Catastrophe

They are as they are, and their merciless candor will be missed.

The last six episodes of Catastrophe are not unlike the 18 that came before--often brilliant, relentlessly hilarious and searing in the process, depicting one of TV's best and most unexpected pairings of two actors (also the creators and writers, of course), who somehow making their coupling, as unromantic as it was, believable, with every episode over the course of the series run giving off an authenticity that allowed viewers to think, "Yeah, I can see how this works for them, even when it's not working." A nice trick, that.

The fourth and final season falls somewhat from the series peak of Season 3 but still bids a splendid farewell to Rob and Sharon on an elegiac but thrilled-to-keep-carrying-on note.

Raunchy, glorious. ... Catastrophe, it is clear, refers not to a single occurrence but to a state of being--the chaos of life, which this comedy depicts with deadly honest charm. ... With less than three hours to play out, the emotional turns can feel abrupt and the resolutions sudden. But it also finds the greatest emotional depths of the series in a story line that acknowledges the real-life death of Carrie Fisher, who played Rob’s mother.

By the series finale -- which is aptly strange, beautiful, and ambiguous -- it just feels unfair that we have to let go of something so special.

Between the many, many jokes, Horgan and Delaney built an unshakable bond between their characters. Rob and Sharon’s relationship, for all its heartache and flaws, is enough. That’s the honest truth, and it’s felt through to the end.

It is as warmly vicious, and viciously warm, as it has always been, and its acid tone cuts through with as much originality as it did in 2015.