Ask in the comments if you wish, and I’ll say a bit more. All I want to say here is that I’ve encountered two disappointing endings in the last 24 hours, and it makes me want to make a vow about the kinds of endings I’ll write henceforth.
The disappointing works (but not the reasons):
Cold Mountain (the book–haven’t seen the movie, and I’m not tempted to now).
Deadwood, Season Three (which I really liked up to the last episode).
Please provide the spoilage! With extra snark.
With snark!?! I think the disappointment’s too fresh, ’cause I really wanted to like the endings.
Spoilers coming!!
With Deadwood, the big evil essentially gets bored and decides to go away after Swearengen does something really horrible, which is interesting, but not nearly as interesting as some of the other really horrible things he’s done. And Bullock doesn’t even quibble with it. It’s both wrong for the characters and wrong for making the viewer want to tell their friends what a neat show this is.
With Cold Mountain, the problem is simpler: our hero goes through many fairly interesting events, and so does our heroine, and they meet, and then our hero is killed in a way that’s supposed to show the pointlessness of war. The end.
Since Deadwood will have a couple of two-hour movies to wrap things up, I’ll hold off on discussing it.
But Cold Mountain reminds me of other works with disappointing endings. When the message has already been made before the ending, you don’t need to reinforce it with the ending. “The lucky survive” is always an honest ending, so long as you’re clear that it’s luck (ideally, combined with wit or pluck or something else good) that is the deciding factor.
This may interest you:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jan2004/cold-j07.shtml
I had a similar response to Cold Mountain.
I’m sorry to hear that about Deadwood. We’ve got the third season DVDs piling up from Netflix…
I had a siimilar feeling about Cold Mountain: it’s as if Odysseus made it all the way back to Ithaca, chased out the suitors, and then got taken out by an arrow from some Trojan straggler. Eh.
Good article. Much as I like Rene Zellweger, the review suggests I’d like the movie even less, because the book does handle the Ruby character with a great deal of dignity.
If you remember the novel or novel series that I was suggesting you should write, you may be interested in knowing that I’m giving it some serious thought now.
Since they’re piling, I recommend watching them. I keep wondering if the series was canceled before or after they wrote the last episode.
I hate it when a writer doesn’t land the ending, or lets things just sort of dribble off. I feel like for the book to truly work, the ending needs to touch down just so.
It’s one of my personal gripes, when I read.
And failing to land the ending seems to be even more common with short fiction, not surprisingly.
Do you think that the last episode is an interesting example of “commerce vs. art” and how our acceptance changes because of that?
Hypothetically, if it were the only chance they had to provide closure to many of the plot threads, is it better than a more satisfying conclusion to only a few?
I wasn’t disappointed with the end of Cold Mountain.
The movie though — argh, you’d never ever guess that the Civil War had anything to do with Neeeeeeegroes, much less, you know — slaves and slavery.
Heck, the book was embarrassed enough about slavery as it was.
Deadwood’s season got screwed by HBO, so all kinds of goofyness has ensued. Not the writers’ / directors’ fault, but HBO’s.
Love, C.
Well, I do wish I knew more about what was happening behind the scenes. My current theory is that this was the ending they planned on, simply because of the use of the new whore in the earlier episodes. I think they just decided that since the historical Hearst didn’t die then, they couldn’t kill him. And I don’t object to the character living. I just wanted a little more art in the ending. We know we’re not watching history. So give us more than “sometimes the great evil gets bored.”
I’ve gotten bored with most short fiction, I think for that reason.
And I’ve been agonizing over the current book’s ending for weeks now. Maybe I need to write a draft of something else and come back to it. I think I’ll do a post on endings soon and hope that makes me see what I’m missing.
Maybe it’s untied-up to give them something to do in the two-hour “movie” finale it’s getting instead of the fourth season… ? (Is that still happening?)
Do you have any links to the backstory on HBO and Season Three? I’d heard about the unhappiness, but when I think about the story we got, I don’t know if HBO can be blamed: the choice of what to do with the blond whore and Hearst is set up in the earlier episodes. It just feels like the affect on the characters wasn’t thought through.
The best info I could find quickly is here. Sounds a bit iffy to me, but we shouldn’t give up hope yet.
I’m out the door for “Sicko” ….
Honey — Just google and you will find as much info as you want.
It was written about in all the blogs, the major media, people organized cancellation of their HBO service, etc.
Love, C.
Did a little more googling. Haven’t found anyone say HBO messed with Milch’s vision, just that they offered him less than he wanted for Season Four. So I’ll keep blaming Milch for the last episode of Season Three. My disappointments aren’t that things are wrapped up; it’s that I don’t buy what happens, in which everyone accepts Al’s solution.
Don’t tell me how Sicko ends! (Kind of a joke. I’ll be seeing it tomorrow.)