Examples of shows where the final season was the best

[Myasishchev]

Hell, one of the best science fiction movies in the last years is "The Man From Earth" and it doesn't need much more than a log cabin in the middle of nowhere and a bunch of talented actors!

That is a pretty good movie. A little convenient at times in its plotting, but it's well worth watching. Also, it has just about my favorite title ever.

Those mentioning BSG: if you hack off Daybreak, S4 is indeed pretty great. With the exception of that one episode about Tigh punching far above his weight class, sexually speaking, which was not offensively bad but tremendously boring and unnecessary.

But, of course, Daybreak does exist.

 

[Christopher]

How about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles? The first season may have been a little tighter storywise, but I really enjoyed the characters more during that second season.

Mmm, I didn't care for the second season as much as the first. It had some intriguing stuff going on, and John Henry was a great addition, but it was more uneven and had more problematical episodes. I could've done without the UFO rubbish, and I still prefer to think that bizarre one with Sarah hallucinating while being held hostage never "really" happened at all. Plus the finale was too much of a letdown, considering that they had enough advance warning to know it might well be the series finale. I know showrunner Josh Friedman chose to leave things vague and open-ended, that he'd rather raise questions than give answers, but I would've liked at least a few more answers.

 

[Mr Light]

Ugh, the second season of Terminator was awful. There was the five episode stretch where every single episode was about Sarah being insane :-x

 

[Python Trek]

I honestly can't think of one show that was at its best in its final season. That's the nature of these things---the writers just run out of steam. The only two shows that came close, IMHO, were DS9 and ENT. DS9 screwed up its 7th season with the David Koresh episode, the Quark grows tits episode, and that extremely clunky Pa Wraith horse poop in the multi-part finale. That makes season 6 its best, methinks. ENT was good for about half of season 4, but it gets really uneven after that, and totally screws the pooch with that crappy finale. Therefore, season 3 wins.

I might be willing to call the final season of Justice League Unlimited its best, but it's a tough call---I really loved season one.......and do we count JLU as just a re-naming of Justice League?

 

[Christopher]

I think the penultimate JLU season, the Cadmus arc, was better than the season that followed. The penultimate season was intended to be the series finale, and they wrapped it up very effectively, told the most epic story in DCAU history. But then they got picked up for another season and had to keep going after they'd already played their best cards. So the whole thing felt like an afterthought.

 

[Too Much Fun]

I don't quite agree, but it's a close one. I loved that Cadmus arc. I was riveted for that whole serialized period where each episode fed into the next, but I think they stumbled a bit on sticking the landing. I'm biased, though, because I just can't stand Brainiac. I don't know what he's like in "Smallville" or the comics, but in the DC Animated Universe, I found him so excruciatingly boring. I hate that they brought him back to be the big threat of the season finale.

I loved Luthor, Waller, and Cadmus. I thought Brainiac just took away screen time that would have been better spent on them. I actually much preferred Darkseid (although I'm not a huge fan of him either) coming back at the end of the true series finale. Unfortunately, the season preceding his return wasn't as good as the one with the Cadmus arc. It's one of those cases like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" seasons 5 and 6. I think if we could have taken that first season and given it the following season's villain, it would have been perfect!

 

[DevilEyes]

I honestly can't think of one show that was at its best in its final season. That's the nature of these things---the writers just run out of steam. The only two shows that came close, IMHO, were DS9 and ENT. DS9 screwed up its 7th season with the David Koresh episode, the Quark grows tits episode, and that extremely clunky Pa Wraith horse poop in the multi-part finale. That makes season 6 its best, methinks. ENT was good for about half of season 4, but it gets really uneven after that, and totally screws the pooch with that crappy finale. Therefore, season 3 wins.

The Quark grows tits episode (Profit and Lace) was in season 6.

Then again, season 7 had the worst of all Mirror universe episodes, Emperor's New Cloak.

 

[DeafPoet]

Angel and ENT are the only clear-cut examples I can think of. I love the final seasons of Lost and BSG but frequently waffle back and forth over their quality versus previous seasons. They're pretty close in my mind anyway.

The only other show that comes to mind is Scrubs, whose eighth season was almost front-to-back amazing after a few middling seasons. Of course this was followed up by the crime against humanity Scrubs: Med School, which was basically a different show but is billed as Season 9. So there's some grey area there.

 

[label]

Angel and ENT are the only clear-cut examples I can think of.

Angel's final season was certainly not as unanimously accepted as the best as this statement might make it seem. While I thought Angel Season 5 picked up around "Lineage" and ended nicely, I'd take Season 4 of Angel of Season 5 as the strongest any time and I know I'm far from alone in that respect.

On the flip side of things, I will say that Angel's final season ended stronger than most of the other shows I've watched. I guess Farscape and Lost both ended "strong" but neither, in my mind, were close to either show's best season.

 

[Kirkman1987]

I think a case could be Made for Ashes to Ashes, although It's really a case where there wasn't much of a drop-off or gain in quality from what came before.