Before Trump Became President Jonathan Rauch Asked How We Got Here? I Look At His Answers and See What They Might Tell Us In A Post-Trump America

 

In the last decade the question one hears about so much political discourse, particularly from the left as well as Democrats (not always the same thing) was simple: "How did American politics get to the point to let Trump become President?"

Having spent enough time among progressive newsletters, websites and blogs like this one: I've essentially gotten about a hundred variations of the same answer: the right did it. The narrative, if it is coherent, argues that ever since the 1970s, Republicans backed by the corporate oligarchs, the religious right and various white supremacists, have worked to undermine the many safeguards America put in place after Watergate. The laundry list is always the same: think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist society, the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, certain Republican villains (Reagan, Gingrich and McConnell are the most common names) spent years setting up a system to subvert all three branches of government, create cable news networks that indoctrinated the naïve followers and have subverted the system of checks and balances by using the electoral college and the power of small states to subvert the will of the overwhelming liberal and progressive majority of the country to lead our nation to the state that Trump was just a symptom of all this and didn't cause anything that wasn't already there.

It's a persuasive argument for quite a few reasons. The historical record bares out that all of these things actually happened in our society and by doing so it completely absolves the left's role in any of it at every level: from their protesting during the leadup to the 1968 convention that caused just enough of a shift in the vote to swing the election to Nixon to the increasing withdrawal of the left from politics more or less after the McGovern debacle to the constant equating there is no difference between the two parties, leading many people to vote for Nader in 2000 ensuring that W won.

I've recently been looking at a series of articles written by staff members of The Atlantic over the past several years. The Atlantic is a liberal magazine but has mostly remained objective even as that very idea has been argued as something all good institutions should throw away after the rise of Trump. One such article was written by Jonathan Rauch in July/August of 2016 in which he asked the same question we've all been asking: "What's Ailing American Politics?"

In this article he argues that many of those very reforms and safeguards American institutions have put in place in the half century prior to 2016 were collectively responsible for the situation we find ourselves in today. If nothing else this is a novel approach, arguing that the way we tried to fix the system has in many ways done much to break it. The third and most pertinent reason I'm inclined to listen to Rauch is that "Back in the 1970s, as a teenager in the post-Watergate era, I was on their side."  That he is willing to look back and admit he might have been misguided is enough for me to take him seriously. Even before Trump arrived on the scene both sides of the political spectrum had more than doubled down on the idea of never admitting you were wrong in any argument, no matter the circumstances.

And it is worth noting that so many of these reforms that have taken place over the years had bipartisan support at least initially and were all part of the body politics so long that changed them seems unthinkable. This doesn't mean Rauch is correct in all of his assumptions: indeed I disagree with him on a couple of them. But as we will have to navigate a post-Trump world – and unlike so many of my colleagues, I do believe that is on the horizon – we need to at least seriously consider how we got there so we can figure out if there is a way to fix them,

So in this article I will briefly look at Rauch's five central arguments and why I believe he is right or why he is wrong. Each of them are long enough to take up separate articles and indeed I may deal with them all in more detail. But for now, let's look at the basics

 

Reformation of the nomination process for all candidates running for office.

This argument was actually very much en vogue during Obama's first term, particularly when it came to the Presidency. Rauch's argument involves how party leaders had ways to influence nominations and vet candidates not just for the White House but for all Congressional offices. He also makes the convincing argument about how voter turnout in primaries across the board is always low in both parties: usually between 15 and 20 percent at the most.

He also argues that 'party leaders of your did a better job of getting qualified mainstream candidates to challenge incumbents.' This is a straw man argument, as it's difficult to believe one could find someone as unqualified to run for Congress as Marjorie Taylor Greene for Republicans or Alexandria Ocasio-Cotez for Democrats.

Basically all of these arguments are a call-back to the so-called smoke-filled room when party bosses could make choices for who ran for office without anybody else making up their mind. The problem is this logic doesn't hold water when you consider that at no point in the selection process were the voters allowed to have influence. The party bosses chose who ran for every office and then they got the voters excited about them. Furthermore well into the 1940s, these races were sown up by machines who we're more than willing to use these elected officials to control politics at every level. It was the same corruption as we see today, it was just exclusively for white men. (I'll be dealing with that again later on.)

Rauch even acknowledges as much when he says that Prescott Bush got his start in politics from one of the top executives at Pan Am. He's not so subtly arguing that industrial executives may have a better view of politics than the average voter which shows bias in the worst way. He also leaves out the fact that all of these financial and political powers didn't want the boat rocked and that meant no reforms for the system anywhere. He also removes the issue of the implicit racial bias exacted by the South over Democratic party nominations for over a century, blocking even the idea of either reform or civil rights.

And as a result during this period of power brokers from 1836 to the mid-1970s the overwhelming majority of presidential; candidates of both parties were mediocrities at best. Lincoln, Wilson and FDR were the exceptions to this rule; far more often we would get Pierce, Buchanan, Grant and Harding, all chosen by the bosses and all considered the worst Presidents in history. And those I should add were the ones who won the White House; most of the losing candidates were no better. Lewis Cass, James Cox and Horatio Seymour barely ranks as answer to Jeopardy questions.

It is hard to deny, especially after last year, that the political primary on so many levels is the worst way to pick a candidate. But the rest of the sentence 'except for all the others' is just as applicable when you consider the 140 plus years when the public had no choice in the matter. Rauch says that whether  the switch to direct public nominations a net benefit or a drawback is subjective. I don't agree because any process that allows the people, no matter how small a group, to have a voice in who their leaders are, should always be preferable to having none. One could make a convincing argument that for most of our country's history we were closer to an oligarchy then a true democracy: yes the voters had choices who the vote for in November but those choices themselves had been made by the same kinds of powerful people that so many today demean.

As for the problem with party purity that leads to the fear of being primaried, that is a valid concern and I can't deny that is a problem as does the issue of gerrymandering which is becoming just as problematic in the Democratic Party as Republican. That being said I still reject the argument Rauch raises here. I may not be able to see a way forward but going backward isn't the answer either.

 

Attempting to get dirty money out of politics.

Rauch argues that the tightening web of regulation for campaign finance was to reduce the idea of corruption and special interests. But he points out the fundamental reality that you can't eliminate money from politics. All that it did was divert the money from being raised by the political parties and outsource it to special interest groups; PACS, 501 C (4)S and various 527 groups. He also reminds that even after Citizen United formerly weaponized money as speech, there were various political machines on the left as well as the right, most notably Tom Steyer's NextGen America. In the 2014 midterms Steyer supported Terry McCauiliffe's run for Governor for Virginia and also supported Democrats in four Senate races and three gubernatorial races. By the end of that year he was the single largest donor in American politics – something I don't remember seeing in all of those progressive newsletter that spent so much time arguing how the Koch brothers and American Crossroads had destroyed America.

Rauch argues that because these groups rely on purism, protest and parochialism, the outside groups are driving towards politics towards polarization, extremism and short-term gain. And it was clearly having an effect on the state party. Rauch quotes a mountain state Democrat arguing that the internal conversation they'd been having is 'How do we keep state parties alive?" A southern state Republican party director asked the same story.

In the aftermath of 2016 the situation has hurt the Democrats far more at a state level, particularly in rural and southern states. The Justice Democrats have done nothing to make the situation for state parties across the board and considering their own strict rules on campaign contributions, they have precious little show for their own purity and extremism and not even much short-term gain to show for it in eight years. Yet it is from them that by far the greatest argument for campaign finance reform comes the loudest though paradoxically their platform basically involves as much money being spent as possible as the solution to all of their reforms on no less than four bills that they have made part of their platform (Medicare for All, Free College Tuition, The Raise the Wage Act and Taxing Wall Street).

 A central part of their platform is publicly funded elections which in all the years prior to Citizen United has only managed to make it into effect in two states since 2000. Only once in 2006 during the Arizona gubernatorial race have both candidates run this. There have been no statewide elections in Maine where both candidate allowed this. It was overwhelmingly defeated as a ballot initiative in Alaska in August of 2008.

And even in the two states where it passed voters – Massachusetts in 1998 and California in 2008 – the voters would reject it in subsequent measures when they ran up the question as how these campaigns would be paid for. In both cases the voters of two of the most liberal states in the nation made it clear that they didn't to publicly finance the campaigns of elected officials.

Like Rauch I'm in agreement that keeping money out of politics is impossible and the ideas of those who argue for it, no matter how well intentioned, are fundamentally naïve. Money has always been a part of politics just as it will always be a part of everything in America. One understands why one wants to keep special interests and corporations out of politics but ever since the Industrial revolution that's never been a reality in America or really any democracy. Everything has a price and that includes running for office. The Republicans accepted that reality years ago and that's something the far left more than any other part of our American discourse refuses to accept.

 

 

Reforming Congress, particularly in regard to seniority determined chairmanship.

Here Rauch argues when the post-Watergate class of Congressmen in the 1970s (he refers mostly to liberals but Newt Gingrich, who he says accelerated the process entered the House during the same period) destroyed the system of seniority and committee systems that 'rewarded teamwork and loyalty, that ensured people at the top were experienced, and harnessed hundreds of middle-ranking members of Congressmen to the task of legislating'. He points out that today Congress is 'a collection of individual entrepreneurs and pressure groups' and correctly points out that the balance of power is in the Freedom Caucus members 'who think nothing of wielding power against their own leaders'. One could argue that a similar mindset now is part of the Progressive caucus on the other side of the aisle.

I have a slightly different opinion than Rauch on this. While I agree that the reforms have led to the world of chaos in politics, mostly in the House but also the Senate, I've never been convinced that the idea of seniority – which even the author admits was closer to a fiefdom than meritocracy – was the best thing for reform as a whole. As anyone who knows the history of 20^th century politics by the era of the New Deal, the most senior chairs of committees were primarily the conservative southerners known then as the Dixiecrats. They raged against most of the New Deal programs and much of FDR's legislation and were the primary obstacle for any attempt to advance the idea of civil rights legislation until the combined efforts of LBJ and a coalition of liberal Democrats and Republicans managed to overcome to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act the following year. This may have rewarded the idea of party unity but it came at the cost of the basic rights to African-Americans for the first half of the twentieth century.

As for the work of Gingrich's revolutionaries who compounded all of this, I will simply state the only odd thing about is not that he decided to tear up the old order of Congress but that it took as long as it did for any Republican to do so. The more I look at the historic record of the 20^th century I wonder how much of the myth of 'the loyal opposition' comes from the liberal mindset of that era. As we know very well Republicans by and large hated the New Deal programs, had little use initially for international organizations and no respect for any part of the Great Society and all the reforms of the 1960s. But because throughout the overwhelming majority of the 20^th century the Democrats had such staggering numbers in both houses of Congress the Republicans more or less had to limit themselves to speeches on the floors of Congress against it. Opposition to the majority of these reforms always came far more from conservative Democrats and it was due to the leadership of strong Democratic Presidents from FDR to LBJ that they managed to get the reforms they wanted accomplished. The Republicans opposed all of these reforms at an institutional level but they were so popular with the public that they saw no benefit in campaigning against it. Minority leaders like Bob Michel may have believed conservativism could be preserved by working honestly with Democratic leaders. We know that throughout the 20^th century there were quite a few Republicans, from Karl Mundt and Charlie Halleck to William Jenner and Joseph McCarthy who were just as willing to tear the order down – and by and large the Republicans were fine with it for political means.

So while I agree that tearing the old order down led to the problems we face today, I'm not sure the old order was something to be celebrated. It's the consequence of something Sam Rayburn famously said: "Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one." I agree the situation we face today is because of too many jackasses and precious few carpenters but that doesn't mean the barn didn't deserve to be kicked down.

 

 

Cameras in Congress, ending the possible of closed-door negotiations for legislation.

This argument is self-explanatory. Rauch says that because federal law, congressional rules and public expectations have places almost all formal deliberations and most informal ones in public view, finding space for delicate negotiations and candid deliberation can be difficult. Of all Rauch's arguments I agree with this one whole-heartedly and I doubt any sane person could argue the long term damage that has been done in the name of greater transparency.

This is where the strongest argument for the 'smoke-filled room' works for me. Congress, cable news networks and the media-industrial complex have taken away the idea of all meaningful legislation in the name of public theater. This was a problem well before Trump arrived on the scene as cable news did everything in its power to pick apart any major development in the name of a bigger story or one at all. Government when it works well, we forget, is supposed to be dull and boring. This has always been anathema to the media and particularly television which needs to make things exciting when they're not. And in my lifetime whether the Presidents were Democrat or Republican, whether the Congress were Democrat or Republican, everything became a real-time media event. Tom Daschle would point out "The idea that Washington would work better if there were TV cameras monitoring every conversation gets it exactly wrong."

He's correct. The only people it has ever worked better for are reporters, pundits and media analysts. And considering that there's more money to be made working as one of those then serving in elected office, its hardly shocking that years after elected officials on both sides have become far more well-known as fixtures on television in which they can explain the process in more detail while arguing why their former colleagues are saying what they're saying, making it harder for things to get done. Sunlight has hardly been a disinfectant in this case. On the contrary now everyone on Washington only comes out at night.

 

 

Reforming pork

This last one is one I would have confessed not being a problem before Rauch explained the reason why. As long as I've been alive the one universal truth from Democrats and Republicans was that pork was the worst thing possible and should be avoided at all costs. What I didn't know – but honestly should have picked up on during my intense reading on American history – was that it has been these very pork-barrel promises that got so much done.

I'm not sure how else FDR and colleagues for most of the 20^th century would have been able to get their legislation past conservative Democrats had they not been promising things for their districts, whether it was patronage, federal bases or something to bring jobs to the community. Rauch points out that LBJ couldn't have gotten the Civil Rights bill through without support from minority leader Charles Halleck whose price was a NASA research grant for his district.

But starting in the 1970s and increasingly snowballing when the Republicans took over, the process for appropriations broke down, due to reforms that weakened appropriations' power, sunshine laws that reduced their autonomy and the polarization that made negotiations possible. Ironically one of the last times extremists of both parties ever worked together was in 2011 when 'a strange-bedfellows coalition of Tea Partiers and progressives banned earmarking, the practice of dropping goodies into bills as a way to attract votes – including, ironically, votes for politically painful spending reductions.

And as a result Congressional leaders lost one of their last remaining tools to induce fellowship and team play. Trent Lott told CNN in 2013: "Trying to be a leader where you have no sticks and very few carrots is dang near impossible. Members don't get anything from you and leaders don't give anything. They don't fell like you can reward them or punish them."

 

So small wonder that in recent years so much of our government has fallen apart to the point that an entire generation of elected officials come to Congress not in the name of serving the public good or their party but to purely became celebrities on a national stage.

This has been rampant in the Republican Party, particularly in the House for the 21^st century. The equally troubling possibility is that the far left branch of the Democrats will catch up with their Freedom Caucus counterparts. The Justice Democrats came into existence in large part having grown up knowing only of this level of Congressional dysfunction and believing that being an effective representative meant playing by the rules that have been effect all their lives.

They have benefited it just as much Gingrich's Republican revolutionaries, the Tea Partiers and all of the Republicans who have come in age in the era of Trump have. They are purists in the same way that the Freedom Caucus is, care less for helping their party or their district then being known on a national stage and it has already proven difficult for leadership to control them. Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries were mostly able to do so during Biden's administration but in the aftermath of last year, it may increasingly become difficult to. There are no carrots and almost no sticks.

And in many cases they have demonstrated that they care far more for the big picture than locally. In her first year in Congress Amazon was planning to locate a new corporate headquarters in Queens that would have provided financial growth and jobs for the people in New York. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, then in Congress les than a month, joined with her fellow progressives to argue the money Amazon would invest should be invested in public services, that the tax breaks would lead to the richest people, and would exacerbate gentrification in Queens – which is not even part of New York that she represents. This opposition led to Amazon cancelling its plan for the New York campus.

When she learned that she had stopped the possibility of 2500 new jobs AOC said that she had a more concrete plan to help New York. But Ocasio-Cortez has in fact spent precious little time in New York during her six years in Congress. Her most famous return was when she attended the Met Gala in 2021 wearing an organza gown that said, 'Tax The Rich' . She has spent a fair amount of time speaking out on college campuses about progressive issues, appearing on CNN and amassing a huge amount of followers on social media. In the minds of many young Americans, this is what a great representative should be and what a reformer should look like. They only think this way I'd say because of the chaos that has been caused by so many previous reforms.

I mention this because everything that applied to AOC and 'The Squad' could just as easily apply to so many of the Republicans that Rauch mentions with disdain in his essay. They could only have come into existence because of those reforms and are as potentially destructive to the Democratic leadership as Gingrich was when he came to power in the 1990s. And they have no use for the reforms that allowed them to come to power in the first place, believing in an age of political individualism and with little use for the institutions that are already frail.

The reason I mention this is because, in those same left-wing newsletters I have received arguing what is wrong with American politics, they frequently held up the Squad and fellow leftist politicians as the solution to the problems. Not for them is trying to fix a system that is broken, best to tear it down completely and start over. That they have no idea of what that world would look like is unsettling in a way the far right just isn't. Because they do have an idea and they've spent a lot of time trying to realize it.

Rauch's article didn't have a solution for today's problems but that's actually not an argument against it. As I said he wrote this before Trump's surprise win in 2016 so he might have assumed like so many it was a problem for the Democrats to deal with. As I said, unlike my more alarmist colleagues I believe we are approaching a post-Trump America and we're going to have to try and figure out how to fix things going forward. It's only by admitting our mistakes – and more importantly, why we might have supported them initially – that we may be able to find a way to build a healthier democracy and government so we can figure out how history does not repeat itself.

Homicide Rewatch: Thrill of the Kill

 

Written by Jorge Zamacona ; story by Tom Fonatana & Henry Bromell

Directed by Tim Hunter

 

This may be the first episode in the series entire run that could be considering polarizing by fans. David P. Kalat, author of the series first unofficial episode guide, calls it 'possibly the series lowest point'. Tod Hoffman the author of the more critical guide Homicide: Life on The Screen refers to it as 'an exciting, cinematic episode with a surprising twist at the end." Having watched the episode multiple times over the years I can see both points of view.

I don't think this episode would have happened had not been made for NBC's demand for Fontana to bring higher ratings in Season 4. We've seen other episodes over the last season that seem like they're trying to make the show more audience friendly and we'll see more in the weeks and months to come. 'Thrill of the Kill', however, is the first episode that really seems like it belongs to another series altogether, the kind of thing you could see Criminal Minds or NCIS dealing with in subsequent years.

It's not so much the camera work in the scenes of the killings or even the way the show spends relatively little time with the detectives themselves: it's that this is first time the show has ever spent so much time with the actual killer. You could argue that Fontana is trying to experiment with the formula the way the show has done as recently as the previous episode. (Thrill in the Kill was originally aired before 'A Doll's Eyes no doubt because the network heads thought this episode would draw more eyeballs.) But 'A Doll's Eyes' worked because it spent so much time dealing with the family of the victim and seeing just how the trauma of murder affected those around it. Thrill of the Kill, by contrast, only seems tangentially attached to Homicide at all. Bayliss and Pembleton are called in to help the FBI, only because the killer is headed in their direction after a spree of other murders which goes against the rules of how the detectives have done their jobs for the last three seasons.

And even if you buy this as a concept and go along for the ride (heh heh) the plotting of the episode makes no sense. As Kalat himself argues:

"The story has a geographical problem. Bayliss and Pembleton are warned that the killer is on his way north and that he is on a drug-addled speed trip (in both senses of the word) Dell continue northward at a relentless pace, yet the detectives manage to go south to the scene of one crime, investigate their for several hours, and still return to Baltimore north ahead of Dell. What shortcut did they take to set up a roadblock in front of him. Unless Dell stopped to take a nap along the way, he would have blazed through Baltimore while they were still returning from crime scene number one. To help explain his lack of speed, the script has Dell stop for gas at an alarmingly frequent rate. No reasons are given for his stops. Perhaps he has a hole in his tank?"

This is the kind of sloppy writing that you would expect of a lesser procedural, not from a man who's already won an Emmy for writing. And that's before you get to the twist at the end where the detective catch the man they think is the killer and only after they've locked him up to they catch the real killer, who is his identical twin brother. I'll admit the Baltimore PD is sloppy with its research but they're being assisted by the FBI. How is it possible that no one notices that the Dells are twin brothers? They might very well have grown up in a small town in Florida but you'd think that when they looked for birth certificates they'd have found two filed by the same day.

I can't deny the affect of the cinematography, the suspense in some of the crime scenes and a brilliant performance by Jeffrey Donovan both onscreen and narration. But all of this would be more suited to a show like Millennium or Profiler both of which would debut on television the following year. And it's not like there haven't been better examples of serial killers on TV to deal with by now: even at this point in its run Law & Order had dealt with the subject of spree killers multiple times and with better results. (The most famous example to that point was 'Mayhem' in 1994, which follows the detectives over a shift that involves six murders over twenty-four hours.)  I get the feeling watching this episode that the writers are trying to experiment with the format and they clearly found it wanting. The next time they deal with a serial killer of this magnitude they will have figured out what works and what doesn't and it will be much truer to what we get here.

What works in 'Thrill of the Kill' are, unsurprisingly, the smaller deals. By this point in the show's run Andre Braugher and Kyle Secor were strong enough that they could carry lesser storylines. We see Pembleton being snappish at Tim for practicing Spanish, Frank being annoyed that they have to be toyed from crime scene to crime scene, and in what may be the most interesting part so far we see the detectives having to get certified on the range. This is the first time in the show's history we've seen any of the detectives firing their service weapons, and as in keeping with reality, its purely to qualify on the range.

We also finally see Frank's weakness: he's a lousy shot. He admits he's never much liked guns as part of the job and we see he barely manages to hit the target. This is the first time we've seen Bayliss actually better at Frank then something: he hits the target far more cleanly then him. By this point they're searching for the killer and they know what he's capable of.

The contrast between Frank and Tim with guns in their hands and Dell killing a man in a rest stop bathroom is one of the only times the conceit works and that's because we here Bayliss' voice over the killing, not Dell's. Bayliss has always been the more philosophical and even as he fires the gun he wonders what it must be like to deal death. "No fear of hell. No fear of lethal injection. No fear at all." It's a brilliant contrast, particularly because at no point during the investigation to we get any explanation as to why the brother who was considered harmless all this time finally snapped and went on this killing spree. You can argue Homicide has never cared about the why before but considering we're hearing so much of the killer's thoughts this time, it seems like a fly in the ointment.

It would be easy to dismiss this episode from the canon of Homicide altogether but that would be a mistake. Because the one genuine virtue of this episode is that for the first time in the show's history we get a look at the other side of Al Giardello. We've heard about his children before and we've known that he has a special fondness for Charisse, his eldest. Now for the first time in a long time Charisse is driving down from Richmond to see Al and he wants to cook for her.

The episode goes out of its way to draw as much suspense from Charisse being delayed as possible: she's late for lunch, she won't call and we see Newton Dell pick up a young African-American female hitchhiking. When we learn that there's another body, we're given to expect the worst – and then before we cut to commercia Charisse shows up safe and sound at Al's.

In truth if Charisse had been a victim of the serial killer the squad was chasing it would have gone against the rules Homicide has established so far and be closer in formula to NYPD Blue where this kind of thing happened more often to the regulars. The show is almost always upfront when someone the viewer cares about is in danger and that will be the trend. The truth is, Fontana has something far colder in mind.

We've been given reason to believe that Al was a good husband and a good father. But when Charisse tells him that she's getting married and moving to California, for the first time that image is cut. And when Al tries to talk with Charisse, we see her turn on him with a rage we've never seen the usually powerful lieutenant deal with. She tells him that whenever he's confronted with something he doesn't like, he turns into a bully. When Al hears this he starts getting angry – actually proving his daughter's point. We've gotten hints in previous seasons of the toll the job takes on the detectives in their personal relationships but this is the first time we've actually seen the long term damage. (The final season of the show will actually have one of the major storylines confront it directly.)

When everything is over and the killer is caught (the viewer assumes) we see Gee more glum than usual. In the course of less than a day he's had to deal with the worst aspects of the job and a blow to his personal life. He tells Megan at the end of the episode: "My family's my life savings" and while he know this is a sincere wish, we also know that Gee will never be able to fully separate the two lives. Tellingly while Charisse will be mentioned multiple times in the remainder of the series and we will eventually see much of the other members of Giardello's family, this is the only time we ever see Charisse in Homicide. We'll deal with her again later this season and it's telling that we're never sure how its resolved.

At the end of the day 'Thrill of the Kill' is a very good hour of television by any normal standard. But it's also very poor by the standards of Homicide. One gets the feeling that Fontana did this episode for the network more than anything else and spend the next few episodes doing shows that the real fans signed up for.

 

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

"Detective Munch"  While he's listed the rap sheet of Newton Dell, he refers to his beating of his mother as 'the son who violated the Fourth commandment." Frank says: "That's the Fifth Commandment."  Munch says: "Maybe in your church." He also ends his run by saying 'Page 2' and when Frank asks for more he adds: "No, that's just a Paul Harvey thing I've always wanted to do.

Frank's proficiency with a firearm will become a vital storyline in Season 5 though I'll spare the details.

Continuity Error: Charisse refers to Al's other children as Teresa and Al Jr. Clearly the writers forgot this little part by the time we got to Season 7 as you'll see.

Hey, Isn't That… This was one of the first roles of any significance Jeffrey Donovan ever had. He would slowly break into significance playing Kyle on The Pretender then star in The Beat, Fontana's next network series after Homicide came to an end. He was then given the lead in Touching Evil an NBC drama that only ran one season despite the presence of such talent as future TV stalwarts Zach Grenier, Kevin Durand, Vera Farmiga and a very young Bradley Cooper. He finally achieved national prominence for his role in USA's Burn Notice where he played the title role of Michael Weston for six seasons. Since then he played Dodd Gerhardt in the second season of Fargo and played Detective Frank Cosgrove WHEN Law and Order was revived in 2021 for two seasons. His most famous film role was in Sicario as Steve Forsing, a role he replayed in Day of the Soldado.

My Predictions for the 2025 Emmys: Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama et al

 

I will be honest; this is a tough category for me. Three of the most underrated actresses in TV history are competed for the Emmys. Six of the seven performances are unvarnished masterpieces, and while the Emmys did go slightly crazy for The White Lotus, at least they nominated the four performances I think deserved it the most.

And unlike every other category we have no awards show to guide us. The Astras gave Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama to Isabella Merced for The Last of Us and inexplicably the Emmys didn't nominate her. Not that previous awards are always the best benchmark to guide us as to what the Emmys will do but this is the first time in at least five years that we have nothing to help us. That's why I think the 'Experts Pick' is built more on sand than any other of the other awards in any nominee for the Emmys in any major category.

So with that in mind let's go.

 

Patricia Arquette, Severance. For Playing: Harmony Cobel, one of the major executives at Lumon, keeping an eye on them off work. Pro: Arquette has been the key representative of the threat that the company represents both at work and outside. As the second season unfolded we saw the alliances she was going to have to make to make sure Cold Harbor came off and just how difficult it would be to keep her front layered. It's a dark and menacing performance that is more than worthy of praise. Con: This year Arquette's work was overshadowed by Dichen Lachman who most viewers thought was more likely to get a nomination in this category than Arquette. It's possible institutional memory may have worked more in Arquette's favor then her actual performance. Setting that aside, of all the acting nominees from Severance in any category, this is the one where it is least likely for someone to win according to Gold Derby and I'm inclined to agree.

Carrie Coon, The White Lotus. (EXPERTS PICK, MY PICK) For Playing: Laurie, one of three friends on a vacation to reconnect in Bangkok. Pro: Coon hasn't been as active in Peak TV as long as Walton Goggins but she has been just as underrecognized from the Emmys. She was ignored for her critically acclaimed work on The Leftovers, got nothing for her work on the second season of Sinners and lost for her work in Fargo (though that was a tough category) The Emmys has been making up for it in a big way recently. Coon is actually nominated for the second straight year, albeit for a different series and there is no doubt she will be back next year for the third season of The Gilded Age. There's an excellent chance that latter show may boost her chances of winning this year but honestly there's an argument she could have won just as easily on her own. As part of the 'blonde blob', Laurie seemed on the outside looking in and of the trio she seemed to be very much a victim of the maneuvers of her friends. It looked very much by the penultimate episode that this was going to be another story of how a stay at the resort lays bare the fractures in a solid relationship. But in what was almost certainly the episode she submitted for consideration Coon delivers an incredible monologue in which she lays her soul bare in a way we've never seen on the show to this point, telling us that for all her unhappiness and sorrows, she really needs them and cares for them. It's honest and real in a way the show rarely is and it moved Coon into the forefront of contention just then. I want her to win badly and I hope this is the first Emmy of many for her. Con: The only real thing working against Coon is the fact this is a raw emotional moment that goes against most of what White has done on the series. That's not a flaw; it's just an uncomfortable truth.

Katherine La Nasa, The Pitt. For Playing: Nurse Dana Evans, the head of an underfunded ER. Pro: It didn't take many episodes for me to realize that Dana was the beating heart of the ER the one who was holding this place together with the sheer force of her personality. And then when she took a punch to the face that broke her nose and blacked her eyes, we saw that, like basically everyone else here, it was all just a front. She managed to hold it together for the rest of the shift but by the end of it, it really seemed like she had completely broken down and was leaving for good. It's now clear that was a blind alley but you could tell after the day was over – and until the final hours, you could argue it was a light day – that this was the burden of years of pressure. LaNassa has been rising in the odds to possibly upset Coon in this category and I wouldn't be upset if it happened. Con: LaNasa's chance of victory depends if the nominees in The White Lotus split the vote sufficiently so that she can triumph. That is possible in this category but honestly it's a remote one.

Julianne Nicholson, Paradise. For Playing: Sinatra, the woman who built Paradise and is determined to keep order maintain in the wake of the murder of the President. Pro: Nicholson has been gifted at playing characters with an icy professional front on television since her recurring role on Boardwalk Empire but she's rarely had the chance to flex those muscles here. We see the story of the woman who saw the future and was determined to build a city to save the world, who was willing to be the woman in power, the women who would kill to keep her secret. In the season finale she came to realize very much that she was a monster and while her fate is uncertain, the majesty of her work is not. The fact that she gave this performance and the polar opposite of it in Hacks and was nominated for both roles shows what a master of acting she is. Like Coon and Parker Posey, the Emmys have only recently started to catch up to giving her the recognition she deserves. Personally, she's my favorite. Con: Just as with James Marsden in the previous category Nicholson's nomination came as a shock to many (though again, not to me). More pertinently Nicholson has won fairly recently for her work in Mare of Easttown and she very well may win for her work in Hacks next week. I think the nomination will stand as enough.

Parker Posey, The White Lotus. For Playing: Victoria Ratliff, on vacation with her family and not the least happy about it. Pro: Whenever the story got too dark this season you could count on Posey's ugly American behavior to make us laugh hysterically. Posey has been a force in movies and TV for a long time and the Emmys honestly owe her even more than they owe Coon. Almost every line out of Victoria was hysterical, as she wondered who took her Lorazepam but never looked at her husband, was horrified by her daughter's decision to become a Buddhist, straight-faced told her desperate spouse that she couldn't think of living being poor (not knowing he was considering that very option) and being so clueless and detached from reality she had no idea what her husband was going through and everything her children were doing when they were out of sight. Her hysterical oblivion to everything was a fallback to so many of the great comic performances on this show from Jennifer Coolidge in Season 1 and Meghann Fahy in Season 2. In this case, the brunette had the most fun – at least until they got on the boat back. Con: There can be only one and we know who it will probably be.

Natasha Rothwell, The White Lotus. For Playing: Belinda, a guest instead of staff who finds herself encountering the past in the worst possible way. Pro: In Season 3 Rothwell's return made it clear that this show was still a drama rather than an anthology. Rothwell received her second nomination for The White Lotus, joining previous winner Jennifer Coolidge who managed to overcome the odd in 2023. What was fascinating about Belinda this time was seeing the no-nonsense staffer who had her head on her shoulders in Season 1 unchanged but that didn't seem to be a problem – until she saw that she wasn't the only familiar face. As she realized just how potentially terrible this could be, she and her son also saw an opportunity to get something every guest had but she didn't. There's an argument that Belinda 'won' the third season of this show the same way she managed to 'win' Season 1: she's certainly managed to survive. Con: First of all, Rothwell lost in this category when the show was a Limited Series. Second, many fans of her character in Season 1 were disappointed when her final actions mirrored the situation she'd been in with Tanya back in Season 1. I'd argue she learned her lesson and deserve what she got. But I'm not sure that will be enough to convince the voters to do so.

Aimee Lou Wood, The White Lotus. For Playing: Chelsea, the girlfriend of Rick who cares for him more than he does and believes in the goodness of people. Pro: I had some issues with even the idea of Wood being nominated coming into watching this series that had nothing to do with her performance. Now having seen the third season, I have changed my mind. Chelsea was a new character for the show: someone who came in with an unguarded sense of belief towards her love for Rick, even when it wasn't returned. Someone who believed in him even when he didn't, who was faithful to him even when she had other opportunities, who had a clear perspective of so many of the other guests (particularly the Ratliff boys) that not even they did. In the world of cynicism that hangs over this show (and let's face it, television today) Chelsea was practically a unicorn and that made her fate in the final episode of the series all the more tragic as she became the first person to die in the show's history who was a completely innocent bystander. Wood's work was moving in a way most of this show has never been. Con: What may push Wood over the top is the fact that dying on The White Lotus has always gotten nominees an Emmy. Otherwise, if someone in this category wins, it's probably going to be Coon.

 

MY PREDICTION: Barring an upset by LaNasa look for Coon to get her first Emmy. The second will come sooner than that.

 

Now to deal with the other major awards.

 

OUTSTANDING GUEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA

At the Astras Jeffrey Wright deservedly prevailed for his work in The Last of Us. I think there's an excellent chance he will here though there is a possibility that Shawn Hatosy will win for The Pitt. My sentiment is for Scott Glenn for The White Lotus but I think Wright wins.

 

OUTSTANDING GUEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA

This one's easy. Kaitlyn Dever takes it for her work in The Last Of Us. It's not just it was a great performance; she's been an owed an Emmy at least since Unbelievable.

 

BEST DIRECTING AND WRITING IN  A DRAMA

The predictions are that Severance wins in both categories. I'm inclined to believe that will happen for direction but I'm less sure about writing. After all, Shogun was the overwhelming favorite in that category last year and Slow Horses managed to win. I think it could just as easily happen this year as well.

 

That wraps up drama. Next week, I'll finish up with Limited Series. I know what most of the winners will be and I'm not thrilled with all of them even though everyone else is.

The Blonde Dies First Has A Frightening Story to Tell - That Has Nothing To Do With The Horror Movie Its Parodying

 

 

Warning: Spoilers for much of Joelle Wellington's The Blonde Dies First

In last month's Constant Reader I raved about Joelle Wellington's literary debut Their Vicious Games and said how eagerly I was awaiting her next book. Little did I know that I had by pure chance taken it out from the library earlier this month.

The Blonde Dies First in many ways establishes Wellington as the force she is. As you might expect based on the title this is a horror parody and indeed in the acknowledgement section Wellington pays tribute to Wes Craven. She even has a post-credits scene that is written as a screenplay and shows yet another parody for those of us who stay to the movie waiting for the last Easter egg.

Now I need to be clear on the surface this is a brilliant book. It works not only as a satire of the genre but also as a solid horror in its own right. It's one of the first YA books that genuinely frightened me with its descriptions as so many of the horrible events happened to its protagonists. The fear is as genuine as the satire which in an era when so many so-called horror novels don't even bother to hide how derivative they are and care more about jump scares then actual scares, this is refreshing. There's clearly a great deal of love for both the original film and it works well ninety percent of the time. Indeed it's so affective as a horror and as a parody of it that I imagine readers, both young and older, missing the far more troubling subtext of Wellington's prose.

The problem is I couldn't and unfortunately it really kept me from being able to recommend this book the way I could so many others. Don't get me wrong; it's a great read and everything I said it was. The problem is not with most horror: it doesn't make sense when you stop and think about it. The problem is: it does make sense when you think about it and it's that part that reveals Wellington's bias.

The novel is narrated by Devon , an African-American teenage girl who like the author lives in Brooklyn. She has a twin sister Drew who she used to be close with until everybody found out she was a genius and she was put in a special high school. Since then Drew has been separate from Devon's friend group which include Gael, Malachi, Leila and Yaya.

All of these characters meet certain archetypes of horror as we find out: Devon is the blonder (she dyed her hair for a party) Malachi is both African-American and gay (Devon's is queer but we'll get to that) Gael is the nerd, particularly when it comes to horror movies, Leila is somewhat pretentious, Drew is the smart one and Yaya is the final girl. They also all fit the multi-cultural makeup of the Heights, though in a troubling sign everyone refuses to differentiate between Leila's Judaism overcoming her being white. (That part doesn't come up until the last page of the book by which point Wellington's bias has been spelled out far more blatantly.) Devon has felt Drew's genius has made her pull away from her friend group and she's afraid that this will leave her and her friends behind. She's also never truly liked the 'bougie' friends (read white) Drew has and it's telling that when they take the G train it’s a sign of just how little Devon has traveled and how uncomfortable she is that Devon is far behind her.

It is an effort to try and deal with this that Devon plans out 'The Best Summer Ever' in order to try and make up for the distance between the twins which Devon thinks is entirely on Drew's part. For that reason she convinces their friends to go to a party with Devon school friends and it's clear that all of them think they're pretentious and patronizing. Devon shows some bad signs when Drew is using what she calls fancy words such as 'furthermore' and 'definitely'. All of this bothers Devon because she thinks Drew is becoming less who she is.

There's something troubling about this from the start, particularly when I think of Their Vicious Games. That book had to do with Adina Walker, an upper class black woman at an almost entirely white Connecticut prep school. She's spent her entire life trying to get higher up and when her dreams are shattered, she finds herself signing up for 'The Finish'. She's willing to do anything: "working twice as hard to get half as much', the famous phrase is uttered early in the novel. There's an underlying message in Blonde that argues that it those very people who do these things have betrayed their own by trying to permeate white society where the wealth and power is. Drew is trying to do just that – that's clearly what her family wants – but Devon seems to judge Drew harshly for selling out who she is to do so.

This part I should mention is resolved by the end of the novel. And if it were just the relationship between the twins used as a mirror, I could probably overlook the implications. The problem it's not just the relationship with the twins.

Again I'll be vague on the details because some readers might very much enjoy this book.

There's a clear bias to how the demon that stalks the friend group . Each time it misses one of them, it chooses to kill someone else. And each time, that person is labeled so horrible in some way that they deserve to be killed instead. I don't think I'm risking spoiling much when I tell you the three people who miss being killed are people of color and the people who get killed in their place are white.

Okay that last paragraph smacked of entitlement and privilege. The truth is that the most fun and pleasure from Blonde is how Wellington wants to completely subvert the genre in the biggest rule possible: not have any of the friend group end up victims of the killer. Indeed there's a line that a characters gives as to just how dull a movie that would be if that were to happen. And there's an equal amount of scares and laughs to be mined out of how the characters are determined that the only reason Yaya is the Final Girl is so that the monster is lured out and they can kill it.

It's here that Wellington reaches the satiric brilliance of her previous book in what may be the darkest joke of Blonde: the characters desperation to avoid not only being the victim of the monster but landing in police custody as responsible for the deaths. This is made clear in the starkest scene after the demon makes its first kill when even though the death is clearly viewed as a suicide, the police interview Devon and they clearly want to put her in jail for what happened. None of the friends even try to explain to the grownups what's happening to them because they know how crazy they'll be viewed and they are also adult to know that they might escape the demon killing them only to be gunned down by the NYPD or at best thrown in jail for his crimes. These are the deepest and best parts of Blonde and it's where she comes close to what I thought this novel would be: a mashup of the best parts of Scream and Get Out.

And I'll be honest: its refreshing to see a horror novel of any kind end and all of the people who were around when the killing started are all alive and ready to party. It goes against all of the rules of horror films but that's the point Wellington is trying to do. So I could let go of the troubling nature of the race of the victims mainly because that's part of the joke. The problems comes when we learn who's behind the monster and it's that which shows the greatest sign of Wellington's bias.

Throughout Blonde there are two characters who are constantly raised as the most contemptible people in the neighborhood. Kendra Thompson-Bryant and her son Keith. Kendra is the daughter of Mr. Thompson, who used to live in the neighborhood but moved in after her father died to gut his brownstone and turn into highly priced apartments.

Now it's clear throughout the book that what Devon and her friends consider the real underlying threat is gentrification, the very real probably they facing urban minority neighborhoods to this. Kendra has been sounding complaints about all of the things that made this neighborhood distinctive, most recently the ice cream truck coming by. Everyone, child and adult, hates Kendra and her son – and I have to emphasize right now, Kendra and her son are African-American.

I don't deny the very real problem of gentrification to our country in every part of it. The problem is that by doing so Wellington has all of her characters view the Thompson-Bryant's as monsters well before the climax of the novel because they've 'forgotten where they came from'. This is a very real problem faced by upper-class African-Americans who have had to strike the balance between being viewed as dangerous and radical by the far right and Uncle Toms by the progressive left. Indeed one wonders if that's part of the reason why Devon is so worried about Drew changing. But where there was at least the suggestion that Drew was having trouble dealing with it from the perspective of being a teenager, there's  no nuance at all about Kendra Thompson-Bryant. She has, in that particular parlance, sold out.

It's here that I have by far the biggest problem with how Wellington looks at Kendra – and by extension so many others in this community. Not long after Kendra refuses to help with the block party her mother unloads to her family:

"You should have heard her in that uppity voice…She thinks she's better than us because she's got an education. "

'Uppity' as Devon's mother knows full well, is one of the most notorious dog whistles when it comes to African-Americans in our nation's history. She also has to know when white people used it was usually the kind of phrase that was followed by a lynching. And it's worth noting this is the exact same thing that Drew's parents have been trying to do when they helped her go to a special school to achieve black excellence. They are saying this in front of Drew at dinner and they don't see the double standard. I'm not sure Wellington sees it either.

Indeed she makes it clear in everything that Devon says. "Forget hometown solidarity or class solidarity from Kendra Thompson-Bryant. She's not that kind of Black."

How do I put this mildly? This is as bigoted a term as I've heard on some of the most offensive far right chatrooms over the years. I've heard bigoted terms from white people in other novels. But this is a kind of racism that cuts much deeper. In a way it says everything that Adina Walker is trying to achieve in Their Vicious Games will never be understood in this neighborhood: they would just her as an outsider because she came from Connecticut and went to a prep school, rather than public school.

Because that's the thing about Keith who is in college, who has been reading the same kind of books that I suspect Drew has been reading and who speaks in an educated tone of voice. Everybody in the friend group hates him because in their mind, he's just as pretentious. Devon finds Keith insufferable because "he's inherited Kendra's genes. Pretentious, condescending and entitled."

To be clear there's no doubt that Kendra going forward had to work twice as hard to get half as much as so many other African-Americans have been forced to. Wellington is basically arguing that if it makes you forget what you came from, we are entitled to hate you just as much – if not more – then the white people who are making our lives horrible.

It's worth noting Devon doesn't bother to hide the fact that she's upset the owner of the convenience store where she works has started selling goods 'that the yoga moms and young professionals moving in three blocks over prefer." She acknowledges he's making money and able to replace the floors and make it look better. Then there's this throwaway line:

"People with more cash to spend are good for business, but while the streets look the same, everyday I recognize fewer of the faces walking them. Another reminder that everything is changing."

I can't help but wonder about Wellington's personal politics reading these lines and again question the meaning of the term 'progressive'. By definition, progress means changing and improvement. Devon wants to have it both ways and the fact that Devon's parents clearly want economic improvement but don't want the makeup of their neighborhood to change is very troubling. And it's particularly unsettling considering how just sixty years ago, predominantly African-American neighborhoods in the north were frequently the discussion of poverty and termed as ghettos. It seems impossible that people could yearn for that as 'a simpler time' but that's what is considered gospel by the people in the heights.

And the final nail in the coffin comes when Devin makes it clear that Kendra's father was as bad as anyone because he had 'an old school way of thinking. He was nice to Drew because you bootstrapped your way out of what he thought of as beneath the respectable type of Black people." I should mention at no point does Devon make it clear what her idea of the ideal African-American should be. That's not her fault; she is a teenager and doesn't understand nuance the way adults should. But it shows the burden Drew is put under.

And this is where I have to tell you that's eventually revealed that Kendra is the one who summons the demon into existence as will use her son as its host. None of this surprises any of the friends, because she was just that kind of person. The problem is when she says her motivations for killing the friend group:

"You're all annoying. You are loud. You are rowdy. You bring down the property value. You complain about my attempts to better the neighborhood. And so does your mother."

To be clear Kendra Thompson-Bryant is killing six children because she wants their parents to move out because she wants to bring in new people for her brownstone."

What's telling is that there's a larger lesson earlier on the same page. When asked how she summoned the demon, Kendra tells them:

"It wasn't that hard. There's misery everywhere. All you have to do is invite it in."

In another book this would be the kind of profound statement that you could see being the purpose of a good horror movie – perhaps written by Jordan Peele. In Blonde all of the teenagers hear it and because of the source, dismiss it. None of them can deny the truth behind it – they all live in this world -  but because Kendra used it on them, they're not inclined to hear it out.

Indeed it's telling that while they're spending so much time trying to survive none of them seem willing to understand the higher purpose. There's something fun about this, I admit – part of the joke of a horror movie is that teenagers make bad decisions and ignore logic – but its disturbing when you consider that Wellington has made the ultimate monster an African-American woman who some could say is trying to raise herself out of the conditions of which she's been born.

But there's no effort by Wellington to even try to give dimension to either Keith or Kendra. Usually it's the villains of the story who have the most dimension or at least some depth to them. But Kendra and Keith are both seen as cartoonish, atonal, Uncle Toms well before they are identified as the source of evil. I grant you the reason that the killings in any of the Scream movies made no sense on the surface level but Wellington actually wants this to be a deeper reason.

But it's a sick and biased reaction all the same. Really the point is made clear in the final pages when Kendra tries to lure Drew over to the dark side and Drew makes it clear where she stands: "I'm not like you. I'm an asshole, but I'm not a class traitor." If I heard that line delivered in any movie, I'd walk out.

What makes all of this infuriating is that earlier this year I read and in fact raved about Tiffany Jackson's The Weight of Blood, an adaptation of Carrie put into the context of today's racial divide. Among the other brilliant subtexts of Jackson's work is that at every level of the narrative she made it crystal clear that the far right's bigotry and the far left's bigotry were both equally responsible for the horrors that unfolded and that both sides were intractably incorrect in their views. Barnes demonstrated in Vicious Games that she is as brilliant a writer as Jackson but as the above line indicates they are not merely valid but by implication the correct ones for any African-American to have. That's honestly more frightening than any of the horrors we see unfold in Blonde because it comes very close to arguing for a kind of separatism, which among other things isn't sustainable in New York, much less America.

I suspect that I might receive blowback from seeing Barnes' point of view from my gaze as a white, cis male. I would hope my reputation for reviewing books on this site that I've devoured that have to deal with the female, LGBTQ+ spectrum and minority experience would be able to overcome this. And I've read and devoured dozens more books that dealt with this experience that I could appreciate and understand even if I didn't relate to it. Blonde Dies First is the first book in a while that I've read that troubles me with its narrative and that it comes from an author whose first book was so brilliant in its depiction of a similar type of horror, about the subjugation of women in society. There was a nuance even in the grotesqueries that unfolded in Vicious Games that was extraordinary and frightening. Blonde Dies First is a brilliant satire of the genre and a scary horror read in its own right and other readers may be able to overlook my problems with it. I can't, and I suspect that will keep me up at night long after the images in the book itself have faded away.

 

 

My Predictions for the 2025 Emmys: Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama

 

I suppose I should be annoyed that yet again this category has two shows making up all but one of the nominees. However, I'm by and large okay with that because: 1) The White Lotus has only three nominations rather than the four its gotten in its first two seasons, 2) they nominated the three actors I would have nominated, 3) the one nominee from neither White Lotus or Severance was one I hoped would be nominated in this category and 4) I'm really not sure who else I would have nominated in their stead besides that. Jack Lowden will be back next year, anyway.

With that in mind this category is the only one that does seem to have some genuine suspense. There is a favorite but it's not as overwhelming as the majority of the winners in this category. We'll see how it goes. Here are the nominees:

 

Zach Cherry, Severance. For Playing: Dylan George, who must face a harsh truth about who he loves. Pro: Cherry's storyline as Dylan was by far the most wrenching one considering he has likely been nominated for his work in Atilla. In it we see that Dylan is facing a crisis with his wife and makes a decision so unsettling that even to hint at it seems uncouth. An overlooked gems in a brilliant supporting cast. Con: There is a favorite from Severance in this category but it's not going to be Cherry.

Walton Goggins, The White Lotus. EXPERTS PICK (?) MY PICK. For Playing, Rick, a man on his mission that leads to violence and tragedy. Pro: Let's get this over with. By this point in his career Goggins should have at least three Emmys in this category alone for his work in The Shield and Justified. (We'll set aside what she should have gotten for his collaborations with Danny McBride over the years.) Instead this is only the third nomination he's gotten ever since he exploded on to the scene as Shane Vendrell over twenty years ago. To call him overdue is ludicrous and its kind of ridiculous – even to him – that the rest of America discovered him this past year. To be clear, it's not as if his work as Rick is the best work he's done in any show but that's a tribute to Goggins as an actor. What is clear is that his work is the most radically different performance we've seen on this show in three seasons. Rick is completely miserable, thinks there is no purpose to his life and has only come here on a mission of revenge and death. His storyline is by and large the darkest this show has dealt with over three seasons. And his fate is by far the most tragic of any character on this show because it really seemed that he was going to overcome the burden of his past. And then in the final minutes he gave into his trauma, acted impulsively, immediately regretted and paid the ultimate price. Goggins has already won the Astra Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in this category and was the overwhelming favorite from the moment the nominations came out. Con: He's still the favorite but there are signs his momentum may be beginning to flag. Still there is the fact that every White Lotus character who dies on the show wins the Emmy that year. That may be enough to help.

Jason Isaacs, The White Lotus. For Playing: Timothy Ratliff, the wealthy father bringing his family on vacation who learns that they when they return home they will lose everything. Pro: Isaacs is, if anything, an even more undervalued actor than Goggins and for nearly as long in TV. I still remember his work in Brotherhood as Tom Caffee as utterly mesmerizing. As Timothy he plays a character who is dealing with the fact that at home, his fortune and his freedom will be taken away from him as soon as they return home. Timothy spends the series balancing the high wire actor of extreme tragedy and very black comedy as he spends his time doing everything in his power to keep his children from learning the truth, self-medicating to the point of numbness and trying desperately to persuade his family to see if they can live without money, only to keep learning that they can't do without it. Eventually he begins finding his way towards a mass suicide as his only exit – until at the last minute he backs out and almost loses his son anyway. It's rare to see a redemptive arc even of this limit play out but Isaac does it incredibly well. I'm glad to see him nominated for an Emmy at last. Con: There can only be one winner from The White Lotus in this category and it's probably going to be Goggins.

James Mardsen, Paradise. For Playing: Cal Bradford, ex-President of the United States and President of Paradise. Pro: To make a humble brag I predicted Marsden's nomination in this category when most of the experts didn't give him a chance in hell. Like the majority of the actors in this category Marsden has been one of the most undervalued actors in Peak TV for the past decade in particular, able to play comedy, drama and himself with equal measure. So it's striking his work as one of the youngest presidents in history – and as we learn in flashbacks, the last one – is one of the best he's ever given. Seen entirely in flashbacks (his character's murder is the engine drives the series) we see Cal as a man who's boyish appearance hides the trauma of everything that has happened  not much better than anyone else. He's almost always drunk,  barely able to keep up a public face, not respected by his father or his son. And we see that in his last days he was trying to find a way to make the truth come out and ended up being killed because he was the target of all that was wrong with Paradise even though he may have had the best moral compass closer to the end. Privately he would be my favorite in this category, if for no other reason that while the show will be back for a second season his character won't. Con: I'm wise enough to know that the only chance Marsden has is if the three nominees of Severance and White Lotus split enough to give Marsden a chance to win. But in recent and past Emmy history that rarely, if ever, happens. The nomination is reward enough.

Sam Rockwell, The White Lotus. For Playing: Frank, a friend of Rick who has gone on a spiritual journey and losing it after one night in Bangkok. Pro: Just when you though Sam Rockwell couldn't do anything more to surprise you he delivers a six minute monologue in Episode 5 that is by far the comic highlight of the entire season, describing how he abandoned a life of alcoholic and sexual abandon to become a Buddhist monk and describes in very graphic detail how it played out. We then see him travel with Rick to the home of the man who ruined his life to play a part and within ten minutes ends up throwing away his lifestyle to alcohol and spends the final minutes of that episode in an orgy. ("I'll go back to being the monk tomorrow.) Compared to his fellow nominees in this category his role is smaller but no one, certainly not me, can say he didn't earn it. And when Season 4 comes I want to see Frank again – or maybe Mike White can do a spinoff? Con: I can't rule out the possibility of Rockwell pulling off an upset but I think with so many other major leads in this category, it's unlikely he'll pull it off.

Tramell Tillman, Severance. For Playing: Seth Milchick. Pro: Tillman has been moving up in the odds for recognition in this category for several weeks to the point that he has been given the most chance of upsetting Goggins. He's already won the Best Supporting Performance in a Drama from the Dorian Awards so it's clear he has some momentum. Watching as we realize the head of HR in Lumen has a more complicated history but is just willing to toe the company line is an unsettling performance that leads to a terrifying final image in the finale. Tillman has had a solid record in some of the more underrated dramas on TV including the cult series Dietland and the first season of Godfather of Harlem. Con: I'm not entirely sure why the momentum for Tillman is building as opposed to Turturro or Cherry.

John Turturro,  Severance. For Playing: Irv, trying to get answers at Lumen and protect the man he loves. Pro: If I have a favorite from Severance in this category it's Turturro though not entirely for his work here. For starters Turturro is one of the greatest actors in film and TV for the last four decades and has got almost no recognition for any awards. This has been as true for TV as film. To be fair he does have an Emmy for his guest work in Monk but considering his work in such astounding Limited Series as The Night of and The Plot Against America he should have won something. Calling his work as Irving his role of a lifetime is an exaggeration but his love story has by far the soul of the show when the strangeness of it gets to difficult to bear. And in the penultimate episode when Irv faces the possibility of never seeing Burt again, it is the most moving moment in the show. Of all the cast member Turturro deserves to win the most. Con: I'm not sure Turturro has the power to emerge from this unscathed.

 

MY PREDICTION: I think Goggins finally gets his first Emmy for his work. Hopefully they'll start giving him more.

 

Tomorrow I'll wrap things up with Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama as well the other major awards in this category.