the ask@AAR: What series have the worst endings?
Dr. Feelgood and I just watched the final half season of Ozark, something I’d been wildly looking forward to, and it was a serious let down. I didn’t like hardly anything about it–the way the characters’ behaved, the futures they may or may not have going forward, the completely unnecessary plotlines that detracted from the pull of the original story. I’m sure our disappointment was in part due to the fact that our expectations were so high–Ozark’s first three and half seasons had been mesmerising.
It’s widely agreed that in television the worst conclusion of a much watched show is that of Game of Thrones. (People often cite Mash, The Office, The Wire, and Six Feet Under as having the best finales.) But what about romance? What series have the best/worst endings?
I found the last original Bridgerton book (On the Way to the Wedding) to be remarkably blah. Wrapped Up in You, the last Heartbreaker Bay novel by
How about you? What series do you feel ended badly? Why?
I totally agree that the Game of Thrones showrunners botched the ending of that show. So disappointing. I was also disappointed in Downton Abbey. It just wasn’t as good after Matthew and Sybil left. They should have wound up the show when they found out the actors were leaving. I still watched, and there were some storylines I enjoyed, but it never reached those heights again.
I came to Friends late— I streamed it a a few years ago while on my treadmill one winter. While some of the humor is now dated, I was impressed with how strong the writing and acting stayed for its entire run, and I was really happy with the ending. More recently, I loved the endings of Schitt’s Creek and The Good Place. I miss those shows which made me laugh and held a real tenderness for its characters.
The worst are the ones where the publisher cancels the series before it’s done. We never get to read the end.
On TV, I never got over the ending of Quantum Leap.
In books, I never really took to Devilish. I loved Slightly Dangerous, with its obvious references to Pride and Prejudice.
I only wrote one continuing series, Richard and Rose, and it didn’t end the way I wanted it to, but the editor I was working with then didn’t really see eye-to-eye with what I wanted. There is one book in that series that never saw the light of day, because by that time I just wanted it done. It’s still very popular today, though, and I’m still very happy with it.
Will the Eve and Roarke saga ever end? Nora has said it will end when Eve gets pregnant, presumably because then everything will have to change, but will she ever get pregnant? And if so, please give me an epilogue!
it’s been discussed before, but my problem is that series go on too long and I lose interest in them. I rarely make it past 6 books. After that most series get repetitive or they jump the shark (a term that came from a TV series that fell flat in it’s last season.) One notable exception (so far) is the Miles Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold. I’ve gotten into double digits in that series, and though I still haven’t finished, they’ve never diminished in quality.
I think the problem with a long series is that impossible expectations get raised. It’s not that Devilish or Slightly Dangerous were bad books. Its more that the preceding books had set the bar awfully high. Same thing with Julie Ann Long’s Pennyroyal Green series. We’d been hearing about Lyon and Olivia for so long that they’d become almost mythic so that anything was going to be at least a slight letdown.
(And I wish Long would Stop. Doing. This.)
I did like the Olivia/Lyon story, but I thought she took too long to get there.
That’s a good observation. If an author is going to build up to one character’s own story in such an obvious way they should have something striking planned for the finale. Something fresh and original, something ‘more’ than the standard romance novel tropes we’ve all seen done to death. I had lots of ideas suggested to me along the way by the glimpses of Wulfric throughout the series and then his own book felt unoriginal and tedious.
I found Slightly Dangerous by Mary Balogh to be a huge letdown. Wulfric was built up throughout the whole series as being this enigmatic character who deserved an amazing duchess and then we got Christine. I disliked her pretty much from the get go. She was self deprecating to the extreme and the whole book annoyed me.. I read the two books before SD, just so I could get more Wulfric scenes and then he ended up annoying me too.
Yep, that’s the book I immediately thought of when I saw this thread. I too read the rest of the series so I didn’t miss anything important about Wulfric. I actually bought it in hardcover because I couldn’t wait for the paperback ($40 Australian dollars at the time when about $8 is my current absolute ceiling price which I might pay about twice a year). SD also borrowed the plot of Pride and Prejudice, which added to my feelings of betrayal because it felt like such a cop-out. Now I think about it, that book is probably the reason why to this day I cherrypick from series and read the best reviewed book first; no more of this wasting time or money on completism or chronology.
Romance novel series have endings?!?
Snort. Only half kidding though because I’m having trouble thinking of one of my favorites that’s actually ended. Hmmm, does it count when the author finishes a major storyline but then continues writing more in that “universe”?
Nothing ticks me off more than an unfinished series. I try hard to wait for a series to be finished before starting it unless I really, really trust the author cause I need closure. :-) I know a lot of people hated Allegiant, the ending to the Divergent series and I wasn’t wild about Mockingjay the final book in the Hunger Games trilogy.
I hated the end to Game of Thrones but I read the books years before watching the show and had something very different in my mind as the focus. The first book was very science-fi fantasy with the white walkers and dragons and the series lost that as it went on. That was a detriment to me because I really liked the fantasy elements and felt that was where Martin shone. He tended to get lost when he concentrated on the politics, imo
For what it’s worth regarding Game of Thrones, I think the books’ endgame will be quite different from the show’s (assuming the last couple of books get written). Several book characters are in very different places from their show counterparts.
I have zero faith that either Martin or Rothfuss are EVER going to finish their stories.
Yep
I can’t remember a book series where the last book disappointed me, although I know there were some. The problem with a series is it is hard to keep up the momentum. As for TV or movie series, Newhart had the best ending hands down. It was such a great surprise when Bob woke up from his “nightmare of running an Inn in Vermont” and there was Suzanne Pleshette (who played his wife on his earlier TV series, The Bob Newhart Show) in bed next to him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgdUWXf8jJk
As for Game of Thrones, the writing in the last two seasons did go downhill and the story seemed rushed, but the ending made sense to me. Daenerys was never going to have a good ending and anyone thinking otherwise wasn’t paying attention from the beginning.
That Newhart ending is perhaps my second favorite ending of all time. (The first is Six Feet Under which I feel is unsurpassed.)
Newhart had an awesome ending. The best.
I’m not sure if Sarina Bowen’s BROOKLYNAIRE counts as the last book in the Brooklyn Bruisers series because she has published subsequent books regarding the same hockey team but I think they’re considered a sort of sub-set of the original series. That being said, I was very disappointed with BROOKLYNAIRE. I think part of the reason was because Nate & Becca’s story had threaded through all the previous Brooklyn Bruiser books and Bowen had really set up their story as being the pinnacle of the series. When BROOKLYNAIRE finally arrived, it felt lethargic and most of the drama completely manufactured: there was no real reason, after Nate’s divorce, that he and Becca could not have gotten together at any point in the ensuing seven years, but the story just kept playing out that line. Add to that, Nate’s wife being “punished” by leaving him for a guy who verbally abuses her, and the whole story fell flat. In fact, I coined the term “BROOKLYNAIRE Syndrome” for any time we’ve waited so long for a couple’s story (and gave undoubtedly shipped them in the meanwhile) in a series that when their book finally arrives, it’s a bit of a letdown.
I remember being very disappointed by the last book in Linda Howard’s MacKenzie’s series, A Game of Chance. I loved every book/novella in the series and eagerly waited for Chance’s story. It finally arrived and I did not like it. At all. I wondered at the time if my expectations were so high that any book would fall flat. Many, many years later, it is still my least favorite book of the series.