Favorite TV Series Final Scenes

The Sopranos - Contrary to many, I found this to be the perfect ending to this series.  Bring on the ambiguity!!!

 

Six Feet Under - The best ending to a TV series ever.  To end a series based on a family running a funeral home by showing how the remaining characters all die is sheer genius, and the song by Sia “Breathe Me” couldn’t have been more appropriate.

 

Newhart (from Wikipedia) - My second favorite ending.

The series boasts one of the most memorable series finales in television history, entitled “The Last Newhart.” The entire town is purchased by a visiting Japanese tycoon, who plans to turn the hamlet into a huge golf course and recreation resort. The lone hold-outs are Dick and Joanna, who keep their property thanks largely to Dick’s refusal to play along with what he views as the latest demented whim of the townspeople. Everyone else takes their huge payoffs, says their final good-byes, and leave Dick and Joanna to run the Stratford Inn.

Flash forward five years. Dick continues to grimly run the Stratford, while golf balls constantly pelt the walls. Joanna dresses like a geisha, and the Japanese replacements for George and Stephanie are even less helpful than the originals.

The ex-townfolk — richer and odder than before — unexpectedly pay the Loudons a visit. Michael and Stephanie’s daughter has grown up to be a tiny clone of her mother. George has opened a new theme park dedicated to handymen. Larry, Darryl and Darryl have all married gabby, talkative women (one of whom is played by a then-unknown Lisa Kudrow). When their wives will not shut up, the Darryls yell out in unison, “QUIET!” Aside from Larry, who had always commented on how talkative they were, this moment is the only time on the show that anyone has ever heard them say a word. Everyone is stunned (the studio audience gasped in shock before erupting in a loud ovation).

Things quickly become chaotic, with the visitors cheerfully deciding on an extended stay at the inn. Dick vents his frustration at how unmanageable and stupid everything has become, but nobody is interested in Dick’s opinion, so he announces that he is finally fed up and is leaving for good. As he storms out the door, Dick turns around and says, “You’re all CRAZY!” Just then, he is struck by a wayward golf ball and collapses, unconscious. The screen goes black.

Then a light is turned on, and viewers see Newhart in bed, saying “Honey, you won’t believe the dream I just had.” Another light comes on, revealing not Dick Loudon’s wife Joanna, but Bob Hartley’s wife Emily (Suzanne Pleshette). The bedroom is a recreation from The Bob Newhart Show, and – in a parody of a 1980s television vogue – the entire Newhart series is revealed to have been a dream in the mind of Newhart’s 1970s character. Bob tells Emily that in the dream, he lived in a weird Vermont town surrounded by strange people: a snobbish maid and her alliterative husband, a dense handyman, and three eccentric woodsmen, two of whom were mute.

When he reveals that he was married to a beautiful blonde in the dream, an annoyed Emily tells Bob to go back to sleep and flicks off the light on her side of the bedroom. Reviving a technique from The Bob Newhart Show, in which one of the Hartleys incredulously flicks back on a bedside light and restarts the conversation, Emily turns her light back on and inquires, “What do you mean, ‘beautiful blonde?!’ Bob tells her to go back to sleep, commenting, “You should wear more sweaters,” something Joanna was noted for. The scene ends to the strains of the old Bob Newhart Show theme song (although this was removed for syndicated reruns).

St. Elsewhere (from Wikipedia) - My third favorite ending.

The final episode of St. Elsewhere, known as “The Last One”, ended in a context different from every other episode of the series. As the viewer pans away from snow beginning to fall at St. Eligius hospital, the scene changes to Donald Westphall’s autistic son Tommy, and Daniel Auschlander in an apartment building. Westphall arrives home from a day of work, and it is clear that he works in construction from the uniform he wears and from a conversation in this scene. “Auschlander” is revealed to be Donald’s father, and thus Tommy’s grandfather. Donald laments to his father, “I don’t understand this autism thing, Pop. Here’s my son. I talk to him. I don’t even know if he can hear me, because he sits there, all day long, in his own world, staring at that toy. What’s he thinkin’ about?” The toy is revealed to be a snow globe with a replica of St. Eligius hospital inside. Tommy shakes the snow globe, and is told by his father to come and wash his hands. Donald Westphall places the snow globe on the family’s television set and walks into the kitchen and the camera closes in on the snow globe. [1].

One of the more common interpretations of this scene is that the total series of events in the series St. Elsewhere had been a product of Tommy Westphall’s imagination, with elements of the above scene used as its own evidence [2] [3].

One of the results of this has been an attempt by individuals to determine how many television shows are also products of this Tommy Westphall’s mind because of shared fictional characters: the “Tommy Westphall Universe”. See Tommy Westphall for further discussion of this hypothesis.

Two other good  sources for famous TV series finales are:

Retro YesBut - Famous Television Finales

Series finales from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Do you have a favorite series finale?  Let me know by leaving a comment.