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quaggy
While I’ve tried to keep my thoughts in order, don’t expect me to come to any conclusions. This is just stuff that have been on my mind…
Heroes. Ugly Betty. Avatar: The Last Airbender. These are the three shows I’m hooked on this season. Each are well-written multi-episode, multi-arch stories headed to conclusions that have been clearly planned well in advance. Definitely my type of shows. I begin to loose interest every quickly if the writer(s) seemed to be just making it up as they go along. I enjoy well-planned and executed overarching stories. I love the throw away lines that later become major plot points. I love when a character references something that happened in previous seasons. (Avatar: The Last Airbender really sets the standard for this. Yes, the cartoon show sets the standard. Go figure.) But what I like best is the end, if not the end of the series, then at least the end of the story arc. I like having closure, even if it’s just enough to tide me over until the next season (or book as the case may be.) I suppose I have been rather silent on my shows lately because they all are in the beginning stages of story arcs. It’s not that I don’t enjoy what is happening, but it’s just too soon to tell what really going on and so I have nothing to say.
But I’m now wondering the wisdom of investing in a serial drama in light of the writer’s strike. I support this strike, as I think anyone who’s ever harbored dreams of becoming an author would. If this strike takes months and months, so be it if it means the writer’s will be given a fair deal in the end. (Though I hope for their sake it doesn’t last too long, because it’s awful to be out of work for such a long period of time, even if it’s voluntary.) But this writer’s strike means that the series finale is just that much further away and I will have to wait that much longer until to find out where this is all going. It might be easier to wait for the DVDs.
For someone who watches a lot of Japanese animé, I’m not really big on ambiguous endings. I like happily ever after and detailed epilogues. I like knowing what happens after. This should comes as no surprise to anyone that’s notice half my fic are set post-series. So if a show just stops, I go a little crazy.
I suppose these things have been on my brain a lot because I recently found the endings of two different stories that I adored. One was this quirky comedy on AMC about a pre-WWII radio station called Remember WENN. The other was a comic book series called Ruse that was basically a cross between Sherlock Holmes and the X-Files. (Honestly, it was so much more than that, but that’s the best I can come up with.) I was left hanging for years in both cases.
It had been four years since I read the last episode of Ruse. Never a serious comic book collector, I chose to wait until issues were collected in graphic novel form rather than traveling to a comic shop to purchase individual issues. The company went out of business before more than 12 issues could be collected. Though the series was given enough time to wrap things up, I was told by friends who ARE serious comic book collectors that back issues are difficult to come by. People hold on to those issues!! But I found someone who had collected scans of all 26 issues and offered them online. Thanks to Caz, I was able to download them all! Finally, got to find out the end!!
Emboldened by my success with Ruse, I decided to see what I could uncover about Remember WENN. (Some of you might have heard me talk about this before.) The show, which was notorious about ending seasons on cliffhangers, chose to end this season on three cliffhangers! Then AMC cancelled the show before the fifth season could be produced!! To say I was upset would be an understatement. Just this year, I refused to watch Mad Men because it was on AMC!! Well, I found something on an LJ community about how the series creator had planned to resolve the cliffhangers. Now, granted, this is third hand knowledge at best, but I was pretty horrified. If Season 5 had gone on ahead, he would have managed to piss off everyone who supported the two major ships of the show by turning the love triangle and the off again/on again couple by combining them all into one big hexagon! It would have sucked!! Now, while I’m not foolish enough to think that was the reason that AMC cancelled Remember WENN, but I'm now in the strange position of being gratefull that AMC cancelled my favorite show! *shiver* Oh well, at least I can now watch Mad Men.
The ending to Ruse, on the other hand, was fabulous from start to finish. This was even more impressive since there another writer took over halfway through and it was still a great read. The series managed to resolve everything. The characters were consistent and almost every loose end was tied up. Well, there was a matter of whether or not the relationship between the two main characters would turn romantic, but that doesn’t bother me. Apparently I can deal with a little ambiguity if there’s a reason for it and if I have enough clues to form my own ideas about the ending.
Heroes. Ugly Betty. Avatar: The Last Airbender. These are the three shows I’m hooked on this season. Each are well-written multi-episode, multi-arch stories headed to conclusions that have been clearly planned well in advance. Definitely my type of shows. I begin to loose interest every quickly if the writer(s) seemed to be just making it up as they go along. I enjoy well-planned and executed overarching stories. I love the throw away lines that later become major plot points. I love when a character references something that happened in previous seasons. (Avatar: The Last Airbender really sets the standard for this. Yes, the cartoon show sets the standard. Go figure.) But what I like best is the end, if not the end of the series, then at least the end of the story arc. I like having closure, even if it’s just enough to tide me over until the next season (or book as the case may be.) I suppose I have been rather silent on my shows lately because they all are in the beginning stages of story arcs. It’s not that I don’t enjoy what is happening, but it’s just too soon to tell what really going on and so I have nothing to say.
But I’m now wondering the wisdom of investing in a serial drama in light of the writer’s strike. I support this strike, as I think anyone who’s ever harbored dreams of becoming an author would. If this strike takes months and months, so be it if it means the writer’s will be given a fair deal in the end. (Though I hope for their sake it doesn’t last too long, because it’s awful to be out of work for such a long period of time, even if it’s voluntary.) But this writer’s strike means that the series finale is just that much further away and I will have to wait that much longer until to find out where this is all going. It might be easier to wait for the DVDs.
For someone who watches a lot of Japanese animé, I’m not really big on ambiguous endings. I like happily ever after and detailed epilogues. I like knowing what happens after. This should comes as no surprise to anyone that’s notice half my fic are set post-series. So if a show just stops, I go a little crazy.
I suppose these things have been on my brain a lot because I recently found the endings of two different stories that I adored. One was this quirky comedy on AMC about a pre-WWII radio station called Remember WENN. The other was a comic book series called Ruse that was basically a cross between Sherlock Holmes and the X-Files. (Honestly, it was so much more than that, but that’s the best I can come up with.) I was left hanging for years in both cases.
It had been four years since I read the last episode of Ruse. Never a serious comic book collector, I chose to wait until issues were collected in graphic novel form rather than traveling to a comic shop to purchase individual issues. The company went out of business before more than 12 issues could be collected. Though the series was given enough time to wrap things up, I was told by friends who ARE serious comic book collectors that back issues are difficult to come by. People hold on to those issues!! But I found someone who had collected scans of all 26 issues and offered them online. Thanks to Caz, I was able to download them all! Finally, got to find out the end!!
Emboldened by my success with Ruse, I decided to see what I could uncover about Remember WENN. (Some of you might have heard me talk about this before.) The show, which was notorious about ending seasons on cliffhangers, chose to end this season on three cliffhangers! Then AMC cancelled the show before the fifth season could be produced!! To say I was upset would be an understatement. Just this year, I refused to watch Mad Men because it was on AMC!! Well, I found something on an LJ community about how the series creator had planned to resolve the cliffhangers. Now, granted, this is third hand knowledge at best, but I was pretty horrified. If Season 5 had gone on ahead, he would have managed to piss off everyone who supported the two major ships of the show by turning the love triangle and the off again/on again couple by combining them all into one big hexagon! It would have sucked!! Now, while I’m not foolish enough to think that was the reason that AMC cancelled Remember WENN, but I'm now in the strange position of being gratefull that AMC cancelled my favorite show! *shiver* Oh well, at least I can now watch Mad Men.
The ending to Ruse, on the other hand, was fabulous from start to finish. This was even more impressive since there another writer took over halfway through and it was still a great read. The series managed to resolve everything. The characters were consistent and almost every loose end was tied up. Well, there was a matter of whether or not the relationship between the two main characters would turn romantic, but that doesn’t bother me. Apparently I can deal with a little ambiguity if there’s a reason for it and if I have enough clues to form my own ideas about the ending.
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no subject
Date: 2007-11-13 04:31 pm (UTC)I haven't watched S2 of Heroes yet - I'm saving them up until I have time to watch them all in one go! Mind you, with the strike, I might wait a bit rather than be left hanging mid season!
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Date: 2007-11-14 03:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-14 12:33 am (UTC)A woman of my own heart. I want a happy happy ending to everything. I also want to know what happens next. I hate open endings. I hate not knowing who marries who, who has babies etc.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-14 03:58 am (UTC)YES! I want to know what happens!! Of course, as I learned with Remember WENN, sometimes ignorance is bliss. Which, come to think of it, is why I prefer to pretend that Gimore Girls ended with Luke and Lorelei's kiss, interrupted by Kurt running screaming out into the night, a full two seasons before the show actually ended.