This week in TV season finales

Ok, let's talk about the first season finale of HBO's True Blood. It was awesome, and yet a little upsetting.
I've read 3 of the Sookie Stackhouse mystery novels by Charlaine Harris that the show is based on, and I had been pleasantly surprised at the things the show had kept the same as books, the things they changed, and the new elements they'd added. But as the season progressed I started to figure out that they were probably going to still make (spoiler alert!) Rene the killer like in the book, even though they'd expanded his character for the show and had made him so damn likeable! It didn't hurt that the actor playing Rene, Michael Raymond-James, is so cute and likable with his (fake, yet realistic) cajun accent.
Then last night at the end of the finale they (spoiler alert!) killed my favorite character Lafayette! So sad about this. Nelsan Ellis was so amazing in this role. In the books Lafayette is a very minor character that is killed in the beginning of the second book and whose murder sets up the plot for that installment. But on the show they'd made this character the most dynamic and likeable of the supporting players, so I thought there might be a chance that they would postpone his murder for awhile; like maybe the end of the 4th season?

So now with 2 of the 5 reasons that I watch the show gone, I'm hoping that season 2 won't be a disappointment. Maybe they can make Lafayette a ghost character that Sookie or Tara can talk to in visions? It is a show by Alan Ball ("Six Feet Under") afterall.


Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders: Making The Team 3 - This show is probably my guiltiest of guilty pleasure reality shows. I. Love. It. Can't get enough of it. I wish that every episode was an hour long like the first and last eps of each season. I can't explain how caught up I get in the training candidates attempts to make it on this year's squad. I'm way too invested in some of the veterans; desperate to see if my faves like Brooke, Kandi, and Deryn make it another year.

I'm not sure whether it's the bitchiness and control-freakedness of Kelli Finglass that I love to hate or the way too bubbly goody-goodness of most of the auditioners, or my fondness for the team from the 1970s that were on two (TWO!) episodes of the "The Love Boat", that makes me so obsessed with this show, but I'm always so disappointed when the seasons end. Can't we follow the squad throughout the NFL season?! Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait for next Fall. And Yay! All 4 of my fave vets made it for 2008!