End of TV series like the loss of a friend
THERE are times when one truly mourns the passing of a favourite television series. Somehow a single episode dose of compelling entertainment once a week maintains an emotional build-up.
This is very different from binge watching, which I imagine is closely related to binge drinking and eating, but without the stench of pathology and dismay. Instead, there’s the goody-goody feeling of a pleasure delayed.
But to get back to a sense of loss. This hack has learnt the hard way the difference between good and bad television. The good stuff, like diamonds, truffles and unending love, is rare and fleeting.
So when we recently had Twin Peaks series 3 and the secondlast series of Game of Thrones, their ending left a sense of loss. One is bereft; one may have to read a book instead or listen to a couple of ECM vinyls on the valve-powered hi-fi system.i start with the great, though lesser pleasure: Game of Thrones. The most recent series has been full of action, with resolution after resolution piling up like the corpses of the Battle of the Bastards.
Since the end for the producers is in sight, subtle plot developments have been understandably wiped out, as has any real attempt at character development.
What we got instead was a wild rush to the end, with all sorts of people, ravens, Wildings (yes, I know they’re people too), Dire Wolves and sadly one dragon wiped out, destroyed or zombified, assuming such a word exists.
The television-endorsed truth of zombies has lost its shock value, given the extraordinary number of the undead that populate so many series and the White House itself.
But when the Bezombied One is a favourite dragon, whom one has seen grow from a stone egg to a creature bigger than several Boeings glued together, the sense of loss and post-raphaelite dismay overcomes one.
One sniffs, and wipes away a salty tear. Not really of course, but this piece of the review demands some sentiment.
Sentiment is absent from Twin Peaks. The dominant feelings for many viewers, some of whom phoned me up after episode 1 in rage and disappointment (“Listen,” I said to most of them. “You’ve got the wrong David.”) was puzzlement, boredom and, to repeat, rage.
These emotions were the appropriate outcome of David Lynch’s masterpiece: a successful attempt to obliterate traditional expectations, overwhelm reason and affirm the random in all human affairs, including television programmes.
For this, I was, am and forever shall be deeply grateful. On the other hand, I suspect my gratitude is not universally shared.
So what did we get? Our hopes – especially those whose memories of series 1 and the sadly degraded series 2 broadcast 26 years ago were alive and well and living in full consciousness – were that the puzzle of Laura Palmer’s death, the meaning of the talking log, the religious/ liturgical contexts of black coffee and cherry pie, the true nature of the Black Lodge and some other mysteries would all be resolved. They weren’t. Not one of them.
Instead fans were left with our hopes dashed. Or postponed? Could series 3 be just a cliffhanger for series 4?
Only those with the password to the Black Lodge know the answer.
A small fact of luminous import: in 26 years Lynch will be over 100.