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As the beach-dwelling survivors continue to plan their ambush of The Others, another plan is in the works to try and get them off the island.  It seems that Sayid, who I think I will start calling The Onion as he has so many layers to him, has managed to retrieve a set of blueprints for another Dharma station, this one called The Looking Glass.

It seems that The Looking Glass is an underwater station that is underwater somewhere off the beach, but perhaps more importantly, it broadcasts a signal that keeps the island from being found.  That means if they can turn off the signal, the island might be able to be found, and they can be rescued.  Now to figure out how to find the station, swim down to it, turn off the signal, get back, initiate the ambush…

So there are a few things that need to happen.  Luckily Hurley has found a cable running from the jungle into the water, and it seems that The Onion – that’s Sayid, remember – has deduced that the cable is what powers The Looking Glass.  Problem #1 solved.

Now if only they had someone to swim down to the station.  Luckily little Charlie Pace was pushed into swimming as a wee lad by his father, so he insists that he can make the swim.  Unfortunately, future-seer Desmond has already seen Charlie die.  Again.  This time it might stick.  But that’s a minor issue for now.

As the rest of the group on the beach encounters none other than Bernard and Rose, who seem to be alive and well, and Bernard entertains everyone with his fine shootin’ skills, Charlie, Desmond and Hurley head off to the beach, where they plan to put in a little swimming.  At least someone does.

When they arrive, Charlie knocks Desmond out and dives into the water.  Guess Desmond didn’t think the little guy had that in him.  The last shot is Charlie, looking a lot like the baby from the Nevermind album cover, hanging almost motionless in the water, above The Looking Glass station – which looks like it was brought over directly from The Abyss set.

Am I the only one who thinks that Heroes is getting really strange?  Besides my wife, I mean.  The whole idea is interesting and all, but they really have to cut down on the cast of characters or I think I’m going to need to hire an assistant to keep up.  Or maybe I’ll just have to not keep up.  That might be easier.  And cheaper.

In any case, Hiro and Ando are back.  Which is to say that they are now in the present, because they were in the future.  Since they have no idea what they are doing, they turn to The Comic, which tells them… nothing.  So we get to see what everyone else is doing instead.

As some of the cast crosses the country for their date with destiny – and someone or another exploding or not exploding – while Peter tries to convince Claire not to go on a shopping trip to Paris, that guy we love to hate, Sylar is actually doing something.

He’s using his newly-acquired power to paint possibly related events that might or might not happen (how is that for being specific?) and before you know it, he has a lovely picture of none other than himself stealing the power of Ted Sprague.  This makes Sylar a possible candidate to explode!  That actually makes Sylar seem like he cares.  Not about stealing Ted’s power, mind you, but about exploding, so he calls his mom for comfort.

Little does he realize that he’s being stalked followed by Hiro and Ando.

On the juvenile front, uber-boss Thompson introduces Mohinder to little Molly Walker, a little girl that doesn’t have a cool ability that allows her to really do anything.  She is only able to find anyone in the world at any time.  That’s neat and all, but come on – it just might allow you to beat curfew by knowing where your parents are.  All the cool mutants are going to laugh at you behind your back.  Since Molly has the same disease that Mohinder’s sister had, he is able to cure Molly, and they become BFFs for life.

The other crazy kid, Micah, is still missing in action, but D.L. and Jessica decide that poking their nose in to see what Linderman is up to – or at least what they can find in his office is a good idea.  They find out that their lives are just one big experiment, and that Micah is the result.  I wonder if Linderman failed high school biology.

About now is when Sylar and the boys get to Sylar’s mom’s place, and some of the pieces are starting to make sense.  She’s just as nutty as he is.  Maybe more.  After she finds out what he can do, she actually tries to stab him, but in the confusion she stabs herself.  Or maybe Sylar turned it around so it would just look that way.  You can never tell with that guy.

That’s when Hiro shows up, and he tries to stop time, but Sylar evades him.  Hiro has been able to bring people along with him, but someone has been able to go outside his stopping ability?  That’s an interesting development.

As The Sopranos starts to wind down – and seems like it will never reach the eventual conclusion – at least we’re starting to see some death again.  In this case, Christopher is the one who finds a brutal end, but in a bizarre turn of events, it’s only partially due to brutality from another person.

As Chris is driving Tony – and perhaps most importantly, Chris is distracted by just about everything, including the fact that he’s bonkers on whatever is going through his system at the time – he looses control of the truck, sending it off the road and careening into a Talladega-worthy crash.  But that’s only the beginning.

Since Tony was wearing his seat belt, he doesn’t even get a scratch (at least nothing noticeable), while Chris is messed up badly, but that’s nothing when he asks Tony for a hand.  He suggests that Tony help him out so he doesn’t fail a drug test.  Lucky for him, Tony does.  He suffocates Chris.  Guess that’s one way to beat a drug test, but I’m not sure if it’s really a good one.

At the wake, there’s a good turnout – better in fact than there is for the wake held for Paulie and his aunt – mother – sister – daughter – whatever, a fact that he takes very personally.  But then, Paulie takes just about everything personally, so it’s really not much of an issue to anyone but him.

In an effort to avoid any issues that might arise from Chris, Paulie or even his son AJ, Tony heads to – where else? – Las Vegas.  Once there, he meets with, sleep with and do peyote with an old flame of Chris’.  He also proceeds to bet wildly on the roulette wheel, doing pretty well before collapsing in a heap of uncontrollable laughter when he realizes that Chris is really gone.

I still think the best ending for the series is for Tony to wake up one day and realize he’s imagined it all.

Fall From Grace was the second part of the three-part season (and as it seems, series) finale, so enjoy the last of the Close to Home recaps. Unless they ever issue the Season 1 DVD, this will be the last of them.

Since Conlon has now waved goodbye to his bid for election, he has vowed to go full-bore after the corruption plaguing the police department, and it seems like he just might get it. A new tip comes in that looks like they just might have the evidence that they need to prosecute Detective Veeder for his role in all the goings-on around town. But Annabeth isn’t there to investigate the tip. She’s taking care of the kid, or her new beau or something. So Maureen goes instead. This is both good and bad. Good for Annabeth, but bad for Maureen, because Maureen gets whacked. Sopranos whacked. Seriously.

When Annabeth hears what has happened to Maureen, she can’t take it.

Sure, she’s upset, but she vows to get Veeder once and for all for killing Maureen. Even my man Doug Hellman is visibly shaken. It looks like Veeder may be going down. Or maybe his wife is.

After Mrs. Veeder shows up at a party with Deshayes – and gets arrested in the process – things get really interesting.

Naturally Deshayes doesn’t think that he’ll go down at all, and Annabeth wants nothing more. She even gets help from an unlikely allay – Maureen’s dad, who mentions that Maureen testified for the Grand Jury, which is where Annabeth finds out that Maureen testified that Conlon was a good guy after all. Seems that she has one more word to add, even in death.

As to Deshayes, he is found guilty. And with that, the series ends, on a bit of a whimper.

Everyone gathers for a final drink at the bar. It’s too bar really, because the stories were – generally – fairly good. This three-parter dragged on too long, but typically they were not bad at all.

The crescendo is building to the climax of Season 2 – what we found out in The Prophet was that Melinda met Gabriel, someone like herself (meaning only that he could see ghosts). She also found new meaning with the number five – with four catastrophic events happening, each of which created deaths that ended up somehow adding up to the number five. Now that we’re onto the finale, we get to see the fifth – can you guess what it is?

It’s actually the celebration – perhaps mourning is a better word – of the plane crash from last season’s finale. My only complaint about that is that these other events happened around the world, and then the plane crash happened in Grandview, as does this one? That’s just a little too strange for me. I mean it’s not like Melinda is going on vacation or anything, but the last two events, both happening in this sleepy little town? Sure, that could happen. But we’ll go with it.

Melinda ends up meeting a guy named Ethan, who brought the kids to meet her. You know the kids – the ones who have survived all these strange disasters, all happening on May 11? He has since become obsessed with May 11, and since this is May 11, he’s getting a little antsy, and he needs her help. It also happens that he is the husband of the wife who was coming to Melinda. So he’s invested, as they say. He doesn’t know that his wife has been coming to her, but Melinda figures that out along the way.

Meanwhile, she’s trying to figure out what these kids, the signs, and Gabriel have to do with each other, and why everything seems to be shifting towards the darkness. She’s got it nailed down to the memorial dedication, but she can’t quite put her finger on it. She’s just terrified that something will happen to those kids, and so she goes to the dedication in order to save them. Just as she does, she sees the event unfolding before her eyes – unfortunately for her, it wasn’t the kids that were in danger. It was her. She is the one who ends up dying.

The children are actually there for a reason. All the mad drawing and supernatural abilites that they possess manage to bring her back, but not before Melinda finds out two more clues that will keep us on the edge of our seats. First, we find out that Gabriel is a bit more than just another random character. He’s Melinda’s brother. And Melinda’s father, who has been misisng all this time, is apparently dead. To make matters worse, he seems headed for the dark side. Looks like bad news in the Gordon household.

Way back in Very Bad Things, Joy stole a truck (it also turned out that the guy died, as recounted in Kept a Guy Locked in a Truck, but it started at the beginning of the season). It also turns out that the offense would be Joy’s third, which is why she’s trying to get out of it. Her third strike means that she goes away for a long time, which she doesn’t want to do. It also means she’s running from the law, like The Dukes of Hazzard, which means we get to hear that classic, and the fact that she’s running also means we get a bonus appearance from Dog the Bounty Hunter, and strangely that fact isn’t mentioned. But I digress.

Crab Man is having a tough time – but it’s tough to tell if it’s with the kids, or because the kids appear to be taping Mr. Turtle to various surfaces of the trailer where he doesn’t seem to want to be taped. Randy is also having issues, but then Randy always has issues, and it’s not really a problem. Mostly it is because Earl is now trying to make something of himself, and Randy isn’t sure how he’ll be left to fend for himself. I suspect that he’ll be just fine.

Earl decides that to try and restore some order, he needs some character witnesses for Joy, so he starts looking all over Camden County. He looks at Joy’s friend’s house, but Joy apparently had some indiscretions with her friend’s family. Yeah. Joy’s minister? He’s not going to help, because Joy would come to church dressed inappropriately, and her response was to think that Jesus might like a piece of it. Probably not the most appropriate dress, not the most appropriate response. Catalina is the lst try, and of course, Catalina thinks that Joy is a whore. That one’s out too.

Then Earl goes to the lawyer’s office, and decides to discuss strategy. He ends up in bed with Ruby (the lawyer), after a date at a pizza place. When in bed, he finds out he can cross an item off his list – that he had been a lazy lover. But then it turns out that he had stolen something from a deaf woman, who just so happened to be Ruby. Things aren’t looking good for Joy as Earl takes the stand. Then it gets worse.

It turns out that the prosecutor has a bunch of 911 calls from times when Earl was afraid for his life – times when Joy was coming after him. As the last call winds down, Earl sees just how much Joy fears being locked up for life, and how much she’ll miss the kids, and he shouts out that he’s the one that did it, taking the fall for her. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get a slap on the wrist for his act of honor – he gets thrown into the slammer. Locked up. Sent to the big house.

When he gets there, we find out that it’s not just a joke or a stunt – he’s really sent in. And a blast from the past awaits. Out of the darkness comes none other than his good friend (?) Ralph, who hands him a sock stuffed with what appear to be batteries, and a warning to be on the lookout. Looks like Ralph’s up to his old tricks. And Earl is going to have a heck of a time keeping up with the list from the inside. Maybe we’ve seen the last of the show, or maybe not. We’ll just have to see if it comes back for a Season 3.

The Brig was pretty straightforward. A little wacky, with Locke calling on Sawyer to whack his old man (without getting into the subject of how he actually got to the island). But fairly straightforward, other than that one little detail. Now we’re going off-course. Way off-course. It’s a good trip, because we get to find out where little Ben came from. Sort of.

Alongside a road – some road, apparently off in the wilds, where peace-loving people hang out – a woman is giving birth. Her name is Emily. In the process, she dies. But Ben is born. His father, distraught over this turn of events, takes a break from reality, and on the advice of a friend, heads to an island where he can get away from it all. Really away from it all. He takes his son, Ben, because he doesn’t know what else to do, other than blame Ben – repeatedly – for the death of Emily. Not a good father-figure, which helps explain just why little Ben is so messed up once he gets older. It also makes you wonder why Ben says that he was born on the island, when obviously he wasn’t – he was of an age where he should have remember coming. Anyway. That’s for another time.

Once young Ben grows up, he meets Richard, and it seems that Richard doesn’t belong to the fine folks at Dharma. He wants to take them out. So he asks Ben to help. Ben agrees, so long as he gets to be the one to deliver the news to his dad. He does so. With a vengeance. Did I mention that Ben’s dad is named Roger, and drives a van filled with beer? Sorry, must have left that out.

Apparently while Ben was a part of the (supposedly) peace-loving Dharma clan, he helped wipe them out. Richard and the others, who claim to be the natives of the island, took their place, and are not the actual Dharma employees. Which is certainly an interesting development. We’ll have to see what happens there.

In the meantime, Ben takes Locke to meet someone named Jacob – a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, person who apparently gives the orders on the island. Locke doesn’t buy it, and after they leave the cabin, Ben shoots Locke, leaving him for dead in the same pit where all the former Dharma employees are left. But I suspect that Locke isn’t dead. We’ll see him again.

Back on the beach, everyone has decided that Juliet is bad. Really bad. Sawyer and Sayid are just about ready to take her out behind the shed and shoot her. That’s when Jack and Juliet show up, and agree with what they’ve determined is the case, and that’s also when they find out that they are coming for the pregnant women. So rather than stringing up Juliet right then, they are going to wait to do it. They’ll set up an ambush for the invaders right now, and take care of Juliet later.

This is it. In Coalition of the Willing, it seemed like the battle was coming. Now it is. We also don’t really know if there will be any further Jericho after tonight, but that may not matter, because this might just be the end of it all. Unfortunately we have to sit through a bunch of nonsense about how Eric married April and Jake became the number one bad boy. But who cares? Jericho is just about the best show ever, and it’s going to come to a head.

Even better, we get to meet Grandpa Green. He is so cool he overcomes the wimpiness that is Eric. It just leaves you wondering how Eric came out of the same bloodline. Maybe he didn’t. But that’s for another story, another time (probably never, but hey – it sounds good). What I – and everyone else – wants to know is why all the coolest of the Green clan end up dead. If anyone deserves to live in that family, it was Grandpa Green. That man had more cool in his few minutes of screen time than most of the rest of the residents of Jericho. But I digress. There’s a war happening, people!

The other cool cat in town (that would be Hawkins) hacks into the satellite to track the whereabouts of the New Bern troops, since they have to be just about on top of Jericho by now. For what seems to be most of the episode, he’s hanging out in his crib, sending morse code signals on his Radio Shack walkie-talkie to Jake and the gang, all while he tries not to get caught. Lucky for him all those higher-ups can’t figure out how to track him very quickly. Good thing he bought the anti-tracker decoder ring at the mall.

Meanwhile, the Jericho Tank comes out of the barn (I was wondering if they’d ever pull it back into action) and the New Bern Crew rusn back into hiding until they figure that the tank can fire like once, while they have trainloads of mortars. Then Poppa Green takes one for the team, and that’s what really rallies the troops. Isn’t it always that way? Why can’t they get going before the cool people get shot and killed? Anyway, as dad dies on the Richmond table, Jake steps up to be the man he was meant to be and gets all the Jericho lackeys to back him up, which is just what the people from New Bern didn’t need.

Connie says that he’ll give Jake one last chance to surrender, but it’s too late now. He might have had a chance to make peace happen before he killed his dad, but not now. As helicopters come in, the war starts in earnest, and Jake has just one word for Connie: Nuts.

Update: Over the coming weeks, fans of Jericho sent tons of peanuts (apparently more than 10,000 pounds in all) to the offices of CBS in order to save their show. It worked. Jericho was given a second chance, and will return in some form for a second season. We’ll have to see how that shapes up.

We don’t need the present. Or you have to figure that’s the case, because that’s what’s happening tonight on Heroes. It’s now five years later (hence the title) and pretty much everyone is dead. What happened, you ask? Sylar exploded, not Peter, so those of you hanging onto all hope that cute little Peter won’t get hurt, you should be happy. Unfortunately, it seems that good-guy Ando has bought the farm, and perpetual short-sticker Parkman now works for Homeland Security, run by evil Nathan, and he is getting ready to lock up past Hiro (who is present Hiro to us, but he’s past to them). Good enough for now? Good.

Why would Parkman want to lock up Hiro? Because apparently present Hiro (that is, future Hiro to us, present Hiro to them) is considered a terrorist. When past Hiro shows up, they think he is present Hiro, and since they finally think they have him, they are going to grab him. Naturally that means that present Hiro has to bust him out. Meanwhile, HRG is running something of an underground hero railroad from someplace in Texas (probably the diner). Then present Hiro shows up, and he’s looking for Peter. The only problem is that Peter is invisible. And he’s dating Niki. That makes sense – if you were going to date a hero, wouldn’t you want to date Niki? Remember her job before she started killing people? What doesn’t make sense is why Peter has a monstrous scar on his face. I thought he could heal himself, thanks to exposure to Claire-bear. Maybe we’ll find out.

Speaking of Claire, it seems that she is now waiting tables at the good old diner, but then daddy comes in, and though she’s ready to get married, he tells her that she has to move. Which doesn’t sit well. She still doesn’t like having to move around at the slightest provocation – or whenever HRG gets paranoid about what’s happening. So it is sorta funny that this time he’s not paranoid, because that’s about when Parkman shows up and takes Claire to see her real pops (which would be Nathan).

Nathan, meanwhile, has decided to have Mohinder take care of past Hiro, and he then goes to the meeting with Claire. But when he meets her, we see blood start to appear on her forehead, which indicates that Nathan isn’t doing the fatherly duty, he’s stealing her power. It’s not Nathan at all – it’s Sylar. He didn’t explode five years back, it must have been Peter after all, and if he did explode, it’s pretty impressive that he only has a small scar to show for it. Now things are really getting confusing!

While all this is going down, Peter has teamed up with present Hiro to bust past Hiro out of prison before Mohinder can kill him. They get there just before this all goes down, and The Haitian gets the needle instead, and then Parkman shoots present Hiro. Then Sylar and Peter go into it, and Mohinder and Ando tell past Hiro to head back to the past already, because he needs to get the timeline back on track so this doesn’t happen. He needs to get back to the plaza and stick Sylar with the sword already. Though this has been a fun trip through future possibilities, it needs to not happen!

In Chasing It, we discovered that T had a gambling problem. Not a gambling problem where he would bet money and let it ride so that he’d just keep going because of the adrenalin rush or anything, but he’d win and since it seemed like his luck was beginning to change, he would keep it going, and then he’d lose it all. It looks like Tony is about to fall and fall hard.

Meanwhile, back on the home front, Christopher makes plans with his new father-in-law to sell some stolen power tools. Quick-like, by a show of hands, tell me who sees that ending badly? I thought so – me too. While Chrissy is trying to stay all clean and sober, it’s not doing any favors for his career path in the family business, and neither Paulie nor Tony seem to care too much. It’s like he’s been ostracized and no one told him about it. Poor kid. So when Little Paulie decides to take a few extra tools from the store, Chris decides that he’ll just take care of it himself – he throws Paulie out of a window. Sweet. That’s what we’ve been waiting for – a little action!

Unfortunately, that’s pretty well all that happens. Paule comes back and does donuts on Chris’ front lawn. Donuts on the lawn! What has happened to the mob? They take out lawn gnomes? Good grief!

Of course, Chris is doing nothing more than causing Tony grief, which Tony doesn’t need because of his gambling issues. So Tony sits Chris down and they talk about their issues. Then Chris has a drink. Or three. Then he goes to visit his old buddy J.T., who he seems to think had everything to do with this problem – since he “wrote” the screenplay that caused the whole downward spiral, it must be his fault, after all – and that must be where it all ends. So Chris shoots him in the head. Some more action? No, that’s pretty much it. We don’t really see anything more mentioned of it. Chris just goes home.

Back at work, Tony tells his G-Men buddies about the towel-headed buddies, in the hopes that it will help him get off. While they don’t seem to care, it seems like perhaps it will help in the future. Seems to me like more fluff to fill in the time slots until the finale, where hopefully something will happen.

As all this is going down, A.J. has broken down again. Blanca has decided to dump him. Apparently he wasn’t doing it for her. Or maybe he was. Frankly, I don’t know that it was ever really addressed. She just kicked him to the curb and know A.J. is on the verge of a breakdown. Tony does force A.J. to go to a party at the Bing, where he gets together with some of his old buddies, but that’s just so that they can use him – he meets some people who apparently aren’t paying their bills, and he gets introduced as “Tony Soprano, Jr.” – sort of like an introduction as the muscle. It seems like A.J. sort of likes it. Maybe he’ll be stepping into the old man’s shoes.

Maybe he’ll snap. Geez, I just wish that something would happen, because I’m about to go nuts here.