So the show (formerly The Show) ended recently with a perfectly good winner, and if you think that I am damning it with faint praise, you of course are correct. It also had a perfectly good winner last year who you don’t remember (and who subsequently became nearly invisible) and you probably won’t remember this year’s winner for long, either.

Right before the finale, the producers announced that next year’s season of the show would be its last. That’s hardly surprising, given the show’s long run and its slumping (but still not bad) ratings, and I’m actually kind of glad to see it go. It stopped being an obsession for me a few years back, like it did for most of America, and now it’s just this program I watch. Time for it to walk away with a little dignity.

As for me, there really is *no* television I’m obsessed with any more. Most television these days, like the show, is perfectly good — but it’s all become so serialized that if you don’t get and stay on the ride for a particular program, you lose the thread and soon stop caring. That sort of thing doesn’t work for my lifestyle, and thus my overall interest in television has really faded in the last few years.

Thus, the show may be my last TV obsession. So be it.