House has been a bit (quite a bit) disappointing lately, and Dick and I are dawdling in our watching of the final season of Alias. We have three episodes to go, and for once, I’m not dying (or not really being killed, get it?) to see what happens next. Luckily, Blockbuster stocks old TV shows, even old shows that only played for one season, including possibly the best high school show ever, Freaks and Geeks.
I love the characters because they act the way real kids act. They don’t have the fake sophistication and cynicism that taints several John Hughes movies, even the best high school movie ever (Some Kind of Wonderful), and that really became distracting beginning with Beverly Hills, 90210.
Maybe Freeks and Geeks succeeded in portraying honest conflict and motivation because it was set in 1980. Sad that even 1980 is the good old days now, a gentler time when only the ‘bad’ kids have sex and drink beer. When a kid finding out that his dad is having an affair is devastated, and more significantly, surprised and disbelieving.
Can somebody just please tell me why we didn’t have a mathlete team when I was in high school? Melinda and I would’ve rocked the mathletes!!
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Surprisingly not as bad as it could have been, or much better than it had to be . . . Transformers. I can’t say that I played much (at all) with Transformers as a kid. I don’t think my little brothers did either. We weren’t a Transformer or Barbie type family — oh, how the times have changed. And speaking of movies, and Barbie, Barbie as the Island Princess is pretty good too. Not as good as Princess and the Pauper, of course, but that one set a pretty high standard.
Transformers was really entertaining. The female love interest was a bit (quite a bit, or in other words, extremely) slutty, but the hero was suitably earnest and humble, yet capable of great things when pressed into the service of mankind. Optimus Prime sounded a bit too much like a Cecile B. Demille God. I think we even got into a discussion of Christ-centered analogic works versus areligious mythologies (like Lord of the Rings). And Dumbledore being gay — was J. K. Rowling hoping to get more conservative Christians upset about her wizards? Afraid sales are slumping from lack of controversy?
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What I would give a great deal to see, almost, but not quite, seven years of servitude:
Jennifer Garner and Kevin Kline in Cyrano de Bergerac on Broadway. I saw Cyrano first as an impressionable NHS student on a bus trip to Cedar City, Utah. My shirt was wet with tears as we left the theater. Of course, I’ll cry, embarrassedly, at anything, but still. Gerard Depardieu’s French version is great, even if his Roxane is pretty blah, and the play itself is greatly lyrical (in English anyway, I can’t read French, unfortunately). I might have to watch Steve Martin’s version again for a fix of some sort, and now that I know about it, I’m greatly sorry to have missed Christopher Plummer in the musical version. Angela and Laura, maybe you guys could see this and sigh once or twice for me?
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I have a friend who is all up in arms about the negative Mormon references on both House and Pushing Daisies. I don’t mind them, to tell the truth, but I was actually glad the Mormon character was fired on tonight’s House. There are only so many slightly negative Mormon references available before it gets obvious and offensive, right?
yeah, they had totally beaten that horse to death. I like #13. i think she’s the most interesting candidate.
Eric and I LOVE “Freaks and Geeks.” I really hate it when the tv gods cancel good shows, leaving all the crappy ones. Right now, we’re grieving for “Journeyman.”