Comic Strips

The ending of a series can completely destroy all the meaning and character development of said series.

Or let me put it differently:

Essentially what this is saying is "it's about the journey, not the destination", but ultimately it's a pretty flawed notion. It doesn't matter how pretty the journey is if you're going to someplace to get tortured or beaten.

Also, as far as people go; you may cure cancer, but you can still suck. Steve Jobs sucked. He died a stupid death because he didn't listen to anyone about curing an easily curable cancer. Something which also defined his career, as he never listened to anyone about computers and technology, meaning his stuff sucked all the way up to the 90s.

The last season of GoT invalidated all of the growth that was witnessed in all the previous seasons, ruining the story.

How I Met Your Mother's last season broke a spell that was over me, thinking that any of the characters were decent people. And allowed me to look at the whole thing without any of the nostalgia that carried me throughout the show. Was a young adult with questionable opinions that got better as I got older. The show seems to have never done so. And so I can say that the bad season did ruin the rest of the show, as I may have never given it a critcal eye if they had written it better.

Except that isn't the same logic?

A show's ending is the culmination of its plotlines. A bad ending essentially invalidates all the plot development of the show.

Similar logic applied to a human would be if someone spent all their life trying to cure cancer and told everyone about how they were about to release the cure to then, suddenly, abandon the project, destroy all research so no one else can use it, and fuck off to retire in Tahiti.

What a stupid logic.

If a story doesn't have a satisfying conclusion, then I would say starting the story is pointless.

Disagreed, there are many shows that spend seasons building on the ending that if the ending is really bad, it makes the rest of the show feel pointless.

Shows sort of suck after about the 5th episode. They all start doing filler at some point.

Really putting the "ass" in comparison there. Also, if a person say... wrote a best selling beloved children's book series, but then heel-turned into a piece of shit, it absolutely does ruin their entire body of work for a lot of people.

Like, this happens, what is the comic even talking about?

If a show tells you it's building to something, then fails to deliver, it has disrespected all the time and effort invested.

See:

Lost
Battlestar Galactica
How I Met Your Mother

I think both "the show had 5 great seasons but a terrible ending" is as bad as "the show has 3 bad seasons but the last 2 are great!" are equally bad and reasons that I would not watch something.

It's not like there aren't hundreds of other options.

What no? A show has a narrative structure - buildup to a disappointing end devalues all of that which came before.

A narrative and a person ain't the same. It also follows that we evaluate them differently

"Too late, I've already drawn you as the soyjack"

Let's say you build a bridge. You build the nicest on-ramp, you put the nicest lamp posts, the nicest pavement, and the most beautiful railings in the history of bridges. And the bridge ends on a cliff. There might be some nice views on top of the bridge to nowhere, but it's a bridge to nowhere.

That's a work of fiction with a bad ending. A work of fiction is a work, not a person, so where it leads to is very much an integral part of the work.

This comic is out of touch with the politics of Netflix style script writing where there's no story arc being followed.

We absolutely do apply these to people. Kevin Spacey? Bill Cosby? Jeffrey Epstein? Jared Fogle? Joe Paterno? Louis CK? Chris Brown? P. Diddy? Harvey Weinstein? OJ Simpson?

meh. if people report that the ending of a show was terrible, i'm not going to watch it, no matter how "good" the rest of it was.

similarly, if someone turned nazi at the end of their life, i'm calling them an asshole, no matter what they did before that

also, comparing tv shows to people's actual lives is a dubious half ass analogy

Like a punchline is to a joke, the ending is the most important part of a story. The conclusion gives the journey meaning. Blowing the ending can - and often does - retroactively ruin an entire narrative. This comic is akin to saying “a bad punchline doesn’t ruin a whole joke.” It does. In the same way, a bad or missing conclusion undermines the narrative as a whole.

A Person isn't a story though the ending being rubbish rings the whole story

JK Rowling.

(I meant this satirically.)

Meanwhile you have BNA:Brand New Animal, A show with an ending so bad it taints everything that leads up to it. I have never seen a show undermine its own message like that.

This comic has a solid set-up, but the punchline is weak.

I had been meaning to start Game of Thrones, but hearing that the ending sucks kind of killed all interest for me.

Well when the preceding story is contingent on it leading to a satisfying conclusion, that being 99% of the shows I've seen critiqued this way... I'd say it's a valid conclusion.

I'm sorry someone criticized your fav, comic guy :(

"Surely if I satirize people who trash my favorite show, it'll make me feel better about how it took a shit at the end."

Was it Game of Thrones? If so, don't worry, that's not applicable either way,

It's almost like stories are different from people and stories are comprised to a beginning middle and end. The only time this doesn't count is if the series is not serial based and a mess of episodic with serial through arcs.

I mean it varries a lot, a lot of shows put huge emphasis on building up to an ending.

I would say probably the biggest example would be lost... it feels like it's building up to something special all throughout... it's just like "a few more pieces and it will finally make sense".

Then you get an ending that... well if anything can be improved with small edits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXIOA_sgZoo

Show: Look! Look here! The shiny! Ooooh what might it be?! Oooh something's going to happen at the end! Just you wait! Just you watch to see what it is! Ooooh shiny! ... psych it all turns out to be dumb bullshit.

You: Ah well, at least I got to see shiny.

Every single person of note in Canada, lauded for building something good in Canada, for all Canadians, is eventually found to have cursed out a left-handed albino otter one day on a Monday, and is thus Satan incarnate.

Here we chastise people in glass houses from throwing stones; but we also don't respect a redemption story or long-lasting contributions in case Buddy had a bad day once.