Arrested Development

The Death of the Grown Man

Caroline Ferdinandsen — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 12:29:28 -0800

I am no Darwinist, but as I see it, the Age of the Grown Man is nearly complete. After several thousand years of hunting, gathering, procreating, and rescuing, it’s quite possible that The Grown Man has only a few decades left before he morphs into another species. (Disclaimer: With only one semester of college biology under my belt and no Y chromosome in my DNA, I might be the wrong candidate for recording such a primitive history, but indulge me; writers get paid to exaggerate stuff in order to make a point--or in this case, give it away for free).

Eons ago, the Grown Man relied on physical strength. He had to; otherwise, he and his family might die. Without the luxury of believing he had eighty years in front of him, he got right to the business of surviving. That’s about it.

Then a bit of complexity pushed the GM into some micro-evolutionary survival skills. He needed to do more than just stay alive; he needed to fight, to be good, to invent stuff that made the other GMs look like losers. In this way, he was able to attract his fair share of women from which to choose his favorite. When he found one, the two of them figured out how to stay alive even longer and protect their young carefully, given their unique biological skills.

Then we read the Old Testament narratives of a great many GMs—men who feared God and prayed for wisdom. Some foreshadowed our moral decline (think David in his Bathsheba era or all those wicked kings with names starting with “J”), but others were Grownups in the best sense: brave, protective, self-sacrificing seekers of justice. There was no time to be silly, for there were too many causes to fight for, and in the case of the Israelites, there were covenants to keep. God himself was a model of straight-up holiness. He was unchanging, cosmic, even frightening when he needed to be.

As societies began to change, the GM changed with it, losing his blunt edges, some growing spoiled, indulgent, and hedonistic—and they suffered for it. The strongest men survived and the weaker ones? Well, you know how it goes when men grow weak. Mid-millennium, the hedonists died out doing temporary things while the GMs kept fighting for things with a longer shelf-life.

But here’s the weird part. Somewhere in the last century—and picking up frightening speed in the past two decades—the adolescents are gaining traction while the GMs are dying out. Why? Well, I have no scientific idea, but the layman’s theory wonders if 1) we’ve given young men too many virtual causes on which to waste their vast intellectual and physical resources, or 2) if young men believe they have a third of their lives to squander, why get busy doing important things right away? (There are YouTube videos to watch and comedies to write and beers to drink, for God’s sake!)

The death of the Grown Man is not merely hypothetical. I met a man last month—a pleasant charter bus driver about the age of thirty—who was a premiere specimen in my fake paleontology. As a chaperone, I sat in the front of the bus, and he and I chatted on and off over 800 miles. He carried a picture of his World of Warcraft avatar on his Blackberry, knew every science fiction film we discussed, still lived at his mother’s house, spent a few semesters in community college, saved his money to go to Vegas every few months, and met his girlfriend while online gaming (they had yet to meet in person, he told me). When I asked him what inspired him—what was most meaningful to him or what goals he dreamed of—he mentioned that he just liked to wander, kind of like his bus rides, waiting to “see what happens next.”

What universe do I now live in where great swaths of strong young men are trading in their vitality for a zero return? This isn’t a phase, mind you, where a sixteen year-old stumbles his way around for a year or two. It is, rather, becoming the long, dry era of arrested development, where men halfway through their lives are still sleeping till noon in their mothers’ guest rooms. The Grown Men are dying every day, and someone has forgotten to tell the next generation what to live for.

As one who believes that Jesus Christ was the ultimate GM, I say study his words, his behavior, his leadership, and his divinity. If you know a Grown Man—if you are lucky to have one in your house—put his picture everywhere and get the word out that he is a treasure. Gather up the boys in your neighborhood and bring them to him. If you are a Grown Man, you won’t need to beat your chest and sneer at the losers; just keep leading, keep pressing forward, rally together with others who are likeminded so that we all might say as Paul did, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.”

Best TV of the 2000s

Brett McCracken — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:53:22 -0800

In 2020, will there be TV anymore? Who knows. But on the off chance that the death of television hasn’t been greatly exaggerated and is indeed imminent, we can at least celebrate the good twilight years that were the 2000s. In case TV fades into oblivion or merges with the Internet or something, this wasn’t such a bad decade to have ended on.

Here are my picks for the best TV shows of the decade:

1) Friday Night Lights (NBC, 2006-present): This show, based on a movie that was based on a book, became the best adapted television show of all time. More than a high school football show, FNL is beautiful rendered, stunningly mature look at Middle America. It’s close to perfect on almost every level and one of the great dramas of the contemporary network era.

2) Lost (ABC, 2004-present): There’s nothing else like Lost on TV, though there have been plenty of imitators. The Twin Peaks-esque sci-fi mystery show has gotten better in its five seasons, and its time-traveling, shape-shifting perplexities only get more interesting. This is to say nothing of the insanely perfect ensemble cast and memorable characters that have compelled audiences to truly care and watch, sans irony, for all these years.

3) Arrested Development (FOX, 2003-2006): This show might be the most tragically short-lived and under-seen on this list. But it’s also the best comedy. Hands down. If you haven’t seen this show (which launched the careers of people like Michael Cera, Jason Bateman and Will Arnett) you must get on it right away.

4) The Office (NBC, 2005-present): Though the British series is hard to top, the American version (which at 6 seasons is now a much more substantial body of comedy) quickly became one of the best comedies of the decade, capturing the zeitgeist of the YouTube era better than any other show on TV.

5) Mad Men (AMC, 2007-present): This is the show that got hipsters obsessed with television again. It’s a show that has so much indie cred: It’s bleak, sexy, fashionable, 60s lux, and on AMC! But it’s also just really great, nuanced, challenging TV. This show offers television what Don Draper’s vodka offers his martinis: Top shelf quality.

6) 30 Rock (NBC, 2006-present): As richly intertextual and self-reflexive as Arrested Development and with a cast equally as brilliant, 30 Rock just might be the comedy that saves NBC. It’s been a slow gainer since its low-rated first season, but it’s only gotten better with time.

7) The Wire (HBO, 2002-2008): I read something once that said that after watching The Wire, there’s no way anyone could watch CSI: Miami without stabbing their eyes out with a fork. And I think that’s about accurate. The Wire is HBO’s verite show about urban life in Baltimore, and though I’ve only seen the first two of its five seasons, I can understand why the critics frequently hail it as one of the best television shows of all time. It’s gritty, prestige TV of the finest order.

8) American Idol (Fox, 2002-present): This is the show that has dominated the decade in ratings and reality TV trends. After Idol came all the other dancing, performing, talent shows. But Idol’s contribution was also to the emerging landscape of “convergence” television in general—perfecting the art of audience interactivity, product placement, and trans-media storytelling (a live show, a concert tour, single available on iTunes, etc). It’s not Citizen Kane or anything, but it’s a ridiculously well-oiled machine of moneymaking pop entertainment. And I applaud that.

9) Friends (NBC, 1994-2004): Yes, this show was on in the 2000s, and while it might not have been the best years for the show, it was still pretty darn good post-Y2K. By the end the six “friends” had become icons getting $1 million a piece for each episode. The show was THAT huge.

10) Laguna Beach (MTV, 2004-2006): Before The Hills became a parody of the genre, there was the exquisitely rendered, truly original reality/soap hybrid Laguna Beach. Its celebration of conspicuous consumption and rich white American youth ushered in a new era for MTV and the youth culture at large. Real teens acting like actors playing real teens, driving Range Rovers and wearing Stella McCartney coats… GREAT TV.

Honorable Mention: The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Chapelle’s Show, Da Ali G Show, Dexter, South Park, Rome, Prison Break.