Sitcoms - and why they end the way they do

Since I was a child I have always been a fan of sitcoms. Despite them mainly living for the "laugh about the moment" and being dorky most of the time they still have a plot and the characters that are developed.

However, no matter how often I think about the many sitcoms I liked, and still like for the aspects I loved long ago there is always the conclusion of the series themselves that pretty much ruins it for me. Of course a series must end but then it should at least end in a satisfying way for most of the characters and the audience. Just because a series loses some viewers and its decided to end it it does not mean you cannot write a more fitting ending.
Now of course some people actually like endings that I did not really like but when I think about the whole story, the characters and the show that they made I always see things that would need to be lead to an ending fittng for them that they actually deserve. I can end a show in a funny way and still I don't need to lose focus on the good things the characters have experienced until the end and even if a shows ends abruptly the finale does not necessarily need to look like that.

When it comes to this, there were three shows that I was not happy with how they have ended, those were:

Full House
The Fresh Prince of Bel Air
The King of Queens

And exactly one sitcom that I thought of as the best sitcom finale and while not being absolutely perfect, pretty perfect nonetheless, perfect especially because the main point of 10 seasons has been used to end the show.

Tell me your thoughts.

What finale did you think was perfect?

Honestly, I love sitcoms. Loooooove. I watch a lot of Friends, Will & Grace, How I Met Your Mother, That 70's Show, The King of Queens, Eveybody Loves Raymond, Cheers, etc etc, and I've noticed that there hits a point in the show where you can just tell it's going downhill. Like you just know. I've reached that point now in That 70's Show, which I am rewatching atm, and I'll keep watching it but it just... I don't know. It isn't the same and that makes me a bit sad.

Anyways, my point is, at a certain point in sitcoms, the main characters become more and more exaggerated. They definitely don't end the way they started. Which is fine if it's done right because people change over 10 years, but they don't become caricatures of themselves, which is what happens when it's done wrong. So some of the time, the finale is on par with the way the show has become, which is subpar.

I will say this. I loved the finale episodes of Will & Grace. I think they did a great job. I had so many feels. Cheers was okay. I think they undid some of it with Fraiser (like Woody got a good job and whatnot and in Fraiser he was back to tending bar?) and Friends was good. Wasn't great, but it was good. I would be a liar if I said I didn't cry.

There's only two ways for a sitcom to end:

1. It was all a dream
2. Walking out of the house for the last time, and the main character turning around and giving a bittersweet smile, then shutting the door

Or some combination of these two.

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Originally Posted by shion

What finale did you think was perfect?

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Friends with Ross and Rachel finally being together.

People do change indeed but sometimes something ruins the ending. King of Queens would have been good in my opinion without the epilogue which was just a "let's end it funny" moment. That does not change that their life is a mess again. Also I did not like that Carrie became more and more irrational, she was during the whole show and while Doug was a dork and totally doing idiotic things that are also not acceptable she was just evil, not properly responsing all the time. I did not care for a long time but this should not have been like this. Carrie began to finally understand a bit during the final but then Kelly talked to her, which was annoying as her character often did crap - as her reactions sometimes and her leaving Deacon from one moment to the next showed. It was fitting for Carrie to not agree with Doug but it would have been nice to let her change a bit, as it was shown first. At least they reunited afterwards.

The show was my most favourite sitcom for a long time and this ending is not what it deserved and it did not satisfy me personally. So much try to be fun was given priority instead of a "finally you are also lucky" happy ending character moment.

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Originally Posted by Jinx

2. Walking out of the house for the last time, and the main character turning around and giving a bittersweet smile, then shutting the door

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Sounds good to me if this is really the last moment.

I've seen nearly ever episode of Full House and Fresh Prince... but I honestly don't remember if I've seen the endings of those. I probably have, but they don't stick out. Some of the only endings that I know I've seen that stick out to me are:

The I.T. Crowd -I really enjoyed it. Not the best ending, but probably the best ending they could give for the show.

The Office (US) - The last few seasons were absolutely awful with only some good moments here and there, but the ending was pretty satisfying. Yes, the show should have ended a lot sooner, but they did well with what they had by that final episode.

The Office (UK) - Good.

Roseanne - Awful awful awful. I love this show way more than I should, and that final season, including the final episode, just felt like a smack in the face in a lot of ways. It was just so weird, too.

Family Matters - I honestly can't remember it, which may say a lot. This show was getting really weird as time went on, though.

Boy Meets World - Very satisfying, heartfelt ending. Again, a lot of people take issue with the later seasons (at least amongst my friends), but the ending was pretty great I felt. If I remember right, it had a lot of recycled footage, but it was a nice send off to the characters and a nice moment of looking back on everything they went through.

This is all I can think of off the top of my head. I feel like it's really hard to make a proper ending to a sitcom though, just from the nature of these kinds of shows.

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Originally Posted by shion

... How I Met Your Mother ...

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While the show itself has many things that get boring for me, it pretty much had a perfect ending from the first episode as Ted began to tell the story and no matter how the story is told and ends, it is not as much in the present as he who tells it. He is happy and has a family, his wife and he has kids and he tells them how it came to all that so the ending of the story is not even really the "most present ending" once it ends and so it cannot really end bad for me, as the show is already the story of Ted's family life "how I got my happy ending which I today live through with you" and not just one moment that was is happy ending in the past (of course it will always be but as we can see he still lives "happily ever after").

I do like sitcoms. The Simpsons is one of my all-time favorite shows. I also very much liked Malcolm in the Middle and enjoyed How I Met Your Mother for a while.

I rarely ever stay with one of them until the end, though. At some point I just lose interest. Maybe they just run too long. Or rather, they don't go the way I'd prefer them to go. And here's why:

Recently I've been a bit into slice-of-life anime and they share a lot of similarities with the sitcom genre. It's just that Key's works in particular are comedic, but the comedy never takes absolute center stage and there's always a more emotionally involving plot underneath the surface. The moments in which it becomes the main focus are the most memorable and it feels as if that's what the show was all about. It just appeals to me more than a sitcom in which it almost seems to be the other way round. The comedic factor takes center stage and no matter how serious the series might be at particular points, it cannot separate itself from its comedy to convey a more deep, meaningful, thought provoking story. At least that's how I perceived them.

A lot of people disagree with this I hear but I thought Seinfeld had the perfect ending for the show. You get cameos from a lot of the best characters, the main characters learn absolutely nothing and absolutely nothing of any real value happened. The show ended the way it began and the way it was for its entire run: focused on the silly minutia in the lives of four awful people.

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Originally Posted by Jinx

There's only two ways for a sitcom to end:


2. Walking out of the house for the last time, and the main character turning around and giving a bittersweet smile, then shutting the door

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This was how Growing Pains ended.

I think Seinfield had a good ending as well. Very fitting for a show that claims to be about nothing. It really was nothing.

How did How I Met Your Mother end? I gave up at like S6.

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Originally Posted by Shiny

How did How I Met Your Mother end? I gave up at like S6.

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It did not end yet. I talked about the ending because technically the "narration" part is the ending as it happens in Ted's present and his life is a good one, as he wanted. The story he tells is not over yet.

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Originally Posted by Vivi22

Any other ending would have been a disservice to the very spirit of the show as far as I'm concerned. And anyone looking for anything more was either watching the wrong show, or forgot what it was all about to begin with in the last episode.

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You could say that about every sitcom. Staying one-dimensional does not necessarily mean staying good.

I loved the finale of Friends, especially the joke about where to get coffee.

I only caught Will and Grace a few times on tv when nothing else was on but I did catch the finale and felt the feels. If I had seen the whole series I probably wouldve been a mess of feels

The Office (US) was much funnier after Micheal Scott left. There was a larger variety of jokes which were a lot less awkward. Finale was good I guess.

The Office (UK) finale was ok. Nice wrap up for everyone.

Extras had a brilliant ending. I love a cheesy speech in front of large crowds of strangers. Especially given the message of the show.

30 Rock had a good finale, especially with the finale parody at the end

3rd Rock from the sun I prefered the alternate ending to the official one (I like the one where he comes back after Mary's memory is erased and abducts her) It's a lot more fitting with Dick's selfish personality and the general flow of the show where Mary is dragged through ridiculous circumstances but still manages to enjoy the adventure. Also she doesnt have to deal with her friends and family asking where Dick went.

American sitcoms, on the whole, are pretty hard to stomach. There's good ones don't get me wrong (the US Office, Fraser, Seinfeld, even Modern Family works), but on the whole they were broad humoured nightmares. They always seemed to want to carry a message in them and it always felt and looked crass. Even some of the good ones did it at times.

They were churned out constantly and ferociously and because each network always had another in the works on getting more popular when one lost the viewers it was no big thing to just cut the cord and watch it drift.

In the UK and Ireland TV shows have a shorter run. They usually chose quality over quantity. They came in 'series' of 6 or at most 9 and unlike America there were usually only one or two writers who had invested their lives into them.

All that lead to an increased likelihood that if they did have to wend they had the time to end them right, and the will and heart to end them properly as it was their own babies they were killing.

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Originally Posted by Vivi22

A lot of people disagree with this I hear but I thought Seinfeld had the perfect ending for the show. You get cameos from a lot of the best characters, the main characters learn absolutely nothing and absolutely nothing of any real value happened. The show ended the way it began and the way it was for its entire run: focused on the silly minutia in the lives of four awful people.

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Yeah, I disagree with this. I felt like the cameos from all of the characters was a cheap way to get fans to reminisce instead of coming up with something original and a good, solid, home-hitting ending. Instead of doing that, it was essentially a "yeah, they deserved that" copout endig.

Seinfeld should have ended with each of them in separate settings perhaps in a way that tied them all together somehow and a manner that catered to the nature of their characters; perhaps George going off the handle in his George-like way, Kramer causing misplaced awkward distress to someone and being chased away, Elaine getting upset and her feathers ruffled over something trivial, and Jerry suffering someone's idiocy, and then showing the endings of the more important ensemble characters like Newman, et al.

The ending was a charicature of the show itself, and I didn't like that. Also, it was stupid.

I have actually not seen a lot of finales of the shows I watch because I can't handle how ridiculous they get. I am a sucker for the Friends finale, though, as mentioned. The last seasons leading up to it were stupid as all hell, but you bet your ass I cried my stupid eyes out at The Last One.

edit: Also, the Newsradio finale was a heinous crime and I will never forgive Lisa Miller for (SPOILER)not ending up with Dave. :colbert: I can appreciate the liberties they took with Dave and Lisa's relationship, though, in order to make it non-typical and non-obvious, unlike every other sitcom couple in existence. I still don't like it, though, because they were meant for eachother. :doublecolbert:

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Originally Posted by Shorty

Yeah, I disagree with this. I felt like the cameos from all of the characters was a cheap way to get fans to reminisce instead of coming up with something original and a good, solid, home-hitting ending. Instead of doing that, it was essentially a "yeah, they deserved that" copout endig.

Seinfeld should have ended with each of them in separate settings perhaps in a way that tied them all together somehow and a manner that catered to the nature of their characters; perhaps George going off the handle in his George-like way, Kramer causing misplaced awkward distress to someone and being chased away, Elaine getting upset and her feathers ruffled over something trivial, and Jerry suffering someone's idiocy, and then showing the endings of the more important ensemble characters like Newman, et al.

The ending was a charicature of the show itself, and I didn't like that. Also, it was stupid.

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The ending wasn't a caricature of the show. It was the show. Funny things happening in the lives of four awful people and absolutely nothing being learned by any of them or them improving in anyway, in the end only even having each other because who else would stick around and be friends with people that messed up? It was a show about nothing. In the end, nothing really changed aside from them going to prison for a year and, presumably, once that year was up they'd get released and go back to their lives still having learned nothing.

Any other ending would have been a disservice to the very spirit of the show as far as I'm concerned. And anyone looking for anything more was either watching the wrong show, or forgot what it was all about to begin with in the last episode. I admire the writers for having the balls to just basically do the same thing and even all but blatantly point out for those who never got it that they were awful human beings. Great way to end in my book. Any other ending would have felt either out of place or not fit with the spirit of the show and only been more disappointing than people found the ending we got.

Agree to disagree. The ending jumped the shark and was too much for my taste in the show.