Last week's terrorism-punctuated Rubicon felt more like a finale than this week's, but perhaps the series is just borrowing the "just when you think you know the answers, we change the questions" mantra out of the Lost playbook.

It remains to be seen whether last night's 13th episode of Rubicon will be its last, but the creative team certainly seems to be making a pitch for a second season by making radical changes to the status quo. First came a confirmation that there is much more to Will Travers's neighbor/booty-call Andy than meets the eye, then came this hidden-in-plain-sight assassination:

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Can the consistently low-rated series continue without its (arguably) most-recognizable star, Miranda Richardson? Or was she an albatross that the story needed to remove in order to progress? Time, no doubt, will tell.

This next clip covers several other structural changes, as the villainous Truxton Spangler responds to his own failure to murder Will by deciding to humiliate him professionally instead. Grant, something of a live-action Jay Sherman [http://tv.gawkerarchives.com/5665235/], has just the sort of qualities Truxton looks for in a toady:

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But all is not well in Spangler's world: although he openly dares Will to stop his plot to engineer a war between the US and Iran, he has also fallen out with his shadow-cabinet cohorts, and the season ends with the same MacGuffin on which it started: Marsilea quadrifolia.

[There was a video here]

If this is the end of Rubicon, it will make an excellent DVD to get you through a rainy or flu-stricken weekend. If this is "only the beginning," we look forward to what four-leafed machinations AMC has in store for us next year.