TV: Season Finales

Hey, I'm back! With some talk about the best and worst of the TV season finales over the past week. In no particular order:

24: A bit of an anti-climax to a very exciting season. Would L.A. get nuked? If that missile had been heading anywhere but L.A., I might've believed that they would actually go through with it. But of course, Kiefer & Co. needed to be in direct peril, and also of course, they weren't going to kill off Kiefer. Which gives you the answer to the second question: were they going to kill off Kiefer? Uh -- no. Despite all the rumors and conjecture out there -- "It's the only way they can really up the ante in this finale!" -- you had to know Jack Bauer would be back next season, torturing away in the interests of American freedom. Which didn't leave much suspense. After the nuclear (or, as Kiefer says, just like Dubya: "nuke-u-lar") missile was shot down in the first half of the episode, it was just a lot of time-killing nonsense from there. Kind of a lazy end to the best season since the first. In fact, maybe the best season, period: this time around, no Kim!

Lost: Arzt! NOOOOO!! Man, that was a hell of a shock. Too bad, I would've liked to have seen that character continue on next season. I like the actor who played him, Daniel Roebuck (and have ever since he played Jay Leno in The Late Shift), and I liked that his character was calling the main group on their nonsense (I'm paraphrasing here): "There are forty others of us, and we do a lot of important stuff, too!" "I'm a high school teacher, I know a clique when I see one!" And best of all, to Hurley: "Some of us have lost weight since we've been on the island! Where are you hiding the carbs?"

There were some good moments -- the highlight being the abduction of Walt from the raft -- but there should've been a bigger payoff for the cliffhanger ending. A really deep hole in the ground? That's what all the hatch business has been building up to all season? I know, there'll be some nifty stuff at the beginning of next year, but we should've gotten a taste of some of it at the end of this year. Also, the revelation that the giant monster they've been hearing all season is a puff of black smoke -- pretty underwhelming. I'm still completely onboard with the show; I love the characters, and the mystery, and I'm aware they can't give everything away all at once. But for the finale -- they should've given us one really big answer, at least.

Alias: A pretty good episode, with some great moments -- damn, Lena Olin just shot Sonia Braga in the head! -- but it was in the final minute that it became excellent, the best ending of any series this year. We're expecting a nice, quiet moment between the newly-engaged Sydney and Vaughn, driving to a Santa Barbara getaway, and instead it veers into a Lynch-ian disconnect from reality, with Vaughn breaking down all of Sydney's beliefs about him ("As long as you're not one of the bad guys," Sydney says at the start of his confession; Vaughn: ominous silence), culminating in the statement, "My name's not Michael Vaughn." Then: CRASH!! Their car is demolished by an oncoming vehicle, in spectacular fashion, seen from Sydney's point-of-view, so that it feels like we're in the car when the impact hits. I jumped out of my skin. Now that's the way to get me pumped up about the next season!

CSI: I almost never watch this show, even though when I do it's generally entertaining. But I checked out the two-hour finale because Quentin Tarantino was directing. And it was solidly entertaining, but again, I probably won't be coming back for another episode any time soon. It's just one of the shows that I can live without.

Unlike 24, I actually bought into the idea that a major character might be killed off; I knew George Eads had been through contract difficulties at the beginning of the season, and I thought maybe the producers had decided he was expendable. Genuine suspense -- what a concept. It's a good thing he survived, because he gives a really outstanding performance here, trapped underground in a glass coffin rigged with explosives.

And there are a few other good bits throughout; I liked seeing Tony Curtis and Frank Gorshin ham it up as the Las Vegas lounge lizards that they are (or were, in Gorshin's case), and I was genuinely surprised when Eads' kidnapper blew himself up after receiving the ransom payment. "You might want to take a step back," he says to William Petersen, the second before obliterating himself with a belt full of Semtex. Like Alias, that was a jolt that really worked, one I hadn't seen coming. I found myself sitting up and yelling, "Son of a bitch!" as a chunky spray of John Saxon painted the walls of the wooden shack. Wow.

There were some Tarantino moments throughout the show, like Eads' hallucination of his own grisly autopsy (played for laughs), or the Dukes of Hazzard board game, but overall it felt like just another episode; I never really felt like I was seeing the Tarantino stamp on the show (despite the fact that the buried alive thing is recycled from Kill Bill). Good, not great.

Desperate Housewives: Now that is a professional way to end a season: satisfactorily and unequivocally wrapping up one mystery (what did Mary Alice do to get blackmailed, which in turn drove her to suicide?), while opening up one or two more (is Mike really Zach's father? And what's up with Alfre Woodard?). And Rex's death was a big, season-ending surprise development -- they actually killed off a main character, instead of Lost, which invented a guy in one episode just to kill him off in the next (Arzt! NOOOOO!!) -- but of course, his death happened off-screen, which means he might still be alive. More mystery! This show is such great, cheesy, guilty entertainment. I hope the second season lives up to the first.

Deadwood: This was the year I signed up for HBO, and this was the show that made me do it. And I'll tell you what: it was so worth it. Easily -- and I mean easily, not even close -- this is the best show on television. And it had a terrific finale. Mrs. Garrett becomes Mrs. Ellsworth! Swearengen and Hearst match wits! Dority, Adams and Johnny help Wu kill off his rivals! Tolliver gets gutted! E.B. sells his hotel to Hearst! Wolcott hangs himself! And most shocking of all -- Jane wears a dress! This episode was tremendous, as were all the episodes before it. Best writing and acting on TV, bar none. If only they'll produce more than 12 episodes next season!

Smallville: Didn't see it. God damn it.

Enterprise: Didn't see it. But I caught the repeat! And... eh. I question the wisdom of muddying the finale by including Next Generation guest stars, and I especially question giving those guest stars so much irrelevant plot. They rehash the meat of an old ST:TNG ep, while the Enterprise cast is on the sidelines, saying, "Uh, what about us? It is our show, after all. Hello?" It was especially shabby treatment of the Enterprise cast to set them up as little more than playthings in Riker's holodeck program. (Speaking of which, I know there have to be some viewers who never watched ST:TNG, and were completely baffled by Riker, Troi, the holodeck, the Pegasus, and everything else thrown into this episode with insufficient explanation.) And to have Riker call an end to the program before Capt. Archer -- who, after all, is only the main character, the anchor of the show, the guy we've been following for four years -- has his moment and gives his speech: that's crap, plain and simple.

The more I think about, the worse this episode seems. Trip? You kill off Trip? The one character whose subsequent life might have been interesting and fulfilling? The one character who might've had a happy ending (with T'Pol) that gave the audience pleasure and closure? You kill Trip? Out of so many more deserving candidates? Why not Mayweather, for Christ's sake? Or Hoshi? What a big "screw you" to the audience. Even the wonderful melding of three generations into the final moments (with the "Space, the final frontier..." spiel intoned by Patrick Stewart, William Shatner, and Scott Bakula) couldn't quite get the bad taste out of my mouth. A poor ending for a show that, though uneven, still deserved better.

Gilmore Girls: But this is the winner of the "Screw you, audience" award for series finales, 2005. The final episode went over its allotted time by one minute -- which, sadly, is the norm for much of television these days -- but that's not why they screwed the audience. They screwed the audience because A) this show has never exceeded its timeslot before, and B) they didn't tell anybody they were doing it, not even my precious, precious TiVo. The bastards and/or bitches! So that means anybody recording it got the final minute cut off. And, as I have found on my journeys through the intar-web, something very important happens in that last minute. I already spoiled it for myself, but if any of you have not had it ruined for you yet, the WB is repeating the episode tonight. Better pad that recording with a good five minutes, just in case they try to achieve the rare and coveted "double screw you."