It’s official: I hate season finales

Warning: finale spoilers ahead!

Photo: sidereel.com

I guess that’s not entirely true, I’m just really frustrated by all the cliffhangers. But that’s the idea, right? It seems like lots of finales are happening earlier this year than they usually do. So far we’ve said goodbye (for the summer) to New Girl, Bones, How I Met Your Mother, Hawaii Five-0, Private Practice and Suburgatory, just to name a few. And tonight, Grey’s Anatomy and The Mentalist are both wrapping up. I already know Grey’s is going to be one of the most frustrating finales ever; I’ve come to terms with this. But here’s a run-down of some of the others…

New Girl | Not surprising at all – Nick and Jess still aren’t together. I’m ok with this, though, because I get that it shouldn’t happen right away. I’m just glad Nick didn’t end up moving in with Caroline. If they had ended it with them together I may have screamed.

The Voice: Live Semi-Final Eliminations

And then there were four!

Tonight, each team got cut in half yet again, and there was no shortage of emotions. Interspersed among the eliminations were performances from last year’s final four – Dia Frampton, Vicci Martinez, Beverly McClellan and Javier Colon. It was weird not hearing feedback from the coaches after they performed, but I guess they’re beyond that now.

The eliminations work the same as last year – both the coach and America has a say in who advances. The coach splits 100 points between his/her two singers, and the scores from America get added to that number to determine who stays and who goes.

The Voice: Live Eliminations, Week 2

I finally got around to watching the week two eliminations even though I accidently read a tweet saying who the winners were. I still decided to watch the show and just pretend I didn’t know the outcome 🙂

Photo: starpulse.com

Jessie J kicked off the show with a performance of Domino. I didn’t know she’s a judge on The Voice UK; that’s interesting. Christina’s team joined her for the end of the performance, although all they really did was jump around and sing back-up.

Carson started with Adam’s team when announcing who was safe and who would get to perform again. From his team, America saved Mathai, Tony Lucca and Pip, so Kim Yarbrough, Karla Davis and Katrina Parker each sang one more time for Adam’s save.

From Team Cee Lo, America saved Juliet Simms, Jamar Rogers and James Massone. So, Cheesa, Tony Vincent and Erin Martin got another chance to sing and be saved.

Saying goodbye to One Tree Hill

Wednesday night we said goodbye to one of my favorites: One Tree Hill. For nine long seasons, we got to watch these characters grow from struggling teenagers to adults and saw all the ups and downs in between. Over the years there were nasty high school rumors, teenage pregnancy, deaths and goodbyes to old friends. And through it all, Brooke, Nathan, Haley, Lucas, Peyton, Skills, Mouth and so on, were by each other’s sides.

To me, a good TV show is when the characters and their families feel like your own. When a good show ends, it’s like you’ve lost a friend. And that is true of One Tree Hill.

The Voice: Live Eliminations, Week 1

Warning: Spoilers

Photo: examiner.com

The Voice switched it up a bit this year with their eliminations. Team Christina and Team Blake each had six singers left, and based on America’s votes three members of each team were automatically safe. The other three members then got another chance to sing for their coach for a chance to be saved.

From Team Blake, Erin Willett, Jermaine Paul and RaeLynn were safe. I was surprised about Jermaine because I wasn’t very impressed with his performance on Monday.

From Team Christina, America saved Jesse Campbell, Lindsey Pavao and Chris Mann. I didn’t love Lindsey’s rendition of Somebody That I Used to Know, but I guess America enjoyed it.

The Voice: The Battles, Week 2

We got to see six more battles this week, along with more of Christina’s silly little hat. I hope she ditches that before the live shows begin…just saying.

Team Christina: Geoff McBride v. Sera Hill – I’m glad Christina resisted the urge to get up on stage and sing with Sera again. For this battle, Christina had her singers perform Chain of Fools by Aretha Franklin. They both did well during the rehearsals – Lionel Richie was very impressed with Geoff’s voice and even suggested he skip the glasses during the battle so he can make eye contact. I thought that was a strange request because Geoff doesn’t wear those glasses for fun, he actually needs them. He met Lionel in the middle, though, and wore non-tinted glasses instead. As expected, they were both great during the battle. I actually really enjoyed their performance as a duo, but someone had to go. Geoff was great, but I wanted Sera to win. Christina felt this way too and picked Sera to advance to the live shows.

Midweek Round-Up

This is quite a busy week in television, but I think I say that every week. Rather than going through a long winded recap for each show, here a few of my favorites so far:

Hawaii Five-0
This episode gave me a heart attack within the first two minutes. Obviously the show cannot kill off McGarrett, but the thought of him being seriously injured did not sit well with me. Turns out he was just hit by a car, no big deal. Flashback to the previous day and we see how McGarrett got to this point. Turns out a woman was killed at a charity event after trying to confront the married man who knocked up her sister. I guess he really didn’t want that secret to get out. Besides the murder, a couple key things happened in this episode:

This Week on TV

Parenthood: “Tales from the Luncheonette”

Parenthood never disappoints and this week was no different. Kristina is home taking care of baby Nora while Adam is busy trying to get his record studio with Crosby up and running. This leads to chaos at home – the house is a mess, dinner isn’t getting cooked, and poor Hattie has no one to read her college essay. On the other hand, Adam and Crosby got a call from Cee-Lo saying he wanted to record at their studio. Cee-Lo was unhappy with all of the takes, which caused a lot of tension between Adam and Crosby. They feared they had lost their first customer.

The other half of the family was dealing with some much deeper issues: Seth’s alcoholism and Julia and Joel’s adoption. Sarah is determined to get him help because as much as she hates Seth and what he does to their children, she knows he is family; what happens to him matters. Seth can’t get into the free rehab so she goes to her parents for money. Zeke refuses to help, so Sarah turns to Julia. Meanwhile Zeke also had quite an opinion on Julia and Joel’s adoption. He thinks it’s a terrible idea. Zeke, Camille, Sarah, Julia and Joel are eating dinner together and Joel unknowingly brings up the money to Sarah. Zeke realizes what happened and freaks out, but Joel stands up to him and says to stay out of both situations because these are decisions they’ve made as a family. Love him!

Castle Recap: “Eye of the Beholder”

After the lack of Caskett sexual tension in last week’s episode, we were given a double dose of it this week! There’s something about a jealous Beckett that I just can’t get enough of.

This week’s case focused on a $50 million dollar piece of art called the Fist of Capitalism, which was stolen from a museum. Well, actually, it focused on the murder that happened as a result of a theft, but the piece of art was an important factor. The museum’s insurance investigator, Serena Kaye, offered her services to help solve the case because she wanted her 1% finder’s fee. Beckett turned her down, but the captain overruled her so Serena was on the team.

Dexter Recap: “Smokey and the Bandit”

Warning: Spoilers

Deb started her job as lieutenant, and her first order of business was to find a detective to replace her. LaGuerta gave her two cents on who they should hire without really letting Deb have an opinion. I was glad to see Batista is still being supportive of Deb’s new role, especially when he called her to tell her not to let LaGuerta shove ideas down her throat. That woman is seriously vile and I’m not sure I could dislike her any more if I tried.

Batista’s supportive moment came after Quinn was dropped off late to a crime scene by a woman whose classiness was debatable. After Batista learned that Quinn and Deb broke up, Quinn called him Mrs. LaGuerta and told him he’s too nice and allows people to walk all over him – including Deb who stole his job. This worried me because while Batista said it wasn’t his job to begin with, I was afraid he might let that get into his head and start hating Deb, especially since he almost punched Quinn in the face. So far that hasn’t happened, though.