'Tis the season of grand finales. Television finales, that is. It's the time of year when you don't dare miss an episode of your favourite show or you might miss an important lead up to the grand finale, which will probably be a cliff hanger.
What is up with all the cliff-hangers this month? I mean, yeah, I understand the networks do this because they want to keep your interest until the show comes back for the new season, but still. Maybe they should just trust that their show is good enough to sustain the audience and keep them loyal. I mean, I'd have watched Castle next season because I love the show. I didn't need the end of season cliff-hanger this week. (No spoilers here!)
I'm not a fan of cliff-hangers. Not in books and definitely not in television programs. I can't count the number of times I watched a television show that ended its season on a cliff-hanger and then never returned. Gone. Vanished. Irritating as all get out. There's been a bunch of shows I was attached to that ended like that, although the only one I can think of at the moment is Peter Benchley's Amazon.
And what's with these short seasons?? Yes, technically there are 13 weeks to a season. But we're talking calendar seasons here, not television seasons. I have a boxed set of Lost in Space (yes, I am a dork) and the first season is 29 episodes long. I watched the season finale of The Returned last weekend. It was episode number 8 and they're calling it a season. Really?
I watch a lot of shows on Showcase, and what irritates the crap out of me is the way it starts a new show, sucks you into that little universe, and then 10-13 weeks later it's gone. No repeat season. Sometimes it will reappear a year later with new episodes, sometimes it never returns. A year is a long time to wait for new episodes of a show that's become a favourite. I've actually forgotten about a show until it makes its return for another season.
Does anyone else miss the anticipation in the fall when the new season of a show would start, run for around 20 weeks, then you'd get repeats throughout the spring where you had a chance to catch up on episodes you missed? And then would come the summer where the networks would test a show over the course of six to eight weeks. If the ratings were good, it might end up in the Fall line-up for the following year. Nowadays we don't even get the repeat season, which is really irritating to those of us who don't/can't watch shows online. We've got On Demand, but it doesn't show everything.
I'm not even going to go into the Space Channel's lame attempt to keep Dr. Who fans interested by running repeat episodes of the last three doctors. They seem to do that every time there's been a long wait for new episodes so we've seen them all before. And before that. And before that. A better idea would be to show some of the early Dr. Who episodes. You know, the ones with Jon Pertwee or Tom Baker.
Maybe those network executives should put me in charge of programming. Yeah, that's the ticket. Add an all Dr. Who channel and ban all reality TV.
Sounds like a plan to me!
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