Spoiler warning: If you have not yet watched the last two episodes of The Big Bang Theory or Game of Thrones, why not?! Even the photos above have probably already spoiled things for you. Nevertheless, you should probably stop reading and go stream the episodes instead, in case you still want some surprise from the experience.

If you’ve been under several rocks (or care nothing about pop culture), you might be interested to know that two of the most popular shows on TV just aired their last episodes. Both being geek-friendly shows, The Big Bang Theory, and Game of Thrones have huge fanbases prone to picking at every nit possible, and placing sky-high expectations on each series to go out in a blaze of episodic glory. Interestingly, there were a number of similarities between how they each approached their big conclusions (BBT after 12 seasons, and GOT after 8). However, while BBT gave us a nice ending that was both glorious and heartfelt, serving longtime fans while staying true to the characters and how they’ve grown, GOT rushed through multiple big climactic events, and wreaked havoc with their accumulated character development and the goodwill of many many fans.

Despite the apologists (including members of the cast), you’d be hard-pressed to find much positive response to the last two episodes of Game of Thrones (at best we’re talking “Here’s why it’s not as bad as you think”). One of the biggest problems is how the show spent years and seasons to build up and develop characters who were then undercut by ridiculous decisions at the end. Jaime Lannister started the show’s whole conflict when he pushed Bran out the window and later when he helped get Ned Stark killed (all because of his taboo relationship with Cersei). However, his gradual redemption and eventual decision to leave Cersei (because she’s crazy-wicked) was dumped-on by his decision to leave Brienne, return to her (and die with her) in the end. Even worse is Daenerys Targaryen and her turn from heroic “breaker of chains”, saviour-queen to murderous villain who burned the whole capital city of King’s Landing (innocent victims and all) with dragon fire. Some have argued that she was always quite ruthless with her enemies (who the show had painted as being extremely awful people worthy of gruesome deaths). In the last episode, there was a visually fabulous moment where it looks like Dany is flexing her own dragon wings (actually an optical trick with dragon Drogon lifting off behind her). It made her look so malevolent, so Lady Dracula, that the show had clearly lost any of the subtlety or character nuance that had been its hallmark in seasons past.

Ironically, Big Bang Theory also made character turns with its leads in its last two episodes. The one that many fans still have trouble with is Penny being pregnant and being happy about it. I’m no expert in not wanting to have children (unlike my extensive experience in attacking cities on the backs of dragons), but it didn’t seem too unbelievable that someone who was dead-set against having kids would change her mind once she became pregnant. Nevertheless, the joke of unsuccessfully keeping a character’s pregnancy a secret is a sitcom standard, and they handled it pretty even-handedly (culminating in Sheldon blabbing to the entire Nobel Prize audience). Similarly, Sheldon’s own character moment came after his usual self-centredness led to all his friends being upset with him right before the Nobel ceremony. While he started to go down the “burn’em all” path in response, he was thankfully saved by his better half, Amy (Jon Snow, you really know nothing!), who helped him understand that his friends were more important and that he did wrong by them. His Nobel acceptance speech was a touching culmination to the growth that Sheldon had gone through since the beginning of the series (and I still get choked-up when I rewatch it).

There are a bunch more ways to compare the two shows. For no good reason they chose Bran to be king of the Seven (now Six) Kingdoms, and ended with a Seinfeld-esque scene of the small council (now populated with characters that we know and like) having jokey banter. Similarly, after his conciliatory speech, the last BBT scene shows Sheldon still seemingly holding court with his friends, eating takeout on the sofa. While the BBT scene seems comforting and well-earned, the GOT version seems like self-satire. The endings also revisit the theme music, with GOT orchestrating a melancholic, choral version of the orchestral theme as Jon and the wildlings march out someplace north. On BBT, the Barenaked Ladies do a stripped-down acoustic version of the theme song, giving a nostalgic flavour to the final visuals (again, of the gang eating takeout).

I don’t know what the downturn of GOT in fans’ estimation will do to the prequel series that are coming. I’ll probably still watch them, but the disappointment of this last season has really made me wary of a GOT show that is not based on actually George RR Martin source-material. If they couldn’t stay true to characters that had several books of story to start with, how much are they going to mess up a new bunch of characters that have little to nothing about them already written. In contrast (Are you surprised there’s a BBT parallel?), the prequel series for BBT is already here. I’ve been enjoying Young Sheldon for two seasons now, and if you haven’t been watching, what they did in the season finale was just perfect. Young Sheldon arranged a party for his neighbourhood friends to join him to hear the announcement of the Nobel Prize winners. Sadly no one showed up (especially since it was early morning, Texas time) and Sheldon felt discouraged, and thought that he’d always be alone. In a touching quasi-crossover with the original series, we got a montage showing what each of the future characters, young versions of Leonard, Penny, Howard, Bernadette, Raj, and Amy were doing at that exact moment. It was adorable, sweet, and such a great way to hand-off from one series to the other.

Now that both these shows have ended, it won’t be easy to find something to take their places. The TV/streaming universe is ever-expanding and I’m hoping that something will be as good and as enjoyable. For better or worse, both these shows were special and unique, and had a fond spot in my viewing schedule and my heart.