HBO's decade delayed coda to the beloved Deadwood series came out recently. Is it good, should you watch it? It's probably not going to appeal to anyone who didn't watch the series (and they might as well watch Season 1 if they want Milch's expensive sets, lyrical dialogue, and cutthroat characters.) But it does give fans of the series exactly what they want.
That therein might be the problem, and also the future of prestige TV.
Prestige television, especially in this era of antihero protagonists, has a surprising amount of artistic integrity. They depict a dark and nihilistic world, firmly post-"happy endings." And so they have to end in a way that highlights this hopelessness.
Tony Soprano suddenly faded to black. And at the end of Deadwood S3 they drive off the despicable George Heart by... giving or convincing they gave him everything he wanted, and watching him ride out of town, having killed innocents and sold their dignity to do it. We are denied catharsis. These are bleak endings, fitting their bleak worlds.
Turns out audiences aren't actually happy with that. (See the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad as well, with Walter sitting alone in a cabin.) But what are they going to do, as a strong directorial voice doesn't respond much to what audiences want.
The solution apparently is to end the series like that... and then have a movie that comes back in and fixes that. Even a pretentious director doesn't want to do the same thing in a movie that they already filmed.
I was somewhat shocked at the change in historicity of the show. Deadwood the series fit what we knew of history - Wild Bill died, but Seth Bullock, Al Swearengen, and George Hearst all went on to live big lives afterwards. The movie decides, eh nevermind, let's kill or imprison Swearengen and Hearst anyway. It will give pathos and closure.
And in abandoning history, the movie does this pretty well. We get the same cynical characters, but they manage to wring some good out of the world, the moral people either die heroically or get married and have kids, and the anti-heroes die but on their own terms. It's not a cheery Disney ending, but it's one that leaves a warm feeling inside you. (You know, much like the actual ultimate episode of Breaking Bad.)
It's a pattern that will probably be replicated. If James Gandolfini had not passed on, we could see him take a bullet for his family or have the day saved by Dr. Melfi. Hell, the Breaking Bad movie will probably accelerate this phenomenon from the sentimental ride-or-die ending.
