Valerie Ettenhofer
Staff Writer

Everyone is looking for a happily ever after, and in the television world, there aren’t as many as there used to be. With critically successful shows such as “Dexter,” “The Office” and “Breaking Bad” wrapping up this year, viewers can expect more shocking and emotional series finales than usual.

Season and series finales weren’t always a platform to showcase innovative twists and turns; in the days of traditional sitcoms, seasons could come and go without much heightened conflict.

Classic series finales like that of “M*A*S*H” were watched by millions, while modern fans choose from a diverse set of genres to fit their individual viewing tastes.

Now, shows tend to amp up toward season’s end, killing off unexpected characters, taking romantic entanglements to a new level and otherwise attempting to throw off audience expectations.

Warning, spoilers are ahead! Last month, “Downton Abbey” became the latest show to pull off an unexpected death that hit audiences like a punch to the gut. This was a case of tragic misdirection; writers putting a character through the ringer or focusing on the danger of another character, only to suddenly kill off the one who’s ‘already been through so much’ or the one person viewers assume was safe. This is a classic trope used to varying degrees of success, often by medical shows like “Grey’s Anatomy,” where characters often survive the ‘big surgery’ to die from some random belated complication.

In recent years, TV shows have upped the ante by killing off regulars. “Lost” was originally written with the protagonist’s death in the first episode, and “The Walking Dead” has sent viewers into a ‘no-one-is-safe’ fit of frenzy by frequently taking out integral characters in gruesome ways. The two most surprising finale character deaths in recent years were the killings of our antihero protagonists’ wives in “Dexter” and “24.”

A simple but impactful cliffhanger is the “Who dunnit?” finale. Perhaps most memorable of these was night-time soap “Dallas,” which left America with the question “Who shot J.R.?” Since then, these burning watercooler questions have revolved around assassination attempts [“The West Wing”], murderers [“The Killing”], terrorists [“Homeland”] and the overall fate of a character [“Sherlock”].

When it comes to sci-fi, finales tend to blow the mind [and the established format] in every way possible. Shows like “Fringe,” “Lost” and “The X-Files” crafted emotionally evocative season-enders that strayed hugely from the weddings-and-funerals norm. A revelation of an alternate universe or a flash-forward in time can be met with disbelief, but do a great job of getting fans talking and creating passion for the next season.

Some do get their happy endings after all; many shows offer up situations of domestic bliss that make romantic shippers weak in the knees. Jim and Pam’s kiss on “The Office,” Ross choosing Rachel at his own wedding in “Friends,” and a plethora of pregnancies, weddings and consummations offer some well-deserved glee in a decade of such intense programming.

The most important finale will always be the last one, and some shows pull off this complicated hat trick well.

Time jumps such as those in “Six Feet Under” and last year’s “Weeds” are a go-to ending, though some work better than others.

The gimmick ending was popular in shows around the 1980s; both “St. Elsewhere” and “Newhart” ended with some variation of “It was all a dream!” More recently, “The Sopranos” cut to black mid-scene, confusing and tormenting viewers in ways a finale never had before.

Perhaps the best series finales leave fans with a lingering image; an eye closing, a purple door, lights on a football field, that same old bar. These are simple and familiar gestures that remind viewers that this story happened; that we got to be a part of it, and that all good things must come to an end.