ENDINGS

Having grown tired with the Hollywood rewind, composite, formula television shows that lack special character, I have looked higher up the cable dial to the international stations new entertainment choices.  Since I have no problem watching and understanding subtitled shows from Korea or Japan, I look to this avenue as a means to find new stories based upon non-American cultures and folk tales.

One thing that I have noticed with foreign titles is that a show will have a more limited run. Twelve episodes a season, and perhaps maybe two or three seasons max seems to be the industry standard. As a result of knowing that the creators have a limited episode count before filming the pilot makes the story lines more well defined, crisp and easy to follow. It is not to say that there cannot be mysteries, drama, murders, betrayals, and character development in a 12 hour show run. It is interesting to see that writers don't have time to add "filler" tangents.

Even these shows can have their own cultural formulas, like Korean romantic comedies often show a young woman in a dead end retail job who faces societal pressure to marry before age 30 or she becomes an "old maid." This premise is used for various character themes and interpretations, including love triangles, defying social conventions, aftermath of divorce, the pressure of economics in single life in large, expensive metro cities like Seoul or Toyko.

But one aspect of the foreign dramas is that they must have a "happy ending."  One could go through 23 roller coaster emotional rides with the lead actor, to suddenly have all the story angst suddenly resolve itself in the last episode, where the lead gets what he or she has desired to go off to live happily ever after. Perhaps the government wants shows with happy endings because a happy ending makes happy viewers which is a less a protest problem for governments.

So looking at LOST's ending from a new cultural perspective from Asia, if LOST was a Korean or Japanese program, viewers would have expected the happy church ending and it accepted it as normal television.  Even if a thousand questions were left unanswered, and the characters did not desire a happy resolution to their problems, Asian television makes it so in nearly all the shows I have seen to date.

That is not necessarily good or bad. One tenet of entertainment is to give the audience what it wants. In the Asian markets, a happy ending must be a standard requirement viewers expect while in American cinema, the anti-hero may not be redeemed at all (and succumb to a brutal ending).