Who-Dunnit? Who Knows!

Friends, I love television and I know saying that has become somewhat taboo, you know, because of the "reality" of television. And if you love television then maybe you are not that bright, or you’re a couch potato with high cholesterol, or some other type of unhealthy underachiever. There is really no glory attached to being a lover of television, yet I remain such. 

The stereotype is not as bad for movie lovers (which I also love, but love to watch them on my TV) because movie lovers can say, "I love a good film" to snob it up a bit. But, what can I say? I have some shows I love.

I love to be pulled in to a great story, to get raked over the coals, chewed up and spit out by a story that grabs me, shakes me, hurts me, and moves me. 

As an avid reader for many years, books became an addiction as I would constantly "one more page" myself into all-nighters. I had to stop, and television makes you stop, because when the show’s over, it’s over. Bedtime.

So when a TV show disappointments me like happened this week, I guess you can say, I take it personally. Yes, I know how that sounds, but it is all about anticipation and what I expect to get when I choose the shows I watch. If I don’t like what I choose, I don’t watch anymore. If I like it, I keep watching faithfully, with the full expectation of having issues resolved, questions answered and a maybe even a cliffhanger to lure me back for next season. I anticipate these things from the show’s season finale. Doesn’t everyone?

I enjoy anticipating the end of a series, or I did until this week. I like having something to look forward to and I believe that is the key. There needs to be something on the other end of the anticipation, the thing you anticipate has to arrive. Your first date with a new person, your wedding, your big vacation, finding out who shot JR-otherwise, without the realization of what you have been anticipating, well, then you’re just a sucker like me watching The Killing on AMC.

Not since the hearty laugh in my face, punch in my gut, kick in my shin and ultimate wedgie I received from the Sopranos series finale have I felt like I did this week, when our current passion - The Killing - failed to reveal who the cock-a-doody killed Rosie Larsen in the season finale! 

For 13 episodes we endured the rainy, dark and dreary trip to Seattle, the setting for what started out as a mouth-watering "who-dunnit". Why did we? Because we wanted to know who killed Rosie Larsen! Why does anyone watch a show?  To find out what happens. To find out who did it. To simply, find out. Someone killed her in episode one, subsequent episodes introduced all the suspects, logic and history dictates that the final episode would tell us who did it. Insert multiple exclamations points!

You find something out when you invest in a series, that’s just how it works. Can't find someone? You find out where they are. Find someone dead? You find out who killed them. It is a very simple formula that for some reason the writers of this crapfest decided to abandon when they decided, no, they would not tell us who killed Rosie Larsen. 

So, writers and producers of The Killing, (enormous assumption on my part that they will ever see this, but hey, maybe someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone might read this) or whosever idea it was to abandon the television history long formula of creating a who-dunnit and then resolving it at the end of the season, whoever thought this idea was better, whoever thought they could force my hand into another 13 episodes by depriving me of my God given right as a viewer to get the answer to the season long burning question, to you I say, who the Arthur Fonzarelli do you think you are?

Your idea was stupid!  And soon I will forget you and your stupid non-resolving show. Your show is dead to me, and unlike you, I will reveal the killer. It was you!  I hope your show gets canceled. How dare you mess with the formula? And not in a cool Quentin Tarantino way, but in a stupid, stupid, way where you failed to deliver the one thing anyone endures a series for-the answer!! Well let me tell you, Rosie Larsen was no JR, I will not be back.

Okay, so I am a little worked up over this TV ponzi scheme, what if this new formula of torture catches on? Perish the thought friends, perish it!  Jaded as I am now, I need to return to the joyful anticipation of something, anything that will guarantee delivery.

Yoga moment: I close my eyes, imagine a comforting image and there it is, a good burger.   

Did you know there is an honest to goodness burger joint opening in Morristown? It is kind of old news, but I am anticipating it very much. A one time legend of Livingston, New Jersey is reopening right here in Morristown. I have waited for this for a very long time. 

I know you can get burgers on every corner in Morristown, but we have long needed a burger "joint" and now it is coming. But will I be duped again?  Will it use colloquialism to lure me in only to let me down? The word "Fountain" is in the name and come on, you know what that implies. It implies the 50s. And what does that imply? Simplicity, modesty, frugality. If I walk in there and find Kobe and Wyagu beef hamburgers on the menu and some bastardized cousin of the original french fry, and milk shakes made of yogurt or soy milk, I will know I was again led astray.

But even still reeling on the heels of season finale betrayal, I remain optimistic. I anticipate that Don's predecessor will recapture the original simplicity of Don's from South Orange Avenue and the burger I have longed for in Morristown at Don’s Burgers Fries and Fountain. He will deliver, he has promised me a burger and fries in the classic sense and he will deliver on his promise. He will not bait and switch me, he will not promise to put a burger on my plate for all these months and then give me a goose egg when I arrive.

I have been reading some blogs and it seems some people are a bit ticked off to have Don's located next to our beloved theater, and I can sort of see their point, but, not really, I am lying. I can't see it at all. Some people have an image of Morristown, historic and preserved, and that is great, but I am sorry, 50 banks line the streets of Morristown and I say, enough! And Sushi, enough!  We need a burger joint, I am tired of driving out of town to get a good ole' burger.

Don's will not stand out like a sore thumb anymore than Subway or Blimpie does. Let the little people have something. Keep all of your Sushi joints (because they are indeed are keeping with our town's historical element), keep the banks, but please, let the people have a good reasonable burger, not Kobi, not Wagyu, not "sliders." Just a burger. 

Life can be disappointing enough, and as I hang in this state of perpetual anticipation, living with the sensation of the sneeze that won't come, suspended in cliff-hanger limbo at the hands of a stupid TV show, I am never going to know who killed Rosie Larsen and a good burger might make me forget all about her.