J.J. Jareau and the case of the magical boyfriend from N'awlins.

In the last few years, as shows I loved have come, gone, and jump the shark, I've started investigating running series that I'd never picked up when they started. One such show is Criminal Minds, which Lianne recommended to me because I'm a sucker for a.) a good crime drama, b.) strong characters, c.) some psychological intregue, and d.) pretty boys. I watched the first two seasons in less than a week, all-told, and devoured the first half of the third season over my Christmas break. It was instant and nearly obsessive love.

Aside from the cases, though, I really felt drawn to the cast of characters. Even in their weakest moments, every one of them felt fleshed out and developed, from Elle (who I was glad to see go, and frankly, I always think a mark of a strong character is being able to hate them), to Spencer, to Hotch, Garcia, Morgan, Emily, and even Gideon. In a lot of ways, though, J.J.'s development was my favorite, mostly because of its subtlety. I spent half of the first season thinking that she was, to put it bluntly, a pretty blonde who served next to no purpose in the show. As time wore on, however, she was given clever slivers of personal development that slipped in almost unnoticed. By season three, I really liked J.J. and how she fit into the team.

And then, we had the writer's strike.

Now, this is not another instance of me raging against the WGA and talking about how the strike simultaneously saved and ruined television. That would be petty. However, while the strike was on-going, A.J. Cook--who plays J.J. on Criminal Minds--announced that she and her husband were pregnant. If the strike hadn't occured, the pregnancy might have been able to keep out of the show, because they wouldn't have been filming so late into the spring or starting to film the next season as early (that is, during the first few summer months). The show was clearly at an impasse: write Cook's pregnancy into the scripts, or have her spend half of season four hiding behind file cabients, desks, bags, coats, and other various "baby blocking" equipment (a la Mariska Hargitay).

They decided to write the pregnancy in.

I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about writing in the pregnancy. Part of me thought it would be an excellent chance for development and evolution in the character, but let's face it: the rest of me was cringing. There's always the risk in giving a character--any character--an in-show pregnancy that it will come off as artificial and lame. Truthfully, and especially in shows that spend as much time on cases as Criminal Minds and its ilk, there's a fine line between satisifying character development and overwrought melodrama (a la Law & Order: Special Victims Unit).

When the post-strike episodes began to air, then, I spent my time waiting for a reference to, if not the pregnancy, a boyfriend. Or, if not a boyfriend, some sort of tryst or affair. An interest in artificial insemination. An act of the Holy Spirit. Anything, really, to set off the pregnancy plot. I figured that, with seven episodes before the season finale, there would be some opportunity to set up J.J.'s coming bundle-of-joy properly.

The fourth episode in, Detective Will LaMontagne (first featured in a second season episode) appeared, quite literally, out of the blue to help the BAU and the Miami-Dade Police Department work on a case. This was all well and good. What wasn't? The sudden revelation that he and J.J.--who'd had some chemistry when they'd first worked together, yes--were entangled in a secret love affair that had started when they first met and now, a year later, was still going on.

What?

There was never any indication this was happening. To watch Will and J.J. in the first episode where they met was to watch the slow build-up of flirtacious fun, to this I will admit. But the episode was more than a year gone and without so much as one hint that J.J. was going to New Orleans literally every weekend. At the end of the episode, the other characters congratulated themselves for having had the relationship figured out from day one, but clearly their profiling powers are in the "Superman" range, because no viewer had a clue. And yes, I realize that there are "offscreen" moments that these characters clearly have with one another, but if they were going to drop this bomb, what about sort of pushing it towards the audience?

The next few episodes, though, were worse. From discovering the relationship between Will and J.J. to the season finale, where someone is probably dead (there was an exploding SUV, for pete's sake), J.J. shifts from a strong, capable woman to someone's wishy-washy girlfriend. She wants Will, then she doesn't. She wants to be with him, then she wants to break up with him. She wants to tell her colleagues about her pregnancy, then she doesn't. She wants to marry Will, but she doesn't, but she does only if he'll quit his job, but she doesn't want to quit hers, but she's torn between going into the field while pregnant and chasing down a bad guy to going back to the hotel and making sweet love to Will... You get the idea.

I'm all for character development. I don't want any character to stay stagnant, because that is simply bad writing. Even some of the baddies in Criminal Minds show remarkable, surprising amounts of growth. But for J.J., it's like a switch was flipped from "off" to "on" within ten seconds, and we lost her.

There's a moment where she and Will are arguing. I don't remember the full body of the argument, or exactly what is said, but J.J. suddenly throws what is basically an ultimatum at Will: give up your badge if you're serious about me and the baby. She does it in part because Will thinks she shouldn't be diving face-first into streets filled with a killer gang, but it just goes to show how absolutely self-centered and ruined J.J. has become. She won't give up her own job and believes she shouldn't have to, but this man she supposedly loves does. J.J., who calls these people she works with her family, who has literally killed for them, turns into a petty high school girl: "I don't wanna unless you will! So there!"

It's just sad.

At the end of the season finale, an SUV explodes, and we know it has to belong to one of the cast members. All of them except Hotch is in one of the black monstrosities. Recently, a promo pictures of Hotch standing over J.J., who is lying prone on the street, was released. I know it sounds awful, but I hope it was her.

It's the only way to save her character and, maybe with it, that entire storyline on the show.

For triteness and for worse.

I know I have been sorely remiss in updating this blog, which you may all now feel free to hate me for. Wish death upon me, if you're really feeling overzealous, but the facts are these: the summer is a media black hole, and while I have a list of topics to talk about, none of them are as interesting to me as the slow and terrible death knell of a comic strip that has become an institution: For Better or For Worse.

I can't remember when I started reading FBoFW because I must have been a child. The comics were always my favorite part of the newspaper, and I remember events (such as April's birth) that took place in the very early 90s, so I must have been reading the comic since I was seven or eight years old. It's the story of a middle-class Canadian couple, Elly and John, who are blessed with three children: Michael, the oldest, an aspiring writer with a creative (if sometimes also illogical) mind; Elizabeth, the middle child, who goes off to the northern parts of Ontario to become a teacher in a small native community; and April, the accidental youngest who is born when Elizabeth is in late elementary school and is a budding musician with an interest in veterinary medicine.

Elizabeth's official birthdate makes her two or three years older than I, so I think I've always considered her the character I'm most like in the strip, my Canadian kindred spirit. She was finishing her education as a teacher as I was starting it, and when she left home to teach "up North", it was a beautiful day for FBoFW. For once in the history of the strip, it broke the middle class norms of going to high school, college, getting married, and popping out children with in a half-hour drive of your family. Michael was already married, a budding writer and mildly successful freelance journalist, and while he wasn't exactly making the big bucks, he and his wife were happy. April was starting a band and in her first relationship, the sort of happy-go-lucky kid we've come to expect as the youngest in a family (like Lily in long-gone sitcom Step by Step, or any other late-added baby to a series).

But a few years ago, as Lynn Patterson started planning her retirement, the plots suddenly shifted.

Elly retired.

Michael's apartment burned down and he and his family moved in with his parents.

Elizabeth quit her job up North after being assaulted at her summer job and decided to come home.

Grandpa Jim had another stroke.

April befriended a student with a disability.

A neighbor put a house up for sale that John and Elly wanted to buy.

Michael got a book deal out of the absolute blue.

Elizabeth hooked back up with an old boyfriend.

April decided that her dreams of being in a band as a professional were unrealistic.

Michael and his wife bought the homestead from his parents to live in with their two kids.

I am tempted to just say "et cetera" here, because trust me, all the other plots are just as bad.

On Monday, the strip goes into a time freeze in which Patterson's assistant artists (she, herself, has a disease and cannot really draw any longer) will integrate new material in her old, very rudimentary style into old storylines, giving more history of characters she never before fleshed out (and committing the creative sin of a retroactive continuity--that is, changing the history of a character whose life story is already established--for others). Over the last two weeks, Elizabeth has married her high-school boyfriend and gone to see her grandfather, suffering after a heart attack, in the hospital immediately after the ceremony. No, this is not something I imagined during a fever dream. This is the actual storyline I had to suffer through over the last few weeks.

This strip has been a mainstay of the comic pages for something like thirty years now, but as it wraps up and goes on to the great comic page in the sky, I have to ask: why is this strip so beloved? It's a white family with primarily white friends. It's a middle-class family with no lower-class struggles, unless you count Mike and Deanna's early financial troubles (which always had a certain lack of urgency about them, like we were just waiting for his parents to sweep in and set them right). Mike and Elizabeth both are reunited with and marry their high school sweethearts. April is back together with her creep boyfriend as far as any of us know, and who knows what will happen to them as their lives continue on. There is no real diversity, no real adversity, no real meat to so many of the plots. It's all circumstantial: if it's time for a heart-warming moment, well, someone has a crisis; if it's time for a controversial plot, well, someone knows a gay or a rapist or a girl who's been accused of sleeping around.

As a child, it was easy to point at the page and go, "I love these characters." Why? Because they were as deep as a nine or ten or fifteen year old expects them to be, sort of like wading into a warm kiddie pool. As an adult, I sympathized with and encouraged Elizabeth because it felt like swimming slowly into the deep end for the first time; she was far away from home and her feet weren't brushing the bottom of the pool any longer. There was a real chance of drowning.

But in the end of the series, it's less a deep end and more just losing our balance. Whoops, we slipped, and our head almost went under, but now our feet are planted again and we're able to rub the water out of our eyes. It's like so many other series finales, warm and fuzzy but completely without real substance. Nothing is resolved, and in resolving nothing, we realize with crystal-clear accuracy that there was never anything to resolve. All the hard moments, all the struggles, they were all incidental and just beyond the core.

I like the idea of life and history coming full circle. The concept has always interested me. But I guess in these final moments of For Better or For Worse, what I'd really like to see is April standing in the rain in a graveyard, umbrella as black as her dress, watching one or both of her parents be buried while Mike and Elizabeth stand with her. Elizabeth is still part of her community in the North, and Mike still a struggling writer who perhaps is in his third edit with a publisher, and as the rain pours down, there's no final pun or stupid sentimentality, just the siblings saying goodbye and walking away. Elizabeth can go to her constable Paul Wright, the one male character worth his salt (and actually getting points for acting like a real-life man); Michael can go to his wife and their children before heading back to the apartment; and maybe April is single, working her way through a music career even though it means a lot of singing in bars. But it's something more than what we've gotten.

And apparently, more than we're allowed to want for, too.

I can't get no satisfaction.

The last couple weeks of television have been rough. Let's just admit it together, now: the strike crippled TV as we know it and now we're all struggling to catch up. I think this is especially true with serious character dramas, like House, MD. Sorry, fans, but Grey's Anatomy doesn't actually have character development to be affected, nor does Two and a Half Men or Law & Order, but House and its ilk does. You can feel when you watch that the writers and producers are working with half time and thusly trying to shove all they can into a few short episodes, which means it ends up feeling false. House doesn't know, at least in what we've seen, that 13 is bisexual. Since when have Chase and Cameron still been together? And don't get me started (again) on Amber and Wilson.

With the season finale being a week away and Amber's mysterious illness building to its conclusion, I am pondering not the season but rather the series finale. A friend of my feels that it's "unfair" that Amber should get sick and (possibly) die, because it's already a show about misery and someone (Wilson) deserves a happy ending. I argue that the misery is the best part of the show.

In fact, I would argue that it's so much the best part--and so integral--to the show that there are only three ways the series can actually end without being the least satisfying piece of tripe imaginable. And here they are.

1. House dies.
   The cyclical nature of the season finales have worked this way thus far: House loses someone he loves (Stacy); House gets hurt (shot); House loses someone he loves (the fellows resigning or getting fired); House gets hurt (bus accident). House puts himself in some of the most ridiculous and dangerous positions imaginable and never seems to expect that he'll die or almost die. There's also the argument that with episodes like "97 Seconds" (House electrocutes himself to see if there's anything "there") and "House's Head" (House self-medicates and goes into cardiac arrest), his self-destructive behavior is amping up. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine a finale in which House dies. It could be in the tireless pursuit of knowledge and a cure for a disease, but I think it's more likely to happen that he destroys himself. House is surprisingly adept at putting himself in danger, and wouldn't it be just like him to get in a bad motorcycle accident and be lying in a coma while the team has to scramble to save the half-diagnosed patient of the week? The patient lives, House dies, and the show ends (in a way) as it began. It is, after all, the pilot in which House gives his "dying isn't dignified" speech. It would be a strong coda to the show, too.
   
   
2. Wilson or Cuddy dies.
   The cyclical nature of the season finales being as they are, House could possibly lose someone he cares about. But who does he care about? The two people he most is connected to and cares about are his two close friends: Wilson and Cuddy. The fellows dying would be bad but not necessarily touch him the same way losing either of these two would, and in the same way, I don't think there's going to be an emotional connection to any new character in the next few seasons that will rival the connection he has to these characters. I'd go beyond calling it unlikely to calling it "impossible."
   But if House is going to be affected by a death, anyone's death, it's going to end up being either Cuddy or Wilson. Frankly, I think that Wilson is a more likely candidate. Cuddy and House are close, but not like House and Wilson. If House is going to lose someone who he cares about, Wilson will be this person. It may crush House worse than anyone else he knows--it may be worse for House than his own death--but it's a possibility. Especially since I get the feeling that House is very much the kind of person who "don't know what he's got 'till it's gone."
   
   
3. It's all a dream.
   In "Three Stories," arguably one of the best season one (or perhaps overall) episodes of the series, we discover that House underwent surgery for his infarction after he was put into a drug-induced coma. From the point of view of the show, he comes out of the coma with his injured leg, but as we watch the show, we realize that "time is not a fixed construct." The show slides through time almost fluidly, when three months and three minutes can all take place in the same episode. It's never been perfect reality. Plus, we get to see inside House's psyche several times ("No Reason", "House's Head", even "Three stories" to an extent) in a way that no other show does. It's entirely possible, perhaps even logical, that he could still be in the coma and this reality we see as the viewer is actually the drug-induced reality of House's head. We know what his mind is capable of. Why would this not be a expanded a few beats further into it being all one giant, drug-induced dream? Reality is not a fixed construct in the House universe, either.
   

It's not that I want my show to end. It's not that I like thinking about the series finale. But I think, in a way, the show is edging along a terrifying cliff. Finding a satisfying ending is going to be a challenge, but there's no room for "happily ever after" in a show that is about, in its essence, misery.

It's just the level of misery we find at the end to mitigate the misery we've had from the start. Maybe it won't be warm and fuzzy, but it will be a little less frigid. At this point, that's the best we can hope for.