'Friday Night Lights:' The Last Season Thus Far

This final season of Friday Night Lights has not disappointed.

It’s had a little bit of everything in its first six episodes.

Family drama: College freshman Julie Taylor had an affair with a married teaching assistant then fled home after the guy’s wife confronted her and called her a slut. Becky Sproles fled to Billy and Mindy Riggins’ house after her father’s wife is nasty to her. Vince Howard’s formerly bad dude dad was released from prison and, though Vince originally didn’t want him around for fear he’d get his mother hooked on drugs again, Vince started to warm up to him.

Football drama: The East Dillon Lions football team is doing well this year thanks to Coach Eric Taylor, and some inspiration from Billy Riggins, leading Eric to be put on the cover of a national football magazine under the title “Coach Kingmaker.” Luke Cafferty is starting to worry that he won’t be able to play college football or might not even go to college, while Vince is being courted by some big name colleges. Buddy Garrity Jr. straightened himself out – after drinking, doing drugs, lying, stealing – after his dad persuaded him to join the East Dillon football team.

Teen romance drama: Jess Meriweather and Vince make for a cute couple and their relationship is tested when Jess joins the football staff. Luke keeps flirting with Becky, clearly interested.

Career intrigue: Tami Taylor, fresh from the abortion controversy that led to her leaving her post as Dillon High School principal, has had difficulties fitting in at East Dillon as she tried to breathe new life into the guidance department and reach out to troubled students. Mindy, having lost her baby weight, returned to working at the Landing Strip but was given cruddy hours.

Random teen stupidness: A high school girl got drunk and boys at the party were flopping her around in front of a video camera; a video of it was posted on YouTube. Members of the East Dillon Lions football team branded themselves as an idiotic team building move.

I can promise you, even more meaty, moving drama is ahead in the final seven episodes as I've already seen them. I’m gonna miss this show mightily, the Taylors especially.

'The Descendants:' George Clooney Plays a Middle-Aged Dad

Just caught this trailer for a new George Clooney movie, slated to open in December, based on the novel The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings. Clooney plays the dad of two daughters who is forced to become more involved in their lives and actually parent them after his wife goes into a coma following a boating accident.

I haven’t read the book yet – though I may after watching this movie promo – but Clooney looks like he might be really affecting in this. He hasn't been in a really good film since Up in the Air, where some critics said he played a character that was very similar to himself.

Anyone read the book? Recommend it?

Notes on Pop Culture: What Are You Looking Forward to Seeing This Summer?

Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.

The end of the series chronicling the exploits of The Boy Who Lived hits the big screen on July 15, and I plan on enjoying it in the theaters with my Potter-crazed kids, whom my husband and I are taking to Orlando this summer to visit Universal Studios’ the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. (I don’t know who’s more excited about it, them or me.) This is the BIG film to which I’m looking forward to seeing in those slow months, pop culture-wise.

TV-wise, other than Red Sox games, there are a few shows I intend to view this summer. (You can find the summer TV schedule here.)

I’m going to catch the final, gut-wrenching season of Denis Leary’s Rescue Me on FX, which starts on July 12 and will conclude right before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, sure to be a poignant moment for this series which rose from the debris and emotional wreckage of that horrific day.

The subtle and moving Ray Romano/TNT drama Men of a Certain Age returns with the second half of its second season on June 1. I’ve grown to really admire the way the three lead characters depict the disappointment they feel about where they are as they arrive at mid-life and try to figure out whether they should do something about their disappointment or just give in to it.

Image credit

The gritty, clever but pretty depressing AMC show Breaking Bad -- about a high school chemistry teacher upending his life and leaping into the crystal meth business after being diagnosed with cancer -- comes back for a fourth season on July 17. If you’re in the mood for dark, brooding drama about the violent underworld of drugs, Breaking Bad fits that bill perfectly.

Speaking of drugs . . . I’ll be setting my DVR to record new episodes of Showtime’s Weeds, which’ll be starting its seventh season on June 27. Though this show has had its ups and downs, I’m intrigued, now that Nancy Botwin has surrendered herself to the authorities, where it’ll go next. Perhaps it’ll enjoy a creative renaissance like Grey’s Anatomy did in its seventh season.

If you’re an Alias/spy genre fan, USA’s Covert Affairs, whose second season starts on June 7, is like Alias-lite. It’s set in D.C., has a light-hearted streak and isn’t excessively complex like some of the other spy shows out there as it follows the journey of Annie Walker, a new CIA agent.

Another item on my pop culture agenda this summer: Watching the first two seasons of CBS' The Mentalist on DVD with my eldest son. We started watching this show together this past winter, about halfway through the third season, culminating with The Mentalist’s fantastic season finale. Now we want to go back and gather some backstory, just me and my eldest boy child.

What movie and/or TV shows are you looking forward to?

Image credit: AMC.

Notes on Pop Culture/Politics: Season Finales, No-Win Pols' Wives & NY Mag on TV

Season Finales: The Good, The Bad

I always say that there’s too much pressure for TV shows' season finales to be homeruns all of the time. But part of that pressure is the result of the networks amping up viewers' expectations for some major razzle and dazzle. We set ourselves up to be wowed. And when that doesn't happen and our high expectations are dashed, we wind up disappointed.

The season finale of Grey’s Anatomy, which I reviewed on CliqueClack TV is a good example of this.


Image credit: ABC


The ABC drama has had a wonderful seventh season. Seriously. I've enjoyed it. However I wasn’t a big fan of the finale, because it seemed kind of flat (except for the Cristina and Owen storyline) and because I felt as though Derek’s character slipped back into old habits that I thought he'd put behind him, namely acting like a pompous jerk who’s above everyone, specifically Meredith. (The fact that he couldn’t just appreciate or acknowledge the fact that what Meredith did was rooted in love and her fiercely protective nature, peeved me to no end. Be angry, sure, but don’t take your ball and go home to sanctimoniously sulk.)

The Desperate Housewives finale was just blah, as was, frankly, most of the season which took camp to a subterranean level. So there was another murder and another cover-up on America's most dangerous street. There was another highly strung romantic relationship for Bree. Lynette and Tom were fighting again, albeit more seriously this time. (*yawn*) As much as I used to love this show, I think it's more than past time for it to take a bow.
One season finale that stood out and thoroughly entertained me from start to finish was The Good Wife's where Alicia not only triumphed in the court but, in the end, gave herself a little present in the form of one Will Gardner in a $7,800 a night presidential suite. (Technically, it was Will's credit card that gave them the gift of time alone together, but Alicia finally allowed herself to revel in this pleasure instead of being a stoic martyr.) The Good Wife's sophomore season was strong and the episodes leading up to the finale were fantastic and eagerly anticipated. As for the finale, it was well executed, stylistic and fun, the way I wish more finales would be.

Do you have a favorite season finale? A least favorite?

Politicians’ Wives: They Can’t Be ‘Winning’

Speaking of The Good Wife . . . people can’t seem to get enough of using that term not only in reference to Maria Shriver and the ongoing horrors that are being revealed about her husband’s outrageous infidelities, but are also applying the phrase to the wives of the presidential candidates. (Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman’s husbands aren’t getting as much coverage as the wives of potential presidential candidates are.)

In a Newsweek cover story, which seemed to pity and ridicule the wives of high powered pols, a campaign strategist observed, “We have achieved this odd place in American politics where the wife is no longer there just to support her husband. She has to be a full-fledged part of the campaign.”

What does being a “full-fledged part of the campaign” look like? Cindy McCain, wife of 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain explained in an accompanying essay: “Everything you do is criticized – your clothes are ugly; you’re not doing enough; your politics are questioned. It gets mean. I could not wait to get out of the job. The demands are significant and they are endless.”

I delved into what this unfortunate, hostile media climate means for women in my weekly pop culture column.

New York Magazine Takes on TV

It’s worth taking the time to go through New York Magazine’s big television-themed issue. From interviews with showrunners – including Shonda Rhimes of Grey’s Anatomy and Robert and Michelle King of The Good Wife -- who make some intriguing proposals for network TV (like 13-episode blocks with breaks in between instead of 22 episodes), to a quirky interview with Parks and Recreation’s Amy Poehler on her favorite TV characters and shows, the package is a good read.

Image credits: Randy Holmes/ABC, Newsweek, New York Magazine.

'Bridesmaids' -- In Which I Admonish Folks to Go See This Comedy

CliqueClack TV, for which I blog, has launched a new brand, CliqueClack Flicks, featuring commentary about . . . movies.

My first contribution to this new effort was a post in which I make the case that if you’re among those who lament the fact that only 30 percent of speaking roles in movies go to women and that a paltry percentage of films are written by women, then you have no excuse to take a pass on Bridesmaids.

Why should you see it?
1) It’s funny. (I laughed out loud, something I rarely do.)

2) It has Melissa McCarthy (whom I loved as Sookie in the Gilmore Girls).

3) It has heart.

4) It’s smart.

5) Jon Hamm has a small role in it.

So what are you waiting for?

Notes on Pop Culture: Jon Hamm Cameo Rocked 'SNL,' Krasinski/Baldwin Battle Over Baseball & Shriver=Good Wife?

Jon Hamm Cameo Rocked SNL

The first half of the Saturday Night Live TV Funhouse segment, “The Ambiguously Gay Duo” was ridiculously puerile and, frankly, obnoxious. It was as if a group of bodily functions-obsessed middle schoolers had eaten too much sugar and wrote a highly inappropriate, sexually suggestive script. I nearly turned it off, as I couldn’t tolerate its stupid double entendres any longer. But then the cartoon characters were transformed into real live action characters and one of the “Ambiguously Gay” superheroes was Jon Hamm. The other was Jimmy Fallon. Being a shameless Jon Hamm fan, of course I had to watch the rest of it.

I like Hamm and Fallon and, although I found the whole segment annoying when it was in cartoon form, when it was in live action, I was amused.



Krasinski & Baldwin Battle Over Baseball

Die-hard Red Sox fan John Krasinski from The Office and passionate Yankees fan Alec Baldwin spoofed sports’ greatest rivalry in another edition of their New Era Cap ads.

Given that the Boston Red Sox – who are now playing .500 ball (*hallelujah*) – swept the Yankees this past week (*clicking heels*), I’m able to watch this ad and still smile.



Shriver = The Good Wife?

Tonight’s much-anticipated The Good Wife season finale comes out just as news has broken that former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger fathered a child 10 years ago with a woman who worked in the Schwarzenegger/Shriver household for decades. His wife Maria Shriver learned about the love child this year and has since left her husband, after she’d made a passionate case for folks to support Schwarzenegger’s campaign despite allegations that he sexually harassed dozens of women.

Over on CliqueClack TV I compared Shriver’s behavior to the fictional Alicia Florrick’s. Now I’m just waiting to learn that Peter Florrick also has a love child.

Inspired Illustrations Whet My Appetite for a New 'Mad Men' Season

Image credit: Dyna Moe.

Whimsical illustrator Dyna Moe – who has published a book featuring her artistic interpretations of three seasons of Mad Men – has come out with a new handful of illustrations from the fourth season. However, because she said, “I’d rather not have any more discussions with the fine upstanding people at Lionsgate” (the company which makes the show), she has disabled downloads of her new pictures, except for the one above.

However you can still visit her Flickr page to gaze at the images of Joan leading the conga line at the Christmas party, solely for the benefit of Lucky Strike (before Lee Garner Jr. pulled the account from Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce), Sally talking to the odd Glen, Miss Blankenship clutching Don's bottles of booze before she dropped dead at her desk and Don painting Anna’s living room wall in his underwear.


Image credit: Dyna Moe/Amazon.

Looking at these images reminded me that I never did pick up Dyna Moe’s book, Mad Men: The Illustrated World featuring drawings of scenes from the AMC show as Moe imagined them. I think I need to add that book to my wish list.

Damn, do I miss Mad Men. Won’t get a new fix until 2012! Watching the highlight video from the last new episode from 2010 makes me remember what a fabulous season it was.

Image credits: Dyna Moe/Flickr, Amazon.

Notes on Pop Culture: 'The Killing's' a Conundrum, 'Grey's' Adoption & 'FNL's' Julie Messes Around

Image credit: AMC.

The Killing’s a Conundrum

I’m still watching each new installment of AMC’s pitch dark drama The Killing with a question mark floating above my head as if it were in a cartoon bubble in a comic strip. Every time I think I have an idea of who was involved in the teenage girl’s murder – which is the central question of the show – that notion is quickly dispatched. It’s gotten to the point that I’ve resolved myself to the fact that I won’t be able to identify the killer until it’s blatantly obvious, like when the person’s in handcuffs and says, “I did it.”

But that’s okay with me. I'm liking the mystery. Unlike with some of the unbelievable hokey twists and turns a show like 24 took, when there were intentional dead ends intended to put viewers on the wrong trail, The Killing is going about unfolding this tale in a pretty smart fashion. And the mother of the teenage murder victim, played by Michelle Forbes . . . if she doesn’t win an armload of statues for best supporting actress it’ll be a shame. She’s been terrific.

I reviewed the most recent episode of the show over on CliqueClack TV.

Image credit: ABC.

Grey’s Adoption?

So will it be as easy as the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy led us to believe, that Meredith and Derek will be able to adopt that adorable little girl just like that? After so much heartache, the miscarriage and the failed infertility treatments the baby will just be theirs? (I devoted a recent column to how many primetime shows, including Grey's, have been featuring infertility and adoption storylines.)

There are two more episodes left in this season of Grey’s and while the last episode (reviewed here) made things appear to be looking up for the show’s central couple -- they got legally married and hope to adopt baby Zola -- I’m assuming that before the season ends the boom will be lowered once more, most likely in the form of the Alzheimer’s clinical trial being invalidated because of Meredith’s actions and Alex’s big mouth. But I really hope I’m wrong about that. It’s been too good of a season to just allow the uncharacteristic, preachy behavior of Alex to undo the study in the waning moments of the season.

Do you think Zola's adoption will go through smoothly? Will Meredith get caught for helping Adele?



Friday Night Lights’ Julie Messes Around

Pity Friday Night Lights’  Tami and Eric Taylor. They’ve poured so much into their first child Julie, tried to do the best they could to put her on the right track. And now Julie’s off at college messing around with a married teaching assistant in her very first semester. Not a very auspicious start to her college career.

Then there’s Buddy Garrity’s kid, Buddy Jr. who broke into his father’s bar, got drunk and passed out, stole his father’s credit card and took off in his father’s truck . . . after his mother had sent the teen to live with his father because he’d become uncontrollable and been taking drugs as well as drinking.

Given those two parental situations, I’d rather be the Taylors.

Image credits: Carole Segal/AMC, Richard Cartwright/ABC.

Notes on Pop Culture: Tina Fey Hosts 'SNL' & Jon Hamm's Adventure with a Weird Blue Puppet

The awesome Tina Fey, proudly showing off her baby bump, will be hosting this weekend's installment of Saturday Night Live. On this Mother's Day weekend (why is it now considered a weekend-long celebration?), I'm looking forward to Fey making all manner of inappropriate jokes about being in her "delicate" state, as she did in the promos above.

Herman Dune "Tell Me Something I Don't Know" from Jon Hamm

In the meantime, Fey's former 30 Rock fictional flame, Jon Hamm, has a weird video on the web site Funny or Die where he picks up a hitchhiking fuzzy blue dude and takes him on an adventure, where neither of them wear seatbelts in the white convertible, what a safety scandal (!!). Then the duo goes clubbing and Hamm puts the blue guy on his shoulders so he can see the band that was playing. All in all, a really weird video.

Attention Readers: Watch 'Friday Night Lights'!

I came late to my Friday Night Lights fangirl-dom. Wait, let me clarify. I’ve liked the original, nonfiction Buzz Bissinger book since the early 1990s and enjoyed the film, starring Billy Bob Thornton. But as for the NBC TV version of this tale of Texas high school football, I was tardy in getting to that game.

However once I started watching the TV drama, I was smitten.

In my new pop culture column, I explain to folks who aren’t football fans that Friday Night Lights is more like another NBC show, Parenthood, only it focuses on a different demographic group, it’s in Texas (not in California) and it has some football.

This season especially, the focus is intensely on adults doing their darnedest to raise/advise/assist hormonal teens who aren’t quite grown-ups yet, while at the same time, those adults are having to face the realities of the limitations of their influence and power over these oftentimes troubled teens.

NBC is streaming the season’s first few episodes online so it’s not too late to jump on board for one last Friday Night Lights ride.

(FYI – You’ll notice that my column is now appearing on the web site Modern Mom. Modern Mom bought Mommy Tracked and brought me over from the site.)

Notes on Politics: Correspondents' Dinner & Lara Logan Speaks

White House Correspondents’ Dinner

In the craziness surrounding the Osama bin Laden death, other interesting newsy stories got lost in the shuffle . . . like the White House Correspondents’ Dinner that happened over the weekend where Saturday Night Live’s Seth Meyers did a great job at skewering Washington politicians. Chief on Meyers' list was Donald Trump, whose Obama birth certificate antics now seem terribly silly in light of the massive news from Pakistan.

As I watched the C-SPAN coverage, I was amused when the cameras frequently panned over to Donald Trump who looked stone-faced as Meyers directed his fire at the would-be presidential candidate and Celebrity Apprentice star. (Trump looked like he wanted to strangle Meyers the way Homer Simpson is apt to strangle Bart when the boy enrages him.)

While it’s true that Meyers clearly leans toward the liberal side of the political spectrum – like saying that Obama would’ve “loved” the 2008/campaign version of himself, and questioning what “happened” to his appearance – he didn’t seem overwhelmingly liberal in his humor as he attacked his own network, critiqued MSNBC for drinking the Obama “Kool Aid,” mocked Anderson Cooper’s tight clothing and noted the size of Brian Williams’ ego in addition to the animal-like "hair" on Donald Trump's head.



The Bravery of Lara Logan

Also over the weekend, Lara Logan shared with 60 Minutes the story of her attack in Egypt two months ago at the hands of a mob. It takes a strong, brave woman to give voice to the nightmare of vicious violence, which landed her in the hospital for four days.

Particularly poignant moments from the interview:

She thought she was going to die as the mob ripped off all her clothing and took cell phone photos of her, sexually violated her, tried to tear chunks of her hair from her scalp, distended every joint in her body and beat her with flag poles and sticks.

When she saw her children -- ages 1 and 2 -- after the attack, she said she felt like she’d “been given a second chance” that she didn’t think she deserved because she said she “came so close . . . to abandoning them.”

By the end of the interview, I only wished Logan emotional strength and hoped that the love and respect of her friends, family and her fans help to build her back up again.

Today There's Only One Story: Justice

My youngest son was six weeks old when those American planes were turned into lethal missiles in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. under the direction of Osama bin Laden. And this morning, I got to tell that child -- now 9 years old, who’s been told since he was old enough to understand about the horrendous evil that occurred on that day -- that the United States, and the families of those killed on that day, finally got some justice.

And while watching Democrats and Republicans speak with one voice to praise the Navy SEALS, members of the U.S. Intelligence community and the leadership of President Obama and witnessing footage of citizens at Ground Zero celebrate the fact that that person can longer perpetrate evil upon the world, those feelings I experienced in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 are bubbling up to the surface.

This morning a Boston radio station replayed the audio from NBC Nightly News' broadcast from the night of Sept. 11, 2001. Listening to the voice of Tom Brokaw summarize the horrors of that day brought me back to when I had a six-week-old baby and 3-year-old twins and suddenly felt as though our nation was more vulnerable than I’d ever believed it to be.

Today at least we can feel better that the symbolic figure who represented the death and violence of that day is no longer.

Image credits: The Huffington Post.