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

Cafe Society
61

[QUOTE=tanstaafl]
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
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The bad part is that they could have easily ended the series on an upbeat note by editing out the last ~30 seconds. Knowing it was the series finale, and leaving the ‘cliffhanger’ ending, was just wrong wrong wrong.

62

Forever Knight. Another in the list of lets-kill-off-everyone-so-we-don’t-have-to-listen-to-people-whining-for-it-to-come-back. I’m still pissed off about it.

I second Newhart and Hitchhiker’s Guide, though the Blake’s 7 ending I was ok with, as it does, indeed, fit the series perfectly. I liked the final episode of Quantum Leap.

I refused to watch the last episode of Angel or finish the final Dark Tower book as I could see an ending I’d hate barreling towards me.

I loved Steven King’s It in general, but I hate endings where everyone forgets what happened. What’s the point, really?

63

I also thought the ending to “Blakes 7” fit the series perfectly. And I didn’t see any problem with the end of “The Prisoner” either. But that’s just me, I guess.

When I was a little kid and watched “The Wizard of Oz” on its yearly run on TV it always bugged me that Oz was just dream. When I got around to reading the books I was so glad that wasn’t so.

64

Now and Again.
This is another example of a cliffhanger at the end of a cancelled series.

65

Carnivale on HBO. They could have ended it nicely if not for the last two minutes of what turned out to be the final episode. The ending of Deadwood wasn’t much better.

66

If Serenity counts as the finale to* Firefly*, I know a number of fans who were pissed by

Wash’s and Shepherd Book’s deaths…

67

I was always interested in reading King’s Dark Tower series, but after reading this thread, I’ve reconsidered.

68

I really don’t see disrespect in a downer of an ending. As long as the ending seems in keeping with the rest of the work, I think tragedy can be as good as a more postive ending. So, while I see the points that other posters are making about Quantum Leap, or Serenity, or Blake’s Seven as being endings that left the fans down, I don’t see any of those endings as being disrespectful. All of them fit the mellieu of the stories of which they were part.

It’s when the ending seems pulled out of someone’s ass, someone who wasn’t even involved in the show at that, then that’s what I’d consider disrespectful.

69

Re The Dark Tower: I can’t understand all the hate for the ending. It was…upsetting, maybe, but on reflection, how could it have gone any other way? Did you really think there would be an interview with God or something?

70

[QUOTE=well he’s back]
I also thought the ending to “Blakes 7” fit the series perfectly. And I didn’t see any problem with the end of “The Prisoner” either. But that’s just me, I guess.
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I always liked it, too. I can see why it would piss off someone who was expecting a conventional, explain-all-the-weird-stuff ending, but why would anyone expect that from a trippy, surreal show like The Prisoner? It was bizarre from the beginning and only got more so as it went along . . . a tidy, rational explanation at the end would have been a let-down.

71

[QUOTE=Robot Arm]
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.

…

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.

…

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.
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I was bothered by all the legal mistakes in the last episode it made but that’s just the knee-jerk lawyer in me.

Aside from that, I would’ve preferred that that Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer not all end up in jail with their lives likely ruined. In an earlier episode, Elaine (who at the time was having a spell of bad luck) commented that everything always seemed to even out for Jerry while George often ended up at a deficit. I thought their legal fates should’ve reflected that. Jerry would get off lightly with perhaps nothing more than a fine and community service; Elaine would be put on probation; George, of course, would get the worst of it and have to go to jail for a year; and Kramer, the guy who falls backasswards into money and whose whole life is a fantasy camp, would end up not getting penalized at all because the video he took of the carjacking resulted in the identification and capture of the real crook.

72

[QUOTE=Dung Beetle]
Re The Dark Tower: I can’t understand all the hate for the ending. It was…upsetting, maybe, but on reflection, how could it have gone any other way? Did you really think there would be an interview with God or something?
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Here’s my thing about DT. I understand that rarely can a book build a fantastic, enthralling story, and have the payoff equal the ride. I’m a Stephen King fan, so I realize that is particularly true for Steve (in his novels).

The first disrespectful thing he did was to use the books as public therapy over his accident, instead of crafting them for the benefit of the readers. I understand completely why he did it, and I feel sympathy for him, but it made for a really sucky literary product.

The second disrespectful thing was that he shoehorned a lot of disparate stuff together, rewriting some of the rules as he went, when a lot of the magic of the series was wondering how all the little mentions in other works and all the destiny and interacting personalities and magic and psychology were going to weave together as things drew to a climax. However, I could have forgiven this - it merely transformed what started as a unique and magical reading experience for me into a readable but somewhat standard King story.

The third disrespectful thing was giving up entirely after (presumably) writing himself into a corner, and resorting to having the author, himself, leave a freaking instructional note for one of the characters.

The fourth disrespectful thing was taking this wondrous, compelling story and ending it with an equivalent of “it was all a dream,” robbing meaning from all the adventures which were compelling partly because they seemed so fraught with meaning

And finally, the way he did the fourth thing was monumentally disrespectful and nutless, to boot, because he couldn’t just pick an ending, (preferably sticking with the false ending he offers, which had some integrity and poetry, given that we know that nothing can actually fulfill our wildest fantasies), he tries to fob off the responsibility on the reader, and when (of course) we went ahead and read the final ending, he says if we don’t like it, well, it’s our fault for reading it!

I don’t hate him, and will still read his books. I just won’t ever read DT beyond The Wastelands again.

73

[QUOTE=Unauthorized Cinnamon]
I don’t hate him, and will still read his books. I just won’t ever read DT beyond The Wastelands again.
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Well, okay then! :slight_smile:

Actually I don’t think of DT as Steve’s magnum opus, and don’t particularly love it myself. I think it hit a high point with The Drawing of The Three. However, I thought the ending worked just fine.

Thank you for your thoughtful answer.

74

[QUOTE=davidm]
Twin Peaks. The season ended with a cliffhanger (actually a number of cliffhangers) and then was cancelled.

Then to add insult to injury, rather than giving some closure, the movie was a prequel.
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This is what I came into the thread to say as well. Ending the show with the viewers not even knowing if several important characters were dead, possessed, etc. Man. The rumor I heard at the time was that David Lynch was just pissed that it had been canceled and so the final episode was sort of a “tantrum” of his.

75

[QUOTE=Sierra Indigo]
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.
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::: Moderator coughs discretely ::: We generally don’t feel that death wishes are appropriate in terms of “well-mannered conversations” in Cafe Society. It’s not quite a rule – well, OK, it’s a rule that we don’t allow death wishes against other posters – but it’s sort of, one can think poorly of the works of some writer, but death wishes are … well, just not nice.

76

[QUOTE=Tahssa]
I will add Married with Children since they never got to do an ending episode.
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Huh? I remember the final episode, Kelly’s wedding is off and she winds up with what appears to be the Chippendale Fantasy Best Man Stud Club or something.

Was that not supposed to be the last episode? It wasn’t anything staggering but it wasn’t a “WTF???” moment.

77

[QUOTE=SkipMagic]
I wasn’t too whoopie about what happened to Sam, but I did think the resolution for Al (especially considering the previous episode referenced by the finale) was really touching.
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I was annoyed that the resolution of Sam’s fantastic journies was something of such small cosmological signifance.

78

Either I blinked, or no one’s mentioned Sports Night’s metatextual dig at the network in the final episode. I paraphrase, but it boils down to: “What kind of a network can’t make money off of Sports Night?”

I absolutely loathed Dark Tower until the, what was it? Second epilogue? Whatever the “ha! gotcha! this is the final final” ending was called. I thought that last piece of writing was absolutely perfect - it was almost everything else that came post-accident, pre-final ending that sucked. I don’t think King intended the awfulness of the last couple of books to be a sign of disrespect for his fans, though. I think his accident panicked him into not wanting to die before his magnum opus was completed, and since the series had the potential to run a nearly infinite number of volumes, he wrapped things up in as much of a hurry as he could manage. Bad writing, yes, but disrespect? That’s not how I interpreted it.

Largely ditto for the ending of Angel. I disliked how they jettisoned the “changing the system from within” theme of the beginning of the season to conclude the series with some rushed and not always well thought out episodes, but at least I understand why it happened. I did like the final episode, for the most part, even if I am thoroughly pissed about what happened to Wesley (but even that I interpret more as writers taking the easy way out than showing disrespect for anyone).

79

Earth: Final Conflict :frowning:
In the last season, instead of returning the show to what the fans loved about the show, they got rid of all vestiges of it of by killing off Da’an and the Taelons. :mad: :mad: :mad:

80

Wildstorm comics had a comic called Stormwatch, about a sort of Justice League group of superheroes, except that they had no compunctions about punching people’s heads clean off. The comic was later turned into the (deservedly) more succesful The Authority, but the way they went about it was pretty cheap.

The last TPB has the heroes on their satellite, picking up a meteor passing near Earth from outside the solar system. Then all communications with the satellite end. So they get a couple of the more popular heroes from the Wildstorm line to go check it out, where he finds out that the entire superhero team has been wiped out by Aliens. Not just aliens, but Aliens. They weren’t killed by any sort of nemesis, or as the conclusion to an on-going storyline, or anything like that. They were killed by a cross-over. Off-panel, even. (Although I guess that’s understandable, as it would have been difficult explaining exactly how an Alien could kill, say, the hero who was a cloud of sentient gas encased in a suit of power armor.) Instead, the final story arc for the book features a hero who was never part of the team, running around their base and finding all of their corpses, before blowing it up and escaping back to Earth. But what mostly bugs me about it is, these are the same aliens that were unable to kill a platoon of non-superpowered colonial marines. They were unable to kill a prison full of deranged ex-cons. They were unable to kill a ship filled with untrained space miners. But they wipe out an entire team of superheroes. Which means, I guess, that Sigourney Weaver is more powerful than any ten Wildstorm superheroes.