Three Genre-Hopping Season Finales Served Tonight: Comedy, Horror, and Crime
My Name Is Earl, Supernatural, and Without a Trace All on the Tasty Menu
Three different shows from three different genres are closing out their respective successful seasons on three different broadcast networks tonight. First up at 8pm EST is NBC’s sophomore comedy My Name Is Earl and the extended “The Trial.” In this forty-minute installment, the title character (played by Jason Lee) encounters a new love interest in Academy Award winner Marlee Matlin, who has had a recurring role this season portraying crime-prone Joy’s (Jaime Pressly) deaf lawyer. Will the hook up last as Earl also finds himself enjoying an unusual spate of maturity—including new digs to go along with the new appliance store sales job he acquired in the last episode—and recently available opportunities? Well, the installment ends with one of those exasperating cliffhangers, so what do you think?
Next comes the CW’s Supernatural at 9pm EST. As longtime fans of the series know, this second season has been defined by older Winchester brother Dean’s (Jensen Ackles) continuous grappling with his father John’s (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) dying wish that he look after his younger brother Sam (Jared Padalecki). This promise, made under the duress of realizing that his beloved parent died in order to spare his life, has proven difficult given the all-consuming and unbelievably dangerous nature of full-time demon hunting, especially after Sam began manifesting some spooky metaphysical powers of his own. The second-season finale, “All Hell Breaks Loose,” is a two-parter that begins tonight and concludes next week at the same time. It promises to directly address some of the issues that viewers have been contemplating and dissecting since the beginning of the series, such as what really happened to the Winchester brothers’ mother Mary (Samantha Smith) when she died by fire while splayed on the ceiling of Sam’s nursery, and what malevolent monstrosity does the randomly appearing but always nigh Yellow-Eyed Demon have in store for both Sam and the world.
Finally, at 10pm EST, CBS presents the fifth-season finale of its hit FBI-missing persons procedural Without a Trace, moved from its regular Sunday-10pm time slot. The newest addition to Jack Malone’s (Anthony LaPaglia) ace investigative team, Elena Delgado (Roselyn Sanchez), has been coping with a wrenching custody battle over her young daughter all season long following a split from the child’s troubled cop father. In “The Beginning,” this struggle approaches catastrophic proportions during the search for a missing teenage girl involved with a religious cult. What the increased tension will mean for Elena’s blossoming romantic relationship with her colleague Danny Taylor (Enrique Murciano) remains to be seen.
My Name Is Earl photo courtesy of NBC
Supernatural photo courtesy of the CW
Without a Trace photo courtesy of CBS
