For some reason I just recorded this off of NBC (no way I watched the commercials, I just thought it'd be fun to watch the film as it used to be shown, fast-forwarding through adverts) and finished watching it.

The burden and stress George carries and instead of just talking to Mary or friends that are all over Bedford Falls, he cracks and falls apart, his family getting a brunt of it as did his uncle, an uncle who never could be the leader, needing a family member of stronger ilk to bear the weight of dealing with a Potter. Today the Potters are all consuming and despite the very nature of George's strong fortified integrity, those strongholds would be flooded like a detonated dam, the explosives lobbyists, with lots of rentals replacing homeowners. Just the same, I love to live a little while in this world, a world where heroes are just good people who sacrificed dreams in favor of helping others reach theirs, to secure a living place to call their own despite economic hardship, setbacks, and entanglements that threaten that very possibility. While Sam Wainwright became a big time businessman, and Mary could have married him, there is something that made my eyes well up, when a family made their new home out of Potter's shack, driven there by George and Mary, watching Sam drive away...Mary's arm was around George, and George's arm was around Mary. She was happy and he was happy. And yet George, for a moment, after hearing Sam remind him he could have been a rich man on the ground floor of his plastics factory, kicked the door of his beaten-up old jallopy, regretting his decision to stay on at the Building and Loan.

George has those moments of regret. And yet, so many could have been victims and were not because he made the sacrifices. There are good people all over the place, I try to keep that in mind despite how easy it is to fall into those cynical traps where I could just collapse and crack, as George does at the bar, gnawing at his knuckles, quivering near panic attack. But the man had friends.