THAT’S A WRAP!
A look at the 10 best series finales of the modern TV era
The series finale is a do-or-die moment.
This week all eyes were on the sombre conclusion of FX’s The Americans, the 1980s-set espionage thriller. The series came to a satisfying end Wednesday after six superb seasons. Said finale arguably lands into the pantheon of TV’s great endings — but what shows are already in that club?
What the following list of 10 modern-day finales all share is one crucial trait: They made sure viewers never forgot how things ended.
1
Breaking Bad AMC, 2013 Perhaps no finale in recent memory has more fully honoured the spirit and tone of its own making as the conclusion to the saga of Walter White, an Albuquerque, N.M., science teacher who becomes a master meth maker and discovers his own capacity for evil.
In the last episode, Walt (Bryan Cranston), returns to New Mexico to exact a wildly complex comeuppance for his enemies, whether by simple intimidation or poisoned Stevia packet. Before he dies in a shootout with a neo-Nazi drug cartel, Walt gives everyone what they deserve or require: Skyler gets the truth (in a parting scene that remains one of the finest-written and best-acted in modern TV ), Jesse gets freedom and viewers get a moment to consider what it means when a person’s moral compass points so surely in the other direction.
2
Six Feet Under HBO, 2005
The final minutes of Alan Ball’s intense family drama about a funeral home remain, for many viewers, the gold standard of satisfying finales, as Claire (Lauren Ambrose), sets off to start a new life in New York and her cross-country drive shifts into an expertly conceived montage of flash-forwards, building on the show’s signature motif of the moment of death.
What could be more conclusive than killing everyone off ? We see the deaths of most of Six Feet Under’s characters until we arrive at Claire’s own peaceful demise, at 102.
3
The Sopranos HBO, 2007
Still a sore point for many fans, I’ve always appreciated the abrupt way David Chase ended his six-season story of suburban New Jersey mafia man Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini). In the episode’s final minutes, we see the Soprano family gather for dinner, nothing special. Every time the bell on the restaurant door rings, Tony’s eyes dart upward. The bell jangles one last time and the screen goes dark. Was Tony shot by the man who had just walked toward the restroom? If not now, Tony will spend the rest of his life watching doors, waiting for a bullet.
4
Mad Men AMC, 2015 Advertising exec Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is a searcher, an itinerant soul: unreliable father, selfish lover, aloof to the very end, until he seems to have a personal breakthrough while meditating at a Northern California retreat centre. A satisfied grin crosses his face and Mad Men plays out to Coca-Cola’s iconic commercial of that era (I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing). Interpretations abound: Don found his next million-dollar idea. Or Don found inner peace. Maybe it’s both? Points for the smooth exit.
5
Twin Peaks: The Return
The Movie Network/CraveTV, 2017 For those who needed a somewhat tidy ending, the first hour saw FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), break free of his Dougie Jones catatonia and arrive at the last minute to Twin Peaks, where he put things as right as they could ever hope to be in a Lynchian universe.
Then what happened? The real finale — a beautifully rendered mindblower, as Cooper’s journey, presumably as a man named Richard, leads him to the present-day Laura Palmer. Together they journey back to Laura’s doorstep in Twin Peaks, where, in the final moments, the last semblance of narrative certainty falls away with a blood-curdling scream. One simple explanation is everything has been a dream. Others posit time travel or interdimensional existence. This is the finale for people who are comfortable living in a permanent state of WTF.
6
The Office NBC, 2013
In the show’s central mockumentary conceit, receptionist Pam (Jenna Fischer) and her co-workers agreed to let cameras film them for a long public-television project about the American workplace. On The Office’s final episode, the completed series has aired and the characters got to see themselves as they truly are — often in unflattering terms.
The finale’s sappiness, while spread thickly, also memorably acknowledged an inescapable truth about work: Even in the worst jobs, you can still be fortunate enough to work with people who become like family.
7
Parks and Recreation NBC, 2015 The show took wild advantage of the flash-forward button as this NBC comedy about Pawnee, Ind., public servant Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), and her oddball staffers, showed viewers the eventual fate of its characters in the future.
It was a cleverly contorted display of mostly happy endings and funny cameos. A resolute Leslie goes on to serve two terms as Indiana’s governor, but what’s next — a presidential run?
Perhaps the character’s nutty but authentic idealism (and the show’s absurdist comic tone), are legacy enough.
8
The Good Wife CBS, 2016 Forced to participate in another face-saving news conference at the side of her estranged husband, Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies), at last turned away from the weight of public expectation. She took off down a side hallway, pursuing a shadow ahead that she believed to be her departing lover (Jeffrey Morgan Dean), but, instead of finding him, she received the slap of all face slaps from Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski), the mentor and colleague she chose to betray. The episode skilfully walked that difficult line between blunt conclusiveness and lingering questions — and scattered the characters in several directions, a couple of them toward a spinoff, The Good Fight, starring Baranski.
9
The Shield FX, 2008
The final two-hour episode, like the rest of the series, remains a master class in the modern ways of prestige TV, with a mix of absolute conclusiveness and just a note of “Wait — what?” It was an anxiety-filled wrap-up of betrayed alliances, immunity deals and the desperation to avoid moral reckoning. Ten years on, fans of the show can still recall how Shane Vendrell (Walton Goggins) poisoned his pregnant wife and son and then shot himself. Or a final scene of Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) trapped in a desk job at ICE, abandoned by his family. Now forbidden from carrying a firearm, he reaches into his desk drawer, pulls out a gun and heads out ... to where, we’ll never know.
10
Halt and Catch Fire AMC, 2017 Although viewers never turned out in great numbers, Halt and Catch Fire managed to find a deeply human side to the failure rate of startups, and how those wins and losses eventually moulded the players’ emotional maturity. After four seasons, the show ended in a way that was both melancholy and hopeful, as Cam (Mackenzie Davis), and Donna (Kerry Bishé), briefly reconsider what would happen if they were to try again as business partners. They game it out to an inevitable collapse, but after breakfast at a diner, Donna is struck with one last idea. The final note is one of quiet optimism.