It's Official. This...Is...Peak Jeopardy!

 

A couple of months ago in this column I tried to answer whether or not this is the era of Peak Jeopardy. I still have seasons I have fonder memories of, but in terms of the level of champions that have appeared on the series in just one year, we are officially in unprecedented times in the series thirty eight year history.

Last night, after Mattea Roach officially breath the hallowed air of 19 games won, Jeopardy reached a record that it has never had in the nearly two decades since champions were allowed to win until they were beaten. This is the first time in Jeopardy’s history that four champions have won eleven or more games in a single season – Matt Amodio, Amy Schneider, Mattea Roach and Jonathan Fisher, whose eleven wins and more than a quarter of a million dollars won would have been enough to lead all comers in almost any season but this one.  In the history of the series it has been a long time since this many great players appeared on Jeopardy in close succession – the nearest parallel in 2016 when several of Jeopardy’s all time greats appeared within a few months of each other. I speak of names such as Buzzy Cohen, who win that year’s Tournament of Champions, Austin Rogers, who went viral while almost incidentally winning over $400,000 in twelve days, Alan Lin, who would fill out the 2017 Tournament of Champions finals that year and Seth Wilson who won twelve games and over $260,000 but couldn’t get past the quarterfinals in that years Tournament. Not one of them has won nearly as much money as the three nineteen game winners this year.

Ken Jennings has every right to be impressed with the great play of Mattea Roach – he of all people has every right to appreciate a great winning streak.  That being said, it is clear that as great Mattea is and as entertaining as she to watch play, she is not at the level of Matt Amodio or Amy Schneider. Most of her games have not been nearly as one sided as Matt’s or Amy’s (though admittedly she has been in a single-player Final Jeopardy, something neither ever managed to accomplished in their runs) and she is lagging far behind them in terms of money won. At this point in Matt’s run, he’d won well over $640,000 while Amy had won nearly three quarters of a million dollars.  Mattea’s winnings of $460,184 at this point quite understandably would look like chump change in comparison.  Part of this is because of how Mattea approaches the game – she tends to start at the top of the categories and work her way down and she has never bet very big on most of the Daily Doubles she has found (something she admonishes herself on every time she gets one right). As a result, she hasn’t had nearly as many of the utter romps that Matt and Amy have had, the ones she has had runaways won have been modest ones at best (she’s been in the position of having one player have exactly half her total on two occasions so far, leaving almost no wiggle room.) and she’s had more than her share of incorrect Final Jeopardy responses, which has led to games she has been lucky to win.  (Indeed, it is because of the modesty of a player who could have defeated her had she wagered enough that her winning streak didn’t end after nine games.)

However, only in comparison to those same players does Mattea’s performance look unimpressive. Compared to three previous contestants to make it to nineteen wins, Mattea compares very well. For perspective, let’s look at the three players who managed to get to this number and then had their streak ended then or just after: David Madden, who won nineteen games in 2005 between Seasons 21 and 22 (the second place total behind Ken Jennings for nearly a decade) Julia Collins, who won 20 games in 2014 (second until James Holzhauer broke it in 2019) and Jason Zuffranieri, who won 19 games in 2019, across Season 35 and 36:

 

Mattea Roach: $460,184

David Madden: $430,400

Julia Collins: $410,000

Jason Zuffranieri: $532. 496

 

When Julia Collins streak ended two days later, she had won $428,100, so her record for a female contestant in a regular season run has been surpassed for the second time this year.  I think Julia’s gracious enough to handle it.

Julia’s approach to the game was the closest to Mattea’s: she went category by category and wagered small on Daily Doubles. David would search the board for the Daily Doubles in both the Jeopardy and Double Jeopardy round and would build insurmountable (but not enormous leads) Jason’s play was closer to Julia’s in going through clues, but he would wager more on Daily Doubles.

Because Mattea will participate in the 2022 Tournament of Champions and, like Matt and Amy, almost certainly be asked back to play in future tournaments, it is worth noting that the three players I’ve compared Mattea to have had decidedly mixed success in their respective Tournaments of Champions. Neither David nor Jason was able to make it into the Finals at all. Julia did make it into the Finals of her Tournament but ended up finishing third to Ben Ingram. (Like most Jeopardy champions, Julia doesn’t hold grudges; the two have since become very close friends.) Both Julia and David appeared in the Jeopardy All-Star Games in 2019, which for those of you who didn’t read an earlier entry was a tournament where the players competed as part of a team. Julia was named captain of her own team (and chose Ben to play alongside) but do mostly to her own poor play, her team was the first eliminated. David was chosen to play on Brad Rutter’s team; still the winningest player in Jeopardy and thanks in large part to his play, Team Brad was able to share in a prize of one million dollars.

Earlier this year I wrote a longer article in which I considered whether this season should be considered the Year of the Woman. Given the play of Mattea Roach and Amy Schneider, along with the fact that four women have now qualified for this year’s Tournament of Champions, I think it is fairly safe to say this is a very accurate description as well.  Granted, since three of the women who are currently eligible have only won four games, there is still a very valid possibility that a male contestant could win more than four games and therefore knock one of them out of contention. Mattea herself did so when she won her fifth game and eliminated Maureen O’Neill, whose score of $58,200 was the lowest of the four female champions who each won four games in March. ’Jackie Kelly, who won $115,100 likely has a safe place. It remains to be seen whether Christine Whelchel’s score of $73,602 or Margaret Shelton’s $79,700 will hold up. In most seasons they would be sufficient, but as this article has indicated, this is not most seasons, and there are nearly three months to go before the end of Season 38.

I must add almost in passing how great a job both Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik have been doing as hosts this season.  Bialik seems to have a good handle on the history of the show (she handled the succession of female champions particularly well) and Jennings seems to be having an absolute ball hosting during Mattea’s run. He seems to delight in coming up ways to salute her: he gave a tribute to Canada two weeks ago, listed great things about the number sixteen when Mattea had won sixteen games, and seemed impressed that she has achieved such remarkable accomplishment at just the age of 23. (By coincidence, Brad Rutter won his first million dollar tournament when he was only 24. Could similar great things be ahead for Mattea?)

This is a great time to be watching Jeopardy, and based on the fact that it seems to be averaging ten million viewers an episode, a lot of people are now. Whoever ends up hosting Jeopardy will have a lot to do to be worthy of Alex Trebek. But the champions now playing on the studio named for him have been more than been worthy of him and Jeopardy. I look forward to seeing what happens in May.

 

 

Police Procedural Problems: Why The Closer Was Even More Problematic Than I Thought Before

 

 

Note: The next two pieces in this series are in a sense follow-ups to my most recent piece on Homicide and interrogations.

 

In writing about the interrogation scenes on Homicide, I wrote that on very few occasions in the entire series did any of the detectives lie to the suspects they were interrogating. This stands as a contrast to The Closer, in which lying to the suspects was basically at the core of Brenda Lee Johnson’s interrogation method.

In a piece I wrote in December of 2020, I stated very broadly that I thought that much of The Closer dealt in what was portrayed mostly as a light-hearted comedy one of the darker portrayals of police in TV in the new millennium. Now, after learning some more about the methods of deception used in interrogation, I realize that if you look at how Brenda Leigh Johnson is portrayed, she seems less like a sweet-natured heroine and more as a cold-blooded sociopath that even Dexter Morgan might consider a monster.

It is not just that she lied to suspects – most of them the kind of deceptions that anyone with a grain of sense could have seen through. I actually think there’s something pathological about who Brenda Johnson was. She was uncomfortable anywhere or with anyone – not even her husbands or her parents – outside an interrogation room. On more than one occasion, she was stave off her parent’s visits and head off to a murder investigation. She delayed vacations and even going on her honeymoon to close cases. Once she brought an accomplice to a murder on a trip to Atlanta in her parents RV so she could get him to confess. Another time she used her troubled niece to come with her to a hospital bed, so she could maneuver a dying suspect to confess his crimes.  Her boyfriend and future husband Fritz (Jon Tenney) was frequently frustrated with her, but often only when it interfered with a corresponding FBI investigation. Some might consider this love; I think he was enabling her.

Not to mention she was utterly immune to doing anything to make her bosses life’s easier: she refused to let any of her detectives leave her department even though the budget called for it, she did everything she could to make life difficult for the chain of command or the district attorneys, and she may be the only cop in television history who had to be pushed by a superior in to trying for a promotion when the opportunity was afforded to her. Some might call it loyalty to her people, but honestly Brenda Lee Johnson only seemed to feel any sort of satisfaction when she was putting a murderer behind bars.  You never saw her really interested in anything else – saw her really seem alive – other than when she was locking a suspect up.

And in case you’ve forgotten, that was when the justice system worked in her favor. Given Brenda’s way of handling murderers who could find loopholes in the system, I actually preferred the direct bloodthirstiness of Vic Mackey and his Strike Team on The Shield. At least Michael Chiklis’ character was honest when he went into the interrogation room in the Pilot and said to a suspect he was about to severely beat down: “I’m a different kind of cop.” (It may have been the only thing he was ever honest about on the series, in fact.) Brenda, by contrast, would off set up suspects who she couldn’t send to prison to face death on the streets. Throughout the series most critical arc: ‘the Shootin Newton case’, where she left a triple murderer without police protection to be murdered by his gang, she would spend two seasons telling everyone that she had done nothing wrong. Apparently, she was just as good at lying to herself as every other suspect she got to confess.

In a way, a lot of these murders are actually a lot more frightening then all the violence we would see on the far more graphic The Shield.  Throughout the series run, Mackey’s behavior would be tolerated, but it was considered despicable by his bosses such as Aceveda and Claudette (CCH Pounder) both of whom made concerted efforts to bring him down, and who tried to the Strike Team’s actions as an aberration. In the Major Crimes Division, the ‘blue wall’ was up for every single action Chief Johnson took, no matter how horrific it might be. While the lawsuit involving the Newton murder was going on, every cop to a man not only stood behind Chief Johnson but refused to give Sharon Rayder (head of the equivalent of IA and therefore a rat) even the benefit of a real interview. (There are contrasts that were clear when Rayder took over the squad in Major Crimes, which I will go through in another article.) If anybody had any doubts about what had happened, they refused to say it on the show.

And it is very clear as to just how The Closer viewed even the slightest deviation from the party line. Throughout the investigation, Rayder was convinced that there was an information leak in the department, something that Brenda refused to accept despite the overwhelming evidence. After the case was resolved, it was revealed that leak was- indirectly - Sgt. Gabriel (Corey Reynolds). Over the past year, he had been dating a woman and in the final season he had proposed. Eventually it was learned that she had been approached by the lawyer for the Newtons and that she had shared pillow talk from Gabriel. Gabriel was shunned by the rest of the squad for the remainder of the series, and eventually left Major Crimes. Just to be clear, for talking about the case with someone he cared about, Gabriel was by association a rat. All the loyalty the squad had built up during seven seasons disappeared in an instant.

Perhaps because of Kyra Sedgwick’s inner charm and ability as an actress, we saw Chief Johnson as fundamentally a force of good on The Closer – a bulwark of justice against the criminals out there. In retrospect, she seems just as much an antihero as all the others that made up so much of Peak TV during that period – as loose with the rule book as Vic Mackey ever was; as much as a ruthless dispenser of ‘justice’ as Dexter Morgan was, and in her own way, as much an addict as Gregory House was.  Indeed, that latter example is a lot closer to her than I thought. Both had no use for anything out of the problem they were trying to solve, both thought everybody was lying to them; both utterly disregarded their superior’s advice, and felt no remorse at any time for their approach. Taking that a step further, Brenda would later get her own medical diagnosis which would make eating chocolate – her one real indulgence – impossible for her. She basically ignored it the same way House refused to deal with his Vicodin addiction.

Perhaps it was the fact the Southern drawl and her butter-melting approach that made her seems the force of good. To quote Mike Ehrmantraut when he had to deal with the monstrous Lydia on Breaking Bad: “That’s what (you) get for being sexist.”  Because let’s be honest, there’s nothing about her approach to people and criminals that wouldn’t be fitting in any of the antiheroes that were dominating cable around this time. She is as cold and calculating in her approach to human life as so many of the other ‘difficult men’ in TV – the fact that she doesn’t kill them herself the way Tony Soprano does or manipulates them with her words the way Walter White would – doesn’t change that fact.

But Brenda Lee Johnson and The Closer in their own way represent as dark a portrayal of how law enforcement works in a perfect world as The Wire does for how it does in one that is anything but. And since in both worlds, the bosses don’t care how the job gets done as long as the case gets closed, why wouldn’t more viewers choose the one that leaves us feeling better at the end? The Wire was a huge critical hit, but never popular – on its best day, it had a fifth of the average audience of The Closer and the latter series is far more popular in syndication and streaming.

What makes this particularly odd is because when the spin-off – or to be more accurate, the continuation – of The Closer premiered weeks after that series ended, even though its cast and approach were essentially the same, there was a critical difference in how Major Crimes approached policing. I’ll deal with that in a follow-up piece.

It's Back in Time To Go Back In Time: Russian Doll is Back for Another (Time) Trippy Season

 

In July of 2019, not long after that year’s Emmy nominations, I ended up watching Russian Doll on Netflix after it was one of that year’s nominees for Best Comedy Series. Like so many streaming series I had not gotten into it on its initial run – I spent just as much time that year catching up on Fleabag, which would deservedly dominate the Emmys that year - and I might still have ignored it had it not been for the presence of Natasha Lyonne, an actress whose work I had admired even before she ended up breaking big in Orange is the New Black.

In my initial review of the series, I was cautiously favorable to it – the formula was unlike most shows even on Netflix. Lyonne had written herself the role of Nadia Vulvokov, a New Yorker at her thirty-sixth birthday part, bright hair, cigarette always hanging out of her mouth, looking ready to celebrate. As those of you who watched the first season of Russian Doll know, that’s what she did for that entire season – she spent it in a time loop, somehow always dying and regaining consciousness at the mirror of her birthday party.  The comedy was bloodthirsty, the jokes barbed and the longer the series went on, the more philosophical and scientific questions kept being asked as the universe around her began to deteriorate. Eventually with the help of the only person who knew what was happening, a milquetoast named Alan (Charlie Barnett) that finally managed to escape the time loop and deal with the mental issues in their background. It was an entertaining ride – and given what would happen in the world not long after it premiered, something we all seemed to live through. But at the end of the day, I wasn’t entirely certain it would work for a second season. But absence makes the heart go fonder, and when Russian Doll dropped last week, I violated almost every rule I’ve done with streaming series since this became part of entertainment and started watching it the day after it premiered. And I’m happy to say I’m gratified to be back.

It’s Nadia’s fortieth birthday. Ruth (Elizabeth Ashley) one of her mother’s oldest friends is beginning to deteriorate physically. Considering what happened in Season 1, she has spent the last three birthdays quietly celebrating with Alan, just in case something goes wrong. She has every intention of doing the same this year, except this time she goes into the subway, sees that everybody is in 1980s clothes (in Nadia style her first reaction is its some kind of 1980s flash mob) only to find she has traveled back to 1982. And while the explanation as to what was happening in Season 1 was more of the wibbly-wobbly we’re used on Doctor Who, both Nadia and the audience get a very clear explanation as to what’s happened: Nadia has traveled back to a few months before she was born – and inside the body of her mother Leonora, who was talked about as being immensely unstable and suicidal in the first season.

Perhaps because she was expected this (or because of who she is) there’s none of the freakiness that was in the early parts of Season 1. Nadia rolls with every bit of the weirdness, even accounting for the fact that her mother is in the reflection of every mirror she sees. She has no problem dealing the con man Chaz and seems to get a message as to why she’s here very quickly – Chaz and Nora stole all of the gold that her grandmother has been hoarding all her life (she survived Auschwitz) , something that has been held over her for years. Unlike the previous season, Nadia has control of her time travel; she just hops a subway that has a car with the digits 22 on the end. (Still travels more efficiently than the L Train.) She is completely blasé over everything she does, even more so than before in fact. At a bar in the season premiere, when a man shows his card saying he works for the notorious Crazy Eddie, she tells him that his boss will be indicted for securities fraud. Nadia is interested in changing her future, no one else – that is; until she meets the younger Ruth (well played by Emmy winner Annie Murphy). We see clearly the devotion she shows to Nora and a similar desire to roll with things. But she also knows that there is too much madness below the surface and that there is some shit from her friend she will not take. We actually see sadness in her that the decades have clearly eroded.

I’ve only seen the first two episodes, so obviously there are many questions that remain to be answered. What’s the real reason Nadia is traveling back and forth through time and in her mother’s body? What deeper secrets does Nora hold and is she aware of what is happening? And how is Alan, who went in the subway in the season premiere and who Nadia sees in a passing train in the final minutes of the second episode, linked to her this time? (I’m told that he ends up traveling to Cold War era Berlin, which considering the nature of Alan makes me even more intrigued than what’s going to happen with Nadia.)

Russian Doll is a far better series than I gave it credit for being in my initial review three years. It’s helped that so many actresses that I love are in these series. I loved Ashley’s work in Season 1, I like what Murphy is doing and I hope Chloe Sevigny, who is playing the young Nora, gets to do more than appear in reflections. But as always this series is all about Lyonne, who continues to delight in every aspect of her work. Almost every line out of her mouth is a gem (she looks as a phone book at one point and asks: “How did people do things before the Internet?”) But there’s also signs that she is confronting her deeper sadness, particularly in her scenes with the young Ruth, and in a particular memorable conversation (sure to be used at Emmy time) of her leaving a message to her mother, and telling her in no uncertain terms how badly she screwed up her life.

I don’t pretend Russian Doll is a perfect series, and I’m not yet sure the flaws in Season 1 can be easily corrected in Season 2. It’s hard to know whether the characters that were so interesting last season will get a similar level of screen time. And it’s so heavily a series about New York that I don’t think a lot of the references will translate well beyond people like me who have lived here all their lives. But Lyonne and her crew continue to engage us all the way, and make us want to follow her through whatever time warps or loops she goes too. I’m sorry the series is going to end after three seasons (though who knows, maybe in the Russian Doll verse, it’ll just keep going forever) but I look forward to the ride as long as they keep going.

My score: 4.25 stars.

Netflix Recent Crisis Shouldn't Surprise Everyone. I Saw It Coming Years Ago

I am not the kind of person who delights in schaudenfraude. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t wish ill even on his enemies – a rare quality for a critic. But I am not immune to taking a victory lap when a theory that I have believed for a very long time has finally been proven. And given the current crisis that Netflix is facing, I think I’m entitled to do so.

Netflix’s stock has spent the last week tanking, announcing huge quarterly losses and the lack of growth for the first time in a decade. This apparently has come as a shock to the business world, but honestly not to me. I’ve been waiting for a day like this for a long time; I’m just surprised it took so long for Netflix to get to this point.

For years I have railed against binge watching, the process that Netflix basically invented when it came to original programming.  I’ve modified my opinion on it over the years; I still don’t think it’s the best way to enjoy television, but I can understand why people who don’t have the time would need to do it. However, I always considered a deeply flawed business model for any service to operate on.

One of the major reason is I think it doesn’t work for the idea of television as a communal experience: whatever I personally may think of Game of Thrones, it worked in large part because it was an event that people could talk about week after week. And the reason that so many of the great series of the 2000s worked was because we were talking about them week after week. We wanted to discuss everything that happened around The Sopranos and Lost and Mad Men, and appointment television let us.

Netflix never did that. No matter how many people may have loved House of Cards or Orange is the New Black (I’m going to get to that in the next paragraph) the ability to binge watch a series at your convenience takes away that spirit of community that made so much of the television experience great. A quote on line sums that up: “You talked about Game of Thrones for months; you talk about Ozark for fifteen minutes.” And not having that shared experience doesn’t help.

Assuming of course, millions were sharing that experience to begin with. For years Netflix has been the only source for telling the world how many people are watching a given series. This has always struck me as shady from the get go – like a drug sponsoring a scientific study saying that same prescription is safe for consumption. During 2020, we found out that in fact, this rubric was untrustworthy as it seemed. Netflix has been based the number of viewers on anything that airs on its service entirely on whether or not you watch it for ten second. In other words, if you just watch one minute of The Crown, it counts the same as if you’ve binged an entire season.

We shouldn’t have been shocked by this. The numbers that have come out of Netflix for series have been sounding inflated since the start. Do we really believe that fifty million people have been watching Stranger Things? We can’t that many people to vote in an election. And the numbers we have been getting have been absurd – Netflix recently announced that combined viewers have watched 50 billions minutes of the second season of Bridgerton. Honestly, why not just that eleventy kajillion people watched the season? It frankly would sound more believable.

And the answer to a business model that doesn’t seem sustainable has been for Netflix to just keep throwing shows on the Internet and seeing what sticks. SNL actually parodied this a few years back and it’s actually pretty accurate in hindsight. I don’t know how many original programs Netflix has right now – one hundred fifty? Two hundred? – but it’s a number that even the biggest TV fan could never keep up with? Netflix almost single handedly contributed to the glut of television everywhere and each year adds more series. They have to, because all of there show don’t run that long – the average run for a series on Netflix is three years by design.  Now maybe this adds to creativity but it’s not a very good long term business model. And that’s assuming these are all good, which I’m willing to be eighty to ninety percent just aren’t.  Those are, of course, just the successful ones: I have no idea how much experiments like Baz Luhrman’s The Get Down and The Dark Crystal series ended up costing the service before they were cancelled after one season.

It actually makes you wonder where Netflix has been getting the billions of dollar they are sinking into these programs.  They seem based on the idea that Netflix was just going to keep growing sustainably forever – sort of a streaming Ponzi scheme. That might have been plausible when Netflix was the only game in town. But now services like Amazon, Hulu, both its regular service and FX, Paramount +  Apple TV and HBO Max are all out there with more options. And by having fewer series and more importantly, leaving room for ad revenue, all of these services have time to invest in their shows and more importantly, allow them to air at a more measured pace. On most of these services, episodes do not drop all at once. Some even are willing to air an episode a week a method that many showrunners – like Matthew Weiner – have said that they would only work on a streaming service if that was allowed.

Netflix’s answer to this has been to pull out their checkbooks and throw money at big names. The problem is, of course, not even Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy can guarantee that they will produce a hit every time. For every Scandal, there’s a Rebel; for every American Horror Story; there’s a Scream Queens.

And Netflix has tried to compete in the film industry claiming it has been able to the greatest directors and actors available. To be clear, this says infinitely more about the state of movies today then anything about Netflix’s granting artistic freedom. Does anyone honestly believe Martin Scorsese chose to debut The Irishmen on Netflix because he liked Peaky Blinders so much? Studios only seem to be interested in superhero movies these days, and no one wants to give even Scorsese a chance to make a movie any more. And that’s not counting the mess of independent films: Marriage Story and Power of the Dog wouldn’t be Netflix property if smaller films studios would give directors like Noah Baumbach and Jane Campion the freedom they deserved.

Anyone with a sense of reality would know that Netflix was going to finally hit a wall. Last week, they finally seem to have to hit. So what do they do going forward?  Based on what I’ve heard on the net, they’re probably not going to change direction until they hit rock bottom.

I know; this kind of market drop doesn’t count as rock bottom? Financially it may. But they’re not going to hit until they do creatively. That’s going to come in a couple of years when Stranger Things and Dead to Me and Russian Doll and The Crown are all gone and all the money in the world can’t buy the showrunners they need to get the volume they had before.  At that point, there are two things they should to do to save themselves and because they’re counterintuitive they’re going to resist. They need to make fewer shows over the course of the year and not release all the episodes of them at once.

Honestly, these solutions are so obvious I think they’ll pull against him. When Amazon started to embrace original programming, it was at a small scale: the first year they went in they only had four series eligible for Emmy consideration in 2015: Transparent, Mozart in the Jungle, Alpha House and Bosch. They did build up gradually year by year, but never to excess and never keeping series on too long; even now, they rarely have more than a dozen original series airing over the course of a season. Hulu has followed that same model and has a similar number even now, Apple TV is sticking close to it and HBO Max hasn’t gone over half a dozen in its first year. Granted all of these services have other sources of revenue and forms of entertainment, but they’ve stuck to that model creatively.

For the last six years Netflix has never stuck to that model: they always seem to have twenty to twenty five eligible series every season and that’s not counted the number of limited series they have running. When services like Amazon and Hulu send out their series for awards consideration, they could fit a yearly collective output in a DVD case. Netflix would need a bookshelf for one season. That’s not just bad business creatively, it’s bad business financially.  Not even at the height of Broadcast TV dominance did any of the big three try to premiere more than fifteen to twenty shows in a season; it was too much of a drain financially. To have this many series on in a year and keep adding to it every year, no service, no matter how rich, could survive with that.

As to staggering their release schedule, one can argue this has already hurt Netflix creatively. Matthew Weiner only went to Amazon with The Romanoffs when he received assurances that they would stagger the release, a guarantee he would never had gotten from Netflix. And some of the deans of television – I speak of Vince Gilligan and David Simon – have said they’d never put a series on a service that drops all its episodes at once.  Rhimes and Murphy are known for creating hit TV, not always Peak TV and you can argue that in Rhimes’ case in particular – a showrunner used to dropping bombshell after bombshell on her series – would be far better suited to Netflix. But it’s hard to argue that Bridgerton or The Politician is anywhere near in quality of even lesser Peak TV like Mr. Robot or The Deuce.

In a way, Netflix is starting to accept the latter: the final season of Ozark was scheduled to be released in two parts: the second half dropping this week.  But they have to go further and embrace what every other service is willing to accept.

Now it may seem like I’m shitting on Netflix, which isn’t true. Over the last decade, I’ve loved much of their original programming: I love The Crown and Stranger Things. I loved comedies like The Kominsky Method and Master of None and Dead to Me and intend to rave about Russian Doll soon. I love limited series like Unbelievable and The Queen’s Gambit and Maid.  And I will eventually get around to Squid Game.

But don’t pretend that all of your series are like that. Don’t pretend that all of it is even Grace and Frankie or Peaky Blinders. You put on so many series so fast that there’s no time to watch them all or even notice them. When a truly brilliant show like Bloodline debuted, it was drowning under so much attention to Orange is the New Blank and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt that no one could have even noticed it.  I don’t know if the cliché ‘ninety percent of everything is crap’ applies to Peak TV, but there’s so much on Netflix it’s hard to believe it isn’t. Quantity has never equaled quantity, but the way you guys turn out programming, it’s hard to believe you don’t hold that to be the case.

You have to turn it down a notch, if not only for your company’s sake than surely for the members you’re desperately trying to hold on to. It’s hard enough to keep track of everything on cable; how can you hope to do so on a server that is premiering a new series every day? Netflix’s problem isn’t that people are sharing passwords on their membership; it’s that you have so many shows; eventually you were going to run out of enough eyeballs to watch them all. I know the whole purpose of the internet seems to be sustainable growth, but your method was never going to be sustainable. The only way to try and help yourself is take a breath, and reduce.

At least that’s my suggestion. It may not be as advisable as the strategy that has brought you The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Ghost in the Shell and Ratched, but you might want to consider it anyway. Or hell, if all else fails why not embrace the punch line of another SNL sketch involving lunatic advertisers with insane pitches: ‘Netflix: We do porn now.”  Probably get more viewers than Halston did.

Between A 'Rock and Hard Place' Nacho Still Triumphed: Better Call Saul Breaks Great In Last Night's Stunner

 

One week ago, in the midst of my review for the extraordinary Better Call Saul, I said that I cared what would happen to all the characters in this prequel series that didn’t make it to Breaking Bad. Last night in ‘Rock and Hard Place’, we got the answer to the final fate of one of those characters – and it was simultaneously heartbreaking, frightening and perfect.

Ever since Better Call Saul began, the series has focused on the life of Nacho Vargas, exquisitely played by Michael Mando. Nacho was a simple dealer in Albuquerque, who in Season 2 came to Mike with a problem – he wanted Mike to get rid of Tuco, the most hot-headed of the Salamanca clan. He knew what every viewer of Breaking Bad did –Tuco was psychotic and unhinged. Mike tried to ‘solve’ the problem, but Hector (Mark Margolis) aided by the Cousins managed to ‘persuade’ Mike to get the problem resolved. Nacho’s would only get worse.

For the next three seasons, despite everything he tried to get out of the mess he was, Nacho kept getting deeper. His plan to kill Hector by switching out his heart meds backfired when Gus Fring’s desire for a colder revenge led to him saving his life. Then he became a pawn in the fight between Gus and the cartel, eventually playing an increasingly dangerous game with Lalo that led to him being forced to go with him to Mexico to lead mercenaries into his compound – a mission that ended up killing everybody but Lalo.

If Nacho didn’t know he was a dead man walking from that point on, he sure as hell did the longer he stayed in a motel waiting for rescue that was never going to come. He managed to survive an assassination attempt by the Cousins but he knew it was a temporary escape at best. It was pretty clear early in last night’s episode when he called his father, unable to say the things he needed to because the man he’d done everything to keep out of this just couldn’t accept the path he had chosen.

Finally he called Mike and told Gus (Giancarlo Esposito) that he would do whatever he wanted as long as his father was protected. In the last half hour of the episode, Mike gently led Nacho through what was to come, giving him what we now know was a last meal, beating him up so that it would like Fring had tortured for information, going over his story one last time, including how he was going to die. Mike insisted on being there.

The final scene in ‘Rock and Hard Place’ is one of the great moments I’ve seen in TV this year. Set in the desert, I have no doubt that Gilligan and his writers were intending to set up a parallel to Hank Schrader’s death in ‘Ozymandias’, more than a decade ago in television time, three or four years in the future in the Breaking Bad-verse. And in a way Nacho managed to do something not even Hank was able to do: die on his own terms.

Told by the cartel boss that there are good deaths and bad deaths, he was given a choice. Nacho did his job and parroted the line that Fring had given him about being in the pocket of a Peruvian cartel. Then he went off script.  Asked if Fring was responsible, he finally said what Nacho waited for his entire life to say: he told everybody what he really thought of them. He berated Gus Fring as ‘the Chicken Man’, saying he was too weak to this. Then he told the Cousins and Hector that he would have done everything the Peruvians did: “for free…because I hated you psycho bastards!” Then he told Hector that he was the one who swapped out his pills and how pissed he was when he’d watched Gus save his life and that as long as Hector sat in his own shit, told him to think of him. Then he managed to grab the gun from the cartel boss – and shot himself in the head.

It wasn’t as defiant a message as Hank Schrader’s: “My name is ASAC Schrader and you can go f---- yourself” but considering the audience he was facing at the time of his time, it clearly was more unsettling. Gus Fring, renowned for being stoic in the face of violence – even his own death - walked away clearly shaken. Mike packed up the rifle he was carrying, looking like he might burst into tears. The Cousins looked utterly gobsmacked. And Hector was left in a stated of impotent fury, even as the Cousins carried him so he could empty his gun into a corpse. It was one of the most stunning deaths in the entire history of the Breaking Bad-verse, not because it was unexpected or violent (though I don’t know how much crap AMC will go through showing the bullet going through Nacho’s head) but because for one we knew was coming, the method was absolutely shocking. This is something unheard of almost in Peak TV, a pawn who spent the series maneuver by greater forces managing to take himself off the board before the kings can do it. Nacho got a good death even if it wasn’t how anyone watching would define it.

Though most of the episode was focused on Nacho and everything around him, ‘Rock and a Hard Place’ did find time to focus on the adventures of Jimmy/Saul. The plot to ensnare Howard continued, utilizing the skills of the very adept Huey (Lavell Crawford providing this episode with desperately needed levity) When he gave Jimmy the keys, Huey did something we wouldn’t expect. He reminded Jimmy he was a lawyer ‘mostly legit’, that his wife was a legit lawyer, and that both made good money. “Why this?” he asked.  Jimmy went through his speech that this was for the greater good, something that Huey was buying. And when you can’t sell one of your lackeys on your good intentions, you’re really screwed.

Then Jimmy came home to Kim (Rhea Seehorn), and learned what she had spent this episode learning: Kim had been called aside by a friendly DA and learned the story of what the DA’s office and what they knew about Lalo Salamanca, that he was assumed dead, and that if Jimmy broke privilege, there might be a way out of the mess he was getting into. Now Kim, despite her plan for Howard, still has a moral compass. She gave the DA information that hurt her client in a case because it was the right thing to do. Just a few days ago, Lalo had a gun to her head. So when Jimmy asked her what he thought we should do, her answer was key: “Do you want to work for the cartel or be a rat?” Having been through Breaking Bad, we know very well the choice Saul Goodman ended up making. Was this the last turnoff before Jimmy passed the point of no turning back?

I would say that ‘Rock and Hard Place’ should be the episode for Emmy submissions this year for Better Call Saul, but we’re only three episodes into the season. I would say this is the greatest episode in series history, but as we know from Breaking Bad, Gilligan and his crew kept pushing the goal markers ahead with each season particular in the final episodes.  But I think it’s safe to say this: Anybody out there who still thinks that Better Call Saul has moved too slowly at times, ‘Rock and Hard Place’ absolutely justifies it. If Gilligan, Gould and crew hadn’t measured everything involving Nacho, Gus Fring and the cartel at this deliberate pace, taking the time to show us how a basically good person like Nacho keeps getting deeper and deeper, last night’s episode would not nearly have had the same impact. Better Call Saul has firmly established that it deserves to dominate the Emmy this year. And if the Academy still thinks otherwise, well, to quote Walter White: tread lightly.

My score: 5 stars.

A Look at Politics From The Female Perspective, Part 1: The First Lady is First Tier Television

 

During the era of Peak TV, the world has become fascinated with political television in a way it never truly was in the 20^th Century. But while there has been a lot more time focused on the executive branch than ever before, television – much like politics - still doesn’t know quite what to do with the First Lady.

This has been a fundamental problem at the core of  even some of the great political dramas. As brilliant as Stockard Channing was on seven seasons of The West Wing - I don’t deny she deserved the Emmy she ended up getting in 2002 – the series could never quite find the right balance for her on the series. In all honesty, the series better served her when she only had a recurring role: as a regular, she always seemed out of place in the Bartlet White House and the series was always struggling to give her something worthy of her. Recent series like Scandal and House of Cards have leaned far too hard in the other direction: both Claire Underwood and Mellie Grant seemed far too more focused on their own political ambitions to be satisfied with their roles. Both Robin Wright and Bellamy Young managed to make their characters work, but in later seasons both seemed far too more focused on drives for the Presidency (neither of which seemed remotely realistic) than any characters in their own right. And this has not exactly been something that too many Limited Series have done much better: The Kennedy and The Reagans did very little to paint the most iconic First Ladies of the 20^th Century in any realistic way.

Showtime’s new limited series The First Lady is therefore ambitious in that regard – perhaps far too much so. What appears to be an anthology series is focusing what might be its first season not on one historic First Lady, but three simultaneously: Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Ford, and Michelle Obama.  The makeup of each episode shifts from each First Lady’s era constantly – one minute were following Betty Ford as she learns her husband is about to become Vice President, the next were in Hyde Park watching as Eleanor has to deal with Franklin being diagnosed with polio.  The series tries, perhaps harder than necessary, to make sure that the viewer is always aware where they are, but the constant flashbacks and flashforwards are a bit for even the viewer of Peak TV to deal with.

The series still works extremely well, and that is mainly due to the fact that Susannah Bier and her staff have cast three of the greatest actress of all time in its leading roles: Gillian Anderson is Eleanor Roosevelt, Michelle Pfeiffer is Betty Ford and Viola Davis is Michelle Obama. No matter how strong the whiplash may be from the frequent shifting of eras, the power of these performances guarantee the viewer can never look away from the screen, nor would they want too.

It will be hard for the Emmy judges to decide which actress to honor the most, but so far my personal favorite of the three performances is Pfeiffer’s work as Ford. Pfeiffer has been incredibly selective as to when she works these days (even though her husband David E. Kelley is one of the hardest working writers in Peak TV) and I can’t remember the last time I saw her in a role worthy of her. When we first meet Betty, she is anticipating leaving DC as her husband Gerald is contemplating retirement. Then she turns on the TV and learns that Agnew is resigning and her husband is going to be the next Vice President.  You can see her face fall.

Because there has been less written about Betty Ford life as a political wife as opposed to her personal history, the writers have more room to delve into and Pfeiffer relishes every minute of it. Telling the wives of Congress about her psychiatric history and battles with depression; challenging Donald Rumsfeld for her own point of view, confronting her husband about hiding his political ambitions prior to his ascent to the Presidency. Pfeiffer is bold and daring in every scene she is in. “I am going to be myself,” she says in an early interview and you know she wants to be.  The personal challenges that Ford will end up facing are well known (in almost every scene so far, Betty is seen clutching a drink) but you can sense the power every time Pfeiffer walks on screen.

For Gillian Anderson, this is somewhat old hat for a woman who just won every award in the book for playing Margaret Thatcher on The Crown last year. And just as with Thatcher, Anderson does very little to ameliorate her voice as one of the most famous women in political history. (I imagine there will be some nitpickers who complain that Eleanor Roosevelt looks too pretty; is there any makeup artist on Earth who can make Gillian Anderson look unattractive?)  As someone who knows far more about the Roosevelt family, I’m slightly less inclined to acknowledge the liberties they seem to be taking here – Eleanor was never truly enamored at the idea of Franklin running for Governor, and I don’t really believe Franklin ever consider her as much a political partner as the series seems to think.  But what The First Lady does get right is Eleanor’s own personal ambitions. Do I think she wanted to have more of a job in her husband’s administration than the series says here?” No. But Eleanor Roosevelt was never going to be satisfied with the kind of jobs that Lou Hoover was used too, and this series gets that right. It also gets right the complicated relationship about their marriage; when Franklin tries to dismiss her, she says simply: “Don’t handle me, Franklin; I’m your wife, not one of your girlfriends.” And it understands the very complicated relationship she had with her mother-in-law (Ellen Burstyn remains brilliant) her children, and her own love life. (The First Lady is very direct when it comes to Eleanor’s bisexuality; Leonora Hickok, the reporter who was rumored to be her lover in DC for years is a major character.

There have already been a lot of online complaints about Viola Davis’ work as Michelle Obama – nearly as many complaints about the role of the real Michelle. Of particular amusement to fans is the way Davis seems to be constantly pursing her lips, something I didn’t really notice at all until last night’s episode. And indeed, there will no doubt be the occasional troll that we’re covering Michelle Obama rather than yes, Jackie Kennedy or Barbara Bush.  But if you going to cover pioneering First Ladies, it’s kind of hard to not deal with a groundbreaker. Of the three first ladies featured, Michelle is the only one who seems to go into everything on something resembling an equal footing with her husband. She is far angrier when Barack becomes the first President to receive Secret Service protection. She has to be dragged into the campaign to make her husband seemed more relatable. And she absolutely flips out when she learns the White House wants to turn her ‘into a black Martha Stewart.”  One of the best scenes in the series so far is when Michelle has a flat-out argument with Rahm Emmanuel, who will basically confirm everything we already know about him. It also helps matters that of the three marriages covered, the Obamas are the only ones who seem to truly have a happy one or at least one where they can talk about conflict in civilized tones.

All three leads are magnificent, but so is the rest of the cast. O.T. Fabergakke from The Handmaid’s Tale manages to escape the usual failings of an impersonation of Barack Obama to make him seem more than a caricature. Kiefer Sutherland’s normal dynamism is restrained in his work as FDR. And I’m impressed by the work of one of my favorite actors Aaron Eckhart as Gerald Ford. Both Eckhart and President Ford have been ignored by TV and film, at best shown as a cameo to stories on Richard Nixon. Eckhart’s everyman quality is the perfect match to the similar vibe that Ford has and may do the job of raising him above the four decade portrayal of him as a punch line. Other great actors are everywhere: Dakota Fanning places Susan Ford, Jackie Earle Haley is brilliant as FDR’s right hand Louis Howe, and the series gets fine work from smaller appearances from such fine actors as Judy Greer and Gloria Reuben.

I don’t pretend The First Lady is absolutely perfect yet – many of the parallels are too neat and a lot of the flashes between the timelines within the individual characters story can sometimes be hard to follow. But I’m kinder to projects that try too harder and risk failing, and in no way can anyone consider this anthology series a failure. I don’t know yet if Showtime intends to just do one season of this, or like Super Pumped make it into a regular anthology series. Well, considering that I’d much rather spend time with any of the characters than Travis Kalanick or Mark Zuckerberg, The First Lady has my vote for another season.  Might I suggest Lady Bird Johnson and Bess Truman for Season 2?

My score: 4.5 stars.

Mattea Roach Isn't The First Great Jeopardy Champion from Canada: Five Players from the Great White North Who Did Their Home Provinces Proud On Jeopardy

 

At the beginning of Monday’s episode of Jeopardy, Ken Jennings walked out and delivered what appeared to be a humorous ode to many of the great contributions of Canada to the world culture. He finished on two somewhat more serious notes: the fact that Canada was the birthplace of the late Alex Trebek (a fact he was more than proud to emphasis every time there was a reference to Canada on the show) and to Mattea Roach, who was beginning the week having won nine consecutive games and just over $210,000. She happens to hail from Toronto.

As this week Mattea has added quite a bit more luster to her resume. She has won four more games, putting her total (as of Friday night) at fourteen wins, a total that puts her tied for ninth on the all time list of consecutive wins. On Wednesday night, she secured another notch on her belt by being the only player to participate in Final Jeopardy that day, only the sixth time in the thirty eight year history of the series that has ever happened. (She got Final Jeopardy right that night, for the record.) And while she is nowhere the record total of the two other great Jeopardy Champions that have made history this year – Matt Amodio or Amy Schneider – her total of $330,000  is fairly impressive by nearly any other Jeopardy players standards – she is slightly ahead of Julia Collins’, who won twenty games and currently is in second place for most games won by a female contestant on Jeopardy and slightly behind David Madden and Jason Zuffranieri, whose total of nineteen wins she is fast approaching. What is more, she may very well be the most entertaining Jeopardy champion since the days of Austin Rogers, the New York bartender whose hand gestures and comic reactions during the opening sequences helped him go viral in 2017. (She’s passed him in number of games won on Thursday, but trails his twelve day total of $411,100 by a considerable margin.)

It is already clear that Mattea is one of the great players in the history of Jeopardy. How great a player she will end up being remains to be seen – she has a long way to go before she even approaches being one of the greatest players of this season. But at this point, Mattea has managed to pass another, slightly less impressive sounding record. She is the most successful player to have been born in Canada.

As we all know Jeopardy is an American centric game, and it has disadvantages for people who haven’t been born in the United States. Perhaps it is not surprising that the most successful players from any foreign country have been from Canada, where one is constantly aware of what is going on south of the border. And as someone who has been watching Jeopardy practically all his life, I have noticed that some of the greatest players in the history of the show have in fact come from Canada – which is particularly impressive because for a few years in the last decade, Jeopardy said that it would not let Canadians try out for the series. Thankfully, they reversed that decision.

So since I imagine Mattea will be celebrated for years to come and that at some point, columnists will be trying to track down some of the other great Canadian players, I thought I’d list five of the all-time great Canadians to ever play Jeopardy. I will give some highlights of their appearances on Jeopardy, some personal anecdote, and if the occasion calls for it, some of the times they made it very clear they were proud of their Canadian heritage.

 

Barbara-Anne Eddy – Vancouver, British Columbia

1987-1988 5 Time Champion - $52,000

Quarterfinalist Tournament of Champions -$1000

Ultimate Tournament of Champions – Round 1 - $5000

 

Barbara-Anne is the only one of these champions who I never saw in action except for a single occasion. But she has several connections to Alex Trebek which are interesting in their own way and I couldn’t resist mentioning her without that.

One of the first shows that Alex Trebek ever hosted was the $128,000 Question. (It’s a variation on a game show that was around close to the early days of television.) Barbara-Anne appeared on that show some time during the mid-1970s and she brought a stuffed frog with her for good luck. (Whether it actually brought her luck is a question for another day.) In 1987, when she appeared on Jeopardy she was stunned to find out that not only did Alex remember her from that show, he remembered the frog and asked her if she’d brought it with her again. The frog did bring her luck on her original run on Jeopardy.

My sole memory of Barbara-Anne was in an appearance she made in the Ultimate Tournament of Champions back in 2005. Once again, she had the frog with her and for much of the game it did seem to be bringing her luck. She had a big lead up through categories like AFRICAN CUISINE and LATIN LEGAL TERMS. Then she found the second Daily Double in ONE LAST ‘EZ’ CATEGORY. She was leading her main challenger Ryan Holznagel $15,000 to $13,711. (Holznagel made weird wagers on Daily Doubles.) Perhaps testing the bounds of the category, she wagered $5600. The Daily Double wasn’t ‘easy’ enough. ‘One of Thomas Edison’s first ever film shorts was of assistant Fred Ott doing this.” Barbara-Anne guessed: “What is on a trapeze?” rather than sneezing. Down she went into second place and never came out.

 

Bob Blake- 1989  -$82,101 – FIVE DAY RECORD at time - Vancouver

Winner 1990 Tournament of Champions - $100,000

Super Jeopardy Semi-Finalist: $10,000

UTC - $5000

 

When she passed him in money won last week, Mattea Roach unseated Bob Blake as the most successful Jeopardy champion from Canada. That was actually a smaller demotion because from 1990 until 2001 Bob Blake was the most successful Jeopardy player, period.

Though his five day total of $82,101 may seem far less impressive compared to players like Jennings and Holzhauer, when Bob Blake won $82,101, not only was it a record for the show (it broke Jeopardy pioneer Chuck Forrest’s record of $72,800), it set up a scenario that the producers hadn’t expected. At the time, if you won more than $75,000 you were required to donate the excess to charity. Bob did so, giving his extra $7101 to Oxfarm. (Thankfully for future Jeopardy champions, that regulation was gone by 1991.)

Bob won the Tournament of Champions in 1990, utterly demolishing his two opponents by the time the first game of the final were over. Curiously he had actually made another Jeopardy related appearance the previous summer on Super Jeopardy, a very complicated spinoff that lasted just one season and was supposed to be an annual super tournament. (If you search Ebay, you can find the Nintendo version of the game that was released that same summer). Bob played well among both his Tournaments of Champions often knowing the answers to questions that his fellow Americans didn’t. One prime example came in the Final Jeopardy for his initial Super Jeopardy appearance in the category THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE: “A member of this famous family proposed it and he and his brother signed it for Virginia.” Bob was the only competitor who knew this referred to the Lee family.

Bob’s combined total of $182,101 (it’s never been clear how Jeopardy considers winnings from Super Jeopardy as part of canon) stood until 2001 when Robin Carroll finally managed to surpass it. Even then she needed to win both the 2000 Tournament of Champions and the 2001 International Tournament to manage it. Her all time money total didn’t last nearly as long as Bob’s – in 2002 Brad Rutter won the Million Dollar Masters.

Bob appeared in the Ultimate Tournament of Champions in 2005 and did very well for much of the game. He did not so much lose his first round match as John Cuthbertson (a great player in his own right) managed to win it. I was hoping to see him in the Battle of the Decades in 2014 but because he was apparently traveling the world at the time, he declined to participate. He wasn’t the most conspicuous absentee, but he was missed, certainly by me.

I will close this article on Bob with an anecdote he relayed to Alex expressing both his modesty and his sense of humor.  His apparent catch all response when asked if he did anything crazy with his winnings was: “I’m a Canadian and an actuary. What do you think?”

 

Robert Slaven - $53,202 – 1991 Yellowhorse, Northwest Territory

Semi-Finalist 1992 Tournament of Champions $5000

Competitor 10^th Anniversary Tournament 1993 - $5000

Quarterfinalist UTC - $67,201

 

I’m more familiar with Robert Slaven’s work on Jeopardy as he appeared in the very first Tournament of Champions I ever watched back in 1992. His $53,202 won in his five games was a sizable amount for a Jeopardy champion in those days before the dollar figures were doubled. In the 1992-1993 season, it was actually one of the lowest totals of any of the champions that year. (Three players won over $70,000 that year and one champion Jerome Vered ended up with $96,000.)

Still there were signs that Robert could be impressive when the pressure was on. In his quarterfinal match he kept close to two good players and managed to emerge the winner. In his semi-final he encountered Jerome (who I personally consider one of the all time greats) and managed to fight him to a near draw.  Jerome still beat him, but he had to work for it.

He ended up competed in the 10^th Anniversary Tournament the following year and didn’t do particularly well. To be sure, the draw was against him: one of his players was Frank Spangenberg, who at that time in history held the record for the most money won in five consecutive games – a record which lasted for more than thirteen years.  Frank, one of the most recognizable and impressive champions history cleaned Robert’s clock on his way to the finals, which he would eventually win.

The reason I consider Robert an impressive player is because of his track record in the UTC. In what amounted to a bracketed tournament, Robert would end up defeating two Tournament of Champions winners on his way to the quarterfinals – Russ Schumacher, who won in 2004, and Michael Dupee, who won in 1996. (He’ll show up briefly later.) I think Robert’s finest hour came in his Round 2 match against Mike and Eugene Finnerman. In what was one of the most exciting competitive matches of a tournament that would end up lasting fifteen weeks, all three players were at the top of their game. Michael finished it in the lead with $21,700. Eugene was in second with $13,200, and Robert trailed with $11,200. In order for Robert to win, he needed both Eugene and Michael to be wrong and for Michael to wager enough so that his ‘crushing’ lead could be surpassed.

The Final Jeopardy category was NEW LAWS. “CEOs must personally certify their corporate books following a 2002 law named for these two men.” It is impressive that Robert knew the correct response and his opponents didn’t, considering the nature of the clue: “Who are Sarbanes and Oxley?” (Both Eugene and Michael thought the clue referred to McCain and Feingold.) Robert was clearly shocked that he managed to win.

His luck extended to the quarterfinals when he went into Final Jeopardy with a lead, but was undone by John Cuthbertson (the same man who had defeated Bob Blake in that tournament)

Robert remains one of the proudest of his heritage. On every game in his UTC appearance, he drew a Canadian flag out of one of the letters in his name (usually the lowercase b or t). And in both his victories in the UTC, he chanted out Canada as his win was confirmed.

 

Michael Daunt:  Waterloo Ontario - $64,198

Finalist 1996 Tournament of Champions - $8200 third Place

Winner 1997 International Tournament of Champions - $35,000

UTC Quarterfinalist - $62,602

 

Michael Daunt is in many ways a mirror of Robert Slaven, though in some ways he enjoyed greater success. In his initial run, he won $64,198 and in one game won $27,400 – which at the time was the sixth highest one day total. (Of course these days, that’s a very bad day for Matt Amodio, but still…)

He played impressively in his initial games of the 1996 Tournament of Champions winning his quarterfinal match easily, and getting to the semi-finals due to a moment of pure luck. Unfortunately, his luck ran out in the Finals. He played poorly in the first game and while he did better in the second game, by then his opponent Mike Dupee (yes that guy again) had locked up the Tournament.

Redemption would come the next year in the International Tournament of Champions, an event featuring players from Jeopardy franchises across the globe. (Canada doesn’t have one, of course, so the rules were slightly fudge for Michael to participate.) And honestly he had to fight very hard to end up winning this particular tournament. The representative from Norway Per Gunnar Hillesoy out played him most of the first game of the final and actually finished ahead of him in the first game. Even though he played far better in game 2, he was still in a position to lose when it came to Final Jeopardy.

The category was PAINTERS: “His grandson was the cinematographer of Barbarella and The Spy Who Loved Me.” Michael was the only one with a correct answer: “Who is Renoir?” (Pierre’s son was Jean, the famous French filmmaker.)

This was not quite the high point of Michael’s career in Jeopardy: he played superbly in the first round of the Ultimate Tournament of Champions (superb doesn’t cover it, it was basically a massacre) and he managed to get all the way to the quarterfinals before being basically crushed by Jerome Vered (him again) But he remains a personal favorite of mine. When the Battle of the Decades allowed fans to vote for one of five champions to be a ‘fan favorite’ for the 1990s, Michael Daunt was the one I cast my vote for. (He didn’t make it.)

Michael is just as proud of his heritage, though he does know it has a certain flaw. While his original run of the series was airing, his toddler son watched so many episodes that at one point, instead of referring to him as ‘Daddy’, he called him: “Michael Daunt from Waterloo!”

 

 

Lan Djang – Toronto - $51,100 – 2 Camaros

2001 Tournament of Champions – Semi-Finalist -$5000

UTC- Quarterfinalist - $63,100

 

Lan Djang is actually a very good player who happened to have the misfortune of having his initial run on the show come during a year where there were so many good players. His total was, much like Robert’s, one of the lowest of the participants in that year’s tournament. And when he played in his quarterfinal match, he was getting horribly beaten for most of it. He spent the lion’s share of it in a distant third, and when Final Jeopardy came he had a mere $1200.

The category was 1990S MOVIES. “It was based on the true story of the 4 Niland brothers of Tonawanda, New York.” Lan was the only one of the competitors who knew the answer: “What is Saving Private Ryan?” He doubled his score to $2400. Most years in most tournaments that wouldn’t have been nearly enough for him to qualify for even a high-score for wild card. But 2001 was not most years. Though Lan had no way of knowing (all competitors in tournaments are kept in isolation until their game) there had been many incorrect Final Jeopardys in the previous quarterfinals and many low scores. Lan was as shocked as anyway to find out he’d qualified. Alex said: “It must be the suit!”

Lan’s luck wouldn’t hold past the semi-finals. But he remembered what Alex called “The Intimidator Suit’ and wore it – complete with the Canadian flag pin – when he returned to the Ultimate Tournament of Champions. It served him much better there getting him to the quarterfinals where he just ran into some bad luck.

Note: From 1997 to 2001, five time champions received sports cars along with there winnings. Lan was one of the last players to receive an automobile before the rule change in the fall of 2001.

 

How long Mattea Roach’s run will last is impossible to say – heaven knows we’ve already seen some remarkable runs this season. But much like these players and Trebek himself, Mattea has done her home country proud. (Even if she still is too gun shy to wager big on Daily Doubles.)

Homicide Life on the Street Retrospective, Part 5: Thinking Inside 'The Box' and the Interrogation Scene

Over the past couple of months we have learned a lot about police interrogations. John Oliver did a segment on it Last Week Tonight’s most recent episode in which he went in to great detail about the makeup of how these interrogations proceed, the way that the narrative the police use to determine whether a suspect is guilty is deeply flawed, that police are allowed to lie in their interrogations, and that more often then not this had led to faulty convictions that DNA evidence has later led to exonerations.

I actually knew a great deal of this going in to the segment. And when it came to the Baltimore Police Department, I knew even more: a recent story in New York magazine has revealed that many of the detectives that were profiled in David Simon’s book  that led to the inspiration for Homicide revealed that the department now is facing a raft of convictions being overturned and many of the detectives that inspired many of the characters in the series were responsible for many of them. Simon himself has now begun to doubt whether his original portrayal of these detectives was entirely impartial.

When I learned about this I was considerably thrown – it gutted me in a certain way to learn that one of my all-time favorite series might have some dirt attached to what was its more important point. The ‘box’, after all, was where the Homicide was the most comfortable. It has taken me some time to assess this, and my conclusion is: while the real life detectives in Homicide the book might well be guilty of these crimes, I don’t think the detectives in Homicide the series are.

Now I have watched and rewatched every episode of the series at least half a dozen in times in my life – I did a rewatch as recent as five years ago. The interrogation scenes, where Frank Pembleton worked confessions out of people are among the greatest dramatic scenes in the history of television. And fundamentally, I think that Tom Fontana and his writers basically did a very clean job when it came to them. Detectives are allowed to lie to suspects, and to be clear, the detectives on Homicide did do that on more than one occasion. But honestly, they didn’t do it that often. Out of more than 12- episodes during seven seasons, I think all of the detectives who ever worked at the Baltimore Homicide Unit lied a grand total of a dozen times to suspect. Considering that this probably contains around at least two hundred cases, that’s almost an unrealistic ratio, considering what we have seen on police procedurals. (There’s one in particular I’ll deal with, but I’m going to save that for a separate article.)

By and large, there was basically one lie that every detective more or less maintain before they began the interview and that was getting just about every suspect to sign the Miranda waiver. Granted, the lion’s shares of these suspects were guilty anyway but this was a deception. Indeed, this was made clear in the very first episode. Pembleton is interrogating a suspect and gets him to sign a waiver. During the interrogation, the suspect ‘thinks’ he wants a lawyer and Pembleton talks him out of it and gets him to confess. The rookie Bayliss witnesses this and calls Frank on it. Frank basically berates him by telling him that the man will change his story before trial, the DA will plead him down to five years and the killer will do maybe a third of that before he’s released. (The suspect is clearly guilty by the way.) These are the ground rules that Homicide laid out, and however one questions the irregularity of the Miranda waiver, the fact remains, as we shall see, that’s pretty much the only deception the detectives would ever engage in. 

By contrast, quite a few of the interrogations that took place on the series occurred with defense attorneys present, and some of the best drama would often come as the detectives tried to work around this. One of my all time favorite episodes is ‘Work Related’ where Bayliss and Pembleton are interrogating an accomplice to a triple shooting at a restaurant. The suspect is a teenager and his parents have given him an attorney and in one of the show’s greatest interrogations occur as the two detectives manage to work around the defense attorneys maneuvers. (This is also the episode where, mid-interview, Pembleton suffers a stroke in the box.)

I think a large part of the reason that Homicide stayed so far within the lines when it came to interrogation was because of Al Giardello’s leadership of the squad. As a veteran of the days when detectives would beat a confession out of a man, he continued to make sure his detectives played fair most of the time. That didn’t mean he didn’t want the cases closed, but he never pressed as hard as some of the others.

This level of fairness when it comes to interrogation is perhaps made the most clearly in what may well be the show’s finest hour: ‘Three Men and Adena’. This episode is the climax of the first and most important arc on Homicide: the investigation into the murder of eleven year old Adena Watson. For four episodes, Bayliss has been circling around his prime suspect: Risley Tucker, aka the Araber. He has been brought in multiple times and as the episode begins, Gee warns him that this is their last shot and that they are bordering on a harassment suit. Bayliss tells Giardello that they will get the interrogation no matter how long it takes. Pembleton counters that they have at most twelve hours, or any court will end up tossing the confession.

The rest of the episode takes place in ‘the box’ and centers on Bayliss, Pembleton and the Araber (Moses Gunn’s last role before he passed away). The interrogation follows just about measure we are used to in a police drama, Bayliss relentless and demanding; Pembleton friendly and cordial. The heat isn’t working; the jackets are off both men by the time the episode is halfway over. Tucker is fed, talked too, and relentless pressed until he admits very tired.  Two things are typical of Homicide; the detective pressure Tucker with the evidence they have, but they never fabricate any. All the pressure is psychological. And Tucker never comes close to break or even appearing guilty. The Araber walks out the room a free man, and the case is never closed. Bayliss spends the rest of the series always looking for Adena’s killer in every murderer. And the audience leaves as unsure of Tucker’s guilt at the end of the episode as they did in the beginning. It may be the most realistic interrogation scene in the history of the medium; it did win Tom Fontana an Emmy for Best Teleplay that year. And it speaks to the ambiguity that surrounded everything that made Homicide great that Pembleton leaves it certain that the Araber murdered Watson, and Bayliss is no now longer so sure.

I am not saying that the detectives on Homicide ever lied to the suspects on the series or played on false science to make things word. One of the most famous scenes in the series comes when Bolander (Beatty) and Munch (Richard Belzer) subject a witness to the ‘electrolyte-neutron-magnetic test scanner’, aka, a copy machine to get him to admit to the guilt of a murderer. (The witness is cagey enough to know is a copy machine, but is dim enough to believe the detectives.) But such experiments, while usually played for comedy, were rare. That’s because the detectives held key to a holy trinity when it came to solving a murder: a witness, evidence, maybe a confession. In his rant about the flaws of interrogations, John Oliver said that while investigating a crime, police should, you know, investigate. That is exactly what every single detective on Homicide well before they even thought of putting a suspect in the box. They were willing to manipulate the suspects, but they never went in without ammunition.

And it’s also worth noting that for many of the cases on Homicide; even having evidence was no guarantee that the suspect would confess. Quite the contrary, there were at least a dozen episodes where they had would push hard on the suspect, but he’d never crack. And there were more than a few cases where the detectives would manage to interrogate a suspect and then find out that they were wrong. In an episode that was quite remarkable, Munch is investigating a suspicious death where he suspects the husband is lying about knowing what happened to his wife. The M.E. (Michelle Forbes) refuses to call it a homicide, but Munch, certain something is wrong, relentlessly presses the husband until he admit that’s he is responsible for his wife’s death. When Munch comes to see the ME, she then tells him that not only the husband innocent, it’s not a murder – his wife overdosed on heroin, and his guilt about leaving her alone forced him to cover it up. To be sure Munch’s reaction is not the best - “I only care if it’s a murder” – but I suspect most detectives would be similarly irked if they’d wasted their time on this. (The husband is immediately released.)

I don’t think any of the detectives on Homicide were superhuman in the way that they have been betrayed on police procedurals before or since. Even ‘the almighty’ Pembleton was never truly perfect – there were multiple occasions where he pursued the wrong lead and didn’t admit he was wrong until the investigation was over. And there was even one major case when he was relentlessly pursuing a suspect towards a confession when Sgt. Howard came in with the perp, who’d confessed and had the murder weapon. Stoically, he unlocked his suspect and just said: ‘Go home.’

I don’t have enough evidence to know about the methods behind the detectives who were at the center of the Baltimore PD in Homicide the book and if they are indeed representative of how criminal investigations work as a whole throughout the country amplified by their being a vital part of American television. What I know with certainty is that the detectives created by David Simon and Tom Fontana for Homicide: Life on the Street did nothing to besmirch the reputation of criminal justice. Much like everything else about the series, the show is an outlier on the police procedural. There is a far greater example of a series that is, in learning this, an even greater stain on how we view criminal justice and in another article, I will deal with it.