Disappointing endings to TV shows

The ending of Game of Thrones was so bad that I didn't even think of HIMYM when I read the topic title.

As has been said by others, the truly astonishing thing about how poor the Game of Thrones ending was wasn't that it was necessarily hated, it's that it was so bad that the immediate collective response was to just be done with the whole thing. It's not even like people really got up in arms defending the earlier seasons. It was like, in the space of two or three weeks, it went from being one of the largest pop culture phenomenons to literally everyone just being done with it.

People still discuss Lost and Dexter and look back fondly on the bits that were good, but in the space of a month, GoT just up and disappeared from our collective consciousness. It's one thing to be bad enough to be hated, but to be so bad that a previously slathering fanbase just... forgets you instantly. That's incredible.

So glad others said HIMYM. Barney and Robin were the greatest couple in live action sitcoms until they ruined it

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Skarjo wrote:The ending of Game of Thrones was so bad that I didn't even think of HIMYM when I read the topic title.

As has been said by others, the truly astonishing thing about how poor the Game of Thrones ending was wasn't that it was necessarily hated, it's that it was so bad that the immediate collective response was to just be done with the whole thing. It's not even like people really got up in arms defending the earlier seasons. It was like, in the space of two or three weeks, it went from being one of the largest pop culture phenomenons to literally everyone just being done with it.

People still discuss Lost and Dexter and look back fondly on the bits that were good, but in the space of a month, GoT just up and disappeared from our collective consciousness. It's one thing to be bad enough to be hated, but to be so bad that a previously slathering fanbase just... forgets you instantly. That's incredible.

I think it was the speed of GoT's decent. Other TV shows have been really popular and just fizzled out. 24 and TWD come to mind.

I've been really disappointed with TV shows lately. British TV has been particularly bad, The Stranger was absolute garbage, Marcella started interesting but didn't end a single thread, Line of Duty has the most ridiculous endings, Killing Eve was gooseberry fool. Netflix documentaries have been the most enjoyable things I've watched lately.

Had it not eventually returned and continued, i would have said Red Dwarf.

The ending of season 8 was utterly diabolical, so much so that i consider the canon ending to be the alternate one which had been originally filmed before being swapped out at the last minute.

PostRe: Disappointing endings to TV shows by **Rax** » Tue Jun 02, 2020 8:28 am

Game of Thrones and its not even close. It was the biggest thing in the world and the last 2 seasons were just terrible, rushing to an ending just to get it over with. I dont hate the events or how everything ended, its how it got there that was complete garbage.

I actually think it's harder to come up with genuinely satisfying conclusions to shows, most have some element that disappoints, fail to find a satisfying resolution for their stories and characters, or just display a general drop in quality as they wind down to their ending.

The Battlestar Galactica remake had a strawberry floating awful ending. The whole "Oh they're actually the ancestors of modern humanity" angle was such bullshit.
And then the "Let's just throw away all our modern technology and send it into the sun" :fp:

. Well if you had some kind of medical condition that was being treated, strawberry float you!

The original series, where the fleet came across a present-day Earth with a (for the time) modern level of technology, then deciding to introduce more advanced technology to Earth gradually in order to prepare it for the Cylons, was a much better concept.

Jenuall wrote:I actually think it's harder to come up with genuinely satisfying conclusions to shows, most have some element that disappoints, fail to find a satisfying resolution for their stories and characters, or just display a general drop in quality as they wind down to their ending.

I thought The Shield had a satisfying ending. It was a show that, in general, actually seemed to get better the longer it went on.

Worst ending was definitely Lost. I knew from the moment when Michael 'explained' the whispers to Hurley it was going to be bad. Didn't realize how bad, though. Absolutely heartbreaking.

Bad shows get cancelled, good shows get renewed until they get bad

US TV seems to suffer from this more, probably because of the longer series' lengths

Oh, I'm also going to throw in Enterprise. The final episode of that was an absolute slap in the face to fans of the show. It was made even worse having come off the back of multiple outstanding episodes that had set up what could have been a fantastic finale.

Instead the final episode of Enterprise was literally a bad holodeck episode of TNG.

PostRe: Disappointing endings to TV shows by **SEP** » Tue Jun 02, 2020 9:45 am

Lagamorph wrote:Oh, I'm also going to throw in Enterprise. The final episode of that was an absolute slap in the face to fans of the show. It was made even worse having come off the back of multiple outstanding episodes that had set up what could have been a fantastic finale.

Instead the final episode of Enterprise was literally a bad holodeck episode of TNG.

That one really hurt. Enterprise had found its own voice, and had started to become really good. Then they made the ending a sub-plot in an old TNG episode.

OrangeRKN wrote:Bad shows get cancelled, good shows get renewed until they get bad

US TV seems to suffer from this more, probably because of the longer series' lengths

Because they run out of ideas and don't tell have stories to tell. It's difficult to keep starting new arcs and keep things fresh and on the right track. It's understandable in most cases but Game of Thrones should have been different as it had all been mapped out already. I know the books finished but they just had to get GRR Martin more involved.

Vermilion wrote:Had it not eventually returned and continued, i would have said Red Dwarf.

The ending of season 8 was utterly diabolical, so much so that i consider the canon ending to be the alternate one which had been originally filmed before being swapped out at the last minute.

I found out about this later, but yeah this is so much better and I have absolutely no idea why they wouldn't use it.

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OrangeRKN wrote:Bad shows get cancelled, good shows get renewed until they get bad

US TV seems to suffer from this more, probably because of the longer series' lengths

I think British TV shows are worse for being massively over hyped. As well as the shows in my post above I thought Sherlock and Luther were gooseberry fool and suffer from too few shows as everything needs to be wrapped up so quickly.

I'm mainly thinking about sitcoms - compare the 14 episodes of the British The Office to the 201 episodes of the US show for example.

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OrangeRKN wrote:I'm mainly thinking about sitcoms - compare the 14 episodes of the British The Office to the 201 episodes of the US show for example.

Yeah I get what you mean, I just don't like that some people see fewer episodes as always being quality of quantity. I'd rather watch series 5 of 24 every day for the rest of my life than another episode of Luther.

Both the long form "mass-produced" US approach and the shorter more single-creator focused UK approach have their strengths and weaknesses. The US market is much more commercially focused though which does mean that if something is good then it will be milked dry regardless of the creators original ideas or intent.

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Yeah it is a shame Breaking Bad and The Wire are the exception. Hopefully on demand TV will see this change.

Sitcoms I get when you see the amount of money Seinfeld, Friends, The Big Bang Theory, etc make.

Game of thrones is the one thst immediately jumps to mind. As has been said, it was all everyone used to talk about before that last series, and as it went on the feeling of dread built that it was going to be a stinker, but strawberry float me what an awful way to end it. Utter gooseberry fool, I remember flat out shouting at the tv saying, "how the strawberry float is THAT the ending to that show?!". So bad that I don't want to watch it again and forget it even exists.

I'll tell you a great ending-The Sopranos. Original, and perfectly executed.

Disappointing endings to TV shows

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