i'm gonna be the lone dissenting voice here (i suspect) and say i hope they DON'T renew it.
i thought it was a good ep - i agree with most of
jade_nolan's points and it was a fitting end to the season and also the series if that is the case. i think i said to her at the time they showed the little montage at the end, something like "ah come on, there's no way they're coming back after showing that!" - and i think i was probably right. that montage was too final to come back from.
i did like it as an ep, for much the same reasons as
jade but it pissed me off that after a dreadful season 6 and a mediocre (but with a few high points) season 7 they waited until now to prove they can still produce great episodes. if they'd thought of that half way through season 6 maybe there wouldn't be the imminent cancellation. and maybe i wouldn't be so glad to see it go.
when i say glad, of course i will miss it, having gary on screen every week is rather lovely, especially when, as last night, it's an ep he can really get his teeth into and that lets him really act instead of just coasting on stupid scripts. but i think as a series it's run its course - the last couple of seasons have proved that the writers are no longer capable of producing good episodes on a regular basis. you look at s1-3 by comparison and it's just no contest. it's a different show. i've felt for months that the scripts have been appalling, that the actors - and especially an actor of gary's calibre (ha, biased, moi?) - have been struggling to make it plausible given the dreadful material they have to work with. they've made a sterling effort and in some episodes they were able to redeem the sinking ship but it's been going on for too long and i think it's over. i hope it is.
don't get me wrong, i don't have some vendetta against it, i still enjoy it, but i would rather a show (or indeed anything) quit while it was ahead and went out still popular, with fans wanting more but having good memories of the show in the past, than limping on and on and getting even worse and getting to a point where even die hard fans just can't be bothered, where the actors are visibly fed up, and so on. i think csiny was getting to that stage. i'd like to think it could go now and be positively remembered rather than becoming worse.
but yeah, a good ep, i liked it. and gary was fantastic
i gave it a square
C - it would've been a A- for the actual ep but the rest of the last two seasons and the fact that the writers waited this long to prove themselves, indeed until it's probably too late, has dragged it down. if only they'd shown us this ability 6 months or a year ago, i wouldn't have to say this.