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Why are the endings of some TV series so bad?
19 December 2010
The Sopranos was a great TV series, but the ending was, at best quixotic, at worst unfulfilling and frustrating. Lost was also a great TV series, but the ending was flaccid and annoyingly religious.
We just watched Flashforward (on DVD) and while we loved the series through 21 episodes, the ending episode was, like with so many other American TV series, a failure at closure and resolution. The viewer is left to wonder what really happened at the end. Too many questions left unanswered.
That, for me, led to a few sleepless nights. Band of Brothers, and The Pacific had an end, and I lost no sleep over either. Rome had no end, but that was because internal politics ended the series (and such a waste, since it was so much better than most TV series).
It seems simple to my non-Hollywood brain: in TV as in literature we want closure. We want resolution, or sometimes (often?) redemption. Or at the very least, we want answers. Unresolved mysteries are fine as long as they are merely part of the passage towards the eventual solution. They are bothersome when they are presented in the closing episode because they leave us with more questions than answers.
Some TV series give you answers and closure, sometimes every season. Each season of 24 had its own ending that allowed both closure for that season and enough promise for the series to continue next year.
Mad Men has left each season open-ended (like the Sopranos) but not offered any resolution (much like a soap opera). I can only hope that when the series ends, it does so with some sense of finality, not the lingering confusion of, say, the Sopranos.
I think TV series that end should have a focus. The BBC semi-comic series, Mulberry, a show about death and the afterlife, at a mere 13 episodes, provided both witty entertainment and closure. Tenko - about women in WWII Japanese prison camps - and even Blackadder - a comic historic series - had closure. Of course, they were BBC series. Even Waiting for God had closure, of a sort.
I want things to end, to find closure and completion. Perhaps it's considered artistic to end a series without closure, but while that may be true of a movie it's not always true of a TV series. It strikes me that the hanging end is not so much a decision as an escape route. It's the resort of a poverty of ideas, rather than a coherent, well-written resolution.
Faithful viewers deserve to be rewarded by closure, not punished by the failure of the writing team to resolve its own complexities.
We just watched Flashforward (on DVD) and while we loved the series through 21 episodes, the ending episode was, like with so many other American TV series, a failure at closure and resolution. The viewer is left to wonder what really happened at the end. Too many questions left unanswered.
That, for me, led to a few sleepless nights. Band of Brothers, and The Pacific had an end, and I lost no sleep over either. Rome had no end, but that was because internal politics ended the series (and such a waste, since it was so much better than most TV series).
It seems simple to my non-Hollywood brain: in TV as in literature we want closure. We want resolution, or sometimes (often?) redemption. Or at the very least, we want answers. Unresolved mysteries are fine as long as they are merely part of the passage towards the eventual solution. They are bothersome when they are presented in the closing episode because they leave us with more questions than answers.
Some TV series give you answers and closure, sometimes every season. Each season of 24 had its own ending that allowed both closure for that season and enough promise for the series to continue next year.
Mad Men has left each season open-ended (like the Sopranos) but not offered any resolution (much like a soap opera). I can only hope that when the series ends, it does so with some sense of finality, not the lingering confusion of, say, the Sopranos.
I think TV series that end should have a focus. The BBC semi-comic series, Mulberry, a show about death and the afterlife, at a mere 13 episodes, provided both witty entertainment and closure. Tenko - about women in WWII Japanese prison camps - and even Blackadder - a comic historic series - had closure. Of course, they were BBC series. Even Waiting for God had closure, of a sort.
I want things to end, to find closure and completion. Perhaps it's considered artistic to end a series without closure, but while that may be true of a movie it's not always true of a TV series. It strikes me that the hanging end is not so much a decision as an escape route. It's the resort of a poverty of ideas, rather than a coherent, well-written resolution.
Faithful viewers deserve to be rewarded by closure, not punished by the failure of the writing team to resolve its own complexities.
