I tune in every week for the joy of watching Ozzy’s genuinely moral, selfless, humble, and spiritual game contrast with Coach and Brandon’s hypocritical one. Both gaming strategies involve aspects of excess, but the different ways to bring excess into the game speak to the split between Ozzy’s genuine game and Coach and Brandon’s phony game. Coach and Brandon’s excess ultimately comes through over-the-top performances of religious faith, which humorously and ironically point out Coach’s ego-centered motives and Brandon’s mentally unstable personality during moments when they claim to be charitable. Coach’s numerous prayer sessions are less about serving God and more about rallying the tribe to put faith in him as a leader who dictates what cast members to vote off, with the end goal being to put Coach in the final two with someone who would receive fewer votes in the final tribal council. While Coach tries to bring his tribe members together through prayer—a gaming strategy of unity, he strategically plays the game just as much through one-on-one or two-on-one secretive meetings where he manipulatively plots out whom to send home, how to blind side the competitor, and how to have the numbers always work to make him least vulnerable. The tensions between Coach’s ego-centered goals and ego-less claims come to a head in excessive moments, such as when the cast members had to paint themselves for a challenge. Coach painted a cross on his face, prayed during the physical competition to serve God properly, and then quickly gathered his team together for a prayer after they won, making sure he was in the center of the prayer circle.

On the other hand, Ozzy is a servant leader, which is central to many religions. Ozzy’s leadership comes through not in making sure that the numbers will serve him to advance to the next round but by sacrificing his body and potentially his place in the game so that his tribe can continue on successfully. At the first tribal council after the merger, Ozzy offered his immunity necklace to Savaii tribe member Whitney so that she could be saved and so the tribe wouldn’t be hurt. Ozzy also came up with the brilliant strategy to send himself to Redemption Island instead of the tribe voting for Cochran, which it wanted to do, so that he could win the challenge at Redemption Island and then later rejoin Savaii after the merger and give them a numbers advantage. (This worked out, but the merged tribe later sent Ozzy back to Redemption because Cochran turned on Ozzy and others.) A moving moment on this season occured when the members of Upolu sent Cochran to Redemption Island, and Ozzy greeted Cochran with kindness, charitably offering him a space in his covered sleeping area. Most people would have shunned a rat like Cochran who ruined their tribe.

Ozzy is the most moral and ethical competitor in this season of Survivor, but the series delightfully packages him in epic scenes of transcendental religious communion with nature. Ozzy’s been on Redemption for a while, and he’ll probably play his way back into the game. Episodes with Ozzy on Redemption show him communing with nature, swimming with fishes, and climbing to the top of hundred-foot high trees. Long haired and long bearded, Ozzy looks like Jesus. He constantly offers tribe members and people on Redemption Island fish, a symbol of Christian faith. Ozzy is so excessively coded as a Christ figure that his fans are awaiting his resurrection from Redemption to the game.

There are often religious people on Survivor, but there have never been so many of them offering us so much viewing pleasure. For instance, last season when several tribe mates joined together for prayer and Biblical interpretation, eventual season winner Boston Rob looked at them like an alligator calmly waiting in the water to attack his prey and noted that, even though he’s religious, religion has no part of this game and he’ll send them packing. He was right for that season. But things change between seasons. Last season I cheered for Boston Rob’s cunningness; this season I’m rooting for Ozzy. His selfless, humble, packaged-in-excess spiritual style has won me over.

One night as I flipped through the channels, I came face to face with Brad Womack, this year’s bachelor. His vacant look, mannequin smile, and pumped-up physique reminded me of everything I loved about The Bachelor: An Officer and a Gentleman, the last season I watched, where a beefcake guy walked around with his shirt off, said cheesy lines such as “I’m in Heaven when I’m with Bevin” (the name of a female contestant), and spouted every romantic cliché possible. I figured the new season with Brad Womack would show how hollow an unquestioned embrace of traditional patriarchal romance and romantic coupling can be. Mainly, I thought I would be experiencing the carnivalesque pleasures of reality dating shows that Jonathan Gray has astutely noted, ones that can subvert gender roles and patriarchy. I hadn’t seen Brad’s previous season when he left two women at the altar and incurred the scorn of viewers who believed in fairytale romance.

Normally I find the carnivalesque pleasures of certain reality series or subgenres painful. They lead to such corny moments that are both hard and delightful to watch, and usually the painful moments question normative assumptions about our identities. I’m all for this type of pain. It’s masochistic, but fun.

I think I’ve found a different type of pain on this season of The Bachelor. While this season has carnivalesque moments filled with over-the-top romantic clichés, love-crazed women, and a zombiefied prince, I’m amazed by the way the season has the patriarchal past impinging on the happiness of the present and the hopes of the future. So far episodes have spent an inordinate amount of time explaining how Brad went into three years of intensive therapy after ditching his two love interests in his last season, and Brad goes on about how he had commitment issues because he felt abandoned by his father at a young age. Brad recounts numerous stories of his father coming back into his life, only to leave quickly and devastate our beau. I was particularly surprised when Brad talked about how he turned to body building in an effort to overcome his emotional weaknesses that he developed from being abandoned. Even he concedes that his inflated body is meaningless. Brad claims he came back on The Bachelor in hopes of freeing himself from the past and finding happiness in the present and future.

A few contestants add to the theme of patriarchal ruins destroying the happiness of the present and future. Emily seems trapped in unhappiness because her husband died in a plane crash on a business trip, yet she has come on The Bachelor in hopes of discovering happiness in life. And Ashley S. talks to Brad about the devastating sudden death of her father and how she is trying to find peace in the present. Brad has developed what I call the “patriarchal crisis” look. Every time a woman tells Brad of a devastating loss of a man in her life, he clenches his lips and looks down to the right. It seems to be the image of the season.

Sometimes I feel this season of The Bachelor shares more in common with Vertigo than it does with other seasons; however, maybe I haven’t seen enough previous seasons to make such a grand claim. But I feel like I’m watching a traumatized man re-enter the same love story when history might not allow him to find happiness this time around either.

This season is painful to watch, but not in a fun, carnivalesque way. Rather, the pain seems to be much more serious and reveals the emotional trauma that we can experience when we blindly submit ourselves to normative ideas of patriarchy and the nuclear family. Common sense tells me that the producers aren’t consciously promoting this, but it appears prominently in this season because of casting.

Where is this theme going, and what are we to make of it? Perhaps this theme about the past and patriarchy will simply die out and be replaced by the carnivalesque that dominates reality dating shows. I’d be fine with that, since I initially started to re-watch The Bachelor to experience some subversive fun. But I hope that if the season continues with issues of the past and happiness, it envisions a coupling that doesn’t fall back on assumptions of a good man simply being there for his family—as if that in and of itself is good enough—or a good woman simply standing by her man just because he is there and alive. If issues of the past continue to concern the series, can The Bachelor work through a vision of love that truly frees these people from the ruins of patriarchy instead of redeeming patriarchal roles for them?  Promos for the season hint that Brad might be abandoned by the woman he proposes to because she can’t free herself from the past. If this season continues with its Vertigo trajectory, I hope the final rose ceremony isn’t on an exotic ocean-side cliff with nuns lurking around. If it is, I hope the producers attach Brad’s love interests to bungee cords and harnesses.

I was born and raised in Indiana, Pennsylvania—the hometown of Jimmy Stewart. My childhood home was just five blocks from Stewart’s childhood home. I never knew who Jimmy Stewart was until my Cub Scout troop marched in a parade honoring the actor. The first image I saw of him was on my Jimmy Stewart Parade badge. During the parade, we marched past the site of the hardware store that Stewart’s father once owned. There, Stewart himself sat on a podium and watched the event. I never took Cub Scouts seriously, but I was moved when Stewart gave us the Cub Scout salute. When the event ended, however, I was much more delighted to have another badge on my uniform than to have seen a Hollywood actor in person.

As I got older, I grew to know the schmaltzy It’s a Wonderful Life image my town celebrated every holiday season: every Christmas, a “You Are Now in Bedford Falls” sign stood where the Stewart hardware store used to be. A holiday light show featured George lassoing the moon. Indiana presented It’s a Wonderful Life as a film celebrating simplistic, traditional values. Stewart symbolized the typical nice, small-town guy.

As the steel and coal industries crumbled in Western Pennsylvania during the 1980s, my town embraced its view of Stewart for commercial purposes. People tried their hands at entrepreneurship by exploiting Stewart. We had Jimmy’s Restaurant and It’s a Wonderful Cup. About the same time, my town honored Stewart more and more, naming a street and airport after him. We erected a statue of Stewart on the lawn of the courthouse, created a museum for him, and posted a sign letting people know the exact place of his birth. My hometown celebrated Stewart for all of the good things that small-town life had to offer in an effort to fix its cracked economic base.

For me, Jimmy Stewart and my hometown became one. As a teenager, I hated my hometown and small-town life in general. I thought it lacked urban sophistication, and the cliquey atmosphere was stifling. Stewart dominated the visual iconography of the town. His face on the courthouse lawn came to symbolize everything I hated. Why on earth would I watch the film on which my town based its image?

I wound up going to undergraduate school in my hometown at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. As an English major, my goal was to study hard and go to graduate school as far away as possible. I took “The Art of the Film” my last semester. Slowly the class started to mean more to me than my literature courses, and as I was deciding which graduate program to attend, the direction of my life changed when my film professor showed Vertigo. Stewart mesmerized me as he transformed from his small-town, nice-guy image to a monster on screen. So much about the film moved me, but mostly I remember thinking Hitchcock uncovered a truth about small-town America: beneath the façade of friendliness rests some really horrific, sick stuff. I enrolled in Georgetown’s graduate English program because of the film studies faculty there.

Since seeing Vertigo, I’ve grown to love Jimmy Stewart, but I still actively avoided It’s a Wonderful Life. I’m taken by the subtle darkness Stewart can portray, but after watching Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in graduate school, I was reminded of Stewart’s good-guy image. Being that Mr. Smith was a Capra-Stewart film, it confirmed my conviction not to watch It’s a Wonderful Life.

I decided to give the film a try for Antenna’s Late to the Party feature. The first 90 minutes pleasantly surprised me. Sure, Stewart is a nice guy willing to stand up against corruption, but the movie also exposes the physical, emotional, economic, and career sacrifices one has to make to stay in a small town. This was not the schmaltzy film about the blessings of small-town life that my hometown had presented to me. The last 45 minutes certainly delivered the cheese I feared, but I wasn’t offended by the rosy portraits celebrating small-town life. Rather, they easily resolved complex tensions of small-town life. George represses so much to stay in this town, but he releases his anger only because of the loss of $8,000. From there, everything becomes rushed—George’s anger at his family, his suicidal thoughts, his economic despair, and his redemption.

I was also struck by how odd it is that Indiana, PA, chooses to remember Stewart through a film that basically says life in a small town is crap, and you can only be saved from its traps through divine intervention. I should have watched the film as a teen because it confirmed my feelings at the time. As an adult who has an interest in cultural geography and has embraced his rural Western PA roots, I’m more concerned with how It’s a Wonderful Life participates in a larger cultural process that simplifies the complexities of small-town life to a few traits in order to offer an equally simplistic notion that life would be better elsewhere, particularly in a city.

When I travel to see my parents over the holidays, I plan to visit the Jimmy Stewart Museum. Since I haven’t been there in years, I’m interested to reexamine how that site remembers Stewart. But no matter how my town remembers Jimmy Stewart, I am now, as an adult, quite proud to be from his hometown.

To someone not concerned with sports talk radio in general or New York sports talk radio in particular, this debate probably appears to be pointless—another piece of meaningless trivia in jock culture. But it has fascinating implications for how audiences for sports talk media interact with different screen cultures. Mike’d Up is a converged program, airing simultaneously on AM radio on New York’s WFAN, on cable television on YES (The Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network, which airs regionally in the New York area and nationally through DirecTV), and on the web at WFAN.com. Francesa has been WFAN’s evening commute guy for the past twenty-one years, someone who could tap into the ready-made market of people stuck in their cars for a substantial period of time with nothing to do but listen to the radio. Announcing the names of the callers’ towns became a hallmark of Francesa’s shows, first on Mike and the Mad Dog (1989-2008) and then on Mike’d Up. In the spring of 2010, eight years after it began simalcasting Francesa’s shows, YES asked the host to stop announcing the names of his callers because it was information irrelevant to the television program. It was also less work for the production staff just to type the name of the caller. Francesca honored YES’s request, but commuters and radio listeners called the show and expressed their deep disappointment about this change to the program’s format.

The debate about town names raises issues about the difference between airing live radio for commuters and producing live television for the home viewer. The settings of the car and the home offer audiences different screens for interfacing with the show.

Listening to Francesa during a commute demands that audience members look at the car window as a screen. The car window continually offers commuters a moving picture of their material environment. The window grounds commuters in a physical location at a present moment. However, the town names of callers allow listeners to construct an imagined regional map, an extended network of communication of which they are one point in their material environment that they comprehend through the car window. As American Studies scholar Kent Ryden notes, while maps eschew the discursive and cultural construction of a region because they fixate on measurement, not meaning, they also inspire imagination in viewers and allow them to imbue the map with their own meanings of the region. The constant fixation of the town names of callers on Mike’d Up gives commuters a map through which they can position their own feelings for and ideas about a region as they view a very small piece of that region through their car windows.

The screen cultures present during YES’s airing of Mike’d Up are drastically different. YES wanted information displayed on the television screen to pertain to sports, not to callers. If you watch Mike’d Up on YES, you’ll encounter an ESPN Sports Center aesthetic. The bottom of the screen presents scores and statistics of ongoing games and the times for upcoming games, as well as relevant statistics for those upcoming games. YES envisions onscreen text as a type of sports news, not as a billboard to display the towns for people who call in to Mike’d Up. For YES, Mike’d Up is not a commuter show. It’s a sports show competing with shows on ESPN at the same time, and hence, it needs to offer the latest sports news—just like its competition does.

As someone with a substantial commute in the New York City region, I’m delighted that radio listeners won this battle. Because the area has such a huge commuter population, the needs of commuters and listeners matter a great deal. Francesa has returned to announcing the towns of callers, and listeners seem to be very happy now . . . except when the Mets are the topic of conversation.