Random TV Shows That Had Supposedly Happy Endings (13 items)

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  (#1) How I Met Your Mother

  • Josh Radnor, Jason Segel, Cobie Smulders, Neil Patrick Harris, Alyson Hannigan, Cristin Milioti

  After nine seasons, the titular mother (Cristin Milioti) of How I Met Your Mother is in the show for like a minute, then she dies. It feels like she only exists so that Robin (Cobie Smulders) and Ted (Josh Radnor) can end up together, even though viewers have seen time and again that Ted and Robin are fundamentally incompatible, and that their relationship is destined to fail. Also, what kind of dad talks to his kids about having sex with random women this much? Ted doesn't seem to have matured much from the series's start, and his kids are inevitably going to have some sexual hangups when they come of age. 
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  (#8) Girls

  • Lena Dunham, Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet, Adam Driver

  Early on, Girls tells the story of a weird, narcissistic, generally unpleasant person, who is surrounded by people who share her issues to some degree. As the show comes to a conclusion, not much has changed, except that the protagonist Hannah (Lena Dunham) is now having a baby.

  First of all, the baby's name is Grover, so he's starting off life with a supreme disadvantage; the Muppet jokes practically write themselves. On top of that, there's not a whole lot to suggest that Grover is going to have a wonderful upbringing, given how characteristically awful his mother is. 

  Would anyone really be surprised if the selfish Hannah decided to give up Grover for adoption after like a year, just as the baby was starting to recognize and love her? She'd probably say that raising children is harder than she expected, or something equally pithy. 
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  (#9) Mad Men

  • Jon Hamm, Elisabeth Moss, Vincent Kartheiser

  In the final moments of Mad Men, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) seems to have escaped the hollow world of advertising; the viewer finds him smiling on a beach, seemingly at peace. Then comes the successful Coca-Cola campaign that uses Don's slogan, and viewers are hit with the immediate realization that Don never escaped that world at all.

  His peace is fleeting, as he's more than happy to dive right back into what's apparently the only life he knows how to live. From the first episode, it's clear that Don thinks highly of himself, and his character doesn't grow or mature much over the course of the series. While, technically, he's returning to a successful career, the very premise of the show is that his job is ultimately his undoing. There's a reason no one likes being called a "mad man." 
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  (#2) Chuck

  • Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski, Joshua Gomez, Sarah Lancaster, Adam Baldwin, Ryan McPartlin, Mark Christopher Lawrence, Scott Krinsky, Vik Sahay, Julia Ling, Bonita Friedericy

  After watching Chuck (Zachary Levi) and Sarah's (Yvonne Strahovski) love slowly develop over the course of five years, the final episode comes as a slap in the face for longtime fans. Just as things are starting to wrap up, Sarah is brainwashed, and forgets all about the couple's intimate history. 

  The episode ends with them kissing, which implies that Chuck has successfully restored Sarah's memories, but this hope is never explicitly confirmed within the show (the creators even refused to confirm or deny anything after the fact). The reality is, there's a 50/50 chance that her memories are not restored, and that the road ahead of the couple is long and hard. 

  When the show starts, the pair's love is all an act, as Sarah is tasked with impersonating Chuck's girlfriend so that she can protect the super-computer inside his brain. However, as the series progresses, Chuck's nerdy charm slowly wins over Sarah, and the two actually end up getting married at one point. If one is to believe that the finale ends on a negative note, then the couple has to go through this courting all over again, and lightning may not strike twice. 

  Even if Sarah does get (some of) her memory back, the mere fact that Chuck has to convince his wife she loves him is heartbreaking, yet the show presents this tragedy in a characteristically lighthearted manner. Sarah has it even worse, as her memory was forcibly removed from her head, meaning that her life was basically stolen. 
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  (#11) Rules of Engagement

  • Patrick Warburton, Megyn Price, Oliver Hudson

  Rules of Engagement comes to a reservedly sentimental end (as most run-of-the-mill sitcoms do) with a final few gags thrown in on the way out the door. One of these gags is Russell (David Spade) marrying his assistant Timmy (Adhir Kalyan) to save the young man from deportation.

  While this makes for a passable (if insensitive) one-time gag, Russell and Timmy's marriage is obviously a sham, and the faux couple are undoubtedly in for years of close, horrifying government scrutiny. How funny is the joke when, years after the finale, Russell is caught locking lips with a woman in public? When that happens, Timmy will be swiftly deported, and Russell will potentially face jail time. 
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  (#6) Battlestar Galactica

  • Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Jamie Bamber

  At the conclusion of Battlestar Galactica, the surviving 38,000 humans and Cylons land on a prehistoric Earth, just as humans are starting to come into being. To dispose of all their dangerous, advanced technology, Anders flies their fleet into the sun. Following this, it is revealed that the entirety of Battlestar Galactica is actually a creation myth, or at least the fictional origin of modern humanity.

  That's all pretty cool, but destroying all that technology means that humanity has to go through thousands of years of bloody history. If humans had access to Cylon regeneration from the very start, there would be no tragic assassinations or mass genocides in our history books today. Plus, the humans and Cylons destroyed their own cultures, and probably won't be able to survive in the harsh, uncultivated Earth, considering how dependent they are on technology.

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