Warning: Obviously, there are huge spoilers here if you
haven’t yet seen these series’ endings.
Screenwriting is largely about setups and payoffs. You set
up the characters’ dilemmas, contradictions, problems, etc., and then you pay the
setup off with some kind of resonant resolution. Of course, you might say that
there’s a distinction between entertainment and art - while entertainment
requires clear payoffs, art shouldn’t be restricted by that expectation. There
are two problems with this. The first is that if you do not intend to pay off
the setups you create, you should warn the audience in some way that you are
doing art rather than entertainment. The second is that if you have talent,
then you can do both entertainment and art simultaneously. The work of a
talented artist can satisfy the requirements of both entertainment and art in TV
series finales.
So let’s look at the finale examples in four TV series’:
DEXTER
The relevant setups were largely around the ignorance of the
detectives versus the genius of Dexter. So the resolution should have been the
detectives realise the truth, and the genius of Dexter wins or loses depending
on big picture factors of life. Instead, the finale leaves the detectives still
clueless, and Dexter foolishly tells everybody that he’s going to Argentina, which
increases the likelihood that the spotlight will be shone on himself and/or his
family after his escape from America. In reality, he would have had escape
plans worked out years ago because he is smart. He would have told everybody
he’s going to France, for example, and then would have gone to Argentina at the
last minute, even surprising his new lover in the process. The finale would then
have been about whether he succeeded or not.
Personally, I see him walking along a sunny beach with his
woman and child. I would have had a camera pointing up towards the sky with
Dexter smiling down, the wind blowing through his hair—the message being that
life and God are murderers. But the complexity of life could have interfered
along the way to take it another direction. Or the detectives could have
figured it out and caught him or there could have been a shootout. Instead, he
boats off into a hurricane and survives that to become a lumberjack, leaving
his kid alone with a serial killer in Argentina. That is a fucking ridiculous plan
for such a smart calculating guy.
The writers said the setup was whether he would become human
and the payoff is that he did become human and couldn’t live with the remorse
and was punishing himself by living in seclusion. Firstly, that’s not what the
audience saw as the main setup. Secondly, his decision to be human was already
resolved, so punishing him for past crimes made it seem you can never transcend
your past, which is a lousy message.
THE SOPRANOS
The relevant setups were the luxurious lifestyle versus the
ugly reality behind it all, and the delusion of Tony’s wife and the daughter.
The obvious payoff, therefore, was to show the full truth about Tony to the
wife and daughter. So I would have had him arrested for the murder of many people,
including Adriana and Meadow’s first boyfriend. Then we could have seen the
wife pretending it’s all lies and the daughter finally twigging to just how
evil Tony is. Then the wife could go to jail too, and the couple spend the rest
of their lives contemplating all that they have done and lost. Indeed, I
thought Tony getting spiritual and taking drugs, and the wife going to Europe were
experiences that gave them a taste of a better life so that it would make the
restrictions of prison life harder to bear.
Instead, we get a purely artistic ending. The director said
that the audience loved Tony, and so I presume the camera cutting to black was
the killing of Tony and the audience. Actually, the director David Chase said:
“The way I see it is
that Tony Soprano had been peoples' alter ego… They had cheered him on. And
then, all of a sudden, they wanted to see him punished for all that… I thought
that was disgusting, frankly.” [The
Sopranos: The Complete Book. pp.182 -185]
So it seems the director the finale was about the director
getting revenge on the audience for enjoying the Tony character yet
simultaneously wanting justice meted out to him. Attacking the audience - how
indulgent is that?
Even logically, Tony saw all these guys entering the
restaurant and acting suspiciously, so why wouldn’t he respond instead of
acting oblivious? Another setup that wasn’t resolved was Tony complaining
endlessly to the psychologist, yet the psychologist had been raped. An obvious
resolution would be that Tony finds out and realises what a complainer he is
compared to how brave she is. By the way, Tony’s son suddenly wanted to join
the army yet he suffers from panic attacks and depression. How is that even
remotely possible?
HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER
This is a romcom, so we reasonably expect a light and happy
ending. Furthermore, the characters all grew really well through the series.
But, in the end, the characters reverted to their previous immaturity and they ruined
the goal of the whole series—Ted’s meeting with the mother. Horrible ending.
The first setup was, “Will he get Robin?” The answer was no. Disappointing, but
that’s life. And the real mother well and truly made up for that disappointment
by being wonderful in so many ways. So they should have ended it with Robin and
Barney being happy, and Ted and the mother on the train station under the
umbrella… “And that’s how I met your mother.”
By the way, they should have had him ask her why she is
standing in the rain rather than under the station roof, and she would have
said, “Because it’s raining,” i.e. she was enjoying the rain, which is another
thing he could have loved about her.
Romcom is about escapism. Instead, How I Met Your Mother
became about regression and death. I was gutted for weeks after that finale.
SMALLVILLE
The gigantic setup was Lois not knowing that Clark is the Blur,
and furthermore, that he’s an alien. So I would have liked to see three
episodes of her coming to terms with that gigantic news. Instead, she accepts
it straight away. Same thing happened with Lana. Also, how does he suddenly
have the power to move a gigantic asteroid? They should have built up to it by
him getting stronger and stronger. Or have him take nukes to the asteroid. As
it was, the ending felt completely unrealistic. Sure, the series was already
unrealistic but it didn’t excessively violate its own internal realism. To do
so in the finale was incredibly lazy.
CONCLUSION
While watching many TV series, I always get the feeling by
about the third-last episode that there’s not enough time left for the resolution.
The writers often leave it all to the last episode, and that’s never enough
time.
A good ending can save a bad series. And a bad ending can
ruin a good series. A bad ending is tolerable in a film because it’s only 2
hours of your life. But a TV series can involve you for years. You owe it to
your audience to make a great finale, preferably with great payoffs while beginning
the finale a few episodes before the end so you have time to payoff all the
setups.
Here’s hoping that producers and networks raise the standard
for finales in future.
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