Yep, I said it. Fuck the finale of Newhart, fuck it right in the goddamn ear. I’m so sick of it showing up in threads like this one Most perfect series ending - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board while everyone stands around circle-jerking and moaning about how awesome it was. Christ, it only took ONE reply in that thread before somebody mentioned Newhart. It wasn’t that fucking great!
You know what was better than the Newhart ending? The Cheers finale. You know what was better than both of those? The Wonder Years finale. Hell, the last episode of fucking Blackadder Goes Forth was better than the Newhart finale. Fuck all you Newhart finale fanboys and fangirls and your over-hyped shitty final epsiode!
Fuckin’ aye right. Newhart can eat a dick. I seriously don’t see all the hype over that finale with so many better series endings out there. MASH, anyone?
Well, screw you guys. I watched it, and I didn’t know what was going to happen until it went dark and I thought that was how they did it on the Bob Newhart show, and it was cute surprise and then a mean little existential twist about how our fondest dreams might just be having et sumtin that didn’t sit well. It was clever.
But it wasn’t The Shield, or MASH or The Sopranos.
The MASH ending wasn’t that great. Then again, the MASH series wasn’t all that great, either, madly caroming as it did between sanctimonious and juvenile. I’m prepared to buy that it was groundbreaking, but jeez…
It was the bestest finale EVAR, and when I’m Emperor of the Universe my first decree shall be that all endeavors, upon their completion, must include a variation of Bob Hartley waking up in his bed and telling his wife Emily that he had just had the weirdest dream.
EVERY endeavor. If you can imagine the SDMB ever closing up shop, the final post on the last thread will be a description of Bob Hartley waking up, confused and disoriented, in Chicago. The final issue of Vanity Fair magazine, when published, will have the scene played out in the last article. When Sixty Minutes airs its final broadcast, Bob will wake Emily, and tell her about the strange man with the quirky little observations on our modern world.
When the heat death of the Universe is imminent, I shall arrange that the very components of the cosmos, with their dying bursts of energy, shall present the scene to a non-existent observer stationed at the location where the Big Bang originated.
Seriously, how many MASH episodes featured Hawkeye developing acute but temporary psychological problems? I recall at least three:
[ul][li]He develops crippling back pain when he learns a doctor back home is successful, and Hawkeye always thought the guy was mediocre.[/li][li]He starts sleepwalking and having nightmares about his childhood.[/li][li]He start suffering flu-like symptoms stemming from a repressed memory of a childhood near-drowning.[/ul][/li]And then chickens and babies… show some originality already!
Hawkeye was insane. That was kind of the point of the show. The only rationale response anybody could make to war was to be or become insane. He was a cruel, Don Juan, sanctimonious, narcissist. Same as Frank Burns, but an athiest, competent and not so extreme. Our choice in an insane universe is to be Hawkeye or Frank.
