Thinking about TV Finales
First off, wow. Long time since I've posted here, though it's remained my homepage since I first made this account in my senior year of high school. I've got another blog on Blogspot, but it's specifically for episodic fiction I'm writing. I might find myself transplanting this blog over there, if for no other reason than it's kind of easier to format.
Anyway, I was reading this article on the AV Club and it got me thinking about entertainment and art and the difficulties and reward of a long-term narrative.
Fiction is my drug of choice, and when I run out, I go into a kind of withdrawal.
And this is, I think, what gets me into the long-running series. Though it took me a while (as it does for all of us) to realize that often sequels are shitty attempts to wring all the quality out of a popular, original work, there's still a part of me that gets excited if they say there's a new one on the way.
Like many of my age group, who were in Middle School and High School when the Star Wars prequels came out, I convinced myself that they were good movies, with the usual hope that more of a good thing was good. I think the problem is that, when a sequel is conceived after the fact, rather than intended from the beginning, it is very often destructive to the original pieces. When the protagonist achieves his or her goal in a story, many of these end on a "happily ever after" note. While you can always come up with a different kind of conflict, which I think the better sequels tend to do, often times the happy ending of an original movie is utterly destroyed by the sequel so that the same conflict can be repeated - but this time, with more superficial bells and whistles to make it seem like you're getting something new.
Case in point: Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Yes, Dr. Evil survives the first one, and all that, but a big part of the plot was Austin learning to be a modern man, with the ability to put the reins on his "Free-Love" mentality just enough to get the girl (played by Elizabeth Hurley, who, when I was eleven, was my first celebrity crush.) Anyway, the sequel shows up, and all that is tossed out with a throwaway line about her actually being a robot. Yes, it's a silly movie, and maybe taking it seriously is missing the point, but it's these kinds of throwaway handwaves that are the mark of a cheap sequel, even if they are lampshaded.
A remedy to this is something that's become a lot more popular, which is the long-term-plan. This tends to be more in the realm of novels and television (and in the case of Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire, both!) The problem, though, is that as much as we would like to think the writers have it all planned out, often times they don't. I was a huge fan of Lost when it was on the air, and whatever flaws it had, I still maintain that it was a captivating show. That said, after a couple years, I'm still not really happy with the finale - specifically the "sideways universe" half of the ending. Despite the insistence of the writers that it was a "character-based show," that was never true. Sure, you had some great ones like Ben and Locke and Desmond, but what we really wanted was to know what was special about the island, and what the fuck was the Smoke Monster all about. We sort of got those answers, but with a lot of extra threads that were either left dangling, or explained in somewhat unsatisfying ways.
Battlestar Galactica, I think, was always a kind of sister-show to Lost. While I liked the overall "vibe," to Lost better (helped tremendously by Michael Giacchino's amazing score and the cool Hawaiian jungle) I think that, at least for the first two and a half to three seasons was a more intelligent show. The way it dealt with the War on Terror and the Iraq War (and remember that the miniseries started only two years after 9/11) was clever and provocative (especially the occupation of New Caprica in the beginning of season 3, where Western audiences saw our heroes in an insurrection that has resorted to terrorist tactics, mirroring the contemporary situation in Iraq but from the Iraqi side.) Aside from the "don't trust technology" bullshit tacked on to the very end of the finale (despite the show being about a Robot Uprising, the theme of over-reliance on technology was way in the backseat while themes of paranoia, freedom during wartime and the difficulties in making peace with one's enemies were in the forefront) the biggest issue I think most people had was the overt "God fixes everything" deus ex machina.
Ultimately, we had to have BSG & co find Earth (the real one, like this planet,) and they were either going to find it in the future or in the past (turns out it was past.) So that part I think you can't argue with. I think what bugged a lot of people was how cheaply they got there. My sister watched the first season, and while she liked it at first, as soon as it started to get mystical, she tuned out. I don't mind a bit of mysticism, even in hard Sci-Fi, but only if it's used to explore the fuzzy boundary between the supernatural and the natural. If it's there to let you get away with huge plot holes, I'm not such a big fan. Note, however, that if the piece is fantasy (and that includes Star Wars - which, despite its setting, is fantasy and not Sci-Fi, and I don't mean that to put one genre over the other) it's something I'm perfectly willing to accept, because fantasy is about different things.
Man, I'm rambling a bit. Good thing no one else is going to read this (if you are reading this, congratulations on your epic attention span.)
The joy of a long series is that the pleasure you get from that piece of media is extended. You can, for example, read The Gunslinger and rest in the knowledge that you've only hit the tip of the iceberg (and haven't even met half the main characters of the series.) Of course, this does two things: it means the ending's got that much more of an investment to pay off, and you feel that much more depressed when it ends. I only got into the Dark Tower in 2003, only a year before it was finished, but imagine if you had been reading since the 80s? That's a part of your life that, granted, you can go back to, but the whole thing is complete. Stephen King clearly feels the same way, because he's writing an "Interquel" (that's right, it's a thing.) The Dark Tower actually takes this to a fairly meta place. In the later books, it is revealed that the actual writing of the series (including the book you're reading at that time) is one of the many thing necessary to keep the Dark Tower (God with a capital G, except that instead of looking like a bearded guy, it's a big black tower in the center of all universes that simultaneously contains all universes - though sometimes it's different things, like a Rose, depending on the universe) from falling. He takes pains to make sure that he's trying not to be egotistical - King the character is kind of a lazy coward, only able to write the books because of divine inspiration, and not in a "I've earned it" sort of way - but I can sort of see what he's getting at. As a writer, his stories are his universe. So the Dark Tower (the last book of the series) ends with a "Coda." He actually warns people against reading it (without it, the series ends with Roland walking into the Dark Tower, and we don't get to find out what's inside, which, despite what some people would complain is a cop-out, is actually the ending I was hoping for.) Anyway, massive spoiler: Roland walks up the tower, seeing a bunch of scenes form his past, and then the door opens, and it's the Desert where he started in the very first line of the first book. In that moment, he realizes he's made this journey a million times (maybe more.)
In a way, it's kind of horrific, given all the pain he goes through, but in a way, it's immortality, and an infinite number of chances to right what wrongs he committed. In the most important way, though, we find that the story continues (and is, in fact, slightly different, as one of the shames of his past has been corrected in this run-through.) While I was outraged at this at first, I sort of get it. The story never ends, and we are free to speculate on what would happen this time, even if Stephen King doesn't have to write any more of them.
So my current series is A Song of Ice and Fire. (along with a few sitcoms - where continuity is less of a concern - and Fringe, which... let me get back to you on that.) ASOIAF has actually been in the writing since the 90s, and while I had heard of it before, it did take the HBO show to get me to check it out.
It's an interesting series, in that the first volume ends by completely uprooting your expectations for the series. You finish it and ask yourself "well, who's the protagonist now?" And the answer is: "Yes." Or maybe "No one." Or maybe "Jon, Daenerys, and Tyrion... for the most part, but then there's other people who are pretty important too." You finish the first book perhaps expecting that the series will be the war between the Starks and the Lannisters, but book two centers more around the war between Stannis and the Lannisters. Still, you might cling to the Starks eventually winning somehow, but book 3 ends with basically the entirety of the North ceasing to be an independent power and every (living) Stark is either fleeing or in hiding.
MASSIVE SPOILER FOR BOOK 5:
Hell, even one of our top 3 is ambiguously dead (as in, we haven't seen whether he's dead, but leave it to George R R Martin for us to say "there's no way he could be dead..." and then have him be dead.)
The endgame for ASOIAF is really up in the air, and I actually think it's been a strength of the series. Really, we don't know who is going to come out on top in the end. Granted, given the fire-vulnerability of the Others and fact that Daenerys has a trio of dragons, the obvious direction would be the Others mounting a full-scale zombie apocalypse, Westeros getting flooded with Wights, and Daenerys rides in to save the day.
But obvious is not clearly the way things are going to go. After all, this is a series where our badass, but principled protagonist gets his head chopped off in the very first book. The point is that as long as we see the Others invade Westeros, and as long as Daenerys gets to... also invade Westeros, the "promises" GRRM has made will be fulfilled. The rest of it - who sits on the Iron Throne, who survives (if anyone, because I totally wouldn't put it past GRRM to kill everyone off) - is totally up for grabs. Just as long as we don't have another Feast for Crows-type book ("none of the interesting characters for 900 pages!")
Anyway, it's 3:30 in the morning and I've been LJ-rambling too long. I wonder if this is remotely an interesting thing to read.
Anyway, I was reading this article on the AV Club and it got me thinking about entertainment and art and the difficulties and reward of a long-term narrative.
Fiction is my drug of choice, and when I run out, I go into a kind of withdrawal.
And this is, I think, what gets me into the long-running series. Though it took me a while (as it does for all of us) to realize that often sequels are shitty attempts to wring all the quality out of a popular, original work, there's still a part of me that gets excited if they say there's a new one on the way.
Like many of my age group, who were in Middle School and High School when the Star Wars prequels came out, I convinced myself that they were good movies, with the usual hope that more of a good thing was good. I think the problem is that, when a sequel is conceived after the fact, rather than intended from the beginning, it is very often destructive to the original pieces. When the protagonist achieves his or her goal in a story, many of these end on a "happily ever after" note. While you can always come up with a different kind of conflict, which I think the better sequels tend to do, often times the happy ending of an original movie is utterly destroyed by the sequel so that the same conflict can be repeated - but this time, with more superficial bells and whistles to make it seem like you're getting something new.
Case in point: Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Yes, Dr. Evil survives the first one, and all that, but a big part of the plot was Austin learning to be a modern man, with the ability to put the reins on his "Free-Love" mentality just enough to get the girl (played by Elizabeth Hurley, who, when I was eleven, was my first celebrity crush.) Anyway, the sequel shows up, and all that is tossed out with a throwaway line about her actually being a robot. Yes, it's a silly movie, and maybe taking it seriously is missing the point, but it's these kinds of throwaway handwaves that are the mark of a cheap sequel, even if they are lampshaded.
A remedy to this is something that's become a lot more popular, which is the long-term-plan. This tends to be more in the realm of novels and television (and in the case of Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire, both!) The problem, though, is that as much as we would like to think the writers have it all planned out, often times they don't. I was a huge fan of Lost when it was on the air, and whatever flaws it had, I still maintain that it was a captivating show. That said, after a couple years, I'm still not really happy with the finale - specifically the "sideways universe" half of the ending. Despite the insistence of the writers that it was a "character-based show," that was never true. Sure, you had some great ones like Ben and Locke and Desmond, but what we really wanted was to know what was special about the island, and what the fuck was the Smoke Monster all about. We sort of got those answers, but with a lot of extra threads that were either left dangling, or explained in somewhat unsatisfying ways.
Battlestar Galactica, I think, was always a kind of sister-show to Lost. While I liked the overall "vibe," to Lost better (helped tremendously by Michael Giacchino's amazing score and the cool Hawaiian jungle) I think that, at least for the first two and a half to three seasons was a more intelligent show. The way it dealt with the War on Terror and the Iraq War (and remember that the miniseries started only two years after 9/11) was clever and provocative (especially the occupation of New Caprica in the beginning of season 3, where Western audiences saw our heroes in an insurrection that has resorted to terrorist tactics, mirroring the contemporary situation in Iraq but from the Iraqi side.) Aside from the "don't trust technology" bullshit tacked on to the very end of the finale (despite the show being about a Robot Uprising, the theme of over-reliance on technology was way in the backseat while themes of paranoia, freedom during wartime and the difficulties in making peace with one's enemies were in the forefront) the biggest issue I think most people had was the overt "God fixes everything" deus ex machina.
Ultimately, we had to have BSG & co find Earth (the real one, like this planet,) and they were either going to find it in the future or in the past (turns out it was past.) So that part I think you can't argue with. I think what bugged a lot of people was how cheaply they got there. My sister watched the first season, and while she liked it at first, as soon as it started to get mystical, she tuned out. I don't mind a bit of mysticism, even in hard Sci-Fi, but only if it's used to explore the fuzzy boundary between the supernatural and the natural. If it's there to let you get away with huge plot holes, I'm not such a big fan. Note, however, that if the piece is fantasy (and that includes Star Wars - which, despite its setting, is fantasy and not Sci-Fi, and I don't mean that to put one genre over the other) it's something I'm perfectly willing to accept, because fantasy is about different things.
Man, I'm rambling a bit. Good thing no one else is going to read this (if you are reading this, congratulations on your epic attention span.)
The joy of a long series is that the pleasure you get from that piece of media is extended. You can, for example, read The Gunslinger and rest in the knowledge that you've only hit the tip of the iceberg (and haven't even met half the main characters of the series.) Of course, this does two things: it means the ending's got that much more of an investment to pay off, and you feel that much more depressed when it ends. I only got into the Dark Tower in 2003, only a year before it was finished, but imagine if you had been reading since the 80s? That's a part of your life that, granted, you can go back to, but the whole thing is complete. Stephen King clearly feels the same way, because he's writing an "Interquel" (that's right, it's a thing.) The Dark Tower actually takes this to a fairly meta place. In the later books, it is revealed that the actual writing of the series (including the book you're reading at that time) is one of the many thing necessary to keep the Dark Tower (God with a capital G, except that instead of looking like a bearded guy, it's a big black tower in the center of all universes that simultaneously contains all universes - though sometimes it's different things, like a Rose, depending on the universe) from falling. He takes pains to make sure that he's trying not to be egotistical - King the character is kind of a lazy coward, only able to write the books because of divine inspiration, and not in a "I've earned it" sort of way - but I can sort of see what he's getting at. As a writer, his stories are his universe. So the Dark Tower (the last book of the series) ends with a "Coda." He actually warns people against reading it (without it, the series ends with Roland walking into the Dark Tower, and we don't get to find out what's inside, which, despite what some people would complain is a cop-out, is actually the ending I was hoping for.) Anyway, massive spoiler: Roland walks up the tower, seeing a bunch of scenes form his past, and then the door opens, and it's the Desert where he started in the very first line of the first book. In that moment, he realizes he's made this journey a million times (maybe more.)
In a way, it's kind of horrific, given all the pain he goes through, but in a way, it's immortality, and an infinite number of chances to right what wrongs he committed. In the most important way, though, we find that the story continues (and is, in fact, slightly different, as one of the shames of his past has been corrected in this run-through.) While I was outraged at this at first, I sort of get it. The story never ends, and we are free to speculate on what would happen this time, even if Stephen King doesn't have to write any more of them.
So my current series is A Song of Ice and Fire. (along with a few sitcoms - where continuity is less of a concern - and Fringe, which... let me get back to you on that.) ASOIAF has actually been in the writing since the 90s, and while I had heard of it before, it did take the HBO show to get me to check it out.
It's an interesting series, in that the first volume ends by completely uprooting your expectations for the series. You finish it and ask yourself "well, who's the protagonist now?" And the answer is: "Yes." Or maybe "No one." Or maybe "Jon, Daenerys, and Tyrion... for the most part, but then there's other people who are pretty important too." You finish the first book perhaps expecting that the series will be the war between the Starks and the Lannisters, but book two centers more around the war between Stannis and the Lannisters. Still, you might cling to the Starks eventually winning somehow, but book 3 ends with basically the entirety of the North ceasing to be an independent power and every (living) Stark is either fleeing or in hiding.
MASSIVE SPOILER FOR BOOK 5:
Hell, even one of our top 3 is ambiguously dead (as in, we haven't seen whether he's dead, but leave it to George R R Martin for us to say "there's no way he could be dead..." and then have him be dead.)
The endgame for ASOIAF is really up in the air, and I actually think it's been a strength of the series. Really, we don't know who is going to come out on top in the end. Granted, given the fire-vulnerability of the Others and fact that Daenerys has a trio of dragons, the obvious direction would be the Others mounting a full-scale zombie apocalypse, Westeros getting flooded with Wights, and Daenerys rides in to save the day.
But obvious is not clearly the way things are going to go. After all, this is a series where our badass, but principled protagonist gets his head chopped off in the very first book. The point is that as long as we see the Others invade Westeros, and as long as Daenerys gets to... also invade Westeros, the "promises" GRRM has made will be fulfilled. The rest of it - who sits on the Iron Throne, who survives (if anyone, because I totally wouldn't put it past GRRM to kill everyone off) - is totally up for grabs. Just as long as we don't have another Feast for Crows-type book ("none of the interesting characters for 900 pages!")
Anyway, it's 3:30 in the morning and I've been LJ-rambling too long. I wonder if this is remotely an interesting thing to read.