TV's revival era has brought about the end of endings

The New York Times

"Didn’t endings used to mean something?" asks Amanda Hess. "Nothing ends anymore, and it’s driving me insane," she adds. "No property may rest: Not Jersey Shore, not Twins, not Mr. Mom. The series finales of Roseanne, Murphy Brown and Will & Grace were not finales after all. The speed with which stories are expanding is beginning to outpace our capacity for language." Every story has become like a soap opera, Hess notes, pointing to dead characters who are resurrected like Roseanne's Dan Conner. "For their part, television reboots feel less like storytelling opportunities than they do remixes, dutifully mashing up vintage properties with topical scenarios," says Hess. "The image of Murphy Brown in an 'Original Nasty Woman' T-shirt or Grace Adler of Will & Grace redoing Trump’s Oval Office does not supply the satisfaction of an insight or even the comfort of nostalgia. At best, it provides a twinge of recognition. At worst, it’s the shudder of the uncanny. Like dolls or wax figures, these reanimated properties provide something almost realistic but not quite; their characters feel like impersonations of characters, and watching them feels like dreaming. It works for David Lynch and basically no one else."