Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Finales Disorient and Disappoint

Last night's House season finale was rather underwhelming, much like the majority of Season 3. By the end of the episode, all three of the House-ettes had either resigned or been fired for reasons that remain underdeveloped, and the Patient of the Week's illness was quickly resolved with little explanation or mystery. A heart defect? That's it? Remember when this show used to have House doing autopsies on living children and unearthing shocking affairs via diagnoses of African sleeping sickness?

There's little suspense surrounding the fate of Cameron, Chase, and Foreman, considering that the actors who play them have not quit the show. The only tension is around how the writers will contrive to bring them back to the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital at the start of season 4. Let's hope that come Septemberish, House will return to form with shocking, provocative cases, a little more heat (House and Cuddy, anyone?), and fewer plot arcs featuring men as hell-bent on destroying Dr. Greg as cartoon villains.

Lost's finale already has been much-discussed across the blogscape (I prefer this term to blogosphere) so I will just say this: now that's how a show maintains fan interest during the off-season. I have no idea how showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof plan to continue the show, given the shocking nature of the finale's few minutes. Any commenters care to weigh in with their predictions?

Finally, take a gander at David Remnick's take on the end of The Sopranos. He says it better than I could, which is one of many reasons why I am not running The New Yorker.

4 comments:

Mark said...

I suspect you'll see a convergence of of two story threads. An "A" storyline as events unfold on the island and perhaps later in the series run off the island, and a "B" storyline (the flash forwards) as the characters from the future try to change the consequences of past events in the "A" timeline.

I've got a feeling it's going to get a lot more confusing than it already is before they wrap up the series.

Alanna said...

That makes a lot of sense, Mark. It seems as though the show HAS to do something like that, based on how they structured the finale. But that's certainly not the easiest way to tell a story! Time travel has always been really hard for me to wrap my head around, and I suspect a lot of people will be very, very confused by such a move.

Mark said...

I'd agree as well - I think it's going to be doubly confusing given the length of Seasons 1-3. As much as I love Lost, I don't know how easy it will be to keep track of all the balls they have in the air - flashbacks as well as the events that occured on the island prior to the start of the fourth season.

If fans of The Sopranos are still frustrated by the lack of narrative closure with Russian that Paulie and Christopher encountered can you imagine how frustrated Lost fans are going to feel by the end of it all?

Alanna said...

At this point, Lost will have to pull off a series finale unparalleled in greatness if they want to satisfy the fans.