In a sense, the entire series was worth it just to get to the scene in the parking garage with Stan. And while on the one hand I feel like they cheated by trying to have it both ways (Stan gets to figure it out and confront them meaningfully, but they also get away without anybody having to get shot), on the other hand they somehow found a way to earn that result. Which is pretty miraculous.

But ending a long-running TV drama...man, it's just a nightmare. There are times that I think the only acceptable endings are the three most interesting HBO finales:

1) Six Feet Under: the alpha and omega when it comes to "we are literally going to tell you what will become of these characters for the rest of their lives." Just wallow in the glory of the fan service.

2) The Sopranos: the polar opposite of the Six Feet Under finale in the sense that it actively taunts the audience about what they will never get to know. Beyond genius and essentially the apex of the medium.

3) Deadwood: the beauty of a series finale that was never meant to be a series finale, per se, and just stands on its own as a perfect episode of a perfect show. This has aged magnificently.

Other than those, it's just really a lot of misfires and anticlimaxes. A lot of these genius showrunners seem hellbent on paying off their narrative climaxes either in the next to last episode or early in the finale, and then kind of just gliding into a downbeat finish. Ultimately I think I'm happy for the high notes they hit in the Americans finale, and if ever a series earned a muted, quiet, excruciatingly grey ending, it would be that one. But it still bums me out because that's mostly what finales do. Because it's over and I didn't need it to be yet.