[DevSop]

The most visual, well-crafted show of the 2007 television season against a show that ends with a snow-globe everything never happened ending. Please don't vote for that garbage; #25 Pushing Daisies vs. #40 St. Elsewhere.


#25. PUSHING DAISIES




vs.

#40. ST. ELSEWHERE

[The Jewish Cunthead]

Howie Mandel, Denzel, the voice of KITT... like I'm not gonna vote for St. Elsewhere

[DevSop]

Pushing Daisies could never air another episode and it will be better because it didn't end IN A FUCKING SNOW GLOBE. There's bad storylines, there's bad characters, there's even bad endings...and then there's taking 6 seasons worth of character development, plot points and everything and saying...whoops, none of this actually happened because a kid with autism had a snow globe.

A FUCKING SNOW GLOBE.

[Lou]

The snow globe didn't make me enjoy the previous seasons any less. I gotta go St. Elsewhere.

[National Champion Chris Cole]

Pushing Daisies is easily the show I look forward to the most each week. I absolutely love the show. If you haven't taken the time to check it out you really should.

[Lucky]

Seriously, its not the snow globe was some bullshit excuse to get out of an existing story or resolve a problem. It wasn't JR never dying. It was Bob Newhart waking up in bed with his old wife. It was just an end, that's all. A provocative twist but nothing that took away from the past. Not some unsatisfying end to a plot.

Besides, it opens the door for an awesome theory:

The Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis

The Tommy Westphall universe hypothesis, an idea discussed among some television fans, makes the claim that not only does St. Elsewhere take place within Tommy's mind, but so do numerous other television series which are directly and indirectly connected to St. Elsewhere through fictional crossovers and spin-offs, resulting in a large fictional universe taking place entirely within Tommy's mind.

Tommy Westphall lends his name to this hypothesis because if St. Elsewhere is a figment of his imagination, and all other series that can somehow be connected to it exist in the same fictional universe, those shows could be said to exist only in Tommy Westphall's mind. In a 2003 article published on BBC News Online, St. Elsewhere creator Tom Fontana was quoted as saying, "Someone did the math once ... and something like 90 percent of all television took place in Tommy Westphall's mind. God love him."[6]

See? Begley's character appeared in Homicide. Which means Homicide was all in the kid's mind too. Which means Detective Munch is too. Which means every show Munch was in is a figment of the kid's mind. That kid dreamed up all the Law and Orders, Homicide, X Files, Arrested Development, and the Simpsons. Isn't he awesome?

[DevSop]

No, he had a fucking snow globe. Nothing more, and while it may not take away from 6 years of a good show, of which I have no idea. It's still the fact that it never actually happened that leaves a bitter taste. All endings like that are horrible and it DOES take away from the show because what they're saying is that everything you watched didn't matter cause IT NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

I don't care that 90% of supposed television existed in this kid's autistic mind, it's a horrible twist ending that exists just to be OMG~!SHOCKING.

Bullshit, vote for the best new show on television with brilliant characters, brilliant visuals, and just a fun show.

[Jack Quinn]

Sop, these shows are all made up for TV. None of it actually happens

[Stu]

devilsoprano said:

No, he had a fucking snow globe. Nothing more, and while it may not take away from 6 years of a good show, of which I have no idea. It's still the fact that it never actually happened that leaves a bitter taste. All endings like that are horrible and it DOES take away from the show because what they're saying is that everything you watched didn't matter cause IT NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

I don't care that 90% of supposed television existed in this kid's autistic mind, it's a horrible twist ending that exists just to be OMG~!SHOCKING.

Yeah, but if Lost ended by pulling back and revealing it all took place in the mind of a goose, wouldn't you go "Ah, that explains a lot"?

[Lucky]

Seriously, why in the world would give you a shit? It makes no sense. If Lost went and pulled something like that it would blow because the explanation is a MAJOR part of the show. So copping out would impact the show. But the nature of St Elsewhere was never in question. Shaving the final 5 minutes of the series off doesn't change anything. It was just a unique and weird way of closing the book on that world. You don't have to like it. But it genuinely doesn't affect the show at ALL.

And even if it did, Pushing Daises would have to be some kind of special bit of genius to beat out SIX SEASONS of some of the best TV in history with a lousy ending in only 10 episodes.

I can not imagine how St Elsewhere telling you that the show didn't matter in anyway affects you. If the producer of EVERY show I watched came on screen at the end of each episode and said "you, that was all fiction" I'd just say "duh." Really, seriously. EVERY TV show could end with that kid looking into a new snow globe and I'd have zero problem with it.

[DevSop]

It's lazy. It's just a completely lazy way to come up with an ending. It's basically saying, we're not sure how we want to end these characters stories so here's a kid with a globe who made it all up. If you want more of the story, find him because he's the one who created the St. Elsewhere world.

And don't give me that all stories are fictional bullshit. I know that, but within that fictional world don't give me a cop-out, lazy, twisty ending just because you think it's edgy or whatever bullshit you come up with. If you want to leave it open-ended, that's one thing and I'd prefer they didn't do that either, but at the end of the day, if I watch a television show from start to finish, I'd like the ending to be AN END. Not a kid with a snow globe, not someone waking up from a dream, not someone writing the story as a book or whatever the dumb ending to Roseanne was. Just give me an ending to all these characters and stories that I invested time in.

And I'm not saying St. Elsewhere isn't a good show. Everything I've heard about it says it was a quality drama that at points was ahead of its time with issues that they dealt with. And that's terrific, but I think an ending like the one they gave cheapens the entire run. Maybe not alot to some people, but it does to me and if Lost ends with the final scene being the plane crash and realizing it was all figments of the dog, I'm going to be fucking furious.

And since I mentioned it above, with regards to the Newhart dream ending, I'm not even that upset with that ending because they gave an ending to the characters in Newhart before the dream sequence. If I recall correctly, Newhart waking up and being back in his original sitcom was the coda as the credits were rolling. It was a cute add-on that didn't take away from the fact that there was an ending before that. If you can tell me there was a legit end to St. Elsewhere before the fucking snowglobe, that's different to me.

[The Jewish Cunthead]

But I can also see the POV from a series creator. He or she has more invested in the show than anyone else so who's to say what the right or wrong way to end the show is? I wasn't crazy about how Chase ended The Sopranos but it still doesn't take away the pure awesomeness of everything that happened before the screen went black.

[Lucky]

Its not lazy because it didn't resolve anything. They could have ended that show like dozens of others did with the main characters walking out the door and the lights being turned off. It wouldn't have changed anything. That was nothing more than an epilogue. The idea wasn't to END the characters. They didn't want to. The story wasn't over, the show was. But there was no STORY like there is with Lost or Heroes or other similar plot driven programs. It was an ensemble drama with weekly issues (that did often carry over but which never DROVE the show like many of these modern programs). There would continue to be new doctors, new patients, new emergencies, etc. St Eligius would keep going. The cameras would just not be there anymore. All the snow globe did was give a surreal spin on the fates of the characters.

Lost isn't even in the same world because the mystery and questions are real. If the answer is then a dismissive cop out, yes it has an effect. If it becomes a dream or a fantasy that IS bullshit because that's what we spent 6 years watching for. We never gave a shit about the ending of St Elsewhere. That wasn't the point. The final episode saw doctors leave and go down new paths of their life. Doctors stand up to each other, make life changing decisions, etc. Everything you expect in a finale. Then a weird epilogue that I can totally understand people not liking but which didn't change anything. St Elsewhere was always weird and very self aware. Hell, the snow globe almost makes sense in some ways because that show was very willing to make gags that we as the omnipotent TV viewers can only get.

Roseanne was ALL bullshit. She says that in the final scene of the show. Jackie was lesbian, not her mother. David married Becky and Darlene married Mark. Dan died from his heart attack. The entire show was a fictional account from the mind of Rosie and she changed a lot of it to suit her storytelling. The entire final season of suck was nothing more than her absurdist fantasy world. Does that invalidate the genius of the show?

[punk/core]

I remember that... hahaha, a retard staring into a snow globe. Brilliance!

Wait... was M. Night Shamalamafuck's involved with that show at all? That pretty much sounds like it's got his fingerprints all over it.

[Lucky]

Except, again... it wasn't some twist that was built up. It wasn't the resolution of a lingering or building problem. It wasn't the long awaited answer to a question. It was just an epilogue. Nothing more. M. Night would have spent 6 years dropping clues and hanging a huge question over the heads of all the characters, snowglobes and autistic children would have walked the halls, we would have figured out in Season 2 and the show itself would have acknowledged it by Season 4. They they would have pretended it WASN'T the case, in no way build a convincing case, and then give us the OMG TWIST!

This wasn't a TWIST like we think of them.

Seriously, if you like Roseanne and gave it one vote in this showdown (and I know you did, Dev) then its pure hypocrisy to hold this against Elsewhere. The TWIST didn't change ANYTHING about the show. All it did was tell us that the world was in fact fiction even within a fictional world. The world didn't change at all. And like I said, if you really want to argue it almost makes stuff like the Mary Tyler Moore gag make more sense because there is now a guiding force that would MAKE those jokes besides just the writers. But ultimately it was meaningless. It wasn't the disappointing anvil of an M Night. It wasn't a show changing Deux Ex Machina. It was just a weird aside. The characters are still the characters, the stories still the story. The show's just less real than it was in the first place.

[National Champion Chris Cole]

Sounds sort of like the movie Identity in a way. I didin't watch St. Elsewhere so I can't comment about first hand experience of the ending but it sounds like it was a one time incident and might be a tiebreaking factor in decision making but not a real factor.

[Lucky]

Except again, Identity the answer was a real factor. The major part of that movie was WHY were those people connected and who was the killer. There was an overlaying mystery that drove the movie and made it more than just a generic slasher flick. The twist of Identity meant something.

It was incidental with Elsewhere.

[Courtney]

I voted for Daisies mainly because I've never seen the other one. It's my favorite new show of the season and probably the most fun show I've ever watched. Between the voice narration and the quirky acting of Kristin Chenowith and Lee Pace, I love this show.

[DevSop]

Closing these polls either late tonight or early tomorrow, make sure you vote if you need to.

[DevSop]

St. Elsewhere unfortunately moves on to Round 2.