‘Tis the season to be mourning. While others embrace the solace that summer brings and the comfort of their hometowns, I spend my days grieving the temporary end of my favorite television shows.
Yes, ’tis the season of season finales. Full of nail-biting action, tearful tragedy and cliffhangers that cause us to (gracefully) yell at our television screens, season finales pose a difficult time for TV addicts like myself. Yet, despite the swift blow to the gut we feel immediately after they inflict emotional drainage, they inevitably end up being some of our favorite episodes. And there’s an explicit reason why.
These finales serve as the zenith of the episodes that proceed them. September through May builds up the storyline until it’s ready to explode. Unimaginable secrets are revealed. Characters are pulled in every direction until they’re forced to make tough decisions. And, with most exceptional storytelling, finales often mark a certain character’s final goodbye in a fictional world we spend far too much time worrying about.
But the point is to keep us enticed so we anticipate our show’s return in the fall. “Going out on a high” is a classic strategy television networks use during finale season. What’s going to happen next? Who’s going to survive? It’s a strategy that causes us to plead with television writers during finales, begging them to tie up at least one character’s fate in a neat bow.
This year in primetime, countless series used this tactic shamelessly, and dare I say some of these finales will go down in my book as some of the best I’ve seen. (No spoilers ahead, I promise! I will have failed miserably as your TV columnist if I start out my semester with spoilers).
Guilty pleasure shows (you know which ones I’m talking about) often have the most outrageously dramatic season finales that we eat up by the spoonful. For example, “Grey’s Anatomy” concluded its ninth season on a rather grim note. It included all the appropriate trimmings of a season finale: an encroaching natural disaster, explosions, life-or-death surgery and even a character who may or may not make it to the next season. Tears? Check. Emotional drainage? Double check.
Next is a series that isn’t featured on the primetime schedule, but nonetheless is a show worthy of one of my season finale awards. “House of Cards” is a Netflix original series that follows the vengeful quest of congressman Francis Underwood, played by the beguiling Kevin Spacey.
I binged through the show’s first season in a matter of days — but my lack of self-control is beside the point. The season finale re-established a somewhat faded premise of the series: journalism and politics as ambiguous alliances. Like “House of Cards,” finales tend to be nostalgic of their primary episodes of the season, whether to recall previous information for their audiences or to return to their roots and remind us why we decided to watch the show in the first place. Of course, a series as dark and dramatic as this one ended the final minutes in a mess of unwrapped storyline. But hey, that’s why I’ll be refreshing the Netflix page until they release a second season.
My last season finale award goes to CBS’s “How I Met Your Mother.” For a comedy series, the show’s eighth season finale was quite the emotional roller coaster. Dedicated viewers found the gang in a whirlwind of approaching change that provided a great platform for their farewell season in a milestone finale. It even featured a killer song by The Shins in the final moments. Season finales also tend to have exceptional soundtracks.
Well, now that this year’s regular television season is over, I have no choice but to actually rejoin reality and do things like socialize with real people. My DVR will sadly be much less full and instead stocked with reruns of “Friends.” Thankfully, summer shows start in a matter of weeks. I guess reality can wait!