KEY POINTS:
This season of Kath & Kim (last night, TV3) has been as toned as Kim's butt, which is to say it's been wobbling all around the show in dire need of a noice pair of fat pants to give it a bit of structure.
Unless you're Ricky Gervais and you construct an entire series around celebrities, when a series starts carting celebs in, you can usually bank on it being out of ideas.
The episode starring Little Britain's Matt Lucas as Sharon's long-lost half-sister was as lame as Brett's attempts to stand up to Kim.
So we could have been forgiven for thinking that bringing Shane Warne in for the season finale was going to be a yawn. He's no actor but all he had to do was play himself - you couldn't write a better part for a caricature of a naughty Aussie bloke.
And those sheilas can still pull it out of the fascinator. As in that brilliantly disgusting example of Aussie vomit humour they revived last night: "you've got a bit of carrot in your fascinator."
They do teeter close to the edge. For a couple of awful minutes it looked as though everybody might live happily ever after. Sharon would marry Wayne, the "not very good" Shane Warne impersonator; Kim and Brett would finally move to their new apartment; Kath and Kel would open their B & B, the Kountry Kottage, in their lovely period home in the countryside setting of Fountain Lakes.
But that wouldn't have been a real happy ending. We need them all crowded into Kath and Kel's gorgeous home; we need all those small irritations and repetitions and the never-ending bickering to make it work.
Kath's "look at moi, look at moi, look at moi," when Kim and Sharon are squabbling is silly and we've heard it a hundred times, but it still makes me laugh. It's a running gag, like Kim's refusal to take the DVDs back to the rental store.
And they are still the undisputed mistresses of the malapropism. Kim wanted a "Phillip Starkers" juicer.
That DVD gag was, possibly, wound up last night. Kim made Sharon return some DVDs on the way to the wedding. This was a sight which will be hard to erase from the memory. Sharon, in her wedding finery, looking like an enormous smashed pav, clambering out of a car made for midgets. Later Kim got a call from the DVD shop; she owed more than 90 grand in fines. Bye-bye apartment, bye-bye B & B.
It wasn't her fault. It never is. "It's not my fault that people make boring worthy films that I get out and never feel like watching."
There was a predictable but still funny Warnie running gag.
"Hello Spunky," he said to Shazza, "Sorry I'm late." Why didn't he text? "I don't even have a mobile." The marriage was in danger. "Wayne's bought a mobile phone."
And after all the trouble that went into the big day, at classy Luna Park, where vows were exchanged on the Shock Drop ride.
We were spared the depilatory preparations. Kim advised a Brazilian, but "actually you might need a whole South American, Sharon".
That's our Kim, and we'll miss her like a second-best friend on Sunday nights.
