Pajiba

You picked both my favorite and least favorite already, so in the interest of diversity I'll present a couple of others.

Best: Star Trek, The Next Generation -- It brought the show full circle and examined in no uncertain terms some of the complex ideas explored in the show (and in good science fiction in general). What does it mean to be human? Is it an emotional experience? An experience of conflict? Are we defined by our careers? By our families? By our ability to overcome our shortcomings? Are we creatures trapped to a certain destiny, or are we able to make our own future? The season finale explores all these questions and more without cheating on the answers, and without insisting upon a certain philosophy. It brings story arcs to a close, without leaving them shut to further exploration. It makes it clear that the journey is more important than the destination.

Worst: Who's The Boss -- I know, I know, it's just a sit-com right? Right. But it was a sit-com I watched every week when I was young, and it had characters I grew to know very well. It was a formative television show for me. The show was about family, and how a family is formed. Family isn't just who you're related to; it's who you're thrown together with, who you grow to love, and who effects you. And in the last episode, Tony and Samantha leave the rest of the cast behind and go off to a nearby college so he can become a football coach. They abandon the set you've grown to love over the course of the show. Abandon the cast and introduce all new characters. They fly through the next five years or so. And I think they end in divorce or something. I remember thinking, "Now that's some fucking bullshit." And I was like eight. If you're a sit-com and your season finale makes an eight year old child think, "That's some fucking bullshit," then you've done something horribly wrong.

For me,
Best: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I think they did the good job of tying all the loose ends of that show. The final shot of Buffy smiling after Faith asks her "what are you going to do now?" was classic. Honorable mention: Angel.

Worst: The X-Files. One of my favorite shows but God, all they ever did at the end of every season was add more mysteries without really tying up loose ends. And the series finale was a huge let down. Dishonorable mention : Lost

I'm sorry, but I just don't see how The Walking Dead can be considered a "truly great" series. This is based off of...6 episodes? REALLY? I'm just saying, let's wait for next season. Who knows..maybe after a few more episodes people might realize how horrendous the dialogue and acting really is.

Best: M*A*S*H, if only for pioneering the concept of Series Finale. COL Potter leaving on his horse made me cry when I was 10.

Worst: Twin Peaks, f u David Lynch

Oh, and Todd, I totally agree with you on the Quantum Leap thing. I thought the finale was great...for the most part. The end, yes. The bar stuff, kind of wonky.

Newhart, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Barney Miller.

I know I've said this at some point around these parts, but the way Roseanne ended was just atrocious. That the whole last season was just a dream sequence was stupid, but what drove the knife through my gut was learning Dan had actually died of the heart attack he had at the end of the previous season. Then they had the gall to say that the characters had all been written for a book and weren't actually living the lives they had portrayed for all the previous seasons. I still haven't watched a single rerun of that show since the finale, and I loved that show.

I thought Cheers had one of the more perfect endings. Despite the final Sam and Diane shenanigans, knowing that the bar and it's inhabitants would be going about their days as usual was very comforting. We don't get to see them anymore, but they're still there.

I thought the end of Arrested Development fit the show perfectly even though it still pains me to think about it.

I thought the Seinfeld finale was an awesome premise, but as episodes go, it was only about average in execution.

The Twin Peaks finale was one of the best hours in the history of television.

The Wire finale rocked, which kept with the quality of the entire series.

I love The Wonder Years finale. Not putting Kevin and Winnie together is one of the things that made that bittersweet voiceover succeed - not just for the final moments, but for the series as a whole.

Cheers was doing a bit of floundering that final season, and I didn't think the return of Diane was executed well, but that final scene in the bar was very satisfying.

Night Court was another of my favorite sitcoms back in the day. That finale was puzzling and underwhelming, but I suppose its bizarre nature fit the show.

I dug the Quantum Leap finale. It stayed true to the spirit of the show, and, yes, I'm a sucker for down endings.

No list like this can be compiled without mentioning the wonderful final beat of Newhart.

Lost's ending wasn't great, but I didn't think it was all that terrible.

The X-Files had already sealed its fate. Compared to the preceding season, the finale wasn't too bad and had a few good moments, but, yes, it was a disappointment.

I know the show had to be rushed, but they really should have done something differently with that Pushing Daisies finale. Ambiguity would have been stronger than those hurried five-minute resolutions.

I never watched The Sopranos, and I still intend to do so. It was so present in the zeitgeist that the ending was spoiled for me. A friend of mine forwarded me this link that I went ahead and read a while back that I thought made a compelling case for the meaning and value of the ending. If you're a Sopranos fan, it's worth checking out.
http://masterofsopranos.wordpress.com/the-sopranos-definitive-explanation-of-the-end/

And how about that ALF ending? Someone needs to rescue ALF!

M*A*S*H. That is all.

I second =DocDoom1= with Spaced, but the end of the first season was the one with the dancing, and it was awesome - it ended on just the right note of ambiguity. The end of the second season gave the perfect amount of closure, reinforced by the end of the DVD box set cast commentary.

This will sound silly, but I'm probably most bitter about the ending of Dawson's Creek. Jen suddenly has a congenital heart defect and dies just so the other characters can Learn Important Lessons? WTF?

Everyone hates on the BSG ending, but it really only faltered on a couple points. The Adama/Roslyn bow was fantastic. The attack on the cylon stronghold by the Galactica was fantastic. Even the epilogue, with "head" Baltar and "head" Six was decent. Starbuck was a missed opportunity, certainly, and it was too ambiguous, but it wasn't awful.

LOST gave up on trying to do anything but wrap up the characters, and I could appreciate that much, even if the absence of any answers was a painful robbery for so much invested time.

I almost wish the Season Five finale of Doctor Who had been the show's bow out, since the ending was fantastic (not that S6 hasn't been pretty good so far).

Worst: Popular. Ryan Murphy made the mistake of assuming his show would be renewed (what, with the good for WB ratings and passionate and vocal fanbase) and ended season 2 on a horrible cliffhanger. The show was then cancelled.

Everyone hates on the BSG ending, but it really only faltered on a couple points.

To me, humanity destroying their entire civilization -- finishing the job for the cylons -- so Hera can pass along a tiny bit of DNA to some cavemen (which, biologically, could not have been that different from the cavemen's own DNA or interbreeding would have been impossible to begin with) and then die young marks a colossal failure on the part of the writers, not a minor misstep.

Then, junierizzle, your primary complaint is that ABC decided that an American version of Life on Mars was made at all...

The "Lost" ending sucked for sure, but it didn't rob anyone of any time out of their lives. If you enjoyed the rest of the show, you should be grateful for that.

The ending to "Roseanne" also blew big-time, much like the entire last season (or maybe the last two seasons, I forget).

Some people thought the "St. Elsewhere" ending was clever, I thought it was dumb.

The "Dallas" ending was also stupid; I didn't watch the show, but it was impossible not to hear about it, even back before the internets.

The ending to "Medium" (whatever, I liked the show) was also dumb.

Among the better endings: Mary Tyler Moore Show, MASH ending was OK, but really depressing. The "Rescue Me" ending was pretty good. A little long, but not sucky. The "Buffy" ending was OK, all things considered.

I didn't watch "The Sopranos" and felt "Seinfeld" was overrated, so I didn't really care about either of those endings.

Ending a show is probably harder than it seems to us, but I don't think it's so difficult to do well that so many shows had to fail so utterly at it.

Also, some shows go so completely off the rails in the last couple seasons (Nip/Tuck) that the ending almost doesn't matter. What came before was such a clusterfuck that there's no way to end it in any way that makes sense, so they don't try.

I know it's only because the show got cancelled, but boy did the end of Veronica Mars suck. Big balls of suck. I'm glad the FBI thing didn't happen though, that looked woeful.

I didn't like buffy ending, I hated all of season 7. Especially the crap that went down with Spike being nutty in the basement. Pure cack.

End of Harpers Island I liked!!

The Shield

Best:
Newhart I really didn't like the series much, but the ending was genius.
Firefly and FarScape even though it took movies to wrap them up.
and
M.A.S.H. such brilliant writing.

Worst:
I can't think of any series I watched regularly enough that had a lousy ending. BSG and LOST were just mediocre to me, not horrible.

For a brilliant show, BSG's finale was a tad lacklustre, but not deserving of the endless hate piled on it. It was nowhere near as bad as the time-wasting, pointless and contrived mess that Lost decayed into. And Veronica Mars, despite a hectic battle for survival, managed to bow out with some poignant grace despite its cancellation and unanswered questions.

For my money West Wing holds the best finale honours, having regained its stride in season 7 and went out strong, bringing just the right balance of closure and potential. Star Trek TNG had a good finish too, but was somewhat weakened in that the story didn't really end with the TV show, as successive movies did their best to undercut what should have been a good ending.

I find it hard for any series finale to top Six Feet Under.

ANGEL the entire fifth season is almost pitch perfect, and that ending, one of the most satisfying caps on a journey I've had. The closure on Wesley's story (one of the finest character arcs ever to find its way into our living rooms), the twists, Lorne's bow out ("Goodnight, folks.), the final line "Let's go to work.", and watching our gang charging against insurmountable odds, because the good fight has to be fought by someone, even in the face of certain death. *sniffle

I was slightly disappointed with Party Down and the ambiguous ending they gave us, but it still warmed my heart.

Fuck the entire 6th season of Lost .

And, just to stir the pot, it wasn't the series finale that was the worst part of Battlestar , it was the entire show. HA!

Best: Arrested Development - A bit forced, but they did a great job wrapping it up and leaving it open...I love that show.
Also, kudos to Fox for actually letting them wind down rather than cancel them outright. Shame on everyone who didn't watch it. I hate you all and "Family Guy" is the result. Ugh.

Another Best: Scrubs. The show was hit and miss. The end kept missing for me. But one night I tuned in and without knowing, was watching the series finally. It was fantastic and the way that a final episode should end. It was brilliant. If you see it, you'll see the juxtaposition they put the character and that audience.
They then brought it back ala "Three's a Crowd" to my "Three's Company" and it didn't work. Ugh. Why do they do that.

Anyway, epic closure and very clever. Hope you all get a chance to see what I mean.

*puts Bernard on The List for defaming one of the best shows on TV, ever.*

BSG started spinning out of control a bit toward the end but I maintain the decline is overstated. If you want a show that went downhill fast, try Prison Break, which never should have gone beyond season 1. BSG started out strong and stayed that way consistently with very few misses. The extent of its decline was from A/A+ down to B.* Prison Break by comparison was from B+ to D, and Lost was from A to F over the course of its run. I think BSG is picked on not for the extent of its decline as its deviation from its pattern of excellence - suffering from high expectations, by comparison to the other shows.

*All grades per the Helmet Standards Counsel.

"Hera was essentially a MacGuffin and fulfilled her function as a catalyst for the interests of both humans ans cylons. So it's totally unimportant what happened to her after."

When the driving force of entirely half of your series can be dismissed as a MacGuffin, your series finale (indeed, your entire series) can be described as a failure.

I actually liked the almost series ending of Farscape, by which I mean I cried my eyes out. I would have been happy without the miniseries.

I also agree with Newhart, Arrested Development, and ohmygod Angel, especially Wesley.

Worst: Twin Peaks (it was like the show wanted to be hated. How's Annie indeed.)

Best: Blake's 7 (Look it up. Bad. Ass. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar3wv-mjLZY)

As soon as I read the headline, I knew I was only going to have one comment:

I loved the Lost finale. I loved the BSG finale.

Now, the final SEASONS had some massive flaws, but the finales were great.

Lost - The "sideways" universe proved pointless. There were a lot of details that meant nothing once we learned what that universe was. BUT, the finale - Everyone reconnecting in the afterlife/remembering their past, great (especially Sawyer/Juliet). Jacob's role being passed on to the best candidate, perfect. Ben in the afterlife being unable to move on, perfect. The cave o' light, okay, that was stupid, but didn't take away from all the other awesome moments.

Also, what THE HELL were the "unanswered questions". Walt. Aaaaand? I swear, I can't even think of anything else I felt was unresolved.

BSG - The final cylon reveal was awful, and for me ruined the greatness of the last time we saw that character previously. But the finale, as others noted, had stuff like the Roslin/Adama conclusion. I also even liked Starbuck's conclusion. A lot. Hell, as she stood there, I actually said to my TV "now disappear, disappear, come on, YESSS!" much like I begged the screen to cut to black while in the theatre for Inception.

In short, fuck everyone.

Yes…it’s “Lost” and that was six years of my life down a fucking rabbit hole.

I knew they didn't have a clue what they were going to do before the end of the first episode. So glad I dodged that bullet.

While I never watched Newhart, I did watch The Bob Newhart Show faithfully. I decided to watch the last episode of Newhart and it did not disappoint. I laughed my butt off. Genius. (Actually, all of Bob Newhart's shows just run together in my head, The Bob Newhart Show, Newhart, Bob, Show, etc. etc.)

I also loved the ending of Life On Mars (UK version), but I love the entire show. The Brits know how to not overstay their welcome. I also watched the ending of Ashes To Ashes (the sequel) and thought it was dumb.

And I know I'm showing my age, but I liked the ending of Upstairs/Downstairs (ending with the crash of 1929).

Scrubs had a very satisfying finale.

i vehemently adored buffy and most of angel bc i am a whedonite and not ashamed, but the ending of angel was SO AWFUL. i mean, don't get me wrong- loved wesley's arc and all, but just...no. no, no, no.

my fiance and i just watched the ending to 'quantum leap' the other day and he hated it. i loved it, despite the wonky bar bit, for the simple fact that he chose to do what he was doing. also, we both decided 'arrested development' ended very strangely and abruptly- but it was pitch-perfect for the way the show was to begin with.

i was meh on seinfeld.

LB >> I don't know if you'll come back to read this, but I came *very* close to talking about the Death Note anime ending in my rundown. I agree with your critique in general, although I thought the anime was such a quality adaptation overall that - while I found the ending inferior to the manga - I accepted it as an alternate ending and would highly recommend the anime (but only after reading the manga).

Did you check out the live-action movies?

And I'm just going to say it again, since no one seems to come close to agreeing with me. The Twin Peaks finale was greatness.

Best: Six Feet Under
Worst at the moment of viewing: Angel, simply because we spent 15 minutes messing around with the DVD and checking online to see if we were missing one because we couldn't believe that was it. In retrospect I appreciate it more.
Worst with lingering bitterness: Lost.
(Also, I have 2 friends who went on a rampage after watching the Golden Girls finale. I saw the aftermath of the hissy fit and it was not pretty.)

I loved the LOST ending, i think it ended in a great way and it was bittersweet.

Darth Corleone: I'll respect your opinion, naturally, but I just couldn't tolerate how they screwed up two of my favorite characters' arcs and added in a plot hole. (There is no mention of anybody in Near's team being a mole, so how did Mello kill them off with the Note?) I also enjoyed the manga's displays of Near and L's deduction processes, which were absent from the anime.

I'll discuss the live-action films with you later, if you're willing to spend your time on that.

As for Twin Peaks, I only just put the series on my instant queue, so I can't comment yet. I watched the pilot months ago, though. .

Also, what THE HELL were the "unanswered questions".

Posted by: Steve at September 8, 2011 10:03 PM

Steve, you didn't pay attention, did you? Here is a video that neatly lists all of the unanswered questions. And here is a list of the more important questions in depth.

I'll throw Terriers into the ring. Sad as I am that the show only had one season, that was a great ending! Sitting in the truck at the red light wondering which way to turn, then the fade out as you hear the truck start moving...just perfect.

My father let out a scream of frustration, but I loved it.

I have to second Star Trek:TNG as one of the best series finales. I recently caught the very end of it on TV and it made me so happy and nostalgic. It really summed up everything that made the show great and cemented the relationship between the characters.

I'm not really sure what I would put under the "Worst" heading. I've had a lot of shows betray me in the past few years and I've left most of them before the ending either through apathy or anger. I should really take a break from watching genre TV. Clearly it's not good for me.

Tarn--Blackadder, great call. I watched it many years ago and still remember feeling shocked, that after all the wonderful nonsense, the end was them leaping out of the trench to face their deaths.

Oh! One I forgot: Wonder Woman. Because they had only just started to figure out how good Lynda Carter looked running in slow-motion when the series was canceled.

Gia, I so agree. The entire 7th and 8th season of That 70's show was a travesty. They threw away any character growth for the first 6 seasons and went for cheap jokes. Hyde has a black father because he has curly hair? He is about the whitest guy on the planet. Jackie ends up with Fez? Why don't they just pass her around the circle like a joint. Hyde marries a stripper after he dates Jackie for 3 seasons and tells her he's not ready for marriage. He's 19 fer christsakes. Randy replaces Eric? Not on your freakin life. The actors who played Randy and the stripper wouldn't have made it on According to Jim, that's how bad they were. The show was about the 6 friends and Red and Kitty and should have ended when Grace and Kutcher left the show.
After Donna and Eric were played out, Jackie and Hyde became the interesting storyline and they just tossed it away. You could tell that the remaining actors thought it was shit too and were going though the motions.
Danny Masterson even said on a call-in to his radio show that he hated the season and thought J and H should have ended up together.

The final 5 minutes was actually good ( deleting the Jackie Fez monstrosity) and was the only smile I cracked for the final 26 episodes.

Best ending: Newhart.

"This will sound silly, but I'm probably most bitter about the ending of Dawson's Creek. Jen suddenly has a congenital heart defect and dies just so the other characters can Learn Important Lessons? WTF?"

Yeah, but later she was the only one of the group to have a respectable film career -- Katie's $cientology contract notwithstanding -- so it all turned out okay in the end.

I'll give a shout to Blackadder Goes Forth, too...

"I wrote a final entry in my journal. It just says, 'Bugger.'"

Sopranos hands down without a doubt #1 for me.

Wire #2.

Six Feet Under? REALLY??? One of the worst endings ever IMO. Way to spoon-feed your audience and spell out all the endings/epilogue of characters.Too heavy handed and wrapped up nicely in a package with a bow. Too damn obvious and clean for my liking.

My 2cents.

The finale of LOST broke my heart. What's the point of ever revisiting past episodes?

If DarthCorleone returns at some point, I'll be glad to discuss the live-action DN films. Until then, I'm going to go ahead and make my argument for why Episode Five of Children of Earth should have been the series finale for Torchwood, not The Blood Line of Miracle Day, or whatever episodes Starz will release in the future, as there was a massive sequel hook at the end of Miracle Day.

One of the best series finales that I have seen: Torchwood:Children of Earth, Episode Five: Having lost the man that loved him, lost track of his one remaining personal connection to earth because she is a fugitive from the UK government and lost all dedication to his work in light of the death of his grandson by his own hand, Jack Harkness abandons earth for the final time, choosing to rejoin his mentor after his optimistic intentions for defending earth have collapsed.
Gwen Cooper is forced to sacrifice the career that she loved to ensure the security of her family.
An incredibly bitter ending, but the lingering opportunity for Jack to give earth another go in the "future" offers a sliver of hope. And knowing Gwen, the desire for action will overwhelm her eventually and she'll likely attempt to rejoin a police force at some point.
For Miracle Day's mediocre ending to a series that is full of missed opportunities and real potential, I will return later in the day.

As an episode I thought the finale of Twin Peaks was excellent. It was the first episode in quite a while that Lynch directed himself, and the drop in quality over the course of the second season was obvious. The finale was a great return to form, and it's my understanding that they hoped they would get a third season. Either condemning it or praising it for ending on a cliffhanger seems unfair, because they didn't want to end it that way.

If we're going to get pissed about shows that ended on cliffhangers when the creators didn't want them to, I have to mention The Others. It wasn't a great show, but man, was that ending a gut-punch. Especially since it meant no more Satori, who was so hot it hurts me.

Without anyone to rant about/discuss Miracle Day or Death Note with, I'll just mention that, despite my opinion that it shouldn't have been the finale, the final episode of Dead Like Me was one of the series' highest points. In response to whoever mentioned Pushing Daisies, while I can't completely disagree with you, it was still satisfying, for me at least, to see everybody get a resolution. Dead Like Me didn't get full character resolutions, not even with its Serenity, Life After Death, which wasn't *as* disappointing as I'd expected it to be.

Love them or hate them, at least these series had endings the merits of which we can argue about for years to come. One word......Deadwood.

Most of the files in the Wordpress theme I have end in .php. I would like to be able to make the text changes on screen in the Wordpress theme, also, how do you add additional pages, etc?.

Best is Star Trek: TNG, end of discussion. It wins every category possible for a series finale: sheer quality, wrap-up of the show's major themes, character development/involvement in the story, full-circle-ness, transcendent message, dedication to genre, entertainment value (even if you had never seen a single other episode, you'd be fantastically entertained). It even cleverly manages to solve the Troi-being-pointless problem by largely excising her but making her absence an important plot/character point. And the last scene is beautiful and genius on multiple levels. I've never seen a series finale that could beat this one.

Worst would have to be X-Files in a landslide, although I actually think the final scene is lovely. The rest of it is unwatchable. It even fails the test of "Was it only so terrible because the rest of the show was (well, mostly) so great?" Nope, it would have been a shitty finale even for a shitty show.

I think the LOST finale, while obviously an utter failure, gets a bad rap, because taken on its own it's quite a beautiful, interesting episode. But in the context of the show, it came off like the finale to a different show than the one we'd been watching for six years, paying off not a single thread of plot while answering a bunch of random questions no one had even asked. Terrible. But just as a single episode of television I think it's really good.

The BSG finale hate is so fucking overblown. Come on. Yeah, the Starbuck thing was lame, and there was a bit too much deus ex machina to be really good storytelling, and okay yeah the epilogue was as stupid as Harry Potter's, but the character wrap-ups and battle at the Colony were fricking awesome, and overall it's a great episode of television.

Echoing the honorable mention for the SATC finale. Everything worked, each character got a lovely send-off that displayed actual development, and the final shot of Carrie disappearing into the NYC sidewalk crowd, like we'd only ever caught a glimpse of her, was perfect.

The worst ending for me goes to the short-lived U.S. version of Life on Mars. Dream sequence? The writers knew they had to end the show...and they choose to make the whole thing as a dream? I would have rather had loose ends everywhere. And the even more infuriating part is that they has it ended pretty well 10 minutes before the end of the episode, but then they tacked on the dream.

The best: maybe not the best, but my favorite might have to be Quantum Leap because it didn't leave on a "happy note."