The Top Ten TV Shows of 2021, Part 2: Numbers 5-1

Before I conclude my list while awards won don’t usually have an influence on my selection I won’t deny there was a major awards group that has been a factor. It’s one I spent an immense amount of time raving about from June to August but I’m going to mention it again.

The Hollywood Critics Association first ever Television awards was one of the greatest selections of nominees and winners I’ve seen for any major group of awards in nearly twenty years of seriously following them, especially for their first attempt. I’ve rarely been prouder to be a critic than when I saw how they defined their nominations, who they nominated and what ended up winning. Cheers guys, and I hope this year you get to broadcast your awards show in person and on some cable channel.

Back to it.

 

5. Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist (NBC)

There have been a lot of series that came to a premature end this past year but none really gave me such a punch in the gut as NBC’s horrendous decision to end this superb series after its second season. Yes, I’m aware that the audience for it was very low by the standards of NBC but on a network that is increasingly becoming the sole possession of Dick Wolf, you’d think they’d want something as original as this.

And that’s what Zoey’s was among other things. Funny, moving, profound, silly, romantic, frightening and above all fun. This may have been the most brilliant original show I’ve seen since Crazy Ex-Girlfriend debuted in 2015. The same sense of joy was there with a little more realism. The cast was everything you could wish for (even with the absence of Peter Gallagher and Lauren Graham) and it made your heart feel joy and ache at the same time. It was even willing to deal with issues you wouldn’t expect from this kind of show: racism within the workplace, sexism with the tech workplace, dealing with grief at all its levels, trying to find love in the midst of a chaotic life and that your soulmate may not be the right person for you yet. All with a song in its heart So I’m honestly not sure what hurt more: the fact that NBC decided to keep The Blacklist on the air another season instead of Zoey even though the former had run out of creativity well before the latter premiered last year or that the Emmy voters, in their wisdom, decided that Emily in Paris was more worthy of a Best Comedy nomination that this series which has a level of imagination that the latter doesn’t even pretend to have. Either way, I was gutted when NBC decided to cancel it this June.

In a way, I received closure and happiness from two separate events this summer. The first, as I mentioned above, was that the HCA in their infinite wisdom chose to give it the most nominations of any comedy series on any platform – six – and that August give both its prizes for actresses to the incomparable Jane Levy and Mary Steenburgen for their remarkable work. I was annoyed that the series inexplicably lost Best Network Comedy to Young Rock, but the HCA gave it a special prize as a fan favorite which was a worthy consolation. And while no streaming service was willing to pick it up for an additional season, fans did get closure of a sort when Roku agreed to make Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas which aired this December (and has already been nominated for Best TV Movie by the Critic’s Choice Awards). Shows cut down in their prime rarely get a chance for closure for any of us. And like the series messages of joy, there’s something Extraordinary about that.

 

 

4. Wandavision (Disney+)

I realize that some people may have expected, if I was going to include another Limited Series here, that it would be Mare of Easttown the other major drama that everybody was talking about this spring. And I won’t deny that it was brilliant at every level – the great acting, the deepness of the writing, the grief that followed everyone and the twist that came at the end. But I’ll be honest: I expect all those things to come from an HBO limited series as a matter of course. I don’t expect them to come from a service whose biggest hit, The Mandalorian; I would have no use for even if I loved Star Wars. I certainly wouldn’t expect all of the elements I mentioned above being equally pertinent to a series set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, an industry that I have more or less gone out of my way to avoid unless I’m channel chasing. And unless the discussion of award nominations had started back when the series debuted I still wouldn’t have given Wandavision the time of day. That said I’m so glad now to be proven wrong.

Set aside whatever preconceptions you may have about Marvel. The thematic concept of Wandavision throughout the first half of the series at least dealt with two very vital issues: our love of television comedy and how that gets us through some of the toughest times of our lives.  On a purely technical level the series was exceptional – it reminded me so much of how X-Files wunderkind Darin Morgan used the medium to wildly poke fun at a staid genre. Just watching Wanda and Vision trying to make their way from sitcoms starting in the era of the 1950s and moving up to the present day was entertaining enough in its own right and had it just been on that level, I would have found it impressive enough.

But at the core of the series was how Wanda Maximoff (Elisabeth Olsen demonstrated a depth she never got to in The Avengers) dealt with a loss that absolutely shattered her emotional and forced her to create an entire alternate reality.  Some might argue the methods that she did would far too extreme. I just finished Landscapers a brilliant HBO true crime project which dealt with the story of a woman show broken by life she retreated into cinema to deal with her traumas. She also may have done something truly horrendous. Why will the latter be judged as art and the latter popcorn? Because Wanda’s soul mate wasn’t human?

Technically this series was a triumph on every possible level (I’m not saying Kathryn Hahn was robbed of an Emmy because I love Julianne Nicholson, but I didn’t mind when the HCA gave her the Supporting Actress prize) And it made me feel levels of pain and anguish that I rarely feel on television, certainly not from a comic book franchise. Maybe people were dissatisfied by how it ended. I’ve already gone into detail in a previous article how little that matters with me.

I was rather happy when the HCA – given choices that included Mare and The Queen’s Gambit chose Wandavision as Best Limited Series. This was a show that demonstrated the power of television and a love for the medium. In a world where the past is becoming increasingly disposable, for nothing else this series is remarkable. I’m not saying I’d subscribe to Disney+ to get another season, but I wouldn’t mind another one.

 

3. Hacks (HBO Max)

When I saw the Pilot for this series on HBO in May I thought it would be a waste of time. I kept watching it after I got the service. By the time I reached the end I realize that this comedy was one of the true masterpieces of the year.

I’ll admit that what kept me watching in the early stages was the magnificent presence of Jean Smart as Deborah Vance a comedy legend who’s built an empire without really changing her act in at least twenty years. Watching her beat up on just about everybody including her own daughter was always enjoyable no matter how monstrous it was. But what made the series work for me was the slow but steady growth of Ava throughout the series. She really seemed completely useless in the Pilot and didn’t seem to really have much of a purpose other than to be pathetic in the first few episodes. But the longer we watched her the more you realized that there was far more to her than meets the eye and that she wasn’t the Gen Z cliché she seemed so proud of being in the first few episodes. There was darkness that she wasn’t willing to face (we got in the glimpses of her home life throughout the season) and she showed real growth that probably shocked even her because of her relationship with Debra. One of the nicer pleasures of this was watching the two of them realize they were equals in a way and that Ava in her way was there because of women like Vance. When Hannah Einbinder managed to tie Hannah Waddingham for Best Supporting Actress in a Streaming Comedy Series at the HCA, it actually seemed just about right. Einbinder lost to Waddingham at the Emmys, but something tells me that she has a lot more in her future.

But of course the series rose and set on Jean Smart, who deservedly took both an Emmy and a standing ovation when she received it this year. It also deserved the writing and directing prizes it got from them as well – with respect to Ted Lasso which is genius, it’s a lot harder to write about doing comedy than to just write comedy. I didn’t honestly think they could pull it off in the first episode but I was impressed at just how well the series managed to do it the longer I watched it.

While Wandavision didn’t quite convince me to get Disney+, Hacks made me glad I’d shelled out for HBO Max and combined with The Flight Attendant I’ll admit there’s certainly some very interesting and original programming here. Does it justify putting it on another service instead of the main one? Probably not. But if the series are this good, I’ll watch them anyway.

 

2. Pose (FX)

There is not a single attribute I share with any of the characters in Pose save that we live in New York. But I felt more anguish and pain with them watching them trying to live their lives – in a world that considered them disposable and shrugged off if they existed – then with almost any other series on this list. That is the realness that Ryan Murphy and his extraordinary group of writers and actors showed when they gave us a picture of New York that Carrie Bradshaw wouldn’t be caught in, then or now.

I was upset to learn that this exceptional series was coming to a close after only three seasons but grateful that the writers were ending it on their own terms. And they didn’t disappoint. It was agonizing watching Pray Tell go through the final stages of AIDS, first dealing withdrawing into alcoholism to numb the pain, and then making a journey to his Southern hometown where we saw far too clearly the horrors that he had escaped – and that were still denying him on his deathbed. In the series finale, it genuinely seemed like that he might somehow survive this horror – and in true fashion, he gave his life for someone else. I don’t think there was a more painful death all season that Pray Tell’s and certainly not a better commemoration of his loss. I was overjoyed when the extraordinary Billy Porter took an HCA Best Actor Award and I really hope the Critics Choice do the same when they meet. There was no better male acting performance in 2021.

This doesn’t mean that the series didn’t also have great moments for the rest of the cast. On the contrary seeing all of the people we’ve followed the last three seasons manage to find love, success, and a place in the world brought a more than welcome joy in an often grim TV landscape. They have not been related by blood but the House of Evangelista was a better family than some of the ones we saw in TV. When we got a clear look at Electra’s backstory in ‘The Trunk’ we saw the pain she had to live through and why she has been caring in her own way. I was quietly happy when she became wealthy and pleased when the mobsters she worked with said she would have made a great boss.  Everybody in the cast was at least as good as or better than Porter throughout the season, especially Dominique Jackson and the history making MJ Rodriguez. (Thrilled she got an HCA prize too.)

Pose never lied when it showed how tough the world was for those who walked the ballrooms. But it also showed love and happiness in practically every form. The final images of Blanca yet again taking on a new family as the ghost of Pray Tell walked by one of the most wonderful things I saw all year. But the category was always Love and that’s what I have for this show.

 

1, Cruel Summer (Freeform)

My hands were sore from clapping when I watched the lion’s share of the HCA. But when this show managed to triumph for Best Cable Drama, there is a very good chance that my feet left the floor. I expect to take quite a few brickbats for choosing a series from Freeform as better than Succession but I could careless. Because this spring this was the series I couldn’t wait for the next episode of. Not Mare of Easttown, not Wandavision. This was the series I couldn’t wait to find out the answers for. And the answers were worth every bit.

Set in the summers of 1993, 1994 and 1995 the show follows the parallel lives of Jeanette Turner (the phenomenal Chiara Aurelia) a teenage girl who starts out as a wallflower and Kate Wallis (the equally astonishing Olivia Holt) the queen of her small Texas town. The series deals with how their lives changed around a central event – the disappearance of Kate in 1993, her reappearance in 1994 and how her stunning accusation destroyed Jeanette’s life by 1995.

First off, all the technical aspects of the series were spot on and the make up and hairstyles signifying each year, perfect. Then there was the story of how Kate seemed to have the perfect life, that Jeanette wanted it and somehow manage to get it when Kate disappeared. There were all the friendships, relationships – sexual and familial – that suffered as a result of everything. And at the center of it was the complicated relationship between Kate and Martin Harris, the man whose abduction of her triggered all this – but who had been doing far more work beforehand to make it more complicated.

There is an excellent chance that you have never heard of this show, much less seen it. So I will not reveal any more details of the plot. I will say that the acting and writing were among the greatest I’ve seen on television in years and put so many shows –teenage aimed and Peak TV alike – to utter shame by the realism in the writing and the relationships. I was over the moon when I learned this series was coming back for a second season and I can’t wait to see how they do it.

To the rest of you, go to Hulu and start watching it. Within five minutes at the most you will be utterly unable to look away. Forget that it was created by Freeform (although seriously after The Bold Type and Everything’s Going to Be Okay, we can’t pretend this is a network just for young adults) And if someone asks you if it’s a guilty pleasure tell them simply it’s a pleasure. You won’t be lying.

 

I’ll be back later this week with my Jury Prize.

 

The Top Ten TV Shows From 2021, Part 1: Numbers 10-6

 

When we bid farewell to 2020 some of us no doubt naively hoped that next year could only be better. While that remains for the judge of history in a way we needed television in 2021 as much as we did the previous year. And one of the smaller mercies of the easing of the pandemic was that some of our old favorites were able to return and some new shows helped us ease through a tense time.

Before we go forward, I should emphasize yet again that is based almost entirely on television I saw this year, which is far from a complete list. And as always there were some series I’m never going to get behind no matter how much the masses congregate around them. (This is a Succession free zone, in other words.) I also still haven’t gotten around to some of the series that made this last year enjoyable (I’ll get to Season 2 of Ted Lasso and eventually I’ll lead up to Only Murders in the Building.) In other way, this is not going to be a mainstream list. But if you’re looking for some alternatives going forward, I may be willing to make some fairly valid suggestions. So here we go, and remember in most cases the numbering is arbitrary:

 

10. The Wonder Years (ABC)

I know that just the concept of this series pissed off millions of people – probably many of whom had never seen the original. They’re just trying to do a ‘woke’ version of the show – ironic considering that the whole point of the 1960s was about a generation becoming ‘woke’ in the first place.

The vision that Lee Daniels and his new group of writers show for The Wonder Years has not only made one of the best new series of 2021, it has completely redefined what a reboot should truly be. It looks at the 1960s from the world that Kevin Arnold only occasionally glanced at while showing simultaneously the true meaning of what the 1960s really were – to African Americans and women in particular – while losing none of the charm and humor that the original series had. If anything, it’s willing to looking at the 1960s as more than an era for great music (though trust me, its there). The acting is spot on, particularly the brilliant work of Dule Hill finally getting a chance to have a role that isn’t regulated to the sidelines. I don’t know if this Wonder Years will last as long as the original did. What I do know is that it more than deserves to.

 

 

9. City on a Hill (Showtime)

The police procedural is going through a reckoning right now and its possible that people won’t particularly want to look at a series that looks at corruption among law enforcement any more. I still find this series an outstanding exception to the rule. Starting out with Decourcy Ward and Jackie Rohr determined to destroy each other after the mess of Season 1, the series did something truly remarkable by the middle of the season – it completely flipped our sympathies for both characters. (I never thought that there was an ounce of humanity in Jackie, but a brilliant monologue he delivered halfway through the season showed just how truly broken he was before he even got a badge.) Kevin Bacon and Aldis Hodge are electric onscreen, whether in their own scenes or most spectacularly when their sharing the screen together. And watching Jackie come to the end of the road he knew was coming and seeing Decourcy cross lines you didn’t think he could (particularly after his wife was shot at by a drug dealer she was defending) featured some of the most stirring drama of 2021. The rest of the cast, especially Jill Hennessy who’s doing some of the best work of her career, is spot on. I was so glad when this series was renewed for a third season. Whenever it comes, I’ll be watching.

 

8. David E. Kelley: Nine Perfect Strangers (Hulu) & Big Sky (ABC)

Yes it’s the fall of 2021 which means its time for another David E. Kelley/Nicole Kidman collaboration on an adaptation of a best seller. But no one could honestly compare Nine Perfect Strangers with The Undoing and say that Kelley was simply going through the same material as before. For starters, this series – moved from Australia to California – far and away was more fitting than the original. And there were so many changes from the novel – like with The Undoing – that by the end it was barely recognizable from the source material. I didn’t find myself caring that much though, mostly because of the dazzling work from the cast - Kidman was her usual glowing self, but everyone from Michael Shannon to Melissa McCarthy was just as good – and because the variations may have actually gone to a brighter kind of comedy than the screwball insanity at the center of Lianne Moriarty’s original novel. Was the ending too optimistic? Maybe. But in an era where every television series is far too dark, I wasn’t complaining that much.

It’s unclear how much involvement Kelley still had with Big Sky aside from the producing credit, but having read the original novel I can say with justification it’s an even bigger improvement. We’re still in very dark territory as the series moved away (but not entirely) from Ronald and Rick Legarski and followed Cassie and Jenny as they continued to travel down dark paths with some truly disturbing characters. A truly broken ranching family trying to decide who will rule next, and a bunch of teenagers who get involved with a crash that ends up getting them into a world they can escape, this series may be the best model for the post-2020 police procedural. It also has some of the best acting you’ll see on television anywhere. The brand new Hollywood Critics TV Awards was exactly right when they nominated for Best Network Drama and I hope that this year they get a chance to give John Carroll Lynch (who I’m not sure I even recognize as Rick’s hippie twin brother) another Supporting Acting nomination. I don’t know how long ABC will keep it going, but with series like this and The Wonder Years, creatively they’re heading in the right direction again.

 

 

7. In Treatment (HBO)

It’s rare that a series is ahead of its time. When In Treatment debuted in 2008 it was the perfect show to be binge-watched but HBO could never figure that out and put it through three separate time slots before finally giving up on it in 2010. Now 11 years they have rebooted it for this era (Technically, they’re calling it Season 4 but the connection between the previous series and this one is so tangential you could be forgiven if you missed it.) What is clear is that we needed it.

Some of the most brilliant acting this year came from the stunning work by Uzo Aduba as Brooke Taylor, an LA psychiatrist who is far more broken than any of the patients she treats. And that’s saying something considering the three patients we saw: Eladio, a caregiver who couldn’t tell what to do with his love, Laila, a teenager forced into therapy by her controlling grandmother who dealt with the horrors facing her generation by never telling the same story twice, and my personal favorite Colin, a tech billionaire coming out of prison who claims that he loves therapy but really just wants to sell everybody.

As the weeks wore on we saw just how badly Brooke was broken by life – the death of her father, a troubled relationship with a man who was bad for her, and a struggle with alcohol that got worse with each new episode. When she finally had the ultimate therapy session – when she had a conversation between herself the person and the doctor – it should’ve seemed like a gimmick, but it really wasn’t.

I thought the series was robbed of the Emmy nominations it so richly deserved by shows that weren’t nearly in the same ballpark as it creatively. (I’m talking to you Handmaid’s Tale!) And it’s unclear at this point whether the show will be brought back for a fifth season. What I know is that In Treatment is the right show for this era, not just in terms of how you choose to watch it, but in the subjects it covers. I would love to go back for more sessions.

 

6. This is Us (NBC)

In this era we needed the Pearsons more than ever. And in all honesty the series showed the family adjusts to the pandemic and every major issue facing us probably better than every other series that says its trying too without losing any bit of its ability. What other show would have done an episode that focused on the man who was in a way responsible for the video chatting process that got us through the pandemic in a way that was vital to the plot of the series and was just as profoundly moving as anything else that happens to The Big Three?

Everybody dealt with their problems in their own way, and not everybody liked it. When Kevin and Randall finally dealt with the issues that had not just let to their split at the end of Season4 but had in effect been there throughout their entire lives, millions were angry because Randall was speaking for so many black people and that threatened the picture of the show that so many want but that the series has been dismantling season after season. It was immensely powerful. Kate confronted the older man who groomed her and forced her to have an abortion. Randall dealt more and more with issues with his own children. Kevin had his twins and seemed to be destined for a happy ending – then he wasn’t. And in the biggest shock in the final minutes we saw the marriage of Kate and Toby which seemed to be unbreakable seems fated to end badly (though not with Toby’s death).

The final season is coming up fast. We have an idea how it will end for the Pearsons, but not the full picture. (Though I’m pretty sure tears will be involved) The world of television – particularly network television will be a much emptier place when the final episode airs in May. And I really wish the Emmys would take note of it. Not for nothing, but I’d much rather have the people behind the Pearsons celebrating this September than the one behind the Roys.

 

Be back tomorrow with the final five.

The Allegations Against Chris Noth Should Affect How We Watch TV. But They Won't and We All Know It

 

As the #MeToo movement has led to a reckoning of charges against so many major television and film stars – publicity wise; there remains a scarcity of any actual consequences – more often the viewer is forced to deal with the consequences to the shows and films they once loved.

But the thing is: will we really? The cultural record seems to speak otherwise. Despite the accusation that plagued Michael Jackson throughout his career, his music remains popular and a Broadway show about his career is planned next year. People who have been prominently accused of misconduct – like Louis C.K. and Kevin Spacey – are finding work again. And while Woody Allen may not be able to make another movie for the rest of his life, it’s not like the movies he did make have disappeared from streaming services.

The question of separating an artist from their art has been around for decades, if not centuries. No matter how horrible, if not criminal, their behavior was, it has done little if anything to stop the art from the public eye. Netflix might not publicize House of Cards anymore, but they haven’t dropped it from its service.

But with the recent accusations against Chris Noth, a television star whose career spans more than three decades and some of the most iconic series in the history of the medium, the constant viewer is now truly facing a judgment that they can’t truly walk away from. And how we the viewer – and perhaps just as importantly, the show’s creators and the people who syndicate the series – choose to deal with it, may truly answer just how much we’re willing to let someone’s truly repugnant behavior affect whether or not we watch their art.

The consequences for Noth have been immediate in a sense: as more and more accusations have come out, he has lost his current role on The Equalizer, he’s lost representation from the agencies that represent him, and members of Sex and the City are making public statements. The problem is, though, will this really make any difference in how the world of television views him?

Let’s start with his first iconic role: Mike Logan on Law & Order was one of the most worshipped characters on television in the early 1990s.  Fan clubs formed around him, and millions were outraged when his character was written off at the end of the fifth season to the point that Dick Wolf wrote both a TV movie about him in 1999 and arranged for his character to return on the spinoff series Criminal Intent in that series’ fifth season. (The first accusation against Noth was made by an actress who guest starred on that series.)

Let’s state the obvious: Law and Order isn’t going anywhere. If anything, it’s become a bigger sensation when it was sold in syndication than it was when it was in the early years of its original run. Entire networks have blocks of it scheduled for its daily lineup. And it’s not like any of them are going to just stop airing the five seasons Noth was part of the show. (Exhibit A: One cable channel ran a marathon of the first season this past Thursday and will show Season 2 New Year’s Eve.) One does not remove over a hundred episodes of television series from syndication under any circumstances; it’s just not good business.

Now to make the obvious joke: Law and Order could – they do, after all, have another three hundred plus without them. And considering that the series is a procedural that doesn’t depend heavily on character arcs, one could do just that and few would know the difference. Hell, I remember my own frustration at TNT’s decision to do just that when they had the series in syndication.

But no network will do that and no streaming service will do it. There’s too much money involved. They’ll make the arguments that Law and Order is an ensemble show and that there was controversy among other figures during Noth’s run which isn’t entirely false: Michael Moriarty, who appeared in the first four seasons had a very public mental breakdown in which, among other things, he accused Attorney General Janet Reno of being a fascist. But it’s a false equivalence, and it won’t change the fact. There’s too much money involved. Theoretically they could remove the Chris Noth episodes of Criminal Intent from syndication, but I have serious doubts that’ll happen either.

Now I imagine at this point there are some readers out there who will make the argument that they don’t watch Law and Order or that they won’t watch Noth’s episodes. I find that doubtful in the extreme; as I’ve written in numerous articles I think everybody in America watches the reruns at some point and I’m not entirely convinced they’ll stop now. The bigger questions come with the series that Noth was most known for by female viewers: Sex and the City.

I’ll cut to the chase. No one’s going to stop watching Sex and the City. I won’t reproduce the arguments why they should have watched it in the first place and just how fake the whole things because it’s futile. Sex and the City may have ended its run a full six seasons before Law and Order, but if anything, it’s proliferated the culture even more than that series has. You don’t inspire two movies, a prequel series and a follow-up series if some part of the world isn’t hopelessly devoted to it.

And I absolutely refuse to believe any of those fans will stop watching the show even with the accusations that are now hitting Noth. I imagine they’ll have similar justifications – that the series was always more about Carrie and her gal pals, that it was really a woman’s show, etc. etc., But its not like they’ll be able to watch the series and pretend that Big had nothing to do with it. And its not like the people who have bowdlerizing the series for basic cable for decades are going to do  the same thing and remove Noth – the entire show would come down to a run of about three hours.

No, if you watch Sex and the City you are in a way celebrating Noth. It is the fan base of this series that I think is going to have to take a very hard look in the mirror the next few months and years. The optimist in me wants to believe that seeing that a series so false in every aspect, that had so many problems with almost every single character, that had an ending where even the fans of the show believed it was false, will finally reject it. If nothing else, considering that there are now accusations by women behind the scenes about Noth’s behavior on-set back set, I would think they might seriously consider the hypocrisy of watching a show that was supposed about female empowerment that in actuality covered up the behavior of the romantic ideal. The cynic in me doesn’t believe that one bit any more than the idea that any of the services that have been streaming will get rid of it.

And I will confess: I am not immune to this hypocrisy. One of my favorite series of all time is The Good Wife of which Noth was by far one of the most important characters. Having heard the accusations against him (and I repeat that I do believe that they are credible) I find myself how I can in good conscience watch a series that has as one of its key premises, a DA who is sent to prison for illicit sexual conduct in the pilot and is redeemed politically to the point that he becomes a realistic possibility for President by the series final season. How can I watch a show that makes one of its core precepts a central character who stands by her husband despite his infidelities at first and gets to the point where she actively defends his corruption – makes it her brand, after a fashion? As anyone who watched the show knows, there is infinitely more to The Good Wife than that but can I in good conscience watch the series the same way? What will I do if a female working on that show accuses Noth of harassment?

And I don’t deny that I have similar issues with some of what I’ve discussed – I always preferred watching Law and Order reruns where Noth was a major character. (I also liked it for the presence of actors like Jerry Orbach and Jill Hennessy, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say a large part of my preference for the early seasons was Noth. And I’ll be honest; I probably won’t stop watching these reruns. I’ve had no trouble watching Kevin Spacey films like The Usual Suspects and L.A. Confidential years after the accusations and I’m still planning next year to do a House of Cards rewatch in part to try and answer some of the problems I raised at the start of the article.

So I guess in the end I really can’t answer questions I posed about whether there’ll be any kind of consequences or reckoning for Noth or any other of the actors I’ve mentioned at the start of the article. I don’t deny the fundamental unfairness of it – none of the accused seems likely to face any criminal charges; they’ll be in exile for a few years and then they’ll probably go back to working again somewhere. It’ll make news for awhile, and then when the outrage is buried by another one, the average viewer will probably go back to watching their art with little more than a shrug.

But I think, at some level, viewers like me must accept some responsibility in all of this. We may all say the right things when it comes to these kinds of accusation against these powerful men but at the end of the day we still don’t stop watching. I can’t help but wonder how many people who say they’re appalled by everything Harvey Weinstein did and then go home and put on a movie like Pulp Fiction or Shakespeare in Love. Maybe the most we can hope for when we see a Law and Order marathon is to think a little before we decide to just watch it. We owe all the accusers that much, since we can’t seem to give them anything else.

 

If Nothing Ends Any More, Does The Ending Still Matter: A Reflection on the History of The Series Finale, Conclusion

 

I’m not sure when exactly the reboot and the continuation of a series became so much part of out TV landscape. Was it to unlikely reunion by Netflix of Arrested Development a work of genius that was cancelled too soon? Was it ‘Live Another Day’, the limited series of 24 which was supposed to give closure to the world of Jack Bauer and CTU? Maybe it was the return of Will and Grace in 2015 which basically tore apart the idea of the show’s finale that had troubled so many.

Whatever it was within the last five years more and more series that were considered finished began to return, usually with the same casts and writers that had started them. And more often than not, elements of the final episodes which often brought so much trouble before were either disregarded or ignored. This was rarely clearer when Roseanne came back in 2017 and basically ignored the precept of its controversial finale – that Dan (John Goodman) had died of a heart attack and that the ninth season hadn’t happened. So committed was ABC to the series going forward that when Roseanne became too controversial for its network to handle, she was killed off and the series continued under the name The Connors.

And this tradition seems to be continuing even among series that in the past decade managed to end well. Justified the extraordinary FX series that clearly gave closure was constantly talked about by Walton Goggins and Timothy Olyphant for another season and now it looks very much like some version of it will happen. Breaking Bad fans were apparently not satisfied with the extraordinary prequel series Better Call Saul and have wanted more and more – El Camino debuted on Netflix in 2019. Even Six Feet Under, the series with what was arguably the most perfect ending of all, has recently come under discussion for the development of some kind of follow-up series just this year.

Ironically this refusal to end series or desire to keep going back to the well for new episodes has come at a time when more and more often so many great series have actually managed to stick the landing in a way they couldn’t before. A lot of time this is usually about series that are not nearly as popular as some of the best of Peak TV, but it doesn’t change the fact its been done increasingly well. The Americans, arguably the best standalone series of the 2010s, had one of the greatest final episodes in the history of television – one which actually earned its writers an Emmy.  Mr. Robot, a series that started as a sensation and then disappeared, ended nearly as brilliantly as it began. Jane the Virgin one of the most brilliant comedy series of the decade not only managed to survive to a final season, but ended on an absolutely perfect note. Even Damon Lindelof, who has taken so much fire for the ending of Lost clearly learned from his mistakes and helped give his next series The Leftovers an ending that has already gone down in history as one of television’s best.

But far more often – particularly on network television – endings are becoming more and more irrelevant. Law and Order, which ran twenty seasons on NBC, has been recently picked up for a twenty-first. CSI which lasted for fifteen years and spawned three spinoffs came back this year and has already been renewed for a second season. There is discussion to bring series like 24 and Glee back for new incarnations on Fox. And with the growing popularity of the cast reunion – series like Parks and Rec and 30 Rock did ones even in the pandemic and Sex and the City returned for a now controversial follow-up series the year – it becomes more and more obvious that shows don’t seem to end any more so much as they do stop until people grow nostalgic for it. Sometimes this does lead to genius – the Twins Peaks Return and Deadwood: The Movie were more than worthy follow-ups, and I’m very fond of the new version of In Treatment we got this year – but it continues to take up so much space on network television that there is little room for original programming anymore.

Furthermore networks still haven’t lost the impulse to keep television series on the air until all the freshness is gone from it. When NCIS and Grey’s Anatomy eventually come to an end, no one’s going to really be curious how it happens and the odds are no one will really care anymore. That’s assuming they will end – it sure as hell doesn’t look like shows like The Simpsons or Law and Order: SVU ever will at this rate. The idea of ending a series on a note of finality has pretty much disappeared. Say what you will about the snow globe finale that wrapped up St. Elsewhere – there was no question the series was done after that. Ending a series at all is becoming less desired by anybody connected to television.

There may be one good thing about a series ending mattering less and less. It makes us seriously reflect on the value of the original show. Which, in a way, brings me back to why I constantly rewatch Lost. I’ve been asking myself the same question over and over almost since I started reviewing TV series: if a great series has a controversial or disappointing ending, does that mean the show has no merit as a whole?

And the fact that during the last decade so many people have been rewatching so many of these old series may answer that question. Millions of people were up in arms at the final shot of The Sopranos. At the time, many were so disappointed they actually thought it was inferior to shows like The Wire and Deadwood.  But the fact that its been rediscovered and that people are still talking about it more than a decade after the finale does seem to indicate that there has always been and always be value in it.

And it is for that reason that I rewatch Lost over and over. Maybe part of me still thinks that if I keep doing so often enough I’ll eventually think that it ended on a perfect note. (Six times haven’t convinced me of this yet, but you never know.) Most of the time I rewatch because of the feelings it inspires. The brilliance of the acting of the cast, particularly Terry O’Quinn and Michael Emerson. The willingness of Lindelof and Cuse to take risks, whether they worked like gangbusters (the final moments of the Season 3 finale) or if they didn’t work (Nikki and Paulo). The operatic brilliance of the music. The themes and philosophies it inspired in the viewer and the deep emotions when it pulled on the heartstrings (Desmond and Penny’s love story is one of the greatest in TV history). In that sense, it doesn’t matter how the series ended. What matters is how it could make both your brain and heart ache at the same moment. Very few series – certainly almost none at a network level – have ever made me feel this way.

It is possible I stand alone in this feeling. Maybe the lion’s share of viewers are people so upset with the final episode of Game of Thrones that they will never watch the series again, let alone any prequels or read any books by the authors. Maybe they’re the same people who wanted so badly the New Blood we got from Dexter and really want to see another adventure in real time. Maybe they’re the same people who desperately ignore any of the repeated comments from Cuse and Lindelof that they will continue or reboot Lost.  I’ll admit that sometimes I agree with them – part of me really wishes we’d get another season of Twin Peaks.

But to them I’m reminded of a constant phrase that came up rewatching Lost: You have to learn to let go. And I honestly think that television would be better if everybody connected would learn to let go. I’d like it if the executives would let go of bringing the same series back over and over (but believing that is harder than a pillar of smoke killing people on a mystical island). I’d like it if the fans could let go of the biases they have towards so many of the series that ended so badly and demand a new ending (that’s harder to believe than what I said about the executives). But most of all I’d like it if we can appreciate a great series for what it was. What it meant at the time and what it did right. And let that be enough. It’s not easy – nothing about being a fan or a critic of TV is – but at some point, I think everybody involved will be better for it. Stop being frustrated about what shows like Lost did to upset you and appreciate what they made you feel like as a viewer. We may not believe, like we were told in the last few minutes of Lost, in some mystical place that we all made together, but in another way, isn’t that what being a true fan is?

 

 

 

 

If Nothing Ends Any More Does The Ending Still Matter: A History and Perspective on the Series Finale, Part 1

 

Almost every two years like clockwork I rewatch Lost.  I consider it one of the greatest series in the history of television because of the brilliance of the performances, the depth of the characters and the extraordinary greatness of every technical aspect of the series. (Michael Giacchino’s score remains the gold standard for every television series since.) Like every fan of the series I find different nuances every time I look at it.

But I know that though Lost was one of the most watched series on television in the 2000s, millions of those same fans will never watch it again and potential fans are constantly warded off. There are many reasons for this, but I think all of us know the real one: the final episode remains one of the most controversial in the history of the medium. And unfortunately in the last decades, there have been more and more examples of final episodes that disappointed the devoted fan base.

I was never one of the legions of Game of Thrones fans who reacted in fury to the final episode, but it’s not like I wasn’t capable of feeling their pain. I’ve been pissed for years at the final episode of Dexter, I still can’t really comprehend the last minutes of Mad Men and even more than a decade later I’m still not sure what to make of the last episode of Battlestar Galactica. When I saw I thought it was near perfect. On reflection I can now understand why it’s so polarizing.

Series finales have become more and more central to a show’s level of greatness in the era of Peak TV and since the nature of television is fundamentally changing I think we’d do well to look at the idea of the series finale: its history, when it became critical to a show’s success, and if, in the age of the reboot, whether it still matters.

Let’s start with something that will probably shock the current generation of binge-watchers. For almost the entire 20^th century series finales didn’t happen. Almost from the inception of the medium until well into the 1980s, television series didn’t really end so much as stop. I Love Lucy, The Twilight Zone, Gunsmoke, Bonanza – they just ran until they were cancelled. And many of the series that we associate with the first Golden Age – The Honeymooners, Star Trek – just got canceled without even a thought to the viewer. The Fugitive may have had the most watched episode in television history to its peak, but that didn’t mean that network executives thought The Rockford Files or Kojak needed to have a similar great ending.

Indeed until the end of the 20^th Century, the series that had the most successful endings were almost entirely comedies. The Mary Tyler Moore Show may be the first truly great series to have an equally great finale, and that wouldn’t have happened if the creators hadn’t decided that they were going to stop making the show. MASH has one of the most famous final episodes in history, but its not known as much for the brilliance of the ending (although to be clear, it’s still one of the greatest final episodes in history) but because it had by far the largest audience of any series in history to that time.  That, to network executives, was always going to be the definition of success, and they didn’t exactly take the right lesson from it. (Anyone remember AfterMASH?)

This trend continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s: the most successful endings of series were for long running comedies. If they happened to be perfect creatively, that was an added bonus. Everyone loved the final episode of Newhart for its cleverness only after the fact. The level of disappointment in the finales of series like Cheers and later on, Seinfeld were mostly because they seemed somehow anticlimactic. (I’ve never understood why so many people were disappointed with the last episode of Seinfeld. The series was notoriously about nothing; did the fans really expect something would happen in the last episode?)

This trend didn’t, by and large, exist with dramas. Millions of people who watched the notorious finale of St. Elsewhere might have been bewildered by the nature of the ending (a feeling that carried over to several of the cast members) but I honestly think that may have been more of a critical derision than anything else. Much of the time I was growing out, series didn’t so much end as wrap up – and in several cases like, say, Dynasty never even get an ending. It was mainly the nature of network television. A series was going to go on as long as it could make money for the network. By the time, they squeezed it dry; there usually weren’t enough fans to care.

All of this changed in the era of Peak TV, and I think we all know where. It happened with a ground-breaking HBO series that involved a family dealing with the darkest aspects of human nature for a living that had some of the most memorable acting in television history and had one of the darkest final seasons ever. I speak, of course, of Six Feet Under.

Like The Sopranos I never quite cottoned to so much of this series brilliance when it was on the air. So many aspects of it were beyond me – the presence of Nathaniel Fisher haunting his children was always bizarre, I thought the series spent far too much time on Brenda and it never seemed quite to know what it was trying to be dark or too light. But what no one can argue was that ‘Everyone’s Waiting’ and particularly the last ten minutes are among the greatest moments in the history of television. A series that by its nature was entirely about death and its ramifications did what no other series would have to guts to – show all the characters we’ve grown to love over the last five seasons futures, ending in their deaths. Ever since I heard the last note of Sia’s music more than sixteen years ago, I have never been able to get it or the final images of that show out of my head. And unlike so many other disappointments from TV over the decades, I never want too.

More than sixteen years later, Six Feet Under remains the gold standard for series finales. And though some of the other HBO show’s from that era in that time had ended – Oz and Sex and the City – I think every series since then has been trying in its own way to measure up to it. And there have been quite a few that have.

The Shield’s final episode remains arguably the most haunting final minutes I’ve ever seen for its lead and everyone around it. The Wire managed to end satisfyingly in its final episode in the sense that showed that nothing truly ends, certainly not in David Simon’s Baltimore. Damages, a little watched series that needed two networks to come up with a final season, had a satisfying conclusion for both Patty and Ellen at the end of it. When the final season of Breaking Bad came, the New York Times said, for all the praise around it, its final episode would not be a cultural event. Ten million fans begged to differ, and I think like me, we got what we came for.

But sadly, these have been the exception far more than the rule. There may be critics to this day who somehow think that notorious cut to black final image of The Sopranos may be the paramount of TV brilliance. I have a feeling many more of them feel like Tom Fontana, who wrote the notorious final episode of St. Elsewhere when he said in an interview: “Thank you for taking me off the hook.”

Far too many of the series finales in the era of Peak TV have been massive underwhelming if not out and out met with rage.  Some of the examples I’ve mentioned above have made far too many critics and frustration which includes, of course, the millions still outrage at the final episode of Lost. A critic I admire immensely said that everything the series had been leading to for six seasons came down to two brothers fighting over a glowing puddle and an afterlife holodeck for the survivors. I find her description both tremendously unfair but also not entirely inaccurate. The outrage is more aggravating then most because for three straight years creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse said they had been intricately plotting out the end of the series. A lot of fans still have trouble believing that.

I can’t help but remember how frustrated a similar group of fans (I among them) were upset when The X-Files came to an end in 2002. The mythology that had made up the bulk of the series had become incomprehensible years ago but millions of us still tuned into the final episode somehow hoping that creators Chris Carter and company would have found out some way to satisfyingly resolve the series. To say we were disappointed is an understatement. In this case, it was clear that the writers had long since lost the narrative thread that made up the spine of the series. Just as it would be for Lost viewers had been persuaded to keep tuning in week after week with promises that everything would one day be revealed. Watching the final season and finale, it was clear that the writers were never going to that. In both cases, it was dramatically unsatisfying.

That has been at the core of so much of the controversy behind the final episodes of Peak TV series – the need for a satisfying ending. Except now television is changing in such a way that may not ever truly happen. In the second part of the article I will go into how the age of the reboot and continuation of the series may have brought about the end of endings – and why endings still matter and why they never did.

 

You Won't Be Able To Binge It. You Can't Not Watch It: Maid Review

 

For all intents and purposes, for better or worse, Netflix invented binge-watching. The moment the next season of Orange is the New Black or Stranger Things would drop there were always a group of rabid fans (however big a group is something we can never know for sure) who would watch the entire season in the course of a weekend. That’s become the fabric of our lives. Whether it’s Amazon or Hulu, a new series or an old one, we spend entire chunks of our lives watching every episode of it at once. I imagine that is how tens of millions of people managed to survive forced isolation these past two years. Seth Meyers basically made it part of his late night routine.

But what of the series out there that are just too dark to watch? That you look at an episode of it and nobody how high the quality the idea of watching the next episode right away repulses you? Not because its too gross or violent or sexist – we’ve somehow grown immune to that over the years – but because it’s too sad? I have a feeling that millions of Netflix viewers may have made that consideration when they started watching Maid. Sure Squid Game showed a look at a dystopian future for the starving masses, but that was in Korean and you could pretend that it was 'just' dystopian fiction. There’s no way to pretend watching Maid that this is some world you can look away from. Millions of us know people like Alex. Well, know may be the wrong word. We ‘see’ people like Alex all over. We see them on the side of the road or walking in the dollar store – hell, maybe some of us have people like her cleaning our houses. And my guess is we note them the same way we look at a bug or a bird we’ve never seen.

That may be part of the real reason lots of people won’t watch to Maid. Some of us may be good liberal people, donate to food banks and want the minimum wage raised but do we really want these people walking our streets? And on the other side, they’ll think the only reason Alex is starving is because she can’t pull herself up by her bootstraps. Some might even take the idea that this book is a version of an autobiography and say the author is proof of the American Dream, as if somehow everything she went through is a ‘learning experience’ In either case both sides essentially do believe the same thing: They think people like Alex are less than them. And it is for that very reason that even if you don’t want to binge Maid, you absolutely need to watch it.

Alex’s life, from literally the moment the series begins, is a nightmare. She drives out of her boyfriend’s house with her toddle daughter because he is an angry drunk who we learned punched through the wall, probably not for the first time. She had $17.50 on her (the number is counted down onscreen every time she has to buy something like gas). In the average Lifetime movie, this would be the end of a nightmare. In Maid, it’s the beginning of a worse one.

Alex finds herself stuck in a bureaucracy that Kafka would find painful to live through. She doesn’t file for police protection because her boyfriend didn’t hit her and she doesn’t think (yet) she’s in an abusive relationship. She can’t get government support because she doesn’t have a job. She can’t file for a job because she doesn’t have a residence or a place to leave her daughter. A ‘helpful’ social worker gives her a lead on a domestic cleaning job, which offers even lousier pay, makes you buy the cleaning products you need for the job and penalizes you if you don’t bring back the vacuum they supply.

Alex finds herself turning to the one person she really doesn’t want to: her mother (who she calls Paula). She’s rented out their last residence as a B&B and she has drive through two trailer parks to find her. Paula is an ‘artist’ and clearly bipolar. If she ever loved her daughter, it’s not clear for a moment. She is entirely self-obsessed with no use for anyone but her current flake of a boyfriend.

She’s goes to her first job in Westchester. The owner blames for being an hour later and threatens to dismiss her right away. She cleans the place and is astounded by the amount of food in the refrigerator. She collapses from hunger in the nursery and the owner gives her a granola bar and two minutes to eat it before she tells to get back to work.

She has no phone service on the ferry and comes back and learns her mother has basically just given her daughter back to Sean the abusive boyfriend, the one thing she insisted she not do. Her mother berates her. Alex drives back to Sean who is apologetic and says he went to a meeting. He offers her the first meal she’s had in twenty four hours. It says something for her that she refuses to touch it. He treats with barely veiled contempt until she drives away.

She gets a call from the service telling her that her client is pissed because she did a shitty job on the lawn furniture and if she wants to keep her job, she’ll drive their back now. And things just continue to get so much worse it becomes nearly unbearable. In the second episode things nominally improve when Alex begins to accept the truth of her situation and she finally moves into a domestic violence shelter. There are moments of cheer in the next episode – mostly focusing on one of the previous occupant’s ridiculously large collection of My Little Ponies and as she finally confronts the woman who stiffed her of her pay that basically will cost her car, her job and her daughter. That is balanced by the fact that the woman who has accompanied her through her day of struggle and who seems genuinely free in a way Alex isn’t checks out of the shelter the next day. “It takes most women seven tries before they break free of their relationship,” the woman who runs the shelter kindly tells Alex. “It took me five tries.”

What makes this series absolutely riveting – and what will probably draw even those who find the subject matter excruciating – is the work of Margaret Qualley in the lead.  I knew who Qualley was before this – her work in Fosse.Verdon and Native Son was riveting – but not even that could prepare you for her work. We write clichés in articles such as ‘the world is against so-and-so’ but its impossible not to watch this and not feel like it is against Alex. Everything that should be helpful is against her – her parents, the system, her car. Even the toddler she loves unabashedly seems utterly unconcerned with the chaos around her and doesn’t seem to care how much worse she seems to be making it. No one has a kind word for her, even the paramedics who help her when her car is totaled. The only asset Alex has is Alex, and that’s not nearly enough.

I’ll admit I had no clue that Qualley was the daughter of 1990s box-office star Andie MacDowell who is a revelation in her own right as Paula. Many people argued that MacDowell was a lightweight throughout her acting career, that even her performances in just critical and box-office hits as Sex, Lies & Videotape and Four Weddings and a Funeral were somehow the movies weak point.  Watch her in her scenes as Paula and you will instantly reassess any assumptions you might have previously had. I know I did.

Now I know there are certain people who will look at the premise of Maid and simply view it as another example of a white woman suffering. They will look at this picture of Alex’s poverty, struggle and being stuck in a relentless system – and especially the scenes where they see a wealthy African-American woman employ her, regard her as nothing and cause her to lose everything as a result – as some kind of conservative click-bait. To them, white people on television are the Drapers of Mad Men at worst and the Roys of Succession at best. (They ignore the reason Walter White started Breaking Bad and clearly never saw a single episode of Shameless – a series which, like Maid, John Wells also helped create.)  White privilege to them extends even to the poor.

These people clearly look at those who are poor and abused basically the same way that the people at the top do. That they can’t avail themselves of the system even though its weighed against people like Alex. (In the second episode Alex attends a court proceeding where Sean has filed a custody writ and every word she can’t understand is just ‘legal’ to us and to her.)

Because here’s the thing: Alex thinks she’s a ghost and maybe she is. In the opening of the second episode, she reads a heartrending story at a bar of how at age eleven, she fell through the ice and was clinically dead and that she has felt like a ghost ever since. Not a single person listens to her except the asshole who will become her boyfriend. (You never saw Nick Robinson like this.) We ignore people like Alex so much that ultimately they think they deserve to be in the situations they’re in – that the $37.50 we don’t even think of paying for a shirt on Amazon could be the money they need to keep everything.  When Alex tells the story of how she became pregnant and how Sean reacted in front of an audience of My Little Ponies, it’s triumphant and still sad – right now, they’re the only things listening to her. That’s why you need to watch Maid – we need to be listening to her too.

My score: 4.75 stars.

My Reactions To This Year's Golden Globes TV Nominations (Sigh)

 

It was my intention to just ignore the Golden Globes this year. They’re almost certainly not going to be broadcast on any service (three weeks to go and counting) and their truly dickish move of announcing they planned to give their awards on the same day as the Critics’ Choice didn’t endear to me any more.

But I am a completist of sorts and despite they’ve ever done in their history I feel a sense of obligation to go over my opinions of their nominations in television. That said I’m not going to give them the same coverage I do usually. Instead, for each category I will simply compare and contrast with the Critics Choice nominations to see if they did anything that corresponded with them and therefore might give us a hint as how the Emmys will do things and see if there are any nominations that seem like outliers. For the record though, I’m not going to try and predict the winners and on January 9^th, no matter what, I will be watching the Broadcast Critics. So here I go (heaves sigh)

 

BEST DRAMA

 Well Succession, Pose and Squid Game correspond with the Critics though I’ll admit it’s something of a surprise the latter is here. Lupin was considered Best Foreign show and really, The Morning Show is another one of those quirks that doesn’t make them look good.

 

BEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA

Brian Cox and Jeremy Strong, Billy Porter and Lee Jung-Jae are hardly surprises – against they’re copying the Critics Choice. I guess they’re trying to be impressive with Omar Sy being here for Lupin. Ignoring Sterling Brown doesn’t help you guys.

 

BEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA

I give them credit for MJ Rodriguez and Uzo Aduba and a little more for Christine Baranski for The Good Fight, not because she doesn’t deserve it but because the Globes have basically ignored her for the past four years (and seven before that if you count The Good Wife which they gave a lot of recognition too) Still, better late than never, I guess?  Jennifer Aniston is an old habit, and Elisabeth Moss is just plain laziness. Not really proving you’re doing a better job

 

BEST COMEDY

Essentially a cut and paste from the Broadcast Critics. The only real surprise in the increasingly new devotion to The Great. Does that mean I now have to watch this series or were they just too lazy to nominate black-ish again

 

BEST ACTOR IN A COMEDY

Well, at least they’re acknowledging Anthony Anderson’s superb work. Beyond this, it’s more or less a cut and paste from the Broadcast critics. Nothing wrong with any of their choices really, though I’m still questioning the validity of Nicholas Hoult in this category.

 

BEST ACTRESS IN A COMEDY

I guess they’re finally acknowledging that, for all intents and purposes Hannah Einbinder is a co-lead in Hacks. Though whether this will divide any real hope Jean Smart has of winning for this category is beyond me. Issa Rae and Tracee Ellis Ross are good. I’m just a little disappointed that there’s no room for Selena Gomez.

 

BEST LIMITED SERIES, ANTHOLOGY SERIES OR TV MOVIE

Okay, I have to at least give the Golden Globes credit for acknowledging the existence of Impeachment, something the Broadcast Critics refused to do. And you can’t argue with Maid, Mare of Easttown or The Underground Railroad.  Dopesick like Maid now seems like a sure Emmy contender. At least the Globes are a little more focused on the season to come.

 

BEST ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES, ANTHOLOGY OR TV MOVIE

Again, the Globes get credit for acknowledging Oscar Isaac’s work in Scenes from a Marriage which the Broadcast Critics ignored. Michael Keaton now seems like a sure Emmy contender and Paul Bettany was inevitably going to be nominated for Wandavision.

I’m honestly not sure whether Ewan McGregor’s nomination for Halston is a step forward of backward. And I’d never heard of Tahar Rahim or The Serpent until I saw the nomination. In that sense, the HFPA’s tradition of making bizarre nods has not changed,

 

BEST ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES, ANTHOLOGY OR TV MOVIE.

All right, I’ll be honest. This is a better selection of nominees than the Broadcast Critics did. Kate Winslet, Elisabeth Olsen, Cynthia Erivo and Margaret Qualley more than deserve to be here and I’m strongly in favor of Jessica Chastain being part of this group than any of the alternatives we got from the Broadcast Critics. Would I have liked to see Beanie Feldstein or Sarah Paulson here? Sure but it’s a smaller category.

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

At least they’re acknowledging how broad a net they have. That said, still a weird group.

Billy Crudup has a certain following for The Morning Show. Brett Goldstein deserves to be here for Ted Lasso. And I know I’m arguing against the tide for Kieran Culkin and all things Succession.

The other two choices? I’m genuinely uncertain. Did O Yeong-Su deserve to be nominated for Squid Game more than Clive Owen for Impeachment or Murray Bartlett for The White Lotus? I have no idea. Both of them definitely deserved to be nominated more than Mark Duplass for The Morning Show, but I’ve always been a fan of the Duplass brothers in general and am always glad when one of them gets nominated for anything. (Still, I’d rather have seen Jay nominated for The Chair.) This is always a weird bunch.

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Same problems. Too large a net, not enough nominees.

Hannah Waddingham and Jennifer Coolidge more than deserve to be here. And after just one episode of Maid, I’m convinced that the Broadcast Critics did Andie MacDowell a huge injustice by not nominating her. Kaitlyn Dever also looks like she’s a sure bet for Supporting Actress for Dopesick. And no one who isn’t a fan of Succession would have a problem with Sarah Snook being here.

Word of advice for the Golden Globes, you want to have people consider you serious: consider separating out the Supporting Acting categories a little. They’ve been one of your more obvious bugbears for as long as I’ve been watching. This would be a minor step in the right direction.

 

Like I said, I’m going to be watching the Broadcast Critics on January 9^th. I won’t even try to pick what the Golden Globes will do. I won’t pretend I won’t care a little who wins – if for no other reason that they have seemed to be a foreshadowing of the year to come at times – but as far as I’m concerned, they’ve still got a lot of work to do. I won’t deny there are some interesting choices here, but I don’t really think they represent the institutional progress you have to make before you regain acceptance – if you can.

 

We Never Needed A Sex and The City Reboot, Part 2: If The Ever After is Long Enough, There's Never a Happily

 

From the beginning we’ve known that And Just Like That was ill-starred. There’s the fact that the feud between stars Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Catrall which was a badly-kept secret throughout the series, spilled over and led to the fact that Catrall is not in the new series at all. There was the passing of Willie Garson, who played Stanford, just a couple of months ago. And just this past week Chris Noth, Big himself, was hit with numerous charges of sexual misconduct and at the very least may be the facing the end of his career.

(Two things I must say: I have always been an admirer of Noth as a performer. I’ve always considered his work as Big the least deserving of recognition from some of the great roles he’s played from Law and Order to The Good Wife. And in almost everything else associated with her, I find Zoe Lister-Jones, one of the actresses who’s gone on record with her complaint, an extremely credible source. If the charges against Noth are true - and for all the furor they are just a story at the moment – than his fall as a creative force is one of the greatest blows I’ve taken since I accepted the misconduct of Joss Whedon.)

But leaving aside all of the horrible behind the scenes drama, the real reason I find the existence of And Just Like That appalling became horribly clear when I learned of a spoiler in the first episode. For those of you who wouldn’t be caught dead watching it during the opening episode Big- the man who was the focus of so much of Carrie’s life through the length of the original series, the man who after nearly eight seasons she finally committed too - was working out on his Peloton when he suffered a heart attack and died.

Set aside those fans who believed that the ending of the original series was a huge disappointment that Carrie finally decided to end up with Big. Let’s aside the overall track record of television series in Peak TV trying to avoid the possibility of successful romances and the completion of a female character’s arc. Why do we keeping have series where they spend five or six seasons keeping the male and female leads apart finally having them end up together – and then, eventually, having their happily ever after shattered by a tragic death?

Now I admit there may still be some residual hostility towards all things Shondaland at this point – I never liked the series, but I’m still incredibly angry at Rhimes and everybody else at Grey’s Anatomy for basically setting up couples together and then, usually because of death, tearing them asunder. Casting issues aside, is killing one (or in Rhimes’ case, both) leads off anyway to end a relationship. I’ve seen variations on this carry on in series like Nashville when Connie Britton’s character died in a hospital and in NYPD Blue when both Jimmy Smits’ and Sharon Lawrence’s characters were killed off. But somehow what happened in That just seems far worse. In a series that basically told you to take on faith that if you tried hard enough you would find a happily ever after, the creators basically seem to be giving a middle finger to the very fans that loved the series for over a quarter of a century.

I admit have absolutely no intention of watching a single episode of the new series (I didn’t subscribe to HBO Max for that) but if I’d been a fan of the show I can’t for the life of me understand why you’d want to watch another episode after you saw Big fast. No matter how great your devotion to Sex and the City – and seriously, if you’re loyal enough to want to watch after learning Samantha was going to be there, you have a level of loyalty I can’t begin to comprehend -  why the hell would you bother to keep watching after Big’s funeral? What possible level of devotion to female friendship – which to be clear I always found a fairly weak point of the entire series – would have you want to stay loyal after that? Are we supposed to believe – like Rhimes’ did when she chose to have Christina leave Grey’s Anatomy alive because her death would be too much for Meredith to survive – that friendship is somehow supposed to mean more than finding your soulmate? I didn’t buy it for a second when Derek Shepherd was killed off on Grey’s; I don’t find it anymore plausible in this scenario.

And while you can blame all the carnage that involved so many characters on Grey’s on the simple fact that the series has been on the air far too long, there’s no similar logic for Big’s death on That. The writers may never have been comfortable writing about long term relationships for any of the other characters on SATC, but they at least were willing to do it as far as it went with Charlotte and Miranda. Cynthia Nixon’s character was even willing to eventually forgive an affair her husband had during one of the movies. The decision to kill Big off seems deliberate and forced by comparison – an attempt to try and add Peak TV thrills to a series that never really inhabit the Peak television era the same way all the other great HBO dramas of the period did. I had my share of problems with almost every aspect of Sex and the City when it was on the air – I shared many of them in the previous article – but as long as the creators were willing to show as something light and fluffy I could live with it. The decision both to go forward with it without Samantha and Big’s death show that this as purely an attempt to mine currency from an old franchise and simultaneously turn off any fan who might want to watch it for nostalgia’s sake. I’ve argued that unless there’s a real change in a reboot of a series, it doesn’t deserve to happen. This makes that change and yet somehow negates the need for it as well.

I don’t know if And Just Like That will be a success. I don’t know why it was brought back in the first place nor why Darren Star and his cohorts thought doing it like this would bring fans to the series. In short I don’t know what the audience for this Sex and the City reboot is. And that makes everything the writers have done seem even more pointless.