“Overall, this finale feels like a pathetic attempt at baiting us into watching Season 2,” an excerpt from the Countdown Season 1 finale review reads.
Your reactions about the finale and this review have been streaming in from all corners since the season ended, and many have taken offense with my use of the word pathetic to describe the finale.
I’m not writing this article to walk back this assessment; I’m doubling down on it.
However, it may have seemed cruel to describe it as pathetic without further expounding on why I feel this way.
Many thought I was calling the use of the cliffhanger pathetic. Shows have been doing cliffhangers for the season finale since the medium was invented.
When I used the word “pathetic,” I wasn’t referring to the cliffhanger.
In fact, I use the word “cliffhanger” once. It was more about the attempt to use it as a decent season-ender that makes us want to see more.
The best cliffhangers are those that leave you begging for more and wishing for the next season, not those that make you feel like you’ve been robbed of your time.
A cliffhanger is not a substitute for a decent ending to a story that viewers have invested in for weeks.
What makes Countdown‘s attempt at setting up a cliffhanger pathetic is the fact that the story being told had barely progressed for more than a few days.
Yet we were expected to wait with bated breath for the outcome of something we weren’t invested in in the first place.
The show set itself up for failure when it introduced a time jump mid-episode and dove into Season 2’s case in Countdown Season 1.
This decision had significant consequences because it robbed the Volchek story of a decent conclusion, and the subsequent story did not get a satisfying conclusion, either.
One of the biggest problems with Countdown is its tendency to drag on unnecessarily, and with this cliffhanger, it didn’t even feel particularly anxiety-inducing.
We never knew what Todd did with the dog when it found itself in the crosshairs of his rifle, so why should we care what happens to Oliveras?
For all we know, he never shot the dog, so Oliveras is safe.
But given what we saw with Meachum’s miraculous healing, who’s willing to bet that she will somehow survive this?
It’s predictable, and that’s what ails the show.
How else will it keep mining the will they/won’t they with Meachum and Oliveras if she dies?
If Haas truly wanted to heighten the cliffhanger, then he should have gone further and had Oliveras get shot and left her fighting for her life.
Now, that’s better than whatever that was.
Oliveras is one of the decent characters in the show development-wise, so having her in such danger would have undoubtedly heightened the finale.
The entire episode offered zero development to the characters or the story, so yes, the cliffhanger did feel like a pathetic attempt to keep the remaining viewers interested in this story.
I hope this clears things up, but I’m always up for discussing things more, so drop a comment with your thoughts. Is this specific use of the cliffhanger pathetic?
Will you watch Season 2?
Drop us a note below, and if you need something else to watch on Prime Video that scores high on the action scale, don’t miss The Terminal List: Dark Wolf!
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