[QUOTE=silenus]
Quantum Leap.
[/QUOTE]
I love the last episode of QL. Sam isn’t FORBIDDEN to go home; he chooses to embrace his new calling and, presumably, dies nobly.
He’s not married, right? Cause I don’t recall, and if he is I retract the above.
[QUOTE=Selkie]
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?”
[/QUOTE]
"Anybody who can’t make money off Sports Night should get out of the money-making business. "
There were a couple of others. I believe Natalie commented to the effect of…“The show is fine, it’s the rest of the network that sucks”
But I disagree with the show’s addition to the list. The show was screwed by the network and ended WAY prematurely, however IMHO the Quo Vadimus episode was absolutely fantastic. Everyone knew a great show was dying and everyone knew exactly what killed it.
What better send off than writing the fan’s and cast’s frustrations right into the script of the final episode. 
[QUOTE=VCO3]
What series - comic book, novel, TV show, book, video game, etc. - ended with the most disrespectful ending for the fans? Which gave the fanbase (or the network or publisher that was funding it) a gigantic middle-finger with its conclusion?
I was reading about how the soap opera “Another World,” when it was canceled in the nineties, basically spent the last several episodes showing the most beloved characters being brutally murdered at the hands of a random serial killer. I guess the fans are still upset about it.
[/QUOTE]
Not quite sure where you heard that, but it’s not true 
. People weren’t thrilled with the ending of the series, but the writers attempted to bring in the history of the show to end it and there wasn’t a serial killer at the end of the show. Several years previously, there WAS a big serial killer storyline where a major beloved character was killed off, but that had nothing to do with the show’s ending.
I can speak with absolute authority when I say that the people who worked on Another World were just as devastated as the fans to lose the show, and while they may have missed the mark slightly, they had nothing but respect for the show and its fans in regards to the final few episodes. It was a depressing ending, and there was a whole lot of disrespect going on, but it was from NBC, not from the producers/writers/cast/crew of the show.
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer]
He’s not married, right? Cause I don’t recall, and if he is I retract the above.
[/QUOTE]
He’s married - we see her a couple of times in the series, and she still loves him. However, he doesn’t remember her existence (due to the swiss-cheese effect) so it’s not like he’s deliberately abandoning her.
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer]
I love the last episode of QL. Sam isn’t FORBIDDEN to go home; he chooses to embrace his new calling and, presumably, dies nobly.
He’s not married, right? Cause I don’t recall, and if he is I retract the above.
[/QUOTE]
Originally, I don’t think he was. But in one of the early leaps (first season), he leaps back into a professor and does something to help Donna Alisi (I think that was her name). Later, in the leap where Sam and Al switch places (a few seasons later), Sam is briefly back home and remembers that he’s married to Donna. I think it was his earlier leap that changed this – and made it so he ended up with Donna.
Then he has to go back into the leaping chamber to save Al from that leap, ending up leaping again. The swiss cheese memory makes it so he doesn’t really remember her while he’s out there leaping.
And count me as another who liked the Quantum Leap finale. Much of that episode was filler, but the ending, righting Al’s big “wrong”, that’s what it was all about. The “Sam never returned home” can be interpreted in different ways, I think. Some have chosen to interpret it as Sam choosing to continue leaping. Another way to view it is that Sam sacrificed his own ability to return home to fix the big wrong in Al’s life – a sacrifice he made for his dearest friend. (Sam’s already gotten to fix wrongs from his own life, like his brother’s death).
The moment where Sam tells Beth that Al is alive and coming home – that was a perfect moment in that series.
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant]
Space Above or Beyond killed or injured everyone when it was canceled.
[/QUOTE]
that wasn’t the writers’ doing. the network suits had been jerking the show around, constantly playing with its timeslot and when it was being run. (rumors abound that The Suits got in a snit because Morgan and Wong, the creators/producers, actively fought against the networks wish to turn it into Space 90210, instead opting to keep to their vision of a gritty future-war drama.) the season finale, which turned out to be the final episode, got filmed – THEN they got the word that the show was being axed.
nobody who was actively involved with producing, writing or acting in the show was happy about the way the show was treated. the fanbase tried for a long time to get it revived, but to no avail.
How about Agatha Christie’s final Hercule Poirot mystery? Christie made no secret of the fact that she had grown to detest the character after so many years of her publishers demand she writie more books featuring him. For the final Poirot mystery Curtain (written in the mid-1940s, but not published until after her death in '75) she had the famed nemesis of countryhouse murderers everwhere…
murder someone!
[QUOTE=lachesis]
that wasn’t the writers’ doing.
[/QUOTE]
Thanks, lachesis. I’d read they did it on purpose when canceled. Glad to learn the truth.
Glad to see that I’m not the only one plotting to have the Hitchhiker’s Guide go on. I always thought that the bird/book had the power to bring the earths back, it just had to (or wanted to) follow orders and turn them off first.
It’s been long enough that I’m fuzzy on how much self control it had. Maybe I need to read it again.
[QUOTE=Elza B]
Not quite sure where you heard that, but it’s not true . People weren’t thrilled with the ending of the series, but the writers attempted to bring in the history of the show to end it and there wasn’t a serial killer at the end of the show. Several years previously, there WAS a big serial killer storyline where a major beloved character was killed off, but that had nothing to do with the show’s ending.
I can speak with absolute authority when I say that the people who worked on Another World were just as devastated as the fans to lose the show, and while they may have missed the mark slightly, they had nothing but respect for the show and its fans in regards to the final few episodes. It was a depressing ending, and there was a whole lot of disrespect going on, but it was from NBC, not from the producers/writers/cast/crew of the show.
[/QUOTE]
Sorry, this is what I was thinking of . Beloved character brutally murdered.
[QUOTE=Miller]
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.
[/QUOTE]
Well, to be fair, Warren Ellis was using the idea that the xenomorphs take on some of the qualities of their host bodies.
[spoiler]For instance, the alien toting Fahrenheit’s corpse on its tail spike breathed fire at them.
I wasn’t too familiar with the Stormwatch team roster, but I could imagine that some appropriately-augmented xenomorphs could theoretically take out Hellstrike or Fuji.
[/spoiler]
Put me down as another who DIDN’T like the ending to Quantum Leap.
They had a much better ending to Al’s saga a few episodes previously. Dr Ruth helped him come to terms with losing Beth, and he is able to move on and commit to his relationship with Tina. The final episode throws that away.
The awful attempt to extend the show Beauty and the Beast beyond Linda Hamilton’s tenure was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen on television, and apparently lots of fans agree with me.Hamilton’s character Catherine is kidnapped, tortured for months and left to bleed to death after giving birth. They then had an arc about Vincent going on a quest of vengence and to find his child, and introduced a female homicide cop who was intended to become the new female lead.
[QUOTE=Winston Bongo]
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.
[/QUOTE]
Thank you for saying that. I mean, really. To me, it’s part & parcel of the whole. After all, it is 17 episodes in all, done in a single year. (And since I saw them out of order, I saw “Many Happy Returns” last, which makes just as much sense at that point.)
[QUOTE=Strain of Thought]
The Vogon narration specifically states that Earth is so multiversally unstable that if you don’t destroy ALL the earths and ALL the earthlings simultaneously, it just pops right back into existence; and yet, at the beginning of the story, Fenchurch has mysteriously disappeared, and Arthur never does have any idea what happened to her.
I suspect that, years from now, someone will be licensed to write a final book in the series based on it, with an obvious title:
“WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE”
[/QUOTE]
Great idea. I’m wondering how much of my royalties, if I write this book, it is ethically appropriate to give you.
(Since I, too, came into the thread to protest Mostly Harmless. Stavro Müller Beta indeed. :rolleyes: )
Oh, and I am told that Bellisario meant there to be another season of QL, & that weird weird episode wasn’t really meant to be the finale. Maybe now that Enterprise is done, Bakula can get together with Bellisario to do the reunion movie they’ve hinted at for years.
Or this, which I just found right now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bold_Leap_Forward
If the final episode of the Inspector Lindley Mysteries, really was the last episode, then thank you. Thank you ever so fucking much. 
[QUOTE=Strain of Thought]
I suspect that, years from now, someone will be licensed to write a final book in the series based on it, with an obvious title:
“WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE”
[/QUOTE]
If they know what’s good for them, they’ll entitle it “WE APOLOGISE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE”, what with the whole Hitch-Hiker’s Guide thing being, well, English… 
[QUOTE=kunilou]
Roseanne
[/QUOTE]
Ohmigosh, yes. When I see reruns of the first few of seasons, I find it hard to believe that it’s the same show as the last few seasons. It went from funny & realistic to a self-indulgent, over-the-top piece of crap. Sad, because there was a lot of good talent that was being wasted.
[QUOTE=Lumpy]
The awful attempt to extend the show Beauty and the Beast beyond Linda Hamilton’s tenure was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen on television, and apparently lots of fans agree with me.Hamilton’s character Catherine is kidnapped, tortured for months and left to bleed to death after giving birth. They then had an arc about Vincent going on a quest of vengence and to find his child, and introduced a female homicide cop who was intended to become the new female lead.
[/QUOTE]
:mad: THANK YOU for bringing up that horrible memory! I’d just about forgotten and now I have to be pissed off all over again. harumph