Dying young

News came recently that the Sci Fi channel's version of Battlestar Galactica, which at first I could have cared less about, may end after its next (fourth) season. Sad news now that I'm so into it, but better that it end early than late. I've long been upset that My So-Called Life and Freaks and Geeks and Arrested Development and countless other fabulous shows were cut off due to low ratings. But then, their early departure leaves them remembered in their prime. There is no keeping a show after it has faded into a shadow of its former self, no awkward aging among young casts, no cousin Oliver joining the family, no shark jumping, no finding out it was all a dream ending.

Carrie Bradshaw ended up with Mr. Big on Sex and the City. The MASH gang for better or worse went home. Aeryn Sun and John Crichton got together; granted their love was fulfilled, if you will, during a horrid Farscape follow up finale movie but still, it ended in the right place, the expected place, the fulfilled place. The Lost crew have called their own end date. I can appreciate that--know when to quit and how to get there. This is how endings are supposed to occur, no matter the twists and turns along the way.

I don't require perfect endings, but I admit it's tough to grieve for a show or cherish for eternity a movie that ends on an illogical low note, or which just sputters to a hasty conclusion of sorts. A tragic ending done right is a good thing and satisfies that part of me which acknowledges life is not all about happy endings. Closure is a good thing.

David and I used to watch The Sopranos. I'm somewhat thankful I have had only limited access this final season. The episodes I saw were too depressing, with too little (none?) of the occasionally silly, oft amusing tidbits thrown into dialogue and storylines that I so reveled in in the early seasons. Now after a depressing season, the finale is vague about Tony's future, doesn't create closure.

The nebulous closing out of The Sopranos works for me, primarily because it offers me the chance to hope. The show was based in a violent, sexist, vengeful, self destructive existence. Do I really want to see how a mob boss's life ends out, no matter how sympathetic a character he may be at times? Okay, it's better to leave Tony alive, ailing as he was at the start of the show, than to kill him off or imprison him and leave his family in limbo as reality might dictate. That would be too depressing. I couldn't easily watch reruns without thinking, "What's the point, he dies anyway?" But it doesn't leave you crying in your wineglass either, so I suppose on balance it actually ends on an up note, a hopeful note. (Clearly, I am in a glass-half-full kind of mood.)

Hmm, maybe I truly yearn for endings that are going to be overtly happy or at least let me live with delusions of happiness. Goodness, what an escapist sap I've become. :)