Supposedly there are going to be Deadwood movies to wrap up the show. The set for the show was razed, but Milch said that was easily resolved as in real life Deadwood was destroyed twice by fire, so the movie could be set afterward on a similar set. OTOH, the longer they wait the less chance of getting everybody back together, as Olyphant/Bullock and McShane/Swedgen are the two essentials and both seem to have full schedules.
The pilot and the series finale are frequently the least representative episodes of a series. Maybe that’s kinda what he was trying to get at.
sob
No one’s reading my posts.
I think winterhawk is the first person I heard of who liked the Roseanne finale. I thought it was wretched.
Of the episodic series I watch, I think The Sopranos probably had the strongest pilot. The finale was pretty good too.
The pilot of The Venture Brothers is as brilliant as any other episode of the series.
The A-Team had a pretty good pilot; the only thing wrong with it is that Face is played by Tim Dunigan, and he was terrible. It didn’t really have a finale, though the whole final season was a pretty big drag.
Check out this McSweeney’s article for what would have been a brilliant Murder She Wrote finale.
Mad About You had a great finale.
I don’t remember the finale, but the pilot still lives in my imagination, It had TWO killer reveals, one about what happened to the two cops, and the other about who was sleeping with the Captain. Just a beautifully done show.
I recall the X-Files pilot being very good.
And NYPD Blue.
And, as mentioned, Twin Peaks.
But those were about establishing atmosphere & Seinfeld doesn’t seem to have much interest in that.
Due South’s pilot movie generally makes for an excellent buddy-cop movie, although in general presentation it’s not really the same as the regular show (the show tended to be played more for laughs while the pilot was mostly-serious, but both were quite good). I remember that I rather liked the series finale, which had drama, laughs, but most importantly:
PARA MOUNTIES! 
Pilots/first episodes, especially today, tend to be among the better episodes of the series. They’ve got to set theme, tone, introduce characters, kick of major story lines, and sell the network, the critics, and the audience before they turn to check out the pilots on the other channels. Plus, there’s generally more time to make it good than there is for later episodes in the series.
They ought to be pretty good.
Series finales, on the other hand, don’t tend to be among the best episodes of the series. There are exceptions, of course, but among longer running series, there usually have been a number of truly great episodes. The finales are carrying the weight of expectations, the need to wrap everything up, a compressed time schedule, and a cast and crew that knows their paychecks are coming to an end. Because they were last, they’re often among the more memorable episodes of the series, but often times not really the best.
Blake’s 7 had a great pilot/first episode and two great finales! (the show had a last minute stay of execution, so we got what they thought was the finale in season three and the real, EVEN BETTER finale in season 4.
Blackadder also had a great first episode (Peter Cook!) and a great finale, too
mm
I can’t believe anyone liked the fanale of MAS*H. Way too long and featured Hawkeye completing his journey to the ultimate pussy. Donald Southerland wept.
I thought the TNG pilot was terrible. Ditto the finale. There was tons of good stuff in between. The pilot was badly overacted, and the finale was just plain stupid.
Both of the pilots for the original Star Trek were excellent, in fact “The Cage” was some of the best work they ever did, as was evidenced by the Hugo Award they won when they re-incorporated that episode into “The Menagerie” two-parter.
I didn’t much care for the DS9 finale. The pilot was ok. Voyager had an ok pilot as well. The finale, however, was one of the best Star Trek finales ever. In fact, it needed to be a three-parter rather than a two-parter. Its only flaw was that it ended too abruptly.
What Firefly finale? Objects In Space, which was just the final episode, not the finale, or Serenity the movie, which was a movie, not a finale?
Reaper’s pilot was light-years better than any of the following episodes to this point (though I missed the Halloween ep).
Whilst I agree that Pushing Daisies pie-lette was great, following episodes have still been improvements on it, so perhaps, while being good in its own right, it does fit the OP, at least IMHO.
This is, um, a bit of a lower level of TV show, but the pilot for Due South was awesome, not just for it’s jokes, but also for it’s dogsled-chase with cliff-jumping action. :eek:
The first episode of the The Young Ones was the funniest thing I had ever seen on television at the time and the finale was perfect - outrageously funny, poigniant and dignfiied.
mm
The pilot for That 70’s Show was near perfect (although the finale was horribly sappy).
I thought the Magnum PI finale was excellent.
Not the actual finale, but the one from the season before, when Magnum was shot and walks off into the sunset. Then CBS decided to renew the series and they had to figure out out to resurrect Thomas without making him a zombie.
Hmmm, “Zombie Magnum PI.” Could work.
Obviously HIS father never gave him that piece of advice!
And whadyaMEAN it’s a lower level of TV show?! Pistols at dawn, good sir!
The pilot for Hill Street Blues was jaw-dropping, I-never-saw-that-on-TV-before good. So good in fact, that they had to bring back two characters who had (apparently) been killed.
The finale of Cheers, although it bogged down tying up loose ends, was notable for bringing back the character of Dianne Chambers, written and performed as if she had never left the show at all.
As noted upthread, the finale of Newhart may have been the. best. ever.
I think the proper translation for this remark might be, “I’ve written a movie based solely on an extremely weak pun, and am just beginning to realize what a terrible mistake this was.”