I've never really been a fan of The Sopranos. I've never really met a mob-centered movie/tv show I liked, and the once or twice I tried sampling the show, it proved no exception.
I stood at quite a distance and read all the commotion generated by creator David Chase's finale last week. I'm careful to say "finale" there, and not "ending," because as I understand it, the show just sort of stopped right in the middle of everything. It seems a few critics have come out defending this "bold decision," while a greater major of viewers are upset that it's a big cop out.
I was somewhat amused by the whole thing. Until I saw this. Ronald Moore, creator and show runner of the new Battlestar Galactica, has used the SciFi.com he almost nevers updates to post how much he loved the utter-lack-of-closure, thumb-your-nose-at-convention (and your fans, depending on your perspective) ending.
Mind you, this is the man who, right around this time next year, will have just delivered us the series finale of Galactica. And now I have to worry a bit that maybe he liked this approach enough to draw some inspiration from it.
I'm not making any particular claim as to what I think the ending of Galactica should be. But I am saying right now, there had better be a frakkin' ending. None of that "Sam Beckett never returned home," "Lois and Clark, this baby's for you," "How's Annie? How's Annie? How's Annie?," "Journey got cut off mid-chorus" crap here. This is not a situation where an open-ended "the fight continues" kind of ending like Angel (brilliantly) had is appropriate. This story demands a real resolution.
And I'm saying now: there had better be one.
5 comments:
Not that it matters but the Sapranos really wrapped everything up. There was just some tension like something *might* happen in the last scene and then it ended without resolving that last scene.
I think Moore will wrap things up. The Sopranos is a different beast -- there was no real journey involved.
But I will confess some discomfort of the odd tone of the third season finale -- it is much different than how the series started. I hope that doesn't mean the show will get all "final season weird" on us. I hope we're not treated to variations of "Spock's Brain" for half the season while Moore scripts the mythology episodes that will wrap it all up.
Each episode needs to count. None of these "Star Trekkish" "issue for issue's sake" episodes or "48 hours earlier" episodes.
Oh, and I would offer that the finale of Quantum Leap was a rush job that thumbed its nose at a network that mucked with the show too much. You knew things were going wrong when Sam started leaping into celebrities and his great-great-grandfather.
The finale of Twin Peaks simply "ended" an unnecessary season that was likely forced by the network after the success of the first "Laura Palmer" season. Had that show ended with the Palmer's mystery solved, it would have been deemed an iconoclastic masterpiece. Instead, it's seen as a show that got away from itself.
In short, while writers aren't perfect, there are cases where the networks meddle too much in a series' affairs (Alias), and a series can completely lose itself to the point of disappointing faithful fans in a finale. This applies to series that run too long or too short. I even have a small beef with the final season of The Next Generation as it stunk of heavy budget controls that kept the crew members daydreaming about alternate realities on the same damn ship. Fortunately, the finale was extremely satisfying.
ABC's unusual deal with the Lost honchos gives me hope that that series will wrap things up in a very satisfying way.
I think he can't possibly "copy" the Sopranos ending, just because he would know the direct comparisons would be overwhelming. so a similar "ending" will be less likely, not more likely (Moore likely?)
but he will probably be inspired to give some kind of twisty ending, hopefully he already had one in mind and will stick to it...
the mole
I didn't really watch the series, but I found myself watching the last part of the finale after hearing fans rant about the ending. So I suppose in one way it's brilliant, it got me to watch.
Mostly though, it seemed like a case of writer laziness. I can hear the conversation now;
"I'm kinda tired. How should we end this?"
"I don't know, let's just cut to black and call it 'edginess'!"
"That will piss a lot of people off, but why not it is happy hour."
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