We've just concluded the traditional TV season and were treated to ample season/series finales. Most of them were moderately entertaining, some were really good and many were disappointing. I really liked the season enders for The Good Wife, Parks and Recreation (Councilor Knope!), The Mentalist and Scandal. I wasn't all that thrilled with the finales of Grey's Anatomy, Awake (was ticked that it was so confusing and now we'll never know the real story because it was canceled) and House.
The folks at Entertainment Weekly, meanwhile, time-traveled back to the recent TV past to select 26 season finales (not series finales) of which they were fond. Why 26? You'll have to ask them. Among the finales they honored:
The third season Mad Men finale when Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce was born in a cramped hotel suite.
The stunning conclusion of 24's first season where Jack Bauer's wife was murdered in the CTU offices.
The season two finale of Alias when CIA agent Sydney Bristow learned that she'd missed the past two years of her life and that her longtime love, fellow agent Michael Vaughn had thought she was dead and married somebody else.
The season two finale of Grey's Anatomy when Denny died and Meredith and Derek hooked up again. As much as I hated the Denny storyline, this episode, plus its selection of tunes (almost all of which I later downloaded) haunted me for weeks. However Grey's season six finale, with the mass shooting in Seattle Grace, Derek getting shot, residents dying and Meredith miscarrying could give the Denny dying season two finale a run for its money.
"Not Penny's Boat" season three Lost finale where Charlie died as a sacrifice for his friends and the whole series flashed forward for the first time. Let's just forget about that last season, okay? That never happened.
All in all, some excellent choices, although I would've added the season three finale of The Mentalist where Patrick Jane shot the man he thought was Red John (the serial killer who murdered his wife and daughter), the fifth season finale of the Gilmore Girls when Rory moved in with Richard and Emily after dropping out of Yale and the season one finale of Friday Night Lights where the Panthers won the state championship, Tami learned she was pregnant and Eric took a job at a college a plane ride away from Dillon.
What was your favorite TV show finale, this season or ever?
As a voter who's squarely in the politically moderate middle of the road, I issue this plaintive plea to the presidential campaigns and the news media: Enough with the canines already.
Now I'm as much of a dog lover as anybody. (Check out my lifestyle blog, The Picket Fence Post, where I've been chronicling our hunt for family dog numero dos.) But seriously, what do the infamous tale of Seamus Romney atop the Mittster's family car and the fact that, as a child, Barack Obama ate dog meat have to do with the dire U.S. economy and the yawning gap between the 1 percent and the 99 percent? With the costly (money & lives) over-commitment of U.S. troops in dangerous locales across the globe without any clear objectives? With a potentially nuclear Iran? With the fierce partisan logjam in Washington that has spawned a climate of stubborn intolerance and the demonization of one's political rivals that has done absolutely nothing to raise the level of political discourse?
Unless either guy vying for the Oval Office has intentionally hurt a pooch (kicked it, starved it, etc.), then I don't care about their Marley & Me stories. This whole who's-worse-than-the-other-guy gambit when it comes to dogs is fine fodder for the late night comedians but to the voters, it's truly meaningless. I hope this isn't foreshadowing a hideously shallow general election. I'm game for some meaty debates and analysis, but not frothy stupidity better fit for the likes of Snooki.
What Ever Became of 'Friday Night Lights'' Boobie Miles?
I love, love, loved Friday Night Lights, the book about journalist H. G. Buzz Bissinger's year spent with the Odessa, Texas Permian Panthers high school football team in the late 1980s.
When I taught journalism at the University of Massachusetts, I had my students read this book and when non-football fans would grumble about the assignment, I'd tell them that the book isn't about football, it's about our priorities and about life in a town where high school sports was king above all else. And, after they read the book, I never heard a word of complaint about the compelling tale, especially the tragic story of promising running back Boobie Miles who had his bright future ripped from his hands after he suffered a career-ending injury and was rendered irrelevant to the school that didn't educate him and had no use for him once his days of playing football were over.
Now Bissinger has revisited the story that made him a household name. He has recently spent time with Miles and has written After Friday Night Lights, a 34-page Kindle Single which focuses on what has become of Miles in the wake of what Bissinger described as "a symbol of everything that was wrong with high school football." You can read an excerpt on Grantland.
I'm downloading my copy tonight.
7 Reasons Why 'The Hunger Games'' Katniss Everdeen Kicks Butt (Especially to My 13-Year-Old Daughter)
1. She's got fierce survival skills.
2. She has a savvy combination of smarts and strategic thinking that she's not afraid to show to others.
3. She is extremely mature for her age.
4. She has a rock-solid set of morals and refuses to kill others in the Hunger Games (the sick fight-to-the-death games pitting children against one another) unless they pose a mortal threat. (She wouldn't even kill a violent rival, in a climatic scene, when she could wound him instead.)
5. She doesn't care about her own popularity and allows her actions to speak volumes for her.
6. She'd take a bullet (or an arrow or a tribute slot) for those about whom she cares.
7. She doesn't feel the need to wear make-up.
Katniss is a heroine I can fully embrace. I'd love to get Katniss and Hermione Granger in a room together. Now that would be something.
How cute-as-a-button was Daniel Radcliffe (aka Harry Potter) on The Daily Show? Love how modest his is. (Amy Poehler lives in his building and he was adorable when he talked about her.) I hope his post-Potter career flourishes.
NY Magazine: The Best of Coach Taylor’s Inspiring Speeches
I’m really gonna miss Coach Taylor. Aren’t y'all?
Julie & Julia Still Inspires
The other night while flipping through the TV stations, I came across the movie Julie & Julia and decided to watch it again with my two sons (selectively muting the volume when I remembered that a cuss word was coming up or for one part of the film where Julia Child’s sex life was discussed by blogger Julie Powell). The film provided me with inspiration all over again, even on this third viewing. (I've also read both Powell’s book and Child’s memoir about her time in Paris.)
For Julia Child to create for herself a culinary and TV career from scratch in her late 30s and 40s, and to be doggedly persistent about it over a series of years, in the face of numerous obstacles and rejections, gives you hope, or at least it gives me hope for my quest to get my freshly completed manuscript published. It was sweet when my boys recognized this and said, “That’ll be you Mom!” when Julia Child, at long last, finally received that letter saying a publisher who wanted to publish her book.
The Mentalist Freshman Season
This past winter my eldest son and I happened upon The Mentalist one night when just he and I were home and we decided to give the show with the weird name a whirl. Turns out, we liked that quirky, suave fellow, Patrick Jane, and decided to give another Mentalist episode a try the following week. And we were hooked on the solved-in-an-hour drama.
After its extraordinarily tense season finale in May featuring the illusive Red John, I told my son that this summer, we’d go back to the beginning and learn Patrick’s backstory and how this Red John tale unfolded. The season one DVD has arrived, and the kid is now itchin’ to break into it. Patience, grasshopper.
Thirty-three minutes into the pilot episode of Friday Night Lights, Jason Street, the beautiful, smart, kind, polite, going-places Dillon quarterback with the gorgeous cheerleader girlfriend became paralyzed in freak accident during Eric Taylor’s very first game as head coach. In the days leading up to the game, people none-too-subtly told Eric, who wore a perpetually worried look on his face, that the pressure was on and that if he didn’t guide the team properly, he’d be gone.
Buddy Garrity was still married, Buddy Jr. was a little kid and there was a grand to-do celebrating the opening of his car dealership.
Sophomore Matt Saracen was complaining that he’d never get the chance to set foot on the field because Jason was so good at QB-1.
Julie Taylor, who was reading Moby Dick, compared her father to Captain Ahab and the town of Dillon to the elusive Moby Dick.
Tyra Collette flirted wildly with lots of guys even though she was the hard-drinking Tim Riggins’ gal pal.
At the end of that first episode Eric, who was emotionally crushed by Jason's injury, said, “We, at some point in our lives, fall. We will all fall.”
Now, on the cusp of the series finale of Friday Night Lights, I can honestly say that the show ended on a high note. The Taylors have weathered all manner of family crises, including in season two when Eric was living away from home part-time and Tami was pregnant, when Eric was replaced as Dillon’s coach and handed a non-existent football program at a financially strapped school and when Tami was drummed out of her Dillon principal’s position after she dared to have a conversation with a girl who attended East Dillon about the girl’s accidental pregnancy. The original group of Dillon high schoolers has left and new students, attending East Dillon took their places on the show and have done so seamlessly.
I’ve loved the earthy Taylor marriage and how Tami rarely let Eric get away with stuff. The scenes where they planned date nights, when they demonstrated that, after all this time, they were still into one another, were wonderful. In an episode this season, after Eric had been drinking with his fellow coaches at an away game, he called Tami from his hotel room and asked, “What y’all wearin’?” hoping for phone sex.
As the Friday Night Lights book closes, we learned that Jason Street has thrived, despite the tragedy that befell him in episode one when his entire sense of who he was and what he’d do with his life was shaken to its core. Now a husband and a father, Jason evolved into a confident sports agent, complete with his own business card and that trademark, All-American smile on his face.
Matt, who always seemed older than his age as he shouldered more responsibilities than someone his age should have to, finally stopped martyring himself. He went away to school in Chicago to chase his dreams and utilize his artistic talents. His future looks bright.
Tim, whose best days seemed to have been left behind on the playing field, is now an ex-con and has no idea what he’s going to do next.
What’ll happen to Jess Merriweather, who dreams of becoming a football coach, to Vince Howard, who hopes (like the other East and West Dillon players before him) to go to college and play pro ball, to Becky Sproles, who seems lost without parental guidance but has found puppy love with Luke Cafferty, who’s learning that football scholarships aren’t abundant? We’ll have to use our collective imaginations to picture what might’ve become of their futures had Friday Night Lights gone on for more seasons.
It was a down-to-earth, smart and enjoyable ride while it lasted. Thanks y'all.
While I’m planning on seeing the biggest movie of the summer this coming opening weekend – I speak, of course, of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 – I finally got to go to the delightfully air conditioned movie theater and enjoy Woody Allen’s latest offering, Midnight in Paris.
As someone who’s in the midst of tweaking my own novel and who has sought feedback from trusted sources, I identified with Owen Wilson’s naïve, romantic, insecure writer character, Gil who was fearful of letting folks take a peek at his manuscript lest they rip it apart and, in a way, destroy him. However when Wilson’s Gil got the chance to go back in time and enjoy 1920s Paris with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso and Cole Porter, that’s where the similarities end.
This movie about learning to appreciate what you’ve got, taking chances and daring to follow your dreams was clearly written by a dreamer. Maybe that’s why I liked it so much.
TV
Women’s World Cup: Quarterfinals game. Against Brazil. Amazingly inspiring for all the sports-minded members of my household. The real-life, come-from-behind drama created by the U.S. Women’s World Cup team this weekend trumped even the inspirational Nike ad the team stars in.
Friday Night Lights: In preparation for a piece about the end of Friday Night Lights (*sniff*), I watched the first two episodes of the drama where, 33 minutes into the pilot episode, the clean cut, sweet, police hero high school quarterback is paralyzed during a pivotal play. Five seasons later, the show hasn’t lost its mojo. It’s so sad that the series will end this Friday evening.
Want to relive the Panthers/Lions glory? The entire series will be replayed on ESPN Classic, according to the New York Times. Starting tonight, ESPN will air those same first two episodes starting at 8 p.m., followed by a marathon of the first season on ESPN Classic on Thursday and Friday. The series will begin regularly airing episodes on Thursday evenings on ESPN Classic starting July 21, the paper reported.
Newspapers/Magazines
In this past Sunday’s New York Times, the co-creators of The Good Wife, Robert and Michelle King wrote an op/ed about how strange the real-life marital twists of politicians’ love lives have turned out to be. Talking about everyone from Weiner, Schwarzenegger and Edwards to Spitzer and Sanford, they said, “Speaking as television writers: [The melodrama] is over the top.”
“One can imagine the studio notes,” the couple wrote. “’We like the husband who impregnates his housekeeper, but keeping her in the same house for a decade seems a bit mustache-twirling.’ ‘Love the presidential candidate cheating with the videographer, but do you need the wife to have cancer?’ ‘Tweeting semi-naked photos from the congressional gym: good – very hip. But making his wife pregnant: isn’t that too on-the-nose?’”
The Gilmore Girls’ Rory Gilmore was the consummate “good girl.” She was smart and became the valedictorian of her academically rigorous private school’s senior class. She dated a nice boy and then a bad boy but never let her behavior veer off into wild gal territory. She was respectful to her mother and her grandparents.But when she began attending Yale, things started going off the rails and Rory started acting distinctly unRory-like.
For example, she had an affair with Dean, her married ex-boyfriend which led to the breakup of his marriage.
Her next boyfriend, Logan, was an affluent, spoiled albeit very smart party boy. She was in his company when she suggested that they “borrow” (i.e. – steal) someone else’s boat at a marina for a joy ride. (Just before the joy ride, she had been told in no uncertain terms by Logan’s media magnate of a father that she had no future in her chosen profession: Journalism.) Following her arrest and probation, she withdrew from Yale, became estranged from her mother and went to live at her grandparents’ home, missing out on a semester of college as she tried to figure out what she was going to make of her life.
Now Friday Night Lights’ Julie Taylor is not Rory Gilmore. She got a tattoo when she was in high school. Her dad, her high school’s football coach, walked in on her when she was having sex with her boyfriend, the team quarterback. She went through a rebellious period, including the time when she went away overnight with her boyfriend in direct violation of her parents’ wishes, and she frequently clashed with them.
But by the time she was ready to head off to college, Julie and her parents were at peace with one another. Her parents were tearful as she pulled out of the driveway.
That was before Julie met Derek, a charming and handsome teaching assistant who took a shining to the college freshman. Derek showered her with attention and flirted until the flirting turned into a full fledged affair. Problem is, Derek was married. And Julie knew it but proceeded to screw around with him anyway.
Julie’s stealing-the-boat moment occurred when Derek’s wife slapped her across the face and screamed, “Julie Taylor is a slut!” in front of a whole bunch of her fellow students. In her shame, Julie fled school and headed home, even went so far as to intentionally smash her car into a brick post so she couldn’t drive herself back to school.
When Julie’s parents Eric and Tami finally learned why she was hiding out at home, why she intentionally totaled her car, they tried to make her return to school, like Rory’s mother Lorelai unsuccessfully tried to make Rory go back to school after Rory was busted. Eric became so irritated, that he tried to physically get her to walk to the door. That was a no-go. Frustrated, Tami drove up to the college to pick up her daughter’s books and assignments so Julie wouldn’t fail out of her first semester of college.
What does this mean for Julie Taylor’s future as a college student? Will she turn it around like Rory eventually did?
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.
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.
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.)
Unfortunately, I’m not among the lucky ones who has DirecTV, therefore I won’t be watching when the fifth and final 13-episode season of Friday Night Lights starts airing on DirecTV on Wednesday, October 27. (The final season will air on NBC next year.)
But that doesn’t mean I can’ t drool over the new promos DirecTV has released for a season that a network press release has hinted will be a very challenging one for Eric and Tami Taylor, as a couple, saying specifically that Tami’s attempts to help improve the East Dillon High School system “will force her to make a decision that places a strain on the Taylor’s usually steadfast marriage.”
More of a strain than when Eric moved to Austin to coach at TMU while a pregnant Tami and Julie stayed behind in Dillon? More than last season where Tami lost her job as a result of a witch hunt and Eric had to create a football team from nothing? I'm more than a little curious.
While there’s ample fresh material on primetime TV with new and returning shows all over the TV schedule (The Good Wife premieres its second season tonight), a number of the freshman seasons of some well liked/loved shows are currently airing in repeats on cable:
Gilmore Girls: My daughter and I, both fans of the Gilmore Girls (feel free to play “Six Degrees of Lorelai Gilmore”), have enjoyed the season one repeats on the ABC Family channel of the sassy mother-daughter duo and the loony antics of their Stars Hollow neighbors. At this point in the first season, Lorelai’s already broken up with Max once, Rory’s still pretty new to Chilton and they haven’t met Rachel yet.
Friday Night Lights: ABC Family is also in the midst of running season one of Friday Night Lights, starting back when Eric Taylor was the new Dillon head football coach and Tami was Dillon High's guidance counselor. Issues ranging from former Dillon QB Jason Street dealing with his sudden paralysis to racial tensions at Dillon High all made FNL’s freshman season powerful.
Grey's Anatomy: Want to go back to square one with Grey’s Anatomy? Lifetime is, this week, airing the first few episodes of the medical drama, before the mass shooting, before Gizzie, before Denny and before the ferry boat accident, or, as some former fans might say, back when the show was edgy and new and McShiny.
The New Adventures of Old Christine: Lifetime has also started airing Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ funny and sarcastic The New Adventures of Old Christine, featuring Louis-Dreyfus' Christine, a deeply flawed divorced mom who lives with her brother and is prone to make an idiot of herself. It’s good to see this show get a new home, particularly after CBS execs treated it so badly.
Considering that this was one of the strongest seasons that this underrated show has had – kicking some serious butt on the Vince Howard storyline with his tale of a teen trying to overcome poverty, drugs and gang violence, and daring to go “there” with a story about teenage pregnancy – I admit that I was somewhat disappointed that the season finale wrapped up some of the stories a bit too neatly for my taste.
Having the underdog East Dillon Lions beat the playoff-bound West Dillon Panthers . . . I’m sorry, as much as I love seeing Joe and J.D. McCoy’s smug noses rubbed in defeat -- especially after the lousy punks vandalized the East Dillon Lions’ field -- that victory wasn’t realistic, though I was happy to see Landry make that field goal. Given that the bulk of this season been marinated in difficult, messy reality, this Lions victory seemed improbable.
As for Tami Taylor, I was cheering when I saw Principal Tami walk out of the school board’s meeting without reading that bogus apology that the board had written for her, leaving those who wanted to scapegoat her for a young woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy, all in a tizzy. “Listen, y’all . . . I’ve always put the welfare of the students ahead of everything else, every action that I made was with that intent and it always will be,” Tami said before she left the meeting, calls for her firing heard in the background.
But to have Tami leave her West Dillon principal’s post, after being told she was being placed on “administrative leave,” to take a step down and run the guidance program at East Dillon (she was a guidance counselor before she became principal), seemed, what's the word . . . off. (Plus it makes the folks who run West Dillon High, as well as the school board, seem pretty stupid, dumping two successful members of the Taylor family from the West Dillon faculty in two consecutive years.)
The rosy ending to Tami’s multi-episode arc – with the warm, homey final scene, the folksy music, Tami’s smile, Eric putting up Christmas lights while the girls played with decorations on the front lawn – made me think that the writers simply had a hankering to leave viewers with visions of a happy and contented Taylor family, with Eric’s team having beaten West Dillon and Tami keeping her dignity and having a job that she’s good at.
The story wasn’t so rosy for the Riggins brothers. “You are my brother and you are all I have,” Tim said. “You have a family now. You are a father. And you need to be one.” Watching Tim Riggins take the fall for Billy the moron was so upsetting. Billy should have known better. Tim already has a ton of obstacles in front of him if he wants to succeed in life, but now having to serve time for chopping up stolen cars, that’s certainly not going to help his cause any. Now this was a story that ended on a realistic note, as was the scene with Jess dumping Landry and Matt and Julie finally breaking it off.
Overall, the “Thanksgiving” episode was a moving the-good-guys-can-still-sometimes-win conclusion capping an outstanding season. I absolutely cannot wait for the fifth and final season to begin.
*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Friday Night Lights.*
FNL’s Depressing Episode
Fifteen-year-old Becky Sproles’ abortion on Friday Night Lights’ – a choice fully supported and, in fact, insisted upon by her mother Cheryl – continues to haunt Tami Taylor, even though Tami neither advised Becky to terminate her pregnancy nor did she advocate that Becky do anything other than talk with her mother.
Somehow, the baby daddy’s mother, Margaret Cafferty, got it into her head that the abortion was all Tami’s idea and that since Margaret didn’t get to speak with Becky while Becky was still pregnant, Tami is the one who has to pay. In the latest episode, “Laboring,” Margaret had taken the false story to the newspaper, resulting in Tami getting attacked in an article with her photo next to it, accusing her of pushing Becky into having an abortion. After the article's publication, Tami received phone calls at home calling her a “baby killer” and telling her she’s going to rot in hell (even though she pointedly told Becky, who’d asked Tami if she’d go to hell for having an abortion, that she didn’t think Becky would burn in hell). Tami got picketed at school with signs, while the school board pressured her to publicly apologize of her “inappropriate behavior,” even though she didn’t do anything inappropriate.
Sure, there's a big football game coming up between the two rival Dillon teams and Eric is all worked up about it – fielding his own hate-filled, taunting phone calls, hearing the mean-spirited trash talk and seeing his car covered with graffiti -- but between Tami’s situation and poor Vince’s, where he bravely stood up to a gang member who wanted him to help him kill a rival who gunned down one of their friends . . . never mind that Billy Riggins became a daddy at roughly the same time he and his younger brother Tim were hauled to jail for running a chop shop, and the East versus West game seemed like a minor concern by comparison, except for that heartbreaking scene where the spoiled heathens from West Dillon ransacked the East Dillon field, knowing full well that East Dillon doesn’t have the money to repair it. That was truly sad, particularly because it seems like the odious brats will get away with it.
Meanest Anti-Lost Finale Tweets Sent to Lindelof
During a the TV Critics Association Awards over the weekend, Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof accepted an award for best drama series by sharing a handful of the nastier tweets he received after the show’s controversial finale (I still cannot discuss the finale rationally), New York Magazine reported. Among them:
“Hey, douche! Instead of backpacking in Europe or whatever the f_*& you’re doing, how about you give me six years of my life back?”
AND
“Has anyone accused you of being an emotional terrorist yet? And research these words: closure and actual explanations.”
Eat Pray Love: The Eating Portion
Having just dispensed with The Help last week (I couldn’t stop thinking about Betty Draper’s housekeeper/nanny Carla, who we saw for the first time last night), I’m now onto Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I completed the Italy section over the weekend and, I must say, I developed an immense desire to consume copious amounts of fresh, authentic Italian fare and wash it down with a fabulous glass of red wine while reading it.
And while I dabble in yoga – try to take classes intermittently – I can’t envision that reading about the India portion of Gilbert’s trip is going to compel me to pull out my yoga mat and meditate every morning. (It’d be kind of impossible, the notion of meditating, what with the three kids who live here in the house, including the one who likes to wake up at the crack of dawn and follow people around.)
The Philadelphia Story
My 9-year-old son had a friend sleep over our house the other night and for entertainment, the two of them chose to watch the Pink Panther 2 with Steve Martin for the umpteenth time because they so adore watching Martin mispronounce “hamburger” while affecting a French accent.
Since I didn’t think I could sit through it again (actually, I think I’ve only watched portions of it), I, opted to retreat to my room to watch The Philadelphia Story for the umpteenth time without having to listen anyone whine, “Mooom, this is so borrrr-ing!).” Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant, they never get old. Plus having Stewart portray a not-well-paid writer, well, that hits a note with me.
*Warning spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Friday Night Lights.*
Although she did nothing wrong, Friday Night Lights’ Tami Taylor was summoned to appear before a closed-door school board meeting in the recent episode -- “Injury List” -- to answer Luke Cafferty’s mother Margaret’s allegations that Tami urged 15-year-old Becky Sproles to get an abortion. (Even though it was Becky's mother who insisted upon it.)
When the school board voted against taking any action against the West Dillon High School principal -- who’d previously been a guidance counselor and who made no recommendations to Becky – it seemed as though the 15-year-old’s abortion storyline would be done, wrapped up.
Only it wasn’t.
The baby daddy's mother, Margaret Cafferty – who’s unfortunately being portrayed as a one-dimensional, spiteful, angry character – went to the news media about it and, in the closing minutes of FNL, Tami received a call from a local newspaper reporter who asked her to comment on allegations that she advised a pregnant teen to have an abortion. (She provided no comment.)
Tami, as she’s been a great deal of the season, was trying to deal with this development on her own because her husband Eric was off drinking with Buddy Garrity (anyone notice that Eric’s drinking has increased this season) and said he didn’t want to go home yet. Eric's not been there for Tami a lot this season, preoccupied as he is with his new coaching gig.
Seeing Tami sitting alone, in the dark, on the front stoop of her home, frightened about what was going to happen to her for doing nothing more than listening to a girl in trouble and telling her about her options – she even mentioned a teen health clinic and adoption first before Becky asked what she could do if she didn’t want her baby – was filled with melancholy.
My pop culture column over on Mommy Tracked this week examined how the mothers involved in this storyline – Tami, Becky’s mother Cheryl and Margaret Cafferty – are depicted as they struggle to do what they think is right for the teens.
What do you think about the way FNL has handled this issue?
*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recently aired episode of Friday Night Lights.*
Becky’s story has become not just an emotionally wrenching one for the pregnant sophomore from a single parent home -- the product of a teen pregnancy herself -- but has made headlines, specifically in the New York Times this weekend.
Why the coverage in the Times, with its writer, GiniaBellafante writing that FNL “chose to maintain its commitment, above all, to the world it renders . . . that economics dictate everything?” Because it was one of the few TV shows which had a female teenage pregnant actually go ahead and have an abortion.
At first, Tim, who served as Becky’s confidante, tried to convince Becky to talk to her mother, but Becky said she couldn’t because, well, she just couldn’t. So he brought Becky to Tami’s door. “I need your help,” he said. And help Tami did, particularly when Becky asked, “What should I do?”
Tami started to run down a list of her options saying there’s free medical care for pregnant teens and an adoption agency, Becky interrupted her with this question, “What if I don’t want to have the baby?”
“I can direct you to literature,” Tami, a former guidance councilor, now high school principal said, without flinching, though their conversation kept Tami up late fretting about what if that had been her own daughter asking those questions.
When Becky finally went to her mother – who later referred to both herself and her daughter as “trash” for getting pregnant as teens -- the mom reacted similarly to the way in which the pro-life mom on Private Practice, Naomi Bennett, reacted when she learned that her 15-year-old daughter was pregnant, with screaming and tears and the directive that she’s going to have an abortion, no questions about it. “She’s not having a baby; she’s having an abortion,” Becky’s mother firmly and angrily told the doctor, when Becky was still not sure what she wanted to do.
Wavering on the abortion question, Becky returned to the reassuring Tami again, late at night and teary-eyed after the consultation at the abortion clinic. Becky said: “We don’t have any money and I’m in the tenth grade. And it was my first time, and I threw it away and I don’t want to throw my life away. It’s just really obvious that my mom wants me to have this abortion because I was her mistake and she has just struggled and hurt every day and she wanted better.” Then she asked Tami if she thought she’d go to hell if she had an abortion to which Tami said, “No honey, I don’t.”
Then the big question. What would Tami tell Julie if she were pregnant: “I would tell her to think about her life, think about what’s important to her and what she wants and I’d tell her that she’s in a real tough spot and that I would support whatever decision she made.”
The scene with Becky and her mother stood in stark contrast to Luke’s scenes, the first of which had Luke sitting in church with his parents, being singled out in front of the congregation by his pastor and thanked for making them all proud. He was clearly bothered by the notion of Becky aborting their baby. His conscience was so weighed down with guilt that he finally told his father, who in turn told his mother. It was so sad to watch Luke, this naïve young student, call Becky and try to explain how they could make this work out, how he could help raise the child, only to be informed that Becky had already ended the pregnancy, as Becky hung up the phone and dissolved into tears.
The other main storyline in “I Can’t,” was the on-going tragedy of Vince. Beneath that tough veneer and swagger, Vince has a huge, vulnerable heart. Those scenes -- where he found his mother ODed on the sofa and later spoke with her in the hospital when she became conscious (“Mom, why do you keep doin’ this to yourself? Why do you keep doing this to me? I mean, am I that bad? Why don’t ya wanna be with me? Why you wanna leave me by myself?”) and then he believed he had no choice but to turn to the local gangs and crime in order to get the money to save his mother’s life in rehab -- are why I was a big advocate of Michael B. Jordan getting a supporting actor in a drama Emmy nomination. That kid plays both sides of this confused, desperate and scared teen boy extremely, heart-rendingly well.
And can I just say that I love “Big Mary?” Just love that character. (“I understand Vince because he’s me.”)
Modern Family: 14 (almost all the show's actors got nominated with the glaring exceptions of Ed O’Neill, who plays Jay, and Rico Rodriguez, who plays Manny)
Lost: 12 (including lead actor nomination for the much-maligned Matthew Fox who I, personally, liked very much as Jack Shephard)
Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler got nominated for lead actress and actor in Friday Night Lights. FINALLY!
Jon Hamm (Don Draper), January Jones (Betty Draper), John Slattery (Roger Sterling), Elisabeth Moss (Peggy Olson), Christina Hendricks (Joan Harris), Michael Emerson (Ben Linus) and Terry O’Quinn (Smoky Locke) all got acting nominations. Even Andre Braugher, who gave a brave performance on Men of a Certain Age, got a nod.
Missing from the nominations – complete list is here -- Grey’s Anatomy and Rescue Me actors and writers whom I thought deserved some accolades.
Here are the nominees for the two biggest categories:
Best drama: Breaking Bad, Dexter, The Good Wife, Lost, Mad Men, True Blood
Best comedy: Curb Your Enthusiasm, Glee, Modern Family, Nurse Jackie, The Office, 30 Rock
I wrote up my react to the nominations here at CliqueClack TV.
Who are you pleased to see on this list? Who’s missing?
I’ve never been a huge fan of Friday Night Lights’ Julie Taylor. I usually find her kind of annoying and whiny. Nonetheless, I felt badly for her in the past episode, “In the Bag,” in the aftermath of her boyfriend of three years, Matt, taking off without a word, except to his family. Never told Julie he was leaving or even said, "Goodbye." Julie was left flailing and floundering and wound up signing up for all manner of school club in an attempt to take her mind off of the fact that she’d been dumped. But it was no use, especially when her heartbreak went painfully on public display where the only solace she found was in her mother's arms.
Loved watching Tinker help Luke and the Cafferty family build the fence to keep the cows safe from thieves so Luke wouldn’t have to stay up until the wee hours of the night working on the fence because his dad couldn’t afford to pay anyone else to help out. (It seems like Luke's parents are among the rare football parents who aren't all insanely crazy about high school football, the anti-McCoys if you will. Joe McCoy was the one who fought Luke's transfer to East Dillon, after all, not Luke's parents.) But the twist at the end, when Luke’s hips got crushed in between the metal fence door by the cows, that just can’t be good. Man has that kid had a bad year.
And while I really didn’t like Vince Howard’s character at first because all we got to see of him was his swagger and arrogance, I’ve been warming up to him as of late. In what should’ve been a proud moment, when he was named QB post, he was instead humiliated in the Lions locker room as the police searched his locker for a gun, causing his teammates and his coach to look upon him with suspicion. Ultimately, he did have a gun and, as a show of faith, he handed it over to Coach Taylor to prove that he’s really trying to do the right thing and seize his new opportunities Eric’s offered him. Eric now believes in Vince and Vince in Eric.
As for Tami Taylor and the goofy, drunk Glen kissing her . . . wait ‘til Coach Eric finds out about this. Wonder if he'll be as cool and collected as he was when Vince brought a gun to the Taylor house? Throw in the cute Jess-Landry flirtation and this season has been getting better and more emotionally revealing with each episode.
Are you finding yourself liking this season as much as I am?
The only thing that can attempt to fill the void left by Lost's departure (other than the quiet, moving incisiveness of Friday Night Lights): A new season of Mad Men. And Don Draper of course.
I found this fan-created video on the web site Collider via the Mad Men official web site and it's making me impatient for the new season to start next month.
FYI: The fourth season of Mad Men premieres on Sunday, July 25 at 10 p.m. on AMC.
Last week, Coach Eric Taylor attempted to address some of the dire financial needs of his ragtag, upstart (0-2) East Dillon football high school team by organizing fundraisers and writing a personal check to cover the initial installment on the team’s new uniforms. On this week’s installment of Friday Night Lights, “A Sort of Homecoming,” Coach Taylor was trying to bolster the morale end of things, trying to rally the community behind his team, rendering him looking awfully, earnestly ham-fisted at times.
Who knew that ex-Panther booster Buddy Garrity would be his saving grace in luring former East Dillon players who’d won the State Championship in 1983, to appear at a pep rally/homecoming Eric organized? Or that Jess Merriweather would be the person who'd convince her former football star father to reluctantly offer up his restaurant for the rally? (Can't wait for more backstory on that family.) I loved watching how this all came together -- as well as the speech about a “pride” of lions -- knowing that nothing, it seems, is coming as easily for Eric as it had back in West Dillon.
The other two threads that interested me during FNL's new episode this week: Matt Saracen realized that perhaps he made a mistake in passing up a golden opportunity in Chicago in order to stay in Dillon with his high school girlfriend Julie, who's mulling college opportunities on both coasts, and Tami Taylor continued to endure all manner of harassment (character assassination on the radio, vandalism to her car) for simply enforcing the school rules by sending football star Luke Cafferty to the proper school.
As this season has unfolded, I’ve been wondering if Eric really understands the magnitude of the malice that's been directed his wife or whether she’s keeping a lot of it from him, as he’s been so completely absorbed with his job that he doesn’t see what’s happening with his own family . . . other than whether Tami would be willing to cook dinner for former East Dillon football champs.
A Retooled Alias?
I was a major fan of Alias. Became quite fond of J.J. Abrams, Jennifer Garner and Victor Garber while watching this smart and thoroughly entertaining (in the first three seasons anyway) espionage drama which was at its greatest when Garner’s Sydney Bristow was working as a double-agent for the CIA while serving the evil international crime syndicate, SD-6, run by the nefarious Arvin Sloane. (The show launched not only Garner’s career, but Terry O’Quinn’s -- aka Lost's John Locke -- and Bradley Cooper’s, he of Hangover fame.)
When I got word that people have been buzzing about what they’re calling a “reboot” of Alias – an E! report called labeled it an “initial talk” about a newly revised Alias series, sans the Rambaldi element – I was skeptical. Abrams is already working on a new NBC show, Undercovers, that’s slated to begin next fall about a married couple who met while working as spies and are re-activated into the espionage game, adding a dash of excitement to their marriage, now that they're boring, staid caterers. Wouldn’t a new version of Alias be too similar? Would any of the old characters be involved? Could you really call it Alias without them?
EW Top 100 Characters List
If you were to sit down and make a list of the top 100 fictional characters from the past 20 years, who’d be on it? The editors and writers at Entertainment Weekly took up this challenge and put together a rather eclectic list. Why certain characters rank higher than others, and why certain ones were selected over others – like Tim Riggins making the list as representative of FNL and NOT the Taylor family? – remains a mystery to me. Kind of like the Lost finale. The EW top 10 of the past 20 years:
1. Homer Simpson
2. Harry Potter
3. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
4. Tony Soprano
5. The Joker (Heath Ledger’s version)
6. Rachel Green from Friends
7. Edward Scissorhands
8. Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs
9. Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City
10. SpongeBob Squarepants
FYI: Some of my favorites made the list: Sydney Bristow (42), Jack Bauer from 24 (44), John Locke from Lost (63), Lorelai Gilmore from the Gilmore Girls (65), Don Draper from Mad Men (74) and Gregory House from House (84).
Sex and the City 2
I went to see Sex and the City 2 on Friday and dedicated this week’s Pop Culture column to it over on Mommy Tracked. While I’m not going to tell you that it’s absolutely fabulous – I called it an “over-the-top, junk-food-binge of a film,” a bad-good movie you can enjoy with friends and share a laugh – I was steamed by the language some reviewers used when writing about the characters and the women in the film, everything from “shrews” to “harridans.”
