It’s the lull between TV’s fall finales and winter premieres and that means one thing to viewers: maybe we can go a week or two without seeing somebody die.
True, the tendency to kill off major series characters isn’t brand new; just think of the body count on Lost, which aired between 2004 and 2010.
But things have been particularly gruesome recently, with sometimes beloved characters getting offed in
some creatively gory ways. (And let me insert a warning here: if you’re still catching up on any of the shows I’m about to mention, stop reading right now because there are big spoilers ahead.)
Take Sons of Anarchy, the largely unsung, sometimes brutal FX biker drama, as an example. In just two weeks at the end of Season 6, former club leader Clay Morrow (played by Ron Perlman) had a hole shot in his neck while his estranged wife watched and Tara Knowles (Maggie Siff), wife of current club president Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam), was drowned in a sink of dirty dishwasher and viciously stabbed with a fork by her own mother-in-law.Sons hasn’t exactly shied away from violence in the past — last season we watched a club member get beaten to death with a lead pipe in prison and a prison guard bludgeoned with a snow globe in retaliation — but there was a poignancy to these killings and a sense that, in the fictional world of Charming, Calif., things are getting very bleak indeed.
One of the more recent TV deaths was logical, even desirable from a plot standpoint, but no less shocking.
That was the demise of Nicholas Brody, played by Damian Lewis, on the Showtime dramaHomeland’s Season 3 finale.As CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) watched in anguish, Brody, the father of her unborn child, was hanged from a crane in front of cheering Iranians.
Unlike Brian the Dog on Family Guy, there was no resurrection for Brody as the episode’s epilogue made clear. While it’s hard to imagine how Brody’s story arc could have continued, given his outing by the CIA as an aspiring terrorist, Lewis’s excellence will still be missed.
Perhaps the saddest of recent TV deaths happened on The Walking Dead’s mid-season finale, with Hershel (Scott Wilson), the veterinarian who was the moral compass of the band of survivors taking shelter from the zombies in the Prison.
The megalomaniacal Governor (David Morrissey) hacked Hershel’s head off with a sword as his weeping daughters watched from the other side of a fence. And with that, war broke out between the Governor’s band of survivors and the Prison crew, which led to many more deaths.
You can bet on even more deaths when Season 4 resumes in February with the Prison community scattered and homeless.
A close second in the upsetting death category would be the end of Richard Harrow (Jack Huston) in the Season 4 finale of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. Yes, Richard had killed plenty of people both of his own accord and as a killer for hire, but he was always more of a good guy than a bad guy. He was on the cusp of happiness with a wife and stepson when one more job, settling a score for Nucky (Steve Buscemi), led to him getting shot and dying alone under the Atlantic City boardwalk.
Let’s not pretend, however, that some of the TV deaths we’ve witnessed haven’t been satisfying. The series finale of AMC’s Breaking Bad in September was as near to a perfect 75 minutes of TV as I’ve ever seen, not least because chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin Walter White (Bryan Cranston) met his end.
Walt had done everything he needed to do, including providing for his son financially, making peace with his wife, setting his former meth-making partner free and getting revenge on the neo-Nazis who’d killed his brother-in-law Hank (yes, another death), so there was really nothing for Walt to do but die.
And then there are the deaths that should have been.
Had serial killer Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) of the Showtime seriesDexter died when he steered his boat into a hurricane on the series finale, we might have forgiven the credibility gaps that preceded that scene. (And let’s add the euthanasia of Dexter’s sister Debra, played by Jennifer Carpenter, to the sad deaths category.) Instead we had Dexter alive in a logging camp in a perplexing denouement.
TV death is not limited to cable series as a major character on CBS’s Person of Interest,Taraji P. Henson’s Detective Carter, was dispatched last month. Long before that, Fox’sThe Following seemed to kill off series protagonist Joe Carroll (James Purefoy, although it appears he’ll be back in Season 2).
Finally, you can’t talk about TV deaths without mentioning the “Red Wedding” scene in the penultimate Season 3 episode of Game of Thrones.
This was as shocking as it gets for those of us who hadn’t read the books, as Robb Stark (Richard Madden), his pregnant wife Talisa (Oona Chaplin) and mother Catelyn (Michelle Fairley) were all stabbed to death by order of Lord Walder Frey, seeking revenge because Robb didn’t keep his promise to marry one of his daughters.
Though we’d learned in Season 1 that anybody was fair game with the beheading of Ned Stark, the Red Wedding brought a sudden and brutal end to what had seemed a key plot line and left us anticipating the fallout when the series returns in the spring.
It’s the lull between TV’s fall finales and winter premieres and that means one thing to viewers: maybe we can go a week or two without seeing somebody die.
True, the tendency to kill off major series characters isn’t brand new; just think of the body count on Lost, which aired between 2004 and 2010.
But things have been particularly gruesome recently, with sometimes beloved characters getting offed in
Take Sons of Anarchy, the largely unsung, sometimes brutal FX biker drama, as an example. In just two weeks at the end of Season 6, former club leader Clay Morrow (played by Ron Perlman) had a hole shot in his neck while his estranged wife watched and Tara Knowles (Maggie Siff), wife of current club president Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam), was drowned in a sink of dirty dishwasher and viciously stabbed with a fork by her own mother-in-law.Sons hasn’t exactly shied away from violence in the past — last season we watched a club member get beaten to death with a lead pipe in prison and a prison guard bludgeoned with a snow globe in retaliation — but there was a poignancy to these killings and a sense that, in the fictional world of Charming, Calif., things are getting very bleak indeed.
One of the more recent TV deaths was logical, even desirable from a plot standpoint, but no less shocking.
That was the demise of Nicholas Brody, played by Damian Lewis, on the Showtime dramaHomeland’s Season 3 finale.As CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) watched in anguish, Brody, the father of her unborn child, was hanged from a crane in front of cheering Iranians.
Unlike Brian the Dog on Family Guy, there was no resurrection for Brody as the episode’s epilogue made clear. While it’s hard to imagine how Brody’s story arc could have continued, given his outing by the CIA as an aspiring terrorist, Lewis’s excellence will still be missed.
Perhaps the saddest of recent TV deaths happened on The Walking Dead’s mid-season finale, with Hershel (Scott Wilson), the veterinarian who was the moral compass of the band of survivors taking shelter from the zombies in the Prison.
The megalomaniacal Governor (David Morrissey) hacked Hershel’s head off with a sword as his weeping daughters watched from the other side of a fence. And with that, war broke out between the Governor’s band of survivors and the Prison crew, which led to many more deaths.
You can bet on even more deaths when Season 4 resumes in February with the Prison community scattered and homeless.
A close second in the upsetting death category would be the end of Richard Harrow (Jack Huston) in the Season 4 finale of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. Yes, Richard had killed plenty of people both of his own accord and as a killer for hire, but he was always more of a good guy than a bad guy. He was on the cusp of happiness with a wife and stepson when one more job, settling a score for Nucky (Steve Buscemi), led to him getting shot and dying alone under the Atlantic City boardwalk.
Let’s not pretend, however, that some of the TV deaths we’ve witnessed haven’t been satisfying. The series finale of AMC’s Breaking Bad in September was as near to a perfect 75 minutes of TV as I’ve ever seen, not least because chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin Walter White (Bryan Cranston) met his end.
Walt had done everything he needed to do, including providing for his son financially, making peace with his wife, setting his former meth-making partner free and getting revenge on the neo-Nazis who’d killed his brother-in-law Hank (yes, another death), so there was really nothing for Walt to do but die.
And then there are the deaths that should have been.
Had serial killer Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) of the Showtime seriesDexter died when he steered his boat into a hurricane on the series finale, we might have forgiven the credibility gaps that preceded that scene. (And let’s add the euthanasia of Dexter’s sister Debra, played by Jennifer Carpenter, to the sad deaths category.) Instead we had Dexter alive in a logging camp in a perplexing denouement.
TV death is not limited to cable series as a major character on CBS’s Person of Interest,Taraji P. Henson’s Detective Carter, was dispatched last month. Long before that, Fox’sThe Following seemed to kill off series protagonist Joe Carroll (James Purefoy, although it appears he’ll be back in Season 2).
Finally, you can’t talk about TV deaths without mentioning the “Red Wedding” scene in the penultimate Season 3 episode of Game of Thrones.
This was as shocking as it gets for those of us who hadn’t read the books, as Robb Stark (Richard Madden), his pregnant wife Talisa (Oona Chaplin) and mother Catelyn (Michelle Fairley) were all stabbed to death by order of Lord Walder Frey, seeking revenge because Robb didn’t keep his promise to marry one of his daughters.
Though we’d learned in Season 1 that anybody was fair game with the beheading of Ned Stark, the Red Wedding brought a sudden and brutal end to what had seemed a key plot line and left us anticipating the fallout when the series returns in the spring.
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