20 of the Worst Series Finales of All Time

Television is one of the few forms of narrative media that can extend a story for years without an end in sight. (What else do we have? Podcasts?) That’s a double-edged sword. On one hand, you can just let the story go where it goes, naturally developing according to a delicate interplay between the characters and their environment. This is known as “the Breaking Bad.”

On the other hand, you run the very real risk of writing yourself into a corner, forced in the end to pull a finale out of your ass to no one’s satisfaction. Even the best-planned shows can end up delivering a bleak death rattle, either because they were canceled before they could properly wrap up or the creative minds behind them turned out to have no idea what was good about their show in the first place. This is known as “the How I Met Your Mother.”

Both were no doubt on user Halloween-365’s mind when they asked r/AskReddit, “What television series had the biggest bullshit finale?”