Grab the mic, we're gonna drop it. Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the best series finales that helped TV shows go out with a bang.
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00:00And now it looks like there won't be much of a world left for you or your brother and sister to live in.
00:05Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the best series finales that help TV shows go out with a bang.
00:13Warning! Massive spoilers ahead.
00:15How did you capture what it was really like?
00:17How we felt, and how we made each other laugh, and how we got through the day.
00:24Number 10. Goodbye!
00:26Black Adder. Each season of this British sitcom is set in a different time period, with Rowan Atkinson playing
00:33variations of the title character in Black Adder. Its very last edition is hysterically funny, despite being set in the trenches of World War I.
00:42But this time, our absolutely paws will break through. It's ice cream in Berlin in 15 days. Or ice cold in no man's land in 15 seconds.
00:50Now, the time has come to get out of this madness once and for all.
00:54Black Adder pretends to have lost his mind in order to be discharged, but it doesn't work out.
00:59He finds himself leading a troop of doomed soldiers to their deaths in place of their commanding officers.
01:05How are you feeling, darling?
01:11Not all that good, Black Adder.
01:14Rather hoped I'd get through the whole show. The jokes all stop once these men realize they're about to die.
01:19The episode garnered critical acclaim,
01:22including a review from The A.V. Club that called it the best episode of the series, and one of the best series finales in television history.
01:30Well, I'm afraid it'll have to wait. Whatever it was,
01:33I'm sure it was better than my plan to get out of this by pretending to be mad.
01:36I mean, who would have noticed another madman around here?
01:40Number 9. Hello, losers. Killing Eve.
01:43You're about to embark in some mad endgame, and in fact, you know deep down
01:48you're just a woman who likes an inappropriately timed croissant on a hungover Sunday morning.
01:53For four seasons, viewers watched MI6 agent Eve Palastri play a dangerous game with the sociopathic assassin Villanelle.
02:01Many Killing Eve fans hoped their globetrotting cat-and-mouse adventures would end with a real romance,
02:07but their exploits catch up with them in the final scene of the series.
02:11Smart.
02:14They're here.
02:18We've got to get on before it leaves. After Eve's former superior at the agency orchestrates Villanelle's assassination,
02:26Villanelle and Eve jump into the River Thames as sniper fire rains down on them. Although Villanelle seems
02:32irredeemably evil, she ultimately dies protecting Eve. Her arc is complete,
02:38but at what cost? She sinks to the bottom of the river while Eve can only scream in grief.
02:44It's a bracing and merciless episode.
02:52Number 8. One flew out of the cuckoo's nest. The Golden Girls.
02:56I mean, what can you say about seven years of fights and laughter?
03:02Secrets?
03:04Cheesecake?
03:05Tuning into this sitcom about single women in their golden years sharing a house in Miami was like a warm hug.
03:11In the two-part finale of The Golden Girls, the jokes are as witty as ever, but the tears aren't far away either.
03:18Dorothy marries Blanche's uncle Lucas, and the four women, Blanche, Dorothy, Rose, and Sophia, face a future without each other.
03:26And that these are memories that
03:29I'll wrap myself in when the world gets cold, and I forget that there are people who are warm and loving.
03:40They share a group hug before Dorothy leaves for the airport, or at least tries to leave.
03:46She runs back in for another hug, and then another, but once it's clear
03:50she's really gone, the episode closes as the remaining trio tearfully hug each other. There is no punchline.
03:58There is sad to part ways as we are to see them go.
04:02Dorothy, he says goodbye.
04:11I love you, always.
04:14Number seven, Whenever You're Ready, The Good Place.
04:18Well, this may not come as a surprise to any of you, but
04:23I'm ready to go.
04:24This philosophically grounded sitcom that takes place in the afterlife
04:28always found a way to add a new wrinkle to the story. The finale of The Good Place adds yet another
04:35complication. The main characters can choose to end their time in the afterlife.
04:39The wave
04:41returns to the ocean
04:45where it came from
04:48and where it's supposed to be.
04:50We follow them as they each decide when it's time to step into the great unknown.
04:55The selfish Eleanor Shellstrop finally learns her lesson and makes her first real selfless decision, and
05:01Chidi finally makes a decision as well.
05:03The finale is profound and sad in a way that still feels true to the show's humor and overarching ideas.
05:12To me, remembering moments with you is the same as living in them.
05:16Can you just remember the happy times and forget the bad stuff?
05:22There was no bad stuff.
05:25It was all good.
05:26Number six, Made in America, The Sopranos.
05:30Tony is in dire straits in the end of season six of The Sopranos.
05:34He finds himself staring down the barrel of an all-out mob war with New York,
05:39resulting in several of his crew getting killed or hospitalized.
05:42Oh, come on. I beat cancer once. You got no idea what that does to you. Yeah, I know, I know, but Jesus, you gotta be-
05:48Richie April, Ralphie MIA, Vito.
05:50When the screen suddenly goes black at the end of the episode,
05:54it would be understandable if viewers thought their cable went out.
05:58Instead of tying up the story with a bow, they did the most Sopranos thing they could do.
06:02In the midst of death, we are in life, huh? Or is it the other way around?
06:06I think it's the other way around.
06:08They left Tony's fate unresolved. Whether he dies now or dies later, he and his family will always be living in limbo.
06:16HBO's masterful mob series never provided easy answers, and it wasn't about to start.
06:21I really can't reveal much more. Right, even though we're paid.
06:30Number five, Finale, The Office.
06:33Every day when I came into work, all I wanted to do was leave.
06:37So why in the world does it feel so hard to leave right now?
06:40Given the zany antics that had become standard at Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, its last hour is surprisingly heartfelt.
06:48Taking place a full year after the previous episode, The Office Finale finishes all the loose narrative threads.
06:54It's full of touching moments, like Erin finally meeting her birth parents and Michael Scott making a surprise appearance at Dwight and Angela's wedding.
07:03Michael!
07:06I can't believe you came.
07:08That's what she said.
07:11For all the sweetness, there's also a sense of melancholy throughout the whole thing.
07:16It's impossible not to put on the nostalgia goggles as you're watching this family of weirdos say goodbye to their good old days.
07:23Please someone tell a joke before we run out of tissues.
07:26There's a lot of beauty in ordinary things.
07:30Isn't that kind of the point?
07:32Number four, Everyone's Waiting, Six Feet Under.
07:36I have no idea how to do this.
07:41You just say goodbye.
07:44The tone of this hit HBO series always tended to sit comfortably between dramatic and comedic,
07:50but the closing scene of Six Feet Under was just straight up poetic.
07:54Oh, I want to take a picture of everyone.
07:56I can't take a picture of this, it's already gone.
08:04As Claire Fisher leaves her family behind for New York, we're shown a montage of how they all meet their end.
08:10It's an emotional and deeply moving sequence.
08:13It's also devastating.
08:15You can't just make us fall in love with these people and then remind us that they'll die once the story is over.
08:21But that's the whole point.
08:24If we've learned anything from watching the Fisher family in their funeral home for five seasons,
08:28it's that death is inevitable.
08:30Okay, fine, but not for them, please.
08:45Number three, Felina, Breaking Bad.
08:48Let's just say things are not going well for Walter White.
08:52His long-held double life as a drug lord has never been less secret.
08:56And by the series finale of Breaking Bad, he's gone full-on fugitive.
09:00I need the money.
09:03I've spent almost all of mine already.
09:07It's time to stay one step ahead of the police.
09:10Watching him try to make amends and get his final revenge on the criminal associates who have wronged him
09:15make for a bittersweet conclusion.
09:18Walt is finally honest about why he turned to crime, but it's a little too late for that now.
09:23I did it for me.
09:32I liked it.
09:37I was good at it.
09:39There's no possible way this can end well for him.
09:42Yet the show still manages to twist the knife at every turn.
09:46It's an explosive conclusion to an unforgettable show.
09:49Still worse.
09:53Say you want this.
09:57Nothing happens until I hear you say it.
10:03I want this.
10:05Number two, Changing Nature, Dinosaurs.
10:08It sounds like we'd be declaring war on nature.
10:11Exactly!
10:12But sir, our last quick fix solution sort of backfired on us.
10:15Maybe we should think twice before unleashing the unholy fires of hell.
10:19Extreme problems call for extreme solutions.
10:22Due to some broadcasting weirdness, this series finale wasn't the last episode
10:27that aired of this puppet-centered children's show from Jim Henson.
10:30However, it was the last one produced, and it's definitely the end of the story.
10:35As thick black clouds of sulfurous gas and soot now shroud the entire planet,
10:41blotting the sun from the sky and causing global temperatures to drop precipitously.
10:50So maybe we'll get snow instead of rain.
10:53The show Dinosaurs ends on the most depressing possible note
10:56as the family patriarch Megalosaurus Earl Sneed Sinclair
11:00inadvertently causes the ice age that will kill off all the dinosaurs.
11:04That includes the entire family at its center, even Baby.
11:08It's not the first episode where the show conveys its deeply environmental message
11:12to its young viewership, but it was easily the most straightforward and depressing one.
11:17And taking a look at the long-range forecast,
11:20continued snow, darkness, and extreme cold.
11:25This is Howard Handupme.
11:27Good night.
11:31Goodbye.
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11:53Ladies and gentlemen, five minutes ago at 10.01 this morning,
11:56the truce was signed in Panmunjom.
11:58The hostilities will end 12 hours from now at 10 o'clock.
12:02The war is over!
12:05The long-running joke about this Korean war sitcom
12:09is that it lasted even longer than the war it was set in.
12:12M.A.S.H. had come a long way from its laugh track-filled beginnings.
12:16Over the years, it had towed the line between comedy and drama,
12:20openly confronting the psychological toll of war.
12:23This culminated in a television film that served as the M.A.S.H. series finale.
12:28Why did you make me remember that?
12:30You had to get it out in the open.
12:33Now we're halfway home.
12:36The generally good-humored Hawkeye is haunted by an incident
12:40involving an enemy patrol and a refugee's desperate act to stay hidden.
12:44Exploring the mental toll of war,
12:46the emotional finale became the most-watched TV episode in U.S. history.
12:51May they have a long, wonderful life,
12:54filled with love and peace.
12:57And so may we all.
13:00Amen.
13:03What series finale caught you off-guard?
13:05Tell us in the comments.
13:07I'll say this to you, my friend, with all the love in my heart
13:12and all the wisdom of the universe.
13:17Take it sleazy.
13:18Do you agree with our picks?
13:20Check out this other recent clip from Ms. Mojo.
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