When the shows had an ending (also ugly), and mutilations to today’s series
Some time ago, by collecting information on an old TV series such as Quantum Leap, we discovered that the NBC decided not to renew the show that in the first five seasons had reaped audiences, criticism and prizes, because the new head of the American television broadcaster on which it was aired wanted to produce new shows without cumbersome inheritance of the past (curious for a series that spoke of travel over time to correct the errors in the past).
Donald P. Bellisario received the feral news as he aired, at times and days always different precisely to boycott it, the sixth season, and thus had the opportunity to write and stage a real history of history for the adventures of Sam Beckett (or Becket, as the final sign recited) and his friend at Calavicci. A ending that still leaves the bitterness in the mouth of many fans of the series, but still an end, a conclusion.
Now let’s go back to the present day: as far as Deadline reports, the first video has canceled the mega Fantasy TV series The wheel of the time after three seasons: considering not only the very open ending of the third season but above all that the series is taken from a literary saga of about fifteen books, talking about the end of premature is an euphemism.
Spectators from all over the world who have not read Robert Jordan’s novels are therefore liquidated without explanations nor above all any ending to a story that had come to life. Thanks and see you.
And the destiny touched on the Rafe Judkins series is only the last case of a very long list of TV series that Netflix, first videos, Disney+ and the other streaming platforms abruptly interrupted if not on the most beautiful however before the grand finale: to name a few examples scattered among the most painful cancellations, let’s think of Kaos, Prisma, The Peripheral, Outer Range, Sky High, Sky High, Oblitated, 1899, sex/life, death and other details, Willow …
As spectators we are sadly getting used to this, as we got used to seasons spent from 24 to 8 episodes and pauses of two, three or even more years between the season and another, when once there was yes and no time to go on vacation and our favorite shows returned.
But if the sacrifices in terms of waiting and duration are justified by more solid plots and without the plot holes, the “retcon” and the filled episodes of the past, the practice of abruptly stopping a series per season concluded, without giving the possibility of creating a real ending, we seem to us a lack of respect for those who are not only of those who make them but above all of those who look at them, or we spectators.
We do not discuss the economic investments of those who produce those series, but we believe that the emotional, temporal investments deserve more attention, and in any case also economic than those who pay more and more expensive subscriptions, and perhaps has started to pay them just to see a series that is then canceled from tomorrow. We do not ask so much, even just an episode a little like this and a writing with a typo, as happened for Quantum Leap.