Coalition of the Sane: Leftists Can Do Nice Things Sometimes - Usually By Accident.

 

Some time earlier this year, I don't remember when, I ended up following a writer on this site I'm going to refer to as Charlotte. I don't know why I did this exactly because after three or four articles and even more appearances in various comments sections it was very clear to me that she is the kind of writer I've done my best in this same period to actively avoid, usually by blocking them the moment I read one such article and it becomes very clear that I'm basically reading the same article I've read on this site thousands of times during 2025 alone.

Charlotte, according to their author's bio, claims to be expressing the views of oppression by a series of cultural studies. Which is of course the exact thing the world has been crying out for all this time and is what we need more of to solve the problems of today. This particular work of art had a title that involved "Why Men Are Submissive if A Male Dominated Society'. 

I should have known better and blocked the author right then but sometimes you just have to know what you get when moral indignation and cherry picking  combine. This article was no different than any of the ones Charlotte has written over time in that it used thousands of words and several links to previous articles to basically say what could have been said in a hashtag or an Instagram post and probably have been. And by the end of it I was in the same place I almost always am after one of them. And as I sometimes too, I gave them one and a half barrels.

I'm going to quote verbatim what I said:

Seriously. Just write over and over. All western cultures are horrible. The west has destroyed everything. All men are bad and there's nothing we can do about it.

Just keep doing that. Every article. Don't bother with supporting evidence from some old book, don't bother with philosophy, don't bother with current events. Just do that. Over and over. Much quicker, saves your readers a lot of time Has the same intellectual affect.

Because if you're not going to come up with a way we can lead a revolution against our oppressors, step by step, including a place to meet and a way to do it, honestly you're wasting everybody's time. I've been hearing smashing the patriarchy in some form for decades on line. It was written by generations of feminists before you. And yet somehow you have yet to do it beyond this passive aggressive BS arguments to the faithful on sites like this.

Because honestly if this is your way of causing a revolution you're really, really, really failing the cause. I acknowledge fully how much worse things have gotten over the last decade in particular in society but all people like you've done has been to say, "Told you so" and then go back to writing the exact same articles you always do. I don't know what you're waiting for any more or if you're still waiting for everyone else to do the work for you.

All you people do here is talk, talk, talk and nothing else. Violence from group aligned with you outbreak, you passive aggressively condemn it, right does it you act with full fervor and still do nothing. Gilead could form overnight and you'd be putting on the gowns saying, "Somebody needs to do something." You and your colleagues do nothing. You march, you write angry letters, you run a few candidates in far left primaries , end of the day you have contributed nothing and changed nothing and yet you somehow think articles like these are valuable to the cause.

You are not winning the battle for hearts and minds because you never talk with anyone who doesn't give you anything but unvarnished praise. You think your followers on this site are a force when they're just part of the virtual ether. And trust me you can dispel all the cultural narratives you want. That doesn't solve a damn thing.

And if the only problem with patriarchy is drawback but you can live under it, then honestly it must be working out better than you think at least for you. Perhaps it's not working out well for women who are poor or struggling but since they don't have access to sites like this or free time to read them, I guess they don't matter.

Personally I'd appreciate you doing something to speed up the revolution. Any day now. And not by writing another angry article. Though I guess that involves less effort.

Was I being unpleasant? Yes. Was I being sincere? Completely.

Because I have been reading this exact article with the POV changed for race, sexual preference or gender identification on this site so many times. It is articles like these make me yearn for a hashtag or a simple black square. At least then we don't have as much pontificating and intellectual cherry picking and we can move on to other things.

I've been beyond clear and the left itself knows this all too well on what the right is doing and has been doing the last decade. You would think, considering that by this point many of these articles list the effective strategies of the right wing, somebody among them would say: "You know writing all these articles isn't changing anything. Maybe we should come up with a plan. Or at least change our approach."

I wasn't expecting a response at all or if I did it was going to be some kind of hate-filled creed. I got part of column B but the actual response was in its own way, insightful.

 Again I'll quote verbatim:

A) We can't solve a problem that we don't understand the properties of.

B) And how did you manage to miss the 5 citations to outside sources as well as the links to three other relevant stories that are themselves filled with citations to experts (like all my stories are)?

C) How did you manage to miss the entire paragraph where I talk about the other artificial stratifications that are a part of a dominance hierarchy system?

“It’s an artificial method for maintaining not just gendered hierarchies, but all sorts of other kinds of social stratification — related to things like race, religion, wealth, sexuality, education, able-bodiedness, etc. The gender aspect is a reflection of the larger cultural system and just one aspect of it.”

If you're not also angry about the subjugation of women, then you, my verbose friend, are a huge part of the problem, but it's pure projection that you find the tone of this piece to be angry. It's simply matter-o-fact. I think your emotions are getting the best of you.

If you honestly believe that any woman who writes online about women and society never encounters anyone who doesn't agree with her, you are more delusional than you previously appeared.

Why is it MY job to start the revolution for you? Grow up - you sound like a petulant child.

Now as you'll notice all the tendencies I gave from an earlier piece on how progressives handle criticism are here:

1. Stating a point of view in the loudest and most self-righteous way possible.

2. Using cherry-picked facts to buttress their argument.

3. Gaslighting any debate by saying the problem as you.

4. Calling you the worst name possible depending on the section of the left aisle they're stumping for (racial, gender, LGBTQ+ etc.)

Here's the most important difference and I think its critical. Charlotte feels no moral obligation to do anything to change her approach. As far as she's concerned the burden rests entirely on society to change despite the fact she regularly writes for a site which argues society is essentially incapable of changing itself.

This is remarkable. In all the years I've been reading these articles and taking the brickbats of the people I criticize I've never seen anyone basically say the quiet part out loud. The burden on society to change is on society. I don't owe it a damn thing.  Why should I take an active role in making the world a better place? The most I'm willing to do is write these cultural studies which prove to me my point of view. If no one else does anything despite this, well I've done my part.

Needless to say Charlotte all but confirmed what I was saying in my original criticism with her response but what I consider the worst possible sin Charlotte considers it proof of her own position.

This is what confirmed the worst part of her to be. First when she asked for contributions she highlighted it with "For the drawbacks of living under the patriarchy." Which I guess means shit sucks for society but I'm getting paid. And more damningly that comment in which I criticized her she clapped for it before giving her own response. So she either she looked at this criticism with the fervor of someone looking for their name in the pan of a play or she just saw it as another way to add to her brand. Either way Charlotte confirmed what a narcissist they are.

Now I admit I could have blocked Charlotte right then but I was curious what she'd do next. So I followed up:

You were, to be clear, less original in your 'takedown' of me, then in your original column. Outrage? Check. Gaslighting? Check. Not answering any of the suggestions I pointed out? Check. Saying it's not YOUR responsibility to do the work? It's usually just implied so thank you for stating it directly for once.

Tell me, just for the record, in all of your writing and research into the subject of these problems that you clearly understand, have you managed to come up with a solution yet? Something that ignorant people like myself might be able to do to help the world I live in. Because I must have missed that among the dozen other articles I wrote in which you essentially said the exact same thing.

And of course you're not angry. Just like this post was not angry but coolly and calmly thought out.

Honestly the only surprise I really have is that you answered my post at all. I guess you wanted more validation then your original article and your waiting for your legion of supporters to applaud you for your bold stand.

I'll be in the other room, doing phone banks trying to get a woman elected to the Senate in Alaska later this year. I'll also be trying to get other Democratic officials elected in letter-writing campaigns this year. Not for you and your supporters of course. I could give a darn what you actually thought of me. But because I want to make the world a better place and I don't think dispelling erroneous cultural narratives alone will do the job. But you do you.

My readers know that I'm being sincere in all of these facts, including my efforts to elect Mary Peltola this fall. (Primary's next Tuesday!)

I honestly didn't expect a response to that one. And yet less than an hour later:

Yes - I write about it all the time, but I'm not going to link them because you're not going to be around to read them. What part of understanding the problem before you can create a solution do you not understand? Also, I don't owe you articles about anything whatsoever. Where are yours though? All I see are stories about TV shows.

When I get to the place where I'm just shaking my head at what an idiot someone is, it's time to block them, so let's just say, that's on the horizon.

Toodles!

Note yet again the self-centered behavior as well as the fact Charlotte doesn't believe she doesn't owe anyone who doesn't completely agree with her an answer, even if it would solve society's problems. 

All that Charlotte has done was illustrate in a way that involves far more candor then usual how little so many leftists think they owe 'the cause'. The world owes them everything and they owe it nothing in return, not even if they have a solution that might solve the problems of today. For the record I'm skeptical that Charlotte has anything resembling an abstract solution to the problems she argues for, let alone one that would receive mass acceptance.

Not that I intend to find out. I blocked her after the most recent conversation. If she wants to think she got the last word, I'm not going to burst her bubble. As we all know people like her have no desire to venture outside in the first place and I have no desire to fight a battle of wits with an opponent who is so clearly unarmed. I do have more important things to do with my time.

Author's Note: While I've quoted verbatim 'Charlotte's' response to me and have vaguely restated the title of the article that caused this, I have no intention of revealing either the real pseudonym nor where her articles can be found.

Some of my readers might be able to figure out where and when they find them. I urge them in the strongest possible sense not to. It's not worth the time or brain cells you will waste doing so.

 

 

 

 

 

Better Late Than Never: Shrinking Season 3

 

 

It has been one of the great joys of my experience is as a viewer to see Shrinking, which in its first two seasons has become a contender for one of the greatest comedies of the decade. A collaboration of Bill Lawrence and Jason Segel, it is another in this decade's trend of comedies about community and friendship , along with such fellow Emmy nominated and winning series such as Abbott Elementary and Only Murders in the Building.

So naturally it's taken me six months since Season Three dropped for me to finally get around to watching Season Three. In my defense it's not like I've been idle during this period; indeed much of the last few months have been spent watching some of Apple Tv's latest crop of brilliant freshman comedies such as Margo's Got Money Troubles and Widow's Bay both of which, like Shrinking, were deservedly among the most prominent Emmy nominees for Best Comedy. I haven't per se been saving the best for last – I did spend much of the last that period saying goodbye to Hacks – but I had a feeling that since I was going to spend the leadup to the Emmys dealing with some of the darker dramas and limited series I was going to need this show as balance.

And indeed having got through the first two episodes (technically three because the season premiere is a two-parter that was released as an hour-long one) I'm very grateful I waited. Because as always Shrinking is just as sublime, sentimental, sometimes dark, sometimes messy and always hysterical as its always been.

The first two episodes deal as much with Paul (Harrison Ford has to get the Emmy this year!) dealing with the fact that his struggles with Parkinson's are getting worse. He has spent much of the first two episodes having conversations with his doctor girlfriend Julie (Wendie Malick) about getting power of attorney and all the other negotiations. Jimmy (Jason Segel) suggested: "Why don't you just get married?" Paul's response was, as every line out of his mouth, classic: "Did you just propose to my girlfriend?"

Much of the first two episodes dealt with the plans for the wedding which was done primarily by Gabby (the always awesome Jessica Williams) who seemed to be throwing all of her energy in it because she liked being a wedding planner. This bugged the hell out of Paul (but doesn't everything?) who spent much of the episode trying to say that she was meddling. As always Gaby pointed out that she was doing this for her she was doing this for Julie and it sunk in that he was being  a prick to a woman he genuinely loves.

So as always they got married. Unfortunately after the wedding Paul saw a patient from the Parkinson's clinic (Michael J. Fox) in his kitchen. And since he knows one of the symptoms is hallucinations he immediately knows he has an issue. Paul has taken the position of  "Fuck Parkinson's" and is determined not to let this disease destroy him. That doesn't mean he enjoys having to lean on other people and he sure as hell doesn't like that Liz (Christa Miller!) has taken over his scheduling.

Jimmy (Jason Segel) is actually in a better place than when we met him two seasons ago. He seems to have managed to come out on the other side where he was, he's trying to get used to the face that Alice (Lupita Maxwell) is going to college on the other side of the country, and he's increasingly more balanced then when we first met him. He's still meddling like the first couple of seasons but it's less problematic then before; he has accepted the help of Paul when it came to handling certain problems. The one thing he's still struggling with is the idea that he will never love again. He thought he got it with Tia and that he can be fine without it.

But in one of the better storylines the woman he bought a car from last season (Cobie Smulders!) actually showed up at his doorstep under the fig leaf of bringing a spare key. The two of them had a pretty good conversation and it was clear the two are attracted to each other – and just as endearingly she's just as bad at approaching another man as he is. Jimmy then walked up her home at the end of the third episode, then walked away, then walked back, then walked away. Segel's hasn't gotten as much a chance to do his physical comedy during Shrinking, it's good to know he's still good at it.

All of the people in Jimmy's circle are going through their own transitions. Gaby is struggling with whether the kind of therapy she's doing is the right kind anymore and she was never thrilled about how both Jimmy and Alice were spending so much time around Louis (Brett Goldstein) the hit and run driver who killed Tia and whose involvement in their lives was the focus of Season 2. In an extraordinary monologue Gaby unleashed all of her anguish about how she can never forgive Louis for killing her best friend while still managing to be therapeutic. And in keeping with how Shrinking works this proved an impetus for Louis to finally find a way to move forward. He found closure with his girlfriend and at the end of the third episode told Jimmy and Alice that he planned to move to San Diego and carry on with his life.

Derek (Ted McGinley) continues to grow as a character along with providing the wonderful marriage that he and Liz share. Much of the first three episodes was about how their 25 year old son had moved back home yet again and neither of them could figure out how to tell him to get on his own. Liz loved being the bad cop but she showed at some level she didn't like it with her kids and Derek spent time struggling to do the right thing. He eventually did it and Liz thanked him – and in typical fashion then went to her son to apologize for him.

Brian (Michael Urie, nominated for his second consecutive Emmy) has been preparing for the birth of he and his husband's new child and have trying to figure out how to deal with the adoptive mother in the picture. Urie has always been good at showing both the selfish and vulnerable sides of him all at once and this was clear with how they dealt with the mother. Brian was clearly sensitive to her needs but they'd been delaying how much they wanted her in the child's life because Brian wanted no involvement. Liz managed to persuade him it was good to be selfish and he went to the meeting with the intention of doing so – but once he heard just how bad her life was he and his husband backed away. Liz then told him what a weak person he was – and then assured him she would have done the same thing.

I know because I'm very clear of how the average season of Shrinking works that things will be both bad and good as the season progresses, that there will be fights, arguments and messiness all the way through, with darkness and much as light. This has been the sweet spot that Bill Lawrence has worked in so masterfully in ever since the classic Scrubs debuted back in 2001 (and now it's back too!) and he and his incredible writers and actors have created one of the funniest and sweetest comedies in TV history.  And when you add some of the great comic actors of all time combined with one of the greatest actors of all time giving arguably the greatest performance he's ever given (every line out of Ford's mouth is gold) you have a masterpiece. There are Emmys in this show's future and eventually a Best Comedy prize. Maybe not this year but it's inevitable for a show that is now on the shortlist for a show that meets the high bar Bill Lawrence has been setting for decades and yet incredibly, manages to surpass it.

My score: 5 stars.

Homicide Rewatch: All Is Bright

 

Written by Rafael Alvarez; story by James Yoshimura & Julie Martin

Directed by Matt Reeves

 

Homicide's track record with introducing new characters has always been decidedly hit or miss and that's particularly true with female regulars. Generally the show's pattern has been that they start out like gangbusters and then as time goes by they become less significant to the overall plot until they eventually end up leaving. While there were outside factors in each case, we saw this play out with Isabella Hoffman as Russert and we've been seeing it playout with Michelle Forbes's Cox this season.

It would have been easy to assume the same pattern was going to play out with Callie Thorne's Laura Ballard.  Just like Russert she was introduced as a force of nature in the three part season premiere and has been less of a presence ever since, barely getting ten minutes of screentime in the four episodes that followed. But perhaps because they were now facing the certainty of their star leaving the show and a still uncertain future the writers now knew they had to build up the new arrivals as forces in their own right. They've spent much of the first third of the season on Paul Falsone to the point you might have forgotten that Ballard and Gharty were still there.

All is Bright seeks to rectify this in what is one of the biggest departures from the pattern. This is the first episode in years in which the main story features entirely along two detectives who the viewer has little knowledge of. Gharty has the advantage of having been around a few episodes over two previous season so we know his character a bit but we don't know his prowess as a detective and we haven't seen Ballard in action at all. So there's something of a thrill that when the teaser ends and a name is written in red under a detective who to this point we've never seen investigate case as a primary.  The result is a tour de force by Thorne and it confirms that the writers have no intention of failing Ballard. And though the viewer can't know it yet it's a harbinger of how well it will do by the various newcomers who will join the unit during the final seasons.

That is does so in one of the bleakest storylines the show has done – in a Christmas episode, no less! – is a tribute to how the series has complete confidence in everything it does even as it's future is still uncertain going into the end of 1997.

Its entertaining seeing Ballard and Gharty bickering about how apparently a waitress at Jimmy's mistook them for a married couple. (Considering how so many partnerships are closer then marriages its harder to argue this.) Ballard's annoyed about the assumption, Gharty's annoyed that Ballard doesn't think he's good enough to be married to so Ballard just says they'd be fine together. Pembleton and Bayliss talk about the darker parts of humanity while driving to crime scenes, Ballard and Gharty bicker about whether the fact that he spills gravy on his pants is a disqualifier for a husband.

The victim is Philip Longley, killed as his local laundromat with a bottle of liquid detergent and he hits the machine on the way down. Cox actually misses that at the crime scene someone poured bleach down his throat. This leads to Gharty asking at the morgue: "Anything else in his system? Drugs, alcohol, fabric softener?" (It was that line, more than anything, that made me accept Gharty as murder police.) The owner doesn't know much. She went to get quarters for the machine and when she came back Longley was dead on the floor.

Longley's parents assume that their son was a victim of urban crime, but we already know this isn't a robbery. As we'll see they didn't know their son at all or for that matter, neither did the many women he was seeing. Gharty handles it with decorum we haven't seen him use so far this series and he and Ballard get to some part of it.

Philip seems to have been what was then referred to as ladies' man and now more accurately might be called a 'man-whore'. We see four different girlfriends, all of whom seemed to be fine just sleeping with him. And its clear he was whatever each of the women he was sleeping with wanted him to be.  "Pick your adjective we got it covered," Gharty tells Giardello. Its clear all of them knew about the other women but none of them had a reason to kill him. Then we get to the very real motive: Longley was HIV positive.

Its worth noting Longley was aware of his diagnosis and yet made no effort to tell any of the women he was sleeping with during this period. Ballard immediately finds this as a reason to hate the victim and honestly it's hard to blame her.  It's one thing to be a womanizer, it's another to be one who has a fatal disease that is transmitted sexually and not tell your partners. Gharty immediately shows his problem saying Longley had AIDS and doesn't want to tell the mother.  Tellingly his mother knows and has been keeping it from her husband, not even planning to tell him if it led to her son dying. She spent all her savings keeping him alive for the last six years. Gharty actually has the moral high ground when he points out she also knew of her son's womanizing. He swore that he used protection and she believed him – except with Rita Hale who isn't his address book.

There are many extraordinary guest performances in Season Six and the Emmys was more than generous for once. But Kathryn Erbe's work as Rita, the woman who was a victim of Philip Longley before he met his end, is one of the most haunting in the entire series. Considering that during the 1990s Hollywood was giving a fair amount of awards recognition to those who played victims of AIDS its surprising that Erbe didn't get nominated. Then again, maybe it's not. With the sarcomas of the disease all over her face and a death shawl practically hanging over her, her Rita has all the mark's of someone dying of AIDS but doesn't wear the cause of victim. Indeed her first line is of someone who is expecting the cops to show up at her door, who almost seems more than happy to confess to her crime.

Much of it involves a long monologue by Erbe in which she tells the detectives the story of who she was before and when she met Longley. She was practically a virgin, still waitressing, barely out of college and she fell in love with him because he put maple syrup on his scrambled eggs like her.  Marriage and children were discussed. Then there was a blood drive.  She learns she's HIV positive. And Phil reveals what we already know. He played the same line on her with every other woman he's been with. "My life is over, Detective, I get sicker and sicker. Soon enough I die." The treatments that are working just fine for the man who infected her are not doing a damn thing for her. She makes it clear that all the headlines about the AIDS epidemic being contained are a bad joke as far as she's concerned. "Their cocktails work for two-thirds of the people who need it. For the rest of us, it doesn't do jack." She has less than five months to live and nothing to lose.

She's on the verge of confessing when Ballard walks out the room with Gharty behind her. Ostensibly its because she doesn't believe in her condition a woman of Rita's size can do this. Gharty says "You're angry enough you find the strength." He points out she did just admit. "He gives her AIDS. She gets sick. He doesn't." Ballard doesn't want to get the confession out of her.  Gharty keeps pressing her and blows up: "You don't want to go after her because she's sick." Ballard retaliates: "You want to go after her for exactly the same reason." Then she loses her ground saying: "You know what's unfair? What Longley did to her." Gharty then acts like a grownup (for once) "Let's forget about the disease…and treat her like any other suspect."

The show also takes a bit more of the shine off Falsone. The moment he learns Hale has AIDS he's stunned that Kellerman and Lewis don't seem more bothered and seems determined to get the courthouse. His excuse is that he's suing for custody of his son and he doesn't want this to be used against him. But that's a straw man argument and we all know it. The way he argues against Meldrick saying that you can't get it by breathing the same air really sounds like the kind of rhetoric you'd hear from an anti-vaxxer. That immediately afterwards Kellerman confronts him about leaving the Mahoney file on his desk – and then he starts right up taunting him again – is perhaps the best explanation why so many fans took a very hostile look at the character by this point.

The scene in the box between Gharty, Ballard and Hale is one of the best scenes in the entire season, arguably one of the best interrogation scenes of the entire series. Considering that at this point the two actresses had little experience in TV and the other has no experience in the interrogation room, its striking just how well it holds against any of the scenes we've seen Braugher and Secor do over the years.  What's also clear is the empathy she shares with the suspect: they're both 29, she broke up with her fiancée in Seattle and she's dating again.

When they go back in the room Hale almost seems to enjoy haranguing the detective about the single life: "Always wear a rubber." She says she should do public service announcements instead of sitcom stars. (That said her argument about using her as a public service announcement does foreshadow how some groups have dealt with diseases like lung cancer in the 21^st century.) Eventually Gharty starts leading the conversation where it needs to go. Finally Hale denies it saying that she was at home sick as a dog. Ballard tries a sympathetic approach saying that if she explains her story to a jury it'll be okay. Hale explodes. "Nothing will be OK!"

Both detectives get to the same point. Gharty thinks she did this because she felt nothing mattered she was still going to die. Ballard says the killing was justifiable based on Longley's actions. "So you gather up the last bit of strength that you have and you follow him to the laundromat."

(I have to tell you when Rita tells you that poor people are told 'a healthy dose of bleach will clean out the virus', you might get triggered, )

Her last words on the subject will haunt anyone. "Philip Longley murdered me. I murdered Philip Longley. Wouldn't you have done the same?"

Ballard actively pleads with them not to charge her and Giardello is utterly unsentimental. "Don't we have an infirmary at the state prison?" He points out Rita Hale committed premeditated murder and ignores Ballard's attempt to try and argue this is self-defense. He tells her that in Italy a person with AIDS can't be sent to prison. (Or at least it was true in 1997.) He tells them of one man who robbed eleven banks in one summer and each time he was caught and released. Ballard tries to argue that this is a reason to let Hale go. Gee reminds her this is Baltimore, not Italy.

Ballard storms off and Gharty finds her. He admits he understands why she did what she did but he doesn't believe she should get away with it. He's closer in spirit to Pembleton in this case. Ballard then says that she's worried about all of Longley's girlfriends who didn't know about his having HIV.  So then they spent the next several hours notifying them of his condition and we see it play out (see below)

 

What stops this episode from getting too bleak is that the B-plot centers on John Munch. Munch has no more use for Christmas now then he was partnered with Bolander but now he owns a bar and has to get it ready for Yuletide customers.  Now he's summoning his inner Charlie Brown saying that Christmas is too commercial. His fellow detectives and Billie Lou are helping him at first but in typical Homicide fashion one by one he's abandoned.

It is the fact that he's busy cleaning that we finally meet someone we've never met in five and a half seasons – Munch's own Ghost of Christmas Past.

 Yes its his first ex-wife  Gwen, played by that fireball of comic energy Carol Kane. In a wonderful touch a performer known for her brilliant eccentricity a comedienne chooses to turn her panache so low its practically a straight woman.  And that's because she knows Richard Belzer is the comic star of Homicide and when you get a chance to use that power you don't get in his way. She can joke with the best of them but all of them are delivered almost deadpan. She's here for a sad reason: her mother has died. John can't even bother to mask his unhappiness:

John: She loathed me and I loathed here right back.

Gwen: She didn't loathe you.

John: She despised me.

Gwen: She didn't despise you.

John: She disliked me?"

(Pause)

Gwen: Okay, maybe loathed is the word.

Munch doesn't know how he can help his mother-in-law met a horrible end. Gwen's response: "Sorry to disappoint you." She needs him to plan what she believes will be a very elaborate funeral.

Gwen's mother was a literary critic of some note and she is planning a funeral in which she expects everyone she ever reviewed to show up to pay their respects. (Clearly Gwen has to good a view of both her mother and critics overall.) Gwen goes through the funeral with starry eyes, thinking of what an extraordinary life her mother led and so many experiences. Munch argues she did a number on him and he honestly thinks she did on Gwen. When Gwen says she likes some of the men she brought home John can't contain himself: "Briscoe?"  The more he brings it up Gwen tells him to stop the car and she gets out in the middle of the road, hailing a cab.

The joke, of course, is that Mrs. Munch is buried to an empty room with only Gwen, a shill that Bernard paid as the deluxe package and Peter Maas, the author of Serpico and The Valachi Papers, among others. (Of course he knows David Simon from around.) John immediately tries to console his ex-wife. "It's not an empty room, there's you…and me…and a woman crying…" Maas came down from New York to "have a last laugh at a petty, vindictive, parasitic old hag."  He uses his own prose to illustrate that Gwen's mother was a bitter old crone who didn't know "good writing if it were tattooed on her forehead."  He came to the funeral to make sure the woman was really, most sincerely dead.

The end of the episode balances all the parts. We have one of those rarities for Homicide a conversation between two female characters. I'm not sure it was quite pass the Bechdel Test; they're not talking about men so much as their fears of the single life. Ballard talks about her failed engagement without every mentioning the man's name (save to say he was an idiot) and that while she's cautious, she's not sure she trusts her own judgment. Cox points out she's no help as she definitely doesn't trust her own. (We're going to get an example of that in the final minute.) Their final exchange is about how frequently you should get tested.

The final scene is in the Waterfront where the Yuletide joy is in full swing. Pembleton has a drink and goes home to be with his family.  Gwen is now in the position of realizing just what a monster her mother was and John is trying to make his wife feel better.

And what happened next? Well in the Waterfront they say Munch's heart grew three sizes that day. He raised his glass and says one of the sweetest things he'll ever say on the show:

"On this evening a solemn ceremony was held to convey the remains of Genevieve Talbot. She was a strong woman possessed of many opinions. She lived life on her own terms. She had a daughter, a beautiful daughter, who took as her husband a charming if somewhat peculiar man. Genevive Talbot loved her beautiful daughter and so feared for her happiness that she did everything she could to discourage this union for the man was hopelessly peculiar and quite perverse. And the daughter, she was a rare gift, who deserved much, much better."

And after a season of flirtations and longing on one part Bayliss gives Cox a Christmas present and the two kiss for the first time. On some shows this would be a sign for happiness going forward. On this show…well, that's actually one of the more daring themes of the final season.

To wrap this up I have to tell I have a special place in my heart for All Is Bright because it's one of the darkest Christmas-set episodes in all my years of TV viewing. Does that make me peculiar and perverse? Maybe. But maybe once you've been deluged in twenty-four hours of It's A Wonderful Life sometimes you want a different kind of Christmas episode. Because a lot of Christmas's are really like this, with random hookups and bad holiday experiences. I love 'The Constant' don't get me wrong but there's something to be said to ringing in the holidays with Blood Makes Noise over a woman getting tested for HIV.  And sometimes we need it more than we think.

Anyway, Merry Christmas.

 

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

"Detective Munch": Typically for Christmas we get to see a lot more of Munch's Jewish side then usual, starting in the Waterfront. Lewis actually gets the best line: "Hey Munch, you're gonna make some poor orphan I nice Jewish mother someday.  

As you'd expect the best scenes come with Undertaker Munch who seems determined to mark up the price.  John then tells his brother: "When you were nobody, when you had no connections, when you asked your brother the Homicide cop to pass around a few business cards to the relatives of those recently  departed, who was there for you?" Bernard then meekly goes back to his calculator and comes up with a reduced rate. "You're a real mensch. "

That plus his eulogy at the end really shows the worst and best parts of him

Mahoney PTSD: Kellerman gets back to the squad and finds pictures of Luther Mahoney on Falsone's desk. It's almost as if Falsone is openly taunting him now. He confesses to Juliana he has yet to tell Lewis or Stivers about what Georgia Rae has on him. Kellerman is dodging it, saying he's waiting until after Christmas. Juliana tells him to man up. When he does tell Meldrick at the end of the episode he tries to assure Lewis that even if Georgia Rae has a videotape we don't know what's on it. Lewis doesn't bother with this: "We know what's on it. Kellerman ices dealer. News at eleven." Kellerman tries to tell the story on the official report and Lewis makes it very clear that this he's not buying that either.

Continuity Error: When Munch goes to SVU we'll eventually see Gwen and she seems to have lapsed into some kind of mental condition, either bipolar or schizoid-effective. There's no real evidence of it during this episode, though her outburst might be a precursor of a condition that developed later. (There was a lapse of nearly a decade between that appearance and this one.)

FUTURE INMATE: Kathryn Erbe already had a decent resume having starred in What About Bob, the sequel to The Mighty Ducks and the Nicolas Cage film noir Kiss of Death. Then after this role Tom Fontana would cast her as Shirley Bellinger, the Susan Smith type killer who spent the better part of three seasons as the only woman on OZ waiting on Death Row before being hung. It was one of the most memorable stints on this series.

Immediately after her character was killed off she would be cast as Detective Eames on Law & Order: CI. (And in the way episode are aired 'All Is bright' aired immediately after The Subway, which meant if you watch Homicide that December you saw the two main leads of that show and didn't know it.) She was so focused on that she did nothing else during its run and has done relatively little for awhile afterwards. But by 2017 she was acting more regularly playing Kay Ambrose on Season 1 of The Sinner, Jacqueline on Season 4 of How to Get Away With Murder (Jimmy Smits' ex-wife) and has since been seen on Pose, Instinct, The Good Fight, The Blacklist and had a recurring role on the series City on A Hill. Her last role was in the Emmy nominated Black Rabbit,

Hey, Isn't That…Carol Kane broke into Hollywood in the 1970s starring in small roles in such seminal films as Carnal Knowledge, The Last Detail and Annie Hall. She was nominated for Best Actress for playing Giti in Hester Street in 1975. She would start in such cult films as When A Stranger Calls and La Sabina before finally breaking out as Simka, the girlfriend and future wife of Latka on Taxi. She is best known to millions for playing Valerie ("I'm not a witch, I'm your wife)in The Princess Bride and the Ghost of Christmas Present in Scrooged.

Let's focus on TV for the rest of this. She played Aunt Sylvia on the Emmy winning Brooklyn Bridge and received an Emmy nomination for playing Marguerite Birch on Chicago Hope in 1995. She had the role of Annie in the one season show Pearl, LL on the Showtime critical hit Beggars and Chooser's, would play the Penguin's mother on Gotham  and Lillian on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. She PLAYED Bianca on Los Espookys, Mindy Markowitz on Hunters and is currently playing Pelia on Strange New Worlds. I could tell you about her voice work but that's another page.

By the way you'll blink if you miss her but Jenny is played by Rhea Seehorn in what was her first screen role. Her career for the next fifteen years was not that great. She was a regular on one season comedies like 'I'm With Her'  an even more short-lived series The Singles Table, a role on The Starter Wife and played Roxanne on Whitney for three season, and the recurring role of Ellen on Franklin & Bash.

All of which is to say if you never heard of her before she was cast as Kim Wexler its not your fault. Vince Gilligan seeing something in her as Kim is just as remarkable as what he saw in Bryan Cranston and Bob Odenkirk.

Oh and in case you were wondering…yes the Matt Reeves who directed this episode is THAT Matt Reeves. He was a TV director for shows like Felicity and Homicide before he managed to direct Cloverfield. After that came the Andy Serkis led Planet of the Apes franchise and now Batman. It's not just great actors that get their start in TV.

Tracking the Justice Democrats: Now That The Primaries Are Over, Let's See What The Justice Democrats Have Actually Accomplished

 

The next time one of your self-righteous socialist or progressive colleagues (but I repeat myself) launches into a diatribe about how AOC and the Squad are the future of America interrupt them and say you are typing the following question into your iPhone:

"How many seats have the Justice Democrats flipped that were Republican?"

My readers already know the answer but I'm going to tell verbatim what the algorithm tells me when I type it in:

Justice Democrats have not flipped any Republican-held seats in general congressional races.

To back it up there's are two quotes from the centrist Democrat site Third Way under the term Electoral Performance:

Justice Democrats have not flipped a single Republican-held seat blue over the last four cycles.

Candidates endorsed by Justice Democrats have lost 63 of the 72 non-incumbent races in which they have competed – an 88% loss rate.

(My private thanks to Third Way for making it clear that someone in the Democratic Party knows what they're doing.)

There's a joke in there about how Siri and Alexa know that socialism is still unpopular with the American electorate but the New York Times hasn't figured that out yet. Privately, however, I find it exhausting that in eight years no one who works in legacy media, whether it is CNN or Rolling Stone, seems capable of doing a one minute search on the internet to actually find out if what Bernie and the Squad are saying about their policies resonating with the masses  are true. Why hasn't anyone from Rachel Maddow to Sean Hannity confronted them with this? Why haven't George Will and Bret Stephens done their homework? It's one thing to worry about socialism taking over the Democratic party – I myself have concerns about it -  its another to keep saying it every two years as if it's doctrine.

I want to believe so badly that this election cycle will be the one where the media finally wakes up and realizes how little the average voter wants what Bernie and the Squad have been selling. Certainly the Democrats themselves should be capable of pointing out this simple reality to the left wing of their party: if nothing else Elizabeth Warren should be able to understand basic arithmetic. But seeing as that is increasingly unlikely to happen, it falls upon yon author (as well as the good people at Third Way, who I hope will be the North Star going forward for my party) to tell you  where the Justice Democrats actually  are at the end of the 2026 primaries.

This week marked the end of the last  primaries where the Justice Democrats were running new candidates. By their standards (which as you can see  are incredibly low) this has been a good cycle for them. Compared to the hyperbole that they and the media seem to greet  everything they do it’s as underwhelming as Supergirl's box office.

So here's the complete record of the new group of  Justice Democrats who ran this cycle in order of the dates of their respective primaries:

March 3rd

 

TEXAS

As I mentioned Frederick Haynes III won the nomination for Jasmine Crockett's  old district. Crockett held similar values to the Justice Democrats though she wasn't an official member.

ONE HOLD

 

NORTH CAROLINA

Nida Allam tried to run against Valerie Foushee in the fourth district  on an anti-ICE platform, was endorsed by Bernie Sandrs, gun control activists and the working families party. She lost.

ONE PRIMARY LOSS

 

 

ILLINOIS MARCH 17^TH

Two challengers, Junaid Ahmed and Kat Abughazaleh tried to win in the 8^th and 9^th district respectively.

Both received less than 26 percent of the vote.

 TWO PRIMARY  LOSSES

 

 

PENNSYLVANIA May 19^th

Chris Rabb ran in the 3rd. He's running unopposed in the general. No Republican opposition.

ONE PRIMARY WIN.

 

June 2nd

NEW JERSEY

Adam Hamawy is running to succeed Bonnie Watson Coleman in the 12^th district.

He won, albeit with just under 28 percent of the vote.

ONE PRIMARY WIN

 

CALIFORNIA

Three new candidates were running for in California along with Ro Khanna who won his primary: Mai Vang in the 7^th was challenging Doris Matsui, Saikat Chakrabarti in the 11^th (Nancy Pelosi's former district) and Angela Gonzales-Torres was challenging Jimmy Gomez in the 34^th district.

. Chakrabarti finished in a distant third, Vang finished first in her primary and Gonzales-Torres finished second. Under the rules of California politics both Vang and Gonzales-Torres advance to the general election. We'll deal with their prospects in the general below.

 ONE PRIMARY LOSS, TWO PENDING FOR GENERAL ELECTION

 

NEW YORK, June 23rd

Claire Valdez, another Democratic Socialist who was elected to the 37^th district in 2025 would attempt to run for New York 7^th to succeed Nydia Velasquez. She would be challenging Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and Queens Councilwoman Julie Won. In the 13^th Darializa Avila Chevalier would be running to challenge Adriano Espaillat, who has represented the district since 2017 and is the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Both candidates won, in large part thanks to the endorsement of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. (I've written about why this happened in a previous article.)

TWO PRIMARY WINS

 

COLORADO, July 1^st

Melat Kiros, a democratic socialist. defeated Diana DeGette in the primary in the Colorado 1^st. She is heavily favored to win in the general.

 

 PRIMARY WIN

 

August 4th

MISSOURI

Cori Bush was challenging Wesley Bell for the seat he defeated her in the Democratic primary in 2024 in the Missouri 1^st.

Bell beat Bush in their rematch by a landslide. For those keeping track Bush has now run as a Justice Democrat all five cycles. She lost the first time she ran in a primary, won her primary and the general in 2020, was reelected in 2022 and was primaried by Bell in 2024.  She's the ultimate Justice Democrat candidate in every way that counts.

PRIMARY LOSS

 

MICHIGAN

Donovan McKinney

McKinney was challenging Shri Thanedar in the Michigan 13th. The main difference is that Thanedar renounced his membership in the DSA in October 2023, after they failed to condemn Hamas after the terrorist attacks in Israel.

McKinney managed a narrow victory beating Thanedar by just under 4 percent.

PRIMARY WIN

 

TENNESSEE August 6^th

Justin Pearson

Pearson was running to contend in the newly redrawn Tennessee 9^th. He managed to win in a landslide over his nearest competitor with 65 percent of the vote.

PRIMARY WIN

 

 

So to recap of the fourteen candidates the Justice Democrats recruited this cycle seven won their primaries (I'll get to one of them below) five lost and two are advancing to the general while holding one  old seat.

Only by the incredibly low bar that the Justice Democrats have set in four consecutive election cycles could their track record in 2026 be seen as a 'movement'. Particularly when you consider that in 2025 they announced that they were planning to have candidates to run in all fifty states and that they could only come up with fifteen to run in eleven. Add in that Allam and Bush had already tried before (in Bush's cases, multiple times) and it's hard to argue that people are lining up to run under their banner.

For the second consecutive election cycle the only districts they chose to run in were some of the most blue in the country. The exception was Pearson who had planned to run before a recent Supreme Court decision led to Tennessee redrawing its maps make the one deep blue district in the state now majority red. By that point Pearson had already announced his candidacy but it's clear that this wasn't the race he'd signed up for. To his credit he decided to keep going but this district is overwhelmingly favored to go to his Republican opponent.

And its not clear for the two other candidates who managed to advance to the general election whether they'll have a chance to win. Vang managed to finish ahead with 31.2 percent of the vote to Matsui's 29 percent. However its not clear where the 37 percent of the vote that when to her Republican challengers will go.

Gonzales-Torres is in a worse situation in the 34^th district, finishing second to Gomez. Gomez won far more decisively getting 46 percent of the vote to Gonzales-Torres 30.7 percent. In order for her to overcome that deficit she's going to have to make up a lot of ground and there are fewer voters to win.

And historically California has never been as friendly to the Justice Democrats as one might think. In the first two election cycles 8 Justice Democrats tried to run under that platform (other than  Ro Khanna who was an incumbent when he joined). Only three were able to advance to the general and all lost. The same happened this year for Saikat Chakrabarti, one of the original founders of the Justice Democrats, who could only come up with 17.6 percent in the primary and finished a distant third.

I have no doubt that the Justice Democrats will use their successful primary challenges of incumbents in New York, Colorado and Michigan as signs that they have 'put the establishment on notice' and the media will parrot it.

Several things. First the left is always putting the establishment on notice when they protest or go on social media. Equating a college campus march with a primary victory shows their lack of context. Second, they will as always ignore the numerous primary defeats – including in Missouri and North Carolina, where they couldn't successful primary an incumbent.

And lastly the Tea Party in its first cycle in 2020 managed to win 39 seats in the House and multiple primaries in the Senate. Two of them, Rand Paul and Mike Lee are still standing after sixteen years while Marco Rubio was a fixture until he became Secretary of State. That was a movement that America's still reckoning with. (I found out all of this with another Google search.)

Four election cycles after their founding by the end of the 2026 election cycle the Justice Democrats in the best case scenario will have fifteen members in the House of Representatives. That means they have three percent of one house of one branch of Congress. The Freedom Caucus alone has between 30 and 40 members and they are far closer to where their party is then the Justice Democrats have ever been – and no one can argue which group has power to set the agenda in the House no matter which party is in charge. That won't change this cycle even if the Democrats do regain control of Congress this cycle – and at least until the Democrats win the Presidency we're not going to know if they have the same kind of influence the Freedom Caucus has.

Far more than the far right, the far left wing of the Democratic Party has a more visceral contempt of the political establishment. That most likely explains why they feel a primary victory against a Democrat is the equivalent, if not better, then prevailing over a Republican in the general.  This argument has always been prevalent among the Sanders-Warren wing of the Democratic Party and its even more true for the Squad. Perhaps to them a defeat in the primary is less meaningful then losing in the general election; it would certainly explain their overall strategy over the past few election cycles even before this one.

But there is a difference and anyone who works in politics knows it.  Mainstream Democrats are aware of it and the Republicans definitely are. And it is infuriating to see every single media establishment essentially argue that a primary victory by Claire Valdez is ranked by them the same way Cait Conley's was in the same state. If Valdez wins in November it doesn't change the math for House Democrats at all; it just changes the name of a member. Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries know that Claire Valdez can take a cruise for four months and still win this fall. They're going to spend far more time and money helping Conley defeat Mike Lawler because that actually matters.

And it's not just New York; there are swing districts in nearly every state that the Justice Democrats chose to run candidates in. If the Justice Democrats had wanted to help the party they would have run in them. Instead they put their own brand ahead of the party they share their name with and half the time it still  resulted in failure for them. Worse they forced many state parties to spend time and money helping either beat back challenges to incumbents or lost to new members who have made it clear they show no loyalty to the Party many of them will be representing next fall. Yet the media still acts as if their accomplishment count for more then the many Democrats in those swing districts who the Party is counting on to do what the Justice Democrats keep demonstrating over and over they can't.

So for the next several months whenever you read an article or see a story on TV or social media arguing about how the left, radical or otherwise, is taking control of the Democratic Party/America simply do exactly what I have done but that the rest of the media, liberal, conservative or otherwise, has apparently not. A five minute internet search. It may surprise you; it may reassure you; it might even bother you. But remember that even if you think the algorithm is misleading you, figures don't lie. And I'll take statistics and voter counts over the vibe any day of the week.