Bad endings may not exist

No one likes a bad ending, yet they seem to happen all the time. In the movies, on television, in books and in real life, they seem unavoidable.
I encountered two bad endings this past week that have left me thinking about them for days.
The first occurred when I finished a novel by Chuck Klostermann called “Downtown Owl.” The book was highly entertaining, as it was about life in a small town in North Dakota in the mid-1980s. Growing up in a small town in Wisconsin, I found the similarities between here and there amusing and the characters he wrote about seemed like people I knew.
But then Klostermann killed them all off in an Alberta Clipper to surprisingly conclude the novel. Supposedly their deaths were similar to the deaths of real people killed by such a blizzard in North Dakota in 1984, and the whole point of the novel was to show how these characters found themselves in a situation that ultimately led to their demise, but the ending felt too contrived when compared to the rest of the novel.
Maybe I ended up liking the characters Klostermann created too much and was disappointed they wouldn’t go on to live what he described as being completely “normal” when compared to life in bigger cities.
Or maybe I made myself one of the characters and when that character died, part of me did, too. Not really, but it’s not that fun to imagine yourself dying because you foolishly found yourself outside in a killer snow storm.
But in this world, that’s how some people will go. The vast majority of people will not control their own ending, and they’ll have to accept whatever ending is given to them. Some will go too young, some will feel they are too old and others will believe their ending comes at the right time.
Of course, we’re not Goldilocks and don’t necessarily have the option to make this choice when we want to, so we’ll have to accept whatever we get. In the end, it won’t really matter much to the person that goes, but only to the people around him or her.
Getting back to less depressing endings, the second bad ending I encountered this past week occurred while watching Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”
I’m not going to spoil the movie for people who haven’t watched it yet, but I will warn people about the ending. It’s bad. Both my wife and I looked at each other and said “What was that?” It just ended, with seemingly no resolution.
This was especially disappointing since we both really liked the rest of the film. The story was fun, the characters were likeable, especially Penelope Cruz’ character, for which she deservedly won an Academy Award for it this past weekend, and the scenery was outstanding.
I’ve always been fond of Allen’s films, and he usually always delivers good endings to them. Maybe I’m missing something with this one, but I don’t think so. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Some of the most famous supposedly bad endings in recent pop-culture history are actually some of the greatest endings, in my opinion.
People still argue about the ending to David Chase’s HBO show, “The Sopranos.” As a Journey song plays in the background, the Sopranos family sits at a table in a restaurant and then suddenly – black screen – the show is over. Since Chase won’t say what this means, it’s up to others to interpret it.
Based on a conversation in the previous episode in which Tony Soprano and another mobster talk about how life ends, both determining it ends suddenly and sometimes without warning, I took the ending of the show to mean a rival mobster ended Tony’s life as he was sitting in the restaurant.
Others have said it was just an abrupt ending that was meant to show that life continues on for these characters as it always will.
I guess we’ll have to see if Chase ever makes a “Sopranos” movie to determine if Tony is still alive or dead.
Another supposedly bad ending occurred in last year’s Oscar-winning film “No Country for Old Men.” At first I was baffled by the ending, but as I chewed on it for a week, I realized it was brilliant. And when I saw it a second time, my conclusion was confirmed. Others disagree with my assessment, but the fact an argument even exists about it may show how good it really was.
Maybe as I ponder my latest bad ending encounters, I’ll change my mind. Maybe I’ll determine there is no such thing as a bad ending. An ending is an ending, and it can’t be bad because it is what it is. Or maybe this is just a bad ending to this column. Think about that.