Ending It – 10 Great (But Mostly Not So Great) Dramatic Series Endings

I haven't seen the series finale of The Sopranos that everyone and their half-sister is going on about. I don't subscribe to the premium cable service that it was on here in Canada (because I don't have to in order to get what I want – thank you Shaw Cable). However I've seen it recapped, with varying degrees of analysis to the point where I feel like I've seen it – only better because I didn't have to watch the unimportant bits because the recappers left out the stuff that they didn't think was important. And since they all seemed to ignore the same stuff I don't have to worry about some seemingly insignificant detail in the first fifteen minutes that would have a huge impact in the last fifteen.

And of course there was the analysis. That was a lot more divided. The last minutes of the episode were either brilliant...or lame. It's all because we didn't get closure...or don't believe that we got closure. The sudden going to black had people calling their cable companies complaining that their cable went out just before the crucial moment of the series where we find out the final fate of Tony Soprano. Except of course that this was exactly what David Chase planned – probably right down to the phone calls to the cable company. We don't know what's going to happen to Tony, whether he's at the end of his life or somewhere in the irredeemable middle, or maybe even starting a new life with the burdens of his past life lifted from him (yeah right). If you want an explanation of the final sudden going to black say that the mysterious character or characters weren't there to whack Tony Soprano in front of his family, he/they were there to whack us. We (the audience) are dead and can no longer view or influence the lives of Tony Carmella, AJ, Meadow, or Janice. That's about as good an explanation as any.

Drama series have difficulty coming up with endings. With comedies it's easy – the people move away (or the ones we care about move away) and we don't move with them. Think of all the sitcoms that have been brought to a close in just that way. M*A*S*H, Home Improvement, The Nanny, and Friends are only a few of them. Even Seinfeld ended that way when you think about it for a few seconds – the difference being that they move away to the Paris Hilton Housing development (aka jail), and thankfully we don't go with them.

Ah but dramas don't have it so easy. At least they don't now that they've become more continuity intense. Dramas – and comedies for that matter – didn't used to need a series finale if they survived long enough to go out on their own terms. Sometimes we got some degree of closure from a reunion movie – one particularly bad one I remember was for Emergency. It was really a "clip" show but we saw Captains (!) Gage and De Soto getting together to talk about the good times they had a paramedic at old Station 52. Of course this was undercut when they decided to do a couple of movies after that with Gage and De Soto back as paramedics. Still for the most part we don't get closure. For all we really know, officers Reed and Malloy are still driving Adam-12 around the streets of LA – or more likely took their retirements at the appropriate time and get together to go fishing from time to time (that by the way is a salute to Martin Milner who for many years did a syndicated radio show on fishing). Still as time has gone by we have increasingly seen shows that needed to give us closure. So here are some memorable series finales, mostly in chronological order. The only condition on this list is that I had to see it (which lets out Melrose Place and however they managed to end Dynasty among a lot of others).

1.
Hawaii Five-0: I'm sure that wiser people of my acquaintance (Toby or Ivan) will be able to correct me but this is the first series that I can remember with a series finale that was designed as such (Davey Crockett doesn't count – it was in effect a mini-series). By 1980 Hawaii Five-0 was wheezing
towards cancellation and everybody knew it. The show had one bit of extended continuity related to it – Steve McGarrett's archnemesis Wo Fat (played by Kigh Diegh) who had made his debut in the show's pilot. While McGarrett inevitably thwarted Wo's devious plots he never brought him to justice. The character had essentially been retired following Nixon's visit to China – he hadn't been seen since 1976 which was only the third story he'd appeared in since 1972 – but he was brought back in 1980 so that McGarrett could catch him and throw him in jail for espionage. The last scene however had Wo Fat smiling as he tried to pick the lock of the jail cell.

2. St. Elsewhere: You think that The Sopranos was frustrating? Remember the ending of St. Elsewhere – that was frustrating. The producers gave us closure. Boomer, Fiscus and most of the interns have left the hospital (Elliot Axelrod had died the episode before), Mark Craig is moving to Cleveland having reconciled with his wife, Donald Westphal has returned to the hospital which has now been sold back to the city of Boston, and Auschlander dies, not of the cancer that had been a part of his life for as long as we knew him but of a stroke. And then, then the revealed that the whole thing had been the imaginings of the autistic Tommy Westphal whose father wasn't a doctor but a construction worker and whose grandfather was an alive Auschlander. Talk about an FU ending.

3. Hill Street Blues: By contrast with its sister series, Hill Street Blues series finale was a pretty conventional one. There has to be a reason for Norman Buntz to leave The Hill for Dennis Franz's previously announced spin-off series with Peter Jurasik as Sid. There has to be some doubt about what's going to happen to Furillo and Davenport, and there has to be some doubt about the future of the station and therefore the characters that we've come to know. They set this up with a fire at the station (threat to the future of the characters as a group together), while the future of Furillo is pretty clear when he rejects an opportunity to run for Mayor (he probably remembered what being Mayor did to Ozzie Cleveland) leaving the path open for Chief Daniels. As for Buntz, well there is something satisfying about him socking Daniels in the jaw in front of everyone (all of whom wanted to do the same thing) and none of them "seeing" it.

4. Dallas: Let's admit the fact that by the end of the series Dallas was thoroughly over the top and had been for a long time. The ending therefore was totally insane – JR does It's A Wonderful Life in a peculiarly JR manner. Without JR, Ewing Oil is bankrupt, Southfork is tract housing, Sue Ellen is a successful soap opera star, while Bobby is a cheap hustler with back alimony and debts casino owner Carter MacKay. And Cliff Barnes is President of the United States. JR, who is already on a major downer after everything has fallen to pieces and these images of an alternate time line aren't exactly comforting. The "visions" are courtesy of "Adam" (beautifully played by Joel Grey) but unlike "Clarence" in It's A Wonderful Life, Adam's boss likes the evil JR: Adam's boss is Satan. The episode ends with Bobby returning to Southfork and hearing a gunshot from JR's room. Of course from the eventual reunion movie we know that JR shot the mirror that "Adam" appeared to him in (a side effect of a lot of bourbon) but did get him to change his way...a bit.

5. Magnum P.I.: It's fairly well known that Magnum P.I. actually had two different finales. The Season 7 episode "Limbo" in which Magnum is shot by mobsters and put into a coma where he spends time with all of the members of the cast was supposed to the finale – Magnum was supposed to die at the end – but fan support was such that the show was brought back for an abbreviated twelve episode season eight. The actual finale is more satisfying for fans. Paying a visit to his family in Virginia Magnum is offered a chance to re-enter the Navy, this time in a cleaner branch than his Special Forces work. He solves one last case and is reunited with the daughter that he had long thought dead. T.C. is reunited with his ex-wife, Rick gets married and Higgins finally confirms Magnum's theory that he is Robin Masters – which Magnum immediately decides is a lie. The series ends with Magnum – in his dress uniform – turning of the TV; our TV.

6. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: My favourite Star Trek of all, but oh that finale was jam packed with resolution and done in a way that seemed rushed and padded at the same time. The Cardassian military rebels against the Dominion, the war ends, Sisko has a final confrontation with Gul Dukat who by now has become a servant of the Pah Wraiths, Sisko becomes one with the Bajoran Prophets (his mother was one of course), most of the crew leave the station except for Bashir and Ezri (who are seen in bed), Kira and Jake, and (deep breath) there's still time for a song from Vic Fontaine (James Darrin).

7. NYPD Blue: The biggest problem that I had with this episode was the same problem that I had with most of the show's final season – the elimination of Andy's personal life as a focus for the series. Apparently this was a result of disputes that the producers had with Charlotte Ross who played Andy's third wife Connie McDowell but I have to say that it hurt the episode that there was not even an acknowledgement that Andy had a home to go to and three kids, the completion of the character's journey from a divorced alcoholic racist when the program began. Being the boss and having a family was the culmination of his success story, and in my not so humble opinion it all needed to be put together. Don't get me wrong the finale worked, with the squad running a high profile case and Sipowicz finally getting a taste of what the other squad commanders had to deal with from above (his immediate predecessor Lieutenant Bale tells him that the three things he has to worry about are those above him, those below him and having to live with himself). The final scene had a bit of a "Good night John-boy" feel as the members of the squad came in to let them know they were going but if you are going to go that route there should at least be an acknowledgement that Andy has some place to go too.

8. JAG: The problem with the JAG finale is that for the most part it wasn't intended as a finale. The original plan seems to have been to write David James Elliott's character, Harmon Rabb, off the show – his contract had not been renewed – and shift most of the action to a posting in San Diego where Catherine Bell's character Sarah MacKenzie would be in charge (at least for a year, until her contract ran out). So Harm was promoted to Captain and put in charge of a JAG office in London while Mac was assigned to San Diego. However CBS cancelled the show twenty-five days before the season finale. Changes, that seem fairly evident viewed today, were made in the script. Harm proposed marriage to Mac with one or the other resigning their commission while the other stayed in the military. Who would resign would be decided by flipping Bud Roberts's JAG "challenge coin". We'll never know exactly who resigned (each actor says their character won) because the final scene freezes with the coin at the apex of the toss, positioned so we can read the face of the coin, which says "JAG 1995–2005", which of course are the dates of the show.

9. The West Wing: In my opinion one of the truly great series finales. Based on the way that NBC scheduled the show it was apparent to just about everyone that the seventh season would be the last even before the announcement of the show's cancellation and the death of John Spencer soon afterwards. And, given that most of the seventh season was given over to the election, the end of the Bartlett presidency and the beginning of the Santos administration the appropriate ending point for the series is Inauguration Day where the changing of the guard is finalized. The transition is symbolized perfectly when, as the actual inauguration ceremony is taking place the Oval Office of Josiah Bartlett is packed into storage boxes and the possession of Matt Santos replace them, so that by the time that Josh, Donna, Anna Beth and Sam arrive in the lobby there is no indication – even a photo – remaining of President Bartlett. The transition is complete and when CJ encounters a man and his daughter on the street after exiting the White House she can truthfully say that she doesn't work at the White House. And yet the characters have a future as we're reminded when, on the plane back to New Hampshire, Abby asks what Jed is thinking about. He responds by saying "Tomorrow" the last word of the series.

10. Angel: I know this one is out of order but it does have a certain style to it. In fact it is almost like the last scenes of the original Godfather where Michael Corleone launches a surgical strike to take out all of the Family's enemies in one sudden stroke. The characters prepare, each in their own personal way for the final battle and then each member of the Circle of The Black Thorn in a battle that is successful but not without casualties – Wesley dead, Gunn apparently dying, and a demon army – with a dragon – coming to overwhelm Angel, Spike, Iyllyria and Gunn. Perhaps the most chilling scene is Lorne, the gentle singing demon putting a bullet through Lindsay's head in true hit man fashion. All of which ties us back to The Sopranos.

Lights Out, But For How Long

o there I was, making supper ('cause a guys got to eat, right) and catching the rerun of the first hour of the Bartlett re-election on The West Wing, and yet again picking up on some detail that I hadn't seen before or had seen before and forgot about for a while. And it's good, sort of like that favourite restaurant where you've been going to since you developed a palate that favoured something more than hamburger cranked out in some factory in Indiana and has the perfectly done steak that you order every time. Then I settle down to watch...well I started out to watch Bones before I discovered that it was being replaced – entirely inadequately – by 'Til Death. It's just as well because I forgot to set the VCR to tape Jericho or Friday Night Lights and I can't tape one and watch the other on the late feed. So I settled onto the finale of Friday Night Lights but it's obvious that I'm going to miss some of the nuances. But let me tell you folks, even missing some of the nuances, this show is like that new place that opens with a cuisine that you've rarely tried before and never seen done really well until now, and suddenly it's on the list with your old favourite. Or at least it is until it shuts down after a few weeks because only you and a few others went there while the rest of the world was stuffing Mickey D's products down their gullets. The comparison to The West Wing is deliberate; while Friday Night Lights just possibly might not be the best show on television, it is undoubtedly the best new show to survive to the end of this season but unlike The West Wing, because people were too busy with shows they were comfortable with and because their perception was that the show was "just" about sports or teen angst it may also become the best "one season" show of the decade. And that's a shame.

The Friday Night Lights finale – three weeks before the start of May sweeps; not that good of a sign – brought the Dillon Panther's season to its conclusion. There was football of course, with the usual last minute heroics by Matt and Smash and Tim Riggins. But if football was all that the show had going for it I wouldn't be enthusiastic about it. And there was teen angst – Lyla Garrity dealing with here parent's impending divorce, Julie Taylor worried about being separated from her first real boyfriend (Matt) because her father is intent on taking a college coaching job, and poor Landry doomed hope of get into Tyra's pants during their trip to the big game in Dallas. But if teen angst were all that the show had to offer, it wouldn't make the show special. The show brings more. In a lot of ways it is about relationships, but even though the central relationship is Coach Eric Taylor and his wife Tami, the relationships we're talking about aren't just male-female. Eric is under constant pressure to perform miracles as coach – he has to recover from the loss of his starting quarterback and groom a kid who by rights is a year or two away from being ready for the pressure of leading the team. He has to deal with the team's boosters led by Buddy Garrity and which basically includes the entire town of Dillon Texas. Everyone's a critic and everyone has a suggestion, and yet the whole thing is done in intimate detail. The stories are personal but at the same time the viewer is aware that these people – players, coaches and their families – are under a microscope from people who aren't going to cut them any slack because of their personal crises.

Friday Night Lights has excelled with casting and in making the relationships seem like they'd be real. Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton as Eric and Tami Taylor have an amazing chemistry that makes them work as a married couple. Zach Gilford, who plays Matt Saracen, is a perfect choice as a kid who is suddenly thrust into the spotlight and is coping with what must seem to a kid in his position to be the weight of the world – a beloved grandmother who is slipping into senility, a father who is less distant when he's off with his military unit in Iraq than when he's at home, and the expectations of an entire town. It's no wonder that he latches on to Coach Taylor and his family as surrogates. In the season finale, when Matt discovers that Coach has decided to take the job at a college, he more than any other member of the team feels personally betrayed. It is a nice bit of acting made even more impressive by the fact that the sense of betrayal isn't expressed in words so much as it is in Matt's actions and expression. And then there's Jesse Plemons as Landry Clarke. The character is an outsider when it comes to the team who gains what access he does because of his friendship with Matt (and the fact that he has a car and Matt doesn't). It's a sign of something that the show's creators chose to name the character, who has the slightest relationship to football, "Landry" after the legendary coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Landry is, in many ways, comic relief. He is something of a mediocrity with a good heart and ambitions far above anything he can hope to achieve now and possibly ever. In the finale it is illustrated by his expectations that he will get a romantic weekend with Tyra which is smashed when he find that she's taking along her mother and sister. Yet his good heartedness makes him stop to take Matt's grandmother with them, and then to persuade Tyra to let them give a stranded Lyla a ride to the game. The thing to note is that while these are performances that stand out, the other actors turn in performances that are just as good. It is a great cast and the writers give them great material to work with.

The season finale neatly brought the show's first year to a close, to the point where it would not be entirely disappointing if it were also the show's series finale. The team goes to the Texas State Championship Game – there's a scene in Texas Stadium as the team enters that is reminiscent of the scene in Hoosiers where the Hickory team enters the Butler Fieldhouse. They win the championship, which also sees them defeating Ray "Voodoo" Tatum who services as quarterback had briefly been bought for the team by Buddy Garrity. Eric's decision to leave the Dillon Panthers becomes public in a way that he isn't able to control. Tami Taylor is surprised to discover that she and her husband are finally going to have a second child but while this is enough to get Eric to reconsider his decision because of his devotion to family, Tami insists that he follows his dream while she and their daughter stay in Dillon. The episode ends as the season began, with callers to a local radio show expressing their doubts about the coach, this time about his lack of "heart" for leaving the team. If the show were to end this, combined with the team winning the championship would provide closure for the story. And yet because of Tami's pregnancy the writers have left open the possibility that Eric will choose family and Dillon over football and the job offer in Austin.

There's some reason for hope among Friday Night Lights fans. NBC has ordered six more scripts, and NBC President Kevin Reilly has indicated that renewal is likely. The Peabody Award and the recognition from the American Film Institute probably haven't hurt either. Still there's absolutely no guarantee that these scripts will air or even be shot – it may be that the network just wants to see where the producers intend to take the show before deciding on renewal. Reilly's suggestion that the show's renewal is a strong possibility has to be tempered with the knowledge that the show has never been a strong ratings performer even though it attracts a strong and affluent fan base. The worst that could happen is not that the show would be cancelled; the worst thing that could happen is that the show would be renewed but with so many "suggestions" for "improvements" that we wouldn't recognise it. I don't want this show to end up like Boomtown, killed by those determined to save it. This show doesn't deserve that particular fate worse than death.

Short Takes - May 22, 2006

Seeing as how I've spent the last week relaying news about TV, the usual topics for my short takes pieces are gone. On the other hand I've let a number of season finales go uncommented on, something which not only needs to be rectified but if done briefly also provides me with ample subject matter for this piece.

Sunday: The West Wing - Not just a season finale but a series finale. Before I say anything else, let me just express how profoundly disappointed I was with the way that NBC handled this series this year. First they moved the show to Sunday night, supposedly to "protect it" from competition from Lost and then, when the ratings went down (because of the move to Sunday) they announced that they'd be ending the show at the end of this year. And then they treated it the show was something being eliminated at the end of a single season instead of one of the most critically acclaimed series of the past decade. A planned retrospective was called off because NBC and Warner Brothers didn't want to pay the extra money and the episode itself was only an hour long (while Law & Order: Criminal Intent got a two hour season ender) and opposite the Survivor.

And yes I think the show needed a two hour finale. The whole atmosphere of the episode felt rushed, which I suppose is fitting given that the subject was the Inaugural Day transition between the old and new presidencies but I confess that I wanted a bit more. I wanted more closure to Charlie's story and more about where the relationship between Josh and Donna was going. I wanted to meet Sam's fiance and find out if she was an ex-hooker who has a relative working as a hospital administrator in New Jersey or a blonde conservative lawyer who quit the Hoover Institute after nine days. There were some great touches that were enough to bring pangs of nostalgia but it's like going to Disneyland for just one day - there's so much more that you want to see than you can. In this case though it was the people who were running things who decided that you weren't going to see anymore, and I think it was disrespectful.

Monday: Grey's Anatomy - This they give the whole night to, courtesy of President Bush. ABC decided to repeat the first hour of the finale from Sunday night rather than show Oprah Winfrey's Legends Ball after Bush's Immigration speech. That was, I think, a little too much. The two hour finale was full of sound and fury but was there was a clear separation between the first and second hours for easy syndication. Yeah there were revelations, tears and laughter, sexual tension resolved, and storylines carefully left dangling over the edge of a cliff to hold onto the audience for next season. And yes there was good acting, particularly from Katherine Heigl who was by turns manic, depressed, full of joy and defeated. And even though Izzy is leaving Dr. Bailey's little band of surgical "butt kissers" I can't help but hope that they'll somehow manage to keep her on the show, just because she turned in such good work this season.

Wednesday: The Amazing Race - Yeah, I know that I should be writing about what turned out to be the series finale of Invasion but I'll let you in on a little secret - I've been missing both Lost and Invasion a lot in the past few weeks. At least with Lost I should be able to pick up some of what I missed during the summer. Besides, I love The Amazing Race. I really liked this season. It wasn't as much fun as the seventh season of the show which pitted Rob & Amber fans against Romber haters it was easily better than the dismal Family Edition. And hey a team that was not only one of my favourites but actually deserved it won. BJ & Tyler - The Hippies - had fun with the race but also brought some real skills to it. This was more than could be said for Ray & Yolanda, who seemed to get lost and start arguing at the drop of Ray's hat. As for Eric & Jeremy the so-called Frat Boys - who were actually college drop-out and from community college at that - while they excelled at the physical aspects they revealed some negative aspects to their character when they cancelled the cabs of two of the teams and made disparaging remarks about BJ & Tyler. And that doesn't even mention their apparently insatiable desire for sex with any young female they encountered. While some fans of the show have stated that they found the "Hippies"' shtick wore thin, they were smart players who made an effort to learn a few words of the language at every stop they made. They deserved it.

Thursday: CSI - I realise that nothing they could do would compare to last season's Quentin Tarantino directed finale, but really this was a rather lackluster pedestrian effort. The major event was the shooting of Captain Brass in the previous episode but since that case was solved - or more accurately the perpetrator was terminated - we were left with an "ordinary" (well ordinary for CSI) case of a decapitated man found on a railroad track. Underlying it all was the prospect of Brass dying and the various CSIs standing vigil for him. One interesting aspect was that Brass had given Grissom his medical power of attorney despite the fact that, as Grissom told Greg, their relationship was entirely work related: "We don't hang out Greg." It indicates a level of trust and almost intimacy that doesn't need to happen away from the workplace. The one thing to take the show above the ordinary was the revelation in the final minute or two, where we discover that Grissom is intimate (in a sexual way) with Sara Sidel. There's been speculation for some time among serious fans that the producers were going to bring them together. What's really interesting - to me anyway - is that there's a sense of intimacy and familiarity that suggests that we're only seeing it for the first time but that they've been together for a while. I'm not sure if this is a good development or not (supposedly it has a lot of people "enraged") but it certainly has shaken things up.

Friday: Numb3rs - I don't really have much to say about this except that it indicates an interesting approach by the writers and producers. According to co-creator and executive producer Cheryl Heuton, the premise of the show was so different that "this show had to tell people what it was about a little longer than most." Now they're finally able to delve deeper into the character's relationships. The season finale was interesting but less for the case - a serial killer for whom the stresser was having his trust fund cut off - than for the insight that we got into Charlie's character and history. The execution was interesting, using that most illogical of mediums - dreams - to give us some sense of what shaped a character whose occupation as a scientist forces him to be eminently logical.

24 Finale - Stinky Bad

I was trying last night to sort out my feelings about the 24 season finale - having failed miserably to sum up my feelings about Desperate Housewives the night before (suffice it to say I'm a late convert but I am actually looking forward to reruns to catch what I missed when I was foolish enough not to watch) - and then today it hit me as I was reading another blog: it was bad! Admittedly it was this review at Blogcritic.org but it crystalised my thoughts on the matter. The finale, and more specifically episode 24, was terrible. (Just promise me one thing. If I ever channel the Comic Book Guy and write a review with a title that includes the phrase "Worst. Episode. Ever." and I'm serious about it, please make an intervention. That phrase has "jumped the shark" (but then so has "jumped the shark) as far as I'm concerned.)

The problem is a simple one. The story was both too rushed and to leisurely at the same time. Too rushed in that the resolution of the main plot occurred without any sort of revelation as to what the motivation behind the plot was. At no point was there any explanation of what Marwan hoped to accomplish or why his plot was so involved that it required trying to melt down 107 nuclear power plants, shooting down Air Force One, and attempting to nuke Los Angeles, not to mention where he got a stealth cruise missile, assemble a huge Terrorist Army (tm), or was able to find a Stealth Fighter that actually carried an air-to-air missile. I mean there's a certain suspension of disbelief that goes along with 24 but in this case a little explanation might have helped. It's like building a thrilling roller coaster which doesn't quite get us to the unloading platform.

Of course it may have been a tip-off when the whole "Mandy and Tony" subplot took most of Hour 23 to unravel. There we were, no closer to Marwan than we had been since the terrorists sprung him a few episodes ago and it's the end of the next to last hour. You have to end the series in the next hour but you've got this great gimmick for the end which is going to take time and so there's no time for any explanations. That means killing the antagonist without finding out from him or anyone why (or how) all of this mess happened. Or maybe the writers just decided that we didn't need any resolution, that we'd buy anything they were willing to sell us and thank them for it.

And then comes the leisurely part. Having successfully saved the world - okay the United States - okay Los Angeles three times running (the first season doesn't count - all he did there was save David Palmer) our gallant hero and his team of intrepid sidekicks returns to CTU. Not quite in triumph of course because Jack has to get ready to turn himself over to the Chinese for his part in the Consulate attack thanks to that weak-willed moron Bern (and forgetting for the moment that the only way they got him was to kill two Americans on American soil) because Jack will always do exactly what the President tells him to do even when the President isn't David Palmer or even John Keeler, but acting President Charles Logan (which is what Logan is - remember Keeler didn't die when Air Force One crashed). Still there's time for Audrey to look longingly at Paul's body bag then give Jack the big "I love you but we can never be together even if you aren't going to be set up as the fall guy for the Consulate operation" speech; for Buchanan to look overly serious; for Michelle and Tony to do log some serious screen kiss time to the point where it would have been better for everyone concerned if they'd just grabbed a quickie in Interrogation Room 1; and Edgar and Chloe pledge eternal geek love - oh sorry, that was my nightmare last night, I meant express incredulity that they're going to give Jack to the Chinese. Plus there was actually time for Jack to change his clothes before the denouement.

Of course the denouement is a good one. Having decided to hand Jack over to the Chinese with the reluctant approval of ex-President Palmer, President Logan's security chief decides that Jack knows too much and will tell all under interrogation. He had previously suggested that Jack have "an accident". Logan tells him no, but the security chief gets in touch with the Secret Service Agent who is going to get Jack and tells him that Jack is going to have an "accident" before he can be delivered to the Chinese. Now setting aside the total unlikelihood of a Secret Service Agent not only committing an illegal act (like murder) but doing it on the orders of someone who is not the President Of The United States or even the acting President, you know this is going happen because of the actor playing the agent. He's Patrick Kilpatrick, and as sure as I've never seen Gregory Itzin (Logan) play any character but spineless weasels I have never seen Kilpatrick play anyone but a hard-ass who will obey any order he's given. Sure enough, Logan is a spineless weasel because he refuses to listen to Palmer when David begs him to make sure that Security Guy calls off the hit (Mike Novick overheard Security Guy's end of the phone call), and Palmer is a resolute enough friend to warn Jack of what's coming. Jack, Tony, Michelle and Chloe (Chloe?!) concoct a cunning plan that lets the Secret Service Agent think he's snuffed Jack and allows Jack to get away scot-free with the clothes on his back, the money in his pocket, a clean cell phone and false papers that will get him into Mexico. Of course they could have set up a retirement fund for him, but you can't have everything and why would he come back for season 5 if he did?

In a season that has led viewers though a series of plot elements that have not only required willing suspension of disbelief but a total detachment from reality - which most of us have been willing to do - the pay-off was disappointing to say the least. And yet the viewers (including me) will flock back in January just to see what is going to happen to Bauer next. Just a guess but I don't think he'll be sipping margueritas on some beach surrounded by bikini clad babes.

CSI Season Finale - WOW!

The Thing about Quentin Tarantino is that you either love him or you hate him. If you hate him, nothing he can do will ever be any good, while if you love him, he's brilliant. I may be one of the few people in North America who has no fixed opinion of him, simply because I've never seen any of his movies straight through, and I've only seen a few scenes of Pulp Fiction. The one opinion I have of him, as a result of Thursday's finale of CSI is that the guy is a damned fine TV director.

There's an interesting story about how Tarantino came to direct the episode. He had long been a fan and let various members of the cast who he met at awards shows know it, but it was when an former criminologist named Larry Mitchell who works as a consultant ion the show met him at the food court at the Luxor and invited him out to the set - without knowing who he was - that the seeds for the episode were set. On the set he met Anthony Zuiker and William Petersen, creator and star of the series but both also executive producers, and mentioned that he had an idea for a story, but he'd like to direct it. The deal was done very quickly.

The episode starts innocently enough. Nick Stokes (George Eads) is called to what appears to be a crime scene. A queasy looking uniformed cop is there and it's easy to see what's making him queasy. In the middle of a lonely parking lot is a pile of guts - literally. While the cop goes to toss his cookies (we see him vomiting by his car) Nick follows pieces of evidence set out like bread crumbs, or bait for a trap. When the cop turns back, Nick is gone.

One of humanity's primal fears is being buried alive. In the 19th Century there were actually patents issued for devices that would alert people on the surface that someone had been buried alive. Of course, whether any were actually sold - or more importantly used for their intended purpose - is another question entirely. More recently a handful of real life kidnappers have buried their victims alive as an "incentive" to have the ransom paid, but in truth it has been more often used as a fictional plot device than anything else. Indeed at least one episode of CSI - starring Jolene Blalock in an early acting job - has used it, but no one has managed to make it as chilling as it is used here. Nick is placed in a plexiglass coffin with a gun, a tape recorder, and a bunch of light sticks. He can see the dirt pressing all around him. Worse is to come. Back at headquarters things are going nowhere fast. The evidence collected at the scene tells them little except the size of the truck that Nick was taken in. Then a messenger arrives with a package, apparently picked up outside a random house. It contains a tape and a USB drive. The tape provides a sound track for what comes next because the USB drive provides a hypertext link. There a ransom demand for a million dollars and a button that when clicked illuminates Nick's coffin. What they don't know is that lighting the light reduces the power in the battery that also runs the ventilation system feeding air to the coffin.

The two hour running time for the episode allows the writers to show off aspects that we know about the characters. Grissom's knowledge of insects helps to locate the site where the coffin is located while his ability to read lips provides a touching moment when Nick is recording what he thinks is his last words on the tape recorder. Catherine's relationship with her father as well as her devotion to her CSI family is shown in the scene where she approaches Sam Braun for the million dollars that the kidnapper is demanding and which the city won't pay. Warrick shows his temper, worry and exasperation at the chance that put his closest friend in the coffin instead of him while Greg's quick wits and youthful enthusiasm are seen. Tarantino even accomplishes what I thought was impossible - he made me actually like the character of Hodges, who normally comes across as a smug, brown-nosing ass. In this episode he plays a Dukes of Hazard board game with Greg (a pure Tarantino touch as is Grissom's framed Roy Rogers certificate), roughs up the messenger delivering the envelope with the clue to tape and USB drive (on the grounds that the guy was probably destroying trace evidence) and provides a vital piece of information that helps save Nick. It is however Eads who has the hardest acting job of all. He goes through the five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance, all mingled with various degrees of terror and a decline into madness as his situation becomes increasingly desperate. It's a tough job and he pulls it off amazingly well.

The Tarantino touches are there as well of course. Besides the bits mentioned above, he uses a comedian (I think it's Bob Goldthwait who previously appeared in a third season episode of the series) as the delivery guy's lawyer. The scene between Sam Braun and Catherine is preceded by a scene with Tony Curtis and Frank Gorshin sitting with Braun and his latest bimbo talking about Old Vegas. While some may think that the scene goes on too long (although it does let Gorshin do his Kirk Douglas, Ed Sullivan and Jack Nicholson impressions - a fitting reminder of what a great talent was lost when he died (the episode also included a memorial note at the end which was another nice touch given the short time available to set it up)) it worked to establish just how secret Braun had kept her and just how tough she is. Finally there is the controversial sequence near the end in which Nick hallucinates his own autopsy, as performed by Doc Robbins and his assistant David "Super Dave" Phillips. Reportedly the scene was so gory that it had to be shot in black & white but it works incredibly well because it was shot that way.

In this episode of CSI Tarantino has crafted a brilliant thriller building tension by the minute. His use of John Saxon as the mastermind of the plot is brilliant. He is the villain but we never see his face and he exits the scene - by blowing himself up - without our discovering the motivation behind what he is doing. Layer upon layer has to be peeled away to allow us to know not just why he did what he did but the significance of seemingly insignificant details. Are there faults? Of course. At one point it is crucial for both the audience and Nick to think he's being rescued but there seems to be no clear explanation of why he's hearing what he's hearing when it turns out that the hope is a false one. In another scene, it is difficult to understand why Saxon's character put something onto the prototype coffin he built, something that allows Hodges to discover a trap and alert the people in the field. Still these are minor points in a series that expects us to suspend our belief for far greater plot points every week. It seems a shame that in syndication this episode will be broken into two pieces - it really is a CSI movie event and should be treated as such but the requirements of television mean that it will probably be cut in two. If this episode doesn't earn at least Emmy nominations for Tarantino as director and writers Naran Shankar, Anthony Zuiker and Carole Mendelsohn, and at least consideration for George Eads as Best Supporting Actor, I will truly be shocked.

Survivor Finale: The Right Man Won

(Since I didn't watch Everybody Loves Raymond toniight - because I don't - I thought I'd sum up last night's Survivor finale instead.)

After 39 days and a bunch of episodes, the best player of Survivor: Palau, 41 year-old New York firefighter Tom Westman won a 6 to 1 vote over PR professional Katie Gallagher. And under the circumstances it was about bloody time. Like most reality shows (and unlike my favourite The Amazing Race) Survivor isn't about being the best person, it's about being able to manipulate people without drawing a target on your own back. The person who does best at challenges and the person who shows leadership skills gets hit by the "tall poppy syndrome". Being too good usually leads to a player getting eliminated at the first possible opportunity once Tribes disappear and challenges become individual. Flying under the radar - not winning immunity challenges and not trying to lead the team but doing as much work as you have to and keeping your alliances strong but flexible - works, which is why Katie got as far as she did.

What Tom brought to the table was the whole package. He was a strong leader during the tribe vs. tribe phase of the series and a strong provider for his team. What's more he developed a number of alliances of varying strength. For most of the game his strongest alliance was with Ian Rosenberger - about the only player who was close to being his equal in the physical challenges. He also held an alliance with Gallagher and a secondary alliance with three of his fellow team mates. Another factor was that he had a clear vision of how the game would go. He played the game very much in the way that a chess player does, thinking ahead to what the best move his opponents could make would be and what his best move to preempt this would be. He planned to keep Gregg Carrey in the game until there were five players left because he thought that this would be the optimal time for Greg to make his move. In the event, he managed Gregg's removal with six players left because he got the impression that Gregg was making his move earlier than expected. After that it was a simple business of isolating and removing the remaining players who were not part of his core alliance, Caryn Groedel and Jenn Lyon.

The end for Ian came prematurely when he seemed to have burned too many of his bridges, first by not taking Katie on a reward he won which raised questions with her about his honesty and then by seeming to agree to vote Tom out if he lost immunity. It all came out. In an amazing turn of events Rosenberger dropped out of the last immunity challenge, an endurance competition, after almost 12 hours because he had thought through the events of the show and decided that he wasn't pleased with how at odds his behaviour in the game was to his own personal values. He ended the challenge after extracting a promise from Tom to vote him out, a development that astonished both Tom and host Jeff Probst.

After that it was a foregone conclusion that Tom would win. In the final Tribal Council he was articulate, and both complimentary to his opponents and even a little humble. Gallagher on the other hand was a t times abrasive towards people - at one point she told Jury member Janu Tornell that she wouldn't answer the question because she knew there was nothing she could say to get Janu's vote. Beyond that her behaviour during the game had not won her any fans. She didn't try hard at competition, she did on more than one occasion ridicule other players and, she did ride the coat tails of two better players through her alliance with Ian and Tom.

At 41 Tom is the oldest player ever to win Survivor but as Jeff Probst pointed out the average age for Survivor winners is 34. Maturity - emotional and intellectual maturity - wins Survivor. Physicality isn't enough, indeed as we've seen over ten series being physically dominant can be detrimental because at the first opportunity you are likely to be voted out if you don't also have a solid plan in playing the game. Tom won in part because he was physically better than most of the other players but also because he had a well thought out and executed plan. He deserved to win because he literally was the best player on that island.

Star Trek Enterprise Finale

Last night saw the season finale of Numb3rs and the series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise. The finale of Numb3rs was the sort of episode you'd expect from a series that was pretty much sure of coming back next season. (Network upfronts are coming in the next week or so, but some series look to be confident about returning.) About the most spectacular thing about it was the complete absence of Sabrina Lloyd. She's been seen less in the past few episodes so maybe they're just phasing her character out. Shame on them if they are.

I really want to write about the Star Trek: Enterprise finale though, but first let me just repeat my usual refrain about it being long past time for the team of Berman & Braga to leave the Star Trek Franchise forever and not let the door hit them on the ass on the way out. They should go out backwards and let it hit them in the .... well you get the idea. There, that felt good.

The series finale was a two one hour episodes. The first was the wind up of last weeks episode in which Trip Tucker and T'Pol discover that there's a Human-Vulcan hybrid child with their DNA, created by an anti-alien group "Terra Prime", headed by the often underappreciated Peter Weller. In the episode, the Enterprise crew managed to defeat Terra Prime's nefarious scheme to destroy Star Fleet Command, prevent the signing of a trade agreement between Earth and a number of alien races, and force all aliens off earth. There's the usual amount of daring-do and in a touching note the baby - named Elizabeth by T'Pol and Trip - dies as a result of genetic complications. Phlox however leave the door open for a certain future blessed event when he explains that the cloning process used by Terra Prime was flawed and Human and Vulcan DNA is in fact compatible enough to allow a child to be born and survive.

On the whole that episode would have been a pretty good opener to a fifth season - the end point of a cliffhanger - or even an end the series, but no, someone couldn't leave well enough alone. We had to be treated to a different final episode. We are catapulted six years into the future, when the Enterprise is heading back to Earth to be decommissioned and put into the mothball fleet (a term that originated with the US Navy for ships that have been retained for emergency service but aren't crewed and receive minimal maintenance). Suddenly there's an announcement calling all senior staff to the bridge and we discover that what we're seeing is a holodeck program being run by Commander Bubble Butt - sorry, Commander William T. Riker. Yes they decided that they needed an episode with Next Generation characters, so we got to see William Frakes who appears to have been eating his way out of his depression after Thunderbirds flopped, and Marina Sirtis who really should lay off the Baklava and hit the gym if she wants to wear that uniform again.

The storyline is a disappointment after so many good episodes in the past year. Riker is participating in the Holodeck reconstruction of the final days of the new original Enterprise (as opposed to the original original Enterprise which was Kirk's ship) because he's pondering a decision. In fact it's the decision that he made in the Next Generation episode "The Pegasus", to disobey orders and tell Picard about the illegal tests of a Federation cloaking device that occurred aboard the USS Pegasus. Apparently Troi told him that he could get greater insights about the decision he has to make by experiencing the last days of Archer's Enterprise. The plot there focusses on Shran, who is supposed to be dead but is really on the run. After leaving the Andorian Imperial Guard (and why would he do that?) he fell in with an unsavoury element, who now want him to return something he doesn't have and have kidnapped his daughter to get it. Early on Troi and Riker let us know that Trip doesn't survive, so during the time that the crew are trying to rescue Shran's daughter on Rigel 10 we're wondering if this is when Tucker's going to kick the bucket. In fact, it doesn't happen until after the rescue when the guys who have kidnapped the child (and supposedly only have a Warp 2 ship) suddenly show up on Enterprise and want the Shran and the kid. Tucker does the heroic thing, putting himself in a potentially life threatening situation to kill the bad guys and save Archer. Throughout the episode we are treated with meetings between the Enterprise Chef and several senior crewmembers. Chef of course isn't the "real" Chef but Riker. Troi has told him that since the ship didn't have a counsellor (or a bar tender) people tended to talk to Chef. Needless to say the insights Riker gains all centre on the Archer-Tucker relationship, which gives Riker the answer he needs to decide to trust his instincts and tell the man he trusts unconditionally (that would be Picard) about the secret of the Pegasus. This episode was such a terrible send-off for the show that it is difficult to believe that Manny Cotto did it of his own free will, given the episodes that have come before in this season. The idea had to have come from higher up in the Paramount food chain.

Next year, for the first time in 18 years there will not be new episodes of a Star Trek series. For the first time in its history there won't be a Star Trek series on UPN. Unlike a lot of people I don't think that the franchise is dead. If anything the last season of Star Trek: Enterprise points the way forward. I've said it before and I'll say it as long as anyone wants, the time has come for Berman & Braga to go. It may be true that there can't really be a single vision for the whole franchise. If there ever is a new series (and if UPN gets desperate enough there might be) it may need a new vision, and a different vision from any future movies. The basic concepts are sound - a utopian future (because so many movies and TV shows give us a dystopic vision) and a focus on exploration rather than conflict - so a new show could be led by someone who isn't currently involved. I don't know what comes next, but I hope it's something interesting.

Thoughts On A "Season" Finale

Among the things I do besides writing this blog is to write recaps for the Amazing Race newsgroup, and believe me it's a taxing self imposed job to the point where I'm often totally exhausted on the day after because I've been up until four in the morning or later. Consequently I haven't reviewed two of my favourite series this year - House and Lost not to mention Smallville. I intend to remedy that now that Amazing Race is over... but not right now.

Actually this post is about a show I've reviewed earlier. Last night was billed by The WB as the season finale of Jack & Bobby but the whole exercise stank of being the series finale. Not only did we finally meet the boys' father, played by Lou Diamond Phillips with the thickest Hispanic accent I've ever heard him use, but we also found out how Jack dies - gun downed in a convenient store robbery after being a war hero, a conscientious public defender and a Democratic Congressman. It also seemed to wrap up the documentary on the life of President McAllister with a final coda from Bobby's mentor Peter Benedict, played as an old man by legendary TV producer Norman Lear, and the documentary narrator played by Gore Vidal. The episode was good and set up the course that Jack and Bobby's lives would take because of their trip to meet their father, but there's a depressing finality to it as a way to end a show's season.

Of course it probably is the series finale. While The WB hasn't announce its "upfronts" yet, Jack & Bobby has been the lowest rated show on any network (with the possible exception of the soon to be defunct PAX network of course) in the United States and being last on the ratings list doesn't normally get you renewed even on The WB. Which is a damned shame really because the show is generally quite good. The problem may well have been when they chose to show it. It stated out on Sunday nights with Charmed and was moved to Tuesday nights following Smallville. Neither show was exactly a good fit for it - a better match for Jack & Bobby might have been on Monday nights with either Seventh Heaven or Everwood but with both series continuing and the network not wanting to anger affiliates like WPIX, WGN or KTLA by running a third hour of shows (thereby postponing the local news) putting it on Monday night is out. And the network doesn't have another night where the shows they have will work with Jack & Bobby. It's a shame really that a show like this will likely get cancelled when Joey has been renewed for next year.

NYPD Blue - Goodbye, Farewell, and Thanks

On the same day that Alaska senator and chairman of the US Senate Commerce Committee, Ted Stevens, announced that he would support an extension of the FCC indecency regulations that cover broadcast TV to cable TV, the groundbreaking show that tested those regulations from the beginning has left the air. The last NYPD Blue to air was not quite as edgy as the first. There were no bare asses or almost exposed female nipples , and the famous dictionary of words that could be used has apparently shrunken somewhat. I doubt that today Andy Sipowicz would be able to grab his crotch and shout "Ipsa this you pissy little bitch."

It doesn't really matter of course. The point was never really to shock. It was much more about reflecting the realities of "the job" and the people who did it. The aim of series creator David Milch and his adviser, friend and later Executive producer of the show, former New York Police detective Bill Clark was to make a show as real as American TV would let it be. And while Law & Order which debuted three years earlier was all about the cases and never the people, on NYPD Blue was about the people. The cases they worked were part of the way we found out about them. The people were interesting because, as is rarely the case in television but is necessary in great drama, they were shown "warts and all", and there were some pretty prominent warts.

As the special that aired before the final episode showed, NYPD Blue evolved through a series of stages. The first year of the show was very much about David Caruso's character John Kelly. Sipowicz was a major figure but it was Kelly and the storylines that surrounded him that were the focus. The problem was that Caruso sincerely believed it and thought that the world was his oyster bar and being tied to a series was keeping him from enjoying it. He left acrimoniously and I think the show was better for it. I certainly think that the show wouldn't have lasted 12 years with Kelly as the focus. What Caruso leaving did do was to give Dennis Franz and his character Andy Sipowicz a more prominent role by bringing Jimmy Smits in to play Bobby Simone. The relationship between the two was far closer to being equals than it was with any of the other partners that Andy had. It was illustrated in the special with the clip of Simone and Sipowicz singing "Duke of Earl" together in the car, something that Bill Clark and David Milch did on at least one occasion. It was an intimacy that wasn't shared with any subsequent partners. When Jimmy Smits left the show in 1998 and was replaced by Rick Schroeder, the chemistry changed. Schroeder's Danny Sorenson was never an equal to Sipowicz; rather he was a cipher that Andy was never able to crack which made the character's departure wrenching. Finally there was Mark-Paul Gosselaar. His character, John Clark Jr., was a pupil. He was also a Sipowicz in the making buffeted by personal problems that drove him towards despair and addiction, but this time Sipowicz was able to see the problem and catch it. This evolution in the show was also an evolution of Sipowicz. He went from Andy the drunken screw-up with Kelly, to Andy the guy who tries hard but sometime slips with Simone, to Andy the guy who has all this stuff to teach but doesn't know how with Sorenson, to Saint Sipowicz with Clark.

NYPD Blue is a show that is a sparkling example of the theory that a movie or TV show rises and falls on three things: good actors, good writing and good direction. NYPD Blue all three elements. The acting has been strong throughout most of the series' run, with the supporting players delivering solid work and storylines that at time rose above simple support of the leads. They all had effective backstories and the ways the parts were played made the backstories believable. Actors brought elements that the writers didn't think of to their roles - Gordon Clapp decided that Greg Medavoy stammered when he was nervous (in an early episode, a director went to producer Steven Bochco and complained that he couldn't work around Clapp's stammer and the actor had to be replaced; Bochco told him that the stammer was part of Medavoy's character). The series went through a lot of actors but by and large the actors they used were able to deliver.

Writing and Direction were major areas of controversy. Like Andy Sipowicz, David Milch is an alcoholic and as he put it Andy got sober before he did. This caused problems in the writing, which Jimmy Smits pointed out in the special. By the time Smits left, the cast were getting blank call sheets and lines delivered hours or minutes before scenes were to be shot. It was chaotic but many of the cast consider this sort of working without a net to be some of the best episodes they did. What the writers did impressively week after week was to chart the progression of the characters in a manner that didn't seem staged. Andy's relationship with John Irvin, the civilian administrative assistant, progressed over the years from antagonism to acceptance to friendship in a way that was totally believable. As for direction, the use of the "shaky cam" helped to create the show's feel as well, giving it an almost documentary feel. Although appearing random the quick movements of the camera were deliberately planned to recreate the way the human eye moves when something suddenly attracts our attention. It helped to define the show's look and feel.

The final year of NYPD Blue wasn't as strong as many of the earlier seasons. The departure of Charlotte Ross, who played Andy's third wife Connie MacDowell, last season pretty much ended storylines that dealt with his home life. The fear of a crackdown on obscenity, which began with Janet Jackson's nipple, restricted both the language and the number of nude scenes in the show - the latter affected relationship stories for other characters in the show. It was starting to become more about the work not the people. Then too there was the feeling that, with ABC announcing that the show was in its final season, the show was sliding towards its end. Sliding but not entirely slumping. Some of the stories this season have been quite strong. It was fitting that it went out when it did, and fitting that last scene, featuring the guy who was the screw-up from the first season who knew he would never make it beyond Detective Third Grade, had made Sergeant and was running the detective squad. The Progress Of Andy Sipowicz was complete.