Ezra on the politics of Knocked Up

Apparently a few bloggers on either side have deemed Knocked Up to be a pro-life movie since Katherine Heigl's character makes a choice not to have an abortion. Ezra volleys masterfully:

The flick is pro-choice in the most literal sense of the term. Katherine Heigl's character receives advice in both directions, and then makes a decision -- a decision the audience may very well conclude is the wrong one. But she has a choice; nothing is forced on her, and the most explicit scene on abortion features an eloquent speech by her mother advising her to end the pregnancy because, at this point, she's not ready, and these are not the right circumstances. Heigl, it turns out, disagrees, but that's a perfectly allowable, and indeed respectable, decision within the choice framework.

Due to my eerily busy travel schedule, it'll probably take a week or two to get to the twilight showing at Quality 16 (the only theater in Ann Arbor I step foot in, for appropriately complicated reasons), but I'm pumped. You see, as my wife can embarrassingly confirm, I was a massively strange fan of Seth Rogen's character on Freaks and Geeks. His appearance in The 40-Year Old Virgin made the movie for me, and now, Judd Apatow gives him his own movie? Beyond my wildest Freaks and Geeks dreams.

I had a huge crush on the quasi-nerd version of Linda Cardellini, completely unable to predict that she'd turn into the hot nurse on ER, the sort of neo-Abby of emergency resident dreams. Lindsay Weir was the archetypal cute high school brunette smart-girl nobody noticed in their apoplectic fit of adolescent tunnelvision, not the Ennis-seducing blonde saloon girl from Brokeback Mountain. So Cardellini's ascent into mainstream hotness makes me uncomfortable in that pimply, meso-pubescent sort of way. I might have been able to manage a coffee date with Lindsay Weir, but Samantha Taggart would be making fun of the awkward medical student to her fellow nurses by the fridge in the conference room. So that paves the clear path for Seth Rogen to be my official favorite Freaks and Geeks alum (a venerable position, indeed). All hail Seth Rogen!