They what?! Please tell me you’re joking.
I used to watch the show in reruns, and I never (apparently) saw the last episode.
They died? How? Why?
Oh, man, this is really disappointing…
Were we watching the same series?
The last episode was the perfect way to end the series.
Not only was it an echo to the ‘Kill-em-all’ endings of I and II (I think III skipped that and had Blackadder replace Prince George…), but it was the culmination of the ‘this is all completely futile and stupid’ attitude of the series.
While Baldrick’s last few lines are ‘sentimental and maudlin’, Blackadder’s final line or two, and the ‘Aw, bugger it’ attitude thereof broke that (and this fits the above).
Another vote for Seinfeld. Horrific, disgusting, nonsensical CRAP if you ask me. I was all ready for this great finale, and they come up with this horseshit trial? I enjoyed the pre-finale more, with the flashbacks and bloopers. (Side note, every time I hear Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) by Green Day I think of the final episode of Seinfeld.)
Roseanne was also pretty lame. I mean, the concept was good, but it just didn’t make up for the final season being so full of pointless storylines.
I hated the final episode of Seinfeld as a whole, but I loved the final moments. The first episode began with a standup spot, followed by the first in-character moment: a conversation between Jerry and George about the second button on George’s shirt. The final moments of the last episode have Jerry and George in the jail cell, and Jerry comments on the second button on George’s shirt. George points out that they’d had that conversation before, and for the first time in their lives, they have nothing to talk about. Then it ends with a final stand-up spot. The last moments mirror the first moments. Nice.
The final episode was “The Mork Report”. Mork tries to get a promotion from Orson by filing a report on what makes a good marriage, but winds up violating the principles in his own report. No one dies. It is likely that this episode was aired out of its intended order.
The true series finale could be considered IIRC “On the Run”, a three parter in which the couple are pursued by a homocidal alien, their apartment is bombed, and they decide to reveal that Mork is an alien on TV. They are pursued by a mob back to their apartment, and Mork uses his magic shoes to escape, which, being damaged, accidently transport them to prehistoric times.
I’d prefer to think of the series as having ended after the first season.
[hopefully]Did everyone die in the end of that one?[/hopefully]
This is all pretty hazy, I saw it when it first aired, and then c. 1987 in syndication.
It was a three-episode arc. In the first episode, Mork and Mindy meet an alien (played by Joe from Murphy Brown) and his wife. Everyone gets along fine, until the “wife” tells M&M that her husband is actually an assassin sent to kill Mork, and she’s really a bomb. She explodes and the apartment is destroyed.
In the second episode, M&M and their son (Jonathon Winters, god that was a waste of talent) climb out of the rubble, and “Joe” returns trying to kill them. During the battles between Mork and Joe, it becomes public knowledge that Mork is an alien. M&M decide to time-travel to the past in order to escape Joe. Somehow Jonathon Winters gets left behind, and the episode ends with him in hysterics, surrounded by reporters.
In the third episode M&M arrive at some point in the past, only to be followed shortly by Joe. M&M keep going back in time, Joe catches up to them, etc. Eventually M&M foil Joe, and he meets with some ghastly, morally just fate that I can’t remember. Unfortunately M&M, still traveling back in time, are unable to escape the “time tunnel” thingie. Mork tells Mindy he doesn’t know where they’ll end up, but Mindy is optimistic, saying at least they’ll be together.
The final shot is (presumably) a primordial Earth. Mork and Mindy are facing the camera and holding hands, but their bodies are…altered. They still have their hair and their clothes, but their flesh has been transformed into either goo or ice. Their faces are gone.
I did some web-hopping to try to confirm my version, and according to the several (!) Mork & Mindy episode guides available, I got most of it right, but apparently there was, as Number Six said, another episode called “The Mork Report” which was the final one aired, but I also think it was not intended to be “the end”. No mention in the guides on how the Mork vs. Joe arc (actually called “Gotta Run”) ended, although one says something about cavemen.
There is a consensus, however, that Mork was able to travel through time because he had magic shoes.
-WICKED-! It makes me think of Silent Hill for some reason. Just 'cause it’s creepy.
The only TV series I really followed was Married With Children. That show rocked. I was actually kinda happy with the final episode because it was so…anti-climactic. There were no big gimmicks…no changes to the core of the series and it’s characters. It makes me wanna think that the story lives on. 
My least-favorite series finale is Star Trek: TNG. And only because of the whole half-assed ‘canon’ explanation afterwards about how none of it was real because it was ‘anti-time’, or something. It basically turned me into a nitpicker of everything Star Trek has put out since the original series (which is still the best!)
-Ashley
While it wasn’t the “final” show…it was a season ending one…
But we can’t forget Dallas…
It was a frigging dream!
In my opinion that killed the show.
What I remember is Blackadder making a few Hawkeye Piercesque “damn these insane warmongers” remarks that (for me) made the episode more of a anti-war commentary instead of something that represented the irreverent attitude of the previous episodes and incarnations of Blackadder. What about that cheesy dissolve to the battlefield as it appears today, with the birds chirping and all? What the hell was that about? I think a more appropo ending would be Blackadder arranging for Col. Melchett’s and Capt. Darling’s headquarters to be bombed (by British pilots of course) and then skipping out of active duty by forging himself some sort of release and taking off with a French whore. Wouldn’t that have been more like it?
Again, I have to ask, were we watching the same series?
Blackadder never wins - save for the rather silly ending of Blackadder III - and except for that ending, he never wins in BIII. (What were the writers thinking when they did that ending…?)
In I, he, and everyone else, dies (By his own machinations backfiring), paving the way for Henry Tudor to take over.
In II, he, and everyone else, dies (despite the apparently happy ending in the shot immediatly preceding the pan over the corpses), and Queen Elizabeth is replaced with a German Master-of-Disguise.
In III, as I said, the only death is Prince George, but Blackadder takes his place - save for George’s final line, that episode was a major letdown.
In IV, he, and everyone else, dies because everyone above (And below - General Melchit, Captain Darling, Lt George, Pvt Baldrick) him is an idiot (a theme that runs through the whole series), and despite Blackadder’s machinations, AND the apparently happy ending just before their final push.
The ending was a little maudlin, but Edmund’s last lines are still, to my mind ‘bugger it’. ‘People are idiots, you can’t fight it…let’s go.’
Y’know what, I think I sound a little condescending there. I don’t mean to be. I need to get more sleep. 
It was obvious to me from very early on that Higgins was Robin Masters, and in order to further the charade, he hired actors to give a voice and face. Welles for the voice and Capote for the face. This was well in keeping with the Higgins pathological liar nature as Magnum recognized the actors by their faces and voices, Higgins was too damn grandiose to hire unknown actors. It was just like all of Higgins World War II special forces stories when he was an “officer” in pretty much every damn theater of the war (although I think he tended to favor Burma and prison camps) when he couldn’t have even been old enough to have been a teenager: in the 80s he was fiftyish, which would have made him between about 10 and 15 in 1940. So in that respect I found him finally fessing up in the last episode long overdue and awaited.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Tengu *
**
That’s what I was driving at, the maudlin quality of the ending, not the inconsistency compared to the “everybody dies” themes of the previous incantations. I guess it’s telling that my favorite installment was III, perhaps because it’s the most slapstick and perhaps crude of the four. Who can forget Hugh Laurie thrusting out his groin and roaring? Of course that turd had to die at the end!
Personally, III is my least favourite, though, to each his own.
Yeah, George had to die at the end that’s not what bothered me about the ending - it was that Baldrick and Blackadder didn’t, and not only that, but that Blackadder WON - HE replaced George.
(Then again, I don’t really know anything about the real George IV, so I don’t know if it was a good thing for Blackadder to take his place…)
Blackadder can’t win, and has no control over his fate - the former was missed by III (my current vote for the answer to the OP), but both were covered well in IV.
As a long-time Peak-o-phile I have to object to the inclusion of the series finale in a list of worst-of final episodes. Any episode of a show that can continue to generate the kind of debate that this episode does among fans can’t be all that bad. It’s not really fair to label the show as bad because it leaves unanswered questions due to cancellation.
But for those who must Lynch-bash, may I humbly suggest the final episode of “On the Air,” his short-lived ABC follow-up to Twin Peaks? I don’t know which of the seven episodes was actually the “last,” because ABC only aired, I think, three of them. Either way, since the only decent episodes were the pilot and the “Mister Peanut” episode, by definition the last episode had to suck.
I seem to recall The White Shadow ending on a rather horrible note. One of the basketball players was shot and killed during a liquor store holdup right after graduation. That’s all folks! Thanks for watching!!
Just the last episode?
The episode to which you refer wasn’t the series finale, but IIRC, it was the second season finale. The players who survived won the city championship, then graduated. The series ended after the third season, but had no true finale. Like many shows of its time, it was cancelled during hiatus, and never had a chance for a farewell show.
The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island