One of the classy endings of a show was "NBC News Overnight". This was the show that made Linda Ellerbee famous. It had a small but dedicated audience (including myself) in the year (1982-1983) that it aired. It was gaining in popularity especially with the college crowd, who generally stayed up all night. Great writing and cool commentary. Ellerbee with her partner Bill Schechner really had a nice chemistry in a "telling it like it is" style (much like the way Ellerbee had with her co-host (Ray Gandolf) on ABC's highly touted but low rated "Our World" a few years later). When NBC canceled "Overnight", the hosts were allowed to say goodbye to the audience for a few of weeks with Ellerbee saying "That's it for Overnight, there are 10 to go. And so it goes......". For the show, they continued to gain a following right to the end. IMHO, NBC made a big blunder at the time in canceling "Overnight".
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
Best & Worst Endings to TV Series
- Thread starter The Voice of Reason
- Start date
My vote for the worst finale goes to "The Brady Bunch". This is the episode where Bobby Sells hair tonic, Greg buys a bottle which turns his hair orange. Robert Reed hated this episode so much he refused to appear in it. If there was a 6th season Sherwood Schwartz would have written Reed out of the series.
Markieo said:
One of the options Mr. Schwartz was exploring was to have Robert Reed's character killed, leaving Carol (Florence Henderson) a widow. But since the show was canceled by ABC, that became a moot point. Much as Robert Reed was a fine actor, and yes....he was, but he was a bit of a prima-donna throughout the show's run (1969-1974) and hounded Schwartz to death about practically scene in the series. It was a family-situation comedy, not a Shakespearean play.
And yes, that last episode was ridiculous.
I wished I could've seen Ann (Of "That Girl") and Donald get married.
The worst include Gilligan's Island and Alf granted they had TV movies to reconcile the endings but I don't count those.
Some shows like "Here's Lucy" and "Bob Newhart" ended then they were unexpectantly brought back for another year. This 'causes a bit of reworking in the writing.
It was a shame that "Archie Bunker's Place" and "The Jeffersons" never got a proper ending either.
The worst include Gilligan's Island and Alf granted they had TV movies to reconcile the endings but I don't count those.
Some shows like "Here's Lucy" and "Bob Newhart" ended then they were unexpectantly brought back for another year. This 'causes a bit of reworking in the writing.
It was a shame that "Archie Bunker's Place" and "The Jeffersons" never got a proper ending either.
I guess I never understood the Seinfeld finale. I never thought of the characters as being evil. So I don't why they ended it the way they did.
I agree The Fugitive was the best and Newhart was right up there. St Elsewhere's was pretty good. Hill Street Blues, M*A*S*H, and Cheers were OK and glad to see things turned out ok for Sipowitz in the end of NYPD.
The one that hasn't been mentioned yet was Leave it To Beaver. It's a clip show with the cast going thru a family album as Wally prepare to go off to college. Very well done.
I agree The Fugitive was the best and Newhart was right up there. St Elsewhere's was pretty good. Hill Street Blues, M*A*S*H, and Cheers were OK and glad to see things turned out ok for Sipowitz in the end of NYPD.
The one that hasn't been mentioned yet was Leave it To Beaver. It's a clip show with the cast going thru a family album as Wally prepare to go off to college. Very well done.
...and ABC made just as big a blunder in cancelling Our World, if for no other reason than it was the only show they could have possibly put up against The Cosby Show on NBC in the late '80s that would actually turn a profit for the network (as, according to Ellerbee, it indeed did)...Peter Q. George (K1XRB) said:
bpatrick said:
I should clarify what I said above about Jerry Lewis and Leonard Goldenson;
I meant the efforts by ABC during the run of the show to get Jerry
to open up about what he had planned for the next week. The week after
Jerry's last show there was, IIRC, a beauty pageant of some sort, and the
week after that "The Hollywood Palace" premiered and lasted six years.
STF said:
I recall catching "I Married Dora" a few times as a kid, though my memory of the series was foggy. The last episode comes up every now and then in discussions about TV series finales because of the actual acknowledgement the series had been canceled within the plot line. I finally caught the last episode about eight years ago when TV Land ran a two-day promo event; series finales ran on New Year's Eve and openers were on New Year's Day. I've got to hand it to the writers, etc. -- it was clever, and a seemingly noble, way of taking the news that had been handed down from the ABC brass.
bpatrick said:
Jerry Lewis' show on ABC has to be ranked as one of the worst programs in television history. Apparently the network thought that Lewis, who was still a top money earner in the movies, could draw an audience to TV. They learned the hard way he couldn't.
Two ironies here.
One of the early hosts of "The Hollywood Palace" was Dean Martin. After being introduced and sang a few songs, Martin joked: "I want to thank Jerry Lewis for building this nice facility."
The second irony is that a few years after the ABC debacle, Lewis went to NBC to once again try a second time to host a TV show and once again he bombed. Meanwhile Dean Martin, who had one of the top rated variety programs on TV at the time, asked his audience to watch Lewis' show; something I am almost certain Lewis would have never done.
Even when Frank Sinatra got Martin and Lewis together on the MDA telethon in 1976, you can hear Lewis on You Tube say to Sinatra: "You son-of-a bitch, it should have been a jew"....referring that someone other than Sinatra, who like Martin was Italian, should have been the person to patch things up between the two men.
I bring these points up because everything I ever read indicated that Martin couldn't stand Lewis and didn't speak to him for 20 years. It was only after Dean's son died in a plane crash did the two men reconcile their differences.
Good thread, this.
On page 3 of this thread there were two references to "breaking the fourth wall". I'd never seen that term before. I almost asked you people about it. Instead I went to Wiki and found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_the_fourth_wall . Here's the quote from same, for the curious...
<When speaking directly to the audience through the camera in a film or television program, it is called "breaking the fourth wall."[1][5] The technique of breaking the fourth wall can be seen in various television programs, especially situation comedies such as the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, in animated cartoons such as those featuring Bugs Bunny and Huckleberry Hound, and in films such as Alfie, those of the Marx Brothers (where Groucho frequently speaks directly to the audience) and Bob Hope. Although prominent in comedy, it is also used in dramatic presentations as well: Eugene O'Neill's play Strange Interlude is one example where a character speaks his innermost thoughts directly to the viewer, while the early episodes of the 1960s series The Saint usually opened with the protagonist addressing the viewer.>
ixnay
On page 3 of this thread there were two references to "breaking the fourth wall". I'd never seen that term before. I almost asked you people about it. Instead I went to Wiki and found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_the_fourth_wall . Here's the quote from same, for the curious...
<When speaking directly to the audience through the camera in a film or television program, it is called "breaking the fourth wall."[1][5] The technique of breaking the fourth wall can be seen in various television programs, especially situation comedies such as the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, in animated cartoons such as those featuring Bugs Bunny and Huckleberry Hound, and in films such as Alfie, those of the Marx Brothers (where Groucho frequently speaks directly to the audience) and Bob Hope. Although prominent in comedy, it is also used in dramatic presentations as well: Eugene O'Neill's play Strange Interlude is one example where a character speaks his innermost thoughts directly to the viewer, while the early episodes of the 1960s series The Saint usually opened with the protagonist addressing the viewer.>
ixnay
Correct. Once they did, they made a point of chatting on the phone, and meeting on a semi-regular basis, usually at a restaurant near Martin's home where he was a regular. I don't recall Martin granting any interviews late in his life, where he might have shed more light on the subject, but Lewis maintaimed after Martin's daeth that the two of them had done a good job patching things up; Lewis claimed he still got mad at Dean over Martin's just letting his health go to waste, but both had mellowed with age to the point where they could remain civil.The Voice of Reason said:
I recall, on the telethon shortly after the death of Dean's son, Sammy Davis Jr. made a point of dedicating a song 'for Dino...' and explaining to Jerry, '...just so you understand.', asif he needed permission to sing a Martin hit on Jerry's show. I don't even remember which song it was, but Jerry, subdued for once, nodded and said 'By all means...', and that was that.
There was a show called "Run for your Life" in which the plot centered around a man who had a short time to live. The show was cancelled and thus there was never a final episode letting viewers know what happened to this person.
The irony here is that that particular episode would have really allowed Mike Brady the opportunity to give one of his best lectures of the entire series. Instead, that job fell to Carol, who usually didn't do the lecturing. Mike would have given that lecture had Robert Reed not been written out of the episode.Markieo said:
azumanga said:
I don't see the irony. M*A*SH* was on the air for 11 years, and US involvement in the Korean War only lasted 4 years. It's scripted comedy and drama - make believe.
Maybe those 3 years in Run For Your Life represented just a few months in the life of Paul Bryan (Ben Gazzara). If ratings hadn't declined, they could have taken as many seasons for him to "die" as they needed. And then again, terminal conditions can go into remission, and doctors are often wrong...
...somewhat similarly, there was a series that CBS filmed in 1965 but didn't get around to running until 1967 called Coronet Blue. The premise of the series is that Michael Alden, played by Frank Converse, was an amnesiac who had survived a murder attempt; all he could recall from the experience were the words "Coronet Blue." The series had Alden try to regain his memory and find out what the phrase meant. (The title theme song, also titled "Coronet Blue," was sung by soul great Lenny Welch.) Thirteen episodes were filmed. Problem was, by the time CBS finally got around to running the bloody thing, attracting a respectable audience and a cult following of sorts, Frank Converse had been signed by Talent Associates/David Susskind and ABC to star in N.Y.P.D., so no finale -- or explanation of what "Coronet Blue" meant -- was ever given to the earlier series' viewers...Mark_Giardina said:
Wasn't there a western where the main character also suffered from amnesia? I think the star played on Wagon Train for a few years. Anyways that show was cancelled before the viewers had the opportunity to learn this person's real identity.
Speaking of westerns, Walter Brennan, had a show where he, and his grandson, were looking for Brennan's son who was a gunfighter. That program was also short-lived, but at least, I believe, Brennan found his son before the show was cancelled.
Speaking of westerns, Walter Brennan, had a show where he, and his grandson, were looking for Brennan's son who was a gunfighter. That program was also short-lived, but at least, I believe, Brennan found his son before the show was cancelled.
- Status