How George Clooney's Infamous Op-Ed Demonstrated Why There Should Be A Line Between Celebrities and Politics

 

This article needs a bit more of a personal introduction than usual.

I'm not like the overwhelming majority of the writers on this site or indeed social media in general. First of all I have barely any footprint to speak of. Second for most of my career I stuck to my lane of criticism. I expanded it to history and politics only gradually and basically only staying in that lane. I wasn't writing to provoke or court controversy or in order to gain hundreds or thousands of followers. And perhaps for that reason it's taken me a considerable amount of time to gain even close to a thousand.

I don't seek conflict by nature, in my personal life or online. It's just not me. I want to engage in reasonable, logical debate and have constructive conversation. You know the exact opposite of what we seem to use the internet for these days. Whenever I challenged somebody in the comments section I did so painstakingly, usually with my own historical information (which I found in books rather then the internet) and always with the intention of giving the author the chance to give me an answer based on facts. I was usually met with silence and then increasingly with hostility.

In the past year and a half I have dipped my toe very cautiously into current events. Even then I stay in my own lane, usually using metaphor, always dotting my I's and crossing my T's. I'm still greeted with hostility far too often but by this point I've come to realize that the criticism is not about me but them. Specifically they care more about followers and their own approval from virtual people. For me, it's nice but not a necessity. I can take it or leave it. I will take the applause when it comes, when there is constructive criticism I will hear it out, and the vitriol and name calling, well, increasingly my attitude is to treat with satire and humor.

Every so often, usually late at night when I've seen something that troubles me, I will write a long column to get my feelings out. Then I put in a file and decide if I want to publish it or not after a day. Sometimes the urge passes, sometimes it doesn't, but I always take the time before I put on the internet where the world can see it.

Other times I've written articles thinking they will provoke an explosive reaction from this site. The overwhelming majority of the time it doesn't get a reaction at all. I'm initially disappointed, but usually I'm relieved. I'm a consensus builder and I avoid conflict.

So when two weeks ago I wrote a long article about Natalie Portman and a statement she made about the omission of female directors it was not one of those pieces. I don't like making accusations based on no evidence and I want to give people, even people I disagree with, the benefit of the doubt.  Given the timing of her statement and the information available I didn't think there was any other conclusions to draw then the two I reached. And it was only in regard to her statement about the lack of female directors being nominated by the Oscars that week. I only spoke about politics very generally because that was not the purpose of the article.

What it came down to was the idea of an informed opinion and in uninformed one. I argued that because Portman was an actress she was informed to talk about her industry and less informed to talk about anything that didn't involve Hollywood. Her statement about the omission of female directors in this year's Oscars seemed to argue that at best she was uninformed about even that. That has never struck me as a controversial idea at any time in my entire life. The fact that social media and the internet have basically obliterated the difference between those two shouldn't make it any less true.

I didn't state that in my article and indeed I haven't written it any of the articles I've written before mainly because I thought it went without saying. Given some of the more virulent reactions to some of my own articles I have only myself to blame for not realizing this is no longer a universally held truth.

Now after two weeks this article has gotten a lot of claps and mostly positive reaction. I'm grateful for it and the constructive criticism and as always the name-calling doesn't bother me as much as it used to. What it has made clear is that for more than a few people who peruse the internet not only is there no difference between an informed opinion and an uninformed one but many people are fine even if an uninformed opinion express because they believe it’s a valid one to have. Many of those same people believe its perfectly fine to support a celebrity whose wife felt it fine to cut off relations with loved ones because of who they voted for but that's another story and I already know for many of them it’s a non-starter to argue this point.

Instead what I'd like to do is answer a different question that I've been posed more than a few times in this article in particular: why shouldn't a famous person be allowed to raise awareness for their point of view? Well I have the facts on my side, and I've expressed them in other articles.

 I'll summarize:

 

Many Americans think Hollywood is a wing of the Democratic party.

The idea of the 'limousine liberal' has done much to push the working class voter into the Republican Party and that has accelerated since Trump's first run for the Presidency.

After the 2024 election, the Republicans won the White House and both houses of Congress, leaving the Democrats unable to provide a check on Trump leading to the current administrations actions.

The Democrats need to win power back to bring about the kinds of changes needed to repair America after the least decade and that means winning independents and working class voters.

Conclusion: Hollywood should shut up and therefore not make any unforced errors that will be a burden to the Democrats in the mid-terms.

 

Now I'm not saying that's the only thing Democrats need to do in order to win – I've made some suggestions in other articles and I will make more over the next few months. But if you want to try and convince the average American that you're on their side, having a bunch of millionaires making the kinds of political statements that Fox News can tie to the 'coastal elites' is absolutely not going to help. I don't know if the Democrats have realized this; I know for sure Hollywood has not.

Hollywood looks at problems in methods that are very much of the left-wing approach for the last half-century:

The problems in our institutions are so great that they need to be completely torn down, rather than reform.

In order to do this, the people must act, but since the electoral process can't be trusted it is useless to the cause.

Therefore we must raise awareness so that once the people know they will…

I've trailed off because in all the years of reading and seeing left-wing people not only do they not finish that last sentence, they rarely reach it all.

And Hollywood celebrities are focused on 'raising awareness' as if they believe, without irony, the only reason we still have these deep societal problems is that Mark Ruffalo has not been speaking out about them and Michael Moore has not been making films about them. Considering that they truly seem to belief 'no publicity is bad publicity' when it comes to their own industry they may genuine believe the same applies to all aspects of life. It is certainly seen that way among many of the people I've encountered on this site and others, but I'm not like them: I won't make this entirely about me.

I've made my other arguments about how Hollywood has not helped over the last year based on economic factors within the industry as well and how increasingly in the past year they seem to be going out of their way to prove that they are out-of-touch, annoying, privileged Americans who think they know what is best for the average person even though they haven't been one for years.

Now I can understand why one would want an academic to talk about certain subjects: they've at least spent time researching and studying. I don't per se believe in the left-wing bias of these academics mainly because I've seen more than my share of right-wing academics over the years. But I respect them more because many of them have informed opinions. The same can't be said for an actor or a director. And that brings me, finally, to George Clooney.

A little review because a lot's happened in two years. On June 27^th 2024 after the presidential primaries for both parties were over Joe Biden and Donald Trump had what would be their only presidential debate for that year. Before it was even half over America, if not the world, had come to the stunning realization: that the Commander-in-Chief was clearly not capable of engaging in a coherent debate.

This in itself was horrifying enough. But it was immediately swept away by more terrifying implications for the Democratic Party: their nominee for President was in no  mental condition to serve a second term. (We'd learn not much long after Biden left office that he developed a kind of bone cancer that would have almost certainly made him physically incapacitated.) The party had never been wild about Biden running for reelection in the first place: had he won he would have been eighty two years old when he was sworn in. Combined with negative popularity ratings even before the leading up to 2024 many had worried about his ability to do win reelection.

The reason I suspect the Democrats had stood by him was because he had been the picture of calm during the 2022 midterms when everyone in America in both parties had been certain there was going to be a 'red wave'. Biden was the only one who believed otherwise and everyone thought he was an idiot. And then the Democrats bucked the odds and had the best midterms of an incumbent party in 20 years and the best for any Democrat since FDR.  To ask him to not stand for reelection after that would have seemed ungrateful to the man who'd brought them back into power two years earlier and helped them keep it to an extent. I suspect that is why everyone in the party kept any doubts to themselves about Biden's competency for the next year and a half.

When it became apparent to the world that Biden wasn't up to the job the Democrats understandably panicked. They were already facing a difficult map in the Senate and Biden on the ticket now seemed certain to not only sweep Trump into office but completely destroy the Democrats at every level. The Republicans who were about to nominate Trump by acclimation were overjoyed. (Maybe some of them wondered if it had made sense to stand by Trump because now it seemed Republican could win against Biden. Story for another day.) There was clearly division in the ranks and while some Democrats were demanding Biden step down, many more were either standing by him or being quiet.

Now The New York Times, not without reason, is considered one of the most anti-Trump publications in the country. They had supported Biden throughout his administration in the op-eds, though to be clear, not as enthusiastically as the right might think. But the paper of record couldn't just close its eyes and say that Biden was fit for office having seen that debate. I can't imagine it was easy to find a Democrat of any standing who would be willing to say what needed to be said out loud.

With that all being said when they allowed George Clooney to write an op-ed on July 10^th they came as close to being a tabloid as they've ever been in my lifetime of reading them.  And Clooney should count his blessings for the rest of his life that America and the free world was so concerned with what was happening with the country that they essentially gave him a pass.

Because make no mistake: under normal circumstances the fact that one of the biggest actors and forces in Hollywood was writing an op-ed arguing that the President of the United States needed to not stand for reelection with the seriousness of delivering a monologue from one of his films should have made him a laughingstock in the country, the industry and the free world.  Some people no doubt might have opened the Times and thought they were reading The Onion or The Babylon Bee.

And its striking that the day  it was written Jake Tapper called it: '"the most damning, damning opinion' with a straight face because Clooney had 'led some of the Democratic Party's biggest fundraisers."  He admitted that was his biggest qualification and no doubt because he'd won an Oscar. Perhaps if Ed Harris had written it, we would have taken it less seriously

Let's get to why Clooney wrote the op-ed. He said that he was holding a fundraiser for the Democratic Party with Biden in attendance a  week before the debate where he behaved in a fashion that was identical to his performance on the stage.. To be clear he saw Biden on June 20^th. He waited until July 10^th – two full weeks after the debate – to state:  "He wasn't the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate."

So you know he helped the Democrats raise $28 million dollars that day. So he felt no remorse about taking money that would have gone to his reelection on June 20^th and telling everyone there they'd wasted it on July 10^th.  For the record he'd have done well just to tell all of those people to save their money and of course no doubt offered everybody a full refund.

Next Clooney told us this was the opinion of every House member and Senator he'd talked to and every governor he'd spoken to in private. So Clooney was both protecting their confidence with anonymity and then telling the world that that they all thought the same thing. Clooney then says we can either put our heads in the sand and hope for a miracle in November or we can speak the truth.

For the record, and I just think its worth pointing out, the following November Clooney said that Harris replacing Biden was a mistake. So just to be clear we did exactly what Clooney suggested, we still failed to defeat Trump and now Clooney felt fine saying this one full year after Harris had lost. Maybe for his next film role Clooney should play Captain Obvious.

This is a moment when late night failed to meet the moment. Every single late night host from Colbert to Kimmel to Bill Maher should have roasted Clooney to the sky. Because Clooney made it clear in this op-ed that while he had no real expertise in electoral politics he'd fundraised for Democrats for years going back to Obama. This was the Times version of that famous commercial that starts:  Do you know me? I'm not a doctor but I play one on TV." (Which in Clooney's case was true but I wouldn't be asking him to be surgeon general.)

The parodies  practically write themselves:

I'm not an expert on crime and urban decay but as someone who played both Batman and Danny Ocean…

I'm not an expert on the Middle East or renewable energy but having won an Academy Award for Syriana…

I don't pretend to know anything about the Fairness Doctrine or cable news but as the writer of a film on Edward R. Murrow…

And of course…

I may not know much of running for President but as someone who in The Ides of March played one…

Some of you are no doubt saying that Clooney had a right  to give an opinion and that he was more informed then most of us. There is truth to that.  There's also the truth that the White House did hide the truth about Biden's physical and mental condition and concealed it until well past the time we could do anything to stop it. Biden does bear the responsibility for it.

But Clooney's hands are not clean. He could have gone before the cameras the day after the fundraiser and told the world what he saw. That would have been an act of courage. He had an entire week to say something that could have changed the narrative or at the very least given the world a heads up. Instead he held his tongue and waited for at least fifty million people watching at the time and then the rest of the country in real time realize what he had seen.

Then he went out of his way to talk to as many Democratic elected officials as possible. Maybe they confirmed what he already believed, maybe he genuinely wanted to know what they thought. Whatever the reason he spent two whole weeks before he chose to write his article in the Times.

And let's not forget what Clooney chose to do in the aftermath of the election. He and his family confirmed citizenship in another country. This is something that only the very rich among us can easily do and it confirms Clooney's elite status. He asked for Biden to step down to save democracy and when it didn't work as he planned, he chose to leave. It's conditional of course – he was back in Hollywood for the Golden Globes after being nominated for Jay Kelly  - but that only goes to prove a larger point.

For him the fate of American democracy is in a sense an abstraction, something that they can afford to worry about because they can afford to leave America. We've seen multiple celebrities from Rosie O'Donnell to Ellen DeGeneres to Robin Wright make a similar decision and in all those cases they've returned. Some have not been subtle about it; Wright was at the Golden Globes as well.

That is the larger reason why I don't think we should take celebrities advice when it comes to so many of America's problems. It's not that they're necessarily uninformed on the subject (though again I do think the majority are); it's because for all of them, they're like America itself: they can take it or leave it. Those are options the majority of the Americans who are worried about the policies of the administration (of which I'm one) don't have.

Now I know none of that is going to stop the rest of the world from commenting on them with superiority; I've seen countless people do so on this site alone. I don't have a lot of respect for them, particularly expatriates from the last decade. And it's for the same reason I don't have any respect for celebrities when they do: both of them are speaking 'truth to power' when they're in no position to suffer the consequences from that very power. It doesn't take a genius that if you say 'F--- ICE at an awards speech in New York, you will get a very different reaction then if you say it to the face of one.

And that's a big difference. I may not agree with the protestors and I may think that they are ineffective at anything other than 'raising awareness' but at least when they do it in a place like Minneapolis they know what the cost is.  Mark Ruffalo isn't risking anything when he wears buttons or says the same thing at the Golden Globes in LA. And if he really thinks the country is a dictatorship (which if it was, he'd have been jailed as a political prisoner years ago) he can always fly to London or Paris where many of his colleagues have taken up dual citizenship.

Hell maybe he and the rest of them can make a film about a bunch of handsome, well-clothed white people planning to break into the White House and get Trump to sign a letter of resignation. Clooney could write the screenplay and says its based on a true story. But because this is Hollywood he could tweak the ending to make himself the hero this time.

After all, the film version usually supplants reality.

2026 Jeopardy Invitational Tournament Recap, Part 2: The Semifinals

 We saw a lot of remarkable things happen in the quarterfinals of this year's Invitational and that has led us to the semifinals. Three previous participants in the Jeopardy Masters are competing, along with a former Jeopardy All-Star and two winners of the Jeopardy Second Chance Tournament.

The impossible has already had happened for two of the semi-finalists: Alison Betts and Drew Goins. So let's see how the semi-finals played out.

 

February 13^th

Roger Craig vs Jen Giles vs Drew Basile

 

For Jen her moment in the sun came early in the Jeopardy round when she found the Daily Double on the second clue in SONG & BOOK: SAME TITLE. The only one with money, she bet the $1000 she had:

Don Henley looks back at an old relationship; Roger Kahn looks back at the baseball players of the 1950s.

She figured it out: "What is The Boys of Summer?" She doubled to $2000. She would only get one more correct response the rest of the round. But because Roger got into a big deficit early (at one point he was at -$2000) she would be in second for the entirety of the round. Drew finished  in the lead with $6000 to her $2400 while Roger had half her total.

Roger then found the first Daily Double on the second clue of Double Jeopardy in A SCIENCE BRIEF. He already had $3200 and because as he said: "I am a scientist", he bet it all:

The Cassini-Huygens mission found rippling sand dunes and liquid seas on this moon.

He figured it out: "What is Titan?" With that he went to $6400 and moved into the lead for the first time.

Not long after Drew found the other Daily Double in WRITERS. In second with $5600 and well aware of who he was playing, he bet everything as well:

Dickens saluted this writer as 'my dear sir' but also expressed doubt that it was actually a man behind the name (it wasn't).

Drew figured it out: "Who is George Eliot?" He moved up to $11,200 and the battle was well and truly joined.

Roger moved back into the lead a bit later but it was not a picnic. Both Roger and Drew each gave 20 correct responses and each got a Daily Double correct. Roger gave four incorrect responses; Drew gave 2. But all of Roger's were in the Jeopardy round and that was enough for him to finish with a slight lead: $18,400 to Drew's $14,000. Jen loomed as a spoiler with $4800.

It came down to Final Jeopardy. The category was SAINTS. Mentioned several times in a 1699 play, this patron saint of cobblers had a feast day that coincided with the Battle of Agincourt.

Jen's response was revealed first. "Who is Saint Swithin?" Not a bad guess but wrong. It cost her $425, leaving her with $4025.

Next came Drew. He wrote down: "Who is Crispin?" And that was the correct saint. The play in question was Henry V and the St. Crispin's speech is one of Shakespeare's best. He wagered nothing, no doubt trying to keep ahead of Jen in case he got it wrong.

It was all on Roger. He wrote down: "Who is St. Crispin?" His wager of $9601 meant that even if Drew had bet everything Roger still would have won by $1. The former Master beat the Survivor and fellow All-Star as Roger returned to the finals for the second straight year.

February 16^th

Matt Amodio vs Andrew He vs Alison Betts

 

In the first Invitational Tournament there were complaints about how in the quarter-finals or semi-finals had any of the three former Masters facing off. They couldn't make that argument for this semi-final as two former Masters were facing off against each other with Alison standing against them. A tough battle but she'd survived one already.

Alison's best chance came when she found the Daily Double in the Jeopardy round on the second clue in IN A 'B' COUNTRY. She bet the $1000 she had:

Cricket is the national sport of the Caribbean nation & Anglicanism is the predominant religion. She thought and guessed: "What is the Bahamas?" She should have gone with her other choice Barbados.

From that point on Andrew and Matt went back and forth. Andrew got a big lead early and finished the Jeopardy round with $8400 to Matt's $3800 and Alison's $1400.

Matt got the first two clues of Double Jeopardy correct and found the first Daily Double in PLAYS & PLAYWRIGHTS. He bet the $6200 he had:

Set in a fictional town in the South, this 1955 courtroom drama was based on the Scopes trial; a film would follow. They weren't going to stump him on Inherit The Wind and he took the lead for the first time.

Andrew struck next when he found the other Daily Double in TAKE YOUR MARBLE. With $11,600 he bet $6000:

After some effort, 'The Brutalist' director Brady Corbet got to film in the quarries of this Italian marble mecca.

Andrew had no idea and guessed: "What are the Dolomites?" It was actually Carrara. But he'd wisely held some back and had $5600 left.

As you'd expect it was a close match. Matt gave 17 correct responses and only one incorrect one; Andrew gave 22 and 3 incorrect ones. Alison had 7 only 1 incorrect one. (There were quite a few triple stumpers particularly in STATE CAPITAL ENTERTAINMENT?) Matt finished in the lead with $19,200, Andrew was next with $13,600 and Alison was in third and had $2600.

It came down to Final Jeopardy. The category was MEN OF RELIGION. A 1660 book quoted Mary, Queen of Scots as saying she feared this man's prayers more than an army of men.

Alison's response was revealed first.  "These guys probably won't bet it all." As Ken pointed out, "That's probably true this time, Alison." She bet nothing.

Next was Andrew who took a philosophical approach: "Who else thinks the best season of Jeopardy was…? When Ken asked, it made sense when you considered the wager: $38. "That was your season, Andrew," Ken asked. "Yeah and Matt's. (Also Amy Schneider, Mattea Roach and Sam Buttrey; it was a very good season.)

Matt tried to take it seriously. "Who is James I?" But that was incorrect. Ken said: Mary Queen of Scots as a Catholic feared John Knox, leader of the Scottish reformation. So it came down his wager. Matt bet $8001, leaving him with $11,199 and Andrew He comes from behind to return to the JIT Finals for the second time in three years. (He also assures us that whoever wins the JIT Finals will be different for the third consecutive year.)

For the record I wrote down Who is Knox, crossed it out, wrote down Calvin, crossed that out and went back to John Knox.  So I was right but I really wasn't sure of it.

 

February 17^th

Long Nguyen vs Karen Farrell vs Drew Goins

This was the closest game of the tournament so far. Karen started strong when she found the Daily Double in the Jeopardy round on the second clue in POEM ADD A LETTER. With just $800 she wagered the $1000 she could:

Keats looks back on an unfortunate day as a line cook in Athens when his hand blistered after touching a hot gyro plate.

She figured out the category: "What is Ode on a Grecian Burn?" She went up to $1800. But not long after that Drew ran the category WORDS WITH A SILENT LETTER and the battle was joined.

At the end of the Jeopardy round Long had $5600, Drew had $4600 and Karen was in third with $3600.

Long got off to a great start in Double Jeopardy when he found the first Daily Double on the second clue of the round in MAPS & GLOBES. He bet the $7200 he had:

Lines of latitude are also called these, from their geometric layout; you're just about standing on the 34^th. He knew it was a parallel and was at $14,400.

Then he found the other Daily Double in OPERA on the very next clue and had a chance to put it away early. This time he was more cautious and bet $5000. It was good he did:

Maidens guard the title object of this opera, the first of the 'Ring' cycle. He guessed the entire opera: "What is the ring of the Nibelung?" It was actually Das Rheingold. He dropped to $9400 and gave Drew and Karen a chance to catch up.

It was a close game all the way. Long gave 20 correct answers but four incorrect ones to finish with $15,800.  Drew gave 18 correct answers and 3 incorrect ones to finish with $12,200. Karen rang in with 12 correct answers and not a single mistake to finish with $10,000 even. It was anybody's game going into Final Jeopardy.

The category was WRITERS.  The winner of 3 Pulitzer Prizes in 2 different categories, he called his home in Connecticut "The House the Bridge Built."

Karen's response was revealed first. She couldn't come up with anything. But she bet nothing leaving her at $10,000.

Drew was next. He wrote down: "Who is Agee?" It was not James Agee. He went big, wagering $12,197.

Finally it came to Long. He wrote down: "Who is Wilder?" And that was correct. It referred to Thorton Wilder who won Pulitzers for the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth and for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Long had become the last finalist. He bet $5001 which means he was hoping to be left with enough if he was wrong and Karen had wagered nothing. Either way, his strategy made him the winner.

For the record I thought it was Steinbeck. Right idea, not enough Pultizers.

So Roger Craig, Andrew He and Long Nguyen will face off in the finals which start tomorrow. It should be exciting to watch and I'll be back whenever it ends

Better Late Than Never: Olivia Cooke Is The Girlfriend And Robin Wright May Have Met Her Match

 

Ever since I first saw Olivia Cooke in Bates Motel where she played Emma, Norman Bates young friend who was forever attacked to an oxygen tank I have been in awe of her work as an actress. Much of her film work has been playing either women who are frail such as Me and Earl and the Dying Girl or women who only appear frail such as Samanthan in Ready Player One and her terrifying work in the undervalued masterpiece Thoroughbreds. I don't think I knew until fairly recently she was British though the fact she played Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair should have been a big clue.

Her television work in recent years has  shown her embracing her natural accent first as Sid in Slow Horses, then as the adult Queen Alicent in House of The Dragon. In both cases her frail appearance does much to hide that inner steel. And had I known she was playing the title role in the recent Amazon limited series The Girlfriend I would have ended up watching it quicker.

The series has already been nominated for a Golden Globe and a Critics Choice Award for Best Limited Series but the major draw appeared from the start to be Robin Wright. Robin Wright has been playing steely characters most famously as Claire Underwood, whose rise to power was as fascinating as Frank's on House of Cards until the show drove in to hard to melodrama rather than politics. So when you have two actresses this superb you're expecting a power struggle. That it happens to be over a man is not surprising; that Wright is playing the mother and Cooke the girlfriend less so.

Watching this series it is impossible for me not to me reminded of one of my favorite shows Damages which famously was about a struggle between Patty Hewes and Ellen Parsons, a struggle for dominance that led to a lot of blood being shed before it was over and it was up to the viewer to see who one. Unlike Damages The Girlfriend acknowledges upfront the biggest similarity in its tagline: "There are two sides to every story." The series than demonstrates that it's going to show both perspectives:  Robin Wright gets one version, Olivia Cooke the next. In many cases they overlap and each time we see how both women see it.

Wright plays Laura Sanderson, a fiftyish art gallery owner living in London who at the start of the series is planning a major show. The first time we meet her son Daniel they are in a swimming pool and its really hard to get away from the sexual implications even when we know the truth.  Laura's possessive nature is explained to an extent but the viewer can't get away from the creepy factor and to the show's credit, if never shies from it.

Daniel is an aspiring doctor who is planning to become a trauma surgeon. His father, Laura's husband, is a wealthy hotel owner and the family is from enormous wealth which is clear from the start. When he introduces her to Cherry Laine (Cooke) the natural assumption is that she's some kind of stripper. When we first meet her, she goes out of her way to deflate it with a joke.

Cherry claims to come from money and from a major British boarding school. It's clear from the start there are holes in her story and Laura seems naturally suspicious. Eventually she goes to the office where she works and sees her punching a man.

All of this comes from Laura's perspective. Then the show switches to Cherry. Cherry is very much from a working class background and its clear that she's being passed over for promotion multiple times. Her former boyfriend has been acting in a very overt way to attack her. She meets Daniel when he thinks he's coming in to see a different real estate broker. The two go to a penthouse and immediately begin to flirt.  Cherry very quickly realizes this is the wrong place for him and takes him to a more humble abodes which they have to break into. Eventually they have a rendezvous at his parent's flat, and that's when Laura shows up. This leads to an incident were Cherry accidentally steals Laura's bracelet and can't find a way to give it back.

By switching perspectives in each episode (I've only seen the first two) The Girlfriend does a great job of switching the viewer's sympathy when we see the same scene from different perspectives. From Laura's perspective at the dinner, when she pours coffee on Cherry's dress we think its because she's distracted by Daniel's news. From Cherry's perspective, it seems deliberate but we're not sure and our sympathy is with Cherry because she paid money for an expensive dress and wanted to return it the next day – something she can't do now and will be out of pocket 300 pounds.

The viewer's sympathy through much of the first two episodes is with Cherry because we know her backstory in a way Laura doesn't yet. Cherry comes from very humble beginnings with no real access to money and she's clearly been ashamed of her entire life. Laura does seem a little to invested in Daniel's happiness and it does have a creepy vibe. But on the other hand Cherry is very blunt with her actions.  Her mother is a butcher and we see her take the innards of a dead animal, then pretend to be a serve so she can get it into her former beau's wedding cake and so when the cake is cut, horrible bloodshed ensues. When Laura learns about this, she's appalled and it doesn't help matters immediately afterward that we catch her in a lie.

There is clearly a deeper story going on with Laura as well. We know that she had a daughter and that she died very prematurely, though we still don't know the circumstances. Laura has never entirely stopped mourning and when we see a room that has all of the daughter's possession in it, it clearly still is a subject of difficulty for her husband. We also know that at one point when their marriage was struggling she had an affair with another woman and was planning to leave Howard for her until she got pregnant and she chose her family. Critically the only person she's told is Cherry and we know that won't end well.

For all my issues with Wright on her decision to recently emigrate to England I still respect her ability as a performer. And watching her both act and as a director (she had directed the first three episodes; Andrea Harkin directed the last three) I am yet again reminded of how she is one of the great actress of our time. Like so many actresses as she has aged she has become more steely in the characters she portrays. But the sexuality as well as that frailty is there and she's more sympathetic even as we are reluctant to buy it.

But for all the award nominations she's deservedly received its Cooke who truly impresses. For the first time in my years of watching her the frail nature is nowhere to be found in Cherry. This is a woman who flaunts her sexuality, who is utterly bold in her attitude towards Daniel and while she may be insecure about fitting in with the family she is not shy about who she is and how much she cares for him.. Cherry has clearly been underestimated her whole life and she is not walking away from it even here. For the first time I can tell Cooke is having fun playing someone very close to a femme fatale and every moment she's onscreen it’s a delight to watch her.  Cooke needs to be among those who are considered for Emmys this year and if she has to lower herself to being considered for Best Supporting Actress  even though she's clearly a co-lead, well, her character's more than used to it.

It's pretty clear something dark is going to happen in five months' time: the series flashes forward to an argument between the two that sounds like its going to end in bloodshed. (Damages did this first by the way.) But watching The Girlfriend is so much fun that I'm honestly hoping there can be some kind of sequel where the two of them go on the run for Europe, dancing in front of pools and getting heavily sloshed. As we all know men are powerless beneath Cherry and Laura, and I want to see anything where I get to watch these two powerhouses faces off. For now, I'll just settle for watching this.

My score: 4.25 stars.

Lost Landmark Episodes 20th Anniversary: One of Them

Once again some personal history.

When I started watching TV in the 1990s I'm not sure I would have been able to tell you what an antagonist was and even if I'd know I'm not sure if I'd have considered them that important.

I might have used terms like 'villain' or even 'adversary' but when I watched network TV – the only game in town until the late 1990s – it was rare to find one that impressed. To be sure there was William B. Davis's incredible Cigarette Smoking Man but he was far more a cipher and considering that basically every episode of The X-Files had them to dealing with some kind of adversary, whether it was Monster-of-the-Week or mythology very rarely did they register as characters.

So many of the procedural dramas I watched whether they were Law & Order, Homicide or by extension The Practice (I'll get back to that one) did have characters who were villainous but the adversary was basically the criminal justice itself. Same with ER (at least until Dr. Romano arrived); the characters were dealing with an underfunded medical system which is bad enough on its own. In truth the best one to use antagonists were Buffy and Angel, in large part because Joss Whedon went into such depth with many of his best antagonists and season after season they would become allies with the Scoobies and the Fang Gang against greater adversaries.

I'm not entirely sure when I began watching HBO dramas that many of them had antagonists in the traditional sense. OZ was full of murderers, rapists and other monstrous criminals that it was a challenge to feel sympathy for them at all and it wasn't until the second season you realized the biggest antagonist was the 'hoary judicial system' itself.  That message was crystal clear by the time the series was over but it was always difficult for viewers like myself to feel empathy for the majority of them.

Considering The Sopranos was the first drama with an antihero as its central character it was always difficult to consider if the antagonist model worked. Considering how challenging it was to follow Tony as he became more and more monstrous each season and combined with how David Chase would frequently eliminate potential adversaries in ways unexpected even to him I'm not sure we ever followed it that way. With Six Feet Under the only real antagonist was death and as that always won we basically ignored it. The Wire's entire plan was that America itself had forced everybody on the show into a broken system that there were neither heroes nor villains. Only Deadwood had anything resembling a conventional antagonist and David Milch's showed it through the threat of the Hearst combine, first with Francis Wolcott in Season 2, then Hearst himself in Season 3. And the premature cancellation of the series left us unclear who would win that struggle.

24 very much had the villains and antagonists throughout its entire run and utilized them brilliantly throughout eight seasons. Part of the reason the show worked so well was because you spent much of every season right in their with Jack and CTU: we had no idea who could be trusted. But of course the greatest antagonist was one we were always reminded of: the ticking clock, counting down whatever threat first LA, then DC and finally New York would face.

All of which brings us to Lost when I was first watching it. (For purposes of this and all other articles I will be sticking with series that aired up to the point of the time; in this case 2006.) Lost had already proven to me such a brilliant show that if I'd seen the DVD extras from Lindelof and Cuse at the time I might have chided them. In the Season 2 DVD they say they were kind of amazed that "they'd gotten along a year and a half without an antagonist."

I'd have argued they were doing just fine without it until then. We'd spent the first season moving at what I consider the absolute perfect pace for the show, particularly in comparison to all the series that tried to imitate its success during its run. The first season was all about trying to survive on the island and honestly that was hard enough. They'd been hunting, gathering water, slowly trying to find out "where are we?" and making attempts to find a way to save themselves. Halfway through the first season we became aware of 'The Others" and we were starting to figure out what the 'monster' was. The survivors on the beach were still feuding a lot and forming alliances and by the end of the season Jack and Locke were starting to feel at loggerheads.  During the second season the presence of the Tailies made it very clear the real threat the Others held and we'd gotten our first real glimpse at the Smoke Monsters.  I was fine without an antagonist.

That said by the middle of the second season it was clear Lost needed something. After the Tailies reunited with those on the beach for the next five episodes the plot started to drag a little. This became clear after Michael ran off into the jungle after Walt in 'The Hunting Party' and Locke, Sawyer, and Jack ran after him. What should have been a high point of the conflict ended up being one of the weakest episodes of the series so far as so much of the episode was spent in internecine squabbles between the three of them that made it clear they only wanted to snipe at each other.  The meeting with 'Mr. Friendly' seemed like a big deal at the time but Jack's self-righteous and complete denialism was so dumb you almost thought he was willing to get everybody killed just to prove a point.

It didn't help matters that the next few episodes represented some of the weakest points in Season 2 as the writers seemed to completely lose the thread. Jack talked about training an army with Ana Lucia, that went nowhere. Charlie decides that Aaron needs to be baptized, that seemed pointless. Sawyer decides to steal all the guns and basically nothing changes after that. All of this seems to be putting the show in a holding pattern, especially considering that it was following an already frustrating pattern set in Season One. During that season Claire had been snatched by the Others and for four episodes everybody forgot about it until she reappeared at the behest of the writers. Walt had been abducted at the start of the season and they'd spent half Season 2 really do nothing to find him. Now Michael is gone and for much of the next third of the season the show forgets him too.

As I said I think Season 2 overall works rather well but I do understand why so many fans began to get frustrated with it when it was going on.  The show needed to get going again. "One of Them' provided us with the energy.

It's worth noting that the character of 'Henry Gale' (if you've read my other articles you know who he really is but again I'm going to act like it was at the time) was originally just supposed to be there for a three or four episode arc. At this point Cuse and Lindelof were working on the idea of who the leader of the Others was but they hadn't figured it out yet and they certainly hadn't cast it.  But when they came up with the idea of Henry, they decided to cast Michael Emerson. That would turn Lost from being potentially a great show into a masterpiece.

Because even in 2006, I knew you could never take any character Michael Emerson played at face value.

I’d only seen him in a few major roles on television prior to Lost but they were significant enough to tell you everything you needed to know about him. In 2001, he had won an Emmy for playing William Hinks on The Practice, a man caught standing over the body of a dead woman who confessed to being a serial killer. His court-appointed psychiatrist came to Lindsey Dole convinced that not only was he not insane; his delusion was thinking he was the killer. Lindsey went along with it, and interrogated Hinks on the murders and pulled him apart on the stand. Then the DA made such a convincing closing that it actually sold Lindsey on what she was being told – and Hinks revealed he was right. On a series that was known for mesmerizing guest characters, most of whom fooled their attorney, Emerson scared the hell out of you and even when he met his end, it wasn’t the end of the trouble he caused.

Then, in what would be the penultimate episode of The X-Files Emerson played Oliver Martin, a young man who lives in a house that neighbors say looked like that of The Brady Bunch. Eventually we learned that he was actually Anthony who as a boy had been the greatest example of telepathy ever seen, the proof of the paranormal that Dana Scully had been looking for. Many of the changes in Oliver’s character over the episode would have been difficult to believe in a lesser actor, but Emerson completely sold them, this time showing a level of humanity.

So when we see Emerson screaming in a net that he is Henry Gale from Minnesota and that he is begging for help, naturally I was inclined to agree with Rousseau. No matter what any character he plays, I already knew outright that Michael Emerson never played straight with us. I don’t think I could have imagined how right I was at this stage (we will never know for certain if the writers had even figured that much out) but I was convinced as quickly as Sayid was that no matter how much he pleaded and implored with us, how frantic his cries for help were, how pitiful he seemed, that he just wasn’t being straight with us.

One of Them is one of the greatest episodes in Lost’s history for many reasons besides the introduction of Emerson to the cast of the show. Perhaps the most important is that it completely revitalizes the character of Sayid. For the first part of Season 2 he was underutilized, after Shannon’s death he basically went into mourning, and he’s been detached from much of the action ever since. This gives Sayid’s character a complete new direction to take things and while it does much to unleash the darkest parts of him, it also gives Naveen Andrews a chance to flex his acting muscles at a whole different level. He will demonstrate it many times going forward in the series but few times to the level he does in both the flashback and the story on the island.

It's stunning to see Andrews in the flashback thirteen years before we saw him on the island: there’s an innocence in his face that we honestly did not think he ever had throughout the flashbacks and a sense of devotion and loyalty to his cause that we did not see even in his first flashback. We are in the middle of the First Gulf War and Sayid has been taken prisoner, and his fate will end up being determined by Americans and two faces, one that we have seen before, one we will see again and both times they have connections to characters that are vital to the island.

When Sayid is escorted from holding the man standing over him is Sam Austen, the man who at this point in time Kate believes is her father. Sam clearly knows differently, but it's clear he still loves Kate with all his heart in the final flashback as he stares lovingly at a picture of a young Kate and asks Sayid if he has family. It is hard to put that in context with the man who has little trouble telling Sayid to interrogate his commanding officer to get the location of a missing pilot. There’s a very clear difference in his tone in both the beginning and the end of the episode.

The other character we meet is identified as Joe Inman. His face was familiar to me but from other roles: Clancy Brown was a fairly busy character actor.  To that point his most famous role was one of the lead characters in the flawed but fascinating Carnivale, an HBO mythology series that was cancelled before it could realize its potential (or maybe disappoint its fans, that does seem to happen a lot.) Inman seems to be a decent man when he talks to Sayid but it’s clear he intends to manipulate him early on. Looking back on it, I sometimes wonder if in a way Darlton was making a subtle political statement about the War on Terror in this episode. Was what the American military did to Sayid here just a rehearsal for what would be do a decade later without getting our hands dirty? I think of that quite a bit in the last scene when Inman leaves Sayid by the side of the road, telling Sayid he now has a new skill set that might come in handy. The fact that he does so in perfect Arabic reveals the true mastery of the deception. They never needed him as a translator in the first place, which means they were using him from start to finish.

It's worth remembering the previous Sayid-centric episode was willing to use him first to infiltrate a terror cell in Australia and then manipulate him to turn a reluctant participant into a full-fledged martyr all while manipulating Sayid with the carrot of seeing Nadia again. (Nadia isn't mentioned at all in this episode or indeed until Season Four in relation to Sayid.) When Essam learns the truth of how he's been used and takes his own life the government is so cold-blooded they won't even bury him according to his wishes because in their mind he's just another terrorist. Sayid demands his flight be changed to give Essam a proper burial – which puts him on Oceanic 815 and brings him here again. We are not yet sure of the greater forces that put everybody on the island – that's been moved to the background for much of the next couple of seasons – but its now clear that a greater force did put Sayid on his path: the U.S. government. This was a bold statement to make, even as fatigue over the Iraq War had begun to set in (months after this episode debuted the Democrats would regain control of Congress as what was seen as a political repudiation of W's handling of it) and perhaps tellingly the writers never discuss it again. (To be fair, Lost was never that type of show the way 24 was.)

Andrews is superb throughout the flashback: we don’t actually see him torture someone for the first time, only the aftermath when he emerges from the room, tells Inman about the pilot’s fate, and we see that his sleeves are stained with blood and the look of horror on his face. When he tells Inman at the end that he never wants to do anything like that again, we know that’s what he believes even though the viewer knows better. The fact that he is left alone at the end is perfectly fitting; Sayid has always been solitary and now we see he started out that way.

But his performance on the island is just as magnificent, surely his highpoint for Season 2.  He goes through a remarkable range of emotions throughout. It helps matters that Rousseau, who has yet to make an appearance this season returns to bring Henry to his attention. Despite what happened in the first season finale Sayid trusts Rousseau in a way no one else does. Sayid is shocked by Rousseau’s actions in the initial scene, but it's worth noting that everything she tells him is absolutely true all the way through. We will not learn that they have a connection until much later in the series but Rousseau knows enough about him to know better.

And Sayid is suspicious about what he sees and keeps working slowly. He is quiet at the start in his approach, but it's very clear that he’s got a plan and he knows outright that it’s easier to manipulate Locke by putting him at odds against Jack. He arranges things so that he can lock himself in the armory and its very clear what he’s going to do.

The scenes between Emerson and Andrews will be a highpoint in Lost from this point forward, particularly in Season 2. Henry will very quickly prove that he is good at manipulating the survivors of the crash but he never can quite pull it off with Sayid. He has answers to every question Sayid has, and there are no obvious flaws in his story. Even the fact that he claims not to remember just how deeply he buried his wife could be something that could be overlooked out of grief. But Sayid knows better.

And then there is the monologue he delivers before an act break when he ‘introduces’ himself to Henry. It is by far the fullest realization of who he is and in  a way, it’s acceptance. When he tells him that: “My name is Sayid Jarrah and I am a torturer” it is exhilarating, terrifying and heartbreaking simultaneously. I have never understood why Lost received no major acting nominations in Season 2; the fact that Andrews never got one  is by far the most blatant offense.

But as much as the episode is dominated by Emerson and Andrews, One of Them is also incredible because it puts a human face on the divide between Locke and Jack. They will spent much of the next several episodes divided on how to handle the situation with Henry, and I have to say that from the start Jack comes away looking worse.

Everything that both Locke and Sayid tell Jack about the situation is not only accurate but rational. Locke’s speech to Jack is perfectly sound: if Jack is raising an army, they are at war. Part of war means doing unpleasant and horrible things to people you consider the enemy and it also means making alliances with people you might not normally trust. But rather than take this as the sound advice it is, Jack gets self-righteous because someone else has taken the choice out of his hands. And when he decides to force Locke to open the armory or let the timer run on, he looks even worse. He chooses this opportunity to possibly risk the lives of everybody on the island to get what he wants and throw in a chance to mock Locke’s devotion to task he considers pointless.  When Locke gives in and runs to the computer – and the viewer gets their very first hint that something bad might happen when the timer runs out -  we get the feeling of how utterly reckless Jack is when it comes to getting what he wants.

Even when everything is all done and Henry spends the next several episodes in the armory Jack utterly refuses to admit he has made a mistake. I think his actions going forward have less to do with controlling the information – Sayid has already told Charlie there’s a prisoner in the basement – and more about exuding his dominance. Jack has to be in charge even if it’s not in the group’s best interest.

Its worth noting that when Sayid expresses his certainty that Henry is one of them, Locke points out a very real truth: the first time Rousseau found Sayid she did exactly what he has just done to Henry Gale and for the exact same reason. "To Rousseau we're all Others. I guess it's all relative."

This is the first time any one of the Losties has made a valid point on the Us Vs. Them mentality.  At this point we think the Others are wrong when they chose to think of the survivors of a hostile force but that's because we've spent the entire series from their perspective. However its hardly surprising no one including the viewer takes John that seriously on the subject: no matter how many times they will try to justify themselves going forward (and this will happen constantly in Season 3 when we finally enter their camp) the Losties have always been on defense and reacting to the threat the Others pose.

Yet at this point and for several episodes to come there's still plenty of room for ambiguity. As Emily St. James points on "What if he really is just some poor guy whose hot-air balloon crash and whose wife died? If that's true then finding himself suddenly a pawn in a much larger war must be deeply horrifying." And the fact is Henry did not break under Sayid's torture and will stick to his story for days to come.

If the episode ends with another storyline being proposed that doesn’t really go anywhere – Sayid’s alliance with Charlie is basically a non-starter, though it's at least carried out a little better than Jack’s ‘army’ – it makes it very clear that Sayid has a true realization of the Others as a threat than Jack does at this point. There’s an argument that Jack's plan for an army was less due to protect his people than the fact that they humiliated him. Sayid  knows how dangerous these people are, and for the rest of his time on the island will do everything in his power to protect the survivors from them and thwart their actions. Sayid has had no direction since Shannon’s death, and now he has one. But in doing so, whether he knows it yet or not, it is started him down a path that leads to darkness that he will increasingly find hard to climb out of.

And though I could have had no way of knowing it at the time Lost had just been given a shot in the arm it desperately needed and one of the greatest characters in the history of television was about to be created.  Less surprisingly was that after this episode Michael Emerson was about to become one of the greatest actors on TV a title that he holds to this day. Of course whatever role he plays we're like Rousseau. We don't believe a word he says, no matter how convincingly he says it.

 

 

Homicide Rewatch: White Lies

 

Written by Anya Epstein ; story by Tom Fontana & James Yoshimura

Directed by Peter Weller

 

White Lies is one of the more interesting episodes in Season 5. So much of the series is devoted to the detectives doing everything they can to work against impossible odds to close cases. The board is a reminder of how frequently they fail, even if the viewer doesn't see every investigation.

White Lies turns the narrative on its head as we see two separate investigations where the detectives overcorrect in their job. One investigation involves a detective who vigorously pursues what he believes to be a crime, only to learn that there was no crime committed. The other involves the work of two detectives which lends the possibility that they have the right criminal in custody but they can't prove it. And all of this is done by progressing the investigation into Kellerman's corruption and reveals he's not the innocent he claims to be.

The most interesting story of the night involves John Munch, Throughout his tenure despite having a relatively minor role Richard Belzer never complained once about it how little he was used. (He had no idea at the time that he was going to be playing it for the rest of his life in practically every show on TV long after it was cancelled.) With the unit depleted by retirements, suspensions and elopements Munch would finally be giving a chance to put more center stage and White Lies is the first time that happens in Season 5.

This is Munch's first encounter with Cox and its great to see the two of them play off each other.  Cox is observant on things that only a woman who get: particularly that Nina Engle was wearing makeup to bed. She can tell that something's strange is going on even if she doesn't know if she died. Munch then has a discussion with Engle's husband and its clear to the viewer that there's something off. Munch picks up on it immediately and tells Cox to let him know the moment the preliminary is done. He knows the husband is lying.

When Cox comes down to the squad room (after some clear flirtation with Bayliss) we see a side of John we rarely see: the kind of thorough investigator trying to poke holes in the suspect's story.  When Cox interferes and says that there's no sign of foul play Munch might be inclined to let it go but Cox chooses to challenge him by saying that he's traumatizing the husband and that it isn't a murder unless she says it is.  Its telling that most of the time John would be inclined to let it go and its clearly the challenge as well as the flaws in the story that keep him going.

It's also worth noting how Howard reacts to this. When he calls her that woman, she immediately says: "She has a name." But Kay's always been a cop first and her feminine sympathies do not extend to those who don't wear a badge. "Since when do we let an M.E. dictate investigative procedure?" She tells John to follow his instincts.

The way John manages to get to Engle is a superb example of his process because he never threatens violence, never even gets angry. Instead he starts to poke holes in the husband's story about how a 29 year old woman could not just die in her sleep. He basically tells the truth – they are going to have to perform a complete autopsy on Nina Engle and that will reveal the cause of death. Her husband admits "It was me" and collapses in tears and its clear this surprises Munch.

And then we get the twist – Nina Engle died of a lethal heroin overdose. Munch is infuriated by all of this but Cox gets to the root of it: "Who are you angry at, me, the husband or yourself?" And Munch as always is honest: "How about three for three?" When Cox asks if he's curious to know why he lies Munch gives an answer that could serve as the mantra for the show:

"I'm a Homicide detective. The only time I'm surprised is when they tell the truth."

The scene where Cox goes to talk to Philip Engle is out of sync with how Homicide usually works: there's no point when an ME would ever talk to someone suspected of murder. However for dramatic purposes its necessary because the viewer needs  closure and Munch isn't interested in giving it. So the husband tells Cox that it was his fault because she promised she'd stop using and he went on a business trip – therefore he takes responsibility for it. He found her naked on the floor and to preserve her memory he dressed her, put makeup on her and put her on the bed hoping to spare her family the truth. Cox lets him off the hook by telling him the autopsy would have revealed it anyway. Forbes's gentleness in the scene shows her with the capability of giving the kind of grace the detectives won't.

Pembleton spends most of the episode working a cold case – Alison Lambert, the only open case on Bayliss' side of the board.  This is clearly him trying to avail himself of what Gee suggested he do when he came back and its telling that Bayliss seems to humoring his old partner when he agrees to run the prints. It doesn't help that when Frank keeps pressing he can't remember the victim's name.

But Bayliss does find the prints of a suspect Samuel Colby, whose fingerprints were on the steering wheel and who wasn't in the system six months ago. So he brings him in the box and interrogates him. He comes close to doing but in the midst of the interrogation goes off on a tangent in which he mistakenly loses the thread. (Or does he? See below.) Bayliss knows he does but Frank observes him and then makes it clear where and when.

Tim is already mad at himself for what he did and the fact that Frank is pissing on his leg in the aftermath has got to be a bridge too far. He chafed enough under Frank's tutelage when they were partners and the fact he's doing it even though he's suspended is a bridge too far. So he calls Frank on his BS and tells him to go into the box. You can see the longing in Frank's eyes as the offer is extended as well as the desperation. We actually see him doing so in his mind before we realize that it is just there and then Bayliss walks out.

At the end of the episode Pembleton finally expresses the misery he's in ever since he came back. "My old life hangs over me," he tells Frank. And he tells Tim just how much he misses the box. "Four walls. A mirror. A table. Two chairs but getting a confession…its better than a cigarette better than coffee1"

The final moments feature one of the best segments in Homicide history (see Get The DVD for the full effect.) Frank goes into the box for the first time since coming back to the squad as Garbage's iconic song "I'm Only Happy When It Rains" plays. No suspects are there so he won't be in trouble. And in a series of quick cuts we see Frank in some of the most famous interrogations during the show's run going back four seasons and like him we are reminded of just how great Homicide was when Andre Braugher was working his magic. Like him, we long for what we can't have…though that time is coming closer.

Of all the storylines Homicide pursued during the run there's an argument that Kellerman's attitude during the FBI investigation is the most problematic. Much of it has to do with Kellerman himself. It's worth noting that every week Mike takes a different position on the kind of support he wants from the squad. When he was first suspended he was pissed when people stopped talking when he entered the room. When the Feds were interviewing his fellow detectives he was upset both when they withheld what they discussed and when Meldrick shared information, he was pissed by what he shared. And now that he's actually being asked directly what happened in the opening teaser he immediately turns on Bayliss as though even the questions are an offense.  It's never clear if anyone in the squad even momentarily thinks Mike took bribes but considering just how mean Kellerman says no matter what his fellow detectives say it would be hard to blame him for thinking it.

And when Kellerman chooses to go to the man who has named him in a bribery charge, physically threaten him and basically tell him to call the U.S. attorney and recant, it shows that Kellerman doesn't seem so much to think he's above the law but has forgotten how it works. He has no cards to play against Roland and has to know that a defendant accosting his accuser only makes him look guilty because he's been on the other side of it. The fact then he knocks stuff of his desk and threatens to hit him would be bad enough even if Roland hadn't called the U.S. Attorney on the other line.  That he doubles down by choosing to yell  at Ingram shows just how badly he's forgotten the idea of due process.

Again its worth noting that everyone in the process, whether they are Feds or the chain of command are following the law and doing everything by the book. And when he's called into Barnfather's office with Giardello presence he decides to lie to their faces. Ingram then calls him on it immediately and he seems more upset he's been caught on his lie then the trouble he's in. Ingram seems willing to bend over backwards to make sure Kellerman doesn't end up getting added more charges to his indictment that might end up with him going to jail right then. Furthermore he doesn't think he should be suspended and when Ingram offers him a string he demands full reinstatement. Kellerman's behavior is childish from the moment he meets the woman charged with his prosecution and if anything he seems inclined to make it worse.

When the polygraph takes place and Kellerman answers various questions we seem to get a sense that he's probably telling the truth – until he's asked if he knows if other detectives were taking bribes. He first refuses to answer the question and takes the equipment off. Ingram seems fine with this but Kellerman knows different as he tells Lewis

The thing is Kellerman is guilty – not of taking a bribe but because he knew that Goodman, Connelly and Perez were taking bribes and didn't report it to anybody.

The attitude of Hoffman on this storyline argues that there is a larger dilemma: "What is the culpability of those who knew the wrongdoing of others but chose to remain silent?" Andre Braugher it should be noted was vocal about the moral shortcomings of this storyline and expressed it at the time:

How pure is a cop who sits back and watches corruption going on? What is the virtue in remaining silent?"

Indeed Hoffman argues that the so-called blue wall being invoked is dissatisfying. He tries to take the burden off Kellerman by saying his 'fellow arson bunkies did nothing to free him from the jam even though they knew he was innocent." But then he adds: "Maybe the answer is Kellerman wasn't such a good cop from the beginning." We've already seen quite a few examples of it even before the investigation began and if anything Kellerman is making actively worse with each week.

And it is telling that even though his job is on the line its basically understood that going to prison is being equated as nearly as bad as being a rat. This is not a theory that other detectives in the unit might believe. Pembleton in particular would look down on it. One of the quick flashes we get is of one of Frank's most problematic interrogations – when he got Gerry Staley to falsely confess to the murder of C.C. Cox. Frank did so out of deference to Giardello because he was convinced that a cop had killed Cox and Al had made it very clear the fellow police officers were to be assigned the benefit of the doubt. Frank felt otherwise and as was proved Frank was correct.

Perhaps its not shocking that Gee chooses to stick up for Kellerman with Ingram as he walks her back to her car. Ingram may be doing this purely for political gain but she's right when she calls Al on whether he can trust a man he's known for a year and a half for something he did before he knew him. For Al that kind of blind loyalty is typical and most of the time its one of his most enduring characteristics. But by the end of the episode we know its misplaced. Al may not think Mike is guilty of a crime but the law is a different beast.

And by the end of the episode we know that as well. Ingram comes to the squad room and tells Mike that he passed the polygraph. But so did Mitch Roland and unlike Mike he answered every question. When Mike asks Ingram what that means he already knows the answer and its not a comforting one.

The truth will not set Mike Kellerman free. In fact, it may be the thing that ends up sending him to prison.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

 

The story line of Nina and Philip Engle is borrowed from Simon's book, which also tells the tale of a man concealing his wife's heroin overdose. He wasn't arrested as the autopsy revealed the truth.

Brodie Is On The Move! As you'd expect Lewis throws Brodie out of his apartment claiming he wrecked his marriage. Brodie bemoans his fate and when Howard overhears she agrees to let him move in with her.  

Brodie doesn't think this is a good idea as he's worried as to how it will be if he moves in with a woman. He's proven correctly as Munch and Lewis (both of whom seem to be doing this solely to be petty to him) tease him with sexist terms and Lewis gives him condoms leftover from his honeymoon. Howard doesn't seem to mind but Brodie does. With the kind of sympathy we don't see he tells Howard that she's a sergeant and its important the detectives respect her. "Your reputation is more important then my comfort," he says with chivalry. Then he goes on to sleep in the nook. Aww.

In the episode guide Kalat reminds us that in 'Stakeout' Bayliss was planning to move to California but seemed to be talked out of it. The last line was that he wasn't going to leave until he closed the Lambert case. That may be an unconscious reason why he tells Frank not to bother with it and might explain why he confuses Colby with his out of left field speech above leaving Baltimore for Sunny California. As Frank points out: "That's you, not him!"

Get The DVD: In addition to the soundtracks use of Garbage in the closing the opening sequence where we see the Baltimore Sun with Kellerman on the front page being delivered to everyone including the squad we hear The Subdudes: "Tell Me What's Wrong." The former can't be heard on streaming.

This episode marks the first appearance of Rebecca Boyd as States Attorney Gail Ingram. She will appear for the remainder of this storyline and quite a few episodes for the remainder of Homicide's run.

Hey, Isn't That… Scott Bryce who plays Philip Engle was a familiar face to viewers of TV throughout the 1990ss. He made his TV debut as Rick on The Facts of Life and then played Will Forrest, Corky's eventual husband on Murphy Brown. He had recurring role on LA LAW during seasons 6 and 7 as well as roles on Matlock and Sex and The City. His most famous role was as Mike McQueen on Popular. His longest role was on As The World Turns where from 1982 to 2008 he would appear as Craig Montgomery. He has since appeared in the first season of Homeland, the first season of The Good Fight and of course Law & Order and Law & Order:SVU. Also a producer and director, he directed and produced several Lifetime movies