Finessing the finale

APRIL is the cruelest month, but May makes a close second. It’s finale season and all that entails, which this year includes, sob, the very last episode of “Gilmore Girls” entitled, fittingly enough, “Bon Voyage” (CW, Tues., 8 p.m.).

Like the five-minute blowout at the end of every good fireworks display, finale season is a visual extravaganza that leaves one overwhelmed yet wondering, “Wouldn’t it have been better if they had spaced a few of these puppies out?” Maybe next year we could stagger things somehow.

Finale titles are, as “Gilmore Girls” reminds us, reminders of the poet that lies in every show runner’s soul. From “7th Heaven” we get “And Away We Go” (CW, Sun., 8 p.m.); from “CSI: Miami” (CBS, Mon., 10 p.m.), “Born to Kill.” “Bones” (Fox, Wed., 8 p.m.) gives us “Stargazer in a Puddle”; “Two and a Half Men” (CBS, Mon., 8:30 p.m.) has “Prostitutes and Gelato.” On “Medium,” (NBC, Wed., 10 p.m.) “Everything Comes to a Head,” while over at “ER” (NBC, Thurs., 10 p.m.), “The Honeymoon Is Over.” “Ugly Betty” (ABC, Thurs., 8 p.m.) goes musical with “East Side Story” as does “Grey’s Anatomy” (ABC, Thurs., 9 p.m.), which is going out with “Didn’t We Almost Have It All” (that can’t be a happy ending).

We’ll have to watch till our eyeballs fall out -- there’s something about a finale that we don’t want to miss even if we don’t regularly watch the show. But as the writers of “Everybody Hates Chris” so presciently state in the title of their season finale (CW, Mon., 8 p.m.), “Everybody Hates the Last Day.”

-- Mary McNamara