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35 TV Shows With Remarkably Divergent Pilots and Finales

August 09, 2024

It’s hard to imagine a more disappointing series finale than Charlie’s Angels. But these franchises deserve credit for trying!

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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. — Source

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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! — Source

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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. — Source

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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. — Source

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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. — Source

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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. — Source

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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 — Source

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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 — Source

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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.

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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. — Source

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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. — Source

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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 — Source

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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. — Source

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CRACKED.COM Worst TV Finales Battlestar Galactica (reboot) In a purely expository finale, the shows tries to pull an all-too-religious plot twist that clashes with its more philosophical, idea-driven sensibility. In short, the Galactica landed on Earth 150,000 years ago, and so the Cylon-Human hybrid Hera Agathon becomes modern humanity's Eve. Because God. — Source

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CRACKED.COM Worst TV Finales St. Elsewhere Finding out it was all happening in the head of one minor character is just a mockery of the viewer's investment in the characters (not to mention that it's a trope that was born tired). Plus, they killed a kitten. — Source

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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. — Source

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Worst TV Finales How I Met Your Mother All they had to do was to show how Ted met the mother, and make it all fun and sweet, romcom style. But then the eponymous mother dies less than a minute after the wedding scene. And after bragging to his kids about his sexual conquests for, like, years, Ted goes on to hit on Robin. Yikes. CRACKED.COM — Source

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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 — Source

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CRACKED.COM Worst TV Finales Quantum Leap This sci-fi show has stood the test of time, which means every new generation gets frustrated with its ending. As the episode wasn't written as a finale and the producers found out the show wouldn't return after it was shot, they just slapped a final title card saying, Dr. Sam Becket never returned home. — Source

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Worst TV Finales Battlestar Galactica (original) The gang has just defeated the Cylons in battle, and just before leaving to celebrate, a random butt bump actually catches the Earth signals they've been looking for all this time, but there's no one there to see them. It's not irony, it's space irony. CRACKED.COM — Source

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Full House JOHN POSEY Вов SACET CRACKED.COM THE PILOT THE SHOW Before Bob Saget smirked his way into our hearts, Danny Tanner was played by comedian John Posey. Producers decided Posey didn't have the right vibe, so they reshot just the Tanner scenes with Saget. — Source

14

Star Trek: The Original Series CRACKED COM THE PILOT THE SHOW In the first of two pilots, we see a very alien scene: Spock smiling alongside Captain Christopher Pike. Pike would obviously be replaced by Captain Kirk; in fact, Spock was the only major character to survive the first pilot. — Source

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Star Trek: The Next Generation CRACKED COM THE PILOT THE SHOW The pilot was actually two unrelated scripts uncomfortably crammed together, and lots of the characters feel very different: Worf is in a diminished, subservient role, Geordi is the helmsman, and worst of all, Data uses contractions! — Source

12

Family Guy CRACKED.COM THE PILOT THE SHOW The pilot was a shorter, less-polished version of what would come to be Death Has A Shadow. Lois has blonder hair, the family is actually nice to Meg, and Quagmire isn't among Peter's beer-drinkin' buddies. — Source

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Archer CRACKED.COM THE PILOT THE SHOW Okay, it's unlikely this is true, but a DVD extra titled Archersaurus claims to be the unaired pilot. It's just the first episode, Mole Hunt, shot-for-shot... except that Archer is a roaring rapter. — Source

10

The X-Files CRACKED COM THE PILOT THE SHOW David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson have chemistry, and we know Mulder and Scully eventually get to smochin', but they drag us along for years. In the pilot, things feel downright romantic out of the gate. Scully even calls him Fox. — Source

9

Bob's Burgers CRACKED COM THE PILOT THE SHOW The animation is a bit janky, but other than that, everything seems to be-WAIT Tina was a boy! Daniel was still voiced by Dan Mintz, and still had a crotch rash. — Source

8

Firefly CRACKED.COM THE PILOT THE SHOW Rebecca Gayheart lost her spot as Inara Serra after the pilot because Joss Whedon thought she lacked chemistry with the cast. Morena Baccarin, a first-time TV actor, apparently had that chemistry. — Source

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Gilligan's Island STARRING BOB DeNVER STARRING BOB DENVER as GILLIGAN CRACKED.COM THE PILOT THE SHOW Lost for over thirty years, the original pilot featured different actors playing The Professor, Ginger, and Mary Ann (known as Bunny) - as well as a truly jarring calypso theme song. — Source

6

Happy Days Love HAPPY AMERICAN STYLE DAYS CRACKED COM THE PILOT THE SHOW Originally called New Family in Town, the show's pilot was shot three years before the first episode aired. In the interim, ABC chucked the pilot up on the anthology series Love, American Style. — Source

5

Frasier one = I ff. CRACKED.COM THE PILOT THE SHOW Lisa Kudrow played Roz in the pilot, but was given the boot because her vibe wasn't quite right. Absolutely devastating - until she booked Friends a year later. — Source

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Game of Thrones GRACKED.COM THE PILOT THE SHOW Understandably, it's incredibly tough to distill GRRM's tomes down to weekly television scripts. The first attempt included a flashback to the Mad King's murder spree, and a couple of major differences in casting. — Source

3

The Munsters AL LEWIS AL LEWIS as GRANDPA as GRANDPA CRACKED.COM THE PILOT THE SHOW They swapped out Eddie's and Lily's actors (technically, Lily was named Phoebe in the pilot), made Eddie less bratty and Grandpa more goofy-oh, and switched to black-and-white to save money, and ramp up the camp. — Source

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Leave It To Beaver CRACKED COM THE PILOT THE SHOW Wally and Ward were played by different actors, and while there was no Eddie Haskell, Harry Shearer played the Haskell-esque Frankie. Shearer very nearly played Beaver himself. — Source

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Seinfeld IEI И Г CRACKED.COM THE PILOT THE SHOW The pilot famously aired as The Seinfeld Chronicles. Beyond that, Kramer (whose name was Kessler) owned a dog, Elaine didn't exist in any capacity, and the female lead was instead a waitress at the diner. — Source

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