The Last One

I loved St. Elsewhere. This was a series that could make you laugh you butt off, creep you out or terrify you with it's life-threatening situations, and rip out your heart with some of its twists.

The show had a reputation of reflecting television as a whole with loads of inside humor: A reference to the hospital barber named Floyd was summarized with the joke, "He may bury us all." I wonder if Andy Griffith ever saw that one.

But this episode was the tribute episode to all TV endings, with references ranging from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" to "Dallas." And, no, I won't provide the spoiler to the ending, but when it first aired, it literally stunned the fans. We honestly thought the hospital would be torn down at the end of Season 5, but when NBC decided to give the series one more year, we got the ending we would talk about three decades later as one for the ages.

Granted, much of the series could be like a soap opera, but with wonderful performances by so many previously unknown actors (and many known ones) and writing that could often charm and sometimes disgust you, this finale gave us fans what we really wanted.