I just saw this on MSN. It's one of those slideshow type things.

http://specials.msn.com/A-List/TV-show-f...amp;FORM=MSNIIT

I am going to list them as I look at them. It doesn't seem to be in any particular order.

Mary Tyler Moore Show
MASH
St. Elsewhere
Newhart
Dallas
The Cosby Show
Cheers
Seinfeld
Friends
The Sopranos

It gives a little more detail on what happened on each final episode. My two favorites are Newhart and MASH. MASH was saying goodbye to old friends and Newhart had me laughing for a couple of minutes.

The only finale I've seen from those on your list was the finale for Seinfeld. I was quite underwhelmed by that finale to be honest.

My personal best tv show finale list would be,

1. Babylon 5
2. Battlestar Galactica (even with its flaws)
3. Twin Peaks
4. Rome


And while I'm a huge X-Files fan I have to admit that I was quite disappointed with its finale.

I remember the MASH one, that was a serious one.

St. Elsewhere was good, had people thinking to figure out what just happened.
Cheers was sad, but funny when they went to the cast party that was going on and George Wendt was WASTED (as they all were, but mainly him).

Newhart was funny, but also seemed a little cheap. After that I had no desire to watch the reruns. It was original though, nice cameo. LOL

Seinfeld ending sucked completely.

The B5 ending (hard to say for real though, with all of the movies) was very good and almost emotional. You felt it was the end of an era and major story coming to a close.

BSG...cheap, cheesy, out of character, reaching desperately to explain the silliness of the last few seasons. Sorry Panzer. LOL

Highlander the series....after a lackluster season, the end of the next to last season had a HUGE bombshell, the finale wrapped up a lot of things and ended the way an immortal eventually ends an era of his life. I liked it. If only the movies would follow the quality of that show in it's prime.

Star Trek TNG: WOW! Very good, and also very much ignored by any show or movie afterwards. Set about 30 years down the road, it had Warp 13, the modified Enterprise D with Riker as Capt, a 3rd nacelle, and a huge friggin gun strapped under the belly that takes out Klingon battleships with a single shot--right through their shields. DATA retired and was teaching IIRC, still emotionless, Geordi had eyes IIRC.

ER...not bad, it really took place over the season. Mainly it was good since it should've been done about 4-5 years before--at least they finally did it.

I agree with PM except BSG as I never was able to get into it.

I would also add the original UK version of Life on Mars as a show with an EXCELLENT finale. I'm going to watch the series finale of Ashes to Ashes this weekend.

I can't recommend those two series enough.

..seriously.. I'm like Razorback is with Chuck.

MASH is my hands down favorite.

Newhart was pretty good.

The Sopranos was cryptic but good.

Seinfeld disappointed. I know they were looking for a vehicle to get all the past characters together in one room, but it just didn't work and it sure wasn't funny. Too bad for such a great show.

Everyone keeps remarking about the Seinfeld finale. But few know the last Seinfeld took place in a penitentiary called "OZ"

See here--the Final Seinfeld!

v6,
boNes

I'm curious to know. What was it about BSG that made it not your kind of show?

MASH has the best of any TV show ending ever if you ask me.

The US version of Life on Mars only lasted one season. It was an excellent show with a great cast, but I wasn't really sure about the finale. Did the UK version end the same way? Spoiler below.

MASH and BSG are tops for me. I liked TNG's the best out of all the Star Trek spin-offs. I don't remember many of them like Friends and Cheers, so they must have been pretty lame. Seinfeld's was just not funny, extremely disappointing.

Knew Bob Newhart had to be in there. One of the cleverest fanales ever.
Don't know how many of you watched "Six Feet Under" about a family that owned a mortuary.
The last episode showed the future, and how they all would die. Thought that was pretty neat.

Seinfeld was awful, utter dreck. Friends was pretty good, Frasier was better though.

MASH probably had the best ending of all, of course.

pfunk

The last episode of Band of Brothers never fails to choke me up.

I just couldn't get into the whole "60 minutes until we jump" stress of it all. I know it changes after a few episodes, but all the intense stares and the "AHH WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!" were too melodramatic for me. It's one of those things that I'd probably like if I could make it past the opening episodes, but I don't have: a) the time, or b) the inclination. Kinda like Lost actually..


In regards to Life on Mars..

The UK version of Life on Mars is incomparably better than the American version. The ending is much different and was actually recently voted by UK viewers the top series finale out of 50.

UK "Life on Mars" ended quite differently. All in all a far superior series than the Americanized version.
The sequal 'Ashes to Ashes' is at the end of its' 3rd and final series. It actually turned out better than I though it would. Gene gennie has been a great character, (so far). "Come on out, you are surrounded by armed Bast--ds".

"All Good Things" from TNG was the best finale I've ever seen on a series. Just superb.

Jason

I agree about Babylon 5's "Sleeping in Light" as being one of my favorite finales. DS9 was the same year, and almost as emotional.

I'm guessing the article came up because the finale for Lost is this Sunday night? The show has been incredible this season, but to be honest, the closer we get to the end, the more afraid I'm becoming that we're going to get a finale that resembles the last 10-15 minutes of the "Rocky Horror Picture Show." It'd be a good way to explain everything on the island, after all.

Let me put it this way, "Sleeping in Light" up to now is the ONLY tv show finale that has made me cry.

Yep it's why it came up.

I stopped watching after the first season of Lost. I got iritated that it kept asking more questions before it answered any of the previous ones. I thought about it during the summer of the first season and I saw it as a carrot on a stick. I figured that either it would get cancelled and we would never know what happened or the explanation would be so stupid that I would feel like I wasted years of my life over something and just sit there for 15 minutes going WTF???????

I wasn't willing to make the investment. I got out of Flash Forward for the same reason. Flash Forward got cancelled so I am curious as to if they are going to actually wrap the show up just leave people going WTF?????

There was actually a running joke in the podcasts that if the show was cancelled prematurely, the last episode aired would be an orangutang sitting in a chair, smoking a pipe, and reading an emergency script with the answers to all the questions being asked.