I want to like Bored to Death, but it just won't let me

You want to like "Bored to Death" (HBO) but it keeps promising to be good and then disappointing you (me). At its best, it's zany and witty with some good dialogue, a kind of likable nebbishy literary lead character (Jason Schwartzman) who manages to get the girls mostly through his wit, a role Woody Allen might have played 40 years ago. It also offers Ted Danson in a great role for him, a Clay Felkerish boulevardier and magazine editor - Danson continues to get better. Also some amusing name checks and cultural references - watch this show if you want to be reassured that you already know the most hip writers and directors. Also some good stunt casting here and there. All that said, Bored to Death just never comes together and never makes sense. The odd premise is that Schwartzman is a magazine writer, a blocked novelist, with a part-time job on the side as a private eye. He is completely and utterly unbelievable as a detective, and it seems that the writer (Jonathan Ames) has no idea how to blend these elements of plot and character into a unified vision. For example, shouldn't the plot lines link - he solves literary mysteries? He uses his writerly skills to solve mysteries? No, we just have two different characters living in the same body, it seems. His palling around with Danson makes no sense either; no magazine editor of Danson's stature hangs around with a part-time writer and a cartoonist (Zach Galif... - another poorly conceived character, never believable as an artist). Although there are many laughs along the way, the whole feeling is of three musketeers concocted by a screenwriter who have no relation to one another outside of this script. In a great series, you can imagine the characters lives beyond the frame. Not here. And, by the way, no serious writer ever tells someone: I can't hang out tonight, I have to work on my novel.

Season finales are often disappointing - but Friday Night Lights stil among the best

Though final season episodes are almost inevitably a little disappointing - hard to tie so many strands in 41 minutes, so they inevitably feel a bit burdened by the demands of plot, and are often either too arcane (Damages), too ambiguous (Sopranos), or, in this case ("Friday Night Lights") a little too sentimental - Friday Night Lights Season 4 remains among the best. I won't be a spoiler, but I exactly predicted what would happen to principal Tammy Taylor. As to the rest of the plot outcomes, I'll leave them unsaid. Just this: The season beautifully explores some key issues seldom treated effectively on TV or in any dramatic format for that matter: racial tensions (two rival high schools, white and black), moral ambiguity (several characters brush with crime and not all pay a price), friendship (friendship between guys portrayed accurately and sympathetically without recourse to vulgarity or Apatow-like pranks and snarky dialogue, funny as that may be in other contexts), teenage love (Matt's abandonment of Julie was surprising, yet ultimately seemed like just the kind of thing a confused and somewhat immature guy would do - and her sorrow is palpable), marital stress and happiness (Tammy and Eric Taylor cover the whole range of emotions from fury to tenderness all in a totally credible and sympathetic manner). Though most people will say the final game between E and W Dillon is the highlight, I think it's hard to top the Thanksgiving dinner at the Taylors, with the strained dialogue and the awkward toast. The excellence of the scripting, acting, and directing of this scene speaks for the subtle beauty of the whole series.

The inequities between East and West Dillon are criminal (Friday Night Lights)

Penultimate episode of Season 4, "Friday Night Lights," just great - as with many next-to-last episodes in seasons, it ends with just about everyone in trouble and with the sense that there's no way they can clear this up in one more hour. We'll see - but meanwhile I have to step back and admire at how effectively this is written, directed, and played - we believe in each of the characters, we actually like each of the characters, even the screwups. Every plot line is credible, and each is quirky enough and sufficiently unpredictable that you cannot see ahead around the bend - surprises happen, and they feel right and inevitable. To summarize where we are: Riggins brother at their highest point (new dad, new landowner) arrested for running a chop shop, Vince walks away from a gang revenge assignment and into Jess's arms, leaving Landry out in the cold, forces still gathering around Tammy trying to oust her as principal on trumped-up charges that she counseled a girl toward abortion, and most germane: East and West Dillon about to face off, the game made ugly by tremendous vandalism to the already pathetic East Dillon field. The inequities between these two schools are criminal, and I hope they will move that issue to the forefront before the season ends. I for one can't quite see what will happen, though I suspect Tammy will lose her job and nothing good will happen for Vince. Odd how some characters - Matt, e.g. - have been written right out of the series. Another oddity (goof): anyone notice that Coach Taylor calls Landry "Lance" throughout one scene?

You don't have to like football, but... : Friday Night Lights

"Friday Night Lights" Season 4 gets back on track (episode 10?) as Matt at last gets in touch with Julie and she tearfully tells him off, Vince witnesses a shooting while with his thug friends, and Luke finally breaks down and shows Coach his severely injured hip. Also, Riggins gets thrown out of his trailer and again is alone and troubled, sensitive tough kid with terrible luck. And most significant - fundamentalist forces in town (backed by Dillon boosters?) go after Tammy's job, accusing her of counseling a girl (Becky) toward abortion. In other words, a lot happening in this episode as season conclusion (obviously the Dillon E v W game) is on the horizon. Not sure why I find this episode better, stronger, but I think Becky is a weak character and a limited talent, so the episode of her struggle with her pregnancy did not ring true - hard to understand her hookup with Luke, hard to figure the level of her maturity as she comes on to Riggins, that whole plot line seems a little out of kilter - and how it's largely resolved - it was mainly used to set up Tammy. Also, story line seemed to be in danger of moving too far away from the field, which is ultimately at the heart of this series - I tell everyone that you don't have to like or even understand football to like FNL, but some of the best moments in the series concern the team and its players, and we don't know a lot about the E Dillon players - at least compared with how we knew the Dillon Panthers in previous years. This episode puts the team back in play.

Moving toward melodrama in a series that doesn't need to go there

Episode 9 of Season 4 of "Friday Night Lights" OK but not up to standard as most of the others, as it brushes dangerously close to melodrama - we follow the Riggins-Becky-Lance subplot as Becky, 16 and pregnant, decides for an abortion, which kind of rocks the father, Lance, who's from a fundamentalist family and is wracked with guilt and concern. To me, this plot strand is stretched too thin and I don't care particularly about these characters, especially Becky, who is hard to read. At the same time, Vince's mom ODs and he struggles to send her to rehab and has to send her to a private facility at $4k - and the only way he can get that money is by edging back into thug life. OK, it's a good social theme and things like this happen all the time I guess, but again it seems a melodramatic element in a story line that's appealing because it generally takes on themes of ordinary kids and families and their ordinary lives - that is, the college trip and the spat over a girlfriend (described in previous post) much more moving to me and more thoughtful than the complex plot lines about life & death. Episode does give Tammy/Connie Britton and her writers to once again make her a fount of wisdom and clear-headedness, as Becky wisely goes to her for counsel. We'll see where this goes - Vince obviously headed for trouble as, strangely, the racial tensions among the older generation are healing as the old guys come together in support of the E. Dillon football team.

Very real, right, true to life : How can you not like Friday Night Lights?

Two examples of the excellence of "Friday Night Lights" (Season 4, episode 9[?]) in that it shows the way people really do act and (usually) not the way characters act on tv and in movies. Much build-up toward the tension between Landry, goofy and intelligent and very average white-guy football player, v Vince, excellent player, black, a step away from going back to juvenile detention (juvey). Landry's become really interested in a black girl in their high school who it turns out was a long-time girlfriend of Vince's and a particular fave of Vince's mom. We've seen a few scenes of Vince staring down Landry as he's begun to date the girl. Landry seems oblivious - keeps waving to Vince, etc. We expect a big showdown on the field, perhaps ruining the team spirit and sending Vince back to juvey. Landry goes up to Vince, says in his goofy way hey why don't ou hit moe or something or whatever you have to do cause I know you're angry and so on - and Vince pauses, stares, taps Landry on the chest with the side of his fist: as if to say, you're okay, end of story. Very real, very right. Similarly, Glen awkwardly confesses to Coach Taylor that drunkenly he'd tried to kiss Tammy. Taylor seems really angry. That night he asks Tammy, she says she meant to tell him - we're expecting some big and pointless fight, Coach says he's then kissed Glen by proxy, and this whole thing becomes a running joke between them - again, very true to life, very right. How can you not like this show?

Has any mother-daughter pair been better cast than Britton and Teegarden?

"Friday Night Lights" season 4/episode 8 brings us on the college tour with Tammy (Connie Britton) and daughter Julie (Amy Teegarden) and you have to wonder whether mother-daughter have ever been better cast - impossible to believe they're not truly related. Also, better scripted (and acted, for that matter, especially Britton) - any parent who's gone on one of these tours and lived through the process as ambitious daughter applies to top colleges and struggles with desire to leave hom and anxiety about doing so, will recognize that they get all the notes and nuances right. As noted, much of this season - and perhaps an underlying theme of the whole series - is getting out and getting away: who leaves the small town of Dillon and never looks back? Who'd drawn back to it? Who can never leave, and what does that do to them? The town has its beauty and charm, as we see when Riggins surveys the 25 acres he hopes to buy. He could, maybe, have a good life there, if he can stop drinking and stay out of trouble. And the camaraderie surrounding football is a (mostly) good quality, that brings people together, across class and (to a degree) racial lines. But we also see that it's a big world and Dillon's a small town. Amy will have to go, and she's able to go - but what about the others, some of whom count football as their only possible way out? We see a few issues developing on this sidelines, so to speak: The Riggins brothers getting into the chop-shop business, Vince staring down Landry as Landry starts to date Vince's old girlfriend, Lance playing through a serious injury sure to get worse.