Series finales are a weird thing. They really didn’t exist until maybe the 80’s with the finale to MASH* (I know, the original The Fugitive was the rare series that had a series ending) and they only did it because they had a logical way to end it, with the ending of a war.
Now it seems that EVERY series that lasts 5+ seasons MUST have a huge, ratings filled series finale, even if it really doesn’t warrant one. To make matters worse, with the advent of social media, speculations of said finales abound with many viewers either:
• Being disappointed with the finale because it didn’t meet their expectations
or
• Being disappointed because it ended exactly how they thought it would.
One finale that seems to be loved by all is the Newhart finale, but I wonder, how many of those who praise it (and I liked it too, BTW) actually watched it the night it aired? I was a fan of the show, watched the entire run, but I recall it never was a big ratings getter. It was never talked about, the way Friends or Seinfeld would be. It was a simple sitcom with that great Newhart humor (that drastically changed it’s cast and direction after the 2nd season) that ended the show by completely surprising everyone. It was clever. It was funny. But had that aired during the social media era of today I’m sure there would be huge cries of anger that they “insulted the viewers by saying the entire series was a dream”.
I seem to remember the last season of Newhart getting progressively more surreal. There was the episode where Dick joins a local gang of middle-aged men who have a rumble with their rivals but it turns into a scene from West Side Story without the choreography. The series did provide a resolution, like having the Darryls finally speak. And since so much of the show relied on Newhart himself, having the real ending be a callback to his other show (and getting the details so right) didn’t feel like an insult.
Not to thread-jack though - but was any substantive question answered? Beyond the widely assumed theory that the side-verse where the plane never crashed was actually purgatory. What was the island? Why did it need a guardian? How did it have magnetic/disappearing/time travel powers? What were the Others really after for so many years? What was Dharma really after for so many years and why did they think there was a plague on the island? What was the golden light in the cave and why did the mechanism need to be fixed? Why was letting the Smoke monster off the island unacceptable? The intial character arcs of Jack being the skeptic and Locke the believer did not seem to add to up to much - why not? If the message that believing is good is what was intended, why was Locke unceremoniously killed and replaced in form by his arch-nemesis, the smoke monster?
I’ll back you up on this, to a point: I thought it was a great way to resolve the character arcs, and I don’t feel that every mystery in the show needed to be explained. But I felt that it was a major omission that it never clarified which party was in the right (i.e., acting in the interests of the island’s well-being) in the conflict between Ben Linus and Charles Widmore. That was pretty much the central conflict of the show, the fulcrum around which all else revolved, but we’re left wondering whether the right party won in the end.
I just don’t think it’s true. Most finales that I’ve seen tend to be pretty good, with the exceptions just being the ones everyone talks about. The only thing they need to be is to provide some sort of feeling of finality (even if things continue). And it’s not that hard to do.
I admit that shows with a ton of continuity have a harder time making good finales. But that’s because they don’t plan the full arc of the show, and thus can’t wrap up everything properly.
Oh, and All Good Things was not only a good finale, but better than 3/4s of the movies. Of course the time travel isn’t consistent. Q was causing it, in an effort to allow Picard to beat the test from the other Qs.
Now the DS9 finale had the “black man abandons his family” problem. Voyager had a “weak Borg” problem, but that had been happening for the last two seasons, so it fit. And Enterprise’s was a disaster because they killed someone out of misguided necessity, because it was just a TNG episode, and because the how had finally gotten good, and thus was not ready to end.
But the TNG finale was good, as was the movie that was the actual finale for TOS. (The TNG movies are best seen as an alternate continuity, really. Only First Contact fits in continuity, and even it wasn’t as good as the TV finale.)
Not by any reasonable definition. The arc of the episode is fundamentally incompatible with itself.
The very moment the phenomenon arrives in the present, the future time period must change completely, or else the entire crew of the Enterprise are shown to be complete and total idiots for ignoring Picard.
The same thing happens to the present when it reaches the past.
‘A phenomenon that propagates backwards in time’ is not a macguffin that can be used lightly. It takes a deft hand to either make it work logically, or to reasonably remove the need for logic.
‘A [del]Wizard[/del]Q Did It!’ is not a deft hand.
Geez, no love for The Sopranos. The whole 2 part season 6 was dark and increasingly depressing. Much of the dark humor and just about all of the colorful characters had disappeared. And Bobby Bacala kicking Tonys ass?? I believe that David Chase really didnt want to do the last season and make it as painful as possible. And the series suffered when Frank Renzulli departed.
I see what you did there. Even if you can’t… Because you haven’t seen the finale so it was obviously unintentional…
I hated the ending at first, but in retrospect it’s actually the perfect ending to the show. Buffy was always about defeating your demons. Angel was much more pessimistic and about the ongoing struggle against them. With that in mind, the ending fits the tone and themes of the show so well.