Weeds to conclude after eight seasons. And yet another three-act narrative closes shop one season early...

I like Weeds, having watched it first for work-related reasons and then having caught it on my own slowly over the last year or so via Netflix.  I'm not a die-hard fan, so news of its upcoming cancellation following the upcoming eighth season would otherwise be untroubling save for one key factor. Weeds, like any number of ongoing episodic series was clearly structured into a three-act structure, with three seasons for each act.  Like 24, Mad Men, and (so far) Sons of Anarchy among others, the show's long-form storytelling clearly established a set structure.  The first three seasons established the core premise (Nancy sells dope to neighbors in upscale Agrestic after her husband dies) and literally burns down the primary story, while the second three seasons upended Nancy's world and left her at what amounts to rock-bottom (her family abandoned her and she basically surrendered herself to police custody at the conclusion of season six).  That leaves three seasons to rebuild to some kind of third-act finale.  But just like 24, the logical narrative has been cut short by a season.

DVD Review: Smallville: the Complete Series

Smallville the Complete Series DVD box set
Warner Bros. home video
Available Tuesday, November 29th
9,261 minutes (and thirty-seven seconds)
Not rated

by Scott Mendelson

This one is pretty simple, folks.  I liked Smallville during its initial five years, when the series had a pretty clear narrative arc.  However, when the show picked up surprising ratings strength during its fifth (what was to be its final) season, the show became a giant waiting game, as the creators kept trying to arbitrarily keep the show alive through guest stars and cast replacements as the CW failed to launch successful replacements.  I gave up at the end of season seven, although I kept up with major plot points and did tune in for the series finale last May.  By the time Clark Kent became Superman, it was the definition of anti-climax.  He had already gone through pretty much all of the major Superman beats and encountered pretty much every major friend or foe that the he had already been Superman in all-but name and costume for four or five years already.  Still, through hell and high water, the show was an uncommonly ambitious bit of fantasy storytelling, revamping the Superman mythos in a way that made sense for series television and creating its own mythology that can stand alongside the movies, Lois and Clark, Superman: the Animated Series, and the comic books themselves as a 'proper' Superman epic.

Smallville finale shocker: no actual shots of Tom Welling as Superman!

Obvious spoiler warning: I'm not going to get into every plot detail of last night's Smallville finale.  The big climactic moments were disappointing for two reasons.  First, as usual with television superhero shows, the big action climax was painfully puny, especially for the payoff of ten years of mythology.   Basically, Clark flies through a possessed Lionel Luther (does that count as murder?) and then a CGI blue thing that is supposed to be Superman quickly flies into Apokolips and quickly moves it about three inches to the left, saving Earth.  The most emotionally potent moment of the finale was its opening and closing bookends, which had Allison Mack reading a comic book to her young child seven years into the future, a four-color tale of how Clark Kent became Superman and saved the world.  It's a weird breaking the fourth wall moment, but it served as a reminder of just how potent, primal, and powerful the Superman mythology really is.