Finale-Palooza: On One Crowded Night, Eleven Seasons End

30 Rock: Tina Fey's beloved Emmy-winner is only one of 11 network shows ending seasons tonight. NBC

 

by Linda Holmes

It's hard to identify the end of the regular TV season anymore, what with the proliferation of cable channels and the rise of split seasons, partial seasons, half-year reality shows, and everything else that has unraveled traditional scheduling.

(Fun fact: According to The Futon Critic's wonderful listing system, there have been only three nights so far in all of 2009 that didn't feature either a season/series finale or a season/series premiere somewhere on the dial.)

But if you had to pick one night to represent the end of the 2008-09 season, it would probably be tonight, when eleven network series will depart for the time being.

The roll call: Bones, My Name Is Earl, Parks and Recreation, Smallville, CSI, The Office, 30 Rock, Grey's Anatomy, Hell's Kitchen, Supernatural, and CSI: NY.

What to watch?

We run down some thoughts, after the jump...

As we've discussed, The Office has had a slam-bang season, and there are a couple of very welcome guest stars listed in the official description, so that one gets a thumbs-up.

Ditto 30 Rock, where Alan Alda wants Alec Baldwin's kidney, and nothing about that is anything less than delightful.

ABC has been promising that the Grey's Anatomy season finale will "forever change the way you watch Grey's Anatomy," so ... the picture will be upside-down? It will be broadcast in Chinese and subtitled in English? Double tear-jerking, in that there will be twice as many tears and twice as many jerks?

I have actually followed this season of Hell's Kitchen, sort of, but since I wouldn't trust any of the yahoos on that show to microwave a Lean Cuisine without irradiating my entire apartment and rendering it uninhabitable for hundreds of years, I can't recommend investing heavily in the answer to which of them will pretend to be happy about pretending to be made the pretend chef of a real restaurant.

My favorite part of the description of Smallville — which I don't watch — is that Clark Kent apparently has to be told that someone named Doomsday is a serious threat. What kind of a superhero (or future superhero) needs someone to tell him that a guy named Doomsday needs attention? "Hey, Clark, you know that guy Doomsday? That guy is bad news."

I'm not a major crime procedural aficionado, but I like the idea that the baddie on CSI: NY is apparently going to be played by Craig T. Nelson. I never did trust that guy, even when he was on Coach. Especially when he was on Coach. How much did we really know about Coach?

In any event, it should be a full evening for those who don't have cable, so fire up your DVR (or VCR, or Betamax system, or habit of careful note-taking) and enjoy the closest thing there is to the end of the regular season and the beginning of summer, the big-media way.