Why ER’s Finale Was Awful

I hate television finales.

Everyone’s been talking about them lately since the long running NBC drama ER finally came to an end (about a decade to late).

Series finales get a lot of attention, but they are usually awful and not well received (see Seinfeld’s finale). There’s a very good reason for this. A finale goes against everything television stands for.

A series finale is surrounded by a lot of hype that the show can never live up to. Everyone thinks a television series should go out with a bang and that the finale should be its greatest moment. But if the show still had the capability to make a great episode then it wouldn’t be going off the air.

Series finales are actually judged and critiqued like they’re a movie. If any regular episode of any regular television show was judged and critiqued like that it too would be deemed awful. It is television after all.

But we don’t judge every episode of every television show like it’s a movie because there’s another one on next week. With a television series there’s always the promise that next week’s episode will be better. There’s no such promise with a finale.

Seinfeld's series finale is the perfect example of why TV finales are awful. When something actually happened on the show about nothing, it turned out that it wasn't very good.

However, the series finale’s biggest crime against television is it generally moves the characters forward or there’s some sort of resolution. In other words, there’s change.

People hate change. It makes them uncomfortable. Whereas television, at least its dramas and comedies, does comforts us. We allow it into our living rooms because its characters and its formulaic plots provide us with an escape from life’s tribulation.

When I have my own television show (a vigilante zombie and his two zany sidekicks go around town fighting crime) I’m not even going to have a finale. I’m just going to end it—like the first Star Trek series. No finale, no over-hyped, wrapping-everything-up conclusion. Just air a regular old episode and then never have the show return (minus the feature film of course).

Still the most watched program ever in the history of American television, the M*A*S*H finale is the exception to the rule.

Think about the favorite episodes of your favorite television shows. They’re never the series finale and they’re generally never even a season finale (they usually suck too). Your favorite episodes are generally just some run-of-the-mill, middle-of-the-season show.

Look at The Simpsons. Do you think they’d still be on the air if Bart, Lisa and Maggie actually aged (changed)?

That’s why I hate television finales. They make me very uncomfortable.