The final season of a series is almost always a game-changer. How well it goes over with audiences and critics can make or break the entire show's legacy. More often than not, it seems that beloved TV shows tend to suffer from poor final seasons or episodes. Think Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother or Dexter. In many ways, the odds are stacked against showrunners and writers when it comes to crafting the perfect ending, so this outcome isn't entirely unexpected. It's hard to come up with something that will please everyone and do justice to a series everyone loves, especially if it's very long-running.
While it's not as common as fans would like, the final season and episode being wrapped up well can be incredibly satisfying and add to the entire experience. Series like Breaking Bad and Six Feet Under were both quite long-running and very popular, and are credited with having beautiful endings that they're still remembered for today. Both of those endings took everything that happened in the series and all the themes that were there and wrapped it up in a way that felt satisfying. But there's another way to end a series that may be a little riskier and divisive. If done right, like this recent series finale was, it can be so effective.
It's the norm for shows to evolve and go through a transformation throughout their run. Of course, a series that stayed the same would be boring and likely not running for very long. It's important to keep up with the times and address relevant themes in society. What's not so common, is for a series to turn itself on its head so much to the point where it changes genres and becomes something completely different from what it started as. This is exactly what HBO's recently concluded Search Party did, and writers should take note.
First airing on TBS in 2016, Search Party moved to HBO Max for its third season which premiered in 2020. It's a black comedy series focusing on a group of friends living in New York City, each fitting into a different millennial stereotype. The first season focuses on the main character Dory, played by Alia Shawkat, and her obsession with finding a missing former classmate of the group named Chantal. This and the fallout of their journey is the main focus of the first two to three seasons, with other things thrown in of course.
Once season four kicks off, however, things start to change and by the final season, the show is nearly unrecognizable. Dory is abducted by an obsessed stalker and held hostage for a significant amount of time. While she's going through this experience, there are some seriously disturbing scenes, and they can be tense and unsettling. The comedy is very much still there because a lot of what goes on is so ridiculous, but there's a noticeable shift in where things are going. Of course, nothing can compare to what viewers were brought in season 5.
The fifth and final season takes place after Dory has escaped from her kidnaper, she has spent some time in a mental institution, she feels that she is fully enlightened after her experience and wants to share that with the world. What follows is a truly bizarre dive into a psychological, culty, slightly science fiction, season of television that took the show straight into the horror genre. The last few episodes especially are action-packed, violent, and gory. Such a stark change in tone seems like it wouldn't go over well, but the way it was done worked so seamlessly.
Even though the crazy horror plotline seems like it could be just too jarring and a big turnoff, it actually fits in with the rest of the series much more than audiences might think. Five seasons might not seem like a super long-running show, but it's a good amount of time to develop characters. Writers on Search Party really used every episode to pack in so much character development, especially when it came to the character of Dory. While the progression is very unrealistic in many ways, it's also very natural. What happens with the characters and the choices they make does not feel out of place at all.
Of course, fans who tuned into the show for a bit of mystery and a lot of comedy may not love the direction it goes because it is so extreme. However, that's fully down to personal taste and not because it doesn't work. The finale actually has received a really positive response from critics and fans alike. Not only does it make sense with the rest of the series, but season five of Search Party is the ultimate satire of today's world and the people in it. And the show has always been this way.
Search Party truly stuck to its guns for the entire time it aired. It set out to be a parody of city-dwelling millennials, and that was fully maintained. As the show aired, the world changed a lot and became increasingly wilder. So did the series. Combined with just being a great time to watch, Search Party was really quite profound. Given that the entire series is now available to stream it could make for some great bingeing material and is unlikely to leave viewers feeling disappointed.