TV is the New Reading

Fall finales range from "pretty good" to "good riddance"

A number of shows took a bow, at least for now. Some won’t be back, some won’t be back until next fall and some, even when they do show up again I won’t be watching, so as far as I’m concerned, I’ve seen the series finale.

Ranking them from best to worst I’ll start out with Tuesday’s 90-minute special “Sons of Anarchy” on FX.

In the wake of a couple of significant revelations, including Jemma’s gang rape by Ethan Zoebelle’s neo-Nazi animals and his temporary employment of the rival Mayan biker gang as gun-runners -- cutting into their sideline operation -- the Sons of Anarchy motorcycle club Redwood Original or SAMCRO was in a difficult situation. Sure, no one had any sympathy for Zoebelle -- played pitch perfectly by Adam Arkin -- or for his rapist minion A.J. Weston played with intensity by Henry Rollins -- but they kept outsmarting the title crew, their white supremacist crew picking Sons of Anarchy members off in prison, getting them jailed for ambushing them at big church gatherings and turning gang members against each other both within the club and between other clubs. Zoebelle just kept poisoning the situation, seeding corruption here and there until the gang was struggling to survive.

When Clay and Jax realized what was going on, they brought the whole gang together at the SAMCRO clubhouse with their families to keep everyone safe. The targeted A.J. and Zoebelle separately, getting A.J.’s racist little kids into state custody, sparking a beautiful ambush outside of town, where SAMCRO was ready for A.J. and his white supremacist crew. There was an epic beatdown and A.J. was hauled into jail.

Meanwhile, other Sons were targeting Zoebelle and his daughter, who was part of the trap they set for Jemma’s gang rape early in the season. They moved Zoebelle’s own narcotics into his cigar shop to pressure him out of their gun-running territory. Between negotiating side deals with rival gangs and threats of violence against Zoebelle’s daughter, the pressure was on. In the end Zoebelle turned himself into the authorities on the drug charge to escape the certain death they’d face at the hands of the Sons.

Meanwhile, Jemma’s after Zoebelle’s daughter in her own pursuit of justice, tracking her to her boyfriend in the Irish Army leg of the gun-running. There’s a standoff in the guy’s house between the Irish guy, the daughter, Jemma and Ally Walker with the ATF. Walker shot the guy, and Jemma shot the daughter. Ally then put all the blame on Jemma, who got away, but not before Irish-guy’s dad hears his son has been shot. Irish dad targets Jemma’s family, including Jax and Jax’s son. He stabs the Prospect who was protecting them, grabs Jax’s son and takes off with him. The season ends with Irish dad in a motorboat with Jax’s infant son and Jax having a breakdown on the shoreline. Jemma’s leaving the county until the ATF charges can be dealt with, and generally, the Sons presented a united front and drove the white supremacists out of Charming, but at enormous cost.

There’s absolutely enough storylines in play for Season Three to get off to a great start. “Sons of Anarchy” returns in the fall of 2010.

'V'

“V” had its fall season finale a week or so ago and it essentially established the Vs as an insidiously manipulative bunch of alien lizards with vastly superior firepower lurking out in space.

The show continues to play on latent fears of our too-trusting nature, a charismatic leader saying pretty words and getting us all blissed out while life-giving flu shots -- shots our government is telling us we all need to get -- are poisoned. POISONED! Meanwhile they’re spying on us. Spying on us ALL. They’re already promising universal health care and they’re seducing our fine young men. I can’t wait to find out how much darker and more insidious the Vs get before they come right out and start eating us all right out in the open right in front of us, but that will have to wait until the series resume in March. Oh well. For me it’s only a television program. For fans of Glenn Beck it’s more of a documentary.

'Monk'

Anyway, moving from histrionic to just bad, if the “Monk” series finale hadn’t been the series finale I might have been done with it anyway. I know, I know, I’ve been tolerating this show for years -- mostly because I love the title character as presented by Tony Shalhoub, enjoying some of the storylines and mysteries but really disliking a lot of the writing.

While the mysteries have been reasonably OK this season, the writing on this show, as I’ve said, has always been hit and miss. This two-part series finale should’ve been one part, focused like a laser on the Trudy mystery -- the car bomb attack that destroyed Monk’s wife.

Which again, they should’ve had some consistent idea about throughout the series. As they were writing the pilot episode, these morons should have sketched in all the salient details about that attack. It was so obvious that it was all tossed together at the last possible second by a couple of hack writers. It failed to account for revelations made throughout the series (for instance, Trudy could never have survived long enough to say “Bread and butter” to Adrian following the explosion we witnessed) and anyway, her last words would’ve been “Look in the box!” That box, the gift Adrian kept from Trudy that he never unwrapped, he finally did unwrap it and it was a videotape with an extended exposition about a daughter Trudy had carried to term years before she met Monk, a daughter who was the product of a sex affair with a law professor who became a judge.

So in two episodes, Monk reopens an old case of a missing midwife -- impossible, since Trudy is the only murder he’s never been able to solve -- is targeted by The Judge, who murdered the midwife and buried her in his yard and the reason Monk knew where was because she was under a decorative sundial and who would put a sundial in the shade? Someone with a gas line to mask or persistent crab grass or any number of reasons I mean turn it around -- who puts a sundial in the sun intending to use it to tell time it’s 2009 for Pete’s sake!

The assassain puts poison in his wipes, and Monk is close to death and no one can figure out how the poison’s been introduced. But the Judge knows because Monk drops a wipe and the Judge avoids touching it (which, yes, knowledge that it’s been poisoned is the only reason someone would avoid touching someone else’s wipe). But really, the dead body of the missing midwife who’d “found God” and was going to tell about the judge’s affair, that’s much more incriminating anyway. Really, on reflection, he should’ve buried her more than two feet down.

Monk is saved and in quick succession tracks down Trudy’s daughter, a movie reviewer, who as it turns out would love to meet him. He plans to retire but in the end decides to help Stottlemeyer with a new case. And so it goes. Disher’s moved to New Jersey to be a police captain and date Sharona, and for some reason Monk still needs his assistant, Natalie, although he was able to take two weeks off from seeing his psychiatrist and in fact seems less debilitated by, y’know, life, but hey, so long as we can have a farewell montage by Randy Newman, that was my favorite part. The ending. In that it ended. I mean God love him, the show is a cute little diversion but so much of it is filler and putting Monk in crazy situations just for the sake of it, and yeah, I wouldn’t have needed a lot more of that.

'White Collar'

And if USA’s “Monk” was about 20 minutes of filler for every 25 minutes of story, USA’s “White Collar” was filler beginning to end. There was no part of this production that scratched the surface of any character or remotely conveyed any sense of urgency. You had “criminal mastermind and forger extraordiare” Neal Caffrey wandering around with great hair, and then the hapless handler, FBI white collar crime division Peter Burke who Caffrey would trick and smirk and evade whenever he felt like it and it’s like screw it, back in your cell.

Aside from maybe the pilot episode, they never had any really compelling cases to bring him in on. There was nothing Neal could actually do except if Burke needed something done under the table, he could send in Neal and then he himself wouldn’t get in any trouble. Burke’s wife’s reaction to Neal was bizarre. She was alternately amused by him, a new soulmate for him, angry with him, whatever the script called for, and basically it’s like the three years Burke spent tracking this guy that put some stress on the marriage, she’s pretty much indulgent about that. Oh, Neal, you irrepressible cad. Whose economy will you destabilize next?

They tried to build the fall finale to a major plot twist by revealing that Burke has been working with Kate -- Neal’s vanished girlfriend, who Neal has been tracking ever since Burke sprung him from prison, and now we’ve got to wonder about Kate’s motives in all of this chasing around (apparently someone had seen her in California and now she’s back in New York) and is Burke really controlling Kate to control Caffrey and how does Caffrey’s little friend not know about this and why is everyone being so deliberately obfuscatory and oh yeah, I NEVER CARED ABOUT KATE!!

Kate's character has received zero development and anyway in half a dozen episodes I’ve never gotten any indication that any of these people are even tolerably clever. The last case hinged on a jewel heist and a flickering light in an oh-so-stylish vault that revealed a “hidden passage” that here’s where you’re going to fall over backwards in surprise, no one knew about! This led directly to a street-level exit, so theoretically anyone could’ve just wandered in from outside and stole the jewels, plus there’s a camera out there monitoring … nothing. So they run the tape back and it reveals HA HA! The forger they’d talked to earlier when they had no proof of anything (beyond Neal "recognizing his work") and they had to leave empty-handed.

Whatever. “White Collar” may someday return with new episodes, but I for one am entirely uninterested in them.

Coming up

All is not lost, and indeed there are some significantly brighter days ahead.

This week sees SyFy’s Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass reboot “Alice” starring Caterina Scorsone in miniseries form Sunday and Monday and then both together next weekend.

There’s Christmas-run series resume of “The Closer” starting at 9/8c Monday on TNT, leading in the series premiere of the Ray Romano project “Men of a Certain Age,” about which I’ve heard almost nothing, so that’s on at 10/9c on TNT.

Tuesday sees the second-season premiere of “Better off Ted” at 9:30/8:30c following an all-new “Scrubs,” and if that weren’t enough, we’ve got superspy reboot of “Chuck,” on NBC and cable productions “Psych,” “Damages” and “Burn Notice” all slated to return in January.

So it’s sort of like taking a box of old clothes you’ve grown tired of and don’t want anymore to Goodwill, and replacing them with armloads of shiny, new good clothes that you love on your way home.

And I for one am looking forward to it.

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labRatt

12-11-09 11:50 PM »Report Abuse

Did you miss out on the laughs and quirkiness that makes Monk, Monk? There were several lol sections, my favorite being Adrian's attempt to talk the doctor into letting him die first and skip the vomitting! Monk is something that my family shares. My cousin cried when Adrian met Molly. Monk has at least one quirk that I share with him, that quality makes him endearing to many viewers. I was happy that the ending of Monk didn't turn out to be a dream. I'm not looking at the writing of the show, I'm enjoying the entertainment value. So, I take it that the Monk bobblehead isn't on your Christmas list? I've already got mine on display!

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