What is "My Two Bits?"

My Two Bits is the official editorial page for the editor of Techtite.com. Techtite will accept reader submissions, for reviews as well as any editorials deemed well written and pertinent to this web site's audience.

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---DEATH to pop-up window commercials!

---Off the "Daily Radar"...

---PG-13: An Asset, or a Curse?

---Sept. 11, 2001...

---Down with pop- ups: THE SEQUEL!

---Movies "Based on a Video Game"? YOU WISH!

---25 Years, and STILL no Light Saber!

---Why "Ludicrous Gibs is cool, and "Suggestive themes" is banned...

---Star Wars: It's All The Same To Me...

---Bulletin Bored.

---Is it Ever TIME for Matrix Spoilers?

---No Fate But What We Make...PERIOD.

---Mac Attacked.

---Screening the Screener Ban.

---Robin Williams, Multiplayer, and You

---Is Chrissy Snow in Charge of Disney...?

---Where are My Flying Cars?

---Why Stalactites As Stabbing Scepters are Swell But Bare Behinds are Banned...

more>>>>>

No sidebar comments for this review. Yet.

My Two Bits for May/June, 2004 is titled :

Three Series Finales, Three Reactions...

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As I type this, it's one week since the finale of Friends. Time yet to talk about it? If not, go somewhere else. That's what this editorial is about. If you're hording the last episode for a July 4th picnic or something, read no further. If you saw it and want to have me editorialize about it, read on...

Simply put, the opinion of this finale is mixed...and to this fan, it shouldn't be. Rachel and Ross confess their love for one another and are an item again. Chandler and Monica get not only a child, but fraternal twins; a boy and a girl. Joey gets them a duck and a chicken as a gift; a vintage Friends salute to classic early seasons. Phoebe is her lovably carefree self, racing to get Ross to the airport on time to get Rachel off the plane, then when everyone is all "I'm sorry there are regulations blah blah blah," Phoebe hilariously screams "Rachelllll!!!!!" at the top of her lungs, as if to say, "It's the finale; get off the plane already and hug Ross!" This was a really fun finale.

Does everybody agree? Most do. some do not. Canadian TV columnist Bill Brioux of the London, Ontario Free Press, snorted that this finale "was called 'The Last One,' but it should have been called 'The One That Really Sucked.'" Similarly, Roger Catlin in the Hartford Courant called it "relatively low-key." That seems to be the problem some had with it. Nothing major happened here. Plot threads were tied up, stories were ended, and everyone lives --as much as we can presume-- happily ever after. Some people may thing a poetic ending where something bad happens would've been more memorable, and to those people I always say: if you wanted something bad to happen in the finale, then you weren't a real fan of the series, were you? Sure such emotional finales offer a series one last chance at an Emmy nomination, though what does it leave the fans? Answer: a fat lot of absolutely nothing.

That said: how many finales make the stupid mistake of snubbing their nose at fans, for some petty last-ditch attempt at an Emmy? Critics love such finales;; fans loathe them. Here's a small sample of such finales, off the top of my head::

• The Wonder Years: Winnie and Kevin never marry. In an epilogue, it's revealed that dear old dad dies just weeks later, while Kevin's mom enters politics (!), for a cheap Hillary-Clinton joke that wasn't worth the groans.

• Xena Warrior Princess: Xena dies. 'nuf said.

• Mad About You: Paul and Jamie split up for some stupid reason, then get back together, though only many years later, when  one can only presume senility helped them forget the stupid reason they broke up.

• Who's the Boss? Tony re-applies as Angela's housekeeper --big whoop!-- yet they don't get married, even after so many seasons of being together.

• Quantum Leap: Here's a hot one; you're told your series has been cancelled, but you have the time to add an epilogue to your final episode. Instead of simply typing the line "Sam Beckett finally came home!" the caption reads, "Sam Beckett never returned..." So, basically you have a series that could've left loyal fans with a happily ever after message, yet instead left them with a message that sounded like "Sam never makes it home, nyah-nyah!" What a snub to series fans!

Mind you, this is just a cursory top 5 list; the list grows every year. Just this very season, the finales of Frasier and The Practice aired, and let's be frank; they sucked. I was expecting the Practice finale to suck, if just because the final season was a hard sell in the first place: they had already fired half a dozen of their lead characters, at the start of the season(!). As for Frasier, it left fans with him given the chance to either move to Chicago to be with his "true love" (or so the final half dozen episodes want us to believe), or go to San Francisco to be on his own TV talk show, or stay in Seattle, with his quickly growing family of 6. While the finale does show Frasier arriving in Chicago...what? No hugs, marriage proposals, or perhaps her moving with him to San Francisco, to be his series co-host? No; this is one of those "artistic" scripts that allows you to write your own final page. Well, if I am to write my own script; what's the point of a series finale at all? Hmm?

The bottom line is that good finales are a simple "thank you" to the fans who kept loyal to a series for so long. Anyone who says that the Friends finale sucked is no fan of the show. They wanted to see a cast member die or another cast member lose their job or the whole gang to get arrested while screaming "Serenity now" (accept it: that Seinfeld finale sucked, too!) for no reason other than a cafe-philosopher's view of "art." Oh gee; the show ended with a crappy ending. How very artistic.

In the end, when seeing Friends offer such a "thank you" to fans --via everything they wanted resolved in the finale-- all I can say to the cast and crew is, "You're welcome." There's a word for shows that have angst more than happiness in their season/series finales; they're called dramas. Give me Rachel and Ross sharing a hug over Xena's death any day of the week.

As Always: I'm Techtite, and these are My Two Bits...