Not that it matters, as no one reads this anyway, but I have neglected this blog for sometime now. As I start to get ramped up for the season at the middle to end of this month I'll be checking in with some thoughts.
But for now, I'm thinking about my second favorite TV show: Monk, which will be airing its own series finale "Mr. Monk And the End, Part II" this Friday. I am not really a frequent viewer of scripted TV shows--most of my viewing consists of sports and news. There are a handful of shows that I am a huge fan of--LOST, Monk, Burn Notice, The Office, Psych. And there are a few more that I try to catch--24, FlashForward. Outside of those shows, though, I really don't watch any TV shows.
Monk will be the first show that I have been a huge fan of to bow out, and as such watching the series finale on Friday will be a new and interesting experience for me. And a little bit of a test run for the LOST finale.
I am actually more sad about the end of Monk than I will be for LOST, even though I like LOST more. The reason is the nature of the shows--LOST is a puzzle that you want to unwrap and get to the bottom of; Monk is a familiar face you watch every Friday night to make you laugh at the end of the week. The end of LOST is bittersweet, to be sure, but it is also exciting, as the answers that we've been waiting for will either be revealed or be crystallized as mysteries to ponder forever. I will miss the Thursday morning theorizing (LOST will always be a Wednesday show to me, no matter when it actually airs), but it should feel good to actually understand what the heck has been going on over the last five years (even if that understanding is incomplete and limited).
But in the case of Monk, it is losing a friend. Just a TV friend (which is to say an imaginary one with no real emotional attachment), and one you have over 120 episodes to catch on re-runs, but it's just a little different. Sure, there's the puzzle of Trudy's murder, which has lurked just under the surface throughout the series, but that is nothing compared to the massive, all-encompassing mystery that is LOST.
So farewell, Monk. We'll thank you later? No, we'll thank you now.
