Doug Howard and David Bianculli produced an entire book about endings, specifically television finales. The book, “Television Finales—from ‘Howdy Doody’ to ‘Girls’” (2018), is a collection of essays edited by Howard and Bianculli that catalog the last show in a series where an effort is made to provide closure, answer lingering questions or send characters off to different spin-offs.
The most famous TV finale came when “The Fugitive” added a late-summer two-part conclusion in 1967 allowing Richard Kimble to stop running, a watershed moment for television, said Howard.
But it wasn’t by grand design. “ABC wasn’t at all interested in ending ‘The Fugitive,’” said Bianculli, who also serves as a TV critic on NPR’s “Fresh Air. “But after they ran the finale in the dead of summer and outrated an appearance by the Beatles on the ‘Ed Sullivan Show’ three years earlier that had been the biggest TV event up to that point, the finale became common and almost mandatory,” he said.
The first finale of note came on “Howdy Doody,” a kids show that finished a 13-year run in 1960. That’s when the camera closes in on Clarabell the Clown, a character played by three different actors, none of whom had uttered a word in 13 years.
When Clarabelle says very quietly, “Goodbye, kids,” Howard suggests the effect might have proved alarming for some people. “If you had any kind of clown phobia, this is your worst nightmare come true,” he said, adding the scene is available on YouTube.
But finales are known to stir fans that have followed a particular program for years, said Howard, an English professor at Suffolk County Community College in New York. “Sometimes people don’t want to say goodbye,” he said.
Bianculli told Steve Tarter that the finale of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” was “very Seinfeld-ian” That’s when creator Carl Reiner (who played Alan Brady on the show) announced plans to play Rob Petrie, the chief writer, in the final episode.
Sometimes finales don’t go over or come too late, noted Bianculli, the professor of TV studies at Rowan University. “The finale to ‘The Walking Dead’ was like the dog that caught a car that stopped. At one time it was the most-watched cable show and it was excellent over the first several years. But the show refused to die. It went on too long. I’m just not interested in any spinoffs at this point,” he said.
When it comes to TV finales, however, the hardest thing may just be keeping up. Both Howard and Bianculli admitted to looking forward to two finales this Memorial Day weekend—when “Barry” and “Succession” come to an end.
Comments & Upvotes