Closing out the summer seasons

Between waking up to freezing temperatures and scratchy throats, it must officially be fall and therefore it’s time to clear out those summer finales.

True Blood

It aired last weekend but I finally caught the fourth season finale of “True Blood” this weekend and I’ve got to say that was … kind of a letdown.

I mean, after the standoff at the Moon Goddess Emporium with the sun-infused force field and the magic flying around -- and one trip to his homestead and Lafayette's boyfriend Jesus is now a superpowered witch who can pull Antonia's spirit out of Marnie but then can’t pull Marnie's spirit out of Lafayette?

I’m calling shenanigans on that, and the fact that Lafayette is a medium who gets forcibly hijacked by not one but two different spirits. I know NBC and then CBS had Patricia Arquette as the medium overtaken occasionally by this that and t’other, but she was a medium. Lafayette was a semi-observant witch’s boyfriend.

And talk about tragic. Sookie forsakes the two great undead loves of her life and she’s free to pursue Alcide – after all, he’d rebuked the double-dealing Debbie – until she arrived at Sookie’s home with a shotgun and blew the back off of Tara’s head! Oh Jesus, hadn’t that woman earned some happiness? Couldn’t she just be with her kickboxing girlfriend in New Orleans and stay clear of Bon Temps for good? Instead her mom goes absolutely crazy, her boyfriend gets killed, she’s kidnapped for a vampire bride, and after a year of probably the happiest she’s ever been in her life she’s unceremoniously murdered saving her best friend’s life.

Death was too good for Debbie. Sookie should’ve shot her in the knee so she couldn’t get too far and then had her arrested. I was interested in how they left Jason Stackhouse, with that sired anti-vampire wackadoo Children of the Sun priest outside his house -- he hadn’t invited him in, after all -- and his continuing relationship with Jessica. Well, he’d already taken the beatdown from Hoyt, he may as well enjoy the benefits.

Now Sookie has killed Debbie and Arlene has faced down the ghost of her psychopath boyfriend and baby daddy, we’re left with Sheriff Andy and his pursuit of waitress Holly as the one vaguely normal relationship in Bon Temps -- if you don’t count shifters Sam and Luna.

This season felt unfocused, which happens when all the main characters are stuck in B-plots. Sookie, Bill and Eric were trapped in that whole post-Edgerton anti-vampire movement thing and the Tolerance Festival, and I’ve never read the books but the show doesn’t seem to know what it means to be Vampire King, and there’s no especially compelling reason that Bill would be it. Main character Jason has been stuck being raped by inbred meth-head hicks in Hotshot to make him a werepanther of all things -- and let me just say that if those backwater hayseeds were to transform into panthers they would not be the sleek, beautiful panthers we saw. They’d have bald patches and mange and missing teeth. Sam’s dating the ex-wife of the local pack leader. And of course there’s a trash baby.

Meanwhile, the A plotline for the season is being pursued by Lafayette, his boyfriend Jesus and this we-never-met-her-before-this-season Marnie witch person, possessed by the 400-year-old ghost of Antonia to necromance the vampires, meaning all the vampires had to just … hide. Not especially interesting. The resolve on it was sort of interesting with Sookie’s grandmother making a return appearance from the dead, but beyond that, no, you don’t put Lafayette as the main character in charge of the A plot. We’re all tuning in to see Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer and Alexander Skarsgard, and while I’m certain he has a following, don’t pretend Nelsan Ellis is the same kind of draw.

That said, the new season can never come fast enough and here’s hoping that Sookie and Alcide manage to have quite a lot of onscreen time and happiness together.

Royal Pains

I managed to clear out my stash of “Royal Pains” episodes and I was paying attention but I wasn’t clear about how they resolved people taking this opportunity to murder Boris now that he’s got an heir, and by poisoning his swimming pool of all things. Also, Divya having to change back and forth, in and out of her uniform while in the hospital seemed ridiculous, but thinking about it, she rarely gets to be the comic storyline. She’s always sort of the straight man for all of Evan’s nonsense, and since they’ve been taking his storylines in a more buttoned-down path, I guess the wackiness needed to come out somewhere.

Unfortunately they closed the summer finale on something of a downer. Divya, overtired from working two jobs with HankMed and the hospital, made a significant error prescribing an oral steriod which may have seriously compromised a patient’s health and possibly his life.

Still, it was fun seeing Madeline Zima play a nanny in one of them – she was the youngest daughter in the ‘90s sitcom “The Nanny.” And holding with the guest stars from sitcoms we also had Wilmer Valderrama, who was Fez in “That ‘70s Show.”

“Royal Pains” will resume with a winter season in January.

Burn Notice

Burned spy Michael Westen is stuck again.

After a year working with the CIA as a reinstated spy, he discovers that he has in fact been in this sort of spy purgatory, working just outside the bureaucracy for a shadow agency operated by this sort of shadowy figure played by Jere Burns who among other things was Jesse Pinkman’s group leader on “Breaking Bad.”

On “Burn Notice” he’s a sort of low-key psychiatrist who seems to be calling the shots for this shadow agency, including roping in recurring nemesis Larry Sizemore so as to get close enough to Michael while avoiding direct attention. By the end he seems to be calling all the shots, ordering Michael around and Michael finds he can’t get at him directly, even while talking to him face to face.

This specific leverage confused me but I’m sure it will all make perfect sense in the season resume this winter. For right now, it’s convenient for Burns as this Dr. Fullerton person to have a burned operative in Miami for various countermeasures and covert operations off the agency’s docket and that’s apparently what Michael’s been all this time. Although in theory he’s finally found the man who’s calling all the shots directly. I still say he should’ve gotten in a car five years ago, driven to Langley and demanded some answers.

Oh well. After Richard Schiff, after that Carla person, after that escaped prisoner from the plane, after Management, after Vaughn, after that used car salesman Tyler Brennan and now all these CIA shadow people, there could still be several more shadow agents, a couple of corrupt CEOs and a convent full of Carmelite nuns messing with Michael’s destiny. Maybe his mom is one of them. Maybe he’s been working for her all along. Who knows? At this point I’m just enjoying the ride.

Necessary Roughness

Sticking with USA, Callie Thorne’s brilliant freshman season of “Necessary Roughness” closed out at the playoffs. New York Hawks wide receiver T.K was thrown by the Minefield, an opposing player who’d gotten right in his head and he couldn’t shake him. T.K. was actually experiencing hallucinations which spoke to the intense pressure he was under. Naturally Dr. Dani was able to make it all better -- not 100 percent clear on how that happened this time -- but she did, and the day was saved.

And she and Riley -- oh, I mean Matthew, sorry, athletic trainer Matthew Donnally played by Marc Blucas -- are finally together! Oh, it’s so nice when two gorgeous available people who are perfect for one another can overcome absolutely nothing and get together like that. And there was a nice complicated resolve on that team owner’s wife having an affair with Nico.

Mostly I think the show works as well as it does because I completely buy Callie Thorne as a Long Island therapist. Which speaks to her range as an actress because I completely bought her as a pot-stirring homewrecker in “Rescue Me.” I’m happy she found such a great role post “Rescue Me,” and I wish her all the very best for seasons to come.

Suits

As for USA’s “Suits,” that ended with a Class 5 shockwave.

No, Mike didn’t finally go to law school and pass the bar exam and thus stop exposing everyone at Pearson Hardman to a massive fraud investigation. Instead, his friend, Trevor, learned that Jenny, Trevor’s ex-girlfriend, was now seeing Mike. So Trevor, who hadn’t known up until now what Mike was up to, decides to go to Mike’s law firm and tell them that Mike isn’t a lawyer.

On one level, oh noes! On quite another level, why on earth would they take the word of a drug abusing criminal over a simple scan of the Harvard alumni files, where a hacker established his credentials for him earlier this season.

Although, and I’m going to have to really insist on this, Mike needs to spend a week immersing himself in student life. Associate Louis Litt has come at him from so many different “soft Harvard” directions -- school fight song, where do you get square pizzas (which everyone would absolutely have known so why even ask it?), questions about faculty and so forth.

Mike with his big eidetic brain that can memorize and reproduce a page full of numbers after simply glancing at it should be able to figure out hey, if Harvard is this significant a part of the corporate culture here, I should maybe have some firsthand knowledge of it.

Archer

Now that the summer finales are out of the way I’d like to turn my attention to a couple of premieres.

First, “Archer” is back very briefly on FX. The animated spy series returned for its third season with a triptych, opening with Patrick Warburton as big tough extraction agent Rip Riley tasked with locating ISIS agent Sterling Archer, missing since a rival ODIN agent murdered his fiancee.

International superspy Archer is found slinging drinks at a bar in the Caribbean. He’s saved! But he and Rip’s plane goes down when Sterling mistakenly overpowers him, thinking he’s being kidnapped. They are recovered by pirates and by the end of the episode, Sterling has become the Pirate King.

It makes as much sense as anything else that happens in that show, but it was fun to see it return. New episodes air Thursdays at 10:30/9:30c on FX.

The Secret Circle

Finally, a comment on the CW’s supernatural teen drama “The Secret Circle,” about teens who look at things and set them on fire. We meet Cassie and are introduced to her tragic life as her mother is murdered in a flamboyantly magical way by, we assume, her estranged father.

Both are full-blood witches and Cassie is herself, and so we must assume is Cassie’s grandmother. Cassie moves in with her grandmother finds she’s got a creepy peeper next door who can open her curtains with his mind. Apparently. And the resident mean girls play with her locker combination and set her car on fire, trapping her inside so she needs to use magic to put it out.

But Cassie doesn’t use magic. Her mom “didn’t want this life for her,” so she never told her about how she’s, y’know, a witch.

Setting aside for the moment that whether you’re a witch or not is a matter of practice and belief, not bloodlines, Cassie’s such a powerful presence that she makes everyone’s magic go flooey. Even though she can’t make a drop of water float on her own, if she touches the hand of a cute boy witch, together they can make all the drops of water in the forest float.

My heavens, anyone can be a witch with cheap computer graphics.

And the mean girl summons a storm. Because she feels like it. And she can’t make it stop, even after lightning strikes her friend. Why did she want a storm in the first place? She’s just that chaotic.

But my favorite part of this whole thing was when the Circle is assembled in their little clubhouse and Cassie who just by walking in should by all medical logic have made the building explode, she’s so powerful is told that they’re a secret society of witches, of family bloodlines tracing back to the 17th century. “Don’t tell our parents!”

Oh please, you kids today, you think you’re the first ones to make water float.

So its the usual CW teenage drama with improbably beautiful teens, this time with superpowers, but frankly I’ve got no patience for this kind of nonsense. “The Secret Circle” airs Thursdays at 9/8c on the CW.