I can’t quite pinpoint when I decided Miles Teller might be the most promising actor of his generation. It wasn’t an instant revelation, that is for sure. Id seen him in a few things and he seemed talented and most certainly charming, but somewhere along the time I saw That Awkward Moment, I began to wonder if this kid was the real deal.

He’s not necessarily conventionally handsome. You’ll notice he has a few small scars, obtained during a massive car wreck back in 2007. A lot of guys are comparing his swagger to Vince Vaughn, but there is that sense of self-deprecation to his performance that reminds me a lot of John Cusack too. The kid is paradoxical, simultaneously brimming with confidence yet completely insecure. It allows him to play quite a range of characters, which was something I wasn’t expecting when I first decided to watch all nine movies Teller has been in. The range I had seen was mostly the charming, sarcastic Teller, but as I saw more, I realized there is massive depth at his disposal to finesse his characters, though they may superficially appear rather smilar. And the obsessive need to see everything he’d been in possessed me and here we are.

So yeah, I can now say I have seen all nine feature films Miles Teller has been in and I am here to rank them for you from worst to first. Keep in mind, this isn’t a ranking of the movies themselves. This is specific to Teller and his performance, which oftentimes outshines even mediocre movies:

9. Project X

I’m gonna be honest, I couldn’t finish this movie because this largely improvisational teenage comedy thing is just so far removed from movies I want to watch and Teller’s part is a cameo at best. So instead of watching that, watch this:

8. 21 & Over (Currently free on Netflix)

While Teller is charming as usual in this film and his co-star Skylar Astin (who I enjoy a lot as well) give it their all, they can’t do much to overcome the standard “long night of drinking goes terribly wrong plot”. There are amusing moments, but if you want to see charming, snarky Teller, you have much better options.

7. Divergent (Currently free on HBO Go)

In interviews, Teller slipped up and admitted he took the role of antagonistic Peter in the YA blockbuster series for mostly business reasons. To be honest, I appreciated his honesty. It is smart to be in something with international appeal, to expand his range, playing the only unlikable character he has in his career, and getting to work with Shailene Woodley, his The Spectacular Now costar, again, because I would watch the two of them read the phone book together. It is a bit part, but I believe his role expands with the series and, in the meantime, he manages to prove that even with his young-looking face, he can be sinister (Searched for a decent clip of him to no avail. He pops up here around the :40 second mark)

6. Rabbit Hole

This is a beautiful movie about grief that earned Nicole Kidman a Best Actress Oscar nomination as the grieving mother of a now-dead toddler. What you may not realize is Teller made his film debut playing the teenager who accidentally hit the boy with his car. His scenes are minimal and the role is a big departure from the persona he has since developed, but there is an earnestness to his acting here worth noting.

5. Footloose

If you know me at all, you know I am generally opposed to remakes, yet somehow Craig Brewer’s remake of “Footloose” won me over. In many spots, he sticks to a near shot-for-shot dedication to the original, but he also gives the movie a country bent which I found interesting and at least a new take on the flick. Teller plays Willard, the part played by the late, great Chris Penn in the original, which is a tough act to follow,but he manages to stand out as one of the best parts of the film without ripping off Penn’s performance. If you don’t remember, he is the lead’s best friend who doesn’t know how to dance. I’ve taken to watching this “Let’s Hear it For the Boy” sequence on the regular just as a pick me up, so enjoy:

4. Two Night Stand

You’ve never heard of this movie. There is no reason you should have. It got relatively horrible reviews and is one of those things you stumble upon when cruising through on demand when you have insomnia. It is a pretty silly little flick where a girl (Analeigh Tipton of America’s Next Top Model fame) and a boy (Teller) hook up for a one night stand only to have the girl get snowed in the next day. It is stupid, but it is a fun stupid that I enjoy because the plot is silly, but the dialogue is pretty well done and, once again, Teller wins me over in a movie where he is required to carry half the film and does so with ease:

3. That Awkward Moment (Currently free on HBO Go)

I’ve got to be honest, I don’t understand the terrible reviews for this movie. Honestly, I think they come from people who don’t have to date in the current dating scene, which is scary and confusing, and filled with crap like these guys pull in this movie. Nothing is clear, nothing ever makes sense, and this flick nails it and does so with three leads who are dripping with charm and talent (yes, I’ll even give Zac Efron props on this one). I highly encourage any and every person who is single or who is in their late twenties or early thirties to check it out:

2. Whiplash

Number two, you say aghast and angry? The movie just nominated for Best Picture in which this kid clearly pours his heart, sweat, tears, and soul into. It is incredible, I don’t disagree. Teller, who was a drummer prior to getting the part in this movie about an ambitious jazz drumming student and his maniacal teacher, is sensational as a kid driven to succeed, obsessed with impressing his teacher and reaching greatness, and willing to sacrifice anything and everything to get there. It is a must-watch performance in one of the best movies of the year. Just watch these two minutes and tell me you aren’t intrigued:

1. The Spectacular Now (Currently free on Amazon Prime)

Yes, Whiplash is incredible and Teller gets all the flash and grit and an incredible sparring partner in the presumed Oscar winner JK Simmons. But the movie where you can see a guy who can deliver incredible performances with just a subtle delivery of a line or a seemingly insignificant drag from a Big Gulp is this teenage love story where Teller plays Sutter, the life of the party who simply thinks he is incapable of getting his shit together, so he doesn’t even bother. Then he meets a girl, takes her in, makes her his project if you will, and suddenly he has to face where his future is going and whether or not he likes it at all. It is an incredible love story with memorable performances from both the leads, but when you are outshining Shailene Woodley, you know you are giving one of the best performances of your career.

There we have it, ladies and gents, my Miles Teller obsession in one giant blog. And because this kid seems so unique and interesting to me, with touches of Tom Hanks, John Cusack, and Vince Vaughn, I think I am going to keep trying to see whatever he is in, including those horrible-looking Fantastic Four movies. Because I am calling it right now. This kid is legit. The Oscar is coming one of these days, and I just hope he continues to make unique and wide-ranging choices the more opportunities come his way.

While may of you are betting on the NFL games and sweating your DFS line-ups (For once, I have a couple of promising ones!), but tonight begins the season I wish wagering was more popular in: Movie and TV awards.

Should you choose to make some predictions with friends, these are my picks for this year. I should preface that I am much more confident in my movie picks than my TV ones, because the TV voters tend to get cuckoo crazy with whatever is new and amazing. The movie ones though, I feel pretty strongly about, so we shall see how I fare in a few hours. The bolded ones are my picks to win.

Best Motion Picture – Drama

Boyhood
Foxcatcher
The Imtation Game
Selma
The Theory of Everything

Best Actress – Drama

Jennifer Aniston – Cake
Felicity Jones – The Theory of Everything
Julianne Moore – Still Alice
Rosamund Pike – Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon – Wild

Best Actor – Drama

Steve Carell – Foxcatcher
Benedict Cumberbatch – The Imitation Game
Jake Gyllenhaal – Nightcrawler
David Oyelowo – Selma
Eddie Redmayne – The Theory of Everything

Best Motion Picture – Comedy

Birdman
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Into the Woods
Pride
St Vincent

Best Actress – Comedy

Amy Adams – Big Eyes
Emily Blunt – Into the Woods
Helen Mirren – The Hundred-Foot Journey
Julianne Moore – Maps to the Stars
Quvenzhane Wallis – Annie

Best Actor – Comedy

Ralph Fiennes – The Grand Budapest Hotel
Michael Keaton – Birdman
Bill Murray – St Vincent
Joaquin Phoenix – Inherit Vice
Christoph Waltz – Big Eyes

Best Animated Feature Film

Big Hero 6
The Book of Life
The Boxtrolls
How to Train Your Dragon 2
The Lego Movie

Best Foreign Film

Force Majeure
Get: The Trial of Vivane Amsalem
Ida
Leviathan
Tangerines

Best Supporting Actress

Patricia Arquette – Boyhood
Jessica Chastain – A Most Violent Year
Keria Knightley – The Imitation Game
Emma Stone – Birdman
Meryl Streep – Into the Woods

Best Supporting Actor

Robert Duvall – The Judge
Ethan Hawke – Boyhood
Edward Norton – Birdman
Mark Ruffalo – Foxcatcher
JK Simmons – Whiplash

Best Director

Wes Anderson – The Grand Budapest Hotel
Ava Duvernay – Selma
David Fincher – Gone Girl
Alejandro Gozalez Inarritu – Birdman
Richard Linklater – Boyhood

Best Screenplay

Wes Anderson  – The Grand Budapest Hotel
Gillian Flynn –Gone Girl
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Nicolas Giabone, Alexander Dinelaris, Armando Bo – Birdman
Richard Linklater – Boyhood
Graham Moore – The Imitation Game

Best Original Score

Alexandre Desplant – The Imitation Game
Johan Johannsson – The Theory of Everything
Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross – Gone Girl
Antonio Sanchez – Birdman
Hans Zimmer – Interstellar

Best Original Song

Big Eyes – Big Eyes
Glory – Selma
Mercy Is – Noah
Opportunity – Annie
Yellow Flicker Beat – Mockingjay Part 1

TELEVISION

Best Television Drama

The Affair
Downton Abbey
Game of Thrones
The Good Wife
House of Cards

Best Actress – Drama

Claire Danes – Homeland
Viola Davis – How to Get Away with Murder
Julianna Marguiles – The Good Wife
Ruth Wilson – The Affair
Robin Wright – House of Cards

Best Actor – Drama

Clive Owen – The Knick
Live Schreiber – Ray Donovan
Kevin Spacey – House of Cards
James Spader – The Blacklist
Dominic West – The Affair

Best Comedy

Girls
Jane the Virgin
Orange is the New Black
Silicon Valley
Transparent

Best Actress – Comedy

Lena Dunham – Girls
Edie Falco – Nurse Jackie
Julia Louis-Dreyfus – Veep
Gina Rodriguez – Jane the Virgin
Taylor Schilling – Orange is the New Black

Best Actor – Comedy

Louis CK – Louis
Don Cheadle – House of Lies
Ricky Gervais – Derek
William H Macy – Shameless
Jeffrey Tambor- Transparent

Best Miniseries or Made for TV Movie

Fargo
The Missing
The Normal Heart
Olive Kitteridge
True Detective

Best Actress – Miniseries or Made for TV Movie

Maggie Gyllenhaal – The Honorable Woman
Jessica Lange – American Horror Story: Freak Show
Frances McDormand – Olive Kittridge
Frances O’Connor – The Missing
Allison Tolman – Fargo

Best Actor – Miniseries or Made for TV Movie

Martin Freeman – Fargo
Woody Harrelson – True Detective
Matthew McCounaghey – True Detective
Mark Ruffalo – The Normal Heart
Billy Bob Thornton – Fargo

Best Supporting Actress – TV

Uzo Aduba – Orange is the New Black
Kathy Bates – American Horror Story: Freak Show
Joanne Froggatt – Downton Abbey
Allison Janney – Mom
Michelle Monaghan – True Detective

Best Supporting Actor – TV

Matt Bomer – The Normal Heart
Alan Cumming – The Good Wife
Colin Hanks – Fargo
Bill Murray – Olive Kitteridge
Jon Voight – Ray Donovan

I’ve only ever cried during one sporting event, and, no, it wasn’t the 2006 National Championship game where Vince Young’s knee was so clearly down on the go ahead score in the second quarter that shifted the momentum in this game that transpired nine years ago today.

Instead, I cried four days later when Carson Palmer threw an incredible 66-yard pass to Chris Henry, then be tackled right at the knees by Kimo von Oelhoffen of the Pittsburgh Steelers. At the time, it felt like a dirty play, but I came to realize the guy was just doing his job. And, while I hate that the game has taken to over-protecting the quarterback, I don’t mind the Carson Palmer rule that ensued from this play.

Because this was our year, his year. That 66 yard bomb was his first throw of the game. I was jubliant, watching Henry reel in the ball only to have my heart stop when they cut back to Palmer. We were legitimate contenders that year. We weren’t just wildcard one and dones.

To be honest, my Bengal fandom wasn’t particularly strong until I started college, because I was never much of a football fan before that. Geography dictated the Bengals and the Reds were my teams, but I was fairly aware we were pretty crappy.

But then Carson Palmer made me love football and, in turn, made me a fiercely loyal Bengal fan. And on the first series of the first playoff game we stood a chance in in ages, I watched him writhe in the grass.

Yesterday, in the first round of wildcard games, I was treated to a similar image, as the opening montage featured Palmer going down with a torn ACL again, face-down in agony in the grass. I wanted Arizona to pull it out because I knew what it felt like to be there. To know you had a chance and now that chance is gone. Plus, I still love Carson Palmer more than any other football player in history, so to see him prove to the haters once again that he is not mediocre quarterback only to go down during his swan song is genuinely fate being cruel. He is a guy who rehabbed from a seemingly unrehabable injury, the kind Peyton Manning gets lauded for all the time. 

Perhaps I set the bar too high with Carson and that is why I really am not a fan of our quarterback. I’m used to Dalton Daltoning. Last year, it was almost comical to watch him single-handedly flush our playoff hopes down the drain in a game we were supposed to win.

This year, I can’t even blame Dalton. I knew things would be rough with AJ Green out, then I heard our old, albeit clutch, TE Jermaine Gresham was not going to play either. With Dane Sanzenbacher on IR too, that left us with Mohamed Sanu, Greg Little, and Brandon Tate to catch balls.

I tried to believe that Jeremy Hill could pull through on the offense, even though I constantly find myself undewhelmed by him.

But mostly, my hope that we could somehow break this two-decade losing streak lay in our defense. Yes, Burrfect was out, but Dre Kirkpatrick, George Iloka, Terence Newman, Pacman Jones, Domata Peko, Leon Hall, and, of course, my two Trojans/Bengals: Taylor Mays and the insanely talented linebacker Rey Maualuga.

When Maualuga went down in the first half and I watched him get carted off the field, I thought back to that game in 2006. This year was most certainly not our year. After all, we’ve had basically half the squad in the hospital the entire season. The fact we found success with Sanu and Hill and Gresham resurging in the absence of Tyler Eifert is a remarkable stroke of good fortune that got us to the playoffs in the first place.

I almost wonder though if Marvin Lewis and Dalton and the gang need a break. That maybe not making the playoffs and hearing once again about how terrible we are in the playoffs might just be good for them. Because, as heartbreaking as it was to see Rey carted off, seeing the faces of the veteran Bengals in the fourth quarter was so much worse. Newman’s stoney stare knowing that no amount of effort on defense was going to make up for the fact our offense was all on the sidelines. Dre Kirkpatrick doing everything he could to battle through injury so we could go three and out again before eventually resigning himself and his ankle to defeat.

Who really wants to make the playoffs four years running, knowing every time you don’t a chance and the fact you don’t stand a chance is the only thing anybody is going to talk about in the week leading up to the game?

So, as I sit here in my new Sanu jersey, thinking ahead to our next season and who we will draft, I remind myself that sometimes things don’t go your team’s way. I also think about the many happy regular season moments this team gave me. I fell in love with Mohamed Sanu, I began to think Dre Kirkpatrick is a year or two away from being a really unstoppable cornerback, and my favorite bench player Dane Sanzenbacher even managed an interception against the Steelers last week.

It won’t make up for 2006, but it will remind me this time next year that I should be less preoccupied with the playoffs. When it comes to the Bengals, I think I could stand to cut them some slack and not talk about the playoffs for a while. I’m not gonna kick my guys when they’re down, especially when it is so clear there is no one kicking themselves harder than Marvin Lewis and his squad.

Who Dey? A team to be proud of, that’s who.

Being the beginning of the year, I always try to ruminate on some sort of pop culture project. The first place I look tends to be my Netflix queue. I tried to start with “Breaking Bad”, thinking there would be something to be blogged about my anxiety watching fictional people make bad decisions butting heads with a show about a good guy gone bad, but then really really not being into the show after eight episodes. I went back to Season 1 of “The Wire”, but stopped there knowing that I was content to end things with, “Where’s Wallace?”

As I perused the rest of the list, I realized it has become a vast wasteland of movies and TV shows that have languished there (many for years), mostly because I don’t really *want* to watch them. I know they’ve been nominated for some Oscars, or I feel I’m missing part of the canon, so I keep them around, but they have grown to feel like nothing but a chore.

In other words…I don’t want to watch them for the most part. Or, in many instances, they are foreign, which you all realize requires more than your standard amount of movie-watching attention. Rather than set out to finish this list off, I’m setting myself free and doing some real talk about what I’ll be watching in 2015.

Currently, here is where the list stands:

1. Broadchurch (TV Miniseries)
2. 21 & Over (Movie)
3. 30 for 30: Survive and Advance (Doc)
4. 30 for 30: Free Spirits (Doc)
5. Two Days in New York (Movie)
6. Bottle Shock (Movie)
7. The Rocketeer (Movie)
8. The Wolf of Wall Street (Movie)
9. Liberal Arts (Movie)
10. Varsity Blues (Movie)
11.Your Sister’s Sister (Movie)
12. Good Morning, Vietnam (Movie)
13. The Trip (Movie)
14. Mud (Movie)
15. The Importance of Being Earnest (Movie)
16. An Ideal Husband (Movie)
17. Julia (Movie)
18. The Wood (Movie)
19. Kinky Boots (Movie)
20. The Hunt (Foreign Movie)
21. The Punk Singer (Doc)
22. The Men (Movie)
23. Cutie and the Boxer (Foreign Doc)
24. The Returned (Foreign TV)
25. The Act of Killing (Foreign Doc)
26. A Walk on the Moon (Movie)
27. In Bruges (Movie)
28. What Maisie Knew (Movie)
29. There Will Be Blood (Movie)
30. Mrs. Brown (Movie)
31. The Kite Runner (Movie)
32. Trainspotting (Movie)
33. Cinema Paradiso (Foreign Movie)
34. Sling Blade (Movie)
35. The Elephant Man (Movie)
36. Four Weddings and a Funeral (Movie)
37. Boss (TV Show)
38. The Endless Summer (Doc)
39. Tora! Tora! Tora! (Movie)
40. Luther (TV Miniseries)
41. Twin Peaks (TV Show)
42. Dragon Tattoo Trilogy (Swedish Version)
43. Coupling (TV Show)
44. Fawlty Towers (TV Show)
45. Evita (Movie)
46. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Movie)
47. Django Unchained (Movie)
48. Snowpiercer (Movie)
49. Nebraska (Movie)
50. Labor Day (Movie)

Do most people have 50 items on their Netflix list? At one point my number hovered in the 70s and only once can I recall it dipping below 40, but I am I the norm or the outlier? Back when it was a DVD mailing service, it made sense to have lengthy queues to get the biggest bang for your buck, ensuring there was always something waiting to be mailed to you. Now though, what do I really get from having this lengthy list of movies staring me in the face reminding me I am never going to watch them?

This is what I am starting to realize. There really is no contemporary canon, there is simply too much entertainment being produced to possibly keep up. Many critics on Twitter lamented the top 10 list problem, noting that it is impossible to watch all the great TV shows, so perhaps including a list of what they watched a reasonable amount would help contextualize their selections.

It might also explain why this year feels like one of the more wide-open Oscar races in recent memory. Perhaps it was just a dud year for movies or perhaps there weren’t as many obvious prestige pics like “The Theory of Everything”. Right now, it seems like it is “Boyhood” is in pole position, but who knows what will happen with the Globes in a couple of weeks?

So, much like one cleans out the closet, I cleaned out the queue. We’re down to 15. You’ll notice a couple of weird ones, like 21 & Over (part of a larger project of mine trying to watch the entire Miles Teller ouevre, as I am obsessed with this remarkably talented young kid, and no, I haven’t seen Whiplash yet) or keeping one 30 for 30 instead of another. Don’t get me wrong, I love these sports docs, but with so many more than 30 now, I find myself picking and choosing, rather than blindly DVRing all of them.

Here goes:

1. Broadchurch (TV Miniseries)
2. 21 & Over (Movie)
3. 30 for 30: Survive and Advance (Doc)
4. Two Days in New York (Movie)
5. The Wolf of Wall Street (Movie)
6. Liberal Arts (Movie)
7. Good Morning, Vietnam (Movie)
8. The Returned (Foreign TV)
9. The Act of Killing (Foreign Doc)
10. There Will Be Blood (Movie)
11. Cinema Paradiso (Foreign Movie)
12. Luther (TV Miniseries)
13. Twin Peaks (TV Show)
14. Snowpiercer (Movie)
15. Nebraska (Movie)

If I picked one off you think is worth my time, let me know on Twitter (@jesswelman) and I’ll consider adding it back. But I think rather than starting off this year feeling daunted by my long lists I’ve created, I am going to try to keep it brief. No more than 15 at a time. Nothing gets added until something gets watched. In 2015, I’m not watching anything I feel like I have to (hence why Django got the boot), I’m only watching movies I want to, whether it be to understand the hoopla (The Wolf of Wall Street), because I will always love Ted Mosby (Liberal Arts), or because I just need more Chris Rock in my life (Two Days in New York).

Let’s see how it goes.

It took five seasons and numerous emails with my thoughts on the show before my friend finally asked me an important question:

“Do you like ‘The Sopranos’? I can’t tell if you do.”

It wasn’t the easiest question to answer. Many of the more recent canonical TV shows, I can very quickly divide into love and hate, and, more importantly, I can easily dismiss any vying for the “greatest of all time” title. There is no way “The Wire” is the best show ever because its fifth and final season is genuinely bad television. For the same reason, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, which spends five seasons hitting it out of the park, one season stumbling, and one season in the borderline unwatchable category, can’t be the number one, though I would heartily assert it is better TV than both The Wire and The Sopranos, though everyone else in the world has been telling me otherwise for ten years.

“The Sopranos” doesn’t necessarily have a bad season, though the front half of Season 6 is certainly its worst. I had to think to come up with my favorite though, which I concluded was Season 4, the season about the past and how things have changed (I can hear those who know me chuckling).

When it came to individual episodes, it really depended on which characters were featured how I felt about them. Given the number of nominations I was aware Michael Imperioli earned over the years, I was floored at how dull and uninteresting Christopher was. Sure, he had some good one-liners and the occasional well-performed scene, but by and large, his storylines struck me as incredibly flat–one can only relapse into drug use so many times. It is worth noting, however, that “D-Girl” is hands-down my favorite episode of this show and is actually somewhat Christopher-centric. Most of the time though, I just wonder, “Where’s Sil? Where’s Bobby? Can’t we put Junior back in the fray?”

Another part of the problem is that, while there are a long list of genres I love, the relatively short list of genres I hate tend to be as follows: gangster, Westerns, stuff about criminals, mind trip—you know, all the genres that have gotten all the accolades over the past two decades. So, it was an uphill battle for this show from the beginning because I never have and never will find Mafia stories all that interesting.

At least The Sopranos had the family element going for it though. More importantly, Margaret Lyons beautifully summed up what it was about this show that helped me put up with the boring mobster stuff. Please read the whole piece, because it really did fundamentally change my appreciation of the show, but here is the one line that really sticks out:

 “The Sopranos is about the performance of self when we haven’t picked what we are.”

Millenials may think we can be anything, but there are some of us who still live in families like mine, where during Christmas time, I put forward a version of myself that doesn’t really exist. I smile and joke and make a mention of something that happened at Midnight Mass to ensure Grandma knows I went to church. I make it seem like that husband and family are just around the corner. I make it seem like I spend more time with my family than my friends, or heck, even my family and my blog. Around my friends, I put forward a version of me that isn’t exactly me either. At work, the same. As someone who got a Master’s Degree with a large emphasis on the performance of self, intellectually this is right up my alley, because we are always performing, and, a lot of the time, we are performing roles we don’t want to be in. We may not be mob bosses who have to stick to these roles or else there are life and death consequences, but the general concept should be familiar to everyone.

I think we can all relate to that idea of pretending to be someone we don’t want to be sometimes, which is why this show, and Season 4 in particular stuck out to me. In this season, several guys return from the clink after years removed from the real world. Some are ready to jump back in, but can’t be what the new order needs them to be. Others try so very hard to get out a la Michael Corleone, only to be pulled back in again. And, at the center of it is Tony, seeing it all go down, realizing that relationships, such as the one between himself and his favorite cousin, may change, but the people they have to be are never going to. He realizes, no matter what, he is stuck in what he is and there is no way it isn’t going to end poorly.

It was a show that made me think. It has me still thinking, honestly. Is it the greatest ever? That, I can pretty easily answer no, but I am also the person who is going to offer up The Dick Van Dyke and The Mary Tyler Moore shows as perfect pieces of television long before anything made in the 21^st century.

I even told my friend I don’t prefer it to “The Good Wife”, which is, in my mind, the best show on television right now. In many ways they deal with the same identity politics, in that several characters are stuck in places they would rather not be and have to do what they can with them. Unlike The Sopranos, which had more than one “off” episode (I’m looking at you, Kevin Finnerty), “The Good Wife” has faltered arguably once with a strange story about Kalinda’s life before the firm. Otherwise though, this program, which produces 22 episodes a season mind you, compared to The Newsroom and their six, Game of Thrones and their 10, and the now-lofty 12-13 of most major cable shows, and manages to do so without much filler, with a plethora of compelling characters to choose from and a bench of bit players that rivals the UK basketball team.

So, as someone who waited 15 years to see what the hype was about, where do I stand on The Sopranos?

I can most certainly see how it shifted the paradigm for television drama and helped to popularize the anti-hero concept on TV (though, as Emily Nussbaum rightly points out, Carrie Bradshaw beat him to the punch on that one). I respect on an artistic level what it did, though I am still mildly baffled at how many references only media scholars and intense film nerds like myself would ever get are peppered throughout the show.

Again, I am deferring to Lyons on this one. It is a show I respect and revere, but is it a show I love? No. Me? I need characters I can invest in. They can be complicated and flawed, sure, but I have to fundamentally care about what happens to them. Save for Carmela, Bobby Baccalieri, Silvio, Paulie’s mom, and a handful of others, there were precious few characters I found myself genuinely emotionally reacting to when they were in peril. Once or twice the show gut-punched me, but mostly I admired it from a distance as a piece of art, not full enmeshed within it, as I tend to be with my all-time favorite shows. 

Much like the show, Tony Soprano was always an arms-length away for me. He could make me smile and laugh, but he never made me cry. When he got shot or had his life on the line, I wasn’t that compelled, though maybe it is because I knew they can’t kill off Tony. Most of all though, there was just way more to dislike about Tony than to like by the time the series ended. While I found him fascinating to scrutinize, if put to a decision, I would say, no, I don’t really care about him. And, for me, that is a problem.

I admire it as a show that made me think, but it isn’t a show that makes me feel nearly enough, which is what I am looking for when it comes to searching for the greatest TV show of all time. I am certainly happy I watched, but I’ll still tell you it is no “Buffy”, it is no “The Good Wife”, and it is not “The West Wing.” It certainly isn’t half-bad though.

I wish I had a better explanation for why I so vehemently hate some fictional women. I think about my peers telling me to support all women, don’t sabotage other women, perhaps don’t Tweet incessantly about how awful this, albeit fictional, person is.

But when the fictional Maggie Jordan of “The Newsroom” exited my life a couple of weeks ago when the show aired its series finale, I let out a massive sigh of relief. Because, to be frank, the fervor with which I hated her was positively exhausting. Every week, she found new ways to appall me, starting with the very first episode.

After watching the finale, I thought I would return to the pilot to see if maybe I was wrong and blinded by my Maggie anger and that, perhaps, she had grown more than I realized. Or that I was too quick to judge.

Nope.

When you begin “The Newsroom”, you are introduced to Margaret “Maggie” Jordan when she explains to her boyfriend that 1. She is disappointed he isn’t comfortable meeting her parents after dating for four months and 2. No, she will not be abandoning the “News Night” staff even though her now-boss does not even know her name let alone that she is on the staff. She is doing this in the office. You know why? Because her boyfriend, who is likely ten years older than her, used to be her boss and the two of them are participating in a grossly inappropriate workplace relationship, so they have conversations like this in front of fellow employees at the workplace all the time.

Her lone positive character trait is that she is loyal to the show, and her not defecting earns her an immediate promotion to Associate Producer. Later in the episode, she is given a task to research an obscure government organization. She finds out some important and useful information, getting a guest in the process, but the entire time she is presented as a girl on the verge of competence, who seemingly lucked into the information rather than someone who actually got a degree in something like journalism, which would fully prepare her for such a task.

So, Maggie and I didn’t get along particularly well off the bat. In my first job, I never asked my boss questions unless absolutely necessary because I knew I would get a ripped a new one if I didn’t figure it out on my own, and, while there were a couple of very cute boys in the office I would’ve loved to go crying to, I went to other experienced females in the office in an attempt to sharpen my skills.

In the second episode, she is on her third day at the job as an Associate Producer when her boss, Senior Producer Jim Harper, asks to do a mock pre-interview in preparation for a segment. Rather than being grateful a seasoned vet is going to walk her through the process, she literally screams at her for believing she is incompetent and needs babysitting. But guess what? She does.

She blows the pre-interview on an unimaginably bad level. It results in an abysmal show that embarrassed all those involved with it. Inexplicably, Jim covers for the girl who yelled at him, was insubordinate and exhibited what was only the first in a seemingly endless list of unprofessional behavior. But Jim has a little crush on poor, broken Maggie and protects her. When Maggie, who has an anxiety disorder and forgets her medicine at work, she doesn’t talk herself out of the panic attack she is having, Jim does.

In Season Two, we learn via flash forward that Maggie went through some shit on a trip to Africa. As a result, she starts showing up to work dressed like a waitress in a dive bar. This was new, edgy single Maggie, a girl who handled her own life, but yet she was sleeping around with whoever she could, continuing to mouth off to her superiors, and supposedly still remained the biggest liability on the staff.

I’ve gone through my lost and unsure phase in my twenties, don’t get me wrong. Hell, I’m probably going through one right now, to be frank. But the obviousness of her being unable to hold it together once again saddened me. Is this really the way young women in the work force come across? Is it really that obvious when we’re struggling? Is it really that necessary that we have at least two dudes there to save us whenever we are in a bind?

Fellow network employee Sloane Sabbath, who is much higher up the ladder than Maggie in every respect possible, tries to help her out. It is the kind of mentorship most of us would kill for, but Maggie hardly takes advantage of it at all. She wallows, she flails, she continues to display an egregiously unprofessional at work, and when it comes to her personal relationships, she could genuinely not be more selfish.

Yet, in Season 3, Maggie is supposed to be redeemed. The result of all that suffering and struggle brought on by no one but herself is that she gets handed an adorable Cornell Law professor to date. Because she shows an ability to read and speak words she wrote herself at the same time while being filmed, she saves the day at work. She allegedly shows her chops again by scooping a big interview with someone from the EPA, but it ends up being a wholly depressing segment, not to mention illustrates that Maggie is somehow 26 years old and has still not learned how to effectively highlight things.

Then, in the final two episodes, she finally gets together with the adorable Jim, who spent two seasons being delightful, then inexplicably turned into a jerk in the final season. They get together, then three days later Maggie learns Jim recommended her for a field producing job in DC, despite the fact the show has clearly established she is the least useful producer on the show on numerous occasions (Poor Gary Cooper can’t ever catch a break, can he?)

Then, conflict of conflicts, Jim gets promoted to Executive Producer of “News Night” and, in a remarkable display of unprofessionalism himself, runs to Maggie to offer her his old job as Senior Producer.

And Aaron Sorkin wants me to believe that Maggie has grown and learned because she is going to interview for that field producer job because it is what she wants. Go Maggie! Girl Power! Way to choose one of the two jobs you would rather have that is being offered solely because a dude wants to sleep with you. That’s feminism, ladies and gentlemen. I’m not gonna bring you down, I am not going to hate on other women.

Cause it is awesome that one of the three main female characters in this show essentially learned nothing in three years when it came to her career, but will apparently have a string of dudes who are entirely too good for her vying for her attention.

 In episode one, Maggie chooses a job out of loyalty and in the final episode, Maggie chooses the job she wants for her own reasons. So, is the moral of the story that Maggie learned to be selfish? Cause she seemed to have that character trait down pretty pat long before Season 3 got started. Is the moral of the story that all of her selfish behavior when it comes to Jim is that she gets him now that he is damaged goods?

I want to know, as a female, what I am supposed to get from Maggie Jordan. If I am supposed to support all women, fictional and otherwise, I want to know why it needs to include a character who sets back chicks who spend their 20s never lighting their pilot light to save money on gas, never being late for work, never not knowing the answer in front of your boss, and never having to wonder if you got that compliment or promotion for any other reason than the quality of your work. Because I don’t see that chick on television very often. We haven’t had a Veronica Mars for me to cheer for in a while, especially on so-called prestige television.

I thankfully have Alicia Florrick and Diane Lockhart on “The Good Wife.” I have Keri Russell kicking ass on “The Americans.” But when it comes to girls in their 20s and early 30s, I have a pretty girl with dragons, I have a delusional, self-involved writer, and a straight up crazy homeland security expert.

At least I don’t have to deal with Maggie Jordan anymore though. She is gone, off living some life a dude made for her. Way to go, now make your exit.

“You’re going to need to return this pie,” Dolores, my mother explained to me.

This occurred mere moments after she peeked into the grocery bag containing said pie and uttered in disgust, “No Sugar Added,” with the same level of disdain she reserves for food items like coconut, all seafood that isn’t catfish, rice, garlic, alcohol, and the droves of other foods she basically equates with poison.

You see, there is particular and there is Dolores. If you’ve met me and think I am picky, you don’t know picky. My mother told me the other day she didn’t want food from Fazolis, a fast food restaurant she used to eat at, I kid you not, six times a week, because the Memphis Fazolis, “doesn’t taste like the other Fazolis do.”

So, with a No Sugar Added pumpkin pie, we obviously had a problem. Wanting to be a good daughter, I offered to go to the store and purchase a different pumpkin pie.  In my head, the No Sugar Added one was just written off as a loss, a mistake of a pie that we would try to find a home for with one of our relatives, or simply throw away.

“Yes, you need to please go back and exchange it.”

This is where she lost me. I’ve returned clothes, electronics, and other things, but, prior to this day, I didn’t even know grocery store returns were an option. What is surprising is that they are. What isn’t surprising is that my mom is fully aware that you can return things to the grocery store.

“Where do I even go to return a pie when I get there, Mom?”  I imagine myself walking in, holding the pie outstretched, like Oliver Twist. “Please sir, can I have a different pie?”

As I learned, there is a customer service counter at the front of the store that handles returns and the sale of cigarettes. So, I took the not-sweet-enough pumpkin pie back to Kroger, picked a regular sugar pumpkin pie up, and proceeded to the counter.

It was a relatively easy process. I was surprised how the girl didn’t even bat an eyelash at my pie snafu, just pleasantly exchanged them, then told me I was good to leave with the new pie. The only part that struck me as funny is that she saw me eyeing the receipt and said, unprompted, “We need this for the paperwork.” It took some restraint not to ask what pie exchange paperwork looks like. I’ve easily spent an hour pondering what kind of blanks are on that form.

So, this Thanksgiving I learned something new—you can exchange just about anything and, for my mom I will. Even if she did sneak a slice and inform me that, while this pie had plenty of sugar, it also had some sort of spice she didn’t care for and wouldn’t suffice either.

On the bright side, she didn’t ask me to return the pie with a piece missing at least…

When there was a lull in the questioning at the Smith Center tonight, I simply decided to raise my hand and go for it. Lo and behold, David Sedaris called on me. So I asked him a question I often wondered about his writing:

“Do you ever have your family ask not to write about the things you write about?”

It wasn’t completely out of the blue as it sounds. First of all, if you aren’t familiar with the author David Sedaris, you likely don’t know his entire oeuvre is personal narratives, often very intimate but funny stories from his childhood, love life, and family. Just the stories about his brother, affectionately called The Rooster, are enough to make you blush. It also made me wonder though…is the Rooster okay with this?

Unsurprisingly, the Rooster is just fine with the often scathingly hilarious descriptions of his antics. I was surprised to hear though that Sedaris offers his family the power of veto by providing them drafts of his work before it is published. At one point, his dad exercised that power, asking him to withhold the rather crass phrase the Rooster called his father from time to time. At one point in a Q & A, Sedaris ended up divulging the turn of phrase to an audience, who was apparently horrified. And, interestingly enough, he said his dad was right both from a privacy perspective and it made the story better.

I asked the question mostly because I wanted to know how Sedaris’ family felt about his stories, but I also had selfish motivations. I know I am no David Sedaris, but the more I write in this blog, the more I question what should go in here. I frequently wonder where the line is. I knew Sedaris wasn’t going to give me the magic answer, but to at least see someone I admire with the intensity I do this author, seems to struggle with the same question was a bit of a relief.

I don’t mean to be coy when I say I am at a point in my life where a lot of things are going on. Things that wear on me…things that make me cry…things that I don’t know how to wrap my brain around without writing about them.

And I guess where I really struggle is, as someone who doesn’t really see the value in a diary, I find I write in order to share things and find common spaces and strike up conversations that might just help me understand things a little better.

I long to write a post on my “blinker boys” theory, as many of my friends insist I should, but I hold back knowing it could hurt some of the guys in my past or threaten some of my male relationships in the future. I want to write about half a million things about my mother, for I find her incredible, but with every Tweet I send about her, I feel a little bit worse knowing how much my mom gets bashful when I do it, even if it is filled with love.

And then there is me. I’m struggling right now in a lot of ways and the last thing I want is for people to think I am seeking attention and the only thought in my head is “woe is me.” I am White. I was born in America. I’m ahead of the curve and I know that. But I also know I am a pessimist at heart because optimism is just something that has never made much sense to me. Bracing for the worst is so much easier than expecting the best, and the same kind of goes with how I write. I tend to point out the things that frustrate me or make no sense more than the things I admire, because admiration is a pretty easy emotion to figure out. I know why I admire Mohamed Sanu. What I don’t know is how to deal when life throws me 35 curve balls. And I like to believe that writing through those curveballs will help, even if that writing isn’t always cheerful.

So I go back and forth about how much of these goings ons in my life need to be on here. Like Sedaris, I wonder if my mom telling me no isn’t just about self-preservation, but is also a smart decision from a content perspective. I want that blinker boy post to exist so badly, but respect of others and a desire to maintain relationships with trust win out, even though I have it saved as a draft on my computer.

In the end though, I can’t seem to kick this urge to write about some of these things my mom and dad always told me weren’t for other people to be burdened with. They taught me to deal with my own problems, not foist them on others, so I stay silent, thinking that writing about it is an imposition, making people read about my drama out of a sense of obligation. But, here I am, almost two months in to what I will say are categorically the worst two months of my life, and I think I just have to get some of it out to stay sane. I doubt I will Tweet and FB new posts, so if you are curious, check back in.  If you are not, that is okay too, because I realize this whole exercise is fundamentally a selfish one. But more than one person has told me I need to be a little selfish right now, so here goes. I may not be forthcoming if you have questions and I may omit details, but it is only out of respect for those who don’t want their stories shared. So there are no blinker boys just yet. And the Dolores stories will be sparse. Instead, you’ll just be stuck with me as I try to work through some of these bizarre happenstances, knowing in the back of my head that it is okay to wonder what should and shouldn’t be said, because it is something even someone as immensely talented as David Sedaris worries about too.

For the past seven weeks, one of my fantasy football teams did not have a name. Last week, I finally decided it was time for a cheesy, punny one, not because most everyone else had one, but because my love and obsession for a certain player on the Cincinnati Bengals squad had grown too great to ignore.

That is how Team Sanu Dawn, Sanu Dey was born (Note: The Dey is intentional, a riff on the Cincy’ “Who Dey?” cheer).

Wide receiver Mohamed Sanu began this season with the Bengals as a third stringer who was expected to get more looks while Marvin Jones, the breakout wide receiver from last season, recovered from an appendectomy. In the preseason Bengals games, I saw that Sanu was getting a lot of looks from quarterback Andy Dalton. He even threw a touchdown at one point. While I tend to get most of my fantasy advice from Brett Collson, my fantasy sensei, I decided to pick him up off the waiver wire without consulting him first (unfortunately dropping Ronnie Hillman, which at the time made sense, but now is a bit frustrating). So why did I get so invested in a wide receiver that was clearly second fiddle to one of the best receivers in the game, AJ Green? The answer is pretty simple. I don’t ever like the #1 receiver. It’s too easy.

Prior to Sanu, my favorite Bengal receiver was not OchoCinco or AJ. It was TJ Houshmandzadeh, who, like Sanu, had to work his way from third receiver to the starting line-up, but once he got there, he proved to be quite the powerhouse for several years. The beauty of the #2 receiver is they can catch you by surprise. You know AJ Green is getting double teamed cause he is an incredible talent. Meanwhile, Sanu can line-up on the other side of the field, get open and make a remarkable catch of his own. That is why Sanu’s numbers dropped a bit two weeks ago in that tie against Carolina—he wasn’t the distraction, he was the featured show. But when Sanu gets to surprise, amazing things can happen. Like gingers not named Jimmy Graham catching touchdowns:

My love for Sanu is not unlike my love for the Bengals. While they are geographically my team, there is something nice about rooting for the non-obvious choice (says the girl who roots for the most obvious college sports teams imaginable, I realize). I would love the Bengals to win the Super Bowl, or heck, even a playoff game, something which hasn’t happened since I was six-years-old. Still though, there is something character building about sticking with a team that doesn’t always succeed. I want nothing more than my nephews to adopt my teams because I always say rooting for Cincinnati builds character. It helps you deal with disappointment. It helps you find the silver linings. It helps you appreciate Mohamed Sanu.

It also helps that he has a personality that can crack me up a little bit. While I generally find my friends who use too many exclamation points and emojis in their Tweets somewhat obnoxious, I can’t help but find @Mo_12_Sanu’s feed hilarious. Here’s how he wished Andy Dalton a happy birthday. Like a 12-year-old:

Happy Birthday to my boy andydalton14 !!! Hope you have a good one bro🎈🎊🎉🎁 http://t.co/EidnOSYndC

— Mohamed Sanu (@Mo_12_Sanu)

October 29, 2014

This should annoy me, but for some reason it doesn’t. Part of it is, this kid was born in 1989, so he is effectively an infant. Moreso though, it is that a 6’2” intimidating football player shows the enthusiasm of Taylor Swift about his QB’s birthday, hanging with his little cousins, and he finds it necessary to persistently tweet his horoscope (he’s a Leo, if you’re wondering). It’s like why I love Bengals safety Taylor Mays because he has a Lululemon backpack collection and likes to wear jerseys baring his midriff. It is the perfection of not being on top, the team in the middle, or the number two wide receiver. You may not always end up on top, but you have endless opportunities to catch people by surprise.

Mohamed Sanu has been nothing but a pleasant surprise for me, so, as I come off what I can safely say was the worst month of my life, I look to November and a game with a vulnerable Jacksonville secondary tomorrow where I can call out “Sanuuuuuuu” with a smile on my face, knowing I have learned that the lesson that it is no fun to like the obvious and the easy. It is more gratifying to like the ones that may not always be top notch, but will surprise you, enthuse you, and leave you with that wonderful feeling that you appreciate something that other people just haven’t realized is amazing yet.