Worst Television Series Finales of All Time?

[VirginiaHamilton]

The How I Met Your Mother shitstorm has inspired me to ask - what, in your opinion, was the worst television series finale of all time? (ETA: both primetime and daytime TV series are welcome.)

As much as people bitch and continue to bitch about Seinfeld, The Sopranos, and Lost to this very day, they don't have jack on Dinosaurs' (which incidentally aired 20 years ago this year).

Yeah, I learned about dinosaurs perishing due to the Ice Age in school like any other kid, but I tuned into to see a cute TGIF show and expected to see Baby Sinclair bop Earl upside the head and holler "Not the Mama!" one last time instead of this hot steaming pile of caca about the dinosaur population going extinct that they rolled out and I've never forgotten or forgiven that show since.

[DRW50]

I had no idea that was the last episode of that show. Damn. My mother loved that show but has never seen the last episodes. That's probably for the best, as she would have hated that ending as much as you did.

[Marco Dane]

DYNASTY it deserved so MUCH BETTER!!!

[ReddFoxx]

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, just for the fact that Will didn't make any progress in the end, it's like all the past six years was for naught and that his time in Bel-Air hadn't led to much advancement. The other characters moved forward, but Will didn't and I didn't care for it.

Family Matters is another one, that was a complete disaster and a joke.

Most finales I've seen are okay, what I don't like is when shows are canceled and don't get a proper finale, like The Jeffersons.

[Vee]

I was pretty traumatized by Dinosaurs, but I didn't consider it a 'bad' finale.

I was not a fan of Fresh Prince until syndication, but it's very noticeable how the show declined after the Nia Long season - they dump the marriage, make it seem like the relationship is still going, then in the end tag for the same episode, it's "Will's single, y'all!" The whole show was even more broad and vapid after that, just Will and the random honeys; the finale didn't mean much to me. Will Smith had consolidated all creative control over the show.

HIMYM's finale - I wasn't a fan of the show, but it sounds like a complete clusterfuck. They apparently did the exact opposite of, say, Dawson's Creek; they didn't learn from the way their show organically evolved. DC was no work of genius, but it recognized that it had fundamentally changed over the years with the romance between Katie Holmes and Joshua Jackson; the HIMYM dudes seemed to miss this lesson and just pulled out old footage and an idea that was not relevant to their latter years. Alan Sepinwall's takedown of them and their plan on HitFix sounds very close to the truth.

[NothinButAttitude]

Moesha. Even though it was cancelled, it's "ending" was lackluster. Her brothers Miles and Dorian getting kidnapped and Moesha fainting was stupid.

I didn't care for the Melrose Place finale either. Amanda and Peter faking their deaths was stupid IMO.

[quartermainefan]

Seinfeld was a let down, Sopranos was equally famous for being a disappointment.

[Khan]

Same. I also don't care for the ones that serve as a "back-door pilot" for a spin-off series. For example: "The Andy Griffith Show," whose last episode essentially was the first for "Mayberry R.F.D.".

[applcin]

St. Elsewhere - I know people oohed and aahed over it but I didn't at all care for the entire series being reduced to an autistic boy's imagination.

Enterprise - A ST:TNG holographic program? Even the Enterprise actors hated it. I mean, the show was not without flaws, obviously. But as if killing off probably their most likeable character, Trip, weren't bad enough, to give the final scene to TNG actors was just a slap in the face and led to Jolene Blalock calling it "appalling."

With the exception of "The Wizard Of Oz", I don't usually care for endings where everything that came before is made out to not really have happened. I don't mind time travel erasing things, like Fringe did. It's the idea that everything was all made up by one of the characters.

[DRW50]

I was mostly just relieved that the season 5 finale, which was the biggest piece of [!@#$%^&*] they ever did, wasn't the end.

[P.J.]

At this point, I've just come to believe all series finales suck.

Along with HIMYM, LOST, Quantum Leap, and Will and Grace come to mind immediately. The original Magnum PI ending, with Thomas dying and strolling off to heaven sucked mightily too. I didn't particularly like Frasier's, but it wasn't that bad, I just didn't like the girl they foisted on Frasier at the end.

I guess the outrage dulls over time. I can barely remember finales in general. I mean, I loved ST:TNG, but can't recall the series finale off the top of my head. There are famous endings like Newhart, MTM, and MASH you can't forget. But most just kind of fade away. Or you fade away from the show before it ends. I remember tuning into ER for the end and not understanding a damn thing.

[sheilaforever]

Going out on a limb, I thought this was was an awesome idea for an ending. BTW; this show still holds up today. Recently watched an episode here and there and it is really well written.

[Khan]

Same. Then again, maybe it's just b/c I don't find Laura Linney particularly appealing on any emotional level.

In a way, I'm glad "Magnum, P.I." got one more season, b/c the thought of any series ending with its titular hero getting killed...? It's never good. I only wish the writers had risen to the occasion and turned out a more fitting final season.

[DRW50]

I'd say most series finales are just sort of there, not just because some shows run too long, but because even a year or two is enough for some shows to run out of steam.

It just depends on how I felt about the show before it ended. For instance, I had lost a lot of interest in Golden Girls several seasons before it ended, so a relatively decent finale didn't have as much impact on me.

Then you have an ending like SATC, where in theory I liked some of the ideas, but I was just tired of it all and felt like the entire show had become forced and the friendships were now a lie (and that whole Germanic misery of Miranda finding her true place by scrubbing down a stroke-ridden Anne Meara didn't exactly bowl me over).

Some shows, like Oz, I barely even remember the end of.

[dm.]

Will & Grace. It was good up to season 6, IMO, 7-8 were average at best, and the finale was just downright silly.