Finales (Jackpot January #31)

Well, here it is. The last post. We made it.

To celebrate, I’d like to talk about five finales I really enjoy:

1. The final episode of BoJack Horseman

I’ve heard some backlash against the final episode of BoJack, and I understand why. The previous episode, ‘The View from Halfway-Down’, is a masterpiece even for this excellent show, and ‘Nice While It Lasted’, the actual final episode, is slow and restrained by comparison. But there’s no other way this show, with its talent for uncomfortable feelings, could have ended.

The episode is half an hour of Bojack talking to each of the show’s main characters, tying up a couple of loose ends in their stories, and quietly sharing intimate feelings. BoJack has certainly grown, but by inches rather than feet. Everyone else has started a life beyond themselves: Princess Carolyn is married, Diane is engaged, Todd is… still happy. And BoJack got a day out of prison.

The writing is pitch-perfect. You feel the awkwardness of old acquaintances reunited after two years, the lingering knowledge of all BoJack has put them through. But the standout is his conversation with Diane at the end. It’s the last ten minutes of the episode, and it is a sad, cathartic catchup with an air of finality. I love how Diane is equal-parts standoffish and affectionate. I love that BoJack slips into his ‘I know I’m shitty but I’m working on it’ mode.

But most of all, I love that it all feels like an extended verbal shrug. In the final exchange of the show, Diane remarks, “It’s a nice night, right?” and BoJack responds ‘Yeah. This is nice,” and I just want to scream at my screen, I want to tell BoJack, “If only you could do this every day. All you need to do is notice good things, all you need to do is try to be grateful a little more often.” The show ends with a snapshot of everything the characters (and by extension we ourselves) could be, and then leaves that potential hanging.

2. The final line of The Great Gatsby

The last sentence of Fitzgerald’s greatest novel is, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly to the past.” Before we go any further, let’s just appreciate how beautiful this sentence is just on the face of it. It sounds so good I have it memorised.

As for its meaning, the statement reflects on how we are always fighting to go towards the future, but always seem to be dragged back into the past. (SPOILERS from here on out!) It refers to both the utopia of the green light and Gatsby’s origins catching up with him. We aspire to be one thing, but we can’t let go of our past. Even if we do, it comes back.

So already it’s a nice statement. But let’s contrast it with the novel’s opening line: ‘In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my head ever since.’ The novel itself opens on a moment of the narrator Nick borne back into his own past. His father, he explains, told him not to criticise others as not everyone had the same advantages as Nick. In two lines, Fitzgerald cuts the figure of an old-money, kinda snobby rich boy.

And what does Nick do in the end? He judges. He universalises the judgement, yes, but he still implicitly judges Gatsby for the past that Gatsby is born back into. In the context of the novel overall, Nick’s profound and truthful statement is also a disavowal of Gatsby’s story. Its trajectory ends with a revelation about the corrupt and corrupting, artificial nature of wealth. How appearances mask reality. How illusory are the values that Nick’s circle is founded upon. And Nick chooses to ignore all this. To cope with the idea of Gatsby as a victim of circumstance, Nick ignores it and generalises the story, he philosophises so he doesn’t have to face up to all the bloodstains on the dollar bills.

3. The last minute of Sleater-Kinney’s ‘Modern Girl’

As a song, ‘Modern Girl’ is weird, pretty, and pretty weird.

Its three verses all follow the same verbal structure, with just a few words swapped out. Initially, the singer is a modern girl because the love of her ‘baby’ makes her happy. In the successive verses, happiness becomes hunger becomes anger. This is what’s so wonderful about the song.

It’s very tongue-in-cheek and ambiguous about the true situation of a ‘modern girl.’ Where she initially is happy and finds pleasure in love (as women are expected to), her natural human urges catch up with her. She needs to eat, she needs to act on her anger. Through this oscillation between pleasure and frustration, the song artfully captures the experience of patriarchy’s double-bind.

But the real reason I love the final chorus is not the lyrics, it’s the music. The melody is consistent and uniform throughout the song, but though its structure doesn’t change, it gets louder on each verse. By the last verse it becomes distorted, as if it’s punching through the fabric of the song. The singer’s anger seems to have a tangible impact on the reality of her song. She declares she’s ‘sick of this great big world’, and the fury of her ambivalent autonomy seems to tear that world apart.

4. The final scene of Suspiria (2018)

I will defend the Suspiria remake until my dying day, but I don’t know if I could say that without the finale. Everything before that last (technically penultimate) scene is great, but it’s only ever on a par with Argento’s classic. Very different but just as good.

The ceremony at the end of Suspiria is one of the most breathtaking things I’ve ever seen. The protagonist, Susie, frees all the vulnerable young women from the coven and massacres the witches who lead it. (God, this film is awesome.) Each witch dies in an explosion of blood as Susie opens up her chest to reveal her heart, Thom Yorke’s delicate falsetto trilling all the while.

Suspiria is a cold and grey film through most of its runtime. That’s a big part of why it received lukewarm reviews. Next to Argento’s psychotic fantasia of colour, Guadagnino’s version is hard to digest at first. But this scene is stark yet kinetic, frenzied yet delicate, the whole thing in a red-filtered storm of blur and slo-mo.

Because the film has so far been unwaveringly cold, the heat of this moment hits with such catharsis. Everything ambiguous or confusing seems simple for a moment as authority is defeated.

My favourite thing, though, is the backing track, ‘Unmade’. It’s a melancholy, tentative piano ballad which smothers the violence in a layer of peace. When Susie shows her heart, it’s like the light of truth, of authentic human feeling, finally shines into the film. Coupled with Yorke’s singing, it doesn’t feel like vengeance or cruelty, but just a natural rearrangement of the order of things. The poisoned world is unmade so it can be remade good again.

5. The final level of Half-Life 2 (before the boss fight)

I don’t have anything profound for this final entry. I just think this level is unbelievably fun.

Ignoring the boss fight at the end, the moment when you storm the Citadel is as surprising as it is exhilarating. You walk into a security area which disintegrates all your weapons, but when it gets to the gravity gun a strange thing happens. There’s a big reaction and the gun turns blue.

But so what? How are you supposed to fight with the gun if there’s nothing small to pick up? The game answers by rewarding you with the ability you wish the gun had had in the first place. You can now pick up and throw almost anything: guards, energy pellets, consoles.

It’s far from the hardest part of the game, but you are having the time of your life so it doesn’t matter! And you still have a couple of tricky battles. At one point, you fight a strider with just energy pellets and you can’t do your usual duck-shoot-run trick. You have to face it off, strafe, and be brave and quick with your movements.

That last section is the kind of power fantasy video games were made for. The only greater sense of power is the one I have for seeing Jackpot January through to the end!