The recent "Downton Abbey" final episode, a frenzied orgy of conclusions and loose-end tying, got me thinking about finales.
Endings have an outsized role in how we think about a TV series, as if nothing mattered except how it concluded -- this despite the fact that an ending is the most artificial part of the whole construct.
In real life, nothing actually ever ends. And yet, we give TV endings so much import we’ve had to invent a new term -- “spoiler alert” -- in order to discuss them.
And it’s true: We tend to judge our most favorite shows against their finales. "Cheers" had a good one, "Gilmore Girls" was disappointing. "Buffy" was okay. "How I Met Your Mother" seemed to upset people.
"The Sopranos" had an amazing ending that was viscerally compelling down to the final second, and that managed to redeem a show that had gotten maybe a little slow in its latter season.
The "Breaking Bad" conclusion was okay. There were about four or five things that might have happened to Walter White and that was one, but it didn’t mean a whole lot one way or the other. That’s better than an ending so botched it ruins what has come before. "Battlestar Galactica" comes to mind, a mostly smart show whose ridiculous and pretentious ending was so bad it should have been criminal.
I loved "Lost" so much precisely because it couldn’t have a conclusion that made any sense. And yet, I’m one of the few who was entirely satisfied by how it wrapped up. I’m not talking about the mush in the final ten minutes about the afterlife and togetherness. I mean the alternate realities coming together, which for me hit its apogee when Jin and Sun drown in one reality and then remember their life on the island in the other. Oh, wait. Spoiler Alert. Oops.
Anyway, watch your endings, people. It’s the only thing people remember.
I’m Dan Libman, and that’s my perspective
