"They never really did a final episode," said Preston Beckman, the executive vice president of programming at NBC. "We didn't make the decision about 'Homicide' until May, and by then it was too late to go back.
We care about the pay-off of a final episode of Breaking Bad, for instance, because we've watched the storyline unfold slowly but surely until it reaches this climax.
What I do feel is a final episode of the show is not the same as another episode.
The show's quiet commentary on the tragedy of black invisibility in white society also isn't made plain until the final episode, a delayed reveal for a series that on the one hand makes a loud case for social mobility but is in fact rife with skepticism.
Unfortunately there are no episodes left, but lucky for you, the producers waited until the final episode to show you a segment called "A Day in a Life of David Letterman".
None of the actors know, until the final episode of a season, whether their characters are actually heroes or villains.
Lucy Ricardo never actually made it in show business, "The Fugitive" didn't find the one-armed man until the final episode, and a baby on "Will & Grace" could have the same leadening effect as it did on "Mad About You".
Exactly why this progressive condition never showed up until the final episode was a medical mystery, but it allowed Lord Grantham to suggest Barrow be brought back as butler with Carson as a sort of overlord, the dowager countess of butlers.
"Tanner on Tanner," though it comes at an analogous historical moment, is, until the final episode, more about pop culture than it is about politics.
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