Sleeper Cell awakes in its final episode

I'll be honest... I had a hard time suspending disbelief to the extent that a rogue agent could kidnap the wife of, locate and set up a slap-boxing appointment with this show's equivalent of Osama. But it sure made for one hell of a season finale. I loved the stripped-down Western "shootout on the streets of a ghost town" ending incongruously set in the Yemeni desert. It reinforces that even with all the remote bomb detonations, long-range missile GPS-coordinate targeting and SWAT snipers involved in the war on terror, a good, old-fashioned handgun duel mixed with some savage hand-to-hand uncomplicates things in a good way. Also, this ending sets up a third season nicely. Farik gets away by the hairs on his chinny-chin-chin (rescued by a young, untested and sadistic underling who had been taunting Darwyn minutes earlier) and a wounded Darwyn is sure to be rescued by the undercover who provided him the pistol.

I guess my only real complaint is that the cell members were less interesting this year than last. The writers seemed to shorthand their development somewhat by making Salid a homosexual and having Mina raped. I was unaware of Thekla Reuten before, and she impressed me in flashes, but they let her tell too much of her own backstory to make me care about the loss of her husband or her being forced into prostitution. Her husband's death would have made a good flashback (and simultaneously served to rescue us from the Sean Astin lookalike who was breaking Darwyn's balls all season).

All in all, though, a good showing on the shoulders of Michael Ealy and Oded Fehr. I'll definitely tune in again. And I loved the 8 episodes in 8 days format. I didn't watch Season One in real time, so I guess I never knew this series aired that way. The format pretty closely approximates the benefit of watching a TV series on DVD: the cliffhanger endings are still fresh when you begin the next installment.

If you don't know, now you know...