In the military we used to talk about facts on the ground. At moments of extreme change, or extreme weirdness, or disappointing developments, or straight-up confusing plot points, it's helpful sometimes to consider the imperatives of the show itself. As a critic I tend to jump back and forth between explication and amplication, which is to say, sometimes I want to talk about what's going on within the show and the intratextual meanings of a thing, and other times I feel like talking about what it reminds me of, or what it could mean, or what it implies extratextually. (Usually, what I wish it would mean.)

Like no, obviously I don't think the writers of the show sat down and talked explicitly about the Goddess triune when constructing their Opera House, for example. But it works out, of course, because that's how stories work. They tell self-organizing truths, just like we all do. But speaking as a writer, there's a certain give-and-take with interpretation and the facts. You'll only ever hear a writer say, "That's amazing! I didn't even intend that!" Point being, I'm going to keep the amplification to a minimum this week, and try to stay a little more focused on the facts on the ground and the imperatives that brought them about. I'm not trying to Cavil you: you're free to think whatever you like, regardless of what some dude on a website says about it. On the other hand, I think it shows the areas of our blindness when we throw away a toy instead of figuring out how it works.

Though you'd really be surprised how much of that stuff is actually intended and iterably true. The people who write this stuff think about it more than you do. And I don't think my track record would be as good as it is if we weren't at least sometimes on the same page with this stuff. Think like a writer, not like a passive consumer. Some of it's the blueprint, and some of it is looking back at the historical record of past episodes and seeing the paths they could follow, and discarding them one by one until the obvious-but-still-interesting solution presents itself. In the case especially with Final Season-itis, and I could give you approximately a billion examples from Sex & The City to Once & Again to Dawson's Creek and The O.C. (the easiest ones to see because of those show's reliance on Jungian typology), there's a mandate that must be followed in order to finish the story: everything turns into its opposite.