The Audacity Is More Radical And Better Then You'd Think

 

 

Even before I saw the first episodes of The Audacity I realized something that has made AMC an outlier in the world of 21^st century TV.  Ever since the first season of Mad Men debuted way back in 2007 it has been one of the constants in great television. Yet that brilliance is almost entirely focused in drama.

I don't just mean that they don't have comic masterpieces; I mean that in 19 years they've made almost no real effort to try comedy at all.  Which is bizarre when you consider that almost every major cable network, pay or basic, as well as all streaming services usually get in comedy first before they get into prestige drama. It was certainly true of HBO, then Showtime and definitely FX made some experiments. You can make that argument with every streaming service today.

By contrast while AMC has working in many genres within the would of drama and has done even a few intriguing things with unscripted programming in nearly two decades I can count their attempts on comedy on one hand and all of them, no matter how much potential they had whether the dark battle of the sexes Dietland or the intriguing Bob Odenkirk vehicle Lucky Hank got canceled after one season. In the 21^st century the only one that I recall lasting longer is Kevin Can Go F--- Himself which was more of deconstruction take of comedy then an actual comedy and either way just ran two seasons.

Considering that these days AMC's original series are, with the exception of Dark Winds, either part of the world of Anne Rice or Walking Dead spinoffs I was pleasantly surprised to see ads for an original AMC program while watching the current season of Dark Winds. Furthermore while The Audacity bore the imprint of a writer from Better Call Saul and Succession it made itself clear from the ads that it was going to be a comedy. Clearly a very bleak one (that much was clear from the promos) but a comedy, nevertheless. And in an era where every service is taking fewer risks when it comes to television AMC had either enough confidence or bravado to renew it for a second season before it even debuted. And despite the fact the early reviews have been decidedly mixed and by the very high standards of the network that's the equivalent of a pan I found myself admiring and even enjoying the first two episodes of the show.

This came as a surprise even to me because it was clear from the previews and even more so during the actual series that this is the kind of show I've started to openly loathe. It's a very black comedy set among Silicon Valley, which means its asking us to spend time with not only billionaires but the kind that we openly acknowledge will likely bring about the apocalypse. It's a comedy asking me to laugh at the nastiest behavior of so many privileged people which as I've written before, was becoming tiresome a decade ago and I've grown even less fond of now.  And as my viewers know a connection to Succession is one of those things that I would consider a red flag rather than a recommendation. Throw in all of my issues with all things involving the internet, tech and social media and I should despise The Audacity on site.

Yet I didn't. I agree its not a masterpiece by any standards and it does play into almost every horrible trope we've come to expect from the Valley in real life. I get why so many critics and viewers might be turned off by it, especially now. Yet I find it entertaining and often very amusing after two episodes. The fact that it seems to have been review bombed a bit in advance (it has an imdb.com rating of 5.3 despite the fact the first two episodes all average around 7) has more to do with the fact that there are no doubt a bunch of left-wing people who are annoyed that this show exists.  (Or who knows? Maybe the Musk's and Zuckerberg's of the world are leading the campaign to try and kill it because of how it makes them look.)

The show is center on a tech wizard known as Duncan played to perfection as a stunted manchild by Billy Magnussen. At the start of the series Duncan has leaked information about a merger that wasn't true and it has led to his stock prize to sink. We see him trying to confide in his shrink Joanne (Sally Goldberg) but after their session ends he keeps trying to invade her privacy.

Duncan is all the parts of Silicon Valley woven into a horrible package. He openly cheats on his wife with his chief executive officer but can't stand it when she does the same. He has no real involvement in raising his daughter Jamison and has to be reminded that orientation for her most recent school is coming up. We learn in one session that he basically bullied his previous partner to the point that he killed himself and feels no remorse of it. Its pretty clear he's been getting his best ideas from an employee who's name he doesn't know but who he feels no remorse in bullying. And he absolutely is determined to use his tech to stalk the people he feels are against him, which is everybody. He thinks there are no boundaries in the world and he thinks it should be all about him.

All of these are things that should make him loathsome to me. The reason I don't hate Duncan with the same feelings I do anyone at Waystar Royco is that he's so pathetic and basically not good at anything.  He's Silicon Valley's master of the universe but its clear that his wealth has done nothing to stop his wife Lili (Lucy Punch) from belittling him, from his CEO to going over his head and for him to unable to engage even in basic human interaction with his own daughter. He thinks the world should work like technology does and he seems irritated when he's even momentarily hits a bump and the first two episodes are nothing but bumps for him.

It helps that his therapist is no saint herself. Sarah Goldberg was Barry's ray of light for four seasons and like almost every female character in the first two decades of TV she was considered a buzzkill even though as Hader himself kept saying: "Barry kills people." Goldberg endured and as Joanne is playing someone who by any rational standard is more unpleasant then Duncan. She's been using the intelligence from her sessions with Silicon Valley titans to engage in insider training in order to make money and when Duncan discovers her first reaction is to buy a gun. She then spends her next session with a client, scrolling through guns and ignoring him. When Duncan harasses her in public she then goes to a bank but its clear she doesn't want to admit the fraud – or give the money back.

Aside from this Joanne is as bad a parent as anyone from the Valley. When her son Orson arrives from Boston because of his father's (her first husband's) bad health, she basically puts him in a guest room in the basement. She wants to get him into a good school, but its one she uses as a status symbol. We learn she and his father have fought against having Orson in custody (something Orson now knows) and she's been out of his life for so long she can't even remember his birthday. There's more evidence, listening to her give her sessions, that she's not even that good a therapist really, even if you set aside the inner training bit.

The thing is, while there are quite a few miserable characters in The Audacity there are actually some pretty good ones. Right now they are represented by those work for the VA, most notably Tom played by that exceptional talent Rob Corddry. Rob used to work in Silicon Valley and is now reduced to shilling for VA and trying to help those who are suffering. He's essentially begging billionaires for money and eventually he ends up at Duncan's company – against Duncan's will. Duncan was trying to get good PR but he wanted to hang out with soldiers because he thinks military is cool. When his chief executive goes over his head because she still wants to do good with their data, he very reluctantly goes along – and is so disconnected from reality that when he learns so much of the VA's information is on paper and floppy disks he's angry not because of the state of affairs but because this means his company will have to do work and he shirks the idea.

But I have to tell you two episodes in if there's a heart to The Audacity it is the children, mostly in early high school who are broken in individual ways from the non-existent parenting that the rich grownups are giving them. Jamison is being bullied by her parents into being diagnosed with a spectrum disorder so it will make it easier for them to frame their donation to Stanford as less of a bribe.  The discussions they have are done completely over her head and its clear her mother has no interest in her input. When Duncan takes his daughter out for cheeseburgers (for the sole purpose of spying on another billionaire) Jamison says she can get in on her own because this feels like cheating. Duncan doesn't think this is an issue.  "Cheaters never losers and losers never cheat," he tells her daughter with sincerity.

The Audacity makes it very clear that Joanne is just as neglectful. In addition to everything else during the first episode Orson gets locked into a basement crawl space and has to break out of it on his own. Joanne naturally assumes someone broke in to their house and its clear Orson didn't tell because he's rebelling against her bad behavior. When she drops him off at school she gives a lecture about Icarus that is just horrible parenting and doesn't bother to deal with orientation. His father has forgotten to send his transcript from Boston and he has to spend the day in 'the dungeon'. By this time Orson has gotten to know Jamison quite well and its clear that he has a crush on her.

There's also another child in this Tess, the daughter of XO who has a reputation as a trouble maker. She's already got a problem with prescription drugs and is driven to school in a driverless car. In an act of rebellion she glues a traffic cone to the hood, which paralyzes it there and causes all of the adults to be clueless. This is one of the funniest scenes in the series so far.

If there's a flaw in The Audacity to this point its that it has yet to figure out how to use its impressive cast to its full potential. Paul Adelstein, who plays Joanne's current husband is a psychiatrist who caters to so many of the wealthy by diagnosing them with spectrum disorders. While he frequently seems to be a good husband the writers haven't decided whether he has empathy or is clueless in his own way.  Simon Helberg, who plays Martin, should be in his element here as someone trying to design a virtual friend for teens yet basically he's had nothing to do in two episodes. By contrast Zack Galifiankis has done a lot in the two episodes as Carl Bardolph, one of Joanne's other patients, whose issues seem more genuine but who is listed as a guest star and you wish there was more of him and less of the regulars.

Yet despite these flaws I think The Audacity shows more promise then those on the internet might be inclined to give it at first glance. I realize that given the mood of the country these days and how much tech has done to create a satire set in the Valley might well seem not only in bad taste but less bizarre then real life. But I don't hold with the argument of bad timing, considering that in the last decade we've had to endure so many bleak and miserable dystopian series that Hollywood is clearly doing to mirror their distaste at the America we live in.  If anything that so much of The Audacity is spent with those teenagers are just as neglected as those who are far worse off is the kind of story we need more of in our society.  Nor do I buy the idea that we're not prepared to laugh at the fictional antics of the rich and powerful considering that's essentially all comedy is basically done only at those of the rich and powerful. And frankly I find the jokes on this show far funnier then much of what I've seen on late night over the last few years too.

Don't get me wrong: The Audacity is not a masterpiece by the standards of AMC's best dramas. But the fact is, given everything that's been hitting cable over the last few years, there's something bold about the fact that AMC in particular is willing to experiment again with the kind of bold programming it did when it was at its peak in the 2010s.  Even if it ends up being a failure there's something, well, audacious about the fact that they're willing to give two seasons for a very black comedy. That should be admired if nothing else.

My score: 3.5 stars.

Beef Is Finally Back For A Second Season

 

Like the entire world I fell in love with Lee Sung Jin's Beef is the spring of 2023. The fact that the show had a predominantly Korean and Asian American cast did nothing to stop me from immediately identifying with the theme Sung Jin established of how anger and emotion cause to spiral in directions that lead us to do things we might not think we're capable of but that in our hearts we all could do. I named it the fifth best show of 2023 and celebrated every single award it won particular for the incredible leads of Ali Wong and Steven Yeun.

Naturally the show was renewed for a second season and Sung Jin made it clear from the start that it was going to be a completely different cast. This was in my opinion the correct move as so many brilliant limited series frequently fall in the trap of thinking that they can keep the magic going with the same cast the following year. I also approved of his cast for the next season who he announced as two of the most brilliant actors of this century: Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac. I didn't know until I watched the first two episodes (the new season finally dropped Thursday) that Sung Jin was trying a completely different approach to how he dealt with the themes he'd started in Season 2. In it he decided to show the ramifications of an argument but this time it was between a married couple who are played by Isaac and Mulligan and how it is viewed – and more importantly filmed -  by a younger twenty something couple played by two superb actors in their own right: Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny.

There are similarities between the conflict: like In Season 1 it deals with the struggle between two people who are struggling economically and a seemingly wealthier couple who themselves only have the appearance of economic success but in fact are similar dependent are far wealthier people. In this case Isaac and Mulligan play Joshua and Lindsay who work at a California country club in positions where they seem to have wealth and power. Spaeny and Melton play Ashley and Austin two millennials-Gen Z who are struggling with working class issues, they don't have health insurance and they're not making ends meet. They have no idea that their bosses are not only in the same economically bad position as them but have no more job security then they do. Nor do they realize that the fight that catch them in is just another in a long series of signs that their marriage is on its last legs but neither one can pull the trigger on it.

Now's where I tell you that, unlike in Season 1, all four of the leads are white people. (Melton's character, as in real life, is half-Korean.)That may have seemed obvious if you know who the actors are but I can imagination that for those who loved Season 1 because of how much it looked at a minority group that has struggled for representation onscreen, to change it to just looking at a bunch of angry white people might seem like Sung Jin is selling out. That's not the case. In fact I'd argue he's doing something he couldn't have really done as much in Season 1. Because of the increasing polarized America the first season of Beef resonated even more because it dealt with a minority that's had to struggle far more in this country as opposed to white people. That's why the figure that was seen as the true heavy of Beef was a seemingly progressive white woman played by Maria Bello, who was very much a member of the very rich and was cosplaying at being open-minded and loving.

The second season of Beef tests our sympathies by setting so much of the show at a country club where the rich and elite gather to play and treat both the managers that Josh and Lindsay represent with the exact same contempt they do those that Austin and Ashley do. These people are the real one percent and they basically see all four of these people as the help if they see them at all. This is the same theme that the first season of Beef visited but by looking at it through white people Sung Jin is making the same point as before: everyone is looking at the person a few rungs higher as the villain when none of them are really looking at the very top of the food chain. One of the better jokes is that the two younger people talk about late-stage capitalism as the villain and Austin wants to try and do it the right way and talk about reading books and voting. Ashley  just wants to blackmail Joshua and Lindsay because they're what she considers late stage capitalism and this is the shortest distance between two points.

Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan are two of the greatest actors working today. Twelve years ago the two of them starred in Inside Llewyn Davis; Isaac played the title role; Mulligan his more successful sister. There's a parallel in their marriage between the relationship in Llewyn Davis;  here Lindsay was an heiress from Britain and she clearly resents that he's dragged her down, causing her to lose her ambitions as well as much of her money.  The fight that takes place is caused for many reasons, both career wise and sexual. In the Season 2 premiere Lindsay complains they haven't had sex in a year. Going in we don't know what caused this drift but we see Joshua pleasuring himself to pornography online; something he's clearly been spending a lot of money on. Lindsay seems to be considering cheating on her husband yet again but that actually seems like a cover for a British noble she still follows on social media.

What makes both of these actors so ideally cast, apart from both their talent and former on-screen pairing, is that both have an equal measure of parallels of threatening and awkwardness. Isaac's height and build frequently make him look imposing (it's why he's part of both the Marvel and Star Wars franchise) but just as frequently there's someone whose uncomfortable in his own skin. Mulligan has a long history of playing characters who seem frail but are far stronger then they look beneath the surface: something that was clear with her breakout role in An Education and was made most clear in arguably her best role to date on film Cassandra in Promising Young Woman. Both of these elements play out perfectly in the early segments: in public they can be one thing and in private something far darker.

Spaeny and Melton have both been working in Hollywood for nearly a decade; Spaeny has worked in serious projects both on film and TV; in the latter she had roles in Mare of Easttown before breaking big in 2024 where she worked with Sofia Coppola, Alex Garland and starred in Alien: Romulus. She has a common thread of playing seemingly frail character. Melton played Reggie on Riverdale  but has occasionally done deeper roles, most controversially playing the teenage lover of Julianne Moore in the controversial Todd Haynes film May December. Melton's role in his most famous works serves him well as Austin: he's playing both the idea of teenage heartthrob who's aged out of his prominence but still believes in the ideals of love. Spaeny's seeming frailty with a misplaced sense of toughness also works well for her as Ashley. All four are contenders for Emmys in both lead and supporting acting awards right off the bat.

Another critical way that Sung Jin subverts things is how it goes out of its way to have both the female characters using bullying tactics to get things done in their own way. Ashley sees no problem in blackmailing Josh from going from the beverage cart to a higher up manager spot even though she didn't even graduate high school and has no ability to do anything that broad. She doesn't think once about getting anything for Austin for the first time, does everything wrong from the start, demands Austin essentially steal clothes for her (which he refuses to do) and only needs to receive token praise to do whatever Josh asks.  Josh himself refers to her an entitle, unqualified Gen Z who pays no attention to detail and has no problem manipulating her (more on that). She then decides to try and cozy up to the new owner of the club by saying her boyfriend is half Korean and that he's a physical therapist, which he absolutely isn't. As far as she's concerned if anything goes wrong she'll just blackmail Josh. Ashley really thinks the world should work without her trying.

Lindsay is no peach herself, though we're more sympathetic to her given how much she feels like an outsider at the club. She wants to perform surgery to look better for someone she's still flirting with online and essentially tries to first nudge a local tennis pro and when he won't give her a discount (which he can't afford) she blackmails him by saying he's sexually harassing the women at the club. "And you're making me feel uncomfortable to," she says casually. The tennis pro then immediately gives in because he knows how this work.

Both Josh and Austin are at least initially more sympathetic. Josh has been essentially embezzling money from his family to pay off various debts the two of them have but its also clear how financially precarious their position. There's also the very real way the male entrepreneurs not only bully Josh into doing what they want and openly talking about wealth as if it's nothing to them. Josh is trying to sell off some of the things they have to pay debts and he's finally realizing that trying to do things the honest way just isn't working. So he decides to engage in a series of scams that he intends to blame on Ashley, who clearly has no idea what she's doing or that she'd have to work this hard. Lindsey is so impressed by this that she openly kisses Josh and it looks like they might have emotionally connected for the first time.

After two episodes Austin is still the character who seems the most human. He was clearly a former athlete of some note once and now his career has failed. He's been trying to make it doing virtual workouts for rich people and that's going nowhere for him. He's clearly more in love with Ashley then she is with him and is willing to do anything for her. He still seems to have some kind of code of ethics that is driving him that to this point none of the other lead characters have.

Its worth noting there is still a Korean influence. The club that everyone works at has been bought by Chairwoman Park, someone who controls 2 percent of Korea's GDP. It's still not clear why she's bought this particular club but we also see in a sense her marriage is as much a joke as anything else. She married a man twenty years younger then her and she's basically left him in Korea. When he calls her in despair because he's killed a patient she can't really be bothered thinking he bought another gold Rolls-Royce. How this will play out later on I'm not sure yet but I suspect it will be yet another argument how the truly wealthy always evade the penalties of the law, no matter what country they live in.

Understandably the second season of Beef has not been as positively reviewed as the first by viewers even though critics have generally responded to it enthusiastically. I find it just as darkly entertaining, frequently hysterical and even more bleak then the first season was.  But because it looks at the white  working class of America as well as the more overt versions of the generational, gender and often political stereotypes – and just as frequently finds them things people use to get ahead or don't comprehend -  it very likely makes those same viewers more uncomfortable then they did during Season 1 when it was dealing with darker themes. The characters in Season 2 are just as desperate and angry as the ones in Season 1 and just as at mercy of the forces of wealth. But it was easier to applaud when it was with Korean and Asian American actors fighting each other instead of having Poe Dameron  jerking off to online porn and Reggie Mantle looking like he's gone to pot.

But for me it confirms why I truly loved Beef the first time around: even though I wasn't Korean, I recognized the emotional realities of the two leads as being universal. Here Sung Jin has changed the format from ten half hour long episodes to eight much longer ones, is dealing with images from European art rather than Asian and is more addressing the economic realities of the world then he did in Season 2. But that same rage that drives the leads is present here, always beneath the surface, always done against the wrong targets, always stopping those involves from recognizing that they have more in common with their opponents then they really thin. It might not be as comfortable as the last time but that's always the point.

My score: 4.5 stars.

Theodore White on The Campaign Trail: Nelson Rockefeller in 1960

 

 

In America In Search of Itself Theodore White does what so many people do at the end of their careers: he starts picking his favorites. In this case after  covering seven campaign trails from 1956-1980 in which by his own accounting he met 'a score of would be Presidents' he choses those who in his words 'seemed most qualified for the leadership denied him."

He names four men who are among the most significant political forces of that period of time: Nelson Rockefeller, Hubert Humphrey, Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver.

In one of my earliest series on politicians I covered Humphrey's long career in politics in detail and quote White's Making of the President series at great length as to advocate for it. Kefauver only appears in America in Search of Itself and while I may very well cover his career in a later series there isn't enough material on White to deal with it. That leaves Rockefeller and Stevenson.

Because Rockefeller was present in the first four books in White's series and was critical to Presidential campaigns in the first three it would seem beneficial to begin with him. I have long considered writing a series on him for multiple reasons, not the least of which I'm a resident of New York and Rockefeller is one of the longest and most successful governors of that sate of either party. For the purposes of this article Rockefeller's significance is that he was a controversial figure of the party when it was about to reach arguably the most critical point in its century long history.  He represented what had been the main center of power for more than two decades: the so-called Eastern Establishment, one that had given the party respectability if not the power it wanted after FDR landslided Alf Landon in 1936 and many believed the Republican Party would go extinct. This was the more moderate-centrist wing of the party, one that was anathema to the increasingly conservative wing in much of it.

To understand Rockefeller's failure to achieve the Republican nomination for President in three consecutive Presidential cycles explains what the party was like during that period and why the conservative movement began and would eventually take over the party so thoroughly that by the time Ronald Reagan was nominated for President in 1980 Rockefeller, who had passed away the following year, was not even mentioned at the convention.

So let's start where White did in the Making of the President 1960. This is how Rockefeller describes the party as he knew it 1960 – and in the first paragraph he refers to 'the spectacular Republican schizophrenia which has baffled all observers:

Within the Republican Party are combined a stream of loftiest American idealism and a stream of the coarsest American greed. These two political streams have mixed their waters from the days of the Party's birth when the undeniably pure New England abolitionists let their conscience be joined with the skills of some of the most practical veterans of the old Whigs to form a party that would end slavery.

He discusses its long proud structure, how the party irrevocably split during the Roosevelt-Taft civil war of 1912 which left the liberal wing in exile save for occasional victories – with the exception of New York state. He talks about Eisenhower's take over because of that Eastern establishment that gave them the Presidency in 1952 after twenty years in exile. And he makes it clear that by the 1958 midterms the Party has sunk to its lowest ebbs since the 1936 FDR landslide.  It is not just that Congress that is under a Democratic near supermajority in both houses; it is nationwide. The Republicans now have just 14 governorships and control only 7 of 48 state legislatures. (Alaska and Hawaii wouldn't officially join the Union until 1959.)

Richard Nixon, Eisenhower's Vice President, is considering his campaign for the nomination which will almost certainly be his given the state of just how few viable challengers there are in the Party. He knows there are only two Republicans who have come out on the 1958 midterms with the power to challenge him. Barry Goldwater, who has just won a massive reelection to the Senate in Arizona and is already the favorite of the more conservative branch of the party. The other is Nelson Rockefeller, who managed to win the governorship of New York by more than 573,000 votes over the Democratic incumbent Averill Harriman.

This is how White first describes Rockefeller personally, particularly compared to the solitary Nixon:

"(Rockefeller's attitude) is one of total security, total confidence, total cheeriness. Born into what is America's closest counterpart to a royal family, raised within the walls of the greatest private fortune known to man, Rockefeller has escaped the weight of wealth that makes all but one of his four brothers and sister such shy, withdrawn, reticent people, instead the assurance of wealth has made him radiant. Rockefeller is, in image and in actual person, one of the sunniest, most expansive and outgoing personalities of American politics….His constant smile is genuine, his great bear hug an authentic expression of delight in meeting people.

Rockefeller had already served in some form of politics under FDR, Truman and Eisenhower, but by early 1956 he had quit the administration out of his belief that it was drifting from crisis to crisis. He had served in appointive office for years but realized 'only the people, voting at the polls, give a man true power in American government. For that reason in 1958 he ran for governor because it was 'an executive post to be won from the people directly. Not lost on him was the fact that as White puts it 'in 21 national elections from the end of the Civil War and 1948 no less then thirteen times did one or the other (and sometimes both) parties choose its Presidential candidate a governor or former governor of New York. These included both Roosevelts, Grover Cleveland and Tom Dewey, Eisenhower's predecessor as Republican nominee for President.

Rockefeller knew that the pressure was on the moment he was elected governor. He was going to be 52 in 1960 and if a Republican won, then served two terms, he would be 60 in 1968. More than that 'he disliked Richard Nixon and considered him incapable in the role of President'. (Boy was he on point.)

In December of 1959 Rockefeller began to explore his options and his fortune as White says, "made it a far more efficient headquarters then the Republican national headquarters.' And if was efficient: Rockefeller was doing an exploratory campaign not trying to launch one.

It makes clear what Rockefeller was exploring: concern for the welfare of the United States which even then White acknowledge was more important to the liberal progressive wing of the party. The second was the mechanics and acquisition of delegates (more important then primaries in 1960) and third financial exploration.

In it White is very much on point to how Republican politics worked even in 1960:

The regular wing of the Republican party depends for support on the executive class of great corporations… in fact, they control it.

Rockefeller knew that his personal fortune was more then enough to finance a Presidential campaign; it was, if anything, large enough to dwarf the Kennedy fortune that was about to be launched to gain the Democratic nomination.  But he also knew even if he was successful, it would be politically worthless – and unlike so many wealthy Republican presidential candidates to come Rockefeller had the morality that he wasn't willing to buy it.  In any case he knew if business got behind Nixon he couldn't stand against him. So this part was important.

Rockefeller's business team then went to almost every major corporation, assuming that because they were the first family in business and because they had spent much of their fortune on funding the GOP, the favors would be returned. They were met with courtesy but the doors were closed.

As one of Rockefeller's in-group said in words of portent:

I'd always read these things Democrats say about us and thought they were naïve. But here was the club, not only against Nelson because he was a liberal but also committed to Nixon.

Business like Eisenhower and they believed Nixon would be good for business. More to the point Nelson's money hurt him – because he didn't need them.

Rockefeller made two scouting trips between October and December and the reaction was generally the same: the people liked him but the regulars who controlled the machinery ignored him.

So by mid-December the Rockefeller clan was ready for its report. Nixon had the regulars sewn up, the delegate brokers likewise and nothing from business.

Given the support he'd gotten on the trail Rockefeller might well have made contest of it had he taken the route of the primaries. But by this point he didn't want a primary fight, he actually wanted to be a good governor. So Rockefeller chose to take an approach that was almost impossible to think of today.

So on Christmas Eve Rockefeller read a statement:

"I believe…that the great majority of those will control the Republican nomination stand opposed to any contest for the nomination…Therefore any quest on my part for the nomination would entail a massive struggle in primary elections throughout the nation demanding so greatly of my time and energy would make impossible the fulfillment of my obligations as Governor of New York…My conclusion, therefore, is that I am not, and shall not be, a candidate for the nomination for the Presidency."

Everyone in Rockefeller's inner circle knew that this wasn't entirely true. Rockefeller didn't want to give Nixon a fight and knew if he did so the party would go more to the right. Besides there were seven months to the convention.

And the Nixon campaign was anything but thrilled by this. They'd planned for a primary battle against Rockefeller in which Nixon would be the active campaigner and Rockefeller the punching bag. They saw it as a way to enliven the spring, get the party invigorated for the fall campaign, take media time away from the Democrats "and above all, tune up the personnel and human machinery they would need for the fall election. All this was now denied them."

Rockefeller was a good governor for the next five months.  Then on May 1^st 1960 events began to intervene. Francis Gary Powers, while flying his U-2 plane over Russia, was shot down and captured the first acknowledged American spy seized by the Soviets. A summit that was scheduled between Eisenhower and Khrushchev collapsed before it began, ending the possibility of a disarmament summit. Relationship with the new leader of Cuba Fidel Castro collapsed as he welcome the support of the Soviets. All this and much more led to a decided shadow over the Eisenhower administration and its Vice President.

White would write about this affected every candidate for President still in the race. And Rockefeller began to speak out. Most notably he was eligible for a draft and his lieutenants then chose to freeze the state which at that point commanded the biggest delegate prize from Nixon to an uncommitted posture.

This movement, unknown to contemporaries but far more common then, had been used by the Democrats just eight years earlier to pick Adlai Stevenson, who hadn't sought the nomination, as their nominee on the third ballot and Wendell Willkie in 1940. White mentions this had to be part of Rockefeller's thinking but has no clear idea of anyone other than Rockefeller himself actually believed it a possibility however remote. Yet even then he refused to say if he was running for President.

Then on June 8^th he issued a statement in which he challenged the Republican party as being unable to meet the needs, issued a nine-point program which for all intents and purposes repudiated the Eisenhower administration. He gave a series of speeches over the next five weeks in the leadup to the convention which was for all intents and purposes "open warfare with the leadership of his own party and implicit denunciation of its conduct over the last eight years."

And while it was too late to realistically do anything there was clearly a public demand for it. A movement to Draft Rockefeller was formed and the RNC would be overwhelmed by telegrams and mail from the people demanding the delegates nominate Rockefeller.

Compared to the Democratic convention in LA there was no real suspense over who would become the nominee. The excitement as White makes clear, was over the platform.  It was being designed by a man named Charles Percy then a Republican businessman who in six years would be elected to the Senate in Illinois. Percy had worked on the platform for the past several months.

However when he flew to New York he was completely unprepared for the force that was Rockefeller:

Mr. Rockefeller had a wide range of national concerns, care for the aged, rights for the Negroes (sic) stimulation of capital investment for growth of the economy and national defense…most notably the Missile gap."

There was a problem:

In essence, Mr. Rockefeller insisted that the platform on defense cry: EMERGENCY!

But in essence the Republican administration of the country denied emergency.

White acknowledges something no politician would

In the hard life of politics it is well known that no platform nor any program advanced by either major American party has any purpose beyond expressing emotion…All platforms are meaningless: the program of either party is what lies in the vision and conscience of the candidate the party chooses to lead it…The platform committees are harmless exercises in both parties and flatter all the people appointed to platform committees, in the belief they are important.

(Perhaps certain people should have read this when they were so outraged that the 2020 and 2024 Republican conventions had no platforms. It was the inevitable end point.)

Percy spent the next early part of the convention trying to hammer out a compromise between the Nixon forces and Rockefeller's. Many of his own delegation -mostly from the more conservative upstate regions – were already annoyed by Rockefeller as governor and they knew that Nixon's nomination was a foregone conclusion. The question was how long could Rockefeller hold them before they broke to Nixon openly, thus humiliating the governor publicly.

On Thursday evening the Rockefeller delegation reviewed the draft of the platform and found it unsatisfactory. They demanded a floor fight and the possible of 'open civil war on the convention floor'. The following day Nixon called Herbert Brownell, one of the key strategist of Eisenhower's victory and a colleague of former governor Dewey. Brownell then called Rockefeller on behalf of Nixon to organize a meeting to discuss the platform, saying he agreed with all of Rockefeller's terms.

This meeting that took place in New York occurred in ignorance of the delegates in Chicago. What emerged was what White referred to as 'the 14 points compact of Fifth Avenue." The exact details are relevant more to historians: what matters for these purposes is what Rockefeller did afterwards.

He issued a statement in which he made it clear that he and Nixon had worked together to discuss the platform and where the two men agreed.

Two explosions took place simultaneously.  The most significant was in Chicago where the delegates on the committee were infuriated.  Back then there was already a belief that 'the Eastern Establishment' – then a code word for liberal as much for Republicans as Democrats – had conspired to force their values down the throats of so many Republicans. Barry Goldwater, already becoming their loudest voice, referred to it as 'the Munich of the Republican Party'.

Eisenhower was quieter but no less infuriated. For him this was a personal betrayal by a man who he had once considered a personal ally.

By Sunday the Republican convention was in chaos and Nixon was caught between the two extremes of the party as White said:

Unless the Nixon men demonstrated to Rockefeller that they could deliver a platform in the spirit of the Compact on Fifth avenue, Rockefeller could cry treachery and still take his fight to the floor. Yet if they rode roughshod over the platform committee, they would be expose to the outriders of Goldwater crying 'Treason' or 'Tyranny' from the right.

Eventually he came to take two critical positions that accommodated Rockefeller. What may have been the most costly, from an electoral standpoint,  was Rockefeller's position on civil rights. This was, it should be noted, a more advanced one then the Democrats because it advocated support for sit-ins and promised federal intervention to promote job equality.

White I should mention was very clear on how things were going to play out when it came to civil rights and the south:

If they adopt a civil rights program only moderately more restrained then the Democrats, the South can be there for the asking and with the South, if it comes permanent to Republican loyalties could come such solid addition of electoral strength that would make the Republicans again, as they were for half a century, the majority party of the nation and semipermanent stewards of the national executive power. Furthermore since the Northern Negro now votes habitually for the Democrats by overwhelming margins, why seek to outbid the Democrats where they cannot be outbid?

As we shall see, just four years later, that is exactly what Goldwater would do and it played out exactly as White said it would for the Republicans for the next sixty years. White is essentially saying what every single left-wing columnist has about what the GOP did after the 1964 election. But whereas they see it as purely a moral consideration and therefore evil, White sees it as 'one of trade: let us give the Northern Negro vote to the Democrats and we shall take the South to ourselves.'

White himself believes that by agreeing with Rockefeller on this it cost him the election, though he acknowledges Nixon couldn't decide whether to campaign for Northern Negro or Southern white and instead tried to get both. Say what you will about Nixon but he clearly learned that he had to choose one or the other and he chose one that he thought would win him the Presidency – and it did.

None of this concerned Rockefeller; he accepted the compromise and by Tuesday announced he was withdrawing from the race for President. What he didn't know was something White would tell us in the next volume.

Before the convention, they came to Goldwater, saying that they wanted to nominate him for President and that they could provide 300 delegates to do so on the first ballot. Barry Goldwater was many things but he was not idiot; he demanded those same conservatives give him the names of the delegates. They could only come up with 35, and he told them to back off. His address to the convention, with the famous words: “Let’s grow up, conservatives!” was less a declaration of interest for the Presidency and more of a warning to them about how they should do things going forward.

Nixon of course narrowly lost the election to Kennedy, seemingly ended his Presidential prospects for good. Rockefeller now believed he had a better chance for it – seemingly unaware of just how many enemies he'd made the first time around.

In the next article in this series I will deal with Rockefeller's plans for the 1964 nomination – and how his personal life would do as much damage as the upcoming civil war in the GOP would.

Homicide Rewatch: Wu's On First

 

Teleplay by David Simon & Anya Epstein, story by James Yoshimura & Julie Martin

Directed by Tim McCann

When this episode first aired it was in February of 1997 still considered sweeps month for network TV.  In this era, as is true to a certain extent today, network series used this period for appearances by major guest stars either for stunt casting or to get big names you wouldn't be able to get normally. Homicide had already done this quite a few times already but always by its own rules, most recently by casting Elijah Wood in The True Test.

Here it casts three actors who were fairly prominent in movies during the 1990s: Joan Chen, Tate Donovan and Eric Stoltz. In the case of the latter two there was a significance  that some viewers at the time (myself among them) was unaware of.

 Donovan, Stoltz and Reed Diamond had been among the young stars cast in the 1990 World War II film Memphis Belle. Ever since then the three of them had been extremely close with Stoltz saying he loved them "like the brothers I never wish I had." So to cast Donovan and Stoltz as Mike Kellerman slightly older brothers is a bit of stunt casting, as is the fact he's never mentioned them to Meldrick and the first words out of his mouth when they storm the boat is: "Just when I thought my life couldn't get any worse."

With good reason. This is the first time his brothers have shown up in Baltimore in three years. His mothers thinks her babies are dead, his father is convinced they're in jail and its clear from the moment Mike opens his mouth which parent he knows is telling the truth. And sure enough Drew tells him that he owes $18,000 to a bookie in Ohio and that they need to go to Miami to get away, Greg says to pay for the charter fishing they have stolen a uniform of Babe Ruth that they intend to sell to a pawnbroker. Neither brother feels the least remorse for their actions and they clearly bully Mike into seeing a dead body just so they'll show them the uniform. This understandably outrages Cox and its clear again Drew and Greg show no respect for her job or really anybody.

 We know even before Meldrick checks their rap sheet just how criminal their behavior is. When you steal Babe Ruth's jersey from one set of gamblers in order to try and pay off another gambler that's a pretty good sign you're not exactly friendly with the law. That they even show up to his boat in the first place, knowing he's a cop and how bad this will hurt him shows just how little respect that they have for him as well as his job something we see as they mock him for always wanting to be a cop. Greg tries to say that Mike is depressed about something and he clearly picks up on it in the very awkward but inevitable scene at the Kellerman household – but he doesn't care that much about his brother's wellbeing.

But in this episode watching Mike interact with the two of them it explains a lot about why he's so focused on being a good cop far more than anything in the grand jury storyline ever did. It's clear pretty much from the start that Mike has been cleaning up his brother's messes ever since he was a kid and that has driven him to become a cop more than anything else we've seen. It also explains why he was so reluctant to tell his parents why he'd been subpoenaed and why the way his father talked to him hurt so much. The Kellermans have clearly taken so much grief from Drew and Greg over the years that they've pinned all their hopes on Mike and subconsciously been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And we also know that emotionally Drew and Greg could not have shown up at a worse possible time for Mike. After months on suspension and suspicion that he thinks at some level will never go away, the knowledge of his guilt in not reporting a bribe, the failed relationship with Juliana and what happened on his boat a week ago, the last people Mike needs to see are his brothers sneaking on to his boat and treating him like they're all still kids. It's clear they've never had the relationship where Mike could be honest with them; they're perpetual liars even to themselves and they really don't care about his personal well-being. Its pretty clear the only reason they showed up was not to lure him for a charter fishing business but because they were in trouble and they wanted Mikey to bail them out, one way or the other. Mike knows this and at a certain level so do his brothers.

Much as we like spending time with the Kellerman brothers this is Homicide and there is a murder to solve. Except the show tries to look at it from a lateral perspective by having the first person we see be Elizabeth Wu. And when you learn that Homicide was considering making her a recurring character  you can tell why this could have paid off.

Chen is incredible in this episode, playing a character who is just as good at getting information, holding off her adversaries and determined to get to the truth even if it means bucking the bosses. Pembleton dislikes her immensely (what else is new?) but it's clear all the other detectives as well as Gee clearly respect her.  To be sure they mock her name over and over in this episode but there's none of the snideness we've gotten with so many of the other reporters and media we've seen them interact with over the last four and a half seasons.  Giardello says: "She's a player" and it's clear all of them (save Frank)treat her with a certain dignity they haven't treated other reporters or even Brodie. (We'll see the best contrast of that in the next episode.)

This is true from the opening scene when Wu's clearly being bullied by a TV reporter for the only working pay phone at the crime scene. She sweetly hands it over then goes to the tape and makes it clear she's figured out the victim is a Calvert County cop named James Haybert, the weapon, the blood trail and his service weapon in the car. When Pembleton tells her to get lost, Munch and Howard do damage control trying to argue that this will make it hard for them to do their jobs. She counters she has a job to do and they're not making it easier. Al is willing to make a deal in order for her to withhold details. Then she walks back to the payphone which Daniels says isn't working because the call isn't going through. Wu then takes out the receiver which she unscrewed before she gave them the phone and screws it back in, calling the Sun. It's the kind of introduction that would work for a back-door pilot if Homicide had ever been so inclined.

It works best when Bonfather comes out and she says she wants to ask him a question after which he leaves. When Al asks what he wanted to ask her she says nothing – she just figured it was the fastest way to get rid of him, which endears her to Al even more.

Wu writes a story in the Sun in which she paints Haybert as a hero, a twenty-six year old beat cop still trying to do the right thing, who died as a victim in the War on Drugs. It’s a good story but even as Bayliss reads in admiration its becoming clear that Haybert was holding vials even though there's no reason for him.

This is the first episode of Homicide where its clear Simon's imprint as he gives a clear picture to a police reporter, an editor who refuses to let no news be an excuse to keep writing a story and the press keeps putting details forward regardless of the interest. When Wu hears something from a source and wants to talk about what she's heard Pembleton's first reaction is to call Danvers and summon a grand jury and Wu calmly quotes chapter and verse the annotated code of the Shield law. This is very much a Pembleton move which irritates him more. Munch and Giardello are more understanding and are willing to bend. And her editor doesn't care whether a story is properly sourced, all he cares about is keeping it on 'A1'  "If it's wrong we'll fix it the next day." A decade later many people would complain about how much of the final season of The Wire was badly done because of the storylines in the Sun and editors just putting whatever would be readable. No one complained here.

When it becomes clear that Haybert was buying the vials and using them for himself and was likely killed in a drug deal Wu is upset because she got the story wrong and wants to correct things. I've rarely had more contempt for Frank when he has an exchange with Wu about the story coming first:

 

Howard: Come on Frank. She has a job to do.

Pembleton: So do the hookers on Point. They just don't take as much pride in it.

 

This may be the most single offensive thing Frank has said about anyone in Homicide's entire run that absolutely can't be justified. Even Giardello feels the need to apologize after this.

In this episode Chen embodies Wu with more character then some of the other series regulars did in their runs. It's impossible not to compare her with Brodie (who isn't in this episode at all) when it comes to how much she cares about doing her job right and the importance to the truth. At the end of the episode she's very clear on just how badly she screwed things up in her two stories and how much everyone in the world must judge here. This bothers her more than Bonfather's decision to name her and get the editor furious at her so he sends her to the sticks. It's just as likely he would have done so because she didn't bring the killer back to the newsroom in a rolltop desk: that matters more to him than the actual story.

The final two scenes between Mike and his brothers tell their entire history in a nutshell. When he relates the story of how the three of them stole comic books and he was the only one who got in trouble neither Drew or Greg get the point of it. You really wish that Mike would leave his brothers to rot or at least let the out-of-state cops get them.

But the final scene when Mike says goodbye pretty much tells you everything you need to know. Despite everything they've done to him just in the past two days he still loves his brothers. He doesn't trust them with good reason but he still is willing to pay them off before they say goodbye. Maybe he's doing this as a favor to his parents: he knows how much trouble they've already caused. Or maybe its because he's already had enough problems with them hanging around and now he just wants them out of his life again. It's a good decision: one Kellerman is already enough trouble.

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

Detective Munch:  He starts off the plays on Wu's name with Meldrick.

"That's Wu."

Who?"

Wu?"

What?

To be fair Giardello and Naomi do the same thing. Munch is actually more of a good cop then we've seen in a few episodes and he actually is more than civil with her then the rest of the detectives are. Good for him.

 

Hey, Isn't That…Nope, nobody significant in this one. Just kidding.

 

Joan Chen made her debut at 16 in Chinese films and her debut in American TV in Matt Houston. She made appearance in Knight Rider, Miami Vice and MacGyver before becoming more known for her role as Wan Jung in the 1987 Oscar winner for Best Picture The Last Emperor. Then she officially became known to millions for her role as Josie Packard in Twin Peaks where thirty five years later fans are still discussing how she died and how she ended up in a doorknob.

Much of her film work afterwords was often beneath her such as The Hunted, Judge Dredd and On Deadly Ground and not long after that she has more or less returned to China, mostly working film and TV there. The few exceptions were playing Empress Chabi in the Netflix series Marco Polo and Lu Mei in the FX series A Murder at the End of the World. She is currently starring in the Chinese medical drama Wen Xin.

Tate Donovan has been one of the most formidable actors in film and TV for nearly three decades and for the purposes of this article I'm going to focus on his TV work. Prior to playing Greg Kellerman he'd played Own on Partners, a one season comedy on Fox. Known for his relationship with Jennifer Aniston he played her secret crush Joshua in Season 4. After giving the voice of Hercules in the film he did the voice work for the animated series which ran two seasons. He also started as Kevin McCalister in Trinity, which also starred Jill Clayburgh, Charlotte Ross, John Spencer and Kim Raver, all of whom would become TV phenomena just a little later.

Finally he became part of a major hit as Jimmy Cooper on The O.C. and then became part of a critical hit when he took the role of Tom Shayes, Patty Hewes top lieutenant on Damages a show I've raved about a bit. After his character met his fate in Season 3 he starred in several short-lived network series Deception and Hostages before playing Mark Boudreau in 24:Live Another Day. He followed that up with the role of George Dixon on The Man in the High Castle and playing Oversight in the reboot of MacGyver.

As you'd expect he's also done his share of directing, starting with the OC but also Nip Tuck, Glee, Gossip Girl, Weeds, Madame Secretary and such shows as the Fosters and Hawaii Five-0.

(Deep Breath)

Eric Stoltz worked In TV even longer than Donovan did starting with his TV debut in 1978. He actually first made the acquaintance of Tom Fontana when he played Eddie Carson in St. Elsewhere's inaugural season. That was his last TV role for awhile as he became a fairly significantly movie star. In fact while he'd appeared in quite a few TV movies during the 1990s (and had actually appeared on Partners with his running buddy Tate Donovan it was a get to have him as Drew. And he liked the taste of it.

He would join the cast of Chicago Hope during its fifth season as Dr. Robert Yeats but end up being hired as the show cleaned house. He then played August Dimitri a teacher of Grace Manning in the third and last season of Once and Again in a controversial arc. He played Mark on the showtime dramedy Out of Order, an odd but fascinating failure that featured Felicity Huffman, Kim Dicken, Justine Bateman, William H. Macy, Peter Bodganovich and Lane Smith.

 He played William Dunn the serial killer Meredith Grey has a bizarre fascination with on Season Five of Grey's Anatomy and after that was cast as Daniel Graystone in Caprica, the prequel to Battlestar Galactica. An intriguing series it was cancelled after 1 and a half seasons. He had the recurring role of Will Adams on Madam Secretary over five seasons.

In truth he's worked far more as a director then a filmmaker. He directed a dozen episodes of Glee over its run but has worked for Shondaland on almost every series she's produced from Grey's Anatomy to Private Practice to How to Get Away With Murder and a few failed ones like Off The Map. He also directed 19 episodes of Madame Secretary and six episodes of Bull. He even directed the independent film Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk.

In order to make it clear how flustered Mike was by his brothers Donovan and Stoltz actually improvised a lot of their dialogue in their scenes together. "It was mayhem," Stoltz admitted. The effort made off; you can tell in every scene Diamond is fighting cracking up even when he's belligerent with them, which makes sense given everything that happens.

 

It's Baltimore: Wu tells Giardello that the O's might trade Mussina next year. In fact it didn't happen that year but later…

I hate to point this out but I am a baseball fan. When the pawnbroker looks at Ruth's uniform and says that he saw Ruth 'hit a homer over his head against the Senators in '38'" that would be difficult because Ruth retired in 1935.  He was a first-base coach for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1938 but there's no way they would have played the Senators.  If he'd said he'd seen it in 1934 he'd have been on safe ground.

The brothers are right about Babe Ruth beginning his career in Baltimore. He was signed with the very first minor league team called the Baltimore Orioles in 1914. It was as a pitcher and he did go 14-6 before the Red Sox bought him. Of course Ruth was the son of a Baltimore saloonkeeper and Camden Yards was built on the site where Ruth's father's saloon once stood, among other things.  Considering just how troubled Ruth's childhood was and that he was essentially raised in an orphanage, it's one of those great ironies that the official museum for the greatest Yankee of all time is in a city that he never spent any moment of his adult life in.

Better Late Than Never: Plur1bus

 

The moment that Vince Gilligan announced that he was doing a new TV show with Rhea Seehorn I didn't need to know any other details to know that even if this was considered by critics the absolute worst shows in the history of television I was going to watch every episode that aired regardless. When you create one of the greatest shows in the history of television and then create a prequel that is so good there's debate whether its better than one of the greatest shows in the history of television, you've earned a measure of goodwill so big it could fill the Grand Canyon.

 That he was doing so with Rhea Seehorn was even more incredible. I think I speak for everyone  who watched Better Call Saul  that the closer the show got to the present and the longer Kim Wexler was still alive the more openly terrified you were. The thing about a prequel is that characters from the original source material have plot armor but everyone else doesn't. Saul Goodman, Mike Erhmantraut and eventually Gustavo Fring did (albeit so that when they met Walter White he would destroy them either by killing them or just by being in his presence) but almost every other regular did not. And because there was no sign Saul had a girlfriend or wife in Breaking Bad you became more terrified with each passing season and Kim will still in Jimmy's life. By the time we reached the second half of the final season I was certain the only way out for Kim was at the hands of the cartel. (Spoiler: she survived. 'Lived' in a strong word'.

Gilligan went out of his way to make sure the details for his project remained under wraps and Apple TV gave him the same largesse that AMC did. By the time Plur1bus was finally announced in the spring of 2025 they'd given it a renewal for a second season. By the time it came out some details were available, most notably that it seemed to involve an extraterrestrial invasion.

And of course the moment any TV fan worth their salt heard this their minds naturally turned to Gilligan's origin story: his eight years writing for The X-Files. Those of you who've read my previous articles on The X-Files and Gilligan might be somewhat surprised to know that while he wrote thirty scripts for the series, either on his own or in collaboration he never wrote a single script that had anything to do with the mytharc. In my series on Gilligan and The X-Files I'm going to actually explain why that was the right choice for Gilligan and the series but for now I'll just repeat that Gilligan learned quite a few lessons from showrunner Chris Carter. And in the case of a mytharc that was what was not to do.

Carter never had a bible for The X-Files.  Both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul had a lot of planning within each season as to where they were going, if not always knowing how to get there. Carter never had a clear blueprint for any of his character's history. Gilligan had the broad strokes for Breaking Bad and made sure that they fit within the contours of Better Call Saul when the prequel was written.  The X-Files ran past its end date. Breaking Bad and Saul had fixed ones.

The biggest problem with the alien invasion of The X-Files is, of course, it never happened. Carter kept promising with ominous phrases like 'the date is set' but the date kept getting pushed back the bigger hit the series came. The bigger the conspiracy became, the more irrelevant to the action Mulder and Scully increasingly became. The forms the aliens were going to take, what they were going to do, changed the depending on the season and eventually became incoherent. Gilligan would occasionally gently satirize it in his later scripts but it was never his deal.

So I can imagine a conversation between Chris Carter and Gilligan after the series ended joking:

Gilligan: Nine seasons and the aliens never came.

Carter: Well maybe they'll come in the movie.

Gilligan: Chris I gotta tell you if you'd let me help with the mythology I could have made it work and make sense.

Carter: Before or after you sell that crazy idea of a chemistry teacher cooking meth in an RV?

(Both men laugh, knowing full well it'll never happen)

Gilligan: "You're probably right. Still someday I'd like to prove you wrong. 

Carter: "Like Hal from Malcolm in the Middle would work as Walter?"

 

Now imagine Carter in November in 2025 watching the Pilot of Plur1bus. I almost expected the ending of the first episode to have a message saying: "To Chris Carter: I Made This."

It took me way too long to get around to watching the first two episodes of Plur1bus by which point it was clear to the world that Gilligan had made another masterpiece. It has already made multiple top ten lists for 2025 and both the show and Seehorn have been nominated for Best Drama and Best Actress. To date Seehorn has won the Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award in that latter category and barring an alien invasion will finally get the Emmy she should have won for Better Call Saul. (I hope the hive mind came for the Emmy judges who decided that Jennifer Coolidge's work in The White Lotus was a dramatic performance.)

The reason I think Carter would be watching the entire first  two episodes (all that I've seen to this point) shaking his head is because it's clear that Gilligan has finally done something The X-Files would not do in nine seasons, two movies and two revival seasons. And to show just how brilliant Gilligan is let's review how his alien invasion works:

 

1. He shows every detail of how the aliens get here.

We see a satellite transmitted, then a bunch of scientists puzzling over the message they've gotten and its form. We see two scientists trying to figure out how its being delivered in quinary form. They make a realization what it is, even though it's not spelled out, simply showing a lot of testing on animals.

Then we see two people who are there to gas lab animals, something they've been doing for a very long time. They go to the lab where it looks like one of the rats is already dead. One of the scientists takes the rat out of its cage and finds out its alive. Then it bites her.

She runs to the sink while the other exterminator chases the rat. While she's scrubbing she begins to shake violently. The other exterminator grabs her and hauls her into the shower. We cut away where the security guard is trying to get something from a vending machine. He's so distracted pursuing the Fritos he barely notices when she grabs him – and kisses him. We then see her colleague grabbing and kissing a janitor.

Then we see the entire staff licking and swabbing a series of sample dishes and putting them in something. They do so in a mechanical rote fashion. As they do so a group of military police come in and automatically begin doing the same thing. The implications are absolutely terrifying.

 

2. We see the actual invasion albeit in vague terms

Carol Sturka is returning to Albuquerque with her wife Helen from a book tour. They go to a bar for a drink. When they go out for a smoke, the TV cuts to a news story of an airbase being locked down. While the two are outside answering her mail, Carol notices what she thinks are planes flying in a strange pattern. Then the two of them go back to it and see a truck crash into a neighboring car. Carol runs to help and finds that the driver is shaking violently and she can't move him. She yells to Helen, only to see her collapse. She runs into the bar to get help…and sees everybody there frozen in place unable to move. She gets on the phone and finds that emergency services aren't answering. She gets Helen into a truck at great effort and drives down the road. She sees an ambulance hauled over the one side…and then sees the entire town in flames and discord.

What she finds when she gets to the hospital is such a horror show I will leave to those who have yet to see it to discover. What I will say is that this and so much of what follows is another great strength of Plur1bus.

 

3. Show don't tell.

The term 'Carter-speak' is a derogatory term for just how much of the purple, languorous dialogue and monologue's Carter wrote during his tenure on The X-Files: dialogue that sounded portentous but you couldn't imagine a real person saying. It made some of the things George Lucas wrote for Star Wars sound like Shakespeare by comparison.

By contrast all of the horrors I've described and almost everything that follows takes place in near total silence. This is particularly true in the pilot both in the sequence above and the entire period that Carol realizes something horrible is happening but can't grasp it. Gilligan has always been one of the greatest masters of directing and long silence sequence where we follow a character's actions but never directly explaining it. In the pilot he reaches new heights with this in a sci-fi construct that is clearly closer to pure horror than anything he's done in a quarter of a century. As a result when the alien intelligence finally speaks to Carol it has more power than any long expository dialogue could be.

This is made even clearer in the opening of the second episode where we meet Zosia (Karolina Wydra) in an unidentified but clearly Middle Eastern country. We see an extended sequence watching an unidentified figure moving through where smoke is rising and bodies are everywhere. She helps them to a certain place, gets into a car, drives to an airstrip. We then watching her move efficiently to a prop plane and slowly but surely turn on every engine. After the opening credits we see Carol awaken from an alcoholic stupor and then look at the body of Helen with despair. We then see the plane land in New Mexico and Zosia walk through a deserted airport, then taking off all her clothes and walking naked to a bathroom where other aliens are cleaning up. It is only after nearly thirteen minutes of the episode are over that we hear Zosia utter her first line of dialogue to Carol.

I haven't seen a bravura sequence of this kind of exposition since the opening episode of Season 5 of The Americans where we watched Philip and Elizabeth, along with a colleague, dig up a grave. And it is the complete opposite of nearly every over-expository episode I've seen of The X-Files.

 

4. Make the aliens takeover of this planet seem like a good thing.

It was a given for everything we saw on The X-Files over the mytharc that the aliens were planning to colonize and turn us into a slave race. Now we see the exact same thing happen – but the new alien overlords are actually so nice and pleasant. All of them, especially Zosia, are trying everything they can to be pleasant to Carol and not upset here. They accommodate her every need including the second episode when she has to bury her wife. They agree to have her meet five of the other people who speak English as a second or third language. There are thirteen who are unaffected.

Furthermore the first five we meet all seem perfectly happy with the idea of the alien takeover. One of them, a gentleman from Mauritania, tells her that there is finally no war, no crime or poverty, no one in prison, and all the animals from the zoo have been set free. Perhaps most tellingly Carol is not merely the only American who seemed unaffected but is also a white woman while all the others seem to be people of color. (The fact that 'Carol' is not that far removed from the name Karen can't be a coincidence.) More importantly four for of the people still alive they still have all of their families still alive, albeit as part of this hive. Carol has lost the only person closest to her and it was clear in the pilot that Helen was the only one who ever could tolerate her bad behavior.

What's more Zosia makes it clear that they don't kill, even animals or insects, are perfectly fine being used sexually and are giving those who are still alive free will. They don't want to hurt the feelings of those who are still alive in anyway. And that brings me to…

 

5. Make the alien's one weakness something we haven't seen before.

It's clear in the second episode the real weakness the aliens have is Carol's rage. There's something in their biological makeup that when Carol expresses outrage it hurts them physically to the point it can kill them. When Carol has an outburst we eventually learn 11 million people die as a result. The fact that one of them happens to be the grandfather of one of the sole surviving humans doesn't endear her to them anymore.

This is a reversal of almost every alien invasion story we've seen including The X-Files where every alien we met was an unemotional killing machine, unbothered by human emotions. That the aliens can be killed not with a stiletto or a bizarre metal but with one simply shouting at them has to be an in-joke for Carter as well.

 

6.  Punctuate the horrors with small and occasionally sly details.

When Carol goes home after everything she naturally goes to the TV and changes every channel and gets nothing but static or bars except for the CW, which doesn't broadcast in her area anymore. Eventually she tunes to a channel and sees a man and a suit and thinks the government its work. In fact it's C-SPAN and its clear the cameras never got destroyed because they never use satellites to broadcast.

When the channel broadcasts a message for her it tells her to use the landline because all cell service is down.

 

7. Your lead must be a strong female protagonist who has absolutely no time for the foolishness of other people.

All right that was actually a good lesson to take from  The X-Files considering how Gillian Anderson's Scully is one of the most iconic characters in TV history.  And considering just how many shows have been focused on White Male Antiheroes there's something to be said by making your lead character a Dour Blonde Lesbian.

Even here I can't help but wonder if Carol Sturka's pre-invasion occupation of a paranormal romance author is a private dig at the kind of overwritten prose that Carter used to have on a daily basis. And the way there are so many devoted fans obsessed with the trivia of Carol's books is clearly a parody of the fan culture that surrounded The X-Files at the start. The fact that they're predominantly female housewives doesn't make them any less ridiculous then the fanboys and shippers we had to deal with on The X-Files. And the fact that Carol has to deal with them every time a book comes out and treats them with enormous scorn is a big poke at them too.

What's magnificent about Seehorn's performance in the first two episodes is that Carol is absolutely right about the threat these creatures are. They admit that just by coming here they killed nearly 900 million people and she's just as right about calling the survivors traitors to the human race.  But she's also blinded by the fact that she's so angry she doesn't seem willing to ask the right questions, so blinded by revenge that its not until she's having dinner and getting drunk that everyone else starts asking about certain things involving the aliens. (In keeping with the previous point, they want to know if it's just for food.)

 

As Gilligan knows better than anyone else when you tell a sci-fi narrative you'd better be able to deliver at the end. He saw firsthand how this played out with The X-Files and so much of the 21^st century has seen so many sci-fi fantasy masterpieces have endings which to this day have been polarizing to say the least, from Battlestar Galactica to Lost to Game of Thrones. As we speak many are already wondering if Severance will be able to keep those plates in the air whenever it comes to an end.

It is no doubt far too early to see how this will go: not even Gilligan can tell us when Season 2 will be coming out. However he says at most he intends to end Plur1bus in four. That itself shows me Gilligan learned another less from his time on The X-Files: don't spin your story out until it becomes incoherent. To be fair Gilligan made that decision with Breaking Bad and that played out with Better Call Saul each of which are considering to have the greatest endings of any series in television history.

What I know already is I don't want to believe the hype for Plur1bus. It is everything that the world has already seen. And what I hope is out there is an Emmy for Seehorn and eventually a lot of Emmys for the show and for Gilligan. They may not all come this September but when it comes to this combination, trust Vince Gilligan.

My Score: 5 stars.