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What's missing from this list of the best series finales?
by Bob Sassone, posted Mar 30th 2009 12:25PM
Everyone loves lists, and everyone has an opinion, so it's not always nice or productive to point out that another person's list might be lacking in some way. Having said that, let's talk about how this list is lacking in some way.
It's a list of the 10 best series finales of all-time. I'll get right to the point: Newhart should be on this list.
I mean, come on, how can Bob waking up in bed next to Suzanne Pleshette, one of the great, most unpredictable, most satisfying endings in TV history, not make it somewhere on this list? And it's not like the author chose only recent shows, because the M*A*S*H series finale from 1983 is one there. Though it is really heavy on recent shows. The finales of Battlestar Galactica, The Sopranos, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Oz all made the top 10.
The number one series finale of all-time? Six Feet Under. The fans of those shows can argue the merit of the list, but I have to take exception to his reasoning for including M*A*S*H. Not that it was a bad finale, but to say the reason that the last episode remains the highest-rated television program in history is because "it's one of the most satisfying, gut-wrenching finales ever" doesn't make any sense. It's highly rated because it was the last episode of M*A*S*H. It could have been terrible and still gotten the same ratings. After all, it's not like viewers knew it was going to be great beforehand and that's why they tuned in.
So, besides Newhart, what else should be on this list (shows that actually had a chance to do a proper series finale and didn't just "end"). Maybe The Fugitive?
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