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Pop Culture Happy Hour

Best TV Series Finales

Pop Culture Happy Hour

NPR

Arts, After Shows, Tv Reviews, News, Books, Music Commentary, Entertainment News, Music, Film Reviews, Tv & Film

4.511.6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Barry, and Succession will conclude this month, and it's not easy to end a TV series. So we decided to debate: what is the greatest TV finale of all time?

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Transcript

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0:00.0

The marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Barry, and Succession will conclude this month and it's not easy to end a TV series.

0:11.0

You have to wrap up the story, leave the characters somewhere satisfying, give the

0:15.4

fans what they want up to a point. It's a lot to balance, but sometimes a show will get it just

0:20.9

right. So we decided to debate what is the greatest TV finale of

0:25.0

all time. I'm Linda Holmes today we're talking about the best series

0:29.3

finales on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today are my fellow Pop Culture Happy Hour hosts, Aisha Harris hi aisha don't stop

0:46.0

believe

0:47.8

hey oh Glen well done hello glen I should took mine Glenn Weldon. Hello, Glenn.

0:53.8

Aisha took mine. I wasn't going to sing it, but I was going to say it.

0:56.5

Hey Linda.

0:57.5

All right, and Stephen Thompson, hi Stephen.

0:59.5

Hello, Linda.

1:00.5

All right, well all of us know what a series finale is. The only thing I will say is that obviously

1:07.1

we're going to spoil a few endings, so if you hear us talking about one that you don't want to hear the end of. I mean you know that. All right we are going to start with

1:16.7

Aisha Aisha. Aisha what is your pick? So this was a tough one to come up with. I had to kind of figure out what my criteria

1:24.9

was going to be and what has most satisfied me at the end of shows that I've

1:28.8

spent many years in many cases watching. So for me I set up a couple of ground rules. The first is that the show had to be

1:36.1

consistently good from start to finish so the ending actually feels earned so no really bad gas leak seasons as in you know community.

1:45.0

So that was not going to be in the contention for me.

1:49.0

It also must feel like there's some closure and some answer to some of the important questions but not necessarily all of them.

1:55.2

I don't need every single loose end tied up. There has to be some sort of satisfaction there.

2:00.0

And then I also feel like it has to stay overall true to the character's journeys.

...

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