The Strange World of Thomas P. Coombe

Breaking Bad: When Skyler Met Saul

 Freed from the confines of the lab for most of this week, Walt and Jesse spend "Abiquiu" embarking on new business ventures, neither of which is as simple as they'd like them to be. 

 For Walt, that means introducing Skyler to Saul, in what turned out to be one of my favorite Breaking Bad scenes so far.

 Saul's sweating out his unctuous brand of charm, jumping from flirting with Skyler to solemnly calling the wounded Hank "an American hero."

Skyler can barely believe her husband trusts this guy, whose long term plan involves Walt laundering his money by investing in a Laser Tag franchise. (His rationale: Lasers = science, and Walt's a scientist, right?)

 She's already dubious of Walt's method of funneling his meth money to pay for Hank's therapy. And who wouldn't be? "My guy is a top...guy" isn't the most compelling argument. (Showing up with a check cut by something called "Ice Station Zebra Associates" doesn't help much either.)

Season Finale Wrap-Up: Community, Parks & Recreation, The Office, 30 Rock and Chuck

 There was too much going with in the non-TV blogging part of my life last week to find the time to write about the season finales of NBC's Thursday night sitcoms after they had aired.

 Let's take a look at how they all ended their seasons, plus I'll talk a bit about the action-comedy Chuck, which had a really super finale earlier this week.

 Community

 "I give this year a D...for delightful."

 So says Troy, speaking on Abed's video yearbook. I concur with his grade, and only wish Community's actual finale had been the episode that aired the week before. That one actually felt like a finale, with the study group dealing with a -- by their standards -- crisis that threatened their existence. 

The End of 24 and Law & Order

 As the clock struck 10 Monday night -- 4 p.m. in a fictional New York City -- Jack Bauer was a wanted man, about to flee the country in the 24 series finale.

 One hour later, Law & Order ended its 20th and final season, with an episode that broke with the show's normal format, in that the actual crime didn't happen until the final minutes.

 Two very different shows, both influential. Both of which have been, at times, very, very good. Both ending on the same night, yet it feels hard to mourn either of them.

 Jack Bauer will likely be back in a 24 movie. But even if this was the last we'll ever see of him, the show's last few seasons have been so uneven -- a huge dip in quality in year six, an improved season seven, and a lackluster final year -- that it was time for it to end.

Breaking Bad: Man Vs. Wild

"Fly" was one of Breaking Bad's stranger hours, part Roadrunner cartoon, part confessional drama. All quality.

  Had it not aired the same night as the Lost finale, I might've been -- horrible pun intended -- buzzing about it all day.

 As it stands, I can say that it's another illustration of how daring this show is, basically slowing down much of the narrative to spend an entire episode on a story that amounts to "Walt tries to kill a fly in his lab."

 Of course, there's a lot more to it than that.

The LOST Series Finale: It Only Ends Once

 And here we are, at the end. This is likely the last thing I'll write about Lost for a long, long time. 

 If anything interesting -- theories, videos, interviews, etc. -- pops up, I'll post it here, and on Twitter. But this will likely be my last significant post on Lost, the show that's the reason I started blogging about TV almost four years ago, and the reason I started this blog last May. 

 So here we go, one last time, through the jungle. Spoilers, as always, lurk ahead...

LOST: I Need More Time

 It wouldn't be fair to myself or to anyone who reads this blog to write something about Lost tonight. 

The series finale had too much going on, and ended with a revelation to the "sideways" world storyline that's bound to be controversial, that it's just too much to swallow before bed. I need the night and tomorrow morning to think things over.

 As I've said before, all I wanted out of this finale was for the show to avoid ending in a way that would negate everything that came before. And that's NOT what happened, despite that those final moments may have led you to believe.

 It was an often lovely episode, with just the right mix of action and emotion. There were a lot of great call-backs to past seasons, and my only real complaint -- aside from all those damn commercial breaks -- is that I would've liked to see a bit more closure for some of the characters.

 But for now, I'm a bit too drained and mind-blown to say much more, so I'll be back tomorrow with my final Lost blog post.

 Tom Coombe

Fringe Season Finale: Pleased to Meet Me

 Earlier today, I mentioned on Twitter that I was growing tired of people using the phrase "made of win" to describe things they like.

 Still, when a blogger I follow tweeted during tonight's Fringe finale that the episode was "made of 12 kinds of win," it was hard to disapprove.

  Everything the show promised with the first half of the finale last week arrived tonight. And then some. We always talk about how great John Noble is, but tonight's episode really belonged to Anna Torv, who did a lovely job making the Olivia we know and the one from the other side two distinct characters.

Getting Ready For the End of LOST

It's a bittersweet feeling, coming to the end of Lost.

 Sweet because we want to get to the end of any story we enjoy, to see how things wrap up. I

've been asked how I want to see the show end, and I can't really answer that question, other than to say what I don't want to see: any sort of Owl Creek Bridge/St. Elsewhere sort of ending that negates everything that came before.

 It's a bitter moment too because, well, it's the end of Lost. I've grown to love these characters perhaps more than any that have ever appeared on television before -- save for perhaps the Bluth family and Buffy's "Scooby gang" -- and it's sad knowing this is goodbye.

A more critical part of my brain knows it's not a perfect show. The Wire, The Shield and Breaking Bad have all been far more consistent in terms of their storytelling, characterization and overall quality.

 But I always come back to something I wrote when I started this blog a little over a year ago: that basically, Lost is a story we can all put ourselves into. Most of us aren't cops or lawyers or doctors. But we can watch the stories of the people on Flight 815 and say "That could be me."

 We all have mistakes in our past, families with problems. In our minds, we're all the heroes of our stories. We're all tested, and we all have chances to do better.

 TV producers worried about where the "next Lost" is coming from should keep those factors in mind, and not worry so much about hatches, time travel and polar bears.

 That said, Lost is still a show that sparks questions and debates, so in that spirit, here are some things to check out before the finale:

•  Ryan McGee of Zap 2 It lists 10 questions that the finale needs to resolve. What I like about this list is that they're all questions that can be answered through good storytelling, rather than a scene where a character sits down and spends 10 minutes explaining things. I also think we can forget about learning about things like the Hurley bird and or why Pierre Chang used all those pseudonyms. 
• Meanwhile, writer Marc Oromaner argues there are some mysteries Lost has answered indirectly, such as the polar bears and Jacob's cabin.
• The Vulture -- New York Magazine's pop culture website -- picks the show's 20 most unnecessary episodes. I agree with them about "Expose," but still think it was kind of fun. "Adrift" and "Eggtown" were still pretty weak.
• I'm not sure when I'll get my thoughts on the finale posted. I'll likely write a quick reaction before bed Sunday night before returning to the blog the next day. I'm sure I'll have a lot to say.

 Tom Coombe

LOST: Fireside Chat

  People who write about Lost -- myself included -- tended to use words like "polarizing" and "divisive" when talking about last week's Jacob/Man in Black origin story.

 But this week? Really, really hard not to like, a funny, exciting, shocking and ultimately moving episode that set up major showdowns in both the island and sideways storylines.  

 The penultimate episodes of seasons four and five were basically there to set up cliffhangers for the finale (bomb on the freighter; Jack steals the nuke). 

 That sort of stuff was happening here as well, as Desmond and the Monster hatch their respective plans, but somehow, "What They Died For" felt a whole lot richer than, say, last year's "Follow the Leader."

Breaking Bad: Place Your Bets

  It's not just Skyler's fictionalized version of Walt that's into gambling. It seems like everyone in this week's Breaking Bad is rolling the dice.

 For Marie, it means threatening to go around her insurance company to find physical therapy for Hank, a move that could put her hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. 

It's yet another unintended consequence of Walt's decision to cook meth: it's allowed Marie to think it's possible to pay for complex medical care without insurance and still scrape by.

 For Skyler, it means taking a pretty significant risk and telling Marie about Walt's money, this saving her sister from making that big leap. Sure, she lies about how he got it -- a great scene by the way, and more on it below -- but by telling Marie this story, she's potentially given Hank/the DEA a reason to look at Walt.

 Walt's big gamble: telling Gus his -- correct -- theory about how the Hank vs. the Cousins shoot-out went down, then asking Gus what happens when their three month arrangement is up.