TV Shows – Solid Endings

I’ll try my best not to add any spoilers, so this ‘muse’ may not be very detailed. 🙂

I’ve relatively recently finished watching The Big Bang Theory on TV. I’m not a big fan of ‘endings’, so watched the last episode with some trepidation. However, I was pleasantly surprised. It didn’t try to be ‘clever’, it didn’t try to change anything too much, it was a good, solid, believable ending.

Some time ago I watched the final episode of The Good Wife. I didn’t like it. It tried so hard to be ‘clever’ that it missed an important point – most people don’t care about ‘clever’ endings! The last episode was very disappointing. If the show makers were determined to have the ‘incident’ in the episode, so be it, but that shouldn’t have been the very end. I can think of a way that could have kept that in, but ended slightly differently with no disappointment to the show’s fans. I actually hated how it ended!

I’m also a big fan of ‘Friends’, but I didn’t like that ending either. It was far too poignant, and it changed everything far, too much. I’m not saying it was particularly bad, I just didn’t like it myself.

It was the same with ‘Frasier’ – the ending changed everything…It could have ended much more happily in half a dozen different ways.

House was another show I watched right through. Although the ending was also very poignant, it seemed appropriate somehow. Another solid ending.

I think program makers and writers start off with perhaps a vague idea of how they want the show to end. It was like that with The Good Wife, I believe, which sounds more like stubbornness than good sense, to me!

Psych almost disappointed me, too. I love that show, and when everything started to change at the end, I almost stopped watching it. However, the things that changed were very appropriate and the ending was funny and typical of the show!

When it comes to TV shows, particularly comedies, I think more thought needs to go into the endings so fans don’t end up disappointed. They should imagine themselves watching it for the first time as a fan and imagining how they would like to see the conclusion to play out.

I’d be very interested in reading any comments and opinions, but if you could do so without adding spoilers, that would be great! 🙂