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| This is the face you never want your fans making after the finale |
The series finale. One of the hardest feats in television. There are so many ways to screw up and upset your fans. What do you do with the main characters? Do you make it a goodbye episode or just another episode in the series? Do you wrap it up with some big change or have the overarching theme of your show emphasized? So many choices, and so many shows get them wrong. In fact, it's a rare occurrence for an ending to a beloved series to be satisfying. If the show can get off with fans not actively hating the finale, they consider it a win. Sadly, some shows fail even to hit this mark. Their endings leave their fans angry, frustrated, and saying "I could have done a better job than that". Here are the 5 worst offenders. (Spoiler alert of course, although I try not to give too much away).
5. X-files
The X-files had a great run. They had two great lead actors who complimented each other well, Gillian Anderson as the overly skeptic Dr. Dana Scully and David Duchovny as the wishful believer agent Fox Mulder. They were part of a special FBI division that investigated abnormal events. The show's episodes came in two varieties: episodes based on the mythology of the series, and "monster of the week" episodes where some event would be investigated that had no lasting impact on the characters, show, or continuity. This resulted in a really confusing mythology as important episodes would be followed by multiple weeks of "monster of the week" making it hard to keep up. So to make sure the fans (and staff themselves) knew what was going on, half of the finale was essentially Fox Mulder telling us what were were suppose to have remembered. Sure, they caged it in the setting that he was on trial and had to defend his actions and prove the existence of a conspiracy to cover up an alien landing, but let's call a spade a spade. If you speak to any fan of X-files they will tell you how underwhelming that finale was. There was also no real resolution after our history lesson, and we don't even get to see if the aliens are defeated as we were given the date of Dec. 21, 2012 as the date of the "alien invasion" with the understanding that Mulder and Scully were just gonna wait until then. Um...okay.
4. Seinfeld
The show about nothing. My mother loved this show so it was on a lot in our house. The humor in the show was very clever. They did have a conundrum though in regards to how to end the show. They couldn't make their finale a feel good, sappy ending a la Friends but they did need to send off the characters in grand fashion. The finale was watched by over 76 million people. And by the end 76 million people were asking themselves "That was it? really? WTF?". I didn't think a show with as much good will Seinfeld could generate this much negativity. They used the tried and true staple of bringing back old characters to get the "oh hey I remember him" reaction. So what went wrong? They got too cute. The four stars get arrested for watching a crime and "doing nothing". Get it? While most fans did get it, they didn't appreciate it. The tone of the finale felt like it was mocking their devoted fans and the plot line was too hokey.
3. The Sopranos
This was the first show that I watched where I was blown away by the writing. It was so smart, deep, and had great characters. Because of the success of Sopranos, shows like The Wire were possible. Endlessly quotable, somber, and plain fun to watch, this show had it all. That is, up until the finale. Again, they dealt with the dilemma of how to end such an iconic show. They decided to end it on a cliffhanger, because people love cliffhangers (source?). The show ended just as it appeared that Tony might be killed. But instead of just cutting to the credits they cut to a blank screen leaving millions of viewers to wonder "what's wrong with the TV?". Then the credits started rolling. Sadly there was no Samuel L. Jacksonesque cameo after the credits and confusion quickly turned to anger. Even today there are plenty of websites devoted to trying to decode what the ending meant. It will always be sad that such an iconic show left such a sour taste in their fans mouth.
2. Dinosaurs
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| THE SIMPSO...I mean Dinosaurs |
Dinosaurs was a really goofy show. Take your average sitcom with a father figure with slightly below intelligence, add some kids, a loving wife, a slightly senile grandparent, and a baby with violent tendencies and you have this show (i.e the Simpsons). Oh yeah and make them dinosaurs. A lesser known staple of many 90's kids schedules, it had crude humor at times but was mostly just...goofy. Except for the finale. I don't know if the producers of the show lost a bet, decided that a show about talking dinosaurs needed to be historically accurate, or that they needed to make up for years of no educational value but that finale was insane. In essence, the patriarch, Earl, through his company's greed and lack of accountability, eradicates all plant life on earth (MESSAGE!!!). Then in a plan to create rain clouds, volcanos are blown up with bombs covering the earth in dust causing a cooling of the earth (MESSAGE!!!). This induces an ice age, and we all know what happened to the dinosaurs because of the ice age. So to recap, they ended a children's comedy show with the hint that all your favorite characters will either freeze or starve to death. I forgot to mention that during the credits they also debunked Santa Clause because... eff kids.
1. Lost
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| You can really see the chemistry of the cast here. |
Lost. So many emotions come up with... oh I'm sorry, that picture above is garbage. I get the two confused so easily.
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| I still barely see the difference |
There we go. There is a fundamental difference between the shows above and this show. The others attempted to pull off a unique and novel idea and failed. There was no malice or deceit. They just misjudged what the reaction would be. Lost lied to its fans. Throughout the final season, we were promised answers. Every promo kept telling us how all the secrets in the show would be explained. All the lost fans I knew were giddy for the finale. We had so many questions and couldn't wait until the show tied together their whole mythology. We were all prepared for the most epic finale in television history. We would speak of this day to our children, and grandchildren. This day would become a national holiday to commemorate the moment our lives were given meaning. (We were pretty excited for the finale is what I'm trying to say). Instead we got a finale that, while it resolved character story arcs, did nothing to explain why things were the way they were. Oh great, they beat the bad guy! Why was he the bad guy again? Oh just because you said so? Okay. Why did Walt have magic powers? Why couldn't the man in black leave the island? There are literally over one hundred of these questions. They were integral parts of the storyline that helped make the last episode of Lost viewed by so many (Super Spoiler alert). Some of my friends stopped watching when a polar bear showed up on the island. Some stopped when we found out Hurley won the lottery with the same numbers of the island. Even more stopped when they escaped the island only to go back. Many stopped after the island decided it could time travel. They didn't think there was any way to tie in all the mysteries and that the writers were just making it up as they went along. Sadly, they were right. And that was reflected in the finale.
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