Talk about bookending a story.
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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 as
00:50well, 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.
02:39Number 8 Josh Wilson, Weeds
02:41The mid-2000s Showtime dramedy may have gone out with a whimper, but for a time in its first few
02:47seasons, Weeds was a compelling, sometimes uneven and darkly humorous exploration of Nazi Botwin's
02:54venture into selling marijuana to support her family after her husband's untimely demise. A large
03:00number of characters came and went across its run, and while some characters had completed arcs by the
03:04time they left the show, others were not afforded this luxury. This is the case with Justin Chatwin's
03:10Josh Wilson, son of Nealon's dim-witted Doug Wilson. The eldest Wilson child was introduced in the pilot
03:16as a pot dealer, and once Nancy discovered that he sold the drug to children, she threatened to out
03:20his sexuality to his father. After the pilot, the character was not seen to the series finale, where it
03:26was revealed that he eventually became a lawyer and married a painter named Alan. Once Weeds was picked
03:31up for a full season, it was revealed that some contracts were not renewed, and this included
03:35Chatwin's explaining his disappearance from the rest of the show.
03:40Number 7 Yori Nakajima, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
03:43The 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 Yuri Nakajima was a nice bit of humanizing for the super soldier. Unfortunately, it's revealed that
04:23the friendship was born out of Bucky's desire to atone for his role in killing Yuri's son RJ. As seen in
04:29the pilot, this loss hardened Yuri, 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 Yuri, and whilst this meant that Bucky had
04:40completed this part of his atonement journey, the revelation visibly hurt Yuri. His role in the show may have
04:45been minor, but it showed Bucky and the audience the fallout of his past actions, as involuntary as they
04:51may have been. Number six, Tom Hanks. Sort of. Veep. HBO's satirical comedy was a roaring success,
05:00and helped solidify Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a comedic icon for those who may not have experienced
05:05or grown up with Seinfeld during its run. Her role as Vice President Selina Meyer saw the VP being pitted
05:11against the off-screen President Hughes, as her attempts to gain political influence, and the
05:15hurdles facing this, became more and more amusing. The show itself was hilarious and incisive with
05:21its 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,
05:36as an event that would detract from VP Meyer's very public use of an offensive word. It seemed like
05:42a throwaway joke, but actually pays off in the series finale. Here, in a 24-year flash-forward,
05:48Hanks is revealed to have died and is passing overshadow Selina's own. It served as a perfectly
05:54hilarious summary of Selina's character, a person whose wins were often short-lived or overshadowed by
06:00other notable events. Number five, The Cloud9 Baby Superstore. NPC's recently concluded sitcom
06:08experienced some growing pains early in its run, but was able to eventually fine-tune its storyline
06:14and ensemble to deliver a wholesome and heartwarming peek into the lives of the Cloud9 employees and
06:19their lives outside of the chain store. Some may have balked at its your workmates are your family
06:24members approach in several instances, but the show was savvy enough to have a lot more on its mind rather
06:29than banal HR proclamations. It was able to be critical of the challenges and inequities in the
06:34workplace and still foster genuine relationships between its characters. Its series finale luckily
06:40stuck the landing by adhering to what was so endearing in the first place, while being topical at the same
06:45time. In addition to this, its callbacks to earlier seasons and episodes were pleasant in their
06:50retrospective approach. One such callback is Amy's encounter of an unsupervised child sitting on a potty
06:56in one of the store's aisles. It turns out that this is the same child and in a similar outfit from
07:01the pilot, only 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 in their lives.
07:13Number four, Anatoly Sitnikov, Chernobyl. Although a good number of artistic licenses were taken in the
07:20Chernobyl miniseries, its depiction of the horror and desperation following the worst nuclear disaster in
07:25history made for both compelling and harrowing viewing upon its release in 2019. It wisely took a
07:31restrained approach to said depiction in a way that didn't paint caricatures of the people involved
07:36but also ensured that the terrifying scale of the disaster was understood by viewers who may have only
07:41had a cursory understanding of what happened in 1986. This was seen in the treatment of main characters
07:47such as, and I'm going to butcher these, Valery Legasov and Vasily Ignatenko, as well as minor ones.
07:53One such individual was Anatoly Sitnikov, the power plant's deputy chief operational engineer, who took
07:58note of the immediate scale of the devastation following the plant's meltdown. Unfortunately,
08:03he was ignored by his superiors at first until it became clear that Anatoly Dyatlov, the station's
08:08chief engineer, was ill following extensive radiation exposure. Against his will, Sitnikov inspected the
08:14fallout of the exploded reactor and was bombarded by a lethal dose of radiation. He was later seen in a
08:20flashback in the last episode that detailed everyday life in Pripyat before the accident that would
08:25change his life alongside many others for the worse. Number three, Nancy Ryan, When They See Us.
08:32Released in 2019, When They See Us received near unanimous praise from viewers and critics alike for its
08:39uncompromising depiction of the injustices the Central Park Five endured after being falsely prosecuted and
08:45imprisoned for the 1989 assault of jogger Tricia Mellie. The case, and consequently the show, is a
08:51seminal example of the devastating impact racial and class criminal profiling has on people of colour
08:57and or working class individuals. One character that both bookended the crime drama and signalled the
09:02shift towards achieving the Five's freedom was the assistant district attorney Nancy Ryan. Played by
09:08Famke Janssen, 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 process
09:25that would see the Five exonerated after sufficient evidence was provided to prove their innocence.
09:30Ryan's part in the miniseries is understandably not its focal point, but Janssen acquitted herself
09:35well 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.