Elite Eight

Sunday night marked the end of one of TV’s most acclaimed, and over-analyzed, series ever, The Sopranos. I was never a big fan of the show, but my Dad watched it and I watched a few episodes with him, including the series finale. The way the show ended has drawn the ire of fans worldwide. Is Tony dead? Is he alive and facing indictment? Does he merely have heartburn from those greasy onion rings?
It got me to thinking: what are the best TV finales ever? I’m thinking season or series, which ones take the cake? So, in true Right Wing fashion, I’m coming up with a list. These are my eight favorite season or series finale episodes.

Blake’s Elite Eight Season or Series Finales

8. Family Guy, season 5 finale. Peter asks Death to send him back to 1984 so he can be 18 again. Of course, this timeline contradicts previous statements made in the series, such as Peter winning a trophy in 1965 (Covered in the Most Ticks) and Peter and Lois actually meeting as older teenagers in the 1970s, but the hilarity that ensues more than makes up for the mistake. Peter’s night in 1984 changes the future so that he is married to Molly Ringwald, Lois marries Quagmire, Al Gore is President, and Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney accidentally shoots Justice Scalia, the bullet goes through him and kills Carl Rove and Tucker Carlson. The final scene, at the country club dance, ties together so many jokes from the series that it creates a fitting end to the season.

7. Angel, series finale. I watched Angel, get over it. It was better than Buffy. The series ended rather abruptly, canceled after five seasons, but the end gave us a good hour’s worth of TV. Angel rallies his troops against the forces of evil, and at the end he stands in a dark alley, in the rain, staring down the thousands of demons that are coming to attack. A dragon flies overhead, spouting fire. Angel’s last words, “I want to slay the dragon.”

6. Lost, season 1 finale. I didn’t watch this show at first, now its one of my favorites. The survivors of Oceanic flight 815 band together to ward off the deadly “Others,” only to never be attacked. Instead, the men that left on the raft are attacked, and Walt, the boy, is taken by the “Others”. Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Locke (who, by the way, is the greatest character ever) retrieve some dynamite and blow open the hatch. Hurley’s numbers, 4 8 15 16 23 42, come back to haunt everyone, and the inside of the hatch is marked “QUARANTINE.” Great stuff.

5. M*A*S*H, season 3 finale. “Lt. Col. Henry Blake’s plane… was shot down… over the Sea of Japan. It spun in… there were no survivors.” That line, spoken by lowly Radar signaled the end of the best three year run of this show. Many viewers claim that those words mark the precise moment that M*A*S*H jumped the shark. I disagree. If you ever see this episode, pay attention to Radar’s face, you’ll cry.

4. Futurama, season 4 (series?) finale. Since season 4 ended, Futurama has been off the air, but rumors persist about an upcoming return to network TV, possibly on Comedy Central. This episode, in which Fry bests the Robot Devil in a game of chance, thereby winning his hands, is hilariously funny, if only for the final sequence, the opera, where everyone bursts into spontaneous song. The final images give the viewer hope for Fry and Leela, but the payoff didn’t really come for this series, and it deserved a better fate.

3. Serenity, (motion picture, series finale for Firefly). What? You’ve never seen Firefly? What are you waiting for? This is one of the best shows ever made, and Fox saw fit to cancel it after less than one season. Their reason? They had better shows to bring you, like American Idol, The O.C., and Insert Reality Show Title Here. If Futurama was deserving of a better fate, then Firefly certainly was. Joss Whedon’s best show is also the shortest-lived. Thus Serenity came to the big screen, successfully capping off a great series.

2. Stargate SG-1, season 8 finale. There is a five-episode stretch here (Reckoning I, Reckoning II, Threads, Moebius I, Moebius II) that, had the series ended here, would’ve earned the number one spot on this list. I’m planning a big Stargate dissertation in the coming weeks, since SG-1 is scheduled for a series finale on June 22. Season 8 was fantastic, and these episodes prove why. An impending Replicator attack is thwarted by Daniel Jackson, Baal, and the Tok’ra (Reckoning I & II). Jackson becomes half-ascended (in Threads) and struggles with whether to ascend once again. SG-1 finally located a ZPM (Moebius I & II) but must go back 5000 years in time to retrieve it. The alternate timeline stuff is great. If you’ve never seen these episodes, find a way to watch them. I have it on DVD if you want to borrow it. If any other show had this sort of episode run at the end of a season, I’d quit while I was ahead, anything that you could do after this would never equal it.

1. M*A*S*H, series finale. Quite possibly the greatest show ever and the series finale garnered the highest viewership total ever. If you’ve seen this episode, you’ll understand why. “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen” could’ve been a movie. The gang goes on a bit of a vacation, relaxing away from camp. As they return to the 4077, their bus falls under enemy attack. Hawkeye is seen to have gone crazy after ordering a woman to silence her chicken after their bus comes under enemy attack. The chicken though is a figment of Hawkeye’s imagination, made to compensate for his guilt in ordering the woman to silence her baby, which she does by killing it. The Korean War comes to an end and everyone leaves the four-oh-double-seven in various ways most of the unit in a convoy, Col. Potter on his horse, BJ on the motorcycle, and Hawkeye in a chopper. (Nitpickers argue that this should never have happened, an army unit would ship out in the same convoy for processing and the like), and as Hawkeye leaves in said chopper he sees that BJ has spelled out in white rocks “GOODBYE.”