10 Great TV Shows That Lost It By The End

10. Fringe

Fringe cast
Fox

Always a show on the bubble - a loss-maker for Fox - Fringe barely scraped renewal for its fifth and final season, a truncated 13-episode run that would serve to pitch its total instalments to 100, the magic syndication number.

A show in a similar vein to The X-Files, Fringe€™s bizarre high concept plotting began where the more esoteric episodes of that hit show left off. Despite the show€™s strong narrative focus on solid storytelling and resonant characters and relationships, at its core it was always about a mad scientist and the mad science he€™d unleashed upon the world.

That€™s something that changed with the final season, as Fringe completely altered direction to take place in a dystopian future, the central characters frozen in amber to be revived two decades on from the fourth season finale. That two-part episode, €˜Brave New World€™ had concluded as a potential series finale, the fifth season renewal having occurred right at the last minute€ and it shows.

So many of the central storylines and relationships of the preceding four seasons had been wrapped up or referenced in €˜Brave New World€™ that season five felt as though it was surplus to requirements. Moreover, Fringe was simply an entirely different creature now: the once vibrant, endlessly creative series had never been so formulaic, so hackneyed; reheating tired old storylines about unstoppable totalitarian conquerors and the heroic, doomed resistance that opposes them.

The actual series finale, €˜An Enemy Of Fate€™, would almost redress the balance, giving the small but perfectly formed audience that was left a proper emotional beat to round off five years of commitment to a show that bounced around the schedules almost as much as it bounced around the limits of science fiction. However, you can ignore pretty much the entire of season five without missing anything of importance from your experience of the show.

Contributor
Contributor

Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.