Off-Season Week 13

13/13

So this is it. Twelve weeks have built to this point in time. Deadbeat concludes its series run this week and OITNB will take its yearly hiatus, its cast safe in the knowledge that they're all employed for 3 more years (barring any Poussey-like curveballs), which leaves The Night Shift in a tenuous position. Let's not waste any more time and just get right into the meaty finales!

DEADBEAT - 3x13 "Death List Three" (series finale)

"Pac learns the automatic ghost-to-light device isn't what it seems, but in going up against Danny Poker he risks not only his own life, but Clyde's too."

Before I watched this finale I thought about Deadbeat's first two seasons and remembered they ended them pretty well, so I questioned why would they not be capable of that here? And as it turns out, they were more than capable. The over-the-top, outlandish humour that permeated most of the standalone episodes this season was substituted for sheer plot and, like the Deadbeat of old, a simple but effective and focused 23 minutes was presented.

   When Pac discovers Danny's device traps ghosts rather than send them into their light, (the souls of whom he plans to then use to power his new Danny Poker's Poker vibrator business), Pac enlists Clyde to help bring him down. Along the way Pac is buried alive and the ghost of a rather horny "Ben fucking Franklin" possesses Clyde's body to create a superconductor that eventually kills Danny, before Pac uses Danny's own device to trap his soul forever. The series concludes with the two friends laying on the roof next to Danny's dead body, engaging again in their excellent passive banter.

   Everything was neatly timed here, but just like Castle's finale, Deadbeat left itself with a shade too much to fit in. And since Danny wasn't really important to the plot until the last two episodes, I'm still of the opinion that this plot could have been adapted and extended by another one or two episodes. After all, while we all knew Danny was going to be the season's main villain, he was nothing like Camomile (played by Cat Deeley), the fraudulent medium who bullied, attacked and tarnished Pac's reputation in the first two seasons.

VERDICT: The focused writing style of the first two seasons was really felt here and made the series finale feel comfortingly familiar - a tactic employed brilliantly to close out such a clever and inventive show. 8/10 

SHOW VERDICT: I would recommend Deadbeat to anyone who enjoys spending a lazy 20 minutes with a show that, while thoughtful on occasion, simply aims to be there and be decent while it is. It isn't full of big names (OK, Cat Deeley is quite a big name), but it is well-written, consistent, funny, sometimes outrageous and clever throughout. The cast and writers took a good premise and elevated it, and it shows at every turn. 8/10

THE NIGHT SHIFT - 3x13 "" (season finale)

* "Scott and Jordan get trapped in a rapidly intensifying wildfire. TC goes to great lengths to get medicine for Syd, who has contracted Typhus. Drew and Rick fight to keep Brianna after her father attempts to take her. Topher finds an unlikely buyer in Paul's father."

A lovely short and sweet Wikipedia description today, but it doesn't do justice how big this finale was. And when I say finale I'm not even sure what I mean. Was it a season finale or a series finale? Of course, that's dependent on whether NBC sees fit to renew the show (and based on its performance that I will discuss later it would be mad not to), but if it doesn't renew The Night Shift then we can say that what we have here nearly works as a satisfying series finale instead.
   The mystery of the missing Narco is solved: it was Annie after all, and she had been hiding the drugs in TC's jacket, which Jordan grabbed when she left to help with the forest fire. The discovery led to a heated argument between Scott and Annie, which culminated in Scott demanding that Annie go back to rehab - but softening and offering to go with her. If there's a season 4, I do wonder if Annie's recovery will be a part of it or if this is her way of being written out.
   And speaking of written out, the one part of the finale which really sucked was the airstrike in the Syrian refugee camp that knocked TC and Syd unconscious, right after they had convinced the Turkish border officials to give them the med kits and contained the typhus outbreak. My first thought was they were going to blow up Syd, but when TC tried to rescue her they both got KO'd. In the potential season 4, I would expect Syd to die but I would be sad if TC died too (although I do agree with a couple of reviews I've seen that suggest TC has been slowly written out this season; his influence at the hospital has waned significantly since his break-up with Jordan). I hope he comes back, though, and he and Jordan reconcile.
   Elsewhere, nearly everyone else was written out too, although in a decidedly less deadly fashion. Paul's wealthy father, Julian, buys the hospital instead of the evil Hobart company that were lurking, leading to TC's pharmaceutical rep ex-girlfriend Jessica losing her job instead of the ER staff. To which Topher emotionlessly tells her "Karma's a bitch". Uuuuuunfortunately for Topher, he's right, because Julian decides that he won't fit in with his company's new bottom line management style - and immediately fires him. I didn't like that move and wondered if it was because Ken Leung (Topher) was leaving, but then, in one of the best moments of the episode, after Paul finally got his chance to prove to his father he could be a great surgeon and stand on his own two feet, Paul resigned in protest - and was followed by basically everyone else. The scene was raw and emotional and one of the best The Night Shift has written yet.
   Paul's resignation then served as a catalyst for two things: one, for Shannon to realise she loves him and for them to reconcile; and two, for Paul, now cut off from his family wealth, to be unable to loan Kenny the $5000 he needed, which left Kenny in an unresolved situation with some veeeeeery evil-looking people who wanted their cash.
   So in all, an astonishing finale. Parts were predictable, but there was a nice balance of happy endings (Paul and Shannon) or near-happy endings (the ER walkout) amid the potentially tragic (TC and Syd) or just unfavourable (Kenny and Topher) cliffhangers.

VERDICT: A twist at every turn made the final fifteen minutes of this episode an emotional rollercoaster. Superbly written, although if The Night Shift returns it needs to do less of the war storylines. It's not called "The Night Shift" for nothing. 9/10

SHOW PERFORMANCE: Let's give credit to the fans here. The Night Shift's performance statistics this season have been phenomenal, even with the iffy start. The finale's provisional overnight rating is 5.8m, which, if we take into account a potential small downtick, would make it either the second- or third-highest rated episode of the season. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
   Season 2 aired midseason last year, which is a naturally better pull for live ratings, but season 3 in the off-season saw a minimal decrease in the 18-49 demographic and only a 6% decrease in total average viewers, way less than the average season-to-season decrease a show generally experiences. This with, as is noted in the article I'll provide, "shifting timeslots, double episodes and various hiatuses". And although it isn't a solely NBC production (which can have a big effect on a show's lifespan), I reckon it will be renewed into the off-season again, but I will update you all in future roundups when I hear news!

CarterMatt - The Night Shift Renewal Odds

ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK - 4x13 "Toast Can't Never Be Bread Again" (season finale)

* "Following Poussey's death, MCC tells Caputo to hold off on calling the police until they can develop an angle, while Taystee urges Caputo to at least call Poussey's dad, and break the news to him. Soso wanders into the library to find Suzanne trapped under a fallen shelf. She rescues Suzanne, but in medical, Suzanne gets put next to Kukudio who is still recovering from the beating Suzanne gave her. Piper finds out that Alex has been leaving notes around the prison, revealing Aydin's real name, and then the two of them track down the notes, and prepare to burn them. MCC grants release to Judy King wanting to get her away from the crisis. Caputo ignores the MCC prep, and on camera refuses to fire Bayley. Taystee overhears, and snaps - she incites the other inmates, who all march through the hallways of the prison, and eventually converge on where Judy King is being escorted out of prison. Humphrey instinctively goes for the gun in his sock, but Maritza pushes him over, and it slides across to the Hispanics, and Daya picks it up. She initially takes aim at the white supremacists, but instead takes Humphrey and McCullough hostage, cocks the gun and takes aim at Humphrey's head, while all the inmates present collectively urge her to pull the trigger. In a flashback, Poussey has a fun night with strangers she meets in New York City that ends in her arrest for drug possession and trespassing."

There is so much to talk about with this finale I don't really know where to begin. Maybe my consistency at guesswork: Netflix stuffed all the action into 75 minutes rather than my predicted 90, but nothing was missing that hadn't already been present. And by that I mean the theme of this year was a significant decrease in most of our main characters' airtimes because of the overpopulation plot that introduced something like six to ten new characters. Maritza, Flaca, Aleida, Healy and Yoga Jones are among a number of people who made cameos here, but the biggest principal example I can give is how little we've seen of Daya since her kid was born and shunted off to live with her ... cousin? However, we'll see a definite uptick in airtime for Daya next season what with the final prison scene of the season being her holding a gun to the head of Humps in the middle of a prison riot. No gunshot though, like with Shaw in Person of Interest. You like to keep us guessing, don't you, Jenji?

   The prison riot itself was a magnificent scene. Instigated by Taystee after she overheard Caputo's press conference where he defied MCC's wishes and refused to fire Bayley for Poussey's death, all the prisoners ended up in the middle of a corridor, surrounding Humps, a female guard and the about-to-be-released Judy King. Humps (who had brought a gun to work that day) lost control of his weapon and ended up facing his own barrel.

   But that was just the climax of the fallout from Poussey's death. On a personal level Taystee and Watson took it extremely hard and ended up fighting with nearly everybody in their grief, Crazy Eyes felt so guilty she tried everything she could to discover what it felt like to struggle to breathe and Soso drank away her pain; meanwhile, Caputo had to deal with the political machinations of a corrupt company hellbent on covering its own arse by not moving Poussey's body until they could find a way to make Bayley their dangerous, unstable scapegoat - when in reality he was just in way over his head. The acting from Nick Sandow (Caputo) and Alan Aisenberg (Bayley) was superb and captivating, and as much as I hate MCC, seeing Caputo break under the weight of the corporation's corruption is fabulous TV.

   I didn't really understand the Poussey flashbacks, although I judge from the Wikipedia description that what was displayed was the lead-up to her arrest. (I shouldn't need a Wikipedia description for me to understand, however, and this just epitomises how vast the OITNB world is and therefore how hard it can be to keep up). And for me the Poussey flashbacks were an unnecessary disturbance that disrupted the flow of the episode, and her cheesy smile which broke the fourth wall was a poor shot on which to end a cracking episode.

VERDICT: Much of the fourth season has been troubled by the over-large cast but somehow the incredible finale has managed to hold together and close out the majority of its arcs. A superb episode to ring out the season and set up season five. As someone says in the episode (I'm paraphrasing) "We've got time." Yeah you do. Another three seasons. 9/10

Final thoughts

What a ride! The episodes this week all took turns I couldn't predict and did so brilliantly in the process. Deadbeat's swansong was an impressive stylistic throwback to its first two seasons, OITNB played on every facet of grief it could in astounding fashion and The Night Shift left us craving so much more. I can't wait to see what the latter two shows bring next season (presuming The Night Shift is renewed), but I'm sure things will only continue to improve from here.

Thank you to everyone who's followed me throughout this dry run, I've thoroughly enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to the on-season's return beginning September 19th! In a couple of weeks, I'll release my summary roundup based on the shows I'll be reviewing, so that will bring you all up to speed on where my favourite on-season shows (and yours) are at this point in their life, and I'll also summarise the new shows that will make it in as well.

I'll see you next time!

Sam