CRUSOE: Stranded Forever

Before we get into the final recap of CRUSOE, I just wanted to take a moment to thank Meredith for her hard work and dedication to this show this season. CRUSOE maybe wasn’t the hit NBC hoped it would be, but Meredith stuck with it all season long.  Kudos and again, THANK YOU!

———————–

So he’ll be stranded forever…..

This week Blackthorn and his gang head back to the tree house looking for the baptism certificate hidden in Crusoe’s bible. When he doesn’t find it, they burn the tree house. (Did anybody notice how the fire stayed contained to the tree house and didn’t spread anywhere else? Just an observation on my part). After Crusoe and Friday watch the tree house burn, they return to the ashes and Crusoe finds his baptism certificate hidden in the spine of the bible, and not hidden within the pages where Blackthorn had looked. He apparently didn’t know it was there and as he reads it, he finally realizes why Blackthorn is after him.

It’s only a matter of time before Blackthorn and Crusoe run into each other and when they run into each other at the piranha filled lake, Crusoe lets Blackthorn know he has the certificate he’s looking for. He asks Blackthorn to head back to the ship and wait for him. Crusoe then asks Friday to follow Blackthorn back to the ship while he tracks down Tuffley and Nathan, who Friday had scared off earlier by shooting arrows at them. He follows them to the beach where he challenges them to a duel. He kills Nathan and then threatens to kill Tuffley if he doesn’t tell him the truth about what has happened to Susannah and his kids.

Once Crusoe and Tuffley make it to Blackthorn’s ship, Crusoe tells Blackthorn he will let him keep his fortune if he takes him back to England. Blackthorn agrees, but then points out he forgot to make a similar deal for Friday, who Blackthorn had captured while he was following him back to the ship. Crusoe begins fighting the people on board in an attempt to get Friday back. But when he fights with the captain he notices blood in his eyes, which is a sign of black pox. Nobody will make it back to England alive, including Crusoe and Friday. Once Crusoe realizes this, he pushes Friday overboard and then jumps with him. As we’ve seen so many times before, they watch from the shore while another ship sails away.

My opinion about the show has wavered. The first episode was good and the last two episodes were good, but everything in between was usually mediocre. It would have been nice to see NBC give the show another shot, but the reality is that it won’t happen, with low viewership and with companies scrimping on their advertising budgets because of the economy.

I can absolutely see how they set things up hoping for a second season – Blackthorn dying on his trip back to England, Susannah expecting to inherit the fortune when she can’t without the paperwork , Crusoe and Friday still trying to leave the island – but I still don’t like that there wasn’t any more closure than there was. It’s good that Susannah and the kids are safe, but that’s really the only loose end that I felt like wrapped up. With a bad time slot from the beginning and with NBC doing very little to promote the show, there had to be some feeling that it would only get picked up for one season, so why not try to tie up some loose ends for the people who did follow the entire season. Call me a little sappy, but I feel jilted that I didn’t get the happy ending I was hoping for.

Here are some of the high points of the series for me: Friday and Oliver/Olivia. Friday was just absolutely terrific and I loved that he had both a huge heart and brains to outwit anyone or anything. As for Oliver/Olivia, we never did find out her complete story or whether or not her motives were pure, but her chemistry with Crusoe and her drive to help Susannah and the kids amped up the story.

One of the low points had to be any of the episodes where Crusoe and Friday were by themselves and not having to defend themselves against outsiders. In those episodes, like the wild dogs episode, their chemistry is off and it was boring to watch at times.

What were some of the high points of the series for you? What about low points? What worked for you and what didn’t? Do you think something could have been done differently to help save the show?

— posted by Meredith

Meredith lives in a small South Carolina town where there is nothing to do but watch TV! She loves The Office, Chuck, Scrubs and Arrested Development, and her guilty pleasure is anything Gordon Ramsay related.