Theodore White & The Kennedys, Part 2: White's (Mostly) Objective View of Robert F. Kennedy In the Books

 

As you'd expect Bobby Kennedy makes quite a few appearances in White's book on 1960. And its clear that while White might express admiration for Jack Kennedy, he considers Bobby in a far less flattering light.

Robert F. Kennedy is mentioned over two dozen times in Making of the President: 1960 and White is very clear about how important Robert was in the echelon of making his brother President. But he comes across mostly in snapshots during the primary campaign and even the convention, with little detail as to his personality or strategy. This is understandable because White is more interesting in the candidates and not the men (which is who was in power) at the time.

It is not until the fall campaign begins in earnest that White discusses Bobby in detail. (He notes in a footnote that Bobby Kennedy is now attorney general.) He makes it clear that Bobby was present observing during Stevenson's failed campaign for the Presidency in 1960. (He may not be aware that Bobby eventually became convinced of Stevenson's inability to lead and didn't vote for him as President that year.)

Thus in 1960 at Hyannisport…he was in no sense a neophyte in national politics. (Bobby was 34.) Young as he was, he knew as a privileged witness not only the inner personality of his brother Jack (…whom he reveres) but also the mechanics of American electioneering.

To this knowledge he brought, moreover, the force of his singular personality – one that has baffled all political analysts who seek hidden sensuosities of theory or belief. For Robert F. Kennedy was, and is, above all, a moralist whose deepest-held beliefs might find expression in either party – or in the Y.M.C.A For him all the vulgarities and weaknesses of the American manner – the crude violence on TV, the physical weakness and seeming softness of American youth – are personally offensive. It is as a Boston puritan, albeit of the Catholic faith, that Robert Kennedy should be seen.

The question that future readers must ask, given the prurient nature of his older brother was how Bobby managed to square that discrepancy as a character flaw – or whether he, like so many millions afterward, chose to not consider it.

As a Puritan, Robert F. Kennedy believes that men should work hard, go to bed early, rise early strive to the extent of their ability and be penalized ruthlessly when they fail in their relationships. It is his opinion that men play to win – whether in touch football or politics – with no quarter given friend or foe…His relentless drive was to make him many enemies and expose him to much sophisticated analysis by politicians and press alike. But essentially, he is a simple man moved by great emotions…"

Reading this it's impossible not to look at Bobby's determination to win at all cost and not see the model that would be followed by so many conservative political agents, whether it be Nixon himself or Lee Atwater or Karl Rove decades later.

That is by far the clearest portrait of Robert F. Kennedy we get during the 1960 campaign. White seems willing to allow it because he managed to get his brother the White House but as with his brother he withholds further opinion on him at the end of the book.

This brings us to 1964. As you'd expect White opens the book with a thirty page bravura sequence in which he describes the moment he learned of President Kennedy's death, the horror it struck over the nation and the memorial sequence that followed. (The chapter is titled 'Of Death and Unreason') Then he discusses very briefly the Kennedy Presidency and what effect it had.

And then he does something that his readers and so many generations have never been able to do, though it is by necessity something he must as he is about to cover the 1964 election. He leaves the Kennedy administration, all it accomplished and all it might have to the vanguard of history and turns to everything that followed in the year that passed, starting with LBJ's ascension to power and then the Republican civil war that was unfolding between Rockefeller and Goldwater. (This will be dealt with in future articles.) And  even though he's still part of the administration and already part of the national psyche Bobby Kennedy basically disappears from the narrative for the next two hundred pages.

It's only until he gets to the Democratic Convention that he mentions the Kennedys at all and that's in transition between Kennedy and Johnson's administration. He speaks about the Kennedy White House as almost a fourth branch of government when he talks about their court, making it seem as if everyone of those associated, whether they were Sorensen or O'Brien or Salinger, were speaking for the White House and that they were being open about it. White is aware of how they went to woo them and he makes it clear:

To some on the outside, there was something almost too precious about the court of the Kennedys – too gay, too glamorous, too elegant. Outsiders sneered at the seminars of the Hickory Hill group, where several earnest Cabinet members gathered to discuss great thoughts and heard great thinkers. Outsiders denounced as Babylonian the parties and swimming pool gaieties that the press reported. (He then lists in a footnote Robert F. Kennedy's swimming pool party described as an orgy in which drunken members of the American government one by one tossed themselves fully clad into a swimming pool.)

White then acknowledges his presence. It's in this section that his  worship of the Kennedys becomes the clearest and one wonders if he ever realized just how much the Kennedys were doing everything in their power to woo the press and make them their friends so that no one would question what is now the clearly seedy underbelly of that administration.  He clearly remembers this as a delightful time and never questions whether it affected his objectivity.

It's true he has issues with Johnson's White House in comparison to JFK's and he does have a look at LBJ's frequently sulky manner. But he remains objective and he's clearly impressed as to how Johnson handled the transition with grace and how he managed those months, coming up with the idea of the Great Society. And its only on page 271 that he gets to the issue that no doubt most readers wanted to know about: "the attitude of Lyndon Johnson to the Kennedy family as represented by its leader, the Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy."

White exercises as much discretion as humanly possible to try and mitigate the feud that was as much to define 1960s politics as anything else that happened during that decade. And its when he gets to Bobby that we hear it:

"For (Robert Kenendy) Lundon Johnson was all the yesterdays; for him Lyndon Johnson was his father's generation. And when Lyndon Johnson became President, all the yesterdays were restored.

'There are millions of people all across this country who feel as Robert F. Kennedy does; for them the name of Kennedy is magic, as was the name Stuart under the Hanover reign of the Georges; and whenever old or young devotants of the Kennedy loyalty gather, the Bonny Prince Charlie of the faith is Robert F. Kennedy. Like the Jacobites, they await the Restoration."

He mentions the Kennedy for Vice President boom and the New Hampshire primary trying to write him in and its clear that White considers it unseemly. He acknowledges that the Kennedy loyalists are 'a permanent force or element in the politics of America. Robert F. Kennedy would not mobilize them – nor would he repudiate them."

White admits in a footnote LBJ never took him into his confidence during his year in the press corps to that point but he's dead on in his assessment:

It was not comfortable to be considered a usurper. A President must be President in his own right… To attach a Kennedy name to his own name would mean forever sharing the title of the Presidency with a ghost of the past….Furthermore, the press unendingly murmured with nostalgic comparisons of Johnson's administration and the Kennedy administration. If Johnson were to prove himself in a campaign for the Presidency, he must prove it alone."

All but the most devoted pro-Kennedy supporters – who must be legion even now – would find it very difficult to argue with this logic. In the decision to try and keep Bobby from being part of the ticket LBJ goes to lengths that might be considered petty – keeping Bobby out of a film paying tribute to Kennedy – but could not be dismissed as a reality. Bobby Kennedy might not want to be Lyndon Johnson's Vice President but he could have said so in public at any time, by disparaging a draft. That he refused to make any public statements on that fact saying a flat no had to be as clear to Johnson as the fact he wasn't actively campaigning.

White clearly thinks LBJ's final approach – to eliminate from consideration any member of his cabinet as Vice President – was incredibly heavy handed. But as has been proven in politics time and again, some times you have to hit people over the head to get a message across. I have no doubt the version Johnson and Kennedy tell about the White House meeting in this book is almost entirely fitted for public consumption and that in private each told a version to make themselves the hero.  And I certainly don't believe Bobby said: " I could have helped you, Mr. President," with any humor at all the way White reports it.

I quoted George W. Bush's statement about Obama: "I want him to succeed." In my wildest imagination I don't truly think Bobby Kennedy wanted LBJ to succeed. He had been opposed to him being on the ticket in the first place; the fact that he had been as close to assistant President during his brother's term meant he had done everything to keep Johnson as far away from the decision making process as possible. (There was discussion that Bobby was trying to get his brother to remove Johnson from the ticket in 1964 as much as anything.) And as we know all too well the only people that the Kennedys ever thought would make good Presidents were Kennedys themselves.

White never weighs in on the idea during 1964 whether he believes Robert F. Kennedy should be President in the future; speculation was never part of his writing. He does mention how problematic the idea was to many when he discusses the Republicans rumbling in the months before JFK was killed.

With the clash between Rockefeller and Goldwater looming as the civil war it would become many Republicans in the so-called Eastern Establishment turned to their hero, former President Eisenhower, hoping for a candidate they could throw their weight behind. One of his choices is his own brother Milton and in October of 1963 White says colleagues were discreetly exploring support. But to the New York group was out and there is one big reason:

"It would have destroyed the brother issue," said one. "How could we hammer Jack and Bobby Kennedy if Ike was running his brother for the Presidency?"

This is as close as White comes to saying that Bobby might have been a liability to his brother's run for reelection had he lived. And future events have shown this play out in 21^st century politics at the highest level (though more for spouses and children then siblings).

White leaves Bobby Kennedy as he is at the end of 1964: Senator Elect of New York. Under normal circumstances White would not have dealt with him until 1972 at the earliest when Johnson would have been gone from the White House one way or the other. Given the nature of his landslide victory it would have been a natural response.

History – led by Johnson's actions aided by members of Kennedy's own cabinet – had  other plans.

 

The 1968 volume has the greatest evidence of White's bias towards the Kennedy family. The book opens with a dedication to both JFK and the recently assassinated Robert, followed with a  Bible passage. The chapter devoted to Bobby's entire campaign is bears the subtitle 'requiescat in pacem', or rest in peace and Latin. And he compares the two assassinated leader to the two assassinated Roman emperors who were also brothers 'the Gracchi', which he says with accuracy 'identified them with a cause that outlived their time in the forum.'

It is a tribute to the horrible tragedy and relationship he had with Robert Kennedy that this chapter is not a love letter to the doomed cause the way that Jules Witcover's 85 Days is (White footnotes it as a superb history of the campaign in 1968) White remains remarkably clear-eyed and objective in the flaws of the man he is profiling, both when it comes to the errors his campaign made, the uphill fight he faced for the Democratic nomination after the California primary and refuses to say with certainty that if Bobby had been the nominee he could have won the Presidency afterward. With a little more distance (understandably hard to come by after that traumatic year) he might have been able to make connections from his earlier books that for all Bobby's behavior on the campaign trail, he really hadn't changed that much since they first met in 1960.

He is very aware of Bobby's flaws, the power drive which he admits was 'sinister' to as many as it was the thing that 'drew their loyalty'. Indeed he spells it out

"It was not right, felt such millions, that any man should inherit the leadership by patrimony, family wealth or descended prestige. Had he not been the son of Joseph P. Kennedy, the brother of John F. Kennedy, what then would Robert F. Kennedy have been?...Was a Kennedy dynasty, a single family, to claim by family right the prize all other men in American history had been required to struggle for?

That is a question that White and his predecessors were never forced to answer due to the actions of Sirhan Sirhan. Considering America's attitude towards political dynasties now it's still one we haven't fully dealt with.

White takes us through Bobby's thinking during 1966 and 1967 where as much as he loathes Lyndon Johnson, he doesn't want to destroy the Democratic Party by running in a primary. I find it telling that his thinking was complicated when Eugene McCarthy entered the race. Kennedy says that McCarthy wouldn't make a good President, and while that's no doubt true one can't help but be reminded how much of this was due to the fact that McCarthy had never kissed the ring of the Kennedy dynasty.  Bobby had to remember that McCarthy had given the speech at the 1960 convention to nominate Adlai Stevenson, the most prominent attempt to disrupt the JFK's nomination. Combined with his dislike for Stevenson as early as 1956 – and the fact that McCarthy had been considered for the Vice Presidency in 1964 when Bobby had been eliminated – it would have been understandable had there been personal animosity.

The most generous interpretation of Kennedy's decision to run after McCarthy's surprise victory in New Hampshire – when he finally entered the race – is that Bobby was afraid of four more years of turmoil.  There's another possibility that the ruthless politician that Bobby was has to have contemplated. If LBJ left the race but someone else – McCarthy or Humphrey – got the nomination and  somehow managed to win, then Bobby's political prospects would be dimmed until at least 1976. If he did absolutely nothing, he would be the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in 1972. In that case it was in his interest for LBJ to earn the nomination and whatever the results, he'd be the frontrunner going forward. But if by some chance another Democrat claimed the prize, then Bobby would have to wait until 1976. And by that point whatever luster still held from his brother's legacy would be completely gone and his name would no longer have the same power it once did.

For Bobby Kennedy was ruthless, White doesn't back away from this at any point. And while he might have the Kennedy name, being the junior senator from New York didn't have any real power in Congress. For a man who had essentially been assistant President for three years he had to have chafed during this period.

So the fact that he chose to run knowing as White puts it "no course to power that he could take would fail to divide the Party in bloody bitterness, leaving it shattered when he came to face the Republicans in the general election' very much speaks to a man who knows that his actions will do immense harm to his party and who nevertheless makes the decision to do so anyway." And White makes it clear that the long process to the announcement proceeded almost like bedroom farce – and that the next ten days were a disaster because "No preparations had been made for a national campaign'. He makes it clear the events in March were horrible publicity with him on the campaign trail and his bitterness towards Johnson – who in Los Angeles he calls 'a man calling upon the darkest impulses of the American spirit', makes him look on TV 'hysterical, high-pitched, almost demonic, frightening… the ruthless and vindictive Bobby Kennedy.

He acknowledges that Bobby doesn't find his theme until the Indiana primary where he finally manages to become on the campaign trail the man that his followers remember, mocking his own ruthless nature, joking about how the fact he has ten kids who drink milk do much for the farmer, becoming an idol to those who see him. This comes with the triumph in the Indiana primary.

And its there that White makes it very clear "never did any Kennedy face a more delicate, difficult or uphill battle'. First he had to campaign against his rivals McCarthy and Humphrey so that he could beat them in the primaries but still get their support in the general. Then there was the strategy of earning delegates and White is very clear that even the most optimistic campaign could see Bobby getting more then 800 of the 1312 delegates he needed to earn the nomination. He had to manage a clean sweep of the primaries in order to get bargaining power at the convention. But:

"…the use of that bargaining power depended on another set of ifs: if the war continued or grew in unpopularity; if Humphrey could not disassociate himself from the war; if McCarthy's resentment could be mollified after his defeat, if any substantial number of state leaders stayed uncommitted on the first ballot – then if Humphrey could be stopped on the first ballot, the McCarthy votes must crumble and go to Kennedy on the second ballot…

White acknowledges everything had to go right. And he reckons without certain factors. The first played out in real time; McCarthy's hatred of Bobby continued after Kennedy was assassinated. And he refused to organize and try and put up a front leading George McGovern to take up the Kennedy cause. After the convention McCarthy (as Walter Mondale would report in his biography years later) would refuse to endorse Humphrey even though he knew it was the right thing to do. If McCarthy was that strident after Kennedy's assassination, there is no reason to believe he would have done the same if Bobby had lived and gotten the nomination.

The bigger problem was one that the Kennedy campaign would acknowledge themselves: by the time of the California primary Humphrey had already gotten enough delegates to lock up the nomination. There would likely have been a fight in Chicago but Kennedy would have been on the losing side. And that's before you consider a possibility White acknowledges happened at the time: that at the Chicago convention LBJ was publicly reconsidering his renunciation.

White only refers to it a footnote but now we know that Johnson had been considering it ever since the primaries ended. At some point he called Ralph Yarborough (the Senator from Texas in charge of that state's delegation) and asked what would happen if he were to announce his candidacy. Yarborough said that he might get 1000 delegates right then. However when he called Richard Daley to ask if he should make an appearance at the convention, the Mayor told him if he did , his personal safety could not be guaranteed.

I truly believe that if Bobby was ever in a position to get the nomination after the primaries Lyndon would have willingly risked his life to make sure that Kennedy, a man he despised just as much Bobby hated him, didn't get the nomination for President. And we already know that when Humphrey did get the nomination Johnson made very little effort to get him the Presidency and that's before you consider he crippled any chance the Democratic Party had to have a peace platform at the convention. It's already known he favored Nixon because he was closer to a continuation in Vietnam than Humphrey, there's absolutely no reason to assume he wouldn't have done the same even if Kennedy had gotten the nomination.

Even without knowing any of these details White still isn't willing to argue that Kennedy might have been able to win the Presidency had he gotten the nomination. His main logic, oddly enough, is looking at the Republican side. If a Kennedy candidacy would have emerged from Chicago

"would  not the Republicans have foreseen that possibility – and in Miami, might they have chosen a Rockefeller or a Reagan over Nixon? And 'if' Robert Kennedy had emerged triumphant from Chicago, could he have beaten a Rockefeller, a Reagan or a Nixon?"

White allows that he thinks Kennedy would have come away from Chicago the winner which is speculative at best. But not even he is willing to engage in political fanfiction.  "He might have healed his party," is the most he will say.  Might.

White's own opinion on whether these kind of internecine battles are not clear in 1968. But by the time of his final book he will have reached a different conclusion – and that will involve the final Kennedy brother, who will be dealt with in the last article in this part of my writing on White.

 

 

Emmy Watch 2026 Phase 2 Continued: My Observations About the 2026 BAFTA and Royal Society for TV Nominations

 

 

Considering the influence so much of British TV has always had on American programming well before the era of Peak TV even began there has always been an overlap with so many of the TV series that the British make that we frequently see in the Emmys. We see it most often in so many of the nominations and winners of limited series over the last decade but occasionally that overlap is also seen in the comedies and dramas that the Brits have made over the years. For that reason, looking at the nominations that British TV gives itself can occasionally give insight into what the Emmys might do in a few months' time – providing of course, it doesn't reflect on the year just past.

With that in mind I take a look at the BAFTA TV nominations that came out this afternoon as well as a couple of other British organizations that theoretically might give some guidance to what the Emmys will do this July – or conversely what we might want them too.

It helps matters that they also give international awards.

 

Drama Series

 

I think it's safe to say despite the popularity in some circles for A Thousand Blows and This City is Ours none of the nominees has a chance.

 

Limited Drama

As you might expect Adolescence did just as will with the Brits as it did in America getting eleven nominations total. I'm not convinced Trespasses, I Fought The Law and What It Feels Like For a Girl will get anywhere in America

 

International

Here's the real meat. The White Lotus, Severance and The Studio were all nominated. The current seasons of The Bear, The Diplomat and Pluribus all were as well. I'll be curious to see who wins this much. (No I don't know if the Brits consider The Bear a comedy either.)

 

Leading Actress

Two nominees from last year are up for awards but as you might expect not for the shows we saw them in. Aimee Lou Wood is up for Film Club and Erin Doherty is nominated for A Thousand Blows. (That's where she first started working with Stephen Graham by the way. ) Sheridan Smith is up for I Fought The Law and Jodie Whitaker is up for Toxic Town which is ranked by Netflix. I don't think she or any of the other nominees have a snowball's chance

 

Leading ACTOR

Stephen Graham is here for Adolescence. There are some familiar faces here. Matt Smith is nominated for The Death of Bunny Monroe, Taron Egerton for Smoke and Colin Firth for Lockerbie which you can see on Peacock. James Nelson-Joyce is up for This City is Ours and Ellis Howard for Girl. Graham is most likely to win here as he did at the Emmys/

 

Actress in A Comedy

Ulness you’re a fan of Amandaland I don't think any of these nominees will be familiar. I'm glad to see Jennifer Saunders is still working outside of Absolutely Fabulous.

ACTOR IN A COMEDY

Same here though Steve Coogan is still getting attention for playing Alan Partridge.

 

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Now we're getting somewhere. Three of the nominees for Best Supporting Actress in a limited series last year are nominated here: Aimee Lou Wood for The White Lotus and Christine Tremarco and Erin Doherty for Adolescence.

I've actually seen the three other performance and they are all good ones. Chyna McQueen for her work in Get Millie Black, Emilia Jones for Task and Rose Ayling-Ellis for Reunion. Jones has a chance for getting nominated this year.

 

Supporting Actor

As you'd expect Ashley Walters and Owen Cooper are here for Adolescence. We also see Paddy Considine for Paramount Plus Mobland and Fehinti Balogun for the recent Apple TV hit Down Cemetery Road. It is odd they are nominated and not their more noteworthy leads in these series but there we are.

 

The remaining nominations are irrelevant to the Emmys so I'll leave them out.

BAFTA is not the only British organization to give nominations for TV. There's also a group known as the Royal Television Society that gave nominations earlier this month and in fact gave their awards today. Much of it covers similar ground but there are minor differences that could be relevant.

For one thing they have a category called Comedy Drama which might be the British version for dramedy. (They really do everything better in England.) I've actually seen one of the nominees on Showtime Dreaming Whilst Black and I heartily recommend it. Adjani Salmon, the lead performer, is truly superb.

In Drama series we actually see a show that will contend for Emmys next year: Season 5 of Slow Horses. Which begs the question, why wasn't it good enough for BAFTA?

 

Leading Actor Female has Doherty for A Thousand Blows and Rose Ayling-Ellis for Code of Silence (not Reunion). I'm pleased to see Tamara Lawrence recognized for Get Millie Black which was one of my favorite series of 2024. It's also nominated for Best Limited series along with Adolescence, I Fought The Law and What It Feels Like for A Girl.

In Leading Actor male, Stephen Graham is present for Adolescence, no surprise.

Then we get to Supporting Actor and we see some interesting ideas.

In male we see Owen Cooper for Adolescence nominated against Christopher Chung for Slow Horses. In  female Doherty is up against Wood for Toxic Town and Saskia Reeves for Slow Horses. No the Royal Society didn't see fit to nominate Gary Oldman either.

Writing Drama does see Adolescence along with the loved in some circles Riot Women and expect Owen Cooper to have a big night: he's also among the nominees for Breakthrough Award.

 

I'll be honest the most perplexing thing about BAFTA's TV nominations is their odd relationship with Slow Horses. Considering how popular it is in America I would have expected it to dominate BAFTA's TV nominations just as frequently. Yet it was shut out by them this year and while they nominated Oldman and Chung last year they didn't nominate the show for Best Drama. Then again it's hard to know how seriously you can take them on a good day when it comes to what works overseas. Last year they nominated Baby Reindeer for four awards but gave Best Limited Drama to Mr. Bates Vs. The Post Office.

For that reason I don't think I'll cover the winners this year; the nominees are sufficiently eccentric enough.

I'll be back in a few weeks when the Peabody nominations come out. Until then, cheerio.

 

Better Late Than Never: Nobody Wants This Season 2 Review

 

In many of my reviews I've argued that a great show, whether it is a comedy or drama, can cross all racial or religious lines. I was immensely entertained by the first two seasons of Ramy even though I'm not a Muslim, found the first season of Beef one of the best shows of 2023 even though I'm not Korean and am certain Reservation Dogs is one of the best comedies of the decade even though I'm not an indigenous person. If a show has themes that are universal the fact that I am a white cis male has done nothing to interfere with it entertaining me.

With Nobody Wants This one of the major critical and audience hits of 2024, I found myself on the other side of the coin for a change. This incredible romantic comedy strikes chords with me because I'm Jewish and can get a lot of the in-joke between the Roslow family, the way they view their children and tradition and the way that they are almost appalled about how Noah (the always sublime Adam Brody) has fallen in love with a blond-haired shiksa named Joanne. As I joked in my rave for the first season Noah's parents and his immediate circle are the only people I'm aware of who don't meet Kristen Bell and automatically fall head over heels in love with her.

The first season was incredibly well received earning Emmy nominations for Best Comedy, Adam Brody and Bell's first Emmy nomination for anything. (Can you believe it?) Having watched every episode during the winter and early stages of last year when I, like so many other people, desperately needed something that was just blissfully funny I've been waiting for Season 2 to drop as much as the next person. And my schedule, as you might expect, only recently cleared up enough for me to see it. It helped immensely that, much like last year, the early signs are that yet again Nobody Wants This will be a major awards contender, having been nominated for Best Comedy Series by both the Golden Globes and receiving five nominations from the Critics Choice Awards. I didn't need an excuse to see Season 2 – I loved the show immensely then – but I spent much of the end of last year watching All Her Fault and the past month watching The Girlfriend and The Beast in Me, knowing that Nobody Wants This would be there when I needed it. And this week I finally got around to seeing the first three episodes. It is just as marvelous as before.

At the end of last season Noah was about to ascend to his lifelong ambition of being head rabbi at the temple he's trained for his whole life. Joanne, who couldn't imagine Noah not doing it and couldn't face the burden of his parents told him she couldn't see him anymore. But Noah chose Joanne over his ambition – and perhaps more tellingly his family. He has not renounced Judaism, as that famous Seinfeld episode once played out; if anything during the first episode of Season 2 – which took place three months after Season 1 ended – had Joanne and Noah having their first argument when it became clear that Joanne had no intention of ever converting, which would be a permanent obstacle in him become a rabbi.

This led to a major fight at his temple when his head rabbi did retire and replace him with another rabbi also named Noah. The two of them apparently knew each other from Hebrew camp and they were apparently Big Noah and Little Noah. Cue the immediate joke when someone calls for Rabbi Noah and both say yes. Even worse, the new Rabbi Noah may be a jerk but he's incredibly good at his job with bothers our Rabbi Noah.

The ice had not melted one bit between Noah's mother (every time she's onscreen Tovah Feldshuh steals everything not nailed down) and Joanne. Bina is very much the cliché of the Jewish mother, only in Nobody she's far closer to a mob boss when it comes to her family and the community. Its clear watching Bina that this is the first time perhaps in his entire life that Noah has done anything independent of his mother's wishes which in Jewish culture is an unspeakable crime where the guillotine and the firing squad or merciful in comparison. When Noah chooses not to show up at Shabbot, Bina makes a completely unscheduled (and undesired) appearance at her sons pick up basketball game which unnerves her children and scares the hell out of her daughter-in-law Jackie. Only Joanne decides to confront her, which is another in the endless line of reasons I love her.  Joanne may want the approval of Bina but only because she wants Noah to be happy. She's used to being hated by the masses and she doesn't give a damn about anyone else's opinion. For a moment détente seems to be achieve but we know damn well Bina isn't going to rest until Joanne is gone.

All of this is hysterical for someone who is an insider. But like all of the other comedies I've mentioned above, you don't need to have studied the Talmud to love Nobody Wants This because everything else in the story – relationships between couples, dysfunctional families and sibling rivalry – is a universal theme. We keep seeing it between the always tempestuous relationship between Joanne and her older sister Morgan (someone give Justine Lupe an Emmy already!) Morgan has tried her best to be supportive of her sister but it clearly chafes that Joanne has managed to finally get into a serious relationship. We're reminded in the third episode just how dysfunctional Joanne and Morgan's family situation was growing up and if anything it's worse now. Joanne's father came out of the closet and basically abandoned them to their mother who is essentially so thoroughly involved as a hippie that she barely even talks to her children something that they are grateful for.

This played out in the third episode where Joanne, while at Shabbot, tried to explain that her family didn't have any traditions and that sending a text for their mother's birthday was the only thing they did. Noah insisted on trying to set up a tradition to celebrate it – mainly because he's feeling less needed at his temple – and it turned out to be a disaster on every level. Her mother wanted the event to end as quickly as possible because she was more interested in spiritual energy then being with her family. Her father was more concerned about whether to text his most recent boyfriend (more likely a hook-up) then anything with his children. And Morgan, who we've thought is envious of what her sister has, showed up with Dr. Andy her new boyfriend. Joanne thought something was sketchy because she'd never heard of him until now.

And she's right to be. As Noah found out Dr. Andy is Morgan's therapist and there's a suggestion they've been dating before the official relationship was terminated. Joanne is understandably horrified by this – it violates every ethical guideline – but she ends up supporting Morgan later when she lets her guard down. "He knows all of the traumatic shit I've been through and he still wants me," Morgan tells Joanne with a vulnerability we haven't seen Morgan show. We want Morgan to happy but we also know how bad this will end.

On the other side of this is Sascha, played by Timothy Simons with such charm and awkwardness that is the mirror opposite of his iconic work on Veep but playing someone far more likable.  Sascha is very much still in love with Jackie but the fact that he kept his burgeoning friendship with Morgan secret all last year set off flares in Jackie that Morgan still doesn't get. The two of them have spent the last couple of episodes trying to rebuild their marriage and they actually seem happy in the most recent episode, until Bina walks in after they've just had sex (something she's unapologetic about) and basically makes it clear she wants another grandchild. It's still not clear where this storyline will end up going after three episode but the viewer is rooting for Sascha like they are all of the other leads in this series. Sascha is the son who can never live up to Noah in the eyes of his family and he knows it – though that may change given how the third episode ended.

Nobody Wants This arrived right when comedy needed it last year as many of the extraordinary comedies that made up the first half of the decade were coming to an end. Reservation Dogs ended in 2023; Somebody Somewhere ended in 2024 and Hacks is about to air its final season in a few weeks' time. (Though its still not considered a comedy by many The Bear is going to air its final season this summer.) We've gotten some incredible new comedies last year, including St. Denis Medical and the awe-inspiring The Studio.  Nobody may want the relationship between Joanne and Noah to work out but we all want great comedies that have a human touch to them and Nobody Wants This is another brilliant entry in this decade's remarkable run, even if you think the Torah is a dance that Jewish people do at weddings.

My score: 4.75 stars.

Ranking Jamie Ding's Run Among The Jeopardy Greats Part 1: Why Eight Was Often Enough on Jeopardy And Where Jamie Compares to Them

 

 

In terms of bringing out great Jeopardy champions Season 42 already has last year beat.

We started the season with Paolo Pasco who won 7 games and over $195,000 before being defeated by Steven Olson who himself would join Paolo in the 2026 Tournament of Champions. Paolo would earn a bye into the semi-finals en route to the most dominant performance by any Jeopardy champion in the Finals of the Tournament of Champions in its new format, running away with three games in spectacular fashion in an extraordinary appearance.

Just before the eligibility requirement for the 2026 Tournament of Champions ended fans were greeted by the arrival of the next Jeopardy super-champion fourteen game winner who won $373,999 during November and then on December 1^st met defeat.

Now a month after the postseason came to an end a new Jeopardy great has entered the list of great Jeopardy players and while he is not yet a super-champion he is quickly entering the discussion of so many that we have been privileged to witness in the post-Trebek Era. As yesterday he managed his eighth victory I feel it is time to discuss his place in Jeopardy lore. Because even his run stops before he gets to double digits – and if he does I will discuss him at great length on Friday  -  Jamie is setting himself up to be a force to be reckoned with. Like Harrison it's impossible to imagine him not getting a bye into the semifinals of the 2027 Tournament of Champions when his run ends and since he's already second in both games won and money so far, its worth talking about him now.

If 11 games is where discussion of super-champion status has become in the post-Trebek era, 8 games is where being considered a truly great Jeopardy player was ever since the five game limit was removed at the start of the 2003-2004 season. Indeed when Tom Kavanaugh won eight games at the start of 2006 it was the third-place total in terms of games won behind David Madden and Ken Jennings until Dan Pawson surpassed two years later.

Between Tom Kavanaugh's run in and Arthur Chu officially taking third place with 11 wins in 2014 only five other players managed to win eight games. I've mentioned some of them in previous articles but for the record here they are again:

 

Dan Pawson, 9 wins $170,902

Tom Nissley, 8 wins, $235,405

Jason Keller, 9 wins, $213,900

Drew Horwood, 8 wins, $138,100

Ben Ingram, 8 wins, $176,534.

 

Dan and Ben both went on to win the Tournament of Champions in 2009 and 2014 respectively and have been invited back for multiple special tournaments multiple times in the years since including the first Jeopardy Invitational Tournament in 2024.  Jamie Ding at this point has won $222,203 which puts him considerably ahead of everyone save for Tom.

Its one of those oddities of gameplay how Jeopardy played out between Arthur Chu ushering in the modern super champion in 2014 and James Holzhauer essentially permanently defining it  in 2019 that there were six players who won eleven games or more but no one who won exactly eight games. We had quite a few seven game winners and Buzzy Cohen managed to win 9 games in 2016 but no one managed exactly eight. In the 2019 Tournament of Champions, the last ever hosted by Alex Trebek Ryan Fenster, Josh Hill and Kyle Jones all won seven games which was tied for second behind Holzhauer in games won.

In the truncated 2019-2020 season as I've written Jeopardy saw three female eight game champions between December of 2019 and February of 2020: Jennifer Quail, Karen Farrell and Mackenzie Jones. Jennifer was the most successful of the three, finishing as 1^st runner up in the 2021 Tournament of Champions and a semi-finalist in the first Jeopardy Invitational Tournament.

In Season 38 we saw three players who managed to win eight games or more: Stephen Webb, Hannah Wilson and Ben Chan. The latter has very quickly become one of the greatest Jeopardy champions of all time finishing a runner-up in the 2024 Tournament of Champions. We saw Isaac Hirsch come up with 9 games in 2024 and we all saw Laura Faddah make a certain kind of unfortunate Jeopardy history.

Since most of the eight day players of note had their moment in the post-Trebek its worth comparing Jamie Ding at this point in his run with them. I'll leave out Laura Faddah because, well, we all know why:

 

Jennifer Quail: $228,800

Karen Farrell: $159,603

Mackenzie Jones: $204,808

Stephen Webb: $184, 881

Hannah Wilson: $229,801

Ben Chan: $227,800

Isaac Hirsch: $195,389

Jamie Ding: $222,203

 

As someone who remembers all of the players on this list as some of his favorites to watch even among the era of super-champions it's hard not to consider Jamie at the level. Some of them were far more dominant in their original runs then Jamie has been to this point (I'm thinking of Hannah and Ben in particular) but they fit the same overall pattern: running away with several games but never by as big a margin as so many super-champions or constantly playing in tense exciting games where they're often fortunate to get a win, usually by being ahead at the end of Double Jeopardy and responding correctly in Final Jeopardy.

Of course Jamie hasn't been at the level of Tom Nissley, who ranks among the all time greats. And while he's played brilliantly in all eight games he's still behind where two of the all time greats were after six games.

 

Larissa Kelly: $222,597

Roger Craig: $230,200.

 

Of course as anyone who's watched Jamie's run knows there's an excellent reasons Jamie's still behind Roger and Larissa on the list of money won in his original run. In his second appearance Jamie had $34,000 at the end of Double Jeopardy and his nearest opponent had only $1600. He went incredibly big and risked $30,067 in Final Jeopardy and responded incorrectly and won just $3933. He learned his lesson after that and has been far more conservative in wagering whenever he has had a runaway ever since (though as you know if you've been watching when he's runaway with a game he hasn't exactly had much room to maneuver since then.)

Jamie Ding has not officially reached super-champion status and indeed his run might very well end tomorrow. It could also end in a week or longer; no one can predict the future certainly not even someone who's been watching Jeopardy all his life. But in an earlier era –  which would be seven years ago – Jeopardy fans would be considering him one of the all-time greats by this point. He's already proven multiple times how great he is and whenever his run ends I know he's made sure that Season 42 keeps on surprising and delighting us with so many great champions already.

Author's Note: Jeopardy, you're killing me. Those of you who read my last piece on Season 42 will remember that I talked about James Hirsh, who I'm confident we will see in the 2027 Tournament of Champions and James Denison, who according to Jeopardy has officially qualified for it. Now here comes Jamie Ding.  I swear to God, if the next player to qualify is Jimmy or Jim I'm just going to throw up my hands and call the show Jim-Pardy until the end of the year.

 

  

The Only Reason Euphoria Exists Is Because Of Whom The Creator's Father Is. Because Sam Levinson's Track Record Before and After Shows He Has No Other Reason to Be Working in Hollywood

 

Ever since Euphoria against all odds and reason has become such a cultural phenomena and is so highly worshipped by a certain faction in America I've been asking myself a question: how did this show ever get greenlit, much less become a series? It wasn't until fairly recently I realized that the answer to the question had been staring me in the face all this time.

The creator of Euphoria as its fan are possibly aware is Sam Levinson. I've been asking myself who Sam Levinson was and why HBO was willing to greenlight a show by him based on his track record prior to it because I've seen some of the movies he's made in the four years since the second season of Euphoria ended – both prior to and after the series debuted in 2019  and they are no better then his flagship show and in many cases are far worse. It wasn't until I saw the credits of one of his films that I realized that Sam is a nepo baby pure and simple.

Sam is the son of Barry Levinson, one of the most incredible forces in Hollywood for more than half a century. 0bviously I'm a fan of his for his work in the creation of Homicide but he's been a force in film and TV for half a century.

He is the writer and director of some of the greatest films in history, from Diner, The Natural and Good Morning Vietnam to his Oscar winning Rain Man as well as Bugsy and the underrated masterpiece Wag The Dog. In the 21^st century he became one of the directors of many Emmy nominated and winning TV movies for HBO, mostly in collaboration with Al Pacino. These include You Don't Know Jack, Phil Spector and Paterno. He also directed two episodes of the Emmy winning miniseries Dopesick and an early Peacock limited series The Calling. He's also produced many other undervalued TV series in connection with Tom Fontana including Copper and most recently Monsieur Spade. Even as we speak he is currently working on three different TV series.

Barry Levinson's films, particularly the ones set in Baltimore, have always been known for their humanity and understatement, an absence of flashiness to them. I love his work for film and TV because he's interested in looking at humanity and the deeper stories.

This is not a trait that his son Sam shares. Indeed Sam Levinson managed to write two films and direct three others before he managed to get his job for Euphoria. Since Euphoria exploded he's written two other films and created another TV series. I've seen a bit of his work since then and its safe to say in none of them does he show the talent of either his father when it comes to storytelling or humanity, nor the subtlety and nuance that one associates with so many of the great writers in TV and film of this past century. Looking at Levinson's work, I keep thinking these are the products of a child who wants to be as good as his parents but basically doesn't have that talent. Yet he continues to get jobs because he's trading off the name of his more famous parent. This is almost certainly true for how his relationship with HBO began and it may well be the only reason Euphoria got greenlit. It has nothing to do with his actual talent.

This piece will by and large not relitigate my issues with Euphoria; my readers know what they are and I'm not going to beat that dead horse. What I will do is discuss some of the films and TV shows I've seen him do in the last few years which it make it crystal clear that Sam Levinson was first coasting on his father's reputation and then on Euphoria's success. Furthermore there's an argument even before Euphoria aired he was a one-trick pony and he didn't come up with anything original even then.

You can't exactly blame him for the flaws of Rogues Gallery his film debut as a screenwriter. A ridiculous action comedy featuring Zach Galifanakis, Adam Scott, Bob Odenkirk, Ving Rhames and Maggie Q all playing government spies with the code names of Tarot Cards (Chariot, Hermit, Magician, etc.) It's basically Hudson Hawk with less control but more imagination. It's completely insane but that's one of its charms.

That's not present at all in Another Happy Day Levenson's directorial debut and by far the closest thing he ever did to his father's work. Set in an estate in Annapolis (not far down the road from Baltimore) we follow Lynn (Ellen Barkin) at a wedding at her parents estate (Ellen Burstyn and George Kennedy) as she deals with a series of very touchy family dynamics. Lynn hopes to have a reunion with her family but her middle son (Ezra Miller in an early role) assaults everyone while her daughter Alice struggles with her demons. Like so many of his father's films the best laid plans of the protagonist quickly self-destruct under the complicated and increasingly angry family dynamics of her siblings.

The film was a box office disaster, making $8,464 its open weekend and as a result very few studios would touch anything Sam did again.  His father eventually came to the rescue letting him co-write the screenplay of one of his next TV movies for HBO The Wizard Of Lies, the story of the rise and fall of Bernie Madoff. The film received four Emmy nominations including Best Actor in a Limited Series or TV movie for Robert DeNiro as Bernie Madoff and Michelle Pfeiffer as his wife Ruth. Sam would receive a WGA nomination for Long form adaptation for TV for it and along with the acclaim he got for the film he was on HBO's radar.

Around this time his second film was greenlit, Assassination Nation. I've seen this…film quite a few times and it's as if Harmony Korine and Lars Von Trier made a high school film only it was somehow more stylish. The film deals with four teenage girls in high school, played by Odessa Young, Abra, Em, Suki Waterhouse and Hari Nef. The movie opens with them in a motel room saying "We may not survive the night.

Here's just one line:

Like, what's the motive behind 300 plus mass shootings every year? There is none. People just burn out, wanna take down their own little universe.

There are so many rape jokes you wonder how many were cut out. There are gunfights, stand-offs, endless nude shots, lots of drugs being done and jokes about child molestation. It features Maude Apatow and Colman Domingo in critical roles. The movie ends with a marching band doing a number down a series of burnt own cars and houses. In other words, it would be a fairly dull episode of Euphoria.

It's too easy to say that the pilot for Euphoria is pretty much cut from the same cloth as Assassination Nation.  I have a feeling, based on seeing this film, that Levenson had an entire franchise planned and when this movie became such a critical and box office disaster he turned it into a TV series. Because the opening two minutes of this movie basically show with a subtitle every single thing that will happen in Euphoria during the first season with the sole exception of Rue's drug addiction and her relationship with her parents.

I have no idea how Sam Levenson pitched Euphoria to HBO and they were willing to buy it. Aside from both he and his factor's connection to the network there's nothing in the pilot much less the first season that meets the metric of what the network was putting out during the 2010s. It's a combination of how simultaneously open-minded and morally depressed Hollywood was in the aftermath of the 2016 election that this show got greenlit at all, much less so well received. I really believe nobody who's written a favorable review of it has seen Assassination Nation, otherwise they would realize that Levenson was essentially ripping off his own material and doing over and over for one season and then a second.

In hindsight the story involving Rue and Ali by far the strongest relationship in the entire series, honestly seems like it belongs in a different show entirely. Hell Colman Domingo's character really doesn't seem like he belongs in the same universe as everything else that's going on in Euphoria. Domingo's performance is far and away the best thing about Euphoria for that very reason; because he's basically untouched by everything that's involving all the other teenagers and their parents Domingo can manage to rise above the lunacy of five year olds with cigarettes, social media erotic posing and penises as far as the eye can see. Ali's conversations with Rue are among the few times you can see anything real among all the flash and illusion.

Many of the other actors and actress have been superb in other shows and films; there's a reason that Jacob Elordi and Sydney Sweeney have become stars and why Maude Apatow and Hunter Schafer are becoming presences in film and TV. But everything on Euphoria is very much in the style of Assassination Nation; there's a lot of style on the surface but there's nothing beneath it.  Of all the dramas that have come out of HBO in the past decade that have been nominated for or won Emmys for Best Drama Euphoria stands apart as the only one that seems to be pure style and image with nothing to say.  Whether that will change after the third – and what is likely to be the final season – remains to be seen but given what Levenson has written in the interim between Seasons 2 and 3, it's not clear if he had anything else to add to the discussion.

Malcolm & Marie a film which debuted in 2021 was essentially a black and white two person show between John David Washington and Zendaya in the title roles. Made for Netflix, it is the story of how a director and his girlfriend's relationship goes into overdrive during a single night. Mostly known for Zendaya's work (she was nominated for multiple awards for Best Actress) it's a more toned down film that one was used to from Levenson at that point.

While the second season of Euphoria was airing Levinson then adapted a Patricia Highsmith novel for Adrian Lyne called Deep Water. Ben Affleck played a  husband who allowed his wife to have affairs in order to avoid divorcing here and then became a prime suspect in the disappearance of her lovers.

This was the first project that Levenson had written as an independent screenplay since The Wizard of Lies and its difficult to blame the flaws of the film as much on him as the director. Lyne was best known in the 1980s and 1990s for a series of erotic thrillers. His best were the Oscar nominated Fatal Attraction and Unfaithful; his most pornographic was 9 1/2 Weeks and somewhere in the middle was Indecent Proposal. This was his first film of any kind in twenty years and by this point he could only get it released in Hulu. Lyne had been a voice of the Zeitgeist in the 1980s; by 2022 he had run out of things to say and its difficult to blame the real difficulties of the film, most notably the age difference between the two leads, on Levinson.

All the blame, however, must go to Levinson on what was his follow-up project to Euphoria, The Idol. Initially one of the most heralded projects of HBO during the spring of 2023 it very quickly became arguably the biggest disaster HBO has had during the 21^st century.  A collaboration between Levinson and the artist The Weekend, it very quickly became clear that it was HBO's Showgirls, without even so much as the camp value.

The reviews were the worst any HBO project had ever received and the network received such horrible press that they actually cancelled the show while it still had an episode left to air. They did so, I should add, during June of 2023 when the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike were devastating the airwaves and viewers were crying out for original programming. No one seemed to mind that they never saw how the series ended.

Levinson turned 41 this January. He has spent much of the last two years writing and then filming the final season of Euphoria which is scheduled to debut in less than a month. So I think before it airs the time has come to ask certain questions about Levinson's abilities as a writer and director.

At this point Levinson has been nominated for two Emmys, both for the second season of Euphoria. The first was producing, the second for co-writing music and lyrics for one of the songs with Zendaya and Labrinth. (Labrinth, it should be noted, has announced his retirement in a very public tweet where among other things he said: "F---- Euphoria). He has never been nominated for writing or directing an episode of the show, though he did win the DGA award for TV for the 'Stand Still Like a Hummingbird' episode of the show and was nominated for other awards for it. To date Euphoria has won 9 Emmys, two for Zendaya and one for Colman Domingo. The overwhelming number of the nominations and wins have been for technical elements, makeup, music, cinematography and costumes. Multiple actors have been nominated for awards in the cast but Levinson has basically been ignored save for the ones I tell you about.

What this tells me as Euphoria is far more respected for its technical aspects and some of the performances than anything Levinson has contributed to it. This is an outlier for great dramas not just for HBO but almost any peak TV drama in the 21^st century. Even the most visual stunning series on HBO, whether they are Game of Thrones, The Last of Us or The White Lotus, tend to get multiple nominations for writing and directing when they are on the air. I will grant you that Euphoria has had to compete against Succession both years it has been eligible but consider what it was up against in the most recent year 2022: Better Call Saul, Ozark, Squid Game, Yellowjackets, Severance & Stranger Things. Those shows were able to get writing and directing nominations (save Yellowjackets to this point) every year they were on the air.  Levenson, who has written and directed every episode, stands alone from all his fellow showrunners in that regard. That's strange for a series that in a short time has become such a part of the cultural conversation'

I take away that while there are fans of the technical aspects and the actors there's not as much respect in the industry for Levenson's part in creating Euphoria. And this show as well as Wizard of Lies are the only works of film and TV that have received a positive critical reception from the industry at all.  And considering the body of his work, there's something very troubling about it.

Assassination Nation and Euphoria have a very exploitative vibe with the latter honestly seemingly more like highly stylized pornography then an actual TV show. Deep Water was a film where the Alliance of Women Journalists nominated it for the award for 'Most Egregious Age Difference between The Leading Man and the Love Interest' which is a different kind of exploitation. The Idol was notorious for just how exploitive the relationship between the characters played by Lily-Rose Deep and The Weeknd was.

It's very difficult for me not to look at Levinson's overall work and see a cross between the films of Larry Clark and Gaspar Noe, two filmmaker who were controversial for graphic nudity and unsimulated sex scenes usually with actors playing characters below the age of consent. While I'm not entirely onboard with so many of the new standards of morality that have emerged in Hollywood in the past decade in the case of both of these filmmakers and quite a few others, I'm more than onboard with the idea of intimacy coordinators and so forth.  One of the reasons I've had so much difficulty watching Euphoria for even a few minutes is that it does seem very much like child pornography and exploitive. There has been a fair amount of discussion about this in Levinson's work, particularly after The Idol, but it doesn't make me any more comfortable with those critics and audiences who still eagerly anticipate the new season of the show.

And unlike filmmakers and TV writers who tend to show growth as they mature almost all of Levenson's work ever since Assassination Nation retains this kind of exploitive feel to it. With the critical exception of the writers behind Game of Thrones, almost every major TV writer associated with HBO during this century has tried to move on to a different subject when they had a successful series, whether it was David Simon or Alan Ball, all the way down to Craig Mazin. For all the bright colors in Levenson's pallet in his film or TV, they all basically are painting the same picture and its far more stylistic than substance.

I'm not sure if at this juncture I'm prepared to write Sam Levinson off as a creative force: he is relatively young and he might very well be able to regain the humanity that was occasionally present in some of his first films. What I do know is that his work for HBO lacks the depth in terms of writing and directing that I've come to see from a network that still remains the gold standard for TV in my eyes. Barry Levinson and his production company did much to help lead that revolution and the father has done much to add to the luster of it in so much of his work for the network. Sam, with his work seems determined to spray graffiti using a substance that is decidedly not aerosol in the 2020s. This is one case where I think the child needs to be more like the father than anything else.

Homicide Rewatch: The Documentary

 

Written by Eric Overmeyer ; story by Tom Fontana, James Yoshimura and Eric Overmeyer

Directed by Barbara Kopple

 

In 1997 when this episode first aired the idea of 'meta' in television was all but non-existent. To be sure Darin Morgan on The X-Files had realized it on an epic scale in his writing, most magnificently with Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' which had aired just a few months earlier. But by and large, television took itself seriously and that was particularly true of drama.

Considering that in the 2000s so much of comedy, first on network TV, then cable and then all through streaming, was about to create the format of the mockumentary and turn it into an art form I find it fascinating that one of the earlies recorded examples of it on TV in any form was 'The Documentary' episode of Homicide. To be sure, it doesn't play by the rules that The Office and Parks & Rec will do later on as the camera is always there and the cast is always referring to it, all in the name of a documentary we may never eventually see.  By contrast Brodie makes it very clear that he's been making a documentary almost entirely without the permission of the members of the unit and it's only on the unusually slow night that is New Year's Eve that he decides to show the detectives what he's been working on.

Brodie has never really gelled as a character in the nearly two seasons he's been on the show but it is possible that for Fontana this was intentional. In this episode Brodie is clearly a stand-in for David Simon who originally wrote the book that inspired the series which everything is based on. Like Simon when he chose to write his book the detectives have treated Brodie as if he were a nuisance and never a member of the squad. Even when he's doing his job he is barely tolerated and all the detectives consider him basically a gadfly. They don't think of him as an obstacle the way they do the bosses but they don't consider him an asset either.

This was true, I should add, of the detectives when Homicide became a series. While some were generous to its accomplishment many of them openly degraded it in terms of quality or how they were played onscreen. Many of them, I should add, would end up being transferred out of the unit in the years that would followed and by the time of the airing of this episode, only one of the detectives Simon had originally written about was still working in Homicide. (There were other factors and the show itself will make it part of the story by the time we get to Season Six.) So watching both Brodie's documentary and the detectives criticizing it, both humorously and with increasing anger as they see themselves portrayed, works very much as a metaphor for the detectives themselves.

But its also a metaphor for how many viewers and NBC itself often looked at the show. The opening credits play over the theme music for the series, they criticize the editing techniques as well as his camerawork and complain the show doesn't have enough action, all criticisms that the network constantly made of the show throughout its original run. Throw in the fact that in the middle of this Bayliss goes on a bathroom break, not long before the show itself cuts to commercial, and its clear just how much fun the writers are having. Which is good, considering just how bleak the season has been so far and how much darker its going to get once the phones start ringing again.

There's also an added layer to this episode which the overwhelming majority of mockumentaries ignore (save The Office): is the workplace documentary any good?  Aside from an in-joke that I won't yet spoil, having seen Brodie's documentary the answer I have is if this has been sold to TV and I knew nothing about going it, I would applaud it solely on its own merits. This opinion, I should add, is held by the fans itself as you'll see below in 'Notes From the Board'.

Part of the reason it stands out comes from the sequence called 'Random Thoughts'. In it all six detectives recite, pretty much verbatim, a memorable five page sequence from Simon's book in which he tells us the exact process that a suspect does every time he has committed a murders. It’s a description pretty much of the process we saw Frank go through in the pilot and that we've seen so many times before. But this time it has an added power as the detectives relate the Miranda warning and in exact detail why the first three points are so pertinent. They make it clear from the start that the detective  is 'a man who is not your friend' and that every suspect who they bring in knows this in their soul at every level going in.  They make it clear they are telling you about your 'sacred Fifth Amendment freedom',  that anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law and that this detective is offering you an attorney, someone that anyone brought to a police station guilty or innocent has to know its in their best interest to have.

It's this monologue, more than anything else, that makes it clear that me that Homicide is not and never will be 'copaganda'. These detectives – particularly Braugher who has rarely sounded more God-like – are essentially telling anyone watching exactly what they should do when they end up taken to the Homicide unit, having committed a crime of violence. They make it clear that they know the rules of engagement, that they are adversaries and that it is their job to convince the suspect that it is in their best interest to waive their rights and incriminate themselves. These scenes in 'The Documentary' might as well be a step-by-step instructional video telling you what is going to happen to anyone brought down to a police station in the dead of night and how the process will play out. And there's no doubt in the final minutes that Pembleton is making it very clear that he thinks the guilty people who confess to him "are ignorance personified." If anyone watched this episode in 1997 than  in the next thirty years committed a murder (in Baltimore or anywhere else) and still decided to waive their rights, I would have a difficult time if later on they argued 'the cops tricked them."

As the sequence plays out all six detectives are superb with their individual lines. Belzer delivers his trademark snark in regard to needed someone 'who is familiar with the Baltimore code of law or at least read the cliff notes."  Diamond contrasts by telling you your best bet is to shut up and then in the next sequence speak up. Melissa Leo is brilliant in the charming beguiling ways that we've seen far too little of in recent years, particularly when she says, "with eyes full of innocence." And the sequence where Meldrick takes the role of interrogator and Pembleton the dumb-eyed suspect is extraordinary because the viewer is so used to Frank being the one who reels the fish in rather than falling for bait.

Its striking to see so many of the detectives unnerved by having their inner secrets aired. Its hysterical in particular seeing Frank unnerved by having his dirty laundry aired, whether it involved joking about overtime being televised or lying about how they reveal how the damaging of a department vehicle was covered up by Frank to avoid paying for fender-bender which he caused and Brodie recording.

Of course the most fun takes meta to a whole new level. Lewis and Kellerman are going to arrest a suspect, who ducks out the back and runs behind the alley where he runs into a crew that is filming a TV show…by Fatima Productions…called Homicide…and Barry Levinson is shooting. Which means Homicide is a fictional show being made in Baltimore but the detectives we know are part of the show Homicide…and everyone's brain explodes after they stop laughing. (This in itself is the ultimate in-joke and I'll get to that below.)

The question that the detectives ask over and over is why Brodie chooses to focus on the murder of Llewlyn Kilduff. (This murder, based on where it is on the board, took place between the end of the Sniper two-parter and The Hat, in terms of the calendar. This is a murder committed by Bennett Jackson who kills his neighbors, sits on his porch swing and confesses without a thought. Pembleton, who is the primary is fine taking the confession but Bayliss wants to know why. We learn that Jackson was a funeral director and that his wife has Alzheimer's. He's had parties with people coming in and out of his home.

The truth is revealed at the end and its grim even by the standards of the show. Jackson has been taking bodies from his funeral home to his house, dressing them up in poses and pretending to have parties. (The writers stop just short of arguing that necrophilia was involved.) His only explanation is: "I was lonely. The Kilduff's didn't understand."

I think there's a meta level to this as well, considering that one of the reasons Homicide struggled for renewal was because the executives wanted more 'life-affirming stories' which went against the nature of what Fontana did. By having this be the public face of the unit – and part of the documentary – Fontana is putting forth that the show is always going to be about the darkest and most ugly parts of human life and those who can't deal with it have to turn away. The fact that Bayliss is painted as the hero – Secor's character was seen as our way into the unit – is also meta as is the fact of the greater lesson we've always known. "You're better off not knowing the why." In this case I'm not sure Bayliss – or the viewer is.

We also get insights into the personal lives of the detectives: we see Howard's secret beau (who Kellerman recognizes but tells only Howard) Giardello having a night on the town (with two women!) and Lewis hanging out with Stivers. This is nicely intercut with Cox showing up in the middle of the documentary saying she was bored when its clear she wanted to see Mike. The scene where we see the two making out is sweet, especially as the two try to decide to start actually dating.  The viewer wants to root for both of them, we do, but we've seen relationships between detectives and ME's. They never end well.

And as an added bonus we finally find out who the Lunch Bandit, who we met last season, is. Brodie figured it out, and while the unit is surprised we really shouldn't be. Of course it's Gaffney has been stealing everybody's food and of course he's been doing it even after becoming a boss. And of course, this is never mentioned again.

But the high point comes at the end with Pembleton giving another monologue that is pure Simon:

You're history. And if I wasn't so busy locking you up, I'd tell you…I'd tell you that after all my years I'm still a little amazed that anyone utters a word in this room. Think about it son. When you came in this room, what did the sign say? Homicide unit, that's right. Who lives in a homicide unit….And what do Homicide detectives do for a living?  You got it bunk. And tonight, you took somebody's life. So when you opened your mouth, what in God's name were you thinking?

But the detectives are not happy when they learn that Brodie has sold this documentary to PBS without their knowledge, much like Simon. Perlich almost manages to justify his stint on Homicide with his monologue in which he makes it very clear that the difference between investigating a murder and making a documentary are essentially the same thing. Both are working towards a greater good.

The episode ends, like so many others, with no resolution. They watch the ball drop and the moment it does the phone starts ringing. Everyone has to go back to work. The detectives go back to investigating murders. Giardello goes back to his office with a troubled look on his face. And Brodie takes the videotape out of the TV and goes to the board, erasing 1996 and writing in 1997. It's a new year but the bodies will keep dropping. Death took a holiday but its back at work.

 

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD: In a poll on Court TV of the 15 greatest episodes of Homicide this episode is ranked 5^th all-time.

 

Inconsistencies: Brodie must be one hell of a documentarian. In the montage sequence where we see so many of the murders that have been committed during Season 4 and Season 5, Brodie seems to have been present not only in episodes where he wasn't called to the crime scene but even before he officially joined the unit. There are scenes from Fire, A Doll's Eyes and Scene of the Crime, all of which took place before Brodie was officially recruited in Hate Crimes. And if you're really paying attention, the majority of the most traumatic murders for the squad –  the ones in The Hat for Lewis and Kellerman, Requiem for Adena for Bayliss and the murders of Kevin Lugo and Raymond Dessassy for Howard and Giardello, Brodie was in the squad room at the time covering different events. (Brodie would refer to this as artistic license.)

As for the shots of the various detectives he did room with Munch, Kellerman and Bayliss. And who knows? Maybe Mary invited Brodie over for dinner.

Foreshadowing: When Munch sees Lewis and Stivers together he tells him: "A word to the wise. Nix the horizontal rumba with a fellow detective." He's wrong about Lewis and Stivers but in the final season…

Brodie said that he sold his documentary to PBS and that Bill Moyers will probably narrate it. In 1998 PBS aired a special in collaboration with Homicide called 'Anatomy of A Homicide'. (For the record, we'll be dealing with that in a while too.)

There's footage of Isabella Hoffman as Megan Russert in this episode but she's never seen in anything we haven't seen before.

"Detective Munch" I think his best line comes after Brodie says he admires Ken Burns. "Ken Burns, the only man to make something more boring than a baseball game. A documentary on baseball." This is Munch being facetious, we've already seen many references that he's an Orioles fan and we'll actually see that play out in a storyline in Season 6.

The event where Kellerman and Lewis chase a suspect onto Homicide and he surrenders is actually based on a real-life event. It’s a fictional adaptation of an event that Richard Belzer would make part of his routine. Security guards would chase a shoplifter where Homicide's cast and crew were filming. The thief mistakenly assumed that the cast were really cops and surrendered himself to the security guard! Clark Johnson was on set when it happened and eventually got tired of recounting the story. (But it's such a good one!)

Hey, Isn't That…Barbara Kopple, the director of this episode, is a famous documentarian best known for Harlan County USA for which she won an Oscar. She also won for American Dream in 1990. Those are just her most famous documentaries. She also directed Wild Man Blues, Woodstock '94, My Generation and Shut Up and Sing (the documentary on the Dixie Chicks) and Miss Sharon Jones! She would also direct episodes of OZ and attempted a foray into fiction film with the 2005 feature Havoc, starring Anne Hathaway. She is still working at age 80.

Melvin Van Peebles, who plays Bennett Jackson,  is most famously known for writing, directing and starring in the Blaxploitation film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, one of the most iconic films ever made. He had worked in short films prior to that and would work in that genre for years for such films as Don't Play us Cheap and the TV miniseries The Sophisticated Gents. He would have small roles as an actor over his career, most famously in the series Sonny Spoon in 1988. Most of his work, I should add, came at the behest of his son Mario who has been a bigger force in TV and films that his father. Van Peebles died in September of 2021 at age 89.

On the Soundtrack: In what is one of the best merges of music and film the Iguanas Boom Boom Boom is used throughout the episode. It is from that we get the line 'Back Page News' that Brodie uses in the title of his documentary.