Totally Tubular Seasonal Depression
Some TV Shows Terminal Others See You Next Year
By: Charles Giuliano - May 15, 2012
OMG
I’m like soooo depressed.
It’s been one season finale after another.
With nothing to anticipate but reruns.
Long standing shows like House and Desperate Housewives signing off for good.
With just.
Thanks for the memories.
See yah.
Truth is.
Both those shows should have ended years ago.
After eight years we finally get our lives back on Sunday Night.
Those ladies on Wisteria Lane sure dragged it out.
With the impeccable she of the perfect muff, or is it muffins, Bree van de Kamp (Marcia Cross) winding down the series by boozing and slutting it up. Then taking the rap for Carlos (Ricardo Antonio Chavira) whacking Gabriella’s (Eva Longoria) abusive father.
Approaching the two hour series finale the cliff hanger was whether the ladies will be outfitted in orange jump suits and bunking with new girlfriends.
I stopped caring about the bathetic, ditsy Susan Mayer (Teri Hatcher) years ago. Almost ditto for Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman). Why she tried so hard to win back Tom (Doug Savant) is kindah beyond me. Eight years ago, arguably, Tom was cute.
There is a pretty short shelf life on cute.
Bree got her get out of jail pass when the terminally ill Karen McCluskey (Kathryn Joosten) took one for the team.
The show ended with one last spin around Wisteria Lane with Susan relocating to bring up her granddaughter. The ghost of the recently deceased Mike Delfino waved goodbye. In fact there was a ghost on every corner. In eight seasons the show wracked up a lot of exquisite corpses.
All’s well that ends well.
Next we say goodbye to the brilliant, pill popping, train wreck Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie). His best buddy, an oncologist Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), get this for irony, is croaking of cancer.
Depending on whether or not he opts for chemo (he would rather not after a severe, off the chart dose that failed) and has either five months (no treatment) or up to two or three years with therapy.
House, as usual, has pulled a ridiculous stunt. Because of his grossly criminal act, not the first one, he is headed back to prison to serve out his sentence.
“How long” he asks.
You guessed it. Six months.
The good doctor, brilliant as a diagnostician, and pretty much a jerk in every other way, is ordered to turn himself in on Monday morning.
Which leaves the weekend to be played out next week.
Will House and Wilson, inseparable buddies, form a suicide pact?
We’ll find out next week.
Goodbye cruel world and turn off the TV.
There were two great new shows this year. Smash and Luck.
The final episode of Smash concluded with what we knew all along. Katharine McPhee as Karen Cartwright, the cornhusker, will step up as Marilyn Monroe in the ersatz Broadway bound musical Bombshell (Conceived and produced by Theresa Rebeck and Stephen Spielberg). In the final episode she edged out arch rival Megan Hilty as Ivy Lynn.
The two super talented women have been fighting it out brilliantly with week after week of show stopping musical numbers.
In the final analysis the super nasty, cutthroat director Jack Davenport as Derek Wills, decides that Karen has something that Ivy lacks. Even though he has been shagging Ivy in every way possible from the get go.
There was always lot of fun like the amazing Anjelica Huston as producer Eileen Rand. Once exotically beautiful she now numbers among the Hollywood embalmed. Some of her best scenes entailed tossing martinis into the face of her fellow producer and ex husband.
The wonderful Uma Thurman came and went as the marquee name (Rebecca Duvall) needed to get the show to Broadway. She provided star quality to the show and generated a bit of tension between Karen and Ivy.
Rebecca, a movie star/ diva with negligible Broadway talent, hung out with her understudy Karen. It was pure Machiavelli “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
But she dishes Karen some sound advice to ditch the boyfriend Raza Jaffrey as Dev Sundaram. They are just a burden for a rising star. Rebecca (Uma) clearly knows what she is talking about.
One of the season’s best musical interludes involved a fantasy revolving around Dev’s Indian heritage. He was featured as a Bollywood star (with incredible moves) that included the entire cast. It was one of the most amazingly memorable TV moments of the season.
It seems that the ever more uneasy Dev (perhaps you recall him from MI5) proposed to Karen in pure desperation. Then looses the ring in Ivy’s room after a night of pumping iron.
Nasty.
It took some getting used to but Luck lived up to the high standards one expects from HBO. It starred the incredible Dustin Hoffman is his first TV series as well as veteran Nick Nolte and tons of awesome character actors.
We started out knowing little or nothing about horse racing.
But with each stunning episode we were getting more and more absorbed.
So much so that Astrid won a behind the scenes tour of the Saratoga Race Track during a recent charity auction as part of a Kentucky Derby party. It will be a highlight of our summer plans.
But they shoot horses don’t they.
Several were put down during the filming of Luck.
It may be a part of the game but HBO pulled the plug on a second season.
Just when it was getting really interesting.
Oh yes.
Madmen.
Now in its fifth season it seems that Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and his huckster associates have wandered into the Bermuda Triangle.
There just doesn’t seem to be much left to care about in the characters.
The mysterious Don has settled as a happily married man and overall working stiff.
Literally.
This was the era of three martini lunches.
In the office every scene seems to start by pouring a drink or lighting a cigarette. They often seem to take afternoon snoozes on those couches. Which also come in handy for after hours layovers.
The only spark and fresh interest is Don’s trophy wife Megan (Jessica Pare). As the season has evolved her character has been the only plot line worth paying attention to.
When the creative team stumbles over the Heinz account to market baked beans Megan come up with the right slant. Sold brilliantly over dinner, a husband and wife full court press, on clients about to slip slide away.
More than just eye candy Megan is brilliant with a true gift for marketing.
But she has her sights set on Broadway.
In a showdown her career change is just fine with Don.
That’s the problem. This season he is just too compliant. Not his usual scheming, nasty self.
Can you blame him?
Megan is just so delicious. What man wouldn’t jump through hoops for her?
Especially when compared to his ex, the once gorgeous, aristocratic, spoiled Betty (January Jones). She’s stuck in the burbs with an unexciting husband, a bratty daughter (conflating the worst aspects of her parents), and two toddler sons.
It is like, how boring, to follow Betty pouting through weekly meetings of Weight Watchers?
What an enervating metaphor for the show itself, which, after five seasons is just stuffed.
Time to stick a fork in.