Homicide Rewatch: Birthday

 

Written by Julie Martin

Directed by Alison MacLean

 

For the first time Since Season 4 NBC did some juggling of the order of episodes of Homicide. 'The Subway' was meant to air immediately after the three part opening season, ended up being pushed all the way back to December while this episode, which was scheduled to air sixth ended up following the conclusion of 'Blood Ties'.

Given how serialized Homicide was going to be during this season this could have wrecked the continuity. Yet oddly the shifting of episodes by the network actually helped make Season 6 unfold in a stronger fashion. The first is to immediately allow the Mahoney storyline to gain added importance to the plot of Season 6 in a way it very well might not have had it aired as it was scheduled. And the second is to start the broader theme about the crimes we'll be dealing with during this season into a more brash relief.

Birthday, like The Subway, dealing with the detectives being called to a crime scene with a victim who isn't dead yet. But it's a far less traumatizing one that with John Lange because in the case of Grace Rivera she's taken away by paramedics mainly because she's on the brink of death but still can be saved. Our victim therefore spends most of the episode alive and everyone involved thinks this is just an assault, rather than a murder.

Grace has been brutally raped, assaulted and left for dead. In fact Stivers, who has since rotated to Sex Crimes, is called to the scene along with Falsone and Lewis. This is the same combination that we've seen in regard to the Mahoney storyline but in this it's territorial rather than the agita of that subject. None of the three detectives even bring it up during the investigation, though to be fair there's a lot of other problems with it along the way. Not the least of which is Falsone calls Cox first and she's royally pissed by his: "I thought I had a homicide," line. (It comes up but there's a bigger storyline that's dealing with it.)

Stivers reasoning is sounder that Falsone's: there's a serial rapist on Federal Hill who's already suspect of three rapes. At the hospital Cox's description would imply that the methodology fits the pattern of the previous  victims.

Watching at the time I still think this was the right call by NBC. The Subway is an extraordinary episode but its such a powerhouse moment that had Birthday aired after it original it would have seemed like Martin was giving us a weaker version of what Pembleton had to endure with John Lange a few weeks ago. By coming ahead of that masterpiece 'Birthday' manages to take a more conventional approach and one that amazingly we haven't seen on Homicide in the past five seasons: what's the procedural when you're called to a crime and the victim's alive? That it is a more 'conventional' kind of crime then the one that we saw on The Subway probably eased the viewers minds a bit more.

Giardello wrestled with head of Sex Crimes Kate McLendon for jurisdiction. With the death of the woman a possibility he lets Falsone take lead as primary with Stivers assisting. If Rivera ends up recovering the case will go back to Stivers.  Clearly this is a version of CVA: if the victim dies, he wants to make sure nothing was missed in the investigation. The problem is Falsone immediately guarantees Giardello a closed case, something Meldrick immediately tries to back away from.

 Falsone shows the eagerness of a rookie who thinks he can solve anything. It's almost adorable to see this earnestness; we haven't seen someone like this in the unit in a long time. It helps that we learn that Grace has no father, her mother has Alzheimer's and her roommate, who calls herself 'the only family she's got',  seems more upset being interviewed by the cops then whether her roommate dies. Falsone perhaps takes this to heart. It's also interesting to know that Falsone doesn't have much experience talking to women in auto and when it comes to his wife: "You notice we're not married anymore." It's unlikely, but not impossible, Falsone hasn't had to council any grieving wives and mothers during three months on the job. There's also the fact that while she's regained consciousness, she's endured a significant brain injury and has no memory of what happened to her.

Grace is cheerful at first, joking about how she doesn't want to be asked what year it is, or what day it is and that Falsone being here isn't to tell her she's dead. But she actually thinks she was in a car accident and the last thing she remembers is waking up the morning before the attack. Falsone and Stivers clearly are reluctant to tell her but she lets them off the hook: "I know the story doesn't have a fairy tale ending." Jon Seda is super as he awkward tells her everything that happened to her. We're not prepared when she says: "I guess I was right. Being a good day. I mean, I'm still here." Perhaps that why Falsone is so determined to investigate all 56 bars on Federal Hill and refuses to accept that despite being so vicious manhandled there is no physical evidence. The detectives then do search every bar in Federal Hill and while many of them do recognize Rivera none remember her from the previous night. Giardello then promptly tells Falsone now that Rivera's conscious he wants to let Sex Crime handle this particular black hole. "We have actual murders to investigate." When Falsone says he can handle the heat Al stops being nice and makes it very clear that he can't handle the kind of supernovas the lieutenant can bring.  And when Stivers brings Falsone and Lewis along for a suspect in the Grace Rivera rape – a rapist who just served fifteen years – it very quickly goes wrong. As the interrogation progress the moment he starts talking as if he did it Falsone slugs him – and immediately afterwards all three detectives feel the wrath of their esteemed lieutenant. (By this point Stivers has to be wondering if her problems will be solved by him being transferred.)

He then has another discussion with Rivera, whose memory is still a complete blank. Falsone goes out of the way not to blame her for what happened but she does a good job. "It's not about being bashed in the head. They all start to blur together. That's Grace always had lousy luck with men." What's disconcerting about this is that she's chuckles more than being depressed. Whether this is the painkillers or shock is never clear.  Then she finally gets mean. "This is sick. You're trying to make me remember the worst thing that ever happened to me so you can do your job."

Ironically none of Falsone's diligence does anything. Its when Lewis and Stivers recanvas they find out one of the bartenders lied to Lewis. She wasn't on duty that night, she needed Matt to cover for her. Matt knows Grace, in fact he bought her a tab that night. The detectives then corner him, first plying him about one suspect and then asking about a bite on his hand. The detectives question him, then are about to leave and ask him casually about his dog bite. Then he runs. When they catch him they find that Grace bit him. "I like that woman," Paul says.

Paul's last exchange shows that Grace still doesn't seem that upset. She talks about what its like to be single and that sometimes its easier just to have sex with a lousy guy then to say no…and then feel bad in the morning. There's a part of her that really doesn't want to deal with her own lifestyles of kissing a lot of frogs. She seems more determined to move on than Falsone is with what happened.  Matt refuses to give it up and the state's attorney makes it clear that they'll have to settle for sexual assault and a lesser charge. There isn't enough evidence and Grace still doesn't remember the attack. Falsone tries to press his luck, even saying he'd beat a confession on it and at that point Al says he's off the case and is one word away from being out of the unit.

Afterwards Cox is in a brown study at the Waterfront. She admits that Grace's blood alcohol was so high. She knows it shouldn't make a difference but in some finger pointing corner of her mind. Cox then admits it could happen to her. There but for the grace of God.  When Munch says he'd never let that happen to her Cox goes: "Because there's a difference between drinking and being drunk. I'm going to go on believing that because right now I'm not in the mood to believe anything else." It's a brave statement that makes us wonder yet again why the writers haven't given Michelle Forbes nearly enough to do for more than half a season.

What she does to prove that this is attempted murder would be more impressive were it not for what happens in the final minutes. Falsone goes back to the hospital and learns that Grace is dead. Her hematoma erupted and she had a massive hemorrhage. They rushed her back in but she didn't make it. Falsone just goes quiet.

 

The real storyline starts when Kellerman meets Georgie Rae outside her late brother's building.  He's pissed and he doesn't know how she made bail and he expects her to be back.

It's here that we finally get a real sense of Georgia. Unlike Luther who toyed with Kellerman and Lewis about his involvement with the trade she's more direct. She says she'll be fine in prison, almost considering it a vacation and talks the only she misses is her VCR and watching movies. (This did take place in 1997 but as you'll see she's not talking about going to Blockbuster.) Then she says she loves one tape in particular. When Kellerman says he doesn't care she says: "You should. You're in it." She reminds Luther was an intelligent man. "Do you think he wouldn't live without surveillance cameras?" Mike goes cold the moment he hears that because its clear in the heat of the moment and with no formal investigation, nobody bothered to check the crime scene.  

Kellerman then starts doing police work, first talking to the estate realtor about the Mahoney condo. (The way he says how the new owners were 'bitching about the blood stains in the walls' is a comment so surreal I wouldn't hear anything like it until Breaking Bad came along.) He then learns that Luther's place was completely wired with surveillance in the walls in every single room. He asks if they were all torn out and it turns out that they were all in the storage room. The way Kellerman is clearly lying about them 'being helpful to our investigation' is the first overt sign this season as to how Kellerman has been corrupted by his own actions. Naturally he brings it to a surveillance expert who tells him what he doesn't want to hear: that if there was a tape in the machine, it would have picked up everything in living color – including Mike acing Luther when he was surrendering. And there's no tape in the VCR.

After that Kellerman goes to the cemetery where Georgia is looking at Luther's headstone. Mike knows what's coming and says you're going to play the game 'torture the detective'. And its then the one inch of high ground Georgia has comes up when she sneers: "Like you enjoyed torturing my brother? You didn't show him any mercy! You didn't make his life or his death any easier." Kellerman wants to know what's coming and then Georgia makes it clear: "If I wanted you dead, you'd be in the ground already."

And the thing is we know the Mahoney family. If they want to get someone, they don't dick around. Luther almost certainly could have had any of the detectives who went after him killed if he'd really wanted it: we know this from everything we saw him do. And there's no reason Georgia would be any different.  When she says she hasn't decided what she wants we believe her. As well as her final warning before she walks away. Unlike her brother Georgia always gets the last word.

The title reference is actually surprisingly direct: it basically deals with the long, long awaited birth of Frank's second child. Homicide rarely shows good things happening to its characters so to spend the series with Frank and Tim not investigating a murder but anxiously waiting for Mary to finally give birth is a nice change.

I love this exchange in particular:

Frank: This baby has temperament. This baby is stubborn.

Tim: I wonder who's gene pool he gets that from.

And I actually think that's another reason moving this episode ahead of The Subway was the right call: Andre Braugher gets one of those rare opportunities to show Frank's human side as loving husband and expectant father. Frank grousing about his in-laws being here and taking into consideration the idea of a salad that might induce labor quicker, sending his in-laws home, then having that salad with his wife, almost begging her to finish it.  But we also get the sincerity when he tells Mary that he intends to slow down and that as much as he loves his job, his family is now his top priority. The way Mary says simply: "I know that" assures us that tranquility has been restored.

 Considering just how horrible his domestic situation was last season; he very well might have welcomed to change to play off his wife as if they were a normal couple again. And when his wife goes into labor he is overjoyed and then afraid when he learns Mary needed an emergency C-section and he can't get a straight answer if either his wife or the baby will be okay.

We get to see Frank and Tim in a sympathetic place. Tim tries to be good to his partner and when Frank says he's never been in a waiting room before Tim is honest, bringing up that he and Mary were in a room just like this when Frank had his stroke. "Most people my age have been here," Frank says. "Grandparent, parent, somebody about to pass." When Tim says he's been lucky Frank doesn't take comfort. Later on he talks about the easier hours at robbery. When Bayliss says Frank was bored, Frank counters: "I was bored. Mary wasn't bored having her husband home at six." When Bayliss asks if he's going to quit Frank says to his partner: "I'm a husband and a father. I should have been with her tonight." Then the doctor shows up and tells Frank his wife and son are fine. We've never seen a smile that big on Frank's face in five years and Tim knows it as much as we do.

I think the real reason we spend so much time with Frank about the birth of his son is so that it can contrast with Grace's sudden death. The scenes of Frank looking at his baby son and Tim handing Mary flowers in her bed are here to contrast with Falsone writing Grace's name on the board in black. We've rarely gotten a contrast of life and death so bluntly on Homicide and its done to show the real balancing act of life in a way we never see.

And the end of the episode shows Kellerman walking into the Waterfront where he hasn't been in a while. He asks for a drink. Munch asks Mike if something is bothering him and seems genuinely inclined to help. But Kellerman says he's got it under control. He doesn't. And in the episodes to come we'll see that he's headed into a dark, dark tunnel.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

Billie Jackson repeats her role from 'Kaddish' as Kate McLendon from Sex Crimes. In the months between those episodes she's been promoted to shift commander (following in the path of Megan Russert).

 

"Detective Munch" Bringing in Grace's roommate Ivy considers her time with Munch 'police brutality'. When Falsone offers a cup of coffee Munch replies: "If you bring her a cup of coffee, she's liable to spill it on your shoes."

Ivy: "That was an accident."

 Munch: "There are no accidents."

Ivy: "I was aiming for your socks."

(Dick Wolf saw this and thought Munch would be suited for a unit involving sex crimes?)

 

ON THE SOUNDTRACK: On either the streaming or DVD as the detectives go through every bar on Federal Hill you hear Big Head Todd and The Monster's Circle. Only on the DVD in the final minutes will you her Kristen Barry's 'God in The Box'. It doesn't make much of a difference but it had an impact when I watch it.

Despite her good looks and memorable work as Georgia Rae Mahoney, Hazelle Goodman had even less of a career then Erik Todd Dellums. Her biggest role other than this was Cookie in Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry. She played Evelda Drumgo in Hannibal and Hazelle Black in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close but she hasn't acted since 2019 when she played Evelyn in the anthology film Brooklyn Love Stories. (Why do the actors who created the Mahoney family never have the careers they'd deserved?)

Alison Folland who plays Grace was only 19 when she appeared on Homicide. She'd already appeared as Lydia in To Die For and Claude in the independent film All Over Me. She'd have roles in such brilliant independent films as Boys Don't Cry, Finding Forester and She Hate Me and eventually played Grace in I'm Not Here. Her last major role was as Laurie Carroll in The Fighter. Incidentally she was a high school classmate of Mindy Kaling, who should really give her a job.

Jeopardy Season 42 Final Summary

 

How incredible was Season 42 of Jeopardy? We almost could have started a 'Super-Champion of the Month Club."

Thirty one days hath Jamie Ding in March and much of April,  in May we got Tristan Williams in June we got Adam Remsen and in July Caleb Groen. Caleb currently has the third bye into the semifinal until for all we know someone will start winning like crazy in September.

Even odder? To this point the roster for the 2027 Tournament of Champions doesn't have a single five game winner on it. We've got a lot who've won more and two who've qualified who've won less but no one has won exactly five. That's a minor nuisance really, mainly because the rosters so strong.

So in chronological order I'm going to give you the 10 players to this point who have officially qualified for the 2027 Tournament of Champions:

Harrison Whitaker, 14 wins, $373,999

Will Riley, 4 wins, $77,403

James Denison, 4 wins, $99,400

Jamie Ding, 31 wins, $882,605

Tristan Williams, 10 wins, $221,902

Chris  D'Angelo, 8 wins, $194,201

Peter McFerrin, 6 wins, $147,399

Adam Remsen, 12 wins, $306, 415

Caleb Groen, 12 wins, $346, 698

Mina Kimes, Celebrity Jeopardy All-Stars Winner

For the record this tournament will also feature four of the 20 top twenty players in Jeopardy winnings after their original run. Jamie is fifth all time, Harrison is 15^th, Caleb is 17^th and Adam is 18^th. Shades of Season 38 only the lineup was much different in 2023.

And regardless of how the roster finally shakes out: two double digit winners are going to be fighting to compete in the semi-finals. Considering how loaded this roster is already it's going to be a doozy.

Now let's get to the three 3-day winners who, if past is prologue, will be invited to participate in the 2027 TOC as well, again in chronological order:

Ron Lalonde: $52,501

James Hirsh, $67,418

Greg Shahade, $74,602

Greg is guaranteed a spot because he defeated Jamie Ding and both his total and James Hirsh's are in the overall range that so many three game winners such as Mike Dawson and Tom Devlin were invited for the year's Tournament of Champions. Ron is borderline but its at the level of Aaron Levine and Brendan Liaw would got extended automatic invites – and you know, being the twin brother of Ray Lalonde is just too good a hook not to extend an automatic invite.

So at the end of Season 42 we have ten players who are definitely in and three who will almost certainly be in. We had similar numbers at the end of Season 41  but only one super-champion and Scott Riccardi didn't show up until the final weeks of the season.

The one downside – if you are pedantic enough to call it one - to having so little gap between super-champions is that there are far few obvious qualifiers for Champions Wildcard so far. Here  are the four who've qualified this season among two games winners:

Libby Jones, $70,802

Trey Hart, $34,300

Quentin Powers, $20,798

Richard Nguyen: $36,801

Libby and Richard have the added advantage of each having defeated a super-champion. Richard also has the advantage of beating Adam Remsen and losing to Caleb Groen, which is in itself a superb narrative.

We'll have to wait a bit longer to see if any of the one-game winners have scores that will hold up or more likely if in Season 43 we get more two game winners or low scoring three game winners that will be added. That being said there are  at least four one game-winners whose totals do make it seem likely right now:

Shannon Crisenberry: $38,400

Madeline Kaplan: $31,700

Grace Bierman: $32,000

Dean Zach: $36,000

Considering all of them won more than Quentin and both Shannon and Dean won more than Trey, I think they're odds are good.

Of course the first two months of Season 43 could shift everything radically –  as we all remember the first two months of this season brought us Paolo Pasco and TJ Fisher, both of whom ended up as finalists in the Tournament of Champions with Paolo going on to win it at all.

This brings me to the Second Chance Tournament. I haven't attempted in my previous summations to even speculate on who the producers might choose because its only after they do so that I can analyze whether their often byzantine reasoning makes sense. However in regards to Season 42, given both the number of super-champions as well as how many other Jeopardy champions matches played out, combined with the past track record of the producers there are already several more than obvious candidates that I suspect many viewers would very much like to see invited back  - and in this case I include myself.

I don't know how many Second Chance Tournaments there will be this year but seeing as the roster for each one as always been nine I'm going to give a roster for one such tournament of those I've seen who I think more than deserve a Second Chance.

First there are three who I think will get invited because they were the 'other player' in a match between two Tournament of Champions Players.

Jessica Marshall: Between Allegra Kuney's last win and Harrison Whitaker's first.

Allegra Rosenberg: Tristan Williams' last appearance; Chris D'Angelo's first.

Camryn Bell: Chris D'Angelo's last appearance; Peter McFerrin's first

 

Now for each super-champion this season there are going to be many players who have earned a slot. I'm going to give one who I believed their second chance the most:

For Harrison Whitaker:

Kara Brown: A couple of good choices but Kara who went up against Harrison in his eighth appearance, probably earned it the most. She made an incredible recovery after getting one Daily Double wrong in Double Jeopardy she got the next one right and was very close to Harrison at the end of Double Jeopardy. Final Jeopardy was a triple stumper and Harrison himself thought he'd lost to Kara, he wrote down: "Well, it's been fun!" I think Harrison would say she earned it.

For Jamie Ding

Dominex Kovacs: There were a lot of players who will doubtless be getting invites from Jamie's original run but there's no question Dominex deserves it the most. Because under normal circumstances he should have beaten Jamie.

It was Jamie's 19^th appearance. Dominex got to the first Daily Double in Double Jeopardy, bet everything and tied Jamie for the lead. Two clues later Jamie found the other Daily Double, bet big and got it wrong. For the first time in his entire run Jamie was trailing going into Final Jeopardy. And the clue was a triple stumper so it came down to wagers. Jamie bet just enough to be left ahead of the third place finisher if she bet everything right and responded incorrectly. Dominex played to win – and as a result Jamie lived to fight another day. There were gasps at the end of that game because everyone expected it. If that doesn't deserve a second chance, I don't know what does.

 

For Tristan Williams:

Rose Sloan: Rose appeared in Tristan's tenth appearance and was ahead all through the Jeopardy round. She gave him was by far his hardest fight to that point and was a close second going into Final Jeopardy. She wagered conservatively and had Tristan been incorrect she would have prevailed. Pretty sure she earned it.

For Adam Remsen:

Kate Raven, Derek Lombardi:

No this isn't cheating. I saw Adam's tenth game. They both earned it. Adam was basically in the lead because he bet everything on the Daily Double he found in Double Jeopardy and was correct. I'm not the kind of person who believes in Coryat scores but Kate was ahead of him at the end of Double Jeopardy based on 16 correct responses and zero incorrect ones with $13,600. And Derek's final total was just as incredible. He found a Daily Double late in that round and finished with $18,000 to Adam's $20,800.

For Caleb Groen:

Michael Yates: This occurred in Caleb's fourth appearance. Michael was ahead in the Jeopardy round and got to all three Daily Doubles. He found the ones in Double Jeopardy back to back. He got the first one right for $5000 but he bet $6000 on the second one and got that wrong. Had he wagered less or been right on it he would no doubt have been ahead going into Final Jeopardy. And since all three players got it right, Caleb's run would have ended long before he became a super-champion.

And so this ends my coverage of a wonderful season of Jeopardy. But before the new season premieres there's still some business from last season to wrap up.

The schedule and the final lineup for the 2026 Jeopardy Masters has finally been revealed. And later this weekend I will be here with the details of who we're going to see and why it has more significance then you might think.

 

Comedy Is Hard. Hacks Just Made It Look Easy. Saying Goodbye to One of the Greatest Series of the Decade

 

 

The great character actor Edmund Gwenn, best known for his Oscar winning role as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34^th Street, may be best known for his last words. On his deathbed he was asked what it was like to die. "It's hard," he said. "But not as hard as doing comedy."

In typical Hollywood fashion that line was rewritten into the punchier: "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard." Deborah Vance no doubt knew the real quote but she also knew that old John Ford quote: "When the legend becomes fact, print to legend." I don't know if Ava would know these lines – I suspect she probably would have said all of this was about the patriarchy and racism – but she definitely knew the sentiment and by the time we reached Hacks final season she probably would have watched John Ford marathons with Deborah.

I've spent a while delaying watching the final episodes of Hacks which came to an end on streaming two months ago. Not because I was afraid they'd screw up the ending but because I wasn't ready to say goodbye. Those of you who read my columns know just how much I love this show – it has been number 3 or number 2 on my top ten list every year it was eligible and it's going to be one or the other for 2026 – and we all know just how difficult it is to watch the final season of any show when its ending. It's something any TV critic or fan gets used to over the years and it doesn't get any more fun but its inevitable.

I've already had to say goodbye to quite a few masterpieces during this decade: Atlanta and Barry departed in 2023, Reservation Dogs and Somebody Somewhere left in 2024 and even though there are still quite a few great shows that don't yet show signs of leaving – Abbot Elementary, Shrinking, Only Murders in the Building  - it doesn't make the loss any easier even as you know great ones might come to take their place. The fact that Hacks was very much leaving on its own terms doesn't make its departure any more difficult.

And fortunately it didn't make the fifth season any less hysterical.  Deb spent most of the season trying to rewrite her obituary for reasons we weren't sure about until the series finale. She wanted to sell out Madison Square Garden and after she managed to get a show there most of Season 5 was adjacent to it. To be sure there were many great stories on that involves all the other characters, which is honestly how a great comedy should end.

Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins) spent much of the final season decided to buy an old style casino and run it himself with Deb's blessing. This led to several hysterical scenes, such as Deb, Marcus and her staff watching 'The Housekeeping Olympics' for servers and grading it with the solemnity of judges, Deb being told she could not have a life-sized statue of herself as part of the introduction as well her usual things. But eventually Deb decided to open a comedy club for young comics to try and help them forward.

Jimmy and Kayla had to deal with the fact their agency was going under and halfway through the season Mr. Schaffer (I've missed you W. Earl Brown) decided to cut off Kayla's trust and the agency had to fold. Meg Stalter has been hysterical in every scene but in a way her journey towards becoming independent has been wonderful. By the end of the season it was very clear she was devoting her high energy, ridiculous talking powers for good and was becoming vital in helping Deb's career in the final episodes.

Ava, of course, has shown the most growth. In the final season Hacks decided that there was no point to having Ava and Deb always at each other's throat and they spent most of the season working together to realize Deb's dream. Ava was finding a way to write an original comedy something she's been working on for most of the series. She decided to reboot the comedy that had made Deb a household name at first for a new generation and Deb said she trusted her with it, which is astonishing. It's been clear during the season more than ever how much being a part of Ava's life has rubbed off on Deb. During the season she was confronted with the issue of AI using her imagery to write jokes for her, something Ava was appalled by and for once her outrage had nothing to do with a generational gap. Deb listened, and though it cost her funding for her casino it was clear this was something she wouldn't have done even last season.

Ava managed to get a certain revenge. In an episode that for any other series would be its highest point Deb, in an effort to try and get Carol Burnett's Bob Mackie dress, tried to win over an old rival (Cherry Jones). Ava ended up there and given their relationship she assumed the two were lesbian life partners. Deb went along with this to get invited to her house and Ava, momentarily repulsed, took the opportunity to absolutely rib Deb at every possible moment, telling their career relationship as if it were a love story, openly kissing her, talking about every single lesbian sex position and openly trying to hit on the life partner that was Leslie Bibb. (Bibb and Jones were both deserved nominated for Emmys for their work.) When this all spectacularly blew up – its worth noting the other couple were still convinced the two were lovers – the two of them had to leave with their dresses between their legs and it was wonderful.

In the penultimate episode, everything fell apart. Bob Lipka (Tony Goldwyn has never been more evil) actually bought out every ticket in advance because he wanted to make sure Deb could not talk shit about him in her first gig back in eighteen months. He made it clear he would do this for the rest of her life if she didn't sign another NDA. Deb, of course, told him to go fuck himself and instead did a free show in Central Park.

This basically brought out the best in everybody. We had another encounter with Weed (Laurie Metcalf) the roadie who Deb famously fired in Season 2. Weed had gone on a horrible journey and bender which somehow landed her in a motel in Juarez with an Apple TV remote – but the TV was a Roku! (Need I mention she was nominated for another Emmy?) She moved on and agreed to help Deb. Jimmy, Kayla and Randi (the always divine Robbi Hoffman) cajoled a city clerk for a permit and thankfully it was the fact that Jimmy had created a Xena podcast earlier this season that worked. Deb appeared on every TV show in New York – and ended her decades long view with Joy Behar – and as a result she managed to have the biggest crowd for any appearance in Central Park in history.

By that point Ava had decided to relaunch Deb's sitcom as essentially the story of what she and Deb had done the last several years and it had been picked up to pilot. Everything seemed happy. So naturally that's when the show threw a curve.

In the series finale Deb told Ava that she wanted to go on a European vacation and at the end of it she planned to commit assisted suicide. She'd found a mass on her kidney earlier that season and it had spread. Rather than go through treatment she wanted to end her life on her own terms.

Ava was shocked beyond words and almost hurt that Jimmy had learned first. Naturally Jimmy had been asked to put her affairs in order. Ava then decided to go to Paris.

If you think their trip to Paris wasn't going to be funny, you don't know this show very well. It turned out Deb's bucket list was trying to make sure Ava experienced everything. Cue scenes of her driving a stick horribly, finally eating bread that's real for the first time, learning how to negotiate at an antique store. It was clear by this point Ava was leaning into it, when they wanted to go a ride she said: "It's my dying wish." Deb looks at her. "You're dying, it's my wish."

Deb bought out the Louvre and Ava spent much of the tour acting like an American, saying she didn't get the Mona Lisa. Deb just shook her head. Eventually they found a painting attributed to Frans Haals but was actually painted by Judith Leceister who only did because that was how it worked. Ava asked what it would have been like if Deb had been a man. Deb said she'd done it her way. Then they went out to a disco and Ava dressed her.

Ava then made a last-ditch effort to convince Deb to take treatment but it failed. Ava stormed out and lit a candle, then came back and said she'd support her. As a reward Deb showed her a secret – Deb's hands were bigger than Ava's. This was one of the oldest jokes between them and it was hysterically.

While this was going on Jimmy, who'd been sent back to Schaffer & Sons in the mailroom to help Kayla and Randi, found out something. Mr. Schaffer had been selling the likenesses of dead celebrities to AI companies not only with their consent but not sharing the money. He and Kayla made a power play and forced him out. Jimmy's call to arms in Hollywood was corny but that's been the point of Hacks all along. It's an argument for creativity and original and respecting artists in an industry that is struggling and constricting. No one knows what Hollywood will be like in the years to come but having watched the show I know we need Kayla's and Jimmy's fighting for it. (Yes I would like a spinoff.)

And the thing is comedy saved Deb's life. Just before they were heading to Zurich, Deb and Ava started riffing on what the best and worst parts about dying were and playing off each other. And after Ava left, Deb started writing in her notebook. By that point Deb changed her mind. "I may not have thirty more years. But I think I have one more hour." She decided to start doing treatment because she wanted to keep doing what she loved right until the end.

One of the last lines of the series was Jimmy telling Ava: "I think you saved her life once. So its fitting you did it again." And that's been one of the secret mission statements of Hacks. Yes the generational gap may seem insurmountable, yes the world of entertainment is changing in ways no one can foresee, yes, there are horrible people in every aspect of it whether its network TV or Silicon Valley or even the people who represent the clients. But to give in be overwhelmed by these factors is another kind of death – the death of artistry, the death of creativity and originality, even the idea of being silenced by those forces. It’s a difficult task and one could easily become cynical and callous like far too many of the people we've met over these five seasons. But as long as the Deb's and Ava's are out there, as long Kayla's and Jimmy's and Randi's are fighting for them, there is reason for hope. And you know, great jokes.

The last stop for Hacks is of course the Emmys. It's a given that Jean Smart will win her fifth Emmy in five tries and that the show will win its second Emmy for Best Comedy. Hannah Einbinder's seems certain to win her second Emmy for Best Supporting Actress – but the fact she only won last year shows how difficult that is to prevail. The show was nominated for 25 Emmys, breaking the record The Bear set just two years for a Comedy (Hacks beat it that year, remember) so how many Emmys it will win is an open question, particularly considering it has quite a few overlaps in multiple categories. (There are a total of five Guest Actress nominees from the show alone.) And of course it will be rivaled in a couple of them  by the more than formidable Widow's Bay though there is overlap between them in this sense.

Hacks has already put together an impressive track record at the Emmys, to date it has managed to win eleven, including multiple writing awards for Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jenn Statsky, the holy trinity that  gives this show life. They are brilliant in all things and while Hacks is over, I can't wait to see what they come up with next.

My final score: 5 stars.

 

A Brief History of RINO'S and DINO'S And Why The Way Each Side Uses The Term Reflects How They Approach Politics

 

 

So much of the time when I tried to criticize some of the more extreme views on this site, I was accused of being a MAGA. When I explained I was a registered Democrat and had been one since I was old enough to vote, the insults almost always switched to something that those involved actually  considered worse: DINO or Democrat in Name Only.

This term has only started to come into common slang in the last few years. It's political equivalent on the other side of the aisle – Republican in Name Only or RINO – has been around slightly longer and has been used more professional, usually by Trump ever since he entered politics. Like so much else in American discourse the only new thing about either of these terms is the acronym: variations on either have been going around for decades with new words coming into existence with each new generation. But they're both saying the same thing and it's about who says them rather than their targets.

Basically it's a version of: I, who have been a member of this political party for basically ten minutes now, am more qualified to know what all people in this party have always wanted far more than elected officials who have been there for years if not decades. Because they have either been corrupted by 'the system' or have failed litmus tests we just created, these elected officials are a disgrace to the party and must be removed to make room for others who share my way of thinking.

These ideological shifts are not new in politics and basically came to their earliest form in both political parties, unsurprisingly, during the 1960s. In both political parties, it always refers to the newest and most extreme members who've grown dissatisfied with the Old Guard's complacency. But there's a huge difference between how each generation chose to deal with it and it's worth talking about it because it's another in the endless line of illustrations of why the extremists in both parties are just mirror images of each other, one has been endlessly more effective in turning their vision into reality.

The modern conservative vision was founding during the campaign for Barry Goldwater in 1964. Goldwater's movement was launched by the so-called Young Republicans who had become despairing of the dominance of the so-called Eastern Establishment of the Party, at that time represented by Nelson Rockefeller. The divide had been simmering since before World War II but ever since 1940 the Eastern Establishment had managed to thrust their more moderate wing of the party as their Presidential Candidates over those in the Midwest. Sick of this during the leadup to the 1964 campaign the Young Republicans worked to put Goldwater as their nominee even before he agreed to run for President.

The result was a victory for the conservatives and an electoral disaster. Goldwater came across as dangerous before the primaries were even over and he would lose in what was the biggest landslide in the popular vote with LBJ taking 61 percent of the vote to Goldwater's 37 percent.  With Goldwater defeated the Old Guard swept back in.

But when Watergate happened the conservative wing waged another battle, this time with Ronald Reagan as their standard bearer. In 1980 he would win the Republican nomination for President and then in an electoral landslide over Carter followed by a 49 state reelection over Mondale four years later. After Reagan's win nearly every ten years a new wave of Conservatism would take root in the Republican Party – Gingrich's Contract with America in 1994, the Tea Party in 2010 – and in each case gain huge majorities in the House and in the former case, control of the Senate for the next twelve years. Each time the shifting of the borders of what a Republican won was buttressed by the fact that it had gained immense political power for the GOP.

In that sense Trump's 2016 campaign and MAGA was just the most recent variation on it. In fact Trump's campaign slogan 'Make America Great Again', so derided by the left as bigotry, was simply part of Reagan's acceptance speech before the Republican convention in 1980 and had been used by both parties ever since. (Clinton had used it during his 1992 campaign for President.) Historians would eventually unearth that fact but the left, rather then conclude that all Trump was doing was campaigning, chose instead to make it all about how Trump didn't have an original bone in his body.

The reason that Trump and his predecessors were able to use terms like RINO  - previous derivative terms had included 'Me Too" for Republicans like Dewey and Eisenhower who accepted the New Deal as written law – is because it was done with the idea of gaining political power. Everything the GOP does when it comes to pushing the Overton Window on what it means to be a Republican and what one isn't is done with the sole purpose of winning elections and consolidating their political power in either Congress or the White House. This has been, for the record, enormously effective considering their track record since Goldwater's electoral disaster. They would win five of the next six Presidential elections in the 20^th century and then went on to win the next two in the 21^st. It gave them control of both Houses of Congress from 1994-2006 and they've controlled the House for eighteen of the first 26 years of this century and the Senate for twelve.  People may be repulsed by how they do it – I myself have my issues with it - but if you simply view it as a means to political power, you can't deny its been effective.

Though that, of course, is exactly what the far left has been trying do for my entire lifetime.

Just to be clear when it comes to election denialism everyone associated with 2020 has nothing on the far left. I'm not talking about 2016 or even 2000. I mean that they've spent a huge amount of the time and energy trying to deny the entire conservative revolution.

They've denounced the Southern strategy as racist which is immoral and therefore that Republicans use it makes their wins illegitimate. They've torn apart everything Nixon did in 1968 and 1972 while denying any role they had in either election (oh, we'll get to that). They'll do everything to say Reagan manipulated the hostage crisis to keep Carter from winning and Bush Senior was lying about his involve in Contra-Gate. They'll say how the Fairness Doctrine created talk radio and Fox News which has, of course, been brainwashing the electorate for thirty years. They'll accuse Republicans of every conceivable crime and immorality. None of this can disguise the fact that they've spent more time and energy in the last half-century 'proving' the immorality of Republicans rather than doing anything to try and similarly take over the Democratic Party.

The 'highpoint' of the left's takeover of the party – the one they will always sing about – is when they marched in the streets and took over college campuses and completely righteous actions in Chicago. And they did have political power: they managed the insurgency campaign of Eugene McCarthy, which forced LBJ to not run for reelection in 1968 and they helped McGovern win the Democratic nomination in 1972. The fact that in the former they all but guaranteed Nixon's election and that the McGovern campaign was an exercise in political ineptitude has always been negated in their minds by Watergate. They believed then  that because they were on 'the right side of history' America should follow their path. They've never gotten over the fact that after losing 49 of fifty states the Democratic Party decided they wanted to win elections.

So ever since then they've essentially thrown shade on the few major Democratic victories that have happened because of that. Carter was regarded as a failure by the liberal wing at the time, was challenged by Ted Kennedy in the primary, and was regarded to political obscurity among Democrats for the remainder of the 20^th century. By the time Democrats in the 1980s and 1990s were winning political office – Clinton being the most successful – the left had adopted the argument of 'no difference between the two parties' and called them all 'neoliberals'. This was these leftists saying to the Democrats: "How dare you abandon the principles of the party just because the electorate had chosen to reject them?"

That's the biggest different between the far left and the far right: the far right hates the Democrats because they are imposing a radical socialist agenda on America when they have power and the far left hates them because they're not doing that. The far left thinks the Republicans all monsters but that's never made them loyal to Democrats. In their minds a Democratic candidate if he campaigns to the left must when he achieves office govern further to the left. Every election of a Democrat to the White House is a mandate for the progressive agenda whether he campaigned on it or not. The voters themselves can't be trusted to know what's best for them. Half of them vote for Republicans, after all. How smart can they be?

Most of the left's sniping was purely at an academic level ever since 1972. Then Bernie Sanders – who isn't even a Democrat in Name Only – ran in the 2016 primaries on a platform that for all its 21^st century terminology was reheated McGovernism. Sanders lost the primary to Hilary Clinton – and yet somehow everyone in the left immediately made the assumption that the failed campaign was the gold standard for every Democratic official going forward.

One of the ironies the Justice Democrats arguing that everyone who isn't them is a DINO is that many of them aren't Democrats themselves but Democratic Socialists who are running as Democrats. The relative few who have won office have been very open about their membership in the Democratic Socialist party which barely fits on the borders of the Justice Democrats platform. And unlike the Tea Party, their movement has not in five elections been able to take a majority in either house of Congress, something the movement's founders have admitted but the membership has ignored.

The few that are here and the activists among them will call every Democrat who isn't Bernie or AOC a DINO. Which is insane. Bernie isn't a Democrat; AOC and the Squad have been in the House for eight years and none of them have ever managed to defeat a single Republican who holds elected office in Congress, let alone at a state level.  If anything I'd argue the burden is on them to prove they're not DINOs. And part of being a Democrat is not just not being a Republican. It's being a good public servant. In that I find no difference between the behavior of Lauren Boebert or Paulina Luna one the right or AOC and Rashida Taib on the left.  They have many interests, some good, some bad, but none of them have to do with best serving the institutions they've run for and are elected too.

At this point  I think one of the biggest differences between a member of the Freedom Caucus and a Justice Democrat candidate is that the Republicans  usually has the common sense to wait until after they're elected to make it clear they won't compromise with anyone, not even the leaders of  their own party. The Cori Bushes and Ilhan Ohmar's of the world basically make it part of their campaign speeches. They can say Republicans believe in power and don't have any principles and I'd be willing to grant the truth of that with many in my lifetime. The problem is it's been very clear that the left means that they think principles are far more important then having political power – and they genuinely can't comprehend why the Democrats have refused to embrace that as a campaign strategy. It's also why, not at all coincidentally, they don't have the kind of  political power that the  extreme right  has managed in the Republican Party.

 

Now I agree the left should have a voice in the Democratic Party. There is a demand for it and I agree with many of  their principles. But there's a difference between a voice and speaking for their entire party. And that I'd argue is the major difference between who uses the terms RINO and DINO.

Because here's the thing. When Trump calls someone a RINO he's just using the standard that every insurgent movement from the Goldwaterites to the Tea Party did. Once you have the numbers and the power you have the freedom to make being a Republican any definition you want. AOC and Bernie and their followers don't have either the numbers or power behind their movement: all they have is the same moral self-righteousness they've always had. But having the moral high ground doesn't mean you get to define what an institution's positions are: you have to have some kind of power to back it up. Until that wing of the party had that and not before, as far as any Democrat is concerned 'the Squad' are the DINO's, not the other way around.

And for those who want to call me names or will: speaking as someone who is a registered Democrat and has voted for them almost every election up and down the ballot (which ones I haven't are none of your business) who has been studying American politics since he was a teenager and probably read more book about American History before he was 18 then today's activist has read in their entire lifetime, as someone who knows the long and complicated history of the Democratic party as well as America, and who keeps informed about every aspects of politics by reading journals and publications as well as online articles, I think I'm more qualified to talk about what it means to be a Democrat then someone who follows AOC on Social media and therefore thinks they know everything about every aspect of American life and certainly what it means to be a Democrat. That may be a minority opinion, but hey I'm a Democrat. That's usually the only kind we've been able to have in my lifetime.

How 4 Groundbreaking TV Shows Paved The Way In Gay And Lesbian Representation, Part 2: How The Journey Of David Fisher On Six Feet Under Was One of The Most Quietly Groundbreaking Arcs of The New Golden Age

 

There's a difference between being drawn to a show because of who's in the cast and knowing that an actor is born to play the lead in a TV show.  Much of my TV viewing as an adult has been based on the former; we all know there are certain actors who will never let us down. But the latter is far rarer.  Let's not kid ourselves, if you thought that the dad from Malcolm in the Middle had the stuff to be the center of Breaking Bad when you first saw the ads for it, you're lying to yourself. I don't think anybody believed it until Bryan Cranston won his first Emmy.

One of the few times in my long career of watching television when I saw the promos for a show and I just knew the lead actor was perfectly cast was when I saw the first ads for Dexter on Showtime. When I saw the premise and I saw Michael C. Hall was playing the title role I said to myself: "This is a role Hall was born to play."

Consider who Dexter Morgan is: his day job is working for the police department which means he gets paid to be regularly confronted by blood and gore on a daily basis. He wears a very public face to his co-workers and even his family and at the start of the series they all completely accept him for who he is. But he has a dark secret that he dares not share with the world, something so dark and deviant he can only express it in ways that he knows in his soul are completely horrific, that if the world finds out about them, he will be marked as a pariah or worse.  And yet his first words in the Pilot are: "It's going to happen again and again."

Aside from the fact that he's not a serial killer this pretty much describes David Fisher when we first meet him in Six Feet Under – and as we know throughout the first season David actually thinks that his acts are as corrupt and monstrous as anything Dexter will do. For the record we'll later see he doesn't judge killers any worse or better than their victims. It's part of his job.

I've written in a previous article that I never felt Six Feet Under got the respect that the holy Trinity of HBO Dramas – The Sopranos, The Wire and Deadwood – have from critics of the time. Which is rather strange because it did far better at the Emmys that the latter two shows did. It won 9 Emmys and was nominated for a total of fifty three, including Best Drama three times and multiple acting nominations for nearly every actor in the cast. It won the Golden Globes for Best Drama in 2002 the SAG Award for Best Dramatic Ensemble in 2003 and the  Peabody Award.

I've written part of the reason has to be compared to everything other HBO drama and indeed almost every other drama that was on their air during its five year run Six Feet Under was far closer to a dramedy than anything else. For a show in which every episode opened with the 'corpse of the week' this show by far took the most lighthearted approach to character death than any other series on TV.  None of the conflicts on the show were at the level of what was going on in Jersey, Baltimore or the camp in South Dakota. This was a series where none of the characters could be classified as antiheroes or even difficult people. It was the journey of a family and the funeral home they owned. Life and death was part of the job but not in the way it was on all those other HBO dramas. It was allowed to be fun in a way that no HBO drama was doing at the time and honestly in a way very few afterwards have. The Fishers were far more fun to be around then the Roys ever were and while Claire was an angsty teen with a drug habit she was always more put together than any of the kids on Euphoria.

 And maybe it's a sign of how much better life generally is for the LGBTQ+ community that we no longer see David Fisher as the kind of prototypical gay man he was when we met him in 2001. Alan Ball made it very clear Six Feet Under was an autobiographical show with elements of his own life present in many of the Fisher family. And this was particularly true of David, a man who has spent his entire adult life terrified of what will happen if the world finds out that he's gay. To that end his professional front as the funeral hall director of Fisher and Sons is very much one he can live with: he puts up a face of dignity and decorum in front of everyone around him and never wants to show his real face to anyone, especially not his family. When he introduces Keith to them in the Pilot – after he gets him to track down Claire, whose out high on crystal meth – he makes it very clear that he knows Keith from playing racquetball. It's only later that episode we learn they're sleeping together and Keith has been trying to convince David to come out of the closet for their entire relationship.

None of this would have worked without the brilliant performance of Michael C. Hall as David, a performance that has understandably eclipsed by his work as Dexter Morgan, who is by far one of the greatest characters in TV history. But I could make an argument that that Hall's work as Fisher was almost iconoclastic in a way that the nearly twenty years he's been associated with Dexter isn't quite.

By the time Six Feet Under was on the air we were well into the age of the antihero. During its five year run the Best Actor in a Drama category was filled with some of the greatest in TV history, not just  James Gandolfini but Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer, Michael Chiklis's Vic Mackey on The Shield and Ian McShane for playing Al Swearengen. These four actors would dominate the awards show circuit during this period with all deservedly  winning Emmys and Golden Globes (McShane only won the latter). By the time Hall started playing Dexter on Showtime audiences were ready to root for a serial killer who thought his only merit was that he killed other serial killers.

Hall's work as David, like so many of the characters on Six Feet Under, would become far scarcer and less recognized by the Emmys during the next twenty years: basically good people who are trying to make their way forward in a complicated world. (Peter Krause, who memorably played Nate, has made a career in the twenty years since playing essentially that sort of role in brilliant network series like Parenthood and 9-1-1 and has gotten a similar lack of recognition from the Emmys for it.) David's greatest struggle throughout the series is with himself, trying to accept that he is a gay man because he has been raised to think it is perverse and disgusting. This is, sadly, a far more relatable struggle and consequently less fun to appreciate that seeing all of the characters I mentioned above – Dexter among them – killing people every week and getting away with it.

Yet I'd argue the arc he did in the first season in particular is one of the most important ones in at least the first decade of 21^st TV. In an era where 'don't ask, don't tell' had been put into law by a Democratic President  who famously had no use for marriage between one man and one woman having the lead character on TV be a gay man was a big deal. And all the more so because the type we were used too in the few examples we were getting in popular culture: there was none of the over-the-top feminine campiness we got with most gay characters or the blatant, angry type we were getting on Showtime series like Queer As Folk. David Fisher had lived his entire life in the closet and he was terrified of coming out, even if it turned out that the people who loved him has always known.

One of the many, many great stories of the first season of Six Feet Under was that David was the good son. He'd stayed behind to work with his father rather than go to law school because his big brother was the more free-spirited one and Claire was already the problem child. It was clear during the Pilot how much David seethed and Nate's contempt for what he did for a living and that spilled out during the funeral. One can never forget David's reaction after Nate spewed how plastic and packaged the funeral business is: "You didn't spend last night stuffing you're father's ass with cotton soaked in formaldehyde so he wouldn't leak."

David is infuriated when the will is read and Fisher and Sons has been left to him and Nate jointly. To him, this is the ultimate sign that everything he put into the family business was never appreciated by his father, perhaps Nathaniel never even trusted him to carry it on. He mocks Nate's laissez-faire attitude to sell the business to Kroner, then changing his mind. Much of the first season is about the two brothers rebuilding their relationship – and in part that means David coming out, subtly, to Nate first. Nate to be clear is so stunned he has to tell Brenda: Oh my God, I think David is gay!" Brenda's reaction is different: "I think David is lucky, did you get a look at that guy he was with

The thing is, for much of the first season David is still struggling with the burden he's carried all his life. Sometimes it's humorous: there's a female family friend who keeps trying to hook up with him all through the season and he keeps putting her off. Sometimes he shows it during the conversations with the corpses of the week. The most hysterical one is when a famous porn star, who died when she knocked her electronics into a bubble bath, says to him as he looks at her breasts: "So these tits do nothing for you?" David is delicate even with the dead. "Well, I can appreciate that they're beautiful in their own completely artificial way." Of course this conversation comes back to something else:

"You think God cares that you're gay?"

Then David becomes a little mean. "You think God cares you f—ed thirty guys at once?

But the more serious story comes when Ruth asks David to take her to the family church in place of her husband.  Religion is an important part of David's professional life but growing up in the era of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson talking about the evils of homosexuality in televised sermons having to attend a church as a child has clearly played a huge role in making him ashamed of who he is. Even after he's named a deacon the fact that he embraces the church's typical conservative stance of homosexuality is to the straw that causes Keith to break up with him during Season 1.  David is used to taking everything stoically but its clear having to carry this along with all the other upheavals in the aftermath of his father's death does much to crack his façade.

This all comes to a head during the final two episodes of Season 1. A Private Live, the penultimate episode, is the highest ranked by imdb.com by the fans of the entire first season and while much of it no doubt has to do with the conflict between Brenda and Billy which boils over into him attacking her and her finally committing him, much of it has to do with the funeral.

The death of the week is one of the most shocking. In the opening a pair of young gay men are attacked and Marc Foster, Jr is killed. Clearly meant to parallel the murder of Matthew Shephard, this is one of the most toxic funerals the home's dealt with: there's immense media coverage and much of it has to do with the 'morality or immorality of the situation'.

David has never felt more discomfort about his identity and this is very clear when Rico, who as we've seen in Season 1 has an almost casual homophobia, comments:

Ok Cinderella. We're gonna have to work overtime to get you ready for the ball, because men don't make passes at girls with big gashes.

David has mostly sat in silence. This time he actually says: "How would you deal with it if you worked for a fag? Because I am one."

Rico is shocked and doesn't immediately respond. Its rarely talked about directly in the aftermath but his homophobia doesn't disappear. Later in the series he will find his brother-in-law having sex with another man and punch his brother-in-law in the face first.

He has several conversations with 'Marc' and Marc spends a lot of time telling David that he deserved what he got. This is was people like him deserve. The confrontation explodes at the funeral where a group of gay protestors and fundamentalist come and Keith is there to try and keep trouble apart.

This leads to David finally having a confrontation with a Fundamentalist.

Fundamentalist: God killed Marc Foster, and I'm here to celebrate.

David punches him in the face.

God just shoved your stomach into your lungs, and I'm here to celebrate!

At the end of the episode David finally manages to say something he's wanted to tell Ruth all his life. But the thing is Ruth has probably suspected for just as law. Earlier in the episode she has an awkward conversation with a gay florist about when he first knew.

Ruth is upset because she can't understand why David never felt secure enough to confide in her such a secret. This could sound selfish in the wrong hands but Ball has gone out of his way to make it clear Ruth has been finding her own way forward as a widow and has been learning that everyone in her family has spent their lives keeping secrets from her. The Fishers have clearly spent their lives not talking.

And sadly at the end of the episode David feels no better for confiding. Marc is still attacking him telling the worst. In a moment that has to rank as one of the great scenes in the entire series the episode ends with David kneeling and saying: "Please God, take this pain away."

This is an extraordinary moment for Hall and incredibly the season finale tops it.

During the season at David's church one of the major characters is the new priest Father Jack. David has spent much of their time together assuming Jack is gay and is shocked he isn't. However when it becomes public knowledge that Father Jack has presided over a lesbian marriage the deacons start a fight over whether to keep him. David is forced to make the tie-breaking vote.

So at the end of it he goes before the pulpit and tells the congregation – and in a sense, God  - his true sexual identity, that he's not ashamed of it and if God is everything they say, he loves him too. Hall does so without lecturing or preaching, he just calmly and silently says this to those assembled. And it's not a denunciation of the church or the worshippers: Hall never raises his voice during his speech. Yet in the subtle, soft-spoken way Alan Ball and his writers did it's nearly as revolutionary as Tony Soprano killing Fabian Petrullo or Jack Bauer's first interrogation at CTU (which was going to happen a few months after this episode aired).

There's no anger in David's stand the same way we saw in the previous episode but there's also no shame. Inevitably he's asked to step down as a deacon and Father Jack is still fired. But David is fine with that in a way he wouldn't have been at the start of the season. It doesn't matter if the rest of the world doesn't accept his being gay ; he now does.

And notably he doesn't leave the church going forward. He'll leave that one obviously but he'll still spend much of the series religious, eventually joining the Gay Man's Chorus at the church he and Keith live close too. We know that he will be close to Father Jack for the rest of the series and even beyond that and from this point forward he's more accepting of some of Nate's more Eastern religious beliefs then he was before.

Its completely understandable, by the way, that Hall only received a single Emmy nomination for his work on the series. (He was nominated in 2002, critically during a period The Sopranos was on one of its extended hiatuses and ineligible for Emmys that year.) This was a cutthroat field with all of the great actors I mentioned and that's without including Martin Sheen who was nominated just as often for The West Wing. I'm kind of amazed Peter Krause managed to get three nominations during this same five year period. Hall's performance was a master class but it was almost always one of restraint where he rarely got the chance for the kind of emotional highpoints we get from the kind of performances that typical earn nominations or awards. In that sense Dexter Morgan gave him far more opportunities to hit those kind of high notes.

But don't kid yourself. Hall's work as David Fisher was in its own way as groundbreaking for gay and lesbian roles in dramatic series as Will and Grace and Ellen were for comedy.  And we'd start seeing it in the most unexpected way just a few months after Season 2 of Six Feet Under.

In the next article I get to The Wire and what its like to be gifted, black – and openly gay.