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How is this possible? Thousands of shows have come before it and even more shows have come after it. Why does it deserve airtime over every other program? I’ll tell you why. Because in our weird world of pop culture nostalgia run amok, “Saved by the Bell” rises above all others.

Allow me to present a recent example of what I am talking about: a random guy with a random song makes a fairly ridiculous “SBTB” parody video using the show’s primary set pieces. The guy is then not only applauded for a job well done, but the video gets picked up and reported on by numerous blogs and websites.

I mention the video not to debate whether or not it is good or interesting. The point is that it simply rides the coattails of “Saved by the Bell”’s everlasting popularity.

In his highly recommended essay entitled, “Being Zach Morris,” Chuck Klosterman posits the following theory:

“’Saved by the Bell’ is like this little generational secret that’s hyperfamiliar to people born between 1970 and 1977, yet generally unremarkable to anyone born after (and completely alien to all those born before).”

But Klosterman makes a rare mistake here. The time frame he gives doesn’t even cover half of what I would call the “Saved by the Bell” generation (or, if you prefer, “Generation Z-is-for-Zach”). I was born in ‘81 and I can’t help but begrudgingly classify myself as a fan, having watched it 4 times a day in middle school while still harboring nostalgic feelings to this day. Miles Fisher, who created the aforementioned music video, was born in ‘83. My girlfriend was born in ’85 and is a fan as well. So by my lazily researched estimation, we now have a fanbase born over a 15 year period that like (love?) a show that aired for 4 seasons and was kinda awful.

Again…how does this happen?

1. It is the ultimate guilty pleasure. We love to talk about how bad it was and laugh at the terrible acting, horrendous dialogue, easily tied up plotting, et al. I’ve had more fun talking (and now writing) about SBTB than I have ever had sitting and watching it.

2. The high school setting. At this point in our increasingly compartmentalized society- where we have the ability to customize almost anything to suit our individual wants and needs – what is one of the few remaining life experiences that we have all had to endure and had no control over? High school. And it doesn’t matter that Bayside wasn’t anything like your high school ya jackass. You’re still relating to the “idea” of high school and comparing it can only increase your nostalgic feelings.

3. Kelly Kapowski was really hot.

4. Dare I say we all secretly crave the kind of simplistically harmless world that “Saved by the Bell” depicts? The kind of world where having a pet robot is treated as an everyday occurrence. The kind of world where fake I.D.’s can be made in your photography class right under your principal’s nose. The kind of world where the good guys at Bayside (us) always win and the bad guys at Valley (them) always lose. That doesn’t sound too bad actually.

For these reasons, and probably a dozen more, who can blame us for indulging in a little nostalgia? Long live “Saved by the Bell!” I hope they run it 6 times a day! 4ever!!!

My first experience with this kind of “push” for diversity in the funny book realm was as a kid watching the Super-Friends. It seems ham-fisted now, but I enjoyed the 1978 introduction of what today seems like the super-hero equivalent of the Village People: El Dorado (Mexican), Apache Chief (Native American), Samurai (Japanese), and Black Vulcan (guess). To me, these heroes were just part of the sudden expansion of the Super-Friends, who were now also regularly featuring Flash, Green Lantern and Hawkman. It didn’t hit me that it was affirmative-action at work. The most I had ever thought about it was with Green Lantern. On some level, I vaguely thought he may have been Hispanic, thanks to his darker skin tone when compared to the other white Super-Friends. But maybe it was a way to single out his Californian tan?

I suppose the characters were too earnest for their own good, but I still feel better about them than I do about Vibe, a 20-something Puerto Rican with vibration powers, who became a Justice League member in 1984. His name was Paco (ouch), he was a member of a gang (sigh) and his hobby was break-dancing (groan). The character was also given what I felt was a stereotypically large family and he “spoke” with an accent that was reminiscent of Ricky Ricardo or Speedy Gonazlez. Whenever he said “you,” it was rendered as “chu.” The biggest plus, which was revealed fairly early on, was that the accent was an affectation that Vibe put on outside of his family.

There’s been a fairly steady output of Latino characters over the years with mixed success: Wildcat II, who was Mexican, and had the annoying tic of thinking everything in English and Spanish; Extrano, who was from Peru, gay and, oy, liked to be called “Auntie” by his teammates; and my favorites, Mas and Menos, who are from Guatemala, and were speedsters introduced in a “Teen Titans” cartoon and later made their way into comic books.

Aside from using my roots when I needed it (like college applications), a bigger part of my identity is being gay, not Hispanic. A friend had to point out that Apollo and Midnighter were gay when I first encountered them. I guess I should’ve noticed that they seemed to be sleeping together, in the nude, but the fact that they were analogs of Superman and Batman may have blocked me from that. Once I did know they were gay, I looked for more confirmations, but those seemed to always be regulated to the corner of small panels, before it became more overt (they married and adopted a daughter, who was a reincarnation of a teammate. Long story.)

As ridiculous as all that sounds, I enjoyed Apollo and Midnighter more than most of the gay content in Manhunter, a series about a female hero who hunted villains. It’s a good series and I was sorry to see it cancelled and I’m even more disappointed that the character does not seem part of the DC rebirth in September. What bothered me about the series was that the gay-dial was turned up to 11. Manhunter, in her civilian guise, had a gay assistant (he had the hots for Hawkman, which I thought was funny), but he ended up dating a gay hero (Obsidian) and in a storyline set in the future, her son came out as gay. This should all be positive stuff, but it felt like overkill, living in a gay ghetto of feverish fan fiction. This felt like a case of “be careful what you wish for,” but there must be some middle ground in presenting gay characters naturally, allowing them tragedies and triumphs without seeming like an afterschool special on Logo. In the end, I sincerely look forward to the day when pontificating about minority representation is quaint.

Coming up: A post about Source Code. Or maybe Captain America. I don’t really know ok? Get off my back!!!!!

“Are you feeling the feeling that I’m feeling?” – Bret and Jermaine

This amazingly well-constructed question was posed in a show completely unrelated to “Friday Night Lights,” but I find it hilarious and I believe that it gets right to the heart of the matter when discussing entertainment. Almost all popular entertainment asks the viewer this question. Creators want the viewer to either sympathize or empathize with their characters in some shape or form. Often, this can be seen as manipulative. Because it is manipulative. However, some things can manipulate you so well, that it doesn’t matter. Case in point: “Friday Night Lights.”

As for me, I’ve never been one to cry from watching movies and television. My brain simply cannot disengage from the idea that I am watching something on a screen that is (usually) completely fictional. In 1998, I went to see “Saving Private Ryan,” and after the Normandy beach scene, A TWENTY MINUTE SCENE BASED ON ACTUAL EVENTS SHOWING NOTHING BUT SOLDIERS DYING IN HORRIFYINGLY VIOLENT WAYS, my friend and I looked at each other and said, “Let’s go get some nachos.”

For years, the feeling that I was feeling was a feeling of complete apathy. Until one show came along that warmed my cold, dead heart. That show was… you guessed it: “Friday Night Lights.”

But why? What was so special about this show compared to everything else? Why did it make me care about stuff??

The easiest answer is that I had found a show that I could finally relate to. No, I did not play football in high school (which in the end, wasn’t what “FNL” was really about anyway) but I could easily relate to the setting. For three years, I lived in Austin, TX where the show was filmed. And even though the small town lifestyle depicted in the show was different from the life I lived, some Texas qualities are universal and inescapable. It could be something as simple as Tami Taylor charmingly inserting ‘y’all’ into her greetings even though she doesn’t have any other hint of a southern accent (this isn’t a swipe against Connie Britton’s acting. This is actually how, in my experience, some Texans talk. No southern accent to speak of, but for whatever reason, “y’all” remains). It could also be something much more complex, like the meaning behind the phrase “Texas Forever.” When the phrase was used, it served a dual purpose. A character might use it to mean the more literal definition, but it can also sum up a person’s feelings about ANY place where they have created a lifelong bond with their family, friends and community. So even if you couldn’t care less about Texas itself, you understood. It felt real.

In its best moments, “FNL” also had a knack for creating an incredible amount of drama from very simple, and therefore, relatable, real life events. The example I’m going to give is the same example that creator Jason Katims always gives, but it’s fantastic so what the hell:

The Taylors want to buy a new house. They are not sure if they can afford a new house.

That’s it. That’s the conflict. And it’s not dressed up in any fictional way to create false drama because it doesn’t need to be. This is what any couple goes through. But there isn’t a season long arc dedicated to it, there isn’t a dead body in the basement that will come back to haunt the Taylors. It is simply there because this is what happens in life. And it works.

I could go on. I could talk about the incredible acting, the cinéma vérité filming style or the gut wrenching dialogue, but I think it is time to say farewell to “Friday Night Lights.” It did what no other show could and I’m sad to see it go. At least now I can go back to being a heartless bastard.

Coming up: A “George’s Thoughts by George” investigative report about minorities in comic books. Or, more precisely, the lack of minorities in comic books.

Right in that sweet spot between “Kevin Smith can do no wrong” and “Dogma” came “Clerks: The Animated Series.” The blink and you’ll miss it 2 episode run aired on ABC in the spring of 2000 but the entire 6 episode series was eventually released on DVD a few years later. So while it was released in the aughts, by virtue of being an animated series, it was produced sometime in 1999. Thus providing a unique bridge between two decades of television.

What makes “Clerks Animated” worthy of discussion here is the show’s ability to take the typical rules of television that were still in use in the 90s and turn them on their head. Something that countless other shows would go on to emulate.

The best example of this, and the show’s greatest creative achievement, was having a flashback episode as the second episode of the series. Dante and Randall spend the opening act trapped in a freezer and kill time remembering what happened in the first episode and a few other occasions that the viewer has never seen because there was no series. Then, in act two, they actually start flashing back to earlier in the same episode. To this day, I’m still unsure if there has been any other single episode that has flaunted television convention so boldy. This kind of joke would go on to become more and more prevalent over the next decade in shows like “Arrested Development” and “Community” as we flashed back to things we haven’t seen before or flashed forward to things that we would never see in the regular continuity of the show.

In episode 3, the Clerks answer fictional fan mail (which the Simpsons had already done and Family Guy would go on to do) and add a black character in response to a viewer’s complaint that the show is too white. But the writers make a complete mockery of this kind of reactionary racial integration by naming the character Lando and actively segregating him within the framework of the show, so he only appears occasionally. “South Park” did the same thing in early 2000, adding Token Williams to its cast. In an odd bit of who got there first, the “Clerks Animated” shows were produced earlier, but the “South Park” eps aired earlier.

There are countless other examples of this brand of humor throughout the series. It’s slightly more than meta, as it is not wholly dependent on the viewer knowing the convention that the show is making fun of to get a laugh but it is constantly hovering over the characters and the plot. In fact, one could argue that the show was built out of the desire to tell this type of joke even more so than the idea of a “Clerks” movie adaptation. In the end, Dante and Randall are nothing more than ciphers. They exist so someone is there to point out the cracks in the television screen. And that is a-ok.

One more thing that needs to be mentioned. The voice talent on display here is actually quite astonishing for such a short run. Alec Baldwin is almost unrecognizable (but no less brilliant) as the series villain, Leonardo Leonardo. For some reason, Charles Barkley appears as himself in a number of episodes. Even Bryan Cranston, before he was BRYAN holy God you are the best actor living CRANSTON, contributes by adding some nuance to a few bit players.

It was (and still is) difficult to imagine Kevin Smith working within the constraints of network television but this actually turned out to be a good thing. It forced him to be more creative and go beyond his comfort zone of the kind of jokes that I cannot type here. To this day, I still don’t understand why he hasn’t written a PG-13 movie in the “Clerks Animated” vein (In other words, his usual hilarious humor, toned down, but devoid of sentiment so we don’t get another “Jersey Girl”). Maybe if I post this on his message board he will answer this question personally. Kevin Smith may not go down as one of the greatest comedic filmmakers of all time (again, I really did think this), but “Clerks Animated” remains one of his creative highpoints and since it’s available on Youtube for free, you have every reason to seek it out.

Coming up: “Friday Night Lights” is ending. This makes me sad. Find out how sad next week.

For our purposes today, we will examine “Patient 49″ in the Breaking Bad Character Rehabilitation Clinic: Hank Schrader. In the pilot, Hank (as played by Dean Norris) is an arrogant asshole cop who hogs all the attention from his brother-in-law, Walt, even on Walt’s birthday. By virtue of his body type (bald, almost fat white guy) and his behavior, the viewer gets the impression that Hank is nothing more than an unoriginal Michael Chiklis clone. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Norris was purposefully directed to act this way by Vincent Gilligan in order to make the coming character twist all the more potent: Hank’s not the asshole. Walt is the asshole. We want to think that Walt is the hero of this story because he is the main character and Bryan Cranston is that brilliant of an actor, but it is simply not the case. Slowly but surely, the show teaches us that Hank is the real hero in this scenario. He’s a good police officer, husband and relative. And for all the good he does and how much he cares about Walt, he is rewarded… let’s just say… not well at times. Thus, what could have so easily been a dull rehash of a previously popular character, becomes a refreshing personality to cheer for even if his ultimate victory would result in the capture of his drug dealing friend who also happens to be the main “protagonist” of the show.

It’s just another in a long line of examples of how Breaking Bad takes our preconceived notions of television and uses them against us. Proving, once again, why it is the best show currently on tv. July 17th can’t get here fast enough.

Now if they can just figure out what to do with Marie…

Coming up: We look back at a personal favorite “killed-in-the-womb” tv series: Clerks Animated (which can be viewed in its entirety on YouTube if you want a refresher).

• 1:50 – Netflix Streaming Review: The Verdict
• 14:49 – Movie Baseball: The Summer of ’94

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The book, written by Jonathan Hickman and drawn by Dustin Weaver, works under the following premise: what if some of history’s greatest minds (including, but not limited to, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo and Isaac Newton) were all part of a secret organization protecting humanity for hundreds of years? Sure, this premise could be the basis for a movie, but let me tell you why it shouldn’t be.

First of all, Hickman can write comic book jargon with the best of them. And by “comic book jargon” I mean dialogue that would sound ridiculously stupid if said aloud on the screen, but reads well and, in your head at least, sounds cool.

Secondly, fantastical events and circumstances are treated as matter-of-fact occurrences. The book is constantly challenging your logic and skepticism and then overcomes it by going even further over the top. In this respect, Hickman and Weaver are communicating with the reader, effectively saying “Oh yeah? You think that is far fetched? Well how bout this?” until you get to the point where you and the creators are both in on the “joke” and you can’t help but go along for the ride. They force you to believe that, in this world, anything can and will happen. The greatest example of this is a sequence where Leonardo da Vinci builds a winged suit and flies into space. He just does it. But that’s not enough. Once he is in space, he flies to the sun. And not just near the sun. But right up in the the sun’s grill because he is Leonardo da f**king Vinci and he can do that. I won’t even attempt to describe to you what he does once he gets there except to say that I found the whole sequence to be brilliant.

Thirdly, Hickman and Weaver utilize one of comics greatest tools: the double-page spread. Things might be moving along nicely until HOLY CRAP! a turn of the page reveals a sweeping futuristic vista with a cracked moon in the sky or a battle between Imhotep and a boatload of aliens. The size of the images not only provides a sense of shock and awe, but the pacing is also slowed down so they have a chance to soak in. The closest film equivalent to this would be slow motion, but even that would fail to have the same effect.

Lastly, any adaptation would surely fall under the trap of casting movie stars (I can see the poster now: Brad Pitt is…Leonardo da Vinci!) in historical roles in order to make the project financially viable, which would only ask the viewer to take another leap in logic on top of the leaps already made with the material. Eventually, the whole enterprise would collapse under its own weight.

Lastly lastly, this book is great. You should read it. The end.

Coming up: Breaking Bad and the art of character rehabilitation.

THE PEOPLE

Since The Larry Sanders Show, this specific brand of humor (i.e. character-driven, literal situation comedy, often rooted in social awkwardness) has flourished (see also: The Office, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development and to a degree; many others), but Sanders was first. And while it’s nice to be the pioneer, the big rewards are typically saved for those that take the new thing and jerry-rig it for a mass audience. What’s interesting here is that the people rewarded for said jerry-rigging actually passed through the series itself. The biggest example probably being Judd Apatow, who wrote for the series and later produced. But there were countless others as well: Sarah Silverman as a female writer hired in the fourth season, Bob Odenkirk as Larry’s Agent, Todd Barry, Mary Lynn Rajskub (who ended up replacing Janeane Garofalo as the Sanders talent booker). The list could go on.

This leads into something rather fascinating. Because The Larry Sanders Show was presented as a show-within-a-show and because the “fake” version of Larry Sanders had on actual celebrities of the era. When looking back on the series all these years later, it is often the case that the cast members (those actors playing a character with a name that was not their own) ended up having longer real-life careers than some of the actual cameo celebrities who, at the time, were some of the most popular names in the business. For every Alec Baldwin or Elvis Costello, celebrities that ascended or at least maintained in the years since, there are many celebs whose careers did not have the longevity that it appeared they would have at the time. For example, there is a multiple season arc about Larry’s love affair with Roseanne. It’s a great premise and hilarious in any context, but certainly works better as a gag when the viewer knows who Roseanne not only is, but was. Frankly, I worry there will soon come a day where our kids will not know of the comedian known as Roseanne. What will they think of those episodes of Larry Sanders? Whose fictional kids are these anyway?

The one celebrity that appeared as himself most frequently (or at least it seemed that way) was Jon Stewart. Back in the 90′s, Stewart was “big” in the way that many stand-up comics were “big” in the 90′s, and yet unlike many of his peers, he seemed to be the one name that simply could not find a good vessel for his comedy. He had his short-lived MTV show, he appeared in “Mixed Nuts” and yet nothing really stuck. In the last season of Sanders, the primary arc involved Stewart being groomed by the network to replace Larry as soon as his contract expired which **SPOILER** caused Larry to prematurely announce his retirement.**END SPOILER** (Behind the scenes, Stewart served as a creative consultant on the show during that last season.) Less than a year later he took over as host of The Daily Show (which happened, I should clarify, in real life, for those of you currently lost in this wonderful Mobius strip of a series).

The Larry Sanders Show is such a rich program to dig through and break apart and examine the components of, one could easily go on and on. It’s probably better for all of us if you just discover it for yourself. That said, I would be remiss if I failed to discuss one last significant aspect of the show: Hank Kingsley.

Allow me to be briefly hyperbolic. Hank Kingsley is the single greatest character ever to appear on a television comedy. Larry’s professional sidekick, announcer and sometimes pitchman is such a fully realized, beautifully crafted character, every moment he is on the show is a moment filled with an ever-intensifying comedic tension. This is true because of three simple points:

1. There are few things funnier than the combination of vanity, neediness and emotional instability. The speed at which Hank can so quickly switch between sadness, rage and jovial camaraderie is endlessly watchable and achingly hilarious. (At times it can also be rather sweet.)
2. Placing a character with the above personality traits in a role where he is, by definition, a second banana, produces a well of comic gold the likes of which we may never see again.
3. Jeffrey Tambor is a brilliant f**king actor.

On that last point all you really need to do is watch an episode of Larry Sanders like “Hank’s Sex Tape” or “Hank’s Divorce” or my personal favorite “The Grand Opening“, then go watch an episode of Arrested Development like “Top Banana” and marvel at how this guy can so completely transform himself simply by shaving a mustache.

APPLESAUSE.

Coming up: Three guesses as to what “S.H.I.E.L.D.” is an acronym for…
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…
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Nope! You’re wrong! It stands for Silly Hats Increase Energy, Lust and Dexterity. Ok not really. Come back for the real answer next week.

For the uninitiated, The Larry Sanders Show aired on HBO from 1992 to 1998 – this was back when HBO was still just TV (albeit TV you had to pay for). It starred Garry Shandling as the titular host of a late night talk show that aired on an unnamed broadcast network. The series used the single-camera sit-com format to tell a behind-the-scenes story of people attempting to put on a nightly talk show. The primary cast focused on Larry, his executive producer Artie (Rip Torn) and his on-camera sidekick Hank Kingsley (Jeffrey Tambor), as well as various assistants, writers, casting people, agents and executives. Typically in each episode one would also see segments from the actual Larry Sanders talk show complete with celebrity guests playing themselves.

About a month ago my wife and I sat down and decided to blast through all 89 episodes. It’s hard to say if this method of condensed viewing is genuinely recommended for watching, well, anything (god help us should C-SPAN ever release “The Complete Book TV“). For better or worse the time-compression tends to expose previously invisible aspects of a show that can be easily glossed over when viewed week-to-week. For series like 24 or LOST this method can be a bit unkind. Instead of letting those moments just pass by while a richer, more atmospheric (and a certainly more water-cooler) aesthetic can be built up week-to-week, we instead are left with a bunch of “Wait a minute, none of this makes any goddamned sense!” moments. In the case of Larry Sanders, the opposite is actually true. Watching so many episodes so close together actually hightens the brilliance of the character work in addition to boiling down one of America’s more baffling decades into something of a thesis for how we all lived.

A DECADE OF VANITY

Tom Wolfe coined the 1970s as “The Me Decade,” but he might have spoken too soon. There is something about the 1990s that really lent itself to inflated self-worth (perhaps it was the inflated personal worth). It was certainly a rocky start, and things could have easily gone a different direction, but what began with a recession and a war ended with 80¢ gasoline, urban sprawl and a Disney Store in Times Square. Granted, this is at best an over-simplification of a complicated decade, but prosperity does have something of an odd effect on the masses: it amplifies the small problems. What might be brushed off as an annoyance during trying times is instead blown up into an all-out catastrophe. This is why Seinfeld was the biggest show of the decade — we were collectively in a position where not dating a girl because she had manly hands suddenly kind of made sense. Our country’s great fortune allowed us to spend six or seven years just staring into the metaphorical mirror and loving what we were seeing. (Generally speaking, of course.) What makes The Larry Sanders Show culturally significant is that it taps into this deep reservoir of blinding vanity without coming off as too acidic or falsely adhering to some sort of saccharine lesson-learning. It is comedy realism. With utterly believable, thoroughly flawed characters who, despite their actions, genuinely love each other (even if they had an impossible time expressing it). The show succeeds as a 90′s time-capsule because it was smart enough to know what was going on in the culture and to use that as a cultural grounding. And of course, what better method to explore all of this than the talk show format itself. It is, after all, a format ostensibly about one person, disguised as a format about two people, but truly about the sometimes hundreds of people needed to put those specific types of programs on the air.

Coming up: Part 2!!