Have you seen the last episode? It was not a bad ending like Lost was a bad ending. It made sense, it’s just that one particular thing was completely gut-wrenching, to say the least.
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Oh, I know and it wasn’t a chicken.
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I need the 2d season to drop already
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LOST was really crushed under the weight of its own success and expectations.
I was a big fan of the show – I would carefully watch each episode and try to really analyze just what was going on. There was so much symbolism, easter eggs, clever writing, and plot twists crammed into just about every episode. The problem was there was this contingent of very vocal fans that would just overanalyze the shit out of everything. I’m sure you know the type.
This was a show that was really more about the journey than destination but people were so hung up on “OMG I have to have answers for everything!” that you ended up with a lot of pissed off people when it was all over and things weren’t what they expected or were hoping for. There could simply never be a payoff that would satisfy everybody.
I do think it’s a show that rewards binge watching. There’s just so much crammed into the show that it’s easier to follow when you’re not waiting a week or more between episodes, and also you don’t need to get too hung up on the details. At its heart, I’ve always felt it to be a character driven show with an interesting mythology while many others would go right for the mythology which is a recipe for disappointment.
And, yes, there were some really rough parts in the series. That’s a given for any long running show (and don’t forget the writers strike creating a dip in quality for part of it).
Keeping this in mind, I’d say it’s worth giving it a chance if you’re into character driven stories with major elements of science fiction, spirituality, and trappings of intellectualism.
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You had the group that wanted to see Tony Soprano live happily ever after, and the other group that wanted to finally see him get what was coming to him (remember: he was a pretty awful person). In some sick and twisted way I think making sure everybody walked away disappointed was kind of genius.
One final point on series finalies before I walk away from the keyboard. If you know your series is ending and you still choose to end on a cliffhanger (and I don’t mean an ambiguous ending like in The Sopranos), you’re not clever. You’re an asshole.
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If you like good series endings watch Dollhouse. They pushed all their chips in the way you wish every series did. It was worth there only being 2 seasons. The best shows aren’t static, like Breaking Bad they change over the run, and not aimlessly the way Buffy did. There’s so many shows that drag out their premise (Alias) that I lose interest after a few seasons.People have told me ‘Person of Interest’ got interesting, but I couldn’t take the boring procedural parts and only watched like 4 episodes.
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I wasn’t sold on Dollhouse the first couple of episodes but I’m glad that I stuck with it. It ended up being a great series when the network stopped meddling with it and I agree that it wrapped up nicely.
Alias really pissed me off with its constant “this isn’t working, let’s throw everything away and start over… again!” seemingly every season. I really wanted to like Person of Interest given its cast but like you I gave up after just a few episodes.
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James May: The Reassembler
I love this programme; such an antithesis of modern telly that it’s quite subversive in its way. Only on BBC4! Gawd love 'em…
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I 
James May. I’ll have to check this out.
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Yeah, he’s great. Not like those other two clowns.
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In a similar vein is the British ‘Plane Resurrection’ on Netflix, obsessives restore WW2 era piles of junk to like new.
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See, that’s the advantage of those streaming services but you rarely get stuff like this on the major networks anymore. The BBC used to show this kind of thing all the time, i’m thinking right now of fred dibnah’s programmes, but that was another time. Of course some would say BBC4 is for libtard guardian readers. 
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It was a sad ending, not a bad ending, though.
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I admit I was surprised to see MASH listed; as the writers on that show didn’t deign to shit all over their fans, once it was all over.
I wasn’t drawn in the way many people were with that show; I only watched the first 6 eps or so before moving on.
Still I know many people were irked by the non-ending; lack of resolution either way seems kinda spineless.
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A real slow-burner. Took a good while to get going and if Mafioso Soap ain’t your thing, easy to get annoyed with.
I liked it. Like a conservation overheard on a train. Part of their lives for a bit and moving on with no real closure. Given the fanbase, there was no way any ending wasn’t going piss a lot of people off. 
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I dunno; I think Breaking Bad demonstrated that it’s very possible to do a finale justice without spitting in the face of the fandom.
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I’m not so sure it would have been doable. With BrBa, there was a very clear and definite progression a beginning, middle and end that could have ended in a lot of ways and the finale was well-written enough to tidy everything up*. With The Sopranos being a more…political scheming and maneuvering thing were deicisions were made often stupidly on the perceived decisions of the players, rather than having a clearer motive.
(Not explaining this well, but I hope you get what I mean!) It was always way messier and complicated and petty with multiple conflicting motives. More like a soap. We were dropped into it at a pretty random point and taken along with the currents of intrigue, rather than a walk down a dark road into the night, like BrBa.
The Sopranos raised the bar for things that followed and made missteps on it’s way, but there weren’t all that many shows before it that were over-analysed in such a way by so many people, rather then a few obsessives on a mailing list. The ambiguous ending was I think, exactly the right thing for the same reasons that the episode “Pine Barrens” also left loose ends. Sometimes things just end and we don’t know why or what happened.
*Except Huell. Poor Huell. 
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So far its pretty good. More sex than I expected. I didn’t realize Doctor Who and Trinity were in it!
I thought the finale was great.
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And Walt’s mom; we never did find out what that barely acknowledged conflict was all about.
It was; the fans got to cheer for Walt one last time.
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Just got back from Hidden Figures. A damn fine movie if you like NASA, math, feminism, and the civil rights movement. Got a little of each and the movie doesn’t seem to know which facet it should emphasize.
Edited to add:
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