Friday Night Lights, which ends tonight, portrays a small town and the relationships within it. The show is steadfastly conventional, commercially unsuccessful and the best thing on television.
I've never liked show choir, but I love Glee. Not primarily for the singing or dancing, though each is sometimes great. I like the show because it gets a lot right about being a teenager—the weird mix of intense emotion and casual pettiness, the hairpin turns of identity creation in process—without getting bogged down by studious realism.
Forensics television is more than gory titillation and casual senationalism. These programs scratch at religious itches: they try to see beyond death and long for ultimate justice.
