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What TV Shows can Teach us About Endings
One of my favorite endings across all media was the finale of Orphan Black, which at the time was the best show nobody was watching. Thanks to being on a smaller channel, it was able to survive until its planned ending. Which…unfortunately, I can’t do spoiler tags on Medium and this is an ending that would ruin the entire show. I’m still trying to get people to watch it.
Here’s the thing about television: Many shows don’t have good endings. Historically, TV shows were episodic and ran until they stopped getting good ratings. Star Trek: TOS has no ending. Because it was truly episodic, it didn’t need one.
Then Babylon 5 came along and suddenly people realized that television could tell this much larger, planned story. Audiences started to demand it.
Unfortunately, many shows still ran until they were canceled, resulting in travesties like Angel ending on a full blown cliffhanger. (This was also a problem with Beauty and the Beast as many people never saw the final season. Beauty and the Beast was actually an excellent attempt to do a good arc…I refused to see the remake because I’m finicky about remakes). Or the ending of Quantum Leap which I’d honestly repressed until I looked it up. I thought it had no ending. It did. Just a bad one.