long running shows without a true season finale

[onairb]

Sometimes the best finale, is a finale that isn't a finale in the usual sense at all. Cheers ended just the right way--after Sam decides NOT to leave Boston and go off with Diane, he returns to the bar, chills out at closing time with the other regulars, bids them good night, closes down for the evening, and tidies up the place for the next day's opening. Life will clearly go on as usual there, we just won't see it on TV any more. (Ending a show that way not only puts a capper on things, it preserves the future watchability of reruns in syndication.)

Other shows close with a big question mark. Take Cheers spinoff Frasier. At the end of the show, Frasier goes off to Chicago in search of his sudden love interest. But does he connect with her? Does she reciprocate his love? Does he find a new job at WLS or WGN that matches the one he left in Seattle? We never found out how it all worked out. Left room for a reunion special (maybe a TV movie) to tie up the loose ends, but it's anyone's guess if that film will ever be made.

To me, while 'Night Court' was an example of the wrong way to leave things hanging, 'Frasier' did it perfectly; the rest of the cast had a satisying degree of 'closure', and as for Frasier, if it didn't work out in Chicago, it would probaby work out somewhere else.

'Cheers' actually mystified me when I first saw it, because the very last scene had someone knocking on the door and Sam saying 'We're closed!' I'd read a lot of the speculation that Sam was going to close the bar in the last episode, and so I thought that was how they were playing the scene.

Later on, of course, the writers of 'Frasier', many of whom had written for 'Cheers', made it clear in the spinoff that the bar was alive and well...although this contradicted the intended meaning-or at least the very strong implication- of the 'Cheers' finale that the bar had shut down for good.
(Actually, Sam's final line was a reprise of a scene from the very first episode, so it was a case of 'coming full circle'. However, when I saw the final episode, I'd never seen the premiere, so the context of that scene was lost on me.

 

[aznyin]

"My Name Is Earl" is another. It ended on a cliffhanger on who the real father of Dodge is and we never found out (though it was hinted it was Earl).

 

[71dude]

The Facts of Life ended with a backdoor pilot in which Blair buys Eastland.

 

[jwgreek8606]

Doogie Howser MD never had a true season finale

 

[ajmcwhorter]

'Mork and Mindy' almost fits the category; late in season 4, spring of 1982, there was a three-part episode involving Mork meeting a Venusian living on Earth(a pre-'Murphy Brown' Joe Regalbuto). To cut a long story short, he was a killer, and M & M time-traveled to the Stone Age to escape him. At the end of the episode, he had been defeated, and they were on their way...somewhere, sometime; the episode ended without telling us if they made it back...the final scene was presumably the cave they'd visited, only now in the present...with drawings of Mork and Mindy on the wall.
ABC had planned that to be the season finale, before cancelling the series. The network decided to delay a different episode to the end of the season, so that the series could end with the characters in their usual setting. Maybe Season 5 would have opened with more time-travelling, but I guess we'll never know.

It is interesting that ABC canceled "Mork & Mindy" in 1982 after the odd Jonathan Winters storyline. Robin Williams, however spent another season, 1982-1983, voicing the cartoon version of his character for ABC.

 

[onairb]

'Mork and Mindy' almost fits the category; late in season 4, spring of 1982, there was a three-part episode involving Mork meeting a Venusian living on Earth(a pre-'Murphy Brown' Joe Regalbuto). To cut a long story short, he was a killer, and M & M time-traveled to the Stone Age to escape him. At the end of the episode, he had been defeated, and they were on their way...somewhere, sometime; the episode ended without telling us if they made it back...the final scene was presumably the cave they'd visited, only now in the present...with drawings of Mork and Mindy on the wall.
ABC had planned that to be the season finale, before cancelling the series. The network decided to delay a different episode to the end of the season, so that the series could end with the characters in their usual setting. Maybe Season 5 would have opened with more time-travelling, but I guess we'll never know.

It is interesting that ABC canceled "Mork & Mindy" in 1982 after the odd Jonathan Winters storyline. Robin Williams, however spent another season, 1982-1983, voicing the cartoon version of his character for ABC.

Cindy Williams also provided Shirley's voice in the animated 'L & S' series, even as she left the prime-time version. Ron Howard and Donny Most had already voiced their characters for 'Fonz and the Happy Days Gang' in 1980...just as 'Richie and Ralph joined the Army and went to Greenland'.

 

[onairb]

Sherwood Schwartz supposedly wanted to end 'Gilligan's Island' after four or five seasons(with different endings in each situation), but CBS killed the show after three years.
Either the castaways would have been rescued and gone home)if season 4 was the end), or, in season 5, the castaways would have found a way off the island, then returned to open a hotel(Schwartz eventually used these ideas in the infamous late '70s reunion specials).
Also, Schwartz planned to write Ginger out of the show, because Tina Louise wanted out after 3 years, anyway.

 

[Bob1370]

One show which came up in a similar discussion on another thread, is the mid-60s adventure drama Run For Your Life. It starrd Ben Gazzara as a wealthy young lawyer who had been told he had an incurable disease--and decided to live to the fullest with whatever time he had left. He then became an adventure-seeking world traveller who encountered all manner of unusual people and situations. He had originally been told he had only a couple years to live, but the show lasted three seasons on NBC and almost was renewed for a fourth. But as a result of its late cancellation the producers never crafted a series finale.

Ben Gazzara appeared on my daily talk show years later, and a caller asked him about how the show would have ended if it had gotten another season or two before going off the air...in particular, would Paul Bryan (Gazzara's character) have been cured at the end, or pass away? What Ben said surprised some people although it made perfect sense in the context of the YV business. He said no matter how long the show lasted, producers had decided Paul Bryan's fate would NEVER be resolved, he would keep travelling and keep living life to the max until the final frame of film with no real ending to his story. Gazzara said this was done to preserve the value of the show and maintain viewership following the network run if it went into syndication. Run For Your Life fell just a little short--88 episodes were produced during the show's lifetime, about a dozen short of the 100-episode library most syndicators deem necessary to make a show salable in syndication. But another year, or 10 years, wouldn't have made a difference--there STILL would never have been a real ending to the show or to the main character's story line.

 

[ajmcwhorter]

I don't ever recall seeing "Run for Your Life" in syndication, at least where I lived (Chicago) during the 1970s and part of the 1980s. Has it been released on DVD?

 

[deltas69]

Two westerns come to mind..A man Called Shanandoah with Robert Horton as a man who lost his memory and wanders the west looking for his identity cancelled after one season..and perhaps the most gritty of all westerns..Deadwood.......