Saturday, May 26, 2007
TV season finale roundup
I'm really disappointed in TV this week. First off, several of my favorite shows have been cancelled, including new shows Jericho, Raines, and The Class and old favorites Veronica Mars and Law and Order: Criminal Intent. Gilmore Girls is gone too, but it was way past time for it to go, so I'm not sorry about that. Since they knew it was going away, it actually had a real series finale, unlike the others. I'm not sure I've EVER seen anything that felt less like a series finale than the last episode of Veronica Mars.
I've been disappointed by season/series finales before, but usually it's because I'm not ready for the show to go away, like Now and Again, which ended with Michael and Lisa and Heather on the run. I like to think that Lisa finally believed the crazy story that her dead husband's brain, previously living in John Goodman's body, had somehow been transplanted into hunky Eric Close, and that the three of them managed to set up a new life in a small town somewhere and were never heard from again, except for 13 or 14 weeks every year when they have a scare because the government gets a lead on its very expensive runaway science experiment and comes after them, and at some point they have to decide whether to pack up and run or stay and fight. Boy, I loved that show.
But anyway. I don't really mind it that Veronica Mars is over; it hasn't been the same since she started college, and I always hate it when the main character goes off to a local college that hasn't been mentioned before (although there had been a story line that involved the college in an earlier season, so at least it wasn't like UC Sunnydale, which just appeared one day and everyone accepted that it had always been there--kind of like Buffy's sister Dawn) and all the rest of the characters do stupid things like turning down scholarships to schools that people have actually heard of to go there too, so they all stay together in the same town. I mean, come on: wouldn't Mac have gone to Stanford? Didn't Wallace actually get offered a basketball scholarship to another school (my memory is hazy on that one)? Veronica not being able to afford to go anywhere else was believable because they had set it up that way from the beginning, but all her friends too? Even Weevil gets hired on at the university, thanks to Veronica. But really, the plots have just been kind of lame this season, with too much focus on relationships and too little on the meat of this series, which is Veronica's incredible mystery-solving ability, so I wasn't all THAT sorry to see it go. But as a series finale, or even a season finale, that one was just not up to snuff.
And I'm not even going to get into how much I hated the ending of CI, with Logan seeing his dead neighbor who might have turned into a girlfriend (but we know she wouldn't have, because Logan is destined to be alone). There was a show about a detective who saw murder victims and talked to them. It was called Raines, and it was good. Snappy dialogue, pretty good mystery plotting, and you just can't go wrong with Jeff Goldblum if you're looking for quirky, disturbed, and determinedly gloomy. Of course it was cancelled, because TV SUCKS ROCKS.
I don't think any of my new favorites deserved to be cancelled. All three of them had really good writing and good casts. One was a science fiction thriller, one was a police drama, and one was a traditional sitcom, but what they had in common was that they were all pretty smart. It took a while for The Class to really hit its stride that way--some of the early episodes wandered a lot, and some of the episodes later in the season were a little uneven too--but I think it would have gelled, especially since they seemed to be paring down the cast and making the dialogue smarter.
Despite TV sucking rocks, this has been an exceptionally good season, compared to the last few years. Some smart new shows made it on the air and lasted an entire season, and that's a good thing. Ugly Betty and 30 Rock have both been renewed, as well as How I Met Your Mother, so that's good news for smart, well-written shows. And I spent too much time this season watching TV anyway, so maybe this is for the best.
I've been disappointed by season/series finales before, but usually it's because I'm not ready for the show to go away, like Now and Again, which ended with Michael and Lisa and Heather on the run. I like to think that Lisa finally believed the crazy story that her dead husband's brain, previously living in John Goodman's body, had somehow been transplanted into hunky Eric Close, and that the three of them managed to set up a new life in a small town somewhere and were never heard from again, except for 13 or 14 weeks every year when they have a scare because the government gets a lead on its very expensive runaway science experiment and comes after them, and at some point they have to decide whether to pack up and run or stay and fight. Boy, I loved that show.
But anyway. I don't really mind it that Veronica Mars is over; it hasn't been the same since she started college, and I always hate it when the main character goes off to a local college that hasn't been mentioned before (although there had been a story line that involved the college in an earlier season, so at least it wasn't like UC Sunnydale, which just appeared one day and everyone accepted that it had always been there--kind of like Buffy's sister Dawn) and all the rest of the characters do stupid things like turning down scholarships to schools that people have actually heard of to go there too, so they all stay together in the same town. I mean, come on: wouldn't Mac have gone to Stanford? Didn't Wallace actually get offered a basketball scholarship to another school (my memory is hazy on that one)? Veronica not being able to afford to go anywhere else was believable because they had set it up that way from the beginning, but all her friends too? Even Weevil gets hired on at the university, thanks to Veronica. But really, the plots have just been kind of lame this season, with too much focus on relationships and too little on the meat of this series, which is Veronica's incredible mystery-solving ability, so I wasn't all THAT sorry to see it go. But as a series finale, or even a season finale, that one was just not up to snuff.
And I'm not even going to get into how much I hated the ending of CI, with Logan seeing his dead neighbor who might have turned into a girlfriend (but we know she wouldn't have, because Logan is destined to be alone). There was a show about a detective who saw murder victims and talked to them. It was called Raines, and it was good. Snappy dialogue, pretty good mystery plotting, and you just can't go wrong with Jeff Goldblum if you're looking for quirky, disturbed, and determinedly gloomy. Of course it was cancelled, because TV SUCKS ROCKS.
I don't think any of my new favorites deserved to be cancelled. All three of them had really good writing and good casts. One was a science fiction thriller, one was a police drama, and one was a traditional sitcom, but what they had in common was that they were all pretty smart. It took a while for The Class to really hit its stride that way--some of the early episodes wandered a lot, and some of the episodes later in the season were a little uneven too--but I think it would have gelled, especially since they seemed to be paring down the cast and making the dialogue smarter.
Despite TV sucking rocks, this has been an exceptionally good season, compared to the last few years. Some smart new shows made it on the air and lasted an entire season, and that's a good thing. Ugly Betty and 30 Rock have both been renewed, as well as How I Met Your Mother, so that's good news for smart, well-written shows. And I spent too much time this season watching TV anyway, so maybe this is for the best.
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