Just One Kiss: The highlight of this episode of Friday Night Lights

Best scene in Friday Night Lights (season 4, episode 7?) has to be the teachers at (West) Dillon at a karaoke night - more more specifically, the aftermath of same, when bumbling young English teacher who's obviously long had a crush on Tammy (understandably) and obviously interested in her in part because she's out of reach - married, and in any case out of his league, he a confirmed nebish, embraces Tammy at curbside outside restaurant/bar, friendly, congratulating her on her award, she thanking him for the fun evening, and the embrace lasts just a moment too long and as they break he leans in to kiss her on the mouth and she pulls back astonished. Even better, she goes up to him the next day to talk about this - tells him not to feel bad or guilty but it can't happen again. That's just one of the things so smart about this show - they really know how to write for Tammy, making her the smartest and kindest person without in the least being wimpy or simpering or supercilious. She just always seems to know what to say to put things right. A cheaper, dumber show would have made a huge plot point out of this and would have her guilt and anger simmer and maybe the teacher would have done something stupid leading to a fight with Tammy's husband - stupid melodrama. But FNL writers understand how people should act and how they do act, and maybe nothing more will come of this kiss, but they used it very effectively to illuminate character and to create a revealing moment - revealing primarily about Tammy and her poise and wisdom.

Sorkin has found his perfect subject : The Social Network

Never was a big fan of Aaron Sorkin and The West Wing, though because M was an avid viewer I probably saw the equivalent of many shows just by passing through the TV room. My plaint was that all the characters sounded like smart screenwriters - nobody talks that way. But Sorkin has found the perfect subject for him in the geeky and intellectually arrogant Harvard world of The Social Network. These people - from all I know of them - really do talk like Sorkin, and it feels he has perfectly caught the inflections and the caustic syntax of Mark Zuckerberg (credit also to Jesse Eisenberg). Director Fincher who put me into a novacaine coma with Benjamin Button has figured out how to pace a story, too, with a fast narrative and very effective cutting from present (legal depositions against Zuckerberg regarding the provenance of Facebook) to past (as we watch as Zuckerberg step by step conceives the idea [or steals it?] and develops it). He's a horrible but troubled kid - amazingly, we learn not a single fact about his life before Harvard - and though the irony is a bit thick here we come to see the sorrow in his life, the guy who created the world's biggest social network, based on "friending," has not a single friend in his life - at least that's the Zuckerberg of fiction, the movie treads a line between biopic and pure fiction, and makes no attempt to be a true documentary. The tone and the playing is exactly right, down to the small scenes - the two rich jocks coming to Larry Summers and expecting his help is a great moment. Film should win lots of awards and one would hope a wide audience, though the theater was not filled.

Two social outcasts but with a weird twist: Kimberly Akimbo

Didn't know much about and don't know much about David Lindsey-Abaire but last night saw his (2000?) play, "Kimberly Akimbo," at the always good Second Story Theater (Warren, R.I.) - a fine production of a very good, unusual family tragi-comedy, a contemporary take on the Williams-O'Neil tradition of families tearing themselves apart - with the twist that in this case the only sane one in the family is the teenage daughter. The real twist is that the eponymous daughter has progeria, she's 16 but looks about 40 (played by a 40ish actor), though dresses and talks like a somewhat precocious teen (it's not broadly comic like Freaky Friday, but just touching and a little strange). Kimberly of course is a social outcast at school, and also facing her mortality - average life expectancy is 16 - and at the heart of the play is her relation with a geeky classmate who befriends her, another outcast. Lots of plays and movies have this theme, too, but handled very well here, with the odd twist of the obvious gap in age between the two actors. One of the best lines is K says people at school ignore her and her friend says he wishes they'd ignore him. One amazing scene: The two get a ride to school from K's alcoholic, bumblingly protective father. Don't touch her tits!, the father screams, leading to an argument about Dungeons and Dragons, finally, after much shouting, awkward silence and then: Look, we're here! Which brought down the house. Most touching scene: when K has to dress as her friend's grandmother (to pull off a clumsy bank heist), and she steps into the light in an old lady's dress and with a powdered wig and she really does look 70 or so, and everyone in the audience and on stage is startled and moved. Can he still be friends with her? Attracted to her? Or does this ruin everything for them? Very good play, sharp and lively production by Second Story.

Which actor in Friday Night Lights has matured the most?

Episode 6 season 4 of "Friday Night Lights" is somewhat quiet compared with many others, a transitional point in the middle of this season of episodes - the E. Dillon Lions begin to come into their own as a team, playing a heartening game and proud in defeat. Strangely, none of the players have fully emerged the way the players did on the Dillon Panthers in previous seasons, but there are tremendous plot opportunities in the racial tensions on the team, an issue rarely explored in previous seasons - the racial tensions regarding Smash Williams resided largely off the field. This episode more about people leaving Dillon, Lyla (Mrs. Derek Jeter) comes back for a brief turn with Riggins - I do think she's one of the weakest actors in the show - and then she's back to college leaving Riggins morose. I think she's out of his life for good, or ought to be - he's a guy destined for nothing good, I'm afraid. In parallel plot line, Matt takes off in his beat-up old car - there's nothing left in Dillon for him, now that his grandmother doesn't need him and all he's doing is delivering pizzas - except for Julie, but he knows she'll go off to college, too. Very sad moment, and very true to life, as so much is in this series. Landry increasingly emerging as a very good character, his dialogue with Matt as they toss around a football, after the funeral, just great - smart and thoughtful and boyishly awkward and true. Not sure what range the actor has, but seems to me he could potentially be a very good actor in a bigger part, especially with some comic possibilities. He's grown and matured as an actor more than any other in the series.

Every word and action is revealing and true to character: Friday Night Lights

What makes "Friday Night Lights (Season 4)" so powerful is that it's a wonderful balance between the expected and the unknown or unpredictable. As with all really good dramas, you find yourself thinking: what will he say? what will she say to him? In this case: how will Coach Taylor speak to his team? What will he say when Matt shows up at his house distraught? How will he speak to the two players arrested for fighting? Even more so for his wife, Tammy: what will she say to daughter Julie? And, in episode 5, what will Matt say at his father's funeral? There's always a bit of surprise, you can never quite predict what they will say - but once the characters speak and act, it seems so inevitably right that you can't imagine they could have said or done anything differently. Matt's eulogy, about his father pulling toilet paper off the shelf in the supermarket - tells us a great deal about Matt (his clumsy inability to come up with a real memory), the grandma (fussy, picky, cross, wrong brand of toilet paper), the dad (angry, impulsive, we see why he left home), most of all Matt's awkwardness in this situation tells us everything he says his dad was "funny" but this shows us a 6-year-old boy scared of his father's impulses - anyway, you could analyze this one scene for pages. All of the scenes are like this. It's not that there is never an extra word, which was the case with The Wire, but it's that every action is revealing of character and true to the essence of the character - kids, adults, all.

Racism right out in the open: Friday Night Lights

Why so few people watch "Friday Night Lights" remains one of those unfathomable mysteries. Season 4 (?), as Coach Taylor takes over the East Dillon team, is just as great as the preceding seasons - very likable and wise and funny and credible characters, including all the high-school kids and recent grads as well as the adults, And in this season a whole new theme opens up, the history of racism, segregation, and unequal opportunity in Dillon, Texas. Up to now, though the show always recognized that the town had haves and have-nots and that the black kids on the team faced a particular barrier that the white kids do not (the black star running back is all but ignored by recruiters after a run-in with the law, which would not and did not happen to other players), this season puts the theme right out in the open. East Dillon High is a disgrace compared with Dillon, the resources and conditions are horrible - and what's more incredible, actually it's all to credible, is that nobody in the community owns this problem. The Dillon boosters continue to do all in their (ample) power to build a football dynasty and they let the other school - not just talking about football here - and its kids take the dregs and suffer. We see this in every community! It should be a crime, someone should go to jail for that. Football cannot and will not be the savior, but we can see how Taylor's dynamism will help build pride in the team and then, perhaps, in the whole East Dillon community, but they will face man struggles and confrontations along the way. Great series.

Moody music, mumbled dialog, grainy photography - do not necessarily make a movie a work of art

So we sit down with the fam last night to enjoy some good quality time watching a movie about a serial killer - and what do we get? A pretentious, crappy movie in which the villain (spoiler, I guess, but if you can't figure it out why are you even reading this?) turns out to be the evil SHOPPING MALL DEVELOPER! Gosh, why don't filmmakers leave these guys alone? All they wanna do is make shopping better and more convenient for everyone. So what if they clear away slum housing to build their palaces? Does that mean they also have to be child molesters, too? I'll never see a shopping-mall developer again without a shudder of fear, thanks a lot. The movie - "Red Riding Trilogy Part 1: 1974" - is allegedly, supposedly based on the story of the Yorkshire ripper of the 1980s, but a quick look at any reference will give new definition to the word "loosely," as this killer is a child molester and torturer, not a slayer of prostitutes. Just call it a series murder investigations and police corruption - at least that would be more honest. It starts off reasonably well, but becomes increasingly preposterous as the plot unfolds - one of those stories in which the improbable hero (in this case, a journalist eager for a scoop) - endures way, way beyond the possible realm of physical endurance, and ultimately you have to say: why don't the bad guys just kill him? They've killed everyone else? They obviously leave him alive just so that there will be a story. All the moody music, grainy photography, and mumbled dialog in almost incomprehensible dialect will not turn an ordinary police procedural into a work of art, sorry.