The most un-Christmas-like special of the month had to be Sunday night’s Bloody Merry: The Extra Special Series Finale on HBO, which also served as the series finale for the show Extras. Except for the sound of sleigh bells ringing intermittently as the background music, the episode wasn’t really about the holidays at all.

Well, one of the opening scenes did follow the lead character Andy Millman (Ricky Gervais), who is at this point in the show a famous TV sitcom actor, strolling through a department store at Christmastime with Maggie (Ashley Jenson), his ditsy best friend. They arrive at a display of “Ray Stokes dolls," which are devoted to the character that Andy plays on the cheeky, fictitious sitcom, “When the Whistle Blows." The Ray Stokes character that Andy created is an overweight doofus who wears a big, curly, black wig and over-sized glasses and repeatedly says the catchphrase, "Are you 'avin' a laff?"

At this point the store manager approaches, nearly begging Andy to autograph a few dolls to help them sell. “Even the Kramer doll is selling better than this one… It’s cheap and ugly, isn’t it?” he says, before going on to say he’s excited about ordering 10,000 Sanjaya dolls for next year. This is the kind of irreverent, dark humor loaded with pop culture references that has made Extras one of the funniest comedies to hit TV in recent years.

Though the plot line had nothing to do with the holidays beyond this scene, this whole series has felt like a precious gift to TV, and last night’s episode did wrap things up nicely with a nice bow, as Andy’s character completed his arc.

How so? [spoiler alert!]

After threatening to do so in every episode since the start of the series when he was a desperate-to-be-the-lead-in-a-film extra, Andy fired his incompetent manager Darren Lamb (played by Ricky Gervais’ writing partner Stephen Merchant), and signed up with a flashy, corporate agent who promised him a bigger and better A-List career. Andy’s plight of unhappiness and desperation would continue though, and his greed to be famous would only make matters worse.

He quit his cash cow BBC sitcom because it didn’t have enough artistic integrity, this despite the fact that he had no other acting prospects in sight, besides a guest spot as an alien on Dr. Who. He made Maggie pretend to be his personal assistant, and then ultimately dumped her as his best friend, because he thought he was becoming too big to be seen hanging out with an extra. And the only gig Andy could land in the subsequent six months (after signing the corporate arts management deal) was to be a housemate on a celebrity edition of Big Brother.

Although the laughs were aplenty last night, this 80-minute episode had a sadder tinge than usual. Maggie slipped into a dark, clinical depression after being dismissed by Andy and after quitting being an extra “because it was too depressing." She had to move to a teeny apartment in a rough neighborhood and become a cleaning lady, as it was the only other job she was qualified to get. Andy was too self-obsessed to notice her downward spiral, which made her sadness all the more depressing. Though in the show’s second-to-last scene Andy realized what an ass he’d become and delivered a confessional-style speech from the inside of the Big Brother house. The speech was entirely dramatic, and not including any light-hearted comedy bits at all, as he turned to face the camera with tears in his eyes, to say, “I’m sorry” to Maggie.

Just like The Office, that other British comedy that Gervais wrote, directed, and starred in (along with Stephen Merchant), there have only been two six-episode seasons of Extras, and last night's Christmas special was the series finale. Although audiences are hungry for more Extras as they have been for more of the UK version of The Office, Gervais has said in interviews that he prefers to “get in and get out” of his projects while they’re still interesting.

As a show that has critiqued the egomania of celebrity culture from the get-go by having famous actors appear as more self-obsessed versions of themselves –- Kate Winslet, Sir Ian McKellen, Ben Stiller, and David Bowie have all had hilarious guest spots -- last night’s episode didn’t disappoint with its dose of celebrity action. Clive Owen rejected Maggie as the extra chosen to play the prostitute that he would sleep with in a movie scene; George Michael stopped to chat on the “queer bench” in the park behind Andy’s new apartment, then left behind a joint and requested that Andy keep an eye out for the paps while he cruised for “some action”; and Gordon Ramsay showed up to yell at Andy about what a “has-been” he had become.

Since Extras has wrapped up, Gervais has begun filming a feature film that he’s starring in, Ghost Town, which is scheduled to release in 2008. We’ll just have to wait and see if Gervais keeps his integrity as he becomes a famous film star, and if he can avoid becoming the cliché of an actor that he so artfully created and portrayed in Extras.

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