I thought Angel had by far the superior ending to Buffy. Regardless of the quality of the final season (which was questionable for both shows despite some good episodes here and there), the finale of Angel was a great wrapping up of the main character's themes and issues throughout his eight years on Buffy and his own show. Angel's road to redemption was not about reaching a goal, getting a "You Are Redeemed" plaque, and calling it a life. It was about the realization that redemption is something he had to do every single day, trying to make the right choice and help other people do the same, to do it even though he could never truly atone for the things he'd done. Angel had no finish line, and the final episode illustrated that. Everyone chose to fight an impossible fight with him because they'd learned the same lessons. And at the end they all walk forward to keep fighting that losing fight against impossible odds (just like our own fight to stay alive and live a good life even though in the end we're doomed to fail).

Meanwhile, Buffy's last episode barely worked as coherent tv, what with the uber-vampires becoming cannon fodder. Earlier just one of them nearly killed Buffy at the height of her training and powers. In the final episode, untrained Slayers and normal human beings are cutting them down like stalks of wheat. The First's potential menace ultimately felt wasted to me. An enemy like that could have played some supreme mind games if the writers had been willing to go there, but they never really did. The final episode got the job done as far as wrapping up the story, and Buffy changing the rules of Slayering is an interesting concept that gets explored a bit in the comics-only Season Eight, but as final episodes go I would not rate it highly.

I liked the last episodes of Firefly and Lost. Breaking Bad and The Shield also had very strong final episodes. I quite enjoyed the two-hour Next Generation finale, it's one of my favorite Star Trek episodes and as far as I'm concerned it's better than any of the Next Generation movies, which all tried to make Picard into an action hero.

I wasn't a big fan of Chuck's final episode. Its entire final season felt like a season too far, like the creators had put everything they had into closing all the story gaps in Season Four with the anticipation of not getting another season. Then they did get a final set of episodes, and didn't seem to know what to do with them. All the ammunition was spent. So we got a ridiculous arc about Morgan as a crazy intersect and then Chuck being a spy without his intersect, and then a strange finale where Sarah and Chuck basically end up having to start over again after all they'd been through. I did not find it satisfying.

X-Files had a horrific final season (I like to pretend it never happened), and then the two hour series finale basically amounted to Mulder/Chris Carter looking at the camera and trying to explain all the convoluted plot twists and dropped storylines they'd built up over nine years of making it up as they went. They then leave the show's main conflict unresolved and refused to return to it even when they got the opportunity with a second movie. The show was always about searching for the truth, but when we finally get to see the show's elemental alien-related truths the conclusion is that there's nothing the characters or anyone else can do about it. It was all a bit depressing. In the final equation, Mulder's belief in hidden truths meant nothing, and Scully, for me, remained the only constant emotional and moral center the show possessed. But even she is left with no answer and no resolution. She gives up her son and gains Mulder back instead, which I'm not convinced was a good trade.