I appreciate all of the interest in this article series and I apologize that I've not finished it yet. I'd like to offer my excuse, although you might not see it as a valid one. And I'll share my plans for completing the article series.
When I started writing this series of articles, I was examining ASP.NET MVC for use on my current project. I was also about to interview at Microsoft, for what I thought could be a position on the ASP.NET MVC team. With that combination, it was important that I get pretty familiar with what the team was offering, and prepare myself to be immerged in it, whether I would be working WITH it or ON it. In fact, I wrote Part 1 while I was sitting in a hotel room in Redmond the day before I interviewed with Microsoft.
As it turned out, I did well in my interviews and Microsoft offered me a job, but not with the ASP.NET team. Life got to be pretty hectic for me, and I didn't get to finish the series before I moved across the country and started my new job.
Shortly after joining Microsoft, I actually exchanged a couple of emails with Rob Conery, and I talked with Phil Haack. While neither of them shot down what I was saying, but they didn't exactly embrace it either. Rob suggested that I take a look at his Storefront series, which would help me see the light as far as what MVC has to offer, and why custom controls everywhere doesn't exactly fit. Since then, I've fallen out of touch with what the ASP.NET MVC team is shipping and I didn't feel right about posting parts 3 and 4 without getting up to speed on the newer developments.
Procrastination has snowballed as it always does though. I've not yet watched the Storefront series, and it's progressed so much now that I don't foresee getting time to get caught up. I am not evaluating ASP.NET MVC as part of my job anymore either, so that makes it especially difficult to keep up with it--and they've put out a ton of new stuff since I last saw it.
I don't want to leave you hanging though, so I want to finish the series, but with a huge disclaimer... I'll merely be posting undeveloped thoughts from more than 6 months ago. I won't have working code and what I talk about might be completely obsolete based on the newer releases of ASP.NET MVC. But maybe it won't be stale and it will still be helpful, who knows? So when I do post, I hope that those of you who have kept up with ASP.NET MVC will set the record straight as necessary.
Update: See Part 3.