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The best series finales OF ALL TIME

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oto said:
The best finale of a series I've seen is Lonesome Dove. Fantastically awesome. (This may be a cheat)

lonesome_dove_ver1.jpg


LOST's is what I call the most infuriating piece of trash to ever air. Made me retroactively hate the entire series... Life is but a dream. Row, row, row your boat. Those motherfuckers.
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... Why would it make you hate the rest of the series? That's like saying, "The final episode of Seinfeld sucks so now I hate the entire series."
 
The Next Generation

"All Good Things" is seriously an unbelievably epic finale.

Fuck me. I need to stop playing so many games and watch series mentioned in this thread like The Shield, Lost, ect...
 
BY FAR THIS:
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FOLLOWED BY THIS:
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BadTimingBoat3.jpg



AND THIS [not a series finale, but still...]:
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Also:
The Wire
Cowboy Bebop
Tengen Toppa Gurrent Laggan [my mind is still blown away :D Entire series is handrawn, zero cheating with 3D effects].
 
I think I like the finale of Seinfeld a lot more than most people, because it was one of the first Seinfeld episodes I ever saw. My mom was into the show and I watched the finale with her, and it was funny enough.

After going through the series years later on TBS, of course it doesn't hold up to the best of the series, but I still think its fine.
 
Babylon 5
The only thing that can make me cry

Twin Peaks
A perfectly weird and dark ending to a perfectly weird and dark series.
 
timetokill said:
Twin Peaks. So brilliant, and such punishment because you don't want it to end... what a goddamn cliffhanger.
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Yeah, that's probably my pick. Best and most frustrating finale, ever. When I was watching it (some friends and I were marathoning their old VHS copies), I for some reason thought it was going to be a two-hour episode.

An hour in, when the credits showed up after
"How's Annie?"
, I was despondent: "What? No! That's not it! Put in the next tape..."

I can't argue with anyone picking the TNG finale, either. For a show that had about a 70%/20%/10% ratio of Crap/Good/Great episodes (though I love them all, especially the crap), it went out on a perfect note.
 
Six Feet Under, The Wire and The Sopranos all have great endings.

Ceres said:
I can't believe so many people put The Wire. I thought the ending was awful. The entire season I waited for everything to blow up in McNulty's face but instead he gets an easy out for all his lies.
.
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It's ambiguous - a number of things could've happened to him when he got back to Baltimore.
 
I agree with Six Feet Under. I stopped watching the show sometime in the second season but was still amazed by the finale.
 
It's weird that people are listing the same shows over and over, I'd think there'd be more variety of shows and experience.
 
Jexhius said:
It's weird that people are listing the same shows over and over, I'd think there'd be more variety of shows and experience.
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In the end, there simply are not many shows that had a series finale worth remembering.
 
Extras had a great ending

Carnivale had a great ending too, though it shouldn't have ended there.


I was disappointed by the Wire's ending, but then again, the show started to lose my interest by the time it got there.
 
omg rite said:
In the end, there simply are not many shows that had a series finale worth remembering.
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Probably. As most shows that are successful tend to get more seasons, and as the quality of writing can't stay constantly high, things have to be that way for most shows.
 
Jexhius said:
It's weird that people are listing the same shows over and over, I'd think there'd be more variety of shows and experience.
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Lot of TV shows never even get a proper series finale and just are cancelled as they expect to keep going on and on.

And some of these don't even seem like "good" ending memories, but stuff they won't forget. Like "it was all in the mind of an autistic child" bad.
 
omg rite said:
... Why would it make you hate the rest of the series? That's like saying, "The final episode of Seinfeld sucks so now I hate the entire series."
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What? Seinfeld was a series of small stories that have nothing to do with each other. One episode ignores the last 99% of the time. Lost is one continual, long and drawn out story. If the ending to a movie sucks, then it's perfectly reasonable to hate on the movie. This is especially true for stories that drag you out thinking the ending is going to be worth your time. The same goes for shows that are continual.

^ I agree with Battlemonkey. I can't even think of many shows that ended with a finale that I watched. The concept of the continual story progression is kind of a new thing. So, the whole concept of a great finale is fresh to television.
 
Six Feet Under, at least, it's the only series finale that got any kind of genuine emotional response out of me.

Oh, and ALF, although I was a kid, but I remember it having a "Shit just got REAL" kind of ending-that-was-supposed-to-be-a-season-finale.
 
Lafiel said:
Because the best ending of that is a movie? :P
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It's technically a film, but it's presented as a replacement for the last two episodes 25 and 26 of the series, (even so as to denote it during the film at the appropriate times which the episodes break.) <_<
 
Life on Mars (UK) brilliant ending.
Ashes to Ashes (UK) brilliant ending that even manages to make Life on mars' ending better.
The Office (UK) perfect.
Extras (UK), perfect as well.
Lost was great too.
 
Best
  • The Seinfeld finale
    on curb!
  • Arrested Development (come on, the whole series was referencing the finale)

Worst
  • Seinfeld (the original finale)
  • Nip\Tuck

Honorable mention (for both?)

St Elsewhere
 
saltinekracka said:
Watch LOST. Good lord, what a show. Ending was amazing.
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I did enjoy the finale, and sure what ultimately becomes of these people is touching, but I didn't react to it like I did with SFU. Although I was happy for Desmond, because he was my favorite character on that show the moment he said "Brotha."
 
BattleMonkey said:
And this wasn't supposed to be the ending. Whedon even went and continued it in the comic books.
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Barely. He plotted out the first few issues with Brian Lynch, who was then given the ability to do whatever the hell he wanted. And it ended up being a mediocre comic was horrendous art and then in the end, none of it mattered. Then when the series was promoted from limited to ongoing, it turned to complete shit.

It does have some ideas that would have been in season 6, like Gunn becoming a vampire. Of course this is reversed anyway.

Either way, it's pretty much non-canon at this point, as the official season 8 Buffy comic ends up showing that
Angel is the villain Twilight
and the current writer of the Angel comic says he will not be changing his stories to sync up with Buffy.
 
Mr. B Natural said:
What? Seinfeld was a series of small stories that have nothing to do with each other. One episode ignores the last 99% of the time. Lost is one continual, long and drawn out story. If the ending to a movie sucks, then it's perfectly reasonable to hate on the movie. This is especially true for stories that drag you out thinking the ending is going to be worth your time. The same goes for shows that are continual.
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Except the episode didn't ignore the last 99% of the time. What are you talking about?

Either way, if you didn't like the last episode, that's fine. But no, it doesn't somehow make the writing, acting, music, and overall brilliance of the first season of Lost somehow suck. It doesn't make episodes like "The Constant" in season 4 and "Through the Looking Glass" in season 3 suck.
 
Santiako said:
Life on Mars (UK) brilliant ending.
Ashes to Ashes (UK) brilliant ending that even manages to make Life on mars' ending better.
The Office (UK) perfect.
Extras (UK), perfect as well.
Lost was great too.
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Exactly the list I was going for.

I cannot recommend Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes as a complete package enough. There are only about 40 episodes between the two of them, anyone who hasn't seen them should definitely give them a look.
 
Vox-Pop said:
Roswell's ending was good as well.
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I was about to say "YOU LIE" (me being a HUGE Roswell fan and owning all three seasons. Even though the latter two didn't hold a candle to the first season), but I guess it fit. Yeah.

Sex and the City, Battlestar Galactica (no, I'm not kidding), Daria and ...there was something else but I don't remember what it was.
 
saltinekracka said:
Watch LOST. Good lord, what a show. Ending was amazing.
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You could say that Six Feet Under's season finale is quite related to Lost's ending.

SFU just has the emotion cranked up by magnitudes if you've seen the full series. The last couple SFU episodes are an emotional rollercoaster.
 
omg rite said:
... Why would it make you hate the rest of the series? That's like saying, "The final episode of Seinfeld sucks so now I hate the entire series."
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Because he's one of the people who didnt get the ending and thinks it was all fake the whole time. It's okay, there's a lot of slow people out there.
 
Trent Strong said:
I never gave a shit about the "characters" in The Wire. That show was so sterile, clinical, and distant, that I couldn't care less how the story turned out.
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WTF is this SHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTT
 
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