You Can't Force People To Watch An Awards Show. Whatever Decision The Emmys Makes This Year Won't Change This Fundamental Issue

 

 

I've noticed certain patterns about the awards shows I watch in regard to TV. Let me share them.

For years the Golden Globes had no hosts, then it had Ricky Gervais, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler co-host, then it had a group of late night people hosts. It has controversy over its voting members; it had to complete rebrand three years ago. It changed networks from NBC to CBS two years ago.

In all that period there were three constants. The first is subjective but in my opinion the awards they gave for TV were top-notch and frequently were superior to the Emmys. The second was that critics almost always gave the ceremonies pans most of the time and damned with faint praise the rest. The third was the ratings either went down or were essentially the same.

Around 2010 the Broadcast Critics Association started giving awards for TV. At first it had a separate ceremony in the summer, then it merged with film and now gives all of them at an end of year ceremony. It has aired on A & E, the CW and now airs on E! Again there are two constants: the nominations and awards are arguably the best in the industry and the ratings have essentially all stayed the same - which is next to non-existent. As for reviews of the ceremony this is an awards show that is so relatively small that I've rarely seen reviews of the ceremony at all.

Finally there are the SAG-AFTRA awards. For the first quarter of a century it aired on TNT. In 2022, it moved to YouTube, it's now airing on Netflix. It had no host for nearly fifteen years, it's had a few for the last three. It's format has barely changed at all in thirty years. The two constants: the reviews of the ceremony have never been that good and by and large the ratings having changed that much. The latter is more subjective then the other two awards shows as the metric for how many people watch a live event on streaming is different then the ones on cable. But given how inside baseball it is, I'm skeptical that thirty million people are tuning into Netflix on a Sunday night in March to see if Timothee Chalamet is going to win for Best Male Actor because nobody ever tuned in when it was on TNT to see if Leonardo DiCaprio was.

All of these were constants in Hollywood before streaming became the center of every aspect of our lives as well as the polarization of Hollywood's place in the universe. And that's because of the common thread between all of these groups: you can't force people to watch an awards show. As I've written before and will write again, awards show are for the nominees and the industry infinitely more than they are the viewer at home. Compared to the TV shows and films that they are commemorating they're not as entertaining or spontaneous as live events and they're not really supposed to be.

There's also the issue that I think would be the constant even if we weren't living in an era of cable and streaming. Unless you have a vested interest in the nominated shows or films as well as the actors, there really isn't a good reason to watch them. I've been doing it for more than a quarter of a century because I have both a professional and personal interest, which is different then both those who review the ceremony. And I completely get why, with so many choices before you on a night for entertainment, you might not want to spend three hours watching a bunch of celebrities giving speeches and hearing remarks about how important the work in Hollywood is.  I care about who wins or loses because I've seen many of the shows and admire much of the talent. I understand that puts me in a niche very few other people have and I completely get why others would want to do something else. I don't judge them.

On the business side, however, Hollywood seems either unwilling or unable to accept this basic fact. I honestly think the main reason viewership for awards show has dropped in the last decade has less to do with the increasing politics of the industry or even the kinds of shows the industry recognizes then the simple fact that there are now dozens, if not hundreds, of things you can be watching at any given day. There was a period in my lifetime when networks wouldn't run live programming against the Oscars or any awards show and they don't any more, in large part because cable isn't either and streaming is always there.  So naturally the ratings for awards shows would drop the exact same way ratings for everything on network and cable have dropped in the last decade. There are so many options that many people, young and old, of all races, genders and sexual orientation, are choosing to watch something else. That is their right.

The main reason ratings for awards show like the Emmys were always high during the 20^th century was because there were only three channels and nothing else was going on against them on those Sunday nights. The shows weren't necessarily better  (indeed I'd argue the shows nominated today are on average exponentially better than they were during the 1980s and 1990s) but they had been seen by more people and there were fewer alternatives. Now there are many alternatives.

On Monday night I have no doubt that millions of people will not be watching the Emmys. Indeed I'm willing to bet Monday Night Football will probably get higher ratings. The only reason this is significant is because the pattern of watching the Emmys is changing. The contract of rotating the Emmys between all four major networks is up and there's debate whether a streaming platform will take over broadcasting it, much like YouTube will be taking over the Oscars in two years' time.

The argument for shifting to a streaming service is an attempt to reach a broader audience, which means younger. This is yet another case of Hollywood missing the forest for the trees. Several awards shows, including the Astras, have been broadcasting on YouTube channels for five years and honestly I seriously doubt anybody but me has been watching them.

The problem is that no matter where you put an awards show, whether on network, cable or streaming, it's still an awards show.  As I mentioned the SAG-AFTRA did the same thing five years ago, and I'll be damned if I've noticed any change in viewership. Does Hollywood really believe that if you move the Emmys to Netflix or Amazon or any streaming service, the millions of people who have been watching other things when it was on networks or cable are going to just go to it because its now on Netflix or Amazon?

Of course not. The people that you're trying to reach will still end up watching clips of it the day after or the week after. They're not going to start caring about seeing the Emmys just because its on a streaming service that they can see on their phones now. Most of them don't have the attention span to watch shows as long as Ted Lasso anymore. You really think they'll sit through a three hour awards show because it's on TikTok?

What it will do is drive away the older audience that is still watching it on network and cable. We all know that this is part of the endless drive or television to try and reach 'a younger audience'. You know, the people who already think institutions like the Emmys and the Oscars are outdated anyway. Not to state the obvious but everybody gets old and at this point most of the people who once watched streaming are essentially starting to get tired of the model and now appreciate the way its being dropped weekly. You know, like network and cable are doing.

To be fair most seniors don't watch these shows either because most of the shows aren't on platforms they watch or can even find. But that's not the Emmys fault either – entirely. (I've had this debate about how the Emmys has been short-shrift network and cable for over a decade but this isn't the time for it.) They still have the patience to watch your ceremonies. That you're cutting off an audience you still have for one that has never been part of your bailiwick and never will be shows yet again the short-sightedness of Hollywood.

The other argument for doing this is that the Emmys must be 'relevant'. But 'relevant has always meant different things depending who you ask.

To an older viewer 'relevant' refers to a time of nostalgia when the family all gathered around the set and where we all watching the same program as a country. The bigotry is not always overt but considering that so much of television during the 20^th century was built on censorship and putting together a homogenous view of America where 'everybody knew their place' its clearer than other institutions.

To someone younger its another one of those hazy terms they just can't define but they know that it isn't something that it's older than them. This has always been the case even before the internet existed and its just as true today.

To women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ and other people of that level in the industry what is 'relevant' is how many of the nominated shows, performers and creatives are women, people of color, etc. They see this as a societal issue rather than simply being an industry matter. Systemic racism won't be fixed by Salli Richardson-Whitfield winning a Best Director Emmy this year any more than it would effect the patriarchy. Thinking does not make it so despite what the people in the industry believe.

And of course we've discussed what the critics need to believe in order for it to be relevant, but in this case they're more clueless than usual.

Personally much as I respect and admire the work the Emmys have done in the 21^st century I can assure the vast majority of Americans don't take it seriously or think about it much. At best they might focus on it the night it airs but that's it. I'd say at most the Emmys is like every other TV awards show: it's relevant to the industry in general and the nominees most specifically. It's never been one of those subjects that people who are invested in heavily about focus on more than the weeks leading up to it and then only a few days afterwards.

I've had my issues about shows that have been nominated and won over the years and I do hold some grudges. But there comes a point when it's not relevant to focus on it. Am I still upset that Better Call Saul never won a single Emmys while shows such as Succession, Ozark and Game of Thrones which I truly found lacking in comparison received so many? Yes. But I'm not going to spend the rest of my life holding a grudge. There's always next year, another show and in many cases the nominees will get another chance, even if it doesn't work out. But just because I think they have given the awards to the wrong shows and actors doesn't make them irrelevant. It makes it a subject for lively debate. The awards matter at most to the nominees and the shows. That's it. Putting the Emmys on a streaming service isn't going to change that nor is going to make any more people watch then it did whenever another awards show changes networks or moves to streaming. It's a niche audience and that's not going to change no matter what Hollywood does.

For what it's worth I do understand the position the industry is in right now and I get the lack of stability. But I also know that with everything else today Hollywood is forgetting the simple moral that if you try to please everybody you're not going to please anybody. And you're a business so you have to try and get as many people to come to the same place and offend the fewest number of people.

Here's my nickel's worth of advice: keep the rotation in play and show the Emmys on a streaming service every year. Will it improve the ratings? No but neither will moving it permanently to a streaming service. You're still going to be faced with the problem that people have free will and that awards shows are long and arduous. That's always going to be a feature and not a bug.

Will the industry grouse about being relevant? That is the same argument Hollywood always makes. To be clear relevance, like everything else, is on a sliding scale and the people who make the argument that something like the Emmys are irrelevant today are the same people who were making those arguments thirty years ago: young people and critics. That they're doing it on social media and the internet only means the methods have changed, not the tenor of their complaints or their logic.

And for the love of God stop holding awards shows to the same metrics as TV and movies when it comes to critical and rating responses. I don't know now many times I have to keep saying this, so I'll keep saying until somebody who actually is in the industry gets it. The awards shows are for the nominees and the industry first and foremost, the viewer and the critic a distant second at best. The former rarely gets this fact, the latter never does. If they haven't realized it after nearly 80 years of them being broadcast, they're not going to get it if you move it to a streaming service. All you're going to accomplish is make it harder for those who do care to find it and they will take it harshly. That will make your industry irrelevant far more then trying to reach the people who consider it a given.

That's all I have to say. I'll see you Monday.

 

Homicide Rewatch: Something Sacred (Conclusion)

 

Written by David Simon

Directed by Uli Edel

 

The second part begins with the perfect note of comedy. With the Guatemalans on the run and a second priest dead the Baltimore PD have become desperate and are trying and an undercover operation. Part of that involves members of Homicide dressing as men of the cloth looking to be robbed, even if that means they're walking the same avenues as ladies of the evening.

The detectives realize the humor of this in many ways (see Detective Munch for the high point) but it also argues the relative futility of where the investigation is right now. It doesn't bring them closer to solving the red ball and it just makes it very clear how depraved the underbelly of Baltimore is. Giardello knows this better than anyone when Munch comes in with the two men who tried to rob him in the teaser. They know that the MO is wrong. The shift has been dressed in clerical garb and all they have to show for it is six robbery attempts, none of which resemble the approach of the murders of Juneau and Jaeger.  As for Pedro and Luis the search is all over the wire but they're nowhere. More importantly the refugees left with only the clothes on their backs. A search of the grounds found no sign of any money and while the diocese of Jaeger was robbed they still don't know what to look for. Giardello is infuriated about being forced to release the two refugees and he makes that point very clear when he's called in to meet with Bonfather who calls him in to meet with City Hall and the archdiocese.

Kotto has always been superb at managing diplomacy when it comes to dealing with the bosses as he understands what his job is. Here he doesn't even bother with formalities, tearing into Bonfather, the mayor and the church from the moment he enters the room.  It helps matters that both representatives are the epitome of arrogance and ignorance and he has no problem being that way. Asked if this is his subtle way of telling them 'I told you so.' Al says coldly: "I don't have time to be subtle. But if you want it, I told you so." The way that both the mayor and the archdiocese seem utterly unwilling to admit error even in the fact of another dead priest makes it so frustrating that Bonfather has to play diplomat for once and Al runs right over him too. Al is called on the carpet later in the episode but he clearly has no patience for that either.

After a failed interrogation by Gharty all seem clear that the recent robber is the wrong tree Ballard finds the inventory from the archdiocese: a gold chalice taken from the altar. (There's a little humor when Ballard explains to Giardello what a chalice is and Al, whose Catholicism is never stated in this episode, gently tells her.) They put it on the pawnbroker's list and then they want every cop to visit every pawn shop in Baltimore. They make the assumption that if you're dead broke  you're gonna grab whatever you can and this leads them to Pedro and Luis stealing what they can and hocking it for money to get out of town.

This leads to a conversation between Gharty and Falsone, who haven't really talked since this season began. Gharty asked Falsone about his religion and Gharty says he still goes to Mass and how he believes. His monologue is one of the highpoints of Gerety's tenure on the show:

This mook sees what he thinks is a priest at a Frederick row bus stop and out comes his .32. Yo father, give it up?...I'm nuts, someone is robbing and killing priests and I'm up to my neck in it. But hey, there's Stu Gharty, wanting to believe. He's down on his knees, his mouth open, waiting for that little wafer.

Falsone's response is interesting. He tells him the job doesn't have to change it. "What is faith? Believing without any real evidence." Gharty thinks it's a joke but Falsone assured him he wouldn't do that. He may not be religious but he's not going to knock another man's faith. 

When Ballard and Gharty go to the morgue looking for more details and get more info on the knife, once again we see Gharty's devotion as he's upset that a Monsignor is displayed the same way as all the other corpses. "It isn't right," he says.

In the midst of the shift change when Pembleton comes in after a sleepless night, helped by his children the man who had a stroke asks for a black coffee. He never gets to drink and we don't ponder it long because the phone rings and he calls in Stivers. They've found Pedro and Luis.

Gharty and Ballard are outside St. Jermaine, taking photos to see if the killer comes back to see both priests paid respects too. Gharty actually goes inside to pay his respect and Ballard eventually follows. Sister Diane shows up and Ballard begins to question her about Pedro and Luis. Diane remains certain, despite everything that has happened, that they're not guilty. Falsone then comes in and briefs Ballard and Gharty that the refugees have been found in Frederick. Furthermore there was a hit on the chalice in Hanover this morning. Sister Diane demands to know what happened and all three detectives walk out without telling her a thing.

Pedro and Luis were found with $34 on them and receipts for fast food and motels running about $40. (This is 1998 Baltimore, remember.) Sister Diane reaches Frederick not long after Pembleton and Stivers do. That Sister Diane seems determined to put them in the custody of the archdiocese saying nothing has changed seems to speak to her naivete. She admits they have demonstrated they are a flight risk but Pembleton actually starts chuckling when he makes it very clear that he finds her position foolish now. The refugees made a statement and its clear she's unsure whether or not they'd confess. They maintain their innocence but can't explain how they were found with more than $70, nor can they give any reasonable explanation for fleeing, having signed an affidavit not to.  Sister Diane seems stunned that they didn't ask for an attorney. When asked if you still believe, Sister Diane says: "I'm willing to believe. Why does belief so appall you?"

She picked the wrong man to pose this question to. He shows her respect by waiting for her to see Pedro and Luis and then he makes it clear: "Blind faith is the crutch of the fools."  In this case, her faith is rewarded

Perhaps few scenes speak to the frustration of the local cop then the pawnshop and Ballard's outrage that a man could walk in with a church chalice and doesn't ask any questions. This leads to one of the best lines in the series and its written by Simon, so it makes sense:

Tell me something. If some 17-year old West Baltimore corner boy came in here with a full set of custom made graphite shaft golf clubs, would you wonder if he had stolen them out of someone's car trunk or would you just figure Homey had a change of heart and decided to take up tennis instead?

The pawnbroker, naturally, takes it straight and he shows them the name and address. "Whitney Houston. And guess what? She's got a place on Fayette Street." It's a burned down shop which leads Ballard to naturally say: "Bobby Brown could have done a lot better by the girl." (To be clear, 1998. No one knew how things were going to work out.)

The pawnbroker can't identify the Guatemalans and remembers a young man, possibly white and of course, he wiped the chalice down before he gave it back. However Giardello thinks the chalice is the key and he's right.  They go to the address that was left 1715 Fayette and Ballard figures out the address isn't random. The place burnt down three weeks ago and Ballard figures out maybe whoever left the address saw it burned which means he's a local – not the refugees.  She tells Gharty to go around the corner.

1517 Baltimore Street is the address of Lamar Bryce, aka Roc-Roc.  1517 Baltimore is one block over, two blocks down from 1715 Fayette. Gharty recognizes the name but says that since the pawnbroker identified a white man and Roc-Roc isn't even fair-skinned it doesn't make sense. Ballard thinks it does and they bring him in. Roc-Roc throws his vials in the sewer before he's brought in (we'll get to that) and the rest of the episode centers on his interrogation.

(Noteworthy is how neither detective gives a damn about his dealing. "A few vials here, a few vials there, we throw that back in the pond.")

It's telling that having spent the better part of two episodes with Gharty being the focus of it the resolution of the case has nothing to do with him. It starts out well enough with Gharty and Ballard pretty clear about what happened saying "They put you in." Roc-Roc goes: "They wouldn't do that", clearly giving himself away. Then Gharty grabs Roc-Roc and makes it clear he intends to beat him into next week.  Roc-Roc tells him he's been beat down by police before (that speaks volumes) Before Gharty can get started Pembleton and Stivers rush in and Gharty is told to get out by Ballard herself.

The interrogation then focuses on the two primaries Ballard and Pembleton. The two have never worked the box together once so its telling as to just how in sync they eventually become that Callie Thorne can match Andre Braugher verbal blow for verbal blow. Ballard makes it clear that she doesn't think Roc-Roc did this but that he knows the people who did and they put the murders on them.

Roc-Roc makes it clear he has a code. Pembleton instantly leans into it: "Why they call you Roc-Roc, Lamar? You give yourself that name?" Pembleton is the first one to call him Lamar, something Ballard and Gharty haven't done. "What do you think God is going to do to someone who took out two of his crew? What do you think God is going to do to someone who knew about the deed then lied about it?" Ballard points out he's protecting someone who killed a priest and tortured him; Pembleton makes it clear that they probably asked him for a meal to get in the parish and then killed him.

Roc-Roc's gospel is that of the corner boy and he mocks the idea of God being anywhere near him. Which is understandable. What's telling is that when they bring in Danvers with the vials they found and his record, the next step is to wave his charge in his face. Danvers threatens him with 3 years as a charge as an adult. (He goes in tough by the way.) But when asked whether he wants the years or a deal, he chooses the three years.

After four hours with no progress they change tactics. Ballard says that they've been arguing life is sacred and Pembleton knows that his world makes them out to be liars. This lead to two incredible sequences. First Pembleton and Ballard take Lamar to the morgue and Frank shows him the bodies. "Look at them, Lamar. You've been right all along. No God, no heaven. That's all there is. And if there was anything more, they wouldn't be so empty. You seem someone you recognize, you see someone you know." That last bit hits hard.

This is cold and hard. But it's the final bit that redeems it and makes the episode a treasure. Ballard and Pembleton drive until sunrise to Chesapeake Bay before delivering an incredible monologue about the value of life. Ballard then reminds Roc-Roc that he's 17 and might be dead or locked up six months from now. They have no illusions about how he's going to die and neither does he.  "So the only question left is this: while you were alive, while you were living and taking up space, did it count?"

Roc-Roc has this look of wonder. "Is this the ocean?" "It's the bay," Ballard says.  Pembleton and Ballard put away their guns and uncuff him. He looks out. And apparently that seems to do the trick. The two killers are two members of Roc-Roc's crew.

In the midst of this Lewis pops up looking scruffier then usual and showing up in front of Falsone. Paul admits he and Kellerman have been incredibly worried about him. He doesn't want to go into the squad and he shows a bit of shame for the jackpot he's gotten himself into. Unfortunately this is where the storyline involving the Mahoney real does take Homicide close to 'cop-a-ganda'.

Meldrick asks Falsone to do police work for him and gives him some names he wants to run to get rap sheets. This is going against the rules of his suspension and in the past Lewis has been more than willing to not just play by the book but hold those who disobey it accountable. Before Falsone agrees to it, he makes it clear that Lewis who's on suspension is risking his badge if he's caught. Meldrick says that he's tired of playing defense against 'this bitch. She's gonna come back at us, we're gonna come back at her." This is the definition of abusing your badge and breaking the law outright.

Just as troubling is that Falsone, who ever since he joined the unit has been busted everybody's chops about the Mahoney shooting being funky, doesn't even blink about doing Meldrick's dirty work for him. He has just been engaged in a conspiracy and it doesn't bother him. And it's very troubling that when Falsone actually asks Lewis what he should tell Kellerman that Meldrick doesn't even dignify it with a response.

The episode also shows the continued deterioration of Kellerman. Aside from the biggest moment (see Notes From the Board) Kellerman is angry at everybody. He harangues Bayliss for his affair with Cox and while Tim takes it in better spirits then he should, it's only because Frank shows up that it stops getting worse. When Lewis shows up and sees Falsone rather than him Kellerman takes his outrage more on Meldrick for not knowing the meaning of the word partner. Falsone tells him: "That a boy, Mikey. Burn those bridges" and despite the animus between the two it's clear he's concerned. But the climax comes when Kellerman is clearly hammered at the Waterfront and he openly mocks the relationship he and Juliana used to have about always being drunk before having sex. He kisses her clearly without her consent, then goes outside (Bayliss and Cox go after him) and then he cheerfully throws his keys in the harbor. (The next day he'll try to open his car with a  coat hanger.) In the final insult Kellerman will see Lewis in the Waterfront with Falsone across the street and by the time he gets there Meldrick has ducked out the back.

After all of this reality sets in. Pedro and Luis have broken the law and like all illegals they will be deported. There are no illusions of a sympathetic judge even in 1998. In three weeks' time they will be deported back to Guatemala. Pembleton and Stivers drop Roc-Roc off carefully. He makes it clear Sting – the white one – liked to use the knife doesn't bother him as much as Tyrell, who was his cousin. (In a montage we see the felons hugging each other once they've been locked up together. Good for you, Lamar. Roc-Roc acknowledges he was with the two of them and Father Wolcott but he couldn't do it when he saw the old man. After that he stopped hanging with the two of them. Before he says goodbye he says: "I really liked seeing the ocean." He ignores that it was the bay.

The episode ends with Gharty and Ballard returning the chalice to the rightful place. Gharty tells about how he and his brother once when they were in third grade would pretend to be priests. They didn't know the Latin so they'd blabber something. He says there's something about the Latin. "Maybe believing in God is supposed to be mysterious…It made it special. That God was coming through to us on a different signal." Ballard says Gharty would have made a good priest. Gharty responds like the cop he is: "No, I'm where I'm supposed to be. And that makes me wonder every day."

As if a higher power were there (but really the archdiocese) Father Klasky is there to accept the chalice. They assure him the killers will be punished. Klasky expresses remorse about Pedro and Luis's fate. So Gharty reassures him: "You had your doubts. We all did."

The last words of the episode is the poem we saw at the first crime scene. It didn't mean anything in regard to the crime but when Klasky says it, it sums up everything we've seen in this two-parter:

Teach us how truly to live. God of love, forgive, forgive.

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

In a minor detail while Jaeger is written as 031 in this episode in future episodes we'll see it written as 034. Presumably there were three other murders during the red ball and the other detectives followed up on them.

Detective Munch: Seeing our favorite Jewish detective dressed as a priest leads to wonderful moments. A good Samaritan passed by; he assures him he's fine with "Zei gesund." Asked by the radio car what that is Munch says: "Yiddish. Go with God." Clearly he's betting that the average Baltimorean can't tell that from Latin. Just as fun is when two stick-up artists try to rob him and he pulls his gun. "That's going to be four Hail Mary's and three Our Fathers', he says as he puts cuffs on them.

Just as entertaining is when Falsone comes into the unit and sees Munch reading 'Remembrance of Things Past' 'Deep Thoughts, dangerous thoughts." Falsone's reaction: "You scare me, Munch." If he's reading it in the original French, I'd be even more concerned.

Mahoney PTSD: The mother of all PTSD moments. Stumbling home drunk Kellerman bangs into a corner boy. He grabs him and halls him off arresting him 'for pissing him off. When the cop says he smells like whiskey  Kellerman hallucinates Luther right in front of him saying "What you gonna do detective?" (Erik Todd Dellums name appears in the end credits to hide his cameo. Kellerman reacts by beating him senseless. Only after he finds vials on him – and more importantly a squad car drives up – does he regain enough of his senses to tell the officers to 'make the collar' before stumbling off again.

On The Soundtrack: The opening montage where the detectives are playing priests we hear 'Jesus on the Main Line' by Blues Musician Mississippi Fred McDowell. In the final moments we hear 'You've Got to Dire' by Blind Willy McTell.

Decision 2026: John Sununu Is The Kind of Republican America Needs. That's Just as True Today As It Was 20 years ago

 

 

There's this belief among academics, pundits and certain people on social media that because a state or region of the country has been Democratic or Republican for the past twenty or thirty years in Presidential politics or at a Congressional level that it will always be that way. This is how many on the left have viewed the South in my lifetime and its how many on the right have viewed New England. Consequently during this period the opposing party have done little to do disturb the status quo.

But it's becoming clear in this election cycle that the Democrats are going to make some real inroads in Dixie at a Senate level and perhaps even a few governorships. And if the Republicans want to move forward in a post-Trump America they'd do well to make similar efforts in New England, which honestly has been far friendlier to them for longer.

This may seem difficult to believe considering that New England not only has by far some of the most far-left Senators and Congressman in the nation such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders but the Republican Party has  no representatives at all in New England and only one Senator Susan Collins who is under immense fire for reelection this cycle and very well might not survive it.

And yet over the same era that Donald Trump has taken over much of the Republican Party New England has had Republican Governors win multiple elections during that same period. Charlie Baker would be elected governor of Massachusetts in 2014 and win reelection the same year that Elizabeth Warren easily won reelection to the Senate. Bernie Sanders became a hero to the left in 2016 the year that Phil Scott was elected governor of Vermont and has twice won reelection in years that Bernie was running for the Senate. (Vermont has two year terms for governor and Scott is heavily favored to win his fifth term this cycle.) And this election cycle with the Democrats looking increasingly like they may take the Senate Majority Democrats in New Hampshire are sounding the alarm that they might lose a Senate seat they've held for a while.

New Hampshire is by far more conservative then its neighbors in New England and actually had a Republican win election to the Senate as recently as 2010. Kelly Ayotte was the attorney general of New Hampshire who resigned in 2009 to explore a run for the Senate. Despite never having run for office she narrowly won the primary and the general election with nearly 60 percent of the vote. In doing so she succeeded Judd Gregg, another Republican who had served the people of New Hampshire for three terms.

Ayotte was running for reelection in 2016 against the incumbent Democratic governor Maggie Hassan. As early as February Americans For Prosperity made it clear they would not support her because  support for the Clean Power Act. When the Access Hollywood tape came out in October of that year Ayotte made it clear that as a mother and prosecutor she wouldn't vote for Trump and would write in Mike Pence for President. This almost certainly cost her reelection as Maggie Hassan would win election to the Senate by a little more than 1000 votes. In 2022 Hassan became the first Democrat to win reelection to that particular seat.

During that election Republican Chris Sununu would be elected governor. The Sununu family is a significant name in American politicians. John H. Sununu was once governor of New Hampshire from 1983 to 1989 and was George H.W. Bush's first White House Chief of Staff. John Edward Sununu, his son, would represent New Hampshire in the House from 1997 to 2003 and then be elected to the Senate in 2002. 38 at the time he was the youngest man elected to the Senate and he lost to Jeanne Shaheen for reelection in 2008.

By the standards of 1990s and 2000s politics John Sununu was one of the most conservative men in Congress, voting to impeach Bill Clinton, opposing abortion, favoring the death penalty and receiving a 100 percent rating from Citizens Against Government Waste. However he had a streak of independence, choosing to join the Democrats in filibustering the PATRIOT ACT and W's energy bill and voting against a constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage and restrictions of trade with Cuba. He was always more of a fiscal conservative then a social one while in Congress. He was also the co-sponsor of the Clean Air Planning Act. And he was always popular in New Hampshire: in 2008 he outperformed John McCain in New Hampshire at a state level

Jeanne Shaheen has served in the Senate ever since but in March of 2025 she announced that she would not seek reelection, having just become the oldest woman in the Senate. By this point Ayotte had won the governorship in New Hampshire after Chris Sununu chose not to seek a fifth term. Both Vermont and New Hampshire were one of two Republican governorships up for reelection in a state Biden had carried in 2020. While the race was close by 2024 standard  Ayotte beat the Democratic candidate by nearly 9.3 percent and running over Trump by 40,000 votes. With Harris getting 418,000 votes and Ayotte getting 436,000 it's clear that ticket-splitting is alive and well in New England.

New Hampshire Republicans had tried to recruit Chris Sununu to run for Senate against Shaheen in 2020 and Maggie Hassan in 2022. In 2026 they had better luck convincing his big brother to run for his old seat after Shaheen stepped down. This was enough to send New Hampshire Democrats to send up warning flares to the National Party.

With good reason. Ever since March Sununu has been polling close to the Democratic candidate Chris Pappas, usually within the margin of error and in some cases ahead of him by a slight margin.

Pappas has solid routes in New Hampshire, having been elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives right out of College, serving two terms there before being elected treasurer of Hillsborough Country before being defeated in 2010, being elected to the New Hampshire Executive Council and serving three consecutive terms there. He had been floated for Congress, the Senate and the governor ship and in 2018 he ran for the 1^st district in a crowded Democratic primary, then the general in the Blue Wave of 2018. He was reelected three consecutive times (defeating Karoline Leavitt in 2022).

As John Sununu was as a Republican Pappas was ranked the most bipartisan Democrat in 2023. He was one of six democrats to vote against the legalization of Cannabis at a federal level in 2020, criticized Biden's plan to cancel student debt and in 2025 was one of 46 House Democrats to vote for the Laken Riley Act. He's also in favor of Israel's right to defend himself and while he is in favor or Palestinian self-determination, he joined 22 of his fellow Democrats in favor of censuring prominent progressive Rashida Tlaib in 2023.

So even though he would be keeping in with the spirit of bipartisanship that marks both parties in New Hampshire he faced a challenge from his left while running for the Democratic nomination from Karishma Manzur who challenged Pappas for being two centrist while in Congress. And as was the case with the overwhelming number of left-wing challengers in the Democratic primaries Pappas easily defeated the challenger with 64 .6 percent of the vote to Manzur's 33.2,

By that point John Sununu was the heavy favorite to try and win the seat he'd lost back in 2008. He faced a challenge from Scott Brown, best known for defeating Martha Coakley in a 2010 election to fill out the term of Ted Kennedy before losing to Elizabeth Warren when he ran for election in his own right. Brown would later try to run against Jeanne Shaheen in 2014. Brown narrowly lost to Shaheen in that election and served as Ambassador to Samoa and New Zealand in Trump's first term.

Its telling that the Republican primary voters, when given a choice between their more recent history and more distant one, chose to go back to a pre-Trump era when they overwhelmingly chose John E. Sununu. 154,000 voters cast their ballots in the Democratic primary and 110,000 in the Republican one but Pappas got 65.2 percent of the vote in the former and Sununu received nearly 69 percent in the latter. Small wonder the Democrats are concerned about how well Sununu will do in the general.

It might seem counterintuitive that in a post-Trump America the GOP must go backwards rather then forward. But it's really no different then the Democratic strategy in this election: in both cases the parties must head towards the center. Sununu is far more experienced at doing so then Pappas is (even though both have impressive records for bipartisanship) but there's a good argument that Sununu is more in touch with the electorate of his state then Pappas is. He will definitely be helped by the fact that Ayotte is easily favored to win reelection as governor – though, as I've noted, this is a state noting for ticket splitting.

New Hampshire, very much like the rest of New England, has a longer history of being Republican then it ever has been Democrat. It was in the GOP's camp ever since the Party was founded, didn't go for FDR in his first term and barely did in his second. It only went Democrat in 1960 because JFK was on the ballot and went right back to the Republicans in 1968. As recently as 2000 it went Republican for George W. Bush and there's an argument that the only reason it went Democrat is because New Englander John Kerry was running as a Democrat. Even then he only carried it by a little more then 1 percent. As recently as 2004 both its Senators were Republican. It wasn't until 2016 that it had two Democratic Senators for only the second time since the Civil War.

The Republican governors of New England have always had a greater independence from Trump in large part because they are able to win in states he has been unable to do so in his three runs for the White House.  While the President has done much to increase the margins of the vote for himself that has rarely worked out as well for the candidates who have run with his endorsement and while they have made some gains in swing states at a Senatorial level (most notably in Pennsylvania) that obstacle is just as much in place the decade after he became the voice of the party as it was before.  While he was in power that wasn't an issue for the Republicans. With him a lame duck, it's about to come back.

It may be impossible at this juncture to see a Republican party where its candidates are becoming more centrist rather then even further to the right.  They may be forced to do so after this midterms and the 2028 elections but that prospect is uncertain at best. If however they can do so it will be in large part if John Sununu can manage to win in New Hampshire.  As someone who has never once been associated with Trump at any time in his political career and who seems to have no interest in being associated with him as he attempts to rebuild it there's something very attractive about that in a Republican right now.

Whether he would fit in a Senate that is under Democratic control (as is increasingly likely even if he were to win) will be hard to measure. But America needs centrists and bipartisanship far more than it ever has and a man who was one of the models for it during his original tenure in the Senate would be more than willing to show the way. Both Pappas and Sununu would be invaluable in the Senate for next several years but I think we need Republicans like Sununu far more and its why I'm more than willing to endorse him to win this cycle. He was the right man for his era 24 years ago; he's just as right for it now.

 

Jeopardy 2026 Masters Recap: Conclusion

 

 

On Tuesday we reached the culmination, as Alex would eloquently put it, of this year's Masters. For Yogesh Raut and Victoria Groce this was all too familiar territory as they had each been in the finals for the last two years. For Andrew it was uncharted territory as he entered them for the first time.

As viewers know this guarantees all three players a return to the 2027 Jeopardy Masters, which for Andrew, who just missed that opportunity in the very first one, is a big deal for him. However it put him in territory that Yogesh and Victoria were all too familiar with: a two game total point affair with the winner going home with $500,000 and the Trebek trophy. Alex himself  had once stated, the player in a distant third at the end of the first game often came back to win the whole thing. Victoria came to learn that lesson all too well last year as she went from having a lead at the end of Game 1 to ending up losing to Yogesh and finishing in third behind Juveria.

In both the quarterfinals and the semi-finals Victoria had been in first on the leaderboard but that had been just as true the last year. More importantly in the last several games momentum seemed to be heading in Andrew's direction. Indeed in the semifinals he'd come from behind in the last two games he'd place to jump past Yogesh and finish second on the leaderboard. And Andrew had a long history of beating Jeopardy Masters in the past, something that this year alone last year's Masters Matt Amodio and Roger Craig had already learned and that Juveria Zaheer had witnessed in the last quarterfinal match.

How was it going to play out?

 

Game 1

In the Jeopardy round Yogesh got off to a lead early and had 7200 points. So when Victoria found the Daily Double late in the round in the category A TRIP TO THE VALLEY she really had little choice but to bet the 2400 points she had. It didn't go well:

It's home to the Timbisha Shoshone Valley at Furnace Creek.

She clearly guessed: "What is Sun Valley?" It was actually Death Valley. (For the record I knew this at home.) Victoria actually went into the red briefly before finished the Jeopardy round at 400 points. Andrew was next with 3400. Yogesh was in the lead with 7800.

In Double Jeopardy Victoria began to turn things around quickly. She was helped when she found the first Daily Double in the category that always appears in these tournaments and that Masters all dread: BEFORE, DURING & AFTER. Victoria had prominently not picked from that category first but when she got there with 5200 points she wagered 1200. Trust me, she was about to earn them:

Innate response urging a choice of melee or escape into a buzzy Rimsky-Korsakov piece with a can of albacore.

"What is fight of Flight of the Bumblebee Tuna?" She really deserved to get up to 6400 points.

Yogesh continued to the build his lead but Victoria got to the other Daily Double in THE PRE-MUSKETEERS. She had 8000 points to Yogesh's 15,400. This time she felt she had to bet everything:

With a name meaning 'new soldier' these elite Ottoman troops were early adopters of gunpowder weapons.

Victoria took a long pause: Who are the janissaries?"  She went into the lead with 16,000.

The rest of the round was a back and forth between Yogesh and Victoria for the lead with Andrew making gains on a few errors Victoria made in BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER. Yogesh finished with a narrow lead over Victoria: 19,800 points to Victoria' 18,800 while Andrew was in third with 7800.

The Final Jeopardy category for Game 1  was THE INTERNET.

In the wake of a recent tech boom this territory now gets nearly 50 percent of its revenue from domain names sales.

All three knew the correct territory: "What is Anguilla?" It's domain abbreviation is .ai and those two letters have become very important in the last few years. (I wrote down what was the Caymans.)

Andrew bet 7777, putting him at 15,577 points. Victoria bet nothing. Yogesh bet 10,000 points.

At the end of Game 1 Yogesh led with 29,200 points to Victoria's 18,800 and Andrew's 15,577. It was within reach for all three.

 

Game 2

In the Jeopardy round of Game 2 Victoria got to the Daily Double on the third clue and bet the 1000 points she had in THE 20^TH CENTURY:

The breakup of Czechoslovakia into Slovakia and the Czech Republic is called this, playing on the name of a 1989 event.

She knew it was the Velvet Divorce and doubled her score. It would be another back and forth between Victoria and Yogesh for the lead and at the end of the round she had it with 6200 points to Yogesh's 5600 and Andrew's 1400.

In Double Jeopardy Victoria maintained her lead throughout the round. Andrew got his best chance when he found the first Daily Double in QUASI-RELATED PAIRS. This is another old standard for Jeopardy tournaments but its clues were even tougher then usual. Andrew had no choice but to bet the 4600 points he had but it was a killer:

'A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning' Poet and wiped with a swifter."

Andrew was stumped (as was I). The poet is John Donne. So what's the quasi-related pair: Donne and dusted.

Andrew was pretty much out of it for the rest of the game. Yogesh managed to gain some ground and found the last  Daily Double in the entire tournament in FOE-POURRI. He had 10,000 points so he decided to 'split it down the middle' and bet 5000:

In 1959 his scathing review of B.F. Skinner's 'Verbal Behavior' was a seminal moment in cognitive science.

He figured it out: "Who was Chomsky?"

The lead kept going back and forth and because an incorrect response by Yogesh was ruled correct at the end of the Round he had the narrowest of leads going into Final Jeopardy 19,000 points to Victoria's 18,600. Andrew had just 2800.

The tournament came down to Final Jeopardy. The category was SUPREME COURT DECISIONS:

This 1944 decision frequently sites Hirabayashi v. United States decided 18 months earlier and upholding a conviction for violating curfew.

Andrew chose not to take it seriously. What is Ken vs. Us at Wrestle?' He was planning to right WrestleMania. (I think we'd all like to see that.) It cost Andrew everything. And since he was in third place at the end of Game 1 that was where he would finish.

Victoria was next: She had the right idea: "What is Takamatsu vs. U.S." She wagered 4400. That left her with 14,200. Her two game total was now 33,000 points.

It all came down to Yogesh. He had: "What is Korematsu?" And that was the right name associated with the infamous decision to intern the Japanese during WWII. He wagered 7201. That gave him 26,201. His two game total was now 55,401 and as a result he deservedly won his second consecutive Jeopardy Masters earning another $500,000 and a charitable donation of $100,000 to Direct Relief. Victoria finished in second and received another $250,000. Andrew received $150,000.

We will see all three of them in next year's Masters and all deserved it.

 

SUMMARY

 

First let's look and see how after this year's Masters where  five of the participants stand on the all-time winnings list. (Long Nguyen who has only won  a total of $165,000 in his tournaments has a bit of ways to go.)

Juveria Zaheer - $541,000 (18th place – her sixth place finish moved her ahead of Scott Riccardi)

Paolo Pasco – $648,717 –  (14^th Place – his fourth place finished moved him ahead of Matt Jackson)

Andrew He - $684,365 –  the $150,000 he earned officially put him in thirteenth ahead of Larissa Kelley

Victoria Groce - $1,023,801 ($250,000 second prize moves her into the seventh place

Yogesh Raut - $1,598, 403 (still in sixth place but closing in on Amy Schneider and Matt Amodio)

 

The 2026 Jeopardy Masters was the most thrilling yet for many reasons.

First it was by far the most balanced to this point. Every single Master scored at least one win in the quarterfinals, the first time that has ever happened. As a result it wasn't until the last set of quarterfinal games that the final four were set in stone.

We also saw remarkable comebacks at every level. Andrew was at the bottom of the leaderboard after his first four appearances and then managed in his last two games to make it to the semi-finals. He then did the same in the semi-finals. And Yogesh, who himself thought he was on the cusp of going home in his last appearance managed to eke his way in and then have a superb performance to win his second consecutive win in Jeopardy Masters.

At this point Yogesh Raut and Victoria Groce are beginning a rivalry very close to the one Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter had over fourteen years of postseason competition. And it's a far more balanced one as the two of them have finished one-two in every quarterfinals of the Masters they've been fighting in and they've managed a fairly even split over three years.

This year's Masters was also wonderful because of the personalities and the clear bonds between all six players. There's clearly a huge amount of mutual respect and friendship between all six going into this one, as well as part of the community as a whole. And at this point there's a certain amount of lovability and charm with the six we saw this year. It was particularly true of Juveria Zaheer and newcomer Long Nguyen, who finished fifth on the leaderboards and first in the hearts of millions. Either one has become nearly as endearing as original Master Sam Buttrey both in terms of sheer skill and endearing to us. I hope we see the two of them in next year's Invitational.

We had just as much joy watching Paolo whose had arguably the most remarkable rise of any Jeopardy player in a long time. In less than a calendar year he's gone from seven game champion to TOC winner to one of the winningest players in Jeopardy history. And the way he seemed to understand his own flaws throughout made us love him all the more. I'm not sure if he'll come back to the Invitational next year (Nilesh Vinjamuri who won the 2025 TOC and participated in the Masters didn't) but he'll be back in some form and I look forward to it.

That joy even spread to how they are signing in on their contest boards. Andrew was by far the most versatile throughout the Masters (Ken pointed it out) but we saw it with all six with Yogesh writing a question mark at one point and adopted an aegis formation later on. Creativity with their signatures isn't itself a great thing but it makes it clear that they are enjoying themselves as much as the fan is watching them.

The Jeopardy Masters was a superb way to remind us how much we loved Jeopardy just as the new season is about to begin this Monday. I'll be back this weekend with a refresher course to remind you about what's to come in Season 43.

 

Howard Gordon & Vince Gilligan on The X-Files:How Vince Gilligan's Early Scripts For The X-Files Showed His Path Towards Breaking Bad

 

One of the best themes throughout The X-Files run was the idea of the banality of evil: that not even aspects of government conspiracy or supernatural powers were often cover for little men doing horrible things. Both Gordon and Gilligan were experts on putting this into their writing and I'd argue you see it play out in their later work. Both Jack Bauer and Carrie Matheson are two of the greatest characters in 21^st century television because they are essentially ordinary people who are forced to do questionable, even horrible things, in the name of a greater good.

Gilligan took a different direction and it was clear from his earliest scripts. Almost from his debut on the series he was a master in creating ordinary human men – and they were almost always white men – who  possessed supernatural powers and used them for horrible inhuman things. And because of these characters ordinary appearances they were able to essentially hide in plain sight and commit their crimes in the shadows or some cases broad daylight. This could apply to Walter White, Gustavo Fring, Lydia Quayle or so many of the people who inhabited the New Mexico that Vince Gilligan created in Breaking Bad and many of whom we'd see again in Better Call Saul.

In many ways the 'monsters' in Gilligan's early scripts are far clearer ancestor texts to these characters then the direction connection of Bryan Cranston's being cast in The X-Files in Drive in 1998. (Don't worry, we'll get to that in due time.) And I think it's worth looking at four of those early episodes Gilligan wrote, all of which are considered masterpieces by the fanbase (myself included). It's clear in them you can see Gilligan's fascination with the ordinary villain someone who may have some kind of supernatural ability but is never the less a monster. Gilligan frequently has empathy for some of these characters which makes it difficult to hate them completely but there's none of the moral ambiguity with them that viewers will later have with so many characters in his later shows.

 Part of that is no doubt because Mulder and Scully are the heroes of this show and most of the time these very human monsters are a direct threat to their lives. Mulder, far more often then Scully, is the only person who is capable of understanding them – and just like with almost every other monster, he's usually lucky to escape with his life.

Never is this more true then in the third season episode 'Pusher'. Only the second script Gilligan wrote for The X-Files it ranks as an all-time classic in what is largely considered the show's finest season. It tells the story of Robert Patrick Modell, aka Pusher.  Modell is an ordinary man whose last job was at a convenience store. He had average grades, average high school, average military career. He applied to the Bureau and never came close to passing the psych screening as the interviewer caught him in half a dozen clear lies. He is a little man who wants to be big.

If that sounds familiar consider this. He develops a brain tumor and it gives him a psychic ability. Just as with Walter White's cancer it liberates him from his average life and he begins a spree of violence. His voice is good enough to persuade people to kill themselves so he commits fourteen contract killings that go on the book's as suicide. Then he cold calls an FBI agent and openly brags about it. In the teaser of the episode he is arrested and put in a car with a cage and then simply by repeating the words 'Cerulean Blue is a gentle breeze' he convinces the driver to not see a car with that shade of blue and drives into it. With his last breath the deputy unlocks his prisoner and sets him free.

Modell uses the metaphors of the samurai much like Walter White will use the code name Heisenberg. Modell appears to have charisma in spades but its clear its borrowed because everything he does seems like its out of a formula action movie. When Mulder ends up following his bread crumbs he considers him a 'worthy adversary' and focuses his anger on him. And he is enough of a sadist to make sure that even as his victims kill themselves they feel every bit of pain. We see such memorable set pieces as him convincing an FBI agent to cover himself with gasoline and light himself on fire, to persuade an overweight agent to have a heart attack while keeping him on the phone to complete a trace. And this cruelty is just as on display in full view of Mulder, as he persuades a judge holding him for pretrial motions to let him go by 'putting the whammy on him', by giving up the phone number he's calling his apartment from cheerfully after forcing one of the agents to die listening to  him speak.

The climax of the episode is one of the great set pieces in series history. Mulder and Scully have traced Modell to a hospital where he's having an MRI. Mulder goes in after him, and we hear two of the other agents kill themselves based on Modell's persuasion. He gets to Mulder and the two of them start playing Russian roulette. Scully comes in after to see Mulder with his gun trained on Modell. It's clear Modell is trying to set up a situation where Mulder kills Scully, that he's sensed just how vital she is to him and that this he couldn't survive.  And its very telling that while Mulder has no problem putting a gun to his own head and pulling the trigger (he should probably see somebody about that) he resists with all his mental power to not put the gun on Scully.

Scully saves Mulder when she pulls the fire alarm, interrupting Modell's speaking long enough to break the spell. Mulder shoots Modell (and keeps pulling the trigger even though there's only one bullet in the chamber) but the wound isn't fatal. We learn in the denouement the tumor Modell had was operable right up to the end but he chose not to have it removed. In other words: "I did it for me. I was good at it. It made me feel alive."  

(Just to be clear Modell does come out of his coma and there is a sequel to this episode but he never says those words exactly. )

I should mention that 'Pusher' is the first 'official' episode Gilligan wrote after Carter invited him to go the show after he freelanced an episode during Season Two. Gilligan would later express gratitude to Carter that he was so patient with many staff writers when it came to their output. (Darin Morgan underwent a similar apprenticeship and would also be grateful to Carter for giving him that space.) And with the writer's room in transition yet again during Season 4 Gilligan would step writing three solo scripts and collaborating on two others that year.  The first two solo scripts and his first collaboration continue with the theme of a serial killer who is nevertheless ordinary. That was especially true in his first script Unruhe.

Unruhe was a watershed moment for The X-Files in many ways: it was the first episode that aired after Fox moved the show from Friday nights to Sunday nights. This transition would officially turn The X-Files into a hit show averaging over 20 million viewers a week for the next two years.  There's no single writer who deserves credit for that but I remember the impact this episode meant.

The episode's 'monster' is Gerry Thomas Schnauz, a construction worker whose more sympathetic then most killers on The X-Files are. It's clear he was subject to years of abuse by his father, a dentist who tormented both him and his sister for years. His sister committed suicide and Gerry would attack him with an axe handle. He suffers from a paranoid schizoid disorder and was released to take care of his father. After he passes away the mental illness he suffers from overcomes him and he begins to stalk female victims believing that they suffer from 'unrest' or unruhe in the German. He uses a combination of drugs to create a knockout drug called 'twilight sleep – a dental anesthetic.  He genuinely believes he is saving the victims he is stalking and performing what amount to ice pick lobotomies on them.

In a twist on that format Schnauz has no supernatural powers. Indeed the X-Files is something the killer isn't aware of and in fact Mulder's focus on it increasingly bothers Scully who is sickened by the victims. And it works because of something that could not work in a reboot. Schnauz's presence has the ability to warp photographs to leave behind a capture of his mental state. If this were to be done on an iPhone, it would be dismissed as a computer glitch and we'd ignore it – and honestly it wouldn't be nearly as terrifying.

Technology is used to help capture Schnauz. Mulder goes back to DC to analyze the photo and Scully is checking out a nearby worksite on a hunch. She finds Schnauz on metal stilts. While she's talking to him Mulder points out a detail on the picture that says the killer is either very tall or wants to be. Scully hangs up the phone and goes 'Unruhe'. Schnauze manages to run away but she catches him and find an awl in his pocket.

Schnauz is played by that exceptional character actor Pruitt Taylor Vince, an ungainly looking man who suffers from astigmatism, a disease that causes his eyes to involuntarily close and open. This makes Schnauz both more creepy and more human simultaneously. Later that episode he targets Scully because he believes she suffers from the same unrest.

The trope of Scully being abducted and Mulder having to save her would have become tiresome if the show didn't reverse the trope more often then not. And the scene between Scully and Schnauz is unnerving because he believes she like everyone he's dealt with "is a victim of the Howlers'. Part of his illness makes him believe they say and do everything. When Scully tries to convince him that they live inside his head he takes the camera and takes a picture of himself. It shows him surrounded by darkness, dead. Scully tries to take it as a sign to get help. He takes it as a sign to finish his work. Only the intervention of Mulder at the last minute saves her.

In the last moments of the episode Scully engages in what is the frequent practice of voiceover narration in which she is theoretically writing her final report to the Bureau. The final speech includes the following:

My captivity forced me to understand and empathize with Gerry Schnauz – my survival depended on it. I see now the value of such insight. For truly, to pursue monsters, we must understand them. We must venture into their minds. Only in doing so, do we risk letting them venture into ours?

Almost coincidentally Gilligan has set forth the paradigm that will lead so much of the world of Peak TV that is to follow, where the viewer must get inside the heads of monsters like Walter White, understanding and even empathizing with them. Gilligan admits he may have succeeded to well on Breaking Bad but the truth is we feel a certain sympathy with Gerry Schnauz as must as anyone.

(And yes Gilligan did name his  monster of the week after his friend and future collaborator on so many projects after his friend Thomas Schnauz.  Schnauz would actually write on The X-Files in the final seasons with Gilligan so he clearly didn't hold it against him.)

If Gilligan was testing how much we could empathize with a killer in his first Season 4 script in his second one he pushed the idea of arguing the entire premise of Mulder's quest – that his sister Samantha was abducted by aliens – was a lie. In 'Paper Hearts' he created one of the greatest episodes in the show's entire run in large part because it focused on one of the most unsettling serial killers the show would ever deal with.

The episode begins with Mulder having a series of dreams which lead him to a long-murdered girl that links to one of his cases from Quantico. The killer, referred to as 'Paper Hearts', strangled his victims with an eight gauge electrical cord and would take a trophy – a piece of fabric cut from their clothes in the shape of a heart. Mulder deduced that the killer was a salesman, someone who traveled a lot and could gain people's trust. Someone ordinary. That turned out to be John Lee Roche, a vacuum cleaner salesman who confessed to thirteen killings – but his trophies were never found.

Eventually Mulder finds the trophies in an old copy of Alice in Wonderland.  Roche clearly sees himself as the Mad Hatter. In between the pages we find sixteen cloth hearts. Its only then we meet Roche.

Roche is played by that brilliant character actor Tom Noonan, who'd already played Francis Dolahyde 'the Tooth Fairy' in Manhunter, the first adaptation of the Hannibal Lecter novels. Noonan was tall and soft-spoken and had a frequently ominous bearing so its intriguing that in Gilligan's version we never see Roche do anything violent or menacing until the final act. The way he nonchalantly greets Mulder in prison, as if they were old friends, is so quietly unsettling as is the way he calmly describes himself as a child molester. It's not until the first act is over and Mulder has another dream that we get to the truly frightening idea – Gilligan implies that Roche abducted and killed Samanatha and that her abduction by aliens was all a lie.

At a certain level we know the series isn't going to reverse a critical part of the mythology. What Gilligan is trying to do is place the seeds of doubt in Mulder's head. It does so most convincingly when Mulder finally asks Scully whether she ever believed Samantha was abducted by aliens – and she's silent. Scully is the person Mulder trusts most in the world and even at a truly emotional broken point she won't say she ever believed his story.

Roche spends the episode toying with Mulder, engaging in emotional blackmail, claiming he sold a vacuum to his parents, a model that Mulder finds in their old home. He leads him to another of his victims but its not Samantha either. Finally Roche persuades Mulder that he'll tell him the truth – but only if he takes him to the site of Samantha's abduction.

This episode shows Mulder at his absolute worst. He beats Roche when he demands his trophy; he ends up bringing back his hearts and finally he violates the orders of the FBI by taking Roche to Massachusetts. Roche confesses that he killed her – but then Mulder tells him that he's taken him to the wrong house.

Roche's power is a reversal of the idea of the profiler getting inside the head of the serial killer – he argues that Roche managed to get inside Mulder's head to form a connection that gave him the memories of what happened to Samantha. In other words Roche was an ordinary man who gained extraordinary powers – and chose to use them to wreak revenge on the man who put him in prison.

In the final act Roche does this again with another dream which he uses to convince Mulder to free Roche, taking his badge and gun in the process. This lead Roche to abduct another young girl. Of course Mulder will eventually find and rescue the girl: he has to save his reputation. But Gilligan finds himself putting his lead character into the emotional quicksand he'll later be very good at with his many characters in New Mexico.

There've been many episodes to this point where either Mulder and Scully have the choice of either trying to get answers to their questions or doing the right thing. Mulder does do the right thing – but in Gilligan's version he has to shoot Roche in the head rather than learn whether Samantha was Roche's final victim.

'Paper Hearts' ends almost as a mirror image of Unruhe: Mulder is just as emotionally exhausted at the end of his experience as Scully was at the end of hers. He beat the monster but the monster has left his mark.

The last script was a special one: 'Leonard Betts'. Gilligan only co-wrote it along with Frank Spotnitz and John Shiban but I think most of the details of the monsters bear his imprint. And I'm pretty convinced its him driving the idea of playing with the format.

The episode begins with the title character, a paramedic in Pittsburgh, apparently being decapitated by a head on collision. His body is put in the hospital morgue – and then later that night, it appears to breakout of the morgue, headless.

For the first half of the episode there's no actual crime that's been committed so the writers are clearly having fun and it plays as a black comedy – Mulder resenting having longer arms so he has to go through a barrel of medical waste, Scully and Mulder cracking jokes over his mummified head, making bizarre jokes about evolution. And for once the viewer spends the episode playing catch up with Mulder and Scully with a new revelation about Leonard coming to us just as quickly as it does to them.

Leonard is by far one of the most sympathetic monsters any episode has ever created.  Leonard will eventually kill two people during the course of the episode but he's so apologetic each time and its clearly done as a matter of survival more than anything else. He's played by Paul McCrane who in less than a year would shot to popular consciousness as 'Rocket' Romano on ER, arguably the most abrasive character that the show would ever have. So its striking to see him basically as yet another man whose basically ordinary and who has managed to survive despite doing such horrible things because no one notices him.

Of course there's the fact that he has the power to regenerate body parts: we see him do so with his head, his thumb and he even seems to recreate an entire new body to throw the cops off his track. He does all this despite the fact – wait for it – his body is riddled with every form of cancer. To the point that he actually uses cancerous tumors to survive and in order to live he finds a smoker and kills him.

Who among the X-philes can forget his incredible line: "I'm very sorry. But you have something I need."  And the real reason we don't forget it is because at the climax of the episode he corners Scully in an ambulance and says just as he's about to attack her. By that point Scully has found the cancer-ridden victim and she knows exactly what that implies. She manages to unfreeze long enough to kill Leonard. But then she goes home and coughs up blood.

The most interesting thing about Leonard comes when they find his mother who doesn't want to talk to him. She makes it clear she loves her son:

I don't believe you when you tell me he killed someone. But if he did, he had his reasons. God put him here for a purpose. God means for him to stay – even if people don't understand.

We later see her taking care of Leonard in a bathtub full of chemicals.

"I don't think they're ever going to leave you alone…You have to conserve your strength. You know what you have to do. I'm your mother and it's a mother's duty to provide."

Later that episode they go to her house and find her lying there unresponsive. His mother was suffering from cancer herself. He took what he needed from her, then patched her up and called the ambulance that came to pick her up. In fact he's still on that ambulance looking after her when Scully figures out where he is.

In other words a man riddled with every form of cancer was willing to do anything to take care of his family.  (Leonard is still more selfless than Heisenberg would ever be.)

Long before Gilligan arrived at The X-Files the show had created the template that monsters live among us, that an animal control operator could be a liver-eating mutant or that the men you pass in the hallways at your job could be shadowy government figures bent on world domination. Perhaps the best lesson Gilligan did when he began to write Breaking Bad that just because these creatures had mind control or the ability to warp photographs that didn't make them special or any less monstrous. You might empathize with some of them but that just made them more dangerous. Mulder and Scully knew better than to tread lightly around these ordinary monsters because they – like Gilligan – knew that usually made them all them the more likely to want to show you how dangerous they were if you let your guard down.