Unfinished Stories
Shadow and Bone.
Julie and the Phantoms.
The Babysitters' Club.
First Kill.
The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia.
These are just a handful of shows that I watched and enjoyed on Netflix that were not only canceled but canceled without a proper ending. I’m talking about shows that were left on huge cliffhangers that basically changed the entire nature of the show going forward, and those plots will forever hang over our heads because the story was not finished.
We never get to know where those characters’ stories leave off, and if they have better days. We don't know what would've happened if certain characters got back together. We don't know if some characters will ever get out of jail (if you know, you know). The Babysitters' Club is the exception to the list above, but for everyone else, go in prepared to be heartbroken by where they left the story off if you dare start the series.
Now, while Netflix is the biggest culprit of my most recent heartbreaks, they are not the first network to cancel a show or two that I loved.
Before them, I had Fox.
The Fox network came out with bangers of sci-fi TV shows only to cancel them quickly after they came into public view. This includes shows like Terra Nova, Almost Human, ABP, Minority Report, and Touch, to Name a Few.
I’ve also dealt with more canceled shows from other networks like The Mysterious Benedict Society, Agent Carter, Charlie's Angels, and Scorpion. As someone who used to be an avid TV watcher, I have gone through my more than fair share of TV show cancellations.
Now, I truly think TV shows are one of the best platforms to use for storytelling. Writers get multiple hours of airtime to tell a story, share a lot of different characters' stories, and have more room for different plotlines to keep things interesting.
Not to mention, TV shows get more time than you would get in any regular movie or even a book, at times. The average movie is around two hours, or three if the studio is pushing it, but a TV show episode is usually a 45-minute stretch of time that is done about eight times per season, given the current streaming TV model. So with the current season model that most streaming platforms are following, you get double or triple the amount of time to spend with your characters and plot than you would in a two-hour movie, which usually is great for not only the cast and crew who want to tell the story but great for the viewer who wants to devour the story.
And when I say devour, I mean that literally.
Nowadays, most TV shows that have their entire season dropped on the same day will be utterly devoured by the average viewer in that one day. You do not know how many times I have seen a TV show drop one day and how many people are commenting on the little production details, have already made 10,000 edits for Instagram, and are making YouTube videos explaining the ending of season two of a show that just came out that morning. And I'm not talking about news or interview channels where the people who have interviewed the cast and crew of the TV show and already had time to watch the TV show before it went live on its respective platform. I’m talking about the viewer who has only had access to that show in its entirety for three hours, and they are already coming up with tons and tons of content dedicated to the show online.
In the age of social media, you will not find a harder worker than a fangirl (or a fanboy or fan).
The truly dedicated fangirl will already have made edits of her favorite scene, have gushed about all the little quotes of her favorite ship on all her social media accounts, and will be banging on the network’s door begging for the next season of the show hours after it premiered.
Now, as someone who has studied film in college, I do ask that fans of TV shows and movies give these networks time to breathe after they've released the season because asking for the next season immediately after it has only been out for six hours is a little extreme because it took them 14 months to make those episodes that you consumed in six hours. But in return, I ask these networks to give these fans a complete show.
Not just an eight-episode season, but an eight-episode season that has a complete ending where the fans do not have to worry about the tragedy of the show getting canceled without certain stories being finished. I know that cliffhangers are a great way to entice people to come back for the next season of a show, but you have to give us the next season of the show if you're going to end on a cliffhanger.
Most of the shows I've mentioned above had cliffhanger endings where whole plot lines were left open, found families were torn apart, and thousands of questions of what could possibly happen next were left hanging in the air because the network decided to cancel the show and this happens far too often nowadays.
It's become a chronic stamp of TV networks, Netflix in particular, to leave stories unfinished.
I'm not going to lie, when I watch a TV show that I've invested multiple hours of my time into watching and find this cliffhanger ending that has me truly excited for more, only to learn that the network that created the show has canceled it with this type of ending, it feels like a slap in the face.
Like I've given you multiple hours of my time and a bunch of my money to watch the shows that are exclusively on your network, only for you to give me an incomplete story and not just once but multiple times.
The days of cable packages where you could get multiple channels of content for one price are starting to disappear because there are dozens of networks that are making their own streaming platforms (most of which you can't bundle all that together) and you are forced to get a subscription to each of these platforms to see all the different types of content that you want to watch. And when you finally get to watch this content, it’s all unfinished, and all prospects of continuation are thrown in the trash because apparently, that show you subscribed to this platform to watch was not worthy of an ending. It was not profitable enough for the platform, so they are going to cut their losses and stop making this show.
From a regular business point, this makes sense. If a product is not profitable, you stop making it and move on to the next. But when it comes to storytelling, this model just sounds like, for lack of a better word, bullshit.
Imagine you read a 10 fantasy book series where you have been waiting for this 10th book for years.
The quest to find the sword of destiny to defeat the evil overlord is done, and it’s finally time to use this great weapon to defeat him.
The team has gathered enough support from multiple nations to stand a fighting chance.
Not to mention, the couple you’ve been rooting for since book 2 are on the edge of getting together, so you can’t wait for this 10th book to come out.
Only to learn, that the author is canceling the series because it didn’t make them enough money, and they send out this information from their million-dollar mansion in the hills on their solid gold laptop right before they go to feed their zebra.
And imagine if this was the 5th series they did that with, after promising that they would never do that to their readers again.
The amount of angry messages that the author would receive could stretch from here to the moon and back.
There is no universe in which people would not be outraged and try to keep others from finding this unfinished story because they want to save them from this heartbreak.
I know I would never recommend another book from that author again.
I don’t recommend a lot of things nowadays unless I have read them myself and guaranteed that they have a good ending.
That is what every fan deserves when they invest their time into a book, TV Show, or movie.
A Good Ending.
Every time we view a story in any form, we are here to see how it ends.
Does the couple get together? Do the ragtag friends defeat the evil forces? Does the lost dog find their way home?
We want that ending to make sure that our time was well spent.
And while I do not regret watching any of the shows above because I enjoyed my time watching them, it doesn’t mean that my heart didn’t break a bit when I heard that story wasn’t being continued.
And when you hear that time and time again over the years, you start to become pessimistic about any story you start being finished.
Most of the time, you will find me rereading and rewatching the same things over again because I not only know the ending, which eases my anxiety immensely, but more importantly, I know it has a good ending.
I am tired of getting invested in stories that don’t have an ending, and I’m not the only one.
People in the bookish community online talk about the fact that they won’t start a book series until it’s finished, not only so they don’t have to wait for the next book in the series, but so they can enjoy a finished series.
When people have a show or movie recommended to them by a friend, they’ll ask if it has a good ending to figure out if they should invest their time into it at all.
Because they know their time is valuable, and they are not going to give it to something that will disappoint them with how it ends.
So, on that note, I leave these two pleas for TV Show networks.
1. Don’t end your show on a cliffhanger unless you have already been green-lit for another season. Save your audience their sanity by wrapping up each season with a pretty bow unless you know that another is coming. If you know you’re going to get more time to tell the story, then please break our hearts as you wish.
If you can’t guarantee this, then I ask you to do number two.
2. Invest in more limited series. Wrap up everything in one season. Make a story that can be told in those eight episodes you give us, and move on to the next series with a well-told story under your belt.
Shows like The Queen’s Gambit don’t come out often enough. I can fully enjoy that show without question as I know in that one season, an amazing story was told, and it was wrapped up beautifully.
If you can’t promise us multiple seasons of expensive shows, at least give us one good limited series. Besides, you've been giving us tons of one-season shows anyway, so that shouldn't be hard for you.
Give your viewers something reliable to work with because if you are not happy with the viewership numbers that you get for one of your top shows on the platforms, don’t be surprised when fewer and fewer people tune in for the new shows you put on the platform.
Because people will stop trusting you if you keep canceling these shows.
Because there is truly nothing worse than an unfinished story, and people will save themselves the trouble by not tuning in at all.
