Legit: An Unnecessarily Sad Ending

Endings mean everything to a story. It's how the audience leaves the story, and creating a lasting impression is important. Sometimes, 90% of a bad story can be redeemed by an incredible final 10%. But it can also go the other way around. What makes a bad ending can obviously vary from viewer to viewer. But happy endings, or at least an ending that leaves an audience feeling hopeful, is important. What's even worse is when stories create all the ingredients for a happy ending but fail to capitalize on them and pull the trigger. In those instances, it's kind of like the story chooses to have a sour note for an ending, which can be strange. It's also exactly what happens with the season one finale of Jim Jefferies's FX series Legit.

Legit is essentially about Jim Jefferies playing a fictional version of himself as he tries to support his newly divorced friend and the friend's disabled brother who becomes Jim's roommate. The season revolves a lot around taking his disabled roommate on adventures. The first episode of the season was about taking the roommate to a brothel. The season finale revisited this plot as the prostitute the roommate slept with returns pregnant, claiming it's the roommate's baby. The episode has a lot of ups and downs as everyone comes to terms with this situation. Towards the end of the episode, everyone is happy and optimistic about the baby, including the roommate's mother, who had mental issues of her own that were clearing up at the thought of taking care of a grandchild. 

Unfortunately, the baby came out black, and the prostitute reveals her ex-boyfriend who took off is probably the father. But that's not where the ending took a turn for the worst. All that did was create an opportunity for the characters to make a choice. They could have either abandoned the mother and the child or still decided to keep them in their lives. They decided to leave the new mother and her baby to go their separate ways. I can't blame them for doing that, considering the child has nothing to do with them. But they didn't have to. They were all talking about how awesome of a person the prostitute was and how the prospect of raising a baby would have uplifted all of their lives. They could have easily still taken her and her child in as one of their own and been happy as a family. It would have been a happy ending that showed growth and characterization. The prostitute was obviously scared and needed family. That's probably why she lied to gain their attention. But the choice the story made seemed to drop the ball and left a very sour taste in my mouth. It's hard to see characters have a true moment of bettering themselves and deciding to do the opposite.