This Thread Might Explain Why Certain TV Show Endings Ruin Good Stories
There are countless TV shows that have broken our hearts twice: once by simply ending and twice by how they ended.
It doesn’t matter which of these series comes to mind ― maybe “The Sopranos” or “Lost” or “How I Met Your Mother” ― there is a universal truth that if a series finale is bad, the overall story is tainted.
One Twitter user attempted to break down exactly why a bad ending destroys the goodwill we had for a show we’d stuck with for years and we think he may have just cracked the case.
I think it's worth looking at why bad endings ruin stories. This will be a big rambling thread I'm gonna chip away at so feel free to mute if it's not your cup of tea #storytalk
— Zac Gorman (@zacgormania) March 29, 2019
Writer Zac Gorman embarked on his Twitter thread after reading another user’s thoughts on the “Parks and Recreation” series finale. Gorman said the “abysmal” ending drove him to skip the last season when he rewatched the show.
“It’s an ending that felt like a betrayal even though it was a ‘happy’ one,” he wrote in one tweet.
Even characters in beloved TV shows cannot all have happy endings, Gorman argued, because they haven’t necessarily earned those happy endings. He then broke down what exactly a real happy ending looks like. Read on below:
You can't just toss in good things happening to characters that they haven't earned. Everyone can't win the lottery in the last episode. That's not a happy ending, it's Deus ex machina that betrays all the things the characters actually struggled for
— Zac Gorman (@zacgormania) March 29, 2019
If you were to draw a story curve, in general a happy ending is one where the characters end up better than where they started but really not too much better. It really depends heavily on how wildly the rest of your graph swings during the rest of your book
— Zac Gorman (@zacgormania) March 29, 2019
If you look at P&R that way, it'd probably look a little something like this. It's easy enough to see where reality breaks pic.twitter.com/wuBvqKYZqk
— Zac Gorman (@zacgormania) March 29, 2019
It's a bit of an exaggeration but not much. The point is, you probably shouldn't swing too far up from whatever was your highest point during the story. If your previous high was "couple gets married," then "couple has baby" is a realistic ending. "Couple win lottery" maybe not
— Zac Gorman (@zacgormania) March 29, 2019
Actually, never have anyone win the lottery after the first act. Unless it's an inciting incident that forms the foundation of the entire story...no lottery. That's a good rule
— Zac Gorman (@zacgormania) March 29, 2019
A TV series needs an appropriate ending, Gorman wrote, because of something he called the “Evergreen Ending principle.”
The Evergreen Ending principle means that no matter how a story finishes, the characters can theoretically go on with their fictional lives in their fictional universe in much the same manner they have previously.
One is what I'll call the Evergreen Ending principle. Which is that even though the story has ended, you need to be able to imagine the characters are continuing to have similar adventures forever. That's part of what makes an ending feel good, especially for serialized media
— Zac Gorman (@zacgormania) March 29, 2019
Obviously, things will be different because the Real Story already happened. But it needs to be easy to imagine how these characters go on doing essentially the same stuff forever. The only thing worse than the ending P&R gave us would be one where Leslie retires, for example
— Zac Gorman (@zacgormania) March 29, 2019
If you change too much, even for the better, you've also ruined any possibility of the Evergreen Ending. You've essentially created a whole new series where everything is different, which only works if you're then planning to tell that new story
— Zac Gorman (@zacgormania) March 29, 2019
Bad endings can never be fixed. Every other story problem can potentially be resolved. Which I think is why those moments tend to pull back the curtain on a writer's failings. It's why writing endings is so stressful
— Zac Gorman (@zacgormania) March 29, 2019
Gorman wrapped up his thread by saying that “a real happy ending is knowing the characters are going to be okay.”
“That they’ve finally found a little bit of balance and ended up better than they started. That who they are is good enough and always has been. And that they can handle whatever comes next,” he wrote.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.