D!

or, The Wire redeems this season of Friday Night Lights.

Even though critics and fans will have you believe that "Friday Night Lights" is the best thing since sliced bread (or the best thing on television since "The Wire"), I feel it leaves much to be desired. It does many things well, but here are just a few of the issues I have taken with it over its 4 seasons (or 3 1/2, since the fourth is only half over on NBC):

• The first season, I was appalled by how much sex everyone had. I guess this was especially apparent with Tyra, and Tim, but it also seemed like everyone treated this as totally normal - that everyone in high school had sex. I guess I dunno what high school is like now, but if everyone was having sex when I was in high school, I certainly didn't know about it. And I really don't think they were...but maybe they are in Texas?
  
• Matt and Julie. I loved how uncomfortably awkward Matt was while pursuing her in the first season, but then they broke up, and then they got back together, and then they had sex, and then they broke up.... I guess I just never found their relationship very convincing. It was a good idea, but the executions seemed off. So, after all of Julie's I-like-him/I-need-to-break-up-with-him crap (seriously, the first time they broke up made no sense at all), the fourth season comes along and she gets so torn up when she leaves cus she thought he was "the one," even though Aimee Teegarden couldn't pull off any sort of soulmate chemistry with Zach Gilford if her life depended on it.
• ohhh, look, Dillon has a 'hood! Three seasons of white, middle class football fun without a care in the world about crime, then suddenly in the fourth season Dillon has a park that is overrun with gangs and drugs and shootings. (Actually, I had assumed that all the East Dillon trouble makers had previously gone to Dillon. But, a commenter on TWOP pointed out that it is likely that many of the poorer East Dillon students came from a third school involved in the redistricting. Very plausible, given that there was no sign of car-stealing, gun-toting gangsters at Dillon High for three seasons, but no explanation was ever given on the show, and I still don't like how Dillon just suddenly has a ghetto).

And now back to our previously scheduled programming: D! I must have yelled "D!" at least five times aloud, alone in my apartment, during Friday's episode. Or at least however many times Larry Gilliard, Jr., aka "D'Angelo Barksdale," came on screen. One of the major things that has kept me interested this season has been the addition of Michael B. Jordan, aka "Wallace," to the cast, and one more "Wire" alum just makes it that much better. And not just any "Wire" alums, but D and Wallace, two of my favorite characters from the first season.