…It Was Aliens The Whole Time
“Endings are hard. Any chapped-ass monkey with a keyboard can poop out a beginning, but endings are impossible. You try to tie up every loose end, but you never can. The fans are always gonna bitch. There’s always gonna be holes. And since it’s the ending, it’s all supposed to add up to something. I’m telling you, they’re a raging pain in the ass.”
-Chuck Supernatural– Episode 5×22
It’s finally happened. You never thought you’d end up here. There were seventeen seasons (the holy grail) you found fresh and now it’s three weeks later and it’s ending. These characters that have been a bigger part of your life than your friends and the majority of your family will be no longer part of your Netflix queue. This is it…your show has ended.
More than films (only a few hours invested) or books (many hours for sure), television show endings suck. And it’s not really their fault. We can invest years of our lives to these characters, the plots, the locations, the crazy tangent it went off in the third season and then suddenly it just stops. It’s like a break up, the characters have moved on and no longer wish you to be a part of their lives. Sometimes they die, or inexplicably move to Paris or now live in a parallel universe where the West Wing is still running. Therefore whatever ending the shows writers end on becomes very personal for us as viewers because of our investment.
But writing endings are extremely tough. Not only do they finally mean you can put your pen down and feel like you may have accomplished something but there’s so much to do. Did all the characters have an ending, did you forget someone in the fourth chapter, stuck under a metal girder screaming for help? Did you really need to kill that other character or should you have killed someone else? Did the plot get resolved? Do you even remember what the plot is anymore after all the twists and turns? Because you as a writer may not remember but your reader certainly will. And sometimes not everything needs to make sense, life doesn’t get tied up in a pretty bow at the end of the week, why should fiction? Unfortunately Lost took this a little too far and now all writers have to remember to solve each question they ask or the smoke monster will be thrown at them.
The other issue is that sometimes the most rewarding and satisfying ending for a character as a reader, is not a terribly interesting one for the writer. This is most apparent when the main character is killed off. It can be quite a relief for your main character to stop existing once that pen is down. As in the case of Sherlock Holmes, Bond or Elizabeth Bennet, the characters can outlive their fiction. That character belongs in a sense to the writer and they don’t want anyone throwing zombies at them two hundred years later. But obviously that makes for one very unhappy reader. With very few exceptions, Black Adder being the only that comes to mind, it feels kind of lazy and worse…unoriginal. Maybe if you King Lear most of the cast but that could cause massive therapy bills.
And sometimes the best thing is to not really have a firm ending. Some of my favourite endings leave enough to the imagination to spawn 70,000 fanfiction stories. Being Human, House, Life on Mars all have endings but they remain open, you know the characters you love are going to continue on their adventures. But that’s where the betrayal comes in, if the characters can just continue, why don’t we get to keep watching (the exact answer is network executives but let’s keep this metaphorical). In my opinion this is really the best way to end a series or book because fictional characters if they are really well written, live in our heads. Would Dana Scully get the non-fat Latte or full fat? How would Dexter deal with this jerk driver in front of me? If I had to chose a husband from True Blood would I go with abs to height ratio or would I rank on facial hair? So they should get to keep living because if the answer to all these questions is no they all got shot in the head then it doesn’t matter, although I feel my morning commutes might be a bit bleaker.
This in no way even touches the behemoth of the Murder Mystery Ending. Currently the biggest thorn in my side. My new book is a mystery and I thought having seen every crime drama on television, I would be a master at the art of crafting a convincing, smart, yet sensitive murder mystery. Surprisingly, not the case. Not only do you have to come up with a three-dimensional antagonist; they have to be misunderstood but not by the reader; they have to be un-likeable but not evil because that’s not real; but also kind of attractive in a I make a fine dinner of people’s livers but have amazing suits kind of way. The ending has to have at least one twist which no one saw coming but also did, if they go back. It has to satisfy the reader in a way they didn’t even know they needed (we’re moving into witchcraft territory here…) and then deal with all the other crap from the above paragraphs.
So the next time you throw your remote at the TV look at it from the writer’s point of view. If you can think of a better ending then maybe you should introduce yourself to fan-fiction and say good-bye to normal life. Of course, this sympathy should not be included towards endings where God is involved, it was all a dream… or my personal awful favourite where the last season didn’t happen. Because life is hard enough, we should get to send off the characters that we have given up exercise, cooking meals, cleaning house and social interaction for, in a manner befit a King…just not any kings of Westeros.
Originally Posted - Sept 5, 2015
