10 TV Show Endings That Get Worse The More You Think About Them
All that time invested for nothing.
Investing time into a TV series is a major commitment - especially if you're going into a show that has several long seasons to its name - which is why endings are so important.
Who wants to watch one hundred hours of action only to be let down at the last hurdle, often by writers who've lost control of their story?
The threat of feeling betrayed or unsatisfied by a show is of course there from the beginning, but if a series happens to drop the ball, it still hurts, no matter how great the build-up was before the crash.
Over the years there have been plenty of great shows that have ended on a rousing high note, but you won't find any of them here.
This list is unfortunately reserved for those finales that flopped. Hard. Often in an infamous way, getting more nonsensical, lazy and mortifying the more you ponder their implications.
With that in mind, from widely celebrated sitcoms to head-scratching thrillers and supernatural dramas, these TV show endings genuinely get worse, the more you think about them.
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This article contains major spoilers.
10. Seinfeld - The Finale
Undeniably one of the most influential and hilarious sitcoms ever made, Seinfeld made an artform out of the mundane, and brought its laughs to life with a variety of deeply flawed characters whose misadventures never talked down to their audience.
The joy of Seinfeld came from how it made the audience know they were watching terrible people get away with terrible things, which is why putting the New York Four on trial and sending them to jail for all the awful deeds they'd committed was a major tone-shattering misfire.
In doing so, the controversial episode brings back a whole host of characters, including several ex-girlfriends and employers who only appeared in one previous episode. Their return retroactively makes Jerry and co's past misadventures feel much less effective, especially since these re-appearances aren't played for laughs.
The episode's sense of finality betrayed the entire spirit of the show and its hysterical lack of stakes, and because it ends in such a clear-cut way, it makes earlier episodes hard to revisit.
Knowing these gags will be used to add unnecessary poignancy to the show's ingenious low-risk concept is one of the strangest final notes in TV history.