Pushing Daisies was cruelly cut far too short.
I came in to add it and see many others have also.
This show was practically perfect in every way.
As most of these shows could never recapture whatever magic the y had due to time and lost of characters I will add a recent loss.** Forever**was a nice show that I think was going somewhere good. It should have got more time.
The West Wing, with Aaron Sorkin doing the writing.
Egads, I’d love to hear Jed Bartlet’s take on tRump!
Aeon Flux
RE: Firefly, DollHouse, Journeyman, Starman
These all seemed to have compressed endings (even Firefly’s spectacular Serenity) that felt like "Well, we’ve been cancelled. Let’s crystalize the key elements from the overall plot and character developments and tie up loose ends in an episode or two (or four made into a movie).
And, borrowed from BBC and twisted: Life on Mars.
The ending seemed rushed and tacked on when they found out they had been dropped.
For that matter, so did the ending episodes of Will & Grace.
I would very much enjoy just seeing those character and plot developments occur and wrap up as they were (naturally?) planned and spread out over several episodes.
I’ll throw an obscure one at you: The Magician with Bill Bixby.
I suspect, however, that one was merely episodic and didn’t have much of an overarching development plan.
I simply liked Bill Bixby.
–G!
Great post/username combo 
So many to choose from. The Maury Chaykin/Timothy Hutton “Nero Wolfe” was wonderfully done. Maury’s passed on of course, but in a perfect world, they would have had a couple more seasons at least. They certainly had plenty of source material to draw from.
Firefly. Perfect combination of casting, characters, story, dialog, directing, etc. Just hits on every cylinder. Many shows cut down early probably would have weakened and disappointed soon anyway, but I think Firefly had many more classic episodes left in it. A real loss, that was.
“Better Off Ted” was a great 30-min comedy with a fun premise. Great cast/characters and fun writing. More would have been better, but I feel kind of lucky we even has a second season.
I’d be more upset about “Deadwood”, but the last season was pretty fucked up. As awesome as the first 2 were, the last was really all over the place and disappointing. It at least soothed with an ending scene that was a wonderful character moment with Swearengen.
I would love more of any of these, but I think the Firefly loss was the worst. I know. . .get over it Emo-boy, it was 15 years ago. . .but time and repeated picking of the scab doesn’t make it any less true.
True Blood
Hell on Wheels
I stopped watching that show after it was clear the writers knew nothing about guns, ballistics or how criminal justice worked back then.
Tracking down the protagonist due to ballistics, by knowing the rare brand of gun he carried was simply impossible. It probably would be impossible today. .36 ball is .36 ball, and there no way ballistics of the era would say it came from a Griswold.
Not to mention, once a suspected killer crossed state lines, it was unlikely lawmen would continue a long and protracted seach and investigation back then.
Me too!
Whenever I re-read one of the Zeck stories, I’m sorry they never got to do any of those.
Yes, by far the best screen version of Wolfe yet, and a couple more seasson would have been doable and great.
Also same with A&E’s Hornblower.
Better off Ted was fun, but maybe not for TV.
Yes, Last season of Deadwood was … weird.
I am not sure about Firefly, what with it being on Fox. And, we got Joss to do Avengers, which worked out well, I think.
The Lost World. Yeah, that syndicated crap from the late 90s/early 00s. It was not a good show by any standard, but it ended on a cliffhanger and got cancelled before it could be resolved.
Chips
planet of the apes
One thing I’d love to have back is Petrocelli– that 1974-76 NBC legal series w/Barry Newman, Susan Howard and Albert Salmi deserved at least one more season’s worth from 1976-77, simply because I would have loved to see Tony and Maggie finish that house they were building.
I’d be ok with this. But what *really *needs to happen is for Brendon Small to do a final season of Metalocalypse! He’s been wanting to do it but Adult Swim is ams dildos!
Also, there needs to have been more than 14 episodes of Spaced!