The greatest feeling in the world? When a show you wish you'd never started watching finally fucking ends.

For some reason I suffered through the whole season of "On The Lot" all the way to the last episode which has, thankfully, come and gone. While there were brief bright spots where clever or original short films actually made their way into the show the whole thing generally tanked. "On The Lot" was supposed to be an "American Idol" style reality show pitting ambitious, independent filmmakers against each other in pursuit of their big break and an office at DreamWorks. With Steven Spielberg attached it seemed like it might just make Reality TV seem palatable.

The first couple of episodes, while a little awkward and rushed, did seem to be living up to this idea (if you could block out the fact that Brett Ratner was a judge). Then, suddenly, like a dozen contestants randomly disappeared, the original host was replaced by Adriana Costa and (in not such a bad change) Brett Ratner was replaced with a rotating cast of different movie makers each week. I can only guess that the initial ratings hadn't been what they expected and this mid-show overhaul was intended to create a larger appeal. I guess Adriana Costa, her often displayed bosom, and Academy Awards gowns were supposed to be a big draw. Maybe this worked for twelve year old boys but I wanted to deck her and developed the habit of fast-forwarding through large portions of the show to avoid listening to her awkward, sexually suggestive banter.

To be honest, I was also fast-forwarding to get past hearing Carrie Fisher launch into long incoherent rambles in her role as the shows Paula Abdul and Gary Marshall talk about how "there needs to be more female filmmakers like my sister Penny." Penny guested on one episode and I hope there aren't as many female filmmakers like Penny because she's a little crazy. So, as you can tell, I've got a gripe with the show. So why did I keep watching, you may ask. Well, part of it could be the same masochistic streak that kept me watching the BBC show "Hex." I sometimes like to call that masochistic streak Richard. But with "On The Lot" I think that I kept watching because I really wished that it would be better but with every elimination where someone other than Kenny Luby went home I saw this redemption becoming a fainter and fainter possibility. Although the judges were lamentable, the host was awful and the execution sucked I would like to end with some hope. Some of the short films that were made during the season were pretty cool so here's a selection of my favorites to illustrate that some amount of good can still come out of something involving Brett Ratner.

1) "Die Hardly Working" by Zach Lipovsky

2) "Sweet" by Jason Epperson

3) "Anklebiters" by Sam Friedlander

4) "Unplugged" by Will Bigham