But my lord, do they need a tech geek. It’s not like they can’t still have outlandish, completely implausible scenarios. Just use the right jargon. Or, at the very least, don’t use the wrong jargon. I’d rather have them literally make up words than use real words in completely the wrong context.

Phrases like “they sent this video to our subnet”, which was said in today’s episode, should not make it to the final release.

The fact that ICE gave Vic immunity without having talked to his commanding officer at the Barn is a glaring omission. I realize it was rushed, but that was just one phone call away. I just can’t believe the federal government would not do their due diligence in that situation.

They went through painstaking trouble to get Corrine to safety, but what about Vic’s kid with Danny? With how much effort Vic went through to fight for rights with him earlier this season, and having just lost his family, you can’t imagine he’s not going to try to get into that kids life. Since he’s not a convicted criminal, his past isn’t a matter of public record. And even if he can’t do so legally, I’d have to imagine Vic’s not going to just give up.

By Vic originally turning down the deal without Ronnie’s inclusion, the picture was painted that Vic accepted the deal because of Corrine’s arrest. I can’t imagine them putting that timeline in (Vic turning down the deal without Ronnie, Corrine getting arrested, Vic going back and doing the deal if Corrine gets immunity) if you weren’t led to believe that Corrine’s freedom was the tipping point for Vic. But did Vic have to confess his sins and throw Ronnie to the wolves in order to do so? Couldn’t he have left his immunity at the table, and simply traded the arrest of Beltran for Corrine’s immunity? The only threat to Vic and Ronnie at that point was Shane, and if Shane’s arrest became imminent, they still had time to flee.

Doesn’t an investigation of a cop (Ronnie) have to go through IAD? Does Claudette have the authority to arrest Ronnie? Don’t they need more proof against Ronnie, who’s a longtime copy with no criminal history, than the testimony of an admitted cop killer who’s testimony was used to secure his and his kids mother’s freedom? Doesn’t seem like that would hold up in court.

I’m shocked Vic and Ronnie didn’t pursue Shane harder. Shocked. Once they found him and got close, they bailed that front. Vic wouldn’t have needed immunity had they caught Shane.

I thought what they did with Shane was a good way to end it. Throughout this season Shane was being painted as a very sympathetic figure. This was a guy who was racist, who beat a teammate into a comma, and who killed a teammate to protest his own behind. After the murder/suicide, and him once again taking the life of an innocent (Jackson), and making the decision for Mora by himself, he lost any sympathy he had gained.

(I can’t imagine how hard the murder/suicide scene was for Walton Goggins, considering his real-life wife committed suicide in 2004).

Vic, after outsmarting everyone for 7 seasons, became absolutely stupid in the last 2 episodes. He should have known, from the time Ronnie dropped off the money and Shane never showed up, that Corrine was working for the cops in an effort to capture Vic. There’s NO WAY Vic doesn’t pick up on that. Then, after Shane tells him that Corrine was working for the police, he still attempts to get Olivia to tell him where his kids went, thinking he can win them back. That was the time he should have warned Ronnie and fled to Mexico. My only guess is he held out hope he could find his family and get them back in his life, or at the very least he was unwilling to close the book on that.

He won over Beltran’s trust too fast for me. That seemed implausible. I also find it difficult to believe the gangs he ripped $100k off of didn’t figure him out.

I didn’t like the Lloyd arc. I think it would have been better had Lloyd gotten the better of Dutch. We’ve seen Dutch lose his edge before when things got personal, and that would have been a shocking end for the show.

In the end, I wasn’t all that shocked by the ending. The murder/suicide was certainly profound, but everything else you could see coming (and even that, you could see it coming, although I thought the possibility of a double suicide was greater).

My biggest problem with the end was it went out of character. For 6 seasons they’ve done a great job of character development. Say what you want about Vic, and he definitely had a lot of negative you could say, but he’s always been loyal to his team and his family. The last two episodes seemed to try to paint Vic as just the villain and a sociopath, when that’s not consistent with his character the previous 6 seasons. He’s had his opportunities to sell out his team to try to save his own face. He could have tried to convince Shane to get rid of Terry so Vic didn’t need to put himself in danger. Lem posed a serious threat to Vic, yet when Lem was killed, there was no sigh of relief in Vic. No happiness. Despite Vic being more safe now, he was pissed off at the suffering his teammate went through. Even after killing Lem, Vic couldn’t bring himself to harm Shane when he had the chance (until Shane directly tried to take out Vic). Given the opportunity to make his life easier for his team, Vic’s never done that in the past. Now, we’re expected to think the past 6 seasons have been a lie and Vic has gone completely self-centered.

I think what they were trying to get at was after Corrine was arrested, Vic didn’t have any options left, and he had to chose either the mother of his kids or his friend. To me, the last two episodes weren’t showing Vic’s true colors, but showing that he had run out of options, and that his past actions had caught up to him. And that I could see as a plausible ending, as Vic almost has to chose Corrine and his kids. I could also dig Corrine betraying him, as I think Corrine betraying him and him turning on Ronnie shows just how he’s lost everything. He lost his friends, his family, his power and his respect. I just don’t think this was executed all that well. He did have other options, and he should have seen that Corrine was selling him out to the cops. He seemed to become conveniently dumb for the last two episodes, certainly not the Vic Mackey we’ve seen in the past. I guess the argument is he panicked when his family was in jeopardy, but it’s not the first time we’ve seen either the team or his family in serious jeopardy (Kav investigation in Season 5).

Also, if they did try to straight villain’ize Vic, that’s a shame, and a complete over-simplification of some of the more complex characters on TV. It’s also not fair to completely victimize Ronnie, or feel pity for Shane. They all committed these acts, and did so under their own decisions. Shane was the one who killed Lem, which set this whole chain of events into motion. Then, Ronnie was the one who kept pushing to make Shane pay for Lem when Vic didn’t want to. Had he not attempted to take Shane out, Shane would probably be in another precinct, and they’d all be free. It’s a weird twist that Vic was almost killed because of Ronnie’s vendetta, yet we’re supposed to feel that Ronnie was the one betrayed. Had the hit on Vic been successful, we’d probably feel drastically different about the 3 than we do now.

So, to me, it’s either they completely altered the Vic character they’ve been taking years to build, or they poorly executed the ending. There were definitely some great scenes in the final two episodes, and I think the ending itself was right (Vic ending up alone as the result of his actions, Ronnie taking the fall for the strike team, Shane not able to work his way out of the jam, Vic being betrayed by the one he was trying to protect and losing his family. In the end, they were all culpable, to varying degrees, and they were all punished, to varying degrees. Some who deserved less got punished more, and some who deserved more got punished less, but that’s the way life works sometimes), I just don’t think how they got there worked.

Overall though, a superb 7 seasons, and one of my favorite shows of all time. The great thing about the show was that everyone was a shade of gray. The ‘good’ cops had their character flaws, defects, and made their mistakes. The ‘bad’ cops had their honorable attributes and you could often times see a ‘why’ they did their crimes. You could see genuine concern on Vic, to his team, to his family, to citizens of Farmington and even to hookers. Some of the more complex characters on TV. Sad to see it go.

Anyway, I ended up getting a series 2 tivo, mainly because I didn’t feel like paying for a series 3, who are still comparatively expensive. I found a really, really good deal on an 80 hour series 2, so I went with it.

I originally set it up in our bedroom, as my main use for it wasn’t so much for live tv (fast forwarding live tv would be nice, though), but to record stuff when I’m away. The TV in our bedroom was pretty much only used in the mornings, and since the series 2 is only a single tuner, I didn’t want to tie up the TV at prime time recording my sixers games and prevent Elyssa from watching TV during that time.

I then decided to take the cable box out of the bedroom, as we really only watch stations we can get on basic cable in there. I brought that into the living room, and hooked the tivo up to that. I have the cable box without the tivo going to input1 in the tv, and the cable box with tivo going to input2 on the tv. The cable box with the tivo hooked up is on the ground and turned around, as I don’t need to change it since the tivo controls it, and the two boxes signals never get crossed up. So now I can have something recording on the tivo, switch inputs, and still be able to watch live tv. The ghetto dual tuner tivo for a third of the price. All in all, the setups nice. It’s nice not missing the first half of sixers games, that’s for sure. And I’ve been extremely impressed with the tivo interface. I don’t even care if that makes me a non-gnu/linux purist.

I’ve barely used it, but what I can say is:
It looks really nice. The graphics and usability of it is very well done. If you have 1.5+ hours of free time for the install, 10 gigs of free space, and 4 gigs of memory, then this OS is for you (that is, if the compatibility check passes).

I especially liked the part when …

Yeah, that about sums it up. For a series finale that had as many loose ends to tie up as the Sopranos did, that was a very underwhelming episode to a great series. The Phil Leotardo scene was a great scene. But it was a great scene surrounded by 30 minutes of filler on each side. For every loose end that was tied up (Phil getting whacked), 5 more were opened up (The profession of Meadow’s fiancée and how it conflicts with Tony, the new rat in the family, etc). And this very well may have been David Chase’s intention. We started watching during the life of the family, and we ended watching at just another point in the family, not necessarily the end.

My main gripe was the ending, and the ambiguity of it. Overall, I think the ending was terrible, but I think it was just one or two details away from being great. I don’t need everything wrapped up, but I don’t think a “decide for yourself” ending was the way to go (in fact, I hated it). What I think would have been great endings:
* Tony gets whacked. This scene could have been almost exactly the same as how it was portrayed in the actual ending. Tony’s sitting there with AJ, and Carm eating onion rings. He’s watching Meadow come in, and as Meadow enters the door she screams in horror. Screen goes black, and show goes silent.
* Tony lives. An ending where Tony kills Phil and lives on was more than acceptable to me. In fact, I was secretly rooting for it. However, do not create the ambiguity at the end by having the screen go abruptly black and question whether that was meant as a nod to the comments made by Bobby earlier in the season about what you remember when you get whacked.

By having the screen go black and quiet at the end, people are going to believe that you are insinuating that Tony was whacked and the at conversation with Bobby has more significance. And I can an argument being built for both sides. And that’s the main problem I had with it. I think David Chase did a great job of setting up tension at the final scene. During the entire 8 minutes of the diner scene you were on the edge of the seat. I think that was brilliant, some of the most suspenseful TV I’ve ever seen. Leaving it open to interpretation, however, was not. Either Tony getting killed, or life going on (and the tension could have been a great indication of the life Tony had to live, constantly worrying about his safety) could have been great. However, the execution was lacking. If Tony was to be killed, we needed to know Tony got killed (not necessarily see it, as I said above only seeing Meadow’s reaction could have been the best scenario). If they all lived, going black created ambiguity that was not needed.

My only other main gripe was that as a whole, the episode was very underwhelming. There was virtually no payoff. It was just another episode in the Sopranos. After dealing with subpar stories for the last 2 years, I think a payoff episode was in order. I also think the war with New York was very underwhelming. Not that more people had to die, but betrayal, tension, everything could and should have been ratcheted up. This was an event that they had been building towards for 3 seasons now. Phil Leotardo was certainly a bastard, but the war needed more than that.

Overall, I don’t think the finale was quite as bad as everyone’s making it out to be, but I do think it was a disappointment. I do not think the ending was done right (although I do think it had potential), and overall I think it was underwhelming. I think it’s time to go back and re-watch the first two seasons.