And, For the Grand Finale...

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Close to 20 million people watched the finale of Game of Thrones and at least that many more who followed along casually had heard every detail of the conclusion to the eight-year saga by breakfast on Monday. Indeed, it was hard to avoid as people rioted in the streets took to Twitter and Facebook to express their amazement, agreement dismay or disgust. I don't want to rehash the many arguments about whether the ending was fitting or not (it wasn't; Sansa + Tyrion should have jointly ruled the kingdoms, Jon Snow should have been King in the North and Brienne and Tormund should have ridden off to adventures together) but it did put me in mind of some of the memorable series conclusions I've seen over the years, and how satisfying - or jaw gaping - they were.

First off, I have to acknowledge there are many, many TV series that never got a finale on the small screen because they were prematurely, unjustly yanked. (The other two of you in the US who watched Flash Forward will know what I'm talking about. Back in the sixties and seventies, even shows that knew they were ending  rarely capped the series - production companies had their eyes on valuable syndication rights, and didn't want to lose future audiences who, it was thought, wouldn't tune in if they knew how everything ended. (A similar theory still circulates in the publishing world: editors will tell you not to kill the main series characters off at the end for fear later readers won't start reading the beginning.

But starting in the eighties and increasing exponentially in the nineties, companies began tying a bow on their popular TV shows. Part of it was economic, as always - even flagging shows could pull a startling number of eyeballs for a last hurrah. For some series, everything was pulled together in a bittersweet and satisfying way that left you with a glow of contentment. For others, viewers found themselves saying, "What the @#$%did I just see?" after the closing credits.  Let's look at a few I remember:

1. M*A*S*H: After a run three and a half times longer than the actual Korean War, the doctors and staff of the MASH unit were discharged. Everyone who had ever been on the show appeared (at least in a photograph) and I sobbed my way through the entire second hour, not so much because I was going to miss Alan Alda, but because I used to watch it with my Mom and Grandma at Grandma's house and I was seeing the finale in my slightly crummy student apartment and I was never going to be a little kid perched on Grandma's enormous divan again.


You may have experienced this finale differently.

2. Mad Men: This was definitely a "What the heck?" ending. Don discovers EST? Did Don write the famous Coke song? The acme of Sally Draper's character arc is that she's cooking and cleaning and taking care of her younger brothers? (that really cheesed me off.) On the other hand, I really love the Coke song because it reminds me of my tween years, so overall, I gave this a thumbs up.


I promise not every episode will be viewed through the lens of how it made me feel about my childhood.

3. Quantum Leap. I sobbed at this one, too. After all his humane, wise, helpful adventures, Sam doesn't get to go home? He never goes home?!? But Dean Stockwell is still alive, thank God, so there's still a chance of a follow-up movie. We should start a write-in campaign. I hear Netflix is looking for projects.


Fun fact: I'm pretty sure my son was conceived the night this episode aired. Seeking comfort in adversity and all that. 

4. Newhart: The best absurdist ending ever pulled off in theater, TV or the cinema. After eight years of wacky adventures in a Vermont Inn (oh, how I loved Larry, Daryl and Daryl!) in the show's finale, Bob wakes up... in his New York apartment, sleeping next to his wife, Suzanne Pleshette. Bob's deadpan confusion, Suzanne's tolerant "All right, Bob," and the audience's enormous affection for The Bob Newhart Show makes this a slam-dunk.


5. St. Elsewhere: It's not an easy trick to pull, however, as shown in the baffling discovery that six years of drama, black humor and angst at the run-down Boston hospital actually all took place in the mind of an autistic kid holding a snow globe. Author John Scalzi has an excellent observation that the failure mode of clever is "asshole": this finale is living proof. It's a good thing this happened before the age of the internet, or the writers would have been hounded off social media for life.


6. The Sopranos: Love it or hate it, the ending of this ground-breaking crime show/family drama was singular and memorable, not so much for the way it completed hanging plot lines - it sort of did and sort of didn't -but for the last four minutes. Three of the four members of the Soprano family are sitting in a diner booth. The camera widens so we see a man walk into the restrooms. Two big guys approach the jukebox. The dialog is banal and the music is anything except suspenseful, but the tension is almost unbearable. The daughter, running late, crosses the road. We hear a ting as the diner door opens and...slam to black. 

The way writer/director David Chase set the scene is purely cinematic, but the ambiguous ending is very novelistic to me. A tricky choice that had lots of fans yelling, but it worked as art.

All right, dear readers, it's your turn. What are your favorite or infamous series finales?

What's On? Jungle Reds Bingewatch

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Of course we watched THE CROWN. And I was riveted, The personalities the history. The clothes. The lipstick. Phillip the pill. Margaret the wacko spoiled one, Elizabeth trying so hard but she can't help it, she's got to be the Queen.  And I was doubly riveted because it felt like I was learning history at the same time.

Turns out, sadly, I wasn't, necessarily. So many articles are now revealing so many things that did happen at all the way they are portrayed in the series. Which is really too bad, but I don't want to list them because I don't want to spoil--if it would be spoiling--the show if you haven't seen it. I mean, it's STILL good, but you kind of have to google as you go. (Well, Rhys doesn't have to.)

But on to happier TV stuff.  Well, not exactly happier. We just finished watching Ozark, which is so incredibly suspenseful I watched the first episode curled up in a chair, saying to Jonathan--I CAN'T WATCH THIS!! And then proceeded to to be glued.

We are also--and I hesitate to reveal how behind we are--watching Breaking Bad. So now you are laughing, because that's pitiful. But wow. It's incredible. (I know, I know, I don't have to tell you.) And Mrs. Maisel, hilarious.  And my private secret treat: Project Runway. Though it's better with Tim and Heidi.

So, Reds are readers, catch us up. Point us in the right direction. What are you watching?  

HALLIE EPHRON: J'adore The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The first episode is so brilliant, and it just keeps going to a fantastic finish. Can you even imagine trying to break out as a stand-up comedian? 

I'm catching up on Vera which happily I missed. And just watched the last episode of The Detectorists and looking forward to the new season about to drop. Sadly, apparently the last. Love those sad sacks so much.

My guilty pleasure is watching (again) the episodes of Sherlock. I saw them but can't believe how much I forgot. I wonder if there will be any more. And can't wait for the new episodes of GLOW. Who knew I'd love ladies' wrestling.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hallie, I rewatch Sherlock, too. They are just so brilliant!!! And I love The Detectorists but am way behind. Where are you getting that?

JENN McKINLAY: I just started watching Game of Thrones a few months ago. Ack! I know! WAY behind but I had to work up to it. And now, I am desperately crushing on Jon Snow. Also I am addicted to YOUNGER, which is the greatest show ever!!! (A forty year old woman can't get a job in publishing because she's been out of the loop, raising her daughter in the suburbs, so she pretends she's 26 and gets hired - SO GOOD)! And now I am going to have to watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel because it sounds wonderful and I trust you and Hallie implicitly! 

INGRID THOFT: "Mrs. Maisel" is definitely going on the list, but I can’t do “Game of Thrones", which is too complicated and too violent.  I think I was the only person on the planet who couldn’t get into “Breaking Bad,” and that’s worse than being late to the show, Hank!  I just watched “Loch Ness” on Acorn, which I enjoyed, and I’m planning on tuning in to “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.”  I’m caught up on “This is Us,” one of the few network shows I watch, and I’m definitely in love with Sterling K. Brown.  There.  I admitted it.

DEBS: Ingrid, who isn't in love with Sterling K. Brown??? 

HANK: Me. No This Is Us for me. Too sad.  And Ingrid,  it took me two attempts to like Breaking Bad. But when I feel, I fell hard.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Jenn, I've been thinking about watching YOUNGER, and you've sold me on it. Besides, who doesn't like to fantasize she could pass as fourteen years younger? Like everyone else, I've got "Mrs. Maisel" on my list, and I'm also excited about the Philip K. Dick-based series ELECTRIC DREAMS which just went up on Amazon.

Youngest and I both adore THE GOOD PLACE, and if you haven't been watching, you need to see it right now. Original and oh-so-funny. I've also been enjoying THE EXPANSE, from the SyFy (sic) network. In fact, I liked the first season so much I've put the second on hold while I finish the novels upon which the series is based. Coming up later this year, Harlan Coben has a series titles SAFE that sounds great, and very Coben-esque: a thriller set in a gated suburban community. And of course, I will keep on watching anything from HGTV. Drew and Linda's Nursery Addition? Yes. Rehab Addict Rehab? Sure. Flip or Flop Poughkeepsie? Bring it on.

LUCY BURDETTE: I barely watch TV so I'm not much use. John is the resident expert. But even he quit on BREAKING BAD, because it was too scary. (His golf buddies tease him relentlessly about admitting this.) We are in the second season of THE CROWN, though I think the first was more compelling. Now will have to watch Mrs. Maisel!

RHYS BOWEN: I regret to say I'm with Lucy. I don't watch much TV. I devoured the Crown. I'm now into the second season of Victoria although I don't find that as compelling for some reason. I am a sports nut and currently watching the Australian Open tennis from which I will go straight into the Winter Olympics. I do confess to a secret pleasure in Project Runway and the Amazing Race. And I must watch Mrs. Maisel. I've heard so much about it.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Can I even admit that I haven't watched The Crown? Ack! I will, I will. I just haven't got to it yet. Rick watched Breaking Bad but I just couldn't work up to it. We did the first season of Game of Thrones, and now I'm wondering if we should pick it up where we left off. What say, GOT fans?

HANK: Yes, yes! I even love hearing the Game of Thrones theme music. Don't stop!

DEBS: I've just started re-watching Vera from the beginning, because it is so good, and I've missed episodes or parts of episodes here and there. And I've only seen Shetland intermittently, so would like to watch all those from the beginning, too. And I am totally in love with an old series from the mid-nineties that's been running on my PBS station, called Pie in the Sky, starring Richard Griffiths as a police detective turned chef. I adore it! Haven't missed an episode since I discovered it.

Our big couple thing lately has been Star Trek: Discovery, the new series that takes place time-wise ten years before the original Star Trek. It is SO good!!! Sonequa Martin-Green, who plays Michael Burnham, the first black female first officer in the Star Trek canon, is just riveting. And Jason Issacs as the captain? What's not to like?

HANK: SO, reds and readers, point us in the right direction! Are you liking The Alienist? (SUCH a great book! But the TV show? Hmmm.)  What are you watching? 

Off the Digital Leash

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:

Not our dog. Wheatie is invisible.

NO DOG: Jonathan and I don’t have a dog, but we wish we did. So we did the next best thing.We have an invisible dog, named Wheatie. Wheatie is a Wheaton Terrier: invisible, so constantly adorable and very low maintenance. (We forget to feed her, she doesn’t care.)

Solly and Daisy

PUPPY LOVE: My colleague/producer Mary has real dogs. Crazy, bouncy, hilarious rescue Labs who are an adventure every day. Very high maintenance, but Mary cannot talk about Daisy and Solly without smiling.

POOCH PHILOSOPHY: The dog-person thing is pretty intriguing. What I have learned from Mary is that there’s more to dogs than dogs. And now I am learning it from Matthew Gilbert, too.

BOW WOW.  Matthew Gilbert. Made me laugh every day as TV critic for the Boston Globe. Fearless, opinionated, hilarious and insightful and a beautiful writer, he made our love of TV be like a community. Something we all shared, discussed, cared about—and it was okay. TV was good. And we were grateful.

DOG CHOW: A few months ago, at a dinner party, (after we dissected The Wire and Game of Thrones and The Americans) Matthew told me about his new book. A book? About TV? (That had to be it, I figured.) Nope. He explained it was about how he’d been forced to detach himself from TV—by a dog.

COME!  I latched onto this instantly. We have dog lovers at Jungle Red, I said. We have readers. We have people who love to read about dogs. Come visit! I implored. And he agreed.

GOING TO THE DOGS. So now, Matthew Gilbert, in his new life. How going to the dogs led him to a whole new place.

Off the Digital Leash

   by Matthew Gilbert

    Hi, my name is Matthew, and I am a TV junkie.

    Like many of my friends, I feel like I was raised by TV. I remember watching reruns of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” as a kid and wanting Rob Petrie to be my father. He was a goofy string bean of a man, and I loved him for his stumbles, for his macho-free masculinity, for the rare birds in his life like his co-writers Buddy and Sally.

    You’ve been there, no doubt, fed by the dependable love of the remote-controlled breast. You’ve visited that place of comfortable numbness, where the world is like another TV show. It’s not a bad place. I’ve made a very satisfying career out of it as the TV critic for the Boston Globe. I watch many, many hours of TV a week, and I love it. I love the medium, and watching stories unfold over time, especially now that those stories – like “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” and “Game of Thrones” – are so good.

      But since I’ve been taking my yellow lab Toby to the dog park, I’ve developed a daily ritual of going unplugged for an hour or two, of leaving the digital bubble. It has been a great development, a daily “off.” I’m away from the TV and computer screen when I’m at the park, and I also try not to use my cell phone. It’s a regular intermission from that state of electronic thrall.

    Toby goes off the leash, I go off the digital leash.

    It’s not the only thing I’ve gotten from the dog park. As I describe in my new book, “Off the Leash: A Year at the DogPark,” I’ve learned how to play, how to relax among groups of people. But this daily intermission from the virtual, this spot of sun through the cloud, has been so eye-opening. These screens and devices we obsess over are very high-tech tools with which to make a very primitive kind of flight. They enable emotional distance; you’re in a room or on a street or at a park, and a very beautiful park at that, but only partially there. I knew that state intimately, long before cell phones arrived.

    

Toby’s name has “to be” in it – that had been my idea when my husband Tom and I named him, thinking of a Globe editor who’d killed himself shortly before we got Toby; that friend, so overwhelmed and resigned, had chosen not to be. Time to be, I thought, at least for a few hours a day, while the dogs are wrestling joyfully at my feet. Stay in the moment of the park, at the park.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Ah, Matthew. See what I mean, Reds?  Do you have a dog? Or have you ever? Did your dog—change your life? Are you a "dog person"?

**And pssst. There's still time to enter my fabulous THE WRONG GIRL paperback contest. http://hankphillippiryan.com/newsletters/newsletter-7-14.html  **

**********
  About Matthew Gilbert and OFF THE LEASH

OFF THE LEASH is a group portrait of dog people, specifically the strange, wonderful, neurotic, and eccentric dog people who gather at Amory Park, overlooking Boston near Fenway Park. And it’s about author Matthew Gilbert’s transformation, after much fear and loathing of dogs and social groups, into one of those dog people with fur on their jackets, squeaky toys in their hands, and biscuits in their pockets.
    


Gilbert, longtime TV critic at The Boston Globe, describes his reluctant trip into the dog park subculture, as the first-time owner of a stubbornly social Yellow Lab puppy named Toby. Like many Americans, he was happily accustomed to the safe distance of TV viewing and cell-phone web surfing, tethered to the digital leash. But the headstrong, play-obsessed Toby pulls him to Amory, and Amory becomes an exhilarating dose of presence for him. The joyous chaos of wrestling dogs and the park’s cast of offbeat dog owners – the “pack of freaks” – gradually draw him into the here and now. At the dog park, the dog owners go off the leash, too.
  

   
Dog-park life can be tense. When dogs fight, their owners – such as the reckless Charlotte – bare their teeth at each other, too. Amid the rollicking dog play, feelings tend to surface faster, unedited. But Gilbert shows how Amory is an idyllic microcosm, too, the home of enduring friendships and, as the droll but vulnerable Hayley knows, romantic crushes. Meeting daily, a gathering of dog owners can be like group therapy, or The Office, or a standup concert.
 

   
As a TV critic, Matthew Gilbert is well-known by his readership for his humorous and wry writing style. A charming narrative that will appeal to anyone who has ever enjoyed watching a puppy scamper through a park, OFF THE LEASH is a paean to dog lovers and their pets everywhere, perfect for fans of Marley & Me and Merle's Door.

I Wish I Could UN-See That Movie!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Well, the Oscars were last night, and (fill in the blank) was awesome, and what a surprise about (fill in the blank) and didn't(fill in the blank) look incredible? (Fill in the blank) was such a disappointment, and (fill in the blank) was so inarticulate. And could you believe the...well, you get the point. You don't need US to talk about the Academy Awards, and all the  movies and stars that were honored.

(We're happy to discuss it, of course!)

But let's do the opposite. Let's talk about movies we hate. Not so-bad-they're good movies, like Plan Nine from Outer Space and Point Break, but ones that were disappointments, or ridiculous, or absurd, or over-hyped, or just--unbearably awful.

My most un-favorite? THE VANISHING.   SPOORLOOS in Dutch, but it had subtitles. That was the creepiest movie I've ever seen, and actually, I wish I could UNsee it. (There's a  American verison, but I'm talking about the original.)  A young couple stops at a highway rest stop. The girl goes inside to the bathroom,and never comes out. And the guy spends the rest of the movie looking for her. Completely and totally obsessed.

(This isn't a spoiler.) So eventually, he gets asked--"You can find out what happened to her, but the same thing will happen to you. Do you wanna know?"  

I can't even write about it. It was SO disturbing. How about you? Any movies you wish you could UNsee?

LUCY BURDETTE: I am getting better at not going to movies I'd like to unsee later. But I did see the live-action shorts. And I wish I could unsee the first one, called DEATH of a SHADOW. A man had to kill 1000 people and then he could be released from his own death. Isn't that a creepy premise? At least we didn't have to slump through all 1000 deaths.

The funny thing is, the film that won this category last year was funny and quirky and upbeat, and yet all the offerings for 2012 were downers, with harsh settings (Somalia and Afghanistan, for example) and grim characters. I guess it's a sign of the times?

RHYS BOWEN: I don't do disturbing movies any more. When I was young I'd go to dark and violent foreign films and sit drinking wine dissecting them afterward. Now I can't handle too much darkness. I like my movies to be well-written and great human dramas (or comedies). My major beef recently with movie theaters is the sound level. Saw the Hobbit in Imax and the sound during the previews was so loud it actually hurt my ears. I haven't seen any movies I hate recently because I only go now on recommendations from friends and good reviewers. Movies like Quartet and Marigold Hotel--that's my speed. The one movie remember absolutely hating after it received so much praise was Raging Bull, every second word was a four letter one. We walked out.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I agree with you, Rhys. I'm fine with the f-bomb once in a while, as necessary, but I've never had much tolerance for being carpet-bombed. You can't convince me that the original 1962 CAPE FEAR with Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum was less scary than the more graphically violent and obscenity-laden remake with Robert DeNiro and Nick Nolte.

Graphic violence usually turns it into a can't-see flick for me. The only film I can remember walking out of is SAVAGES. I like Don Winslow's books, but I can stomach a lot more on the printed page than I can onscreen. I lasted until the "heroes" are forced to help torture a guy before I couldn't take it anymore. Caught the last half hour of THE AVENGERS instead.

A movie that I just hated? In theaters now. A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD stunk like a fish left out in the sun for three days. And I LOVE the DIE HARD series. Plot holes so gaping, Ross, the Boy and I were turning to each other in the theater and asking each other, "But wouldn't he..?" Afterwards, Ross said, "I wish we had seen that in a foreign language. Without subtitles. It would have hung together better."

HALLIE EPHRON: Like Rhys, I stick to movies I've read about and won't make me feel like I stepped in it. So I've got to go back... to A Clockwork Orange. Gleefully torture and maim, tra la. Ick and double ick. Masterpiece schmassterpiece.

The good thing about watching movies at home is FAST FORWARD and the ever handy MUTE button.

ROSEMARY HARRIS: This is a hard one.  I've been disappointed in a lot of movies but UNSEE really raises - or is it lowers - the bar.  There's only one I REALLY wish I'd never seen, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Don't ask me to explain.

For the record I love Plan 9 From Outer Space, 2000 Maniacs, Eeegah!, Valley of Gwangi and a lot of movies many people think are dreadful. I just bought a copy of Frogs! This is a film I've never seen but have mentioned many times in my talk Mischief and Mayhem in the Garden. It stars Oscar winner Ray Milland and carries the memorable taglines "They're not the ones who croak!" and "First the pond - then the world!" I can't wait to watch it.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Because at our house, Friday night is At Home Movie Date Night, and Rick often chooses, I watch all sorts of things. He does make an effort to find things I'll like, so the stinkers are more often my choices. Like Syriana. Hated that movie. And very recently, Flight. I won't say I hated it--good performance by Denzel Washington--but it was pretty much a case of suffering through it. Nice ending, but SO depressing getting there. And SO long.
Movies I wish I could unsee? I think I'm with Hallie on Clockwork Orange. I did my best to erase it from my memory files.

But my current "wish I could unsee" is a TV show, the new series called The Following with James Purefoy and Kevin Bacon, two fine actors. I watched ten minutes of the pilot, thought it was awful, turned it off. Then last week, in a hotel room, the second episode came on and I watched the whole thing in a sort of numb state of shock.  It's not only vile, but BAD. As in bad acting, bad dialogue, unbelievable characters... Just dreadful. Do not be tempted to watch this or you'll want to take a memory-erase pill!

HANK: See? And this is why the world goes round. I loved Clockwork Orange. And I LOVED Raging Bull.  And Ro, I am still laughing over "They're not the onlly ones who croak!" Classic. But you'd never want to unsee it. As for The Following, I have to say, I kind of like it. But it is incredibly violent.  And I just don't like to take up room in my head with that. Which reminds me of a scene in the otherwise-fabulous Game of Thrones I wish I hadn't seen.  Eeessh.

So ,Reds--whats the movie that makes your brain crawl? That you wish you could unsee? And to celebrate Debs wonderful new THE SOUND OF BROKEN GLASS--the oppoite of unsee!--we're giving away a copy to one lucky commenter!