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I really enjoyed this article. I agree with the commenter who said it helped bring weirdly strong feelings about our serialized cultural phenomena into focus. I will never forget that an event put on by my middle school experienced something like 50% of the expected attendance because the administration had the lack of foresight to schedule it on the same night as the end of Seinfeld. And of course the last season of X-Files was like pulling teeth, but I still wept bitter tears when it was over.
I haven't felt that way about a show since - until Battlestar, which I hope will live to a ripe old age. As for books, those of us who were attached to the Series of Unfortunate Events began our year of bereavement last October. And that was a more traditional serial; you could expect about one a year.
You've really managed to put a finger on my feelings about this; it does feel important to memorialize the end of something, to keep it under glass for all time as a way to remember that it wasn't always over. Cutting out the last of a beloved comic strip is another example (I still have the last Calvin and Hobbes, folded up in a book somewhere). It doesn't make any sense, but I guess it's a way to mark eras.
