The 10 Most Controversial TV Finales Ever

Seinfeld

A lot of controversial finales irk people because they throw away their premise right at the end of the show. Seinfeld‘s final episode, though, decided to double down on its central conceit – and still ended up splitting the viewership.

Deliberately designed to be a show where the characters never did anything, you can see where the idea for the finale came from. In the near feature length last episode, Seinfeld and friends end up being sentenced to jail for “criminal indifference” after mocking a man involved in a car crash. In other words, for “doing nothing.”

However, most fans saw this is as a betrayal of the characters, turning them from loveably bad people into legitimately terrible people. It seemed to some that the finale was chastising us for ever liking these characters in the first place. It was undoubtedly a brave thing to do, and kind of in keeping with the show’s spirit, but it’s still probably not a good idea to belittle the audience for liking your own work.