Christmas TV Episode #5: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

5.) "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" 3.10 Amends (Watch it now.)


Amends is one of "Buffy"'s more important episodes, because "Buffy" is, in a lot of ways, a show about amends more than anything else--making amends, repenting, and the search for redemption. By this point in season three, so much has happened, our characters have hurt each other in such terrible ways, and all any of them really have left is the possibility of making amends, righting the wrongs of their pasts. By season three, "Buffy," while still dealing with the tribulations of characters in high school, has evolved into a very adult show, handling themes of sex, sacrifice, divorce, mental illness, death, forgiveness, redemption, and quite a few more, all while pioneering the accelerated, self-aware, culturally conscious, and structurally innovative brand of television we then saw in shows like "Dawson's Creek,"and "Gilmore Girls," and now see in shows like "Chuck" and "Supernatural." "Buffy" also spends a lot of time excavating its characters and their understandings of their own self-worth, as well as their purposes in life and in love, an accomplishment that I think has gone completely missing from teen-centric television today. That is, if there were such thing as teen-centric television today. Now, instead of nuanced, complicated teenagers like Buffy Summers and Willow Rosenberg, we're given lessons in stereotype and generic crybabies like Serena Van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf. "Buffy" is one of the most important shows of the last decade, definitely of the nineties, and probably, well, ever, and with four seconds of research you'll come to understand that this is not just me invoking my blogger right to hyperbole. It's pretty much unanimous. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is fabulous and culturally significant television. Now, Amends...

Angel: Am I a thing worth saving? Am I a righteous man? The world wants me gone.
Buffy: What about me? I love you so much.

Here is one of those exchanges that has the power to encapsulate three season's worth of a television show into one striking moment, one powerful altercation of central theme and character dynamics. Moments like this don't come along often. Not in "Buffy," not in anything.

The first three seasons of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" are a study in forgiveness, in self-forgiveness, redemption, and sacrifice. Amends is a milestone episode, in that it manages to gather all of these things and to manifest them in one explosive, unparalleled scene--that last scene (before the ending montage) in which Angel is waiting for the sunrise, for suicide, on a cliff, and Buffy tries to talk him out of it. Angel is a vampire with a soul, which makes him an enigma, a strapping hunk of moral ambivalence, of guilt and uncertainty, and when he falls in love with Buffy, he's forced to look at himself as, not a monster worthy of punishment for his barbarous past, but as a man worthy of forgiveness, of love and redemption.

If you've seen "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," then you know that its most explosive episodes are those written and directed by Joss himself. Here is one of them. Joss's episodes are shiny gems of magnificently tight storytelling and powerful, agenda-driven performances (see: Innocence, Hush, Once More with Feeling, Restless, Becoming: Pt. II, there are more). They're also, in many ways, driven by, not necessarily hope or Romanticism (re: The Body), but the show's incredibly delicate, volatile interpersonal relationships. Amends, for example, is rooted very deeply in the histories that these characters share, resonance of certain scenes, moments, and small exchanges that exist solely because of some previous moment, or some slowly accumulating dynamic between the characters involved. This is a difficult episode to watch if you've never seen an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," because it is basically a series of culminating moments, moments where tensions and bouts of characterization that have been swimming under the surface for seasons finally rear their terrifying heads. When Angel asks Buffy if he's a righteous man, if he's worth saving--these are not empty words. These words are wrought and packed with past and emotional significance that can only be truly understood by first watching the forty-three episodes that build up to this point.

That's not to say that Amends and its final confrontation are not worth watching if you haven't seen the show, especially if you're thinking of watching the show (which you should). The history of this scene is incredibly complicated, but some of it, I think, can be gleaned from the dialogue, a few expository sentences from me, and the sheer physicality of the players. In season two, Angel loses his soul after sleeping with Buffy (2.14 Innocence), and then, after he either kills, tortures, or threatens each and every one of Buffy's friends, she is forced to kill him in order to save the world (2.22 Becoming: Pt. II). In 3.3 Faith, Hope, and Trick, Angel is resurrected from Hell (with soul) by an anonymous force, and now, the First Evil (an incorporeal, primeval ish that comes back full force in season seven) is haunting Angel, trying to convince him that he was put back on Earth to lose his soul and resume his past as a killer. This is why the First wants him to sleep with Buffy again (re: sexy dream). There's a quick history for you. 

Also, the physicality of this scene does quite a bit of work all by itself in characterizing the volatility, the ferocity of this relationship. Angel faces away from her, she attacks him, he throws her to the ground. He grabs her shoulders, screams in her face. They cry. The Buffy/Angel relationship is hallmarked by its extremes, by its passion. Their love has been polarized due to its unremitting nature of life-or-death--either they're in mad, undying, pathological love, making out and dialoguing on the fate of their forever-bound souls, or they're mortal goddam enemies, slashing at each others' throats with giant swords and sending each other to hell dimensions. This is part of the sadness, the tragic rift that has formed between them and, again, that theme of, not just forgiveness, but of worth. Of weight, of relativity, of sacrifice. What is this love worth? Buffy and Angel can never be together, because when they are, the earth beneath them crumbles and the world literally ends, and when you're a hero, like they are, you just don't have a choice. The world has to come first. That's just sad.

One last thing: The ending here (it snows in Southern California, and everything seems to get better right away) is so firmly Whedonesque, because Joss Whedon, while he likes to toy with his characters and their relationships in terrible, destructive ways, is not afraid to allow these same characters some small, occasional pieces of relief, or consistency, in return for their constant sacrifice. Granted, these pieces are never whole, always bittersweet, and usually thwarted by tragedy or transience, but they are nuanced pieces of real world consistency. In Hush, Buffy and Riley are allowed to share a kiss in that silent, post-apocalyptic downtown scene before rushing off to their respective hero-work. Even in The Body, there's a small piece of amusement when Xander puts his fist through that wall, or when he gets a parking ticket outside of Willow's dorm. In Seeing Red, Willow and Tara get to lie in their pajamas in the sunlight before Tara is killed by a stray bullet in the end. In Amends, there's snow in Southern California, and everything seems okay for now, but really, we know it's not. Like I said, these pieces are not whole, but they're rooted in real, human consciousness, the firm, simple truths in life (a kiss, bloody knuckles, pajamas, sunlight, snow) that may not always offer happiness in its purest form, but that offer some consistency in an otherwise unpredictable existence. Terrible things happen, but in the end, it's the little things we cling to--Christmas dinner, the memory of laughter, coffee in the morning, dipping your toes in the swimming pool, clean bedsheets, rain. In the end, it's not the emptiness that defines us, or the voids or the things we've lost, but the small truths, the lily pads that keep us afloat, the things and the moments and the smells and sounds and actions and memories that get us from one day to the next.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is a show about these little things, and so is Christmas (Raindrops on roses, anyone? Whiskers on kittens?), so it makes sense that the only Christmas episode in the history of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" would succeed. Watch the show. Think about it. None if these characters are ever really happy, but that's not the point. Happiness is not the point. When is it ever really the point? Or when is it ever really attainable? The point is getting from today to tomorrow and to be surrounded by the only things we have left--the simple truths of everyday and the people that love us. 

UP NEXT: My truest loves, the Winchester boys.

Christmas TV Episode #6: "Seinfeld"

6.) "Seinfeld" 4.13 The Pick (Watch it now at Youtube.com)

The Pick is a perfect episode of television. I talked a bit about short stories in the "Six Feet Under" post, and I'll go ahead now and update those claims by saying that, well, there are quite a few episodes of "Seinfeld" that are as compact as complete as any great short story. This is one of them. I was talking to a couple friends last night at the Anthill Pub, and mind you, the three of us disagree on a lot of things (we're all writers and very obsessive), but we did agree on this: "Seinfeld," especially in the first half of its run, is more often than not pure genius, and the reason it was around for so long (and that similarly accelerated shows like "Arrested Development" were not) is that its incredibly literary methods are masked, not only by a novel premise at the coat tails of the family-friendly "Full House"-centric classic sitcom era (four friends living in New York--count how many times that's been duplicated--too many), but also by the writing. Each episode of "Seinfeld" is so tightly written, and the situations are so profoundly absurd, that the comedy works for almost anyone, and you don't need to understand or even try to understand how it achieves its unique comedic glory. But it is extra fun when you do try to understand. That's what I'm doing here.

The Pick is like a short story in that it really does follow a lot of basic rules (rules is a bad word, but I'll use it anyway) that short stories follow in order to achieve credibility and that sense of completion. Even though most short stories do not leave us with perfect, tidy endings complete with big, red bows, they do leave us with a sense of completion, a sense that the story has, in its way, achieved everything that it can, and the rest is all implied. Ron Carlson is a great writer who has published several books in addition to being the Director of the MFA program here at UC-Irvine. He's also a lovely man and an incredible teacher. Anyway, Carlson, in his book Ron Carlson Writes a Story and also in everyday teaching moments has a few terms and methods that he applies to the creation of a short story and how to, I think, sort of achieve this sense of completion. The Pick is amazing in how it actually follows quite a few of these methods and rules, and this is part of why it's so perfect, and why it really does feel like a short story.

According to Carlson (and he's right, yes, he's right), one of the first things a short story should do is build an inventory for itself: establish the people, places, and things of the story. This might seem simple to you, but it is not. I teach my beginning fiction students that, before they can really start to achieve any sort of success with a story, they need to establish the Who, What, and Where, because if you don't have a solid foundation to stand on, a world for its characters to walk around in, and things for them to manipulate, then you simply don't have a story. Realize how inventory works is different for every writer, but "Seinfeld" builds inventory in a very traditional way. Granted, this is an episode of television, so we've already got most of the inventory we need (we're in New York, we know our characters, and we have some understanding of the situations they always seem to be getting themselves into), so inventory, in this case, is going to be all about setting us up for the current outer story. Which things are going to be tapped twice in this episode? Here's how The Pick does it:

The episode begins with the standard Jerry-in-stand-up format. He tells a joke about a model, and since we've probably seen the show before (or even if we haven't), we know that a model, in some way, is going to be integral to tonight's episode. Then, we're in Jerry's apartment (a main setting where most of this episode will take place), and we're given a bit of exposition through George's pining over losing Susan. The dynamics are set right away. Elaine is yelling from the other room while Jerry reads the paper at the table and George is on the couch. So, even if you've never seen an episode of "Seinfeld" in your life, you begin to understand that these people are friends, they hang out in this apartment quite a bit, and they're pretty comfortable around each other. Comfortable enough to yell through the bathroom door at a conversation happening in the kitchen. The conversation itself characterizes these people and the dynamics between them, and it sets up several key pieces of inventory: Elaine's therapist, George's ex Susan, Tia the model Jerry met on an airplane, a Christmas card, and Elaine's new religious bf Fred. Kramer walks in and asks for some Double Crunch. You can bet that each and every one of these things is going to be tapped twice in this episode, which is another Carlson-ism: If you want to make something real, tap it twice. George goes to the therapist. He asks Susan to take him back. Elaine puts her picture on a Christmas card. We meet Fred at Elaine's office. Even the Double Crunch shows up again. We meet Jerry's model friend, Tia in the next scene, in which another major piece of important inventory is revealed: a new Calvin Klein perfume called Ocean. That'll be tapped again, too, when Elaine is wearing Ocean, and then when CK himself makes a cameo on the show and gives Kramer his own CK ad.

The key piece of inventory in The Pick is Elaine's nipple, which turns out to be exposed on the Christmas card she had made and sent out to hundreds of people she knows. The nipple is used several times, including in the therapist's office with George and later when Elaine tells Fred (in a particularly hilarious moment) that she can "see the nipple on [his] soul." In addition to all of this, the last piece of inventory introduced in this episode is the notorious (and eponymous) pick, which shows up first when Tia sees Jerry scratching his nose and mistakenly assumes that he's actually picking his nose in the car. Later that week, Jerry debates the meaning of "the pick" with George in his apartment after Tia won't return any of his calls. This moment is indicative of one of those things that makes "Seinfeld" tick--"Seinfled" is a show about very narrow misunderstandings: the meaning of "the pick" versus "the scratch" and Elaine's nipple, which is only just exposed, but if there ever was a show where the phrase only just has any sort of meaning at all, it is "Seinfeld." So the conversation in which Jerry and George decipher the meaning of "the pick" is a moment of particularly excellent "Seinfeld" logic. Anyway, the pick shows up again in full force once George does somehow convince Susan to take him back. Once he gets back to her apartment, however, he realizes that he doesn't really want her back at all and, yes, uses the pick to get out of the relationship.

Another thing tapped twice in this episode is the literary allusion: Jerry's Merchant of Venice allusion while defending "nose-pickers" everywhere ("If we pick, do we not bleed?") and then Elaine's previously mentioned allusion to The Scarlet Letter ("Because it is not me that is exposed, but you! For I have seen the nipple on your soul!") This is like the icing on the proverbial cake. In a show so fraught with literary significance itself, these high literary allusions are an ironic, not-quite-but-almost-metafictional wink at the reader who reads closely. And by reader, I mean member of the audience, but remember that here, on my little TV blog, television is literature. I like to read TV as much as I like to watch it.

Anyway, this episode is not magnificently Christmassy, the only real Christmas element being Elaine's Christmas card, but it's a GREAT episode nonetheless. That much, I've already pointed out, so I'll go now and ready myself for the next installment on this list. Hopefully, I'll do some other things, too, like eat, sleep, and do work.

UP NEXT: "Tree, nog, and roast beast" = How Whedonites do X-mas.

Review: "Supernatural" 5.10 Abandon All Hope

Since this is our last episode of "Supernatural" for a while (the show returns January 21st, 2010), I do want to take a real moment to talk about the show and to map out what's really working, what's not, and why season 5 worries me so damn much. There are very real, very nasty SPOILERS ahead, so unless you're up to date, I'd tread no further.

Like Mo Ryan said at the Chicago Tribune, the writers have really done a number on themselves this season, spinning a plot as intricate as it is epic, inventing a war that keeps getting bigger and bigger and a hoard of folklore that just keeps becoming more and more nuanced. I like all of this, but season five has not been impressing me so far, at least not as a worthy successor to season four, which was so perfectly paced, and it took its sweet time so well developing Sam and driving that wedge between him and Dean and really landing the emotional impact of that last scene when Dean is there and the Devil is about to escape from Hell. Season five of "Supernatural," so far, reminds me of season six "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," in which the writers had to yank themselves up by their bootstraps pretty hard after having just done a fabulous job with season five. Season five's writing was so good because of its pacing and its patience. The writers really succeeded by effectively pacing the longterm story line (Glory, Dawn as key) with minor to absolute tragedy (Riley leaves, Joyce dies) and with Buffy self-discovery (Fool for Love, Intervention), and then, they hurled the show's title character into a mystical energy lock, which killed her, and, essentially, left themselves with nothing to work with. "Buffy," however, has an excuse, since nobody was totally sure whether it would be back for a sixth season at all. When UPN picked it up, the writers took the wheels off, and the season got very bad (introduction of the Trio) before becoming quite good ("Once More with Feeling," the Buffy/Spike relationship), and then it got bad again toward the end and never really did get back to that point of sheer perfection in season five.

It's not that I feel the "Supernatural" writers are losing the reins, or that, any moment, we're going to take a nose dive into "Lost" territory--the land of loose ends and wavering focus--but Abandon All Hope, the tenth installment of "Supernatural"'s fifth (and possibly final) season, while emotionally wrought and loaded with wonderful moments of tension and farewell, sort of picks us up, sends us forward (via FABULOUS scene with Mark Sheppard as the demon Crowley), and then drops us right where we left off. Lucifer walks the Earth. Big Bad is on his way. The Colt is useless, and the boys are powerless once again. All of these things make sense (the powerlessness, I mean), but the ending feels cheapened and sort of rushed, mostly because of that convenient little turn of events in "The Real Ghostbusters," when Becky Rosen tells Sam that Lilith gave the Colt to a demon named Crowley, a fact she'd learned by reading  Chuck Edlund's Supernatural book series. The book series is an element of the show initially introduced, I think, because it's funny, and this show loves to get meta, and also because it fits into the lore, Chuck is a prophet of the Lord, Castiel tells us in "The Monster at the End of this Story," and I thought that, while the idea of a prophet sort of makes things easier for the boys and the writers (if we know what's coming, maybe we can stop it), the whole thing just worked because, well, it makes sense that, if Sam and Dean are going to be such heavy hitters in the last battle on Earth, there would be a prophet somewhere on Earth to guide them. It's then so distinctly "Supernatural" that the prophet would write a low-circulation, cult following series of books about the fate of Sam and Dean. Let's get meta! This is an instance where the mythology of "Supernatural" meets and plays a major role in the show's flare for the metafictional and the self-reflexive. That's part of what makes "Supernatural" so smart and so unique to any other series on television today.

But oh, that moment in "The Real Ghostbusters" when Becky just drops that expedient bit of knowledge right into Sam's hands--that pissed me off. Never before have the writers sort of plunked the show into such overt convenience and instant directionality. "Supernatural" is about many things, one of them being the quest, the odyssey, and its long bouts of maddening hopelessness, searches that span seasons and absolutely ZERO breaks for our Winchester boys (Why should they get breaks? They're Odysseus in this story.) do not in any way add credibility to the fact that a minor character used for comic relief just gave them a major break in their case--a break that would have made more sense had it been unloaded on them MONTHS ago, maybe even last season. I would have believed a season's worth of searching for Crowley any day, and that, too, would have made Mark Sheppard's appearance much less sudden and much more gratifying in Abandon All Hope. It did seem to me that the writers felt trapped by their own handy-work, and that this was their way of digging themselves out. It doesn't work, however, and it effectively defuses much of what this episode tries to achieve: hopelessness in the face of the Devil, who, it turns out, is one of the few things in the universe that the Colt cannot kill. Also, since so much of this series has been so dependent on the Colt and finding the Colt and everything that the Colt means, and how it is the boys' last real connection to their father (as it's one of the last things he touched before he died) and by extension any life they had prior to this whole Michael vs. Lucifer ordeal, I will believe that they are able to obtain the Colt with ease from a rogue demon named Crowley, I will not believe that they didn't spend a season searching for him first. I've always admired "Supernatural" for its pacing, and its unwillingness to let up on the hardships it's caused its main characters, but this season is in trouble. It shows.

I think this episode is successful in many ways, but I also think that parts of it squashed its own momentum, and the empty cliffhanger in the end only served to annoy me, because it felt exactly like the cliffhanger at the end of the season four finale, and we've made it this far, so naturally, I'm not worried. Or, well, I'm not worried in any way that feels new or complicated. "Supernatural" is at its best when it feeds on our more human, emotional fears--not fears that are sort of unmanageable, like that of the Angel of Death, or Lucifer walking on Earth. The best scene in Abandon All Hope is surely Dean's farewell to Jo, which is milestoned with a kiss and carried by its performances: Jensen Ackles and Alona Tal make the moment into terrible heartbreak. No words are exchanged between them, but the moment resonates, because we know what Dean has lost--everything, everybody close to him. His relationship with Jo, while one that never really came to any romantic fruition, is super important, because it is the only real relationship he's had with a woman for a long time. Also, they don't just sleep together during their last night on Earth (a great decision by the writers, might I add), and they haven't slept together before. Because Dean has continuously been characterized as a kind of skirt-chaser, this really works, and it makes me think back to that first time we met Jo in 2.2 "Everybody Loves a Clown," and how it was right after Sam and Dean's father died, and Jo asks Dean if she's ever going to see him again. Dean replies, "Normally, I'd be hitting on you so fast, it'd make your head spin. But, uh, these days...I don't know." Jo smiles. Tal is so perfect for this role, because she's beautiful and scrappy, blonde and waifish without ever seeming ethereal. She is not unattainable. She is a real girl, maybe the first real girl who's ever really approached Dean--let's not forget that she approaches him in this scene--and when she chalks up Dean's rejection to just "wrong place, wrong time," we know that whatever might have happened between them, probably is never going to happen, but their connection (again, carried by its stellar performances, makes me sad she's been killed off) is still not defused completely. The show never does forget about the attraction between Dean and Jo after that, but it's always done such a great job with hopelessness, and with this idea of "wrong place, wrong time," that while we're rooting for them, we know they'll never be together. And that's part of the incredible sadness of this moment in Abandon All Hope.

That's all I want to get at right now. This episode is great in many ways, but I feel it lacks the pacing and momentum and some of the resonance that episodes like "Lucifer Rising" and "The End" really nail.  I hope the writers figure out the true directionality now, not just of this season, but of Sam and Dean who, I think, have fallen a bit by the wayside in these past few episodes. Of course, they're present in the scene, but the tensions between them have been a little forgotten, and so has Dean's turmoil over having been to Hell, Sam's turmoil over having betrayed his brother, and the ever present loneliness factor. They have nobody to love them, besides Bobby, of course, and each other, and now with Ellen and Jo gone for good, the women in their lives have all been lost. They've all died terrible deaths, and I hope that the show addresses this, because I think it's very important.

Christmas TV Episode #7: "The Office"

4.) "The Office" 3.10 A Benihana Christmas (Watch it now.)

This episode is crucial to several of the character dynamics in "The Office" (which are all particularly well-done, bravo), and how these dynamics are going to play out over the coming seasons. The dynamics I'm speaking of in particular here are those between Jim and Pam and Jim and Michael. In this episode, we see the first of a long, escalating line of glimmers that sort of clue us in on the fact that Jim is, indeed, still in love with Pam, and that the possibility of a real relationship between them has not been diffused in any way. Jim is dating Karen at this point, but the rebound theme in this episode (Michael, having just been dumped by Carol, experiences his first rebound relationship after a silly, well-rendered lunch at Benihana), finally introduces the idea that Karen may, in fact, be just that--a rebound--and the reality of their relationship takes a turn. Karen is not a placeholder, because their relationship is given quite a bit of expository weight (the fact that they both buy each other the same Christmas present says quite a bit all by itself), and while maybe we're not rooting for this relationship to work out, we certainly believe that it exists outside walls of Dunder Mifflin. It becomes clear, however, or the writing in A Benihana Christmas sort of makes it clear, that Karen is not the "girl in question." Karen is the rebound, because like Jim says: a rebound "can be a really fun distraction, but when it's over, you're left thinking about the girl you really like, the one who broke your heart." Jim's expression at this point, and the moment that follows, in which the camera kind of just stays on him and Michael sitting on that couch, is really telling of some complicated, internal realization, in which Jim self-reflects on the advice he's just given Michael, and is not surprised, but concerned, with what he's just unleashed.

In this episode, Pam's Christmas gift to Jim is an elaborate prank on Dwight that she's been working on for months, but Jim won't accept the gift at first, on the grounds that he's just gotten a promotion and shouldn't participate in this type of tomfoolery anymore. Pam is hurt, and so when she befriends Karen after that, I'm not quite sure if she's doing it totally out of compassion or a desire to make Karen feel welcome in the office. It seems to me that at least part of her is forming an alliance with Karen to make Jim feel uncomfortable. Even if she doesn't know this at the time, the agenda sort of lurks beneath the surface, adding even more tension to an already strained relationship. When Jim does end up accepting Pam's Christmas present in the end, the moment is so nonchalant that we don't really realize what this means. He's not given up on Karen, certainly not, but he has acknowledged something about himself that maybe he wasn't ready to before, something he hasn't acknowledged since leaving for Australia and transferring to the Stamford branch: he wants Pam in his life, and he liked his life better when she was in it.

Back to that scene on the couch with Jim and Michael, which is, I think, one of the subtler, more nuanced exchanges we've seen between these two particular characters--I think this scene is so great in that it really foreshadows a lot of what we're actually seeing on current episodes of "The Office." Now, Jim has been promoted to Branch Co-Manager and is technically on the same pay scale and same level as Michael Scott. Their relationship now is so interesting, because they're both isolated from the employees, and they both sort of get the same shit that Jim spent four seasons just giving to Michael. This new dynamic really changes the show, because Jim is off-kilter. He's not used to being the outcast, and Michael, who has this awed admiration for Jim (because Jim is laid back, he has a wife and a baby on the way, and he's got a great wardrobe and great hair) is now conflicted over having to share his boss responsibilities, because, I think, he enjoys the time they get to spend together sharing them. Anyway, this current tension in the Jim-Michael relationship is foreshadowed and set up nicely when they have this little moment on the couch in which Jim explains the rebound relationship to Michael, and internally, they're both sort of struggling with the same thing (on WAY different levels, mind you), so this connection is very real and very present in the scene.

A Benihana Christmas, I think, is one of the best episodes of "The Office," simply because it really does a nice job juggling all of these complicated relationship dynamics with the outer story of rival Christmas parties and a guys lunch at what Michael refers to as "Asian Hooters." Is this episode Christmassy? Yes! Right from its opening scene, in which Dwight brings in a Christmas miracle to gut and prepare for the office as a snack.

UP NEXT: "I'm not sure, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I see...a nipple."

It's Supernatural Thursday! You know what that means...

...It means an hour spent with the most nuanced siblings on television, Sam and Dean Winchester. It means Jensen and Jared, angels and demons, apocalypse and fan girl squeals. This is "Supernatural"'s last episode of the year. It'll be back after winter hiatus at some point in January, so you've got plenty of time if you have some catching up to do. Or, if you want to start watching, which you should. It's in it's fifth season right now, and those of you who marathoned it  like I did (or are marathoning right now) know that it just keeps getting better and better. "Supernatural" is, perhaps, the most underrated show on television, if not for its instinctual, organic take on familial relationships, then for its fabulous pacing, inventive story lines (which are hard to come by, these days, in the fantasy genre), and an indescribably addictive quality that, until you watch every episode from the pilot through tonight's, will not let you rest until it's satiated. "Supernatural" will suck you in for hours at a time and then spit you back into your own reality, a little dazed, and that reality will feel increasingly dull and fabulously mundane. Then, however, in the process of your endless online searches for fan sites and blooper reels and off-camera images, and your incessant Winchester-centric tweeting, you learn that "Supernatural" fans, next to the Whedonites, are as voracious, as dedicated and unflinching as they come, and reality gets a little more exciting, because you realize you're not alone in your obsession and that, really, there's not a whole lot greater than being part of a fandom like this one.

Minor tangent on fandoms: I get so irritated with Twilighters, because they think they're so great. Well, guess what. I read the Twilight Saga, and I saw the movie, and I'm going to go see "New Moon," and yeah, I think Edward Cullen is a hottie, but there's something superficial about Twilight-mania. Don't you agree? Don't you sort of feel like, at any moment, this whole damn thing could just dissolve into the ether of pop culture phenomenon? Or get replaced by something else? Isn't that generally what happens when a fandom surrounds the novelty or the idea of a book or movie or television show rather than the actual merit of said production? The idea of Twilight and its appeal to young women is fairly simple to synthesize. Harry Potter went away, and those books were great, and then Stephenie Meyer came along and wrote a love story about a vampire,
and everybody freaked out. It doesn't matter that I (and many other like-minded women) find the subject matter of the Twilight saga to be incredibly sexual and far too mature for any wandering twelve-year-old girl. It doesn't matter that Bella Swan is a weak role model for young women, and no young woman should look up to her at all. It matters that this is something that was new, and the timing with Harry Potter, and the current revamping of vampires (re: "True Blood"), plus it's a love story, and then the movie, and Robert Pattinson, and everything collided and made Twilight mania. But, to be frank, Twilight sucks. Especially in comparison to Harry Potter. Stephenie Meyer may be able to write obsession, but she's got nothing on J.K. Rowling, who can write actual world-centric fiction. Rowling, while maybe not as gifted with prose or syntactic style, really knows how to build a world. She's kind of a genius in that way, I think, and the fandom surrounding Harry Potter, while it has lost some of its initial fervor, still remains intact. It's something that's become as much a part of our consciousness as getting on the bus in the morning and going to work. It's not a thing that I imagine will dissipate any time soon or ever, because it's brilliant. Because the books will be printed and reprinted, and we'll give them to our children to read, and they'll give them to their children, and call me crazy, but I just can't imagine for the life of me handing "Twilight" to my hypothetical daughter or son, who I would like to grow up respecting his or herself and women in general. Okay, that was a big tangent, back to "Supernatural."

ALL OF THAT SAID, the "Supernatural" fandom is so much fun to be a part of. It's actually quite unique, as far as fandoms go, and it's rooted in more than just the excitement of a moment or the next big thing. This show is actually good. Plus, the boys, Jensen and Jared, are very active with their following, holding multiple Supernatural-cons across the country, and really participating in the thing that keeps their show on the air: its fandom. It also pays a ton of respect to its fans by way of the show itself, which loves to get meta on our asses and refer to the fact that Sam and Dean are sort of a spectacle, and people love them, and the writers and actors and producers and creator Eric Kripke want to thank us for it (see episode 3.18 'The Monster at the End of this book" to get an idea of what I'm talking about, or the more recent episode "The Real Ghostbusters"). The boys are also best friends in real life, and that dynamic really shows in scene. Plus, the writers seem to know exactly what they're doing when they write these boys. There's so much authority, and the story memory is spot on (meaning: past dynamics and situations, instead of falling by the wayside, get absorbed into the consciousness of the show--this is what all great TV does--it's why "Mad Men" is so good). Plus, I say it all the time, and I'll say it again: There's nothing harder to write than siblings, and when you get them and they're done this well, it's writing (and acting) to marvel at, to stew in, to really love with your whole heart. It's not the greatest show on television by any stretch of the imagination (that's hard to do these days, because there sure is a lot of great TV), but it is great. And if you're looking for your latest obsession, look no further.

Oh, and if you are a "Supernatural" freak, like me, today's hash tags on Twitter are #Supernatural and #FindtheColt. Once per tweet, or else we'll get spammed. I think it's hilarious that the Supernatural following is so huge that Twitter has disabled #Supernatural from trending. Fun fact.

Christmas TV Episode #8: "Six Feet Under"

8.) "Six Feet Under" 1.1 Pilot (Watch it now.)

"Six Feet Under" is a show to be watched for its pacing and its performances. If the short story in fiction were to be translated into a visual medium, I don't think we'd get a cinematic vignette or a short film, we'd get the "Six Feet Under" pilot, which fits a lesser show's entire first season's worth of family dynamics and character excavation into about sixty minutes, has a beginning, a middle and an end, and somehow manages to feel complete in the process. This pilot is a singular thing. Very few pilots are this good. It effectively sets up its major conflicts and themes, not through plot points or expositional jibber-jabber, but by characterizing its players (the Fishers), developing a setting (Pasadena, Fisher & Sons Funeral Home), and then allowing those characters to move through that setting, each equipped with their own agendas and their own internal trepidations, and they keep bumping into each other in the worst kinds of ways. The ways families do. Dynamics are born and there you have them: The Fishers.

This pilot chronicles the death and funeral arrangements of patriarch Nathaniel Fisher, Sr., who is killed in a car accident at the beginning of the episode. It's Christmas Eve, and each of our characters, still unaware of the accident, are engaging in their very own patterns of telling behavior: Claire is smoking crystal meth with some bad characters in a yellow apartment, Nate is banging a woman he just met in a closet at the airport, David is in charge of that evening's viewing downstairs in the funeral parlor, and Ruth is in the kitchen cooking a pot roast. Here, the writers waste no time. We get concrete characterization right away. This is the type of behavior we're going to be experiencing all season long. These are the people we're dealing with. Each member of the family then has his or her own reaction to the news of their father's death. I won't give them away, but I will say that Frances Conroy's performance (as the mother, Ruth Fisher), in particular, will hurt you in places you didn't know you had.

Alan Ball (writer/creator/director) then takes us through this world, building credibility through the experiences of each character and how they're coping in the immediate aftermath of Nathaniel's death. Claire, still possibly tripping on Crystal, can no longer tell if she's just high or having a meltdown. Nate, who had initially come home from Seattle just for Christmas, is beginning to understand that he might not be leaving as soon as he'd hoped, and to reevaluate the reason he didn't go into the family business in the first place. Michael C. Hall gives a very powerful, controlled turn as David Fisher, a closeted homosexual and bonafide control freak who's trying to hold himself together, to hold the family together and the funeral home, and he's failing. Ruth comes clean about an affair she'd been having for years prior to Nathaniel's death and calls herself a whore while weeping into Nate's suit coat at the viewing (or wake). Meanwhile, Nathaniel, Sr. haunts each of them, and the show comes to life, not just as a novel take on the modern family and morticians, but as pure magical realism--a world where ghosts walk and talk and give us advice, and where it's as mundane to see your dead father smoking a cigarette on the hood of a hearse as it is to see a dog taking a shit on the sidewalk.

The show abandons the whole commercial/advertising angle after this episode, I think for the better, and you'll know what I'm talking about if you watch. Still, "Six Feet Under" continues and maintains that very quirky, fantastical edge throughout its five season run, an edge that sets it apart from most contemporary serialized dramas. "Six Feet Under" can be as morose as it is whimsical, and it tackles some pretty heavy themes like drug use, fatal illness, homosexuality and religion, depression, abortion, infidelity, psychological disorders, addiction, and, of course, death. Sometimes, the things we're seeing on the screen, we're not so sure we should be seeing, but that discomfort is part of the tension. I think the pilot, which takes place at Christmas and is vaguely Christmas-themed (though we're still stuck in Southern California), is, perhaps, the greatest episode of "Six Feet Under." There are some great ones, but this one, I think, just wins.

UP NEXT: "Hey! I would like a nice slice of Christmas Pam. Side of candy Pams. And perhaps some Pam chops. With mint..."

Dr. Cameron is out. Epic fail for "House, M.D."

I've loved "House" for a very long time, and I've always been sort of impressed by the writers, and their ability to achieve balance between formula and a more serialized format, but last night was lost on me, and I'll tell you why.

"House" lost a little bit of credibility for me last year when Kutner was written off the show via suicide. This concerned me. Not only was it completely unearned (based on Kutner's character and the dynamics of the season), but also completely unnecessary. I know they wanted to make it clear that he was never coming back, but was suicide really the only way? It was jarring and sort of obscene, and now, Kutner's been wiped completely from the consciousness of the show, which makes it even more jarring and obscene. Last season then fell flat, relying on many of the show's old tricks (head games and hallucinations) while simultaneously claiming that these things were somehow new or innovative. We've already seen TONS of alternate-reality-hallucinatory "House," and I think these head-trip episodes are largely the weakest in terms of both performance and credibility. The exceptions, of course, are the season four finales Houses Head and Wilson's Heart, which, I think, are quite well done.

Anyway, my favorite "House" episodes of all time are Euphoria Parts I and II, when Foreman becomes deathly ill (a la amoeba in the brain) and has to go into quarantine. Epps's performance breaks my damn heart, and this is maybe the first time we see House experience any real fear over losing somebody close to him. The best episodes in "House" are the ones that hurt our protagonist in places he can't numb with Vicodin, and they put him in situations that he can't solve by discussing differential diagnoses with the team. Remember, House is Sherlock Holmes. He's a detective, but he's broken and addicted, and so much loss has outfitted him in a seemingly impenetrable suit of emotional armor. The Euphoria episodes expose House's vulnerability far more adroitly than any of these post-House-flies-over-the-cuckoo's-nest episodes, in which the show seemingly forgets about all the baggage House's relationships with his team, Wilson, and, especially with Cuddy, have been lugging around for five seasons, and we're supposed to believe that he's somehow changed, or that the relationships around him have in any way changed when they all look the same to me. I'm increasingly annoyed by the writers' inability to build on the relationships between House and Wilson, and especially House and Cuddy, relationships that are frequently tapped but almost always on the same note. Cuddy STILL thinks House is unreliable, and she's always so surprisingly practical and cool, and she never gives in for a second to her unavoidable attraction to him, an attraction that, I think, is incredibly complicated, and I want more. I don't want her to be this typed professional single mom who's looking for stability and security, because only the 's' word I'm concerned with is SEX, and why she and House aren't having it, or why they haven't had it already. When we thought House and Cuddy slept together last season, I think the tension really changed, and things became a lot more interesting. Then, when we found out that it had all been a dream, this tension became annoyance, and House and Cuddy lost their nuance--it became all about that on-again-off-again crap that "Bones" will simply NOT LET GO, and it's just not interesting. There's no momentum anymore, and after last night's episode, we're back to square one in almost every possible way. Cuddy is untouchable, the old team is back, Chase is tortured, and House is in charge. What should we expect now that the writers have effectively diffused almost all of the tension they've spent five seasons trying to build?

I feel almost like House has been missing from this season's consciousness, as the writers have sort of chosen to focus on Chase and Cameron's failing marriage instead (yawn-fest, don't care) and Chase's ruddy inner-turmoil over killing that bad guy. I've always loved the Chase character and found him to be the most dynamic of all the team members (especially now that Thirteen and Taub are back), but I've never understood his relationship with Cameron, or why they got married, because, well, I've never understood her. She's never really been excavated, and for a long time up until this season, was hardly ever around anymore. I sort of forgot about her and all of her underdeveloped moral qualms from the earlier seasons, and then all of a sudden, last night, there she is BERATING House for being this evil, broken person who made Chase into an evil broken person, and I don't know if I'm supposed to be upset with her for saying these things or nodding in agreement, because none of it makes any sense.

Why is she suddenly leaving NOW? Why not just write her off at the end of last season, have her leave Chase at the alter, and then--BAM--Chase has a reason for the moral fuck-ups he's committing. The Cameron character has always been sort of weak and inconsistent. We never got to know her at all. When she told House that she'd used to be in love with him, I thought, "Why didn't we know this sooner? Why is this all happening now, so late, when there's no resonance anymore and the impact of the moment is lost?" I would have believed her exit MORE had she just disappeared and never come back, because that monologue was just overwrought and out of touch, and it operates on the assumption that we care about Cameron at all, when the writers have spent five seasons neglecting to develop her or her backstory beyond the whole "I fix needy guys" thing. Chase and Foreman have both experienced bouts of intense characterization and exposition, but not really Cameron. All we know about her is that she had a husband once, and the only reason she married him was because he was dying, and then he died, and now she's got a "fixer-upper" complex. Is that why she married Chase? What did she see in him that needed fixing? I would have liked to learn that, to see that in action. Maybe that would have lent some credibility to her exit, because if we know that her initial intentions with Chase were to fix him, just like they sort of were when she was supposedly in love with House, then she's actually leaving because she knows she can't fix him--not after this terrible thing he has done, and she can't handle that, so she leaves. Make sense? I don't know. I think I'm rambling at this point.

Anyway, I have to call it quits on this, or my entire afternoon will be lost analyzing "House, MD." I'm just so disappointed with last night's episode, and with the weird directionality taking place this season. I just hope they get rid of You're-a-cop-Kenny from "Garden State" and excavate the characters they've already got. Because I don't care for new faces at this point. I want to know more about what and who is already there.

Christmas TV Episode #9: "Arrested Development"

9.) "Arrested Development" 1.7 In God We Trust  (Watch it now.)


Christmas in Orange County--there's a lovely thought. I never really understood quite what that meant until, oh, about this time last year, when suddenly, Christmas decorations became just painfully ironic, these dusty flags on lamp posts advertising "Comfort and Joy!" and "Holiday Cheer!" while the sun blazes down and I'm sweating on my way home from campus. My car is disgustingly dirty, because we haven't had any real rainfall since May, and listening to Christmas music while anywhere but locked in my room with the blinds drawn just seems wrong, like I'm wearing snow boots in the desert or a bikini in the Himalayas. The people here crack me up, too, especially around the holidays. "Doesn't it feel like Christmas?" one friendly (though misguided) barista posed to me the other day. I didn't even know she was talking to me, but she was. I said, "No, why?" She told me that the weather made it feel like Christmas. I thought about slapping her but laughed politely instead, and then the girl behind me ordered an iced Chai latte because it was seventy-four degrees out. Yeah, Christmas weather. That's a hilarious joke. Seriously.

When you're from Wisconsin like me, or anywhere like it, you know the true meaning of cold. You know what it's like when your face goes numb on the way from the car to the front door, or when snow gets in your shoes and drenches your toes, and then they hurt for an hour even after you've gone inside. You know what it's like to drive to work in a snow storm, watch three cars spin out or drive slowly into the ditch and then wonder if that will be you in five minutes. The days feel like hell, until about April. Then, they still feel like hell until July, and if you're really unlucky (which, usually, we are), things never really get better, and then there's snow again before there ever really was sun. The whole thing makes Christmas in Orange County seem as mundane and predictable as a knock-knock joke. Everybody's got the same frame of mind (and the same wardrobe) as they did six months ago on the Fourth of July. You sort of wonder what's the point, and then you sort of feel a little bit bad for them, because will they ever know true Christmas cheer? Well, no, or it's a different kind of Christmas cheer. I seem to find that it's cheerful all year 'round here in SoCal (which is maddening, I tell you, but okay), and so do they need Christmas cheer in Orange County? Not really, because they've got constant sunshine. Who needs nog when there's sunshine?

See, in the Midwest, we need Christmas cheer. We need big, jolly glasses of eggnog and giant frosted cookies and fur boots and wool scarves--TO KEEP US WARM. TO KEEP US SANE. Go to Racine, WI, you'll see those same flags on the lamp posts, and they'll provide a considerable amount of holiday cheer, not just a minor change in the scenery. The Christmas spirit, in Wisconsin, is not about red and green, and it's not just about Santa displays at Bloomingdale's (I'm pretty sure we don't even have one of those). It's about plucking us out of our weather-related misery for a month before dropping us flat on our asses again for January drear. So I don't want to hear that it feels like Christmas when it's seventy-four and sunny. But then again, this is a SoCal thing (I'm not condescending--they've got great weather. Why should they care about our suffering?), and this type of SoCal mentality is EXACTLY what "Arrested Development" does best.

In this episode, we learn that Tobias is a never-nude. We watch Michael and Lindsay get drunk together in the middle of the afternoon (in one of the funnier drunk montages I've seen on TV). We get to see what the Living Classics pageant is all about in Orange County (it's all about grumpy rich people in summer formalwear getting angry over denim cut-offs and a missing God in the Michelangelo piece). George Michael wears a muscle suit under his clothes to impress Maeby. Maeby packs a suitcase and buys a ticket to Portugal in a desperate attempt to get attention from her flake, self-absorbed parents. There's a whole lot in this episode, actually. It's a pretty good summation of what "Arrested Development" is. It's a sitcom, sort of, that screws with us. It's sort of like "How I Met Your Mother"'s slightly more innovative, less successful big sister, in its propensity for inside jokes, running jokes, delicate word play (Bob Loblaw's Law Blog, for starters), and an insightful voiceover from a TV has-been. Like "How I Met Your Mother," "Arrested Development" places quite a bit of trust in the audience. It asks us to pay very close attention to what's going on, to make intricate connections between episodes and situations, to locate the family dynamics ourselves, and to notice background jokes that are sort of happening all the time, or that the writers will touch on for just a second before moving on. This show in no way calls attention to any of these things. It trusts us to notice them and put them together, and therein lies the hilarity. It's a show for people who like to participate in their television, people like me, who don't just watch, but who see TV as a sort of conversation in which things are revealed and withheld at specific moments, and then it's my job to figure out why.

This episode is not so Christmassy. There are some decorations, however, in the model home, and that's EXACTLY what I'm talking about when I talk about a SoCal Christmas mentality. Christmas decorations make Christmas! Red tinsel! Voi la! You've got Christmas! There's no real sense of nostalgia for what Christmas time actually means in the home. When I think of Christmas, I think of cold nights and mittens, fireplaces all glowy, hot cocoa with candy cane stirring sticks, footprints in the snow, heavy scarves, and the warmth that's created by lights on the tree, by garland, by baking smells and cookies fresh out of the oven. Not JUST the decorations and objects of Christmas, the physical warmth that these things create. "Arrested Development" really captures that idea of the mundane Southern California Christmas. It's just like in "Studio 60," when Matt Albie is running around trying to find fake snow (They end up shaving coconuts--go figure), and grudgingly trying get everybody into the Christmas spirit, and there's some commentary about how Christmas isn't real in LA. That's exactly what I'm talking about! There's no weather. Weather is the simplest form of conflict. Well, that and money and a ticking clock. But without weather, and with millions of dollars and all the time in the world, there's no real need for the warmth generated by mistletoe and shiny wrapping paper. I don't know whether they've got it great or got it bad here in Southern California. I just know that I miss Christmas time in Wisconsin, and that In God We Trust is a GREAT Christmas episode--precisely because it doesn't rely on snow and chestnuts crackling over the fire. It's funny, because it sort of ignores Christmas, but it still uses the decorations and, of course, there's family, so there's this fantastic irony, and that's the humor.


UP NEXT: More Southern California Christmas bliss. Pasadena, to be exact. Also, there's a funeral home. Complications!

Christmas TV Episode #10: "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip"

10.) "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" 1.11 The Christmas Show (Watch it now.)

Is it really any wonder that Aaron Sorkin can write Christmas? Sorkin's work is known mostly for its fast-talking characters--the kinds with tortured, morally conscious psyches, and most people can identify Sorkin's work based on its particular propensity for smooth tracking shots down long hallways, during which these tortured souls have work-related conversations or trade advice about women. These things are all true. What Sorkin should be known for, however, is his ability to localize tragedy or romance or unity or Christmas time--things that are largely sentimentalized by lesser writers and that can become easily overwrought or drenched in schmultz when in the wrong hands--and to lend them credibility in the moment, keeping things honest while still retaining a good amount of gravity.

In The Christmas Show, Sorkin meditates on quite a few of his usual themes (off-kilter romance, benevolence, David vs. Goliath, there are more). It also talks a little shop. Like "The West Wing," "Studio 60" is about a work place. Personal dramas are rampant, but the premise (a show within a show) is never lost and is always reliable for pressurization. This episode is good. The stuff about the FCC fining the fictional NBS $325,000 because a marine uttered the word "fuck" on live TV after almost being blown up by a stray grenade is great, and it's classic Sorkin consciousness. We know who we're rooting for: the underdogs. This type of thing is always running vehement on "The West Wing." There is also a love triangle afoot in The Christmas Show, as well as an unexpected, off-stage kiss that lends itself to a pretty sweet, believable moment in which Harriet mistakenly calls herself "Matt" on live TV. Also there's a love confession. Like I said, the episode itself, as just any old episode, it's pretty fantastic, well-balanced and all, but it becomes great, it becomes a great Christmas episode, during its final scene.

So, Danny clears four minutes in the middle of the live broadcast of Studio 60 (the show within the show) to showcase a group of brass musicians whose homes were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. The segment is called simply "The City of New Orleans," and as the band plays (a heartbreaking rendition of O Holy Night), a slide show behind them displays photos of New Orleans in its post-disaster desuetude. It is a chilling, touching, truly terrifying scene, and the real gravity of the moment lies in the nature of its conception. You see, salaried musicians on NBS shows like Studio 60 and The Tonight Show called in sick earlier in the week so that these musicians, initially referred to as "subs," could fill in and be paid for their time. Danny gives them a spot on the show to get them union memberships and a chance at real employment. The moment in which he decides to do this is internal. Still, it's written well enough so that we don't know that this last scene is coming, but when it does, we're not entirely surprised.

That final scene in The Christmas Show is, essentially, triumphant in its recognition of Katrina as, not a media spectacle or the channel you change when you get home from work or a vessel through which to elicit a romanticized, sentimental reaction from an audience, but as a tragedy, something that affected real lives--so many real lives--and something that should be addressed honestly, not only in the media, but in entertainment and art, and in our homes as well. Here is the morally and socially conscious Aaron Sorkin that we met a long time ago. Here is the man who wrote the special episode Isaac and Ishmael for "The West Wing" season 3, an episode that breaks continuity, and that is dedicated entirely to educating the public on and paying tribute to those directly affected by the September 11th terrorist attacks. Really, Aaron Sorkin is a pretty special writer. There's nobody like him. Nobody.



UP NEXT: What starts with a B and rhymes with uncouth?...

The Countdown: Fantastic Television for Christmas

I figure there's no better way to kick off my TV blogging experience than with a LIST. I like lists. I'll try to lay off the lists, but right now, here's a LIST. Here's a LIST of my favorite, fan favorite, and fantastic TV Christmas specials. Christmas time is approaching, and whether you like it or not, that means ironic weather-related Christmas displays in the SoCal malls, the revulsion yet (strange) appeal of the eggnog latte at Starbucks, credit card debt, wrapping paper, scotch tape, maniac shoppers at the super market, and, best of all, CHRISTMAS THEMED TV.

I will try to post one episode every day for the next ten days. Anyone who enjoys Christmas episodes will enjoy the episodes on this list, I'm sure. I'll try to contextualize (thought not too much), as well as include a link to where you might watch each episode online, so that, one day, in a fit of holiday cheer, if you feel like watching some good TV (Christmas-style), you've got some go-to glory. Realize that my authority on the matter is mostly bullshit. I'm just a girl who truly loves TV and who believes in its power as an art form.

These will mostly be contemporary, circa the past ten years, and they're all part of a series that is/was ongoing. That means: no made-for-TV movies or mini-series type deals, so none of those guilty pleasure romcoms they air all December long on ABC Family (ie: girl gets trapped in snow globe, falls in love with snow globe boy). That also means no "Charlie Brown Christmas" or the Stephen Colbert special or those little stop animation movies from the 1960s. Even though they're awesome. I want to write about serialized TV. Also, these are not necessarily obscure, but I've chosen some episodes that, I think, may be unexpected. Anyway, I implore you to tell me your favorites, especially if they're not on this list. Because like I said, I love TV, and I'm always looking for more to love.

Letter: Here's the sitch. (Thanks, Joss.)

I went away for a while--I've been here in Irvine, CA, and in the past year or so since I last posted on this thing, I've been working on my MFA in Creative Writing, writing stories about alien abductions and Christmas ghosts, and even attempting my first novel (painful, fabulous, terrifying ordeal). I've been making lots of new friends (who will all be lauded, famous writers someday) and, oh yes, watching lots of TV.

The Scooby Gang, the Winchester boys, Bartlett for America, Angel Investigations, our friends at Capeside High, Agents Mulder and Scully, the Dharma Initiative, the Dillon Panthers, the Ad men at Sterling Cooper, Sookie and Bill, Ted Mosby & co., Dunder Mifflin, TGS, those crazy kids at the Dollhouse, McKinley High School in Lima, OH, the Diagnostics team at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, FBI: Fringe Division, Bones and Booth (will they or won't they?), those proud soldiers aboard the Galactica, and all the millions more whose fictional lives I've indulged in and obsessed over probably far too much and for far too long--THANK YOU.

When I moved out here to California, 2000 miles away from home, I started to realize that my life, as blessed as it is in so many ways, will never be a thing of formula or continuity. At least not for a very long time. Words are fickle and unfriendly, and I've sort of given my life to them. I don't think I'll ever really get it back, but that's okay. Anyway, I left home to pursue my dream of becoming a writer, and I started looking for all those things that went away the minute I moved into my semi-drab, furnished apartment in this parking lot civilization called Orange County: continuity, history, something I could go back to again and again, familiar faces and locales, friends and family, and I found television. I fell in love. I couldn't get enough, and I still can't. I watch TV like I read books--hard and with purpose. I analyze everything from the anti-heroes of "Mad Men" to the sibling dynamics in "Supernatural," and I never get bored of it. Ever. I've always liked TV, yes, but this year, it's become a passion, and it was only a matter of time before I started writing about it. Because, well, that's what I do.

I used to write film reviews for the Daily Cardinal, THE student-run newspaper at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (That's right, Badger Herald. You do not count.) I even had my own column for a while. That was one of the most gratifying experiences of my life. I learned so much about film and writing at the Cardinal that I cannot begin to thank the editors and fellow writers/obsessors who I worked with at the Arts Desk and who encouraged me for the better part of three years (Will, Kevin, Dan, Joe, Eunice: You all rock). I've done a lot of writing since then. Fiction, of course, sort of rules my life right now, but I did continue to post film reviews and short essays on this blog up until about August of last year. I have another blog, too, where I posted maybe two essays on literature and Buffy the Vampire Slayer before getting busy and sort of giving up, and the other day, I wrote a ten-page essay FOR FUN on point of view and the merit of "How I Met Your Mother." Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I love writing about this stuff. I love analyzing television and treating it like art. Because it IS art. Especially now. I don't know if you've noticed, but television is exceptionally good right now. "Mad Men," "Battlestar Galactica," "Friday Night Lights"--these shows are literature. They're playing with us, and they're playing with the way that television works. Remember the meta-fictional, self-reflexive charm that accelerated WB shows such as "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dawson's Creek" sort of pioneered in the late nineties and early 00s? Well, that charm has been refined, distilled, and concentrated with shows like "Supernatural" and "How I Met Your Mother." This is just one example. I could go on forever right now. But that's what the blog is for. So that I don't. Well, at least not all at once.

Anyway, once I get this thing going (over Christmas break I hope to put it in full swing), I'll be writing about the literary side of television. There will be some other stuff, too (like random fandom), but mostly, I want this to be a place where my friends and followers who love TV can read about it in the capacity that it is, in fact, literature. It's not low brow, and it's not a distraction. Well, not the shows I like to write about anyway. So, there's more to come, but for now, I'll leave you with this quote from one of the greatest, most influential television heroes of the last twenty years: Homer Simpson.

"Television!  Teacher, mother, secret lover."

Ain't it the truth?
-T