The End is the Beginning of the End...

There is a song by Smashing Pumpkins called "The End Is The Beginning Is The End," and as you might guess, it's kind of depressing. The first verse goes "Send a heartbeat to; The void that cries through you; Relive the pictures that have come to pass; For now we stand alone; The world is lost and blown; And we are flesh and blood disintegrate; With no more to hate"

You might wonder why I started with that little uplifting piece of prose, well the answer is that song came to mind last night at 8:03 p.m. when the final episode of the first season of the AMC original drama "The Killing" came to an end. It was quickly followed by a joke I remembered from the show "Castle," where the main character asks his detective partner, "Do I look like a killer to you?" and she replies, "Yes. You kill my patience."

You see, endings are tricky, especially in high concept TV dramas. Loyal viewers spend weeks investing in characters and stories and all hope for a good resolution... or at least some kind of resolution. When things go off the rails, you get a kind of vitriolic response from the fan community that can make TV writers research Monastery locations. Usually, that comes from highly serialized shows that draft a finale episode — not a season finale, mind you, but a series finale.

There have been some epic fails in recent years. Consider the "Sopranos" ending, as it faded to black and the audience was left to wonder what became of Tony. (Creator David Chase said he didn't think it was ambiguous — the show faded to black because Tony was about to die.) There was the "Seinfeld" finale, which was utterly pointless and felt like a bad joke... on the loyal viewers. Then there were the big finales that were simply underwhelming. How about the finale to "ER?" After 15 years I was expecting, I don't know, something that felt big and poignant. They tried to keep it simple. That probably worked for some people, but I felt a little cheated.

The "LOST" finale, of course, falls into a completely different category. After six strange, wondrous seasons, fans wanted answers. We got some — and in a lot of ways they seemed to be a betrayal of the misdirection created by producers. It wasn't a complete failure — at least for me — but it didn't give you a warm, fuzzy feeling either.

Still, last night's episode of "The Killing" was perhaps the most incredulous moment in the history of television finales, and not in a good way. It left me frustrated, confused, and disappointed.

The show — adapted from a Danish show of the same name, story, characters, and concept — was supposed to be a season-long exploration of a single homicide case. Each episode covered a day in the investigation, with the implicit promise of getting a resolution at the end of the season.

It started off well, with solid acting, a slow burning narrative, and some interesting production values. That narrative construct drug severely in the middle, and the production values got old, but I, like many, hung with the show to get to that bit of resolution.

When the show earned a season 2 pick up two weeks ago, it was a mild surprise but gave me hope the finale would be a wow moment. And it was, but not in the way I expected. The big twist at the end of the season one finale was not the revelation of a killer, but rather a pair of cliff hangers that implied no killer would be named and the story would continue into a second season.

In short, we were all ripped off. And the message boards this morning certainly reflected a level of anger and betrayal usually reserved for government officials. Never a good sign.

Endings are tricky, and potentially devastating for fans and writers alike. It certainly seems like that will be the case for the second season of "The Killing," whenever that arrives...