You Make Me End Where I Begun: Is There Any Way To End a Show Well?

I got a lovely shout out yesterday from my friend Calah on her blog (yup, I am the Andrea who couldn't manage to get along with a three year old) and it made me think "wow, I haven't blogged anything in FOREVER."  (In my defense, I have that thought every day, there have just been more important things in my life for the last year.)

So, the conversation Calah and I were having about all the failures of the BSG final season has got me thinking: is there any "good" ending to a show?

When shows end suddenly or after an unintentionally short run (Firefly being the prime example) viewers are often left with questions about storylines that never get answered, relationships left eternally in limbo, and bitterness towards TV executives who seems to find joy in the pain of the poor and innocent.  It hurts when you love something and it ends because not enough people out there are smart enough to love it too.  Couple this natural disappointment with frustrated curiosity ("wait, what would have happened if they had been given more episodes?") and suddenly you're sitting there mired in bitterness over the "terrible ending" of a beloved show.

Conversely, when a show has a good long run it can work itself into a corner ("tell me you have an exit strategy!") and when the planned and expected final arrives all the threads of the show are such a jumble the ending makes no sense.  My friend Alissa once quoted our friend Katy to express her own anger on this subject: "sometimes I think everything is fine, and then I remember how Lost ended."  I haven't gotten around to the end of Lost (the last 13 episodes have been sitting in the back of my mind for like 2 years), but I know what she's talking about.  There is nothing quite like watching a show for YEARS, waiting impatiently while it is on hiatus, revolving in your mind the various possibilities of how things will turn out, discussing the characters to the point where you forget that they are fictional, only to get to an ending that seems to be "well, sorry folks, we fucked ourselves royal and then just gave up trying."  I have professed many profanity-riddled diatribes against the sense of time-waste and emotional manipulation that spews forth from the soul when the screen goes black on a much anticipated finale that amounts to little more than a middle finger to my devotion.  The ending of Felicity still makes me livid.  (J.J. Abrams was disappointing me long before any plane crashes.)

Is there no solution?  Is there no way for a show to end that doesn't leave a scorched earth of angry viewers and backtracking writers?  Are we all doomed?

Well, no.  The easiest solution would be for me to care about TV less.  Don't care as much means won't be as disappointed.  But since that is NEVER going to happen, let's look at realistic solutions.

I think that the ending of a show is satisfying to the viewer when the show fulfills the promise made in the pilot (or I suppose we should say, at the outset, since not all pilot episodes are equal and sometimes it takes shows a few episodes to find themselves).  I am not necessarily talking about promises made by writers and producers in interviews and at conventions, though sometimes that factors into things.  I'm talking about the expectation evoked in the viewer based on premise, plotting, characters and the underlying moral and metaphysical perspective of the created world.  In a great pilot all of these elements are present, while in an excellent pilot all of these elements are fully developed and integrated into a whole (Supernatural is a case in point).  People are quick to scoff at the idea of "well, I guess we know what we are going to get for this" without acknowledging that it is completely natural that when we are confronted with a certain set of circumstances we expect a certain outcome.  It's not a bad thing.  (Although since this principle doesn't discriminate by taste, this does account for the continued existence of such crap as The Bachelor and Grey's Anatomy.  Those viewers get exactly what they were promised, even if it's garbage.)

So, do any shows actually worth watching live up to my high standards?  You might be surprised to learn, yes.  For example, Spaced.  The promise at the beginning of Spaced is that together Tim and Daisy will help each other towards functional adulthood by forming a loving bond that creates a family.    And they do.  Tim and Daisy work to bring out the best in each other, providing both friendly distraction and frank reality, so that neither wastes their talents in fugue state of a post university haze.  Behind the fake sexual relationship Tim and Daisy present in order to rent their apartment (man, Britain doesn't make any sense to me) real intimacy develops and that intimacy does exactly what it should: opens Tim and Daisy up to connecting with others, through which their friends and neighbors become kin.  The ending of Spaced isn't satisfying simply because Tim and Daisy are "together" at the end.  It's satisfying because they are both better people for loving each other and while understanding the joy and responsibility their relationship will require they both choose it.  The ending of Spaced is perfect because it is Tim and Daisy sitting on their couch, as they have for the whole show, but a little wiser and a great deal happier because they are the center of a community and no longer isolated individuals.

The ending of The O.C. is also great.

The TV Girl

The Killing: Of My Time and Patience

In January I started teaching 3rd grade, which has left precious little time for watching TV, let alone writing about it.  But, I have developed a new category of TV for myself which I call "TV for grading and worksheeting."  And it is exactly what it sounds like; shows that I watch while I'm grading math homework or making vocabulary worksheets or planning my next belabored science lesson.

Last weekend/week my accompaniment was AMC's The Killing a show now famous for it's potentially frustrating season ending.  The Killing follows three threads of the investigation into the murder of Rosie Larsen (Katie Findlay): the emotionally damaged and ethically compromised police detectives Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) and Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnaman); the working class family with a suspicious history Stan and Mitch Larsen (Brent Sexton  and Michelle Forbes); and the shinny mayoral candidate Darren Richmond (Billy Campbell) who may have more to hide than his affair with his campaign manager Gwen Eaton (Kristin Lehman).  Over roughly two weeks, we plod along as the Seattle rain alternately soaks and mists the various characters while they brood, cry, stare at seemingly random objects, cry, chase down false leads, cry, give obnoxiously self-righteous political speeches, cry, stumble accidentally onto evidence, cry, oh and, cry.  The season does end with an arrest, but in keeping with the general themes of evasion and incompetence, some of the evidence is fake.

Have I indicated properly that this show is rather pedantic?

The Killing isn't exactly boring, it's more that it's detached.  With a moody, understated and a torpidly paced crime drama the audience needs an investment in the outcome achieved in one (or more) of three ways: through understanding and connection to the victim; through a superbly crafted villain; or through the (relative) integrity and humanity of the investigating officer.

We never really find out very much about Rosie Larsen (for all they say her name all the frakking time) and what we do find out is too late to be sensible or have a great deal of impact.  The fact is that Linden and Holder don't really investigate Rosie's life.  They accept without question a few cliched assurances from Rosie's friends and teachers that Rosie was "a nice girl who loved life but never got into trouble." When they immediately find evidence that at the very least calls into question these reassuring but shallow descriptions (Rosie, whose from a struggling blue-collar family has a pair of 2,000 dollar high heals in her locker at school), Linden and Holder don't follow through with any urgency because the Larsen react with the typical "you don't know anything about our baby girl" when the detectives ask the first time if Rosie could have been hiding anything.  This is a deeply troubling exchange because it exposes the crux of the difficulty of this show.  No, Linden and Holder (and the audience by extension) don't know anything about Rosie.  It is their job to find out everything they can about her in order to find out where, when, how and most importantly BY WHOM she was killed, but at the slightest opposition to the unpleasantness of personal questions, they allow themselves to be bullied into simply not doing as they are supposed to.  Therefore their investigation is completely haphazard, and the audience has little more than passing curiosity in who the murder is.  It seems unlikely that one could find a murderer without more than a passing glance at the victim's life choices, and it is almost impossible to engage an audience when the core character uniting the various story-lines is more of a void than anything.

Further obscuring the familial element is the serious miscasting of Michelle Forbes.  I really like Ms. Forbes and anyone who can play a legitimate nemesis to Admiral William Adama isn't a lightweight.  But she is not remotely maternal and so her overwrought emotional exhibitionism never gave the sense of genuine grief.  At one point, supposedly so distracted with sorrow for her slain daughter, she almost kills her two young sons by leaving them in a running car in a locked garage, but a moment that should be terrifying comes off as strange tangential event because Mrs. Larsen gives the impression of a weepy Alzheimer's patient.  It doesn't help the situation that the character's name is "Mitch," giving no room for softness or nurturing instinct.

As for a captivating antagonist,  The Killing offers up all the usual (and male) suspects; the rich douchebag ex-boyfriend, the now drug-addled childhood friend, the formerly mobbed-up dad, the possibly sexually exploitative teacher, the obsessive family friend, the too-perfect politician.  But the brush is too broad.  There isn't enough heft to any of them to justify the brutality with which Rosie is killed.  Nor do any of the possible killers have the psychological intricacies to fascinate the audience.  In order (I assume) to keep the audience guessing about the identity of the murderer by overloading the show with options there isn't any room to layer the characters in a way that would lead the audience to wonder both IF a certain character COULD have killed Rosie but also WHY WHOULD he have killed her.  In choosing breadth over depth another avenue of engagement is closed off to the audience.

So without an empathetic victim or a compelling villain the burden is on the detective to carry the show, and ostensibly Det. Sarah Linden appears to be the protagonist, but again The Killing seems to know what it was supposed to do but then just didn't.  Linden finds Rosie's body on what is supposed to be her last day at the Seattle Police Department before she moves with her son to Sonoma, CA to get married.  That is the basic pattern of most episodes; today will be Linden's last day and then she'll hand the investigation fully over to Holder but at the last minute she always misses her flight because she is emotionally incapable of leaving the case unsolved and isn't 100 % committed to her fiance.  Her obsessiveness in her profession life is balanced out nicely by an almost complete cluelessness about even the most basic facts about her 13 year old son Jack.  Maybe it's that Linden is rather bad at her job that made me actually laugh out loud to find out around the mid-point of the season that Linden once became so consumed by a case that she ended up a patient at a mental hospital in a state of waking coma.  Really, I laughed, because it just struck me as ridiculous.  No, Linden is never with her son, is utterly oblivious to the behavioral issues he is having, and can't even work up the facial expression to pretend she wants to get married, but none of that is shown to be because she is so hard at work investigating Rosie's murder by following up witness statements, verifying alibis or pinning down Rosie's whereabouts before she was murdered.  She goes running, chews gum, and looks piercingly at videos, photographs or docks and (not kidding here) gets caught up in a totally bizarre and distracting terrorism plot-line, but all without either a systematic approach or much fruitful result.  I mean really, if you're totally absorbed in you job, shouldn't you at least be good at it?  Furthermore, at no point are we convinced of some overriding sense of justice or duty that animates this woman that would at least give some credence to her own lack of interest in her personal life.

There is a failure of motivating in The Killing.  There is no distinct motivation of Rosie's murder, for Linden's personality, or for the audience to watch.

The TV Girl

Top 5: Characters I Unexpectedly Fell For, Hard

Hi everyone.

So, it's been two months.  More.  Yeah, well, um, okay.

Let's just skip over all the "where have you been" and such.

Kathleen and I were talking the other day about Legend of the Seeker; she's mid-way through S1.  I asked if she had met Cara yet, and that got us talking about the Mord Sith, and both of us agreeing that as characters the Mord Sith are kind of sympathetic.  Our conversation moved on to Game of Thrones and ended with me exclaiming how Jon Snow and Tryrion Lannister are the heroes of my heart.  (Yes, I AM amazed people will be friends with me, you don't need to point that out.)  It got me thinking about the characters that I love when either I had no expectation to do so, and maybe that I shouldn't: when intellectually they are not my kind of people, or have serious personality deficiencies, but for some reason I just totally dig them and want what's best for them.  (This isn't the same as villains I love for being villainous.)

Omar Little, The Wire
I'm only halfway through The Wire, so maybe I'll change my tune on this, but I get giddy every time Omar shows up.  Like really giddy.  Yes, Omar robs drug dealers and shoots people who get in his way, but he is so unapologetically honest about what he does and who he is that you just want to respect him.  Let's be clear, I do not want to be friends with Omar, I in no way think we should hang out.  He scares the ever living shite out of me.  He starts whistling and I get the shivers.  That said, I greedily soak up every word he drawls out; whether he be rebuking shady lawyers, or explaining the logical conclusion of what-do-I-do-with-my-hands-when-a-gun-is-pointed-in-my-face, or giving McNulty an ethical argument for becoming a state's witness. I would like to hire someone to high-five him.

Caroline, The Vampire Diaries
By all rights I should hate Caroline: she is demanding, overachieving, overbearing, and more often focused on her current boyfriend drama than the mayhem and death surrounding her.  Always planning parties that end up as bloodbaths, she never seems to catch on that being a vampire might preclude her from being a typical teenage girl.  But I adore Caroline.  She is so ridiculous, she's awesome.  Initially treated as a third wheel in the Elena/Bonnie friendship in desperate need of being placated, Caroline turned out to be far more interesting than either of her frenemies, both proving herself capable of a competency and loyalty that eludes the epically enamored Elena and demonstrating the necessary sense of humor that dour and self-righteous Bonnie sorely lacks.  (And no, I don't blame Jeremy for "cheating" on Bonnie with Anna.  Bonnie is the worst.)  I mean come on, give the girl a hand, she turned Tyler into not-a-scumbag and still managed to remain student body president.

Tyrion Lannister, Game of Thrones
It isn't all that surprising that I love Tyrion; smart matters to me more than almost anything.  Not that ridiculous "wow look at this stupid freak trick that I have, aren't I so much smarter than the rest of you" smart (90% of current police/medical procedurals, I'm talking about you), but actual intelligence.  And drinking, wenching, nephew-slapping Tyrion can do no wrong in my eyes.  I want him to sit on the Iron Throne, send everyone to help the Night's Watch against the snow-zombies, and put Littlefinger on a leaky ship heading West, because Tyrion is the bestest best there is in Westeros.  Okay, but seriously, he's smart, funny, realistic, and brave.  Tyrion rocks!

Juliet, Lost
I don't give a flip what other people say, Juliet was one of the very few tolerable characters on this show.  I enjoyed Juliet; I liked watching her grow from Ben's disgruntled hostage to Sawyer's soul-mate.  I actually got upset when she died, and her coming back in the finale might be enough to get me to plow through the last 10/12 (can't remember) episodes I haven't watched yet.  It took her a bit, but she realized Jack was a total waste of space, stood up for herself and made a decision to do what she though was right, did what no one else on the bleepedy-bleeping-bleep of an island seemed interested in and built a real life based on love and respect, which she then willingly sacrificed so that her husband could be spared the imprisonment he'd been subjected to.  But (surprisingly) Juliet continued to be a rounded person: even though she had NO reason on any earth to be insecure about hysterical, useless, whiny, self-justifying, (BORING) Kate, Juliet still suffered from the all to human anxiety surrounding seeing your man with his ex.  In a huge cast of rather unpleasant people, Juliet was a shiny surprise of someone I truly liked.

Luke Cafferty, Friday Night Lights
I think it's kind of amazing that a show can introduce a new character in the 4th Season, and make that character someone you are so glad you met.  In both physicality and personality, Luke looked to be our replacement for the departing Matt Saracen, since after all, what is a show set in Texas without a sweet little mumbling underdog for us to root for?  But make no mistake, Luke isn't the poor-man's Matt.  I would even venture to say that Luke turned out to be a better person. (Please don't kill me Internet!  I love Matt Saracen, I promise I do!)  Luke's familial situation was less dire than Matt's, it was in fact rather like a Steinbeck story, therefore he was less emotionally distraught by the unreasonable pressure of his situation than Matt, and as such was less likely to act carelessly.  (I swear, I adore Matt Saracen, but boy was kind of an idiot some times.)  For the most part, Luke acts with integrity and humility.  In his halting, sincere apology to Tami that he lied to her about his address he acknowledges that she was right to insist that he be sent to East Dillon and asks that she forgive him for betraying her trust, showing that he actually understands the underlying ethics of the situation, and all without anger or self-pity.  Even though all of his focus and hard work was directed to getting a football scholarship so he could go to college and leave the family farm, he wanted to take responsibility for the child he created with Becky, and there's no reason to think he wouldn't have been a very good father, eventually.  I didn't think there was room in my FNL heart for new people, but then there was Luke.

Doctor Who: Someone Said It Better

(6.10, "The Girl Who Waited")

I cried and cried watching the most recent episode of Doctor Who.  I thought it was beautiful.  But, I'm not feeling super articulate about it, so I encourage you to click the link below for Kyle Anderson's review on Nerdist.  He says what I would say, if I wrote as well as he does.  Enjoy!

Kyle Anderson's "The Girl Who Waited" Review

The TV Girl

Sons of Anarchy: Wedding Bells and Bullet Holes

(4.01 “Out”)

The boys are out of prison, Jax with some fun new scars.  Otto’s still inside, and happens to find a razor blade in his boiled egg (I’m not sure how that works, but ok), which he turns on his wrist, but he’s found by a guard.  Charming changed in the time they were away.  Opie is getting married.  Jacob Hale is building a fancy new sub-division, the type of McMansion development that Charming has been so lacking in. Tara had her baby!!!  (Thomas, named after Jax’s deceased brother.)   And there is literally a new Sheriff in town.  Riding through town on their way to the welcome home party at the garage, the Sons are stopped by Sheriff Eli Roosevelt (Rockmond Dunbar), instated during the time of incarceration, and unwilling to see any cuts on the newly paroled riders.  After the happy reunions at Teller-Morrow (where Gemma gives Jax a paper bag containing “the one he picked out”) it’s back to business.  Even with tidy profits, it’s time to renegotiate SAMCRO’s place in the deal between them, the Irish, and the Russians.  Since they have a tail, everyone rolls out: Clay, Jax and Opie to the meeting with everyone else providing a distraction for the all too easily manipulated cops.  While his employees are being played, the new Sheriff is attending a super secret meeting with an odd looking man whose renting the top floor of his building: ASUDA Potter.  He explains to Roosevelt the design of the governments RICO case involving SAMCRO, the Irish and the Russians, which is progressing nicely due to a highly placed FBI agent within the Russians, and asks for Roosevelt’s cooperation, as Charming will most likely be the site of the showdown.  All cop, Roosevelt accepts.  At the meet with the Russians, the FBI agent observes Jax agreeing to the “it’s all just business” apology offered for his shiving in prison (hence the new scars), a new deal is struck and Opie invites them all to the wedding, a lovely pretext for sneaking off to look at guns.  Back to Charming for um, reunion time.  Pillow-talk topics include: (for Gemma and Clay) Unser’s declining health, Clay’s declining health, and retirement; (for Jax and Tara) getting married, how to raise their boys, that John Teller was a coward not to take his sons out of the life, and how Jax just needs to bide his time and save some money so that the can leave SAMCRO and never look back.  Now in the infirmary, Otto is handed a scalpel as another prisoner is wheeled in next to him.  (This can’t possibly end well.)  Also on the list of things that are most likely HUGE mistakes, time for Opie and Lyla’s wedding.  All the gangs are there (on reservation land, so cuts allowed), and Lyla emerges looking much more like the bachelor party entertainment than the bride, but after a few (thankfully) short and awkward vows, Opie and Lyla are pronounced man and wife.  During the reception Chibs and Juice sneak off with some of the Russians (including an un-miked FBI agent) to look at the guns. Otto unhooks the cuff on his bed.  Clay and Jax take Putlova off to fire off a few from a particularly lethal looking handgun. In the warehouse, they test the merchandise on the Russians who brought them their, killing them all.  Otto shoves the scalpel through the ear and into the brain of the man strapped in the next bed, saying, “this is for Jax Teller.”  And out in the woods Clay shoots Putlova’s bodyguards before the others hold him down so Jax can stab him repeatedly in the chest, which is just business after all.  The now dead FBI agent is the last body to be dumped onto the new Hale development sight.

Well wasn’t that just a hi-we’re-back bitchslap?

I mean that as a compliment.

I admit that I find the details of who-has-a-deal-with-who-and-for-what-and-why rather hard to follow on this show: it’s always very intricate and usually changes in the time it takes to flip the safety off.  Therefore it was rather helpful to introduce two new law enforcement characters to explain to each other where the criminal enterprises of the Sons stand.  Without seeming forced or condescending, we got a quick update to bridge us from the previous seasons, and part of the organic presentation was the initial strength of our new lawmen.  Potter, a smoking, paranoid, motorcycle-riding wisp of a dude, is a bit odd, but in now way quirky or cutesy.  He’s like the anti-Stahl: patient observation and quiet cunning instead of furious proclamations and half-baked ideas.  He admits he needs Roosevelt’s help because his team has no credibility in gang warfare, while Roosevelt has vast experience.  He doesn’t strong-arm what he needs, but there’s no doubt (to him or to us) that he is going to get it.  One look at his extensive walls of photos and relationships is enough to make clear that this man won’t be taken in by any Jax Teller triple/ quadruple/ whatever –crosses.  And Roosevelt, what a welcome addition to Charming.  He’s the savvy, upright, committed Sheriff that the town (and the club, because without the law, there’s no such thing as outlaws) so desperately needs in the void left behind by David Hale’s untimely death.  But as a transplant, and therefore without Hale’s hometown attachment to Charming, Roosevelt stands a better chance of protecting the town because of his emotional distance. 

But there is another new character, even if he won’t have any lines.  Emily the Roommate can tell you I was genuinely distressed over whether or not Tara was going to have an abortion.  (I missed the video that would have put me out of my misery sooner.)  It’s not just that I’m Pro-Life, but also that it would have been out of character for Tara.  And it would have just upset me to no end to see Tara have a similar look to the one on Lyla’s face when Opie mentioned expanding their family.  Welcome Thomas Teller, I’m so happy to meet you.  Now please make yourself useful and help you dad propose to your mom.

Seriously, Jax’s proposal to Tara was so frakking prefect I wanted to die inside.  Not some over-the-top declaration of adoration everlasting, but rather a humble acknowledgment of the family that they already are, Jax unreservedly opened himself up to Tara’s rejection by letting it show in his eager expression and halting sentence just how important her answer is.  And as much as he avows that Tara is his savior, brought to him to take him out of the violence of his life, he came to her having thought out her needs, demonstrating to her that he’s asking her to marry him so that he can be her husband, not with the expectation that she will simply be his wife.  Perfect.

And it was nice to have that perfection for half an episode, because at the end we had to question if it had all been a lie.  Where exactly does Jax think he can go where the repercussions of this won’t follow him?  The merits of eye-for-an-eye justice are debatable.  Putlova tried to kill Jax, so within the context of their criminal world, Jax killing Putlova makes sense, and could possibly be something that everyone could move past.  Slaughtering all the Russians is more of the scorched-earth approach, and given that one of those Russians was an undercover FBI agent, the landscape surrounding SAMCRO now looks to be as salted as Carthage after Cato finally got his way in the Roman Senate. 

Sons of Anarchy, how I have missed you.

The TV Girl