Underhated TV finales - What ending you were the only one dissapointed at?

[PeruvianPerun]

The Mentalist, after 5 and a half seasons of hunting Red John, he's finally revealed and defeated and it just keeps going for another season with a mostly new crew and it tries to get you hyped for new villains but nothing measures up to Red John, it just goes out with a whimper not a bang. it should have ended with Jane killing Red John but instead the execs thought they could keep milking the series, turns out no they couldn't

Literally exactly the same situation with Castle. They caught big bad in s6 and went for two more seasons. At least they had serial killer to dangle as storyline. But there was literally nothing to be exited for s8 and final scene of s7 was as good ending as procedural could get. Admittedly this doesn't count as thread tax cause everyone I know hates both last season and last episode and last scenes in said episode

 

[Hey Johnny Bravo]

Deep Space 9: If Sisko is supposed to be some sorta wormhole god now, what the fuck is this "I'll be back... but I don't know when" shit? Buddy you're outside of linear time, take as long as you need to finish up your prophet business and come right back to when you left off. You could be back yesterday if you wanted, it's within your power.

Avery Brooks insisted that Sisko get a line of dialogue stating that he will return soon. He went to Ira Steven Behr and said "don't you know how fucking racist it is for me, a black man, to knock up a woman and then disappear? Wormhole aliens or not, that's not going to happen." So it was changed. It was honestly the right move. The same thing happened when George Romero wanted Duane Jones to hit one of the white ladies in Night of the Living Dead: Jones said "if I do this, I might not make it out of the theater" and Romero changed it because he just didn't realize how controversial that might be.

 

[LazyLizard]

The Mentalist was just a worse and less fun ripoff of Psych.

dude psych is my favorite show, great show though each movie after the shows end got worse and worse though i'd still keep watching them if they kept making them.

 

[Preacher ✝]

each movie after the shows end got worse and worse though i'd still keep watching them if they kept making them

You know that's right.

 

[The_Red_Man]

The end of The Sopranos was fucking stupid, but tbh the show stopped being that great around season 4 or 5 when the Jews running it decided they wanted to start being "artistic". Ending every episode with some song, dream sequence episodes... Fucking gay. Then just turning the show off at the end because "oh that's how fast your life can be taken".

Fuckin gay

 

[regalterry]

Literally exactly the same situation with Castle

Castle became genuinely unwatchable once him and Beckett got together.

The end of The Sopranos was fucking stupid

Don't you know ambiguous and tragic endings are the hallmarks of a mature show for mature audiences?

 

[William Murderface]

Avery Brooks insisted that Sisko get a line of dialogue stating that he will return soon. He went to Ira Steven Behr and said "don't you know how fucking racist it is for me, a black man, to knock up a woman and then disappear? Wormhole aliens or not, that's not going to happen." So it was changed. It was honestly the right move. The same thing happened when George Romero wanted Duane Jones to hit one of the white ladies in Night of the Living Dead: Jones said "if I do this, I might not make it out of the theater" and Romero changed it because he just didn't realize how controversial that might be.

So instead of telling Brooks "you aren't abandoning your baby, you're saving the universe" he opted for the "I'm going out for cigarettes and I'll be back in a bit" deal as though that's win for blacks everywhere.

I would have just killed him off outright and not given him the "you get the nice send off ending". Just he and Dukat fall in the fire and the crew find his ashes at the end.

 

[TheBallPit]

Sounds almost exactly like what happened with SeaQuest DSV.

(This is in reference to Space: 1999.)

I have heard of similar comparisons, though it could be argued that SeaQuest suffered even more jarring changes than 1999. IIRC, the bridge set was also radically downsized when Michael Ironside was hired to replace Roy Scheider. The show tried to sex things up while bringing actual aliens into the story, which veered off into silly directions.

And no one was prepared for Ironside (except those of us who knew him as Ham Tyler from V), as his militaristic order-bellowing and sterile persona was the complete opposite of Scheider's mostly folksy charm.

I really don't know how these things happen. If you've got a series that isn't a total hit, but isn't a failure, either, thinking that the solution to all your problems is a complete paradigm shift is just baffling. Whatever happened to addressing a production's problems methodically, with rationality and sensibility, instead of dumping the whole book into the trash and effectively starting from scratch?

 

[oh no its pipkun]

Serenity was a shit ending to firefly. it felt like a swear-ier version of a tv episode instead of a cinematic send off.

 

[Luke Heaven 13!]

Waco series because they tried to show you that the FBI and ATF regretted their actions.

 

[Gan Ying]

It's not the actual finale, but the finale of Babylon 5 Season 4, which was supposed to be the series finale before they got S5 greenlit, was embarrassingly bad. I like the concept of it and saw what they were going for but it was just extremely heavy-handed and cringe in all of its segments. I wasn't too hot on the final two arcs in general and that episode was kind of the final nail in the coffin for me. Maybe I will eventually watch S5 but most fans said S5 isn't that good so I put it on the backburner hard.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Don't you know ambiguous and tragic endings are the hallmarks of a mature show for mature audiences?

I think there's an unwritten law that you can't have a gangster film without a tragic ending unless the protagonist sells out to the feds. Which to be fair is understandable when the main characters are objectively pieces of shit you only like because you feel you know them.

 

[William Murderface]

I think there's an unwritten law that you can't have a gangster film without a tragic ending unless the protagonist sells out to the feds. Which to be fair is understandable when the main characters are objectively pieces of shit you only like because you feel you know them.

If you look back at Renaissance drama, specifically revenge plays, you'll the same basic structure at the end. The guy seeking revenge for whatever wrongs were done to him kills the bad guy, gets his win, but either dies in the process or the prince or government grabs the guy seeking revenge and executes him too for stepping out of bounds. The power of the state is to be respected and revenge leads only to death is the message that is sent. Look at Hamlet. Yes, he kills everyone, but dies in the end. In the Revenger's Tragedy, Vendice wins, but when he confesses his plan at the end, the prince has him executed for murder. The takeaway is supposed to be "don't engage in petty revenge."

I figure mob stories are like that. Crime isn't supposed to pay and bad guys aren't supposed to get away with it. So either mobsters get killed (Carlito's Way, The Sopranos), they succeed but at a tremendous personal cost (the Godfather films or Casino), or are in prison at the end (Gotti), or have to make a deal with the state and end with their old life being over (Goodfellas).

 

[INDEED]

It's not the actual finale, but the finale of Babylon 5 Season 4, which was supposed to be the series finale before they got S5 greenlit, was embarrassingly bad. I like the concept of it and saw what they were going for but it was just extremely heavy-handed and cringe in all of its segments. I wasn't too hot on the final two arcs in general and that episode was kind of the final nail in the coffin for me. Maybe I will eventually watch S5 but most fans said S5 isn't that good so I put it on the backburner hard.

It wouldn't have made a very good finale, but it's a great adaption of A Canticle for Leibowitz

Maybe I will eventually watch S5 but most fans said S5 isn't that good so I put it on the backburner hard.

S5 picks up dramatically once you get past the Byron arc (which isn't as bad as fans make out IMHO - just so plain compared to the awesomeness of the rest of the series.)
Babylon 5 has the best final episodes of any series, sci-fi or otherwise.

 

[Juan But Not Forgotten]

Yea I loved the series, and in a sense, I can see what they were going for at the end, but Jimmy spent 6 seasons conning everybody, so to then just turn around and take an 86 year sentence because of "guilt" just doesn't make sense.

I'm sorry, but at no point would anybody do that, let alone Jimmy. I don't think that the moral thing to do in that situation is to say "Yes actually, I do think I should spend the rest of my life in a federal prison". Maybe it's the right thing to happen to him from an external point of view, but as the individual it makes absolutely no sense to repent through serving the rest of your life in jail versus repenting through something like charity or the sort.

He just wanted to save Kim. All his bravado about being someone who made Heisenberg who he was and killing his brother was just a mirror of his speech about his brother's letter, but if that time he tried to con the law to save himself this time he did it to save someone else to the point of unbecoming Saul Goodman. Inside he was as rotten as before. I don't think the ending was bad, I just don't like this series as much as other people, especially compared to Breaking Bad. "OMG JIMMY WENT FROM CARING FOR HIS FAMILY TO HURTING EVERYONE AROUND HIM NEVER EVER IT'S BEEN DONE BEFORE SO WELL" - ehm, "Godfather"?

My pick - Prison Break, but if you consider everything past the second season a finale. Third season sucked ass, fourth - sucked what was left of ass, finale - the only good thing about it was that it was over, TV MOVIE FINALE - OH, FUCK OFF ALREADY. I didn't even bother with season five since it would go from Michael being terminally ill to cured to ill to dead and now back to alive for some fucking reason.

Netflix's Punisher - the whole show was a retarded drama with a ton of "why they are here" characters when the series was promoted as badass action, but the ending... Fucking Frank Castle who's thing is that he is a vigilante who kills criminals DECIDES TO SPARE THE KILLER OF HIS FAMILY, MAKES TOTAL SENSE. And then FBI and the police be like "ok, Frank, you killed hundreds of people, broke hundreds of laws, but we think you are a good guy, so walk free and do whatever".

Jessica Jones. Smart and cunning Killgrave suddenly loses 100 points of IQ and just lets Jessica grab himself, because she told him his powers work on her again. I mean, the show wasn't great, but this was just beyond retarded way to kill a villain. Yes, I get those two weren't really "finals" but for me it all ended there.

Banshee. I fucking hate this show, but at least there was some semblance of sense in first two seasons, the last one though... Eh, they should've made one straight to TV movie and called it a day. The ending was basically the opening in reverse with some "my job here is done, even though I didn't get what I came for and ruined countless lives" bullshit.

 

[Your Starter for 10]

Crime isn't supposed to pay and bad guys aren't supposed to get away with it.

However the greatest gangster movie of all time, Johnny Dangerously, bucks this tradition.

Although to be fair, it does still promote that crime doesn't pay (well, it pays a little).

 

[Memes Cat]

LOST had the worst finale of any show I've ever seen. Granted, that's not an unpopular opinion, but fuck that show.

Its only redeeming quality was to warn me away from anything made by its creative team in the future, and from what I can tell, everything Jar Jar Abrams and that faggot hack Damon Lindelof made in the following years was abjectly terrible.

Avoid that terrible HBO Watchmen series by Lindelof. Except for a couple brief highlights it's just total fucking trash as you might expect

The most underhated finale is the one for Big Mouth because it hasn't happened yet. Seriously Netflix is retarded beyond all measure, that pedo-infested shit show will be there till the platform dies but we will never see Mindhunter season 3.

The worst part is fucking Fincher is moving on to do a sequel (but according to him it's not huh?) of QT's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood like wtf asked for that? No one. I'm not sure Tarantino signed off on this or not but come the fuck on why Fincher why?

 

[Pygmy Giraffe]

This isn't exactly "underhated," as its become infamous, but the finale of Star Trek Enterprise is a wretched pile of dogshit. Apparently, the framing device is that all of the preceding show was just a holodeck simulation to help an aging, overweight Commander Riker come to a decision to tell Picard the truth about the illegal experiment on the Pegasus. The main plot is a tangled, forgettable mess where the Enterprise must rescue Shran's cousin or something--I've erased the specifics from memory.

The show was cancelled unexpectedly by typical network kikery and the finale was written by tumblr-tier fan fic scabs during a writer strike, but holy shit it's awful. The plot makes no sense, everyone is out of character, and some of the best characters die offscreen. The worst part is that it follows the best two-parter of ENT, the mirror universe "In a Mirror Darkly," which features callbacks to the original series and the movie First Contact. Just check out this opening:

They even replaced the Hallmark channel-style soft rock opening with a badass title credit sequence for a based, militant Earth:

 

[William Murderface]

However the greatest gangster movie of all time, Johnny Dangerously, bucks this tradition.

Although to be fair, it does still promote that crime doesn't pay (well, it pays a little).

Anyone who brings up Johnny Dangerously is automatically my friend.

 

[Burakumin Bro]

I think there's an unwritten law that you can't have a gangster film without a tragic ending unless the protagonist sells out to the feds.

Actually that used to be a written law. Back in the 30s there use to be the Hays Code, a moral code for movies. And one of the laws was that criminals should always lose at the end. That law gave rise to the classic "rise and fall" structure that many mob movies and shows follows even to this day.