The original post: /r/television by /u/Ok_Style8774 on 2024-09-23 23:40:25.
I’ve been pretty vocal about my hatred for the series finales of Seinfeld and How I Met Your Mother over the years and while I still stand by everything i’ve said about them, I believe I may have finally a sitcom finale that’s actually worse then both of them combined and it’s one few people are aware of-The Naked Truth series finale “Up, Up and Away”. The Naked Truth was a short-lived 90s sitcom starring Tea Leoni about a Pulitzer prize winner being reduced to being a tabloid magazine reporter(as the 90s was the era of sitcoms set at trendy jobs, “Just Shoot Me” being one example)though after ABC cancelled the show and NBC picked up for two more seasons it was retooled to have Nora working at a more respectable magazine.
Anyways while season 2 got huge ratings season 3 didn’t fare nearly as well and there were five episodes that were unaired in the U.S. and weren’t seen until years later in reruns on networks like WE TV. Once people finally did get to see the unaired episodes including the finale some started to theorize that NBC was so horrified by how bleak the finale was that they pulled the plug on the show early. Course if that was true one wonders why they also chose not to air the previous four episodes? I’m not so sure I buy those rumors but after having seen it I can see why those rumors started, like I mentioned Seinfeld earlier and this finale would’ve been much more fitting for that show as the characters in this show while not as “innocent” as other characters in sitcoms at the time I can’t see as really deserving their fate, it just seems shockingly dark and out of place compared to the rest of the show, like this might legitimately be the most inappropriate laugh track i’ve ever heard because I don’t see how i’m supposed to find the characters predicament(basically the main characters get lost over the ocean in a hot air balloon and they’re certain they’re going to crash and drown and the episode has flashbacks to before they got trapped) remotely funny.
I have to wonder if the writer was going through a dark period in his life because I can’t think of any other explanation for something this baffingly wrong-headed. The only other sitcom I can think of with a similar ending is Strip Mall and that show was made to mock over-the-top scenarios like this in TV shows(one wonders whether someone who worked on that show had heard of this finale and was inspired by it)so it fit there, but this is just ugh. Sure ALF had that cliffhanger ending but that can be excused by NBC breaking promises for another season, this show has no such excuse. Even if they suspected they were ending was this really the best they could come up with? I hope somebody does a video essay on this show and dissects how misguided the finale was.
Here is a playlist for the entire series on Youtube because this is otherwise a pretty good show that’s been forgotten. Though I wouldn’t blame you if you skipped the last episode.