It’s been a decade since “Don’t Stop Believin'” cut off in Holsten’s, and The Sopranos cut off with it. June 10 marks the tenth anniversary of the original airing of “Made in America,” the final episode of creator David Chase’s modern mafia masterpiece. Credited (correctly!) with kicking off a new Golden Age of Television, the show ended on an equally influential note: silence. We’ll never know whether mob boss Tony Soprano was killed as he sat down for dinner with his family (as in nuclear, not crime), or if his life simply went on, with the next FBI raid, hitman or plate of ziti always just around the corner. Nor are we meant to figure it out, no matter what you’ve read on the internet. For Chase, the ambiguity and uncertainty speak not only to Tony’s uniquely precarious existence, but all of ours’ as well.

Demanding, divisive and pretty much perfect for the show it concluded, “Made in America” remains the gold standard for finales to this day. In one form or another, nearly all its successors are a reflection of it, whether attempting to right its perceived wrongs or live up to its masterpiece status. Moreover, as one of the first major shows of its kind that was allowed to end in its own time and on its own terms, The Sopranosaccidentally popularized the unfortunate idea that a show is only as good as its final episode, and that if you don’t “stick the landing,” nothing that came before is worthwhile. That’s an extreme overreaction, of course — a bad finale is not a magic eraser that wipes out the hours you spent enjoying the show up until that point — but it’s a concept creators and audiences alike now wrestle with.

With Tony trapped in that diner limbo for ten years (Schrödinger’s Soprano?), we’re taking a look at six of the standout series finales that have aired since: Mad Men, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, Lost and Battlestar Galactica. What did they get right, or wrong, about the shows they’re concluding? What did viewers take away — and what should they have focused on instead? Should we be asking if they stuck the landing, or if they leapt into the unknown? Fire up the Journey and find out.

I wrote about some of the most satisfying and disappointing finales of the past decade, all involving really good shows, for my debut at Mic.

Moment 05 | Battlestar Galactica Season 3

Don’t worry, Westerosophists—our next Boiled Leather Audio Hour will be a deep dive into one of ASoIaF’s foundational texts. But we’re mixing it up on BLAM a bit this month, with a look at a different franchise: the mid-’00s Battlestar Galactica reboot, specifically its landmark third season. With a hot-button political storyline featuring the occupation of the new human homeworld by Cylon invaders, the reign of a collaborationist regime led by President Gaius Baltar, a human insurgency replete with suicide bombings, and the eventual fall of the regime and trial of its leader/catspaw Baltar, it’s led one of our readers to ask us how we think the season speaks to the political climate of 2016/2017, and what its influence on Game of Thrones might have been. Listen and find out in our latest Patreon subscriber-exclusive mini-podcast!

Best: ‘Battlestar Galactica’

Divine intervention, voluntary space-fleet destruction, the incredible disappearing Starbuck — the decisions made in the final episode of this politically charged sci-fi reboot baffled viewers at the time. Hindsight, however, has been extremely kind to Commander Adama and his crew. The show’s long-simmering supernatural elements paid off with the daring idea of a deity whose actions are just as unpredictable and unfathomable as humanity’s. And the joint human-Cylon decision to jettison their ships and live out their days planet-side — in what turns out to be our own Earth’s pre-history — bucked a core tenet of post-apocalyptic SF, arguing that individual lives are more important than the preservation of a culture at all costs. Risky? You bet. Rewarding? So say we all.

I wrote about Battlestar Galactica, Cheers, Dexter, Lost, Roseanne, and The Sopranos for Rolling Stone’s list of the best and worst series finales. But which are which? The answer may surprise you!

I wrote up 16 of the New Golden Age of TV’s most surprising and suspenseful scenes and sequences for Rolling Stone (with a little help from my fabulous editor David Fear). Battlestar Galactica, Breaking Bad, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Deadwood, Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones, House of Cards, Lost, Mad Men, Orange Is the New Black, The Shield, The Sopranos, True Detective, Twin Peaks, The Walking Dead, The Wire. Read, then vote in our neat bracket tournament thing!

Below are links to all my extant writing about Battlestar Galactica. (As was the case with Lost, much of the writing I did about this show was done for my old dayjob at Wizard Magazine and has been lost to countless website revamps and ownership changes.) I hope you enjoy it!

Episode 4.0.1-2: Razor
Episode 4.0.3-10
Episode 4.0.11-12
Episode 4.0.12 extra
Episode 4.5.1: Sometimes a Great Notion
Episode 4.5.2: A Disquiet Follows My Soul
Episode 4.5.3: The Oath
Episode 4.5.4: Blood on the Scales
Episode 4.5.5: No Exit
Episode 4.5.6: Deadlock
Episode 4.5.7: Someone to Watch Over Me
Episode 4.5.8: Islanded in a Stream of Stars
Episode 4.5.9: Daybreak Part 1
Episode 4.5.10: Daybreak Parts 2 & 3
Episode 4.5.10 [continued]
Battlestar Galactica: The Plan
Episode 4.5.10 bonus: Lost vs. Battlestar Galactica: The battle of the finales
Caprica Episode 1.1
Caprica Episodes 1.2-6