It’s difficult to judge this one on its own merits, knowing that, had Castle eked out a renewal, there would be no “happy family” coda because the finale was setting up a reboot in which Beckett (played by the unceremoniously ousted Stana Katic) was believed dead. But even putting that aside, the series ender gave us truth serum, magnetic ceilings and a groaner of a LokSat reveal.
If we were the Dark Passenger, we would’ve gotten off a few stops before Dex made the unfathomable decision to send his beloved son away with a known murderer, then euthanized his sister and faked his own death… only to turn up as a lumberjack prone to breaking the fourth wall.
The HBO dramedy’s conclusion (at least until the movie came along) was as shallow as Hollywood itself. Vince married a woman he hardly knew, Eric and Sloan were reunited by the baby they hadn’t meant to conceive, and Ari gave up showbiz for his family… for about a hot second.
A meandering pace, a big ol’ eyeroll of a backstory for the Espheni, a hokey face-off between Tom and the alien queen and the undone death of a major character couldn’t be offset by the coda that followed, in which the shiny-happy heroes celebrated Earth’s survival.
When your big reveal — Dan is the titular blogger! — completely fails to track with the previous six seasons, you’ve got a series ender that feels not only haphazard, but also wholly unsatisfying. And don’t even get us started on Serena marrying Dan after finding out he was the one who tormented her online for years! Plus, Rufus randomly ending up with Lisa Loeb? WTH?!
Despite its many seasons of excellence, House‘s final episode put the “meh” in “medical drama.” In an effort to avoid jail time, the titular M.D. faked his own death and rode off on his motorcycle alongside an ailing Wilson. Sure, House had a knack for finding last-minute solutions to all of life’s problems — but this series-ending decision felt totally haphazard.
Even if we cut the writers some extenuating circumstances-related slack and graded the series’ swan song on a curve, it’d still be a dumpster fire of epic porportions. The final climactic Oval Office showdown between Robin Wright’s Claire and Michael Kelly’s Doug was full of sound and fury that signified nothing but an ill-fated attempt by the show’s writers to make the best of an untenable situation.
The Closer‘s spinoff ending its own run with a final reign of terror by Phillip Stroh is everything we wanted — though in our minds, Sharon Raydor was alive to see it (and not killed off just two episodes prior!), Rusty didn’t get the big kill, Provenza didn’t feel a need to cover it up, and Brenda Leigh merited more than a passing mention.
It’s not that the Freeform drama’s finale didn’t provide adequate closure for our favorite characters, but when we look back at the show’s big finish, only two words come to mind: British. Twin. The premise of this murder-mystery series was already stretched thin by its final season, but to reveal that it had all been the work of an accented doppelgänger we never knew about? Come on, now.
If you had told us that the initially alluring spy drama would end with Alex’s adopting a kid whose father she’d inadvertently gotten killed and a comatose Ryan’s fate being addressed in one or two lines thrown into a final scene, we never would have believed you. Add in the incredibly-tough-to-follow Irish mob story that drove a good part of the season, and you’ve got — to put it in spy lingo — an op that failed, big time.
Even if you felt that Sookie had more chemistry with Eric or Alcide (RIP!), there was no denying that her relationship with Bill was the heart of the show — so to watch her literally drive a stake through that heart in the HBO series’ last hour felt like an appropriate final whimper for a show that had long since lost its way.
Rather than tie up loose ends, or pay tribute to a successful four-year run with Ashton Kutcher, the long-running sitcom spent the better part of an hour punching down at disgraced former star Charlie Sheen. “Highlights” included an animated sequence in which Charlie Harper had a foursome with a mime and a goat, and the infamous death-by-grand piano. Need we say more?
We hate to be, ahem, blunt, but there wasn’t enough pot in the world to get us high on the Showtime dramedy’s lamer-than-lame send-off, a lazy affair that flashed forward by years to tie up loose ends and solidify the opinion that the series had burned out creatively seasons before it ended.