Now that all of the shows I regularly watch have ended for the season, I might as well comment on their finales. For those of you who haven't seen them yet, there will be spoilers so beware.

Fringe

I was sure this show would be cancelled by the third episode. I liked the premise, but it seemed like something that would never catch on. Plus I thought it started very slow, and at least for the first few weeks I had to keep reminding myself to tune in. I was very pleased at how it turned out. I'm almost as fascinated with the idea of alternate realities as I am with the idea of time travel, and am really looking forward to see where they're going with this concept. Having Leonard Nimoy show up was a nice treat. I'm not sure how much he'll be around next season, but I enjoyed what little they've shown of him. My big concern is that they're apparently moving this show to Thursdays at 9 p.m. in the Fall. I suspect it'll get killed there. It may have developed a nice following in its one season, but it'll be going against other shows that also have their own followings, which are probably larger. As it stands right now I'll have to choose between Fringe and Supernatural, and will probably wind up watching the latter. Why not just put it on Saturday night at 10 p.m. if they really want it cancelled, which is probably what's going to happen. Hopefully they'll come to their senses and move it back to its current spot. If not, they'll probably have to do it during the season, and by that time they may have lost too many viewers.

Heroes

I really don't know what they're doing or where they're going with this show. I think it started strong way back in Season One, but even by the end of that run I think they'd already started running out of gas. The big Season One finale of our heroes finally facing against Sylar consisted of most of them standing around doing nothing, and some of them not even being on site. Now they might as well call it The Sylar Show. I've read comic books my whole life, so I know that comic book villains rarely if ever stay dead forever, but there's usually at least a gap between appearances. When The Green Goblin died in Amazing Spider-Man 122, he didn't show up fresh and clean in 123. They've made Sylar more like one of those bad horror movie villains that gets chopped up, blown up, eaten, etc., and then just shows up in the sequel like nothing ever happened. I'm honestly starting to believe that the writers have no idea what to do with him, and at this point the only thing they can think to do is give him more and more powers while hoping that the series gets cancelled before they have to offer any type of resolution. I think they would have been smarter to "kill" him in the first season, try something novel and actually introduce some new villains over the next few seasons (and no, not villains that we're told are going to be dynamic and then get killed within a few episodes), and then bring him back, maybe for the final season. They've depowered the heroes to the point that it's no longer believable that anyone could ever stand up to him. And the idiocy of not using Claire's blood to save her father in the last episode still irks me. I know that the producers probably want to forget that second story arc ever happened, but the fact is that they did establish Claire's blood was a cure-all. That was yet another mistake, in my opinion, as it made it difficult to care since any character could be brought back any time. It's bad enough that Sylar and Clair already seem to be in that position. But pretending that never happened is ridiculous. Of course, Peter did dump that girl in the alternate future, and we're supposed to forget that happened as well. I really think they need to wrap this series up, and fast.

Lost

Wow. I have no idea what's happening on this show, and I love it. Knowing what we now know about who was manipulating Locke throughout the series makes every previous episode seem different. It's like watching a (good) Shyamalan movie for a second time after finding out what the twist is. So was Richard on the Black Rock? I don't know. I like it that Jacob, and therefore the Island, was somehow a part of all these people's lives even long before they ever crashed. As I already mentioned here, I really enjoy time travel stories. I like it that they're creating the very future they're trying to prevent. My one concern with this show is that it's easy to see the finale falling flat. Expectations are running so high that unless it's absolutely perfect in every way, people are going to pan it. I'm still looking forward to it, and hate to have to wait nearly a year for the final episodes. Since I really hate dangling plotlines, I wonder if they're ever going to revisit the story of Libby. In that one flashback she was shown to be in Hurley's psychiatric ward. Her character was killed soon after, and I don't think that was ever mentioned again. I hope there's some explanation somewhere down the road.

Smallville

I always thought the Lana bashing was more of a jumping-on-the-bandwagon thing, and kind of felt bad when she got trashed for every second she spent onscreen. However, I have to admit that there was a real shift in quality between the pre-Lana and post-Lana episodes this season. It seemed like Smallville had done the impossible, and had overcome the loss of two major characters in what had been its final season and were telling good stories and making me look forward to each upcoming episode. Then the Lana episodes came and went, and the following episodes just seemed…lacking. The season finale felt like it was just slapped together. All of a sudden the Justice League has Davis subdued. How? They were really all over the map with him. "Jimmy" owned him several episodes back, then Davis tossed Clark around like he was nothing, all without having to change into Doomsday. If even Davis was stronger than Clark and had no weakness to Kryptonite, I have no idea how Green Arrow managed to take him down. Maybe there was no way it could be done, so they just skipped that scene. Clark's climactic nighttime battle with Doomsday seemed to last all of ten seconds, and seemed to culminate in them flying into a mountain and exploding. You blink, and all of a sudden it's daylight and we're with Chloe. I figured it out later, but at the moment had no idea what was happening. I wondered if the battle was still occurring, and this was just to show passage of time. Davis winds up being a monster after all, "Jimmy" gets killed, and Zod shows up. Again. I thought it would have been ballsy if they'd actually killed the real Jimmy. They don't really have to follow Superman canon to the letter, do they? Because it seems like they've had no problem deviating from it in the past. With one season left, would it really have mattered if they killed the real Jimmy? It's not like they'd have to rewrite decades of comic books to match the Smallville storyline. Especially since it doesn't seem like we're ever going to really see Superman in this, what's the difference? I also thought that Michael Rosenbaum might make at least one or two appearances this season, namely in the finale. I guess not. Since I guess the argument is that everything bad that's currently happening is happening because Clark saved Chloe, he should just go back in time and kill her. She's the reason Doomsday became unstoppable (even though they stopped him), and as an offshoot, the reason "Jimmy" is dead. And Chloe NEVER met "Jimmy"'s family? Come on. At the beginning of the season I was hoping they'd extend it for another year, now I'm not so sure. Season Nine had better be damn good, and unless they're finally willing to wheel out Superman, it had better be the last.

Supernatural

This is the series I'm expecting to get cancelled season after season, and am always surprised when it's renewed. I thought they said at some point that it's meant to run five seasons, so if that's the case, I guess we're heading toward the end. I really enjoyed this. I found it interesting that throughout the season they made the angels very "human", with their own plans and agendas beyond what one might think. Some of them weren't much better than the demons in the end. I think they did a good job of convincing people that Ruby was at least somewhat on the side of good, although we finally found out the truth. I'm definitely wondering where they go with this series come the fall. It would seem they're not done with the angels yet, which is fine. Plus I love the car. How sad it was when the car got wrecked at the end of the first season. I was sure we'd never see it again.

http://abcnews.go.com/WhatWouldYouDo/story?id=6551048&page=1

I found out that they filmed a piece on racism at a bagel place a few blocks from me and showed it on last night's "What would you do?" ABC Primetime special. I actually know a few people who wound up on camera. It was an interesting piece, but a bit skewed, and IMO it mixed two different, although not separate issues. Basically they had an actor portray a sales clerk who was refusing service to a couple of Mexicans who couldn't speak English, going so far as to accuse them of being illegal aliens and threatening to call the police on them. The whole point of it was to gauge the other customers' reactions, and see what they would do, if anything.

I don't know, I'm kind of torn on this. The racist clerk was pretty over the top, and it's hard to condone his actions of refusing service based on race and taking it further to accuse them of illegally entering the country because of it. On the other hand, I think it completely glosses over the fact that there is a real problem with people coming to the US and, for whatever reason, refusing to learn the language. I'm not talking about the people who've just immigrated to the country and need to get acclimated, but rather the ones who've lived here for YEARS and still can't communicate. I went to grammar school with someone who, from 1st to 8th grade, never was able to communicate in English. I'm assuming that at home all they ever spoke was Spanish, so he was always somewhat of an outsider. I have no idea what happened to him after that, but it's hard to imagine him amounting to much. The counter-argument to this always seems to be that people are asking them to give up their culture, but I don't think that's the case. Realistically, I don't see how a person can expect to live in a country over an extended period of time and feel that everyone should learn their language instead of them even making an attempt to be able to communicate with the masses.

Of course, the fact that so many native speakers have absolutely no grasp of the English language is a problem all in itself. For the love of God, I can't understand half of the posts I read on this site, and they're all supposedly written in English...