Jeopardy Masters 2024 Quarterfinal Recap Conclusion

 

 

Day 5:  Queen Takes Matt (Out) And Mattea Roach Wins A Game

They Desperately Needed

 

In Game 1 Victoria, James and Matt faced off. Matt needed a win in today’s game just to stay alive. Instead he was manhandled by both Victoria and James from start to finish of the Jeopardy round.

Victoria was already ahead  with 4200 points in the Jeopardy round when she found the Daily Double in & FAR AWAY. (And yes before that category was OVER THE HILLS). She did what she has done so often recently and bet everything:

“It can mean an island far removed from others in an archipelago as well as something atypical in any group.” It took her a moment to come up with: “What is an outlier?” and double her score.

The Jeopardy round ended with Victoria already very far ahead at 13,600 points, James next with 6200 and Matt in the red at -200.

James got to the first Daily Double in Double Jeopardy on the fourth clue of the round. He wagered the 7400 points he had in I’M LOOKING FOR SOMETHING TO READ:

“Miles Halter heads to boarding school in this Young Adult novel whose title refers to a girl, not a state.” James needed a moment to come up with Looking for Alaska and he was at 14,800 points to Victoria’s 17,200

 He faltered a little after that and Victoria managed to get to 20,800 points before she found the other Daily Double in IF YOU BUILD IT to his 13,200. In the most daring risk so far this tournament, Victoria wagered everything she had:

“Trained in the Georgian Style, James Hoban won a contest and the commission to build this, beginning construction in 1792.” Victoria knew it was The White House.”

She was at 41,600 points. The round wasn’t even halfway over but no one had a chance to rest of the way. When Double Jeopardy ended, James bowed in respect at Victoria’s 46,000 points to his 19,600 and Matt’s 2200.

The Final Jeopardy category was AROUND THE WORLD. “Almost twice the size of Texas but with the population of Lubbock, this part of Australia rejected statehood in a 1998 referendum.” All three players knew the correct response: “What is the Northern Territory?” (It is mostly desert.) Matt bet nothing. James bet 11,914 points to go up to 31,514 and Victoria bet 4000 to finish with an even 50,000 points. In grand style Victoria had won her fourth game of Masters and gained 3 match points. James got another one.

 

In Game 2 Yogesh and Amy, the winners of Monday’s games, faced off against Mattea. A win for Amy would clinch her spot in the finals. Mattea desperately needed a win to stay alive. Their luck would turn out to be better than Matt’s had been.

 The Jeopardy round started off with Amy and Yogesh at their best. Yogesh got off to an early lead with 3000 points but Amy got to the Daily Double in HAVING AN IN-OF-BODY EXPERIENCE. Amy had 1600 points and decided to bet everything to try and take the lead:

“Alphabetically the brain’s main lobes are frontal, occipital, parietal and this one responsible for learning and memory.” Amy knew it was the temporal lobe and she was at 3200 points. For the first time in the entire tournament Yogesh was not at his peak in the Jeopardy round. Amy built up her lead and despite a late surge by Yogesh, she never lost it, finishing the Jeopardy round with 6600 points to Yogesh’s 5200. Mattea had 2600 at the end of it.

In Double Jeopardy Mattea picked first and found the Daily Double on the first clue in GETTING TOUGH ON THE BORDERS. Acknowledging their desperate situation, they bet everything: “Estonia’s only land borders are with Russia and this country.” They knew it was Latvia and jumped into a tie with Yogesh for second.

For much of the first half of Double Jeopardy Yogesh was dominant yet again. He had built his lead to 16,400 points when Mattea found the other Daily Double in GERMAN WORDS. At the time they had 8800 points and again they acknowledged their desperation when they bet everything:

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra says that he ist der sin der erde, “is the meaning of the Earth.”

It took Mattea a long time before they answered: ‘What is the Übermensch?” It was correct and Mattea was in the lead for the first time in the game with 17,600.

Yogesh gave another brilliant performance: 20 correct responses and only two incorrect ones to Mattea’s 14 correct ones and 1 incorrect one. But the two Daily Doubles were enough to provide Mattea with a lead that they never relinquished and at the end of Double Jeopardy Mattea was ahead for the first time at the end of a game in this year’s tournament with 20,400 points to Yogesh’s 17,200 and Amy’s 9800.

The Final Jeopardy category was a tricky one: ANAGRAMS. The clue was the toughest so far in this tournament, and it clearly baffled all three players: “One is a procedure foundational to computer science; the other was made in large part obsolete by computers.” None of them could come up with the correct response; Amy and Yogesh could barely come up with a single word. The correct response was: “What are algorithm and logarithm?” It came down to wagers.

Amy lost 7401 points to drop to 2399. Yogesh lost everything he had. Mattea lost 14,001 points. That left them with 6399, but that was enough to score a victory and three match points they desperately needed. For the first time in the tournament, Yogesh didn’t score a point in a Jeopardy game as Amy finished second.

 

 

LEADERBOARD AFTER DAY 5

Victoria Groce: 13 (Clinched Semi-Final Slot)

Yogesh Raut 10 (Clinched Semi-Final Slot)

James Holzhauer 6

Amy Schneider 5

Mattea Roach 5

Matt Amodio 1 (eliminated)

 

Day 6: The Deciding Game for the Last Two Slots in The Semis

Unlike last year when before the final match it had already been determined who the final four will be, the sixth and last set of quarterfinals were critical for the final two slots, considering the closeness of James, Mattea and Amy’s positions on the leaderboard at the end of Day 5

In the first game, the three men faced off. A win or a second place finish for James would clinch his spot in the semi-finals. Matt was essentially playing for some form of redemption – and in his final appearance he pretty much did so with what would be his best game of the entire quarterfinals.

He would get to the Daily Double early in the Jeopardy round in A WORD FROM THE BIBLICAL WOMAN. He bet the 1600 points he had:

“It was a true report that I heard in mine own land of thy acts and thy wisdom.”

Matt thought it  referred Esther to the Queen of Sheba and went to zero. He spent the rest of the Jeopardy round in third and finished with 1200 points to Yogesh’s 4200 and James’ 4800. James had made a remarkable comeback; at one point he’d been at -1800 points.

Then in Double Jeopardy Matt had his best stretch in the tournament. He got to the first Daily Double early in OUT IN THE WORLD and was at 4600 points in second place. With nothing to lose, he bet everything:

“This golden object was stolen by the Persians from India; Pahlavi Shahs used reproductions for their coronations.” Matt knew it was the Peacock throne and doubled his score to 9200 and in the lead for the first time in Double Jeopardy in this year’s Masters. He managed to hold it for much of the round helped by a streak of hot clues as well as a bunch of tough categories for all involved. Then James got to the other Daily Double in the category IN CONCEIVABLE. (Each response was made up of letters in the word ‘conceivable’. He had 6800 and though he admitted he was uncomfortable with the category (it hadn’t gone well for any of the other players to that point) he still bet everything:

“Rejoice, sinners! The Latin for ‘indolence’ or ‘grace’ gives us this adjective meaning easily pardoned.”

It took him a moment to come up with: “What is venial?” and he retook the lead with 13,600.

At the end of Double Jeopardy the scores were very close: James lead with 16,400 points, Matt was next with 12,400 and for the first time in the entire tournament, Yogesh finished Double Jeopardy in last, albeit with a respectable 10,200 points.

The Final Jeopardy category was MILITARY PEOPLE: “In April 2020 Chief Master Sergeant Roger Towberman became the first enlisted member of this.”

Yogesh’s response was revealed first. “What is the Officer’s Club?” It was wrong and he lost everything. Matt was next. His response was: “What is Space Force?” He bet everything to go to 24,800. James also wrote down: “What is Space Force?” and he had played for the win, wagering 8615. James went to 25,015, received three match points and guaranteed a spot in the semi-finals.

It was a moral victory for Matt, but nothing more. He became the first player to leave and received $50,000 for sixth place.

In Game 2 Victoria and Mattea were up against Amy. If either Amy or Mattea won, they would clinch a spot in the semi-finals. If Victoria won, second place was vital for either one.

The Jeopardy round started fairly evenly until Victoria found the Daily Double in SCIENCE FICTION. She bet the 1400 points she had:

“In novels by Dan Simmons, the planet Hyperion has a capital named for this poet who wrote an epic about the sun god Hyperion.”

 

She knew that it was Keats, doubled her score and went up to $2800. She maintained her lead throughout the round and finished with 7000 points to Amy’s 3800 and Mattea’s 3600.

Double Jeopardy began with Mattea finding the first Daily Double on the first clue in DOWN IN THE VALLEY. They bet everything with a chance to take the lead and the clue was filled with irony:

“This valley a bit over 100 miles from Pittsburgh gets its name from ‘one mountain’ in a Native American language.” Mattea paused a long time before guessing: “What is Susquehanna?” It was the Nittany Valley.

Mattea said after losing everything: “I needed Victoria to beam me a response. The next set of clues didn’t go well for anybody. When Victoria found the other Daily Double in PREHISTORIC CREATURES, she had 11,400 to Amy’s 4200. Mattea was still at zero.

Victoria responded: “I think based on the rest of the category I want no part of this. I’ll bet 5 points.” “Therapods ate flesh; these giants such as apatosaurus and australotitan ate plants like giraffes do.” She knew it was sauropods and gained all of five points.

 Essentially Double Jeopardy ended with everything where it was at the start. Victoria locked up the game with 21,005, Amy was next with 7800 and Mattea finished with 2800. Mattea’s response for Final Jeopardy (which I’ll get to) summed it up: “What an anticlimactic end to the quarters! Congrats Amy)

I could pass over the Final altogether since none of the players bet anything but for the record, here it is:

The category was SHORT STORIES: “Down – steadily down it crept – downward with its lateral velocity. To the right – to the left” is in this 1842 tale.” No one knew the correct response: “What is The Pit and the Pendulum?” For the record Amy and Victoria both knew it was an Edgar Allan Poe story but Amy thought it was ‘The Gold Bug’ and Victoria thought it was ‘The Tell-Tale Heart?” It didn’t matter in the results. Victoria won and got 3 match points, but more importantly Amy’s second place finish broke her tie with Mattea and put her into the semi-finals as well.

Mattea had fought nobly but ended up going home in fifth place with $75,000. Last year’s second and third place finishers are the first to go home this year. One assumes we will see them in the next Jeopardy Invitational Tournament.

 

 

 

 

FINAL LEADERBOARD

Victoria Groce: 16 Match Points

Yogesh Raut: 10 Match Points

James Holzhauer: 9 Match Points

Amy Schneider: 6 Match Points

Mattea Roach 5 Match Points (Eliminated)

Matt Amodio 2 Match Points (Eliminated)

 

Takeaways From Quarterfinals

 

 *Matt is the only player in this year’s Masters who got every single Final Jeopardy correct to this point and Victoria has gotten the fewest correct Final Jeopardys with two. Yet Matt is going to finish in last place and Victoria finished first.

*Yogesh played brilliantly in the first three matches of the quarterfinals and has been performing with diminishing returns in the last three. While two of his first three wins were routs, in his last two games he played increasingly poorly compared to players he had trounced in his first three matches.

*Apparently losing the first game has humbled James Holzhauer slightly or maybe because his lack of dominance in this tournament has forced him to modify his approach to Final Jeopardy. Whatever the reason ‘the final boss’ didn’t write a single joke in any of his Final Jeopardy responses in the quarterfinals. Taking Final Jeopardy seriously works for him: he managed to get four of the six correct responses, tied with Amy for second for correct Final Jeopardys. Yogesh and Mattea are next with three apiece and Victoria, as I mentioned has only gotten two correct.

*Victoria went into all six of her games and finished in first place, the same as James did in last year’s Masters (save for his second appearance) in which he was tied with Matt for the lead) Four of her victories were runaway games. However while she was taking Final Jeopardy more seriously than he was last year her luck was only slightly better than his in Final Jeopardy, she only got two correct responses. (James got none in the quarterfinals but in four of his matches he was so far ahead he wrote joke responses. He didn’t get the three he tried to answer seriously correctly.)

*Even though there was one fewer quarterfinal match then last year, here’s a comparison between three of the previous attendees in regard to Final Jeopardy in the quarterfinals then and now (excluding James):

Amy got five Final Jeopardys right in 2023 and four correct in 2024.

Matt only got two correct Final Jeopardies (he wasn’t present for one of the matches) and six this year.

Mattea got four correct responses in Final Jeopardy last year and three this year.

The major difference was that Matt and Mattea managed to win when it counted and were frequently in the lead at the end of their games. Amy was never in the lead in any of her seven matches last year.

Well we know going in were in for a different set of Masters than last year as only one of the players who made it to the semi-finals last year will be around for this one. How will the semis turn out as all four players compete in four games that will have every single possible combination of three players? Last year James, who had cruised to victory in all but one of his quarterfinals, had a much harder fight in all three matches he appeared in, even though he managed to win all three games. He’s already lost three times to Victoria and Yogesh already.

Could the self-proclaimed Final Boss not even make it to the semi-finals? And how many of the two newcomers to this year’s Masters will end up competing in the finals? At least one will. Will both Yogesh and Victoria manage it?

And can Amy complete her complicated redemption arc by making it all the way to the finals this year? She’s already redeemed herself for last year’s performance; can she make it all the way in?

We’ll start finding out tomorrow. I’ll be back on Tuesday with all the details.

Requiem for the Cancelled TV Shows Of 2024 I Will Mourn The Most

 

 

One of those things you never get used to, either as a TV fan or critic, is how many of the series you love when a season starts will not survive it. I’ve been dealing with these kinds of departures my entire history as a fan, from 1998 when Cupid was cancelled to late 2023 when Cruel Summer and Single Drunk Female were cut down in their prime, and it hasn’t gotten any easier from when I was a teenager.

I’ve mentioned in the past that the problems with so many critics is that they view TV as an art rather than the business it is. That is the reason so many so called intelligent critics are mourning that the Golden Age of television is now officially over, something I dispute. What these critics all seem to have forgotten is that the very thing that allowed the Golden Age to last – the fragmentation of the audience – was never going to be a sustainable business model for an extended period. This was true for every source that provided it, from cable to streaming, but the area that’s felt the greatest loss has been network television.

Those who have marveled at so many of the classic comedies on network TV over the 2010s in particular have forgotten something very critical: how few people were watching them. Series such as Parks and Rec and 30 Rock would never have been able to survive even one season, much less seven, even in the 2000s when the network’s share of the market was still sizable. But as the network numbers grew smaller across the board, these shows survived not because of the critical love but rather because they were one of the few shows with a loyal audience. Brooklyn Nine-Nine wasn’t cancelled by Fox and reclaimed by NBC because the executives on the former network were idiots and the latter smarter; it’s because Fox could no longer afford to keep it on the air and operate at a loss. I think the only reason NBC purchased was because of its own financial peril: it needed something that was a proven success.

As much as the recent strikes among the creative guilds last year were based on the idea that the studios were hoarding money from them, the reality is that almost all of them were running at a loss. This is verified by the fact of the many entertainment mergers and the fact that several cable stations part of those conglomerates have stopped airing original programming: they have to pick and choose where to put their money.  The fact that there are far too many shows airing on television didn’t help; Jon Landgraf was right when he said there were far too many shows to follow. That is going to mean that there will be fewer shows in the years to come.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing, honestly: I’ve struggled for over a decade to even follow a tenth of the major shows on TV and as my followers were note, much of my reviews of award winning series involves a lot of selective decision making.  Having fewer shows may be judged harshly by those who’ve thought there was always something great on, but it’s a better business model for networks and long term I think it might be better for the audiences who’ve never been able to keep up. But we have to accept that going forward that what we’ve long considered the great thing about TV – that series keep getting renewed without a second thought – will become more of a scarcity. And we have to accept that the shows we come to love will be surviving less and less.

This brings me to the point of this article. The 2024 season for television is now on the verge of its conclusion, at least for the purposes of the Emmys. May 31^st is the deadline for Emmy consideration and it also marks the period when network television decides, to put it bluntly, what lives and what will die. (To be fair the pruning has started far earlier in most cases, as I’ll explain later.)

Because of the strike most networks aired very few new series this season, and all of them are coming back for a second one. But several shows that had been renewed for a second year and have been on the bubble have been cancelled and some of them cut me deeper than others.

I have to say that, when it comes to network television, it is almost always the series that get cancelled after two seasons where I feel the loss more than some others. Don’t get me wrong: last year when The Company You Keep and Alaska Daily got cancelled in May, it stung at a level I’m still not over yet and I have a long list of series that lasted for a year whose cancelation I’m still getting over years and even decades after the fact. (A part of me is still mourning the loss of The Chicago Code and Awake.) But for whatever reason for more than a quarter of a century of viewing, it’s those series removed after their sophomore season where I feel the sting the most. I felt it with Sports Night, it hurt with Joan Of Arcadia, and I know I’m hardly alone in mourning Pushing Daisies given all of the love for it shown on the net more than fifteen years after it was cancelled.

I wrote quite a bit about the effects of the 2007-2008 strike on network TV and I expected a similar result. But this time it played out differently, at least with the three series I’m about to mention. All of them had premiered in the 2022-2023 season and had managed to air their seasons before the strike so trying to call them victims of it is probably unfair. It is more likely due to the precarious financial state of the TV industry these days – which again, the five month strike did nothing to help. (Yes, I will keep beating that horse because everybody needs to be reminded of it.

The first show to be cancelled was the reboot of Quantum Leap. It’s hard to know what the ratings for the series were during the 2023-2024 season, and it was always on the bubble during the first season. And the network was more than willing to give life to the only two series of 2023: The Irrational and Found and they will be starting what is essentially a clean slate next year.

Still I find much of this at the core striking because of NBC’s devotion to all things Dick Wolf. It has already been pointed out that the Organized Crime franchise of Law & Order is moving to Peacock but Quantum Leap isn’t. This fact speaks volumes about how little NBC seems to want to do to irritate the man who is single-handedly propping up two whole nights of their programming and how unwilling they seem to be keeping with other franchises. The reboot of Magnum P.I., which the network saved from CBS only to cancel during the strike also shows that their priorities have been skewed.

Admittedly for me to be speaking out for the continuation of a reboot would seem to go against my normal pitching for creativity but it speaks to a problem networks have when it comes to doing anything imaginative with the formula. Both Quantum Leap and ABC’s reinvention of The Wonder Years are frankly the only versions of this I have seen and enjoyed over the last five years and I’m struck by the fact that they are now gone. I don’t know what the future of the reboot is, but this is not a promising sign.

Slightly less surprising but no less painful was the cancellation of Not Dead Yet earlier this week. I’ve raved about this show for two straight seasons, calling it one of the funniest network comedies on the air. As it moved further away from the gimmick it became something both more funny and more human as all of the characters – not just Nell – began to have to deal with new challenges. Sam  had to deal with the collapse of her marriage and facing a new life. Dennis dealt with becoming a parent and showing his signs of his talent. But I was struck the most by the wonderful work of Rick Glasman and Lauren Ash as Edward and Lexi, who had become my favorite couple on television as I’ve never seen two people more suited to each other romantically in a long time.

Ash was particularly moving in what was the series finale as she had to deal with the possibility of the death of her father (Brad Garrett). She spent the season doing everything to focus on making the hospital serviceable for a gathering that would be fitting for her father, rather than deal with his mortality.  Lauren Ash gave one of the most remarkable performances over the course of this season and I truly hope that she, as well as Gina Rodriguez, receive Emmy nominations for their work.

I’m going to miss this show even if more people won’t: this series had the right mix of humor and sadness that has been lacking in network TV.

The most surprising loss was So Help Me Todd. In the case of this show, it was the victim of the fact that CBS is the most successful of the networks and therefore has a higher standard to meet that the others. Still, it hit me very hard because this was the kind of series I thought network TV needed more of.

At this point network TV is drowning in procedurals that are ridiculously, horribly serious and repetitive and endlessly formulaic. So Help Me Todd was formulaic but it was also wonderfully, joyfully fun. (Indeed, it took me a long time to realize why it had been classified as a comedy rather than a drama.) The series also featured two impossibly lovable protagonists played by the incomparable Marcia Gay Harden and Skylar Astin. Apart, they were joyful. Every time they shared the screen, it was pure joy.

When the series cancellation was announced last month, I continued to DVR every episode but I have yet to watch them. That is how painful the loss of this show has been to me: I’m afraid to say goodbye to it. The fact that it ended so suddenly that the writers never had a chance to wrap it up is appalling; the fact that it has no future on streaming even more. I could argue that Todd really deserves help from some streaming service but that would be low hanging fruit (the kind Todd himself would love to take)

I can, however, take comfort in the fact that its spiritual heir Elsbeth was renewed for a second season and I can hope that there will be other series to take up the mantel that Todd laid down. I truly think series like that are the hope for the evolution of TV’s Golden Age going forward.

In any case the Astra (formerly HCA TV Awards) will be giving its nominations in the next month. Last year they were generous to Quantum Leap and Not Dead Yet in the nominations for network drama and comedy, respectively. I hope that they will do the same this year and that they might show some love to So Help Me Todd going forward. I would love it if the Emmys did the same, but I’m a realist. Recognition here would be the best way to honor these series that are gone too soon.

Underrated Series: Alias

In the summer of 2004 when I was in the very early stages of my career as a critic I penned an infuriated letter to the executives at ABC when I heard that Alias, then one of my favorite shows, was not going to premier that fall but be held back until the following January.

Paradoxically my letter was a missive that looks horrible in retrospect but was prophetic at the time. I expressed my fury of the executives horrible habits of deciding to put Who Wants to Be A Millionaire first for the last three years (a horrible flaw) and its decision to become the grim reaper when it came to cancelling anything that might be a promising TV series. Among the shows whose loss had cut me the deepest were Gideon’s Crossing, Sports Night and Once & Again, all series that had received multiple award nominations and wins in their runs and all of which ABC had cancelled by 2002. I told them point blank that if they thought whatever they put in Alias’  time slot of Sunday nights at 9 pm would never be capable of filling the void this series had managed to pull with its loyal fanbase for three seasons.

The latter statement, if you remember your TV history, was as ridiculous  a prediction as the studio executive who turned down Gone With The Wind because ‘no one would come out to see a Civil War picture.” Indeed in September I was of the more than 25 million viewers who tuned into watch Desperate Housewives (and I stuck with it far longer than I should have) That show, along with such cultural phenomena as Lost and Grey’s Anatomy would reverse ABC’s flagging fortunes and make it the source for both critically acclaimed and popular hits on network TV until the end of the decade.

I didn’t know until years later that, in fact, the heads of ABC had lost confidence in the head of programming Lloyd Braun had lost confidence in him and before the fall season would fire him because they essentially agreed with his stewardship of the network. One of the last shows he helped design Lost was only greenlit after he had been fired, and he never got to enjoy the fruits of his labor.

In hindsight I don’t know why I was so angry: Alias’ Season 4 premiere had only been delayed and in the year’s to come I would have no problem having to wait months and even years between seasons for some of my favorite shows. Part of it may have been due to my relative youth (I was only 25 at the time) but I think much of it was due to how big a fan I was of the show at the time and how upsetting even a brief was.

Alias was one of those series that had an immense cult following at the time and was part of the zeitgeist for awhile but has never been mentioned when it comes to one of the great shows ever made. I’ll acknowledge compared to most of the TV series we were getting in the 2000s when the Golden Age was starting out, it may not be at the same level of Deadwood or The Shield or even 24 and Lost.  It was never nominated for Best Drama by the Emmys  (admittedly given the level of competition in that era it would have incredibly hard to break through) but it won four and received 36 nominations over five seasons. The lion’s share were technical ones but Jennifer Garner received four consecutive nominations for Best Actress in a Drama and Victor Garber received three consecutive ones for Best Supporting Actor. Neither managed a win but again, in an era where West Wing and The Sopranos were among the most dominant winners in these category and Six Feet Under was getting much of the remaining acting nominations, it’s kind of astonishing that either was able to break through at all.

It’s worth noting that during this period The Golden Globes was more often better at recognizing great television than the Emmys would be. In 2002, we got a very clear sense of this. Among the six nominated series for Best Drama were Alias, 24, The Sopranos, CSI, Six Feet Under and The West Wing. Kiefer Sutherland took Best Actor and Jennifer Garner took Best Actress. The major winner in the Drama category was Six Feet Under which took Best Drama and Best Supporting Actress for Rachel Griffiths. When you add the fact that Lauren Graham was nominated for Gilmore Girls, Tom Cavanaugh was nominated for Ed, neither of whom were ever nominated for anything by the Emmys, it pretty clear the Globes had a better handle on great TV that year than the Emmys did. (It would take two or three years for the Emmys to catch up with the rest of the world.)

And the series was immensely popular: that year it won the People’s Choice Award for Favorite New TV drama and was among the constant nominees for the Teen Choice Awards. Its fight scenes, hairstyling and makeup were highly celebrated at the time. And compared to other series of the era, such as its spiritual soul mate 24, it holds up much better. Yet if it is remembered today, it is either as a stepping stone for both Garner and its showrunner J.J. Abrams or an ancestor text for series like Lost. Why?

Is it because the series aired on network television rather than cable? Possibly but that didn’t stop people from calling Lost and 24 great television. Is it because the show was centered on a female lead? I can’t rule it out. I think the reasoning may be that it didn’t fit between the two worlds of episodic TV or serialized drama, what television has essentially become, but rather somewhere between the two. But if anything that’s exactly why I loved Alias. Like The X-Files Alias had an underlying mythology under it but it was sensible enough to make it front and center for the series. Indeed there were entire seasons of the show where it basically was ignored for a long period of time and I didn’t feel the show suffered for it. More importantly the mythology of the series was not something abstract the way The X-Files always seem to keep it but rather something that was critical to the lead characters and eventually came down to something far more simple that whatever the morass of alien colonization was.

In a way Alias was even more revolutionary than many of the series that were already airing on TV at the time and was more willing to take risks that network shows had before and even cable wasn’t quite doing. More importantly Abrams and his writers made it clear from the pilot to the final episode that the show was never really about a double agent who could kick ass or some nebulous sixteenth century Italian who’d seemed able to see the future – it was about the kind of relationships we building and the friendship and love we find along the way. Considering how few shows since have ever wanted to embrace the lighter part of our natures, maybe that’s the reason its never been part of the great shows.

So in this article I will do my best to explain what made Alias such a groundbreaking and revolutionary series. The series can be found streaming on Amazon and I do urge the viewer to check it out. I will speak in vague terms for much of the summary but there will be some spoilers along the way.

Alias opened in media res – with a woman wearing an orange wig that looked out of the film Run Lola Run running down an alley being chased by pursuers. This would become a foundation of Alias and something that Abrams did better than almost any other writer: he would start his stories near the end and show you how Sydney got there.

The episode begins with Sydney leaving her job at Credit Dauphine and being proposed to by her boyfriend. She has just completed her ‘internship’ and is not long out of college. Sydney is stunned, but not in a good way. That night she and her boyfriend go into the shower and she tells him that she doesn’t work for the bank but an agency called SD-6 – a secret organization that works with the CIA. Her boyfriend is appalled – and the next day he is dead. 

Horrified Sydney goes to Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin) the man who recruited her out of college. He gently tells her that there were signs he was a security risk. Not long after she runs into a young man named Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan).

Vaughn tells her that SD-6 is not the CIA. In fact, it is a rogue agency that is involved in what amounts to black-ops that are bent on global destruction and working with terrorists. Vaughn recruits her to work as a double agent to help bring down SD-6. He will serve as her handler – as well as with another man who is also high up in the SD-6 hierarchy. The opening credits make it clear that this is “a man I hardly know. My father.”

Victor Garber had been a character actor working mostly in Broadway with TV guest roles to this point. His most famous role to this point had been the architect on Titanic. His work on Alias would change the trajectory of his career. Ever since he appeared on Alias he has been one of the hardest working actors in TV. He was the lead on the fox series Justice and then a regular role on the underrated Eli Stone. He had a recurring role on the final season of Damages and was a regular on Lisa Kudrow’s Showtime series Web Therapy. Then he ended up getting a small role on The Flash and ended up spending the first two and a half seasons on Legends of Tomorrow as Martin Stein, half of a genuine superhero. He has worked on both the first and second books of Power and is currently the lead on Family Law.

What is striking about Garber’s work is that while he is frequently cast in the role of paternal figures on TV most of his characters are rarely paternal or even warm. This is particularly true in that of Jack Bristow. He and Sydney have been distant their whole lives and before the pilot, its been clear that Sydney has leaned more on Sloane as a father figure that her actual father. When she learns not only that her father has been working with SD-6 but will now be part of the job to bring it down, it’s the biggest shock yet. “I guess we’ll just have to learn to trust each other,” he tells her awkwardly.

The relationship between Sydney and Jack will be the heart of the show. In the first season the biggest problem is the two of them are trying to work through their baggage and it is becoming very difficult. It doesn’t help that halfway through the first season Vaughn, who has been treating Jack hostilely all this time, tells Sydney that he believes that Jack was working for the Russians and that he was responsible for killing many people – including Vaughn’s father. Sydney confronts him on this and they have a public meeting. In it Jack drops an even bigger bomb: he was suspecting of passing on information to the Russians but he wasn’t – Sydney’s mother, Laura was.

At this point Sydney actually wants to resign from the whole mess – its clear early on how big a project she’s embarked on and she doesn’t think there’s an end. It’s only when     SD-6 ends up being infiltrated and held hostage by a group of terrorists (one of whom is played by Quentin Tarantino) that she and her father have to work together to ‘save SD-6’ something that galls her even more. Sydney will find out that these agents are working for someone Tarantino’s character calls ‘The Man’ and that is actually a front for Sydney’s mother, Irina Derevko.

To say that Sydney Bristow has a complicated family tree is the understatement of the year: Irina (played by Lena Olin in a role that earned her an Emmy nomination) is just the first of two Derevko sisters, each played by a brilliant actress of a certain age: Isabella Rosellini and Sonia Braga. (I will leave the roles they play in the series for you to discover because it take a lot of work.) At one point Sydney will be on a mission with Jack and Irina and find herself appalled to realized that this is the kind of family bonding experience she’s wanted her whole life.

There were many things that made Alias different from other dramas and that was that it was fun. You tuned in week-after-week to see Sydney wearing a wide variety of wigs and makeup and walking through foreign countries wearing fabulous dresses that disguised the kind of gadgets that Q wishes he  could have come up with. Sydney was fluent in almost every possible language and capable of playing someone ditzy in all of them, and the moment you underestimated her she would very soundly and proficiently kick that person’s ass. It was rare to see any network show in 2001 with a female lead, much less one who week after week was rescuing people from danger and almost never needing rescuing. Sydney was a spiritual heir of Xena and Buffy Summers when it came to bad-ass behavior but she was also unquestionably an action hero without as much of the moral ambiguity that her male counterpart on network TV Jack Bauer had. (I remember TV Guide once ranked them number 3 and number 2 when it came to action heroes behind Buffy and even twenty years later there have been few substitutes for any of them.)  This was the age of Difficult Men and Sydney Bristow was technically a difficult woman, but you never had any of the doubts you did about rooting for then you did Tony Soprano or Walter White.

And it made clear from the start Sydney was not a lone wolf. One of the most beloved characters in the history of television was Marshall Flinkman, played gloriously for five seasons by Kevin Weisman. Marshal was short, geeky and clearly a fanboy not only of Sydney but his own work. He was clearly a predecessor of Chloe O’Brien on 24 (Mary Lynn Raskjub character didn’t debut on the series until the third season) but whereas Chloe was socially awkward but ridiculously proficient at tech support, Marshall was in a real sense a clown. Much of the comic relief came from him introducing his inventions but you knew Sydney loved him as much as everyone else. He was also at times terrified (justifiably) of Sloane and had, like Chloe, the remarkable ability to say the wrong thing in front of the wrong people. There was never a moment you didn’t love him.

The show also leaned very heavily in the first two seasons on Sydney’s roommates and friends. The first was Will Tippin, played by a very young Bradley Cooper. Even at this age you could tell he had the capability to be a leading man and action hero in his own right. AN enterprising journalist he spent much of Season 1 tracking down a story of SD-6 – something that nearly got him killed, multiple times.

Just as important was Francie, played by Merrin Dungey. Francie was Sydney’s roommate and one of the few people who was completely unaware of the double life Sydney led. That made what happened in a very critical episode all the more devastating

After the Super Bowl in 2003, ABC aired an episode called ‘Phase One’. Sloane had disappeared and was no longer running SD-6. A man named Antony Geiger, played by Rutger Hauer had taken over and was trying to find the mole behind what was happening. Jack, already the focus, ended up in the interrogation room and Geiger planned to torture him to death.

Desperate to save her father while SD-6 was in lockdown Sydney broke her cover to her colleague Marcus Dixon (Carl Lumbly) Before he had time to reel both from the revelation Sydney told him to call in the CIA to come in and take SD-6 hostage. The head of the FBI finally agrees to the signal. Just before Jack Bristow is about to be killed, the FBI breaks the door down and starts tearing down the prisoners.

I remember being astonished by every moment of this episode and twenty plus years later, it ranks as one of the great moments in TV history. For all the changes that networks like HBO and FX were doing, most of them were in terms of violence and character death. The Wire had not yet aired its second season, so the idea of a show completely changing its format was unheard of it – and certainly in such in a dramatic way. The idea of a network TV drama doing this was absolutely unthinkable in 2003. But over the years Alias would not only do so multiple times but each time manage to stick the landing with every transition they made. (I’ll get to another of the more famous ones in a moment.) I don’t think I remember a transition this radical in a network show until the Season 3 finale of Lost. These days there are many shows that make these kinds of transitions on a yearly basis but few have a compelling aftermath (Be honest with yourselves, Westworld fans.)

The final images of the episode are among the most famous in TV history: Michael Vaughn running through the wreckage of SD-6 searching for Sydney, the two of them running to each other – and kissing for the first time. (At the time, Vartan and Garner were romantically  involved so the chemistry was doubly apparent) This too was a big deal in 2003; if there was a couple with chemistry in the early part of a series you waited until the end for it to acknowledge.

Even more telling is the final shot. Francie Calfo, Sydney roommate, is lying dead with a bullet between her eyes. Standing over her is…Francie, who we will soon learn is a mole placed by Sloane.

You wouldn’t think Season 2 could top that – but the season finale ‘The Telling’  did. After a whirlwind of revelations Sydney learns that the woman she’s been sharing her apartment with is not Francie and the two of them engage in a fight. Sydney shoots the woman she thinks is her best friend twice in the chest and she goes down. Sydney passes out in exhaustion.

She wakes up in Tokyo and finds herself calling her old contact number. There’s a long pause. Later Vaughn shows up and there’s a shocked look on his face. After she hugs him, she sees that there’s a wedding bad on his hand. “Are you married?” she asks. “Sydney,” he tells her slowly. “You’ve been gone two years.” TV Guide named this one of the top 100 episodes in 2009 and its power never fades.

I have not even begun to hint at so many of the great performers that were part of Alias over the years. Terry O’Quinn had a recurring role for the first two seasons that was the stepping stone for him earning the role of John Locke. Gina Torres had a role as a rival assassin to Sydney who was just as bad ass as her and who every time she slipped from Sydney’s grasp would kiss the wall. Brilliant character actresses such as Melissa George and Amy Acker had one season roles that started them on a long career in television (though in Acker’s case, it was the second in the long line of waif like psychos she seems to have an uncanny gift for playing). And one of the great long running villains of all-time was Julian Sarks, played by the wondrously slimy David Anders. Bringing him in as the cat who always came back was a great move for the series because you knew we could never trust him and that someone was going to have to trust him anyway. Sark’s loyalties were always to himself first and foremost, and in a series where everything else’s loyalties were flexible, that was almost endearing.

I could also talk about the mythology of the series that was the underpinning of the series: involving a mysterious sixteenth century inventor named Milo Rimbaldi who somehow seemed not only to have seen the future but knew that Sydney was at the center of it. That part, however, I will leave for the viewer to find out and discover. It’s worth noting that, compared to so many other series where the mythology was often ridiculously convoluted,  down at its core what it was all about was something remarkably simple and understandable. When the series finale aired I got why so many people had spent their lives searching for Rimbaldi artifacts.

But as much fun as it was, the reason I kept watching Alias over the year may be the reason it never gets listed as one of the greatest shows of all time. The show wasn’t about some complicated mythology or covert terrorist organizations – it was about love in all its forms. In some cases it was friendship, such as the kind that Sydney had with Dixon and Marshall all their lives. It was also about the love you have for your spouse and how it can cause you to do horrible things.

 Early in the series we meet Sloane’s wife (Amy Irving) Emily. She is suffering from cancer that might very well kill her and Sloane spends much of the first season trying to protect her from the job. He leaves SD-6 to escape from her and live in peace with his wife, who he clear is devoted to. But because of a horrible twist of fate, Emily ends up dead and Sloane is broken in a way we don’t believe possible.

In the fourth season Jack, in a case of a hallucination mistakes Sydney for Laura, not Irina. In order to try and learn secrets, Sydney impersonates her mother in order to extract information from him. She expects it to be difficult but Jack actually tells her without a second thought. He is happier and freer in the past that when we’ve ever seen him in the present and it explains multitudes, not only how deeply Irina’s betrayal cut him but why he has been so distant from Sydney throughout her childhood and until the present. There’s something profoundly moving about that.

And it is the relationship between Sydney and Jack that is what makes Alias sing. Considering that the next series Abrams was connected with Lost dealt with the fact that so many of the character had issues with their parents, it may not be surprising that it’s a theme of Alias. But the former show is more optimistic that these wounds can be healed no matter how much trauma you learn over time.

Alias came to an end in the spring of 2006. Whether it was because of Jennifer Garner’s pregnancy and impending superstardom or because Abrams wanted to wrap up the series may never be known. But either the way the final season played out superbly in a way that few final seasons have since then. There is an acknowledgement of some of the larger conspiracies and some newer characters, but the themes are still the same: Sydney’s relationships with her family, saying goodbye to old friends, and putting so much of her baggage behind her. The final episode ends with the credit: “Thank you for five amazing years” and my response to J.J. was: “No, thank you.”

In an era where every single show is getting rebooted or new seasons, I find it strange that no one has yet suggested a new version of Alias. Garner has been working in TV again and no one can pretend she doesn’t look good for her age. And if you remember the series finale, you know that while a lot of doors were closed, there were still a few that were open-ended.

I’m not the kind of person to normally ask for a reboot or a continuation. Yet I don’t think I’d be alone for objecting to another season of Alias. Even in an era where there are more female led dramas and more series capable of changing the game on a seasonal basis, there are still few series that did it as well as Alias and fewer still with a heroine like Sydney Bristow. I’ve had my fill of dark and angsty dramas. I’d like one that’s just fun again.

Bill Maher's Biggest Problems Isn't His Politics Are Out of Touch. It's That His Comedy Always Has Been

 

I’ve been giving Bill Maher a lot more benefit of the doubt in many of my recent articles when it comes to certain aspects of his political views. Much of that has to do more to my own evolution on politics than any changes in Maher’s viewpoints. That doesn’t change the fact that my original thesis statement on Maher, which made as long ago as the spring of 2020 has never changed.

I wanted to be fair to Maher so I wanted to try and do this in a way that separating his politics from his comedy. That may very well be impossible considering how Maher’s entire career has been in political comedy. However in recent months I have finally managed to put my finger on what may very well be the fundamental flaws in not only Maher’s act as a standup – which I have viewed for more than thirty years – but also how he is an outlier in so much of how late night comedy has worked. And surprisingly, when I put this together with other aspects of Maher’s political identity I have sympathy for him that I didn’t think possible before. But we’ll get to that last.

As I’ve written numerous times I’ve spent a lot of time watching late night comedy over the years and its not until recently that I’ve put my finger on what make Maher’s shows, first Politically Incorrect and then Real Time, so different from everything else that I’ve seen on late night in thirty years.

Jay Leno and David Letterman spent much of their time on the Tonight Show and Late Night putting audience participation and interacting with sidekicks. Conan O’Brien continued this trend with Andy Richter throughout three different shows. Jon Stewart, when he took over The Daily Show, not only made it more political but made his writers part of the act to a greater degree and many of his correspondents, from  Samantha Bee to Larry Wilmore to Jordan Klepper found late night success much of which involved the participation of the writers in their shows.

When Maher moved to HBO and late night evolved most of the hosts such as Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert also involved guest stars participating in many of their bits as well as recurring performers. The Colbert Report frequently used SNL’s Tim Meadows as an African-American Republican, for example. Jimmy Fallon would interact both with his bandleader and guests on both Late Night and when he took over The Tonight Show. Seth Meyers would make writers like Amber Ruffin stars in their own right with their participation. James Corden famously talked to his band and his writers.

Maher by contrast has  devoted almost all of his major bits of his show in solitude. From the monologue to New Rules, there have been almost no occasions when anyone else is allowed to have the spotlight on his shows then him. He engages in interviews and panel discussions to be sure, but over time they have increasingly taking on a pedantic and lecturing tone, unlike the ones we have seen everywhere else on Late Night.  Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert talk with their political guests; Maher talks down to them, regardless of their political affiliation, gender or race.

Almost everyone else who has done work in late night in some point is willing to make some transitions in their act or approach with either the changing of the times or when they find things that don’t work. Real Time is essentially still the same show it was when it debuted more than 20 years ago but, as I’ve mentioned in other articles, it’s become less inclusive and unwilling to change.

But that’s fitting keeping with Maher’s act overall which also hasn’t changed in 30 years. And if today’s young viewers think Maher is out of touch with the average person today, I need to be clear that was true even when he was becoming a breakout comic in the 1990s. This isn’t a matter of Maher’s material aging badly – it’s obvious now how deliberately offensive a title like Politically Incorrect is – it’s that even in the 1990s, his schtick was at least twenty years out of date. And I know this because even as a sixteen year old watching his comedy specials on Comedy Central, I knew that his comedy was dated and out of touch.

People who claim today that Maher is a dinosaur because he is a misogynist and a homophobe don’t understand that’s exactly how he was thirty years ago. Even before the term like incel and red pill were even in the imaginations of Americans (even before The Matrix premiered, in fact) that was the kind of comedy Maher preached. Maher managed to get away with in the 1990s because many of the best comedians of that era were white males. The problem is, if you compare his comedy not only to active legends such as George Carlin and Bill Hicks but such lesser and still entertaining comedians like Bobby Slayton and Richard Jeni, there was something off. There was some kind of cheerfulness in Carlin and Hicks and a self-deprecation in men like Slayton and Jeni.

 Maher, by contrast, started out arrogant and smug and has never stopped leaning into it. And from the start of his act, you could tell he was a misogynist. I remember when he referred to Thomas’ confirmation to Dynasty and said: “I didn’t know who to believe. They were both such great actors!”  Now he never thought Thomas belonged on the Supreme Court but only because he thought he was unqualified. Apparently sexually assaulting Anita Hill was not a disqualifier in his eyes.

This was clear in his decision to defend the accusations against Bill Clinton, first by Paula Jones and later Monica Lewinsky. It was clear in one of his bits on the former that he found Jones description of how Clinton had dropped his pants in front of her without consent as not only amusing but kind of admirable. He made jokes that the reason the world was angry at Clinton was not that he was a sexual predator but because he was married. “We should have a bachelor President. Then we’d root for him to score!” was one of his jokes in a 1995 special.

This has been part of one of the most troubling trends in Maher’s comedy: he has never believed a woman who accuses a man of sexual assault. All of the reasons a woman might have for not being willing to come forward are in his mind excuses or exaggerations. As far as he was concerned Al Franken got a raw deal and he believes that the greatest crime happened when Woody Allen couldn’t make movies any more. No seriously he said he didn’t believe the recent Allen Vs. Farrow documentary “because it only had Farrow’s side.” Allen, for the record, declined to participate in the documentary despite multiple requests. I imagine even if Maher knew that he’d excuse him.

Maher’s act as early as the 1990s was that the problem with society was both the ‘feminization’ of it and the fact that he believed therapy was a racket. He famously made a joke that:

 

“Thirty years ago if you did something bad you’d go to your priest and he’d say: “Schmuck!” And you’d feel better. And the therapist doesn’t do that. He wants you to come back. The priest isn’t in it for the money. Just the kids.”

 

And to be clear Maher was opposed to organized religion even then.

He held this truth to even greater extremes when it came to alcoholism and drug addiction. I’ve never forgotten, much as I want to a line in that same routine:

“Alcoholism is sad, but drunks are funny. You argue about the lives destroyed. What about Dudley Moore? What about Foster Brooks?”

 

He is commenting on Moore’s most famous role as Arthur and Brooks, who was a comedian who took on a drunk act for years and was basically retired when Maher was performing. This speaks to another theme for Maher: the worst thing that a problem with society can do is interfere with a man’s ability to earn his living. It’s like arguing that the Soviet Union was a terrible place for liberty but it kept Yakov Smirnoff employed.

Even his views on alcoholism as a problem were dismissive:

 

“It’s a disease. Who wouldn’t want to get stewed at 3 in the afternoon?

 

That’s not what real alcoholics go through, of course, or for that matter drug addicts. But that doesn’t bother him either:

 

“I know drugs are a problem, but they haven’t exactly hurt my record collection.”

 

That’s the kind of empathy towards societal issues Maher has shown his entire life as well as the kind of blinding insights he thinks he’s capable of.

Maher’s attitude, even in the 1990s, was that he was the most bizarre kind of grievance comedian. His grievance was that everyone else had too many problems and his alone were the ones that mattered. That he was a white, cis male leads to a conflict of an interest that was obvious to me even twenty years ago.

And he always had contradictions that were within his own self-stated philosophy. Maher has spent his life claiming that he is a libertarian where the philosophy is, you can do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t bother anyone else. But that blatantly contradicts New Rules where he lectures the world on all the things that bother him. His libertarianism seems to be I should be able to do and say whatever I want, and everyone else should stop complaining.

I’ve written in several of my political articles that, like Maher, I have major issues with how the left not only views America but how determined they are to get their agenda completed no matter how impossible it may be or how many people it pushes away. But where I differ from Maher is that I acknowledge that the lion’s share of the grievances that most of the coalition have are legitimate and that many of them have faced bigotry and persecution for having these views. Maher only sees them through his own lens, either because he is incapable of it or because of his own implacable view of the world. His attitude, most notably to the transgender community but to basically so many of the minority coalitions, has been to shut up, you’re bothering the rest of us. He basically thinks if you are suffering from prejudice or trauma from the world, keep it to yourself.

And for a man who believes everyone else is complaining too much and acknowledges that the world is a terrible place, he takes a dim view of all the approaches that people might do to feel better. It’s not just things like religion and therapy he thinks are rackets but he’s been screaming at everything Hollywood has put out for decades. Not just the comic book movies, which he insists led to the rise of Trump, but also the serious movies that come out for Oscars. He thinks social media is a waste of time (I’m with him there) but he’s never really liked sports or most other relaxation. Indeed, I could give a long list of what Maher’s hates but after thirty years, aside from marijuana being legal, I don’t think he likes anything.

Or, for that matter, anybody. Maher has famously been both anti-marriage and anti-children in his act and has never had any long-term relationships. He has no family I know of and I don’t know of any friends. He has always been vituperative to the industry that has been so good to him and he’s even held his fellow late night colleagues with scorn. He famously excoriated Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart for their march involving unity in 2010 and his attack on the overweight so outraged James Corden that Corden called him out in the media. Even the people he invites on his show he barely seems to tolerate. He only treats his studio audience with something resembling respect and maybe its only because he doesn’t think he can afford to isolate them.

But all of that actually brings me to the reason I feel sympathy for him. Maher has proudly called himself an atheist his entire life. But he’s also getting older which means he has to be considering his mortality. And if you don’t believe in an afterlife, which Maher says he doesn’t, then he has to consider his legacy.

And he doesn’t really have one. As I said he has lived his entire life with no real regard for a long-term human connection so he doesn’t really have one. All he has is his TV show and the impact it made. And whatever impact it has, it’s negative. Maher’s comedy has always been dated and offensive even thirty years ago. Politically Incorrect is going to be known more for how it got cancelled than anything it did when it was on the air. And there’s never been anything revolutionary about Real Time, not the way that The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight  are or the same impact that Samantha Bee or Desus and Mero made recently. All Maher’s show have been are an hour of a privileged white man lecturing his guests and his audience on what his view of the world is. (By the way Bill, if you wonder why Fox News keeps quoting your show even though you insist you’re not a conservative, this is a big tell.)

That’s the reason I think Real Time is on the air even though its more of a relic with each new show. It’s not that Maher has anything new to say or anything funny. It’s that as long as Maher keeps doing his show, he has a purpose and a reason to go on. He needs Real Time more than anyone else. His entire life has been devoted to the stage and the camera. He has nothing else but that.

I think beneath the smug veneer and chuckling he does on stage; Maher is a very sad man. He’s devoted his entire career in television to his persona and its never been particularly likeable. Maher’s entire act is devoted to promoting a way of life that never existed except in his own mind and a political and life philosophy that is untenable even on an individual one. Maher isn’t raging against the dying of the light; he was raging even when it was focused entirely on him. And the battles he’s chosen to fight all his life were not only the wrong ones but as silly as the ones that he rages so many of his targets for fighting.

That’s the reason I feel sorry for Maher. He was an anachronism when he started his career and now he’s a relic. He’s not even the last of his breed because he was always an outlier. Maher has been fighting a one-man battle against society his entire life. And he can’t concede he lost because he never really knew what he was fighting for. I don’t think the world will miss Bill Maher much when he finally departs or even that his cause was ever a noble one. But we need to understand that he was never a monster, just someone who found his niche early in life and couldn’t bring himself to change even as the world around him was.

 

The Politics of Abolitionists and How The Divide Between Them In the 1840s and 1850S Draws Parallels to the Radical Left Today: Introduction

 

On occasion I have referred to in my writings about the leftist publication The Nation a magazine that for over a hundred fifty years has been founded on the ideal of progressive ideology. For much of the 20^th century The Nation believed in liberalism ideals and in favor of the New Deal, but it frequently used that message with a critic of all who crossed its path, initially being in favor of unions but then criticizing them for being complicit in World War I. During the Cold War it argued in favor of détente with Stalin and attacked the Catholic Church. As the century ended, sued the Department of Defense for restricting free speech in press pools. In the new century it twice endorsed Bernie Sanders.

By this point in its history it has moved so far to the left that its current editor is now the founder of Jacobin, the American Marxist magazine. This explains its recent decision to increasingly attack even Sanders for refusing to go along with its own agenda.

Those who read The Nation (and at this point its readership is less than 100,000 subscribers) no doubt take pride in the fact that it was founded not long after the Civil War as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator the most prominent publication supporting abolition. They might not be as happy about that if they knew more about that then Garrison’s only press releases.

With all the writing that there has been about our nation being founded on slavery, it is worth discussing the abolitionists themselves. I knew very little about them, despite knowing a great deal about antebellum America and much of nineteenth century politics in the years leading up to the Civil War. I assumed that they were never a large number, most scattered throughout the North  with the largest collection in New England where there was no slavery and the greatest concentration of free black. This is all true. What I didn’t know is that even among the abolitionists there was a great division – a division that one can draw a pretty straight line between then and the leftists of today, particularly those led by Garrison himself.

Many of the major abolitionists were quakers and several of the prominent ones were female. Many of them, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, are among the most prominent figures in the movement for women’s suffrage and women’s rights. Elizabeth’s husband, Henry became estranged from what would be known as the Garrisonians, particularly when it came to the question of political participation.

The Garrisonians looked at the Constitution much the way so many of today’s African Americans and leftists do – as a pro-slavery document because of the compromise embedded in it that allowed slavery to continue. Their absolutism was so extreme that they had no interest in advancing the government, not only by taking part in politics but even voting. The American Anti-Slavery society, which was formed in 1833, split six years later. Stanton would become part of a faction to form what would become known as the Liberty Party, a party that would campaign to elect candidates to fight for abolition. Garrison’s segment believed in immediate and uncompensated emancipation of the slaves.

Garrison deserves credit, it is worth noting , for being one of the earliest major supporters of women’s suffrage and many of his articles put his life in danger. But Garrison was also inflexible to compromise. In 1855, he split with Frederick Douglass when Douglass converted to the idea that the Constitution could be anti-slavery. To a man who had publicly burned a copy of the Constitution the year before, this was a betrayal. Garrison also was a virulent anti-Semite who called the Ancient Jews an ‘exclusivist people whose feet ran to evil” and suggested the Jewish diaspora “was the result of their own egotism self-complacency.” He also showed a moral opposition to taking office multiple times.

The behavior of Garrison and many of his followers shows that, even on what was the most explosive issue of all time, there were some who had no wiggle room for it. Even those who wrote the 1619 Project were not as extreme as Garrison and some of his followers who believed the government so stained in sin that even participating in it was beneath them. Garrison and many abolitionists saw slavery as a moral issue, pure and simple. That it was also an economic and political one was not one that he and his sect considered one that should be considered. That they thought they could simply convince the government to agree with them because it was a moral argument and refused to compromise on it shows a link to so much of the politics that we see on the left today.

The abolitionists, it is worth remembering, were located entirely in the North and in an era before even railroads had no real connection to the South. It doesn’t mean that their views were wrong or that they were not brave to take them – many of these abolitionists risks their freedom and lives for participation on the Underground Railroad. But it is telling that men like Garrison’s view of immediate and uncompensated emancipation was not only a non-starter in the South but one that many in the North would have great problems with making practical. Even in the North abolitionists were frequently viewed as a nuisance unattached to the reality of politics. That Douglass, a former slave was more willing to compromise than Garrison, is a telling sign of how some on the left truly think they know about reality more than those affected by the crisis they are arguing.

There’s also the fact that in the leadup to the Compromise of 1850 many in New England would turn on Daniel Webster, one of their great heroes for nearly half a century because he chose to advocate for peace over freedom. That the alternative might very well be the dissolution of the Union did nothing to quell their hatred and shows the difference between an elected politician and one who chooses to argue from afar.

This series will deal not with the foundation of the Republican party but rather the ten years prior to that. It will look instead at those abolitionists who spent the period from 1840 to 1852 trying to form a political party that would express their views in Congress. It will show their attempts to give a voice to the most controversial subject in our nation’s history and how they were fought with every step of the way not only by the fluctuating two-party system and the early years of representative democracy in elections but also the conflict within their own ranks, by those who wanted slavery ended but had no desire to vote for even a political party with that as its mission statement.

It is hard not to look at this conflict and not see so many of the parallels between the most extreme abolitionists and the radical left today: those who look at America and the world through a purely moral lens and refuse to allow for compromise. In the case of slavery the stakes were infinitely higher for all concerns of all races and genders and solutions had to be found. But it’s telling that even when a political solution might have been the only one, abolitionists like Garrison thought that government wasn’t the solution, government was the problem. And we will see in some examples just what they were willing to do to solve them.