You get to say, that pretty person is very stupid; they get to say, that smart person is very ugly, or fat, or whatever you are. And even if it's not true -- and honestly, if you're a grownup at all you should have crossed the lines at least halfway by now -- you get to think it's true, and in this way you never have to measure your lacks, because they don't matter anyway, because the particular things that were handed to you are much, much better. And underneath the hate is a covetousness that borders on, or parallels, or very often hides, a very deep desire indeed.

So with that little taste of Jason's first experience of obsolescence which just happens to be coinciding with his nineteenth epiphany about being a better man, and his other thing about having killed a man and gotten neither absolution nor accolades about it, Andy tenderly pulls Bud up in front of the lunch crowd, and traces the line back even further, to a generation so afraid of change they'd rather drop out altogether: "Get on up here, Bud. Get up here, young man."

After much talk about Bud as father figure and sheriff -- and confirmation that the Gomer Pyle guy is, in fact, Kevin (from the books, in which he was not Gomer Pyle) -- they give him permission to dance, which is the thing he loves the best. He accepts the dancing boots they got him, to a round of applause, and thanks everybody. He smells the leather, and starts into a speech -- but three generations and half of Merlotte's away, the high school jocks are screaming for Kitch Maynard. Andy, one level down, becomes sheriff, and classily ignores the jocks.

(Have you ever seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre II? That movie is precisely and explicitly about this same lineage, up to and including a sort of horrific part where they try to get WWI wheelchair grandpa to kill/rape this girl, and thus win back his manhood, and end up having to pretty much do it for him, like cutting up your kid's steak while letting him hold the knife and fork limply in his hands. And you find yourself sort of feeling sorry for this old guy because they love him so much and all they want him to do is to murder this girl, and it's so frustrating that he can't do it, like, there are actually tears of disappointment and sadness in their eyes -- and still with these boners just from being a part of this experience together -- because even the definition of "man" seems a little less secure and little harder to come by with every generation, and they need all the tradition and handing-down of manhood they can get. Awesome, awesome movie. When you think about straight guys this way, and the absolutely untenable position they are in all day long, it makes it slightly more difficult to get annoyed with their bullshit.