…of the rest of my life. So cliché, yet so true. I feel like I’ve just finished watching the season finale of a much loved show, where the cliffhanger is a major change in the characters’ lives. Something at once wonderful and painful has ended on a very poignantly heartbreaking note, but you know it’s necessary and that it allows for a completely new start when the season begins again.

And so much love abounds. Everyone loves the show and the characters, and the characters all love each other. No one is a villian, and everyone is a hero. No one did anything wrong, and no one wanted things to change, but outside forces—new writers, low ratings, whatever you please—has wreaked havoc and done away with the original plot, forcing the producers to come up with a new one. The entire cast doesn’t like it, but they know it’s best for the show. Hearts broken, as they had such high hopes for their characters, they accept it and move on. It’s just an all-around good show, a veritable love fest that would nauseate the cynics, but one that is interspersed with big misunderstandings borne out of character flaws, external conflict causing undue internal conflict, and now this. The big change. Had to happen. Apologies to everyone involved in the show.

The love of the show and of the cast and characters doesn’t remove the hurt, but it eases the transition and allows you to accept the fact that next season will be a completely different set of episodes, so different that it’s almost as if the show is a spin-off of itself rather than just another season. Perhaps it is a spin-off. Who knows?

But I hope these changes aren’t equivalent to jumping the shark. There is nothing worse than a show’s fans looking back on the show’s history and thinking the best seasons were the early ones before the big changes. Because after that, if they have jumped the shark, the show is just never as satisfying as it used to be. It’s mostly sad and boring, inspiring nostalgia for the old days, before they messed the show up by changing things around.

No. I hope the show is just as engaging and enjoyable, as wonderful to watch and as heavily anticipated, whether or not they introduce any new characters. It’s only fair to the original characters. We want them so much to succeed. Don’t we?

Today is the first day … and I’ve just watched a season finale that made me relive the entire season just past. I’m not yet quite ready for the next season—I’m more than content to wait the summer out, however long or short it is. So I sit here thinking, “What a great season that was. I hate to see it end. I really loved that show the way it was.”

If only life were like HBO. I’d know for sure the next season would be a good one. Right now, I have no clue.

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