What I meant to say about Freaks and Geeks was that it is good in the way normal people who love what they’re doing come up with. It’s crafted but often flawed, opaque, meaty, mostly obvious and simple. Warm. It makes you feel good and, in this particular case, happy. If you like the people behind it you end up liking the thing, and as previously mentioned, I like Freaks and Geeks. But I can accept that plenty of people aren’t particularly impressed (it got cancelled 2/3 through the first season due to poor ratings).
Then there is a kind of goodness that is more scary than “nice”. Bach doesn’t sound good because he loved what he was doing, he sounds good because he’s on a mission from God. He was prolific to the point of nonchalance, he doesn’t seem to have made a lot of fuss about himself and he probably wasn’t much fun to be around. But there can’t be a composer, musician or serious music listener who isn’t impressed by his work. It just sounds perfect.
Of course, there’s no tv equivalent of Bach (as far as I know). A television show is too complicated a thing to make with a “perfect” touch. Maybe something like Angels in America represents a serious attempt. Sopranos is also obviously distinct from what I described earlier (I’ll call it “Tarantino-good”) – it’s too huge, organised, expensive and Shakespearian to allow a brief description of motivation or nature.
