# Happy ending, but we know better **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 24, 2015, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733 "2015-01-24T05:03:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/41 "2015-01-26T18:40:17Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > The hilarious part of this is: The whole plot is driven by the idea that posessing the Ark will make Germany unbeatable. Apparently, nobody ever read the Bible. The Israelites tried exactly this, and it didn’t work. At one point, they took the Ark into battle with them, thinking it would make them unbeatable. _They got their asses kicked,_ and the Ark was captured by the enemy. They only got the Ark back because God sent a plague on the enemy (my translation says it was a plague of hemmroids :eek: ). Yes, and they eventually lost it for good, thanks to their own foolishness and dalliance. It was not a “good luck charm” that would excuse them from the consequences of their own ill-advised conduct. Oh–you misspelled “hemorrhoids.” :o ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/42 "2015-01-26T19:01:26Z")
After Dorothy wakes up, all will be well… until Elvira Gulch realizes Toto is missing and goes back to get him and kill him again. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/43 "2015-01-26T19:02:45Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > After Dorothy wakes up, all will be well… until Elvira Gulch realizes Toto is missing and goes back to get him and kill him again. Nope. Elvira was killed in the twister. It’s implied rather than stated, but still pretty clear. ---
**Author:** ![Sparky812](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eb9ed0/32.png) [@Sparky812](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sparky812)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/44 "2015-01-26T19:04:58Z")
_Highlander_ ends happily in the Scottish Highlands with a now mortal and fertile Connor MacLeod, who is one with all living things, and has new powers that enable him to understand everyone’s thoughts and help bring them together. He and Brenda share a loving embrace and fade to black. Thank god no one has messed with this perfect ending of harmony and loving bliss. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/45 "2015-01-26T19:07:21Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > I remember some story about a guy who was executed in most brutal fashion, then he rose from his tomb and all his company were ever so happy to see him, it all turned out quite nicely. Then a shitstorm that raged on for centuries after, some of which could be counted against the hero of the story. Dune? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![SirRay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@SirRay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SirRay)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/46 "2015-01-26T19:11:03Z")
> [@Horatio\_Hellpop](#): > > I just watched **Boogie Nights** again. I love that movie. All these eccentric losers who can’t really function separately, get back together as one happy family in the end, 1984-ish. Of course, people living in that era remember that AIDS was just around the corner and the party was about to end pretty abruptly again, and that “adult” theaters pretty much ceased to exist shortly thereafter. I seem to recall in the movie they showed the beginnings of mass distribution of adult movies for home viewing via video tape (IIRC a warehouse scene where video tapes are being packed into boxes for shipment), so no matter if adult theaters ceased to exist the actors would still be producing adult films, just for home consumption instead. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/47 "2015-01-26T19:20:36Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Nope. Elvira was killed in the twister. It’s implied rather than stated, but still pretty clear. Yay! > [@](#): > > The Gold Rush was set during the Klondike Gold Rush of the 1890s so there was at least another 30 years to go before the market crashed. Not to mention, I don’t remember any implication that they were heading to New York. Sure, the depression hit the whole country, but where’d New York come from? My contribution - Buster Keaton in _**[The General](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017925/)**_. He gets a commission for saving his train. A commission to be an officer in The. Confederate. Army. Clearly, Keaton intended that. Mickey Rooney in _[Babes in Arms](http://www.amazon.com/Babes-Arms-VHS-Mickey-Rooney/dp/6301965922)_ is about 3 years from being sent off to some God-forsaken rock to die for his country. ---
**Author:** ![Magicicada](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c67d28/32.png) [@Magicicada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magicicada)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/48 "2015-01-26T19:22:50Z")
I remember seeing Yentl in the theater and spending most of the movie musing that if Barbra Streisand would just stop opening her mouth to sing all the time it would be easier to believe her as a teenage girl pretending to be a teenage boy, then coming to the happy ending where she’s on the ship sailing to America and Avigdor and Haddass are reading her letters by lamplight and beaming at each other and it hit me that this was early 1900s Poland, and of course the characters are Jewish, and I wanted to scream, “Oh my God! Run!” ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/49 "2015-01-26T19:28:37Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Nope. Elvira was killed in the twister. It’s implied rather than stated, but still pretty clear. MAYBE… but much of what happened was just a dream. I’m not at all sure Elvira is dead. She might be pedalling her way back to the Gale farm as we speak. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/50 "2015-01-26T19:31:34Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > MAYBE… but much of what happened was just a dream. I’m not at all sure Elvira is dead. She might be pedalling her way back to the Gale farm as we speak. Toto is in the last scene, which takes place after Dorothy’s been unconscious for a couple days. Elvira’s an evil bitch, probably from Cardiff, who would like nothing better than for Dorothy to awaken from her near-death experience only to discover her beloved puppy had joined the kennel invisible while she slept. That slitch is as dead as Barney Rubble. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/51 "2015-01-26T19:33:47Z")
At the end of _ **One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest** _, the Chief kills the lobotomized McMurphy then breaks out of the asylum. Yay, Chief! GO, BE FREE! Except… the Chief, like almost all the other inmates, was in the mental hospital voluntarily. He could have asked to leave any time! All he had to do was say, “I feel much better now,” and he could have walked to freedom out the front door. But now? Now he’s an escaped murderer! The cops will probably shoot on sight if they see him. And if he’s captured alive, he’ll be sent to a maximum security hospital for the criminally insane, FOREVER! ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/52 "2015-01-26T19:40:41Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > No way do those kids in _The Graduate_ stay together. According to the retelling, in the form of _Rumor Has It_, they were together for about a week before she married someone else, but at least the alter-Braddock character had the opportunity to copulate with a third generation of the family ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2015, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/53 "2015-01-27T13:35:25Z")
I’ve just watched a first season episode of _Mission: Impossible._ The villains were plotting to discredit the Americans in Viet Nam by faking a film of American soldiers massacring a village full of innocent civilians. Of course, the IMF foil the plot, and discredit the filmmaker. The reputation of the American forces is saved. This was broadcast in March 1967. In March 1968 the world heard of a place called Mai Lai. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2015, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/54 "2015-01-27T15:53:38Z")
Although they thought they were destined to live happily ever after, Belle & her ex-Beast husband have a date with a guillotine… ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2015, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/55 "2015-01-27T15:57:36Z")
Although Stella got her groove back with her Caribbean boy toy, we all knew he was going to leave her the second he got his green card (heck, we knew that even before we figured out he was gay!). ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2015, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/56 "2015-01-29T10:09:49Z")
**Seventeenth Summer** , published 1942. Near the end, Angie, the main character, is at Pete’s, the roadhouse where much of the action takes place. This is the “young people’s” place, ages about 14 to 22. She looks around the room and gets a wave of instant nostalgia. Because she’s one of a handful of people who are going away in the fall. The others will still be at Pete’s every weekend…for a few years. Then they’ll start getting married, and they’ll come in less often. And then they’ll have kids, and they won’t come in at all. And someday those kids will be hanging out at Pete’s, sipping cokes and flirting and smoking. Not quite. She would have been right in 1940 and 1941, when Maureen Daly was writing this. By the time it was published, though, the next time Angie sees most of these guys, they’ll be in uniform. And there’s got to be at least one she’ll never see again. Also, something else I didn’t think of until just now. It’s not a certainty that her friends’ kids will be hanging out at Pete’s in another twenty years. Even if the youth of the early '60s want to hang out at a roadhouse and not a drive-in, Pete’s is a total firetrap. Run-down building, everybody smoking, floor strewn with peanut shells and no direct path to the front door. It may not still be standing in another two years. ---
**Author:** ![vontsira](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/51bf81/32.png) [@vontsira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vontsira)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2015, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/57 "2015-01-29T18:16:02Z")
> [@OHS201](#): > > Oklahoma became a state in 1905, so the musical is set slightly before that. The Dust Bowl is the 1930s, so 25 years later. I never thought of any connection, **25 years of “happy ever after”** seems pretty reasonable to me? A good, and apposite, expression, "x years of ‘happy ever after’ ". I recall a fairly run-of the-mill romantic novel which I once read – title, and author’s name, now completely “gone”. It was set around the turn of the 19th / 20th centuries: British heroine, Russian hero – the latter maybe not of the aristocracy, but definitely of the social “upper Crust” in Tsarist Russia. They are a very likeable couple, and after the obligatory ups-and-downs, things work out happily and they marry and set up house in St. Petersburg. I remember thinking, after the last page: “They look like getting some fifteen years of ‘happy ever after’; subsequent to that, though, oh dear – things will turn ugly, and ongoingly become progressively a lot uglier.” Of course one can do a good deal of cheating of “but-we-know-better syndrome”, by figuring that the protagonists – or whichever one’s favourite characters are – might be lucky when things go sour. The above couple plus their presumed progeny, might have managed to get out of Russia relatively early and relatively un-traumatically… ---
**Author:** ![Wargamer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/df705f/32.png) [@Wargamer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wargamer)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2015, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/58 "2015-01-29T20:09:31Z")
In _Fiddler on the Roof_, Chava and Fyedka emigrate to Krakow after the expulsion of Anatevka’s Jews. Since the year is 1905, Chava, her children, and grand-children are going to be potential victims of the Nazis in less than 35 years. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2015, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/59 "2015-01-29T20:47:39Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > Of Mice and Men: George’s troubles are just beginning as he tries to explain how he wrestled the Luger away from Lenny and, in self defense, shot him in the back of the head. You and I clearly have very different ideas of what constitutes a “happy ending.” ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2015, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733/60 "2015-01-29T21:21:51Z")
> [@MovieMogul](#): > > You and I clearly have very different ideas of what constitutes a “happy ending.” Weren’t there rabbits? Didn’t they go to a rabbit farm and have a whole lotta rabbits? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/happy-ending-but-we-know-better/710733.md?page=4)