Television Can Blow Me (19 page)

This is the final scene of 24 and it’s glorious. Jack is on video surveillance as Chloe speaks to him on the phone at CTU. They speak like parting lovers. He makes her promise she will protect his family while he’s on the run. Tears run down her potato face as she gives her word to do her spuddy autistic best. “Chloe...” Jack velvets “When you first came to CTU... I never thought it was gonna be you that would cover my back all those years” Chloe is in bits. She can just manage “Good luck Jack” before the call ends. She pulls it together to say “Bring the drone back to base - whatever happened here didn’t happen, you understand? Shut it down” - the final line of dialogue on 24. 00.00.03 - 00.00.02 - 00.00.01 and it’s OUT.

Hell of a show, hell of an ending. If you want pious backslapping circle jerk liberal orthodoxy fuck off and watch The West Wing. 24 brought the motherfucking drama and only liars, whores and fools deny its brilliance.

The verdict on 24 Series finale:
A triumph.

Marks out of 10:
8

¹
Fuck you. I’ve waited three years to tell that joke.

²
Eliza Cuthbert does not show and nor do any of her T-shirts.

Dexter Season 4 finale

Damn. They didn’t hold back with this one. Dexter insiders promised a “game changer” in the run up to the finale and they were not playing. As Dexter’s fourth season began you wondered how many seasonal big bads they could contrive, particularly after the tough-to-follow Ice Truck Killer, Miguel Prado, The Skinner and Loopy Lila. But Dexter kept coming strong with its most horrible villain to date, intriguing subplots, good character development and a shocking, eye-watering climax that left you wondering where on earth they go next season. However it plays out, it’s not going to be cosy.

But let’s deal with the story so far. Meet Arthur Mitchell (John Lithgow). He’s your regular family guy. Adoring wife, loving son and daughter, good Christian, builds homeless shelters around the country - he’s also America’s most successful serial killer with a career stretching over three decades. This Arthur guy? Full of surprises.

It’s a complex story how he got here but the basic facts are these. Watching his sister in the shower aged 10, in a weird pervy potential serial killer kind of way, he startles her causing her to slip, break the shower door, severe her femoral artery and bleed to death. Arthur takes it badly and his mother takes it worse, jumping off a warehouse roof to her death. Arthur takes it badly and his father takes it worse, beating his son mercilessly. Arthur takes this badly and bludgeons his father to death. His father takes it - well, he doesn’t have much say in the issue.

So Arthur, he’s all about taking things badly. To deal with his childhood trauma he kills people in sequence thus: a young woman in a bathtub (just like sis), a mother of two forced to fall to her death (just like ma) and the father of two bludgeoned to death (just like da). This goes back decades in cities all over America and it is such a bizarre M.O. nobody would ever think of connecting the crimes.

Nobody, that is, except Special Agent Frank Lundy, serial killer hunter extraordinaire and Deb’s former lover. He’s back in Miami on the trail of Trinity and back in bony Deb’s panties soon enough. They look like they are finally going to be happy and prove to everyone that age gap relationships can work just swell. You can probably guess how that ends. After leaving a hotel they are gunned down by a mystery bastard. Deb is wounded, Lundy dies.

And what about that Debs? What is it with her and men? Her fiancé Brian Moser turned out to be the Ice Truck Killer, tried to Ice Truck Kill-her and wound up getting killed by Dexter. Then lover Anton gets abducted and a nice patch of flesh skinned off him by the Skinner and now Lundy gets shot to death. Three from three. This girl is a fucking jinx.

With his sister plugged it makes the Trinity case personal for Dexter who uses Lundy’s case files to identify Arthur Mitchell as Trinity. Dexter befriends Arthur under the pseudonym Kyle Butler and begins working with him on the shelters he builds for the homeless, (sites that double as a tomb for the bodies). All our hero has to do is wait with the right opportunity to stick a syringe in his neck and dispatch the beast for good.

Yet when the opportunity presents itself he doesn’t act. He dallies and, yes, dillies because he wants to learn how a monster just like him can successfully have a family and blend in so seamlessly. Yeah, don’t worry about him killing again, Dex, you just play Crouching Tiger Hidden Cunt with the Bible Belt Fred West and learn your life lessons, we’ll all be FINE. The discovery that he kicks off the murder cycle by abducting a 10 year old boy (just like sister shower watching Arthur) and burying him in concrete should not unduly concern us. He kills in fours, not threes but he's still Trinity OK? It’s too late for a name change and Quadrangle sounds just shit.

But while Dexter’s pissing about with his new pal, newly crowned TV pie of the year Christine Hill (Courtney Ford), is fucking Quinn to get information on Trinity. Some journalists will do anything for a story although to be fair to Christine she is secretly Arthur Mitchell’s daughter, the murderer of Frank Lundy and shooter of Deb so let’s not rush to call her journalistic integrity into question. Homegirl had issues.

Dexter wants to bring Arthur to justice himself rather than the Miami Dade PD and spends some time successfully throwing the fuzz off the scent. Once the inevitable happens and Arthur discovers Dexter’s real identity and the police find out about Arthur, the urgency intensifies. The final episode is a three-way game of cat and mouse that ends with Dexter finally getting his man and giving his mutilated body a burial at sea - the Dexter speciality. All that is left is to join Rita on a romantic vacation. The question posed at the start of the series is answered. Dexter can be a family man after all.

But hold up. When Dexter returns home to pack some things he listens to a message from Rita saying she had to return to pick up her ID. He rings her back. Her mobile rings from her nearby bag. He hears the sound of their infant son Harrison crying. It’s coming from the bathroom. Whoa. You don’t think...?

Yep, they went there. Arthur got to Rita, cut her throat in a bathtub and left Harrison in a pool of blood in a chilling parallel of Dexter’s childhood trauma. “Born in blood” Dexter voiceovers as he picks up his son “Both of us.” Not so much a downbeat ending as a beatdown ending. It hits you like a framing hammer to the skull. That Arthur: full of surprises.

I’m not gonna lie and say that my heart lept for joy whenever Rita appeared on screen but she meant something to Dexter. She was his final ‘fuck you’ to his father; the definitive rebuke to his maxim that like Cain or a Kooks fan the killer must walk the earth alone. And now we know the truth: the dark passenger will always be his master. It’s a cold, cold ending and kind of brilliant.

It’s been a powerful season throughout and you have to give John Lithgow a lot of credit for that. His Trinity is compellingly repulsive and in a show where everyone leads double lives, watching the walls between family man and killer break down has been one of the highlights of 2009 TV. Dexter is a show with a great premise that handles its themes with great care and has enough balls to hit you where it hurts when you least expect it. Mark this one up as a triumph.

The verdict on Dexter Season 4 finale:
Mass murder just got serious.

Marks out of 10:
9

Harper’s Island

In Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel Ten Little Niggers, 10 murderers are invited to an island (Nigger Island if you’re asking - I bet property prices are through the roof there) where they are killed one by one by a mystery assailant. Of course in today’s politically correct times you can’t call murder victims niggers, you have to call them “African-Americans”. Only you can’t call them African-Americans because they changed the title to Ten Little Indians. Only you can’t call them Indians, you have to call them “Native Americans”. Anyway, it’s a classic of the genre, sold over 100 million copies and has been subject to numerous adaptations and remakes. Harper’s Island is something of a tribute to Christie’s genius, numerous slasher films and quite possibly Celebrity Love Island. How can it fail?

Abby Mills (Irish actress Elaine Cassidy channeling Neve Campbell in Scream) is returning home to Harper’s Island for the wedding of her childhood friend Henry (Christopher Gorham) to foxy heiress Trish (Katie Cassidy). Abby hasn’t been so big on Harper’s Island ever since her mother was murdered and strung up on a tree branch along with five other unfortunate bastards seven years previously by crazyman John Wakefield. But it’s her best friend’s wedding - what a fantastic opportunity to leave the past behind, reconcile with her father Charlie (Jim Beaver) and just get on with the rest of her life.

The problem with that admittedly laudable idea is that THERE’S ONLY A FRICKIN’ MURDERER loose on the island murdering. It’s almost as if murdering murderer John Wakefield has returned. But how could that be? Charlie Mills shot and killed him seven years ago. Or did he? Dude, I’m telling you - he’s buried on the island
¹
. Or is he?

While you ponder that, numerous subplots keep the narrative going. Thomas Wellington (Richard Burgi), father of the bride and real estate mogul tries his best to stop his daughter from marrying the pleb; douchebag best man Sully (Matt Barr) tries to steal animatronic Barbie doll Chloe (Cameron Richardson) from her gimpy British borefriend Cal (Adam Campbell); Abby flirts with ex borefriend Jimmy (C.J. Thomason); oddball infant Madison (Cassandra Sawtell) tortures snails and bonds with Henry’s weird goth brother J.D. But which of them is the murderer?

Aerial Telly knows but isn’t telling. What he will say is that this is a very enjoyable, taut, pacy chiller that works its way through standard horror conventions with reverence and a wicked sense of humour. The deaths are memorable. Cousin Ben gets sliced and diced by the ship’s propeller; Wellington get a headspade
²
to the skull; Richard gets frickin’ lickin’ harpooned. Tenacious survivors, an impressively sadistic Big Bad and annoying characters getting summary justice in the form of their hideous slapstick deaths all make Agatha Christie proud. The daft racist.

The verdict on Harper’s Island:
The most dangerous island life since Lost.

Marks out of 10:
7.5

¹
Yes that makes all kinds of sense - I bet that went down well with the victims’ relatives

²
The heaviest instrument used when cutting up a whale. Don’t get telling me you don’t learn anything watching slasher flicks

Lost Season 3 finale

Holy fucking shit. What an episode. The two hour finale of Lost’s third season was as good a single episode of TV as I’ve seen in years. It thrilled and delighted at every turn with a stunning reveal at the end that got up in your grill and was, like, “motherfucker, what?” Season three has been a huge triumph for Lost after it tried our patience to breaking point in season two. As we’ve got to know The Others we’ve learnt that they are just as much stranded on the island as the Lostaways, they just have the lay of the land better. They’re still taking hostages, busting chops and indulging their obstetrics obsession but you get the distinct impression they’re not really happy in their island paradise. But they still all need to die - never forget that.