TeleVision from Hell

I’m not real sure about this whole “split season” thing that the cable networks like to pull.  Sci-Fi did it with Galactica and we’re still waiting … and waiting … for the final season to play out.  Monday night, The Closer came to a close but it was only a “mid-season” finale.  Mid-season or not, that was one hell of a finale.

Brenda (Kira Sedgewick) was her usual half-crazed yet brilliant self, managing to get shot at after getting almost blown up at least once.  The case was a particularly nasty one (specially if you happen to live in Utah anywhere near Trolly Square).  As per usual, the crime gets solved by a combination of solid investigative work and stumbling upon that final piece of the puzzle.  Monk does this too, as does House and many others.  They solve the mystery with what I like to call the “incidental moment of insight” or IMI if you will.  Someone says something completely unrelated to the issue at hand which gives the main character that IMI moment.  This time it was not something said, but rather a map Brenda just happens to notice at just the right moment.

But that’s the real brilliance of The Closer.  You don’t care how the mystery is solved because you know it always will be.  It’s all the rest of it that makes us want to watch.  Like the entire team throwing Brenda over their collective shoulders to hustle her out of the vicinity of possible bombing.  Sarah Palin would call that moment sexist … I call it hilarious.

What really makes this series a joy to watch isn’t the mostly no-brainer cases; it’s the rest of the cast.  Their funny moments and their painful ones.  Their individual quirks and their often inapropriate responses to the most awful of situations.  Their unflinching loyalty to their slightly off-center but always beloved Deputy Chief Brenda Lee Johnson.

The Closer went out with a bang … several of them in fact.  At least one of the cast might not make it out the other side.  And while it was one of those mostly annoying mid-season finales, at least we only have to wait until January to see how it all shakes out.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 11:23 am and is filed under Random Channel, Televisionary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.