I think even 40 years later, “The Prisoner” is still a contender. Most LSD trips have more internal consistency and logic than that final episode.
Well, considering it doesn’t have a proper finale, I’m not sure why you think this. The show itself was going downhill quite fast, but the final episode is excellent, I think.
That movie, though? Not good.
I don’t “hate” it, but it was disappointing and forgettable. It was largely (as I recall) a clip show and the original content wasn’t very funny. It also made some heavy-handed last minute attempts to inject a phrase or two into the public conscious about cell phones which fell flat compared to the more organic “Not that there’s anything wrong with that” or “Master of my domain” or other phrases that actually took off.
After Lost, the finale to Deadwood.
To clarify for the one person who hasn’t seen it, I don’t think they actually brought out any clips, they just brought in some old characters to talk about how horrible everyone was.
-Joe
I liked the concept of the last Seinfeld episode, but the execution was kind of meh. And the final scene of the characters locked up bickering at eachother was a pretty good coda to the series, IMHO, so I have trouble grouping it with real trainwrecks like Lost.
I remember hating the Friends finale, but honestly I don’t remember why. Didn’t they try and shove Ross and Rachel back together at the last minute, after spending the last couple seasons making it clear that they were a terrible couple.
Anyone want to (briefly) spoil the x-files finale for me? I gave up on the series a season or two before the ending.
I would cut some slack for series that were canceled before they could set up a proper finale. Pushing Daisies falls into this category for me (as well as Deadwood) - unsatisfying ending but they didn’t have much choice. Lost they had plenty of time to get right, and still fucked it up.
Let me refresh your memory. Yes, we just had to have one last “dramatic” reunion between Ross and Rachel. Holy crap did I come to hate them (as a couple; the individual characters were still ok). Then the whole Monica and Chandler’s twins thing. The whole episode was devoid of humor. I know the idea was to wrap everyone’s lives up in happy little packages but I didn’t watch the damn show for nine (or whatever) years for some maudlin, predicatable pap. You’d think someone could have at least come up with a funny one liner from Chandler.
:dubious:
Puns like that get fingers broken.*
*Unless I am the one making them
Save yourself! It’s too late for the rest of us.
Well, that’s true; I should call it an “unsatisfying end” instead of a bad finale. I just hate it when good shows end on a cliffhanger.
See also: Crime Story
I have to agree with this (even though I posited Farscape, but only because it could have been a good finale rather than a letdown).
Married with Children, Deadwood, Pushing Daisies, Soap and a few others didn’t really ‘end’. They just disappeared. Married with Children, which is still my all-time favorite sitcom, didn’t even have an ending, in that the season finale wasn’t a cliffhanger or anything other than just another episode (if memory serves me right). It especially can’t qualify as the worst.
The Sopranos was not a bad ending, and far from the worst. I understand that an individual may not have liked it, but it doesn’t even come close, let alone
How about Quantum Leap?
[spoiler] San doesn’t get to go home? 5 seasons and all he wanted to do was go home! All those people he helped and he doesn’t get to go home?!? :mad:
[/spoiler]
Lost was hugely disappointing, yes, but the one that will forever scar me is…
Robin of Sherwood. Yes, the BBC one from the 80s. It was a great show, I adored it, and the ending was just SO awful that I can’t even watch the last season anymore. It would have been better off if they’d just let the series end when the first Robin died, just to avoid the ending of the third season. Just… horrible. Not poorly put together, either. Just a total “unhappy ending” that destroyed everything they’d built up the whole arc of the season. ARGH. Now I’m angry again - I can clearly hold a grudge a loooong time.
Nope. Selfless guy is given a choice to go home and live out the rest of his life doing whatever, or continuing to bop through history fixing bad things that are happening to good people.
The hero chose to do the heroic thing instead of the selfish thing. That’s a bad ending?
-Joe
My understanding was that Sam could have gone home, but the better decision all around was choosing not to. He willingly made that sacrifice for Al.
I like the QL finale. It fit perfectly with Sam’s character that, upon learning that he had the power to go home but the choice to continue putting right what had once gone wrong, he could feel obliged to keep at it, and that he’d eventually die from it.
Al articulates the reason in one episode – I think it was the Trilogy. Sam kept getting put upon not because he deserved suffering, but simply because it was a hero; he couldn’t not help. That’s why he was chosen to leap in the first place.
And then he abandons his wife and daughter…or do they not exist anymore?
Sorry, still a bad one for me. Also, how does he continue to leap without Al? Does he now magically know what to fix?
I never saw Leap in its first run and am sure I’ve missed half the episodes; I didn’t know about the wife & child.
That said…I can understand Sam thinking it was too soon to stop leaping, that he still had good he could do, and simply miscalculating.
Wasn’t it implicit that God, ultimately, was behind Sam’s leaps? That he had been chosen as God’s agent? It was pretty clear to me in the death row episode that he believed that to be the case.
I read one of the novelizations which explained why Al tells Sam so little of his history-every time Sam has changed history it created ripples that have modern-day consequences that only Al can remember(due to his tie with Sam). Sam has been married to many different women, been single all his life, had many children, had one child, had no children, the Quantum Leap staff has changed so many times that it gives Al headaches, the number of wives Al has had(and who they were) has been changed just as many times etc.