With more television shows being born every year, cold hard statistics tell us that every year more are also going to die.

And to continue the “cold hard” motif, most of those fatalities will, in the poignant words of The Whiffenpoof Song, “pass and be forgotten like the rest.”

But some passings still deserve a salute. With two such shows in the queue right now -- CBS’s Person of Interest and TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles – let us pause to acknowledge that all TV show deaths aren’t alike.

And yes, it’s also true that every show, no matter how terrible or forgettable, has some loyal core of fans who will miss it terribly.

Here, then, are a few suggestions for categories into which cancelled shows might fall – as illustrated by scripted shows that ended this TV year:

Missed Its Exit Cue a Couple of Years Back: ABC’s Castle was smart and witty for several years, then started working way too hard at having fun. That said, apparently killing Kate and Castle off at the end may have been a harsher sentence than they deserved.

You Hate to Say It, But It Was Time: CBS’s The Good Wife deserved most of the praise it got for being a cable-quality drama on broadcast TV. Too often in the last couple of years it felt like it was running out of oxygen.

It’s Taking a Whole Style of TV with It: Rizzoli & Isles has been the kind of TV we need more of: clever stories with characters we really like. As more dark drama and sci-fi move in, R&I shows are getting squeezed out.

Thanks for the Memories: USA’s Royal Pains is wrapping up a nice breezy run. We won’t be clinging at its ankles and begging it to stay, but it’s been a great fling to which we looked forward to returning every summer.

NBC’s Mysteries of Laura fits this category. So for that matter, does CBS’s Mike & Molly (left).

Oh, What a Tangled Web We Weave: The characters in Person of Interest – including Taraji P. Henson, who got killed off so she could become Cookie on Empire – were intriguing. The show just eventually got too wound up in the nuts and bolts of its all-powerful, all-seeing machine. We didn’t have to understand all of the machine, but understanding none of it was a problem.

No Fair: MTV’s Faking It deserved more seasons, for its unique characters and perspective on the teen years. Sadly, the ratings didn’t justify it. Faking It was one of those shows that never drew the audience it deserved and should have had.

Okay, Fair:  Awkward, which MTV paired with Faking It, did get a decent audience. That’s why it got one post-high school season, which gave its characters a decent if still sometimes inconclusive resolution.

Play the Song All the Way to the Ending: ABC’s Nashville (left) wasn’t the kind of show that would run 20 years, but it had created enough legitimate storylines that another season or two would have been nice. The producers are working hard to see if some other network agrees.

Never Seemed to Get a Break: A&E cancelled Unforgettable after picking it up from CBS, which cancelled it despite decent ratings. Someone needs to pick up Poppy Montgomery again.

Gone Before Their Time: Every so often someone turns out the lights in the middle of a good story. WGN America’s Manhattan and the CW’s Containment were two of this year’s victims.

Less Would Have Been More: ABC’s The Family could have been a solid one-shot closed-end series. Instead, it kept throwing curve balls that made us feel like it was going to become the TV version of a Mobius strip, with no beginning or end. Not a way to entice viewers.

The Old College Try: NBC’s Game of Silence also might have been sharp and memorable as a closed-end story. With no end in sight, there was little reason for its modest core of viewers to reinvest.

Greatest Tragedy Since the Goths and Vandals Sacked Rome: Per my wife’s instructions, I will accept no reason Downton Abbey had to end at all. Ever.