Judd Apatow: Chronicler of . . . ME

I know it's a bit trite for a 40-something, upper middle class white man to say it, but I'm going to say it anyway:  I see myself in Judd Apatow's work.  Consistently.

And I just realized, watching a DVR'd episode of Freaks and Geeks, which the Sundance Channel thankfully shows every morning at 5 am, that I've been seeing myself in Judd Apatow's work for as long as he's been doing that work.

With Freaks and Geeks, Apatow arguably gives the most honest portrayal of high school that has ever aired on network television.  Actually, I need to be more specific.  He provides a perfect picture of high school in the late 1970's and early 80's, when I was a suburban lad, growing up on the outskirts of New York City.

The show takes place in Michigan, I believe -- a place where I also spent a portion of my adolescence.  As the title suggests, Freaks and Geeks is about cliques and the stringent social structure in high school.  Perhaps because I moved around a bit (I attended three different high schools), I was able to move from clique to clique, as well.  For a time I was a geek, and a freak, and a jock.

I remember hanging out with people who looked like the characters in Freaks and Geeks, having the kinds of conversations they so awkwardly have, about love and fitting in, wishing to be considered an adult, while simultaneously lamenting my childhood, as it faded into the distance behind me.

The series only lasted for 18 episodes, suggesting a short-sightedness that some network executive fell prey to.  I can picture him now, shaking his large head, jowls frothing, as he wonders why he didn't foresee the stardom that was in store for so many of the people involved in that little show.  He must kick himself every time a new Apatow hit comes out.

A more recent Apatow-produced hit was a kind of spin-off from his very successful 2007 film, Knocked Up, called This is 40.  My wife and I saw it on a date night, and we laughed.  A lot.  We whispered, "Oh my God, that's us!" and punched each other in the shoulders.  It was a great time, and Mr. Apatow once again proved himself the chronicler of my bourgeois, suburban life.

It leaves me wondering:  Will there be a This is 80?  I just hope I'm around to see it.  If I am, I have no doubt it will make me laugh and think, and see myself, the way both Freaks and Geeks and This is 40 have done.

Staying Home Sick Will Never Be The Same

I became aware of soap operas as a boy, when I would stay home sick from school. Back then, our options on television were slim in general, but during the day? Forget it. The channels we had available to us in the New York Metropolitan area were 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13. Occasionally a few VHF channels came through, but they were snowy and/or in Spanish.

Channels 5, 9, and 11 were the local channels, and 13 was PBS. 2, 4 and 7 was where most of the good, or at least decent stuff aired. 2 was WCBS, 4 was WNBC and 7 was WABC, and they still are, as far as I know. Those three channels were the ones that carried the nationally syndicated soaps. My mother was not a huge soap opera fan, but I loved TV as a rule, and the unspoken understanding was that being sick somehow gave me the right to watch television all day long.

I vaguely remember stopping on Days of our Lives and watching for a while, being somewhat interested in peeking in on the lives of adults, with sex and violence, and all the other good stuff they tried to hide from me when I was a kid. Then, I would infallibly get bored and switch either to a game show or, perish the thought, I’d turn off the television and actually read a book.

The soaps made a comeback during high school, when it became a favorite pastime of my little group of friends to get together at someone’s house – usually someone who lived closest to our school, because of the time factor involved – and watch the tail end of All My Children (“All My Kids,” as Maria and her sisters liked to call it) before getting into General Hospital.

At first, we watched it as a goof, while sneaking shots of Southern Comfort and plotting our weekend mischief. But a curious thing happened. “GH,” as we called it, started getting . . . good. But I mean really good. There was Hutch “the baby-faced hitman” (Maria’s again) who all the ladies adored and who was plotting to kill Luke. And there was, of course, that most passionate of daytime relationships, Luke and Laura. Although Luke looked vaguely like Frank Purdue with a blond wig made of pubic hair on his head, and Laura looked like every overly made-up bimbette you saw at the Galleria mall on the weekends, the chemistry and Forbidden Love thing were just too much to resist.

Now it appears that the long-running English-language soap operas are going the way of the dinosaurs. I guess with the advent, and expansion, of cable television, coupled with the virtual extinction of that elusive mythical creature the "Stay-At-Home Mom," they just couldn’t compete. When my boys are home sick from school, the absolute LAST thing they would want to watch would be one of the classic soaps. They prefer the Food Network. (Thanks, honey, for that.)

As it happens, I am home sick from work today, and no, I have no interest in All My Kids or GH. I’ve got hours of DVR’d HBO programming to look at. The world most certainly has changed, but I have no doubt those soaps will take their proper place in television’s Pantheon.

Oh wait, I know. I’ll watch some “Novelas.” Ay, si!

Quirky Dicks

Don’t be alarmed by the title. For those of you who googled the term, looking for, um, something else, sorry, and good luck on your search. I guess.

For the rest of you, no, it’s not the name of my new thrash metal band. (Does thrash metal even exist anymore? I’ll have to check with Jem, my resident expert on such matters.)

No these are the detective brand of dicks; honestly, I was just trying to get your attention. Didn’t mean to toy with you. So to speak….

In my mind, all the best sleuths are oddballs, and I’m not quite sure why that is. They all share super intelligence, although it is sometimes masked by other attributes.

With Monk, it’s his obsessive compulsive disorder, with which he actively has to struggle in order to solve crimes, often to good comedic effect. Theo Kojak has the visual quirkiness. He’s a smooth-talking character, who dresses to a tee, has a bald head and sucks on the ubiquitous lollipop. He’s also got that quirky tagline that you can’t help but dig: “Who loves ya, baby?”

Poirot has that moustache and air of superiority. Holmes is, well, Holmes. He’s the prototype. The hat, the pipe, the drug habit. Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey’s reimagined 2010 version is pretty exciting, if a bit radical in its departure from what we’re used to thinking of when we think of the iconic Basil Rathbone Holmes.

I’ve saved my favorite for last. What Peter Falk did with the character of Lieutenant Columbo is a feat of brilliance, so much so, in fact, that he pretty much doomed himself to being forever associated with that character. When fans call out to Falk in the streets, wherever he goes in the world, they don’t call out for Falk, they call out for Columbo.

Columbo’s genius is in the way he traps the suspect by making him think himself superior to the detective. That show turned the genre on its ear by taking a huge risk. They revealed the murderer in the first act of each episode, and then allowed the audience to watch as Columbo unraveled the mystery. Although every plotline is nearly identical, the writing and direction is at such a high level that it works. That show captivated me as a boy, and it still captivates me as an adult. Like Sherlock Holmes, Columbo is a master of the art of deduction and observation. My theory is that he knows who the murderer is in the first five minutes of meeting him; the rest is just a question of manipulating him into being caught.

I’m sure there are many I’m leaving out. I am currently reading the second Stieg Larsson book, and I enjoyed the first one. I could see Lizbeth Salander becoming an iconic crime fighter eventually.

What about you? Now that I got your attention with the title, who’s your favorite “quirky dick”?

Hey, it could have been worse. I could’ve said “favorite,” but then my wife would have worried….