10 Exact Moments These TV Shows SHOULD Have Ended

3. "6am-7am" (Season 4, Episode 24) - 24

24's fourth season ended with by far the most dramatically satisfying and emotional conclusion to any of 24's nine seasons.

Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) ends up faking his own death in order to placate the blood-thirsty Chinese government, after which he literally walks off into the sunset to start a new life.

Ending the show here would've been the integrity move: it gave Jack a neat dramatic out and left audiences to ponder on what he would get up to away from CTU, but given the show's popularity, that was never going to happen.

And in fairness, 24's fifth season was arguably its best, even if the quality quickly took a nosedive thereafter, only earning redemption with the surprisingly solid London-set mini-series Live Another Day.

After season five, it was painfully clear the show was running out of dramatic juice, with increasingly recycled and outlandish plot lines, not to mention season finales which strained to match the drama of the earlier ones.

And as great as season five was, if the show ended at season four, fans wouldn't have had to deal with the brutal deaths of David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) and Michelle Dessler (Reiko Aylesworth). It still hurts, dammit.