TV Finales: Desperate Housewives, 24, Lost
May 29, 2005
Last week I felt guilty for running a TV review after a week of great finales without being able to discuss any of them. Now that we are early into the summer off-season, what better time than the immediate post-sweeps period to analyze the three Big Finales, big in my book anyway, which is a book that doesn’t include “American Idol”, “Grey’s Anatomy”, “The O.C.”, or any other TV fad not worth the press it receives. Though truthfully, the three shows I do want to discuss, “Desperate Housewives”, “24”, and “Lost” have received their fair share of attention- both analytical (“Lost”), and sensational (“Desperate Housewives”)- but they are also three of the most entertaining hour-long dramas on TV, and their final hours were appropriately action packed, information heavy, and resolution sketchy. Fans of all three shows have been debating the answers and cliffhangers on fan sites across the internet, with decidedly differing opinions, but one thing is for sure, each of the three season finales left intriguing and tantalizing bread crumbs to chew on over the summer while the series creators somehow come up with more plot developments to equal or better the superb 2004-2005 season.
Let’s go in order from the beginning of the busy last week of May Sweeps to the end, starting on Sunday, when the long awaited answer to why Mary Alice killed herself, and why Mike Delfino kidnapped Paul Young, was finally answered on “Desperate Housewives”. The mystery of the Young/Delfino connection had become obvious in the past few weeks (Mike’s dead girlfriend was the mother of Mary Alice’s stolen baby), but how it lead to Mary Alice’s suicide in episode one, and just why the stolen baby grew up so disturbed and creepy weren’t so easy to see. Basically, what we got from the finale was Paul’s explanation, by way of potential last words, of how Mary Alice accidentally killed Mike’s girlfriend when she came back for her child, and how the boy, Zack, grew up unaware of his real mother; the guilt of the killing, and a subsequent neighborhood blackmailer, was the turning point towards suicide for Mary Alice. The resolution to that thread was satisfying, but the show left us with a major cliffhanger, as Zack, the disturbed Young boy, had Susan hostage, waiting for Mike, who he thought had killed his father, to walk into his trap. One, we don’t know if Zack is capable of cold blooded murder, like his father Paul, and two, we don’t know if Delfino is really Zack’s father, since we don’t know if he was with the dead girlfriend before she had her baby, when she was a junkie. All that, Bree’s a widow, and Carlos knows Gabrielle’s a cheating hussy. Nice soapy fodder for season two next fall, for sure.
Next is “24”, which wrapped a great fourth season with many twists and turns, leaving a big question mark going into season five. Here’s how it played out: Jack, just in time again, stopped a nuclear missile from hitting Los Angeles, Tony wasn’t killed by Mandy, Michelle didn’t kill herself (as was a rumor), Audrey dumped Jack, the Chinese demanded vengeance on Jack, and Jack went underground after unofficially dying by the hands of a shady Secret Service minion, the brainchild of Tony to free Jack to Mexico, where season three floundered mid-stride. You had to figure the show’s producers weren’t going to explode a nuke in downtown L.A., but watching Jack in action, frantically grasping for clues to stop the thing, was intense and exciting. Marwan’s header was pretty cool as well. My prediction is that next season starts with the phantom Jack Bauer in Mexico, working on a cattle ranch as Juan “Benito” Rodriguez, until the newly reinstated President Palmer needs him to come out of hiding to track a suspected radical Canadian nuclear submarine in the Pacific Ocean. Think about it- a few episodes of recluse Bauer, a few episodes in a sub, a few hours above sea level chasing the bad guys, and a few more hours of Chinese interrogations, maybe even Chinese water torture; the thing writes itself. If somehow this suggestion makes it to TV (odds, 1:1,000), than you are my witnesses, and somebody owes me a big check. If not, than I’m sure something good will happen anyway, because “24” is still a wicked cool show to watch.
Finally, I wanted to reserve the most space for “Lost”, and its truly masterful three-part finale, titled “Exodus”, and all of the theories that people invest hours upon hours thinking about, but I’ll just summarize and say that the first season of ABC’s hit adventure was the best first season of any drama since “Boomtown” three years ago, with characterizations continually evolving, plot lines frustratingly changing, and a basket of clues forever growing. This was a brilliantly directed and acted finale, capping off a brilliantly conceived and executed season. The only question I have, of the great ensemble, who gets the Emmy nominations? Matthew Fox, for sure, but how about a nod to Terry O’Quinn, whose John Locke was the most intriguing character on an island of intriguing characters.
What we finally learned in the finale was that the “monster” was some scary kind of shape-shifting metallic security device, that Hurley’s lottery numbers are more important than we originally thought, that Walt is the key to The Others’ plot, that Danielle may have other motives, and Locke’s mysterious hatch goes down, down, down into, well, something. In the way “Lost” weaves stories together, it was such a great moment to see all of the regulars boarding their doomed plane, not knowing each other, and not knowing the adventure they’d be in store for. Much has been made about religious theories, alien theories, and government manipulation theories, but the best lies in the simple debate of hope (as spoken by Locke) and fate (as spoken by Sun), and that on some mystical level of otherworldly coincidence, the survivors and their back stories all converge to form the basis of primal societal interaction, where hope for the future is about as important as the fate you, or somebody else makes for you. On the metaphysical level, that would mean they are together in an afterlife, struggling to work out their troubles from their former life, but on a more realistic, maybe even scientific level, it’s something more akin to science fiction and “The Twilight Zone”, where the ordinary is usually extraordinary. Season two will begin with the hatch, and the new worlds (alien, governmental, jungle, pirate) and adventures it may lead us to. Answers are not easy to come by on this brilliant show, but who needs them when the questions are this tantalizing entertaining.
by Adam Suraf