Tuesdays with Tom: The Worst TV Finales We've Ever Seen
We re-live some of the worst endings in television history, plus thoughts on The Rehearsal, Secretariat and a farewell to Skype
Watching a long-running TV series is a major time investment — kind of like buying stocks. The more you invest, the more emotionally tied you become to the outcome. It can be very rewarding to see something from the ground up become a lifetime achievement. But there’s a flip side to that coin. Sometimes, the years and years spent watching a show can end with bitter disappointment. The stock suddenly goes bust.
Television creators are constantly battling with paradoxical demands. TV is an inherently open-ended medium, valued for how long it can continue and how reliably it delivers. But audiences have shifted. They want shows to stick the landing and to tie up loose ends. Terrible TV endings often spark more emotion than bad movie endings because of the increased time spent with the story.
We remember terrible TV finales more than almost anything in the entertainment sector. There’s a long list of candidates that most agree failed to wrap up their story with any success. For this list, I prioritized shows that I’ve personally seen. But I made a few exceptions because frankly, just reading about some of these finales made me cringe and laugh simultaneously. I can only imagine how much worse it felt for people who did watch those shows. But fear not. I have plenty of experience being on the receiving end of an all-time bad TV finale.
(Spoilers ahead, but they're part of the fun when we're dissecting these implosions)
10. Scrubs
Context: Scrubs already had a great finale in the books. When Scrubs moved to ABC in its eighth season, “My Finale” gave a fond send-off to every major Scrubs character and a beautiful montage that suggested a happy ending for them. But seven months later, the show returned for a semi-rebooted ninth season called Scrubs: Med School. With only Dr. Cox and Turk returning as mainstay characters, it was a hollow shell of Scrubs that pleased no one.
Conclusion: Scrubs: Med School bore little resemblance to the original Scrubs, other than lesser attempts at the quirky humor it curated over eight years. “Our Finale” didn’t resolve anything or offer new perspectives on the original characters. It just sort of stopped.
Aftermath: As an individual series finale, Scrubs: Med School isn’t as offensive or maligned as others. But as a whole, the final stretch was bland and forgettable. It’s easier to pretend it doesn’t exist at all.
9. Entourage
Context: HBO’s Hollywood bros fantasy series never pretended to be high brow entertainment with grand conclusions in mind. But after eight years on the air, it was fair to wonder where Vinnie Chase and the boys would end up after all their escapades together. The answer ended up being a lot more boring than Entourage ever was at its best.
Conclusion: The final episode succumbs to every single finale cliché in the book and treats its characters with an amnesiac touch. Vince marries a woman he barely knows. E gets back with a pregnant Sloan. Ari decides he cares about his family more than his career. Turtle gets bailed out (again!). Entourage suddenly became sappy. In a post credits scene, Ari gets offered to run a movie studio. Just when you thought they were done, the boys were already back.
Aftermath: Like a lot of Hollywood properties, Entourage couldn’t resist the siren song of cash. The Entourage movie arrived four years later. It effectively erased everything about the show’s finale. I’d argue the movie was an even dumber way to exit, but it was thematically appropriate. This show’s shocking longevity is living proof that nothing is ever really over if there’s money on the table.
8. Shameless
Context: Even though the show’s leading lady, Emmy Rossum, left Shameless after its ninth season, Showtime made two more seasons without her. Like its male protagonist, Frank Gallagher, Shameless found new and increasingly ridiculous ways to stay alive. It finally came to a close in 2021 with the 11th season.
Conclusion: After all the insanely convoluted ways Frank managed to survive, he finally dies from…COVID-19? Talk about underwhelming. The finale “Father Frank, Full of Grace” spends far more time with him than it does with the rest of the cast. There was no closure on the rest of the many, many storylines with the Gallagher clan. And worst of all, Fiona didn’t show up. She isn’t even mentioned in the final episode.
Aftermath: Shameless was about a family surviving in spite of their awful father, but somehow it chose to die with its most despicable character as the focus. I’m just glad that I avoided witnessing this stinker with my own eyes.
7. House of Cards
Context: Netflix changed the paradigm of television when they produced House of Cards, a prestige thriller about ruthlessly ambitious politicians, played by Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. The series launched Netflix as an original programming studio. In 2017, Kevin Spacey was fired from House of Cards due to several allegations of sexual assault. Netflix decided to conclude the show without Spacey across one final eight episode season.
Conclusion: Frank Underwood is killed offscreen with little explanation at the beginning of this final season. But even in his physical absence, House of Cards couldn’t escape Frank’s shadow. Claire Underwood’s presidential season was undercooked and silly. The final scene is the most preposterous of all. Claire clears out the Oval Office for a showdown with friend-turned-foe Doug Stamper. His foolhardy assassination attempt ends with a pregnant Claire killing him. Murder…inside the White House!
Aftermath: Truthfully, House of Cards stopped being good long before Spacey was removed from the show. But the final season unraveled so badly that it poisoned the series’ overall perception. They should have let this show die when Kevin Spacey’s career did.
6. St. Elsewhere
Context: St. Elsewhere was one of the most popular medical dramas of the 1980s. The series featured several future stars, including Howie Mandel, Ed Begley Jr., and Denzel Washington. It ran for six seasons on NBC before arriving at the final episode, titled “The Last One”.
Conclusion: After 137 episodes of doctors saving lives and rewarding character relationships, the closing moments of St. Elsewhere locked in on Dr. Donald Westphall, his father and his autistic son. Donald, dressed in construction attire, laments that he doesn’t fully understand his son’s autism. Meanwhile, the son is entirely focused on a snow globe. They leave the room and the camera slowly zooms into the snow globe. Inside of it rests a replica of St. Elsewhere, implying that the entire series was a figment of his imagination.
Aftermath: This finale reveal is so deliriously funny that I’m vicariously upset for St. Elsewhere viewers. Wiping away an elaborate medical TV series as an autistic boy’s daydream is quite a way to go out.
5. True Detective: Night Country
Context: After a five-year hiatus from True Detective, HBO swapped out original creator Nic Pizzolatto for Mexican filmmaker Issa López to take a crack at the anthology series about pairs of fiery detectives. In this fourth season, the show focused on two female detectives in the frigid, fictional town of Ennis, Alaska. This was a large departure from previous True Detective seasons. Initially, True Detective: Night Country showed some promise, including the mysterious deaths of Ennis native Annie Kowtok and eight Alaskan researchers. But as the season progressed, the narrative fell apart at the seams.
Conclusion: It was heavily implied that a supernatural spirit pulled the strings of all these deadly events in Ennis. To quote Maury Povich, THAT was a lie! In a flashback, we learn that Annie touched some tubes that allegedly contained world-changing research and the scientists immediately committed to murdering her. The research station’s janitorial staff implausibly uncovers this and swiftly plots revenge. They storm the station with guns, force the scientists to strip naked into a freezing cold death, and stage this faux-mystical massacre. The conspiratorial janitors plainly confess all this to Liz Danvers and Evangeline Navarro, who agree to keep up this deadly secret. After persistent suggestions that Navarro’s character was suicidal, her fate is left open-ended.
Aftermath: In the end, these “true detectives” become big fat liars. They torpedo their police careers with an unsolved mass murder and a pretty suspicious cover story. Why? Because apparently if you’re a plucky group of indigenous women, vigilante murder is okay! The spiritual aspects and connections to previous True Detective seasons never paid off and retrospectively felt like lazy ways to keep fans invested in this story. Despite this poor conclusion, True Detective will return with Lopez running the show again. Unlike HBO and Night Country supporters, I’ve had enough. “It was the janitors all along” -- now that’s funny!
4. Lost
Context: Lost mesmerized audiences with its amazing mystery and memorable cast of characters. The central question was built into the title. How would the stranded survivors of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 make it home? And where were they? Over six seasons, Lost offered lots of tantalizing possibilities to explain how these people ended up on this mysterious island.
Conclusion: The Lost finale is best known for its near total lack of conclusion. It didn’t offer many answers and essentially told viewers that Lost wasn’t about its core mystery. It was about the “friends we made along the way” - perhaps the most maddening iteration of the Worthless Treasure twist in television history. A more literal interpretation is that everyone died on the island, but waited for each other in purgatory so they could go to heaven together. I’m not sure if that’s any better.
Aftermath: Lost became a cautionary tale for TV writers: a gripping mystery that left too many questions unanswered and too many fans feeling cheated. Lost executive producer Damon Lindelof remains haunted by the finale. It’s ironic that a series called Lost ended up losing the plot of its own story.
3. Game of Thrones
Context: The rabid popularity of Game of Thrones hit a ridiculous peak during its eighth season in 2019. Fans were particularly fascinated to see how Game of Thrones would land the plane because George R.R. Martin still hasn’t published the series’ final book, The Winds of Winter. HBO showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss got Martin’s blessing to finish his story on screen. The final two seasons were split into seven and six episode chunks across two years.
Conclusion: After the shocking and abrupt destruction of King’s Landing, Jon Snow kills Daenerys Targaryen, his aunt-turned-lover, setting up a peculiar chain of events in “The Iron Throne”, the series’ final episode. Later, a council led by Tyrion Lannister decides to name Bran Stark the new king of the realm. Jon is exiled to The Wall (again!) and the remaining characters embark under Bran’s leadership to rebuild Westeros.
Aftermath: I defended this finale at the time, but I’ve come out of the fog. This was a huge disappointment. There are many confounding aspects of each major character’s endpoint. But the biggest blunder to me is Bran Stark ending up on the Iron Throne. Really? A character whose entire arc revolved around him becoming a mystical, omnipresent and notably uninvolved observer becomes the king? It’s equally frustrating watching Jon Snow end up back at square one after all that. And while it wasn’t part of the actual finale, the White Walkers storyline went bust rather quickly. I still think Game of Thrones is one of the best shows ever made, but the final seasons felt rushed and inconsiderate. Given how beloved and popular this show was, it’s arguably the most disappointing finale ever.
2. How I Met Your Mother
Context: How I Met Your Mother was about Ted Mosby finding a wife and his re-telling of that journey to his two kids. The CBS sitcom milked this plot device for 208 episodes, with lots of wacky adventures between Ted, Barney, Robin, Marshall and Lily in New York City. The long-awaited mother arrived in the penultimate season finale, and fans spent all of the ninth season watching Ted and Tracy delightfully reach their destiny.
Conclusion: After nine years of Ted’s perseverance to meet his soulmate, fans watched her die only moments after they’re married on screen. Then, Ted reveals his ulterior motive. He just wants his kids’ approval to date their Aunt Robin. Ted returns to Robin with a blue french horn, a direct parallel to the pilot, signaling a reunion that’s so ill-fitting and nonsensical that it pretty much ruined the show.
Aftermath: Think about this — the creators were committed to this for seven years. They filmed the finale scene with Ted’s kids during season two to avoid aging them out of the roles. From there, I’ll let you decide what is the dumbest part of the HIMYM finale. Is it the tragic and abrupt death of Tracy? Is it Robin, Ted’s close friend/ex-girlfriend/ex-wife of his best friend, entertaining another relationship with him? Is it this friend group surviving a love triangle and divorce? Or said divorce happening off screen to accommodate a predetermined reunion? By intentionally boxing themselves into this idiotic ending, they doomed the titular mother character before she ever arrived. This is the rare case where a hokey, sentimental finale would have been far more welcoming than what actually unfolded.
1. Dexter
Context: Showtime struck gold with Dexter, an unorthodox series about a serial killer working as a Miami police blood spatter analyst. At the show’s core, Dexter was about one man’s internal struggle with his murderous cravings, while trying to blend into society without being caught. His sociopathic personality is channeled through a rigorous moral code created by his adopted father. Over the years, Dexter Morgan’s philosophy and deadly secret are tested by various people. But by the final season of Dexter, the show took its lead character in a direction so unexpected, it made fans question everything they’d ever learned about him.
Conclusion: In “Remember The Monsters?”, Dexter swiftly disassembles its main character and everyone important to him. His sister Deb unintentionally becomes his last victim, left brain dead in a hospital. He leaves his son Harrison with Hannah McKay, another serial killer, who flees to Argentina. Dexter steals his sister’s corpse and dumps her into the ocean. Then, he races his boat into an active hurricane and appears to commit suicide. But no! The final scene shows a bearded Dexter working as a lumberjack in Oregon. He faked his death to distance himself from his girlfriend and son. No one in Miami ever discovers that he’s a serial killer. It ends with him staring into the abyss.
Aftermath: A dozen years later, I’m still stewing over how badly Dexter botched its original finale. For what it’s worth, they seem hellbent on revising it. Two sequel series have been produced, Dexter: New Blood and the upcoming Dexter: Resurrection. Showtime also made a Dexter prequel series, Dexter: Original Sin. Are any of these better? I’ll never know because I refuse to revisit Dexter. Dexter’s behavior in his final days on screen was disrespectfully out of character. It was a complete gut punch to longtime fans and the outrageous leaps it took in “Remember the Monsters?” were instantly reviled. I’ve never felt more betrayed as a television fan and I hope I never feel that way again.
Tom’s Thoughts of the Week
In the last two episodes of Friday Night Beers, we reviewed Tsingtao and Trail Pass IPA. Tsingtao is the No. 1 Chinese beer brand and it was our first time experiencing it on the podcast. We went in depth about the brand’s bizarre history, how it compared to Wicked and the Jackie Chan phenomenon. Trail Pass IPA is one of the best non-alcoholic beers I’ve had. We used the name as a launching pad to discuss some of the best all-time trailers and I delivered a light-hearted rant about fitness influencers. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast here and follow our Instagram page for relevant updates!
It might just as challenging to describe The Rehearsal as it is to make it. The HBO comedy series starring cringe comic icon Nathan Fielder is taking a huge swing with its second season. I’m still not sure how to properly articulate what Fielder is doing. To be clear, The Rehearsal is often hilarious and it's certainly an escalation of Fielder’s uniquely awkward brand of humor that he made famous on Comedy Central’s Nathan For You. But as Fielder acknowledges in this season’s opening episode, how can someone make a comedy show about plane crashes without being wildly offensive? The delicate tightrope walk between controversy and comedy makes The Rehearsal a fascinating watch.
Fielder’s sincere interest in improving co-pilot communication somehow merges with his absurdly committed role-play experiments, drawing out reactions that blur comedy and discomfort. If you’ve followed his career since Nathan For You, this show both builds upon and adds new layers to the warped legacy of Fielder’s approach to comedy. I never know what to expect minute-to-minute. This might be best personified in the episode “Pilot’s Code” - a 34-minute saga that begins with dog cloning and concludes with Fielder delivering a deliriously gonzo re-enactment of the life of Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger. It sounds insane (and it is!), but few people make me laugh harder than Nathan Fielder on television. It’s a credit to him that even after all these years, I can’t tell if this is all an elaborate act or if he’s genuinely the most humorously awkward person in human history.
The newest Kentucky Derby winner is a horse named Sovereignty. The three-year-old American thoroughbred narrowly beat the odds-on favorite, Journalism, to win the 151st Derby race. But the most amazing fact of this Derby field is that every single horse is a descendant of Secretariat. This would be like every player in an NBA Finals being the grandsons of Michael Jordan. In 1973, Secretariat became the first horse to run the Derby in under two minutes. He became a Triple Crown winner and won the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths. That Belmont Stakes performance is still considered the greatest horse race of all-time. Secretariat died in 1989, with a 16-3-1 record that remains the gold standard for American professional horse racing. But Secretariat wasn’t just a stud on the track. He enjoyed a luxurious retirement, siring 663 foals over his final 15 years of life. Given his historic dominance and prolific breeding, perhaps Secretariat has more in common with Genghis Khan than Michael Jordan. I bet you didn’t see that comparison coming!
After 22 years online, Microsoft shut down Skype permanently on May 5. As a college freshman, the only thing hotter than Ke$ha, Four Loko and Angry Birds was Skype. I will never forget making a Skype call back home to my friends to describe my first huge Mizzou party experience. It was a dormitory staple, perfect for flirtatious goof arounds with girls and the occasional check-in with the family. Years later, I learned that Skype was a prominent business tool. The unruly video calls were replaced with mundane workplace chatter. Gradually, Skype got lapped by products like Slack, WhatsApp and Zoom as a functional communication platform. I imagine that Skype executives were dismayed watching the entire global working economy embrace other similar services during COVID-19, while they rotted into obscurity. Ultimately, Skype’s biggest problem was that it arrived a little too early. I never once conducted a business or personal Skype video call as a working adult and I don’t really know why. I’m not shedding any tears for Skype, but it does support the argument that timing is everything. I must say though -- those dorm room Skype sessions were an absolute vibe. You really had to be there.