A study or paper · 1980 · Research

The finale study

Academic work measuring grief responses to soap opera finales and finding the same markers as bereavement.

Considerationhistory

A title plate for The finale study: the name, the year and a mark drawn from the entry. It is not a photograph.

points at this this points at colour is what kind of thing it is

The first hard evidence that a fictional ending produces a real grief response, and the research that was ignored for forty years by a field that had assumed otherwise.

Consideration. The part where somebody stops and thinks. The research, the diagnosis, the ethics, the lawsuits, the regulators. Roughly fifty years of arguing with itself about whether this is a relationship.

Same story, 4 other entries

The soap opera1933 → M*A*S*H1983 → The finale nobody wanted2019 → The finale that moved the schedule2023

Where it sits

1950 1950-1999 · 1980 1999

Provenance · 1 source record(s)

unverifiedNo specific claim is recorded against this source. The record is a pointer to the work in general; the entry's own prose is the argument and is not sourced line by line.ABC News, 2023

COSMOLOGY The schedule

Connected · 3 out, 3 in

The season finalecites · 1980 · A mechanism or tactic The counter sits betweencites · 1985 · A mechanism or tactic Mourning a person you metcites · 1990 · A term or concept Mourning a person you metcites · 1990 · A term or concept The season finalecites · 1980 · A mechanism or tactic The finale that moved the schedulecites · 2023 · An event or moment

Reported as a story

When a famous person dies it can feel like losing someone you lovedThe Guardian ran this on the exact week Dolly Parton, Gloria Steinem and Liam Payne died. The timing is not the story. The timing proves the story.Researchers studied Neighbours fans and found the same grief markers as a breakupABC on the finale. It reads as a light story and it is not, particularly.One death in Assam became a country thinking out loudA year on, the public grief is still doing work. The Assam Tribune explains what it turned into.

It sits in

CHARACTER GRIEF in the CHARACTER timeline in the GRIEF timeline

The full timeline → · The database → · The atlas →