The parade of TV series finales isn't over. But I have a twist for them to consider.
Don't air the finales.
Oh, you can go ahead and make the finale if the spirit moves you. Show them at a cast party. Save them for an extra on DVD. Just don't ask viewers to gather around the TV set for an event that proves less than eventful.
Although I'll be watching Frasier sign off tonight, I said my goodbyes a week ago. Soul Food departs on May 26, but I accepted its demise a couple of months ago. While The Practice may make perfect this Sunday, I doubt it. And no matter what Angel has in store for next Wednesday, it will be hard to top what it did on May 5.
Those and countless other series are suffering for the success of The Fugitive and M*A*S*H.
Every season finds some series saying so long, and this one has already seen the end of Friends, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Sex and the City and The Parkers.
Those farewells and more to come inevitably invite comparisons not only to the ends of The Fugitive and M*A*S*H, but to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Newhart, Seinfeld, Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, Cheers, Dallas, Dawson's Creek, Roseanne and other shows that have left prime time with a formal conclusion -- not just a cancellation.
For the most part, those farewells have been disappointing, inflated by network promotion and producer hubris into grand statements that rarely represent the shows they end.
But a few have been successful enough in the ratings that networks keep hoping for another big finish with audiences.
Nielsen still ranks the finale of M*A*S*H as the most-watched prime-time telecast of the last 40 years, based on the percentage of homes tuned in.
That same ranking -- which includes a lot of Super Bowls, miniseries and specials -- finds the last episode of The Fugitive in 18th place and the Cheers farewell in 22nd.
But it's The Fugitive that started the finale frenzy in 1967. Its farewell episode -- in which Richard Kimble, played by David Janssen, finally found the man who killed his wife -- set a new record for viewing of a TV series episode. And the record held until the Who Shot J.R.? episode passed it more than 13 years later.
Even today, The Fugitive finale has a higher percentage of homes tuned in than any regular series episode other than that Dallas telecast and the M*A*S*H finale. And The Fugitive wasn't all that popular a show at the time. Audiences were just curious about how a series might actually end.
That curiosity also drove the ratings recently. Last week's Nielsens showed the Friends finaleat the top of the total-viewer ranking, followed by its retrospective special and the ER telecast that followed it. In fourth place, you found the finale of Survivor: All-Stars, with its reunion show in fifth place.
At the same time, though, the Friends finale was not part of ``television's biggest night,'' no matter how many times NBC said it. It had fewer viewers than M*A*S*H, Cheers or Seinfeld when they came to an end.
You knew the bean counters were working overtime when NBC declared that the Friends finale ``ranks among the top 33 entertainment broadcasts of all time in total viewers.'' In other words, it was 33rd.
There's even another Friends episode with more viewers -- the post-Super Bowl telecast in 1996.
So some finale fatigue may be setting in. And it's no surprise.
Most finales disappoint, either by raising expectations or just being lousy. They get expanded so much, they lose the rhythms of their regular episodes. (The finale of M*A*S*H, a half-hour show, ran two-and-a-half hours.) They go for big emotional moments. (Ross and Rachel together at last on Friends.) They try to sum up their years on the air. (The lame parade of recurring characters in the Seinfeld finale.) Or they look for a brilliant twist. (St. Elsewhere claimed the whole series was in the imagination of an autistic child, Dallas had J.R. talking with the devil.)
By trying for a big finish, TV series get away from the very things that made them watchable week after week. Think of the little character flourishes. The sense that we are watching a life in progress. The way that a series has to feel unfinished because it's going on week after week, much the way our own lives do.
You don't get that in a finale -- except when shows are trying to keep doors open for reunion specials, sequel series or crossovers with other shows. M*A*S*H had to leave the door open for AfterMASH, Hill Street Blues for Beverly Hills Buntz, Cheers for Frasier. The Practice has spent several episodes this season setting up a successor series for fall 2004.
Even doors that seem closed may not be. Buffy the Vampire Slayer killed Spike in its finale, so it took some complicated plot maneuvers to bring him back to life for Angel. Magnum, P.I., famously killed off its title character at the end of what was thought to be its last season; when the series came back for one more, it had to claim he wasn't dead after all.
Television shows that get a big send-off now often face huge hoopla surrounding their goodbyes -- advertising, interviews, prolonged kisses from Dateline NBC. The relatively quiet end of The Parkers was a departure in a world where the last episode, the next-to-last, even the next-next-to-last is an excuse for dramatic promotional spots. That just adds to the pressure on a show to do something big.
Yet it's also clear that knowing the end is at hand can inspire some shows to do their best work. Angel's telecast a week ago was terrific, mocking its characters in a way that reminded viewers that even a powerful vampire with a soul faces forces more powerful (and cooler).
Frasier did a sweet little summing up a week ago -- a glimpse back through time at its characters. It was an effective show without going for all the big things -- the baby, the wedding, the love -- that NBC has been touting for tonight's finale.
So shows should make that last episode to get it out of their system, then look closely at the ones that precede it for the best place to stop. It may not give viewers closure, but viewers don't need that as much as they think. Fans will still seek out the reruns. They will buy the DVDs. No matter where a network ends a show, for loyal viewers, it goes on forever.
Courtesy of Beacon Journal
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