As Succession Comes To An End, The Reasons Why It's Not A Great Show, Part 1: What the Series Really Is - And Why It Pales in Comparison to the Best one

 

 

As someone who has spent much of the past three years railing at Succession for being one of the most overrated series in history, especially when it has come to taking awards away from series that I think are infinitely better, I may have been one of the few people who greeted the news that the upcoming fourth season will be the series last. My biggest fear right now is that it will what it has done in 2020 and 2022 and take a lot of Emmy nominations and awards from the extraordinary final season of Better Call Saul.

Over the next several months, there will be much writing about the final struggle for power between the Roys for Waystar, whether the inevitable winner was the right one, and the series place in the great pantheon in television history. Critics and fans will no doubt be judging where Succession deserves to finish based on the final season and the final episode. I’m probably going to have to write about it in some regard going forward, but since we’re almost at the end, I’m going to make one last major effort to file a minority opinion as to why all of this is a wasted discussion.

As I have said, over and over, while the performances and the writing of the show are brilliant, it does not change the fact that all of it is done in the picture of one of the bleakest and most unlikable series in the history of television.  And yet paradoxically, all of the things that have caused critics to rant against other series for these actions – the fact that entire seasons go by with no consequences for any of the characters, the fact of all of the characters are fundamentally unlikable, the fact that it took three seasons to go by before the Roy family to really do anything against their father – seem to be arguments for it greatness in the eyes of many. People raged against The Sopranos where nothing seemed to happen or the slow pace of series like The Wire or Deadwood in their later seasons. But the fact that somehow nobody seems to have really taken an action against any of the powerful figures doesn’t seem to work against Succession.

I think because of the superb level of the acting – and make no mistake, the entire cast is brilliant given the fact that they have to make something out of characters who go through entire seasons without doing anything other than yell creative insults at each other – the viewer seems to genuinely think that Succession is something more important than it actually is. Which is why I intend to write two different articles explaining some of the more fundamental flaws in the series that nobody seems willing to accept: the kind of show they’re actually watching and why the fundamental basis of this series that everybody claims to be caring about has always been a moot point.

I’m going to start the first article in this with a theme I actually used before in an article two years ago: that Succession is not, in truth, modeled on some great Roman or Greek epic as Jesse Armstrong claims in his previews or even some fantasy power struggle like Game of Thrones. Instead, it is very clearly modeled on something that has basically vanished from broadcast television in the 21^st century: the prime-time soap.

For those old enough to remember (I barely qualify) the 1980s and 1990s were filled with prime time soap operas based on the sagas of rich and powerful families who spent hours on end struggling for power against rival companies and each other. These series were among the most popular in the 1980s, including Dynasty, Knots Landing and Falcon Crest, but by far the most successful was Dallas.. It’s original run was more than eleven seasons, it inspired several TV movies and it actually had enough interest to spark a revival series on TNT in 2012 with several members of the original cast and some new actors playing characters who had appeared on the series before. In many ways, the Ewings were the Roys well before Jesse Armstrong came up with the idea and had he tried to pitch it a decade earlier he might have called it  ‘Dallas meets the Murdochs’. Because I think there are far more similarities between the two series (and I actually think that extends to the revival) I will use it as the model for the comparison.

And let’s start with one clear difference: at no time did the writers of Dallas have any illusions that they were making art. Even the cast and writers would be more than willing to admit that at its peak, Dallas never deserved to rank in the realm of L.A. Law, Hill Street Blues or St. Elsewhere which would dominate the Best Drama awards throughout the eighties. The series did win the occasional Emmy of course, and was occasionally nominated for Best Drama, but that may have said more for the quality of TV at the time than that of Dallas. Millions of people may have watched every week for over a decade, but they weren’t doing that because of quality television.

I would like to make clear upfront that as a critic, I don’t have a problem with that. Not everything that any medium produces is high art. There have to be some shows that you watch because you can’t take them seriously even if they’re ostensibly serious. I’d actually argue that one of the problems with Peak TV is that it has more or less killed off the ‘guilty pleasure’. We can’t admit we’re watching a series because it’s got a lot of sex or ridiculous plotting; there has to be some kind of higher value to it. Shonda Rhimes is by far the most guilty practitioner of it in Peak TV; I would be far more inclined to appreciate Scandal or How to Get Away with Murder or maybe even Bridgerton if Rhimes would just say that this isn’t supposed to be high art. But because she believes that everything has to have artistic merit, Rhimes and showrunners like her insist that their shows are deeper than they are.  And while critics are more than willing to call out some shows on it, they will not do so for Succession.

Because to be clear, the Roys are little more than the Ewing clan except they’re struggling to take over their father’s company because they each think they deserve too. If Armstrong and his writers would commit to the campiness of the entire, I might actually enjoy Succession more. Because no one on Succession really deserves to be talked about in the same way that so many of the other characters in Peak TV do – and honestly, I think if the Ewings ever were involved in a hostile takeover bid of Waystar,  they could manage it in two episodes, maybe three. Here’s why.

J.R. Ewing was the most legendary character in Dallas and indeed TV history. Part of this was because of the superb performance of Larry Hagman as J.R. who was, to be clear, everything that the Roy family and most critics are convinced Logan is. He’s not. If J.R. had come across Logan early in his career (not impossible based on the timeline of Roy’s rise to power) J.R. Ewing would have been able to destroy the Roy family before any of Kendall, Shiv or Roman were even born. No question. It would have been a knockout in the first round.

Because J.R. Ewing is everything Logan Roy is not. He’s clever, he’s charming and he can see around corners that everybody thinks they can. People love him even as they hate him, Bobby might have spent years struggling with him but at the beginning of the revival when J.R. was in a convalescent home in a coma for years, Bobby came to him and admitted even after everything that happened, he still loved him and even missed the fights. (Of course, because this is J.R. immediately afterward, he roused himself from his bed, and began to make calls to try and thwart Bobby’s plan to sell Southfork.) His relationship with his wife, Pamela (Linda Gray) was one that was forever born out of what seemed to be mutual contempt but the two of them were always drawn to each other time and again. JR’s son, John Ross, despite what must have been a troubled childhood (I’m speaking of the revival) still respected him and wanted his approval and love. And JR inspired loyalty because of his cleverness borne out of devotion instead of fear: when he got a certain look on his face, you knew that he was thinking and that person was in trouble.

Logan Roy, by contrast, has none of those qualities. Perhaps at some point he might have actually had some kind of calculated brilliance, but Armstrong has in fact implied that the main reason he has risen to wealth and power is because he is just a bully and has so much wealth and power that everyone’s terrified to tell him he’s wrong. Even when he has tanked the stock of Waystar, even when he refuses to leave newspapers for social media, even when he is clearly leading the company to ruin, no one wants to say no to him, not even his own children.  And compared to J.R., he can’t even say anything clever. J.R. had the ability to insult in such a way that even the recipient might not be sure they were insulted. Logan’s catchphrase is ‘f---off.” Now I know that Dallas took place on network TV in the 1980s and Succession is on HBO, it doesn’t change the fact that Logan insults are basically just calling people names. I think J.R. would do better under similar circumstances.

That’s the other thing. For all the flaws the Ewings had (and trust me, there were a lot of them), in times of tragedy and pleasure, they would willing come together, even just to observe the idea of politeness. Even at the height of their hatred for each other, I can’t imagine Bobby and J.R. taking separate cars to a corporate meeting, let alone fly in separate private jets rather than spend even a few hours in stiff silence.

Not that the Ewings weren’t capable of splitting in alliances. Indeed, in the early seasons of the revival one of the more intriguing aspects was that while the Ewings were fighting for control over Southfork, the breakdown did not come down on generational lines, but rather by pure family. J.R. formed an alliance with his son, John Ross (Josh Henderson) while Bobby formed one with his son Christopher (Jesse Metcalfe). Many of the alliance that formed were based out of family loyalty more than corporate. By contrast, the Roy family spent the better part of three seasons refusing to ally with any of their siblings rather than lose the possibility of holding power later on. The only true loyalty the Roy family ever had is to the bottom-line. In a third season episode, Kendall tried to convince his siblings to join him against his father, but while they all saw the wisdom of doing so, they were all terrified of their stock losing value. It’s worth noting the only reason that the three younger children are now working together against their father is not because they suddenly want to take him down but because Logan is selling the company to someone else and they all now fear that they will lose the power they’ve had all this time. The Ewings were not good people, but you often got the sense that it was them against the world. The Roys have the world and are only willing to fight each other.

And its not just that the Roys are horrible people to each other in private. I may not know this one way or the other because I haven’t watched the show enough to care, but do any of the Roys have friends or even someone that loves them other than Connor (who to be clear, his fellow siblings don’t seem to real consider one of them)? I don’t know enough about Kendall’s marriage or him as a father to know if he cares about either of them more than the company. Shiv told Tom on their wedding night that she didn’t believe in monogamy. Connor seems to pride himself on isolating everyone he meets. Logan’s second marriage essentially broke up on his eightieth birthday and his brother holds him in contempt. The Roys mother had no problem betraying them in the third season finale and Cousin Greg had no problem betraying his cousins. The only relationship people care about on the show is Tom and Greg and Tom clearly holds Greg in contempt. Gerri Kellman says in one of the trailers that ‘they can’t go against their father…he’ll crush you..” I don’t think for a minute it’s because she cares about them even after working with the Roys for decades or even because she’s on Logan’s side. The only thing she cares about is the company and I don’t think any of the other people we see around the Roys would be near them if they weren’t the Roys.

One of the most famous cliffhangers in TV history occurred when J.R. Ewing was shot. The episode which revealed ‘Who Shot J.R.?” was the highest rated episode in TV series history to that point and is still among the highest ever. It is a tribute to the work of Hagman and the writers of Dallas that a man who had so many people who wanted to kill him got this big an audience not so much to know who the potential murderer was, but because that they wanted to see if J.R. lived. (This was a soap opera, after all, and lead characters are killed on soap operas all the time, even in the 1980s when it was rarer.) We should have been rooting for who pulled the trigger, we might well have been in a later era, but people watched because they gave a damn about J.R.

No one will give a damn if Logan Roy or indeed any of the other characters end up dying in the final season of Succession, and if they do, it’s only because they are under the belief as to how it will affect who ends up finally running Waystar. That’s the other problem at the core of Succession. Armstrong has been trying so far to get us to care who ends up in charge that he’s completely misled on the most critical point: that it doesn’t matter one way or the other. I will deal with how the viewer seems to have ignored that fact even while it has been hiding in plain sight, and why that is the major reason we should not regard Succession as a great series, certainly not in the pantheon of great HBO dramas.

I Managed To See The SAG Awards Last Night. Here's My Reactions (And I'll Throw In the Image Awards for Free)

 

Relatively speaking, it was actually easy to find the SAG awards on the Netflix channel on YouTube. I have no idea how many other people made the effort one way or the other, but I personally had my usual good time.

First, most of the predictions I made on Friday did not prove out to be correct. That was the case last year and I was fine with it then, and I was all things considered, mostly fine with it now. I was dead on when I predicted that Abbott Elementary would win best Comedic Ensemble (as we shall see, Quinta Brunson and her cast actually had better luck at a different awards show last weekend.) I was not entirely surprised that Jean Smart ended up taking the Best Actress in a Comedy award, considering her track record this year, and given her condition a worthy proxy was there: her co-star Christopher McDonald, a worthy actor in his own right. Reading a speech that she sent via text, Smart paid tribute to the guest cast on the series, some of whom received Emmy nominations, some of whom didn’t.  Considering it is unlikely Hacks will complete shooting in time to be eligible for this year’s Emmys, I’m fine with Smart taking yet another prize, and its not like she didn’t deserve. Jeremy Allan White continued his streak by taking the Best Actor in a Comedy for The Bear, and at this point, I’ll be stunned if he doesn’t take the Emmy.

I was somewhat surprised (but no less delighted) to see Jennifer Coolidge prevail for her superb work on The White Lotus and honestly, much as I really wanted Better Call Saul to prevail for its last season, given the category its really hard to argue The White Lotus didn’t have the Best Ensemble this year, full stop. I was further charmed when F. Murray Abraham, one of the most undervalued great actors of all time, was allowed to speak for the cast and gave a fairly charming speech about how this was the greatest cast he’d ever worked with (probably not an exaggeration) how much fun he’d had shooting the series, and his more than due shoutouts to the fighting in Ukraine, the survivors of the Turkey earthquake, and his final cheer for the union. Hell, as much as I wanted Bob Odenkirk to win, I can’t even work myself to get that upset Jason Bateman took the Best Actor in A Drama series for Ozark  Bateman has always been one of my favorite actors and among his fellow cast members he seems to have been lacking the recognition among the awards group that Julia Garner has gotten. (The Golden Globes did not nominate him this year.) I think he was entitled to take a bow for Ozark as it ended. It might well be an overrated series, but my feelings do not extend to the cast.

I was overjoyed by Jessica Chastain’s victory for Best Actress in a Limited Series or TV Movie: I thought she was more than deserving but I was certain that Amanda Seyfried or Niecy Nash-Betts would prevail. Chastain now moves slightly ahead in the race for Best Actress in a Limited Series this fall, and I hope that the Emmys can find room for Michael Shannon. And I don’t think anybody – certainly not Sam Elliott – expected him to take the prize for Best Actor in a Limited Series for his work in 1883. But Elliott, like Abraham, has been one of the most undervalued great actors who has worked in Hollywood and has received almost no recognition from any awards show for it. Do I think he has a realistic chance of winning an Emmy or even being nominated? Honestly, no. But I would love to see him up there in some form, nearly as much as I’d like to see Chastain.

As for the awards themselves, they remained as they always are: light, fluffy and usually hysterical. There were so many wonderful presentations throughout the night that it’s hard to pick a favorite. Aubrey Plaza and Jenna Ortega came out, remained dead silent for ten seconds before both muttering in what was their trademark deadpan: “I don’t know why they sent us out here together.” The Parks and Recreation reunion when Amy Poehler and Adam Scott came out and Poehler in her trademark fashion needled Scott for being too elitist ‘now that he’s working in the dramas.’ Or Jenny Slate and James Marsden coming out there to present Best Ensemble in a Drama and Slate continuously mocking every aspect of Marsden’s presentation. Really makes you want other awards shows to continue to process of pairing actors and actresses together; the SAG awards really seem to have turned into an art form.

And while I do not usually comment on the film awards part of it, I was overjoyed by so many of the wins that Everything Everywhere All At Once got. Jamie Lee Curtis’ speech was incredible, particularly when she told them about wearing a wedding ring her parents once wore: “They hated each other at the end, by the way”, acknowledging that she was that proud term ‘nepo baby’ and utterly saluted Michelle Yeoh. Yeoh’s win brought almost as much gratification to my soul, as I’ve loved watching her in almost everything she’s done and I really hope she wins Best Actress.

But the best came for last. It came as a surprise to no one that the film won Best Ensemble, but the acceptance speech, which started out in tandem, eventually became a tributed to arguably the most successful Asian-American in history James Hong. And Hong was incredible: he started out by speaking in Chinese. Yeoh started to translate, but then Hong said that he was just doing in case they saw it in Hong Kong. He then pointed out just how hard it was for Asians to earn roles when we was getting started in the business, being very clear to point out just how cringeworthy The Good Earth looks in hindsight “because Asians could not command box office. But look at us now!” He then said he was thrilled to be in an all Asian cast, then saluted Curtis by saying “Jamie Lee is a good Chinese name’, said he hoped to be here when he turned 100, and then paid tribute to Yeoh by quoting her the last time they tried to play her off stage: “She can kick your butt.” It was a glorious speech for a superb movie and moment, and few will object when the inevitable triumph for this movie comes.

The only person who might have been disappointed by last night’s events was Angela Bassett. Her Golden Globe and Critics Choice Awards for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever almost made her triumph for an Oscar inevitable until Curtis’ victory. But it’s not like her weekend was all bad. The previous night, she had been basically the guest of honor at the NAACP’s Image Awards, and it was her night to shine. Not only did she win Best Supporting Actress and Entertainer of the Year (over Quinta Brunson) but she also managed to upset Zendaya by taking Best Actress in A Drama for her work on 9-1-1. I’ll admit I was slightly surprised by this, not because Bassett’s performance isn’t superb, but because it’s the type that doesn’t generally earn awards or nominations any more. But there are going to be some vacancies in this year’s Best Actress in a Drama category (Zendaya and Laura Linney will not be eligible, for one) Maybe Bassett will have a chance.

It probably won’t come as a shock that Abbott Elementary utterly dominated the Comedy Awards, taking Best Comedy, Best Actress for Brunson, another Supporting Actor prize for Tyler James Williams, and a Best Supporting Actress prize for Janelle James, instead of Sheryl Lee Ralph this time. It also prevailed for Best Teleplay, while Best Directing went to Atlanta which I don’t mind one bit.

The big winner for Dramas turned to be Starz’ P-Valley, which took Best Drama, Best Actor for Nico Amman and Best Supporting Actress for Loretta Devine. Method Man prevailed for Best Supporting Actor for his work in Power Book II Ghost. Sadly despite their excellence, it is highly unlikely any of these series will be at the Emmys, along with the soon to conclude Snowfall. Still, I am grateful for the wins given to Women of the Movement for Writing and Giancarlo Esposito for Directing Better Call Saul.

As I expected Niecy Nash prevailed for her work on Dahmer and is likely to continue this parade to an Emmy this fall, though whether they rank her as Actress (as they did at both the SAG Awards and here) or Supporting (as she did when she triumphed at the Critics Choice) remains for her and the Academy to determine. The major winner in Limited Series was The Best Man which took Best Limited Series, Best Actor for Morris Chestnut and Best Supporting Actress for Nia Long.  I think the series has little chance of prevailing at the Emmys this fall, though again I have to give a lot of credit to any awards show that acknowledged    Women of the Movement and Ptolemy Gray. Seriously Emmys, try to do better?

Black Panther dominated the movie awards, taking Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress (like I said Bassett had a great night) Another major winner was the overlooked The Woman King which took Best Director and gave another prize for Viola Davis, who already managed an EGOT this year. Incidentally, despite all of the controversy due to Slapgate Will Smith still won Best Actor in A Film for Emancipation, which did very well at the Images. Perhaps if Will had kept his seat last year…

Unfortunately because the Images are spread out over several nights, most of the awards had already been given before Saturday’s broadcast. Which is a great pity because I liked a lot of what I saw: Damson Idris and Method Man arguing about who’s sexier; the cast of The Best Man bickering over who fans were most exciting to see back (and Harold Perrineau joking about how none of the cast still knows how to pronounce his last name) and Issa Rae teasing Jonathan Majors about his astrological sign. Queen Latifah remains a superb host who I wish Hollywood would use more often. And by the nature of the Images this maybe the only awards show where political grandstanding is basically encouraged by the people running it and it was hard not to cheer for Brittney Griner’s appearance with her wife on stage or Gabrielle Union and Dwayne Wade’s being recognized for their advocacy work for the LGBTQ+ community. This is the rare awards show that I think was far too short, I would have been overjoyed to see as many awards, presenters and acceptance speeches given as possible.

In any case, we’re done with awards involving TV for at least the next three to four months. I’ll be back to talk about that most likely in June when some of the other major critics groups start giving nominations. By then of course, the landscape will have changed significantly but we’ll deal with that when we get there.

 

Criticizing Criticism Oscars Edition: How A Book Ostensibly About The Academy Awards Turned out to Be One of the Biggest Examples of Critical Bias I've Ever Read

 

It might not come as a shock to those of you who read my blog to know that long before I had an unhealthy obsession with the TV awards industry, I had an unhealthy obsession with the Academy Awards. ‘Unhealthy’ is actually harsh –  even at its height, I  never took the Oscars nearly as seriously as I’ve cared about the Emmys. Probably because even at the age of thirteen, it was really hard to care about an awards show that took itself this seriously.

That said, my interest in the Academy Awards was one of the back doors that got me interesting into both classic movies, awards shows and criticism in general. I’ve always had a heavy interest in classic movies and I had a deep curiosity about the film industry in general. During my adolescence and teenage years, I ended up reading a huge number of books having to do with film criticism and Hollywood history.

One such book was Inside Oscar originally written in commemoration with the sixtieth anniversary of the Academy. Writers Damien Bona and Mason Wiley did a superb and pretty even handed job of telling the stories of the origins of the Academy Awards and the tales of the films, the creative forces and the campaign behind the awards for nearly sixty years. It was, among other things, non-judgmental about the quality of any of the films that were either nominated or in the discussion for nominations and awards in any given year. It never said, for example, that Citizen Kane deserved to win Best Picture in 1941, more than How Green Was My Valley or that Ordinary People deserved to beat Raging Bull. Even when the Oscars made some fundamentally absurd choices – The Greatest Show on Earth in 1952 or Oliver over Lion in Winter in 1968, Wiley and Bona did not pass judgment on the wisdom or non-wisdom of the academy. The closest thing that they had that might pass for a bias was there decision to focus almost entirely as one of the major precursor for awards The New York Film Critics Association and almost not until the end even mention other groups such as the Golden Globes.

I’m pretty sure I wore the binding on that book until it was ragged beyond repair, so when I was seventeen my parents showed mercy me and got me the 10^th Anniversary edition of the book. This edition gave far more depth to the previous seven years – 1988 to 1994 – than it did much of the previous sixty: 1939 in both books has basically ten pages for the entire year; 1991 devotes more than twice that to the actual ceremony. There were also, in hindsight, some signs that they might have been changing their approach. Whereas the previous volume had not really critiqued any of the films or directors, the tenth anniversary edition began to show clear signs of bias to certain films, some justifiable (there are certainly flaws in movies such as A Few Good Men and Scent of A Woman) some that are very signs of prejudice. The most obvious ones occur in the story of Schindler’s List, where Wiley and Bona try everything in their power to downplay the importance of the film and the work Steven Spielberg did as director. They don’t quite say outright that they believe Jane Campion and The Piano were robbed but its pretty much implied if you read between the lines. In the final year they cover, 1994, their bias starts to become downright bigoted, particularly towards two films that are modern classics Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction. The latter they are particularly harsh on saying that the tributes that Tarantino uses in his masterpiece are  films infinitely superior to Pulp Fiction. In hindsight, this should have been a flashing red light for what came next.

Cut to February 2002. I’m in my senior year of college and in a bookstore, where low and behold I find Inside Oscar 2 which covers 1995-2000. I don’t notice that this time the only author is Damien Bona, and I think I waited maybe all of five second before I grabbed the book and took it to the cashier. I don’t even think I even bothered to browse it before I bought it and I certainly didn’t look at this closely. In retrospect, that was a huge mistake.

While it was simple to devour the first two editions, this book, while barely 400 pages, was an infinitely harder read. And honestly, if I’d been a little older, I would have figured out why instantly.  Where as the previous two editions of the book fundamentally seem to be inclined to simply be a narrations of facts and gossips, Inside Oscar 2 is what only can be described as a ‘labor of hate’, a book that is so centered on its message that it doesn’t seem to care whether anyone – including the reader – might enjoy it.

In a paragraph in the introduction, Bona says that one of the things he wants to illustrate by this book is the decline in the quality of movies over time. This in itself isn’t a faulty goal, its almost noble. But the way that Bona decided to do so reminds me very much of the kinds of screeds that so many fellow critics choose to do when they want to get their point across. It won’t come as a shock to you that Bona was a critic (he died in 2012). Wiley, his co-writer, had died in 1994, and perhaps was the moderating hand that kept Bona from being too harsh in his criticism of movies. If he had been present, Inside Oscar 2 almost certainly would have been less heavy-handed.

There are frankly too many examples of Bona’s judgment clouding his objectivity, so I’ll just use what I think is the most obvious one: his opinion of Saving Private Ryan.

Bona makes it clear in his criticisms that he fundamentally think the premise of the film is absurd, which does have some merit. His criticism of the plot being reminiscent of so many 1940s and 1950s movies is frankly far more judgmental and petty but by far his biggest blindness is his cavalier dismissal of the landmark opening sequence. Considered then and now one of the greatest accomplishments of filmmaking, he goes out of his way to dismiss it, bad-mouthing it as ‘Spielberg being Spielberg’ (Bona clearly has no use for Spielberg) and also by outright lying, saying that all the sequence does is introduce us to Tom Hanks, while leaving out the fact that we basically meet all eight of the characters we will follow throughout the movie.

Now considering that this was one of the most universally loved films in history, Bona has to really stretch to find critics who agree with him. Pretty much the best he can manage is digging up Vincent Canby (who dismissed it outright) and two other low-level critics, one of who’s judgment I severely doubt because he thought the minor animated film Small Soldiers was a better film that Saving Private Ryan. It also shows what has become a clear pattern for Bona, basically dismissing any critic whose opinion runs counter to his own as being a hack or naïve (Owen Gleiberman’s rave for the film he dismisses with the complex sentiment: “Whatever.”

The clearest sign of his bias comes when he compares it to the film Bona clearly thinks should have won Best Picture Terence Malick’s The Thin Red Line. He clearly believes Malick is a genius because his films are ‘artistic’ and Spielberg’s ‘commercial.’ He spends nearly two full pages talking about Malick’s making up the film, celebrating it for not being ‘conventional’, ignoring the fact that he had a six hour cut of the film when he finished and then many of the actors – including Adrian Brody – were basically cut out of it.

And when the critical response to The Thin Red Line is nowhere near as appreciative as it to Saving Private Ryan, Bona basically goes out of his way to dismiss almost every critic who didn’t get it while highlighting the few who did. And in retrospect, Bona’s opinion of filmgoers in general couldn’t have been clearer with his final paragraph: “While Saving Private Ryan was the highest grossing film of 1998, The Thin Red Line was simply too cerebral for mass acceptance.” I’m not sure I understood the meaning of that line until recently. It’s critics for: “the average movie-goer was too dumb to appreciate it.”

Now if by this point you’ve concluded that Bona clearly doesn’t have much use for the average film-goer, you’re clearly smarter than I was at twenty three. Because I honestly questioned that I might have been wrong to think Saving Private Ryan was a masterpiece, and spent quite a few years trying to work around this judgment that Bona had made. Perhaps a less naïve man would have reached this conclusion considering the similar contempt he holds for such movies as Almost Famous, Fargo, The Truman Show, As Good as it Gets, and basically every major film that was considered a masterpiece at the time and now. Hell, I probably should have gotten in his critique of American Beauty where he highlights a critic who agrees with his point of view like this: “Why critics like American Beauty. They’re idiots. Well, all not critics are idiots. Only the critics who like American Beauty are idiots.” Bona pretty much spelled out his bias right there, and I didn’t see it.

This contempt by the way doesn’t extend merely to films. He says that modern master of cinema such as Paul Thomas Anderson and Cameron Crowe were basically hacks. He finds Julia Roberts gushing over her sweetheart Benjamin Bratt at the time annoying. He may be the only person of any kind who thought Tom Hanks’ nice guy attitude an act. And that’s not considering the contempt he shows for some of the winners. When Mira Sorvino accepts her Best Supporting Actress Oscar, he makes a dig both at the understandable joy her father Paul had at the moment as ‘hammy’ and that if he'd known the kind of career his daughter would have, he’d really have something to cry about.”

Bona also spends a lot of pages in the book berating previous Oscar winning pictures without even being asked. When Robert Zemeckis makes Castaway, he not only badmouths Forest Gump but throws in a dig by comparing it just as unfavorably to Dances with Wolves. When Dino De Laurentis is given the Thalberg awards, he mentions that one of his movies is Red Dragon, ‘the first and by far the best of the movies about Hannibal Lecter’, which basically slams Silence of the Lambs without saying so directly.

But surely this hatred is only to the box-office pablum that Hollywood makes. He loves independent films, right? Wrong. In 1996, which was the year of the independent film, he seems very dismissive of Fargo when Gene Siskel claims “there won’t be a better made in 1996.” (Bona clearly detests both Siskel and Ebert, which I’ll get to later on.)  When Mike Leigh gives an acceptance speech for Secrets and Lies he says: “But then again, his films are considered too long and self-important.” He shows some admiration for movies like Gods and Monsters and Boys Don’t Cry but just as often he’s inclined to bad mouth those films that manage to win Critics Awards. (He dismissed Laura Linney and Kenneth Lonergan’s wins for You Can Count on Me, as being part of a drama that would have been cliched in the 1970s.) Clearly a good independent film doesn’t need awards to be good.

Then he’s one of those critics who like foreign films. Again, this is very subjective. He has a very clear hatred towards Life is Beautiful, for which I don’t blame him. But when he mentions Central Station, one of the films that competed against it, it’s far less about its quality than the fact it’s not Life is Beautiful. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon he does seem to think has some good qualities, but even there it seems there’s a bias towards critics and audiences who like this film so much. I was never a fan of this movie, so I can’t say whether his critique is merited there, but I think this is part of what both movies have in common – they set records for the highest grossing foreign film at the time. Based on Bona’s dismissing of so many Oscar nominated films that make money – not just Saving Private Ryan, but also Titanic and Gladiator – you get the feeling he was one of those critics who thought that profitability had nothing to do with what a great film was. The fact that films like American Beauty and Erin Brockovich ended up making so much money may be in part why he is inclined to dismiss them.

So what films does Bona like? The closest glimpse we get to his opinion comes in the entry in 2000 when one critics mentions certain movies that he thought were superb. Among them, Edward Yang’s Yi Yi, the story of a middle class Tai Pei family, Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us (an Iranian film shot entirely from the back seat of a car) and Bruno Dumont’s  L’Humanite a French film by a director known for his emotionless, well shot movies. Bona follows this with: “Needless to say, none of these films were going to catch the Academy’s fancy” and you could sense the same kind of elitist behavior that led to Sight and Sound decided that Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai de Commerce 1080 Bruxelles is the greatest motion picture in the history of cinema.

I have not mentioned the Oscar ceremonies themselves in this volume, even though nearly a third of the book deals with them. In all honesty, they were if anything more painful to read than any other section. Bona’s hatred for the Oscars clearly extends to so many of the hosts: he clearly hates Billy Crystal, thinks the sequences, and jokes that entertained millions were wastes of time, he has no use for the dance sequences, and he barely seems to care about who wins these awards much less whether the show is entertaining. At the end of the day, the Oscars themselves were essentially a means to an end for Bona in this volume.

And what was Bona’s end in this book? Four hundred and fifty pages of contempt and venom towards every aspect of filmdom. The actors, the creative forces, the publicity campaigns (ok, that’s fair) and even his fellow critics. Because not satisfied with his own opinion, he spends a lot of time in his book degrading so many of his fellow critics: he maligns Roger Ebert and when Whoopi Goldberg paid tribute to Gene Siskel in the 1999 Oscars, decides to piss on his grave. He calls Jonathan Rosenbaum, a clown of a movie critics, even when he agrees with his point of view. He basically calls Joel Siegel a moron. I think the only reason he shows any respect to Vincent Canby is because he agrees with his point of view in this context.

And by extension, he shows contempt to the people who might have bought Inside Oscar 2 hoping to get some kind of entertainment and pleasure out of it. But when he decides that so many of these films that we then and now consider classics – and trust me, I have barely scratched the surface of his contempt – by extension, he’s saying that you the reader and filmgoer are just as much an idiot as anyone else he’s writing about in this book. Respectful people can disagree about the artist merits of Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, but when you are told in no uncertain terms that you’re an idiot for liking the latter more than the former, well, you could be forgiven for throwing this book in the trash.

To be clear, I wish I had done so at the time. Because books like this can do damage to how people think. Inside Oscar 2 doesn’t just cherry pick the facts it finds to fit its narrative, it essentially takes all of the evidence to the contrary, no matter how overwhelming it might be, and tells you that the experts are wrong with no proof. The book has no respect for any part of the institution it says its about. It’s just a book written by a man with an agenda who will not let the facts get in the way of his story. And because it’s well written and researched, the untrained eye might be inclined to think it’s the truth with a capital T and that you might doubt what you’ve thought all this time.

Now to be clear, Inside Oscar 2 didn’t do that to the Academy Awards – you can’t destroy something that has always been broken and that nobody except a few people in the industry take seriously anyway. But as someone who has chosen criticism as his profession, books like Inside Oscar 2 do serious damage to every aspect of objective journalism and criticism.

 There are a lot of problems with the Academy Awards, and their should have been a volume telling us what they were and why they happened. But Inside Oscar 2 has no interest in this discussion or even wants to have it. It’s not a history of the Oscar or film criticism; its little more than a supposed tell-all written by a bitter participant in the process who thinks he alone knows the truth and that everyone else is at best unenlightened, or at worst, a complete and utter idiot.

 

Lost Rewatch: Special

 

Of course by far the characters who got the most short shrift by the writers of Lost turned out to be Michael and Walt. Unlike many of the others who did, however, this was most likely due to how the series ended up unfolding. The writers knew that casting a child actor is always tricky on any television show, and originally they intended to factor it in by having a time jump between Season 1 and Season 2, probably of several months. By the time they reached the end of Season 1, however, they were aware that this was going to fit in with the overarching plans for the series, and realized that Malcolm David Kelley was going to have to be written out of the show.  That probably wasn’t the only reason for one aspect of the season finale but it certainly was the reason that Walt more or less became persona non grata from that point, effectively only returning for guest spots after Season 2. For that reason Michael had to get written out of the series as well – and that part they handled extremely badly.

As frustrating as the end results were, by this point in the series you could have been forgiven for wanting Michael to have been the character who met a speedy end instead.  Up until this point, Michael has been one of the most inconsistent characters of the series, clearly trying to be a good father but doing one of the worst jobs imaginable.  He has reacted horribly to half the characters on the series, and he’s already developed the unflattering characteristic of holding grudges against characters he doesn’t like. It’s very clear he is jealous of Locke’s hold over his son, and ‘Special’ shows him at his worst,  trying to beat up Boone, threatening to kill Locke when he thinks he still has a hold on him, and acting like the worst kind of father when Walt is defiant towards him. A part of me genuinely wonders if one of the reasons behind his decision to build a raft is not so much to try and find rescue but to get his son away from Locke.  (You get a certain idea that this pettiness was always part of his character in the flashback when he tells Walt that Brian wants Walt to have Vincent. As we’ll see though, it’s kind of hard not to think Bryan has it coming.)

However, when we see Michael’s flashbacks in this episode, we realize why Michael has been acting this way on the island, not just towards Walt but in a way towards Locke. Michael feels this way because of the tremendous guilt because Susan took Walt away to another country from him at a young age, basically bribed him from having any contact with Walt so she could marry up and has essentially spent her entire life making sure that Walt doesn’t even know that Michael cared about him after that point.  We’ll later learn that Michael understandably had doubts about what was being essentially forced upon him by Bryan, and there’s a decent chance that he’s feeling guilty about that part of it as well.  Michael’s single minded focus on ‘saving’ his son will become so overwhelming in the next season that it will essentially drain anything else about his character we might have once liked. But when we considered why he has that focus, its worth remembering that he might be carrying guilt from that too.

Based on what we learn from Michael’s flashbacks and what we see through Walt’s we do get a clear sense that Walt himself is the clearest example of the kind of bad parenting that, as we’ll soon see, was a key factor behind almost every other character we meet who ends up on the island. The only person who probably cared for him unabashedly in his life was Michael, who fought to get his son back, is understandably angry that Bryan is essentially abandoning him, and still makes himself out to be the bad guy when he comes to take custody of Walt in Sydney. Susan Porter clearly believes being a good mother stops at being able to provide him with a good lifestyle and nothing else: Walt has already moved three times he turns two and Walt himself tells you that Sydney was far from the last place they ended up living at. Whether Bryan ever wanted kids we never know for sure (there is a possibility that he might be creeped out by what we see at the end of Walt’s flashback) but I don’t think even a lifetime of similar incidents would have bothered him as much as it did if he truly loved Walt like a son. The fact that he seems fine just throwing him away when he visits Michael clearly calls that into question. When Locke tells Michael that he’s lived through more at ten then most people do in a lifetime, it’s not a throwaway line (though compared to some of the childhoods we learn about going forward, it’s par for the course on the island.)

And Walt clearly is special which the writers, who have been hinting at throughout the season, finally state directly. While I don’t think the polar bear’s appearance is something that Walt himself caused, there have been enough weird things going on around Walt so far that it is obvious that he does seem to have some kind of psychic powers to do with the island. Locke’s clearly picked up on this by now, and I kind of get the reasoning why Walt is drawn to him. Michael has spent most of the time on the island, ordering Walt around and basically being the worst kind of helicopter parent. Locke, by contrast, has always treated Walt as a grown-up, never talks down to him, and may very well see him as someone whose potential needs to be realized. It’s interesting to compare how both men react to him in this episode in the early parts of it: Locke is trying to help protect him from the dangers he knows are out there; Michael wants to get him away from them. Both reactions have merit and even nearly twenty years later, I still don’t know whose decision was the right one.

But let’s not kid ourselves: no matter what the reason, Michael’s decision to build the raft is the right one for the survivors. Even at this point in the series, its pretty clear that the majority of the survivors are preparing to dig in for the long hall, and that even Sayid’s plan to find the radio tower is in stasis right now. When Michael gives an idea that might actually help, it is frustrating that two of the key leaders on the island instantly start arguing against it and that Shannon’s decision to say she ‘might help’ seems born out of a pettiness to bait Boone than it is to actually get rescued. (Many people will assist in the raft’s construction, but we never see Shannon do so until the season finale.) The fact that he chooses to do so does give the camp a path forward for the rest of the season, and its hard to imagine anyone else on the show having the motivation to get them rescued.

Mind you, it’s not that Rousseau’s map isn’t revealing some things. For much of the episode, Sayid is puzzling over a note on the map called ‘The Black Rock’ but is still inclined to think of it as nonsense. When Charlie shows up near the end of the episode and tells them that Claire has written in her diary about ‘dreaming about the Black Rock’ it establishes a key part of the island mythology that will end up being one of the more successful overarching storylines of the entire series.  We do learn that this isn’t a delusion, we eventually do learn about why it is important to the island (and most importantly not merely to Rousseau) and while the mystery will take most of the series to resolve, its presence will be critical to Lost  until it is.

That said, it is annoying that in a sense the connection to Claire dreaming about it is never referred to directly again on the show from this point forward. We’ve already seen she may be having prophetic dreams, but we never hear anything about the Black Rock for the rest of the series in relation to Claire. (Then again, perhaps considering Claire’s role in the final season, maybe it was preparing her for that. Never thought of it before.) Even if that is the case, it really seems like a heavy-handed way of reminded the audience that ‘no, we haven’t forgotten about Claire after all,” though given the fact that no one seems to have been looking for her the last two episodes and the only reason she is found at all is when Boone and Locke are looking for a lost dog you could be forgiven for thinking that everyone on the island has.

Well, that’s not true. Charlie clearly is. We may not see him climbing the walls in the last three episodes demanding why no one is searching for Claire, but unlike the rest of the camp we can understand why. He is clearly still processing the trauma of not only being nearly killed but discarded by Ethan because they ‘only wanted Claire.’  He spends the episodes looking for Claire’s stuff and eventually her diary no doubt because he feels this is in part penance and in part because, he too, is beginning to think she’s dead. Kate shows optimism about it before she leaves him, but Charlie doesn’t return it. That may be the reason (after wonderful comic byplay) he ends up reading Claire’s diary: he truly thinks he may never see someone he has already begun to care about again.

And then Claire does show up at the end. The writers may never have truly figured out what to do with her long term, but they had decided that Claire was important to the series for the immediate future and maybe longer. Her presence will ignite a series of action that will ripple throughout the remainder of the first season and quite a bit beyond.

Lost Rewatch on VHS: Hearts and Minds

 

While watching this episode on videotape, I saw a commercial for OfficeMax in which a man makes poster for a mislaid ball of rubber bands with ‘LOST’ over a picture using the font of the series ads. In just three months, the series had become part of the zeitgeist.

There are also quite a few commercials trumpeting all of the recent series to earn Golden Globe nominations now on ABC, including Desperate Housewives (which would eventually win Best Actress for Teri Hatcher and Best Musical or Comedy) Boston Legal (William Shatner took the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor) and Alias (Lost’s new next door neighbor had just gotten another nod for Jennifer Garner) Lost had just been nominated for Best Drama that year, the first of three consecutive years it would receive be nominated by the Golden Globes in that category. Say what you will about them these days; they got television right back then. (It would lose to Nip/Tuck which really should have gotten some Emmy nominations.) Back to business.

If you get past some of the inconsistencies in some of the characters between this episode and the last one, and you can get through the ‘ick’ factor in the flashback, there’s actually a lot on display to like in ‘Hearts and Minds.’ The major flaw in the episode is one that maybe is only obvious in hindsight.

In the first couple of seasons of Lost in particular,  it can appear like the writers had some issues with utilizing the original cast members. Part of this is doubtless because of the death rate that would often take out characters just when it really seemed like we were getting to know them. (This may have led to the theory that existed for much of the series that the island was actually purgatory because the characters would die after they came to that realization.) And let’s be honest: a major flaw will come with the first two regulars who end up dying.

Early in the series many people became fans of Boone very quickly. Ian Somerhalder made a strong impression almost immediately in the series and the writers would give his character a lot of screen time in the first season, sometimes at the expense of other characters that we might have wanted to get to know better. Considering that he had gravitated to Locke, who by this point the writers have established is central to the understanding of the show, the fans would justifiably consider that Boone would be important to the series as well, even if not for as long. By this point in the era of Peak TV, the fans had started to expect a major character death in the first season. The writers have been doing a good job to this point leading us down blind alleys so far: it seemed almost certain that Charlie was dead, the viewer would not be surprised if we never saw Claire again, and this episode  reaches its final minutes with Boone and the audience believing Shannon is dead. Given the nature of how television was working, I suspect the viewer was thinking it was going to happen in the season finale. (A death did take place, but by then…we’ll get there.)

And because we all thought Boone was going to be around for a few seasons, we had reason to suspect that the flashback we get in this episode was going to be the first in a series that would tell us the story of Boone and Shannon, who we naturally suspected would get her own series. There’s a lot to unpack in what we end up getting: the fact that Boone instantly goes to Sydney when he thinks his sister’s in danger, when he tells the police the truth about their relationship (we’ve been led to think they’re blood-related, so it does come as a shock to learn they are merely step-siblings) how he has no problem bribing her boyfriend to go away, and the way he learns how she’s been playing him all this time. (We learn Shannon was married, but that’s another bit of her backstory we never learn about.) When we learn that Boone’s mother has left Shannon penniless, there’s another level to that almost gives us sympathy for her – until the final flashback.

But unlike all the other characters who ended up being killed off before we learned their full stories, you can make a pretty good argument that both the flashback we see her and the one we end up getting in Season 2 tells us basically everything we need to know about Shannon and Boone, their complicated family dynamic, and why their relationship was so fraught, on the island and before. I realize a lot of people will truly wonder “Why did we have to see that scene in the hotel?” and I am amazed that, particularly on broadcast TV in the 2000s, we got a scene that was as close to incest as network television was willing to go. But as sick as it may have made the viewer at the time, and as pointless as it may seem to many people who look at the series as a whole, I don’t think its gratuitous, at least in the context of what is happening on the island.

Boone is clearly in love with Shannon. (Nikki pointed out in her book that Boone’s girlfriend bares a striking resemblance to her, and that should have been a warning sign right there.) Shannon has clearly been using to manipulate Boone for much of their adult life, and based on what we will later know, she has been doing this to manipulate him after what we later see.  The scene isn’t erotic or gratuitous, it’s borne out of Shannon’s drunken rage and her wanting to last out at Boone.  The important moment is not the two collapsing on the bed, but Boone afterward, genuinely looking broken as Shannon does what she’s clearly been doing for years, making the terms of their relationship clear. Boone puts up his usual fighting but he seems dead emotionally in a way we’ve never seen in any of their arguments.

So while its pretty clear Boone’s experience didn’t help his long-term survival on the island, it probably helped him reach a point of emotional clarity he wouldn’t on his own. When he admits to Locke that he felt relieved at Shannon’s death, I suppose we might think its cruel – but based on what we see in the flashback, there’s an argument that he did need to find a way to let go of his obsession with his sister. This may have been harsh medicine, but its hard to imagine anything else making the point clear. (I’ll get back to the long-term ramifications of it to the series near the end.)

And don’t kid yourself about how Boone got to that revelation: at this point we may have needed a refresher course on just what’s in the jungle. For what was a drug induced hallucination, what we see the monster do in it is consistent with what we’ve already seen and actually gives a little bit more. Shannon and Boone start running from it as the ground explodes and we hear the howls, and they end up managing to escape into a bamboo thicket where the monster goes away. When Shannon and Boone are running from the ‘monster’ near the end, when she slows down the monster lifts her off the air and will drop her on the ground in blood in a way we’ve seen with the pilot and we’ll see again later. Even where Boone finds her body will have significance very close to the end of the series.

There are certain inconsistencies with some of the other characters: Jack and Kate, who were snapping at each other near the end of the last episode, now seem to be on friendly, almost warm terms again. But I’m willing to let that go because of the garden that Sun has started to maintain in the jungle, which will end up being a critical part of the series for the first half of the show, particularly in regard to Sun. A lot of important revelations about her will take place in the garden and the one here is no exception: Kate comes to the realization that Sun can speak English. The bond between Kate and Sun will be one of the deepest in the series for much of its run (it’s really maddening how few female-centric friendships there were during the course of Lost) and while we don’t know if Sun knows the truth about Kate yet, the fact that she is willing to confide as to why she is lying about her speaking English to Jin is clearly something that Kate might very well be the only person on the island to understand.

Locke’s personality continues to come into focus, but at this point the opinions are all over the map. He’s clearly engaged in long-term deception and its kind of amazing that not only have his lies not caught up with him yet, he doesn’t seem to worry about what will happen if they do. That said, every so often he tells the characters – and the audience – something true. When he tells Sayid about being a Webelos, he says almost as a throwaway: “I wasn’t the most popular kid”, which is so true about Locke. When deceiving Jack about the boar, he makes a very clear statement about man as the most dangerous predator which we will learn again and again. And it’s telling that when Charlie makes it very clear to Jack that he has absolute faith in John Locke to save them, that he means it with every fiber in his being. We don’t know why he thinks he has to hide the truth but we do think there might be something to it.

Of course, there’s also some laughs to be had as Hurley suffers through ‘digestive issues,’ has an ‘argument’ with Jin and begs him to pee on his foot. But there’s character growth here to: Jin may not understand a word Hurley is saying (Hurley was giving voice to the fandom when he said so, as will be his habit) but this is a clear effort by him to make an inroad with some of the people in camp. When he shows up near the end of the episode with a fully cleaned fish in his hand, it says a lot about Jin making progress.

Now I realize that despite all of that, given the above-mentioned inconsistencies, the ick factor and the relatively inconsequential nature of Shannon and Boone to Lost, some fans will still say there’s no point to this episode. Except…after Boone makes his confession, Locke says: “Time to let go.” This is a theme that is going to come up over and over throughout the series and will be critical to the arc of more than a few characters who will make it to the end. We’re going to hear it said again in different circumstance not that long from now. Boone has learned this lesson, but when he tries to pass it on in the most horrific of circumstances the man who most needs to hear it is going to ignore it.

I Try To Predict This Year's SAG Awards Winners for TV

 

I will confess I’m not entirely thrilled about the recent trend of awards shows being moved to streaming services. I wasn’t happy that BBC wasn’t airing this year’s presentation of BAFTA (though based on how hostile critics and audiences were, it looks like I didn’t miss much) and I really hope that some day the HCA manages to get its TV awards on an actual network rather than YouTube. So I’m still not entirely certain if I’ll actually be able to watch this year’s SAG awards, since they seem to be on a service of Netflix I am not entirely sure I get. I will no doubt spend much of the next day or two trying to make sure I can.

Overall, I’m disappointed the ceremony is leaving TNT and TBS for streaming in the first place. It has always been one of the more enjoyable awards shows to watch regularly, it generally gets things done within two hours and the winners can often be entertaining and sometimes surprising to watch. The first sign that Squid Game was about to become a force in the Emmys occurred last year when it upset Succession for Best Actor and Best Actress in a Drama. I didn’t even mind when the series ended up winning Best Drama, mainly because of Brian Cox’s superb speech for the cast. The TV awards have, over the past five or six years, been trending to a happy medium between mirroring or foreshadowing the Emmys while every so often giving us a winner that most awards shows overlook. Some of my highpoints of the most recent awards shows have come from Stranger Things and This is Us triumphs in recent years, and I truly hope that we see something like that again this year.

In any case, here are my hopes and predictions for Sunday night.

OUTSTANDING ENSEMBLE IN A COMEDY SERIES

No contest, no argument. It’s already triumphed at the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice, and its likely to do very well at the Image Awards tomorrow.  Nothing can stand in the way of the juggernaut that is Abbott Elementary. At this point, the only real question remaining is, will Ted Lasso’s return next month do anything to stand its way from winning at the Emmys this fall.

Should Win/Will Win: Abbott Elementary.

 

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A COMEDY

Another easy one, even given the powerhouses in this category. Much as I’d like to see Bill Hader or Steve Martin prevail, nothing can stop Jeremy Allan White for The Bear. He’s already triumphed at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards. It’s going to be really hard for even Jason Sudeikis himself to take a third consecutive Emmy against him this year.

Should Win: Hader/White.

Will Win: White.

 

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A COMEDY

This is the first one I’m not certain of. Quinta Brunson took the Golden Globe; Jean Smart the Critics Choice award. There could also be sentiment for Christina Applegate who has publicly announced that Dead To Me is likely to be her last acting role due to her health. I would like to see Brunson or Applegate prevail, and I think one of them will. But I’m going to give the barest of edges to Brunson, while acknowledging this could be the wild card.

Should Win: Brunson.

Will Win: Not Sure

 

Now on to drama.

OUTSTANDING ENSEMBLE IN A DRAMA SERIES

This is a tough nut to crack. The major contenders would appear to be Better Call Saul and The White Lotus, which I thought was put in the wrong category but may very well be a harbinger of next year’s Emmys.

There is obviously a far more sentimental and better argument for Saul; it has spent its entire run basically being ignored by almost every award show in existence – except the Critics’ Choice, which gave it three awards including Best Drama. It is also the child of Breaking Bad, and the series dominated the SAGs in its final season. On the other hand, Breaking Bad also dominated the Golden Globes in its last season, and that didn’t happen this year.

The White Lotus did win Best Limited Series at the Golden Globes and there’s no question as to how gifted its cast is. But few could make a real argument that it truly belongs in this category. And as history demonstrated, when Big Little Lies transitioned to this category in its second season, it was defeated by The Crown and Lies was a far better fit in Drama than this series is.

I’m going to give the edge right now to Better Call Saul, while admitting that there is just as much a chance that The Crown or Ozark could very well prevail here.

Should Win: Better Call Saul.

Will Win: Better Call Saul (but it’s anybody’s guess.)

 

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES

This one I have more confidence in. While I believed Kevin Costner’s win for Yellowstone was unjustified. I admit he’d be more a threat if he were nominated in this category. And while I’m not prepared to rule out a win for Jeff Bridges or Adam Scott (or honestly be that upset if they won) I think Odenkirk takes this one in a walk. He’s already won the prize from the Critics Choice and the HCA; I think it won’t be that much of a struggle for him to take it here.

Should Win/Will Win: Odenkirk.

 

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES

Much as I don’t particularly like the idea, I’m pretty sure who the winner’s going to be. Zendaya has been making an awards run the last few months, taking the Golden Globe and the Critics Choice for Best Actress for Euphoria. I realize some people truly believe that Jennifer Coolidge has a real chance of stopping her, and I don’t entirely blame them for thinking that, given her run of the awards to this point.

But the sad truth is, Coolidge couldn’t win last year when she was competing in a Best Performance by an Actress in A Limited Series. And as much as I’d like to see her complete the cycle, I just don’t see that happening. I really would like to see her or Laura Linney up there. But I think youth will be served. It will either be Zendaya or Julia Garner, and in this case I’m going with Zendaya.

Should Win: Coolidge.

Will Win: Zendaya (sigh).

 

Now the rest of them.

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES/MOVIE

My out and out favorite in this category is Steve Carell, whose work in The Patient is one of the best performances I’ve seen in this cycle.  But I’m inclined to think this award will come down to one of the two serial killers in this category: Paul Walter Hauser for Black Bird or Evan Peters for Dahmer.

Both men did win Golden Globes; Peters for Best Actor; Hauser for Best Supporting Actor. Hauser prevailed at the Critics Choice; Peters did not. Because there is still far too much controversy about Dahmer in the first place, I will give the edge to Hauser, whose performance was honestly more mesmerizing than Peters.

Should Win: Carell.

Will Win: Hauser.

 

OUTSTANDING PERFOMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES

I would like to see Jessica Chastain prevail, as much for her work in George and Tammy as well as for the fact she was ignored by the Emmys for her superb performance in last year’s Scenes from a Marriage. And let’s not kid ourselves if Coolidge was in this category, she’d probably win in a walk. But because she’s not, I think it will come down to Amanda Seyfried for The Dropout and Niecy Nash-Betts for Dahmer.

Seyfried has been making a constant path through the awards cycle herself, triumphing at both the Golden Globes and Critics Choice awards. There’s little to suggest she won’t do the same at the SAGs save for the fact she wasn’t present for either of those ceremonies. Nash-Betts was at the Critics’ Choice and given the extraordinary power of the speech she gave when she took Best Supporting Actress, I think that people might want to see what she does here. (I’m also relatively certain that she’ll prevail at the Image awards too.)

I’m giving the barest of edges to Seyfried for the sake of completeness. I just hope she’s here to pick up the trophy this time.

Should Win/Will Win: Seyfried.

BEST STUNT ENSEMBLE

This will either come down to Andor or House of the Dragon. I’m inclined to believe how well Game of Thrones did in this category and because House was otherwise shutout, House of the Dragon will prevail here. And I’m fine with that.

I hope I can track down the actual awards on Sunday. Regardless, I’ll be back Monday with my reactions to the winners – and probably those of the Image awards too.

Economic History of Baseball, Part 3: The Reserve Clause Never Did What They Said It Was. Just ask The Yankees

 

By the time Curt Flood’s case against the reserve clause was making its way through the Supreme Court, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, and the owner’s major argument against was that if it was dissolved, the richest and most powerful teams would get all the best players. It is rather amazing that all of those owners – certainly most of those in the American League – were able to make that argument with a straight face.

Because up until just a few years before Flood’s lawsuit began, that’s exactly what was happening in baseball anyway – and it’s indeed the whole reason the Yankee dynasty began in the first place.

For the record Babe Ruth was not the first player infamous Red Sox owner sold to the Yankees, just the most famous. While Ruth was setting his first home run record of 29, Frazee had already sold off pitching mainstays Ernie Shore and Dutch Leonard and halfway through the season sold Carl Mays to the Yankees for $40,000 against the express wishes of American League President Ban Johnson. After Ruth was sold, Frazee continued to sell his best players to the Yankees – indeed, almost the entire pitching staff of the 1927 Team was made up of former Red Sox and three other pitchers – Mays, Joe Bush, and Sam Jones had helped the Yankees win their first three pennants and their first World Championship. Indeed, those first three years of Yankee pennants were subway series against John McGraw’s New York Giants, which would end up doing the Yankees one better by winning four consecutive National League Pennants. When Walter Johnson was helping lead the Washington Senators to their first ever pennant in 1924, most of the nation was rooting for the Senator, half because they wanted to see Johnson finally pitch in a World Series and all of them because they wanted to see some team that wasn’t based in New York win the World Championship again. (The Senators did so that October.)

Even by that point, much of the baseball was beginning to become sick of New York’s dominance of the game. For the first twenty years of the 20^th Century that frustration was directed at the Giants who won six N.L. Pennants. After Ruth went to the Yankees, that hatred left the Giants and went entirely towards the Yankees.

The first sixty years of the existence of the World Series – from 1903 to 1964 – the Yankees would win 29 Pennants and 20 world series, the Giants would win 15 pennants and five world championships and Brooklyn (yes for these purposes they count) won nine pennants and one World Championship. Combined the state of New York accounted for 53 pennants and 26 World Championships. Of the four other cities that had two teams, the second highest was Philadelphia which managed to win a total of eleven pennants and five World Championships (nine of them were the Philadelphia Athletics, and their last pennant was in 1931).

Many of Major League Baseball’s changes over that period only came about either to compete with New York teams or to keep up with them. Putting numbers on uniforms only became official in 1929 when the Yankees did so in order that their fans could identify Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig easier. Night baseball, originated by Larry MacPhail when he owned the Cincinnati Reds in 1935, only really became part of the standard once he took over the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1938. Radio broadcasts had been around since the early 1920s, but because the Yankees did not want it cutting into their revenue, most teams took a pass on it. MacPhail had championed it for the Reds and when he moved to Brooklyn Red Barber came with him. Soon after every team was doing it. The farm system – Branch Rickey’s inspiration when the general manager of the Cardinals to set up a system of minor league teams to develop stars for the team – was essentially developed to compete against the rich teams such as the Giants and when it became successful, Yankee GM Ed Barrow hired George Weiss to help make one for the Yankees.

Even Rickey’s decision to sign Jackie Robinson in 1947 for Brooklyn had a major effect on how New York baseball was played – though not necessarily always for the better. Weiss, as I mentioned in an earlier article, was a racist who believe Yankee fans wouldn’t want to see ‘those people’ wearing pinstripes. He spent years delaying even as protests grew from sportswriters and the African American public. Finally he signed several players for the minor-league teams, traded most of them away, and reluctantly brought Elston Howard up to play in 1955. Because of his racism, the Yankee dynasty would begin to dry up near the middle of the 50s and eventually collapse by 1964. More importantly, the American League followed the guidance of the Yankees, and was slower to sign African-American prospects than the National League, eventually lead to the NL becoming the more dominant league for quite some time.

Winning with the Yankees, for the record, did not come with adequate financial compensation or even appreciation by ownership. Babe Ruth, who one year made more than Herbert Hoover, was by the standards of the crowds he drew vastly underpaid. And management refused to even consider him as manager of the Yankees even when the team was not winning pennants. Eventually they traded him to Boston, and then they – and baseball – were basically done with him. When Ruth wrote the Yankees asking for tickets to the 1936 World Series, management said: “Sure…just send a check.”

For decades the most successful team in baseball had no problem playing its biggest stars as little as possible, justifying it by saying that they had to be ‘hungry for that World Series check.” Because management had all the cards, they had no trouble arguing that when players held out, they were being greedy and selfish. In 1938, Joe DiMaggio who had just hit 46 home runs and driven in 167 runs, demanded $40,000 for his 1938 salary. Ed Barrow said: “Lou Gehrig has been with the Yankees since 1925 and is only making $25,000. What does that tell you?” DiMaggio replied: “That Mr. Gehrig is a very underpaid player.” I don’t really like or respect DiMaggio, but he was dead on when he said that.

And because Yankee management argued that players were money-hungry instead of caring about winning, Yankee fans who expected excellence from their players had no problem effusively booing them. DiMaggio was booed immensely at Yankee Stadium until his 56 game hitting streak. Mantle was booed the first half of his career mainly for not being Joe DiMaggio. It wasn’t until Roger Maris challenged Ruth for the home run record in 1961 that fans began to cheer Mantle – and boo Maris. Only Gehrig seemed to escape condemnation, and that’s probably because most fans didn’t notice him until he was about to die.

And it’s not like Weiss and Barrow didn’t have any problem trading all the great players around these stars when they didn’t produce any more or meet the ‘Yankee standards.’ Indeed, when you hear people like Doris Kearns Goodwin saying that when she was growing up players ‘stayed with the team that loved you rather than pursuing money’ this is 1)ignorance based on the fact that players couldn’t pursue money, and 2) the only reason the Brooklyn Dodgers spent her childhood intact was because they were always winning pennants. And it wasn’t like O’Malley or the front-office wasn’t trading players that were basically unimportant or that the players she loved weren’t traded when they became to old for the Dodgers. The reason she may ignore that is, of course, by the time that happened the Dodgers weren’t in Brooklyn anymore.

This actually brings me to a larger point about New York’s sense of entitlement regarding baseball overwhelming nostalgia.  There has always been some kind of subtle and not-so-subtle idea that to be a truly great athlete you must play in New York. There’s a decent argument that some of the weakest players who were inducted into Cooperstown all got in because they played for New York teams. Many New York Giants of the 20s and 30s got in because of superficial hitting statistics and because two of their old teammates Frankie Frisch and Bill Terry were on some of the committees during the 1960s. Gil Hodges was at best an above average hitting first baseman whose numbers were well below players such as Rocky Colavito and Boog Powell, but because he played for Brooklyn and managed the Miracle Mets, sportswriters and fans kept pressing them for years and they finally gave in. And Phil Rizzuto would never have been the subject of so much pressure to get into the Hall of Fame if he had played for Detroit or St. Louis or any other team than the Yankees.

Similarly there has always been a nostalgia factor for baseball in the 1950s. (Ken Burns even referred to this era as ‘The Capitol of Baseball’ and basically spent two and a half hours only talking about New York teams in that era.) I imagine it was great to live in New York and be a baseball fan, but probably not so much if you lived anywhere else in the country that had baseball. I’m pretty sure that if the Dodgers had kept up their winning ways another season, they would have been granted with cries around the National League saying: “Break up the Bums.”

And all of this brings to be the biggest economic point of all and something New York fans don’t seem able to get over: the Giants and Dodgers leaving New York in 1957, abandoning the city that leaved them for bigger profits or California, ripping a hole in the heart and soul of baseball, symbolizing the end of innocence.

I say this with all the respect of someone whose lived in New York for thirty years: What entitled crap.”

All of these fans who make this argument seem to have forgotten the fundamental reality of baseball in the 1950s. It was in trouble. Affordable air travel and an interstate highway were making people leave crowded cities for the suburbs and the West Coast. Television was finally starting to cut into revenues for every team – even all three New York based ones. Well before 1957, teams were leaving their home seasons and relocating – the Braves left Boston for Milwaukee in 1953, the Browns left St. Louis in 1954 and went to Baltimore and the Athletics left Philadelphia for Kansas City in 1955. If you were listening to radio back then, a fan had to know these things were going on, so this is  less ‘a loss of innocence’ then ‘it can’t happen here'.

In that documentary, Stephen Jay Gould scoffs at the moving by saying: “Both (the Giants and Dodgers) were profitable. There were just more profits to be made in California.” That’s pretty big talk for someone who roots for the Yankees.

First, neither team was profitable. Both teams were struggling financially and that was with one of the greatest players of all time, Willie Mays starring for the Giants, and the Dodgers who had won four pennants in five years. Many people want to cast Walter O’Malley as the villain who managed to con a hapless Horace Stoneham into moving his Giants to San Francisco. Chub Feeney, in that same documentary, makes it very clear that they were going to leave New York regardless of O’Malley’s actions – they were just planning to go to Minneapolis.

Second of all, this takes place from the rose-colored glasses of decades past. When Stoneham announced the move in 1957, he said he hated to disappoint the kids of New York, but he hadn’t seen a lot of their parents at the Polo Grounds. You can’t run any business – and baseball is a business – if no one’s buying your product.  Were the Giants and Dodgers supposed to stay in New York playing to half-empty stadiums out of some kind of civic loyalty?

And why is it somehow this entitlement should only be the property of New York and Brooklyn. Immediately after the Braves went to Milwaukee, they became a contender and dominated the National League standings for the next decade. For reasons not worth going into here, they eventually relocated to Atlanta and struggled for twenty years until basically the present day. Meanwhile during that era, the Red Sox barely contended and didn’t break their eighty-six year old curse until the Braves had won two world championships in two different cities. Why does no one write peons to what Boston lost?

For all the problems the A’s have had financially, when the moved to Oakland they became one of the more dominant franchises in the American League. Why does no one mourn what Philadelphia lost? And for all the talk of New York being ‘The Capitol of Baseball’, Washington D.C. is the actual capital. Yet they lost the Senators twice and had no baseball until the Expos collapsed and relocated to D.C. Why was their pain somehow worse than New York’s?

And before you get to something of ‘loyalty,’ one of the things that Goodwin tells us after the Dodgers relocated was that neither one of them transferred their fandom to L.A. Keep in mind, in this documentary she later says that players today aren’t loyal to their teams. Well, pardon me Doris but if the team is all that mattered, why didn’t you root for the Dodgers when they moved to LA? Most of the players who were on last Brooklyn team in 1957 were still on it in 1958. If your loyalty is to your team, doesn’t that mean the team, not the city that has it? Duke and Hodges and Furillo and Koufax and Drysdale were still there. Reese stuck around for another season. They didn’t stop being Dodgers, they just moved to another side of the country.

And just for the record, what about the rest of the country? For the first half of the twentieth century, Major League Baseball geographically began in Boston and went as far west as St. Louis. Fans in Indiana and Iowa had no problem rooting for the Cardinals and the Cubs even though they might never even see them play. Boston might have been New England’s team, but its hard for me to imagine a fan in 1913 New Hampshire going to Fenway Park for a game. People had been fine rooting for their teams from a distance no matter how far away they lived. Even now, millions of fans don’t live near their closest team and still have no problem rooting for them.

Basically, all of this nostalgia and sense of the end of innocence is nothing more than a sense of bitterness and entitlement. Why should New York fans have to share their Giants and Dodgers with any other state? Sure we didn’t come out to see them play when they were there, but we were comfortable having them around. And if we can’t have them, then anyone else who enjoys them is a loser and an enemy.

And so New Yorkers did what they do so well: they whined and moaned until Major League Baseball gave in and gave them something that Philadelphia and Boston and St. Louis never did: another major league team. Part of me really believed that the reason so many people turned out to what the Mets in the early 1960s had nothing to do with them being ‘lovable losers’ (I’ll argue against that concept in the next piece) but to show L.A. and San Francisco lost. “See, we’ll turn out for the worst team in history over you winning West Coasters. Nya nyah.”

Then in 1969, something terrible happened to the Mets. They miraculously won the World Series. And in New York, once is never enough. Every year since, they have been under just as much pressure of every other team in baseball if not more so.

Because a losing franchise is not a business model that works for long, and it can’t work in New York. Nothing but excellence is acceptable and it has to happen every year. When the Yankees won fourteen pennants in sixteen years, the year they lost the pennant in 1959 the fans booed them unmercifully from the beginning of the season to the end. Casey Stengel, who won ten pennants in twelve years and was beloved by the fans was essentially forced out by management after losing the 1960 World Series. The Mets hired him basically to draw attention from the Yankees because symbols of excellence will do for awhile instead of actual excellence. Because New York will only tolerate the best – even if means no one else can have anything else. It’s still true today – it just hasn’t produced the same results in a while.

Perhaps because the Yankee dynasty had collapsed in 1964 and the Mets were struggling through the 1970 season, Major League baseball had forgotten their history. Hell, maybe they actually thought that if kept things going the way they were, they could make sure it stayed that way. But it did not help that just about the time the Yankee dynasty collapsed the players, who as a group had been more or less docile, were about to wake up and join the sixties. In the next article in this series, I will give an example as how the owners of baseball was about to learn the hard way that the times, they were a changin’.