My Favourite Endings

Not a story, just some jottings. Started when I was working in our office during a slack period. Feel free to add your own favourites in the comments.



I started thinking recently about endings, initially about the final scenes of TV series. My personal favourite one was the ending of Cheers, when Sam Malone is sat in the bar alone and someone rattles the locked door. “We’re closed.” Just about perfect.
The opposite of that was the last episode of Soap, when everybody is involved in some cliffhanger ending the same as normal, but they freeze frame the scenes. But then again Soap always was unique.
Blakes Seven. Now that was an example of how to go out with a bang. It hadn’t been that good for a couple of series, but the last episode and especially the last scene, when everyone but Avon has been shot by the federation and he raises his weapon, laughs that laugh and... It fades out. You hear a final shot, but who has fired it? They’re all dead right? Or are they? Has Blake had a plan all along? Could Avon possibly escape? We never do find out.
Fawlty Towers. Just about all the endings were great. “Ducks Off.” Sybil shouting for Basil who has hidden in the laundry basket. Basil with the gnome under his arm off to visit Mr O’Reilly, “And then I might go to Canada.” “How did they ever win the war?” Basil Dragged out by his heels as the Hotel inspector stares at the space where just moments before he was offered a rat. Basil dropping Mrs Richards’s vase. “That cost eighty five pounds!” Basil ordering a room for the night with lashings of hot screwdriver. Possibly they were all so memorable because that was the point the whole episode was building too, but still, for every one of the stories to end that way was some achievement.
The Italian Job. The coach dangling over the edge of the cliff, the gold and the team balancing each other, Michael Caine trying to grasp it and it slides further away. “Listen lads, I’ve got a great idea.”
Then I started thinking about other sorts of endings. Doctor Who companions for a start. I thought Sarah Jane’s last scenes were wonderful. Looking around expecting to be in Hill View Rd, in Croyden. She looks around, discovers she’s not in Hill View Rd, shrugs, says to herself its probably not even Croyden, and walks off looking up into the sky. My other favourite leaving scene was for Tegan. She’s suddenly sick of all the death and destruction and storms out of the TARDIS. The doctor turns away unhappily and the TARDIS leaves. Tegan comes rushing back, as if she’s changed her mind, but it’s too late. Echoing the Doctors words she murmurs “Brave Heart, Tegan.” Is it a coincidence that these two were two of the longest lasting and most popular of the companions? My other memorable Doctor Who Ending was the last one ever before the TV movie, when they knew it was finishing. The Doctor and Ace walk off into the sunset, with the Doctor saying, “Come Ace, there’s work to be done.”
And then my mind began to wander. Bon Scott’s final recorded words on Highway to Hell were “Shazbar, Nanu, Nanu.” Weird but wonderful as always, thanks Bon. Thin Lizzys final performance at Reading was inevitably “Still in love with you.” A beautiful song any way, but infused with extra poignancy by the fact this is it, the final song of the final set, and the rapport between the fans and the band was still as strong as ever.
What about the ending to both the first radio series and the television series of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Louis Armstrong’s “What a wonderful world.”? What a brilliant finish! Of course they carried on afterwards with a second radio series but it was still an inspired ending.
And then I started thinking about book endings, you know, the bit everybody reads first. The Cruel Sea is one of my favourite books anyway, but I love the ending. For five and a half years they have been battling against the Germans and the ocean and the Captain turns to Number One and says, “I must say, I’m damn tired.” The film ends the same way, sort of just fizzling out. Nice counterpoint to the harshness of the war.