How Series Finales Were Reviewed Compared To The Shows, Charted

​Series finales are tough. You've got to tie up any remaining story threads (or leave them hanging in darkness, if you're "The Sopranos"), include the right character beats, and still make a good episode of television. 

But it looks like showrunners are actually pretty good at crafting finales, with shows' final episodes routinely outperforming the average reviews for the rest of the show. Redditor u/ChallengeResponse put together this chart showing how series finales stacked up compared to the average episode, based on IMDb review data: 

If nothing else, let this be further evidence that "Scrubs" season 9 was a terrible idea — the season 8 finale was one of the best relative to the rest of the show, while the season 9 finale was one of the worst. 

U/ChallengeResponse broke down the data in different ways, including ordering the chart by average episode rating — you can see the rest of those charts here.

[Via Data Is Beautiful]