As I pored through the seemingly uniform expressions of disgust and outrage in columns and on blogs that followed Monday night's series finale of CBS' "How I Met Your Mother," not to mention the ugliness on Twitter that began during the show as its story delivered one unpopular revelation after another, I got to thinking about bad endings for good shows. I'd like to say that I haven't seen so much complaining about the last episode of a beloved series in longer than I can remember, but it has only been a few months since the finale of Showtime's "Dexter."

Since October, AMC's "Walking Dead" has consistently left every other television series in its wake, ratings wise. No wonder every network is in overdrive trying to locate horror and science-fiction franchises with which to compete. That's grand for fantasy fans, but I doubt that any of them will come up with anything that even comes close to the robust power of "Walking Dead," which strikes me as one of those lightning-in-a-bottle TV phenomena that only come along once in a generation and that nobody ever sees coming.