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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. Whatever the truth, 2005's finale was the last Star Trek episode to air
00:52on TV for 12 years. Due to a strange decision by writers Brannon Braga and Rick Berman, it was
00:58received poorly. In a well-meaning but ultimately misguided attempt to lovingly bring the franchise
01:04full circle, they decided to write the finale as a lost episode of Star Trek The Next Generation.
01:10To help him make an important decision, Will Riker seeks inspiration from a simulation of Captain
01:15Archer's final mission. The episode disappointed fans and irritated members of the cast, including
01:22the ship's captain. It was the only time Scott Bakula was mean to me, Braga later told a convention
01:27audience. It's not hard to see why everyone was frustrated either. After spending four years with
01:33the crew, we say goodbye to their holographic echoes rather than the characters themselves,
01:37while 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 faced with
02:08the grinding gears of progress. Progress takes the form of a ruthless land grabber who claims the
02:13town is owned by his boss, a rich railroad tycoon. In protest against this, the townsfolk decide to
02:19blow up their own homes with dynamite, leaving the rich tycoon with nothing but dirt. After the
02:25destruction, the frontier folks simply move on to the next town to start all over again. The story goes
02:30that the dynamite plot was purely a practical decision on the part of the writer and the producer.
02:35As part of the agreement producer Kent McRae had in renting the land on which the set was built,
02:40he had to leave the place as he'd found it. The quickest way to do this, he and writer Michael
02:45Landon decided, was to just blow up the whole town. Number 8. Mulder and Scully's Miraculous
02:52Conception The original X-Files series finale in 2002 was a chaotic climax of nine seasons' worth
02:59of conspiracies. When the series came back in 2016, there was a hope that fans would get something more
03:05satisfying. The 11th season was loosely tied together by the search for their son, William,
03:10who wasn't their son at all. The season premiere had revealed him to be the son of Scully and the
03:14cigarette-smoking man, the result of a non-consensual science experiment conducted by the latter.
03:20William was technically Mulder's half-brother. The series ends with a blood-soaked finale that
03:25asked more questions than it answered. In 43 minutes, Skinner kills Raze, the cigarette-smoking man
03:31presumably 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
05:19Castle 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,
05:45kidnappings, amnesia, and, in the final episode, a double shooting that left them both bleeding out
05:50on the floor of their apartment. This ending was originally intended as a cliffhanger that would
05:55have led into the 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
06:08apparently survived 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. Number 5. Kenneth the Page is immortal. In the hands of any other writers than Robert Carlock
06:27and Tina Fey, the final scene of 30 Rock's last episode would have been an indulgence too far. Far from
06:33being a disaster, it's a meta gag that stays true to the show's absurdist streak. The final episode is
06:39fairly standard sitcom fare, or as standard as a show like 30 Rock can manage. Liz Lemon becomes a
06:44mother to two adopted kids, Jack Donaghy finds himself again, and production on TGS comes to an
06:50end. It's in the final coda to the episode that things get wonderfully weird. The new head of the
06:55network, Kenneth Parcell, is listening to a sitcom pitch from Ms. Lemon, based on the stories of her
07:00great-grandmother. Giving the audience a knowing look, Kenneth commissions the show, and the camera
07:04zooms out to reveal flying cars in the background. We're far in the future, and he hasn't aged a day.
07:10It's a very silly joke, but a brilliant payoff to one of 30 Rock's most enduring gags. That is,
07:16what's going on with Kenneth? Well, he's an immortal. An immortal who loves television.
07:21Number 4. Saint Elsewhere took place inside a child's mind.
07:25The 1980s hospital drama Saint 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, Saint 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 another
07:46had one character admit to assassinating JFK. The least bad option was that the Saint Elsewhere
07:52was 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. If Saint Elsewhere
08:14was invented by Thomas, then surely so would those other series. It's a mind-bending concept that,
08:19in essence, means that series as diverse as Cheers, The X-Files, The Wire, and Arrested Development
08:25all share the same fictional universe. When you look deeper into the Tommyverse, it makes the MCU
08:30look like Amateur Hour. Number 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. It's therefore a
08:58shock when the final episode of the show goes down an incredibly dark route. It begins normally enough
09:04with Earl the father trying to work the new barbecue, and ends with the family facing down their
09:10inevitable extinction. In a convoluted series of events, the local corporation and an unwitting Earl have
09:16inadvertently brought about an ice age with toxic pesticides and deforestation.
09:22The show's writers wanted to use the finale to educate the younger audience about humanity's own
09:27potential extinction event. Having been informed of the cancellation before writing the final series,
09:32creator Michael Jacobs felt that this was the only way to go. When you do a show about dinosaurs,
09:37he 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 the hip
10:06coolness of Starsky and Hutch. Despite featuring some impressive performances, the remake never took
10:12off and was cancelled after one season. In ending the series, the American writing team made a wild
10:18departure from creator Matthew Graham's original vision. Rather than reveal that Sam had been in a
10:23coma, they opted for something much more literal. The closing scenes of the series find Sam waking from
10:28hypersleep 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 cops
10:39were 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 character's lives to reveal that Tracy died of an undisclosed illness after four
11:19years. To make matters worse, it's also revealed that the series' framing device, Ted's story to his
11:24teenage kids, hasn't been about the mother at all. It was all a means to seek their permission for
11:29him to get back together with his ex-girlfriend Robin. The kids give their blessing and he runs
11:33off to be reunited with her. Creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas had conceived this finale
11:38during production on the second series. Eight years of speculation and emotional investment later,
11:43it just feels gross, as we're told rather than shown, that Ted has grieved Tracy's abrupt death
11:48for six years. And the closing scene of him arriving at the doorstep of the one who got away
11:53isn't the big romantic ending the show thinks that it is. That's the end of our list, but do let me
11:58know down in that comment section if you can think of any more bizarre TV series finales that deserve
12:04a spot on this list. As always, I've been Jess from WhatCulture. Thank you so much for hanging out
12:09with me. If you like, you can come say hi to me on my Twitter account where I'm at JessMcDonald,
12:13but make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more great lists.
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