S10 E12 (The Doctor Falls) is the end of (Modern) Doctor Who. Such a perfect episode epitomising the character, and closing an arc for one of the longest villains. He even ‘dies’ at the end.
Everything since then has been badly written and purposefully disrespectful to the cannon and the audience, and has wasted so many fantastic actors.
Andor is probably the last Stars War that I’ll watch unless they come out with another one that learns from it. DS9 took Star Treks seriously and the result was a show that has relevant ideas 30 years later. Until Andor, none of the Stars Wars I’ve seen have taken the universe seriously. They’ve expanded on it in unnecessary detail and obsessed over that detail, but intellectually they’ve all felt flat and liberal. Andor spends three episodes showing the Death Star through Foucault and you get one brief shot of it after a full film-length of watching how a gear is made using slave labour. That dialectical materialist analysis of the empire is so much more interesting than any battle or Jedi scene across the whole canon.
Terminator 2 (T2) is a masterclass in combining CGI with practical effect and its ending is a rare cinematic full stop.
The T-1000’s liquid metal form was revolutionary, the morphing effects were cutting-edge in 1991, yet Cameron used them sparingly and only where practical effects couldn’t work. That restraint made the CGI more impactful and has made it so they still hold up 35 years later.
The truck chase through the storm drain, the helicopter flying under an overpass, the Cyberdyne building blowing up; it was all real and you can feel that when you watch the movie. There is no way any movie studio would do that nowadays when they could just CGI giant Michael Bay explosions.
The destruction of Cyberdyne and the Terminators meant the timeline was reset. Judgment Day was averted. The T-800 lowering itself into molten steel is an iconic moment; a machine choosing self-sacrifice for humanity. It’s a perfect final note, not just for the character, but for the franchise. Bringing him back again and again weakens that sacrifice. Any sequel has to undo all of this just to exist. Which is why to this day, I have not watched a single Terminator film after T2.
Psycho-Pass ended at Season 1. There are no further seasons or movies.
Misfits ended at S2E6.
I feel compelled to say Scrubs s08e19, which is weird because they only ever made eight seasons of Scrubs.
Episode IV. That’s my hill.
NeuTrek. TNG squeeks by, but any Trek with a dysfunctional, corrupt Federation with a Black Ops team is out.
The West Wing, season 4. After Sorkin left it went to shit.
Ren & Stimpy was hit or miss, but really after the first season it fell off a cliff pretty fast.
Nobody’s ever done an adaptation of Asimov’s The Foundation Trilogy, which is too bad.
TLoTR had 3 movies; everything after has been just a shitty job of milking the success of the first 3. Which is too bad, because Cumberbuzzle was brilliant as Smaug.
So episodes 1 through 4 then stop watching?
You mean R&S? Yeah. There were maybe 4 funny ones, and the rest were crap. Space Madness, however, is IMHO one of the greatest pieces of comedy ever produced. Maybe it was just one-hit-wonder syndrome.
Nobody’s ever done an adaptation of Asimov’s The Foundation Trilogy, which is too bad.
Are you saying that Apple’s adaptation isn’t worthy of acknowledgment or are you not aware they’ve been producing it?
The what? Apple’s never done an adaptation. Nope. Not Apple, that’s for sure.
Honestly, though: brilliant graphics, design, and acting. The writers should all be taken out and shot, though.
Walking Dead S07E01. I think that episode could have been a perfect ending. They dragged it a lot after.
- die hard ended at 3
- highlander ended at 4 (and there is no 2)
Season 5 of Supernatural was the logical endpoint
I have two Dr Who hot takes:
Remembrance of The Daleks should’ve been the last time Daleks appear in Dr Who. None of their returns have done anything sufficiently interesting (except maybe Dalek), and every one has to be prefaced with some explanation to where these new Daleks are coming from.
And,
Survival, in that same series is the perfect endpoint of the Master as a character and Dr Who as a show.
There’s a lot of horror franchises that shouldn’t’ve been more than a single film. Off the top of my head: Hellraiser, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Blair Witch, and Black Christmas.
Only Fools and Horses shoulda ended on the episode where they finally strike it rich. None of the episodes after that justify bringing it back.
If we are going into books, the Hyperion series should have ended at 2. The first 2 books are so good! Books 3 and 4 are terrible.
The Gunslinger by Steven King.
He wrote some dark and towerry other books, but they’re unrelated fan fiction
