10 TV Shows That Actually Stuck The Landing

Producing a single season of quality TV is a gargantuan task, but maintaining consistency across multiple seasons and then paying all that off with a gratifying series finale? It's practically miraculous.

So many great shows have failed to stick the landing because giving audiences a meaningful conclusion to a years-long story is so, so difficult.

It's so easy for those in charge to lose sight of a series' characters or themes, and in addition to that, we as fans tend to be a hella fickle bunch.

But every so often, a TV show comes along that confidently maintains a high standard of quality right to the bitter end.

And to be clear, we're not merely talking about series finales here - which are undeniably an important part of the package - but the entire final batch of episodes.

Bringing any series to a close in a way that leaves fans feeling enormously satisfied is incredibly difficult, and yet these TV shows actually managed to pull it off, to the extent that it might've even ended up in a much better place than when it started...

There's actually a reasonable argument to be made that Parks and Recreation should've wrapped up with its sixth season, which ended with a final episode that felt absolutely worthy of being a series finale.

And yet, the post-script of a seventh season nimbly avoided the Scrubs Problem of outstaying its welcome past its logical end-point.

With a three-year time jump, season seven was basically a victory lap for the show's characters - an opportunity to tie their arcs off in satisfying, hilarious, and poignant ways.

While Parks and Rec's ending didn't challenge audiences in any substantial way, sometimes a comforting, candy-coloured happy ending is exactly what a show, its characters, and fans deserve.

The big treat, of course, was seeing the show leap further forward in time in its final episode, revealing what became of every major character long-term - namely the near-inevitable revelation that Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) likely became the President of the United States.

The real success of Parks and Rec's ending, then, is that it basically gave viewers two quality series finales for the price of one.