Homicide Rewatch: Valentine's Day

 

Written by Tom Fontana

Directed by Clark Johnson

 

Looked with the distance of 30 years this episode seems most significance for its casting of Neil Patrick Harris in the very cast against type role of Alan Schack, the villain of the piece. Harris was still in 1997 best known for the innocent role of Doogie Howser MD so this role was a major get and gave him a chance to play against type.

One can't deny the significance of this role. Harris was in the process of transitioning from the teenage doctor to the more sleazy characters he is known for playing in the 21^st century, not long before he would come out of the closet at the turn of the 2010s and add a different level to it. Looked at in this sense, it's a clear progression of a superb actor in the making.

Less known at the time and definitely so today was the second guest role of Linda Dano, a prominent soap opera actress in the NBC franchise (though it would be canceled in a few years' time) Another World. But Dano's appearance as Dr. Miano, the marriage counselor that Frank and Mary see is the far more critical one for the series overall. Because this session finally lays bare the cracks in the Pembleton marriage and Frank, the man who is known for being able to talk people into revealing their most hidden truths, is now on the receiving end something he doesn't like from the start and very quickly finds that he has been as good at lying to himself as so many of the suspects he's gotten to confess in the box.

But first the cases. Pembleton leaves work for personal time and makes it clear he has Kellerman covering for him. For the first time Al asked Frank if he and Tim are speaking and Pembleton makes it clear that they're just not working together. Bayliss and Kellerman are called out for a bombing which leads to them working together for the first time since the death of James Douglas. Kellerman is back from his time off and he seems openly better for the first time since the grand jury subpoena came; he even jokes about how Bayliss was snarky to him the last time.

Once there on the bomb site of with the FBI on site (this is thought of as terrorism and we hear both Hezbollah and Waco mentioned) the jokes start coming when they find an ear. "Friends Romans Countryman," goes Bayliss. "Ear today, gone tomorrow," Kellerman. Yeah he's back to normal.

Things then get worse when there's a second bombing of a defense attorney named Allan Corcoran. Kellerman says he knows the name but can't figure out from where.  Then Kellerman ties to a previous case – Corcoran defended the man who shot Tommo Roh a few episodes back. (See 'Inconsistencies') Corcoran defended the man who shot Roh and acquitted him and Kuntz was the jury foreman. It becomes very clear that Ben Roh is trying to deal with how the honor of his family was destroyed and has been going on a path of revenge.

This leads to the tension with the fact that Ben has gone to the courthouse where Lewis and Juliana are there for the Middleton case. This leads to a good scene between the two where they discuss their personal lives: Meldrick discusses the state of his marriage; Juliana is dealing with the death of her father. We learned in an earlier scene that the headstone has just been delivered and she's been delaying having it set.

This ties indirectly the deaths of these two men to the actions of Luther Mahoney. When Kellerman asks why Ben didn't kill Luther, the son says he was saving him for last. Given what will happen in a few weeks' time one really wishes he had started with him rather than going through the criminal justice system.

Meanwhile Munch is called to the apparent suicide of Nick Bollaneterra. When Munch learns that he's the roommate of Allan Schack Brodie knows Schack as a bad dude and decides to talk to him, something that doesn't interest Munch.

This episode shows the lazy aspects of Munch we haven't seen in a while. He doesn't want to investigate a case that he's written off and he sure as hell doesn't want to listen to Brodie. Brodie goes over Munch's head to Howard (very reluctantly) and lets the investigation continue. To be fair there's something going on beyond Munch's instincts. Bollantera was coked up and there were two sets of fingerprints on the gun. Schack has joked about being there and playing Russian Roulette. (Munch says there were five bullets in the gun and you only use one to play Russian Roulette. Howard: "Is this is a game you play often?" The thing is, I can see Munch doing it when he was in college and high.)

There is something quite brilliant in Harris's work. Even as he grew into adulthood it would be rare he'd play someone who was so genuinely contemptuous of authority and outright sleazy to so many around him. His later characters would have oily politeness to them; Schack can barely refrain from bating Munch and Howard in the box and he openly threatens Brodie before he attacks him.

But this episode gives Melissa Leo a chance to shine in a way she's gotten to far less during the last two seasons, first as she interrogate Schack and then when she brings him into the box to trick him with a videotape. "What we have here his more brilliant then Apocalypse Now and more entertaining than America's Funniest Home Videos. (Ah the 1990s.) Brodie has recorded a tape which he has doctored to make it seem like the narcotics department was monitoring Schack's house and him entering his home. He adds the sound of a gunshot going off and this fools Schack into believing that's he been caught.

But for all that Brodie is still annoyed that no one in the unit seems to be treating him with the respect he thinks he deserves. There's a real sense of false entitlement here; Brodie has been more of a nuisance then anything; he's lived with every single detective save Pembleton during his housing crisis, and after a year and a half its still an open question whether he's been more of an asset to the unit then a detriment. On top of that he filmed a documentary on the unit and submitted it to PBS without asking permission of the department or anyone. Al is more generous and says its not his job to make them like you. You have to earn it. (One really wonders if any people Brodie's age could watch this show today and wonder why he didn't sue for a hostile work environment.)

The scenes with Dano as Miano are comic delights for multiple reasons because its clear that she's just as good at her job as Frank is at his. She sets Frank at ease with questions about how they met, eases him into a false sense of security, then starts talking about his and Mary's sex life. This makes Frank noticeably uncomfortable for the first time in almost the entire series and we see him being questioned in a way that has irony all around. You can see how frustrated he is at just how good Miano is at asking questions and never answering them directly, which is exactly how he does his job so well. Then she drops a bomb and tells him his wife is thinking of leaving him.

We've known about Frank's being from New York originally but we've never learned why he moved to Baltimore. Here he's very direct: he makes it clear 'Baltimore is a brown town run by brown people" and the NYPD was never going to give him what he wanted. This explains why he reacts so much to the perceived slights of Felton and the real racism of Gaffney as well as been so eager to correct Bayliss whenever he makes a remarks that hints of looking back with nostalgia. And he tries the suspect's trick of blaming everything that's going on on someone else, targeting Mary's parents and then the therapist. Frank has built his entire career on being infallible on the job and will not take criticism on it from anyone at work; we shouldn't be surprised when he's criticized on it as a husband and father – and worst of all, a sexual partner.

Frank is very honest about his problems about his sex life and how much he resented doctors told them about how when they were having so much trouble conceiving Olivia (back in Season 3) sex became almost a homework assignment. Mary then tells Frank that he's approaching sex like his job: detached. (She clearly doesn't know just how much effort he went into celebrating their anniversary but the larger point is the same.) When Mary tells Frank the very real possibility he disappeared from the marriage long before the stroke, Frank becomes the worst we've seen him in front of his wife – until he points out the very real sense of inadequacy he had after the stroke in a way we've never seen him to do even when he was at his worst at the start of the season. He may have physically recovered from his stroke; the psychological reckoning may not happened.

But Mary gets to the heart of Frank sins when she says: "Pride." And she makes it clear perhaps more than anyone what his being a fallen Catholic has cost him. We know upfront its bad to challenge Frank on faith (he says when he needed him "God was in the next county over making hurricanes and hunchback babies") but now we see it through a different lenses – Mary.

Ami Brabson has been superb all season but this episode may be her finest hour on Homicide as she makes it clear – without saying it directly – that she must have spent so much time by Frank's bedside and then his recovery praying to God. This is first time we see how much Frank's disdain for God might actually be harmful to those around him and it becomes a living thing when it comes to discussing that Mary wants Olivia to be baptized but has been afraid to do it because of Frank's refusal to go to church, something that has been canon on the show since at least Season 3. Frank lists his believes as justice and life and Mary cuts him off:

Mary: You believe in Homicide.

Frank: It's the same thing.

We know all too well that this is not something held by anyone that isn't a homicide detective (and not even some of them). And when Mary says: "Is it?" it cuts to the biggest question we've had. Frank has made it clear without the job he's nothing and Mary is telling him the opposite. It's telling that Mary chooses to end the session first, despite the therapist's advice. She's the only person Frank can't pressure into doing what he wants and its clear it stuns him.

He actually comes close to confiding in Gee, asking him if he was happily married and the very real question whether she might have gotten sick of him had she lived and he'd stayed at his job. Al says he never thought about it and he doesn't want to now. He thinks he was happily married and that his wife did the job of raising the kids. (We've already seen what his beloved Charisse thinks of him as a father; in the last season we'll get a chance to see what his son thought of it.) We learn that Mary is a lobbyist who is passionate for the causes she fights for "but she can leave her job on I-95." Frank considers Homicide 'a calling…we speak for those who can no longer speak for themselves." He makes it clear he was a cop when he met Mary.

He makes a real attempt when he agrees to have Olivia baptized but then he gets hung up on a case and he misses it. It's not clear if this is the final straw or if it would have happened regardless but Mary tells Frank she's leaving and taking Olivia with him.  She makes it clear he's more comfortable standing over a corpse then changing his daughter's diaper, that Frank cared more about getting healthy so he could get back on the street then be a husband and father "that you care more about dead strangers then you do about your own family."

When Mary leaves for the first time in Homicide's entire history we see Frank broken in a way we never have: weeping saying: "That's not true."

This episode does take place on the title day (it actually originally aired February 14^th 1997!) and we see multiple signs of it in the final montage. There's Cox with Kellerman at her father's headstone; Brodie hanging out with his roommate; Meldrick and Barbra kissing in front of his Teddy Pendergast painting, apparently happy. But all of this is intercut with scenes of Pembleton in his empty home, looking more lost then he ever has. For Frank this is actually rock bottom. The rest of Season Five will be about him climbing up.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

"Detective Munch" In the opening scene Munch asks if there's anything that makes it look like this isn't a suicide Brodie responds: "Just because there's no sign that something isn't doesn't mean that it is." Cox responds: "Careful Brodie, you're starting to sound like Munch.

Munch: I resent that remark.

Brodie: So do I.

Just as brilliant is when Kellerman says he hates red balls and Munch says he can recommend a good urologist.

Inconsistencies: Guides to the show have pointed out that its been less than a month since the Roh case was opened with no suspects. Yet somehow in less then three weeks the shooter has been caught, tried and found innocent. That's somewhat unrealistic.

Nearly as unrealistic is that after Brodie is beaten severely with a lead pipe he's somehow in a condition to just not be discharged the same day but shoot the video of Schack's confession without any sign of injury. But honestly I've seen more inconsistencies between episodes of Law & Order and X-Files on a week-to-week basis during this period so I'll let it go.

Future Inmate: William Cote who plays officer Keane in this episode, would later be cast as William Cudney on OZ, a Christian evangelical who shoots the son of an abortionist and is sent to prison for life.

Hey, Isn't That…Neil Patrick Harris' career began at fourteen when he played David in Clara's Heart. He was cast as Doogie Howser MD in 1989 and would play the role for four seasons. During this period he began his career in voice acting starting as Max on the short-lived series Capitol Critters (I'll focus on TV though there's clearly a lot else.). Most of his work was in TV movies in the aftermath, such as My Antonia, A Family Torn Apart, and the Man in the Attic.

In 1999 he was cast as Henry in the comedy Stark Raving Mad which was canceled after one season and he did the voice of Spider-Man in a 2003 animated cartoon. Then he became legend – wait for it – dary! Legendary! as Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother for nine seasons. He eventually would play Dr. Horrible in Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog written by Joss Whedon and Count Olaf in the Netflix version of A Series of Unfortunate Events. He starred in Uncoupled which both Netflix and then Showtime renewed for a second season and then canceled.. His most recent TV appearance was Lowell in Dexter Resurrection.

He has to date won five Emmys, though none of them were for comedy. He won four of them for hosting the Tony Awards including three consecutive ones from 2012 to 2014 and Special class programs. He also won tow in 2010, one for hosting the Tonys and won for his guest role in Glee. He has also hosted the Emmys multiple times and the Oscars in 2015 and was nominated for doing so that year.

Linda Dano made her TV debut in Police Story in 1973 and had small part in many shows from Lucas Tanner to Harry O TO Matt Helm. She played Cynthia Haines in as The World Turns in 1981 and 1982 before appearing in 1548 episodes of Another World as Felicia Gallant between 1983 and its cancellation in 1999. She would then play Rae Cummings in All My Children and its spin-off series Port Charles as well in General Hospital and One Life to Live before playing Vivian Alamain in Days of our Lives in 2021. She would win a Daytime Emmy for her work in Another World in 1993 and be nominated for it four that show four other times and for One Life to Live in 2003.

Emmy Watch 2026 Phase 2 Concluded: The 2026 Peabody Nominations for TV

 

I have been understandably busy with many, many other things in the last few weeks including watching several series that will no doubt be nominated for the Emmys in a little more than two months' time. For that reason when the Peabody nominations came out last week I neglected to cover them when they took place.

But now I have some breathing room and it is well past time to look at the Peabody Awards and the nominations that they've given to TV last week. Like every other award show it mostly covers the period of the previous year so we will be seeing some shows that have already passed us by. But that doesn't mean we won't get to see some shows that might be recognized for the year to come.

First the nominations for the year just past in Entertainment. We see from 2025 Andor, The Rehearsal, Common Side Effects, Forever, Adolescence, Dying For Sex and The Pitt. For the year ahead of us we see Mo, Mr. Loverman, Heated Rivalry and Pluribus and Death By Lightning

Heated Rivalry is, despite being a massive hit, ineligible for Emmys in America. The Pitt will be contending this year as will Pluribus and possibly Death by Lightning.

I should also mention that Jimmy Kimmel Live was nominated for a Peabody award this year, which is of course what happens when using some of the worst names towards your political opponents is considered a profile in courage in some circles. Not mine, but some.

 

And that as they say is that. We've now come to the official end of Emmy Watch Phase 2. The final phase will take place in May and June as we wait for the announcement of the TCA, the Dorian TV awards and the Astra nominations. Most of them will come in the month of May before we enter the final stretch before the Emmy nominations themselves.  Stay tuned those few who stick to this.

Thirty Wins Hath Jamie Ding on Jeopardy…By The Skin Of His Teeth

 

The moment Jamie Ding passed Mattea Roach for fifth place on all time win list the question was whether he could make it to 30 wins a mark that only James Holzhauer, Matt Amodion, Amy Schneider and Ken Jennings himself have managed to reach. The question was could Jamie reach it and how much money he'd have when he got there?

It was a huge struggle for Jamie just to get past Cris Panullo when it came to passing him for fifth place on the all-time money list. Cris needed just 21 games to with $748,000. It took Jamie 27 wins to get up to $753,000 – and even then he had to back into it. On that day he wagered $13,000 on a Daily Double late in Double Jeopardy and got it wrong and just barely finished with the narrowest of runaways, having to guarantee it by getting the last clue of the game correct. Even then he got Final Jeopardy incorrect for the tenth time in his original run and 'merely' won $21,000.

For the three players other then Jennings who managed 30 wins the 28^th win was a significant one for all of them. For Matt Amodio and Amy Schneider, they both crossed the $1 million threshold. For James Holzhauer, he would cross the $2 million threshold. By contrast for the first time in nine straight games Jamie Ding didn't have a runaway victory and only responded correctly on 22 clues, though again he got none wrong. He had to get Final Jeopardy correct to win against Max Ernst and he did.

Game 29 was by comparison easier another runaway victory though he finished with $20,200 by the end of Double Jeopardy and yet again got Final Jeopardy wrong.

So by the time of Game 30 it had already been more of a grind for Jamie then usual. And his two opponents Leighanna Mixter and Patrick Nolan were absolutely determined to make sure that Jamie didn't have an easy time getting to that critical number.

From the start of the Jeopardy round Patrick matched Jamie practically correct response for correct response. At the end of the round Jamie's lead was $7600 to Patrick's $6400, the narrowest he had all week. Leighanna, who'd spend much of the round in the red, emerged on the last clue on the side of positive with $200.

The back and forth continued in Double Jeopardy. Patrick managed to take the lead away from Jamie on the ninth clue with $11,600 before finding the first Daily Double in TEENY TINY COUNTRIES.

He knew what he had to do and he did it, betting everything:

Boroo Maggiore & Serravalle are towns in this landlocked nation that bears the name of a 4^th century man.

Patrick paused: "What is San Marino?" And he jumped into his biggest lead with $23,200.

Patrick got the next clue correct, then Jamie got the following and that led him to the other Daily Double in ART FOR ART'S SAKE. At that point Jamie was at $13,200 to Patrick's $24,400. Daily Doubles on big wagers had not been going well for Jamie for a while. This time he had no choice but to bet everything:

The Glasshouse in Seattle in a one-of-a-kind structure holding a 100-foot sculpture by this artist.

Jamie paused for a long time: "Who is Chihuly?" It was Dale Chihuly. He took the lead back with $26,400. He held it the rest of round narrowly but this one was a nailbiter. Jamie finished with $30,800 to Patrick's $28,000 and Leighanna's $5400.

It came down to Final Jeopardy. The category was THE 1950s: The announcement declaring this safe & effective was made April 12, 1955, the 10^th anniversary of the death of a famous American.

Leighanna's response was revealed first: She wrote down: What is nuclear power, crossed it out, and then wrote: What is the polio vax?" That was correct: the tenth anniversary of FDR's death. She bet $5000, putting her at $10,400.

Patrick was next: He wrote down: "What is penicillin?" That was incorrect. He bet $10,000 which left him with $18,000, still enough to win if Jamie was incorrect and wagered too much.

It came down to Jamie: "What was…the polio vaccine?" He even wrote in parentheses (Salk's). Jamie had to wager big this time. Jamie bet $25,201, giving him $56,001 and his thirtieth win which made his total $849,603 for 30 days.

Patrick did play superbly but not well enough. Such as the case with the few times Jamie has been threatened in runaways. (I was very tempted to title this article "You Come At the Ding, You Best Not Miss") I suspect Patrick will be invited to the inevitable Second Chance Tournament when it occurs. Of course given that Season 42 has now essentially become the Jamie Ding show, when the Second Chance Tournament, much less the next Jeopardy Tournament of Champions will take place is very much an open question. But that's a problem for another day and for Jamie not at all as he's going to be comfortably waiting with Harrison Whitaker with a bye into the semi-finals.

But even as he closes in on James Holzhauer for fourth place on the all-time win list it is clear that Jeopardy James II is not at the level of Holzhauer, Schneider or Amodio. He remains 'only' the fifth best Jeopardy player of all time. Which I imagine is as much consolation to those who have played against him and lost as it was to everybody who came up against those three or Jennings during their tenures on what is now the Alex Trebek stage. Indeed so many of them must feel like Tantalus with victory over Jamie always just out of reach.

Jamie in reaching these elite group continues his status as an outlier. He has won 30 games and has yet to reach (insert Dr. Evil impression) One Million Dollars. But seriously Ken actually broke the million dollar threshold on his 30^th game and as I mentioned above the next three players Jamie has to catch and pass on the list of consecutive wins reached $1 million or higher far earlier. Don't get me wrong, nearly $850,000 is nothing to sneeze at but it gets to what might be called Jamie Ding's law: "Whenever he bets very big on Final Jeopardy, one will get it wrong. Whenever he bets very little in Final Jeopardy, he will get it right."

To be fair with the notable exception James Holzhauer this is a truth that every Jeopardy super-champions runs into more often then not, and that is true not just for the ones directly above him but many of the ones he's already passed in wins: David Madden, Julia Collins and Ryan Long all lost their share of big wagers on Final Jeopardy. But for Jamie this has been the pattern since the very first defense of his title when he lost $30,000 plus on Final Jeopardy. This has also been true on more than his share of Daily Doubles: he's lost $23,200 on one a few weeks ago as well.

But as we've seen so many times when Jamie needs to get Final Jeopardy correct he does. It was true yesterday to be sure. But that said his opponents do seem to be getting better. In his last three victories he's only managed 22, 22 and 21 correct responses respectively and that has resulted in two of those three games having to be decided in Final Jeopardy. Jamie Ding is one of the great super-champions but every Jeopardy champion is defeated eventually whether it is by Emma Boettcher or Jonathan Fisher or as Ken Jennings knows all too well, by Nancy Zerg. Yesterday was not that day for Jeopardy Jamie II.  How long will his reign continue is the question.

 

  

Coalition of The Sane:I'd Be Happier With The Democrats If So Many of Them Weren't Behaving Like Republicans(And Not the Way The Majority of Progressives Think)

 

 

There's this old standard about a Congressional Democrat during the long period after the Civil War when the Republicans were almost always in power. He said: "I am a Democrat still…very still."

Now unlike the overwhelming number of writers on this blog and quite a few so-called progressives I'm an institutionalist as well as a pragmatist. That means if you want to get things done you have to be loyal to some institutions and then especially includes political parties. In my lifetime it's never been easy to be a Democrat, mainly because we kept losing elections we should have won, because we kept letting the conservatives and Republicans frame the contours of debate, because to much of the time we believe in systems rather than the emotional reactions that drive politics. But I am a Democrat still – very still – mainly because in the 21^st century we've always been grownups in contrast to the increasing Republican insanity at a Congressional and particularly Presidential level. I admit that acting like an adult and being sane shouldn't be the sole qualification for being in political office but in an era where the loudest voices on the right were increasingly being the voices of lunacy I found it very appealing and I always do.

To be clear I long since stopped expecting that from the GOP  long  before the 2016 election occurred. If anything the years since have made me firmer in my commitment to the Democrats.  A Return to Normalcy helped lead the Republicans to a landslide in 1920 and it might well have been Joe Biden's slogan 100 years later. I realize now that it was probably a pipe dream for normal to ever come back but at the very least I would have preferred politics to be much less exciting and interesting, particularly from the Democrats.

Now I do get why after everything that happened in 2024 the decision to panic among the party elders and the loudest voices on that side was understandable. It wasn't held by more than a few Congressional Democrats and I really wish leadership had been willing to listen to the Jared Goldens and John Fettermans,  particularly given that the party was no longer in a position to really do anything. We were now a minority party in the House and the Senate and much as we might hate that fact the people had made their choices clear in that election. And particularly considering the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election there was something to be said for providing a contrast to the GOP in what was going to be a post-Trump America by acting with something resembling maturity and dignity.

That has not, by and large, been what Congressional Democrats have done in the last year and a half. On the contrary what their behavior reminds me of is that of the members of the Tea Party in the aftermath of the 2010 election and throughout the majority of Obama's Presidency as well as the behavior of the Freedom Caucus during Biden's administration. During that period the Democrats rightly called out this behavior as juvenile, undignified and unworthy of the political system. It now seems that's their new business model much of the time.

Because here are Congressional Democrats and state officials storming ICE rallies and courthouses and getting arrested. Here are Congressional Democrats and Senate Democrats shouting belligerently at Trump's cabinet members during their meetings before the Senate. Here they are walking out of confirmation meetings for Trump's judges to appellate courts.

Here they are shutting down the government in order to make political points with their base.

Now I'm sure that I will be told countless times over that this is what is necessary to make it clear just how horrible the actions of the current President are and that the Democrats will not stand for it, how he's running roughshod over the Constitutional process. I do get that. But the thing is, nothing the Congressional Democrats are doing is stopping his administration from rolling out their agenda and ripping up norms. Is it bad that the President is doing his agenda without input from Democrats from Congress? Sure. But he has the votes to do it.  And as I recall more than once from Democratic newsletters a minority of representatives standing in the way of the duly elected President to complete his agenda is an act of immaturity. I read that line more often then not in a group of Democratic fundraising emails during Biden's term. I didn't see in small print "Void when a Republican is President".

And I welcome anyone to explain to me what the difference between when in 2013 Republicans shutdown the government out of funding Obamacare for nearly a month and when Democrats have engaged in a similar shutdown of Homeland Security in order not to fund ICE. I'm sure I'll be told in no uncertain terms why the former was an act of immaturity and the latter is an act that is standing up to tyranny but the result is the game: one party is purposely not funding a vital part of the government for the sole purpose of scoring political points with their base in what is pure political theater. As it stands Majority Leader John Thune is in the process of forming a bill that will ended up completely funding ICE that will occur without any concessions to Democrats and will pass with solely Republican support. 

So two months have gone by with a vital part of our government not working – one that aside from ICE is vital to protecting America in countless ways and has been feeling the pinch across the board in our airports, in FEMA, in cybersecurity.  When it reopens the Democrats will have proved exactly what everyone knew at the start of the shutdown – that they are opposed to the President's policies.  In exchange they gave away their dignity, which is in short supply these days anywhere, and made it clear to civil servants who are already feeling under attack by the current administration that the Democratic Party is just as capable of using them as pawns to make points with their base as Republicans are.  All the damage that Republicans have doing to the civil servants who work in government agencies by tearing them down during the last two years, we're going to need help rebuilding them in the future – and how easy do you think it's going to be to do that now that they know either political party considers them as pieces that they will use in order to help them gain political points?

I've heard all of these arguments before – when Republicans make them. "Burn down the village in order to save it." "We have to go to the dark side." "The ends justify the means." I didn't buy them during W's administration or any Republican who has made them before and I sure as hell don't buy them when Democrats make that same argument.

But it's not merely that this demeans the Democrats and political dialogue that bothers me; it's that the very approach is the exact thing that will further isolate the average voter. Because the big difference between the Republican base and the Democratic one is that the extremists in our base have always had the effect of pushing people into the Republican tent while never winning a substantial amount of new voters to balance it out. This has been a large part of what has given the Republicans power for decades and while the left knows this, they don't really seem to think its  a problem. And I suspects that's because the loudest voices on their part are emotionally little better than toddlers.

Oh to be sure, many of them are college students, may have advanced academic degrees, write for prominent journals or have positions in the entertainment industry. But when it comes to politics they can barely comprehend it at a second grade level. And this has gotten exponentially worse with so much of how technology has changed and how much of our society is based on so-called planned obsolescence. For many of these people they think our Constitution and system of government because of its advanced age needs to be completely replaced or upgraded to a newer model. They really can't comprehend that one just can't download Constitution 2.0 on your iPhone nor that you can't bring about economic inequality or provide universal health care if you just check agree in the box and don't bother to read the terms and conditions. They think that institutions like capitalism and democracy are out of date and need to be completely replaced with something newer and by the way they view things – which is technology – better.  That you just can't trade these things in at your Apple store for better models nor that you can't ask Siri what form of government would work better and then make everyone else in the country – not just elected officials but everyone connected with the government – magically make it work isn't something they can understand. To them passing a law or amending the Constitution at most should be no more difficult then ordering a meal at Uber Eats and they get very cranky when you tell them it isn't.

No one will pretend – certainly not me – how much reform and repair our government needs and that much work must be done to do so. The problem is that too many people in this country if not the world have mistaken activism for governing. It is bad enough that one of our major political parties has essentially turned most of it into a circus; now too many members seemed determined that the only way to do gain power is to put up a rival act that is just as loud and equally destructive. That the majority of Americans either don't pay attention in the first place and when they do they are turned off by the whole thing should matter at least to the Democratic office holders. It definitely matters to me as a voter and I do think it matters to the vast majority of them, regardless of their party affiliation.

And after more than a decade on this blog I'm very clear that the loudest voices on the left can't be reasoned with on this matter and have no alternative solution to offer. Any attempt by the Democrats to appeal to them is a wasted effort because to these people everything they are doing is the bare minimum and they never credit to anybody for doing what they considers was the right thing anyway. They've made it clear they have no use for any of the Republicans or conservative commentators who have repented off their ways in the last decade which is as juvenile behavior as anything that the Justice Democrats have done. And as we saw when the Democrats attempted to shutdown the government the first time and finally agreed to reopen it all they received was contempt because "they had the GOP right where they wanted."

To be clear the Democrats had no leverage then any more then they do when they started to shutdown ICE two months ago. When the Republicans finally reopen the government even if it is done entirely absent Democratic votes they will get nothing from the left for what they've done. They've already moved on to shinier issues like everything in Iran and as I've written before, that's a whole other set of baggage the left has saddled the Democrats with for decades.

To its credit the Democrats have been doing other things that I'm in favor of it and have written about it when it comes to being focused on winning. They are attempted their most advanced campaign strategy for the upcoming midterms: one that involves competing at a state and local level in a way they really haven't since Obama became President. They have been getting back to what they used to be good at: trying to compete in states where they shouldn't be able and understanding that the strident left-wing models of the Squad and the Sanders' don't play in Iowa and Alaska. They understand something that the mostly activist wing of the party they represent refuse to comprehend: that playing the political game is the only way to bring about your goals. That it is more important to stand by your principles then forsake them for short-term goals.

We've seen this in the battles over gerrymandering in this past year. In Maryland the bluest state of the Union Governor Wes Moore attempted to lead the battle to redistrict Maryland to eliminate the sole Republican seat in the state. That movement failed because Democratic members of the statehouse refused to go along with this obviously partisan grab. If there was a sign of hope among the Republicans during this period it came in Indiana when members of the Republican state legislature refused to kowtow to their Republican governor and party and gerrymandered the state to eliminate Democratic seats.

The battle for redistricting in the last year has brought out the most juvenile aspects of both parties. You'll going to gerrymander Texas; we'll gerrymander California! You'll gerrymander Ohio; we'll gerrymander Virginia! Nyah-Nyah-Nyah! That the overall effect is to leave the voting public cold is not in consideration of either party.

It should be mentioned that while the people agreed to the referendum to redistrict Virginia, it was a much closer margin then the one in California, barely managing to pass 51 percent to 49 percent. That result, far more than the one in California, should be a message to Democrats that the voters don't think these battles matter as much to them as ones that will make their lives better economically. They wanted their elected officials to make their lives easier, not engage in political maneuvering for the national party and they were not thrilled by Governor Spangenberger's decision to do so. Spangenberger has always struck me as a mostly pragmatic woman and I can only wonder what it has to have been like to spend her first few months engaging in the kind of childish battles that won't help the people she's supposed to be leading but rather Congress who should be on her side anyway.

But she is a Democrat still…very still and she seems to have accepted reluctantly that this is how the game is being played by Gavin Newsom and Wes Moore. That both of these governors care less about being grownups and have ambitions for the highest office in the land is something that unnerves me as well. As I said if the last decade has taught me anything its that I want the grownups the run the country and by indulging in this kind of behavior governors like Moore and Newsom are only showing that they can be just as childish as the Republicans on a national stage. That shouldn't be a strength if you want to be leader of the free world.  I should know because I heard that argument the first time Trump ran for President from the Democrats.

I have to believe in my soul that the light at the end of the tunnel for America is not an oncoming train and that in a few years we will emerge on the other side, battered, heavily bruised but intact and hopefully smarter. Part of growing up is learning from the mistakes you've made and doing what is necessary to make sure they don't happen again. This is not an attitude that the left has ever held; its always been: "If you don't do exactly what I say, I'm not going to play with you anymore!" For too long my party has tried its hardest to indulge these emotionally stunted individuals who refuse to tell us what they want but are more than happy to share how much were ruining their lives just by existing. I think its well past time we told them to grow the hell up.

And that includes stop let the most childish members of the Democratic party outshout the grownups when it comes to strategy and attitude. Its time to tell Elizabeth Warren and AOC to stop acting like Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert. If they led their party off a cliff would you do the same thing? You're Democrats still, very still, and I think I speak for the electorate that we really wish you'd act like it.

Will Trent Just Had Its Most Shocking Moment Yet

 

(Spoilers for Season 4 of Will Trent as well as Slaughter's novels ahead)

 

I had thought that I was long past the point in my long career of watching TV of being surprised by character deaths. So it says something that the murder of Deputy Director Amanda Wagner – which I'll confess I was hoping against hope hadn't happened until the opening of last night's episode – ranks for me as the most stunning death since Howard Hamlin was fatally in the wrong place at the wrong time in the final season of Better Call Saul.

It's not that there have been more than their share of tragic deaths in that interim but in Will Trent it had a sting that I really didn't think the show would do and few TV shows that are based on source material have. Joel's death on The Last of Us was shocking but fans of the video game franchise had an idea it was coming and considering that Slow Horses is based on the books of Mick Herron, the readers had to know that every death is planned to an extent. And as anyone who is a fan of Slaughter's novels (and I'm one of them) Amanda Wagner is still very much alive after ten books.

To be fair the series has deviated quite a bit from the source material in its adaptation of ABC, not the least in Wagner's character. Not only is she of mixed race, something that was far from the case in Slaughter's version, Season 4 made it clear she was also bisexual. (No one knew if Amanda had a sex life in Slaughter's books.) And considering that in the first Will Trent novel Michael Ormewood was not only the killer but met his end in that book I've known for a while that this series is very much a loose adaptation of everything Slaughter has done since the first episode. Yet despite all of that I still really believed that Wagner had what is referred to as plot armor all this time.

But the thing is looking at Season 4 as a whole and where Will has been going since the season premiere, I'm  inclined to belief Amanda's death was necessary to show us how Will has been spiraling all season and really since the end of Season 3.

At the end of the third season Will has had to deal with multiple blows: he learned the identity of his biological father Cal Broussard (Yul Vasquez) he learned that Angie, the woman he'd had to arrest and torch his relationship with at the end of last season is pregnant with the child her new boyfriend Seth (Scott Foley) He ended season 3 waiting by Amanda's bedside saying: "You're my family."

Everything that's unfolded during Season 4 has been taking away every pillar Will has built his life on. It started when the man who killed his mother James Ulster escaped from prison and in order to save Cal's grandson he traded himself for him. Will then struggled with himself whether or not to kill James before they were abducted by one of Ulster's deranged prison girlfriends and when everything ended Ulster was dead. His last words were: "See you soon," and its clear they've been haunting him.

Will has been struggling with his demons all season, with Ulster taking more and more a position as it progressed. At the halfway point his Uncle Tony was in danger so Will ended up going to Puerto Rico and first encountered Adelaide who claimed to be an FBI agent. While that was going on his uncle was abducted and the two collaborated down a stretch that made it clear that whoever it was happened to be an acolyte of Ulster. By the end of the episode the horrible truth was clear: Adelaide was Ulster's biological daughter and she escaped him with Tony still in captivity.

Will has been getting deeper in Adelaide's head all season which meant getting into Ulster's. The following episode he was handed a phone from one of Adelaide's acolytes, perhaps the most terrifying thing the show has done since when it revealed he was a fifteen year old boy. Will has spent much of the season going forward waiting for that phone to ring and never truly letting the GBI in on it. He didn't know of the efforts Amanda was making to try not only to track down Tony but figure out who Adelaide was working with.  His decision to keep her out of the loop was a mistake – especially when Adelaide finally called two episodes ago.

Will spent most of last week claiming he was sick while he was trying to both get in Adelaide's head and prepare to track her down. It was clear by the time last week ended he was more than prepared to sacrifice his life for his uncle's because that's the kind of man we know him to be. Prior to that Amanda visited him, told him to get better, and then went on her own mission. As we now know that is what got her killed.

And in the most horrible of moments Will found Amanda's body on the ground dead and was horribly broken. Last night's episode showed not only that he but the entire GBI as well as the Atlanta police force had to deal with simultaneously.

If there is any justice in this world (and we all know there isn't) Ramon Rodriguez will be nominated for an Emmy for his work in 'One Last Dance' (which he also directed) We watched Will play out this entire episode going through every stage of grief. From having to close the eyes of Amanda as she was zipped into a body bag to his barely being able to function as he walked the halls of the GBI to his unstoppable rage when her superior who has been trying to get her job showed up – to express support.

Will took his rage out on the man who provided a distraction by beating him so hard he bit his tongue off.  Then as Adelaide's acolytes were being killed he encountered one of the teen ringleaders and gave an impressive speech in which he made it clear what the boy's choices were: either confess his sins or go back on the street and die. And he made it very clear considering that Amanda died because of this child's actions that he was perfectly fine letting that happen.

Eventually the reason Adelaide returned was, as always, horribly pedestrian. She'd run out of money and she came for Ulster's which had been moved. The final confrontation between the two was incredible. Even at gunpoint Adelaide still had the upper hand. She showed him his uncle was still alive and made her terms crystal clear: Either he killed himself and she'd let his uncle live or she'd kill herself and let him die, knowing the fact that this would torture him for the rest of his life would be the ultimate punishment.

Eventually Adelaide did break for it and was killed, making sure she got the last word. But Will did manage to find his uncle – nearly dead of hunger and thirst but clinging to life.

The thing is the final minutes made it clear that Will Trent is dead in a way he may never recover from. He arranged for his uncle to be sent back to Puerto Rico under armed guard because he is a reminder of guilt of everything he's done wrong in the last few months and a way to punish himself. He was notably absent from Amanda's wake. In the last minutes he turned on his tape recorder but couldn't find the words. And the last image of the episode was the camera pulling back from Will's office which had bars to resemble the prison he's put himself in.

Every season of Will Trent has ended with him undergoing a trauma he didn't think he could overcome and each time Amanda in some form has pulled him back from sliding into the abyss. Now Amanda is gone forever, Angie is married to Seth and he's pushed his uncle away. The only things currently tethering him to reality are his job and Faith and its not clear how much longer he can keep both of them near him.

Amanda's death is a gutting one, not just because of the loss of Sonja Sohn as part of the cast but because of the ripple effects it will clearly have on the title character.  I don't know how the season finale is going to play out but its only going to get worse – and for the first time I'm not sure it can ever get better for Will.

 

Hollywood Once Knew Who Michael Jackson Was. They've Clearly Forgotten It. How Pop Culture Has Reversed Itself on the King Of Pop

 

 

When I was growing up in the 1980s Michael Jackson was still considered the King of Pop but the older he got the more pop culture, particularly on Late Night, began to poke at the oddities in his character. Some of it might look in hindsight like the fact that they were being homophobic about Jackson's frequently effeminate and increasingly eccentric behavior.

That changed by the mid-1990s as the allegations around him began to become more audible By 1995 Saturday Night Live had taken the gloves on and not just the one Jackson was famous for. In an opening sketch Patrick Stewart played an advisor of trying to retool Jackson's image under the code name 'Operation Pedophile Not' which even by the standards of that show was incredibly cutting.

I was never a fan of pop music at any time in my life and I wasn't really that aware of music culture. But even then it was becoming clear to me that Michael Jackson was covering something. I remember the infamous kiss between him and Lisa Marie Presley at the VMAs when their engagement had been announced. I'm not sure I knew the meaning of the term 'marriage of convenience' at fifteen but I was pretty sure this marriage was being staged – and not just to cover any possibility that Jackson might just be gay.

Throughout the rest of the 1990s as Jackson became more known for his scandals and less for his music late night began to savage him. I remember an animated sketch on SNL by Robert Smigel where Jackson was walking to a courthouse and someone left a child on a window. Jackson caught the odor of it like it was a pie and like Yogi Bear in a Hanna Barbera cartoon starting to float towards it. It got darker from there.  Mad TV, which was for a brief time positioning itself as a rival to SNL was even more savage towards him, though it occasionally touched at the darker sides of his nature. They once did a sketch where he was painted as a serial killer, deciding to kill off other pop stars to revitalize his image in music – and by implication, distract from the scandals.

By the 2000s no one in Hollywood was blind to who Jackson was anymore. There are too many comedians who I can use examples of this but I'm going to give two of the very best standups of all time in two of their most iconic HBO scandals.

The first is Robin Williams in Live On Broadway which was filmed in the spring of 2002. One of Williams' opening bits was nearly four minutes in which he absolutely tore Jackson a new one:

Michael's screaming racism. Honey you got a pick a race first.

(After the laughter)

Girl, you gotta pick a gender, too. You were Diana Ross, now you've just left it all behind!

But Michael you're just surgically enhanced, and you've spent more money then the Vatican so let's just being quiet.

Then he came in for the kill:

If you go to Neverland, it says "You must be this high to ride Michael'.

That got the biggest laugh and groan combination to that point and after that Williams acknowledged:

At this point the lawyers for HBO, are going "Fuck" (and he mimed writing a check)

That was one of the funniest sequences in standup comedy I'd seen to that point even from Williams (and it only got better from there). The following year on his equally celebrated Never Scared special Chris Rock went in even harder and with even more rage:

"Michael went crazy. Another kid! I thought it was Groundhog Day!

What I think was the best part of this routine and arguably one of the high points in Rock's career is when he discussed an interview Jackson had done on 60 Minutes earlier.

"Ed Bradley tried to make Michael Jackson look like a mammal. He gave Michael the easiest GED questions in the world and Michael could not pass the test.

(Doing Bradley impression) Michael, do you think its normal for a 45 year old man to sleep in a bed with a thirteen year old boy?"

(Rock does a very MJ like expression)

"Yes!"

Rock as Bradley: "All right, I'll rephrase. Michael would you allow your son to sleep in a bed with a man who's been accused of pedophilia?"

Rock as Jackson: "Yes!"

(Back to normal)

Ed Bradley looked at him like he wanted to say: N---er, you crazy?"

Obvious mere transcription can't do justice to Rock's work in this routine and indeed the rest of it, you really need to see it for yourself.

By that point even Law & Order had gotten into the act. To be very clear they were incredibly indirect. Their stand-in for Michael Jackson was a thirty-ish former child star who was white. But the investigation began with him holding a child over a balcony, continued with him having an ice cream van where someone picked up young boys for him and made it very clear the parents were complicit in letting their son be molesting by this superior star and accepted a payout. And by that time if you ended up on Law & Order you were front page news.

As the 2000s continued it wasn't clear if Jackson was ever going to go to prison but the general consensus from Hollywood was that the jokes they were doing was the absolute minimum that he deserved.  For all we know he might well have ended up at least in court.

Then he died in 2009. And the narrative began to change around him almost immediately.

In hindsight the first sign got as to how Jackson's horrors were being pushed aside came during Season 3 of Glee when an entire episode was devoted to his music. The fact that a group of high school agent students were celebrating Jackson unironically struck me as questionable but I let it go.

 

Over the last decade there has been a sense of accountability in regard to so many of the great figures of our time and their horrible behavior, particularly in Hollywood. Not all of this is in regard to the 2016 election; there were signs of that accounting going on particularly when everything involving Bill Cosby became public starting around 2014.

Ever since both the left and Hollywood in particularly have been engaging in this kind of moral reckoning for so many of the biggest sacred cows, not just in Hollywood but in the world overall. Some of it, I will grant you, is long overdue; for more than I'd like; much is more about the left's deciding to constantly move to Overton Window so that something that was acceptable even last week is unacceptable today. But I don't want to just focus on that part yet and instead focus on pop culture.

During the last several years I've watched more than my share of documentaries on cable, particularly about notable figures in entertainment and sports. Many of them have enlightened me on tragic parts of our culture that I was unaware of. For the purposes of this article I want to only focus on prominent African-Americans.

I've seen Omit The Logic which makes it all too clear what a genius Richard Pryor was as a comic, the demons he fought his entire life and never truly beat and what an impossible man he was. I saw the story of Rick James, how his addiction to cocaine was horrible, how he was clearly sexually abusive and the reason he ended up in prison for assault. I saw Pariah: The Story of Sonny Liston arguably one of the greatest boxers of all time and who was viewed by society as a monster and bad man, not entirely inaccurately. And I saw W. Kamau Bell's incredible miniseries We Need To Talk About Cosby which made it very clear all of the good things he did for African-Americans and minorities, how significant and an entertainer he was and the imprint he made in pop culture while simultaneously showing how at every stage in his public life he was a rapist and sexual predator..

All of these documentaries and countless more are raw insights into people who most charitably can be called 'complicated'. It takes what is rare among people who makes these films: a utilitarian look at its subjects, arguing they did horrible things that has to be weighed against what they meant to many people in their public lives.  Many of them aren't easy watches but I'd argue their necessary ones.

All of them aired, I should mentioned, aired on Showtime, which has always been outstanding when it comes to documentaries.  And they aired one on Michael Jackson too. It celebrated the 40^th anniversary of Thriller.

Now I'm not saying that this isn't a very good documentary. If you want details on what is considered to this date the greatest music album of all time, Thriller40 is great. What strikes me as very strange is the tone.  All of the documentaries on Showtime have generally been no holds barred looks at the real life struggles of celebrities. In addition to the ones I've mentioned there was on Whitney Houston and the tragedies that befell her that is not only honest but more willing to look all the real triumphs and how they never were enough to overcome her demons. It debuted 2018 six years after Houston's overdose.

Thriller 40  first aired nearly fourteen years after Jackson died – and by contrast everybody in that film who's still alive has nothing but good things to say about him. Theirs none of the honesty that I see in so many of the films I mentioned above about the flaws in Jackson's character, which in many ways were worse than the ones above.

And this has been the rule rather than exception when it comes to anything involving Jackon even after nearly twenty years. We've already had a Broadway musical about him and this week we're getting a biopic that is one of the most anticipated films of 2026. And it's that part that I find the most troubling.

To be clear this film only got greenlit because of the Jackson Estate. Even then there are clearly limitations and the movie (according to critics) only goes as far as the late 1980s. By any definition we are getting the kind of biopic that so many critics despise as essentially love letters with no portrait of the real artist. I don't have a problem with many of them; I know that films like Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman are the most idealized versions of Freddie Mercury and Elton John, respectively but that didn't stop me from enjoying them.

I could not in good conscience do the same for Michael for a very good reason: it makes it clear it has no intention of telling the story that I really want to hear, the one that Hollywood is more than capable of telling and has been willing to when they are inclined. Peter Morgan has been more than willing to look behind the veil of royalty and Prime ministers with no hold barred over twenty years, Ryan Murphy was more than willing to look at  a realistic glare of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky and George & Tammy made no secrets of the real-life problems that drove both Tammy Wynette and George Jones. It's not like Hollywood couldn't have done the same for Jackson if they'd wanted to.

And as for not getting permission from the estate…well, I'm pretty sure the once and current president didn't give his blessing for The Apprentice last year and not only didn't that stop Hollywood from doing it they were more than fine nominated Sebastian Stan as Best Actor against Timothee Chalamet for playing Bob Dylan.  And that dealt with him the 1970s;  Jackson's real notoriety on the subject came much later. Needless to say Jackson is dead and Hollywood only wishes POTUS were.

I've written countless articles about Hollywood's repeated hypocrisy when it comes to their own sins in the last decade and will do so again because it is a gift that keeps on giving. Michael, however, is the most public admission of their own hypocrisy because not only does it show Hollywood backing away from a position it had during Jackson's life – a position which was most likely correct, for the record – it shows their complete willingness to engage in the cinematic whitewashing (play on words not entirely unintended) of a man whose crimes are likely as bad as the ones they've spent the last decade calling people out on. What makes it worse exponentially is that it now seems every fan of Jackson sees no conflict in going to see this film and their politics in everything else.

Because there absolutely should have been. The fact that not only did Hollywood greenlight this picture but at no time thought how this would make them look during everything that is going on with the allegations from the Epstein files just as the most prominent example of it.  How can the industry as well as the left who excoriates everything that involves the victims there in the same breath have no problem anticipating going to see this film. At this point I really think if there was a letter between the two men where Epstein told Jackson: "Thanks for the great time this weekend," Jackson's fans would shrug and say: "He must have liked his autographed copy of Thriller."

And to be clear that's just the most prominent example. As we speak California is removing Cesar Chavez's names from schools across the state because of the allegations of rape and assault by some of his followers.  I have no doubt the most prominent voices cheering this on will be seen in photos at the Michael premier and none of them will even blink at the contradiction. (Bill Maher, I should mention, pointed out this glaring hypocrisy. I'm glad to know somebody in Hollywood remembers the 1990s and 2000s.)

For me this is academic: I had no intention of seeing this film even before I learned the synopsis. And unlike everyone else on the left or in Hollywood I'm capable of separating the artist from the art. If this film were just an example of that I might be able to forgive its existence. But to not even deal even in a caption at the end of all of things Jackson did in his life that were horrible simply out of respect to his victims.

If nothing else Michael by its existence stands as cinematic proof of Hollywood and the left's blatant hypocrisy when it comes to being a moral authority on anything. It's one thing to make statements of tolerance and inclusivity and be anything but towards their enemies – that's not a flaw unique to anyone. But if you're going to make a multi-million dollar biopic of a man that many of you who are still alive justly mocked and privately condemned for the worst thing a person can do to a child, you no longer have the authority to wear pins condemning the administration on its policies, make public statements on anything political, and certainly not call out anybody in your industry or anywhere at all on behavior you consider immoral.

This isn't going to be enough to make me hand in my glove but its another reason why I feel completely justified in keeping them off when it comes to anything to say and do going forward.

 

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My score: 3.5 stars.