You know what, let’s set aside the whole late night fiasco for a moment. Let’s set it aside in favor of something as close to its televised opposite as one can possibly find. Let’s watch a little PBS.

Have I mentioned on this blog that I like PBS? I do. What’s more, I am a giant sucker for BBC productions, especially those that involve corsets, small English villages, gossiping ladies who wear fetching bonnets, the Industrial revolution, orphans, aristocracy, farming humor, public schools, ill-fated matches that cross social hierarchies, widows, babies, mysterious magicians, seamstresses, scoundrels, choreographed social dance, India, Manchester, and Dame Judi Dench. That’s right: I am a nineteenth-century junkie. And you know what has all of those things? Cranford.

More specifically, Return to Cranford, the recent sequel to the excellent BBC miniseries based on the works of Elizabeth Gaskell. (I am also an enormous sucker for Elizabeth Gaskell). In spite of what is clearly an unchecked bias toward costume drama, I was initially hesitant about Return to Cranford because sequels can so often fail miserably at what made the original good. Worse, while Cranford was an interesting combination of several of Gaskell’s shorter, lesser-known works, Return to Cranford jumps in at the point where Gaskell leaves off completely, and I was afraid it would abandon the themes that make her work so appealing. I am thrilled to report that my fears were completely unfounded, and that Return to Cranford is lovely.

The sequel begins much where its original ended and picks up many of the same themes and concerns. Love, class divisions, education, and the lives of unmarried women provide the minute-to-minute subjects, while the arrival of the railroad and ensuing social change thrums steadily in the background as the dominant issue. In spite of what feels like reasonably familiar territory, Cranford and its form of miniseries provide a refreshing, even unusual presence in an otherwise bland television landscape. As is appropriate in a story about a small village, there is a significant amount of tragedy in Return to Cranford – so much that I was almost surprised by how readily the writers were willing to move away from its previous comfortable, cheerful characters. Life was not easy, and Return to Cranford finds room for dramatic disasters as well as smaller, sadder, more mundane loss. At the same time, it is as joyous and funny as ever, and it’s out of this deftness in combining both emotional extremes that Cranford excels.

Much of that relies on Judi Dench as Miss Matty Jenkyns, the main character in Return to Cranford. Matty’s character grieves and laughs with equal readiness, and she’s the lynchpin around which all the other plot points and swift emotional reversals can pivot gracefully. Her seeming childishness is made ambiguous through her love affair with Thomas Holcomb in the original series, and Matty’s resilience throughout the several losses and developments in the new series defines her as a figure of strength as well as silliness.

Moving away from corsets and spinsters, though, what makes this and other similar BBC/PBS productions seem like such television oddballs is not their content, but their tone. They are sentimental, almost entirely devoid of cynicism or melodrama. The world is still just as cruel as it is on The Wire or Law and Order – there is as much death and poverty, and even less reassurance in a myth of social progress – but the core of the show relies on an essential optimism and goodwill that is not that easy to find elsewhere. As this week has made abundantly clear, terrible things happen in the world, and it may seem more and more like David Simon’s depiction of life is the best fictional portrayal of the current moment. Maybe. It doesn’t mean I can’t continue to hope for a little Cranford.

Today, after many years, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer is changing its name to PBS NewsHour. Last Friday, the final episode of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer ran a nice piece on the changes and history of the program, explaining that the show’s new name will reflect an increased emphasis on its online content, more visibility from its correspondents and the decreased presence of Jim Lehrer, and further collaboration with other PBS news projects like Frontline.

In his explanation of the changes, Jim Lehrer played the opening credits of each of the show’s iterations and described the shift from Robert MacNeil’s half hour program to an hour-long, comprehensive daily show.

Without a doubt, though, the best part of the segment when Lehrer read the guidelines for what he calls “MacNeil/Lehrer journalism.” There’s been little doubt for a long time that what happens on the NewsHour is a vastly different kind of journalism than much of what happens on cable news today, but until he read out the list of guidelines, I hadn’t realized how completely and totally different the two actually were.

Do nothing I cannot defend.

Cover, write and present each story with the care I would want if the story were about me.

Assume there is at least one side or version to every story.

Assume the viewer is as smart and as caring and as good a person as I am.

Assume the same about all people on whom I report.

Assume personal lives are a private matter, until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise.

Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories, and clearly label everything.

Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes, except on rare and monumental occasions.

No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously.

And finally, I am not in the entertainment business.

They’re all great rules, and each one reminds me of how absurd a lot of programming is on CNN and MSNBC and FOX, but that last one is really the kicker. Good luck, PBS NewsHour. Please keep being awesome.

I’m beyond thrilled by how good Sons of Anarchy has been for the last several weeks, and although it’s been almost a week since the last episode aired and there’ll be a new one tomorrow night, I wanted to take a moment and mention why the show’s been working so well lately. (I’m also posting about Sons of Anarchy on a Monday because it’s pretty much the best thing on television at the moment, and I am still in deep post-Mad Men coping mode.)

SAMCRO

As I began to describe in my previous post about this show, Sons of Anarchy deals with a world I find completely foreign, which is both a good and bad thing for new viewers. On the one hand, you’re going to immediately alienate people who feel absolutely no interest in a crazy gun-dealing biker gang, and who will overlook an otherwise intelligent, well-made drama because it’s about dudes with skulls and crossbones on their leather vests. If you can overcome that barrier, though, the premise’s unfamiliarity becomes an asset. I am fascinated by the rules and rituals of the club, and everything from the vocabulary to the honor code becomes a way of establishing a fully realized, richly detailed environment. For instance, the leather vest I just mentioned is actually a “cut.” The club is an “MC,” and you always collect all the cell phones before “going to church,” (attending a formal club meeting).

What I hadn’t previously considered about the benefits of this particular world is that the nature of an MC allows the show to balance some intriguing emotional extremes. Like Deadwood or The Shield, violence is mandatory. The codes of an MC require retaliation, and SAMCRO’s mission to protect Charming, CA from drugs and crime does not mean ending drugs and guns everywhere, it just means shifting the crime and drug trafficking somewhere else. This is what I expect from a show about bikers – there will be anger and gunfire, and probably a lot of sex. The more I learn about the foundation of this show and what the MC is really about, however, the more I understand that this show is also about sentiment. When the club talks about brotherhood, loyalty, and love, they mean it with the same sincerity as a national anthem or a Hallmark card. Unlike The Sopranos, where families look like cohesive units but perpetually tear each other apart, most members of SAMCRO have every reason to abandon or destroy the club, and instead, time and again they choose to stay and fight for the club’s survival. At its best moment, Jax and Opie realize that SAMCRO president Clay Morrow has become a liability to the club, but instead of deciding to stage a coup, Jax acknowledges, “The burden lands on the club. Clay is Clay because of us. We made him.” Instead of violence, they decide to change the club from within.

For a bunch of badass bikers, they sure do spend a lot of time hugging each other and crying.

The resulting show is a potent and satisfying mixture of violence and unabashed familial love, and the most recent episodes have pushed that all-too-dangerous combination to its extreme. There’s a lot of black humor here, as well as cynicism and depression, but to my surprise, it turns out the bikers are at heart one of the sappiest groups of guys you will ever meet. Near the end of last week’s episode, “Service,” Clay struggles to comfort his traumatized wife, and his second-in-command finally reminds Clay that the best thing he can do is remind Gemma that he still loves her. Then Clay and Tig give each other big bear hugs, and Tig says, “I love you, brother,” and it would be the most cloying, obnoxious moment ever if it weren’t so tender. And obviously true.

This week and next will be the final two episodes of this season, and as much as I’m looking forward to them, I’m dreading the absence of this show. The good news is that ABC and NBC have both announced the upcoming premiere dates for their popular mid-season releases. LOST will be returning February 2^nd at 9pm, and Chuck is coming back January 10^th, with regular airdates on Mondays at 8. I’m looking forward to fully analyzing my love-hate relationship with LOST in weekly “The chemists say, I say” blog posts, and I would love nothing more than for Chuck to be so awesome as to also justify a weekly post. We’re heading into the winter television slump, but I’m trying to keep my eye on the highlights.

I have been ignoring Parks and Recreation in favor of writing about The Office, 30 Rock, or Community, but no longer. The show was uneven and awkward last season, but this season has been absolutely hysterical, and I can’t go another week without mentioning it. Last night’s episode, “The Camel,” had both a stellar main plot as well as one of the silliest, funniest throwaway subplots I have ever seen on the show.

Donna's Last Supper, Gerry's mosaic, April's postmodernist multimedia piece, and the final Frankenstein mural

After decades of controversy and defacement, the city of Pawnee, Indiana finally decides to replaces its city hall mural for something that doesn’t feature Native Americans being run over by a train. Each department of government gets an opportunity to submit a mural design for consideration, and in typically enthusiastic fashion, Leslie Knope decides that the Parks Department needs to win. April submits a multimedia performance art mural featuring dead rats from a Pawnee dumpster and a man in a life-sized hamster wheel running ceaselessly. Donna offers a mural of Da Vinci’s Last Supper, with the apostles heads swapped out for famous people from Indiana. Gerry submits a mural that would be perfect, would win hands down, a mosaic of Pawnee citizens’ faces that forms the shape of the Pawnee City Hall. Leslie immediately rejects him because he accidentally says “murinal.”

Comedic representations of art criticism can go a few different ways. Either it can be self-deprecating, awkward, and have a tiny grain of compassion, like the strongest Christopher Guest films, or it can come off as pretentious and self-loathing (think Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). No question, Parks and Recreation is the former. Particularly once the department starts to create the eponymous “Camel” by randomly combining all of their murals into one, it’s obvious you can read this as a gentle joke on the process of writing television. It cannot be easy to create a coherent, quality piece of television with multiple writers, each with different agendas and senses of humor. As Leslie explains, “It’s like if you got Michelangelo, and Andy Warhol, and Jackson Pollock, and Jim Davis from Garfield to do one painting. Imagine how good that painting would be!” But this allegory, which could have been bitter or too obvious, comes off as a little love-note to the process, especially given that Parks Department love the camel they produce.

The entire episode was great, but two subplots really pushed it into excellence. The first one was really just a part of the mural

"I've stared at it for five hours now."

plotline, but deserves its own mention. After paying a poor art student to make him a mural, Tom Haverford initially scoffs at the abstract expressionist Kandinsky/Miro knockoff, but slowly becomes overwhelmed by it. (“A piece of art caused me to have an emotional reaction. Is that…normal?”) It was a pretty obvious little story to follow, but watching him weep over the painting by the end of the episode made it worth it. And then of course, the entire Andy and Ron Swanson shoe shine story: silly, very slightly homophobic, and so funny I got hiccups. I really recommend you watch it. Which is what I am doing right now, for the second time.

I’ve gotten the sense watching Mad Men from the beginning that some of its episodes are built and crafted for different purposes. The primary purpose is and always has been storytelling – a great deal of plot gets packed into several seemingly mundane events, and many different characters develop subplots in a single episode, and the most important effect is always to draw audiences into the story. Some episodes, though, are more about aesthetics than they are story. Quite a few episodes in season two felt that way, particularly toward the end, and in this recent season, I’d point to “Souvenir” as well, with its extended Hilton-induced meditation on Rome and travel. Then, of course, there are installments meant to startle or shock, and for that you need look no further than “Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency,” which went all the way to blood spewing across the office. Two weeks ago, I sat tensed on the couch as I watched Betty pull the box out of Don’s drawer. Other things happened, and there was some hefty accompanying thematic material, but the entire episode built up to that moment and then startled the audience into rapt attention.

Empty Sterling Cooper offices

What I’m trying to say is, last night’s season finale was none of those, and I think there hasn’t been an episode like this one since the finale of the first season, “The Carousel.” Terrible, upsetting, poignant things happened in this last episode, especially all of the material relating to Don and Betty’s divorce. The scene when they have to tell Bobby and Sally what’s going on was intensely painful. But for the most part, “Shut the Door. Have a Seat,” was built to satisfy. All of the changes, the dramatic divisions and reunions, were developments of plots that had already been put into place, and the season has done an excellent job of priming us for some earth-shattering shifts. When it all collided into one big, wonderful mess in the nascent Sterling Cooper Draper and Pryce advertising agency, there were some surprises and tense moments, but for the most part, it felt like inevitable, satisfying change, and it felt like we earned it.

A series of satisfying events

So many scenes from last night hit deeply satisfying notes, big and small. Perhaps the most important long-term development, the moment that has been stirring from Mad Men’s very first episode, was the final showdown between Peggy and Don when she forced him to acknowledge her worth. His pitch to her was all the more affecting because she was so aware of it, and was able to see both the pitch and the place where the campaign stopped and Don Draper began. The whole arc, from the earliest scenes of Peggy struggling to be a good secretary in season one, was given a lovely button at the end, as Roger told Peggy to get him a drink and she flatly, unapologetically, calmly refused. Perfect. In the same vein, Joan walking back into the office was as predictable as it was absolutely necessary, and I actually clapped my hands together with glee when I realized Roger would have to call her.

The whole Sterling Cooper meltdown was riddled with similarly pleasing moments. Don apologized to Roger, Lane Pryce cheerfully stuck it to smarmy St. John (has anyone good ever been named St. John? I hear his name and all I can think of is St. John Rivers from Jane Eyre, and I shudder), and Cooper begged the movers to put on gloves while carrying off his priceless Rothko. And Trudy. Maybe I loved her most of all, starting with her frantically filling the Chip ’N Dip to prepare for Don and Roger, to her strained “Peter, may I speak with you for a moment?” as she overheard Pete announce his plans to leave, to cheerfully providing sandwiches in the pitiful new office space/hotel room. Trudy has really grown on me.

Family portraits

The Draper family dissolution was awful. It was even more gut wrenching after Bobby’s hilarious line about why they were all in the living room if nothing was wrong. But even this, horrible as it was, was also satisfying. Like the doomed Sterling Cooper/PPL merger, it’s been clear from the beginning that Don and Betty’s union is shaky at best, built on deception and self-interest. There has been so much subterfuge and tense, uncertain, hidden emotion, that it was almost a relief to see it all dragged out into the open, including Betty’s relationship with Henry Francis. It was so artfully balanced with the changes in Don’s professional life, too, that what could have felt like an apocalypse instead felt appropriate. Don begged Betty not to break apart their family, but the whole process of building a new agency, and in particular the scene at the end with everyone hovering together over a meal, looked very much like a new family being made. It’s hard to see what could possibly come next between Don and Betty, but the new agency softens the finality of their split, promising challenges and growth in the future.

I have no idea what will come in the future or how long Mad Men will be on the air (at least one more season, hooray!), but this finale really did feel like a bookend to the whole show, not just for this season. The deaths of Sterling Cooper, the Draper’s marriage, and John F. Kennedy all feel like the final resolution of the themes set up from the first episode of the show. Now, at last, all of the powerful institutions from the show’s beginning have collapsed, and it feels like time to start all over again.

…but not until late next summer! Oh, the bittersweet satisfaction of a season finale.

In a post several weeks ago I mentioned a few of the shows I was most excited about for this new fall season, and among that list I included Friday Night Lights. Truth is, that entry was slightly misleading – although there are new episodes of Friday Night Lights this fall, airing every Wednesday night, the chances you’re actually able to watch them are very slim. Facing the commonplace reality of terrible ratings for a stellar show, NBC made the unusual decision to seek outside assistance in order to keep Friday Night Lights alive. As a result, the show is co-funded by DirecTV, and NBC doesn’t get to air the episodes until well after DirecTV has had exclusive access to the whole season. Which means that if you have DirecTV, congratulations, you can watch the new season of this fabulous show. If not, wait until next spring and be thankful (as I am) that somehow this deal is lucrative enough to keep the show in production. All of which is to say, a new episode of Friday Night Lights aired this week, and I’m loathe to write about it because I’m sure no one has seen it. I’ll probably write about it in detail once it starts to air on NBC, but for now I think I’ll hold off. I do want to take this opportunity, however, to describe in a little more detail why the show’s great and why you should take the time to catch up for the new season next spring.

Yes. I am in love with a show about football.

The first thing I feel I have to mention about Friday Night Lights is that it is a show about football, and I assure you, in normal circumstances, there are few things I care about less than football. I have no particular issue with the sport, but have never found it at all intriguing – large men smash into each other on an otherwise lovely, manicured green field, and I am pretty much hollow inside. I am the embodiment of “meh.” I think it’s necessary to emphasize the full extent of my indifference, because I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to dismiss the show thinking that it’s merely a show about football. I dismissed it for several years under that very same impression, and if I could, I would time travel back to my four-years-ago self and attempt to knock some sense into me.

Truth be told, it is a show about football, but it’s also about American images of masculinity, poverty and betrayal, bodily power and bodily weakness, Texas landscape, youth, and maturity. In the beginning of the show, protagonist Coach Eric Taylor becomes the head coach of the Dillon Panthers, the single bright spot in an otherwise ramshackle and struggling Texas town. Several of his football players become fascinating, problematic, charismatic figures, as Coach Taylor’s wife Tami and his daughter Julie. Many of the excellent plotlines come from the players’ lives, the most heartbreaking of which include Tim Riggins, whose only caretaker is his drunken buffoon of an older brother, and the achingingly sweet quarterback Matt Saracen, who lives with and cares for his ill grandmother. The show revolves around the classic, cliché storylines that any sports fiction must – winning and losing, struggle and heroism, underdogs who pull through – but after witnessing Matt Saracen remind his grandmother yet again that he is her grandson, not her son, winning on the football field pulls an entirely different emotional punch.

Eric and Tami Taylor

The players are excellent, and supply Friday Night Lights with the persistent drama and tears of a high school narrative. But players come and go, and the show’s core will always be Eric Taylor and his family. If nothing else, watch Friday Night Lights for one of the best and most moving depictions of marriage I have ever seen on tv, and the amazing performances by Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton that make it possible. Eric and Tami disagree with each other, at times to the point of electric, wordless anger. They deal with problems that face any marriage, especially when Tami makes the decision to go back to work after working primarily in the home for many years. No matter how frustrated, though, they approach each other, quietly apologize, and move forward. Every day brings new stressors and obstacles, and they move through it with confidence that they will remain whole.

Even setting aside Friday Night Light’s gorgeous aesthetic, pleasantly melancholy score, and rich storytelling, I would watch it just to watch the Taylors be married to each other day after day. Do I sound like I want to be them? I do, a little bit. I’d probably try to do it without the football, though. In my minimal real life experience, it’s never as interesting as it is on Friday Night Lights.

Well, that was one of the most riveting hours of television I’ve seen in a long time. It’s hard to know how to start, except to quote the beginning of Alan Sepinwall’s blog post on last night’s episode:

Damn.

Damn.

Damn damn damn damn damn damn damn.

Damn.

Agreed. “The Gypsy and the Hobo” started with a familiar pace and familiar scenes – Don at work and with Suzanne Farrell, Roger and an old love interest, Joan and her horrible husband. Then Joan cracks a vase over the idiot’s head, Betty has a confidential discussion with the family lawyer, and the pace begins to accelerate; things feel tighter and more meaningful. Even given those signals, the moment when Betty orders Don to open his desk drawer and the scenes that followed were heart-stopping. Narrative time seemed to be infinitely still, with every thing coming to a sudden halt while Don wept over his dead brother. At the same time, it was like watching every hint about Don’s past from the previous two seasons all collapse into one five-minute stretch, and it was all the more effective because he was so unexpectedly truthful. And Suzanne’s presence, hovering just outside the door, added a thrumming, unspoken note of tension underneath the entire proceeding. There’s a ton to say about those scenes and the rest of the episode, but if nothing else, I want to make sure I mention how completely amazing it is that Matthew Weiner and the rest of the writing staff made the decision to enact this turn of events with two full episodes left in the season. Any other show I know would have made this episode the season finale, leaving us with a giant, revelatory cliffhanger. Instead, the aftermath of Don’s exposure will drive the show to this season’s conclusion. It’s great writing.

My favorite of these images is the bottom left, with pieces of Halloween costumes strewn in the foreground

This episode was also perhaps the most blatant entry in Mad Men’s ongoing fascination with holidays and the way they structure time. Season one ended with Thanksgiving and Don’s poignant speech about memory, family and nostalgia. This season has been downright riddled with appropriate festive metaphors and notable days of the calendar year – there was the Kentucky Derby party, the eclipse, and the British invasion on the 4^th of July. Now, on Halloween, Don’s costume gets stripped away while his children dress up as figures from the impoverished, misunderstood, marginalized social strata Don once occupied. Betty calls up ghosts from Don’s past, and as he weeps we realize how much Adam’s death has haunted him. Halloween also provided us with the episode’s concluding moment, that thoroughly routine question now laden with new significance: “And who are you supposed to be?” The thematic consistency would almost be too tidy if it weren’t so completely shocking. And of course, these ghosts won’t disappear the next day.

It can’t be an accident that this episode, containing one of the most significant moments in the series to date, was also explicitly aware of its own fictional impact. First, we had Roger and his Casablanca-themed youth. His former lover directly compares their lives with that film, and in her memory at least, the young Roger was already an extra-fictional figure. He boxed, and spent all his money, and basically wandered around Paris “hoping to be a character in someone else’s novel.” Here is Roger now, thirty years later, a prominent but unmistakably supporting character in The Life of Don Draper. Then, there was the Caldecott Farms subplot. The ad campaigns at Sterling Cooper have always had a strong thematic relationship with the rest of the episode, but this one was particularly apropos, especially the focus group scene. Don’s line that he’s “not saying a new name is easy to find,” was the most overt, but there was also that great line from Peggy Olson. As everyone’s gathered in the darkened viewing room in front of a window that looks very much like a screen, Mrs. Dog Food snaps at the ad execs to “turn off” the unpleasant focus group, and Peggy says wonderingly, “I can’t turn it off, it’s actually happening.” For any other television show, that line would have to be some joke about TiVo and the death of destination viewing. On tonight’s episode of Mad Men, though, the scenes between Betty and Don completely achieved that remarkable, all-absorbing fictional suspense that creates a sensation of relentless immediacy for the audience. Who could turn off the television as Don actually fumbled his cigarette? And then, to everyone’s amazement, told his wife the truth?

Twenty-three days until the Kennedy assassination. Two episodes to go.

There are shows that get a lot of attention, shows like FlashForward and House and Gossip Girl and The Biggest Loser. They’re new, or lots of people watch them, or dramatic things happen to sexy people. And then there are shows that are older, about older and less sexy people, that exist in the background, the broadcast workhorses. And sometimes, they’re actually quite good.

Medium is just such a show. It was on NBC for several years and did reasonably well, until NBC in its infinite wisdom decided that Jay Leno would be a much better use of 10pm. (Insert standard grumbling here). I was afraid Medium would be cancelled, as is usually the case, but thankfully CBS decided they could find an audience for well-written television and scooped it up. The premise of the show is the standard crime drama crossed with a little supernatural flair – Allison DuBois begins as a normal, middle American housewife until she starts to have dreams about people dying. As it happens, Allison’s dreams are real, and allow her to help the district attorney’s office find and convict criminals, and even occasionally to prevent future murders. The show is like a grown-up version of the standard young adult fantasy plotline: you discover you have magical powers that can be used for good, others learn about your powers and initially reject you, eventually you use your powers to save them in an awesome and heroic way, you are the super amazing chosen one.

The real life of Allison DuBois: make school lunches, discuss her husband's work project, wake up after dreaming about a serial killer, interview suspect

At least, that’s how it would go in the young adult fantasy novel. What makes Medium so great is that Allison’s life continues to look a lot like yours or mine. She still does laundry. Her kids forget to do their homework, and she has to drop it off at school, which makes her late for a meeting. Allison’s husband Joe initially doubts her gruesome visions of the future, but learns to accept them and supports her career in any way he can. One thing about the show that has gotten some attention is Allison herself, played by Patricia Arquette complete with a realistic, mother-of-three body type. You’re not going to believe me, but it turns out her husband still finds her sexy even though she is larger than a size four. Even weirder, despite years of typical financial stress, three daughters, and a wacky, prophetic REM cycle, Allison and Joe still love each other and work hard to maintain their marriage. There are many scenes that take place at night, when Allison and Joe are in bed. The scenes usually involve them talking about their days. I know! It’s downright odd!

The brilliant thing about Medium is that the show has actually hit upon a rhetorical technique that makes for some extremely effective storytelling. The realism of Allison and Joe’s life, down to the tedium of making breakfast every morning and the perpetual question of who takes the kids to school, pulls the supernatural elements of the show out of fantasy land and well into the realm of plausibility. Sure, we don’t really believe that a woman could speak with ghosts or dream about the future, but when it happens and Allison then forgets to get groceries and they have to get pizza for dinner, the whole thing feels reasonable. It feels scarier when Allison gets caught in a dangerous situation, and it feels more satisfying when she catches the bad guy. Allison DuBois’ surprisingly mundane fictional life is both the most persuasive and surprising aspect of the whole premise. So yes, we can all talk about how Chuck Bass kissed a boy on Gossip Girl this week (insert Katy Perry joke here). I was more impressed when Allison remembered where she put her daughter’s permission slip.

Last night saw the return of 30 Rock, completing NBC’s comedy Thursday lineup and restoring one of the sole gleaming, award-winning bright spots to the entire NBC primetime schedule. In typical 30 Rock form, much of the focus was on topical issues, ranging from the main plot with Kenneth striking to get overtime for the page program, to Tracy roaming the streets in his attempt to reconnect with the common man. (And of course, to Cheesy Blasters. Thanks, Meat Cat!) The recession is still in the air at Rockefeller Plaza, and Jack Donaghy hoarding his annual bonus has a wryly familiar sense of greed, especially in New York City. At the same time, Jenna’s Tennis Night song managed to be silly and forehead-slappingly pointed.

This page ain't turnin'!

The show’s persistent topicality, and its associated meta layer of reference and inference, is one of the main ways 30 Rock distinguishes itself from the standard sitcom. Unlike The Office, which plays with the conventions and form of the old sitcom, 30 Rock assumes the shell premise of a half-hour workplace comedy and just blasts the whole thing to shreds. Sure, it’s a show about the relatable everywoman and her incompetent co-workers, but because 30 Rock constantly refers back to a real building and a real television network, at times it feels much closer to a news satire show like The Daily Show than it does The Office (or, even farther away down the sitcom spectrum, something like Two and a Half Men).

You've got Cheesy Blasters!

For me, the other main distinguishing factor is the language. The hour-long comedies that have sprung up recently on cable networks are better known for a distinctive linguistic character, but half-hour network comedies are more synonymous with the blandest, slowest, most canned-laughter-ridden dialogue around. 30 Rock, for all its inconsistency and sheer ridiculousness, has an instantly recognizable verbal flair, full of fast dialogue and understated laugh lines punctuated by the wit and wisdom of Liz Lemon. (Aside from the brilliance of Cheesy Blasters this episode, we also got her efforts to lie with Pete: “I’m picking up my new…tritionist…and his elderly…son.”) It may rely frequently on stupid, silly, or crude humor, but 30 Rock expects you to be able to catch your scatological Star Wars joke on the fly. And I totally respect that.

I love mystery novels. My preference is for mysteries of the British 1930s and 40s variety, but I’ve been known to sit down with Maisie Dobbs, or Adam Dalgliesh, or even a few contemporary Americans. There’s obviously a great deal of television that’s derivative of the detective novel – everything from CSI to Law and Order to House follows the same basic format, whether you’re investigating medical or criminal clues. This is not to say that the shows are all the same or that some aren’t significantly better than others. I will always prefer to watch Bones than I will ABC’s new crime procedural show the forgotten. (The show is about a group of concerned citizens investigating cold cases, and I suppose the ridiculous lower case title is supposed to emphasize how sad and abandoned the victims are, but really it just looks like ABC forgotten the Shift key.) For all their similarities, these shows also come in many flavors, running the gamut from serious, heartfelt crime solving (CSI, Cold Case) to out and out silliness (Psych).

Rick Castle and Kate Beckett on Castle

One of my favorite newer iterations of the TV crime genre is ABC’s Castle. It stars Nathan Fillion, which, let’s just get it out of the way, is a big part of why I first watched the show. Fillion plays Rick Castle, uber-famous mystery novelist who has just killed off his money-making franchise detective and is now seeking new inspiration for his main character. After a killer stages murder victims like victims from Castle’s novels in the pilot episode, Castle meets and becomes intrigued by Detective Kate Beckett, who eventually becomes the model for his newest character, Nikki Heat. In order to better write his novels and continue to inspire Nikki Heat novels, Castle hangs out with Detective Beckett and lends his useful novelist eye in the aide of solving real crime. The whole premise is utterly, entirely preposterous.

The absurdity of the set-up is part of the pleasure. Without even trying, the tone of the show instantly shifts from something falsely solemn and is instead more campy, more light-hearted, and funnier. For me, the nature of the show’s built in self-commentary device, a mystery writer who solves crimes, immediately adds to the whole appeal and reminds me of some of my favorite mystery novels, those by Dorothy Sayers. Rick Castle is a light-hearted combination of Sayers’ two main characters, Harriet Vane, who works as a mystery novelist, and Lord Peter Wimsey, whose status as a man of leisure allows him to pursue detection as a hobby. Castle is a cheerful, intelligent, confident, goofy guy with ample resources and a wackadoo but happy home life, who walks onto every crime scene because for him, it’s fun. No sad apartment with sagging mattress and pizza boxes on the floor, no clichéd alcoholism, not even the standard tortured back story that makes him outwardly cynical and inwardly sentimental. Castle’s just a smart, silly guy with attention to detail and a love of campy mystery plot taglines. “I can already see the blurb on my next book jacket. ‘It’s Fashion Week in New York City. And the clothes are…to die for.’”

This post is thanks in large part to my sister, whose love of great mystery novels and television shows has always inspired mine, and who reminds me that not all good television has to be depressing, or force us to confront our own inadequacies, or even make a great deal of sense. Some good television is just Castle – well-made, entertaining, and goofy. Thank goodness for that.