So I have this roll-aboard suitcase that’s my standard traveling companion for almost any trip:
It had a handle at the bottom which served two purposes:
1) giving you something to pull on from the bottom of the suitcase when it’s lying flat (for example, on a security checkpoint conveyor belt)
2) stabilizing the suitcase when it’s standing upright, so that it doesn’t fall forward due to the weight in the main compartment
Sometime last year, I was forced to gate-check this bag, because my flight was full, I was in the last boarding group, and rising baggage fees have led to jam-packed overhead compartments. I am generally very particular about keeping my bags with me at all times (for fear of loss or damage), so of course the first time I gate-checked this thing, the bottom handle got broken off. However, one side of it was left partially intact, so that at least the stabilization function of the handle wasn’t totally undermined:
…at least, not until the next time I had to gate-check my bag a few months later. The last remnants of the handle were destroyed, and I now found my suitcase almost totally unable to stand on its own when filled.
So when I was home for Memorial Day, I asked my dad if he could fix it for me. I had a vague notion that something needed to be mounted to the bottom of the suitcase to stabilize it, but I had no real idea what or how. The next day, my dad went to Orchard Supply Hardware and bought (of all things) a metal cabinet/drawer door handle. He punched two holes in the bottom of the suitcase with a drill bit, and we bolted the handle onto it. The finishing touch (which I’ll take credit for) was covering the handle with electrical tape, which helps it stand out less and minimizes scratching noises from the metal handle when it touches the floor.
The finished product:
The suitcase stands up perfectly, no matter how much we put in it — in fact, it’s probably more sturdy than when I bought it!
My dad is incredibly practical, and that is yet another reason why he is awesome.
Some scenes stick with you. Here are ten of my favorites, in chronological order by original airdate. (In general, you should be wary of spoilers, but I’ll make sure to specially flag clips that seriously spoil large chunks of a series — there are only two of these.)
“It was the first kiss for both of us” The Wonder Years – “Pilot” (1988)
I’ve remarked before that this scene is the main reason anyone remembers Percy Sledge‘s classic tune, “When a Man Loves a Woman”. This is probably an exaggeration, but what I find unforgettable about this scene is Daniel Stern‘s (yes, that’s really Marv) beautiful narration at the end. It’s striking how different this is from the voiceovers that have become common in modern primetime soap operas (Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, and so on). While the narration in those shows is at best forgettable, and at worst little more than background noise, the reflections at the end of this seminal series’s pilot are deeply resonant, with a flowing cadence that is nothing short of poetry. I can listen to it over and over again without getting bored.
(To watch, skip to 13:30 here and wait a [long] while for the video to buffer, so that you can watch through to the end of the episode. Sorry I couldn’t find a better video.)
In this gripping episode, Bruce Wayne suddenly finds himself in a world in which there is a Batman, but it’s not him. His parents are still alive, he’s engaged to Selina Kyle, and he leads a life of lazy comfort. But he can’t bring himself to accept that this could really be his life (which of course, it turns out, it’s not).
Watching this now, it’s hard to believe that I first saw it when I was only seven years old. There is some really deep stuff here — the idea that living a life that is true is more important than living one that’s enjoyable, and the idea that it would be worth dying to protect this principle. I can almost feel the chills I got when I first heard Wayne growl the line I quoted above. (I also think this episode must have primed me for being completely obsessed with Inception.)
In this two-part episode from TNG‘s fifth season, Captain Picard is captured on a mission by the Cardassians and subsequently tortured for strategic information by a sadistic Cardassian officer. In an plot point with shades of Orwell, Picard’s captor, Gul Madred, tries to break him by demanding that he admit that a light fixture which has four lights in fact has five. This scene comes at the climax of the second half of the episode, after Starfleet has negotiated Picard’s release. Gul Madred tries one last time to get Picard to capitulate, and Picard refuses.
The chilling line, the one that made this scene even more resonant, actually comes afterward, back on the Enterprise, when Picard confides in Counselor Troi: “I would have told him anything. Anything at all. But more than that, I believed that I could see five lights.”
“Cherry bark and almonds” Frasier – “To Tell the Truth” (1999)
It may seem odd to include a scene from a sitcom in a post about dramatic television, but every now and then, sitcom writing does elevate itself in a way that is impossible to ignore. This scene, which comes after Niles has finally concluded his divorce settlement proceedings and is therefore finally ready to express his true feelings to Daphne, is so potent because of its brutal demonstration of what Niles says: it’s remarkable how completely one’s life can change in an instant. The very last line of the scene, quoted above, has stuck with me for over a decade as a poignant expression of unrequited love.
I believe this scene is the single most compelling portrayal of death that I have ever seen on screen. It’s a masterpiece of direction: the unsettling camera angles, the total absence of a score, the eerie emphasis on mundane sounds like the wind chimes. I love how the scene captures the way that we fixate on the most pointless of details (like Joyce‘s exposed legs) as a way of coping with the unfathomable event of death. I also love it because it’s an example of how, every now and then, an actor can transcend her own talents (which, in Sarah Michelle Gellar‘s case, are not insignificant) and deliver something truly special.
You know that I had to include a scene from The Wire in this list. There are plenty to choose from, but I think what I love about this, in addition to the easy humor of the banter between the characters, is the way that it stands alone as a social commentary even if you know almost nothing about the show. In that sense, it’s a nice primer — no spoilers, but you get an immediate sense for the feel of the show and what it’s about. The scene demonstrates the fundamental tension between the raw ambition of the street dealers in the scene and the reality that they are just pawns in someone else’s game of chess.
Whenever I go on a rant about how advertising isn’t just some soulless tool of the capitalist machine, this scene is the sort of thing I’m thinking about. The things we buy aren’t just about utility; they can also tap into our deepest emotional experiences. I love this scene because it shows that advertising isn’t just about products — it’s fundamentally about people.
It wouldn’t be illegitimate to criticize this scene as overwrought — Harry Crane’s reaction is honestly a bit much — but you’d be hard-pressed to find a scene that captures the essence of a character as artfully and perceptively as this one. Don Draper is a showman, through and through, and showmanship is the only way he can devise to express even his most heartfelt emotions.
This series has had a lot of pretty good scenes, but this was the scene I saw early on that let me know this show was for real. What astonishes me about it is the sheer patience it demonstrates; when was the last time you saw a show invest over ten full minutes in a single scene, letting every last moment of discomfort and pain linger on the screen? It’s powerfully affecting to watch a scene that slows down so deliberately, as if to say, “this is going to be hard, these people are going to suffer, and we’re not going to let you off easy.”
I love this scene because it’s such a powerful expression of potential, of possibility — and the fact that Glee has so rarely met this potential in subsequent episodes makes the performance even more compelling. The sheer joy and jubilation portrayed here are so full and pure that the scene is uplifting even beyond the song itself, which has always been a pick-me-up; only the recent “Loser Like Me” has come anywhere close to being this enjoyable. All the other scenes in this post are about loss and pain, because that’s what much of drama is all about, but I wanted to make sure to include one scene that demonstrated the power of positive thinking.
I knew I wanted to include a scene from FNL in this list, but the marvelous thing about this show is that its writing and performances are so understated in their excellence that it’s actually hard to pick out specific big moments from the thousands of wonderful little ones. I knew, however, that the scene I chose would come from “The Son”, one of the most affecting hours of television I’ve ever watched (and probably the performance of Zach Gilford‘s career). I am deeply impressed by the courage of the writers in making Matt Saracen‘s feelings about his father so complicated, and in not hiding from that complexity just because Henry Saracen was killed by an IED in Iraq (hence the reference to “not having a face” — Matt has just come from viewing his father’s body in the mortuary). It would have been easy to sweep Matt’s bitterness under the rug, but FNL never lets itself off the hook, and this scene is no exception; Matt’s bitterness is on full display, raw and real.
I also love the ways in which the Taylors quietly support Matt and each other; they really are one of the best families on television.
There are plenty of honorable mentions — I could probably fill another post or two with them — but I think you get the idea.
1) He taught me how to play chess when I was four and played with me regularly until I was an adolescent, even though, for the first year or two, I would throw a tantrum nearly every time I lost (which was every time we played). I ended up being president of the chess club in high school, so I guess it stuck.
2) When I was in college taking courses on various things he had studied, he routinely sent me photocopies of relevant problem sets from when he was in college, completed in his pristine penmanship and preserved over the decades as if destined for my reference.
3) You know that somewhat annoying habit I have of drumming my fingers all the time? Well, I got it from my dad :-) I’m pretty sure I inherited my sense of rhythm from him.
4) When I was fifteen and got my learner’s permit, the unenviable duty of teaching me how to drive fell to him. He used to take me to the Central Florida Research Park, where we practiced first in parking lots and then on the 30mph circle within the complex. One day, he told me to go towards the park’s exit and asked me to turn onto Alafaya Trail (speed limit 45mph). I protested, terrified and certain that I wasn’t ready. He coaxed me forward, assuring me that it would be just fine. I made the turn, hands gripping the wheel fiercely, nervous and angry that I was being pressured into driving on such a fast road. It would soon turn out, however, that there are few things in this world that I love doing more than driving. I discovered this because my dad pushed me that day.
5) When he has a problem to solve, he never, ever gives up. His dogged troubleshooting of random computer issues and insistence on fixing things around the house (even when it would have been much easier to replace them), for instance, set an example of persistence and self-reliance that are still ideals I aspire to (and, to be honest, fail to meet).
6) He never misses an opportunity to teach. This can be pretty irritating sometimes :-), but the lessons stick. I remember a time when I was nine years old, and he randomly picked up a little notepad, wrote a few sentences on it, and told me to read it. I’ll never forget those words (and I still have the little piece of paper on which they were written): He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool. Avoid him.
He who knows not and knows that he knows not is a student. Teach him.
He who knows and knows not that he knows is asleep. Awaken him.
He who knows and knows that he knows is a wise man. Follow him. I was so taken with this simple proverb that I took the piece of paper to school one day and showed it to my teacher. She asked me, “your daddy is a very smart man, isn’t he?” “Yeah,” I said. (I learned a few years ago that my dad didn’t come up with this himself — it’s variously attributed to the Chinese, the ancient Hindus, and the Persians — but the fact that he randomly wrote it down from god-knows-what-memory and gave it to his son says a lot.)
7) He’s not generally an outwardly affectionate person, but every now and then he makes an offhand comment that shows you what he’s really thinking. Like the time he saw me watching a video of an old dance performance I’d been in, and he remarked casually, “I don’t know how many times I’ve watched that video.”
8) His career has taken him to many places over the years — Chicago, Colorado Springs, the Bay Area, Southern California — but the whole time, my brother and I stayed with our mom in Orlando. Thanks to his (and Mom’s) self-sacrifice, we both got to grow up in one place until we graduated from high school. Every good feeling I have about childhood, I owe to this continuity.
9) When I was in high school, he was working 70 or 80 hours a week at a startup in the Bay Area, but somehow he seemed to find time to respond to every single email I sent him, asking for help with this lab report or that essay. We got a lot of mileage out of the “Track Changes” feature in Microsoft Word during those years. He never once said that he didn’t have time to look at another draft.
10) Someone asked me half-jokingly the other day, “aren’t you 25? Why do you always act like you’re 40?” That wasn’t the first time I’d heard something like that, and it won’t be the last. I do like being mature, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that this has very little to do with wanting to act older, but rather more simply with wanting to act more like my dad, who is one of the most focused, professional, principled, brilliant, and generous men I have ever known.
Did it provide clear answers to the many mysteries that have arisen over the course of Lost‘s six-season run? No, not really.
Did it prove that the show’s writers had some great master plan all along, one that only they could have devised and that shocked us with its vision? Certainly not.
But was it a satisfying conclusion to one of the most inventive and emotionally gripping television series ever created?
Absolutely.
There were plenty of superficial things to enjoy about “The End.” I certainly liked the sense of closure and continuity brought about by the decision to end the series exactly as it began: with a close-up on the eye of Jack Shephard, only this time closing instead of opening. And I enjoyed, despite myself, the bits of self-deprecating humor the writers included, such as when Desmond (in the flash-sideways) tells Kate that the coffin contains the remains of Christian Shephard, to which Kate responds, bringing voice to the many critics of Lost‘s unapologetically transparent naming conventions: “Christian Shephard? Seriously?” Or when Rose remarks that she really has no idea “when the hell” they are, a problem often shared by casual viewers over the last six years who lacked the alacrity to disentangle the show’s notoriously complicated narrative structure.
As far as the actual events of the episode go, there were no truly big surprises. Most of the main characters got off the island, except the ones we thought might not; the “Man in Black” was killed; and we found out that the parallel universe in which Oceanic 815 never crashed was actually a kind of afterlife (in a slight twist of the long-discussed theory that the island itself was purgatory, and the castaways were all dead). Indeed, the biggest surprise for me was the depth of the disappointment expressed by the group I watched the finale with, who derided it as “lame” and dismissed Lost‘s writing team as “hacks.” I’ve never seen eye-to-eye with many people about Lost — I disagreed with both those who watched it for the mysteries and those who didn’t watch it at all — but it’s still interesting to see how strongly I differ from others on this point.
Archibald MacLeish wrote that “a poem should not mean / But be.” That’s exactly how I feel about Lost. If you care about what it means, if you are desperate to understand the facts of what happened and why, then “The End” was not for you. The episode did resolve the most salient and immediate plot threads, but the way it answered some of the central questions of the show’s recent episodes — most notably, the nature of the flash-sideways timeline — was incomplete and perhaps even pedestrian. The show’s storied reliance on undisciplined plotting and nonsensical decisions by its characters to drive the narrative was just as prominent in the series finale as it has been for years.
But if what you care about is the experience — the raw emotion of it all — then “The End” was sublime. Acknowledging that emotion is what the show is all about, the series finale took its time to let us experience the depth and range of feeling that we’ve enjoyed so thoroughly for the past six years, one last time. Every time two characters reunited in what we eventually learned was the afterlife, there was a flash of memories, not only for the characters themselves but also for us, as we relived all the reasons we have come to cherish these people, with all their flaws and their triumphs and their love. And when they all convened in the episode’s final scene, ready to journey on to who-knows-where-but-who-cares, I couldn’t help but feel deeply happy that, after all their hardships, these people that I cared about would finally be together and at peace. The expression that Sun and Jin wore as they left the hospital — that serenity and satisfaction — was the same as the expression on my face as the final moments of the series unfolded. That Lost made me feel this way about a ragtag gang of fictional nobodies is a tremendous creative achievement, and its willingness to help me grieve for them was an act of great generosity and insight.
Thus, what I loved most about the series finale of Lost was its unfailing loyalty to the show’s soul and to its legacy. Yes, Lost was a good show because it made you think. But Lost was a great show because it made you feel. I have said from the beginning that I really don’t care about the plot at all, and “The End” reaffirmed my earnest belief that this show is not and has never been about what happens. The episode could have devoted precious screen time to explicating this or that confusing plot point, or to filling in the tremendous narrative gap that exists after the departure of Ajira Airways Flight 316 from the island in the episode’s last scene. Those things might have satisfied many people more than what ultimately made it to air. But instead, the episode proved that, no matter what answers fans might have craved, the team behind Lost understood why they watched the show, why they loved it, and why any answers ever mattered in the first place.
Indeed, as hokey as some might find it, I liked the decision to end Lost in that multifaith church, with its stained-glass depictions of the cross and the Star of David and om, a place where questions and answers don’t just matter but Matter. It was a place of faith and spirituality, values this show has always prized above all others, and it gave the events of the finale a certain gravitas. After all, while the show has always been strongest when it focused on being rather than meaning, Lost has nevertheless been unambiguous in its conviction that life itself should not simply be, but mean. The quest for meaning was the core of Lost‘s dramatic tension, and the idea that we all have a purpose became its central dogma over the course of its six seasons. What was most compelling, then, about the final scene of “The End” was its conclusion that the fateful events on the island mattered so much, were so full of meaning, that the castaways could fulfill their cosmic purpose simply by coming together and existing in the aura of those events forever.
What does the ending of Lost mean? More than anything, it means that we may be close to the conclusion of an important chapter in television history, during which network television stood up to say that it could still deliver some of the best scripted entertainment there is, no matter what happened on cable or the Internet. Lost marshalled unparalleled passion and ambition every week for six years, and many critics would say that it’s hard to believe networks will ever reach such heights again.
Last week’s episode ended with a dramatic cleansing ritual in which Coach Taylor and the East Dillon Lions burned their old uniforms, destroying these symbols of a past that included a humiliating forfeit of their season opener and pledging to start anew, to “finish this fight.” “In the Skin of a Lion” (Hulu) deals with the fallout from this incident — fallout which probably wouldn’t happen at all on most shows. Most shows would take this moment for its benefits — an emotional and inspiring scene, a chance for its lead actor to perform, a reason for viewers to get behind a new set of characters — and move on to some other plot line the next week. Friday Night Lights refuses to let go so blithely, lest we forget that these kinds of reckless acts, energizing though they may be, have real consequences.
Eric spends the bulk of the episode dealing with these consequences. I loved the scene where he tries (and largely fails) to explain to Principal Levi Burnwell why, exactly, he needed to burn these uniforms, and why he therefore needs money from the school to purchase new ones. “We’re just a little shy,” Eric begs, getting nothing out of Levi but an admonition that “rebuilding the football program might be a bit premature,” and that he “wasn’t even supposed to take this job.” What’s important about this moment is the oft-ignored truth that even a compelling leader like Coach Taylor is not a leader everywhere: he still has a boss, he still gets put on his heels when his boss doesn’t agree with his decision, and he still has to beg for money like everyone else. He may be in charge on the football field, but that doesn’t mean he can do whatever he wants.
Meanwhile, I still can’t stand Becky. She’s just plain annoying. Even on a second viewing, knowing (though not fully remembering) what happens for the rest of the season, I don’t really understand why, of all the possible subplots they could have written for Tim Riggins, they wrote the one in which he has to listen to a bratty teenage girl prattle on and on, so she can fill the silence and pretend that someone is listening. I get that Tim is supposed to be filling a void in her life — her dad is nowhere to be seen, and her mom is so absent that Becky begs Tim, of all people, to help her choose a dress for an upcoming pageant — but the season’s first three episodes have yet to give us a reason to care. The one redeeming value in this storyline is that it gives us a chance to fully appreciate how much Tim Riggins has grown up in just a few short years; when Luke Cafferty makes a mostly-harmless joke about Becky’s attractiveness, Riggins gives him an unmistakable “I’m too old for this stuff now” look. He would’ve made the same joke a couple of seasons ago.
Plenty of other things happen in the episode — Buddy Garrity publicly breaks up with the Panthers, Vince and Luke chafe against each other and against Coach Taylor’s treatment of them, and Saracen finally has a breakthrough with Richard Sherman (another character I’m not sure I get) — but I paid the most attention to Julie and Tami’s conversations about going to church. It is, in some ways, such a clichéd conversation — teenager has doubts about organized religion, parent tries to keep the teen engaged because letting them out of church could mean letting them out of the family entirely — that you wonder at first why it was worth the screen time to dramatize it. It’s given added weight, however, by the subtext of Julie’s burgeoning doubts about her relationship with Matt. She seems to be wondering, on some level, whether Matt thinks of her the way she is starting to think of God: as someone you maintain a relationship with because you’re supposed to, even though you feel like you’re outgrowing them. I’ve had mixed feelings about Julie Taylor over the course of the series, but I think this is a season in which she begins to take life much more seriously, and she becomes a more interesting character as a result.
The promo for next week indicated that the tension between Vince and Luke comes to a head in the next episode, and also that Saracen will get some news that leads to what’s probably the strongest episode of the entire season (two weeks from now). Looking forward to it!
With the stage for Season 4 having been set in “East of Dillon,” “After the Fall” (Hulu) started to move the story forward. The episode proved to be a showcase of some of FNL‘s best qualities.
The first was the show’s sense of narrative balance. Even as the core plot line — Eric’s effort to pick up the pieces after forfeiting East Dillon’s season opener — unfolded, the episode still spent a huge chunk of screen time advancing the stories for all of the other characters. This is in contrast to, say, Lost, which generally moves stories forward one piece at a time, to the extent that fans refer to most episodes as “Jack episodes” or “Kate episodes” or “Locke episodes.” “After the Fall” was an Eric episode, to the extent that such a thing exists, but we still got to know two new main characters (Luke Cafferty and Jess Merriweather), pumped our fists as Tami stood up to Joe McCoy and his crew, watched with restrained skepticism as Tim Riggins continued to try to put his life back together, and cringed as Matt Saracen discovered that his new art internship with a “genius” didn’t live up to his expectations. Obviously, you can only make so much narrative progress when you keep so many threads running. Friday Night Lights is a slow burn, demonstrating tremendous patience on the part of its writers and requiring equal patience from its viewers.
Which brings me to the second great quality — the music. FNL‘s musical style, patient like everything else about it, is gentle and minimal, deceptively simple. Much of the episode doesn’t have any score at all, and when it does, it serves the narrative without getting in the way. Just check out the climax of the episode and how W.G. Snuffy Walden‘s score (I really love this guy’s work) builds emotion without ever becoming kitschy or melodramatic. The first two notes set the tone for the entire scene.
The third quality, which I realize I mentioned last week and therefore need to stop talking about, is the show’s trueness to life. My favorite scene in the entire episode was the one in which Eric and Tami argue about the mailbox used by the Panthers boosters to establish Luke’s residence in West Dillon.
The way this scene develops is like all arguments in real life, and like FNL itself: ragged and raw. The escalation is uneven and, in some ways, unexpected, and Tami and Eric argue like people who don’t fully understand how they got into this argument in the first place. And I love how the scene ends with Eric storming out of the house saying that he’s going to go get some milk, as if he has any clue whether there’s milk in the house or not. We’ve all done that — made up a ridiculous excuse just to escape an argument with someone.
You get the sense from this episode that the strength of Eric and Tami’s relationship will be tested in this season more seriously than we’ve yet seen. It’ll be interesting to see how they cope, and how we cope along with them.
Friday Night Lights returned to NBC this weekend with its Season 4 premiere (Hulu), and I’ve decided to write a review on every episode this season. As part of the unique financing arrangement that can be credited almost exclusively for keeping the show alive this long, all thirteen episodes have already aired on DirecTV, so I’ll be watching this season for the second time; I’m hoping that I’ll notice new things this time around. (I don’t want to spoil later episodes, though, so I’ll often write as though I haven’t seen the rest of the season.)
Season 4 begins a summer vacation after the Season 3 finale, in which Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) lost his job as head coach of Dillon High School’s football team and was instead named the head coach at East Dillon High, a long-closed campus that’s reopening after a controversial redistricting. The final shot of Season 3 saw Taylor and his wife, Tami (Connie Britton), visiting the run-down East Dillon field that would become his new home.
We viewers have been trained to dread these kinds of plot developments because they tend to signal “reboots,” often perpetrated either by networks who want to “take the show in a new direction” (see: Alias) or by writers who have run out of ideas (see: Weeds, which has done this literally every season, with absurd and appalling results). They almost always turn out to be disasters. If there’s one thing I have to say about FNL‘s Season 4 premiere, “East of Dillon,” it’s that we can rest at ease. It’s clear after just the first few minutes that nothing has really changed, that we are right back where we want to be, with Eric and Tami and Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) and Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) and all the other characters we know and love (or love to hate). Credit is due to the show’s writing team for turning in a new direction without jumping the shark.
But while nothing may have changed for us, plenty has changed for these characters and for the town of Dillon. Coach Taylor has a new job, of course. Saracen, having decided to stay and take care of his grandmother rather than accept his scholarship at the Art Institute of Chicago, is stuck delivering pizzas — to the Panthers’ newly obnoxious starting quarterback, J.D. McCoy (Jeremy Sumpter), no less. Riggins spends less screen time at college than you will reading this review, before he drives his truck from San Antonio State straight back to Dillon. And of course, all of Dillon is on edge as a result of the school redistricting, which has left Tami, Dillon High’s principal, caught on both sides of an argument with deep racial and socioeconomic subtext. The pace of the first half of the episode is brisk, quickly bringing us up to speed on what’s happened to everyone and introducing us to a new character, Vince Howard (played by The Wire’sMichael B. Jordan). I continue to be impressed by how FNL can say more in a 45-second scene — indeed, in a single shot of Buddy Garrity (Brad Leland) looking uncomfortable at a Panther boosters meeting — than some shows manage to say in a 45-minute episode.
I didn’t, of course, like everything the show did to kick off Season 4. We meet two as-yet-unnamed characters in this episode, when Riggins, back in Dillon, has a one-night stand with a red-haired bartender and meets her plucky daughter when he tries to sneak out of her house the next morning. The daughter is just plain annoying and talks too much in that way, the way that often happens on TV but almost never in real life. She’s too young to be a credible love interest for Riggins and, at least for now, doesn’t feel like she has that whatever-it-is that makes us believe so strongly in every character on this show, no matter how minor. The redemption of her role in this episode is that she delivers its best line: “So what’s it like being the guy who used to be Tim Riggins?”
After all, that’s what this episode is really about, and what it seems that this season will be about: when life veers off course, when you lose the things that made you who you are, what do you do? How do you cope? Nearly every character has to find an answer to this question, Coach Taylor most of all. What we see in “East of Dillon” is that he honestly doesn’t know. What we’re reminded of is what we’ve always known: that Eric Taylor isn’t perfect. For one thing, he doesn’t handle the stress very well. He yells, because he can’t think of anything else to do; he even yells at the well-meaning (if buffoonish) Stan Traub (Russell DeGrazier), who joins the East Dillon Lions as an assistant coach after a chance encounter at Sears. Taylor’s frustration, along with that of many other characters, is palpable, and he’s generally as clueless as the rest of us when trying to channel that frustration.
But imperfect though he may be, Coach Taylor is also amazing. His pregame speech in this episode literally gave me chills, and I don’t even have the excuse of being an impressionable 17-year-old. I loved the earnest affection in his eyes as he checked on his bruised and battered team at halftime, gently probing to discover the seriousness of their injuries as they attempted to conceal them, wanting to prove to their coach that they could keep fighting. Coach Taylor might yell, and yell, and yell, but he loves his team, and they love him, and we all know it.
Indeed, FNL‘s commitment to verisimilitude, to showcasing not only a flawed hero but a full cast of flawed characters, human and real, has become its legacy. It’s the reason we watch it and the reason we’ll still be talking about it a decade from now as one of the great television shows of our time. Because if these people, imperfect as they are, can still do amazing things, then maybe I, with all my myriad flaws, can do amazing things too. By watching and learning what these people are capable of, I’m also learning something about what I’m capable of.
And that’s why I can’t wait for next Friday night.
1) When I was three, she took me to the library every Friday to pick up a new set of books which she would read to me over the next week. (I’m sure she got a little tired of Eric Carle and Frog & Toad after a while, but it never showed.)
2) In 5th grade, knowing I had been watching a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation, she picked up a full-length Trek novel at the library and handed it to me, saying, “why don’t you try this?” This was the first book I ever read from the “grownup section” — who knows when I would have ventured there on my own?
3) For my fifth birthday party, she cooked enough food for something like ~75 guests. By herself. And it was all good. And she did the exact same thing ten months later for my brother’s first birthday.
4) She took care of me (age five) and my brother (age ~three weeks) when we had chickenpox…while she also had chickenpox.
5) When I lamented last year that we had gotten rid of a couple of random action figures from 1992 (yes, really) during our moving sale, she went on eBay and bought the exact same ones.
6) When I had to catch a 6 AM bus in high school, she woke up every morning at 5 AM to make my lunch, give me breakfast, and drive me to the bus stop, even though I could, in retrospect, have done all these things myself.
7) She worked extra hours, and sometimes even Sundays, so that she could rack up enough comp time to come home early when she needed to pick up my brother or me from after-school activities (despite the fact that she worked ~50 miles away).
8) Since I got my own apartment, she has sent me a steady stream of carefully measured and written recipes, in the hope that I might finally be able to fend for myself, even though she had to perfect them through decades of hard work. I don’t think I would be interested in cooking if I couldn’t make food that tastes at least vaguely like hers.
9) She remembers even the most obscure and useless life detail I share with her, even things I don’t remember sharing! She recently embarrassed me by asking about a flight voucher I’d forgotten I had and which I therefore failed to use before it expired :-P
10) She has tolerated my BS for nearly twenty-five years and shows no signs of giving up on me :-)
Last week, I had the pleasure of seeing a talk given by Hollywood composer Bear McCreary, who is best known for penning the critically acclaimed score for the 2004-2009 Battlestar Galactica television series. McCreary was accompanied by vocalist Raya Yarbrough, who is featured in the series’ main title (and who, it turns out, is also his fiancée). The event took the form of an interview during which the two also performed a selection of tracks from the Battlestar canon.
I enjoyed this event a lot. Some of my key takeaways:
1) Bear was only 24 when he became the show’s sole composer. Wow. I’d love to be doing something so visible and so creatively compelling at my age.
2) Bear had the benefit of mentorship in his formative years by Elmer Bernstein, an accomplished film composer best known for his work on The Ten Commandments, To Kill a Mockingbird, Ghostbusters, and others. There might be plenty of people who rise from complete obscurity to succeed in Hollywood, but this guy isn’t one of them; he somehow got lucky enough to start learning from a well-known Hollywood insider when he was in middle school. Maybe you don’t need this kind of relationship to “make it,” but it sure helps.
3) Roles like Bear’s can vary widely depending on the openness and leadership style of the producers. By McCreary’s account, at least, Ron Moore seems to have been willing to give him tremendous creative flexibility to experiment with all kinds of musical styles and to make the music not just a background but a central element of the show. By the end of the series, McCreary was actually providing story input and even auditioning for a guest role on the show (a musician, of course). Much like the technology companies I’m more familiar with, I imagine that television studios vary widely in culture, with some relying on heavily hierarchical processes and others being happy to allow creative people to contribute in ways that go beyond their traditional roles.
4) As a professional musician, Bear just doesn’t experience music as a casual listener anymore. This one is probably obvious to any serious creator in any discipline. I nevertheless found it interesting to hear McCreary describe how he doesn’t know how to answer the question, “what kind of music do you listen to?” because he listens to so much music as part of his work, rather than “for fun,” and how he can’t switch off the hyperanalytical lens through which he experiences all music now. I imagine that filmmakers, writers, visual artists, and so on all have the same issue.
5) Creative work is hard. McCreary casually mentioned toward the end of his talk that this was the first day since New Year’s that he hadn’t written any music. The more you think about it, the more incredible this is. It seems clear that if you are serious about pursuing a creative profession at a high level, it is not a 9-5 job. You have to be doing it all the time.
Overall, Bear seemed like a fun and humble guy. Glad I was able to make time to see him!
Coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics has gotten me thinking about a lot of things, but one of the less expected topics of thought has been the American media’s inconsistent approach to word order in East Asian names. I imagine that most people of East Asian descent will consider this old news, but I nevertheless find it interesting.
As most readers probably know, Chinese names (and Korean ones too, though not Japanese ones*) are conventionally written with the family name followed by the given name, rather than the reverse, as is common in most of the rest of the world. For example, Yao Ming, almost certainly the most globally famous Chinese citizen today, wears a Houston Rockets jersey with “YAO” written on the back; Yao is his family name, and Ming his given name. Similarly, Kim Jong-il, the mysterious Supreme Leader of North Korea, comes from the Kim family. (Fun fact: some 22% of Koreans carry the family name of Kim.) As a service to its primarily Western audience, Wikipedia in English generally includes a note about this convention at the top of articles about notable East Asians: “This is a Chinese name; the family name is Yao.”
The fact that this convention does not match Western practice means that Western publications have an interesting dilemma. Should they render Chinese and Korean names in their correct form and run the risk of “misinforming” ignorant readers who might then mistakenly address the NBA center as “Mr. Ming?” Or should they reverse the names, thus implicitly demanding that East Asians conform to the West’s brazenly individualistic modus operandi? (The title of this post comes from a character on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Ro Laren, who refuses to tolerate clueless humans who call her “Ensign Laren” in spite of her people’s preferred nomenclature.) Wikipedia seems to strive for the former but is not entirely consistent: Yunjin Kim is Yunjin Kim, even though she was famous in Korea long before she joined the cast of Lost.
Western media outlets’ inability to agree on an answer to this question has resulted in a great disservice to viewers and readers, who must now contend with widespread confusion as different sources identify East Asians with different syntax conventions. Incredibly, some sources are even internally inconsistent; in what I think is legitimate to call an editorial gaffe, today’s San Jose Mercury News includes a column about pairs’ skating that refers to Chinese frontrunners Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao, as well as a daily results summary that mentions Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo. (The latter renditions are correct.)
NBC, for its part, appears to take the culturally sensitive high road, always printing the family name first. But in a subtle but unmistakable demonstration of how little it thinks of its viewers, NBC also helpfully renders family names in slightly larger text than given names in any screen that includes both. (Watch closely tonight, if you don’t believe me.)
But is this really more accurate? South Korean skater Kim Yu-Na, many analysts’ favorite for the ladies’ gold medal, actually has a Facebook fan page (which I can’t confirm is maintained by her) under the name Yu-Na Kim. Meanwhile, her website, which lives at yunakim.com, prominently displays the text, “Figure Skater Queen Kim Yuna,” juxtaposed with her signature, which reads, “Yuna Kim.” Amid this tangled web, who’s to say what “correct” really is?
Perhaps the answer lies in the data. That is, you might argue that “correct” is simply whatever people do. (You might, but I never would.) To see whether this approach holds any water at all, let’s take a look at a very simple metric: the approximate number of results returned by Google for each form of a name, entered in quotes. This metric isn’t perfect, because Google’s query parser does appear to play games with word order (otherwise, how would the second result for [“hao zhang”] be the Wikipedia article for Zhang Hao, which does not include the Westernized syntax anywhere on the page?). It’s also not perfect because Google will find “Lastname, Firstname” in pages when asked for [“Lastname Firstname”]. Finally, it’s a bit silly because there are over a billion Chinese people who would all write these names one way but aren’t proportionally represented in English-language web content.
Caveats aside, this metric still appears interesting and illustrative.
We’ll start with Yao Ming, who proves himself to be a veritable ambassador to the world for the family-name-first dogma:
And Kim Yu-Na, who, it seems, can hardly make up her own mind?
The water is clearly murky. Independent decisions are being made about each person according to who-knows-what calculus, leaving those of us who strive to use “correct” nomenclature stuck relying on instincts we don’t have. I can make guesses based on what “sounds like” a family name or “seems like it’s probably” a woman’s given name; sometimes it’s easy because I’ve heard the name before, but it’s often impossible. I just don’t know Chinese names well enough. (It’s less stressful with Korean names because there are so many family names that are readily recognizable as Korean.)
The result is that we are all probably wrong as often as we are right (East Asians among us excepted).
But if you think Chinese and Korean naming conventions are strange, try visiting South India. Had I been born and raised in my family’s home state of Tamil Nadu, where the use of a family name has never been customary, my name might most commonly be written as “B. Prabhu.” At least that was true twenty-five years ago; I’m honestly not sure what people do today.
The final question, I suppose, is whether we should care about any of this. After all, what’s in a name?
*Key notes in the comments that Japanese names are surname-first too, although I don’t think I’ve seen them written that way in English.
