Scene by scene, episode by episode, season by season, television shows take their audiences on incredible journeys. Dialog is written, actors are cast, and sequences are shot with one intention: tell a good story from beginning to end.
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Yet endings are difficult, and audiences are hard to please. After investing years into characters and their storylines, audiences have understandable expectations. A sour ending can ruin that. Some endings frustrate their audience by being too ambiguous, too abrupt, or too implausible. Some such endings are in keeping with the story, however, whether the audience likes them or not. These endings might’ve frustrated their fans, but it’s hard to argue they hurt the plot.
10Gilmore Girls
Written by Amy Sherman-Palladino, a television writer as talented as Sorkin or Whedonwhen it comes to pithy comebacks and heart-tearing goodbyes,Gilmore Girlsis the story of a young mother, Lorelai, and her brilliant daughter Rory. After a long hiatus, the series got its proper conclusion in the form of the four-partGilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.
While most fans were happy to get more of their favorite mother-daughter team,many were less than pleased with the four words with which the series wrapped.Even so, it’s the ending Sherman-Palladino always wanted, and the ending everything had always been building to.
9Parks And Recreation
Parks and Recreationis a stellar demonstration of the power of a talented cast and crew to make silver screen magic out of even the most mundane of subjects. A city parks department might seem like an unlikely setting for a hilarious and quirky comedy, but this series shone thanks to comedic geniuses like Amy Poehler, Aziz Ansari, and Aubrey Plaza.
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Parks and Rechas a sprawling cast, and to accommodate their varied ambitions the season finale leaps forward in time. The time jump is written and paced beautifully, and most characters receive clear and final resolutions, but the fates of Leslie and Ben are unclear. They are shown surrounded by Secret Service members, butfans never learn which of them made it to the Oval Office,an intentional ambiguity that nonetheless bothered many viewers.
8The Wire
The Wireisn’t exactly a rainbows and kittens kind of series. It’s a hardnosed look at systemic issues and inequalities in America, including addiction, incarceration, and racism, among other difficult topics.Watching the youth fall victim to the same ugly patterns as those that came before them is one of the most troubling parts of the show.
This is particularly evident in the characters of Michael and Dookie, who in their own way take up the mantles of Omar and Bubbles,sinking into criminal lives they’re helpless to break away from.Seeing their fall is painful, but perfectly in keeping with the show’s message: the ugly systems that rule the world don’t care.
7Roseanne
Roseanneisn’t a show in which evil empires rise or planets are destroyed. The scope of its problems is small: the ups and downs of a more or less average lower-middle-class family. It’s easy for many viewers to recognize their own struggles and those of their loved ones in the characters.
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In the series finale, Roseanne reveals that the show is a fabrication, a retelling of her own story but idealized:her husband died, and her family never won the lottery.Loving and loyal, Roseanne would do anything to protect her family, even pretending away the realities of their suffering and loss. This revelation about the true nature of things might be in keeping with Roseanne’s character, but for many fans, it’s still hard to swallow.
6The Shield
Detective Vic Mackey, along with the rest of his Strike Team, does whatever it takes to rid LA of drug dealing and other crime, even if that means intimidation, coercion, planting evidence, and torturing suspects. Viewers knew from the Pilot that a corrupt cop like Mackey wouldnever find a peaceful end.
It seems that peace will be forced upon him whether he wants it or not when he is forced out of the LAPD and into a desk job at ICE. In the finale’s final moments,Mackey grabs his gun from his desk and heads back out into the streets,returning to the life of violence from which he had, for the briefest of moments, had the chance to escape.
5Blackadder
Shows likeM.A.S.H.have shown that even a topic as horrific as warfare can be fertile soil for comedy in the right hands.Blackadderfollows a group of British soldiers through the battlefields of WWI, and for most of the series, it maintains a profound sense of humor despite the darkness of its subject matter.
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In the end, however, there is no denying that its subject is war, andthe series finale sees Blackadder and his fellow soldiers finally going over the top of the trench in a charge into no man’s land that will presumably kill them.The show’s gallows humor and biting satire are as poignant here as ever, but, understandably, fans who’d grown attached to the soldiers would blanch at seeing their lives tossed away. Unfair death, however, is the unflinching face of war, andBlackadderrefused to sugarcoat that.
Mad Mendevelopeda sprawling and beloved castover its seven-season run. This hodgepodge of ’60s and ’70s New York ad-execs, their partners, their rivals, and everyone else in the gravity well of their lives, is among television’s best casts. The finale did its best to show viewers where their favorite characters were going next, butin the case of ever-enigmatic leading man Don Draper, a mystery remains.
As Don meditates in the lotus position, an idea occurs to him, and the show segues to a famous Coca-Cola commercial. Whether this moment signifies Don finding peace or foreshadows his returning to New York to make the ad, viewers will never know.
3Friends
Lucy and Ricky, Willow and Tara, Jim and Pam–the landscape of television is littered with famous couples. Few of them rise to the same height of will-they-won’t-they pandemonium as Ross and Rachel fromFriends.Torn apart by a breakup and broken hearts, Ross and Rachel seemed like they would never get together.
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In the series finale, Ross returns home to his empty apartment, thinking Rachel has left on a plane to start a new job and a new life in Paris.Then she walks in the door.To this day the finale remains divisive amongst fans. While some are happy to see the pair united, at last, others are frustrated by the decision to make Rachel throw away her dream career to stay in a relationship many consider toxic.
2Lost
It’s hard to find a television show more divisive thanLost.Hailed by some, panned by others, argued over by almost everyone,Lostis the story of the survivors of a plane crash who must now survive on a mysterious island that only grows more mysterious with time.Untangling exactly what happens in the finale is impossible here,but suffice it to say that parallel timelines and limbo are both involved, andeverything is more complicated than it seems.
While many fans hated the many ambiguities or seemingly cheap answers provided by the finale, refusing to settle its mysteries conveniently is part of what made the show so appealing in the first place.
1The Sopranos
Tony Soprano takes a seat in a diner booth and puts on Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin',” waiting for his family to filter in. His gaze rises now and then to other diner patrons, assessing the threat they pose, wondering whether this is the moment when all of his bad catches up with him. His family shows up. They chat a little. Tony’s eyes rise one more time.Then the scene cuts to black.
The audience never learns whether Tony is killed or gets away with everything he’s done. Is it frustrating not to know? Absolutely. However, there’s still never been another ending more suited to its show. The threat just hangs there. Eternal.
