wrong endings
Jun. 29th, 2007 02:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI'm watching the last two episodes of Ghost Whisperer season 1 and I think I've figured out what bugs me about them. It's like they're the finale to a different show.
All season we've had a stable template - a ghost needs Melissa's help to cross over, because they have unresolved emotional issues; the stakes are if the living and the dead get to move on, the jeopardy is only that someone might end up miserable. There were a couple where someone could have got dead but it was because of the emotional fallout, once because a living woman couldn't handle the grief and a couple of times because the dead couldn't handle the rage resulting from grief. The story was about emotion, about grief and loss and dealing with it. And then there was one where the ghost wasn't totally dead yet, near death ghost, who wanted to die so he could help. That time they had to save some alive people against the clock.
The last two episodes... well, they have elements of what we've seen before, but they're all the rare elements not the central issues. Instead of being about emotion, grief and loss and closure, they're about imminent physical threat. And instead of being about ghosts, she's seeing the frozen people for days - presumably before they're even in the air, let alone dead! So she develops a whole new ability just for the finale? And then there's that whole "you're the one" bit, which introduces a mystery and a personal threat.
We're getting stuff introduced in the season finale?
The end of a season has to pay off the rest of the season, by my reckoning. You get a big build up, and the last problem of the set is bigger than all the rest, but it's usually the same problem. I mean, on Buffy you get an extra big battle, you don't get a sudden need to create emotional closure. So on Ghost Whisperer you should have a need for emotional closure, not a sudden race against the clock to save lives, right?
She's fighting a different problem which needs different tactics and has a different resolution. Instead of a big emotional payoff we get a hell of a lot of deaths. Which isn't what we've been watching it for. The deaths happen first, then we sort out the emotional fallout. That's what we've been watching all along. Changing that is not a payoff. So even before they kill a core character the finale doesn't feel right.
The second to last episode doesn't cross any ghost over at all. Just makes a whole bunch of new ones. That's the episode that feels wrong. But everything from the pilot saying they're close onwards makes sense as a ghost story, it's just the mega ominous buildup that makes it All About Her and how special she is that doesn't so much work. Like if they chopped off the last act and started the story there it would work fine? Because then it's huge numbers of ghosts, but it's the same shape of story as usual. Ghosts that need to cross over.
I can see what they were trying to do with the setup, it just made it feel like they were setting up a new kind of story rather than paying off the template from the whole rest of the season.
All season we've had a stable template - a ghost needs Melissa's help to cross over, because they have unresolved emotional issues; the stakes are if the living and the dead get to move on, the jeopardy is only that someone might end up miserable. There were a couple where someone could have got dead but it was because of the emotional fallout, once because a living woman couldn't handle the grief and a couple of times because the dead couldn't handle the rage resulting from grief. The story was about emotion, about grief and loss and dealing with it. And then there was one where the ghost wasn't totally dead yet, near death ghost, who wanted to die so he could help. That time they had to save some alive people against the clock.
The last two episodes... well, they have elements of what we've seen before, but they're all the rare elements not the central issues. Instead of being about emotion, grief and loss and closure, they're about imminent physical threat. And instead of being about ghosts, she's seeing the frozen people for days - presumably before they're even in the air, let alone dead! So she develops a whole new ability just for the finale? And then there's that whole "you're the one" bit, which introduces a mystery and a personal threat.
We're getting stuff introduced in the season finale?
The end of a season has to pay off the rest of the season, by my reckoning. You get a big build up, and the last problem of the set is bigger than all the rest, but it's usually the same problem. I mean, on Buffy you get an extra big battle, you don't get a sudden need to create emotional closure. So on Ghost Whisperer you should have a need for emotional closure, not a sudden race against the clock to save lives, right?
She's fighting a different problem which needs different tactics and has a different resolution. Instead of a big emotional payoff we get a hell of a lot of deaths. Which isn't what we've been watching it for. The deaths happen first, then we sort out the emotional fallout. That's what we've been watching all along. Changing that is not a payoff. So even before they kill a core character the finale doesn't feel right.
The second to last episode doesn't cross any ghost over at all. Just makes a whole bunch of new ones. That's the episode that feels wrong. But everything from the pilot saying they're close onwards makes sense as a ghost story, it's just the mega ominous buildup that makes it All About Her and how special she is that doesn't so much work. Like if they chopped off the last act and started the story there it would work fine? Because then it's huge numbers of ghosts, but it's the same shape of story as usual. Ghosts that need to cross over.
I can see what they were trying to do with the setup, it just made it feel like they were setting up a new kind of story rather than paying off the template from the whole rest of the season.