My Final Verdict on Monsters: The Erik & Lyle Menendez Story

 

 

In my initial review of Monsters: The Erik & Lyle Menendez story I put forth the argument that this season far more clearly was a spiritual heir to American Crime Story than Dahmer was. This would turn out to be more accurate then I know, though had I remembered recent history it shouldn’t have been.

In the penultimate episode of the season Erik is told that he has to clean the floors because “they’re expecting an MVP today.” The day in question in June 17, 1994 and Erik is cleaning when he sees the infamous white Bronco chase that The People Vs. O.J. Simpson famously showed us every side of its landmark second episode.

Now we get an angle as Simpson (who we hear but never see) is walked into the cell with the guards making it clear how much they admire him. Erik (Cooper Koch) says hello and O.J.’s actually surprised to know that they’re still in there. O.J. makes it clear that the domestic abuse charge is B.S “Nicole’s the one who beat him” he says with an arrogance we never saw from Cuba Gooding Jr. Erik tells him that he knows Robert Shapiro is on his team and points out how badly he screwed him over. The last line of the episode is telling: “You should talk about a plea.” The final episode ends with the infamous reading of the verdict in O.J.’s trial. By this point Lyle now thinks this is exactly the kind of thing they should use for their case, and by this points it’s pretty clear the only person who has any illusions about the kind of people she’s representing is Leslie Grossman herself. That she seems willing to cling to it even by the end of the trial and the final verdict says far more about her then it does about the idea that there was a miscarriage of justice; well before that point I’d realized just the kind of monsters that Erik and Lyle were.

The direct link between the two trials is no doubt one reason that Ryan Murphy decided to tell this story on Netflix instead of part of American Crime Story. The second reason is far clearer. I came away from the third episode having some doubts about culpability when it came to why Erik and Lyle committed the shocking murders of their parents. And indeed in the next two episodes Murphy and his writers lean hard into the idea that Lyle and Erik were guilty of some of the most horrific and graphic abuse possible. ‘The Hurt Man’, essentially a monologue by Lyle and certainly the episode Cooper Koch will submit for Emmy consideration, is a tour de force of television because Lyle describes it to Leslie in such graphic and detailed terms that there’s no way you can’t believe it didn’t happen. The episode is the exact halfway point of the season and it is the pinnacle of the empathy we feel for Erik and Lyle. From that point on the writers choose to take us in a completely different direction.

‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ is the longest episode of the season, nearly an hour and five minutes. It basically tells us the love story of Jose (Javier Bardem) and Kitty (Chloe Sevigny). The first lines Sevigny says is that she hates her kids and we’re inclined to belief this episode will tell us what monsters they were. That’s not the story we get.

The episode tells us the story of Lyle and Erik from the perspective of their parents and it shows them in a very different light. At this point we’ve only seen their side of the story; now we see them in the past – and they come across as entitled, spoiled brats who are the picture of entitlement. We see Jose look aggrieved but not angry and tellingly we see Kitty trying to help her sons with their horrible script both of them acting horribly to her – and then seeing her have a seizure and the two of them just watch. This seems to lead to a change in Jose and he seems determined to take responsibility for his actions. We see him making restitution for the crimes his sons committed – and them being horrible at apologizing – we see him ending his extramarital affair and giving up smoking and drinking, and we see both he and Kitty renewing their love for each other.

The episode argues that abuse may have taken place, perhaps even some sexual, though Jose refuses to admit it. What it does reveal, however, is that both Jose and Kitty were subject to physical abuse when they were children – and in a late night phone call, Jose calls his mother demanding she apologize and she denies it. It’s not an excuse for what Jose and Kitty did if it happened (and the next episodes will start to throw into doubt) but it’s definitely an explanation.

During the next two episodes we see the first trial taking place and we also get a very clear hint that everything Lyle and Erik said was an act. We see them manipulating their friends in phone calls, constantly trying to manipulate them with letters, and perhaps more tellingly not doing a great job with their mock testimony. By this point Dominic Dunne (Nathan Lane), who never believed in their story points out his own investigation and the numerous holes in it that, tellingly, Leslie seems willing to overlook. When Lyle testifies Dunne talks to Leslie and tells him: “He’s either the victim of the most horrible abuse I’ve ever heard or a complete psychopath and what horrifies me is I can’t tell the difference.” It’s telling that by this point we’re beginning to think the latter but Leslie is still convinced of the former.

The next episode “Seismic Shifts” shows Erik back to the manic attitude, certain that there’s a movie and TV show and he wants them to cast who’s going to play him (It’s telling for Erik that with the choice of every possible movie star, he picks B-Movie action star Brian Bosworth for him.) The episode talks about both the earthquake but also how momentum is beginning to shift. Erik’s testimony is famously comes across horribly in the media. Leslie gives an impassioned and incredibly long argument to the jury and the verdict ends in a mistrial. Her reaction is “Blame the men.”

Immediately afterwards she interviews the female jurors to find out where they went wrong with the male jurors. After their finish one of them comes to her and says that the problem wasn’t with Erik and Lyle but with you. After this, things begin to deteriorate badly. First the money begins to dry up and Erik’s attorney resigns in large part because of a book that reveals all the horrible secrets about the manipulations they gave. Leslie goes to see Lyle and tells them that things are going badly. She wants to leave the case and Lyle starts to blame her for a horrible approach to the defense.

I come away from Monsters most unable to understand Leslie Grossman, played by Ari Gaynor. Despite how bad things deteriorate well before the second trial, despite everything she knows and sees with her clients, she refuses to believe in that there isn’t some mitigating factor in their actions. Perhaps she’s pot committed to it at this point, perhaps she feels her reputation is being impugned.

Much of the final episode deals with the prosecution which we didn’t see in the first trial. Carcetti, played by that brilliant talent Paul Adelstein, is remarkable as he paints a picture that fits into what we the viewer already know about Erik and Lyle and now is backed up with evidence. The episode also does much to damage what empathy we had for Grossman. Impassioned before, she comes across as something of a harpy, basically objecting at every word out of Carcetti’s mouth, constantly moving for a mistrial and eventually starting to play hangman with Erik as if she genuinely doesn’t care about appearances any more. You almost wonder if she was going to try for an appeal on the idea of inadequate council in the aftermath given that she plays it worse than any attorney I’ve seen in the most melodramatic 1990s David E. Kelley series.

The trial ends with both Lyle and Erik convicted of first-degree murder and as we see they may have only escaped the death penalty due to fate (though ironically, it is a male juror that saves them rather than a female one) That Leslie comes away from this still convinced that of all the clients she’s acquitted in her career that Erik and Lyle are the least dangerous leads to a DA saying: “Leslie. They shot their parents while they were asleep.”

The final reason why Monsters most likely airs on Netflix and not as part of American Crime Story is that, unlike any of his previous incarnations on that classic show, Murphy and his writers are very clear who the victims are and that there is no mitigation for the killers. The final scene involves that fishing trip we’ve heard talked about multiple times and a fictionalized conversation between the parents on one side and the children on the other. We see Jose and Kitty looking relaxed and genuinely happy and Lyle and Erik making it very clear what they have planned and that they feel no remorse about it. There’s none of the uncertainty we’ve seen in other episodes, none of the doubt. We’re looking at two stone cold killers.

I’m not the kind to argue about the mitigating factors in the trials of Erik and Lyle Menendez. Coming away from Monsters I come across with one impression: they’re guilty as hell and they deserve to spend the rest of their lives in prison. Even if the abuse allegations were true – and by the time Monsters is over, it’s clear the writers are leaning against it -  their actions are that of entitled, spoiled brats who will get no sympathy from me. They don’t know how lucky they are to still be alive. I’ve never been in favor of capital punishment as a deterrent but it’s hard for even the most bleeding heart liberal (Leslie Grossman types) to not think “In this case….”

As to Monsters it’s very much worthy to be a contender for Emmys in the months to come. Koch has been the early favorite but I’d argue Chavez’s work is the more remarkable. Watching his scenes being driven to the memorial of his parents and then to and from the courtroom for his murder trial six years later is terrifying because it shows a man who is delusional and insane in a way that Lyle just isn’t. Nominations will likely follow for Javier Bardem and there’s an excellent case to be made both for Gaynor and Nathan Lane, who are remarkable represented either side of the debate on the Menendez trial.

Justice was served in the Menendez case: I come away from Monsters absolutely certain of that. I know there will always be people who want to believe in mitigating factors or that there’s something redeemable in both of them. I have as little use for them as Dunne does as the trials continue. I understand that some are using Monsters to argue for early release for Erik and Lyle. Those people clearly didn’t see the series I did – or if they did believed the message Grossman was telling and not what actually happened.

My score: 5 Stars.

 

 

 

Back To The Island: How Lost's Season Finales Answered Most of Your Questions (And If You Think They Didn't, That's Because They Did Their Job)

 

 

The timeline during each season of OZ was frequently compacted or expanded depending on what storylines Tom Fontana chose to deal with. Even the most devoted Sopranos fan is still wondering what happened to Furio or the Russian in The Pine Barrens. Even the best days of 24 would have some characters disappear before the end – not die off, just leave and not come back – and most seasons came to an end with many minor storylines involving characters never resolved. (We never learned the truth about the Warner family in Day 2, to state one big one.) And we spent entire final season of Buffy with the writers never explaining how the First suddenly became active or how it was able to shift-shape into Buffy who was, last we checked, still alive.

All of which is to say that it seems rather strange that so many fans of Lost are still complaining louder than most fan groups about the writers never answering all our questions. To be fair Lost was a genre series and genre fans are particularly noteworthy for screaming the loudest about the writers screwing up the endgame of any series that involves sci-fi. This always makes me wonder if fans of TV shows have any understanding of how the business of television works.

No one writes a series, genre or otherwise, with the endgame planned out in advance. This was doubly so when it came to network dramas when Lost debuted and honestly well past its leaving the air. It’s one thing for your show to be picked up and then it has to become a success. After that then you have to deal with two conflicting factors: world building and the network’s desire to suck as much as they can out of a hit show. In the 2000s, those still conflicted and it wasn’t until the middle of Season 3 – not coincidentally during the weakest stretch of Lost – that Lindelof and Cuse were able to convince ABC to let them end the series on their own terms, something that shows like The X-Files never had the option to.

The larger argument, fans will justifiably point out, is that ABC gave them three seasons to wrap the whole thing up, therefore ostensibly giving Cuse and Lindelof more than enough time to come up with an appropriate ending then. That’s a fair point but again gives them to much credit. It argues that the writers then would have written the series finale in say 2007 and then worked their way backwards to retcon the show so that it all fit together. Again television doesn’t work that way by necessity and if they had done it that way the final seasons would have been far more mechanical then they were, which would have led to more backlash.

The main reason I find all of these daggers that are being thrust at Lost even fifteen years after the series ended is the fact that the writers were basically answering every question they set up during the course of the series very effectively. Walking away from Lost the writers answered somewhere between 80 and ninety percent of the mysteries throughout the show, which is an incredibly high average compared to series like The X-Files and indeed some later shows like Westworld  or Game of Thrones. The difference was a lot of the questions it answered weren’t noticed was because of the other thing Lost was always better at then most mythology shows and indeed a lot of the dramas of that period. The writers were so incredible at revealing the human drama that you didn’t realize the mysteries you’d been wondering about for years had been solved for you.

 The clearest example of this is actually pointed out in Emily St. James review of the classic Season 5 episode ‘The Life of Death of Jeremy Bentham’. In it she points out that the viewer is so justifiably wrapped up in the sad fate of John Locke and how he ended up dying and in a coffin that we don’t notice that during this episode the writers explained what polar bears have been doing on the island. In that sense she couldn’t be more right: this is one of my favorite episodes of the entire series for many reasons (I’ll probably review it for this series of articles someday) but it wasn’t until I read her story that I realized it is the final piece as to what polar bears were doing on the island. The writers had been giving us bread crumbs (or fish biscuits) over two and a half seasons and then when they gave us the final piece in the puzzle we didn’t care because of what we were watching Locke go through.

That may be the reason Lost deserves the benchmark of a classic even more than some who nitpick it to this day. The show was always answering questions large and small but because it always seemed to give more questions the fans never seemed to give them credit for that. What it did infinitely better than any series that has tried to imitate while it was on the air and quite a few afterwards is that Lost cared far more about the people on the island then it did about checking off boxes. And I think a way to best illustrate this is look, briefly, at the each of the season finales from Season 1 until Season 5. (I’ll deal with the final season later because that’s something that has to be looked at in a different context.)

It's worth remembering the rules of season finales, particularly those of network shows. TV has changed a lot since Lost debuted but by and large network dramas have the same formula. There has been an overarching conflict during the season that the season finale will resolve. On some occasions (particularly genre shows) the season will end with a cliffhanger that will set up the story for the next season but it has to resolve everything that was going on in the previous one first.

During Season 1 the show was dealing with two major overarching storylines: the discovery of the hatch and the decision by Michael to build a raft in order to achieve rescue. Now for all the ways Lost broke the rules, it was still stuck in the formula of how series work. The viewer knows that the raft will fail because rescue can’t come at the end of Season 1. We also know the hatch has to be opened by the time the season ends and perhaps we’ll see what’s inside.

So when Rousseau shows up at the start of ‘Exodus’ she tells us that the Others, who we’ve heard about and seen over the course of Season 1, are coming. “You have three choices,” she famously says. “Run. Hide. Or die.”  Rousseau’s sanity is in doubt but we know enough about TV to know that the Others are going to act on their threat. We also know that this will be the course of action that leads to both the raft being launched today and to open the hatch.

Cuse and Lindelof know this and they know the viewer knows it. So the reason this three-part episode is considered one of the greatest season finales of all-time (a benchmark Lost would historically match or surpass during its run) is because they decide to focus on wrenching all the human drama possible out of it and still subverting our expectations.

So by the end of the first hour, despite some conflict, the raft does get launched to a moment of huge triumph and joy by all around. We’re also given a very moving moment when Vincent, Walt’s dog, tries to follow his master into the ocean and is paddling after him until Walt (with tears in his eyes) tells him to stay and he listens. It is an incredibly moving and powerful moment scored to the hilt by Michael Giacchino – and yet our final shot of the episode is the black smoke in the distance, letting us know The Others are out there.

The two-hour finale does everything we know the show has to do and yet keeps subverting our expectations all the way through. Rousseau abducts Claire’s baby (who she has finally named Aaron) and Charlie and Sayid go after her believing that she has done this because she thinks she will get her child back. We know that there is a Beechcraft out in the jungle loaded with heroin, and we know that Charlie is a recovering heroin addict. Yet when Sayid nonchalantly shows him this (he’s unaware of Charlie’s addiction) it still comes as a stunning moment. When Charlie and Sayid finally track down Rousseau with Aaron, we see she lit the fire. Charlie shouts at her that she made it up. Rousseau starts crying saying she heard them. “The Others said they were coming for the boy.” Lindelof and Cuse have basically set up the cliffhanger but we’re so relieved Aaron’s okay that we don’t notice.

Meanwhile a party has gone to the Black Rock in order to get dynamite. This party consists of Kate, Hurley, Jack, Locke – and a character who was introduced just two episodes called Dr. Arzt who says he can handle dynamite. Anyone who’s watched an episode of Star Trek (which the series already pointed out  the term ‘red shirt’) should know Arzt is not going to survive this. Indeed the writers do everything in their power to make us want him to die, making him so annoying and cowardly and actually complaining about how none of the other survivors take him seriously. When they get to the Black Rock, which is a 19^th century ship in the middle of the jungle (the survivors barely blink at this which is becoming a pattern even this early in the run) when they bring the dynamite out, Arzt starts giving a lecture on how to handle it in full teacher mode, making us seem to know this guy’s days are numbered. But he gets it handled, wraps it up, makes us think he’ll be fine – and then BOOM! (By the way, with the exception of Hurley, no one even bothers to mourn him.)

And on the ocean we see our crew of Sawyer, Michael, Jin and Walt sailing through some obstacles, large and small. They have turned on the radar and then suddenly, it starts beeping. There’s a debate about whether its anything or not. The big argument has to do with whether they use the flare gun, of which they have just one flare. Michael is opposed and then the bloop starts getting further away. Finally he says, “Please God!” and fires it. There’s a pause and then it starts coming closer and closer. Everyone on the raft starts cheering. For a moment we forget this can’t happen.

Then a fishing boat shows up and a ragged man appears and starts asking questions. It seems perfectly natural and we don’t really see any threat. Then the man – who we will later know as Mr. Friendly says, “Thing is, we’re gonna have to take the boy.”

Everyone on the raft freezes. “What?” The mood changes as the viewer – but not the survivors – realizes what’s about to happen. The Others have come for the boy and they have made their intentions clear. Shots are fired, the Others board the raft, and grab Walt. They leave what appears to be a homemade bomb and then the raft explodes. In an image that is iconic beyond Lost fans we hear Walt scream “Dad!” while Michael shouts tearfully “Wallltt!!”

There’s a lot more going on, of course (I’ll go into details in a different review): including the opening of the hatch, our first real glimpse of the monster and the battle lines between Jack and Locke being drawn. But the reason Exodus works is because it has followed the rule of the traditional season finale, make it seem like it was breaking them, and then fooled the viewer long enough to know to hit us in the gut. Lost would be able to do this to a very real extent with the next four season finales, each time making sure being less about the mystery and more about the human connection.

Note: Each season finale obviously has far more going on in them then I’m about to describe. I’ll do so in later articles but for now I’m just going to focus on how they resolve the basic conflict of the season – again in a bare bones fashion – while simultaneously subverting our expectations and making clear the human connection.

The two major conflicts of Season 2 are set up in the second episode ‘Adrift’. Inside the hatch (which we will soon learn is part of the Dharma Initiative) Locke is ordered by gunpoint to type six numbers into a computer (which is called the button) by a man named Desmond. When he does so we see a flip card timer go to 108 minutes. We’re told in the next episode that if we don’t push the button every 108 minutes, the world will end. Anyone who knows anything about television knows that by the end of the season, we’re going to find out what happens when the timer reaches zero.

The other storyline is happening on the raft. The survivors have managed to drift back to the island and while this is going on Michael swears that he’s going to get his son back. We know that this will have to be resolved by the end of the season.

By the time we reach Live Together, Die Alone both of these storylines come into effect, though in typical Lost fashion they happen independently of the other. Michael has returned after being gone much of the season, claiming to have found the Others camp and has every intention of leading a rescue party. By this point the viewer knows – but only Sayid suspects – that Michael has been compromised by the Others. He’s killed two of the tail section survivors and is planning to lead Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Hurley into a trap in order to exchange him for his son.

Simultaneously Locke has reached the conclusion that the button is a fake. However Eko, another of the tail section survivors, is just as convinced that it is genuine and has started pushing it in his stead. When Desmond reappears at the end of the season, having attempted to sail away from the island but ended up back here, both Jack and Locke use him for their own purposes: Jack intends to use the boat to spring a trap on the Others, Locke intends to use Desmond to find out what happens when the clock counts to zero. By this point we know enough about the show that neither of these attempts will end well but the writers go out of their way to wrench every bit of surprise and emotion.

In the hatch Locke and Desmond take over the computer and Desmond asks a question as to why Locke is so lost that he needs to look down the barrel of a gun. Locke reveals just how everything that happened finding the hatch – and honestly everything we’ve seen him go through to this point – has taken away his faith. Desmond, however, takes away a different lesson – one that tells him exactly what happens when the button isn’t pressed. We actually see the consequences in a flashback and we know Desmond is right. But we also know how TV works and that this won’t make a difference.

And it doesn’t. Locke destroys the computer. This causes Desmond to reach for something we didn’t know existed: a failsafe key that will ‘blow the dam’. Just before he disappears the timer reaches zero and we see everything that happens when the button isn’t pushed. There’s a lot to take away from it but the writers make it all center on one of the most emotional moments. We watch Locke look at the hatch imploding around him, making no effort to get away and looking at Eko. He says three simple and heartbreaking words: “I was wrong.”

Critically none of the survivors trekking across the jungle have any idea of the larger conflict and because Jack, who’s now the adversary of Locke is leading them, we know he wouldn’t care. Even before they’re halfway there the secrets come out and betrayals are everywhere particularly when Hurley learns that Michael killed Libby, a woman he was falling in love with. This is a blow to him and he never forgives him. Not long after this everyone learns that Michael’s betrayed them and the survivors are ambushed by the others.

After all this we genuinely don’t expect the Others to let Michael and Walt just walk away from this but surprisingly their leader – who we’ve already met – says “We got more than we bargained for with Walt,” and gives Michael and his son a boat and a course off the island. (I know all of the conflict Harold Perrineau has to say; another time.) Again a lot else is going on but this story has been resolved. The larger issue is the human cost, including the final lines when Hurley is released and asks what will happen to his friends. “Your friends” he is told. “are coming with us.”

Season 3’s major conflicts are set up at different points. One of them is character based: Desmond has been getting flashes of the future and all of them tell him about Charlie dying. He’s doing everything he can to save Charlie but he knows at some point he’s going to fail and Charlie will die. The conflict is, will Lost kill him off?

In the final third of the season a helicopter arrives carrying a woman named Naomi, who knows who Desmond is and claims to be sent by Penelope Widmore, Desmond’s former love and soul mate who we already know is searching the world for him. There’s a freighter within distance of the island and if they can contact it, rescue will come.

By the time Through The Looking Glass airs these two stories have intermeshed: Desmond has told Charlie to be rescued he has to die. As the episode begins he’s being held prisoner by two Others in this underwater station. At the same time the viewer wonders: “they’re not really going to rescue them? The show’s going to end in Season 6 and we’re only in Season 3.”

Much of the tension involves Jack leading his survivors to a radio tower to send a message if the jamming signal underwater goes off. There are many forces in his way getting there, including a threat to some of his friends left behind and Ben appearing telling him that Naomi represents “a threat to the island’. By this point we don’t believe Ben any more than Jack does.

By the time the episode is almost over Charlie has the code to turn off the jamming signal and he’s been saved twice by Desmond. He enters the code and then he sees Penny. It’s then he learns that Penny knows nothing about Naomi. Then a threat comes to destroy the station and Charlie gives his life to save Desmond. With his last effort he writes on his hand: “NOT PENNY’S BOAT.” And we wonder what that means.

Now while this has been going on we’ve been seeing what we assume our flashbacks of Jack with a heavy growth of beard, drinking heavily, stoned on pills and seemingly broken in a way we’ve never seen him. We don’t really care that much; we’re interested on what’s happening on the island. Then we hear Jack make a call identifying himself as one of the survivors of Oceanic 815 and asking to get a fix on their location. It sounds like rescue is coming.

And then in the scene that has become history Jack has a meeting at an airport. Up drives…Kate. Who he never knew before the crash. And a broken, battered Jack tells Kate: “We were never supposed to leave.” Something Kate doesn’t accept. We all remember that last line: “We have to go back!”

This is the subverting of the flash back into the flash forward, arguably the most shocking twist in TV history to that point. (The episode was nominated for Best Dramatic Teleplay in 2007.) The biggest shock is actually that Jack, who has spent the first three seasons trying to get everybody off the island, now is desperate to go back. We need to know why.

The conflict in Season 4 is understandably set up in the first episode. We are told two things. First we learn of the Oceanic 6 which tells us how many survivors are going to get off the island. We now know we’re going to spend Season 4 in the flashforwards knowing who these six people are and how they will get off the island.

The other conflict is set up between whether the people on the freighter are there to rescue the survivors or if they are a force of evil. This divide leads for a break between the remaining passengers, some going with Locke, some going with Jack. When we see Hurley go with Locke, the next question is how does he get off the island if he has no intention of staying? The other question is, who’s on the freighter?

By the time we reach the finale of Season 4, fittingly called “There’s No Place Like Home” we know that the Oceanic 6 are Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Sun and Aaron. We also know in the flashforwards that all of the survivors will experience horrific losses when they return: Sayid will find and marry his love Nadia, then lose her in less than a year. Sun will give birth but raise her daughter without Jin, Hurley will be back in an institution because he thinks he’s seeing the dead and Jack will be burdened by guilt and visions of his father which will cause him to destroy his relationship with Kate. And we also know Ben will somehow make it off the island as well. So the only real question in the present we have at the end of the season is how the Oceanic 6 will be rescued and how many people will die along the way.

Some were disappointed that the answer was as prosaic as that they were all on a helicopter that crashed in the ocean and they were found floating in a life raft. I wasn’t because I knew that despite all of the efforts to keep them separate throughout the season, eventually all six of them were going to have to be at the same place at the same time. The question for me was the human cost.

And the writers (Cuse and Lindelof as always) wrenched every bit of emotion out of it. We saw Sawyer leap out of a helicopter that was losing fuel in order for his friends to get back to it, not knowing it was on the verge of exploding. We saw a frantic rush to refuel the chopper while Sun waits for Jin to get back from below, only to see Jin run on deck just at the chopper lifts off – and then watch as the freighter explodes. (The roar of grief out of Yunjun Kim was her finest hours on the show.) Then we see Sawyer and Juliet looking into the distance as the smoking wreck of the freighter. And then finally we see Ben Linus, who is moving the island, being forced into exile as he does so crying out: “I hope you’re happy Jacob” as he does.

This brings us to Season 5 which is still my favorite season of the show. Some will say that this season in which the island ended up skipping through time and ended with the remaining survivors becoming part of the Dharma Initiative themselves was a bridge they weren’t willing to go. Those people are crazy. What’s interesting is that, at the end of the day, Season 5 has two jobs to do when it reaches the end and we know what it is. We know that the Oceanic 6 are going to have to return to the island, whether they want to or not because the plot depends on it for whatever the final season we’ll be. (I have to say I’m not sure until the writers started On Season 5 that they had fully realized that plan.) That means everyone who’s still alive will have to end up in the same place at the same time: the island in the present.

So despite the fact that Ajira 316 doesn’t crash but there’s a shining light and four of the Oceanics end up in 1977 while Sun, Ben and quite a few other survivors (who I won’t mention here) are in 2007, makes it clear that by the end of the season everybody’s going to be in their proper timeline. The only question is how.

And it’s clear almost from the start of Season 5 as to how this is going to play out. In the episode Jughead, the remaining survivors have been sent back to 1954 to meet that version of the Others (with some familiar faces or ones who will be familiar) and they’re told about a hydrogen bomb named Jughead. Dan Faraday walks over to it with a seventeen year old named Ellie with a rifle and an itchy trigger finger (also foreshadowing Dan’s eventual fate) to the bomb. Dan tells her they have to fill the gap with concrete and bury it. And he knows they’ll be okay because in 50 years the island will still be there. This is the equivalent of Chekov’s Gun (Faraday’s bomb?) and we know by the end of Season 5 it will probably go off.

So when Dan comes back to the Dharma Initiative and tells all those assembled that they don’t belong in 1977 (and in keeping with everything we know about Lost, almost everyone shrugs him off as a nut) he manages to corral Jack and Kate into taking him to the Others. He tells them that he thinks he has a way to make sure none of them ever end up on the island and the way to that is to detonate a hydrogen bomb in a pocket of energy, negating it. (I’d say it makes sense in the context of Lost but at a certain point you do just have to go on faith.)

The only person who thinks this is a good idea is Jack. Everyone else from that time period thinks he’s lost it or is just going along for the ride. So by the time of the season finale, fittingly called The Incident, we know what has to happen in 1977. The bomb is going to be dropped in this pocket of energy and the result is going to send all the survivors back to the present. Yes Dan says this will create a universe where Oceanic 815 never crashed but that would seemingly negate the entire show and who would be crazy enough to think that is a good idea? (Like I said I’ll deal with Season 6 in a different article.) What’s important is that everyone’s doing this because they think that’s what will happen and by the time the episode’s half over, we really hope so because Sayid has been shot in the stomach and even he thinks he’s going to die.

We also know that when Jack decides to go on his mission everything is going to wrong before it starts and it does. He’s only saved because Sawyer, Juliet and Kate have driven over in their van for a shootout at the site that ends with a lot of Dharma red shirts being killed. He drops the bomb in the pocket just at the time of the Incident – and nothing happens.

Then basically what played out in Live Together, Die Alone plays out in 1977, only this time it’s actually worse. Somehow no one died when the Swan blew up in Season 2. We’re in the penultimate season so we know it’s going to be that lucky. Someone we care about is going to die.

And heartbreakingly, particularly for me, that’s what happened. Juliet’s ankle gets caught in a chain and she’s dragged to the pocket. Sawyer (who is in love with Juliet) grabs her by the arm. The scene that plays out is one of the most devastating in Lost history: Sawyer crying out “I got you”, Juliet becoming more and more desperate, finally saying: “I love you” and letting go. The scream that Josh Holloway lets out is one of the greatest moments in his career.

And of course there is that final scene: we see Juliet at the bottom of the pit, broken and bleeding with the bomb. She picks up a rock and starts hitting. “Come on!” she keeps crying and she hits it over and over. “Come on, you son of a bitch!” And on the eighth hit, the screen goes white.

Just to be clear, even though we spent the next seven months wondering what happened we were told very clearly. The last words of Jacob, just before he died were: “They’re coming.” In the ‘Any Questions?” section of that episode in Finding Lost: Season Five Nikki Stafford raised a lot of question for the final season but not what Jacob could have been talking about. She knew what was going to happen to them – and indeed the show was telling us.

In all of the season finales, I should add, we did get most of the questions about the season and quite a few more that we’d been wondering about over past seasons. The writers were answering our questions. But as I mentioned in the example given by Emily St. James we were far more interested – and utterly mesmerized – by the moments of profound emotion that the cast raised in every one of these season finales. That all of these human moments were in many ways telegraphed during the course of the season did nothing to dampen their power and it still doesn’t on many of the rewatches I’ve done in all the years since. And that’s a good thing. You can only have the solution to a mystery revealed once, but emotional and dramatic power never ceases to have an impact.

So stop giving Lost so much backlash about not answering all the questions because it answered the ones that mattered. If you didn’t notice, well, that’s because the writers, actors and everyone connected with the show were focused on giving some of the more emotional, wrenching and unforgettable images and performances in the history of television. Compared to that, what’s a few polar bears?

 

 

Season 41 Jeopardy Update: A Cluster of Champions Greets Us This Month

 

Having watched Jeopardy for more than thirty years (that concept frightens me as well) I have become aware of certain patterns that occasionally appear but that recent viewers might be less aware of. These include the phenomena that might be called a ‘cluster of champions’. More likely due to coincidence and luck then the rise of super-champions in the past decade they have history of appearing slightly more frequently.

A cluster is basically when a quick succession of qualifiers for the Tournament of Champions arise during a short period of time, usually one following the other or at the most the day after one has been defeated. They happened very rarely during the first twenty years of the show, mainly because it was very difficult for a succession of four or five game winners to occur. It did happen, of course but rarely more than once a season at most.

It happened more frequently after Ken Jennings appearance and then began to officially start become more often during the next few years. The first one of real significance came during the 2011-2012 season when Jason Keller, David Leach and Dan McShane all qualified for the Tournament of Champions in the course of a month. Jason won 9 games, Dave won 6 and Dan won four.

We saw a similar cluster the following season when Keith Whitener won seven games, was defeated by Paul Nelson who won 5 and then two days after he was beaten, Jason Shore won four. In the midst of this was the 2012 Teachers Tournament which was won by Colby Burnett, so you could argue four players qualified for the 2013 TOC in less than six weeks.

The arrival of the super-champions began in Season 30 and began to draw considerably more attention but the clusters were often as common. In the 2014-2015 season, Michael Bilow, Kerry Greene and Alex Jacob all qualified for the 2015 TOC pretty much consecutively and two days after Alex was defeated Greg Seroka would have a seven game streak and win $180,401. During the 2017-2018 season Gilbert Collins, Rachel Lindgren and Ryan Fenster would all win five games in during January of that year. Clusters were not as noticeable during Season 38 considering all of the super-champions but they did happen. Christine Whelchel, Margaret Shelton and Maureen O’Neill all won four games consecutively and Ryan Long’s sixteen game streak gave way to Eric Ahasic’s six game streak and Megan Wachspress’ six game streak

Defining clusters has been slightly more difficult with the rise of Second Chance Tournament, Champions Wild Card and allowing three game winners, which has its own issue. However in the last month of Season 41, it’s pretty clear we have just gone through another cluster of Jeopardy champions, none of whom are super champions but all of whom will likely be formidable in the 2026 Tournament of Champions.

The same week that Laura Faddah’s run came to an end Alex DeFrank managed the impressive one day total of $42,401 in his first victory. The next day he came from behind to win in Final Jeopardy and by Thursday had won $102,400 – more than Laura had won in eight games. But on that day he ran into Cameron Berry who absolutely ran away with it by the end of Double Jeopardy and won with $24,600.

Cameron’s run lasted one day as he then ran into Josh Weikert, a politics professor from College Pennsylvania. In what was a difficult battle Josh emerged the victor winning $23,601. He then went on to win every game the following week finishing it with 100,202.

Then on Monday he ran into Bryce Wargin and Allison Willard. This was a tight match from beginning to end. Josh was leading at the end of the Jeopardy round and at the end of Double Jeopardy even though Bryce and Allison found all the Daily Doubles and were never far behind him. At the end of Double Jeopardy all three had impressive totals: Josh led with $15,000, Bryce was next with $12,400 and Allison had a very impressive $11,400.

The Final Jeopardy category was COMMUNICATION. “Invented by a student in 1824, this system has a total of 64 combinations. Allison couldn’t come up with an answer. Bryce could: “What is Braille?” As Ken pointed out “Six dots, 2 to the 6^th.) Bryce bet $3400 and moved into the lead.

It came down to Josh. He wrote down Semafore, crossed it out and wrote: “What is Morse Code?” (That was my guess as well.” It cost him $9801 and Bryce became the new champion with $15,400. (It’s almost certain Allison will be invited back in the next Second Chance Tournament, considering how she played she’s more than worthy.)

Bryce then won the next three games during the week, always in the lead at the end of Double Jeopardy. He had gotten three Final Jeopardys correct and the fourth incorrect but because no one else did, he kept the title. He’d already won $70,199.

Yesterday with a win automatically punching his ticket to the Tournament of Champions he faced Guy Branum and Mike Dawson. It was a close match in the Jeopardy round but at the end of it Bryce was in third with $3400 to Guy’s $6800 and Mike’s $5800.

Bryce found the first Daily Double on his first pick and naturally risked everything in LITERATURE. “A Simple Habana Melody by Oscar Hjuelos focuses on the rumba, but this other 5-letter dance is in the title of his best known work.” I knew it but he didn’t. He guessed: “What is the tango?” It was the mambo (The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love) He dropped to zero and spent the rest of the round in third place, finishing with $5600 to Guy’s $10,800 and Mike’s $15,000.

Whatever chance he had depended on Final Jeopardy. The category was THE NOBEL PRIZES. “Only one man and one woman have won Nobel Prizes in 2 different categories, with this category in common.” Bryce’s response was the wrong one: “What is physics?” It cost him all but a dollar. It didn’t matter because both Guy and Mike knew the right category: chemistry. (Ken told us: Madame Curie won in Chemistry & physics; the other, Linus Pauling, chemistry and peace.”) Mike became the new winner with $21,601.

Bryce’s $70,199 and four wins will be sufficient to get him to the Tournament of Champions this year. It remains to be seen whether this cluster will continue to grow much in the same way the one that took up most of regular play in Season 40 did. As for possible qualifiers for the next Second Chance Tournament, there are a couple of obvious ones in this cluster (along with Allison who like I said is a sure thing) :

Brett Aresco: Led Alex at the end of Double Jeopardy in his second appearance but was defeated when he got Final Jeopardy wrong.

Geraldine Rodriguez: Only player to get Final Jeopardy correct but was too far behind to benefit from it in Josh’s second win.

Melanie Hirsch: Was ahead of Josh at the end of the Double Jeopardy round of his fourth appearance. All three players got Final Jeopardy wrong; Josh’s wager was small enough to leave him the last man standing.

Alfred Wallace: Made a remarkable recovery to nearly overtake Bryce in the Double Jeopardy round of his fourth win having got six of the first seven clues correct. He responded incorrectly on the second Daily Double and could never get close enough again.

There may be more from the rest of the seventeen games that were played but these are by the far more deserving ones in my opinion. (The last several months have done much for me to reevaluate by opinion on the Second Chance Tournament overall.)

I’ll be back when the next player qualifies for the Tournament of Champions or at the end of April whichever comes first. (You never know with Jeopardy.)

 

Homicide Rewatch: The Last of the Watermen

 

Written by Henry Bromell & Tom Fontana

Directed by Richard Pearce

 

This is a stumble for Homicide, not just for Season 3 but for much of the series overall. This is unfortunate in some ways, better than others.

This episode might be some combination of one draft or too much network interference from a very good episode and a part of me is inclined to think it’s the latter. Even at this stage in its run Homicide has already proven that it is willing to shake up the format of the procedural. We saw in ‘Night of the Dead Living’ in Season 1 and in Bop Gun in Season 2. Indeed during the third season the writers will do at least two other major shakeups to the formula that will rank among the highpoints of the series. And it’s not like the show hasn’t been hinting at it with every character at some point in the run, wariness with the job has already become second nature to the detectives and you can imagine a moment like this becoming simply too much for one of the detectives and they just decide they need a break from the action.

It also helps that so far in the series we know relatively little about all of the detectives’s personal lives and what we know is fairly depressing. We’ve spent two seasons dealing with the fallout from Bolander’s divorce and his efforts to find love again and we’ve just witnessed how truly toxic Felton’s marriage has been. And considering that too this point we know fairly little about Howard’s personal life despite what she tells us, looking into where she came from might not be the worst idea. It might seem a little cliched by today’s standards -  a female detective so sick of the job she takes personal lime mid-case – but up until this point Kay has been seen basically as the adult in the partnership she has with Felton. And given everything that’s happened to her so far this season: playing a buffer between Beau and his wife, the repercussions of Crosetti’s suicide – it would be normal for anyone to need a break. Besides Howard has prided herself on being one of the boys to this point and there’s something very masculine about how she talks about the neighborhood she’s in involving the smell of crap and urban decay. So there’s merit to taking a break.

There’s also a rough draft of a good idea of Howard’s return to what appears to be the home of oystermen, which seem to be the blue collar routes of where she came from. It’s also clear she hasn’t been back home to her small town in  a long time; she’s stunned to learn that her father has retired from working the oyster boat, meaning she hasn’t even talked to him in a while. (Considering her relationship with her sister seems to be much closer this is telling.) And a lot of the discussion between her and her father Wesley is incredibly awkward. It’s clear he has only the most basic perception of what she does: “I don’t shoot people. I catch people who shoot people” she tells him. It’s clear in their interactions in the episode Wesley has never truly known what to make of his daughter and doesn’t seem able to connect the same way. We see her visit her grave of her mother, who we learned from an early episode died of breast cancer very young.

We also get a glimpse of her personal life in her first love Chick, who’s still on the water and who tells her very bluntly that both his job and the town itself are dying out. (This is a theme that will come into play that will come in Season 2 of The Wire which takes place on Baltimore’s waterfront.) The job of being an oysterman is being regulated to death by environmentalists, represented by Dr. Bradley. Here, perhaps more clearly then any other episode in the career of Simon as a writer, we see the conflict between the death of work and the government regulation. We see the ripple effects on a small town and how there doesn’t seem to be a good answer between environmentalism and blue collar jobs. Bradley has no good answers either and there’s just anger behind.

All of this has the benchmarks of a deep, interesting episode but I get the feeler that either Fontana or NBC wasn’t comfortable enough to see Kay Howard just living out her version of “you can’t go home again.’ So naturally after Howard sees the anger at a local bar, she’s awakened at her house at 2 AM to be called in by the sheriff to tell her that Bradley is dead, clearly murdered. Worse this is the first murder in six years in her town, so naturally the sheriff asks for her help.

All of the trademark naturalism of Homicide – the murder is committed by the most likely suspect and the truth leaves a wreck – can’t hide the fact that this is more the trappings of Murder, She Wrote (which was still on the air in 1994) and Kay Howard is a much younger Jessica Fletcher. The fact that Fontana chooses to do this with his most prominent female character (at this point) also works against it. The show was on stronger ground last season with See No Evil and it dealt with it more directly; the fact that the writers don’t feel confident enough to grant the same grace to Howard shows their own flaw.

And the final minutes really hurt as well as we see Howard return to the office, apparently refreshed and joking around after a vacation where a man was killed, she had to help participate in the arrest of a friend and her own brother was quietly complicit. I have a reason why there might be more to it than that (I’ll get to it at the end) but it doesn’t look particularly good.

What hurts the most is that this is an episode where the ‘B’ story is so much stronger than the one involving Howard as the lead. The episode follows the murder at the start where Felton and Howard have been called into investigate the murder of a seventy year old woman who has been beaten, stabbed to death, and has had her tongue cut out and stuffed back in her mouth. Howard is disgusted by this and cuts out but Felton is the primary and he needs a partner. Gee decided to team with Pembleton.

This leads to a story that is filled both with enormous tension and humor, sometimes interchangeably. We already know how much Felton and Frank despise each other from a distance and now they’re working in close proximity. This leads to some superb moments from both of them. Felton says he wants to close this case because he hasn’t had a murder in some time. Pembleton says he just closed the Griswold case. Felton looks at Frank. That was a killing.

“Kenny Griswold was a smoke hound with a rap sheet as long as your arm. His death, like his life, was meaningless. Audrey Resnick was a sweet old woman who was killed in what should have been the safety of her own home. That’s a waste of life.”

It’s worth noting this is the first time we’ve heard Felton sound passionate about any murder on the job. But Frank takes offense: “Who are we to judge a person’s life?” Felton asks him if the death shocks him. Pembleton acknowledges Resnick’s death does as well as several other horrible ones:

I’m also shocked by the death of Kenny Griswold, a worthless smoke hound. Because Felton where I come from every life has meaning. “

Then as he walks off: “Even yours, Felton.”

We see Frank spend much of the episode trying to focus, to a ridiculous extent as to why Audrey’s tongue was cut out and stuffed in her mouth. This is an oddity for Frank who doesn’t usually focus as much on the why as the who. Felton actually figures out on the basics: he gets evidence that Audrey’s grandson Artie was living with her, they find a knife with blood on it and his fingerprints are on it. All they have to do is find Artie.

This leads to another tension filled and hysterical scene where Felton and Pembleton go to Artie’s hang out on a half court and in the process start playing a pickup basketball game. Very quickly this stops being a team sport and a one-on-one between the two detectives, as the teens increasingly look on in exasperation and leave with the ball – to the irritation of Frank.

Finally they manage to run down Artie Resnick, who confesses immediately. He doesn’t have a reason for doing it and when Frank asks why he cut out his grandmother’s tongue he just says, “She talked too much.” Frank seems almost disappointed; Felton just shoves him in the car. It’s always fun watching Braugher and Baldwin play off each other; it’s more fun to see Felton’s approach more accurate than Pembleton’s.

I’ve always thought it was off when Kay comes back after everything she’s been through on her ‘vacation’ seeming refreshed. Years later I wonder about that moment before she comes back in the door. Kay has a blank look on her face when she enters the room and the moment Gee talks to her, she starts engaging in small talk, bantering with the detectives. When Beau who was annoyed by what happened asks her if her vacation was good she just says: “It was fine” and is non-committal. Perhaps Fontana and Bromell are suggested that there are two Kay Howards, the one with a personal life and the job one and she needs to make clear that the two never mesh. Her experience back home made it clear she belongs in Baltimore but she’ll never admit she’s was wrong either. So she says everything’s fine and catches the next call.

Homicide learns from its mistakes and while it will probe the detectives personal lives repeatedly to better effect, it will never make the same effort to have the two intersect the same way they do in Last of the Watermen. That’s the best you can saw about this flawed but interesting episode. Like the characters they try to learn from their mistakes.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

“Detective Munch’: In a brilliant opening teaser we see Giardello going to the laundromat on a Sunday and finding Munch there. Munch turns out to be just as annoying being friendly as he is at work and Giardello ends up walking away from him to read the paper. We also hear Munch strenuously arguing with Lewis about having a TV at the bar as Lewis and Bayliss argue they need something there to enjoy sports. “Why not just add nock hockey?” Munch said exasperated. Bayliss asks what that is.

FIRST APPEARANCE OF: M.E. Alyssa Dyer, played by Harlee McBride (aka Mrs. Richard Belzer!) McBride was a former Playboy Playmate, known to (ahem) some viewers for her work in the 1970s film Young Lady Chatterley. Her character would appear on a semi-regular basis from this point until the end of the series.

Also in her first speaking role is Kristin Rohde as Officer Sally Rogers. Rohde will appear repeatedly as one of the beat  cops on the scene in many of the murders the squad is called too. By the time Homicide came to an end Fontana had cast her in a larger and more significant role as C.O Claire Howell on OZ. She would go on to start in various roles in Law and Order SVU and Criminal Intent. Tragically she passed away in December of 2016 at the age of 52.

STREAMING NOTE: The Peacock broadcast once again cuts out the music for this episode. The major song that plays in the episode is Counting Crows ‘Raining in Baltimore.” I don’t recognize the song that plays in the Peacock version. This is another major cut that is not present on the DVD and may not be present on Amazon. This time I think it hurts the episode: the melancholy tone of the song as Kay goes back home really does set up what we are about to see.

 

 

OZ Looked At The Horrors of Our Criminal Justice System Before It Was Hip

 

 

There’s a part of me who wonders if everybody was so enraptured by the brilliance of The Sopranos that no one bothered to ask the very obvious questions about it in the aftermath of all the shows on HBO that followed up. By and large female critics like Emily Nussbaum chose to ignore it when it was on the air and it’s only a quarter of a century after the fact that the questions are being raised at all – though tellingly not to David Chase himself even a quarter of a century later.

Because the real reason The Sopranos is an outlier among not just great television but every series HBO itself did in the immediate aftermath and well past it is frankly just how much of an argument for how much it epitomizes the worst parts of our history and today. As I’ve written before on numerous occasions the Soprano families, both criminal and by blood, were entirely and completely dominated by white cis males. The New Jersey and New York the Soprano family was a part of didn’t seem to have a single African-American, LatinX or Asian people in it: there was never at any point in the six seasons it was on the air that there was a single regular who was a person of color. This sticks out like a sore thumb with the next three HBO dramas that were to follow The Sopranos: what does it say that Deadwood had roles of more depth for minorities during three seasons than The Sopranos ever did? As I’ve mentioned before the female characters were little more than there to show how they reacted off Tony than anything else (Six Feet Under from the start did more to let its female regulars expand from the roles of mother, daughter and girlfriend) and the series was more homophobic and unwilling to show range than any of the dramas of that period and well past it. (There was no Omar Little of any kind in Jersey.)

Chase can argue about the story of humanity he was trying to tell about how given the opportunity people will take the easiest choices possible but that falls apart when the vast majority of your characters are white males who  by definition in the world have more choices then the rest of us. It’s even harder to make that choice about humanity when all around you are white people in suburbia who by definition seem to have made one of their choices to stay away from the ‘real world’ as possible.

That may be one of the biggest reasons that OZ was never really considered being as groundbreaking – or perhaps tellingly, more critically acclaimed – as The Sopranos was. Ironically when Tom Fontana was given the choice to make his project for HBO, he decided to make a series where almost everyone we met from the start to the finish was in a place when they had no choices at all. We’re told that very clearly by Diane Wittelsey in the first five minutes (“We will tell you when to eat.” When to sleep. When to piss. Follow the rules.”)  McManus (Terry Kinney) uses Em City as an experimental wing in an effort to build a better life for his inmates and from the start we see he is considered a joke by the majority of the staff and only tolerated by Leo Glynn (Ernie Hudson). Kareem Said when he enters Em City and is told that he will be treated as an equal says humorously: “How ironic. To finally be treated as an equal and I do not have the freedom to enjoy it.”

Fontana also made it very clear from the start of the show to the very end to make as difficult as possible for the viewer to have any sympathy for the prisoners. Every time he introduced one of the prisoners, he would show us in great detail what they had done to get there and with few exceptions it was always an act of horrible, graphic violence. Then he would have his narrator Augustus Hill made it clear what it was like. “Oz is where I live. Where I will die. Where most of us will die” he tells us in the first minute of the show. And this is a mission statement Fontana keeps for nearly every regular we meet: the only way to leave Oz is in a body bag.

And Fontana made no effort to skimp on how horrible this was in the Pilot: we see an incoming inmate get stabbed in the first two minutes, we witness (not graphically) a rape and assault of one we’ve just met, there is a beating of one inmate, a suffocation of another and by the end of the episode the character we’ve been led to thing will be the lead is doused in gasoline and burned alive. If anything Fontana kept doubling down on that whenever he had a chance to, and he never let us forget just how horrible the crimes committed were every inmate we met, making it harder to feel anything resembling sympathy for many.

OZ was also, perhaps even more The Wire would be a few years later, an indictment of the criminal justice system in all his horrors. This could also have been a reason why so many critics reacted poorly to it. To that point in television, police procedurals had illustrated the cops as unequivocally the heroes and the people they locked up unequivocally the villains. (It’s worth noting with a few key exceptions, much of today’s procedurals still lean very hard on that definition.)  Fontana had tried on a few occasions on his previous show Homicide to give humanity to some of the killers that were arrested in Baltimore but he and his writers were still sympathetic to the detectives more than the criminals. OZ asked a lot of its audience: not just to try and empathize with drug dealers, rapists and killers but to argue that they were worthy of being treated with dignity, if not sympathy. And it did so, it’s worth noting, without bothering to show any efforts to reform or rehabilitate many of these same criminals: OZ made it very clear that these men were just as violent and brutal locked up as they were on the outside. (Orange is the New Black, for all its brilliance, couldn’t help but be more sympathetic to the prisoners then it was to their crimes.)

The series made its most direct attempt to argue this in its first season, focusing almost all of its action in Em City. (Later seasons would spend more time in some of the other cell blocks at Oswald.) This unfolded through two parallel storylines, one focused from without, one from within.

The outside was the actions of Governor Jim Devlin (Zeljko Ivanek), who was essentially the real villain of OZ. Devlin was apparently elected governor on a tough on crime policy and the effects were constantly being felt throughout Oswald. In the first episode smoking is banned in the prison; in the second, conjugals are. Not long after Oz brings the death penalty back and Devlin makes it very clear he wants Jefferson Keane (Leon) to be tried and executed under this standard. As Sister Pete points out Keane is being executed because he is an African-American male and that is done to quell the mob. (Perhaps in aware of this in the second season we will meet Shirley Bellinger, the first woman to be sentenced to death in nearly a hundred fifty years.)

It’s worth noting we constantly hear news reports about Devlin and how he is facing corruption charges, is being accused of infidelity and has made it clear he won’t resign even if he’s impeached. Ivanek does some of his work as an actor playing Devlin as loathsome, corrupt and without a single sense of humanity. He constantly compares himself to Zeus and untouchable. Fontana’s sickest joke of the series is that Devlin is right, in the course of the series he survives an assassination attempt, is reelected governor (and makes it clear that the shooting probably helped him) and by the end of the series arranges for the man who did the most to get him elected to be killed in order to protect himself. This comes out at the end of the series but by that point McManus is cynical enough to believe he’ll still wiggle out of it.

Every time Devlin shows up at Oswald or  on television, he makes it very clear that he doesn’t view the prisoners as human beings. Devlin at one point makes it clear to McManus that this view is held by his constituents and the public at large. The sad truth is the position is also held by most of the guards, the staff and probably the warden. Only a relative few see them as human being and they are often punished for that.

When Said shows up he makes it clear in his first interaction of what he’s planning: “We can take this prison at any time,” he tells Glynn and McManus cheerfully. Glynn says: “You can take it but can you hold it?” Said smiles. “That remains to be seen.” It’s clear from the start Said intends to unify his Muslim brethren (another radical idea in 1990s television) and makes it clear of his own attempts. When he is threatened by Jefferson Keene, he orders one of his new followers to hit him again and again until he bleeds. Keane is struck by this.

He will eventually convert to Islam but not long after his actions come back to haunt him and he ends up being sentenced to death row. Said serves as his spiritual adviser  during this period. In a truly powerful moment he walks with Keane towards his final resting place: “Death is not to be feared.” When Keane says he doesn’t have his kufi, Said hands him his.

It’s clear throughout the season that Said is trying to mobilize the prison to his side. This becomes the clearest in the penultimate episode when after one of his followers betrays him he orders him shunned. Not long after he commits suicide and Said uses the opportunity to stage a press conference to suggest there are questions about his death. Glynn calls for a media blackout. (“Why is blackout such a negative term?” Said jests. “You can get whiteout in a little bottle.”) During this period McManus aims a shot at the Muslims telling them they can not use their religious apparel, such as mats or beads. Said is the first to hand his kufi over. “This is a meaningless gesture,” he assures them.

What’s striking is throughout this entire season (and for several seasons afterward) Said is constantly arguing a path of non-violent resistance and it is working among his brethren and impressing his followers. He intends by the end of the season to stage the riot but in one of those great ironies, it happens without him.

By this point the inmates of Em City have been boiling for what may have been months. In addition to everything else the recent murder of a guard and a weapons raid has led to much of their privileges being taken away and so many random beatings by guards that most of the guards are on suspension. Everyone knows something is coming but it starts by accident: two inmates start a fight over a game of checkers and it starts to spread. One of the inmates overpowers a guard. Within minutes the remaining guard have been grabbed, and Father Mukada (B.D. Wong) has been taken prisoner. Chaos has all but overridden, the inmates have taken control of the doors and McManus’s office and are throwing furniture everywhere. At that point Said takes control, pulls out a gun (which he was given during the last episode) and fires a shot in the air. “Now let’s get organized!”

Within a very short time the inmates have barricaded the doors and are moving the hostages around. Glynn has shutdown every cell block and he and McManus (who was out of his unit at the time) run to Em City. He demands to know if there’s anyone we can talk too. Said’s name is shouted. Everyone starts chanting Said’s name. “What is this about?” “If you have to ask Glynn, we have a long day ahead of!” he says as he dons his prayer beads to a shout of reverence.

By this point we know most of the leaders of the riot Said, Miguel Alvarez (Kirk Acevedo) leader of the Latinos, Scott Ross (Steve Gevedon) who controls the Aryans and the bikers, Simon Adebisi (Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje) leader of the gangsters and Ryan O’Reilly (Dean Winters) who has no power but has spent the season manipulated the prisoners as well as Said has into a position of influence. Said takes a position of delegating responsibility but its hard to no how much control he really has. However, he manages to get them to work together on a list of demands.

We are told in later seasons the riot lasts three days but because the entire series is set indoors we have no clear idea of the passage of time. What we do know is that soon enough Devlin shows up and makes it very clear of his law and order type doctrine. He makes it clear he’s going public and calls in the National Guard. Not long after the rioters ask for food, something Devlin scoffs at but Glynn overrules. McManus agrees to go in with in order to find out about the hostages. “You’re even dumber than I thought,” Devlin says dismissively.

McManus does go in and sees that two of the hostages – Armstong and Mineo – need medical attention. He offers to trade himself for the two of them and Wittelsey, not just the only female but his former lover. Ross starts to flex saying they don’t have to let anyone go but Said says they will live up to their bargain. When he’s asked why he says: “Because if we don’t, we become just like them. And we won’t get our list of demands.” Eventually the leaders agree to let Armstrong and Mineo go but not Wittelsey. O’Reilly hands over a letter explaining the exchange and the demands.

We never get a clear idea of the full list but Glynn later says most of them are harmless “bringing back conjugal visits, smoking” Devlin says bluntly: “I don’t negotiate with animals.” “Then how do you expect to handle this?” “The old fashioned way. With force.” That Devlin thinks the same thing of the hostages as he does the prisoners shows that all he cares about is looking tough on crime.

It is during this period that McManus demands to talk with Said and the parallels to what we have been seeing onscreen are made direct as McManus reveals his background:

“I grew up in a town in upstate New York. And the only thing there was a prison. Everyone either worked at the prison or made money off it…My dad ran a diner. I was about to celebrate my tenth birthday and I was very excited. A few days before it happened, there was a riot at the prison. It lasted four days but then the governor called in the National Guard and ordered them to take the prison back. They did. Firing at anything that moved. So when the tear gas cleared 31 prisoners and nine guards were dead.

Said: “Attica.”

McManus: Three of my friends fathers died. Instead of going to my birthday we went to a memorial.

Said responds with scorn. “And that’s what Em City is? Your birthday party?”

McManus then utters some of his most memorable lines in the series, ones that are called back later.

“We’re on the verge of disaster; we’re on the brink of oblivion. Now before we join hands and jump, I want another chance.”

Said: Not mine to give.

McManus: YES IT IS!

Said: NO ITS NOT! Because even the best prison wouldn’t be good enough!

Said then delivers his own impassioned speech:

I’m going to try to explain this to you one last time. I’m not saying the men in this prison are innocent. I’m saying they are here not because of the crimes they committed but because of the color of their skin! Their lack of education! The fact that they are poor! This riot isn’t about getting smoking back, conjugal rights. It’s not even about life in prison. It’s about the hoary judicial system. We don’t need better prisons, bigger prisons. We need better justice. Now what can you do about that?”

McManus, of course, has no answer to this question. Instead he puts it personally:

If we don’t resolve this, you and me, and soon. People will die. You could die.

And Said makes his nobility clear.

“I am willing to lay down my life for change. Now those deaths at Attica brought real change and real reform. But everyone’s forgotten the lessons of your home town. It’s time to wake this country up again…You want to save this place. I want to destroy it. Brick by hypocritical brick.”

Not long after this the troopers do storm the prison. Six prisoners and two guards are killed, twenty more are injured. McManus himself is shot and nearly dies as a result. In the outcry over the deaths Devlin forms a commission to investigate the cause of the riot but its clear what he wants is for them to clear him of any wrongdoing and to blame all of the prisoners for what happened. He is more than willing to bribe and bully many of them and he offers the position of attorney general to the head of the Commission.

I may go over the episode in a later article but I will deal with the results. At the end of the investigation Devlin is infuriated by the results which doesn’t involving charging the prisoners. The head of the commission Alvah Case (Charles S. Dutton) tells him why:

Case: “From a legal standpoint the evidence is circumstantial. From a moral one, it’s laughable.

Devlin is angry.

Devlin: “I want those bastards tried on television.

Case: Look governor as far as I can see those deaths are a direct result of your actions. Yes the Commission cleared you, but you can’t have it both ways. If the prisoners are guilty so are you.”

For perhaps the only time in the series Devlin is put in check by one of the few characters on the show with any pure integrity. As a result of the commission, the rioters are let back out with no charges and Em City is eventually rebuilt with new rules. And everyone seems to have learned some lessons from this: while tension and violence flow throughout the rest of the series, nothing even close to the events of the riot ever happen again.

OZ is a far darker show than The Sopranos is but it’s far more realistic – and in a funny way, more optimistic – then the one Chase ever put together. Death comes at a more constant rate in Oswald then it does in Em City but in argues even in a place where all of your freedom has been taken away, you can still find ways to change and grow. That it does so in a maximum security prison that should represent the worst of humanity (even compared to Tony and his crew) shows that for all the grimness of Fontana’s setting and the bleakness of the souls of the inmates and some of the staff, you can find optimism in what should be a hopeless place.

That was likely too much for some critics and even viewers during this period to handle and it may be part of the reason that few may write testimonials to OZ the same way they have The Sopranos and so much of HBO’s other extraordinary dramas. But Fontana and his cast were asking questions that are, if anything, more relevant today as we wrestle with the consequences of mass incarceration, the death penalty and the rights of prisoners, particularly in a world that seems even more polarized on the issues that they were in 1997 and the impassioned arguments made by Said during that period are no less relevant today than they were then. And that it does so with a cast that has been part of the television landscape ever since it aired showed how much impact it had one how the Golden Age unfolded.

That’s also the reason I think OZ is a more important and better show than The Sopranos. It’s not just that it had a more diverse cast, had better roles for women and dealt with issues of homosexuality that were the first real steps towards it becoming part of the television landscape. It’s that it was about something in a way that The Sopranos wasn’t, but that The Wire and Deadwood were. It makes you feel sympathy for men who frequently have to work to rise themselves to be antiheroes and gives an explanation for who they are in a way The Sopranos just says everybody is. And unlike Chase, Fontana argues that they do have the capacity to change even if they may not think themselves possible of it or if no one in the outside world ever sees it.