Classic Conversation Thread

[CoolioD1]

3 hours ago, lorddemaxus said:

Finally started watching Community since it's on Netflix now and I'm having a lot of fun already. One of the very few sitcoms I'm actually enjoying right from the start. Might be the first sitcom I'll actually finish till the end (couldn't finish The Office after Carrell left, Friends and Big Bang Theory are unbearable, How I Met Your Mother is fun but just haven't gotten around to finishing it, and wasn't able to finish S4 of Arrested Development) unless the previous season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was its last season.

 

Also binged season 5 Breaking Bad last week after 2 years of slowly watching the series and I loved it. Rian Johnson's final episode was the best and the ending to the show was somehow both heartbreaking but cathartic. Can't get into El Camino though. It just looks like a bad fan-film.

community turned to ass in season 4 because they fired dan harmon as the showrunner. they brought him back for season 5 but i dunno, the show never really fully recovered from that. Last 2 seasons are fine but not on the same level as the first three.

[TMP]

25 minutes ago, WittyUsername said:

It sure seems like television shows with disappointing finales have been a pretty common thing in the 21st century. It’s pretty amazing that Breaking Bad managed to avoid that with a finale that’s widely seen as one of the best episodes of the show. 

Leftovers did that too

[filmlover]

29 minutes ago, WittyUsername said:

It sure seems like television shows with disappointing finales have been a pretty common thing in the 21st century. It’s pretty amazing that Breaking Bad managed to avoid that with a finale that’s widely seen as one of the best episodes of the show. 

It's because it wasn't on that long (5 seasons, 62 episodes total) compared to most of the shows you see brought up when discussing disappointing finales like Dexter and Game of Thrones, meaning there wasn't much of an opportunity for the quality to dip.

[TMP]

2 minutes ago, filmlover said:

It's because it wasn't on that long (5 seasons, 62 episodes total) compared to most of the shows you see brought up when discussing disappointing finales like Dexter and Game of Thrones, meaning there wasn't much of an opportunity for the quality to dip.

Or Lost

[grim22]

4 minutes ago, filmlover said:

It's because it wasn't on that long (5 seasons, 62 episodes total) compared to most of the shows you see brought up when discussing disappointing finales like Dexter and Game of Thrones, meaning there wasn't much of an opportunity for the quality to dip.

Also Breaking Bad managed to subvert audience expectations while still staying with a box they had predefined for themselves, unlike HIMYM which started by saying Ted and Robin wouldn't end up together to renege on it after killing the mother offscreen.

[CoolioD1]

the two best finales of all time are the twin peaks finale and the twin peaks: the return finale.

[4815162342]

27 minutes ago, TMP said:

Or Lost

 

On a plot level, LOST pretty much threw up its hands in the air and just did nonsense.

 

But on a character level, it stuck the landing.

[4815162342]

Even if Season 5 wasn't up to the same level as prior seasons, I absolutely love the series finale for The Wire. It nails the concept of some good guys win, some good guys lose, some bad guys win, some bad guys lose, and life moves on

[grim22]

10 minutes ago, 4815162342 said:

Even if Season 5 wasn't up to the same level as prior seasons, I absolutely love the series finale for The Wire. It nails the concept of some good guys win, some good guys lose, some bad guys win, some bad guys lose, and life moves on

Yeah, the Wire wrapped up everything well. Everyone's arc made sense and had a logical conclusion, unlike Game of Thrones.

[Jake Gittes]

Mad Men, good finale. Deadwood had a strong finale that was perversely powerful *because* it wasn't actually intended to be one.

[Dementeleus]

9 minutes ago, Jake Gittes said:

Mad Men, good finale. Deadwood had a strong finale that was perversely powerful *because* it wasn't actually intended to be one.

...and then ate its cake and had it too by getting a very nice epilogue to wrap things up in a more traditional way. 

[CoolioD1]

mad men had a great finale (if a little too neat for some characters) that i feel like doesn't get talked about enough as a great finale because it's not a "plot" show like all the other ones being talked about on this page.

[Porthos]

The "meatball" is still going to be the primary logo.  But, I have to say, seeing this logo back does bring a smile to my face. 👍

 

[Porthos]

re: Finales.

 

The Good Place had damn near universal praise for its ending.  Which given the subject matter is a minor miracle.

 

As for finales in general, I think part if not most/all of it is inherent in the very nature of serialized storytelling.  There are just so many different expectations from so many different people that "sticking the landing" is incredibly difficult.  Especially for shows that are built on "answers" to "questions".

 

The more I think about it, the more I think The Prisoner was on to something with its famous phrase of "Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself."  Folks build up these huge expectations for the 'questions' or the fate of characters that they've debated and thought about for years that it's nearly impossible to meet those expectations.

 

Not actually impossible, as some series have shown.  But pretty damn difficult.

 

If there is one common thread in many "disappointing finales" it's where the show-runners decide to get too cute by half.  In either that dreaded subverting expectations line or when they just decide "Nope this is the way we want to have it end" and do something that just pisses off a huge segment of the viewership.

 

Even when they aren't trying to get too cute, there can still be difficulties in execution.  I've seen the DS9 series finale described as a "noble failure" and while I don't quite agree, I do think it was somewhat disappointing. 

 

And all of that is not even getting into the area of "making it up as you go along" vs "detailed clockwork planning sometimes done years in advance", which is a whole other series of posts. 

 

tl;dr: Endings are just hard, y'all. It's the one truly big downside to serialized storytelling. At least IMO.

[lorddemaxus]

4 minutes ago, Porthos said:

The Good Place had damn near universal praise for its ending.  Which given the subject matter is a minor miracle.

That's a great one. I was surprised they actually managed to finish the series so perfectly but they managed to give each and every character a completely earned ending.

[lorddemaxus]

I'm surprised this isn't getting more talk on here:

 

 

[AJG]

ShopTo brought the Final Fantasy game to me 7 days early. Earliest i've ever seen a game be sent. I was looking up prices on Ebay, left the room to the bathroom, and my daughter ripped the plastic right off. Ive been sitting here pissed for 2 hours.

[MrGlass2]

13 hours ago, filmlover said:

It's because it wasn't on that long (5 seasons, 62 episodes total) compared to most of the shows you see brought up when discussing disappointing finales like Dexter and Game of Thrones, meaning there wasn't much of an opportunity for the quality to dip.

No show since 2000 gets even close to the success or consistency of GoT. Dexter is more similar to a Breaking Bad or Mad Men, shows that ran too long and had to come up with nonsensical new twists every season for their ever more absurd antihero protagonist.

[4815162342]

Speaking of finales, the Battlestar Galactica reboot series finale is certainly something @Plain Old Tele

[Jake Gittes]

3 minutes ago, MrGlass2 said:

Mad Men, shows that ran too long and had to come up with nonsensical new twists every season for their ever more absurd antihero protagonist.