Culture Surfing

AMC’s “Breaking Bad” airs the finale of its second season on Sunday night. My wife and I just watched the first three episodes of its first season over Memorial Day weekend, and man oh man, is it ever good. I initially resisted the show because it sounded a little too much like Showtime’s “Weeds” — both involve the darkly comic collision of drug culture and middle-class family life in a Southwestern U.S. suburb. But where “Weeds” always struck me as smug and full of itself, “Breaking Bad” has proven to be both more humanistic and more harrowing, with suspense scenes nearly worthy of Alfred Hitchcock. Bryan Cranston fully deserves all the acclaim he’s won as a cancer-stricken chemistry teacher who begins cooking meth to provide for his family.

I’ll finish up “Breaking Bad’s” first season soon enough, and will have a hankering for another show. It’s the perfect time to start, since “Battlestar Galactica” is finished, “Lost” won’t be back until 2010 and the networks are in summer reruns (assuming that concept has meaning any more). So which show should I start in on? Ideally, it’ll be something that we can watch on DVD, because we don’t have cable and, as much as I like Hulu, I’d rather not commit to an hour-long program I can only see on the Internet. Here are some under consideration, with their potential pros and cons:

“Dexter” (Showtime) – Michael C. Hall series about the serial killer who kills other serial killers.
Pros: I liked Hall a lot on “Six Feet Under,” and he’s supposed to be terrific, while playing a diametrically opposite role.
Cons: The premise sounds pretty lurid and contrived. Also, it would be a hard sell to watch with my wife, who’s squeamish about violence. (Which, admittedly, never stopped her from watching “The Sopranos,” “Deadwood,” “Rome” or “Breaking Bad,” for that matter.)

“Party Down” (Starz) – New sitcom about caterers, starring hilarious people like Martin Starr and Jane Lynch
Pros: It looks like a lot of fun.
Cons: It’s so new, it’s not on DVD yet.

“Primeval” (BBC America) – English SF drama about dinosaurs making incursions into the present
Pros: Dinosaurs! Plus, smart English people!
Cons: Could be the cheesiest thing ever.

Continue reading “Which TV show should I start watching?” »

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LIGHTS OUT: 'Friday Night Lights' wrapped season three last week.

1. The Televangelist: ‘Friday Night Lights’ season three finale (Eric and Tami say goodbye Panthers, hello East Dillon High.)

2. The Lazy Reader’s Guide to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Dropping one spot from last week, Wyatt Williams’ post about Brit lit’s new undead has taken on, uh, a life of its own.)

3. The Televangelist: ‘Lost’ episode 13 (Normally we’d scold you, saying all this TV you’re watching will rot your brain, but “Lost” is one hell of a mind game, especially when characters are seeing past versions of their fathers holding infant thems.)

4. Big burlesque weekend! (Y’all love some “hip-swiveling, tassle-twirling action.”)

5. Amazon.com ‘pinklisting’ includes Atlanta authors (Does Amazon hate gays? Not likely, as it seems some sort of internal glitch was responsible for the Easter weekend hullabaloo.)

(Photo courtesy NBC)

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GOODBYE PANTHERS: Hello East Dillon High

“Tomorrow Blues” began five months from where we left off last week, with the Dillon Panthers losing the state championship thanks to JD’s family crisis and his subsequent meltdown. Though the episode opened with a montage of carefree spring moments — lounging by the pool, the crack of baseball bats, taking in an afternoon movie — there’s trouble a-brewin’ in Dillon. Coach Taylor’s contract is up for renewal (already?), and Joe McCoy is looking to make a power play that involves taking over the team and placing his main lackey, Wade Aikman, as head coach.

To be fair, Eric’s tenure at Dillon High has always existed on the brink. It took a full season to get the town’s support, and he continued to struggle against Buddy and Boosters for the remainder of his time. It’s of little wonder then that he hesitated to make a strong play to keep his job, showing up at the board meeting simply to state the facts, “I love this team, I love my job, and I’m good at it.” In the end, it wasn’t enough, but a final shot of Eric and Tami standing together among the ruins of the East Dillon High football field gave the hope that Coach Taylor can start fresh and really prove himself with a new team.

Had this been the final season of “Friday Night Lights,” as was originally rumored, I can’t help but feel the ending would have been mostly satisfactory. There was enough closure (Lyla and Tyra going to the colleges of their dreams) yet enough left open (the Taylor’s future in Dillon, Tim and Matt both considering not going to college) to go either way. As much as I believed this should have been “FNL’s” swan song, the possibilities of another season focusing on the fight between the evil Joe McCoy and the good Coach Taylor as cross-town rivals is both  promising and downright exciting.

Continue reading “The Televangelist: ‘Friday Night Lights’ season three finale” »

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CLEAR EYES, FULL HEARTS: Can't Lose! Except this one

The micro themes of Friday’s penultimate episode  echoed the macro theme of “Friday Night Lights” itself: rising above. Street, Riggins, Smash, Saracen, the Taylors, Lyla, Tyra … well, pretty much everyone on the show has had to overcome huge mental, physical and/or emotional roadblocks throughout the series, pushing themselves to do their best and be their best.  The realness of the struggles and the occasional failures along the way are all part of what gives “FNL” so much of its emotional resonance.

“The Underdogs” had plenty of such moments, the strongest of which was the evolution of Tyra’s college entrance essay. How many of us struggled to find our real voice when wrangling those awful things? Once you cut through the bull of what Landry described as “a five-paragraph knitted pillow. It’s painful,” there’s often a bright truth to be found. After Tyra stopped making terribly strained metaphors regarding her work at Applebee’s (”Sometimes it gets busy and you have to roll with the punches, just like life”) and harnessed the passion behind her real struggles (her mother, her sister, her lost innocence), she wrote something truly beautiful. And if you didn’t tear up just a little at her “Two Years Ago” speech, you don’t have a heart.  “College represents possibility. The possibility that things are going to change. I can’t wait.” Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose!

Speaking of our Dillon Panther’s battle cry, let’s get into this week’s football action.

Continue reading “The Televangelist: ‘Friday Night Lights’ episode 12″ »

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LYLA GARRITY: Is Eastbound and Down

Last week, I took stock of where this season of “Friday Night Lights” has taken us so far, and where it’s headed. Just as I theorized the End is Nigh, it turns out that it very much isn’t. Yes Panther fans, our beloved show has been renewed (or, is just about to be) for two more seasons, each of which will be aired first on DirecTV before moving over to NBC, a la the current season.

This is a good thing, right?  Your Televangelist is not convinced. The show will need to find fresh life and new direction (which it started building this week, with the potential of new cross-town rivals, but more on that later. Will some of our current Panthers get bused over?). Many of our favorite Dillon denizens are hitting the road (Smash, Street), with more to follow (according to reports, Lyla and Tyra will leave after similar multi-episde send offs). Hey, they have to graduate sometime, right? Except how often is a show about high school successful when everyone we know in the high school, y’know, matriculates?

More promising would be a Mindy and Billy spin-off. Imagine the possibilities for specials! This week we already got a taste of “A Very Collette Wedding,” complete with a classy tea party that included all of  Mindy’s closest friends from the Landing Strip: Sugar, Charm, Kandy … and of course Fashionette! What might the future hold? “A Very Riggins Christmas?”

Continue reading “The Televangelist: ‘Friday Night Lights’ episode 11″ »

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NEW MEANING: Of "after-school special"

One thing that “Friday Night Lights” does well is offer parallel storylines that adhere to strong themes.  Friday’s episode was about girl trouble, daddy issues and temper problems, all of which mirrored one another nicely. Though the previews from last week suggested a lighthearted episode with some wacky Matt-and-Julie moments, the truth of this week’s story was anything but.

Before digging deeper into the nuances of “The Giving Tree,” I want to briefly comment on the season so far and where it seems to be going as we head into the stretch of final episodes. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, with the definitive departure of staple characters such as Jason Street and Smash Williams, it’s starting to feel natural that this season might be “FNL’s” last. It seems that each episode has dealt with an issue specific to and resolved within it’s hourlong time frame, leaving viewers without a larger, season-long arc. I’ve realized that each week I’ve sat down to watch and pen my thoughts hasn’t exactly been a chore, but I haven’t felt any tangible excitement, whereas this season of “Big Love” has had me religiously watching, ravenous for the next episode. In fact, I’ve felt more compelled to watch a slew of old “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” episodes or the over-the-top and uneven “The L Word” more so than “Friday Night Lights.”  What gives? Is it just a lack of urgency and cliff-hangers that would usually bring viewers back? Instead of being hungry for big resolutions, we get some little ones every week that don’t seem to build to much.

Continue reading “The Televangelist: ‘Friday Night Lights’ episode 10″ »

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TROUBLE IN PARADISE: He was born a ramblin' man.

Uncertain futures were the name of the game in this middle-of-the-road episode of ‘FNL,’ with everyone trying to take one step forward by taking two steps back. In the Riggins house it began with Billy and Mindy breaking up because he doesn’t want her to work at the Landing Strip once married. (How can she be shocked by this?) Tim was in denial of his possible collegiate future, and blew off an interview to go on a bender in old-school Riggs style. Tami decided to deny her birthday’s claim to her age by not having one, and Tyra’s attempts to leave Dillon behind were thwarted when Cash-the-cowboy turns out to have a serious dark side.

By the end of the episode, a few of these issues had been resolved — specifically, all those in the Riggins household. Billy and Mindy were back for what we can only hope will be more white trash comedy, and Tim ends up being the first Riggins to attend college. (Let’s hope he actually goes.) The only character with a purely positive trajectory this week was none other than Matt Saracen, who led the Panthers to an (unsurprising) last-minute victory, which also served to briefly bring his mother and grandmother out from their Cold War.

It seems like the Panthers haven’t played more than four games, but here we are miraculously in the playoffs for the state championship. Fourth and seven, up by three, risking the opponent having excellent field position for a final play (and we know how dangerous that is since no high school teams seem to have any defense), out of timeouts, what to do? Continue reading “The Televangelist: ‘Friday Night Lights’ episode 9″ »

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