Six Feet Under
[QUOTE=Alessan]
Angel, of course.
The last scene of the last episode finds the surviving cast members in a rainy alley facing a demon horde. Two of the main characters died earlier in the season; one more died a few minutes earlier in the episode. Of the four in the alleyway, one is mortally wounded; all of them know that they have no chance of surviving the coming fight. They step forward to face their enemy. The main hero - Angel himself - raises his sword, says, “Let’s go to work”…
…and the series ends.
Sure, there’s a lot of conjecture that some of the characters survived, that some deus would come out of some machina as soon as the credits finished rolling, but we can just write that off as wishful thinking. Besides, it would defeat the whole purpose of the ending.
[/QUOTE]
The main thing that disappointed me about that finale is that the Wolf, Ram and Hart never showed up. I spent the whole series anticipating that.
Dead Like Me
Among Space Above and Beyond fans there’s a lot of argument over the death toll in the finale. Optimistic fans think only two characters are confirmed dead while the others are likely alive. I’m in the all but one died camp.
Considering a writer for the show has become an acquaintance of mine… I really should ask.
In Topper two of the three main characters started out dead and stayed that way.
Sledge Hammer ended with a nuclear bomb going off in the middle of the city, so presumably…
In Dark Shadows, many characters died during the series (or even before it started) for a certain value of “die.” (It didn’t keep them off the screen.)
Sliders - I think there were 8 main characters over a four year run, it ended with 5 of them dead, and the other three stranded.
[QUOTE=Steve Wright]
Blake’s Seven, already mentioned, is a classic example of this - the final episode (which aired in 1981 and has been much discussed, so I’m damned if I’m going to bother with spoiler boxes) ended with all the main characters being shot dead, one by one.
[/QUOTE]
An interesting sidenote is that they were killed by the TV adaptation of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy: the Beeb couldn’t fund two SF series {Doctor Who was the first, of course}, and pulled the plug on Serenity - uh, I mean Blake’s Seven - whereupon the writers decided that if the show was going out, it was going out, and killed everybody.
A lot of recurring characters on NYPD Blue ended up dead, but one at a time over the course of the series.
–Cliffy
Soap - Several of the main characters were just about to die at the end of the final episode. And several had died in earlier episodes.
[QUOTE=Raguleader]
Neon Genesis Evangelion, of course, ends with just about everyone (as in main characters, minor characters, villians, extras, people not appearing in the movie, all of humanity) except for the main character dying by the end (or more specifically, at the End).
So Doper connoisseurs of the televised arts, any other good examples here?
[/QUOTE]
If anime counts, then two very depressing examples include Berserk, in which every character save the hero Gatsu (Guts) is killed, and Gilgamesh, where not only is every character is killed in the climactic battle, but then the whole human race is destroyed.
I hate getting invested in characters just to watch them all be brutally murdered and tossed aside. Some of these writers are just cruel.
Yay! I get to mention Dinosaurs, inwhich EVERYBODY (and I mean everybody) got killed in the last episode (which I unfortunately missed). Asteroid, don’tcha know.
[QUOTE=Scarlett67]
Yay! I get to mention Dinosaurs, inwhich EVERYBODY (and I mean everybody) got killed in the last episode (which I unfortunately missed). Asteroid, don’tcha know.
[/QUOTE]
I never saw the last episode either, but I think that they actually froze to death due to a botched Wesayso project helmed by Earl.
[QUOTE=Scarlett67]
Yay! I get to mention Dinosaurs, inwhich EVERYBODY (and I mean everybody) got killed in the last episode (which I unfortunately missed). Asteroid, don’tcha know.
[/QUOTE]
Well, not EVERYBODY. Presumably the humans (and the grapes) survived.
Earth: Final Conflict seemed to like to shake up the cast every season. The only character that was consistantly on the show was a minor villain character, altho the first two protaganists were brought back from death for brief cameos after dying in earlier seasons.
Not just the fourth series. The Blackadder series in general had a habit of killing off most or all of the cast at the end of each series. Look at the second series in particular, with all the dead bodies lying around.
[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
Not just the fourth series. The Blackadder series in general had a habit of killing off most or all of the cast at the end of each series. Look at the second series in particular, with all the dead bodies lying around.
[/QUOTE]
You realize that having my posts ignored no less than three times in the same thread has given me a tremendous inferiority complex.
Sorry about that - I saw the other Blackadder quote, but not yours.
You might try Bolding. Or wearing a hat.
The entire crew of the USS Enterprise dies - repeatedly - in the TNG episode “Cause and Effect”: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Cause_and_Effect
But they get better. 