Dear Offspring, it’s time to call it a day. (July 2014)

’m just going to spit it out:  I want Offspring to finish.  I want this season – season five – to be the last one. In three weeks time, I want to be sitting on my couch, in my pjs watching a spectacular series finale. Not season finale. SERIES finale.

I want to be laughing and crying and reminiscing and I want to be really devastated that my favourite show is ending but more than all that I want it to actually be the end.

(I’ll just pause now as you start bashing out an abusive comment. Just remember – it’s BEC with a c not a k).

I can feel your rage from here. I can.

And it’s entirely possible I’m the only Offspring fan in the country that actually wants their favourite show to call it a day.

But let me explain.

I have loved Offspring from that very fist episode.  Remember it?  When Nina’s ex husband the bomb expert was blowing shit up to impress her?  When Nina and Cherie realised that Nina’s own father was the father of Cherie’s baby. When Nina was trying to hit on Chris Havel?  But most of all from that first glorious moment between the Proudman girls when Nina is grappling with a hospital vending machine and Billie calls her mobile and says, “Have you got your hand up a patient or can you talk?”

I was hooked. Smitten. You had me at hello.

And since that first episode in August 2010, baby I’ve been up for the ride.

The Chris Havel on-again off-again (dude, why are you living with your missing wife’s mother?) situation.  The sheer clustertruck of Nina sleeping with Mick.  The genius of Mick’s apology song ‘Six at Best’.  Nana Nina Noonan.

Patrick.

Jimmy’s surprise chips. Jimmy’s Runaway Bride, Tammy. Jimmy’s hair.  Stillbirths. Premmie babies. Infertility. Eloise. Rosanna. Rocket. Nina drunk and hiding in the bushes. And Patrick. Wonderful, complex, enigmatic Patrick.

But now it’s time to head this ship to shore. Because otherwise you know what’s going to happen. You do. Don’t pretend you don’t.  We all run the risk of falling out of love with our favourite show.

And that’s my fear, if I’m going to be brutally honest. That if Offspring keeps going it’ll jump the shark*. A moment that signals our favourite show is now on the decline.

Like the moment Alex and Rex got married on Secret Life of Us.

The moment Kimberly blew up the entire apartment complex on Melrose Place.

The moment Molly died on A Country Practice.

The moment that pesky Cousin Oliver turned up on The Brady Bunch.

There’s always a moment when fans decide – I’m done. And then what was once our favourite, can’t miss, love it to death TV show becomes Desperate Housewives. Or Lost.  Or True Blood. And every conversation about them is punctuated with “Remember when it was good?”

The writing is on the wall for Offspring.  I can feel it. How many more personal dramas can one family take?  Is a long lost Proudman sibling going to appear on the scene?  Is Jimmy going to die in a freak taco accident? Will Zoe suddenly have aged and be 14 in season six? Don’t’ laugh, my friends. It could happen.

“I hope Nina’s happy”

So at the end of this season I hope the writers have all those beautiful, mad Proudmans wrapped up.

Jimmy and Zara are happy.

Billie and Mick will reunite (we all know they will … Lawrence is too tanned and his teeth are too white. Billie will turn him into relationship road kill).

Cherie and Clegg will be back on.

Those saucy devils Darcy and Geraldine will find their way back to one another.

And Nina? Well what I hope is that we see Nina happy. Not necessarily in love. But happy. (Preferably with Leo). I want to see that woman – a woman who has kept me company and made me laugh and cry and cringe for the past four years – walking into her future with Zoe knowing that the two of them are going to be fine. More than fine. Fantastic.

Now you tell me a better ending than that.

* The phrase “jump the shark” was coined by an American college student to describe the moment Happy Days hit the point of no return. Once Fonzie had done the ultimate motorcycle jump numerous times in Arnold’s car park, the show’s producers decided the only way to up-the-ante was to make The Fonz jump a shark on water-skies. And so the phrase “jump the shark” was born. But it’s not just TV shows that can jump the shark – it’s open to anyone and anything: singers, actors, food (kale has had its day, my friends), scooters, loom bands, your parents. Personally, I peaked in February1987 … I was class captain, my braces had been removed and I was freshly permed. It’s been downhill for me ever since.

This post first appeared on Mamamia.