Stupid or Unhappy Endings that P'd You Off - Spoil Away, guys

[Andrew Gilfellon]

1 minute ago, Jo498 said:

For me it was more like:

Season 1: there is another mystery every week or so, the writers must be making this stuff up on the fly

Season 2-3 (or maybe until 4, I forgot) Wow, there really seems a plan behind all the mysteries and they might make sense in the end

Season 4-6: No, you were right with the first hypothesis: We were making stuff up on he fly in the earlier seasons and now we are too lazy/pressed for time to try to get the mess somewhat coherent. And the ending was even worse than that...

I'd be fine with the whole purgatory ending IF they hadn't included things in the purgatory sideway flashes that indicated it wasn't purgatory. It's like they changed their mind about it around Episode 10.

It really annoys me when people build up mysteries, make entire episodes about those mysteries, don't answer those questions and then turn around and say, well, the show was never about those mysteries that took up 95% of story time. What you should be concentrating on are those characters. Um...those characters who the mysteries directly effected and so an explanation should be given?

 

[Andrew Gilfellon]

I didn't like the ending of Doctor Who series 9. Or the whole season to be honest. It was a clusterfuck of nonsense. Time of the Doctor was also bad.

Get this. The Time Lords are alive, it is established in Day of the Doctor that they were saved. FROZEN in a moment of time, in a pocket universe. Right. Simple. Okay. Come Time of the Doctor it is revealed that those cracks in the Universe from Season 5 are being exploited by the Time Lords in order to contact the Doctor from a planet called Trenzalor. This is a planet where we've seen the Doctor's tomb. So it's obvious he failed to you know, bring them back, and died. But come Time of the Doctor, he doesn't die and gets an extra cycle of regenerations. So why was his tomb on Trenzalor? He didn't change history because then his tomb wouldn't be there to begin with. Anyway.

 

So the Time Lords are stuck inside a pocket universe. They need the Doctor's help so they give him more regenerations. Come Season 9 and the Doctor has a confession dial for some reason. I wonder why he never needed it before in, like season 6, or Time of the Doctor? There's this whole thing about the Hybrid. We skip to the Final Episode and it turns out that the Time Lords didn't need the Doctor's help at all to get out of the pocket Universe and unfreeze themselves, and they've been communicating with the universe all along.  The Hyrbid turns out to be nothing and has no impact whatsoever on the series final. Without the whole Hybrid thing season 9 would've still turned out the way it did. For some reason even though it was stated to immortal beings travelling together would be a bad thing, we have Clara who is now immortal and Madame Me who is also immortal travelling in their own Tardis.  Oh yes. Moffatt cannot bear to kill his characters and would much rather cheapen Clara's somewhat halfarsed story arc this year. Oh and you know the Doctor didn't know where Galifrey was? IT WAS IN HIS CONFESSION DIAL THE WHOLE TIME.

 

So. Timelords back in a way that renders Time of the Doctor pointless.

Hybrid came to nothing.

It was a poor season that was far too similar to something RTD would write. I.E. THIS IS COOL. PUT THIS IN REGARDLESS OF IT MAKING SENSE.

 

[Darth Richard II]

RTD?

Also I may be remembering incorrectly but I think Lost was originally planned as two seasons only, then got popular. Also there was a writers strike in there too.

[Jo498]

As far as I recall there were also explicit statements by the writers as early as season 2 or so, that the characters were NOT dead, the island NOT out of time or some kind of hell/purgatory. So they had been lying or they had not really made up their minds at all.

I am not sure but I had the first 2 or 3 LOST seasons on DVD with extras, like comments, making of etc. and it was sometimes obvious that the would be making stuff up for a few episodes and then change it if the audience like things. E.g. the guy who later on turned out to be the leader of the "Others" (Michael) was originally introduced only for a few episodes and then written in.

It was similar with Alias and the Rambaldi shit as well as the Sydney's original boss changing sides (or not) several times. The first two Alias seasons were really good, then apparently it got to complicated for the audience with all the double crossing stuff, so they simplified it towards the end of season 2; the 3rd was o.k. (partly because Lauren (? the blonde wife of Vaughan) was really hot... ;)), the rest was fairly trite stuff.

[Andrew Gilfellon]

6 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

RTD?

Also I may be remembering incorrectly but I think Lost was originally planned as two seasons only, then got popular. Also there was a writers strike in there too.

Russel T Davis

[LongRider]

4 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

RTD?

Also I may be remembering incorrectly but I think Lost was originally planned as two seasons only, then got popular. Also there was a writers strike in there too.

It was because of the writers strike I lost interest in Lost.  Two new episodes would play, then a repeat, then one new one, then a repeat, then.....I turned out as I couldn't keep track as it was.  For the best it seems. 

[Darth Richard II]

Eh, sounds like normal american tv to me.

[The Marquis de Leech]

On 31/03/2016 at 0:32 PM, HelenaExMachina said:

Thinking about children's books too, I feel like The Last Battle takes the cake for awful endings. Even as a child who seemed not to take in anything at all about religion when people tried to teach me, this one still felt wrong when I read it as a child. Revisiting as I got older, well, yeah. Ugh. Not good.

As a child I loved some of the apocalyptic imagery of The Last Battle - the extinguishing of the Sun, the awaking of Father Time, and so on. In fact I loved it so much that as far as I was concerned, that was the real End. All that stupid through the stable door nonsense? I straight out ignored it.

[Myshkin]

On March 31, 2016 at 11:11 AM, Astromech said:

St. Elsewhere too

I actually love the ending of St. Elsewhere. I know, everyone else in the world hates it, but I think it was perfect. And what if we are all just the snow globe dream of an autistic child? I just blew your mind!

[Darth Richard II]

The ending to How I met Your Mother pissed me off so much that it osured the entire show for me. Not the mother being dead, but the whole ted ends up with robin and really just settled for the mother bullshit. I watched 2 fucking seasons about Barney and Robin getting fucking married and true love and shit and they get divorced in like 2 years? wtf?

[Jo498]

I would have to read up the details, but the strike was in LOST's 4th season and I do not think that this was the main problem. My main problem was to expect something coherent from a series that was quite well done and exciting but after all just a TV series where decisions were made every week how it was going to proceed and no real master plan existed at all.

Still, the stupidity of smoke monster guy and purgatory ending (which hat been explicitly denied earlier) was not a necessary outcome...

[Andrew Gilfellon]

1 hour ago, Jo498 said:

I would have to read up the details, but the strike was in LOST's 4th season and I do not think that this was the main problem. My main problem was to expect something coherent from a series that was quite well done and exciting but after all just a TV series where decisions were made every week how it was going to proceed and no real master plan existed at all.

Still, the stupidity of smoke monster guy and purgatory ending (which hat been explicitly denied earlier) was not a necessary outcome...

The strike had nothing to do with the short seasons. They announced before season 4 that the seasons would be short so they can prove they have an end game in mind, the writer's strike just cut 2 episodes from season 4.

It kind of reminds me of what Moffatt did. He explicitly went on record to deny that Doctor Who would be taking a break in 2016 and all reports were false, then a week later announced that the show was indeed taking a break.  Don't say something if it isn't true.

 

Book wise I've been quite satisfied in my endings.  It's only tv that disappoints.

[Werthead]

Lost was chaotic because JJ Abrams came up with the concepts, cowrote the pilot, laid down some thoughts and then fucked off to make Mission Impossible 3, leaving Damon Lindelof to carry the show. Lindelof had a bit of a breakdown as a result, hired Carlton Cuse to help, took a week's break and then came back with some new ideas.

Scriptwriter Javier Grillo-Marxuach has a very long (42 pages!) report here on how the show started and the writing of the series. It is essential reading for fans of the show, even those who ditched it later. It's pretty interesting. For example, they had the hatch from Day One of planning the series but not what was in it.

The real problem was that they did get more of an idea of what the show was about by Season 2, but ABC kept getting them to spin out the show, as they were envisaging 5/6/7 or more seasons of 22-25 episodes apiece. In Season 3 they put their foot down and said they wanted to put an end date on the story. They decided on six seasons and Seasons 4-6 would be shorter to help avoid the choatic production schedule (which apparently had been one of the reasons for them losing some big actors in Seasons 1-3 who had originally planned to hang around longer). They then mapped out the story in Seasons 4-6 before Season 3 ended. There were still some mismatches and changes of plan (the weirdness of Jacob's cabin in Seasons 3-4 seems to be at odds with Jacob himself in Season 6), but at that point they did have a coherent story. That story just wasn't quite in tune with what they did in Seasons 1-2, which is why some core concepts (like the Numbers) were ignored or resolved in spin-off media rather than the show.

Overall, I think Lost had a better ending than BSG's, by far. BSG had an incoherent and muddled mythology that really didn't hang together, with enormous retcons at the 11th hour really not helping the situation (the problems began as early as New Caprica, and steadily got worse over time, weakening most of the back half of BSG's entire run; Lost actually got a lot better in Seasons 4 and 5 and even elements of Season 6 were pretty good, apart from the flash-sideways). Lost's problem was that it had too much backstory and working out what parts of it were important and which were not was left up to the audience. However, given the fanwankery of the internet (and the discussions we had here when the show was on the air!) it's not too hard to piece things together to work out most of the things that happened. The only big problem is that the final question of "What is the Island?" was not answered even though the producers had an idea in mind.

Reading between the lines of JRM's report, I get the impression they wanted the Island to be either an alien spacecraft or the product of a prehistoric technological civilisation, but thought that would be cheesy so decided not to confirm it although the clues are there.

Lost never remotely reached the heights of BSG at its best, but certainly was never as bad as BSG at its worst and it did have a better ending, the sappy afterlife stuff excepted. In fact, there's a fan edit of Season 6 which removes all of the purgatory stuff, which I may employ next time I do a rewatch.

To be frank, DS9, Babylon 5 and Fringe all had much, much better-executed story arcs and far superior endings to those shows.

[Jo498]

Thanks for the info and link. I had closed the Lost file and do not think I'll ever re-watch that but it's nice to know more background.

I gave up on Fringe too early, I am afraid. (Some time into season 3 soon after the parallel Olivia turns up.) But those first two seasons were very episodic and often relied too much on gore and shock value. It took them far too long to set up that parallel worlds/swapped boy thing in the first place. I probably should watch it again but I will certainly not muster enough patience for the first two seasons. It also didn't help that who plays Olivia is not a very good actress with only two facial expressions. (The Bishops are pretty good, though.)

[Liver and Onions]

A relative of mine dislikes the ending to Dune the novel, because it just ends after a seemingly inconsequential line. At first he was convinced someone had removed pages from the book. This is much like my reaction as a child to the Dr. Seuss' the Butter Battle Book. 

Now I love the 1984 Dune movie, in all of its weirdness, even though the ending, well, doesn't work with what the book set up. 

[Werthead]

Quote

A relative of mine dislikes the ending to Dune the novel, because it just ends after a seemingly inconsequential line. At first he was convinced someone had removed pages from the book. This is much like my reaction as a child to the Dr. Seuss' the Butter Battle Book. 

This is kind of what happened. Dune and Dune Messiah were supposed to be one book, but it was too big so what became the ending of the next part became the ending of the whole novel.

[Astromech]

11 hours ago, Myshkin said:

I actually love the ending of St. Elsewhere. I know, everyone else in the world hates it, but I think it was perfect. And what if we are all just the snow globe dream of an autistic child? I just blew your mind!

We're actually just sea-monkeys and Harold von Braunhaut is our cruel overlord.

2 hours ago, Liver and Onions said:

A relative of mine dislikes the ending to Dune the novel, because it just ends after a seemingly inconsequential line. At first he was convinced someone had removed pages from the book. This is much like my reaction as a child to the Dr. Seuss' the Butter Battle Book. 

Now I love the 1984 Dune movie, in all of its weirdness, even though the ending, well, doesn't work with what the book set up. 

That was my initial reaction as well.

[Myshkin]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think Lost had a better ending than BSG's, by far. BSG had an incoherent and muddled mythology that really didn't hang together, with enormous retcons at the 11th hour really not helping the situation (the problems began as early as New Caprica, and steadily got worse over time, weakening most of the back half of BSG's entire run

 

I think all of the problems with the last half of BSG can be traced directly back to New Caprica. The writers had to invent a reason for why all the Cylons on New Caprica were models we'd already seen, so they came up with the concept of the Final Five. It was that concept that ruined the show, as from then on the show had to revolve entirely around a concept that was clearly never originally intended, nor very well thought out.

[Werthead]

What was more annoying was that they hadn't cared about that previously (Cavill being absent from the Downloaded scenes, for example, or the Cavills, D'Annas and Simons all being absent from the Season 1 Caprica scenes) so they could have just completely ignored it, or they could have stuck with Moore's original plan. The Season 3 bible/notes even said that the Final Five were the secret rulers of the Cylons, were off somewhere else and were not people we were familiar with. If they'd stuck with that, that'd been fine. As it was, the Final Five really made very little sense.

[Liver and Onions]

On April 4, 2016 at 0:30 PM, Werthead said:

This is kind of what happened. Dune and Dune Messiah were supposed to be one book, but it was too big so what became the ending of the next part became the ending of the whole novel.

Ha! Thanks, I'll have to let him know. He'll feel vindicated!