Endings and beginnings

Well, I first planned to write something about the season finales of pretty much every show I follow more than casually--Veronica Mars, Grey's Anatomy, House, Alias, The West Wing, the whole schmear. As is all too apparent below, I only managed to cover Gilmore girls and Lost. The damn things just kept coming and coming and there was no way in hell I could keep up with them. Plan B was an umbrella post about the nature of season finales, in which I'd hit on everything briefly. That kept getting put off, but then I found myself feeling motivated after revisiting a finale from well before the big crush--Battlestar Galactica's "Lay Down Your Burdens Part II", which I was lucky enough to see in high def on a huge screen at the Museum of TV & Radio tonight, followed by a panel with Jamie Bamber, Mary McDonnell, Edward James Olmos, Ron Moore and David Eick (oh yeah, there was a promo for the coming season too--roll on, October!). BSG's finale was drastically different from those on the networks (not that all the network finales were the same--that's the whole point of this post), but in many ways it was a sort of ur-finale that combined (and anticipated, I suppose) the strategies that a jillion other shows used to round out the season. Gather 'round then, kids, and I'll sketch out Professor Johnston's breakdown of what it's all about...

So anyway, it's like this--the four interdependent functions of a season finale are:

1. Providing closure
2. Rewarding the fans
3. Moving the show forward
4. Making damn sure people come back for more

I'd submit that this year's most satisfying finales (24, Grey's Anatomy, Veronica Mars) were the ones that stressed elements 1 and 2 and let 3 and 4 sort of happen organically. Lost was mostly about 3 and 4, of course, and it worked better than it could have (though it still could have been better than that). BSG hit all four, but in the end was probably most about 3.

It's not like I think there are a lot of people reading this, but if there were, I'd expect to get challenged on my assertion that #2 makes for the best and most satisfying season-enders. By "rewarding the fans" I don't mean "fellating the fans" or Mary Sue-ism. Here's what I'm talking 'bout: If a show is gonna be off the air for a few months, the most effective way to make sure viewers come back for more is not to leave them hanging but to remind them why they love the show. It's about serving up an episode that embodies everything the show does best (and I think a lot of people in the industry know what I'm talking about, because of how finales are almost always written by the series creator and showrunner, the person who knows the characters better than anybody). On this count, the year's best finale may very well have been the two-night, three-hour Grey's Anatomy lollapalooza. You had your almost ludicrously melodramatic medical crises that were made semiplausible by how much the characters had at stake in them, you had your David E. Kelleyesque wackiness that was made acceptable by how it ultimately connected to the larget plot, and (I already covered this in the Gilmore girls post to an extent) you had your characters really acting like themselves. I'm talking about George getting grilled by the Chief, Kerev sayig he had nothing to do with the Danny situation, Izzy's 180 on the proposal after Denny's initial recovery (followed by another 180 after his big monologue)--all examples of the characters acting the way we'd predict they'd act in these situations, the same way you'd predict how an old buddy would react if x or y happened to them.

One might say that this sort of thing is antithetical to moving the show forward, but I don't necessarily think so. The House finale had our guy reacting natually and consistently to everything that happened, but the big reveal let the show move forward by actually teaching him something about why he loves to be miserable. And BSG's year-ender gave the show a whole new fundamental premise, pretty much, yet served up moment after moment that reminded us why we like these characters and got invested in them in the first place (to be sure, some--Lee and Sharon in particular--got short-shrifted, but it a simultaneously emblematic and transformative episode for the show's most compelling character, our boy Gaius Baltar).

This is starting to read more like some sort of deranged Syd Field manual than it is a critical piece, and I haven't even gotten to Veronica Mars and 24 and how their season-enders fit into the series as a whole, which is a point I want to hit on. If I don't get too consumed by work and/or World of Warcraft and/or trying to make sense out of various aspects of my personal life, I'll try to follow up shortly with an all-24 post. And maybe (take this as a threat if you like) something similar to the above hitting on pilots, now that I've had the opportunity to sink my teeth into a bunch (and holy fracking crap, I expected Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip to be good, but I had no idea it would be so gobsmackingly unbelievably good...