Howard Gordon & Vince Gilligan on The X-Files, Part 1: How The X-Files Helped Make Howard Gordon A Great Writer – Very Slowly (2700th Article)

 

If a time traveler was going to go back to 2002 from twenty years in the future (something an X-File fan would have no problem going with) and told one of those fans that in twenty years' Vince Gilligan was going to be the creative force behind two of the greatest shows of all time, none of us would have been shocked one bit. We might have been slightly surprised that he had done so with some of the darkest dramas in television history and the details would have been odd to the fan but we wouldn't have been shocked. Well before the show was over everyone who'd seen his work knew that Vince Gilligan was arguably the greatest writer the series had ever produced and the ones who didn't would have been arguing for Darin Morgan, which no Gilligan fan would have fought.

However if a time traveler had come back to 1997 from fifteen years in the future and told us that by that point Howard Gordon would have been part of two series that had won Best Drama I'm pretty sure all of them, including me, would have summons our inner Scully and asked us to pull the other one. Because not even Howard Gordon ever thought he was the best writer on The X-Files.

This is something he's been very public about. When he was interviewed by Alan Sepinwall he talked about his tenure very frankly. He said when it came to writers like Glen Morgan & James Wong (who I've written about before) he admired their work and figured out how he could 'reverse engineer it to come up with a story of his own'. When it came to Gilligan and Morgan he knew he was outclassed and was in awe of their genius. That interview took place in 2012 when Gordon had already won his first Emmy for 24 and the one for Homeland was just a few months in the future.

This may seem like I'm saying Gordon was a hack at the time he wrote for The X-Files. He wasn't. There have been worse writers during the series long tenure (I'm not going to mention them here, fans know who they are) and while Gordon did write some bad episodes in the series early going he rarely wrote absolute stinkers.  It's mainly a case that there were a lot of great writers working on The X-Files during the four seasons he was on the staff, hitting it out of the park on every script or almost every script they wrote.  Gordon's episodes were good – and to be clear some of them were absolute classics -  but speaking as someone's whose rewatched the show multiple times over the years he doesn't have as many masterpieces as Gilligan and Morgan did during that seem period.  All of four Morgan's episodes are absolute masterpieces and even though Gilligan had only written five scripts on his own by the time Gordon left in 1997 three of them are among the greatest in the show's history.

And as someone who wrote more scripts, either in collaboration or on his own then Glen Morgan and James Wong did during their two separate tenures on the series it's not even a close question. Morgan & Wong did more than anyone to make the show a breakout hit during its first two seasons then even Chris Carter himself and three of the scripts they wrote when they came back in Season 4 are utter masterpieces. Gordon just doesn't have that same track record and I suspect he himself would admit it.

But in retrospect it looks like Gordon may have been figuring out during his tenure certain things that none of his colleagues ever got a chance to really doing that period. Unlike all of these writers Gordon, whether working with his colleague Alex Gansa, with Carter or on his own, actually wrote far more scripts that were either foundational to the mythology or about government conspiracies, if not exactly connected to the alien mythos. Many of his scripts involve the military in ways far more direct then even Carter himself was willing to go at this point in his writing and indeed years later. Carter was always about the idea of a shadow government, with men in dark suits giving vague orders. Gordon, by contrast, was all about the military and just as often the human repercussions played out by those who have to live with the consequences.

And anyone who has watched and loved 24 and Homeland knows that these shows have a far more direct link to The X-Files that Gilligan's (at least until recently). 'Trust no one' could just as easily serve as mantras for Jack Bauer and Carrie Matheson then they did for Mulder and Scully.  Both series deal extensively with moles in the government who are willing to sell out their country for profit or political advantage. They feature men and women who are working along side our heroes day in and day out and it is only when horrible things begin to happen that people like Jack and Carrie realize they never knew them at all. Both of them are more loyal to their country and government than Mulder it is – for him it's just a means to the truth -  but even before we meet any of them in the Pilot of the series they are very aware of the kinds of horrible things their government and military are capable of, in large part because they've done it themselves.

Gordon is also very interested in the wreckage these actions, done in the guise of patriotism, leave behind. And I think the best way to illustrate how Gordon learned his craft is to look at one script from each season he worked on The X-Files that deals with both the evils of the government and the carnage it leaves in its wake. Three of them are among the best episodes of the early years, one is a mediocrity but all of them serve that larger theme to the point that we can see Gordon becoming the kind of man who has greatness in TV not long after he leaves The X-Files.

In Season One understandably not even Chris Carter had a clear idea about what the mythology was going to look like. This is understandable considering no one thought the show was going to survive the first season. So throughout you can see the writers trying to come up with versions that work. 'Fallen Angel' is Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa's first attempt at it and they come out swinging in what is without question their best effort of Season One.

The title reference is a military code to an alien craft used by one of the military officers in charge. Critically we never get a real look at the pilot of the craft and there's no clear link to any of the aliens we'll see later on. That's not a flaw of the episode as Gordon (with Gansa's help) is not interested in aliens but how the military reacts both in terms of the coverup and the collateral damage. This episode is the first time we get a real look as to just how far the government is willing to go to keeps its secret and how the lost of human life is irrelevant in terms of the bigger picture.

This is seen the teaser which takes place in an air force base where a controller points out what is clearly a foreign craft and is told in no uncertain terms that what she is seeing is a weather balloon. When she protests she's told not to defy her superiors. The General then tells his superiors about the alien craft and that they have to send a salvage team. Mulder is informed by Deep Throat (Jerry Hardin) about the crash and that he has only twenty-four hours before the military has covered his tracks.

This episode demonstrates more than any to this point not only how reckless Mulder is but how little he cares for procedure. He's immediately captured and thrown into the stockade and when Scully comes to bail him out she tells him that a Section Chief has convened a disciplinary hearing and that if Mulder isn't there on time to defend himself he will likely be thrown out of the bureau.

A viewer in 1993 would have instinctually known that Mulder's job at the Bureau was safe: that's how TV worked. But its still striking to see how little Mulder genuinely seems to care about his job r even Scully's during the episode. He's already in trouble and staying on the scene can only make things worse for him, yet he spends the entire episode flaunting authority and essentially dragging Scully along for the ride. Viewers might have turned against him were it not for the fact that Gordon and Gansa make it very clear that Mulder's not wrong.

Early in the episode a strike team goes after the alien no doubt completely unprepared. They are attacked with some kind of unknown weapon and they end up at a hospital, suffering from fifth and sixth degree burns. Most of them die on the scene and we see just how little the military cares. They lie to the families of the deceased and tell the doctor who is treating them that he can never tell what they are doing and threaten him when he asks to learn how they got this way, By the end of the episode at least a dozen soldiers have died and both the military and the FBI are far more concerned with punishing Mulder for speaking out about it then all of the loss of life.

During this episode we also see our first living reflection of that damage, Max Fenig (Scott Bellis). Max is a slightly problematic character because he's clearly a conspiracy nut but the show argues that he's harmless rather than a problem.  Mulder meets him in the stockade and Max becomes a focus of the episode. The show makes it very clear that Max is the other side of the coin from Mulder in terms of his beliefs and determination to get to the truth. That's why he (and the viewer) connect with him. Mulder eventually realizes that Max is an alien abductee and has experienced this multiple times. He then realizes Max has been drawn to this site by the aliens and that their purpose is to take him.

At the climax of the episode we see Max being held in a tractor beam and disappear. The official story is that he shows up dead in the wreckage but Mulder doesn't believe it. (He's right as we'll see in a later story) When he angrily confronts his superiors you can tell that Mulder really doesn't care if he keeps his job or not.

The episode ends with Mulder being saved when someone goes over McGrath's head – Deep Throat.  The viewer is inclined to argue that this is an act of his informant trying to save him. But it's just as likely that Deep Throat is doing so to keep himself safe or perhaps doesn't even have the best intention. When he says: "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer," we have reason to wonder: Is Deep Throat using Mulder as a means to an end himself? Later episodes will reveal Deep Throat had connections to the conspiracy himself and by the end of the second season it will be clear that Mulder's father was connected to it. (That's true whoever you think Mulder's real father was.) Looking back this may be the first time that Mulder might be more important to the conspiracy then you think.

Gordon's first solo script in Season 2 is also one of his best in his entire tenure. 'Sleepless' has no direct connection to the mytharc but its about as close as you can get. It deals with a government conspiracy and shows how the shadow government reaches everything. It's also the very first story to deal with the Vietnam War and considering that is where so much of our conspiracy culture begins we're honestly surprised it took until Season 2 to go at directly. It's even more related to the military then Gordon's previous script and is one of two episodes that deals with the rank and file soldiers. And we also our introduced to two characters who will be vital to the show going forward.

The story itself is a fascinating one. In it we meet a man who seems capable of killing men in impossible ways – the first victim believes his apartment has caught on fire and suffers immense burns even though there is no fire to be found, the second apparently is killed by a firing squad but no bullets are in the body. By the time of the second killing we know who the 'monster' is – and he's arguably the most sympathetic we've met to date: Augustus Cole.

Cole is played by Tony Todd who at that point in his career was not yet the horror film icon he would become in the Candyman and Final Destination franchises. Viewers who know him from those films would be stunned by his work here. Cole is the victim of a series of government experiments done during the Vietnam War which led to soldiers being able to function completely without sleep.  Most of them ended up dying but Cole we will eventually learn hasn't slept in twenty-four years.  He's clearly seeking justice as the murders he commits are done solely to kill the doctors who did the procedures that rendered him and his fellow brothers-in-arms this way.

This story demonstrates what was already becoming a familiar model for Gordon: the supernatural revenge storyline. To be fair even by this point in the series multiple writers had gone to this format: depending on your point of view there were at least four stories like this in the first season. But it takes on a different approach when it comes to Vietnam where no one can argue how badly we failed our troops during that war and in the aftermath. In that sense Cole's final act of revenge, when he summons the ghosts of every former member of his platoon to take a knife to the doctor whose brought the horrors on them is haunted and sympathetic. The fact that we've seen him kill one of those men makes all the more memorable.

In the final sequence by the time Mulder tracks Cole down there's a certain ambiguity to his final fate. (I'll get to that in a minute.) There's no doubt the government wants to shut Cole up so that he can never tell the truth about what happened. But one can't rule out the possibility that Cole wants release from all the horrors he's seen and this is the only way to get it. The term 'suicide by cop' was not part of the lexicon in 1994 but Cole's final words almost sound like he's giving a blessing to the people who killed him.

Now as to those two characters I mentioned. The first is Mulder's new informant who we heard on the phone two episodes ago but didn't see: X played memorably by Steven Williams. X is responsible for Mulder learning of the case in the first place and goes out of his way to guide him and Scully to get the information they need. But when the two of them finally meet, there's a clear difference in tone between him and Mulder's previous informant Deep Throat.

X clearly knew Deep Throat and its implied he's carrying on his work by assisting Mulder. But whereas Jerry Hardin always had an almost avuncular attitude towards Mulder even when he misled him Williams makes it very clear from the start that he doesn't want to do this job and is only doing so out of loyalty to 'my predecessor.'  When he informs Mulder of the experiments that were done on these soldiers he does so with a sense of menace and only gives so much before he leaves. Mulder doesn't seem clear of the rules and X makes it very clear: "The truth is still out there but it's never been more dangerous." Many of the characters on The X-Files will be forced to deliver ridiculous purple prose. X is one of the only ones who always talks bluntly with a threat of violence in his words – and as we shall see he is more than willing toc carry it out.

The other characters of significance is Alex Krycek. In his first appearance as the character who would fondly be nicknamed 'Ratboy' by fans of the show Nicholas Lea does everything he can to make Krycek seem like a fresh-faced rookie. He seems nervous meeting Mulder, is pissed when Mulder does his landmark 'ditch' and tries to act like he has some respect for him. During this period Mulder and Scully have been reassigned and Mulder is now working with a partner. Lea does much to make us seem to trust him.

So when the episode ends with Krycek killing Cole Lea has done a good enough job to make us think that maybe he was fooled by Cole. Cole has the power to make men hallucinate and we see a gun before we realize its his Bible. That's thrown into question in the chilling final scene when we see Krycek reporting to the Smoking Man. He makes it clear that despite their separation Mulder and Scully were closer than ever. The Smoking Man has the final word: "Every problem has a solution." Considering immediately after this Scully is abducted by Duane Barry the implication would seem to be clear – although keeping with the series we never know for sure.

In Wanting To Believe  Robert Shearman argues that the episode reveals Krycek's treachery to early. "Nicholas Lea is so convincing as a junior agent keen to impress Mulder and run around in his mentor's shadow, that you just can't help but wish there was more time to see the two of them in action. And to wonder what greater impact Krycek's treachery might be if he built up greater trust in the audience."  He has a point. If we hadn't seen this last scene then Krycek's first overt act of violence – when he kills the cable car operation in Ascension – would have been far more shocking. We'd have believed that Mulder had an ally to help him and the impact of Krycek's betrayal in that episode would have hit both him and the audience simultaneously and been all the more powerful.

But there's an argument that if the series didn't necessarily learn that lesson Gordon himself did and would use it later shows. By the time he and Gansa moved to 24 in seven years they would do a much better job at hiding moles in CTU and building up the trust in the viewer and Jack to perfection so that when the betrayal came it had this impact. And by the time they created Homeland they had it down to an artform.

While he wrote better solo scripts in Season 3 the most significant one to Gordon's career was a collaboration he did with Carter and Frank Spotnitz: 'Nisei'.  Combined with the follow-up '731' this is arguably the best two-parter in the entire mytharc because it builds on the theme from the opening of Season 3 that the conspiracy has nothing to do with aliens but rather something far more insidious: experiments on humans.

Mulder spends most of this two parter following the trail of an alien autopsy video that leads him across the country and on to a train. It’s thrilling stuff and Duchovny is superb in it. But the reason it's an unquestioned masterpiece is because Scully is following her own trail – and its far more terrifying because of how personal it ends up becoming.

During the episode Scully goes to the address of a MUFON meeting in Allentown, looking for a woman named Betsy Hagopian. When she rings the doorbell, the woman who answered Penny Northern looks at her with recognition. “She is one,” she tells this group of women. Scully has no memory of them (she has no clear memory of what happened to her) but all of the women in this group know her instantly.

Scully tries to deny it and then they ask her about her implant. One of the most frightening scenes in the entire series comes when one by one each of these women removed a small vial from their person, each of which contain an identical implant to Scully’s. It looks like the world’s weirdest book club – and then it takes an ever darker turn. Betsy Hagopian is in the oncology ward suffering from cancer. Northern then tells Scully matter-of-factly that they all have it. “We’re all dying,” she says. “Because of what they did to us.”

The series has basically told us in no uncertain terms what is going to happen to Scully. It’s a measure of the pace of the show that we’ll have forgotten about by the time it actually happens. Scully does what she has done so often, she buries what might happen to her. But she can’t deny what she sees before her eyes.

In the midst of Mulder’s inquiry he has been told of the story of four Japanese scientists who worked during World War II in a unit called 731. This is also based in reality: Japanese scientists also engaged in the similar kind of experiments that the Nazis did during World War II. Four of these scientists were killed on American soil doing the autopsy. But then Scully looks at the picture of one still alive: Shiro Zama and she recognizes him, even though he’s been missing for twenty years. She looks at the autopsy video where he is clearly pictured – and she has a flashback to her abduction and sees him standing over her.

With that being said I think that Gordon's contribution has to do more with Mulder's side of the story. Looking at Gordon's contributions to The X-Files as a whole the overwhelming majority focus on Mulder and frequently try to frame him as an action hero. You get this sense following Mulder's actions in the story: he chasing after a Japanese courier who knocks his service weapon from his hands and at that point Mulder reaches for a sidearm clipped to his sock. "I got tired of losing my gun," he says afterwards.  This could seem like a corny action line but at this point in the show it's happened often enough that it seems like a precaution.

Many of Mulder's actions very much seem like a typical episode of Jack Bauer; tracking down evidence from a diplomatic attaché to the Lone Gunmen for analysis; going to a ship to get information, following the path and being forced to dive into the ocean to escape and the climax where he tracks down our government's secret railway and ends up missing, choosing to leap from a bridge as it passes by. And the fact that moments earlier Scully has been warned by X not to get on that train and just as Mulder does he loses his cellphone, leaving a cliffhanger exactly the kind of crisis Jack would end up in. For that matter even though Gordon didn't write 731 the entire scenario that follows where Mulder ends up on a train tracking down a Japanese scientist and ends up trapped in a boxcar that is triggered to blow up really does seem like the kind of crisis Jack would have to survive.

The Season 4 episode 'Unrequited'  is one of the last he would write for The X-Files.  He collaborated with Chris Carter on it, which by that time was a common practice: in addition to Nisei Gordon would work with Carter on five different scripts before he would leave.  Most of them are superb episodes for good reason: both men were superb at writing about distrust of the government, even when they weren't per se writing about the mytharc. 'Unrequited' has no real connection to the mythology and is a flawed episode for many reasons. Yet in hindsight so much of the story seems to be an ancestor text for the impetus of Homeland  fourteen years later.

The central story involves an assassin who is killing off generals who have connections to the Vietnam War. The assassinations are tied to a paramilitary group known as the Right Hand. The leader is an ex-marine named Denny Markham. Skinner is put in charge of the task force and Mulder and Scully are pulled in because of the circumstances of the first death.

A three-star general entered his limousine and found a playing card on it. We see him killed by a gaunt-bearded man. By the time the drivers turns around the killer is gone. The driver claims he didn't kill him and the paraffin test indicates he didn't fire the weapon.

Mulder and Scully question Markham, who is very much the kind of militia leader that was unfortunately becoming common by 1997.  He gives Mulder and Scully a speech about one day their organization will take up 'an armed resistance against the government'. He denies responsibility but identifies the playing card as part of a group called the Bloody Sabers. The man is Nathaniel Teager. The Right Hand rescued him in 1995 at a Vietnamese prison camp – 23 years after the government declared all P.O.W's from Vietnam had been released. The government attempted to recapture Teager but he escaped. Markham has no idea how.

Nathaniel Teager spends the episode on a path of destruction to kill three generals. We learn via Mulder's newest informant, Marita Corravubias.  These men employed South Vietnamese soldiers as spies and commandos, leaving them behind to face capture or death. The operation had been disavowed but it has recently become public and if these men face charges it would be an embarrassment to the government.

The biggest shock to Mulder comes after learning the government wants them dead. "Why would they ask to protect us?"

Covarrubias's response is simple: "Because they know you can't."

This mission has a dual purpose: maintaining the policy of denial about POWs and silencing those men and as a secondary protocol, to further discredit the FBI and by association The X-Files. It is the kind of convoluted plot that we would later see on both 24 and Homeland. And that's part of the problem.  On those series Gordon would have several episodes to deal with the ramifications of these kinds of betrayals and see it play out. Here he has less then twenty minutes to deal with it once we learn the truth and by this point we know enough about The X-Files to know that if it doesn't involve aliens we won't be dealing with the story in a future episode.

This would be enough to undercut the episode. But that's only part of the problem. The first is that the episode begins in medias re with Mulder and the FBI walking through a speech a general is giving to Vietnam veterans looking for the assassin. This is the opening teaser and we don't understand what's happening. At the last minute Mulder sees the assassin and just as he's about to fire on Him he disappears. Then the episode flashes back twelve hours and the real story unfolds.

Then we see the entire sequence again basically shot for shot during the final act of the episode and only then do we see what happens in the aftermath. In 1997 this gimmick was still new enough that it had power. Problem is its used badly so that it takes up nearly a quarter of the entire episode's runtime, making it by far the worst kind of padding.

Nor is the only flaw. Aside from the killings he commits Teager only appears in two other scenes. The first when he tells a grieving widow that her husband is still alive before disappearing in front of her. The second is when he's actually on his final trip and another veteran recognizes him and follows him. The two men have a civilized conversation where he tries to persuade Teager the war is over and Teager says its not before handing him a list of names. This particular story isn't followed up either.

While this doesn't work in context of the episode it does a lot to make it clear that Gordon might have used the character of Teager when he created the character of Nick Brody for Homeland in 2011. There are clear similarities: Brody was left behind for eight years and his family believed he was dead. And as with Teager he has been 'turned' by spending eight years with terrorist Abu Nazir, who has convinced him to return and exact a terrorist attack on the U.S. intelligence community.  In his final conversation with his fellow veteran Teager makes it clear 'the war isn't over', which is very much why Nick Brody plans to strap a suicide vest and kill, among others, the Vice President.

We can also see signs of the corruption within the U.S government itself perhaps more clearly then most of the other X-Files episodes. Late in the episode when the surviving General, who knows he's the final target, confronts Markham who is in custody. Markham sneers at him and even when Bloch attacks him Markham is unfazed.  "Whatever you do to em won't change his mind, General. He's sending a message. And making damn sure everyone hears it loud and clear."

Markham is a domestic terrorist and he's making it very clear that nothing the government can do will stop what's to come.  

This is a frustrating episode because it almost works. There are individual scenes that are very exciting, such as when Teager walks into the Pentagon and is visible on the cameras – but when he sets off the alarm no one notices. (Teager has the ability to make himself invisible to the naked eye, but the show can't come up with a realistic explanation as to why or how he learned this skill, another issue.) We know by this point he's stalking another general and Mulder has sent him to the Pentagon and asked for an armed escort. His escorts walk him into the room and seeing no one the General enters his office. However we see that playing card.

The General then calls Mulder and tells him what he's found and Mulder tells him to call the men back in his office. We then see Teager behind him and Mulder hears the shot over the phone.  By the time he reaches the office the General is dead. Mulder spots the killer out of the corner of his eye  and whirls around – and then he's gone.

Also working is Teager's death scene when as he dies, he follows the habit of P.O.W's saying name, rank and serial number. The final scene when we learn the government is covering up who the assassin was and that the Right Hand has gone along with it is also powerful. And it helps the final conversation is with Skinner who is a Vietnam vet.

Mulder's final words have power that wouldn't work with any other killer. "They're not just denying this man's life. They're denying his death. And with all due respect sir, he could be you.:"

The line is a powerful indictment of are policies in Vietnam and the Cold War and they could just as easily apply to the 21^st century. And its worth noting in both 24 and Homeland Gordon would frequently deal with storylines where the primary 'villain' was a veteran of intelligence or military hung out to dry (multiple seasons of 24 deal with this as well as several of Homeland) or a government conspiracy to cover up a failed mission. (Both the first seasons of Homeland and 24 involve revenge plots based on these actions.)

Not long after this Gordon ended up leaving The X-Files to strike out on his own. But in these stories and others we shall look at later on, it's more than clear that The X-Files was the proving ground for the man who led the adventures of Jack Bauer and Carrie Matheson for eight brilliant seasons each.

 

 

 

Scrubs Is Back!

 

 

During the 2000s I was starting to watch TV at a more regular clip but I still wasn't sure I was going to be a critic of it. I didn't write my first real professional column on the subject until at least 2011 on a site that no longer exists. That doesn't mean I didn't have opinions, particularly when it came to the Emmys.

There's healthy debate as to which of the great dramas of the 21^st century didn't get nearly enough recognition from the Emmys or other awards shows. The Wire and Battlestar Galactica are basically in a tie for lack of nominations altogether, and Deadwood and The Shield compared to their quality got a ridiculously little number of nominations if not awards. I can see the logic for that, and I could make arguments for shows like Alias if I wanted too. But when it comes to comedies that got lack of recognition by the Emmys and other awards shows, there's only one contender for the most overlooked comedy of all and that is Scrubs.

And compared to all the arguments for dramas Scrubs' track record  is the most inconceivable. It was a network comedy in the era when networks were still rivaling cable for comedy classics; it was an NBC comedy, during the more the three decades they basically owned the nominations, if not most wins in that category every year, and it was a workplace comedy, right about the time the world was about to fall in love with the model. And yet the show was only nominated for best comedy series once during its entire seven seasons on NBC and of the incredible ensemble only Zach Braff ever receiving an acting nomination.

If I had been asked what was the best comedy series of the 2000s at the end of that decade, I wouldn't have said The Office or Everybody Loves Raymond or Will & Grace, I would have said Scrubs and that's a hill I'm still willing to die on. It's not just because I really didn't like any of the other comedies; that's true of the lot of the shows during that period and still today. It's because I truly believe at its peak – which I'd say basically goes from its first season to its sixth – it was the most consistently humorous, wistful and enjoyable series I ever watched. The only contenders to the title in my opinion are Arrested Development and 30 Rock and while both of them are among the funniest shows I've ever watched, Scrubs works for me on a different level because it also has the greatest emotional resonance.

Looking back that maybe the reason the Emmys never knew what to do with it or why it was never as big a hit even when it aired after Friends during the 2002-2003 season is because Scrubs was also one of the darkest comedies of that period. I don't mean that there was any debate like the ones we have today with shows like The Bear whether it was a comedy; generally I laughed more hysterically in an episode watching the antics of JD than any show during that period. But this was also a show set at Sacred Heart, which was a hospital. And let's not kid ourselves: I don't think there was any network comedy during the decade that dealt with such grim subjects in such a humorous matter. I could make an argument that it was as close as the 21^st century ever got to MASH and I don't think there'd be much debate. This was a show where so many of the antics were happening while the staff was doing everything in its power to stop patients from dying and more often then not, they lost the battle more than won it.

This was also a show where we saw the characters suffer more than we wanted to. Consider Dr. Perry Cox, played by John C. McGinley in a performance that every year the Emmys seemed to go out of their way to shun. Every line out of McGinley's mouth was a blistering gem as he went out of his way to deride everyone around him as being an idiot or incompetent, whether it was 'Newbie', 'Doctor Barbie' or any one of the wonderful nicknames he could come up with at a moment's notice. But with each season the episode went out of its way to show that this was someone who was doing everything in his considerable power not to show he had a heart. We saw it in his real friendship with Carla (Judy Reyes); every interaction he had with his ex-wife and soul mate Jordan (the fact that Christa Miller has been sleeping with the showrunner for thirty years doesn't change the fact she's an extraordinary talent) and the way he took the deaths of so many patients badly. We all remember the heartbreaking episode he spent trying to deny the death of his brother-in-law Ben which still brings tears to your eyes nearly 20 years later. You got the feeling most of the time the characters were engaging in the hysterical antics so they didn't cry. That was a balance I don't think TV viewers were ready for in the 2000s, certainly on network TV.

There's also an argument that, for the first two decades of this century, TV has never known what to make of Bill Lawrence. During that period he was the most consistently brilliant maker of comedies, whether it was Scrubs, the awkwardly named but deeply funny Cougar Town and underrated gems like the canceled too soon Ground Floor. Everyone of his shows was a magical experience and they were also watched by too few people and given less recognition.

And then right at the time we needed it – the winter of 2020 – America suddenly realized just how brilliant Bill Lawrence was.  First we found it when the entire world fell in love with Ted Lasso, both the character and the entire show. For its first two seasons it won every award in sight for its actors, its writers and producers. It was as if the Emmys had suddenly realized what a genius it had overlooked and decided to make up for it all at once.

Unlike almost every creative force who derided streaming Lawrence has embraced it and openly spoken in favor of it. It doesn't hurt that his collaboration with Apple TV has been berry, berry good to him. While Ted Lasso was filming its third and what was meant to be its final season, he began working on his next collaboration with Brett Goldstein Shrinking. This series is much more keeping in the Lawrence mold; it’s a lot darker in its subject matter with its lead and the characters around it and has a similar mentor-protégé relationship between Jason Segel and Harrison Ford. Indeed its sometimes difficult for me not to be reminded of Perry Cox much of the time I see Ford's Paul on screen. Paul isn't as mean-spirited and he can be more openly compassionate (though he'll deny it) but he puts up a very gruff façade to those around him and its clearly cost him. And just as with McGinley every line out of Ford's mouth is a gem. (Unlike McGinley Harrison Ford has been nominated by the Emmys and other awards shows and it’s a matter of time before he wins.)

A show created by Lawrence has been nominated for Best Comedy every year since 2021 and its almost certainly going to happen again this year. (Shrinking is a frontrunner for Emmy nominations across the board for Season 3 and I will get to it eventually.) And just like with Ted Lasso  I think the decision to bring back Scrubs for what the show is officially calling a revival rather than reboot comes exactly when we all need it. That ABC rather than Hulu or Apple is doing is a sign of the network's confidence in the project. It may have a shakier foundation with ABC bringing it back then NBC would (it aired the final two very shaky seasons of the show after NBC dropped it in 2008) but having watched network TV in recent years this is absolutely the right call as it is ABC which currently is the unquestionable king of great network comedies during the decade. They brought us Abbott Elementary, the underappreciated Not Dead Yet and the reimagining of The Wonder Years. And having seen the first two episodes, it couldn't be in better hands.

It's clear from the opening that we're right back where we were as we open with a sequence where J.D. is in the middle of a thoracotomy and life-saving procedure that is clearly a John Wells' production. We know it’s a fantasy even before it becomes ridiculous because JD is now a concierge doctor.

He's still living less than an hour from Sacred Heart (and no we still don't know what city its in) when he shows up during a Code Black and Carla is taking charge. (Glad Carla Reyes had the time to show up for the premiere.) As is always with this beautiful relationship (I'm pretty sure 'bromance' has a picture of JD and Turk next to it) Turk senses JD is near and they immediately go into 'Eagle'. Except now their both nearly fifty and Turk's back goes out. And when JD tries to call time of death, he can't read his watch without his glasses.

The series makes it clear what it's going to be right away when Dr. Cox shows up after JD needs help with a patient. JD is dealing with something Scrubs never really had but absolutely needs, a villain: Dr. Park (a wonderful Joel Kim Booster). Its not clear what Cox's relationship is with Park but he immediately says he needs help with another problem: the new group of interns who are so clueless and sensitive they make JD look like Vic Mackey. (Though the show goes out of its way to prove that the only police he would part of is the 'Feelings Police').

Perry can't deal with it the way he used because the times have changed and they haven't so much left him behind as ridiculously overcorrected. The Kelso in this version is played by Vanessa Bayer who is the complete anti-version: Kelso famous had two thumbs and didn't give a damn, Bayer's character makes it ridiculously clear that everyone's feelings are valid, even if they get in the way of the medicine. I really hope that we get to see more of the two because it was just so much fun to see them interact. "Don't I get three strikes?" Cox asks. "You have 900," Bayer says back.

And sadly there are fewer happy endings then we think. JD and Eliot did end up getting married at the end of the original run – and they're divorced now. Honestly this shouldn't really come as a shock as the two of them always worked far better as friends (with or without benefits) then they ever did as boyfriend and girlfriend. I honestly thought when the show made them finally get together by the end of Season 8 (the series is, thankfully, denying that Season 9 ever happened) it was the kind of think a conventional comedy series did, which Scrubs never was. By having the two of them now having gone through a very rocky divorce, the show has restored the status quo – and let's not kid ourselves, that was always the fun.

The fun part of the revival of Scrubs is that the three major characters: JD, Eliot and Turk (the only official regulars in the cast) have grown older but not necessarily matured. JD is less emotionally needy but still incredibly sensitive, Eliot is more in charge but still a hot mess and Turk may be married with four kids but he still is capable of doing the robot dance when he needs to. And its clear that even though some of the regulars are gone, Sacred Heart is just as weird as ever.

But some of the familiar faces are still there, in spirit if not in body. Nurse Roberts has long since gone but now we have a group of African-American charge nurses going "Mm-hmm". Todd is still as much a handful as he was before even though he's trying to be better. "You should see me go deep," he says. But when every women looks at him he goes: "With consent five." And a lot of the older characters will be there and we've seen some of the older faces such as Hooch, who is still crazy.  (Sadly we won't be seeing Ted as Sam Lloyd passed away a few years ago.)

JD ends up coming back to be the Chief of Medicine, the job held by first Kelso and then Perry. And its watching him work particularly with the new breed of interns that you get the sense why we need Scrubs now more than ever. Nothing has changed about emergency medicine in the fifteen years since Scrubs went off the air and if anything its got even worse. Scrubs famously showed awareness of all of the problems and with far more humor and grace then any medical drama did years ago with the exception of ER (which was still on the air when Scrubs premiered). Now it makes it return just as the most critically acclaimed show and one of the most watched series on TV in any form is The Pitt, a series which looks at every possible crisis at every level over a single shift.

Scrubs is no different now then it was in the 2000s and does it with far more grace then those dramas did. We see it in the first episode of the revival when an aggressive intern tells a patient who he thinks has a stomachache to wait in the car or go to an ER, not even willing to leave the hospital. At the end of the season premiere, that patient has a heart attack and dies and the intern realizes in a way he hasn't how badly he's screwed up.  The show also has JD finally dealing with the kind of issues he never had to at any point on the show, budgeting and trying to instruct.  JD seems to have become more pragmatic at this point.

During the second episode when a patient is dealing with heart issues because he can't afford medicine one of his interns decides to argue with the insurance agent to get pills. This leads to trouble and JD tells him to see more patients. Eventually JD does make some deals and tries to get the guy the meds he needs. In the old show this would be seen as a victory and the episode would leave it be as a triumph. In the revival JD tells the intern that he's going to face hundreds of these cases every year and if he cares too much he's going to burn out quickly. JD lets the intern have his victory.

None of this makes the show any less funny or prone to the fantasies that made it wonderful. In dealing with his rivalry with Park JD frames himself in a James Bond story and makes Park the villain. ("So I'm the Asian villain who doesn't have any dialogue?" Park says before throwing a bowler hat to decapitate JD.) Later that episode JD realizes he's a villain to and throws his own bowler. "Want to hit the buffet?" he tells Park. And at the end of the episode we see JD spending the night he should be celebrating his return waiting on hold – and we see that play out as a fantasy too.

The only thing that I have doubts about after two episodes is the numerous group of interns that we've met in the first two episodes. This ended up weighing down much of Season 8 and when it came back trying to focus entirely on them in Season 9 (which did not happen!) it took a way a lot of goodwill fans had with the show.  The new writers are doing a better job then they did in the first couple of episodes they did in Season 8 but that's not a high bar to surpass.

That's a minor quibble. Scrubs was ahead of its time when it debuted during the 2000s and honestly on network TV in 2026, the rest of comedy TV still has to catch up with it. It does have the same nostalgia factor of every reboot and revival, much of which I have little use for in most cases but somehow doesn't apply here.  Like Zach Braff, Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke, I'm also twenty-five years older than I was when I first saw them as interns in Sacred Heart and while I've matured a lot in my viewing habits I still know a classic when I see one. And the message that's still in his opening lyric – "I can't do this all on my own" – could be a mission statement for every show he's done since.  I need the show just as much now as I did twenty five years ago and I think that could be said for all of us.

My score: 4.5 stars.

 

Why I Always Come Back to Lost, Or Why The Feud Between Heisenberg and Westeros Is Just Silly

 

On a Facebook site devoted to Lost fans there's this humorous meme. We see two angry people yet at each other. One face had an image of Game of Thrones over it; one has an image of Breaking Bad. Standing off to the side is a third face with a smile on it and an image of Lost over it.

A little explanation based on what I've been able to learn about this meme. Apparently a few weeks ago in regard to the most recent episode of Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the most recent Game of Thrones spinoff the fans gave an episode a perfect 10 on imdb.com This outraged the Breaking Bad fans because apparently the landmark 'Ozymandias' episode, justifiably considering by my fellow critics one of the greatest episodes in TV history, is apparently still the only episode on that site with a perfect score.

So illustrating the maturity that until recently I only associated with those online forces who hated whenever a show connected with sci-fi was considered 'woke', they spent the next few days reviewing bombing it until it wasn't. In return the Game of Thrones fans chose to retaliate by review bombing 'Ozymandias' until it fell first below 9.9, then 9.7 and who knows how much further they'll go.

It's things like that the critic in me just wants Graham Chapman to come down from heaven and say: "Right, this is getting silly." To be clear I think the entire reviewing bombing procedure on sites like this represents the inverse of the left's attitude of cancel culture. The small-minded people online feel that by making it clear that trying to make any part of the Star Trek or Star Wars universe more woke is tantamount to treason and feel a need to make it clear by making sure before the shows even air an episode that they will not tolerate. As of this writing the only series that has been fully spared their childish wrath is The Last Of Us, which no matter how hard they try they have been unable to reduce such episodes as 'A Long, Long Time' below an 8.  Seriously guys its people like you that make my job a lot harder.

There may come a time when I comment on this practice but this is not it, mainly because I've never used imdb.com or indeed any other site to determine whether a show is worth watching. I make up my own mind and have never been swayed by the masses. I also think that these practices are useless because what the internet thinks about pop culture and what the rest of the world thinks has always had a huge disconnect and always will.

More to the point as my readers know well I don't have shows or episodes where I want to call the greatest of all time. I acknowledge that there are some series and episodes that will be all-time classics but I'm never going to make an argument that it is absolutely perfect. Indeed I judge heavily even my fellow critics who do so. Recently, for the record, The Atlantic had a critic who picked eight episodes that they considered perfection and nothing from Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones was on the list. What was on the list was an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, an episode of Girls and two reality show episodes. That critic made my fellow critics look even worse then this imbroglio.

And finally my colleagues know that I never liked Game of Thrones and just get into it, so for me to weigh into this feud would be pointless because I'd be looking like an amateur. What I would like to do is explain that particular meme and why I think all of us Lost fans hear this feud going on and have this fond smile on our faces.

Now I'm not going to comment on whether Lost is a better show then either of the two above because I don't think its fair to any of them. What I will argue is why all Lost fans like myself would still prefer to rewatch more and more than either of the two shows, regardless of their brilliance.

No one's denying that all of three series are on the shortlist for the greatest of all time. This is despite the fact that Lost had a problematic series finale that many fans debate ruined the whole show even now, Game Of Thrones had such a problematic final season that many thought it ruined the whole series, and Breaking Bad absolutely stuck the landing in a way that is more or less the gold standard of how series should end from this point forward.  (As far as I can tell, no Game of Thrones fan would try to review bomb Felina to death. They can't throw stones here.)

Game of Thrones certainly won on the matter of the Emmys, having broken the record for most Emmy nominations and wins of any series at such a level that may very well stand forever. (Whether it deserved the last one for Best Drama is debatable but honestly the Emmys track record with that is bad for so many shows its not a flaw singular to Thrones.) Breaking Bad, to be sure, did very well: with 16 total Emmys, including Best Drama for its final two seasons, four for Bryan Cranston, three for Aaron Paul and two for Anna Gunn. And Lost did win 10 Emmys including Best Drama for its landmark first season. It finished with 51 nominations across six seasons which for a network drama, particularly during its era, is pretty impressive.

But none of that really makes one show better than the other. Breaking Bad had its first three seasons overlap with Lost's last three and honestly it was basically a draw, considering Mad Men won Best Drama every one of those years. When Game of Thrones debuted it was defeated by Mad Men in its first year. The next year it faced off against Breaking Bad for the first time and both shows were beaten badly by Homeland. The last two times they competed Breaking Bad dominated. Only after Breaking Bad went off the air did the wins for Game of Thrones come – and its worth noting that not long it basically left George R.R Martin's books behind and in hindsight even the most devoted fans believe it started to lose its way. We can't discount the possibility that the Emmys was making up for lost time when it honored it the first time in 2015 – and then in keeping with its institutional laziness just kept honoring it season after season.

I mention the Emmys and the shows that were nominated mainly because there were a lot of great shows during this period competing. Lost had to go up against The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and Deadwood during its first three seasons along with 24 at its peak. By the time Breaking Bad came along both shows were competing against Dexter, Damages and Friday Night Lights, all of which are on the shortlist for greatest shows of this period. By the time Game of Thrones came along streaming was entering the game and both shows were competing against House of Cards and Downton Abbey. (I'll stop after Bad left the air because I have my own biases about the shows Game of Thrones beat during this period and I don't want it to show.)

With the sole exception of Downton which I never cottoned too, all of these shows are great series and I've made an attempt to rewatch many of them during this period, along with many of the shows that were ignored such as The Wire and Battlestar Galactica. And I have rewatched a couple of them from start to finish a few times. But of all of them, the only one I will rewatch like clockwork every few years is Lost. And its not until recently I finally realized why and maybe in a way that explains that meme I talked about.

Objectively Breaking Bad and Game Of Thrones are two of the greatest dramas of all time and that's true of all the series I listed. But even by the standards of all of those shows, they are by far the bleakest. I'm not per se saying that's necessarily a dealbreaker for me when it comes to rewatching a show: it wasn't when I rewatched Damages a decade ago and it wasn't when I did so for Deadwood.  But the thing is I'm not sure there's the same motivation for people like me to rewatch Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad that there necessarily is for Lost.

Game of Thrones is one of the bloodiest shows in the history of television when it comes to killing off characters remorselessly. I'll be honest, that would be enough to make it a dealbreaker for me and it’s the same reason I'd never be willing to watch The Walking Dead which has a similar ruthlessness. I'm used to characters being killed off on regular basis but at a certain point, this makes character not flesh and blood human beings but essentially cannon fodder.

And that's before you get to the brutality of the show in killing people off. This is a series where one of the greatest episodes of all was 'The Rains of Castamere' a title they had to choose in order to hide the fact that in Season 3 they were going to do the infamous 'Red Wedding' Now I do realize this was canon and at this point the show was following the novels of Martin closely. But there's a different between violence and gratuitous violence and at a certain point the show really leaned her into the 'gratuitous' part. That was true for all of it, the nudity, the sexual violence, even how it basically turned incest into something acceptable for the readers.  But it had the effect of making you watch less to see how the series played out and more to see how many characters would die.  That never set right with me with any show and Thrones was just to most obvious example.

Breaking Bad wasn't nearly as violent, mainly because it was on basic cable rather than HBO. But it doesn't change the fact that so much of our 'pleasure' in it seemed to be watching Mr. Chips become Scarface. I don't deny that it wasn't a great show for that reason and I'm far more willing to rewatch it then any other series. What I question is whether it was an enjoyable series to watch.

Because for all the argument that Walter White was an antihero, let's not kid ourselves. The longer the show was on the air, the more of a villain he was clearly becoming. He was also becoming increasingly petulant and childish with each new season, showing an arrogance that seemed to overpower his better judgment, particularly when it came to Gus Fring. This was a man, who for all his chemical genius, was not as clever as he thought he was. He had one great ability: to lie. That was more his superpower than his science.

And let's not kid ourselves: I really never liked the fanbase's toxic masculinity to characters who we should have been sympathetic too, particularly Skyler. Even Gilligan admits he never understood why her character got so much hatred and visceral contempt. No matter how nasty and unpleasant Walter became, particularly to those who loved him, the fan base basically seems to hate Skyler because she was a wet blanket and kept reminding the audience how much of  a monster he was.  This is a guy who could poison a child just to save his own life by the end of Season 4, and the fanbase was still willing to say: "Well, he had his reasons." Skyler tries to protect the family from the IRS, which was a government branch that could have been just as dangerous, and everybody jumped on her.

I should mention that's part of the reason I was looking forward so much to Better Call Saul.  The longer the show lasted, every scene between Walter and Saul became so unnerving as Odenkirk made it clear each meeting that he was genuinely afraid of the monster he'd created. By the time of Gus's death you could tell that Saul realized he was in over his head but couldn't find a way to get out. In their final interaction in Bad when Walt was still trying to control the situation and ignoring anything Saul said, I genuinely felt sympathy for him. (For the record I will rewatch Saul at some point and try to look it at with fresh eyes, independent of what happens in Breaking Bad first.)

And that brings me as to why I keep rewatching Lost. Because what is vastly different between this series and not only Thrones and Bad but all of the shows I mentioned above (with the exception of Friday Night Lights) Lost was never the kind of show where you liked it when something bad happened to one of the characters or when they did something bad.  And its also the real reason why in the aftermath of it becoming a hit show, so many of its successors could not duplicate what it accomplished during its run and in a way almost none have done since.

Lost was a mythology show, I won't deny that. But unlike all other mythology shows that came after it, it made it very clear it was about the characters first. Yes we were always trying to unravel the mysteries week after week, yes we wanted to know the truth about the Monster or why the Black Rock was in the middle of the woods, what the Others were, what the Dharma Initiative was and why Oceanic 815 crashed on the island in the first place. (For the record all of these questions were answered by the time the series ended.) But it was never as much about the mysteries of the island then everyone we met.

In guides to the show many have argued this was its strength and it proved it early on. Emily St. James makes this clear in her review of the Season One finale Exodus. In the midst of explaining why one of the most famous sequences on the show – the launching of the raft' works so well she gives a long list and eventually a simpler reason:

But mostly, it's the dog.

See as the raft heads off into the Pacific, Vincent the dog paddles along with it trying to catch up to Walt, the boy who has been caring for him these last few weeks. Walt calls out to him to go back and still Vincent keeps paddling away…Finally Walt convinces the pup to return to shore and he turns around and paddles back. It should be cheap to rely on a trope as corny as this but Lost understands very well that this kind of earnest sentimentality can be enormously effective when deployed well…The raft sequence needs this little extra spice to push it over the top and it finds it in one of the oldest stories there is: a boy and his dog.

And to emphasize how well this still works on here, St. James adds a footnote:

I'm struggling not to tear up at the thought of poor Vincent trying to catch up to Walt as I right this. He's such a good dog!

(Yes I know the reputation Vincent has among Lost fans. Doesn't change it.)

When explaining why so many shows that tried to replicate Lost in the aftermath failed St. James after giving a long explanation gets back to the point.

Mostly those other shows forgot the dog. By that I don't mean they all should have a dog. (Footnote: Though all TV shows should have a dog.) I mean that they don't have those tiny but significant moments of sentimentality and feeling which by the audience's goodwill and allow the series to keep pushing it into darker, weirder territory. A viewer will forgive a show for a lot if they get to see a moment like Vincent swimming after the raft. Lost understood that, but too many of its imitators did not.

Now think about that in regard to Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones or indeed so many of the shows that I've mentioned above. I'll grant you many of these series were brilliantly written, directed and starred. I'll grant you that I love watching many of them over and over. But do any of them have a dog in the way St. James argues?

The 21^st century has been a place for great television perhaps because it reflects so much of our nature. Certainly Lost was more than willing to do that in quite a few of its storylines. But it never forgot it was a show that it needed moments of sentimentality in order for its viewers to forgive some of the weirder and darker and mysteries.

This was also, as any fan know all too well, the most romantic show of any series during the 21^st century. This was a series that made it clear practically from the first season that it was going to be a show as much about love stories as it what about mysteries even before it introduced to the greatest of all: Desmond and Penny. (Now I'm tearing up as I think of Desmond saying "I love you Penny' as he's about to turn the fail-safe key. Damn you, Lost.) Love became something that has been basically less and less relevant in great television series and if it does come up its done in a cynical and often bloodthirsty fashion. We certainly saw in both Bad and Thrones how love caused its characters to commit horrible acts of violence, which irrevocably tainted it.

That was never the case for Lost. Indeed I'd argue part of the reason we loved the show so much is because it made us care about the characters and how so many of the things they cared about the most were taken from them in regard to the island. Here I'll quote Nikki Stafford in the final volume of Finding Lost:

Almost every character in this series has lost the one thing that mattered most to them. For Sun, it was Jin. Jack lost Kate. Kate & Claire both lost Aaron. Locke lost his faith and then the island. Sayid lost Nadia. Daniel lost Charlotte. Sawyer lost Juliet. Desmond lost Penny, but he stands apart because unlike everyone else, he got her back again.

And that's not counting how Ben and Danielle both lost Alex, Richard lost Isabella or Hurley lost Libby.

Most of these losses were through death but unlike so many of the shows above Lost made you feel these deaths in your gut. Every time a character died on Lost even on the island, there was a funeral of sorts. I don't think I've seen this in any of the shows above in the same way. Lost went out of its way to take the time to bury its victims and have those who were still alive say a few words and mourn their departure. When a character died on one of the previous two shows, their loss was barely noticed and in many cases mourning was not an option. Lost alone made you feel the loss of the characters in a very real way.

I suspect that's another part of the reason I keep rewatching it. I know which characters are going to die, when its going to happen and how. But that doesn't make them any less painful or hit it in the gut any less. When we watch Charlie die after going through all of Season 3 wondering if it will actually happen, it's arguably one of the most moving and profound sequences in TV history. You feel it in your gut and your heart breaks all over again. I defy anyone to say they feel a similar kind of emotion whenever they rewatch a wedding in Westeros or when we see what happens to Jane or Gus Fring on Breaking Bad. I've seen the latter quite a few times; it's not the same thing at all.

I think its telling that the episode all Lost fans think is the greatest of all time is The Constant. Unlike any of those in Bad or Thrones we aren't waiting for a moment of tragedy but to see love conquer all, even time and space. This isn't a struggle for power that ends in bloodshed or one character losing everything he ever had; this is a story about love and the power it has to cross over everything. There are other episodes in Lost I think are superior to 'The Constant' but I do understand why Lost fans feel that way and why it was once named one of the greatest episodes of the 21^st century. You come away with your brain and heart aching and happy in a way you just aren't watching 'Rains of Castamere' or 'Ozymandias'. When those episodes aired the first time you no doubt needed a week to recover. When 'The Constant' aired you counted down the hours and minutes for the next episode to see what happened next and you stayed up all night because you were overjoyed.  There aren't a lot of shows you feel that way about and fewer that give you that feeling after nearly twenty years.

That's why I know that while I want to rewatch many of the shows at the start above, Lost is the only one I know with certainty I will rewatch. It has nothing to do with it being a higher quality show then Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones or even favorites that mean more to me like The Americans and Damages.  They are all great shows and they all have power. But Lost is one of those shows that resonates with my heart far more than my brain or my gut.  In other words it's the kind of show that leaves you smiling when you watch it.

Hollywood and Politics, Part 5: How California Politics in the 2000s May Have Been A Harbinger Of Events to Come a Decade Later

 

Because at this point it has become a leftist talking point about how the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine was critical in the right wing's rise to power it is important to tell you – as someone who lived through it – exactly what the left chose to do during this same period.

When the Fairness Doctrine itself was repealed on August 4^th 1987 the left did nothing. When Rush Limbaugh became a fixture on talk radio, they also did nothing. And when Fox News was founded in 1996 they did nothing.

This was in keeping with the pattern of how the left reacted during every factor of the right's rise to power. There was never a progressive equivalent of the Heritage Foundation or The Federalist Society. They never attempted to elect politicians who would keep to the left-wing ideology the same way Gingrich would do so in the Republican Revolution in 1994.  All of their complaints and arguments about how this has led to the polarization of politics are accurate but always reported on in the kind of detached fashion: somebody should have done something.  These methods, by their definition, were just as available to progressives as they were to conservatives. But they chose to do nothing.

And in the case of Hollywood they did the same thing they did they always do: they mocked it with the attitude of 'no intelligent person would ever take this seriously'. This was, as I noted in the previous article, the exact same attitude of smugness in which they had been proven spectacularly incorrect when it came to either Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. But in this case it was far more dangerous as this was not a single candidate but a method of broadcast that reached millions of Americans across the country on a daily basis.  Considering in particularly just how successful Reagan had been at reaching the voters this way the dangers should have been crystal clear far more to Hollywood than anyone else.

And yet during the 1990s well into the 2000s Hollywood's attitude was to openly mock the idea that anyone would take this seriously. Perhaps it was built on the idea of offense: one of the talking points of both Limbaugh and Fox News was just how hopelessly liberal Hollywood was and how it was leading the country down a moral sewer. But Hollywood never felt a need then or now to make a case to defend itself to those very viewers. However in the 1990s and 2000s there were different reasons then there are today.

And that is because, with the exception of programs like The Daily Show and Bill Maher, during this period Hollywood was not challenging politics directly any more than they had to this point.  By and large Hollywood still had no use for the Republican party but they also had very little for the Democratic Party and their projects both in film and TV basically reflected it. They believed correctly their jobs were those of entertainers and that  they were to mock those who were in power, regardless of their politics.  Despite the fact networks like Fox News argued Democrats were in the pocket of Hollywood by and large they were still neutral on the subject.

To be sure they were increasingly fundraising for Democratic candidates far more than Republicans and many of the faces were more and more left-wing. But with few exceptions their entertainment during this period – the 1990s until Obama's second term – was to essentially follow their version of the Fairness Doctrine. Both sides were equally worthy of their contempt and they saw no reason to choose one or the other.

There were exceptions of course, notably among documentarians such as Michael Moore and increasingly the films of Oliver Stone. But Hollywood essentially spent the Clinton era and all of W's Presidency basically absent. Some of their more left-wing members would protest, some of them would give speeches at awards show arguing for various causes, but that was basically as far as it went. Hollywood was still a business, after all, and despite what conservatives said the industry basically took the same approach Michael Jordan did when he refused to campaign for a Democratic Senator in North Carolina: Republicans bought movie tickets and watched TV, too so why isolate them?

Unlike other aspects of the left's constituency not only do I not blame Hollywood for not taking any action but I approve of it and wish they'd maintained it throughout the past decade. And there is a good possibility that a large part of the reason Hollywood didn't choose to criticize the right is because during this period in the state of California it would have looked like they were throwing stones from glass mansions.

In 1996 voters in California approved Proposition 198 that changed the partisan primary to a blanket primary in which each voter's ballot lists every candidate imaginable regardless of party affiliation. The candidate of each party who wins the most votes was the parties nominee. This went against the rules of every California political party opposed this idea because they historically prohibited nonmembers from voting in their party's primary. Eventually all four parties filed suit against California, alleging the blanket primary violated their First Amendment right of association. Jones, a Republican, argued that a blanket primary would intensify the election. This judgment would be upheld by a district judge and the Court of Appeals. But eventually the California Democratic Party would present the question that violated the political parties First Amendment right of association.

IN 2000 by a 7-2 opinion, the Court held that proposition 198 forced political parties 'to associate with – to have their nominees and hence their positions, determined by – those who, at best, have refused to affiliate with their party and, at worst, affiliated with a  rival…A single election in which the party nominee is selected by nonparty members could be enough to destroy the party."  Only Ruth Badeer Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens dissented in this opinion.

By that point California had already held what would be its only election of this type for governor. At that point California might well have wished it had never happened.

Grey Davis has been part of California politics since the 1970s when he had volunteered for John Tunney's campaign for the Senate. He'd served as Jerry Brown's chief of staff and was far less liberal then him. He would eventually serve as Assemblyman from West LA and Beverly Hills and had served as state controlled from 1986-1995. But even by then he had a habit for being a dirt campaigner. When Pete Wilson had vacated his Senate seat he'd run against Dianne Feinstein in the Democratic primary. He ran one of the most famous negative ads of all time when he compared Feinstein to the just incarcerated Leona Helmsley. This spectacularly backfired and Davis lost to Feinstein significantly. Nevertheless he continued to use horribly negative campaign ads and would do so win the Lieutenant governors race in 1994 against the Republican candidate who he claimed was too conservative.

In the primary campaign David surprised everybody by beating two better funded Democratic opponents. Upon winning the nomination he went out of his way to frame his opponent Attorney General Dan Lundgren as too conservative for California and out of touch with its views on issues like guns and abortion. Upon election Davis, with no apparent irony, said he would work to end the 'divisive politics' of his predecessor Pete Wilson.

Davis was the first Democrat to win in California in sixteen years. He used the growing budget to increase spending in education, signed legislation that led to a new statewide accountability exam and began recognizing students for academic achievement in arts and science. But by May of 2000 the bloom was coming off the rose.

A coalition of civil rights groups would file Williams v. California alleging the state's failure to ensure basic and decent educational necessities  violated the state's constitution's guarantee of a free and equal public education with plaintiffs emphasizing that the worst conditions centered on low-income and non-white students.

Rather than pursue a negotiated settlement Davis retained a private law firm to defend the state and by September of 2001 California had paid this firm 2.5 million dollars. He drew criticism for deposing student plaintiffs some as young as eight, filing cross complaints against the school districts and diverting millions that could be spent from repairs and instruction into litigation.

Davis was very much one of the more left-leaning governors in the state recognizing domestic partnerships and signing laws banning assault weapons, expanding the number of low-income children with state subsidized health coverage and was one of the most environmental governors in America.

All of this happened during a period of an economic boom and the budget expanded to cover Davis's new programs and the budget had a ten percent surplus. But when the dot.com boom that had been fueling California record tax revenues went bust and the state income taxes dropped. Combined with the huge spending commitments California suffered deficient and its credit rating began to fail. Davis was determined to keep a balanced budget, a position that was increasingly becoming unpopular with the far left wing of the party who believed in government spending without limits.

Early in his governorship Davis began to fundraise for his reelection campaign and had 27.4 million dollars by the end of 2000 alone. And during the lead up to the 2002 election Davis took the unusual steps of taking out campaign ads against Republican Mayor of LA Richard Riordan. Davis's polls show that as a moderate Riordan would be more formidable challenger in the general election. He attacked Riordan's pro-choice stance and wanting a moratorium on the death penalty as being to the left of Davis, who supported it. In the first ten weeks of 2002 Davis spent 3 million dollars boosting his record and $7 million attacking Riordan. When the more conservative Bill Simon won the primary Davis ran a long and bitter campaign attacking him.

By the time the election was over Davis would win largely because the horrible tone of the campaign had led to the lowest turnout percentage in modern gubernatorial history. Even then he won with 47 percent of the vote to Simon's 42 percent. Davis received 1.3 million fewer votes than he had when he was elected to the office four years later.

By this time the budget crisis had fundamentally hit California hard and he was widely criticized for reversing a decade of fee reduction on motor vehicles. And not long after he signed a law allowing the California DMV to grant driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants he was challenged to a recall.

Davis was attacked by everybody. Some claimed he had mismanaged events in the lead up to the California energy crisis. Conservatives thought a corporate friendly Republican governor could save it from fraud. The overall believe was that Davis was guilty of corruption because of the massive campaign contributions he had take it, even if he couldn't be prosecuted by the legal standard.

 

By July of 2003 a sufficient number of citizen signatures were collected for a recall election. It had been financed by the funds of Darrell Issa who had been reelected to Congress the same year as Davis. An Orange Country Republican Issa had started the 'Dump Davis' movement in order to hopefully become governor himself. Davis spent a fair amount of time calling the recall vote an insult but eventually admitted he had lost touch with the voters. He called it a right-wing effort to rewrite history having lost the election the previous year.

By that point Issa had dropped out of the race. On August 23^rd so did Bill Simon the previous nominee. Eventually 135 different candidates would run to the point that it very much seemed like a media circus and a nightmare. It didn't help that the Game Show Network held a game show debate entitled "Who Wants to be Governor of California, featuring unlikely but on the ballot candidates as Gary Colman and porn star Marey Carey. It became more unclear who didn't want the job: Issa would drop out as would Simon. Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante would become the Democratic frontrunner and there were several legitimate candidates including Arianna Huffington Republican Tom McClintock.

The actual frontrunner, however, almost seemed like it was the punch line to a horrible joke.

Arnold Schwarzeneggger had been prominent in Republican politics for years. Having served on the President's Council of Physical Fitness under George H.W. Bush. He had considered running for public office in 1999 but he denied the efforts early saying he was in show business.

When he jumped into the political campaign he'd never held public office and no one knew his political views, even in California. But because he was one of the biggest action movie stars of all-time he moved ahead based solely on name recognition. He declined to participate in any of the debates with other candidates and only engaged in one the entire campaign.

That Hollywood chose to fall lockstep behind a man who had no qualifications for elected office for the governorship of the biggest state in the country solely because he was one of their own should have served as a bellwether for what would happen to the Presidency more than a decade later.  No one in Hollywood seemed to care about what it would be if a man whose only qualification for governor of California was that he was one of the biggest box-office draws of all time. The actual recall of Davis may have been done out seriousness; the choice to replace him Schwarzenegger was pure farce. And it didn't help that days within the election allegations of sexual and personal misconduct were raised against him from six different women.

Schwarzenegger was moderate Republican who claimed to be fiscally conservative and socially liberal. But what the state seemed to care about was his handiness with a  catchphrase such as calling Democratic state politician 'girlie men'.

And almost from the start of his gubernatorial run the state unions itself began to oppose his various referendums. On June 13^th 2005 he called a special election for eight ballot initiatives. Prop 74, teacher tenure requirements, Prop 75, the use of Union Dues for campaign contributions, Prop 76 state budgetary limits and Prop 77, redistricting. He put on four other propositions, including parental notification for abortion, prescription drugs by pharmaceutical companies, and electric industry regulation. Every single one of them failed , most with 60 percent of the population voting no. He would sign the Global Warming Solutions Act as part of being governor and would be one of the best governors when it came to climate change.

Furthermore many of his policies as governor when against what members of his state asked for. He twice vetoed bills for a single-payer health care system in the state and two bills that would have legalized same-sex marriage. And he opposed Prop 66 an amendment to the Three Strikes Law in November of 2004, that would have required the third felony to be violent to mandate the maximum sentence. It ended up being voted down.

And he suffered nearly as many ethics issues as Davis by the time he left office. His approval rating when he finally stepped down in 2010 was 23 percent, only one percentage higher that Davis when he was recalled. This act was signed during a period of campaign finance reform of which Schwarzenegger openly believed. It had been passed in some states such as Massachusetts, Maine and Arizona but in 2003 the legislature had repealed it because the people had voted to reverse their position by a margin of 74 percent against.

It's also worth reminding readers that in 2008 the California Fair Elections Act passed the California Assembly and Senate and Schwarzenegger signed it to law. He had tried to push this through in 2005 with Proposition 89 in 2005, which suggested funding elections with a business tax. That was voted down by 74 percent as well. Because of the Citizens United Decision the vote had to be approved by an initiative. And on June 8^th 2010, the voters of the most liberal state in the Union rejected it by 57 percent to 43 percent.

This rejection is keeping with all of the liberal reforms of the Davis administration and that Schwarzenegger made numerous attempts to follow through on. At the end of the day someone has to foot the bill for these reforms and the electorate of California, already known as a very liberal state, made it clear repeatedly they didn't want to have to pay for them. One sees this same pattern play out whenever progressive states argued for the kinds of things they claim are fundamental rights. They will use grand talk about how these things will benefit all Americans in some kind of nebulous future in a way that will justify short-term costs.

 But the world lives in the present and in the present they have to deal with things that affect their economic well-being.  Repeatedly voters have made it clear they don't want to have pay extra money for something they may not give out benefits in the long-term, perhaps not in their lifetime.  Not coincidentally when most of the people arguing for these reforms are educated, rich and mostly white it adds to the detachment they have from the working class voter who will feel the pain far more than they will.

 

In the last decade I'm seen every historian, professional, amateur or online, use something from every aspect of our American history going back nearly a century to try and 'explain' how the electorate could have let the 2016 election 'happen'.  Somehow in all that time none of them have ever tried to look at California after 2002.

But look at the story. One of the most successful states in the Union – one which could have had one of the largest economies in the world were its own country  - chooses a Democratic leader who enacts some of the most progressive reforms after decades of Republicans rule. That state which had bene undergoing an economic boom suddenly undergoes circumstances that lead to a crash that hurts the economy. The citizenry, upset with the unpopular leader, lead a concentrated effort to remove that leader from office, one that is heavily financed by Republicans and quickly becomes a media circus

The leading candidate for that effort has no experience in electoral politics but it is a national celebrity. He refuses to engage in the typical political process, has rallies which center far more on film catchphrases then actual policy and quickly becomes the overwhelming frontrunner. Even the fact of multiple sexual improprieties within days of the election does nothing to stop him from coming to power. And yet his agenda is unpopular with the electorate of his state and he is challenged far more by the left then his right. Eventually he leaves far more unpopular than he ever was and with the state in far more economic trouble than it was when he came into office.

So why does Hollywood choose to ignore a parallel so obvious a child could see it? I think the biggest reason is that Schwarzenegger chose to go more to his left as he governed and eventually became a pariah in his own party. As we all know among the progressive failures are completely acceptable if you move to the left by doing so. By this point Hollywood and the left it represented had long since stopped looking for legislation or candidates to foment their agenda then people who said and did the right things. That he did so at the cost of not helping their own state was irrelevant; it suited an increasing brand of activism rather than actual politics. Even the fact that Schwarzenegger had been the keynote speaker at the 2004 Republican National Convention -  at a time when the industry was at its peak in its contempt for George W. Bush – was never a disqualifier the same way so many former Democrats were increasingly moving to the Republican party during this same period.

And it also ignores the fact that the state was putting on the ballot multiple parts of the progressive agenda where it has since become gospel among the left are universally popular among voters. But the fact remains Schwarzenegger put many of these principles to a vote among the citizenry of the biggest state in the Union, one that by the mid-2000s was already far more to the left then the rest of America and they were all overwhelmingly rejected by the voters. It's worth noting these patterns played out in multiple states across the country during the first two decades of this century  -most of them also left-leaning – and the electorate of those states rejected them as well.

This was far from the only lesson progressives and Californians alike failed to learn during the 2000s. In the next article I will deal with how the results of the 2000 election perhaps more than anything else caused a new generation of progressives to completely misinterpret America's politics right up until 2016.