Family matters

Doesn't sound like the same TV you're watching, huh? Well, then, you'd better get ready for a spectacular third season of " Friday Night Lights" (9 p.m. Wednesdays), currently halfway through its 13-episode arc on DirecTV, thanks to an odd deal between the satellite company and NBC. For those who don't have DirecTV -- and that's probably most of you -- the third season will premiere on NBC this January, so don't miss it.

I'm sure you recall how everyone was falling all over themselves to praise this show during its debut season. But then, in its second season, the show stumbled on soapy, unrealistic story lines, thereby turning away a huge crowd of viewers who had resolved to start watching. I can't tell you the number of readers who wrote to tell me, "Oh well, I guess I don't have to catch up with this show after all."

I have some bad news: You really do have to catch up now, because compared to the countless channels of fantastical, empty tripe on your TV screens at the moment, "Friday Night Lights" is a show with an uncanny knack for reflecting real Americans and their challenges. And isn't that what we need, during these crazy, mixed-up times of hardship and hope? I have to believe that the mood has shifted, and suddenly people won't want to watch TV dramas about trillionaires and faux celebrities and bitchy housewives scheming and backstabbing and bickering endlessly. I have to think that the authenticity and humor in each and every scene of "Friday Night Lights" will shine through and win over a bunch of new, loyal fans.

Now, it's true, it took me about three episodes to get back into the swing of things this season. The coach's wife, Tami (Connie Britton), is the principal of the school now, and Brian "Smash" Williams (Gaius Charles) injured his knee and is having trouble finding a college where he might play football. Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) is struggling with his grandmother's dementia (although, strangely enough, she seems sharper than ever) and ends up accepting help from his estranged mother, while Tyra (Adrianne Palicki) is grappling with her feelings for Landry (Jesse Plemons).

I don't want to give too much away, of course, because the vast majority of you will have to wait until January to watch. But let me just say that football booster Buddy Garrity (Brad Leland) has always been one of my favorite characters on this show, because he's such a recognizable type: He's got that chuckling, back-slapping Southern-dad enthusiasm that's so lovable but also so completely short-sighted and bumbling and out of touch. Like a big, clumsy bear, he happily rallies the troops but then resorts to intimidating or throwing his weight around when things don't go his way. He often acts out selfishly and then pays so dearly for his big mistakes, you just want to cry for him. Buddy foolishly had an affair that ended his marriage, only to watch helplessly as his wife found another man and moved to Northern California, taking the two youngest kids with her. Their oldest daughter, Lyla (Minka Kelly), stayed behind, but Buddy's life is still pretty empty, leaving him even more time to meddle with the local high school football team.

On last week's episode, Buddy welcomes his estranged teenage son and daughter off the plane. His son immediately reveals that he plays soccer now and he thinks football is stupid, while his daughter grimaces when her father hugs her, and grumbles, "Dad, Dad, you're all sweaty!" Next stop: an ill-fated camping trip where Buddy cheerfully unpacks a bunch of grass-fed, hormone-free Angus steaks for the grill, extolling their virtues with relish, only to have his daughter announce that she's vegan now. Buddy keeps trying, offering to say a little prayer for the cow before they eat. Her daughter tells him, flatly, that her stepfather taught her that "meat is murder." Buddy looks crushed, but hesitantly explains that that's one man's opinion. "It's a fact!" his daughter counters, at which point Buddy realizes he no longer has the pull with these kids that he's always had. Unable to handle this huge disappointment, he hurls the steaks into the woods and storms off, leaving poor, protective Lyla furious at her two younger siblings. Later, when Lyla picks Buddy up, walking in the dark along the highway, and he tells her he's lost his kids, she responds, "You still got me." The whole sequence is so heartbreaking and true to life, it's almost too much to bear.

 But then, there are so many great, funny details sprinkled into every scene on this show. I love watching coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) being forced to interact with the overbearing, loaded parents of the new star quarterback, J.D. McCoy. The disconnect between Eric and Tami and the McCoys is captured so perfectly when, after their dinner together at the couple's enormous house, Katie McCoy confides to Tami, "Guess what I have upstairs? The California Closet guy has been here, and I have a brand-new bedroom! You've got to come see it, it has just totally changed my life." Tami grins but looks like she's thinking that Katie's bedroom is likely to be bigger than her entire house, while Eric looks ready to punch the woman right in the face.

While there haven't been that many big twists or revelations this season, "Friday Night Lights" has returned to its first-season roots by focusing on unexpected connections between unlikely characters. Whether it's Billy Riggins enlisting wheelchair-bound fallen quarterback Jason Street to help him get Riggins' little brother into college or Tami stepping in and convincing the reluctant, unenthusiastic parents of a football player to come and watch one of their son's games, characters on this show so often grow beyond their former limitations right before our eyes. It makes the series incredibly satisfying to watch, far more satisfying than any arbitrary plot twists could ever be.

But loyal fans don't watch "Friday Night Lights" for big, flashy, high-stakes plots, they watch it because they want to see what Tami will say to poor, depressed Landry when she runs into him in the school library. Landry, the classic good guy who wears his heart on his sleeve (a trait that most high school girls are utterly allergic to), can't help but confess to Tami that he's worried that he's always going to scare girls away. Her response, and the graceful, goofy way Connie Britton delivers it, is unforgettable:

"Here's the thing, and I know it's probably not very easy to see this here, in Dillon, but you are at the beginning of your life. A lot of these football heroes around here, they're not going to get much further than this. But you are going to go to some great college, you're going to have a career that you love, and I'm telling you right now that women are going to flock to you. I know that's hard to believe but that's the way it's going to work. You are a good person, and this is just the beginning. I'm right 100 percent of the time. You can ask my husband."

Suffice it to say that "Friday Night Lights" is a show for ordinary people who are touched by the wisdom and sweetness of other ordinary people. I just can't think of any show I'd rather watch right now.

Soaping up

OK, except " Grey's Anatomy " (9 p.m. Thursdays on ABC). Yes, it's much more flashy and manipulative and ridiculous than "Friday Night Lights." In fact, it's not inaccurate to call this show fluffy, heartstrings-plucking doctor-stud porn for the thinking girl.

But sweet Lord on high, it's just so well-written and dynamic and funny and moving. Sure, this is a nighttime soap, but only because there are lots of new crushes and love triangles, plus big, heavy plot twists and weeping, confessional, dying people everywhere.

Oh, man. How do I explain this without sounding like a chump? Let's see. The lead couple McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey) and Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) aren't all that fascinating. But Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) has always held our attention, and right now she's falling in love with Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd, see also: Lucius Vorenus from HBO's "Rome"), a guy who's much more dynamic and appealing than her former fiancé Burke (Isaiah Washington). If anyone handles the long-smoldering love-fire well, it's the writers of this show, particularly when it comes to Yang. Watching someone break through Yang's "I can barely speak about emotions without snickering" demeanor really gets us by the throat. This is your unbearable perfectionist doctor friend, the one whom you want to see shake off her tightly wound exterior thanks to the love of a good ... Roman soldier!

Meanwhile, Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) and Erica Hahn (Brooke Smith) are discovering that they might just be gay and might just be in love, a story that should be dorky and hopelessly clichéd but that's somehow handled gracefully. The scene when Hahn sat up in bed and proclaimed that she was most definitely gay, no doubt about it, was so beautifully acted, it really sticks in the memory. Of course we got the paint-by-numbers "Grey's Anatomy" monologue, with its particular cadence and rhythm and repetitions, but those words still managed to sound entirely authentic and believable coming out of Brooke Smith's mouth.

I really try to resist "Grey's Anatomy." I do. But while its spinoff "Private Practice" flails with unlikable characters and uninteresting, unrealistic story lines, "Grey's Anatomy" continues to excel at what it does. This show obviously stands on the shoulders of "ER," but it's taken that show's strengths and built on them and created something that's more entertaining, more poignant, more believable, better paced and much more addictive. Damn them!

So before the return of "24" transforms me into a popcorn-snarfing, suspense-addled worm once again, I want to raise a glass to the writers of "Grey's Anatomy" and "Friday Night Lights" for bringing us familiar, lovable, odd, funny but most of all ordinary people. Very few TV shows dig into rich emotional territory so accurately and with such reckless abandon. Ratings and controversies and hype and disappointments aside, the writers of these two shows should know one thing: You're great at what you do.

Next week: Enough with earnest, heartfelt tales! Jack is back, saving orphan boys and thwarting corrupt military regimes, in Fox's "24: Redemption"!

Whenever a solid teen drama like "The O.C." (in the early days) or "Gossip Girl" or "Friday Night Lights" starts to stumble down a soapier and soapier path, and the quarterback pines for the coach's daughter who likes the bad boy who wants the cheerleader who likes the strait-laced geek, and then everyone changes partners and do-si-dos? I think about our hormonally charged action figures, knocking on doors as we put the finishing touches on their apartments: That was the best part of the game. The heart-pounding anticipation of love, waiting to see if the devil-may-care smuggler pilot liked you, too, and hoping against hope that he'd take you out for a ride in the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy.

That's why, when on "Friday Night Lights," former cheerleader Lyla started dating a good Christian boy and quarterback Saracen fell in love with his grandmother's nurse and bad boy Riggins was pining for Lyla and geek Landry loved bad girl Tyra who secretly loved him, too, I wanted to say to the show's producers, "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter!" In other words, cut this soapy musical chairs routine and give us something with some heart and a little grit, damn it! Put away the dolls and write a real story, for Chrissakes!

Knock-knock jokes
This week, NBC announced its new lineup, and "Friday Night Lights" is coming back for a third season, thanks to a strange deal with DirecTV, which dictates that the show will air on DirecTV in October and then on NBC in early 2009.

This means I finally have a reason to watch the last episode of the (strike-shortened) second season, which has been sitting on my TiVo, unloved and forlorn, for weeks now. Thank God FNL's producers will have another chance to recapture the soul of the show's first season. In the second season, they clearly wanted to prove that FNL wasn't really about football, but as a result, the football team felt like an afterthought. During the first season, we understood the role of the team and its games in the town of Dillon. We saw how many lives were wrapped up in the teams' victories and defeats. We met ordinary people with ordinary problems.

You can't just make all your main characters fall in love with each other, confess their love, break up, change partners, rinse, repeat. All we saw, show after show, was some character knocking on the door to some other character's house to confess his love, and then she'd say she had to shampoo her hair or they'd kiss and the music soared and that was it. What really went on between Saracen and that nurse? We never knew. Why was Riggins hung up on Lyla? How did Lyla feel about Riggins? Who can say?

This is a common problem for dramas, particularly those that bring to life the often fickle concerns of teenagers. You introduce a big group of characters who fit into a story organically: Landry is Saracen's snide buddy and sidekick, Tyra is Riggins' lost ex-girlfriend, Lyla is the handicapped star quarterback's supportive girlfriend. Once you start dreaming up new story lines, though, you make the mistake of putting your sidekicks and exes in the spotlight, and suddenly you not only have way too many characters to service, but you've got sidekicks trying to hold down their own stories. Of course we love Landry as the snappy sounding board for Saracen's angst and confusion, but do we really want him front and center? No. He's just not all that charismatic -- he wasn't made for a leading role. Giving him a major plotline is like having Leia elope with Chewbacca.

Worse than all the changing partners, of course, are the moral dilemmas faced by these teens. "Should I really dump this body in the river?" "Should I invite my thug friends to my surrogate daddy's house?" "Should I beat that racist guy's face in and risk losing my scholarship?" "Should I skip practice and get wasted with Riggins?" While Landry's murder plot was as ill-considered and unbelievable as Chewbacca opening fire on a crowd of lovelorn action figures (I'm pretty sure that happened in our childhood games at least once), these other, smaller indiscretions are the lazy equivalent of "The O.C.'s" endlessly repeating "Welcome to the O.C., bitch!" style of fisticuffs.

Surely there's more to being a high school kid than unrequited love and big, stupid mistakes! But at least now FNL's writers have another chance to show us the sometimes mundane, always heartfelt concerns of the down-to-earth, sentimental, small-town folks we grew to love in the first season.

Step by step
If down-to-earth, regular folks are your thing, you certainly won't find them on "Step It Up & Dance" (10 p.m. Thursdays on Bravo), yet another reality dance competition for the millions of viewers who just can't get enough of dance shows, of all things. Doesn't that make you feel like it's the early '80s and you've just gone to see John Travolta's Tony Manero try to become a Broadway dancer in the deliciously awful movie "Staying Alive"?

As easy as it would be to write off "Step It Up & Dance" as just another dance show, it's actually pretty different from either "So You Think You Can Dance" or "Dancing With the Stars." Best described as a dance version of "Project Runway" or "Top Chef," the show features contestants who are mostly professional dancers, either members of modern dance troupes, performers in Broadway musicals, or dancers who've toured with pop and R&B stars. So, while "Dancing With the Stars" attempts to turn celebrities into dancers and "So You Think You Can Dance" takes mostly twentysomething dancing amateurs and turns them into versatile dancers-for-hire, "Step It Up & Dance" takes a group of proficient, professional dancers and basically tortures them with impossibly difficult choreography (think "Quickfire Challenge") for the chance to win $100,000.

This has become a time-honored tradition with Bravo's reality competitions: take talented professionals and make them do insanely difficult tasks while the clock ticks and the cameras roll. You can tell these dancers are much more professional that the ones on other shows, because when they're learning new choreography, they're focused and self-possessed and they don't laugh and chat with each other. Unlike, say, "America's Next Top Model," this isn't about young people, giggling and squabbling. These are intense, motivated, seriously egocentric people. For this reason, Bravo's reality competitions seem to target adult viewers who can relate more to neurotics and control freaks and stubborn, overconfident thirtysomethings than they can to naive teenagers with no notion of how to play nicely with others. While some of the contestants on "Step It Up & Dance" are very young, most of them have already had careers: Mochi has performed with "The Lion King" on Broadway since 2001, Cody went to Juilliard and performed in the Broadway shows "Moving Out," "Grease" and "Mama Mia," Adriana (who was eliminated for her "Staying Alive"-style moves during the first episode) is in a contemporary jazz dance company in New York, and Michael has toured with Mary J. Blige and Beyoncé. These dancers are familiar with hard work, and they mean business.

Of course, this also makes them seriously smug and full of themselves, and somehow a dancer's pretensions are particularly amusing. Miguel begins by telling us, "My dance style is called jazz funk, and I would say that I'm a pioneer of the genre itself. I am the most amazing performer you'll ever see on the stage." He says that telling him he's not talented would be "like telling Da Vinci, 'I'm sorry, you're not a good painter.'" Later, James describes himself as "23 years young and beautiful." Even the dancers who don't brag a lot make it clear to us that the art of dance is a force of good that will eventually end global warming, cure world hunger, and make all the little children of the world hold hands and sing in the streets.

And you have to love the unbridled cheese of the "Pack your knives and go" scene, in which the freshly eliminated dancer enters an empty, dramatically lit studio and does a somewhat melancholy farewell dance for the viewers at home. Through my movements, I express my regrets and hopes for the future! those pointy toes and graceful, sweeping arms seem to say. Or maybe they're saying, I'm one of the pioneers of jazz funk, damn it!

Sometimes it's tough to tell the difference. But at least one thing is clear to these dancers, as it should be to you: Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter!

Next week: The finale of "The Real Housewives of New York City" features more classless, tasteless lessons in class and taste. Then, the suspicions and paranoia build on "Battlestar"!

In my family, you haven't caught the Christmas spirit until you chug a double dose of DayQuil, then wheedle everyone into playing Risk, forming international alliances with your youngest nephews and nieces, spewing propaganda that teaches them to see their parents as malevolent forces on the global stage, begging to be taken down by a plucky band of the world's underdogs (spearheaded by you, of course). For us, it's not Christmas until my mom's Jack Russell leaps onto the table and dashes away with the smoked trout and my mom makes half a dozen passing "jokes" about the practicality and budget-mindedness of taking a lethal overdose in order to avoid a long, drawn-out stay in a nursing home.

Oh, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas! So bright and cheerful and happy and gay! I can't wait! After I've beaten everyone at Risk and Monopoly and Scrabble and rifled through all of the mass-mailed Christmas letters and speculated as to whose marriages are falling apart and whose daughters unwittingly married gay men, we make a big traditional Carpatho-Rusyn meal that includes pierogi and prunes and sauerkraut and other weird meatless dishes that make our spouses curse the day they married into this family, and everyone drinks a little more red wine than is prudent, and my sister's in-laws ask me when I'm going to be on NPR again, since to them, I'm an impudent troublemaker whose only redeeming quality is that on National Public Radio I once whined about something that got on my nerves.

But seriously, they're great, especially when they bring that really good Nova Scotia lox with them. And listen, Madison and Henry are awesome, so please, dear friends and family, whatever you do, don't stop sending those letters!

Go, Fight, Kill!
I wonder what Landry's mom will write to her family and friends this year. Landry (of "Friday Night Lights") and his folks have had quite a year, what with Landry beating that poor fella to death, then dumping his body into the river. Ah, well, you can't have a great year every year, can you? No doubt Landry's mom will downplay the whole ugly affair and try to focus on the positive ("Canning season was busier than ever this year, thanks to that bumper crop of okra we got this summer!")

Sounds just like the way the show's writers have handled the whole Landry-as-murderer storyline. Apparently sensing that they'd wandered into dark and soapy territory for a drama that always took pains to remain realistic and focused on the challenges of everyday people, the writers swept the story under the rug and tried to distract us with Landry-and-Tyra couplings, then gave Landry (Jesse Plemons) the moral high ground ("I'm tortured by what I've done! I must confess!"). Meanwhile, his cop daddy took the low road, hugging his son and then driving out to the middle of nowhere to torch his son's car (which was linked to the murder). The kid killed someone -- shouldn't he at least get a smack in the head?

Finally, Landry confessed to the cops, and we assumed he'd pay the price for going along with Tyra's (Adrianne Palicki) terrible, impulsive decision to dump the body. Instead, the cops of Dillon took pains to convince Landry that he acted in self-defense: Tyra's attacker was coming at him, wasn't he? He feared for his life, didn't he? Landry balked; he was ready to do hard time! But eventually, he lied like a good boy. At the end of the very same episode that began with his confession, Landry drove to Tyra's house and told her that the charges were dropped. We're off the hook! High five! Hey, teens, don't sweat it if you have to murder someone! Sure, it's inconvenient for a day or so, but then everyone forgives and forgets.

In short, the Landry-Tyra storyline proved to be just as disastrous as we thought it would be at the beginning of the season. No big surprises there. But has it ruined everything? Not by a long shot. There's no way you could ruin a show as good as "Friday Night Lights" (8 p.m. EST Fridays on NBC) with one stupid storyline. While Landry stuttered and stumbled through his bum steer of a plot, Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) left his big-deal university job with his tail between his legs and retreated back to his beloved Dillon Panthers, only to find the team in a serious state of disrepair. Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) was missing practice, Smash Williams (Gaius Charles) was cockier and less of a team player than ever, and Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) was seriously broken up over the Coach's daughter Julie (Aimee Teegarden) dumping him to go out with an older guy. But in the last episode, Riggins rejoined the team, Smash got his head back on straight, and Saracen started fooling around with his grandmother's hot nurse, while Julie developed a major crush on a teacher (played by Austin Nichols, see also: John of "John From Cincinnati"). (Does every high school kid in Dillon have a thing for older men and women? Remember Riggins' affair with his older next-door neighbor?)

Tami's (Connie Britton) relationship with her daughter Julie has been one of the highlights of this season. Their scenes together have always been great, but lately the writers have made their dynamic more combustible: Instead of being respectful and careful of her mother's feelings, Julie has been more reckless than usual, and Tami has been lashing out in return, mirroring the rockiness of most mother-teenage-daughter relationships.

It's unfortunate that the crappy Landry-Tyra murder storyline has received so much press, because lots of people have said to me, "That show's not good anymore, right?" Nope, sorry. "Friday Night Lights" is still one of the best dramas on TV.

Facing reality
By the way, there's a glut of crappy reality programming coming your way this January, thanks to the continuing writers' strike, which means you have no excuse not to catch up on "Friday Night Lights" and "30 Rock" now. And instead of watching "Pushing Daisies," "Grey's Anatomy" and "Gossip Girl," soon you'll be forced to chose between "Celebrity Apprentice," "American Gladiators," "Dance War," "Big Brother," "The Biggest Loser," "Wife Swap, "Supernanny" and "Extreme Makeover," not to mention more game shows like "Deal or No Deal," "Power of 10," "1 vs. 100," "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" -- all of which can make you suspect that very few Americans are smarter than a fifth grader.

But now for the good news: Fox Reality is planning to bring back the best reality show of all time, "Paradise Hotel" (see also: Drunk Asshole Hotel). Fox Reality president David Lyle told "Broadcasting & Cable" that he's just giving the people what they want: "All of our research has shown that 'Paradise Hotel' is a brand that reality viewers are desperate to see on TV again."

Desperate? Isn't that an insulting term to employ in describing your target demographic? Of course it's accurate, but shouldn't a smart executive chose a less stigmatizing word, like "excited," or even "anxious" or "itching"? I think most of us would rather be itchy than desperate.

But then, the beauty of Drunk Asshole Hotel is that it makes you feel anxious, itchy and desperate while you're watching it. We can only hope that the producers don't mess with the original formula (the way they did when they brought the show back but changed the name to "Forever Eden" and set it in a dark little swamp and made up a bunch of crappy rules and it promptly tanked). No. They need to start with the same gleaming white luxury palace in Acapulco and fill it with the same googly-eyed lunatics (I'm sure they're all available, at least until they become elected officials).

Better yet, start with a new batch of innocents, naive but aggressive, wide-eyed but bitter, filled with hope but also filled with rage and several strong, fruity drinks. Yes, I'm sure there are 10 firm-bodied young people out there, of average age, slightly above-average looks and slightly below-average intelligence, who would love to flirt and bicker and slur and stumble in paradise for a few months, while a bunch of sad old people at home ogle and despise them.

Of course, according to my mom, the producers could save a lot of money on that costly rent in paradise by giving all of the residents a lethal overdose. Talk about a show-stopping finale! When the Mexican officials come to investigate the deaths, they can just tell them that the residents of paradise joined together and attacked the producers with ashtrays and coat hangers, and the producers feared for their lives. I'm sure no one will press charges. And the ratings will be off the hook! High five!

Murderer makes good
While we're on the subject of murder, let's not forget last week's "Dexter" finale, a big blast of explosions and raging fires and insane twists and dirty deeds. (If you haven't seen last week's second-season finale of "Dexter," don't read this.)

Now, like the "Friday Night Lights" Landry resolution, this finale was all a little convenient, from Dexter's scorned lover Lila (Jaime Murray) blowing Dexter's nemesis Detective Doakes (Erik King) to high heaven, thereby destroying the evidence that Dexter (Michael C. Hall) is the Bay Harbor Butcher, to Dexter reuniting with stable love Rita (Julie Benz), to sister Deb (Jennifer Carpenter) not suspecting a thing. I like how Rita's kids were kidnapped by Lila, but weren't all that scared, and then they slipped out the windows without a scratch before the fire got gnarly. Mom shows up and sees them, and all she can say is something like, "Oh good, everyone's safe! See you tomorrow for bowling, Dex!"

"Dexter" is such a strange mix of sophistication and willful dorkiness. After building suspense all season, everything is conveniently torched, and the only one who cares is Lt. Laguerta (Lauren Velez) because she loved Doakes.

The best misdirection had to be when Dexter told Lila they belonged together. I actually believed for a few minutes that Dexter would drop everything to be with Lila, because they are soul mates, after all. Plus, that would make for an interesting season: Lila and Dexter, killing people together, hand in hand.

Nah, we'd hate them too much. It's bad enough that Dexter is, well, a homicidal maniac. In fact, I struggle with this show, because I really dislike the murder scenes, no matter how evil the victim is. Hell, I can barely watch those scary shots of raw meat and frying eggs in the opening credits.

Anyway, all of you heartless, immoral types who love this show should chime in and let us know what you thought of last week's finale.

Courtney Hate
"This isn't, like, welfare. It's a game. Like, she doesn't deserve it just 'cause, you know, she sucks at life" -- Courtney, "Survivor: China," on efforts by Denise, a lunch lady in a cafeteria, to stay in the game because she and her family need the money more than the other contestants.

Speaking of heartless, immoral types, if you missed the "Survivor: China" finale on Sunday, you missed seeing one of the most unlikely "Survivor" contestants ever making it to the final three. For a minute there, it actually looked as if Courtney could win it, too. While the other two finalists, Tricky Todd and Ass-Out Amanda (whose butt was apparently hanging out during the entire season, based on the amount of camera blurring going on), batted their eyes and flattered the jury, rail-thin big-city cynic Courtney said that at least she was upfront and honest, and admitted, "I was physically scared to be in this game in the beginning."

But then Courtney insulted former competitor and juror Jean-Robert ("I won an immunity. Did you win an immunity?") while Todd (brilliantly) told Jean-Robert that he voted him out only because he knew that Jean-Robert was the biggest threat in the game. Everyone watching knew that this was far from true, except for one person: Jean-Robert. Todd might as well have said that he'd eliminated Jean-Robert because Jean-Robert was so studly and handsome that he would make Todd look bad by comparison. When Todd finished speaking, Jean-Robert looked very satisfied, didn't say another word, and ended up voting for Todd to win it all, despite having vowed to take him down a few weeks earlier.

So Todd won. Courtney came in second with two votes. And Amanda, who played a great game but started kissing up and acting demure to an insincere degree in the home stretch, got only one vote. Also, the wit and absurdly pretty physique of James the gravedigger won him a $100,000 fan-favorite prize voted on by viewers at home.

And what happened to poor Lunch Lady Denise? At the reunion, she reported to the audience that she was taken off the lunch shift because her star status was causing a big distraction at her school. So she was being forced to scrub toilets at the school at night instead, and she never got to see her kids. Then, at the end of the show, Jeff Probst announced that show creator Mark Burnett felt so bad for Denise that he was going to give her $50,000 of his own money, just for sucking at life -- er, rather, in order to turn her life around.

Later, the superintendent at Denise's school claimed that Denise had lied, that she was actually a full-time custodian (a promotion from cafeteria worker) at the time she took a leave of absence to appear on "Survivor." So, can we assume that Denise told a lie simply to win the sympathy and love of Americans everywhere? Hey, maybe Denise doesn't suck at life after all! I bet she's dumped one or two bodies in the river in her day, too! High five!

We can be "Heroes"!
Speaking of bodies piling up, how about the last few episodes of "Heroes" (9 p.m. EST Mondays on NBC), huh? Looks like we're back on track to save the world again, this time from a deadly virus that threatens to wipe out almost everyone on the planet ... except for people with really incredible immune systems, or people who are completely isolated in a luxury hotel in Acapulco. Uh oh. Imagine if the Earth were repopulated by a small band of dumber-than-average but cuter-than-average drunk assholes!

Isn't that what happened here in America? We were founded by outsiders, small groups of heartier-than-average, more-religious-than-average questioners of authority who believed in subverting the dominant paradigm and giving the king and/or queen the finger from across the big pond.

Unfortunately, those tough pilgrims and zealots paired up and gave birth to a bunch of dumb, in-bred ruffians, who set to work building strip malls and forming touch-football leagues. Thank God for the eventual influx of highly intelligent, wildly good-looking Carpatho-Rusyns, or this great land of ours would be led by aggressive, unattractive, in-bred half-wits.

Oh, wait, it is! Anyway, this gives you some notion of what the heroes of "Heroes" are up against ... although none of them seem capable of discerning who's good and who's evil or whether or not they should be working for or against "The Company" or each other.

Come to think of it, "Heroes" has more than a little in common with "24" -- first they're fighting a nuclear bomb, then a deadly virus. Various alliances form and shift and form again, with friends and foes at odds or working together in random succession.

And then there's the dialogue. Sweet Jesus, the dialogue of "Heroes" can be bad, almost as bad as "24's" dialogue, but not quite. Take this exchange, where Nathan's eeevil mom explains the simple, Landry-like reasoning behind the original collaborative effort to kill off the Earth's population:

Mom: And in the end Adam decided that the world just wasn't worth fixing, and that it needed to be wiped clean with an unstoppable virus. And just before it was too late, I, um, I came to realize how wrong it was.

Nathan: Did you? You and Linderman wanted to blow up New York to save the world. Doesn't sound to me like you've changed much at all, Ma!

But mommies never really change, boys and girls. You don't need to be a hero to know that. Neither do their impudent troublemaker children, whether they're poisoning their nephews' and nieces' minds against their parents or drinking too much DayQuil, then wrestling bad little doggies to the ground for fun and sport. So enjoy the twisted delights of the season and lean into the chaos, my lovelies! You get the chance to lounge around your parents' house in dirty socks whining for someone to refill your glass of red wine but once a year. Happy Holidays!

For those who didn't spend the first 30 years of their lives on a psychic battlefield of their own creation, though, it's a different story. For extroverted professionals who came to marriage all busy and important, with a clear sense of purpose, puffed up by years of big, satisfying ego gains in the workplace, the American dream is a cold and soupy bog indeed. When you're particularly hip or pretty or stylish or ambitious or well-adjusted, running a bustling human factory to the tireless strains of "Baby Beluga" and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" can feel hopelessly demeaning and unspecial. When asked to surrender such luxury items as dignity, pride and personal hygiene, fiercely independent hipsters and extroverted captains of industry alike are known to shiver in their Prada demi boots, then hop the next train to the city in search of high-end call girls and fine Colombian.

Lies become him
This tension, between secure but trapped and free but lost, inhabits the deeply ambivalent heart of the American experience. No matter which path you choose, you'll still feel like you're missing out on something.

This is where we find Don Draper (Jon Hamm) in the waning moments of the first brilliant season of AMC's "Mad Men" (10 p.m. Thursdays). (If you haven't seen last week's episode yet, don't read this.) On top of living the double life of the '60's-era ad exec, drinking and carousing with beautiful women, then returning home to his (almost) happy family, Draper has also been running from a mysterious past, rejecting a long-lost brother who knows him by the name Dick Whitman. Draper represents an extreme case of alienation from those who should be closest to him. Orphaned at a young age and raised by a family that never felt like his own, he escaped his modest roots and created a whole new life and family, only to haunt it like a ghost who's barely there. But then, all of the male characters on "Mad Men" are disconnected from their families, from the most deceitful (Pete Campbell, who navigates interactions with his wife without any real feeling) to the most loyal (Harry, who primly supports his married status, then strays from his wife on a drunken impulse).

In last week's episode (the second-to-last of the season), Draper is sent into a tailspin when Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) reveals that he knows that Draper isn't who he says he is. Anxious for a promotion, Campbell threatens to blow the whistle on Draper, revealing his false identity, if Draper doesn't give him the job he wants.

Still reeling from Roger Sterling's (John Slattery) recent heart attack and brush with death, Draper escapes to the arms of Rachel (Maggie Siff), his lover and the only person he's honest with. Desperate to avoid the mess he's made, Draper asks Rachel to run away with him. But Rachel is very pragmatic, and is shocked that Draper could be immature enough to even consider ditching his family. The scene charts breathtakingly unfamiliar ground: Here we have our steely-jawed hero, proposing a romantic escape from the mundane realities of life, and instead of jumping on-board, his sweetheart is shocked, disgusted and heartbroken.

"What about your children?" Rachel asks.

"I'll provide for them," Draper tells her.

"And live in Los Angeles? My God, you haven't thought this through. I feel sick," Rachel says. "What kind of man are you? Go away, drop everything, leave your wife?"

"People do it every day," Draper responds, weakly.

But Rachel's shock has already hardened into anger, as she sees him clearly for the first time. "This was a dalliance, a cheap affair. You don't want to run away with me, you just want to run away. You're a coward!"

You really have to hand it to the writers of "Mad Men" for offering us scenes that are not only utterly original and imaginative, but that also reflect, with every word, the central premise of the show: Is it possible to foster close connections in a society that, for all of its potential, is built on the laws of supply and demand and is, therefore, cold and unforgiving by nature?

In each scene, the writers revisit the impossibility of living an honest life in an essentially corrupt world. When Draper returns to the office looking desperate and ill in the wake of his encounter with Rachel, he finds his secretary, Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), crying over the fact that by complaining about her office mates' throwing a messy election party, she inadvertently got the elevator man fired. After Draper reluctantly hands Peggy a drink (liquor and cigarettes are the cure for every ill in this world), she tells him, "I don't understand. I try to do my job, I follow the rules, and people hate me! Innocent people get hurt and other people, people who are not good, get to walk around doing whatever they want. It's not fair!"

Ah, another innocent flower, crushed in the heartless machinery of high capitalism! Draper looks stricken. He knows he's one of the bad people. Even so, this realization fuels his determination to confront Campbell, using Rachel's words against him: "You haven't thought this through!"

The two storm into their boss Mr. Cooper's (Robert Morse) office, and Campbell blurts out what he's discovered: Dick Whitman supposedly died years ago, and Don Draper isn't really Don Draper. Cooper's response takes both of the men (and the viewers at home, no doubt) completely off-guard:

Cooper: Mr. Campbell, who cares?

Campbell: Mr. Cooper, he's a fraud and a liar, a criminal even!

Cooper: Even if this were true, who cares? This country was built and run by men with worse stories than whatever you've imagined here.

Campbell: I'm not imagining anything!

Cooper: The Japanese have a saying, "A man is whatever room he is in," and right now Donald Draper is in this room. I assure you. There's no profit in forgetting this. I'd put your energy into bringing in accounts.

Then, after Campbell leaves, Cooper says, "Don, fire him if you want. But I'd keep an eye on him. One never knows how loyalty is born."

The pragmatic capitalist speaks! Nothing is personal, not criminal acts or lies or even a person's true identity. All that matters is your ability to keep the wheels of industry rolling steadily along. If there's no profit in something, Cooper doesn't want to hear about it.

Of course, the sweet irony of the title "Mad Men," is that, despite the fact that the women on the show are repeatedly pronounced unhinged, from the "crazy broads" at the office to Draper's wife, who confides in a psychiatrist who, in turn, calls her husband to update him on her unstable nature, the female characters are the only sane ones in the picture. Draper's wife, however lonely, behaves honorably, or at least tries to, and she's honest about her missteps. Rachel, even though she's Draper's lover, has strong principles and immediately dismisses Draper when she realizes that he's a self-deluded coward who's capable of abandoning his children. And Draper's secretary Peggy, despite her past indiscretions with Campbell, has quickly grown to disdain the shallow antics of the secretaries and working guys at the office.

The sad message of the show is that, in a world built on lies, ethics are a barrier to both success and happiness. Draper is trapped in a marriage that he doesn't feel connected to, partially because it grew from false pretenses (his wife doesn't know who he really is), but escape from it would be reckless and destructive for him and his family -- just see the single mom down the street from the Drapers, considered hopeless and sad by her neighbors.

The characters of "Mad Men" are thus resigned to live double lives, and the more comfortable they are with their deceit, the happier they'll be. But it makes sense that ad executives would be best served by experiencing the world as pure, delightful artifice: You are whoever and whatever you say you are, nothing more and nothing less. It's a testament to the intelligence of the writing that we, as the audience, find ourselves torn over these characters and their choices. In an oppressive, corrupt culture, their lies sometimes feel like acts of cowardice, and at other times feel like acts of liberation.

This is what a good dramatic work should do: ask important questions that have no easy answers. But that's not all we get from "Mad Men." We get weighty, nuanced scenes that we've never seen before, and that we can't predict as they're unfolding. We get fantastic acting, incredible art direction, and dynamic, fun storytelling with a wicked sense of humor. "Mad Men" is easily the best new show of the year, a true work of art grounded by sharp social commentary and poetic insights into the American experience.

It's a fumble!
The sometimes oppressive nature of family life has also come to the forefront of last year's best new show, "Friday Night Lights" (9 p.m. Fridays on NBC). In keeping with last year's pilot episode, the show began its second season on a dark note, with coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) absent from his family just as they need him the most. His daughter Julie (Aimee Teegarden) is struggling with fears that staying with her sweet and loyal boyfriend, Matt (Zach Gilford), means that she'll end up exactly like her parents. Meanwhile, wife Tami (Connie Britton) is handling a brand-new baby by herself and basically falling apart, but trying to hide it from her husband, for fear of squelching his dreams of coaching at the college level. Mother and daughter represent the essentially impossible and conflicting visions of happiness put forth by our culture: You're emotionally stunted if you embrace fun and excitement over true love, but you're invisible the second you put your ego on the back burner in favor of drool cloths and sippy cups.

Unfortunately, these very resonant struggles are being undermined by what should have been a minor story line, gone horribly wrong: In the show's second season premiere, bad girl Tyra (Adrianne Palicki) and her longtime admirer Landry (Jesse Plemons) encounter Tyra's attacker, and Landry bashes the guy in the head with a massive pipe. Uh-oh. Tyra checks his pulse, and he's dead. So what do they do? They're in public, at a gas station. Someone probably already saw this ruckus going down. Call an ambulance or the police? No. Load the guy into the car, and dump his body off a tall bridge, into a muddy river. "Gee, I hope we don't get caught for this. Wanna hook up?"

How this great show could misjudge its own essential tone and rhythm this badly by throwing murder into the mix is totally and completely beyond me. Without the death of Tyra's attacker, this scene would've fit seamlessly into the larger picture of the show, with Tyra and Landry sallying forth into uncharted waters, forging a relationship that's all about love and romance for him and all about safety and feeling protected for her. If Landry only injured the guy, or killed him and then quickly called the authorities, that would force them to suffer through a trial and Landry's possible incarceration while Tyra stood by his side without knowing how to break it to him that she's not really in love. But making two kids kill a guy, then try to cover it up, then start sleeping together? This is a plot twist plucked straight from "The O.C.," with its violent criminals and suicidal teens and fiery car crashes lurking around every corner. There's no way for characters like these to work with the full weight and impact of a murder. It reminds me of Seth and Summer from "The O.C.," trying to keep a straight face while discussing Trey's near-murder or Marissa's death. It always felt like they were about to crack a smile or dissolve into giggles. Whether Tyra and Landry fall in love or fall apart, their interactions aren't going to feel authentic because these two aren't actually capable of doing something this stupid, nor are they capable of discussing something as heavy as having committed a crime against humanity in tandem.

The best we can hope for is that this very bad story is swept under the rug until the end of the season, when the writers will be forced to drag it out and dust it off and create a big, dumb finale with it. Or better yet, have the police discover the dead body soon, and send Landry to jail. Once everyone is shocked and disgusted and Landry is in a personal hell of his own making, then we can get past this artificial and arbitrary curve ball. Until then, unfortunately, we're just going to cringe every time we see either of their faces. I feel pretty sorry for the actors, being saddled with this unimaginably bad plot.

It's a shame someone didn't stop this train wreck from happening, because the rest of the show's stories match the quality of the first season, and the buzz over this show has been growing steadily, to the extent that it could've broken out and attracted a herd of new viewers this year. That said, personally, I'm not giving up on "Friday Night Lights," and I hope that those who haven't seen it yet will give it a shot despite its latest soapy missteps.

Falling short
Once again, we learn the same hard lesson: Nothing cool can stay. Just as every seemingly perfect televised creation is sure to disappoint us eventually, every bedheaded and unwedded rebel might someday fall prey to the lobotomizing melodies of Raffi. So rage against the two-car garage as long as you like, but you'll lose your precious edge sooner or later. You can walk around with tissues and sippy cups sticking out of your clothes, shouting instructions like some kind of enraged bag lady, or you can party like a rock star, leaving your offspring to rummage around for a breakfast of stale Saltines and Red Bull every morning. Either way, you're doing something wrong. But then, that's what being an American is all about!

Thanks to laziness, I've ended up watching shows like "I Love New York" for months, despite their obvious brain-melting stupidity, because they were always at the top of my TiVo queue. Like McDonald's french fries, they sit there, stinking up the joint with their foul, foolish stench, begging me to dig into their salty deliciousness despite my best intentions.

I know it's a sin, but something rotten inside me won't let me delete "Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll" or "The Bachelor: Officer and a Gentleman" or the insipid eighth cycle of "America's Next Top Model." For some reason, the baby ho donkey festival and sea donkerella pageant are my personal El Guapo. I can't get enough of the skin-tight ass pants and the nasty little insinuations that Felicia can't dance or Jolena has an eating disorder. Sea donkey, who are you, to take these many forms?

The More You Know
Then again, sometimes reality shows are really more like public service announcements. For example, did you know that it's important to wear your "boob pads" if you want to "dance sexier"? You would if you listened to Pussycat choreographer Mikey Minden, who dropped that pearl of wisdom last episode. Or, did you know that, while rubbing shoulders with famous people at a swanky party, it's usually not a good sign if 50 Cent tells you to go away repeatedly, then throws you into the pool? To be fair, aspiring "Top Model" Jael probably figured that the kinds of "famous people" who agree to appear as "famous people" on a reality show don't deserve much more than outright harassment. (Nicole Richie appeared later and allowed the cameras to shoot her fluffing her hair in the bathroom.)

And then there was this conversation between "The Bachelor's" Andy and aspiring wife Alexis, who the other aspiring wives loudly speculated must be a virgin, since she said she was conservative and she was wearing a white dress.

Andy: So, when was the last time you had a serious relationship?

Alexis: I've been engaged before. Um, like, for me, divorce isn't even an option.

Andy: Me either! It's, literally ... it's so important that I won't even pass go if it's not there. It's that important.

Now, is Andra Dee really trying to tell us that he won't go to bed 'til he's legally wed? For more clues, you have to ignore the appropriate, agreeable sounds that are coming out of his mouth, and isolate that moment of abject horror that flashes across his face when he realizes that Alexis thinks it's reasonable for him to frolic on the beach and clink champagne glasses once or twice for the cameras, then commit to spending the rest of his life with her.

Ladies, this is what we call a Yes Man (see also: Officer, Gentleman). No matter how stupid or odd a comment one of the "lovely ladies" makes, Andy acts like she's touching the innermost reaches of his soul. If you doubt me, witness this exchange between Andy and Peyton, the sorority recruiter, about how incredible it is to be a sorority recruiter:

Peyton: We offer sooo much to our collegiate women. I want to change their lives! I have to tell myself, "OK, Peyton, you can't change everyone's life!"

Andy: That's great. To be a good, inspiring mentor to others, it's what I'm all about.

Peyton: What are you looking for in a woman?

Andy: Someone who wants a family. Someone with integrity. Someone who likes to inspire others. A lot of things that you have!

Peyton: Good, I'm so glad!

Peyton at least made it to the next round, which is more than can be said for Alexis, who found out that Andy isn't about to pass go without collecting his 200 donkerellas, if you know what I'm saying.

Yes, it's true: The Most Sincere Man in the World is the one you should warn your daughters about the most. Proving once again that a gentleman is a wish a guy makes when his penis is fast asleep, and a little white lie is a check your mouth writes that your ass can't cash.

Name that festoon
See how educational reality TV can be? Take Bravo's "Top Design." If I didn't watch this show, I'd never know that, in order to be a world-class interior decorator, all I need is a 10-foot-by-15-foot neon-lit white box and a few minutes in the overpriced shops of the Pacific Design Center.

Yes, the fine contestants on this show, who had so little to say that the producers were reduced to showing them bickering with their appointed carpenters over and over again, spent most of the season strolling around the PDC's indoor mini-mall, searching for a stodgy-looking chaise or a boring mahogany ensemble that looked like a "dinette set" straight off "The Price Is Right" Showcase Showdown.

Now, it's true that, just as Elle Decor editor in chief Margaret Russell appeared tanner and more youthful as the show went on, presumably to match her costar Kelly Wearstler (who looked like she got mowed down by the Stupid Fashion Trend Bus on more than one occasion), "Top Design" got better as the season progressed. By Wednesday night's finale, I barely even noticed Jonathan Adler's cartoonishly strange facial expressions, or the fact that Todd Oldham was painted bright orange.

And even though the contestants were pretty dull, the show did have its moments, like when aspiring designer Goil blurted, practically through tears, that he didn't want to be "a Jan Brady" (meaning wishy-washy, emotional or envious?) or when Carissa narrowly avoided allowing her reckless carpenter, Carl, to inadvertently smash to little bits the rustic dinette set on loan from the PDC.

The final challenge was at least new and ambitious: Design a loft that you'd like to live in. While Carissa's black, white and red-all-over loft looked like a funky, reasonably skilled imitation of a room you'd find in Jonathan Adler's design book, minus the chartreuse glazed dildo-shaped vase and the 3-foot-tall Dalmatian statuette, Matt's loft was the usual subdued, somnambulant showroom. Yes, the judges praised the pink girly bedroom for his daughter and the eggplant-colored walls and the whimsical hanging lamp in the bathroom. But other than those two rooms, all we saw from Matt was decent taste and nice furniture placement. At least Carissa designed a sunken platform bed (covered in Adler-esque pillows, of course) and some shelving (straight out of West Elm catalog, but still). If the whole point was merely to shop for dumb furniture, why not just call it "Top Consumer"?

Even worse, the pickings were so slim at the PDC that producers expected us not to notice that Carissa chose the same dinette set for her loft that Andrea had chosen as the main feature of her dining room design a few weeks earlier. In short,"Top Design" often felt cheap, lazy and unimaginative, as if the producers only had a few days to create and staff a show that they were told should be "just like 'Top Chef' or 'Project Runway,' except it's about design!"

Here's a cool idea for a show, guys: "Top Reality Show Producer"! We'll get a bunch of lazy wannabe producers to throw together sloppy, uninspired reality shows overnight. After all, a reality competition is just a pitch your broke buddy makes when his brain is fast asleep.

Yow, man!
OK. Time to get to today's challenge. Say what you like about the repetitiveness of the "Survivor" series, at least the show found a winning formula and stuck with it. After experimenting with a muddy, claustrophobic corner of the outback in Australia and a dusty, featureless expanse on the plains of Africa, Mark Burnett and Co. decided that "Survivor" really belonged in a photogenic tropical island setting. Instead of digging for grubs or crouching in the mud, neither of which were particularly pleasing to watch, we should be able to see the survivors climbing for coconuts or frolicking, half-naked, in crystal-blue shark-infested waters.

Why change the theme song significantly or cast aside the "eat this disgusting thing" challenge or the "stand on a platform" challenge, or even offer Jeff Probst something other than his Safari Ken Doll outfits to wear? Last season's Battle-of-the-Races "Survivor" aside, the producers know better than to mess with a good thing. After all, in the world of television, immunity is always up for grabs!

"Survivor: Fiji" (8 p.m. EDT Thursdays on CBS) has been solid but unremarkable so far, with a few exceptions: Rocky, the confrontational dummy, brought a few laughs to the picture, as does Boo, the nonconfrontational dummy, and Dreamz, the Man Who Cannot Tell a Lie (who, incidentally, you should never align yourself with if you want to win this game). But my favorite by far is Yau-Man, the strange little old guy who not only found the immunity idol (after digging for it ineffectually on a few different occasions), but who's suddenly figuring out ways to win challenges, either by scurrying as fast as his feeble little legs will carry him, or by choosing "the straightest possible arrow" and shooting it near the bull's eye to secure a win for his team.

Yau-Man, in fact, represents the one element of "Survivor" that its producers have continued to finesse: casting. For the first few seasons, producers looked for irritating overconfident freaks and angry sociopaths likely to hurl spitty insults like Richard Hatch and Susan Hawk did during the first season. That approach soon fell apart because there were so many annoying jerks that audiences had no one to root for. (Remember "Survivor: Thailand," when Brian the car salesman won? I didn't think so.) Next, producers focused on trying to stock their island with mostly outrageous hotties ("Survivor: Palau," anyone?). Again, audiences enjoyed the meat Chiclets and the fake boobs, but no one did much but stir the rice and blather on about their yoga routines.

"Survivor: Cook Islands" (aka Race Survivor) demonstrated that a diverse group of interesting people makes for much better television, and "Survivor: Fiji" turns out to be a major experiment in casting out the token black or token old guy for whatever mix of people happens to be interesting. What other season of "Survivor" has featured not one but three black men? And would the producers have cast two hot Asian girls, Michelle and Stacy, before this season?

Yau-Man, though, is the crowning glory of this new era, the polar opposite of the protoypical "Survivor" hottie. He's a tiny man with a weird little shrill voice and huge Coke-bottle glasses, prone to saying geeky things about how crazy it is that he has an alliance with "a big black man" (Earl). Far from an outcast, Yau-Man was an accepted member of his tribe, and since he has the immunity idol and his tribe is in the majority since the two tribes merged, he's sitting in the catbird seat right now.

If Yau-Man wins the million-dollar prize, it would be a huge victory for diminutive dorks everywhere. Like voting for Sanjaya on "American Idol," rooting for Yau-Man is a subversive act that buoys the little guy against a rising tide of meaty-chested refrigerator monkeys (see also: Officer, Gentleman).

And just so you know, a subversive act of television viewing is a wish your heart makes when you can't be bothered to vote in general elections, let alone participate in legitimate acts of subversion.

This is the end
Speaking of legitimate subversive acts, did you tune in for the finale of NBC's "Friday Night Lights" like I specifically instructed you to do? And if so, what did you think? (If you didn't watch, naturally you shouldn't read this.)

Personally, I enjoyed the episode, but a few aspects of it bothered me. First of all, I thought the state championship game was rushed. Now, normally, I like the fact that this show rushes through the football games. Most of us don't really want to see how these games go down, play by play, because they interrupt the dramatic action too much. We just want the general idea: Smash is kicking ass, Saracen is feeling jittery, etc.

But in this case, the rough outline of the game that we were offered was pretty stupid. Oh no, the Panthers are down by 26 points! Coach is sure going to give them quite a talking-to at halftime! Coach rolls out just the right mix of tough love and inspiration and ... Oh my God, the Panther offense is coming back! Can they do it? Can they really make up such a huge deficit? It all comes down to one final play! "Hey, Coach? Let's run this nifty trick play me and the boys dreamt up when we were fast asleep!" "Kid, that plan sounds so crazy, it just might work!" The crowd goes hush ("What kind of a crazy-ass play is that?" they seem to be thinking) but then ... Touchdown! The Panthers win the state championship!

And didn't the post-game celebration feel a little hollow to you? Was it just that Coach was leaving to work at TMU? I don't think so. Something in the mix there didn't work. It felt cursory -- there was nothing original in the celebration, beyond the part where the team gave Coach a standing ovation even though he was ditching them. This show takes really basic stories (teen girl considering sex with boyfriend, hot girl tutored by geek) and makes them feel fresh and unique, so the fact that there was nothing all that unique about the game or the victory was a little bit jarring. Yes, yes, the trick play was tricky, of course -- but for anyone who's watched pretty much any other drama about sports, the trick play is beyond cliché. I just expected the whole game and aftermath to feel new and different.

Naturally, you have to love Daniel Johnston's "Devil Town" playing over the victory parade, and the scenes with Tami telling Coach she's pregnant made me teary-eyed, but from the victory on, I was feeling too worried to enjoy it. I mean, I can't say that I would've been happier if they had lost, but doesn't the fact that they won sort of make you think that the show's not going to come back for another season? I know that the producers probably have no idea, at this point, and they wanted to wrap up the show without a major cliffhanger so that no one would feel ripped off if it didn't come back.

But look, if this show isn't renewed, we're going to feel ripped off regardless. I just wanted the last few minutes of this incredible season to feel a little bit more satisfying.

Which brings me to my final gripe. In the final seconds of what might be the last episode of "Friday Night Lights" ever, the players are clapping and Coach Taylor looks like he's going to cry, the screen goes dark for a millisecond, and then ... Thursday! "ER" returns!

As Snoop Dogg once said, can we get a motherfucking moment of silence? NBC has a terrible habit of stepping on the last minute of a show with its promos. Do they honestly think we care about the return of "ER"? I mean, the injustice of that! "ER" returns for the 50 millionth melodramatic crisis in which a dirty bomb goes off in the O.R. or a Greyhound bus full of gorillas crashes into the hospital or somebody's head explodes all over the lunchroom, and yet we might not even find out how Tami and Coach handle the new baby, or how college football treats him, or whether he ever comes back to Dillon!

Choose your conclusion
My heart is making a wish, chickens. In my heart-wish, "Friday Night Lights" returns next fall along with "30 Rock," while "ER" finally goes gently into that good night. Yau-Man wins "Survivor: Fiji," feisty drunk Jael wins "Top Model," the Pussycat Dolls change their name to the Whoring Sea Donkeys, and Wednesday night's TV lineup features the double threat of "The Bachelorette: Sea Donkerella and a Sorority Recruiter" right after Bravo's "Top Reality Show Producer." Remember, chickens, no matter how your heart is grieving the loss of "FNL," if you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true!