Who does not love a good TV show? We all have such busy lives that we often get little to no time for ourselves. But, when we have such little time, we tend to spend it judiciously, with something that has value for our time.
In today’s world, we tend to be quite choosy about what we want to engage with. It is quite a tedious job to make something that engaging for the viewers. However, there are certain TV shows or web series that manage to fascinate us—so much so that we end up finishing the entire season or series in one go.
But more often than not, certain shows begin fantastically, hitting all the right chords, but somewhere down the line, they tend to lose their charm. There may be various reasons for the same, which is exactly why we will try to talk about shows that began well but ended terribly. Here are the top 6 worst TV show endings.
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Top 6 Worst TV Show Endings: Riverdale (2017-2023)
When the first season of Riverdale first appeared on television, it managed to gather a tremendous response from it’s viewers. The show has everything that was missing in the teenage television space, where shows were either too sugar-coated or extremely adult. Themes were quite extreme; that is, when Riverdale first appeared, based off of characters from Archie Comics.
The show had all the elements of a terrific show for young adults, covering themes such as teenage romance, rivalry, love, musicality, and sometimes mystery. However, things went quite south when the show got confused with its own self of what it wanted to be.
After the first season, the show tried to fit in every genre possible with the show, ranging from a cult leader building a rocket to go to the Moon to the Earth splitting into two, with two alternate realities combining and then time travelling back to the 1950’s. Yes, all of this does happen in the show. It makes us scratch our heads to understand exactly how a sweet-teenage romance drama show transitioned to become the train wreck it turned out to be.
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Top 6 Worst TV Show Endings: The Good Doctor (2017-2024)
The Good Doctor was an American medical drama that lasted 7 seasons. The show is a remake of the 2013 Korean series of the same name, Good Doctor. It follows the life of a young resident doctor from the fictional town San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital, Shaun Murphy, who has autism.
The show chronicles the life of Dr. Murphy as he navigates his life in the hospital with his condition and his brilliant medical skills with the patients. The biggest problem with the show lies with one simple fact. The original Korean show lasted for 1 season, with 20 episodes airing from August 5 to October 8, 2013. The American adaptation, however, aired from September 25, 2017 to May 21, 2024, with 7 seasons and 126 episodes.
The American adaptation just tried to use the series as a cash grab, trying to squeeze out every last inch of every single plot line, making the entire series an overstretched, ragged mess with terrible writing and unnecessary subplots. It would not be wrong to say that the original show should not have been touched.
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Top 6 Worst TV Show Endings: Peaky Blinders (2013-2022)
It’s not an easy job to bring together a near-perfect TV show ending. It is especially difficult. When the final moment just signifies the franchise’s transition into the world of movies rather than bidding farewell to the world of Birmingham and its characters.
The last episode of season 6 began with flirting with the possibility of killing its main character, Tommy Shelby, as if to set up its upcoming film as a predecessor to World War I, only to change directions. It exposes the bait at the last minute.
However, the choice to have Tommy ride off into the smoke makes you curious immediately about the film’s credibility: Does the plot line support the change in medium from TV to films if there is now more freedom to present more of Shelby’s adventures? It was a dramatic choice that made its nine-year-old loyal audience question the franchise’s integrity and reliability.
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Top 6 Worst TV Show Endings: Sacred Games (2018-2019)
Sacred Games was in every way a pioneer for the boom of Indian Web series’. It was a one-of-a kind show, being the first series to be produced by a platform like Netflix. The first season of the show had elevated all levels of magnificent story-telling, supported with incredible writing and performances by Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Saif Ali Khan.
When the first season had ended on a cliffhanger, with Sartaj finding out Gaitonde’s bunker, viewers of the show had lost their minds as they had never seen anything like that in Indian Space. However, the second season suffered with the same problem that all sequels do. With the first season being a massive hit and becoming an instant audience favourite, it started to forget its core.
The show, which began in the dingy streets of Mumbai, now has a massive budget; the storyline shifted to Africa; there were more subplots. There were more cliffhangers that tried to recreate the same “formula,” which worked so well for the first season, which made the show lose all hell breaks. Even the cast and the directors have spoken about their disdain for the second season.
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Top 6 Worst TV Show Endings: Sherlock (2010-2017)
BBC’s Sherlock had created quite the stir when its pilot aired on television. Benedict Cumberbatch took on the role of the London Sleuth Sherlock Holmes, with Martin Freeman as his co-star, who starred as Doctor John Watson. The show had a dream run for its first three seasons with the finest cast and impeccable writing.
It reworked the timeline of the original Arthur Conan Doyle book series, mixing the bestsellers with a modern time frame and twist. However, the twist of introducing Mycroft and Sherlock’s secret sister, Eurus, in the final episode. It left a sour taste in audiences as the show tried to dabble with themes of murder, violence, agony, and empathy. The character graph of Eurus did not get explored to the best of its abilities, as she wasn’t established well in the first place.
This lack of establishment messed up the show’s ending, making it a mediocre mix-bag, unlike the first few incredible seasons.
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Top 6 Worst TV Show Endings: Game of Thrones (2011-2019)
Game of Thrones had all the potential to be one of the greatest shows of all time, along with shows like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and Mr. Robot. It had all the ingredients to do so as well, in terms of opulence, structure, narrative, performances, and the brilliant foundation of George R. R. Martin’s epic saga.
The main problem lies in the fact that whatever the show had established in the first seven seasons. It dismantled the very same things in the last season, as if in a rush, making it one of the worst seasons in television history.
The subplots lost their nuances and complexities; themes and conflicts that had been carefully planted in the previous seasons with reasonable screen time were either left unresolved or discarded, and the worst of all, the loss of identity for all of it’s characters. Characters that were once favourites stopped behaving like themselves in a very abrupt tone, which made the end quite jarring.
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While we do understand that it’s quite a difficult job to curate and weave a story for years. It is also equally important to follow the narrative of the product that one is creating over the years. While fame, love, and grandeur are important for growth in the world of glamour, it is also necessary to stay true to the foundations with which the show began.