TITLE: This American Life
NETWORK: Showtime
AIR DATE: May 4, 2008
STARRING: Ira Glass
CREATED BY: Ira Glass

"The world is just absolutely f*cking spectacular."

That line comes not from a rich kid or a traditionally lucky person but a young man who barely has movement of his face and can only speak by gently moving his finger to type his thoughts in the season premiere of Showtime's This American Life. In a modern story of what constitutes identity and escape similar to the brilliant The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the debut of the second season of This American Life is a stunner, a must-see on every level. And, amazingly, the second episode is just as fascinating, if not quite as moving. I'll admit, even though I review a LOT of television (for more, check out here) and have a deep love for what Showtime has done in the last few years with personal faves like Dexter and Weeds, I was unfamiliar with season one of Ira Glass' This American Life, a six-episode, half-hour-a-piece documentary series about unusual stories from around the country based on his excellent National Public Radio program. After watching the first two episodes of season two for review, I went back and watched season one on demand. The first frame was good. The opening pair of the second frame is great. The show feels more confident and the first two stories are insanely riveting. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

The first episode devotes almost its entirety - after a fun opening about urban horse riders in Philly - to the story of that young man with barely any movement but an active mind and heart. What would be a natural story of a boy turning into a man by trying to leave home becomes inspirational because of the true disabilities faced by this story's hero. He can't really live on his own, but he's become so dependent on his mother, the only woman he ever sees, that it's led to massive depression. He can barely move and he's gone stir crazy. So he puts a posting on Craigslist for a new assistant and, after that goes well, he puts one up for a girlfriend. Yep, it's a love story. And it's better than you could imagine with one of the most amazing twists I've seen in a TV doc. At one point, creator/interviewer Ira Glass asks him who he would have play him in a movie, to which he responds that he'd like Johnny Depp or Edward Norton because they're "badasses." For the rest of the episode, our hero's narration and typed thoughts are read by none other than Mr. Depp himself. It's fantastic.

The second episode is completely different but just as riveting. "Two Wars" tells the story of two young foreigners with very different American experiences. The first involves an Iraqi who comes to America to find out what people think about his people and the war. To do so, he simply plops down a booth in small towns around the country with the placard "Ask an Iraqi". What he finds through his cultural experiment is fascinating. Some people want to know simple things, like if there are fat Iraqis, but, of course, most want to talk about the war. And I do mean talk. It's an amazing part of the American persona that instead of asking an Iraqi, more people are interested in telling him what life was like under Saddam and why we had to go to war than asking him about his life. As the young man points out, we all agree that Saddam was bad, but the support thinking refuses to recognize that it could actually be worse now. But it's not all dark. A TV highlight of year so far has to be the little girl who sits down at the booth and says, quite bluntly, "I've been waiting to apologize to an Iraqi for the last three years." The other story in this episode is an off-beat, fun one about a Bulgarian who simply refuses to tend his front lawn and the rift it causes between him and his wife. It's clever but doesn't have the weight of the first two stories, which is where American Life should focus its lens more often. At its best, This American Life reminds me of the best work of Errol Morris, the movies like Mr. Death and Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, flicks that looked at unheralded, unknown parts of the fabric of humanity. If it continues to improve as it has from season one to season two, the show could be on for a long time.