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Talk about bookending a story.
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00:00The long-running nature of some TV shows means that earlier and latter seasons become completely
00:05different beasts. Some characters are elevated from recurring status to being essentially co-leads,
00:11whereas original leads become bit players or leave the show altogether. That said,
00:15what about characters who leave the show after the pilot has aired and return for the series finale?
00:20I'm Sy, this is WhatCulture.com and these are 10 TV characters who only appear in the first
00:25and last episode. Number 10, John, Parks and Recreation. The early 21st century saw the rise
00:33of documentary style comedies with tongue-in-cheek tones and while some achieved relative success,
00:38almost none, aside from The Office, achieved the notoriety that Parks and Recreation did across
00:43its seven season run. Its main casts were definitely the big draw but its cameos had their own appeal as
00:50well, ranging from Joe Biden to John Cena and even Genuine. One cameo, however, served a unique
00:56narrative purpose, despite not being as prominent as the aforementioned. During the core cast's
01:02farewell in the finale, a man walks into the park's department office and asks if a broken swing in
01:07the park would be fixed. In addition to giving Leslie one last act as deputy director, the man,
01:12played by John Daly, was featured in the pilot as an inebriated drunk who Leslie tried to get out
01:17of the park's slide. Daly's character evolution from a humorous slob to a concerned citizen was a
01:23heartwarming display of how much Pawnee and its people had grown since the show's beginning.
01:28Number 9, Deliveryman, Frasier. The Cheers spin-off enjoyed as much praise and notoriety as its
01:35predecessor and gave Kelsey Grammer's Fraser Crane a chance to start over in his hometown of Seattle
01:41as a radio show host alongside being caretaker to his father after he left Boston following the end
01:47of his marriage to Lilith. His eponymous radio show served as an interesting narrative device that
01:52helped differentiate the show from Cheers and gave it a different style of comedy due to Crane's high
01:57society-minded, also known as stuffy, sensibilities having more time to shine. This mindset often clashed
02:04with his father Martin's working-class sensibilities in multiple episodes and one could argue that their
02:10initial misunderstandings were embodied by Martin's rather off-putting Eames chair, a source of comedic
02:17jabs throughout the show's run. That said, the chair is tied to a minor role most fans missed until
02:22years after Frasier ran its course. The deliveryman who brought the chair in is the same person who
02:28picks up the chair in the finale. Played by the late Cleo Augusto, his appearances demonstrate how much
02:33Martin and Frasier's relationship has changed over the years for the better.
02:39Number eight, Josh Wilson, Weeds. The mid-2000s Showtime dramedy may have gone out with a whimper,
02:46but for a time in its first few seasons, Weeds was a compelling, sometimes uneven and darkly humorous
02:52exploration of Nazi Botwin's venture into selling marijuana to support her family after her husband's
02:58untimely demise. A large number of characters came and went across its run, and while some characters had
03:03completed arcs by the time they left the show, others were not afforded this luxury. This is the
03:08case with Justin Chatwin's Josh Wilson, son of Nealon's dim-witted Doug Wilson. The eldest Wilson
03:14child was introduced in the pilot as a pot dealer, and once Nancy discovered that he sold the drug to
03:19children, she threatened to out his sexuality to his father. After the pilot, the character was not seen
03:24to the series finale, where it was revealed that he eventually became a lawyer and married a painter
03:29named Alan. Once Weeds was picked up for a full season, it was revealed that some contracts were
03:34not renewed, and this included Chatwin's explaining his disappearance from the rest of the show.
03:40Number seven, Yori Nakajima, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier didn't
03:46quite live up to its lofty expectations, but still delivered a mostly interesting exploration of
03:51America's deeply flawed socio-political structure, and the dynamic between the titular duo was both fun to
03:57watch, and emotionally satisfying. Sam and Bucky each got detailed arcs throughout the six episode
04:02run, and as much as Sam's had more focus, Bucky's was impactful in a more personal fashion. The former
04:08Hydra assassin had intentions to make amends for his past crimes throughout the season, and although his
04:14approach lacked grace in most of his interactions, his friendship with Yori Nakajima was a nice bit of
04:19humanizing for the super soldier. Unfortunately, it's revealed that the friendship was born out of
04:24Bucky's desire to atone for his role in killing Yori's son, RJ. As seen in the pilot, this loss
04:30hardened Yori, and his friendship with Bucky was one of the few things the Elder held in any regard.
04:35In the show's final episode, Bucky came clean to Yori, and whilst this meant that Bucky had completed
04:40this part of his atonement journey, the revelation visibly hurt Yori. His role in the show may have been
04:46minor, but it showed Bucky and the audience the fallout of his past actions, as involuntary as they may have
04:52been. Number six, Tom Hanks. Sort of. Veep. HBO's satirical comedy was a roaring success and helped
05:00solidify Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a comedic icon for those who may not have experienced or grown up
05:06with Seinfeld during its run. Her role as Vice President Selina Meyer saw the VP being pitted
05:11against the off-screen President Hughes, as her attempts to gain political influence, and the hurdles
05:16facing this, became more and more amusing. The show itself was hilarious and incisive with its
05:21political commentary and managed to keep its high quality throughout its run with intriguing
05:26storylines, great character work, and guest appearances. One such appearance, in a figurative
05:31sense of the word, was beloved actor Tom Hanks, whose potential death was discussed in the pilot
05:36as an event that would detract from VP Meyer's very public use of an offensive word. It seemed like a
05:42throwaway joke, but actually pays off in the series finale. Here, in a 24-year flash-forward,
05:48Hanks is revealed to have died and his passing overshadows Selina's own. It served as a perfectly
05:54hilarious summary of Selina's character, a person whose wins were often short-lived or overshadowed
06:00by other notable events. Number five, The Cloud Nine Baby Superstore. NPC's recently concluded sitcom
06:08experienced some growing pains early in its run, but was able to eventually fine-tune its storyline and
06:14ensemble to deliver a wholesome and heartwarming peek into the lives of the Cloud Nine employees and
06:19their lives outside of the chain store. Some may have balked at its your workmates are your family
06:24members approach in several instances, but the show was savvy enough to have a lot more on its mind
06:29rather than banal HR proclamations. It was able to be critical of the challenges and inequities in the
06:35workplace and still foster genuine relationships between its characters. Its series finale luckily stuck the
06:41landing by adhering to what was so endearing in the first place while being topical at the same time.
06:46In addition to this, its callbacks to earlier seasons and episodes were pleasant in their
06:50retrospective approach. One such callback is Amy's encounter of an unsupervised child sitting on a potty
06:56in one of the store's aisles. It turns out that this is the same child, and in a similar outfit
07:00from
07:01the pilot, only much older. It's an amusing moment that serves as a nostalgic source of comfort or
07:06nightmare fuel for actual retail workers before the cast eventually moved on to other phases
07:11in their lives. 4. Anatoly Sitnikov, Chernobyl
07:17Although a good number of artistic licenses were taken in the Chernobyl miniseries, its depiction of
07:22the horror and desperation following the worst nuclear disaster in history made for both compelling
07:27and harrowing viewing upon its release in 2019. It wisely took a restrained approach to said depiction
07:33in a way that didn't paint caricatures of the people involved but also ensured that the terrifying
07:37scale of the disaster was understood by viewers who may have only had a cursory understanding of
07:42what happened in 1986. This was seen in the treatment of main characters such as, and I'm going to
07:48butcher these, Valery Legasov and Vasily Ignatenko, as well as minor ones. One such individual was
07:54Anatoly Sitnikov, the power plant's deputy chief operational engineer, who took note of the immediate
07:59scale of the devastation following the plant's meltdown. Unfortunately, he was ignored by his
08:04superiors at first until it became clear that Anatoly Dyatlov, the station's chief engineer,
08:09was ill following extensive radiation exposure. Against his will, Sitnikov inspected the fallout of
08:15the exploded reactor and was bombarded by a lethal dose of radiation. He was later seen in a flashback
08:21in the last episode that detailed everyday life in Pripyat before the accident that would change his life
08:26alongside many others for the worse. Number three, Nancy Ryan, When They See Us.
08:32Released in 2019, When They See Us received near-unanimous praise from viewers and critics
08:38alike for its uncompromising depiction of the injustices the Central Park Five endured after
08:43being falsely prosecuted and imprisoned for the 1989 assault of jogger Trisha Melly. The case,
08:49and consequently the show, is a seminal example of the devastating impact racial and class criminal
08:55profiling has on people of colour and or working class individuals. One character that both bookended
09:01the crime drama and signalled the shift towards achieving the Five's freedom was the assistant
09:05district attorney Nancy Ryan. Played by Famke Janssen, the assistant DA was initially assigned to the
09:11case when it was believed that Mele would die from her injuries. Once this was determined to not be so,
09:16the case was assigned to now controversial prosecutor Linda Fairstein. Years later, in 2002, Ryan and New York
09:23DA Robert Morgenthau began the process that would see the Five exonerated after sufficient evidence
09:28was provided to prove their innocence. Ryan's part in the miniseries is understandably not its focal
09:33point, but Janssen acquitted herself well as one of the driving forces that gave the Five their freedom back.
09:40Number two, Freddie Hammid, The Night Manager. The 2016 adaptation of John Le Carr's first post-Cold
09:46War novel honoured the source material by respecting its espionage roots while adding its own spin on the
09:52narrative. This led to a well-told six-episode saga and one of the best adaptations of Le Carr's work
09:57in
09:58any medium. Tom Hiddleston's Jonathan Pine may be the series lead but he wasn't forced to carry the show
10:04as he was more than capably aided by the likes of David Harewood and a rarely better Hugh Laurie as
10:09series antagonist Richard Roper. The simmering conflict between Pine and Roper is driven by the
10:14involvement of the volatile hotel owner Freddie Hammid and his partner Sophie Alekin. Sophie
10:20immediately sees Jonathan as an ally in her mission to bring down Hammid by exposing his dealings with
10:25criminals such as Roper. Unfortunately this was her undoing as Hammid found out about their budding
10:31relationship and assaulted Sophie before having her killed. Her death sees Pine's further involvement
10:36with bringing down Roper and in the final episode the hotelier slash former spy enacts his vengeance
10:42by killing Hammid once he learns the reason behind Sophie's death.
10:47And number one, Vera Keller, The Pacific. Although not quite as gripping as Band of Brothers and
10:53admittedly that's a high bar to clear, The Pacific still delivered the requisite heart, wartime thrills
10:59and introspective storytelling one would expect in an HBO prestige drama backed by the likes of Steven
11:05Spielberg and Tom Hanks. As its title suggests, the miniseries focused on the United States Marine Corps'
11:11actions in the Pacific War, i.e. the section of World War II that was largely fought on territories
11:16surrounding the Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean to a limited degree. Despite this wide narrative scope,
11:22the show was still able to focus on a core cast of characters, one of them being Private Robert
11:27Leckie as played by James Badge Dale. One of his most defining traits was his relationship with his childhood
11:33friend slash first love Vera Keller. Despite her mother's warnings, Vera grew closer to the rebellious
11:38Leckie until his eventual draft into the war following the Pearl Harbor tragedy. Despite her limited
11:43appearances, Vera's romance with Robert was one of the series' stronger emotional components and
11:48symbolized what every soldier had gone overseas to protect.
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