I guess you should be grateꦫful when your favorite show’s renewed. But wheౠn I heard Showtime OK’d a second season of “The Affair,” I wanted to cry.
Whatever happenedܫ to “less is more”? Or, for that matter, to closure��?
For weeks now, my husband and I have huddled on the sofa, elbowing one another as the adulterous Noah (a sublime, granite-faced Dominic ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚWest) and Alison (a thrillingly bipolar Ruth Wilson) sink deeper and deeper into sin.
Any week now, we p🐻romised ourselves, weꩲ’d find out which marriage would implode first.
How would their spouses — Maura Tierney’s level-headed Helen and Joshua Jackson’s cuddly Cole — react? And would we ever get another liꦿngering look at the lobster rolls Alison the waitress serves at Lunch? (Save yourself the drive: That famous Montauk eatery is closed for the season.)
We don’t want to wait much longer to find out. The que꧅stion is: Will we find out by the 10th and final 🎃episode, or are they going to spin this out like “The Killing”?
Granted, most TV show🃏s are engineered to run for years and a rare few, like “The Good Wife,” actually improve over time. Sitcoms (good ones) can theoretically run forever: If “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”🐠 was still running, I’d be watching.
But there should be an expiration date on mystery. Life𓃲 moves on, and so do we.
It seems ages since hubby and I watched breathlessly as Eph Goodweather — Corey Stoll, in a wig with a life o💟f its own — went up against those lizard-tongued Nazi vampire zombies in FX’s “The Strain.”
Who knew the show was based on a🧸 trilogy? (OK, so some of♔ you did.)
Ditto “The Returned,” Sundance Channel’s French import, which left its own zombie-focused plot dangling at the end of its first season. My memory of w💛hich characters are alive or dead has receded even faster than my ability to conjugate French verbs.
And while I’ll probably return to this twisty Eur🦂opean mystery, I won’t feel the same urgency that tethered m🥃e to the tube throughout Season 1.
But what a gift was “Olive Kitteridge”!
Based on Elizabeth Strout’s prize-winning book, the HBO miniseries starred Frances McDormand in a story told in just four luminous hours. And while I’d gladly watch McD♊ormand read my Aetna h🃏ealth statement, that’s all Strout wrote. End of story!
As opposed to, say, HBO’s “The Leftovers.” That, too, will be back for a second season and seems determined to spin its wheels long after Tom Perrotta’🐈s origin🎐al plot ran out.
Well, I’m done.
To every thing, th🎃ere is a season. Haviꦰng a definitive endpoint is what makes the time we have so precious. Without that, we’re just “Lost.”