I'm sure I deserved the spoiler, but jesus.
August 5th, 2019 at 12:02 PM ^
Yeah, you're in a thread about TV Series Endings and went 3 replies down on Game of Thrones.
That's on you, buddy.
One not on many radars: Bablyon 5, Sleeping In Light.
Six Feet Under was the correct answer. Never has a show ended do uniquely and memorably. That episode stands as the only proof that I am not dead inside, because it kicks me square in the feels.
Yup I binged watched it years ago not knowing any spoilers and then the last ten minutes ... wow.
And the finale aside , It’s also one of my favorite shows of all time that is always going to stand the test of time just because the concept of death is always going to stay the same . It has some amazing quotes that come with it. I love Richard Jenkins in it even though his role is minor
Dexter
August 4th, 2019 at 10:05 PM ^
I git a thunbs down for Dexter. Becoming a lumberjack is a bad ending?
The Americans. Better than Breaking Bad (about even as a series, better finale), but I admittedly have only seen sporadic episodes of Six Feet Under and not the finale.
“The Americans” finale was brilliant.
Mathew Rhys and Keri Russell acted the hell out of that finale . So glad Rhys finally ended up getting the Emmy he deserved for that show after that
The scene in the parking garage was fantastic. They built to that moment through the whole show and I still had no idea what was going to happen.
Any of the shows Peter lists in Family Guy?
Newhart
Beat me to it by one minute - LOL
Kung Fu
Sopranos
Mad Men
I'll go old school......Newhart (the second one)...very clever ending
Mad Men finale and particularly the end of Don Draper’s character arc was very well-done I agree . Just rewatched the finale that was on the UVerse channel AUD a couple weeks ago and completely forgot Brett Gelman was in the episode
I never ended up seeing the end of Mad Men.
IIRC, they had a long break in the final season and, quite frankly, they simply lost me as a viewer. I guess I'll have to go to the library and rent the final season now.
Breaking Bad.
But it's the only finale I have seen out of all the shows mentioned in this thread so far. I don't watch a ton of tv.
Cheers.
On par with best sitcoms in TV history.
IMHO ...
Breaking Bad. End of discussion, there is no debate. Better than the Sopranos, far better than the garbage ending GoT put together.
The Americans.
The final episode of "Newhart" was very clever.
Hated the M*A*S*H finale, and rather liked the Seinfeld one.
It's almost impossible to end a show well (as Tom Cruise said in "Cocktail": "Things always end badly, otherwise they wouldn't end."). That said, the conclusion of The Americans stuck with me for quite some time, and I have quite a lot to say about it that I'll spare you all, but I think it was brilliantly done.
August 4th, 2019 at 10:05 PM ^
Mash but that was a long time ago, you Youngins were not around so you all can't appreciate what that meant at the time.
August 4th, 2019 at 10:13 PM ^
Not scrolling down... do not want to see any spoilers
August 4th, 2019 at 10:14 PM ^
But How I met your mother. The ending was terrible. Wtf just awful
August 5th, 2019 at 12:10 AM ^
Explain! I thought it was one of the best ends to a comedy sitcom with the beginnings of the after story that we got to fill in with our own hopes.
August 4th, 2019 at 10:13 PM ^
The MLP series finale will be even BETTER than all the finales you posted.
August 4th, 2019 at 10:15 PM ^
Breaking Bad
Best TV show ever. Game of Thrones was tied with BB up until Season 8. Now Breaking Bad sits alone on the throne.
Embarrassingly, I didn't even watch BB while it was on the air. I didn't believe the hype. At one point I decided to check it out during like Season 4 and the episode that was airing was the one with Skyler crying holding on to her baby, Holly, while Hank and Marie tried to take it. I thought the show was some soap opera bullshit. It wasn't until years later I started the series from the beginning and realized the master piece it truly is
August 4th, 2019 at 10:38 PM ^
I think it’s weird to compare these two shows. I enjoyed the hell out of both of them, but GoT was pure spectacle and BB had things to say.
I always think about novels as fiction versus literature. Both can be enjoyable but the latter has a purpose beyond pure entertainment. GoT is fiction, BB is literature.
I guess I can see the similarity in that BB and the first several seasons of GoT were deservedly lauded for the intricacy of their plotting.
August 5th, 2019 at 12:25 AM ^
Game of thrones had plenty to say when it was still following the books. It was far from just spectacle. The source material for the first four seasons of game of thrones surpassed even the best of breaking bad.
August 4th, 2019 at 10:26 PM ^
MASH.
August 4th, 2019 at 10:29 PM ^
As the biggest Seinfeld fan ever, the finale was the worst.
The best ever was Mash. Almost felt real.
The Seinfeld finale was bad even though those 4 sociopaths got what they deserved
August 4th, 2019 at 10:29 PM ^
Six Feet Under was great.
Breaking Bad is a top 5 all-time show for me and the finale was great, but it was my third or fourth favorite episode of that season.
Under-the-radar pick: Angel.
The last season of “The Leftovers” destroyed me. Vague spoilers alert (!!!) but I think a lot of people didn’t “get” the finale. Nora’s whole explanation of why she ghosted is completely up to the audience to believe or not. The whole show was about faith and belief and that the truth about the unknowable is simply what you choose to believe (or something kinda along those lines). I thought that show was wildly underappreciated (at least the second and third season; the first was often brutally hard to watch and I get why people gave up on it).
August 4th, 2019 at 10:50 PM ^
Angel's finale was excellent. I wouldn't put it over Buffy's finale though. It's not quite as much a finale, and it's not quite as much a groundbreaker. Illyria was an amazing twist character though, and overall the episode was fantastic, I agree.
August 4th, 2019 at 10:53 PM ^
Great write-up on the The Leftovers and I agree with everything you said . Also a great musical Score to the show . Finale was spectacular for the reasoning you put .
The Leftovers is one of the best TV shows of all time. Top 5. I had a comment about it below as well that kind of hits on what you are talking about in the Finale. It actually goes a little bit further than what you said.
Not only is it really unimportant whether Nora left and came back or not, it calls into question whether it was actually even a possibility for her to try and even if she really even experienced the things that the audience witnessed. You realize in the finale that you were watching the show from the perspective of Kevin and Nora and they are the most unreliable of narrators. They both kind of even unspokenly treat Nora's trip to the "other side" as a fantasy that they will agree to believe for the sake of going forward.
Notice nobody (with the exception of Laurie) is even in contact with Kevin or Nora, nor are they attempting to be. It opens up a possibility that basically Nora and Kevin went crazy (Kevin a lot like his father) and the finale is both of them coming to terms with serious mental illness.
August 5th, 2019 at 11:32 AM ^
For the record, I haven’t done a careful rewatch. I think your’s is a totally reasonable interpretation, but I think that, if you were so inclined, you could also make the argument that everything that happened in the show’s world (whether or not Nora is lying to Kevin and/or herself) was real. That duality is why I think the finale is so interesting. Again, it comes down to what the viewer wants to believe. The show very purposefully left it open-ended. You know, the whole “let the mystery be” thing.
August 4th, 2019 at 10:44 PM ^
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and it's not even close. Buffy dragged television series out of the literary ghetto.
Honorable Mentions
The Wonder Years. What could it have been if the producers and writers were actually given time to make a finale?
Newhart.
Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The Fugitive.
Dawson's Creek. A sleight-of-camera trick that was kind of dumb but also kind of necessary thanks to the show's debt to metafiction; overall it stands up really well.
M*A*S*H
China Beach.
Angel.
Six Feet Under.
Dishonorable Mentions
St. Elsewhere.
Lost.
Game of Thrones.
Battlestar Galactica.
Beauty and the Beast. If only Linda Hamilton had returned. If only people knew what they had with a series starring both Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman.
Seinfeld. Sigh. Love Seinfeld, but what's the deal with that finale?
August 4th, 2019 at 10:55 PM ^
To answer your side topic question about a show where what could’ve been if they had time to make a proper season finale , I’d put King of the Hill on that list in that I’m confident they would’ve had an amazing finale if given the chance
August 4th, 2019 at 11:02 PM ^
Wings.
August 5th, 2019 at 12:07 AM ^
Wings was great!
August 5th, 2019 at 12:52 AM ^
Wings was peak Tony Shalhoub. And Thomas Hayden Church was damn good. Why that show is essentially forgotten is a mystery to me.
Cast had great chemistry and comic timing, and the pace the first five seasons was very crisp. They ran out of steam a bit when Church left to do Ned and Stacey, but its first 100 episodes were as funny as anything ever written for television. And the finale tied everything together nicely with the pilot.
Funny how it's been forgotten but man there was a decade there where it felt like you could find a Wings repeat on any time of the day. Maybe just overexposure or something.
Cheers.
August 4th, 2019 at 11:09 PM ^
M*A*S*H
August 5th, 2019 at 12:06 AM ^
How I Met Your Mother
Big Bang Theory
Original MacGyver
Mini series:
The Stand
Band of Brothers
August 5th, 2019 at 12:23 AM ^
Since its an anthology it should count, i think that the finale of season 1 of True Detective was one of the best episodes in TV.
Agree on Six Feet Under as well, absolutely spectacular