There's A Good, Competent Show In Line of Fire So Why Did The Writers Bury It With An Unnecessary One?

 

 

There are two series in NBC's new drama Line of Fire: the one that the previews and advertising leads you to think you're getting – a competent Blue Bloods type procedural set in DC instead of New York –  and a show that seems determined to remind you of the worst parts of everything associated with Scandal and House of Cards. Having seen the first three episodes there's a part of me that wonders if the writers started out with the first idea and perhaps because so much of network drama is done in the influence of Shondaland felt an obligation to throw in a serialized – and totally unnecessary – subplot that I think even Olivia Pope and her Gladiators would say: "Yeah, this is just too ridiculous!"

The much stronger show is the family dynamic. It centers on the Hollingsworth family, which involves a family that is involved in nearly every part of the federal justice system. Mike (Peter Krause) is one of the legends in Secret Service, Jane (Hope Davis) is a U.S. Marshal, Claire (Kat Cunning) is an FBI agent, Micah (Tommy O'Brien) is a secret service tagged to the President's detail and Russ (Taylor Bloom) just got started in the Justice Department proper as a probationary.

So the first impression would be that of the Reagan clan but when they sit down to family dinner in the Pilot, it's the first one they've done in five years and none of the children seem happy to be in the same room with their parents. With good reason. We've already seen Mike bully his son as part of the detail and emotionally blackmail Russ so that he can information he can't access normally. Jane calls in Claire for backup on a case of a Marshal being killed to buttress her opinion but when Claire tries to take it further Jane essentially demonstrates no motherly instinct and honestly seems determined to ignore her.

At the start of the series Mike is about to retire and its clear he doesn't want to do that. (The show naturally forces him to stay on active duty for reasons I'll have to get into later.)Both he and his wife don't have any problems using their son as a font of information to due their own jobs and are perfectly fine using his brother and sister as leverage to get what they want from him, even if they have no capability to do it. This is a pattern with both parents: they may serve the government and the law but both truly feel that the rules of agencies get in the way and are perfectly capable of leveraging any professional or personal relationship they have in favor of their own means.

You get the feeling that all of the Hollingsworth children have been emotionally exhausted by their parents lives and that they all might have gone into law enforcement as a way to try and either win their approval or even spend time with them. And after three episodes I wouldn't put it above either parent for pushing their children into these fields with the promise of emotional affection but really playing the long game and having resources they can use when they eventually exhaust all their friendships and personal contacts. Both Krause and Davis are very good in playing the kind of overbearing people both professionally and personally who know that they are on the right side of things and will never let anyone, least of all their own children, forget it.

The result is a dysfunctional family where the siblings will often get drunk and relate just how they've inherited the worst parts of both their parents and it's killed them professionally and personally. The best part of Line of Fire are the times the family is capable of working together towards a better goal and showing those signs of affection. We see this when Mike says he proud of how Micah managed to stop an attack on the President by doing the kind of work he wouldn't have done or when Jane admits that some of the worst parts of Claire's tunnel vision came from her side of the family. And when Russ admits he told his boss about taking documents home he says: "Someone in our family has to do the correct thing instead of the right thing.) That implication hits home with Claire who says that this is why Russ is the best of them.

All of these are good elements and I could see a competent, possibly very good, procedural if the writers would follow it. The problem is that in the final ten minutes of the Pilot the writers essentially bury all of their good work with a series of revelations so ridiculous you genuinely wonder if they were thinking when they put them in.

In the Pilot Claire is about to introduce her family to her current boyfriend Noah who she's been seeing for nearly a year but hasn't introduced them to her family. She ends up taking him against her will and it unfurls in a disastrous family dinner in which Noah asks about one of their brothers. We're told he's Jack and that he committed suicide five years ago. This leads to Noah and Claire having a huge fight and Noah storms out.

So far, so good. The problem is Noah comes back to Hollingworth home at the end of the pilot and starts looking around suspiciously. Then he unfolds one of the family pictures and sees Jack. It turns out Jack is his next door neighbor. He then turns around to see Jack who cold-bloodedly kills him.

We don't even have time to process this when the agent in charge tells them there've been a series of killings of law enforcement officers and that as a result Mike's retirement has been postponed. Then Jane shows Mike a small-folded crane and tells them that Jack did this and that they've been lying to their family about this.

This in itself is a lot to take in. But then in the second episode we learn that Noah was in fact a deep cover CIA agent who'd been called to get close to Claire. We've also learned from various contacts that Jack was undercover and had been lying to his parents about how to find him and that the last contact he had was a year ago when he committed suicide. At the end of the episode we see Jack taking pictures of Claire with the agent in charge.

Then we learn that there are clearance issues as to why Noah was doing and why and in the midst of all of this we see Jack going to an AA meeting, meeting someone, then trying to get a job at a doctor's office in the same strip mall where an undercover investigation is taking place. And by this point I'd wondered what the hell the writers were thinking with this storyline.

Even with Scandal and 24, the writers were very careful with how they did things in their bigger storylines. Even Shonda Rhimes didn't start the B613 storyline until Season 2 and was smart enough to limit her 'game-changing revelations' to one or two an episode. I don't know of any cable or streaming drama in twenty years that forces the viewer to reveal so much is a deception in the first episode and then keep building on the incredulity. I don't even think the most outlandish soap opera would put this many twists in a single storyline.

And what aggravates all the more is that Line of Fire doesn't need this to be a good show. The individual stories are fascinating enough. (Well, except for the fact that Micah seems to be having an affair with the President's daughter he's detailed with protecting which very well could be a bridge too far there.) The way that the writers deals with individual stories – the killing of a U.S Marshal and her prey involved with a cartel, an armed robbery that leads to a suspect who hasn't committed a robbery in three years, last night's story about grand jury intimidations that have led to two murders – are all strong plots on their own. And the way the Hollingsworth's either collaborate or clash can be brilliantly done and often quite funny. When Claire is at home working on the grand jury links and then first members of the pool and then the entire family end up all helping her, it has a genuine comic snap. And all the more so when Russ introduces his new girlfriend (who naturally he's been keeping hidden from everybody) and she takes it all in stride, because she's from a family of lawyers. "Most families have board games nights," she says as the chaos builds with a shrug.

Krause and Davis are also very good at showing how while they are separated they can't quit each other. While Jane has spent much of the last several episodes in a relationship with a Senator (Campbell Scott) and seems to be on the verge of moving in with him in the Pilot, Mike makes it very clear this is a bold decision "considering last night the bed you woke up in was mine."  

The problem is that this entire ridiculous subplot seems to have been dragged in for the sole purpose of making the Hollingsworth family come together again when a smarter writer would have been able to do so without putting in so many ridiculous twists. When the family dynamics play off it almost works but then the writers bury it with another ridiculous plot twist.

I'm not prepared to give up on Line of Fire just yet. If it can get through this ridiculous storyline and move forward, it could be the solid procedural it clearly wants to be. I saw this play out after the laughably bad first season of Alert: Missing Persons Unit ended and one got a much better second and third season once they decided to try and forget about it. There's enough good stuff in it to make the show watchable, even if I can't recommend it to my readers in good conscience. In other words I'll keep getting in the Line of Fire but other people shouldn't at least, not yet.

My score: 2.5 stars.

How in Lanterns Damon Lindelof is Still Asking Questions About Destiny & Free Will And Whether Superheroes Deal With The Same Thing (Lost 20th Anniversary Series Adjacent)

 

 

"They come. They fight. They corrupt. They destroy. And it always ends the same."

Any fan of Lost remembers the first time they heard those words spoken by Titus Welliver in 'The Incident'. This nameless man will eventually become the Smoke Monster, who will be known as the force of all evil on the show, who has been menacing  the survivors of Oceanic 815 since the Pilot, who has been manipulating them and countless others on the Island for millennia, and who seems to be the ultimate force of darkness on all of Earth.

I've rewatched this series quite a few times in all the years since and will continue to do so. But one of the questions that I keep thinking now is: Did the Man in Black ever really believe what he said? Or was this just something he remembered his mother saying when he was a boy and despite everything she did to him, he still believed it?

The question of free will and destiny is at the center of Lost and its really been at the center of every show Damon Lindelof has done in all the years since. And it's very much at the center of Lanterns, the much-anticipated, highly rated, critically acclaimed and hated by all comic book fans who don't want a moral grey area in anything, least of all comic books.

There are many reason to enjoy Lanterns but as a Lost fan I find myself thinking that this is Lindelof returning to one of those great philosophical questions that not nearly enough great television actually tries to deal with: Do we have any power over the choices we actually make? Or is our path set in stone by decisions that were made by greater forces long before we were ever born? Considering that Lanterns is all about superheroes, aliens and beings that are pretty much gods by our standards it makes the discussion all the more interesting. If it ends up polarizing the fan base as it unfolds, well, we all know that Damon Lindelof has no problem doing that and has to have got a skin so thick that he wouldn't need a magic ring to protect him from the slings and arrows of the internet.

In an earlier review I've said that a great franchise show is ideally one that is made for people who might never watch anything based on a franchise. Comic book based series have less room for this than almost any other series and I think it's significant that Lindelof is associated with one of the all-time classics of the genre 2019's Watchmen. That series was about a lot of things and very few of them had to do with Alan Moore's classic comic book which is why he took his name off the series and I suspect is one of the reasons it works so well.  He's done another classic limited series since then (Mrs. Davis) and now he's back doing the same thing with Lanterns.  It deals with a cop drama, alien invasion, supernatural beings, forces beyond our control and fear. Very little of it has to do with the ring, the lantern and the suit which has causes DC fans to hate this and is one of the most appealing things about the show to me.

And at the center of it are two men who are the parallels of destiny and free will. Hal Jordan seemed to be handed the ring and didn't earn it; John Stewart was driven through it from the moment he was a child. Both men dealt with forces that were larger than them, both of them have major parent issues (this is a Lindelof show, after all) and both of them have no trust in the other. The only difference between this and Jack and Locke is that it took three seasons for Jack to try and kill Locke and in Lanterns it only took four episodes.

Some have made the argument that in 'Outkast' the writers leaned in too hard about why it's so difficult to be a black man in America when it came to why John Stewart was driven towards the ring. There's truth to that but there's also clearly a parallel to how figures such as Daniel Faraday and Desmond Hume (among others) were driven towards a destiny they had no control over by dominant females such as John's mother, Bernadette and the Guardian (Laura Linney). Both Bernadette and the Guardian are clearly pushing him to something that's more in their interest then John's, stripping his free will away day by day until John doesn't question his path one bit. Every bit of John's life was pre-determined before he began, even his choice to join the military instead of art school. His regimen is being trained to follow orders to the point he no longer recognizes it when he finally achieves it.

There's a clear argument that in the first half of Season 1 John (Aaron Pierre) is pursuing the ring not so much for himself but to please his parents and then the Guardian. He says over and over that Hal didn't do a thing to earn, it was handed to him. But Jon has clearly never had a chance to ask if he actually wants it. The decision was made by his parents who were clearly being manipulated by the Guardians who never trusted Hal in the first place. (Whether that was justifiable based on Hal's actions is moot: the Guardians had started the vetting process for his replacement even then.) They were trying to push on the idea what it meant to be special for some higher purpose and if they had any regrets about it we don't really see it.

 Even as the climactic events in Rushville unfolded they seemed less interested in what was happening to anyone else or even their son; all they wanted to know was whether he'd gotten the ring. This is mirrored when John brings the Crystal Heart of Zoe to the Guardian and shows it to her. She looks at it and pushes it aside. All she says, in a neutral tone,  is: "We all make mistakes." And considering we've just seen the body count of humans and aliens as a result of their 'mistake' it shows how little they truly care about humanity, only their own interests.

(As a Lost viewer I should add that scene between Hal and the Guardian really reminded me of the confrontation between Ben and Jacob at the end of Season 5 when Ben reminds Jacob of all his years of service and Jacob's response is a dismissive: "What about you?" The Guardian's lucky John just walked away; in my opinion he would have been justified in putting on the ring, manifesting a knife and stabbing her in the chest.)

This is mirrored in Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler). In 2016 Hal seems arrogant not just to John but to basically everybody in Rushville. He's had the ring for twenty years and he thinks that gives him certainty that he must be 'the chosen one',  a theme that comes up a little bit in Lost.  There's an egomaniacal brazenness to him that makes him feel he's invincible and he treats everyone he meets in person with barely veiled contempt.  This certainty leads to the horrible consequences of his determination to get Zoe and prove to the Guardians that he alone should be the Green Lantern. As a result the horrible events of Rushville are very much on him. Even before this its become clear he has very little respect for orders, the chain of command or even right or wrong.

But – and this is the genius of Lindelof and his writers – there is a reason for why Hal is who he is. He makes it clear to Jon that this is a lonely life and that you have to get used to losing people and not having human connections. He tells John that being the only Lantern for Earth, there's no one else he can talk to about the burden placed on him and none of the other Lanterns even speak English. There are no perks about the job anymore; he probably doesn't know who Hal Jordan was before he got the ring.

And in a very real sense many, if not most,  of his actions are justifiable. The Guardians were lying to him about why John was there and John was willing to maintain the lie to Hal's face. He has no doubt that the Guardians wanted John to kill Hal after he took the ring from him (that they never say so directly doesn't mean it any less probable). He was right about an alien menace in Rushville and that everybody in town was lying to him about what was going on.  He was right that Zoe was the Manhunter and that John had been compromised like everyone else in her orbit. Hal was right about practically everything – including his last words to John. "They replaced me. They'll replace you."

By the time we move to 2026, we know Hal was right. When Jon refuses the ring the Guardians chose to pass it on to Guy Gardener, who makes his first appearance in the sixth episode. Interestingly this is one of the rare occasion where Gardener's previous appearance in the DCU (Superman in 2025) actually is a buttress for one of Lindelof's key themes in Lost.  Nathan Fillion made it clear Gardener was just as arrogant in his own way as Hal or John. ("Supes couldn't be here, but you got on an upgrade," he says to a young boy at the climax of the film) but there's a certain good-naturedness and humility to him that we don't see in Hal or John.  The Justice Gang ("Not Our Name," Hawkgirl tiredly reminds him) is essentially the DC version of 'Live Together, Die Alone' that was the thesis of Lost.  And for all his self-confidence Gardener clearly gets the importance of teamwork in  a way that Hal never did and John never got.  There's a good argument that by the time we meet him he's still around because he understands that fact – and as if to drive the point home, Hal has died alone and Jon very much is when the action resumes.

There's a larger argument that Guy, even at his most foul-mouthed in his encounter with Jon in the jail, has a better eye on the big picture than Hal or John ever did. He makes it clear that he's spent much of the last decade doing damage control in part because of what happened in Rushville and the stain it left on the Lantern. Tellingly neither Hal nor Jon seem to give much a damn for the new Lantern and even a decade after the fact still refuse to acknowledge who's responsible. John says that Guy owes him because 'what you have is because of me.' This indicates that despite everything that pursuit of the ring cost him there's a part of him that still wants it.

In 2026 Jon has broken off ties with both his parents who clearly don't feel any remorse for their actions. In their mind the events in Rushville and all the lives lost pale to  what they did. And John seems to have engaged in the compartmentalization Hal did. When the waitress of the café lies for him and demands reparations Jon pretends not to recognize the nine-year old girl who was horribly scarred. (At the end of Season 1 he atones in more ways than just the money) As he walks through Rushville in a town that hates his guts he doesn't seem to care how traumatizing his presence is. And everything he does is in a sense manipulative: he doesn't care about proper respect being paid to Hal, all he cares about is getting the ring so he can figure out who killed him.

In the penultimate episode we get the clearest parallels yet between Lanterns and Lost.   Hal Jordan is a hologram of himself and has no idea of what the last decade was like and what his relationship with John was. He has a fair amount of his cunning still in play and is capable of manipulating John to get what he wants, first to talk to Carol and then to go to the safe.

During this period secrets about John's life are becoming clear, including just how bad his relations with his family is. Ironically now that Hal actually wants to know about John's life, John has no desire to share it and now that's he dead Hal is capable of telling John everything he wanted to hear as a trainee.

By the time they end up traveling to the wreckage of the planet John learned about ten years ago John is forced to confront some of the true horrors of his life. He faces what is his greatest fear, which is the truth about himself: he never really wanted to be the Lantern and everything he's done has been to please his parents, something he still can't do. When Hal ends up saving him John doesn't want that.

Hal then confides his real secret: his father committed suicide. We saw him talk about it during the flashback in 1975 when he gives him a 'fail-safe key' and it is everything he has and a note. We learn that this is the trauma passed down from the Jordan's. "I wasn't fearless because I'm brave," he tells John. "I'm fearless because I'm broken."

We can't help but remember how the Man in Black in Locke's body described him "as weak and pathetic and irrevocably broken…just like all the people Jacob brought here." And given everything we've seen about John Stewart to this point, it's clear that he's just as broken as Hal was long before he ended up being the trainee. One is reminded that Jacob said he didn't bring anyone to the island out of a happy existence, that "you needed this place as much as it needed you."  But that leaves out the fact that Jacob, much like the Lantern Corps, may have been manipulating its members their entire lives to serve their end. And as we've seen over and over the ring doesn't make you whole.

What's clear is that by the time John and Hal reach Sinestro that they've finally figured out how to work as a team in a way they couldn't when the two were alive. And the relationship that John has really been searching for his whole life becomes real after John manages to take Sinestro down. Hal says: "Nice arm, kid" and the parallel to Hal in the aftermath of his father's death is made clear.

The clearest parallel in the Season 1 finale to Lost deals with some of the revelations in the final two episodes. In What They Died For Jacob tells Kate that the reason her name was crossed off the list of being the guardian of the island is because she became a mother. We know from Across the Sea that every happened because Jacob and the Man in Black were raised by an insane woman, who killed the real mother of the twins when they were infants and essentially took away all their choices in favor of purposes they never truly understood.

Kate Austen parallels Kerrey because neither had the choice of becoming a mother but they both proved that wasn't a qualification to be a great mother. Everything we've seen about Kerrey parallels what we see Kate when it comes to Aaron: she raised her son well and did everything possible to protect him from the world. And when the truth was revealed about her son's parentage everything she did was to protect him.  She admits it wasn't premeditated and while she doesn't acknowledge she doesn't deny that she called John because he might be the only person who can figure out what she did and that he may be the only person who can be objective about doing the right thing.

And that's where John's action in the season finale most parallel the idea of free well versus destiny. John talks about 'programming' with Noah in a way that parallels everything he's gone through but he also argues that he had free will. This was true when he decided not to take the ring back in 2016 and it guides his actions here. He chooses not to follow Noah's wishes and kill him. He chooses not to turn Kerrey into the authorities. When he confronts Guy he says he's choosing to take a different path then the Guardians. And the oath he says in the final moments involves the word choose as well. That of course is the clearest parallel between the climax of Lost. Jack chooses to take Jacob's place for the final battle and Hurley makes the decision to take over the burden, even if he believes its only temporary.

Those who are fans of how the Green Lantern is portrayed in DC will have many reasons to loathe what Lanterns was in the first season. As someone who had no real attachment to the comic but who deeply admires both great television and the work of Damon Lindelof, Lanterns comes across as a triumph both on its own merits (like all Lindelof shows it is superbly written, directed and acted at every level) and as it explores the same philosophical arguments that have always made each and every one of his TV shows a joy for two decades.  That's more interesting to me than whatever Easter eggs comic book fans look for and its why I hope its renewed for a second season even if they choose to review bomb it on various websites.  I might not swear an oath to it, but it's definitely a light shining out in the often blackest day and darkest night  of television.

Coalition for the Sane: The Issue Voters Care About the Most Is The One the Left Cares About The Least

 

 

Every so often, particularly the closer we get to election day, I'll read an article in the Times or Reuters or some other publication where reporters actually talk to voters about who they're voting for and why. I like these articles because it's one of the few times that our media actually talks to people like people instead of talking around, over and above us.

There's a common theme this year when these papers talk to ACTUAL working class voters such as building managers, fisherman, and small business owners. That theme is how much harder it is for them to either do their jobs or make ends meet. Some of it has to do with the trade war Trump started, some of it has to do without his immigration policies have made it harder for them to find workers to do projects, some of it has to do with just being able to pay their bills. The common thread is, to quote James Carville, the economy, stupid.

The Democrats are expected to do well in this election cycle because they are playing in to the idea of affordability,  something the President basically considers a fake issue. Many of the people interviewed are former Trump voters who are considering either voting Democrat, or if they have no stomach for it, sitting the election out. In either case the circumstances for a blue wave are growing more and more likely by the day.

I mention this because I've read a lot of articles online at this site and others. And there are a lot of things that inflame the readers here: DEI policies, the policies of ICE, laws against transgenders, the administration of history, Gaza, how Trump is corrupting the Justice system…well you know most of them better than I do. And yet somehow I haven't read a single article here or indeed in most left-wing journals talking about economic issues and how they hurt everybody.

They have a lot to say about capitalism and how its destroying everything that is good and pure. But the closest they'll ever get to talking about economic issues is how the one percent have too much money. They'll argue about how broken capitalism, how much the rich have corrupted every part of our American system and made it a wasteland. Yet I find it telling that most of their article are more about the evils of the 'One Percent' and how to help the other 99.

I've mentioned in previous articles that the left really has no economic policy to speak of beyond money is the solution to all the problems in society and the way to get that money is to tax the rich.  This is the attitude of the activist, which as has been established is usually a college-educated and relatively rich white person.  How the wealth of the one percent ends up getting to the rest of America has never been established by the progressive.

Most of their arguments are based on taxing the income of the wealthy, which is a false narrative. The argument for a wealth tax has occasionally been floated by some states but as we've seen it rarely gets out of the state legislature or is struck down, as Mamdani's second home tax was by an appellate court last month. And because the wealthy have more resources then you or I they can easily relocate to other states or countries where the tax laws won't reach them and the money certainly won't get to those who need them.

The larger problem is that the Sanders and AOC's of the world have never explained how, having taxed the top one percent, that money then gets to those who need it, particularly those I mentioned below. Which brings us to the real issue: the left has never really cared about helping the poor so much as they have hurting the rich.

Far left political issues have always targeted the wealthy and the system itself and blamed them for what is wrong with society while the far right has historically attacked minorities for what's wrong with America. And whether it's the Dixiecrats or the Southern Strategy of Nixon, the right's method has always been more successfully in getting votes. This is the difference between the left-wing populism of Bernie Sanders and the right wing populism of Trump: one couldn't win the Democratic nomination; the other won the Presidency twice. What's hurt the Democrats the most in the last decade is that they've spent far too much time trying to follow the Sanders model rather then try to win back the working class which the left, despite ostensibly wanting to help, considers beneath them in every respect because they are working class.

  The exit polls of the 2024 election made it very clear that the plurality of all voters – over 40 percent of them – made their choices because they were concerned about the economy. This is nothing new: economic well being has always been a good talking point whether Reagan is asking "Are you better off then you were four years ago?" or Clinton campaigning on that very message.  But because the left is mainly made up of people who themselves are well off in the American hierarchy – maybe not in the one percent, but definitely no lower than ten – it's almost always the least important issue to them.  Academics like Nikole Hannah-Jones and celebrities like Mark Ruffalo can yell about the racism and unfairness of America because they can afford to do so. It's highly unlikely someone who trying to decide between whether to pay for their medical insurance or water bill in Mississippi gives a crap about transgenders being allowed to use bathrooms in his state. He's more concerned about his own life.

If the left wonders about the well-being of these people, it's only in an abstract way: why do they vote against their economic interests instead of Republicans who promote culture wars? But they're not really interested in getting them to vote Democrats because most of them are annoyed Democrats aren't left-wing enough for their states. That Democrats have realized that they can only win with economic issues has earned them the slur of 'neoliberal' and that there's no difference between the two parties. Which is another way of saying: neither party is sufficiently progressive for me.

It might seem glib to look at so many of the issues the far left raises as vital, whether they are campaign finance reform, policing, immigration as  simply 'rich people problems'. But the fact it is easier to decide what issues are vital to you the more money you have and conversely the richer you are, the easier you can put a wall between yourself and the rest of the world. Not to sound like a broken record but the reason the conservative movement is more successful then the progressive one in terms of effective control of every level of politics is because they've always realized they need to spend the time and energy to manipulate the voter in order to achieve their goals. The progressive movement, by contrast, sees the process beneath them and wants the voter to realize on their own how badly their being abused and exploited and come to the left on their own. Both sides no doubt hold the average voter in equal contempt but the conservatives are much better at hiding it because they need them.  The progressive actually holds the voter in contempt for being dumb enough to fall for the manipulations of either side.

The other major problem with the left is that they spend the overwhelming majority of their time focused on causes that, however noble and important they are, nevertheless are abstractions to the overwhelming majority of Americans. And because that nearly all of them are so massive that the only power the average person in this country has to do something real – voting – can do very little to fix them, the average person chooses to focus on more concrete realities that affect their day-to-day lives. There's nothing wrong with this in theory and practice, but almost to an individual the average progressive tends to use this as  a cudgel to argue the worst possible thing about the masses, usually using it as code for them being bigots.

In the aftermath of the 2024 election the majority of progressives chose to dismiss Trump's electoral victory as confirmation of the foolishness of the average voter because they cared about 'the price of eggs'. To them that was code for them being idiotic at best and racist at worst, which has been their blanket assumption of so many working class voters at least for the last decade.

During that same cycle the cause that was by far the most important to the progressive was Gaza. To them this election was a mandate not on American democracy or the Democratic administration but rather foreign policy in Gaza. (To be sure then as now many of them believe that electoral politics can't solve the problem in Gaza, but let's let that go for now.)

The problem is, even for the most devoted people to the cause, what is happening in Gaza is an abstraction where is the price of groceries is a reality that affects more people in their daily lives.  As I illustrated above working class voters care far more about economic issues while college educated and upwardly mobile ones care far more about things like Gaza.  And while I grant you it is unlikely the voters will be able to change what happens on either issue with their votes next month they are all voting in America, not the Middle East. It's not racist or wrong for Americans to care more about issues that affect their lives more than ones that don't.

Gaza is just the most recent of which the left cares about: the Justice Democrats platform as I've illustrated has more to do with social justice then economic well being and by its nature has only appealed to those who are inclined to agree with left-wing policies to begin with. That has always been a much smaller percentage of Americans then the left insists it actually is but the left doesn't see a problem with it. The Democratic Party does – and to their credit have spent much of 2026 trying to run candidates who will listen to the voters I've mentioned above rather then trying to win over those who have only a minor allegiance to democracy in the first place.

The power of the vote, to send a message to those in power every two years, has essentially been taken for granted by the masses for so long that even the most educated tend to forget both how relatively recent it is to world history and how relatively few countries practice it. The far left, more then the right, tends to treat it not just with disdain but actually uses it to argue it’s a fraud and an illusion to hold the populace in chains. That they have yet to come up with an alternative – not even a better one, just a different one – in all the years I've been reading them is another in the seemingly endless line of obstacles as to why they've failed to succeed as a political force in America.

But what has become clear in the last decade is that the average citizen does take it more seriously then it did. The average voter turnout rate for both Presidential and midterms have been at their highest levels in decades as Americans are realizing yes, elections do have consequences and that they want their voices to be heard. That the extremes on both sides have made it clear how little use they have for the message when it goes against what they want is honestly irrelevant because elections aren't about what they want but what the voters want.

If next month's elections go according to the polls the Democrats will have succeeded because they've heard the complaints of what the voters in the articles I've read as well as countless others and are trying to find candidates who will hear them on economic issues which is what they care about. If this annoys the progressives who care about every issue but this one, well, we've spent a decade listening to them and the voters have made it crystal clear that its not their first priority. The left can afford to care about other things, but the vast majority of Americans can't. Until they realize that, they'll basically keep doing what they've always done because they can afford to.

 

 

 

Yankees Vs. Red Sox Greatest Rivalry in Sports…Now, Part 2: How The 2003 Postseason Would Have Convinced a Die-Hard Atheist that There Was A Devil

 

As my readers know from my articles on baseball my household – particularly my mother – is a Yankee household. I never quite inherited the title mainly because by the time I started watching the sport seriously around sixteen I was watching baseball as a fan of narratives.

To be clear, while I devoured box scores with a passion and watched the records that were being set in the steroid era  (I was as oblivious as any fan was, for the record) my real focus didn't begin in earnest until the postseason which was about to shift from the division race to the wild card race. At the time this was met with derision from every single sportswriter and broadcaster at the time and I imagine that there are still quite a few Boomers who think it's an abomination.

As I've written before I thought it was an improvement. As I've written a couple of times before the idea of the season long pennant race for one league, much less both, is sepia toned. This was especially true when the Yankees were in their period of dominance between 1921-1964 but it was never that common for the National League much of the time either. Many of the things purists deride, such as divisional races, had done much to make the sport more competitive. Between 1978 and 1987 ten different teams won the World Series, something that had never happened before in baseball history. For the first time the possibility of any team winning the World Series was becoming closer to a reality and as we've seen in the 21^st century, it's led to the breaking of some of the larger championship droughts in history and several expansion franchises finally win the World Series after going for decades without one.

Of course I didn't know that in 1996. Then I was very much rooting for the Yankees as they finally broke the longest gap between championships in their history when Joe Torre led the Yankees to their first World Series victory in eighteen years. And I was as much a fan of Jeter and Bernie and Jorge and Petite as any New Yorker was back then.

I was also in awe of them in 1998 as they had what was the greatest season in American League history going 114-48 and sweeping towards the World Series.

By 1999, the luster was beginning to dim. By 2000 I was pulling for the Mets in the Subway series. And by the fall of 2001 I may very well have been the only person in America not pulling for the Yankees to win their fourth consecutive World Series.

This is public knowledge in my family; in fact my first byline was an op-ed I wrote for Newsday in 2002 'Rooting against the Yankees is an act of love.'  In it I argued much of is had to do with my mother's die-hard devotion to the team. With the benefit of hindsight I'm pretty sure that had less to do with it then her.

The truth of the matter is dynasties in sports can be infuriating if you don't happen to be a fan of the team. It had to have been exhausted for the seven other teams in the American League during the 1920s, thirties, forties and fifties as well as for so many of the franchises in the National League that had to face them and usually lose year after year. There's a reason the Broadway show was called Damn Yankees and not Go Senators! – hating the Yankees in the 1950s was something that could be universally understood if you didn't live in the Bronx. And when your name is synonymous with winning I'm pretty sure it’s a big reason the rest of the country hates New York with a passion.

During this same period I was started my pattern of looking for narratives in the postseason. I would root for Cleveland because they hadn't won a World Series in forty years and until 1995 wouldn't make the postseason at all. The Mariners hadn't won during that period when they were starting to become a force of nature (unfortunately right when the Yankees were in resurgence). And I'd root for the Orioles and the Rangers for the same reason.

My problem with dynasties wasn't just held to the Yankees. Much I admired and loved the Braves pitching staff I wasn't thrilled that they were making it to the World Series every year and were always winning the NL East. I pulled for the Padres, who'd never won a World Series, the Cubs for obvious reasons, and back then it was easier for me to pull for the Mets. (I've essentially given up on them, though every so often they do surprise me.)

Now it wasn't like the Red Sox were doing poorly during this period. They won the AL Wild Card in 1995 and again in 1999. They frequently contended for the division title and they sometimes got close to both. But I'd basically stopped taking the Red Sox seriously after Roger Clemens went to Toronto (and of course later the Yankees.)

I should be honest, despite the fact I'd watched Ken Burns' Baseball multiple times by that point, I was still very skeptical of the idea of a curse. By this point I'd read a lot of other histories of baseball, the World Series and many seasonal ones. And even by 2002 I'd noticed a pattern that, in the aftermath of the 2004 World Series, other writers would put in various books on the Sox.

In 1946 when the Red Sox won their first pennant in 28 years, their opponents were the St. Louis Cardinals. Between 1942-1944, as I've written, the Cardinals won 106, 105, and 105 wins respectively, three consecutive National League Pennants and two World Series. Much of the 1944 team was facing off against the Red Sox and they won their third World Series in five years.

In 1967 the year of the Impossible Dream, they faced the Cardinals again. There was no question who the better teams was that year as the Cardinals had, even with Bob Gibson missing much of the summer with a broken leg, run away with the National League Pennant. This was a team with four future Hall of Fames, Gibson, Lou Brock, Orlando Cepeda and Steve Carlton and they'd won the World Series over the Yankees three years earlier.

In 1975 the Red Sox ended up facing the Big Red Machine, which is of course one of the greatest baseball dynasties in history. The Reds would have the best win-loss record of any National League in the 1970s. They'd win six NL West Titles, four NL Pennants and 2 world series during that period. That year they'd won the NL East by 20 games over the Dodgers. They were powered by Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez and Joe Morgan to win 108 games.

And while every Red Sox fan of a certain age will gnash their teeth at this the New York Mets in 1986 were by far the best team in baseball that year. They went 108-54, which was the best single season record any team had during the 1980s. The Philadelphia Philles who came in second, finished 21 and a half games behind them. That year the Red Sox were 95-66. And need I remind you the Angels were beating you 3 games to 1 in the ALCS that year and were down to your last strike in Game by before Dave Henderson saved your season? (Those who know baseball history are aware there were more tragic consequences to that for the Angels that year, but I won't relate it here.)

And to be clear, Bill Buckner only lost Game 6 for you. You could have won Game 7.  Just a reminder.

So if you think about there wasn't so much a curse hanging over the Red Sox during this period but the simple fact that every time they made to the World Series they ran smack into a much better team. Teams that should by any measure have made mincemeat out of the Red Sox each time. And a couple of times it nearly was. In 1967 the Red Sox were actually trailing the Cardinals three games to one before winning the next two games to force a game 7 and we all know the lore of Game 6 in 1975.

I get that the curse of never being able to win Game 7 fits a certain narrative but it leaves out the fact that the Red Sox didn't win Game 7 before the curse. To be clear you won in the first World Series in 1903 but that was a best of 9. In 1912 the Red Sox won the World Series when they won Game 8 (too complicated to explain) They won in 5 in 1915 and 1916 and in six 1918. So winning Game 7 was not something Red Sox hadn't really done in the 20^th century.

And I'm not saying that to shame the Red Sox fans, just telling you that just made you like basically every other team when they get to the postseason. Baseball is like that. Grover Cleveland Alexander can strike out Tony Lazzeri in 1926 and the Yankees can come back to sweep the Pirates in four in 1927. The Mets can complete a miracle over the Orioles in 1969 in five games and the Orioles can come back to beat the Reds in five in 1970. Kirk Gibson can hit a home run to stun the A's leading the Dodgers to a five game sweep and in 1989 the A's can sweep the Giants. That's how baseball works.

And I would still believe that…had I not watched the 2003 Championship Series for both the National League and American League that year. Because I'm convinced both those series might cause the most die-hard atheist to think to themselves: "This can't be chance! God is playing dice with the universe and every time he rolls for the Sox and Cubs it comes up snake eyes!"

During the early weeks of October of 2003 much of America seemed seized by the potential of something that even non-baseball fans would have realized the significance of: a Red Sox-Cub Fall Classic. I remember that the Times, which even then was notorious for not covering sports of any level with the detail most papers did, were running the scores of Red Sox and Cubs postseason games next to the masthead on the daily issues.

And by the second week of October it seemed increasingly probable. In the ALCS the Red Sox were, for the first time in franchise history,  facing the Yankees in a postseason series while in the NLCS the Cubs were facing off against the Florida Marlins.

Now even though my home was a Yankee home I was paying more attention to the Cubs during that nine day period. Why wouldn't you?  That the Red Sox were facing their all-time rivals in a postseason series was a secondary story to the fact that this was the first time the Cubs had gotten even this far in the postseason. Winning their first pennant alone would have been a bigger story then anything else, considering it had become a punch line for every comedian.

The games overlapped quite a bit during that period. And when the Cubs took a three game to one lead it seemed inevitable. Even their losing Game 5 in Miami actually seemed fitting. They would clinch the first pennant in 58 years at Wrigley Field.

I was alone at home on October 14^th 2003 – my parents were at the opera that night.  Mark Prior, who seemed like he was going to be a future Hall of Famer started and the Cubs took a 1-0 lead in the first. They held it and added a run in the sixth and the seventh. As the top of the eighth began the Cubs were just six outs away from the World Series.

Now Game 6 has of course gone down in history because of Steve Bartman's catching a foul ball that if Moises Alou had caught it would have put the Cubs four outs away. He became such a figure of abuse in the aftermath of what happened and the scapegoat. But as someone who saw the entire inning unfold everyone knows none of that was on him.

Yes it was an eight pitch at bat to Mark Pierre and yes Alou might have been able to retire the side and yes the Cubs got angry about it. But that alone can't be blamed on what happened next.  I remember watching the entire disaster unfold and the idea of blaming Bartman for what it happens is as much a straw man argument as blaming Bill Buckner for the Red Sox losing the World Series in 1986.

I saw everything go wrong. The double play that Gonzalez messed up, the hitting that Derek Lee did, the fact that Prior was kept in far too long, that the relief pitching went up in smoke and that the Marlins then proceeded to bat around. It was a complete and utter shitshow but trying to blame Bartman for the Cubs mistakes is beyond the point.

And again as with Buckner it was only Game 6. The Cubs could have rectified the whole thing by winning Game 7. And it looked like that might happen when Kerry Wood hit a three run homer in the second to tie the game. The Cubs took the lead 5 to 3 and held it for two more innings. Again the Cub Manager kept his starting pitcher into long and that ended up destroying Chicago's hopes.

Now I wasn't even a Cubs fan but watching that eighth inning unfold I felt the wreckage as deeply as anyone who'd spent their entire life on the West Side of Chicago. I'm pretty sure I was shouting thins like "No!, How Could You?" and "How the Hell Could This Happen?!" in some variation for that horrible twenty minutes. I was, however, more tolerant then those at Wrigley Field for a clear reason: at no point did I blame Bartman. In fact I wouldn't even learn Bartman's name until several months after the fact when he became the most notorious sports fan in history.  (Law and Order actually did an episode where a Bartman-like character was the victim of a bar brawl and Briscoe couldn't work up sympathy for his death.)

Bartman's name has since been cleared by history, most recently in a monologue by Oliver Platt in The Bear during the Season 2 finale. But when Game 7 ended I felt the ashes so much more deeply than I had. So imagine less then twenty four hours later I had to watch Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS.

It was clear just how bad the blood was from the start. The two teams split the first four games pretty much evenly. It was clear just how much bad blood there was a bench clearing brawl that was lowlighted by Don Zimmer charging Pedro Martinez in Game 3 and the game ended with a Fenway groundskeeper scuffling with two Yankees. The Yankees left Boston up three games to two, needed just one win to clinch their sixth American League Pennant in eight years.

The game took place the same day as Game 7 of the Cubs-Marlins series and I'll be honest I don't think I gave the Red Sox a chance.  These were still the Red Sox. Now there had been signs that they were no longer the losers of old. In the ALDS of 2003 they were trailing two games to zero against the Oakland A's. Then they came from behind to win three straight, winning the last two games by one run. This went against what I was used to from the Red Sox over the years and I may very well have given them a credit for being a good team.

But these were The Yankees. Sure in 2002 they had lost a postseason series for the first time in four years to Anaheim (which was on their way to their first ever World Championship) but they'd won 101 games that year, tied with the Braves for the best record in baseball. They run through the Twins in the ALDS (even back then Minnesota had a habit of being a punching bag for the Yankees) and having seen most of their season on YES (which was a relatively new network back then) I had no reason to believe history would be any kinder to the Red Sox now.

And I'll be honest I was still focused on Game 7 of the Cubs-Marlins game. I honestly can't remember if I was even really listening as it played on the radio that afternoon. But when the Red Sox ended up winning 9-6 I do remember telling my parents that the Red Sox had a bad history when it came to winning Game 7.

Again in the first century of their existence the Red Sox had won a Game 7 twice. The first time was in the 1903 World Series when the series was Best of 9. The second was when they'd clinched the American League Pennant against the Angels in 1986. I knew their history in Game 7. To overcome that seemed too much to believe.

Still I did watch because it seemed to feature an all-time match up Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens. Clemens said he was planning to retire in 2003 (he'd turned 41 that year) and everyone thought this might me the last game he'd ever pitch. Pedro was starting to slow down but he was still the best pitcher in the game, having lead the American League that year in ERA, strikeouts and winning percentage.

As we all know the Red Sox started the game out on hot. Trot Nixon hit a two run homer in the second and the Sox put up one more run.  They would be ahead 4-0 before Clemens was removed and Mike Mussina came in to relieve. But it didn't seem to make a difference against Martinez. By the 7^th inning the Red Sox were ahead 4-2. After they got an insurance run, the natural move would have been to take Martinez out.

So I was stunned to see Martinez pitching the bottom of the eighth. This move has deservedly become the stuff of backroom talk even after the curse was reversed the following year.  The Red Sox had capable relievers and Martinez had experienced problems pitching into the late innings. He'd already thrown over 100 pitches.

Martinez got the first out. Then he gave up a double to Jeter and a single to Williams. Then Little went to the mound, everyone assuming he would take Martinez out.

The moment that Little left the mound and kept Martinez in, that maybe the first time in history I believed in a curse. Not so much of fate but the fact that the managers of the Red Sox historically had made these kinds of bad moves before to the teams detriment, particularly with pitching.

In 1948 with a one-game playoff against Cleveland, Joe McCarthy chose as his starter Denny Galehouse, who was 8-7 and hadn't started in three months. Galehouse didn't last three innings and the Indians won 8-3. Galehouse would never pitch in the majors again.

In 1949 with the Yankees and Red Sox tied on the final day of the season McCarthy had taken out Ellis Kinder for a pinch hitter with the Red Sox down 1-0. The Yankees would score four more runs, 3 of them on a bloop pinch hit by Jerry Coleman off Tex Hughson who hadn't pitched in three months. Hughson never pitched in the majors again either.

In the one game playoff in 1978 after Bucky F---Ing Dent homer Zimmer took Torrez out when Thurman Munson came to the plate. Torrez had already struck Munson out three times that game. Munson hit a double of Mike Stanley to drive in Mickey Rivers to make the game 4-2. He then kept Stanley in during the eighth when Reggie Jackson hit another home run., the insurance run that made sure the Sox would lose 5-4.

So the fact that Little had this time blundered by leaving his pitcher in didn't make me any less certain that he had just signed Boston's death warrant for 2003. And that's what happened  Matsui would hit a double and then Posada hit a bloop that drove in 2 runs. At that moment I knew the Sox had lost. The rest was just waiting for them to be buried.

That Aaron Boone was the one to do it in the eleventh is part of Yankee lore and their long history. Like every Red Sox fan I suspect they all knew the game was over the moment Little kept Martinez in the game. The rest was just details.

Like any baseball fan I've had some postseasons that have left me emotionally spent but few have left me in such devastation as the aftermath of that week in October 2003. I have no memory of watching the World Series that following between the Yankees and Florida which the Marlins would win in six games and if I did, it left no emotional impression on me. Oh I was fine by Thanksgiving – the TV season had begun in earnest and I was watching 24 and Gilmore Girls and all the other shows that kept be going – but it was a bitter pill to take.

And honestly like any sports fan I had no idea this was the bitter waters we had to go through before we reached the sweet – an era of competitiveness in baseball unlike any in the sports history and one in which the Red Sox would lead the way.

In the next article I will go in depth with the 2004 postseason which everyone knows about but nevertheless can never be forgotten.

Homicide Rewatch: Mercy

 

Written by Eric Overmeyer

Directed by Alan Taylor

 

It's time we talked about the Tommy Westphall Universe.

For those who might be unfamiliar with it – which is almost certainly anyone born after 1998 – this refers to the final episode of St. Elsewhere. In the last two minutes it's revealed that everything we've seen has taken place in a snow globe held by Tommy Westphall, the autistic son of Dr. Donald Westphal who we've spent six seasons watching as the chief of staff of St. Eligius. Now we see him as a construction worker and his son is still autistic and he's starring into that snow globe. And because St. Elsewhere has a history of crossing over with multiple TV shows during its run and those shows in turn have crossed over with other TV series in that sense anywhere from three-quarters of television that have ever aired are taking place in that snow globe.

When this ending aired in 1988 it was the most polarizing ending for a drama in TV history to that point and would remain so until the series finale of The Sopranos. (Tom Fontana has made it very clear how grateful he is not just to David Chase but also the writers of shows like Battlestar Galactica and Lost. "It's so lonely being the guy who infuriated half the audience!" he told Alan Sepinwall in a 2012 interview.) And then naturally came that fan base which has been building on it.

It's tempting to look at 'Mercy' as Fontana finding a way to play into it with 'Mercy' which brings back a character from St Elsewhere a decade after the fact. But at no time does Turner's character even reference she worked at St. Eligius and considering that St. Elsewhere wasn't in syndication during this period you wouldn't have known unless you knew the show's history. Furthermore Roxanne Turner was never an official cast member only a recurring character during the show's final three seasons. The only reference to it comes when Turner says she used to be an OB-GYN but Mercy never clarifies how in ten years' she's ended up in hospice care and neither Bayliss or Pembleton ever ask.

And perhaps most tellingly while Turner's story is the highlight of the episode there's a lot going on. Indeed this episode is one of the busiest ones for all the major characters we've had in a very long time, and I mean that as a compliment.

Pembleton and Bayliss are engaging in their usual banter about which museums they've gone to and have gone to; Frank debates real museums; Bayliss asks the difference between standing 'on line' and 'in line'. They've been called by an officer to a scene where it looks like a 52 year old man has been dying of a lingering illness. Frank and Tim are gentle, if annoyed. Considering that the man is a victim of end-stage colon cancer. However one of the victim's sisters has an issue Alberta Wells. She says that her brother was murdered, something the rest of the family takes issue with when she says that the attending physician Dr. Turner killed her brother. Alberta knows her brother was dying of colon cancer but that Turner committed euthanasia by administering a lethal dose of morphine – which forces the detectives to do an autopsy, much to the objection of everyone else in the family

During the 1990s, it's worth remembering, the trial of Dr. Jack Kevorkian was much in the news and he would become one of the most prominent advocates of the so called 'right to die'. The subject was no less controversial in the 1990s then it is today and the fact that certain nations have since legalized what is referred to physician assisted suicide as well as a few states here has done nothing to remove the battle over it. I think I should point out that when the Netherlands became the first country to legalize it in 2001 it did so over the opposition of the Catholic Church – and while he may be fallen, Frank Pembleton is still a Catholic. Equally new was the idea of the hospice movement – Turner mentions its small but growing and says given the choice many people would rather die at home.

There's a good chance Frank's attitude towards the subject changes when he meets Turner. (Both detective and doctor are African-American and the show doesn't mention this at all. Good for them.) Turner makes it very clear that Arthur was very clear on his wishes and in fact signed a living will.  She runs a surface that's called St. Jude's and she shows him the hospice she runs as well as the patients she takes care of. Bayliss is in complete awe of what she's doing while Pembleton makes it clear they have something in common. When Turner says her patients are dead, Frank says: "You help yours die', in that casual way that Frank does. Turner makes it very clear about how the process works, how the decision is made between the patient, the doctor, the social worker and the family. Frank's skepticism is simple: "I've seen a lot of death. Haven't seen much dignity."  Turner's response is simpler: "Then you and I don't have much in common. I see it every day." She has no problem walking them through the world of palliative care and talking about using 'whatever's legal' to help their suffering." Pembleton then asks if suffering is needless if pain is a theological question. Turner responds: "If God created pain, he also created the poppy to alleviate that pain, so why not use it?" The closest reference Turner gives to her old job is when she says she's come full circle. "Bringing babies into this world from seeing them off into the next."

Pembleton is clearly annoyed about the idea of euphemism such as passed away. The two of them talk about living wills – as police detectives they have a priority of keeping themselves alive – and eventually they're forced forward when the victim's sister goes to a judge and authorizes an autopsy. Dyer (in her first appearance this season) tells them that the level of morphine in Wells' system was definitely far over the legal limit. However she says it might prove malpractice, but not intent.  When Bayliss tries to argue she overdid it, Dyer counters she gave him six time as much needed to manage his pain.

Turner's reaction is to say the ME has no idea what she was talking about; if anything she undermedicated her patient and the only reason it seems otherwise is because the system is stuck in the 19^th century. I suspect its Turner's dismissive idea of pain being necessary that increasingly chafes Frank. Her better argument is that her patient was so sick that while it would kill the average person her patients have developed a tremendous tolerance. Bayliss actually pushes a little, asking if she might have overdone it just a bit.  She denies it.

Pembleton and Bayliss look at four of the last patients of Turner who passed and one currently under her treatment. It's here an episode that takes place very much in the gray area becomes all the grayer. On one side there's the fact that one of Turner's patients had no family and therefore the only person who could make the decisions for him competently was Turner.  Pembleton argues "We speak for the dead" one of the series' mantras in regard to that patient and that might be a murder. And his social worker makes it clear he left care of more than a few of Turner's patients entirely in her care. The social worker claims he has no knowledge but whether this is due to denial or turning a blind eye.

But then they see Priscilla Owens who's still coherent and alive for the moment. She has MS. Bayliss is very awkward in describing whether they're lucky to be Turner's patient. She's lost the use of her legs and bladder function  and she's only 34. She knows she'll be dead in a year at most. She makes it very clear that she and Dr. Turner have an understanding and that she has no desire for anything to screw that up. When Turner shows up  Owens is blunt: "They want to know if you're gonna snuff me." The way she says it we know what she means.

There's no direct evidence to link any of Turner's actions to this. The families speak the world of her; all the bodies were cremated; the social worker has nothing. Bayliss clearly wants to let this go, correctly pointed out Frank is accusing Turner with 'negative proof' . Bayliss admits all the autopsy won't prove anything because Turner acknowledged using the morphine. Giardello agrees to have Turner come in for a conversation – one that Bayliss refuses to take part in.

Once again we are blessed to have two of the great actors of our time: Braugher and Woodard in the Box for the final discussion. The two of them discuss the seamless garment: "Life is a seamless garment, sacred from conception to death." No abortion, no murder, no euthanasia…" Frank starts. "No capital punishment," Turner finishes.  Turner calls him on it. "Feelings are one thing. I'm a cop. I have to embrace contradictions. Capital punishment is wrong…And necessary."

He thinks that Turner believes she doesn't commit murder." When she pushes him off he says he no longer suspects her of murder. Turner doesn't want his absolution. He knows he can't charge her with any crimes under the laws of man. But playing God?"

Turner says God doesn't make house calls. It's here Turner becomes the most problematic the way she seems to think Pembleton randomly decides who's guilty and who's innocent.  She says he has no business speaking for her patients. She was there when they were dying not him. It's here for the first time she shows vehement rage about what her role is, how hard her job is, the cost is clearly has on her. "How dare you presume to speak for my patients? They didn't have you then. And they sure as hell don't need you now!"

Pembleton's calm is ethereal, arguing that while she is a good doctor she can't bear the be around when they're suffering.  Then he shares a story about a friend he has who started having migraines and who had a brain tumor. They operated on her and the surgeon made a mistake. Her mind has been affected so she can't remember people when she sees them and needs to be cared for by her father all the time.  He admits he's only seen her once since then.  He mentions his stroke and how his memory has been perforating.

Turner points out that he's drinking coffee. He tells her he doesn't listen to doctors anymore. "What do they know? What do they really know?" Turner pounds on her saying that because he had a stroke he's going to prove his doctors wrong even if it ends up killing him. (Point, Turner. ) She calls him out on not seeing his friend since the accident. Pembleton says he's going to keep autopsying her patients and Turner tells him she's not going to stop doing what she's doing. Turner says even if he stops her, all the pain they have will be on him.

Pembleton: I can take the weight.

Turner: Can you?

There are no easy answers for either the doctor or the detective. Who's the one doing their job and who's the relentless fanatic? The one who speaks for the dead or the one who has to care for them in their darkest extremities? That this case, like so many others, is never followed up on is beside the point: there are still no easy answer thirty years later, and despite the legality and success of certain aspects of the movement Turner pushed for, the questions still need to be answered and can't be.

 

The first story linking to a previous one is involving Gharty and Ballard. Stu is busy shopping for perfume for reasons he doesn't tell Ballard, when they run into the city goats  - the McCord brothers - that killed Antonio Livingston. Gharty famously told her that they'd be spending every weekend looking for them, so its fitting with how Homicide works that they run into the two of them when they aren't looking for them at all.

They end up chasing down Donna McCord, the boys' mother, and this time they push her after she reveals she moved. Her lying capacity is no better than the average corner boy: she says she can't remember her new address because its so recent. Gharty and Ballard give her enough time before Stu understandably loses patience. "White trash too stupid to know when to stop lying," as he puts it. The truth is Donna wants to believe the best in her kids even as Gharty tells them they have the murder weapon, the nature of their crime and that they have their fingerprints on it. To this point Donna has seemed stupid and frail. It's when she realizes the truth she says: "This is what comes…from mixing with colored."  Gharty and Ballard haul Douglas and Ronnie in. And I gotta say while I'm not normally a fan of police brutality as someone who supports women I really liked when Ballard knees one of the McCord's in the groin to give back what they gave her a couple of months ago.

At the Waterfront Ballard and Gharty are sanguine. Gharty thinks this is about two bottom feeders who wacked a third and Ballard thinks it was just two easy to get the McCord's to confess. Billie Lou, who as we know is from that part of Baltimore, says: "We come from a part of the world that thinks the moonwalk was fake and pro-wrestling is real." (Okay I admit that's less funny now then it was in 1998.) The strange part comes when Gharty gives Billie Lou that present and is secretive about it. Is there something about his marriage we don't know about yet?

Stivers and Falsone are called out on what will be Stivers first ever child murder: sixth grader Latisha Morrison killed in an armed robbery in a pizza parlor in which she was killed along with the store owner.  They killed the store owner in part of the robbery and LaTisha, as is far too often the fate in Baltimore, was killed by a stray bullet.  Giardello quickly realizes why these two rookies are struggling. He tells them with great experience there are two kinds of murders that bother detectives the most: "The murder of a fellow officer and the murder of a child."

Stivers thinks she can handle this because of her experience in narcotic and sex crimes. Giardello is calm: "This is your murdered child." And having seen so many of them over nearly six seasons (and unfortunately there are still more to come) he tells her "You'll never be able to forget her." When Falsone says that if we put it to rest they'll be able to get over Giardello tells them not to pretend this case isn't different. And the viewer knows this as well as Gee does. We see it in the way Falsone starts to darken as they can't find anything and Stivers becomes more and more desperate sounding.

This time it works out. They pick up the killer on a traffic camera with the ATM card, the murder weapon and blood on his shoes.

And the biggest one is when Kellerman lies to Munch about a dentist appointment so he can have a conversation with Judge Gerald Gibbons, the civil court judge he tried to see in his office last week. What follows is one of the most fascinating conversations as Kellerman talks about the Mahoney case and his suspicions. Mike starts talking in hypotheticals about whether Gibbons is on Georgia Rae's payroll.  He says this might scare the city into settling and that Gibbons might end up getting a cut. When Gibbons says that he'll be talking to his superior Mike reminds him that homicide is assigned to investigate kidnapping, extortion and bribery which means that if he does it, they'll have access to his financial and phone records.  Kellerman implies that he's done enough detective work to prove the link and can give it to the states attorney's office.  Gibbons says there's no way to prove a direct link between 'the judge and the gangster'  and money can always be explained. Kellerman argues the investigation would put a damper on Gibbons's political aspirations.  Gibbons implies that the possibility of this might cause him 'to make an error under pressure' causing him to dismiss the charges.

Later that day Kellerman plays the tape of the recording he made with Gibbons to Meldrick. (See Notes from the Board for my issue with this). Meldrick is astonished how far his partner has fallen. Kellerman assumes this is a promise to throw the case out. Kellerman assumes that Gibbons is offering him a bribe and Lewis counters that the tape could be read as if he solicited a bribe, arguing its extortion. But Kellerman is convinced that this is the beginning of the end.  Lewis tells Mike to throw the tape in the river. Once again Kellerman's being given good advice and yet again his arrogance keeps prevailing.

The episode ends with two different notes. Falsone and Stivers go to building where they place the photo of Morrison in a Baltimore place for children 18 and under who die of violence. Stivers quiet response as we look at it is devastating: "They're gonna need to build a stadium."

And that night Frank goes to a home he hasn't been to in years. He's supplicant, almost apologetic as he goes to see Carla.

 

Notes From The Board

Alfre Woodard would be nominated for an Emmy for Best Guest Actress in a Drama for her performance in Mercy. The episode would also be nominated for the Humanitas Prize in 1998.

'Detective Munch' : Munch describes Ballard and Gharty as Inspector Javert as they stalk their city goats. Neither of them know the reference even when Munch brings up Jean Valjean. "Victor Hugo? Les Miserables?" Still blank. "Am I the only one here who can read?" I'm with Munch; you'd think at least they'd have heard of the musical that was still in its original run in 1998.

Just as funny is when Munch says: "What kind of world do we live in when more people believe in angels and UFO's and past lives regression then evolution:

Billie Lou: I believe in angels.

Ballard: I believe in UFO's

Gharty: I've always been iffy on evolution.

Mahoney PTSD: In his conversation with Gibbons, the judge says to Kellerman: "You're digging your own grave." Kellerman's response: "I tend to do that. Character flaw." Mikey, Mikey, don't you ever listen to yourself?

This question has been bugging me for 28 years. How the hell did Kellerman find Meldrick? Lewis has been dodging his calls for weeks, went to see Falsone instead of Mike for what he was doing and the moment Kellerman spotted him at the Waterfront a few weeks ago Meldrick went out the door. And now the two of them are having a clandestine meeting in his car, casually discussing how Kellerman has made a secret tape of Judge Gibbons? It's not like the internet existed the way it did in 1998 and there's no sign either of the detectives has a cell phone during the series. So how did this meeting happen?

 

Hey, Isn't That… Even before she created the character of Roxanne Turner Alfre Woodard had already proven she was a force to be reckoned with. Making her debut in the TV movie the Trial of the Moke in 1978 she appeared in several 1970s and 1980s TV shows such as The White Shadow and Palmerstown USA before the world became aware of Martin Ritt's Cross Creek. For her role as GeeChee she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 1983. She had made several TV appearance during that period a regular in two short-lived series 1982-1983's Tucker's Witch and Rosalyn in 1985's Sara.

In 1984 she won her first Emmy for Best Supporting Actress for Hill Stret Blues. The following year she would be nominated for Playing Claudie Sills in Words by Heart. In 1986 she was nominated for Best Lead Actress for her role in St. Elsewhere even though she only appeared in three episodes. (The rules were different then.)

She is the most Emmy nominated African-American actress in Emmy history with 17 nominations and only Debbie Allen has more with 21. She's won four, for Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries for Miss Evers Boys and Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama for the Practice.  Regina King tied that record in 2020. With her nomination for Homicide Woodard is one of only  a handful of performers to be nominated for playing the same character in two different series. She's also one of the few performers to be nominated in two different Emmy categories the same year: when she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy for her work in Desperate Housewives and in a TV movie for The Water is Wide.

It might actually be easier to provide a list of TV series Woodard hasn't appeared in during her nearly five decade career.  Her film career has also been formidable and varied in such films as Scrooged, Grand Canyon, Blue Chips, Passion Fish, Heart and Souls, Crooklyn  and Star Trek: First Contact. She's played Harriet Tubman and Winnie Mandela in TV movies, has narrated the story of Nat Turner, played Mrs. Whatsit in a TV film of A Wrinkle in Time, worked for Tyler Perry and done shows for Shonda Rhimes. She's also worked for Tom Fontana a lot: she appeared in his BBC America Series Copper in 2013. She's played Mariah Dillard in Luke Cage, Paris and See and in case you missed her she just finished playing Judy in The Boroughs. And she's not even close to slowing down: she has five projects coming up according to imdb.com