They strung us along for years saying they would tie it all in, and
they did not in almost every case.
“Strung us along”, there’s that hint again that the viewer was submitting to a painful process in the hope of some later reward. I call the bluff of anyone who says this. It just doesn’t ring true that someone would watch hour after hour of TV that they are not enjoying, just because they genuinely think that the meaning of life (or something of equally compensatory value) will emerge in the last episode.
Rationally, people watched episode 2 because they enjoyed episode one, and watched 3 because they enjoyed 2, and so on by induction. They enjoyed how the story unfolded, and that’s why they watched it unfold. They may not have liked how it ended, but the ending was about 1% of the total experience. The other 99% was about the enjoyment of seeing each mystery, when explored, revealing still more mysteries, and so on.
If someone watches for hundreds of hours despite finding it to be without entertainment value in its own right, because they expect the final hour (or two) to suddenly change and become entertaining enough to justify six years of TV drudgery, then how could anyone take their criticism seriously?
