Original Desmond

Let's define long running shows as 5 or more seasons and of course show has to have finished

I can't think of many where the last season was the best season

Buffy - No
Dexter - Hell No !
Sopranos - No
True Blood - No
Alias - No
Lost - No
X Files - No
Stargate SG 1/atlantis etc - No
Smallville - no

even when you look at long running sitcoms

Friends - No
Sex and the City - No
90210, Melrose place and BH90210 - NO
Family ties, family matters, growing pains, step by step etc - No
How i met your mother - No
Baywatch - No
Married with Children - No
Charmed - No


I was thinking possibly Oz, really hard to find a show where the last season was clearly the best one. I'm also thinking possibly Charles in Charge because the last season, season 5 is when Nicole Eggert was closest to being legal

dex14

Breaking Bad... The Wire?

Original Desmond

Breaking Bad is close for sure, still season 4 could be considered the best. I haven't seen the Wire.

johnnysd

I would vote for the last season of:

Quantum Leap (and one of the best finales ever)

Josh-da-man

Farscape, maybe? (Though it only ran for four seasons.)

Star Trek DS9, possibly? Been ages since I watched it, so everything is sort of mixed up in my memory.

DJariya

Original Desmond

Yep i would second Friday Night Lights. the show was very consistent and just improved just a little bit every season

fujishig

Are we excising season 2 from our collective memories or something?

Decker

Taxi's fifth and final season might not have been the funniest, but between the Latka/Simka marital strife, Louie's ending of one relationship and start of another and "Jim's Inheritance", it was the most poignant and thoughtful season. I consider it the best one.

PhantomStranger

It's never happened in the history of television. What happens most of the time is the creative staff behind the scenes scramble for jobs on other shows knowing it's getting canceled, since they want more security. Producers tend to cut that budget and you have a lot of inexperienced people working on a series in its last season. Notable exceptions to this can occur if a show gets canceled unexpectedly like House, which had a decent season despite the loss of Cutty.

Jimmy James

The Shield perhaps...been a while but it ended so perfectly

I think comedies are harder to come by in this category. They overstay their welcome often.

Jimmy James

Nah...season 6 was much better than 7. It did peak late.

Groucho

Six Feet Under

Decker

Sorry. Great final episode. Great near-final episode shocker. But most of that season dragged and James Cromwell - an actor I usually really like - was not well used and killed every scene with Ruth he was in. I liked seasons 2 and 3 a lot more overall.

Kennyx

Fringe!

That last season was the best I've seen of anything from network TV.

RichC2

Most seem to disagree on that one.

My Other Self

Although not the best season of the show, there's classic Seinfeld in Season 9 (yada yada yada, Festivus).

Breaking Bad may get my vote.

RichC2

The last season of Breaking Bad was easily the most fast paced and outright entertaining, it just lacked the depth of some earlier seasons.

majorjoe23

I'd say the last season of The Wire was the weakest. McNulty's plan was just ridiculous.

PhantomStranger

That is definitely the only one mentioned I would consider.

Michael Corvin

Nah, the fifth season relied on too many gimmick episodes... Lee Harvey Oswald x 2, Elvis, Dr Ruth, a Civil War leap, plus roughly 5 or so Evil Leaper episodes... it was just overkill for a single season. Also while the epilogue with Al was 'effing brilliant, most of the finale was so-so since it was never intended to be the series finale.

DJariya

Huge fan of Walker Texas Ranger. Series Finale and Final season was perfect. Walker's earlier seasons, especially the ones produced by Cannon and Sony weren't that great. Standard crime procedural. Once Norris and his brother Aaron took over the show and the rights moved to CBS, the show got better IMO.


I try to pretend this 2005 Reunion movie never existed. It really screwed up what was otherwise a perfect end to the show. The movie wasn't bad, but it ended on a cliffhanger that never got resolved.

Giantrobo

Smallville. I gave up on it early on but i would watch random eps. When they started having more DC heroes towards the end to me it improved a lot.

DJariya

Seasons 9 and 10 of Smallville were probably the strongest run of episodes of the entire run. Erica Durance and Welling really gelled together and became very believable as Lois and Clark. There were alot of really great episodes in season 10. Some of the more hardcore Superman fans were just pissed that in the final season we never actually saw Welling in the Superman suit and in the series finale it was a CG version of him from a really far distance.

morriscroy

Season 9 of Dynasty.

(It wasn't my favorite show, but I watched it with my then-gf).

The writing on Dynasty seemed to go downhill as the years went on, especially after season 2 or 3.

Season 9 seemed to have somewhat better writing than the previous seasons, but was probably "too little too late" to save the show by then. IIRC, some guy that cut his teeth on Dallas was brought in for season 9 of Dynasty. (Don't remember the name offhand).