Worst Happy Ending

[RTFirefly]

@Darren_Garrison

One that grates at me in (undeserved) memories is an episode of 7th Heaven. A pair of middle-school kids have to make a report on Washington and Lincoln for President’s Day. They have the idea to address the question of what would be said about Washington and Lincoln if they had faced modern (late-90s, early-00s) negative campaigning where you tear down your opponent instead of build up yourself, so they created “attack ads” against Washington and Lincoln. This caused an uproar amongst school administration. So the parents teach the kids how horrible they were for showing disrespect for the Founding Fathers and the kids admit that they are wrong and produce a bland report praising them just like everyone else. So the “happy ending” is that the kids learned that producing a creative and clever project was a mistake and they should just regurgitate the same crap as everyone else (and to never say anything bad about Important Historical Figures.)

My fundie BIL introduced me to this show. It was basically a safe-for-evangelical-Christian-families family drama, which means not only did the drama have to be not at all risqué, but it couldn’t puncture conservative Christian orthodoxies, which of course include a very safe, conservative view of American history.

In the world inhabited by the target audience of this show, this WAS a happy ending. That’s the scary part.

[Dendarii_Dame]

When Worlds Collide. An asteroid or comet is going to crash into the Earth, killing everybody. A old rich guy pays for a spaceship to be built to take a bunch of young people to a new world so humanity survives, on condition he gets to go along. Only at the end some other guy (I think the spaceship’s designer?) who doesn’t like him holds him back so he can’t board. “The new world belongs to them!” Grr.

Jane Eyre. I sure hope she doesn’t show any evidence of what he considers mental illness.

[bucketybuck]

@Wheelz

It always makes me roll my eyes when movie characters are going through, or have just been through, what would be the most traumatic experience of anybody’s life – and decide that’s just the perfect time to start making out.

Of all the films to criticise for this trope I’m not sure why people decided upon Speed, the film that went out of its way to point out the reality of such relationships…

Annie: You’re not going to get mushy on me, are you?

Jack: Maybe. I might.

Annie: I hope not, 'cause you know, relationships that start under intense circumstances, they never last.

Jack: Oh yeah?

Annie: Yeah, I’ve done extensive study on this.

Jack: I have to warn you, I’ve heard relationships based on intense experiences never work.

Annie: OK. We’ll have to base it on sex then.

Jack: Whatever you say, ma’am.

[Telemark]

@RTFirefly

This. That they have no idea what they should do next is the whole point of that ending.

I’m aware that it’s not a happy ending, but a lot of people miss that context and think it’s a happy ending and celebrates the relationship. That’s why I posted it.