Interesting how many of these “terrible” finales are actually quite good.
“Battlestar Galactica”? Touching, unexpected, thought-provoking. Not perfect but strong.
“Lost”? The series frustrated me terribly, but I thought the final episode was enjoyable.
“Sopranos”? Excellent. The mystery and significance of those final seconds linger like few other finales.
For bad finales, it’s hard to top “Enterprise.” Nothing like focusing the final episode on characters from another show.
My belief is that they simply didn’t have budget for much more than pushing Apocalypse away, so everything else had to be exposition and Clark, the most powerful man on the planet, being such an emo wuss (which he perfected over the past 10 seasons).
Then why do people keep mentioning Lost?
OH YEAH I SAID IT
I’ve never understood this complaint.
Consider what we what we simply and literally see in the final episode:
When it aired I thought Seinfeld’s finale kind of sucked, but it was actually quite good upon reflection. It brought back a familiar storyline (the series Jerry), had George and Jerry apparently headed for success - but their typical spiteful and mean-spirited behavior throws a wrench in the works. I thought they were a little too mean to the fat guy - it wasn’t their typical behavior to just mock people. They’d just take advantage of a situation.
Bringing Jackie Chiles back was brilliant - funny and underutilized supporting character - and the final scene with them all in the jail and Jerry referencing the sweater that George was wearing was a nod to a scene in the first episode. And even if you hated the finale, there is a mock finale that is the centerpiece of the last series (to date) of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
It’s not exactly that the actual last episode was epically bad, although it was pretty bad. It’s that the whole series was bad, but people kept a small hope they’d somehow pull off something in the end to make it not terrible, and they didn’t.
The whole show revolves around mystery upon mystery, creating these entities and people and situation that you want to know more about, and the creators had told everyone that it would all come together and make sense one day, they knew what they were doing. They knew 2 or 3 seasons out how long the show would last, so they had ample time to come up with a satisfying conclusion. People couldn’t realistically expect the answer to every little detail - the show was so dense with questions - but they at least expected the big ones to be answered.
So the show is winding down, there are a few episodes left - and nothing major is really getting resolved. I mean - stuff is happening, but not in a way that meaningfully resolves any of the mystery. So the only hope left is.. alright… 3 episodes left… they’ll really start resolving stuff now. Okay… 2 episodes left… I’m not sure how they can really come up with an ending in the next 3 hours of tv, but they’ve had 3 years to build toward an ending, and they promised they knew what they were doing, so… oh, shit… just one episode left… it’s going to have be crazy filled with detail to even half-ass try to resolve the series and… wait…uh… wtf was that? Well, ok, I wasted my wednesdays for quite a while.
So it’s not that the episode itself was epically terrible, but that the whole expectation of having some sort of meaning and resolution to the end of the show kept getting pushed back and finally rested on the final episode. It wasn’t until the final episode that we knew for sure that we’d been conned (ironically, since about 700 people had been conned during the run of the show - maybe they were mocking us) and we’d wasted our time hoping that the show was anything other than their attempts to string us along with random bullshit and false hope of resolution. So that resentment isn’t directed at the final episode necesarily - it’s more that it was the last chance to not screw the viewers, and they didn’t even try.
I do not recommend going back and watching the show due to curiosity about that.
Aw man are you serious? I thought the last episode was one of the funniest in the entire run of the series. I was constantly laughing…and hard.
I’m going to agree with Sports Night only because they fell victim to the “didn’t know they were getting cancelled” when the episode aired. I also don’t like it because of how the story lines ended. Again, not their fault but I really wanted to see some things happen differently.
This reminds me of why I’ve never sat down and watched all of the original The Prisoner.
Ron Moore and company wrote themselves into a corner and let God bail them out.
Giving away their nuclear reactors for stone knives and bear skins was idiotic. 
As I said before about the end of BSG;
They’re wandering in pre-historic Africa at the end of the show. Some of them scattered and lagging behind. Where are the Lions and Hyenas taking down the isolated Humans, sending the rest running screaming in terror? How about the poisonous snakes as these Humans just kinda wander around? That ain’t no nature park they’re blindly strolling across, it’s untamed PRE-HUMAN wilderness full of nasty things that want to eat them.
Good Luck With That.
Looking back, that’s exactly how I feel about Harry Potter… hmmm.
Well, there were those austorpethecenes, however you spell it, that Baltar says they could “breed with”.
I mean, who would trust Baltar on anything, let alone who or what you could have sex with?
Whoops. I think it was the episode prior that was the clip show (and one of ten million shows to use that “Good Riddance/Time of Your Life” song that year).
Which goes to show how forgettable the finale was.
Luckily, the fans decided the finale wasn’t good enough. That’s two more seasons to make everything work.
Yes, and that’s precisely the problem. The show was scifi, not fantasy. Executive meddling changed the ending from what the creators wanted, and it sucked. There seems to be a theme of bringing in God or the supernatural to end scifi shows.
It’s a deus ex machina ending, and people don’t like those.
Damn straight.
Absent a divine explanation, what then would be the reason that Sam always ended up somewhere that needed his help?
-Joe
Final episode, he travels back in time to the day he first stepped into the machine and vanished; he swiftly programs in the dates and times where he was needed – possibly as a clip-show, possibly with a montage – and then steps back to watch young Sam set off on the journey old Sam just finished.
Bad writing? An urge to please advertisers?
Nobody mentioned MASH? A huge build up, and then pfffft.
The series went on about one season too long. The POV episode, the episode with the timer - end the series with that level of quality, and it could have been among the best TV ever. Instead, it was just using up characters and recycling the lame hijinks from the first couple of seasons.
We expected more than meh. But that’s what we got.
Meh.
Regards,
Shodan
So you’ve got no possible explanation. Good to know. Looks like the writers went with the only thing that would have worked after the show being on multiple seasons.
Good pick, writers.
-Joe