Channelup

Last night was Steve Carrell’s final episode of The Office and with it ushered Michael Scott out of the Dunder Mifflin world, presumably, for good. It was a touching goodbye, bringing back a number of little moments from previous seasons and wrapping up Michael’s story in more fairy tale fashion than really anyone would have predicted at the start of the series. Hell, Jim cried telling Michael how good a boss he’d been.  If you’d told me that in Season One, I would have thought the show had gone completely off the rails. But it didn’t, and while this wasn’t the series, or even season finale, I think last night’s episode was as close to culminating as any show can be. The place of Michael Scott in the television lexicon sits right next to the other biggies, the folks whose characters almost transcended the greatness of their already transcendent shows.  The Sam Malones, Jerry Seinfelds, and Homer Simpsons of the world who occupy a place in our hearts beyond just the world within thei...

I plan on writing in earnest about the final season of Friday Night Lights (the second time around, it’s already aired on DirectTv) and over the next three months or so suspect you’ll be treated to at least 500 instances of me using the term “bittersweet.” Granted, I have no idea how the whole thing ends (avoided internet updates like the plague), and yet I sit here contemplating the significance of the final season, the show’s role in the greater television landscape and how exactly a series chooses to sign off the airwaves once and for all. There is a sentimental side of me (and maybe everyone) that would like to think Friday Night Lights ends with the Lions (and maybe the Panthers too) carrying Coach Taylor off on their shoulders after a last second championship win. This would of course be after a stunning finale in which the major cast members from Smash to Street, Tyra to the Swede (kidding) came back to pay their last respects in some way to the Coach and family and town that s...