OK - so I haven't done a good job of keeping up posting on TV shows (and not so coincidentally, my movie watching has declined a great deal). But now we're coming down to the end for two of my three regular shows, and they both need to hit home runs.
24 and Lost have had opposite problems this season. 24 got off to a very strong start - Jack back from China for a suicide mission, nukes going off in California, Jack taking out Curtis - but then something went awry. The things that once endeared us to the show, all the cliches, began to grow stale. Odd subplots were introduced and dropped without warning (remember "Behrooz on the loose"? Or Kim's one-legged boyfriend?). More petty bureaucratic struggles at the White House. More meddling from CTU central. More uncomfortable office love triangles. It just began to seem like going through the motions. And even the Jack moments seemed off. He would spend entire hours waiting in an empty house for a meeting. And somehow the shootouts didn't even have much to them (a notable exception: Jack's final takedown of Fayed and his team - even Doyle was shocked). Jack's takedown of most of the Chinese infiltration team last week is a good example; Sutherland was just kind of running around firing - must have had an aimbot working for him.
And now that we hit the last two hours, we have just started another office politic thread at CTU, we are chasing after Jack's nephew for the fourth time this season, and Jack is headed off to punk Doyle for at least the third time this season. They need to end strong, and then they need to figure out what to do next season; the producers seem to realize that the status quo isn't working out and have promised changes for next year.
As I mentioned, Lost has the opposite problem - a weak start and a stronger finish. The season was broken up into two parts, and the "fall season" was so useless that Lost moved from "don't miss" to "catch up with later". Once we finally got off of "Others Island" and back into the main group, things picked back up. I'm not happy with a lot of stuff - Desmond's sudden Charlie-focused precog abilities foremost - and the Others focus on pregnancy still doesn't have much of an explanation. But Locke's storyline has been a welcome return - back to having him be an independent agent, thinking he is in control but not realizing he isn't (a trait also shared by Ben). I even enjoyed the twisted little morality tale that ended up with two unliked characters unknowningly buried alive by the castaways.
The writers have done a pretty good job of setting up a bunch of juggling balls for the finale - Charlie in the Looking Glass station, the Others assault on the Losties, the Losties trap (which I swear was taken directly from Blazing Saddles of all things), Locke shot and left in a pit of bodies....there's a lot of things going on, and the writers also have to set us up for season four. Here's hoping they can pull it off.
And meanwhile, The Shield just keeps rolling along, kicking ass and taking names. By far the best show of the three this year. They still have a few more weeks to go on this season - I'm not sure Shane will be around to see the end of it.
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