What are some TV shows (lasting more than one season) that you loved while they were on, but can’t rewatch at all now because the final episode or episodes were just very bad, and ruined the show for you?
For me, the obvious choice is the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. I collected the DVDs as they were released, confident I would want to rewatch the show, probably more than once. I did rewatch early seasons while the show has on hiatus, and enjoyed them
But since the show ended, I have not rewatched any of it because knowing what it all leads to has ruined the rest of it for me. All of that religious glurge? All of those religious wackos? Oh, yeah – it and they were exactly right all along. Fuck that.
I’m not inherently anti-religious, but Battlestar Galactica was a show where 1) religion vs. reason were pitted against each other in an interesting way for quite some time, without anything swing one way or the other at least until the end, and this intriguing balance was utterly betrayed in unbelievable ways in the final episodes, and 2) its religious glurge makes no fucking sense at all in the first place. Not to mention, 3) Hi, Opal.
Kind of an obvious choice, I know. What are others?
I loved Lost when it was first running - the acting was excellent, I loved the characters, their backstories, their dilemmas. The ending ruined it for me. won’t ever watch an episode again.
I think the same will be true for “How I Met Your Mother”. A rerun was on the other night & I just couldn’t watch it after hating the ending episode so much.
I was never a big fan of that show, but the ending made NO sense! After all these years, building up to the woman he fell in love with and married… the wife/mother in the title turns out to be a throwaway character! And if that wasn’t bad enough, the kids of this mother don’t seem to care a whit about her either- even THEY exist only to tell their Dad to pursue somebody else!
The Prisoner. The original Patrick McGoohan series, not the ridiculous Jim Caviezel series of the same name. I won’t say I can’t rewatch it (there are a few episodes that I still like very much), but after all the curiosity and guesses about who was behind it all, the surrealist/allegorical finale was a big disappointment. I can only accept it if I assume that Number Six’s mind finally snapped at the end and he hallucinated the whole episode.
I hated “Endgame,” the two-part finale of ST: Voyager. Janeway is gonna undo thirty-odd years of history for the sake of crew members who died ages ago? Or for Tuvak, who is dying of perfectly natural causes? (Ain’t nobody gonna live forever!) Completely out of character! Why not just go all the way back to the beginning and stop them from ending up in the Delta Quadrant altogether?
Then again, logic never was Voyager’s strong suit. They changed timelines the way other people change their mobile providers.
That’s how the late 1980s graphic novel “Sequel” to the Prisoner “Shattered Vistage” handles the final episode: “The trade paperback included a two-page text piece that explained the surreal final episode, “Fall Out” as drug-enhanced psychodrama designed to break Number Six.” and “According to the text piece, the Village was liberated by UN troops shortly after the finale. This suggests the gun battle and helicopter evacuation seen in Fall Out were the skewed perceptions of a drugged Number Six as rescue finally came. The episode Many Happy Returns provided Number Six’s superiors with enough information to eventually locate the Village.”
So now you can go back to enjoying the other 16 Prisoner episodes (well, most of them, I never liked the wild west episode “Living In Harmony” myself)
To be clear, I’d like to distinguish between shows that have final episodes you hate, but still watch reruns of (Seinfeld might fall into this category for many people, or MASH*.) I’m looking for people’s reactions to the show’s finale being such that they can no longer enjoy the episodes in syndication (or watching on DVD or Netflix or whatever).
Yes, I did read that when the TPB came out, and I decided that explanation worked for me.
I didn’t mind “Living in Harmony,” although when I first saw it, for the first ten minutes or so I thought that someone got the tapes mixed up and they were showing a Western movie by mistake.
“Hammer Into Anvil” has always been my favorite, but other than the finale, “Dance of the Dead” is the one I find most unwatchable, because it seemed to ramble without going anywhere.
Seconding two Treks, ENT and VOY. Although I can still watch individual eps, like Year of Hell, Distant Origin, Cogenitor, A Night In Sick Bay, etc… I just can’t find myself Netflixing the series anytime soon.
X-files, mostly. I own several season DVDs but haven’t made a big effort to watch them. The ending retroactively took away any point to them.
Bones, and it hasn’t even ended! The assassination of Zack’s character, the fact that Booth is just a big bully thug, and the show’s apparent acceptance of Brennan’s murdering father, ended any further interest I have for even season 1 episodes, knowing what is going to happen. The fact that the show continues to be successful is a source of never ending pain.
Burn Notice is almost there, but I have been so far successful at blanking the last two seasons from my consciousness, and can still enjoy the early years.
Heh, I loved that episode, because they even changed the standard TV show intro for it … when I saw it, I seriously wondered if I was watching the right program. Very meta, for the 1960s.
Agreed that the ending episode made no sense, and was a let-down from an otherwise truly outstanding series. My take is that, like some similar shows, they had simply written themselves into a corner, and any neat wrap-up they gave would spoil the ambiguities present throughout the show.
When it was on, never missed it. but since the final episode… have started watching a few times, but just can’t get into it. Prior to the final episode, I watched reruns. But since… just have no interest.
Not even sure why. I did not even reallly think the FE was that bad… not great, but not bad.
Other Series, that I liked, I will still watch … but not House… hhmmmm I wonder why.??
My b.i.l. takes that view; he felt so betrayed by the final episode, he won’t ever watch any of it again.
I still adore it, even the finale. It’s absurd and surreal and dada and goofy and it doesn’t really matter. McGoohan didn’t know how to wrap it all up, so he punted. But, what a punt! Rockets and Carmen Miranda and machine guns (how far can you get from the pacifism of Danger Man! John Drake wouldn’t use a gun…but Number Six mows people down on auto!)
(Not formally claiming Number Six was John Drake…but Number Six also had some hints of pacifism. Some of us think that may be why he resigned…)
Wonderful show…but, yeah, the finale was certainly a muck-up. So badly planned, that Kenneth Griffith, as President of the Assembly, was sitting around the set writing his own lines! (And…he gets just about the best speech in that episode!)
Wasn’t the end of The Prisoner written to deliberately fuck with people 's heads? I don’t know if it was this or some other show where after receiving complaints that the show was confusing, the writer decided to show them what confusing really was.
Very meta, for the 1960s.