Since I Brought Up "Newhart"...

Not everyone at the time was wild about this ending. I recall some people being annoyed that the show was, effectively, signalling that we'd wasted our time for the last eight years. And on one of the "Simpsons" commentaries, David Mirkin (who executive-produced "Newhart" for two years but wasn't involved with the finale) hints that he's not too fond of it, though he does acknowledge that it got huge laughs.

Incidentally, David Mirkin's work on "Newhart" had a lot of the kind of humor he'd bring to his own show, "Get a Life," and to his two years as showrunner of "The Simpsons" -- particularly a vicious contempt for television, and particularly television news. Here's an excerpt from one of the episodes Mirkin wrote and executive-produced, where Dick (Newhart) has to host a show with a quintessential '80s airhead played by that expert parodist of '80s airheads, Julie Brown. "That's right! He was President."