10 TV Shows That Went One Season Too Long

Friends is yet another NBC sitcom which clearly could've ended on a more dignified note a year earlier - and amid negotiations with the cast, it very nearly did end on season nine.

Instead, the beloved sitcom continued for a final batch of 18 episodes, defined by an awkward, widely-loathed romance between Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) and Joey (Matt LeBlanc), which more-or-less felt like a desperate attempt to stall until the inevitable finale where Rach and Ross (David Schwimmer) finally got back together.

With the main characters basically boiled down to bare caricatures by this point, the show's strongest writing was long behind it, and it was pretty much just a foregone conclusion playing itself out.

Season nine was hardly spectacular television itself, but there's no reason why the characters couldn't have been given their ending in a more concise fashion - beyond business concerns, of course.