Fair fair.
And to be fair, I enjoyed the Seinfeld finale too, but wouldn’t call it perfect.
These days all I ask is that a show not deliver a finale that makes me retroactively hate the show and want to never watch it again, eg Game of Thrones, Dexter (before revival), Heroes.
This is all I want/need from the Justified revival. Although if it’s terrible I think I can just pretend it doesn’t exist.
Give me HIMYM for all-time worst finale; it damaged the show in ways that Seinfeld couldn’t have possibly. And to be clear, I don’t think Ted Lasso’s finale really harmed the rest of the show either. Beyond the absolutely painful musical number by the team, issues with the finale:
*More of a season-long issue than just a finale issue I guess, but everything about Nate’s redemption arc was completely bungled, which is utterly baffling under the circumstances. They, with full knowledge that they were doing a three-season show, made his heel turn the centerpiece of their season two finale with the intention of a redemption arc, and then got to season three and went, “Oh shit, we only have one season to do this redemption! How are we going to get it done in time??” And then they paced it just terribly, rushing at first and making it difficult to connect with at every step. But here in the finale, the climactic moment where Ted and Nate finally got to talk about it fell totally flat, and they basically still didn’t get into what happened between them in the S2 finale confrontation. Nate basically just apologizes for ripping the damn sign? Nothing about the harsh (albeit truth-tinged) words from when he rage-quit? I just thought this was badly done all around. I was optimistic they could kind of save that whole plot to an extent after the fantastic Beard/Nate scene from the penultimate episode, but…this wasn’t it, at all.
*Rupert’s little on-field meltdown as an attempt to neatly tie up a downfall for him was quite silly. One, I wouldn’t believe he would actually do in public view what he did there. Two, as he got tossed out of the game and walked away to jeers, I’m pretty sure we as a viewing audience were just supposed to accept that he would indeed cease to own his team right then and there. That’s, uhh, not how owning a sports team works. He wasn’t in a position where he could simply be fired over an embarrassing public incident. Again, badly done.
*Speaking of unsatisfying ways to write out assholes: the show basically never addresses that Michelle’s new boyfriend is a grossly unethical jackass who should get his license pulled, and instead the writers just shrug and have him being a jerk about how uninteresting the final soccer game is, and I guess that’s supposed to be his death knell? That wasn’t even in character; for all of his grossness, he was a perfectly affable guy from all we saw, so just suddenly morphing him into the asshole stepdad archetype was stupid.
*Ted is spending halftime of a functional championship game talking about his own departure? Dude doesn’t have a plane to catch 30 minutes after the game; he’ll have a chance to say goodbye still. Why is he making this game all about him when the game’s stakes go well beyond “Ted Lasso’s final game”? I realize that soccer is mostly just a vehicle to deliver character stories in this show and always tended to be pretty absurd, but this still had me going “WTF?!” while I was watching.
*Basically, Colin’s quick payoff during the postgame celebration was the only feel-good thing I can remember about the finale. Nothing else about it worked for me.
Six Feet Under finale was fantastic and deserves its roses, but I can’t confer it full GOAT status because on some level it felt like they mashed a cheat code to get there.
Like…of course the audience is crying waterfalls over this. You killed everyone. Any show with a significant finale could have also prompted a bunch of crying by doing the same thing.
To be clear: it’s defensible in every possible way. It’s consistent with the premise of the show, and they earned the emotional payoff because they spent a series making you care a lot about all of these people. But it still feels like going this route inherently lowers the degree of difficulty required to deliver a great finale, so I’m loath to put it all the way at the top of the GOATs list.
Personally, I lean toward The Americans for GOAT finale that I’ve seen.
Six Feet Under was just wayyyyyy to heavy for me. At that time of my life a regular direct consideration of/confrontation with mortality was just not something of which I was capable.
Those are good points.
I confer GOAT status to SFU because doing all of those things is easily a gimmick for other shows, but each element feels so resonant precisely because they are aligned with every other aspect of Six Feet Under. It was not just the resolution of the plot, but an emotional resolution to our relationship with each character.
The thing that’s cheating is using a song by Sia. Now that’s the Contra code for yanking the audience and doing so blatantly lol.
A lot of shows pull off the plot part, but very few shows pull off emotionally impactful final moments. I’d argue if GOT had at least given us a powerful outro scene that tied together the audience’s most emotionally resonant moments throughout the series, it wouldn’t be nearly as reviled. But GOT, like a lot of shows, didn’t just mess up the plot. They gave us final moments that felt empty or a betrayal of what we loved about the journey of watching the show in the first place.
I didn’t get to the end of GOT. I liked the show well enough, but I was late to the party and wasn’t progressing quickly. Then I saw the widespread reaction to the final season and I couldn’t be bothered to continue given the likelihood I would agree with the angry mob.
In the moment I thought that Mad Men had completely bricked its finale, but when I did a full series rewatch it was quite a bit better than I remember. Peggy’s ending remains atrocious, but the rest of the finale was pretty good really.
Good call with GOT. By the end, too many of us were just hoping for a little rakeback.
Mad Men is an awesome example. I am rewatching it right now and there are a ton of things hitting me differently this time. Curious if I’ll feel the same way when I get back to the finale. I think it is gonna be unfortunately or fortunately colored by how many recaps and analyses I’ve read about why the show is so amazing, HBO hilariously passed on it before AMC, the BTS drama just makes it even better lol, etc etc.
God I love Roger Sterling’s interactions with the staff.
Lolllll
“So is this like every month?”
“Get the hell out.”
Fwiw John Slattery did an audiobook edition of For Whom The Bell Tolls that’s exactly like you’d imagine Roger Sterling reading the book into his dictaphone.
“I went home after, and Jennifer didn’t know what was coming. I was like --”
“I don’t want to hear that!”
“No, of course you don’t. Why would you.”
Wish I could do audio book novels. My attention span is such trash that I will invariably drop out of places and then suddenly realize I’ve missed a bunch of plot. Not such a problem with non-fiction or podcasts, but with fiction? I’m jealous of those who get a lot out of that. John Slattery does seem like he would be an elite reader. I did greatly enjoy Edward Hermann on Unbroken and Boys in the Boat; that guy was just straight-up born to narrate shit.
LOL!!
Plot stuff can be kinda tricky to follow with an audiobook for sure, because if you miss something, you can’t quickly flip back a few pages and reorient yourself.
I find it helpful to just go look for audiobook adaptations of books I know extremely well. When it comes to an audiobook, I am far less interested in discovering the plot and far more interested in the experience of a narrated story.
In that sense, my familiarity enhances the experience by helping me anticipate how the narrator will perform my favorite moments, whereas if I were reading the book I’d want to experience the plot itself as a surprise.
I forget but gotta think you’re a Stephen King fan? John Slattery did an audiobook for Duma Key.
Arriving nine years after Stephen King’s own near-fatal accident, “Duma Key” chronicles Edgar’s physical recovery in unflinching detail, providing King with a much-needed outlet to explore his own rehabilitation. On the beach, Edgar meets two more damaged souls badly in need of healing, along with a nightmarish sea goddess named Perse.
Could be a fun one to experiment with first reading the Wikipedia breakdown to your heart’s content, then flip through the book and sit down to invite John Slattery to find surprises within the exact same text. He doesn’t change a single word! And yet it’s completely different than what you experience when reading the book to yourself.
I like Stephen King for sure even though there are large missing gaps in my King reading resume. I listened to Mr. Mercedes on audio and did okay with it, but I definitely didn’t come away feeling like I was better off than I would have been to just sit and read it on my Kindle.
The other thing with audio books is that I’m such a frequent podcast listener that I simply haven’t found that I enjoy them as well as I do keeping up on my favorite podcasts.
That’s the truth. It has gotten to where I ask myself whether I am more likely to have a better experience listening to my favorite podcast recap the movie than watching it myself.
Fortunately there are now some excellent podcasts that do that for books too, eg The Worst Bestsellers, If Books Could Kill, or even the Stephen King Cast which focuses almost exclusively on the ending of a different book each episode.
Finally getting around to binging White Lotus. Great show. My wife and I used to go to AI resorts all the time with friends although we haven’t been in 5-6 years. Am I a psycho that this is making me nostalgic for them?
appreciate you enumerating all of this even though I disagree with most of it, especially about the musical number.
The Americans as a goat finale is a solid choice tho imo
I’ve got Mad Men #2 behind the Wire in my all-time rankings. Questionable finale or no.
And The Americans is also right up there.
There’s no window in there.
You can buy yourself a very beautiful picture of something to look at.
I tapped out of the Americans before the start of the final season.
Okay so we agreed to suspend disbelief and assume that the Sioux dude is just an Aragorn-level tracker, fine. Now on E9 and everyone’s at the Travelodge and I am not even that mad about the idiot South Dakota cops turning off the radio. But Solverson is driving back, trying his best to reach them on the radio to warn them that the Gerharts are otw with no success, and just…gives up? I know cell phones aren’t a thing yet, but maybe pull over and phone the hotel to ring the rooms? Seems like a lot of bloodshed might have been avoided i dunno
