Homicide Rewatch: Saigon Rose

 

Teleplay by Anya Epstein & David Simon ; story by David Overmeyer

Directed by Nick Gomez

 

was groundbreaking in the ways it dealt with racial issues, even though many of the African-American actors at the time complained it never went as deep as it could have.  This changed immensely in the last two seasons when the writers seemed more willing to look at controversial racial issues in a way it hadn't done before. It started the season taking an uncomfortable look at how the power structure look in a predominantly black city and showing that rich African-Americans could be, at their core, as good at manipulating it as rich white people could.

Now it takes on what was already one of the most polarizing issues in American discourse: affirmative action. And in what is an incredible twist a show that involves so many African-Americans at every level of the police force makes a convincing argument that there are very good reasons against it. That the case at the center of Saigon Rose  is being investigated by the two African-American detectives who've been on the show since the series debuted is all the more daring. They must be confronted with the fact that the system that almost certainly aided in their rise in the department also allowed an officer unfit for the job to get into a position where she would be able to kill a family who trusted her to protect them.

Saigon Rose also shows variations on how Homicide is evolving. The opening moments get us closer to the actual crime then we've been in a long time, perhaps since 'A Doll's Eyes' back in Season Four. We see the Nguyen family and Larry Jones about to sit down for dinner at the title restaurant after they close for the night. The two children Tom and Lucy go back to wash up. Then they hear a sound which sounds like a bang. Then we hear gunshots that seem to go on forever.

Halfway through the episode Lucy and Tom will describe what they remember hearing and just how horrible it was and then we will see the two of them in the immediate aftermath despairing as they try desperately to wake their family from their final repose. It's one of the most devastating scenes in Homicide's entire run and its followed by shots off all the members of the family on slabs in the morgue. Rarely have we seen the reality of what being written up on the board means.

Back in the squad the phone starts ringing. Pembleton picks up the phone. With Bayliss with stomach pain,  Frank asks Meldrick: "In the mood for a multiple homicide?" Interestingly the two previous times Pembleton and Lewis partner the two spent most of the investigation at each other's throats. This time there's none of the combativeness we associate with Frank every time he has to partner with another detective. This isn't an outlier. In another twist during Season Six Frank will work with more different detectives then in any previous season and he's more mellow than we're used to with him. That combativeness is still present on every other level of the job, as we'll see in this episode. (The way he mocks Tim when he comes back to the squad is classic.)

Of course there's mockery. Lewis calls Frank scary as they go into the interrogation room. "I'm the friendly affable type  and you're the terrifying intimidating type." (Frank seems to take that as a compliment.)

The crime scene is one of the bleakest in the show's entire history: we've seen multiple serial killers during the show's run but rarely so many bodies in the same place at once. What's more, it's clear from the start what happened. The Nguyen family were sitting down to dinner and someone broke in to rob the place. Robbery gone wrong is not a crime that we saw very often on procedurals: it's really too simple and its just a matter of finding who pulled the trigger. Even for a show that shows how simple murder is, we've rarely seen one that is just about a robbery. But like 'Bop Gun' which was capable of mining all the drama out of a crime that what at its core, so simple, Saigon Rose manages the same thing albeit a much more frightening scale in terms of the details.

The first detail is that Larry Jones, the one stranger at the table, is  a cop. Immediately afterword Toinette Perry shows up, saying she moonlit as a security guard. Then we hear the fact that in addition to killing the entire family and Larry, the robbers took all the jewelry off the dead bodies along with their wallets and purses, along with emptying the cash register. At some level we know this is how robbers can be but it doesn't make it any less ghoulish. Tom and Lucy are the only ones still alive. Officer Perry says all the right things and does all the right things. Then she starts saying the Nguyen's had a lot of money around the store – 'for the Vietnamese.'

Now it's one thing to have a white detective making racial slurs on anybody, but when Perry starts making references about how 'those people are', we're in uncomfortable territory. When she starts called them 'tight-lipped secretive' and mocking 'their language' it is going to make the most liberal viewer uncomfortable. Lewis plays along and Frank keeps a stoneface.  They're mostly deflected about Perry's offers to help, no doubt because they have notified Larry Jones wife – and we see very quickly he has a toddler and his wife is pregnant.

The truth comes out before the first act is over. During the initial interview Tom and Lucy clearly have talked and neither Frank nor Meldrick can penetrate their fear until Frank says: "if you're scared we can protect you." Lucy tells them that there were two of them. Black. Meldrick assumes that because the two detectives are black they're afraid they'll protect them.  They deflect at first saying they sounded black even though they didn't see them. More importantly they recognized the voice of one: Toinette Perry.

It's not like Homicide is a stranger to cases of cops abusing the badge; that's the overarching storyline of Season Six. But there's a difference between killing a man in the heat of the moment and the cold-blooded execution of five people in the process of robbing a restaurant.  It makes a horrible amount of sense. Jones's gun was not fired, so he recognized Perry let her in, then the other shooter enters and kills everyone. They know this will be a media firestorm: cop killing cop as well as the racial angle not to mention the morale of the department.

Larry Jones moonlighted the last six months to earn extra money for his new family. He and Perry weren't friends: she was complaining about the Nguyens, how prejudiced they were. Its then they learn she was hired because of affirmative action. Mrs. Jones tells them that she had a big chip on her shoulder and for once its not racial. Larry says she was a lousy cop and lazy and her record confirms it.  Excessive absenteeism, handful of complaints, excessive force, insubordination and she failed her initial psych screening. "Unstable, paranoid, borderline personality." Someone from the mayor's office overruled the psych consult.

Pembleton and Lewis instantly argue that this is affirmative action. "We're playing the game," Frank jokes. In addition she has no immediate family, her father has been missing for a year. And to prove the point she has cousin named Curtis paroled after serving for armed robbery. They decide to bring Perry in for an interview, saying the kids said something.

The irony is that Perry is no better at being a suspect in a crime then she is a cop. She walks right into the box not suspecting anything and within a few minutes Frank and Meldrick start picking apart all the flaws in her story, which she can't even really keep straight as she's telling it.  They remind her they said: "Did they ID the shooters?" Then they start making it clear: one of the shooter was a woman, he sounded a lot like Toinette. She keeps trying to deflect, blaming the local crackhead, then Tommy. They point out she rolled up in a squad car despite telling them she was off duty. She says she heard the call but she wasn't in a squad car at  the time. Then she heard the call but then rather than drive down to help the family, she got into uniform and then got the squad car.

By that point Falsone and Bayliss have brought Curtis in and they find a nine millimeter. And now they know all the bullets came from the same gun. Lewis takes a swing at Curtis and Pembleton hangs with Toinette. So for a change it is Lewis who gets to the truth first – and its somehow more horrifying then you'd think.

Toinette came to Curtis. It was going to be on his own. There was to be no shooting, he was just supposed to rob the restaurant and she'd come back later and coverup for him, allowing them to get away with a robbery no violence.  He knocks come in and asks for brown rice. And then Perry comes in takes the gun out, shoots her partner and then everyone else.  And what did they get for their trouble? "Two grand, including the tip jar."

We've seen serial killers and stone cold felons; we've dealt with Luther Mahoney. But there's still something unsettling about how Frank just sits there as Toinette casually tells him the shrink didn't think she looked like a cop but she was clearly jealous of her looks.  Now we learn the truth of how she got on the force. Her daddy made a few calls and got him to call a judge, to get them to overrule the report.

Immediately afterwards Lewis and Pembleton pin her down. Her reaction: "Punk? Always was weak." Watching from the observation room Al looks like he's going to vomit and Frank and Meldrick don't look much better. She instantly tries to pin it on Curtis and Meldrick goes back to him.

The final confrontation between Frank and Toinette is bleak. Toinette knew the Nguyen's. They didn't treat her badly. She was supposed to protect them. And when he she says that even though Curtis killed them she doesn't feel the least bit bad about it. And just to make it clear the depths of her evil, in the basement of her father's house is the father who cleared her to work as a cop in the first place.

Cox watches the whole ordeal in something close to shock. We know that she's used to death but to see an entirely family killed at once has affected her in a way we've never seen to this point. She actually seems upset when Lewis and Pembleton come to her for the autopsy report and seems more upset about the guns that are available in this city then usual. Cox apologizes saying she gets giddy doing an entirely family and gets fixated on the resemblances. For that reason she's getting stewed at the Waterfront which brings us to old business

 Giardello tells Falsone that the state's attorney can't make a case on Georgia Rae for her role in the murders of Molly Bowman or the Collins'.  Paul is understandably pissed as he was on both cases. The real news is that he assumed that after charges were dropped she split to Caymans but he isn't surprised to know she's staying in Baltimore. 'Unfinished business', he says but doesn't elaborate with Gee. Instead he goes to the source.

That leads to one of the most repeated scenes in Homicide history in the clips of "Previously On…" Falsone confronting Kellerman on how Georgia Rae's going to skate who seems not to give a damn about Junior Bunk beating the rap of killing Molly Bowman. Kellerman's casualness is the first sign he really doesn't care about his job anymore. Falsone is pissed that an innocent woman got killed because someone was taking shots at Stivers and he missed. And he's just as pissed that Kellerman really doesn't think he bears any responsible for it because he killed Luther and he doesn't seem disturbed that as a result three kids don't have a mother.

Falsone says he's got two choices. "Spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder or do Georgia Rae like you did her brother." I don't think Falsone has anyway of knowing that's exactly where Kellerman is right now and I honestly don't think it would make a difference. The scene where Kellerman and Falsone come to blows in the hall to the point of pulling their guns on each other may seem over the top in hindsight but it’s the fact that the two of them immediately try to play normal the second they see someone passing that sells it. Their feud is so intense they've forgotten that they were cops and where they are – and that Falsone can immediately pretend everything's fine – is a subtle way of showing they are two sides of the same coin.

It's worth noting Falsone actually tries his theory out on Bayliss when they're trying to pick up Curtis Lambright and Bayliss, who has arrested his share of killer cops, says he doesn't believe it. He tells Falsone that it's over and he should just let it go.  Falsone says it will come back and bite everybody in the ass. Unfortunately Falsone's right.

And its worth noting Kellerman's in agreement with him. When Cox shows up at the Waterfront telling Mike she's thinking of getting out of the profession he says almost casually so is he. Earlier this year when Cox confronted him about the Mahoney shooting he told her to go to hell. Now that he's in a spot he can't find a way out of Juliana is the first person he tells the truth to about everything. Her reaction is he can't do this alone. Kellerman actually seems human, it's clear he wants to take the weight himself. She points out Lewis and Stivers signed off – and so did she. When Kellerman tries to deflect she makes it blunt: "I really hope the grand jury would see it the same way." She pushes him to do the right thin and tell them about the tape.  In the next few episodes we will see him trying to do the right thing. It goes as well as doing the wrong thing does.

Thank God for Gharty and Ballard who spend the day talking about the merits of Baltimore crab. Gharty talking about the primordial desire to eating a crab and Ballard  talking about the merits of Louisiana blue and Alaskan and Puget Sound. This leads to Ballard saying: "These aren't bad." Gharty: "Blasphemy."

Nice to see partners bickering about unimportant stuff and having fun. Which means in typical Homicide fashion something's gonna go wrong. And sure enough while Ballard is looking over some cold case she starts getting dizzy. She nearly died from anaphylactic shock which came from an allergic reaction to shellfish. (You should see Notes for this.) When Gharty learns this he's horrified. When told lots of people live perfectly happy normal lives his reaction makes perfect sense from a Baltimorean. "Define normal!" Ballard is sanguine and takes her partner off the hook. 'Laura Ballard fought felons but was done in by a bad prawn!'

At the end of the episode Frank is sanguine and reflecting on guardian angels and realizing that Toinette Perry was supposed to be the Nguyen's. He has no doubt she is the killer and he can't understand why. And while he never says it he must wonder about a system that would allow a woman with so many pieces missing was allowed to serve alongside him for so long and making everyone who looks like him look bad.

Few shows would go so far in the 1990s. No show would dare go so far now. It's not just because we live in a world where any reasonable discussion about DEI has been labeled racist (and that so many conservatives have managed to roll it back on that guise) but because in 21^st century TV its considered an unqualified good. I don't think anyone outside the people who wrote for Homicide would ever go out of their way in the show's they wrote subsequently to deflect the narrative that racial diversity is anything but a universal good and those who oppose our bigots. There's a certain truth to the nature of the opposition but its because of the biggest critics that civilized debate is impossible.

And I can't help but thing of Shonda Rhimes work in this century in comparison. Olivia Pope would devote herself to dealing with some of the worst people in Washington but the system she thrives in was built on one that allowed a monster like Toinette Perry to slaughter an innocent family. Annalyse Keating might help people get away with murder but she would still be unable to look at a woman who by her actions proves all the worst things about women like her and is as monstrous as any of the rich defendants she helped escaped justice.  The rules of affirmative action are by and large good but as a result of them being bent a woman of one color was allowed to murder a family of a different color and two children will live without parents.

Toinette Perry was black and young…but the only thing she was gifted in was psychopathy.

 

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

Eric Overmeyer based this on a violent incident that took place in his home city of New Orleans.

This episode would receive a nomination for Episodic Drama by the WGA in 1999.

This episode marks the first appearance of Ellen McElduff as Billie Lou, the new bartender at The Waterfront. She's a performance artist who plays double bass topless. In a dark reference to the events, she's moonlighting to make ends meet. We learn in passing that Munch hired her but we won't figure out why until…well, you'll see.

Detective Munch: Gharty brings up Jets quarterback Vinny Testaverde and asks if he thinks he took stuff for his last name. "Take it from Mrs. Munch's little boy, he did!" As he starts giving a debate about how Ballard is a Seattle neighborhood Ballard starts getting dizzy and she collapses soon afterward, in what is a near death experience. Now I know the diagnosis is the shellfish allergy, but wouldn't be funny if someone died listening to Munch's rambles?

The shellfish allergy that brings Ballard to the hospital was inspired by Callie Thorne's own food allergies. Once the writers learned that the frail Thorne couldn't eat a lot of very ordinary foods, they decided to rib her about it. And she was comfortable about it not to sue for a hostile work environment. I know, it was a different time.

On The Soundtrack: On the DVD but not the streaming or cable you will hear Charley Miller's Lullaby Peace Dreams when Bayliss and Falsone pick up Curtis Lambright and The Subdudes 'All The Time in the World' in the final minutes of the episode. It makes less of a difference for this episode then others. For what it's worth David Simon would use much of The Subdudes' music when he was scoring Treme.

The Pitt Season 2 Final Analysis: How This Incredible Show Is Redefining – In All The Best Ways - What Peak TV Should Be

 

I've watched by share of extraordinary TV over my lifetime and a lot of it has come over the past decade. I've noted that drama has begun to radically shift from where it was at the end of the 2010s and that's nowhere more present that on the HBO the network that ushered it in.

Gone are the days when we spent so much time celebrating the prolonged suffering of the one percent in Succession or the bad behavior of Selina Meyer and her staff and all of the awful people in Silicon Valley. Perhaps when the final season of Euphoria debuted one reason it underwhelmed is because the audience no longer yearned for the kind of despair that was its one not during its first two seasons.

Instead we've watched the show that it is the bond between Deb and Ava on Hacks and the wonderful community that assembled on Somebody Somewhere, candidates for two of the greatest shows of this decade. We've looked at the 19^th century struggles of the rich in The Gilded Age with none of the profanity or horrible family dynamics of the Roys but somehow even more dramatic power. Task was a return to the working class roots and urban struggle that made HBO the pinnacle of television and centered it's story on a broken man who somehow managed to emerge whole and restored at the end of the first season. Even the world of genre TV is moving with The Last of Us taking a more human look at dystopia then Westworld or a look at those who served in the ranks in Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

But by far the greatest appeal both critical and in terms of the audience has been the masterclass that is The Pitt a show that has a format we haven't seen in twenty years – taking place in real time in a single shift at a Pittsburgh ER – with a group of characters we haven't seen on this network in particular in far longer.

No one who works at the day shift at The Pitt is a bad person: Scott Gemmill and his writers make this very clear even in the relatively short time we know them each season. They are all competent, skilled professionals fighting an endless battle where the broken medical system is just the tip of an iceberg of the problems that they have to deal with each day. There's the constant closing of hospitals due to cuts in the safety net, there are  patients who can't afford insurance and have to make horrible choices, there are patients who have no respect for the staff, there are patients understandably angry at having to wait hours just to see a doctor. And there's a board that never empties, a bureaucracy that puts everybody through hoops, and a grind that hour by hour wears every one in the staff down to a nub. And then they have to come back tomorrow and do it all over again.

The second season of The Pitt more than first illustrates just how the doctors, nurses, interns and med students have been dealing with this in the past ten months. And the answer, even before we get to the story of Dr. Rabinovitch is basically the same across the board. They're all barely hanging on.

Some are doing better. Whitaker (Gerran Howell) has improved light years from the 'Huckleberry' he was when we first met him. He knows how to handle med students and traumas better then before and he can act like a mentor and say he feels good where he is. Jack Abbott (Shawn Hatosy) is clearly in a better place when we met him at the start of the series; it's clear he found a balance between work and life in a way we haven't before. And in his first day back we see that Langdon (Patrick Ball) really has come out on the other side from where he was when we met him and while he does have doubts he seems to have improved.

Some are doing worse. I don't think its entirely a coincidence that Supriya Ganesh  isn't a regular for Season 3. A constant in both seasons has been that Dr. Mohan cares far too much then what is healthy for any doctor and it was inevitable it would catch up with her. Everything involving the patient who had let his insurance lapse to treat his diabetes was her approach to patients in a microcosm, she tried to do everything for him and he still rejected her advice. When at the end of the shift he came back having clearly hurt himself in order to obtain coverage for his family, it rocked her in a way we've never seen. Combined with the increasingly harsh treatment of Robby, which in this case was practically bullying, its understandable she wouldn't want to keep working here.

With others some are wondering how much the job is taking away from their private lives. The biggest revelation for Mel (Taylor Dearden) was that her sister who she's clearly focused everything on, has more of a social and even a sex life that she does right now. Cassie (Fiona Dourif) is wondering how much the day to day life of the rotation is taking out of her emotionally and how little it is for her to have even a date.  Santos (Isa Briones) remains almost a question mark. She's still as cynical about the job as she was before and over the last ten months she's made it clear her first impressions are the ones she keeps forever. And considering that her end of day therapy is 'getting wasted and doing primal scream therapy as karaoke' – she's definitely going to have problems in future seasons.

You don't need to watch the whole season to know how Robby's dealing with everything. It's clear from the start he's having an existential crisis where he doesn't want to stay and doesn't want to go. And that’s how  we realize where  he is emotionally at the end of the season.

As I've watched Noah Wylie's magnificent work throughout Season 2 the comparison I'm increasingly coming up with is the work of Matthew Fox as Jack Shephard on Lost. Unlike Robby, Jack is very much a competent leader who knows what he's doing but just like him he is unable to delegate responsibility, holds grudges and considers every failure a reflection on him, and increasingly snaps at anyone who isn't making his standards. We still don't know much of Robby's backstory even after two seasons – we only know about the death of a mentor, and we assume the relationship with his godson has gotten worse. We know that he doesn't have much connections with women outside of work and it very much looks like Doc (Jeff Kober) is the only real friend he has, which is why he takes so much time trying to get him to come to the hospital and then spends much of the end of his shift and the night shift trying to get him to take care of the aortic aneurysm that may very well kill him. Near the end of the season he tells Samira that he thought he'd have a wife and two kids in college by now and it hasn't turned out that way. It seems to be something he's saying to goad his colleague but the way he refuses to acknowledge that's it possible for himself right now would indicate how much despair he's in.

Robby has spent the entire shift claiming that he's about to go on a sabbatical for three months, the first vacation he's taken that anyone can remember. But throughout the shift he's acted increasingly erratic, snapping at Dr. Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) his replacement in his absence. Throughout the entire day we see that she's just as good as he is and very capable handling the entire staff. Indeed as the shift progresses its clear she's treated them with greater compassion and empathy then they've had in a while – and Robby almost seems to resent it.

As the day progresses he spends more and more time with each of his friends trying to comfort for them on how good they are at their jobs and find paths forward. Yet simultaneously he treats many of them with hostility as they show their own levels of trauma. When one of them has a panic attack he treats her with no empathy and can barely apologize after Al-Hashimi calls him on it. He refuses to give Dr. Langdon any grace most of the shift even when Al-Hashimi credits him for it. And when Dana (Katherine LaNasa) reacts to the attack of a nurse by sedating a patient, he seems angrier at her for not dealing with her trauma something that Dana, who has been tracking his bad behavior all day immediately calls him on, and he ignores it. By the time his shift is over he's still there dealing with Doc and she tells him to go home. He then lists all the problem that he feels the staff are having and Dana tells him, in frustration, that he can deal with it when he gets back. Finally he says: "What if I don't come back?"

Dana is understandably terrified by this. And it becomes even clear when his motorcycle is hit by an ambulance. Doc gets out of his bed to make it presentable and tells him to take it by the shop. Robby says he needs to leave today. Finally Doc calls him on his bullshit and gets him to admit what he's been denying. He doesn't know if he's going to come back.

The breakdown Robby has is the highpoint of Wylie's performance; its certain this is the episode he's submitting for Emmy consideration. Robby tells his friend he doesn't want to be here anymore, that this ER is the only place he feels that he has some measure of control. Given what we've seen throughout the shift, any competent observer can say if this is what he considers holding it together, then he may be more broken then even he wants to admit.

Its here the comparison between Jack Shephard and Dr. Robby is the clearest. One of the most unforgettable images of Lost is in the Season 3 Finale where a heavily bearded, emotionally broken Jack walking on top of a bridge and saying: "Forgive me." Then there is a car crash (which we later learn is caused because someone saw him on the bridge) and Jack takes this long pause before rushing in to help people out of the wreck and save their lives.

Like Jack (and Doc makes the comparison clear) Robby's entire life is based on fixing things while he himself is incredibly broken. In the final season of Lost Jack confides in Hurley that he actually ended up going back to the island: "Because I was broken…and I thought this place could fix me." The difference is Robby clearly doesn't want to be fixed, despite having far more options. He spends his last shift avoiding the hospital psychiatrist whose spent the last several months trying to get him a therapist. He's fired three of them for reasons that at this point are unclear but we assume that Robby thinks he is beyond help. So much of the second season seems like Robby is saying his final goodbyes to everyone. Only Dana picks up on it and she demands Abbott try to reach him.

And that's exactly what happens. In an episode which Hatosy has submitted for Emmy consideration his Jack Abbott tells Robby why after everything he saw in Afghanistan he never killed himself even after losing his leg and his wife:

Because it comes for all of us. You and I know it more than most, we see it every shift, but we can't let ourselves succumb to it. Yes life can suck. It can be unbearable and brutal and ugly and heartbreaking…but its also beautiful. And hilarious."

He tells Robby that the woman and baby they saved that day would be dead if he wasn't here that day.

Robby acknowledges just how important the work in the hospital is. "But if its killing me…You know how they say a part of you dies when you lose someone you love? I'm not convinced that a part of you doesn't die when you see a fellow human pass. And I've seen so many people die…that I feel its leeching something from my soul…I'm tired of being a role model. I'm tired of feeling I can't get ahead. I'm tired of feeling like I'm drowning."

And then he asks the question he's probably been avoided since the series began. "Am I fucked up?"

And Abbott is honest. "One hundred percent." But he makes it clear that this isn't universal to Robby and that's he gotta find a way to get out of it. "Dance through the darkness."

There's a pause. "Maybe that's a song lyric," Abbott admits which breaks the tension just enough. Then another trauma comes in with his face half blown off. Abbott replies deadpan: "How can you not love this place?" Then he says goodbye with one last mix of warning and fondness. "You are still my emergency contact and I do not want to be contacted."

Driving the point home at the end of the day Langdon finally confronts Robby and he makes it very clear that when he was in rehab he met a lot of guys like Robby but the difference is they accepted they need help. "How can we live up to your standards if you can't? You need help, man!" Robby doesn't respond to this either.

The real sign comes when Robby goes to the Baby Jane Doe and talks to him with comfort. He says he got abandoned to – when I was 8. But I got through all of that. And as he comforts the child and says: "it's going to be okay" he looks at peace for the first time all season. Perhaps Season 3 will begin with the knowledge he's trying to adopt baby Jane Doe. Perhaps we will see he's trying to get help. All I know is I've never been more relieved to know that Wylie's back for Season 3.

Perhaps the most optimistic case to come out of this is Javadi. Its clear by the end of the shift that she is accurately realized just how much this job takes out of every one of the staff psychologically and the importance of mental health. Whitaker argues that she should use this to be her specialty  and she immediately seizes on it. Perhaps in future seasons we will see Javadi taking a role in which she does everything in her power to help everybody on the staff. This will be a huge lift but given what we saw this season in particular she by far may be the most qualified to do it.

Another thing that makes The Pitt so incredibly different from so many other shows over the previous decade is that it depends on positive relationships. We see it in the bond between Langdon and Mel at the end of the day and the way that Santos decides to invite Mel for  a fun night in a wonderful post-credit scenes. And its clear watching all of the characters that they are bonded that while the work environment is harsh, the bonds that are formed are genuine and real in a way I haven't seen on any HBO drama in a long time.

The Pitt deserves to repeat as Outstanding Drama and Best Actor. How many other Emmys it will win is an open question. Plur1bus is looking like a heavy favorite to win either writing or directing for Vince Gilligan, possibly both. And while every member of the supporting cast who was nominated for an Emmy (three in Supporting Actor, four in Supporting Actress) deserved their nomination, it will by necessity split the vote leaving an opening for any actors. We saw this play out just last year with The White Lotus dominating both of these categories. That may very well be why Katherine LaNasa managed to win: as great as she was, going into Emmy night Carrie Coon was the heavy favorite.

My personal favorites among them are Gerran Howell for its incredibly balanced work as Whitaker and Taylor Dearden for her superb job as Mel. And I support Jeff Kober winning Best Guest Actor for his work as Doc. Guest Actress has three exceptional roles but I suspect Shailene Woodley will deservedly win for her work in Paradise.

What I do know is The Pitt is after just two seasons a triumph at every level. Not merely at one of writing, directing or acting, but of the human spirit trying to work in a never ending cycle. For dealing with both our overburdened medical system and mental health in the same series, for looking at the world we live in today not in a way to make political points but just to tell how it plays out. And for setting a gold standard for which dramas in the 21^st century should be going forward, appealing to the better angels of our nature rather than celebrating the worst. Season Three can't come soon enough.

My score (Season 2 overall) 5 stars.

Coalition of the Sane: Bernie Sanders Never Won Anything. The Democrats Should Stop Acting Like He Did

 

As a student of American politics I've always known that as long as political parties have existed there have been battles over what positions to take. These fights involved everything from slavery to economic issues to the rights of the common man to civil rights to our increasing role in international politics. Almost all of these battles were settled on the convention floor and either party would unify behind a candidate that they believed best expressed those issues.

As the presidential primary developed during the 20^th century the voters were increasingly given a choice into which candidates in each political party they thought best embraced the worldview they shared. This sometimes led to schisms in both political parties that led to very public fissures – Goldwater's takeover of the convention over the Republican party regulars in 1964, the battles over the Vietnam War during the 1968 and 1972 election - but during my lifetime (which essentially begins at the 1980 election) these battles were basically all decided well before the conventions took place. If this increasingly led to conventions becoming performative and political theater, it was because both the Democrats and Republicans had agreed on the concept of party unity in which whatever internecine conflicts the candidates have had during the primary season are resolved and you go in with a united front against the opposition until November.

Now to a point I do agree when the media talks about a battle being fought within the Democratic party during the 2026 election cycle, and while they might be inclined to use hyperbole ("battle for the heart and soul of the party", for example) I don't deny that's its there. What I have a problem with, honestly, are the people who are leading the loudest and biggest part of the opposition: the far left wing of the party represented most prominently by Bernie Sanders in the Senate and AOC and 'The Squad' in the House. Because the war that seem determined to wage even if they bring the party down was settled by the voters at least by 2020. And strangely enough the losers seem unwilling to acknowledge the severity of their defeat.

I'm going to bring this up as often as I have to: Bernie Sanders lost the 2016 primary to Hilary Clinton by a considerable margin. He ridiculously overperformed because he was the only real opposition to her and where he did well as in the caucus states where his supporters could organize rather than the primary states where the Democratic base shows up. Sanders would ultimately accept that but there's a good argument none of his supporters ever have. A significant number of those who voted for him in the primary would vote for Trump in the general, despite Sanders fully endorsing Clinton when he conceded and on the campaign trail.

After Trump's upset win understandably the Democrats were demoralized and many people did believe that Trump would have lost if Sanders had been the nominee. The fact that they chose to try and move the party in that direction was in a way the most normal thing the left has ever done. The Democrats had to give a valid consideration to the possibility they'd lost because they had rejected the left-wing of the party.

Sanders would spend the 2018 election trying to fill the gap of party leader. That was also acceptable, with Hilary having lost and essentially out of politics there was  no unifying voice to fill that gap. Sanders then tried to play the role of kingmaker and endorsed many candidates on the Justice Democrats that formed after his defeat. And that's where people should have started to wonder if Sanders was the man for the job. Because for all intents and purposes he was a failure.

Not every candidate who ran as  a Justice Democrats had Sanders' de facto endorsement during the 2018 midterms but many did and the vast majority ended up losing their primaries or their general elections badly. The one that should have made the entire media realize the limit of Sanders' power was Christine Halquist who ran as a Justice Democrat in Bernie's native Vermont.   She lost to the incumbent Republican Phil Scott in what was a landslide losing by nearly 15 percent of the vote while Bernie got 67 percent in his reelection to the Senate outpolling Halquist by over 73,000 votes.

This should have registered to anyone paying attention that only Bernie could win with his platform, even in his own state.  And the point was driven home all the harder during the 2020 primaries where he and fellow progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren were ultimately trounced by the more moderate Joe Biden.

After Biden was elected President in 2020,  combined with the failure of the Justice Democrats to do well in the midterms and that despite the endorsement of so many progressive such as Sanders, Sara Gideon lost reelection in a landslide to incumbent Susan Collins, the message should have been clear to anyone with a functioning brain cell.  Whatever the electorate might think about the Democratic Party as a whole it didn't want the kind of policy that the Bernie-AOC wing embraced. Sanders seems to have accepted that and was willing to work with the Biden administration.

 But critically AOC and her colleagues in the House never have. For whatever reason – perhaps because they've been watching Fox News for too long – they seem to believe they are the true voice of not just the Democrats, but the American people. That the voters had so overwhelming rejected the Justice Democrats that they'd barely been able to find a sixth of the number of candidates to run for office that they had in 2018 should have been an even bigger sign that their politics weren't the kind that most people were willing to run on.

If anything the 2022 midterms, in which the Democrats historically overperformed, more or less confirmed this. No new Justice Democrats were elected to office and one of the ones who had been two years earlier Marie Newman, lost her seat in Congress. The battle was over, the people had made their voices heard repeatedly.

And yet over the 2020s the Justice Democrats have demanded the Democratic Party dance to their tune, despite not having the political power within the base to back it up. It is conceivable that it is because of the disaster that led to Biden being forced to step down in July of 2024 is part of the reason the party establishment continues to listen to them, believing that they need them for support in future elections.

But this falls apart when one considers that by and large progressives have never been supportive of the party unless the candidates meet their needs. During the Mississippi governor race Tate Reeves, the Democratic candidate was in a close race but many on the left rejected him because he was running as a pro-life candidate. To be clear for any Democrat to have a chance to win national office in a deep red state they must by design embrace far more conservative positions then one in a deep blue one. And regardless of Reeves's personal views on the subject, with the Mississippi legislature being a supermajority Republican there is no way he could have passed pro-choice legislation and not had it immediately overridden.

And yet Mississippi progressives essentially sat out the election. To be clear Haley Barbour was one of the most scandal ridden governors in America at the time, having been involved in a welfare corruption scandal that had made national news. There's no question that his policies were actively hurting Mississippians. Yet many progressive truly thought that even living under his governorship, that there was no real difference between the two parties. And as a result Barbour narrowly won reelection.

Those on the left reject all institutions, most notably that of party unity. Many will openly say on social media and the real one that they are fine if Democratic candidates who run for office don't meet their progressive litmus test lose. Many of them will say in other articles that the Republican party is destroying all that America is and yet they've been notably lukewarm about embracing the Democrats even after Trump's reelection. 

And that's the real reason calling this battle 'a civil war' is ridiculous. Because it's not a fight between two evenly matched sides. It's a battle with a fringe group that compared to the national party doesn't have anywhere near the power and influence in either house of Congress, most state legislatures or governorships. Any wins the national party has had in the decade so far have essentially come when the party has gone where the voters are. That has meant, by necessity, going to the center where most of the Democratic base and independents are. During my lifetime it has by far been the biggest keys to our electoral success whether through Clinton's 'Third Way', Howard Dean's 50 state strategy and the kind of neoliberalism Obama preached.

The Bernie-AOC wing, by contrast, has no policy victories to prove people want what its selling and no wins outside the places where their bubbles tend to congregate. They can barely convince Democratic primary voters to come out for them, and they have always lost when they go onto a bigger stage such a statewide race. The electorate at large has overwhelmingly rejected the candidates that stand for the policies Sanders and his colleagues stand for.  And Bernie continues to have no real influence beyond his bubble. Earlier this cycle we saw this play out when a left-leaning candidate he endorsed in a primary for the Utah 1^st district ended up losing in spectacular fashion to the more conservative Ben McAdams.

The only reason the left has any support is because of Harris' defeat in 2024. Yet with the notable exception of Zohran Mamdani's win in NYC and a few primaries in very left-wing districts, the voters have no more support for the Justice Democrats and the far left then they did in 2016. The Democrats won the governorships in Virginia and New Jersey in 2025 by campaigning on economic rather than the social justice issues the left argues for, the overwhelming majority of its special election wins are in places progressives don't get any support and the most likely winners of critical Senate elections have been won by moderates as we saw when James Talarico defeated Jasmine Crockett in a significant victory in Texas and Josh Turek trounced Zack Wahls in Iowa by a bigger majority.  The candidacy of Graham Platner, by contrast, blew up in the left's face and it remains hard to believe Troy Jackson can do any better. And the victories of Annie Andrews in South Carolina and Jamie Davis in Louisiana are states where the Democratic Party is much weaker and have little chance of success.

So that the left continues to think it can hold the Democratic Party hostage is laughable when you consider they have no real leverage and are basically refusing to support a party its never really had much to do with historically.  Essentially their idea of holding the party hostage is putting guns to their own heads – and saying even  if you meet their demands they might still shoot themselves anyway.

I won't argue the party hasn't made its share of mistakes in my lifetime but the biggest one they've made is negotiating with this brand of terrorists. It's been proven time and again they don't need them to win elections and that they can't win them on their own. I acknowledge everything involving Trump has screwed up so much of politics but its worth noting that during this period the Republican have clung to the idea of party unity and won while the Democrats have done a half-assed job  and keep losing. That they keep listening to a side that has no victories to its credit historically as opposed to a side that during the 21^st century alone has multiple ones is basically another sign of our own incompetence, not that the far left wing of the party is correct about knowing what the electorate wants.

And few things could illustrate this point more than a recent State Navigate poll involving the race for governor in Wisconsin. Over the last few weeks the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination is Francesca Hong, the socialist mayor of Milwaukee.  Hong, like most socialists, has a huge approval with young voters in Wisconsin, who are expected to turn out in record numbers. To them the biggest issues are health care, affordability, social issues and ICE. There are thirteen issues that impacted their vote. Hong led on 12 of them, most notably AI data centers and affordability. There's only one she didn't lead in.

Whether or not she can beat the Republican nominee Tom Tiffany.

I've rarely seen the progressive voter encapsulated so perfectly then in this poll. The one thing that is the most important when it comes to an ideal candidate in the eyes of pundits, politicians and election observers is the least important consideration for the most devoted supporters of  Francesca Hong. The fact that the moment Hong became the front runner Wisconsin went on websites started ranking from Toss-Up to Lean Republican will likely do nothing to change the minds of those who are devoted to her. To them, it's not whether you win or lose elected office; it's whether you give the boilerplate progressive stump speech while doing so even if you lose in a landslide. I'll deal with the other ridiculous of this particular way of thinking in regards to Wisconsin later but the fact that the progressive voters really think that a state that went for Trump twice will vote for a far-left candidate in a statewide race demonstrates just how much they're willing to take the Democratic Party off a cliff in the name of ideological purity. It's a lesson that in a swing state the Democrats can't afford to keep losing on even as the left insists on it.

Historically the left has always believed, in the world of Theodore White, that was is morally right is politically sound. And they've made it clear that they would rather lose as many elections as possible then change their mind on the subject.  Since Sanders' arrived they've reached a level of election denialism that rivals anything that happened in 2020: no matter how many times they lose elections, they remain utterly certain that their point of view is wanted by the masses and they have no desire to try and meet anyone, least of all the voters, halfway.

I really do think that after the midterms the Democratic leadership needs to force its fringe members to come to Jesus, win or lose.  They have the upper hand after Platner imploded and they've always had all the cards anyway. The left-wing of the Party has been fighting its Lost Cause since the 2016 Democratic Primary. It's time people like Schumer and Jeffries force terms of surrender on them. They have the majority and as they know, the numbers are what allow you have control. Bernie and his followers never had the numbers at any time and they won't after this election. It's time they came back into the fold and publicly admitted defeat, something they should have learned a long time ago. They've certainly had enough experience with it, even by the standards of Democrats.

Constant Reader (YA) July 2026 When We Were Monsters

 

I'm not the kind of person who thinks in terms of perfect introductory sentences for novels. But Jennifer Niven came up with a hell of a one for When We Were Monster:

The day before we kill Meredith Graffam is calm and blue. Like Massachusetts in summer after the rain. The scent of earth and flower and fresh clean air. Just a perfect sunlit day.

None of us will walk into the forest that night planning to commit murder.

Niven tells in the acknowledgement section that among the authors she grew up loving was Shirley Jackson and its impossible not to read the introduction and not be reminded of Jackson's perfect dialogue that introduced The Haunting of Hill House. "Whatever walked in Hill House, walked alone."

I was familiar with Niven's work long before I read this novel: I was a huge admirer of Holding Up The Universe and All The Bright Places. To say neither of these works, which while dark are far more optimistic, could have prepared me for Monsters is an understatement. Niven herself admits that she grew up loving Gothic novels and couldn't understand how she had never written the kind of book she grew up loving reading.

All of Us Monsters very much takes place in the increasingly growing world of dark academic thrillers. This is a genre that both writers for adults and young adults have been trafficking in for decades. I remember devouring Donna Tartt's debut The Secret History and Joelle Wellington's recent Their Vicious Games with extreme delight and there have been countless books in between. But All of Us Monsters is the first to lean in hard to the idea of true Gothic. It takes place at a prep school called Brighton & Hove that is mostly made up of the very rich and highly accomplished, save for the present company who are all scholarship students. There's no secret society but there's such a thing as Jan Term 'its own elite, slightly nerdier organization of students, past and present. The building where all the action takes place is Moss House, named for the founder and it is surrounded by ten thousand acres of forest that even though its official name is Murton Wood, everyone calls it Murder Wood. And in 1995 a student wandered off the path and died there.

The novel introduces the four people who will kill Graffam and they also fit certain notches:

Effy, the orphan, who doesn't believe in ghosts but is haunted by them.

Isaac, the legacy, who carries the world on his shoulders.

Vanessa, the wallflower, who never thought she belonged.

And Arlo, the prodigal son, who returned to the school he walked away from two years earlier.

So Monsters is not a whodunit, even though it will never tells us which one of these students does kill Meredith Graffam. Therefore you go in knowing what will happen. What it's about is why they kill Meredith Graffam. And honestly by the time the novel is two-thirds over, you've rarely wanted someone to die more.

The story is told from the perspective of two of these four 'killers': Effy and Arlo. They, along with four other students, have been selected for the Visiting Artist series in January. The artist is a best-selling author, Oscar winning actor, director and screenwriter and Tony winner Meredith Graffam. They will be there for three weeks and on completion of the class one of them will be awarded a $15,000 scholarship and a chance to have their work published.

The novel is punctuated by three weeks, each beginning with a pamphlet presumably written by Graffam, telling the students who attend what each is going involve. Needless to say, very little writing is involved even before the decision is made to kill Meredith Greffam.

The only other people besides the students as Moss House are Drea Garcia, Meredith's assistant and the groundskeeper. And I think the best way to describe the action in the novel is through something that occurred to me only after I finished, a subtext I don't know if Niven intended but actually makes the story more fascinating if it's true.

Meredith Graffam's first book was The Hunt. It involves the murder of her best friend Lara  – who was the student who died in the forest in 1995 – and her personal crusade to put the killer behind bars. However six years after the novel was published, new evidence exonerated the man Graffam had for killing Lara Leonard who'd serve eight years for a crime he didn't commit. The public went after her with torches as if she'd personally betrayed them.

Ten years later she emerged with another memoir: The Lie, in which she came clean about her past, documenting every lie she told and the shame of putting an innocent man in prison. That was turned into an off-Broadway show, which became a film, which led to other films and other books and now at 45 she's bigger than ever.

At the start of the book Effy has immense sympathy for Graffam and throughout the novel, even as it becomes incredibly clear that Graffam had no intention of bringing them her for a writing workshop, she keeps trying to excuse what is becoming increasing degrees of dangerous behavior to her students and increasingly exploiting and gaslighting them. For the record all of the students who are still there by the final week are still trying to make excuses for her until its well past too late.

Now I'll ask the question: is society willing to forgive Meredith Graffam for his obvious transgressions because she's a woman? It's certainly clear that none of the students have even considered doubting anything that happened to her all the way through. But would society be as forgiving if Graffam had been a man?

To be clear if Meredith Graffam had been a man (Meredith is actually used as a male name so let's stick with it) I don't think that America would have been willing to keep welcoming him back with open arms and certainly not an elite prep school who doesn't want to have scandal associated with it. I can't imagine a dean of students being willing to allow this happen in an era that involves both MeToo and cancel culture and I can't imagine any female students idolizing 'Meredith' if he had been a man. And the fact that every student is required to sign a NDA – which in the world of corporations is considered a red flag for bad behavior -  would argue that none of them might feel at risk with a female author that they would with a man.  They'd definitely be debating the patriarchy rather than attend voluntarily.

Now consider what Meredith does in their introduction. The eight students assemble by the cliff and Meredith gives the kind of pretentious speech that I've heard given by so many directors and writers that speaks of privilege and pretention. Then she demands they jump off a cliff at the count of three and if they don't she will automatically send them home. I can't imagine this scenario playing out if Jonathan Franzen were to do the same thing.  But all of them do so. One of them, I should mention, nearly drowns. Graffam immediately apologizes and everyone says okay.

After this its clear there's no wi-fi which again I can't imagine any teenage girl would allow to happen if they were around a male writer who had this history. The following day one of the students is gone. "Graffam kicked her ass out." When her assistant says it was more civil than that the student points out she was crying when it happened. Would this be tolerated if a man did this to a teenage girl?

By that point one of the students asks the obvious question:

"Did she deserve a second chance after getting that guy locked up and blaming it on the school?"

This is the explanation a female student gives: "In a world where people are canceled and then never heard from again, she managed to remake herself."

At that point the same student points out that her husband accused her of stealing his original idea and Effy says that he cheated on her as if that's a defense. Then she says that she didn't lie. She believed he was guilty.

I honestly can't see a world where two female students who defend a male writer if they did the exact same thing. Combined with the fact a male student is doing the accusation makes it clear that they've lined up on gender lines.

At this point the electricity starts going out and the heat can be worse. Then that night the power starts back on and every student is awakened by loud music on the second night. At the source of the music they find a handwritten note by Graffam telling them:

Now that I have your attention. In order to improve the creative dynamic of the group, someone else must go. You decide who it should be. After voting, return to your rooms and pack your bags. Set them outside your door. One of you will be gone by morning."

Everyone does it without a second thought. The next day another student is gone. Then Meredith stands on the roof of the building, on a windy cold January day and orders them to express their deepest fear. She says if they don't do it, she will jump – and she does into a snowbank.

After that Effy goes to another room and Meredith finds her:

The magnetic pull of Meredith Graffam is dizzying. She is one of those people who comes with her own thermosphere, as if she could channel the sun itself. She's been through hell. She has battle scars. She's powerful and fierce and intensely human. She does her part to shatter the glass ceiling for women and she's not above giving young writers a chance. In many ways she's who I want to be.

It's that underlined segment that makes it clear why Effy is so willing to forgive every single thing Graffam does. She confides in her about Lara and why they were friends and then talks to her. When asked what to say about her past Graffam openly says:

You can embellish. Lie. Whatever you want to call it. Take the truth and twist it. Improve it. Give it a better ending. Everything that's ever happened to me is material for my work.

She then makes it clear she doesn't want kids and gives a story about being villainized because she's a woman. Then she openly tells Effy how she drugged a producer with Visine that ended up with a producer ending up in the hospital.

"It sounds bad but it's not like anyone died and trust me he deserved it."

Meredith Graffam is confessing to poisoning another human being, which is a crime. Effy just accepts it as what a woman has to do in a male world. I can't imagine any reversal of the genders that any teenager would just blindly accept this.

As the novel continues Meredith Graffam increases the level of danger of the exercise. The second part begins with her demanding all the students stand in the open road while traffic is driving by. By this point one of the five students really does think she's crossed a line and refuses too. He calls all of them reckless and walks toward the fan. Meredith orders her assistant to shut the door and tells him to walk back, even though its January and freezing.

The student never makes it back to the Moss. Graffam then tells him the student is fine and back at home. Immediately after that the landline – there only connection to the outside world  - stops working. At that point Effy realizes just how cut off they are. Not long after they start feeling sick as if they have the flu. And at one point Arlo goes into the study and looks at the Scrabble Board which says RUN NOW.

And at this point I think I've told you all you need to know, save this. Unlike the works of Jackson and so much Gothic the monster is technically human. But by the time the third part is under way it's clear that Meredith Graffam is missing parts of her: compassion, empathy, a conscience, any ability to see the world through any lens but her own. Meredith Graffam truly believes she is the only person in the universe and everyone else is an NPC that she can discard or exploit as she sees fits.

By the time the novel's over you really wonder if Graffam ever had any stories to tell or if all she's been doing is stealing the lives of other people – in many cases, literally – for her own financial and personal gain. To call her insane seems inaccurate; narcissistic is by far the better term. Even in the final pages when she is confronted with all the horrible things she's done, she honestly seems too think that it is the students who have betrayed her.

Perhaps the greatest irony of what happens is that the legend of Meredith Graffam remains unchanged even in death. The novel's epilogue involves all the students returning to Brighton and Hove in the same exact positions that Meredith invited them five years earlier because of a book and a film based on their experiences of that workshop. Its clear by a discussion with a security guard that the legend has remained intact all this time and in a way they have carried on her legacy. One of the last things the book tells us is a letter that Effy has written to Meredith about everything that happened since then. Her words are not much different then much of what Meredith told her. And the final line makes one wonder an uncomfortable possibility.

We all know Meredith Graffam died in the opening pages of When We Were Monsters But how much of her spirit is in those who came back? There was only one monster that night. How many more of them came back?

 

 

 

All You Need To Know About The 2026 Jeopardy Masters

 

The 2025 Jeopardy Masters operated last season on the idea that more was better: more contestants, a more elaborate format, more games. It was a noble idea but flawed from the start – mainly because by inviting the entire roster of finalists of the 2026 Tournament of Champions and Jeopardy Invitational it basically rendered the victories by Nilesh Vinjimuri and Matt Amodio moot. And while it was great to see Brad Rutter finally returning to the Alex Trebek stage for the first time since the Greatest of All Time Tournament in 2020 his quick elimination rendered that advantage.

The result ended up bringing negative feedback for the first time. So the producers decided for this year's Masters a back to basics format. To be sure it took a long time for us to learn when the Masters would happen. It wasn't scheduled for its previous time in May and then it didn't seem to be on the summer lineup for ABC. Fans were assured it would happen.

And so in a decision that has a certain intelligence the 2026 Jeopardy Masters will take place during the last week of August and the first week September, concluding on September 8^th.  Season 43 will premiere the following Monday.

Furthermore the show will air on consecutive days. The first four quarterfinal games will occur August 25-28^th. The last two quarterfinals and the semifinals will air September 1^st-4^th. And the two game final will air on Tuesday September 8^th.

One assumes it will have an identical format to the 2024 Jeopardy Masters.

We know who the first three players will be.

Yogesh Raut, the winner of the 2025 Jeopardy Masters and 2024 Runner-Up

Victoria Groce, winner of the 2024 Jeopardy Masters and 2025 third place finisher.

Juveria Zaheer, second place finisher 2025 Jeopardy Masters.

We also knew going in who the other two players were going to be:

Paolo Pasco, 2026 Tournament of Champions Winner

Andrew He, 2026 Jeopardy Invitational Winner

And the final spot will go to Long Nguyen, the runner-up in this year's JIT.

This is an interesting roster for many reasons. For one thing this will be the first time that two previous winners of  Jeopardy Masters will be facing off. Yogesh and Victoria have fought each other in the last two Jeopardy Masters, coming first or second in either.  The two of them know each other better than anyone else in this tournament.

And as we all know Andrew He is a veteran of the first Jeopardy Masters. In that classic first match up he finished second in the quarterfinals only to James Holzhauer in Match Points and was tied in the semi-finals with Mattea Roach for the third spot. It was only because Mattea managed to win in the tiebreaker that Mattea ended up going to the finals that year ultimately finishing second.

Andrew was also a veteran of the first JIT and has already faced off against Victoria in that inaugural tournament Finals.  In his return to the Jeopardy Invitational this year he managed to defeat his old Masters rival Matt Amodio on his way to the finals and trounced Roger Craig, an established Jeopardy Tournament veteran in winning the JIT. He will be a formidable competitor.

Paolo Pasco, as we already know, has set his own record on his way here. This year he became the first player in the new best of seven format to win the Tournament of Champions finals in three consecutive victories – all of them runaways.  Considering that one of the players he defeated was super-champion Scott Riccardi, he is more then ready for this fight.

Long Nguyen has an interesting battle of his own. Like Juveria Zaheer he was a veteran of the 2023- 2024 Second Chance Tournament. Like her he managed to make it into Champions Wildcard but ended up narrowly losing his quarterfinal match. And like Juveria he showed a certain mettle against players who on paper were stronger, defeating former Jeopardy Master Adriana Harmeyer in a runaway in his quarterfinal victory and taking Andrew to the limit in the deciding match of this year's Invitationals. And he did better in his JIT appearance then Juveria in one critical way: he won a game over Roger Craig.

There are also interesting narratives that could come out of this fight. As of this writing Yogesh Raut is current sixth in all-time Jeopardy winnings with just under $1.1 million. Victoria is as $773,801, currently 10^th all time. A win by Victoria in this tournament would make her the seventh player to cross the million dollar threshold in earnings.

Andrew He is currently 16^th in earnings with $534,365. If he were only to make it to the finals this year he would have a chance to break into the top ten in earnings. To win the Tournament himself would put him ahead of, among others, Mattea Roach who narrowly edged past him in the Inaugural Master. It would be an impressive and subtle revenge.

Paolo Pasco after his first year on Jeopardy has already earned $448,717.  He wouldn't be able to cross the million dollar threshold by winning the $500,000 grand prize but it would put him well into the top ten all time. No matter how this tournament plays out he is certain to move into the top twenty in all-time earnings even if he finished dead last with the $50,000 6^th place total.

And then beneath it all is one of the most fascinating narratives of any Jeopardy Tournament in history – one that given the issues the shows has had with minority contestants over the years is incredible. For the first time in Jeopardy history the tournament will be majority minority with five of the six players being of some kind of Asian descent. Throw in the fact that all the participants are women or people of color, no matter how this tournament plays out it will be a cultural landmark in Jeopardy history. One that is a long time coming for someone who's been watching this show for over 35 years.

I will be back when the Tournament begins with a game by game rundown. I'm looking forward to it. I hope you are too.

 

 

Decision 2026: I'm a Democrat. This is Why I Want Susan Collins to Win - And She Will

 

A decade after the 2016 there comes a point when you really do believe you are numb to every shock imaginable and nothing can surprise you. So in that sense I'm grateful to not just Graham Platner but everyone who was willing to ignore all the red flags that started from the beginning of his campaign and kept with him almost to the bitter end. (We won't talk about the fanbase he still has because thinking about that sends me into a black hole and I need to be cogent for this article.)

The real shock for me came after the New York Times article the weekend before the Maine primaries revealing that three different former girlfriends of Platner had accused him of sexual assault. It didn't come so much from the fact that so many of the progressives who'd endorsed him from Rho Khanna to Bernie Sanders to Elizabeth Warren chose to stand by him even while the vast majority of the Democratic Party and many critical groups were rescinding their endorsements left and right. No, the real shock came when I saw a New Republic article published the day before the primary.

By that point everyone from the Times to the Washington Post to the Atlantic was tearing Platner down in big fat letters in multiple columns. The New Republic stood by Platner – or more to the point made it clear why they were standing by Platner.

They made it clear that regardless of Platner being a flawed candidate (there's a euphemism) the real issue was that Susan Collins could not be allowed to remain in the Senate.  Now I've made it clear I never bought 'the ends justify the means' argument when it was used for the War in Terror and last I checked Susan Collins isn't a  member of Al-Qaeda.

Much of this followed the same argument that is basically standard for any Republican senator or representative for the last decade: they tacitly endorsed the agenda of Donald Trump. First of all that's what party unity is called, something I don't expect the writers who lived in a morality based universe long before Trump came along when it came to politics on either side of the aisle. Second of all, and more importantly, almost every Republican who has served in the House or Senate during the last decade has done practically everything Susan Collins did when it comes to supporting Trump's agenda – and as far as the voters in their states are concerned, that's okay by them.

Everything that could be said about Collins can just as easily be applied to Ted Cruz or Rick Scott or Marco Rubio. They completely and totally supporting Trump's agenda, Democrats railed against them for years and years, and the voters chose to reelect them, in some cases multiple times. Endorsing Trump's agenda may be morally repugnant to all good liberal people but it sure as hell hasn't hurt any of them politically. So objectively saying that Collins has to lose because she's endorsed Trump's agenda may not be the winning argument with voters that the left seems to believe it should be.

The thesis behind that article – the main justification for the need to endorse Platner – was that she had voted for all three of Trump's Supreme Court appointees. The main one brought up, with no sense of self-awareness, was Brett Kavanaugh.

Now I have to tell you arguing that we need a sexual predator in the Senate to balance out the one Collins put on the Supreme Court is an argument nearly as ludicrous as saying that Platner's Nazi tattoo didn't matter because 'Trump has dinner with Nazis'.  One almost wonders if the Democrats now want to win back 'the deplorables' but instead of working class voters are now, as the left often does, taking it to the most extreme level possible. It would be funny if it wasn't being written in the New Republic and if it wasn't something that so many Platner supporters seem to believe was a valid argument even after the assault charges came out.

Hard as it is to look at this objectively, need I remind you that Collins confirmed all of Trump's appointees during his first term. She was up for reelection in 2020 against Sara Gideon. That argument was waged long before Amy Comey Barrett's was nominated and Gideon doubled down on it.. Collins defeated Gideon by eight points.

And for the record Collins wasn't even the only Republican female Senator who did exactly the same thing. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Shelly Moore Capito of West Virginia. So did Deb Fischer of Nebraska. All of them were women, all of them voted for Kavanaugh, all of them won reelection. Ernst and Capito did so in 2020; Fischer was reelected in 2018 and again in 2024.

By contrast Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Claire McCaskill of Missouri voted against both Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch's confirmation. They stood up for women – and the following November the voters of their states turned them out for reelection by a significant margin. McCaskill, it's worth noting, actually said the spectacle around Kavanaugh's nomination was a factor in her losing reelection.

You might say they were profiles in courage. I'd say we needed red state Democrats more than we need Susan Collins out of Maine. Heitkamp was basically as much a centrist Democrat and Collins was a moderate Republican. There are those who would've called Heitkamp a DINO just as they did Kristyn Sinema and Joe Manchin during Biden's term. I'd say if you're the kind of person who thinks a moderate Democrat is as bad as any Republican, you're part of the reason the Democrats are having so much trouble getting the majority back in the Senate. And since you're not having any luck beating Republicans by shouting how evil they are for supporting Trump then clearly you're AOC. (By the way if you ever try running for Senate, don't expect to get many votes in Long Island or Upstate New York. That area isn't friendly to the left.)

As I've argued before the far left's takeover of the Democratic Party is greatly exaggerated. What isn't is how the red state Democrats which existed because of moderates winning in conservative states, dried up entirely after the 2024 election. Part of the reason was because the left had done such a good job labeled Joe Manchin a DINO that he did leave the party as did Krysten Sinema who became an Independent. Both of them chose not to run again in 2024 and as result Jim Justice took Manchin's seat in West Virginia and we lost Jon Tester in Montana and Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Manchin made it clear that the left wing of the party was driving people like him out of it. To the left that's a plus.

The problem is – and Chuck Schumer knows this better than anyone else in the Democrats – is that there have been no Democrats taking their place in the Senate to take their place. And since rational people know that they can't turn DC and Puerto Rico into states unless they have a Democratic majority in the Senate the only way to correct the balance is elect more Democrats in states that are unfriendly to progressives but might be friendly to centrists.

Now the Bernie Sanders-Elizabeth Warren wing of the party knows full well it for the last decade it has not been able to get a single AOC type Democrat elected to the Senate. Their endorsements had been worthless for Sara Gideon and that was a state that should have friendlier to them. And while Annie Andrews and Jamie Davis might swell the hearts of left-wing voters in some places, their chances of winning in South Carolina and Louisiana were slim to none. The DNC had been willing to try and win with them and they hadn't. And as I've indicated they spent much of 2025 trying to recruit candidate in many states where it had been proven they couldn't win.

They needed a win at any cost. And they chose Platner. Some may want to blame Schumer for keeping other less toxic progressive candidates out of the race in favor of Janet Mills but that's based on the concept voters want progressive candidates in the first place, something that multiple election cycles – starting with Sanders' primary defeat in 2016 – have been making it increasingly abundantly clear to anyone who isn't a progressive.

 The left wing of the party believed solely because of Platner's early polling numbers and appearances before crowds that this would be their guy. It was entirely based on crowds for Democratic primaries. It was done by the typical progressive campaign ideologue who had never been to Maine but naturally assumed the basic ideas that the progressive way was the one size fits all matter. An 'authentic progressive' would win, which makes you wonder was the reason Sanders lost the Democratic primaries for President twice was because the voters didn't think he was authentic enough?

 He didn't do a sufficient vetting process, saying America doesn't want candidates in a vat and when recently interviewed by the Times makes it very clear that they his appeal at rallies before he'd even won the primary was the end of the discussion. Even his half-hearted apology is based on the failures of the Democrats saying the conventional approach is failing. He conveniently omits that the progressive approach isn't exactly working either.

This is the belief system of the typical progressive who believes what works in a Democratic primary will de facto work in the general election. The Justice Democrats first election cycle alone proved that didn't work at a Congressional level in all but four districts. The only times they managed to get that far was when in 2018 Ben Jealous and Christine Halquist in Maryland and Vermont, respectively won the Democratic primary for governor and both lost to Republican incumbents in landslides. Bernie easily won reelection in 2018 but Halquist couldn't get forty percent of the vote against Phil Scott. 

If in Vermont the voters made it clear they didn't want someone with Bernie's 2016 platform as their governor, it should have told him at least how little the rest of America wanted it. The fact Bernie's own state had rejected his candidate should have been the official notice to anyone with eyes how little influence he had at any level. Instead he and the left wing of the Democrats continue to insist the people want what the left is selling.

That's the difference between leadership like Schumer and the left wing that Sanders and Warren represent. Schumer has to look at things like the results of general elections, margins of defeat and which parts of the primary campaign didn't work in the general. Sanders and Warren will argue based on nebulous things that have to do with their belief that what is morally right is politically sound.

That this logic has failed every time they use that to campaign against MAGA – and hasn't worked to defeat Susan Collins six years ago – has never stopped them from arguing: "If it were the right kind of progressive, we'd win." This is the same tone they use when they say that Venezuela and Cuba aren't 'really socialist countries'. Only people who already believe you will listen. Clearly the voters in general elections don't – and if they thought Platner was 'the right kind of progressive', I'd  really hate to see what they think the wrong kind was.

That's why, even if Platner had not been as flawed a candidate as he was, I still believe he would have lost against Susan Collins. The strategy behind his campaign was very much a left-wing one: far more interested in mobilizing progressive supporters in the primary on the belief they'd all turn out in the general. Given that Platner had already made it pretty clear that he would not move towards the center and that many of his supporters were perfectly fine if more centrist Democrats rejected him, this would have given more of the center to Collins who has been winning them for twenty years.

And that's the real reason I want her to win. All of my previous entries have been endorsing centrist Democrats as well as Dan Osborn who's trying to build a collation as an independent. I will endorse at least one Republican this cycle, maybe two and the ones I do will follow this centrist ideology.

The Republican party is very low on centrists, to say the least. I believe its conceivable there are more of them that can be expected but the only two that identify that way as Collins and Alaska's Lisa Murkowski. Both have incurred the wrath of this administration more than a few times by bucking his agenda. Murkowski has done so more frequently but earlier this month Collins voted in favor of the War Powers Act in a gesture against the conflict in Iran. Cynics will say she did this symbolically to help win reelection. I'd remind them everything involving this act is pure symbolism as Trump has made it clear he'd veto it if it landed on his desk.

To put it very mildly we need centrists in both parties. The last decade has caused many of them to retire in the GOP while many of the Democrats have essentially been pushed out. Both sides are very clear they view centrists as betrayers of the cause, essentially arguing that bipartisanship is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. I didn't agree with it in when McConnell did it when he took over the Senate leadership and said their goal was to make Obama a one-term President; I sure as hell don't agree with it when my party has turned on John Fetterman because he has acknowledged that Trump won the 2024 election.

More to the point if there were Republicans I think deserve to lose reelection Collins would be at the bottom of the list. I was fine trying to defeat Cruz and Scott and Josh Hawley because I find them more despicable as politicians. And I've no doubt there are far more Republican Senators who deserve to lose more. The reason the left chooses Collins for their punching bag is because she's in a state that has been voting Democratic for decades and by their logic, no Democrat should be allowed to hold in such an office. (That there are increasingly fewer 'safe states' for Democrats at any level is another in a long line of realities progressives ignore at their peril – but that Democrats can't.)

All of their arguments against Collins's being an enemy of the people are just straw men arguments because she reminds them that yes Republicans do live and vote in blue states and can in fact be elected if they embrace t center. Progressives don't like being reminded of their weaknesses – which is odd because electorally they don't really have any benefits that I've seen in the last ten years.

And now I have to end this piece with my fellow beleaguered Democrats. The ones who cling to hope against all evidence to the contrary. Who still believe with Platner gone from the ticker the Democrats still might be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat despite this very public implosion.

To which I can only say: no. Even if by some miracle those fanatics who somehow believe Platner was framed by the establishment decide to vote in this election anyway Collins will still win easily. And the reason I know that is because Troy Jackson is now the nominee.

I will acknowledge that Jackson has some pluses but they won't help him with the right people. He first ran for office as a Republican, was elected to the Maine state senate in 2002 and became a Democrat in 2004. You know there isn't a progressive in the world who wouldn't find that as suspect even before Platner.

He also has a pretty lousy track record running for national office. In 2014 he ran in the Democratic primary in the 2^nd District and lost by 51 percent of the vote. He was a Sanders superdelegate at the 2016 convention and left in 2024. In March of 2025 he announced he was running for governor as a Democrat. He claimed he was running on behalf of the working class Mainers who 'feel under attack from billionaires, special interests and their friends." He was endorsed by Bernie and Rho Khanna for the governor's race, like Platner was in the Senate. In fact the two of them endorsed each other.

Platner's endorsement for the record wasn't worth much. Jackson finished third in the primary with 29 percent of the vote.

So to recap the Democrats are endorsing a candidate who had the support of the same people as Platner, but who's already been rejected by the voters of Maine less than a month ago. He has the exact same positions as Platner on everything included calling Gaza a genocide, called for the abolition of ICE and only chose to distance himself from Platner after the rape charges came out. And just to drive the point home Katz considered going to him as a candidate before thinking the man with the Nazi tattoo was a better choice.

And the Maine Democrats just blessed him with their nomination.

Leave it to the progressives. Only they could make the same mistake twice in the same state in the same election cycle.

Susan Collins should be scared. For five minutes.