Top 10 Unsatisfying Sitcom Endings

Some of the most unsatisfying series endings happened when the show’s creators didn’t realize they were making a series finale episode, and “ALF” is just one example of that. The final episode ends with ALF being surrounded by the Alien Task Force and the words “To Be Continued…” appear on the screen. You see, NBC had verbally committed to another season but they ended up changing their mind, making what had been produced as a season four finale the show’s final episode. Thankfully, fans eventually got the closure they deserved six years later with the 1996 made-for-TV movie “Project: ALF” which resolved the “To Be Continued” cliffhanger.

As if a show about an alien from planet Ork who greets people with "Na-Nu Na-Nu" wasn’t bizarre enough, “Mork & Mindy” got farther out with each season. At the end of season four, Mork and Mindy see their apartment destroyed by an alien named Kalnik. Mork’s magic shoes get damaged and when he clicks them they are transported to prehistoric times. Cut to season five and they have to keep jumping through time to get away from Kalnik. Well, that was going to be season five, but the show was cancelled after they’d already finished filming season four. So, even rearranging the order of the final episodes left fans with a bit of a never-resolved cliffhanger.

The cornerstone of “Will & Grace” was, well, Will and Grace. They were the titular characters and their friendship was the bedrock of the show. No matter what happened, they were a friendship that could withstand anything. At least until the series finale in 2006 when an argument-slash-perceived betrayal leads to the pair speaking but once over the next 20 years. Eventually, they find their friendship again when they run into each other taking their kids to college, but the whole “falling-out” storyline didn’t sit well with many fans. And apparently it didn’t sit well with the show’s creators either, because when the series was revived in 2017 the original finale was retroactively nixed and written off as a dream Karen had.

The final “Full House” moments were just what you would have expected as the show ended with a wonderfully overly saccharine scene that had us smiling and groaning all at the same time. However, to get to that heart-filling and tooth-aching moment the show, for some reason, decided to have Michelle fall off a horse, get amnesia and forget her whole family. This was way more serious than the show usually got and was an odd decision for the last episode. Although it did allow for both Olson twins to be on screen at the same time when Michelle gets her memory back and they morph together via some lame mid-90s special effects.

76.3 million people in the United States watched the “Seinfeld” finale, which ranks fourth among most watched TV series finales. It was also the first time a regular series television show had charged $1 million for a 30-second commercial spot. And yet, to many of those 76.3 million viewers, the episode was an unsatisfying disappointment. While the idea of having the four main characters get their comeuppance for years of selfishness was controversial enough, the most unsatisfying thing about the episode was how unfunny it was. To quote from the Entertainment Weekly review of the episode, “[Larry] David took the idea that these are essentially unlikable people and ran with it, mainly leaving out the jokes.”

Losing a beloved main character is difficult for any show to navigate (unless that show is “Law & Order”). Losing two of them is even harder. Which is what “That '70s Show” had to deal with when both Topher Grace and Ashton Kutcher left prior to, and shortly after, the start of the eighth season respectively. The show brought in some new characters and managed to put together a decent final season and, of course, both Topher and Ashton came back for the final episode. Unfortunately, the show provided a send off into the 80s with an episode that wasn’t quite as good as what it used to be and not the same as what it had been for the last season.

Trying to briefly recap the final episode of "Two and a Half Men" would be harder than Charlie Harper trying to stay faithful to just one woman. The episode had it all, from the revelation that Charlie was still alive to cameos from Christian Slater and Arnold Schwarzenegger. And while the majority of the episode was enjoyably odd and filled with references for the fans, it’s the last minute that gets most people up in arms. As a man who appears to be Charlie Harper approaches the house a…. Actually, just watch for yourself as the oddness reaches a whole other level and series co-creator Chuck Lorre decides to end it all with what comes off as some sort of petty revenge fantasy.

The week of May 14th, 2001 was a big week for sitcom pregnancy test cliffhangers. On Thursday the 17th “Friends” ended its seventh season with the revelation that Rachel was pregnant. But who was the father? And just three days prior, on Monday the 14th “Moesha” ended its sixth season with a positive pregnancy test in the trash can in Moesha’s dorm room. But whose test was it? However, unlike “Friends,” “Moesha” was cancelled after that season and we never found out who was pregnant, or any of the other cliffhangers that the show left us with, thinking they’d be back next season. There were rumors that some of the storylines would be resolved on “The Parkers,” but that never happened.

We were told in the pilot that Robin wasn’t the mother of Ted’s children. And the show’s creators have said that they did that right away in order to avoid the whole will they or won’t they thing. However, in the series finale, after we find out that the “mother” passed away six years ago, even his kids call their dad out for having told a story that is more about his love for Robin than how he met their mother. Basically making the whole “how I met your mother” part of the show an afterthought. The finale was so hated that they included an alternate ending on the DVD that cuts off before the part with his kids and the loving Robin stuff.

In “Roseanne”’s final season, Dan survives a heart attack and the Conners win $108 million in the lottery. Or at least that’s what we thought until the last couple minutes of the series. With the final scene we're basically told that everything we’d seen had been made up by Roseanne in an effort to cope with her husband’s death. But not just that last season. Writer Roseanne hadn’t just made up the lottery winning and Dan surviving, but she’d also switched the boys her daughters were dating, made her straight mother gay, and made her gay sister straight. When the show was revived in 2018 it pretty much dismissed the entire ninth season, which is what most fans had done back in 1997.