As we draw nearer to summer, all (or most) TV series are finished or are drawing to a season close, just in time to allow us to see the Stanley Cup playoffs (and hey, it's only early June ).

I was thinking about how some of my favourite series ended, and wondered if, during the writers' strike, there must have been a few "coffee klatches" where the writers would all huddle in their Armani suits with Gucci bags, bemoaning the dire straits their personal trainers were being thrown into (I'm suppositioning here, of course).

"Oh hey, what if we kill a guy off at the last minute of the closing episode "

"Or better - make it look like they were killed at the last minute of the last episode, and we won't tell you until the beginning of the new season whether they live or not."

"Here's one - just spitballin', you understand - we show each and every cast member getting into a separate black SUV then, without warning, we blow one of them up!"

"What for?"

"To cause interest in the new season. See, we don't show which one got blown up, then in the new season, maybe we'll show it wasn't one of the regular cast, it was an innocent person who got blown up by this terrorist/bad guy dude, and "

(Voice of waitress): "Fresh latté, anyone?"

Well, you get the general idea. I'm sure this is how it worked; consider how the following series ended, all within one week: CSI Miami ended with the head CSI dude Horatio Cane shot on the tarmac at an airport, waiting futilely for his son and his mother to show up. He's shown twitching as he lies on the tarmac so is he dead? Probably not. I mean, who would they get to utter his inanely dramatic lines? ("Yes, Robert, those guys did make a killing " he might intone at the site of a multiple murder ) (It's all in the voice.)

Then, on the original Las Vegas-based CSI, Warrick Brown is shot twice by the sheriff who oversees the CSI department, at least once through the neck. No twitching. Is he dead? Well, it would seem so; the actor was recently caught with a wide variety of drugs in his car, claiming none of it was his. I suppose time will tell on that one.

Then, on Criminal Minds, the above scenario of each member of the team getting into a separate black SUV then blowing up a black SUV was how that show ended. I couldn't believe it when I saw that. The nice blonde on the team was just revealed to be both engaged and pregnant - that really wouldn't do, to be blowing her up, but who got it, and why?

On CSI New York, Gary Sinise is last seen being driven to an unknown destination by a guy with a gun to his head. No dead or twitching bodies there, but it's unknown what will become of Mac Taylor's character, one of the better CSI investigators (besides Grissom, of course).

The only other one I saw was Without A Trace, and Jack got himself demoted down to working on the street for some supposed thing he screwed up on in FBI protocol. There were other shows where he had come under scrutiny before, but he survived those investigations; this time, he was nearly killed after being kidnapped, and they go and demote the guy.

You know, I don't know if a writers' strike is such a good thing for all these guys to gather at; next time there is one, we'll send the writers off in separate SUVs, and see what happens.