BET‘s The Game limped to its season finale this week as Derwin uttered the words “Was it mine?” to Melanie in a thirty minute episode that was supposed to reveal a monumental shock that nobody saw coming. Honestly, the thing that nobody saw coming is how BET completely ruined a respectable show by transforming it into a dramatic, pitiful drama that is no longer about “The Game” as the title states.

How BET managed to destroy a beloved franchise—controversially brought to a grinding halt by the CW a couple of years ago—is mind blowing. Did anybody else notice the complete lack of football and locker-room talk that made “The Game” interesting in the first place? Aside from Malik‘s awful storyline that saw him go from super egotistical star quarterback to drug-addicted shell of a man to a man who has fallen in love and finds redemption in less than eight episodes. Where was the game of football? We heard the Sabres weren’t doing well in the season finale. But damn, when did they play? Did they ever win? Who cares, right?

We care.

Every storyline this year was fast tracked to hell as if they knew this season may be the show’s last. Derwin’s baby mama issues went up in smoke after a couple of episodes, Jason‘s life made less cameos than Chris Webber, Kelly morphed into a pathetic reality TV diva and vanished without anything really being said about her and Jason’s daughter (aside from the fact that Jason is watching her), Tasha Mac saw her hoodrat-isms soar to new heights while dating a youngster and then being hoodwinked into dating a dying man who wasn’t really dying…what the hell was the point of that? The best stories were the ones we had to assume happened. The relationship between Malik and Tasha never received the spotlight it deserved. We never knew what the heck was up with Jason’s life after football (sadly, he became nothing more than a occasional guest). Derwin and Melanie didn’t really wrap up this whole Janay situation. (Does he see his son anymore? Who cares!) Then there’s this new all-star quarterback the Sabers signed mid-season without really explaining why he wasn’t signed in the first place (which punctuates how the writers completely trashed the football part of The Game). We received closure on nothing. Half-assed storytelling and plot holes the size of Texas riddled this show from the start.

Am I being too harsh? Perhaps. But nobody can honestly say that this has been a “good” season of The Game. It’s frustrating to see a once respectable show subjected to juvenile writing and elementary storylines usually reserved for a Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles movie. I thought The Game was better than that.

And that damn season finale? WTF was that? The writers and the network preempted the final show with “a twist that we’ll never see coming” and boy were they right. Want to know why they were able to blindside us with a twist? Because they literally made it up out of thin air. It’s not like The Sixth Sense when you can go back and see the twist take form on a second viewing. It’s more like watching The Sixth Sense and Darth Vader comes out at the end and tells the little boy he’s his father. No set up involved, it just kind of happened.

Obviously, BET believes their audience is dumb enough to fall for all their tricks to keep fans engaged. Never once did they take an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach. Rather, they gutted the show and removed the elements that made it a late discovery for many thanks to the series running endlessly on BET after its CW cancellation. They had us at hello, but had us annoyed as hell with their goodbye.

Thanks for building up our hopes only to embarrass everyone with a show that is a fraction of its former self.

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