I was very excited to see the American Reunion movie. I saw American Pie just after college and remembered it was quite funny.
Jim, Michelle, Oz, Heather, Stifler reunite for their high school...
The folks in the movie miscellany board are having too much fun with their lists and I figure that there's a couple of best of lists we can come up with for television. And what better way to kick it off by coming up with a list of the great season/series finales? These are the finales that (unlike Lost) stuck the landing or the cliffhangers that left you wondering all summer as to how they are going to get out of this mess or where does the show go from here (like Lost). I have it at top 25 for right now but if this thread is active, we can up that some more. I'm going to kick it off with one of the most creative series finales ever. ....
1. Newhart: Not only was the entire series a dream but it was a dream by a character on another TV show. The multi-camera sitcom with a laugh track is played out but it really enhances the last scene....
I'll submit this one as it's very fresh in my mind. Vague spoilers ahead for those who have yet to start or finish the series!!
2. Friday Night Lights
It's like the overly sentimental finale of LOST, except FNL has never had to pay off on 6 seasons worth of convoluted mystery and mythology. All they had to do was treat the characters with care and dignity.
In a series full of characters that I had come to love (often after not caring for them at all), it warmed the cockles of my heart to see them in various states of happiness.
Most importantly, the final moment of the series brings it right back to its core: the relationship between Eric and Tami Taylor. Quite possibly the best depiction of a positive marriage I've seen on screen.
3. Northern Exposure: Funny this thread should come up as I've had the song from N.E.'s final episode stuck in my head all morning. The show's final montage is just a sweet, classy, & thoughtful ending to really smart show.
Series protagonist Rob Morrow exited the show a few eps prior & his departure is my favorite ending of any show ever. The original song used in the scene in 1995 was Talking Heads "This Must Be The Place" but the version below uses Los Lobos:
Yes, there were a few loose ends (Zuko's mom chief among them). Yes, the energybending is slightly out of left field, though I feel like it's more justified than some.
But who cares when you have a four-episode animated finale that's more epic and satisfying than most live-action finales? The animation and action is simply GLORIOUS to behold, the voice actors are all working at the top of their game, and there's oodles of dramatic payoff for both the story and all our wonderful characters.
Ricky Gervais pulled off something extraordinary with The Office Christmas Special, he gave us all what we wanted (a little bit of happiness and redemption for the characters) without conceding any of awkward humour or cynicism that we'd come to expect. As perfect a sitcom finale as I've ever seen.
Ends with every character left alive going into a fruitless battle, arms swinging. Love it. The fight may be insurmountable and ultimately unwinnable, but you have to keep fighting.
Great Finale and Cliffhanger all in one. The best kind. Going to change gears and submit one of my favorite cliffhangers of all time. I know I'm not the only one who threw my shoes at the tv screen and yelled in impotent rage "Fuuuuuuck Youuuuu!" after that final scene aired......
7. Star Trek TNG: Best of Both Worlds Part 1:
That was one long ass summer. Also BOBW was easily the best Star Trek TNG movie ever. It just so happened to air on TV instead of going theatrically. Derail over.
It's a fantastic culmination of all the different threads of the season, from big things like Buffy's relationship with Dawn, to little things like using the troll hammer in the battle against Glory. Everyone gets something to do or has their moment. It's both funny and moving, as the best Joss Whedon episodes are, featuring those witty quips and touching speeches. And then it sticks the landing as well as any show possibly could. There's no better synopsis of Buffy than that epitaph on her tombstone. I'm a guy who loves a lot of things about seasons 6 and 7, but Buffy really could have ended right here.
The brilliant, allegorical series ends with an episode that is played out as one long, cynical metaphor having little & everything to do with reality. Where's The Village? 20 minutes outside of London apparently. Who is Number 1? Number 6 is..or maybe society is...or maybe..who the fuck knows.
A mad end to the greatest series that ever illuminated a television screen.
13. Star Trek: The Next Generation-- "All Good Things..." (series finale)
For a show that definitely had its ups and downs, it was a bit of a risk to wind things up by asking the audience to remember how it began-- and to bring back a certain love-to-hate-him recurring character. It must also have been tempting to whip up some kind of endgame from the various bits of late-series mythology, or to engineer an explicit handoff to Deep Space Nine. But they made the right choices, and "All Good Things..." serves as a perfect bookend. Importantly, the focus is firmly on the regular cast, the better to chart the relationships between the show's longest-running characters without side distractions. And for eye candy, that glimpse of a roided-up future Enterprise can't be beat.
The Shield season five finale. Brilliant writing of course- the conscience of the Strike Team is destroyed, and it is utterly brutal, both physically and emotionally.
But for me it's really Lem and Shane that make the scene. Goggins is simply an exceptional actor. Johnson is the kind of actor who may be nothing special on his own but can become great if he's working alongside greatness. On top of that, there was always an amazing chemistry, a realness to the camaraderie within Vic's Strike Team (I think in large part because the actors were so tight in real life). They felt like a REAL unit. So when they decided to hurt each other... let's just say it was hard to watch.
I couldn't decide whether The Shield's Season 5 or Season 7 finale. 5 may be the best episode they ever did, but "Family Meeting" deserves incredible props for bringing the entire series, especially one that moved at such a breakneck pace for so long, to such an elegant conclusion.
This is one of the rare shows that sticks the landing all the way through. All (most?) questions are answered and characters are given proper sendoffs while still leaving an opening for the unfilmed third season. For all we know, if the show had continued to the end it might have turned into a Lost-sized clusterfuck so lets be happy with what we got.
It's hard to pick a finale from TEHBESTSHOWEVAH!!!'s run, in part because they're all phenomenal and partly because it's the second to last episode in any given season that has the biggest dramatic fireworks, while the finale itself examines the fallout. I give "Final Grades" the nod over the actual series finale because it bucks that trend a bit and has some pretty big events. We have Carcetti basically completing his heel turn by failing to save the school system, Michael and Dukie tragically entering the Stanfield organization, McNulty falling back into detective work, Bodie refusing to take the walk into a rowhouse. But while it's mostly doom and gloom, there's also what is probably the single most satisfying moment of the whole series.
Comedies are more miss than hit when it comes to series finales, but this one stuck the landing big time. Just about every loose end is tied up and there's a wonderful symmetry going on with the pilot episode that when it ends, you are sad to see it go but you don't want or need any new AD. Perfect ending to a damn near perfect comedy series.
19. Sons of Anarchy Season 3 "NS" I loved how they wrapped up what had come before and set the scene for the next season. Threads that had been hanging from the beginning and a major piece of revenge got resolved with the overall story of Jax (imho it's all about him) driving on.
19. Sons of Anarchy Season 3 "NS" I loved how they wrapped up what had come before and set the scene for the next season. Threads that had been hanging from the beginning and a major piece of revenge got resolved with the overall story of Jax (imho it's all about him) driving on.
This is a tough one to judge. On the one hand, I think in order to make a list of best finales ever, it needs to be the culmination of an exceptionally strong season of TV. On the other, it sort of makes it more impressive as a finale to redeem a lot of weaker hours and make me excited for next year when I had been ready to give up on the show going into the episode.
This is a tough one to judge. On the one hand, I think in order to make a list of best finales ever, it needs to be the culmination of an exceptionally strong season of TV. On the other, it sort of makes it more impressive as a finale to redeem a lot of weaker hours and make me excited for next year when I had been ready to give up on the show going into the episode.
Yeah, it is a tough one to judge, I thought the first half of the season was very slow but upon re watching it, I don't think the ending would work as well otherwise. What helped was the call back to the first season about Jax's character and doubts about SAMCRO. It was a satisfying conclusion to the arc and the season as a whole so IMO it does it's job.
21. (I'll put Hitchikers as #20): THE FINALE. You know the one. The one people are still bitching and moaning about. Though, it's people who don't really grasp the entire point of the show, and how there are no endings, ever: The Sopranos
Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. The point is precisely that ambiguity.
21. (I'll put Hitchikers as #20): THE FINALE. You know the one. The one people are still bitching and moaning about. Though, it's people who don't really grasp the entire point of the show, and how there are no endings, ever: The Sopranos
Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. The point is precisely that ambiguity.
While I agree with your praise of the episode, but I have to take issue with this particular wording. I think while it was definitely part The Sopranos' DNA that life does not have finales, it was also very much about endings. In their very first session, Tony tells Melfi about feeling like he came in at the end of something, which is supported by the mobsters constantly feeling nostalgic for the glory days of the mafia that they were to late for and stuff like Patsy trying unsuccessfully to shake down a franchised shop in the final season (the exact type of place Tony's greed is ushering into the neighborhood with the Jamba Juice deal). Or one of the final episodes taking it's name from Yeats's The Second Coming ("the center cannot hold" and so forth). Or how without getting spoilery, any number of characters meet very final ends throughout the course of the show.
The Sopranos was to a large extent about the slow death of the American moment. But it's telling that for a mob drama, it knocked off almost as many people with cancer as with gunplay; endings abound on the show, it's just that they come more frequently with a whimper than a bang. And as the gyre widens, so to speak, the really terrible part is how much goes on the same as before. There's no real reckoning* that comes with the continual decay, just a growing certainty that this is not a time that will punish selfishness, pettiness or greed in any way. And a corresponding dread of all the horror that exposes us to, all the calamities waiting around the next corner or in the next day...
Or that's how I took it, anyway. Maybe a better way of putting it is that The Sopranos was always about the feeling that things were ending, even as the mundane business of life slogged unfeelingly on. But it's all in that last scene in any case.
*Not in this life at least. The show also has a very traditional, borderline-superstitious Catholic subtext that peeks out every now and then.
Way to pick a nit over a word choice! I hear ya, though. Was referring more to the former 'there are no finales and life continues on'. Great read on the series as whole, though, Schwartz. Life goes on, and the book never finishes until we die; we just get another chapter. In Tony's case, he now has to keep a keener eye on the feds and find a way to adapt to the new world order he has helped create with his greed.
23. 24 Season 1. The final hour of Jack Bauer's first really, really long day is one of his worst. The final reveal, followed by the silent clock was a pretty shocking end to the first season of this action packed show.
24. BLACKADDER GOES FORTH. The men we've laughed our asses off at and with for six episodes go over the top into No Man's Land and get gunned down unceremoniously, before the screen fades into a silent poppy field. Probably the most poignant moment British comedy's produced.
22. M*A*S*H* - The greatest, epic-est, most bittersweet finale in television history.
I'm sorry, but the fact that it took until 22 for this to be mentioned really gimps this list. I'm sure a part of this is just people focused on the recent past, and part of it is a lot of posters not being old enough to remember it, but honestly you'd be hard pressed to find 2-3 finales in television history that match MASH. It just feels like the list suffers from "too recentitis".
I'm sorry, but the fact that it took until 22 for this to be mentioned really gimps this list. I'm sure a part of this is just people focused on the recent past, and part of it is a lot of posters not being old enough to remember it, but honestly you'd be hard pressed to find 2-3 finales in television history that match MASH. It just feels like the list suffers from "too recentitis".
While that's true to an extent, and I'm as guilty as anyone of being ignorant of much of TV pre-1995 or so, there's another factor to consider. TV, particularly American TV, didn't really embrace the season-long arc until the mid to late 90s. So until fairly recently, you'd have season finales, but they wouldn't really be "grand" finales of the type to top lists of same. So prior to the turn of the century, you mostly only have series enders to work with, and it's a very short list of shows that went out completely on top. M.A.S.H, Newhart, Cheers, maybe WKRP In Cincinatti? I haven't seen enough of these shows to really say, but that's about all I've heard of going out strong.
I wouldn't say early 90's and before finales didn't pack a punch. The Star Trek TNG "Best of Both Worlds" episode didn't have the benefit of a season long arc to make it awesome. It was just a really well written stand alone ep.
I'm thinking let's get to 50 or so and then we can rank them as "MASH" should definitely be in the top 5.
For number 25 I propose:
Dallas Season Who the Hell Knows: Who shot JR. Quite possibly one of the great cliffhangers of all time and definitely one of the most famous. Ironically, you can also place one of its season premiers as the worst of all time (the season without Bobby was all a dream!)
23. 24 Season 1. The final hour of Jack Bauer's first really, really long day is one of his worst. The final reveal, followed by the silent clock was a pretty shocking end to the first season of this action packed show.
GREAT PICK. I remember being prepared for some kind of explosive finale but instead we get Jack Bauer cradling his dead wife and crying. Truly crushing ending.
I wouldn't say early 90's and before finales didn't pack a punch. The Star Trek TNG "Best of Both Worlds" episode didn't have the benefit of a season long arc to make it awesome. It was just a really well written stand alone ep.
Right, and to be honest, in my head I think I was placing TNG about 5 years further down the line than it was.
Regardless, I was talking about it as a broad trend, not any kind of law of nature. Nowadays there is a pressure to make any finale an EVENT, which didn't exist prior to the turn of the century. The episodic format that dominated the 20th century didn't lend itself to grand finales in the way that the serialized cable drama format that has now arisen does. Not that there aren't exceptions.
24. BLACKADDER GOES FORTH. The men we've laughed our asses off at and with for six episodes go over the top into No Man's Land and get gunned down unceremoniously, before the screen fades into a silent poppy field. Probably the most poignant moment British comedy's produced.
Great call on M*A*S*H: "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen". I'd been meaning to write that one up-- doesn't it still hold a record for most-watched single broadcast?
I second "through the looking glass." Probably my favorite of all those already discussed on this list.
27. ROME. Season 2 and series finale: De Patre Vostro (About Your Father).
For being awesome. For giving so many characters (Marc Antony, Atia, Octavian, Pullo) their perfect endings. For putting a smile on my face right before the ending credits rolled.
Rome had a great finale, but with the pace they were rushing through the second season, it felt incomplete somehow, at least to me. IMHO the season one finale stands head and shoulders above the series ending, with Pullo and Erine walking off and holding hands, a hopeful note, to contrast with the (at that point) unknown fate of Vorenus, surrounded with death, punished by the gods for forgetting his duty to Rome. Episodes 11 and 12 of season one stand as some of my favorite hours of television of all time. Still though, I do love most elements of the series finale, though the final fight outside Alexandria feels very undercooked. Clearly they had little if any time to choreograph that. Antony gets the best material*, though I love that in the end SPOILERS Pullo got a son, and inherited a family with Vorenus' kids. Polly Walker does some of the best acting of the series there at the end with that look on her face as the corpses of Antony and Cleopatra go by. I also love that the final shot doesn't just end, and we're allowed to watch Pullo and his son fade into history, disappearing into the crowd
* his line, "not a bad place to die at any rate, I suppose... ::scoffs:: could have been a ditch in Gaul. ::pausing a moment, then half in reverence, and half with smug satisfaction:: Men that knew Alexander once stood here!"
is one of my favorites moments in the series, and Vorenus' none too impressed reaction "good a place as any" is such a perfect response to Antony's grandiosity
Heck, that whole death scene is just one of the best written and acted scenes in the entire series
PS If the auspices are favorable and the movie happens, where it's said Vorenus is revealed to have lived, it will put things in a slightly different perspective, since I kind of took that ending to indicate he died there with his family around him
29) The Wonder Years SERIES FINALE
Alot of big moments in that episode, and the epilogue made it hit that much harder, as you knew that the 'wonder years' were for Winnie and Kevin and the rest coming to an end, and things wouldn't ever go back or be the same
This is one of the rare shows that sticks the landing all the way through. All (most?) questions are answered and characters are given proper sendoffs while still leaving an opening for the unfilmed third season. For all we know, if the show had continued to the end it might have turned into a Lost-sized clusterfuck so lets be happy with what we got.
I love this episode, but feel frustrated by the fact it's the end of the series. While there are alot of plot points reaching their culmination in this one, unlike LOST, there was a highly detailed plan for what would come next. There was a 5 SEASON BIBLE dedicated to laying it all out. By the time the series concluded, they were already teasing stuff from three seasons down the line (the trinity atomic bomb test ultimate confrontation, for example)
There was never a risk CARNIVALE would have become LOST, and so it's premature death (most likely because HBO's coffers were being pilfered by the SOPRANOS cast* and their increasingly outsized demands) still wounds most deeply
On the strength of season closer, and the fact the show had finally kicked into high gear (though I do love the pace of the two seasons we get), I feel like it had the potential to finally become a real hit had the third season been given a chance
* OK I acknowledge they also had that whole "ROME" thing to finance too, I just happen to not care for the SOPRANOS that much. It was well made and acted, I just didn't like the characters or story
Great read on the series as whole, though, Schwartz.
