My Predictions (And Hopes) For the 2025 Emmy Nominations, Week 3, Day 1

OUTSTANDING LIMITED SERIES

Two notes before we begin. As always with the majority of the acting nominees I will be focusing on limited series rather than TV movies.

The second is more important for the purpose of this category. Just as with last year when I acknowledged that Night Country was going to be one of the nominees for Best Limited Series but because of my opinions of it  I couldn't in good conscience endorse it, I can't do the same with Adolescence for Best Limited Series. I will do so in the acting categories below but compared to so many of the other great limited series I saw in the lead-up to the Emmy nominations, I don't think it deserves to be considered that way. I acknowledge I'm in the minority but I can live with that.

So here we go again.

Dying for Sex (Hulu)

So far in 2025 this incredible dark, sexual and often hysterical true life story is likely going to be on my top ten list of this year. It's a mix of genres that should not work at all: facing ones death of cancer, going on a sexual walkabout, dealing with abuse and frequently being hysterically funny about much of it. And somehow through the work of Liz Merriwether and her band of writers and an incredible cast, this show is one of the most delightful series of 2025.

Michelle Williams yet again returns to television in order to die but this time she's determined to 'come, come against the dying of the light'. We see her traveling through Tinder, dealing with her messy family (Sissy Spacek will likely be considered among the contenders for nominations) an incredibly bizarre group of erotic partners including one she only knows for much of the series as Elevator Guy (look for Rob Delaney to contend) an endless stay as things get far worse and a wondrous journey with her best friend in an incredible performance by Jenny Slate.

This limited series was the most radically experimental show of all of the five nominees and even more risky. A single wrong step and all of this could very easily have been unwatchable or bleak beyond imagination. Instead right up until the very end there was joy to be found in it (and flying penises!) and the possible of moving forward after the worst thing that can possibly happen.

 

Monsters: The Erik & Lyle Menendez Story (Netflix)

Just as with Dahmer it took me a bit of time to engage with Ryan Murphy's latest Netflix docudrama about two notorious killers. But it was a lot easier to engage with and find  something remarkable about it. In fact, the comparisons to the frontrunner in this category Adolescence are hard to escape.

This series deals with an unthinkable crime happening in a community. 1990s Beverly Hills may be different from the present of Adolescence but we can see the shock waves Erik and Lyle's murders of their parents send through not just their country but America. Why would these two boys of privilege murder their parents? During the second third of the series we get one side of it: that Erik and Lyle were horribly abused throughout their childhood and adulthood and may have been the subject of horrible sexual molestation. Indeed 'The Hurt Man' episode parallels the equally remarkable Episode 3 of Adolescence as Erik reveals to his attorney the horrific abuse he underwent in a single take.

But then the series shifts in a way Adolescence never does. We spend an episode with Jose and Kitty, played exceptionally by Javier Bardem and Chloe Sevigny. For the first time we see Erik and Lyle's story through their eyes and it throws everything we've believed in to question. This sets us up for the final third of the series when we begin to see the gaps and holes in their story, the flaws that led to the case being a mistrial and how it became very clear that so much of what they said might have been a lie – and the circumstances that led to their sentence to prison. Circumstances have changed to lead to their parole but I left convinced of their guilt in a way no trial ever could.

This showed Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk at the peak of their abilities in the kind of work they did masterfully on the first two seasons of American Crime Story. It deserves whatever nominations it gets and more recognition than Adolescence.

 

The Penguin (HBO)

The majority of the nominees in this category were contenders for awards at the end of last year. The Penguin was by far the most frequent contender and won by far the most awards in the leadup to the Emmy nominations. And no one who saw a minute of it can deny just how incredible it was.

The series took place in the Gotham City of the most recent Batman film but for all intents and purposes it could just have easily been a version of all of the great crime dramas fans loved in the first decade of this century. This was likely intentional, starting from Colin Farrell's incredible work as Oz Cobb. He disappeared into this role and I don't just mean the makeup that is absolutely going to win an Emmy along with Farrell himself. The series was not so much drawn from the world of DC Comic but The Sopranos and I suspect in the years to come fans of Peak TV will be pointing out the Easter eggs to that as well, starting with Oz's complicated relationship with his mother – and how that played out in the series finale. Farrell wasn't channeling Burgess Meredith or Danny DeVito but the late James Gandolfini in every breath of his work and it led to a performance that has already won every major Outstanding Actor in a Limited Series for the last six months.

Of course the real breakout performance was Cristin Milioti's incredible work as Sofia Falcone, released from Arkham due to overcrowded and trying to find a place for herself in the world after a horrific experience where she was betrayed by everyone she dared to trust. Milioti's performance was more layered than Farrell's because by the end of it she had enough self-awareness to walk away from the mess of Gotham but she was betrayed by those around her for a fate worse than death.

Farrell and Milioti were joined by an incredible cast of supporting actors all of whom from Rhenzy Feliz and Clancy Brown down to the incredible Diedre O'Connell will be among the front runners for nominations in the weeks to come. The majority have already received multiple nominations by different groups. And artistically and technically this was the most striking limited series among this incredible group, almost certain to win so many of the other awards for editing, music and cinematography.

This series was number 3 on the top ten list of 2024 and more than deserves to be the winner this year. I don't think it will but if it does, it will be a great and little thing.

 

Presumed Innocent (Apple TV)

Perhaps because it was unclear whether Presumed Innocent would be an original series or a limited series, awards shows have not been quite sure where to classify it. It has been nominated for many acting awards and indeed most of its cast is likely to contend but no one was sure where to put it. Now that it is going to be an anthology series I believe it has a great chance of contending for nominations.

David E. Kelley took Scott Turow's classic novel and moved it into the present day without having to change that much. Indeed given the nations obsession with true crime and the media circus being even greater today then it was in the 1980s, it translated even better than it did in the film. Jake Gyllenhaal took the role of Rusty Sabich, the Cook County prosecutor who quickly becomes the suspect in the murder of a fellow district attorney – who was also his lover – and takes into the direction of madness, toxic masculinity and something close to a delusion. It is the kind of performance deserving of a nomination.

The entire cast was more than up to the challenge in this version. Such masters as Bill Camp and Ruth Negga were remarkable in the roles on Rusty's mentor and beleaguered wife but it was the work Peter Sarsgaard as Tommy Molto, the obnoxious, feral prosecutor who is convinced of Tommy's  guilt that sticks with you. Everyone underestimating Tommy, including Rusty, but from the moment he stepped into the courtroom you saw the other side of him and it was magnificent.

There were alterations to the story of course – including a twist on the twist ending – but I'd argue all of them made this version far more powerful and riveting to watch. Apple TV has a lot of formidable contenders in this category, including Alfonso Cuaron's Disclaimer that would be good choices but this one is my first chair.

 

Three Women (Starz)

Three Women has had a long journey just getting put on TV in the first place. It was greenlit by Showtime in 2021 and filmed before it was cancelled along with a group of other stirring original programs. Like Ripley another force came into save it, this time a fellow cable network Starz. And those like me who saw it were quickly immersed in one of the most radical and erotic works of art of 2024.

Based on Lisa Taddeo's non-fiction best seller the story follows twenty-something New York writer Gia (an impressive as always Shailene Woodley) as she travels across country trying to learn the stories of women in 2010s America. She tells the story of three of them who she meets: Lina in Indiana, a homemaker who when we meet her hasn't been touched by her husband in three months; Sloane, an African-American wife in Montauk, who brings both men and women into her bed along with her husband; and Maggie, a twentyish waitress who has never been able to get over what her high school English teacher did to her.

The stories that we see are, to state the obvious, as relevant as anything you'll find in a show like The Handmaid's Tale but far more adultly addressed. These are women who as Gia tells us "want more". These are women who will try to find companionship in the past and try to regain it; women who think they have it all but still can't figure out that empty place in them; women who try to use the justice system to redress wrong and are turned into harridans by their neighbors. And yet in all three stories we find humor, optimism and some of the most tastefully done eroticism that television has managed to do in a very long time.

Three Women is the kind of limited series that the Emmys frequently ignore because it's on either the wrong network or because it's not flashy in the way other shows are. But it is just as magnificent as so many of the front runners in this list. I have been down this road before with Gaslit and Homecoming and have always been dismayed – though not surprised – when they are rejected by the Emmys. But I will keep advocating for them because in my own way, I want more for characters and stories like this.

 

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Accused (Fox)

This is the kind of series that network television doesn't make anymore. Honestly it's the kind of series Peak TV barely touched on cable or streaming. It is an anthology series but one that tells a different story with a different set of actors each week. It takes issues and crimes that we see in the news every day – road rage, steroid abuse, facial recognition software, AI – and goes from the kind of 'ripped from the headline' fodder we are used to on Law & Order to look at the human side of this incredibly real story.

The second season had a better cast and more fascinating stories than the incredible first one: each with performances that should have been considered for awards. My personal favorite, a brilliantly directed piece which featured Taylor Schilling playing a housewife who finds herself the unlikely victim of road rage – was the kind of tour de force I had stopped thinking network TV could do these days.

Throughout the season we saw so many of the best character actors on TV – Felicity Huffman, Michael Chiklis, Mercedes Ruehl, Ken Leung – playing ordinary people who find themselves in horrible situations usually beyond their own making that have spiraled. Howard Gordon doesn't so much see criminals or even bad people but uses the format of a trial to show the America we live in today.

As of this writing, it is still unclear if Accused will return for a third season. I hope it does but I understand why Fox would cancel it. I also understand why the Emmys has a hard time recognizing it: this is not the kind of show that fits easily in a box. But it is the kind of show that deserves recognition and I will continue to push for it.

 

Tomorrow I will deal with Outstanding Lead Actor in a TV Movie/Limited Series. As always I will lean in to the Limited Series part.

Better Late Than Never: The Pitt

 

 

It's easy to understand why the heirs of Michael Crichton attempted to sue HBO Max for copyright infringement for The Pitt before it debuted last year. This is, after all, a drama that is set in an underfunded emergency room in a blue collar city: Pittsburgh here; Chicago there. John Wells is executive producing it and Noah Wyle, who starred on ER for eleven seasons, is playing the lead. The character he plays in Dr. Rabinovich – Dr. Robby – but his first name is Mark, which was Dr. Greene's first name on ER.

There's also the usual mix of interns we meet in the first moments, a cynical resident who's in a feud with one of the surgical residents. We've got a new group of med students who are on their first day of rotation. We've got bureaucrats telling our protagonist how horrible job he's doing with patient satisfaction, threatening his job and the place with being closed. We've got overcrowded waiting rooms and patients in the hall. We've got regulars that the staff is familiar with, including an old lady who tells Dr. Robby "Do you want to see my vagina?" Dr. Robby tells her with resignation he's seen, probably more than once.

So yes I see the overwhelming similarities to ER which for me would not be a dealbreaker. The reason after three episodes I'm drawn into it even beyond the usual medical drama is twofold. For one thing, we're not in Shondaland which means I've now seen three full episodes and no one's ducked into a closet to have sex. One could forgive me for finding that refreshing after twenty years and no signs yet of Grey's Anatomy going anywhere.

The second is more pertinent – and in fact makes me wonder why for all the raves the show has gotten over the last six months and is clearly going to be a frontrunner for Emmy nominations across the board that no one has picked up on it. The Pitt unfolds in fifteen episodes, each of which take up one hour on a shift. The fact that it is nearly twice the length of the number of episodes we usually get in an HBO drama – indeed even more than most network dramas these days – is remarkable in itself. And it's worth noting that The Sopranos got us used to a thirteen episode season.

The real similarity that most long-time TV viewers should be aware of is to 24, the classic real-time drama where we spent a day watching as Jack Bauer saved the world from terrorist attacks with the help of tech support, a lot of killing and violence and frequently the sheer force of his personality at times. No one has attempted anything remotely like this since – until The Pitt.

The Pitt is the polar opposite of 24 in every way possible and I don't just mean that was a suspense thriller and one is a medical drama. 24 was full of technical flourishes: split screens, a brilliant musical score and an always ticking clock. The Pitt is brilliantly done technically but in a completely different fashion. There's no rapid cuts and we follow the characters from crisis to crisis. There's for all intents and purposes no musical score at all, except for the end. And while we're aware of the passage of time, R. Scott Gemill and his writers never go out of their way to remind us of it: there's a subtitle at the start of the episode and that's it.

There's also the fact that whenever Jack Bauer was faced with a crisis, he always had cutting edge (unrealistic) technology to get him through each hour's crisis. The technology for The Pitt is slightly more advanced than ER but that's more to do with the passage of time then anything else. There may be an up to date patient board instead of the dry erase board that we saw at Cook County and there have been more advances with medicine in the last thirty years. But all of that barely keeps up to date with an underfunded emergency room in a hospital that is overcrowded and as is critical to the background of Dr. Robby, is still recovering from Covid even four years later.

Dr. Robby is hardly working alone in 'The Pitt' (the nickname of the hospital which the bureaucracy denouncing being used and naturally everyone does) but because he is played by Noah Wyle, we follow him constantly. It's easy to see Wyle as John Carter nearly two decades after we last saw him in the series finale of ER but even though after three episodes I don't know much of his backstory, it's pretty clear he doesn't come from the silver spoon background Dr. Carter ever did. One of the key things that separates Wyle's work on The Pitt as opposed to ER is the fact that he doesn't have the boyish look to him he once did even in his final seasons. There was always a boyish quality to Wyle even after he left ER and spent the last decade working on such entertaining if lightweight TNT series as Falling Skies and The Librarian. Wyle always looked like he was in his twenties, even when he was in his forties.

That's almost entirely gone as Dr. Robby. It's not just the full beard he has covering up that youthful demeanor; it's as if he has an armor up in the way he talks to so many of the staff, the way he snaps at the bureaucrats in the hospital; the way he's clearly far more of a teacher and mentor then John Carter ever was. He bears a much closer resemblance to Mark Greene; humorous, more cynical and quietly angrier.

Wyle has more than able support and while I suspect people will be trying to find the parallels to Cook County there are more differences and the characters, honestly, engage me more in the first few episodes than the original cast did in the first season of ER. Tracey Ifeachor is Dr. Collins,  who at one point may have shared Robby's bed given how they speak to each other and who is trying to hide a secret from the staff. Patrick Ball plays Dr. Langdon, the doctor who graduated 'with a degree in cynicism but who is efficient in everything. Fiona Dourif plays Dr. McKay, who travels like a veteran but has an ankle monitor than is unnoticed. Supriya Ganesh is Dr. Samira, a compassionate caring doctor who is derogatorily nicknamed for her slowness. And there's Isa Briones as Dr. Santos, who clearly thinks she's better than everyone and is so abrasive you know there's going to be a fight some point.

The most fascinated interns are Dennis Whitaker, who has the kind of fresh-faced look that reminds you more of JD on Scrubs then any ER doc and Taylor Dearden as Melissa King, an emotionally clingy and talented doctor who clearly has some kind of emotional disorder.

The series is dealing with the kind of crises that ER dealt with on a weekly basis – except they have no time to even pause between them. Because the show unfolds in real time, we stay with cases longer than we normally would on ER and have to deal with them at a greater level. We deal with two siblings trying to deal with their father's advance directive to not be kept alive by artificial means and how that plays out when one can't let go. We see two parents trying to deal with the fact that their teenage son has overdosed on drugs, that he is brain dead and positive for fentanyl. And perhaps most striking we see a woman faking illness because of her teenage son with whom she found a list of girls he wants to hurt – and who leaves the hospital before Robby can talk to him. If you've already seen the series we know just how horribly this will end both for the mother and how the ER will end up dealing with the consequences.

The larger story centered on Robby is that today is the fourth anniversary of the death of his friend and mentor Jack Abbott, who held the position before he did. We're still not sure of the circumstances but everyone is surprised Robby came in today and we're not sure how well he can handle it.

As I said the show unfolds in real time and the crises come at a faster pace that I think even Jack Bauer would be prepared to handle it which is why it's surprising how much better The Pitt in its first season is handling character development better than either 24 or ER did in their first seasons or indeed much of their run. We have a fairly even hold on what we need to know about the characters and their behavior is also far more entertaining in their treatment of each other. They know when to be mean, when to be compassionate, when to take a moment of silence and when you have to laugh. This is true even when rats come in on a homeless man, whether you're giving a sandwich to a regular who keeps asking for them or when you're in an ambulance bay sneaking a smoke outside a hospital.

It also helps matters that this show has a much less dark atmosphere to it then so many of the best Peak TV dramas. It shouldn't be considering where its set and what its dealing with, but it helps that after twenty five years of dealing with antiheroes if not outright villains in so many HBO dramas, Max had created a show where most of the characters are basically good people, no worse and no better than the ones who work at your average ER. If you prefer the company of Tony Soprano and Walter White that might be a disappointment. Given that the first season of this show averaged an 8.9 rating at imdb.com  - considerably higher than Euphoria after nearly as many episodes over two seasons and even higher than last year's Shogun after its first season – it turns out that there is market for people who like these kinds of dramas after all.

It took me as long as it did to get to The Pitt, I should add, because I've had a busy schedule and didn't have the time to watch a fifteen episode drama on Max. I knew I'd get to it eventually, particularly after the Astras flooded it with nominations and lo and behold HBO did a marathon of the show just this past Monday and I recorded it all. Three episodes in, it deserves all the raves it gets, all the Emmy nominations it will receive and all the awards it will win. The Pitt is a great drama in the old-fashioned sense of the word, reaching back to the 1990s and early 2000s. I liked those shows then and I'm glad to see a new generation is starting to appreciate them.

My score: 4.5 stars.

The American Dream Worked Out Just Fine For George Carlin

 

"They call it the American Dream,

Because you have to be asleep to believe it."

 

There's been a lot of talk online about the work of George Carlin recently and what he would say if he were alive today. While I can't speak to that, I know what I'd say to him.

First I would be polite and say that I loved a lot of his material. The differences between baseball and football hysterical. His routine about 'stuff', wonderful. And every time I go to an airport I get in the plane. But that's not the stuff they're talking about.

I would say: "Mr. Carlin, you spent many years struggling to become successful. Eventually you did. You worked yourself up from obscurity to become rich and famous. You are considering by many comedians as the greatest whoever lived and you're quoted by millions to this day. How can you not believe in the American dream? It worked out just fine for you."

Now I do realize much of the darkest material in Carlin's oeuvre came as he got older and the closer he came to death. I also know about he was famously someone who had no use for organized religion or the afterlife, so that couldn't have been easy. (I'll get back to that.) But I have the same issue I have with Carlin that I do with so many other prominent and successful celebrities. America has worked out just fine for you. Indeed you've managed to make a fortune playing to sellout crowds telling them that every institution they believe in – politics, corporations, education, religion – is something that only an idiot would be dumb enough to believe in. I grant you there's always been an audience for this kind of market, but how do you never consider yourself the same kind of hypocrite as the evangelists and politicians and corporate shells you roast on a nightly basis? At least they are selling a solution, even if its flawed. You're getting your audience to laugh at all the people who are dumb enough to believe in these institutions, how screwed up the countries and really that believing in anything is kind of idiotic.

Now I realize other comedians have an equally cynical nature about mankind. But there's a very real difference between them and Carlin: they have a reason to believe in the worst of America that he doesn't. Let me give some examples.

If George Carlin isn't the greatest comedian who ever lived, it's considered that it's Richard Pryor. I've seen his material: there's a good argument. He was delivering material about the police shooting black people in the 1970s and sadly that's as evergreen as much of Carlin's stuff. Perhaps the material that I can write which would involve the least censorship would work:

"You see Logan's Run? There weren't no n----rs there? In the future white people ain't planning to have black people alive."

Very funny and also a very fair commentary.

Moving a bit forward, his spiritual heir Chris Rock. He had a more nuanced approach to America that Pryor did.

"America is the greatest country on Earth. But for black people, we look at it a little different. For black people, America is the rich uncle who paid your way through college… but molested you."

I've rarely heard a more accurate metaphor for African-Americans then that.

Or Lily Tomlin, your contemporary and still going strong. She had her own line about the American Dream:

"I worry that the American dream is being made in Japan, only cheaper or more efficiently."

Change that to China and that line still packs a punch.

What's the difference between the comedians I've listed and Carlin? To spell it out, he's a white man and they aren't. You can understand why it sounds different if a white cis male tells you America has no value and if someone who is a minority says the same thing. I might not agree with the minority but I can at least understand why they might think this way and sympathize. A white man tells me that exact same story and is called a truthteller? Seems to me things worked just fine for you.

And it's not just Carlin I have this issue with: the late Bill Hicks had much of the same attitude towards religion and advertising Carlin did and while some of his material was funny, far too often he had the attitude of the preacher, only telling you not to believe in anything. It's funny when Trevor Noah or Wanda Sykes says something about the way of the world; I have an issue with it Bill Maher does.

Another critical thing I different from the comedians I listed and the white ones: they almost never told stories about themselves. All of the comedians I mentioned over the careers were more than willing to laugh at themselves, make themselves part of the joke. The white comedians who made jokes about the world of politics I mentioned never make fun of themselves. They make it clear they held (or hold) themselves about the rest of the world, aware of the knowledge that has given enlightenment. And none of them, for the record, seemed particularly happy about it. It's a trait I could use about the demeanor of particularly progressive entertainers as a whole: Michael Moore and John Oliver never seemed particularly happy when they are addressing an audience and seem more involved in educating than entertaining.

To be fair, a lot of comedians have made their misery part of the act: Marc Maron gave a wonderful comic special about this just a few years ago and I've seen countless other comedians of both genders and colors. But the difference is, for the most part, they tend to make fun of themselves, their lives, their misfortunes. This was true of some of the other comedians I've listed: Prior was able to make a routine about how he set himself on fire, for crying out loud. Hicks and Maher never make themselves the subjects of their own humor unless they were taking the tone of superiority that Carlin definitely had in so much of his material in his later years.

Again I do get the reason to worship these guys given how dark the world is these days. But I really object to the idea of calling Carlin a sage or an entertainer, particularly a comedian. I get wanting to laugh at how much of a joke the world is but when you think about so much of Carlin's material, he basically saying America is a joke and his audience was showing a kind of elitism themselves by laughing at how dumb the rest of the world is. There's something very cynical in the kind of entertainment calling out hypocrisy when you're not willing to call yourself one of them or even make yourself part of the joke. Other comedians who I have loved over the years have done this and done it well.

So perhaps I should close this op-ed by quoting another late, great comedian Richard Jeni, a man who was just as cynical about the world but was willing to try and be optimistic about it. He had a different view of advertising than Carlin did and he thought we could use it to make us realize what is good about America:

"Here's the slogan. America. Twenty million illegal immigrants can't be wrong! There it is!"

 

Constant Reader June 2025: Wanting to Believe and Monster of the Week How Two Different X-Files Guides Shine a (Flash) Light On One of the Greatest Series Ever Made

 

I suspect some of you have heard this anecdote but indulge me.

Two Jewish men have been arguing for a long time so a friend to both men brings them to their rabbi. The first man tells his side of the story to the rabbi. The rabbi replies: "You're right." The second man tells his side of the story. "You're right," the rabbi says. The third man is baffled. "Rabbi, they can't both be right." The rabbi looks at the third man smiles: "You know something? You're right."

In a way that kind of approach is very much the reason I may have chosen criticism as my major profession. It's not just that I love writing and going into details but I also love how so many critics can look at the same piece of work – film, book, or in my case TV – and come to completely different conclusions about it. This may come from having been a fan of Siskel & Ebert when I was growing up but it applies just as much to anything else. Perhaps it's because in many ways I can see myself as the rabbi in this argument. In some cases I can see why one person would love a piece of work and why another would hate it for the same reasons. This is also true for why different viewers love a work and why critics might love something for a different reason than a fan would.

Now those of you who've read my articles over the years also know that I tend to spend a lot of time dealing with episode guides involving television over the years, particularly with my own writing. And in a sense I'm going into familiar territory when I'm giving a recommendation to these two books because I have used both frequently over the last several years in my own writing and will do so again. This time, I'm giving you details because if you are a fan of The X-Files and you have yet purchase either of these books (or one rather than other) that both of these volumes are perhaps the most comprehensive of any that have ever been written on The X-Files in the roughly thirty years since they started writing books about The X-Files. (And yes I own most of those books too.)

I've referenced both before but for the uninitiated here are the full titles of both: Wanting to Believe by Robert Shearman and Monster of the Week by  Zach Handlen and Todd Van Der Waff (now Emily St. James). There are valid reasons to own both books because to paraphrase Vincent in Pulp Fiction, they got the same shit but in some cases, it's a little different.

For one thing the full title of Shearman's book includes the subtitle  'A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen. Shearman was a completist and because he had seen neither series when they were on the air but The X-Files did an episode that wrapped each series up after they were abruptly canceled, he decided to watch all of them. (That included more of a sacrifice then you might think, which I'll explain later.) Handlen and St. James only chose to review The X-Files as a whole. Shearman is British and only saw most of the series months after the fact, and vernacular penetrates most of his reviews. Handlen & St. James are Americans and have a different view point.

Perhaps more significant is the approach each take. If I'm going to use The X-Files as a metaphor (and why not?) Shearman's approach is closer to that of the one Scully would. He looks at the entire series from a detached, academic point of view, giving every single episode a rating between 1 and 5 stars (and he allows for 1/2 stars which I applaud him for). Like a critic, he views each individual from how enjoyable it was and as you might expect, he tends to think the monster of the week episodes are better than the mytharc episodes which he loses patience with very quickly. (That is not new for any X-File fan.) He also tries to look for themes between each season, criticize each writer and looks for patterns in their work over time. Some of his choices are unsurprising (he thinks Vince Gilligan is the best writer the show produces) some are (he doesn't love Darin Morgan as much as most fans do) and he makes some connections you might not think, particularly with authors you might not remember. (He has a sentiment for David Amann, who joined the staff in Season 6 that I never thought of watching the show.)

Handlen and St. James, by contrast, have an approach closer to Mulder. (For the record both books to think Scully was the better character throughout which any self-respecting fan knows.) They don't rate any of the episodes but try to explain why they either loved or hated each one. (The two alternate reviews most of the way through.) They tend to review the myth-arc episodes, usually two-parters in one review during a season and while they grant more latitude than Shearman about its rewards, they are close to alignment as to when it went off the rails entirely. And when it comes to episodes that they consider classics they will give far more space to it then the run-of-the mill ones. (Shearman, by and large, basically devotes about two pages or less to every single episode regardless of quality.) Generally speaking the more they love an episode the longer the review: 'Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose' gets four pages, Jose Chung's From Outer Space gets close to five and The Post Modern Prometheus gets the longest one at six. They also have the benefit of having written their guide a decade after Shearman wrote his. (Shearman published his guide in 2009; Handlen and St. James wrote theirs in 2019.) And as a result they cover both revival seasons of the series, which they refer to as Seasons 10 and 11. Their devotion is shown in footnotes throughout each episode where they make personal asides, some humorous, some unsettling.

The real argument to buy Shearman's book is his criticism of Millennium. He almost seems to argue that this is the superior Chris Carter series and while that's a bit extreme I won't deny its persuasive nature. I purchased the book in 2009 entirely for its X-Files reviews but after reading his reviews of Millennium (which I'd glanced at a few times when it was originally on the air before dismissing) I decided I needed to see it. In the mid 2010's I rented it from Netflix (as of this writing it is still unavailable for streaming anywhere) and with each episode I began to see what Shearman found so appealing about it. Thematically it never had a connecting thread during the entire series or even from season to season but so many of the episodes connected with me on a visceral level and both the writing and the work of Lance Henriksen made me realize it was a forgotten gem of the 1990s. And having watched the X-Files episode that dealt with it after the fact, I now realize why it was such a disappointment to fans of the show and fans of the X-Files. If  the 'Millennium' episode of The X-Files had been my only taste of the series I wouldn't have understood why anyone liked the original series. Having seen the original series by now, I keep thinking it should get a revival too.

Harden and St. James don't seem to have thought much of that show (the only time they refer to it outside the X-Files episode it's in a derivative way) and that's understandable considering they intend to show their love of The X-Files. And it's  the way they review individual episodes as opposed to Shearman's that make both books required reading and comes back as to why some episodes are classics and some are messes. Shearman may be holding The X-Files to a harsher standard than Monster of the Week does but he's clearly as much a fan as Handlen & St. James are. (You wouldn't watch 200 plus episodes and two films if you didn't enjoy The X-Files and you wouldn't subject yourself to such stinkers as Teso Dos Bichos and Excelsis Dei if you weren't truly devoted.) But Shearman's objections are clearly different then the problems that Handlen and St. James have, particularly when it comes to the myth arc. It's not just that he doesn't think it ever made sense; it's that he's more aware of the flaws in it in a way that Handlen & St. James rarely admit and that's in particular the horrible purple prose which he refers to, pointedly and accurately, as 'Carter-speak."

It's in these segments that you get to see Shearman's humorous side the way that inspired Roger Ebert when a movie was truly terrible. A few passages from his one-star review  of Season 4's 'Terma' will probably suffice:

"In fact, a lot of this feels like the writers have set themselves a game: the scene between Skinner and Scully outside her apartment has the two rabbiting exposition at each other with as many subordinate clauses squeezed in as possible. (Mitch Pileggi wins by coming up with one sentence which boasts no fewer than eleven.)

…Gillian Anderson is required to speak ever more complex and facile speeches, until at last you can see her give up and switch on the autopilot. It's dreadful, boring and facile. Just when you think the dialogue has got as bad as can be, Mulder stands in front of Congress and tells them they should all be held in contempt for not believing in aliens. In response, everyone looks bemused. I know I was."

It almost makes you want to watch the episode to see if its really that bad. (It's not, but it's close.)  Handlen and St. James are slightly more charitable to it than Shearman is (they review this episode in conjunction with 'Tunguska' which it was paired with) but they're inclined to think it's just as much a mess. Their problems with the mytharc are story related rather than dialogue. They think the episode is trying to much of its era (1996) and they're also pretty sure this is where the mythology begins to lose whatever chance it had of making sense. (Shearman basically agrees with them but for different reasons.) They have more patience for the set pieces of the show than Shearman does but even when they praise them, they do mention that it's now clear the show runners were building a house of cards that got more unstable with each season.

Now I do realize that for me to recommend not one but two different episode guides about the same TV series is going to have a limited appeal to those people who aren't X-Files fans. I'm not so much worried about that niche (especially considering we may get a revival very soon) as to those who might not necessarily want to read TV criticism or even fan love in books when they can read them online. But think of it in terms of the kind of YouTube or TikTok sites where you see people criticizing the most recent action film or marvel movie or for that matter a Scully and a Mulder looking at episodes in different ways. Sometimes it's how you see things that matters.

I could give a dozen examples of this throughout the book but I think the best way is to do one episode that Shearman loves and Handler and/or St. James hates, one the other way around and a classic episode they both love but for different reasons.

Let's start with Season 6's 'Milagro' an episode that I found problematic the first time I watched and will never consider a favorite. This is why Handlen loathes the episode:

'Milagro' is a self-serious, intermittently insulting chunk of television…It's not very good – because it's pompous, and because it treats Scully with the sort of ill-defined contempt and exhausting male gaze that forces the viewers that forces the viewer to ask some really uncomfortable questions about just what the writers think of her…It's bad enough that Scully is once relegated to victim status; even worse, the episode makes him the puppet of (the villains) creepy infatuation before he gives up upon realizing she's already in love with Mulder'

The problem Handlen says along with all this is among other things the episode is too serious and that the prose is terrible , like watching someone's fanfiction come to life…and that the episode is 'fixated on the sort of vague philosophizing that makes Carter's monologues so goofy. Handlen ends the review – which almost comes into the so bad its good territory by saying "it's intermittingly captivating and frequently horrid, with all the profundity of a late night jam session between two stoned (male, single) philosophy majors.

Handlen is absolutely right.

Shearman doesn't entirely deny this but argues that the episode is something of a self-portrait of how Carter himself views The X-Files. He says that the main villain is essentially a metaphor for Carter himself and that so much of what Handlen considers bizarre about it is an expression of Carter's frustration at The X-Files which he never expected to succeed this well is now so popular that it has completely consumed him. He says:

…this is an episode about writing, about how if the writer becomes God and makes his characters do what he tells them against their inclinations it won't be true or sincere, but if he allows himself to be a vessel for where the characters direct HIM he may produce better art but end up powerless as a result."

Considering that by this point the episode had run long past the intended run of the series and had now been moved from Canada to LA, it's a subtext worth considering as well as the fact that Carter never intended Mulder and Scully to get together but the fans had been pressuring him so hard for five years it was becoming a constant drumbeat.

And as for the horrible nature of it:

It's a piece of self-indulgence, of course. It's vague and it's flabby. And it's by Chris Carter, which means the writer's voiceover prose has passages of brilliance and passages of pretension. In some way, though, all these faults are part of the point; this is a study of overwriting with all the mistakes left in, all the frustrations and inadequacies a writer has to endure…And after six seasons of being a runaway hit – and still going strong, Carter won't be off the hook for years yet! – the show couldn't make something as inward looking as this. It shouldn't still be running at all.

Shearman is also absolutely right. (It doesn't make the episode better but he's still right.)

Now let's do the reverse with All Souls a fifth season episode that tells a story that – well, I'll let Shearman who considers this one of the worst episodes in the entire history of the franchise describe it:

 

"So, this is the one about a killer who's hunting down four girls. And burning their eyes out. But it's okay because the killer is God. Yes, God. That's right. And it's doubly okay, because the girls are disabled, and not 'meant to be'…I'll let that one sink in a moment. And when Scully gets the chance to save the last victim's life, she's persuaded – get this – by a vision of her dead daughter to let her die as was intended. The daughter who was, unless we forget, also killed earlier in the season because she too wasn't meant to be. (To be fair, at least in Emily, the girl was an alien hybrid with green acid blood. And she wasn't disabled? Did I mention that these other girls have no right to live because they're disabled? Okay. Good. I thought I had.)

Now let's ponder. What sort of message is being sent out here?"

 

To be clear most of the time in Shearman's reviews he doesn't let his own personal beliefs cloud his judgment: he clearly has them when it comes to the political incorrectness of certain stories that have aged badly but he doesn't let it always be a factor. That he takes such offense to this story is very telling and it does get to one of the biggest flaws with The X-Files overall. Whenever The X-Files deals with religion, organized or otherwise,  it far too often became offensive. I'm closer in a sympathy with Shearman on this episode than I am in Milagro but that doesn't change the underlying fact that there is something very offensive about this.

Now I should mention one of the central themes of Monster of the Week is how so many of even the best stories on The X-Files can be problematic either because they've aged poorly or because they deal with troubling subtexts, most notably when it comes to consent. (That is no doubt one of the issues driving the contempt towards Milagro by Handlen.) You'd think this same issue involving all of the problems above would trouble  The problem is that when St. James reviews this episode it's clear that their love of Anderson is enough to carry the day. This is how St. James deals with all of the very real issues with the episode:

"Just don't think about its somewhat nihilistic theological implications too much and you'll be fine."

St. James almost always handles most of the episodes that deal with consent in a humorous fashion with the delicacy they deserve. They acknowledge their problematic but you can get over it. Both authors have considerable issues with some of the more racist storylines which tend to bother Shearman somewhat less. St. James acknowledges the reality of the storyline phrasing it like this: "Scully is pretty sure that God sent four mentally handicapped girls with the souls of angels into her life so he could burn out their eyes, take them to heaven and let her know it's ok to let go of any residual sadness she has about the death of (her daughter) earlier this season".

St. James seems to be acknowledging the absurdity and the dark implications but she has a different perspective:

"Of course God would want to tell Scully to proceed with her work. Of course he would contrive an elaborate scenario wherein he sends four of his angels down to Earth in the form of endangered young girls, purely so he could call them back at some point to teach Scully a lesson about letting them go. And of course he would let this entire cosmic battle play out before her very eyes as a way to let her know what path to follow."

This scenario is, if anything, more ridiculous than the one Shearman described in his review. But St. James is playing it more or less straight because of her overriding love for Scully. If anything she doubles down in the final sentences.

"Scully, you see, is just that important. She's not just the rational skeptic, there to give Mulder the support he needs. She's the skeptic, the woman who stands out between the mundane and the unexplained and sees demons and doesn't get her eyes burned out. She's on the front lines, and that's exactly where the almighty wants here."

In other words God loves Scully as much as the rest of us do and that allows us to excuse a storyline even St. James acknowledges is 'preposterous'. Shearman loved Anderson's work as Scully too but even he isn't willing to go that far.

And now let's close this with an episode where both books are in complete alignment on a classic episode. Let's do one of the all-time great's Vince Gilligan's Season 4 classic 'Paper Hearts'. This is a classic episode and I'll let St. James tell you why:

Paper Hearts spends its entire running time trying to get you to believe a lie. More than anything, it wants you to think the show will throw away one of its most important structural underpinnings in the service of a Monster of a Week episode that seems cribbed from a more earthbound detective show. Chiefly, it wants you to believe that Mulder will uncover that his sister's disappearance is due to a man – a monstrous man, but a mere man, nonetheless. Not aliens. Not a conspiracy. Not a shining light in the sky. A man.

Now I'll let Shearman explain why this man, a serial killer named John Lee Roche, is so unsettling and why the trick works so well:

"Vince Gilligan (the writer) has a disturbing ability to take serial killers and make them pointedly ordinary; there is nothing 'Silence of the Lambs like in his approach to his human monster, nothing to glamorize them. But nor does he demonize them either. John Lee Roche…is a man who is an interested in the details of his vacuum cleaner sales as he is the trophies of his child murders.

…There is something truly macabre in his opening scenes with Mulder, the way they greet each other as calmly as familiar acquaintances. And what this achieves is the unthinkable – you spend the episode hoping that Roche really is the man who killed Samantha, because it would somehow bring closure, it'd bring peace. When Mulder and Scully visit Frank Sparks, some twenty years after the abduction of his little girl, it's clear from the way he greets the FBI at the door that he's been keenly waiting for the news all this time, that the mystery has never for a single day stopped haunting him. He talks about how its better to know than always to wonder – and yet, conversely , how relieved he is the child's mother is dead so she's spared the news.

And it's that contradiction which is at the core of Paper Hearts' success. You want to find out the truth. You dread to find out the truth. David Duchovny's performance – one of his very best – captures the dichotomy of this brilliantly, digging in the dirt with his bare hands eager to discover the body of his sister, relieved and yet anguished when he realizes the corpse on the autopsy table is not Samantha, meaning that she still has not had the resolution he needs.

I'll avoid revealing how this episode plays out exactly and why so much of this is agonizing. Instead I'll let St. James conclusion to her essay – which covers the same ground in different ways – explains its power:

The comforting idea of a conspiracy theory is that it removes all room for random chance, that the death and misery that greet our time on Earth can be written off as the machinations of the devil or a secret cabal that controls everything that happens. The boldest move of 'Paper Hearts' is that it takes away the certainty that some kind of evil order prevails and replaces it with the idea that it all could be random chance. In real life, most of us eventually come to accept this as a fact of life. But in fiction, particularly in fiction like The X-Files, where there's a place for everything and everything has it's place, it can be disconcerting.

'Paper Hearts' lives in that uneasiness. Its suggestion that sometimes its not your dad turning you over to aliens, that sometimes It's just a nut with an El Camino and a horrible secret, is almost radically simple for the show. The possibility that there could actually be a rational explanation becomes a doubt that nags and can never entirely be dismissed, even as you know it for the lie for what it is. The X-Files, for all its feints towards ambiguity, exists in a universe driven by an almost godlike conspiracy that can do whatever it likes, and there's a comfort in having that kind of certainty in our fiction. But there's a power in embracing the mystery, the idea that life is a scary, random place."

To be clear neither of these books are the kind of books you sit down and read from start to finish. They fit the definition of a coffee table book, the kind of book you randomly open to any given page when you have free time – or when you've seen an episode of these series. For me, one or the other has for the last several years been the kind of book I read a few pages of before I go to be each night. And no, reading these books late at night doesn't make me have trouble falling asleep because of the frequently disturbing subject matter in them. No I sleep just fine…because I've been replaced by an alien shape-shifter or a man with a tail or I work at a cubicle and my boss called him and now I'm a zombie. (Just kidding…or am I?)

In all serious both of these books are the kind of project that all fans of Ten-Thirteen either have already or should have. For those who are still uninitiated in the world of Mulder and Scully, it might not be the worst idea to see a few episodes of the X-Files on streaming (they're always on one service or another) Monster is probably the better one for just that book as neither Millennium or The Lone Gunmen are on any streaming service yet. For those Millennium fans who are out there (and there is a new graphic novel series so I know they are) Believe will help you wander down memory lane and maybe track down the DVDs. It did for me.

Either way both of these books will appeal to a certain group of fans out there. You know who you are. (And so does the Syndicate.) With Ryan Coogler's revival of the series supposedly coming very soon, you might want to get acquainted again, if only to see what the show did right and what it did wrong and begin the wondrous debate over one of the greatest series of all time.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to pick up a pack of Morleys. Just kidding…

 

Homicide Rewatch: The Old and The Dead

 

Written by Randall Anderson; story by Henry Bromell & Jorge Zamacona

Directed by Michael Fields

Years after the fact it would be clear that of all the cast members of Homicide Ned Beatty was viewed by the writers they had most difficulty with. Tom Fontana would express as much on the Season 4 DVD, though he didn't call him out by name.

Part of this frustration was no doubt caused by Homicide's constantly being on the bubble and an actor of note like Beatty being unable to take opportunities he might want because he was tied to a series. Another issue might have been how the series evolved over time. In the first two seasons it was clearly an ensemble show and Beatty's role was slightly more prominent even when he wasn't investigating cases. By Season 3, however, Andre Braugher's exceptional talent had become more obvious to the writers and he was deservedly being put more front and center. The rest of the cast would suffer as a result but it was particularly clear for Bolander, whose character had a much less prominent role in the first half of Season 3.

With no clear idea by this point in Homicide would be renewed, the writers might have been trying to hedge their bets in the final third of the season: Bolander is far more front and center than he has been to this point. To do so they have to rush the recovery timetable of not only Bolander but Felton and Howard to a ridiculous standard (see Not By The Book) but this was a case of necessity being the mother of invention. This isn't really a complaint, either: as someone who always admired Beatty's work on the show and who wanted to see the rest of the actors get their due, these episodes stand much closer to the mark of first season episodes across the board.

From a logical point of view it also makes sense to deal with the detectives who were shot from the perspective of Bolander. He is the elder statesman who's been on the job for 27 years and he was by far the most seriously wounded. His major way of dealing with the 'trim he got at Maryland Shock Trauma' is a natty grey fedora, which combined with the Orioles scarf he traditionally wears actually works as a fashion choice for Stan. He spends the episode keeping the hat on at all cost; it's not until late when he's finally getting ready for the bed we see the horrible scar and understand that this has nothing to do with vanity.

He also has more of a reason to be philosophical then usual which considering that Munch is usually the more pensive one in their partnership is an interesting reversal of the dynamic. We're not sure how long he spent since being discharged before heading back to the job (again see below) but his own concern is his mental and psychological capacity. This adds more layers to Beatty's performance as on his first day back, he picks up the phone and goes out as primary.

It's clear Stan is dealing with issues that in part have to do with trauma: when he enters the Warner household and takes a look up the stairwell, the show lets us know by implication where his mind is. Munch spends a fair amount of the episode taking on the role of more of a caretaker than usual: when Stan appears repulsed by how savagely the Warners have been beaten to death, he slightly takes over the crime scene. Bolander makes it very clear he resents that fact but as his first day unfolds the viewer has reason to doubt whether Stan is ready to come back.

It's understandable he'd been dealing with memory loss issues given what happened to him, and he makes some errors involving medical terms and with Eldin Warner in certain details. Then when Munch finds a potential suspect he almost overcorrects by going too hard at him and John gently pulls him off. That night Russert has to gently tell him to go home. When he shows up at his partner's house later that night (very likely for the first time) I almost wondered if he had forgotten where he lived. The fact that he couldn't sleep and was dealing with nightmares is just as logical.

As Stan undresses he gives the kind of rant he's given to John a few times about his life, but this time there's an air of regret. He's been forced to contemplate his mortality in a way most of us never do and now he realizes at the end of the day, he doesn't have anything but the job. "I don't need a will," he tells Munch sadly. Munch, who usually can't shut up in Stan's presence, doesn't say anything even to offer false comfort: he lets Stan talk and leaves him to sleep.

But by the end of the episode it's clear that Bolander does still have what it takes. When Lyle Warner, the grandson of the deceased, finally shows up at the house both Munch and Bolander can sense that something's off in his behavior. For the first time Bolander seems more like his old self. The interrogation is one of the shows masterpieces: Munch plays the bad cop when it comes to arguing why he killed his grandparents and then Bolander tells him to take a walk. Then in the kind of fatherly way that we've always associated with him in the interrogation room Stan gets Lyle to confide in him.

It's clear that father and son have always been distant and ever since Lyle's mother has died it's gotten worse. He has essentially dumped him on his grandparents to raise him while he travels the world, making business deals and occasionally doing pro bono work. It's telling that the father seems more comfortable helping strangers then spending time with his son. There is something rather distant about Eldin that he doesn't even seem that bothered to stop his working after his parents are brutally murdered, not even to arrange their funerals. He doesn't think of taking his son with him on his long trips abroad and he doesn't even think of making regular phone calls. (Cell phones did exist in 1995, so that the father only calls his parents to get in touch with his son is also fairly telling.) Bolander gets Lyle to admit he was angrier than he'd ever been and that he beat his grandparents to death with a lacrosse stick. The moment he finishes Stan gets up, greets Eldin and coolly says: "Your son's going to need a lawyer," before calmly walking out of the room.

The episode also focuses on how the other two detectives are doing after the shooting. Felton has clearly done his time at a desk and Giardello is willing to let him work as a secondary. Bayliss asks him to go out on a call and Beau is willing. They are called into find a skeleton that was dug up by an old woman's dog ("Can I keep the thigh bone?" she asks Bayliss compassionately) and its clear this is a more personal case to Felton then most. This is 'Billy Town' the area of Baltimore where essentially the white trash of the city live and Felton grew up in this area. He takes a certain offense when Bayliss refers to it that way and Bayliss (who's dealing with reminders of Adena Watson) allows him to take the lead.

Felton shows a rare amount of subtlety, perhaps because he knows the neighborhood. He takes the slower of the Blakey siblings aside, talks to him about the woman who used to make candy and asks him about the body in the back. It is the father and the Blakey's say they didn't kill him. They buried him in the backyard because they didn't have the money for the funeral – something not uncommon among the poor.

This would normally be the end of it but showing a sense of dedication he didn't have before Felton finds out that the Blakey siblings haven't reported their father dead because they want to keep collecting his Social Security checks. (Or maybe they want to put the work on the Feds, which would also be common for the Baltimore PD.)

Howard is stuck behind a desk because of being shot in the heart. Is it sexism or seniority that gives Bolander the authority to go back out on the street despite being shot in the head? (It's the writers.) Howard's way of dealing with this is that her desk has been moved to make way for the fax machine and it pisses her off. This is both amusing and keeping with Kay's character: we already know she's got a superstitious streak in her the last few seasons and for all her talk of being a great detective she knows luck has to do with her record as much as skill.

Pembleton's role in this episode is much smaller than usual (considering he's been front and center much of the season that's actually a nice change) and when he shows up he treats Kay the way she likes to be treated. In his case, he's impatient because he's trying to solve the Gasparino murder and he delegated her to make phone calls. In his mind her superstition is getting in his way. But in a refreshing change of pace Kay follows through on the phone calls and figures out who killed the man after doing interviews. For once Frank is left speechless when he realizes that someone has done his job better than him and when Kay erased the name and says: "You're welcome," with just enough arrogance he looks comically stunned.

But the most significant storyline on the show has nothing to do with the detectives at all. In the first half of the episode Giardello has a discussion with Granger about the plumbing in the building and Granger, for once, agrees to help with no strings. The strings become clear when the plumbers come and go – and then the toilets are bubbling and explode. Giardello does some homework and realizes that the plumbers are involved with Granger's family and that they have been double billing the city for doing the same job twice. Gee confronts Granger about and he denies it.

What happens next is interesting. The following day there's a story in the paper about what Granger has been doing all this time. When Russert reads it to Giardello, he asks completely shocked by it – badly. Then he gets a call from Bonfather and he looks gleeful. It's pretty clear Gee leaked the story to the press: he's done it before and he will do it again. This time the consequences are greater than he could think.

Bonfather tells Giardello that Granger has been forced to retire. (This is Gerald F. Gough's last appearance on Homicide.) Bonfather has been promoted to Colonel, which leaves his position open. Gee clearly expects he'll been given the job but instead it's given to Russert. Giardello knows this is political but he has a read on it: "75 percent of the voters (in Baltimore)are black," he tells Bonfather. "And 61 percent are women," Bonfather counters. "Was merit ever a consideration?" he asks before he leaves.

One could make the argument that this is the first clear example on Homicide about how merit has nothing to do with how one is promoted in the police department. (The Wire, Simon's follow-up show, will state this directly.) But it's worth both Giardello's character and the circumstances. Giardello has already made it clear the first three seasons that he has no use for the politics the bosses play; he's butted heads with them countless times before and he's warned Frank about the kind of games earlier this season. But the fact remains Granger got fired as a direct result of Giardello's actions and he clearly expected that he was called up because he was going to get promoted. This was as political a maneuver as Giardello has ever done over the years. Did he think he could benefit from it? He talks about his career as if merit matters but after thirty years you think he of all better would know better. Besides after all his years of being a pain in the ass to the bosses, did he truly believe that wasn't going to be weighed against him?

It must be said that Russert's promotion to Captain just a few months after becoming shift commander makes less sense from a realistic standpoint: even if you acknowledge that she was promoting for political reasons, it seems an acknowledgement that the writers haven't been able to fit her character into the show as a shift commander and are now trying to change the game by making her captain. Perhaps they think by having her butt heads with Al on a regular basis after being his equal, it would add to more drama particularly given the circumstances. The gambit doesn't work; by the time the fourth season is less than half over, they will change her position again, demonstrated that the writers never figured out how to use Megan Russert properly.

'The Old and the Dead' ends with Bolander and Howard sitting on the roof, checking in on each other. Both of them say that they haven't missed a step but you can tell in their voices they don't have the confidence they should. Because of future events this would also end up not playing very well for either character but it's still a good note to end this superb episode on.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

Not By The Book: I don't so much object to the recovery time of all three detectives being accelerated as much as they have as the fact that apparently during that recovery time there have been practically no murders in Baltimore. Last week, we got up to the 53^rd murder so far in 1995. Somehow in the space of time that Bolander and Howard have been going through physical therapy and being cleared for the job there's only been one more murder: the Gasparino case. The alternative is they came back to work from all of this in one week's time. I don't think either works.

Also though two people were murdered Warner is written up as one case. This isn't unheard of on the show to this point: the Billiard Brothers who Munch investigated in the pilot were written up as one crime. Starting with the next season murders in a family will each be accounted separately.

Detective Munch: We saw Munch's home for the first time and we hear him drinking bear and dancing to Lou Reed's 'Next to You'. He even sings a few bars before letting Stan in.

Opening Teaser: One of the best jokes in the series. Megan is bickering with her cousin 'Tim' and Felton comes in and recognizes him as Tim Russert, who at the time was the weekly host of NBC's Meet The Press. A starstruck Felton tries to ask him about politicians of the era ("Does Bob Dole have a chance in '96?) and all Megan and Tim can argue about is the socket wrench set she got him for his birthday present. She dismisses him: "Go play tennis with Hilary. Play golf with Quayle!" It's hysterical watching a man we associated with such gravitas tell Isabella Hoffman: "You know how they say when you're angry, you're beautiful? Well, you're not!"

Interestingly enough this unbilled cameo would become canon for Isabella Hoffman's character. When she was written out of the series, it was said she was introduced to a French diplomat that her cousin introduced her and she ran off to Paris with him. (Then again, that may just be talk.)

Hey, Isn't That…This episode marks the debut of Shawn Hatosy, a child actor who mad appearance in many films in the 1990s including In & Out, Anywhere But Here and The Faculty. His career began to slowly accelerate as he got older, particularly in television, where he would receive acclaim in films such as A Soldier's Girl and Faith of My Fathers.

He finally managed to break through playing Sammy Bryant on the acclaimed TV Series Southland and has worked constantly ever since in shows such as Bosch and Fear the Walking Dead. His first incredible work came as Pope, the silent son on the criminal Cody family in Animal Kingdom. He has been far busier in the last year starring on Rescue: Hi-Surf, Chicago PD and on The Pitt as Dr. Jack Abbott.

 

 

 

 

 

My Predictions (And Hopes) For the 2025 Emmy Nominations, Week 2 Concluded

 

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY ET AL

So far in this decade each year has produced a different winner. And the odds are heavy it will happen again this year with an overwhelming frontrunner. That said this is still arguably one of the strongest categories in the Emmys overall and yet again one of the most diverse. Once more into the breach.

 

Liza Colon-Zayas, The Bear

Larraine Newman was really upset when Colon-Zayas won last year and I won't pretend I was overjoyed either. But as we know this category has been prone to upset victories over the distant and recent past, usually when the cream rises to the top. (Exhibit A: Sheryl Lee Ralph.) No one denies that Colon-Zayas' work as Maria hasn't always been steady and entertaining over the years to watch. The trouble is it's always harder to watch her work on the show and make the case that The Bear is a comedy.

Colon-Zayas was one of the few performers in the cast to make it through the mixed reviews of Season 3 pretty much with her reputation intact. After all, she starred in the one episode that everyone considered was a gem in Season 3: 'Napkins', a flashback that told how she ended up becoming part of the original sandwich shop and will likely earn nominations for Jon Bernthal for Guest Actor and Ayo Edebiri for direction. It's likely for that reason that she was the only nominee for The Bear for the Critics Choice Awards, even though she lost to Einbinder this time.

It's possible her work in that episode will allow her to repeat in this category but as I said it's unlikely. But for all the flaws of Season 3, no one questions her coming back this year (except maybe Larraine Newman)

 

Hannah Einbinder, Hacks

I predicted that Einbinder would end up winning last year in this category, for the simple fact that she is well past due. Einbinder already has a wall full of prizes for her work on Hacks – three Astras awards and winning the Critics choice award this past winter.

In a narrow sense Ava is a co-lead rather than a supporting actress and this continues to be just as true in Season 4. Having finally been willing to do the worst thing possible to get what she wanted she spent the first half of the season openly feuding with Deb and proving that, in her own way, she's just as unprepared for the burden of the spotlight as she is. The two of them eventually manage to find a way to move past it by the halfway point. Then in the most critical episode of the series so far, she is exposed and the network forces her to be fired, forcing Deb make the most selfless decision she's made in her career. The season finale which showed how devoted Ava is to Deb despite everything was just as funny and moving.

What may stand in the way of Einbinder's victory may be her politics: she has made some political remarks over the past year that have gone too far even for Hollywood. But she's still the overwhelming favorite in this category in my book – though as with Smart the tides may be changing.

Janelle James, Abbott Elementary

Many people watched James's work in Season 4 and considered it 'the season of Ava'. I've no doubt if asked Ava would say: "Every season is about me" which is not wrong. James has always been the comic diamond of an extraordinary cast of performers: the go-to move when the series needs a laugh. Witness the Hollywood episode where she dresses as "Blade, bitch."

But as hard as it might be to have believed at the start of the series, Ava spent much of Season 4 showing the most emotional growth. She's now clearly good at her job in a way even the district is impressed by and is making more and more talks. She's comfortable with the politics of her job and in being willing to take bribes. We've seen bonds grown between some of the characters, particularly her and Barbara (see below). And even when she ended up being fired after making an awesome sacrifice for her teachers (something I didn't think she'd have been capable of last season) she landed on her feet. But she decided to come back and I think we were all stunned to see the entire community rally behind her.  You throw in that she seems to having a truly mature relationship with a boyfriend and may be reestablishing her bond with her father after years of being estranged and this entire season has to be her best work yet.

I want Janelle James to win someday. Indeed I advocated it for the first season of Abbott. It's hard to imagine Ava Colman being eclipsed but no one can argue just how incredible the three woman who ending up winning the last three years have been (all of them are certain to get nominated this year). But if the Emmys were willing to give Ava the love she is certain she deserves – and really she does – would anyone object?

 

Catherine O'Hara, The Studio

Catherine O'Hara is, as they say, having a moment. Just four years after leaving Schitt's Creek (with every single acting award imaginable as a parting gift) she has returned to television in grand style. She is certain to receive an Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama nomination for her magnificent work in The Last of Us. And while that was going on she came back to comedy as Patty Leigh, the messy executive on The Studio.

Now to be fair a lot of her co-stars might be in this category. She might be joined by newcomer Chase Sui Wonders who was nominated for a Gotham TV award earlier this year and an Astra. It might also go to Kathryn Hahn, who the Emmys might want to recognize after likely ignoring her for her work in Agatha All Along. But the fact is O'Hara did manage to win Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy from the Astras which I was certain would go to Einbinder. And that double dipping might help more than a few actors.

O'Hara can never get enough recognition from the Emmys in my book, same as with quite a few other nominees in this category. Right now she is the most likely one to show up here.

Sheryl Lee Ralph, Abbott Elementary

Ralph has diminished slightly in awards circles since she managed to prevail in the Emmys in Abbott's first year but that doesn't mean Ralph has on the show. Barbara continues to be as much a force of nature on Abbott, still occasionally stepping out of her comfort zone, sometimes to her own level.

Much of her best work in Season 4 was with Ava, as the unlikely friendship led to her standing on her own two feet at a choir presentation. We also saw her take over a music class as a request by Ava, saw her go viral by her students but then managed to find a way to work with it. We've seen Barb deal with the issues of technology, go to dinner at the Shemanski home, continue to make new traditions and deal with the reality of getting older, but still being able to change.

The relationship between Barb and the younger teachers on Abbott has always been special as it continues the always pleasing trend of the boomer generation getting along with much younger ones. We've seen how well this has played out on both Hacks and Only Murders and its always been both moving and hysterical. Ralph has no need for another trophy at this point but if she got one, no one would mind.

 

Meg Stalter, Hacks

At this point Meg Stalter's Kayla is the only performer who has not received an Emmy nomination of any kind for her work on Hacks. And I suspect Kayla herself might be the only person in the world who would be untroubled by that face.

Stalter has been able to steal scenes ever since she started playing Jimmy's incompetent assistant in Season 1. And in an act of comic genius on a show that doesn't lack it by far, the writers have been expanding Kayla's role with each season, deciding that is incredibly funny woman-child who wears the nepo baby proudly has depths and can actually be good at whatever life throws at her. Each season she keeps taken (usually against the will of Jimmy) more responsibility and somehow she keeps managing to not only succeed but excel at her job.  You'd think by now Jimmy would have stopped being surprised by this but honestly his comic amazement at this is as much part of the fun.

By this point Meg Stalter has become one of those standout characters who I could see, as with Bob Odenkirk's Saul Goodman or Carrie Preston's Elsbeth, carrying her own series some day: she's that good at it. The next step is to give her an Emmy nomination and I keep hoping they will. Maybe this year.

 

Jessica Williams, Shrinking

Williams's nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in 2023 was a balm to my soul because of her grounded and charming work as Gaby on Shrinking. I didn't expect her to win in 2023 there were just too many good candidates. Now yet again she will be in the arena for her wonderful work, which like every other character in Season 2 expanded.

Gaby spent the first few episodes breaking up the FWB relationship she'd started with Jimmy at the end of Season 1 and having a kind of touchy relationship over the first half of the season. We saw her deal with her life as a teacher and a therapist, saw her try to begin a relationship with Derek No. 2, and more importantly saw her tricky relationship with both her mother and her sister which involved a very messy family dynamic where both had to take separate roles taken care of an addict. In the midst of this she had to deal with the strange mix of the friend group she was a part of and the saga that was unfolding involve both her colleagues and friends at the therapy group.

Williams is going to be part of the Emmy conversation for years to come, though I'm not sure if she'll win for her work here – there are too many great candidates already and their will continue to be in the future. But she deserves all the recognition she gets.

 

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Stephanie Koenig, The English Teacher

Honestly Stephanie Koenig should have been recognized by the Emmys already considering just how many great TV series of any genre she's had a major role on. Whether Sabrina on The Flight Attendant, Andrea Eastman on the undervalued The Offer or Fran, the busybody colleague in Lessons in Chemistry she's always had talent. And it looked like her work as Gwen on English Teacher was going to push her over the top. The series that she had co-created with Brian Jordan Alvarez got a lot of early buzz and she was nominated for awards from the Critics Choice Awards, the spirit awards and the WGA. Then accusation came to Alvarez last winter and everyone associated with the show kind of became radioactive.

That's unfair to the entire cast but it's particularly unfair to Koenig. Her work as the podcast listening friend on the faculty to Brian, the deluded girlfriend to a loser boyfriend who spent the entire digging a hole in his backyard and calling it a pool, who seemed to be the deepest thinker on the series but could slip back into bad habits just as anybody, was a true work of comic gems that I'm reminded of the work of Tina Fey on 30 Rock. But by the time of the Astras like the rest of the cast she was persona non grata.

I understand why she'll likely be excluded but I think it's horribly unfair. That's why I truly believe she deserves to be considered. She doesn't deserve to be branded for the accusations against another person.

 

GUEST ACTOR AND ACTRESS IN A COMEDY

It's a certainty that last year's winners in this category, Jon Bernthal and Jamie Lee Curtis for The Bear will be among the contenders. But their chances of repeating have diminished immensely.

There will no doubt be several nominees from The Studio likely including performers playing themselves. The certainties right now are Bryan Cranston and Zoe Kravitz.

From Hacks look for Julianne Nicholson to join perennial contenders Kaitlin Olson and Christopher McDonald back for their annual comic joy. And don't rule out the possibility of Olson being nominated for her work in the Abbott Elementary crossover.

Melissa McCarthy looks likely to return for her work in Only Murders and don't rule out Eugene Levy coming back to the ranks.

Finally one long shot nominee for each category I'd personally like to see. Bradley Cooper for his wonderful spot in the season premier of The Righteous Gemstones and Wendie Malick for her superb work on Shrinking.

 

Next Week I bring events to their conclusion with Outstanding Limited Series. Expect some different faces then what the Emmys will be arguing for.