FD expected to be disappointed in the lost finale. After six years, there were far too many plot points/avenues that had been put into play. Still, the actual ending was weak, weak, weak. FD also watched the Jimmy Kimmel show afterwards, which included three parody alternate endings. Although the Bob Newhart “all a dream” finale was included, the more appropriate, Dallas “dream” solution to a bad season wasn’t mentioned.
FD was reminded of a nineteenth-century phenomenon, the novel The Gates Ajar by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, which offered its readers a similarly comforting vision of how happy everyone will be after death. Phelps’ novel inspired others; there’s an interesting discussion of those novels in this essay by Elmer Suderman, “Utopia, The Kingdom of God and Heaven: Utopian, Social Gospel and Gates Ajar Fiction.”