Inessentials

On Wednesday, Psych returns for its fifth season on USA, a network that has solidified a place as the most-watched cable network by developing original content branded around a helpfully loose “Characters welcome” theme. (See a good discussion of its branding and the role of genre at In Media Res.) Critical reaction to this show is some mixture of ignoring it and reviling it. And frankly, I’m not sure I disagree with a lot of the criticisms of the show: the writing is too on-the-nose, the acting is too mugging, the humor is too broad, the mysteries are too predictable, the lead character is too irritating (to other characters and to us), and… well, you get the idea. Even the score gets trashed.

Despite all of these (and in some of these cases, because of them), I dearly love Psych. There’s probably no show I enjoy watching more than Psych, none that makes me laugh more, and none that gets watched as quickly after the DVR records it. And it really comes down to one simple thing: Psych is funny.

Funny makes up for a multitude of sins. I’ll watch and rewatch a funny show far more quickly and more regularly than an otherwise superior drama. So when Psych‘s fourth season gets released tomorrow, it will soon make it into the DVD player for a second viewing, and probably a third viewing within a year.

There are some things to be said in favor of Psych. The supporting cast is stronger than Monk, a show that is viewed more positively by critics and Emmy voters. They’re about equal on the quirk-o-meter, for whatever that is worth, and both can attract some solid guest stars. But for me, the show works for one main reason: Dulé Hill.

Critics (and, I suspect, many fans) claim that the show lives or dies by the James Roday’s performance at the center of the show. Shawn Spencer is the fake psychic, after all, and he gets the most lines and the most story arcs. I can’t disagree that the show rests a lots on his shoulders. But what makes Roday’s mugging and irritation to others watchable is Hill’s Burton “Gus” Guster.

Gus fits into a particular subgenre of the bromance that I think of as the Male Black Best Friend. There are Lenny and Carl on The Simpsons, Phil and Lemm on Better Off Ted, Shawn and Gus on Psych, and (the fullest realization of this subgenre) J.D. and Turk on Scrubs. In each case, there is a pair of male best friends, one Caucasian and one African-American, who view each other as equals and are viewed by outsiders as inseparable. (The second half of Community‘s first season saw them pairing Abed with Troy, interestingly putting a twist on the formula by putting a character of Palestinian-Polish descent in the role of the white friend.)

With Phil and Lemm, the idea was that these are codependent coworkers who need each other to be successful. Lenny and Carl began as background figures, drinking buddies to Homer, but The Simpsons has generated a lot of humor out of their pairing. Scrubs pushed the bromance aspect farther than any show or film has yet done, but what interests me the most about it was that it gave Turk more stories and a greater depth of characterization than any other Male Black Best Friend, Guster included. Turk not only supported J.D. through residency and beyond, but he had an interesting and complicated relationship to Carla and had meaningful interactions with the rest of the cast. Gus has far less of that characterization and almost no relationships that aren’t mediated or interrupted by Shawn, and thus he suffers as a character. But he surpasses the others in the central role of the Male Black Best Friend: alleviating the white best friend’s perceived dorkiness by being equally dorky.

The joy of watching Psych for me is watching Hill’s performance as the Male Black Best Friend to a character that is built out of hamming it up and irritating others (including his father and those who sign his paycheck). Hill finds a nice balance between joining in with Roday’s antics and giving a look of sharp displeasure or an annoyed tone of voice that serves as a helpful counterpoint. Psych never passes up a joke, a reference to an ’80s film, an antic, or a farcical conclusion,(except in a handful of darker episodes near the end of the last two seasons). And there is simply too much silliness in the show for one character to carry without the show self-destructing. Many are annoyed at Tony Shaloub being nominated for his portrayal of Monk yet again, but that show is nothing without his performance. Roday’s take on Shawn is too thin to do the work of carrying the show single-handedly. So we have Burton Guster to carry us through, to take the weight off Shawn, to serve as a bridge to the somewhat more realistic characters on the show, and to ground Shawn.

This ancillary nature of the MBFF is disturbing insofar as it suggests that a television show can’t survive with a black lead or further contributes to racial tokenism. And there is probably something significant in the fact that Hill’s most famous role was on The West Wing, where he was a late addition to the cast, forced by NBC to address complaints about its whitewashed primetime lineup. To their benefit, USA has always promoted Psych as a two-lead comedy, but unfortunately that’s not how the show actually works in terms of stories or characterization. Gus is no more than the MBFF.

But I return to Psych because it is funny and because of Hill’s performance. In one of the show’s few (mostly) serious episodes, Shawn is tracking a serial killer and finds he can’t work under the stress, so he asks Gus to be his surrogate and lighten the mood. Rather than aim for mimicry, Hill delivers a performance as Gus that takes Shawn’s levity into absurdly literal territory and thus makes a joke of the very idea that Gus could be funny. But the real joke is that Gus is the funny one. Shawn is the class clown, the big-joke guy who can’t take anything seriously. Gus is the classic straight man who gets more laughs with an exasperated look than the wildly gesticulating man beside him.

Community has a well-earned reputation for mixing in lots of meta-humor into its character humor and one-off jokes. A lot of the humor comes from seeing how the writers play off sit-com clichés. When done properly, it adds a layer of sophistication to the show that I find very compelling. A show won’t survive long just doing that; it still needs characters we are interested in or stories we find compelling. In its first season, Community has done this remarkably well, incorporating nearly every kind of joke you could ever want in a sit-com.

We can appreciate those jokes about television (directed at itself, at other sit-coms, or recently at Glee), and it can lead to us thinking of Community as a smart show, one that it takes attention, background knowledge, and intelligence to watch. But I want to highlight a different way that Community‘s creators express and expect intelligence in their show. Here’s an exchange from last week’s “Modern Warfare,” an extended parody of action films.

The dialogue I want to draw your attention to is not the characters’ awareness of clichés and how they see themselves against those clichés. It’s the following.

Britta: “You’re right, you know. I am a phony. I try to act compassionate because I’m afraid that I’m not.”

Jeff: “Oh, please. I invented phony.You care about people. I accuse you of faking to convince myself that I’m not such a jerk.”

Britta: “Jeff, you help people more than I do and you don’t even want to. You’re not a jerk; you’re fine.”

There is a sophistication to this exchange that I really appreciate. Britta expresses a profound insight about herself: that what looks like compassion is actually rooted in a fear of being uncompassionate rather than a true benevolence. Jeff dismisses her worry because, as a phony, he recognizes what phoniness is and can see it in other people. Those are two really insightful observations for characters to make, and it takes an awareness by the writers of who these characters are and an ability to verbalize it without sounding pompous or distracting from the mood of the show. That is really smart writing.

But then it gets better. Britta recognizes a distinction between a person who has positive character traits (e.g., a compassionate person who wants to do go for others) and a person who produces positive consequences (e.g., a jerk who actually does good for others). Britta recognizes that the character traits, intentions, and desires that make a person a good person are not always correlated with actually doing good. On the other hand, there are people who are able to do a great deal of good that don’t have a great character. For example, Richard Nixon has done more good than most people who lived in the 20th century. It doesn’t follow that he had a morally praiseworthy character; he probably didn’t. It also doesn’t follow that he didn’t do a great deal bad, as well. He certainly did. Jeff, through elements of his personality and his position in the group, is able to do a lot more good for the study group (and the community college) than the person who is dedicating her life to doing good. That doesn’t make Jeff the better person, just the more powerful one.

One thing that Community has done a great job of this season is tracking Jeff’s reluctant immersion into the group. Positioning himself as an outsider who in the pilot claimed that he was a moral relativist who doesn’t care about other people to a group-member willing to make sacrifices (that he doesn’t fully understand) for the sake of others.  This can only be achieved when you create really complex characters, and the writers have a really firm grasp on them and the intelligence to draw out of those characters compelling stories and sensible dialogue. What makes Community the smartest show on television isn’t (just) all the self-referential humor, it’s also the ability to articulate very finely the social interactions of these complex characters while exploiting the backdrop of a community college to draw out interesting ethical and socio-psychological insights.

And it’s funny.

Big spoilers for “Chuck vs. the Honeymooners” (3.14) (Monday, April 27, 2010) and general spoilers for season 6 of The Office

Last night’s Chuck (which is the first of six episodes added after the initial run of 13 episodes in season 3) brought a lot of satisfaction to those who had been waiting, and waiting, and waiting for Chuck and Sarah to get together. Finally, an end to all that UST (Unresolved Sexual Tension, to use Mo Ryan’s acronym). Most critics have focused on the myth that a show takes a nose-dive in quality after the leads finally get together (the Moonlighting myth). “Look at Jim and Pam on The Office,” these critics say. “There are still interesting stories to tell about being in a relationship, not just about leading up to a relationship.” And these critics are right (except that The Office example is ill-timed, since the best part of season six has been the budding romance of Andy-Erin and not the established relationship of Jim-Pam). There is no part in dragging out a relationship of two characters who seem like they should be together simply to avoid dealing with the new problem of writing them as a couple.

Andy and Erin, from The Office (photo from fanpop.com)

Unfortunately, though, critics have been forced to deal with a rift among the devoted viewers of Chuck. Some fans’ major interest in the show is in seeing Chuck and Sarah get together. Known as ‘shippers among critics (as in “relationshippers”), these fans primarily care about casting aside any obstacles to Chuck and Sarah and getting them together as quickly and as happily as possible. Critics are then in the position of needing to distance themselves from these fans while also reaffirming that there is no point in keeping the leads apart for arbitrary reasons or because of the Moonlighting myth. I’ve written before about how this season of Chuck is an example of how shows (often in their third season) push the lead character away from their allies/friends to add new levels of drama. This was partly accomplished by the introduction of Agent Shaw (Brandon Routh) and Hannah (Kristin Kreuk) as romantic possibilities for Sarah and Chuck, respectively.

What I want to focus on is Sarah. But to do that, alas, I must write about Chuck. A lot has been written about Chuck, which is appropriate on a show that bears his name. But Sarah’s story is in many ways the more interesting one. To an underappreciated extent, Chuck is a show by, for, and about fanboys. It’s the now-classic tale of geek-gets-girl. From Sam Raimi’s Spiderman to Josh Schwartz’s The O.C. to beer commercials, the last ten years have seen a new popular narrative established in which the Geek (brown, tousled hair, glasses, shirt untucked, comic book obsession) wins the Girl (blonde, svelte, a little tomboy-ish). This is derivative of some of the college nerd comedies of the 1980s, but one important twist is that the Girl must recognize that what makes the Geek geeky is also what makes him lovable. Also, the Geek may have a Rival, but this is more often the cause of undermining the Geek’s self-confidence than forcing the Rival out of the Girl’s gaze. Because deep down, this narrative says, the Girl really does like the Geek better, and they would be perfect together if only the Geek could gather the courage to be with the Girl.

One of the dangers with this narrative is that it reinforces the focus on the man (the Geek, in this case) even as it redefines manliness. If the story of the Geek getting the Girl is about the Geek overcoming his lack of confidence, then the story will have to follow him getting that confidence. It’s still all about the guy.

We’ve seen that problem pushed to the forefront in this season of Chuck. Sarah was shoved aside this season while the Geeek (Chuck) tried to earn her love (by becoming a spy) while fending off the Rival (Agent Shaw, who, like all Rivals, represents what the Geek is not but thinks that he must be to deserve the Girl). This left the viewer with one episode in which the Girl makes her move, followed by twelve episodes in which she sits idly by watching the Geek become unrecognizable. Since in the Geek Gets Girl narrative, it is the Geek’s geekiness that makes him suitable to the Girl, when he loses that geekiness he becomes too much like the Rival. And then the Girl may as well be with the Rival. Watching this unfold, however, it reinforces an underlying problem with the Geek Gets Girl narrative: the Girl is completely passive. She simply reacts. This is less noticeable in films (such as Spiderman) where one small goal (e.g., breaking into acting) is enough to distract away from the Girl’s passivity. But over the course of 50 episodes of a television show, it is difficult to find a way to make the Girl an agent with a life and decisions that are her own. This season of Chuck‘s greatest failing has not been avoiding a Chuck-Sarah romance, or introducing Agent Shaw, or putting the Intersect in Chuck’s head, it has been giving Sarah nothing to do. This is a problem embedded in the Geek Gets Girl narrative, but it came to the forefront this season.

Remember when we got backstory on how Sarah became a spy (2.10)? Remember when Sarah shot a Fulcrum agent to protect Chuck’s identity (2.11)? These provided ways to make Sarah a person, someone who makes decisions with consequences and has a story of her own, within the loose confines of the Geek Gets Girl narrative. This season Sarah has been reduced to a prop, whose job is to watch with Sad Eyes while the Geek tries to become like a Rival. She is a passive spectator, rather than a worthy partner to the eponymous hero.

What I liked about last night’s episode of Chuck was not that Chuck and Sarah finally got together, but that Chuck and Sarah were treated as equals. Both were trying to be good partners to each other, considering the other’s desires as at least as important as their own. That Sarah is once again Chuck’s equal is nicely captured in the smartly choreographed fight scene from the episode.

There is still a fundamental inequality to the show that I don’t think it will ever overcome. As we saw in the pre-credits sequence of “Chuck vs. The Honeymooners,” Sarah is in an expensive, barely-there neglige while Chuck is in a plain t-shirt and lounge pants. Sarah, no matter how realized the character becomes, will always exist also as eye candy in a way that Chuck does not. (Captain Awesome, who was yet again shirtless, is supposed to roughly even things out I suspect, but it doesn’t approach the level to which Scrubs took the equity, requiring that every episode of a woman in underwear also have a man in underwear).

Sarah may begin to be treated, finally, as an equal to Chuck, but she will still be the Girl.

Small spoiler for Parks and Recreation (2.19) and big spoiler for last year’s The Office (5.23)

There was a really good episode of Parks and Recreation last night, which has been enjoying a really great second season after a mini-first season that saw it finding its feet. (I’ve written about the importance of second seasons previously.) Last night, we got an (unnecessary but still quite funny) insight into why Jerry is the most put-upon member of the Parks Department. As Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) explains, Jerry is both schlemiel and schlimazel. In the following scene, in sympathy to Jerry who has recently dislocated his shoulder, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) declares that no one in the office is to make fun of Jerry. Which turns out to be very, very difficult.

One thing that makes this scene work so well is the conference table. Five people sitting in a room around a table; one standing. In a single shot, we can see four characters (Tom, April, Donna, and Leslie). A second shot gives us Ron and Jerry. A third shows Donna, Leslie, and Ron. And so on. What does this do? Watch April as Tom asks, “Muncie?” or Donna as Leslie declares, “Muncie is a lovely city.” We can see one character’s reaction while another is speaking without the need for a reaction shot. So rather than feel hyper-edited as we jump back and forth from Jerry’s presentation, we get a feel for each character’s attempt to hold back their laughter. It’s an extremely simple yet extremely clever way to set up the scene.

What I’ll call “tabling” is a great way to block an ensemble comedy. The characters are literally facing each other, turned only slightly toward the camera. It invites the viewer into the room, into the meeting, into the world of the Pawnee Parks Department. It creates a natural feel appropriate to a single-camera sit-com. It also provides an excellent opportunity to show off how well the cast plays off each other. Parks and Rec isn’t the only show to do this, or do it well. For instance, we see it at the writers’ table on 30 Rock. (Since both Tracy and Jenna tend to eat up the camera when they’re one screen, we rarely see them together in large groups. Instead, we get all the writers, producers, and staff together around the writers’ table, with Liz standing at the head of the table or walking into/out of her office.)

But we see it most clearly on Community. Many of Community‘s best scenes have been nothing more than the cast sitting around the table in their library study room, playing off one another. The direction on Community is so solid that you rarely feel that seven people sitting at a table in a library is dull. We get a combination of shots that show one, two, three, or more characters. We can get both simple reaction shots and also shots of Annie with Shirley or Troy with Abed or Pierce with Shirley. We can get pans around the table. The characters on the show are so precise and the acting so strong that you actually look forward to watching scenes of them sitting around a table together. That’s quite an achievement for a sit-com in its first year.

One weakness on The Office is that it too often turns into The Michael Scott Comedy Show. And we can see this every time the cast enters the conference room, which is almost always set up with the chairs facing the front of the room. Michael Scott (Steve Carell) is such an over-the-top figure that he tends to dominate the show (like Tracy on 30 Rock). Put him in front of the conference room, and suddenly everyone (the other characters and the viewer) must turn their attention toward Michael. Then Jim is left to shoot “did you see that?” looks at the camera. Stanley sits and does his crossword. And no one can interact with anyone but Michael without awkward craning of the head. We know Jim and Dwight are going to play a role in a conference room scene in The Office when they sit against the wall, which allows them to turn toward Michael, the camera, and the coworkers. It’s a very limited structure and one that The Office relies on too often. (Imagine if Community was always stuck in Senor Chang’s classroom, facing toward the scene-chewing Ken Jeong.) Compare that to the wonderful scene in season 5 of The Office when Michael, Ryan, and Pam negotiate with David Wallace and Charles Miner. Look at the opportunities presented by the format, particularly how we are shown Ryan and Pam’s reaction to Michael’s “No.”

The table not only signifies the combat between Michael-Pam-Ryan and David-Charles, it also signifies the unity of Michael-Pam-Ryan. At the same time, it gives a way to watch how Ryan and Pam respond while Michael seems to throw their opportunity away. It’s a completely different way of watching these characters squirm with Michael.

This season of The Office could take a page from Community and last night’s Parks and Rec and use a lot more tabling.

Some not-too-specific spoilers for Chuck and Burn Notice‘s third seasons

There’s an old adage in music that sophomore albums are usually terrible. Many bands manage one great break-through album before their sophomore release reveals a band not worth the investment. If the sophomore album holds steady or improves on the debut, then you have a band that is really worth throwing yourself into for the long haul.

I think something important also happens on television shows in their second year, but it’s often the opposite from the music case. Many shows have trouble finding just that right balance of tone in their first year. Occasionally they recover, but too late to save the show, like Dollhouse. Sometimes they recover and they have the good fortune to be on NBC (!), where very modest ratings can bring back buzz-building shows like Parks and Recreation, which is having a wonderful second season. But a good show is one that can manage by its second season to strike consistently in its tonal sweet spot, and hit that groove through enough episodes to make for really enjoyable viewing.

A great example of this is Chuck, which somewhere around episode five or six of its second year turned from modest and enjoyable spy comedy to unbelievably hilarious spy show, workplace comedy, and heart-twisting drama. In that second season, it was about as perfect as a lightweight TV show can be.

Burn Notice was always designed to be more episodic, and there are plenty of great moments in the first season. But the immensely irritating brother was largely removed in the second season, and the mother was made less histrionic and more sympathetic in the second season, which eliminated the two most unwatchable elements of the first season. The story became more complex without being too dense, the actors revealed themselves to be very comfortable in their roles, and the writing for each character became more specific. It was a pretty great season.

Then in the third seasons of both Chuck and Burn Notice, the producers made a change, and that change was largely the same in both cases. To push the edges of what each show did well, they attempted to take the central character (Chuck Bartowski and Michael Weston) and isolate them from their closest allies (Sarah & Casey for Chuck, Sam & Fiona for Michael Weston). In doing so, they took each character to a slightly darker place that challenged the viewer’s understanding and relationship to each lead. (This is more true for Chuck than Michael Weston, but it applies to both.) Can Chuck became a “real spy” and still be the person that Sarah (and the viewer) loves? Can Michael work for Gilroy and still be the good guy that does bad things for helpless people, which keeps Sam and Fiona (and the viewer) as allies?

It makes for more challenging viewing to see the central character in the show you love become less sympathetic. But when it works, it works. Buffy the Vampire Slayer worked well through seven seasons by pushing its title character further and further away from her friends (and only occasionally closer again) and making her more and more irritating. But the writers (often, not always) did such a fine job of telling their story that the viewer was rewarded with seven good-to-great seasons, even when those seasons (starting with two) push the lead character to a dark place that distances her from her friends.

But it doesn’t always work, which is what is worrying a lot of fans of Chuck. Where is the normal guy we loved? Where is the relationship with Sarah going? Who are these new characters pushing our two lovers away? Why is Chuck acting like such an ass? Has the show, in the unfortunate parlance of our time, jumped the shark?

Although I have some small worries, I do not think Chuck has ruined itself. It’s going through a fairly typical attempt (especially typical for a third season) to create drama by isolating the main character. And – this is important – the worries that we have about Chuck are amplified by standard television scheduling. Waiting week to week for each episode allows one to dwell on those worries about where the story is going and reduces the trust we have in showrunners to tell a compelling story. I’m sure many of the complaints about this season of Chuck would be dissipated if it could be watched in one weekend mega-viewing, without the unfortunate weeklong wait or monthlong Olympics hiatus. Let’s trust Josh Schwartz & Chris Fedak. We’ve already seen in the last month that Matt Nix can push Michael Weston to a similar place as Chuck and bring him back. Similarly, the third season of Mad Men left many cold in its front half, until viewers had a chance to see where Matt Weiner was taking us. (Surprise! He further isolated Don Draper from his family.) I don’t doubt (too much) that Schwartz & Fedak can do the same.

And even if they don’t, so what? Let them tell the story they need to tell, even if that means it loses some of its audience. I’m waiting to watch this last season of Lost for a while still, but I really hope they leave a lot of loose ends, things that leave the audience wondering. Great stories can do that. They can leave us disappointed, and they should, because sometimes life leaves us disappointed. (Of course, a show can be disappointing because it gets less good, but I’m talking about a story taking a character or story to a place we don’t want them to go.)

So I haven’t given up on Chuck, and those who have seen the screeners are saying tonight’s episode is pretty dang awesome. Cheers to third season isolation, and the hug-it-out moment we invariably get at the end.

If you are on Twitter (like I am) and follow pop culture creators and critics (like I do), you may know about the rebirth of Roger Ebert. If not, then it is worth taking a moment to see why his is one of the more remarkable stories of the last six months.

Ebert is the long-time film critic for the Chicago Sun Times and was co-host and producer of At the Movies, which cemented the “Two Thumbs Up” lingo in our national slang lexicon.

A recent article by Chris Jones in Esquire discussed his battle with cancer, which led to his jaw being removed in 2006. (Ebert talks about why he agreed to give the interview and have his photo taken at his wonderful blog. Also, there is a wonderful piece there on his not being able to eat or drink.) He now has new technology that allows him to speak, as demonstrated on his recent appearance on Oprah. (Here is a clip with Ebert’s wife Chaz.)

Ebert has embraced other technologies, too, becoming one of the most prolific Twitterers around; he has a following of nearly 100,000 people.

And if there was ever a question about whether Ebert is a nice guy, this remarkable story about his mentorship and forgiveness should settle it.

The story of Roger Ebert is not just the story of a remarkable person with a remarkable story, it is also the story of film criticism in America. For decades, people have fretted over the state of film criticism, particularly in America. “It’s dying.” “It’s dead.” “It’s pointless.” “It’s all about celebrity.” Ebert is sometimes seen as the major culprit behind the last charge. Ebert, first with Siskel, then with Roeper, became the face of film criticism in a way that earlier critics were not. He was a minor television celebrity who reached a national audience and whose “thumbs up” could lead any advertisement for a motion picture. The worry is that film criticism, partly because of television avenues like At the Movies, has become more about celebrity and less about the art of criticism.

There is a kernel of truth to this charge, but it’s largely off point. Film criticism serves a number of functions, and Ebert excelled at a number of them. First, he is a film lover. Critics can inspire love for films in us by demonstrating their love for films. And Ebert has always been a champion of film. Second, he is a lover of storytelling. Ebert, more than many critics, is interested in the story of a film more than many of its other artistic aspects. This is partly why he gives such favorable reviews to mainstream Hollywood films. Hollywood films tend to employ certain storytelling techniques, and Ebert is quick to praise films that tell conventional stories in a competent way. Third, and relatedly, Ebert has very populist tastes. One thing we look for from critics is the standard, “should I see this movie that opens tomorrow?” And Ebert is a great barometer of mainstream tastes. For a long time, especially when I first started paying attention to film criticism, I realized that no film critic was as good as Ebert at predicting whether I would like a given Hollywood film. And that is still valuable. Finally, Ebert is a very fine writer, who has an above-average prose style and a good sense of when to connect film reviews to larger truths, which makes his writing even more compelling.

There are other important roles that a film critic performs that Ebert has been less successful at, and I think this is the source of many complaints about him. For instance, his populist taste and preference for classical Hollywood storytelling lead to somewhat bland and predictable grades. While he champions films in his Great Movies series, they are usually films already part of the canon. You’re not likely to find many surprises in there. Also, Ebert has never focused on the close analysis of film. Now, this is moving more toward the domain of academic film studies since it is often not possible to do this in a newspaper review with a set word limit, but film critics also should have an eye for various formal elements of film, and many reviewers find ways to incorporate this into their writing. There is one other complaint about Ebert’s mainstream sensibilities: many of the most interesting films are those that divide critics. Some films deserve both passionate defense and full-on ridicule. (The films of Lars von Trier come to mind here, as well as what appears in Scott Tobias’ New Cult Canon or Manohla Dargis’ defense of Southland Tales.) Which means that we don’t always want critics that we agree with. Sometimes a critic’s job is to defend something we hate or devastate something we love. That makes us better film viewers.

The various roles that critics perform also suggest why we should read many different critics. Sometimes we simply want to know whether it is a movie we are likely to like, articulated very clearly or cleverly. (Ebert and A.O. Scott are good at this.) Sometimes we want consistently sharp or provocative reactions, even when they disagree with our own. (Here I like Mike D’Angelo and Stephanie Zecharek.) Other times, we want more historical and scholarly discussions. (David Bordwell and Matt Zoller Seitz.) A good critic can teach you how to watch film; engaging multiple critics can teach you how to understand film.

Mild spoilers for How I Met Your Mother 5.15, “Rabbit or Duck” (February 8) and The Bible, Genesis 1:1

On Sunday, a football game was televised on CBS. More Americans watched it live than have watched any other television show in history. CBS ran a clever spot for How I Met Your Mother that just showed the show’s break-out character, sex-obsessed Barney Stinson, holding up a poster with his telephone number on it. (A friend I was with called immediately and got to a voicemailbox message by Neil Patrick Harris, in character.) This fed nicely into the next day’s show, in which Barney receives call after call from women interested in him because they saw him on TV.

Barney, sadly, runs into a problem. No matter how attractive the woman sitting across from him is, each time the phone rings he thinks that the next girl might be a little bit hotter. So he abandons whichever woman he is with to pursue the next one. And this slowly drives him crazy.

The show does a nice job of pointing out the problem faced by having too many choices. There’s a vast literature in psychology on this point, which has been summarized in an easy-to-understand book by Barry Schwartz called The Paradox of Choice. The basic point is that more choices can lead to less happiness.

But there is a different problem suggested by Barney’s particular struggle, and it is a problem that many philosophers and theologians have suggested might be one faced by God. God’s problem is this.

God decides to create a world, because that’s what a good God does. But being God, not just any world will do. God must choose the best possible world to create; anything less would be un-godlike. But there is no best possible world. There are infinitely many possible worlds that God could choose to create, and if we lined them all up from worst to best, the line would go on forever. So for each world that God could create, there would always be a better one. If this is the case, then it seems like God would not create any world.

So that leaves you with three choices. (1) There is no God, and this is just another reason why. (2) There is a best possible world, which we know because God created one (spoiler: it’s this one), so it is not true that for each possible world, there is a better one that God could have created. (4) God does not have to create the best possible world, just one that is good enough. This problem has been noticed for hundreds of years, so each of these has been defended by someone.

Barney’s situation is disanalogous to God’s in a lot of ways. For one, Barney doesn’t know if the next girl is hotter than the last, but God presumably knows if there is a better world. For another, God’s motivation seems a lot, well, healthier, than Barney’s.

But they both reveal the same problem. When presented with many choices, a reasonable maxim for acting (sleep with the hottest woman, create the best possible world) can lead one to not acting, which is worse than any (or many) of the alternatives. If one could be a satisficer (pick one that is just good enough) instead of a maximizer (pick the best one), one might be able to lead a much happier life.

Spoiler-free discussion of Lost, The X-Files, Fringe, and Dollhouse

The only reason I am looking forward to the final season of Lost, which begins tomorrow, is that it will finally be over.

Lost is a show with an expiration date printed on the label. Fortunately, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse understand that and have said for some time that the show should only go about 100 episodes. This season’s 16 episodes will put that total at about 121, roughly 50 more than was really necessary.

Lost works according to the Reverse X-Files Principle. The X-Files was a wonderful show about a skeptic and a believer (much like Jack and Locke on Lost) who were assigned cases that typical FBI agents couldn’t or wouldn’t handle. The show was very, very good at giving them a fascinating case to solve each week, and its loyal fans loved it to death on internet message boards by piecing together clues concerning long-running plots about aliens and government cover-ups (sounding familiar?). However, when the show tried to tackle long-arc topics, like the abduction of Fox Mulder’s abducted sister, the episodes were often duds. (Not always, but often.) The later seasons became too enamored with the mythology of the show and tried to make well over half of the late seasons’ episodes about dark forces moving against our beloved FBI agents. Thus begat The X-Files Principle: monster-of-the-week episodes that were light on the mythology are superior to the grind-it-out, mythology-heavy episodes.

Lost, though, acts according to The Reverse X-Files Principle. In the case of Lost, the most interesting episodes were those that advanced the mythology, and stand-alone, character-driven episodes were the least compelling. That is why the first season is so hit-or-miss. After a spectacular pilot, and spot-on blending of character, plotting, and mythology-building in episodes like “Walkabout,” too many of the episodes took us into the lives of characters that, frankly, weren’t all that interesting. Sun and Jin had an interesting dynamic on the island, and it was helpful to find out about their pasts, but episodes that simply follow them through their lives in Korea dragged on too long. The very worst were flashbacks involving Jack, easily the most one-dimensional character at the center of any critically adored drama. Terry O’Quinn as Locke was the only actor capable of turning any material into a work of art, while episodes focused on Kate, Hurley, Claire, Michael, and Charlie were at the whims of their episodes’ writing and mythologizing.

Since it has been five and one-half years since Lost began, we’ve had to suffer through lengthy stretches between seasons and sometimes just as interminable lapses in plot movement while Lost was on the air. And that was simply too long for a show so uneven as Lost. I know it has its devoted followers, and many critics consider it one of the golden jewels of television in the 2000s (on broadcast TV, no less!), I think it is so exasperating in its uneveness, that the density of the mythology makes it uninteresting to me (and, I’m sure, many others). I’d like to watch this final season of Lost as it airs to take part in this exciting moment in television history (which I do think it is), but I won’t be watching along. I’m still dreading my choice between watching the whole of the first five seasons again (ugh.) or trying to pick up in season four or five (huh?).

And that is why Lost is just too damned long. Too many non-mythology episodes to slough through. Too many episodes total for a show with such a dense mythology. Combine those two and you have television to dread, television as assignment rather than television as enjoyment. (I mean “enjoyment” in the full, critically aware sense, not in the watching Real Housewives sense.)

I could forgive Lost if I thought that it was better at correcting problems as it went on. But my viewing of later seasons (I made it half way into season five) never confirmed that those corrections were made. And that’s one of the reasons that I think both Fringe and Dollhouse were better television. Neither hit the highest highs of Lost, but both shows recognized problems with their first seasons (reining in William Gibson on Fringe, heavier mythology and less Eliza Dushku on Dollhouse). They found a smart balance of mythology, pushed the limits of dramatic storytelling’s adherence to the laws of physics, created memorable characters, and generally were smart and entertaining serials.

One question that this leaves us with is this: Is it better to love a show with higher highs and lower lows, or to love a show that is steadier but never reaches the same heights? Let us not confuse this with a show’s ambition. Fringe dares you accept things just as ludicrous as Lost does, and Dollhouse dares you to believe that its science is really possible and soon. And while neither invites inviting friends over for “event television” to the same level as Lost, I’m pretty sure I’ll find them more satisfying viewing on an episode-to-episode basis.

So I congratulate Abrams, Lindelof, and Cuse on their success on Lost, scattered though they are. They made a difference in television, changed its course in interesting ways. I hope those sitting down for the final season watch it with open minds for wherever (or whenever) they take it.

This is the latest Subway commercial featuring Olympic gold-medalist Michael Phelps, intended to tie in to the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

I’d like to take a moment now to say why this commercial is so very, very dumb.

1. Michael Phelps bursts through the pool wall. The first time I saw this commercial, all I could think was, “He’s going into that turn way too fast.” Then he bursts through the wall. Why would you want me to associate fear with your sandwich, Subway?
2. Not getting what makes Michael Phelps great. Michael Phelps is an amazing athlete who has broken all sorts of world records and won an astonishing number of Olympic medals. He did this by swimming. Through water. This commercial, though, assumes that is not amazing enough. No, Michael Phelps must swim through land. Now, Michael Phelps is no longer an amazing Olympic athlete, he is simply a below-average CGI figure, somewhere between Tremors and Bugs Bunny.
3. Jerod. Unlike every other spokesman in existence (except maybe Luke Wilson for AT&T), Jerod is in every single Subway commercial. This is to remind you that Jerod was once fat, but then he ate at Subway and became the huggable Jerod we feel indifferent toward today.
4. Vancouver. Jerod calls to Michael Phelps, who is wearing earplugs and swimming through concrete, “See you there!” Where? Apparently, Vancouver, which is where the Winter Olympics will be held in 2010. Why is Michael Phelps going to the Winter Olympics? I have no idea. But it is urgent that he must get there, urgent enough that he is swimming through the ground. Later we learn it is “so he can get to where the action is.” People, Michael Phelps doesn’t go to where the action is, the action comes to him.
5. Olympic athletes eating fast food. One of my favorite Olympics traditions is watching the McDonald’s commercials where smiling Olympic athletes eat massive piles of greasy cow meat. I always think, “They didn’t get to the Olympics by eating at McDonald’s.” But that’s not the thought I have watching Michael Phelps sell Subway subs. All I can think is, “Michael Phelps consumes 12000 calories a day. He could eat three Dominoes pizzas for dinner as part of his regular diet.” Just because “Michael Phelps fuels up with the mega-tasty Subway Turkey Melt” in no way reflects anything about whether you or I should eat one.

Stay tuned for analysis of future stupid commercials.

Spoilers for Angel (Season 5) and House (Season 4)

My official Best Television of the 2000s list will feature only shows that aired at least three seasons in the 2000s. I am making this restriction because one of the marks of a great show is its ability to sustain its stories and characters over a long period, and three seasons seems as good a cut-off as any. Also, since the traditional television season runs from fall to spring, I’ve decided to include seasons that began in the fall of 1999 and I am ending with seasons that concluded before fall of 2009. That means that shows debuting in fall, 2009, are ineligible (Community, Modern Family), and it also means that on-going shows that debuted in spring, 2009, are ineligible unless they had the bad fortune to be cancelled immediately; that means no Glee, Dollhouse, Parks & Recreation, Castle, or Better Off Ted. Those shows got too late a start to be included in the best of this past decade, as I am arbitrarily determining it. Because of these restrictions on my count-down list, I thought it appropriate to say a little bit about a few shows that didn’t make the three season cut-off, but were spectacular nonetheless. I’m also including three shows that I think managed to pull off one truly great season amidst a number of less spectacular ones, and those are included at the end. Below are the highlights, in alphabetical order.

One Season

Andy Barker, P.I.

Andy Richter and Conan O’Brien teamed up for a Thursday night mystery-comedy hybrid that only aired four episodes before being yanked. (Six were filmed.) Featuring a stellar supporting cast around beat-down everyman Richter, the show exhibited remarkable comic timing over its first few episodes. When Andy Barker, CPA, moves into the office formerly held by a private detective, he finds people mistaking him for a P.I.; he may not know how to handle a gun, but he can handle your taxes when it’s over.

For fans of Chuck, Remington Steele, accounting

Firefly

Perhaps the greatest science fiction show to ever air on television, this series brought a legion of new fans to Joss Whedon. Its fans called themselves “Browncoats,” and turned Firefly into the most essential television show of geek culture in the 2000s. But is it any good? Beyond good, this show’s 13 episodes (shown, as jilted fanboys like to point out, out of order by the evil Fox Network) created a fully realized world from the first episode. The pilot is too slow and too long, but beginning in the second episode, this outer-space A-Team demonstrated that stories about vigilantes fighting against an evil centralized power could somehowstrike a chord with viewers during the Bush administration. Like many great shows, the most essential member of the cast was the location, in this case a creaky old spaceship with more smuggler’s holds than the Millenium Falcon. Wonderfully cast, with a sly sense of humor that combined Whedon’s subversive expressivism with Ben Edlund’s comic exaggeration.

For fans of Battlestar Galactica, The Tick, men in tight pants

Freaks and Geeks

Freaks and Geeks is remembered today as the greatest dramedy, the greatest high school show, the show most like your own life, and the show that launched a thousand careers. This brainchild of Judd Apatow and Paul Feig told the story of high school from those least interested in remembering it. Surprisingly, those of us who had successfully blocked our own experiences found glorious catharsis in watching the failures and (very occasionally) successes of the two bands of outsiders (those intentionally existing outside the system and those too nerdy to fit in comfortably). Essential viewing for people who love television.

For fans of Glee, Friday Night Lights, awkwardness

The Middleman

An unrepentant throw-back to a sillier form of science fiction and fantasy shows, The Middleman proved that sharp writing and smart characters can make great television using the flimsiest of CGI. When a smart young artist (Natalie Morales) working a temp job gets nearly eaten by a mutant science experiment, her unflappability catches the eye of The Middleman (Matt Keeslar) who recruits her as his sidekick. There’s perhaps never been a show in the history of television that required so many repeat viewings with a pen and paper handy to unpack its jokes and references. Often times, an episode would pick a theme (Die Hard, sixties rock band The Zombies) and build as many references as it could into its 44 minutes. This show never achieved the critical mass of devotion it deserved.

For fans of Get Smart, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, meta-humor

Chuck

Chuck has found unexpected life, being renewed for a third season that begins this January. This is the only show on this list still on the air, so catch this bandwagon while its still hot. (Wow, now that is a mixed metaphor.) Chuck Bartowski is a hard-working Buy More employee whose brain, due to unexpected help from his college roommate-turned-nemesis, becomes the living computer that stores all of the US government’s information. This is a fun, funny, sexy, silly blend of action and comedy that really found its stride in its second season. The best thing to happen to Mondays since Memorial Day.

For fans of Alias, Eureka, Adam Baldwin

Flight of the Conchords

Immigration. Unemployment. Bureaucracy. Topics for a gritty documentary somehow became occasions for the musical comedy duo to perform their songs. Each episode is a poorly constructed attempt to cram three pre-established songs into 30 minutes of story. Somehow, despite the obvious problems with this plan, the show managed to create moments of sublime comic awkwardness squeezed between occasionally brilliant, occasionally boring musical set pieces. In its way, it was one of the most ambitious television shows of the decade.

For fans of Dead Like Me, The Ben Stiller Show, Michel Gondry

Life

In its strike-addled first season, Life was a gritty cop drama, light-hearted character study, and on-going mystery in absolutely perfect balance. No procedural has ever managed to so perfectly blend those three elements as well as Life did in that first season. Its second season renewal came with strings attached: bigger (and subsequently less plausible) weekly hooks, less of the on-going story arcs, and Donal Logue as the new police captain. The second season fell to merely an above-average cop show, but was fortunately able to tie up many loose ends in its memorable series finale. The show drew out a nice parallel between generic Eastern religion’s emphasis that everything is connected and the basis of good detective work, which is following connections. Unlike most shows that attempt to make a character religious or philosophical, the writers were fully aware that the form of Zen being practiced by Charlie Crews is a watered-down, pop psychology version of Zen, which kept the show from ever falling into self-parody.

For fans of Castle, Burn Notice, staying out of prison

Pushing Daisies

Abandoned by film, television became the home of screwball dialogue in the 2000s, and not even Gilmore Girls or 30 Rock could manage Pushing Daisies‘ speed. More brilliant color and wacky quirkiness than any show should rightfully be able to manage, Barry Sonnenfeld somehow managed to create an engaging dream world in which a pie maker brings people back from the dead and solves crimes along with the love of his life whom he can’t touch, a crabby detective, and Kristin Chenoweth. Death has never been so funny.

For fans of Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, color

UPDATE: Silly me. I left Kings off the list. Great modern fable.

Long-Running Series with One Great Season

Angel (Season 5)

Angel never discovered what it could do well until its final season, by which point fans’ whiplash was so great from its overhauls each season that no one knew what this show was any more. However, by having Angel go to work for the evil law firm Wolfram & Hart, Joss Whedon and Tim Minear wisely guided the show into complex thematic territory: at what point do you stop protesting the system and find a way to work within it? Mirroring Whedon’s own complex relationship with the Fox Network, Angel and his band of merry men try to be constructive from inside a destructive system. And by bringing Spike over from the now-finished Buffy the Vampire Slayer, shooting for darker, more gothic horror, and achieving more sublime humor, the fifth season became by far the series’s best. Watching Angel is worth it simply for the show’s finale, which is perhaps the finest final episode in the history of television.

The Closer (Season 1)

A weaker knock-off of England’s Prime Suspect, The Closer began its run on TNT as a law & order procedural with the added element of watching an unknown, and therefore untrusted, female cop head LAPD’s Major Crimes division. A breadth of capable acting by the supporting cast grounded Kyra Sedgwick’s head-flailing approach to characterization. In later seasons, the show became unbearable in its explorations of Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson’s inexplicable relationship with her boyfriend Fritz, unnecessary relationship with her adopted cat, and unwatchable relationship with her family. But in that first season, The Closer was a smart woman-in-the-workplace drama with workable stories about how only she could wrangle a confession out of the bad guy.

House (Season 4)

Modeled on Sherlock Holmes, Gregory House, M.D., is a jackass to everyone, including his trusty confidant, his busty boss, and his team of diagnosticians. The writers always knew how to write for House (or Hugh Laurie’s indelible performance at least made it seem that way), but he was always surrounded by thin, unnecessary characters led by Cameron, the whiniest female lead this side of Felicity. So when House fired his staff at the end of Season 3 and began Season 4 by whittling down an auditorium full of candidates, new life was breathed into this occasionally stale medical drama. House was allowed to be his devastatingly truthful and hilariously cruel self and a better cast of supporting characters stepped in. The writer’s strike created some story-telling problems for the back half of the season, but it was still an audacious reinvention that amazingly worked, at least until Season 5 became too enamored with the Foreman-13 story.