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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.
00:2910. Riker and Troy Upstaged the Crew of the Original Enterprise
00:33Enterprise 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 Brannan 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,
01:38while 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 writer
02:35and the producer. As part of the agreement producer Kent McRae had in renting the land on which the
02:39set 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
03:30smoking man presumably kills Skinner. Cigarette smoking man kills William, believing him to be
03:36Mulder. Mulder kills the cigarette smoking man. Scully reveals that she's miraculously pregnant.
03:41William is 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
03:52season to 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
04:06The 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 episode
04:17went several steps further. It begins with lead character JR Ewing drunken alone, contemplating
04:23suicide. He's visited by a spirit who shows him just how the world would have been if he'd never
04:28been born. In a direct lift from It's a Wonderful Life, JR and his guardian angel watch as his brother
04:34Bobby becomes a down-and-out, and his brother Gary runs the family business into the ground. It soon
04:40becomes clear that several people actually benefited from never having met JR. His ex-wife becomes a
04:45highly successful actress whilst a distant relation never learns of his connection to JR and lives a
04:51fulfilling family life. After these revelations, the guardian angel reveals himself to be a demon
04:56and demands that JR kill himself to improve everyone's lives. Staring at this demon in the
05:02mirror, JR raises the gun to his head and we hear a gunshot ring out, his fate unknown. In a
05:08bizarre
05:08coincidence, a month later, David Lynch's subversive soap Twin Peaks also ended with the protagonist doing
05:14himself considerable harm in front of a mirror. Number 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 Fillon 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 floor of
05:51their apartment. This ending was originally intended as a cliffhanger that would have led into the ninth
05:56season. When the production team discovered that there would be no next season, they were granted
06:00permission to hastily insert an epilogue. Taking place seven years later, Castle and Beckett are seen
06:06to be enjoying breakfast with their three children, having apparently survived the shooting. Some fans
06:10reacted with frustration at the insulting happily ever after climax, whilst others pondered whether
06:16or not the ending was an idealized future dreamt up by two dying lovers. Number 5. Kenneth the Page is
06:23immortal. In 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 stays
06:36true to the show's absurdist streak. The final episode is fairly standard sitcom fare, or as standard as a
06:41show like 30 Rock can manage. Liz Lemon becomes a mother to two adopted kids, Jack Donaghy finds himself
06:47again, and production on TGS comes to an end. It's in the final coda to the episode that things get
06:53wonderfully weird. The new head of the network, Kenneth Parcell, is listening to a sitcom pitch from
06:58Ms. Lemon, based on the stories of her great-grandmother. Giving the audience a knowing look, Kenneth commissions the
07:03show, and the camera zooms out to reveal flying cars in the background. We're far in the future
07:09and he hasn't aged a day. It's a very silly joke, but a brilliant payoff to one of 30 Rock's
07:14most
07:14enduring gags. That is, what's going on with Kenneth? Well, he's an immortal. An immortal who loves
07:19television. Number 4. Saint Elsewhere took place inside a child's mind. The 1980s hospital drama Saint
07:27Elsewhere is best known for two things. Launching the career of Denzel Washington, and unwittingly
07:33creating a sprawling fictional universe. Knowing that the show was to be cancelled,
07:37Saint Elsewhere's writing team pitched increasingly ridiculous ways to end the series with a bang.
07:42Possible endings included a nuclear bomb wiping out the hospital, whilst another had one character
07:47admit to assassinating JFK. The least bad option was that the Saint Elsewhere hospital was actually
07:53inside a child's snow globe. The characters and situations weren't real at all. They'd been
07:58brought up by young Thomas Westball. It's a daft ending, a Hail Mary by a departing writing team.
08:04However, it had extraordinary unintended implications for the rest of network television.
08:10The show had alluded to several different shows whilst it was on the air. If Saint Elsewhere was
08:14invented 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,
08:29it 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 conventions
08:53on their head by having them performed by a cast of dinosaur puppets. It's therefore a shock when
08:59the 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
09:09their inevitable extinction. In a convoluted series of events, the local corporation and an unwitting Earl
09:16have inadvertently 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
09:27own potential extinction event. Having been informed of the cancellation before writing the
09:31final series, creator Michael Jacobs felt that this was the only way to go. When you do a show
09:36about 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
09:56and policing 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 off
10:12and 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
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 cops were all
10:39members of the crew, including Gene Hunt, who's revealed to be Sam's estranged father. Now 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 regularly
10:56features in lists of the very worst season finales. After spending nine seasons and nearly a decade building
11:03up to Ted Mosby meeting his future wife Tracy, the season finale gives viewers exactly what they want.
11:08Then it does something crazy. It kills her. The show's final episode jumps through ten years of the
11:14characters' lives to reveal that Tracy died of an undisclosed illness after four years. To make matters worse,
11:20it's also revealed that the series' framing device, Ted's story to his teenage kids, hasn't been about the
11:26mother at all. It was all a means to seek their permission for him to get back together with his
11:30ex-girlfriend
11:31Robin. The kids give their blessing and he runs off to be reunited with her. Creators Carter Bays and
11:36Craig Thomas had conceived this finale during production on the second series. Eight years of
11:41speculation and emotional investment later, it just feels gross as we're told rather than shown that
11:47Ted has grieved Tracy's abrupt death for six years and the closing scene of him arriving at the doorstep
11:52of 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
12:00of any
12:01more bizarre TV series finales that deserve a spot on this list. As always, I've been Jess from
12:06WhatCulture. Thank you so much for hanging out with me. If you like, you can come say hi to me
12:11on 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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