One that made me feel like I had wasted time watching the show was How I Met Your Mother. It was a fun show and really picked up in quality in seasons three - five. They could have ended the show in season 7, really, if they had planned for it. Season 8 was kind of a bore, and season 9 was bad, as all of the season took place over a weekend. And when we got the finale of the show… I was so tired of holding on to what might come that it really hit me negatively how they ended it.
That being said, Game of Thrones ended so poorly that I was baffled as to how haphazard and dull the writing and storytelling was that I, just like a lot of others, held on to hope that the last few episodes might bring things all around. (Morgan Freeman as Narrator - It didn’t.) While cracks were showing since late season 6, the finale of that show was horrible. The payoffs didn’t come, and everything just felt so rushed, watered down, and a tremendous feeling that content was missing from the season, if they were to help make sense of the finale.
The best way I’ve seen it put; the GOT ending was so bad, it made you feel ashamed for liking the show in the first place.
Totally agree on both.
I read the GOT books, and I’m convinced that HBO is the reason why Martin messed this all up. There was a whole other Targeryen, Aegon VI, that was running around being some charismatic cool dude and also making a claim to the Iron Throne. HBO just cut him out, and I’m convinced that what was supposed to happen was everything was him vs. Danerys at the end, and he took the iron throne, and would have been sitting on it when the dragon fried it, which would have killed him and the throne and left Danerys as the obvious true ruler because she has that fire magic.
But we’ll never know because Martin cashed his checks and peaced out.
I’m actually convinced that this is Martin’s ending and everything to get us there was made up by HBO. Seeing the absolute backlash has scared the shit out of him and that’s why it won’t be finished.
100% same. As if he saw all the hate, didn’t want to put forth the effort to explain the discrepancy, and shelved the last book until it all dies down. Maybe even a posthumous publishing just to avoid the haters.
People are trash. What is wrong with us? It’s like anyone that does anything cool and can’t keep up perfection forever has no other option but to be a total pariah is they slip.
I see a lot of hate for the HIMYM finale and… I truly do not get it. I will not praise it as a cinematic masterpiece, because it isn’t. But it is an ending that they have been building up since the very beginning, and it makes perfect sense given the characters and what they went through. There are a lot of show endings that cannot claim that at all, with random last-minute additional arcs or forgetting things from earlier seasons. I haven’t seen any of that in HIMYM. So yeah, I think it’s a decent ending overall, and I truly do not understand the hate it gets.
As for GoT; yeah that went into shitshow territory from season 7 for me personally.
Let’s be honest cracks started showing in season 2 its just the source material covered it up for a while.
How I Met Your Mother. It was a fun show and really picked up in quality in seasons three - five. They could have ended the show in season 7, really, if they had planned for it.
I heard they were being cancelled after 7, and thus were on target to wrap it up by then, but then got the cash to do the last season and found themselves short on material but needing to end it properly.
Genuinely controversial or just bad?
The Lost finale is probably both
Unrelated, just realized how the advent of streaming has changed the way we talk about past TV series.
Before streaming we would say the Lost finale was
past tense, because it had finished airing
Nowadays, no show really finishes airing so it’s discussed in a present tense
Sorry, I’m old
Never apologize for being old
Get mad at them for having the audacity to be so young
The Seinfeld one always gets a lot of shit
I loved Curb Your Enthusiasm recognizing that.
Larry’s self awareness is incredible. The references in curb to it had me in tears
“Huh, mistrial? Why didn’t we think of that before…”, yeah, I chuckled when I saw that.
The Sopranos final episode immediately springs to mind
Sopranos and Game of Thrones are the ones I recall having the most uproar. To this day, new videos on YouTube about how awful they were.
I loved it. It made me think about how life just stops. I love all the foreshadowing.
I like it since I learned that it ends so abruptly because the last POV is Tony’s as he dies.
That said, it whooshed nearly everyone who watched it and therefore pissed people off.
My then roommate worked on the series. He said, “You don’t watch it so I can tell you. Nothing happens. Nothing. People are gonna be fucking pissed.” Lol
Lost
Everyone was very shocked back in the day at the ending of Seinfeld.
Some of us thought they were just taking a year break (which they explicitly said in the last episode)
The Prisoner probably. Nothing is resolved. #6 escapes… or does he? The Individual was #1 the whole time.
Okay, but it turning out that the iconic “Who is Number 1?!” “You are Number 6” exchange from the intro was Number 2 literally telling him the answer was freaking brilliant.
“You are, Number 6.”
Can we mention Farscape? Without the movie it was a massive let down, with the movie it became an impossible mess. Either way, an incredible let down.
I introduced my wife to Farscape in 2008 and she absolutely fell in love with the series, as had I when I first watched it. We binged watched the entire series inside of two weeks.
We got to the final episode of season 4… And…she… was…piiiiiiiiissssssed. She absolutely abhors cliffhangers. I cannot count the number of times we’ve had to stay up late to finish on an episode that didn’t end on a cliff hanger.
I might have forgotten to mention “The Peacekeeper War” mini-series… evil laugh.
She stomped off and made herself a cup of tea, as I was “getting Season 1 of Battlestar Galactica 2004 ready to watch”. wink wink
She came back sat down on the couch and I hit play… “WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS!” She only uses the word “fuck” when she’s truly angry BTW.
We then stayed up late to finish “The Peacekeeper War”.
As to it being a mess… Yeah, I can see your point. An entire season was rammed into the equivalent of 4 episodes. I think it was done about as well as it could of been. With that said, it would have been great to get that 5th season.
It still remains as my all time favorite Sci Fi series. There was just too much creativity and uniqueness through out to just throw it out at the end as a fan.
I personally think it’s a great ending, even though it was intended to be a cliffhanger for the next series before cancellation, but a lot of fans didn’t like the ending of Quantum Leap where it was said that Sam never made it home.
I loved the ending because it fit Sam’s character perfectly. He’s essentially told (by god or whoever) that the only one who controls when Sam goes home is Sam himself. That when Sam truly, deep inside feels that his job is done, he’ll go home. The fact that he never returned home means that He never truly felt his job was done. And Sam wouldn’t. The essence of the heroic journey…always one more person to help.
It made the ending bitter-sweet, sad, heroic and tragic all at once. Just like Sam’s character.
I thought it was brilliantly done for something designed to also be a season finale “just in case”
In this thread, mostly: “Yeah, I know the show was poorly written through several seasons, but I thought the ending would at least be satisfactory.”
The “Attack On Titan” finale was a bunch of nonsense.
Everything just whipped back and forth at the whims of being artsy. None of it aligned with what the show had been known for in writing or foreshadowing. Characters constantly acting unreasonable for the sake of conflict. Shit just stopped making sense and everything felt like it was being made up on the spot.
All of the Ymir lore felt forced. Why tf was it a worm?
I disagree. I don’t think it whipped back and forth at all, I think it was pretty solidly foreshadowed, even from episode one. Who was acting unreasonable? Eren? That’s very clearly and explicitly stated to be him doing so on purpose. The rest of the cast seemed to act in accordance with their history from my view.
I also don’t feel like the Ymir lore was forced. I mean obviously there’s going to be some fantastical element to the lore of a show with titans and magic and such, so that part aside, I thought her story was really heartbreaking and encapsulated the themes the show was hammering home the whole time.
I think the time travel stuff was a bit fucky, which is one of my biggest criticisms of the show, and I also felt like Mikassa’s character should have had a better arc. I didn’t like the deus ex machina of Falco coming in to save the day with the people who didn’t want to be there, but the rest of it felt like a pretty satisfying conclusion to an incredible show.
To each their own of course, no shade or anything.
Babylon 5 (whole last season actually); just ran out of gas.
I’m still amazed at the Two and a half men finale
