World Building, The Infinite and Series Finales

By José Espinosa

Introduction

Raymond Williams' concept of 'flow', arguably the "only term of aesthetic analysis in TV studies to have acheived any real currency" (Sconce, 94) understands the experience of watching television as one that is based on the constantly available, continually streaming nature of the medium. Beverle Houston articulates it as "the idea that the text issues from an endless supply that is sourceless, natural, inexhaustible and coextensive with psychological reality itself" (Houston, 184). How then do television watchers and scholars come to understand series finales from within a discourse of 'flow'? What are the particular questions raised by the conclusions of long-running serial dramas?

As Jeffrey Sconce has argued, television series, especially serialized ones, "create worlds that viewers gradually feel they inhabit along with the characters" (Sconce, 95). The epic scope afforded by the serialized television format allows for the development of complex fictional worlds filled with enough detail so that the audience can feel a "powerful sense of co-presence" (Ellis, 32) with the events they see on screen. Regular viewers bring more than an interest in the ways characters will resolve situations to their weekly viewing. They also come to identifiy with the constructed universes of their favorite programs so much so that when they feel as though the logic of these universes has been violated it becomes uncomfortable and/or impossible to continue watching.

A friend of mine who had been an avid fan of the ABC primetime soap opera Grey's Anatomy recently stopped watching after years of dutiful viewing. When I asked her why, she responded that the show had recently become "too unrealistic" for her to continue following it. It's interesting that this friend who religiously watches fantasy programming like True Blood would consider the unlikely but plausible melodrama of Grey's too unrealistic even as she devotes considerable time to watching a show about vampires and other super-natural creatures. The point to make here is that viewers like my friend both accustom themselves to the worlds they see on screen and unconsciously craft rules that fill in the limitations of diegetic realities. There is a form of cognitive dissonance that takes place when programs break down the boundaries of the worlds we had perceived.

Part of the pleasure in watching serialized dramas comes from our own self-satisfaction in discovering that our world-building aptitude increases each time we tune in. We grow increasingly aware of the nuances of the program and, as Umberto Eco explains, "we are happy because we discover our own ability to guess what will happen" (Jones, 83). Sustained viewing not only ensures that we will see what happens in the plot of the show but also that we will become better watchers, more attuned to the internal mechanisms of the series' machinery. The serial produces in us a desire to understand more about the fictional world it creates. As Amelie Hastie writes, "it provokes [a] drive for knowledge in its viewers" (Hastie, 74).

Just as television conceived of as flow is infinite and uncontainable, so too are the limits of knowledge. No matter how long we follow a series or how closely we watch it there are always things beyond our epistemological reach. It is the pursuit of this infinite that makes new episodes exciting and worth watching. In this regard serial drama finales are unavoidably faced with an impossible quandary: how to close a series while pleasing viewers who derive their pleasure from the expectation of future episodes. A look at the final scenes of three of the most renowned programs of the past 15 years will demonstrate the varied approaches to this problem and how each one uniquely comments on the television medium.

Closing Montage From The Wire's Final Season

These final five minutes of The Wire are marked by their cyclical nature. Jimmy McNulty was the first character introduced in the series' pilot and he is the last character to exit as the show concludes. The musical montage effect is utilized in this clip as it was in the previous four season finales but this time the music playing in the background is "Way Down in the Hole" by The Blind Boys of Alabama, the same song that carried every title sequence in the first season. The clip moves slightly forward in time in order to give many of the principal characters a wrap-up scene and shows the inevitability of individuals being recycled in certain societal roles. The triumph of middle-aged Bubbles coming clean of his heroin addiction and reconnecting with his family (3:10) is tempered by a scene that shows 15 year-old Dukie shooting up in the hovel of the arabber(2:25). A significant section of the clip, from 3:30 to 4:25, is devoted to shots of the daily lives of Baltimore citizens (within The Wire's universe) in important locations easily identifiable to viewers familiar with the show. Interestingly, a shot of a group of three girl extras from the pilot's first scene is also shown in this, the final scene of the series.

From the pilot. From the finale.

Revisiting familiar characters in new situations before the conclusion of the show is one way The Wire finale gives viewers some of the parting information they desire. But while story-lines are advanced it is left unknown where the characters will end up in the future and the reordering of some societal positions in the montage imparts the message that nothing is certain. The knowledge given to the viewer is limited by the fixed temporal position of the final montage; there is a definitive sense that "the characters will continue their lives" (Ellis, 82) after the credit sequence rolls. Additionally, shots of other Baltimore citizens remind the audience that their experience within the universe of The Wire has been limited to the perspective given to them by the show's specific lens. Even as the five seasons of The Wire created a sprawling, interconnected world for viewers, the final sequence speaks to the infinite, ultimately unknowable fictional landscape created by television.

The Controversial Sopranos Blackout

As Hastie notes, "viewing is thus a process in which one comes to know" (Hastie, 87). The viewer is inevitably frustrated by their loss of a lens into the infinite world of The Wire; of losing their view, and consequently their ability to know this world, and its characters, as it "become[s]" in its new "history" (Hastie, 87). Nonetheless, the viewer is offered the satisfaction that their "knowing" this world did not constitute its "becoming." In contrast, The Sopranos final scene actively dispels the viewer's fundamental fantasy of accessing a world that is real and meaningful outside of their gaze. When the screen turns black in the final seconds of the series finale, the viewer is suddenly made viscerally aware that without their viewing, the world of The Sopranos will simply cease to exist. Up until this point there is the expectation that some big event will herald the end of the episode. Audiences watching the clock as The Sopranos ticked down to its final moments must have been nervous with anticipation as the tension-heavy scene (within the wider context of a Mafia war) seemed prime for a blowup; the sort of great event that they could imagine serving as an adequate capstone for their half-decade-long viewing commitment. As Houston writes, however, while the "promise" of television is "a return to the pleasures of incorporation," it can never fully "enable this imagined return." For inevitably, the meaning of television is only a "partial compensation, a distraction from its endless representation of the sign, of lack, of difference." (Houston, 185) The final blowup is not some gory shootout, but the threatening lack of a black screen.

Death and Resurrection in Lost

Where the finale of The Sopranos purposefully disrupted viewers' ideas about the redeeming qualities of television, Lost embraced a different creative philosophy aimed at rewarding audiences for their commitment to the series. It is important to note that this difference may have been informed by the unique demands of the network political economy, as opposed to those of a subscription service like HBO. In the final scene, Jack reconvenes with other important characters in an event aimed at offering viewers an opportunity to say goodbye to their favorites. The last shot of the series, one of Jack lying supine on the island and closing his eyes, is a direct inversion of the opening scene of the series in which Jack is pictured opening his eyes. Whereas the expression on Jack's face in the pilot was one of fear and sudden terror, in the last moment of the finale he exudes a certain serenity. Although this denouement also reminds viewers that their presence constitutes the reality of the show, the tranquility with which Jack and the others fade into light hints that their fate is not simply the death of a black screen but the promise of resurrection. The act of viewing has in fact enabled Jack and the others to move through the purgatorial tests of the Island and emerge into the Light.

Opening scene of pilot Closing scene of the finale