Best/worst TV season enders/twists

And I remember really enjoying the Ken Burns Civil War series and then right before the finale someone tells me the North won and Lincoln got shot. Ruined the whole ending

 

What's interesting to me about "West Wing" is that I watched the entire series (at least twice) when Bravo re-ran it. I had no idea when each season began and ended.

 

Dating myself, but I can't believe "Who Shot JR?" hasn't been mentioned. Whether you liked it or not, it's legendary.

 

You mean other than in the OP?

 

Not only dating myself, but revealing myself to be FULL OF FAIL to exponential levels.

Ever have one of those days when you just can't do anything right? That's so me right now.

But "Sunshine Cleaning" just started, and all is right with the world.

 

"St. Elsewhere" had an awful, bizarre series ending.
As noted previously, the last scene of "Twin Peaks" was a big FU to the audience.
I thought last scene of "ER" was damn near perfect.
I really liked the last scene of the "Buffy" series, too.

 

Oh yeah - St. Elsewhere sucked. As did the Bobby Ewing shower scene and the new Miss Ellie on Dallas. And we shouldn't forget Fonzie on waterskis when the whole Happy Days gang heads out to L.A.


And I know it is still airing on NBC - but I would stamp the Friday Night Lights finale as just damn near perfect.

 

Some good ones: The Wonder Years finale, when Kevin says what happened to everyone.

The Cheers episode when Diane leaves, and Sam says, "Have a good life." Also the series ender, with "Sorry, we're closed."

 

I always think of the end of Cheers as the cast getting drunk together on that post-show they did.

 

Greatest dating show ender ever: Brad Womack rejecting both bimbos in his first "Bachelor" appearance.

 

Might not qualify as a "dating show" but this tops all in that genre:

 

I had literally never seen a full episode of The Wonder Years until a couple months ago when I was channel-surfing late at night after putting out the paper.

It was one of the prime-time shows I never ever watched, since I was always working nights.

Anyway, I started to watch it a couple months ago, since it deals with my age group (Kevin Arnold's character is two grades ahead of me).

HUB has been showing the series, but apparently out of sequence, heavily edited and also skipping a lot of episodes.

I didn't like the final episode because of the Shylaman-esque "twist" they threw in at the end, which struck me as completely arbitrary, contrived and pointless. (OK, he died. Since we don't get to see what kind of effect this had on the family, what difference does it really make if he died in 1975 or 1992?)

After doing some googling on the way the show ended, apparently the producers were only given a week or so notice that the show was being cancelled, so basically they slapped a rush ending on the series (and maybe also a "screw you" to the network). Supposedly the producers originally intended the show was going to run one more season, which would have carried Kevin up through HS graduation.


Oh, the final episode of "Northern Exposure" was pretty cool. Not memorable, epic, a show for the ages, etc etc., but a nice sendoff. Almost made up for the last two seasons of the series overall going into the tank.