Ending a long-running series

[Stumpy Pepys]

I mentioned on another thread that Germany's longest-running soap Lindenstrasse was coming to an end, after 35 years. The show is set on a Munich street, but is filmed on a set in Cologne. A wag suggested the entire set collapses in the final episode and it ends like the Truman Show.

So some other endings that come to mind.

1. The mostly baffling final episode of The Prisoner
2. I never liked the last episode of Seinfeld, but it doesn't detract from my love of the show
3. The final episode of The Colbys, where Fallon is abducted by a flying saucer (I suspect the writers were having a laugh there)
4. The horrifically bleak final episode of Sapphire & Steel
5. The similarly brilliantly grim ending to the otherwise rubbish final series of Blake's 7

[Stumpy Pepys]

Oh and the rubbish last episode of Allo Allo, where Gruber marries Helga (WTF?)

[Benjm]

Brookside offered a good lesson in how not to do it, not that many were watching by then. Flying visit from Barry and Bev then an hour of Jimmy Corkhill sitting on a sofa outside in the Close ranting about anything that came into his head.


Cheers comes to mind as managing to acknowledge the occasion without being too mawkish, but I haven't seen the final episode since it was first shown.

[Janik]

The Guardian yesterday claimed that the last ever episode of Friends was well done. Not that I've ever seen it, so I'll have to take their word for it. The final episode of The Sopranos divided opinion, IIRC. Personally I think it's obvious what it was getting at, but as it was allusive that frustrated some who prefer their explanations unambiguous.

[Hot Pepsi]

Is Cologne the center of the German entertainment business?

[ursus arctos]

Very much the centre of the media industry, yes.

[adams house cat]

They will all wake up and discover it was a dream and see Bobby Ewing in the shower. Fade.

[G-Man]

2. I never liked the last episode of Seinfeld, but it doesn't detract from my love of the show

In retrospect, it's pleasing that racist Kramer and Jerry Seinfeld, who pretended to shoot Palestinians on an IDF base in the West Bank, are jailed.

[G-Man]

As for German TV centres, it's all a bit regionalised, with their own broadcasters. The big players on the first statutory state broadcaster have been WDR (Northrhine-Westphalia), NDR (Northern Germany, which is responsible for the evening news), SWF (South-West Germany) and BR (Bavaria). So it is feasible that WDR might commission a show set in Munich and film it on set in Cologne, as was the case with Lindenstrasse. Add to that ZDF, which is based in Mainz and used to record most of their programmes there.

As for media, Hamburg is the other big centre, especially in terns of print, with Bild, Stern and Spiegel among those who have their head offices there.

[3 Colours Red]

I think How I Met Your Mother will become a future case study in how not to do it. It's essentially the culmination of stringing your viewers along for nine years and then laughing in their faces while telling them to fuck off.

[Guy Profumo]

The end of the The Avengers where a gurning Mother mugs to camera with the line "They'll be back"?

[G-Man]

I think How I Met Your Mother will become a future case study in how not to do it. It's essentially the culmination of stringing your viewers along for nine years and then laughing in their faces while telling them to fuck off.

I was just happy that show was over, after two excruciatingly bad seasons. I didn't mind the conclusion, and didn't see it as an insult to the viewers.

[Disco Child Ballads]

I hated the last episode of Friends, just because I thought that Ross and Rachel getting back together was the wrong thing to happen.

[Sits]

Cheers comes to mind as managing to acknowledge the occasion without being too mawkish, but I haven't seen the final episode since it was first shown.

Yes my faint memory is telling me it was nicely done.

[Patrick Thistle]

I hated the last episode of Friends, just because I thought that Ross and Rachel getting back together was the wrong thing to happen.

Agreed.

If they do the much-rumoured reunion I hope the story is the next day she realised what a colossal bell he was and fucked off to Paris.

I watched HIMYM in a box set binge fest rather than in real time and it really started to fade from about series 6 onwards. The last series was just terribly slow and I'd stopped caring by then. I didn't mind the punchline ending though.

The last episode of Fraser was OK but the last series had lost its way big time. Fraser wasn't a likeable character any more and once the unrequited love between Niles and Daphne was requited there wasn't much point to the show.

The absolute worst last series award has to go to Scrubs, though. I remember watching the first few series when they aired and liking them. I watched the rest years later on a box set binge again and the quality tailed off into catchphrases and recycled plot lines. Then they tried to reboot with a new intake of medical noobs and it was disastrous.

[Patrick Thistle]

The first "final episode" of Futurama is brilliant. (End of season 4)

[Wouter D]

The first "final episode" of Futurama is brilliant. (End of season 4)

I think that the final final episode of Futurama is pretty bloody good too.

You're spot-on about Scrubs. What were they thinking?

[San Bernardhinault]

Haven't we done "terrible last episodes" before? Lost, obviously, is very high up in the list of worst final episodes - although, to be fair, the show had clearly degenerated into dogshit long before the final episode.

[G-Man]

The last episode of Fraser was OK but the last series had lost its way big time. Fraser wasn't a likeable character any more and once the unrequited love between Niles and Daphne was requited there wasn't much point to the show.

Fraser Crane was likeable at some point? I mean, we rooted for him because he was the eponymous protagonist of the show, and that created a tension between the automatic affection we had for him and his objectionable pomposity and oafish snobbishness (which Kelsey Grammer, an objectionable man himself, played superbly). Rewatching a few episodes had the same effect on me as rewatching The Sopranos: with every viewing I despise Tony Soprano more and more; so it is with Fraser Crane.

[Gerontophile]

Frasier.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Straying into 'series that should never have been resurrected' I know but Only Fools and Horses should have left it at the fairytale ending, fulfilling the 'we'll be millionaires' theme and neatly tying things back to the early episodes (Rodney keeping a ledger against Del's advice). The comeback episodes were unnecessary and undid a rare good closer.

[diggedy derek]

How have we not mentioned Blackadder Goes Forth? It's essentially the finale of the whole thing, aside from a couple of one-off reboots.

I still think of the end of Six Feet Under often.

[gjt]

How have we not mentioned Blackadder Goes Forth? It's essentially the finale of the whole thing, aside from a couple of one-off reboots.

Yes, and it was only as it was (as anyone would tell you) because of technicians' union rules meaning that they could only do one take. I think the original plan was for Blackadder to avoid dying and to escape, in much the same way as he was still alive at the end of the other series.

[Hot Pepsi]

I think How I Met Your Mother will become a future case study in how not to do it. It's essentially the culmination of stringing your viewers along for nine years and then laughing in their faces while telling them to fuck off.

I don't think that was their intention. I think they thought it was a surprising twist and, because he ended up with [spoiler alert] Robin, that viewers would be delighted because that's how romantic comedies are supposed to end. And indeed the outcome would have worked a lot better if they didn't try to cram it all into the last episode. In fact, as I recall, most of it was all crammed into the last five minutes of the last episode. But as it was, it looked like it was headed toward a nice soft landing - like Cheers - and instead they suddenly kill off a very likeable, albeit new, character - the mom - as well as the Barney-Robin relationship, which fans had become invested in over several seasons. It was just jarring and unnecessary.

It was popular in syndication, but knowing how it ends makes those reruns a lot less enjoyable.

OTOH, a show all about how a widower with two teenagers reconnects with somebody he dated 20 years earlier would make a good sitcom. And the journey of Barney from womanizing-asshole to decent parent and human-being would be a good B story.

That show isn't even that old - I think it started in like 2004 or 2005 and yet it would never fly today. You can't make a show about five white people in NYC anymore and a lot of Barney's behavior would, quite rightly, not be acceptable.

[Southport Zeb]

Yes, and it was only as it was (as anyone would tell you) because of technicians' union rules meaning that they could only do one take. I think the original plan was for Blackadder to avoid dying and to escape, in much the same way as he was still alive at the end of the other series.

Blackadder was only alive at the end of the third series (and even in that one "Blackadder" was officially dead as the character had swapped identities with the Prince of Wales).