What, in your personal opinion, is the lamest, sorriest cop-out of an ending to a story that you’ve ever heard? My vote is split between: (1) The last episode of The Prisoner, and (2) They might be giants, starring George C. Scott. Both earn my disdain because they used the sorry tactic of going allegorical when the writers discovered they didn’t actually have an ending to the story.
Dishonorable mention:
-Last episode of Quantum Leap
-Bobby Ewing’s death on Dallas was “all a dream”.
I’m still smarting over the Quantum Leap ending.
The Seinfeld wrap-up was ridiculously over-hyped and under delivered, that’s for damn sure.
Space Above and Beyond.
The book “Venus on the Half Shell” by Kilgore Trout.
(Whom I haven’t seen around the board lately.)
I actually shreiked and THREW the book. I’m still pissed, thanks for asking!
Yeah, got to agree with seriousart on the Seinfeld thing. That’s all I can really think of for now, though I can’t say I was that disappointed with the last episode of The Prisoner. An argument can be made easily, and has been many times, that the whole series was allegorical. For a series that noone really understood what the true meaning was, I didn’t really expect the ending to be any clearer. I would have been disappointed if everything had been solved out of the blue. “Oh, it was the British Government behind it all? Okay.” That would have been terrible. Though I admit, the ending wasn’t exactly up to par.
My vote goes for Quantum Leap …
MASH had an interesting ending.
Oh, and I wanted Joss Wheden to kill buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles at the end of season 4. I think the series is going to have a hard time keeping new things coming - rather end it on a high note.
tv shows: Twin Peaks, Crime Story
Star Trek TNG - A pointless “why am I here/do I really matter” plot, ending up with the cast back together same as always, totally unchanged, back where they started.
And just like any other episode, everything that happened was immediately forgotten. Think about it, has any of the subsequent TNG movies ever referred to Picard’s supposedly deteriorating mental condition?
I didn’t really like the ending to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and I have to strongly agree with carnivorousplant. Space: Above and Beyond was a great show that shouldn’t have been taken off the air. I try to watch the re-runs on Sci-Fi channel whenever I can.
How did Quantam Leap end anyways?
And its the year 2000!! Where are those cool ass clothes with the flashing lights I saw on the first episode of that show!?!?
I didn’t like the resolution of this, either, but once the decision was made to have Patrick Duffy’s character brought back, there was no other good alternative. He could have played Bobby Ewing’s evil imposter, but that would have been even lamer, as we’d merely be waiting to see how long it was before he was “unmasked”.
IMHO, the Dynasty “wedding in Moldavia” (SP?) was far worse. Who did they kill off, two minor characters?
I don’t know if this is true, but I heard that, years ago, on All My Children, they had a story line where a pregnant woman was shot in the stomach, but her baby survived. Yeah, right.
Twin Peaks’ last episode was JUST BIZZARE. But then, the whole series was.
I loved the show anyway.
TV movie ending: Steven King’s “IT”
Theater movie ending: ‘Penn and Teller get killed’
Book ending: ‘Hannibal’
That is the entire point of course. Anyway, I loved it to death. “Five card stud, nothing wild, and the sky is the limit…”
[ Q ] "Must you be so linear, Jean-Luc? [ /Q ]
I don’t think it makes sense at all to regard the TNG Movies as logical sequals to the series, in terms of a normal time line. They’re just separate stories with a familiar crew. They could have taken place at any time.
The Book Hannibal. Talk about a shitty ending.
sheesh.
Osip
Roger Zelazney’s second Amber series.
That’s an ending?
for the book Hannibal. yech. I had a hard time believing that the same writer who created the characters in Silence of the Lambs wrote this sequel - hell I had a hard time believing that Thomas Harris even READ Silence of the Lambs… (yea, I know he wrote them both, I still think it must have been an evil twin or maybe Bobby’s shower)
The only thing I know, in Zelazney’s defense, is that he was still writing about it up till the time he died. I agree he shouldn’t have left if hanging that much, but still…
Monty Python and the Holy Grail. After that wonerful build-up with the dragon ship in the mist they had to end it all with the hand-held video cop-out?
I hear that’s because they ran out of money. It was supposedly going to be this big battle, but nope, too little money. And it’s too late to change it now.