In Hindsight: The Last Episode

Archive, Features

So here we are, the final edition of In Hindsight, as we head into Inside Pulse V3. Wondering what that might hold in store for some of your favourite television columnists – and myself? Look no further than the preview for Reality Dish, Prime Time Pulse and the DVD Lounge.

So for my last column, let’s take a look at some of my favourite “last episodes”. Some recent, some not so much.

Even though my favourite Trek series was Deep Space Nine, I can’t deny that The Next Generation had the best finale. The DS9 finale was really meant to be a culmination of all the storylines explored to that point, Voyager’s was, unsurprisingly, craptastic, and I’m still trying to digest the finale for Enterprise. TNG though, managed to tie things into the pilot episode, and kept things pretty simple, playing off of the strange relationship between Picard and Q. Quite frankly, I’d rather watch this ten times in a row instead of ten consecutive episodes of Voyager


The Friends finale was probably most similar to Cheers in that the show had overstayed it’s welcome, and needed to go out with a bang. Actually, check that – you could say that about many different NBC sitcoms. Off the top of my head, these include – Family Ties, Night Court, Seinfeld, Frasier, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Saved By the Bell. I’ll spare Newsradio because of the circumstances surrounding the show. Regardless, Friends actually did deliver a somewhat satisfying ending to the show. It wasn’t the Best Finale Ever, but it gave us what we wanted to see – the relationships between Joey and Chandler, and Ross and Rachel.


And at the other end of the spectrum, here’s a show that I love that took a wrong turn somewhere (season four or five, depending on who you ask) – Sliders. Supposedly, the series ended on something of a cliffhanger, in order to get Sci-Fi to consider continuing the series. Unfortunately, the cliffhanger was a little weak, with Rembrandt jumping into the wormhole to infect the Cromaggs with a virus. It’s hard for me to describe what went wrong here, because not a lot went right for me in this episode. I’m not really sure if this came about due to budget or what, but overall, it was a weak ending to a fun show.

Reality Shows
Of course, I can’t go into Reality Dish without talking about the Reality Show finale – more specifically, the Live Reunion show. Like any “season” of a reality competition, the reunion show hinges on the strength of the cast, but there is one other factor – the ability of the host to ask questions and keep the show moving. Survivor started this trend by having Bryant Gumbel – who really could’ve cared less about the show – host and ask questions. And because it was Bryant Gumbel, it wasn’t bad – just a little stiff. Survivor also had über-fan Rosie O’Donnell host before stumbling upon the perfect host – Jeff Probst.

But interestingly, Jeff was not the first in-show host to host a reunion show. That honour may belong to Anderson Cooper when he hosted The Mole. And Anderson did a great job – he’s the same guy you see on Anderson Cooper 360 with that great wit and delivery. Or it could’ve been Julie Chen on Big Brother, but more on that in a moment.

Both Jeff and Anderson have proved to be competent in keeping the flow going and not sounding stiff when asking questions. For Anderson, it’s probably a good thing. But there are others who, quite frankly, are just horrible at their jobs. There is the aforementioned Chen, who I suspect still has the Big Brother gig because she’s married to Les Moonves. There’s Laird Macintosh of the recently completed Treasure Hunters, who showed a complete and utter inability to maintain flow and ask decent questions.

And finally, there is The Donald. The Apprentice is 99.9% about Trump anyways, so it made sense to have him host the live Reunion Show. But the problem is that Trump is a really bad host. Really, really bad. You can see that he’s good when talking business and/or promoting himself – how else did he build his empire? But when reading cue cards and acting like he gives a shit about the fired candidates, he’s pretty blatant about his feelings. Even bringing Regis Philbin in to host didn’t help things – instead of elevating things to Regis’ level, Regis lowered himself to Trump’s. Such is the way of being near The Donald, and it’s probably part of the reason that the ratings keep dropping for his show.

Finally, this has nothing to do with television, but I give you the often imitated, sadly duplicated ‘N Chink:

IP Linkage:
Matt Basilo no longer has a Case of the Mondays.

Yet another contest, as we give away a DVD set of The Unit Season One.

The Week… In Hindsight:

‘Canadian Idol’ (CTV)
Eva did more than enough to win, but as we saw on American Idol, sometimes personality can overcome a sometimes suspect singing voice.

‘Prison Break’ (FOX)
Great way to keep us guessing with the escapees staying in multiple motel rooms. However I kept thinking that they focused a bit too much on Tweener, and since Peter Stormare was listed as a guest star, Abruzzi dying was the (second) most obvious outcome. Supposedly, Stormare didn’t like the grind of a weekly series, and wanted to go back to movies. I can’t wait for “The Brothers Grimm 2” where he keeps yelling “Come back, a-Grimmy”.

‘Rock Star: Supernova’ (CBS)
Lukas won. EVS.

That’s it for this column. See you on Reality Dish and Prime Time Pulse!

Kevin has been an Insider since 2003, writing on a variety of topics ranging from The Amazing Race to Mixed Martial Arts. His current hobbies include Fantasy Football, Sporcle, travelling, making liberal use of his DVR and wondering what the heck he's gonna do when his two daughters are old enough to date. You can follow Kevin on Twitter (@starvenger).