Signing off. Time to change the channel.

See you over here.

A New Family Video...

More G-TV... summer edition this time. Much love to N for slaving over Final Cut for hours to make this episode.

It wasn't the last time I saw him on TV...

...but it was, perhaps, one of the most memorable. I was in a hotel room in Boston and desperate to go to bed, but the Indiana precincts were not sending in their vote totals in a timely way. Still, when Tim came on and announced, "We now know the nominee," I went to sleep with a smile on my face, certain that Tim wouldn't say it with such confidence if it weren't true. Rest in Peace. I'll miss you -- especially as I watch the race from here to November. I might even cheer for the Bills for you, just once . . .

From Here It Gets Happier, Right?

So there have been two new episodes of Army Wives this season and both have caused my cheeks to be covered in tears from the cold open through the final credits. At the end of last season there was a bombing in the local bar and we eventually learned over the course of that first episode this season that Amanda Holden had died. She was the eighteen-year-old daughter of Claudia Joy Holden -- the general's wife. And now she's gone. And watching that sort of grief grabs me some place down way too deep. Tonight, I even thought about turning the TV off. Here's why: I cannot think of a single thing in the world that I fear more than losing my child. And watching that on TV is really hard.

With Canterbury's Law, the grief began with the first episode of the show and turned me off immediately. With Army Wives, on the other hand, I already care about the characters and so I am compelled to keep watching. Just promise me, please, that it gets a little happier from here on out.

From the "How'd I Miss This?" File: Weeds

Sometimes, friends, this blog really is just about tv.

This weekend's new discovery: Weeds. This show is fantastic. It is sharp, witty, and biting. Mary Louise Parker is masterful (but, then again, she always has been). And the show is both dark and hilarious. On the surface, it is a satire about life in suburbia. But it is not mere farce. It is also a family drama with well developed characters that are worth caring about. Think American Beauty meets Brothers & Sisters with a little of the irreverent silliness of Ugly Betty thrown in for good measure.

The answer to the question "how'd I miss this?" is actually fairly obvious. Weeds is on Showtime. I do not subscribe to Showtime (although I'm thinking I may need to start!). But the beauty of watching tv made for a premium movie channel is immediately obvious from the first episode of season 1 of Weeds. There is no concern for the FCC here. The language is raunchy (and, therefore, sounds real), the sex is graphic, and the drugs are on full display. But the show also tackles every other sacred cow left on TV -- from teenagers having abortions to fifth graders wacking off and uncles finding ways to avoid being sent to Iraq by enrolling in religious seminary. (Not to mention the drugs themselves... could you really have a show where the hero is a pot-dealing-soccer-mom on NBC? Um... no.) And it works. It just works.

It's late and I've watched two seasons of Weeds on DVD in the past three days, so I can't explain it any better than that.

Simply put, you need to drive to the video store, or put this show on your Netflix cue, or download it from Itunes. Now.

Next week (June 3) you can add season 3 to your list. And in the middle of June, season 4 premieres on Showtime.

Derek & Meredith (or, A Meditation on Timing)

It's hardly a secret that Meredith and Derek will finally ride away into the sunset together (or something like that) on Thursday's two-hour finale of Grey's Anatomy. It's got me thinking about timing.

In the beginning, Derek was ready and Meredith clearly was not. Then Addison came back and Derek thought he'd try to salvage his marriage. Then that didn't work, but Meredith was working on drowning herself and things. Then Meredith thought she was ready but Derek had just started moving on, ever so slightly. It's the classic game that the writers play with us. The male and female romantic leads can't just find each other and fall in love and live happily ever after. Then what would the show be about? I get that. It keeps us coming back for more.

And yet, at some point, the writers realize that the game can't be played forever. At some point, the characters have to either admit that they're in love and no matter how hard it is, it's worth it... or they have to move on. (And maybe start their own spin-offs, like Addison.) Sometimes the writers get the timing right on this. And other times they miss their critical window -- the missed connections and the gnashing of teeth take over the aura of the show and the magic is lost.

This scenario has played itself out on every show I've ever watched. And I get sucked in every time. And I cheer for the relationships right from the start, even though I could predict that it will be three or four seasons before the writers acquiesce and let them live happily ever after. So I guess I'm a sucker, but I will nonetheless watch with a little glee on Thursday night. 'Cuz sometimes, even if it takes years, the timing does eventually work out.

Grown-ups Dating (or, Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned Watching TV)

A Sunday morning romp through YouTube...

Dating has been the theme around here lately. Some of it my own -- with N, my husband of 8 years -- some of it related to others. Here's what I know:

1) Grand romantic gestures are good. Making grand romantic gestures in public is even better. Pacey bought Joey a wall for her to paint. Seth climbed on top of a coffee cart and declared his love for Summer. Danny showed up, dressed as Santa and gave CJ a goldfish pin in front of the entire press corps. Works every time.

2) There is a fine line between nervous, anxious smiling and happy, excited grinning; and the former often leads to the latter. See, e.g., this scene with Addison and Pete in a "not horny elevator."

3) Sometimes the guy who is not "boyfriend material" turns out to have surprising potential. Logan was a wild-child with a zero kScale (tm) score. And then along came Rory and they -- almost -- lived happily ever after. We'll call it the L-corollary.

Where you been? (or, How to survive the winter without TV)

Ok, so to be fair, I *have* been watching TV over the past few months. I just haven't been blogging about it. With the dearth of new, quality* TV for the past months, there hasn't been much to say. Here's an update, quick-hits-style:

-- Army Wives is being re-run on Lifetime, Sunday nights, leading up to the second season premier in June. If you didn't catch this series last summer, you really should catch up on it now. It is, as I have said before, compelling, well-written, and timely. The acting is superb and the stories will make you cry every week. My favorite kind of TV.

-- Canterbury's Law, though still sitting on my TiVo, is too grim for me. I absolutely love Julianna Margulies, who played Carol on ER back in the day. And, I generally love TV shows that make me cry (see, e.g., Army Wives). But, there's a difference between making my cry and giving me nightmares. You see, the central plot of Canterbury's Law revolves around how Margulies's character deals with the loss of her beautiful four-year-old boy who was apparently abducted from a playground while Margulies took a work call on her cell. Nope. Can't do it. Sorry, Julianna. I'll catch you on the next show.

-- My So-Called Life is running on abc.com, with one new episode being added each week. I've been watching these on Saturday afternoons after skiing. They are good enough to keep me watching but I think I'm keeping myself from getting to invested in the characters, knowing that the show lasted only one season -- and ended ten or so years ago! Also, the parental characters are abnoxious and stupid.

-- One Tree Hill's new season has been pretty good. The plot leapt forward four and a half years from last year, so we've missed the college years. That was a good thing. Anyway, this show is never going to win any Emmys but it's fun to watch the melodrama unfold every week. OTH has been on hiatus for a few weeks but will return in a couple weeks on Mondays, paired up with Gossip Girl, the CW's new hit.

-- This season of Survivor has also been fun to watch. It's the "fans" versus the "favorites" with superstar Ozzie back for a second try at dominating the challenges all the way to the million dollars. I'm looking forward to the season resuming after the madness of March releases its grip on CBS's schedule.

-- Other than that, I've mostly been filling my TiVo with re-runs of Gilmore Girls. I fast-forward through all of the scenes that involve Kirk and Michel and Luke's stupid sister and brother-in-law. But it's fun to watch Rory's relationship with Logan unfold.

*Please note: I have my own definition of "quality"... but if you read this blog, you already know that.

Eli Stone: Pilot

There's not much TV left to keep me happy for the next 8 months. Accordingly, I've been watching each of the major network mid-season replacement shows with piqued interest... Cashmere Mafia has me entertained and Lipstick Jungle is coming along next week. This week it was time for Eli Stone.

Eli is a senior associate at a BigLaw firm and a former Ginsburg clerk. He also has a brain aneurysm and reason to think he might be a prophet. It's kind of an odd premise, but the writing -- by Greg Berlanti, one of my favorites (Dawson's Creek, Everwood, Brothers & Sisters) -- was compelling and the actors are solid. Loretta Devine (Adele from Grey's Anatomy) is simply fantastic as Eli's legal secretary. I'm looking forward to a few more episodes. I think this one will be basically a law procedural with a twist. In Berlanti's talented hands, that could be a great thing. Set your sad little empty TiVos to catch it or stream it on abc.com.

Bad Medicine

I am not a huge fan of going to the doctor. And so I procrastinate and never make appointments. Same goes for the eye doctor and the dentist. Today was my day to stop procrastinating. I have decent health insurance for which I am charged every week in my paycheck and I never use it. So today was the day to make the appointments.

Step one: call doctor recommended by my mom. "It has been six years since you've been to see this doctor, so we have to treat you as a new patient. It will be 14 weeks before the intake people will call you schedule an appointment." You think I'm kidding -- or perhaps exaggerating. Nope. Not even a little. 14 weeks. Goody.

Step two: call the eye doctor as I seem to have lost my most recent pair of glasses (circa 2003, so not a huge loss other than that I don't own another pair) and I think I'm down to one spare pair of contact lenses... "She is booking for May . . . nope actually I'm seeing mid-June . . . How's mid-June?" Just peachy. I'll just squint until then.

Step three: call the dentist. Now I really hate dentists, but I figured ok, well, I'll just make the appointment now and I won't have to actually go for six months so no big deal. "I just had a cancellation. How's tomorrow at 9:20?" Super.

So True

A Dog's Purpose

Being a veterinarian, I had been called to examine a
ten-year-old Irish Wolfhound named Belker. The dog's owners, Ron,
his wife, Lisa, and their little boy, Shane, were all very attached to
Belker, and they were hoping for a miracle.

I examined Belker and found he was dying of cancer. I
told the family we couldn't do anything for Belker, and offered
to perform the euthanasia procedure for the old dog in their
home.

As we made arrangements, Ron and Lisa told me they
thought it would be good for six-year-old Shane to observe the
procedure. They felt as though Shane might learn something from the
experience

The next day, I felt the familiar catch in my throat
as Belker's family surrounded him. Shane seemed so calm, petting
the old dog for the last time, that I wondered if he understood what
was going on. Within a few minutes, Belker slipped peacefully away.

The little boy seemed to accept Belker's transition
without any difficulty or confusion. We sat together for a while
after Belker's death, wondering aloud about the sad fact that animal
lives are shorter than human lives. Shane, who had been
listening quietly, piped up, "I know why."

Startled, we all turned to him. What came out of his
mouth next stunned me. I'd never heard a more comforting
explanation.

He said, "People are born so that they can learn how
to live a good life -- like loving everybody all the time and being
nice, right?" The six-year-old continued, "Well, dogs already know how
to do that, so they don't have to stay as long."

Good Dog

We miss you already.

Fantasy Success and Failure

If you know me, you already know this: I'm more than a little bit competitive. I'm also an unabashed football fan.

So this year, for the first time, I played fantasy football. Two leagues: fantasy and pro-pick 'em. In my fantasy league, I went 12-2 in the regular season and made it to the championship game... and then I lost.
Because Adam Vinatieri only got the chance to kick one field goal and one PAT for the Colts' anemic backup offense.

In the pro-pick 'em league, I won after leading for more than half the season.

It's going to be tough to match this performance next year -- after all, it's mostly just dumb luck. Nonetheless, I just had to take the opportunity to gloat a little. It's my blog, so I'll gloat if I want to.

A Brave New Year

I woke up this morning early to check on Bailey. He's been diagnosed with cancer and had a bad day yesterday. He seems a little better this morning. Anyway, I woke up to a Facebook invitation from an old friend... it was nice to hear from him and it was just the nudge I needed to finally join Facebook. And really, what else was I going to do at 6:30am on New Year's Day?

It is so cool to have Facebook say: "These are people you might know" and see all my best friends listed... gotta love associational algorithms :-)

If I haven't found you yet on Facebook, find me!

Why Barack and Not Hillary

I will get back to posting about the Walker family and the goings-on in my other favorite TV worlds after the new year. I promise. Particularly if the strike ever ends.


In the meantime, you should read this piece by David Brooks in today's NYTimes.

More Nervous Than the Players?

I am more nervous than the actual players are. I am even more nervous than Sarah was before Game 5 of this year's ALCS. And that's saying something. I bring you... my boys:

Don't fail us now. Patriots Nation requires that Peyton, and his I'm-on-tv-every-five-minute-smugness be silenced. Here's a sample:

More of that would be good.

My Shortest Season Pass List in Years

Blame it on the Red Sox who want to keep playing. Blame it on lots and lots of football on Sunday and Monday nights with live scoring on my fantasy team. Blame it on the new job. Blame it on having a slightly older kid who stays up a bit later. Whatever it is, my TV watching is seriously lagging this year. I have updated the season pass list at the left of this page to reflect the shows I've actually been watching before they get deleted from my TiVo. All in all, I'm relatively underwhelmed by the new offerings.

• Pushing Daisies was way too much like a Broadway musical for my liking. It's no longer on my season pass list.


• Chuck is probably good, but I has been sitting on my TiVo for weeks without any major urge for me to watch it after the first episode.


• Private Practice is passable, but not outstanding -- what Grey's pulled off as quirkiness, Private Practice pushes to the edge of corniness.


• Cane is good enough to keep me interested, but mostly because I absolutely love Jimmy Smits. In my world, he is currently president after all.


• Gossip Girl is good, but it is hardly Gilmore Girls or the O.C.-- and it never will be.

Brothers & Sisters has risen to the very top of my favorites list. It's exceptionally good and has be crying as some point during nearly every episode. At some point, I think I'll write a post about why I love it so much when TV makes me cry. But not tonight. I'm going to hope that the TV program I'm watching tonight doesn't make anyone in the Nation (i.e. Red Sox Nation) cry.

Shark Jumping in Progress?

Friday Night Lights is definitely still one of my top two favorite shows, but I'm a bit worried. There's this term that's used by TV commentators and bloggers: jumping the shark. Wikipedia explains nicely why it's called that. It happens, in my humble opinion, most often when showrunners are pressured by the network to spice things up a bit by changing something major about the show. Sometimes it works. Often it just spells the beginning of the end. The potential for shark jumping in Dillon, Texas should have been predictable given the skin-of-its-teeth renewal at the end of last season. But it might have been nice if the showrunners could have resisted. Instead, they decided, in their infinite wisdom, to have Landry kill someone and pitch his body off a bridge into the river at the end of the season premier. Not exactly in keeping with the normal course of events in Dillon, and a bit too I Know What You Did Last Summer for my taste. Next week they find the body. Here's hoping it all gets resolved quickly and we can get back to the good old fashioned Friday Night Lights I've invested so much time cheering about.

Sports Guy Sez Save Friday Night Lights

Fibby passed this along and it's so darn good that I'm going to reprint it here in its entirety. Please visit ESPN's website and patronize their advertisers so they don't sue me for copyright infringement, etc.

I recognize that at this point, all ten of my friends who read this blog have either 1) watched FNL and are already addicted or 2) decided not to watch it just on principle. I am unlikely to change any more minds on the show directly, but maybe you all have other friends to whom you can spread the FNL gospel.

Editor's note: This column appears in the September 24 issue of ESPN The Magazine.

If last year's memorable TV phrase was "Save the cheerleader, save the world," I'm declaring this year's to be "Save the show." NBC is damned close to burying Friday Night Lights, which would be a shame on a number of levels, but none more serious than this one: It's the greatest sports-related show ever made. Returning for a second season on Oct. 5, it's a fair bet that FNL will be canceled by Christmas. And when it is, it's going to be because of people like you.

If you're reading this, then you should be watching Friday Night Lights.

Now, I know only about a thousand people, not counting the anonymous folks in my Barely Legal chat rooms. Since almost two million people subscribe to this magazine, there's an overwhelming chance we don't know each other. That said, I feel confident about making the following three generalizations:

No. 1: You're reading this magazine because you like sports.

Okay, maybe you're killing time in a doctor's office, or maybe you stumbled across this issue in an airplane seat pouch, sandwiched between a barf bag and a catalog that sells night-vision goggles. But I'm going with the odds: If you're reading ESPN The Mag right now, there's a 96% chance you like sports, a 3% chance you're killing time -- and a 1% chance you're stoned and think you're reading Rolling Stone.

No. 2: If you like to watch TV, you wouldn't knowingly turn your back on a great show.

I know, I know, that sounds like a quote from Joe Theismann. But most rational TV fans will cave once a show generates enough buzz, either because their curiosity is piqued or because it's on cable with an "N" or an "SSC" in the ratings. Hey, I've been there myself: I held out on The Sopranos and The Wire. I don't like being told what to watch; this dates back to when a fellow fourth-grader made me feel dumb because I wasn't watching Doctor Who reruns, and we ended up fighting to a draw at recess. But when the buzz passed a certain tipping point, I gave in and gave both HBO icons a fair chance. Before long, I realized they're the two most important TV shows of all time, narrowly edging out Beavis and Butt-Head. Point is, you can never know for sure until you watch.

(I know that in certain cases you ignore the buzz simply because you don't give a crap about the subject matter. I feel this way about tennis, a sport I once loved, before it became too fast and impersonal for its own good. You could pull a Biff Tannen and guarantee that Roger Federer and Andy Roddick were about to play the greatest match ever, and I wouldn't tune in. But who doesn't want to get hooked on a good TV show? Well, except those who are homeschooled.)

No. 3: If Nos. 1 and 2 are true, there's an overwhelming chance you'd love FNL -- and a decent chance you aren't watching it. And if that's the case, don't you owe it to yourself to rent Season 1, Disc 1, and try the first four episodes? Look, if FNL doesn't make it, we're just going to get more Grey's Anatomy spin-offs, a CSI for every city and 20 Deal or No Deal clones. Hollywood doesn't like to take chances, and it doesn't like to fail; it figures out what works, bleeds it to death, then flips the corpse and bleeds it some more. Execs don't care that a few million faithful treasure a show, singing its praises like religious fanatics. They care only that 15 to 20 million kinda-sorta-maybe like it. And it doesn't matter who those viewers are or how dumb they might be, either, as long as they keep coming back for more.

Despite what I might have said in the past about jumping on team bandwagons, you shouldn't feel guilty about jumping on this one. I watched the pilot when it originally aired, but I didn't love it: too much puke-cam (the camera stopped moving so much in later episodes) and an unspeakable sports inconsistency (Dillon High completes a game-winning Hail Mary that could have happened only on a 140-yard field). Once the abysmal ratings were announced, I assumed the show was doomed and opted not to waste my time with Episode 2. Networks pull the plug so quickly these days, you can be burned by getting hooked on something no one else is watching. Ask my wife, who's still complaining about never having learned the identity of the murderer on FOX's Reunion.

After FNL garnered its critical groundswell, I decided to wait for the late-summer DVD release to dive back in. My buddy Connor, a man who knows how to get things, refused to accept this, mailing me the Japanese import in June. That's right, I have a friend who loves FNL so much, he actually couldn't deal with my being willing to wait two more months to see it. So he called in some connections and possibly violated U.S.-Japan trade agreements so I could catch up. As he predicted, the Sports Gal and I ripped through all 22 episodes in a week, learning the Japanese words for "play," "stop" and "pause" in the process. Quite simply, FNL is the best date show ever, an improbable cross between The O.C. and every sports show you ever wanted Hollywood to make. It's the first show my wife and I have loved equally, but for different reasons. What can be better than that?

On Aug. 28, NBC released the American DVDs with a "satisfaction guaranteed" gimmick. Now if you continue to ignore FNL, it's only because you're trying to hurt me. If you do give it a shot, let me recommend the impeccable acting, the lively football scenes (although they tend to go overboard on exciting finishes), the risky story lines and especially Coach Taylor's family, the most authentic household in recent TV history. Every nuance is nailed, every hug seems genuine, every fight makes sense, every sarcastic barb and flustered reaction ring true. If there are better TV actors than Kyle Chandler (Coach) and Connie Britton (Mrs. Coach), I haven't TiVoed them. Pay particular attention to the astonishing two-parter in which an older assistant sets off a racial powder keg before a big playoff game. If FNL were Michael Jordan, Lyla Garrity's slam-page episode would be the 63-point game in Boston (the coming-out party), and the two-parter would be the 1991 Finals (the moment considerable potential is realized).

Look, I'm the biggest White Shadow fan on the planet ... and even I concede that FNL is the greatest sports show ever. Shadow died prematurely because the story line called for it to graduate too many key characters at once. I can live with that. FNL is going to die prematurely because five times as many Americans would rather watch an acerbic British guy belittle dreadful singers on a reality show. I can't live with that.

So please, please help me and every other FNL fanatic. Watch the show. Spread the gospel. You won't save the world as they did in Heroes, and you probably won't prevail in the end, but as Coach Taylor once told his team, "Every man at some point in his life is going to lose a battle. He's going to fight, and he's going to lose. But what makes him a man is that in the midst of that battle, he does not lose himself."

I pray we're not sticking that quote on his TV tombstone in two months.

Bill Simmons is a columnist for Page 2 and ESPN The Magazine. His book "Now I Can Die In Peace" is available in paperback.

Dunnest

It's official. I passed.

The bad news: now I can be liable for malpractice.