10 Most Bizarre TV Series Finales In History
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 As the writers of Game of Thrones know all too well, it's difficult to write a final
00:05 episode that satisfies everyone, or anybody in the case of that particular finale.
00:09 It's especially difficult in an age of instant reaction on social media and endless fan theorizing.
00:16 This list collects ten of the weirdest endings for much-loved TV series that delighted, flummoxed,
00:21 and horrified viewers.
00:22 I'm Jess from WhatCulture, and here are the ten most bizarre TV series finales in history.
00:28 10.
00:30 Riker and Troy upstaged the crew of the original Enterprise
00:35 Enterprise is often cited as the show that killed the Star Trek franchise.
00:39 Whilst poor ratings led to its cancellation, it's more likely that the burgeoning Abrams
00:44 Trek universe made commissioning new TV series more complicated.
00:48 Whatever the truth, 2005's finale was the last Star Trek episode to air on TV for 12
00:53 years.
00:54 After a strange decision by writers Brannon Braga and Rick Berman, it was received poorly.
01:00 In a well-meaning but ultimately misguided attempt to lovingly bring the franchise full
01:05 circle, they decided to write the finale as a lost episode of Star Trek The Next Generation.
01:10 To help him make an important decision, Will Riker seeks inspiration from a simulation
01:15 of Captain Archer's final mission.
01:17 The episode disappointed fans and irritated members of the cast, including the ship's
01:22 captain.
01:23 "The only time Scott Bakula was mean to me," Braga later told a convention audience.
01:28 It's not hard to see why everyone was frustrated either.
01:32 After spending four years with the crew, we say goodbye to their holographic echoes rather
01:36 than the characters themselves, whilst simultaneously being reminded of a superior Star Trek show.
01:42 9.
01:43 The Little House on the Prairie blows up
01:46 The Little House on the Prairie was a wholesome, all-American family series about the country's
01:51 frontier spirit in the face of adversity.
01:53 The official website talks of the themes of optimism, love, and joy, all of which is at
01:58 odds with the series' final feature-length TV movie, entitled The Last Farewell.
02:04 This finale finds the residents of the tight-knit community of Walnut Grove faced with the grinding
02:08 gears of progress.
02:10 Progress takes the form of a ruthless land-grabber who claims the town is owned by his boss,
02:15 a rich railroad tycoon.
02:17 In protest against this, the townsfolk decide to blow up their own homes with dynamite,
02:22 leaving the rich tycoon with nothing but dirt.
02:25 After the destruction, the frontier folks simply move on to the next town to start all
02:29 over again.
02:30 The story goes that the dynamite plot was purely a practical decision on the part of
02:34 the writer and the producer.
02:36 As part of the agreement producer Kent McRae had in renting the land on which the set was
02:40 built, he had to leave the place as he'd found it.
02:43 The quickest way to do this, he and writer Michael Landon decided, was to just blow up
02:48 the whole town.
02:49 8.
02:50 Zelda and Scully's Miraculous Conception
02:53 The original X-Files series finale in 2002 was a chaotic climax of nine seasons worth
02:59 of conspiracies.
03:00 When the series came back in 2016, there was a hope that fans would get something more
03:05 satisfying.
03:06 The eleventh season was loosely tied together by the search for their son William, who wasn't
03:10 their son at all.
03:11 The season premiere had revealed him to be the son of Scully and the cigarette-smoking
03:15 man, the result of a non-consensual science experiment conducted by the latter.
03:20 William was, technically, Mulder's half-brother.
03:23 The series ends with a blood-soaked finale that asked more questions than it answered.
03:28 In 43 minutes, Skinner kills Reyes, the cigarette-smoking man presumably kills Skinner, cigarette-smoking
03:34 man kills William, believing him to be Mulder, Mulder kills the cigarette-smoking man, Scully
03:39 reveals that she's miraculously pregnant, William is able to survive the shooting due
03:43 to his regenerative abilities, it's a lot to take in.
03:47 This was never intended as the very end of The X-Files, and Carter harbors hopes of a
03:52 twelfth season to build on the events he set up.
03:54 Gillian Anderson has no intention to return, however, so for now, this brutal gunfight
03:59 marks an abrupt ending for decades of mythology.
04:02 Number 7
04:06 The long-running Texan oil and cattle ranching drama Dallas ended in 1991 with a spectacularly
04:12 out-there finale.
04:13 It may have once revealed a whole season to have been a dream, but the final episode went
04:18 several steps further.
04:20 It begins with lead character J.R. Ewing drunken alone, contemplating suicide.
04:24 He's visited by a spirit who shows him just how the world would have been if he'd never
04:28 been born.
04:29 In a direct lift from It's a Wonderful Life, J.R. and his guardian angel watch as his brother
04:34 Bobby becomes a down-and-out, and his brother Gary runs the family business into the ground.
04:40 It soon becomes clear that several people actually benefited from never having met J.R.
04:44 His ex-wife becomes a highly successful actress, whilst a distant relation never learns of
04:49 his connection to J.R. and lives a fulfilling family life.
04:53 After these revelations, the guardian angel reveals himself to be a demon, and demands
04:57 that J.R. kill himself to improve everyone's lives.
05:01 Staring at this demon in the mirror, J.R. raises the gun to his head and we hear a gunshot
05:05 ring out, his fate unknown.
05:07 In a bizarre coincidence, a month later, David Lynch's subversive soap Twin Peaks also ended
05:13 with the protagonist doing himself considerable harm in front of a mirror.
05:17 6.
05:18 Beckett and Castle Die?
05:20 Castle was always a bit of a tonal mishmash.
05:23 It was a frothy romantic comedy about a roguish crime writer and a steely detective that also
05:28 featured grisly murders.
05:30 It was basically moonlighting for the CSI generation.
05:33 Once the series eventually paired Castle and Beckett, played by Nathan Fillon and Stan
05:37 Akadik, respectively, they had to find dramatic ways to challenge the relationship.
05:42 Rather than infidelity or divorce, there were new careers, kidnappings, amnesia, and, in
05:47 the final episode, a double shooting that left them both bleeding out on the floor of
05:51 their apartment.
05:52 This ending was originally intended as a cliffhanger that would have led into the ninth season.
05:57 When the production team discovered that there would be no next season, they were granted
06:00 permission to hastily insert an epilogue.
06:03 Taking place seven years later, Castle and Beckett are seen to be enjoying breakfast
06:07 with their three children, having apparently survived the shooting.
06:10 Some fans reacted with frustration at the insulting "happily ever after" climax,
06:14 whilst others pondered whether or not the ending was an idealized future dreamt up by
06:19 two dying lovers.
06:20 5.
06:21 Kenneth the Page is Immortal
06:24 In the hands of any other writers than Robert Carlock and Tina Fey, the final scene of 30
06:29 Rock's last episode would have been an indulgence too far.
06:33 Far from being a disaster, it's a meta-gag that stays true to the show's absurdist
06:37 streak.
06:38 The final episode is fairly standard sitcom fare, or as standard as a show like 30 Rock
06:42 can manage.
06:43 Liz Lemon becomes a mother to two adopted kids, Jack Donaghy finds himself again, and
06:48 production on TGS comes to an end.
06:50 It's in the final coda to the episode that things get wonderfully weird.
06:54 The new head of the network, Kenneth Parcell, is listening to a sitcom pitch from Ms. Lemon,
06:59 based on the stories of her great-grandmother.
07:01 Giving the audience a knowing look, Kenneth commissions the show, and the camera zooms
07:05 out to reveal flying cars in the background.
07:07 We're far in the future and he hasn't aged a day.
07:10 It's a very silly joke, but a brilliant payoff to one of 30 Rock's most enduring
07:15 gags.
07:16 That is, what's going on with Kenneth?
07:17 Well, he's an immortal.
07:19 And a mortal who loves television.
07:20 4.
07:21 St. Elsewhere took place inside a child's mind
07:26 The 1980s hospital drama St. Elsewhere is best known for two things; launching the career
07:31 of Denzel Washington and unwittingly creating a sprawling fictional universe.
07:36 Knowing that the show was to be cancelled, St. Elsewhere's writing team pitched increasingly
07:40 ridiculous ways to end the series with a bang.
07:43 Possible endings included a nuclear bomb wiping out the hospital, whilst another had one character
07:47 admit to assassinating JFK.
07:50 The least bad option was that the St. Elsewhere hospital was actually inside a child's snow
07:55 globe.
07:56 The characters and situations weren't real at all; they'd been thought up by young
07:59 Thomas Westball.
08:00 It's a daft ending, a hail Mary by a departing writing team.
08:04 However, it had extraordinary, unintended implications for the rest of network television.
08:10 The show had alluded to several different shows whilst it was on the air.
08:13 If St. Elsewhere was invented by Thomas, then surely so were those other series.
08:17 It's a mind-bending concept that, in essence, means that series as diverse as Cheers, The
08:22 X-Files, The Wire, and Arrested Development all share the same fictional universe.
08:27 When you look deeper into the Tommyverse, it makes the MCU look like Amateur Hour.
08:32 3.
08:33 The Dinosaurs Face the Ice Age
08:35 Dinosaurs, a Jim Henson production for the ABC network, was a popular family sitcom in
08:41 the early 1990s.
08:42 It's best described as a reverse Flintstones, with intelligent dinosaurs living domestic
08:47 lives alongside simpleton cavemen.
08:50 It ran for four seasons and playfully turned various sitcom conventions on their head by
08:54 having them performed by a cast of dinosaur puppets.
08:58 It's therefore a shock when the final episode of the show goes down an incredibly dark route.
09:03 It begins normally enough with Earl, the father, trying to work the new barbecue, and ends
09:08 with the family facing down their inevitable extinction.
09:11 In a convoluted series of events, the local corporation and an unwitting Earl have inadvertently
09:17 brought about an ice age with toxic pesticides and deforestation.
09:22 The show's writers wanted to use the finale to educate the younger audience about humanity's
09:27 own potential extinction event.
09:29 Having been informed of the cancellation before writing the final series, creator Michael
09:32 Jacobs felt that this was the only way to go.
09:35 When you do a show about dinosaurs, he said, you always have that extinction card in your
09:39 pocket.
09:40 2.
09:41 Life on Mars Goes to Mars
09:44 On paper, an American remake of the BBC's Life on Mars had legs.
09:48 By transporting modern cop Sam Tyler back in time, the show explored the tropes and
09:52 problematic aspects of both 1970s television and policing in the UK.
09:57 A remake could do something similar with American attitudes to both policing and cop shows.
10:03 After all, there are marked differences between the grimness of the Sweeney and the hip coolness
10:07 of Starsky and Hutch.
10:08 Despite featuring some impressive performances, the remake never took off and was cancelled
10:13 after one season.
10:15 In ending the series, the American writing team made a wild departure from creator Matthew
10:19 Graham's original vision.
10:21 Rather than reveal that Sam had been in a coma, they opted for something much more literal.
10:25 The closing scenes of the series find Sam waking from hypersleep on the first manned
10:30 mission to Mars.
10:31 The 1973 cop show he's been inhabiting has been a simulation created by the ship's
10:36 computer to keep him entertained on his long journey.
10:39 His fellow cops were all members of the crew, including Gene Hunt, who's revealed to be
10:43 Sam's estranged father.
10:44 Now that's far out!
10:46 1.
10:47 How I Met Your Mother Kills The Mother
10:49 Yes, you saw this one coming, How I Met Your Mother's finale is notoriously controversial
10:55 and regularly features in lists of the very worst season finales.
11:00 After spending nine seasons and nearly a decade building up to Ted Mosby meeting his future
11:04 wife Tracy, the season finale gives viewers exactly what they want.
11:08 Then it does something crazy.
11:10 It kills her.
11:11 The show's final episode jumps through 10 years of the characters' lives to reveal
11:15 that Tracy died of an undisclosed illness after four years.
11:19 To make matters worse, it's also revealed that the series' framing device, Ted's
11:24 story to his teenage kids, hasn't been about the mother at all.
11:27 It was all a means to seek their permission for him to get back together with his ex-girlfriend,
11:30 Robin.
11:31 The kids give their blessing and he runs off to be reunited with her.
11:35 Creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas had conceived this finale during production on
11:39 the second series.
11:40 Eight years of speculation and emotional investment later, it just feels gross as we're told
11:45 rather than shown that Ted has grieved Tracy's abrupt death for six years and the closing
11:50 scene of him arriving at the doorstep of "the one who got away" isn't the big romantic
11:55 ending the show thinks that it is.
11:56 That's the end of our list, but do let me know down in the comments if you can think
12:00 of any more bizarre TV series finales that deserve a spot on this list.
12:05 As always, I'm Jess from WhatCulture, thanks so much for hanging out with me.
12:09 If you'd like, you can come say hi to me on my Twitter account @JessMcDonald, but make
12:13 sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more great lists.
12:16 [BLANK_AUDIO]