![[TV]](http://www.christopherstreetjournal.com/topicons/tv.gif)
This may make me a total dork, but I don't care.
I love American Dreams. I love American Dreams. I love American Dreams. I love American Dreams. I love American Dreams. I love American Dreams.
There. I've said it. I'm on record. I love this dorky little show.
Every week I watch, expecting to finally see the man behind the curtain, expecting to finally feel manipulated, expecting to finally think that Joey Lawrence with a haircut is, well...still Joey Lawrence.
But I don't. Instead, every week I watch it and I am filled with joy. Pure, unabashed joy.
Let's start with Meg. I love Meg Pryor. She's every girl that I wanted to be and wanted to be friends with in High School. She's smart and funny. She's a good dancer, she's popular with the fellas. She's exuberantly happy. And she's nice. Now some will say that there is no such thing as a nice adolescent girl, and they will be right. All girls between the ages of, say 13 and 17 are total bitches. I was. Everyone I knew at that age was. I suspect that they still are. Roxanne, for example, is a total bitch. But not Meg. Meg is a Good Person. She is a little defiant, sure. She talks back to her parents, yeah. But she also finds a way to surreptitiously teach her brother to dance, so he can take his girlfriend to the Winter Formal and not be embarrassed. She's that kind of good. And at the crusty old age of 36, I find that touching.
The other characters are rich and deep, too. Helen, the dutiful housewife who just discovered Tolstoy and thinks that maybe there's life beyond tuna casserole. Jack, her husband--so much like my Grandfather--who sees the world changing faster than he can order it not to. Jack is a tragic figure, destined to be a grumpy, disenfranchised old man, like so many men of his age became. They knew a world that they liked, a world that made sense to them and then, one day, it was all gone and they were left with a TV dinner and a wife who read Tolstoy. Many men didn't recover from that. I know my Grandfather didn't. JJ, the High School senior who wants his life to be different than his father's...and more importantly, wants his life to be different than his father wants it to be, so much so that he is willing to risk a scholarship to Notre Dame just to break away from his father's oppressive need to control him. Patty is every annoying little sister or brother, ever. Because of that, I can't stand her, just like I couldn't stand my brother when he was 10. I think that I get glimpses of the person she might be, though...if Meg doesn't kill her first.
Finally, there's Will. A little boy with a literal mind who wants answers to some pretty heady questions. Questions like, why did that man shoot the president and what happens to us when we die. Will will be a philosophy major at Berkeley in the 70s, I'm pretty sure.
John is sure that Meg is destined to be a "damn, dirty hippie"--a phrase my Grandfather would have used. She'll be 19 in 1967, you see, and she's already making friends with minorities and beatnik record score drones--and, this week, she was listening to Bob Dylan. Plus, you know...Roxanne. He may be onto something there.
I just hope that we get to see it.
(For the non-TiVo-enabled among us, American Dreams is on Sundays at 8:00 on NBC)