Why the ending of the Good Wife failed

Endings are hard. Having to sum up everything, close off loose ends, not to mention the emotional aspect of it. There are a ton of resources out there about how to write a good ending, there are tons of suggestions, rules of thumb, and helpful advice – but sometimes even the most helpful or well-meant advice isn’t enough. Sometimes an ending just flops. So instead of telling you what to do, I am going to show you what happens if you do or don’t do certain things – all with the TV show The Good Wife as the example. 

The Circle ending

Bringing the story full circle is often used as an ending, and often with great success. This is something that The Good Wife did too, but with less success than most others. They did it with a slap – first Alicia slapping her husband in season one, episode one, and then Diane slapping Alicia in the final episode – and both slaps occurred in very similar places, and both were related to a husband´s infidelity.

The reason I don’t believe this worked is 1) the show has 7 seasons with a total of 156 episodes (which is about 111 hours of watching), and 2) a lot has happened on the show, a lot has evolved and is now almost unrecognizable from what it used to be. This means that expecting the audience to remember that initial slap is a stretch, especially with no trip down memory lane building up to it.

The open ending

Is another widely used ending, and one which there was also a touch of in the final episode of the Good Wife. While the circle closed off the past, the future is still wide open. The trouble with this is glaring: an open ending has to be different from a cliffhanger, and a show finale has to be different from a season finale. In this case, it wasn’t. In the season 3 finale, Lockhart Gardener is being threatened with a $50 million lawsuit that could ruin them, Kelinda is in some kind of trouble, and Jackie and Alicia are on the outs. In the season 7 finale, the final episode of the show, the stakes are more along the lines of “which guy should I choose”? This does two things: we expect resolution in the end, because a pattern of resolutions have been established throughout the show, and 2) it also feels like a letdown. Is that what it comes down to in the end? Is that the big life-changing question Alicia ends up struggling with?

It isn’t out of character for her to struggle in the romantic and duty departments, but to make it her finale makes it seem as if she will always be defined by the men in her life, and that is a shame. Alicia was a good lawyer, she was bright, she was creative, and she was her own person.

Continuing on that thought let’s go to the third and final point:

The title resolution

The title defines a lot in fiction, it tells us what to expect, what to look for, and even who should watch the show. Relating the ending to the title can be a great way of establishing that emotional relief, that “it is complete” feeling. In “The Portrait of Dorian Gray,” for example, the portrait is destroyed. That closes the story effectively and doesn’t leave us wondering what happened next. The good wife tried to do something similar to this, but they failed miserably – because their title was sending the wrong message.

“The Good Wife” in this context is more about being dutiful than good, it is about staying with a cheating husband and stand by his side. In the ending we see Alicia leave Peter, request a divorce, and refuse to stand by him anymore. While this means that she is no longer a wife, the ending leaves the audience with a bad taste in their mouth – much like the open ending with the two guys did.
For one, it says that there can be no show where Alicia and Peter aren’t married – and since Peter was never that good a husband to her, it is heartbreaking to be suddenly told that Alicia and Will never stood a real chance within the show. It reinforces the idea the Alicia is defined by the men in her life, and that all she accomplished is linked to them.

In short, this ending undid a lot of character growth Alicia had had, and it sends an awful message to female viewers.

The lessons:

So, in more general terms, what can we learn from this, and how can we make sure to do better ourselves?

1) fit the ending to the genre and medium.
A single book, or a series of three books, can make use of the circle ending, but a 7 season long TV show will have to lay some memory lane tiles down first.

2) The ending has to stand out from the main body of the work.
There has to be something in it which tells the audience that this is an ending, this is it, no more. It has got to be distinct.

3) The ending has to express growth
Don’t cancel out the growth of your major characters – at least not unless it is intentional for some reason.

4) Don’t make the goodbye bitter
Make it sad, make it emotional, make the audience cry their hearts out, but be careful with leaving them with that bitter taste of disappointment in the characters, the writers, the show. It will color their whole view of the show.

and finally
5) Don’t just think about the ending, feel it
It seems the overall problem with this ending, is that the writers took advice and templates and mashed them together, but didn’t give much thought to how it would feel in the end. That is an important lesson to learn and remember: theory can’t replace feeling.

I’ll say that again, and then let you get back to your writing:

Theory can’t replace feeling.