Angel
After four seasons of tumultuous storytelling that took us through the highs and lows of the titular vampire’s new life in L.A. (and the lows were really low) the final season of Joss Whedon’s supernatural drama show shouldn’t have been great, but it was. Without Buffy and Firefly to juggle, creative focus was suddenly on keeping Angel afloat, and it was all change at Angel Investigations as the core team took over law firm Wolfram & Hart in an effort to fight evil from within, only for everything to go massively pear-shaped. Gunn got his mind altered to become a legal expert and took an enormous amount of psychic damage. Fred was killed and her mind taken over by the powerful ancient being Illyria. Angel became a puppet, literally and figuratively. Meanwhile, Spike (James Marsters) was added to the cast, reviving the excellent chemistry between the two clashing vampires of the mothership show.
The season was consistently jolted with these fresh sparks and built to a fantastic but bittersweet conclusion, as Angel and the gang realized they weren’t fighting evil from the inside, but were actually being absorbed by it, triggering a final stand where each character accepted their doom because they understood that the fight would never end, and “winning” was an impossible concept. Yes, the story continued in the (also good) Angel: After the Fall comics, but the show itself went out on a brilliantly philosophical high note. – Kirsten Howard
Better Call Saul
It may be hard to remember now, but it took a minute for Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul to really find itself. Originally conceived as a half-joke in the Breaking Bad writers’ room, the mere notion of a spinoff following the travails of Walter White’s colorful criminal lawyer didn’t come out of the gates fully formed. Midway through its run, however, Better Call Saul would blossom into its own special, tonally unique thing.
By the time its final episodes rolled around, Better Call Saul was truly on a roll. The first half of the season 6 meticulously and entertainingly works towards the execution of Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and Kim’s (Rhea Seehorn) plan to do “something unforgivable” to well-meaning rival Howard Hamlin. After that “something unforgivable” proves to be, like, really unforgivable, the back half of the season spends much of its time on one of the most satisfying extended flash-forwards in television history. – Alec Bojalad
The Good Place
The last season of The Good Place finally saw the main characters actually get to the Good Place, after designing an experiment to prove that flawed people in a simulated Good Place can become better people. But inevitably, they found that once humans reached a place where they could have everything they wanted, there was nothing left to strive for, and their lives became boring and kind of meaningless. This all led to the creation of what was effectively a suicide door, where people could end their existence once they felt their lives were complete. One by one, we saw the characters we’d come to know and love enter the door. That’s when the sobbing started.
Yet The Good Place’s great finale was bolstered by the fascinating moral and ethical questions at work throughout the rest of the season, with the characters proving, bit by bit, that the entire structure of eternal reward and punishment was fundamentally broken, earning them a real chance at happiness. It’s a wonderful batch of episodes; just don’t make us think about anyone’s final speech unless there’s at least one box of tissues nearby. – KH
