Minutiae

'The West Wing' exits stage left.

There's no steadfast school of thought on how series finales should go. Should it be a clip-ridden mess, giving no plot advancement and leaning heavily on how enjoyable the past however many years have been? Should a major character die? Should everyone learn a lesson, or should things be left for the audience to interpret, having learned the characters so well over the course of the show?

No matter how you go about it, you can't deny the fact that something is ending. The Seavers will move out of their house and eat pizza on the floor. Sam will lock the bar up for good. Rachel will get off the plane. There's no escaping it. It's the execution that makes a final episode shine or fizzle.

( Transition...more after the cut )

Superior writing, strategizing return to NBC's White House, but some question marks remain.

There's a lot to be said about how weak the fifth and sixth seasons of The West Wing really were. Regular viewers noticed an obvious drop-off in quality after creator Aaron Sorkin stepped out of the picture, leaving his underlings to very nearly wreck the show with muddy plot lines and dialogue, two things in which Sorkin was unquestionably strong.

As the show prepares to bow in a few weeks - there's only two episodes left - that trend has reversed. The past two weeks have seen smart dialogue and wickedly diabolical politicking, both in the transitional offices of President Elect Santos, who's trying to staff his White House, and outgoing President Bartlett, who is trying to walk gently on the razor-sharp edge of an international crisis. Last night, Santos smartly offered Senator Arnold Vinick, whom he defeated for the presidency, the job of Secretary of State after an ingenious mind game that had Vinick pondering everything from the vice presidency to re-running in four years to sitting on the board of directors for any number of companies.

Indeed, for the Santos camp, The West Wing is playing out like it's season three all over again. But we all know that there's two episodes left, so what's the point? I can understand that the writers don't want to get Jed into any more big situations they can't write him out of in two weeks, so Martin Sheen is, in essence, a lame duck. But there's storylines yet to be wrapped up. After a mental near-breakdown, Josh was ordered by Sam (he's back!) to take a vacation, and he brought Donna with him. Will they return as confirmed sweethearts? And is Sam really going to take a place in the Santos White House? What of Toby? Does he plead out of his treason charges, or does he go to jail? Are CJ and Danny for real after seven seasons of near misses? Can we bring back Zoe and have another White House wedding with her and Charlie before Jed and Abby pack up? And yes, can Bartlett and Santos work their good cop/bad cop routine to achieve international peace between China and Russia? There's so many holes left to fill in on The West Wing in the next two weeks, I feel like I'm watching Lost. Even so, the tail end of the seventh and final season has been a treat for anyone who has had the gumption to stick around through the hard times.

Could this really be the end for one of the best shows on television?

I'll openly admit that I only got into Arrested Development two months ago. After borrowing the first six episodes on DVD from a friend back in December, I realized that I'm the problem with the show. I'm one of the people who by all accounts should have been watching the show all along but, for reasons unknown, didn't. Friday, FOX aired the last of the episodes that it had ordered from the show's creators, and the proverbial hand is ready to officially pull the plug. I will step up and take blame, because if the series is over, I didn't watch a single episode when it aired (don't tell me what happened in the last four! I'm watching them this weekend!).

Fact of the matter is that FOX is going to cancel the show, and it's best option is to land on Showtime, where nobody has to worry about ratings (the real tribute to the show would be watching the number of Showtime packages people add to their cable bills). But, if online reports are to be believed, even that possibility is remote.

Watching these three seasons of Arrested Development on DVD and downloaded onto my computer has given me a feeling like when I was watching Firefly: enjoying the experience but knowing in the back of my mind and the pit of my stomach that it was going to be limited. If the four episodes sitting in my VCR, waiting for me to watch them with the person who turned me on to the show, are indeed the end for the Bluth family, I know that it's been a fun ride but am disappointed that good television can be stifled by bad ratings. Gorram business world.

A special treat tonight: in the middle of watching an awesome "LOST," I flip over to check what's going on at "Veronica Mars" and I see the Sixers. God bless UPN for covering basketball. So, "Mars" was switched over to 10 p.m. Those of you who don't watch both yet, tonight was a great opportunity to learn why you should.

Is the definition of 'Must-See TV' making a return?

I will not pretend for a second that Friends isn't my favorite TV show of all time. Yes, I've matured in my watching habits, becoming engrossed in offbeat sitcoms like Arrested Development, fully immersing myself in the LOST mystique, and finding a smart high school show in Veronica Mars, but I'm not gonna lie: watching the final episodes of the tenth and final season on DVD made me weep like a little girl. Yes, season 10, and probably most of 8 and 9 for that matter, were on the lame side, but Ross, Rachel, Chandler, Monica, Joey, and Phoebe were still my friends, and I still consider myself a huge fan.

So how excited am I to report to you that Friends is slotted to return to NBC for four hour-long episodes? As excited as I was when I found out that Steve Burns is coming back with a second album. Maybe more. Friends really dropped the ball at the end of the series by not giving fans a Ross/Rachel wedding. There was natural momentum when she had his child, and instead of putting the duo together immediately, they settled for more frustration and a questionable reunion at the series' end. I know it sounds like I'm bashing the writers, but hey, they could make Ross and Joey space explorers in these four new episodes, as long as they can explain it and make it funny.

Losing Friends marked the end of a TV era for me, much like it did for devotees of Cheers or M*A*S*H. Now, I get to extend that a little bit longer even without the help of my full-series DVD collection. Bravo, NBC. Bravo.

Tip of the cap to coworker Carolyn for the link.

In other NBC news, not that it's surprising, this season is officially the last for The West Wing. I knew once I started watching it that it would end. But hey, this at least means they can swear in the Republican at season's end and not have to deal with trying to wrap their liberal minds around a conservative cast. Even so...vote Santos!

There's just something about me and doomed television shows. First, I get hooked on The West Wing, which could very well be done after this season. I've had an affinity for The Critic even before it went off the air after two and a half season. I was part of the DVD-buying public who inspired the resurrection of Family Guy. One of my favorite shows, Firefly, didn't even make it through a full season and left people to discover its genius on their video store shelves. Now, just as it appears that it's ready to journey into the land of canceled shows, I'm starting to get into Arrested Development.

Development follows the Bluth family, primarily Michael (Jason Batemen), as they try to keep the family real estate business above water after business and family patriarch George Sr. is arrested for what could be any number of crimes. Michael, who it seems is the only one in the family with his head screwed on correctly, tries to wrestle control of the business from the scattershot places that George Sr. has embedded it, all while fending off his relatives and trying to keep his father from running the business further into the ground from within the prison walls. Like any good comedy, this central plot element is a launching pad for any number of tangential story arcs.

Unlike sitcoms like Friends and Cheers before it in almost any way, Development borrows one successful element from these legendary shows: a strong ensemble cast. Yes, Michael is the focus of the A plot, but each member of his family has an important part to play, and the actors are on top of their respective games for every scene, bringing all brands of comedy to the table. As Michael, Bateman is smart and sarcastic; as his magician brother George II (called Gob), Will Arnett is wacky and melodramatic. Brother-in-law Tobias (played by David Cross) is stumbling and neurotic, son George-Michael (Michael Cera) is nervous and insecure, George Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor) is deliciously immoral, and so on down the line. The crazier this family gets, the more important it becomes for the actors to bring it, and bring it they do.

Development is a television show in the vein of Wes Anderson, and though he has nothing to do with it, you can see the same sparks in it that made his The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore so brilliant. Its comedy is smart, its characters deeply and wackily flawed, and its plot at once deceptively simple and wondrously complex. The show is shot like a movie too, making it one of the most aesthetically pleasing things on television not stuck on a mysterious island. The show is hip, perhaps tragically so. It's too smart to make it with the general public, too well-crafted to be appreciated by the laugh-tracked masses.

I've only made it through the first six episodes, on loan from a friend, but I'm already simultaneously considering buying the DVDs myself and mourning the foreseeable end of the show. Hopefully before Arrested Development disappears for good, a cable station will spring it from the prison of network television and let it develop where it can be appreciated.