43 Years Later, TV's Most-Watched Finale Of All Time Is Still A Masterpiece

Published Nov 2, 2026, 7:30 PM EST

Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock.

Now that the monoculture has splintered off into a thousand different niches on their own corners of the internet, it’s tough to convey just how big of a cultural phenomenon the final episode of M*A*S*H was. More than 100 million viewers tuned in to see the last hoorah of this seminal sitcom when it aired its finale in 1983.

Until M*A*S*H came along, sitcoms were strictly for laughs; they were all about absurd scenarios and second-hand embarrassment. But M*A*S*H brought an unprecedented level of pathos and emotionality to the sitcom without sacrificing any of the laughs. It wasn’t just mindless entertainment; it used humor as a coping mechanism to get through the fog of war. It’s one of the funniest shows ever put on television, but it had some truly heartbreaking moments, too. The series finale opens with Hawkeye being treated for PTSD.

The final episode of M*A*S*H — season 11, episode 16, “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen” — is essentially a feature film, with a two-and-a-half-hour runtime. After stretching out the Korean War for more than a decade, the show finally got to the ceasefire, and the 4077th threw a party to celebrate before tearing down the camp one last time. Not only is it still the most-watched series finale of all time; it still holds up.

Why MASH's Finale Still Works Over 40 Years Later

After all this time, “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen” remains one of the greatest series finales ever made, and it continues to influence series finales to this day. It gets everything right: it uses the most obvious setup — a party celebrating the ceasefire — to give everyone a proper sendoff. It sets every character up for the next chapter of their lives, and it uses their heartfelt farewells to each other to bid a heartfelt farewell to the audience.

The final shot of M*A*S*H — a “goodbye” message left in rocks, seen from the helicopter by Hawkeye — was the perfect note to end on. It’s a sweet moment between Hawkeye and B.J., but it’s also a sweet moment between the makers of the show and the loyal audience who stuck with them and invited these characters into their homes for the past decade. These simple visual storytelling tricks are timeless; they’ll always work, no matter how short the audience’s attention span gets.

MASH's Finale Viewership Record Won't Ever Be Broken

Cheers, Friends, Seinfeld, and The Fugitive have all come close, but M*A*S*H’s final episode remains the highest-rated series finale in television history — it was bigger than Roots and the Super Bowl — and it’s likely to hold that record forevermore, because it’s highly improbable that 100 million people will ever tune in to the same TV show ever again. Thanks to streaming, terrestrial television is a thing of the past, and even the biggest viewing figures in streaming don’t come close to the numbers posted by M*A*S*H and Roots and the Super Bowl.

Now that on-demand services have made everything so convenient, TV is no longer appointment viewing. In the ‘80s, when M*A*S*H ended, audiences were at the mercy of regularly scheduled programming. There were a small handful of networks, and whatever they were showing at a given time, that’s what you had to watch. But in this day and age, there are so many other options. There are hundreds of TV channels and that’s before you take into account all the streaming services.

Even when a water-cooler show hits the zeitgeist, like The Bear or The Last of Us, most audiences just catch it on streaming when they get a chance; a very slim percentage of viewers are actually watching it when it’s on and contributing to the night-of Nielsen ratings. So, it’s more than likely that M*A*S*H’s finale will hold its viewership record in perpetuity.

M*A*S*H