How They Shouldn't Have Ended
Sep. 8th, 2015 04:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcIt is possible that that "How Friends Should Have Ended" thing - the one where it turns out the whole series was the fantasy life of a still homeless Pheobe - annoyed me a bit. In fact, it's possible that it annoyed me so much that I satirically wrote a whole bunch of alternate endings for other sitcoms which revealed that everything we'd been watching was a lie, and things were actually as depressing as heck. Because how could they possibly not be improved by such a thing?
It's also possible I've decided to share them with you lucky people because misery loves company.
Frasier finds himself slumped over the bar of Cheers, and Sam informs him that he drank himself unconsious when his divorce from Lilith was finalised. He starts to tell Sam about his dream, and Sam reminds him that (as established in previous Cheers episodes) he's an only child and his father is dead. He perseveres with describing his fantasy life in Seattle, until Sy Flembeck (a oneshot Cheers character played by John Mahoney) bluntly tells him "Doc, no-one's listening."
After considerable prompting from Geraldine, Alice finally makes a breakthrough and acknowledges the fact she killed her husband Hugo many years ago, and has been in a high security mental facility ever since. As Geraldine leaves, she passes other cells (yeah, cells, I'm thinking we go full Arkham with this, since a realistic mental health facility wouldn't be terrible enough) containing Owen, Frank and Jim (Jim in particular seems to be in considerable distress; let's make "nononono yes" harrowing!) before making her final report to the asylum director, Dr David Horton.
J.D. isn't a doctor, he's a patient. And he's in a coma. We see the other characters gather round his bedside and the series ends with Dr Jan Itor sadly explaining that, while his mind is active, it is totally unconnected to his body. (You see? It's taking the concept of Floating Head Doctor and giving it a twist that makes it into the bleakest thing ever! Isn't that edgy and postmodern? Because whimsy ain't kewl!)
Similar to Frasier, this was all imagined by a drunken Lister. The twist is he's not even really from the future! But he does really have a tedious job restocking vending machines, and Rimmer is really his officious and persnickity supervisor, and there's no escape.
It turns out Dan died of a heart attack in Season 8, and everything we've seen since has been a book written by Roseanne where she deals with her grief by fantasising that ... wait, hang on ... (checks notes) ...
Huh. Well, I can see why that was one of the most popular sitcom endings in history, second only to How I Met Your Mother.
It's also possible I've decided to share them with you lucky people because misery loves company.
Frasier finds himself slumped over the bar of Cheers, and Sam informs him that he drank himself unconsious when his divorce from Lilith was finalised. He starts to tell Sam about his dream, and Sam reminds him that (as established in previous Cheers episodes) he's an only child and his father is dead. He perseveres with describing his fantasy life in Seattle, until Sy Flembeck (a oneshot Cheers character played by John Mahoney) bluntly tells him "Doc, no-one's listening."
After considerable prompting from Geraldine, Alice finally makes a breakthrough and acknowledges the fact she killed her husband Hugo many years ago, and has been in a high security mental facility ever since. As Geraldine leaves, she passes other cells (yeah, cells, I'm thinking we go full Arkham with this, since a realistic mental health facility wouldn't be terrible enough) containing Owen, Frank and Jim (Jim in particular seems to be in considerable distress; let's make "nononono yes" harrowing!) before making her final report to the asylum director, Dr David Horton.
J.D. isn't a doctor, he's a patient. And he's in a coma. We see the other characters gather round his bedside and the series ends with Dr Jan Itor sadly explaining that, while his mind is active, it is totally unconnected to his body. (You see? It's taking the concept of Floating Head Doctor and giving it a twist that makes it into the bleakest thing ever! Isn't that edgy and postmodern? Because whimsy ain't kewl!)
Similar to Frasier, this was all imagined by a drunken Lister. The twist is he's not even really from the future! But he does really have a tedious job restocking vending machines, and Rimmer is really his officious and persnickity supervisor, and there's no escape.
It turns out Dan died of a heart attack in Season 8, and everything we've seen since has been a book written by Roseanne where she deals with her grief by fantasising that ... wait, hang on ... (checks notes) ...
Huh. Well, I can see why that was one of the most popular sitcom endings in history, second only to How I Met Your Mother.
