What with How I Met Your Mother meeting a frankly disappointing end, Mad Men entering into its final season and Breaking Bad also finishing up this year, we thought we'd take a look at some of TV's greatest finales. Spoilers below!
THE SOPRANOS - "Don't stop believin'..."
Look, say what you want about The Sopranos' finale, it got people talking. The final scene in the diner was poured over and analysed like a conspiracy video to the point where you missed the whole reasoning behind it. David Chase, the creater of the hit TV show, said the scene was meant to convey the fact that for the rest of Tony's life, he'd be looking over his shoulder. Tony was going to be faced with the real possibility that he could either die by an enemy or a hail of FBI gunfire he went down fighting. Either way, he's in big trouble. Order a bowl of Onion Rings and think it over.
FRASIER - "That which we are, we are."
Arguably one of the greatest TV comedies ever made, Frasier was intelligent, witty, funny and had a real warmth to it. Kelsey Grammer's personal life saw terrible turmoil throughout the entire series and to put both that and the show that made his fame was probably terrifying for him. Something that he eloquently and beautifully communicated in the final moments of the series finale. And if you recognise that poem, yes it's the one from Skyfall.
THE U.S. OFFICE - "Remember Flonkerton?"
Although the UK Office had a much shorter lifespan, its US counterpart managed to take the original premise and grow out from it into something more. Running for a total of nine seasons, its finale saw the entire cast reunite and a touching musical number sees what it meant for everyone. The final line sums up the entire concept of the entire series; "there's a lot of beauty in ordinary things - isn't that the point?"
DALLAS - "What makes you think I'm from Heaven?"
When it comes to totally batshit endings, Dallas reigns supreme. After a whopping FOURTEEN seasons, the long-running soap saw JR Ewing go off on a It's A Wonderful Life-esque journey that saw his family leave him entirely, his arch-nemesis becoming President of the United States and a creepy 'angel' following him around. It may be because people just stopped watching Dallas that they thought nobody would care, but what an ending.
The Wire's finale demonstrated in five minutes what the show had been trying to communicate throughout the entire series - nothing really changes. David Simon's gripping opera of life on the streets of Baltimore saw everything from the ghettos to the highest courts of law, all done without idealism or any sense of mollification. It was real, tough and utterly unforgettable.
BREAKING BAD - Jessie escapes
For all of our speculation about what would go down, Breaking Bad's ending felt almost too clean and neat for some viewers. Walter White, exposed as the drug kingpin and living in exile, decides to take charge of his life and settle his business in a single stroke. The bloody finale, which sees him wiping out an entire gang of white supremacists with a machine-gun before succumbing to his end before the cops arrive, served as a perfect end to his story. Walter White was simply too clever and too lucky to be taken alive. He would only go out on his own terms.
BLACKADDER GOES FORTH - "Who would have noticed another madman around here?"
The finale of Blackadder Goes Forth demonstrates just how dark and intelligent British comedy could be if it was given the right material to work with. Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Laurie and Tony Robinson play the hapless soldiers trapped in a bunker in World War I who, each episode, come up with a clever way of keeping themselves out of the fighting. Its blend of anarchic, screw-ball humour blended seamlessly with the senseless violence of the Great War. Its ending has been unmatched in poignancy or relevancy.
