What’s worse than ending the show on a bad foot? Getting cold feet about an ending so just never ending and letting it drag on and on and on…It’s a major issue and seems to be killing major, once good, series.
But really, I think we need to discuss the issues of the shows that never seem to want to end. This is going to be a particularly mean-sounding piece and one that focuses on many television series so there will be plenty of spoilers to be had, so beware.
Firstly, let’s get down to the basics of a good show. The building blocks of a great fan following aren’t that hard, there have been terrible shows that exist and somehow maintain a huge fanbase regardless of being the same benefit as watching paint dry.
But what makes a good show good?
I’m gonna be borrowing from this article to help explain what I’m going into, so give it a quick look-over.
Good Characters are important because they help lead the show. Having good characters means having interest constantly within the viewers, characters we can relate to and watch with their many flaws, gains, achievements, etc.
The issue with this is that many shows start with good characters, but then allow them to turn sour and morph into very stereotypical and guarded by that evil plot armor.
Having a character become defended by the dreaded plot armor means that, regardless of their doing of the stupid things, being arrogant and getting people in trouble or even killed, they will barely if at all face any repercussions. This is what kills a character for myself and most viewers. We don’t want to see someone who gets away with being terrible yet remain the main character, practically cast in gold.
The plot is another element that needs to be focused on heavily. Good shows tend to start out (maybe) with a good plot but then slowly derails and turns into some confused mess. Is there any way to explain this other than just saying that shows should have a clear goal to get from point A to point B, and so on. Just like an outline of a paper (of which I’ve written maybe two in my entire life), you must have a clear understanding of where you’re going. Good show writers understand this.
Dynamism. This is probably the major issue and where we’re going from here. I’m rolling my eyes with the many examples that I can use.
When Good shows go Bad: Part 1, talk about that shark
So. The term jump the shark comes from the beloved show Happy Days. Season 5 of this show and the Fonz is dared to jump a shark on water skis. There are a number of reasons I can name for why this is stupid.
This show coined the phrase that is now used to describe the stupid, desperate lengths a show will go when they’ve lost their viewer interest and don’t wanna just end the show.
Jump that shark. You jump that shark and have fun spiraling down into utter failure.
When good shows go bad: part 2, Doctor Who.
If you’ve known me for a long time you know I went through a very long and heavy Doctor Who phase. It was easy, and it was honestly very fun. I loved the show and the characters and what it did. I was mesmerized by this sci-fi blend. Maybe my love for historical time travel is why I now love Quantum Leap.
But what’s utterly sad is that everything good, if not ended at the right time, can sour very quickly and turn very bad. Unfortunately, this was the case for Doctor Who for me. I watched the series reboot from 2005 onwards and loved it. But around year 3 of Matt Smith (11th Doctor), things started to go pretty south. Quite honestly, I cannot remember where this show jumped the shark. It probably did multiple times but I just didn’t notice.
But alas, here comes that inevitable television-movie that was supposed to answer questions and was supposed to be a big deal. All it did was bring back the most popular doctor (David Tennent), and introduce a new Doctor that we never knew about, though I love John Hurt to the ends of the earth–may he rest in peace–his part in this was painful.
Just rehash the idea of a huge war that we already knew about, and add some convoluted time thingy and suddenly a new regeneration that the writers should have thought of before actually making cannon. Why?
So in very short: The doctor can only regenerate past their original body 12 times. So 13 in total. There was later a retconned in reason that the Master (mister Doctor’s nemesis?) found a way to bypass dying past 13. This is lazy. The doctor should have died after Peter Capaldi. The show SHOULD have ended back when the fanbase was there. There isn’t much really, it’s still huge, but not as much as it was. Because they jumped that shark a few times over, but they keep asking for more sharks and a bigger boat.
When Good shows go Bad: Part 3, Supernatural
I really loved this show too, and part of me still does. But let’s be completely honest, there is no real reason this show should still be on. Yes, the main actors are amazing and nice people and deserve work, but the show is just running on fumes now. I stopped watching then the main characters joined an old Illuminati-style underground thing their grandfather used to be a member of and suddenly there are fifty-thousand new antagonists and the main goals of the show doesn’t matter as much. You know, the end of the world was put on a back-burner.
I’ve said this to so many people: The show should have ended at the end of season 5. It was perfect! The characters came full circle, and their deaths–well, Sams death–would not have only been fitting, it was literally his purpose. Through season 5, the show retained it’s supernatural elements and actually kept a semi-serious, horror-esque aspect. Season 6 onwards was…just a joke. They jumped the shark with the…whatever they were called, the monstered ran by that guy named Dick. There were so many Dick jokes in season 6 I wanted to throw something.
It kept getting worse.
When Good shows go Bad: Part 4, Greys Anatomy
I’ve watched this show a lot. I liked the show up until the moment they wanted to kill off Derek. Now I will never watch the show again. There is the prime jumping of the shark; kill off one of the main characters, a character everyone likes and is a good person honestly. Let’s kill them off in a pretty stupid and mean way and give them a whole episode to send them off.
You know, at least when Medium jumped this shark it was in the very last episode of the series and proved to be an excellent send-off for the series and its characters. They didn’t do it and expect to keep going like “doodly doo, nothing wrong here”.
I remember when the characters that are now heading the show were introduced. They were rude, and I didn’t like them. Oh, the show tried to make us like them, forcing their little plots into every episode when we really just care about the characters that have been on the show since it started. I hated the new characters.
It would have been different if they were likable and didn’t come in literally the episode after the main character died in a very brutal way, and they come in and blatantly disrespect said dead characters memory and space, and act like arrogant assholes.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that a few episodes later two or three (I can’t even remember) die when a crazy gunman comes and shoots up the hospital. Why did they kill off like the only character of the new group that had gotten development for the better?
Because. Shondra proclaims it.
Now the actual main character, Merideth, is a cold, bitter and cynical woman who has essentially become the character her mother was in all those flashbacks. All the (original) characters save like two are gone. Why is this show still going? Why. WHY.
Part 5: Shows that KNOW when over is over.
As previously mentioned: Medium. This show was great and ended on a pretty awesome foot. It wasn’t a very happy ending but it was fitting for the characters we’ve come to know since it started. Ending a show doesn’t mean building up a happy ending. It means ending the show in the most fitting way for the world and characters.
Six Feet Under, for example, the show ends (MAJOR SPOILER) by showing us flash-forwards of all the characters and how/when they die. It’s pretty bitter-sweet.
The Sopranos. This show ended on a cliffhanger that was heard around the world. Did the family get whacked, did someone die, what happened? Dunno. It was a show about the mafia and that’s a pretty good ending to leave us on such a hanger like that.
The ending to Breaking Bad is also an ending I’ve heard is extremely fitting. Avatar: The Last Airbender, supposedly a children’s show that not only had such mature characters and complex issues but ended after four three extremely strong seasons. It tied everything together and made the ending feel earned and well-deserved. It’s sequel series Korra also ended on a very good, happy-ending note.
Ending a show isn’t bad. It doesn’t mean the death of something or the end of money you can make off something. It just means that a studio respects their characters enough to not degrade them into nothing but a running stunt on skis as we keep jumping sharks, sharks on fire, a ring of sharks. I’m not even going to go into The Walking Dead and how they killed off a major character–not for plot reasons–but because the studio wanted to screw over a young actor and when he called foul, they killed off his character. It’s totally unfair and stupid, and I have little hope for the show at all.
Woops. I went into it.
Part 6: End
Because I know how to end my posts. Perhaps networks should learn how to end their crap.
A Retro Moose 