Theodore White on The Campaign Trail: Nelson Rockefeller in 1960

 

 

In America In Search of Itself Theodore White does what so many people do at the end of their careers: he starts picking his favorites. In this case after  covering seven campaign trails from 1956-1980 in which by his own accounting he met 'a score of would be Presidents' he choses those who in his words 'seemed most qualified for the leadership denied him."

He names four men who are among the most significant political forces of that period of time: Nelson Rockefeller, Hubert Humphrey, Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver.

In one of my earliest series on politicians I covered Humphrey's long career in politics in detail and quote White's Making of the President series at great length as to advocate for it. Kefauver only appears in America in Search of Itself and while I may very well cover his career in a later series there isn't enough material on White to deal with it. That leaves Rockefeller and Stevenson.

Because Rockefeller was present in the first four books in White's series and was critical to Presidential campaigns in the first three it would seem beneficial to begin with him. I have long considered writing a series on him for multiple reasons, not the least of which I'm a resident of New York and Rockefeller is one of the longest and most successful governors of that sate of either party. For the purposes of this article Rockefeller's significance is that he was a controversial figure of the party when it was about to reach arguably the most critical point in its century long history.  He represented what had been the main center of power for more than two decades: the so-called Eastern Establishment, one that had given the party respectability if not the power it wanted after FDR landslided Alf Landon in 1936 and many believed the Republican Party would go extinct. This was the more moderate-centrist wing of the party, one that was anathema to the increasingly conservative wing in much of it.

To understand Rockefeller's failure to achieve the Republican nomination for President in three consecutive Presidential cycles explains what the party was like during that period and why the conservative movement began and would eventually take over the party so thoroughly that by the time Ronald Reagan was nominated for President in 1980 Rockefeller, who had passed away the following year, was not even mentioned at the convention.

So let's start where White did in the Making of the President 1960. This is how Rockefeller describes the party as he knew it 1960 – and in the first paragraph he refers to 'the spectacular Republican schizophrenia which has baffled all observers:

Within the Republican Party are combined a stream of loftiest American idealism and a stream of the coarsest American greed. These two political streams have mixed their waters from the days of the Party's birth when the undeniably pure New England abolitionists let their conscience be joined with the skills of some of the most practical veterans of the old Whigs to form a party that would end slavery.

He discusses its long proud structure, how the party irrevocably split during the Roosevelt-Taft civil war of 1912 which left the liberal wing in exile save for occasional victories – with the exception of New York state. He talks about Eisenhower's take over because of that Eastern establishment that gave them the Presidency in 1952 after twenty years in exile. And he makes it clear that by the 1958 midterms the Party has sunk to its lowest ebbs since the 1936 FDR landslide.  It is not just that Congress that is under a Democratic near supermajority in both houses; it is nationwide. The Republicans now have just 14 governorships and control only 7 of 48 state legislatures. (Alaska and Hawaii wouldn't officially join the Union until 1959.)

Richard Nixon, Eisenhower's Vice President, is considering his campaign for the nomination which will almost certainly be his given the state of just how few viable challengers there are in the Party. He knows there are only two Republicans who have come out on the 1958 midterms with the power to challenge him. Barry Goldwater, who has just won a massive reelection to the Senate in Arizona and is already the favorite of the more conservative branch of the party. The other is Nelson Rockefeller, who managed to win the governorship of New York by more than 573,000 votes over the Democratic incumbent Averill Harriman.

This is how White first describes Rockefeller personally, particularly compared to the solitary Nixon:

"(Rockefeller's attitude) is one of total security, total confidence, total cheeriness. Born into what is America's closest counterpart to a royal family, raised within the walls of the greatest private fortune known to man, Rockefeller has escaped the weight of wealth that makes all but one of his four brothers and sister such shy, withdrawn, reticent people, instead the assurance of wealth has made him radiant. Rockefeller is, in image and in actual person, one of the sunniest, most expansive and outgoing personalities of American politics….His constant smile is genuine, his great bear hug an authentic expression of delight in meeting people.

Rockefeller had already served in some form of politics under FDR, Truman and Eisenhower, but by early 1956 he had quit the administration out of his belief that it was drifting from crisis to crisis. He had served in appointive office for years but realized 'only the people, voting at the polls, give a man true power in American government. For that reason in 1958 he ran for governor because it was 'an executive post to be won from the people directly. Not lost on him was the fact that as White puts it 'in 21 national elections from the end of the Civil War and 1948 no less then thirteen times did one or the other (and sometimes both) parties choose its Presidential candidate a governor or former governor of New York. These included both Roosevelts, Grover Cleveland and Tom Dewey, Eisenhower's predecessor as Republican nominee for President.

Rockefeller knew that the pressure was on the moment he was elected governor. He was going to be 52 in 1960 and if a Republican won, then served two terms, he would be 60 in 1968. More than that 'he disliked Richard Nixon and considered him incapable in the role of President'. (Boy was he on point.)

In December of 1959 Rockefeller began to explore his options and his fortune as White says, "made it a far more efficient headquarters then the Republican national headquarters.' And if was efficient: Rockefeller was doing an exploratory campaign not trying to launch one.

It makes clear what Rockefeller was exploring: concern for the welfare of the United States which even then White acknowledge was more important to the liberal progressive wing of the party. The second was the mechanics and acquisition of delegates (more important then primaries in 1960) and third financial exploration.

In it White is very much on point to how Republican politics worked even in 1960:

The regular wing of the Republican party depends for support on the executive class of great corporations… in fact, they control it.

Rockefeller knew that his personal fortune was more then enough to finance a Presidential campaign; it was, if anything, large enough to dwarf the Kennedy fortune that was about to be launched to gain the Democratic nomination.  But he also knew even if he was successful, it would be politically worthless – and unlike so many wealthy Republican presidential candidates to come Rockefeller had the morality that he wasn't willing to buy it.  In any case he knew if business got behind Nixon he couldn't stand against him. So this part was important.

Rockefeller's business team then went to almost every major corporation, assuming that because they were the first family in business and because they had spent much of their fortune on funding the GOP, the favors would be returned. They were met with courtesy but the doors were closed.

As one of Rockefeller's in-group said in words of portent:

I'd always read these things Democrats say about us and thought they were naïve. But here was the club, not only against Nelson because he was a liberal but also committed to Nixon.

Business like Eisenhower and they believed Nixon would be good for business. More to the point Nelson's money hurt him – because he didn't need them.

Rockefeller made two scouting trips between October and December and the reaction was generally the same: the people liked him but the regulars who controlled the machinery ignored him.

So by mid-December the Rockefeller clan was ready for its report. Nixon had the regulars sewn up, the delegate brokers likewise and nothing from business.

Given the support he'd gotten on the trail Rockefeller might well have made contest of it had he taken the route of the primaries. But by this point he didn't want a primary fight, he actually wanted to be a good governor. So Rockefeller chose to take an approach that was almost impossible to think of today.

So on Christmas Eve Rockefeller read a statement:

"I believe…that the great majority of those will control the Republican nomination stand opposed to any contest for the nomination…Therefore any quest on my part for the nomination would entail a massive struggle in primary elections throughout the nation demanding so greatly of my time and energy would make impossible the fulfillment of my obligations as Governor of New York…My conclusion, therefore, is that I am not, and shall not be, a candidate for the nomination for the Presidency."

Everyone in Rockefeller's inner circle knew that this wasn't entirely true. Rockefeller didn't want to give Nixon a fight and knew if he did so the party would go more to the right. Besides there were seven months to the convention.

And the Nixon campaign was anything but thrilled by this. They'd planned for a primary battle against Rockefeller in which Nixon would be the active campaigner and Rockefeller the punching bag. They saw it as a way to enliven the spring, get the party invigorated for the fall campaign, take media time away from the Democrats "and above all, tune up the personnel and human machinery they would need for the fall election. All this was now denied them."

Rockefeller was a good governor for the next five months.  Then on May 1^st 1960 events began to intervene. Francis Gary Powers, while flying his U-2 plane over Russia, was shot down and captured the first acknowledged American spy seized by the Soviets. A summit that was scheduled between Eisenhower and Khrushchev collapsed before it began, ending the possibility of a disarmament summit. Relationship with the new leader of Cuba Fidel Castro collapsed as he welcome the support of the Soviets. All this and much more led to a decided shadow over the Eisenhower administration and its Vice President.

White would write about this affected every candidate for President still in the race. And Rockefeller began to speak out. Most notably he was eligible for a draft and his lieutenants then chose to freeze the state which at that point commanded the biggest delegate prize from Nixon to an uncommitted posture.

This movement, unknown to contemporaries but far more common then, had been used by the Democrats just eight years earlier to pick Adlai Stevenson, who hadn't sought the nomination, as their nominee on the third ballot and Wendell Willkie in 1940. White mentions this had to be part of Rockefeller's thinking but has no clear idea of anyone other than Rockefeller himself actually believed it a possibility however remote. Yet even then he refused to say if he was running for President.

Then on June 8^th he issued a statement in which he challenged the Republican party as being unable to meet the needs, issued a nine-point program which for all intents and purposes repudiated the Eisenhower administration. He gave a series of speeches over the next five weeks in the leadup to the convention which was for all intents and purposes "open warfare with the leadership of his own party and implicit denunciation of its conduct over the last eight years."

And while it was too late to realistically do anything there was clearly a public demand for it. A movement to Draft Rockefeller was formed and the RNC would be overwhelmed by telegrams and mail from the people demanding the delegates nominate Rockefeller.

Compared to the Democratic convention in LA there was no real suspense over who would become the nominee. The excitement as White makes clear, was over the platform.  It was being designed by a man named Charles Percy then a Republican businessman who in six years would be elected to the Senate in Illinois. Percy had worked on the platform for the past several months.

However when he flew to New York he was completely unprepared for the force that was Rockefeller:

Mr. Rockefeller had a wide range of national concerns, care for the aged, rights for the Negroes (sic) stimulation of capital investment for growth of the economy and national defense…most notably the Missile gap."

There was a problem:

In essence, Mr. Rockefeller insisted that the platform on defense cry: EMERGENCY!

But in essence the Republican administration of the country denied emergency.

White acknowledges something no politician would

In the hard life of politics it is well known that no platform nor any program advanced by either major American party has any purpose beyond expressing emotion…All platforms are meaningless: the program of either party is what lies in the vision and conscience of the candidate the party chooses to lead it…The platform committees are harmless exercises in both parties and flatter all the people appointed to platform committees, in the belief they are important.

(Perhaps certain people should have read this when they were so outraged that the 2020 and 2024 Republican conventions had no platforms. It was the inevitable end point.)

Percy spent the next early part of the convention trying to hammer out a compromise between the Nixon forces and Rockefeller's. Many of his own delegation -mostly from the more conservative upstate regions – were already annoyed by Rockefeller as governor and they knew that Nixon's nomination was a foregone conclusion. The question was how long could Rockefeller hold them before they broke to Nixon openly, thus humiliating the governor publicly.

On Thursday evening the Rockefeller delegation reviewed the draft of the platform and found it unsatisfactory. They demanded a floor fight and the possible of 'open civil war on the convention floor'. The following day Nixon called Herbert Brownell, one of the key strategist of Eisenhower's victory and a colleague of former governor Dewey. Brownell then called Rockefeller on behalf of Nixon to organize a meeting to discuss the platform, saying he agreed with all of Rockefeller's terms.

This meeting that took place in New York occurred in ignorance of the delegates in Chicago. What emerged was what White referred to as 'the 14 points compact of Fifth Avenue." The exact details are relevant more to historians: what matters for these purposes is what Rockefeller did afterwards.

He issued a statement in which he made it clear that he and Nixon had worked together to discuss the platform and where the two men agreed.

Two explosions took place simultaneously.  The most significant was in Chicago where the delegates on the committee were infuriated.  Back then there was already a belief that 'the Eastern Establishment' – then a code word for liberal as much for Republicans as Democrats – had conspired to force their values down the throats of so many Republicans. Barry Goldwater, already becoming their loudest voice, referred to it as 'the Munich of the Republican Party'.

Eisenhower was quieter but no less infuriated. For him this was a personal betrayal by a man who he had once considered a personal ally.

By Sunday the Republican convention was in chaos and Nixon was caught between the two extremes of the party as White said:

Unless the Nixon men demonstrated to Rockefeller that they could deliver a platform in the spirit of the Compact on Fifth avenue, Rockefeller could cry treachery and still take his fight to the floor. Yet if they rode roughshod over the platform committee, they would be expose to the outriders of Goldwater crying 'Treason' or 'Tyranny' from the right.

Eventually he came to take two critical positions that accommodated Rockefeller. What may have been the most costly, from an electoral standpoint,  was Rockefeller's position on civil rights. This was, it should be noted, a more advanced one then the Democrats because it advocated support for sit-ins and promised federal intervention to promote job equality.

White I should mention was very clear on how things were going to play out when it came to civil rights and the south:

If they adopt a civil rights program only moderately more restrained then the Democrats, the South can be there for the asking and with the South, if it comes permanent to Republican loyalties could come such solid addition of electoral strength that would make the Republicans again, as they were for half a century, the majority party of the nation and semipermanent stewards of the national executive power. Furthermore since the Northern Negro now votes habitually for the Democrats by overwhelming margins, why seek to outbid the Democrats where they cannot be outbid?

As we shall see, just four years later, that is exactly what Goldwater would do and it played out exactly as White said it would for the Republicans for the next sixty years. White is essentially saying what every single left-wing columnist has about what the GOP did after the 1964 election. But whereas they see it as purely a moral consideration and therefore evil, White sees it as 'one of trade: let us give the Northern Negro vote to the Democrats and we shall take the South to ourselves.'

White himself believes that by agreeing with Rockefeller on this it cost him the election, though he acknowledges Nixon couldn't decide whether to campaign for Northern Negro or Southern white and instead tried to get both. Say what you will about Nixon but he clearly learned that he had to choose one or the other and he chose one that he thought would win him the Presidency – and it did.

None of this concerned Rockefeller; he accepted the compromise and by Tuesday announced he was withdrawing from the race for President. What he didn't know was something White would tell us in the next volume.

Before the convention, they came to Goldwater, saying that they wanted to nominate him for President and that they could provide 300 delegates to do so on the first ballot. Barry Goldwater was many things but he was not idiot; he demanded those same conservatives give him the names of the delegates. They could only come up with 35, and he told them to back off. His address to the convention, with the famous words: “Let’s grow up, conservatives!” was less a declaration of interest for the Presidency and more of a warning to them about how they should do things going forward.

Nixon of course narrowly lost the election to Kennedy, seemingly ended his Presidential prospects for good. Rockefeller now believed he had a better chance for it – seemingly unaware of just how many enemies he'd made the first time around.

In the next article in this series I will deal with Rockefeller's plans for the 1964 nomination – and how his personal life would do as much damage as the upcoming civil war in the GOP would.

Homicide Rewatch: Wu's On First

 

Teleplay by David Simon & Anya Epstein, story by James Yoshimura & Julie Martin

Directed by Tim McCann

When this episode first aired it was in February of 1997 still considered sweeps month for network TV.  In this era, as is true to a certain extent today, network series used this period for appearances by major guest stars either for stunt casting or to get big names you wouldn't be able to get normally. Homicide had already done this quite a few times already but always by its own rules, most recently by casting Elijah Wood in The True Test.

Here it casts three actors who were fairly prominent in movies during the 1990s: Joan Chen, Tate Donovan and Eric Stoltz. In the case of the latter two there was a significance  that some viewers at the time (myself among them) was unaware of.

 Donovan, Stoltz and Reed Diamond had been among the young stars cast in the 1990 World War II film Memphis Belle. Ever since then the three of them had been extremely close with Stoltz saying he loved them "like the brothers I never wish I had." So to cast Donovan and Stoltz as Mike Kellerman slightly older brothers is a bit of stunt casting, as is the fact he's never mentioned them to Meldrick and the first words out of his mouth when they storm the boat is: "Just when I thought my life couldn't get any worse."

With good reason. This is the first time his brothers have shown up in Baltimore in three years. His mothers thinks her babies are dead, his father is convinced they're in jail and its clear from the moment Mike opens his mouth which parent he knows is telling the truth. And sure enough Drew tells him that he owes $18,000 to a bookie in Ohio and that they need to go to Miami to get away, Greg says to pay for the charter fishing they have stolen a uniform of Babe Ruth that they intend to sell to a pawnbroker. Neither brother feels the least remorse for their actions and they clearly bully Mike into seeing a dead body just so they'll show them the uniform. This understandably outrages Cox and its clear again Drew and Greg show no respect for her job or really anybody.

 We know even before Meldrick checks their rap sheet just how criminal their behavior is. When you steal Babe Ruth's jersey from one set of gamblers in order to try and pay off another gambler that's a pretty good sign you're not exactly friendly with the law. That they even show up to his boat in the first place, knowing he's a cop and how bad this will hurt him shows just how little respect that they have for him as well as his job something we see as they mock him for always wanting to be a cop. Greg tries to say that Mike is depressed about something and he clearly picks up on it in the very awkward but inevitable scene at the Kellerman household – but he doesn't care that much about his brother's wellbeing.

But in this episode watching Mike interact with the two of them it explains a lot about why he's so focused on being a good cop far more than anything in the grand jury storyline ever did. It's clear pretty much from the start that Mike has been cleaning up his brother's messes ever since he was a kid and that has driven him to become a cop more than anything else we've seen. It also explains why he was so reluctant to tell his parents why he'd been subpoenaed and why the way his father talked to him hurt so much. The Kellermans have clearly taken so much grief from Drew and Greg over the years that they've pinned all their hopes on Mike and subconsciously been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And we also know that emotionally Drew and Greg could not have shown up at a worse possible time for Mike. After months on suspension and suspicion that he thinks at some level will never go away, the knowledge of his guilt in not reporting a bribe, the failed relationship with Juliana and what happened on his boat a week ago, the last people Mike needs to see are his brothers sneaking on to his boat and treating him like they're all still kids. It's clear they've never had the relationship where Mike could be honest with them; they're perpetual liars even to themselves and they really don't care about his personal well-being. Its pretty clear the only reason they showed up was not to lure him for a charter fishing business but because they were in trouble and they wanted Mikey to bail them out, one way or the other. Mike knows this and at a certain level so do his brothers.

Much as we like spending time with the Kellerman brothers this is Homicide and there is a murder to solve. Except the show tries to look at it from a lateral perspective by having the first person we see be Elizabeth Wu. And when you learn that Homicide was considering making her a recurring character  you can tell why this could have paid off.

Chen is incredible in this episode, playing a character who is just as good at getting information, holding off her adversaries and determined to get to the truth even if it means bucking the bosses. Pembleton dislikes her immensely (what else is new?) but it's clear all the other detectives as well as Gee clearly respect her.  To be sure they mock her name over and over in this episode but there's none of the snideness we've gotten with so many of the other reporters and media we've seen them interact with over the last four and a half seasons.  Giardello says: "She's a player" and it's clear all of them (save Frank)treat her with a certain dignity they haven't treated other reporters or even Brodie. (We'll see the best contrast of that in the next episode.)

This is true from the opening scene when Wu's clearly being bullied by a TV reporter for the only working pay phone at the crime scene. She sweetly hands it over then goes to the tape and makes it clear she's figured out the victim is a Calvert County cop named James Haybert, the weapon, the blood trail and his service weapon in the car. When Pembleton tells her to get lost, Munch and Howard do damage control trying to argue that this will make it hard for them to do their jobs. She counters she has a job to do and they're not making it easier. Al is willing to make a deal in order for her to withhold details. Then she walks back to the payphone which Daniels says isn't working because the call isn't going through. Wu then takes out the receiver which she unscrewed before she gave them the phone and screws it back in, calling the Sun. It's the kind of introduction that would work for a back-door pilot if Homicide had ever been so inclined.

It works best when Bonfather comes out and she says she wants to ask him a question after which he leaves. When Al asks what he wanted to ask her she says nothing – she just figured it was the fastest way to get rid of him, which endears her to Al even more.

Wu writes a story in the Sun in which she paints Haybert as a hero, a twenty-six year old beat cop still trying to do the right thing, who died as a victim in the War on Drugs. It’s a good story but even as Bayliss reads in admiration its becoming clear that Haybert was holding vials even though there's no reason for him.

This is the first episode of Homicide where its clear Simon's imprint as he gives a clear picture to a police reporter, an editor who refuses to let no news be an excuse to keep writing a story and the press keeps putting details forward regardless of the interest. When Wu hears something from a source and wants to talk about what she's heard Pembleton's first reaction is to call Danvers and summon a grand jury and Wu calmly quotes chapter and verse the annotated code of the Shield law. This is very much a Pembleton move which irritates him more. Munch and Giardello are more understanding and are willing to bend. And her editor doesn't care whether a story is properly sourced, all he cares about is keeping it on 'A1'  "If it's wrong we'll fix it the next day." A decade later many people would complain about how much of the final season of The Wire was badly done because of the storylines in the Sun and editors just putting whatever would be readable. No one complained here.

When it becomes clear that Haybert was buying the vials and using them for himself and was likely killed in a drug deal Wu is upset because she got the story wrong and wants to correct things. I've rarely had more contempt for Frank when he has an exchange with Wu about the story coming first:

 

Howard: Come on Frank. She has a job to do.

Pembleton: So do the hookers on Point. They just don't take as much pride in it.

 

This may be the most single offensive thing Frank has said about anyone in Homicide's entire run that absolutely can't be justified. Even Giardello feels the need to apologize after this.

In this episode Chen embodies Wu with more character then some of the other series regulars did in their runs. It's impossible not to compare her with Brodie (who isn't in this episode at all) when it comes to how much she cares about doing her job right and the importance to the truth. At the end of the episode she's very clear on just how badly she screwed things up in her two stories and how much everyone in the world must judge here. This bothers her more than Bonfather's decision to name her and get the editor furious at her so he sends her to the sticks. It's just as likely he would have done so because she didn't bring the killer back to the newsroom in a rolltop desk: that matters more to him than the actual story.

The final two scenes between Mike and his brothers tell their entire history in a nutshell. When he relates the story of how the three of them stole comic books and he was the only one who got in trouble neither Drew or Greg get the point of it. You really wish that Mike would leave his brothers to rot or at least let the out-of-state cops get them.

But the final scene when Mike says goodbye pretty much tells you everything you need to know. Despite everything they've done to him just in the past two days he still loves his brothers. He doesn't trust them with good reason but he still is willing to pay them off before they say goodbye. Maybe he's doing this as a favor to his parents: he knows how much trouble they've already caused. Or maybe its because he's already had enough problems with them hanging around and now he just wants them out of his life again. It's a good decision: one Kellerman is already enough trouble.

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

Detective Munch:  He starts off the plays on Wu's name with Meldrick.

"That's Wu."

Who?"

Wu?"

What?

To be fair Giardello and Naomi do the same thing. Munch is actually more of a good cop then we've seen in a few episodes and he actually is more than civil with her then the rest of the detectives are. Good for him.

 

Hey, Isn't That…Nope, nobody significant in this one. Just kidding.

 

Joan Chen made her debut at 16 in Chinese films and her debut in American TV in Matt Houston. She made appearance in Knight Rider, Miami Vice and MacGyver before becoming more known for her role as Wan Jung in the 1987 Oscar winner for Best Picture The Last Emperor. Then she officially became known to millions for her role as Josie Packard in Twin Peaks where thirty five years later fans are still discussing how she died and how she ended up in a doorknob.

Much of her film work afterwords was often beneath her such as The Hunted, Judge Dredd and On Deadly Ground and not long after that she has more or less returned to China, mostly working film and TV there. The few exceptions were playing Empress Chabi in the Netflix series Marco Polo and Lu Mei in the FX series A Murder at the End of the World. She is currently starring in the Chinese medical drama Wen Xin.

Tate Donovan has been one of the most formidable actors in film and TV for nearly three decades and for the purposes of this article I'm going to focus on his TV work. Prior to playing Greg Kellerman he'd played Own on Partners, a one season comedy on Fox. Known for his relationship with Jennifer Aniston he played her secret crush Joshua in Season 4. After giving the voice of Hercules in the film he did the voice work for the animated series which ran two seasons. He also started as Kevin McCalister in Trinity, which also starred Jill Clayburgh, Charlotte Ross, John Spencer and Kim Raver, all of whom would become TV phenomena just a little later.

Finally he became part of a major hit as Jimmy Cooper on The O.C. and then became part of a critical hit when he took the role of Tom Shayes, Patty Hewes top lieutenant on Damages a show I've raved about a bit. After his character met his fate in Season 3 he starred in several short-lived network series Deception and Hostages before playing Mark Boudreau in 24:Live Another Day. He followed that up with the role of George Dixon on The Man in the High Castle and playing Oversight in the reboot of MacGyver.

As you'd expect he's also done his share of directing, starting with the OC but also Nip Tuck, Glee, Gossip Girl, Weeds, Madame Secretary and such shows as the Fosters and Hawaii Five-0.

(Deep Breath)

Eric Stoltz worked In TV even longer than Donovan did starting with his TV debut in 1978. He actually first made the acquaintance of Tom Fontana when he played Eddie Carson in St. Elsewhere's inaugural season. That was his last TV role for awhile as he became a fairly significantly movie star. In fact while he'd appeared in quite a few TV movies during the 1990s (and had actually appeared on Partners with his running buddy Tate Donovan it was a get to have him as Drew. And he liked the taste of it.

He would join the cast of Chicago Hope during its fifth season as Dr. Robert Yeats but end up being hired as the show cleaned house. He then played August Dimitri a teacher of Grace Manning in the third and last season of Once and Again in a controversial arc. He played Mark on the showtime dramedy Out of Order, an odd but fascinating failure that featured Felicity Huffman, Kim Dicken, Justine Bateman, William H. Macy, Peter Bodganovich and Lane Smith.

 He played William Dunn the serial killer Meredith Grey has a bizarre fascination with on Season Five of Grey's Anatomy and after that was cast as Daniel Graystone in Caprica, the prequel to Battlestar Galactica. An intriguing series it was cancelled after 1 and a half seasons. He had the recurring role of Will Adams on Madam Secretary over five seasons.

In truth he's worked far more as a director then a filmmaker. He directed a dozen episodes of Glee over its run but has worked for Shondaland on almost every series she's produced from Grey's Anatomy to Private Practice to How to Get Away With Murder and a few failed ones like Off The Map. He also directed 19 episodes of Madame Secretary and six episodes of Bull. He even directed the independent film Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk.

In order to make it clear how flustered Mike was by his brothers Donovan and Stoltz actually improvised a lot of their dialogue in their scenes together. "It was mayhem," Stoltz admitted. The effort made off; you can tell in every scene Diamond is fighting cracking up even when he's belligerent with them, which makes sense given everything that happens.

 

It's Baltimore: Wu tells Giardello that the O's might trade Mussina next year. In fact it didn't happen that year but later…

I hate to point this out but I am a baseball fan. When the pawnbroker looks at Ruth's uniform and says that he saw Ruth 'hit a homer over his head against the Senators in '38'" that would be difficult because Ruth retired in 1935.  He was a first-base coach for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1938 but there's no way they would have played the Senators.  If he'd said he'd seen it in 1934 he'd have been on safe ground.

The brothers are right about Babe Ruth beginning his career in Baltimore. He was signed with the very first minor league team called the Baltimore Orioles in 1914. It was as a pitcher and he did go 14-6 before the Red Sox bought him. Of course Ruth was the son of a Baltimore saloonkeeper and Camden Yards was built on the site where Ruth's father's saloon once stood, among other things.  Considering just how troubled Ruth's childhood was and that he was essentially raised in an orphanage, it's one of those great ironies that the official museum for the greatest Yankee of all time is in a city that he never spent any moment of his adult life in.

Better Late Than Never: Plur1bus

 

The moment that Vince Gilligan announced that he was doing a new TV show with Rhea Seehorn I didn't need to know any other details to know that even if this was considered by critics the absolute worst shows in the history of television I was going to watch every episode that aired regardless. When you create one of the greatest shows in the history of television and then create a prequel that is so good there's debate whether its better than one of the greatest shows in the history of television, you've earned a measure of goodwill so big it could fill the Grand Canyon.

 That he was doing so with Rhea Seehorn was even more incredible. I think I speak for everyone  who watched Better Call Saul  that the closer the show got to the present and the longer Kim Wexler was still alive the more openly terrified you were. The thing about a prequel is that characters from the original source material have plot armor but everyone else doesn't. Saul Goodman, Mike Erhmantraut and eventually Gustavo Fring did (albeit so that when they met Walter White he would destroy them either by killing them or just by being in his presence) but almost every other regular did not. And because there was no sign Saul had a girlfriend or wife in Breaking Bad you became more terrified with each passing season and Kim will still in Jimmy's life. By the time we reached the second half of the final season I was certain the only way out for Kim was at the hands of the cartel. (Spoiler: she survived. 'Lived' in a strong word'.

Gilligan went out of his way to make sure the details for his project remained under wraps and Apple TV gave him the same largesse that AMC did. By the time Plur1bus was finally announced in the spring of 2025 they'd given it a renewal for a second season. By the time it came out some details were available, most notably that it seemed to involve an extraterrestrial invasion.

And of course the moment any TV fan worth their salt heard this their minds naturally turned to Gilligan's origin story: his eight years writing for The X-Files. Those of you who've read my previous articles on The X-Files and Gilligan might be somewhat surprised to know that while he wrote thirty scripts for the series, either on his own or in collaboration he never wrote a single script that had anything to do with the mytharc. In my series on Gilligan and The X-Files I'm going to actually explain why that was the right choice for Gilligan and the series but for now I'll just repeat that Gilligan learned quite a few lessons from showrunner Chris Carter. And in the case of a mytharc that was what was not to do.

Carter never had a bible for The X-Files.  Both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul had a lot of planning within each season as to where they were going, if not always knowing how to get there. Carter never had a clear blueprint for any of his character's history. Gilligan had the broad strokes for Breaking Bad and made sure that they fit within the contours of Better Call Saul when the prequel was written.  The X-Files ran past its end date. Breaking Bad and Saul had fixed ones.

The biggest problem with the alien invasion of The X-Files is, of course, it never happened. Carter kept promising with ominous phrases like 'the date is set' but the date kept getting pushed back the bigger hit the series came. The bigger the conspiracy became, the more irrelevant to the action Mulder and Scully increasingly became. The forms the aliens were going to take, what they were going to do, changed the depending on the season and eventually became incoherent. Gilligan would occasionally gently satirize it in his later scripts but it was never his deal.

So I can imagine a conversation between Chris Carter and Gilligan after the series ended joking:

Gilligan: Nine seasons and the aliens never came.

Carter: Well maybe they'll come in the movie.

Gilligan: Chris I gotta tell you if you'd let me help with the mythology I could have made it work and make sense.

Carter: Before or after you sell that crazy idea of a chemistry teacher cooking meth in an RV?

(Both men laugh, knowing full well it'll never happen)

Gilligan: "You're probably right. Still someday I'd like to prove you wrong. 

Carter: "Like Hal from Malcolm in the Middle would work as Walter?"

 

Now imagine Carter in November in 2025 watching the Pilot of Plur1bus. I almost expected the ending of the first episode to have a message saying: "To Chris Carter: I Made This."

It took me way too long to get around to watching the first two episodes of Plur1bus by which point it was clear to the world that Gilligan had made another masterpiece. It has already made multiple top ten lists for 2025 and both the show and Seehorn have been nominated for Best Drama and Best Actress. To date Seehorn has won the Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award in that latter category and barring an alien invasion will finally get the Emmy she should have won for Better Call Saul. (I hope the hive mind came for the Emmy judges who decided that Jennifer Coolidge's work in The White Lotus was a dramatic performance.)

The reason I think Carter would be watching the entire first  two episodes (all that I've seen to this point) shaking his head is because it's clear that Gilligan has finally done something The X-Files would not do in nine seasons, two movies and two revival seasons. And to show just how brilliant Gilligan is let's review how his alien invasion works:

 

1. He shows every detail of how the aliens get here.

We see a satellite transmitted, then a bunch of scientists puzzling over the message they've gotten and its form. We see two scientists trying to figure out how its being delivered in quinary form. They make a realization what it is, even though it's not spelled out, simply showing a lot of testing on animals.

Then we see two people who are there to gas lab animals, something they've been doing for a very long time. They go to the lab where it looks like one of the rats is already dead. One of the scientists takes the rat out of its cage and finds out its alive. Then it bites her.

She runs to the sink while the other exterminator chases the rat. While she's scrubbing she begins to shake violently. The other exterminator grabs her and hauls her into the shower. We cut away where the security guard is trying to get something from a vending machine. He's so distracted pursuing the Fritos he barely notices when she grabs him – and kisses him. We then see her colleague grabbing and kissing a janitor.

Then we see the entire staff licking and swabbing a series of sample dishes and putting them in something. They do so in a mechanical rote fashion. As they do so a group of military police come in and automatically begin doing the same thing. The implications are absolutely terrifying.

 

2. We see the actual invasion albeit in vague terms

Carol Sturka is returning to Albuquerque with her wife Helen from a book tour. They go to a bar for a drink. When they go out for a smoke, the TV cuts to a news story of an airbase being locked down. While the two are outside answering her mail, Carol notices what she thinks are planes flying in a strange pattern. Then the two of them go back to it and see a truck crash into a neighboring car. Carol runs to help and finds that the driver is shaking violently and she can't move him. She yells to Helen, only to see her collapse. She runs into the bar to get help…and sees everybody there frozen in place unable to move. She gets on the phone and finds that emergency services aren't answering. She gets Helen into a truck at great effort and drives down the road. She sees an ambulance hauled over the one side…and then sees the entire town in flames and discord.

What she finds when she gets to the hospital is such a horror show I will leave to those who have yet to see it to discover. What I will say is that this and so much of what follows is another great strength of Plur1bus.

 

3. Show don't tell.

The term 'Carter-speak' is a derogatory term for just how much of the purple, languorous dialogue and monologue's Carter wrote during his tenure on The X-Files: dialogue that sounded portentous but you couldn't imagine a real person saying. It made some of the things George Lucas wrote for Star Wars sound like Shakespeare by comparison.

By contrast all of the horrors I've described and almost everything that follows takes place in near total silence. This is particularly true in the pilot both in the sequence above and the entire period that Carol realizes something horrible is happening but can't grasp it. Gilligan has always been one of the greatest masters of directing and long silence sequence where we follow a character's actions but never directly explaining it. In the pilot he reaches new heights with this in a sci-fi construct that is clearly closer to pure horror than anything he's done in a quarter of a century. As a result when the alien intelligence finally speaks to Carol it has more power than any long expository dialogue could be.

This is made even clearer in the opening of the second episode where we meet Zosia (Karolina Wydra) in an unidentified but clearly Middle Eastern country. We see an extended sequence watching an unidentified figure moving through where smoke is rising and bodies are everywhere. She helps them to a certain place, gets into a car, drives to an airstrip. We then watching her move efficiently to a prop plane and slowly but surely turn on every engine. After the opening credits we see Carol awaken from an alcoholic stupor and then look at the body of Helen with despair. We then see the plane land in New Mexico and Zosia walk through a deserted airport, then taking off all her clothes and walking naked to a bathroom where other aliens are cleaning up. It is only after nearly thirteen minutes of the episode are over that we hear Zosia utter her first line of dialogue to Carol.

I haven't seen a bravura sequence of this kind of exposition since the opening episode of Season 5 of The Americans where we watched Philip and Elizabeth, along with a colleague, dig up a grave. And it is the complete opposite of nearly every over-expository episode I've seen of The X-Files.

 

4. Make the aliens takeover of this planet seem like a good thing.

It was a given for everything we saw on The X-Files over the mytharc that the aliens were planning to colonize and turn us into a slave race. Now we see the exact same thing happen – but the new alien overlords are actually so nice and pleasant. All of them, especially Zosia, are trying everything they can to be pleasant to Carol and not upset here. They accommodate her every need including the second episode when she has to bury her wife. They agree to have her meet five of the other people who speak English as a second or third language. There are thirteen who are unaffected.

Furthermore the first five we meet all seem perfectly happy with the idea of the alien takeover. One of them, a gentleman from Mauritania, tells her that there is finally no war, no crime or poverty, no one in prison, and all the animals from the zoo have been set free. Perhaps most tellingly Carol is not merely the only American who seemed unaffected but is also a white woman while all the others seem to be people of color. (The fact that 'Carol' is not that far removed from the name Karen can't be a coincidence.) More importantly four for of the people still alive they still have all of their families still alive, albeit as part of this hive. Carol has lost the only person closest to her and it was clear in the pilot that Helen was the only one who ever could tolerate her bad behavior.

What's more Zosia makes it clear that they don't kill, even animals or insects, are perfectly fine being used sexually and are giving those who are still alive free will. They don't want to hurt the feelings of those who are still alive in anyway. And that brings me to…

 

5. Make the alien's one weakness something we haven't seen before.

It's clear in the second episode the real weakness the aliens have is Carol's rage. There's something in their biological makeup that when Carol expresses outrage it hurts them physically to the point it can kill them. When Carol has an outburst we eventually learn 11 million people die as a result. The fact that one of them happens to be the grandfather of one of the sole surviving humans doesn't endear her to them anymore.

This is a reversal of almost every alien invasion story we've seen including The X-Files where every alien we met was an unemotional killing machine, unbothered by human emotions. That the aliens can be killed not with a stiletto or a bizarre metal but with one simply shouting at them has to be an in-joke for Carter as well.

 

6.  Punctuate the horrors with small and occasionally sly details.

When Carol goes home after everything she naturally goes to the TV and changes every channel and gets nothing but static or bars except for the CW, which doesn't broadcast in her area anymore. Eventually she tunes to a channel and sees a man and a suit and thinks the government its work. In fact it's C-SPAN and its clear the cameras never got destroyed because they never use satellites to broadcast.

When the channel broadcasts a message for her it tells her to use the landline because all cell service is down.

 

7. Your lead must be a strong female protagonist who has absolutely no time for the foolishness of other people.

All right that was actually a good lesson to take from  The X-Files considering how Gillian Anderson's Scully is one of the most iconic characters in TV history.  And considering just how many shows have been focused on White Male Antiheroes there's something to be said by making your lead character a Dour Blonde Lesbian.

Even here I can't help but wonder if Carol Sturka's pre-invasion occupation of a paranormal romance author is a private dig at the kind of overwritten prose that Carter used to have on a daily basis. And the way there are so many devoted fans obsessed with the trivia of Carol's books is clearly a parody of the fan culture that surrounded The X-Files at the start. The fact that they're predominantly female housewives doesn't make them any less ridiculous then the fanboys and shippers we had to deal with on The X-Files. And the fact that Carol has to deal with them every time a book comes out and treats them with enormous scorn is a big poke at them too.

What's magnificent about Seehorn's performance in the first two episodes is that Carol is absolutely right about the threat these creatures are. They admit that just by coming here they killed nearly 900 million people and she's just as right about calling the survivors traitors to the human race.  But she's also blinded by the fact that she's so angry she doesn't seem willing to ask the right questions, so blinded by revenge that its not until she's having dinner and getting drunk that everyone else starts asking about certain things involving the aliens. (In keeping with the previous point, they want to know if it's just for food.)

 

As Gilligan knows better than anyone else when you tell a sci-fi narrative you'd better be able to deliver at the end. He saw firsthand how this played out with The X-Files and so much of the 21^st century has seen so many sci-fi fantasy masterpieces have endings which to this day have been polarizing to say the least, from Battlestar Galactica to Lost to Game of Thrones. As we speak many are already wondering if Severance will be able to keep those plates in the air whenever it comes to an end.

It is no doubt far too early to see how this will go: not even Gilligan can tell us when Season 2 will be coming out. However he says at most he intends to end Plur1bus in four. That itself shows me Gilligan learned another less from his time on The X-Files: don't spin your story out until it becomes incoherent. To be fair Gilligan made that decision with Breaking Bad and that played out with Better Call Saul each of which are considering to have the greatest endings of any series in television history.

What I know already is I don't want to believe the hype for Plur1bus. It is everything that the world has already seen. And what I hope is out there is an Emmy for Seehorn and eventually a lot of Emmys for the show and for Gilligan. They may not all come this September but when it comes to this combination, trust Vince Gilligan.

My Score: 5 stars.

 

Jamie Ding Is Now In the Top Five of Jeopardy Greats

 

 

It is now clear to anyone who's watched Jeopardy the past month that few players have ever played Jeopardy as well as Jamie Ding. And even fewer have done so well while making it look more difficult than it should be.

The contradictory nature of Jamie Ding was clear on Tuesday. He tied Mattea Roach for sixth place all time in number of games won with 23 and with $644,000 is also sixth in all-time winnings in a Jeopardy champion's original run. (He's also thirteenth on the all-time winnings list for those including tournament victories having passed Matt Jackson's total on Monday.) Yet despite having won 2 more games then Cris Panullo he has nevertheless won over $100,000 less than him.

I've commented on this discrepancy in my articles on him including last Wednesday's and it doesn't take a genius to see Jamie's Achilles Heel: Final Jeopardy. He started strong getting seven of his first eight Final Jeopardys correct. But in his next fifteen games he's gotten seven correct – and eight incorrect.

This is a track record that is almost unparalleled among so many of the players that James has already caught and passed on the leaderboard of legends. Jeopardy legends such as Austin Rogers and Matt Jackson had a far better track record on Final Jeopardys in much shorter runs than Jamie has in a longer one. And I know quite a few players who've never missed on Final Jeopardy who still ended up not making the grade. (One could make an argument – and many still will – then Ben Chan should have had a much longer run then he did because of that fact.)

This is rather bizarre contradiction and almost unparalleled among the Jeopardy greats. I'm not just talking about the legends still ahead of him on that board. In this sense Jamie has been playing as well as the five players ahead of him on money won when it comes to number of runaway victories:

 

Cris Panullo: 17

Ken Jennings: 16

James Holzhauer: 19

Matt Amodio: 17

Amy Schneider: 19

Jamie Ding: 18

 

Cris of course only managed to win 21 games before losing. But he managed to only get 7 final Jeopardys incorrect during 22 games. Jamie had already gotten that many incorrect by his 21^st. And that's a better track record compared to the four players who even higher up by the leaderboard of legends.

Furthermore all of the players above him on the list and quite a few others below him have never been as risky when it comes to Final Jeopardy as Jamie has been during their runaways. And the result has been decided mixed for him. And as a result while Jamie has the sixth highest total of money won in Jeopardy history, his average per game is considerably lower then the five players above him even though they won far more games. At this point Jamie is averaging just under $28,000 a win which is impressive- until you considering that the five players ahead of him all average at least $32,000 a win. Even if you set Holzhauer asides Panullo managed to win over $35,000 a win in his 21 victories. This is true of some of the players below him as well: Scott Riccardi managed to average $28,500 a game in his sixteen victories.

One has to admire any Jeopardy player who is so well to go for the big payday as Jamie Ding has been more than willing to do over his incredible run when it comes to Final Jeopardy. And considering the margins he's had in so many of his runaways you can understand the willingness to take the risk. The problem is when he does take the risk, he invariably gets burned and burned badly.

This may sound like I'm trying to throw shade on one of the greatest Jeopardy players in history. My readers know full well I absolutely am not doing that. I'm merely pointing out while Jamie Ding is one of the greatest Jeopardy players in history, certainly the best we've seen since Cris Panullo lost in December of 2022, it has been more difficult for me to tell with him then really any other Jeopardy super-champion since Ryan Long how much more luck has to do with his incredible run then skill. He definitely has the latter in spades – one does not have three games in which you get 43 correct responses or more if you're not one of the greatest Jeopardy players of all time – but more than any super-champion I've seen he seems more willing then most to undercut himself.

This was true in tonight's game where Jamie officially moved into fifth place on the all-time wins list ahead of Mattea Roach. It was yet another runaway victory for Jamie and both on the surface and beneath he was dominant. And yet I still came away with the same impression I have with so many of his victories: that the only person who could beat Jamie Ding was Jamie Ding – and he seemed more than willing to let that happen given the chance.

Playing against Bill Page and Kim Elliott Jamie started off well. He already had $2800 when he found the Daily Double in the Jeopardy round in the category A FINE ROMANCE. He bet everything:

On April 5, 1953 the Atlanta Daily World announced the engagement of this pair who met in Boston.

Jamie paused: "Who are Elizabeth and Philip?" It was actually Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King. Down to zero he went. As is his want he regained the lead by the end of the round with $5800 to Kim's $2200 and Bill's $1400. It was a much smaller margin at the end of the round then he's used to.

In Double Jeopardy he went on a very Jamie like run of 9 consecutive correct answers and has built himself up to $20,200 when he finally found the first Daily Double in LEVELING UP. He bet $4800 hoping for a nice round total of $25.000:

In 1826 this city became a state capital, taking over for Murfreesboro.

I knew almost immediately it was Nashville. Jamie thought it was Little Rock and dropped to $15,400.

Redemption came on the next clue in TOUGH 1-SYLLABLE WORDS. He bet just $2600 this time:

It can refer to an accident or part of a whale tail. This time he knew it was a fluke and went up to $18,000.

He would finish Double Jeopardy with another runaway victory: $22,400 to Bill's $6600 and Kim's $4600. Another impressive one but for Jamie a relatively low total by his standards.

The Final Jeopardy category was NOTABLE AMERICANS: In 1909 she jointed the Socialist Party & later published 'Out of the Dark', her writings 'On Physical & Social Vision." All three players knew the correct answer: "Who is Helen Keller?" Jamie was cautious this time, only betting $600. Or perhaps he was being precise. His total was $23,000 and now his 24 day total was $667,000 – two thirds of a million.

It was an impressive win and yet it brought his average per victory to just under $27,800. All five of the players ahead of him in terms of money won have a considerably higher total then Jamie doe – including Cris Panullo, who averaged over $35,000 per win. He's also significantly behind in this department of quite a few players behind him in games won. Jason Zuffraneri managed  roughly $28,000 per win over 19 games and Ray Lalonde managed just under $30,000 in each of his 13 wins. All of this must be laid at the feet of so many incorrect Final Jeopardys during this period and at this point we do have to look at the four players ahead of him during those 24 games

James Holzhauer 1 wrong in his first 24 games

Amy Schneider 4 wrong out of her first 24 wins

Matt Amodio: 7 wrong out of his first 24 wins

Ken Jennings: 8 wrong out of his first 24 wins.

The big difference with Matt and Ken is that most of their incorrect Final Jeopardy were in the first 15 games or 20 games and then they started to get much better in their runs going forward when it came to Final Jeopardy. Jamie by contrast started incredibly strong and is now starting to falter in that regard..  

This might also be tied to the fact that over the course of their runs other super-champions reach a point where they begin to inevitably get tired and their performance across the board begins to flag in ways that become clear in hindsight. I'm actually going to write on this in a later article when Jamie's streak comes to an end, though at this point I can no longer state with certainty when that will happen.

I have long since given up trying to predict how long Jamie Ding's run will last. I have already erroneously predicted he would not much outlast this season's previous super-champion Harrison Whitaker in terms of wins and he caught and passed him two weeks. At this point all I can say with certainty is that now that's Jamie is in fifth place its only going to get harder to get further up on the leaderboard.

In fourth place in wins is Jeopardy James I, Holzhauer with 32 wins. Just in order to tie him Jamie will have to win another eight games. This is not an impossible number to surpass, as viewers know. In Season 38 Matt Amodio and Amy Schneider did it within four months of each other. But it's still eight games just to get that far.

Getting past Cris Panullo on the all time money list in theory should be easier: Cris has $748,286. In theory Jamie could get that far in three or four victories. But again that would involve three or four victories and as Jeopardy watcher can tell you that's three more chances for something to happen. Jamie will be defeated, it's a given, the only question is when.

The next marker is if Jamie can catch and pass Cris Panullo who with his combined earnings is in 10^th place all time. That is the next marker he has to catch. He might get there; he might not. At this point we can only wait and enjoy the ride.

  

(Mildly) Criticizing Criticism: Quite a Few TV Critics Are Having Second Thoughts About Euphoria. Here’s Why Some May Have Made Mistakes The First Time

 

Any show that involves teenagers in my lifetime always starts to falter when the characters leave high school. It's a universal truth going back to Beverly Hills 90210 and goes through every show that was on the WB or the CW going forwards with only a few exceptions.

There's a reason for that. It makes sense to follow the same group of kids when they're in high school but once they graduate there is no realistic one for them to keep hanging out. They are all going to go to different colleges and start to grow apart. The old romances you had as a youth die out and you have to focus on your future, which isn't as fun as watching New Directions belt out sounds at McKinley.

TV shows have been struggling to escape this trap even in the era of Peak TV and they still have trouble with it. So basically they've decided to have fewer seasons or move on to college based shows. It helps that in the last two decades TV has more or less been centering on teenagers in relationships to their parents', which is more interesting even if it can become repetitive. It may become tiresome to keep seeing teenage daughters as symbols for White Male Antiheroes (I was fine with them on The Americans & Mad Men; less so with Ray Donovan) but at least we don't have to keep dealing with the drama of your boyfriend cheating on you with your best friend.

Most TV critics in my lifetime have had an odd relationship with teen dramas. The ones that are more traditional or sensationalized, from the ones I've listed above all the way to Pretty Little Liars and almost everything Disney has done over the past two decades, they've essentially dismissed as 'fluff' or 'eye candy'. They're not entirely wrong on that, but much of it has to do with the problems adults have trying to understand what appeals to teens which is a gap that has always been present and certainly has only expanded in the 21^st century. The ones that have significant crossover appeal – My So-Called Life, Freaks & Geeks, Joan Of Arcadia  -  are almost invariably cancelled so that they remain forever young – and never get a chance to fail. The few that are both usually don't have the normal teenage travails front and center (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) or have a significant adult presence that is just as powerful as the teenage actors (Friday Night Lights).

 This brings me, as you'd expect, to the recent season of Euphoria.

This is a series that everyone knows I hate with a passion and I was curious to see what critics would think once it return for its third and (God willing) final season. The early reviews are in and they are decidedly mixed, particularly for a series that was so deified in its first and second season.

The reviews for the sophomore season were more diminished then the first but there was still a fair amount of (unjustified) praise. Now the third season has debuted five full years after the second and the critics are not overjoyed its back. In fact with the sole exception of positive reviews for Zendaya as Rue, they are mediocre at best. It's currently hit a record low for the series with 56 percent approval from Critics on Rotten Tomatoes. What strikes me as  somewhat amusing is why so many are appalled.

Because of the more than four years between seasons largely because the entire cast, particularly Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney and Jacob Elordi have becomes fixtures in film during this period, by necessity there was a  time jump. Now every character is 22 and out of college. This was a necessity and they all knew it was coming.

But the thing is now that every character is out of high school and officially Gen Z almost every single critic now sees them as a bunch of whiners engaging petty things around each other. Rue is now just another drug addict, Sweeney just another twenty-something who posts her nudes on social media, Elordi just another nepo baby following in his father's footsteps, Maude Apatow another young writer realizing her artistic dreams have little to do with reality, Hunter Schafer's character a model whose flailing. They are no different in personality then they were in Seasons 1 and 2 but now they're just twenty-somethings trying to adjust to adulthood. And that's boring.

Much of this makes me wonder why critics like this show in the first place if that's their reaction. To be clear, you were fine with all of this immature, driveling behavior with no real substance and utter nihilism when all of these kids were in the same high school. Now they're in their twenties and they haven't changed one bit – and now you find it dull and uninteresting?

If that doesn't tell you that the praise for Euphoria was all about the critics' view of the world  and nothing to do with what was actually happening, I don't know what is. You're fine loving all of the hedonistic, nihilistic, social media, unrealistic behavior when high school children (or to be accurate, young adults playing high school children) were doing it. They become 22 and they haven't changed, been there, done that. We're fine seeing Sydney Sweeney posing naked on social media when she was in high school, now she's aged out of it.

What confirms this in my opinion is that Sam Levenson has apparently become more experimental in the final season, shooting much of the show on 35 MM and 65 MM lenses, giving its most cinematic look to date. This is the kind of thing that most critics will celebrate in any other tendency. The reviewers who loved Levenson for similar tricks two years ago now either think its showing off or a waste. Which again makes me thing the only reason they liked 'the cinematic tendencies' was because it showed so many young people in states of undress so much of the time.

To be fair there have been some critics who never thought that much of Euphoria from the start. A recent opinion piece by Nina Starner actually says the show jumped the shark in its second episode because of Nate's actions with Maddy and a random guy and how its never followed up on. It acknowledges just how many absurd twists were throughout the second season that undercut whatever fascinating and grounded stuff there was in it. They actually use the phrase: 'Season 2 of Euphoria actually rachets up the insanity considerably" and argues the major disbelief of the school play having a budget of, I'm guessing  one million dollars "and you've got so much disbelief to suspend that it becomes borderline impossible to do so." I can do that if the series is insane from the start but Euphoria makes it clear that it wants to take all of this insanity seriously.

Indeed in regard to Season 3 Starner basically restores my faith in criticism:

When we, as a TV watching society, look back on Euphoria, we're not going to see it as grounded or realistic. We also probably won't look back on it as particularly good. Part of the problem is creator Sam Levinson, who reportedly doesn't use a writer's room and makes life on set wildly difficult.

This doesn't shock me as a recent New York Times article basically points out Levinson being some of an enfant terrible, someone who can say that he is very much proud of The Idol which is one of the worst shows in HBO's history, and who a female director who was fired from that series has made it very clear what a contemptible person he is without saying it directly.

Starner continues:

As someone who's watched Euphoria from the beginning I feel uniquely qualified to say that I think Levinson is a man who imagination for interesting or surprising storylines is so limited that he leans really hard on shock value, which is how we got here.

As someone who reviewed Levinson's body of work in a previous article and has argued that he's basically pulling storylines from his even more bizarre film Assassination Nation for Euphoria, I'd say that's a solid guess. I'm willing to bet Starner is like the rest of the world and never saw that film and if she had seen it before she'd seen Euphoria she'd have recognized Levenson for the hack he clearly is.

I am impressed, I should be clear, with Starner's candor in admitting that she clearly misjudged Euphoria overall.  Most critics, like many of us, don't want to admit we've made a mistake with something and stay pot-committed to it even when it gets worse overtime. This is as close as any critic has ever said to this point that there really was no there 'there' in Euphoria.

I'm willing to concede that there are serious ideas at the center of Euphoria: addiction to drugs, the oversexualizing of today's world particularly on social media and the nihilism facing so many of this generation. And they deserve to be discussed maturely and seriously. But as I've written and Starner seems to concur Levenson doesn't seem to have any real insight or knowledge into this and only wants to shock the audience more than discuss it. And if that's the case, there's an argument he should have tried to do so at all.

As a forty plus man I was always uncomfortable with the graphic nudity on Euphoria and I'd gotten used to a lot from HBO alone. And frankly the cynical and brutal dialogue that Levenson gave his characters and all of the behavior was at its core, not really much different from any previous HBO drama – or for that matter what I'd seen on Shameless for the past decade. The difference was that these were wealthy (mostly) white kids as opposed to working class minorities in HBO dramas or lower class white people on Shameless. (The Gallaghers also dealt with addiction and mental health issues and engaged in self-destructive behavior but its easier to feel sympathy when you consider that each sibling has to work multiple jobs in order to keep the lights on.) The teenagers in Euphoria may not have lived in the world that the Roys did but that sense of entitlement was just as present in Rue and so many other characters.

A large part of me has always believed that so much of the critical approval. for Euphoria was because it was an HBO production. Even now HBO is still the gold standard for great television and it's mostly deserved. But that doesn't mean it isn't capable of producing flops or mediocrities, particularly in the era between The Wire ending and the arrival of Game of Thrones.  They had some clunkers, whether it was John From Cincinnati or Tell Me That You Love Me and that made some mistakes: Luck was canceled after one season: the really weird comedy Hung lasted three.

And the same was just as true in the last years of the 2010s: I remember watching quite a few disasters even from former steady hands. Whether it was Alan Ball's misfire Here & Now or Jenni Conner's morbidly unfunny Camping HBO has made it share of mediocrities if not flat out disasters. (Remember Time Traveler's Wife? Exactly.)

The main reason there was so much initial interest in Euphoria was because this was the first time in its more than quarter of a century, it was taking a swing at the teen drama format. But it was always going to be a bad fit for teen dramas because all of its shows are designed primarily for an audience that shouldn't see them.  There are issues of merit in every single great drama at the start of the Golden Age but as someone who was in his late teens when he first saw shows like Oz and The Sopranos I was not prepared to deal with them. HBO never flinched from dealing with societal issues in mature ways; that's what makes such great TV. But if I were a parent I would not want my fourteen or fifteen year old to watch a show such as Deadwood or Big Love even if I was watching with them. And I'd be uncomfortable if I knew my teenage child was watching shows like Game of Thrones and is watching House of the Dragon now.  (I know many of them did but that doesn't make them the intended audience and there's a difference.) I think there was a lot of critical latitude given to Euphoria because it was an HBO series. Had it debuted on a streaming service or even one of HBO's rivals on pay cable such as Starz or Showtime the critics would have ignored it the way they have ignored so many of the frequently higher caliber shows on both these networks over the years.  Branding is a big deal in Peak TV even now.

And the idea that Euphoria had to be taken seriously because it was a cultural phenomenon that resonated with so many of today's teenagers…well, so did Dylan McKay and the Walsh twins. So did the gang at Dawson's Creek. So did the students in Glee. So did the ones in Gossip Girl. Teenagers relating to a show only makes it popular; it doesn't per se mean it’s a classic. All of these shows had young, attractive adult actors playing teenagers at a high school and teenage audiences found something in common with them. That's not revolutionary; it's how cultural phenomena take place and it alone is not enough to make it a great show.

The fact that it launched so many of these actors to cinematic superstardom isn't enough of a reason to call it a great series either. I have no doubt their exposure on Euphoria helped get them started but that's true of basically every major cable show I've watched over the years.  HBO started quite a few brilliant young actors on the road to superstardom who were not in programs that were geared towards young adults. Michael B. Jordan was brilliant in the first season of The Wire as Wallace. Amanda Seyfried absolutely dominated some of the best actors in television on Big Love and in fact became so prominent that she left the show before it ended. And no one will say that Game of Thrones was aimed for teens but quite a few brilliant young talents started there to.

If you are given great material you can break as quickly as if you're on a smash hit. That was just as true for Claire Danes and Seth Rogen as it is for Zendaya and Jacob Elordi. Hell,  Timothee Chalamet's first big break came in a one season role on Homeland. When Damien Lewis joked at the SAG Awards "We made you, Chalamet!" he wasn't entirely wrong.

So I think its fair to say Starner's final assessment of Euphoria is the correct one. Its' not very grounded, realistic or even very good and it didn't have interesting or surprising storylines and it relied heavily on shock value. Because shock value is part and parcel with so much of HBO's programming and because it did make such a cultural impact the critics made the assumption that it was a brilliant show rather than just another snapshot of its era, no more different then how 90210 did so for the 1990s or so much of the WB and CW's programs did for the 2000s. And like so many of those teen dramas before it, when the main characters got out of high school everything the critics and fans loved about had disappeared.

I should be upfront that my initial article was a much harsher and judgmental reception of these particular critics and indeed some of that may well be present here. But I've taken out some of my earlier, harsher judgments in part because I've repeated them before and also because Starner's insight into Euphoria is enough to make me believe that there were other factors involved then some of the ones I suggested in the first draft.

I think Euphoria's legacy will be that of so many teen dramas before: it was a snapshot of young people in an era, of decent but unremarkable quality, that launched many prominent young actors to superstardom in film and television. And it is just as likely that when it is gone (almost everyone save Levenson seems sure this will be the last season) it won't have the same impact as so much of the other great television of its era. Some shows just don't age well, and that can be just as true for any show that's set in a high school.