Also there is crying involved in The Americans (SMART)
Dan Zhao
2025-04-13 14:45:51 +0000 UTC
This literally reminds me of The Americans (2013) starring Keri Russell (Felicity!) and Matthew Rhys.
#1, The Americans' season finale is one of the top "stick the landing" finishers. (IMDB Americans finale is 9.7; IMDB S&L finale is 9.5) BTW I haven't seen The WIRE but someone mentioned it also had its finale being the best rated episode. This is important because you need the "catharsis" or the wrapping up of things that happen AFTER the climax. Because the climax is the "top point" of the story. And the problem is that so many shows and movies hit the climax and then end after ~10 minutes with no talk about things that happened or things that are meaningful (for example Avengers: Endgame. Great but the ending was a letdown).
#2, Excellent ensemble supporting characters you REALLLLLY care about AND two leads that are top of the top. Also, the "catharsis" ending spends its time "wrapping up" the supporting characters, to show where they're heading next and/or how what happened affected them.
#3, Essentially about family, friends, relationships... and with both that's how life is unfortunately" bittersweet and unexpected moments.
I realized that while the first impression of a show is important for you to keep watching... The last impression of the show is important for you to remember it.
To take it back to CW... If I were to judge The Flash by all of its seasons, then pft. But if I were to judge The Flash by seasons 1 and 2, then I would say it's close to Season 1 and 2 of .
Yet despite my high degree of love for those first seasons... I just don't have any feeling of love for the show. If it had ended with Season 2 my opinion would be so different.
(TLDR similar thing with Supernatural. Supernatural was heavily planned by the showrunners and written with the 5-season arc. The rest was commissioned and the showrunners had to come up with things with little preparation time, and you can see how that went).