Matt Zoller Seitz explores trends and changes in scripted television in “TV Is Moving Away From Finale Fever — Which Is Making for Better TV”.
From the moment it debuted on April 15, 2012, Lena Dunham’s coming-of-age comedy-drama Girls became a crucial fuel source for the internet’s think-piece-industrial complex, and it kept that machine chugging along for six seasons. As the date of Girls’ finale drew nigh, after an arc that saw Dunham’s heroine, writer Hannah Horvath, getting pregnant and deciding to have the baby, a wary consensus settled in: Whether they love-watched or hate-watched Girls, anyone who’d so much as sampled it wanted to see how it would end. Right after the finale, in which Hannah had maturity foisted upon her, the recaps and cultural thumb-suckers began to appear. Everyone had their say. And then: crickets.
By the following week, it was almost as if Girls had never existed.
This was no reflection on the validity of the finale or significance of the series itself. It’s an indicator of how the importance of the ending has faded in scripted television in recent years. Not too long ago, the ending was everything. It put a frame around the entire seasons-long adventure of watching a show. It made viewers… Read the article on Vulture.
