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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think writers don't know how to end series' these days

44 replies

Griphook · 19/05/2016 22:54

To be so annoyed that this week I wasted 12 hours of my life watching undercover and Marcella, to just not understand the endings and to think the writing is absolutely shit.
It's like they just make it up and forget what they have written in the past episodes.
Aibu? To be fucked if that undercover made no sense!!

OP posts:
Ratbagcatbag · 20/05/2016 14:27

Drives me mad too. As well as the pp posters mentioning more and more ridiculous plots rather than ending it or setting up for a new series that then gets cancelled.

Arrow is a prime example of good series gradually getting more and more mental as it goes on. I'm completely fed up with it.
Sanctuary I loved and they left massive cliff hangers and didn't renew the series. Angry
Warehouse 13 was finished brilliantly.

frikadela01 · 20/05/2016 14:33

This is one of the reasons I try not to get into ITV dramas every one I've ever watched has been let down by the last episode. I know over channels and networks are just asbad but for some reason the itv ones are particularly bad.

chanie44 · 20/05/2016 14:34

Also annoying is when TV shows just don't return. Me and OH we're really into the new series of V and it wasn't brought back after the second series, so we've been left hanging!!

FranHastings · 20/05/2016 14:42

I like it when they end happily, like The Mentalist. I'm not one for miserable, death filled ending.

I refuse to watch series endings if I happen to hear that I'm going to hate it. How I Met Your Mother is a fine example of that.

Wabe · 20/05/2016 14:44

I'm not bothered about 'tidy', all loose ends tied up endings, but lazy writing drives me crazy.

Some of the inconsistencies in The Night Manager annoyed me - in the novel it's more than ten years since the main character has worked at the Cairo hotel, so there's at least a better chance of him not being recognised by staff when he returns as an obviously rich and important guest under a different name. In the series, it all happens within a year or two, and still only the nice chef recognises him, out of all the staff of a big hotel that he'd regularly have been dealing with as a night manager? Hmm.

And don't start me on the bad writing in Downton Abbey. Any time a character had a storyline, they would develop and change, understandably, but as soon as their specific storyline finished and the focus was on someone else, that other character would immediately snap back to being the same two-dimensional stereotype they were before their storyline.

You nearly got whiplash from snapping back and forth between Thomas the motivlelessly-malignant Iago figure and Thomas the tormented-but-essentially-decent closeted gay man, Lady Mary the cold, sneery bitch whose only emotion was a raised eyebrow, and Lady Mary the widow who was frightened of loving again and who was anachronistically kind and sisterly to her servants when they got accused of murder or had a baby in her bed. Not to mention Robert the stuffy middle-aged aristocrat vs Robert the sensitive new man, Cora the gurning airhead vs Cora the dissatisfied wife briefly swept away by someone paying her attention and committed to reinventing the local hospital etc etc.

And don't even get me started on why a series would cast two very similar-looking actors as Lady Mary's suitors and not give them any discernible distinguishing characteristics over the course of an entire season or more. I know one of them boffed her in a Liverpool hotel room and the other didn't but I've honestly forgotten which. Grin

littledrummergirl · 20/05/2016 19:26

even more annoying when the last episode in the series is clearly setting itself up for the next series - massive explosion, who is dead, who survived?? and then the next series is cancelled (am looking at you ITV - Home Fires)

Shock

I didn't know it had been cancelled. It's the only thing I've watched on ITV this year!
Sad

hookiewookie29 · 20/05/2016 19:31

I thought the ending of Dr Foster was dire......kept waiting for something to happen,but it never did!

mygorgeousmilo · 20/05/2016 19:34

YANBU I was furious at the ending of undercover! Oh what Michael did it... Really, ok?! No explanation still of why it all dragged on into an undercover operation for 20 years, why oh why oh why!!! Why would Mya have gone to the forest with the kids, she surely wouldn't have endangered them for the sake of Nick? And they seemed quite chilled about their disabled son being shot! Don't get me started on effing Marcella.... All pointless!!! Argghhh

squoosh · 20/05/2016 19:34

Dr Foster had so much promise to begin with but then just turned so soapy. Very disappointing.

Woodenmouse · 23/05/2016 21:25

I am very late in watching Dexter and I finished it last night. The ending gave me so much rage I had to go to bed! It was absolutely shocking!

Woobeedoo · 23/05/2016 21:37

I call shitty endings in books and films a 'dinners ready ending'. The writer was doing really well, building the scene, the atmosphere and getting you ready for the grand reveal and then someone in their house shouts out "Dinners ready!" at which point the author thinks "Bollocks to this" and writes a load of shite.

Tatiana11235 · 23/05/2016 21:41

Woodenmouse, I agree re Dexter. The ending was neither here nor there. No conclusion whatsoever Confused

Longtime · 23/05/2016 21:42

Good Wife terrible. Six feet under brilliant. Never got to the end of Dexter. Loved the first few series but lost interest.

GrassW1dow · 23/05/2016 22:02

Felt the same about London Spy. Ridic ending

LadyCallandraDaviot · 23/05/2016 22:30

I call shitty endings in books and films a 'dinners ready ending'. The writer was doing really well, building the scene, the atmosphere and getting you ready for the grand reveal and then someone in their house shouts out "Dinners ready!" at which point the author thinks "Bollocks to this" and writes a load of shite.

It's a bit like primary school children who can't work out how to finish their stories so write 'and then he woke up and it was all a dream'.

SaucyJack · 23/05/2016 23:14

I dread to think what George Martin has in stock for us.

I doubt anything will be satisfying.

Unless itas Jon Snow naked.

trashcanjunkie · 23/05/2016 23:56

I hate it when they just kill people off at the end. Gives me the worst rage.

LadyTmalia · 24/05/2016 00:35

Merlin, I have to skip the very last scene when rewatching, bloody awful!

Tartyflette · 24/05/2016 00:55

The Good Wife is on episode 17 here, (UK) and is definitely not finished yet so no spoilers please! There are 22 episodes in S7 according to Wiki.
But totally agree about Undercover - WTF? Incoherent and just rubbishy - and Marcella was also deeply unsatisfying.
Happy Valley, on the other hand, was bloody brilliant (and if they have left an opening for a third series I'm very happy about that.)

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