Damn Season Finales

“Damn season finales.” The finales of two of television's most talked about shows, NBC’s Heroes' "How to Stop an Exploding Man" and ABC’s Lost's "Through the Looking Glass," generated tremendous fan anticipation prior to airing on (respectively) May 21st and 23rd, but while the latter was almost unanimously well received, the former met with very mixed reviews, including such derisive scorn as Nikki Stafford’s. A few weeks later (June 10th) “Made in America,” the season- and series- ending episode of HBO’s The Sopranos, with its brilliantly inconclusive supply-your-own ending left many fans feeling short-changed. “Damn season finales” (the words are from Television without Pity's recaplet of the Lost finale). Though perhaps not deserving of eternal fire and brimstone, season-enders do present formidable challenges. If the season has been any good, the last episode before a long summer (or, in the case of a series-ender, a long forever) without a favorite show (especially a favorite serial) must clear a very high bar.

Asked (by TV Guide) about viewer complaints about credibility such as Nikki raises, in particular the question why Peter didn’t fly himself away from Kirby Plaza, Heroes' mastermind Tim Kring’s response is quite fascinating. While willing to “admit that there’s a very tiny window of logic there," he insists that doubting Thomas fans broke the rules: “theoretically you are not supposed to be thinking about that,” he gently scolds, and this man who, once happily cited Charles Dickens as an inspiration and a model, then evokes (with a laugh TV Guide notes) an even older 19th century British writer: "But what can I say? It's requires the proverbial suspension of disbelief."

The concept, of course, comes from the great Romantic poet, philosopher, and literary theorist Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) and first appears in Biographia Literaria, where it is described as an essential “poetic faith” elicited from a reader by “a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure” it.

Kring, however, has left off an important word in the original formulation: for Coleridge was describing the “willing suspension of disbelief.” A writer (or filmmaker or television showrunner) cannot demand it of an audience. It must be established by “best laid plans.”

Unlike the unwilling, gagable Nikki, my disbelief was willing, at least at first. My “crap detector” (the original phrase was Hemingway’s) was registering inconsistencies and disappointments as the scene in Kirby Plaza unfolded. I didn’t understand why Jessica didn’t stay there and fight out with Sylar—why she lamely had to go tend to D. L. Only the needs of the script made that the right thing for her to do (she had to get out of the way, to make room for Peter and Hiro).

Nor did I buy (and never did) why Claire had to be the one to off Peter. Claire was the only one who could plunge a syringe into Ted Sprague in “Company Man,” of course, because only she could get close enough to the original exploding man, but could not Bennet (who seemed more hobbled by the thematic needs of the screenplay than by Sylar having tossed him aside) or even Mohinder could have shot Peter at a distance pre-explosion? Couldn’t Niki/Jessica have swatted him as well with that parking meter?

And yet when Nathan flew in—Nathan a character I had never been crazy about and who I believed, with Hiro, to be a “villain”—Kring had me at Flying Man’s arrival. At “You saved the cheerleader, so we could save the world,” I cried, as I was supposed to.

Now granted that I am, by admission, an easy mark (see Lavery, “The Crying Game,” I find it interesting that I, the scholar-fan (in Matt Hills’ terminology) was so much more willing to suspend, to respond as it was written, than was Nikki, the ultimate fan-scholar, as her first-rate books on Buffy, Angel, and Lost have demonstrated.

This wasn’t the first time that I was the one being less objective with a finale. When the series-ending “Chosen” completed the seven season, 144 episode run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I was stunned to find fans carping over scores of questions regarding continuity, while I loved every minute of it despite its clear incongruities.

The unanimously praised finale of Lost’s third season, “Through the Looking Glass,” was, like those of its two previous seasons, a two hour episode, allowing ample time for its complex on-island and its flash forward off-island narrative to play out. Heroes’ was only one hour, though Kring and company conceived of the last three episodes—“The Hard Part,” “Landslide,” and “How to Stop” as of-a-piece (Weiland, “Heroes Post-Game”), but they were not packaged or promoted as such.

If they had been—if we had seen them in a single sitting (a hypothetical precluded of course by broadcasting needs and economic reasons)—would we have seen “How to Stop” differently? We will all have the opportunity to repackage when we are in possession of the Season One DVDs. Will Nikki still be gagging then?

Perhaps the real problem, however, was “Five Years Gone,” the episode which immediately preceded the closing three-parter. A sensational, bad-ass episode, complete with a too-brief face-off, all powers at-the-ready, between Sylar and Peter Petrelli, 1.20 created expectations for 1.23 that couldn’t be met. After “Five Years Gone,” “How to Explode” was probably pre-ordained to be anti-climatic and unsatisfying.

Spider-Man Jumps the Shark

I have now seen Spider-Man 3 and am here to report it is a big disappointment.

The villains--Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), Venom (Topher Grace), and Green Goblin II (James Franco)--are, frankly, boring. The much-ballyhooed-in-advance spectacular special effects scenes left me yawning. The usually adorable Tobey Maquire wasn't nearly so endearing as before (perhaps his prominent double chin got in the way), and the often-intriguing Kirsten Dunst was, alas, boring. The on-again/off-againness of their relationship was becoming tedious even before this outing; here it reaches whatever status. I cannot imagine there will be much repeat viewing of this unimaginative film by anyone over the age of twelve.

I so wanted to love this film, but it didn't meet me even half way. Give me long-term television narratives like Lost or Heroes, which offer us engaging, intricate 22+ episode (16+ hours of screen time) seasons each and every year for 1/10 of the cost of this one unimaginative and often tedious piece of storytelling.

I couldn't have been the only Heroes fan who was comparing Peter Petrelli's metamorphosis from hospice nurse into bad ass superhero (in "Five Years Gone") with Peter Parker's visit to the dark side under the influence of the symbiont black Spidey suit. How much more convincingly Milo Ventimiglia pulls it off on TV than does Tobey on the big screen! In a head-to-head battle between the two NY-based Peter P's, my money is on the Heroes hero. Though at a distinct CGI disadvantage, Petrelli would take the webslinger in red (or black). Narrative power trumps XF.

Lavery in Portuguese

To see an article by Joana Amaral Cardoso in Publica (Lisbon) on American television for which I was a major source, go here .

The Madness of George

Bill Maher makes an excellent case for President Bush as insane (from the "New Rules" segment of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher (go to 2:20 in to see this particular "New Rule").

Dr. Strangelove Changed My Life

Mention of Stanley Kubrick's 1964 black humor masterpiece Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb in something I was reading took me back for a moment to the pivotal role the film played in shaping my life.

In 1973, almost a decade after its release, I was deciding where to pursue my Ph.D. Following the advice of two of my St. Cloud State University professors, Dr. Jonathan Lawson and Dr. James Lundquist, I had applied to, and been accepted at (respectively), Texas Christian University and the University of Florida. TCU had made me a better offer (a fellowship that required no teaching), but I had some misgivings about moving to Texas. What would it be like to actually live in Fort Worth, I wanted to know, asking Dr. Lawson for an honest response. "Well, let me put it this way: when Slim Pickens rode the bomb down at the end of Dr. Strangelove, the audience I saw it with in Fort Worth gave him a standing ovation."



The next year I became a Gator. At U of F I would meet my wife. If I had gone to TCU, we could never have met. I might have married someone else, might have had children, but they would not have been these amazing women: Joyce, my wife of 27 years, or my daughters Rachel (26) and Sarah (21). If not for Kubrick's film, I would have gone to Texas and my life could not possibly have been this life.

In 1977, I was given the GTA assignment of introducing Dr. Strangelove to a 300-400 student "Introduction to Film" class at U of F. As part of my remarks, I told a version of the story above. As the film came to an end, as Major Kong again climbed on top of that nuclear warhead that would bring about Doomsday, hollered his rebel yell, and waved his cowboy hat, the class rose in unison and gave him a standing ovation. From my place in the back of the auditorium, I both shuttered and laughed and felt glad I was a Gator.

Heard on The Colbert Report

Heard on The Colbert Report:

"I don't see race. People tell me I am white, and I believe them because I belong to an all-white country club."

"I have no problem with the Gays. What they do in the privacy of my imagination is nobody's business."

"I know we have been together a year America, but I would still so do you" (on the CR's first anniversary).

"Is America ready for a Black President? Who thought Forrest Whitaker would become the last king of Scotland?"

Bonds will Never Break Aaron's Record

The always brilliant Onion has figured out how to stop Barry Bonds from becoming the all-time home run champion.

If only it could be done.

Whedon in Turkey

I hsve just been invited to give the keynote address at

BUFFY HEREAFTER: From the Whedonverse to the Whedonesque:
An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Work of Joss Whedon and its Aftereffects

17-19 October 2007
Istanbul, Turkey

If memory serves, the Bringers killed a Potential there in the first episode of Season Seven, but I was most honored to be invited nonetheless. I even have a title already:

Keeping the Faith: Joss Whedon’s "Religion in Narrative" and Contemporary Television

Website here:

http://www.independentscholars.org/