TV is the New Reading

Vaya con dios, cable finales

In this week’s topic, vaya con dios, finales, closing out with a brief comment about Tim Burton’s brilliant feature film “Alice in Wonderland.”

Men of a Certain Age

First, however, I forgot to talk last week about the season finale of TNT’s “Men of a Certain Age” featuring Ray Romano, Andre Braugher and Scott Bakula. It was OK. I mean, the show itself was pretty low key, adventurewise, running the same night as “24,” “Heroes” heck, even “Chuck.” Over the course of the show Ray’s character, Joe, gained a better rapport with his anxiety-attack-prone son and the tiniest bit of rapport with his teenage daughter -- or, more to the point, the guys she was dating. He forced himself to confront his gambling addiction once his bookie casually strolled into his home and his son saw him. And he decided to pursue a lapsed dream as a professional golfer. That’s not too bad in terms of a year in the life.

Meanwhile, the life of Scott Bakula’s character, Terry, kicked the crap out of him. He’d been a single former actor phone-it-in cube dweller who had maybe one last shot as a professional actor, taking on some beachcomber type character in a friend’s film as well as a ton of extra videography work he got praise for but who knows if he got paid for it? His absence during the film nearly got him fired from his apartment manager gig, and not getting a firm offer from his film-maker friend about any future projects. He realized he was getting jerked around by the film people and that he hated managing the apartment complex, so he took on a sales position at Owen’s used car lot, a post where his former actor talents for being “professionally charming” could come in handy.

Braugher’s character Owen was perhaps the most successful over the course of the season. After his dad kept him low guy on the totem pole, grooming some kid for management in Owen’s place, Owen struck out and took his salesman skills to another dealership where he was selling at least a car a day. The owner couldn’t be happier with him. But despite his numbers he did have to start at the bottom. Owen’s dad hired him back at his dealership as manager. It was more important for him that Owen, his son, be in charge. That was a wonderful triumph for Owen, because he’d been putting in the hard work and been so consistently overlooked for so long.

So everyone’s characters were pretty dynamic, or at least their situations were, and we’re in an interesting place heading into a new season.

Burn Notice

As for the series finale of “Nip/Tuck” on FX and the third season finale of “Burn Notice” on USA, I was a little disappointed. First, on “Burn Notice,” you don’t need to be a superspy to know when you’re flying into a trap. And you can’t count on the apprehension of someone’s mom to be leverage -- heck, Michael might’ve been happier to keep her out of the equation. The problem I had was this military prisoner from a supermax who engineers his own escape with the most precarious of plans and turns out to be a key contact for Michael.

I have nothing against show creator Matt Nix or coincidences per se, but for someone who has demonstrated the keen awareness of the importance of a small team of friends in getting absolutely everything Michael does done, he seems to forget that there are huge teams of people working all the time to ensure national security as well. People whose task it is to collect and relay information. These people are aware of exactly where they left Michael and are also aware of nearly everything Sam does.

So it shouldn’t all come down to a mysterious criminal on a plane -- which it shouldn’t even have been entirely possible for the crew to know where all they’d be going let alone the criminal himself -- who, as it turns out was a spy! Like Michael! And they attributed all his crimes to Michael so Michael would be burned. Because that should be possible.

Anyway, it should all come down to the problem of making Michael a private citizen and putting him in a deep sleeper operation. And then someone really needs to figure out what the heck he’s doing. I guess we’ll return to that next season.

Nip/Tuck

And Matt?! Over on Nip/Tuck Christian and Sean’s twisted son Matt offered his daughter, Jemma, to Ava in order for him to stay with her. Why he’d imagine Ava would do anything other than steal the child and run off -- she’s done it at least once before -- is quite short-sighted. But it’s the end of an era and time to wrap everything up, one last fake forced family dinner with Sean and Annie and Conor and Julia and Christian and Liz (Matt couldn’t make it because he’s a jerk) one last passage of Art Garfunkel’s “All I Know,” Liz and Julia hug and vanish like afterthoughts and Christian kicks Sean out of the business before it -- and by “it” everyone means Christian -- destroys Sean’s soul.

Ultimately, “Nip/Tuck” wasn’t about answering a lot of unanswered questions. It was mostly about tying up loose ends and bringing things to a close. It was about going out the way they came in, naked and screaming. Sean is returning Rafael, a disease-ravaged child, to a disease ravaged land where he will join Doctors Without Borders. He’s also introducing Rafael as his own son, so welcome to Doctors Without Boundaries. And Christian is still scamming chicks in bars for fun and profit. It’s the message of the show: At heart, no one ever really changes.

It was a good run, with more flash than substance and way more darkness than light, but its exploration of the human condition cut further than skin deep and ultimately I’ve truly enjoyed being along for the ride.

Psych

No vaya con dios accounting would be complete without the news that USA’s “Psych” is coming up on its fourth season finale this week and I’m deeply upset. The writers have taken us to interesting places this season, including this past week in which Lassiter employed Shawn’s methods to try to solve his case. Also, the appearance by Jeri Ryan, and Shawn’s offhand shoutout to Ryan’s recent TNT project “Leverage.” However, it also means there’s a fifth-season premiere to look forward to, and I’m already looking forward to it. w00t!

Survivors

P.S. -- I’ve watched more BBC America’s “Survivors” since last week and I can say for sure that it’s not worth the effort. The characters and situations are poorly thought through and quite unlikely. Plus, I caught a glimpse of “Jekyll” while I was cataloguing my home media collection and feel that programming ought to come up to that kind of standard. Obviously Stevenn Moffat’s six-part “Jekyll” starring the inimitable James Nesbitt is setting the bar extremely high, but yes, I should at least tolerate the suspension of disbelief, and not stare at the screen wondering, irritably, when it will end. For me, “Survivors” ended this weekend, thank you very much. Good luck with future projects, BBC America -- try to make them acceptable.

Alice in Wonderland

As for the feature release of Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” here is the part of the podcast where much of a muchness I’ve been considering words that begin with the letter “M.” Like Mia Wasikowska, who played Alice, and “magical” and “magnificent” and quite, quite “mad.”

Alice is a storyline that lends itself to grand reinterpretation. After the Syfy presentation in December prepared me mentally with one bizarre reinterpretation, I was all the more open to this one. This one discovers Alice grown from childhood on the verge of an arranged marriage. She falls through a rabbit hole into a dream world where she is destined to Do Something to save Wonderland. She’s ever so prone to growing and shrinking and the film makes some attempt to adapt the costuming, which by the way I have to say the dress they make for her in the palace is magnificent, with asymetrical styling and some beautiful detail.

The film has a few draggy moments, being a quest film, and once again there is this outlandish emphasis on the Jabberwocky. However, the blend of Looking Glass with Wonderland was reasonably well done. I loved how the White Queen was presented as a scientist and how the Queen of Hearts doubled as the Red Queen. And Johnny Depp was once again a main attraction as the Mad Hatter. The Tea Party was quite good, as were the antics, and the castles were marvelous. The more you know about the stories the more you get out of it, and I will say it’s a bit too dark for smaller children. Also, the 3-D aspect adds little to the experience so if you decide to wait for a DVD release you’re not out much.

Ultimately, I liked it. Well done, everyone.

Everything else I talked about was a season or series finale, so the fourth-season finale of “Psych” airs Wednesday at 10/9c on USA.

Back Back to Shows Back to Main Page Next