It has to be tough being a showrunner and figuring out just how to end your series. If you go too conclusive, you risk being labeled as cliché and if you decide to leave things too open ended, a lot of fans end up feeling like they’ve wasted their time, whether that’s the right attitude to have or not. You have to worry about character arcs, current plotlines, the past, the future, motivations, and fan expectations while trying to make the best possible product that you can. While some shows that I’ve watched haven’t ended exactly the way I wanted, I usually can understand where they were going and why they chose that direction.
Secret Diary of a Call Girl is one of those shows. The ITV2 transplant finished airing its fourth and final season tonight on Showtime, culminating in Belle rejecting both boyfriend Ben and wannabe paramour Harry and strolling down the streets of London one final time. It completely took me off guard and for a good 10 minutes after it finished airing, I was a weird mix of sad and upset. I mean, the show had always been as romantic and soft as you can make a show about a prostitute and they’re not going to give us the ending they’ve been teasing since day one? Really? But after the initial surprise wore off, I realized something.
It was brilliant.
The duration of the series found Hannah/Belle struggling with her identity and who exactly she wanted to be and here you had two men wanting her to ditch a side of herself in order for her to be worthy of being with. By breaking it off with both men, Billie Piper’s character went against a trope of a female-led show and decided that being alone was better than sacrificing her own self to be with some guy. Too often, we see heroines riding off into the sunset with their respective main squeezes at the end of their respective shows and while that can work a lot of the time, it took a lot of guts to not feed into the desires of fans foaming at the mouth for marital bliss. Belle and Ben were not on the Carrie Bradshaw/Mr. Big levels of dysfunction, so if they ended up together I would have been alright with it, but it became obvious throughout the fourth season that they simply weren’t meant to be as lovers and the show was ended in the most realistic way possible. Sometimes the guy you’re with that you fight with all the time is just that: someone that you’re not romantically compatible with.
Secret Diary of a Call Girl spent four seasons being a flirty, almost tongue-in-cheek look at sex and ended with a vulnerable finale that is a wonderful series capper. Though Belle was losing her Hannah-ness throughout the fourth season (i.e. her crazy beautiful house, the constant couture, the heavy make-up, etc.), her decision to stay by herself shows that there’s still a little bit of the shy, lonely girl from London left behind that crooked smile.
Secret Diary of a Call Girl is one of those shows. The ITV2 transplant finished airing its fourth and final season tonight on Showtime, culminating in Belle rejecting both boyfriend Ben and wannabe paramour Harry and strolling down the streets of London one final time. It completely took me off guard and for a good 10 minutes after it finished airing, I was a weird mix of sad and upset. I mean, the show had always been as romantic and soft as you can make a show about a prostitute and they’re not going to give us the ending they’ve been teasing since day one? Really? But after the initial surprise wore off, I realized something.
It was brilliant.
The duration of the series found Hannah/Belle struggling with her identity and who exactly she wanted to be and here you had two men wanting her to ditch a side of herself in order for her to be worthy of being with. By breaking it off with both men, Billie Piper’s character went against a trope of a female-led show and decided that being alone was better than sacrificing her own self to be with some guy. Too often, we see heroines riding off into the sunset with their respective main squeezes at the end of their respective shows and while that can work a lot of the time, it took a lot of guts to not feed into the desires of fans foaming at the mouth for marital bliss. Belle and Ben were not on the Carrie Bradshaw/Mr. Big levels of dysfunction, so if they ended up together I would have been alright with it, but it became obvious throughout the fourth season that they simply weren’t meant to be as lovers and the show was ended in the most realistic way possible. Sometimes the guy you’re with that you fight with all the time is just that: someone that you’re not romantically compatible with.
Secret Diary of a Call Girl spent four seasons being a flirty, almost tongue-in-cheek look at sex and ended with a vulnerable finale that is a wonderful series capper. Though Belle was losing her Hannah-ness throughout the fourth season (i.e. her crazy beautiful house, the constant couture, the heavy make-up, etc.), her decision to stay by herself shows that there’s still a little bit of the shy, lonely girl from London left behind that crooked smile.
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