Tag Archives: Series finale

Saving Hope co-executive producer previews the series finale

When you have a chance to talk to one of Saving Hope‘s writer-co-executive producers, you take it. I ran into Patrick Tarr earlier this week in North Bay, Ont., where he is doing pre-production work as the showrunner on Season 3 of Cardinal. Tarr, who has written for Showcase’s King and CBC’s Cracked and the Murdoch Mysteries web series The Curse of the Lost Pharaohs, penned several instalments of Saving Hope, including last week’s “First and Last.”

Now, with the finale “Hope Never Dies” just two days away, we asked Tarr to tease his thoughts on Charlie and Alex’s final storyline.

“I don’t think that there is another ending that is true to what the show is about,” Tarr says. “I asked Adam [Pettle, Saving Hope‘s showrunner], when we were breaking the final episode and we had the idea we did: ‘What is Saving Hope about?’ This is what we’ve been doing for five seasons.”

Tarr acknowledges that, after a handful of seasons, fans are definitely going to have strong feelings if anything untoward were to happen to any of the key characters they’ve fallen in love with. To have something other than a happy ending for Charlie, Alex, Zack, Shahir, Dawn, Dana or Jackson would be incredibly upsetting. That said, Saving Hope is about life, death and everything in between. And, as the writers have proven over the show’s run, no one is safe from injury.

Tarr joined Saving Hope in Season 3 and has been involved in the last 54 episodes and exits with fond memories.

“I’ve been lucky to come on board a successful show that works really well and has great characters and directors,” he says. And now it’s coming to an end this week.

Saving Hope‘s series finale airs Thursday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CTV.

Images courtesy of Bell Media.

 

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Bitten says goodbye

It’s always hard to say goodbye to a television show, especially one like Bitten. Far from stale, Season 3 felt like a bit of a rebirth for the show, and a move in a bold new direction. That’s certainly the case for Friday’s series finale “Truth, Changes, Everything.” Written by Daegan Fryklind, the script does close out stories, but leaves others wide open for interpretation and the imagination. Yes, there have been dark moments for several of these characters over the last three seasons, but by the end of “Truth, Changes, Everything,” I definitely felt hope.

Here’s what’s in store for Jeremy, Elena, Clay, Nick, Rachel, Paige, Sasha, Alexei, The Albino and Konstantin moving forward.

“Truth, Changes, Everything”
The episode title has a wonderful double meaning to it, referring both to how the truth literally changes everything and the storylines deal with truth, changes and, well, everything. Fryklind is a damned wordsmith and I love it.

Things start slow
The first 20 minutes are prep and posturing. Then the wheels really start to move and there’s no let-up. The next 22 minutes sped by faster than a wolf chasing down prey.

Bitten2

Elena’s dream is realized
“We’re the outlaws now. It’s time to embrace our fate. This won’t stop until it happens, so let it come.” With those words, Elena makes a decision, putting irreversible steps in motion that can’t be stopped. Whether or not those steps were the right move will have fans talking for awhile.

Not everyone survives
It would be silly to assume everyone emerges from “Truth, Changes, Everything” unscathed—Bitten is a series about werewolves, blood and witches, after all—so place your bets on who will, and won’t, survive the final showdown. I can say those who do perish don’t do so in vain and are given the proper sendoff.

Bitten‘s series finale airs Friday at 10 p.m. ET on Space.

Let me know what you think of Bitten‘s series finale!

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Review: Mystery lingers in ‘Listener’ finale

There was a definite sense after last week’s episode of The Listener that the finale would have plenty on its hands—the IIB was faced with one stunner of a weekly case while Tia and Oz still had to provide closure to the series’ longest running mystery. While Becker’s storyline offered up a meaty intrigue, things fell a bit short when it came to Toby’s reunion with his mother.

The Rookie Blue fan in me was excited to hear Noam Jenkins would be appearing in the finale as the Becker-thwarting baddie, although his tense posturing quickly tipped me off that we didn’t actually have two dirty cops on our hands, or even one. But the incriminating evidence Griffin (Bruce Gray, All My Children) was able to build up had me wishing this sort of investigation could have gone on for a bigger lead into the finale, especially when Becker had to negotiate how much he trusted his new team with how important it was to protect an old friend. He and Michelle have been getting closer throughout the season, but despite all his talk it wasn’t until this episode that Becker and Toby finally sorted their issues out.

As for Michelle, after the expectation she’d had at the beginning of the season that she would become head of the unit, it was interesting to see how she ran the team once given orders to investigate Becker. Much as I lost most of my respect for Griffin when he dangled that promotion back in her face, at least she finally got her chance to lead before the show wrapped. And I would not have wanted to be Griffin considering her expression after he threatened her family, guaranteeing that however they might stack the evidence against Becker, Michelle wouldn’t just roll over. Of course, with the way things ended Michelle seems to be going a more traditional route by clocking in two months on the road with her family instead of leveraging her big bust—but after four years of high–intensity work, she’s probably earned that vacation. How long she’ll be able to keep herself in vacation mode is another matter entirely.

In fact, even though this has been Toby’s show from the start—he and Oz being our mainstays over the past five years—the finale felt more like it belonged to Michelle, or even Dev and Alex, more than our teal-sporting lead despite the big reveal at the end. What the episode did show us was how far Toby and Michelle have come as a team as he trusted her when she asked him to read Becker (not to mention a few episodes back when she trusted him to read her). Outside the office offered more as Tia, taking advantage of Dev’s open computer, finally found Toby’s missing mother only to be misled into believing she was dead. After all these years, that couldn’t possibly have been the ending, so Maya’s perfectly-timed reappearance in Toby’s life didn’t surprise me as much as it did him.

But instead of offering the answers about why the pair had been split up for so long, or what role The Institute had to play in everything, the two sat down for tea as The Listener rolled to a close—leaving us with some mysteries still unsolved. Given the way the show changed over the years, it’s entirely possible the writers weren’t interested in going there anymore, but without any resolution that half of the conclusion felt more rushed. Even Dev and Alex suddenly and awkwardly admitting their feelings and running off to the dance floor together at least had enough build to it that Alex’s “that took way too long” came from us as much as herself. Then again, in a world where a mind-reading paramedic can end up cracking the nation’s highest-ranking corruption ring, maybe there are only so many answers we can expect.

What did you think of The Listener finale? Let me know in the Comments below!

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