Why Do Few TV Series End Well?

I thought that MASH had a fantastic ending... And the War Ended... What else should it have been?

But, I can understand why many think it "ran out of ideas, and went to the well too often"... As much as I enjoy that 11 year series, it definitely recycled many earlier ideas...

And the continuity frequently went out the window, by having a show that ran longer than the actual war it referenced, which didn't help either. As I recall, that late series episode that took place over the course of one year, began with Potter standing there as Father Time saying goodbye to an old year, and that New Years Eve was long before Blake left.



On Star Trek Voyager, After seven years, Voyager came home... The End.

Isn't that was most of us expected? The onlything was, is that we just didn't know how that would happen.



Sadly, the reality is, it's hard to end most shows anyway...

Unless they all die, how does one want a show to end?... We usually want the characters to stay together and to keep going on, and so, that doesn't really end it, does it?



I don't find ENDINGS so bad, what I don't like is when a show gets cancelled, and there is no episode to wrap things up...

It sucks to watch a show for many years with many questions left unanswered... and then you think, why the fuck did I waste all that time watching it, for no payoff of anykind.

Most TV shows I like had ok to fantastic endings

Very few things more overrated than series finales. I care much more about the follow-up season after a good first season.

Maybe because people will gripe no matter how it ends, so they put in less effort.

The only shows that I know of that had sad endings was How I Met Your Mother and Roseanne's show.

God bless you and her always!!!

Holly

P.S. In a way the Full House ending was sad too because even though Michelle's memory returned, before she got it back, she asked about her mom.

In case you want to avoid spoilers:
02:17 ROSEANNE
03:04 SCRUBS
03:56 ONLY FOOLS AND HORSES
04:17 BREAKING BAD
04:39 HEROES
04:55 HAPPY DAYS/THE OFFICE
05:35 TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY
06:04 TRUE DETECTIVE
06:34 LOST
07:49 HEROES again
08:20 FRASIER/THE OFFICE again/LOIS & CLARK: THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN
09:04 THE SOPRANOS
09:36 OZ
10:55 DEADWOOD

With a lot of the most popular shows, the ingredients have changed a lot between when the shows were launched and when they ended.

Often the actors are relatively unknown at the beginning, so they are very hungry and willing to put up with a lot to make their marks. By the end of the run, if it's been a hot show, the stars have made a lot of money and either just want a break or want to go on to newer, more interesting projects (movies, new tv shows), instead of continuing to play the same characters that they've probably grown tired of, especially if they feel the writing isn't at the same quality as when the show started, which is typically the case, and if they are being hounded by paparazzi. So they may not be working with the same intensity as when the show was still relatively new and hot.

Consider Game of Thrones. Who'd ever heard of Emilia Clarke or Kit Harington before that show? By the final seasons, they were earning over $1 million per episode. By the time you can command fees like that, you are nowhere near as hungry as the fresh new kid who's trying to break into the business.

The creator/original writer often runs out of ideas after the first couple of seasons, kind of like how some popular recording artists have a fantastic first few albums then seem to run out of ideas. The creator had probably had been thinking about the show elements for several years before the first season launched. By the time the show has reached the third or fourth season, they're still being expected to come up with ideas but have already used up their best stuff. And they hadn't been thinking about a long-term storyline because they had been putting everything into just getting the show started in the first place, which, in most cases of show proposals, never happens. In a lot of hit shows, the producers and financial backers have also brought in other writers to fill out the day-to-day episodes after the first season, people who may not have the same kind of creative energy and willingness to try new "risky" ideas as the original writer. (The money people hate risky.) So in a lot of popular shows, the quality dips when the original writer loses interest or moves on to other projects (Aaron Sorkin, The West Wing). Sometimes conflicts arise between the creator and the studio, the producers no longer want to pay what the creator thinks the show deserves, and the show gets cancelled earlier than the creator had anticipated (HBO's Carnivale).

Remember, with most shows, for the people calling the shots about whether to continue to run a show or cancel it, at the end of the day it's all about making money, not about making art. So if a show is still in high demand and bringing in a lot more money than the costs of producing it, they are going to keep the show going even if the quality of the writing and/or acting have seriously declined and if the original writers and/or actors have departed.

Of course, I am just speculating here since I don't work in entertainment. But I have heard or read some insiders saying some of these kinds of things over the years.