Review: The Good Fight, “The End of Everything” | Season 6, Episode 10

Out of chaos, a few moments of crystalline clarity as we say goodbye to Diane and Liz

Photo: Elizabeth Fisher / Paramount+

At the end of a television show, one question becomes most acute for the viewer: What do we want to happen? I don’t like to approach TV this way. For me, it’s always about surrendering to a storyteller and looking forward to being surprised. If I don’t think what happens works, that’s a judgment for afterwards. Sure, I have hopes and fears for characters to whom I get particularly attached. But the game of proclaiming that X better happen and Y better not, or I am outta here, has long irked me. And I don’t like the idea that creative teams might feel pressure to run their shows with their fingers lifted to the prevailing winds of the discourse, anxious to please and afraid to run afoul of the loudest and most demanding voices.

But when there’s only a few -- or one -- hour left, you can’t avoid the question. Something is going to happen to these people, and then there won’t be any more chances for anything else to happen. I still don’t try to come up with theories; I still want most of all to know what ending the creators want for their creations. Disappointment is still a feeling I want to avoid, relying as it does on some set of expectations. But the possibility exists that the ending will leave me empty, be unnecessarily bleak, or -- worst of all, for me -- abandon or abuse the characters. I respond most strongly to creative people’s unadulterated love for what they create. I believe in grace, and when it is extended to fictional characters by those telling their stories, it buoys me as well.