So The Closer ended this past Monday, sort of.
Really it's kinda funny how the entire season built up an arc that could have explained Brenda leaving, and yet the finale felt forced, rushed, and last-minute. Hey, let's resolve the one remaining loose thread and usher her out the door!
The biggest problem with the episode, really, was that it required a villain previously depicted as a criminal mastermind to turn into a complete fucking moron at the last minute. One character even points out, in dialogue, that his actions in this episode don't match the MO established in his previous appearances. This is never resolved, nor explained even a little bit, but I guess it's nice the writers acknowledged the part where it didn't really make any fucking sense based on what had come before.
And then the goodbye felt awfully abrupt. It didn't feel much like an ending at all.
Because it wasn't, really, because it led straight into Major Crimes, which the writers and network have taken great pains to establish is the same show with a new title.
It's not a jumping-on point. It continues directly from the Closer finale, picks up threads from the previous season, and even has Fritz wandering around the office talking to Brenda on the phone and picking up her things for her.
Really, it's a smart move -- a jumping-on point is also a jumping-off point, and TNT made the right decision in trying to reassure its existing viewers that this was still the same show instead of trying to make it appealing to a new audience that may or may not actually exist to tune in on a Monday night in the middle of August.
And if they had given Brenda a big sendoff, well...how many people quit watching The Office after Michael left? I know I didn't watch the last season of Scrubs because My Finale was such a great damn note to end it on.
So Brenda's shown the door, roll credits, show the new titles in the same old font, and life goes on. A fairly savvy bit of television-making, really.