The (Moderate) Rise and Fall of the CW, Part 3: Precursor to the Arrow-Verse, What Smallville Got Right About the Comic Book Based TV Series.

 

 

Before I begin this section, I have to give some of my own backstory.  I have never liked comic books. I have several fundamental reasons for this, but because they directly explain my problems with several of the shows in this article, I’ll hold off going into why for now. Suffice to say, I never liked them when I was a child and well past that point.

That dislike did not extend to television series based on comic books. As a teenager, I was fascinated by several Fox cartoons based on them, especially Batman: The Animated Series, X-Men, and Spiderman, which in the latter case was a precursor for cartoons to what the MCU would accomplish nearly a decade later in movies. Similarly, my problems didn’t extend to filmed versions of comics, I generally admire many of the movies within the MCU and consider Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy the cinematic high point for comic book adaptations.

I think the fact that I never truly got into the comic book world the way that most, if not all of the fans of this world did may have served me better than many of the traditional viewer. Because I had no idea about what canon was beyond the bare minimum of these stories (the secret identity, basic backstory, and knowledge of many of the villains in several of these worlds) I wasn’t fundamentally inclined the way far many too trolls are when the writers of these films and shows went off book. At my core, I viewed them the same way that I do everything else on TV: I was interested in good stories, well told. That may have been the reason I was drawn into one of the CW’s series that originated with the WB: Smallville, the story of Clark Kent’s childhood before he became Superman.

I watched the first six seasons of the series pretty much on a weekly basis and more or less abandoned the series at the beginning of Season 7. This had nothing to do with the quality of the show, but rather the fact that other series that I liked more were running against it. (One has to remember that in the late 2000s, streaming fundamentally didn’t exist, and what little there was had to be viewed on computer screens more than anything else. The idea of streaming a series days after the event was still a few years off and neither Netflix nor Amazon had embraced it yet.) But several years after Smallville ended, I ended up rewatching the entire series in a combination of syndication and streaming.

In my opinion, Smallville works all the way through. The producers had made it fundamentally clear that Clark Kent would not don the costume until the series finale, a vow that they kept. So much of the series, particularly in the first four seasons proceeded as a variation on The X-Files and Buffy, as Clark Kent became slowly but sure aware of his powers and tried to figure out who among his friends he could trust.  The series diverged from canon in many ways, perhaps most crucially by having Clark save Lex Luthor’s life in the Pilot and have the two basically be close friends for the first five seasons of the series. In that we saw, not just the rise of Superman but the corruption of Lex Luthor and the series went out of its way to make the latter story just as important and in a way, far more tragic. Michael Rosenbaum was superb as we saw the good man who was within being worn down by his demons and the corruption of his own family, represented by his father Lionel (Jon Glover in one of his best roles.) You spent much of the first half of the series knowing Lex’s ultimate fate, but you kept hoping that somehow Clark’s could redeem, and when the series ended with the inevitable drawing of the lines between them, you could feel the sorrow when Clark said: “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

It was not until the fourth season that the writers slowly began to trickle in other characters from the DC universe, also in their childhood. In the fourth season, we ended up meeting a young Bart Allen (The Flash), in Season 5 we met an eco-terrorist named Arthur Curry (Aquaman) and Cyborg, and in the middle of Season 6 we met the young billionaire Oliver Queen. The series had already set up some of the other elements of Clark’s life with us meeting Lana Lang as a series regular (I’ll get back to her in a minute) and eventually in Season 4, Lois Lane showed up to the town.  In the second half of the series, Clark moved to Metropolis to start an internship at the Daily Planet where he would eventually meet a young Jimmy Olsen. Martian Manhunter showed up in Season 6, and in Season 7 so did Kara Danvers. There was also a slow but steady trickle of villains. Brainiac eventually showed up in Season 5 (a  nearly unrecognizable James Marsters) Doomsday had an entire storyline in Season 8, and Zod who had been mentioned several times throughout the early seasons finally appeared in Season 9. We also would see cameos from many players who had smaller roles, including Amanda Waller and members of both Suicide Squad and the Justice Society.

What I think made Smallville work so well – in my opinion, its still the gold standard for comic book based television – was that all the way through, it kept you in suspense even though anyone who knew most of Superman the eventual fates of the characters. There were storylines that didn’t work – the potential love story between Clark and Lana became deadweight fairly early not just because Clark kept hiding the truth about itself but because anyone with even a marginal memory of the series knew it was doomed.  But because it was true to the framework of the show without violating canon, it had the spirit of a DC comic but a fair amount of charm. The writers would pay tribute to this throughout the series – Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder had cameos early on, Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher who had each played Clark and Lois in a 1990s series had minor cameos and Jor-El was voiced throughout series by Terence Stamp. And the show made it fundamentally clear that everything we saw was a part of Clark’s backstory in a way the comic just never did. Martha and Jonathan Kent were almost background in the early stages, with Jonathan’s death being considering the defining moment of Clark’s life. When Jonathan Kent did die in the series 100^th Episode because the show had spent five seasons showing us just how vital he was (and credit to the work of John Schneider for being the father we all wanted), it was gut-wrenching it really couldn’t have been in any film.

Near the end of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, in a discussion of comic books, Bill says that Superman stands alone because: “Superman didn’t become Superman. Superman was born Superman.” Smallville is the counter-argument to this line. Its shows that Clark Kent may have been born Superman but growing up he wanted to be Clark far more than he ever did Superman. It shows Clark alternately rejected and accepting destiny,  trying to make his powers part of him but not who he was, trying to have friends and romance, trying to be a normal person  - in short, the struggles that come with growing up. From his first introduction, Superman was shown as someone who had to stand apart from the rest of humanity. Smallville fundamentally argues that Clark Kent wanted to be part of it. If you wish to read religious metaphors or arguments of destiny over free will into this, you’re welcome to – this has been a part of fantasy and sci-fi almost since the creation of it as a genre. But it doesn’t hurt that Smallville was also a crackling good adventure story, well told and with a very accurate sense of humor. The fact that it chose to make its final episode basically at the part where most Superman movies begin only goes to prove that this was the story of the journey of Clark Kent more than it was ever Superman, and that Clark was, in his own way, just as interesting as Superman ever was.

I did not intend to make this article a gushing rave for Smallville, because it wasn’t a perfect show. As I said, it spent too much time and energy over the first seven seasons on the Clark-Lana romance only to write her out of the story in Season 8 when Kristin Kreuk’s contract came to an end in a truly unsatisfying way. It also didn’t help that when Rosenbaum’s contract came to an end in Season 7, Lex Luthor was more or less written out of the show until the series finale, even though his presence was felt throughout the series, in truly messy and monstrous way. And the fact that so many of the stories dealt with meteor rocks (kryptonite, though it didn’t get called that until Season 3) and its aftereffects as sort of deux ex machina was an obstacle the series never worked around. But overall, Smallville was an immensely satisfying series that may have been the most successful product that the CW ever inherited from the WB, ending on the right notes. And that includes a key shift in Season 6.

As I said Oliver Queen was introduced that season by a then relatively unknown Justin Hartley. His relationship with Clark was clearly meant to serve as a counterbalance to that between him and Lex Luthor – by this point in the series, Clark and Lex were all but enemies. Oliver was already taking on the mantel of the Green Arrow, and the story of his rise to prominence and his friendship with Clark was well-handled. He was introduced initially as a love interest to Lois (who was actually more in love with the Green Arrow at the time, quelle surprise) and eventually he became friends and eventually married original character Chloe Sullivan (the now disgraced Allison Mack, one of the few characters who stayed with the series from the pilot). Throughout the series, Oliver was the focus of planning various aspects of the superhero world we all know – he formed alliances with the Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg;  we saw him form a relationship with Dinah Lance (introduced as a conservative anti-vigilante broadcaster) and eventually revealing his secret identity in the final season to the world. Hartley’s character was so popular that at one point, a Green Arrow with Hartley as the lead was planned for the 2007-2008 season but the writer’s strike that year scuttled the idea and Hartley stayed on as a regular on Smallville for the rest of the series’ run.

It's interesting to think what a Green Arrow spinoff with Hartley as the lead would have looked like. Hartley was suffering from many of the demons that Berlanti would mine so well in his own show, but he genuinely seemed more connected to reality and more openly cheerful about what he was doing than what we actually got. Considering that the creators had already laid the groundwork for so many of the characters in the DC world and would continue to do so in a subtler way (back then, the DC world was still not part of the mainstream as it is today) it would have been interesting to watch. (Then again, there’s no guarantee it would have been as good: in 2004, the creators would try their luck in the world of Gotham City with their version of Birds of Prey, a female led series so messy and badly received it was canceled before half a season was over.)

Still, watching Smallville you got the sense of everything that a comic book based series could transcend the boundaries of television. For a while, it seemed that Greg Berlanti was going to be able to take the ball and run with it. The problem was, he ran too fast, too far and took up too much territory as we’ll see in the next article.

The (Moderate) Rise and Fall of the CW, Part 2: Early Warning Signs and How the Longest Running Series in Its History Was Never Intended To Be That

 

Almost from the start of the CW’s existence, there were portents of impending doom. When the merger took place, one of the series that didn’t make the cut was the WB’s Everwood, a much beloved series featuring Treat Williams as a Colorado doctor. The series discontinuation came so quickly that the showrunner and cast had known it was coming.

In the spring of 2006, just prior to the merger Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband, who had run Gilmore Girls since its 2000 premiere and had written the lion’s share of its scripts were inexplicably fired at the end of the sixth season. The seventh and last season of the series was considered a disaster by its fans, perhaps because Sherman-Palladino had told fans from the beginning that she knew how the series was going to end, and the last four words of dialogue. The final season did not allow for that. (It would be nearly a decade later on a limited series for Netflix that fans not only got closure, but Palladino got to use those four words.)

At the end of the 2006-2007 season, Veronica Mars, one of the few UPN series that had survived the transition was cancelled after three seasons despite being one of the most beloved series in television history. Even a desperate mail-in campaign by the fans was not enough to get the CW to change its mind.  (Creator Rob Thomas and the cast, however, never surrendered. A few years later, the very Kickstarter campaign led to the financing of a Veronica Mars movie. Several tie-in books and a Hulu continuation of the series would eventually follow.)

This incredibly mishandling of so many treasured shows led to several fans of the CW to truly wonder if this would be a successful transition. Perhaps in reaction to this, the executives in charge of the network would dangerously overcorrect. The best illustration of this came in a series that debuted the season on the WB before the merger: Supernatural.

Created by Eric Kripke in the fall of 2005, Supernatural began its run dealing with the Winchester brothers, Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam (Jared Paladecki). Both Ackles and Paladecki has credits with the network on other shows – Paladecki had played Dean on Gilmore Girls on and off for the first four seasons of the series; Ackles had been a regular on Smallville in the series’ fourth season. The series beginning was simple – the brothers would begin a season long hunt for their father (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and learn that their mother had been murdered by a demon when they were young and their father was hunting him. The first season was something of an X-Files like series, involving the Winchesters as they drove across the country in their convertible ‘Baby’ hunting demons and looking for their father.

Gradually the series became more complicated, becoming part of a struggle between demons and angels, with neither supernatural being incredibly interested in the fate of humanity. (As Kripke would say when they showed up: ‘Angels are dicks.”) But this was the plan of Kripke going forward: originally the series was supposed to run for five seasons, and the series was going to end with the younger brother Sam ending up being sacrificed to save humanity. It was an ideal plan and would have a fitting ending.

Except…in the spring of 2010, the CW renewed the series for a sixth season. This might not have been much of a shock: Supernatural was at that point the network’s most highly rated series. But Kripke and his fellow writers had to start scrambling to figure out how to write past the prescribed end of the series.

 This still wasn’t unusual in itself: Chris Carter had planned to end The X-Files after five years and go into a series of movies, but the show’s massive success forced him to keep the series going beyond that. But anyone who’s been a fan of The X-Files knows just how badly this decision ended up messing up beyond repair the already deeply frayed mythology of the series. The show was successful for several more seasons, but almost immediately after Season 6 began, it began to decay in quality, hemorrhage viewers, and make sure the mythology would never make sense.

The consequences for Supernatural were even worse, as the show was renewed very early every year for the next decade. Once modest in scope, the series’ struggle between good and evil became more convoluted and absurd with each successive season. The brothers encountered the devil and killed him. God showed him and became a teenager. Trusted allies became enemies, became allies, then enemies again. And all of this still seemed maddeningly vague because the consequences rarely seemed to spill over into the real world, only that of the Hunters. Worse, beyond the characters of Sam and Dean, there were few other characters who would last more than a season as there were countless deaths, resurrections and being winked out of existence only to return when the writer’s couldn’t come up with an idea. When the series finally gasped out of existence in the spring of 2020 -  a year which seemed to close to being a real apocalypse for viewers to care about a fictional one – almost no one cared any more.

The early renewals were not limited to the CW. Over the 2010s, as the other series that were linked to the WB and UPN came to their end, the CW would constantly give early renewals to what would amount to its entire lineup, usually before November. This was in itself, nothing radical different about how other networks were doing business at the time. As the decline of broadcast television accelerated at the beginning of the 2010s, more and more low rated series were given early renewals on almost every network. And considering that by this time, all the networks were beginning to expand their broadcast schedules into the summer, which until this point in TV history had essentially been a place for reality series and reruns, it wasn’t as if the CW didn’t have time or space for them.

The problem was that by doing so, the networks were not considering the plans of the writers and in several series cases, the actors. Perhaps one of the clearest examples of this can be found with The Vampire Diaries.  Based on a series of popular novels, and no doubt trying to cash in on the success of the Twilight films and True Blood series, The Vampire Diaries debuted on the CW in 2009. It dealt with the story of Elena Gibert, who moves to the town of Mystic Falls and becomes involved in a love triangle with the Salvatore brothers, Damon, and Stefan, both of whom are vampires and the supernatural circle they are a part of.

The series, adapted by old WB hand Kevin Williamson, was a success for the network and inspired two spinoffs for the network. But by the sixth season, Nina Dobrev, the actress playing Elena, did not want to renew her contract. There was a natural end for the series, of course, but the show was successful and had been renewed for a seventh season before Dobrev made her announcement. Considering that the relationship between Damon and Elena was central to the series, this was a mess that the writers couldn’t get out off. The show continued for two more seasons, and while the ending was highly regarded it was considered another disappointment.

We will never know for certain if the WB was more engaged in the idea of ending series when the showrunners believed it was time. While series like Felicity and Dawson’s Creek seemed to come to appropriate ends when they did, the former was always more of a critical success than a popular one, and by the spring of 2003, most of the cast of the latter was so popular that it was unlikely they could be held to the show for much beyond it.

 Similarly given everything we have seen about Buffy and its spinoff Angel, it’s not clear that the WB had any understanding of how to end the show.  When the WB cancelled Buffy in May of 2001, the last episode seemed like a series finale, but its never been clear if Whedon wanted it to be the end or if UPN’s purchase of it was a surprise to its cast.  (Anthony Stewart Head, who’d played Giles, the adult figure on the series, may have wanted to leave anyway: he stopped being a series regular and was a recurring character for the last two seasons.) Similarly, when Buffy ended in 2003, Whedon intended for the character of Spike to be sacrificed on the series finale which put him in a very awkward position when the WB hired James Marsters for the cast of Angel  without telling him. Even this may have made things awkward when, after the ratings for the fifth season of Angel were going up, the WB abruptly cancelled the show in February of 2004. So the fact that the endings for both the final seasons of Buffy and Angel seem appropriate for the nature of the series may be due more to chance than design.

But for all that, there’s something to be said for being to end a series on your own terms rather than having to keep come back to the well year after year after year. These were the circumstances not just for shows like Supernatural or The Vampire Diaries, but practically every series in the CW playbook for the entirety of the 2010s. I should be fair and say that at the time, I considered this more of an advantage than a flaw as it wasn’t just the more popular series that the network picked up, but quite a few other series that under any other circumstances on any other network would have been cancelled by at least the second season. (I’ll get to both of them in a future article.) But in hindsight, this was clearly a mistake that many of the showrunners for the CW had to work around as their series were extended often far beyond their natural lives.

Perhaps more importantly, during the 2010s the genres of the series that the CW was airing was beginning to change dramatically. Where as the WB had some supernatural series, it had spent much of its time equally promoting a fair amount of comedies as well as youth oriented programs. By the middle of the 2010s, most of the half-hour comedies the CW aired were extinct, and it was focusing almost entirely on hour-long YA genre shows. Many of these were adaptations of cult series themselves, such as Nikita a variation on USA’s 1990s series La Femme Nikita. Others were closer to variations on book series, such as The 100. And during the early stages they attempted new versions of Aaron Spelling type series, including 90210 and Melrose Place, both of whose new cast were supplemented by members of the original series. What all of these series tended to have in common was that they were generally more youth themed and the ones that tended stay around longer were ones with built-in audiences.

Then in 2012, Greg Berlanti the showrunner of Everwood and who had just come off the ABC soap opera Brothers and Sisters adapted another genre series based off a comic book. Despite the massive success of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Series and the MCU in the film world, adaptations based in the comic book world had never been successful. Furthermore, Berlanti was using as his lead character an comic book so obscure that had it not been for another CW series, you could have been forgiven for never having heard of him or the characters in his orbit before.  

The series was called Arrow, and it would change the CW forever.

In the next article in this series, I will go into detail on Greg Berlanti’s effect on the CW, how it made the network a force and then slowly but surely weakened it beyond repair.

This Time, The Therapist's Time May Be Up. Better Late Than Never: The Patient

 

Since this is a review involving shameful secrets, I’ll start with one of my own: I never liked The Office.  I tried multiple times to get into the version that millions loved at the time and more seem to do so now, but the entire tone of it was always off-putting, awkward, and unfunny. I don’t know why I found the quasi-documentary tone so off-putting here whereas I loved it with Parks and Recreation, but it was just part of many flaws I could never get my head around.

And I need to make this clear: I had no problems with any single actor ever connected with the cast. From John Krasinski to Mindy Kaling, from Ed Helms to Elle Kemper, there isn’t a single performer on that series that I didn’t love in literally every other project they did. And that is especially true with Steve Carell, who I need to make clear loved in every project he did before, after, and while he was starring on The Office. From his breakout role on The Daily Show (his bits with Stephen Colbert are among the greatest moment in comedy history) to his incredible movies such as The Forty-Year Old Virgin and Date Night, to his later dramatic work in Foxcatcher and The Big Short,  Carell has always struck me as the greatest of performers. Hell, even when he won the Golden Globe for his work on The Office over Zach Braff, I didn’t mind because his speech was utterly perfect.

But for all that, old prejudices die hard. So when I saw in September that Carell was going to be doing a limited series in partnership with FX on Hulu -  a series that from the teasers could in no way be mistaken for a comedy – I decided, yeah, I’m not going near this. No matter how well reviewed by the media, I wasn’t going to take a look at The Patient until and unless the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice started showing it some love in the next few weeks. Then last Wednesday, I had just finished up with Reservation Dogs.  I decided just to scan Hulu to see whether my next project would be The Bear or Season 2 of Only Murders in the Building, both likely award contenders. I saw the ad for The Patient  and saw the first episode was 21 minutes long. What the hell, I thought.

Then you see the opening sequence. Carell wakes up on a mattress. He gets up, and he clearly sees things that aren’t familiar. He starts walking to the stairs, and he notices that he’s chained to the bed. He extends as far as he can in one direction and he sees there’s a toothbrush and a water glass. He goes to a different direction, and there’s a bucket. Increasingly panicked, he begins to shout for help… and then the camera pulls to a wide shout and we see how isolated he is.

I don’t think I’ve seen an opening sequence this riveting possibly since the first few minutes of Better Call Saul nearly eight years ago, which like The Patient starts in medias re before flashing back. This was before I learned that the creators of this series were Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields, the two geniuses who created The Americans with little question the best series of the 2010s. I knew that I was going to be watching this series to completion not only because, unlike nearly every other Limited series, The Patient’s episodes are brief – most are in the 25 to 30 minute range – but because from the beginning, the creators lure us in and don’t let us go.

I’ve only seen the first two episodes, so I will tread lightly for those who are still thinking over whether they want to get involved. Carell is Dr. Alan Strauss, a psychotherapist who we very quickly learn is still mourning the loss of his wife. On his answering machine in the opening sequence, he receives a message from a young man named Gene, telling him he’s read his book and thinks he really needs therapy. The next scene shows Gene in his office, wearing a cap and dark glasses. We see him talking with Dr. Strauss about how he thinks his dad messed him up. There are several other sequences showing Dr. Strauss with other patients intercut with Gene. In the last flashback, Dr. Strauss confides that he is frustrated with how therapy is going, mainly because he thinks Gene isn’t confiding in him. He gently pushes that Gene should tell the truth.

We see a couple of scenes of Alan going through his closets at home, visiting his son at a shop with a guitar and its clear that things are awkward between them. Then that night, Alan hears a noise coming from outside. He checks to see that someone has tied something to his car, and then he is knocked unconscious.

The next morning ‘Gene’ comes into the house and Alan tries to reason with him. Gene tells him, perfectly calmly, that he agrees with him that traditional therapy wasn’t working and that he thinks this is the only course forward. Then he tells him Gene isn’t his real name: it’s Sam. And that’s not the only thing he’s lying about. The compulsion that has driven him to therapy is that he is a serial killer.  He wants to stop, and he thinks this process is the only way that will work for him.

Sam is ‘the John Doe killer’, a man who the media has characterized for taking the identifications of everybody who he has killed.  Alan manages to maintain the professional calm that he must and finally tries to get a promise that if he has a compulsion to kill he will not do so before talking to him. Sam promises to try. He then relates a story that he works as a food inspector, and tells him about ‘Restaurant Guy’, someone who he believes didn’t take him seriously and is the first person he has actually been connected to that he wants to kill. That was four months ago, around the time he first came to Dr. Strauss.  Alan tries to suggest paper and pen and Sam becomes cold and distant before driving off. Then Alan, who has heard noises on the floor above him, yells hello. The second episode ends with a figure with a poker coming down the stairs.

It is perhaps a cliché to use this phrase, but I’ve never seen Carell doing anything remotely like this before.  The Patient uses flashbacks to show us Alan’s life before this and we get to see the human side to him, and we know that he is using every tool in the therapist’s trade craft to try and save himself. This is a man who knows better than almost anyone about the human psyche and he knows that if he manages to step wrong at any time, his life will be forfeit. And he also knows that he has to restrain the utter terror that he is feeling if he as any chance of surviving.

Essentially, this series is a two-man show and the actor playing Sam is just as spot on. Domhnall Gleason. With connections to the Harry Potter and Star Wars franchises (as well a series I utterly loathed called Run) the role that perhaps most prepared Gleason for this was the exceptional sci-fi pic Ex Machina. Essentially a three person show, he played Caleb the winner of a lottery contest held by the company founder (Oscar Isaac) who called him to test an AI (Alicia Vikander). Much of the film was conversations between Isaac and Gleason, and Gleason and Vikander, in which Caleb learns just how mad the scientist behind this idea is and finds himself falling in love with the AI. We spend most of the movie thinking Caleb is the good guy in the story, where we eventually learn that he’s not that good and for all his machinations, just being used as a pawn. I have a feeling Gleason took a fair amount of his lessons for that role and used them as Sam, someone who has the ability to be perceived as normal in the real world but who is aware of demons and who believes they can be controlled – even though his idea of therapy is just as depraved as everything else in his life.

I have heard things by now about the final episodes of The Patient that I imagine many of you have. Some people believe there are metaphors being used that should not be, and the ending is somehow too much of a downer even for a series that starts out this dark. I’m not sure yet whether my overall opinion of the series will change immensely the further I get into it. But considering how much I still mourn the fact that In Treatment wasn’t renewed for another season, and that this series basically seems to be a saga that you genuinely think the writers of that show might have worked their way up to over a couple of more seasons, then I know one way or another I’ll be sticking with it until the very last session. And I will regret when our time with Alan and Sam is up.

My score: 4.25 stars.

The Independent Spirit Awards Have Just Taken A Big Step Backwards

 

 

When I was twenty, I tuned into the IFC network, the TV network once known for recognizing where you could see independent films. (You now mostly see old sitcom reruns and more recent blockbusters, but that’s a conversation for another day.) It was the Saturday before the Oscars, and just I was watching Ally Sheedy was giving an acceptance speech/nervous breakdown for Best Female Performance in High Art. (I’m sure you can find it on You Tube somewhere.) I was curious and watched the rest of what I would learn would be the Spirit Awards.

For the next twenty years, one way or another, I made sure that I found away to watch the Independent Spirit awards for many, many reasons. The most important was, unlike any awards show I’d seen to that point in my career, no one was taking it remotely seriously. Not the presenters, not the hosts, and not even some of the winners. It wasn’t just that many of them were as lubricated as they could get at the Golden Globes, it was that, because this is IFC, no one bleeped them when they cursed. And indeed, if you’ve ever had the pleasure of watching the Spirit awards, the cursing is part of the fun. I well remember Felicity Huffman’s glorious acceptance speech for Transamerica when she described a grips telling her exactly what she thought of the awards future. I remember Andy Samberg opening the 2013 awards by literally using the F-word for every other word. And no one who saw Adam Sandler accept the Best Lead Male Performance for Uncut Gems in 2020 will ever forget his gloriously obscene acceptance speech. Really made you realize how idiotic the Academy was.

The Spirits tend not to take a lot of things seriously, and that can often be seen in the way they do business. For much of the 2000s, they introduced their nominated films with sing-a-longs where they invited the audience to ‘Sing Along With The Spirits’.  (Billy Crystal had nothing on the Spirits; he never went where they did for Secretary and Precious.) Sadly the audience never went along with it, and it was discontinued by 2010. Still the presenters were genuinely entertaining all the way through: I’ve never forgotten Jacob Tremblay (who was nominated for Room) presenting an award with Anthony Mackie, and completely pretending that Mackie was actually The Falcon. It was hysterical and adorable at the same time. There have also been moments of great drama: I remember in 2003, just as the Gulf War had been declared Don Cheadle read a powerful statement about the right to express dissenting points of views.

The hosts, I should mention, have always been superb, from John Waters to Sarah Silverman to Aubrey Plaza, none of whom take their job the least bit seriously. I love how Plaza discuss Yorgos Lanthimos nominated for The Favorite likened his name to a Harry Potter spell and said when you say it: “someone gets fingered in a corset.”  It’s an endearing and entertaining awards show, and it always over way too fast (they’re usually done in less than 2 and a half hours.)

And of course, there’s the added bonus that most of the films that the Spirits nominated and give the prizes too are fundamentally more interesting than those the Oscars have done so. (The Oscars has tended, in recent years, to mirror the spirits more evenly but honestly that probably says less about the Oscars then it does about the Spirits.) I remember being thrilled when Memento swept the Spirits in 2002.  Without the Spirits, I probably wouldn’t have tracked down movies such as Talk to Me, Bernie, The Lighthouse and First Reformed. The Spirits have also recognized fairly early such great talents as Alexander Payne (for Election, he also took prizes for Sideways and The Descendants) Darren Aronofsky (his films have won Best Film three times, for Requiem for A Dream, The Wrestler and Black Swan) and female and African-American directors well before the Academy got there (Sofia Coppola and Lisa Cholodenko have both taken prizes well before Kathryn Bigelow and Lee Daniels and Jordan Peele took Best Picture prize for Precious and Get Out.) I’ve never agreed with all of their choices, but I’ve always found them fundamentally more interesting. When the Spirits decided to begin giving awards for television, I couldn’t have been happier.

Until the Broadcast Critics and Hollywood Critics Association began broadcasting their awards for television in the past decade, the Spirit Awards were my favorite awards show. Which is why I’m so dismayed by their latest approach to this year’s nominations.

Now to be clear, I don’t have a problem with most of the nominated films or performances. I’m glad to see movies like Tar and Everything Everywhere All at Once nominated. I’m glad that Sarah Polley, an actress I literally grew up watching who has moved to directing, is getting an award for her new film Women Talking and I’m overjoyed she’s up for Best Director. I wanted to see Bones and All before the nominations; now I’m absolutely going too. And as someone who has loved their work, I’m glad to see Aubrey Plaza and Brian Tyree Henry up for awards.

No my problem is about how the Spirits has decided to give their acting awards. Instead of separating nominations by gender as they have done up until now, they have decided to give one award for Best Lead Performance and one for Best Supporting Performance. They’ve expanded the nominees to ten in each category, as if that’s supposed to atone for this grievous sin.

When the Emmys discussed stopping the separation of awards by gender last year, I vehemently made my opposition to it. I believe in the strongest possible terms that to do so will ultimately exclude far more than it can possibly include. And while I realize the fundamental issue with the increasing number of people who do not wish to be categorized as one gender or the other, I think trying to this community the barest of sops does not do anything solve the problem. I was annoyed when MTV fundamentally did this for its movie and TV awards the last two years, but this strikes me as somehow worse.

Let’s start with basic math. By arranging these awards this way, you are guaranteeing that more people will go home as losers than other the old system. Sixteen people weren’t going to take home awards no matter what happened before; now eighteen people won’t.  Yes,  I know I’ve spent years arguing that there should be more nominees in each acting category at the Emmys but this is not what I had in mine.

And looking at, say, the list of lead performances I can see warning signs right of the bat. There are only two male nominees in the entire category. Now I’m all for recognizing more female nominees. But wouldn’t it have made more sense to, say,  expand the number of nominees in Best Female Lead then lump all of them in one category.  I don’t know how much trolling the Spirits awards gets as a rule, but it’s going to be amplified exponentially in the next few months, and not only by people who thought Brendan Fraser shouldn’t have been snubbed.

Nor is your cause immediately helped by having seven male nominees in the Best Supporting Performance category.  This will anger everybody who you haven’t already enraged with your decision to lump all Lead and Supporting Performances into one category: women will be upset because there aren’t enough females in this category, men will be pissed because they’re all being placed in supporting.

And by the way, if this decision was made as a sop to those performers who don’t identify as either gender, well, where are they? Its fine and fitting that you boast on your website about the inclusivity of the people who give out your nominees – considering how far behind every other awards show in the world is, it’s worth a victory lap or two. But none of the performers in either category identify as non-binary. I realize in a sense why you’ve done this considering just how dangerous things are for the LGBTQ+ community these days. But if you did this to recognize the T part of it, it didn’t happen this year. And that’s not a good way to start out a precedent.

 No one pays any attention to the Spirit Awards – this is very sad, to be sure, but perhaps inevitable when you present the day before the Oscars. I’d say this relative anonymity has been a boon to the IFC: it has allowed them greater creative freedom on every respect and a fair amount of pleasure. But the moment you went out of your way to give your nominations this way, the Spirit Awards have put a target on their back. I guarantee you, the IFP will soon become the target of attacks. And given how fragile your ratings and place in the Hollywood system is right now, you have to ask if it’s worth it.

And the irony is the Spirits have been for years, the gold standard when it comes to recognize films and performers in the LGBTQ+ community. From Gods and Monsters to Boys Don’t Cry, from Brokeback Mountain to Milk and The Kids are All Right, the spirits have gone out of their way to recognize the stories of these communities. You recognized Ian McKellen and Ellen Page (before she transitioned) John Cameron Mitchell and Dustin Lance Black. The independent film community has led the way for gay and lesbian stories to be told, the same way that it has led in telling story for BIPOC and the Asian-American and LatinX community. The Spirits have always been the gold standard for any awards show when comes to speaking for inclusivity. This decision is as an argument for exclusion.

I hope with all my heart that at some point the Spirits awards realize the error of their ways, and not just because I don’t want other awards shows to follow their example. They have held a special place in my heart in my career of watching awards shows, existing in a perfect place of recognition of excellence and disdain for the norms of an awards show. They’ve managed to lead the film industry in certain ways. I really hope this isn’t one way they do.

Promising Young Woman Is Even Darker Than You Thought It Was

 

Once asked to describe Leaving Las Vegas, Mike Figgis’ masterpiece about an alcoholic drinking himself to death, star Nicolas Cage described it as a ‘dead man’s suicide note’.  Having rewatched it, I think that summary could just as easily describe Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman.

It is generally agreed that this is one of the darkest and best movies made in recent years, led by a masterclass by Carey Mulligan as Cassandra, a woman who spends her nights acting out the kinds of vengeance against potential rapists in her neighborhood, and then enacting a plan to bring about revenge and justice for her best friend who committing suicide in college after being raped and publicly shamed by a fellow student. It’s a perfect movie for the MeToo era (I’m almost positive that’s why Mulligan was cast in the lead role in the recent She Said, a film about the revelations behind Harvey Weinstein) and one of the most brilliant mixtures of horror and comedy I’ve ever seen, rivaling the work of Jordan Peele. Fennell deservedly won an Oscar for the screenplay and as great as Frances McDormand was in Nomadland, I think she would have been fine letting the Oscar go to Mulligan that year.

But rewatching again recently, I can not help think that there may be another, deeper level to the movie that many of us may not immediately get on the first or even the fifth rewatching. That assumes, of course, that many people, particularly of my gender would want to watch again considering how firmly Fennell is in the camp of saying that ‘there are no good men’ out there.  I don’t deny I’m not immensely uncomfortable every time I come across it on TV, but that’s generally how some of the best art is supposed to make us feel: if every movie had us walk away feeling warm and fuzzy, there’s a problem with the viewer not the film. And the last time I watched Promising Young Woman, I couldn’t help but feel that everything Cassandra did, from the first moment we see her until the last scene was probably her ultimate plan. Perhaps not vengeance, but… well, let me get to it.

Consider Cassandra’s life when we meet her. I don’t mean what she does at night; I mean what we mere mortals might consider a ‘normal life’. She works at a coffee shop where she can not pay the rent. She’s living with her parents and the relationship is very tenuous. She has no friends, save the owner of the coffee shop she works at, and you get the feeling she had to be forced into that one. In one of the opening scenes, she walks out to breakfast and has to be reminded by her mother that it’s her birthday.

Cassandra has essentially stopped being Cassandra. She has no drive, she has no ties, she doesn’t even think the day she was born matters any more. You actually wonder when she has the time to sleep. The only thing she lives for any more is going out at night, engaging with men who  consider themselves nice, getting into a situation where they take her home, she pretends to drunkenly pass out, and she confronts them. Then she goes home, opens her notebook, and puts a notch on it. We never know if that’s the only notebook she’s filled, but it’s a safe assumption there are more of them.

The context is horrible in terms of masculinity. But ask yourself: what is Cassandra looking for? There are no names recorded only checkmarks, which signifies that while she’s keeping count she doesn’t bother to keep a record of the man in question. She clearly has no focus on any of the other people in the bar, as we find out in a scene in the second half of the movie. What is the purpose of her actions? She already knows how horrible men are, and she doesn’t need any more objective proof. She has to know she’s not changing anything as she limits her attention only to her own neighborhood. She even tells one of her ‘victims’ as much.  Even a serial killer has more focus in their actions. Cassandra, until Ryan shows up, has no purpose to her actions.

As much as Cassandra would never consider herself one, she is a victim of her friend’s rape and suicide, and there’s an argument that her friends death effectively killed her as much as her friend. She dropped out of med school, has reduced all ‘normal’ human interaction to the bare minimum, and seems determined to stop one man at a time from the same crime that destroyed her friend. (Fennell, of course, does nothing to indicate that any of these men, merely go to another bar in a different neighborhood rather than alter their behavior.)

Now consider Cassandra’s point-by-point revenge. She sets up a friend, Madison (Alison Brie) of hers who was at med school to appear to be the victim of rape. She sets up the daughter of the dean at the college who did everything to whitewash Jeff’s record to appear to be the likely victim of a sexual assault. In neither case does she follow through, which leads us to think that the implication was more than enough.

She is clearly planning for more than that when she has a meeting with the attorney who made sure Jeff’s case never got the inside of a jury. And I have to tell you that scene is the scariest in the entire film. Alfred Molina, in my opinion, should have gotten a Supporting Actor nod for his six minutes in that movie because it is by far the most unsettling scene in the film.

His character is the only one who seems to be ready for Cassandra’s arrival. He welcomes her into his house. He tells her he’s had what his employers claim is a ‘breakdown’ but he knows is an acceptance of his life’s work. His firm’s entire reason for existence seems to have been to debunk rape cases and destroy the victims – he says simply they got bonuses for how many people they destroyed in a year and how much easier it is to do it not. When he finishes, he actually seems to want Cassandra to inflict vengeance on him. And for the first time in the film, Cassandra is hesitant. She walks away: “You’ll just have to live with yourself.” Then she goes outside and at her car is a hulking man asking if she wants him to go through with it. Cassandra seems subdued when she tells him no.

I think at this point in the movie, Cassandra realizes the futility of what she is doing and what she has done. There’s always going to be bars filled with ‘nice guys’ and organizations determined to make sure none of them have to spend a night in jail. And what is she doing it for? The next day, she goes to see her friend’s mother, and she tells her to ‘let it go’ and move on. All the vengeance in the world will never bring her friend back.

Cassandra then tries to have some kind of semblance of a normal life. She goes on dates with Ryan (Bo Burnham) that are more traditional, she introduces them to her parents, she actually seems to be ‘doing better’. There is the briefest of moments when it looks like she might be happy. And then Madison shows up, looking utterly broken. She seems horribly damaged by her encounter with Cassandra and the aftermath, and then she shows her the footage of her friend being raped while her med school students cheer her on – and she sees that Ryan is there.

From that point, I think Cassandra is going on what amounts to a kamikaze run. Sure, she’d been plotting vengeance for her friend, and everything prior had been based on her making that trip to her bachelor party. But I think there’s more to it than that. I think finding Ryan is as much of a monster as Jeff has finally confirmed what she has suspected: there is truly no such thing as a good man. Combined with what the attorney has told her, she now has nothing left to live for.

The final scenes are in a sense, a triumph – Cassandra getting her vengeance from beyond the grave. But I think at the end of the day she had no intention of coming back alive. All she had left was revenge, and what was the point of living in this world that had nothing for her? The fact that she was essentially leaving her parents without their daughter is, in a way, selfish and self-centered. She knows first-hand what the loss of a child can do to their parents, and yet she has no problem doing the same to hers.

Her last words to Jeff are an acknowledgement that he ended Cassandra’s life as much as he did her friends.  In that sense, I think there’s an argument that she let Jeff kill her. Not only because she wanted to make sure the full course of vengeance against everyone who wronged her was meted out – as it clearly was – but because she had no reason to live when it was over. I think even if she had successfully carried out her vengeance on Jeff, she would have made sure she was dead at the end of the day. What reason did she have to live now that her life’s work was finished?

I don’t know if Fennell had this in mind when she wrote Promising Young Woman but either way, its another layer to the story she was telling. It makes it crystal clear – as if we truly had any doubt by the end – that rape causes ripple effects that go far beyond the lives of the victims, and that the damage is far deeper to our psyche than we ever considered.  It certainly gives another reason to rewatch this extraordinary film, even if you disagree with my analysis of Cassandra’s behavior, and it shows just how powerful a movie it is.

The CW's (Moderate) Rise and Fall, A Series, Part 1: Origin Story

 

 

When the CW was purchased by Nexstar earlier this year, they made relatively clear that there was going to be a fundamental change in their approach to programming, mainly they would be more interesting in keeping costs down which meant more ‘reality’ series and fewer original ones.

It has not taken long for the effects to be felt. Nancy Drew and Stargirl, two of the series more successful series, have been cancelled this month. Original series premiering this season such as Walker: Independence and The Winchesters will not be receiving the traditional 22 episode seasons. There have been other signs leading up to the purchase that this era of programming on the CW would be different: there have been cancellations of several series that have been modest successes, such as In the Dark and Roswell, N.M.  before they could come to a proper conclusion. And with The Flash ending in 2023, we may well be seeing the conclusion of the most successful collaboration between a network and a showrunner in recent years. (This relation will be dealt with in detail in another article in this series.)

I wish I could feel more dismay at what truly seems to be the end of an era and what is clearly yet another sign in the decline of network TV as a whole. But in truth, over the last several years I have found it increasingly hard to give a damn about the programming on the CW and dismay at what it has ended up becoming over nearly two decades.

To truly explain why the CW, even at its peak, must truly be considered a failed experiment, we must consider several things: how it got started, where it went wrong and how its greatest successes were the building blocks for its inevitable decline.

For those of you who may have forgotten by now, in 1994 two networks launched to challenge the Big Four dominance: UPN and the WB. Almost from the start, the WB was the more successful network, though it didn’t exact get out the gates gun-blazing.

Both networks at their inception would lean heavily into African-American led programming. Overall, UPN would be slightly better at it, considering that some of its shows like Moesha are now considered part of the landscape. That didn’t mean their mistakes, when they came, weren’t horrible: series like Homeboys from Outer Space and The Secret Life of Desmond Pfeiffer rank among the worst series ever created. But generally UPN would have slightly better luck with those series. This is mildly ironic considering how many of the actors who ended up with series on the CW are among the most iconic African-American superstars of our era. But I find it difficult to believe that Shawn and Marlon Wayans, Steve Harvey and Jamie Foxx look back on this particular era as anything other than marking time until they managed to find their places in the sun.

Up until 1997, the most successful series on the WB was 7^th Heaven. A quasi-religious drama about a minister (Stephen Collins’ casting now looks horrible in hindsight) and his children, the series managed success thanks to the young cast, led by future stars Barry Watson and Jessica Biel. Then in the spring of 1997,  the networks reluctantly greenlit the television remake of a box office flop in 1992 that had been adapted by the screenwriter for television.

The show was called Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  Considering the horrible controversies that now surround Joss Whedon, who was idolized by millions (myself included) for more than two decades and the backstories that we know were going on behind the scenes all this times, the series has fallen under a dark cloud. But I’ve had occasion to rewatch many of the episodes in the last few months, and despite everything I now know about Whedon the fact remains its still one of the best series I’ve ever watched and still deserves to be consider an essential part of the Golden Age of Television. Incredibly written and superbly acted by one of the best young casts in the history of television to that point, it was a mix of genres that many shows have tried to mimic but none have succeeded in doing.  It managed the perfect balance of monster of the week and mythology that The X-Files never could, and had a level of continuity in its backstory (which would continue in the spin-off Angel) that almost no show in history has ever been able to match. It was a wondrous joyous event, and was the official beginning of what must be considering an unmatched gathering of talent.

For the remainder of its existence – which as we shall see lasted until roughly 2006 – the WB may have been the single greatest gathering of talent behind and in-front of the screen, perhaps even rivaling the talents that their contemporaries at HBO were starting to turn out at around this same period. Several of the most gifted talents in television history would cut their teeth at the WB. Kevin Williamson, who not that much earlier had revolutionized the horror genre with Scream, created Dawson’s Creek in the spring of 1998. A relatively unknown writer named J.J. Abrams created Felicity,  a series whose critical acclaim would win some of the few awards the WB would ever win. Amy Sherman-Palladino would become the creative force behind Gilmore Girls, one of the most beloved shows of the 21^st century. And a young Ryan Murphy would lend his tilt on the teen drama when he created the twisted Popular.  At its peak the WB was known for creating a genre that was openly satirized as ‘Pretty White Kids With Problems’ by Mad TV. At one point the network itself satirized what it had created in the superb one-season satire Grosse Pointe which fundamentally laid bare all of the pretensions that so many of its series took seriously and had guest stars from the WB’s shows have cameos as themselves.

The network would also begin to try and strike lightning with supernatural themed  young adult series and had a fair amount of success with them. Charmed which deputed a few months after Buffy ran for eight years. Smallville, the first series to try an origin story of a young superhero (something that was novel when it debuted) premiered in 2001 and ran for a decade. Even some of their less successful shows were part of the zeitgeist: Roswell, which debuted in 1999, was considered a fan favorite even after its mythology began to collapse in its first season.

And if the talent behind the scenes was impressive, the talent in front of it was incredible. Not since the days of the studio system in the 1930s had so many future celebrities who would dominate the landscape for decades to come assembled in a single place. Here are just a handful of the stars who cut their teeth on the CW:

From Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Allyson Hannigan, Seth Green, James Marsters, Amber Benson. From Dawson’s Creek: Katie Holmes, Michelle Williams, James Van Der Beek, Joshua Jackson. From Felicity: Keri Russell, Scott Foley, Scott Speedman, and in a recurring role, Jennifer Garner. From Gilmore Girls: Lauren Graham, Alexis Bleidel, Jared Paladecki, Milo Ventimgilia, Liza Weill, Matt Czuchry. From Everwood: Emily Van Der Kamp and a very young Chris Pratt.  And from Smallville:, playing Oliver Queen: Justin Hartley.

 And those are just the ones who were listed in the opening credits. A lot of the actors who worked their managed to take their lessons and put them into use elsewhere. Danny Strong had recurring roles on both Buffy and Gilmore Girls. Eventually he changed his focus to writing and has written some of the most stunning work for television in the past decade, most recently in the Hulu limited series Dopesick.

There has been rarely been so much talent at one place and one time – and just as rarely has their been so little regard for it by the Emmys. Not one of the series or actors ever received a single nomination for Best Drama or any of the acting awards which is, collectively, the biggest travesty in the history of the Emmys. To ignore an actor or series is one thing; to ignore an entire network is offensive and insulting, particularly considering that around this same period cable was beginning to start its long period of dominating the awards circuits. The fact that dramas like ER and Law and Order received nominations even though they were well past their prime and series like Buffy and Gilmore Girls never did when they were at their peaks can only be viewed as the fact the Emmys were run by geriatric snobs. (The Golden Globes would show more enlightenment, nominating four actors and actresses, giving Felicity a Best Drama nod and giving a Golden Globe for Keri Russell. Another reason I can never fully dismiss them as an awards show despite their manifest flaws.)

If I have left out the UPN as a similar provider of great series, well, I think even the most devoted fan of the network would have reasons to understand why. For much of its run, the UPN was best known for being the provider of two of the least regarded spinoffs in the Star Trek franchise: Voyager and Enterprise.  There were the occasional successes like 7 Days and intriguing cult series like Nowhere Man, but the UPN was almost always regarded as the poorer cousin of the WB. This seemed true even when series would switch networks: Buffy and Roswell would go there in the fall of 2001, and the quality of both series would drastically drop. Roswell got cancelled in the spring of 2002, and though Buffy lasted until 2003, the last two seasons are considered by even the most devoted fans as the bottom of the creative barrel.

By 2004, it looked like UPN might be turning itself around. It managed to launch the critically acclaimed comedy retelling of Chris Rock’s childhood Everybody Hates Chris, a highly regarded Taye Diggs drama Kevin Hill and perhaps the first series that could have ever gone toe to toe with any WB show and beaten it on its own merits, Veronica Mars  a show which launched, among others, Kirsten Bell to superstardom and is probably one of the most beloved series of all time. Unfortunately, for both the WB and UPN, time was about to run out.

Neither network had achieved its goal of being as successful as either of the four competitors. The WB was more successful, with shows like Buffy and Smallville averaging between six and seven million viewers an episode. Ironically, while these days networks would kill for shows with ratings this high, in the 2000s they were still not considered enough for financial success.

So in order to stave off what seemed inevitable for both, the two networks merged, officially becoming in September of 2006 the CW.  Much of the first season of the new network was made up of series that were part of both networks. In the transfer of power, the WB ‘won’,  with the majority of its shows making up the six night schedule. (Veronica Mars and Everybody Hates Chris were among the few series from the UPN to make the transition to the CW.) Many of the series from both networks would make up the bulk of the CW for the next few years. But there was one smaller series that had debuted in the last full year of the WB that became one of the flagships of the network, symbolizing all that was good about it – and its biggest failures.

In the next article in this series, I will discuss the fate of several of the series that survived the transfer and deal with Supernatural, the greatest success story – and its greatest failure.

What Amy Schneider's Tournament of Champions Win Means in The Context of Jeopardy and Credit To Her Fellow Finalists

 

After an epic six-game battle, Amy Schneider finally managed to win the 2022 Tournament of Champions, defeating Andrew He and Sam Buttrey.

In a season of historic streaks, there was always a question as to which of the super-champions would emerge the victor. No doubt it came as a shock to the more recent viewer that Amy was the only one of the big winners to qualify for the finals at all, with Matt Amodio and Mattea Roach losing in their semi-final matches. Halfway through the final, it looked like the odds were in favor of Andrew. But she played superbly in the final three games, went into all three in first place and managed to win two of three.

By taking the quarter of a million dollar cash prize, Amy’s winnings on Jeopardy give her a grand total of $1,632,800. This puts her in fourth place among the all-time money winners, trailing James Holzhauer, Brad Rutter and of course Ken Jennings.  Jennings witnessed the battle from beginning to end from the podium and  perhaps better than any other person connected with the show knows just how difficult the feat Amy has just accomplished.

Amy also became only the fourth female contestant to win a Tournament of Champions. The other three are Rachael Schwartz in 1994, Robin Carrol in 2000 and Celeste DiNucci in 2007. The winner she has the greatest parallel with is Robin, who for a brief time was actually the biggest money winner in Jeopardy history, having won both the 2000 Tournament of Champions and the 2001 International Tournament. Her total of $220,000 was the highest won by any contestant at the time – until the doubling of the dollar figures in November of 2001 and the Million Dollar Masters in May of 2002.

Where Amy Schneider ranks among the all-time greats still remains to be determined. At this juncture, I think it is safe to consider her the fourth greatest player of all time behind the three players ahead of her on the all-time money record.  She is clearly a superior player to Matt Amodio, who finished behind her in the exhibition match that they played two weeks prior. Mattea did, for those who might not have seen it, managed to runaway with the exhibition game, but considering both that she had won a little more than a third of Amy’s total and was flattened by Andrew He in her semi-final match, it’s hard to consider her the superior player right now. I have a hunch that we will see all three players on the Alex Trebek stage in the not-too-distant-future.

Credit must also be given to Amy’s two fellow finalists, Andrew, and Sam. All six games were magnificently played by any standard, with not a single runaway in any of the games, all of the matches being determined by Final Jeopardy and everything coming down to the wagers on some of the toughest Final Jeopardy clues in recent years. Amy and Sam each managed to get three of the six Final Jeopardys correct, while Andrew managed to get just two.

Amy deservedly won the Tournament, but if there is a breakout star of this Tournament of Champions it is Sam Buttrey. The winner of the inaugural Professors Tournament in December of last year (in the middle of Amy’s original run) Sam managed a runaway victory in the last quarterfinal match and managed to defeat Matt Amodio in his semi-final. To that point in his Jeopardy career, he had never lost a game.  He was also significantly older than both Amy and Sam, and often age can work against Jeopardy players both in regular play and in tournaments. It certainly didn’t work against Sam, who matched up more than evenly against one of the all-time greats.

In addition, Sam may be the first great Jeopardy contestant to have gone viral since Austin Rogers and his extraordinary run of twelve wins in 2017. (There was a similar level of playfulness among all three players in the finals, when it came to gestures and gesticulating in the opening.) He also had a remarkable awareness of recent pop music and dance crazes and may be the first contestant to have the best byplay with Ken Jennings since he began his hosting duties.

Ken did a fair amount of joking with quite a few players in this tournament, but he had a true affinity and playfulness with Sam.  This became clear when Sam managed to pick the last clue at the end of the Jeopardy and Double Jeopardy rounds of the finals. In the first four games, he had the habit of saying ‘Bring It’. By the fifth game, Sam was actually being more playful: when he said in the Jeopardy round of that game, Ken said: “I was waiting for that.” When the opportunity came in Double Jeopardy, he said: “May I please have the final clue?” Ken’s response: “So polite now.” In last night’s game, he just read out the clue and Ken said: “I will bring it.” And in the last clue of Double Jeopardy, their interaction was delightful:

Sam: May I please have the most final clue that you have, Ken?

Ken: You know what Sam; I will accommodate you.

Sam: Thank you.

Sam was funny and charming in almost every aspect of the show, when it came to being flattered that he was being compared to Steve Martin, who he called ‘the most handsome man in the world’, his jokes about skydiving and how he described some of the songs he wrote in his spare time as ‘unfunny and obvious’.  Sam has no doubt won the hearts and minds of so many fans of Jeopardy and has ranked himself as one of the sweethearts of the 2021-2022 season. I suspect many players from this Tournament will be returning to the Jeopardy stage in years to come; I think – and hope – that Sam will be one of them.

This may seem to short-change Andrew He, which is unfair to him. While its still a bit too early to see where he will end up ranking in the Jeopardy annals, it’s worth noting that he has already managed to defeat Mattea Roach and battled on an even keel with Amy Schneider the whole way. (Considering that she defeated him to begin her incredible streak perhaps may have added an element of vengeance.) His approach to this tournament mirrored that of super-champions James Holzhauer and Matt Amodio himself, starting in the $1000 clues. His all-in approach on Daily Doubles also mirrored that of Holzhauer and ‘lesser’ champions like Alex Jacob and Roger Craig, both of whom used that approach to win their respective Tournament of Champions and with considerable success a bit beyond that. The first two games Amy and Sam were chasing Andrew. His luck began to falter in the next two and the turning point was the last Daily Double he hit in the Double Jeopardy round of Game 5, which went against him and left him with nothing. Still his challenge to Amy was superb and while he won ‘only’ five games in his original run, I suspect we haven’t seen the last of Andrew either.

There was a minor controversy (I’ve discussed one in an earlier article among Game 3) that in Game 5, Amy who was in the lead, wagered less than she should have to win the tournament so that Sam could win a game. I don’t think I have to dignify this controversy with an argument. I’ve never seen a Jeopardy tournament in history where any contestant tries to lose a game. I don’t care how friendly everybody acts on the stage: when it comes to big money, everybody is calculating and cutthroat. Amy was never going to let an opportunity like this drop. You give anybody an advantage in a tournament, you could immediately pay for it. Any Jeopardy player knows that no matter how many games they win.

What’s more, Amy no doubt considered that Andrew, who like her had two match points, was the bigger threat. If she wagered too much against Sam and was wrong and Andrew wagered enough and was right, he would win the tournament that day. Besides she had spent the majority of the finals wagering carefully and her betting for that was consistent with that of previous four. She learned her lesson after that, and in last night’s game made sure she bet enough so that she would defeat Andrew for good.

This year’s Tournament of Champions was, pretty much from beginning to end, utterly thrilling and worthy of the champions that preceded it. Will it continue to follow this format in years to come? I find it unlikely. But like everything else that has happened in the past year and a half, it has more than proven itself fitting to the era of Peak Jeopardy that we are fortunate enough to be living through.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeopardy Tournament of Champions Finals Analysis

 

 

Editor’s Note: In my previous article, my listing of Jeopardy champions who had double digit winning streaks but had poor luck in the Tournament of Champions, I omitted Matt Jackson who won 13 games in Season 32. My original argument still holds true, however; Matt made it to the finals of the 2015 Tournament of Champions  but was defeated – resoundingly -by Alex Jacob.

 

Many of the champions who have qualified for this year’s Tournament of Champions on Jeopardy have been among the most astonishing in the show’s nearly four decades on the air. So perhaps it is fitting that the finals for this tournament reflect the circumstances.

I wrote in the articles leading up to this that the finals for the tournament were a two-day total point affair, with the winner at the end of the second game winning the tournament. I was unaware, however, that the producers had changed the rules again. Modeling themselves after the Greatest of All Time tournament that aired in primetime in January of 2020, the finals of this tournament are what might be considered a best-of-seven affair, with the first player to win three games winning the grand prize of $250,000.

When I learned about this at the start of last week, I admit I had my doubts. The GOAT tournament commemorated James Holzhauer, Brad Rutter, and Jennings himself, and was done primarily to be a tribute to the ailing Alex Trebek who passed away that November. Watching at the time, I think the format was something of a disappointment but I accepted it more as a tribute to Alex. There was no sign of any change in the format in the last Tournament of Champions, so there didn’t seem any reason to do the same here. I think this may have been done with the implied idea that the three finalists would be Matt Amodio, Mattea Roach, and Amy Schneider. That seems hard to believe considering the show’s producer’s should know better by now, but I can’t think of any other reason they would so radically alter a format that’s worked just fine all these years.

However, having watched the finals I confess that I have changed my mind. I don’t believe this is so much precedent for future tournaments as a way of dealing with a very special year. I find it likely that in the next Tournament, Jeopardy will return to business as usual. But the finals, which extended into six games have proven themselves to be more than worth the buildup. The matches have been thrilling from beginning to end, remarkably evenly matched between the three competitors, and have ended with some of the toughest Final Jeopardys in the history of Jeopardy tournaments, leading to some of the most thrilling finishes in the show’s history. And though it took awhile together, it was finally won by the player who earned it.

Here is a play-by-play for the finals between Sam Buttrey, Andrew He and Amy Schneider.

Game 1

The Jeopardy round of Game 1 started off fairly evenly with Sam getting off to a quick start. The mood changed in the middle of the round when Andrew found the Daily Double in THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE. Continuing a trend he had begun in the semi-final match that would become a recurring theme, he bet everything he had:

“You can go from ‘A’ to ‘Z’ crossing the 660-mile border between these 2 southern African countries.” Andrew hesitated before saying: “What are Angola and Zambia?” He doubled his score to $3600 and went into the lead. At the first commercial break, he’d still be ahead with $4400 to Sam’s $3000 and Amy’s $1400.

It didn’t last for long. Amy went on a mini-run in the second half and pulled ahead by the end. But it was a very close score: she had $5000 to Sam’s $4800 while Andrew had dropped to $4200.

In Double Jeopardy, Sam and Amy spent much of the first half of the round dividing the clues between them. Then Andrew managed to ring in on a clue in FOREIGN WORDS AND PHRASES and found the Daily Double immediately afterwards in POETRY. Trailing with $7800, he bet everything:

“’Thou singest of summer in full-throated ease”, Keats wrote in ‘Ode to’ this creature.” Andrew came up with a Nightingale and jumped into the lead.

Sam found the second Daily Double two clues later in FOREIGN WORDS AND PHRASES, and slightly behind Andrew decided to wager $6000. It didn’t go as well for him:

“A criminal who is caught red-handed is caught this way, “while the crime is blazing.’ Sam struggled, finally guessed: “What is corpus delicti?” It was actually in flagrante delicto. He dropped to $7200. Not long after that Amy managed to get four consecutive clues correct, including three of the remaining $2000 clues. Still Andrew had enough of a margin that he finished Double Jeopardy in the lead with $18,800. Amy was next with $14,600 and Sam was in good shape with $12,000.

The Final Jeopardy category was one that Ken was relatively sure had never been seen before: GEOGRA-FLEE. “In July 2022 the ousted president of this country fled west across the Indian Ocean to the Maldives.”  Sam and Andrew knew the correct country: “What is Sri Lanka?” (Ken: Sri Lanka is just a bit southeast of the tip of India, the Maldives are right to the Southwest.) Amy apparently thought it might have Sri Lanka, but wrote down: “What is Indonesia?”

The wagers were more considered than they probably would be in a two-day total point affair. Sam bet nothing, leaving him at $12,000. Amy lost $10,000 dropping her to $4600. Andrew’s correct response guaranteed him a win, but he had bet enough to beat Amy by $1 had she been correct and wagered everything.

Winner Game 1: Andrew.

 

Game 2

In the Jeopardy round Andrew went in the red early and managed to climb out by the first commercial break. All three players were on a fairly even level until Sam made a mistake in the historically tricky category JEPORTMANTEAU! For $600:

“Area in which law is enforced + a reference book.”

Sam thought it was ‘districtionary’, while Amy knew it was ‘jurisdictionary.” This put her into a tie with Andrew with $2800 at the commercial break.

Andrew managed to put some distance between him and Amy when he finally found the Daily Double in FACTS & FIGURES. Again he bet everything: “50% of our genes – 10,000 of 20,000 are regulated by this rhythm, from Latin for ‘about’ & ‘day’. He knew it was circadian and doubled his score to $7600. He finished the Jeopardy round with $9200 to Amy’s $4600 and Sam’s $2200.

In Double Jeopardy Amy would take an early lead when she found the first Daily Double in TALKING ECON’. She bet $4000: “The birth of economics as its own discipline is often traced to a 1776 work by this man.” Amy knew the answer: “Who is Adam Smith?” She went into the lead with $10,200.

She held that lead after a lot of struggling with the category FIRST-TIME RESPONSES. But then Andrew found the other Daily Double in A LITTLE PEACE OF HISTORY. Trailing her by just $200, he bet the $10,000 he had: “The 2006 Greentree Agreement, settling a fight by shifting a peninsula from Nigeria to Cameroon was brokered by this African.” Andrew thought before guessing: “Who is Annan?” (the former Secretary-General to the UN) He jumped to a big lead with $20,000.

The chances for Amy to anybody to catch up with Andrew were remote at that point and Amy didn’t, but she came incredibly close. Doing well in categories NOW STREAMING ON DuMONT + (a 1950s TV network) and LATE 20^TH CENTURY BOOKS, she managed to finish the round only $1000 behind Andrew with $22,200 to his $23,200. Sam was in good shape with $9400.

The Final Jeopardy category was NAME’S THE SAME and it was tough. “Name shared by a Victorian novelist and an 1805 flagship captain whose name is heard in a famous phrase.” Andrew and Sam both wrote: “Who is Gridley?” Amy put down: “Who is Nelson?” Amy had the right idea.  Lord Nelson’s last words were: “Kiss me, Hardy.” The man he was speaking to was named Thomas Hardy.

It came down to wagers. Sam bet nothing. Amy bet $1100, and Andrew bet $21,199. Amy had the most at the end.

Winner Game 2: Amy.

 

Game 3

The Jeopardy round of Game 3 was by far the most evenly matched of the games to this point. Andrew dropped into the red early again in the game, and when he found the Daily Double in AMERICAN HISTORY, he didn’t have a lot to work with, so he bet the $1000 he could.

“At this New York battle in the fall of 1777, nearly 6,000 British troops surrendered to Colonial forces.” Andrew knew it was Saratoga and went to $1400. The game continued in a close fashion: in fact, there was actually a three way tie for first at one point. The Jeopardy round ended nearly as close: Amy and Andrew were tied at $3800, Sam had $3600.

Amy effectively gutted her chances early in the Double Jeopardy round. She found the first Daily Double in COMPOUND WORDS. At this point it was still very close, she was in the lead with $5800 and Andrew was in third with $5000. So she tried to break it open by betting $5000. It didn’t work out:

“A point of reference from which measurements are made, it was once an actual notch or line made on a permanent object.” She pondered a long time before guessing: “What is milestone?” It wasn’t. It was benchmark. She dropped to $800.

Much of the remainder of the round was dominated by Sam. He had gotten up to $12,400 when Andrew managed to find the other Daily Double in 4 WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL. With only $5800, betting everything seemed like a reasonable option: “On September 12, 1846, this pair of poets wed secretly at St. Marylebone Church; the bride lived with dad on Wimpole Street for another week.” He knew it was Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and closed the gap by getting up to $11,600. But Sam managed to hold the margin and finished Double Jeopardy ahead with $14,800 to Andrew’s $13,200 while Amy loomed as spoiler with $2400.

The Final Jeopardy answers to Game 3 have met with some controversy going forward. The category was THE NEW TESTAMENT. “Paul’s letter to them is the New Testament epistle with the most Old Testament quotations.” Amy’s response of: “Who are the Hebrews?” was ruled correct. Sam’s response of: “Who are The Romans?” was ruled wrong. But there have been online challenges as to the veracity of the response, with some scholars saying that the latter book has more quotations.

The results were about the wagers. Amy bet nothing. Andrew (who wrote down: “Who are the Philippians?”) lost $3201. Sam bet big - $11,601. Andrew had the most money at the end of Final Jeopardy and notched his second win.

Winner Game 3: Andrew.

 

Game 4

The Jeopardy round was pretty much dominated by Amy. She took a quick lead and was in charge pretty much from beginning to end, with $6200 at the commercial break and $10,200 by the end of it. Andrew was slow to get started and not even finding the Daily Double was able to put up much of a dent in Amy’s lead. Andrew was in second with $4000 and Sam trailed badly with $2400.

Double Jeopardy was Sam’s turn to shine. Trailing badly with $6000 when he found the first Daily Double, he brought laughter to the crowd when he said: “I’d like to bet the maximum amount required by law.” A couple of moments later he brought the crowd to their feet for a different recent.

The category was FAR OUT: “Once matter enters a black hole, it falls to the center and concentrates at an infinitely dense point called this.” Sam knew it was the singularity and jumped up to $12,000. He would take the lead briefly on the $2000 clue in that category.

He wouldn’t hold it long, though. Amy found the second Daily Double near the end of the round in NATIVE AMERICAN PLACE NAMES IN THE U.S. “It’s the capital of a state and the seat of Laramie County.” Amy knew it was Cheyenne and gained $4000 which put her at $21,000. She finished with the very impressive total of $25,000, Sam was next with $20,000 and Andrew was in last place at the end of a final for the first time with $6800.

The Final Jeopardy category was the deceptively easy sounding MOVIES & LITERATURE. The clue was anything but that. “Ridley Scott’s first feature The Duelists, was based on a story by this author to whom Scott’s film Alien also pays tribute. All three contestants were thinking in terms of science fiction or fantasy. Andrew wrote down: “Who is (Philip K. ) Dick?” Sam wrote down: “Who is A.C. Clarke?” Amy responded: “Who is Lovecraft?” As Ken pointed out: “Many of the spaceships and other objects are named in honor of the works of Joseph Conrad, such as the Nostromo, the spaceship in Alien. And Conrad wrote the duelists.” It came down to wagers: Andrew bet $5999. Sam bet everything and Amy bet $6000. Amy was left with $19,000, which gave Amy her second victory, tying her with Andrew.

Winner Game 4: Amy.

 

Game 5

In the Jeopardy round, everybody got off to a slow start. Amy found the Daily Double early and got it wrong. (The FURNITURE category was a bad one for the contestants.) Slowly but surely Amy pulled into the lead with $2400 at the commercial break and $6000 by the end of it. Andrew was next at $2400, while Sam, who was in the red for much of the round, managed to get up to $1600.

Early in Double Jeopardy it looked like Andrew had the momentum. He found the first Daily Double in 20^th CENTURY FICTION. As he done on five previous Daily Doubles in the finals, he bet everything: “This book with a facial feature in its title was Toni Morrison’s debut novel.” He thought for a moment before guessing: “What is The Bluest Eye?” He doubled his score to $10,000.

He then found the other Daily Double on the very next clue in PAINT SAMPLES. Once again, he bet everything. This time, his luck ran out. “Don’t try to pet this cat in a tricky canvas by Louis-Leopould Boilly, who invented this French term.” Andrew struggled but could not come up with a response. It was trompe l’oeil.” He dropped to nothing and spent the rest of the game in last, though he gave it his best effort.

Amy maintained her lead the rest of the way, despite a worthy challenge by Sam. At the end of Double Jeopardy, Amy led with $15,800, Sam was next with $11,200 and Andrew trailed with $6800. Amy was in the best position to clinch the tournament.

The Final Jeopardy category was ENGLISH CITIES. “William the Conqueror’s son built a fortress on a key northern river in 1080, giving this city its name.” Andrew didn’t have the right answer, but Sam and Amy did: “What is Newcastle?” Sam also knew the other part of the name: “upon Tyne.”

It came down to wagering. Sam, who had nothing to lose, bet everything. Andrew, who knew his only chance was if Sam and Amy canceled each other out, bet $6700. Amy clearly saw Andrew as the bigger threat and wagered only $1800. If she’d been wrong and he’d been right, she still would have won the tournament. Unfortunately for her, Sam was not as cautious and was rewarded with his first victory of the finals.

Winner Game 5: Sam.

 

Game 6

The early stages of the Jeopardy round were dominated by Sam and Andrew. Then Sam found the Daily Double in WRITERS AND THEIR WORKS. He gambled and bet the $2600 he had. “Left unfished at his death, Juneteenth, his second novel, was published in 1999.” Sam puzzled over this before guessing: “Who is Baldwin?” This was wrong. It was Ralph Ellison. He dropped to zero and spent the rest of the Jeopardy round in last.

By the middle of the round Amy caught fire and pulled ahead. She spent much of the remainder battling with Andrew for first, and finally took it over with $6400 to his $5800. Sam was in a distant third with $1400.

Luck seemed to be with Sam early in Double Jeopardy. He found the first Daily Double on his first selection in BODIES OF WATER and bet the $2000 he could. “The Komandorski Islands are part of a 1200 mile arc separating this sea from the Pacific Ocean to the South.” He knew it was The Bering Sea and went to $3400.

Sam’s luck improved more when Andrew made a mistake in the category ‘P.J.” that cost him $1600 and Sam got one that earned him $1200. He then hesitated before choosing the category MOVIE TAGLINES and found the other Daily Double. He bet $3000.

“2021: Every family has its own language.” He hesitated before guessing: “What is CODA?” and jumped up to $9600 and into the lead.

That unfortunately was the highpoint of the game for him. He soon lost $3600 on two consecutive clues in INTO CREAM CHEESE and the rest of the round was fought fairly evenly between Andrew and Amy. When Amy got three of the last four clues correct, she managed to get the barest of advantages, finishing the round with $15,600 to Andrew’s $14,200 and Sam’s $8000.

The Final Jeopardy category for the game was PLAYS. “The January 12, 1864 Washington Evening Star reported on a performance of this ‘dashing comedy’ to a ‘delighted full house.’” Sam may have had the right idea when he wrote down: “What is Our Mutual Friend?” but Andrew and Amy had the right play: “Our American Cousin.” (This is the play Lincoln was seeing at Ford’s Theater the night he was assassinated.)

Again it came down to wagers. Sam bet and lost everything. Andrew bet $2801. But Amy had learned her lesson and this time bet $13,000. This gave her $28,600 and made her the winner of the Tournament.

Tournament Winner: Amy. ($250,000)

Second Place: Andrew. ($100,000)

Third Place: Sam ($50,000)

 

Tomorrow I will wrap up this series of articles with a final analysis of the tournament and the significance of the winners in the context of the history of Jeopardy.