Its not easy to stick the landing when it comes to series finales.
Just ask fans ofDexterandHow I Met Your Mother, who continue to debate the merits of those final hours.
Then it ended again when NBC aired the final episode on July 15, 2011.
Credit: Bill Records/NBC
(Click through both pages to read the entire interview.)
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When did you start to map out this finale, even in terms of an outline?
Thats what I always sort of imagined, that it would be them leaving.
And I first thought that would be kind of where we would get to at the end.
And so that was sort of the overall idea that I had throughout the course of the entire series.
KATIMS: That helps a lot.
So thats how we sort of formed the season and what led up to the finale.
Tell me about the genesis of coming up with that.
KATIMS: That idea was something that came out of the writers room.
It was something that we figured out very specifically.
KATIMS: No, we didnt.
It was never really a question of what that ending was going to be.
We were committed to it.
It was one of those things that everybody felt.
I felt like this story that we wanted to tell we wanted to do in a more poetic way.
We wanted that game to play in a more poetic way.
NEXT PAGE: Did Katims purposefully leave a window open for a potential movie follow-up?
I dont remember them having any objection to what we were doing.
They were really incredibly supportive of us.
There was the DirecTV airing and then the NBC airing.
Many of our episodes, a cut would come in fifteen minutes long or even longer.
So we were always cutting things out of the episodes.
It was really intended to be an ending.
There was no thought in the finale of keeping a window open for the future.
EW: Did you take any extra security steps to keep the ending from being spoiled?
KATIMS: No, not really.
We didnt take any crazy measures to keep it secret.
EW: What are other series finales that you think really hit it out of the park?
KATIMS:MAS*Hcomes to mind.
Thats a good question and the truth is, I dont know.
The one thing that I really felt was this responsibility to the fans of the show.
I remember when I was there directing there was always a great feeling on the set of that show.
And I remember saying that to people and getting blank stares when we said this early on.
So, thank you.
