“I’m wearing something of yours now....”
The last two episodes of the Great Eastern, from April of 1999. By then everyone knew there was no hope of the show being renewed. The CBC, complaining the show was “too foreground” wanted to move to a different time slot, and reduce the team’s compensation and lower production values. So the plug was pulled.
Episode 25 (April 17, 1999) opens with a gardening segment - another gardening segment, that is. Completists might recall the opening show from Season Two, when Paul reviews the forlorn Moth Manor yard with another Gardening Guy. Special appearances by Mom, the Guy Shouting at Paul, and an infected human tissue dump. Also featured is a spendid interview with TV producer Ambrose Sands (played by Ed Riche), whose latest venture is a show about bums and bombs going off. The title? Bum Bomb.
Episode 26 (April 24, 1999) opens with a Vault that, well...I can’t describe it. You'll have to listen to it. Suffice it to say it involves troll’s hole. We also revisit moronic archaeologist Professor Ian Trumbull, who has discovered a second Ned Murrin play (the first was Carlos, Duke of Portugal). Rex Finis Mundi was partly developed by the GE writers, and we are lucky enough to have the unfinished script here (see below).
Paul’s final Paulitorial is a masterpiece of the form, managing to be simultaneously sentimental and salacious:
You know what they say, the five year mark in a relationship is the watershed. So, I mean, now that we're here, at the end of the season, after five years, maybe the idea of a trial separation isn't such a bad thing. To see where we're at. You'll linger over the repeats during the next couple of weeks, remembering some of the good times we've had. After that, who knows what will happen. Maybe you'll find another show to listen to. I'll have to live with that. Maybe I'll find a new audience. Whether we get back together or not depends on many things, most of them out of our control. If we're lucky enough to survive this experiment, though, there's one ground rule I'm going to insist upon. You can't tell me what shows you listened to, and I won't tell you about ... anyway. I have not ... and will not ... forget you. I'm wearing something of yours now, (sniff) just to remember you by, until we meet again.Indeed. We wouldn’t meet again for three-and-a-half years, when the team was reunited for the Marconi commemorative episode in December of 2002.
Season 5, Episode 25
Season 5, Episode 26
Rex Finis Mundi - Unfinished and Unproduced script