I have no issue with Sisko’s ascension following his death but rather the events surrounding his birth. It and the convenient closing of the wormhole while the Dominion fleet was in transit are the only two things I absolutely hate about Deep Space Nine.
And I have no idea why I typed Nog as I knew it was Rom and, to save face and regain my geek-cred, I must turn around and nitpick you on “the first Romulan conflict”, which was the Earth-Romulan War and generally considered to predate the Federation.
Only Fools And Horses should have definitely ended in 1996. It had the perfect finale. After all their hard work scratching around, Del and Rodney are finally ‘miwwionaires’, effectively by accident; through an item that they had all the time.
The last line, walking into the sunset, “This time next year we’ll be billionaires” was perfect.
The X-Files ended with Mulder’s abduction, and without the seventh-season episodes Zein und Seit and Closure.
Perfect fodder for a second movie–Mulder comes back, to warn everyone of the impending invasion and get people ready (or some time later, to help fight off the aliens). A good strong run of seven immensely popular seasons, and no Doggett or Reyes.
Putting aside jump-the-shark moments when a show should have ended, I nominate the lesser known Canadian series North of 60 - in it, a white RCMP officer tries to deal with all the mini-conspiracies and hassles of life in an isolated aboriginal community, recently gone “dry” by law (and not with the agreement of all residents) after decades of damage wrought by alcoholism. In what I thought was a rather cliché and predictable move, he becomes romantically involved with the only white woman in town. Had he instead become intimate with his lower-ranked aboriginal coworker, herself a recovering alcoholic (and who I thought was way more attractive), that whole romantic subplot would have been a lot more complicated and interesting, what with issues of workplace and interracial elements, combined with her already being seen as a traitor by some of the community for becoming a cop in the first place.
Angel. I love everything about the final season – it’s probably my favorite overall season of any TV shows ever. The ending is breathtaking, but I would have changed one thing: I wish Wesley didn’t die, at least not on-camera.
I always wanted a Cheers episode where they had an Xmas party at the bar and make Norm bring Vera over his strong objections. He shows up with this shrill harpy that shows why he is never at home. Then a real babe shows up at Cheers, sees Norm and the Harpy and starts crying. Turns out that Norm brought a fake Vera to the party and that the reason he is never at home is that he thinks Vera is too good for him and he doesn’t deserve her.
The show ended on the right note, and with some really good episodes. The ending just should have come later. But as long as I’m rewriting the show, Michael never should have gotten involved with Rita. As the character himself noted, the secret agent thing was “retarded.”
Tara was in the opening credits only once – the episode in which she was killed. That had been Joss’ plan, by the way, in the pilot: he was going to have Jesse McNally, Xander’s best friend, appear in the credits and then kill him in the very first episode, just to confound expectations. He was thwarted in this by budget concerns that didn’t let him shoot and edit two versions of the opening credits.
Anya’s death was heartbreaking, but it was true to the series.
For some reason, this idea tickles me. If Buffy was a comedy (well, it was part-comedy, but if it was a wacky spoof-type show), I could imagine a new character being introduced in the opening credits every week, only to be killed off during the episode. (But maybe I’m inspired by Police Squad!, which featured a running gag in which a big-name special guest star was killed off during the opening credits.)
Heck, I wanted to see MORE people die in the very last episode. For a titanic battle against the nearly limitless hordes of Hell, the good guys got off kind of light. Most of the deaths were hardly more than Redshirts.
I’ll amend my Buffy complaint. It still gets a seventh season, so we get to keep OMWF–but at the end of the Dark Willow arc, she STAYS evil. When Giles makes his Superman entrance and knocks her out, he points out all the ways that she’s been evil for some years now.
Let’s see. Faced with the temptation to make out with Xander, she decided to use magic to compromise his free will. Angered by Oz’s infidelity with Veruca, she called upon the power of Satan to do her bidding (though she lost her nerve at the end). Grieving for Buffy, she violated the natural order and ripped out of the afterlife, not considering that Buffy’s years of heroism would surely have sent her to heaven, not hell. Unwilling to accept a rebuke from Tara, she used magic to wipe her lover’s memory, violating her mind, even though she knew Tara had recently been violated in a similar fashion by Glory. Confronted with the consequences of that rebuke, she attempted to do the same thing to Tara, knowing that Tara felt extraordinarily violated by the first instance. She murdered Rack the demon-power peddlar, not for the sake of justice but because she wanted his power. She tortured and murdered Warren. She attempted to murder Dawn.
I think Aly Hannigan is the cutest thing on two continents, and I found Willow charming. But she was evil. Not PURE evil…but give her time.
