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When good shows end badly.

Posted By: PanzerMeyer

When good shows end badly. - 07/16/20 01:00 PM

I’m a fan of both BSG and GOT but I found myself largely agreeing with the author’s major points:

https://bleedingcool.com/tv/game-of-thrones-battlestar-galactica-when-good-shows-end-badly/


I'd like to add two shows of my own to the "when good shows end badly" category.


1. X-Files
2. Star Trek Voyager
Posted By: No105_Archie

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/16/20 01:16 PM

The article sums it up pretty well. I was a fan of BSG and GoT and thought their endings were terrible. Sopranos and Breaking Bad pretty much nailed it

I never was a fan of X - Files so I can't comment on the finale. I liked the Endgame finale of Voyager
Posted By: NoFlyBoy

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/16/20 02:03 PM

The X-Files was over when Mulder left.
Posted By: PanzerMeyer

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/16/20 02:11 PM

Originally Posted by NoFlyBoy
The X-Files was over when Mulder left.



Lots of fans agree with that including me.


While in my opinion there were some good episodes in seasons 8 and 9, the overall effort was really a waste of time.


There's a whole long story behind the show that sheds an interesting light. Chris Carter (the creator of the show) wanted to end the show after the seventh season and then finish off the story with 2 more theatrical releases but he was overruled by Fox. Fox wanted to continue the series so they extended it for 2 more seasons.


Oh, and don't even bother mentioning seasons 10 and 11 which were part of the "revival". What a massive waste of time that was.
Posted By: Vaderini

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/16/20 02:40 PM

I would like to add

- JAG
- Lost
- ALF
- House of Cards
- The Killing
- Several seasons of American Horror Story
- Top of the Lake
- The Fall
Posted By: PanzerMeyer

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/16/20 02:46 PM

Originally Posted by Vaderini

- Lost


I have many friends who watched this and not a single one told me they were satisfied with the series finale.
Posted By: NoFlyBoy

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/16/20 02:54 PM

Alias. That was a great ending.

Jennifer Garner, one of my youth TV crushes after Scully and every actress on Buffy, there were so many cute actresses on that show.
Posted By: Mr_Blastman

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/16/20 03:02 PM

Haha, I thought the ending to "Game of Thrones" was fitting, and am amused at all the butthurt fans who are angry their "Khaleesi" let the demon in side her win, in the end. But they forget a critical juncture, no matter how much they longed for political correctness--that she was a Targaryen, descended from the Mad King; insanity was in her blood. So while her idealism and lust for a grand, new, free and different world simmered, her genes lurked, deep within, boiling in dark corners, fueling her conquest with the bloodlust of success while staying hidden long enough until they could emerge at a point where there was nothing almost anyone could do to stop her.

Almost.

The ending was fitting, and supported wholeheartedly by the lore. The fans got what they wanted--a strong woman who broke down the bonds of a classical society, but they got what they deserved when they blindly supposed she'd be a good woman forever.

Deal with it. =)


The BSG ending was so so, and the series began to falter the second half of season three when they had that stupid courtroom drama--as I've said in other threads here. I fear the writers were so driven to throw the viewers off by not giving us the "obvious" ending we all expected, that the settlers settled Earth and we were descended from them, that the last season got a little weird. I feel though they missed an opportunity and could have made the humans discover that instead of the cylons being descendents of us--that the humans were descended from them, and all of us have a little cylon in us.

If they had been truly bold and daring, they could have pulled off such a twist, and certainly would have laid enough foundation for a prequel series... and even a subsequent sequel series set some time further in the future, far prior to the discovery of agriculture, for example, and before written records existed amongst mainstream, primitive mankind.




NOW,

If someone truly wants to see a series that went off the rails, check out "Vikings," the only series I've watched that started out pretty good, but then decided to be cute by killing off every single character the audience loved in pursuit of torture porn, leaving us with nothing but empty, worthless husks of puppets to follow in the aftermath, whom don't even pursue their own character traits anymore. When they killed off Aethelstan, Aethelwulf, Ragnar and Eckbert, the showrunners jumped the "Greek" and the "Roman" and even the "Zeus" and the "Napolean" and slit their throats and drowned in their faux Perrier sweat of cuteness. "Hey, look at us! We're bold writers who can kill things you like and you never expected that!"

We also never expected them to flush the series down the toilet by doing stupid things, either.
Posted By: NoFlyBoy

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/16/20 04:09 PM

THIS!!

Seinfeld. Love the show. It was comedy genius The ending sucked.
Posted By: F4UDash4

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/16/20 04:10 PM

Star Trek Enterprise. Last episode is an abomination.

As for Voyager, I liked the ending as far as it went but there should have been either another 30 minutes or one more episode of "post return".
Posted By: PanzerMeyer

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/16/20 04:33 PM

Originally Posted by Mr_Blastman
Haha, I thought the ending to "Game of Thrones" was fitting, and am amused at all the butthurt fans who are angry their "Khaleesi" let the demon in side her win, in the end.



For me personally, I had no problem with Danaerys turning to the dark side. What did bother me was the rushed manner in which the writers did this. Danaerys defeats the Lannisters and destroys Kings Landing in one episode and then the very next episode she's congratulating her army and is then killed by Jon Snow a couple of scenes later? Please. The biggest, glaring mistake is that the final season was only 6 episodes. It's quite clear to me that Weiss and Beinhoff had already "checked out" of the series and were already busy working on other projects.
Posted By: BlueHeron

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/16/20 06:27 PM

Originally Posted by PanzerMeyer
The biggest, glaring mistake is that the final season was only 6 episodes. It's quite clear to me that Weiss and Beinhoff had already "checked out" of the series and were already busy working on other projects.


This. A pitiful end to an epic series.
Posted By: Mr_Blastman

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/16/20 06:35 PM

Yeah the rushed nature was the true bummer. The last two seasons deserved ten episodes, each.
Posted By: Crane Hunter

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/16/20 06:50 PM

Miami Vice.

The actual finale wasn't horrible but the series as a whole had been going downhill for years at that point.
Posted By: Dart

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/17/20 02:45 AM

The GoT comments are interesting.

The wife was howling at just one part - Sansa getting the North - not just as Queen, but as an independent kingdom.

She still gets pissed and goes off whenever GoT is mentioned.

smile
Posted By: DM

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/17/20 08:32 AM

GoT ended badly. No problem with the major points, but how they got there was clumsy, lazy and revealed no talent for writing. Aside from that, soooo many stupid facepalm moments.
One episode - We can't win against the white walkers in a head on attack.
Next episode - Send all the Dothraki into a head on attack immediately.
Just.... facepalmy.
Everyone turning against Daenerys for little reason, Daenerys herself turning bad suddenly all in a couple of episodes, Unsullied just accepting her murder with no believable component, the wrapping up speech by Tyrion with bows on top, bleah. Many other examples of this. I guess D&D are pretty good at realising great TV when handed good material, less so when they need to generate good material.

The other series I can think of, already mentioned actually, is House Of Cards. It maintained a high standard of writing & character arc until that last dreadful season. They should have just brazened it out & kept Spacey in on it. Was instead a travesty of "Look how woke we are".

Posted By: EAF331 MadDog

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/17/20 10:40 AM

The ending of GoT and the fate of the main characters is supposedly the same as GRRM has planned. How they end up there might of course deviate in the novels (if the final two ever comes out.... I have my doubts).

So if you dislike how the characters ended up, blame GRRM. Of course, not ending things predictable is a hallmark of GRRM.
Posted By: PanzerMeyer

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/17/20 11:07 AM

At the other end of the spectrum I think it's safe to say that the series finales for Babylon 5, Star Trek: TNG and Breaking Bad are universally praised by the critics and fans.
Posted By: Mr_Blastman

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/17/20 05:01 PM

Dexter also had a great, fitting ending to the series.
Posted By: WangoTango

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/17/20 05:55 PM

Originally Posted by NoFlyBoy
THIS!!

Seinfeld. Love the show. It was comedy genius The ending sucked.

Big time disappointment.
Posted By: Dart

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/17/20 09:17 PM

Band of Brothers ended kind of lamely.

All that action, bonding, and adversity and in the end they just write that the War ended and they all went home to boring lives.

Winters winding up as a personnel exec at a chemical company owned by his buddy Nixon and pushing paperwork? Hack writing, to be sure. wink
Posted By: NoFlyBoy

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/17/20 09:34 PM

There wasn't much action in the last episodes 8, 9 and 10 of Band of Brothers.
Posted By: oldgrognard

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/17/20 09:51 PM

That was kind of the way the war went.
Posted By: Timothy

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/17/20 10:05 PM

Originally Posted by Mr_Blastman
Dexter also had a great, fitting ending to the series.


See, I thought the ending wasn't that great, but I also felt the last season it had started to jump the shark.
Posted By: F4UDash4

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/17/20 10:19 PM

Originally Posted by Dart


Winters winding up as a personnel exec at a chemical company owned by his buddy Nixon and pushing paperwork? Hack writing, to be sure. wink


He started his own company later. Reading "Conversations with Major Dick Winters: Life Lessons from the Commander of the Band of Brothers by Cole C. Kingseed" Now, great book. great man.


Kingseed and he wrote his autobiography (Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters). They went back and forth about how to split the proceeds, decided on donating all of it to charity.

Oh and Winters insisted on paying his back taxes when he returned home even though his military pay wasn't taxable.
Posted By: NH2112

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/18/20 01:15 AM

I didn’t like the ending of “Rome,” a third season with Octavian consolidating power. Both “Travelers” and “Dark Matter” had crappy endings, in that they both ended on cliffhangers when the next seasons were canceled. At least “Defiance” got the cancellation notice early enough for a decent ending to be written.
Posted By: PanzerMeyer

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/18/20 12:09 PM

Agreed on “Rome”. The ending could and WOULD have been much better but the producers were already told by HBO that the series was being cancelled so they had to cram everything they could into season 2 to wrap things up.
Posted By: bones

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/18/20 01:15 PM

Originally Posted by PanzerMeyer
Agreed on “Rome”. The ending could and WOULD have been much better but the producers were already told by HBO that the series was being cancelled so they had to cram everything they could into season 2 to wrap things up.


I think one reason Rome ended so abruptly was that they ran out of relevant history. AT the rate they were going, if they continued on, it would have had been during the time of Jesus, which would be interesting, but has been done so many times before.

Also, until GoT, the Rome episodes were the most costly HBO had ever done and they just couldn't sustain that. There was talk of making Rome movies to follow, following the 13th Legion, but I guess that didn't happen.

Also, I agree with PM about GoT...that's fine if she went crazy, but it was like all of a sudden someone flipped on her evil switch. It wasn't like she had shown signs over the course of the season of the magnitude of it all. It just felt like the writers were like, you know, we're done--she flips out and that's the end of it.

v6,
boNes
Posted By: bones

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/18/20 01:33 PM

Oh I would like to add The Unit ended badly. But this was because with the war on terror becoming increasingly unpopular, they called the show after 5 seasons leaving story arcs abandoned.

Also True Blood ended badly. It was a great concept then by a season or two before the end it just got cheesy bad. They even introduced a new illness that was dilapidating to vampires that they forgot they already had in season 1

JAG ended badly but again they were falling victim to the unpopular war on terror plus the story lines were getting cheesy. But it spun off NCIS, which really at that time was what they were more interested in anyway

v6,
boNes
Posted By: NoFlyBoy

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/18/20 02:05 PM

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, cancelled after 2 season by FOX. Dollhouse cancelled after 1 season by FOX. Firefly cancelled after 1 season by FOX. Harsh Realm cancelled after airing only 3 of 9 episodes by FOX. VR.5 cancelled after 10 of 13 episodes aired by FOX. Keen Eddie cancelled after 1 of 7 episodes aired. FOX bosses must be idiots!
Posted By: PanzerMeyer

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/18/20 02:12 PM

Originally Posted by NoFlyBoy
FOX bosses must be idiots!



They are simply a business just like any other tv network. All of those shows you listed were cancelled due to low viewer numbers. Now you can argue whether or not you feel Fox properly promoted those shows but that's a different issue.

Also keep in mind that Firefly debuted 18 years ago. The economics of tv production and how big of an audience a network needed to keep a show on the air was fundamentally different from what it is now in our streaming era.

edit: Dollhouse ran 2 for season by the way.
Posted By: NoFlyBoy

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/18/20 03:01 PM

My bad. Dollhouse did run for 2 seasons. I love all those shows. They are shows of my childhood. You mention low viewer number, okay, I understand. But to cancel a show after only airing ONE (Keen Eddie) or THREE (Harsh Realm) episodes?

One more: Nowhere Man on UPN was abruptly cancelled after 1 season. Love the opening!

Posted By: F4UDash4

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/18/20 03:26 PM

Originally Posted by PanzerMeyer
Now you can argue whether or not you feel Fox properly promoted those shows but that's a different issue.


Proper TV series promotion is a big deal. I never watched Firefly in its original run because I didn't know it existed or only saw a few short promos that didn't do the series justice. IF it had been promoted properly, through various means, I would certainly watched as probably would many others in which case the series would have stood a good chance of surviving for several season IMO.

Same goes for movie promotion. "John Carter" being a prime example. Poorly promoted and the inexplicable dropping "of Mars" from the title hurt the movie greatly, as the movie itself is much better (IMO) than the rather dated (1912!) book upon which it was based.
Posted By: MarkG

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/18/20 03:48 PM

When the History Channel could no longer be called the Hitler Channel, television all but died for me. Even mornings with Robin Meade on HLN lost appeal when she got heavy into social media news. frown Fortunately I have my favorite History Channel programs on DVD and a buttload of VHS tape recordings to cover the rest.

Sunday, April 14, 2019...

Wife's company invited us to a swanky dinner at a newly renovated bed and breakfast (featured on HGTV) about 30 min. north of us. Pre-dinner we were in the courtyard enjoying horderves and champagne, the people around us all seeming to have Game of Thrones on their minds. Some even left early to watch it, skipping dessert.

We had no idea what they were talking about. I occupied my thoughts with imaginary math problems (was just getting into trig and seeing right triangles in everything). For example, I had estimated the distance from the center of our table to the exact location in 3D space (XYZ) where my marriage was consummated on my wedding night was ~13' (`4m).Lol. Everyone else (other than wife) was thinking GoT. Must have been some show and a special episode to skip dessert, in the age of DVR.
Posted By: F4UDash4

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/18/20 04:51 PM

Originally Posted by MarkG
When the History Channel could no longer be called the Hitler Channel, television all but died for me.


Much of the good stuff is now on YouTube, like the old "Discovery Wings" programs. That was great TV, no fluff, no MTV music scores or fancy graphic / screen fades just original historic footage and factual information narrated, in some cases at least, by Peter Ustinov.
Posted By: EAF331 MadDog

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/18/20 06:36 PM

I think we can distinguish between shows that ran their course and those that was cancelled.

Cancelled shows will often have a bad ending since they might be cut off mid-story.
"Completed" shows have had a chance to tell their full story.

I think I'd supressed a lot of shows I felt ended badly, and just can't recall them very much - or it was shows I didn't care that much about to begin with smile
Posted By: NoFlyBoy

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/18/20 09:56 PM

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was cancelled by WB after 5 season and I think it ended great. The producers knew it was their final season so they made sure the 5th season was well written and done.

Then UPN bought it and ran it for 2 more seasons before cancelling it. Yes I am grateful for the 2 extra season but I think the UPN 7th season series finale of it was good but not as good as the WB 5th season series finale.

This is the WB 5th season series finale:




This is the UPN 7th season series finale, first with a small clip showing how they got there



Posted By: Nixer

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/19/20 12:48 AM

Oh no! Not Buffy...

What about those real life witches that pretended to be magical witches on TNT? (forgot the name, was forced to watch it like twice, banned it from the house)...Oh yeah, Charmed. Pure Garbage
Posted By: PanzerMeyer

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/19/20 10:53 PM

Maybe it’s my age demographic but I find it hard to comprehend why any male over the age of like 17 would have watched Buffy.
Posted By: Crane Hunter

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/19/20 11:34 PM

Originally Posted by PanzerMeyer
Maybe it’s my age demographic but I find it hard to comprehend why any male over the age of like 17 would have watched Buffy.


What if your girlfriend of the time was a huge Buffy fan, and insisted you watch it?
Posted By: PanzerMeyer

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/19/20 11:38 PM

Originally Posted by Crane Hunter
Originally Posted by PanzerMeyer
Maybe it’s my age demographic but I find it hard to comprehend why any male over the age of like 17 would have watched Buffy.


What if your girlfriend of the time was a huge Buffy fan, and insisted you watch it?


As they say, there are always a few exceptions to every rule. smile
Posted By: Nixer

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/19/20 11:46 PM

There is also ALWAYS something else to do besides watch TV.
Posted By: PanzerMeyer

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/20/20 01:13 PM

Originally Posted by F4UDash4
Originally Posted by MarkG
When the History Channel could no longer be called the Hitler Channel, television all but died for me.


Much of the good stuff is now on YouTube, like the old "Discovery Wings" programs. That was great TV, no fluff, no MTV music scores or fancy graphic / screen fades just original historic footage and factual information narrated, in some cases at least, by Peter Ustinov.



You make a very valid point and I don't really recall seeing too many promo spots for "Firefly" before it made its debut.


The most infamous example from Fox though is "Family Guy"; a show that Fox kept moving around different time slots until they finally cancelled it after I think the second season? Then Fox noticed the massive DVD sales for the show and decided to bring it back. How many seasons has it been out now? Over 20 I think.
Posted By: EAF331 MadDog

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/20/20 03:39 PM

I'll fully admit to watcing Buffy when it ran, I loved the show.
Posted By: NoFlyBoy

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/20/20 03:41 PM

Buffy is one of the best TV series ever!
Posted By: F4UDash4

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/20/20 04:26 PM

The only parts of Buffy I ever saw was while walking through the den while my wife was watching. No desire to see more than that either.
Posted By: NoFlyBoy

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/24/20 01:16 AM

The Mist. Only one season!
Posted By: Dart

Re: When good shows end badly. - 07/27/20 01:34 AM

Originally Posted by Nixer
Oh no! Not Buffy...

What about those real life witches that pretended to be magical witches on TNT? (forgot the name, was forced to watch it like twice, banned it from the house)...Oh yeah, Charmed. Pure Garbage


Hey, now, I would watch Charmed with the sound turned all the way down. Pretty hot.

smile
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