Top tier TV shows with terrible final seasons!

To be perfectly honest, once I know it’s going to be the end, I kind of breathe a sigh of relief once it’s all over and a show sticks its landing. Assuming I’ve lasted that long. I bail on a lot of shows after the first few seasons, or even episodes. Some (like the 90s version of La Femme Nikita, the last arc for the Battlestar Galactica remake, Revenge, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Defiance) went some places cool and surprising right before the end. A lot more just pancake on the pavement.

Here are some major disappointments over the years.

Sherlock: They were building up Mary over the two leads. No, they were fridging her to motivate the main bromance. Make up your minds, Gatiss and Moffat. Plus, what semblance of mystery procedural from the original source material the show bothered to have left got scrambled like a mess of eggs in the final season.

Torchwood: Torchwood had potential, but never really found its sea legs. Then it killed off most of its cast (except for Jack and the truly annoying Gwen Sue) at the end of seasons three and four. And then it moved to the U.S. and we got Miracle Day. Which was unwatchable. Every so often, RTD will hint about doing another season. Please don’t.

Grimm: With the right writing team, this show could have gone on indefinitely with the backbone of a Wesen of the Week formula. Sadly, they had a team who ran out of material around season three (the show went six seasons) and then repeated one of the least-liked storylines (a minor female antagonist magically raping a more major male character and then having his baby) twice. Same female character, different guy. Oh, and they turned her and the title character (one of her victims) into a One True Ship by having her become good via a magical pregnancy and turning his previous girlfriend, the female lead, into a horrible person. Not that she was especially wonderful before, but Juliette’s broke-bad subplot was all kinds of awful. And we even got a superpowered baby on top of things.

Castle: What the hell happened here? Well, apparently the female lead wanted out, after the show had spent years allowing the endless, tedious story of her mother’s murder to take over the show’s mytharc like plot kudzu. They got her to come back but only for a certain number of episodes, in most of which she was barely in the room with the title character, let alone having a relationship with him. Keep in mind she was originally his love interest, so if they were no longer an item, there kind of wasn’t a good meta reason to keep her around. That poor final season. Just a hot, hot mess.

The Mentalist: First, they stretched the Red John storyline way too long. Then, after yoking the entire mytharc of the show to Red John, they killed him off and tried to keep going. The way Red John went wasn’t actually half-bad, but it fit poorly with the previously drawn-out storyline and should have happened about four seasons sooner. And the entire FBI storyline that replaced it made me want to punch the showrunners in the throat.

Saving Grace: It’s not so much the last season as the series finale. It just went completely off the rails after Grace hit that little girl. I don’t even know what the Mexican interlude was supposed to be and the less said about that downer ending, the better.

Charmed: The very last episode wasn’t actually that bad. I rather liked the ending montage. But the whole “They’re dead but not really” plot in the last season was stupid and introducing Billie was a huge mistake.

Highlander: The Series: The show hit a big high in season five with the Horseman arc. And then season six came around and it tanked in so many ways. Peter Wingfield (Methos) left for most of the season to lead in another show. They’d already killed off Richie in a very stupid storyline. The Ahriman plot was horrible. The episodes where they tried out an increasingly misogynistic array of stereotypes with the potential female characters for the spin-off were even worse. The only halfway decent episodes were the two-part series finale and the only genuinely good episode was the Methos and Joe team-up road trip in “Indiscretions.”

Da Vinci’s Inquest: Technically, this isn’t true. DVI was brilliant right up until it was rebooted and became Da Vinci’s City Hall. But the show kinda lost something once Da Vinci got elected Mayor. Mick was good as Da Vinci’s replacement at the Coroner’s Office, but for some reason, they dropped his long-term mental illness storyline and platonic relationship with partner Kosmo except for hints. Plus, while the previous season had done a good job of bringing closure, Da Vinci’s City Hall ended on a cliffhanger that felt very unsatisfying with many major plots left dangling. The TV movie sequel didn’t really wrap any of that up and didn’t even have Mick.

CSI: I used to be a huge fan of police procedurals and still love true crime shows. I really liked CSI and CSI: Miami (I watched the latter until it was canceled), though I never particularly warmed to CSI: New York and Cyber was godawful. And then the Miniature Killer storyline happened. For months, that thing dragged out (never been a fan of Super Serial Killer plots) and then we found out it was … the janitor. After that, I started looking for anything else to watch and dropped into season two of Supernatural, which was in the same time slot. Still watching Supernatural. Yes, I know CSI went on for years after that, but that’s when it ended for me. I don’t even watch it in reruns now. Just totally lost interest.

The Sopranos: Years before that pretentious screw-you final scene, I gave up on this show. They’d teased the whole first two seasons that he might have a redemption arc. By the end of season two, it was pretty obvious that would never happen and that it would just get grimmer, and grimier, and more depressing until the end, so I bailed. If they’d just admitted they were doing a Macbeth-style Classical Tragic Hero and had the brass to kill him off at the end, it might have worked better, but they didn’t. Plus, the show lost something critical when his mother died (yes, I know that’s because the actress died in real life).

Babylon 5: The more passionate B5 fans (those who are left) will tell you this show has aged well, but there’s a reason hardly anyone watches it, anymore. Season one and the first part of season two were awful. Then it got pretty watchable. The season two finale cliffhanger was chilling and season three (and the early part of season four) was a good time. Then they weren’t sure they’d get a season five, so they rushed the mytharc, but at least it ended (even if the results were…mixed). Then they got a season five and also fired their most popular female lead between seasons because she wanted as much money as her male coworkers (despite claims to the contrary, B5 treated its recurring female cast very poorly) and replaced her with a Tough Female Lead copycat. Between that, the stupid singing telepaths plot, and how that ruined the one remaining female character who’d been around since season one, season five was a dumpster fire. And then it didn’t really have an ending because the actual 20-years-later series finale aired at the end of season four. Confused? So was the rest of the audience.