What Series' Had Damn Near Perfect Endings?
- Thread starter DeadmeatDiggory
- Start date
Are we talking about ST: Insurrection here or Nemesis? haha
As soon as I saw the thread title, I instantly thought of BSG. I thought it had the best ending hands down. Nothing else compares. For one thing, it was an actual ending. Most shows don't have that, they have stopping points, which is what "All Good Things..." was for example. Same with Lost's final episode. Anyway, back to BSG... Why do I think so highly of it? The show fulfilled its mythology and with a great twist to boot, and I liked where the characters ended up. I also loved the coda at the end. It added something important to both the story and the overall mythology. I can't believe people hated it and thought it should have been left out. In short, BSG's finale capped off a great story and exceded my expectations.
I agree. I always thought we'd get a movie with Q. In 1994, it was almost a dead certainty that it would happen someday.
Quantum Leap was a graceful ending. Made me weep, damn near.
BSG was, like the show during its run, mystery and mysticism wrapped in beautiful moments.
Journeyman, while not 100% satisfying(much like Jericho) had a very strong wrap.
All Good Things was good. So, too, The Peacekeeper Wars and Life On Mars.
For me the big toss-up was between DS-9 and B5. Both left me feeling satisfied. Both were beautiful Maybe B5-just because DS9 got a little maudlin'.
BSG was, like the show during its run, mystery and mysticism wrapped in beautiful moments.
Journeyman, while not 100% satisfying(much like Jericho) had a very strong wrap.
All Good Things was good. So, too, The Peacekeeper Wars and Life On Mars.
For me the big toss-up was between DS-9 and B5. Both left me feeling satisfied. Both were beautiful Maybe B5-just because DS9 got a little maudlin'.
MASH--near perfect.
TNG-- TNG had an uneven final season but managed to pull off the best swansong in tv history. It managed to have a fascinating plot/mystery unlike LOST for instance that looked at much larger issues, a worthy adversary in Q, had the highest stakes imaginable, revisited the series in loving ways instead of the hamfisted way say LOST did this season with gratuitous namedropping(hello Nikki/Paolo) and brief cameos and the TNG cast really did feel like a family. And that final scene "The sky's the limit" and zooming out to see the E-D in all its glory was perfect and the unique neat idea of visiting the past/present/future was cool in that they lovingly recreated earlier scenes from the series. TNG goes down for sure in tv history with the best cliffhanger in The Best of Both Worlds, the best episode in tv with The Best of Both Worlds and the best series finale with AGT.
BSG had an uneven final season and the mythology payoff sucked(but unlike LOST mythology wasn't as a siginificant part of BSG) but it had a great finale that was far more emotionally satisfying than LOST. BSG made me as a viewer experience the whole range of emotions--from excitement during the final battle, to exhiliaration at the sight of Earth, to sadness realizing Roslin had passed away. There were a lot iof unanswered questions/spiritual mumbo jumbo but it didn't grate as much since it wasn't as much a part of the show's DNA. Third best finale of all time. In fact, I see some similiarities to LOST's final season(although I think LOST had a better overall more consistent final season so far than BSG but BSG did have higher highs than LOST with "The Oath", "No Exit", "Daybreak" for instance--LOST really has only had "Ab Aeterno") where it felt the writers were stalling and dragging everything out until the series finale.
Heroes had only one great season--season one. Unlike LOST that was more of a self-contained standalone season where almost all the questions raised were answered that year--there was four or five that weren't and were meant to be carried over to the following season and one big one meant to span the series--the explosive rift Isaac repeatedly painted--but for the most part it stood on its own. So you can sort of separate it out from the others--Lost is more of a Whole and you can't so easily separate stuff out anymore than you can a baked cake once all the ingredients have been mixed and cooked. And as Kring originally intended the character arcs wrapped up in satisfying ways in season one. And that is probably why the Heroes characters didn't do much since then because their arcs the way Kring wanted were complete and didn't see them being around 3 years later. Heroes is also interesting in the way that most series have an awkward beginning as it tries to find itself, a strong middle consistent run, then comes off the rails at the end. But it had a brilliant first season then just got progressively worse--it burned very bright but burned out quickly. So I can actually just think of Heroes as running one season.
The XFiles had started coming off the rails in season 6 got progressively worse and made the mythology more and more convoluted and incoherent that I just gave up trying to make sense of it. It didn't help that they got rid of Duchovny in the last two seasons and in the final season reduced Gillian's role to basically a cameo. It also had a bad series finale. But since the mythology was only the focus of season premieres, Feb sweeps or season finales and the bulk of the show was episodic I can still enjoy it despite the myth being messed up. Lost, on the otherhand, is so interconnected and everything ties into eveything else that one bad misstep can poison to a certain degree everything it is feeding into. We are obviously going to have pieces of the puzzle never filled in that are just going to be voids when you go back and rewatch it because those answers or flashbacks you thought were coming never do i.e. the shitload of questions I've posted over and over in the last few episode threads. But is that going to be enough to undermine to a degree all the other stuff it did do right--like the character moments, twists, cliffhangers, reveals, build up etc. I don't know. LOST is this big complicated show that is never cut-and-dry so why should my final verdict be any less conflicted and complex.
Prison Break had a great final season but a weak finale. ENT had a good final season but it really wasn't intended to necessarily be the final season so I'm not sure it is fair to include it here although TATV was middling--I don't hate it the way so many do.
So as it stands now DS9 is the only series I've watched that managed to not only have a good final season but also a good finale. It started off a little rocky but it did so much better in the second half--doing a little bit of everything well--touching on elements from all over the series(Kor, the Mirror Universe, Section 31 etc), letting us spend some good quality time with the characters one last time before launching into the final stretch( i.e. Badda Bing Badda Bang), bringing back old faces one last time(compare this to the ham-fisted attempts by the LOST writers to do this with all the pointless namedropping and brief cameos of old dead faces), giving us a tightly written exciting epic Final Chapter and a series finale that did more things right than wrong with a heaping dose of emotion, excitement. Loved the continuity and how the writers not only provided satisfying payoffs to character arcs like Nog, Rom becoming Nagus, Martok Chancellor, Odo the new Founder leader but I also loved that they took the time to reflect on all the big Star Trek civilizations and examined them. Loved how they brought the series full circle and it was a stroke of genuis to parallel Bajorans with Cardassians. So I guess I should say kudos to Behr!
LOST--is a show I loooooooooooooooove and rave about whenever possible. It had three of the most consistent seasons in tv history with no real bad or average episode. The writers meticulously laid the groundwork over S3-5--introducing elements, pulling them together and it seemed they were poised at the end of S5 to take the story the last mile in terms of development-instead they seriously dropped the ball and gave us a very mediocre final season. It was much better than say The X-Files final season but it certainly wasn't what I would have expected based on the three previous seasons of the show. Everything that made those years such a satisfying experience were gone. The revelations weren't as good, the episode ending cliffhangers were weak, the narrative urgency was absent, the mythology was unfortunately sidelined, stalling was evident. It was as if they went back to the malaise of the early seasons. The season felt very mechanical as people spent most of the season shuffling from camp to camp.
I felt LOST was more about the Mythology/Plot than the characters and that was what should have continued to be the focus but I guess L/C thought that like any other show in its final season they should refocus on the characters. Unfortunately I think that was a miscalculation since what we got were mostly boring character stories, forced character returns/cameos, gratuitous namedropping, stupid character arcs--since people might not have seen the season I won't go into detail here. And the series finale was not the worst ever but it was pretty average and overrated--no tension, no real excitement, purported epic stakes that just lacked the conviction for me to buy into them, unanswered questions which contributed to an incomplete mythology.
Seinfeld's finale sucked while Newhart's finale was only okay it made up for it with the great idea of it was all just a dream Bob had.
Roseanne--loved it but around season six fell off the rails and turned into a bad parody--Roseanne promised all the zaniness would make sense in the series finale--much like LOST--but ultimately it was a mess. I hated the way they rewrote everything from not just the year since Dan died as being a novel but from the beginning of the show. It did have a few nice moments and I liked the final scene but this was definitely a finale that fell into the crap category.
TNG-- TNG had an uneven final season but managed to pull off the best swansong in tv history. It managed to have a fascinating plot/mystery unlike LOST for instance that looked at much larger issues, a worthy adversary in Q, had the highest stakes imaginable, revisited the series in loving ways instead of the hamfisted way say LOST did this season with gratuitous namedropping(hello Nikki/Paolo) and brief cameos and the TNG cast really did feel like a family. And that final scene "The sky's the limit" and zooming out to see the E-D in all its glory was perfect and the unique neat idea of visiting the past/present/future was cool in that they lovingly recreated earlier scenes from the series. TNG goes down for sure in tv history with the best cliffhanger in The Best of Both Worlds, the best episode in tv with The Best of Both Worlds and the best series finale with AGT.
BSG had an uneven final season and the mythology payoff sucked(but unlike LOST mythology wasn't as a siginificant part of BSG) but it had a great finale that was far more emotionally satisfying than LOST. BSG made me as a viewer experience the whole range of emotions--from excitement during the final battle, to exhiliaration at the sight of Earth, to sadness realizing Roslin had passed away. There were a lot iof unanswered questions/spiritual mumbo jumbo but it didn't grate as much since it wasn't as much a part of the show's DNA. Third best finale of all time. In fact, I see some similiarities to LOST's final season(although I think LOST had a better overall more consistent final season so far than BSG but BSG did have higher highs than LOST with "The Oath", "No Exit", "Daybreak" for instance--LOST really has only had "Ab Aeterno") where it felt the writers were stalling and dragging everything out until the series finale.
Heroes had only one great season--season one. Unlike LOST that was more of a self-contained standalone season where almost all the questions raised were answered that year--there was four or five that weren't and were meant to be carried over to the following season and one big one meant to span the series--the explosive rift Isaac repeatedly painted--but for the most part it stood on its own. So you can sort of separate it out from the others--Lost is more of a Whole and you can't so easily separate stuff out anymore than you can a baked cake once all the ingredients have been mixed and cooked. And as Kring originally intended the character arcs wrapped up in satisfying ways in season one. And that is probably why the Heroes characters didn't do much since then because their arcs the way Kring wanted were complete and didn't see them being around 3 years later. Heroes is also interesting in the way that most series have an awkward beginning as it tries to find itself, a strong middle consistent run, then comes off the rails at the end. But it had a brilliant first season then just got progressively worse--it burned very bright but burned out quickly. So I can actually just think of Heroes as running one season.
The XFiles had started coming off the rails in season 6 got progressively worse and made the mythology more and more convoluted and incoherent that I just gave up trying to make sense of it. It didn't help that they got rid of Duchovny in the last two seasons and in the final season reduced Gillian's role to basically a cameo. It also had a bad series finale. But since the mythology was only the focus of season premieres, Feb sweeps or season finales and the bulk of the show was episodic I can still enjoy it despite the myth being messed up. Lost, on the otherhand, is so interconnected and everything ties into eveything else that one bad misstep can poison to a certain degree everything it is feeding into. We are obviously going to have pieces of the puzzle never filled in that are just going to be voids when you go back and rewatch it because those answers or flashbacks you thought were coming never do i.e. the shitload of questions I've posted over and over in the last few episode threads. But is that going to be enough to undermine to a degree all the other stuff it did do right--like the character moments, twists, cliffhangers, reveals, build up etc. I don't know. LOST is this big complicated show that is never cut-and-dry so why should my final verdict be any less conflicted and complex.
Prison Break had a great final season but a weak finale. ENT had a good final season but it really wasn't intended to necessarily be the final season so I'm not sure it is fair to include it here although TATV was middling--I don't hate it the way so many do.
So as it stands now DS9 is the only series I've watched that managed to not only have a good final season but also a good finale. It started off a little rocky but it did so much better in the second half--doing a little bit of everything well--touching on elements from all over the series(Kor, the Mirror Universe, Section 31 etc), letting us spend some good quality time with the characters one last time before launching into the final stretch( i.e. Badda Bing Badda Bang), bringing back old faces one last time(compare this to the ham-fisted attempts by the LOST writers to do this with all the pointless namedropping and brief cameos of old dead faces), giving us a tightly written exciting epic Final Chapter and a series finale that did more things right than wrong with a heaping dose of emotion, excitement. Loved the continuity and how the writers not only provided satisfying payoffs to character arcs like Nog, Rom becoming Nagus, Martok Chancellor, Odo the new Founder leader but I also loved that they took the time to reflect on all the big Star Trek civilizations and examined them. Loved how they brought the series full circle and it was a stroke of genuis to parallel Bajorans with Cardassians. So I guess I should say kudos to Behr!
LOST--is a show I loooooooooooooooove and rave about whenever possible. It had three of the most consistent seasons in tv history with no real bad or average episode. The writers meticulously laid the groundwork over S3-5--introducing elements, pulling them together and it seemed they were poised at the end of S5 to take the story the last mile in terms of development-instead they seriously dropped the ball and gave us a very mediocre final season. It was much better than say The X-Files final season but it certainly wasn't what I would have expected based on the three previous seasons of the show. Everything that made those years such a satisfying experience were gone. The revelations weren't as good, the episode ending cliffhangers were weak, the narrative urgency was absent, the mythology was unfortunately sidelined, stalling was evident. It was as if they went back to the malaise of the early seasons. The season felt very mechanical as people spent most of the season shuffling from camp to camp.
I felt LOST was more about the Mythology/Plot than the characters and that was what should have continued to be the focus but I guess L/C thought that like any other show in its final season they should refocus on the characters. Unfortunately I think that was a miscalculation since what we got were mostly boring character stories, forced character returns/cameos, gratuitous namedropping, stupid character arcs--since people might not have seen the season I won't go into detail here. And the series finale was not the worst ever but it was pretty average and overrated--no tension, no real excitement, purported epic stakes that just lacked the conviction for me to buy into them, unanswered questions which contributed to an incomplete mythology.
Seinfeld's finale sucked while Newhart's finale was only okay it made up for it with the great idea of it was all just a dream Bob had.
Roseanne--loved it but around season six fell off the rails and turned into a bad parody--Roseanne promised all the zaniness would make sense in the series finale--much like LOST--but ultimately it was a mess. I hated the way they rewrote everything from not just the year since Dan died as being a novel but from the beginning of the show. It did have a few nice moments and I liked the final scene but this was definitely a finale that fell into the crap category.
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Seconded.
The first one that comes to mind for me is Babylon 5. Finales can be dicey, so it made me very happy that a series I loved so much had such a great ending. Sleeping in Light probably benefits from the fact that, unlike many finales on arc-heavy shows, it's not a grand climax that resolves all the storylines. B5 had already had about three such episodes, so by the end the show could just concentrate on saying goodbye to the characters and locations. Personally I thought it did so in a very moving way and the whole thing left me feeling happy and sad at the same time and made the series feel genuinely complete.
STTNG's finale was damn good as well. Definitely the best Trek finale.
Moving beyond sci-fi, the finale of Blackadder was pretty staggering as well.
STTNG's finale was damn good as well. Definitely the best Trek finale.
Moving beyond sci-fi, the finale of Blackadder was pretty staggering as well.
You think Turnabout Intruder was the perfect ending? Really?
I have a love/hate relationship with "endings". That Star Trek ended with an episode thats "just another day on the job" is more pleasing to me than many of the bloated, big hoopla, final episodes of other series.
TNG
DS9
MASH
Boston Legal
24 (Damn good for not being filmed as the series finale)
Six Feet Under
BSG (remake)
Arrested Development
The Cosby Show
The Shield
Frazier
Cheers
The Fugitive (original)
Dollhouse
Jericho
DS9
MASH
Boston Legal
24 (Damn good for not being filmed as the series finale)
Six Feet Under
BSG (remake)
Arrested Development
The Cosby Show
The Shield
Frazier
Cheers
The Fugitive (original)
Dollhouse
Jericho
Quantum Leap had a great finale... I'm a sucker for those kinds of 'open' endings.
S
Stone_Cold_Sisko
Guest
The Wire, The Shield both had great endings. TNG's was very appropos.
DS9s.... it's a pretty good finale but doesn't make my list because that whole Pah Wraith stuff is just crap.
DS9s.... it's a pretty good finale but doesn't make my list because that whole Pah Wraith stuff is just crap.
I'm just glad that it ended.
Actually it was a lousy place to end - everyone finding out about the metahumans lends itself to a solid two more seasons of stories, IF the writers were up to it, which they aren't. To end it there is acceptable only because I cringe to think what those two seasons would have been like.
My favorite finales are Lost, DS9 and Farscape. I could find things to pick apart in all of them, but Farscape probably made the cleanest getaway, doing everything they needed to without stumbling too much.
But it's also the most straightforward of the bunch, with really just one dominatingly important main character instead of the ensemble approach, and without the epic scope of the other two.
Futurama used to be in that list, but it looks like it was a false finale. Futurama will never die!
I'd kind of given up on BSG before the ending, but it had some beautiful moments, especially the way Anders, Starbuck, and Bill & Laura's stories ended.
But they should have stopped before National Geographic.
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