Joan of Arcadia was one of the few shows my wife and I would watch together with mutual interest. I was surprised when she told me it had been canceled. I can't believe no one else has picked it up.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to see the final episode of Twin Peaks. What happened?

a lot. the bank blew up with Audrey, Catherine, and Pete (as I recall) in it, Coop was possessed by Bob, oh, lots of stuff. haven't watched it in a while, but if you like, I can and PM you an episode summary. (next week; I'm so busy today that I shouldn't be posting at all.)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

As far as "series" go, yes it is an animation, but "Cowboy Beebop" ends on a rather sad note for a twenty-six episode run,; if you go back and watch, the ending was foreshadowed at least three times... really nice work overall. Some flaky science, but not as much as is usual.

There's the old "Sapphire and Steel" British live-action series from 1979-1982 which ends with the heroine and hero trapped for all eternity by the nemesis they've been fighting through thirty-odd episodes.

Then there are shows that simply end badly... like the soon-to-be-shown on Cartoon Network "Neon Genesis: Evangelion." Interesting idea for a series, but one of the stupidest blowing-chunks punch-out endings I've ever been witness to. "Congratulation to Boy and Girl" indeed!

I don't know if they never win. I can recall one where a police detective, a woman who had been chasing a seriel killer, somehow gets control of a time machine. She uses it to go back in time to just before his first victim and kills him. It's played as a loss, IIRC (been several years since I saw it) but in the end she saves several women from brutal murders by killing him.

Other movies that have sad endings, the original "Night of the Living Dead" should qualify. The recent remake of "Dawn of the Dead" certainly does, too, if you watch to the end of the credits (the move has a very different ending depending on when you leave the theater). The famous TV movie "The Day After" has an open, but almost certainly tragic, ending. Same goes for a great many movies about nuclear war. "Testement" comes to mind, where the survivors of Hamlen, California die out one by one after a nuclear strike on San Fransisco.

Sad or unhappy endings do happen, but I don't think they should be the norm or anything. Who would want to go to the movies if the bad guy always wins?

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"Kittens give Morbo gas." -- Morbo the Newscaster, Futurama

I like totally unexpected final-scenes that wrap it all up:
Good...........2001
Bad.............Elvira Madigan
Fave............King of Hearts

Sounds like you might like to see the various extended/reworked endings of this anime. I haven't actually had the chance to see any of it yet, though I do want to! Wikipedia has lots of info here (including spoilers, beware).

Several years ago, my wife and I decided we should be more sociable with our neighbours, so we invited the couple next door over for a meal and a movie.

The movie was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which had recently come out on DVD. We didn't know if they watched that sort of film, and we were worried it might bore them.

When it ended, the wife, Tanya, had tears running down her face. She said, "I didn't want it to end like that!" Her husband gently said, "It's not Hollywood, Tan."

Result!

I like endings that play fair with the viewer, whether happy or sad. I was first aware of unfair endings when I saw Nightmare on Elm Street. The heroine identified the twisted dream logic that she and her friends were trapped in, and she was able to use this knowledge to win the day. Then - surprise! - it hadn't worked after all and evil triumphed for no reason.

A thing I really hate is time travel stories in which it is established, in no uncertain terms, that you cannot change the past. But then, because someone important is killed or something, they say, "Let's try and change it anyway!" And, miracle of miracles, it works.

Anybody here ever seen MIRACLE MILE? What an ending for an American film.

The Pledge (Jack Nicholson) had a "bad" ending, even though the bad guy, who is never exposed dies (I didn't really care for the movie though).

Also, Invasion of the Body Snatchers wasn't a great ending (at least for the humans).

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Earth First! We'll mine the rest later.

Hanging? V?


Unhappy......Not seen Blakes Seven?

You aint lived....

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"Oh, you'd be surprised at the things you can learn when you're doing alterations."

I did see Miracle Mile. A good, kinda weird movie. I thought it was a good ending, but I didn't like it, because I do like happy endings. Although endings where things just go on, or are kind of left unresolved (which happened in the remake of The Thing) are OK too. But, yeah, I really don't like endings where the bad guy gets away. That's my opinion and I'm stickin' to it.

What I do want in my happy ending is that it not be the overblown mess that Hollywood makes so often, where the hero has to physically beat the villain one-on-one in a martial-arts fight blah blah blah or there has to be an "everything" ending. For example, the ending of The Abyss. A perfectly good happy ending would have been for the aliens to rescue Bud, but to do so they have to change his internal physiology so he can't come back to the surface. That would set him up as the surface-dwelling humans' first ambassador to the deep dwellers, and his wife electing to join him. Happy ending, no pointless raise-the-entire city sequence.

I think you are kinda missing the point about the ending of Abyss.

The Aliens had to make an appearence at the end (hell, who says they are aliens? They could be natural to earth), or the impact of the mile high tidal waves would be lost.

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"Oh, you'd be surprised at the things you can learn when you're doing alterations."

Tell me about it.

What about the almost pathological need for villains to try to make their final escape by climbing to the top of some structure? The city cathedral, the local(and never finished)construction site for the new city hall, the inner workings of the nearby clock tower, the incomplete top floor of the biggest high-rise in the city thats vacant save for lots of hanging plastic sheets and the elevator shaft with the defective door!

If I were a bad guy, when it came to the inevitable endgame, I'd do my best to keep my person firmly at sea level! [-( I have no need for some metaphoric fall on top of my ego-bruising defeat.

The tidal waves were not in the theatrical release, James Cameron felt that it made the aliens look too dangerous, and threatening. He thought that It would have had the audience rooting for the nuke to destroy them, so he cut that scene out.

David.

I heard from a friend who had the entire series and movie that they ran of money while making the last episodes, hence the lack of color and mostly unanimated sketches being used. After releasing the series in North America it helped pull in enough money to produce a movie which is considered the real ending. I havent seen the movie in a very long time but I enjoyed it greatly, extremly violent and still confused the hell outa me so it kept true to the series.

I think Cameron was underestimating the audience.

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"Oh, you'd be surprised at the things you can learn when you're doing alterations."

Ahem. While I liked the theatrical release, I hated the "Director's edition" for exactly that reason. The aliens had caused the destruction of our submarine, intentionally or not. They were the reason for the followup encounters. Obviously, anybody with that technology had immense power, but in the theatrical edition they were reasonable. And given their technological level, they must have understood nuclear technology. Since they let humans get the nuke, it couldn't have posed a danger to them. But despite that, in the director's edition, they proved that they were extremely dangerous and were quite willing to demonstrate it. It was a horribly unhappy ending: Long term human survival was extremely questionable.

Given that scenario, I would expect governments to attempt to set up survival bunkers, do everything they could to negate the aliens' power, and if an opportunity arose, to destroy them.

I expected Million Dollar Baby to have a happy ending.

Spoiler


Well was I ever wrong ! I thought she would get better and go beat the german gal. Then they cut off her leg.

The series Forever Knight ended badly also. Or should I say Shakespear-esque.

I've only heard about it on this forum. I've just googled and it appears to be a UK TV series. I'm not likely to find it at the local Blockbuster as I can't even rent Star Trek videos from there these days.

Assuming this is a series I can buy on a DVD is it worth it? Currently, I'm really enjoying the new Battlestar Galactica and both StarGate series. I enjoyed the first two Star Trek series as well. Where would you rank Blakes Seven with those?

I also liked the Matrix, Bladerunner, the original Planet of the Apes, Lord of the Rings and The Princess Bride. There, now you know everything there is to know about me to make a valid judgement on whether buying a DVD of Blakes Seven is worth it.

eugenek

Blake's Seven was a BBC science fiction series. I caught it on a UHF PBS station about a 100 miles away, so rarely saw an episode clearly (which may have been a good thing - more on that later). Our local PBS station never carried it.

I liked the series quite a bit, but it was low budget, much like Doctor Who, and it shows. There are obvious i