Parting is such sweet sorrow. With May sweeps come the inevitable and unbearable: season and (oh, no!) series finales. Within the next two weeks, nearly every show on the tube that you really like will be ending for the summer. Many cable shows have already gone on summer hiatus.
Two popular and controversial series are also ending. ABC's Lost, the most complicated, maddening and truly great TV series possibly ever (the only other serious contenders are The Wire and The Shield), has its 150-minute series finale on May 23. On May 24, Fox will air the two-hour series finale of 24, the show that many critics assert allowed America to get comfortable with torture during the Bush and Obama Administrations.
We could give over this whole column in a paean to Lost, it has been that spectacular a series, but we won't. For devotees like us, Lost was proof that TV could be innovative and compelling, that characters could sustain over six seasons and still surprise viewers as their stories delved deeper and got more involved, and that writers could move entirely outside the box of established series-TV criteria and still have a show that viewers looked forward to seeing.
One of the things that made Lost work so well was a rotating ensemble cast of believable and engrossing characters portrayed by actors whose nuanced performances brought those characters to life and made them resonate. Terry O'Quinn's sometime-villain, sometime-savior John Locke was especially fine, and Matthew Fox's tortured doctor Jack Shephard provided the moral compass in a tricky landscape where morality was often strangely flexible. Nestor Carbonell (he of the magnificent Latino eyes) played Richard Alpert, the island's most mysterious denizen, with an amazing level of sustained mystery. Evangeline Lilly as escaped murderer Kate Austen proved that women can be as tough and resourceful as men without losing one bit of their womanliness or inherent charm. A host of other characters were equally strong, but these were the players who held the show together each season.
An ongoing critical argument about Lost was that it was too difficult to follow. The storylines were heavily layered and multi-faceted, with characters' pasts intertwining in ways that brought the present into bold relief. There was a lot of science involved, physics and such. Also, the past two seasons have taken place in the past and present, as well as an alternate present. Yet as complicated as the storylines were, the complexity epitomized the lure of Lost – this was never TV for idiots or channel-surfing couch potatoes. The show required real attentiveness to minute details, and those details could turn out to be questionable at any time. Lost has always been full of surprises. It was the New York Times crossword puzzle of TV series, in opposition to a schedule full of Daily Jumbles. The first five seasons are available on DVD, and the final season will be available in June. If you never watched it while it was on the tube, it's highly recommended for DVD viewing now.
We can't give the same glowing recommendation for Fox's counter-terrorism drama 24, unless you want to deconstruct the arguments for politically-motivated violence and torture in the 21st century. Despite superb performances by Keifer Sutherland and a host of others, including lesbian actor Cherry Jones as a particularly disturbing US president, what made 24 difficult to watch week after week (or sometimes just through one whole episode) was the gut-churning amalgam of torture and violence that was the foundation for the show.
Joel Surnow, the show's creator, is a noted neo-con, even referring to himself in a New Yorker profile as a "right-wing nut-job." Surnow, who called the Clinton years "especially obnoxious," has taken on a new project post-24, re-writing the Kennedy years for a TV series in a vein which has been called "malicious and vindictive" by liberals. Surnow calls 24 "patriotic."
What many critics, ourselves included, found reprehensible about 24 was the consistent premise of the show, which focused on counter-terrorism specialist Jack Bauer (Sutherland) during one day of teeth-clenching action. (Each season took place over the course of a single day, hence the 24.) The premise was always the "ticking-time bomb" theory of terrorism: something horrendous is imminent, and Bauer must stop it. By any means necessary. Those means, not surprisingly given the post-9/11 climate, usually included what has been termed by both the Bush and Obama Administrations as "enhanced interrogation."
Set aside the fantasy element of the show, the tone of 24 still smacks of jingoistic paranoia and an alarming acceptance of the us-vs.-them perspective on foreign policy that seems more appropriate for a cold-war spy show than one set in the 21st century. There was a grimness to 24 that was as inescapable as its formula for torture.
There's no ignoring the impact of both Lost and 24 on the TV landscape. But while Lost elevated our viewing experience and made us think and engage in new ways, 24 was TV at its most insidious, manipulating viewers into rooting for a hero who operated far outside the perimeters of the international rule of law, and played fast and loose with the Geneva Convention. Watching Lost made viewers yearn for more. Watching 24 made some of us cringe. Turning torture into entertainment lowers the threshold for what should be our innate intolerance for such acts. 24 not only made torture okay, it made it necessary. Some of us won't be sorry to see this show leave the airwaves.
Fond farewells
ABC's Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters, both in the midst of storylines with their gay male characters, will have their season finales on May 16. On B&S, Kevin and Scotty have just discovered their surrogate is pregnant, even as Kevin deals with some intense issues from his closeted past. On DH, Bree's son Andrew is back on the canvas (sans his husband), and Tom and Lee are (or are they?) baby-bound as well. Who will return, and what storylines will come with them next season?
May 20, our guiltiest pleasure, Grey's Anatomy, brings prime time's only lesbian storyline to an end – or does it? Callie and Arizona are breaking up over Callie's desire to have a baby. What will happen in the two-hour season finale is being closely guarded, but there is usually a medical disaster as well as some personal ones. At the end of last season, George was killed and Izzy nearly died from her cancer (she left this season).
The May 6 episode set the stage for the end of Callie and Arizona. Callie was propositioned by a very sexy African-American patient with whom she flirted shamelessly until the woman wrote her phone number on Callie's hand. Callie came home to Arizona and showed her the number, saying that had no intention of calling the woman, but she couldn't help thinking that maybe this woman would want to have a baby with her someday. Arizona kissed her, and they both declared their love for each other. But then Arizona said she would be moving out – she couldn't be the person who kept Callie from having a baby. But Arizona does not want children.
Callie and Arizona are an immensely likable couple, and Callie has had several relationships that have crashed and burned. This one looked like a keeper until she was re-infused with the baby lust she had back in season two, when she was married to George. This one's a heartbreaker.
'Glee' club
The only show we love that is not having a season finale imminently is Fox's musical queer-fest Glee, which runs until June. Each week we wonder how lesbian actor Jane Lynch will top her previous performance. Then we see her as Madonna, and we just can't help being amazed by her versatility. Without the glue of her deadpan wit and killer sarcasm, Glee would be an also-ran, but Lynch is superb, and infuses every scene with a dynamism that is just off the charts. Give that woman an Emmy!
Speaking of Emmy-winners, we can't imagine what ABC's All My Children was thinking in not snapping Emmy-winner Eden Riegel back up to reprise her role as Erica Kane's lesbian daughter, Bianca. The show moved to LA in January, and Riegel is in LA. But instead, CBS' Young & Restless caught Riegel, and she is now playing the assistant DA Heather there. Some things do not make sense. AMC's butchering of Bianca's lesbian storyline by giving her a crash-and-burn wedding sent Riegel off into the hinterlands. She was uncharacteristically public about her displeasure with what happened to her character. Then Y&R snapped her up. What a big mistake for AMC, which has made a plethora of bad moves since the shift to LA. You're killing your own show, guys.
This September, CBS' As the World Turns is set to end as a series, now the longest-running series on TV since Guiding Light ended last September. But until the show leaves the airwaves for good, we can expect to see a steamy triangle with Luke Snyder, Noah Mayer and Dr. Reid Oliver. Over the past few weeks, Reid's attraction to Luke has been growing. (They hated each other at first.) This week, after Noah's surgery, the two had the steamiest kissing between two men in TV history not on a porn channel. This was no fade-to-black peck. This was real, heterosexual-TV-style kissing, and it was amazing.
Luke and Noah broke the ice for daytime gay kissing. But their kisses always seemed a little chaste, a little controlled, a little fumbling to go with their recently discovered gayness and Procter & Gamble's (they own ATWT) nervousness. The kisses between Luke and Reid were grown-up kisses. This is what real gay kissing looks like, folks: just like real heterosexual kissing. No pretense of anything except desire and passion. It was a step in the right direction. Now let's see if these two actually make it to the bedroom, which Luke and Noah never did on-screen. Stay tuned.