Top 5 Series Finales

I don’t do a lot of writing about television, because I’m not actually the biggest fan of TV.  Since the medium tends to be passive, and I’m not in a darkened theater with no way of grabbing my laptop, my brain tends to get bored and fall away.  Also, most of the shows on TV generally hold limited interest for me, but I think that’s less an issue with the medium and more with media in general.  A lot of books, video games and movies don’t hold a lot of interest for me either.  Finally, I also play a lot of video games, and video games take up the same amount of time as television.  If I have to split my time between those two things, I’d have to chose games, since I tend to find them more personally engaging.

That said, if there is a TV show I like, I love the Hell out of it.  I try to not be an evangelist for stuff anymore, but sometimes it can be difficult.  If I like a show and someone brings it up, I tend not to be able to shut up about it.  That’s kind of true about a lot of things for me, but I imagine it surprises people when they find out I actually can engage in the culture at large.  However, one thing I really hate about TV (and video games, too) is that they rarely end well.

I love endings.  A lot of people don’t, but I do.  I like to know that the story is over, whether things end well or poorly for the characters, and where they’re going to go.  Having that knowledge of closure is great for me.  However, because of how television works, a lot of shows just stop and don’t get to have an end point, whether the show gets canceled or a lead actor walks out or something.  It’s sad.  Sometimes, though, the series nails it and knocks everything out of the park.  So, I present my five favorites.  Now, I do have some rules.  The first is that it has to be a finale.  This can include multi parters, but if it’s part of a series of final parts (like Deep Space Nine), I only chose the last episode.  Second, it has to be the final episode, so if a show gets revived, I can’t go with the original finale, even if it’s better, which is why you won’t see the Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings, despite it being my favorite Futurama episode.  Finally, I’m not including any limited shows that lasted one season.  Most anime and Firefly aren’t going to count.  Also, I’m not counting a mini series or anything canceled before it’s time.

One Last Ride- Parks and Recreation

The impetus for this whole list, which I finished watching this morning, One Last Ride remains my favorite episode in a series I loved for years.  I don’t normally follow sitcoms, but Parks and Recreation had some of the most lovable characters and interesting situations.  It helped that it had the feeling of a live action cartoon, which appeals to me a lot.  One Last Ride, however, is the ultimate happy ending.  Flashing forward all throughout the future of the characters, it was inventive to see how everyone would turn out over the next 30 years.

I’m a bit of a sap for happy endings, so it was good to see that everything worked out.  However, what I liked even more was that it showed that their lives continued in the future, and it wasn’t always easy for them.  Parks and Rec was always about people coming together to overcome difficult problems, and that was what they continued to do, even 31 years into the future.  It was a fitting end, with people happy while still working at what they wanted to do.

Not Fade Away- Angel

Angel is my favorite TV show, I’ve seriously seen it 4 times all the way through and it was the first show I got all of on DVD.  Not Fade Away, though, is the perfect ending to the show.  There were a few bumps in the road, with the Circle of the Black Thorn coming out of nowhere, and a few things not getting the resolution they deserved, but none of that mattered, because the last second is one of the best scenes in the whole series.  “Let’s go to work.”

That line crystallized everything about the series in four words.  Good, no matter what the cost, was always worth fighting for, and Angel, staring down an army of demons with the remains of his friends, ready to fight to the death and all he can think is that he wants to kill the dragon, just because it’s cool.  He spit in the face of the Devil and whether or not he would win didn’t matter.  He was going to go out swinging.  I loved it.

What You Leave Behind- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

This is going to be the only Star Trek on the list, but only because Enterprise screwed everything up by dragging in a terrible series finale (aired on the same night on what would have been a great one).  What You Leave Behind is the final battle against the Dominion, and while the Federation triumphs, it’s not without cost.  There’s something poetic about everyone but Bashir leaving the station, with him losing everyone close to him.  It’s a happy ending, but we, like Bashir, are losing everyone we love in the process.  Not because they’re dead, but because they can finally move to where they need to be.

Deep Space Nine was a place for outcasts, a place where people didn’t fit in.  One of the themes of the show was about helping people find their place in the universe, and the seventh season was all about them coming together to do that, even if that meant moving away from everyone you love.  Things worked out for everyone, but it doesn’t make it easy for everyone to move on.

Meanwhile- Futurama

It’s not the Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings, but it was good to see Fry and Leela get the happy life they deserved, even if the universe was frozen while they lived.  Yes, they would get out at the end, with the implication that they would probably finally get together for real in the future, but it’s not easy.  For a moment, it looked like taking the Professor’s reset button would be like tearing their own arms off, but they did it, and when the final credits aired.  Still, “It was a good life,” “Kinda lonely, though?”  “I was never lonely, not even for a minute,” gets me a little bit emotional.

It’s not the best episode, and in later years, some of Futurama’s episodes were more weird than interesting, but it never got bad.  Meanwhile gives a lot of closure to a series that made me happy for my entire adult life.  Much like Angel, it’s one of my favorite shows of all time, and probably one of the only shows I will have on DVD forever.

Destroyer- Justice League Unlimited

Lex Luthor saves the world.  I mean, that’s all that needs to be said, but I mean, there’s also the fight against the forces of Apokalips all across the Earth, villains and heroes uniting and of course, the World of Cardboard speech.  The only issue is that Superman doesn’t get a chance to really cut lose against Darkseid for long enough, but what we get to see is amazing.

It probably doesn’t have the same level of resolution as, say, Epilogue or, well, a lot of other TV shows, but it was a closure on almost 15 years of my life, from the first episode of Batman the Animated Series I saw on my bean bag chair when I was 6 to staying in on a Saturday to watch cartoons with my brother when I was 20, just because I wanted to end it.  I guess this one is more personal than any of them.