The end is near once again for John Wells. It's staring him in the face.
The executive producer of one of television's groundbreaking shows sits with 45 pages of notes on his desk, a keyboard in his lap and a computer before him as he slowly taps out the final script to NBC's long-running medical drama "ER." While Wells knows generally how the show -- set to air April 2 -- will end, there are many details to work out -- like exactly how George Clooney, who played Dr. Doug Ross for the first five seasons, will return.
"You want to try and find the essence of the series," said Wells, taking a break this month to discuss the conclusion to the program that has lasted for an astonishing 15 seasons. "You want to find the thing that people actually identify with in the series and do something that leaves them feeling satisfied for having spent X number of hours of their lives devoted to watching your ongoing narrative."
Wells, who has wrapped up other acclaimed television series as well -- "The West Wing" and "China Beach" among them -- is experiencing something of an anomaly, especially for network television. The wildly successful writer-producer actually gets to have an ending -- but then only on some of his shows. Historically, for every big-bang omega moment accorded to a "MASH," "Friends" or "Seinfeld," there are hundreds more programs crowding television's graveyard that came to their final resting place with a whimper.
But thanks largely to the ascent of cable television and its increasingly sophisticated storytelling, planned endings for television programs are slowly becoming more common. As shows have become more literary in their approach by featuring complex characters, expectations have risen for an appropriate farewell. While audiences may not have cared about what ultimately happened to the characters on "Jake and the Fatman," they certainly do care about the stranded, tortured souls on "Lost," the finale of which has already been slated for 2010.
"In the '70s and '80s, the characters basically did the same kind of things and they didn't change that much," said David Chase, creator of HBO's "The Sopranos," whose television-writing roots reach back to "The Rockford Files." "The audience didn't really know about the character's beginning and they really didn't care about the end either.
