Friday, January 05, 2007

You Should Be Watching

This week's "Friday Night Lights" was further example of it's awesome-ness. Seriously, there are shows that are only about adults that are not this good.
Exhibit A: In the continuing story of Jason Street, former star quarterback now recovering from a a spinal injury that has left him paralyzed: this week he and his cheerleader ex-girlfriend tried to move past her sleeping with his best friend by sleeping together and found some - uh - equipment difficulties. What made this storyline so wonderful was that his response was to go talk to quad buddy Herc who said, it will happen but things aren't going to work like they did before and you may find that what turns you on now is different. It was treated respectfully, and as a normal question (which of course it is) that will get better but maybe not in one neat episode. Lyla (afore-mentioned ex-girlfriend) hunted up a video (from the eighties if the hairstyles are anything to go by) about quad sex, watched it, and then brought over to watch with Jason.

Exhibit B: New QB Matt Saracen's dad came home on leave from Iraq. In very realistic fashion, he expected things to have been exactly as they had been when he left - namely before his son matured when handed leadership responsibility - both in football and in life. (Remember how silly the freshmen seems once you were a sophomore?) So when told by Coach Taylor that his son was a great leader, his response was - let's hope that keeps up. When he finally clued in that what Matt had been telling him about Grandma's slide into dementia* really was such that she couldn't be unattended for very long - he said great, let's put her in a home. Except that in Dad's absence, Grandma was acting as Matt's guardian. Okay, let's move Matt to Oklahoma. (Exacerbating tensions was the fact that the person they talked to had mentioned that in light of having a minor child with no real guardian, he would be eligible to end his service, Mr. Saracen had responded no.) It was beautifully handled, not making the elder Saracen a villain, just a guy who's out of touch with his family.

*I am forgiving them for acting like dementia and Alzheimer's are unrelated conditions. Perhaps the government classifies them separately.