The first time this happened to me, I was 13 and addicted to Japanese cartoons Lady Oscar, which was on Canal Famille, I believe. I owe this series my passion for the history of the French Revolution, when I followed the fate of Oscar François de Jarjayes, born a girl, but who had to put aside her life as a woman by being transformed into a boy. , to become captain of the royal guard of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, because his father wanted a son.
Posted at 7:15 a.m.
I could talk to you about it for hours, but here I want to address an essential point for the lover of series who is losing his favorite stories and benchmarks: Lady Oscar, not only did it end in absolute drama, but… it ended. I spent two days crying, I swear. How was I going to live without Oscar’s presence? I have the series on DVD, which I watch every now and then, like digging through old photos.
The second time it was with City rooms, series started in adolescence, a little neglected when I became an adult and I went out in nightclubs a lot more than I watched TV, but it was a blow to me to lose Pete, Lola and Caroline forever .
Since then, I have experienced a lot of farewells, some more painful than others. I will never forget the finals of Six Feet Under and breaking Bad, I was disappointed by those of Dexter and Game Of Thrones, and I don’t know if Walking dead keep going because I quit a long time ago. I would have taken another season of Black sequence, and I still have not succeeded in filling the Monday evening time slot of Vivid memories, of which I did not miss any episode, which I cannot yet explain to myself.
But being faithful to a daily show is too demanding, as far as I’m concerned. District 31, I caught it when I burst into the first season, to go with the wave. Swallowed up in a week, impossible to do otherwise. Then I continued, abandoned, re-followed, re-abandoned … In short, I am not one of the real fans of District 31, those you cannot reach between 7 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
But let’s come back to the mourning of a series. What exactly is mourning? That of an assured and reassuring reward, that of the escape into a fictitious universe that we have made our own.
For 30 minutes, or for an hour, we pick up on everything, we experience other emotions, we are passionate about the lives of characters who have become like relatives, we vibrate by forgetting ourselves.
It’s still strong, what it can do, a fiction – Houellebecq talks about it in his latest novel, Annihilate.
We feel that at the end of a novel that we adored, that we devoured quickly, while not wanting to finish it. We see the last pages arriving with anguish, because what can replace what monopolizes us and saves us a few hours? This is not the case with a record, which we play back often to really appreciate it and integrate it into his being. We can constantly watch a series or reread the novel that we love, but what hurts us is not to find this state where we follow a story and characters in full motion like us, forgetting that they will disappear, like us.
It’s probably worse when it’s an announced death, it changes our relationship to the future of a plot. We are taught that District 31 is going to end in April, one of the few stable things for many embarrassed people, when we don’t even know where the pandemic is going. Notice, District 31, the only meeting capable of competing with the government press briefings, should perhaps end with the pandemic (this other series whose end is rather impatiently awaited). This show is perhaps too associated with it now. I hung up on District 31 with the death of Poupou, and of course that I will not miss any more episode knowing that it will end. In full confinement, the ratings will be stratospheric and the outcome, inevitably tragic. If I were in a death pool of characters, I would bet on Commander Chiasson.
No but, what a fabulous species we are, as Nancy Huston wrote in an essay.
All that to tell you, loyal fans of District 31, that I understand you. And the others who are not, be nice to them. All good stories, and also bad ones, come to an end, and you have to be close with people in mourning.
The important thing is that there is a story.