Lost has become the poster child for finale disappointment lately. I know many people hated the end of BSG too (no spoilers, please, I’ve got 1/2 season to go! But I already get the feeling that “[The Cylons] have a plan” has been BS from the start.). X-files ended with a nonsensical clip show. Many fans think Wheel of Time and A Song of Ice and Fire have lost their way and start to meander after the first few books.
I love these type of dense, intricate storylines, with mysteries that keep you guessing at what the writer(s) have (hopefully) planned. But I’ll be darned if I can think of a single one that’s been well planned out from the start and was able to execute flawlessly on the plan all the way to the end.
Babylon 5 had the famous 5-year plan, but then they had to compress it into 4 years when they thought the 5th year wouldn’t happen, and then stretch it back out to 5 when they got renewed after resolving everything. ST:TNG had one of the greatest finales of all time, IMHO, but it was more of a “monster of the week” show, and not an intricate mystery. Heroes crashed and burned after season 1. So many shows like Firefly & Dollhouse never have the chance to get off the ground.
I’d love to find an example of a multi-book or multi-season series that maintains a high level of quality from beginning to end, with mysteries that all get resolved in a satisfying way, where all the prophecies come true somehow, and all the clues add up. Where characters don’t forget what happened to them last week or 2 years ago. Where the schemers have plans that make sense in retrospect. Where all the traitors have a reason to be traitors, and don’t turn out to be traitors out of nowhere with no clues at all. Where you can tell the writers weren’t making it up as they went along, and really planted the seeds early for all the payoffs later.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer came close by doing season-long stories. Each season ended satisfactorily, as did the final season, but there was no arc from start to finish.
Homicide: Life on the Streets ended up with an overarching theme (It starts with Bayless joining Homicide and ends with him leaving), and things were further tied by by a reunion movie.
I thought ST: Deep Space Nine (DS9)'s Dominion War Arc ended pretty decently, tied up a lot of the loose ends with the Series finale “What You Leave Behind” - and you must admit it was a fairly in-depth, intricate story-arc.
No spoilers, but I’m fairly certain that Battlestar Galactica ended exactly as it was supposed to, with only minor changes coming about during the course of the show. The whole show was extremely well-done in my opinion, but of course I know I may be in the minority there.
Not long enough, Trilogies come together all the time. It’s when things stretch out longer than a trilogy that it usually falls apart.
Also not ____ enough. I’m not sure what word goes in that blank. I used “intricate” above, but what I mean is the kind of work with lots of clues, conspiracies, details, mysteries, schemes, etc that are all supposed to fit together.
I’ve seen “Mythology-heavy” tossed around, but not in terms of Greek mythology, in terms of the personal mythology of that story. (Like whether a given X-files episode is “monster of the week” or adds to the overall Mythology of the recurring conspiracies)
LOTR is wonderful, but it’s a pretty straightforward adventure. The bad guys are known, for the most part. The mission is clear from the start. Get from point A to point B, don’t get corrupted, throw ring into fire. Yes, Boromir and Saruman could be considered “suprise traitors,” but not to the extent of the Cylons in BSG or the Darkfriends in Wheel of Time.
On a season-by-season basis, I would agree, but aside from the awesome scene at the end of Lessons where The First Evil takes the forms of each Big Bad in reverse order there’s nothing that really linked the seasons together story-wise, only character-wise.
OK, yeah, figures I would forget my favorite show of all time. This is kind of what I’m looking for. Though even I will admit that DS9 floundered early on until they stumbled onto the Dominion War story and then decided to let it take over the show. All the set up regarding the Prophets and Orbs in the first few seasons seemed to get pushed aside in favor of the War, until they trotted it out at the end to wrap things up. Still, very, very close to perfect. Except for the Ferengi and Vic Fontaine episodes.
I think both of Dorothy Dunnett’s historical fiction cycles end extremely well, the Lymond Chronicles and the House of Niccolo, and they are ever so very vaguely related to each other too. They are DENSE historical fiction though, the kind of series you need to make a serious commitment to.
If “Twin Peaks” had ended with the revelation of Laura’s murderer, it would have been fine. Unfortunately, it dragged on for much too long with no real focus, and the very end of the last episode was a huge disappointment.
Steven Eriksons series “The Malazan book of the Fallen” was always supposed to be ten books long, with Erikson stating very early on that he had planned for ten books to tell his tale.
The tenth and final book was released early this year. It was most definitely an intricate story, and though opinions always vary, also a well received story that garnered a lot of high praise.
Stephen Kings TV mini-series of IT! ended beautifully. I kid. A fucking space spider did it. Dressed in a clown suit no less. Maybe space spiders have a clown fetish or something.
It can certainly be argued some of these long arc stories just crap out a the end. But I do think you have to be careful. Does it suck just because YOU don’t like the way things wrapped up. Or can you give decent arguement for it sucking in general?
Imma have to say The West Wing.
Yes, there was significant floundering for awhile after Sorkin left, but I think they managed to stay upright and stick the landing enough for even the Russian judges to be impressed.
I think The West Wing ended well (although there were some shaky points along the way). The writers had an advantage in having an obvious ending for the show - the election of a new President and the end of the Bartlett administration.
Well, to be fair, the West Wing, Sopranos (even the last five minutes, dammit!), Six Feet Under which wrapped up in a beautiful way didn’t have the weight of a long mystery/mythology that was all supposed to become perfectly clear in the final minutes.
No wonder there are so many bad examples, its an incredible task to put yourself to.
I was going to mention this but you’ve beaten me to it. In my opinion the ending was pretty damn good and covered off most of the huge number of threads that Erikson wove into his epic.
Oh and while the main series is ten books long, there’s also Eriksons collection of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach short stories and Ian Cameron Esslemont’s three novels in the same setting which are also great.
Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun is only four books (or five if you count Urth of the New Sun, which is much more closely tied in to the first series than the other 2 series set in the same universe), but it is sure plenty intricate and ties up pretty well (either as a four-book or five-book set).
Everything I came into mention was already said…so I’ll say it again.
Sopranos only left you with one major cliffhanger and really, once you get over the initial shock of it, overall you’re pretty satisfied with the story as a whole. The thing about the last few minutes is that it’s not that they didn’t answer some big question we all had, it’s that they basically started a new story line so even though the last few minutes was a pretty big deal, we weren’t that invested in it.
Six Feet Under…I haven’t watched it in a long time, but I can’t think of anything it didn’t wrap up and it was one of the best finales I’ve ever seen on TV. It left you with some questions, but no mysteries.
Twin Peaks…as far as I’m concerned, you really only need to see that show through until you find out who killed Laura, after that it’s just fluff.