TV: So we'll end with a whistle and end with a bang

[sigma7]

Day 01 - A show that should never have been cancelled
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season)
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever
Day 05 - A show you hate
Day 06 - Favorite episode of one of your favorite shows
Day 07 - Least favorite episode of one of your favorite TV shows
Day 08 - A show that's had a significant effect on who you are today
Day 09 - Best scene ever
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving
Day 11 - A show that disappointed you
Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times
Day 13 - Favorite childhood show
Day 14 - Favorite male character
Day 15 - Favorite female character
Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show
Day 17 - Favorite mini series
Day 18 - Favorite title sequence
Day 19 - Best TV show cast
Day 20 - Favorite kiss
Day 21 - Favorite ship
Day 22 - Favorite series finale
Day 23 - Most annoying character
Day 24 - Best quote
Day 25 - A show you plan on watching (old or new)
Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale
Day 27 - Best pilot episode
Day 28 - First TV show obsession
Day 29 - Current TV show obsession
Day 30 - Saddest character death

First off, the elephant in the room -- I didn't hate the BSG finale. I understand completely why people have issues with the ending, particularly the last half-hour -- I can't defend some of the decisions made...well, some of the characters were forced to make by where the writers ended up shoehorning them; it was forced, contrived and implausible. The dei ex machina I actually had no problem with -- well, maybe a little one, but Skulls/Racetrack, for example, none at all. It'd been a recurring theme deep in ambiguity for enough of the series that I was actually somewhat pleasantly surprised to see the show finally commit itself, and just in the nick of time.

But all that being said, the idiot ball of that one moment (and the coda; bleurgh) is sufficiently cosmic in size to disqualify it, even in my forgiving eyes, from the top spot. And lest you think I'm entirely too forgiving, I still can't rewatch Lost's final season after its finale. That was an interesting decision, but...it didn't work for me.

I'm also disqualifying M*A*S*H. "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" is such an extraordinary creature that you can make a strong case for it falling outside the boundaries of its series. Yes, BSG's "Daybreak" was a two-part episode, and a ton of series have ended with super-size episodes, but Jesus, a three-hour finale for a show that typically runs 30 minutes? That's not fair. Similarly, Serenity doesn't count, either -- for Firefly, which episode counts as its finale, the last in the show's continuity ("Objects in Space") or the last shown ("Heart of Gold")? Either way, neither's a good finale. Sorry.

Way I see it, we can break finales down roughly into three tiers -- those whose premises worked and worked well, those whose episodes were flawed or executed poorly, and those that were either constructed around an abysmal premise or just horribly rendered.

The Good	The Meh	The Ugly
Angel	Arrested Development	Lost
Magnum PI	Babylon 5	Quantum f'ing Leap
Buffy	Miami Vice	Roseanne
The Shield	Monk	The Sopranos
Six Feet Under	Newhart	St. Elsewhere
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine	The West Wing	Star Trek: Enterprise
Star Trek: Voyager		X-Files

Obviously this is not all-inclusive (I try to stay with those I've seen or have absorbed enough of via zeitgeist that I feel like I've seen them) and a few of them don't quite comfortably fit into their niches (Monk, for example, tries to straddle "good" and "meh" -- too many plot elements came out of the woodwork at the last minute for me to feel very good about the finale) and it should be recognized that these are somewhat relative based on the series -- Voyager's finale was pretty decent for a Voyager episode; The West Wing's finale was sub-par for that show's typical output. (I just rewatched the Buffy finale, and I gotta tell you, it was a toss-up; it had some neat ideas that barely mandate its placement in "good," but as far as a Buffy episode goes, it was way off its typical game.)

And of course, this is just my personal take. Just a glance at it should tell you what I'm looking for in a finale and what turns me off. Some people think The Sopranos finale is genius, and maybe even the Enterprise finale has its defenders, though I've never met any. And regardless, they would be wrong.

Each show has a different set of goals when its end is clear. Typically they're looking to raise the stakes a bit, send out the show on a triumphant note, revisit the series and its history, reaffirm the show's meaning, and maybe tell a pretty good story in the process. Oh, and not screw up everything that's come before (do you hear that, "Ugly" tier?). Not many shows have done all that successfully.

Star Trek: The Next Generation ended just as its leap to the big screen was approaching, which meant two supposedly-epic stories were in the making: the finale and the movie. The movie was Star Trek: Generations; it sucked. Alex DeLarge kills Captain Kirk and Troi plows the Enterprise into a planet while there are wacky holodeck shenanigans and oh look it's Whoopi Goldberg. It was a widescreen foray with a small-screen script. Flip that and you get "All Good Things...", TNG's finale. Captain Picard finds himself unstuck in time, flipping both back to his first days aboard the Enterprise and far in the future where the crew's been fractured and his mind is clouded by disease and age. When the omnipotent (malevolent? trickster?) entity Q -- who held the crew on trial for the crimes of humanity as a species in the show's first episode, and who agreed to Picard's demand that the crew and thus humanity be properly tested -- reappears, he announces that humanity's trial has, indeed, not ended, and that Picard finds himself on the threshold of the extinction of the human race. Picard argues that the ship has traveled far, cataloged many new stellar phenomena...but that's the wrong argument to make.

Of course Picard prevails, saves the day and the human race. And while he's relieved that the trial is over, Q spells it out for the poor little mortal:

"You just don't get it, do you, Jean-Luc? The trial never ends. We wanted to see if you had the ability to expand your mind and your horizons. And for one brief moment, you did."
"When I realized the paradox."
"Exactly. For that one fraction of a second, you were open to options you had never considered. That is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence."

The basic premise of Star Trek has been pretty simple -- hey, look, we're in a space ship and we're exploring (also: Kirking up nubile aliens as needed). But to have the premise distilled to this point, where it's not just further abstracted but beautifully so, to the point where it's clear that one doesn't need to be a 24th-century star voyager to participate in the greatest endeavor of humanity. The rest of the episode is pretty solid (the heartbreak on Picard's face when he comes back from the past with Tasha, the Troi-strife, the poker game), but tweaking the idea of the series just so...that's a revelation.

Edit: While not specifically a series finale, it did make me think of a tale from yesteryear, and after a cursory Google search, I found this gem:

There is a scifi pod cast that I listen to that has a running joke about that. Every time there is a situation like that on a show or in a movie, they always refer to it as "going through a wormhole and shooting Patrick Ewing". And yes, they know that the name is wrong.

Comments

[daethkow.livejournal.com]

Ah, good times. This is what happens when you get two (or three, depending on the incarnation) sci-fi fans who also happen to be erudite basketball scholars.

I hadn't really thought about the joke this fine of detail until now, but that was a TRIPLE-reference, working in Dallas, ST:DS9, AND the NBA ... and I believe that there are technically TWO Dallas references, so it could be a quadruple-reference.

Anyway, that made my day.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

While perusing the links that a Google search for "Patrick Ewing wormhole" returns, I found at least one page that thinks Patrick Ewing played Bobby Ewing. (And there are "Patrick Ewing" / wormhole references that don't refer to this incident. I had no idea.)

For the rest of the world -- long ago in the midst of a rant about the deus ex machina nature of the DS9 episode "Sacrifice of Angels" [in a RDM show? Inconceivable!] a certain radio personality was comparing the cop-out ending of the Dominion threat to the "it was all a dream" resurrection of Bobby Ewing on Dallas and -- feel free to correct the specific language here, Herr Kow -- somehow confused the character (Bobby Ewing) and the actor (Patrick Duffy) into a composite, Patrick Ewing, who is neither a reluctant oil baron nor a prime-time soap opera star, but a seven-foot-tall Jamaican-born center for the New York Knicks. So a spiel about -- and I'm paraphrasing -- "going through a wormhole and shooting Patrick Ewing" becomes a metaphor for a lot of things, not just a tough stand against dei ex machina. Like paying attention to details. And leaving poor Patrick Ewing alone.

[daethkow.livejournal.com]

Patrick Ewing had EVERY advantage in that league. It's nobody's fault but him that he couldn't win a title. This is a guy whose career spawned a theory about great players that actually make their teams worse.

I guess I'm saying that I'm more than okay with shooting Patrick Ewing ... metaphorically, of course.

[jb-helfrich.livejournal.com]

Put DS9 in the good catagory? Really? It was amazing for the first two thrids, but the last third, in which Sisko completely abandons his near series-long efforts to be a man instead of a religious figure without as much as a moment's pause left a bad taste in my mouth. Sure, the Prophets could have just made him do that, but there was never even a hint of that.

Sort of sad that both BSG and DS9, two of the best (and arguably the two best) science fiction shows in the modern era just completely go off the rails in their closing minutes. And interesting that RDM is involved in both.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

And how they both fail in about the same manner -- encroachment of the divine (or at least beyond human understanding) in the affairs of mortals. Like, say, writer's fiat.

Initially Sisko's fate bothered me -- not as much as it could've, because Sisko's battle to stay out of the machinations of the Prophets never quite engaged me, and it being the series ender, his virtual capitulation didn't have the weight it could've. Maybe part of me saw it as the necessary payment for the Patrick Ewing assassination, I dunno. You're right, that part didn't work for me, but it didn't kill the episode for me, either.

[rewil.livejournal.com]

I'd have to give the nod to the finale that didn't have to be one, but ended up that way.

Anybody who can't make money off Sports Night should get out of the money-making business.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

And yeah, I left it off my list entirely; three guesses which column it'd go under. I think part of it is just me still unprepared to acknowledge that it's really over. At least Sports Night got to acknowledge its impending doom; WKRP managed to put its ending in pretty much the same frame, too, and still have a good show in the process. Not necessarily the epic finishes we tend to think of, but good notes to end on.