Faced with the enormity of Clyde’s powers, the gang pull out all the stops one last time to try to put an end to his plans and ensure a future for all of them. But that future might not be what they all expect.

Three and a half years, fifty-one episodes and four seasons boil down to this – a finale which has to tie off every loose end, resolve every plot point and finally answer the question as to whether all our heroes will get to live happily ever after. And it gives me no pleasure to say that they blow it.

Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here – there are still elements to this episode that I adore. Two characters who have easily been the standouts of the entire show finally getting the happy ending they deserved. More revelations about Oasis which tie directly to stuff seeded in previous seasons, and some genuinely tense action scenes are all pros. Unfortunately, for me, the cons rather overshadow it all.

I feel like I’ve said almost every week of this season that the episodes have felt packed – sometimes that has worked and other times it hasn’t. However, part of the issue with packing stuff in is that sometimes stuff gets left out. Like how a character who was dying is now suddenly… not. Or how another character robbed of their key strength somehow retains enough of it when narratively convenient to move the plot along. Or just how suddenly a character makes a literally life-altering choice on the spin of a dime, undermining those four seasons and fifty-one and a bit episodes’ worth of development in the process.

To recap – our heroes are confronted by an all-powerful nemesis who they cannot possibly stop and who has them all rounded up and at his mercy. Until he doesn’t, when someone figures out a way around his powers and inadvertently makes themselves the new ‘true’ target of his attentions (seriously, it’s getting silly now how often Clyde’s ‘real’ target changes). Anyway, he and Shivani are in cahoots because why the hell not and despite a flicker of doubt that makes us wonder whether maybe the tech billionaire has retained a shred of human decency she goes along with his plans anyway, right up until an inevitable betrayal that might as well have included the character actually going ‘Mwahahaha.’

Liz is racked by doubt as her brain continues to let her down and so turns to an old friend/mentor to try to help her find a way to stop Clyde and re-establish his ‘brand’. This is annoying in two ways – 1, it expects us to invest in said character a lot more than the show has given us reason to and 2, it gives way to that whole unevenness where Liz can’t do science anymore except when she absolutely can. The script does half-heartedly wave in the direction of a supposed solution for Liz’s broken brain eventually, which is odd because I swear Max Evans’ main ability used to be to heal people and, well, that ain’t the way it gets done.

Then again, I also found myself wondering why Max couldn’t just do the magic hand thing for Alex when he was supposedly dying of radiation exposure but the script in relation to this is even more half-assed, simply choosing to ignore the fact altogether and leave me as a viewer wondering whether or not he’s still dying or has somehow, offscreen, got better? We may never know.

I think possibly the worst thing though, is how the show takes two relationships, one old and one new, puts them centre stage and then refuses to give us the resolution it feels like they both deserved before the credits roll. If I were a more optimistic man I might hope that someday these threads may be picked up by another network looking to renew the show. But this is the really real world, and as much as I have enjoyed Roswell New Mexico over the years, Brooklyn Nine Nine it is not – no mass fan petitions and celebrity twitter outcries for Liz and friends, I fear.

And so I am left feeling a little bereft. I’ve loved these characters and enjoyed watching their journeys. This was a show which arrived with so little promise and managed to change my mind and my heart within the first few episodes of its maiden season, and which has gone from strength to strength since. But at the final hurdle, as it closes its doors for good, the thing stumbles, giving me half the happy endings I wanted and a bunch of unresolved stuff that will remain so in perpetuity. It certainly wasn’t what I was expecting or hoping for, but then in a way that could be a description for the show as a whole. Perhaps I’m just lucky it waited until the very end to let me down.

Verdict: A show finale that doesn’t feel like one, and a bitter disappointment to a long-term fam like myself. 5/10

Greg D. Smith