My Generally Pleased Reactions to the 2026 Emmy Nominations Introduction and Part 1: Drama

 

After the 2024 Emmy nominations came out and I was by and large fine with most of them I wondered if I was starting to get soft. When last year's nominations came out and I was basically fine with them to, I started to wonder if the Emmys was finally beginning to get things mostly right.

Well now the 2026 nominations have come out and at this point I now have to conclude that after decades of frustration and rage by the mid-point of the 2020 the Emmys seems to have basically worked out eighty to ninety percent of the flaws in its system and is finally getting far more right than it does wrong.

Oh to be sure the usual flaws are overwhelmingly present. The Emmys has essentially determined that network drama is persona non grata and is mostly doing the same things for comedy. The usual suspects among cable and streaming are being nominated across the board. But at this point it's very hard for me to avoid the fact that the Emmys is by and large breaking out of the patterns I found so frustrating for much of my adult life: nominating the same shows and actors over and over regardless of how weak the quality of the series and performers were.

Take drama which has been the bane of my existence for most of my years. In previous years the habits of the club of nominating the same series year after year would have led the final seasons of Euphoria and Stranger Things to be nominated for Best Drama despite the drop in quality noted by fans and critics alike. And yet neither show was nominated for Best Drama and with the sole exception of Zendaya being nominated for Best Actress it had no real presence in the acting categories. The Emmys of even five years ago would have done that in a heartbeat and while there would have outrage. This time they did the right thing. To be sure there were the usual flaws which I'll get to but far fewer then recent years.

Just as present was in comedy in regard to The Bear. In addition to the controversy whether the show is a comedy or not the respect for the series overall has basically sunk like a stone among critics since Season 3. Last year despite that it was nominated for twelve Emmys though it won zero. This year the general consensus among every critical group was that the fourth season deserved no recognition at all but many expected that sense memory would prevail.

And it did but to a point of almost non-existence. It was nominated for seven Emmys by far the fewest since it debuted. And of the cast only Ayo Edebiri was nominated for an acting award. None of the previous nominees who've in many cases have won multiple awards – Liza Colon-Zayas, Jeremy Allan White and Ebon Moss-Bachrach were even nominated this year. The series that just two years ago set a record for most nominations and wins for a comedy finished its fourth season tied for fifth place in total nominations with Abbott Elementary.  And while can and will debate those were nominated in the place of The Bear (and other shows) this again is something that would have happened even a few years ago.

Now am I still annoyed that shows like Matlock, Will Trent and Dark Winds are being shutout in the dramas and St. Denis Medical and Elsbeth are ignored in the comedies? Of course I am. I would not be human if I wasn't. But after so many years of having to endure Game Of Thrones and Succession taking nominations from Better Call Saul and The Americans and Veep taking nominations from Parks & Rec, it's nice to finally see that the Emmys are showing a pattern of getting it far more right than they are wrong after living through the 2010s. So there will be notes but not as many as before.

Let's actually start with drama this time.

 

OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES

The Pitt and Plur1bus as expected will be fighting it out for the grand prize: The Pitt getting 24 nominations, Plur1bus with 18. That latter is the most that any Vince Gilligan drama has ever gotten in his career to this point.

Paradise, The Diplomat, The Gilded Age and Slow Horses all did pretty well, each series getting seven or eight nominations and as we'll see most of them in major categories. Knight of the Seven Kingdoms presence isn't much of a surprise as many expected it to contend for Best Drama, but it got no other nods.

The most bizarre outlier is Your Friends And Neighbors being nominated for Best Drama and basically nothing else while Task was nominated for eight awards, including writing and directing but not Best Drama.  Maybe the Emmys just didn't want nominate every series from HBO for Best Drama this year the way they did last year. And hell they nominated The Gilded Age over Euphoria. I can't complain.

 

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR IN A DRAMA

The four nominees everyone expected to be here are here: Sterling K. Brown, Gary Oldman, Mark Ruffalo and Noah Wyle. The fifth nominee is a surprise – but for a change it’s a pleasant one.

Rufus Sewell has been doing superb work on The Diplomat ever since the series premiered but the Emmys and indeed many awards show have not shown him the respect they have Keri Russell. Perhaps they were unsure he was a supporting actor or a lead. Now here he is nominated for the first time in this category. And for an actor who has spent of his career in both film and television never getting any real respect or nominations for his incredible work this is a job well done by the Emmys.

 

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS IN A DRAMA

Obviously I can't fault the Emmys for nominated Carrie Coon, Rhea Seehorn or Keri Russell. I'm not shocked they nominated Zendaya for the third season of Euphoria; old habits die hard.

I am very annoyed, to put it mildly, that the Emmys seem to have fallen into The Handmaid's Tale trap and nominated Chase Infiniti for The Testaments over Kathy Bates for Matlock. And for those of you who are happy about this that's the only nomination The Testaments got this year. This is a fail.

 

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA

I'm more than thrilled to see Patrick Ball and Shawn Hatosy here for The Pitt because I argued for them, I'm thrilled to see Tom Pelphrey present for Task and Jack Lowden for Slow Horses as I picked them both as well. Billy Crudup's presence for The Morning Show isn't a surprise – though he is the only major nominee.

As for Gerran Howell being nominated for playing Dennis Whitaker and Carlos Manuel-Vesga being picked for Pluribus...I would have advocated for both had I the chance and I really have no objections to their presence over some of my own picks. (James Marsden and Jason Ritter were pipe dreams.)

 

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA

I advocated for Taylor Dearden and Katherine LaNasa for The Pitt as well as Julianne Nicholson, Alison Janney and Karolina Wydra. And the Emmys by far chose the right two female actress from The Pitt to fill out the ranks: Fiona Dourif for her superb Dr. McKay and Sepideh Moafi as Dr. Al-Hashimi, the new resident who we learn has a dark secret. Who I am to pick nits among details.

Now let's deal with some of the other major categories that I didn't cover in the Emmys.

 

Writing

Glad to see the pilot for Pluribus here as well as the season 1 finale of Task. Always glad to see Slow Horses present and I'm pretty good with the two choices for The Pitt.  Also glad seeing The Diplomat here rather than say, Euphoria.

Director

Pluribus earned it for the Pilot, another for Vince. Paradise earned it for the season 2 finale, ditto Salli-Richardson Whitfield for The Gilded Age – and Task for that matter. (Will she cancel herself out?") Slow Horses is here for the third straight year and I guess Noah Wyle is a good choice for The Pitt. Given the nature of that episode in particular I can see how he got it. Again nothing for Sam Levenson and Euphoria, so I'm good. (I intend to drive that knife in, so let me have this.)

 

Guest Actress in A Drama:

I'm thrilled to see Shailene Woodley here for Paradise and tickled Merritt Wever is for The Gilded Age. I'm glad to see Miriam Shor here for Pluribus and I'm more than fine with all three nominees for The Pitt included Tai Anderson.

Guest Actor in a Drama

More than fine with Jeff Kober being here and Ernest Harden Jr was magnificent as Louie in The Pitt. Bradley Whitford seems to be getting nominated every year, I'm glad its for playing Alison Janney's husband. Make up for lost time with Jeff Hiller and Jonathan Pryce should have won last year for Slow Horses. I knew Colman Domingo was going to be here for Euphoria; I'm just glad it's here rather than Supporting Actor.

 

So there is very little drama from me this year about the nominees for drama. Tomorrow I will deal with comedy where, if anything, I'm happier.

How Graham Platner's Self-Immolation May Be A Blessing In Disguise for the Democrats

 

 

I think it's fitting for me to begin this article with something I wrote three months ago about Graham Platner:

Platner is a problematic candidate for Senate the same way that Jeffrey Dahmer had a very specific dietary restrictions. He is the exact kind of candidate that I associate Republicans nominating in my lifetime well before the era of Trump and that they've never quite gotten away from. It has constantly cost them races that they absolutely should have won from nominating Christine O'Donnell for the Senate in Delaware, a woman whose biggest claim to fame was claiming she had once been a with, to Roy Moore's to fill Jeff Sessions' Senate seat in Alabama and losing to Doug Jones to the last midterms when Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker's candidacies in Pennsylvania and Georgia cost the GOP senate seats they most likely could have won with less eccentric (to use a euphemism) candidates.  But I've never seen a candidate for public office, much less a Democrat, who is running for a Senate seat whose essentially done the opposition research for his opponents before the primaries were even over.

Platner has no qualifications for public office. He may be combat veteran who has served his country with distinction but his most recent career is that of an oyster farmer. Perhaps I shouldn't be shocked that his main adviser worked for Mamdani – and considering we've just seen the limits of that in New York, I can't imagine how it'll play in Maine. He calls himself Maine's Mamdani because he has openly opposed Israel's war in Gaza.

In the lead up to last November several high level staffers included his political director, his campaign manager, and his campaign treasurer resigned. Several Reddit posts have made it clear that he is a 'communist, called cops bastards and said rural white Americans are stupid." The fact that he has a Nazi tattoo – and that somehow he wasn't aware of it until recently – is the least of his problems.

I wrote all of this to be very clear in May just after Janet Mills had dropped out of the race leaving an open field to Platner for the nomination. Those of you who read my columns and those that have followed on the subject know that by comparison I was being mild in this one about my feelings about what a horrendous mistake it was for Platner to be my party's candidate to try and unseat Susan Collins in Maine.

What I left out at the time and still troubles me now is how so many people I've respected as intelligent for a long time, along with so many publications, seemed to be willing to completely buy into the narrative that Platner was setting and basically disregard all of his negatives any one of which would have been a major disqualification had they been for a Republican. Why did all of these people, who have spent much of the past decade unable to understand why the vast majority of the Republican Party and the electorate at large, have blindly followed Donald Trump for so much similar bad behavior in his past, were willing to just buy into the myth of Platner upon talking to him attending his rallies? Why did they choose to take his word rather then so many of the people on his campaign who resigned after these problems became obvious?  Nothing in his campaign rhetoric or for that matter his platform was any different than anyone of the many left-wing candidates who have run in the Bernie Sanders type mold since 2016 for Senate and were rejected by the electorate? And why did they realistically believe that they would not be taken advantage of by a Republican establishment that has been able to do so much more when the candidate was and I quote myself "writing his own opposition research for them?"

Now I don't want to take a victory lap and I don't particularly think I deserve credit for not having to wait for an accusation of sexual assault to think that Platner was going to be a bad candidate. In fact I want to give credit where its due to mainstream media especially The New York Times who after months of favorable stories ended up running a week before the primary the article about three separate woman who claimed Platner had sexually assaulted them.

Much of the media behaved with honor, including Politico, The Atlantic and The Washington Post who ran an op-ed by Platner's former campaign manager making it very clear how bad a candidate the Democrats were embracing. Many within the Party did behave with honor in urging Platner to drop out, among them Josh Gottheimer and John Fetterman. Multiple organizations withdrew their endorsement and Cheyenne Hunt, who had led the charge for Eric Swalwell to resign from Congress after similar allegation emerged, publicly rescinded her endorsement of Platner.

I was disappointed but not truly surprised that almost to an elected official every single left-wing senator and Congressman who'd endorsed Platner chose to stand by him, whether it was Bernie Sanders or Ro Khanna. Ever since the 2020 election at the absolute latest the far left wing of the party has been more than willing to excuse the bad behavior of its members even when it mirrors that of the Republicans they've been arguing are perverting the values of America. In that sense the way that AOC and Warren were willing to go on TV and defend the accusations against Platner in the immediate aftermath of him becoming the official nominee was instructive for any impartial observer to make it clear of the utter hypocrisy of the Justice Democrats and the left-wing of the party in general.

What made it far more troubling was the obvious comparison between the accusations against Platner and the Access Hollywood tape being released in October of 2016. During that period many of the same people who were more than willing to argue that the GOP had a moral obligation to demand Trump resign from the ticket were absolutely willing to advocate that the party had to be unified behind Platner. Considering that Trump's election was the main impetus for MeToo and Time's Up, among countless other movements, the fact that so many people were choosing to argue that Platner was 'clearly being framed' by his accusers is the strongest example I've seen yet that the left is only giving lip service to anything regarding social justice. For ten years the slogan had been 'believe women' and now it was 'believe Graham Platner'.

And the fact that everyone was willing to bend over backwards to defend Platner for the sole purpose of defeating Susan Collins was the clearest demonstration of not just how skewed the priorities of the left were but their own hypocrisy there. That so many people were choosing to argue that Collins' vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh was a reason to elect Graham Platner is by far the clearest illustration as to how the left could no longer follow its own narrative thread.

And that it took a second story told by a second woman who'd been assaulted for Khanna, Sanders and all the remaining left-wing officials to finally do the right thing and withdraw their endorsements and argue for Platner to step down should be the biggest sign yet as to the left being as immoral and lacking any principles as we've seen to this point in the post-Trump era.  And it is for that reason that there is a clear lesson to be learned here about the Justice Democrats and everything that has followed since 2016 about the left-wing side of the Democrats.

By and large since the 2018 election of AOC and the Squad the Justice Democrats have managed to get a relative free ride from the media. The attacks of Fox News and the far right have been dismissed as racist and bigoted which is true but it has also given the Squad and its members almost complete immunity from any real attack both in the media and the Democratic Party. It has given them cover from the fact they have no real policy triumphs after a decade in existence, have not been able to help the Democrats increase their majorities in Congress in any real way and have failed to win at a statewide level since they were founded.  They have to this point been able to let their controversies and bad acting – which at times have been as chaotic and demagogic as anything MAGA has done – get a pass in large part because of everything that MAGA has done. The media has covered the failings of the Justice Democrats and various left-wing Senators to win elected office but never with the same fervor they've covered their successes as well.

This combination has given so much of the left-wing of the party a sense of power that is vastly disproportionate to their numbers. In the aftermath of the 2024 elections there have clearly been a struggle for power among the left wing of the party and the leadership led by Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer. And despite almost no real victories the media has been more than willing to take the decisions to either primary Hakeem Jeffries or challenge Schumer's leadership of the Senate Caucus by Chris Van Hollen or other members as if they must be considered legitimate. Indeed the decision of Schumer to back Janet Mills in the Maine primary instead of Platner was seen as a reason for him to step down as recently as a month ago.

The left to be clear has suffered quite a few defeats in this election cycle to their endorsement power. One of the clearest ones came in the Iowa primary where Elizabeth Warren backed Zach Wahls, a man who said he wouldn't vote for Schumer as majority leader if they won, versus Josh Turek who Schumer quietly backed. Turek won by nearly two to one and there is a decent chance the Democrats might flip that seat.  Jasmine Crockett suffered a similar defeat to James Talarico in the Texas Democratic primary last March and now Talarico has a better than 50-50 chance to defeat Ken Paxton this fall.

Graham Platner was by far the biggest standard bearer the Justice Democrats and Sanders had going into the midterms and they have been very public as to standing by him even after the initial reports of the assault were revealed. The DNC by and large had not sent nearly as many emails for fundraising for Platner even after Mills dropped out and they'd sent comparative few in relation to other major progressive Senate candidates such as Jamie Davis in Louisiana who have no really chance of victory.  Some traditional Democrats were willing to pay lip service to Platner after he won the primary but basically they were holding him at arms' length compared to AOC and others who were willing to go to the media and defend him.

This means that whatever happens in Maine this cycle now can only and entirely be left at the feet of the wing of the party. They chose to put a considerable amount of time and energy supporting a deeply flawed candidate even after allegations of sexual assault came to light for the sole reason that he endorsed their platform.  It will be extremely difficult for them not to shoulder the blame for whatever happens even if (as is increasingly likely) Platner chooses to step down.

By contrast this is clearly a victory for the establishment wing of the party such as Schumer.  The left has so clearly framed Platner as their candidate that no matter what happens in Maine it is a loss for them and a win for the establishment. If Collins wins reelection Platner will be hung around the left's neck like an albatross for the foreseeable future, certainly until at least 2028. If the Democrats manage to win back the majority with Collins winning reelection, it will be the clearest sign that America wants centrist Democrats not the left wing such as Platner or Davis or Annie Andrews in South Carolina.

And if by some miracle the Democrats can find a candidate to replace Platner and they manage to unseat Collins it will be the biggest middle finger to those such as Sanders and Warren in the last decade by the establishment of the party and to the Justice Democrats across the board.  This is the most unlikely scenario but if the million to one shot comes through it will be a signal that not even AOC and Mamdani will be able to ignore. They were handing a shit sandwich by the left and they managed to turn it around despite everything they were given.

And the thing is no matter how this plays out this is the most notable and public loss of the left in the last decade and one that is going to follow them however the Democrats choose their candidates in elections for the foreseeable future. As I've said in most of my articles the Democratic Party was looking to do very well in the midterms this cycle in swing districts and with centrist Democrats but the left had wanted to make it all about them and the media had been willing to give them cover to do so.  Platner's very public immolation is a story that everyone (maybe not MSNOW) is not going to be able to ignore and all of the sparks are going to fall entirely on the left-wing of the party. For a Democratic establishment who no doubt has wanted them to shut up but never had leverage to hold over them, this is going to be a gift that keeps on giving for this cycle and probably the next one as well.

As for myself I don't want applause. I don't take real pleasure in the misfortunes of others and I don't think I deserve credit for realizing what should have been obvious to anyone with a brain and access to Platner's social media thread. But as someone who has spent the last several years arguing that the left was leading the Democratic Party off a cliff and that it was absolutely going to come back to bite us down the road, I'm grateful for L'affaire Platner for demonstrating that there is value in taking the moderate path and behaving like a grownup.

I'll end this column by quoting myself again:

…as much as Platner and his supporters want to pretend otherwise it's impossible to argue that had they listened to Schumer and backed Mills their chances of taking the Senate back would be much easier.

Now the Democratic Party has proof of that statement. Even if the Justice Democrats choose to deny it (which they invariably will) the party has the receipts and they all know it. If this gives the grownups the upper hand, it's worth it if Susan Collins wins reelection this November. The left might want to ignore this. The Party won't and they deserve what they get.

That I'll admit to taking a certain pleasure in.

 

 

Better Late Than Never Paradise Season 2 -We See America After The Day And It’s a Whole New World

 

 

If you read my columns last year you know that when I saw the first season of Paradise rebroadcast on ABC I immediately saw what the rest of the world did. I would eventually name it the 5^th best series of 2025 and advocate it for Best Drama. Few things have been as rewarding to my soul as a critic when in a year that was dominated by The White Lotus and Severance to the point that almost all other shows were ignored by the Emmys for nominations the Emmys did reward it with four nominations, not merely for Sterling K. Brown for Best Actor but also Best Supporting Actor for James Mardsen, Best Supporting Actress for Julianne Nicholson and Best Drama itself – all of which I had pushed for in my predictions. That the series was shutout was irrelevant to be: in this case it was an honor just to be nominated.

Like so many fans of the series – and there were clearly a lot of them – I was eagerly anticipating Season 2. But I assumed, somewhat naively, that ABC would rebroadcast it during April or May like they did last year. When they chose not to (as is their right) I realized I'd have to find time in my already crowded schedule to finally watch it on Hulu. This was never going to be a burden but I had a lot of other priorities to get through, as my readers are all too aware. It was only until last week that I finally got around to watching the first two episodes of Season 2. And while I was aware of quite a few of the spoilers this time I didn't think it would be enough of a problem for me to enjoy it and honor it. That proved to be more than accurate.

At the end of last season Xavier Collins (Brown) having finally learned who murdered Cal Bradford and that their were survivors outside the bunker, made the decision to get into Air Force One and fly to Atlanta where his wife Terri was actually alive. This was a huge cliffhanger and one that all fans of the show wanted an answer to. So naturally Dan Fogelman did what he often does and gave us an episode featured on a complete different character that had nothing to do with anything we'd seen in the first season at all.

The first episode told the saga of Annie, played by Shailene Woodley in a role that has deservedly made her the frontrunner for Best Guest Actress in Drama. Annie grows up as a girl in an impoverished home in Memphis and the only pleasure she seems to get out of live is the tours of Graceland. Eventually her mother dies and she ends up going to med school, something she washes out of just as she's about to begin her residency. She ends up driving back to Graceland and with nowhere else to go becomes a tour guide there, seemingly happy, enjoying telling the same joke over and over again and going to one of the secret rooms none of the tours no about, and at the stables.

Then on 'The Day' she hears the message the President gives and takes the opportunity to head into the bunker with her fellow tour guide having grabbed all the supplies she can. Her friends breaks her leg before the final blow comes. We see the two of them trying to exist together for several weeks, see the fires in chemical plants, the country and perhaps the world going into the equivalent of a winter and no electricity working at all. For the first time we get a hint at what happened in the outside world but once again the writers make it very simple by reducing into one very basic tragedy as Annie watches her friend succumb to her injury and cold and eventually die.

A little more than two years later, Annie has adapted. Then a group of bikers show up and Annie hides. We have no idea what's happened during this period but Annie's clearly terrified. Link the youngest, ends up coming inside knows she's there and tries to talk to her with civility – and she responds by hitting him in the head with a vase and running and hiding again. In the world of Paradise this is essentially a meet-cute.

Eventually Annie meets the rest of the bikers and they tell her in certain terms what's happened the rest of the world. They believe roughly two-thirds of the population of the country is dead and the rest of America is in camps hiding. They've spent much of their time trying to shut down chemical and nuclear plants to stop them from exploding. It's clear that they have some idea of what's happening outside and that some of them clearly know of the bunker in Colorado we spent the first season in – which begs the question: how?  They also seem very concerned about something known as Alex, which they think is a bigger threat.

Again the writers spend the season premiere less concerned with the story then character development. They focus on how these bikers prepare breakfast  which they call bacon and is actually wild boar. They show how Annie seems fine showing them around the place, eventually warming to it, leading to a last supper before they intend to head out. And Annie gives her last tour of Graceland which is clearly a set up for the two of them to be put in a bedroom together. Annie and Link spend the next few minutes awkwardly flirting, Annie tells her joke which Link takes literally, Link asks Annie her favorite song and when she tells him he takes it literally and eventually they have sex. Its sweet and charming and heartfelt in a way we're just not used to for Paradise so far and is all the more heartbreaking when Link tries desperately to get Annie to come with them and her fear  paralyzes her from leaving. We then move forward another several months with Annie now very pregnant and then she hears a plane crash. She rides out there – to find Xavier.

In the second episode 'Mayday', the writers again choose to play with us. We see Xavier flying, realize he got trapped in a hailstorm and that he's lost his ability to see things. His plane crashes and he fractures his knee. Eventually a young boy (we'll later learn he was part of an academic tournament) rescues him and takes him back to the few kids that are still alive. We've been told in the previous episode that in Arkansas there are still nasty patches where civilization has broken down. Guess where Xavier crashed?

The second episode confirms yet again why Brown is one of the greatest actors of our era. We see that him immediately going to his paternal instincts and trying to talk with these kids and rationalize with them. He's willing to share his supplies but he needs the rest of it to find his family. He tells them where he was and where his family is and he's more than willing to read stories to them. And when one of them says he wants to have Xavier's jacket when he dies Xavier just says: "Okay. No book."

And after all the kids end up going to sleep Xavier hears an ominous noise outside and even though he has a busted leg he goes out anyway. There's a raider out there who wants to get to the kids and even on one leg Xavier's training as a Secret Service agent is just enough for him to prevail. When the kids come out he does everything to make it clear he was there to protect them – and only then does he notices there's a knife in him. (In a perfect touch Xavier starts to swear and then stops because he doesn't want to offend their 'delicate ears'.) When he wakes up the kids have deserted him with all his supplies, save the picture of his children and a single word 'Sorry'.

In keeping with how Paradise and indeed Dan Fogelman's previous series work Xavier's story in the present is matched with a flashback to the past. It shows him suffering an injury in training and ending up going to a hospital where Teri, his future wife is also a patient who's about to undergo surgery of her own. Terri makes it very clear she's career first, not interested in a wife and a kids, and not getting coffee with the hot man in the bed next to her. Xavier takes the lesson, only saying 'hot man'.

But in the aftermath of her surgery Terri is left temporarily unable to see and when Xavier first overhears and then sees her panicking the next day he stays behind to look after her. We have no idea how long he waits for her to regain her vision but we know it’s a while and that makes the fact she will all the sweeter. The fact that this intercut with Xavier mentioning his wife's name so many times that Annie, who's taking him back to Graceland, thinks its his name is all the more heartbreaking – particularly when we see it ends with him handcuffed to his bed.

I realize that its only been two episodes and the show hasn't even come back to the bunker to show us what Paradise looks like now. Yet its remarkable just how comfortable the writers are at completely flipping the formula. Its been two full episodes and the only series regular from the first season we've seen in any detail is Xavier. We have no idea what's going on with Sinatra yet, no idea how any of the children – Bradford's son and Presley and James are doing – no idea what the new power structure is, no idea what the consequences have been. But I don't feel the least bit impatient or cheated even in an eight episode season.

On This is Us Fogelman was never afraid to shake up the format of the series from season to season, even within the structure of it. Here he and his writers have far fewer episodes to work with and even less time. (The series is scheduled to end after its third season which has already begun to shoot.) And yet in a way I haven't really seen any writers master since Lost have I seen a show which has done as much to build a world so effectively and spend as much time focusing on characters rather then plot. This show does have a heart and soul that so many mythology based series have had in the last decade and that's something to applaud rather than to be frustrated by.

For Season 2 it's expected that Paradise will be more prominent in the Emmy nominations that will come out this week then it was last year. How many remains an open question but no one is arguing it doesn't deserve to be the way they were last year.  But no matter how well or poorly it does I will watch the whole thing anyway. I care less about what the Emmys do to honor this series then how the whole story plays out. And that's a trademark of great television.

My score: 5 stars.  

Homicide Rewatch: Blood Ties, Part 3

 

Teleplay by Anya Epstein & David Simon ; story by Tom Fontana, Julie Martin and James Yoshimura

Directed by Mark Pellington

 

The conclusion of Blood Ties is critical for multiple reasons. The most basic is the conclusion of the investigation into Melia Brierre's murder, how it reveals the rot at the center of the Wilson family and how while it reveals the killer there is no closure. The 'B-Plot'  is as important because it gives us a sense that Georgia Rae Mahoney is just as bloodthirsty as her brother and more importantly, for the first time we get a sense just how the Mahoney's have been able to get away with their criminal enterprise for so long. And most importantly it concludes by rounding out the three new series regulars for Homicide and establishing them in a way that the show really has done as good a job with since it introduced Kellerman two years ago.

The open scene where Frank and Mary at home watching Felix and Regina Wilson being interviewed about their shock at Melia's murder is fascinating because of many subtleties. Even in the 1990s Americans were used to the idea of wealthy people who were related to suspicious deaths going on TV and making clear how shocked they were and how determined they were to the killer be brought to justice.(During 1997 we were seeing in regard to the parents of Jon Benet Ramsey, something that will be referred more directly later this season.) The difference is something incredible subtle – both the married couple on TV and the one watching at home are African-American. And just as has happened many times race is not mentioned once by anyone involved.

The second is something subtler. It's clear that the estrangement between Frank and Mary did teach him where to place his values. When Frank said that robbery was relaxing at the start of the season Tim mocked it. But here we see that he was being sincere: he could keep regular hours and get home to his (very pregnant) wife and daughter. It's clear Frank still loves the job but it's just as clear he loves his family as much and this undercurrent will be referred to more often in his final season on Homicide then it ever has before, even as he kisses her goodbye and heads off to work. There's also the fact that Mary is asking him about his job and he's sharing in a way we've never seen before in their interactions: he's clearly talking with her now.  And she knows that when he says he wants to play hooky he really wants to go back to work.

Ballard's discussion of the press in regard to the Wilson murder doesn't seem to bother Frank and we know at the end of the day it only matters in his ability to his job. Bonfather calling everybody on the carpet only bothers him slightly more – though I wonder if he experiences some schadenfreude seeing that Ballard and Gharty who earlier this week the bosses were singing their praises to the press are called on the carpet as well.  It's when Barnfather starts attacking Giardello because of his friendship to the Wilsons that Frank speaks up. (Interesting that Barnfather is the first person outside of Gharty who actually brings up the idea that the department is protecting the family because of their wealth and race. We know all too well under other circumstances he'd be the first to do that and he has.) But it's clear despite their own posturing about Wilson's affairs Frank and Al aren't pretending they don't have to do this. Pembleton makes it clear they have to investigate the Wilsons; Giardello authorizes warrants for the blood and hair of Felix and Hal Wilson. Nevertheless he's still trying to put his hands on the scale, going to see Regina 'as a friend' and telling her that by calling the attorneys they've done the worst possible thing. Al saying he can't control what happens and protect them is fairly upsetting.

He's actually taken off the hook when Regina tells him that it was her instinct to call the lawyers. She talks about the bad old days when black men were railroaded into false confessions – something that was much closer and more frequent when Al and Regina were much younger (even if the consequences were far more often more immediate and mortal then the 1990s or today) and even though Al tries to assure her otherwise, he himself knows differently. Regina tells him that she has one job and he has another.

When the detectives talk with Danvers he helps them find a way for a search warrant but its trickier for blood and hair.  They also find a way by using fingerprints and figuring that will lead them to blood and hair. If the prints from the Wilson women are there it's meaningful because they're not supposed to be in the men's room (Gharty) and if they happen to be Felix and Hal, it might be enough probable cause for blood and hair on Hal (Ballard) This leads to the search of the Wilson home and its telling just how quickly the sympathies of the Wilsons have turned. Thea, who seemed so sympathetic to Melia for two episodes, is so outraged by the invasion of the cops that she actually says: "This is all her fault. I wish I'd never brought that bitch here! Everything was perfect before she came!" If nothing else this basically shows that black liberal guilt only goes as far as white liberal guilt: when it hurts you personally, you're just as much a bigot.

Eventually Bayliss finds love letters in the house that are unsigned from Hal to Melia. Frank shows it to Giardello and the detectives all gathered, agreed that theirs a motive in this house. Finally Al tells Frank to go to the Wilson house, alone. He tells him to go in soft – "but if you see any opening at all, take your best shot."

The scene at the Wilson home is basically what the entire story has been building towards.  The fiction of having Frank talk to Hal if nothing they say is admissible in court is clearly unrealistic but the viewer lets that go because we get the truth – and though we don't know witness one of the first examples of an actor who will dominate television in the 21^st century.

Frank shows the letters and puts them on the table. Hal says he never gave them to her. "Never gave them to who?" Hal is quiet. Then Felix says: "Mind if I have a look?" And then Jeffrey Wright, whose spent much of the last two episodes, seeming like an overprivileged blue blood snatches them from the hand of his father. He says, 'let the detective leave'.  "No" Felix says. Frank asks him about what's happening. Felix is apologetic and Hal is quietly angry. "What are you gonna do, send me to my room?! Cut off my allowance? Take off your belt and give me a good ass-whupping?!" Felix unloads on his son as a privileged whine; Hal calls his father a sanctimonious prick. "You deny me nothing? You deny me everything! I'm a twenty-eight year old man. I don't need you to tell me what to do any more."

You have to be a great actor to be able to trade blows with a man who was already one of the greatest actors of all time. Wright absolutely nails every line out of his mouth, years of resentment being spit out, making it very clear his father has no moral high ground to judge him for his actions. When Felix lifts his son up he makes it clear for the first time despite everything that has happened in the last few days he could never believe his son was capable of murder.  Then James Earl Jones brings all the fire we know he can, saying that he can't let this search continue for an innocent man if the guilt in his house. Finally Hal admits it. Only then does Frank say anything.  Hal said he thought Melia knew how she felt. He came home the day of the benefit by mistake and saw Melia coming out of her father's bedroom. He threatened to fire her and tell the whole family. On the day of the benefit Hal saw Melia on the way to the bathroom, hysterical. He pulled her into the bathroom. "She hurt me. I wanted to hurt her."

Frank then wants to read him his rights. And then Felix tells him no. You have the truth. Melia is dead and he's going to protect his son. When Pembleton brings this to Giardello Danvers is blunt. There's no physical evidence tying Felix to the murder and the love letters are 'entertainment'.  And when Frank wants to hold him in pretrial judgment Danvers tells him its futile.  No matter how long they have the evidence will still be ruled inadmissible. Frank is genuinely angry for the first time – and Danvers says: "it happens all the time."

 

The major story is the murder of a face we saw two episodes ago – Wilkie Collins ("Wilkie, Wilkie, Wilkie" as Meldrick puts it) has been murdered at his home, along with his wife Lydia. Lewis and Falsone are pretty certain that he and his wife have been killed as repercussion for Collins ratting out Junior Bunk and leading to Georgia Rae Mahoney's arrest. They have a witness – though it turns out horribly to be Jack, the terrified five year old son who they find locked in the bathroom terrified. This is one of the most disquieting scenes of the aftereffects of the drug war on Baltimore, seeing a terrified child throwing toys as detectives before running into the arms of Falsone.

Lewis knows immediately what this is about and he pushes off the fact that the two of them are in lockup from Falsone. The only difference between the two is how: Lewis wants to shake the trees of the Mahoney family, Falsone thinks its better they find the shooter first. Giardello says the latter and also says they should talk to Jack. Falsone thinks that Jack heard everything and is told by Giardello to be gentle. When Falsone says: "Aren't I always?" the viewer is inclined to laugh it off because of what we've seen of him to this point. This is the first time we see Falsone's layers.

The series then does one of its most unsettling cuts in a long time showing Lewis as he walks Jack through the squad room. While he tries to strike up a rapport with the kid we see the world from his perspective and see just how much it terrifies him as he begins to spiral first figuratively and then literally, finally seeing and hearing what the murders looked like from his point of view.  Finally when he is screaming and crying Falsone embraces him and offers to leave – and the way Jack says "I wanna go home" will absolutely break the heart of even the most hardened TV viewer.

Falsone then takes Jack to a playground and tries to talk to him with a combination  of awkwardness and genuine affection, trying to get him to open up. Finally when he starts going down the slide and Jack tells him its not a police care that he sees an opening. When Jack can tell the model Cavalier he's driving Paul gives a genuine smile. "I happen to know a little something about automobiles myself." There's something sweet about how Paul gets Jack to smile by showing him how to hotwire a car – as well as the fact that his father taught him how to do the same thing. (It's not clear if Falsone's father was a criminal himself but it would explain a lot.) That's what gets Jack to admit what happened to his parents and Paul is sympathetic, telling him the truth he would any scared witness but in the language a five year old can understand. He gets him to tell him that the man knew his father and that he called them the night his parents were killed. This leads them to the answering machine, which Jack says has the voice of the man who killed his parents.

And its here that the first cut comes deep to the detectives, particularly Lewis and Stivers. Because they know the voice and so does the viewer, though we could be forgiven for forgetting.  Its Detective Robert Castleman who worked narcotics. We met him back in The Damage Done which was our first official introduction to Luther Mahoney. (And now that we know that he was on Luther's payroll since 1993 we have every reason to believe he might have had a role in making sure all the people who were killed in the drug war that started this whole mess ended up not having any attachment to his boss.)

After Jack identifies Castleman as the shooter he asks: "Is he going to jail?" Falsone says succinctly. "You bet he is." Castleman ended up at sex crimes because of the rotation and he's perfectly open at first, saying Wilkie Collins was a quasi-informant for Luther. He doesn't seem to know how Wilkie ended up dead and that he hasn't talked to him. This is our first time seeing Falsone interrogating a homicide suspect and we can see the righteous anger when he brings it out on a dirty cop who calls Collins 'scum'. Lewis holds back for a bit but then makes it very clear he wants him to make a deal. Castleman folds like a cheap suit and says Georgia Rae said if Castleman didn't kill Collins he'd out him. Falsone and Lewis want to go after Georgia Rae immediately but Giardello says that won't work without corroborating evidence. Meldrick's reaction is telling but Al says: "If it were Luther would you say the same thing?" He tells them not to worry; Georgia Rae isn't going anywhere. He's wrong but we won't know that for a bit.

The biggest stuff we learn about Falsone at the end. Lewis talks about Falsone getting married and having kids of his own. Falsone takes out his wallet. Daniel three years old. He mentions that he and his wife had an ugly divorce and the two of them would never be in the same room if it wasn't for Daniel.

The final scenes between Al and Regina are heartbreaking as we learn that the two of them were childhood friends. The Wilsons have decided to leave Baltimore, all of it behind. Regina seems more concerned about her family then the law; Al, however, now realizes the truth. Frank goes to see Hal to understand why. Frank quotes Bob Dylan's The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. "Two hotels, two black servants, two privileged young men whose parents raised them not to deny them anything." Felix says. Frank the detective's response is simpler. "Two senseless deaths." Frank, who spent the first two episodes excusing everything the Wilsons did, makes it very clear he feels contempt for not only what Hal did but how the father is more than willing to cover it up.

And the most important scene comes when Ballard tries to make amends with Frank.  Ballard asks Frank to look at her "not through me". And then Frank turns a Pembleton glare on her. "How's that?" Ballard defends her turf and makes it clear she's not going to run away. That means she wants to keeps things civil. Frank says: "I agree."  Ballard thinks that's it.

And then Frank says something that in five seasons we've never heard Frank say, not even to Bayliss. "You were right. Your instincts were dead on. Mine, for once, were not." For Frank Pembleton to admit this is pretty close to the pope saying he is fallible. Even Ballard wasn't expecting that.  The fact that Giardello admits as much to Frank in the final scene, that Frank has made it clear that he's notified the San Diego police that Hal Wilson will kill again, is almost anticlimactic compared to this simple revelation.

There is new blood in the unit. And they clearly know what they're doing.

 

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

Mahoney PTSD: Kellerman goes to the morgue for a write up on the Elefante murder.  Julianna asks him about the Mahoney shooting and Georgia Rae and Kellerman makes it clear that she's a psycho and insane. When Cox says Falsone was asking about the shooting and that she might have let her guard down on the autopsy because they were sleeping together Kellerman's immediate reaction is to accuse her of sleeping with Falsone now.  Cox becomes cold in a way towards Kellerman in a way we've never seen before and the two leave in a huff.  Later Falsone shows up in the bar where Cox is drinking. She tells him that everything about the Mahoney shooting was clean on paper, mentions what happened with Mike but before she can say anything else she shuts up. "Vino makes me chatty." .

Get the DVD: During the search of the Wilson home, Lauren Hoffman's 'Strange Man' is used with incredible power.

Hey, Isn't That…Jeffrey Wright is one of the greatest actors of my generation. Just the year prior to Homicide's release he'd made an impression in the title role of Basquiat but he was still relatively unknown that it was easy to get him to play Hal. He'd appeared on TV quite a but before, most notably as Sidney Bichet in the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. He spent a while working in independent movies such as Woody Allen's Celebrity, Crime and Punishment in Suburbia and Peoples Hernandez in Shaft. Then in 2001 he appeared as Martin Luther King in Boycott on HBO and with that appearance one of the greatest collaborations between network and actor began.

In 2003 he played Belize and Mr. Lies in the groundbreaking HBO adaptation of Angels in America which swept all four acting awards, along with Best Mini-Series, Best Director and Best Teleplay. Wright would win his first Emmy for Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series. He has since been nominated for four more acting Emmys all of them in conjunction with HBO, three for Westworld, one for Best Actor in a Drama, two for Best Supporting Actor and Best Guest Actor in The Last of Us. In between he has starred in Emmy winning and nominated HBO movies such as Lackawanna Blues, Confirmation and OG and played Valentin Narcisse in the final two seasons of Boardwalk Empire. He will recreate his role of Isaac Dixon in the third season of The Last of Us…that is if he has time off from playing Henry Ogletree in Showtime's The Agency.

He has been part of two of the most famous franchises, playing Felix Wright in the Daniel Craig bond movies and Beetee in The Hunger Games. He's starred in the work of Jim Jarmusch and Wes Anderson, most recently in The Phoenician Scheme. He finally got his first Oscar nomination for playing Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison in American Fiction. Oh and he'll be recreating the most recent incarnation of Commissioner James Gordon in The Batman II. Did I mention he also has received two Emmy nominations for his voiceover work in What If?

Why The 250th Anniversary of Our Country Is A Big Deal: (An Alternative to Every Single 'Think Piece' That's Been Published on the Subject)

I don't know why it needs to be said but I'm going to say it anyway. It is a big deal that America is turning 250 this year.

Think about it. (I know most people don't and I'm going to deal with them.) How many countries 250 years after they came into formal existence are still around in basically the same form? Siam, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire? No longer around. Most of the countries that are still around from that period, they sure as hell don't have the same form of government: France and Italy doesn't have a king, China doesn't have an emperor, there isn't a sultan in Egypt. And the Soviet Union didn't survive the twentieth century. (Russia has changed a lot and not at all in two hundred fifty years.)

Basically the same form of government exists that started in 1789. I'm not talking about it working perfectly or as it should, I mean its still here. Many of the countries that are not Western are frequently unstable, and let's not talk about colonialism or intervention by the West because there's an expiration date. At a certain point the reason that governments in Africa keep falling apart can't be blamed on colonialism and I don't think we should be thrilled at the 'stability' of Saudi Arabia or North Korea.

America still functions. It may not be the ideal country that we sing about or write about in so many books but there's a reason that there are so many people risking their lives to come here, illegally or otherwise. (Perhaps when refugees come to this country they should do exit interviews. "Reason for leaving Venezuela?" might have some enlightening things to say to those who would have voted for Hugo Chavez.)

And yet this entire 250^th anniversary celebration is not getting the attention or cheers it should, and that is overwhelmingly coming from the same people: those who are too rich, too educated, and have too much time on their hands. I admit to being among group three, I don't think I'm in group 2 and I sure as hell am not in group 1. So I'd like to believe my opinion might count for something.

Now the majority of those people will tell you its because of who is President that they have 'issues' with patriotism.  Let me assure you like almost everything else in the last decade Trump is just an excuse, their latest in a seemingly endless line of them.

I've seen a lot of them firsthand. They were on display during W's administration when they argued that patriotism was being used to do horrible things in their name (back then those people were firm believers in the Constitution and everything it stood for). Before that the Chomsky's and Zinn's and Vidal's of the world were arguing about the 'myths of American exceptionalism' and making a lot of money and prestige about how the country had no real value. Before that they mocked the idea of Reagan and his believe of America as a shining city on a hill.  And that's just in my lifetime.

Ever since the time of abolition – not long after our country was founded – there have always been a group of wealthy, educated and overwhelmingly white people who spend their time and energy arguing that the country they live in has no value in it and that the people who believe in it are by far the biggest suckers of all. Many of their colleagues, to be clear, spent their time in politics trying to end slavery, trying to bring about women's suffrage, trying to bring about rights for the working man, battling for civil rights and trying to push America forward. And at every stage you could find people further to the left who argued that those people were wasting their time and the best thing to do was burn the whole country down and…well, they never got that far as to what the next step was.

The AOC's and the Nikole Hannah Jones and so many of the other 'thinkers' of today who write for publications like The New Yorker or Harper's or if you want to go further left, The Nation or Jacobin, going out of their way to write that the American dream is for suckers. Its one of those deep ironies that the people for whom America has certainly worked out for the best for feel free to write to other like minded people to say that every institution has failed the less fortunate. Personally I would love to be in a business where you could write a few thousand words every month on how late-stage capitalism has failed and draw $10,000 an article. It seems quite lucrative.

Perhaps these people are bitter about the fact that the masses, who work two jobs or are trying to send their kids through college, are too busy trying to pay the bills to overthrow the system and put them in charge. Because I hate to tell them this but spending your time and energy concerned about just how badly America has failed everybody is the kind of thing that only the wealthy and privileged can spend time doing. You may claim to speak for the 99 percent but at worst you're in the top five percent. Rich people can afford to spend time worrying about the problems of society – and more importantly are among the few who can do things to fix them. That you seem to spend so much of your time only doing the latter – and more importantly looking down on the people who hold dear to the institutions you despise – is a contrast the left hasn't realize in two hundred years and I don't expect them to learn it now.

But the thing is as someone who has studied history – something I'm pretty sure most of these latter day leftist have only seen on TikTok at best – I take a longer view and a different one. And that's why I'd like to discuss certain parts of the document those 'dead white men' the left so scornfully refers to as the founders of our country wrote. Because I'm pretty sure they haven't read it themselves and if they did, they were only looking for their names.

First of all, let's remember that thing that the left always forgets: time and place. 250 years ago, there was no running water, no air conditioning, no indoor plumbing, no antibiotics, no way of preserving food, no electric lights and the only way to get from a town (calling it a city would be ridiculous) such as Boston to Philadelphia was on horseback. All of those who look down on the Founders and say they could have come up with something better need to be remind that to a person, they think it’s a hardship to have no wi-fi for five minutes.

Now to be clear, yes these were a bunch of white men. But make no mistake: they didn't have the benefit of hindsight the left always chooses to use. Many of them were not comfortable with the idea of armed combat against what was the greatest force on earth in 1776. For all of their anger they weren't idiots. They were in the midst of plotting a revolution. A revolution in which the enemy had the biggest navy and biggest army in the known world. Many of them had seen what they could do twenty years earlier in the French & Indian War.  And yes they knew that their actions were absolutely going to send many young men to die.

They also knew the consequences if they failed. If they lost, they would be executed for treason and brought back to Britain to hang if they were lucky. And no one was even clear what would happen if they succeeded. There was not a model democratic state to use as an example before them and they didn't have a lot of examples ahead of them. If they failed, their deaths as well as those of their families were certain and just as important America would continue to be the subject of the British crown, possibly forever. Certainly no one would be lining up to do it for a very long time.

And this involved trying to unite thirteen colonies whose citizens didn't like each other and who the only thing they all had in common was they were on the same continent.  That was meaningless: European conflicts had gone on for centuries before that. Trying to get 'all thirteen clocks to chime at the same time' as Ben Franklin put it was not going to be a small accomplishment, and after that they were going to have to find a way to unite hundreds, if not thousands of small militias together to form an army and a navy to fight, again, an Empire that was going to stop them. That's a real revolution, not a bunch of protestors in a street.

So eventually those men made a Declaration of Independence. And they had to spend a lot of time and energy coming up with the right words to say to George III and more importantly, a message that would manage to unite thirteen colonies. This was a deadline in a near literal sense and I'm astonished under all of these conditions they came up with exactly the right thing to say.

And I'd like to deal with what is deservedly the most quoted line of that Declaration, something that in 250 years despite being more educated and learning from all the trial and error in our history none of these incredibly educated men and women have managed to top:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

As Aaron Sorkin says in The West Wing: "Strangely enough, this was the first time it had occurred to anyone to write this down."  So perhaps its best not to think of this so much as gospel from up high but a rough draft for future generations.

The left is a big believer in deconstruction. So let's break this down, section by section:

We hold these truths to be self-evident

To be clear in all the thousands of years of civilization previous – which the Founders had all studied and I doubt the naysayers today have – no one had ever said that they were.

That all men are created equal.

No this wasn't about the patriarchy or about white men. It was a direct line at King George III. They were telling the King of England, who ruled over not only their country but 2/3 of the world, that his subjects were his equal. Remember all those people who went to 'No Kings protests" and thought they were being brave?" These guys were going further to an actual king. Back then if you said that kind of thing Kings had a habit of locking you up without a trial. (Due process was still in its foundational stage as well.)

They were saying that these men who lived their lives in another country were the equal of someone of royal birth.  The British didn't see it that way, to put it mildly. That line alone was enough to be  a charge of treason and they all knew it.

That they are endowed by their creator.

This line is somewhat misunderstood by the religious right. Like the previous one it has more to do with a swing at the man who was the head of the Church of England and who had his power in part by 'divine right'. To say that God gave the same rights to men like Jefferson and Ben Franklin would have been considered heresy in some parts of England. They might not have burned at the stake if things had gone south, but only because the previous line meant they'd have been hanged first.

Now let's get to those unalienable rights because I'm pretty sure its those that the deep thinkers on the left absolutely get wrong or take for granted. Specifically let's look at them in America today.

Life.

Relatively speaking America's a pretty safe country. I'm aware there's something of a breakdown depending on race, gender and sexual preference, but I have to tell you even by that standard, in far more countries then you think, that's far less of a guarantee than the United States.

Because in a lot of countries – far more than the left will ever acknowledge – living at all is far from safe.  And in many cases the government is actively working to make sure the life within the borders of their country is not safe, whether it comes to civil or religious fighting within the country or wars with neighboring countries that will almost certainly lead to the average citizen dying when they go out on the street or even if they stay in their homes. Say what you will about America – and the left will say a lot – but we don't have to listen to the news every night to know if roving militias are roaming the street or whether another countries may bomb our homes.  That's one of the main reasons so many people are risking their lives to get here.

 

Liberty

I realize we take so many of the things in the first amendment for granted but again its worth pointing out then in far too many countries in the world, those freedoms are not only guaranteed but trying to express what we take for granted could at best get you thrown into prison. Actual prison.

These freedoms include the right to protest and dissent, which the right is always angry about and the left seems to think is the only good thing about America. They always forget that in many of the countries around the world – including all of the one's that they claim are the victims of 'Western imperialism' – people are jailed or killed for doing much milder things then they do on a nearly daily basis with the government's blessing.  So don't tell me that being censored on social media or being unable to tell a joke that offends certain people is a sign that America is a dictatorship. There are far too many examples of what actual dictatorships are for me to hold up.

 

The pursuit of happiness.

Again I think we need to pay attention to the word 'pursuit' because that's really the critical one. In America there are far less restrictions on your pursuing your own bliss then there the overwhelming majority of countries on Earth today. In most of them there so concerned with preserving the first two that the third rarely, if ever, is a consideration for them.

And again the Founders used the right word. You can 'pursue' happiness. That's not the same thing as a guarantee. A certainty. The left is very big on changing the meaning of words to things they didn't mean. It's their superpower.

But in the original text the Founders were clear. People can pursue happiness in whichever form, whether it be financial, political or any other definition. Yes they were talking about primarily white men but that part was more revolutionary then you think because, again, in 1776 you did every at the pleasure of a man across the ocean.

 A small part of this revolution was because they felt this right was being impugned. The people in Philadelphia wanted to pursue their happiness without having to ask the permission of the King to do so. In America today you can do that without having to ask anyone's permission and we'll basically let you.

I focused on those last three in particular because in countries in the Middle East, Africa, South America and a lot of places in Asia, you're lucky if you can manage your existed with one out of three.  Trust me when I tell you women in Saudi Arabia and members of the LGBTQ+ in Yemen are not focused on breaking glass ceilings or being able to get jobs in the film industry.

 

I don't think America's a perfect country and we can debate the things that its done wrong. That's a large part of the freedom this country has, by the way. We can engage in debate about these things.  And I will admit that based on race, gender and sexual preference it can feel less free to many of its citizens.

But the fact that so many people on the left – and this is something that is basically only something they do – spend so much time and energy essentially arguing that all of the rights that take for granted don't exist, that they owe nothing to the country that gives them to that and think the ones who think has values are suckers and losers,  who actually seem disappointed that America has lasted as long as it has, well, I have another modest proposal.

When in the course of humans events you produce document that expresses what you believe all the people are entitled too in clear, concise language, when you are willing to assemble an army, rather than just protestors, to fight for them, when you are ready to declare your independence from this country rather than just angrily demand it do what you tell you and actually pledge your life, liberty and your sacred honor to fight for it, then I'll take you seriously.

In the meantime happy 250^th birthday America. Ignore the haters. The founders would be proud you made it this far. And so am I.

 

My Predictions (And Hopes) For the 2026 Emmy Nominations Conclusion: Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series (TV Movie)

 

Have we saved the best for last? Not really. But this category is the kind I love – no frontrunners, no one with an award to call them the favorite. Just six incredible actresses, many of whom I've loved watched for years, if not decades, none of them with a single previous award and all giving the performances I love.

So here we go.

 

Linda Cardellini, DTF St. Louis

Ever since she first graced our TV screens in the still-mourned Freaks & Geeks Linda Cardellini has been one of the most versatile actresses in 21^st TV. It doesn't matter whether it’s the drama of ER or Mad Men or the dark comedy of Dead to Me, she is one of our greatest actresses and it’s a crime she has only received three Emmy nominations to this point.

Her work as Carol Smernitch is one of the most wonderful performances she's done. We spend much of the series thinking that she's the femme fatale, the woman pulling the strings of the men in her orbit, a woman who is neither a good wife or a good mother. The way she behaves to the detectives, constantly asking them to speak up, makes her seem like just another bullying femme. And then like her male co-leads we learn that she's not any of those things. She does want the best for her son; she is worried about her husband and is  sexually unsatisfied (with good reason) and she even wants to be a good Little League umpire. All of the secrets she's appears to have are just the kind of little things we all go about our lives. And the series finale we realize she does love her husband and her son so much that she's willing to throw away a financial payoff so that her son doesn't think his stepfather hated him.

The fact she has to do all this while doing some of the most bizarre sexual fantasies and much of it completely deadpan adds a depth to her performance I'm in awe of. She has already been nominated by the Astras for her work and I expect to see her fighting it like a tiger (tiger) with the nominees below.

 

Dakota Fanning, All Her Fault

The Fanning sisters had an incredible year and its worth noting Dakota started it out far stronger then Elle. Dakota has been slowly but surely becoming one of the biggest forces in television over the last few years: this is the third limited series in as many years that she's appeared in that has been considered for awards and the second where she certain to be nominated.  And Jenny is a different woman then her interpretation of Margie Greenwood in Ripley: confident and bold in the world of work but still living in the complicated world of mother.

Jenny's role is the most different from Mara's original novel. In adapting it to television Jenny is made a far bigger working mother, whose life is destroyed when she learns her nanny has used her to get close to Milo. She reaches out to Marissa against the advice of everybody and as the series develops the two of them form an unlikely and true bond as Jenny does everything to get to the center of what happened to Milo. And she is given a story that parallels Marissa as her husband goes out of the way to put the burden of caregiving on her now their nanny is gone and then does his own bit of lying that, while less monstrous then so many around them, is no less a betrayal.

Her moment in the sun comes in an incredible monologue in the sixth episode when she learns her husband has been spending his days watching TikTok When Jenny unloads on him with the ferocity of how horrible it is to be a both a mother and a breadwinner it is the kind of speech that is more emotional resonant with any woman in America if not the world. Jenny is mostly absent from the final two episodes but the fact the series chooses to end with the two women and their children together is one of the great things about the entire series.

Fanning  finally received her first award nomination from the Astra this past summer (I'll get to a nominee later below). I'm beginning to think she's overdue a victory herself and I would be fine if she took the prize.

 

Grace Gummer, Love Story

Grace Gummer has been one of the quiet forces in television in the last decade. She was incredible in her stint in the criminally under-recognized (by the Emmys) Mr. Robot as an FBI agent who wants to expose the Dark Army and ends up doing things she never thought she could do in order to survive. She was superb Claire in the sadly cancelled too zone Let the Right One in as a scientist who tries to save her brother from his affliction and becomes as big a monster as he is. Now she takes on one of the most difficult roles in her career – one that led to significant controversy because Caroline Kennedy is still alive and was not happy about it.

But like her mother before her Grace manages to inhabit the role of a famous member of a family by not trying. She clearly cares for her brother very much but she thinks he's not being serious enough. She clearly loves her mother (see below) but she finds it hard to avoid the questions. When her mother dies the two of them realize that yet again they have to bare up under tragedy because its their job. And yet during everything John does she seems more interested in protecting her privacy and her families and what he does as a reflection of it. She is cold both to her brother and the few times she and Caroline interact.

But the power comes, as we know it must, after her brother dies. Once again she finds herself dealing with tragedy and she spends that time trying not to talk to the people involved. This leads to one of the most powerful moments in the entire series where she and Mrs. Bessette are in the same room perhaps for the first time since John and Carolyn's wedding. In it she tells a story about how it truly feels to live in a family which seems to be cursed by tragedy and yet keep coming away surviving. She tries her hardest to reach across a divide that may have been insurmountable and for the briefest of moments does so. With respect the real-life Caroline Gummer did more then enough respect to her and her family.

Gummer was nominated for an Astra Award for her work in Love Story. It's hard to know what her odds are of winning but the big draw is to see if her acceptance speech would be as good as her mother's.

 

Brittany Snow, Beast in Me

Brittany Snow had a great 2025. First she achieved newfound sexual status for her work in The Hunting Wives and then she followed it up with a different kind of wife in The Beast in Me. Now I'd be fine if she was nominated for the former but I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen so why not nominate her for a performance in which she shows a side of her we don't see that often: her more dark and dramatic one.

Considering she spends the overwhelming majority of her time onscreen with two of the greatest actors in TV today it says something about Snow that her works as the most recent Mrs. Jarvis that she can hold her own with either of them. She thinks she knows the secrets of her husband and she's aware of his reputation when we meet her but she doesn't seem clueless or the other woman. And we also see that she's trying to find a way for herself beyond being Nile's wife and that ends up making her be a pawn in so much of what is going on between them, something she chafes at as much as anybody. There's an inner toughness to her that frequently seems missing from Danes's Aggie at times as well a nuance and subtlety that Nile can barely maintain. She's far from innocent in this story but you root for her despite that.

Snow was nominated ahead of Naomi Watts by the Astras but her work is more than worthy of the nomination. I don't know what the odds are of her being picked but I'd be more than fine seeing her compete.

Callie Spaeny, Beef

Of all the four leads in the second season of Beef there's a strong argument that Spaeny's Ashley is the one who is the root cause of everything that follows. We do want to feel sympathy for her: she needs health insurance; she seems to be on the outs with her father and Josh does seem to bully her when he confronts her after the fight. But Ashley also seems to have the worst aspects of every millennial: she wants to do things through shortcuts, she only thinks of herself ahead of Austin and when she ends up getting her promotions its clear she has no idea what she's doing and thinks that because she's blackmailing Josh she should get a pass from doing the hard work and yet be given more responsibility. Josh and Lindsey see absolutely no problem in using her to achieve their own ends and her behavior keeps showing a cluelessness that makes her increasingly hard to sympathize with even as things spiral. The fact that she and Austin come out the winners of this just shows how much they are compromised – and there's an argument that Ashley's learned nothing from this experience at the end of the series.

In lesser hands this could be a problem. But Spaeny who in her brief career has a pretty good track record of playing frail seeming characters with who seem both deep and shallow makes it sing more often then it doesn't. She'll almost certainly be the youngest nominee in this category but she's also one of the most deserving.

Naomi Watts, Love Story

Naomi Watts has literally been here before. Two years ago she was deservedly nominated for Best Actress for playing an iconic famous wife whose dying of cancer most of the series" Babe Paley in Capote Vs. The Swan. Now not two years later she's her for playing perhaps the most famous widow in the 20^th century who is also dying of cancer. But this time it's a role that by this time has been played by just about every other actress of note, from Katie Holmes to Natalie Portman. What could Watts add to it, particularly being in just three episodes?

Well because she's Naomi Watts, a lot. Watts's performance shows Jackie O in a role we never see her as: a mother. And the thing is, she's not particularly warm to her son. She seems more interested on what he does in life and more importantly who he's romantically attached to, as a reflection on the family name and her.  You get the feeling she was closer in life to Caroline and that she seemed perfectly fine to treat anything her son did as withholding affection or respect, the one thing he craved. Most of what we know about the lies of Camelot comes from Jackie herself. In scenes with Caroline (Grace Gummer adds to her increasingly brilliant list of performances) her daughter asks if she ever wished she'd married another man.  Jackie looks at her and tells her that she was forced to live her mother's dream: "I was supposed to be the most famous accessory to the most powerful men." She admits she created the myth of her husband which she could have punctured but chose not to. In what is a powerful but almost certainly fictionalized sequence when she is taking her last rites she tells her confessor she wanted to die that day, that she knew of her husband's indiscretions and a part of her has hated him ever since.

Watts role is considerably less significant than Gummer's and indeed other female performers in the series, most notably Constance Zimmer's work as Mrs. Bessette which many could argue deserves recognition as much, if not more, then Watts. I myself wouldn't object if that were to happen. But Watts has been one of our most underrated actresses in any medium for even longer then the rest of them and while I don't per se think she was robbed two years ago all the arguments I made for her then apply now. I mean, why should her husband keep getting all the awards?

 

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Sophia Lillis, All Her Fault

When the Critics Choice Awards nominated Lillis for her work as Josie, the nanny who abducts Milo at the start of the series it might have seemed like an odd choice to choose her over such prominent names as Dakota Fanning and Molly Gordon. And relatively speaking Josie's role is smaller than the more prominent supporting nominees.

But you can't take your eyes of Lillis whenever she's on the screen. We see her watching TV from far away, we see her trying to take care of Milo, we know that her mother knows what she's up to but isn't telling the truth. And when Milo is returned to the Irvine with three episodes to go in the series we think her character's done – until she shows up at the Irvine home with a gun. Then in the penultima episode we see the story from her perspective and we realize she is the biggest victim of them all, the daughter of parents who didn't love her, suffering from a mental condition that has troubled her from birth, seeing her boyfriend go to prison, believing her son is dead – and then finding out that he's not. To this point we've been led to believe she's the crazy one, suffering from the worst kinds of delusion. It's only in the final minutes of the penultimate episode – and in the final scenes of the last one – that we realize she is the sanest one of the bunch and horribly ends up the victim of the man who destroyed her entire life. It is a tragic story.

It's nearly certain that Fanning will be nominated in this category and she deserves to be. But Lillis deserves recognition as much, if not more then her. In a sense the title refers to her as much as anyone – and just like Marissa and Jenny, it's completely inaccurate.

 

And that, as they say, is that. On Wednesday we'll see how well I did and then get ready for the leadup to the awards itself.