I admit that I choked up a couple of times along the way. The first was when Phil went back to the neighbor’s house to explain his mother’s last wish; the second was when Alex revealed what the lighter meant. I thought that was a great gift for Alex because she does need to break the rules on occasion and because sometimes wonderful things do happen in those situations. I really hope next season shows Alex taking her grandmother’s advice to heart about something.

Anyway, I was ready to write off this show ahead of Season 5, but now I’m not so sure. I might just tune into the premier before making a final decision!

There were a lot of terrific M/N tags throughout the series run, so it was pretty difficult trying to keep my list of favorites down to 10. In fact, I couldn’t do it, so I have to start with several honorable mentions first:

3×11 — “Cobra”: This tag marked the first time Monk and Natalie walked away arm-in-arm together at the end of an ep. This would of course become a familiar sight with the two of them over the course of the next 5 seasons, but it was very surprising to see Monk so tolerant of close contact from Natalie this early in their relationship.

3×15 — “Election”: This was the first tag that showed the developing family dynamic between Monk, Natalie, and Julie. The final shot, which panned across a desk photo of Mitch, Natalie, and Julie before zooming in on Monk, Natalie, and Julie walking away together was a fairly clear indication of where the writers initially wanted this relationship to go.

6×10 — “Man Who Shot Santa Claus”: Three years after the events in “Election”, the family motif was stronger than ever with this trio in the Season 6 Christmas episode.

7×07 — “100th Case”: While I loved the brief standoff with Natalie brandishing the newspaper and Monk wielding the knife, what makes this tag awesome is the way the two of them lean over the newspaper together looking for interesting cases to solve.

8×07 — “Voodoo Curse”: This was one of the funnier tags, with Monk trying to explain how ridiculous Natalie was for believing in voodoo — while he compulsively touches every parking meter he passes.

8×09 –”Birthday”: Monk feeds Natalie a piece of birthday cake off his own fork. Enough said!

1. Star Trek Into Darkness, $70.6 million
2. Iron Man 3, $35.2M
3. The Great Gatsby, $23.4M
4. Pain & Gain, $3.1M
5. The Croods, $2.75M
6. 42, $2.73M
7. Mud, $2.25M
8. Oblivion, $2.22M
9. Peeples, $2.15M
10. The Big Wedding, $1.1M

I stopped watching The Office sometime near the beginning of Season 5. The quality had already started to decline at that time, IMO, and there just didn’t seem to be any reason to stick around. I popped back in again to catch Steve Carell’s farewell episode in Season 7 (?), but that was it. I didn’t follow any of the storylines or anything, and just caught a few mentions here and there about guest stars like James Spader and Will Ferrell.

Still, I couldn’t help tuning in again for the series finale last night. As expected, there were a ton of new faces I didn’t recognize at all, and I of course had no clue what the current storylines were. But it was nice to see what became of the characters after nine long years at Dunder-Mifflin. As a very casual viewer, my favorite parts were:

• Michael coming back for Dwight’s wedding, with his first words being, “That’s what she said.” I used to hate the TWSS jokes, but this one was so fitting.
• The Q&A panel with questions from the audience, who were clearly stand-ins for real fans. Every finale should include some “fan service”, don’t you think?
• Pam answering the phone one last time, with Jim at his old, familiar desk. What a wonderful callback to the early seasons when, as Pam said in her final talking head interview, Jim was just five feet away from her.
• Andy working at Cornell. I only saw a couple of seasons with the Nard Dog as a regular, but I remember him always talking about Cornell. Always. So it’s fitting that he ends up with a real job back there.
• Stanley retiring, but still thinking of deskmate Phyllis. They are such an unlikely (friendship) pairing; yet that’s exactly what happens when you work at the same place long enough.
• Ryan and Kelly running off together. okay, I didn’t care for the way Ryan abandoned his baby (there’s nothing funny about that kind of thing), but it was typical of these two shallow, selfish characters. Plus, knowing that BJ Novak and Mindy Kaling are such close friends IRL makes it hard not to root for them to be together, even if it’s just on a TV show.
• The final gathering with all the regular cast mates drinking and reminiscing upstairs after the warehouse party. I felt Michael should have been there, but understand Carell not wishing to overshadow the others.

There were definitely some things I didn’t understand — like where all the Pam hate came from (she used to be my favorite character, so I’m glad I wasn’t around to see her turn into someone completely different) or why Dwight called her his best friend (they certainly weren’t close in the seasons I watched) — but that didn’t diminish my enjoyment too much.

All in all, this was a very satisfactory series finale.

Are Cam and Mitchell ever going to do anything substantial on this show or are they going to be limited to saying things that sound wrong when heard completely out of context? It was funny back in the Vietnamese restaurant episode, but now it’s just repetitive and predictable. And the whole gloating over Lily’s accomplishments/cheering for other kids to fail for Lily’s sake trope is getting old too. Not every parent is like that.

Jay and Gloria had their moments tonight, but overall weren’t that funny. I liked that Jay drew a cat on the package delivery notice just to prove his drawing skills were up to par and I liked how Gloria figured out that Manny was the one who failed to deliver the invitation. (Speaking of the invitation, would Cam, of all people, NOT follow up with a phone call after not getting an RSVP from them? Didn’t they do a party episode where he went crazy because people weren’t RSVPing in a timely manner??)

Luke and the girls were funny too, now that I think of it. So is Haley really going to be a Laker Girl from now on? Is that going to be part of her storyline next year???

There’s really not much else to say about the finale. I liked that Gates and Beckett had a calm, professional chat for once, but at the same time felt bad that the character has been so terribly underutilized in the past two years. Why can’t we get scenes like that more frequently? Other than that — I can’t remember anything else that stuck out as being worthy of a finale as opposed to a standard ep.

Well, Castle, it’s been a good run (for the most part), but I think this is the end of the road for me. I’ll just catch the show on DVD from here on out and not bother with the regular broadcasts.

1. Iron Man 3, $72.5 million
2. The Great Gatsby, $51.1M
3. Pain & Gain, $5M
4. Peeples, $4.85M
5. 42, $4.65M
6. Oblivion, $3.86M
7. The Croods, $3.6M
8. The Big Wedding, $2.5M
9. Mud, $2.4M
10. Oz the Great and Powerful, $802K

Warning: Spoilers below!

Liked:

• I enjoyed seeing Tony Shalhoub again. Let’s face it, he was the only reason I rented the film to begin with. He didn’t disappoint, though I couldn’t help but see Adrian Monk shine through a couple of times. Obviously that’s just my perception, as the Sheriff was a completely different character. Clearly, Shalhoub will always be Monk to me!
• The screen play was pretty good. I wasn’t too enamored of the actor playing Joe, so whenever he was on screen (which was practically every scene), I more or less tuned him out and tried to focus on just the story. When considered that way, I liked the story a great deal.
• I liked that Joe took the polar bear plunge in the end. He wasn’t doing it to impress anyone; it was all for himself. That’s exactly how all life-changing experiences should be motivated, IMO.

Disliked:

• As mentioned above, the actor playing Joe (I don’t remember his name) didn’t do it for me. He was too bland and passive, and his dullness was made even more apparent by the “colorful” characters that rounded out the script. I didn’t connect with him in any way.
• I thought there needed to be more development in Joe and Sif’s relationship. He met her at the diner, they talked while she was skating, and ???? That was pretty much it. That was enough for Joe to realize he was head over heels in love with her? She was nice and all, but come on. There had to be more than that, and viewers need to see it.
• A lot of the small town humor fell flat for me. The badger attack, hunting accident, primitive heating systems, etc. just came off as the writer trying too hard to make the setting “quirky”.
• The blurb on the DVD cover says, “He loves his fish. She hates her dad. They’re perfect for each other.” I didn’t really get a “hate” vibe between Sif and the Sheriff. Sure, there was tension, but hate? That’s pushing it. I know this is such a minor point, but it bugs me for some reason.

Rating:

Feed the Fish tries to be a different kind of romantic comedy, but it ends up hitting all the traditional story beats you’d expect from this genre. Still, the story had some merit and Tony Shalhoub is worth watching in almost anything. I give this one 3 stars out of 5.

I loved that Luke chose Claire as his hero, and I loved it even more that the writers didn’t make a huge deal out of it by having Claire rub it in Phil’s face or something. It was nice to see Claire get an open acknowledgement of love and respect from one of the kids. Usually they’re too busy rolling their eyes at her to see how much she really tries to do the right thing on their behalf.

The best part of the episode for me was the Haley/Alex bonding time. As much as I enjoy their bickering and teasing, it’s even better to see the rare moments when they get along. (Don’t get me wrong; it would be terrible from a comedic standpoint if they were BFFs all the time.) Yay for Haley building up Alex’s self-confidence (and knowing the word was “emasculating”), and yay for Alex admitting that Haley isn’t a total dolt.

Of course now we have some C/B angst about this job offer. Obviously Beckett won’t take the job, because Castle can’t follow her around when she’s working for the AG, which would effectively mean the end of the show. The offer is just a ploy to get their relationship baggage out in the open and force them to consider the future, how serious they are, where they’re headed, etc. etc. I guess that’s part of the price we have to pay for having them together.

Season finale next week. Then I have to decide if I’m going to keep watching Castle according to the broadcast schedule or just wait for the DVDs. I actually do want to start reviewing some different shows on here, so this might be the end of Castle for me.