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.

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.

First Look: Gossip Girl

I downloaded the pilot for Gossip Girl from iTunes on this rainy evening. It's an amusing romp through some sort of cross between The O.C. and 90210. They're going to need to spice up the quippyness of its dialogue a bit, but I think that could happen with Josh Schwartz at the helm. If it does, this could be a good solid WB/CW-style viewing option.

Penn Badgley (right) particularly stole the show in the pilot. He was also great on the short-lived Bedford Diaries, so it's nice to see him back. Kristen Bell's voice-overs were also excellent -- I was never a loyal Veronica Mars fan but I have seen enough episodes to appreciate why many people were. Here, the unseen Kristen adds a bit of star-appeal to the show with her commentaries as Gossip Girl herself.

I look forward to watching this one unfold. Hopefully the CW will stick with it long enough to let it find its voice (and audience).

What I'm Watching this Summer

With almost all my regular appointment viewing on hiatus for the summer (or canceled forever, R.I.P. Star's Hollow), whatever shall I watch? Well, it actually hasn't been too hard to sprinkle my TiVo To Do List with a few summer flings, some of which may actually be good enough to watch during the winter months too (if they're allowed to stick around that long)!

Hidden Palms: Ok, so this little summer fling by Kevin Williamson (Dawson's, Scream) is not the classiest show that ever was. It's not quite as sharp and quippy as the first season of The O.C. But it has a neat undercurrent of mystery that Dawson's and the O.C. never had, so it's got enough that's new to keep me interested. I'm hoping the writing will sharpen a little once we get to know the characters and can deal with a bit less exposition. Only 8 episodes on this one though. And I'll be surprised if the CW picks it up (although they definitely need SOMETHING for their schedule, having canceled Gilmore and Veronica Mars).

Falcon Beach: This is one of the shows I probably should just not admit I'm watching. It's terrible. No really, it's terrible. And I watch it every week during the summer. It's in its second season (Why and how? No idea. But I'm still watching...)

Army Wives: This Lifetime original series is really surprisingly good. It's produced by one of the executive producers from Grey's and really well written. It has a great ensemble cast that clicked with me right from the start. (I love Kim Delaney from her role as Rebecca on The O.C.). It portrays a really nice cross-section of army life on one base (different ages, different ranks, different social classes, even different genders and races -- one of the "wives" is a black man whose wife is an officer.)

The Starter Wife: Oh this show is just plain fun. It's billed as a mini-series: 6 or 8 hours I think with no intention of a pick-up, which is too bad. It has a bit of an Ally McBeal sensibility at times because it's funny and has silly dream/fantasy sequences in places. The entire reason this show works is Debra Messing. She's great. She has all the comedic timing she needs, but also has the dramatic, expressive face to pull off this rather melodramatic role without sounding ridiculous.

Deadliest Catch/After the Catch: Ah, the one show I can watch with my boys. We TiVo it and then enjoy it together on the couch before G's bedtime. He's fascinated. After the Catch is a new series to accompany the original; the captains just sit around with host Mike Rowe in a Seattle bar and swap fish stories. And we're fascinated. My dad asked at dinner the other night why anyone watches this. I'm not really sure, but it's just about the best "reality" TV out there. I think it's good because it really seems real. It's just a long documentary, rather than a contrived social experiment or a game show.

Studio 60: I've said my peace about this show. Last night's episode was fantastic. Last week's was not. The week before that it was good. Who knows what the rest of the run will bring, but I'll be watching to find out.

My Boys: The only half-hour comedy on my TiVo season pass list returns in July for a 9 episode run. Can't wait to see what P.J. and the boys are up to!

... and streaming...

The Bachelor: I didn't watch this season. It's not my favorite reality show (because I find it more than a little distasteful to watch this guy "date" multiple women at the same time). But this year's bachelor is hot and ABC posted the last 4 episodes on their website, so I'll watch them and see who "wins."

Six Degrees: This is one of those shows that everyone forgot about. The last 8 episodes never ran on ABC, but they're streaming on the website, so I'll watch them when nothing else is sitting in my TiVo's Now Playing list for me!

All in all, not a bad summer of TV.

S60: K&R ... wow.

Wow. Just wow. I think I get it now. Studio 60 was never supposed to be a funny story about a comedy show. That's 30 Rock. No, S60 was supposed to be about a world where smart people have to try to write some funny lines in the middle of a not very funny world. The sketches weren't supposed to be funny. The show wasn't supposed to be funny. Sure, there are supposed to be amusing moments (back in the day, how many times did we laugh at something C.J. Cregg said or did -- or sang?), but really the tone of the show should have had much more in common with the West Wing from the very start.

Tonight's episode was perfect. Better than the "Disaster Show" episode that I praised a couple weeks ago. It reminded me of the way that the West Wing did drama. There's something big going on in the world -- there's a war in Afghanistan -- but it's connected to the characters' lives in a bunch of different ways, and we get to see how the characters struggle with that and make sense of it (rather than having Aaron Sorkin preach to us about what's right and wrong -- or struggle to make light of it). The vagaries of network politics and ratings just didn't pack enough punch for those of us who live outside of L.A. to make us care, but tonight there was enough there to make me care.

I loved the montage of Harriet and Matt fighting about religion for 8 years, and then the pay-off when Matt says a little prayer, in his own way, for Jordan at the very end of the episode as he and Harry are headed off to the hospital.

I loved that Jordan asked about the cut and clarity of the ring before she said yes, and then teased Danny about the ring size as they wheeled her off to surgery. Not because these lines were funny (though they were) but because they were human and touching and just plain good writing.

And so I wonder what might have been if the network execs and Sorkin's own demons hadn't run this thing off the tracks.

Here's to hoping that the last couple episodes stay this good and then to watching out for Sorkin's next adventure.

TV Squad blogger Jay Black fervently disagrees, although many of the commenters on his blog agree with me.

From the Blogosphere

I have lots to say about Hidden Palms, which is a summer fling worth a look. (It was created by Kevin Williamson of Dawson's fame and, with full episodes available for streaming on the CW's site, you can tune in whenever the spirit and general dearth of good options on the tube moves you.) But I've been studying all day and don't feel like being coherent for more than a few lines. Instead, a quick hit of interesting links:

• A nice Q&A with Alexis Bledel regarding her new movie and leaving Rory behind.
  
• I definitely want to see Keri Russell's movie about pie (ok, I'm sure it's not really about pie, but the website is). I'll watch Felicity in anything.
• An interesting essay by the show-runner for the best show on TV ... Friday Night Lights of course.
• What I'm reading (when I'm not studying): "The Billion-Dollar Kiss: The Kiss that Saved Dawson's Creek and Other Adventures in TV Writing" by Jeffrey Stepakoff, former staff writer for ER and producer for Dawson's.
  

While I'm on the subject...

Since I've been posting about the West Wing a bunch lately, I got to thinking about how it would have been a perfect show to have a spin off (a la Grey's Anatomy/Private Practice). I guess it was never tried because Aaron Sorkin was likely too looped on coke to be able to run two shows at once. [Rob Lowe did try to be a senator, I think, in a short-lived show called Lyon's Den, but it was no good -- and not a real West Wing spin-off anyway. I think it was on a different network, and I know it was on a different night with no tie in -- and different characters, etc., etc.]

Although the moment for a true spin-off is long dead, I have a modest proposal for the network execs at ABC. You see, network big wigs, you have already sort of created a little mini spin-off, what with Rob Lowe finally getting to play a senator and run for president and get good ratings. And you seem to have a relatively talented bunch of writers. So, I propose that you hire one more former West Wing-er to make the package more complete (and the homage more striking). My suggestion: woo Dulé Hill away from USA Network's Psych and bring him on as a young speech writer for Senator McDreamy. And maybe set him up as a solid, non-sleezy love interest for Emily VanCamp's Rebecca. (Emily has spooky incestuous chemistry with Dave Annable, who of course plays her half-brother... we need to nip that one in the bud, although apparently they are dating in real life.) Or you could go the other way with it and bring in Janel Maloney as, let's say, another attorney in Kevin's office (and have her fall for Justin). I don't know. But I think a little West Wing blood does a show good (witness, last night's S60.)

Did You See It Too?

Fibby poses a question in her comment to my last post that is worth a whole bloggy entry of its own. She writes: "I saw huge parallels between the last episode [of Ugly Betty] and an episode of The West Wing. I wonder if you'll see it too..."

And the funny thing is that I didn't. So I went to Television Without Pity (source of snarky but complete recaplets of all the tv worth watching). And as soon as I saw the headline for the Ugly Betty recap, I figured out the reference. And digging up the details on the West Wing episode was a fun little Google adventure. You really can find any sort of information in about 2 minutes on Google!

It was episode #322, "Posse Comitatus," in which Mark Harmon's Secret Service Agent Simon Donovan had captured the heart of one C.J. Craig (and more than a few audience members at the same time), only to be killed off in a convenience store hold-up while C.J. and the rest of the President's entourage watched an opera . . . just in time for May sweeps.

Santos, we loved you, though we hardly knew you. At least Ugly Betty's telenovela conceit shields it somewhat when the writers pull a soap operatic move like killing off the happy, beautiful minor character the fans love just in time for sweeps. Nonetheless, I'm hoping that with Drive cancelled, Kevin Alejandro (Santos) miraculously survives or is brought back from the dead next season. Hey, if it's going to be a world where characters get shot for ratings, it ought to be a place where they can get revived for ratings too. (And it is: cf. the ridiculous ferry disaster arc on Grey's Anatomy in which Meredith is dead for at least two full episodes and then is cheerily looking gorgeous and back to work in the next one . . . that was February sweeps after all!)

Channelling the West Wing

Tonight Studio 60 returned to burn off the episodes that have already been filmed, despite the show's sealed fate. And a funny thing happened. The show was good. I chuckled throughout. Another funny thing happened: the show was based on the amazing chemistry of Timothy Busfield and the lovely Allison Janney. And another thing: Bradley Whitford and Matthew Perry had the night off. Literally, they didn't even make an appearance. And guess what? Timothy Busfield's Cal should have been the main character of the series. The show might have survived. Or maybe I just love the West Wing's Danny so much that the Studio 60 Danny (Bradley Whitford's character) never really had a shot. Still, I kept hoping that Cal would give Allison a goldfish or something. It was that good.

Updated: TV Squad disagrees. They missed Danny and Matt. (And come to think of it, it probably would have been fun to revisit the West Wing chemistry between Bradley and Allison, too.) But that's the thing about S60: no one seems to be able to agree about what's wrong with it, so no one was able to fix it. I'll just be content to watch the last few episodes, secure in the knowledge that my TiVo is not missing anything better when it records the show in this post-sweeps abyss of a tv schedule.

A Happy Little Moment

Watching a rerun of Dawson's Creek the other night, I had a fun little moment . . . and no one to share it with. So here it is: the Capeside crowd was in the college bar that they hung out in, having some typical Dawson's-style discussion and, for some reason, I happened to hear the music playing way in the background (as if on the bar's jukebox). Now, I'm really not a music person, as many readers of this blog will attest. I've got no ear for it, and usually it just blends into the background for me when I watch TV. But on this one occassion, you see, the jukebox was playing "Here We Go" by Dispatch. Once upon a time, Dispatch was called One Fell Swoop (and even before that they were the Wood River Bandits, fondly known by their friends as the Cloud Forest Bunnies), and they played concerts in the dorm lounges at Middlebury and lived on the same hall as my friend Tyler. This summer, they will play three sold out shows at Madison Square Garden as a fundraiser for Zimbabwe. This despite the fact that the band has been broken up for 3 years! In any case, it was really fun to hear their music on an old episode of Dawson's. I sure wish I had tickets to one of their NYC shows this summer, but it seems like a somewhat inappropriate method of bar study.

This Just Takes the Cake

Although N is the love of my life, he is not a TV-watching soul mate. These folks, on the other hand, threw a TiVo themed wedding. The couple that watches Nip/Tuck together stays together? I guess.

Those are their wedding cakes, MOMP! SFGate.com reports: "The groom's TiVo was chocolate with a cream cheese filling and the bride's TiVo was vanilla with a peanut butter filling."

Speaking of what they have to say...

Good news today! Twenty-two more chances to fall in love with Friday Night Lights, coming to the small screen near you next fall.

The network up-fronts (when we--the advertisers, actually, but fans too--find out next fall's schedule) are all next week, so lots of renewal news and word on pick-ups of new pilots will be trickling out in the next few days.

Gilmore has been officially canceled already; cause for celebration of the end of an era, in my mind, rather than mourning for the loss. (In fact, we will be celebrating this Tuesday at my house--by eating like a Gilmore (a Lorelai Gilmore, not an Emily Gimore, of course)! There will be tater-tot-topped-frozen-pizza and chicken nugget appetizers . . . and malomars, if I can find them.) After the completely appropriate and satisfying but still utterly sad end of Rory and Logan's relationship last week, I'm ready to say goodbye to the show, and eager to see what projects come next for all involved (particularly Matt Czuchry and Amy Sherman-Palladino).

With Gilmore off the schedule, it sounds like One Tree Hill may actually get a chance at another season--one in which they jump the action forward by 5 or so years. I'm all for it. This week's scene at the prom where the characters all make fun of the melodrama in their lives was priceless. O.C.-style self-aware irony. Love it.

I Dare You

I have made a convert. Fellow almost-lawyer AC told me that she caught a couple eps of Friday Night Lights that her TiVo had "suggested" for her. Since then, she's been streaming them obsessively on her computer. Recently, she was even questioned by a policeman at 2 am about this obsession. (Ok, so the policeman is her boyfriend and he was wondering why she hadn't come to bed, but still...)

All this leads me to my double dog dare of the week. NBC has posted the whole first season of FNL on its site. I double dog dare you to stream and watch two episodes without getting hooked. Go ahead, do it... you know you want to.

News on the Renewal Front...

A new report from Ausiello suggests that the death knell may not yet have sounded for the Stars Hollow gang, but I'll be shocked if this May's season finale doesn't wind up as the last word we have from Lorelei and Rory. It sounds like Rory and Logan are history in any case, and since I think Logan is the only reason I've bothered to watch the show this season, I think I'm ready to let GG head off into the great television heaven in a few weeks.

On the other hand, everyone seems convinced that Friday Night Lights will be back.

And in an amusing, eerily torch-passing coincidence, Lauren Graham was apparently once roommates with FNL's brilliant Connie Britton. Two of the smartest, most talented women on the small screen, in my humble opinion: I would have loved to hang out at that apartment!