The Art of the Heartful Series Finale
Picture a wave.
I have made no secret about how much I love a good ending. Toy Story, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, The Avengers, The Lord of the Rings. Whenever something long-running and dear to my heart comes to an end, I anticipate that ending becoming something I spend a lot of time thinking about. It happened when season nine of The Office took over my life for months. I treasure stories and I value them even more when they receive the endings that stories of their caliber deserves.
So I don’t know whose bright idea it was to bring The Good Place to an end on the same night that the last season of BoJack Horseman released on Netflix, but man, what a day that was. Two of my favorite shows in television history! Ending on the same night! My heart was tortured.
Granted, I watched The Good Place live and saved BoJack over the course of three weeks, but still. It’s hard to say goodbye to the things you love, especially when it seems like there are way more endings than beginnings these days. But I was grateful. I was grateful that both of these shows, treasured aspects of my creative and story-loving heart, ended with sentiments that were true to what they were when they were on the air.
Most series finales do this. Arrested Development, Veep, 30 Rock, and Seinfeld were joke machines that only ever wanted to be funny. They didn’t betray those identities for a sweet series finale. They remained as unlearning and funny until the end.
On the other hand, my favorite series finales have always come from the shows that had streaks of sweetness and heart to them all along. Returning to the finale of The Office, I cried and I cried hard because The Office had shown how much heart it had over the years. This heart was earned when it paid off in the series finale and the show ended on an emotional note, rather than a humorous one. Those are the series finales I return to the most.
Don’t get me wrong, immortal Kenneth Parcell (Jack McBrayer) is hilarious. But most of the time, if I return to a series finale, it’s because I’m an emotional state of mind. I don’t necessarily want to laugh at a Jonah Ryan (Timothy Simons) insult or a George Costanza (Jason Alexander) button rumination. I want to see Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) hug Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi) twice in the Community finale. I want to see Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) exclaim, “Roo doo doo doo doo” to a legion of adoring fans. I want to see Sam Malone (Ted Danson) turn the lights off in his bar. I want to see J.D. (Zach Braff) and Turk (Donald Faison) present their matching Christmas sweaters to Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley). I want to see Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) become the president. That’s what it’s all about. I’m a sap at the heart of it.
There’s nothing I love more than a sweet, sentimental, bittersweet finale. So even though I was sad to lose The Good Place and BoJack Horseman on the same day, I was glad that they were bittersweet. They were exactly what you could have wanted from either show and, if you were a fan of either, you needn’t fear that they don’t stick the landing. Like McKayla Maroney, they really stuck that damn landing.
Speaking of landings, I would be remiss to not mention the highest-rated series finale in television history, which came from M*A*S*H. I want to acknowledge its importance for television endings, but I have not gotten to the finale yet! While I can only imagine it will make good on the tone it has imbued throughout the series’ run, I have not seen it yet and I think I might want to save my M*A*S*H thoughts for when I actually finish. I want this to be a BoJack and Good Place piece. As such, spoilers for both will come about following this very paragraph. You’ve been warned!
I have to say, it is insane how similar the endings to these two shows were. They were so dangerously similar that you could watch both and be absolutely shocked that they had somehow not actually collaborated on what their respective endings would be beforehand. It’s hard to even believe that they were not made in the same writers’ room. That’s how scarily similar they were.
The Good Place came to an end with each character walking through the door on the edge of the afterlife that would bring them into eternal peace. Each character was followed one by one. In the penultimate episode of BoJack, there was a door in the afterlife that characters were forced through where their existences come to an end. In the finale, each character was followed one by one. It was fucking insane how similar the two were. I can’t get over how of a piece they were with one another.
Both shows were comedies that could dance between extreme silliness and jaw-dropping metaphysics and psychology on a dime. They taught me something while they also made me laugh at absurd jokes. Both were concerned with what it means to be a good person and what we are supposed to do with the time we have on this planet. While The Good Place took a more optimistic tone with its ultimate stance on these subjects, BoJack was a bit more realistic, perhaps a bit more nihilistic, while still tinged with hopefulness. I bet most people will appreciate BoJack’s ending more because people tend to gravitate towards the realism of it all. But I loved what The Good Place had to say at the end.
I mean, I loved what they both had to say. That’s why I’m writing about them in tandem. After all, I couldn’t just let perennial favorites of mine go away without a tribute, could I?
Let’s begin with BoJack. (Again, spoilers ahead.) I want to first push back against the legions of fans who have said that the penultimate episode of BoJack, “The View from Halfway Down,” should have served as the series finale of the show. I’m not so sure. This particular installment sees BoJack (Will Arnett) in some sort of pseudo-purgatory, mental fantasy world where all the characters whose deaths have affected him across the run of the show are gathering for dinner and a show.
It’s pretty obvious from the get-go that BoJack’s latest bender is what brought him here and that he might very likely be among the dead. (Fans have speculated for years that the show would eventually end with BoJack’s death.) By the end of the episode, with the black sludge of mortality approaching and consuming him, it seems like BoJack has died. Drowned in the swimming pool as the intro of every episode seemed to foreshadow.
And this corrosive feeling carries through to the actual series finale, “Nice While It Lasted.” After a few stupid (but funny) fake-outs, it’s revealed that BoJack did nearly die, but he is, in fact, alive. This seemed to rub people the wrong way, but I think it was necessary for the show. Yes, he is alive, but one could argue that the ending BoJack receives is far from a happy one. Is it the best he could ask for? Probably. But it is hardly a happy one. Why must he be dead on top of it?
At the core of BoJack Horseman, there was a hopeful optimism. The idea that we could become better, even if everyone, including the voices in our own heads, tells us otherwise. Does BoJack become better? I think so. As viewers, we have a lens into BoJack that the world of Hollywoo(b) does not have. We can sympathize, perhaps empathize, but never condone. We can root for him to get better, but the final season taught us that the actions of BoJack deserved consequences. And now he has to live with them. They do not die with him. He has to constantly work at getting better, better all the time. This is the true lasting message of the show. Our actions have consequences, but we can always get better.
This idea is best expressed through BoJack’s final interaction with Todd (Aaron Paul). The structure of the finale is centered around Princess Carolyn’s wedding and it is divided into a series of conversations BoJack has with each of the show’s other main characters, one at a time. He savors the loyalty of Mr. Peanutbutter’s (Paul F. Tompkins) everlasting, no-strings-attached friendship. He reconciles professionally with Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris). He stays in the silence with Diane (Alison Brie) before they’re out of each other’s lives forever. But the heart of the episode (and perhaps the heart of the entire show) is in Todd.
Todd, who has always thrust sincerity into seemingly-trivial things in this world, regards “The Hokey Pokey” with more in-depth analysis than perhaps anyone has ever given it. Todd says that in “The Hokey Pokey,” there is too much emphasis on the actual hokey pokey. BoJack counters by saying, “Well, that is what it’s all about,” referencing further lyrics of the song. Todd explains himself more clearly. “You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. ‘You turn yourself around.’ That’s what it’s all about.” That is what it’s all about. If you hurt someone, if you relapse, if you act in a deplorable way, there will be consequences. Potentially, they will be permanent and severe and deserved. But you turn yourself around.
BoJack has always been a bittersweet, deep-silly show and the finale was no exception. It’s not a happy ending, but it’s an ending. A righteous one, a remarkable one. A beautiful one, really. But the show was always this way. What came most surprising was in the ending of The Good Place.
Another show with an optimistic heart, The Good Place dealt with sadness from time to time, but there was always the prevailing belief that the show would end happily because it was made by Michael Schur and not Raphael Bob-Waksberg. Instead, The Good Place ended bittersweetly, too. Different notes were hit along the way, but fans were still left with existential thought-processes and intense streaks of melancholy. Both shows are so drawn to the same ideas that it remains remarkable they ended on the same day.
Similar to BoJack’s one-character-at-a-time structure, The Good Place’s wrap-up deals with each character deciding to go through a door that would end their existence in the afterlife and in the universe, one by one.
We begin with Jason Mendoza (Manny Jacinto), who has achieved the perfect Madden game and is ready to venture into eternity. When the look of contentment spreads across his face, I knew what we were in for during this finale. It began with Jason and it was only going to get tougher. Oh, dip.
Granted, not every character transcends the universe through that door. Tahani’s (Jameela Jamil) ending is perfectly-suited to her, as the universe’s preeminent rookie architect. Michael’s (Ted Danson) ending is similarly perfect in that he gets to finally become a human and venture into the unknown (sorry, Kristen Bell). And Janet (D’Arcy Carden) gets to experience everything forever because any other outcome for her not-a-robot life is just too sad to imagine.
But we do still see the end of Jason, Chidi (William Jackson Harper), and Eleanor (Kristen Bell). And it’s almost as if each character’s departure into the door is a little bit more devastating each time. But why is that? I thought the point was that each character would be at peace at the door, rather than afraid. A billion or more Bearimys is supposed to bring peace? So why am I sad? Why is the only peace I’m finding the one I feel for myself and my own eventual trip through the door?
It’s because they’re still television characters who we have spent time with and it’s okay that they have not transcended the medium. If the best shows end too early, then The Good Place is the pinnacle of television. Four seasons for one of the best to ever do it? It’s not always the Mike Schur strategy. But it was perfect because when Chidi puts his hands in his pockets and Eleanor’s hair spins around, I am sad and awed and wishing for more. But there’s no coming back from that. There is a finality to it and it had to be bittersweet or else it wouldn’t have been The Good Place.
I mean, it’s fucking brutal to see Eleanor in tears, begging Chidi to stay in the afterlife with her. This is undeniably the saddest moment of “Whenever You’re Ready,” the finale. In a show that often went to great lengths to make the Chidi and Eleanor relationship seem legitimate, only in the past couple of episodes did it really feel like it belonged to the pantheon of TV romances. That’s why it hurts so much for us, too, when her voice breaks with the crushing realization she tried to stave off (and that we can all relate to) and she says, “But you don’t though. You don’t have to go. You don’t have to leave me.” It’s crushing. We don’t want Chidi to go either. We don’t want to go through the door with him or with Eleanor because it means we are going through the door, too. And then our time in the Good Place is over.
(Listen to the podcast if you want a little extra time, though. Mike Schur’s discussion about the wave is worth the price of admission, which is zero. It’s why I didn’t focus on that moment, even though it is the episode’s best. Schur said everything that needed to be said about it.)
But it has to end sometime or else we’re not building to any sort of truth. If BoJack just keeps relapsing or if Shawn keeps moving the goalposts of morality, then we’re not actually achieving anything. We’re just ignoring the artistic truth in favor of having a dwindling amount of fun.
By actually bringing the stories to an end, we have the ability to learn something and we gain a brand new perspective on the world that we get to carry forward with us. For The Good Place, help is other people. The same is true for BoJack, even though we have to understand that sometimes, the consequences of our actions take our help away. We don’t get it all the time. But does everyone deserve a shot? I reckon that Schur and Bob-Waksberg would agree: Yes. They do. Everyone deserves a chance at going through that door, even if the path to get there is a tortured one.
That’s how it can feel to watch these finales in the same small window of time. Torture. Two of many people’s favorite shows of the past decade ending at the same time, putting their characters through heartbreak and devastation and making the audience cry and cry, cry cry cry? It’s just not fair. It’s torture.
But there’s something crucial about torture. The fact that one could be so broken up watching these episodes, it means that they meant something along the way. They had a tangible impact on me, at least, and on so many others, to be sure. I liked feeling the emotions of loss and nostalgia. I liked feeling bittersweet, even if it hurt so much. It’s important to feel those sorts of things because they remind us that we can feel at all. Give me a laugh and some tears every day. The heartful series finale will always be my favorite kind of episode. It was true on May 16, 2013. It’s still true today, when I anticipate watching the series finale of M*A*S*H. Goodbyes in the real world hurt. If they hurt in the fictional world, too, then that is not less legitimate. They were our friends. And our friendships were a fun way to be for a while. Whether we were in the waves or just watching them, at the view from halfway down.
So yes, there’s something fun about a show that maintains loyalty to its identity by having a series final be funny and give the characters what they deserve (Veep, Seinfeld, you know the drill). But sometimes, it’s nice to have a little bit more, a little bit of heart. Or a lot a bit of heart.
Things are always so much easier on television. Bonds are formed through some of the funniest moments. Relationships arise when people in them act in fairy tale ways. And when life goes on in the real world, we know that we only get one finale. So it’s nice to see a story wrap up, as if the characters don’t have any more hurdles to overcome. There’s nothing to worry about with Jim and Pam or Eleanor Shellstrop or Todd Chavez. They’re good now. They’ve grown to the point where their reward is peace. Their story gets to end. That’s television. All of the heart can lead to a happily ever after. Forgive me for wanting to hang out there just a little bit longer. After all, everything is fine.
