's spinoff Angel. Literally no resolution to the story at all.

That was done purposely though. The ending of Angel was supposed to be, "the eternal fight that never ends." That's why Buffy ending on an uplifting note and Angel ended with him, Spike, and Illya fighting a horde of demons.

Anyway if you count the comics you know they all survived that encounter.

The comics have conflicting accounts of what happened afterwards...in the Buffy continuation, Angel was a well-intentioned big bad who got Giles killed.

I didn't think anybody ever complained about the M.A.S.H. ending being a disappointment. It made television history, and I think it has a very memorable final scene, so why is it even on this poll?

I never really found the episode itself to be bad, the hastily added text overlay about "Dr. Beckett never returned home" doesn't really gel with the message the episode is trying to say (i.e. take a Sabbatical now and then). I read somewhere it was just a studio/network decision to make it fell more like a series finale even though the show's creative team had plans to keep doing episodes and building off that last season.

I suppose it would be as ridiculous of any show that just cancelled/non-renewed and the TV execs decided to throw a message onto the end that says "This was the last one, folks. Nobody ever got what they really wanted. Thanks for watching."

Yeah, pretty much all I read of it over the years since was that it was last minute cancelled and thats why as the writers intended to go more crazy sci fi with aliens or something & go to the future (which would be weird, cuz Sam could technically go anywhere if he is leaping through time to the future because he lifetime would not then be linear..) and there was an alternate ending (or two) out there but never filmed (that I've been able to find anyways). Al's Place (website) had a ton of fanfic done to wrap storyline plots & continue with other untouched things. They continued with Alia's story too and Zoey leaping... With NCIS NO ending, they could get Scott to do a bit part intro & film his finale scene (if he doesn't want to stay on) and get a new cast to start a new Quantum Leap series. Maybe call up Dean Stockwell for a bit part too since he doesn't look so well these days, before its too late.

And the MASH ending was perfect. The show outlasted the war by a few years... Used to watch that with my dad. The finale actually made him tear up a bit.

Wouldn't just about any show that wasn't renewed despite clearly leaving plot threads open for another season count?

I've watched some of the earlier How I Met Your Mother episodes and I don't get why the series was so popular and went in for several years. It's not particularly funny. The only character that's somewhat funny is Barney.

Also, why such a long comedy show with thelat kind of premise? Did they just reveal who the mother was in the final episode?

Also, I dunno if thr writers kept doing that in later seasons but they seemed to not be able to make up their kinds whether Ted liked Robin or not. It became annoying. Might as well have made her the mother.

I suppose. I'm still mad at Tru Calling getting cancelled lmao.

I think a show like Seinfeld should have ended on a random episode. Or maybe at the end of season 7 where Susan, George's fiance, dies. That would have been fitting for a final episode.

That ending would have been better than just the fade to black and text... but the Sam talking to Beth also changes the ending of the MIA episode's ending because he was technically already there and outside & Beth was dancing unknowingly with Al as a hologram... The other thing that would work is that Al had 4 girls, so the show could have 2 women leads and it would actually make sense in a way if both Dean & Scott can't or won't come back full time... Course it would be fun with all four of them leading the show, which also fits making it a team thing.

We get a lost Sam Beckett, Al leaps looking for him since he listened to Sam at the end of Mirror Image when Sam basically says he himself is leaping him life to life... so Al leaps thinking "find Sam!!" and off he goes... first episode around that, ends with Al leaping & Sammy Jo & one of Al's daughter going "oooooh shhhh¡t!" And the wives can be in it too... give Ziggy an upgrade so he can support two leapers and if need be, 2 holograms.

Plus you have like 21 years of fanfic to borrow from for story ideas. Can throw in some real world events from the last 2 decades if they stay within his lifetime... if Dean & Scott don't want to stay on forever, just have them film finding each other and/or returning home but the shoe can keep going with the girls.

No, I intentionally didn't include those because that isn't fair. Those are "bad series finales" by no fault of their own, because they intended to do more. I only included Stargate Atlantis, for example, because they did have time to quickly create some kind of a series finale.

Might as well add Shameless to the list. It sucked!

So the Twilight arc and After the Fall can't co-exist in canon? Genuinely curious, I have no idea.

Definitely Shameless! The Sopranos hurt like hell when it ended, but I have no qualms with the finale other than the fact that one had to happen. Seinfeld... Eh. It was weak, but not entirely inappropriate. Now Shameless, though... **** that noise.

Crrrrraazzzzyyyy take!

I can see it not hitting when you watch it for the first time, but upon rewatch that scene is so tense and emotional. Genius stuff.