Long-running series queue up finales

They should probably get Tchaikovsky to compose the theme song for this TV season because so many shows will be making their swan songs in the next few months.

On Tuesday, Timothy Olyphant will set his Stetson for his last roundup as Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens on FX's Justified.

Later this month, we'll bid the Bravermans goodbye as Parenthood finishes up its run after six touch-and-go seasons.

In February, it will be lights out for The Mentalist and Two and a Half Men on CBS. NBC will also be shuttering Pawnee, Ind., next month as the plucky Parks and Recreation draws to a close.

Glee, saddled with the indignity of exile to TV's Friday-night ghetto in its last season, bites the dust in March. Cougar Town bows out on April Fool's Day.

And we've already been served the last suppers of Boardwalk Empire, Sons of Anarchy, and The Newsroom this season.

Perhaps the toughest loss will be the supernal Mad Men, which resumes its bifurcated seventh season on April 5 and ends after seven episodes on May 17.

The remarkable facet of this mass series die-off is that we have so much advance warning. It didn't used to be this way. In the old days, you'd find out your show had been canceled because your parking privileges at the studio had been revoked. "Sorry, Mr. Van Dyke, your name's not on the list."

Now, producers get months and months to plan their shows' finales. This is not necessarily a good thing.

Lost was one of my favorite series - complex, challenging, and often inscrutable. But that revival-meeting ending with Jack and all the castaways gathered in a hazy chapel in the sky was inconclusive and disappointing. The Sopranos is another example of a great show that went out with head-scratching ambiguity.

It even happens to comedies. Seinfeld, a modern classic, abandoned humor in an existential finale that had Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer pondering their fates in a jail cell. We came for a sitcom send-off and we got a bad Ionesco play.

Then there's How I Met Your Mother, which spent nine years teasing the arrival of the mystery matriarch, only to bump her off about 10 minutes into the finale. Hello and goodbye. Shouldn't that have been How I Lost Your Mother?

So what do we want in a TV epilogue? Nothing too formulaic. But no one would complain if the fates of their favorite characters were settled satisfactorily. The comeuppance of a scoundrel is optional, but a sure crowd pleaser. A little romance is de rigueur. Top it off with a dramatic and original twist ending, and off you go, into the sunset.

For the batch of shows that are about to expire, they all face different final hurdles. (Don't be afraid to read on. These are speculations, not spoilers.)

The recent promos for Justified pose season six as the ultimate confrontation between Raylan and his Appalachian nemesis, Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins). A quick-draw duel? Maybe too on the nose - unless Ava (Joelle Carter) gets caught in the cross-fire.

But judging by the TV tea leaves, Raylan is going to have to wade through a number of bad guys first. This is a show that has always flourished on the quality of its villains (viz. the Bennett and Crowe clans). In its final season, Justified will introduce Sam Elliott as a ruthless pot baron and Garret Dillahunt as his henchman, a lethal soldier of fortune. (Dillahunt and Olyphant together? It's a Deadwood reunion.)

Parks and Recreation has jumped three years into the future for its grand hurrah, so maybe the Jetsons will show up for the finale.

This show has remained so wonderfully goofy over the course of its run I'm inclined to accept almost any outcome. As long as it's not grandiose. I don't want to see Leslie run for governor, or for anyone else to move on to bigger things. Please leave them muddling along in their Pawnee bubble. And could you bring back Detlef Schrempf one last time?

Another Midwestern show, Glee, has also fast-forwarded through time for its showstopper. But I wish its characters the opposite fate of Park and Rec's: I hope they all manage to get out of Lima. Except Rachel (Lea Michele). Let her end up a crestfallen waitress at Breadstix.

There are all kinds of theories about the ending of Mad Men, most of them pretty dire. Don (Jon Hamm) and Megan (Jessica Pare) are victims of a horrific Sharon Tate-like massacre. Or at the end, we'll see Don plunging from a skyscraper in an echo of the show's chiaroscuro opening credits.

I'm just glad this time capsule of the '60s will expire as that turbulent decade is ending. No one in that circle, apart from Roger (John Slattery), is equipped to make the transition to a world of leisure suits and Studio 54.

Most of the discussion about the finale of Two and a Half Men concerns whether the show's original, banished star, Charlie Sheen, will return for the last episode (despite the fact his character was run over in the Paris Metro).

Who cares? There's not much payoff in seeing Charlie reappear. My guess is that in the end, Walden (Ashton Kutcher) takes off on some grand adventure and deeds the Malibu house to Alan (Jon Cryer).

Two and a Half Men ends with an hour-long episode on Feb. 19. The following week, its time slot will be inherited by the Matthew Perry remake of The Odd Couple. And we already know how that show ends.

Hint: They never do get even.

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