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SPOILER ALERT!: This article reveals and discusses the climaxes to several classic TV series. You have been warned.
With And Just Like That coming to an end after three seasons, it seems like a good time to look at other popular shows’ endings. Many beloved series have angered their fanbase with murky conclusions. So, let’s start with And Just Like That, the sequel to the enormously successful Sex and the City series. First, most fans took the sudden pronouncement of this episode as the last as suspect. Executive producer and writer Michael Patrick King announced the swan song before the next to last episode. His reasoning was that if they had announced it at the beginning of the third season, the press would make that the focus of interviews with the cast and not the storylines. Many fans weren’t buying it. Viewership was down and the show had a hefty price tag. AJLT became a show to hatewatch.
The last episode didn’t seem like an important send-off. What we got was a normal episode that takes place on Thanksgiving. Three new characters are at Miranda’s dinner (one having a plot point we will just skip because it was tasteless and unnecessary and beneath the show). It’s a shame because in the last three episodes the show was beginning to hit its stride, especially when it came to Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker). She spent most of the season floundering in a ridiculous plot concerning former boyfriend Aidan (John Corbett) What was the attraction there? Maybe furniture? She got a chair from him during the SATC run and a table during this incarnation.
I also never understood Ms. Bradshaw’s obsession with Mr. Big (Chris Noth). He might have been rich and handsome, but they had nothing in common. At the end of Season Two in the original series, when she had her Plaza Hotel showdown with Big after missing his and Natasha’s engagement party, Carrie called him Hubbell (a reference to the Redford character in The Way We Were). Big says “I don’t get it,” and she replied, “And you never did.” In my opinion, that should have been the end of the Mr. Big storyline. Right there. Full stop. Fini. But I digress.
And Just Like That took three beloved characters (Smart woman that Kim Cattrall for opting out) and did what I won’t mention happened in the last episode. Okay, it involved a toilet. Need I say more? Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) completely forgot who she was, Charlotte (Kristin Davis) was more ditsy, and Carrie became insufferable. The outfits became costumes, and not the everyday dress a woman would wear running around New York, unless they were in a fashion show. The writing was as bad as the writing we heard from Carrie’s first try at a fiction book. As for the newer characters, nobody cared about documentarian Lisa’s (Nicole Ari Parker) husband’s funk from losing an election.What’s worse, Lisa had the distinction of having her TV father die twice on the show (continuity, anyone?). At least Sarita Choudhury as Seema brought some spark to the show.
SJP has said in interviews that she doesn’t read any comments about the show. That’s a shame. Because And Just Like That…it’s gone.
Another HBO hit, the Mob drama The Sopranos, decided to go out in a polarizing way. It had Tony Soprano’s (James Gandolfini) family going out to eat at a diner. Tony’s eyes dart across the restaurant as he awaits his family’s arrival. He keeps looking at the entrance door. His wife and son come in, and a man in a Members Only jacket who seems suspicious. His daughter Meadow is outside trying to parallel park. She finally enters the diner; Tony looks up; the screen goes pitch black and then there is silence.
There were many theories about the ending when it originally aired. Fans assumed Tony had died. Series creator David Chase said later he was inspired by another episode where A.J. and Meadow were discussing the Robert Frost poem “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Meadow thought the snow signified death, but A.J. is convinced that black conveys death. But Chase stops short of saying Tony died. Ambiguity wins in this case.
I would put the ending to 1963-67’s The Fugitive at the top of any list. Dr. Richard Kimble (David Janssen) was convicted of killing his wife but escaped when the train taking him to prison derailed. He spent four seasons on the run doing menial jobs and trying to prove his innocence. Complicating matters was Lt. Gerard (Barry Morse), a Javert-like police detective who was hellbent on capturing him. The two-part final episode, “The Judgement,” came to an exciting close with Kimble finding the elusive one-armed man he saw leave his house the night of the murder and being vindicated. Back then justice always won. And so did the network, as 78 million viewers saw Kimble become a truly free man.
The universally beloved The Mary Tyler Moore Show decided to end its seven-season run in 1977. The last episode had a new station manager (Vincent Gardenia) firing everyone in the newsroom except for inept anchorman Ted Baxter (Ted Knight). Because he said, “I’m going to have to let you guys go,” Mary thinks maybe she was excluded because she’s not a man. This gets resolved in a funny scene where she calls Gardenia to ask for clarification, only to be told he meant, as she puts it, “Especially me.” Lou (Ed Asner) even has Rhoda (Valerie Harper) and Phyllis (Cloris Leachman) fly in to cheer up Mary. The heartfelt and tear-inducing ending includes Lou admitting “I treasure you people” and Mary saying “Thank you for being my family.” And we all felt part of that family, too.
Newhart, starring funnyman Bob Newhart as a Vermont innkeeper, also had a satisfying and surprising conclusion. After getting hit in the head with a golf ball, Bob wakes up in the bedroom from his first sitcom, The Bob Newhart Show, with his wife from that program (Suzanne Pleshette) next to him. Waking her up, he tells her he had the strangest dream and goes on to recount all the crazy characters from his second series.
Another show that delivered a great finish was Alan Ball’s darkly comical look at human mortality, Six Feet Under. The HBO drama about two generations at a family-owned funeral home ended its five-season run by jumping ahead though the decades to chronicle the future lives–and, naturally, deaths–of all the main characters. It also used Sia’s song “Breathe Me” to poignant effect.
The 1980s medical drama St. Elsewhere ran for six seasons on NBC. Its creators decided to go out with a provocative and–to some viewers–frustrating ending. Dr. Westphall, played by Ed Flanders, had an autistic son, Tommy (Chad Allen), on the series. In the last episode it is revealed that the entire series has taken place in Tommy’s mind. Further, Dr. Westphall is really a construction worker, and his father is Dr. Auschlander (Norman Lloyd). It was the show’s highest rated episode.
Seinfeld also had an alienating goodbye. Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine were sentenced to a year in jail for breaking a Massachusetts “Good Samaritan” law and not helping a man being carjacked. As they are sitting in jail, Jerry and George have a debate about the placement of buttons on a shirt. Many fans did not get the reference (I didn’t), but it was a harkening back to the same conversation the two had in the series’ very first episode. And we all thought it was “a show about nothing!”
Naturally, we’ve only scratched the surface of this topic (sorry, M*A*S*H fans). Do you have a favorite TV program whose finale either delighted or disappointed you? Tell us all about it in the comments below.