really great! Thanks for posting!!!

Ah yes the Angel finale -- I wanted to throw a shoe at the TV when that happened! LOL The Best Cliffhanger Ending Ever! But that final shot is how I like to think of the characters - standing up to evil. And I've found that watching a series as a whole is an interesting experience. I'm a huge Friends fan (don't throw things at me) and finally decided to watch the entire thing in a month long marathon viewing. It really held up even though I know the writers didn't intend for it to be viewed that way. I also watched about 99% of Battlestar Galactica that way and without giving anything away (Roland is watching it and only at the start of the third season) I feel that it not only holds up upon watching it all together but after finishing it I couldn't imagine watching it any other way. I wouldn't read a chapter a week for four years of a novel and there are just some shows that ought to be looked at as though they are novels. BSG is one of those and so is LOST. I will say that I had low expectations (that's putting it mildly) for the LOST finale given that I was seeing the answers revealed and they were pretty blah so I was fretting the quality of the finale. But I have to eat my words and admit that Darlton pulled it out of the bag and delivered one of the most emotional evenings of television I've ever had the pleasure to watch. The action stuff seemed thrown in to placate the network and it was serviceable but I've seen better and on this show - but LOST never does this kind of sci-fi racing against the clock well; I'm reminded of the episode a couple years back when Charlotte and Faraday were trying to stop the gas from being released on the island. Don't remember it? Theres a reason.. it was instantly forgettable. I liked Paulo and Nikki's stuff (I know, I'm the only one) but the countdown to gas chamber explosion episode really blew. Looks like I will have to stuff down my Chiklis-aversion and try to watch some of The Shield since so many folks have been recommending it!

I dimly remember seeing The Prisoner's finale but it didn't make as much of an impression. I would love to rent the whole thing and see if Ro and I could get into it. Maybe it's an Extra Criticum 'mass viewing' project like we did with After Hours? I've been told that The Shield is a great series but Michael Chiklis is one of those actors that get under my skin in a bad way .. he doesn't have to do anything, he just annoys me for some reason. I'd heard about the 6 Feet Under closing minutes.. didn't watch much of the show but wouldn't mind searching for those final few minutes. I've been meaning to see The Wire as well. And yes, the companion piece to this is "What Is the Worst TV Finale You've Seen?" and the Will and Grace with it's stupid time trippy story, Jack and Karen basically pushing Leslie Jordan out a window, Will and Grace not talking to each other for 18 years and then their kids meet and fall in love in college.. just too convoluted and silly to cram into the time they gave it. The show started out so well. Dumb idea to fast forward like that too.. makes any follow up project unworkable (although perhaps that was the point). But the implication being that these two characters have to be estranged in order to lead happy lives is kind of deranged. Another bad one - the X Files finale... sixty minutes of Gillian Anderson as Exposition Fairy trying to make sense of the nine (?) seasons the show ran.... insulting to long time viewers (and, nonsensical since Chris Carter has gone on record saying that he had no backstory for the mythology he was spinning and so there wasn't actually a 'solution'... note to Darlton: do not EVER say that even if it's true!")

Well, when I read last week that Team Darlton was crowing that they secretly constructed new sets and shot stuff featuring people we've never heard of before and that fans would finish the final episode saying "what the fuck?", I totally gave up hope that there was any resolution going to be offered.. Instead yes I think it'll just get weirder (like the episode of Dallas leading up to the infamous Bobby in the shower scene) and then the camera will pull back and reveal that the show we've been watching is a reality show for beings on another planet. Not a spoiler but it would certainly make everything we've seen make 'sense' (although I may be hoping for too much here). What I don't want to find out is that Darlton had no plan at all from the get go.... it did not do Chris Carter any favors when he revealed that he just made stuff up on X Files without any kind of plan (and didn't care to resolve it). Darlton need to really just keep that to themselves. Grumble. I guess I was ruined by the original Star Wars trilogy where stories were teased ("no, there is another") and then resolved satisfactorily.

Good thoughts.. at the beginning of the season the executive producer of the show, JJ Abrams, went on the promo circuit and pushed the idea that, as a kid, he was more interested in the unopened box than what was actually inside it. I think this is relevant in that it absolves the show from having to answer a bunch of stories that were introduced and dropped over the years (the list is way too long to go into here). But you make a great point which supports Abrams - in that these characters are finding out WHO they are and the WHY of the things that happen are, I suppose, less important. However, for a major network show to end a series with a few million unsatisfied fans is a big gamble I think. My prediction is that they'll let the fans do the heavy lifting figuring out the solutions to the various mysteries ... I find that a little cheap (the answers should be in show not in some fan forum online) but it is, I think, what we're going to get. I dread the day that I see an old ep on tv or dig out the dvd season sets and tick off all the things that got launched and never landed. (Where DID that Dharma food drop come from? I mean, that's a pretty major plot point as it kept the Losties alive).

Great post Ro... the manager of the venue was not just surly but condescending and snide. It did not put me or our friends in a good mood, certainly not the kind of mood one wants to be in to spend three hours in a venue that relies upon customers to buy drinks and food (I was shocked that in three hours the waitress took our drink order exactly twice.. that's a lot of missed opportunities for alcohol sales).

Well, I guess we all hope that we can have both a quality experience AND quantitatively count how much money we've made... but if I have to choose, I would easily go for quality of experience (not that the other choice isn't incredibly tempting). This is probably why I love you so much Rolando, because we value the same thing - and thankfully we are finding others who value that too! :)

Great comments everyone... I wish I could enjoy Gervais the way the rest of you do.. I'm just not feeling him. His humor sort of hits me like Ellen's did on the first two/three seasons of her sitcom - there's sort of something there but the shuffling and hemming and hawing doesn't make me laugh, it just grates. I get the joke, it's just that I don't find it funny. On the other hand, he did get a couple good licks in and I thought his promotion of the Office was amusing... but nothing really all that memorable. However, having said that, if I was going to add a thirteenth memorable point, it was Steve Carrell miming "I'll break you" to Gervais after he made some anti Office crack... which I'm stealing next time I get a chance. :)