With LOST giving it up Sunday night in a pop culture gorge-fest, naturally I started to think of other notable finales.
The best, of course, the mother of all final episodes, is MASH. Moving, funny, incredible and sometimes painful (if your heart doesn't break for Hawkeye and the "chicken", you are dead), it rounded out the moving, funny, incredible and sometimes painful (particularly in the last couple seasons when Preachy took over from Funny in the writer's room and minor characters were given major roles too often - there's
a reason that some of them were written to be minor - Klinger is only funny/interesting in a dress - out, not so much of either).
Each character got an ending that fit them (such as Charles, who had always been the music snob, could no longer listen to his records without remembering the quartet of musicians who died from a roadside bomb), and nothing felt off or rushed.
That's a pretty incredible feat for a show that had been on for 11 years and had long since fallen off the
pop culture radar. And because the finale was so incredible, it erased any MASH-fatigue that had set in over the years and left the audience with a good taste in it's mouth - sort of like how a really great goodnight kiss can make up for a pretty bad date (I know you all know what I'm talking about).
And that final 'goodbye' written in stones - took my breath away.
Other goodbye moments that merit mention - Newhart's retro recall to his first show (brilliance - although dwarfed the entire series by instantly making us compare it to the old show - to which there is none), Mary Tyler Moore's 
group hug (although penalized slightly because it introduced the notion that an office - any office - is like a family - that one was, but most are not), the Friends "I got off the plane" finale (emotionally satisfying and funny, it got the job done without too much manipulation - I was very glad that they didn't rush a Ross and Rachel wedding, that would have been way too much) and even Ugly Betty's finale, while seriously flawed for being way too rushed (after being canceled), still resonated with me in those final moments where Betty, now fully realized as an adult begins a life apart from her family, apart from her first job and 'ugly' no more (and the show playing Macy Gray's "Beauty in the World" didn't hurt either).
So, what are your favorites?!
