Notes on Pop Culture: Great TV Finales

We've just concluded the traditional TV season and were treated to ample season/series finales. Most of them were moderately entertaining, some were really good and many were disappointing. I really liked the season enders for The Good Wife, Parks and Recreation (Councilor Knope!), The Mentalist and Scandal. I wasn't all that thrilled with the finales of Grey's Anatomy, Awake (was ticked that it was so confusing and now we'll never know the real story because it was canceled) and House.

The folks at Entertainment Weekly, meanwhile, time-traveled back to the recent TV past to select 26 season finales (not series finales) of which they were fond. Why 26? You'll have to ask them. Among the finales they honored:

The third season Mad Men finale when Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce was born in a cramped hotel suite.

The stunning conclusion of 24's first season where Jack Bauer's wife was murdered in the CTU offices.

The season two finale of Alias when CIA agent Sydney Bristow learned that she'd missed the past two years of her life and that her longtime love, fellow agent Michael Vaughn had thought she was dead and married somebody else.

The season two finale of Grey's Anatomy when Denny died and Meredith and Derek hooked up again. As much as I hated the Denny storyline, this episode, plus its selection of tunes (almost all of which I later downloaded) haunted me for weeks. However Grey's season six finale, with the mass shooting in Seattle Grace, Derek getting shot, residents dying and Meredith miscarrying could give the Denny dying season two finale a run for its money.

"Not Penny's Boat" season three Lost finale where Charlie died as a sacrifice for his friends and the whole series flashed forward for the first time. Let's just forget about that last season, okay? That never happened.

All in all, some excellent choices, although I would've added the season three finale of The Mentalist where Patrick Jane shot the man he thought was Red John (the serial killer who murdered his wife and daughter), the fifth season finale of the Gilmore Girls when Rory moved in with Richard and Emily after dropping out of Yale and the season one finale of Friday Night Lights where the Panthers won the state championship, Tami learned she was pregnant and Eric took a job at a college a plane ride away from Dillon.

What was your favorite TV show finale, this season or ever?

Fall TV Previews: 'Grey's Anatomy' Releases Season 7 Promo Posters

Grey’s Anatomy had one of the best season finales of the spring back in May with its taut, grisly shooter-in-Seattle Grace storyline. (Refresh your memory with my season six finale review for CliqueClack TV here. Just watching the video below gave me that edge-of-your-seat feeling all over again.)



Derek sustained a serious gunshot wound. Alex was shot and bleeding out. Owen was shot in the shoulder. Meredith miscarried her baby. Two Mercy Westers were murdered, one shot to the head, another shot then bled out in Dr. Bailey’s arms. The hospital staff was completely traumatized as more than one person (Owen, the Chief, Meredith) put him- or herself in harm’s way in order to save others.

When Grey’s Anatomy returns on Sept. 23, it’ll be in the wake of all this violent carnage. In the meantime, ABC has released several promotional posters for the medical drama’s seventh season all of which are a bit edgy, a long way from the emphasis on the sexcapades in on-call rooms, and all feature some take on the theme of “healing.”

About that 'Grey's' Finale . . .

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the Grey’s Anatomy season finale.*

Have you come down from that intense, highly caffeinated Grey’s Anatomy season six finale yet? Seriously.

The blood bath, the deaths, the tension. For two freakin’ hours. That’s not what I need to watch right before I going to bed.

Notes on Pop Culture: 'Grey's Anatomy' Finale Teaser, Finale Death Counts and 'The Good Wife' Gets the Job

Grey’s Anatomy Finale Teaser

You so know that this preview of Thursday's season finale of Grey’s Anatomy has been placed online just to torment us. When promos for the season finale ask, “Who will fall?” (note the word "fall" not "die") and say that a shooter will be on the loose in the halls of Seattle Grace, I have to think that there's no way this whole pregnancy thing will pan out, that Meredith Grey will actually have the baby and that, by this time next year, she'll be the dark and twisty new mom. But we'll see.

The bringing danger into the hospital angle has occurred on this show before, like when there was a bomb inside a patient and Coach Eric Taylor was blown to smithereens, when an irate employee shot people including Burke. But a shooter inside the hospital? Given last year's Grey's season finale, after which I felt as though I'd been emotionally manipulated with the George-run-over-by-a-bus story, I'm skeptical.



Finale Death Counts Climb Higher

*Warning . . . spoilers from already aired finales ahead . . .*

Private Practice's finale, "The End of a Beautiful Friendship," killed off Dell, leaving his daughter an orphan, after the drama flirted with killing off Maya and her unborn baby following a car accident caused by a drunk driver. (I reviewed the finale here on CliqueClack TV.)

Brothers & Sisters finale, “On the Road Again,” also had a massive, fatal car accident in the last scene which appears to have killed Robert McAllister while his bloodied wife Kitty comforted him in the front seat of their vehicle. The bloodied Robert, with a huge gash on the side of his head, suddenly stopped talking and his eyes remained open but he was non-responsive and motionless. (See video below.) Holly Harper was bloody and severely injured while being tended to by Justin. Don't know if Patricia Wettig, who plays Harper is coming back.

Given that it’s been known for quite some time since we've known that Rob Lowe was leaving the show, plus the fact that it’s been reported that when Brothers & Sisters returns in the fall Kitty is “single,” it seems like a reasonable conclusion that Robert died from his injuries. Oh, and we also learned that Sol -- who will forever be Arvin Sloane to me -- has HIV. What a damn downer, particularly after that sweet scene where the family members had just frolicked in the shower of an aquifer that'd been discovered under what was left of the property the family owned after their business went belly-up.



The Brothers & Sisters finale was entertaining, the last scene moving (I was shocked by the Sol scene), but the finale that appeared just before it for Desperate Housewives, in a word: Sucked. And I like Desperate Housewives, or I used to. They used to make wry, dead-on commentary about life in the ‘burbs and on occasion they still do. But not with their finale, “I Guess This is Goodbye.” Gabby’s storyline was ridiculous. Bree giving up her business and Orson leaving her *yawn.* At least the only fatality was a character no one cared about, Angie’s former eco-terrorist boyfriend who’d tried to kill her and her son.

Which brings me to this question: Were the writers for Desperate Housewives talking to Shonda Rhimes? Lynette Scavo went into labor while being held hostage by a teen serial killer and her pregnancy was in peril, particularly when it was discovered that the baby's umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby's neck and the killer had to save the baby. Given that the last two Private Practice season finales ended with pregnant women in peril, I, for one am tired of series finales pulling this kind of thing.

The Good Wife Gets the Job

Last week’s The Good Wife "Unplugged" episode provided viewers with the answer to the season-long question: Who would win the one open junior associate’s position, twentysomething Cary, who’s unmarried and has no kids and can work a bazillion hours, or Alicia, breadwinner mother of three who took a decade-plus off from the legal profession and only went back to work when her politician husband resigned and was then incarcerated? Alicia got the nod, however in my pop culture column this week I asked what would’ve happened had she not had the political connections. Answer: She would’ve been unemployed.

What do you think about finales killing off characters to boost ratings?

Season Finales Aren't What They're Cracked Up to Be

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from a variety of recent season finales*

I've come to the conclusion that, for the most part, season finales are serious let-downs. They almost never live up to the hype. And how can they, really? We viewers want drama, humor, the occasional sweet moment and cliffhangers . . . but not emotionally brutal cliffhangers that can sometimes appear out of left field. The networks just want one thing: Monster ratings, and they don't care how they happen. This means there's tremendous pressure to amp up the drama and conflict, even if they don't make sense as far as where the show has been throughout the season because without ratings there will be no show. This annually leaves us viewers with TV season finales that largely leave us disappointed and, sometimes irritated particularly if a naked, ratings-chasing maneuver is employed.

Take Lost's shocking season three cliffhanger finale. Now that was one hell of a finale. A beloved character, Charlie Pace sacrificed his own life in order to save his friends and, after three seasons of character flash-backs, Lost engaged in several flash-forwards, depicting Jack Shepherd in a future point in time longing to return to the island while, in the current time period, Jack was singularly determined to get everyone off of it. It was the gold standard of finales. A major character died in it -- doing something he thought would save the woman he loved -- but his death was beautifully and touching done. It was tough to watch Charlie drown, but it made sense for the larger story at the same time that it made viewers sad.

Compare that to Grey's Anatomy recent, fifth season finale, where it was left uncertain as to whether two of the show's original characters will live or die when season six begins. One character, Izzie Stevens, had been battling cancer, so if she had died it would've been understandable and, given the previous three-hankie episode where she was married, poetic and tragic. But instead, the show had Izzie AND George O'Malley facing death, as O'Malley was hit by a bus and potentially fatally injured. Tacky. Grey's fourth season finale ended on a much better, more uplifting note, with Meredith Grey committing to Derek Shepherd by making a "house" of candles on the plot of land Derek had picked out for their future home, even as O'Malley learned he'd failed his intern exam.

Grey's season finale notwithstanding, the rest of this year's season enders were all over the map as far as quality goes.

Lost's season ender was good, but I thought it opened up too many different and confusing themes. Whereas the season three flash-forward finale blew my mind, this season's ending frustrated me because I was (and still am) having trouble reconciling the religious imagery and overtones with the sci-fi time travel angle, plus I feel deceived about the whole John Locke-is-really-dead twist.

The 24 finale -- which had many gripping moments this season, loved President Taylor, Renee Walker and even by-the-books Larry Moss, liked the debate over the use of torture, adored the new Washington locale -- was a classic case of too much build up. The show seemed to sputter to a lackluster conclusion, particularly when there's not much drama in the Jack Bauer's-gonna-die question because we already know that Bauer lives because Kiefer Sutherland has signed on to take his 24-hour odyssey to New York City next season, provided his parole officer lets him out of LA. Kim Bauer sitting next to her father's hospital bed, coupled with the ambiguity of the resolution with the sinister Alan Wilson -- who apparently was behind all manner of badness for several seasons, including the plot against President David Palmer -- didn't hold a candle to previously powerful season finales like the death of Teri Bauer in season one, the apparent poisoning of President David Palmer in season two and Bauer being shipped off to China in the fabulous season five.

The finale for House, however, was a nice departure from the pressure to be overly, out-of-one's-depth dramatic with the last show of the season. The tone of the final 2008-09 episode was well balanced all the way through to its "what the?" ending where we learned that Greg House didn't actually have relations with Lisa Cuddy and that his hallucinations had become so severe that he checked himself into a psychiatric facility.

Friday Night Lights capped a poignant season with an episode that jumped a few months into the future and unceremoniously had Eric Taylor dumped as the Dillon Panthers' coach and instead, assigned to run the football program for a new high school whose most talented players had already been poached by Dillon. There were way too many holes and unexplained questions as to how or why the town that had been behind Taylor -- who led his team to the State Championship that season -- would so easily fire him. I'm sure next season will be just as good as previous ones, but the finale felt abrupt.

The Office ended quietly with an insane Dunder Mifflin company picnic -- and the delightfully awful Michael Scott/Holly skit where they inadvertently informed an entire branch that it was being shuttered -- where the closest thing to a cliffhanger was Pam's visit to the ER. Viewers were led to jump to the conclusion that Pam is pregnant, but that's just an inference without overt confirmation.

Contrast the low-keyed Office finale with the over-the-top Private Practice finale, where there was an accidental embryo switch leaving two women pregnant with the other's baby, the ob/gyn for a patient with a high risk pregnancy was caught making eyes at the patient's husband in front of said patient, and a pregnant shrink (who refused to figure out which of her two lovers is the father of her baby) was rendered paralyzed by a shot administered by a patient who plans to cut the therapist's baby out of her belly. This wasn't a series of episodes. These events didn't unfold over a period of weeks. It was in one finale. And it was all too much.

I'm convinced that the ratings pressure is the biggest culprit for the zany finales and the reason why viewers inevitably feel disappointed by the aggressively-promoted season finales, many of which fail to justify the hype because either they're artificially crammed with manufactured drama or because the writers have things happen that they normally wouldn't.

What recent season finales did you like? Which ones let you down?

Image credit: Fox.

'Grey's' Finale: A Mixed Bag of Touching Sweetness and Manipulation

*Warning: Spoilers from the Grey's Anatomy finale*

I wanted to wait a few days before I wrote something about the Grey's Anatomy season five finale because my initial reaction to the last few minutes of it was negative, very negative. Made me feel manipulated. I was ticked off.

Thus I decided to chill for a few days, put a little distance between me and the finale so I could think about it and blog after my shock had worn off. But I remain annoyed, not by the bulk of the two hours, though, which featured wonderful scenes including Paris Gellar and Matt Saracen as inspiring patients, the beautifully complicated Cristina and Owen love story, the blue Post-It Note wedding with the simple yet moving vows ("No running away." "To take care when old, senile, smelly." "This is forever."), the agonizing thought process that went into deciding whether Izzie should have the brain surgery and then her signing the DNR, the reaction of the staff to the notion of George serving in the Army (particularly Arizona's backstory about the importance of Army trauma surgeons). I'm simply annoyed with the conclusion and it's coloring my reaction to the entire finale.

Grey's fans of course knew that Katherine Heigl, who plays Izzie, and T.R. Knight, who plays George O'Malley, have had creative and professional disagreements with the show's execs/producers/writers for some time. Heigl complained that she wasn't given meaty material last season and made noise like she wanted to leave the show. Knight, according to news reports, wanted out of his contract because his character's storylines had all but disappeared. Given all of that, I couldn't help but feel as though the season finale was more about the off-camera antics than the natural, creative flow of the ABC drama.

Yes, I could see it as plausible that Izzie could die from her cancer and her risky surgery. That makes sense, no matter how upsetting it was to see Alex clutching her in his arms as she started coding. But deciding to have George hit by a bus and mangled beyond recognition? While it's true he was heroic ("a hard-core hero" as Meredith said) and that he saved a woman's life in the process, but the symbolism of being hit by a bus seemed like payback to Knight. And to have BOTH Izzie and George code simultaneously, and then feature Izzie in the same prom dress she donned when she was boarding the elevator to visit her fiance Denny who, unbenownst to her, had just died . . . this was all way too much for one finale, for five minutes of TV.

I'm not alone in being unhappy with Grey's final minutes. Here's a sample of different folks' responses to the finale, in which the fate of Izzie Stevens AND George O'Malley were left in limbo (Are they both gone? I'm not convinced.):

New York Magazine's Emma Rosenblum, in a post whose headline called the finale "A Betrayal," wrote:

"T.R. Knight's George . . . got little to no screen time this season until the finale, where he signs up for the Army and is promptly hit by a bus. This plotline really disappoints: [Show Creator] Shonda Rhimes claimed this episode would be true to the characters, but if you're familiar with George's five-season arc, his Army enlistment seems mighty suspect. He had just started his hard-won residency at Seattle Grace after failing his boards the first time around, so why would he leave now? And then he gets hit by a bus. The only believable thing? No one notices George's absence (since he was never around this season). The five minutes from when Meredith finally realizes that the no-faced man is George to when he shows up, ghost-like, in an Army uniform, is certainly not enough time to ready our tear ducts for the final farewell. No weepy goodbyes? No musical montages?"

The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik wrote:

". . . [T]he ending for O'Malley feels excessive to me. There was . . . an expectation that T.R. Knight, the actor who played O'Malley, would be leaving the series as well, but they deftly wrote him out in Thursday's finale by sending him off to Iraq as a military combat trauma surgeon.

Was it surprising when he appeared to be the victim of a fatal traffic accident -- hit by a bus after saving a woman by pushing her out of the way of it? Yes, it was surprising. And while I suspect some will say it was a cleverly done ironic twist and even a comment on the battlefields that America's streets have become, to me it was mostly about shock value.

And while some longtime fans are arguing that there is wiggle room for the two 'dead' to return, I believe that is mostly a matter of denial on the part of those fans. But even if they are right, it is only further of evidence of the ways viewers' feelings are abused by the producers. If either of these two characters show up in any form next year -- even as ghosts -- I am going to wail away for days on this blog about the cheap and low-down way the show exploits its fans."

The web site Double X called what happened a broken contract with the loyal viewers:

". . . George's death was a big ol' eff you to the actor and to the audience. Last night George, who has been noticeably and woefully underused all season, enlisted in the Army as a trauma surgeon, which would have been a perfectly acceptable, if totally lackluster way to send him off. But getting shot at in Iraq was too good a fate for George, who instead became 'roadkill' (as one of his doctors put it) after pushing a stranger out of the way of a bus. His friends only realized it was him underneath all the swollen damage a few seconds before he coded.

George is a character Shonda Rhimes has spent five years making us care about — and she didn't even give him his own death scene. Instead he got a brutal, shocking, expedient death he had to share with the show's real star (Izzie). His violent end wasn't necessary to the plot, the character, or the story. It was just some grizzly afterthought."

However the Los Angeles Times' Mary McNamara said she thinks that the ending is indicative that Grey's Anatomy's future might on the uptick, creatively speaking after what she saw as an underwhelming season:

"All I have to say is: They better both be dead.

Grey's Anatomy limped to its season finale . . . with a two-hour episode that looked very much like one-hour episodes pushed together as we all waited in less than breathless anticipation to see if the endless and increasingly monotonous rumors were true and both T.R. Knight . . . and Katherine Heigl were leaving the show.

. . . For a moment, it seemed Knight would be deprived of even a picturesque death scene -- Izzie collapsed in Alex's arms (causing even the jaded TV critic who saw it coming to sob mildly) but George, of course, had no face. But creator Shonda Rhimes is anything but heartless and so we followed both into the Afterlife, which turns out to be an elevator, where Izzie in her prom dress met George in his dress uniform (which actually he cannot have actually received yet but whatever). The two looked at each other enigmatically and lovingly."

As if you need reminding, below is a clip of the last five minutes that everyone's STILL talking about:



What did you think of the finale? Do you think the touchingly poignant moments outweighed the shock and the uncertainty of the fates of Izzie and George?

Image credit: ABC.