'Tis The Season

We live in an age where television shows are devoured thirstily and periodically by pre-teens, teens and young adults. Whatever’s new and even remotely dramatic is sure to get watched avidly and then judged on whether it can be watched avidly. And we’re part of that age, whether we like it or not. What with the world being currently dominated by murky oil spills, angry volcanoes that spew out drunken football players and fans, riots and heavy violence against a recent squirrel uprising and poetry professors getting elected by email, a tiny dose of fiction here and there wouldn’t hurt.
Television shows are getting harder and harder to not watch, these days. Comedies, medical dramas, legal dramas, police procedurals – they’re tailor made for audiences to raucously laugh at, hopelessly sob over or gasp and then proceed to have a minor heart attack after dusting off the last few crumbs of your blueberry muffin.
Now I’m hungry.
Anyway. You’ve got your story arcs, flashbacks, flash forwards, alternate realities, fatal twists and turns that make you wonder,” But wasn’t she dead?”, bottles of glycerin, witty one liners, false eyelashes and an extraordinary budget. And it’s all for the sake of entertainment. And employment.
I don’t watch too many of these shows but some of them are genuinely enjoyable and really entertaining. They’re smart, funny, gripping and sometimes, slightly deranged. Apart from their regular episodes and telecasts, the thing that gets me all enthusiastic is the season finales of a few select shows.
Season finales are the type of things that end the season of a particular television show, with a bang. It gives the writers a shot to go little crazy, do a little damage and commit some first degree murder and the viewers an incentive to keep watching and to remind them to pay their electricity bills. A lot of them are really expertly written and carefully handled.
Like, ‘Psych’ for instance. ‘Psych’ really stands out in the fourth season finale:‘Mr. Yin Presents’. Humorous, fast-paced and truly suspenseful are the words that come to mind. This episode is slightly darker compared to the others, but that’s what makes it so gripping. This particular one is littered with themes and motifs from Alfred Hitchcock’s films. You’ve got your classic shower scene from ‘Psycho’, the tower scene from ‘Vertigo’, a staircase comprising of ’39 Steps’, the wheelchair facing the ‘Rear Window’… The best part is that when the episode ends, I yearned to know the true identity of Mr. Yin. With the amount of damage he attempted to do and the untimely demise of the creepy-yet-strangely-lovable Mary Lightly, who wouldn’t want to know?
‘Lost’ finally came to end too. Imagine an island that has eerily strong electromagnetism, can time travel and move all over the globe. It has the ability to heal people and then eventually proceed to kill them. I agree. ‘Lost’ is deranged. But that’s the beauty of it, I’m afraid. I too have surrendered myself to this madness, about four years ago. But it didn’t end as beautifully as I thought it would. Without giving too much away, the 2 hour finale consisted of high melodrama involving violence in the rain, a much sought after plane and the highly dangerous ‘heart of the island’. The climax of the episode didn’t have a really big impact on me. The end left so many questions unanswered, so many doubts and theories hanging, so many dead ends left in their graves. It was the only plausible ending to the series, but left me quite unsatisfied. Even though it’s one of the most imaginative shows (which makes it by appearance, confusing and delusional), it’s truly lost itself in an incoherence of religion, science, mysticism and pure preachiness .
I’m not too fond of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’. But if you hear of a shooter at Seattle Grace Hospital in the sixth season finale, it wouldn’t be that bad to just take a wee peek as hell ensues. But alas. No major character died. Nervous breakdowns were in the air. High melodrama and sanguinary ruled those two hours.
The ‘Bones’ season four finale was disappointing. Don’t get me wrong. ‘Bones’ is absolutely brilliant. But the season finale, meant to be dramatic and a drastic change from the usual ‘decomposition-and-dissection-in-the-science-lab’, comes off as slightly dull. But what I do love about ‘Bones’ is the no-nonsense bang with which each season starts. Fresh out of the oven and ready to dive head first into decayed human remains! Figuratively, of course.