Can American Government Become Boring Again? Or Why I Hope This Week's Attempt to Impeach Pete Hesgeth Is The Last Gasp of Pure Political Theater

 

In one of my first articles on politics back in the now halcyon days of 2023 I argued that the average American doesn't care that much about politics and government because it's immensely dull. I believe I used a line that if we did C-Span would be the most watched cable network.  I later argued the average person spends as much time on electoral politics as they can afford to and later statistical evidence about how relatively few people watch cable news networks like Fox News and MSNBC have born that out as well.

I'd add that by far the people who will decry how bad things are in politics the loudest are by and large the ones whose job it is to watch it – those in cable news, academics, entertainers and former elected officials. The average voter is basically indifferent to it in large because it doesn't interest them unless it directly effects them, which is why their first issue when it comes to voting has always been the economy. This is something that, for the record, those on the left care about the least – usually because they themselves are far better off than the  average voter.

More to the point for all the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth when it comes to the idea that Congress is a circus or just engages in political theater, I'd argue those who say that are actually fine with it because when of what I stated in the first paragraph. I'd argue that's true for those who argue for social justice and other reforms. They say they want Congress to sign a bill enacted Medicare for All, but they're not going to stand by their TVs or their phones watching Congress hold hearings on the subject which is what it will take to actually get it done. And to be fair, it would very quickly become dull to watch because watching legislation being discussed is dull. That's how Congress is supposed to work; it's the C-SPAN version of it as opposed to ones we get on CNN or Fox News and even then they only cut in when it's getting combative.

And again that's how it should be. I think it's fine that Congress should be a long, dull process of working together to pass legislation that helps Americans. I also agree with the discussion that in the 21^st century far too much of it has been occupied by bad actors on both sides of the aisle (particularly in the House) who some of their own colleagues despise as being content creators rather than passing legislation. In a recent article for the Times Magazine many Congressional Democrats have decried how in the Trump era even the serious ones have been forced to engage in political theater for their base rather than the business of passing legislation. They've done so in large part in reaction to Trump and how the Republicans have reacted but also because of those in those in their own far left candidates who are more engaged in creating content then helping people.

I've written about some of the more overt versions, such as Jamaal Bowman's pulling a fire alarm in Congress in the midst of passing a funding bill back in 2024, but I've received numerous examples of this from the contest deluge of political fundraising ads I've received from progressive organizations over the year. Most of them involve support for reform bills that have no chance of passing in the current Congress (the No Kings Act, adding four new justices to the Supreme Court, repealing Citizens United) or more notably impeachment of either the President (both terms) or various cabinet officials. This brings me, as you might, expect to Pete Hegseth.

To be clear I'd been getting notices demanding since impeachment since November of 2025, along with those for Todd Blanche and RFK Jr. Now I'll confess I don't particularly like any of these men (to put it mildly) and I do agree that all of them have abused their office. But I also have no taste for symbolic gestures and even Congressional Democrats knew it was symbolic.

Nor, for the record, was I particularly wild that so many Congressional Democrats were essentially taking a page out of the Republican playbook. In Biden's administration alone, multiple Congressional Republicans announced articles of impeachment against him as well as multiple members of his cabinet. Those were far more political theater then what the Democrats were doing where there was at some legitimacy to the charges here, but they were just as meaningless.

That being said there is a legitimate case for Hegseth to be investigated by the new Congress and I hope that both House Oversight and Judiciary do exactly that. The model that should be followed is what happened in the aftermath of the 2018 midterms – it was a long drawn out process but it was serious, with many hearings and multiple arguments that led to a successful vote, if not a conviction.  That is not what happened this past week.

To be clear the man who is now the left's hero is Thomas Massie, a libertarian Republican Congressman who (to his enormous credit) has never been Trump's biggest fan, particularly after he was reelected. During Trump's period of political retribution in May he had Massie primaried in his district and Massie lost his seat. He's been a lame duck for most of this year, much like Thom Tillis, Joni Ernst, John Cornyn and Bill Cassidy in the Senate. And nothing gives you immense political courage like knowing you don't have to face the voters any more.

This fall Massie began his most direct assault on the Trump administration when he made it clear he was going to announce articles of impeach against Pete Hegseth. There had been, to be clear, no more of a formal investigation against him then any of the ones that had been done against Biden's administration, it was an act of pure political theater. The three differences were: 1) Massie was a Republican, albeit a lame duck, 2) by this point the Iran War was already such a burden on the Republican Party that many believed (rightly) that they would lose reelection and 3) many of them in Congress were tired of Hegseth's antics in particularly.

So Mike Johnson adjourned Congress before the vote could even come to the floor. It almost certainly wouldn't have gotten through the House and even if it had gotten to the Senate there was no chance for conviction given the numbers in both cases, but Johnson didn't want this to be a campaign issue that Democrats could use against them. They didn't need to – there were already a bevy of issues to use across the board – but everyone on the ground knew things were already going to be bad and they didn't want it to get any worse.

Then the bloodbath of last week happened and the lame duck session of Congress went in. Now for the next two months the math was no different. What was different was whether Trump would stand by Hegseth or fire him. Many had speculated that, as with Donald Rumsfeld after the 2006 midterms, Hegseth might be an acknowledgement of the failures and serve as a sacrificial lamb. Trump's sacrificial lamb was Suzie Wiles, his chief of staff instead.

I think Massie's action of reading the eight articles of impeachment were not a profile in courage but his own act of political retribution for the man who'd caused him to lose his job. If the vote had gone along party lines – which for the record it basically did – it would have failed. It also only delayed the inevitable: the new Democratic Congress had already made it clear it was going to investigate the administration and they wanted Hesgeth's head on a pike. So I think all Massie wanted to do was engage in one last gasp for the spotlight before he left the stage.

And the media obliged him. The moment he started reading the articles on the House floor everybody on cable news immediately took it as if it were a serious action. None of them argued that there had been no investigations by the appropriate (and currently Republican controlled) committees. No one considered that it wasn't going to have enough votes to pass in the Senate. So when the motion to table it until the next session – by which point the Democrats would be in power and it would almost certainly pass if it could – the entire cable news stratosphere chose to read it the wrong way.

Now there's an argument that many of the lame duck representatives – including at least forty Republicans who lost their jobs – might have resented being used as political props in another defeated Republican's play to engage in political theater There's also an argument that they've been so used to jumping at whatever the President's tells them to do they do it, and their actions were muscle memory more than anything else. In either case Massie was likely reading articles  to humiliate his former colleagues as much as the President. And having endured a shellacking at the polls a week earlier, they might have considered this the final insult to injury.

The last paragraph is me playing devil's advocate because I don't understand why (at last count) 45 Republicans who lost their seat in the election in large part of Trump's unpopularity still feel that they owe this man anything now that they've lost their jobs. I do hope that the first thing all of them do when they enter retirement is spend more time finding out what happened to their spines.

With that said those who choose to blame the eleven Democratic representatives who missed the vote prove yet again that they only understand government as political theater and in the case of the left, wanting immediate results. There was no way this vote was going to lead to Hegseth being impeached in this session and certainly not being convicted. This vote wasn't even going to do that: it was going to table it to the next session. And the Democrats were already talking about doing this as the scope of the majority was made clear.

 Massie's decision to do read the articles out probably annoyed some of them as much as it did the lame duck session: he was stealing thunder from the Democrats as much as he was humiliated his former Republican colleagues. In that sense I really do think Massie has done kind of a disservice to the whole process as its made what should truly be a serious and well-thought out enterprise into a question of pure political theater. No one's talking about whether Hegseth should be impeached; many consider this a failure to do so. In a sense they've have taken what should be a serious process into the land of Lewis Carroll: sentence first, verdict afterwards.

Now I know the new Congress which is heavily Democratic will thoroughly investigate Hegseth and other members of the administration. These investigations will by necessity take a long time, involve a lot of witnesses and closed door processes, and with no doubt a few exceptions be as tedious and uninteresting as all political hearings are and frankly should be. Perhaps Hegseth will be impeached; I think it's more likely that a few months into 2027 he'll resign. I suspect what will happen will mostly unfold on C-SPAN which means most of America will never care as much.

And you know something? I am absolutely fine with that. After almost a decade where all three branches of government increasingly seem to leave me in a state of constant vertigo, where everybody engages in theatrics and where I've spent so much of the last couple of years watching network TV with the dread of an interruption that might signal something horrible, I think I speak for countless Americans that what I really want is for politics and government to be dull. I want grownups to be doing the work without engaging in viral moments. I want legislation being produced, not content. That's what I really want from the new Democratic Congress. Do your job so well that people like me don't notice when you're helping us.

And bring the final curtain down on political theater. That'll piss off almost everyone in media, mainstream or social. Given the last decade, I think that would be a Congressional Resolution that might actually get unanimous consent and bipartisan support.

24 25 Years Later How Jack Bauer And CTU Revolutionized TV Forever - Introduction: "Previously in 2001"

 

In the summer of 2001 I, like I suspect many TV critics and viewers, were not convinced that television was about to enter a new Golden Age. We'd essentially gotten confirmation of it with the Emmy nominations that July.

For those who have forgotten back then the Emmys was very much in the 'cut and paste all nominees from previous year' era in addition to being limited to five nominees in every category. And they basically did that with the nominees for Best Drama, all of which had been nominated the previous year.

I had no question that the current seasons of The Sopranos and The West Wing were masterpieces deserving of every nomination they got. But by this point ER and The Practice were in their creative decline and Law & Order, while still a great show, was becoming increasingly formulaic. Furthermore while there were several new acting nominees, by and large they were all from the same shows that had dominated the Emmys the previous year.  While Michael Imperioli and Aida Turturro from The Sopranos and Bradley Whitford and Rob Lowe more than deserved their nominations you couldn't escape the fact that they were just shuffling certain cards from the same deck.

This was true with the majority of the other nominees: Dennis Franz was there for the eighth consecutive year for NYPD Blue, Amy Brenneman and Tyne Daly were back for Judging Amy and basically everyone who had been nominated for The Sopranos and The West Wing the previous year was there again. The only nominees from series that had debuted in the 2000-2001 season were Marg Helgenberger from CSI and Andre Braugher for Gideon's Crossing – and Gideon's Crossing had been cancelled.

Furthermore with David Chase announcing that Season Four of The Sopranos wouldn't debut until the fall of 2002 (and was actually considering making it the last one) it looked very much like television would be returning to the era of relative mediocrity very soon. To be sure Six Feet Under had aired during the summer of 2001 on HBO but while the ratings had been very good the critical reception hadn't been quite as ecstatic as The Sopranos had been.

Then I got the Fall Preview issue of TV Guide. Back then in addition to giving previews of every new show that was going to air on network TV, the editors also made clear which shows they thought were, from a critical perspective, the ones to watch. They had quite a few of them for the 2001-2002 season, including Alias, Undeclared and The Bernie Mac Show. But the one they said flat out was the best new series of the fall season was 24.

By that point the promos had been rolling out for weeks on Fox, mainly because the network knew just how high concept it was and how hard a sell that could be. Kiefer Sutherland was playing Jack Bauer, a man who had received intelligence that there was going to be an attempt on the life of David Palmer, an African-American Senator running for President. (The first season took place on the day of the California Presidential primary.) The show was going to be 24 episodes long and unfold on 'one extraordinary day' in real time.

This was, without question, one of the biggest swings that any TV show had ever taken in history. At that moment TV series were still not heavily serialized. Even The Sopranos didn't have overarching plots that took over a full season and The West Wing was very much a story of the week. Furthermore it was compressing the action to a single day which was a violation of every rule in television. How could you have character arcs in a single day? Where was emotional growth going to be? How could you manage sustained plots?

It's worth noting that much of the success 24 managed in its first season was almost entirely due to the critical attention to it. It would not officially become a ratings hit until it aired immediately after the first season of American Idol in Season 2, after which there was enough crossover to push into becoming a ratings juggernaut. By contrast during Season 1 it ran against many prominent established hits on network TV such as NYPD Blue on ABC and Frasier on NBC. Most of its first season it was lucky if it finished third in its timeslot.

So the critics and various awards shows were more responsible for 24 surviving that first season. At the end of the year the Golden Globes would nominated it for Best Drama and Kiefer Sutherland would win for Best Actor in a Drama at both the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards. The Television Critics Association would name it the Best Show of 2001, ahead of The Sopranos and The West Wing. And in the summer of 2002 24 would be nominated for ten Emmys, including Best Drama and Best Actor and would win for Best Dramatic Teleplay for the Pilot.

And by that time it was clear to everyone that TV was a much different place. Six Feet Under would receive 23 Emmy nominations, outdoing The West Wing's 21. Alias would become a critical and pop culture hit, launching both J.J. Abrams and Jennifer Garner into orbit. And perhaps most important The Shield debuted on FX to the highest ratings of any basic cable drama in history and be nominated for three Emmys, with Michael Chiklis registering what was at the time one of the biggest upsets in Emmy history by winning Best Actor in a Drama.

After the 2002 Emmys it was clear the Golden Age of Television had truly begun. And Jack Bauer and 24 had led the way.

 

24 means a great deal to me. It's not just that it's one of the greatest shows of all time winning 20 Emmys during its eight seasons on the air. It's that its one of a handful of all-time classics on TV that I watched from the moment it debuted until its final episode. And like most viewers I have special place in my heart for those series.

There are only a relative handful of all-time great dramas I was in from the moment they debuted until the end of the series and as you'd expect all of them were on either broadcast or cable before streaming messed up the equation for all of us. These masterpieces also include The West Wing, Six Feet Under, Dexter, The Good Wife, Parenthood, Homeland and Better Call Saul as well as some undervalued gems as Fringe and Person of Interest. It's also why I have a place in my heart for shows such as The Gilded Age that I don't necessarily have for The Last of Us.  I was there at the start of the former rather than the latter.

Now this doesn't mean I per se think these shows are necessarily better than other gems on the list. Indeed I do believe The Wire, Lost, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Battlestar Galactica and The Shield are masterpieces, having seen every single episode of all of them. But because I came to them slightly behind every other major critic – and in the case of some of them much later than most – the shows in the previous paragraph have a more important place in my heart. I suspect that those people who came to the shows in this paragraph before I did and the other shows later would feel the same way.

I once wrote that I considered the three most groundbreaking shows of the 21^st century were in chronological order 24, The Wire and Lost. The common thread between these three is how each of them revolutionized how television could work as a narrative in a way that so many other series tried to imitate and very few afterward could succeed at.  And as much as I love Lost I'm pretty sure it could only have come to existence had 24 not been such as a smash hit and broken many of those molds.

24 wasn't as deep as many of the series that were on network TV: it was very much an action based show more than anything else. Yet even that was revolutionary at the time. Indeed in his review of it in The Revolution Was Televised when it came to action heroes of the 2000s said:

"I'll take Jack Bauer over any of those guys. The snarling, bloody, paranoid hero of Fox's 24 may not have transported me to some far-off land where I didn't have to think about the dark state of current events, but that was exactly why I liked him."

What's ironic about a show that would become known for glorifying and justifying so much of what was going to be called the War on Terror is that it was never meant to do so. As I'll relate in this series it ended up falling into these events entirely by happenstance rather then design. It really was a case of art imitating life and that in the decade that followed so many real life elected officials were willing to use it as cover was not something that the showrunners ever intended. All they'd wanted to do was what everyone else on television, particularly on network TV ever  wants to do: create a riveting, popular show. And no matter what your political alliances were, you couldn't argue they didn't succeed at that.

In fact in an era where the culture wars were about to become toxic, 24 was one of the last TV shows, if not Hollywood works of art, that was immensely popular with conservatives as well as the traditional liberal. Republican politicians celebrated it and even Democrats have reason to admire it: I really can't think that Barack Obama could have gotten elected had it not been for David Palmer being such a powerful force on it for the first four seasons. And despite Hollywood's issue with what was happening in the aftermath of 9/11 and the War in Iraq Emmy voters had absolutely no problem nominating it along side the liberal fantasy that was The West Wing during the five years the two shows overlapped. (The West Wing beat it the first two seasons; 24 beat it in The West Wing's final year. )

And for a series that by design gave us little time for character depth if you ask any fan of TV during that period they will tell some of the most gut-wrenching character deaths in TV history took place on 24.  I'll save the particulars as we get into the series but speaking personally it was never more gut-wrenching for me as a viewer when the clock on the show went silent because it meant we'd lost someone who meant a great deal to the viewer as well as the character – and worst of all, we didn't even have time to mourn. Like Jack, we were just going to have put in the background and concentrate on the crisis facing the city, if not the country.

Now a full 25 years after it debuted I think it well past time (heh heh) for me to give it the tribute it deserves in my column. I've done so before more than once in previous articles but most of that was about the politics involving the show itself and not as the work of art which it truly was and always will be.

So in this series I will be taking a fond look back at Jack, Chloe, David Palmer and all those who worked in the White House and at CTU for eight seasons. All of them were the longest days of their lives and I wouldn't have missed a single minute of it for the world.

So let's start the clock.

Season 43 Jeopardy Update: Two Weeks of Women Champions and the 5-Day Curse Continues

 

One of the oddities of next year's Tournament of Champions is that not a single female player qualified for it save for Mina Kimes in this year's  Celebrity Jeopardy All-Stars. What's more there was no way to stretch the rules to do so. Not only did no female contestant win four games, no female contestant won as many as three. Indeed ever since Allegra Kuney no female player managed to win as many as two games.

While in past years this would have been the focus of immense online chatter there's been surprisingly little pushback, which is understandable considering that everyone will be watching to see how well Jamie Ding does against the likes of Adam Remsen and Caleb Groen, each of whom won 12 games.  Still it was relatively striking how few female players did well during Season 42, the first time during the post-Trebek era that this was the case.

So one of the more interesting stories of Season 43 so far is that for the first time in almost a year female contestants are doing much better. Indeed during the last two weeks we've had nothing but female champions which has been the first time in recent memory (and distant memory) that this happened on Jeopardy. Now for reasons I'll get to in a bit there's only one of them we'll be seeing for certain in the 2028 Tournament of Champions. But it's still worth paying attention to them.

On October 23^rd Shannon Leigh Godwin brought an end to the reign of Anthony Cantor in superb fashion winning $16,001. She then managed two consecutive runaway victories. But on October 28 2026 she went up against Stefanie Landeweer and Spencer Murphy and went into Final Jeopardy in  a distant third.

The Final Jeopardy category was a new one: CURRENT TV STREAKS. The longest-tenured male actor on a primetime show, he released the now ironically titled album 'Home Invasion' back in 1993. Shannon knew the correct actor was Ice-T. (As Ken pointed out: "He now investigates home invasions and other crimes on Law & Order: SVU; he's been playing Fin Tutuola for over 25 years, if you can believe it.) So did Stefanie. Spencer thought it was Tim Allen. Shannon's streak ended with $40,602 and Stephanie was the new champion with $19,400.

Stefanie made it to the end of the week when she faced off against Erica Doornek and Sam Neal. Stefanie and Erica were dead even the entire game both getting 18 correct answers. But the difference may have come in wrong answers: Erica only got one and Stefanie got three. One of them was the last Daily Double in YOU SLAYED ME!

"King Laius (it was patricide). Stefanie couldn't figure it out and neither could I. It's because even the man who did it didn't know it was patricide; the clue referred to Oedipus. This cost Shannon $2000 and the lead. It came down to Final Jeopardy.

The category was ART & ARTIST. "Commenting on a work by this artist, MoMA noted 'his initial experiments with the effects of gravity & momentum on falling paint." All three players knew the clue referred to Jackson Pollock and Erica became the new champion with an impressive $23,500.

Now Erica's run on Jeopardy was interrupted in most markets because of election night coverage. So ABC did her a mitzvah and showed her entire run this week when it past years they might have just skipped over it. It was a good one, particularly in what was her fourth win. In that one she met a solid challenger in Alexandra Field who kept close to her throughout and finished with $14,400 to Erica's $20,200. (The third player spent much of the game in the red and was lucky to have $1000 going into Final Jeopardy.

The category was SHAKESPEARE: 'In Act III, scene 1 of a play, "Exeunt King Claudius' & another man; then there's an entrance and these 6 words are spoken." Alexandera knew the correct six words: "What is to be or not to be?" However she only wagered $1995. Erica clearly didn't know it but had fun:

"What is…Go Griz, Go Scotties?" Ken joked: "This is Montana Shakespeare to laughter. But Erica had the last laugh because she wagered nothing. She won another $20,200 and became the first woman to qualify for a Tournament of Champions outright since Allegra Kuney last November.

Then on Thursday's game (which was aired on Friday in most markets) she went up against Cameron Bays and Betty Hume in one of the best games of the season. Again she got off to a big lead in the Jeopardy round but in Double Jeopardy both Cameron and Betty made her work for it. The woman of the hour was Betty when she found the last Daily Double in LITERARY LANDMARKS. She was in a distant third with $7800 and she decided to bet it all:

Tennessee Williams said he hoped he'd die in his townhouse on Dumaine St. in this city but it happened in a Manhattan hotel.  Betty figured it out: "What is New Orleans?" She doubled her score and went into the lead. The rest of the round was a back and forth between them and it ended with Erica in the lead with $17,000 to Betty's $16,000. Cameron had a very impressive $10,700.

The Final Jeopardy category was RELIGION. John Calvin, on this artifact: 'Either St. John is a liar, or all those who boast of possessing Holy Sudary are'.

Cameron's response was: "What is Shroud of Turin?" That was correct. (Ken Jennings: "Calvin thought that the appearance of the shroud seems to contradict the description of Jesus' burial the gospels." Cameron bet nothing. Betty also had the Shroud of Turin. She bet $5000 to go into the lead with $21,000. However Erica didn't have it and even she had it wouldn't have helped because she bet $1000. Betty Hume, the retired law librarian became the new Jeopardy champion with $21,000 and Erica left with 4 wins and $72,401.

Betty's run came to an end yesterday as Curtis Parker became the first male player to win a game in two weeks. Still the last two weeks have been a more impressive time for female champions than almost all of Season 42.

So far in Season 43 no one has managed to win five games, something that no one has managed to win exactly since TJ Fisher last October. This is more of a statistical anomaly and really when five players win ten games or more, who cares? However since we seem to be going back to the olden days of fifteen players in a Tournament of Champions (yea!) it's unlikely that Shannon Leigh Godwin will qualify on her own merits. However she will definitely qualify for a Champions Wild Card Spot and its nearly certain Betty Hume and Stefanie Landeweer will be there too. And you'll also definitely see another female 2 day champion Jennifer Leavey, who managed to win $50,801 in the third week of the season.

I'll be back with another Season 43 update at the end of the month or when someone manages to win five games or more, whatever comes first.

Now That Everyone Loves It The Gilded Age Returns For Another Glorious Season (Great Shows of the 2020s Edition)

 

Now that the election is well and truly behind us I can return my focus to my first great passion. And just in time for that one of the best series of the decade so far has returned for its fourth season. It took nearly two seasons for the rest of America to stop hate-watching The Gilded Age and acknowledge what I knew from the start: that it is an unquestioned masterpiece. And fresh from its second consecutive season of being nominated for Best Drama it has returned just in time to yet again be at the forefront of end of year award nominations, as well as discussion for the Emmys.

Much of the first two episodes are about how subtly the power dynamics that have been at the center of the first three seasons are shifting. Almost from the debut of the series the Russell family has been climbing over the power structure of 1880s New York with Bertha, played by the magnificent Carrie Coon, reaching the pinnacle of society in Season 2. But there were signs throughout the third season of the cost of her climb and they exploded in her face when after her biggest triumph her husband George, between whom cracks in their marriage had been building all season, finally came to a head and announced a separation.

So much of the first two episodes have shown Bertha in a position we've never seen her before: powerless. In the season premiere she watched as her daughter Gladys (Talissa Farmiga) struggled in a difficult birth of her child and she was essentially regulated to the sidelines between Gladys' husband and her family. For the first time all the power she'd had was useless to protect her daughter as she suffered a horrible complication that ensured that this would be Gladys's only grandson. She convinced the Duke to withhold the news of it from her daughter but it is another one of those things she can't control.

It's increasingly clear that George, played by Morgan Spector who reaches new heights this season, has been focusing entirely on both his position in the wealthy stratus and finding out who shot him near the end of last season. For the first time in his life George is facing an adversary he can't overcome: John D. Rockefeller, a man who holds all the cards against him and is infinitely more wealthy and powerful then him. It doesn't help that' he's struggling with an addiction to laudanum (an opium derived painkiller that was nearly as addictive as morphine) as well as the very real trauma from the attempt on his life. We learned in the second episode that the killer was the son of one of the first men to fall victim to George's rise, a family who he left destitute and caused her husband to commit suicide. It seems George feels no obvious guilty about what he did to their family but it's also clear that he wants to handle this through the Pinkertons rather then the normal authorities. We spend much of the second episode thinking George has found the killer to inflict revenge and indeed the episode comes to a climax with him holding a gun at the young man's face preparing to kill him in front of his mother. And yet George has never been capable of violence in his rise to the top and that may be true even in his actions. When Bertha learns the truth and demands he release her, he points out that if this man is found out by the police he will surely hang and blood will still be on his hands. At the moment of truth George fires into the wall and orders the family to flee New York never to be seen again.

It's clear that Bertha is struggling in her own regard when she returns to New York. She's spent so much time focusing on reaching the pinnacle of society that she failed to learn a lesson on her own climb: once you get there, there are going to be people who will try to push you off. Bertha didn't make a lot of friends on her way to the top and the fact that she is now forced to cover the separation between her and George – and few believe her excuses – show that she knows just how shaky the ground is.

At the same time there's a clear sign of the power dynamics heading across the street to the Van Rijn household. At the end of the season Agnes (the incomparable Christine Baranski) who'd spent most of Season 3 struggling with the fact she could no longer control the purse strings seeding it to her sister Ada (Cynthia Nixon, just as incredible). However when she found herself President of the Heritage Society, a position that contains prestige and cache she seized on it. Now she is planning her biggest plan yet to entertain the President of the United States Grover Cleveland. Even here there are clear struggles between her and Ada who is not happy that Agnes wants to spend a fortune. This leads to the usual sparkling dialogue:

Agnes: We must not pinch any pennies.

Ada: Especially when they're not your pennies to pinch.

Ada is trying to experience growth in her own way in society and she is fascinating in politics in a way she wasn't before. When Peggy tells Ada about Cleveland's behavior towards the South in the aftermath of Reconstruction (something that was increasingly becoming clear in the Solid South that had helped given Cleveland a narrow victory in 1884) Ada makes it clear she knew nothing about this and wants to learn more. This decision causes her to make a stand of principle and say she won't spend any more on the dinner.

But Agnes finds money and stature from an unexpected ally. Last season Oscar (Blake Ritson) formed a political alliance disguised as a marriage to Edith, the former serving girl at the Russell household who married to wealth but didn't gain the stature. Now that the two are married they want to try and reshape New York in their own image. Oscar is planning an alliance with the Frick family and Edith wants to hold a salon. Furthermore when Agnes learns the truth and is humiliated she is shocked to find that Edith has shared the truth with Oscar and that he is fine with it – and more that Edith wants to be an ally.  Edith is now in a position to not just held the Van Rijn's but attack Bertha, her great adversary and its clear Bertha is blindsided when she learns about the President's dinner across the street from her.

As for the younger generation they are dealing with their own problems. Marian (Louise Jacobson) attends a soiree the married couple and encounters Larry Russell, for whom the two have been circling ever since the series began. Going home that night in the midst of a real-life tropical storm their carriage breaks down and they are forced to stay overnight in a hotel. At that point both trauma and passion finally lead to what has been brewing for three seasons and the two consummate their love.

But as a reminder that we are very much still in the Victorian Era when Marian arises from her night she is ashamed in a way we can't conceive of today. She stumbles home and can barely look at her aunts. When she confides to Peggy what happened the night before, she speaks in the terms of someone who believes – not without merit – that if the truth emerges her stature in society, which has been shaky after two failed engagements, will lead to her become a pariah. Jacobson has always been superb throughout the entire series but she reaches a level that her mother would be proud of when she talks to Larry, who can't understand what happened because of how society judges men then (and unfortunately, quite a bit still today) and how Marian wants little to do with him.

Peggy's fortunes are moving upward, or at least as much as it could for African-Americans in 1880s New York. She has managed to get her first book professionally published and its striking to see how white women judge it and black women do it. When she returns to the Van Rijn household Agnes, who has always had immense respect for it, showers her with praise. "Think of what inspiration you will be to other black women. To other women!"  For a woman who has always been curmudgeonly with her praise even to those she loves this is the greatest praise Peggy could receive. But when she tries to tell the story to her soon to be new mother-in-law (Phylicia Rashad is anything but Claire Huxtable here) she can barely spare two minutes before returning to wedding planning. More to the point when she is introduced to the Daughters of Friendship at Newport and she meets many of the other wealthy women of color, she finds that not only have none of them met female authors, the closest they have to someone in their structure who writes is someone compiles a cookbook.

Peggy had one of the pure moments of joy last season when she was proposed to by the doctor she's been serious about for two season not just in Newport but in full view of his mother, who never approved and still doesn't.  We are very much aware of how far even black men have to climb in this society in the second episode when a long-time patient of his has to be sent to Bellevue, but he can't go in with him because they don't allowed colored doctors.

The Gilded Age has always been especially magnificent when it shows both how far we have come as a society and the parallels to today. We see it when George complains about how Cleveland's cabinet is considering anti-trust legislation (The Sherman Antitrust act is soon to come) and Larry tries to advocate for the small man and George can't even be bothered to show sympathy. Marian is working as a Settlement House that provides health and care for the underprivileged and we're shown a child who is suffering from work injuries and can't stay to long because he has to work the next day. The house runner Virginia Saville (always good to see Elizabeth Marvel) tells Marian not to judge and her family is concerned that she's working in a poor part of town  And on a more personal note during a night at the Met Larry is pulled away by a colleague of his to watch a production of The Pirates of Penzance and is told about Gilbert and Sullivan who have already conquered Britain and are on the verge of making a similar splash in America that will forever change how the world – and New York in particular – view musical productions.

All of this backed by some of the most extraordinary characters actresses in history, who more than justify that old statement of "There are no all small parts'. Watching just premiere talents as Kelli O'Hara, Audra McDonald, Debra Monk, Donna Murphy (to mention just a very, very few!) delivering the kind of dialogue that sparkles with nary a profanity to be heard. (The Gilded Age is the first TV series with a TV-14 rating to be nominated for Best Drama since This Is Us and Stranger Things.) And at this point it has to be on the shortlist of unquestioned great dramas of the 2020s along with such other classics as Slow Horses, The Diplomat and The Pitt, all of which have been nominated for Best Drama with The Gilded Age for the past two seasons.(We're going to have to wait a few more months to see if Paradise and Yellowjackets can stick the landing and officially join them on this list but I suspect they'll be there too.)

As someone who was with The Gilded Age from the moment it debuted, who considered it a masterpiece when far too many people considered it more akin to Emily in Paris or …And Just Like That when it came to how you viewed, who was overjoyed when it made the Emmys for the first time in 2024 and was thrilled when they kept it in the ranks for Season 3, I'm overjoyed that critics, audiences, really everyone has found out what I knew from the start. I will not make the kinds of pre-formed judgments that so many on this series do about those they consider beneath them but celebrate as a sign of progress much like what is happening beneath the surface and increasingly coming to the top in the series itself. And now that America seems to be approaching at least the possibility of moving out of its current Gilded Age after last week's elections, I'm just glad I can spend more of my time indulging the pleasures in life and less on the real world around me. That's a privilege too, and I'm grateful for it.

My Score: 5 Stars.

Five of the Biggest Left-Wing Myths The 2026 Election Permanently Disproved (Even If They Deny It)

 

This past week's election was an enormous balm to my soul. Not just because it was a repudiation of everything Trump and Republicans have represented a decade. Or the historic nature of so many of the places and candidates who won. Or how it may very well have laid the groundwork for a new era of politics going forward.

No one of the smaller joys was where, how and what caused this Democratic landslide across the country was that it basically dismantled so many of the cherished beliefs the left has had about American politics, the electorate, how they think and the country itself.

To be clear I have no illusions that the self-styled progressives themselves will see it that way. I've known for years that the result of every election, no matter which side wins or by how much, the left will find a way to make it clear that the results proved that America wants progressive values, even in the aftermath of a Republican victory as we saw just two years. Even now they are trying to find a way to prove that this election was a validation of how they think and how every single candidate who was elected was in truth arguing for progressivism even if they never met them.

The thing is reality doesn't have a liberal bias and that is not true for the results of elections.  The results of this one basically disproved many of the core tenets that the left has sworn by for decades and that have calcified ever since the 2016 election. All of them had a grain of truth and certain historical evidence to back it up but never quite that deep beneath the surface was how the left has always viewed the world and how their own flaws have shaped realities that the Democrats have spent years, if not decades trying to overcome – and then this cycle actually did.

So here are five of what have been the biggest talking points of the left for the last decade, the truth behind each one and how they were spectacularly disproven this past week even before all the votes have been counted.

 

1. The South has been Republican ever since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed and will never change.

For decades the left has ceased on the fact that supposedly when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 he said that "I think we just handed the South to the Republicans for a very long time." That he said not out of celebration but mourning is something the left leaves out as well as the fact that it didn't happen overnight.

As I wrote in a series of articles during the rest of the 20^th century a New South of moderate Democrats managed to win Senate seats and governorships during the 1970s and two of the latter Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton would eventually become President. In the aftermath of Clinton's election the Blue Dog Democrat coalition was founded of more moderate Democrats, mostly in the south at their height numbering over 20 percent of all Congressional Democrats. They only began to lose their seats when the Democratic Party started to move to the left in Obama's term, something progressives convenient leave out when they recount the history of the rise of Republicans. (They do that a lot as you'll see.)

Reality: The left has always felt the South is irreparably racist and has always gloated about how badly these states suffer compared to the north.

This has been true as far back as the antebellum era when it was by far the most genuinely true and they held this position throughout Jim Crow when America fall intents and purposes ignored the South. (They also try to leave out that the Democrats had one party rule from Reconstruction until the 1950s.) They've viewed how Republicans such as Nixon and Reagan would lean into racist overtones to win the South electorally as well as their eventual Republican lock on it. But they always seemed to think that Democrats shouldn't bother to go near it because that would mean they'd have to moderate their views. 

This was particularly true in regard to Joe Manchin, who was the bete noire of the left during Biden's administration to the point that he eventually chose to not only not run for reelection in 2024 but leave the party altogether. The fact that Manchin had been a Democrat for eighteen years in one of the reddest states in the Union didn't stop them from labeling him a DINO. If you're not a progressive, you might as well not be a Democrat at all.

2.  The Christian Right has used the gospel as a tool to maintain political power rather than actual faith.

While it's difficult to argue the fundamental truth of this fact, given the power the Moral Majority and other similar organizations used to use Christianity as an arm of the lord from the early 1980s on it ignores the basic fact that to the left…

 

Reality: Religion is the opiate of the masses.

Often used in the way the left attacks Reagan as being a tool of the Christian right is their saying that Jimmy Carter was a real born again Christian and Republicans rejected him because he rejected church's tax exempt status. Left out of that recounting is that during the 1970s many liberal Americans thought Carter's devotion to scripture off-putting, leading to what they called 'a weirdness factor'. Furthermore Carter was very much a centrist and a Southerner, which were always two strikes against him during the 1970s anyway.

Like all institutions organized religion is something the traditional progressive considers just something that is used to mislead the masses, just like military service and patriotism, and has always caused them to view them with contempt. That this has given an opening to Republicans that they used on the voters for half a century is something that they also choose to ignore.

 

3. The Republicans have gerrymandered the system so thoroughly that there is no point to even trying to compete in certain districts.

It's very hard to argue this basic truth, particularly in the face of the mid-decade gerrymandering that Republican states forced down legislatures in states like Texas and Florida in the past year, as well as what they've done ever since 2010.  When the right will gleefully refer to the way they redraw map as 'ratf---ing' it's hard not to argue how corrupt they've been. The thing is we've seen evidence in the 2020s that there are ways for Democrats to overcome these obstacles and we got the biggest proof of it this cycle.

 

Reality: The left doesn't want to compromise and try to win conservative votes.

As has been made abundantly clear during the last decade members of the Squad such as Ilhan Ohmar and AOC have had a hostile relationship with Blue Dog Democrats such as Jared Golden and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez as well as swing district Democrats such as Laura Gillen and Tom Suozzi.  That these Democrats had to win Republican votes in order to be reelected – something none of the Justice Democrats or DSA candidates ever have to worry about – is something that in the minds of the left should not be a factor. One must do the moral thing and if the voters in your district don't get that, well, they're just dumb.

This is part of the antiestablishment mindset that the left has always had, never mind that once you're elected to Congress you are de facto part of the establishment.  That these Democrats are needed to help build the majority to even try and get the votes in order to even try and pass some of the legislation the left wants is not relevant to Justice Democrats and DSA members. That it's been dragging down the majorities in both Houses of Congress ever since 2018 is another fact they refuse to acknowledge but the DNC could not.

 

4. Too much power is given to states where 'nobody lives'.

Even before the 2016 election the left was very big on how 'unfair' it was that DC and Puerto Rico weren't represented in Congress and argued how much more population they had then smaller and usually more conservative states. Much of this was legitimate considering how the way Mitch McConnell had essentially ground the gears of democracy to the hall by using the filibuster.

The problem was even after 2016 the Democrats still had a presence in many of these conservative states. Heidi Heitkamp was representing North Dakota, Ben Nelson was still representing Nebraska, Jon Tester was still serving Montana and Claire McKaskill was still representing Missouri. Democrats could win in these states and were still there.

Reality: The left hates flyover country.

There's a more judicious way to say this, particularly how urban America has always looked down on rural America but increasingly during the last decade the left has developed a 'red states bad, blue states good' mentality. They seemed to rejoice about how many states that were led by Republican governors and senators were doing much worse at so many levels then those of blue states. The fact that minorities, women, LGBTQ+ and other Democrats lived in these states along with all the MAGA people and no doubt suffered as much by these policies – more than they would in blue states – never seemed to enter that consideration. They seemed to rejoice at how many people were migrated from these states into urban areas, never thinking for a moment that some of them might be Republicans as well.

By their own definition the people in these states needed the leadership of progressives in order to be saved from the decades of Republicans who were using them solely for political ends and didn't care if they suffered. But there was never even a trace of empathy for the people in Alabama or Idaho, only the idea that they were collectively reaping what they sowed.

 

5. The Electoral College has cheated the people of Democratic Presidents.

Reality: See Number 4.

This argument has faded slightly in the aftermath of the 2024 election where Trump managed to win his biggest popular and electoral majority in his three runs. But I have little doubt it will pick up again the closer we get to 2028.

The left never got over the robberies of 2000 and 2016 each time arguing that the Democrats won the popular vote. In both cases the correct response was "California won the popular vote for the Democrats." In 2000 Al Gore won the popular vote of George W. Bush by about 500,000 votes but carried California by 1.3 million votes by far the biggest margin Gore had in any of the states he carried. In 2016 Hilary Clinton won the popular vote over Donald Trump by over 3 million votes but won California by nearly 4.3 million votes the largest margin by any Democrat since 1936. I don't remember anyone pointing that out during the next four years.

I understand this part: the Democrats have been struggling with the label of being coastal elites for decades and it doesn't help that both of results in these elections spell out their biggest flaws. But it also gave weight to the left's sincere belief that the people really wanted Democratic (read progressive) leadership and it was only an antiquated system that the right was rigging that kept them in place. In their minds autopsies of the 2016 election or indeed any election Democrats lost was unnecessary: Republicans could only win by cheating. In other words do exactly what the left has been preaching and the wins will come. That this was proven disastrously wrong in 2024 did nothing to change the left's approach.

 

Now after the results of midterms have unfolded it's clear how each one of these progressive bubbles has been popped.

- The Democratic Party has won more races in the South  both at a Congressional and state level in nearly thirty years, most of them in states that were deep in the heart of Dixie. Annie Andrews won a Senate seat in South Carolina, the first time a Democrat has in 28 years.  Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first African-American woman in history to be elected governor when she won the governor's race in Georgia. Scott Colom is on the verge of becoming the first African-American to win a Senate seat in Mississippi since Reconstruction.

Roy Cooper's win North Carolina has reshaped the Congressional delegation in that state where it seems like it will have a majority Democratic Congressional delegation. Combined with Jon Osoff's landslide reelection in Georgia, it's clear the Democrats can win in the South.

- Seven of the Democrats who won elected office this cycle were ministers or pastors. The most prominent is Adam Hamilton, leader of the biggest church in Kansas who has become the first Democrat to win a Senate seat since 1932. James Talarico, the Democratic Party's new hero for his triumph in Texas, has freely used the gospel while campaign.

In addition many of the freshman democrats in Congress have campaigned on their background in the military, including Cait Conley in New York and Rebecca Bennett in New Jersey. All of this contrasts tremendously with the majority of the Justice Democrats and DSA members, the vast majority of whom are activists.

-One of the biggest stories of election night is just how much the radical gerrymandering of so many states blew up in the Republican's faces. This is true not just in Texas and Florida, where the most public abuses took place, but also in Alabama and Tennessee. More importantly to this point 52 Democrats have flipped seats that were overwhelmingly Republican for decades. By contrast the DSA, which was considered the big story of the primary season, have a grand total of eight members for the next Congress. The Blue Dog Democrats alone have fourteen new members – and they may change immense as the New Congress takes shape.

- In the aftermath of 2024, there were no Democratic Senators in states Trump carried remaining. After Tuesday there are already six Democrats in those states and by the time all the votes are counted there will likely be two more: Scott Colom in Mississippi and of course Mary Peltola in Alaska.

The Democrats also flipped Congressional seats in many red states, including three of the four in Iowa, one in South Carolina, one in Missouri, one in Montana, Utah and Nebraska. In addition the Democrats flipped the governor's race in Texas (naturally) Georgia, Iowa and Ohio. Even the state everyone was sure they would lose – Kansas is looking like it will stay in the Democrats hands.

-In 2016 the Democrats had just 16 states under gubernatorial control. Ten years later they now control 28 governorships a majority for the first time since 2006.  As was recording these 28 states control 392 electoral votes. Of the major electoral prizes on the map only Florida managed to keep a Republican governor – and not by that much.

And keep in mind in this entire election the Republicans didn't flip a single Democrat Senate seat, governor's race and look like they might flip at most 2 or three Democratic seats. All their gerrymandering, all the money spent, everything they did to rig the system and it was nearly the extinction level event that Ron Desantis said it was.

It remains to be seen if this has stalled much of whatever momentum there has been for left-wing organizations like the DSA and the Justice Democrats; what is clear is that the media that has given it so much of the oxygen that has driven it in the decade since Bernie Sanders' primary campaign is basically considering a footnote in the aftermath of the results.

The best example of this came in Nithya Raman's victory in the Los Angeles mayoral race. Just one year ago Zohran Mamdani's victory for a democratic socialist in New York City had the media's attention for weeks and months after election day. Now another democratic socialist has done the same in an even larger city – and it has been regulated to an afterthought in almost every major network this week.  The media has been focusing the entire week waiting to see how Mississippi and Alaska turn out, they could give a damn about what's happening in LA.

That's the clearest sign as to how little the left now matters in the national media sphere. For months the world was convinced that Abdul El-Sayed would be either the savior or damnation of the Democratic Party. By the time he won at 3 A.M. early Wednesday morning, everyone wanted to talk to James Talarico or Adam Hamilton instead. It took until Friday for MSNBC to talk to a Justice Democrat/DSA winner – Chris Rabb – and when they did they illustrated how many districts the Democrats had flipped in comparison to how many the DSA had won.  All the discussion of Congress was about how Democrats in both houses were planning to work together, now that the left could be regulated to a statistical insignificance in the House and how Adam Hamilton made it clear he wanted to be the best friend of Jerry Moran, the same thing John Fetterman had been doing when he worked with his Republican colleague Dave McCormick for the good of Pennsylvania.

There has been an unprecedented historic landslide, a sea change in American politics. And it must bug the hell out of the left that it not only went against everything they've been preached about America for decades but also that the rest of the country, never mind the Democratic Party, cares much less about what they have to say then they did a week ago. I have no illusions the left will be any less loud and obnoxious then they have before last week, but I take great joy in the fact that the entire country made their voices heard and that  the left's opinion was very, very small compared to everyone else's. Let's hope that it lasts for all our sakes.

 

 

 

Homicide Rewatch: Finnegan's Wake

 

Teleplay by David Mills; story by James Yoshimura & David Simon

Directed By Steve Buscemi

 

Right from the start we know this is going to be a different kind of episode.

It's not just that we're told that the victim is Adena Watson or even the way Frank says: "This is your second chance. Don't screw it up." It's that we see the bloody footprints and that we're indoors. The long time viewer knows because by now we've seen flashbacks of previous times that this is not how Bayliss found Adena Watson.

As everything unravels and given how Frank is acting so calm we realize before Tim does that this is a dream – or honestly a recurring nightmare.  This is a look inside Bayliss's subconscious and given how judgmental and matter of fact Frank is – as well as how he burst out laughing at Tim – we know that this is how at a deep level Tim has always thought about the crime as well as his relationship with Frank. So the true realization comes when Tim tells Frank not only does he know this is a dream but that he's had it before.

It's a measure of how much Bayliss has grown just in the past two seasons that we realize almost with a shock that this is the first time Adena Watson has come up in any form since 'Betrayal' almost a year and a half ago. Tim is still very much the conscience of the unit but he's also one of the most veteran members of the squad by this point and since Season 6 has focused more on his romantic tribulations then anything else you could be forgiven for thinking that Tim might, in fact, have put this whole mess behind him.  That is one of the subtexts of Finnegan's Wake and why, while this episode is primarily centered on Falsone, Bayliss is very much at the core of why it works.

When an old man named William Devlin wanders into the squad and goes to see Bayliss and tells him his father killed Clara Slone in February  1932 Bayliss treats the case like it's a joke and sends Devlin on his way. Then he goes to Giardello and asks him if they find proof of a murder, even if the murderer is long dead, does it count as a clearance. To Bayliss this is just a hypothetical and Giardello assumes it is. It's only when Bayliss mentions that the victim was Clara Sloane that Giardello takes note and tells him that this is the oldest unsolved murder in Baltimore still on the books. Giardello doesn't know the details but then he tells Bayliss that it was a nine or ten year old girl who was sexually molested, then shot in the head with her body dumped in the woods. Bayliss knows that this reminds him of Adena Watson and that leads Giardello to hand the case to Falsone.  Paul doesn't take it seriously, even when Giardello tells him this gives him a chance for a career moment.

When Bayliss mentions this to the rest of the unit – specifically Pembleton and Munch –  and asks why he never heard of this murder the viewer knows even before Frank, with remarkable tact, states the obvious. When he caught Adena Watson and the case never went down, no one had the heart to tell him about it.

  Typically it's Frank who sends Falsone on his way. He wanted to check out the casefile himself and he learns that it's been missing for years. (Also typically he takes Falsone's refusal to do the work on this personally.) He learns all the evidence and the casefile was signed out in 1974 by a Thomas Finnegan. That's when the episode takes flight.

Thomas Finnegan is played by Charles Durning (see Hey, Isn't That…) one of the greatest character actors, if not actors of all time. He's a crotchety old man living with his daughter and the moment Falsone rings his doorbell he starts giving what would be the quintessential guest role in any other show's history but this one.  He knows the moment Falsone shows up exactly why he's here and he immediately demands to become part of the investigation. Falsone, who we know as the get along guy, can barely hold his patience around the older detective the entire episode. He tells Falsone that he's the last person who gave a damn about Clara Slone and that's why he has all the evidence. The parallel between Finnegan and Bayliss is immediate to any viewer and its telling Falsone doesn't seem to have a bit of patience for it.

The parallels made clear when we see Bayliss talking about this as merely a paper clearance whereas Pembleton sees this as Baltimore history, that she's been waiting all this time to be avenged. Bayliss tells Frank about the dream we saw in the opening sequence and he tells us he hasn't had it in a long time. Then he says that now that he knows it and woke up he tells Frank at some level he's all right with what happened now. At that point Munch, of all people, tells him that "We all have that dream," and Bayliss says maybe he's not as screwed up as he thinks. (It's rare for John to admit he has the same feelings about being a murder police as anyone else.) When Frank again being gentle says maybe its good he didn't stay with the Sloane case Tim tells him "That wound has healed."

Finnegan then decides to dress himself up in a coat and makes it clear he intends to go with Falsone to see the case closed. Again it's telling how much of a rookie Paul is. He's never really shown respect to some of the elder statesmen on the squad (save Frank) and it's clear he should show none to a veteran detective. To be fair Finnegan shows him no respect particularly when he says: "There was no need for EYE-talians in the department." The difference is Finnegan has respect for the case and the way he looks at the evidence it's clear the case has haunted him.  He admits he came onto the case in 1944 but he was partnered with Pete  O'Malley, who apparently passed it down to him on his deathbed. Finnegan is apparently a multi-generation detective and has never stopped thinking about the case when he was on the job and for the quarter of a century after it. Falsone is willing to give a little ground when he says how much it matters but he's clearly expecting Al to say no.

The scene in the unit is remarkable because for the first time we're seeing it from the eyes of someone whose been long gone from it but still remembers it.  He walks past an old plaque that has been hanging their for decades and tells Falsone he knows the detective, how he died, was a pallbearer at his funeral and got the man who did it. When he enters the squad he says the phone we've heard for years sounds like flying saucers, admonishes the female detectives for not wearing hats, and is infuriated that Falsone didn't tell him Giardello was 'a colored fellow'. The only detective he seems to have any accord with is Gharty because of his Irishness. He has no use for how Munch and Pembleton don't beat up on suspects like in 'the good old days'.  

Where he does have value is about the case. Finnegan tells Bayliss and Falsone the crime scene no longer exists and tells him that over the years over 200 people have given information on the murder, with even a few people confessing. It's when he begins to give a monologue on how much the case tore Baltimore up, and with all the manpower they put on it the investigation was a circus.  They walk the wreckage of the crime scene and Finnegan tells the whole brutal story. Bystanders stepped all over the place getting the crime scene messed up. The body went to the morgue before anyone could take photos of the scene.  Its when Finnegan tells O'Malley how he lost control from Day One and how he was never the same afterwards that the clearest parallels to Adena Watson become clear.

Finnegan spends the entire investigation talking more to Bayliss then Falsone. Devlin tells them that his father was a heavy drinker, who went to a bootlegger at the edge of the crime scene. One night he came home and said that he'd go to the chair if they found out the day before Sloane's body was found. He didn't say anything else about the murder even on his deathbed.  Finnegan, critically, is the only person who doesn't treat a man who is older then him with disrespect.  But he learns his father owned a gun and before he died he gave it to his other son Charles.  He can barely manage the patience to act as in an undercover operation to find the gun he has and Falsone can barely keep him in check. Bayliss manages to keep cool, says Devlin's story is credible and convinces Giardello to send a diving team. When Falsone tries to push Giardello off Al snaps at him. He knows exactly the kind of cop he is but he was locking up killers before Falsone was even conceived.  He demonstrates it when the divers are going to give up and he gives the kind of spiel about Clara Sloane's people deserving answers. It's a complete lie – the kind the detectives have told to suspects for years -  but somehow this offends Falsone.  Bayliss is more respectful, willing to grant him acquiescence.

In the aftermath Falsone takes Finnegan out to celebrate at an old Irish pub. He can't deal with the bartender being a woman and starts getting hammered. He treats Falsone with increasing disrespect and as he reminisces about the good old days both how detectives use to kill suspects and plant weapons and his increasingly racist language offends everybody about how bad it is that black people and women have taken over the unit. Falsone takes a drunken Finnegan home and he lets him having speaking in some of the most openly bigoted terms disguised as nostalgia, finally calling Falsone a 'punk dago bastard.'

Notably Bayliss is absent, packing up the Watson file no doubt with the intention of taking it with him for future generations the same way Finnegan did with Clara Sloane. The next day Bayliss is looking through the file and finds out that Clara had a little sister. Not long after that Giardello tells Falsone to write the case on the board in blue. They're going to do a press conference and Bayliss decides to tell Finnegan about it.

It's that last scene that finally ties it together. Bayliss is the only detective who has treated Finnegan with complete respect all the way through and he does so here.  He tells him about Margaret Putnam, where she lives and asks if he wants to come with her to give him the news. Finnegan finally tells the truth about why he can't just let this go. John Devlin did get away with murder and Finnegan never got him to answer for what he did.  And Bayliss talks about the Araber and how now that he's dead he'll never be able to let it go. "Did I come face to face with absolute evil and have him in my reach – and let him go?"  Finnegan's reaction is notably less mean-spirited and almost funny and when he calls Bayliss a pain in the ass, it's almost with admiration. He invites Bayliss into the house to get his coat.

The episode ends with Falsone getting the press conference while Bayliss and Finnegan go to Margaret Putnam's house. And for the first time something like a genuine smile crosses Finnegan's face. In the final moments we see him playing solitaire but also at peace while the press conferences plays in the background. And Bayliss watches at home, inscrutable as always. It's a moment of peace for Season Six and a rare happy ending…right before the climax.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

Charles Durning was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama for his performance in this episode. Steve Buscemi was nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Series – Night by the DGA for this episode. Mills. This episode was nominated by the WGA for Episodic Drama, the third nominated episode for 1999.

I was curious so you should know that Nothing Sacred, which I talked about earlier, won in this category. As for Directorial achievement it went to Paris Barclay for NYPD Blue in the classic episodes Hearts and Souls in which Bobby Simone passed away. Much as I'd like to argue I really can't with either.

Mahoney PTSD: Finnegan remembers that Kellerman was responsible for shooting Luther Mahoney and congratulates him. "He's you in fifty years," Falsone jokes. Actually he's Finnegan right now.

'Detective Munch' Asked about the Clara Sloane case Munch says that it's an old legend. Bolander used to talk about it. He also has the best reaction to Finnegan's presence after a confession goes wrong:

Finnegan: "You give him a taste of the old phone book?"

Munch: "We haven't used the phone book since 1996."

Clearly John remembers this from Bolander's day.

Slone's name is written in blue. The last time we saw a case written in blue was Eugene Elwin's way back in Heartbeat.  At the time it stayed that way even though the case was open. We'll see other names on the board in blue in the final season but only when the case is closed.

The anecdote Finnegan relates about dropping the knife after shooting the dealer is, like many others, taken from Simon's book right up to the dealer identifying his own knife. Law and Order would actually use a similar anecdote in its first season.

Hey, Isn't That…A legendary actor Charles Durning's film resume alone would serve as iconic. He had critical roles in such iconic films as The Sting, Billy Wilder's remake of The Front Page, Dog Day Afternoon, An Enemy of the People, The Muppet Movie (Doc Hopper) When A Stranger Calls even before his two Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and Mel Brooks' To Be Or Not to Be in 1982 and 1983. In TV Movies he would play Stephen Douglas, Commissioner Oswald in Attica, Casey Stengel, Pope John XXIII and John Honey Fitz Fitzgerald, JFK's grandfather. I'm now just going to deal with his TV work which is also formidable.

He had a regular role in the short-lived series The Cop and the Kid in 1975 and starred in almost every major TV series from the 1970s that involved cops: Barnaby Jones, Hawaii Five-O, Cannon. He played Oscar Poole in the 1985 series Eye to Eye. Then in 1990 he played Dr. Harlan Elldridge on the Emmy nominated 1990s TV comedy Evening Shade for which he received two Emmy nominations. He would play Justice Henry Hoskins in the  short-lived 2002 drama First Monday and would narrate the short-lived (unfortunately) CBS drama Now and Again. He played Tommy's Dad for all seven seasons of Rescue Me for 30 episodes. Oh and he played Santa Claus in five different movies.

In addition to his nomination for that in Homicide he received nine Emmy nominations in his long career, including for his work in Rescue Me for playing Tommy Gavin's father in 2008. He would receive the lifetime achievement award from SAG-AFTRA in 2008.

And that's before you consider Durning was one of the most prolific theater actors appearing in the original cast of Jason Miller's That Championship Season, Shakespeare and Glengarry Glen Ross. Yon author had the great privilege of seeing him play Matthew Brady against George C. Scott in the 1997 revival of Inherit The Wind and he was magnificent. He passed away on Christmas Eve 2012 at 89, gone but never to be forgotten.