Sometimes you are so into a movie or a TV show or a book, sort of hoping it will never end but ultimately realizing it will and you just hope not to be disappointed. Unfortunately, there are plenty of times you are. Whether it’s a story of girl-meets-girl and then girl jumps off a building, or girl ends up being a stalkery lesbian murderer who kills her love interest’s whole family, we’ve got some ideas of how we could rewrite endings to some of the stories that really let us down.
Grace Chu: I would write in Godzilla or the mystery sea creature that swallowed a great white shark whole in real life at the beginning of 80% of all lesbian films including Go Fish, Bar Girls, Love and Suicide, Claire of the Moon and any other unwatchable film in our “worst lesbian movie ever” list. The monster would gobble up all the characters and destroy whatever city they are in so the movies wouldn’t even start, thereby saving us from having to sit through them.
Heather Hogan: One idea I have is that Skins Fire could have just left Naomi and Emily’s story the way it was at the end of actual Skins instead of waiting until their happy ending had become an iconic beacon of blinding hope for gay ladies for years and years, and then resurrecting them and parading them around in front of the minority community to whom they were so obviously beloved and handing their story off to someone who didn’t give a single fuck about what they symbolized or who they were or even how to tell a coherent goddamn story, and MURDERING NAOMI with a kind of cancer that was more inexplicably deadly and stupid than Dana Fairbanks’ rapid-reward breast cancer, and then trying to shame and belittle the gay fans who were outraged when it happened. I will never forget and never forgive. I am the Daenerys Targaryen of Skins fandom. I am the dragon’s daughter! Fire cannot kill a dragon!
Dana Piccoli: I’ve always hated the way that Lost and Delirious (an otherwise pretty great movie) ended. Instead of having Polly jump off a building or turn into a bird whatever that symbolic nonsense was, I wish she would have packed her little lesbian bags and left. Just a final shot of her tossing her duffle bag in the back of a jeep and living. Just freaking living. Then she could have grown up and lived her life in New York or Boston, somewhere they serve brunch, and she and Mouse could meet up for mimosas to talk about their fabulous freaking lives. A few years down the line, her heart would barely remember the trauma of Tori and that stupid school.
Valerie Anne: I would change just about every single thing about Warehouse 13‘s final season, but the most important change would be that, when H.G. broke up with Mr. Suburbia, it wouldn’t be a stranger in a throwaway she dated next. Instead, she would take her packed bags directly to the Bed and Breakfast. When Myka turned around to see her standing there in the hallway, H.G. would drop her suitcases and run into her arms. Then Bering and Wells would kiss like the world was ending and being saved all at once. (And none for Pete Lattimer.)
Jenna Lykes: I’m probably being shortsighted with this response, but I’m going to go with the final season of Warehouse 13. (The wound is still so raw!) I love Bering and Wells as much as (probably more than) the next person who has eyes and a heart, but the real tragedy of this show’s ending was the complete dismantling of Myka Ophelia Bering. In the span of six episodes, she went from being one of the greatest fictional characters I’ve ever known to being defined only by her relationship with Pete. In my mind and in my heart, the final season of Warehouse 13 does not exist.
Dorothy Snarker: I’d change the end of Where the Red Fern Grows so Old Dan and Little Ann never tree that mountain lion. They already won the damn contest and were able to move into town, dammit. Hunting is stupid, anyway. So if Old Dan was never killed and Little Ann never died of loneliness, I wouldn’t have had to cry so much as a fourth grader. And I wouldn’t suffer from PTSD when watching Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercials.
Elaine Atwell: Viola di Mare is one of the warmest, sexiest lesbian movies ever-UNTIL THE LAST 20 MINUTES. And you’re like, obviously bad things happen in every life, but that doesn’t mean you have to end every story on a bad note. I would replace the end of that movie of an extended sex scene, or even just footage of waves crashing against a beach.
Dara Nai: Blue Is the Warmest Color. After Adele leaves the art gallery, I’d have her meet a hotter, better girl who’s emotionally available. That poor girl needs a win.
Chloe: The Devil Wears Prada. Screw her stupid boyfriend – stick with Meryl!
Ali Davis: Oh, man, it’s hard to write about without spoiling all over the place, but I would love to rewrite the ending to High Tension, which is a French horror flick my friend and I rented in sort of an “Oh, well” moment that turned out to be one of the best horror movies either of us had ever seen…until the ending.
So it’s 87 minutes of clutching your viewing companion/biting your nails/throwing full glass tumblers at random house noises because the heroine keeps making really smart decisions — but so does the killer — and thinking your brain is going to leap straight out of your skull from all the tension and then suddenly you switch to four minutes of ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS BULLSHIT?!
I can’t detail the ending, of course. Essentially you go from Psycho violins to that sliding trombone noise. And then someone drops a cymbal and it rolls around and around before spinning to a halt.
It’s still well worth watching for those 87 minutes. But I’d love to cut the lameball ending and add one last burst of ass-kickery.
Jesus, I’m tense just from thinking about that movie. Do not sneak up behind me unless you want a tumbler to the face.
Bridget McManus: Titanic.
Kimberly Hoffman: I’m not OK with the way The L Word ended, but who is?! More specifically, I’m not OK with this frustrating forever-mystery we are supposed to take with us through life in quest for who killed Jenny. Talking, laughing, loving, breathing…..dying. This is the way that we….er…live? I’m still not over this, obviously. Haters can go on hating but I adored Jenny, even crazy Jenny. She fucking annoyed me when she whined but she didn’t deserve to die. (Then again, neither did Dana.)
In my series finale, it wouldn’t have been a series finale, it would have been like, “Hey, get excited for Season 7!” Jenny is rushed to the hospital and is in a coma. Shane sits at her bedside waiting for a sign when Jenny finally wakes up and tells her to go read the Molly letter she hid from her. Bette and Tina move to New York even though they built on to their house, only to find that they missed LA too much so they return by 704, titled “LA Ladies.” In that same episode, Shane meets Molly for lunch and they realize they have a lot more to do, like have more sex, only, Molly is so moved on at this point that she’s giving Shane all this deep advice about love and not letting the right ones get away.
By mid-Season 7, Shane is on a mission to get Carmen back. Helena waited for her prison lover to get out and they live on an island not far from Fiji. Alice and Tasha are back from a much needed Hawaiian vacation and are better than ever, Alice has plans to start her own magazine. Max has the baby, but now seeks out transgender support from a group and meets a hot MTF named Sara. Papi is boning Melissa Rivers. Dana’s old tennis coach is dating James, from CAC. Jenny lives alone at the house that was once her love nest so long ago with Tim. She gets all the rights back to her film, Adele ends up in a psych ward after everyone finally realized she had major single-white-female-syndrome. And Kit decides to do what she does best, run the Planet and live every day like Foxy Brown.
Trish Bendix: Instead of dying in a car crash on The O.C., Marisa would have stayed with Alex. They would get the fuck out of the suburbs and move to West Hollywood where Alex could get a job at the Abbey and Marissa would pursue her modeling/acting career. They would live happily ever after or until they were both ready to move on, in which case they would remain best friends and lesbians.
Lucy Hallowell: This may be pushing it in terms of qualifying as an “ending” but I sure as hell would change the movie of Fried Green Tomatoes to reflect the fact that Ruth and Idgie weren’t just best buds raising a kid together. They were in loooooove and it’s a crime the movie cut that out.
What ending would you rewrite if you could?
