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10 Most Bizarre TV Series Finales In History
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00:00As the writers of Game of Thrones know all too well, it's difficult to write a final episode
00:05that satisfies everyone, or anybody in the case of that particular finale. It's especially
00:10difficult in an age of instant reaction on social media and endless fan theorizing. This list
00:16collects 10 of the weirdest endings for much-loved TV series that delighted, flummoxed, and horrified
00:22viewers. I'm Jess from WhatCulture and here are the 10 most bizarre TV series finales in history.
00:2810. Riker and Troy Upstaged the Crew of the Original Enterprise
00:34Enterprise is often cited as the show that killed the Star Trek franchise. Whilst poor ratings led to
00:40its cancellation, it's more likely that the burgeoning Abrams Trek universe made commissioning
00:45new TV series more complicated. A Star Trek episode to air on TV for 12 years. Due to a strange decision
00:55by writers Brannan Braga and Rick Berman, it was received poorly. In a well-meaning but ultimately
01:01misguided attempt to lovingly bring the franchise full circle, they decided to write the finale as
01:07a lost episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. To help him make an important decision, Will Riker
01:13seeks inspiration from a simulation of Captain Archer's final mission. The episode disappointed fans and
01:19irritated members of the cast, including the ship's captain.
01:23It was the only time Scott Bakula was mean to me, Braga later told a convention audience.
01:28It's not hard to see why everyone was frustrated either. After spending four years with the crew,
01:33we say goodbye to their holographic echoes rather than the characters themselves,
01:38whilst simultaneously being reminded of a superior Star Trek show.
01:42Number 9. The Little House on the Prairie Blows Up
01:45The Little House on the Prairie was a wholesome, all-American family series about the country's
01:51frontier spirit in the face of adversity. The official website talks of the themes of optimism,
01:56love, and joy, all of which is at odds with the series' final feature-length TV movie entitled
02:02The Last Farewell. This finale finds the residents of the tight-knit community of Walnut Grove
02:07faced with the grinding gears of Progress. Progress takes the form of a ruthless land grabber who
02:13claims the town is owned by his boss, a rich railroad tycoon. In protest against this,
02:18the townsfolk decide to blow up their own homes with dynamite, leaving the rich tycoon with nothing
02:24but dirt. After the destruction, the frontier folks simply move on to the next town to start all over
02:29again. The story goes that the dynamite plot was purely a practical decision on the part of the
02:34writer and the producer. As part of the agreement producer Kent McRae had in renting the land on
02:39which the set was built, he had to leave the place as he'd found it. The quickest way to do this,
02:44he and writer Michael Landon decided, was to just blow up the whole town.
02:49Number 8. Mulder and Scully's Miraculous Conception
02:52The original X-Files series finale in 2002 was a chaotic climax of nine seasons' worth of
02:59conspiracies. When the series came back in 2016, there was a hope that fans would get something
03:04more satisfying. The 11th season was loosely tied together by the search for their son,
03:09William, who wasn't their son at all. The season premiere had revealed him to be the son of Scully
03:14and the cigarette-smoking man, the result of a non-consensual science experiment conducted by
03:19the latter. William was technically Mulder's half-brother. The series ends with a blood-soaked
03:25finale that asked more questions than it answered. In 43 minutes, Skinner kills Ray's. The cigarette-smoking
03:31man presumably kills Skinner. Cigarette-smoking man kills William, believing him to be Mulder.
03:36Mulder kills the cigarette-smoking man. Scully reveals that she's miraculously pregnant. William
03:42is able to survive the shooting due to his regenerative abilities. It's a lot to take in.
03:47This was never intended as the very end of the X-Files, and Carter harbors hopes of a 12th season
03:52to build on the events he set up. Gillian Anderson has no intention to return, however,
03:56so for now, this brutal gunfight marks an abrupt ending for decades of mythology.
04:02Number 7
04:03The long-running Texan oil and cattle ranching drama Dallas ended in 1991 with a spectacularly
04:12out-there finale. It may have once revealed a whole season to have been a dream, but the final
04:17episode went several steps further. It begins with lead character J.R. Ewing drunken alone,
04:23contemplating suicide. He's visited by a spirit who shows him just how the world would have been
04:28if he'd never been born. In a direct lift from It's a Wonderful Life, J.R. and his guardian angel
04:33watch as his brother Bobby becomes a down-and-out, and his brother Gary runs the family business into
04:39the ground. It soon becomes clear that several people actually benefited from never having met J.R.
04:44His ex-wife becomes a highly successful actress, whilst a distant relation never learns of his
04:49connection to J.R. and lives a fulfilling family life. After these revelations, the guardian angel
04:54reveals himself to be a demon, and demands that J.R. kill himself to improve everyone's lives.
05:01Staring at this demon in the mirror, J.R. raises the gun to his head and we hear a gunshot ring out,
05:06his fate unknown. In a bizarre coincidence, a month later, David Lynch's subversive soap Twin Peaks
05:12also ended with the protagonist doing himself considerable harm in front of a mirror.
05:16Number 6. Beckett and Castle Die?
05:20Castle was always a bit of a tonal mishmash. It was a frothy, romantic comedy about a roguish
05:26crime writer and a steely detective that also featured grisly murders. It was basically
05:30moonlighting for the CSI generation. Once the series eventually paired Castle and Beckett,
05:35played by Nathan Fillion and Stanna Caddick, respectively, they had to find dramatic ways to
05:40challenge the relationship. Rather than infidelity or divorce, there were new careers, kidnappings,
05:46amnesia, and, in the final episode, a double shooting that left them both bleeding out on the
05:51floor of their apartment. This ending was originally intended as a cliffhanger that would have led into
05:56the ninth season. When the production team discovered that there would be no next season,
06:00they were granted permission to hastily insert an epilogue. Taking place seven years later,
06:04Castle and Beckett are seen to be enjoying breakfast with their three children, having apparently
06:09survived the shooting. Some fans reacted with frustration at the insulting happily-ever-after
06:14climax, whilst others pondered whether or not the ending was an idealized future dreamt up by two
06:19dying lovers. 5. Kenneth the Page is Immortal
06:24In the hands of any other writers than Robert Carlock and Tina Fey, the final scene of 30 Rock's
06:30last episode would have been an indulgence too far. Far from being a disaster, it's a meta gag that
06:35stays true to the show's absurdist streak. The final episode is fairly standard sitcom fare,
06:40or as standard as a show like 30 Rock can manage. Liz Lemon becomes a mother to two adopted kids,
06:46Jack Donaghy finds himself again, and production on TGS comes to an end. It's in the final coda to
06:51the episode that things get wonderfully weird. The new head of the network, Kenneth Parcell,
06:56is listening to a sitcom pitch from Ms. Lemon, based on the stories of her great-grandmother. Giving the
07:01audience a knowing look, Kenneth commissions the show, and the camera zooms out to reveal flying
07:06cars in the background. We're far in the future, and he hasn't aged a day. It's a very silly joke,
07:12but a brilliant payoff to one of 30 Rock's most enduring gags. That is, what's going on with
07:17Kenneth? Well, he's an immortal. An immortal who loves television.
07:214. St Elsewhere took place inside a child's mind
07:25The 1980s hospital drama St Elsewhere is best known for two things. Launching the career of
07:31Denzel Washington and unwittingly creating a sprawling fictional universe. Knowing that the
07:36show was to be cancelled, St Elsewhere's writing team pitched increasingly ridiculous ways to end
07:41the series with a bang. Possible endings included a nuclear bomb wiping out the hospital, whilst
07:46another had one character admit to assassinating JFK. The least bad option was that the St Elsewhere
07:52hospital was actually inside a child's snow globe. The characters and situations weren't real at all.
07:58They'd been thought up by young Thomas Westball. It's a daft ending, a Hail Mary by a departing
08:03writing team. However, it had extraordinary, unintended implications for the rest of network
08:09television. The show had alluded to several different shows whilst it was on the air.
08:13If St Elsewhere was invented by Thomas, then surely so would those other series.
08:17It's a mind-bending concept that, in essence, means that series as diverse as Cheers, The X-Files,
08:23The Wire, and Arrested Development all share the same fictional universe. When you look deeper into
08:28the Tommy-verse, it makes the MCU look like Amateur Hour.
08:32Number 3. The Dinosaurs Face the Ice Age
08:35Dinosaurs, a Jim Henson production for the ABC Network, was a popular family sitcom in the early
08:411990s. It's best described as a reverse Flintstones, with intelligent dinosaurs living domestic lives
08:47alongside Simpleton Cavemen. It ran for four seasons and playfully turned various sitcom
08:53conventions on their head by having them performed by a cast of dinosaur puppets.
08:57It's therefore a shock when the final episode of the show goes down an incredibly dark route.
09:03It begins normally enough with Earl the father trying to work the new barbecue,
09:07and ends with the family facing down their inevitable extinction. In a convoluted series of events,
09:13the local corporation and an unwitting Earl have inadvertently brought about an ice age with toxic
09:20pesticides and deforestation. The show's writers wanted to use the finale to educate the younger
09:25audience about humanity's own potential extinction event. Having been informed of the cancellation
09:30before writing the final series, creator Michael Jacobs felt that this was the only way to go.
09:35When you do a show about dinosaurs, he said, you always have that extinction card in your pocket.
09:40Number 2. Life on Mars Goes to Mars
09:43On paper, an American remake of the BBC's Life on Mars had legs. By transporting modern cop Sam Tyler
09:50back in time, the show explored the tropes and problematic aspects of both 1970s television and
09:56policing in the UK. A remake could do something similar with American attitudes to both policing
10:01and cop shows. After all, there are marked differences between the grimness of the Sweeney and
10:06the hip coolness of Starsky and Hutch. Despite featuring some impressive performances, the remake
10:11never took off and was cancelled after one season. In ending the series, the American writing team made
10:17a wild departure from creator Matthew Graham's original vision. Rather than reveal that Sam had been in
10:22a coma, they opted for something much more literal. The closing scenes of the series find Sam waking
10:28from hypersleep on the first manned mission to Mars. The 1973 cop show he's been inhabiting has been a
10:34simulation created by the ship's computer to keep him entertained on his long journey. His fellow
10:39cops were all members of the crew, including Gene Hunt, who's revealed to be Sam's estranged father.
10:44Now that's far out.
10:46Number 1. How I Met Your Mother Kills the Mother
10:49Yes, you saw this one coming. How I Met Your Mother's finale is notoriously controversial and
10:55regularly features in lists of the very worst season finales. After spending nine seasons and nearly a
11:02decade building up to Ted Mosby meeting his future wife Tracy, the season finale gives viewers exactly
11:07what they want. Then it does something crazy. It kills her. The show's final episode jumps through
11:1310 years of the characters' lives to reveal that Tracy died of an undisclosed illness after four years.
11:19To make matters worse, it's also revealed that the series' framing device, Ted's story to his teenage kids,
11:25hasn't been about the mother at all. It was all a means to seek their permission for him to get back together
11:30with his ex-girlfriend, Robin. The kids give their blessing and he runs off to be reunited with her.
11:35Creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas had conceived this finale during production on the second series.
11:40Eight years of speculation and emotional investment later, it just feels gross, as we're told rather
11:46than shown, that Ted has grieved Tracy's abrupt death for six years. And the closing scene of him
11:51arriving at the doorstep of the one who got away isn't the big romantic ending the show thinks that it is.
11:56That's the end of our list, but do let me know down in that comment section if you can think of any
12:01more bizarre TV series finales that deserve a spot on this list. As always, I've been Jess from
12:07WhatCulture. Thank you so much for hanging out with me. If you like, you can come say hi to me on my
12:11Twitter account where I'm at JessMcDonald, but make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more great lists.
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