Worst Television Series Finales of All Time?

[sheilaforever]

True. Season 8 was great with the 2 (?) live shows (I remember one set in Karen's GIGANTIC bathroom...), but the rest was sooooo bad for the most part. Mostly due to John Cleese's obnoxious character.

Speaking of bad series finales: I cannot remember what happened at all but my memory tells me "Cagney & Lacey" had a really bad non-ending. That said; I loved the reunion movies fom the mid 90s. Kinda like CBS later did for "Murder She Wrote".

Did "Scarecrow & Mrs. KIng" have a proper ending? I know everything was botched due to Kate Jackson having cancer but those lkast few episodes were just not good.

[quartermainefan]

I loved the finale to Lost. It had such a nice emotional theme to it packaged in an action/adventure ending. For me that was one of the best finales ever and I loved the idea that these friends all waited for each other.

[sheilaforever]

I can see why you liked it. Concept shows like LOST (same for the cause of this thread HIMYM) have a real tough package to carry to really deliver for a finale. Problem with LOST - for me - was that every single previous season finale had so much more action AND impact, that the finale even if you accepted some of the answers and that stuff that remained unanswered, it fell flat compared to the fantastic ride you were witnessing for 6 seasons. The burden was just too high. It simply lacked the one BIG eyecatching moment that left you speechless instead of scratching your head.

ALIAS had a much more narrowed down mythlogy and even when ABC cut them down by 5 episodes making it look pretty rushed, they did deliver flawlessly and provided great payoff for longtime viewers.

[DRW50]

I don't think Scarecrow had an ending.

[Vee]

Lost was terrible from start to finish. Alias was slapped together on the cheap after Season 3 tanked. Its ending was embarrassing - came down to some nuclear warheads or something.

[quartermainefan]

I disagree. Lost was a great show and had a major impact on the types of TV shows that would go on to be shown on TV. Before lost there was next to no genre sci fi shows or heavily serialized dramas. It was all worthless cop and doctor shows like Law and Order and ER--genres that had been playing for decades. Lost came, everyone was fascinated by the differentness to it, and ever since then the networks have been trying to find the next different thing. If it wasn't for Lost we probably wouldn't be watching Walking Dead, instead settling for some tired David E Kelley Lawyer drama starring anorexic women and people like Dylan McDermott or maybe Law and Order: Special Jaywalkers Unit.

I am prejudiced. I don't watch network doctor shows, cop shows or lawyer shows, so when Lost came along it was finally something for me to watch.

[JackPeyton]

I'm actually rewatching Lost, and s3-5 are great. 4 may be it's best as it's complex but interesting and provides answers while creating more questions. Juliette, Ben, Desmond added so much life and story into the series. I'm at the end now, and I think Jin and a Sun have been separated for nearly 3 seasons, and the Claire reveal just happened. But while s6 has good moments, overall it's the series worst season. It's sloppy, it's over complicated just to be, it gives answers that are quite frankly stupid, and ignores a lot of its own mythology and rules. The finale is the final seasons best episode, but it isn't saying much.

The s4 finale was the best.

[Vee]

Okay. Neither do I. I still thought it was [!@#$%^&*]. It's a hodgepodge of other, better shows, freshman year philosophy courses, a lot of Wikipedia trivia and ancient soapy character drama chestnuts dredged up from TV movies and youth shows from the '90s, complete with overwrought music, constant slow-motion and a lot of sad people pulling faces whilst drenched with sweat in the jungle. With vague science-fiction trappings owing a lot to a cursory, superficial viewing of The Prisoner and Twin Peaks, and very slick viral marketing.

But that's just my opinion. And you'll notice that at least 95% of the serialized sci-fi drama shows you cite that followed Lost all tanked and were terribly conceived and poorly thought out, if they were thought out at all (unlike Lost). That is the legacy of Lost - ensemble dramas built on smoke and mirrors and the illusion of genre-bending transgression.

I actually had a lot of hope for Lost. I watched the pilot, I thought it was a great idea. Great concept. It utterly disappointed me.

[sheilaforever]

Too bad. To each their won. :-)

LOST also ranks within my top 5 series ever. I agree with JackPeyton: season 3-5 were THE best.

[VirginiaHamilton]

I haven't watched any episodes since that dreadful finale (sorry, but we'll have to agree to [strongly] disagree here), so I wouldn't know if it's aged well since the 90s, but I do remember it being an enjoyable part of the TGIF lineup.

[vote4llama]

I was hooked on Lost for a while. I remember liking seasons 1 and 2 the best. I actually think it got worse each season.. I didn't even watch 6.

I never saw Dinosaurs so I can't emphasize but I always thought the finale sounded pretty morbidly hilarious. What better way to end a kids show than having all the characters die? (I'm sure I would've been traumatized too though)

[Khan]

I once joked that the producers of "The Simpsons" keep putting off ending the series because they know it's bound to engender conversations such as these. Because, really, how can you end a series as long-running and as integral to pop culture as that one is without it coming across as a giant letdown? Even the final episode of "M*A*S*H" wasn't a total success, and that's practically the yardstick by which all other series finales have been measured.

[vote4llama]

That's funny. I never thought about that. I would like Ned Flankers' wife to come back as a ghost or something and he would say "Holy [!@#$%^&*]" and be censored. That's just a sliver though.

[CassieFan]

Drama - Dexter.

Sitcoms - HIMYM & W&G.

[Khan]

Oh, I've heard about the final episode of "Dexter." Talk about a [!@#$%^&*]-storm. Even if I had watched the series, I still think the ending would have pissed me off (enough to kill someone, in fact).