Spoilers TV Shows with Great Endings

[Gradine]

Lost's ending is practically perfect, thematically. The sci-fi nonsense that never really gets answered never needed to be answered because it was never the point. The point was all about living together and dying alone, but also, NOT dying alone. Maybe they do die separately, and some of them alone (including Jack), but really, they are completing the process of dying together.

The BSG remake's ending is full of a lot of really stupid stuff, but Cara and Roslin/Adama both fully wrecked me the first time I watched it.

 

[MarkB]

Lost's ending is practically perfect, thematically. The sci-fi nonsense that never really gets answered never needed to be answered because it was never the point.

Which would be fine, if the show's metanarrative, aftershows, marketing etc. hadn't been selling the audience the idea that it was the point, that there were real answers out there, and if they could only piece together all the clues that were being fed to them they'd find those underlying truths.

 

[Ryujin]

Which would be fine, if the show's metanarrative, aftershows, marketing etc. hadn't been selling the audience the idea that it was the point, that there were real answers out there, and if they could only piece together all the clues that were being fed to them they'd find those underlying truths.

Season one I wrote the whole thing off as "they are dead and in Purgatory." I think that I finally stopped watching some time in season 3.

 

[MarkB]

Season one I wrote the whole thing off as "they are dead and in Purgatory." I think that I finally stopped watching some time in season 3.

I concluded somewhere near the end of season 1 that the writers had no more idea of the answers to their questions than the audience did, so I stopped actively watching around then. However, I had a flatmate at the time who remained an avid viewer and the TV and my PC were both in the lounge, so I caught a lot of the later-season episodes peripherally, like second-hand smoke monster.

 

[Clint_L]

Lost lost us midway through Season 2.

 

[Bedrockgames]

On the Sopranos one of the things I like about it is it is transitional. I like Babylon 5 for similar reasons. Both have clearly been shows that helped lead to the kinds of TV you see today, but they still had elements of earlier television (which I think make them more enjoyable on rewatch (a lot of the newer prestige TV built around a long narrative, I might like a lot the first time, but then have no desire to watch again: there are, of course, exceptions, and plenty of newer shows don't do what I am talking about here). Both the Sopranos and Babylon 5 still have individual episodes that are entertaining on their own. There are basically three TV shows I watch again and again: Doctor Who, The Sopranos and I, Claudius. Doctor Who is another that still has great self contained episodes even if it has a longer seasonal arc.

For those who don't know, there are also some connections between I, Claudius and Sopranos (for instance Livia is named after a character from I, Claudius, and Chase did this for a reason). Of course I, Claudius is more about the longer narrative. But it is just so well written I've watched it regularly since first discovering it in the early 90s and it never gets old (plus it has a lot of great performances by people like John Hurt (one of the best examples of a villain who is sympathetic but remains terrifying, which is hard to do), Derek Jacobi, Brian Blessed, Patricia Quinn (who played Magenta in Rocky Horror), Sian Philips (maybe the greatest villain role ever), and Patrick Stewart (seriously if you want to see Stewart play a terrific villain, check this show out). Also there is a fun connection between I, Claudius and the 2007 season finale episodes of Doctor Who.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I never watched Lost. I assumed that the show would go on and on and that any tying together of plots would be last minute arse pulls.

 

[MarkB]

I never watched Lost. I assumed that the show would go on and on and that any tying together of plots would be last minute arse pulls.

Wow, someone did decipher all the clues correctly, and so early on.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I never watched Lost. I assumed that the show would go on and on and that any tying together of plots would be last minute arse pulls.

Lost was great up until they decided to start tying it all together. They had run out of steam by that point -- the final episode before the shift was one about the origins of Jack's white guy Asian characters tattoos, which was cringeworthy even at the time.

The episodes after that had a bunch of narrative energy again, but it was all in aid of tying together stuff that wasn't planned out in advance and didn't really work as a unified fabric and left other stuff on the cutting room floor. (Why did the big Egyptian statue not have enough toes?)

It had a great three or four seasons before that point, though.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Non-genre show: You're The Worst, which started with the most cynical take ever on romantic comedy, with the two terrible leads meeting after heckling a wedding in the pilot, has a final season with them planning their own wedding. And the writers never relent and turn them into particularly nice people.

They've grown -- a bit -- but are still the worst and the show never pretends that marriage and kids is the goal everyone should be heading toward or that true love will redeem a group of extremely broken people.

Seinfeld tried to do something similar and completely face-planted, while YTW stuck the landing while still being diametrically opposite of the (also great) Parks & Rec finale and surprise final season victory lap.