Ordered by range between 25th and 75th quartiles (lowest at top, highest at bottom). Series that have low quartile ranges but large differences in the finale rating could be argued to be the most "surprising".
Television rating data was collected using IMDbPY ( https://pypi.python.org/pypi/IMDbPY ) and visualized in Jupyter ( https://jupyter.org/ ) using matplotlib ( http://matplotlib.org/ ). Source code for Jupyter notebook is available on GitHub: https://github.com/OrganicIrradiation/vistvfinales A couple of notes: * Scrubs is split into S8 and S9 finale comparisons with the series median. * Psych's finale is the 2nd from last episode (last episode on IMDB is a wrap party show). * Spartacus: War of the Damned finale is the 2nd from last episode. * Avatar: The Last Airbender's last season is incorrect on IMDB * Prison Break only includes the original run. * The X Files only includes the original run. * "Averages" are the median of the episode ratings rather than the series rating.
BradC on October 29th, 2017 at 16:55 UTC »
I think the fact that Band of Brothers has almost no movement is a testament to how truly awesome every episode of that series is.
annafirtree on October 29th, 2017 at 15:25 UTC »
I found that the third graph, that sorts the shows by their average rating, is the one that felt most satisfying/informative.
LuciferGoosifer on October 29th, 2017 at 15:03 UTC »
I never believed the ending to Dexter could be THAT bad until I finally saw it. Surprise motherfucker.