by Thomas Willett
This past Sunday, HBO said goodbye to the show Entourage after 8 seasons of Jeremy Piven and his gang of friends roaming around with women and egos. I couldn’t wait to see how this show would decide to end itself.
This is not to say that I ever watched the show. I saw ten minutes of a rerun on the CW a year ago, and I just had to stop. The characters were not that funny. From the moment the credits show them driving down the strip to Jane’s Addiction, I was kind of already over it. To think it lasted 8 seasons is baffling to me, but then again, in a world where Tom Green is suing over the rights to planking and flash mobs crowd the malls, I have already shaken hands with the target audience.
I cannot tell you much about this show’s cultural impact. I can just tell you there was some guy named Turtle and that they were making an Aquaman movie at one point. I’m sure that should be exciting to see them lampoon Hollywood, but my general thoughts on the premise are best quoted from Rajesh Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar), “He sucks. He sucks underwater. He sucks fish pee.”
Of course, my general feelings towards this show cannot be a new discovery. Before the finale, I’d only seen 10 minutes, 6 summaries on AV Club’s TV Club, and this endorsement from one of my favorite podcasts, Firewall and Iceberg:
“Right now, everyone’s like, ‘Oh my God, what has happened to Entourage? Entourage is so terrible now!’ When was Entourage good?” – Dan Fienberg
And Fienberg has seen 40x as many episodes as I have. This made it easy to just sit down and watch the finale, titled “The End.” What did I get out of it? Piven talking to Malcolm McDowell (wasn’t he in A Clockwork Orange? Time has kicked his ass) and some plane trip where Piven sets up the possibilities of a movie. To say the least, TV Club gave the episode a D rating.
I didn’t like it, nor does it make me hyped to visit the rest of the episodes. Then why do I decide to watch the last 30 minutes of a show?
It is a bizarre trend that I have had since I was little. For some reason, I have always seen series finales as an event. Through my youth, I have heard about the famous finales, including Newhart, St. Elsewhere, and the Sopranos. Those determine the lasting impact on their presence in the pop culture landscape. Do you think anyone would remember Newhart if the last season wasn’t revealed to be a dream (albeit, the show itself was a subsequent version of the Bob Newhart Show)? Just the comedy historians.
This is precisely why I always make it my mission to watch the finales of these shows. I want to see those black outs, those dreams. I want to see what surprises they have in store. To say the least, most are standard episodes, but when you get one as amazing like Freaks and Geeks’ “Discos and Dragons,” you’ll be glad you stuck around.
Here are 5 finales to shows I never watched before that stood out.
1. The L Word –“Last Word”: A bunch of women gather and hang out to talk about stuff. It’s not until the final act that creates the gimmick. Someone named Jenny is found dead. While I’m sure there may be some back story to help explain why this happened, it still feels like a cop out to end on a mysterious murder. The finale was so vague that following the closing credits, the cast encouraged the audience to go online to watch some webisodes that explored this murder. I found that to be rather pathetic, speaking it opened up more ends than solved for a series finale.
2. Friends – “The Last One”: I have expressed much loathing for this show, but I couldn’t resist watching the final few episodes. I found them the same annoying characters, but the one thing that stands out is the only time I remember hearing an audience applaud so enthusiastically in the final moments. I cannot remember anything about this episode besides some births and Jennifer Aniston saying “I didn’t get on the plane.” Of the show’s entire run, this was the only line I can recall.
3. Lost –“The End”: I mostly watched this as a gimmick to see how “lost” I would be knowing nothing about the show. Apparently people who actually watched the show were pissed, but I kind of felt it was an entertaining finale. I think it also answered the necessisty of seeing any episodes before, which has been described as futile. However, I can now walk into a room and mention Damon Lindelof and piss off some people, making me feel for a few minutes like the upper class nerd in a debate. Will I watch the rest of Lost? I don’t know. However, not seeing it before made the ending all the more rewarding.
4. The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn: For some reason, I was watching David Letterman, and I forgot to change the channel. Usually by this point, I would switch over to Conan O’Brien, but I stuck around on CBS. It turns out it was the final episode of Kilborn’s talk show. They played clips from his past, and at one point he threw a cat. I don’t remember much else of this other than the coincidence that at 12:30, nothing else was on worth watching. So, I watched it and while he came back withthe Kilborn Files on Fox a year or so later, I was fine saying goodbye to him at 1:30.
5. 3rd Rock From the Sun –“The Thing That Wouldn’t Die” part 2: This is sort of a cheat. I never watched 3rd Rock from the Sun on CBS during it’s initial run. However, I was a big fan of watching reruns on Fox after school. I have yet to see the later episodes, but when I heard this show was getting axed, I tuned in for the final episode, which was pretty good. I still remain a fan, though my dedication has waned since it’s finale ten years ago. Who knows, maybe with Netflix Watch Instant, I will complete it one day. Also, how many shows can you say launched something as awesome as Joseph Gordon Levitt?
So, that’s my list. I’d like to see what TV shows you checked out the last episode for. There is an art to watching them. Who knows, maybe it’s luck and those episodes will stick with you, make you watch the rest of them. I know there’s been some instances of that with me. Sadly, Entourage was not one of them. What was equivalent to the male Sex and the City (TV) was not even as good as the lesser moments of Sex and the City 2.
I just wonder if any of the new shows will be added to this list within the following weeks.
You can read Thomas’ blog every Wednesday at nevpodcast.com and check out the Nerd’s Eye View podcast every Tuesday and Thursday. Send us your thoughts at nevpodcast@gmail.com
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