Decision 2026: John Sununu Is The Kind of Republican America Needs. That's Just as True Today As It Was 20 years ago

 

 

There's this belief among academics, pundits and certain people on social media that because a state or region of the country has been Democratic or Republican for the past twenty or thirty years in Presidential politics or at a Congressional level that it will always be that way. This is how many on the left have viewed the South in my lifetime and its how many on the right have viewed New England. Consequently during this period the opposing party have done little to do disturb the status quo.

But it's becoming clear in this election cycle that the Democrats are going to make some real inroads in Dixie at a Senate level and perhaps even a few governorships. And if the Republicans want to move forward in a post-Trump America they'd do well to make similar efforts in New England, which honestly has been far friendlier to them for longer.

This may seem difficult to believe considering that New England not only has by far some of the most far-left Senators and Congressman in the nation such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders but the Republican Party has  no representatives at all in New England and only one Senator Susan Collins who is under immense fire for reelection this cycle and very well might not survive it.

And yet over the same era that Donald Trump has taken over much of the Republican Party New England has had Republican Governors win multiple elections during that same period. Charlie Baker would be elected governor of Massachusetts in 2014 and win reelection the same year that Elizabeth Warren easily won reelection to the Senate. Bernie Sanders became a hero to the left in 2016 the year that Phil Scott was elected governor of Vermont and has twice won reelection in years that Bernie was running for the Senate. (Vermont has two year terms for governor and Scott is heavily favored to win his fifth term this cycle.) And this election cycle with the Democrats looking increasingly like they may take the Senate Majority Democrats in New Hampshire are sounding the alarm that they might lose a Senate seat they've held for a while.

New Hampshire is by far more conservative then its neighbors in New England and actually had a Republican win election to the Senate as recently as 2010. Kelly Ayotte was the attorney general of New Hampshire who resigned in 2009 to explore a run for the Senate. Despite never having run for office she narrowly won the primary and the general election with nearly 60 percent of the vote. In doing so she succeeded Judd Gregg, another Republican who had served the people of New Hampshire for three terms.

Ayotte was running for reelection in 2016 against the incumbent Democratic governor Maggie Hassan. As early as February Americans For Prosperity made it clear they would not support her because  support for the Clean Power Act. When the Access Hollywood tape came out in October of that year Ayotte made it clear that as a mother and prosecutor she wouldn't vote for Trump and would write in Mike Pence for President. This almost certainly cost her reelection as Maggie Hassan would win election to the Senate by a little more than 1000 votes. In 2022 Hassan became the first Democrat to win reelection to that particular seat.

During that election Republican Chris Sununu would be elected governor. The Sununu family is a significant name in American politicians. John H. Sununu was once governor of New Hampshire from 1983 to 1989 and was George H.W. Bush's first White House Chief of Staff. John Edward Sununu, his son, would represent New Hampshire in the House from 1997 to 2003 and then be elected to the Senate in 2002. 38 at the time he was the youngest man elected to the Senate and he lost to Jeanne Shaheen for reelection in 2008.

By the standards of 1990s and 2000s politics John Sununu was one of the most conservative men in Congress, voting to impeach Bill Clinton, opposing abortion, favoring the death penalty and receiving a 100 percent rating from Citizens Against Government Waste. However he had a streak of independence, choosing to join the Democrats in filibustering the PATRIOT ACT and W's energy bill and voting against a constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage and restrictions of trade with Cuba. He was always more of a fiscal conservative then a social one while in Congress. He was also the co-sponsor of the Clean Air Planning Act. And he was always popular in New Hampshire: in 2008 he outperformed John McCain in New Hampshire at a state level

Jeanne Shaheen has served in the Senate ever since but in March of 2025 she announced that she would not seek reelection, having just become the oldest woman in the Senate. By this point Ayotte had won the governorship in New Hampshire after Chris Sununu chose not to seek a fifth term. Both Vermont and New Hampshire were one of two Republican governorships up for reelection in a state Biden had carried in 2020. While the race was close by 2024 standard  Ayotte beat the Democratic candidate by nearly 9.3 percent and running over Trump by 40,000 votes. With Harris getting 418,000 votes and Ayotte getting 436,000 it's clear that ticket-splitting is alive and well in New England.

New Hampshire Republicans had tried to recruit Chris Sununu to run for Senate against Shaheen in 2020 and Maggie Hassan in 2022. In 2026 they had better luck convincing his big brother to run for his old seat after Shaheen stepped down. This was enough to send New Hampshire Democrats to send up warning flares to the National Party.

With good reason. Ever since March Sununu has been polling close to the Democratic candidate Chris Pappas, usually within the margin of error and in some cases ahead of him by a slight margin.

Pappas has solid routes in New Hampshire, having been elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives right out of College, serving two terms there before being elected treasurer of Hillsborough Country before being defeated in 2010, being elected to the New Hampshire Executive Council and serving three consecutive terms there. He had been floated for Congress, the Senate and the governor ship and in 2018 he ran for the 1^st district in a crowded Democratic primary, then the general in the Blue Wave of 2018. He was reelected three consecutive times (defeating Karoline Leavitt in 2022).

As John Sununu was as a Republican Pappas was ranked the most bipartisan Democrat in 2023. He was one of six democrats to vote against the legalization of Cannabis at a federal level in 2020, criticized Biden's plan to cancel student debt and in 2025 was one of 46 House Democrats to vote for the Laken Riley Act. He's also in favor of Israel's right to defend himself and while he is in favor or Palestinian self-determination, he joined 22 of his fellow Democrats in favor of censuring prominent progressive Rashida Tlaib in 2023.

So even though he would be keeping in with the spirit of bipartisanship that marks both parties in New Hampshire he faced a challenge from his left while running for the Democratic nomination from Karishma Manzur who challenged Pappas for being two centrist while in Congress. And as was the case with the overwhelming number of left-wing challengers in the Democratic primaries Pappas easily defeated the challenger with 64 .6 percent of the vote to Manzur's 33.2,

By that point John Sununu was the heavy favorite to try and win the seat he'd lost back in 2008. He faced a challenge from Scott Brown, best known for defeating Martha Coakley in a 2010 election to fill out the term of Ted Kennedy before losing to Elizabeth Warren when he ran for election in his own right. Brown would later try to run against Jeanne Shaheen in 2014. Brown narrowly lost to Shaheen in that election and served as Ambassador to Samoa and New Zealand in Trump's first term.

Its telling that the Republican primary voters, when given a choice between their more recent history and more distant one, chose to go back to a pre-Trump era when they overwhelmingly chose John E. Sununu. 154,000 voters cast their ballots in the Democratic primary and 110,000 in the Republican one but Pappas got 65.2 percent of the vote in the former and Sununu received nearly 69 percent in the latter. Small wonder the Democrats are concerned about how well Sununu will do in the general.

It might seem counterintuitive that in a post-Trump America the GOP must go backwards rather then forward. But it's really no different then the Democratic strategy in this election: in both cases the parties must head towards the center. Sununu is far more experienced at doing so then Pappas is (even though both have impressive records for bipartisanship) but there's a good argument that Sununu is more in touch with the electorate of his state then Pappas is. He will definitely be helped by the fact that Ayotte is easily favored to win reelection as governor – though, as I've noted, this is a state noting for ticket splitting.

New Hampshire, very much like the rest of New England, has a longer history of being Republican then it ever has been Democrat. It was in the GOP's camp ever since the Party was founded, didn't go for FDR in his first term and barely did in his second. It only went Democrat in 1960 because JFK was on the ballot and went right back to the Republicans in 1968. As recently as 2000 it went Republican for George W. Bush and there's an argument that the only reason it went Democrat is because New Englander John Kerry was running as a Democrat. Even then he only carried it by a little more then 1 percent. As recently as 2004 both its Senators were Republican. It wasn't until 2016 that it had two Democratic Senators for only the second time since the Civil War.

The Republican governors of New England have always had a greater independence from Trump in large part because they are able to win in states he has been unable to do so in his three runs for the White House.  While the President has done much to increase the margins of the vote for himself that has rarely worked out as well for the candidates who have run with his endorsement and while they have made some gains in swing states at a Senatorial level (most notably in Pennsylvania) that obstacle is just as much in place the decade after he became the voice of the party as it was before.  While he was in power that wasn't an issue for the Republicans. With him a lame duck, it's about to come back.

It may be impossible at this juncture to see a Republican party where its candidates are becoming more centrist rather then even further to the right.  They may be forced to do so after this midterms and the 2028 elections but that prospect is uncertain at best. If however they can do so it will be in large part if John Sununu can manage to win in New Hampshire.  As someone who has never once been associated with Trump at any time in his political career and who seems to have no interest in being associated with him as he attempts to rebuild it there's something very attractive about that in a Republican right now.

Whether he would fit in a Senate that is under Democratic control (as is increasingly likely even if he were to win) will be hard to measure. But America needs centrists and bipartisanship far more than it ever has and a man who was one of the models for it during his original tenure in the Senate would be more than willing to show the way. Both Pappas and Sununu would be invaluable in the Senate for next several years but I think we need Republicans like Sununu far more and its why I'm more than willing to endorse him to win this cycle. He was the right man for his era 24 years ago; he's just as right for it now.

 

Jeopardy 2026 Masters Recap: Conclusion

 

 

On Tuesday we reached the culmination, as Alex would eloquently put it, of this year's Masters. For Yogesh Raut and Victoria Groce this was all too familiar territory as they had each been in the finals for the last two years. For Andrew it was uncharted territory as he entered them for the first time.

As viewers know this guarantees all three players a return to the 2027 Jeopardy Masters, which for Andrew, who just missed that opportunity in the very first one, is a big deal for him. However it put him in territory that Yogesh and Victoria were all too familiar with: a two game total point affair with the winner going home with $500,000 and the Trebek trophy. Alex himself  had once stated, the player in a distant third at the end of the first game often came back to win the whole thing. Victoria came to learn that lesson all too well last year as she went from having a lead at the end of Game 1 to ending up losing to Yogesh and finishing in third behind Juveria.

In both the quarterfinals and the semi-finals Victoria had been in first on the leaderboard but that had been just as true the last year. More importantly in the last several games momentum seemed to be heading in Andrew's direction. Indeed in the semifinals he'd come from behind in the last two games he'd place to jump past Yogesh and finish second on the leaderboard. And Andrew had a long history of beating Jeopardy Masters in the past, something that this year alone last year's Masters Matt Amodio and Roger Craig had already learned and that Juveria Zaheer had witnessed in the last quarterfinal match.

How was it going to play out?

 

Game 1

In the Jeopardy round Yogesh got off to a lead early and had 7200 points. So when Victoria found the Daily Double late in the round in the category A TRIP TO THE VALLEY she really had little choice but to bet the 2400 points she had. It didn't go well:

It's home to the Timbisha Shoshone Valley at Furnace Creek.

She clearly guessed: "What is Sun Valley?" It was actually Death Valley. (For the record I knew this at home.) Victoria actually went into the red briefly before finished the Jeopardy round at 400 points. Andrew was next with 3400. Yogesh was in the lead with 7800.

In Double Jeopardy Victoria began to turn things around quickly. She was helped when she found the first Daily Double in the category that always appears in these tournaments and that Masters all dread: BEFORE, DURING & AFTER. Victoria had prominently not picked from that category first but when she got there with 5200 points she wagered 1200. Trust me, she was about to earn them:

Innate response urging a choice of melee or escape into a buzzy Rimsky-Korsakov piece with a can of albacore.

"What is fight of Flight of the Bumblebee Tuna?" She really deserved to get up to 6400 points.

Yogesh continued to the build his lead but Victoria got to the other Daily Double in THE PRE-MUSKETEERS. She had 8000 points to Yogesh's 15,400. This time she felt she had to bet everything:

With a name meaning 'new soldier' these elite Ottoman troops were early adopters of gunpowder weapons.

Victoria took a long pause: Who are the janissaries?"  She went into the lead with 16,000.

The rest of the round was a back and forth between Yogesh and Victoria for the lead with Andrew making gains on a few errors Victoria made in BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER. Yogesh finished with a narrow lead over Victoria: 19,800 points to Victoria' 18,800 while Andrew was in third with 7800.

The Final Jeopardy category for Game 1  was THE INTERNET.

In the wake of a recent tech boom this territory now gets nearly 50 percent of its revenue from domain names sales.

All three knew the correct territory: "What is Anguilla?" It's domain abbreviation is .ai and those two letters have become very important in the last few years. (I wrote down what was the Caymans.)

Andrew bet 7777, putting him at 15,577 points. Victoria bet nothing. Yogesh bet 10,000 points.

At the end of Game 1 Yogesh led with 29,200 points to Victoria's 18,800 and Andrew's 15,577. It was within reach for all three.

 

Game 2

In the Jeopardy round of Game 2 Victoria got to the Daily Double on the third clue and bet the 1000 points she had in THE 20^TH CENTURY:

The breakup of Czechoslovakia into Slovakia and the Czech Republic is called this, playing on the name of a 1989 event.

She knew it was the Velvet Divorce and doubled her score. It would be another back and forth between Victoria and Yogesh for the lead and at the end of the round she had it with 6200 points to Yogesh's 5600 and Andrew's 1400.

In Double Jeopardy Victoria maintained her lead throughout the round. Andrew got his best chance when he found the first Daily Double in QUASI-RELATED PAIRS. This is another old standard for Jeopardy tournaments but its clues were even tougher then usual. Andrew had no choice but to bet the 4600 points he had but it was a killer:

'A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning' Poet and wiped with a swifter."

Andrew was stumped (as was I). The poet is John Donne. So what's the quasi-related pair: Donne and dusted.

Andrew was pretty much out of it for the rest of the game. Yogesh managed to gain some ground and found the last  Daily Double in the entire tournament in FOE-POURRI. He had 10,000 points so he decided to 'split it down the middle' and bet 5000:

In 1959 his scathing review of B.F. Skinner's 'Verbal Behavior' was a seminal moment in cognitive science.

He figured it out: "Who was Chomsky?"

The lead kept going back and forth and because an incorrect response by Yogesh was ruled correct at the end of the Round he had the narrowest of leads going into Final Jeopardy 19,000 points to Victoria's 18,600. Andrew had just 2800.

The tournament came down to Final Jeopardy. The category was SUPREME COURT DECISIONS:

This 1944 decision frequently sites Hirabayashi v. United States decided 18 months earlier and upholding a conviction for violating curfew.

Andrew chose not to take it seriously. What is Ken vs. Us at Wrestle?' He was planning to right WrestleMania. (I think we'd all like to see that.) It cost Andrew everything. And since he was in third place at the end of Game 1 that was where he would finish.

Victoria was next: She had the right idea: "What is Takamatsu vs. U.S." She wagered 4400. That left her with 14,200. Her two game total was now 33,000 points.

It all came down to Yogesh. He had: "What is Korematsu?" And that was the right name associated with the infamous decision to intern the Japanese during WWII. He wagered 7201. That gave him 26,201. His two game total was now 55,401 and as a result he deservedly won his second consecutive Jeopardy Masters earning another $500,000 and a charitable donation of $100,000 to Direct Relief. Victoria finished in second and received another $250,000. Andrew received $150,000.

We will see all three of them in next year's Masters and all deserved it.

 

SUMMARY

 

First let's look and see how after this year's Masters where  five of the participants stand on the all-time winnings list. (Long Nguyen who has only won  a total of $165,000 in his tournaments has a bit of ways to go.)

Juveria Zaheer - $541,000 (18th place – her sixth place finish moved her ahead of Scott Riccardi)

Paolo Pasco – $648,717 –  (14^th Place – his fourth place finished moved him ahead of Matt Jackson)

Andrew He - $684,365 –  the $150,000 he earned officially put him in thirteenth ahead of Larissa Kelley

Victoria Groce - $1,023,801 ($250,000 second prize moves her into the seventh place

Yogesh Raut - $1,598, 403 (still in sixth place but closing in on Amy Schneider and Matt Amodio)

 

The 2026 Jeopardy Masters was the most thrilling yet for many reasons.

First it was by far the most balanced to this point. Every single Master scored at least one win in the quarterfinals, the first time that has ever happened. As a result it wasn't until the last set of quarterfinal games that the final four were set in stone.

We also saw remarkable comebacks at every level. Andrew was at the bottom of the leaderboard after his first four appearances and then managed in his last two games to make it to the semi-finals. He then did the same in the semi-finals. And Yogesh, who himself thought he was on the cusp of going home in his last appearance managed to eke his way in and then have a superb performance to win his second consecutive win in Jeopardy Masters.

At this point Yogesh Raut and Victoria Groce are beginning a rivalry very close to the one Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter had over fourteen years of postseason competition. And it's a far more balanced one as the two of them have finished one-two in every quarterfinals of the Masters they've been fighting in and they've managed a fairly even split over three years.

This year's Masters was also wonderful because of the personalities and the clear bonds between all six players. There's clearly a huge amount of mutual respect and friendship between all six going into this one, as well as part of the community as a whole. And at this point there's a certain amount of lovability and charm with the six we saw this year. It was particularly true of Juveria Zaheer and newcomer Long Nguyen, who finished fifth on the leaderboards and first in the hearts of millions. Either one has become nearly as endearing as original Master Sam Buttrey both in terms of sheer skill and endearing to us. I hope we see the two of them in next year's Invitational.

We had just as much joy watching Paolo whose had arguably the most remarkable rise of any Jeopardy player in a long time. In less than a calendar year he's gone from seven game champion to TOC winner to one of the winningest players in Jeopardy history. And the way he seemed to understand his own flaws throughout made us love him all the more. I'm not sure if he'll come back to the Invitational next year (Nilesh Vinjamuri who won the 2025 TOC and participated in the Masters didn't) but he'll be back in some form and I look forward to it.

That joy even spread to how they are signing in on their contest boards. Andrew was by far the most versatile throughout the Masters (Ken pointed it out) but we saw it with all six with Yogesh writing a question mark at one point and adopted an aegis formation later on. Creativity with their signatures isn't itself a great thing but it makes it clear that they are enjoying themselves as much as the fan is watching them.

The Jeopardy Masters was a superb way to remind us how much we loved Jeopardy just as the new season is about to begin this Monday. I'll be back this weekend with a refresher course to remind you about what's to come in Season 43.

 

Howard Gordon & Vince Gilligan on The X-Files:How Vince Gilligan's Early Scripts For The X-Files Showed His Path Towards Breaking Bad

 

One of the best themes throughout The X-Files run was the idea of the banality of evil: that not even aspects of government conspiracy or supernatural powers were often cover for little men doing horrible things. Both Gordon and Gilligan were experts on putting this into their writing and I'd argue you see it play out in their later work. Both Jack Bauer and Carrie Matheson are two of the greatest characters in 21^st century television because they are essentially ordinary people who are forced to do questionable, even horrible things, in the name of a greater good.

Gilligan took a different direction and it was clear from his earliest scripts. Almost from his debut on the series he was a master in creating ordinary human men – and they were almost always white men – who  possessed supernatural powers and used them for horrible inhuman things. And because of these characters ordinary appearances they were able to essentially hide in plain sight and commit their crimes in the shadows or some cases broad daylight. This could apply to Walter White, Gustavo Fring, Lydia Quayle or so many of the people who inhabited the New Mexico that Vince Gilligan created in Breaking Bad and many of whom we'd see again in Better Call Saul.

In many ways the 'monsters' in Gilligan's early scripts are far clearer ancestor texts to these characters then the direction connection of Bryan Cranston's being cast in The X-Files in Drive in 1998. (Don't worry, we'll get to that in due time.) And I think it's worth looking at four of those early episodes Gilligan wrote, all of which are considered masterpieces by the fanbase (myself included). It's clear in them you can see Gilligan's fascination with the ordinary villain someone who may have some kind of supernatural ability but is never the less a monster. Gilligan frequently has empathy for some of these characters which makes it difficult to hate them completely but there's none of the moral ambiguity with them that viewers will later have with so many characters in his later shows.

 Part of that is no doubt because Mulder and Scully are the heroes of this show and most of the time these very human monsters are a direct threat to their lives. Mulder, far more often then Scully, is the only person who is capable of understanding them – and just like with almost every other monster, he's usually lucky to escape with his life.

Never is this more true then in the third season episode 'Pusher'. Only the second script Gilligan wrote for The X-Files it ranks as an all-time classic in what is largely considered the show's finest season. It tells the story of Robert Patrick Modell, aka Pusher.  Modell is an ordinary man whose last job was at a convenience store. He had average grades, average high school, average military career. He applied to the Bureau and never came close to passing the psych screening as the interviewer caught him in half a dozen clear lies. He is a little man who wants to be big.

If that sounds familiar consider this. He develops a brain tumor and it gives him a psychic ability. Just as with Walter White's cancer it liberates him from his average life and he begins a spree of violence. His voice is good enough to persuade people to kill themselves so he commits fourteen contract killings that go on the book's as suicide. Then he cold calls an FBI agent and openly brags about it. In the teaser of the episode he is arrested and put in a car with a cage and then simply by repeating the words 'Cerulean Blue is a gentle breeze' he convinces the driver to not see a car with that shade of blue and drives into it. With his last breath the deputy unlocks his prisoner and sets him free.

Modell uses the metaphors of the samurai much like Walter White will use the code name Heisenberg. Modell appears to have charisma in spades but its clear its borrowed because everything he does seems like its out of a formula action movie. When Mulder ends up following his bread crumbs he considers him a 'worthy adversary' and focuses his anger on him. And he is enough of a sadist to make sure that even as his victims kill themselves they feel every bit of pain. We see such memorable set pieces as him convincing an FBI agent to cover himself with gasoline and light himself on fire, to persuade an overweight agent to have a heart attack while keeping him on the phone to complete a trace. And this cruelty is just as on display in full view of Mulder, as he persuades a judge holding him for pretrial motions to let him go by 'putting the whammy on him', by giving up the phone number he's calling his apartment from cheerfully after forcing one of the agents to die listening to  him speak.

The climax of the episode is one of the great set pieces in series history. Mulder and Scully have traced Modell to a hospital where he's having an MRI. Mulder goes in after him, and we hear two of the other agents kill themselves based on Modell's persuasion. He gets to Mulder and the two of them start playing Russian roulette. Scully comes in after to see Mulder with his gun trained on Modell. It's clear Modell is trying to set up a situation where Mulder kills Scully, that he's sensed just how vital she is to him and that this he couldn't survive.  And its very telling that while Mulder has no problem putting a gun to his own head and pulling the trigger (he should probably see somebody about that) he resists with all his mental power to not put the gun on Scully.

Scully saves Mulder when she pulls the fire alarm, interrupting Modell's speaking long enough to break the spell. Mulder shoots Modell (and keeps pulling the trigger even though there's only one bullet in the chamber) but the wound isn't fatal. We learn in the denouement the tumor Modell had was operable right up to the end but he chose not to have it removed. In other words: "I did it for me. I was good at it. It made me feel alive."  

(Just to be clear Modell does come out of his coma and there is a sequel to this episode but he never says those words exactly. )

I should mention that 'Pusher' is the first 'official' episode Gilligan wrote after Carter invited him to go the show after he freelanced an episode during Season Two. Gilligan would later express gratitude to Carter that he was so patient with many staff writers when it came to their output. (Darin Morgan underwent a similar apprenticeship and would also be grateful to Carter for giving him that space.) And with the writer's room in transition yet again during Season 4 Gilligan would step writing three solo scripts and collaborating on two others that year.  The first two solo scripts and his first collaboration continue with the theme of a serial killer who is nevertheless ordinary. That was especially true in his first script Unruhe.

Unruhe was a watershed moment for The X-Files in many ways: it was the first episode that aired after Fox moved the show from Friday nights to Sunday nights. This transition would officially turn The X-Files into a hit show averaging over 20 million viewers a week for the next two years.  There's no single writer who deserves credit for that but I remember the impact this episode meant.

The episode's 'monster' is Gerry Thomas Schnauz, a construction worker whose more sympathetic then most killers on The X-Files are. It's clear he was subject to years of abuse by his father, a dentist who tormented both him and his sister for years. His sister committed suicide and Gerry would attack him with an axe handle. He suffers from a paranoid schizoid disorder and was released to take care of his father. After he passes away the mental illness he suffers from overcomes him and he begins to stalk female victims believing that they suffer from 'unrest' or unruhe in the German. He uses a combination of drugs to create a knockout drug called 'twilight sleep – a dental anesthetic.  He genuinely believes he is saving the victims he is stalking and performing what amount to ice pick lobotomies on them.

In a twist on that format Schnauz has no supernatural powers. Indeed the X-Files is something the killer isn't aware of and in fact Mulder's focus on it increasingly bothers Scully who is sickened by the victims. And it works because of something that could not work in a reboot. Schnauz's presence has the ability to warp photographs to leave behind a capture of his mental state. If this were to be done on an iPhone, it would be dismissed as a computer glitch and we'd ignore it – and honestly it wouldn't be nearly as terrifying.

Technology is used to help capture Schnauz. Mulder goes back to DC to analyze the photo and Scully is checking out a nearby worksite on a hunch. She finds Schnauz on metal stilts. While she's talking to him Mulder points out a detail on the picture that says the killer is either very tall or wants to be. Scully hangs up the phone and goes 'Unruhe'. Schnauze manages to run away but she catches him and find an awl in his pocket.

Schnauz is played by that exceptional character actor Pruitt Taylor Vince, an ungainly looking man who suffers from astigmatism, a disease that causes his eyes to involuntarily close and open. This makes Schnauz both more creepy and more human simultaneously. Later that episode he targets Scully because he believes she suffers from the same unrest.

The trope of Scully being abducted and Mulder having to save her would have become tiresome if the show didn't reverse the trope more often then not. And the scene between Scully and Schnauz is unnerving because he believes she like everyone he's dealt with "is a victim of the Howlers'. Part of his illness makes him believe they say and do everything. When Scully tries to convince him that they live inside his head he takes the camera and takes a picture of himself. It shows him surrounded by darkness, dead. Scully tries to take it as a sign to get help. He takes it as a sign to finish his work. Only the intervention of Mulder at the last minute saves her.

In the last moments of the episode Scully engages in what is the frequent practice of voiceover narration in which she is theoretically writing her final report to the Bureau. The final speech includes the following:

My captivity forced me to understand and empathize with Gerry Schnauz – my survival depended on it. I see now the value of such insight. For truly, to pursue monsters, we must understand them. We must venture into their minds. Only in doing so, do we risk letting them venture into ours?

Almost coincidentally Gilligan has set forth the paradigm that will lead so much of the world of Peak TV that is to follow, where the viewer must get inside the heads of monsters like Walter White, understanding and even empathizing with them. Gilligan admits he may have succeeded to well on Breaking Bad but the truth is we feel a certain sympathy with Gerry Schnauz as must as anyone.

(And yes Gilligan did name his  monster of the week after his friend and future collaborator on so many projects after his friend Thomas Schnauz.  Schnauz would actually write on The X-Files in the final seasons with Gilligan so he clearly didn't hold it against him.)

If Gilligan was testing how much we could empathize with a killer in his first Season 4 script in his second one he pushed the idea of arguing the entire premise of Mulder's quest – that his sister Samantha was abducted by aliens – was a lie. In 'Paper Hearts' he created one of the greatest episodes in the show's entire run in large part because it focused on one of the most unsettling serial killers the show would ever deal with.

The episode begins with Mulder having a series of dreams which lead him to a long-murdered girl that links to one of his cases from Quantico. The killer, referred to as 'Paper Hearts', strangled his victims with an eight gauge electrical cord and would take a trophy – a piece of fabric cut from their clothes in the shape of a heart. Mulder deduced that the killer was a salesman, someone who traveled a lot and could gain people's trust. Someone ordinary. That turned out to be John Lee Roche, a vacuum cleaner salesman who confessed to thirteen killings – but his trophies were never found.

Eventually Mulder finds the trophies in an old copy of Alice in Wonderland.  Roche clearly sees himself as the Mad Hatter. In between the pages we find sixteen cloth hearts. Its only then we meet Roche.

Roche is played by that brilliant character actor Tom Noonan, who'd already played Francis Dolahyde 'the Tooth Fairy' in Manhunter, the first adaptation of the Hannibal Lecter novels. Noonan was tall and soft-spoken and had a frequently ominous bearing so its intriguing that in Gilligan's version we never see Roche do anything violent or menacing until the final act. The way he nonchalantly greets Mulder in prison, as if they were old friends, is so quietly unsettling as is the way he calmly describes himself as a child molester. It's not until the first act is over and Mulder has another dream that we get to the truly frightening idea – Gilligan implies that Roche abducted and killed Samanatha and that her abduction by aliens was all a lie.

At a certain level we know the series isn't going to reverse a critical part of the mythology. What Gilligan is trying to do is place the seeds of doubt in Mulder's head. It does so most convincingly when Mulder finally asks Scully whether she ever believed Samantha was abducted by aliens – and she's silent. Scully is the person Mulder trusts most in the world and even at a truly emotional broken point she won't say she ever believed his story.

Roche spends the episode toying with Mulder, engaging in emotional blackmail, claiming he sold a vacuum to his parents, a model that Mulder finds in their old home. He leads him to another of his victims but its not Samantha either. Finally Roche persuades Mulder that he'll tell him the truth – but only if he takes him to the site of Samantha's abduction.

This episode shows Mulder at his absolute worst. He beats Roche when he demands his trophy; he ends up bringing back his hearts and finally he violates the orders of the FBI by taking Roche to Massachusetts. Roche confesses that he killed her – but then Mulder tells him that he's taken him to the wrong house.

Roche's power is a reversal of the idea of the profiler getting inside the head of the serial killer – he argues that Roche managed to get inside Mulder's head to form a connection that gave him the memories of what happened to Samantha. In other words Roche was an ordinary man who gained extraordinary powers – and chose to use them to wreak revenge on the man who put him in prison.

In the final act Roche does this again with another dream which he uses to convince Mulder to free Roche, taking his badge and gun in the process. This lead Roche to abduct another young girl. Of course Mulder will eventually find and rescue the girl: he has to save his reputation. But Gilligan finds himself putting his lead character into the emotional quicksand he'll later be very good at with his many characters in New Mexico.

There've been many episodes to this point where either Mulder and Scully have the choice of either trying to get answers to their questions or doing the right thing. Mulder does do the right thing – but in Gilligan's version he has to shoot Roche in the head rather than learn whether Samantha was Roche's final victim.

'Paper Hearts' ends almost as a mirror image of Unruhe: Mulder is just as emotionally exhausted at the end of his experience as Scully was at the end of hers. He beat the monster but the monster has left his mark.

The last script was a special one: 'Leonard Betts'. Gilligan only co-wrote it along with Frank Spotnitz and John Shiban but I think most of the details of the monsters bear his imprint. And I'm pretty convinced its him driving the idea of playing with the format.

The episode begins with the title character, a paramedic in Pittsburgh, apparently being decapitated by a head on collision. His body is put in the hospital morgue – and then later that night, it appears to breakout of the morgue, headless.

For the first half of the episode there's no actual crime that's been committed so the writers are clearly having fun and it plays as a black comedy – Mulder resenting having longer arms so he has to go through a barrel of medical waste, Scully and Mulder cracking jokes over his mummified head, making bizarre jokes about evolution. And for once the viewer spends the episode playing catch up with Mulder and Scully with a new revelation about Leonard coming to us just as quickly as it does to them.

Leonard is by far one of the most sympathetic monsters any episode has ever created.  Leonard will eventually kill two people during the course of the episode but he's so apologetic each time and its clearly done as a matter of survival more than anything else. He's played by Paul McCrane who in less than a year would shot to popular consciousness as 'Rocket' Romano on ER, arguably the most abrasive character that the show would ever have. So its striking to see him basically as yet another man whose basically ordinary and who has managed to survive despite doing such horrible things because no one notices him.

Of course there's the fact that he has the power to regenerate body parts: we see him do so with his head, his thumb and he even seems to recreate an entire new body to throw the cops off his track. He does all this despite the fact – wait for it – his body is riddled with every form of cancer. To the point that he actually uses cancerous tumors to survive and in order to live he finds a smoker and kills him.

Who among the X-philes can forget his incredible line: "I'm very sorry. But you have something I need."  And the real reason we don't forget it is because at the climax of the episode he corners Scully in an ambulance and says just as he's about to attack her. By that point Scully has found the cancer-ridden victim and she knows exactly what that implies. She manages to unfreeze long enough to kill Leonard. But then she goes home and coughs up blood.

The most interesting thing about Leonard comes when they find his mother who doesn't want to talk to him. She makes it clear she loves her son:

I don't believe you when you tell me he killed someone. But if he did, he had his reasons. God put him here for a purpose. God means for him to stay – even if people don't understand.

We later see her taking care of Leonard in a bathtub full of chemicals.

"I don't think they're ever going to leave you alone…You have to conserve your strength. You know what you have to do. I'm your mother and it's a mother's duty to provide."

Later that episode they go to her house and find her lying there unresponsive. His mother was suffering from cancer herself. He took what he needed from her, then patched her up and called the ambulance that came to pick her up. In fact he's still on that ambulance looking after her when Scully figures out where he is.

In other words a man riddled with every form of cancer was willing to do anything to take care of his family.  (Leonard is still more selfless than Heisenberg would ever be.)

Long before Gilligan arrived at The X-Files the show had created the template that monsters live among us, that an animal control operator could be a liver-eating mutant or that the men you pass in the hallways at your job could be shadowy government figures bent on world domination. Perhaps the best lesson Gilligan did when he began to write Breaking Bad that just because these creatures had mind control or the ability to warp photographs that didn't make them special or any less monstrous. You might empathize with some of them but that just made them more dangerous. Mulder and Scully knew better than to tread lightly around these ordinary monsters because they – like Gilligan – knew that usually made them all them the more likely to want to show you how dangerous they were if you let your guard down.

 

Decision 2026: Five Senate Races That Are Safe For the GOP - And Why You Should Pay Attention to Them On Election Night Anyway.

 

In every election cycle in the 21^st century there are certain states for either party where the organization is so overwhelmingly in favor of one party or the other that the official party apparatus has no doubt given up on years ago.  The GOP has made a fair amount of effort in the last decade to on their side to compete in states they couldn't before and certainly in this cycle the DNC is making an effort in a way it hasn't since Howard Dean was forced out of the chairmanship in 2008.

But it doesn't change the fact that for both parties there are many states that neither parties are making an effort in. The GOP is essentially abandoning states like New Jersey, Massachusetts and Delaware to Cory Booker, Ed Markey and Chris Coons respectively. Likewise the Democrats are essentially yielding Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia to Tom Cotton, Bill Hagerty and Shelly Moore Capito. This is understandable on both sides: there's only so much money to go around and both sides are trying to put their resources to where it will do good. The Republicans this cycle have to play defense and have few, if any real opportunities to make gains and while the Democrats have been expanding the map immensely this cycle as Trump's approval ratings have tanked there is only so far they are willing to go.  Much as they loathe Mitch McConnell, they have no intention of spending their time to get Charles Booker to become a new Democrat.

Now as I've mentioned a few times before the map for 2026 overwhelming favors the Democrats. The Republicans are defending 24 seats this cycle, the Democrats only ten. Despite their doubts at the end of 2025 the math was always in their favor going into this November and it is increasingly looking like they will take the Senate majority back, perhaps with an even bigger number then they expected. But to do so that meant that by necessity there were several states where the Democratic Party hasn't done well in decades, much less this century.

That being said there are still five states this cycle which are overwhelmingly and deservingly safe for the GOP that the observer will have to watch. I'm not saying that an upset will happen or even if it many cases the race will even be close. In all of the states I'm about to list the Democratic Party at a state level has atrophied to a point that in two of the states I'm about to list whatever chance they have won't have to do with a Democratic candidate at all. For the reason, with two exceptions, little attention will be paid by the media in the next couple of months and certainly not on election night.

All of the candidates face climbs so uphill that they might as well be mountains. Regardless of what polling information we might get all of the states are ranked as Safe Republican or Likely Republican – and in the two that aren't, I think the pollsters are being ridiculously generous. These states are not Iowa or Alaska; there's no history of Democrats doing well for me to hang my hand on. In all of them the challenger's have two chances: slim and none and honestly they barely even have slim.

But one of the hallmarks of a healthy democracy – and I'm under no illusions about how battered America's is right now – is that there has to be competitiveness across all of America. That includes states that one side has abandoned to the other years if not decades ago. (Because I actually am fair and balanced I intend to deal with an article that deals with where the GOP needs to do better going forward. The leftists on this site should consider themselves duly warned.)

So I'm going to deal with five states that are all almost certainly going to go Republican on election night and why we need to look at them anyway.  In a couple of cases the Democrats might have a chance to win but that is more due to circumstances then anything else. I'm going to go in order of likelihood of something surprising happening on election night – or from one-in-a-million to snowball's chance in hell, if you prefer.

 

South Carolina

If you've read my article this cycle you know that I had overwhelming doubts that Annie Andrews, the great white hope of progressives in South Carolina had a snowball's chance in hell of winning against Lindsay Graham this cycle. I'd been down this road six years ago with Jaime Harrison who the Party was picking to go after Graham in great detail as the man who would absolute do it – and he lost by 10 points. Why we then named Harrison the chair of the DNC is just another sign of how clueless we are.

The big difference now of course is that Andrews isn't running against Lindsay Graham.

It's been a long time since a candidate running for reelection passed away while running for reelection. The last time it happened was when Paul Wellstone died while running in Minnesota in 2002. Wellstone's name was still on the ballot but Walter Mondale agreed to serve if he was elected. It didn't work out and Norm Colman won instead.

The difference was Graham passed away in July and South Carolina had different election rules. Darline Graham, Lindsay's sister, was appointed to serve as an interim Senator and that Trump decided to endorse her to run in her own right. It has taken both a general primary and a run-off for Darline Graham to finally win the nomination on August 24^th.

Now the reasoning I thought this might give aide to Annie Andrews was built in the idea of chaos that we saw earlier this cycle when Graham Platner was forced to step down in June and was replaced by Troy Jackson. I assumed that this chaos could only help the incumbent Susan Collins and while the polls do show Jackson leading her the last few months having been through this with Sara Gideon six years ago I have a healthy skepticism. One could look at Andrews's chances as the mirror version of this, particularly as she facing a neophyte candidate who never held elected office prior to this – and has already made a serious gaffe.

In the Republican debate between her and Ralph Norman, who finished second to her in the run-off, Darline Graham was asked a question about Taiwan and China. Graham paused and then responded: "I'm not that informed on national security." The Republican audience gasped and booed. While this didn't stop her from winning the runoff, it took a cash infusion and Trump campaigning for her to lock up the runoff.  And Graham's arguing that she is a political outsider won't be a cudgel she can use as easily against Andrews, who has also never held elected office in her life and has the benefit of being more then twenty years younger than Graham.

While I believe Andrews will be able to use this as a cudgel to make the race against Graham more competitive then it would have been against her brother, I say any real chance Andrews has of winning shaky at best. No Democrat has won statewide office in South Carolina since Fritz Hollings did in 1998 and Hollings was from an entirely different era of politics than Andrews is. The Democrats will do better in the South this cycle then they have in nearly 20 years. Andrews is almost certainly not going to be lifted to victory.

 

Kansas

 

As I've written in an earlier article Kansas hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. The last time a race for the Senate was even close to competitive in Kansas was in 1974 when Bob Dole came within 13,500 votes of losing reelection for the first time in the aftermath of Nixon's resignation.

The last time Kansas was even competitive it was Pat Roberts ran against Independent Greg Orman, after the Democratic nominee withdrew. Even then Roberts won reelection by nearly ten percent. That year Roger Marshall ran for the first time against Barbara Bollier. Bollier made some progress, winning a few counties that hadn't gone Democrat in decades – or in the case of Johnson county, forever – but he still won by nearly 11 percent.

Despite that and the victory and reelection of Laura Kelly in the past decade few seriously considered Kansas would be in play. Indeed when Adam Hamilton first announced his intent to challenge Marshall's in his bid for reelection he actually considered running as an independent. Instead Hamilton chose to run as a Democrat a role which might not fit the Democratic model.

Hamilton is the founding pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, the largest UMC church in the entire country. Hamilton is an author of more than 30 books; he has preached at the National Prayer service during Obama's second inauguration festivities and was appointed to Obama's President Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnership.

Conservatives have been trying to use his religious leadership against him, with Marshall arguing he's too woke for Kansas. It's worth noting Kansas has a fairly sizable bloc of moderate voters and its constitution protection abortion rights. And he faces attacks from both the right and the left, who are wary of mixing government with religion. (This is, for the record, part of the reason Democrats keep losing elections they could win.) But for those who've argued about the hypocrisy of the religious right and the contradiction with scripture it is refreshing to see a minister who says: "When did it become woke to care for your neighbor?"

I truly believe Hamilton would have had an easier time winning had he ran as an independent. The few polls that we have in this state show the race close with either candidate within the margin of error in terms of the lead. I actually think this race will be closer than South Carolina in large part because Kansas has shown signs of Democratic strength at a statewide level in recent years that just aren't in South Carolina. But even that has its limits. In 2022 when Laura Kelly won reelection Jerry Moran won his third term in a landslide with over 60 percent of the vote. For Hamilton to beat those odds it would take, well, a miracle.

 

Mississippi

Last August I wrote how Joe Kennedy III was doing something that most Democrats and all Progressives would have considered a fool's errand.  He was spending a lot of time and energy in some of the reddest states in the Deep South making an effort to rebuild the Democratic Party. I made it clear that I didn't think whatever efforts he would do would be seen in this election cycle or for many to come.

Later this year we'll get a chance to see some of his work and I think the best possibility will be the Mississippi Senate race. As I wrote more than once a few years back Brandon Presley's challenge of the incumbent Republican governor Haley Barbour came within a few points of succeeding and might very well have had Mississippi progressives not sat out the election altogether.

This year Cindy Hyde-Smith, the state's junior senator is running for reelection. Running for her first full-term in 2020 against Democrat Mike Espy Hyde- Smith won by nearly ten points  but underperformed then President Trump in that state by nearly six percent.  Now she will be running against Democrat Scott Colom.

Colom has served as a District Attorney in Mississippi since 2016. Biden nominated him to be a federal district judge but the nomination stalled in the Senate when Republicans including Hyde-Smit blocked the appointment.

As with Espy six years ago Colom has been surprisingly competitive when it comes to fundraising in Mississippi. And he faces a decidedly uphill battle: even the most generous polls list him at 6 percent behind Hyde-Smith.

Despite the considerable signs of improvements the Democrats will be making in Dixie this cycle Colom has no realistic chance of winning. However I think it will be instructive to compare his run against Jamie Davis in Louisiana. Compared to Colom Davis has been very prominent about his progressive ties and the party, particularly the left-wing of it, has been pushing his candidacy far more than they have Colom's in terms of fundraising. Both Davis and Colom are given less then a five percent chance of winning their respective states. It will be instructive to see who comes closer to winning in these border states: the candidate backed by the left-wing or the one based by the centrist one.

 

Idaho

I referred to the last two candidates in a separate article about independents running for office and I think its worth going into detail on the two are the most interesting here.

In Idaho Republican Jim Risch is running for reelection for the third time. Running against him is Todd Achilles who has an interesting history. Achilles was registered as a Republican before February of 2024 but changed his representation to Democrat so that he would qualify to replace one for a seat in the Idaho House of Representatives. Six months after that he changed his representation to unaffiliated, arguing that issues such as the national debt and foreign policy was a reason he left both parties. He resigned in July of 2025 to run for the Senate as an independent. In May David Roth won the Democratic primary and earlier this week, chose to withdraw in favor of Achilles.

He has criticized Republicans on supporting the Iran War, has criticized cuts to Medicaid and has been a major critic of DOGE, particularly in regard to the VA. But he also believes in reducing the national debt and is opposed to 'corporate socialism' and supports the administrations' approach on the consolidation of the meat-packing industry.

Achilles's represent a chance to see how well a true independent performers in a western state where some have had success. I'd argue if Achilles comes within ten percent of Risch in the general election it will be a marker for future independent campaigns going forward.

 

 

Montana

In the Montana Senate Race incumbent Steve Daines chose to retire last earlier this year. U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme chose to run and  won the Republican nomination. The Democratic primary was more crowded but Alani Bankhead won the nomination there.

However there's a third candidate on the ballot Seth Bodnar the former President of the University of Montana who resigned in January and officially announced he would run as an independent. During his run Jon Tester a Democrat who was defeated in the 2024 election revealed a text message in which he made it clear the Democratic party was 'poison' to his campaign.

Bankhead at the moment is refusing to withdraw from her campaign to clear the field for Bodnar. The few polls that are available show that Bodnar in a one on one race would have a better chance than Bankhead. What's not in dispute is that Alme will easily win if both stay in the race and the deadline is next Monday for one of them too.

Since at this juncture neither Bankhead nor Bodnar has chosen to withdraw it’s a given Alme will win.  The interest in this race is whether Bodnar manages to poll ahead of Bankhead in the general election. I'm not wild about any vindication whether a Democratic brand is 'poison' but if it means that the party learns from it, I think it’s medicine we have to take going forward.

 

Just to be clear like everyone else who's watching the returns on election night I will be focusing all my attention on the races I've highlighted in my previous articles. I'll be looking at these races in the days immediately afterwards – and I hope the Democrats do as well for their future.

 

I Think That HBO's Lanterns Is A Very Good Show

 

In the war over shows like Lanterns there are two sides and you have to decide which you are on.

On one side is, of course, the fanboy culture who have elected themselves the sole arbiters of what it is acceptable entertainment. They think that Hollywood has been taken over by a radical leftist elite who are somehow simultaneously covertly and overtly using their shows and their platforms to put a woke agenda that violates everything that they 'the fans' want and by definition all of America, if not humanity, wants from their entertainment. They believe that the masses are with them and they will defend their position to the death.

On the other side is Hollywood. They consider themselves purveyors of a noble craft whose purpose is to speak truth to power and shout to the rafters for equality, even though most of them are multi-millionaires and billionaires. They believe that they are handlers of a sacred calling and that their projects are weapons in the battle against an increasingly fascist society of which the fanboys themselves are the most critical part of it. They know they are on the right side of history and that they are a beacon in a world filled with darkness. They believe that the masses are with them and they will defend their position to the death.

So which side am I on, you ask? Easy. I'm part of the masses who doesn't care about these wars and just wants to be entertained after a long day.

My readers know that I can see both sides of the issues and know that both sides are completely clueless. Hollywood is a business and the films and TV shows it makes are products of that business. The actors and talent are employees, albeit much better made that the overwhelming majority of us. And at the end of the day the business side of Hollywood doesn't care why people watch a show like Lanterns. If you're watching it because you're on side or the other or if you're just watching to be entertained, the industry absolutely doesn't break its viewership down that way. Either way, you're helping them make a profit. I have no doubt the executives really wish both sides would just shut up about it and be entertained but they know that's not the world we live in and they've accepted it.

Now my readers know that I personally have little use for shows that are based on franchises such as Star Trek, Star Wars or comic books. In the 21^st century in particular shows like these are the most extreme version of the capitalist intent of Hollywood. They are safe properties designed to make money and they leave little, if any, room for creativity or imagination. This is true, to be clear, whether it is film or TV but for me as I rarely willingly go to any of these films it only applies to television.

The reason I tend to dislike most comic book adjacent shows is simple: they're not for viewers like me who don't look comic books. All I care about is seeing a good story well told, written and acted and to be clear I've never gotten that from shows like The Mandalorian or Star Trek: Discovery or Secret Invasion. These are shows that are there to do fanservice and I am not a fan. I don't begrudge the people who are fans of these shows, I need to be clear on that, but they are not my cup of tea.

It is almost unheard of for a show based on a franchise to be able to transcend the shackles that bind it and a formula that it can't escape. I think that's the reason Andor resonated with so many people (myself included). It was a Star Wars show for people who might never have liked Star Wars or more importantly might know very little about it.

Television has been shifting quite a bit in the last decade and every so often you can see a comic book show trying to break away from the shackles of the format to actually tell a different story. For the MCU that series was WandaVision, which used the mantle of television to tell a story about how grief can do much to destroy you. For DC, that show was The Penguin which used the origin story of Oz Cobb to tell a very much antihero based drama that seemed to have more Easter eggs to The Sopranos and Breaking Bad that the world of Gotham.

Lanterns is not quite at the level of either of these series. But having watched the first three episodes you get an idea that Chris Mundy and Damon Lindelof are trying their hardest to break against the shackles that hold a comic book in place and try to tell a different story. For Lindelof this is familiar territory: he was one of the creative forces behind Watchmen one of the greatest limited series of the 21^st century that deservedly won eight Emmys.

As someone who knows very little about comic books and almost nothing about the Green Lanterns I was drawn to it because the show seemed to be pitched very much closer in spirit to True Detective. That plus the presence of Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre as Jon Stewart. Chandler, of course, has been one of the great forces in 21^st century TV, most notably for playing Coach Taylor in Friday Night Lights and to certain viewers for his work as a cop in the underrated Netflix series Bloodline. Pierre has increasingly become something of a force in film and TV the last few years, most notably for his work in the Emmy nominated TV film Rebel Ridge.

The biggest complaint (that's a euphemism) has been in the first three episodes we've seen very little of the famous ring, the uniform, and even the lantern is almost considered a throwaway. The origins of Hal Jordan getting the ring have been very vague and the few times the ring has been used, it really seems like Hal isn't taking it seriously. (When he chants the famous pledge to charge the ring, he says so quickly and in a monotone that it almost seems to bore him.) What Lanterns really does seem like is a buddy cop drama where the two partners can barely tolerate each other and there's a decent chance they'll kill each other before greater forces can.

It has none of the tones of a comic book movie, none of the lightness of the MCU or of the most recent DC films and it barely seems interest in paying lip service for the fans. In short it barely seems interesting in telling a story about a comic book at all and its for that exact reason that I admire and find it fascinating, even if after three episodes it has yet to reach a level of brilliance.

Chandler plays Jordan with a mix of weariness and arrogance. The story is he got the ring because he knows no fear. Chadler plays him as if the rules shouldn't have to apply to him and it annoys the hell out of him when he goes to a small town in Nebraska and the local sheriff (Kelly MacDonald) shows him nothing but contempt when he openly breaks the law. Her husband (Jason Ritter, the comic relief in this series) actually does seem to have respect for Hal but its worth noting that may be because he's under the influence of the local billionaire landowner who seems to worship Hal but doesn't respect him. The fact that he is played by Garret Dillahunt makes you know he's up to no good.

Aaron Pierre plays Stewart as someone who is determined to follow the chain of command and show respect no matter what. In the third episode, by far the best to this point, we learn that Stewart's father was considered to be the Lantern and as a result of not being picked went into a spiral. His mother had a meeting with one of the Guardians (Laura Linney) who tried to apologize but said that one day her son might have that potential. We then see that the Jordans essentially raised their child so that he would know no fear and that led to them engaging in behavior which is clearly abusive but that Hal has compartmentalized so much that he doesn't want to think about it. He is laser focused on getting the ring and being able to follow Jordan.

This episode has been talked about because of the obvious racial undertones (which I found too blunt for my liking) and the very real sense of what it means to be a symbol to your people. I actually found a different level. Ever since Lost Lindelof has been an expert at telling story about destiny and free will and whether our actions are shaped by forces beyond our control. So I found myself wondering: Did Jon ever have any choices? I don't just mean by how his parents have decided to shape him but by the Guardians own remarks. We know that they never liked Hal being one of them so is it possible this Guardian planted the seeds in Mrs. Jordan so that her years of training would eventually make Hal the man the Guardians wanted him to be?

If you're a fan of Lost you will remember the sage of how Eloise Hawking chose to shape the life of her son Daniel based on events that happened before he was even born. She took away all of his choices because she said he had a gift that needed to be nurtured. We saw the cost of that gift on Dan throughout his life and we see something just as similar out here. Hal seems to have taken a life where he will respect the chain of command no matter what, so that means he's basically outsourced his free will to other people.

Hal, it's worth noting, has similar issues. We know about how his mentor Sinestro (Ulrich Thomson) abused his trust and tried to lead a coup against the Lanterns. Hal still has a very close relationship with him that clearly bothers the other guardians. 'Daddy Issues' are a big thing about Lindelof dramas as well and we can see that both Hal and Jon have those in spades.

And there are conflicting missions. The Guardians consider Hal reckless and they want Jon to replace him. However they've told Hal that he's a backup in case something goes wrong. Hal doesn't want a backup and he's very clear on that and we all know eventually he's going to find out the truth.

As someone whose always cared less about fidelity to source material and far more about just being entertained on a technical level Lanterns more than checks every box. The writing and directing are masterful, the performances from Chandler and Pierre on down are superb and technically its as well shot and filmed as any HBO project. In short it is a comic book series that can be loved if you never read a comic book in your life which is, of course, why the fanboy culture hated it even before it debuted.  Of course it has very quickly become a ratings success for the network which means the business of Hollywood could give a damn why people are watching it and even less what the fanboy culture thinks.

I acknowledge this has not been a typical review but Lanterns is not a typical show. I write this review for my readers who know what I think about the business. For those who will argue that this is just the woke personification of an industry that is trying to destroy the world – well, I have to be honest I think the writers knew this going in. All of the action in the main story takes place in 2016. You just know that this was a town that was going to be holding MAGA rallies in the near future.

My score: 4.25 stars.