Same. I have tried to watch a couple of episodes, but knowing how the final seasons played out means that nothing Mulder and Scully did meant anything. They made huge retroactive changes to Mulder’s backstory, and destroyed it.
I was going to post this about the Lost finale here, but decided it’d probably end up hijacking the thread into being an argument about the merits of Lost, so I started a thread about it.
Don’t know how strictly this fits what the OP is asking for, since I might still re-watch any of these shows, but I can’t help sharing this Cracked article on soul-crushing series finales.
I second this, all of it. Though for me it was less the finale itself and more the second half of the final season. Taken as a whole, it just pushes the series off for me. Used to love re-watching the first couple seasons (still have the DVDs). In fact, bought like the season 4 dvd when it came out and haven’t even opened it.
Yes and no… McGoohan didn’t want to use any of the conventional endings. He was emphatic that it wouldn’t be a Blofeld- or Dr. No-style mastermind. He wanted something that every viewer could interpret differently, a kind of kaleidoscope where we all see a little of the world, and maybe a little of ourselves.
But he ran out of time, and had to punt. He just threw it all in the blender and let everyone sort it out for themselves. He didn’t originally set out to do “confusion for its own sake.” He rather painted himself into a corner. A space rocket was as good a way out of that corner as anything else…
Came in here to say BSG.
For a long time I also avoided Lost but I didn’t hate the ending. I just felt that there seemed no point to re-watch since I knew how it ended but recently I started re-watching Season one again and I am enjoying it.
Saving Grace if you saw the final then you know why it ruined the series for me.
For me it was Bablyon 5. I’d seen an episode here and there when it was on air and thought it looked cool but I was watching TV pretty infrequently at that point. I decided to give the series a try when we first got Netflix and I was hooked on the first episode. Remember the alien has the intense psychic vision of the death and destruction of the station? The show was clunky and especially that first season the acting wasn’t great. But I persevered in large part because of the pathos of it. All these great characters. Doomed to die. Well, not all of them, I would think. Who will make it? Finally the last episode rolls around and… the station does not dies in riot and fire and chaos. No. It’s an orderly demolition and (most) everyone lives happily ever after. Fuck you.
Roseanne. I liked the surreal lottery-winning last season; then to find out that the whole series was just the writing of a mad housewife/widow?
I have never watched another episode.
I didn’t like House, Roseanne, HIMYM, Seinfeld, but I still watched those in reruns, just pretending their last sucky seasons didn’t happen.
But Dexter? Dexter pissed me off so much I haven’t been able to watch a rerun since.
I’ll never watch a rerun of How I Met Your Mother, despite being an enormous fan of the show. All of the really cool, skillful storytelling things they did have been soured permanently.
The reaction to Dexter’s finale was such that I quit watching somewhere in Season 5-6. Such is the reality of running a TV show in the age of DVR, on-demand, and social media.
Up until that point, were you under the impression that it was a documentary? I actually liked that twist. The writer was in front of the camera, instead of behind it.
Same here. I heard what the ending was and no way in hell was I going to watch any more.
This is not exactly to the OP’s point, but I find that with any series that has romantic tension between the male and female leads that is eventually resolved by them getting together, I find myself uninterested in watching reruns of the episodes before they get together. Castle and Bones, for instance.
Rik-I would say Moonlighting is the Ur example of that.
Northern Exposure had romantic tension between the male and female leads that is eventually resolved by them getting together, and suffered for it.
Actually, Northern Exposure’s final year was awful, but I can stiil watch the early seasons. (unlike Lost or HIMYM which are ruined for me)
I’ve been able to do that with some shows – I guess shows that didn’t take continuity too seriously.
But not BSG, which did.
Indeed not quite what I was thinking of, but a good and interesting example nonetheless. For me, I always thought the romantic “tension” between Castle and Bones was contrived from the start.
I think people always take the wrong lesson from Moonlighting. It wasn’t the fact of the leads getting together that ruined, it, it was the way it was handled. The four-part episode that ended with them together was bad enough (three hours of David felling sorry for himself, then ending with a slap-slap-kiss-kiss), but what they did once they were together took all the fun out of the show. For all the contrivance of Castle and Beckett, they still actually solve crimes together since they are a couple. What did Maddie and David do, post coupling? Fight. Have separate episodes. Hide Shepherd’s pregnancy.
I had the feeling that Remington Steele actually had the pair together, but didn’t draw attention to it for fear of getting the *Moonlighting *curse. They actually seemed like a couple. I think it was hidden, behind the scenes, like Mulder and Scully.
Man, there really ARE a lot of will-they-or-won’t-they detective shows, aren’t there? Makes me long for Nick and Nora Charles!
Castle and Bones together. Now THAT would be frightening! Two writers. I can picture Booth and Beckett easier. (even so, I can’t see Beckett putting up with Booth’s crap.)