The Best Television of a Horrific Year: Top Ten For 2020

At this point, saying just how horrible this year has been would just be superfluous. It seems we’ve all spent 2020 locked in our rooms, watching everything fall apart. Television helped keep us going throughout this dreadful, even though not even the series we watched could escape the outside world events, first based on what shows were made, how we viewed the world of television, and how some series ending up getting made at all.

In my own bubble of this year, I turned to streaming services more than ever, looking often for escapism. Sometimes I found it, sometimes reflections of the real world brought their own level of greatness. With hopes that the next year will bring some return to normality, here are my choices for 2021

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10. Kidding (Showtime)

In a year with so much darkness, you took joy wherever you could find it. And this brilliant merger of Jim Carrey and Michael Gondry gave us a mesh of surrealism and energy that so many of the other series this year lacked. As we followed Jeff through his journey, we literally went into new world – a musical romp under anesthesia where Jeff made his greatest revelation; a look at the TV show where his world changed; a look back at nostalgia therapy, where he dealt with the woman who had probably damaged him forever – Kidding took more risks than almost any other show this year. It was probably too complicated for a mass audience, which is why it was cancelled after just two seasons. But I’m grateful for the journey – and for finally meeting in a world of antiheroes, a man so good he couldn’t say the obscenities Showtime allowed him to. We need Jeff Pickles now more than ever. We need shows like this as well.

 

9. David E. Kelley: The Undoing (HBO) and Big Sky (ABC)

David E. Kelley was one of the great showrunners in a time before the world knew the term, and this year he adapted two very different novels which created very different worlds to look at the darkness of humanity.

The bigger and more likely more favored one was The Undoing. Featuring three of the greatest actors in history – Nicole Kidman as Grace, a successful New York therapist who leads an apparently happy life until her world is shattered by a horrific crime; Hugh Grant as her husband Jonathan, a pediatric oncologist who becomes the main suspect and reveals just how big the mask he is wearing is, and Donald Sutherland a as Grace’s father, a man determined to protect his daughter even though he’s never trusted her husband. This feature some truly astonishing performances, superb direction and writing, and some daring twists. The only reason I don’t rank it higher on this list is because I read the book it was based on, and unlike Big Little Lies, I believe Kelley did a disservice to it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great experience, but I think it would’ve been more interesting had Kelley agreed to stick to the script.

Big Sky is a different kind of thriller, but its one of the best experiences I’ve had on network TV all year. The study of two of the most different kinds of monsters we’ve met on TV in a while – Ronald the truck driver and State Trooper Rick Legarski (John Carroll Lynch deserves award consideration for his work here) whose human trafficking ring is put in jeopardy when Ronald kidnaps the girlfriend and sister of the son of Jenny Hoyt. When she and her partner (already feuding over an affair one was having with Jenny’s husband) it becomes more thrilling than any procedural you’ve seen. With one of the biggest shocks of the year at the end of the pilot, this has become one of the most captivating shows of the new season. I don’t if it’ll be a limited series or a second season can come, but this demonstrates that Kelley, more than a decade removed from his last network series, has lost none of his touch for it.

 

 

8.Dead to Me (Netflix)

I came late to this comedy, but after basically binging the first season, I’ve become enraptured by one of the darkest – and yes, funniest – series on any platform. As Jen and Judy found themselves trying to clean up after Jen’s murder of Steve, the already complicated lives of these two already struggling people, became one of the most joyful experiences I’ve seen. It helps that the leads are played by two of the greatest actresses in television – Christina Applegate as Jen, still reeling from the death of her husband, and Linda Cardellini as Judy, a woman who can’t keep her mouth shut about some of the things she does and who makes the worst possible criminal – and the best possible friend. Helped by the fact that both were playing against type, it featured some truly inspired performances by James Marsden, Valerie Mahaffey and Jere Burns bringing excellent support. I’m actually sad that this show is going to come to an end after just one more season – but considering how brilliant creator Liz Feldman has been to this point,  I have complete faith in her abilities.

 

7. This is Us (NBC)

I admit this series has fallen a little in my eyes the last year or so, but even four and a bit seasons in, it never ceases to amaze me how well the writers have been able to mine gold from these characters. From the bad week the Big Three all had that forced them to face some of their darkest problems to Randall finally facing that he needs psychiatric help – and then engaging in a bitter argument with Kevin over Rebecca’s dementia, which led to them breaking contact, this has been nearly as hard a year for the Pearsons as it has been for the rest of the world. But even in its fifth season, the writers have proven that there are still great things to mine out of this family – the 5^th Season premiere featured some of the best work Ron Cephas Jones and Milo Ventimiglia have yet done, along with the revelation that Randall’s mother is still alive. Perhaps in a year with so much darkness, it may be hard to deal with the Pearsons tears. But this year, more than ever, they’ve shown they can deal with it too.

 

6. Ramy (Hulu)

I came even later to this show than I did Dead to Me, but after just a few episodes of the first season, I realized that Golden Globe lead/showrunner Ramy Youseff received as Best Actor in a Comedy was anything but a fluke, and that Ramy isn’t just one of the best comedies in awhile; it’s one of the best shows period.

Following a twentyish Muslim in New Jersey, Ramy spent most of the first season trying to be a good Muslim even though he doesn’t really seem to believe in the morality of it. In the first season, I thought that despite Ramy’s faith, this was a story that could appeal more universal to any race or religion. The second season, if anything, has become even more daring. Not only is Ramy trying to pursue a relationship with a sheik (Mahershala Ali in yet another brilliant television performance), he is moving on to the point where he is trying to begin a romantic process with the sheik’s daughter.  But the show has moved beyond the scope of Ramy following all of the family, and their problems. From his mother desperately tracking down someone who gave her a bad review on Uber so she can become a citizen, to his father finally dealing with the fact that he has lost his job and yet somehow trying to live for his dreams, to his sister (an even less faithful Muslim than him) dealing with what she believes is the evil eye, we see how they try to find their place in a world that doesn’t want them. Youseff the writer and director has become just as talented as he is an actor, which was already impressive. How long it will be until we get a third season remains to be seen, but this clearly has the potential to be a masterpiece.

 

5. Perry Mason (HBO)

In an era of endless reboots, HBO’s reinvention of Perry Mason may be exactly what this era needs. What was one of the most clichéd series in the history of television got off to a great start by going back to Perry’s origins – a private investigator who believes everybody has secrets, a cynical man who agrees to represent a client even though he’s initially convinces of her guilt and becomes more and more convinced of her insanity. A man whose belief in justice shows him willing to bend and if necessary break the law to win.

Matthew Rhys goes to the head of Emmy contention with a stunning performance in the title role. But everybody in this series is just as good. By moving the series back to the early 1930s (when Mason’s stories started being published), we get a really good look at the level of corruption that is in every structure in Los Angeles; the police, the law, even the church. With Juliet Rylance going to a level of Della Street that far outweighs anything her character has been given to work with in nearly a century (as well the answer as to why she and Perry never hooked up),  this series was backed with some of the greatest character actors working today: from Shea Whigham as Perry’s long suffering fellow investigator to Tatiana Maslany as an evangelist who believes her own gospel, this was a brilliant series. And the season finale demonstrated that the clichés that made the series won’t be in this show. When in the final credits we heard the unforgettable theme music, it wasn’t an Easter egg – the show had earned it. And I can’t wait for Season 2.

 

4. Little Fires Everywhere (Hulu)

I’ve spent much of the past few years not giving Hulu the same consideration I gave Netflix and Amazon. But this year has launched me as one of their most fervent fans. Ramy is one of the great comedy series I’ve seen in many series, and this limited series more than demonstrated that they are truly among the great artists.

This may be the best single adaptation of the entire year, taking a fairly simple if well done novel and mining it for every ounce of drama they could find. If it were just for the astonishing lead performances of Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon as two very different mothers, this would’ve been enough for me to laud it. But Liz Tiglaar and her team of writers expanded on so many of the ideas only hinted at in Celeste Ng’s novel that I was actually expecting more when I read the book. From the complicated relationship each mother had with the daughters in their family, to the frequent clashes between Mia and Elena, to the revelations that we got in everybody’s backstories (especially the astonishing performances from everyone of the child actors in this cast), you could practically see the sparks coming with every scene. And unlike the alterations that were made in The Undoing, I think that all of the changes – especially the ending – benefited this extraordinary work. I was appalled that it got so shortchanged at the Emmy earlier this year, and given the level of the competition, it’ll probably be ignored by the Golden Globes as well. So all I can say is see this series, and find out what was one of the greatest triumphs of this year.

 

3. The Crown (Season 3) Netflix

I always seem to get to this series later than I should. I still haven’t gotten around to seeing all of the fourth season that dropped this November. But having seen the lion’s share of Season 3 this year, I’m not going to waste the opportunity to give this series its due.

As brilliant as Claire Foy and so many of the cast members of the first two seasons of Peter Morgan’s exceptional history of Elizabeth II, Season 3 demonstrated just how gifted a writer Morgan and his team are as the House of Windsor moves into the 1960s and 1970s trying to remain a symbol as England and the world change. I’ve already advocated how brilliant an actress Olivia Colman has been in so many other series over the past decade, and she was more than up to the challenge of taking on the role of an older more troubled Elizabeth. But by expanding the series beyond her to looking at her husband and sister – and most daringly, Prince Charles (an extraordinary Josh O’Connor), we get to see just how hard is to be both a family and rule at the same time. We see how Philip has chafed at the times. We see how Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter in one of her greatest roles)  goes from one unhappy love to the next. And most shockingly we see the real possibility that Elizabeth is so focused on being queen that she’s probably failed as a mother – and her children know it.

I can’t wait to venture into the fourth season where Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher finally enter on stage. There’s been a lot of raves for Emma Corrin and Gillian Anderson already, and I know they earned it. Given all the tumult that’s come out of England the last few years, you almost wish Morgan would go beyond six seasons – I’d love to see how he thinks Brexit and Margaret Markle have affected the Crown.  Ah well.

 

2. Better Call Saul (AMC)

It has taken a lot of debate for me to decide between the first and second best series of the year, considering that on every level – writing, directing, acting – they’re a tie. Ultimately, I decided to give the edge to one series because it’s probably the last installment of it I’ll get. Better Call Saul has at least one more season (and given how Vince Gilligan and co broke up the last season of Breaking Bad, they may well do the same here)

What I do know is that this series gets better and better the closer it gets to the end. As Jimmy finally embraced his alter ego of Saul (and by extension, got closer to being in a crisis in Omaha that will no doubt be the end stage for the final episodes), we saw that Jimmy was begin to fall away from his roots. As he finally got involved with the cartel that will bring him into contact with the world in Heisenberg, we saw some of the greatest episodes in the show’s history that rival some of the best from the original series. We saw Jimmy finally doublecross his soul mate Kim, a battle that ended up with them getting married. We saw him go on a trek south to get bail money for Lalo Salmanaca, a trip that nearly got him killed so many times, you almost forgot he was going to survive.  We saw him reach the ultimate level of stress, and be angered that the only one he could confide it was Mike – and than have a confrontation with Lalo so full of tension, I was sure that Kim was going to die here. And we ended with another revelation – that just by being near him, Kim may have been as corrupt as her soulmate (Explain to me why Rhea Seehorn wasn’t nominated for an Emmy this year?)

And around all this, we saw the other characters struggle. Mike dealt with the repercussions of his murder at the end of Season 4 in a way I didn’t think he could. We saw Gus go into battle against his first worthy opponent, and continue to reveal how ruthless his character was. We saw Nacho trying to negotiate between two psychotic drug lords, with his escape getting narrower and narrower. And there were so many brilliant moments that when Hank and Gomez finally entered the scene, it didn’t seem like an Easter egg.

We knew going in who was going to survive this series. Its impressive that Gilligan has now created a group of characters that we care about even more, and knowing that they don’t have a place in Breaking Bad, breaks our heart every time we see them. The Emmys had better start recognizing Saul soon – like Jimmy and so many others, they’re running out of time.

 

1. Fargo (FX)

There have been great shows the past decade. Then there’s Fargo, the series that bares no resemblance at all to the movie, and yet is exactly like it. As it moved through its final season (though has been no word from creator Noah Hawley, I feel certain this is it), we found ourselves in the 1950s in a world that we couldn’t help but recognize.

Hawley said he started each series with an inspiration. I’m guessing this year’s was: “What if two crime families decided to negotiate a truce by the boss exchanging their children?” And even though we knew that this failed twice before, it happened this season: The Fadda family and The Cannon family, headed by the extraordinary Chris Rock did so, and yet, in traditional Fargo fashion were unable to stop the war and violence.

Every season of Fargo has its share of unforgettable characters. This year had some of the best: a corrupt Kansas detective with OCD (Jack Houston), a psychotic nurse who was the model for every Karen out there (Jessie Buckley was astonishing), a Mormon U.S. Marshal determined to find prisoners in a city determined to hide them (Timothy Olyphant) and the sole survivor of the last feud, ‘Rabbi’ Milligan, the only person on either side who was willing to put his life before a child’s. Ben Whishaw was practically unrecognizable from his work in A Very English Scandal and moved ahead once again, to consider for Best Supporting Actor.)

“You know why America loves a crime story?” one character asked during the series. “Because America is a crime story.” And as anybody who knows our history, there’s a lot of truth to that. The main narrator for this story said she was giving a history report, and in the last minute of the season, we realized whose history we’d learned, and how it tied the show together so neatly that we really don’t need another season. This series may have been the most relevant one in the entire series, and it reveals that there has never been equality anywhere, even among the criminals.

This may well be the end for Fargo (it depends on Hawley’s mind), and though I hope it isn’t, this has been a hell of a ride. You betcha.

 

Tune in later this week when I do my jury prize.

 

 

TV In The Age of Trump Comedy (?) Edition: How Our Cartoon President Turned Out To Be A Bigger Mess Than Reality

 

The universal complaint from so many late night comedians was just how difficult it was to find comedy in the last four years. Even the best talents at it – Seth Meyers & John Oliver among them – found it exhausting trying to make fun of the current administration. And if those experts had so much trouble, trying to go directly at it was even worse.

I should note that trying to satirize the Presidency in comedy settings has always been difficult. During George W. Bush’s administration, Comedy Central made two attempts to try and make fun of it: Trey Parker & Matt Stone’s sitcom send-up That’s My Bush which imagined the White House as an eighties laugh-track comedy, and Little Bush which imagined Bush and his inner circle as eight year olds, a la Muppet Babies. Neither worked for the simple reason that they weren’t particularly funny.  The First Family, a syndicated comedy clearly satirizing The Obamas lasted longer, but was less ambitious and not exceptionally amusing.

So expectations should have been low when Showtime premiered Our Cartoon President, a more or less direct animated satire of The Trump administration. I can only imagine that they went for it so that they could finally have Donald Trump more or less the bright orange comedians have been saying he is for his entire candidacy and time in the White House. Unfortunately, that was pretty much the high point of the whole series.

Now, I should say up front that my entire viewing experience of the series – which inexplicably has lasted three seasons – has been limited to six episodes and bits and pieces over the years.  However, I think my impression of it is fair – that it may be one of the greatest wastes of time and energy in the history of Showtime and remember, this is the network that not only brought us Californication, but tried to do a spin-off of it.

Admittedly, part of the problem that it’s very hard to satirize the Trump administration. I don’t just mean the President, I mean the entire group including his family, his cabinet and his advisors. Part of the problem with that was there has been so much turnover over his term that its really hard to get used to any single parody of one. But even if there was constancy, there has been no real effort made. James Mattis was shown in a military uniform all the time may have been the most inspired thing they did, which still isn’t amusing. The storylines were haphazard at best, barely making the effort to try and satirize policy or even try to make fun of politics. What you mostly have was people shouting at the top of their lungs or acting particular stupid. I know we live in an age where subtlety is a lost art, but Our Cartoon President didn’t even try.

And this didn’t even stop with the administration itself.  Nancy Pelosi was played as a woman whose couldn’t move her face because it was permanently botoxed. Mitch McConnell sounded like a turtle. Ted Cruz’s entire character seemed to be based on his saying his name over and over again. This barely qualifies as nursery school humor.

What makes this harder to understand is that this came from the mind of Stephen Colbert, who for more than two decades has been one of the most astute political satirists in history. Even if you think he’s modified his personality too much in his transition from The Colbert Report to David Letterman’s replacement, one has to admit he still has a great quality for political comedy. But there’s none of his genius here. Every joke is played at a level that is so obvious a five year old couldn’t miss it. The plots of the episodes barely would qualify as plots anywhere else. He doesn’t even try for the subtlety that The Simpsons even past its peak still has. Hell, the closing theme is just ‘Donald Trump is the President’ played over and over for a minute. It’s like the writers don’t even want to make an effort.

And in a year where we needed to laugh more than effort, this season (where the title was adapted to Who Will Be Our Next Cartoon President?) made even less of effort. I grant you it would be hard to laugh at a pandemic and economic crash, but everything they did bordered on the banal. I wouldn’t have minded that actually gone darker – given the status of the world, I would’ve appreciated it. But Trump being trained to do a fake wrestling match against the Pandemic? Susan Collins flip-flopping leading to her jumping through windows? This wasn’t offensive, it was just plain stupid.

I don’t know what idiot on Showtime’s executive board greenlit this show or who decided we needed three full seasons. But I hope someone sees the light and cancels this stinker. We didn’t need it during the Trump administration, and there isn’t nearly enough comedy in Congress to sustain it now.

Police Procedurals Reexamined, Part 2: How Major Crimes Got Right (Almost) Everything The Closer Got Wrong

 

In my previous article, I indicated just how many things The Closer did wrong during the course of its run. By extension, you would be hard pressed to think a spinoff of the show would be any more wrong-headed. Actually, spin-off is the wrong word, considering that almost the entire cast from The Closer was on the series, save for Sedgwick, Simmons and Corey Reynolds. It would be more accurate to consider Major Crimes a continuation.

(It should also be noted that Major Crimes is what the unit Chief Johnson was heading was called after it seemed likely that Priority Homicide was going to be disbanded. She called it Major Crimes in front of a reporter. Some would call this an action to protect her people; I saw it as yet another example as to how Brenda refused to accept any decision that threatened her authority. But I digress.)

The central reason, I believe, that Major Crimes worked better was the woman they got to replace Sedgwick. But to explain how they made this choice, we need to go back a bit.

Early in Season 5, we were introduced the leader of the Force Investigation Division (the variation on Internal Affairs) Captain Sharon Rayder. Played by Mary McDonnell, who had just left her best job on the Scifi Channel’s revival of Battlestar Galactica, Rayder was as close to a worthy antagonist – and eventual frenemy that Brenda would have. She was just as determined and intense as Brenda was at her job, but unlike Brenda, she was committed to doing the right thing for justice whatever the cause.

The reason we were supposed to dislike her is the same reason we have been attuned to hate Internal Affairs ever since police dramas began – they are the bureaucracy preventing the cops from doing their jobs. The fact that police might need policing is one of those things that both bad cops and good cops seem to agree on –  apparently the only thing worse than being a criminal is being ‘a rat’  - which ironically may be one of the few real things police procedurals are right when it comes to accurate portrayals of cops.

But because Sharon was essentially the other side of the coin when it came to Johnson, it became easy to root for her very quickly. Their relationship was complicated, but the possibility that she was trying to support her because of the difficulty of being a woman in the LAPD – something that was only hinted at – may have led to her trying to help her. She gently nudged Brenda into interviewing for the Chief position, headed the investigation into the Newton murder, trying to protect Brenda as much as she could against the brass, and trying to find the mole in the department, something Brenda virulently denied, even up to the point of her exposure. You could argue that Sharon was trying to help the department this way as well, but Brenda never saw it that way, because she still viewed her as an obstacle.

When Major Crimes began, the series made several brilliant moves. First they put Rayder’s character at the head of the unit. This gave the series a certain integrity that, for all the efforts of the writers, The Closer never really had.  We knew Rayder believed in justice; we didn’t have to be convinced. The series also became more of an ensemble piece in a way it had never been in the parent show. Provenza was given more to do than be the crotchety comic, out of touch, old cop, and reveal some genuine talent as an investigator. He was actually allowed to be second in command, something Brenda almost never did. Many of the other characters began to get more of a background that we rarely saw on the show –  we saw more of the characters family and some of the characters who had always been on the fringe – Buzz, the cameraman whose sole job seemed to be setting up video on The Closer -  was actually given a real backstory, which would form the background of an entire season.

There was also at the center of Major Crimes more of a sense of the process that was never quite there. In The Closer, Brenda got them to confess and that was almost always the end of it. In Major Crimes, the DA’s office was at the center of every investigation. Plea bargains were the goal rather than confessions. We spent far more time in the courtroom then we ever did on the parent season, and while the results weren’t always pleasant, at least Major Crimes acknowledged their was a process.

I honestly think the series could have had a better reputation had it not made such a ghastly mistake from the last episode of The Closer. In the finale, Brenda’s series long battle with an attorney/serial killer Philip Stroh, culminated after she used a teenage male prostitute named Rusty basically as bait to catch him and get him into jail. Right from the start, Rusty was portrayed as one of the most annoying teenage characters in the history of the medium. It wasn’t until  We Are Who We Are that I found one that irked me nearly as much from beginning to end.

What makes this hard to understand is why he was on Major Crimes in the first place. Granted, he was a witness in the Stroh case, but there was no legitimate reason to keep him onscreen. I understand why Sharon would feel an obligation to protect him as a witness, but there was no reason at all to invite him into her home. Indeed, the longer the storyline was carried out, the more ludicrous it became. Sharon would end up adopting him later in the show, and eventually he would work at the DAs offices while attending community college.

All of this could have happened without making him a regular. He could’ve just shown up occasionally every few episodes and it would have been easier to tolerate. And since the writers never found a real use for him, I just don’t know why he was there. At one point, he was being used as bait for one of Stroh’s accomplices, and this may have been one of the times I was rooting for a character to be killed off.

But despite this massive flaw, Major Crimes was a very well done police procedural that dealt far more with the consequences of police work than anything else. There was more empathy with the suspects then usual (though there will still more than their share of moronic criminals) and I think it could’ve lasted longer. Indeed, the writers were as shocked as the fan base when the series was canceled after six seasons. I grant you, it basically wrapped up slightly better than The Closer did (though I was not sold on a major death near the end), but it could still be going on today. Granted TNT has moved on to darker and somewhat better material (the rousing Snowpiercer and the delightful Claws), but it could use a series like this. Hell, given everything going on, I think the genre could as well.

Police Procedurals Reexamined, Part 1: How The Closer Damaged Both The Genre and the Strong Female Protagonist

 

Given all the protests of the last summer, the police procedural has come under intense scrutiny. I myself took a deeper look at it in August, paying particular attention to the work of Dick Wolf and how his view of police has served as both propaganda and a normalization of some of the more intense police behavior over the past two decades.

I should add I don’t feel the same universal revulsion for so many of the cop dramas that have been seen under a new light; I still feel that Homicide and The Wire did a lot of good work exposing the flaws of the politics of policing and how it has failed the war on drugs. I also believe that The Shield probably took a closer look at the level of brutality we are willing to tolerate for our own safety, and provided no easy answers, even at the end.

But in retrospect, there are quite a few procedurals that have done a lot of damage to how the viewers feels that policing should be done – and unlike so many, the flaws were very evident at the time, we just chose to overlook them. In this article, I’m going to look at one in particular that always made me feel just a bit uncomfortable at how justice should be done.

In the summer of 2005, TNT – a network which had spent the last few years experimenting with original programming, but had yet to come with a commercial success – debuted The Closer. The series focused on the LAPD’s new Priority Homicide Division, made up of various officers in the unit, headed by a former FBI agent named to head the division from Atlanta Brenda Lee Johnson, memorably played by Kyra Sedgwick. Perhaps a warning sign should’ve been given right then. Given the history of Southern police officers and their relationship with minorities (an issue which would become central the longer the series went on), was the series sending a message as to how justice would be meted out right then?

Brenda seemed determined to step on everybody’s toes right from the start. Her entire unit threatened to resign because of her behavior less than fifteen minutes in the Pilot, and she would tear up all their letters after receiving them. (As a sign of solidarity, they would offer them to the captain again at the end of the season.) Another sign of trouble, she would accept their help but she would always view their opinions with a certain level of disdain. They all seemed to respect her for it, but I’m not sure that’s the best relationship for any superior to have with her fellow detectives.

I should add that this series had a superb supporting cast: J.K. Simmons would play Chief Pope, who brought her in from Atlanta to head up his division; it would later be revealed he had affair with her. Jon Tenney would play FBI agent Fritz Howard, who would eventually become her boyfriend and then her husband; perhaps not coincidentally, he would be the only person who would be able to handle her. Veteran actors  G.W. Bailey and Anthony Denison would play Lieutenants Provenza and Flynn, who provide much of the humor with their back and forth. Raymond Cruz, who would have a memorable stint on Breaking Bad, played the hot-tempered Detective Sanchez. Also, the series would have one of the most racially balanced casts in any procedural up to that point: Corey Reynolds would play Detective Gabriel, who eventually became her most trusted man on the force, and Michael Patrick Chan would play Lieutenant Tao, the units most technically advanced officer.

All of this should be applauded, but the series never resolved the problems with Chief Johnson. I can’t help but think that so much of the criticism that should normally be applied to the faults in Johnson’s policing were overlooked because she was a woman. Any one of the flaws she demonstrated would have represented as a cliché from a male chief (I’m thinking of Frank Furillo from Hill Street Blues as my top example) but just sailed over everybody’s head. For one thing, she constantly butted heads with the brass over every minute detail of the handling for the case. In the entire series, I don’t recall a single incident of her willingly working with the higher-ups. It wasn’t the protect her men, as so many of the other chiefs have done in the past; it came across more as an inconvenience to her personally.  This was trivial some of the time, but a lot of the time you really wondered if she cared. I remember an incident when she was involved in hit and run, and rather than file out an accident report, she ignore the head of traffic division so she could work on her case. She never did fill out the report; instead, she had Chief Pope give the man a commendation to get her off her back.

Much more disturbing was how she handled things  on the rare occasion that a criminal should escape justice. Every season or so, if a criminal couldn’t be sent the prison, she arranged things so he would face justice by other means – usually being killed. Never mind that every cop seemed willing to wink at this (that was disturbing enough) , it made her seem like the kind of cop who believed the victims priority superseded justice. After the series was on just a couple of seasons, I started to feel the rare case of empathizing more with the murderer than the police.  This was helped because, like in so many case, in a lot of cases the perpetrators  were often deeply stupid, but a lot of their reasons were sympathetic. Brenda just seemed to wash them all off, which says more about her than anything else.

This became incredibly clear during what would be the series most critical arc near the back half of The Closer’s run. After a gang member nicknamed ‘Shootin’ Newton confessed to killing three men and walked away because of an offer an immunity that had been given to him before full knowledge of his crimes, Brenda drove Newton home. It was evident that his gang, who’d known he’d been snitching, was there and they were armed. Johnson let him enter his home with no police protection. He was murdered almost immediately afterward, and she just drove away.

Johnson, I repeat, was a white woman. Newton was African-American. This was one of the most cold-blooded acts I’ve ever seen on television. And for the rest of the series, Brenda never even considered she’d done some wrong.

For the last two seasons of the show, the LAPD was involved with a wrongful death lawsuit from the Newton family.  Everything Brenda did was put under a microscope. (I’ll get to the person who did in the next part of my review.) She hired a lawyer, her team was all served with subpoenas, and it became clear there was a leak in her department. If there was any sign of person guilt or a need to take some kind of personal measures, Brenda never showed it. Indeed, she was more than willing to giving her particular lying statements to the police in front of her lawyer.

And at this point, I should probably get to the center of what made The Closer unique: Brenda eliciting confessions. Now there was nothing new about lying to your suspect during an interrogation: I’d delighted to Lennie Briscoe and Frank Pembleton doing it for years. But knowing what we know about how police get confessions these days, the sheer amount of lying that Brenda did was frankly overblown and over the top. And I find it very telling that in the entire run of the series, every person she interrogated was always guilty. She never made a mistake. I realize that’s how most procedurals work, but it was central to The Closer. If there had ever been an innocent person who confessed to a crime because of the lies Brenda told, the whole series would’ve fallen apart. And often the lies were so outrageous, the viewer could tell without needing to be told. But as we are very aware of now, most suspects can’t. So there were never any consequences for Brenda on that end.

As for the lawsuit, her lawyer clearly thought she was guilty, but nevertheless managed to get the suit dismissed. When Newton’s lawyer filed a class action based on the victims of the murders by proxy that had taken place throughout the series, it was brought down when that lawyer was connected to another crime. And the only consequences of the lawsuit was that Brenda’s name would be associated with an exception for bad practices. And that’s what upset her the most. Not the fact that she had been responsible for so many people’s deaths, but because it affected her reputation at the LAPD. A reputation, by the way, she never cared about as long as the work was getting done. (There were at least a couple of occasions where she had to be forced into being considered for a promotion.)

So there were no consequences for any of her actions. Even when the series ended, she was still stretching the boundaries willing to break any rule to get a killer locked up. (Of course the killer was one of the ones that make the murderers in Criminal Minds seem modest…but we’ll get to that a little later) The only consequence, she moved over to the DAs office, and followed a different path.

And I should mention that much of this series played as a light-hearted comedy, some of which had to do with Flynn and Provenza, but most of which dealt with the silliness of the crimes. It doesn’t change the fact that this series painted a picture of one of the most twisted and ruthless law enforcement figures in the history of the medium – who we were supposed to root for because she kept reaching for chocolate out of her bag.

And then, somehow, there was a spinoff of this same series that managed to do almost everything right. I’ll get to that in the next entry.

Doesn't That Long for Him to Start Breaking Bad Again: Bryan Cranston Returns to TV In Your Honor

 

Has there been a greater performance in the history of television than Bryan Cranston’s work as Walter White on Breaking Bad? It’s been very difficult to argue otherwise even more than seven years after the final episode aired. Cranston has not quite vanished from the medium that launched him to superstardom well before the debut of that series – his work as LBJ on All The Way was a masterwork, and his performance on the undervalued Sneaky Pete on Amazon was appreciated by many.

Now, however, he returns to a role much close to the one that brought him glory in Showtime’s new Limited Series Your Honor.  In it, he plays New Orleans Judge Michael Desiato, a widowed father and, as we see in the opening minutes of the Pilot, a bastion of the law. We also see his son Adam, an aspiring photographer, due to an asthma attack accidentally hit a boy about his age riding a scooter. He panics, drives away, and when Michael sees his son, he gently nudges him into doing the right thing and taking him to the police. Then when he reaches the station, he realizes who the child’s father was – Jimmy Baxter (Michael Stuhlbarg, one of the great discoveries of Peak TV), the most vicious crime boss in the city. Knowing full well what Baxter is capable of, he reverses course, and starts covering up the crime his son has committed.

Unfortunately, just like so many of Walter White’s plans, this one starts to spiral out of control almost immediately. He calls upon one of his closest friends, Charlie (Isiah Whitlock, Jr. in a role not that far from Clay Davis) to make his son’s  car disappear. Unfortunately, the cops find it before it can get to the scrapyard and Baxter’s man in the New Orleans PD gets to the patsy and leads him open. Charlie arranges a cover-up, but Michael’s conscience is clearly getting in the way, and its already clear, so is Adam.

As always, Cranston leads the way in a character that is far closer to the level of goodness that everyone thought Walter White was. He also gets to play a character with a real sense of morality and compassion, something that he didn’t get to do that much as White. It’s another master class of a performance. Stuhlbarg is actually a greater revelation here: he always seemed urbane as Arnold Rothstein on Boardwalk Empire and inept as a criminal in Season 3 of Fargo. Here you see a man who is capable of compassion to those he loves, and far more frightening and ruthless than even the world knows.

The series has a great supporting cast, but so far only Stuhlbarg and Whitlock have gone to show off. Hope Davis, playing Baxter’s wife, has done very little so far, and Carmen Ejogo, a defense attorney who has a history with Michael has done even less. (Margo Martindale is in her somewhere we have yet to see her. Still, with the level of menace that always seems right around the corner (the sequence leading up to the fatal accident is one of the best I’ve seen this year) and the atmosphere of New Orleans fully permeating this show already, Your Honor, yet another marvelous production of Robert and Michelle King, has the potential to be yet another in a superb line of limited series to fill 2020. In any case, seeing Cranston back on screen is a great way to rap up the year.

My score: 4 stars.

The TV Series Was Better: Why Little Fires Everywhere worked better as a Limited Series Than A Novel

 

I’ve made no secret that I considered Hulu’s adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere one of the premier accomplishments of this year. Led by the exceptional performances of Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, this daring study of two completely different mothers living in a planned community in 1990s Ohio was superbly written, directed and acted all the way through.

I didn’t read Celeste Ng’s original novel before I saw the series. This isn’t strange for me; a lot of the time when films and TV shows based on novels are out, I try to go into them with no knowledge of the source material so that I can make an impartial judgment. After the series was over, I spent a fair amount of time before I finally read the book, hoping it might fill in some of the gaps that producer Liz Tiglear and her staff left out. I finally finished reading it earlier this week and frankly, though it was a good read, I was left wanting a bit more.

(Warning: spoilers for both the book and the series are ahead.)

The fundamental story of the book is the same as the limited series; it deals with the relationship between the Richardson family, a white family lead by Elena and her four children who seem to have the perfect life, and the Warrens, Mia, a photographer who travels the country with her daughter, Pearl. Pearl becomes friendly with the younger son, Moody, and slowly becomes more involved the Richardson family, something that Mia doesn’t like. More to keep an eye on her daughter, Mia agrees to do housework at the Richardson family. In turn, she becomes friendly with Izzy, the youngest daughter who doesn’t bend to the structure of her school or her home, and who her mother seems to openly not like. Eventually, the tension between Elena and Mia begins to boil over, when Mia helps Bebe, a Chinese woman try to reclaim her child from the McColloughs, whose wife is Elena’s best friend and who adopted her daughter after Bebe left her in a fire station during a fit of post partum depression.

What’s absent from the book that I found so prevalent in the limited series was the level of detail that was in the latter. In the series, Elena is distrustful of Mia from the beginning, and there are definite indication that she looks down on her. There are many confrontations between Mia and Elena in the series; in the book, there’s only, near the end. Elena is pictured in the book as a sheltered woman, but we never get a clear picture as to how. In the series, she has ambitions, which she gives up after she finds out she’s pregnant with Izzy. There’s a clear indication that she wants to abort her at one point, which is probably the cause of her resentment of Izzy when she is grown. And there are always indications of a life she never got a chance to have, one that she at point considers going back to with her boyfriend from college, who she nearly has sex with… and then backs away from at the last minute.  There was never a clear explanation for this in the series and I was hoping the book would explain it. In the book, the character is there for all two expositional paragraphs.

Mia’s backstory is essentially the same as the book – and because it’s one of the more successful things, I won’t repeat it. There is, however, one critical change. Mia is revealed to have had a lesbian relationship with her mentor, which leads to a picture being taken that is critical to the series. In the book, Mia is a virgin (the explanation as to how she had Pearl is the same in both version, so I’ll leave it to you to find out why). Mia’s sexuality is critical because of her relationship with Izzy.

There are also major disappointment about the stories of the children, the biggest of which is Izzy. Izzy is trying to be an iconoclast even before she meets up with Mia, but we never get a clear reason as to why. In the series there’s a very clear reason – Izzy was attracted to a fellow classmate who shared her affection until it was exposed, and has now abandoned her to the hostility of her fellow students. This is a common bond between Izzy and Mia that is far more enlightening then we get in the book.

And by far the most disappointing thing about the book is its conclusion. The book and the series both open with the Richardson house having been burnt to the ground. Everyone assumes Izzy did it. In the book, that’s exactly how it plays out. We understand the reason why she did it, but it makes the ending completely anticlimactic. The limited series conclusion is, in my mind, far more satisfying. (I’ve already revealed it in a previous article, so I won’t repeat myself.) There was a reckoning for Elena that just wasn’t there in the original book – she makes a false assumption about Pearl, and as far as we know, its never corrected.

There are ways the book is superior – we get a clearer reason as to how Lexi ended up pregnant, which leads to Lexi and Mia end up having a closer relationship, and there’s also a much clearer explanation as to why Bebe abandoned her child. But in my opinion, in almost every imaginable way, Hulu’s adaptation of the book is far better than reading the novel.

Last week, I gave an explanation as to why I thought The Undoing, while a great series was a flawed adaptation of its source material. I’ve come to the reverse conclusion when it comes to Little Fires Everywhere.  I can see why Reese Witherspoon was drawn to it in the first place – there’s a lot in it that resonates – but those, like me, who often think adaptations leave out more than they bring in, will find that the latter is true in this case. I make the following recommendation; if you haven’t either read the book or seen the  series, see Little Fires Everywhere first. It is a thunderbolt. The book is just a novel.

 

TV In The Age of Trump, Part 4: Escapism

 

My last entry in this series will deal with a group of shows that fit the definite of escapism better than any of the other shows on this list.

We all spent much of the last four years looking to TV to bring us into a world other than this one. But these shows – be that comedies, dramas or mini-series – used the medium to new levels of imagination. A lot of them didn’t make sense, but can we truly say the world we lived in the past four years made much either? These really took the visuals of the medium and made it incredible.

 

Kidding

Not nearly enough people viewed Jim Carrey’s return to television. But those of who did saw a true miracle. Carrey played Jeff Pickles, the host of a children’s TV show for thirty years whose life was slowly and surely becoming undone after the death of one of his children. As he slowly but surely began to crack, the lines between his world and the world of puppets that he and his family had spent decades developing began to fray and the result was one of the greatest surreal experiments in TV history, that constantly kept the viewer on their toes, trying to figure out what was real and what was in Jeff’s mind.

We saw flashbacks to an earlier time when things seemed easier. We saw a dream sequence under anesthesia that not even Jeff could tell if things was actually happening. We saw an episode of his series – and in all candor, if this was a real show, it’s the one we need now more than ever. Carrey reminded us why, in addition to be one of our great comics, he’s a superb actor. And he was backed up by a great supporting cast, including Frank Langella and Catherine Keener.

I’m not entirely stunned that this series was canceled after just two years – the viewership was low even for Showtime. But I hope like heck that some other creator takes on the ideas of the visuals and focuses it on an other rarity in Peak TV – a good person who can’t even bring himself to use the curses everyone around him can.

 

Stranger Things

This would be a true joy for television even if this were a far gentler era. But in this era, it is remarkable. A flashback to 1980s Indiana and a story focused on a group of pre-teens as they try to explore the world of supernatural monsters.

Watching the series first explore the disappearance of Will Byers featured some truly magnificent moments. Joyce trying to find her son using Christmas tree light; the disappearance of the nerdy Barb that started its own hashtag, the visuals on the Demagorgon. And all around a bunch of good-hearted middle Americans trying to do the right thing.

The cast was always filled with winks to the earlier era, starting with Winona Ryder as Joyce, but what has made this series sing has been the incredible performances the Duffer Brothers have managed to coax out of these incredible kids led, of course, by Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven. Even three years into her work, there are few actresses of any age who can do so much with so few words.

The virus postponed the shooting of Stranger Things 4 which means will have to wait to see if the most beloved character Sheriff Roy Hopper is still alive. But as long as they keep promoting, I’ll be a member of their party.

 

Atlanta

I know, I know, technically this is an urban comedy. But anyone who’s watched Donald Glover’s masterpiece knows that Atlanta is anything but the typical comedy. Writer-director-star Glover has assembled a troop of writers that are willing to do more and stranger things that even some of those risky dramas are willing to try.

Who can forget ‘B.A.N’, where Paper Boi when on a black network channel to deal with a racial controversy? The commercials alone made it a masterpiece. Or the prescient Juneteenth where Earn and Van went to the title celebration that was the complete opposite  of what we know it should be about? Or FUBU, where we back to Earn’s childhood and saw just how dark things could be over a jacket?

Of course, all of that pales (pun definitely intended) with the show’s masterpiece (so far)  ‘Teddy Perkins’. Fringe character Darius goes to pick up a piano, and ends up having one of the most surreal experiences in television history with a former rock star who seems to have completely bleached his skin and has a completely different look on fame and success. This is one of the greatest achievements in TV history. Two years later, critics are still trying to explain it.

Atlanta will be back, though it’s hard to know when. (It was renewed for two seasons, but Glover was moving at a measured pace getting the writing done before Covid threw everything into chaos. But I want to see what happens next to Earn. I know it won’t be pretty. That’s why I want to see it.

 

Watchmen

Technically this series was one of the most realistic explorations of race in the history of the medium. That doesn’t change the fact that this limited series that served as a sequel to the groundbreaking graphic novel was one of the greatest visual and creative masterpieces in history.

The murder of a sheriff in Tulsa becomes the backdrop to a battle for racial dominance that could lead to the end of the world. But Sister Night (the always dazzling Regina King) could never quite put together how it was happening, even though she was at the center of it. And Laurie Blake (the equally brilliant Jean Smart) didn’t seem to care because, as we all knew, she’d seen it all before.  In the midst of this, Adrian Veidt seemed to live a life of leisure that quickly became more and more surreal. Looking Glass was dealing the aftereffects of the attack at the center of the comic and the truth was devastating. And through it all Lady Trieu was trying to bring about world peace. That’s what she thought anyway. And where was Dr. Manhattan in all this?

This did turn out to make sense in the end, but it wouldn’t have matter much of it didn’t because the visuals were so great (This Extraordinary Being was one of the great accomplishments of 2019) and the performance were marvelous. Damon Lindelof has firmly said that this will be a one and done series, even though the demand for Season 2 is high and there are place the show could go. But this was a true masterpiece and nothing can damage that.

 

Twin Peaks: The Return

In a world of reboots and revivals, it would’ve been easy for David Lynch to get the cast and crew of his landmark cult series back together and do more of the same. But as anyone who’s watched his work, ‘easy’ is not something David Lynch does.

This series defined what a revival should do. In eighteen episode, Lynch and Mark Frost managed to create a world that was almost, but not entirely unlike the series he had created a quarter of a century ago. He took the central character of that series Dale Cooper and had him play two completely different versions of himself until the revival was almost over. Most of the characters of the show were there, but it made very clear that the world of Twin Peaks was completely different. Hell, half the characters we met had no previous connection.

Did it make much sense? Not really. Did I care? Not at all. This is one of the true works of art of television, a perfect companion to the original series. And I know it was because the Emmys had no idea what to do with it when the time for nominations came out. They’ll appreciate it later.

Much as I’d like another season, given the age of most of the cast (Miguel Ferrer and Catherine Coulson died not that long after making it) the odds are fairly strong against it. So let’s be grateful that we got what Dale Cooper said all those years ago something that was: ‘wondrous and strange.”

 

TV In The Age Of Trump: Part 3 - Limited Series/Anthology

 

There have been a lot of great anthology and limited series over the last four years, some of which have been brilliant at showing some of the major issues of our time, some of which were just brilliant entertainment. Some of them were one and done; some of them were part of a collective. But even though they were classified under awards shows as ‘limited’, they were anything but in power and scope.

 

American Crime Story

So far we’ve only had two editions of Ryan’s Murphy’s most exceptional collaboration with FX, but each one has peered deeply into some of the darker corners of our world.

 In The People V. O.J. Simpson, even those of who lived through ‘The Trial of The Century’ and thought that there was nothing left to say about it were absolutely astounded by how many new angles there were to see.  From the prosecution trying to play this as any other murder to the ‘Dream Team’, showing us that this case was the story of race in microcosm, this story seemed to be a review and a preview of the world in which we lived. Hell, it even explained the Kardashians. It was also one of the great triumphs of acting of the last decade, with extraordinary work from veterans such as Sarah Paulson and Courtney B. Vance to delivering the first of so many stunning performances by Sterling Brown.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace reversed the format by starting with the title murder and then going backwards, showing that the two lives by Andrew Cunanan (the extraordinary Darren Criss) and fashion icon Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) were mirror images of what it was like to be gay in the 1990s. Slowly, we worked backwards over Cunanan’s crime spree which seemed like something that could only happen then and yet seems eerily plausible now. And in doing so, it did something that the first incarnation could never do: it made us feel sympathy for the killer.

The third incarnation, which was supposed to deal with Clinton’s impeachment has been filmed but has yet to air. Perhaps given the climate in which we live, Ryan Murphy is waiting for a slightly calmer time. Whenever it comes, I’ll be waiting with baited breath.

 

Unbelievable

With the coming of the #MeToo movement and the general realization of the role the police procedural may have been in our view of the justice system, Netflix’s telling of this investigation into a serial rapist in the west may have been the perfect tonic for it. Telling the story of Marie (Kaitlyn Dever in one of the best performances of the past two years) a teenager from foster care whose own background let to even her doubting a sexual assault, the story followed two female detectives who put all the ones from Dick Wolf to shame. Two of the greatest actresses working today (Merritt Weyer and Toni Collette, absolutely robbed by the Emmys…for this) played Karen Duvall and Grace Rasmussen, two detectives whose investigation into a single assault leads into one of the more sprawling cases that either could have imagined. Duvall’s placid exterior and Rasmussen’s vigor showed a contrast so vivid it almost made you forget that this may have been the first time in a very long time you saw two women investigating a case where it wasn’t put obviously front and center. You knew the two cases would link up eventually but it didn’t make it any less powerful when it did. Headlined by one of the most exceptional directors in the film industry, Lisa Chodenko, this may have been the hardest of all the series I will list to watch. It doesn’t make it any less important or well-done.

 

Fosse/Verdon

Now that Broadway has gone dark for who knows how long, it seems important to remember the legends who made it work. And it helped that two of films greatest legends – Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams, who deserved won an Emmy for her work – played the roles of two of Broadway’s most complicated legends.

Bob Fosse was one of the greatest talents in any field he worked – the only person so far to win a Tony, Oscar and an Emmy in the same year. By the most casual of observers, he was also an impossible man to deal with. Only his wife and muse Gwen Verdon seemed able to handle him, but as we watched this series, the operative word was seemed. We got the view of their relationship from every angle – their beginning in the work of art Damn Yankees, how she helped him through Sweet Charity, and how their marriage finally collapsed in one horrible weekend. We saw he was a victim of drugs and excess, as well of sexual abuse in his younger days, but the writers pulled no punches in showing he was no less a victimizer as well. If there was a happy ending for these two complicated people, it may have come through their daughter, who managed to escape the madness on her own. It was dazzling, depressing, and let’s call it like we see it – show-stopping.

 

Little Fires Everywhere

Reese Witherspoon may have been the extraordinary force to come out of the past four years; I’ve already mentioned her brilliance in Big Little Lies and her talent in The Morning Show has been recognized, but in my mind her most extraordinary performance came as the locked into routine Elena Richardson is this exceptional limited series that the Emmys unforgivably shafted.

Witherspoon and the extraordinary Kerry Washington gave brilliant dueling performance as two completely different kinds of mothers to their children, one perfect on the outside but incredibly flawed, one angry but loving on the inside, and in each way, attractive to children in the other’s family. Surrounded by a mystery that opened the story, the show took a look at 1990s Middle America in a way we haven’t seen in a long time and dealt with racism, sexuality, cross race adoption and what it means to be a good mother. From the leads to the exceptional child actors, this was one of the greatest limited series in the past year, and in my mind, a far superior adaptation then the book it was based on.

 

 

Fargo

In a sense, this example of ‘Midwest Noir’ got started two years before the time I listed. But the two seasons that it gave to the viewer were so incredibly well done – and in a way  explain the era we live in so well – that it would be wrong to ignore it.

In Season 3, Noah Hawley took us into the post-recession would of Minnesota following the Stussy Brothers (both incredibly portrayed by Ewan MacGregor) one the parking lot king of the Midwest, the other a parole officer with one good thing in his life – parolee Nikki Swango (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). A conflict over a stamp leads to a series of murders, blackmail and corruption which devoted cop Gloria Burgle (Carrie Coon) tries to unravel even though her job is being eliminated and it doesn’t seem like she exists anymore, according to security doors and washrooms. Does she succeed? It all depends, in a quantum universe. But God, it was fun.

Over the past few months, we’ve gone way back to the past – 1950 Kansas City, and watched the struggle between two families; one led by Loy Cannon (an incredible Chris Rock) the other the way over his head Josto Fadda (Jason Schwarzman). Because of two lesbian robbers, a seriously psychotic nurse, and a U.S. Marshal whose the only law in this town, things got very bad. A little child ended up leading one side out of the darkness. And through it all, a survivor from the last family struggle (Ben Whishaw in a searing performance) may have been the only compassionate person in the world. This was a history lesson, and in the final minutes we learned whose history we had just learned.

Fargo was an example of great TV. Like in so much of the work by David Milch, sometimes it didn’t make a lick of sense, but the dialogue is so good and the images are so powerful (like in what was as close to a bubble episode as the series gets, this year’s ‘East/West), the viewer didn’t care. This may be the end for this series, and if it is Hawley has created one of the most complete worlds in all of TV.

 

In my final set of articles on this particular part, I will deal with some series and shows I qualify under the category ‘the fantastic.’

It's Still A Little Gem: A Million Little Things Season 3 Review

 

Oh, the madness of timing. Last year, I was overjoyed when one of my favorite series from 2018, A Million Little Things was given the golden time slot in Shondaland right between, Grey’s Anatomy and How to Get Away with Murder. It was a move that allowed me to give gratitude to Shonda Rhimes – something I’d rather not do under any circumstances. I spent much of the end of last year alternately watching it and The Good Place one week and streaming the other. Then because I got focused on the final episodes of the latter show – with good reason, I might add –  and with other series getting in my way, I ended up missing much of the second half of Season 2.

However, in this new world, I’m welcoming old friends, and I’m glad to see the group has survived – albeit with more trauma. Eddie (David Glutnick) spent much of the back half of Season 2 trying to figure out another mystery of his past that may have involved a murder when he was drunk. Just as he seemed to resolve it, he was the victim of a hit and run while he was still on the phone with Katherine (Grace Park). He managed to survive it, but is now facing the possibility he might never walk again.

Rome and Regina spent much of last year trying to go through the process of adopting a child. I well remember how opposed Regina was to the idea in the half of Season 2 I watched, so I don’t know how much effort it took to win her over. I do know the end result – the birth mother backed out at the last second, and now Regina and Rome are dealing with the consequences in different ways – Rome is angry, Regina is depressed, and their shaky marriage is starting to crumble.

But I think the most devastating blow for me was learning that my favorite couple of the group Greg (the remarkable James Roday) and Maggie (Allison Miller0 broke up at the end of last season. After going through remission last year, you really thought they could handle everything, but I guess life and all the other aspects came to a blow. Maggie went to London on a fellowship to try and write a book at the end of last season, and is now in the process of trying to distance herself emotionally from her friends and Greg in particular. Greg has moved on with a friend of the family – physical therapist Flora – but some part of me is still rooting for them.

I won’t lie to you; A Million Little Things can often be a hard watch -  at times, it can make This Is Us seem like a positive cheerfest by comparison. But there are rewards. The deepness of the friendships that have been built through so much tragedy, the often great comedy that can come more often than you’d think, and the mysteries that always seem to be there. More than that, the friends are getting into stages where they can move on from some of the darker moments. I wish we’d see a bit more of Delilah, the widow who basically brought everybody together in the opening season, but it still plays well. I do think we’d be better off with some of the darkness – I don’t know who the driver is who tried to kill Eddie in the Season 2 finale, but it looks like at least a fair amount of the next few episodes is going to be spent dealing with him and the fallout.

So yet again, I find myself reluctantly giving credit to ABC and Shondaland for putting this brilliant series right up behind the two last series of Rhimes’ work on the network. I look forward to the day that they’ll have the confidence to let A Million Little Things stand on its own two feet, because not only can it really do so, the level of creativity and emotion don’t even belong in the same universe as Grey’s Anatomy. It’s a beautifully sculpted series, the kind that you’d think that Peak TV would and should have more of.

My score: 4.5 stars.

Sure, It Was A Great Show, But... Why The Undoing Was A Flawed Adaptation

Why Fargo's Season Ending Was Perfect and Brought us Back to the Beginning

 

Warning: This story contains spoilers. At the request of the survivors, the names have changed. Out of respect for the dead, everything else from the last four seasons of Fargo will be told exactly as it happened.

 

Last week, the announcers on FX said that yesterday’s episode of Fargo would be the final one. Not the season finale, the final one. Understandably, I was really upset to hear this and hoped that they were just referring to the end of Season 4. But after the credits rolled, I realized there was a very good reason as to why Noah Hawley not only would choose to end his saga of Midwest noir here, but why he chose this story in the first place.

To review, Season 4 dealt with the closing of the war between the Cannon family and the Fadda family. Ethelrida, the child of the owners of the morgue that Loy Cannon (Chris Rock) ended up taking over because of the bad decisions of the Smutny family, came to Loy and told him how to end his war. She handed over to him the ring that Oretta Mayflower had stolen after she murdered Donatello Fadda. Cannon seemed to thwart one last power grab, coming from family who betrayed him, and in the new capo from New York confronted Josto (Jason Schwartzman) with the information that Oretta had murdered his father at his request.

Now, to be clear, I have never been fully convinced how serious Josto request was. He seemed really determined to murder the head of the hospital who had turned his father away after he had been shot (a revenge he carried out at the beginning of the episode) But in a sense, Josto is as much a victim of the changing ways of America as so many of the characters in this series are. “The family business was for the old world,” the new head say. “It doesn’t work here.” And Josto was a victim of that.

Now, don’t get me wrong: Josto was a butcher who was willing to kill his own brother to serve his needs and an innocent child to provoke it. But as he faced his end, I still felt more sympathy for him than any of the criminals in this long and complicated saga. Hell, the woman who ratted him out asked him to be killed first so she could watch.

And it’s not like Loy did any better. He was reunited with his son, but he pretty much lost everything else he had been fighting for all season to the same forces that brought down Josto. Organized crime has taken over for the family business, and even the ambitious ones like Loy are still scrambling for scraps. And just as it seemed, he might have lost the world but at least gained his family, in a literal final twist of the knife, he was murdered by his sister-in-law in act of revenge.

But it wasn’t until the final moments that we realized why Hawley chose to end Fargo. Ethel framed the beginning of the series as a history report, telling us of the world that formed the Kansas City crime syndicates. But why this history? Then the credits rolled – and we saw footage of a familiar face: Mike Milligan (Bokeem Woodbine) one of the most notorious characters in the series incredible history. And then all became clear. Though he was referred to as Satchel for most of the series, we knew his name was Michael from his mother. And now we he realize how he got his last name – he adopted that of Rabbi Milligan (Ben Whishaw) his protector through his ordeal and given how he tried everything to save him, the only person in the entire series who put a child’s life before his own. Clearly that meant more to Mike than a father who was willing to use him as a hostage to try and gain more power. It may be the greatest twist that Hawley pulled off in four seasons of Fargo, in that it was hidden in plain sight the entire season but even the most devoted fans (of which I am one) couldn’t make the obvious connection.

And in that sense, Hawley created his greatest trick for a series full of them: he managed to link four seemingly separate stories into one epic saga of crime. Mike Milligan isn’t just the link between Season 4 and Season 2; he’s a link between the old way of doing things and the new way. He saw how the family business failed, and after everything else, chose to join the Kansas City Syndicate and help wipe out one of the last remaining family crime businesses: the Gerhardts. I’d like to say that’s a sign he succeeded, but given how innocent he seemed so often and was manipulated so much, it’s kind of tragedy that he ended up following in his father’s footsteps. Given how he managed to finally make out at the end of Season 2, we can’t even say for sure it was worth it.

And from the battle between Kansas City and the Gerhardts, which climaxed in the massacre at Sioux Falls, we find a link to Lou Solverson, who would go on to father Molly, the center of ‘Minnesota Nice’ and one of the few unquestioned purely good people that Hawley ever created. But even though she had a happy ending, it’s hard to argue that her way worked. As we know in Season 3 (which was linked to Season 1 by another characters whose real name we never knew for sure), Minnesota Nice came to an end pretty soon. And the criminal syndicate, which was already showing dents at the end of Season 1, was eaten up by the corporation run by men like V.P. Varga. Did the last remnants of that era, Gloria Burgle triumph over him? I thought so at the time, but given the way the world works, I’m less sure now.

At the end of it all, did Fargo have anything really deep to say? Maybe it was summed up by the poor Josto Fadda: “You know why America loves a crime story? Because America is a crime story.” And over the past few years, given everything about our history and that we have torn down far more than we have brought up, it’s hard to argue that point. Our society has always been more dog-eat-dog than the land of the free. Fargo only made it clearer than that.

Is this the end of Fargo? I actually think there is a good argument for it. In this cycle Hawley proved that history may not repeat but it does rhyme. This is a complete story and while there were occasional loose ends (I would like to know what happened to Ethelrida’s robber aunt who managed to escape a gun battle near the end of the season) it was a more complete series than any of the dramas stories I’ve seen these decade, as well as one of the best written, directed and of course, acted. (There will be a lot of awards nominations for this series in the coming year.)

But you never know. Maybe, in the same way he was inspired from every incarnation of Fargo that came out, a few years from now Hawley will have a moment of inspiration and we’ll be back to the blood and the snow and the music. Would I welcome that? You betcha.

Side Note: When I was writing my list of Best shows of the past decade, I wrote down Fargo as number 7. If this current season had been included, I think I would have flipped it with Parenthood and put it in at Number 5. This was a true triumph on every front.