2024-01-24 19:27:09
We recently saw what great finale episodes are worth in terms of the television industry in the United States: nothing. Both “Trust Sol” and “Barry”, two series from the top of the TV Champions League, came to an end with a great finale and were completely ignored at the award ceremonies. sad? is very. So many series end in an unsatisfying, embarrassing and even infuriating way, that this is almost the standard. It’s a good time to go back to the best finale episodes in television history, roll them up and use them to bash the members of the Academy. It will be a happy ending.
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Deep in the ground // Six Feet Under
It is a bit difficult to define what a good ending to a series is, because it is a definition that depends on a wide variety of things – from the style of the series to personal preference. But the consensus surrounding the ending of Alan Ball’s death drama overrides all preference, because it is so comprehensive, so touching, and so fitting for a series that is all about moving between life and death. Throughout an already mythological sequence we predict one by one the fate of all the remaining characters, throughout the rest of their lives, until their final fate. It sounds kitschy, and it really is a bit kitschy, but it works in levels and feels like an emotional juice cleanse. If you wanted closure, “Underground” finds it only in the grave, and that’s exactly what makes it perfect. (Matan Sharon)
The Sopranos // The Sopranos
Have you noticed that there are a lot of series that end with an ending that is not entirely clear until the end, such that it is impossible to know one hundred percent what exactly happened and what didn’t? So you can thank The Sopranos. A screenplay masterpiece, superbly done in all respects, and the final episode did not drop the bar in the iconic moment when the screen went black and we did not stop believing. David Chase did confirm after 15 years the death of Tony Soprano, and although he didn’t show the moment on screen, it was pretty obvious if you followed the clues the series left. This is a perfect final episode, which gives the audience exactly what they want without giving them what they want, and without getting into the complexity of the mafia connections derived from it, just for this final moment it was worth watching the whole series. And, like, for the whole series. (Leron Roddick)
Mr. Robot // Mr. Robot
The finale of Mr. Robot was controversial, as the entire series was. But at its best, Sam Ismail’s series managed to constantly deceive its viewers, and its final episode was all a deception within a deception, with fans still debating the meaning of its last minutes. Contrary to what many were outraged to think, this is really not an ending along the lines of “it was all a dream”, but rather a saga of a mentally damaged person who tries to put all the broken pieces of himself together by himself, and at the last moment also manages to break through all the smoke screens. We really wanted it to be a series about the horror of technology and hackers and the way to defeat the world controlled by corporations, and in the end we got something much more beautiful and poetic. Many insals were left frustrated. (Yron Ten Brink)
Breaking Bad // Breaking Bad
The series that brought Walter White, the chemistry teacher turned drug dealer, into our lives could so easily have been missed when the fifth season landed. It could have gone wrong in so many ways, become a morality tale or just a whiny bore, but instead we got a grand finale. Walter White’s end was much more graphic than Tony Soprano’s, and many still weren’t sure he was dead, until the death was confirmed in the spinoff film El Camino. There were highs throughout the series from the end, but Walter White’s breakdown, from the first moment of the episode to the last moment, makes it a heartbreaker. And at the end, Vince Gillian’s epic left us with a great question – do we really hate or really love Walter White. (Leron Roddick)
Heirs // Succession
We knew that “Yorishim” was keeping a last card in hand towards the end, and it’s hard to say that we were disappointed – all the children gathered for the fateful decision that decides who will be the winner who takes the whole jackpot. Two betrayals in, and Shiv is already joining hands with the brothers one last time, to enthrone Kendall – and then, of course, one last emotional chess move, which turned the victory upside down and left us with Tom, of all people, at the top. Like a successful gunfight that ends with only the undertaker standing. For a Shakespearean work like “Heirs”, and another one that made a good choice with the death of Logan at the beginning of the season, it’s a perfect ending, sad, a little optimistic and especially very, very appropriate for her character. After all, we knew that one last card would be saved, and it was nice to still be surprised in real time, while watching some of the most open and honest dialogues in the history of the series. (Matan Sharon)
The Shield // The Shield
Very few series end with such silence. A dead silence of four minutes, in which the hero is alone, struggling with his feelings, and the camera closes a close-up of his face that becomes more and more extreme. “The Defender” was a police series that was largely ahead of its time and suffered a little from the shadow cast by “The Sopranos” and “The Undercover” in those years, but it is a masterpiece series about a violent policeman who is willing to do anything to stop the bad guys, until he becomes evil himself. Vince McKee, one of the most successful characters in television history, loses everything in the last episode of the series. He gets his hell: alone in a cubicle, a police officer, subordinate to bureaucrats. Despite everything, they manage to continue to squeeze out of us empathy towards him until the first second. Oh god. (Yron Ten Brink)
Better Call Saul // Better Call Saul
The prequel to “Breaking Bad” managed to do the impossible – a series that, although we knew exactly where it would end up, we had no idea how it would end. Usually the trajectory of the prequels is quite clear, because it tells what happened before the plot – which makes the whole thing a bit predictable. “Trust Sol” completely changed the rules of the game, and by introducing new characters and deepening the existing ones, managed to drain the entire plot to the dramatic final moment. The result is an exciting, important and significant final episode, which both closes for us what happened after “Breaking Bad”, and also completes the complete course of Saul Goodman. Every episode in this series is a masterpiece, but the last one just wraps everything up, including the parent series, so beautifully. (Leron Roddick)
The Leftovers // The Leftovers
Many final episodes will try to move you to tears. The best of them will succeed. After the finale of “The Remaining”, you won’t stop crying for two years. The final episode leaves the big questions that “The Leftovers” asked throughout its three excellent seasons open to the viewers’ interpretation. It could have been frustrating, but something much more important happens in it, when love wins and the most broken love story in television history gets its truly moving happy ending, and in the most satisfying way. Like any great series, here too you can learn from the last episode what is really important in life. And it is recommended to study. (Yron Ten Brink)
The Undercover // The Wire
In order to finish a large-scale narrative epic like “The Undercover”, you have to use the oldest trick in the book, and fly like a bird between all the corners of the city while one of the “Devil In The Hole” performances of the series is playing. What to do, sometimes clichés work, and for David Chase’s statement – that suckers in the crime game don’t die, they just change – this was the most accurate way to tell, for the last time, about Baltimore’s DNA. There are some happy moments (Bubbles eating with the family), some heartbreaking moments (Michael becomes the new Omar), and above all a tingling feeling that we have already been here before, five seasons or so – the sofa is still standing in the yard, the chess is still being played, and the city as usual drives. After all, she was the most important character in the series. (Matan Sharon)
Mad Men // Mad Men
“This is the real thing, what the world wants today.” Over the course of seven seasons the ultimate man Don Draper lied about his identity, cheated on his wives and made millions convincing everyone that one product or another was what the world wanted. But gradually the world around him, and especially the women, began to change, flooding his feelings of guilt and inner emptiness. Don leaves the office and embarks on a journey through the back roads of America, during which he experiences a mental crisis that brings him to the brink of a nervous breakdown. In the hippie center of mutual support, the advertising man in the gray suit is apparently undergoing a spiritual transformation. When he joins a group meditation and a Nirvana smile spreads across his face, it seems for a moment that the series has lost it. But then the famous commercial video from 1971 begins, which mobilized the hippie culture to sell Coca-Cola to the world, and we realize that the smile is not what we thought and an elf remains who he was. This coda makes the final episode of “Mad Men” one of the most ironic and striking in the history of American television. (Yael again)
Twin Peaks // Twin Peaks
The owls are not what they seem. What year are we in? The mysterious magical journey of “Twin Peaks” lasted 25 years, interrupted and vague as only David Lynch can, and we expected nothing less than a perfect and confusing ending – and that’s exactly what we got. Agent Dale Cooper closed all possible circles, a kind of Happy End in a universe where a Happy End is impossible, a kind of victory over absolute evil in a world where victory over absolute evil is impossible. Laura Palmer can finally rest, but fans will continue to discuss this mystical creation forever. And that is infinity. (Yron Ten Brink)
Atlanta // Atlanta
It’s only fitting that a series as delusional as Atalana ends with an episode that asks the question, “Was it all a dream?”, and then flatly refuses to answer it. If you ask me, by the way, it was clearly not a dream. This is simply the hallucination of life as an African-American in the age of the Internet. The last episode was classic Atlanta, with two pretty basic plots that were all about what Atlanta likes to do – black culture and hallucinations. In between, he also provided a small statement about how the series itself was perceived in the public eye, and also some hysterical moments that reminded us that no matter how much we dig into the complex meaning of each and every episode, at its core, Atlanta is just a lot of fun for some strange friends. (Matan Sharon)
The Americans // The Americans
Six seasons led to the confrontation in the final episode of “The Americans”, six wonderful seasons of one of the special and underappreciated series in the history of television, and it is doubtful if any series in history received such an emotionally satisfying finale – yet emotionally stormy – and radiated so much humanity in an hour that it is difficult to decide at the end Whether to be happy or cry and maybe both. It’s a dazzling ending with its wisdom and heart-wrenching beauty that makes you want to hug each and every one of the heroes of the series from all sides, and never let them go. And that’s exactly what the finale explains to you is not going to happen. what a world. (Yron Ten Brink)
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