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Comment by shampto3 | Hacker News Reader

I really enjoyed this, well done. I love that there were surprises like the LOST finale not being as bad as you thought (statistically).

Some obligatory personal hot takes:

- the Scrubs finale should be considered the last episode of season 8 (which was great). Season 9 should be considered a spinoff series.

- The Blacklist recently aired the series finale and I would consider it a disaster finale. It has ruined the series for me, and I no longer recommend it to friends.

- I think most comedies aren’t ruined by a series finale. That’s probably due to the character over plot idea, as there usually isn’t a storyline I’m dying to finish.

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I'm in the minority of people who enjoyed the LOST finale.

In the end, for me, it was about the characters. Not the mystery.

And the finale was about seeing the characters off.

... I know, I'm terrible at being a nerd. :(

PS: But then, I also loved the Seinfeld finale. For me, it peeled the curtain back a little more and showed they were in fact, awful, neurotic people who were the source of the very craziness in their lives that they spent so much time bemoaning.

Anyone who didn’t think they were awful and neurotic to begin with are probably awful and neurotic.

> That’s probably due to the character over plot idea, as there usually isn’t a storyline I’m dying to finish.

Yes, but how you handle your characters can still be very important. There are shows where the ending is simply a good episode, sending some loved characters off - like The Big Bang Theory. The ending itself is not that great of an episode on the tin, but the viewer has come to love these characters and having a great ending for them is important.

And then there are endings like How I Met Your Mother, which manage to cast the the whole series in a worse light. It would be the counter-example for ruining a comedy with the finale.

Overall, comedy endings are probably simpler than most, but you can still make a lot wrong.

LOST’s finale _was_ bad. And what’s crazy is they had the makings of a great one all ready to go. It almost feels like they drew the finale out of a hat or something that they passed around the writing table. It’s.. an ending, but not nearly as satisfying as it could’ve been.

IMO, they should’ve finished the show with the two realities we were witnessing being two realities created post explosion. No nonsense about Limbo or whatever. If you feel the ending is the good reality, so be it. If you feel it’s the bad one, cool too. If you feel it’s both, also great.

The show is largely about faith and consequence. So make the finale about it too.

You are giving that show wayyy too much credit. (Bonus points: read the JJ Abrams interview about the magic box on his desk)

It was clear to me by the start of season 3 that the writers had no plan, that they were making it up as they went. That is why they had filler episodes, one which introduced new characters only to kill them off at the end with 0 impact on the overall plot.

The finale was more of a Rorschach test for what you thought the show was about. I even tested a friend of mine on this, making a convincing case about how the whole show was the Island bringing to life the gay subtext between Jack and Sawyer. (She is still raw about that)

I think the best way to understand the finale is with a Nihilist bent: it's whatever man.

I thought that LOST was really the worst finale ever.

> the Scrubs finale should be considered the last episode of season 8 (which was great). Season 9 should be considered a spinoff series.

If you're going to divide the show like that, wouldn't the spinoff start with season 5?

From the Wikipedia for the ninth season:

> Lawrence considered the eighth season to be the end of the show Scrubs, going so far as to ask ABC if he could change the name to Scrubs Med School. ABC declined, but Lawrence still advised fans to treat it as a new show, even putting a caption under the "Created By" on the X-ray in the opening sequence saying [Med School]

So the showrunner treated it like a spinoff but the network wanted to keep the name.

Season 9 had Denise as main character, with Turk in a supporting role. Ergo, it’s the spinoff season.

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