Coalition of the Sane: Why I Want 'Readers' And Not Followers

 

 

This particular article requires I share some of my personal history with the reader.

Those of you who are members of this coalition might be aware that I'm 'on the spectrum'. I wasn't officially diagnosed with what was then referred to as Asperger's until the mid-1990s. By that point I had been seeing multiple therapists for much of my childhood and was well into my teens. It was clear that one major problem I have was depression.

How much of this was feeding on being on the spectrum I don't think I'll ever know for sure. What I do know is that for my formative years and well into my twenties it was an ordeal, particularly as the vast array of antidepressants that are now available today were still being tested and figured out during this period. I've lost track of how many different medications I was on as my therapists and psychiatrist kept trying to find a combination that would work.

The absolute nadir of this period has to have been when I was in college.  I suffered from every variation of symptoms imaginable: lack of sleep, oversleeping, lashing out in anger at those closest to me, being paralyzed at the idea of reaching out to people, being irrationally mad or depressed when things didn't go my way. In hindsight I'm astonished that I not only managed to graduate college but did so with honors given how much of that period I was in such a dark place. At one point – I forget exactly when – I was in such a bleak place that I finally agreed to engage in a series of ECT treatments, something I'd been resisted for years. I had somewhere between half a dozen and ten sessions before it was agreed to end them because it was clear to everyone it wasn't helping my mood.

Now this took place between 1998 and 2002 when teachers were far less equipped then they are today to pick up on the signs of mental instability in their students. I suspect the reason none of my teachers picked up on it was because for their purposes I was very good at masking it. I wasn't a problem student. Indeed I never missed a single assignment when I was in college, never had an outburst in class that caused me to be called to the attention of a teacher, always participated in discussion and despite the fact that I was commuting rather than living on campus had a superb attendance record.

This was, in fact, no doubt part of how being on the spectrum may have helped masked my emotional problems even to those few people (and outside my parents, there really weren't that many people) who were close to me growing up. Like the majority of people on the spectrum I was a slave to the routine and school absolutely provided me with one. It helps matters that I've always loved learning and education and my curriculum had subjects that I was interested in. I knew I was lonely but I'm not sure at the time even I knew just how unhappy I was.

I didn't start to climb out of it until my mid-twenties and even then depression is one of those things where the cliches are true: you have good days and bad days. The reason I have more good days then bad days is because of a combination of finally getting the right kind of medication, finding the right therapist and psychopharmacologist and most of all, time. It took years, maybe even decades, to get to a point where I'm happy most of the time – even given how horrible the world is.

I think if there is a secret to mental health it's that tried but true standard known as the serenity prayer and I'll quote that's most relevant:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

This advice is given to those who suffer from addiction but it's just as viable to those who have mental illnesses. And even though it sounds simple in theory, in practice it's incredibly difficult and it is something that I forget far more often then I remember it. But that's true of everything.

Now as we all know one of the major issues that so many people, particularly those who are young think is pressing, is mental health. As someone who spent his entire life struggling with it, I concur. And its worth remembering that much of my worst struggles came in a pre- 9/11 world as well as one where the internet was barely part of our daily lives much less social media.

And I've made no secret in previous articles about how the election of 2016 threw me off kilter emotionally. I spent November of 2016 until Biden's inauguration with this sense of vertigo that was omnipresent. It didn't have to do with what was on the news or the internet; just the fact of Trump as President did much to give these constant feeling in my stomach that the world as I knew it didn't make sense anymore.

I will get in a future article – perhaps not one related to this series – how I managed to adjust my life so that by the time of the 2024 election I was in a much better place emotionally and am functioning far better then I did during the first Trump Presidency. For the purposes of this article I will only say around this time I started writing for medium, exclusively in regard to television and not even in those reviews of shows that were on point to current events being incredibly vague about referring to it.

That didn't mean I wasn't aware of the majority of the political writers on this site at the time and who very likely still are writing for it. Because I was, like so many people, in a bleak spot I was drawn to their writing out of sympathy for their feelings if not always their views. I got it. But I assumed that once Biden had been elected, and in my somewhat naïve opinion at the time, order had been restored to the world I knew they would begin to modify their tone or they would change the subject. As I've written they never did.

Which brings to the reason why I prefer the term 'readers' to 'followers'. I've joked more than once that the latter term makes me feel like I'm the head of a cult. But there's a more serious underpinning and it has to do with what the majority of the political writers on this center-left site write: a term that many of them actually refer to as 'doomporn'.

I've noticed that it is the most prolific and darkest writers in that site that by far had the biggest following and many still do: I've seen some of the most depressing writers on any subject have anywhere from 50 to 100 thousand followers. And historically when the word 'doom' is used in conjunction with the word 'followers' it rarely has a happy ending for anybody, not the leader, not the followers, not society.

I'm being facetious again. I've also been facetious when I read so many articles and near worshipping comments in these same articles. I don't necessarily see the same writers over and over in each (I'm not the kind of person who keeps track) but it does seem like that. On more than one occasion I've referred to the echo chamber around so many of them as 'the largest, most depressing and ineffective group therapy session I've ever attended.' I was actually being more serious than my tone reflects.

I understand and sympathize with how so many people are upset with how the world is today, how it seems to have always been that way and how we seem to be heading to an inevitable apocalypse. Where I draw the line – and have a visceral contempt for those who work in this field – is the way so many of these writers seemed determined to write this exact same article which offers no hope for any of its readers and then basically asks you to either give a tip or agree to follow their work.

Many of the people who I've expressed hostility towards about this subject have said I've been too sensitive. In truth much of the time I've been keeping the gloves on. Because as someone who struggles with mental health on a regular basis I think there should be a special place in Hell for those who are actively contributed to making that of those around you on a daily basis. And I say that for anyone who does this regardless of what side of the political aisle they're a part of.

I need to be clear I'm more than aware about how much the right is contributing and how much work they've done to make a profit from it and trust me; they are on my shit list just as much. But the thing is, well before 2016, I expected this kind of horrible behavior from them as a matter of course. Well before the so-called 'manosphere' came along I knew just how good the right was at preying on those who were struggling and luring them in and exploiting them for financial and political gain. It's disgusting and its horrible.

I'm also aware that, by comparison, the left's efforts to do so are much smaller. But I'm also aware that there's a difference between 'fewer' and 'none'.  The people on this site or other social media sites are not I will concede as big a problem as those in the world of podcasters or cable news or other websites: I've seen firsthand how horrendous they are online. You'll get no dispute from me that they are by far the biggest problem.

I would argue that it is therefore imperative for all those who consider themselves on the side of the angels – and the left will be the first to tell you they are even if you don't ask – to do everything in their power not to contribute to this cesspool of despair that has seized so many people, particularly the young and those lost by society. I realize that this is difficult given the way the world is and how the right is, I agree, actively making things worse. And  I do understand why so many of those people feel the need for some kind of way to express their feelings on the subject. None of these in themselves are bad things or if they are done, necessarily, being done for the wrong reason.

But the difference between the right's echo chamber of despair and the left's is that the right's gives its followers something they can do to be proactive. You'll get no argument from me its horrible, bigoted and represents the worst aspect of our society but its far more than anyone I've ever seen who writes articles of the same tone ever suggest.

If the right's approach is to sell snake oil, the left won't even bother to do that. They have the same appearance of community but they offer nothing else. They'll tell you the right is selling a fake cure and then not bother to do the next step and offer a fake cure of their own.  It's the same sense of despair and hopelessness but you have nowhere to go with it. The right sells a lie disguised as a truth, the left tells you that they are selling you a lie – and that lie is that no one or nobody can solve the problems.

This understandably has never been a big seller in our society and I suspect its one of the reasons the far left has never been able to manage to take much of a hold in the political eco-system the same way the far right has.  The right, for all its very real lies and contempt, will tell its listeners who the enemy is and what they can do to stop it. The left, by contrast, argues the entire system itself is the enemy and it is so under the control of powerful people the individual or even the collective is hopeless against it. It doesn't matter whether the writer is African-American, LatinX, female or part of the LGBTQ+ community: the tone of futile despair penetrates all of them and rejects any effort to even try to change the system as a waste of time. And by the way read my next article when I tell you the same thing in different words.

Now if one takes all of this to its natural progression, the only thing you can take away from this is that there's nothing anybody can do to help us and we're all doomed. Essentially all these articles are a suicide note for mankind. But very few people on this blog or anywhere will take it to its natural progression. I don't think its because they care about the emotional well-being of others; I think they see their values entirely in their social media presence and the idea of losing even a single follower or being banned from a site because they stop dancing around what they've been implying is too much for them to bear. Oh and I suspect they're making enough money off them to not want to lose any of these readers. And as someone who struggles with his own personal issues with depression and darkness, I can't help but take what these people are saying and implying very personally.

I agree the world has problems. Big ones. But I'm pretty sure the people who write so many of these columns have no more interesting in solving them then the counterparts on the right who've done so much to cause them. Aaron Sorkin in a fictional piece basically said those on the right are interesting in two things: "Making you afraid of it. And telling you who's to blame for it. That is how you win elections."

Well the left is only interested in the second part of that statement. And according to they're writing everyone who isn't them or their readers is to blame for it. That may build a sense of social community but in a way that will solve the problems of today it's completely ineffective.

That is another reason why I eventually had to stop reading so many of the articles, posts and other comments by the left. Because at the end of the day, it's no more good for my mental health then if I were to watch Fox News or listen to Alex Jones. I have the same problems with the world that the left will point out and I have sympathy for those who feel that they are lost in it. But as someone who wants to actually solve the problems in these articles I can assure you that the 5000^th article on how capitalism is evil or how Newt Gingrich destroyed Congress or anything Trump breathed about will not do anything to make it better, nor will expressing comments saying how smart and wise the writer is for pointing out something they no doubt saw on TikTok or YouTube five minutes ago and that the rest of the world knew years ago. Yes the right is putting so much noise into the world it is hard to talk to each other. But your articles are just a different kind of noise to a different set of listeners. Noise is noise, no matter which person is shouting it. I'm not going to drink your Kool-Aid any more then theirs and its not just because I never liked Kool-Aid at all.

 

 

 

X-Files 30th Anniversary Celebration Landmark Episodes: Jose Chung's From Outer Space

 

Truth is as subjective as reality.

 

This line is uttered by the title character (Charles Nelson Reilly) before this episode truly begins. Scully then says Chung wants to hear her version of reality.

So before we begin discussion  of the episode itself, I think it's worth bringing up my guiding stars when it comes to the critical perception of The X-Files Robert Sherman and Monster of the Week's Emily St. James' (who reviewed the episode) because, just like those in the episode itself, they absolutely do not align. And to confuse you further (as is the case with this episode) I'll tell you my perception of their perceptions.

First as I mentioned in my essay on Clyde Bruckman Shearman may be the only person, not just among X-Files fans but in the known universe, who doesn't think Darin Morgan is one of the greatest writers of all time. It's not his biggest flaw in Wanting to Believe but it is his oddest and that's particularly true with Jose Chung. This is what he says in the second paragraph:

It is, as I say, very clever. It's also pretentious, overwritten, and desperately self-indulgent. Jose Chung is the kind of thing you get when you find an incredibly talented writer and tell him that he's a genius once too often.

His biggest problem seems to be that he finds this episode heartless. He says that he finds Charles Nelson Reilly 'not as good as Peter Boyle' in Clyde Bruckman. (I should now tell you he loves Reilly when he plays this same character again in Millennium even though there's really no difference between the portrayals in each version.) And the thing is even at the end of the day; he can't really tell you why he doesn't like it:

This manifestly isn't  a case of the Emperor's New Clothes; the fanbase is right – this is dazzling and brilliant; the episode is as clever as everyone thinks it is. I just don't care very much.

Now lest fans of The X-Files read this and argue that Shearman is 'a ticking time-bomb of insanity (where) events have so warped his psyche one shudders to think how he gets any enjoyment out of life", Shearman is basically spot on with every other writer, especially Vince Gilligan. Is it bizarre that he things 'Hell Money' long considered not only one of the worst but also among the  most racially tone deaf episodes in the entire history of the series is twice as good as Jose Chung? (That's his own ranking: Jose Chung gets two stars; Hell Money, four.) Yes but it's not a dealbreaker for me to dismiss the entire body of work.  It is the only review in 277 pages I can't even glance without wincing at so I don't read it. It's not enough for me to dismiss the other 275 pages. Why Shearman gets basically so much right and gets Morgan wrong is nearly as inexplicable to me as the mytharc but since Shearman and I agree it doesn't really make sense, I'm inclined to let that go.

St. James feels the other way and her review gets to the heart of why it is a masterpiece. That said, I do disagree with her about one of her final judgments – and might also explain why Shearman has a problem with it:

And although its probably one of the very finest episodes of television I've ever seen, I'm not sure it’s a terrific episode of The X-Files. If The X-Files were a Lord of the Rings-length novel, then 'Jose Chung' would be its first appendix, a source that is both in love with the main text and critical of it, a place where real human concerns creep around the edges of the show's chilly implausibility's."

That may explain why Shearman has such a problem with this episode: he's reviewing it as an episode of The X-Files and by that standard it's lacking. However my perception is the inverse of St. James: I think it’s a brilliant episode of The X-Files but I'm less convinced its one of the greatest episodes of all time, the same way I'd argue for Clyde Bruckman or, in a different context, Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster. (I once put that episode on a list of the 50 greatest TV episodes of the 21^st century in 2019.)

The reason that Jose Chung works so spectacularly for me is for the reasons I've argued as to why Morgan is a genius. During his tenure with Ten-Thirteen he essentially invented the term 'meta' when it came to television.  Jose Chung is in that sense the clearest example of meta in his first tenure with Ten-Thirteen, something he'd revisit again in his second tenure and demonstrated he still could do it better than so many shows had done in the interim.  The major flaw with 'meta' I've come to realize is when it tips over into fan service and when it does that, you really do risk the show becoming what Shearman things Jose Chung is.

 I feel this very strongly about episodes like Lost's Expose or when comedies like South Park and Community basically trend in that direction as they increasingly did. It's also why I love episodes that do it well like Homicide's The Documentary and Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Superstar which are among the earliest examples of the genre and still the best. And it's why Jose Chung works as well as it does: it takes what we the viewer have come to observe over three seasons and basically twists it to its ultimate finish. This is particularly true with the line I quoted above: it basically is mocking the show's catchphrase: "The Truth is Out There".  The X-Files would hint in many of its serious episodes that maybe it wasn't a great idea to try and find the truth in the first place; Morgan's essentially saying that its impossible to ever find it – and with a comic subversion that makes you realize its probably the real reason Mulder doesn't agree to be interviewed in the first place.

You might wonder why I didn't give a spoiler warning. And that's the best part of this episode: I could tell you everything that happens in it but when you were asked what happened you say to your friends: "How the hell should I know?" St. James will argue that she has the basic story behind what happens in Klass County is very simple -  and I really want to agree with her- but after multiple rewatches since reading the book, I just still can't commit to it. So I'm going to give my answers to the two biggest questions that St. James poses.

The first is how much of the episode really happened and how much is fictional? I'm of the opinion that the only thing he can we truly trust is what we see in the teaser because it's the only thing that isn't subjected to reinterpretation later on. To review that extraordinary piece of work (for which super-director Rob Bowman rarely gets enough credit for when it comes to Jose Chung): Harold Lamb and Chrissy Giorgio are on their first date when their car is intercepted by two U.S. government officials disguised as aliens. While that was going on a second craft appeared and a third alien emerged. Whether that was a bounty hunter, a Russian spy plane or Lord Kimbote is irrelevant.  The government found out what happened and did what they did and covered it up, whether through hypnosis on the part of the teenagers or killing off the pilots and destroying the evidence.  That's what I think happened. It's only slightly in conflict with St. James version but that's kind of the point.

The second question is how much of the episode is meant as a slam against the X-Files fan base, mainly through such people as Roky and Blaine  both of whom clearly emphasize the fans who even by 1996 were so excessively obsessed with The X-Files  as well as well as the way it treats Mulder. I agree with St. James that this is just a case of Morgan poking the fan base gently in the ribs. However I'm  now convinced Morgan is slamming someone associated with The X-Files, and I'm inclined to think its Carter and the mytharc he's creating.

Here's some background. When Darin Morgan was asked to submit a writing sample to get his job with The X-Files he came up with the opening teaser for this episode. Apparently he then put it in a drawer, as all writers do at times, and set to work on Humbug.  During Season 3 he was more productive and created Clyde Bruckman and War of The Coprophages.

Two things happened by this point: Morgan was beginning to find the process of working for TV exhausting and the mytharc was starting to spiral. As Carter admitted he never had a bible for the series and he kept changing the mythology with each season. In the first half of Season 3 he'd essentially argued that alien abductions were a front for experiments on humans and by 731 he and Spotnitz had made that their conclusion. When they took up the mythology again in Piper Maru/Apocrypha, they seemed to have leaned on the side that aliens were de facto the cause of everything.

Morgan had hinted at how absurd the conspiracy was becoming in War of the Coprophages when he had one of his characters argue that killer bees were part of the alien invasion. By the time Morgan left the series Carter had essentially decided that this was a good idea and made it integral to the mythology basically for the next two and a half seasons by which point any idea that the mytharc was going to make sense was something not even the deluded Roky and Blaine would believe.

So in what he expected to be his farewell to The X-Files Morgan returned to what got him his job and made it very clear just how absurd he thought the mythology of the episode was by centering on an alien abduction and throwing in basically every part of the mythology that Carter had done, treating it with such brilliant jokes and humor that I'm relatively certain Carter had no idea he was being roasted. Or if he did, he clearly never took it personally: he kept trying to bring Morgan back to The X-Files to write scripts in Seasons 4 and 5, eventually convinced him to write two scripts for Millennium (when he was reunited with his brother Glen) and got him to write two equally brilliant scripts for the revival more than twenty years after they first met. (By that point Carter had embraced his own inner comic angels to new heights as we'll see going forward.)

The clearest demonstration of Morgan's satire towards the mythology is, as always, through Mulder. One of the great gifts of Morgan is just how much fun he pokes at Duchovny's work as Mulder, both through his ridiculous good looks and how he appears like a buffoon to every outside observer. But he's rarely made Mulder look more horrible then in Jose Chung. It's telling that no matter what version of events we get Mulder looks like an idiot.  Most of this is seen through Scully's retelling of this to Chung and we can tell she's doing everything in her power to make her partner (who has refused to be interviewed) not look like the raving lunatic he appears to be, well, basically in every episode of The X-Files.  If she's censoring any part of her version its how she must have reacted with increasing incongruity with everything Mulder did during this episode.  The only time we see it look through is after Chung tells her about Roky's manuscript and asks how could he have believed this.

Scully: "Well, Mulder's had his share of peculiar notions."

(Flashback)

"Mulder, you're nuts!"

Scully is clearly doing everything in her power to filter out all the disputes they must have had in Klass County to make Mulder sound rational. Everyone else, whether its Detective 'Bleeping' Manners' to Blaine Faulkner to the cook at the diner clearly thinks Mulder's out of his gourd. I'm honestly amazed Chung is as polite as he is when Mulder confronts him in his office: this is clearly 'reality' and Mulder sounds even more delusional then in any of the versions we've seen.

The episode also does everything to make clear that when Mulder investigates cases that even satirical, he can be incredibly cruel.  He has no more use for Chrissy and Harold then the government or the aliens do. To him, they are just a means to an end: a way to discover the evils that either aliens or the government is doing. The show makes this clear in a subtle fashion  by basically dismissing both of them completely by the end of the second act and only coming to back to them by the time Chung deals with them. (More on that later.) When Chung asks Mulder the same question he asked everybody and Mulder replies: "How the hell should I know?" it cuts to the core of Mulder and the show completely.  

The fact that Mulder only comes to see Chung to tell him not to write this book makes it clear the only thing he cares about is how the world sees him even if Chung changes his name. He may claim not to care how the FBI sees him as 'foolish, if not downright psychotic' but you'd think the chance to show his theories to the world would overcome that. (We'll actually see that play out in X-Cops in four years' time.) But I suspect this is Morgan showing just how little Mulder cares for the collateral damage he causes in the gentlest way possible. At this point in The X-Files with the exception of his family and Scully and those closest to her, Mulder has cared very little for the collateral damage he causes in his quest for the truth. (This will no longer be true by the time Morgan leaves the series.) In fact Chung's description of 'Reynard Muldrake' in the final monologue is far closer to accurate then Mulder – and perhaps the viewer – wants to admit.

To be clear I also agree with St. James in her footnote "this episode is for sure a big ol' love letter to Scully." Oh is it ever. In every scene she's in you can tell that Gillian Anderson is absolutely having the time of her life. To be fair this has to be true of every single member of the cast and crew when they were filming this episode. But you can tell Anderson said: "Finally!" when she got this one.

Morgan has always treated Scully with far more respect in his episodes then he does Mulder. It's not that she doesn't make a fool out of herself more than once ("Her name is Bambi?!," anyone?) but Scully is far more often the heroine of these scripts then she has been to this point in any individual writer has treated her even though by this point everyone thinks Anderson is the real start of this show. But all of the episodes Mulder is the driving force and Scully is usually there to explain his actions which get him into trouble. Now Scully gets to tell her story (to her literary idol, no less!) certain that Mulder's version of events will never see the light of day.

So much of Anderson's comedy is based in just how embarrassed she clearly his by her partner and what's she being forced to endure but never expresses it. So for once she gets to remain stone-faced during the flashbacks and explain – in the most straight-faced way possible – how insane she finds her partners theories and behavior. Because this is a Morgan script she also gets to show her emotions more than Mulder does: she practically holds her head in her hands during the 'alien autopsy' and she's practically blushing when Jose Chung calls her a 'brainy beauty who also had good taste." (The outtakes for this episode must be hysterically: both Anderson and Reilly admit she kept cracking up while it was being shot.) And it must have been so much fun for her to be seen as 'a man in black', getting to deliver the lines with the same vehement authority to Blaine in his version and then cutting to "He said I said what?" in the present.

Reilly's work is indeed one of the best guest performances in the show's entire history. For those of us who remember Reilly from his days as a game show consultant it might be shocked to know that in this performance (and again on Millennium) he actually turns his trademark zaniness down to maybe five or six. There are occasions the antic side of Reilly shows up (when he describes the difference between 'experience' and abduction to Scully)  but he was clearly intelligent enough to know that this in this episode he's more or less the straight man and the humor comes from the fact he can't believe what he's hearing is being considered serious by so many people (cough, Mulder).  Chung is clearly modeled on Truman Capote, both in attire and why he's writing 'From Outer Space'. (In Cold Blood was described by Capote as a 'non-fiction novel and this is a 'non-fiction science fiction'.) Reilly was a contemporary of Capote and could have put his trademark mannerisms as interpreted by him. Instead he plays him as any other writer so when he has to deliver arguably one of the best monologues any writer (for The X-Files or otherwise) ever wrote for television, it has tremendous power and gives this episode a genuine soul at the core of all the comedy.

I know that I've described this episode in a way that makes it sound bleak and I won't deny there are certain dark underpinnings. There's the fact that this is the first in a line of brilliant comic episodes in which the possibility of rape is essentially played for comic effect more than the problematic implications. (To be clear the show does deal with it in a serious fashion and you really wonder if Manners is more upset at Mulder and Scully the comic side of his 'colorful phraseology' would let on given his interrogation of Harold and his initial reaction before the 'bleeping' aliens show up.) And even if you can overlook there is a deeper implication of the episode and what it means to have your memories taken from you. Morgan himself acknowledges that concept in interviews.

But despite that the only memories I've ever had of Jose Chung are those of fondness mixed with great humor. I can't explain why exactly. Maybe it's because every time I watch it, I keep discovering details I've missed that add to the overall humor of the story. Maybe it's because the non sequiturs and jokes are among the best that Morgan's ever written even by his impressively high standards. Maybe its because one of the Men in Black is Alex Trebek and the reader knows my obsession with Jeopardy. How the hell should I know?

To be sure it has a lot to say about the human condition more than so many other episodes of The X-Files and television. But I think I love Jose Chung never forgets that it is a TV episode first and foremost, there to entertain and to make us laugh, cry and think at the same time.  The episode begins with a shot that makes us think we're looking at something from Star Wars and turns out to be an undercarriage of a crane and ends with a thoughtful monologue on the darkest parts of our soul and then punctures it with the theme music of The X-Files for the first (and except for the original series finale, the only) time in the series.  Unless you're Robert Shearman, how can you not love that?

 

Homicide Rewatch: Diener

 

Written by Christopher Kyle ; story by Julie Martin & Tom Fontana

Directed by Kyle Secor

 

The episode that serves as Kyle Secor's directorial debut is an interesting one, if somewhat messy.  It's designed to center on two characters more than the case itself and the emotional dilemmas they find themselves at. For the one involving Juliana Cox – the one that the episode indirectly refers to in the title – its an attempt to add layers to a character who even by this point is increasingly absent from the action. Unfortunately it's done so ham-handedly that it barely works. The one that involves Pembleton is much better, mainly because it deals with a familiar bit of his character – and a well that in four and a half seasons the show hasn't even tried to tap.

The investigation of the death of Carol Bridgewell shows just how Frank has decided to deal with the fact that Bayliss has decided to stop partnering with him – he has gone right back to his pre-show habits of working cases entirely by himself. This wasn't a popular decision before he starting working with Bayliss and now that he's had a stroke its less popular despite the fact Frank clearly seems to be absent any of the habits we've had associated with it the first half of the season. Gee is clearly uncertain of Frank's abilities and has decided to send Meldrick to partner with him. The fact that Bayliss is allowed to work alone and Frank isn't doesn't make him any happier. For the record neither is  Lewis - with good reason.

(The episode barely refers to the events of last week but its interesting to see it. Kellerman shows up and tells Meldrick he's going to take some time off to deal with his own issues after everything that happened. It's clear the moment Meldrick sees Mike he's visibly uncomfortable around him and doesn't do a very good job of covering it. Events will later unfold that will give a more direct reason for Kellerman and Lewis no longer partnering. In hindsight one wonders if the roots of it started in the aftermath of what the experience did to Meldrick. Did this incident make him doubt the stability of his partner and everything that followed was just as an excuse?)

As the episode reminds the last time the two of them partnered was two years ago during the investigation into the shooting of Marilyn Battista. From the start the two of them clashed on how the investigation was to be handled and while the case was solved Frank immediately went back to working with Bayliss. Now two years later a lot has changed but the way they clash hasn't.

Fascinatingly the murder of Carol Bridgewell and how the two investigate it is a mirror of the Battista murder. (The episode reminds us of this and so do Meldrick and Frank.) That murder took place at the intersection of two parts of Baltimore, one white and upper class, one black and lower class. Meldrick wanted to investigate the upper class section first, Frank believed the shooting was most likely to take place with the more criminal section. When it played out it turned out Meldrick was right about who was responsible but Frank refused to acknowledge that point. Now they are dealing with a millionaire socialite who was murdered in her own home with what appears to be a fireplace poker. There is no obvious sign of robbery (we'll get to that). Now the two have reversed positions. Lewis wants to investigate the lower class people that Carol Bridgewell helped during her spare time, while Frank wants to look at the nearest and dearest, which would be upper class.

Lewis is less annoying then he has been in that past, and while he keeps pushing them towards the students that Carol taught when he learns that Matthew, the victim's brother, lied about his timetable he begins to see Frank's way of thinking. When Matthew then shows up on their doorstep screaming about the missing diamond ring not long after they try to calm him down he takes Matthew into the box and begins to question him gently. When Frank comes in he continues to follow his lead and the two of them begin to interact well for two people we have rarely seen in the interrogation room at the same time. It's clear he is now in complete accord with Frank that the brother killed the sister and that he's lying to cover for it. What complicates it is the fact that the ring was on the body at the scene and its gone now. Indeed Lewis makes it clear that the fight over the ring has to do with sibling rivalry. When he makes the statement that he thinks everything has to do with your relationship with your mother, Howard actually agrees with him. "You don't see me with a  kid, do you?"

The murder comes down to whether the ring was on the body at the time of the murder or not and the detectives can't pin it down. Eventually the detectives start considering the possibility it was stolen. They consider the possibility a cop would do it and while they'll acknowledge its possible they find it harder to believe a cop would steal evidence. (Money from the wallet seems possible, not personal effects.) Then Munch and Howard begin to think of random bits that were absent and find they all happened within the last three months.

But Cox wants to admit her flaws and she goes to the other civilian on the staff: Brodie. He agrees to help her with gear he needs and makes it clear why this kind of stuff is available. "We live in a cynical, distrustful world," he tells Cox. It's not clear whether this upsets Brodie or not; it's clear Cox is counting on it – but doesn't want to believe.

The episode tries to pair this with Cox and her relationship with her colleague the diener Jeff McGinn, as someone she trusts, someone's who affable, someone who makes her job fun. The problem is that he's a character we've never seen before on this show and therefore when Matthew Bridgewell reports that the diamond ring is missing, leading to an investigation of someone robbing corpses of jewelry the viewer knows even before Cox suspects who the grave robber is. And as a result there's no real suspense in to what happens and Cox's anger into what follows never real registers the same way Frank and Meldrick's arguing does.

It works better when we see Cox under suspicion. She's angry because in her mind this is a slur on her leadership style and she takes this personally. She clearly doesn't like the implication she did something wrong and she clearly doesn't like being forced to jump at the cops command.

Watching Frank and Lewis spar is fun and fascinating. What makes this episode very interesting is when Frank goes home. He's talking to his wife and he says he feels like he's his old self about everything he's spent the last few months going through. Considering that the viewer has spent the last several months waiting for Frank to be exactly where they were, it almost seems like the writers are subtly acknowledging this – right before they throw us yet another curve.

Mary is talking about Olivia and how she's playing peekaboo and Frank seems almost distracted about this accomplishment. Then Mary says she needs to talk to a marriage counselor and says things haven't felt right between them. When Frank responds to his wife with the same dismissive tone he's basically used to everybody else at work, we're a little stunned.

Homicide has never shied away from how difficult being a detective can be on marriages. Crosetti and Bolander were divorced when we first met them; Felton was in counseling long before his marriage fell apart; Munch has been divorced three times (though we're not sure how many of them had to do with his job at this point) and Kellerman's marriage had collapsed before he joined the unit. The Pembleton marriage has seemed to have been a pillar of stability throughout four seasons and there has never been a point when we thought that it was in trouble because of Frank's job. Indeed when Frank quit in Season 3 Mary told him to go back to work. We believed if their marriage survived all of the difficulties conceiving and seeing how genuinely upset Mary was when her husband suffered the stroke, that it would make things stronger between them.

But throughout Season 5 we've seen far more of Mary Pembleton then we ever have before and we know that Frank has not been a good patient. He took frustration out on her early in the season and though we didn't see it afterwards its clear Mary has been baring the burden to given her remarks to Giardello right before he finally passed the firearms exam. So when Mary expresses her genuine concern and Frank brushes them off so brusquely we're on her side in a way we should not be with terms of Homicide's most popular character.

You get the feeling that it may be an effect of the split between Bayliss and Pembleton that things don't work. Frank is partnered with Meldrick and we know that his marriage is on life support already. Meldrick unloads his frustrations (while driving which we know he sucks at) to tell Lewis that he clearly blames Barbara for their problems and that therapy is a grift, guaranteed to make things two to one against the man. (This is one of those sequences that has not aged well, I'll admit.)

So when Mary shows up at the squad and says she wants to talk to Tim, he's clearly floored by it. When they go into the box for privacy and Mary starts talking almost casually about how much time he spends in the box and at his job compared to at home Bayliss almost immediately wants to defend his partner. When she says that she's asking him to partner with him again it floors him as well as the fact that she says Frank misses him. It's the final lines that floor us. "Being a homicide detective is who he is. I'm just not sure being a homicide detective's wife is who I want to be." Tim has seen this play out so many times before – and given how much he cares for both Frank and Mary he clearly doesn't want to see this happen.

When he's willing to swallow his pride and ask Frank to partner with him again we know how much this costs him. And when Frank throws this back in his face – and just as simply ignores his advice about Mary – it cuts deep. And it doesn't help that Frank goes back home and responds to his wife's decision not to see a counselor with the exact same dismissive tone.  The expression on the two closest people in Frank's life at the end of the episode – who he once called the only people he ever trusted – is identical. One relationship seems torched and for the first time in a long time, we're not sure about the other.

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

 

'Detective Munch': Munch rhapsodized about his sandwich: "Provolone & onion. Yin and yang. Bland and spicy. Soft and crunch." Brodie, who has brought the order, punctures this: "Only a man with no woman in his life orders extra onion."

This is the first appearance of Danvers since his fiancée was murdered in Blood Wedding. It's been barely a month since the woman he loved the died and he's back at work. The show will never mention Danvers in his relationship to Meryl again, perhaps out of respect, just as likely because its just another case and they've moved on.  Any grieving he's done has taken place offscreen.

Get the DVD:  If you watch the episode on streaming you will hear Trouble on my Mind by Big Willie Horton during the section where they serve the search warrant on Matthew Bridgewell and begin the process. You will not here The Eels 'Guest List' over the radio when McGinn plays at the morgue or 'A Good Girl is Hard to Find' at the Waterfront when Frank and Meldrick are discussing the case with Lewis. I don't think any of this detracts from the episode in this case.

Hey, Isn't That…Glenn Fitzgerald who plays the title diener had already appeared in Manny and Lo and Flirting with Disaster when he made his appearance in this episode. That same year he played Neil Conrad in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm and then played Sean in The Sixth Sense. He's worked fairly steadily in TV and film since, most notably playing the Reverend Brian Darling in the critically acclaimed by unfortunately short-lived Dirty Sexy Money. His most significant role was in the independent film Tully, which won multiple nominations for both him and Julianne Nicholson in 2003.

Theodore White & The Kennedys, Conclusion: Ted Kennedy Represented More Than The End of Camelot

 

Edward M. Kennedy, as White refers to him in the index of every one of his Making of the President series, is mentioned sporadically in his brothers 1960 campaign, always referred to as 'Teddy'.  Most of it is in regard to how he was assigned to work in the Rocky Mountain States in order to earn delegates for the Democratic nomination and how he'd been courted them in Wyoming since the fall of 1959. It seems to have paid off – all 15 delegates cast their votes for his brother John at the convention, officially giving him the Democratic nomination.

When we meet him again four years later it is in the aftermath of his brothers assassination when he has become the junior senator from Massachusetts. He only appears three more times after the first section most of it having to do with his voting on the Civil Rights Act which is finally being passed. It mentions in a footnote the near tragedy plane crash which injured seriously but not fatally both he and Indiana Senator Birch Bayh. After that the focus turns to Bobby and how he was considered the heir apparent.

Then he takes his biggest role yet on the national stage though it is overwhelmingly against his will. He is mentioned in the musings of how his brother is considering running for the Democratic nomination to challenge LBJ. At first he and Sorensen advise strongly against it in December of 1967; then after a briefing his resistance is diminished.

In the weeks leading up to Bobby's decision to run for the Presidency its harder to discern Teddy's role, at least from White's perspective. Its clear that Ted seems very against the idea of a primary challenge. There's a discussion of not splitting the peace vote with McCarthy. Then he meeting with the wise men of the campaign have a fateful meeting with Bobby. By this point its clear forces are in play Bobby can't control: his name has already been placed on the Oregon and Nebraska ballot. But the men have made a decision

They are unanimous. The perspective of this morning's announcement must point to the convention. It must not pit Kennedy against McCarthy in fratricidal strife, primary state by primary state. They wait on Bobby Kennedy and someone asks where he is.

Then (Bobby) Kennedy appears, opening the French windows and walks in. He listens to the group. "I am not going to come out for McCarthy in the primaries…I'm going to do it myself. I'm going."

For all his public statements and in his own writing in the years and decades to come Ted Kennedy must have spent the rest of his life wondering if he could have said or done anything to convince his brother to changing his course. We know that in private he thought it was a futile task, commenting "Bobby's therapy is going to cost this family ten million dollars." This remarks is incredibly tone-deaf considering what followed but when White acknowledges what an uphill battle Bobby Kennedy's campaign for the Democratic nomination was – even with the raw emotions of his assassination still fresh in his mind – its difficult to blame him.

It is horrible enough that Ted had to bury his second brother in five years in the aftermath of an assassination but even worse was the fact that with his brother's death the anti-war faction was now focusing their attention on him as taking up the banner. Even given the horrors of the time and the reality of what was happening both at home and abroad to place this burden on a man who was not even thirty seven to engage in that same doomed quest was arguably the most horrific that has ever been forced on any elected official in America to that point in history. 

And yet with the death of his brother the 300 plus delegates he had won in the primaries had to go somewhere and there was no one to lead. George McGovern had taken up the burden just two weeks before the convention, as I've written before out of a greater sense of obligation and guilt then most. But even he was yearning for Ted to announce.

By this point the leadership for the antiwar cause was rudderless mainly because McCarthy was still refusing to lead. (I'll deal with how White viewed him in his own entry in a different series later on.) Instead we must deal with one of the oddest factors that White describes in Chicago: the Kennedy boom.

Kennedy's brother-in-law Stephen Smith has arrived on August 25^th and meets with various delegation heads. On Monday:

…what is happening is a Kennedy boom, leaderless, incohesive, a strange, insubstantial, yet inexplicably romantic combination among peace delegates and hardened politicians.

Unauthorized, former Ohio Governor DiSalle announces he, personally, will put Edward Moore Kennedy's name in nomination on the floor, a Kennedy volunteer headquarters opens at the Shearman House Hotel; and the Hilton hotel, by Monday afternoon, is speckled with Kennedy button banners.

On Tuesday:

Self-winding Kennedy spokesmen…begin to sound off in delegation after delegation, like a system of organ pipes hammered by a demonic player…the black people are all for Kennedy, any Kennedy. So too, are now most of the McCarthy people.

On Tuesday evening:

Now, a sudden romantic unity is given by the surge of Teddy Kennedy, the prince returning to claim his inheritance his people on the floor rising to reclaim honor from chaos and squalor.

That was the story. White knew the reality.

Kennedy "anguished and brooding, numbed by love, hurt and shock…had earlier given friends days of concern that he might retreat from politics altogether." He was aware of the plans for the draft but even in his grief he still had his savvy: he knew if he announced availability he'd been trapped, forced to accept the Vice Presidency if it didn't come and with no real desire for the nomination.

Edward Kennedy behaved well and wisely, according to White. He made it clear if there was a draft, it had to spontaneous and he wouldn't do anything to lead it or start it. The taste for power as White rights was fouled in his mouth.

The closest it had a chance of happen was perhaps late that afternoon when Smith was invited by a mutual friend to McCarthy's suite. Smith said Kennedy was not a candidate and that he had come at McCarthy's invitation. McCarthy's response shows that not even death and tragedy had done anything to foil his contempt for the Kennedy family

McCarthy said he would like to see his own name go into nomination; but at some point in the balloting, he would stand on the floor, withdraw his name and urge his people to support Edward Moore Kennedy. Yet he, McCarthy, would not nominate Edward Kennedy. Then McCarthy continued, gratuitously adding:  "While I'm willing to do this for Teddy, I never could have done this for Bobby."

Smith was enraged because in addition to insulting a dead man McCarthy had yet to promise anything substantial.  The boom collapsed though it took a bit longer – and more chaos unfolded – before the news reached the delegates.

Kennedy would campaign with Humphrey but that would be the end of his involvement. No one could have known that was the closest the final Kennedy brother would ever get to the Presidency.

 

It is a measure of what a different time politics and journalism was in 1972 that the death of Mary Jo Kopechne and the role that Edward Kennedy might or might not have played in it is referred to by white as 'the Chappaquiddick Incident'. Kopechne's name is not even mention and it is only referred to as how it 'scarred Kennedy'

It says a lot about just how powerful the family name  was that even after the death of Kopechne  so many Americans still thought that it could be his for the asking. We now know much that was going on beneath the surface but White didn't pursue it in the 1972 book because Kennedy had made it clear as early as 1971 he had no intention of running for the Presidency. He considered it briefly when George Wallace was surging in the polls (with good reason given the man's history in counterpoint to liberalism) but even then it was something he only considered a remote possibility.

But by the time George McGovern was essentially the Democratic nominee he was publicly saying he wanted Kennedy as his running mate. Its clear that Kennedy was no more interested in the nomination then he had been even considering it in 1968 and White is very clear that this is a 'courtship that had become embarrassing to Kennedy" That at one point he makes the request at a funeral for a fellow Senator was a sign of both McGovern's desperation and bad taste.

What's still unclear is just how much the Kennedy name hung over this. During the selection for the Vice Presidency one of the names that comes up is Sargent Shriver, a Kennedy-in-law, former ambassador to France, first director of the Peace Corps. There was some movement for it and McGovern tried to reach Shriver but found out he was in Moscow. So he dropped it.

Their was discussion between two candidates Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri and Boston Mayor Kevin White. At some point the decision had been for White and McGovern made a call to get clearance from Kennedy. Kennedy was cool to White and wanted time to think it over. McGovern immediately ceased on this as a chance that Kennedy himself wanted the nomination. At the same time the Massachusetts delegation made it clear they would revolt if White was chosen. When Kennedy calls back it's to suggest Wilbur Mills of Arkansas. This irritated McGovern  - but not enough to ask him yet again when Eagleton fell through.

Eventually Shriver was chosen. But even had he had been picked the first time, it's unlikely it would have made much of a difference for McGovern's hope for the Presidency which had begun to dissolve after he won the California primary and had collapsed even as he claimed the Democratic nomination.

 

It's impossible not to mention White's view of the 1980 election without giving the context of the volume in which it is related.

By this point White knew this was going to be his last book and compared to a history of America during the nearly quarter of a century he'd been covering Presidential campaigns. The title is America in Search of Itself: The Making of the President 1956-1980. 

There is a fair measure of nostalgia mixed with cynicism through much of the book yet despite that the clear-eyed historian is still there more often then not. That part is clear in the middle section of his book which he titles 'The Transformation of American Politics: 1960-1979."  And in the first two chapters he puts together a collections of facts, figures and historical evidence in which he draws the only conclusion he can – and one that almost certainly has been rejected by everyone calling themselves a liberal in the period afterwards:

Even before the 1980 election the increasingly liberal policies of the 1960s and early 1970s had grown so big, unwieldy and expensive that they had become to impossible to manage and measuring success by them was impossible to note.

White had been making arguments like this since the 1968 volume and it is difficult to argue with what a man who described himself as a liberal is putting forward at the time. By his definition liberalism was already dead even before the 1980 election: all Reagan did was perform last rites.

I will discuss the metrics White uses in a different series of articles but in the context of Edward Kennedy's campaign they take on a different note. White clearly has immense respect and admiration for Ted Kennedy and the causes he has fought for. And its clear he has as much difficulty with Jimmy Carter as so many of his contemporaries did at the time. He acknowledges the legacy of his brothers but is smart enough to know that he is 'the man of the unabashed liberal extreme." And he is more cynical about it:

Concern for the sick, the aged, the black, the underprivileged, had become, by 1980 his central cause."

While he is impressed with Kennedy's love of government and he clearly shares the frustration with Carter, he has absolutely no illusions about the campaign that followed. "Rarely has any campaign been so mismanaged as the Kennedy campaign in its first two months."

The Kennedy campaign was, from the beginning, historically preposterous. What the Senator proposed to do was to destroy the chief of his own party, the President of the United States. Having undermined the President, he would then have to pull the Democratic Party together and face the Republicans, defending a record he had spent a year denouncing."

This would seem to be a contradiction with White's immense respect for Robert's decision in 1968 to do basically the same thing. However at the time the Vietnam War was a clear national crisis that was destroying the entire country and would could make a justification for it.  Furthermore Eugene McCarthy's decision to run in New Hampshire would have given some cover for it.

Indeed White lays in bare in terms of organizational stills:

The Kennedy campaign lurched into action in early November as if from a cold start without organization, with no clear lines of authority, without the blooding of experience in the changing tactics of field campaigns that had developed since 1968, the last time the Kennedy team had tried the race.

This has been more than borne out by multiple writers over the years. White is more cynical about how TV and the media has become much harsher during this period (its here his nostalgia for the Kennedys of old has blinded him of their flaws.) He deals with the Roger Mudd interview in a paragraph but makes it clear he's just as baffled by Ted's inability to answer: "Why he wants to be President?"

And the makes it clear that the Kennedy's money, once their greatest strength, was no longer helping them. He acknowledges campaign finance restrictions hurt as well as the fact that the Kennedys are spending to meet 1960 prices.

But at the day he makes clear what the biggest problem of Kennedy's campaign was and it wasn't technical"

Ted Kennedy had nothing, at this point, to say. Whatever he had to say echoed back to the 1960s and the popular insurgency of that time. In a troubled country, this was no longer enough.

If liberalism as White believed was dead Kennedy was campaigning as if he never read the obituary – but the rest of America had. More to the point:

No message had come clear enough to remove a sitting President from leadership. The rest of the Kennedy campaign was an exercise in personality – an effort of the challenger to redefine his themes and heritage in more positive terms then 'leadership'.

When it comes to the primaries its worth noting that White has no real use for the presidential primary process in any form believing it weakens the power of the executive office and follows an absurd process. (I sympathize with him from the benefit of the passage of time but even now this is by far my biggest disagreement with White's writing.) Still he remains an effective chronicler when it comes to the primaries, particularly the Democratic one.

He divides it into three chapters. The first is the shortest and in White's mind is over after the New Hampshire primary. After he had lost that one Kennedy knows it over but decides to carry on. In his opinion his serious campaign is over by the time of his humiliation in the Illinois primary. The family seems determined to withdraw after the New York primary on March 25^th.

Then the second chapter begins and it extends from their until the Pennsylvania primary in April 22^nd. By that point world events in Iran are working against Carter and White accurately described what follows as a protest vote against Carter.

"The results of the New York primary showed that no amount of organization could overcome the disarray of a world outside. That world was troubled and growing more so; if a vote for Kennedy was the only possible protest, so be it." The Kennedy campaign was now forced to stayed in because of those events."

Even then Carter was still building up his lead and by the end of the second chapter Carter has 1207 delegates to Kennedy's 667. "There was no hope of denying Carter the 1666 delegates needed to win the nomination and then the third chapter of the Democratic primary began.

It unrolls over a six week period from the end of April until June 3^rd, Super Tuesday. The failed rescue attempt of the hostages is only the beginning of Carter's problem. A recession is predicted after he has said they turned the corner on the economy; Miami is deluged with Cuban refugees who Carter first welcomes and two weeks later has to call the coast guard out. The Common Market recognizes the PLO; India detonates a nuclear bomb.

On the last day of the primaries Kennedy wins five states and Carter wins three but Carter still clinched the nomination.

When it comes to Kennedy's 'open convention' policy  he is blunt calling it 'a power struggle – in this case the desperate attempt by Edward M. Kennedy to overturn the verdict of the primaries and by doing so, throw Jimmy Carter out of office." And he has no use for how so many good liberal people are arguing. Of particular contempt he holds George McGovern who won his nomination by insisting the convention was bound by the rules it had adopted  and "that no one could change the rules in the middle of the game. Now he argued the opposite. This the McGovern of 1980 arguing against the McGovern of 1972, the delegates must be freed of the rules adopted by the party."

The term flip-flop didn't exist in 1980 but this is the prime example of it. Once again Carter has Kennedy outnumbered but when Kennedy withdraws White says, "the contest had been hopeless from the beginning."

Of the famous speech that was Kennedy's last moment White acknowledges the mystique of the Kennedy family. He is impressed by the oratory of it says it is one of the great convention speeches he's ever heard. And perhaps because he is stirred by it gives little attention to the part that future historians will remember. After Carter gives his acceptance speech and everyone waits to see if Kennedy would appear:

Carter's face was gaunt as he waited for Kennedy's appearance , then the burst of shouts of "We Want Ted, We Want Ted!" announced that the Senator was coming. Kennedy's appearance was quick and crisp – what politician call a 'drop-by'. He shuffled on to the platform for a minute. Carter clasped his hand but Kennedy dodged the traditional hug and greeting. He lifted his hand in a seigneurial  wave of goodbye, as if he had appeared at the wedding of his chauffeur and was gone."

This is a remarkable amount of discretion for a moment that, when carried on TV across the nation, had such symbolic importance that it truly represented a fissure. To be fair White is a good enough reporter to let Carter have the final word on this campaign done after Carter has been trounced:

Kennedy had undermined the natural Democratic base, used up the party's resources in the primaries so that, when it came to the election "I didn't have time to devote to the wooing of the farmers in the Midwest or wooing the Southerners. I had to spend my time…to recover the support and confidence of the traditional, historic Democratic constituency."

White makes it clear he can't tell yet if the 1980 election is a repudiation of Democratic politics or of Jimmy Carter's Presidency - though he is inclined to think it is the former more than the latter.  By that logic he would seem to have reached a conclusion that the liberalism of that era of which Edward Kennedy had been the proudest member of was over. And that everything that his brothers had promised with their campaigns had reached a conclusion that had been repudiated in the biggest possible term with the Reagan landslide – of which Kennedy's run had almost certainly laid the groundwork for.

 

 

Even Before His 19th Game Jamie Ding Had Officially Become Jeopardy James II

 

Compared to some of the feats of so many recent super-champions winning $500,000 might seem like a lesser accomplishment. In fact it's an even smaller club then those who have won 11 games.

From the day Ken Jennings won his sixteenth game in June of 2004 no one came close to winning half a million dollars in their original run until James Holzhauer hit that total on his ninth win no Jeopardy champion came close to winning half a million in their original appearance. Even when David Madden and Julia Collins had their runs of 19 and 20 wins respectively, neither could even come close to half a million dollars. David finished with $434,000; Julia $428,100.

 Furthermore, even with the $250,000 grand prize in the Tournament of Champions, no one came close to reaching that mark in the next decade.

Roger Craig would pass the mark when he finished in third place in the Battle of the Decades in 2014. Matt Jackson passed it when he finished second in the 2015 Tournament of Champions. It wasn't until the Jeopardy All-Star Games that Madden and Larissa Kelly passed that total as part of Team Brad when they won shared in the $1,000,000 prize for winning that special tournament. (Brad Rutter of course had become the biggest winner in Jeopardy history long before the 5 day limit was repealed.)

Not long after that James Holzhauer had his amazing run. Between April 2019 and December of 2022 seven different players won at least $500,000 and their names, like Holzhauer and Jennings himself, are inscribed in Jeopardy lore. Amy Schneider, Mattea Roach and Matt Amodio are now officially Jeopardy Masters and Jason Zuffranieri and Cris Panullo are legendary themselves.

So when Jamie Ding won his eighteenth game and brought his total to $530,372 he had placed himself on the 'Leaderboard of Legends' in a way that for all the brilliance of Ray Lalonde, Adriana Harmeyer, Scott Riccardi and Harrison Whitaker had never been able to achieve. He'd also done something in eighteen games that David Madden and Julia Collins hadn't managed to do in their original runs.

Technically nothing had changed in those two games on the leaderboard: Jamie was still in eighth place, mainly because of what were (for him) relatively low win totals in Monday and Tuesday's wins, which is where he was after his sixteenth victory. But even if you only started watching Jeopardy after James Holzhauer's run or even after Matt Amodio began his you knew just how impressive Jamie Ding was among the levels even of Jeopardy super-champions. (No matter how his run ended I'm officially christening him 'Jeopardy James II.)

So even before he tried to reach his nineteenth win, he was in a very real sense a better player then either of the two men in that position: Jason Zuffranieri and David Madden. He had caught and passed Madden on his sixteenth win and after his eighteenth he was basically dead even with Zuffranieri after 19 wins. Which was good because his nineteenth appearance was the clearest sign yet his days on the Alex Trebek stage might be numbered.

This initially wasn't clear during the Jeopardy round as yet again he was dominant against Dominex Kovacs and Erica Wagner. He finished with over $10,000 yet again at $10,400 to Dominex's $3800 and Erica's $1400.

Then early in Double Jeopardy Dominex got to the first Daily Double. At the time he had $7400, exactly half Jamie's total. He knew what he was up against and bet everything he had in A HISTORIC SETTLEMENT:

Around 120 B.C. Narbo Maritus, the modern town of Narbonne, was Rome's first colony in the land the Romans called this.

A pause: "What is Gaul?" Dominex was now tied with Jamie. He actually moved into the lead on the next clue but then Jamie took it back on the follow up. Then Jamie found the other Daily Double in THE ONE LETTER LAST NAME OF…

Jamie had not been challenged for the lead this late in a Jeopardy game for a while. He bet $8000:

The 1925 literary character who 'was informed by telephone that there would be a small hearing concerning his case.' Jamie had been having trouble with Daily Doubles in the last few games and this time he couldn't come up with a response: "What is G?"  I knew that it referred to Kafka's The Trial and Joseph K.

Jamie dropped all the way done to $8400 and for the first time in his run he couldn't close the gap by the end of Double Jeopardy. He finished with $14,400 to Dominex's $17,600. Erica was next with $4600.

The Final Jeopardy category was POP CULTURE PEOPLE. Adopted in 1979 this name reflected size and strength as well as a promoter's wish to appeal to Irish-American fans.

It was a tough one. Erica couldn't come up with a correct response. She lost $4400, dropping her to $200.

Jamie was next: What is Rowdy Rowdy Piper?" He had the right idea but he was wrong. He wagered $5199 and dropped to $9201. He was clearly betting to stay ahead of Erica by $1 if she had gotten in correct and wagered everything.

It came down Dominex. He couldn't come up with anything either. The clue referred to a different wrestler: the recently deceased Hulk Hogan. (Ken: 'Hulk' for the size – Hogan for the Irish fans.)

It came down to the wager. Dominex did what he had to do and bet $11,201. He dropped to $6399 and Jamie survived by the skin of his teeth with another $9201. This gave him a 19 game total of $539,573, for all intents and purposes a tie with Jason's $532,496.

Jamie had managed to continue his run. But it was getting more and more difficult to argue that Jamie was starting to prevail more on luck. This was the sixth Final Jeopardy in his last eleven games that he'd gotten wrong. He'd been saved by the fact that four of them had come in runaways and in the other two it had been a triple stumper. And Jamie was increasingly starting to struggle on Daily Doubles having gotten two of them incorrect the previous day.

On the surface it was yet another dominant win: 30 correct responses and only 3 incorrect ones. For any other player – any other super-champion – it would have been an incredible performance; for a man who'd gotten 43 correct responses three times in his run to this point, it was almost disappointing – and he had finished Double Jeopardy in second place.

Jamie is officially in the Jeopardy record books in a way that all but seven players have managed to get to this point. And no one will question he is one of the greatest players in Jeopardy history. But with this narrow escape the question is how much longer Jeopardy James II reign will continue?