Television

CBS has revamped their Sunday schedule, dropping their weekly movie and replacing it with three Jerry Bruckheimer series: AMAZING RACE, COLD CASE and WITHOUT A TRACE. Bruckheimer owns Sunday, which may be the first time a single producer has owned a night of network programming since Aaron Spelling owned ABC’s Saturday with TJ HOOKER, THE LOVE BOAT, FANTASY ISLAND and later with THE LOVE BOAT, FANTASY ISLAND  and FINDERS OF LOST LOVES (though Norman Lear came close with ARCHIE BUNKER’S PLACE, GLORIA, JEFFERSONS, and ONE DAY AT A TIME on CBS Sundays…the last hour going to TRAPPER JOHN MD).

….is one of the reasons why God invented the "fast forward" button. What a snooze. It’s sad to see a once-great series end so badly (bad move airing the pilot first, it only illustrated how far the show has fallen).  But TV Critic Alan Sepinwall got all choked up and so did Bob Sassone over at TV Squad, who went one step further describing the episode’s obvious and maudlin final scene:

Could you have wished for a more orgasmically satisfying ending? Beautiful.

Mark Evanier links to two TV critics and their lists of the Top Five Series finales of all time.  For me, the best would include MARY TYLER MOORE, STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, NEWHART, THE FUGITIVE,  LARRY SANDERS,  M*A*S*H, THE PAPER CHASE and CHEERS.

My list of the worst finales would include SEINFELD, MAGNUM PI, MIAMI VICE,  FRIENDS, ST. ELSEWHERE, QUANTUM LEAP, NYPD BLUE and the two that MAGNUM PI had (the original,  which ended with Magnum getting killed… and the second,  after they talked Selleck into doing one more season, which  ended with Magnum getting married).

I’m a big TV geek, and a sucker for finales, but I’m not sure they are a good idea. Sure, you get a ratings pop, and they give audiences a chance to say goodbye to characters they love.  But I think one reason the majority of "final episodes" are mediocre at best is because most TV series, by their very nature, are intentionally conceived to be open-ended and run forever. How do you conclude something that was never designed to be concluded?

It’s one thing for Dr. Richard Kimble to finally be proved innocent, or for the castaways on LOST to finally discover what-the-hell-is-going-on. THE FUGITIVE and LOST are series built on ongoing quests for absolution and answers.  But do we really need to tie things up for private eyes, doctors, and homicide cops who we watch because we enjoy seeing them do their jobs?

In many ways, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND had the best finale of all — just another great episode.

THE WEST WING seems to be going out with a snore rather than a bang. The second-to-last-episode, which aired Sunday night, was a total snooze. I expected much more of a build-up to the series finale. Instead, this once-great show has just sort of petered out over the last few episodes. It’s sad.

Maybe that’s because a lot of John Wells’ best writers are now working on THE UNIT, my new guilty pleasure. It’s invigorating,  action-adventure silliness, and I’m loving every minute of it. The show is like nothing else on television… except perhaps DEADWOOD, in that it’s one of the few series today where the characters, as a group, have a unique voice, a distinct way of speaking (in this case, you could call it Mamet-speak). It’s the best show CBS has put on the air since the original C.S.I.

Speaking of DEADWOOD, I can’t wait until the third season premiere next month…I think I’ve come to enjoy it even more than THE SOPRANOS (Is it just me, or has THE SOPRANOS become more of a comedy this season than ever before?)

THIEF hasn’t been canceled yet, but judging by the way star Andre Braugher and everyone involved with the show is already mourning its passing today in the LA Times, the ax will be falling soon.

As soon as he glimpsed the ratings for the second episode early last
month, "I entered the grieving process," Braugher said by phone last
week.

Despite huge promotion, only 2.5 million viewers showed up for the premiere — we’re talking STRONG MEDICINE numbers — and barely half of those viewers showed up for episode two.

What happened? Braugher and others close to the show have their own
speculations. (Was there not enough action? Were Nick’s problems with
Chinese mobsters adequately explained? Were viewers turned off by
Nick’s ambivalent morality?)

[…]"Essentially, [viewers] didn’t like it," Braugher theorized. "The
audience saw something on pilot night that let them know they didn’t
want to come back."

Count me among them. I’ve only seen two episodes — and although I’ve recorded the others, I haven’t had any desire to catch them yet. If I don’t hurry, my Tivo is going to eat them soon.

There’s no question that Braugher is a compelling performer, but the serialized storyline is so ridiculously over-the-top that everyone comes across as annoyingly intense cartoon characters.  But what probably hurt the show the most was its complete lack of humor. A few laughs, or simply a smile or two, would have helped humanize the characters and make some of the more ridiculous plot moves easier to accept. One of the things that makes THE SOPRANOS so appealing is that it’s both a violent drama and a laugh-out-loud comedy. The same is true of NIP/TUCK.

The bottom line was that THIEF just wasn’t any fun. The same could be said of Braugher. I admire his intensity but it gets tiring and monotonous after awhile.  At least on HOMICIDE his humorlessness was off-set by an ensemble cast of eccentric characters (the rest of the characters in THIEF either blend into the scenery or are totally unsympathetic).  Braugher’s character  wasn’t someone you wanted to invite into your home every week. Or even spend an hour with.

Tony Soprano and Dr. Christian Troy may be sociopaths, but at least they are entertaining ones.