Worst Series Finale EVER

[sanalayla]

 What happens when a show you love goes off air and their series finale is just absolutely terrible? So terrible that you want to pretend that it never happened? That you just want to write a fanfic and pretend that fanfic was the REAL ending? 

This just happened to me with the series ending of "Medium". For those of you who are unfamiliar with the show, I'll just give a brief synopsis without trying to bore you too much. 

"Medium" was the story of a woman who is a psychic and she has a husband, along with three beautiful girls about 11, 5, and 1 respectively. The psychic gets a job with the DA's office and helps them solve cases (usually gruesome and scary cases) using her "gifts".

The fundamental thing that makes this show worth watching (for me) was the relationship between Allison (the main character) and Joe (her husband). They had a pure soulmates connection and were exactly the sort of healthy, sweet, romantic, and loving relationship that you just rarely get to see on TV. (Another example would be the couple in Friday Night Lights.)

They weathered her crazy visions and dreams, they dealt with raising a teenager, tried riding out the horrible economy, etc. They would argue about who would drive the kids to school and they'd figure out what to do when the bills were piling up and the money just wasn't coming in. 

And - so - I sat down to watch the final episode of this 7-year series. And what do they do? THEY KILL JOE. 

Yes. 

I'm still rather upset about this. Needless to say. So, what about you guys? Any show end in a way that made you want to send poop in an envelope to TPTB? 

(As a random aside, I realized that I am damn glad that "SV" didn't end in S8. I think that I am DUE the ending we're getting in S10.) 

Comments

[lois-88.livejournal.com]

Really, one of the best and most essential parts of this show was Allison waking up after a dream - in their bed - and immediately tell Joe about it. So what now? Are we to believe that for the next 41 years, she woke up alone, having no one to turn to in these traumatic moments? Are we to believe that she would have been fine without the support of her husband? And really, did he leave? And if so, why? She could see him, their kids could. And like Marie said in Allison's dream, dying wouldn't have been his choice, but leaving them would - they would have had every right to be angry then.

So when Allison said "You waited" in the end - it just sounds like she hadn't seen him in all that time, which is ridiculous given how often their dead relaitves showed up unanounced in their house before. It would have been cruel to her and their kids, and nothing the Joe they had shown us for 7 years would have been capable of. The last scene was just unbelievably cheesy - they could be together forever, so? His kids still had to grow up without a father (not to mention that Allison didn't look at all like the old woman she was supposed to look like). Did I cry during the scene? Sure. But only because I started when he left Allison all alone in their bedroom "41 years" before.

Would it have been so hard for them to let her have whatever dream they wanted, only to wake up the day before the crash to tell Joe not to board that plane in the first place? Or to be there when he was being washed ashore - and then a few happy scenes with them - together - being there for Bridgette and Marie growing up, for Ariel giving birth to their first grandchild ...

Really, would that have been so hard? - Well, apparently.

Anyway, sorry, I'm done rambling now.

[sanalayla.livejournal.com]

Are we to believe that for the next 41 years, she woke up alone, having no one to turn to in these traumatic moments?

Yes, I think so. And that's what's so weird to me. Because when Allison says, "There is no me without you." I believe her. There isn't. She can't survive without Joe. Joe keeps her sane.

If Allison died, I could believe that Joe could manage for 41 years. Would he be sad? Yes. He'd miss her. Of course he would. But he would be all right.

Allison? No, I don't believe it. The heart of the story was that Joe kept her grounded and helped her figure out reality vs. dreams. He held her when she woke up in the middle of the night. Talked things through with her.

Without Joe, I don't see an Allison that can survive 41 days - let alone 41 years.

It would have been cruel to her and their kids, and nothing the Joe they had shown us for 7 years would have been capable of.

Yeah. They completely went against the internal logic of their own show. I feel like if they wanted to kill Joe off, then the better way to handle it was to show the DuBois family over the years and a "ghost Joe" hanging around with a smile on his face. Until 41 years later, when he goes off for eternity with his wife.

But they didn't even let us fanwank it, because they had Allison go, "You waited?" So that means that she didn't know he was hanging around for 41 years. (And he even tells her that when he dies.)

What's the point? Did Joe hang around for 41 years and haunt OTHER people's families? To what purpose? That's not who he is. He would have totally taken advantage of the gifts his daughters' had to talk to them every single day. Marie had every single right to be angry at him.

[lois-88.livejournal.com]

Right.

When they killed off Jim on Ghost Whisperer, I didn't have that kind of problem with it. It was a show about ghosts and there was no way they would actually write him out of it. Back then they even made good use of his death - it finally made the character important beyond being Melinda's husband, it gave him something else to do - for once, the show focused a little more on him than on her. And of course, he had gotten himself a new body by the time for the first sonogram of their son.

That ghost just refused to leave his beloved wife behind. He didn't just want to wait for her ... but wait with her.

In my opinion, the Joe Dubois we know and love would have tried to do the same.