10 TV Finales That Messed With Your Brain

Rarely does a production team on a family TV show choose to go with such a brain meltingly downbeat finale as the one presented to the audience of puppet sitcom Dinosaurs in July 1994.

You’d think that a show that mined the same family dynamics as the Flintstones and the Simpsons would have ended on a nostalgic note, recapping the gently regressive humour that had helped the show to a full four seasons on a major network.

Instead, ABC doubled down on the often topical themes that Dinosaurs had presented to its audience over the years, introducing a climactic storyline whereby doofus dad Earl initiates a series of events that kill off the world’s plant life and allow poisonous clouds to blot out the sun, bringing on an ice age.

Now, it’s possible that the kids watching the show - who had Dinosaurs merchandise, and had turned Baby Sinclair’s cutesy dialogue into ubiquitous catchphrases - wouldn’t have been aware of the cataclysm that wiped the dinosaurs from the face of the earth - so just to make sure, the writers laid it all out on the table for them.

Earl tries to explain the situation to his kids: to apologise for not looking after the planet that was left in his care, and to admit to them that they no longer had a future because of his shortsightedness. The camera pulls back from the window to reveal the Sinclair home partially buried in ice and snow, and we cut to the weatherman intoning a forecast for “continued snow, darkness and extreme cold. Good night. Goodbye.”

Jesus, that’s cold.