Fictional Series that ended with the most disrespect to the fans or network/publisher

Yeah, but you missed Evangelion. (Or maybe you just blocked it out.) :smiley:

More so when you consider that a bored philosophy dork has made a website devoted to everything Tommy ever thought about and why it doesn’t really exist.

The Tommyverse

Fuckin killjoy.

You know, I came into this thread thinking “Hmm, nothing much I can think of that fits this description”

I forgot the Dark Tower.

FUCK YOU AND YOU DIE STEPHEN KING! I hope one day you get run over by another truck driven by another drunk driver and it squishes your stupid head to paste.

I wasn’t a big fan of Seinfeld, but I watched the final episode. You know how in cartoons, you can walk off a cliff and you won’t fall until you notice that you’re standing in mid-air? Seinfeld was like that. Whatever world it took place in, certainly not ours, had rules that made sense in a weird way. George has lied to a girl, telling her that he’s a marine biologist, to try to impress her. They’re at the shore and a whale has beached itself. “Is anyone here a marine biologist?” It’s inevitable.

That’s why the last episode sucked. It didn’t follow the rules. I get that Jerry, et al., have stood by watching while someone gets mugged. I get that they are arrested and tried for violating the local good samaritan law. The prosecution wants to show the error of their ways. And so we see familiar guest stars recounting their experiences with Jerry. But all of their stories are about how when the quartet gets involved, they destroy the people they’re trying to help. The best thing that ever happened to that mugging victim is when they all decided to leave him alone.

“Mice don’t wanna eat cheese.” tap, tap, tap, tap… craaaank

“Mice wan’t cat to eat them.” tap, tap, tap, tap… craaaank

“Cat don’t wanna eat mice.” tap, tap, tap, tap… craaaank

“But cat wants dog to massacree him.” tap, tap, tap, tap… craaaank

zzzzzzzzziip

It just don’t add up!

Try this on for size. The episode starts the same, but instead of the prosecution, it’s the defense attorney who tracks down Babu, Mr. Peterman, the Soup Nazi, etc., asking them to testify about how Jerry’s help is the last thing anybody needs. They all decline, leaving Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer rotting in jail for the one thing in their lives they’ve ever done right.

I thought the ending of Angel was brilliant, especially the casual dismissal of the Shanshu Prophecy. It cemented the most important theme of the series: that Angel and the MoG weren’t fighting for redemption, or personal growth, or some kind of reward. They weren’t even fighting to win. They fought evil because it was the right thing to do - because it was their job. That’s all there is.

I couldn’t imagine a better ending.

Completely agree. It blew the finale of Buffy away completely. Hell, it blew the entie last season of Buffy away.

It’s not about winning the fight, it’s about fighting the fight.

This may fall along the Quantum Leap lines… but isn’t Jerry O’Connell still sliding?

Buffy’s finale was pretty good - diving off the tower to save the world.

Seasons 6 & 7 never happened

I saw the whole thing as the standard fight between conformity and individualism, so when the ‘Freedom Faction’ win against the Shinra and Sephiroth they’re in a world of possibilties. Telling us what happened would be defeating the point they made by their fight. We don’t know what’s going to happen next, they don’t know and thats the way it’s meant to be

No, sliders ended with all four of the original sliders dead, and the newbies all trapped on another world with no way off.

Quinn was absorbed into the body of an alternate universe counterpart, and ceased to exist.

A recent one, * Life on Mars*

Turns out that Sam was in a coma and dreaming the whole thing after all. Then he kills himself in order to return to his dream world.

I feel :rolleyes: :frowning: :mad: about it.

I thought it was a really good ending and one of the best episodes ever – I’d only change it by removing a couple of lines of dialogue. Sometimes less is more, and a line written just to be clever is annoying without adding anything. On the other hand, that’s been typical of everything Joss Whedon’s done, so it’s consistent with the rest of the series. More than made up for by the good stuff.

Re: Quantum Leap

I too was upset by the whole bar scene there, but I have to admit that you’re right on the mark as regards Al, including that previous episode. I still cannot hear “Georgia On My Mind” without reliving it all.

[shiver] "Al’s alive! And he’s coming home! [/shiver]

I think perhaps you’re taking that one a little too seriously. After all, it was intended mainly to get a laugh. And wasn’t it intended as a send-up of that *Dallas * episode where they brought back a character they’d killed off by making two entire seasons into a dream?

The BBC recently made the last three books into Radio Plays (with most of the original cast of the first two Radio Series, incidentally!). The ending is somewhat more upbeat, in that

The Babel Fish in Arthur and Trillian’s ears are revealed to have the ability to teleport both their hosts and anyone in the immediate vicinty across vast distances of time and space, in order to preserve their own (the Babel Fish’s) existence. In one version, everyone ends up at The Restaurant at The End Of The Universe, in another, Arthur ends up with the Lintilla/Allitnil Clones from the earlier series, Marvin has been resurrected, and so on.

I like it a lot better than the books’ ending, whilst feeling that it was very true to how Adams himself probably would have written it if he was re-writing the book over again.

All the BBC Radio Series of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy are excelleng and well worth listening to, incidentally.

The ending to Red Dwarf was somewhat disappointing, too- I know the series is still technically “On Hiatus” but I think it’s time to admit that we won’t be seeing a Series IX OR a Movie anytime in the foreseeable future and that what we’ve seen is all we’ll be getting. Smeg.

Nobody has mentioned The Prisoner? Unca Cecil is going to put you all on an island somewhere

Yes, but that was hardly deliberate on the show’s part. They had been told that they would be back for a fifth season and only found out that they were being canceled on literally the last day of filming. So what was supposed to be an end-of-season cliffhanger turned into the series ender

Some anime did this…it was parodied in Excel Saga.

Not to mention the movie follow-on, which pretty much trashed the character of Akito.

Eh? Escaflowne didn’t end with “it was all a dream”.

Thank you. My sentiments EXACTLY.

Double I hate you Stephen King!! If you hated writing the damn books so much, just leave them unfinished. Your contempt for your readers was obvious, but I bet you still loooove cashing those checks. Bastard.

I completely forgot about that. It definitely belongs in this thread.

I will add Married with Children since they never got to do an ending episode.

I thought the Quantum Leap ending episode was good. Sam asks when he can go home and when he’ll stop leaping and the bartender tells him that he’ll stop when he is ready/wants to stop. And I got the vibe from Sam that he was resolved to continue leaping and helping people and doing the greater good because he has been doing it for so long.

Spiderman 3. Horrible ending. I hate Sam Raimi. I will never watch another of his movies again for what he did to my favorite Spiderman villian.