postcards and skylines presents: television, revisited (vol 1)

Alex and I became preoccupied with making lists this weekend at like 2am in the morning. Here are some of my Favorite TV Moments, in no particular order. They’re not like the best moments of all time. I realized that’s impossible, since I’ve only watched like two shows ever. These are the ones that have just stuck since I’ve watched them. I tried to keep it to ten since I like to keep up the pretense that I do other things with my time.

1. The X-Files, Post-Modern Prometheus: The dynamic duo is front row at a Cher concert with a Frankenstein-like monster. Just go with it. The whole episode is shot in black and white. Mulder suddenly gets up, bows down his head and extends his hand to Scully. The look on Scully’s face when it happens is priceless and lovely. There’s this stream of light pouring in through the crowd of people behind them when she’s pulled up to dance to “Walking in Memphis.” They both look contented and wise with the last beads of piano finishing off the song.

2. Gilmore Girls, Love, Daisies and Troubadours: The last moment of the first season after Max proposes to Lorelai with a thousand yellow daisies (and his cute speech about following the tenets of the great literature in life) and Rory reunites with Dean. Lorelai and Rory are running to each other, giggling, young; and they meet at the town gazebo to breathlessly tell the other the news as Yo La Tengo’s “Our Little Corner of the World” plays in the background. It’s a great, quintessential moment of the show. It’s not even so much about the news of the men, as much as it is the mother and daughter meeting at the end to share the news, and how charming Stars Hollow looks as the camera pans out.

3. Veronica Mars, Look Who’s Stalking: Logan and Veronica have one of their first real conversations in a long time at his anti-Prom. They banter. He’s drunk, white shirt untucked, mussed hair and all. Veronica’s tired from “fighting evil by moonlight, winning love by daylight,” and mostly guarded, and then Logan starts to really talk, and deliver one of my favorite speeches in TV history. It’s such a great teen speech. It’s an extreme time in life, and it captures how everything that happens to you, especially love, is epic. Except in their case, it really was.

I thought our story was epic, you know? You and me… Spanning years and continents. Lives ruined, bloodshed: Epic. But, summer's almost here. We won't see each other at all. And then you'll leave town, and then... and then it's over…

Jason Dohring is heartbreaking when he starts to apologize for all the things he’s done, and how he’d do it all differently again if he could. Veronica, discombobulated, says something about how things need not be so complicated or difficult, to which he responds: “No one writes songs about the ones that come easy.” Heh. The scene got me interested in the show and had me listen to Mike Doughty’s “I Hear the Bells” on repeat for so many days.

4. ER, Strange Bedfellows: Neela moves out of the apartment and Ray, at the last moment, tries to stop her, telling her that “she’s the best friend he’s ever had,” that “he wishes he didn’t feel the way he feels.” There are twinkle lights and Cary Brother’s “Ride” in the background, and I’m ‘effin absorbed. Maybe it’s the longing and the apprehension. We do want Neela to get in the cab, because she’s married and her husband’s in Iraq, and at the same time we kind of don’t, because Ray’s always been there for her, he’s a good guy and he’s grown up and she lightens up A WHOLE BUNCH when he’s there. For some strange reason, it’s still a sigh-inducing kind of unexpected when she gets in the cab. Also, there are twinkle lights and Cary Brothers in the background.

5. The West Wing, Two Cathedrals: The West Wing holds the patent in creating epic moments. Like if you’re just sitting and eating a Panini and think, “Well, I think I’d like to get my mind blown today.” You’d pop in a West Wing episode and then you’d read William S. Burroughs. Or not. Two Cathedrals is full of good moments, and I think most people would point to either the scene when The President yells at God in Latin or when Dire Straits’ “Brothers in Arms” comes on at the end. My favorite scene is the memory of a younger Mrs. Landingham (the President’s secretary who had died recently) schooling a young Jed Bartlett in leadership and the courage to stand up for what you believe in within like a two minute conversation on whether the female staff’s salary in his father’s school should be equal to the male staff’s. It’s so good. She calls him a “boy king,” “a foot smarter than the smartest kids in the class,” who was “blessed with inspiration.” The actor they cast to play young Bartlett looks like a young JFK. And the moment where Mrs. Landingham explains how she knows that he’s made up his mind to help the women get fair wages: brilliant. Everybody needs a Mrs. Landingham in their lives.

6. 30 Rock, The C-Word: The scene when an exhausted Liz grows a pair and stands up to her crew after an all-nighter of doing their work for them and watching a particularly potent episode of Designing Women. All the while, unbeknownst to tired, tired Liz, Jack watches on proudly. Alec Baldwin produced the perfect proudface. Also, the context of the episode dealt with Liz being called a word that rhymes with “runt!” and she reacts to it in exactly the same way that I probably would. I think it’s both marvelous and unfortunate how much I can relate to Liz Lemon. I mean cheese nights in a snuggie? I’m in. Also, I can also anticipate having to choose between a free sandwich and true love. Luckily, she makes the bold choice and tries to “have it all!”

(I couldn't find a photo for the episode, so instead you get one of Liz eating a sandwich in a wedding dress. It's a long story.)

7. Scrubs, My Finale: JD has his last fantasy sequence. It’s about the rest of his life, how he spends it happily with the people he loves, like Elliot, Turk and Cox. He sees weddings and Christmases and having children with Elliot and watching them grow up. It’s set up so it looks like he’s seeing all this as a home movie on a projector screen. The moments are all candid, without a single word of dialogue. The song is “The Book of Love” by Peter Gabriel. I never realized I loved Peter Gabriel so much. It’s one of the best endings to a series—if not possibly the best ending. It was so good that a lot of fans cried bloody murder when they announced that they would be “extending” the series this year.

8. Ugly Betty, Zero Worship: Daniel and Betty walk up (yes, up) the runaway together at the end of Fashion Week. It’s not a little known fact that the relationship between Betty and Daniel is the heart of the show (and the original telenovela). It’s romantic in its own way, in a completely non-yucky way. The episode dealt with body image issues in the fashion industry and Betty’s own anecdote as being the girl at pool parties who wore over-sized t-shirts. It’s a great episode that makes me glad that a show like Betty is on the air, and it also demonstrates how much of Daniel’s heart is brought out by Betty and how in Daniel, Betty has found a true confidant and advocate. Their “walking into the sunset” together at the end with Blanche Dubois’s “Dance Away the Day” will always be one of those classic Detty (did I just use that?) moments. I had dinner with Eric Mabius and his wife last year for a school thing when I really wasn’t that familiar with the show. Maybe it’s for the best that I wasn’t a fan when it happened, but sometimes I wish I could’ve actually talked to him about the show. He seemed like a nice guy.

9. Hey Arnold!, Helga on the Couch: Remember Hey Arnold!? What happened to all those great animated shows? Is it all just Hannah Montana now? What a deprived generation. Anyway, one of the moments that always stuck out to me as a kid (and there are many) is when Helga describes her first meeting Arnold on the first day of preschool, how she was having the most crap-tastic day possible, and that he was the only kid who was nice to her, because that’s the kind of kid “football head” always was and will be, and everything after is history.

10. The Simpsons, And Maggie Makes Three: And Maggie Makes Three is my and Ricky Gervais’s favorite Simpsons episode. How do I know that? Well, I rather not say. Although, you’d think my favorite episode would be the X-Files one. Bugger me! Is that how you say it? I don’t know. Anyway, the episode is mostly flashbacks to when the Simpson children consisted of Bart and Lisa. Homer manages to pay off his debts and open a bowling alley, his dream gig. But, when Marge becomes pregnant with Maggie, he has to return to the power plant (and Burns makes him beg for the job). The moment: There’s a plaque on Homer’s desk put there by Burns that says, “Don’t forget: you’re here forever.” We later find out that the reason there are no baby pictures of Maggie in the Simpsons’ family album is because Homer’s covered up the plaque with them to read: “Do it for her.” Holy crap, guys, I was like six or seven when I first saw the episode and it gets me every time. I love that show.

Honorable Mention:

Californication, In Utero: Hank’s “Dear Karen” speech and the montage of their early days in New York, plus Pearl Jam’s “Nothingman” playing in the soundtrack. “She said one thing, and I said another, and the next thing I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life in the middle of that conversation.”