Quantum Leap - Good ending, right up until the text that forms the last thirty seconds. Hopefully that slap in the face will be undone by the upcoming Quantum Leap (TV?) Movie.
Angel - Great ending. Could’ve been better with some gratuitous cameos by other allies against the dark forces. Just doesn’t have the same symmetry without Faith and Groo there to help them fight the forces of evil at the end. By the way : They won. I’m sure of it.
Buffy - Yeah, the Ubervamps are suddenly not able to overwhelm the fighting team of Anya and Andrew? Ooookay.
Martin and his fiance get married. Niles and Daphne’s baby, David, is born. And Frasier decides to move to Chicago to chase after that woman he met near the begining of the last season.
The finale to “Roseanne” would have been good if it hadn’t have been for the fact that in “real life” everybody’s roles were different: Darlene and Mark really got together, and it was Becky and David. Jackie was gay, but Bev wasn’t, etc.
I didn’t mind that the series was a book she was writing about after Dan died and that the last season was totally made up.
Nice summary of the end of Fraiser, Agrippina, but what I loved for a ‘finale’ was:
There was no real sense of anything ending or getting wrapped up all neatly. It was simply life going on. They didn’t try for finality, which is something I like in an ending
I second Sledge Hammer for a great ending, even though it kinda wasn’t the ending…
And… Quantum Leap. I have never, EVER hated a series ending more than that. It made -no- sense, and while it promised to ‘answer the big questions’, it not only didn’t do that, it raised even more. I understand that some of the people involved in said program refuse to even -talk- about the final episode due to their disapointment with it.
And yes, Sleeping in Light was just… Amazing. But I felt that way about the entire series.
Best Firefly Objects In Space…wow it honestly makes me mad whenever I watch it and I realize that there’s no more shows to see.
Sports Night I love this non ending. Makes me feel that somewhere in some other universe there’s more seasons of Sports Night being made.
Worst Quantum Leap as mentioned it’s just a big WTF? episode. Time traveling ghosts? His leaps were a vacation up to this point? Huh? I heard once the producer was actually trying to sell the show to other networks and that’s why they made that ending.
In the Middle Mad About You I could see what they were trying enough to respect it. They just didn’t quite pull it off. Pretty weak in the end.
Friends Eh I wasn’t a big fan of the series anyway.
I have to defend the finale to **The Prisoner ** – I think it was the only way to end the series that wouldn’t have been disappointing. Any literal explanation of the show’s mysteries would not have been able to live up to viewers’ imaginations. Having the mysterious Number One turn out to be a previous Number Two, or some Ernst Blofeld-type character, would have been hugely anticlimactic, as would the revelation that the Village was run by No. 6’s own side, or the Commies, or whoever. The only way to really blow viewers’ minds was the way McGoohan did it: to pull the rug out from under you and reveal that there was no underlying logical “reality” to the show apart from its symbolism and allegorical meanings.
And it’s really not as much of a “hippie manifesto” as some may think – it sympathizes with the counterculture, but its view of human nature is much more pessimistic (or realistic, IMHO).
But hey, it’s my all-time favorite series, so I’m a little biased.
Other great final episodes: the praise is well-deserved for both Newhart (of course) and Star Trek: TNG. In fact, the TNG finale was so well-done in every way that I now wish they’d have left things at that instead of fizzling out with a string of lackluster movies.
Worst finale: X-Files, DS9, and any good series that got cancelled without resolving a cliffhanger, like VR5.
I forgot to mention my favorite finale ever: Mortal Kombat Conquest.
They clearly thought there was going to be another season, so in the final episode, Shao Khan’s minions systematically hunt down and kill all of the protagonists. They final scene is Rayden kneeling in shackles before a victorious Khan, who gloats about his victory. The last shot of the series is Khan bringing his hammer (or axe or something, can’t remember) down on Rayden’s head.
Whoops! Turns out there’s not going to be another season!
I wasn’t a DS9 fan until late into production, but once I began watching around season 5, I went back and had to watch everything leading up to then. That said, who can say that the DS9 finale wasn’t amazing? You have to take into account that the DS9 finale wasn’t just the final two-parter, but also the entire 8 episode arc leading up to it.
Of all the series finales I have seen, DS9’s is by far the most amazing.
Let me add my voice to those who liked the DS9 finale. I consider this show to be the best of the Trek shows. The final wraped the story well, but at the same time showed that the characters were going to go on with their lives. The events in the show chronicled one phase in the lives of each of the characters, and we got to watch. Now that phase was over.
Worst:
St Elsewhere!
Twin Peaks, and X-Files, I think suffered from the fact that while there was a great concept, that seemed to be tied into an ongoing story, in the end there was either no idea where the story was to end, or reluctance to end it at all. There seemed to be some sort of fear that giving the characers the kind of closure on this phase of their lives mentioned above, there would be no stories left to tell.
Just a WAG on my part, but since it’s a line of type between two quotes, it might be looking for a return . . . not finding one . . . and since the system does not count quoted material, might not be properly reading/counting your text.
Try it again with a return after your text and see if that does the trick.
All right, somebody has to do it… I’ll defend the final episode of "Seinfeld."
There are three main reasons I loved it:
The "Almost"s. Remember at the time how everyone was speculating what was going to happen in the last episode? There were several main theories floating around: [ul]
[li]Jerry and George would get to do their pilot again[/li][li]Jerry and George would turn out to be gay[/li][li]The whole gang would move to Europe[/li][li]The whole gang would die in a plane crash.[/li][/ul]
And the writers were clearly listening, because every one of these almost happened. I thought it was hilarious and brilliant.
The show finally showed a moral focus. For nine seasons, we’d watched these characters find brand-new ways to show how heartless they could be to each other, a trend that changed not at all with them making fun of the fat guy getting mugged instead of helping. The final episode finally brought them to task for all nine years’ worth, as past character after character came on to testify. Granted, the trial was mostly for comic effect and turned into a kind of “clip show,” but nonetheless it finally gave the metaphorical wink that the show had never given before, letting us know that “Yeah, we know these characters are essentially the human face of evil.”
Best of all, though:
The very last scene. The four are in jail in Connecticut (or wherever it was), sitting there talking. Jerry, apropos of nothing, points at George’s polo shirt and says something like, “Now, to me, the placement of that second button is what makes or breaks the shirt. If the button’s too high, it looks bad, if it’s too low, it looks bad.” Standard “Seinfeld” fare.
But then George thinks for a second and says, “Wait, didn’t we talk about this before?”
Jerry: “I don’t know.”
Fade to black.
The answer is Yes, they did talk about this before; they talked about it in the very first episode ever, when George and Jerry were sitting in the laundromat. Now, in the very last episode, they’ve finally started repeating themselves.
The series ended when the characters ran out of minutiae to talk about.
Most folks were apparently expecting the last episode to be just like the other ones, except longer and more joke-filled, and so of course they were disappointed. I thought the way it was done was far better, and more aesthetically satisfying.
I concur - it was done in such a way that, even though the expected closure wasn’t reached (unlike, say, Friends), it was clear what direction they were headed in, leaving the viewers to draw their own conclusions. I think most of us might agree on what they were, but the fact that it wasn’t explicitly stated makes for a better finale, imho.
I didn’t even think about the angle of repetition. But I also defended the finale for this reason - even if I didn’t express it as eloquently as you did.
I’d also like to comment on Buffy the Vampire Slayer - not the actual finale, but the ending to season five, which was originally written to be the finale. Not that I didn’t enjoy seasons six and seven, but as far as the way to end a series, the “original” ending (the season five finale) was definitely better, even if it *was * really sad.
Yep, they treated the audience as if we had a brain and could think for ourselves rather than pounding us over the head with what happens
Oh, and let me also defend the Seinfeld finale. It wasn’t a classic Seinfeld episode, but a fitting ending. It also celebrated the secondary character, which is what REALLY made Seinfeld such a great program for all those years. Yes, we love Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine, but we also have our favorite secondary character, whether it be Neuman, J. Peterson, Puddy, Jackie Childs, Frank Costanza, etc, etc.
In a not-dissimilar vein, Mystery Science Theater 3000 ended with Mike and the Bots back on Earth, settling in to watch “The Crawling Eye” on local-access. Crow swears it looks familiar, as it should: it’s the first movie ever spoofed on MST3K*.
I wonder what other shows ended on an “Isn’t this where we came in?” note.
