For me, that’s Newhart.

There are probably more emotionally satisfying finales. There are probably finales that wrapped up more storylines, gave every character a meaningful goodbye, and left viewers with a lump in the throat. But in terms of landing the plane perfectly for the show it was ending, I don’t know that anybody has ever done it better than Newhart.

That’s not to say there aren’t some other great contenders.

MAS*H gave television one of its most unforgettable goodbyes. It was long, emotional, painful, funny in places, and ultimately fitting for a show that had always used comedy to survive the horror of war. “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen” felt less like a sitcom ending and more like a national event, because in a lot of ways, that’s exactly what it was.

Cheers ended exactly where it needed to end, with Sam Malone alone in the bar. Friends had come and gone. Relationships had shifted. Life had moved on. But Sam and the bar belonged together, and that final “Sorry, we’re closed” was just about perfect.

Friends gave its audience what it wanted. The apartment was empty, the keys were left behind, and the group walked out together one last time. It wasn’t shocking or especially risky, but it was warm, familiar and right. Sometimes a finale doesn’t need to reinvent anything. Sometimes it just needs to let the people we love say goodbye.

Friday Night Lights may have one of the most satisfying endings of any modern drama. Coach Taylor and Tami both get honored, the team gets its ending, and the show remembers that the real love story was never just football. It was marriage, family, community and sacrifice. Clear eyes, full hearts, closed beautifully.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show gave us that legendary group hug, with everyone shuffling toward the tissues together. It was sentimental, yes, but it earned every bit of that sentiment because those characters had become a kind of workplace family. It was sweet without being cheap.

Frasier gave its main character something he had spent the entire series chasing, whether he knew it or not: the courage to take a risk. For a character who could overthink a tossed salad and scrambled eggs, ending with him choosing love and uncertainty was a pretty graceful final note.

The Office also deserves mention because it managed to recover from some uneven later seasons and still give nearly everyone a meaningful sendoff. The documentary aired, Dwight and Angela got married, Michael returned just long enough to make everyone happy, and Pam’s line about wishing there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve left them hit harder than it had any right to.

And then there’s The Fugitive, which gave viewers something television audiences desperately wanted: resolution. Dr. Richard Kimble finally caught up with the one-armed man, cleared his name and ended the chase. For a series built entirely around pursuit, suspicion and injustice, that ending delivered exactly what the story had promised from the beginning.

So yes, there are plenty of great finales.

But Newhart is still my pick.

Because that finale didn’t just end the show.

It detonated the show.

And somehow, it did it in a way that made perfect sense.

For most of its run, Newhart was already a strange little universe. Bob Newhart played Dick Loudon, an author who owned an inn in Vermont, surrounded by increasingly bizarre townspeople. The show started out somewhat grounded, but over time, it got weirder and weirder. By the final season, the whole thing felt like it had wandered out of sitcom reality and into some kind of gentle fever dream.

Which, as it turned out, was exactly the point.

The finale itself is funny enough, with the Japanese investors, the town being sold, and everything becoming completely ridiculous. Then, in the final scene, Dick gets hit in the head with a golf ball.

And Bob Newhart wakes up in bed.

Not as Dick Loudon.

As Dr. Bob Hartley from The Bob Newhart Show.

Next to Suzanne Pleshette.

He tells her he had the strangest dream, about owning an inn in Vermont and being surrounded by weird people. She listens, mildly horrified, and then delivers the perfect punchline: “That settles it. No more Japanese food before you go to bed.”

That’s the kind of ending that should not work.

It should feel like a cheat. It should feel like the writers threw up their hands and said, “None of this mattered.” It should make fans angry.

Instead, it became one of the most beloved finales in television history because it understood the assignment better than almost any finale ever has. It honored Bob Newhart’s whole television legacy. It rewarded longtime viewers. It explained the increasing weirdness of the show without needing to explain it.

And most importantly, it was funny.

That last part matters.

A comedy should end funny.

Not every sitcom finale seems to remember that. Some of them get so sentimental that they forget the reason people watched the show in the first place. They dim the lights, cue the emotional music, send everyone off to a new life, and practically beg the audience to cry.

Newhart didn’t beg for tears.

It went for one more perfect laugh.

And it got it.

That is harder than it looks. A finale has to satisfy people who have invested years in a show, but it also has to remain true to the show itself. It can’t just become a reunion special, a funeral, a highlight reel or an extended curtain call. It has to feel like the last chapter, not just the last episode.

The best series finales don’t simply stop the story.

They tell you what the story was really about.

MAS*H was about surviving the unbearable with humor, friendship and whatever scraps of humanity could be protected in the middle of war. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was about the family we build in the places where we work and grow. The Fugitive was about justice delayed but not denied. Friday Night Lights was about love, loyalty, sacrifice and the strange way a game can reveal the character of a town. Cheers was about a man who finally understood that, for better or worse, the bar was the great relationship of his life.

But Newhart?

Newhart was about absurdity.

Quiet, deadpan, increasingly bizarre absurdity.

So it needed one final absurd twist.

It needed to make the whole audience gasp, then laugh, then realize the show had somehow pulled off a magic trick right in front of them.

And that’s why it worked.

It didn’t just give viewers an ending. It gave them an ending only Newhart could have given them.

That, to me, is the mark of a perfect finale. Not that everyone gets married. Not that every loose thread gets tied up. Not that every character gets a tearful goodbye and one last meaningful look at the camera.

A perfect finale understands its show.

Newhart understood itself all the way to the final punchline.

And then it woke up.