Ed End

    My TV viewing is so far behind, I only tonight watched last Friday’s season finale of Ed. Apparently viewership is down for the show, so there’s talk this might be its last season.
    I’ve watched Ed from the beginning; but i have to say, I would not have a problem if NBC decides not to renew the show. Yes, I enjoyed my nice, pleasant visits to Stuckeyville, at first. But as time wore on, aspects of the show began to wear on me. Tom Cavanagh and Julie Bowen were appealing, but they were outweighed by too many grating and annoying secondary characters. I guess a character like Michael Ian Black’s Phil Stubbs was supposed to be an irrepressible schemer and a lovably ineffective con artist. Instead, he was neverending pain in the ass and a drag on the show. (And I only recently found out Black was responsible for the Pets.com sock puppet commercials, so I have that much more reason to hate him. I hated him pre-show.) And the only kind thing I can say about whiney, dorky, cloying, irritating Warren Cheswick (as played by Justin Long) is he almost made Phil Stubbs bearable. It got to the point I was grateful I was watching the shows on tape, so I could skim through any scenes with those characters in them. They not only ruined the show, they killed it.
    So I have to hand it to the producers on how they handled Friday’s season finale. They did not resort to a cliffhanger to force the network into considering a renewal. Instead they gave the show a definite ending, a very pleasing resolution, as if they admitted that the show had run its course. It feels like the end, and I have to admit I hope it is.
    (The only drawback is I won’t be able to see the gorgeous Julie Bowen for a while — since she was the real reason I watched the show every week.)


Images from NBC‘s Ed, taken from julie-bowen.net.