Two of my favorite shows to watch on DVR on Saturday mornings, Nashville and Grey’s Anatomy, wrapped up their seasons recently. For Nashville it was the first season, and the mix of soap opera, great music, and Connie Britton is enough to bring me back next season.

I’m really pleased that it’s been renewed. For Grey’s it was the NINTH season. This show holds a lot of nostalgia for me. I was first introduced to it when I was doing a college internship in South Africa, and it was one of the few shows we had on DVD to watch at night. I caught up when I returned home, and have watched it ever since. It’s had some bad years, but the last couple have been good – despite relying a little too heavily on trauma-heavy season finales.

If you’ve seen the finales that aired this week, click through for some of my thoughts on them and chime in with yours!

Nashville

Wow. What a season finale! In fact, the second last episode of the season was even so exciting that originally I thought it was the finale. But it just got juicier.

Just when Rayna and Deacon were about to go public with their relationship, Maddie found out that Teddy isn’t her biological father and everything went off the rails. She was hurt and angry, Deacon was hurt and angry. And he fell off the wagon. The episode ended with a dramatic car crash – Rayna was behind the wheel after refusing to allow him to drive drunk.

The tragic moment in the second-last episode came when Juliette’s mother died of a drug overdose and killed Dante, the evil sober companion. This was about as soapy as it gets, and I think we all had to roll our eyes a bit at the idea that Jolene would think a starlet’s drug-addled mother committing murder suicide would be less scandalous than a sex tape. But Juliette losing her mother did fantastic things for that character, and I think Hayden Panetierre played the hell out of those feelings in the finale. Her final song was very beautiful, and I liked that the character was allowed to look like hell while she was mourning.

* I read recently that Hayden Panetierre almost didn’t get that part of Juliette, and also that Juliette wasn’t originally intended to be as central of a character. What nonsense! I honestly couldn’t love Hayden more, and the character is fantastic.

Oh, and Gunnar proposed to Scarlett. I saw that one coming, but I’m happy just because it will hopefully mean more duets from them available on iTunes. Also, I much prefer Avery as a love interest for Juliette.

Grey’s Anatomy

Grey’s, Grey’s, Grey’s. You do this to me every year! It’s like an annual rip-my-heart-out-fest. I’ve mentioned before in blogs, that I think individual episodes of Grey’s are still very fun to watch, though when you look at the series overall, it is too repetitive. Characters can only withstand so much trauma before you’re like, “Again, with the life threatening disaster?” The characters themselves acknowledge this, but it doesn’t always help.

Still, I watch. And still, I love it. This year, a massive storm and power outage put everyone’s lives at risk. You knew someone would die. Meredith almost bled out on the table after giving birth via emergency C-section, but Bailey finally put the gloves back on, operated, and saved her life. Jackson saved a toddler from a burning bus and almost died in an explosion, but he managed to escape just in time to make April realize that she loves him. (I know a lot of people hate April, but I’ve liked her for a long time now. And I do want her and Jackson to be together, though I feel bad for the cute paramedic.)

I would have been crushed had Meredith or Jackson died. But I think I might be the most crushed that Richard died. Not the chief! I saw it coming, but that didn’t make me any less devastated when we saw him lying, electrocuted, on the floor in the hospital basement.

The writers were a little heavy-handed in the foreshadowing here. Richard went down to the basement and found a maintenance guy unconscious, having had a heart attack. He saved his life and was able to apologize for yelling at him earlier. Things were a little too ominous when the man told Richard all he had to do was flip a switch to turn power back on in the hospital.

Later, Bailey wanted to go apologize to Richard. She’d yelled at him and called him a drunk when he tried to make her operate again, and once she was back in the saddle she felt guilty about it. Richard had his chance to apologize to someone, and at that point I knew Bailey wouldn’t. Gah! It was predictable, but so sad.

Stray thoughts:

• I’m glad Alex and Jo are together, I like them. Can this be Alex’s happy ending, please?
• Meredith and Derek named their newborn son Bailey, because she saved Mer’s life, but now I kind of wish they would name him Richard.
• Arizona cheating on Callie was heartbreaking, and I kind of resent that it turned back into an argument about the plane crash and Arizona’s leg. She was still unfaithful, and there’s no excuse. I think those two are done as a couple, but I hope next season we see Arizona realize what a huge mistake she made.
• Cristina and Owen are also done as a couple. I was never the biggest fan of them together, and I think this relationship was a little too dragged out for me to care that they broke up again. We’ve known for a long time that Owen wants kids, so while I’m glad that difference wasn’t swept under the rug, the relationship has felt over for a long time.