Community: The Aerodynamics of Gender
I like how, in its second season, Community is breaking the larger study group apart and exploring how the characters relate to each other in smaller segments. This episode also featured a lot of Troy, who I adore, and it didn’t end with them all vowing to be best friends forever and never do things in smaller groups again, which I appreciate. But the trampoline thing was more odd than funny until the very end, and the funniest thing about the mean-girls plot was Chang’s reaction to it.

30 Rock: Gentleman’s Intermission
First off, the phrase “gentleman’s intermission” is just hilarious by itself—that’s not really a thing, is it? Otherwise, the episode started off exploring thoroughly charted territory—didn’t Salma Hayek also find Liz an intrusion on her relationship with Jack?—but it got stronger and stronger as it went on. For another example, Tracy’s “I haven’t done anything with my life” plot felt too familiar at first—isn’t that why he created a porn video game?—but I pretty much died when his story culminated in him shouting “I left Tracy Junior in Atlantic City!”

The Office: Christening
When this episode got to the scene where Pam had to make sure that Michael knew he wasn’t the baby’s godfather, I thought we were in trouble. I wanted to turn off the TV. Turns out, it wasn’t as painful as I feared it would be. Michael was actually kind of right when he hissed at all the Dunder Miffln/Sabre people to stop being rude at the christening luncheon. (Of course, he took it too far, but no one got hurt.) And I like Jim and Pam as harried parents—it gives them something to do. When they don’t have baby conflict, it seems like they’re just hanging around the show.

Outsourced
It will never be Outsourced. In the one minute picked up on my DVR, this episode started off the same way as the rest of them: one of the call center employees got caught off guard by one of the novelties they sell. (He’ll never suspect a water balloon! Classic.) But then, something totally different happened. The white guy got hit with a balloon in the crotch! (Hilarity!) Yes, they’ve moved on to crotch jokes! Now the show is at least as funny as America’s Funniest Home Videos, right?

So, who won Thursday?

Photo by Ali Goldstein/NBC

30 Rock
It just came down to better jokes. Go Necks!

Good news, everyone! My grumpiness over Seth MacFarlane’s dominance in the world of animated sitcoms has slightly subsided! This has happened not because I suddenly find any of his shows particularly funny, but because the universe just got one or two iotas less hilariously cruel, although several iotas more hilarious overall: Futurama is returning to air! Even if you’re not a superfan, you can catch up on what you’ve missed with the above recap video from Comedy Central.

I must begrudgingly admit that we have Family Guy to thank for this. That show’s unholy resurrection after strong Cartoon Network rerun ratings encouraged Fox to invest in a series of Futurama DVD movies, which were also broken up into a sixteen-episode fifth season of the show for Comedy Central, long after it went off the air in 2003 (which itself was awhile after it had ceased production). The success, in turn, of those DVDs, combined with the continuing fragmentation of the TV landscape, convinced Fox to produce another batch of genuine episodes for Comedy Central. Thirteen will air this year, and thirteen in 2011, with the possibility for more down the road, but let’s not get greedy.

I’m not one of those people who disavows any Simpsons episodes made after 1998 (or, even more frightening, 1995, or 1992! These people exist and they are really depressing!). However, I don’t think there’s any question that for the years Futurama aired (1999-2003), it was superior to the then-current Simpsons episodes. The sum total Futurama may not be as majestic as Seasons Three through Nine of The Simpsons, which as far as I’m concerned represents one of mankind’s more impressive achievements, but it is better than seventy-some episodes of just about anything else save maybe Seinfeld.

In celebration of the return of one of the best shows of the past decade or six, Marisa and I have been systematically watching every episode of Futurama ever produced; we’re concluding this evening with the final DVD movie, Into the Wild Green Yonder, and going straight into the two new episodes airing at 10PM on Comedy Central. This nerd download has put me in a good position to count down the top seven episodes of Futurama. There were only seventy-two episodes in the original run, and the movies are sort of a different beast, so I’m keeping it to the top ten percent (but for the record, The Beast with a Billion Backs is probably my favorite of the four DVD experiments). Into the breach, meatbags:

7. “Fear of a Bot Planet” (Season 1)
I pretty much never get tired of Futurama‘s robot jokes, a rich universe unto themselves, and this early visit to the robot separatist planet is full of great ones.

6. “How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back” (Season 2)
Strangely, when a lot of my favorite Futurama characters, like Bender or Dr. Zoidberg, become the focus of a full episode, the episodes tend not to rank among my favorites. There are surely some great ones, but many of their best moments come on the side of meatier Fry or Leela or ensemble-based installments. This episode avoids the pitfall by not so much actually being about office bureaucrat Hermes but focusing on his replacement, a fastidiously neat and orderly woman who is perversely attracted to Fry’s slobbery. The gag-writing on this episode is just really strong, including a ridiculous number of great bureaucrat jokes (“You are technically correct — the best kind of correct!”).

5. “A Head in the Polls” (Season 2)
The jarred head of Richard Nixon has become a prominent character on the show, with his demented, werewolfy call of “arrooooo!” His role can be tracked back to this second-season episode, in which Nixon uses Bender’s pawned robot body to mount a campaign Bender gets his body back, but Nixon wins anyway, and remains Earth President for the rest of the series. The final scene of the episode features Nixon’s jarred head affixed atop a gigantic warrior robot body, kicking over cars and smashing into the White House hollering: “NIXON’S BACK!” Also, I’m going to go ahead and just reprint his climactic monologue, which isn’t as good as Billy West’s reading of it, but makes me laugh every damn time:

“Computers may be twice as fast as they were in 1973, but your average voter is as drunk and stupid as ever. The only one who’s changed is me. I’ve become bitter, and let’s face it, crazy over the years. And once I’m swept into office, I’ll sell our children’s organs to zoos for meat. And I’ll go into people’s houses at night and wreck up the place!” [maniacal laughter]

Please go download it here

4. “Where No Fan Has Gone Before” (Season 4)
The show’s obligatory Star Trek riff goes out, reuniting most of the original cast, poking fun at obsessive fandom, and yet still, with Fry’s previously unrevealed love of Trek, gets to the heart of why it’s an object of such immense affection, and becomes easily the best Trek tribute since Galaxy Quest.

3. “The Luck of the Fryrish” (Season 3)
There are several Futurama episodes as moving as the most heartwarming Simpsons episodes and, if anything, Futurama, perhaps better fitting its twenty-and-thirtysomething, mostly non-familial characters, tends to go a bit more bittersweet. “Jurassic Bark” is notorious for its stomach-kick of an ending, and I’ve teared up at the last few minutes of “Leela’s Homeworld.” But neither of those are quite as moving (or as simultaneously hilarious) as this episode about Fry’s older brother, which alternates between flashbacks and Fry’s 3000-era search for his lucky seven-leaf clover.

2. “Time Keeps On Slippin’” (Season 3)
One of the best things about Futurama is that while it is hilarious and jokey and fine with bending its sci-fi rules to fit its story and/or jokes, the writers have also come up with some delightful sci-fi comedy conceits, perhaps none more so than the disrupted “cronotons” in a far-off nebula that cause pockets of the universe to skip forward in time. The Futurama writers are particularly sharp when they happen upon gag variations that they particularly love (see also: the neutral planet!) and the speed and invention of these time-skip gags make this episode almost dizzying in its brilliance. Also, it has the Harlem Globetrotters in a featured role.

1. “Futurestock” (Season 3)
This isn’t the sweetest or most moving or the most mind-bending episode of Futurama, but I think it might well be the funniest. It is essentially the show’s version of the classic Simpsons episode “Last Exit to Springfield” (in case you aren’t up on your title nerdery: “DENTAL PLAN/Lisa needs braces”). The story of Planet Express getting new leadership in the form of an unfrozen “eighties guy,” like the story of the Springfield Power Planet’s labor dispute, doesn’t sound particularly exciting on paper, but winds up winning on pure, insane, joke-for-joke success rate. Fry, Bender, Zoidberg, Farnsworth, and Leela all get choice moments; I’m particularly fond of Zoidberg’s trade of his shares of Planet Express for a sandwich which does not, in fact, appreciate in value (especially not after he eats it: “I’m ruined!”).

Comments, questions, disagreements? Comment below. But more importantly, watch Futurama tonight on Comedy Central, and every Thursday for a bunch more weeks, and revel in your good fortune.

Nike: Write the Future

It scares me a little to imagine how much this cost. Nike’s three-minute opus features about a dozen of the biggest names in the game, including a few who won’t be playing in South Africa (Brazil’s Ronaldinho, seen here doing his trademark samba over the ball, failed to make his team’s final squad of 23, because Brazil is just so good that they cut players other countries would kill to have. Also, Ivory Coast’s Didier Drogba, the guy in orange at the beginning, has a broken arm and might not play). My favorite section is about 45 seconds in, when England’s Wayne Rooney sees the outcome of one play, if he makes a tackle or if he fails, and there’s a brief clip of American superstars (the closest thing we have to superstars!) Landon Donovan and Tim Howard laughing at him. Then, of course, he plays table tennis with Federer, which is hilarious. And I really enjoy the concept of Ronaldo: The Movie, starring Gael Garcia Bernal. Basically, this commercial makes me want to watch soccer. And buy Nikes. Mission accomplished!

ETA: Seth Stevenson over at Slate points out that the commercial was directed by clever Mexican auteur Alejandro González Iñárritu (hat tip to Friend of the ‘Faux Ali). Seth also spotlights another of my favorite moments in the spot and uses a particular bit of British football slang I love: “Later, Cristiano Ronaldo fantasizes that a successful World Cup will land him an appearance on The Simpsons (he nutmegs Homer, who exclaims, “Ronal-d’oh!”) and make him the subject of a blockbuster bio-pic starring Gael García Bernal.”

U2: “City of Blinding Light”

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that one of my day jobs is working for the company that holds the exclusive broadcast rights to the tournament in the U.S. But I have absolutely nothing to do with the broadcast division, or the people who make the ads for World Cup coverage. So when I say that I LOVE THIS SERIES OF ADS, know that I’m not being a shill for the Mouse. I really do love the set of spots ESPN has done for the World Cup featuring some of U2′s greatest music. This World Cup was basically packaged for Bono to weep over as soon as South Africa got the bid; it brings together two of his favorite things: football and AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHFRICA. This spot is pretty old, as you can see; all the footage is from Germany ’06 and, again, a lot of those players won’t be in this World Cup, notably beautiful German captain Michael Ballack, who you can see three seconds in and who, like effing ALL OF CHELSEA FC, is hurt. (If you’re interested in U.S. games, keep an eye out for our superlative midfielder Clint Dempsey, wearing #8 and seen at 11 seconds.) There’s just something glorious about the scope of the World Cup, the emotion of the players, and that great, great song that has had me tearing up at the gym whenever I’ve seen it over the past three months. Yeah. I’m a sap. I blame it on that adorable baby near the end with “SA” written on its head.

US Soccer: Over There

I saw this spot for the first time on Saturday during the national team’s final warmup game against Australia. (We won! Sorry, Socceroos.) And it felt kind of weird. “Over There,” as I’ve just learned, was written during the First World War and again became popular during WW2, and it just has kind of a weird, militaristic overtone to me. Especially if you look at the verses, which the spot doesn’t use. Given the United States’ unpleasant recent history of global, um, stomping on people, I don’t think that’s exactly the message we want to send. Except that as a soccer-playing nation, we have been historically incapable of stomping on anyone for about 60 years. If you want to ignore the vague cultural imperialism and just look at our very fine national team, that’s okay. We have a hot team this year.

U2: “Magnificent”

If you don’t care for U2′s particular brand of bombast, you may want to stop reading here, because anti-Bono-ites will find this one really obnoxious. But I love it, for a couple of reasons. First is that the rhythm line for “Magnificent” is the best U2 has written since…oh, I don’t know. “Mysterious Ways,” maybe? That bass groove is just incredible. Second is the political aspect. When people talk about the World Cup, they don’t even pretend that it’s apolitical, like some folks still like to do with the Olympics. The World Cup is a political statement, much like the Beijing Summer Games were a political statement, and this World Cup is probably the most politically significant tournament since I don’t even know when. Mexico ’86? Germany ’74? I don’t know enough about soccer intersecting with world history to evaluate all 18 previous Finals, but this World Cup, the first ever held in Africa, is certainly the most important of my lifetime. The people of South Africa fought their way through a lot of shit to get this tournament, and if today’s reception for the Bafana Bafana is any indication, they are effing psyched. South Africa was banned from world competition by FIFA from 1976 until 1992 because the country’s constitution prohibited racially mixed teams. So within the lifetimes of the players on the field and most of the spectators, they weren’t allowed even to compete in this tournament, and now they’re hosting it. That’s a big thing.

U2: “Where the Streets Have No Name”

I like how ESPN is pretending U2 didn’t record anything between 1986 and 2004. Achtung Baby just doesn’t scream World Cup, does it? They had to reach all the way back to the pseudo-religious mysticism of The Joshua Tree to do this most delicate and potentially crass, if treated poorly, subject justice. And I think they succeeded, although your mileage may vary. The fact that the political ruling class of South Africa today was largely imprisoned barely 20 years ago is incredible and inspiring, and lends more credence to the whole “more than game” idea. Expect a whole lot of choked-up people on Friday morning when Mandela, the closest thing the planet has to a living saint right now, (hopefully) makes a brief appearance before the opening match.

Adidas: Star Wars cantina

This commercial is just fucking weird. What does Star Wars have to do with the World Cup? I have no idea. But it does involve my favorite Gallagher and David Beckham, who will be sorely missed on the pitch in South Africa (Becks blew his Achilles tendon in February, ending his hopes to be the first Englishman to play in four World Cups, but he’s there for the tournament. He was in the stands at USA vs. Australia Saturday, scouting and looking quite fantastic), as well as Jay Baruchel? What? Canadians don’t play soccer. And Snoop Dogg! See, I told you it was weird.

So that’s it. More World Cup selling than you can sneer at. Play starts Friday morning; match schedule is here. The final is Sunday, July 11. I think it’s going to be awesome.

I am too lazy to back this up with evidence, and perhaps with Lost ending and the “summer season” rearing its head I am in a bad mood, but it seems to me like everything good and exciting is ending, and it’s all being replaced by garbage. (Remember when I used to get excited about the upfronts? Weird.) Here are the current upfronts. Ugh.

Is this it? Is it over? The comedies seem to be the only returning bright spots, but even they’re looking a little long-in-the-tooth (The Office, 30 Rock, HIMYM) or they’re being shoved to midseason (Parks & Rec). I’m watching Treme but it’s no The Wire. I’m watching Caprica but it’s no BSG.

Yes, Justified is great. Community is great. But I’m still a big frowny face.

Are there others out there, who were added late but gained full-cast love? A few. But it’s not easy. The most important metric I used was the Died/Disappeared rule. If the character seemed important but then Died/Disappeared suddenly and the show went on much as before, they were not, by definition, essential to the show. It’s tough, but I made these rules up, and I’m going to stick to them.

Desmond Hume and Ben Linus (Lost)

These two are the gold standard of essential late additions. One of the things that made Desmond so effective as a character was that he appeared and then abruptly vanished, so that when he came back we were pleasantly surprised and probably fooled into believing he’d been around a lot longer than he had. Ben Linus is a different sort of addition — the unplanned kind. He rocked the part so hard they basically had no choice but to write him in to the series. These are both great examples of characters evolving naturally, and the creators being responsive and observant enough to figure out that they’ve got something there.

Counter-example: Ana-Lucia. The argument could be made that she was supposed to be an unpleasant character and we weren’t supposed to like her, but I don’t care: I hated every second she was on screen and everything she did.

Spike (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Spike shows up as a season 2 villain, and develops into one of the core Buffy gang in fits and starts, as one arc ended and the writers realized they had something great and needed new ways to bring him back. By the end of it you forget that he wasn’t in the short first season at all.

Counter-example: So many! Anya, Tara, Wesley, Faith, Riley, and the character who’s a meta-commentary on the whole process of introducing new people, Dawn. These characters were integrated into the main cast in varying degrees of success, but they never felt as essential as Spike.

Andy Bernard (The Office)

Andy is the only one from the Stamford branch to have made it through unscathed, and that’s only after an anger management class fundamentally changed the entire conception of his character. Now he’s at home in Scranton just as much as the others, which is to say, he’s a weirdo with personal issues who we love despite his bizarre tics.

Counter-example: Erin. I’m not saying she won’t feel essential in a year or two, but right now, she’s still standing out.

Will Bailey (The West Wing)

Josh Malina joined The West Wing in season four, making him the latest addition on this list. But he felt like an old-timer immediately. This one may be a strange case, in which an actor’s previous experience with related material (his awesome work on Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night) meant that the audience was primed to accept him as a member of the team.

Counter-example: I admit that my watching was spotty over the years, but I really disliked that blonde Southern Republican who’s now on CSI. This show also was a strange case of a first-season character finding herself completely unessential to anything — poor Moira Kelly all but disappeared eventually.

Many shows never managed to introduce new people successfully, not for lack of trying, and so only contain counter-examples:

Veronica Mars

Piz and Parker are two of the most energetically disliked characters on this show. Personally, I always liked Piz, and his poor pathetic Piz hair, and who knows what would’ve happened had the show stuck around for a few more years. But these late additions didn’t click with the fans and so didn’t do the struggling show any favors on its way out.

Gilmore Girls

The essential characters in this show (Lorelai, Rory, Luke, Emily) are SO essential that any addition is super distracting, even if it’s boyfriends (Max, Chris, Jason/Digger, Dean, Jess, Logan) and especially if it’s secret love-children (ugh, April).

The Cosby Show

As happy as I am that the phrase “That’s so Raven” has entered our collective ironic lexicon, I don’t think Raven Symone is anyone’s favorite Cosby, and certainly never reached the level of a Theo or Vanessa or Rudy.

House

I guess this one depends on if you liked 13 and Taub. I didn’t. I don’t watch any more (for many reasons, but the lack of connection to new characters is part of it).

This is all admittedly biased by my personal preferences and shows that I watch and characters I particularly liked, so I welcome additions to the additions list. Also, I feel like this was particularly hard to pull off before the current Golden Age of television, as shows were stricter in their scope and less amorphously serialized, and so less likely to try to introduce new beloved characters, way-back-when. But I could be wrong. What am I missing?

Lookit the babies!

And then everyone on that show became a complete and utter asshole. Meredith Grey was always a bit of a dishrag, but back at the beginning Christina was awesome, and all the men were hot, and Bailey was just super. Even Katherine Heigl was pretty terrific, when she ripped her shirt off and yelled at everyone for making fun of her for being an underwear model and proclaimed that while they were in $100,000 worth of debt apiece, she paid her way with her spectacular rack. Remember? That was great. But then they all became jerks. And even pretty, pretty Kate Walsh and Eric Dane couldn’t fix it, because let me repeat myself just this once, Izzie KILLED SOMEONE and then moaned about it for a YEAR.

So when show creator Shonda Rimes spun off Private Practice, I jumped ship on whiny, bitchy Grey’s Anatomy and went with Kate and her pretty hair to California. Because at that point Addison, Bailey, and Torres were the only people on Grey’s Anatomy that I didn’t want to set on fire every Thursday night. it had everything I’d originally liked about Grey’s Anatomy with none of the whining: very pretty people who are ostensibly fantastic at their jobs, an excellent soundtrack, ridiculous medical cases that make you go google shit and panic mid-show.

And we were doing so well! Even replacing Merrin Dungey with Audra McDonald (who along with Taye Diggs hasn’t been allowed to sing ONCE on Private Practice, which I consider a missed opportunity the size of the frigging QE2) was okay. She brings something different and real and lovely. And I discovered that I kind of love Paul Adelstein and I love the relationship Cooper and Charlotte have. Even though I don’t much care for Sheldon the other psychiatrist and the show is just so, SO MEAN to poor Amy Brenneman, I’ve been enjoying most of what’s going on over there, even when they do insane things like treat active-duty military when the show is called PRIVATE Practice.

Would it kill you people to let me sing along with the damn radio once in awhile?

But then this season everything went off the damn rails. First they ran out of acceptable heterosexual couplings for the characters, after Charlotte slept with both Cooper and Sheldon and Violet slept with Pete, Sheldon, and ADDISON’S DAD and Naomi slept with Addison’s brother and Addison slept with Pete and Lorelei’s babydaddy from Gilmore Girls and Mark Sloan, again, and didn’t quite sleep with that guy who’s on Cougar Town now, so then Addison and Sam started making out, even though that’s, like, wrong. And then they decided to knock up Sam and Naomi’s fifteen-year-old daughter. Oh! And then they blew up Dell’s junkie babymama, which I will admit was awesome, because she sucked. And THEN when Violet came back from her insane PTSD trip to Costa Rica, they decided to have a courtroom-set episode in which the lawyers for Pete and Violet interrogated every character on the show until they basically recapped the last two seasons. That was LAME.

And I was still kind of on board for all this, and I was okay with Mark Sloan showing up with his pregnant daughter in tow and being all, “Addison, fix it! And let’s have sex on your office floor!” (What is wrong with these people that they think it’s acceptable to have sex in their offices during the workday like ALL THE TIME? It is just wrong, rude, and germy.) But then Derek Shepherd’s stupid little sister showed up, and she is the last damn straw.

First I’ll point out that the actress playing Dr. Amelia Shepherd, Brain Surgeon Extraordinaire, is younger than I am. Even extremely smart people my age are still residents (compare over on Grey’s Anatomy, where the actors playing the surgical interns were all over 30 when the show started, with the exception of Katherine Heigl, who was 27), not world-renowned brain surgeons who can get away with shit like doing totally unproven surgeries on brain-dead ladies incubating someone else’s triplets. (But we did get to see Billy Riggins in that arc! And I got to have an argument with my mother about abortion! That was so fun.)

Now I’ll point out that she just sucks. She keeps poking her nose where it doesn’t belong, like into Sam and Addison’s lives when she is a guest, and she does stupid shit like last week when she talked excellent Dr. Coburn from ER into having brain surgery that later caused her husband to leave her because she became mean again with some damn sob story about the Shepherd surgeons’ father being murdered. Which…again, I haven’t watched an episode of Grey’s Anatomy in about three years, but don’t you think that would’ve come up at some point? Although Derek didn’t tell Meredith he was married, so I guess it’s understandable that he wouldn’t tell her he’d witnessed his father’s murder. Still, I hate retcons.

And then there’s just everyone being really crappy right now. If it’s not Addison whining about how she can’t have babies, it’s Violet being insane or Naomi mooning over random billionaire-with-Lou-Gehrig’s-disease William White or Sam just being a sad little ball sack of a man. Or it’s Dell saying “midWIFery.” Or the show throwing a big white wedding for a pregnant fifteen-year-old and everyone acting like that’s awesome. (Oh, the best bit of the last few episodes? When Maya was telling Dell she wants a drug-free birth. SURE. I’d kind of like a epidural for after my workout tomorrow; I hear epidurals are awesome.) Right now my favorite character is Fife, because he seems to recognize that everyone else on the show is stupid and deserves to be treated with disdain. Basically he’s Bailey except that instead of being a tiny, shouty black woman he’s a great big white guy with a fancy wheelchair.

This does not mean I’ll stop watching. Kate Walsh’s hair is just that pretty. And I like her outfits. And Paul Adelstein. But it does mean I yell at the TV a lot. Which is par. `

No NBC sitcoms–see y’all after the Olympics!

Ashton Kutcher has now hosted Saturday Night Live four times. Does that seem weird to anyone else? I wouldn’t immediately guess that he’d be the That ’70s Show cast member to host most often, or that he’s hosted more than, say, Scarlett Johansson or Justin Timberlake, who both have their own recurring characters. Looking through the invaluable SNL transcripts site, I see that none of his episodes have been particularly memorable, though he did appear in a Falconer sketch as “the Muskrateer,” and his most recent appearance, in April 2008, was surprisingly decent.

This week’s episode, then, fits right into the Ashton Kutcher SNL oeuvre that we all forgot existed. It was surprisingly good in the sense that it was one of the least recurring-character-heavy episodes of the season, with only a typically middling and pointless View sketch and some amusing Update appearances representing the retread factors. The first post-monologue sketch wasn’t The View or a Kristen Wiig tic-fest, but a very funny bit with Kutcher playing a golddigging pool boy spurned by his departed 110-year-old lover. It exploited a funny idea without just hitting a single joke over and over; that sounds simple, but isn’t always as easy as it looks.

But also like some of his past appearances, the episode was a bit rote; nothing else matched that early high. The sketch with Will Forte as a Roman leader taking creepy pleasure from grape-feeding was appealingly weird, but thin; same goes for “What Is Burn Notice?” — the game show that challenges contestants to describe the apparently popular USA network series. Personally, I’d have more trouble with “What is Criminal Minds?” — a couple of my regular SNL-watching buddies actually love Burn Notice and it’s certainly among the top three or five cooler-sounding cable shows that I never watch but suspect I might like if I did, whereas I have no idea what separates Criminal Minds from its cop-show brethren apart from it not being set in the Navy, not involving crazy forensics or cold cases, and not, as far as I know, taking place in Miami. But anyway, it was still a kinda-sorta funny sketch poking fun at the show’s admittedly vague ad campaign.

The kinda-sorta-pretty-good stuff kept on coming all night. Andy Samberg’s Rahm Emmanuel impression isn’t one of his most dead-on, but the laughs it gets are certainly the most cathartic the show, which hasn’t been specializing in political humor since late 2008 at best, can offer these days. The Oscar nomination bit was funny enough. I liked that band of dads reuniting their eighties punk band at a wedding at the very end of the show. Kutcher didn’t do much to help or hurt, apart from a downright puzzling Mel Gibson impression — he got Gibson’s weirdo defensive posture right, but the voice was a gravelly mess.

So I guess Kutcher is a kind of gap-filler, inconsequential host; he hasn’t worked up enough strong material to qualify as a hosting event, like a Steve Martin or Alec Baldwin appearance, and he doesn’t give off that Jon Hamm major-repeat-host-of-tomorrow vibe, either. He just does pretty typical episodes that you probably won’t remember when he hosts again in a couple of years.

Episode Grade: B-

I'm not so think as you drunk I am.

This week opens with sports talk radio telling us that the East Dillon Lions’ opponent this week is the undefeated McNulty Mavericks, who have the best shot of upsetting the Panthers (later in the season, I guess. Probably conference semis). We see Luke running like someone’s chasing him and Vince at the barbershop. Bug Eyes tells Vince that it’s one thing to play on a team that sucks, but a whole other ballgame playing on a team that sucks on TV. (He says it “TEE-vee,” which I find kind of adorable and hilarious.) There’s a painting of President Obama’s face superimposed on the American flag on the wall of the barbershop, which is a nice little detail.

The Lions coaches are half strategizing, half commiserating about their upcoming Waterloo. Coach says there’ll be press at practice wanting to talk about the game, and that they need to stay on message and not get carried away. At the press conference, such as it is, Coach is circumspect and stonewalls the reporters, because for crying out loud, he’s the coach of a team that basically didn’t exist three months ago and they’ve never won a game. Which doesn’t stop Coach Closet Case from guaranteeing a victory. Oh, man.

Julie and Matt are making out in broad daylight at a drive-through, which is so teenage and normal. She’s gotten tickets to an indie music festival in Austin, and their relationship seems to be a little freer and less fraught, at least for a few minutes.

Speaking of free and fraught, remember how Lyla came back for the funeral? Now, if you’d taken a bus from Tennessee to Texas and gone to the funeral of one of your peers’ fathers and your ex-boyfriend was in town and he looked like Tim Riggins and lived in an Airstream, would you stay away? I didn’t think so. Because my readers are not idiots. She shows up to talk and they have kind of a broken and disjointed conversation, with Lyla prying about why Tim gave up on college, and then sarcastically saying, “I am so glad I came home.” And then Tim kisses the bejesus out of her and backs her into the Airstream and her knickers burst into flames and huh, I guess that wasn’t sarcastic AT ALL.

So Tami won’t let Julie go to Austin for two school nights with her boyfriend. Surprise! Because that’s what normal parents do. Julie tries to appeal to Coach, which, since her parents are still married to each other, doesn’t work. Spoiler alert: She goes anyway.

Matt and Landry are throwing the ball around in Matt’s sad postage stamp of a front yard, and Matt expositions that the Army death benefit was $100,000, which along with the life insurance sets Grandma Saracen up for life. One by one, Matt is snipping the tiny threads tying him down in Dillon with the world’s most poignant pair of nail scissors.

At Dillon, Tami’s secretary tells her some boilerplate school stuff, and then, offhand, tells her that Julie called and she’s gone to Austin and will see her on Saturday. I once took my younger brothers to Baltimore for the day, just for fun, while my parents were on a college visit with my brother Phil, and even though we got back before they did, my parents kind of lost their shit. I do not know how they would have reacted if we’d been gone overnight. Or I was with someone other than my ten- and fifteen-year-old brothers. Tami begins to lose her shit, then calls Julie’s cell phone and leaves the most polite I-am-going-to-kill-you-and-then-ground-you-and-then-kill-you-again voicemail message in the history of electronic parent-child communication.

Landry goes to talk to Jess about that time they sucked face over the barbecue. He bungles it, because even sleeping with Tyra didn’t turn Landry into a smooth talker. He rambles about how there’s “a big part of him” (heh heh) that’s totally into her, but a tiny little part in the back of his mind that’s still hung up on Tyra. Jess smacks him in the face and stalks away. Violence is never the answer, friends.

Who needs pants?

Lyla and Tim have temporarily stopped banging each other into little steaming puddles of lust. She says she has to head back to Vanderbilt in three days, and Tim thoughtfully observes that he can work with three days. Tim is lounging about in his drawers, for the record. I thought you’d need to know that. Their relationship here is just so easy and sexy and playful and damn, I have actually missed Lyla. Tim is so much fun with her. He’s not drunk or sad or frustrated; it’s just glorious. They are starting to go at it again when DAMMIT BECKY bangs on the door of the trailer to demand a ride to school. The sight of Lyla with I-just-fucked-Tim-Riggins-and-you-didn’t hair is enough to send Becky scampering away to write some rageful, cornified, poorly spelled and inconsistently capitalized acrostics on her MySpace page.

On the field at East Dillon we get a sequence that mirrors the pilot. The Lions players and coaches are doing one-on-one interviews with TV news. The boys are adorable. One of them rhymes, “We been through the storm and we been through the rain; now we’re gonna bring the pain.” Landry cites his perfect SAT math score as proof of how well he does under pressure. Coach Closet Case has apparently been instructed not to talk. Vince explains that he’s both brains AND brawn. Aww. I just love him. The reporter asks Tinker if the Lions will win, and he starts chuckling, and moves up to full-on belly laughs. It’s great. And then the reporter asks Coach about his “history of quitting,” first back when he left the Panthers for the TMU job, and then forfeiting the first game. Coach mutters something and his sunglasses glare at her, and he just walks away.

Matt and Julie are lounging like Henry and June or something on the roof of his car eating peanut butter sandwiches. She ignores a call from Tami. Oh man. Tami is gonna kill you. Later we see Tami leave another scalding message on Julie’s voicemail and then tell Grace through gritted teeth, “You are my favorite daughter.” Ha.

Over at Virgil’s BBQ, Vince shows up for some ribs. There seems to be some history, not just between Vince and Jess, which we knew about, but between Vince and Virgil, who tells Vince he can get his ribs at the counter (rather than table service from Jess) and get out. I wonder what the bad blood there is? Is it connected to how Jess was able to teach Landry to kick? Ooh, did they play Pop Warner together, and also Doctor? I am intrigued by this.

Luke brings Becky some candy and steps up for some more of The Matt Saracen Program: Making That Guy Who Was Totally The Hottest One In Your High School Play a High School Kid Who Can’t Catch a Break. Come on, that is sweet. Because they met over candy, and because it would be unwise for him to bring her a six-pack at school. Becky’s all, you don’t know me!, and totally blows him off like the UNGRATEFUL HO BAG SHE IS. God, I really do not like her. She’s going in my small but potent file of Friday Night Lights Things That Should Not Exist, along with Alejandro; the murder plotline; hell, all of season 2; Smash losing his scholarship for that bullshit racial incident; and Julie’s boyfriend the Swedish lifeguard.

Football practice. Jess and the pep squad are working on their routine. And Coach has some surprises to help the team prepare for McNulty: They’ll be playing 11 on offense and 13 on defense today. The extra two? Tim and Billy Riggins, in their college and high school uniforms, respectively. OH GODDAMN. I have missed Tim Riggins in uniform so much, you guys. The Lions start off on the wrong foot, getting totally shellacked, until they start to work together and manage to punch a hole through the Riggins-fortified defensive line. It’s great to see them cohere like that.

That night, Mindy is somehow STILL pregnant (I know TV time is different, but season 3 ended in January. She was pregnant then. Good lord!). Billy, Tim and Lyla are enjoying some beers while Lyla eyes the mechanical bull in the corner. I guess they don’t have those at Vanderbilt? She declares she can ride it. Of course she can; if she can ride Derek Jeter, a west Texas mechanical bull shouldn’t give her any trouble. It does, though. Lyla faceplants into the mats and Tim saunters up all kind of concerned and pretty and damn.

At East Dillon the next day, Tami shows up to thumbscrew the truth out of Landry as to Matt and Julie’s whereabouts. The southern politeness and spectacular dissembling from both of them is a joy to watch. Of course, Tami wins.

Coach gives Vince and Luke some game tape of McNulty to watch, and it’s a very precise illustration of the circumstances his new players live in that the boys take their DVD and go to Sears to watch it on a big TV. And now it’s time for our court-mandated J.D. McCoy Asshole Appearance of the Week, as the little shithead and some of his miserable cohorts show up to start some trouble. J.D. remarks that he’s surprised Vince hasn’t stolen one of the TVs yet. Vince is about to get his third strike when Coach Closet Case (who works at Sears, remember?) shows up to save the day. He boots J.D. and the clown car of jerkwads out of Sears. Vince and Luke go back to their lawn chairs and game tape.

Matt and Julie are in a hotel in Austin, and Matt puts on some Patsy Cline, because as my lovely viewing companion says, hotel sex is better. He calls it “pretty music,” and they dance, and the tender beauty of this relationship makes my heart ache a little. Patsy carries over to Tim’s Airstream, where he and Lyla are whispering together in bed.

Vince and his mom come out of a convenience store with their groceries, and she starts discussing her plans to come see the game. Vince tries to dissuade her from making a long trip just to see him lose, but his mom, who’s looking a little better, says that she needs to see him play, and that she’ll be cleaned up and won’t embarrass him. He acquiesces, with some of the same resignation Tyra used to have about her mom.

Baby, I like the way you wear my football T-shirt.

Tami is spitting mad chez Taylor that night, declaring that she’s going to go to Austin and snatch Julie bald-headed and drag her back to Dillon and turn the key on the chastity belt her own damn self, and she has herself worked up into a fine lather that makes me wonder how she’ll be able to sleep. Also, come on. No one with long hair sleeps with it down. That’s just a recipe for Gordian knot–style snarls. Coach just says quietly, “I support your decision one hundred percent.” And that is why I want to be married to him. The next morning, Tami wakes up in tears and decides that it might be a bad idea to drive all the way to Austin like a banshee and destroy their daughter, and like last week, Coach holds one of his women while she breaks down, and he says a whole lot of things that are right. “The more we make her try to stay, the more she’s going to stray,” he says. “I know, but I hate it,” Tami says. But she decides not to go to Austin.

Tim is explaining the Riggins Rigs business model to Lyla, such as it is, about how Billy is going to have a kid after Mindy’s forty-seven-month pregnancy, and he’ll be busy and Tim will be busy and they’ll need someone to manage the business while Tim is out towing people, and that should totally be Lyla. She gives it a bit of mock consideration and then sees that he’s serious, and asks soberly, “What do you want?” Tim replies simply, “You.” She absorbs it like a punch in the face and then struggles to ask, “What else do you want.” Same answer. Lyla! Sweetheart! The economy is shit. That’s a great deal.

Landry calls Matt at the hotel in Austin to tell him about the whole Tami interrogation thing. And lets slip that Julie lied to her parents about going to Austin. Which Matt didn’t know. He hangs up and starts a fight with Julie because now it’s like he’s lied to her parents, and he cares what the Taylors think about him, and Julie says she just wanted to give Matt something to get him out of Dillon, because she feels guilty that he stayed in Dillon just for her. (Julie has apparently forgotten about Grandma Saracen. She actually says, “You only stayed there because of me and for once I didn’t want the responsibility of making you stay in Dillon.”) The argument resolves as fast as it came up and they apologize to each other and head off for their music. The band they’re seeing, incidentally, is the Heartless Bastards. You may (or probably won’t) remember that the Heartless Bastards song “All This Time” was playing in an episode back in season 1 when Lyla went for a jog and ended up in Tim Riggins’s bed. I like that song a lot.

The game! The (McNulty, I assume) marching band is playing “I Believe I Can Fly,” which is fantastic. The East Dillon team is clicking on all cylinders, putting together offense, switching it up between Vince and Luke. Vince at quarterback is running; he breaks three tackles for a touchdown. Their center is still snapping way too high, though; it’s practically going over Vince’s head, and Vince isn’t short. He needs to work on that. Late in the fourth quarter the score is 14-7, the clock is running down, and the boys just can’t put together one last run. Vince’s mom is yelling “Good job! Good job!” in the stands like someone who’s never been to a football game before, but #5 can’t get a pass off and gets sacked in the backfield as time expires.

The crowd noise fades to nothing until Coach yells, “Bring it in, let’s go. Listen up right now. Every single person out here respects you fellas. Every one. I respect you. You need to respect yourselves. Hell of a job.” And it was.

In Austin, Matt and Julie are at the concert, and he asks if she wants to leave. She’s all, no, the set just started. And he asks, no, do you want me to leave? As in Dillon. He explains that maybe he should have left, and asks if she wants him to stay, and she goes from 0 to panic in about a second, shrieking, “I said stupid things! I’m sorry, I love you, I’m sorry!” But you know that’s not over.

Tim takes Lyla to the bus. Their goodbye seems final and bittersweet and it’s agonizing. And very literal: Her bus passes his truck, and he’s standing by the bed just watching her. In Matt’s car in front of the Taylor house, Julie says goodbye and good night, and Matt says (LYING!) “I’ll see you later?” In the house, you expect Tami to lay into her something fierce, but Julie just crumples to the floor against the wall and starts sobbing even as Tami is tuning up. “I think he’s leaving,” she says.

Matt parks in front of his house and watches Shelby and Grandma through the front window, discussing the crappy old TV. He looks at that tire he and Landry have been hucking footballs at for twelve years. He just looks at the sum total of his life in Dillon. If the last episode was about the goodbyes you don’t get to say, this one is about the ones you can say, and even have to say, but don’t want to because it’s like slicing off your skin.

But we can’t end on that sparkling little jewel of pain. At Alicia Witt’s House O’ Pageants, Tim brings a beer to the back porch, where Becky is spinning her candy-flavored web of obnoxiousness. She asks if Lyla’s gone, then asks if Tim has a broken heart, then asks if Lyla was the love of his life, then rambles on for seventeen years about soulmates and Sri Lanka and all the bullshit that you can’t even stomach in your own head when you’re fifteen, until Tim interrupts her: “Becky? Shut up. Please?” Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” is playing throughout this absurdist little tableau.

Final shot: Matt, in the car, driving. He’s still wearing that Livestrong bracelet he’s had on since the pilot. And that’s it.

Don't cry for me, Corpus Christi

Is this the last we’ll see of Matt Saracen? I was not remotely ready for that. I hope he’ll be happy, in TV graduate land, with his art.

Photos courtesy of DirecTV’s The 101 Network.

On the show, Gavin plays a guy who is possibly a murderer. And possibly a vampire. But definitely some sort of gothic singer for a cover band. It sort of reminds me of a basic cable remake of The Crow.

It’s the nineties plus vampires plus murder minus dignity.

Go over to VideoGum to see him perform Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” Do them a favor — they could use the boost in traffic that our link will provide.