TV Series with best/worst ending?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by alexpop, Jan 26, 2023.

  1. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits.... Thread Starter

    Best ending ?
    Breaking Bad
    The Fugitive

    Worst ending ?
    The Sopranos
    Game Of Thrones
     
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  2. Uncle Miles

    Uncle Miles Wafting in and out of Forum

    Location:
    Phoenix, AZ USA
    Good Ending:
    The Good Place
    Newhart

    Bad Ending:
    Lost
     
    Last edited: Jan 26, 2023
  3. malcolm reynolds

    malcolm reynolds Handsome, Humble, Genius

    Location:
    Oklahoma
    Favorites:
    Fringe
    Chuck (I originally hated, loathed and despised the ending)
    Grimm
    Eureka
    Warehouse 13
    The Good Place
    12 Monkeys
    Star Trek The Next Generation

    The worst:
    The X-Files (both season 9 and then the last episode of the reboot series)
    Lost
    Battlestar Galactica (reboot)
     
  4. Kyle B

    Kyle B Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago
    Best:

    Mary Tyler Moore
    The Fugitive (OK, the first hour is the best, part 2 is contrived)
    Star Trek: TNG
    The Dick Van Dyke Show (cleverly comes full circle)
    The Carol Burnett Show (Not seen in syndication but on YouTube. Carol dressed as the charwoman thanks the audience and pays tribute to her costars, then sings her theme song one last time, through her tears. She leaves the stage and the credits roll over her mop and pail, abandoned at center stage. Perfect.)
    Mad Men
    Desperate Housewives (I love a good flash forward)
    Friday Night Lights (see above comment)
    The Wonder Years (I love finding out what happened to the characters in the future)

    Worst:
    The Sopranos
    Star Trek: Voyager (cmon - I wanted to see everyone celebrate and say goodbye to each other)
    Seinfeld

    Overrated:
    Newhart (the last five minutes are great, the rest of the episode is kind of ridiculous)
    MASH (too much of Hawkeye’s breakdown)
    Cheers (too long)
    St Elsewhere (unsatisfying)

    The finales that should have been
    All in the Family: The Stivics Go West (this funny tearjerker would have rated as one of the all time best if they had ended there)
    The Waltons: The Achievement (John Boy becomes a published writer and moves to New York, essentially winding up the series’ original premise)
     
    troggy likes this.
  5. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    worst-
    LOST
    Game Of Thrones
    The Sopranos
     
  6. jwstl

    jwstl Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    Haven’t we done this before?
     
  7. mecano

    mecano Escape The Human Myth

    Location:
    Athens Greece
    Best
    Blackadder Goes Forth
    The Americans
    Six Feet Under
    The Shield

    Worst
    Dexter (both)
     
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  8. mBen989

    mBen989 Senior Member

    Location:
    Scranton, PA
    For best, Futurama comes to mind; so does The Prisoner.
     
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  9. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    Best;
    The Fugitive
     
  10. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    there's always room for one more. ; )
     
    BrentB likes this.
  11. Worst:
    Lost
    Dexter
    Game of Thrones (though we drill don’t have the book to compare it to)
    The X-Files (both times)
    Seinfeld
    Star Trek: Voyager
    Enterprise
    Battlestar Galatica (remake)
    The Americans
    The Wire




    Best:
    Star Trek: TNG
    Star Trek: DS9
    The Prisoner
    Newhart
    Breaking Bad
    Better Call Saul
    The Good Place
    12 Monkeys
    Fringe (though I disliked most of the last season the final episode was really good)
    Fleabag

    mixed:
    The Shield
    The Sopranos
    Luther (Though that’s come back)
    Fraiser
     
  12. Mister Charlie

    Mister Charlie "Music Is The Doctor Of My Soul " - Doobie Bros.

    Location:
    Aromas, CA USA
    One of the better ones was Everyone Loves Raymond.
     
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  13. sharedon

    sharedon Forum Zonophone

    Location:
    Boomer OK
    smilin ed likes this.
  14. ghoulsurgery

    ghoulsurgery House Ghost

    Location:
    New Jersey
    My favorites:
    Twin Peaks
    King of the Hill
    BoJack Horseman
    Atlanta
    The Haunting of Bly Manor
    The Good Place

    Did not like these:

    Gilmore Girls
    The Haunting of Hill House

    There aren’t that many that I dislike. Mostly because I just stop watching shows once I lose interest. There’s a lot of shows I just never made it to the end of.
    I was lukewarm on Breaking Bad. I thought the episodes leading up to the end were incredible but the actual finale didn’t hit me as hard.
     
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  15. GregM

    GregM The expanding man

    Location:
    Bay Area, CA
    Best
    Mad Men
    Chernobyl
    His Dark Materials
    Sopranos -- brilliant in spite of being on most of the "worst" lists here
    Game of Thrones -- ditto
    Entourage
    Boardwalk Empire

    Worst
    Mr Robot
    Lost
    X Files
    Dexter
    Seinfeld
     
  16. musicfan37

    musicfan37 Senior Member

    Best - Newhart
    Worst - How I Met Your Mother
     
  17. Linus

    Linus Senior Member

    Location:
    Melb. Australia
    Worst:
    Longmire. They should never have slept together!
     
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  18. Randall DeBouvre

    Randall DeBouvre forum resident

    Location:
    Illinois
    the fugitive- that is the first series that had a well publicized/ blockbuster ending.
    the mary tyler moore show had a great, two hankie ending.
    st. elsewhere had a very surreal /wtf ending that didn't at all fit the tone of the show.
     
    Last edited: Jan 26, 2023
    RSteven likes this.
  19. DigMyGroove

    DigMyGroove Forum Resident

    Best (Not Yet Mentioned)

    Six Feet Under
     
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  20. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I would disagree in that I'd argue, how else could The Americans have possibly ended? The Russian agents had built up so many problems over time, there was no way to resolve everything except by <doing what they did at the end>. You could actually create a pretty good show just dealing with the aftermath of the show 10-15 years later: "The American Kids."

    Another show that people frequently cite as having a horrible ending was Seinfeld, but I actually didn't think it was awful. I thought it was kind of clever that they brought back just about every character who had been wronged by the cast over the previous 9 years, and established that Jerry and Kramer and George and Elaine were actually pretty terrible, selfish people. So it kind of made sense that they wouldn't have a happy ending and would instead go to jail.

    Note that when Larry David did the faux "Seinfeld Reunion" episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, they didn't directly reference the original finale very much, except for him to say he liked it and just about nobody in the audience liked it.

    Another show that some fans cite as having a horrible ending was Jim Henson's Dinosaurs, where basically a comet hits the earth and everybody dies. But again... we knew it was coming, eventually.

    [​IMG]

    I worked quite a bit on the original 1990s-2000s Will & Grace back in the day, and I think the network and fans were upset that in the original 2006 finale, they'd had a huge fight, didn't speak to each other for more than 15 years, and they each had separate relationships and children... and their kids went off to college, met each other, and wound up becoming (platonic) roommates. Bizarre ending. In the first episode of the revamped Will & Grace in 2017, Karen obliquely asks about another universe where the two had kids that went to college together and laughs that that could never happen in the "real world." So I think the producers realized over time... yeah, that was a bad way to wrap things up.
     
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2023
  21. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    There's an entire group of fans who believe that the bizarre "Snow Globe" ending of St. Elsewhere, which reveals that the entire series took place in the mind of an autistic child, which also affected scores of other TV shows that had loose connections with St. Elsewhere:

    The Westphall Theory of a Unified TV Universe, Explained

    The Show that Ruined Television | The Saturday Evening Post

    The Tommy Westphall Universe — Unsupervised Nerds

    [​IMG]

    It's enough to make your head hurt -- it's like string there and quantum physics and the multiverse, combined with a network TV comedy/drama set in a hospital.

    In the late 1990s, I worked on a Fred Savage sitcom that nobody saw called Working, and at the beginning of Season 2, the network fired a bunch of actors and producers, shook up the show, and made a bunch of changes. They started the first new episode on a shot of the set, cut to a "Working" snowglobe getting shaken up, and then transitioned to a new wide shot with all the new characters! Eh, it made me laugh, but I told the producer that maybe 10% of our audience would get the joke.
     
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2023
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  22. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits.... Thread Starter

    Ending ?
    What did you think of Better Call Saul ?
     
  23. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Oh, I loved that and thought it made a lot of sense. I had predicted months before that (in my head) Saul would go to Albuquerque and sacrifice himself to save Kim Wexler. That isn't quite what happened, but it wasn't that far off. I thought it was kind of poetic and unselfish, and there really weren't many other ways in which it could go. In a way, it paralleled Walter White's sacrifice in Breaking Bad in order to keep his family alive, get them enough money to live on (even after his death), and also save his old partner Jessie Pinkman from the rival gang.
     
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  24. BEST:
    Six Feet Under was fantastic!
    Breaking Bad was excellent
    Better Call Saul was good

    WORST:
    Dexter was abominable!
    Dexter: New Blood was disappointing
    The Sopranos was blahhhhh
     
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  25. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits.... Thread Starter

    BCS ending ?
    It was a relief that Kim survived, there was initial worry she was going to be bumped off.
    When questioned Goodman trying to reduce his sentence, he mentions Jessie Pinkman and bad guys still out there. Don’t know if Pinkman character will be revived for another one off/ or a series - Alaska location - cartel.
    Seehorn is getting her own tv series ( for 2 seasons ) don’t know if it’s post BCS or still in Kim Wexler character.
     
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