Television finales: the ones that got it right and the ones that did not

[CaptainStatic56]

Series finales are perhaps the hardest thing in television. After years of investment from an audience, the finale has to resolve things without resolving too neatly, honour the characters without being sentimental, and give people a reason to have watched all of it. This is almost impossible and most finales fail in some way.

But not all. Some finales are exactly right and some retroactively improve everything that came before them. I want to know which ones you remember as working and which ones still frustrate you.

[Red Wrench]

The Sopranos ending is probably the best television finale ever made and I will defend that position. It understands what the show was actually about in a way that a conventional ending would have betrayed. The people who hated it initially often changed their view.

[Luke_67]

Breaking Bad's finale is the most technically satisfying ending I have watched. It is almost too tidy and I sometimes think a messier ending might have been truer to the show's DNA, but as a piece of narrative closure it is expert.