In case you didn't guess, I thought last week's series finale of ABC's Life On Mars remake was an insult to my intelligence. And it got me thinking: is it the worst series finale... ever? Can you think of a more heinous travesty to cap a series? I'm talking about big finale's that essentially ruined the memory of a decent show, or just got you angry for some reason. Maybe it didn't answer any longstanding questions the series had asked, didn't make any sense, or chose to finish with an inexplicable cliffhanger never to be resolved?
Here's my own pick to get you started, off the top of my head: Star Trek: Voyager. This mid-'90s spin-off never utilized its premise very well (remember how they set-up the idea that there were two crews merged into one; the straightlaced Federation and the Maquis "freedom fighters"? Ooh, friction. But, er, whatever happened to that idea? They were all best mates by episode three.) Maybe we should have guessed it would end terribly, but I couldn't quite believe how poorly ended Voyager after seven seasons, given the fact it had an emotional pay-off built-into the premise of getting home to Earth.
But what did they do? Voyagers uses some Borg technology to jump back home to the Alpha Quadrant, where we get about two minutes of actual celebration, topped off with a shot of Voyager and some Federation ships flying sway together.
That. Was. It.
Kinda makes you glad the similarly plot-arc'd Battlestar Galactica wasn't developed by those Voyager tools, huh? No, the talented Ronald D. Moore came from the Next Generation/Deep Space Nine stable -- the latter of which had its own somewhat awkward finale, lest we forget, after a dumb 10-part concluding storyline. But still, it was nowhere as bad as Voyager's desperate lunge for the finish line.
Any other suggestions of TV series finale's that rained on their own parade?
