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.

There's Darkness in the Big Sky: Another Feather In David E. Kelley's Crowded Cap

 

It took awhile for one of the legends of great television in the mid-1990s to realize the genius of Peak TV. David E. Kelley was the matter of great television in Picket Fences, Ally McBeal and The Practice, all of which won Emmys for either Best Drama or Best Comedy. But he became far too formulaic even in his best shows in the first decade of the new millennium and it seemed the Golden Age had left him behind.

In the past few years, he has returned guns blazing. Big Little Lies remains on my list of great shows as either a limited series or a real one, and this season’s The Undoing looks like it will be another triumph for Kelley and Nicole Kidman, who already won an Emmy for her work with him. Now for the first time since Harry’s Law was cancelled in 2013, Kelley has returned to broadcast television. And for the first time in a very long time, he’s nowhere near a courtroom or Boston, for that matter.

Big Sky as the title indicates is set in Montana. It deals primarily with the very complicated relationship between two female private investigators: Jenny Hoyt (Katheryn Winnick, late of The Vikings) and Cassie Dewell (Kylie Bunbury). Their relationship has always been edgy, and in the first ten minutes of the Pilot it becomes explosive when Jenny figures out that Cassie has been sleeping with her husband Cody, who she was separated from.  The two end up getting in a bar fight and things are not resolved one iota when Jenny and Cody go home and promptly have sex.

They don’t have time to start dealing for long though. Jenny and Cody’s college age girlfriend Danielle is driving cross country with her sister Grace (Little Fires Everywhere standout Jade Pettyjohn) and just they arrive in Montana, Grace gets cut off by a long haul trucker and gets very aggressive on the road. This would be a bad idea on the best of circumstances, but we’ve already met the driver, Ronald. And he’s just finished kidnapping a prostitute. Less than an hour later, he crashes into their car and takes them prisoner.

For all the conventions that we’ve seen in so many thrillers like this, Big Sky avoids some of them, and uses the rest for maximum effect. It helps that all of the performers are good at their job, but by far the pest is John Carroll Lynch as State Trooper Rick Legarski. Over the past twenty years as a symbol of goodness in the majority of his roles. We knew him as Marge Gunderson’s husband in Fargo, he was charming as Drew’s cross-dressing brother in The Drew Carey Show, and until fairly recently almost always been cast as the symbol of stout goodhearted Middle America. We’re inclined to believe that in much of the Pilot that he’s going to be a good-hearted, if a trifle annoying, assistant to the hunt for the circles. So when in the last minute of the Pilot, he casually says: “One more thing” and then cold-bloodedly and matter-of-factly shoots Cody in the face, and then gets out of the car, makes a call, and says” Ronald, you’ve been sloppy” we know we’re not in Poland, New Hampshire any more. In the second episode, he becomes darker and more creepy, so much so that when Kyle reluctantly lets him in her car, there’s more suspense in the sequence than I remember from a broadcast television moment in a very long time.

It also helps that we spend nearly as much time with Danielle, Grace and Denise, a prostitute holding more secrets than Ronald expected than we do with the investigators. These are not the meek victims that we’ve seen in far too many procedurals over the years. These girls know that the danger is very big, but they – particularly Grace – is determined to do everything they possibly can to save themselves. It helps matters that Ronnie is not the typical psychopath we’ve seen; he’s easily bullied not just by Rick, but by his own mother, who he has a very creepy relationship with. He might end up killing all of them, but he might not, and that’s a genuinely level of surprise that I don’t remember ever seeing in Criminal Minds or Law & Order: SVU.

I’m not going to lie; Big Sky is not an easy watch, and I imagine a lot of people will hear the formula and just turn away. But this is a show as willing to take risks as many of the best cable and streaming networks. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen any network show be willing to kill off what looked to be a lead character in the first episode.

I’m told that Kelley that adapted this book from a series of mysteries novels.  More than anything else, this tells me that Kelley is as good at adapting complicated stories as fellow writer Aaron Sorkin. It’s not as good as Lies or Undoing, but for Kelley in the medium he called home the longest, this is a brave new world for him.

My score: 4.25 stars.

 

 

Who Should Succeed Alex Trebek? Candidates For The Next Host of Jeopardy

 

I will not deny it: it has been immensely difficult watching the last two weeks of Jeopardy since Alex Trebek’s passing. After seeing the memoriam the series producers did the day after he died, dimming the lights on the set for him. And watching Alex going about his business so nonchalantly, even though we know from reports that he was almost always excruciating pain would be hard enough had we not seen him making references to a Tournament Of Champions we now know he will never host. Its hard for me, and it must be hard for millions more.

I don’t know how long the period of mourning for a TV icon should be, but I think enough time has passed for us to discuss the inevitable: who should the next host of Jeopardy be? The producers and Trebek himself must have discussed the question over the past year; as heartbreaking as it must be, television is a business. Jeopardy is an institution, and like other game shows have gone on with new hosts, one must be chosen for Jeopardy. We won’t know until later (if ever) who Trebek himself thought should take over, but I have three suggestions: two from within the family, so to speak, and one who has gathered a certain amount of popularity from outside.

The first choice is Ken Jennings, the contestant who has the longest winning streak in Jeopardy history and still holds (just barely) the record for most money won. After the Greatest Of All Time Tournament this January, Jennings (who’d come back in three previous tournaments) announced he was retiring from gameplay. He has since moved on to the series itself as a producer and clue reader. (He’s read three categories in play since then.) One gets the impression that the series was grooming him to take over at some point (Trebek even half-joked that he was ‘looking over his shoulder’ after one such category). And the argument is solid. Jennings is associated with the show almost as much as Trebek was, he has a fairly good sense of humor and rapport with fellow competitors (I saw as much in several of the tournaments that followed) and he certainly knows as much.

The second choice is Brad Rutter, the most successful Jeopardy contestant and biggest money winner in game show history. Brad has won over four and a half million dollars playing Jeopardy, and until the Greatest of All Time had never lost a game. He’s a little younger than Jennings, and has a sharper sense of humor, which we saw in full force in so many of his interviews. He’s actually more qualified than Jennings because ever since winning the Million Dollar Master in 2002, he has been more and more involved in the entertainment industry. He actually hosted a game show for awhile, and produced several shows for TV Land, and starred in a couple. In that sense, he is at least as qualified as Jennings, though he does admittedly lack the gravitas that Trebek had.

The third possibility has been floating around the internet ever since Trebek passed. It’s a little less likely than the ones I’ve suggested, but in a way it would be more fitting: actor LeVar Burton, veteran of Roots, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and most pertinently, Reading Rainbow.

First of all, Burton is connected to the show. He read out several clues, mostly connected with Reading Rainbow over the years and actually made an appearance on the celebrity edition of the show. And unlike many of his fellow celebrities, he did exceptionally well, winning the game in a runaway and answering several     questions that would have given the average Jeopardy player some trouble.

But more than that, Burton has a familiarity with the viewer that is actually very close to that of Trebek. He wasn’t involved with it for nearly as long, but I’m quite sure that millions of children (myself gladly among them) grew up watching him on Reading Rainbow and getting a certain love of learning that is very close to what one derives from watching Jeopardy. I know many of us were heartbroken when the show was cancelled more than fifteen years ago, and have longed for a way for it to return in some form.

Now, I’m well aware that there is the disadvantage of Burton being considerable older than the ideal host, but there is the advantage of having a built-in fanbase as well. And I think many of us could well get used to seeing him fill Alex’s shoes, and bidding us farewell with the catchphrase he used at the end of Reading Rainbow: “See you next time!” And I’m not alone in thinking this. An online petition started within days of Trebek’s passing that already has nearly a hundred thousand signatures.

Maybe the producers have better choices in mind, and they still do have a little time. Trebek’s final recorded shows will not finiished airing until Christmas Day. But I honestly think these are probably the best choices, and I do hope they are considered.

TV in the Era of Trump 4: Dramas That hELPED me forget the world outside

 

It’s easy enough to say that there has been so much drama in the world around us that it’s hard to imagine wanting to watch any show that makes us want to see even more. But the fact there have been more than a few series in the last four years that have made us be very glad that Peak TV is still going on.

I’m going to deal mainly with series as opposed to limited and anthology series (I’ll deal with them in a future article). I’m also going to focus mainly on shows that aired the majority of their episodes over the past four years. The Americans was one of the greatest shows in history, but the lion’s share of it aired prior to the 2016 election. (Though it’s really hard to deny how relevant it has been to this era)

 

Better Call Saul

Counting the season just prior to the election, this prequel to Breaking Bad has does something that few prequels or companions to other series ever do. It became a great series in its own right. As we watched as Jimmy McGill (why hasn’t Bob Odenkirk won an Emmy by now?) descend into the world of corruption that will lead him inevitably into become Walter White’s consigliore (and as we see in the black and white sequences at the beginning of each season, force him into a nightmare that keeps getting darker), we see some remarkable things. Not just how hard Jimmy tried to rail against his nature before giving in to his inner con man. We also saw how his brother Chuck’s disdain scarred him in ways we couldn’t imagine. (Michael McKean’s finest hour in the medium.) We saw his unlikely soul mate, Kim, being repelled by his unethical nature, and yet unable to tear herself away from.  And as we learned how the saga of Mike Ehrmantraut and Gus Fring truly began, we forgot that they would become victims of Heisenberg as we saw just how involved Gus’ feud with the Salamanca’s really was. We also met some truly amazing characters: Nacho, a simple dealer whose efforts to get out from under increasingly monstrously thugs lead him deeper into darkness, and Lalo, possibly the most deadly Salamanca we’ve met yet (and yes, we saw what Hector was like before the stroke). I have no idea how this series will end (even though, by implication, we know how it must), but it deserves to climax with all the Emmys it can muster as the greatest prequel series of all time.

 

The Crown

Peter Morgan has already proven that he is one of the greatest filmmakers and playwrights in the world, as well as a true master of British politics. But not even the glorious Frost/Nixon or The Queen could have prepared us for this series that looks into the reign of Elizabeth II from the very beginning. His ingenious decision to change casts every two season as age advances on the royal family has led to a different level of great performances each time, from Claire Foy and Matt Smith in the first two years, to Olivia Colman and Helena Bonham Carter in the next two. But even more remarkable has been his decision to slowly expand the nature of the series with each season. The first season that dealt mainly with Elizabeth and her relationship to Winston Churchill has expanded to study not just the immediate family, but also the children. You will never look at Prince Charles the same way after seeing Josh O’Connor’s portrayal of him. And each year, they explore elements of the British monarchy that even some historians may have overlooked. Last season’s ‘Aberfan’ dealing with a major crisis, and Elizabeth’s failure to react to it is a modern classic. I can’t wait to see Gillian Anderson take on the role of Margaret Thatcher, or how Morgan and his writers will handle the final two seasons they’ve already cast. Oh to be in England, now that Colman’s there.

 

This is Us

Yes, I know how much this series has been mocked for how it plays on the heartstrings and tear ducts, but let’s be honest: it works. And it works because we care about the Pearsons. For the first year and a half, the world wanted to know just what led to Jack’s death and when we finally saw it happen, it was the event of the season. (I imagine there are still people out there who still blame slow cookers.) As the world of the Pearson clan has expanded, we’ve found out more and more: that Jack and Rebecca were not the saints their children thought they were, that Randall (Sterling Brown, master craftsman) the good son was neither that nor a perfect husband, and took a long time to resolve his flaws – which given what we’ve seen in the last season, is still there. We saw how Kevin’s jealousy of his brother led to a monster fight, and that Kate is still simmering over the worst possible relationship. And of course, there’s the stuff we don’t know: How will Randall and Kevin make up? Where is Kate is the flashforward we saw at the end of Season 3? How long will it take before Rebecca’s mind finally disappears? (That will be a blow I’m not sure I could take.). Anyone who says that the network drama can produce anything as good as cable or streaming needs to watch this series for awhile, and then shut up.

 

Big Little Lies

This was one of the great triumphs in the immediate aftermath of the election. Watching five of the greatest actresses in history working for one of the greatest writers for women was a tonic we all needed.  Lianne Moriarty’s best selling novel was set in New Zealand, but David E. Kelley transferred it so effortlessly to Monterrey that it’s almost impossible to imagine it any other setting. We watched as Reese Witherspoon’s Madeline befriended Shailene Woodley on the road, an act which would inadvertently start a feud with Renata (the incredible Laura Dern) ostensibly about their children but really about so many other issues. We saw as Madeline feuded with her ex-husband’s new wife Bonnie over even more trivial issues. And most wrenchingly, we saw the troubled marriage of Celeste and Perry White (Nicole Kidman and Alexander Skarsgard deservedly won Emmys for their work) perfect on the outside, but so badly broken that you wondered what it would take for Celeste to break free. We knew about the horrible crime from the beginning, but I don’t think anyone who read the novel could imagine the shock when it came.

When it was announced by HBO they were going to reunite the cast and writer to do a second season, like many people I had grave doubts – the show had a beginning, middle and end, so why try and mess with it? My doubts lasted about five minutes into the second season premiere when I saw the work of Meryl Streep as Mary Louise, Perry’s mother, suspicious of how her son ended up dead, and who had the ability with just a few words to get to the soft spot of every member of the now named ‘Monterrey Five’. All of the actresses upped their game considerably in Season 2, no one more so than Zoe Kravitz as Bonnie. The woman responsible for Perry’s death, she spent most of Season 2 dealing with her guilt and her past in the form of her own mother, who was just as much a strain on her life as Mary was on Perry’s. The performances from the entire cast were masterful, and I don’t understand why the Emmys neglected them.

There’s been no discussion one way or the other whether there will be a third season of Big Little Lies. Unlike the end of Season 1, I say the conclusion of the second cries out for it. I know everyone in the cast is very busy, but I would really like to see another one. Certainly before the kids leave grade school.

 

Billions

Perhaps it’s appropriate that one of my favorite dramas dealt with a billionaire trader who breaks all the rules and the attorney sworn to get him. But that summary doesn’t do justice to the clash that has been going on between Bobby ‘Axe’ Axelrod (Damian Lewis) and Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti) for four and a half seasons.

Chuck is as much a man of means as Axe is, and seems to use this as an edge to go for justice. Axe didn’t come from money, and tries to play as a man of the people. It has been fascinating to watch how much both men are willing to torpedo their lives to get what they want – Axe started out as a happily married man with two sons, by the end of Season 3 he was divorced and no one was in the picture. The more fascinating story is Chuck’s – his wife, Wendy (Maggie Siff) is the performance coach as Axe’s company and has chafed at her husband’s desires not so much because she finds them wrong, but because they might hurt her position. The most interesting change came in Season 4 when Chuck and Axe became allies, but Wendy ended up pushing her husband aside, and by this point in Season 5 is isolating herself more and more from Axe.

Even four and a half seasons, it’s still not clear how this fight will end. Will Chuck win? Will Axe?” Or will someone else – perhaps Taylor, the nonbinary trader who both sides have been trying to use and whose unemotional façade reveals all kinds of turmoil? (Asia Kate Dillon deserves a boat load of Emmys themselves.). This has been the most fascinating chess game on television, and we’re still not sure whose winning. Except, of course, the viewer.

 

For my next article, I will deal with some of the exceptional anthologies and limited series that have aired during this time.

TV In The Last Four Years: Comedies That Made Me Feel Happy...for Awhile

 

 

Throughout my years of reviewing television, I’ve always given a lot more attention to the dramas than the comedies.  Maybe it’s because in the era of Peak TV, it’s always be easier to see the power in a well made drama then look at the intricacies of comedy, which is always harder to explain. And, given that I have a bizarre sense of humor; it’s always been a bit difficult for me to appreciate truly brilliant comedies.

But over the past four years, we’ve needed to laugh more than ever. And considering how hard direct satire has been (I’ll deal with that in a separate article) trying to experience things that make you feel happy and joyful in different way has been something that I have come to treasure over the last few years. And there have been quite a few series willing to help us make that leap.

So here are just a few of the series that have made me glad for comedy, most of which would have been joyful experiences in any era.

 

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

This series technically started before 2016, but really are we going to be technical. Following the adventures of Rebecca Bunch (the incredible Rachel Bloom) as she dealt with her love life, her professional life, and her psychological state of mind was a show that I’m pretty sure we’ve never seen on TV before, much less on a network. I don’t know need to add that it was centered on a series of the greatest comic songs probably ever put together, along with a level of self-awareness that stopped just short of being too clever. And maybe the ending was flawed, but when you’ve created a masterpiece of this level, there is no bad ending. And there was a happy ending – Bloom won an Emmy in the series last year. Millions of people ignored the show when it was on the CW. You have no excuse for not searching it out on Netflix right now.

 

Jane the Virgin

Can we blame the fact that the Trump Presidency began right after Jane Villanueva lost her virginity? Joking aside, it should be noted that this may have been the perfect antidote to all of the toxicity that was going on – a series that featured a Latino family trying to survive a series of crises that were ‘straight out of a telenovela, right?” with grace, balance, and let’s face it, a lot of fun. Gina Rodriguez was just one of the many cast members who was denied an Emmy nomination for their spectacular work on a series that, for a satire of a telenovela, had more heart that a lot of dramas out there. It had two of the biggest twists of the last decade, and ended with the most perfect conclusion of any series in history. It was a joy to behold, and I hope it’s discovered.

 

The Good Place

In an era where ethics and morality seemed to be thrown out the window every day, this masterpiece by genius Michael Schur did the impossible – it turned philosophy and ethics into comic gold. Set in an afterlife system that was just as flawed as the real world seemed to be, Kirsten Bell and Ted Danson led an incredible group of performers in a series that started with a simple experiment in ”The Good Place’ and turned into a test for the fate of humanity. Every element of us was perfect, from Chidi and Eleanor’s unlikely romance becoming one of the best in television history, to D’Arcy Carden’s incredible performance as Janet (the episode ‘Janets’ was one of the great accomplishments in TV history) to all of the guest actors, especially Maya Rudolph as the Judge who viewed the human experiment and Peak TV with equal importance, this was an incredible series that was perfect right up to the end. And it was also one of the most hopeful, showing that change even among an entity that has been evil for eternity can become a ‘real boy’ from being around even the worst of us. That’s a message the world needs.

 

Dead to Me

It was a difficult choice among a lot of good Netflix comedies, and my judgment may be flawed having seen it the most recently, but it’s hard not to consider this very black comedy one of the very best Netflix experiences. Centered around two women, one (Christina Applegate) who lost her husband and is just mean, and one (Linda Cardellini) ho has had multiple miscarriages, and is just nice, their unlikely friendship with links that they don’t want to admit to, this series was not the traditional escapist fare I came to. But watching two of television’s most extraordinary actresses deliver some of the most hysterical performances during situations that got so dark and convoluted the Monterrey Five would have boggled featured some of the most enjoyable moments of the last couple of years. I think even Lucille Ball would’ve been astonished at the situations these two kept getting into despite themselves. And they are masters of the craft.

 

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

For whatever reason, I never seem able to watch this exceptional series from Amy Sherman and Daniel Palladino in time to give the proper treatment. Considering that it’s been one of the biggest award winners in the last three years, that doesn’t seem quite fair. So here’s a big cheer to the extraordinary cast and crew that brings to light the world of Midge Maisel as she tries to break into the world of standup in 1950s New York. From Rachel Brosnahan and Alex Borstein, trying to make their way in a world aligned against them, to Tony Shalhoub and Marin Hinkle as her eternally perplexed parents, who can’t fathom why she got divorced, much less her new career, this is one of the most gorgeously directed, written and acted series of the last ten years. And just to hear the dialogue of the Palladinos, who have created some of the most memorable female characters in TV history, will make anybody feel joyful. I don’t know when we’ll she Midge again, but whenever it happens “Thank you and good night!”

 

Insecure

Yes, I know. I’m still not the right audience for Issa Rae incredibly series about a black woman in LA. But just watching a few minutes, I have more genuine pleasure than so many other shows. Rae has gotten to the point that she no longer needs to do those mental freestyles for her series – perhaps that’s another sign of character growth as she tries to find a place for herself professionally and romantically. And watching the friendship between Issa and Molly (Yvonne Orji continues to awe) fracture to the point of non-existence was one of the hardest emotional blows I’ve had to deal with in awhile, partly because they seemed to have a stability that so many real friendships on TV lack. It’s also one of the genuinely sexiest shows on the air, and most culturally aware. I don’t know how much longer Rae will continue with the journey (understandably, she’s broken big over the last few years) but I’ll be there to the end.

 

Better Things

How many great female hyphenates have come into TV this decade? Pamela Adlon’s brilliant series about a fifty-ish divorced struggling actress- a mother of three children who don’t appreciate her, with a mother who seems oblivious to her, and a love life that barely seems active, trying to have a career, and just dealing with all the things that come with getting older is in many ways the simplest of the comedies on this list, and also the most painful. There have some genuinely brilliant moments on the show, mainly as Sam spends so much of her time trying to get over her baggage only to keep getting more of it. Adlon hasn’t gotten nearly enough appreciation from the Emmys for incredible work, starring, directing and writing it. But maybe that’s fitting. Sam doesn’t either.

 

That’s enough for the comedies. In my next article, I’ll look at some of the dramas.

The Real Reason Trump Became President: Second in a Series on TV in the Age of Trump

 

From practically the day after Donald Trump’s upset win as President, dozens of writers on both the right and left have been trying to explain how it happened. There have been arguments for his appeal to racist elements on one side, the sexism on another, the worst aspects of our nature overcoming the best, etc, etc.

I actually think the reason Trump became President is far simpler than that. He hosted a successful reality show for more than a decade, which made him a national celebrity. That’s why people voted for him.

This seems too simple to be acceptable. So let’s give some background.

In 2000, Donald Trump made his first attempt to run for President on the Reform Party ticket, the shell of a third party that was left over Ross Perot’s runs for the Presidency the previous two elections. It says a lot about Trump’s level of recognition that he lost that fight to Pat Buchanan.

According to rumor, Trump considered a run for the Democratic Party nomination in 2004. Again, it’s hard to know how seriously he was taking, considering his choice for a vice presidential nominee was Woody Harrelson. (Harrelson has admitted there was at least one meeting about it) This never got out of the planning stage. And no successful businessperson has ever made a credible run for the Presidency. See Steve Forbes in 1996 and 2000, Herman Cain in 2012, and Carly Fiorina in 2016.

So what changed between 2004 and 2016? He was the host of The Apprentice.

Neither the right nor the left has ever wanted to consider this the main factor for Trump’s surge starting in 2015. They want to believe in certain demographics of the population feeling one way, and certain others another. To all of them, I would remind them of what Winston Churchill said about the argument for democracy after you spend ten minutes with the average voter. I’m sure the people on CNN and MSNBC and even Fox News want to believe that the average voter absorbs all of the knowledge that comes from then during the news cycle. We know Americans are not that informed. We’ve seen the educational records and stats for years.

Now consider that during George W. Bush’s administration, there were more people involved in the voting process for American Idol than any of the actual elections. We have been a celebrity based culture for a very long time. And the cable news networks have embraced that phase more often by interviewing celebrities and asking what they think of political issues. The average citizen probably couldn’t name one Supreme Court justice, but they could probably name every Kardashian.

I’ve said for years that reality programming has a lot to answer for, if for no other reason that it is just as scripted as the so called scripted shows. (We learned as much from the brilliant satire-drama Unreal). We even know that Marc Burnett spent a lot of effort making Donald Trump seem like a business man after decades of failing at numerous enterprises. Why should we be shocked that millions of Americans chose a reality star as President? Is it any more shocking than choosing an actor as one?

Through all the exit polls during the 2016 Republican primary, not one network ever asked the question that was foremost on my mind: “Did your choice have to do with the fact that the candidate was a celebrity?” No one wanted to ask the question because it would have meant the political process that had been going for years was a fraud. That the American system of democracy is based on celebrity, pure and simple. Part of me to this today wonders if all the votes Trump got for President is based on an equivalency of the number of people who watched The Apprentice.

But I also think that’s only half the story.  For the past four years, late night comedians have been raging about how horrible Trump was and what he was doing to democracy. What none of them are willing to say is how fine they were with him running in the first place.

During the 2012 Republican Primary, The Daily Show on multiple occasions practically urged Trump to run for the nomination, thinking it would be entertaining. John Oliver, who admittedly realized just how dangerous Trump was in the early stages of the primary, gave the same vote for during his era hosting the Daily Show. And Stephen Colbert said as much when he was hosting his Report.

And I really think that’s the reason that so many cable networks hosted all of his rallies, certainly in the early days of the campaign. I don’t recall coverage of a Mike Huckabee or John Edwards rally in prime time. But Trump was entertaining. He wasn’t politics as usual, and networks want ratings more than they want to inform. So yes, the cable news networks do bear a certain amount of guilt in promoting Trump, certainly in the early stages.

And I’d also like to remind anybody who thinks Trump cared anything about running for office at all that he ultimately decided not to run in 2012 because he wanted to host another season of The Apprentice. He never cared one wit about politics; he only cared about ratings. That’s why he mentioned in a Presidential Debate that he was still angry about not winning an Emmy. That’s why he and his staff would always boost about how great the Nielsen ratings were for any press conference or interview he gave. That’s why he never cared about being around 40 percent in approval polls. A forty share would be great ratings on TV, and that’s how he measured everything after hosting The Apprentice.  Hell, he still cared that his ratings were bigger than the new edition after he became president.

Now I’m not saying those are the only reasons he ran and won. There are issues in both parties that he was able to exploit to his advantage, and there are things he said that appeal to certain elements of our society that until fairly recently, we were able to pretend weren’t there. But I still think this is the fundamental reason for his success. He was in television, he was able to use the media to his advantage, and for far too long television was willing to be used. This is a lesson that not just the news media, but the entertainment part of the medium has to learn.

It's Been A Hard Four Years: First in a Series About Television in the Age of Trump

 

For the majority of my time at this blog, I have done my level my best to try and simply criticize television without looking out at the world around us. I thought that was probably the best way to do my job, without any political or personal bias. But now that the election is over and the results are irrevocably in, I feel that now is the time to look back at how the political landscape has affected television and my views on it.

Let’s start with an irrefutable fact: it has been really hard to enjoy any form of art for the last four years. Television’s job, I have always thought, was to provide equal parts entertainment and escapism. But given the high toxicity that has seeped into just about every element of our lives for the past four years, escapism in any form has been very hard to come by. It’s hard to go to a movie or watch a baseball game or even watch your favorite sitcom without being able to fully escape just how painful the world around us has become. It’s been painful for the viewer, and it been damn difficult for the artists who’ve done so.

I don’t just mean all of the late night comedians, who’ve had to try and make entertaining a news cycle that just won’t end of a political situation that has stretched our democracy to the point that many of us thought – and are frankly amazed that it never did – snap. Everything few hours out of D.C. came some kind of violation of the so-called norms that made it hard for satire to even be possible.  It’s been hard to be a comic in this era.

I’m also talking about the fact that even in the Golden Age of television, it’s been very difficult for even the best art to not look at the world around us and paint a picture that we could look at for long. I was never able to really watch The Handmaid’s Tale, in part because I never liked the book, but mostly because its dystopian viewpoint was not one I wanted to engage. Even the best television has gotten extremely dark. This isn’t strictly because of the era in which we live – the best TV was dark even before then -  but its hard to like shows like Ozark or Succession, because of the bleakness they presented compared to the world.

Small wonder there’s been a rise in demand in escapism. Stranger Things is a brilliant series, but it literally takes us back to an earlier era where things seemed simple and kids could save the world. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel would’ve been a source of joy in any era, but the fact that it took place in the 1950s – that era when everything still seemed possible – probably has helped its popularity. Of course, there’ve also been a lot of reboots and revivals in this period, no doubt because so many people wanted to remember series that took them back to times when things were easier. I don’t think the Norman Lear live adaptations would’ve been nearly as popular in the Obama era.

But as a critic, it’s been a lot harder to enjoy even the best of television. There were a lot of great shows over the last four years – I went into great detail on many of them when I was reviewing the Best of the 2010s. But even while watching such great comedies as Atlanta or Fleabag or the final season of The Americans, it was always hard to watch them without always feeling like there was a pit in my stomach. Knowing that at sometime I would have to turn the TV off, and look at the news, and be reduced to where I was an hour earlier. I have a sneaking suspicion it was like that for many viewers these past four years.

So in the next few weeks, I’ll be writing a series of articles about TV in the last five years. Some of it will deal with the political situation – one can not separate Donald Trump from the medium he was spawned from. But some of it will deal with the nature of series that helped get me through this difficult time, the series that best encapsulated the world we lived, and seeing what TV will do now given certain aspects of the last year in particular. I will try to keep my personal biases out of this article – at least my political ones; my entertainment ones are harder to hold back on it. And I fully expect to draw some flak from it. But as I said, the last four years have been a real strain for me. And now that we’re in a new era, maybe these articles will bring, if not closure, at least a catharsis. I think a purge of some kind is definitely necessary before we move forward.

 

The World Mourns This Icon. Who Was Alex Trebek?

 

How many television personalities in any era have the longevity of almost forty years? When Johnny Carson left the air in 1992, the world missed him, but how many of my generation even know his name?  So many of the men and woman who made up television for decades in the 20^th century – Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar – are remembered from black and white footage and will probably be gone when the last viewers of them disappear into the ether.

But even in era where everything is disposable, it’s difficult to imagine the world forgetting Alex Trebek. Jeopardy will no doubt continue in some form in the years to come – it did exist before Trebek was known to anybody – but that person will only succeed Trebek; they will not replace him.

Alex Trebek’s passing should not have come as hard as it did. He told the world a year ago that he was suffering from Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, which even among those in relatively good health is usually a death sentence. Millions no doubt hoped he would beat the odds, and as long as he was there on TV every night, it was easy to forget this.  But it was inevitable, and this Sunday he finally succumbed.  Millions are no doubt mourning as we speak, not just those in Hollywood, but the ones who became champions on his show and who became famous because of their accomplishments on it.

And I’ll be honest. It hurts. A lot. For nearly thirty years of my life, since I was twelve, every night at seven was set aside to watch Jeopardy. Most of those years were spent testing my intelligence against the material, and the intellectual stimulation came from it. But during that period, Trebek became part of my family. He was always there, even through Christmases and Thanksgivings, through blizzards and heat waves (though not always through thunderstorms) through good times and bad.  And I have no doubt that a lot of celebrities knew that they were part of the Zeitgeist when Alex Trebek read their name as part of a Jeopardy clue.

Even the satires of him seemed surprisingly gentle. Yes, Will Ferrell spent a good part of his career on Saturday Night Live ‘impersonating’ Alex Trebek, but that was always more of a satire of the celebrities who performed so badly time after time than of Trebek of himself. (He and the writers took it in good humor, and would from time to time; list as categories the kinds that SNL would use.) Conan O’Brian has satirized his tone in reading out clues, and Alex seemed more amused by that than hurt. I’ve been paying attention to Hollywood for a very long time, and I don’t remember anyone saying anything even remote unpleasant about him. How rare is that?

It’s easy to forget that he was not always like this. He started out as a more traditional game show host on High Rollers in the 1970s, and in the early days of his time on the show, he hosted Classic Concentration for much of the 80s. But on Jeopardy, in addition to having style, he also had that rarest of things – gravitas. It’s hard to imagine even Regis Philbin managed to do what he did.

As was the tradition with so many other syndicated shows, Jeopardy recorded several weeks in advance. Alex Trebek will therefore be seen on TV for another few weeks. Will it be eerie watching his final episodes? I have no doubt of that. But it will give millions of devoted fans a chance to say goodbye to one of the legends of television. And no matter who replaces him, I don’t see him fading into obscurity. He’s left us with too many years of memories for that.