Great endings!

[RaiderDevil]

Is this the thread to talk about Austin Rivers?

My all time favorite is Six Feet Under - perfectly ended the series in a manner that was consistent with the show, wrapped up everyone's story, and was incredibly powerful.

Also loved the Wire, and agree on BSG (though was not a fan of the ghost Kara Thrace thing).


Hall of Shame for me is:
- Lost. Probably not much debate here. Lost was an amazing show in Seasons 1 and 2, and then went all downhill from there. We were always told that the show runners had the ending all mapped out but in reality they just meant the final shot and totally muddled their way there.

- Sopranos. The cut to black actually is a good metaphor for the finale overall - it wasn't so much of an ending as much as the show just stopped. Didn't really wrap up any character arcs, just seemed like David Chase didn't want to tell the story anymore.

- West Wing. Loved this show, but the last few seasons make GOT season 8 (where this started) look like GOT season 1.

- Seinfeld. There was so much pressure to end this show in some amazing fashion that they tried to make a joke out if it, but it didn't work.

I think there is plenty of debate about Lost. Most of Season 3 was bad. Bad is probably an understatement. From the time the first flash forward happened (not sure of the episode, but it ends with Jack saying "we have to go back") to the end of the show was just amazing.

[RaiderDevil]

Great Endings - Battlestar Galactica (the reboot). All the threads going back to the very first movie come together for one heck of a ride. I've watched the last few episodes a lot more than I have the rest of the series.

Bad Endings - Heroes. Ugh! What could have been the MCU for TV turned awful because the writers didn't know how to kill a bad villian.

IIRC, those last few episodes of BSG were filmed at the end of the previous season because they expected to get cancelled.

[JasonEvans]

From the time the first flash forward happened (not sure of the episode, but it ends with Jack saying "we have to go back") to the end of the show was just amazingly awful.

FIFY.

"Through the Looking Glass," the final episode of season 3 in which we discover Jack is in a flashforward an in which Charlie dies after writing "Not Penny's Boat" on his hand, is amazing in terms of giving us big moments. It almost redeems the meandering and stupid rest of season 3. But, the show goes rapidly downhill from there. Season 4 gives us the turn of Ben being a bad guy leader of the others to being a good guy. It also gives us the insane frozen donkey wheel. Season 5 introduces the really bad time travel stuff and the nuclear bomb, which Juliet blows up in the season finale. Season 6 is just all kinds of awful with purgatory and Locke becoming the smoke monster and so on.

-Jason "When you start a mysterious story without any real idea what the answers to the mystery are, things are probably not going to end well" Evans

[OldPhiKap]

-Jason "When you start a mysterious story without any real idea what the answers to the mystery are, things are probably not going to end well" Evans

Speaking of Pretty Little Liars and The Curse of Oak Island . . . .

(These get watched in my house, which is why we have two televisions)

[camion]

Speaking of Pretty Little Liars and The Curse of Oak Island . . . .

(These get watched in my house, which is why we have two televisions)

Wait, I thought one of those was a documentary.

[OldPhiKap]

Wait, I thought one of those was a documentary.

Supposedly, yes. I think it’s a big tv con job m’self.

[camion]

Supposedly, yes. I think it’s a big tv con job m’self.

Yes. But at least Finding Bigfoot found bigfoot.

Didn't they?

[Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15]

Yes. But at least Finding Bigfoot found bigfoot.

Didn't they?

HEY!!! Spoiler alert much?

[Udaman]

I don't know if there's ever been a series that turned out as disappointing to me as Lost. Seasons 1 and 2 were fantastic I thought. And then 3...ughh. And of course the very end of 3 was great, but the show just meandered everywhere. They clearly had no idea what they were doing, and dozens of legitimate questions were never answered, with many of them getting not even a hint of an answer. I liked the idea of the last season, and it would have been good had they not ruined seasons 4 and 5.

I'm hopeful that one day someone will do a reboot and basically scrap all of the last four seasons.

[OldPhiKap]

I don't know if there's ever been a series that turned out as disappointing to me as Lost. Seasons 1 and 2 were fantastic I thought. And then 3...ughh. And of course the very end of 3 was great, but the show just meandered everywhere. They clearly had no idea what they were doing, and dozens of legitimate questions were never answered, with many of them getting not even a hint of an answer. I liked the idea of the last season, and it would have been good had they not ruined seasons 4 and 5.

I never watched Lost, but felt that way about Twin Peaks. Started great, but then a dancing dwarf talking backwards and well -- I found other things to do.

(Plus, they moved it all over the place and I think ended up on like a Friday night or something)

[RPS]

When you start a mysterious story without any real idea what the answers to the mystery are, things are probably not going to end well.

Absolutely. I have said here before that I loved The Americans. One of its many strengths was carefully thought out plot arcs -- which included a brilliant series conclusion.

Others: I loved Newhart, Mary Tyler Moore, and Friday Night Lights. I liked Cheers, Halt and Catch Fire, and Chuck. Friends was okay. Endings are hard. I thought MASH and West Wing both got preachy at the end (WW was problematic for all the post-Sorkin era) but I appreciated the finale's wrap-up for each. Mad Men was okay but nothing special. I didn't like the endings of Seinfeld or HIMYM at all. I don't know about The Sopranos, but the coffee shop was right around the corner from my first house (with fantastic homemade ice cream and candy), so I loved that.

[luburch]

I don't know if there's ever been a series that turned out as disappointing to me as Lost. Seasons 1 and 2 were fantastic I thought. And then 3...ughh. And of course the very end of 3 was great, but the show just meandered everywhere. They clearly had no idea what they were doing, and dozens of legitimate questions were never answered, with many of them getting not even a hint of an answer. I liked the idea of the last season, and it would have been good had they not ruined seasons 4 and 5.

I'm hopeful that one day someone will do a reboot and basically scrap all of the last four seasons.

Didn't Abrams want to end lost after 2-3 seasons, but was forced to keep it going by execs?

[JasonEvans]

Didn't Abrams want to end lost after 2-3 seasons, but was forced to keep it going by execs?

Abrams had very little to do with Lost after season 1. He wrote and directed the 2 hour pilot episode but withdrew from the production team about halfway through the first season to work on Mission Impossible III. Damon Lindelhoff was showrunner from the start and when JJ pulled back they added Carlton Cuse to the showrunner team. D&C were the two folks who were really responsible for building the mythology and the such.

Most importantly, when the trees began to move and those strange mechanical monster sounds were heard and people were whisked away by some unseen force, JJ really had no idea what that force was or how it would ever be explained. The Monster, the Hatch, the Others, the Numbers... all of these were mysteries that the show introduced without having any idea how the mystery would be answered. Whether it took them 3 seasons or 30, they were never going to come up with a good explanation, IMO, because they went about building their story backwards.

-Jason "I will probably never, ever forgive Damon Lindelhoff for the mess that was Lost... but then again when you look at his other work**, it is par for the course" Evans

**- Prometheus (made no sense), Star Trek Into Darkness (worst of the recent Trek films), Cowboys and Aliens (great idea, terrible ending... sound familiar)

[El_Diablo]

Abrams had very little to do with Lost after season 1. He wrote and directed the 2 hour pilot episode but withdrew from the production team about halfway through the first season to work on Mission Impossible III. Damon Lindelhoff was showrunner from the start and when JJ pulled back they added Carlton Cuse to the showrunner team. D&C were the two folks who were really responsible for building the mythology and the such.

Most importantly, when the trees began to move and those strange mechanical monster sounds were heard and people were whisked away by some unseen force, JJ really had no idea what that force was or how it would ever be explained. The Monster, the Hatch, the Others, the Numbers... all of these were mysteries that the show introduced without having any idea how the mystery would be answered. Whether it took them 3 seasons or 30, they were never going to come up with a good explanation, IMO, because they went about building their story backwards.

-Jason "I will probably never, ever forgive Damon Lindelhoff for the mess that was Lost... but then again when you look at his other work**, it is par for the course" Evans

**- Prometheus (made no sense), Star Trek Into Darkness (worst of the recent Trek films), Cowboys and Aliens (great idea, terrible ending... sound familiar)

Yeah, my alarm bells started going off for Lost really early on. On the Season 2 DVD set, the showrunners provided some behind-the-scenes commentary to the effect of, "When we sat down to write Season 2, one of the big questions we knew we had to answer was what was in the Hatch. So we brainstormed and determined, 'Wouldn't it be cool if there had been someone down there all along?'" After seeing that commentary, I realized that they clearly had no overarching plan in place, as the Hatch was a central fixture at that point and (along with the smoke monster) the lynchpin of the Island's backstory. To produce an entire season without even knowing out what the Hatch was supposed to be...was just kind of mind-boggling.

[Wander]

I don't know if there's ever been a series that turned out as disappointing to me as Lost. Seasons 1 and 2 were fantastic I thought. And then 3...ughh. And of course the very end of 3 was great, but the show just meandered everywhere. They clearly had no idea what they were doing, and dozens of legitimate questions were never answered, with many of them getting not even a hint of an answer. I liked the idea of the last season, and it would have been good had they not ruined seasons 4 and 5.

I'm hopeful that one day someone will do a reboot and basically scrap all of the last four seasons.

Man, Lost was SO CLOSE to greatness. It was a great concept, and had IMO the best single episode of TV ever (Season 3 finale). Even the later seasons had some good pieces, like doing time travel correctly without invoking alternative realities. All it needed was a little bit of advance planning of the mythology and not introducing mysteries without having any idea how they would be resolved...

[bundabergdevil]

Couple other series and movies that have come to mind. Maybe a few that are a bit off the radar and personal taste:

Friday Night Lights --- The series had it's great moments and not so great moments (Landry and Tyra commit murder) but they stuck the landing. The final scene with Coach Taylor on the field with his new team outside of Philly and his championship ring was perfect.

Freaks and Geeks --- Not sure they knew it was the finale during shooting but Lindsey hopping off the bus to college to get in the van to nowhere with Kim creates a nice parallel between leaving home and the possibility of the open road.

Monty Python Life of Brian --- I like a little blasphemy in my life. Rewatched recently and the closing song just...God, those guys were/are good!

Braveheart --- Disemboweling Mel Gibson really holds up.

Dumb and Dumber --- A lot of folks hated the movie but if you loved Lloyd and Harry, the ending just broke your heart. Just get on the damn bus!

[HereBeforeCoachK]

IMO Great endings include:

Burn Notice

Monk

The Americans

Frasier



Worst ending EVER? maybe The Glades? House of Cards?

[devilish]

I sometimes felt like I was the only person watching The Middle. But apparently other folks were too as it lasted around 9 seasons or something. I thought the (two part) finale was perfect. Brick with the final whisper "the middle" was classic!

[Kdogg]

Can I get in early with Game of Thrones as an unsatisfactory ending? I barely recognize some of the characters with one episode left.

[Acymetric]

Great Endings - Battlestar Galactica (the reboot). All the threads going back to the very first movie come together for one heck of a ride. I've watched the last few episodes a lot more than I have the rest of the series.

Bad Endings - Heroes. Ugh! What could have been the MCU for TV turned awful because the writers didn't know how to kill a bad villian.

Oof I haven't seen the last 4 episodes of BSG because it got so bad I said I didn't care how it ended..

I was a bit surprised at multiple people listing BSG. I got into BSG a long time ago (~10 years?). I stopped watching it, for reasons I didn't remember, and decided to watch it again a couple months ago. I'm pretty sure I stopped watching because the last season was...not great. I saw it all the way through this time and the ending was...unsatisfying to say the least. Honestly it became a bit hit or miss for me around the time the Pegasus was introduced, and the final five was a massive anti-climax.

I honestly could not get past the first few episodes of the second season of Heroes. The first season was near perfect television. Then it went sideways.

As I recall, it was also a victim of thr writers' strike. Can anyone confirm?

Put me in the "first season of Heroes was great, then it lost me" camp. Although I actually liked the 2nd season as well. I honestly forget how the show ended...maybe that is for the best.


For my own submission...I thought Scrubs had a pretty good finale if we ignore the 9th season and pretend the show ended in season 8 with "My Finale".