Doug’s Top 5 TV series finales

Opinion

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This article was published 21/05/2015 (3256 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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All good things must come to an end.

And that’s what happened Sunday night when the AMC series Mad Men aired its final episode after seven critically acclaimed seasons that saw the show fight its way to the forefront of popular culture.

While beloved by critics, Mad Men, which premièred in July 2007 and collected four Emmys for best drama, was not always a mainstream hit for the cable network.

Never a ratings juggernaut, the show’s final episode, Person to Person, attracted an average audience of 3.3 million viewers — its third-largest audience ever and an estimate that includes live viewing and same-night DVR playback.

But the series, named best TV show of 2007 by the Television Critics Association, made stars out of its cast, none bigger than actor Jon Hamm, who portrayed lead character Don Draper, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, charismatic, tormented advertising executive with a shadowy past.

As Free Press TV writer Brad Oswald noted, the finale brought Draper’s journey to an end on a high note, with the final image showing a cluster of circa-1971 hippies standing on a hillside, crooning their desire to buy the world a Coke. Either Don had found enlightenment or was about to create one of the most iconic ads of all time.

How does Mad Men’s farewell stack up against other famous final episodes? Here’s our personal Top 5 TV Series Finales of All Time.  (Caution: Spoilers abound!)

 

5. HBO’s The Sopranos (1999-2007)

All eyes on the finale: 11.9 million viewers

The swan song: The phrase “love it or hate it” was probably coined to describe reaction to the final episode of this critically adored HBO series. Entitled Made in America, it focuses on the aftermath of a Mob war between the DiMeo crime family, headed by antihero Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), and the New York-based Lupertazzi family.

Tony also has more than a few family issues to deal with in the divisive episode, the reaction to which has become more favourable with the passing of time.

In the final scene, Tony and the family gather at a diner, with Tony arriving first to watch who walks in through the bell-ringing door. The family filters in, as does a dark-haired man in a Members Only jacket, who later passes the Sopranos’ table and enters the restroom.

Just as Tony’s daughter arrives, the bell rings, the lyrics of a Journey song on the jukebox say “Don’t stop,” Tony looks at the door… and the screen cuts to black.

Ten seconds later, the credits roll and a show that Rolling Stone says launched the New Golden Age of TV was over. Not knowing what happens next drove some viewers berserk, but big-shot critics basically said: “Resolution, schmesolution!”

Said TV Guide: “The much-anticipated closer had everyone waiting to see if Tony was finally going to go from whacker to whackee. Instead, they got Journey, a greasy plate of onion rings and a black screen. But, the fact that we’re still talking about it proves — for better or worse — that the episode did its job.” And if that’s not good enough, hey, we know a guy who knows a guy.

4. NBC’s Seinfeld (1989-1998)

All eyes on the finale: 76.3 million viewers

The swan song: When the two-part series finale (the show’s 179th and 180th episodes) aired to millions of eyeballs on May 14, 1998, it made a lot of fans really mad. Entertainment Weekly said the closer was a hearty “So long, suckers!” farewell to fans of this groundbreaking sitcom, famously about nothing.

In a nutshell, Jerry gets the go-ahead from NBC to make his series and, as a perk, is offered the company jet to take him and his friends anywhere, so Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine head to Paris for “one last hurrah.”

When the plane makes an emergency landing in a small town, the gang see an overweight man being carjacked and make fun of his plight, so they get arrested under a new Good Samaritan law for failing to help. In packing them off to jail, the judge scolds: “I can think of nothing more fitting than for the four of you to spend a year removed from society so that you can contemplate the manner in which you have conducted yourselves.”

The finale appears on lists of both the best and worst closers of all time.

“Few finales have let down their audience quite like Seinfeld did in 1998,” groused Esquire magazine’s Matthew Kitchen. “It was just a reunion show that ended with four of TVs most beloved characters… going to jail. But I dare you to rewatch the run of the show and not believe it’s the perfect ending to TV’s undefeated champion of sitcoms.”

Its biggest crime? “It was frankly unfunny,” sniffed TV Guide. But Rolling Stone hailed it for being a “ballsy, subversive” send-off, co-creator Larry David’s way of “giving his lovably horrible protagonists their comeuppance for all the thoughtless slights they’d inflicted on others for nine seasons.”

There’s nothing more to say because, well, yada yada!

3. CBS’s The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77)

All eyes on the finale: Viewer numbers not available but it was drawing about 15 million in its last years

The swan song: No one wanted this show to end, especially its cast. “We kept putting off writing that last show; we frankly didn’t want to do it,” said executive producer Allan Burns in accepting the award for Outstanding Comedy Series at the 29th annual Emmy Awards.

The last show, fittingly entitled The Last Show, aired in Canada on March 18, 1977, and the following day in the U.S. It was the 168th episode of the beloved series following the struggles of associate TV producer Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore).

We still get misty-eyed thinking of the finale, in which the new manager of station WJM-TV fires everyone, except, of course, nincompoop anchor Ted Baxter.

In one of the most memorable moments in TV history — and one of the most frequently parodied — the crew gathers in the newsroom for a final goodbye, which culminates in an emotional group hug, during which nobody wants to let go, thereby forcing them to shuffle en masse over to a box of tissues on Mary’s desk.

They exit the newsroom singing It’s a Long Way To Tipperary and, at the end, an emotional Mary looks back and smiles before turning off the lights and closing the door.

In 2011, the finale was ranked No. 3 on TV Guide’s list of most unforgettable finales. “The tears flowed, though, as the cast gathered for the now-iconic group hug and, afterward, when the show’s star Mary Tyler Moore introduced the series’ seven regulars as ‘the best cast ever.’ Awww,” noted Entertainment Weekly.

You know, Mary might just make it after all.

2. CBS’s Newhart (1982-1990)

All eyes on the finale: 30 million viewers

The swan song: The Last Newhart aired May 21, 1990. The episode is either at or near the top of every list of the best TV finales of all time. Why? Because it was a classic, with arguably the most clever twist in TV history.

By way of background, the show focused on Newhart and actress Mary Frann as the owners (Dick and Joanna Loudon) of a small Vermont inn that was home to an eccentric cast of characters.

In the closer, the entire town has been purchased by a visiting Japanese tycoon, but Dick and Joanna refuse to leave and Dick is knocked out by a golf ball.

In the final two minutes, Newhart, who had spent the last eight season playing innkeeper Dick Loudon, wakes up in an oddly familiar bedroom. “Honey, wake up, you won’t believe the dream I just had,” he says just as his bedmate, Suzanne Pleshette, who played his wife, Emily, on the popular 1970s sictom The Bob Newhart Show, rolls over.

Yes, the innkeeper goes to bed in Vermont and wakes up as Chicago therapist Bob sleeping next to his original 1972-78 TV wife. So the past eight seasons, including wife Joanna, the dimwitted Larry, his brother Darryl, “and his other brother Darryl,” were nothing but a dream.

“It was the ultimate wink-wink, nudge-nudge kind of thing,” Newhart giggled later. “The audience was in on the joke.”

Entertainment Weekly says it was Newhart’s real wife, Ginnie, who came up with the idea at a holiday party, which Pleshette happened to be attending. “She loved the idea,” Newhart recalled. “She said, ‘I’ll be there in a New York minute!’ ”

Which is why it’s No. 2 on our list.

1. CBS’s M*A*S*H (1972-1983)

All eyes on the finale: 105.9 million viewers

The swan song: All you really need to know here is that the final episode of the show’s historic 11-year run, a 2-1/2-hour TV movie entitled Goodbye, Farewell and Amen, was the most-watched TV broadcast in U.S. history until it was edged out by the 106.5 million football fans who watched the New Orleans Saints beat the Indianapolis Colts 31-17 in Super Bowl XLIV in 2010.

We are talking the highest-rated series finale in TV history. TV Guide has named it the best finale ever. It was reaffirmed as America’s favourite this month when it edged out the finale of Cheers in a poll by the TV show Today.

When it aired on Feb. 28, 1983, a huge viewing party was held at a Winnipeg hotel, which had a little decorating help from the Canadian military and was covered by this columnist, then a chubby-cheeked reporter.

Directed by series star Alan Alda, the final episode was the perfect cap for a show that literally changed the face of modern television. The finale delivered laughs and plenty of heartache, revealing why Hawkeye Pierce (Alda) was in a mental hospital in the dying days of the Korean War — a baby had been fatally smothered by its mother lest its crying attract the enemy.

Even today, it’s hard not to shed sentimental tears over the show’s heartbreaking farewells. The teariest? At the very end, Hawkeye, who has been chiding his best friend B.J. Hunnicutt for his refusal to say “goodbye” to him, is taking off in a helicopter. As the chopper gains altitude, Hawkeye finally sees B.J.’s last message — a bunch of large stones arranged to read “GOODBYE” on the helipad.

That farewell wasn’t just for Hawkeye; it was for everyone who came of age watching this life-altering, game-changing program.

The final finale

We are giving ourselves the final word, namely: The end of a beloved show is a lot like the loss of a true friend; you know life will go on, but somehow it just seems a little bit emptier.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca