Finale Wrap-Up

Having finished watching the last of our TV season finales last night, I am now ready to give you all my opinions on them. How glorious for you. In truth, we haven't watched all of them as we still have 24 to watch. However, given that we don't plan on watching 24 next season, I'll abstain from commenting on it. We also happened to lose the finale to "How I Met Your Mother" due to our fearless leader's speech but I'm pretty sure Ted and Robin got together, an interesting development given that we know that Robin isn't the "mother" in question. Then again, I don't think that anyone watching Cheers in it's heyday honestly thought that Sam and Diane would stay together. I should point out that this post includes massive spoilers for various shows. My apologies for not mentioning that earlier and possibly ruining things for people currently watching Cheers. So, if you don't want to know that Jack died on Lost, you probably don't want to read this post. Dammit! I did it again. Kidding.

Gilmore Girls
This was a bummer of a finale as we see Luke and Lorelei bust up and Lorelei hooking back up with Christopher, something we knew was coming for probably 5 - 6 episodes. It's also a bummer of a finale as the show's creators and primary driving forces have left the show, and the network has chosen to place it in the hands of a guy who was once put in a loony bin for stalking Heidi Klum. Lovely. Not sure where the series will go next year, as we've already been through years of Luke and Lorelei dancing around each other but I'm willing to keep watching the show on the basis of the actors/actresses alone. Rory continues to be a real interesting character too, so hopefully they'll keep doing well by her.

Veronica Mars
Frankly, they could just have an hour of Kristin Bell reading the paper and I would have been glued to the screen. Seeing how I'm not the only person they're trying to appease here, they did considerably more than that. In fact, I don't think she read the paper at all. Anyways, the finale was good, with the right number of wrapped up ends and newly loosened ends, however I think it could have benefitted by being 2 hours long. This was one very dense finale, with some fantastic acting and lots of revelations and when done in an hour, it left me a little exhausted and confused about some elements. I was glad to see Veronica and Logan getting together because I think that Logan is the most interesting character on the show, and definitely one of the best actors, given how he's able to make you care about a character that spends half the time being a jackhole. Of course, all of the acting is incredible, but he is way incredible. Glad to see it has been picked up by the CW.

The Unit
For a midseason show, The Unit has done pretty well and has been damn entertaining. I'm concerned that it won't prove to be so over an entire season's run of shows, not without doing some character retooling, but that's just me. I'd like to see some multi-episode mission arcs, instead of just multi-episode story arcs with the wives. Mostly because the wives are pretty much all staggeringly annoying. The finale left some questions, notably if any of the wives died, but I kind of doubt that any did, only because they didn't give any indication whatsoever that anyone got hurt other than Haysbert's character. All in all, it was a good finale, but it could have been easily swapped out with any other show in the season which somewhat diminishes it, given what we expect from finales. At the same time, I only have so much energy to devote to being concerned about fictional characters for the summer, so I'm happy that I can just assume they're all safe at home bickering over finances and assassinating third world dictators.

Bones
Before watching the finale, Linda and I talked about how we want to see some multi-episode arcs, or a season long arc on Bones next year, and lo and behold we were rewarded with the beginning of one in the finale. The problem is, I'm not sure it's the right arc. So basically Bones's mom and dad were post office box robbers on the run from a murderous group of bank robbers? Riiiight. The introduction of Bones's brother was interesting, especially given the revelations of what happened to them as kids, but overall, I think this new development is kind of silly. Now that it looks like they're going to spend time searching for Bones's father, despite her father's insistence to not do so, I hope the writers watched Supernatural this season to know how to handle such a plot line. I also want to see more of the tanktops we were lucky enough to have witnessed in the beginning of the season. Yowza!

Lost
This finale, and Supernatural's finale make me want to just fast forward until September. Soooo much came out, yet at the same time didn't. We know what caused the plane to crash, or do we? We know what Desmond thinks caused the plane to crash, but we have no definitive answer. I like that we now have a character connected to the island, but not on the island, existing outside of flashbacks (Penny). That should put to death any of the theories that the islanders are all dead, unless they plan on doing a crossover with either "Medium" or "The Ghost Whisperer". I also liked seeing that much Desmond, because for someone with so little screen time this season, he's a damn likeable character. Henry Gale as the leader, at least that's my interpretation, of the Others was a nice development. Very Usual Suspects. Personally, I think this show can last for about 5 years and still be entertaining, longer than that and I think we start venturing into X-Files territory where things become so complicated no one, including the writers, have any idea what the hell is going on. Given that this would put this finale at nearly the halfway point, the finale did a good job at answering some very important questions, and opening up some more, while at the same time, changing the direction of the show to involve others looking for our island friends. The fact that others are looking is interesting, given Bernard's ideas a few episodes ago that no one the island seems interested in getting off of it, a sentiment echoed in the finale by the fact that the only idea people came up with for the boat was to use it track Jack and Co. across the island. Next fall should be interesting.

Smallville
Ugh. For a season that started off so well, they really shot it all to shit with the 100th episode and then went back to the depths of craptitude realized last season. So, now Lex is channeling Zod? Whatever. I'll watch it next season, because I want to see how much worse it can get. I'm sure that Clark will escape from the Phantom Zone in the first 10 minutes of the season premiere and then we'll be treated to an hour of Lana furrowing her brow as if she's trying to read something far away or figure out a math problem in her head. At this point, this show is so far removed from anything remotely tied to traditional Superman continuity, that I no longer harbor an interest in seeing them bring Batman on the show for fear of what they'd do to the character.

The OC
Double ugh. At least Marissa is dead, which gives me some hope for the future. Joss Schwartz is coming back too, which should help, however it's a little like an architect leaving the house construction site, and then coming back to oversee operations, but when he gets there, he finds that they've build a carousel. There's only so much he can do at the moment, and the fact that they killed off Marissa, instead of just not making the entire show about her, leads me to believe that the writers don't know anything about character development. Oh well. We'll always have season 1.

Supernatural
This show has my vote for the best new show this season, and is tied for Lost as the best finale. They did a really good job of providing creepy standalone episodes (the Bloody Mary episode was scarier than most recent horror movies) but maintaining an arc over the course of the season that came to a head at the end of the season. Sam and Dean are both really likeable characters, with good chemistry between the actors, all of which is nicely maintained when their dad is dropped into the mix. I'm glad that we won't be seeing any more of Meg, as she looked too much like Sandy Duncan to be effective as a viable villain. It's hard to be scared by a murderous Peter Pan. The finale's end was completely unexpected, and very well done. I can't wait to see what happens in the fall.

None of the new shows for next season look even remotely interesting to me, which is OK, given that the past two years have provided some really stellar new shows to our viewing lineup. Given the amount of TV we currently watch, along with the hundreds of hours of TV on DVD we have, I don't think we could watch any more TV if we tried without quitting or jobs or completely ignoring our children, neither of which are viable options, despite their inherent appeal.

Now the long summer of Netflix and TV on DVD can begin. Huzzah!