- 05/06/2025
Talk about bookending a story.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00The long-running nature of some TV shows means that earlier and latter seasons become completely
00:05different beasts. Some characters are elevated from recurring status to being essentially co-leads,
00:11whereas original leads become bit players or leave the show altogether. That said,
00:15what about characters who leave the show after the pilot has aired and return for the series finale?
00:20I'm Sy, this is WhatCulture.com and these are 10 TV characters who only appear in the first
00:25and last episode. Number 10, John, Parks and Recreation. The early 21st century saw the rise
00:33of documentary-style comedies with tongue-in-cheek tones and while some achieved relative success,
00:38almost none, aside from The Office, achieved the notoriety that Parks and Recreation did across
00:44its seven-season run. Its main casts were definitely the big draw but its cameos had their own appeal
00:49as well, ranging from Joe Biden to John Cena and even Genuine. One cameo, however, served a unique
00:57narrative purpose, despite not being as prominent as the aforementioned. During the core cast's
01:02farewell in the finale, a man walks into the park's department office and asks if a broken swing in
01:07the park would be fixed. In addition to giving Leslie one last act as deputy director, the man,
01:12played by John Daly, was featured in the pilot as an inebriated drunk who Leslie tried to get out
01:17of the park's slide. Daly's character evolution from a humorous slob to a concerned citizen was
01:23a heartwarming display of how much Pawnee and its people had grown since the show's beginning.
01:28Number 9, Deliveryman, Frasier. The Cheers spin-off enjoyed as much praise and notoriety as its
01:35predecessor and gave Kelsey Grammer's Fraser Crane a chance to start over in his hometown of Seattle
01:41as a radio show host alongside being caretaker to his father after he left Boston following the end
01:47of his marriage to Lilith. His eponymous radio show served as an interesting narrative device that
01:52helped differentiate the show from Cheers and gave it a different style of comedy due to Crane's high
01:57society-minded, also known as stuffy, sensibilities having more time to shine. This mindset often clashed
02:04with his father Martin's working-class sensibilities in multiple episodes and one could argue that their
02:10initial misunderstandings were embodied by Martin's rather off-putting Eames chair, a source of comedic
02:17jabs throughout the show's run. That said, the chair is tied to a minor role most fans missed until
02:22years after Frasier ran its course. The deliveryman who brought the chair in is the same person who
02:28picks up the chair in the finale. Played by the late Cleo Augusto, his appearances demonstrate how much
02:33Martin and Frasier's relationship has changed over the years for the better.
02:388. Josh Wilson, Weeds
02:42The mid-2000s Showtime dramedy may have gone out with a whimper, but for a time in its first few seasons,
02:48Weeds was a compelling, sometimes uneven and darkly humorous exploration of Nazi Botwin's venture into selling
02:55marijuana to support her family after her husband's untimely demise. A large number of characters came and went
03:01across its run and while some characters had completed arcs by the time they left the show, others were not
03:06afforded this luxury. This is the case with Justin Chatwin's Josh Wilson, son of Neelan's dim-witted Doug Wilson.
03:13The eldest Wilson child was introduced in the pilot as a pot dealer and once Nancy discovered that he
03:18sold the drug to children, she threatened to out his sexuality to his father. After the pilot, the character
03:24was not seen to the series finale where it was revealed that he eventually became a lawyer and married a
03:28painter named Alan. Once Weeds was picked up for a full season, it was revealed that some contracts were
03:34not renewed and this included Chatwin's explaining his disappearance from the rest of the show.
03:407. Yori Nakajima, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
03:44The Falcon and the Winter Soldier didn't quite live up to its lofty expectations but still delivered a
03:49mostly interesting exploration of America's deeply flawed socio-political structure and the dynamic
03:55between the titular duo was both fun to watch and emotionally satisfying. Sam and Bucky each got
04:00detailed arcs throughout the six episode run and as much as Sam's had more focus, Bucky's was impactful
04:06in a more personal fashion. The former Hydra assassin had intentions to make amends for his past crimes
04:12throughout the season and although his approach lacked grace in most of his interactions, his friendship
04:17with Yori Nakajima was a nice bit of humanizing for the super soldier. Unfortunately, it's revealed that the
04:23friendship was born out of Bucky's desire to atone for his role in killing Yori's son, RJ. As seen in the
04:29pilot, this loss hardened Yori and his friendship with Bucky was one of the few things the elder held
04:34in any regard. In the show's final episode, Bucky came clean to Yori and whilst this meant that Bucky
04:40had completed this part of his atonement journey, the revelation visibly hurt Yori. His role in the show
04:45may have been minor but it showed Bucky and the audience the fallout of his past actions as involuntary
04:51as they may have been. Number six, Tom Hanks. Sort of. Veep. HBO's satirical comedy was a roaring
04:59success and helped solidify Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a comedic icon for those who may not have
05:05experienced or grown up with Seinfeld during its run. Her role as Vice President Selina Meyer saw the
05:10VP being pitted against the off-screen President Hughes as her attempts to gain political influence,
05:15and the hurdles facing this became more and more amusing. The show itself was hilarious and incisive
05:21with its political commentary and managed to keep its high quality throughout its run with intriguing
05:26storylines, great character work and guest appearances. One such appearance, in a figurative
05:31sense of the word, was beloved actor Tom Hanks whose potential death was discussed in the pilot as an
05:36event that would detract from VP Meyer's very public use of an offensive word. It seemed like a throwaway
05:43joke but actually pays off in the series finale. Here in a 24-year flash forward, Hanks is revealed
05:49to have died and is passing overshadow Selina's own. It served as a perfectly hilarious summary of
05:55Selina's character, a person whose wins were often short-lived or overshadowed by other notable events.
06:02Number five, The Cloud Nine Baby. Superstore. NPC's recently concluded sitcom experienced some growing
06:09pains early in its run but was able to eventually fine-tune its storyline and ensemble to deliver a
06:15wholesome and heartwarming peek into the lives of the Cloud Nine employees and their lives outside
06:20of the chain store. Some may have balked at its your workmates are your family members approach in
06:25several instances but the show was savvy enough to have a lot more on its mind rather than banal HR
06:30proclamations. It was able to be critical of the challenges and inequities in the workplace and still
06:36foster genuine relationships between its characters. Its series finale luckily stuck the landing by
06:41adhering to what was so endearing in the first place while being topical at the same time. In
06:46addition to this, its callbacks to earlier seasons and episodes were pleasant in their retrospective
06:51approach. One such callback is Amy's encounter of an unsupervised child sitting on a potty in one of
06:56the store's aisles. It turns out that this is the same child and in a similar outfit from the pilot,
07:01only much older. It's an amusing moment that serves as a nostalgic source of comfort or
07:06nightmare fuel for actual retail workers before the cast eventually moved on to other phases
07:12in their lives. 4. Anatoly Sitnikov, Chernobyl
07:17Although a good number of artistic licenses were taken in the Chernobyl miniseries, its depiction of
07:22the horror and desperation following the worst nuclear disaster in history made for both compelling and
07:27harrowing viewing upon its release in 2019. It wisely took a restrained approach to said depiction in a
07:33way that didn't paint caricatures of the people involved but also ensured that the terrifying scale
07:38of the disaster was understood by viewers who may have only had a cursory understanding of what happened
07:43in 1986. This was seen in the treatment of main characters such as, and I'm going to butcher these,
07:48Valery Legasov and Vasily Ignatenko, as well as minor ones. One such individual was Anatoly Sitnikov,
07:55the power plant's deputy chief operational engineer, who took note of the immediate scale of the
08:00devastation following the plant's meltdown. Unfortunately, he was ignored by his superiors
08:05at first until it became clear that Anatoly Dyatlov, the station's chief engineer, was ill following
08:10extensive radiation exposure. Against his will, Sitnikov inspected the fallout of the exploded reactor
08:16and was bombarded by a lethal dose of radiation. He was later seen in a flashback in the last episode
08:22that detailed everyday life in Pripyat before the accident that would change his life alongside
08:27many others for the worse. Number three, Nancy Ryan, When They See Us. Released in 2019,
08:34When They See Us received near-unanimous praise from viewers and critics alike for its uncompromising
08:39depiction of the injustices the Central Park Five endured after being falsely prosecuted and imprisoned
08:45for the 1989 assault of jogger Trisha Mellie. The case, and consequently the show, is a seminal
08:51example of the devastating impact racial and class criminal profiling has on people of colour and or
08:58working-class individuals. One character that both bookended the crime drama and signalled the shift
09:03towards achieving the Five's freedom was the assistant district attorney, Nancy Ryan. Played by Famke
09:08Janssen, the assistant DA was initially assigned to the case when it was believed that Mellie would die
09:13from her injuries. Once this was determined to not be so, the case was assigned to now controversial
09:18prosecutor Linda Fairstein. Years later, in 2002, Ryan and New York DA Robert Morgenthau began the
09:25process that would see the Five exonerated after sufficient evidence was provided to prove their
09:30innocence. Ryan's part in the miniseries is understandably not its focal point, but Janssen
09:34acquitted herself well as one of the driving forces that gave the Five their freedom back.
09:39The 2016 adaptation of John Le Carr's first post-Cold War novel honoured the source material by
09:48respecting its espionage roots while adding its own spin on the narrative. This led to a well-told
09:54six-episode saga and one of the best adaptations of Le Carr's work in any medium. Tom Hiddleston's
10:00Jonathan Pine may be the series lead, but he wasn't forced to carry the show as he was more than capably
10:05aided by the likes of David Harewood and a rarely better Hugh Laurie as series antagonist Richard Roper.
10:11The simmering conflict between Pine and Roper is driven by the involvement of the volatile hotel owner
10:17Freddy Hamid and his partner Sophie Alican. Sophie immediately sees Jonathan as an ally in her mission
10:23to bring down Hamid by exposing his dealings with criminals such as Roper. Unfortunately this was her
10:28undoing as Hamid found out about their budding relationship and assaulted Sophie before having
10:33her killed. Her death sees Pine's further involvement with bringing down Roper and in the final episode
10:39the hotelier slash former spy enacts his vengeance by killing Hamid once he learns the reason behind
10:45Sophie's death.
10:47And number one, Vera Keller, The Pacific.
10:50Although not quite as gripping as Band of Brothers and admittedly that's a high bar to clear,
10:56The Pacific still delivered the requisite heart, wartime thrills and introspective storytelling one
11:01would expect in an HBO prestige drama backed by the likes of Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.
11:07As its title suggests, the miniseries focused on the United States Marine Corps' actions in the Pacific
11:12War, i.e. the section of World War II that was largely fought on territories surrounding the
11:17Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean to a limited degree. Despite this wide narrative scope,
11:22the show was still able to focus on a core cast of characters, one of them being Private Robert
11:27Lecky as played by James Badge Dale. One of his most defining traits was his relationship with his
11:32childhood friend slash first love Vera Keller. Despite her mother's warnings, Vera grew closer to the
11:37rebellious Lecky until his eventual draft into the war following the Pearl Harbor
11:42tragedy. Despite her limited appearances, Vera's romance with Robert was one of the series'
11:46stronger emotional components and symbolized what every soldier had gone overseas to protect.
Recommended
8:53
|
Up next
0:51
1:31
9:58
12:20
11:57
11:04
8:48