Moments of Joy: The Undiscovered Country

As for traumatic or upsetting finales, well, there are a few standouts.I was upset when Quantum Leap ended by telling us that Sam never got back home.The final episode of Freaks and Geeks sits poorly with me, too.It’s actually a really good episode, but it bugs me that Lindsay bailed on both her friends and a huge educational opportunity so she could follow the Grateful Dead with her new hippy friends.To me, it speaks poorly of her.Plus, I hate hippies.And anything that ends with an unresolved cliffhanger is inherently upsetting to me.Most recently, the series finale of FlashForward just went out not with a bang, but with kind of a farty noise.Basically, the last several minutes are another Blackout, where we see glimpses of the future, and then the main character apparently dies, but not really.It’s hard to explain, but the storytelling choices implied by the final Flashes wouldn’t have worked in an ongoing series – so it’s not even like they ended with a cliffhanger and then got the rug pulled out from under them.The final minutes seem like a response to the cancellation, but not the response you would hope for.It’s sort of a “Screw You!”, and it unfortunately ruins an otherwise really good series.