FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
SEBASTIAN, WRITER
I don’t watch sports. I don’t know the rules to any sports game. When I was in high school, football, particularly, seemed like this dumb set of guidelines set up with the sole purpose of letting guys throw themselves into each other and express various other macho skills. I wasn’t at all involved in all the hubbub surrounding my high school’s football team (constantly State Champions for private schools). And I certainly wasn’t going to watch a TV show about football.
That’s why I didn’t watch Friday Night Lights when it was on TV. BECAUSE I WAS STUPID. First of all, I clearly misunderstood what football was and what football teams did and meant. And second, I was way off-base in thinking that Fright Night Lights was a football show. Yep it centers around a football team or two, the players, the coaches, the culture, and in most episodes there was a game with an impressive throw or tackle. But the show was about a small town. It was about a marriage. About family. About adolescence. About early adulthood. About older adulthood. I’m going to stand by what I’m about to say: It had the strongest developed characters and best-written and acted dialogue of any TV show I’ve ever watched. And did I mention that the music supervisor of the show was veteran KCRW? Most of the incidental and score-like music was written and performed by Explosions in the Sky and the more explicit tracks (like an understated cover of “Devil Town”) she uses fit the scenes perfectly and expand their meaning into multiple dimensions. The shots of Texas are beautiful. The emotions run deep. What more can I say?
Friday Night Lights is without a doubt one of the best TV shows to have ever existed. After five seasons, it aired its series finale this month, probably because of all the assholes like me who thought it was just a football show.
Get Seasons One, Two, Three and Four or Season 5 on Amazon.
CALIFORNICATION
CHLOE, WRITER
Since Californication airs on Showtime, this series didn’t slink into my life until 2009- two years after it premiered in 2007. A few of my friends were Hank Moody devotees and decided I bore a striking resemblance (in both looks and personality) to one of the main characters, Marcy, also known as “coke smurf”. From that point onward “coke smurf” became my sophomore year nickname, and many times I had the compromising (yet hilarious) experience of hearing “YO COKE SMURF” bellowed across campus, drawing bemused glances from both faculty and students.
Californication is an irreverent, hedonistic, and vivid portrayal of the life of author/father/alcoholic/perhaps sex addict Hank Moody and his struggle to be the family man his daughter needs while still retaining unique sense of self. He is both crude and charming, drawing women left and right- each episode is pretty much guaranteed to provide a cheap thrill of naked ladies. Underneath a plethora of one liners and dry slapstick Californication has real soul. The show un-apologetically displays people with unsanitized or glamorized flaws and desires, and is one of the few shows airing unafraid to portray humans at their best and worst without inviting judgement.
Get Season One, Season Two, and Season Three at Amazon.
THAT ’70S SHOW
ANNIKA, WRITER
Watching TV was forbidden in my parents’ home when I was growing up, so I never got to experience That ’70s Show when it originally aired. A decade later, I was flipping channels and stopped on a sitcom where the father was berating his son for doing a “half-job” in cleaning out the garage. I can’t tell you how many times my own father has used that exact same phrase when I didn’t complete a chore to his satisfaction. Seeing it play out on screen was both cathartic and hilarious.
So while I started watching the show for Red’s tirades, I ended up buying all of the DVDs for other reasons too. I’ve always had a preference for the music and fashion of bygone eras (although as a trans girl, I’m so glad that I don’t actually live in one), so the fact that this show takes place in the late 70s is a huge draw. It’s also perfect to watch when you’re not quite sober because this is not a show to be taken seriously; you can even make a drinking game from the number of ridiculous gender stereotypes in each episode! Plus I have a teensy crush on Mila Kunis in bellbottoms (by the way, Mila, if I ask you out to a queer dance on Autostraddle, will you say yes?).
Get the complete series on Amazon.
THE WIRE
RIESE, EDITOR
[this section is adapted from Riese’s Team Pick: The Wire]
The Wire follows a few cops and detectives and the criminals they prosecute in the city of Baltimore. Season one of The Wire focuses on the illegal drug trade, Season Two on the seaport system, Season Three on the city government, Season Four on the school system (MY FAVORITE SEASON) and Season Five on print news media.
The first few episodes of each season can be a little slow, but give it time — by mid-season you literally won’t be able to think about anything else. It’s masterful, brilliant, careful storytelling and these are stories we rarely hear — at least not presented with this degree of compassion.
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!
Back when it premiered in 2002, AfterEllen pointed out that the series would feature “the first regular Asian-American lesbian or bisexual character on television and only the second regular lesbian police officer in TV history.” Kima Greggs, played by African-American/Korean-American actress Sonja Sohn, was described later as serving as “a moral center for the series, one of the only cops in the group not willing to lie, cheat, and steal to promote herself or to help the case.” Also she’s hot:
And, in one of the show’s many daring/interesting/compelling choices, they made Omar Little, a “renowned stick-up man who lives by a strict moral code and never deviates from his rules, foremost of which is that he never robs or menaces people who are not involved in ‘the game,’” apologetically gay, with an extended network of other gay men who meet up at a gay bar owned by a really nice blind guy named “Butchie” who I wanted to hug a lot.
Omar was hands down one of my favorite characters on the show — and FUN FACT! President Barack Obama says Omar Little is his favorite television character (his favorite TV show is, of course, The Wire) — “that’s not an endorsement. He’s not my favorite person, but he’s a fascinating character.”
Season Four introduced Snoop, a drug gangster played by lesbian actress/rapper/ex-con Felicia “Snoop” Pearson.
Mostly I’d like you all to watch it so that we can all talk about it. It feels so realistic that after devouring five subsequent seasons of The Wire, I find Law & Order really disappointing.
Also Holly from The Office is in it.
WEEDS
DEANNE SMITH, COMEDY WRITER
If you don’t already watch the Mary-Louise Parker show, you gotta get on it. (Oh, sorry. You may be more familiar with the show by its more common title, “Weeds.”) There are a lot of reasons I’m into the show, but most of them don’t really matter. I mean, who cares if Nancy Botwin is one of the most compelling characters on TV or that Weeds is an interesting, well-written, suspenseful and darkly comic show about a widowed housewife who pays the bills slinging marijuana? So what, if with each season, the show’s plot gets twistier than…something that’s really twisty. (Sorry, guys. I spent upwards of ten minutes on that metaphor and couldn’t come up with anything better than “Whitney from the Real L-Word’s dreadlocks.” And that is clearly not good enough.) What matters is that Mary-Louise Parker is in it, being all Mary-Louise Parker, with her Mary-Louise Parker mouth and those Mary-Louise Parker eyes and that perfect little Mary-Louise Parker nose. Mary! Louise! Parker!
You may have questions while you’re watching the show, like, “Why doesn’t Nancy Botwin just get a regular job?” or “What’s wrong with these people?” or “Why is everything Mary-Louise Parker says so god damn sexy?” I can’t help you with the first two, but I’ve figured out the last one. It’s because she leaves her mouth open a little bit at the end of her sentences, whatever word they may land on. If you don’t believe me, go give it a try in the mirror. Instant sex appeal! Or maybe you just look crazy!
Buy Season One, Season Two, Season Three, Season Four, Season Five or Season Six on Amazon. That’s a lot of Mary-Louise Parker.
MY SO CALLED LIFE
LANEIA, EXECUTIVE EDITOR & RIESE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Laneia: Basically I will never not be in love with My So-Called Life. I recorded (with a VCR!) every episode after the pilot because I was obsessed with Angela Chase and Jordan Catalano and Leaning and Processing Feelings and that plaid shirt. I felt weird in jr. high, like most people do, and the only thing — the actual only thing — that made me feel like I wasn’t alone in my weirdness, was MSCL and Sassy magazine. My friends didn’t talk or act like Angela or Rayanne (ok one friend sort of acted like Rayanne, but just re: drinking) and I felt like if they did, I’d be a lot happier. So in lieu of an older sister and any hope for self-realization, it was up to Winnie Holzman and Jane Pratt to show me the way. I mean, MSCL is the reason I had a Jansport backpack, bobbed red hair and that Violent Femmes cd.
I feel like Riese and I talk about this show constantly, but honestly, the only way I can really know if someone can understand me on a fundamental level, is to vet their feelings about Angela Chase. And like, which episode is better: Halloween or Betrayal?
Riese: After every episode I had a phone date with Amelia, and I’d have to take it on the crazy phone in my brother’s room because I didn’t have a phone in my room. So I’d wind the cord around to the bathroom and talk to her there. I always had so many thoughts in my head afterwards because Angela Chase read my brain out loud on the TV. I was in 8th grade.
I died my hair Crimson Glow and already wore the oversized flannels. I had the soundtrack and an entire wall of my bedroom dedicated to photos and magazine cut-outs about the cast of My So-Called Life and I subsequently patronized all of their subsequent projects. When MTV had MSCL marathons, after it’d been canceled/ruined my life, I’d tape them, so I could watch them over and over.
It’s really hard to communicate with people who’ve not seen this show, who don’t know what I mean when I say, “I love the way he leans” or “you’re so beautiful, it hurts to look at you” or “my feeling is… whatever happens, happens” or “there’s something about Sunday night that makes you want to kill yourself.”
I’ve never loved a how like I loved this show and fourfour breaks it all down for you in this video.
Get the complete series on Amazon.
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What are your favorite series to engorge upon?
