Entertainment
'How I Met Your Mother' & 9 Other TV Finales Everyone Really, Really Hated
Last night's finale of How I Met Your Mother didn't please many of their fans. So if the "heartbreaking" finale the writers promised us was the show letting us down, then yes, it was heartbreaking. But don't feel bad HIMYM, you're in good company with these 9 other finales that everyone also hated.
Image: CBS
'How I Met Your Mother'
Joining the ranks of this list is the HIMYM finale which killed off the mother we’d waited 9 years to meet, divorced Robin and Barney who we’d waited 22 episodes to see get married, and had Ted decide to go back to Robin. Perhaps a more apt title for this show would have been How I Met Your Stepmother, or How I Got Over Robin 16 Times - Just Kidding
Image: CBS
'LOST'
Fans everywhere are still upset about the ending of this show. In a series filled with questions, many expected those to be answered in the last episode, but if anything, the finale only opened up more questions than ever before. (Is everyone dead? Did the island exist? What the hell is a sideways flash? Are we really supposed to believe they’re all in heaven? Is anything real? etc.)
Image: ABC
'Dexter'
When Dexter sailed into the deadly storm, fans were like, okay, he sacrificed himself. We can handle that. But then, in the plot twist no one saw coming, he manages to survive (how????) and became a lumberjack of all things. Biggest television letdown ever.
Image: Showtime
'Gilligan's Island'
See, bad series finales are nothing new. Way back in 1967 fans were left disappointed when this lovable show left its characters stranded on the island. To be fair, the network thought they’d get another season, but didn’t. Later they tried to make up for it by releasing a couple of movies. Still, the initial shock of thinking the show was going to leave them stuck on the island forever had fans up in arms.
Image: CBS
'The Sopranos'
When this show suddenly went black in the middle of a scene, many fans thought their cable had suddenly gone out. Only later did everyone realize it was intentional…and then they got really mad at the writers for leaving them (in the literal) dark.
Image: HBO
'Roseanne'
Ah, the old “nothing was real” cop-out. I can’t even write that sentence without getting mad, so I definitely don’t blame Roseanne fans for being angry that their show went for that cliche. Perhaps the writers thought it was clever that Roseanne was really writing a story about her life and to cope with it she twisted major facts. But for a fan, having that much change in the show’s final moments can be traumatizing. *Whines* What do you mean Dan’s dead, the family never won the lottery, and the couples are actually oppositely paired up?
Image: ABC
'Little House on the Prairie'
Nothing says “beloved childhood television show” like ending it with a literal bang. A mean old rich man buys Walnut Grove so the townspeople decide to blow their houses up in protest. Because being under the rule of a railroad tycoon is literally worse than being homeless.
Image: NBC
'Quantum Leap'
Another cop-out finale was that of this time-traveling show which ended with the main character attempting to leap through time followed by screen that simply read: “Dr. Sam Becket never returned home.” The question-inducing final episode was a double slap in the face when you realize that the show spelled the name of their main character (Dr. Sam Beckett) wrong.
Image: NBC
'St. Elsewhere'
Before there was Grey’s Anatomy to make fans angry, there was another medical show: St. Elsewhere. The controversial finale of the series ended with the construction worker’s autistic son staring at a snow globe with a replica of the hospital in it, leading fans to believe everything they’d been invested in for years was actually just a child’s fabricated story.
Image: NBC
'Seinfeld'
This show’s finale let us see the characters as complete jerks (not unlike HIMYM’s own ending) *Jerry Seinfeld Voice* What’s up with that? We came to love these characters, we don’t want to see them in jail for “criminal indifference.”
Image: NBC
