Coalition of the Sane Addendum: Ten Years and More Than 1100 Readers Later What I'm Finally Starting to Get From These Kinds of Columns (And Of Course Another Reminder Of What Will Always Be There)

 

I've passed two major milestones on Medium earlier this year. The first was that I've been writing here for ten years (I'm old) and around the same time I got to 1000 readers. I passed 1100 earlier this month so I felt now would be a good time to tell those of you who are fairly recent followers as well as members of this coalition a brief history of my writing.

I first came to Medium to write solely on all things pertaining to television: shows I was watching, shows I was found of, and all the awards surrounding it. It took me nearly five years – not coincidentally until we were into Biden's Presidency – for me to begin to widen my range slightly.

I've written about films books and sometimes criticizing my fellow critics. Around 2023 or so I began to write about American history, almost exclusively about political figures of the past and trying to draw a mirror to today. I've written about sports, mostly baseball, around that same time and every so often I would write about politics and the world today. Even then I would invariably do so as a historical or cultural parallel preferring to write through subtlety and history rather than the blunt sledgehammer that far too many people on social media and other major publications have.

Whatever I had to say about the world today for most of the first eight years I held entirely to the comments sections of other people's writing. While then as now, I found the overwhelming majority of their writing heavy-handed, tribal and overwhelmingly nihilistic I would try in my comments to offer what I intended as gentle criticism. In all of my comments I made it very clear I offered empathy and sympathy for what the writers were expressing in the majority of their articles but I always asked: "What do we do about it?" As I've told you, no matter what I said or whether I caged it politely, sarcastically and eventually angrily, I never got a response. At all.

I reached a point around 2023 or so when what I issued a supportive comment in favor of a moderate writer and was greeting with an attack essentially calling me 'A MAGAT'. I was shocked and attempted to reason with this individual and I was greeted with increasingly unpleasant names. Around this time I found out the block option on medium and though I'd never used it before, I very reluctantly did so this time.

Since then I've had to use this more and more extensively though each time its always with the deepest of reluctance. I don't like giving up on people, even those I completely and utter disagree with and even if they call me the worst names possible online. I always have considered it the option of last resort, mainly because I do feel everybody deserves an opinion and I don't like to personally censor anyone because I think both of us have been robbed of an opportunity. But as we entered Trump 2.0 and it became increasingly clear that the most extreme progressives were never going to accept reality as anyway but the way they saw it, I found myself doing so more and more often though even then I tried to give them every chance to prove me wrong about what I thought about them.

I always tend to give these writers and commentors three chances. First when I read their articles or comments and I offer a criticism or rebuke of my own. Most of the time I try to be civil with my approach but increasingly my harshness and sarcasm will take advantage of me.  If they choose to respond directly and if they choose to call me names instead of engaging in a dialogue (which still happens the overwhelming majority of the time) I compose a sarcastic and often lampoon their comments in a separate section of epitaphs I've titled "How to Talk To A Leftist" (Yes I know I'm taking a page from Ann Coulter's book, please don't remind me.) At the end of it, I basically beg them to block me themselves because I really do believe most of them are all about the content on this site and don't care if I insult them as long as I spell their name right.

It is only when they chose to resume name calling that I say goodbye forever and first block them, then mute them. While this has become easier over time, I always do so with a heavy heart even though I know I'm not losing anything by doing so.

Because the thing is, as no one less than W said of Obama, "I want them to succeed." I still agree with almost everything they said about the realities of the world and I want them to have a better one. I just disagree that their approach of writing pointed articles in magazines their opposition will never read, marching in a circle on college campus and street corners for a few hours every few weeks, and writing columns in sites like this that are so depressing they should come with a warning: "Repeated exposure will cause depression and possibly suicidal ideations' doesn't seem to be bringing about the progressive utopia that I assume is the end goal of everything they do. That to this point almost none of them have ever chosen to give a description of it in this column, only tell us what it isn't, has done nothing to dim my hopes that they don't have a plan somewhere. I mean, you don't keep saying you want to burn it all down if you don't have something to build once you've finished. (Yes I'm being sarcastic.)

To be fair in recent  months people in this coalition and even those who aren't official members have realized this isn't the best approach and are at least willing to talk it out. This week I had a lively debate on single-payer health care with Abby, which was one that I disagreed with but on policy not about ideology which I'll confess was very new to me. I've debated my issues on the reality of the manosphere and my logic for thinking there are some left-wing people in the world who want their own equivalent with Luc. And I've debated the difference between liberalism and progressivism with an engaging person who I have to call Shirley.  (I won't give their full names here but they know who they are.)

Furthermore increasingly some comments that even by my standard are pretty snidely sarcastic are being met in the spirit of what they meant. When I gave what is become my SOP response to progressive candidates and their failures, Rand responded politely and actually gave a list of candidates and elected officials who have. When I argued a man had written a depressing and doom-ridden piece, he acknowledged that he was feeling depressed about the world but he was trying to figure out his way through it. And in two separate cases involve criticism of feminist pieces where I was incredibly harsh, both times the writers actually thanked me and said that my response had made their pieces better. One was even nice of enough to credit me in a piece she wrote a few weeks later, which was moving. In all of these cases, I apologized for my snarkiness and I agree to follow all of them because they had given me the benefit of the doubt.

All of these are signs of improvement among dialogue. The problem is I keep running into people who represent the worst of what the left has to offer and genuinely seem determined to look at all the very real inequities and problems in the world and use them for content. I was reminded of this just the other when I ran into yet another strident feminist column but this time it didn't have a positive reaction.

In this case I will refer to the writer in question as Taylor because like so many people on this site I'm not going to dignify their piece or their writing with even the pseudonym they use.

To be clear it was the kind of seventh wave Feminist piece I've encountered in so many places other then this one. (Seventh Wave, for those of you want to know, allow any women to shoot any men and then claim, 'Stand Your Ground'.) It was neither that original nor even that interesting even by the standard of the kind proselyting on this site and Taylor demonstrated all the worst characteristics of so many online progressives: no objectivity, no logic, no sense of humor, and no awareness of history. This was proven by the first comment where they responded by "I'm sure you think your comment is pretty clever, but it just shows how tone deaf you are to what's actually happening in relationships."

Strike One.

At the end of their piece I went full sarcasm:

You're right. Let's just form two separate parts of the planet. All the men in one side, all the women in the other. That'll solve all our problems.

In fact let's have men-only countries and women only countries. We'll call it separate but equal. Sounds like a perfectly good term for me.

And of course women shouldn't bother to apply for jobs where men work. Or have bosses. Or really anywhere else. We should have companies that are only run by women with only women employees. And if men want to work there, they just check a little box that'll let them there. But only one. He can be the janitor. And if he works really hard we can give him a mop.

But you know the one place men are absolutely welcome. Giving you claps on this sites. Or paying you for articles when you call them the worst things possible. And of course every time a man leaves a comment on your site, you immediately block him because he would ruin your precious purity. In fact I bet you'll do this right now.

This was to be very clear complete satire. In it I was highlighting practices such as Jim Crow, apartheid, the very really problems with the workplace for women right now, the worst parts of tokenism and even the way this author herself chose to mine the very real problems in her essay as a way to get comment.  In that last paragraph I was essentially telling Taylor exactly what they were and what they were doing.

This was their exact response.

 

"Your plan is solid. I approve 100%. You guys just aren't lonely enough yet. Keep trying. You'll get there.

Wow. I mean, wow.

This checks all the boxes I had for so many of the worst progressives I've seen on this site and actually adds a couple I didn't know existed before.

To be clear (because Taylor clearly didn't)

I was suggesting the kind of bigoted solutions that took centuries to repeal and which all progressives consider evil.

I was suggesting a process that was completely and totally impossible on every level.

I was mentioning actual historic content. 'Separate but Equal' couldn't be clearer.

I was telling them that they were the worst kind of hypocrite and that all of this was just kind of context.

And all of this was delivered entirely satirically.

 

Calling what Taylor did 'strike two' doesn't seem to cover it. I don't know if Taylor is ignorant on history, can only take suggestions literally, has no sense of humor, was only doing this for content and clicks, or some horrible combination of all four.

To be clear I've received meaner responses, more dismissive ones, even some clever ones.  This was almost frightening. I was taking an MRI of a progressive's brain and it showed nothing. I'm amazed I managed to compose a response and then first block, then mute this individual quickly enough.

It took a lot of time to learn on this site and others that engaging in a battle of wits with someone on the left is unfair because far too often you're fighting an unarmed opponent. And honestly that's not as fun as it sounds.

It's also why, after the election, I'll be spending slightly less time on politics and social issues for the next several months increasing my focus where I like spending my time: TV, films, books, etc. And of course I'll continue to engage in the battle against those who I find big on talk but light on plans in the comments section. I'm just not going to do so as often either there or in my own columns.

Most of it is for me. I like writing about all of the above far more then I do poking the progressive bear. I don't mean that I'm not  as good writing about Lost or the films of Aaron Sorkin as I'm at about certain aspects of the political world – I've been told as much by quite a few people. But I'm just not sure I like myself as much when I do the latter.

Part of this is because there's no upside to it: mocking or challenging the left basically has the same affect of doing it to the right. It gives diminishing returns and it doesn't solve any of the problems of the world that we're facing. And at the end of the day I don't have a plan to make the world a better place then to many of the people on this site. I have suggestions and ideas of what we need to do but I'm smart enough to know these decisions can only be made above my paygrade and that whatever I think of is almost certainly not going to be read by an elected official of note. I can hope and dream, but my natural pragmatism will always get the way.

And I fear that I could become very much the kind of writer on this column and others I loathe: the kind of person who makes the same point over and over again to the point you might think I'm writing a boilerplate. I'm far, far from reaching that point to be sure but as someone who only tends to read his work after he posts it, I can tell when the tone is becoming the same.

Of course, it'll help that the end of year awards such as the Golden Globes and Critics Choice will come up which will send me into the delightful arms of so many wonderful streaming dramas, comedies and limited series. That's a rabbit hole I prefer to go down. And I have to say I've been on this site for ten years: I've yet to have to block someone because I thought Olivia Colman deserved the Emmy for The Crown over Emma Corrin. We critics are territorial but we all know the stakes are so small on this field.

Anyway as always thanks for your continued support and comments to this point and I will continue to do what I want regardless of what any of you tell me to do. Your claps and comments are always appreciated but I don't live or die by them. I know you're all big enough that you can take this in  a way so many others.

As We Approach Trump's Last Midterms A Look At How Second-Term Midterms Have Gone For Other Presidents (Spoiler: Usually Not Well)

 

As a historian I know two things happen when a President wins reelection. It's the political apex of their career and it's all downhill from there.

There's countless evidence of this in the record: Wilson's failure with the League of Nations, Truman's Presidency being stained by the firing of MacArthur and of course Nixon's landslide being undone by Watergate. But since we're approaching election day, I wanted to look on a more appropriate level. Once a President is a lame duck (and despite all of his posturing Donald Trump assuredly is) how does the electorate treat his party during the final midterms.

To do so I decided to use several specific metrics. First I was only going to look as Presidents who won reelection after the passage of the 17^th Amendment which allowed the direct election of Senators. (Prior to that, it had only been done my state legislatures.) This would mean that both Houses of Congress were subject to a direct referendum by the voters in a way that hadn't been true before.

Second I would make certain metrics. FDR was considering running for a third term even before 1940 but he didn't make the decision official until war broke out in Europe. As most people assumed after 1936 he would step down I will look at the 1938 election. Truman was against running for a third term so we're going to look at the 1950 election as his final midterms.

Third, I'm not going to consider continuity of other successors to Presidents who died in office. This eliminated Calvin Coolidge in 1926, LBJ in 1996 and Gerald Ford in 1974.

This gives us eight Presidents and elections to look at. Four are Democrat and four are Republican. In each I'll briefly discuss some of campaign issues, how many seats in the House and Senate the administration lost (or in some cases, gained) and just for fun, a major elected official who was voted out as a consequence and one who was voted in.

 

Woodrow Wilson: 1918 Midterms

The big issue going into 1918, as you might expect, was the Great War. Wilson had narrowly won reelection on the slogan "He Kept Us Out of War" and less than one month after being sworn he'd broken that critical campaign promise.

This was already difficult because the Republicans had managed to narrowly take Congress back in 1916 with a one seat majority over the Democrats. There was also division among Democratic leadership over how to pay for the war. As a result the Republicans would gain 24 seats in the House increasing their number to 240 and they would retake the Senate gaining five seats putting them in the driver's seat with 49 Republicans. Henry Cabot Lodge became majority leader and would become Wilson's nemesis as soon as Armistice Day came a week after Election Day.

Departures of Note: Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress from Montana, retired to run for the Senate. She lost.

Arrival of Note: Victor Berger would win a seat running for the Socialist Party in Wisconsin's 5^th district. The House would refuse to seat him. He would later run and win in 1922. This time they'd let him serve.

 

FDR: 1938 Midterms

The 1938 election cycle was the nadir of FDR's administration. Having failed in his attempt to pack the Court he'd used a lot of his goodwill up after his historic 1936 landslide election. Then he'd spent much of 1938 attempting 'the Purge' his attempt to primary conservative Democrats with liberal alternatives, which overwhelmingly failed. Combined with this was a recession that undercut much of the growth of the New Deal.

As a result the Republican Party, which many had predicted might go under after winning just Maine and Vermont two years earlier, managed a remarkable recovery. It might not seem that way because the Democrats still had overwhelming majorities in both Houses of Congress. But the Republicans would gain 81 seats in the House, bringing them up to 169 nearly doubling the amount they'd had after 1938. They also gained 8 seats in the Senate. The Democrats still had more then 2/3 of both Houses of Congress. But there were now around 20 unreliable votes among the Democrats – mostly in the South – which would allow conservatives to block some of his policies.

Departure of Note: George McGill would lose reelection in Kansas to Clyde Reed. To date no Democrat has won a Senate seat in Kansas since – though that may be about to change

Arrivals of Note: Robert Taft would win election to the Senate in Ohio and would very quickly become known as Mr. Republican and the main opposition to Democrats for the rest of his life. Sctott Lucas won reelection and he would eventually become Majority Leader under Truman until…

 

Harry Truman: 1950 Midterms

After Dewey didn't defeat him Truman's first term in his own right very quickly became a disaster. China would end up going Communist and the Korean War began on the eve of the election. Domestically there were issues of corruption within the Democratic Party and McCarthyism was beginning to rise.

The Democrats would maintain control of both Houses of Congress but they lost a lot of their majorities. The Republicans would gain 28 house seats, cutting the Democrats margin to 235-199. They also gained five seats in the Senate. One of the critical losses was Scott Lucas who'd lose reelection to Everett Dirksen.

Other Departures of Note: Millard Tydings, who FDR had tried to purge from the party in 1938 lost reelection to the Republican John Marshall Butler, after 24 years in the Senate. Elmer Thomas who'd represented Oklahoma in the Senate since 1926 lost renomination to Mike Moroney.

Arrivals of Note: Everett Dirksen would eventually become Senate Minority leader and would be critical for his work in passing the Civil Rights Acts of both 1964 and 1968. The Dirksen Senate Office Building in the Capitol bears his name with honor.

 

 

Dwight D. Eisenhower: 1958 Midterms

Republicans had hoped that Eisenhower's immense popularity would lead them to huge majorities in Congress and the Senate. It never worked out that way. This was especially true in 1956. Despite receiving the biggest electoral victory of any Republican to that point in history – 41 states and 457 electoral votes -  Congress which was still under Democratic control, remained so.

During 1958 the economy suffered a recession and the Democrats chose to blame Eisenhower. There was also consternation about the launch of Sputnik and busing. As a result they gained 48 seats in the House increasing their majority to 283. This number was so great the Republicans would not be able to take the majority back in the House until 1994 under Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution. This led the disappointed House Republicans to replace the minority leader Joe Martin with Charlie Halleck

It was even worse in the Senate. The Democrats would gain an incredible 15 seats in the upper chamber, in what was only the second (and to date last) time ten or more Senate seats changed hands in the midterms. They would have 64 members to the Republicans 34 (and two came for a special reason.)

Departures of Note: William Jenner, one of the biggest 'red baiters' in the Senate, right up there with McCarthy retired. Good riddance. John Bricker, one of the major conservative forces in Ohio, lost reelection to Stephen Young.

Arrivals of Note: Quite a few, actually. Edmund Muskie, Eugene McCarthy and Robert Byrd all won their first elections to the Senate and all would become vital voices of liberalism in the decades to come. This was also the first election in which Alaska would hold elections and because of a coin toss Ernest Gruening became senior Senator over Bob Bartlett. Gruening is best known for being one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tomkin Resolution.

 

Ronald Reagan: 1986 Midterms

In 1984 Ronald Reagan had the greatest electoral victory in American history with 49 out of 50 states and 525 Electoral Votes to Walter Mondale's 13. But it was a personal victory for Reagan and not the Republican Party. The GOP only gained 16 seats in the House and lost two seats in the Senate.

1986 was worse though it depended on where you looked. The Democrats lonely gained 5 seats in the House where they still held a healthy majority of 253 to 181. The Senate was another matter. In 1980 the Republicans had taken control of the Senate back for the first time since 1954 when they'd won 11 seats. In 1986 the Democrats defeated seven of the freshman incumbents making major gains including in Washington, South Dakota, North Carolina and Florida.

Departures of Note: Barry Goldwater would retire giving way to John McCain. Paul Laxalt also retired in Nevada and his Republican counterpart would lost to Harry Reid.

Arrivals of Note: Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Tom Daschle in South Dakota. Daschle eventually became minority leader before losing in 2004 to John Thune.

 

Bill Clinton: 1998 Midterms

During the 1990s America seemed fine with a divided Congress and in every election between 1996 and 2000 both parties were pretty much evenly divided in the popular vote and very few sides gained or lost seats. This might explain why the 1998 midterms were such an outlier.

The Republicans had been hoping to gain seat due to both 'the six year itch' and everything involving Monica Lewinsky. Instead the Democrats gained five seats in Congress and the Senate remained exactly the same: 55 to 45. The Republicans flipped three Democratic seats in Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky but the Democrats flipped three Republican seats in New York, Indiana and North Carolina. This may have been the inspiration for a line Aaron Sorkin said on The West Wing just prior to the 2000 elections: "Tell me democracy doesn't have a sense of humor.

As a result Newt Gingrich, who'd staked his parties reputation on the midterm results, was forced to resign from Congress. His immediate successor Bob Livingston did so just before he took office leading Dennis Hastert to take over.

Notable Departures: Al D'Amato, who'd been in the Senate since 1980 lost his big, for reelection…

Notable Arrivals: …to Chuck Schumer. Also Ben Nighthorse Campbell who'd first won election as  a Democrat and had switched parties in 1994 won reelection as a Republican.

 

 

George W. Bush: 2006 Midterms

By 2006 fatigue over the Iraq War and the War on Terror had led to exhaustion with the GOP as a whole. Combined with a 50 state approach held by DNC chairman Howard Dean, the Democrats retook control of both Houses of Congress for the first time since 1994. They would win 32 seats giving them the majority in the House to 233 and forced Dennis Hastert to resign. The Democrats would win five seats and thanks to Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders agreeing to caucus with the Democrats the Democrats took back the majority. Furthermore no congressional or gubernatorial seat held by a Democrats was won by a Republican. "Those were the days…"

Notable Departures: Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who'd been castigated by the left into becoming an internet meme was soundly defeated in Pennsylvania. George Allen, a moderate Republican in Virginia many thought would be a contender for President, made a blunder late in October and Jim Webb defeated him.

Notable Arrivals: Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester and Amy Klobuchar would be elected to the Senate along with Bernie Sanders. That said there were some new faces in Congress on the GOP side who have gone to significance: Michelle Bachman, Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan. Jordan is the only one still there.

 

Barack Obama: 2014 Midterms

The most recent six year itch hid Obama hard. The Republicans had already made a huge gain in House Seats with the Tea Party movement back in 2010 and they gained 14 more in 2014. This led to a combined total of 77 Democratic held House seats lost under Obama, the highest number of House Seat lost under a two term President of the same party since Harry Truman.

The Senate was worse. Throughout Obama's administration they'd manage to keep the Senate under Democratic control. In 2014 the bottom fell out as the Republicans took 9 seats that were formerly Democrat while holding every single Republican seat in play. The Democrats didn't win a single Republican seat. The result gave the Republicans their biggest majorities in both Houses of Congress since 1928. And believe me Democrats were in a great depression over the outcome.

Notable Departures: Almost every red state Democrat running. Tom Harkin in Iowa, Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, Jay Rockefeller in West Virginia (he retired before the bloodbath) and Mark Begich in Alaska.

Notable Arrivals:  Tom Cotton in Arkansas, Thom Tillis in North Carolina, Joni Ernst in Iowa, Bill Cassidy in Louisiana. Of course thanks in no small part to our current President those three aren't going to be in the next Senate though at best Democrats may get two out of three. (There's also Dan Sullivan winning in Alaska. Doing everything we can.)

 

One of things that is easy to forget in a world of 24 hour news networks, social media, the internet and our current President is one that every student of history knows by heart: "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

And that is that 'the six year itch'  - a phrase that seems perfectly appropriate as it was when it was coined in the 1990s –  almost never goes away. With Bill Clinton clearly serving as an outlier, it seems that whether a President is a great one or a horrible one, eventually the voters take their frustrations out on his party.  In some cases, such as Eisenhower and Reagan, their personal popularity never synced that much with their political party to begin with and even FDR, considered the greatest President by many historians did reach a point in his political life where the voters took their frustrations out on the Democrats.

In many cases there are outside factors: the Great War in Wilson's case, the Civil Rights battle in Eisenhower's, exhaustion with the War on Terror in W's. But in some cases the voters just want to turn the page even if there is no apparent reason to do so. Everything involving Iran-Contra didn't come to light until after the 1986 midterms so it wasn't a factor in the electorate's decision. And despite Obama's immense personal popularity as well as the fact the GOP had shutdown the government in 2013, the voters still rewarded the Republicans with huge majorities anyway one year later.

It's like the only person who truly believed at every level this midterms were going to go absolutely perfectly for him is the President, whose ability to live in denial was made clear after the 2018 midterms when he blamed the losses on Republicans for not displaying sufficient fealty. (Sufficient fealty to Trump has been proven to never be sufficient to him; it's just taken the GOP a decade to realize this obvious fact. )

Even allowing for the extraordinary circumstances of all things Trump there have always been parallels between him and so many of his predecessors: his personal hold over the electorate is out of sync with his party at a Congressional level. This was particularly true with Eisenhower and Reagan and a similar argument could be made for Obama.  There's also the added fact that his decision to purge the party of those who he considered insufficiently loyal has been more successful then FDR for much of his career, though we'd already seen variations of it during Gingrich's rise to power and the Tea Party as a whole when it came to primarying those deemed insufficiently conservative. It has rarely cost the Republicans at a Senate or House level the way it did those prior movements. This cycle is proof that that lock on the electorate is waning.

It should be noted that while many Republicans are towing the party line about holding on to power, their actions speak  far louder. They've already moved money out of many swing districts and are privately considering the House a lost cause. Earlier they essentially conceded Roy Cooper flipping a seat in North Carolina when they pulled money out of that campaign and they've done the same against Jon Osoff in Georgia. That JD Vance and Trump have spent much of the fall in Kansas – where again no Democrat has won since 1932 – shows how worried the GOP is about Adam Hamilton making history. And they've already spent nearly 300 million dollars trying to hold onto a seat in Texas that every single poll shows James Talarico about to make history for the Democrats.

Trump has spent as much of his administration hiding behind his usual bravado and flexing executive power, all the while knowing that the lame duck status that has destroyed every coalition that has gone before him is something he'd can't pretend doesn't exist. History already indicated that next Tuesday is going to be a good night for the Democratic Party at every level. All the denialism in the world (and he will no doubt put up a lot) can't stop the verdict of the voters. 

The other thing about history is those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. We all know how proud our once and current President is about not learning any lessons. The good thing about democracy is that the voters keep educating their leaders anyway.

I Survived 24 Hours Without My iPhone. I Think All Of Us Would Be Better If We Do Just That

 

This story is more personal and requires a bit more of an explanation.

I live in Bayside, Queens. Every week I go into the city to work out at my gym in Manhattan. Some time ago – I forget when – I decided to forego the locker room and just wear sweatpants and a sweatshirt on my way there.

My sweatpants have pockets which I close with a zipper. In my pockets I carry everything I'll need for my day in the city: my wallet, my keys, my prescription and of course my iPhone.

About a month ago I was doing my workout and at some point my phone felt out of my pocket. I noticed this while I was still working out. But because there have been days in my life when I leave the house without my phone and don't notice until I've been outside for a while, I made the assumption that this was one such day. I even mentioned this to someone else working out and he said: "I've been there."

So rather than look for my phone I completed my workout and then started to go home. This is a long process: I had to take the subway, I got lunch at Penn Station and then I had to wait for a train so it took nearly an hour and a half for me to reach home. Again I need you to keep this in mind.

All the way home I expected to find my cell phone on my bureau drawer in my bedroom where it is almost every day.

Now at this point almost everyone who is under thirty and the vast majority of readers may genuinely think I'm some kind of extraterrestrial. Some I suspect lost me with the title: "How could he possibly lose his phone? Doesn't he have it surgically grafted to his left hand like me?" (Please don't tell me if any of you have actually had this procedure done.)

My long-time readers, however, will know this is part of how I generally view technology in general. I didn't get an iPhone until 2021 when my cell plan was going to run out, I haven't updated it since I got it, and I didn't update my iPad until six months ago after a long rant on this blog in which I related the difference between a convenience and a necessity. In it I said I use my cell phone to make and receive calls and every so often use one of my apps when I can't get to my tablet or my computer. And that's still the case.

Now that being said when I got home and couldn't find my iPhone, I did in fact go into a complete and utter panic that went between hysteria, frustration and rage and sometimes all three at once. But it wasn't the franticness of a Gen Z or a teenager who can't function for five minutes without posting something on social media. Nor was I terrified if I was going to lose all of my personal data.

No this was the worry you have when you lose something expensive and you don't want to replace it if you don't have too. If I had lost my phone it was going to take me awhile to figure out how to replace, then get my data, then figure out who to get it to work, and all of that was going to take an immense amount of time, energy and money to do so. There was all the issue of how I was going to do most of this without a phone in the first place as at this point I had yet to figure out how to get my iPad to make and receive calls in the few months I owned it. I need to be clear that even as all this was going on there was a part of me that could see the humor in this. It almost seemed liked the 21^st century equivalent of a Zen koan: "Who do you call to find your missing phone?"

It didn't take a genius to figure out my phone was almost certainly still at the gym where it had fallen out of my pocket. The issue was how to confirm this. I spent and wasted nearly an hour trying to figure out if there was a workaround before biting the bullet and leaving my home and walking roughly two blocks to my neighborhood pizzeria. A friend of mine works there and I asked them if I could use his phone to call the JCC where it was and see if they'd found it. He was a gentleman and said yes.

After one minute, I got the answer: Yes it was there in the lost and found. And now I'm going to lose those of you I've already lost because what I did next was a decision none of you would make.

I had two choices: I could go back into the city which was going to take at least an hour, pick my phone up and then spend another hour going back home. My entire day would be wasted. Or I could go home, take a nap, spend the next few hours unwinding, go about the rest of my night in an orderly fashion, then get up bright and early the following day and go into the city and pick up my phone, all while gambling that anything that was vital to me would be picked up on my email and my iPad.

Well, I went home, took a nap for about an hour and a half, played video games, did some writing, watched Jeopardy, ate dinner, wrote some more, watched the premier of Line Of Fire, went to bed at midnight, got up at 7 AM and went into the city. My phone was there, and there were almost no text messages and no calls of note. I charged it and went back home, knowing that in good time I would be telling my followers of this 'harrowing experience'.

I would wager all the money I have or will ever make that there isn't a person under 21 that could have made the same decision or gone into a catatonic state had something like this happened. Yet when I discussed this experience with my therapist that day and indeed everyone who knows me, they were all able to laugh about it with me and were impressed how well I handled it.

Now if you've read my articles you know how much I truly believe that the fact that this generation lives its lives on its cellphone is responsible for the vast majority of the problems society is going through. I've already made the argument that so much of what we use as apps or other internet usages are conveniences – things that make our lives slightly easier – rather than necessities – things we need to survive – and that the biggest problem of this generation is that they genuinely believe everything regard technology is the latter.  They say this even as they argue how technology is destroying everything around them, particularly Silicon Valley, and they will do so while using the cell phones these companies make to post comments on the social media sites they founded all while using the apps they invented to get everything vital.

I've argued time and again that so many of the problems that young people and/or left leaning ones have is that they view every situation as a binary choice between two absolutes. I suspect that this is true in regard to all things Internet and Silicon Valley related and to them there are only two ways to see it: Either you are a complete and utter slave to technology or you live entirely off the grid with no access to at all. None of them will admit that they can't exist even a moment without the horrible things technology has given them. And because they can only see these two extremes they spend their existences moaning.

But like everything else there is a middle ground. We're even starting to see signs of it among the young people themselves with the so-called 'dumb phone movement' and the way that in quite a few states – including mine – the government is having cell phone bans while on school grounds. I approve of both of these ideas as steps in the right direction for the next generation and considering the former is basically coming from millennials and Gen Z  is one of the first signs of growth among them that gives me reason for hope.

As someone who's spent his entire life arguing for a middle ground throughout every part of society there are many things you can do. I'm not saying you should cut the Gordian Knot and just complete get off social media altogether – though I'd honestly think everything in the last decade would be the biggest argument to do so – but at the very least you could reduce what I'd call your 'internet footprint'.  I'd argue you should come in with a specific amount of non-work-related screentime – perhaps between an hour to ninety minutes – and limit yourself to that.

That's essentially where I am right now. As I've mentioned the only social media site I'm on is Facebook and almost of that is about publishing my columns on that site for some of my friends. I spend quite a bit of it on Medium itself and the rest is divided fairly evenly between some entertainment sites and eCommerce ones. There was a period six or seven years when I spent much of my late nights doing a primitive version of doomscrolling on my computer, and that often ate up an hour of my nights. I managed to essentially cut myself off from in the aftermath of the 2024 election – almost all for my own mental health -  and I really haven't done in a year and a half or so. It wasn't easy but it was doable.

Now I'll confess that this may not be as easy for someone like me, in their late forties, and someone who has been given a cell phone as a toddler. But given the rise of the dumb-phone movement, it's encouraging to know that some people do admit it’s a problem.

I'm not saying you have to give up your streaming services or throw Uber in the recycle bin or that you should stop using eBay. I am saying that I'm been regulating my use of that as well. I will spend some time browsing on both Amazon and eBay but I've made the decision to only make one set of bulk purchases per month on each site and trying to limit the cost of my purchases to about $100 per month. Don't get me wrong; I still buy groceries on this site every week but I've always spent far more time buying food and drink at the brick and mortar convenience stores and restaurants around me.

And while I do watch a lot of streaming shows on their services I still will buy DVS copies of individual seasons of streaming movies and when shows that are from streaming such as Max or Paramount Plus run their episodes I tend to watch them when they air either in marathons on HBO or on Showtime itself. I've used my DVR to record entire seasons of shows when marathons take place and then watch them at my own pace. Part of this, I'll admit, may be my own quirks but considering how many streaming services are now going back to dropping an episode a week I think they've acknowledged there's a market for it. (Considering that I've read over the last few months that there's been an increasing desire for physical media I'm glad to know I'm not alone on that anymore.)

None of this requires you throw your phone in the sewer and going to Montana and start a compound. It just requires figuring out the difference between a convenience and a necessity. I'm not per se saying it will make your life happier but when two of the main terms for people who spend their lives on social media and phones are 'doomscrolling' and 'bed rot' it would seem to argue even they're acknowledging they're not exactly living their best lives using them.

All I'm saying is: maybe turn your phone off tonight. Go to your nearest supermarket and buy a frozen dinner.  Buy a DVD player and watch Deadwood. Get a record player and buy an LP of Adele. And maybe consider taking Instagram, Twitter, and every other major app off your phone. I mean, when was the last time a tweet or photo from any major celebrity or politician did anything but send you in a spiral? Hell, it'll piss off Bezos and Zuckerberg and Musk more than anyone of your tweets and hashtags ever did. And I'd think that would be reward enough.

Now if you'll excuse me, my copy of Dexter: Original Sin on DVD just arrived and I want to put in my collection. I think I'll put it between my copies of Season 1 of Fallout and Seasons 1 and 2 of The Bear. (I'm sorry, I just wanted to blow the minds of some of my readers with that fact.)

Lost Character Study - John Locke: A TV Character Unlike Any Other

 

In February of 2010 just before the final season of Lost debuted, Entertainment Weekly published an issue in which they ranked the 100 Greatest Characters in The Last 20 Years. This list ranked literary, comic book, movie, television and even some internet creations that the editors considered the standouts of the 20 years this magazine had been covering pop culture. And because we were right in the middle of the New Golden Age of Television there were a lot of familiar faces from that era. (As always I'm going to focus on the era Lost was on the air.)

Tony Soprano, Vic Mackey, Don Draper and Dexter Morgan had critical places along the list, along with Buffy Summers, Sydney Bristow, Jack Bauer, Gregory House,  and Omar Little. Al Swearengen and Walter White weren't there, but I was willing to forgive this because Patty Hewes of Damages and Kara Thrace of Battlestar Galactica were – and also because on that list was John Locke.

Even before Lost's run was over it was the consensus of both fans and critics alike that Terry O'Quinn's work as John Locke was one of the great performances in TV history. Nikki Stafford never hesitated to gush over it in every volume of Finding Lost and Back to the Island regularly sings O'Quinn's praises, eventually coming to the conclusion "He is perhaps the single most fleshed out well-developed character in the show and Terry O'Quinn is remarkable at playing every little micro-expression that might plausibly flutter across Locke's face."

Indeed every time I've rewatched Lost over the year what I always take away from O'Quinn's work time and again are how he can convey so much whenever the camera focuses on him without even saying a word. We see in the Pilot when he smiles beatifically as it starts to rain and everyone else seeks shelter. The way he always seems to have a smile that is utterly content and out of context with what is happening during so much of the first season. The look of astonishment when Eko hands him a bible in which a segment from the orientation film from the Swan is visible. The look of panic when the timer runs out for the first time and he watches the numbers start to spin into hieroglyphics. How unable to speak during a vision quest when he sees Boone, he tries to express his regret at letting him die.  How after he has been paralyzed he faces the fact that his future is in a wheelchair. And most of all that look on his face when he's standing on a chair in a motel room preparing to commit suicide and the weight of every single failed decision can be seen in that expression.

It is a level of performance that is deserving of the Emmy he won in 2007 for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama as well as the two other nominations he got in 2005 and 2010, one that ranks with the characters listed above who also received multiple Emmy nominations and often multiple Emmys for their great performances. Yet O'Quinn's work is vastly different from all of these great performances in a way that's vitally different. Because all of them – and this includes Al Swearengen and Walter White – walk through their series with a cockiness and certainty of what they are doing, even as they do often horrible things, sometimes physically, often psychologically to all those around them. There's an air of confidence and swagger when you see Vic Mackey beating up thugs on the street or Dexter Morgan stalking his prey at night. There's even that level of confidence to Sydney Bristow when she's doing a mission undercover or when Patty Hewes is in her office.

By contrast all of the writing about John Locke makes it very clear that he is none of those things. As early as Season Three Nikki Stafford writes: "The history of Locke is that he will always be a pawn and never a player." The author's of Back to the Island refer to him as a 'mark', a 'born sucker' and 'deep down, something of a dupe'. And the writers never let us forget that fact. For all the confidence Locke has when he's striding across the island, brimming with certainty, we know from his flashbacks and so many of his interactions on the island that it's all a front. And one that is visible to most of the other castaways the more time they spend around him.

I think that's why what seems to be an outlier in the flashbacks of Lost – the one in Further Instruction which shows him at a grow-op" – is actually just as vital to understanding John as all of the interactions with his father.  In the final part of the flashback John has taken Eddie hunting, ostensibly to find out what he knows and possibly kill him, but in reality to learn why the cops decided to pick him when they wanted to infiltrate it. Eddie tells him that his psychological profile has revealed that "he was amenable to coercion'. He was told as much by Anthony Cooper in a far more snide way when he was conned out of a kidney and now a cop is basically telling him the exact same thing.  Locke refuses to accept this as a reality – and when we see him four years later he falls for Cooper's cons one last time and ends up getting pushed out a window.

I would contest the idea that Emily St. James posits in Back to the Island as 'a kind of analogue for the angriest, most vengeance driven voices in the United States in the post 9/11 period." I won't deny that his devotion to the island will resemble a kind of religious fanaticism where that parallel could be driven but I've never seen the connection there the way I do with 24 and Homeland. I think that Nikki Stafford's analysis of his character in Season Three is more on point:

"He suffers anger issues because of what his father did to him, he doesn't trust other people and while both would suggest he's a violent man, he's the opposite. He's unable to lash out at people, even when they deserve it, because of his underlying fear that he's the spineless coward his father has made him out to be."

This is true throughout his history on the show. If he doesn't stop to think about he can throw his knives with perfect aim and kill people he thinks are a threat, such as he does to Naomi in the climax of the Season 3 finale. But if he stops to think about it – as he does when he points a gun at Jack moments afterward – he'll fire a shot into the ground and then walk away in defeat. Similarly in The Brig when Cooper is tied to a post helpless before him, he's given a knife and told he has to kill him to prove his value to the island. He's clearly being manipulated by Ben at this point but the viewer's seen all the horrible things Cooper has done over the past three seasons and we'd be fine with his murder. And yet despite all the horrible things he's been put through by him, John can't follow through.

So in order to do so Richard, who wants to use him to remove Ben from power, gives him a file on Sawyer's history and reveals the two men's connection. He then goes to Sawyer that night and says he has Ben locked up in the Black Rock and that he wants him to kill him. Eventually Sawyer is pushed to his limit and pushes John to the ground with a gun to his head. "Why don't you do it?!" he screams. And in a moment of brutal honesty John shouts: "Because I can't!"  Coming from a man whose mantra has been 'Don't tell me what I can't do!" this is arguably the biggest admission he's made to anybody about what a failure he's always been and what he considers himself to be.

And this is something Sawyer never forgets. In the final season when 'Locke' shows up in the Barracks to a drunk and broken Sawyer, it takes less then five minutes in his presence for Sawyer to figure out something that neither Ben nor Richard couldn't figure out when they met him when he returned to the island: he's not John Locke. 'Locke' is taken by surprised and asks how Sawyer's knows. And Sawyer's answer is honest is brutal:

"Because Locke was scared. Even when he was pretending that he wasn't."

That too separates John from so many characters above. I don't remember ever seeing a moment watching a show Dexter or Mad Men or any other character show fear. They were afraid of people learning who they really were, no question, but they were always able to put up a front in public. By contrast so many times over five seasons you could tell how scared Locke really was and a lot of time he wasn't even bothering to pretend.

As I mentioned in my entry on Jack Shephard Jack was wrong on almost every major decision he made on Lost. And because most of the time his decisions were made because Locke was making the opposite argument John was right about almost all of them. In the aftermath of their first critical discussion right before they were about to blow the hatch John told Jack that all of this was happening for a reason, and that they'd all survived the crash because they'd been chosen to be here. He was right about the importance of the button being pushed – and of course when he decided not to do so with disastrous results, he then made the understatement of the century in a hatch that was imploding around him: "I was wrong."

Locke was right about that the people on the freighter weren't there to save the survivors, something Jack ignored at the end of Season 3 and kept denying even after the freighter folk showed up. He was right when he told Jack leaving the island would destroy him and that one day he'd want to come back. He was also right on many other decisions throughout the series. He believed that the message he got from Eko would lead them to Jack and it ended up doing just that. He was right about Ben lying about being the only one to see Jacob and that he was trying to fool his people. And he was right when the island starting blooping through time that by going back to the Orchid was the only way to stop the island from skipping.

Nikki Stafford writes in her summation of Lost that: "Fundamentally John was right about everything." Yet through his entire tenure on the island no one ever gave him credit for that because he had a different principle then every other character. Because the island granted him his legs back, he became its disciple from that moment. And as a result his first priority throughout every season was the island rather than any of his fellow survivors. He also basically followed his own council rather than being part of the group. Even when he was part of the decision making process during the first two seasons he had other priorities: the hatch in Season 1, the button in Season 2.

It's a shame Locke seemed more determined to follow the island then try to be part of the group because he was better at it then he gave himself credit for. Charlie wouldn't have gotten off heroin without his help, Claire and Walt  seemed to find he had good fatherly instincts and he tended to treat Kate better than Jack did the first couple of seasons. He was always less judgmental and self-righteous then Jack during the first half of the series to the other survivors always trying to be respectful and polite. And whenever he chose to step up, such as when Jack, Kate and Sawyer were abducted by the Others in the first half of Season 3 and when he took over when the island started skipping through time, he was superb at it.

The problem was how John saw the island and everyone else did. Famously in White Rabbit Locke tells Jack "I've looked into the eye of the island and what I saw was beautiful." (John has no idea that the Smoke Monster was manipulating him even then.) At no point did any of the other survivors or indeed almost everyone else who ended up there feel that same way. They were all focused on two things: survival and rescue.  And it became clear as early as Season 2 John really wasn't interested in either.

By Season 3 he was openly doing everything possible to impede rescue at every level, blowing up the Flame, the submarine and fatally wounding Naomi. When he tried to tell the survivors in the Season 4 "All I've ever tried to do is act in everyone's best interest," Jack wasn't the only one looking at John as if he were crazy. As he'd tell Miles – while putting a live grenade in his mouth, mind you – he believed he was the sole person who could protect the island and the well-being or wishes of even those who followed him was always secondary.

At that point no one was following John willingly and he was barely hiding the fact that he was taking a dictator like approach in his leadership. He still hadn't changed that much and he was capable of manipulations of Ben and Sawyer, who'd already fooled him more than once in previous seasons. As a result most of the people who followed him to the Barracks ended up getting killed by the mercenaries (though to be fair Ben had his own role in that) and he had to force Hurley at gunpoint to come with him to find the cabin. While he's being incredibly snide at the time when Ben says: "John's still looking for someone to tell him what to do," he's completely right. Locke has no plan beyond the idea when he takes everyone to the barracks and he's still one step behind Ben's manipulations the whole way. The fact that's he right doesn't change the collateral damage that happens in his wake.

In 'This Place is Death', Nikki Stafford makes the bold argument that while "Locke may be crazy, he's still the bravest character on this show."  I always found that debatable; many characters time and again had shown themselves capable of making brave and selfless decisions putting the survival of the group ahead of their own. But it's hard not to deny the decision John makes at that point isn't up there.

John loves the island more than anything and he knows because Ben told them once you move the island you can never come back. He's also been told that he has to get all of the people who left together to return to the island though he has no idea how he can do that. And he is told by Richard that the only way he can do that is to die. So that John believes all of this and still decides to move the island (on a broken leg, no less) does rank as  one of the biggest sacrifices any character will ever make. That he's essentially being lied to by larger forces doesn't negate his bravery.

For that reason 'The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham'  - what viewers all know is the final episode in which we see the 'real' John Locke is incredibly sad even though we know beforehand basically what's going to happen. And the worst part is John absolutely should have seen it coming.

With the exception of Walt none of the other survivors are happy to see him. With good reason. Despite just how miserable all of their lives have been in the three years since they left the island, not one of them wants to go back. What's more all of them have not forgotten all of the truly horrendous things John did in the name of the island that led to them that made a traumatic experience emotionally, even more draining for all of them. They're clearly all carrying survivor's guilt for all the people who died and who they left behind that has already caused them to fragment all over the world and Locke is a living reminder of it.

All of them treat him with varying degrees of scorn, fear and hatred, which despite our sympathy for John is still justified at every level.  Indeed with each rewatch it's just a reminder that John is still being manipulated  by larger forces: an agent of Widmore is ferrying him around, Ben is following him from a distance, the Man in Black is manipulating him and he's trying to do this for the approval of Jacob. The fact that he truly feels that he can disrupt their lives after three years and just ask them to back to a place they escaped – one that he's already been told will very likely kill them if they return – makes you wonder if the only reason he's doing this is because it will get him back to the island and that's the only place he's whole.

In a sense Locke's death in a dirty hotel room at the hands of his worst enemy is fitting for the larger theme. The mission statement for Lost was always "Live Together, Die Alone" and it takes until the series is over for us to realize that the characters all needed to learn how true that was. Locke never once followed that mission brief and as a result dying alone was the only fate he could possibly earn. That the last thought that went through his head as Ben strangled him was "I don't understand' is also sadly appropriate for John who did everything because of a higher purpose that he never truly understood is entire time on the island.

Writing about Locke in 'The Substitute'

In a way there’s so much about John Locke being laid to rest that is fitting for Locke as we’ve known him for four and a half years on Lost. Just before they are about to put him in the ground, Ilana says: “We should say something. Didn’t any of you know him?: “Did anyone know him?” And there is this long, tragic pause before Ben finally says that he did.

What hurts the most is that, even if everyone who had survived the show to this point been standing over Locke’s grave, there would still be this long tragic pause. Because for all Locke’s brilliance as a character he spent the entirety of the series on his own journey, slowly but surely isolating himself from everyone else on the plane, then in the Others to the point that no one knew anything about him. It’s fitting that Ben gives the eulogy because the sad truth is, he’s the only character on the show who really knew John at all.

That’s why I find Michael Emerson’s performance in this moment perfect because it is awkward, genuine and remorseful – three things we’ve never associated with Ben for the entire series. "John Locke was... a believer. He was…a man of faith. He was…a much better man than I will ever be. And I’m very sorry I’m murdered him… His eulogy does get to the core of who Locke was, and the real reason Ben spent so much of the series manipulating him, resenting him and finally killing him. Locke was everything Ben wasn’t and as a result of his actions, the island is facing the consequences.

John Locke was one of the greatest characters in TV history and like so many great ones we've never truly seen one like him since. I've only seen variations of him in some of the shows that Damon Lindelof did after Lost ended: Matt Jamison, the minister who keeps trying to find some proof of miracles in a world after the rapture in The Leftovers, Adrian Veidt in Watchmen convinced that he is the savior of mankind even after bringing about an apocalypse, Hal Jordan in Lanterns, needing to hold onto the ring because it's the only thing that makes him whole.

Nikki Stafford was right when she said that John Locke really was remarkable. Emily St. James is right when she said deep down, he was something of a dupe. It is that contradiction that made him, as the show would say, truly special.

 

 

 

Homicide Rewatch: Strangled, Not Stirred

Written by Linda McGibney ; story by Anya Epstein & Julie Martin

Directed by Jay Tobias

 

I personally feel that this episode is the weakest of Season 6 and arguably one of the worst in terms of quality in Homicide's entire run.

I admit part of my bias comes from the way it was advertised at the time. During Homicide's run NBC would promote many episodes the way they did basically every other network did on TV during the 1990s which was to sensationalize and frequently give away many of the critical plot revelations. For Homicide this was less of a problem that other procedurals. This was after all a series built more on how the cases affected the detectives and most of the murders were never built on story but the interrogations.

The problem was, unlike the overwhelming majority of the episodes in the series, 'Strangled, Not Stirred' is essentially built on a twist in the final act and the promos for this episode essentially gave it away with the killers confessing how and why. Furthermore since the episode – almost unheard of for Homicide – not only shows you the actual crime but leads the viewer down a false path until they get to the final act, I watched this episode knowing before the detectives did what the truth was. This made the investigation and how it got there, which is almost always the best part, something of  a chore and by the time the detective get to that confession you really do feel like you've wasted your time.

With that being said even if the promos had been more discreet about the twists and turns this still isn't a very good episode. It should be, as it puts Ballard at the center of the investigation and looks deep into what it's like to be a woman in a frequently sexist world. Callie Thorne has nailed Ballard from the jump and even when Ballard isn't leading an investigation her interactions with Gharty as well as the rest of the unit crackle with energy every time she's onscreen. The problem is she and Gharty are basically nailed with a storyline that seems like it's something more in line with so many of the 1990s sex-driven dramas on basic cable. This really does seem more like a case I'd see on Silk Stalkings or Pacific Blue (or even Law & Order: SVU) then Homicide. It doesn't help matters that the B-storyline, where we see the next stage of what Meldrick has been doing with the Mahoney organization, is far more compelling than the action here.

What's all the more frustrating is that this is one of the rare episodes on Homicide – for that matter 1990s TV – which is entirely written by women and while it does have some insight into the feminine side of Ballard, it's basically buried in a plot that telegraphs every action so that the dumbest viewer could see it coming from Fort McHenry even if they had missed the promos.

It starts very much like one of those shows: couple at a nightclub who've just moved to Baltimore, been married for six years, making friends with a woman we'll learn is Jennifer Gerrick, 26. The wife goes home for an early night, the husband takes Jennifer to her car, leans in for a kiss – and takes out a taser.  It was formulaic then and probably more so today. Ballard and Gharty find her in the alley the next day, strangled with her pantyhose. Her wallet and jewelry are still on her but the twist is there's no sign of sexual trauma. Ballard notes her make-up has barely been smudged. The only sign this crime bothers Laura a little is when Gharty says she looks like a nice girl and Laura doesn't answer immediately, saying she hates working Sundays -  a remark that will turn out to be prescient. We then see the couple – Nick and Helen – acting flirtatious and bantering about to have sex. The viewer naturally assumes Helen has no idea what her husband did last night. When we see Helen and Nick in a nightclub later and she's talking about one of the women, we almost wonder if the couple swings and that's what she's worried about

When the detectives go to Jennifer's address they learn from her great-uncle – who she has lived with – that he honestly expected her to get arrested. Her aunt ends going to the morgue and she says she wants to see Jennifer's body. Her aunt doesn't want to look at her and Ballard tries to argue it looked peaceful. Mrs. Gerrick doesn't believe her but Ballard knows she has to say this to begin the investigation proper. The odd quirk is that Mrs. Gerrick says she was right. She does look pretty.

Dyer tells them that there's no sign of sex of any kind, barely any drinking. There are no skin cells, no fibers, only a single hair that isn't the victims. The only thing the detectives have to go on are contusions on the neck, which come from a stun gun. (Tasers weren't introduced by 1998.) Ballard and Gharty tell them they have no motive, no suspect, and no witnesses. Giardello seems to speak her up, saying she has 'moxie'.

At her place of work her employer tells them that Jennifer didn't have a boyfriend and used to go to a lot of trendy clubs. Ballard actually names one when the owner can't think of it immediately. When they go to the club this is when the case gets personal as the owner dismisses Jennifer Gerrick as a "Saturday Night Hon." (I suspect 'Hon' is a euphemism for something far worse.) "Dressed to the max, no coat, comes in looking for an escort home."  This is clearly the nineties equivalent of slut-shaming and Ballard immediately reacts. 

Munch and Kellerman are recruited to help with the interviews of the customers at the bar that night. When Falsone says there's a rule in Charm City that anyone who goes out to a bar alone is 'looking for a good time' Ballard takes her aggression out on him. "I go out alone. Sometimes I even go out on a Saturday Night."  When Stivers offers support and calls her partner a Neanderthal Falsone doesn't take it well.

Eventually they end of at Nick and Helen's and Helen seems genuinely shocked about what happened to Jennifer. The two of them talk and we every reason to think Helen has no idea what her husband did. That night Helen doesn't seem freaked out by what happened she just doesn't want to go out. Helen notes that Nick is spending too much time looking at other women and the way he calls his wife 'frigid' leads us down the same path. Nick chooses to go out without her, calling her a bitch as she leaves.

Not long after they find Gerrick's car – with her coat in the trunk – Gharty tells them they got a call. Another woman has been found strangled with her pantyhose. The victim is Elaine Berretta and she's been dumped in an alley. The woman has been missing a week and killed around the same time. Naturally, she went missing on a Saturday. And naturally there's now a media frenzy with the reporter asking if the Mayor will close down restaurants on the Charles.

Beretta's roommate is upset that Detective Higby was…Detective Higby, thinking she just ran away from home. Ballard has to tell his roommate that Elaine was almost certainly dead by the time she was reported missing. Talking at the night club they recognize Elaine Beretta and that she met with a guy who is clearly Nick – who wasn't there with his wife. By going through the charge cards Gharty recognizes Nick Montgomery as someone they interviewed who was there the night Elaine was.

Despite them matching Montgomery at two crime scenes both Giardello and Danvers tell them that they don't have enough for a search warrant. Ballard and Gharty go back to the Montgomery home and press him on the fact he bought Gerrick two drinks and didn't tell them. It's when they bring up Elaine Beretta that Helen gets upset and walks away. Nick Montgomery seems incredible slick and meets the metric of a chauvinist pig, circa 1998 when they were still allowed to be more obvious. Helen seems upset about what happened and the way he just bought her a drink.

Then they find out in Dallas where they once lived Helen's sister was found strangled before they left town. Nick Montgomery was the prime suspect but besides phone records there's no evidence to speak of. Then Helen Montgomery shows up with her husband's stun gun. She tells them she always suspected that Nick killed her sister but then they moved to Baltimore to start a new life, then they started fighting again. This doesn't quite square with what we've seen in the previous sequences but we're still inclined to believe her.  When they interview her husband he puts on an act that would completely seal the deal on Mad Men until Gharty pulls out the stun gun. Ballard tells him the prongs on the gun match the ones found on Gerrick and Beretta. He says his prints are on the stun gun but his wife killed the women.

The sequence when Ballard and Gharty confront Helen has some of the elements of the way these sessions work: with Gharty being somewhat of an aggressor and Ballard saying: "He said, she said. She said, he said. So hard to know which to believe. That is…" And then presents a comparison of two hairs on Angela's body and Jennifer's pantyhose are both blonde. They make it clear it's a simple choice: Whoever testifies gets life without parole, whoever doesn't gets the death penalty. It's the way she confesses: that the two of them killed them together as an aphrodisiac. They show the way they took Gerrick to their home, put them on their mattress and then apparently had sex after they killed their victims – with the dead body on the bed. "The moment she died our love was perfect," is honestly a line that's not worthy of being said on this show.

And it's not much better when we learn Helen turned on her husband because he 'cheated on her' – killing Elaine without him.  When Ballard asks the question why she turned him in Helen's response. "He killed without me. If he hadn't betrayed me, we could have gone on happily ever after. I may be a jealous bitch, but my husband's a cheating bastard. And there's no way I was letting him get away with that." It really seems like  a storyline Criminal Minds would be embarrassed by.

He tells them Angela and he were having an affair and that when she found out Nick said he'd end it. She told him that to save their marriage they had to kill her. Helen strangled Angela and he held her down.  Then between Dallas and Baltimore she killed two more women, one in St. Louis, one in Pittsburgh. Ballard refuses to believe Nick. When Gharty tells them they have to look at the other bodies Ballard refuses to initially believe Helen was involved. It's then Ballard erupts: "That man is a pig. He's a misogynist pig bastard and I can see it in his eyes." For once Gharty keeps his mouth shut and Ballard acquiesces. They get to the crime lab and Gharty says that they found hairs on Angela's body: one was Nick's, two were Helen's. Helen's hair matches the one they found on Gerrick's clothing. Gharty says that they should say that hair was found on Gerrick's pantyhose. If Helen is innocent, she'll know they're lying. If she's guilty, she won’t.

The meat of this episode comes when Stivers finds a little blue envelope in her mailbox with all the information needing to find who committed the triple homicide, the wheelman, the weapon we saw last week, along with a witness. Kellerman and Falsone received similar envelopes that basically have given them everything they need to close the murders involving the Mahoney crew.

Drug murders, as we know full well, are notoriously difficult to solve so you'd think the detectives and Giardello would be thrilled that they were able to change names from red to black with so little work. But there's a distinct lack of delight in Stivers' voice as she reads through the details and a lack of enthusiasm as she and Frank start doing the work to close her triple.

As I mentioned in the previous episode much of this part of the Mahoney storyline steers as close to 'copaganda' as Homicide ever got. What manages to redeem it – at least in this episode – is that none of the actors seem thrilled about what is going on. They're going to do their jobs and close the cases – they'd be guilty of malpractice if they didn't – but the implications are becoming harder to ignore for the unit.

Falsone immediately goes to Meldrick to assure him everyone got 'their little white envelopes'. He then informs Meldrick that everyone in the unit knows whose behind this. When he asks Meldrick how long it will be until Gee figures out, Meldrick seems unconcerned. He shouldn't be.

The interrogation of the witness which Frank and Stivers lead is fascinating. As it goes on unfolds the witness makes it very clear that he's not worried about blowback – the Mahoney crew is too busy fighting each other to come back on him. However Frank  - who is on the outside of whatever's going on and unlike Stivers doesn't know what's happens – asks the question half the unit doesn't want asked: "What started this war?" According to Antoine, the Mahoney machine choked on its money…and a little dirt. Frank seems a little nonplussed on the explanation: "The Mahoney crew was never that calm on things to begin with." But when Frank and Stivers ask: "Who's winning this war?" The witness's answer is more on point then he knows: "Ain't it you?" Stivers is clearly startled. Frank chuckles, clearly thinking this is just bluster.  When Frank and Stivers arrest the shooter he immediately knows who put him in for the murder.

 Even Giardello, who will turn a blind eye to his detectives actions in the unit, is clearly aware of what is happening and he doesn't believe Bayliss when he says whoever it is has a gift for this sort of thing. Then Giardello asks Falsone: "Any idea who it might be?" And when Falsone tries to say the cases are down who cares, Al doesn't believe it and he clearly knows exactly who's doing this – because he immediately pulls Falsone aside and tells him he wants to meet with Meldrick.

The trial board involving Lewis' suspension is coming up the following week. Giardello tells him that if he doesn't contest the findings he would get off with a reprimand, stress counseling and 5 days lost vacation. (This is for an assault of a woman who named the department in a civil suit. Naturally if it had been a civilian Meldrick would have lost ten days of vacation. I threw that in to appease certain people.)  However when Giardello makes it clear that Bonfather wants him to transfer out of Homicide Meldrick actually gets nervous and Giardello lets him twist in the wind, saying it might be better for him. He's willing to talk to Bonfather. Then he lays down the law. "But whatever's going on between you and the Luther Mahoney people, it ends right now." Then he walks away, refusing to give Meldrick a chance to dig himself in deeper.

The one redeeming aspect of it is Thorne's performance throughout. Her rage against the all-too casual sexism, and the way Nick's obvious chauvinism blinds her to the truth is a refreshing reversal of gender norms. It also fits the pattern of Ballard not wanting to believe the worst in women much like her as established in 'All is Bright'. And the way she confides in Falsone about why she ended up in Seattle in the first place. She said she left her job in Seattle and for the first time how she really thought she was going to find someone to share her life with, someone to take her to all the nice restaurants. Then she decided if no one would take her she'd go alone and that she could have been Gerrick or Beretta.  It's a sign of openness we don't see that often. (Of course there's the very real possibility this may have led the writers to create the worst storyline in the show's history…but like all fans, I'm not talking about this until I have too.)

As I've said the worst episode of Homicide was still better than 90 percent of everything else on TV and honestly this is the weakest episode we've had since probably Thrill of The Kill nearly three years ago. That's a pretty good track record for any TV show – and fortunately we've got some good stuff the rest of the way.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

When Giardello tells Ballard she has moxie, Gharty says: "I thought what you had was spunk." Ballard with a straight face says: "I hate spunk." Ten years after it closed down Tom Fontana is keeping the memory of MTM productions alive.

'Detective Munch': John is really sorry when he refers to Jennifer as another 'Saturday Night Hon'. Asked by Stivers what's wrong with a woman who goes out by herself, "Oh nothing. Absolutely nothing." (And they thought Munch would be a good fit for SVU?) He makes his principles more clear when the press shows up. "Two dead white girls in two days, that's their kind of case."  He comes up the title of the episode and tells Ballard: "Keep that for your scrapbook."

The day before this episode aired NBC officially announced that Reed Diamond would not becoming back for Season 7.  Says something that I couldn't figure out that meant Kellerman and Pembleton's departure were going to be tied together…but one thing at a time.