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Irish Joe posted:The best finales, meanwhile, are those that don't try to do anything more than wrap up the show. ... ... No commentary. No bullshit. Just drat fine storytelling. Except True Detective, which did just that, and then everyone lost their mind anyways...
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Apr 1, 2014 13:57
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VagueRant posted:On the heels of the HIMYM talk, is this the right thread to ask people about GOOD season finales? And of course long before Babylon 5, Super Dimensional Fortress Macross had a thematically pitch-perfect ending that brought the themes of the series to a conclusion and explained the live-action ending of every previous episode as well. Rapey Joe Stalin posted:I thought Bosch looked good, The After is one of the worst productions I have ever seen, it had no redeeming quality at all. How on earth was that picked up? Intelligence is interesting in that it makes America's Military Industrial Complex into a den of vipers where every agency and division is scrambling to be more villainous than the others.
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Apr 1, 2014 13:58
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Cardboard Box A posted:The After is one of many post-Apocalyptic shows around channeling our collective civilizational ennui, and like The Walking Dead, it doesn't have to be good. Sorry but this is silly. I know you get super cool bro points for making GBS threads on The Walking Dead around here but to call it bad while talking about The After is facile in the extreme. It's like complaining about the amount of salt in your meal when the waiter has accidentally set fire to your wife. quote:Intelligence is interesting in that it makes America's Military Industrial Complex into a den of vipers where every agency and division is scrambling to be more villainous than the others. Except it's not really interesting is it, it's the same cliché old nonsense about a plucky team fighting the odds against the establishment. Except the 'hero' here is the most intrusive of all, and the plucky team's job is to spy on everything everyone does. Quite apart from terrible writing, it is, whether intentional or not, propaganda with a strong undercurrent of fascism. Lovely Joe Stalin fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Apr 1, 2014 |
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Apr 1, 2014 14:13
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Dude i've done the research (all citations belong to "goons in platoons") and apparently everyone has been spying on everyone via their isp and email since 1905. The solutions, as far as I can tell are to 1) deal with it and 2) impeach Obumba the socialist and increase military spending.
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Apr 1, 2014 14:18
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Irish Joe posted:The problem with most series finales is that the writers/producers/creators try to shoe-horn in messages about what their shows were 'really about' instead of giving fans more of what they actually liked about the shows. Lost and Neon Genesis Evangelion, for instance, ended on the preposition that it was the main character's emotional journey that really mattered. It wasn't, and people were understandably pissed when each show ended with ponderous bullshit while leaving the real story unfinished. Seinfeld tried to hammer home how awful the characters were, but everybody who watched the show already knew that and didn't need to watch Jerry and the gang become martyrs to the creators' need to prove the point. Yeah, the ATLA finale ruled. By the way, everyone's favorite actor Josh Molina is joining the new CBS Halle Berry show where she plays an astronaut. It's a show called Extant and I just found out it was happening when I read that article that Josh Molina is joining it. Regarde Aduck posted:Dude i've done the research (all citations belong to "goons in platoons") and apparently everyone has been spying on everyone via their isp and email since 1905. The solutions, as far as I can tell are to 1) deal with it and 2) impeach Obumba the socialist and increase military spending. This is not the UKMT D&D thread mate.
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Apr 1, 2014 14:30
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zoux posted:By the way, everyone's favorite actor Josh Molina is joining the new CBS Halle Berry show where she plays an astronaut. It's a show called Extant and I just found out it was happening when I read that article that Josh Molina is joining it. It's a guest-starring role. I know this because he's like the only remotely "good" character on Scandal, and I nearly poo poo a brick when I found out he was going elsewhere and rushed to double-check.
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Apr 1, 2014 14:42
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P.S. That show is gonna be real bad.
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Apr 1, 2014 14:43
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VagueRant posted:On the heels of the HIMYM talk, is this the right thread to ask people about GOOD season finales? No offense, man, but the common theme here seems to be that you routinely skip entire seasons worth of episodes and still watch the finales. I don't begrudge you watching how you'd like and I don't think you should keep watching something you don't enjoy but how can you expect a finale to resonate with you if you skipped all the stuff that came before it? So much about finales is about emotional payoff, which from what you said about the shows you love doesn't sound like something you get much joy from. But very few shows that have run for more than a season or two will have a finale about answering questions or resolving plot lines. For the most part if you're summing up five or eight years of a show then its going to be all about the emotional investment paying off and being satisfied. It's actually a big part of the conflict with the Lost ending. I didn't like it but that was less about the finale and more about the final season. I didn't like the direction the show went in so I didn't like it tied up. But the finale went heavy on the emotional payoff where a lot of people wanted tangible, direct answers about plot questions. That's partly Lost's fault because they spent the first five seasons driving the show on questions before shifting hard away from it, but it's a big reason why there's so much disagreement about it. It's also why some people feel strongly negative feelings towards the Sopranos finale. Because its ambiguous ending left them emotionally unsatisfied and with no closure. I'm not saying closure is required or that the ending was bad, but that's what a lot of people are looking for in a finale. The characters they love are going away forever and leaving their lives and they want a good goodbye. EL BROMANCE posted:I'd already watched it, but it's a bit lovely that people were all cool with posting big finale spoilers in here without tags. Yeah, I've been slow to catch up on the show and I'm kind of disappointed to be have been so casually spoiled in here. Kind of disappointed. I'm not really invested enough to be upset but it's still kind of lame. And ultimately when it comes to HIMYM I only really care about the emotional send off, not the exact details.
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Apr 1, 2014 15:04
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zoux posted:Yeah, the ATLA finale ruled. I will fight you, I am a sexy girl.
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Apr 1, 2014 15:27
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Bown posted:edit: Sepinwall's review is really excellent and explains critically both why that ending probably happened and why it was a loving terrible idea, go hunt it down Tibeerius fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Apr 1, 2014 |
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Apr 1, 2014 15:28
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STAC Goat posted:And ultimately when it comes to HIMYM I only really care about the emotional send off The botched that pretty hard, unless you're really really into the idea of Robin and Ted being together.
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Apr 1, 2014 15:32
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Here's a good April Fool's joke (I hope  )
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Apr 1, 2014 15:46
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VagueRant posted:I've heard a lot of people mention The Shield's finale - I'd love to hear why. (I seem to be the only person who hated the show and only watched the entire first season because a college teacher forced me to.) Did you only watch the first season?
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Apr 1, 2014 15:47
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I watched three seasons and didn't like it 
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Apr 1, 2014 15:47
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Bown posted:edit: Sepinwall's review is really excellent and explains critically both why that ending probably happened and why it was a loving terrible idea, go hunt it down
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Apr 1, 2014 15:48
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zoux posted:I watched three seasons and didn't like it Oh yeah I know, not hatin. That was a legit question where I'm curious if that was all they watched and then quit. Because a lot of people (most?) dislike the first season but go on to appreciate the show more and more each season. I can't even fault someone being confused about why it would be that acclaimed if all they saw was the kid rock and coldplay season. edit--especially when new viewers to the show are going into this first season from 10 years ago when basic cable dramas were finding their footing, but now they have this expanded frame of reference for all the great stuff since then that was able to hit the ground running EvilTobaccoExec fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Apr 1, 2014 |
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Apr 1, 2014 15:58
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The Seinfeld finale wasn't bad for its message or anything it was bad because it was a god drat clip show. The actual last scene of the finale was perfect. The courtroom poo poo was just baffling in how bad it was. Even the lead-up to the finale was solid. That plane should have crashed.
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Apr 1, 2014 16:23
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The best finales are Star Trek: The Next Generation and Quantum Leap.
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Apr 1, 2014 16:29
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Speaking of great finales, Netflix just added the entire run of Rotisserie Chicken today, so check that out.
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Apr 1, 2014 16:29
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precision posted:The Seinfeld finale wasn't bad for its message or anything it was bad because it was a god drat clip show. It wasn't great, so I'm so glad we had that CYE/Seinfeld crossover season which was absolutely glorious. I much prefer to think of that being the end.
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Apr 1, 2014 16:38
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Nate RFB posted:The original Scrubs finale was pretty great.  JD "tricking" the once incredible Doctor Cox into praising him was really weird and unnecessary (that scene might have worked better had JD not heard what was said). The bit with him seeing a whole bunch of characters from the show's history just ended up reminding you of all the terrible one-note joke characters ("Hooch is crazy") and caricatured bullshit the show had devolved into. Then there's like a four minute montage of generic weddings, births and family gatherings that just left me thinking "Didn't this used to be about a hospital?"Eh, I dunno. I think Scrubs peaked in season 2 and it was downhill since then. The first two seasons are some of The Best Television though, and it was still funny for a couple of seasons afterwards. Rarity posted:Angel's was perfect. Irish Joe posted:The best finales, meanwhile, are those that don't try to do anything more than wrap up the show. Breaking Bad and Avatar:TLA are perfect examples of great finales. Breaking Bad concludes Walt's journey and Avatar ends with the bad guys losing in a climatic battle. No commentary. No bullshit. Just drat fine storytelling. STAC Goat posted:No offense, man, but the common theme here seems to be that you routinely skip entire seasons worth of episodes and still watch the finales. I don't begrudge you watching how you'd like and I don't think you should keep watching something you don't enjoy but how can you expect a finale to resonate with you if you skipped all the stuff that came before it? I did give up on Dexter after season 6 though and I haven't actually watched the finale - only read up on it. But hey, no regrets there! EvilTobaccoExec posted:Did you only watch the first season? [The Shield] EL BROMANCE posted:It's hard to explain why it's such a good finale without spoiling the show
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Apr 1, 2014 16:46
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30 Rock should be the gold standard for ending a long-running comedy, because they did it so pitch perfectly. Really that show is 7 incredibly great seasons of funny poo poo, and will probably be held up as the best sitcom from the post-AD era. Also, Craig is hosting Price is Right, and of course, both showcase contestants are women. That man has the golden touch. And Geoff Peterson is still side kicking about. edit: And there's Secretariat dancing around the NEW CAR! Best day.
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Apr 1, 2014 16:50
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I still say Scrubs should have ended with the Janitor hitting JD over the head with his knifewrench and tossing him in the back of a van.
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Apr 1, 2014 16:51
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Yoshifan823 posted:Also, Craig is hosting Price is Right, and of course, both showcase contestants are women. That man has the golden touch. And Geoff Peterson is still side kicking about. Drew Carey hosted Ferguson's talk show last night and while the format didn't do him any favors, it was great seeing someone in Late Night who isn't afraid to be a little mean. Toothless "nice guy" talk show hosts get boring after awhile.
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Apr 1, 2014 16:55
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Irish Joe posted:Drew Carey hosted Ferguson's talk show last night and while the format didn't do him any favors, it was great seeing someone in Late Night who isn't afraid to be a little mean. Toothless "nice guy" talk show hosts get boring after awhile. It's funny, because Dave Letterman definitely has the demeanor to be mean, but I think age has kinda mellowed him out.
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Apr 1, 2014 16:56
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Rapey Joe Stalin posted:Sorry but this is silly. I know you get super cool bro points for making GBS threads on The Walking Dead around here but to call it bad while talking about The After is facile in the extreme. It's like complaining about the amount of salt in your meal when the waiter has accidentally set fire to your wife. Intelligence is absolutely fascist propaganda, being much like Person of Interest would be without the undercurrent that the show is essentially leading up to Terminator 5, but I maintain that the sheer pervasiveness of the villany of the government departments/agencies that are not US CYBER COMMAND does make it interesting.
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Apr 1, 2014 16:59
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The Shield finale really shows that if you put some time into working out a great ending, you can really seal the legacy of a beloved show. As someone else said, I don't think I've ever seen ANYONE say a bad word against it, which is pretty impressive. An ending like that really lifts the series as a whole because, after the show is done and dusted, you're just left with this great overall package. Whereas, whatever your opinion on them, the Lost and BSG endings kind of sour the whole series a little. FNL is another obvious one if we're just listing good finales.
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Apr 1, 2014 17:12
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Yoshifan823 posted:30 Rock should be the gold standard for ending a long-running comedy, because they did it so pitch perfectly. Really that show is 7 incredibly great seasons of funny poo poo, and will probably be held up as the best sitcom from the post-AD era. [Hater] I hope not. The whole series is one long bottle episode of puns and insanely shallow characters who wear out their welcome (looking at you [/hater]
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Apr 1, 2014 17:35
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VagueRant posted:
Ok, but writing it in a paragraph really doesn't do it justice. The show basically works as follows: Everything revolves around the murder of Terry Crowley in the first episode. The Strike Team get worse and worse throughout the show - ripping off the Armenian mob for millions of dollars, getting involved in the drug trade etc. But they still do a good job and some members (Mackey / Shane) are a lot 'worse' people than Lem and Ronnie who know/are involved to a degree but not as much as the other two. The next 4 or 5 seasons are basically things spiralling out of control. Everything they do to try and cover up something they've done simply leads on to more and more problems. Things come to blows when Shane is paranoid that Lem is going to drop them all in the poo poo, and drops a live grenade into his car without telling any of the other members of the team. Shane is pretty much seen as the worst of the characters anyway, but that pretty much seals the deal. Eventually Vic finds out what has happened and poo poo naturally hits the fan as you can expect. The final season essentially finishes as such: Shane goes full Chris Benoit and murders his wife and child before killing himself Vic gets a deal where he gets to admit to what he's done on tape and get off scott free and retain a job in the department. The problem is, what he admits to is around 1000x worse than what they were expecting. They wanted to peg the murder of Crowley on the strike team, but instead they get years of abuse of power and outright criminal activity, from embezzling money to murder. As the only one left who is able to be punished, Ronnie gets sent to jail where he'll be surrounded by a lot of the Strike Team's enemies. Mackey thinks he's OK, but in reality his family are permanently separated from him and the job he was promised was a 9-5 desk job, not something on the streets. It would've been easy to either have Mackey get killed or have him get away with it all - the smart thing is they found a personal hell for the character, and the audience completely understands why this is the worst thing that can happen to him, while also being something out of left field. It's more about the story as a whole than it being an amazing finale out of nowhere - kind of like Breaking Bad, where the finale was consistent with the quality of the show - but I think it passed expectations with the last 2 episodes. The confession scene to tape is just phenomenal, as he basically recaps the last 7 years of the show to the horrified looks of his peers, proving once and for all that he is an absolute monster.
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Apr 1, 2014 17:35
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VagueRant posted:I did give up on Dexter after season 6 though and I haven't actually watched the finale - only read up on it. But hey, no regrets there! I made this mistake with Weeds and I don't want to repeat it. IRQ posted:The botched that pretty hard, unless you're really really into the idea of Robin and Ted being together.
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Apr 1, 2014 17:46
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Oh speaking of, Michael C. Hall is rumored to be in the running for the Netflix Daredevil show. Let's all remember SFU MCH and not Dexter MCH as we ponder this outcome.
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Apr 1, 2014 17:48
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EL BROMANCE posted:*Shield spoilers* It would've been easy to either have Mackey get killed or have him get away with it all - the smart thing is they found a personal hell for the character, and the audience completely understands why this is the worst thing that can happen to him, while also being something out of left field. That's not actually the point of the ending. The point is the second after that moment of regret, where the full weight of everything he's done and what it's cost him hits him...and he shrugs it off and moves on. You can actually *see* him moving past his own guilt. It is absolutely the worst punishment for Vic, but fundamentally Vic is not the sort of person you can punish. He'll adapt, and he'll try to find a way to thrive. And because of how good he is, he probably will in time. It might take years, but he'll find some angle to get out from under the weight of it all. Some morally gray boss looking to make a play, some important case that needs his involvement for some reason. He literally got to keep being a cop after admitting to killing a cop and being a drug kingpin. He's not the sort to just give up.
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Apr 1, 2014 17:49
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As I understand it, the finale to HIMYM ended up like the ending of Mass Effect 3 (whereby it felt like the ending to a totally unrelated story and poo poo on a ton of characters/setting/story)? Good finales: Justice League/Unlimited (both of them, they're both great) Spartacus Breaking Bad Farscape (complicated somewhat due to being truncated into a miniseries/movie timeframe, still good) DS9 TNG The West Wing
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Apr 1, 2014 18:56
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zoux posted:Oh speaking of, Michael C. Hall is rumored to be in the running for the Netflix Daredevil show. Let's all remember SFU MCH and not Dexter MCH as we ponder this outcome. Just as long as nobody remembers Gamer MCH. ...poo poo.
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Apr 1, 2014 18:56
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VagueRant posted:On the heels of the HIMYM talk, is this the right thread to ask people about GOOD season finales? I'd echo the ones some people have already said: the Spartacus finale is great, and the 30 Rock finale is pretty much perfect. The Office's finale isn't bad either. And as part three of my continuing effort to plug the show, the last shot of The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret is absolutely ridiculous, in the best way possible.
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Apr 1, 2014 19:07
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Thwomp posted:As I understand it, the finale to HIMYM ended up like the ending of Mass Effect 3 (whereby it felt like the ending to a totally unrelated story and poo poo on a ton of characters/setting/story)? It's an ending that was written about 7 years ago when it looked like the show didn't have much of a future. Rather than think "hey, we're actually getting a lot more time to tell a story here" and adapt the lead character (who became more and more insufferable due to needing to keep to this script) and take it somewhere new, they just thought "gently caress it" and ran with it anyway. They went with the ending the internet has been joking about for about 4 or 5 years now, which is never a good thing. Boogaleeboo posted:That's not actually the point of the ending. The point is Shield Stuff I kinda wanted to summarise the show/finale as a general... the scene you're describing lasts only a few seconds and doesn't even have dialogue. While not being completely open, it's just giving the viewer a hint of his future. I think the reason it was lauded so much was not down to this scene, but it's handling of the storyline as a whole and how naturally it came to an end.
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Apr 1, 2014 19:07
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PittTheElder posted:I'd echo the ones some people have already said: the Spartacus finale is great, and the 30 Rock finale is pretty much perfect. The Office's finale isn't bad either. I'm surprised that The Office's finale hasn't gotten more love. It wasn't perfect but it made up for a lot of the excesses of the later seasons. The Psych finale wasn't terrible and was the best episode of the final season. Not the best episode ever but it stayed true to the characters and gave everybody a happy ending, which is about all I want from a sitcom finale.
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Apr 1, 2014 19:15
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Thwomp posted:As I understand it, the finale to HIMYM ended up like the ending of Mass Effect 3 (whereby it felt like the ending to a totally unrelated story and poo poo on a ton of characters/setting/story)? Not really. It fit the narrative of the show. (Which was not in fact how he met the mother.)
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Apr 1, 2014 19:15
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It is similar in that it's made the internet loving mad as hell.
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Apr 1, 2014 19:16
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404GoonNotFound posted:Just as long as nobody remembers Gamer MCH. He was really good in Gamer though.
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Apr 1, 2014 20:03
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