Television
Spoiler alert – the end sucks: on televisual addiction and grief
Remember watching the last episode of Six Feet Under, crying for half an hour after it finished, and then missing the characters for weeks after? Or being unable to stop speculating after The Sopranos left you dumbstruck in the end? And how often do you partake in conversations about what DVD or downloaded series you have recently finished?
It’s no spoiler that, through expanding online and digital streams, television programs are increasingly accessible to viewers. It’s a pop-truism that our various screens breed an addictive form of consumption, allowing us to watch what we like, when, where and as often as we like. And if you’re anything like me, you consume fast and often, with extracurricular assistance from swiftly updated TV compendia like The AV Club. Like Homer Simpson before me, TV is my ‘teacher, mother, secret-lover’: I am a television addict, and as the recent uprising of recap culture indicates, I’m not alone.
Programs are now being scripted for this savvy multiple-view-non-network-audience, which has helped to create a cultural shift whereby television programs are being recognised for their ‘quality’. Shows like Mad Men or Boardwalk Empire are largely acknowledged for their literary values, artistic qualities, or cinematic affiliations and budgets. Tapping into this once HBO-driven market, showrunners across various networks and countries are learning how to play us so that we press play.
Across all the TV genres – from shorter ‘meta’ sitcoms (i.e. Community or How I Met Your Mother) to complex, lavish dramas – plot and story arcs require deep investment and encourage re-watchability. As seasons progress, viewers literally spend hours with seemingly fully formed people: we cry at characters’ failures, cheer their victories, predict their futures, and mimic their mannerisms or vernaculars as we would real friends.
Consequently, there is something particularly heartbreaking and damning about investing so much time and emotion in something that, like all good things, must come to an end.
I liken my intense television viewership to a summer romance: it’s all I want to do with my days and all I think about at night. But instead of handholding and butterflies, it’s powerdisking and praying my housemate will make me food so I don’t have to look away from the screen. So, when the show is over, the episodes exhausted and the sun has set, I feel lost, confused and devastated. Left with a cast-shaped hole in my heart, I’m unsure of how to move on. I call this feeling ‘televisual grief’.
Certain programs end by manipulating this emotional build-up – for instance, The Wire provided heartbreaking closure at the end of its five-series run with a circle-of-life montage that crushed any residual optimism left in its viewers. Other times, you can sense the end is nigh because the timing is right (Buffy) or the love had been lost a while ago (The O.C.) – and while sad, it’s better than seeing the show jump the shark and continue into senility (The Simpsons).
And then there is the unexpected kind of conclusion, where shows are passed on by networks and finish before their time (the ‘Freaks and Geeks wasn’t picked up for another season’ kind). Turning up late to the funeral, my recent bout of televisual grief came about from my shameless fling with Veronica Mars. And rather than being cushioned by the nostalgia of re-watching – recalling ups and downs, arcs and knowing how it all ends – I watched every episode, back-to-back, from start to finish, for the very first time.
Short-lived cult show Veronica Mars was always recommended to me due to my love of witty, genre-blurring teen TV and strong female leads. Filled with intrigue, teen-troubles and diversity, a sassy schoolgirl moonlighting as a detective and a surprisingly hot bad boy to boot, the show was made for me. I’m not sure what took me so long to get to Veronica Mars, but when I did it didn’t take long to get through.
So when the end came – Veronica Mars was not renewed for a fourth season – I wallowed in my televisual grief.
I knew when I started watching that it was a short-lived series, but stupidly, I didn’t realise how short. When the third season drew to a close with an ambiguous glance between Veronica and bad boy Logan across a cafeteria, Veronica’s dad in a tenuous position and various other knots left untied, I was excited to move on to season four.
There are famously five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. First, I searched iTunes, Google, amazon, Google again – but nothing, nada, zip. Over and over I searched the same words ‘Veronica Mars Season Four’ … rinse and repeat. Even after reading the IMDB tombstone – ‘2004 – 2007, Season 1 – 3’ – I didn’t believe it. I had entered the denial stage, because it couldn’t end that way. It. Just. Couldn’t.
Then, I got angry: How could Google’s drop-down menu lead me on? (Try it: when you type ‘Veronica Mars’ into the search box, the second search suggestion is ‘veronica mars season 4’.) Bad ratings aside – and, admittedly, it’s a big aside – how could a network discontinue this show? Why would the creators leave it on such vague terms when they felt the end was approaching? I had no closure and was enraged.
So, I bargained to console my televisual grief: there’s a chance the show will continue, I discovered a script had been written for a Mars movie, and still the cast are supportive of movie rumours.
Then the depression hit: it wouldn’t be the same anyway. The teen cast are now thirtysomethings, and so much time has passed. So I moped around the internet, reading recaps, watching interviews with the cast and blooper reels to lament my lost love.
And then, I found myself laughing. Gag-reels and recaps reminded me of just how fun Veronica Mars was and how I was glad to finally watch it. I began to accept that the lack of closure was somewhat charming, in a corny way. I realised that I can always revisit and re-watch, relive. So I did what all good TV addicts do to escape their televisual grief: I picked up my remote and pressed play.
Stephanie Van Schilt is a freelance writer and editor, arts worker and Kill Your Darlings‘ Online Intern.
10 Responses to Spoiler alert – the end sucks: on televisual addiction and grief
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10:05 am, May 1, 2012
OMG. After reading this, all I want to do is talk about all the TV shows that left me high and dry, or came to such a beautiful close that I skipped those annoying 5 stages and went straight to happy (acceptance) ie Six Feet Under. Please don’t make me work today! Dawson’s Creek anyone?
10:16 am, May 1, 2012
I feel your pain, but at the moment I see a light in the form of the promise of more Arrested Development..
1:32 pm, May 1, 2012
I hear you! This is why I prefer to wait until a series ends, so I can watch all episodes in quick succession, lest I be forced to wallow in anticipation -waiting for the next new episode to be released the following week…6 more days till the next airing of Mad Men :-(
3:04 pm, May 1, 2012
This article makes me pout in memory of My So Called Life – my very first TV break-up. And what a mid-nineties kind of heartbreak it was! Gone after one season!
As with any break-up, I sometimes kind of want to see Rickie Vasquez, Angela Chase, Brian Krakow and Jordan Catalano pop up on Facebook, like old friends or people that I might know.
At the same time My So Called Life was for me, perhaps one of those rare shows that was almost perfect in its short-lived nineteen episode life. Was it somehow the right number and the right amount of time upon which to stamp a whirly teenage portrait?
Is it because the memory of Jordan Catalano staring dreamily into space is better than the reality of the modern (and emo-ed up) Jared Leto?
It was short-lived, it was over in a second, but I love the TV memory of My So Called Life.
3:10 pm, May 1, 2012
One word – Carnivàle.
I grieved after they inexplicably ended this amazing series in what i think is one of the best all time season cliff hangers. Dealing with my pain, I defriended or excommunicated (those familiar with pre fb era)those who had put me on to this amazing show that had shattered my fragile little heart. Totes relates.
5:19 pm, May 1, 2012
I will always, always be crushed by the cancellation of Life, which was the most perfect character-driven cop show ever, and the cancellation of Firefly.
9:33 am, May 2, 2012
I cried in Dexter season 2 when one of the secondary characters got a promotino, I was that invested. And Don’t even get me started on Buffy – or, like Emily says above, the cancellation of Firefly!
6:22 pm, May 2, 2012
I suffered the same televisual grief with Veronica Mars :( Exactly how you described – but at least there are 3 awesome seasons to cherish! Still hoping for a movie…
12:37 pm, May 4, 2012
A Veronica Mars movie? Exciting.
Final VM was the worst end of a series ever, let alone end of a show.
10:50 am, September 14, 2012
While ending a show is always sad, I think it depends a lot on how you watched it! When I watched Buffy, I literally grew up with her, over several years, at a time when I was in high school as well. The show ending was the end of an era, both for TV and in my own life.
In contrast, when I binged on Battlestar Galactica recently, I powerdisked all the way, watched it in about 2 and a half weeks, and then when it was over, was sad, but not devastated, because I had consumed it all over such a short period of time!
Conclusion: great article Steph, you’ve made me want to go back and re-watch Veronica Mars again!