Welcome to The GBU, a weekly column coming every Monday where I look at the Good, the Bad and the Ugly on TV.
If you watched TV last week, you may have noticed a lot more shocking twist endings than usual. The device (popularized by M. Night Shyamalan movies) revealed some pretty big bombshells at the end of some of TV’s best shows. Sometimes they were successful, but other times, they were just ridiculous.
Here’s the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of twist endings on TV last week.
The Good: House
The patient of the week was a mysterious homeless man whose problem was that he couldn’t process vegetables. It makes sense, since the big twist at the end was that their patient was a cannibalistic serial killer! It might seem over-the-top, but it was a brilliant twist that shook the foundation of everything that Martha Masters believed in. Plus, there aren’t nearly enough cannibals on TV.
The Bad: The Good Wife
The final scene of last week’s The Good Wife was genuinely shocking as Blake revealed that he learned Kalinda’s secret: Peter Florick helped her change her name and she repaid him with sex. It was a big twist, and while it was well done, the thought of Kalinda having an affair with Peter is not a very pleasant notion. I’m hoping there’s more to the story, because I’d hate for a great character like Kalinda to get tarnished with such an awful backstory.
The Ugly: Grey’s Anatomy
Grey’s Anatomy ended with a proposal and a car crash as Arizona and Callie got into an accident. Perhaps I’d be more willing to accept this tragic twist ending if it was original and if every single doctor on Grey’s Anatomy hadn’t already been a patient at Seattle Grace.
Yang had complications with her pregnancy. Meredith almost drowned. Izzie got cancer. George was hit by a bus. Alex, Derek and Burke got shot. Bailey had a difficult pregnancy. The doctors on this show have all been seriously hurt before, so adding Callie to that long list with a car accident isn’t daring or exciting, it’s just the same old storyline we’ve seen on Grey’s Anatomy a million times before where one of their own is in danger. But at least this time we got singing instead of Hospital Heaven or sex with ghosts.
(Images courtesy of FOX, CBS and ABC)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.
