Just been rewatching Mad Men – and what a fantastic ending- better even than Sopranos? Any thoughts/contenders?
Best show ending
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
I know it divided opinion at the time, but for me it’s Six Feet Under.
good call Jim
“Eldorado”.
Marcus Tandy’s luck just never seemed to run out.
Band of Brothers.
I defy anyone to watch the whole thing for the first time and not be moved by that ending.
I thought you were going to say a rock n’roll melody a la “Uriah Heep live”, with some flashpots going off on the final chord. That’s a proper encore.
Haven’t seen many of the others mentioned, but the Mad Men finale was just a perfect note on which to end such a magnificent show.
I always thought the final scene of NYPD Blue was a lovely way to conclude Sipowicz’s redemptive journey from professional and social pariah to finally becoming the Chief of Precinct 15. A lovely, slow overhead panning shot of him alone in the station house at the end of another typically extraordinary day…Man, I loved that show.
Was surprised and delighted by the grace with which Community finished. #sixseasonsandamovie #gramaticallypoorsentenceconstruction #needlesshashtaggery
Blackadder, surely?
Good shout, Bri.
The Prisoner. Vague, open, enigmatic, baffling. Just how I like endings to be.
The UK Office; Tim and Dawn copped off, Brent told Finchy to f*ck off and he finally told a joke that finally got a laugh.
Also, there’s a surplus “finally” there if anyone needs one.
it belongs in the Department of Redundancy Department
TV shows are notioriously hard to “end” as pretty much their whole raison d’etre is to keep going, week-after-week, rather than reach a conclusion… however, my favourite is probably “The Shield” – people die and get sent to jail, but what happens to the main character is arguably even worse…
I liked the ending of Frasier, it left it up in the air, quite literally, whether he got the girl. A long running theme through the whole series.
Friday Night Lights (a majestic TV show) did it right. No great cliffhanger, but neatly wrapped up the lives of the main characters. Clear eyes, full hearts.
Breaking Bad. The right ending for Walter White. Anything else would have been a cop out.
And I actually like The Sopranos ending. I know I’ll be in the minority. It left you guessing, which was all part of The Sopranos brilliance.
FNL was a great, great show. Texas forever, Street. Texas forever.
(The movie is even better).
Also, the final episode of Frasier has my favourite ever Frasier gag in it: “Don’t gawp, you were no oil painting yourself”.
Lop off the “sweet” reunion and fourth-wall-breaking off switch and Life On Mars wins this by a mile. Leave those bits in and I think it probably still wins.
And for an unlikely double, Life On Mars U.S. also wins worst ending ever!
The “jump” with Life On Mars blasting would have made for a fine end but I can see why they went for a more crowd pleasing tag on the end.
Oh and Ashes to Ashes should not have existed
Still a fondness for the MASH ending here.
Admit it…those of us over 45 remember watching It Ain’t Half Hot Mum non-ironically and simply laughing at the silly accents and the seething underbelly of class war that it portrayed. But do you remember how it ended? The war was over and they all sailed joyfully away on a raft, leaving Char Wallah Dino Shafeek alone at the wharf saying “I’ll never forget you…”
I quite like it when comedies switch into a little bit of sentimentality in the closing minutes. Final episode of Blackadder and final episode of Father Ted were nice.
Blakes 7 – the cast all blown to pieces by the Federation…never would have happened to Captain Kirk and co.