The Finale Conflict

(Warning: Contains spoilers. Do not read if you still want to be surprised by your as-yet-unwatched season finale videotapes.)

Man, it's going to be a loooooong summer.

Granted, the only reason why I'm aware that summer is around the corner is the endless barrage of season finales on television. It has been unseasonably and record-breakingly cold here for the past few nights. Naturally Mother Nature waited until the heat had been shut off in my building to make with the bone-chilling weather, so it's been chilly in my apartment. I don't think it's ever been chilly in here; usually the heat is turned up so high that I have to crack my windows in sub-zero temperature.

Since my windows have been tightly shut for the last week or so due to torrential downpours and 35 degree nights, the cats haven't been able to participate in their favorite pasttime of watching birds and sniffing the outside air. Instead, they've been taking part in their second favorite pasttime, which is chasing each other around the apartment at full speed and trying to beat the living daylights out of each other. Which is fine, except they have now extended Kitty Smackdown into an all-night event (from about 7:00 at night to 4:00 in the morning) and Ma Huang, not being the most graceful cat in the world, has a tendency to thud into things when his brakes don't work. I can't imagine what my downstairs neighbors think I'm doing every night.

So for the past few nights, I've been wrapping up my TV watching habits for the season. All of the shows that I watch on a regular basis have concluded, and I've got some rather mixed feelings about the way things have turned out.

The X Files is finally over, and actually finished with a decent episode. David Duchovny was back, which is always a good thing in my book, and the writers actually managed to piece together the mytharc into something that almost made sense. Although I'm still not sure how I felt about the dead characters appearing to Mulder á la The Sixth Sense, it was nice to see Krychek and X back again. And I think they may have FINALLY killed off the Cigarette Smoking Man. If a surface-to-air missle fired directly into his head doesn't send him to the great Moreley factory in the sky, I don't know what will.

There were a few things that bugged me, though. What happened to Skinner? Who's going to take care of Gibson Praise now? What about the damned Miracle Baby? And what in the name of all that is holy was the deal with the last scene with Mulder poignantly touching Scully's cross and waxing poetic about the afterlife? The truth is out there, and it's God? Um, yeah. Chris Carter, you got some 'splaining to do in the inevitable movie(s). And you better hurry, since the world-ending alien invasion is due on December 22, 2012.

Onto Monday night - the season finale of Angel. I've grown increasingly apathetic about this show all year, what with the (other) Miracle Baby returning from the hell dimension all growed up and Charisma Carpenter's amazing disappearing hair, but this was the last straw. Lorne, the empathic karaoke demon, packed his bags and went to Vegas? NOOOOOOO!!! And don't even get me started on the whole "Cordelia is a higher being" thing. That belongs on some craptacular WB show like Charmed or something. Oh wait. This is a craptacular WB show.

Poor Angel. Stuck at the bottom of the ocean and no hair gel in sight.

After a spotty season, Buffy the Vampire Slayer wrapped up with a bang. That collective shout of joy you may have heard at approximately 9:00 pm Tuesday night was every member of the Buffy viewing audience heralding the return of Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles. His absence has been painfully felt this past season, and he got to kick some major ass (for a few minutes, at least). I'm not sure how I feel about the whole re-souling of Spike, especially given his last interaction with Buffy. But at least they finally gave Dawn something to do besides whine and scream for help and steal things. And Xander got to save the world from destruction with the power of love and his big ol' heart. You go, boy. You ain't nobody's butt monkey. Even if the ending was a rip-off of A Wrinkle in Time, I was on the edge of my seat for the entire two hours.

Since Buffy was two hours long, I had to tape Smallville for later viewing. (And after a lengthy phone call from Rushboy in the middle of watching the tape, it was rather late when I finished.) Talk about your bad proms, man. Clark takes Chloe as his date, only to find out that Lana is dateless for the evening. The slimy reporter from the Inquisitor finds the spaceship in the Kent's storm cellar, almost gets the smackdown from Pa "Don't You Call Me Bo Duke" Kent, and they both go running off into the middle of a tornado. And what's to become of Lionel Luthor? Will the ceiling fall in on him and crush him, leaving Lex in charge of Luthorcorp, or will he narrowly escape and screw up Lex's buy-out plans? Much as I like John Glover and the way he's played the senior Luthor, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that ceiling to give so Lex can fulfill that old saying about absolute power and corruption. Of course, I'm also hoping that maybe the tornado finishes off Lana as well, so I won't have to be subjected to Kristen Kreuk's wooden attempts at emoting anymore. But I'm not holding my breath here, folks. We all know they can't kill off Lana and the Teen of Steel will probably discover he can fly and pull the truck out of the funnel cloud. But I can still dream, right?

Stupid My So-Called Super Powers. Stupid vampires with souls. Stupid alien invasions and conspiracy theories. Stupid television shows. I really need to get out more.