Tag Archives: Finale

August 8, 2008 · 1:40 pm

Season Finale: My Boys – “John, Cougar, Newman Camp”

“John, Cougar, Newman Camp”

August 7th, 2008

After a bit of a non-starter of a season wherein the opening resolution to the cliffhanger never went anywhere, and where the relentless drive towards this wedding finale never felt like any sort of natural progression, we have a finale that wants to bookend things cleaner than the season actually was.

And it’s successful – as far as season finales go, it is a smart choice of letting its various characters serve the right roles in Bobby’s march to holy matrimony, and even though the ending is entirely predictable the episode offers our gang of friends enough opportunities to interact that it doesn’t feel like a total cheat. It still doesn’t feel like any type of finale, serving just as a tease for the continuation to come likely early next year, but it does achieve at least a good sense of character within its contrived plotting.

So while I can’t say I’m any more excited about the final cliffhanger as I was when I presumed it would happen weeks ago, the combination of a decent continuation of last week’s threads with some funny gang stuff rises above the median but does little to change the season’s overall quality.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under My Boys

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

August 6, 2008 · 10:16 pm

Performance Finale: So You Think You Can Dance Season Four

“Performance Finale”

August 6th, 2008

I haven’t blogged about what I deemed the summer’s guilty pleasure all those weeks ago, thus riling up a sizable segment of the show’s fanbase who viewed the term was disaffectionate. Well, needless to say, it was not intended as such – sitting around and watching So You Think You Can Dance has become a weekly ritual, first with some friends and then eventually with my parents as I’ve been spending a few weeks visiting at home.

It’s a show that you grow into more than perhaps any other reality program – there is a combination of personal achievement and massive variety that is unparalleled, and the limited audience involvement in selecting candidates keeps the dead weight out. This is a show where people are brought on for talent: not for how they play to the audience, not for their condescending attitude, but for their ability to dance.

And that means that, even with some surprises along the way, you get a finale of four strong dancers who offer up a great deal of entertainment and where all of the intense nepotism and laudatory comments usually dominating finales seems justified and deserved. I won’t pretend to know everything about dancing, but I have been watching enough to know where things might shake down for the impending final results.

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under So You Think You Can Dance

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

July 19, 2008 · 12:39 am

Finale: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog – “Act Three”

“Act Three”

For two acts, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog was a musical comedy, but the conclusion of the second act seemed to indicate that things were about to take a turn towards the murderous. There was also a moment wherein Penny (Felicia Day) seemed to indicate that she knew something more than she should (As she recognized Bad Horse as “the thoroughbed of sin”). All of this was leading into a final conclusion that seems like it would prove quite good.

[To Watch Act III, click on the above image or here]

And it was good, but very tonally different than what we saw before it. As opposed to evolving into absurdity, it was instead, like many Whedon stories, a turn towards a dour and almost tragic final moment. It seemed impossible that Whedon could wrap up an entire story like this in forty minutes, resisting that type of serial character development he loves so much, and here is no exception: if the series dies in the here and now, this being its only moment to shine, I’m going to be extremely depressed more than anything else.

Which, when you think about it, is an odd point to leave on for a satirical musical comedy piece.

Continue reading →

18 Comments

Filed under Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

June 10, 2008 · 2:27 am

Season Finale: Greek – “Spring Broke”

“Spring Broke”

June 9th, 2008

Most series set in college would end their first season with the end of the school year, but Greek is operating under a really weird schedule – it took only ten episodes to complete the first half of the year, but only got to Spring Break (Woo!) in its last twelve.

The argument you could make, though, is that a show that has nothing to do with academics should probably climax in the throes of the party period as opposed to the exam one. I don’t say that to degrade the series, a solid entry into its television category, but rather to point out the obvious: if you came in expecting no drama or theatrics surrounding love quadrangles or hijinx, you went to the wrong Spring Break.

For the most part, the show follows its traditional patterns: Ashley is shallow and immature, Casey is self-righteous, Cappie is humorous but unfairly treaded on, Evan is pathetic, and Rusty has every possible bad thing that could happen to him, well, happen to him. But they’re comfortable patterns, and just like an ideal Spring Break in a television season swimming with less and less options.

Continue reading →

11 Comments

Filed under Greek

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

May 29, 2008 · 9:25 am

Reflections: Preparing for the Lost Season Four Finale

Preparing for “There’s No Place Like Home”

When Lost ends its fourth season tonight, it has a lot to live up to: not only is the show known for its mind-blowing finales, in particular its most recent one, but it is coming at the end of a season with a lot of momentum. It’s hard to deny that the show’s fourth season has been strong, and also that it has made the best of its shortened schedule. As a result, excuse me if I have high hopes for its end note.

Now, that’s not to say that I think tonight’s finale (airing at 9 EST on ABC, but I’ll be watching it at 6 EST due to the Canadian simulcast) will reach the heights of “Through the Looking Glass,” the stunning conclusion to last season. It’s the same logic I used in defending the slower pace of the season premiere, “The Beginning of the End,” to those who felt that it lost some of its momentum. This sentiment implies, falsely in my mind, that the only momentum the finale created was “OMG, Flash Forwards;” clearly, its success goes beyond that.

I love “Through the Looking Glass” because it feels like a high point in the show’s mythology while also feeling like the climax of a high-powered adventure film. As Michael Giacchino’s score ramps up, and as we get soaring helicopter shots of various travelers, there is something about it that feels epic and sweeping. In the weeks previous, they had set all of the moving parts in place: whether it’s the Looking Glass itself, the trip to the radio tower, the arrival of Naomi, Charlie’s sacrifice, Locke’s apparent death, or the beach ambush, a lot came to a head in that two hours simply on an action level. At the same time, of course, we ended on a realization that it was frakking with the show’s structure more than we ever bargained for.

Season Four, with only fourteen episodes, doesn’t seem like it should have had time to get to that point. After last year’s finale, there was a lot of questions, but the season has done a great job of developing a structure that best serves those questions on a dramatic level. No, they aren’t answering a question a week, but the future has done wonders for the show’s ability to create dramatic pathos. Flash forwards are intriguing in their own right, but their greatest benefit is providing build-in payoff to a season that (even shortened by the strike) that has every ability to feel like a complete ride in the process.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under Lost

Tagged as , , , , , ,

May 20, 2008 · 9:13 pm

American Idol – Finale – The Duel of the Davids

“Finale”

May 20th, 2008

Well, FOX would like us to believe that the battle between David Cook and David Archuleta is like a boxing match, which is really not the most apt metaphor for a variety of reasons. First off, in this day and age, most boxing matches are rarely as close as this battle, and no one really pays attention to boxing anymore either. Second off, I’m fairly certain that if Archuleta was that overwhelmed by praise by this point in the competition, he’d be in the ring for about twenty seconds before the bright lights had him “Omigosh”-ing Pavlov style.

Rather, I like to think of it as a duel – not only do I think it’s slightly catchier, but it is also a better representation of how these two competitors stack up. I haven’t cared enough about their battle to turn in for the last few rounds, what with their unshaking inevitability, but when it comes down to seeing how these two very different, but fairly equally popular, candidates shake up I am most intrigued.

And there’s plenty of spectacle: Tale of the Tape theming, Clive Davis, excessive amounts of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and the wonderous opportunity to hear MORE THAN ONE of the hideous Idol songwriting contest entries. So instead of our contenders being able to define themselves as artists, they have to follow the guidance of an old man and sing an awful emotional/spiritual song.

So, needless to say, Archuleta benefits most from this arrangement.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under American Idol

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

May 20, 2008 · 2:02 pm

Season Finale – Gossip Girl – “Much ‘I Do’ About Nothing”

“Much ‘I Do’ About Nothing”

May 19th, 2008

This one is a bit late, but only because last night was a bit earlier than my previous ones. Considering the traffic that my review of January’s mid-season finale is getting, there’s a lot of people who want to see how Gossip Girl’s first season turns out, particularly in terms of the various romantic couplings the series is too often defined by.

That being said, the bigger issue is that this particular episode is defined by three separate relationships each with their own relative quality. As we wait and see how the Dan and Serena melodrama unfolds, or how the Lily/Rufus love destiny resolves itself, excuse me if I care far more about the delicious pairing of Blair and Chuck that the series has been playing with.

Yes, Chuck is the best part of this finale: smarmy with a purpose, charming with his usual edge, caring even through his usual harsh exterior. That he and Nate settle their rivalry, and that we discover his true feelings for Blair, is the part of the episode we relish in – meanwhile, the other storylines feel less resonant when the show has done them before (Lily and Rufus-style) and lack their explosive spark (Georgina disappears fifteen minutes in). Of course, even that part becomes a bit overplayed by the time the episode concludes.

So as we leave for the summer, which will be filled in by five episodes of material to come in August, everything is topsy turvy, and none of it is overly positive in my eyes.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under Gossip Girl

Tagged as , , , , , ,

May 19, 2008 · 10:27 pm

Season Finale – House – “Wilson’s Heart”

“Wilson’s Heart”

May 19th, 2008

Last week, I thought House was style over substance for 55 minutes before, in the final moments, it transcended into something more interesting – suddenly, a rather pointless and indulgent episode took an intensely personal turn, and “Wilson’s Heart” had a lot more dramatic resonance by default. Placing Amber in danger is actually an incredibly smart move, mainly because we really don’t know what will happen.

Anne Dudek has been enough of a revelation as Cutthroat Bitch that keeping her in the cast could be a theoretical option, or at least keeping her alive long enough for her to appear as a recurring character. At the same time, this episode in particular did a great job of escalating tension to the point where Amber’s death could fundamentally change these characters enough to justify the whole selection process that resulted in three new cast members in the first place.

The result is a finale far less interesting or eventful as last week’s finale, but a hell of a lot more tension-filled, and with a lot more dramatic interest – I didn’t really care about House’s head games last week, but this is the most that I’ve cared about a patient on the show in forever. And in a procedural show that is too often self-centered on House, it was great to see a final hour that barely even dealt with his head in favour of Wilson, 13, and more people who really needed their time in the sun.

Continue reading →

6 Comments

Filed under House

Tagged as , , , , , ,

May 19, 2008 · 9:21 pm

Season Finale – How I Met Your Mother – “Miracles”

“Miracles”

May 19th, 2008

For quite a few series, there isn’t much to go on as far as judging the show’s return post-strike – can we really fairly judge the quality of a series by only four or five episodes designed to either tie up loose ends or pump out content for their network before May Sweeps ends? However, in the case of How I Met Your Mother, you can’t really make the same argument.

We got almost as many episodes post-strike as we did before, and as a result there is a sense that the show got to tell actual storylines and to lay down important pieces for its (now confirmed) future. The biggest problem with this is that I don’t know if they actually told enough of those storylines, particularly the unfortunately absent Stella (Busy with Scrubs Sarah Chalke); if we are to buy this as the season’s big purpose, for Ted to meet this one woman, why is it that we still don’t really feel we’ve met her ourselves.

This isn’t to say that the show is falling apart at the seams, but rather part of me would have preferred a classic apartment setting to the hospital retrospective we ended up getting. It felt like too much of a cop-out, an admission that even with nine episodes post-strike they still weren’t able to build to the finale it feels like they wanted to write.

The result is a finale that is humorous, moderately eventful, and felt less identifiable as an episode of this series than the month’s other comedy finales.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under How I Met Your Mother

Tagged as , , , , , ,

May 12, 2008 · 10:15 pm

House – “House’s Head”

“House’s Head”

May 12th, 2008

When spoilers emerged regarding the setup for this season’s finale of House, I must admit to being somewhat skeptical – it sounded a lot like the House finale from two years previous, wherein we spent an entire episode unknowingly inside House’s head after he was shot. It was a mind-bending episode, to be certain, and was certainly an intriguing glimpse into how his mind works. Here, it seems a bit predictable: faced with a pending finale, we find ourselves delving back into his mind for an extra special House extravaganza.

This time, the subconscious is aware, so it’s a bit trippier, and that House is actively attempting to solve a mystery where the answers are in his own mind proves dramatically interesting. The problem is that the previous finale was a personal crisis for House, and eventually evoked ideas and concepts that would help to focus on his concerns with his leg. Here, we lack that personal connection: the episode tries to draw out feelings between House and Amber, which doesn’t seem as eventful for him as a character.

It’s also now far more detrimental to focus so heavily on only one character: with three new fellows, three old fellows, Wilson and Amber all floating around searching for a point of identity, to spend an episode so clearly wrapped up in House’s own mind. While it has some vague reflections on the other characters (And promises for further complications in the episode’s second part), his physical, emotional and psychological trial is really his own…and I don’t know if a show of this breadth is in a position to be so centered on its titular character at this point.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under House

Tagged as , , , , ,