FinaleWatch: 'Las Vegas'

Well, here we are. We've come to the end of another season of Las Vegas. Thus far, the Montecito seems to have remained intact, no owners have died, and the cast we started the season with we ended it with too (I don't count mysterious bodies in the back of a car at the start of the season as a cast member). Plus, there were the usual shootouts, robbery attempts, and cheaters. Pretty much it was a standard season of Las Vegas, and there was that episode with the assassins.

The first half of tonight's finale was pretty poor. It was a toned-down version of the standard heist-plot that comes up every fourth or fifth episode. Tonight it started with some college-aged girls streaking on the floor of the hotel. The girls provided the perfect distraction for lawyers who were with a rich stamp collector, Barry Limnick, who was auctioning off his stamp, an 1867 Mixed Grill, at the Montecito to remove the pieces of the stashed guns in their briefcases, build them, and take over the surveillance and security office.

Mitch was able to tip Danny off about the situation in security, allowing the boys an opportunity to try and get the drop on the bad guys. Unfortunately, neither Danny or Mike bothered to warn Piper who got herself held hostage too. Then, the gunmen got Danny as he fell through a panel in the ventilation system he was lying on in order to monitor the gunmen.

Danny tried putting forward a ridiculous tale of his being a tourist with a hankering for a little marital infidelity who lost his wedding ring, but the gunmen weren't stupid. They had done their homework, knew who McCoy was, and they had him call all the guards away from the stamp auction. With security gone, the gunmen's accomplices on the floor had no problem getting the stamp.

Ridiculously, it all came to nothing as Mike had taken a couple of guards with him before the robbery went down and was waiting for the gunmen. He grabbed the stamp back before it ever left the casino. There was 40 minutes of buildup for nothing. Or was there more to it than we were led to believe?

You see, throughout the episode Sam had been saddled with this offbeat individual, Howard, to whom Cooper handed Sam's 50,000 dollar chip (which a client had given her as a gift). It turned out that Howard was a rich recluse and the gunmen's target the whole time. During the kerfuffle at the auction, Howard was nabbed and Limnick, who had been incapacitated at the beginning of the episode by the gunmen was actually behind the whole thing. Not to worry, Danny and Mike got Howard before Limnick was able to leave the country.

What a disappointing first hour. There may have been guns, but they weren't really used, there were no explosions, and no real build to the plot. Now, the second hour, that was better. It started with Mike's mom yelling at him about getting married without telling her. To cover, Mike said that she was wrong, that he and Piper weren't already married, they were just going to be getting married and that the ceremony would be that weekend.

After convincing Piper to go along with it, the fake wedding was on. Then, it became slightly more real when Danny proposed to Delinda and the two opted to do a double-wedding with Mike and Piper (without telling Mike and Piper). Upon learning about it, Mike was cool with it, but Piper had something against having her wedding picture showing her standing next to the rather large (in Piper's eyes) woman that Delinda has become.

That problem would prove minor when compared to some of the other things that were soon to take place.

Throughout the episode, little problems started to crop up, like Mike not having informed his parents that Piper was white, and Delinda's mom, Jillian, arriving (without Ed) and informing her daughter that she was getting divorced. There was also Mike's uncle, a deacon at his local church, deciding to leave his wife for a stripper. You know, little things, the sorts of little things that either get resolved or don't, and no one on the show really seems to care five minutes later.

One slightly larger problem also cropped up, Casey Manning's brother, Vic, was back. He had gotten all of Casey's money and had decided to buy the Montecito. Plus apparently, Casey's will (or the copy of it that Vic had that didn't the IRS didn't) stated that all the back taxes on the casino should be paid, in the event of Casey's death, by Casey's estate (which would mean that Sam shouldn't have lost ownership of the place to begin with). Vic tried to get Cooper to sell him the place, but Cooper wasn't interested, leaving Vic distraught. After some serious drinking Vic was able to make himself feel better by having Sam accept his marriage proposal.

Fine, there was one other potential disaster -- Cooper may or may not have died when the Montecito corporate jet crashed. The pilot lived, but was in a coma, and no one else survived. Everyone involved in the now triple wedding decided it would be better to change it into a memorial service for Cooper, not that they knew he was dead.

As it turned out, he wasn't, he showed up just as James Blunt was finishing a lovely song. But, Vegas does have a tendency to go out with a cliffhanger, so just as everyone was getting all excited about Cooper being alive, Delinda started to feel a serious pain in her uterus and, when she grabbed herself, her hand came away bloody.

So, there you have it, another season of Las Vegas is finished and there are some unanswered questions -- what will become of Vic's attempts to get the Montecito back (at last check he was going to sue), would the Danny-Delinda and/or the Sam-Vic wedding take place, where was Ed on the day of his daughter's wedding, why did Jillian finally decide that she'd had enough of her husband, and will Delinda and the baby be okay. Plus, I still want to know what was up with those assassins from earlier this season. Seriously, that whole plot still bugs me.

Some of those answers and more will hopefully come our way in September. Until then, I think we'll just all have to satisfy ourselves with The TV and Film Guy's Reviews.

E-mail

• Digg
• Facebook
• Fark
• Yahoo Buzz
• Stumbleupon