27 God-Awful TV Finales for the Hall of Shame

Oof, these really stumbled at the finish line
27 God-Awful TV Finales for the Hall of Shame

Have you ever watched those cringeworthy videos of some runner or cyclist celebrating their “win” a little too early and getting passed right before the finish line? There’s this uneasy feeling of equal parts heartbreak and schadenfreude. Ooh, schadenfreude! That’s a word we rarely get to use! 

Anywho, that’s the exact feeling we got while watching these finales. We wanted them to be great, but the lazy or audience-disrespecting way they went about it left a horrible taste in our mouths. Here are some popular shows that went out on a face-plant…

Charlie’s Angels

CRACKED.COM Worst TV Finales Charlie's Angels The show chose to end with a clip show, of all things. Jaclyn Smith's character gets shot, and the rest of the cast just waits and remembers better scenes from better episodes. No thrills, just waiting. And then Charlie finally shows up-wearing a surgeon's mask.

Castle

CRACKED.COM Worst TV Finales Castle Castle and Beckett are shot in their apartment and apparently about to die together-and then we cut to seven years later, and they're all happy with like fifteen kids. That was Castle, everyone!

David, The Gnome

David, The Gnome CRACKED.COM It's revealed that David and his wife are 399 years old! Neat! Oh, also, all gnomes die when they turn 400. They abandon their pets and climb a mountain so they can die and turn into trees.

Newhart

Newhart CRACKED.COM Bob Newhart's second show (Newhart) was all just a dream, in the mind of the protagonist of his first show (The Bob Newhart Show).

Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs CRACKED.COM This light-hearted, goofy puppet sitcom was super popular with kids. It ended with a mass extinction event that heavily implied the slow, torturous death of every single character.

Star Trek: Enterprise

CRACKED.COM Worst TV Finales Star Trek: Enterprise The ending had little to do with Enterprise, and instead was a TNG episode about events occurring in Enterprise. Yeah, of course such a clunky, borderline disrespectful finale didn't work.

Lois & Clark

CRACKED.COM Worst TV Finales Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. The show ended with the Kents giving Lois and Clark a baby crib, like total douches, and the crib filling itself overnight with a random baby. Apparently the baby was supposed to be from Krypton, but we never had confirmation, as the show was hastily canceled.

Mad Men

CRACKED.COM Worst TV Finales Mad Men For a show which was such a scathing criticism of the emptiness of consumerism and its soul-crushing consequences, to end with an overt celebration of Coca-Cola feels like it was mocking us all along. Coca-Cola

Mork & Mindy

Worst TV Finales Mork & Mindy After spending the entire episode chased through time by an alien trying to kill them, Mork and Mindy end up in a time vortex, lost in time forever. CRACKED.COM

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

CRACKED.COM Worst TV Finales Chilling Adventures of Sabrina After Sabrina sacrifices herself, she ends up reuniting with the guy she had a difficult relationship with, who killed himself to stalk her in the afterlife. Cringey romanticization of creepiness and suicide, guys.

Dexter

CRACKED.COM Worst TV Finales Dexter Not only were fans supposed to deal with creepy incest storylines and Dexter getting away with (serial) murder, but the show ended in 2013 on a weird note, with him surviving a storm and rebuilding his life as a lumberjack. Nobody was satisfied with this ending, and it's not like the 2021 revival redeemed it either.

Dallas

Dallas CRACKED.COM JR gets A Christmas Carol'd by the devil, who shows him what the world would look like without him. Instead of a wholesome lesson, the devil convinces him to shoot himself.

Crossroads

Crossroads CRACKED COM A wildly successful British soap opera in the 70's and 80's, its short-lived revival in the early 2000's used its finale to claim that it had all been a bored cashier's daydream.

Quantum Leap

Quantum Leap CRACKED.COM Dr. Sam Beckett, whose whole thing is that he can't control his leaps, is revealed to be in control the whole time. Also, he never makes it home. Also, this is all revealed by a series of title cards!

St. Elsewhere

St.Elsewhere M T CRACKED.COM The big reveal - that it all happened in one kid's head - bred all kinds of conspiracy theories. Were shows like Cheers, who had done crossover episodes, also imaginary? Weirder still, they killed the production company's mascot in the final credits.

Lost

CRACKED LOST Many fans were let down by the Lost finale; it didn't answer many questions and focused on the characters' journey to the afterlife. Some answers were given, but there were still a lot of loose plot threads, leading to bad reviews.

How I Met Your Mother

CRACKED HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER Fans hated the ending of How I Met Your Mother because it didn't deliver on the promise of Ted finding true love, and the characters' stories were wrapped up too quickly.

Battlestar Galactica

CRACKED BATTLESTAR GALACTICA The 2009 finale of Battlestar Galactica sparked debate with its religious themes, and the suggestion that God was behind it all, which many fans saw as a cop-out that was, well, a literal deus ex machina. Plus, Starbuck being an angel didn't help.

Roseanne

CRACKED ROSEANNE The finale of Roseanne got bad reviews from fans because it said the whole show was a dream and Dan had died. John Goodman, who played Dan, didn't like it either, calling it irrelevant and silly.

Supernatural

CRACKED SUPERNATURAL Supernatural's 15-season run ended with a monster-of-the-week episode about the Winchester brothers, but fans weren't happy with the finale's low stakes and return to season 1 style.

Smallville

CRACKED.COM Worst TV Finales Smallville The show was always supposed to end with Clark finally becoming Superman, but that was pulled in a totally underwhelming way. Clark was surrounded by Superman's exact set of friends and enemies, but we had to wait until the very last seconds of the final episode to see him as Superman.

Third Rock from the Sun

CRACKED.COM Worst TV Finales Third Rock from the Sun Dick tells Sally he's an alien, she accepts it (that sweet woman), and wants to still be with him now that the gang returns to their home planet. So Dick knocks her unconscious to make her forget about him, and leaves her alone on the ground. You know, for her safety.

Two and a Half Men

Worst TV Finales Two and a Half Men Charlie Sheen was absent for the last seasons after a public meltdown. Then, in the last episode, a Sheen stand-in returns home and is crushed by a piano, only for the real Chuck Lorre to say Sheen's Winning! catchphrase (and be crushed by a piano as well). Chuck Lorre CRACKED.COM

Full House

CRACKED.COM Worst TV Finales Full House This is what happens when your show about vapid, meaningless fluff needs to punch up the drama for the ending. Michelle gets into a horseback riding competition (as one does), and almost dies. Then she wakes up with amnesia (as one does). But don't worry, she finally merges with herself, which is sadly way less Cronenbergian than it sounds like.

True Blood

CRACKED.COM Worst TV Finales True Blood Bill coerces Sookie into killing him, so she can live a normal life - negating the show's themes of questioning such imposed notions of normality. True Blood began all edgy, and concluded like the happy ending to a Lifetime drama.

The X-Files

CRACKED.COM Worst TV Finales The X-Files The show just can't pull off endings. The 2002 ending to the original series was a bland episode setting 2012 as the time of the alien invasion (spoiler alert: that never happened). And then, the 2018 revival's finale ruined the entire storyline about Mulder and Scully's son in one awful swoop.

Game of Thrones

Worst TV Finales Game of Thrones The show's ending capped off an already disappointing season with rushed storylines and nonsensical character turns. It was like the showrunners got tired of making up for the non- existing novels and went, let's get this over with already and move on to something else. CRACKED.COM

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