The 15 Worst Final Seasons in Television History

For many years, TV shows have become progressively worse thanks to the almighty dollar. But every now and then, a hit emerges and rides the wave of success for many years, sometimes too many. This is a list of shows that had a great run but failed to finish with the same greatness it began with. 

X-Files

Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are the reason we watched X-Files. When the 9th and final season began, we were all left with the notion that David Duchovny was going to be a bigger part of the show’s final run without fully knowing if this was the final season. He only appeared in the two-part series finale. The duo carried the show for the first seven seasons, which was apparent when the final season saw a 30% drop in viewership.

Weeds

Did you watch the final season? Shit, I didn’t even realize it had an eighth season until recently. That is how bad the show got towards its end. If only this show would have ended a few years earlier, than it might have had a bigger impact on faithful fans of the show. Like me.

Dexter

As the end of the final season of Dexter concludes, we are still left with wondering why the show lasted as long as it did. Should they have just finished it after season five? Maybe the storyline could have ended up making sense. This season is nothing more than a giant cluster of new characters that are introduced every episode. Hopefully the finale can somehow make up for such a terrible final season.

Heroes

Season one of Heroes was amazing. Season two left us with a few things to wish for before season three pulled the carpet out from under our feet. The show was canceled mainly because it ran out of ways to entertain us. The climb it made in the ratings in the first two years was grand but it fell fast and fans started jumping ship.

Prison Break

The title is self-explanatory folks. The show is about breaking out of prison. How many seasons is needed to tell that story? Once they broke out of prison, that should have been it. End of story. By the final season, the show was so twisted and confusing, it was almost impossible to follow.

Roseanne

The final episode of Roseanne was a punch to the nuts of us fans. The entire show was a lie. It was all pretend and made up stories that Roseanne Conner wrote about her real life and everything was wrong. So we basically spent nine years watching something that never happened in the fictional world of Roseanne.

Nip/Tuck

Nip/Tuck was a great show for about two seasons. But then things started taking a turn to weird town and it never bounced back. The creators did everything they could to make things stranger and stranger. If only they would have quit long before the made it to a sixth season, maybe we wouldn’t have been so angry with the way it ended.

Entourage

There is crap and then there is crap. Entourage is crap. The show started off good and then forced us to watch another seven seasons that could have been left on the drawing room floor. By the eighth season, the only thing we cared about was seeing the beautiful women that kept on being introduced to us.

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24

Before you start sending hate mail, know this, 24 is a great show and will forever be one of my all-time favorites. However, if you have seen one season, you have seen them all. The final season reminded us that the show was out of time. It was no longer about Jack Bauer being awesome and that is the first mistake. You see, everyone loved this show because Jack Bauer was ridiculously amazing in every way. The final season was nothing more than a slow painful death of one of tv's most amazing shows ever.

That 70's Show

A show is only as good as its’ cast. Topher Grace and Ashton Kutcher left the show after seven seasons even though Kutcher was in a few episodes in the final season. Then Jackie, Mila Kunis, got together with Fez, Wilmer Valderrama, and all hell broke loose. That was when the show jumped the shark.

The Office

The Office is nothing more than another example of a show that just couldn’t stop trying to make money. There is no other reason why this show stayed on the air after Steve Carrell left. They tried but they failed.

ER

After 15 seasons, ER became nothing more than a painfully boring NBC drama that was holding down the late night spot on Thursday nights. It was no longer worth watching thanks to the exits of just about every single cast member ever. Outside of Noah Wyle, the only other main character that remained was Laura Innes and even she couldn't last more than a couple episodes in the final two seasons. The show was never supposed to stay around for 15 years and by the end, most people were in agreement.

Scrubs

Just stop. Please. That is how most people felt when Scrubs was picked up by ABC. The final two seasons, eight and nine, were useless. The show could have ended 35 times in the final three years but didn’t, they just kept making episodes and no one seemed to care anymore.

Alias

The final season of Alias was tragic. The show itself was moved from Wednesday’s to Thursday’s and then back to Wednesday’s and finally to Monday’s. It changed time slots four times and lost close to four million viewers by the end of the season. That isn’t terrible, it is, like I said before, tragic.

Desperate Housewives

Desperate Housewives was always interesting but never great. I found myself spending Sunday's watching football and watching DVR'd episodes of Housewives. It wasn't because the plot made me excited; it was the ladies of Wysteria Lane. But then they decided to move ahead 5 years in the timeline between seasons four and five. After that, it was all downhill.