finale watch (simpsons, king of the hill, desperate housewives)

Harken back to a time where not every TV show on the planet had to have a gimmick to end the season.

Cliffhangers were few and far between — Who Shot J.R., the occasional cop shooting on Hill Street Blues — and when they were used, they were usually considered pretty lame.

Then, TV people realized something. When you provided the audience with a cliffhanger, you not only get huge ratings for the finale episode, but the season premiere a few months later.

Sold.

It started with dramas — then even sitcoms followed suit with cliffhanging season finales that kept audiences talking all summer, like the Who Shot Mr. Burns season ender in The Simpsons all the way to last year when Jim finally asked out Pam on The Office.

Now, it’s a rarity when there is no cliffhanger. When there isn’t, we wonder what happened, what was wrong. It seems so weird that the star of the show was to go online and explain to fans why there was no finale (like Zach Braff had to do last week concerning the “Scrubs” finale).

So it’s nice to see that there still are two shows that can just go out with original, funny episodes:

Simpsons: At this point, there is barely a chance that The Simpsons will ever create another Top 10 episode. The body of work is just too big, as the show careens toward 500 editions like there is a bomb under the show and it can’t slow down or it’ll explode. Or something like that. We even take it for granted by now. The only people who watch it week-by-week religiously are the Comic Book Guy-types who keep Web pages on it. So every now and then, it’s nice to stop by and enjoy the fact that you will laugh hard at least five times in a half-hour and giggle another 10 times. That’s what happened last night, as Lisa pushed Krusty out of the spotlight, leading to him hosting a 3:30 a.m. talk show with “local bully Jimbo Jones” as his only guest. The only problem is they already did this plot with a Simpson child doing grunt work for Krusty, only to be thrust into the spotlight by accident. Usually, they’ll make a direct joke about that, but it was like they were trying to hide it from the audience last night. Not cool. They’re lucky it’s still so consistently funny that you have no choice but to look past it. Kinda. Finale grade: B-

King of the Hill: I’m not a huge King of the Hill fan, I usually only watch it because my wife likes it. For the most part, I don’t find it that funny and don’t really think much of it rings true. And when they start talking about how awesome the Cowboys are, it’s like fingernails down the blackboard. But with the state of comedy on the TV now in a time where something as inane as Two and a Half Men can be the most popular comedy on TV, there is something to be said for just hanging out with an easy, breezy, occasionally funny episode of King of the Hill. Same as Simpsons — that’s just what this episode was. Finally seeing Luanne’s dad was a interesting little gimmick — but not a huge development – and finding out that he actually was in prison and not on his oil rig was a nice little twist. But King of the Hill is what it is, and nothing was done here to over-reach that. Every now and then, that’s a good thing. Finale grade: B

Desperate Housewives: I don’t watch Desperate Housewives, I never have. While it was having its two-hour third season finale, I was watching the Burn Notice I had taped on Thursday (it’s one of my new favorite shows, I’m really glad I started watching it during its string of reruns this spring). But I normally check on WNEP’s 11 p.m. news and I turned it on too early Sunday night and caught the last five minutes of Housewives. So I came in where all the Wysteria Lane people were saying how whatever Dana Delaney did wasn’t her fault. Good for her, I like Dana Delaney and don’t want to see any of her characters in jail. She’s a little to pure for that, even if she was the resident trouble maker on DH. Then they jumped ahead five years. Wha? What a crappy time for me to come in. Are they just going to pick it up here next season, five years into the future? I would advise against that. Gimmicks are gimmicks, but that’s just crazy. Apparently they saw the incest angle Brothers and Sisters went with in the slot following it and said, “We gotta one-up those tools.” So congrats, DH writers. You are more outrageously crazy than your Brothers and Sisters counterparts. Five-minute finale grade: C-

A loaded night for finales coming tonight: Bones and House on FOX, Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill on The CW,  How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, Rules of Engagement and CSI: Miami on CBS. The first of a two-part, two-day Dancing with the Stars finale starts tonight too. I’ll probably watch Bones and House, I’ve at least seen every-now-and-then episodes of those, plus I head Angel got shot last week. If I had my ultimate choice though, I’d be watching Gossip Girl, which I liked at the start of the year, but fell way behind with and now have to wait for the DVDs to play catch-up.