Talk about bookending a story.
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00:00 The long-running nature of some TV shows means that earlier and latter seasons become completely
00:05 different beasts. Some characters are elevated from recurring status to being essentially co-leads,
00:10 whereas original leads become bit players or leave the show altogether. That said,
00:15 what about characters who leave the show after the pilot has aired and return for the series finale?
00:20 I'm Sy, this is WhatCulture.com and these are 10 TV characters who only appear in the first
00:25 and last episode. Number 10 - John, Parks and Recreation. The early 21st century saw the rise
00:33 of documentary style comedies with tongue-in-cheek tones and while some achieved relative success,
00:38 almost none, aside from The Office, achieved the notoriety that Parks and Recreation did across
00:44 its seven season run. Its main casts were definitely the big draw but its cameos had
00:49 their own appeal as well, ranging from Joe Biden to John Cena and even Genuine. One cameo however
00:56 served a unique narrative purpose despite not being as prominent as the aforementioned. During
01:01 the core cast's farewell in the finale, a man walks into the park's department office and asks
01:06 if a broken swing in the park would be fixed. In addition to giving Leslie one last act as deputy
01:11 director, the man, played by John Daly, was featured in the pilot as an inebriated drunk
01:16 who Leslie tried to get out of the park's slide. Daly's character evolution from a humorous slob
01:21 to a concerned citizen was a heartwarming display of how much Pawnee and its people had grown
01:26 since the show's beginning. Number 9 - Delivery Man, Frasier. The Cheers spin-off enjoyed as
01:33 much praise and notoriety as its predecessor and gave Kelsey Grammer's Fraser Crane a chance to
01:39 start over in his hometown of Seattle as a radio show host alongside being caretaker to his father
01:45 after he left Boston following the end of his marriage to Lilith. His eponymous radio show
01:49 served as an interesting narrative device that helped differentiate the show from Cheers and
01:54 gave it a different style of comedy due to Crane's high society minded, also known as
01:59 stuffy sensibilities, having more time to shine. This mindset often clashed with his father Martin's
02:05 working class sensibilities in multiple episodes and one could argue that their initial
02:10 misunderstandings were embodied by Martin's rather off-putting Eames chair, a source of comedic jabs
02:17 throughout the show's run. That said, the chair is tied to a minor role most fans missed until
02:22 years after Frasier ran its course. The delivery man who brought the chair in is the same person
02:27 who picks up the chair in the finale. Played by the late Cleo Augusto, his appearances demonstrate
02:33 how much Martin and Frasier's relationship has changed over the years for the better.
02:39 8. Josh Wilson - Weeds The mid-2000s Showtime
02:43 dramedy may have gone out with a whimper, but for a time in its first few seasons,
02:48 Weeds was a compelling, sometimes uneven and darkly humorous exploration of Nazi
02:53 Botwin's venture into selling marijuana to support her family after her husband's untimely demise.
02:59 A large number of characters came and went across its run and while some characters had completed
03:04 arcs by the time they left the show, others were not afforded this luxury. This is the case with
03:09 Justin Chatwin's Josh Wilson, son of Nealon's dimwitted Doug Wilson. The eldest Wilson child
03:14 was introduced in the pilot as a pot dealer and once Nancy discovered that he sold the drug to
03:19 children, she threatened to out his sexuality to his father. After the pilot, the character was not
03:24 seen to the series finale where it was revealed that he eventually became a lawyer and married
03:28 a painter named Alan. Once Weeds was picked up for a full season, it was revealed that some
03:33 contracts were not renewed and this included Chatwin's, explaining his disappearance from the
03:38 rest of the show. Number 7 - Yuri Nakajima - The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
03:44 The Falcon and the Winter Soldier didn't quite live up to its lofty expectations but still
03:49 delivered a mostly interesting exploration of America's deeply flawed socio-political structure
03:54 and the dynamic between the titular duo is both fun to watch and emotionally satisfying. Sam and
04:00 Bucky each got detailed arcs throughout the six episode run and as much as Sam's had more focus,
04:05 Bucky's was impactful in a more personal fashion. The former HYDRA assassin had intentions to make
04:10 amends for his past crimes throughout the season and although his approach lacked grace in most of
04:15 his interactions, his friendship with Yuri Nakajima was a nice bit of humanising for the
04:20 super soldier. Unfortunately, it's revealed that the friendship was born out of Bucky's desire to
04:25 atone for his role in killing Yuri's son RJ. As seen in the pilot, this loss hardened Yuri and
04:31 his friendship with Bucky was one of the few things the elder held in any regard. In the show's final
04:36 episode, Bucky came clean to Yuri and whilst this meant that Bucky had completed this part of his
04:41 atonement journey, the revelation visibly hurt Yuri. His role in the show may have been minor
04:46 but it showed Bucky and the audience the fallout of his past actions, as involuntary as they may
04:52 have been. Number 6 - Tom Hanks... sort of... Veep. HBO's satirical comedy was a roaring success and
05:00 helped solidify Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a comedic icon for those who may not have experienced or
05:05 grown up with Seinfeld during its run. Her role as Vice President Selina Meyer saw the VP being
05:11 pitted against the off-screen President Hughes as her attempts to gain political influence,
05:15 and the hurdles facing this, became more and more amusing. The show itself was hilarious and
05:20 incisive with its political commentary and managed to keep its high quality throughout its run with
05:25 intriguing storylines, great character work and guest appearances. One such appearance,
05:30 in a figurative sense of the word, was beloved actor Tom Hanks, whose potential death was
05:35 discussed in the pilot as an event that would detract from VP Meyer's very public use of an
05:40 offensive word. It seemed like a throwaway joke but actually pays off in the series finale. Here
05:46 in a 24 year flash forward, Hanks is revealed to have died and his passing overshadows Selina's
05:52 own. It served as a perfectly hilarious summary of Selina's character, a person whose wins were
05:58 often short-lived or overshadowed by other notable events.
06:01 Number 5 - The Cloud Nine Baby - Superstore
06:06 NBC's recently concluded sitcom experienced some growing pains early in its run, but was able to
06:12 eventually fine-tune its storyline and ensemble to deliver a wholesome and heartwarming peek into
06:17 the lives of the Cloud Nine employees and their lives outside of the chain store. Some may have
06:22 balked at its 'your workmates are your family members' approach in several instances, but the
06:26 show was savvy enough to have a lot more on its mind rather than banal HR proclamations. It was
06:32 able to be critical of the challenges and inequities in the workplace and still foster genuine
06:37 relationships between its characters. Its series finale luckily stuck the landing by adhering to
06:42 what was so endearing in the first place, while being topical at the same time. In addition to
06:47 this, its callbacks to earlier seasons and episodes were pleasant in their retrospective approach.
06:51 One such callback is Amy's encounter of an unsupervised child sitting on a potty in one
06:56 of the store's aisles. It turns out that this is the same child, and in a similar outfit from the
07:01 pilot, only much older. It's an amusing moment that serves as a nostalgic source of comfort
07:06 or nightmare fuel for actual retail workers before the cast eventually moved on to other phases in
07:12 their lives. Number 4 - Anatoly Sitnikov - Chernobyl
07:17 Although a good number of artistic licenses were taken in the Chernobyl miniseries,
07:21 its depiction of the horror and desperation following the worst nuclear disaster in history
07:25 made for both compelling and harrowing viewing upon its release in 2019. It wisely took a
07:31 restrained approach to said depiction in a way that didn't paint caricatures of the people involved,
07:36 but also ensured that the terrifying scale of the disaster was understood by viewers who may
07:40 have only had a cursory understanding of what happened in 1986. This was seen in the treatment
07:46 of main characters such as, and I'm going to butcher these, Valery Legasov and Vasily Ignatenko,
07:51 as well as minor ones. One such individual was Anatoly Sitnikov, the power plant's deputy chief
07:57 operational engineer, who took note of the immediate scale of the devastation following
08:01 the plant's meltdown. Unfortunately, he was ignored by his superiors at first, until it
08:05 became clear that Anatoly Dyatlov, the station's chief engineer, was ill following extensive
08:11 radiation exposure. Against his will, Sitnikov inspected the fallout of the exploded reactor
08:16 and was bombarded by a lethal dose of radiation. He was later seen in a flashback in the last
08:21 episode that detailed everyday life in Pripyat before the accident that would change his life,
08:26 alongside many others, for the worse.
08:28 Number 3 - Nancy Ryan - When They See Us
08:32 Released in 2019, When They See Us received near unanimous praise from viewers and critics alike
08:38 for its uncompromising depiction of the injustices the Central Park Five endured after being falsely
08:44 prosecuted and imprisoned for the 1989 assault of jogger Trisha Melly. The case, and consequently
08:50 the show, is a seminal example of the devastating impact racial and class criminal profiling has
08:56 on people of colour and/or working class individuals. One character that both bookended
09:01 the crime drama and signalled the shift towards achieving the Five's freedom was the assistant
09:05 district attorney Nancy Ryan. Played by Famke Janssen, the assistant DA was initially assigned
09:11 to the case when it was believed that Melly would die from her injuries. Once this was determined
09:15 to not be so, the case was assigned to now controversial prosecutor Linda Fairstein.
09:20 Years later, in 2002, Ryan and New York DA Robert Morgenthau began the process that would see the
09:26 Five exonerated after sufficient evidence was provided to prove their innocence. Ryan's part
09:31 in the miniseries is understandably not its focal point, but Janssen acquitted herself well as one
09:36 of the driving forces that gave the Five their freedom back. Number 2 - Freddie Hammett,
09:42 the night manager. The 2016 adaptation of John Le Carr's first post-Cold War novel honoured the
09:47 source material by respecting its espionage roots while adding its own spin on the narrative. This
09:52 led to a well-told six-episode saga and one of the best adaptations of Le Carr's work in any medium.
09:59 Tom Hiddleston's Jonathan Pine may be the series lead, but he wasn't forced to carry the show as
10:04 he was more than capably aided by the likes of David Harewood and a rarely better Hugh Laurie
10:08 as series antagonist Richard Roper. The simmering conflict between Pine and Roper is driven by the
10:14 involvement of the volatile hotel owner Freddie Hammett and his partner Sophie Alican. Sophie
10:20 immediately sees Jonathan as an ally in her mission to bring down Hammett by exposing his
10:25 dealings with criminals such as Roper. Unfortunately, this was her undoing as Hammett found
10:30 out about their budding relationship and assaulted Sophie before having her killed. Her death sees
10:35 Pine's further involvement with bringing down Roper and in the final episode the hotelier/former
10:41 spy enacts his vengeance by killing Hammett once he learns the reason behind Sophie's death.
10:46 And Number 1 - Vera Keller, The Pacific. Although not quite as gripping as Band of Brothers and
10:53 admittedly that's a high bar to clear, The Pacific still delivered the requisite heart,
10:58 wartime thrills and introspective storytelling one would expect in an HBO prestige drama backed by
11:04 the likes of Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. As its title suggests, the miniseries focused on
11:09 the United States Marine Corps' actions in the Pacific War, i.e. the section of World War II
11:14 that was largely fought on territories surrounding the Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean to a limited
11:20 degree. Despite this wide narrative scope, the show was still able to focus on a core cast of
11:24 characters, one of them being Private Robert Leckie as played by James Badge Dale. One of
11:30 his most defining traits was his relationship with his childhood friend/first love Vera Keller.
11:35 Despite her mother's warnings, Vera grew closer to the rebellious Leckie until his eventual draft
11:40 into the war following the Pearl Harbor tragedy. Despite her limited appearances, Vera's romance
11:45 with Robert was one of the series' stronger emotional components and symbolised what every
11:49 soldier had gone overseas to protect.
11:52 (upbeat music)