The Conservative Cave
The Bar => The Lounge => Topic started by: bijou on April 02, 2009, 01:47:18 PM
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Bye bye "E.R."
The long-running hospital drama bids adieu tonight with a big lovefest involving all of the old castmembers.
Could be good, could be bad. Probably the latter.
... And then, there are finales like these ten, which did everything wrong.
St. Elsewhere. Aired: May 25, 1988 ("The Last One"). For some, this series ender is a brilliant masterstroke. For most, it tells fans their enjoyment of the series was a big waste of time. Nobody really believes show characters and places are real, but writers intimating that the doctors of St. Eligius were mere figments in an autistic boy's mind was the unkindest cut of all. A series should provide closure, but this overdid it. That said, fans with a little too much free time have speculated about other shows which included "St. Elsewhere" characters � like "Homicide: Life on the Street," which itself crossed into "Law & Order" and even "X-Files" with shared characters. Are all of those places also stuck inside that boy's mind � and snowglobe, too?
Felicity. Aired: May 22, 2002 ("Back to the Future"). "Lost" and "Fringe" fans, beware: Creator J.J. Abrams is brilliant at premises and story arcs � then loses it with finales. "Felicity," a show about growing up in college, friendship and first real loves should have been a no-brainer to end; instead, over the final few episodes the titular character went back in time six months to fix her mistakes. Worse: Not every character's fate got resolved with this deus ex time machina, and viewers were left shaking their heads. Memo to scriptwriters: If you have to step into your own story and rewrite history, it's time to hand in those WGA cards.
Roseanne. Aired: May 20, 1997 ("Into that Good Night: Parts 1 & 2"). "Roseanne" was steeped in the harsh realities of living a lower-middle-class life (though with more zingers), which was one of its great appeals. Then it took a wrong left turn at Albuquerque in its last season when the family won the lottery shortly after Dan miraculously recovered from a heart attack. But the two-part series ender explained it all: That whole season was a dream, you silly viewers � because the reality was so much harsher: No lottery, no recovery for Dan. And Jackie's a lesbian! Yes, all along Rosie was writing a book, then slid into a dream fantasy in season nine, then snapped everyone back to the "real world" in the closing moments. Who knew all along Roseanne Conner wasn't an overweight hausfrau � she was actually God? The X-Files. Aired: May 19, 2002 ("The Truth, Parts 1 & 2"). If your series relies on conspiracies and characters with names like Cigarette Smoking Man, the series finale requires some form of revelations. Instead, the bright bulbs behind the scenes realized they could milk the concept longer with another feature film (the first came out in 1998) � though it took until 2008 to see "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" realized. That led to a draggy finale in which Agent Mulder was stuck in front of a military tribunal, and few to no secrets were revealed. But that satisfied sigh you heard after it was over? David Duchovny, escaping from the role he'd been trying to leave for two years.
link (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,512182,00.html)
Out of the ones featured these are the endings I found most disappointing.
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Hmm, would like to see what the 10 best series endings are.
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Hmm, would like to see what the 10 best series endings are.
Off hand I can't think of one. By the end of a series either it has gone on too long or the writers have usually gone barking mad and come up with a bizarre ending.
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The X-Files for me was the biggest disappointment. I felt like I had wasted nine long years on that stupid show. I was happy to see Mulder and Scully together in the final movie, but I mostly didn't care anymore.
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I remember that Roseanne crap-a-thon. It was the worst. I'm surprised any of the last season was released into syndication. It was an embarrassment for all involved.
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Hmm, would like to see what the 10 best series endings are.
Babylon 5
The Prisoner
Star Trek:TNG
BSG:The Second Series
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The Fugitive
Dallas
M*A*S*H*
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Newhart
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I'm not sure what the seinfeld ending is doing on that list . . . . I for one was THRILLED that that shitty show was over! It should be on the top ten thank GOD that show's over list - right after Friends.
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Newhart
You calling that a best or worst? Depending upon how you like Bob Newhart, it could be either one.
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You calling that a best or worst? Depending upon how you like Bob Newhart, it could be either one.
The best ending. Easily.
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M*A*S*H
No question about it.
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......
For two whole minutes, they saw Tim Conway and Bonnie Boland (one of the "regular cast") mugging the camera and making bizarre faces while above their heads the giant word SEX kept flashing.
They saw an endless string of outrageous sights, but what a 1960's audience found most disturbing was the way this humor was presented. Each bit was backed by strange unfamiliar, futuristic, threatening music. The audience was bombarded with a barrage of words, sounds, images, animations and tasteless jokes. It all made many Americans wonder just what pharmaceuticals sponsor Bristol-Myers was feeding to the show's writers.
Many of those 17 million viewers did far more than simply turn-off Turn-On. Before the show had even ended they began phoning their local stations as well as ABC; they wrote letters to their local station; they wrote to their local paper and local governments; they wrote to the network, to Bristol-Myers and even to the Federal Communications Commission.
Halfway through the show, ABC's Philadelphia affiliate WFIL, pulled the plug on their switchboards because they couldn't handle the number of angry calls. Stations in Baltimore, Little Rock, and many other cities canceled the program even before the credits had stopped rolling.
Thursday morning, Turn-On was the talk of the nation. Every news station, every newspaper, it seemed every person had something to say about the show. ABC found that they had indeed created a national sensation, but it wasn't the pleasant sort of notoriety that provides free publicity and then goes away. This was an all out ground swell of anger that went from coast to coast. It's easy to imagine the executives at Bristol-Myers chugging down gallons of that pretty pink Pepto-Bismol. They severed all ties to the show before noon. By late afternoon NBC, who obviously couldn't resist kicking another network when they were down, issued a press release that stated they would never have broadcast anything in such bad taste as Turn-On. They also stated, "The pilot we saw and rejected was an Academy Award winner alongside the thing ABC put on the air."
Within days, seventy-five ABC affiliates told the network that they refused to air Turn-On ever again. ....
The best debut and finale happened with the one and only airing of Turn-On in 1969. I remember it. I was 14.
http://www.tv.pop-cult.com/turn-on.html
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The Sopranos series finale really pissed me off!
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While not an ending - the whole Bobby Ewing in the shower on Dallas pissed me off.
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Newhart
:cheersmate:
THAT was a good ending.
The ending of Northern Exposure was OK but had some WTF? moments.
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The Sopranos series finale really pissed me off!
+1 Dumbest ending of all time....oooooh...black out, quick! reach for the remote...the jokes on the viewers.....Only managed to piss people off.
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The best debut and finale happened with the one and only airing of Turn-On in 1969. I remember it. I was 14.
http://www.tv.pop-cult.com/turn-on.html
Wow! I was a month away from being 4 then, I'm sorry I missed it. Dang DVR lacking a flux capacitor...
Didn't Jackie Gleason host some game show that was so bad the next week he appeared and apologized to the audience?
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Babylon 5
I disagree Season five sucked and the ending sucked.
Season three and four were by far the best
Then agin the series was written for five seasons............and in the end all be all were great
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Wow! I was a month away from being 4 then, I'm sorry I missed it. Dang DVR lacking a flux capacitor...
Didn't Jackie Gleason host some game show that was so bad the next week he appeared and apologized to the audience?
http://www.tv.pop-cult.com/youre-in-the-picture.html
:-)
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I think the worst ending of any series is when a show just gets canceled and never has an ending.
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I think the worst ending of any series is when a show just gets canceled and never has an ending.
Oh yes, there was a short lived series called 'The Others' which I was enjoying greatly when it suddenly disappeared. :(
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Oh yes, there was a short lived series called 'The Others' which I was enjoying greatly when it suddenly disappeared. :(
Is this the show?
"College student Marian Kitt is terrified to discover that she has the power to see into the "other side." Word of Marian's vision spreads to Professor Miles Ballard, a student of paranormal and psychic phenomena. He introduces Marian to "the others," a group of individuals with the ability to vicariously experience the feelings, thoughts and experiences of others, and to help them understand paranormal phenomena."
Strange, it sounds like a show that I would have watched, but I don't remember it. All 13 episodes are available on torrent sharing sites.
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Is this the show?
"College student Marian Kitt is terrified to discover that she has the power to see into the "other side." Word of Marian's vision spreads to Professor Miles Ballard, a student of paranormal and psychic phenomena. He introduces Marian to "the others," a group of individuals with the ability to vicariously experience the feelings, thoughts and experiences of others, and to help them understand paranormal phenomena."
Strange, it sounds like a show that I would have watched, but I don't remember it. All 13 episodes are available on torrent sharing sites.
That's the one. If you haven't seen it, give it a go I remember it as being good.
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I LOVED The Others, also The Lone Gunmen, Profit, Jericho, The Job and tons of other shows that just disappeared. :bawl:
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That's the one. If you haven't seen it, give it a go I remember it as being good.
I'll have to download the pilot and check it out.
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MASH was mentioned, but as a good or bad series. Seems to me, statrted out "good" wuitth the movie boost in everyone's mind, ended up awful, with the smugness of certain characters.....
Babylon 5 was, I thought, exceptionally well done for a TV series, including the writing. As was FARSCAPE , WITH A FEW crappy shows, but, hell, who's perfect?
X-Filse, ran hot and cold, but I laughed a lot with the Charles Nelson Reilly show....they knew not to take themselves too sereously.
And then there's Quantum Leap, one of the better shows, and I enjoyed the waythey poked fun at themselves too.
As for the Olden Days, Mary Tyler Moore, awful, Gilligan's Island, crap, but nice chick, that Dawn, wasn't she? Eight is Enough, "hated it!", Same My Three Sons, The Brady Bunch, would send me screaming from the room.
Seinfeld bored me, so I don't think I ever sat thru a complete "episode". And there were plenty WORSE that I've blocked from my memory almost completely, a couple with Pam Anderson, I think, and many many more thtat figure in trivia games.]
The good thing about horrid TV is that I read a WHOLE lot of books over the years....
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Does anybody remember "My Living Doll" starring Julie Newmar as Rhoda the Robot and Bob Cummings as her unwitting "owner"? It predated "Batman" and her Catwoman role. Julie was always in a towel. It was largely responsible for my heterosexuality (I was an impressionable boy at 8).
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There's something there among my few flickering nurons.....didn't Cummings have one of those very early airplane-car things with detachable wings?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2550902895914120566
I believe 4 of 5 untimately crashed, with fatal results in at leaast one case.
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There's something there among my few flickering nurons.....didn't Cummings have one of those very early airplane-car things with detachable wings?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2550902895914120566
I believe 4 of 5 untimately crashed, with fatal results in at leaast one case.
The aerocar/Cummings connection doesn't ring a bell with me. It sounds plausible. He was a wild and crazy uptight conservative guy. He couldn't even get along with Newmar and quit the show after the first of it's two seasons. I don't remember who replaced him. Maybe Jerry Van Dyke. Jerry was the default TV actor of the day.
Jerry Van Dyke, until "Coach", was one of those actors repeatedly forced down our throats (like McLean Stephenson). We were suppose to like him because he was Dick's brother. And he was likable, just not particularly endearing.
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MacGyver
Friends
Quantum Leap
Star Trek: Deep Space 9
Star Trek: Voyager
(I'm betting the Enterprise ending sucked, too, but I never saw it, so I don't know for sure.)
Xena: Warrior Princess
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I never liked Dyke van Dick in any roll much less Jerry. The least offensive roll Dick was/is in ; "Diagnosis, Murder" , possibly it was by comparison to the other supposed "offerings" on in the same time slot.
Oh, the worse ever program that was ever produced, or will be, is "The View" which I am forced to watch/listen thu during physical therapy. The lady therapist insists on having it on, but the sheer idiocy has an adverse effect on my Blood pressure.
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HBO's Deadwood. I mean, like, WTF was that?
The Sopranos series finale really pissed me off!
I actually could kinda appreciate the Sopranos' ending.
I guessed the writers felt that us viewers were invited in each week to witness, somewhat voyueristicly and up close, the various goings on of a mob family and others connected with it. We watched each week as all kinds of sh%& went down that we would never normally get to see in real life. Heck, I couldn't wait till next week's episode to find out who was gonna get whacked next.
Well we were at the final episode, we knew it was the end, but didn't know how was it gonna go down. We sat on the edge of the seat, hell, we may as well been sitting in the same booth with Tony, Carmela, and the kids. Would Tony get whacked, not get whacked, is it gonna be the guy sitting in the other booth, the truck driver sitting at the counter? Guy goes into the Men's room...comes out...and bang!
You, the viewer, just got smoked.
Just like a lot of the others who got bumped throughout the series, you didn't see it coming.
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The aerocar/Cummings connection doesn't ring a bell with me. It sounds plausible. He was a wild and crazy uptight conservative guy. He couldn't even get along with Newmar and quit the show after the first of it's two seasons. I don't remember who replaced him. Maybe Jerry Van Dyke. Jerry was the default TV actor of the day.
Jerry Van Dyke, until "Coach", was one of those actors repeatedly forced down our throats (like McLean Stephenson). We were suppose to like him because he was Dick's brother. And he was likable, just not particularly endearing.
His brother Barry is the reson that no one likes the 4th and final season of "Airwolf" among other things too.
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another super sucky ending would have to be the ending of Jericho.
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Six Feet Under. That final montage, when Claire puts in the CD, and the entire lives of all the cast rolls by was one of the greatest moments in television history. :cheersmate: