The first time that I encountered the phenomena was when I started to watch “The Sopranos”. With each successive episode the interwebs were aflutter with rumors surrounding the eventual demise (in the mortal way) of the show’s main character. Discussion centered on the how, when, where and by whom and it had become a foregone conclusion that Tony Soprano just had to be whacked at some point or another. Years went by and nothing. And then in the series finale, the final scene was an intense sequence of happenings about a family dinner in a restaurant. Anxiety built second by second inviting the viewer’s imagination to run wild in regard to what would happen next. And then…nothing, the scene cut to black and “The Sopranos” moved on to syndication. The interwebs exploded with dissatisfaction over the seeming lack of finality. I thought that the ending was perfect as it demonstrated the anxiety Tony Soprano dealt with all the time. But what do I know?
Another HBO show, “Big Love”, about polygamy illustrated another example of the phenomena. Again, the main character’s eventual earthly demise was an oft-discussed topic, which was confusing, as the lead character was a hardware store owning politician. Certainly Bill Hendrickson had a large number of enemies for a suburbanite who wasn’t the head of a mob family but the obsession with whether or not he would be taken out seemed out of place. In the end, the show decided to end poor Bill, by making a peripheral character act out mindlessly over a triviality, and his three wives thrived in his absence. Apparently the moral of the “Big Love” story was that polygamy equals female empowerment, if the dude’s out of the picture. I thought that the ending was silly and meant to sate the palates of the death obsessed and avoid online criticism.
This phenomena, the obsessive cult of death, is a powerfully annoying segment of the fanboy persuasion at the moment. It is made up of know it all, impossible to satisfy sophists who think that no television series is any good unless main character(s) are somehow dispatched someway for the made up reason that these characters’ deaths adds depth to a story. These kinds of people would rather Ross and Rachel run over by a cab than get back together. They would have had Frasier dive off the Space Needle rather than move on. Michael Scott in Colorado? Of course not, they would rather him be face down in the Colorado. Apparently the emotional ties these cultists have to television characters require end of lives to coincide with the end of a show.
This week the interwebs gleamed with self-satisfaction and congratulations over the “brave” decision HBO made in killing off the character in the excellent “Game of Thrones” played by the actor listed first in the opening credits, apparently the ‘lead’ character. But was it really that brave? I ask knowing that “Game of Thrones” is the television adaptation of a book first published in 1996 in which this ‘lead’ character was assassinated as part of the larger story, which really isn’t about him. It wasn’t brave; it was true to the story on which the television show was based. Unfortunately the obsessive cult of death, who apparently doesn’t read, being obsessive and all couldn’t help themselves. It’s too bad because “Game of Thrones” is an excellent and riveting fantasy done well as a television show and is better enjoyed for what it is rather than congratulated for killing off characters.
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