When The MVP Was The Only Award Pitchers Could Win Baseball Considered Them the Best in the Game

 

When Cy Young, the winningest pitcher in baseball history passed away in 1955, in one of the nods to its history that the sport does so well Major League Baseball chose to name an award to be given annually to the best pitcher in baseball. (This took some kinks to iron out, but I'll deal with that in another article.)

In large part I suspect much of this was because ever since the MVP had been established in 1911 (sort of) there had been debates among those in the national pastime as to whether a pitcher could be as valuable as an everyday player.  Whether this was coming more from the pitchers or the players in the game is lost to history; what is clear is that pitchers had to be spectacular – really spectacular – to get the kind of recognition from the sportswriters then the ones they saw every day. That didn't mean they didn't went the Most Valuable Player Award but it took a lot of work and each time, there was some grumbling.

What follows is my attempt to pay tribute to the thirteen pitchers who managed to win the Most Valuable Player Award in their leagues prior to 1956 when the first Cy Young award was given. Some of them were the greatest in baseball history; some were stars for a short time. All come from an era that is quickly being forgotten to all but the oldest fan. Attention should be paid.

 

1913  Walter Johnson American League MVP

A brief note. Between 1911 and 1914 the Chalmers auto company gave the first official Most Valuable Players Award along with a car. The company experienced financial troubles and discontinued the award in 1915.

Walter Johnson, of course, is on the shortlist of the greatest pitchers in baseball history and its very hard not to consider his 1913 season the greatest in his two decade career. He won 36 games, lost only 7, had an Earned Run Average of 1.09, pitched 11 shutouts and led the league in strikeouts with 243. Even in an era dominated by pitchers Johnson's dominance was incredible in 1913: the second winningest pitcher that year was Cleveland's Claude Falkenberg who won 23 games and whose ERA was a full run higher than Johnson's.

The Senators had by far their best finish in their brief history in the American League, winning 90 games and finishing 5 and a half games behind Connie Mack's A, who had already won World Series in 1910 and 1911 and were the AL's first great dynasty.  The A's were an offensive juggernaut but Johnson had almost single-handed carried the Senators, winning 40 percent of their total victories. It's hard to argue that even the great Ty Cobb or the A's Frank Baker was anywhere near as valuable as Johnson was.

 

In 1922 Major League Baseball officially began their MVP system but it still had some kinks in it. For one thing, the American League didn't let any player win more than one MVP while the National League allowed multiple winners. In any case in 1924 both winners of the MVP were pitchers.

No one questioned Walter Johnson becoming the first pitcher two win two MVPs. His 23-7 season had helped carry Washington to its first ever American League Pennant where they had triumphed over the Yankees who had won three straight AL pennants and were on the verge of a dynasty. The winner of the 1924 MVP really raised eyebrows. With good reason

 

1924 Dazzy Vance National League MVP

Dazzy Vance was without question the best pitcher in the National League during the hitter's decade that was the 1920s. He didn't win a game before he aged 30 but before he retired he won 197, enough to get him to the Hall of Fame. He was practically the only draw Brooklyn had during that decade as he was the strikeout king and in 1924 he did everything he could to try and get the Dodgers to the pennant.

He went 28-6 and had an ERA of 2.16 which was incredible in the 1920s. He struck out 267 batters that year, threw 309 innings and 30 complete games. His record overall was better than Johnson's that year in every category, save shutouts.

The problem was not only that this was a hitter's decade and one hitter in particular had done something impossible. Rogers Hornsby hit .424 by far the highest average in the 20^th century and I think its save to say no one will ever hit that high again. He also led the league in slugging average, hits, doubles, runs scored and bases on balls. And yet he lost the MVP to Vance which caused a lot of people – even in Brooklyn – to grumble.

Hornsby went on to win two MVPs during the rest of his career but if I had to guess this is where the rumbling about pitchers winning the MVP started.

 

The MVP system took its modern form in 1931. The first winner in the American League was a pitcher but nobody questioned.

 

1931 Lefty Grove American League MVP

Lefty Grove makes the shortlist of the greatest pitchers of all-time and 1931 is one of the greatest years any pitcher ever had. He went 31-4, becoming the first pitcher in 11 years to win 30 games or more. He led the ERA with 2.06 the seventh consecutive year he had done so. He led the league in complete games, shutouts, strikeouts and winning percentage and tied an American League record with 16 consecutive wins.

And I have to tell you about why he didn't win seventeen straight, or rather I'll let him do so:

"That was Simmons' fault."

"He misplayed the ball?

No, you see Simmons had left the club to go home to Milwaukee for a few days, God knows why. His replacement in left field, Jim Moore, loused up the play. Simmons would have caught it. It was Simmons's fault. And I told him about it."

This conversation took place in 1974, forty-three years later. Grove was still touchy about it. The man had a temper and he hated losing. In 1931 he didn't do it that often but you get the feeling every one of those four losses stuck in his craw.

The A's won their third consecutive American League Pennant but lost the World Series to the Cardinals in seven games that year. Even considering the incredible offensive seasons of Al Simmons, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, it's very hard to begrudge Grove this one.

 

1933 Carl Hubbell National League MVP

By the early 1930s the offensive heights of the previous decade were starting to diminish and pitchers started to regain some control of the game. One such pitcher was Carl Hubbell of the Giants, one of the most successful pitchers.

He was the ace of the Giant staff in 1933, going 23-12 with a 1.66 ERA, by far the lowest in either league since 1919.  (I have no idea with a team that included Bill Terry and Mel Ott in its lineup how Hubbell lost 12 games that year.) Hubbell was also the teams workhorse in an era where starters were offer used to relieve. He made 45 appearance that year and led the league with 5 saves. (Yes that was enough to lead the league at one time.) That year the Giants were led more by great pitching then their offense in the Polo Grounds and with Hubbell's help they won the National League pennant, the first the Giants had won since John McGraw's retirement. That year they beat the Senators in five games for their first World Championship since 1922.

Under Bill Terry the Giants would win three pennants in five years. And one of the reasons they didn't make it four was because of the very next man on the list.

 

1934 Dizzy Dean, National League MVP

Dean famously said: "it ain't bragging if you can do it." And when Dean was at his peak, he absolutely could.  Between 1932-1936 he averaged 24 wins a season. Never was he more at the peak of his ability then 1934.

The St. Louis Cardinals of that period are famously known as 'The Gashouse Gang', known for their ferocity, their clowning and the egos of everyone involved. None had a bigger one than Jerome Hanna Dean, who before the season even began predicted that he and his brother Paul would win 45-50 games that year. And they did. Dizzy won 30 and Paul won 19.

Dean appeared in 50 of the Cardinals games that year also managing to save 7 along with 30 starts.  He led the league in strikeouts, complete games, was second in earned run average to Hubbell and threw 312 innings. And in the final week of the season he helped the Cardinals clinch the pennant by throwing three complete games in the last six starts, including a shutout on the last day of the season.

Both years their were great offensive players. In 1933 Chuck Klein won the triple crown and Mell Ott led the National League with 38 homers and 135 runs batted in during the 1934 season. But Klein played for the last place Phillies and Dean had become the first N.L. pitcher to win 30 games since Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1917. Few would question either.

 

1936 Carl Hubbell, National League MVP

In 1936 Hubbell became the only pitcher in the history of the National League to win two MVPs.  He'd had what was arguably his best season. He went 26-6 with a 2.31 ERA. He led both leagues in wins, winning percentage and ERA, threw 25 complete games and 304 innings.  And he didn't have much protection in the line up or backing him on the mound. Mel Ott was the only Giants batter to hit double digits in home runs or drove in more than one hundred runs. The Giants won the pennant by five games over Chicago and St. Louis, both of whom had stronger offenses and more balanced pitching. Without Hubbell, the Giants almost certainly wouldn't have won the pennant that year.

 

1939 Bucky Walters, National League MVP

This is where the devoted fans will start saying: Who?  That's understandable because you likely neither heard of him or the team he pitched for, even though they won back to back National League Pennants and in 1940 the World Series.

Bucky Walters had come up with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1934 in the midst of a period when they were one of the worst teams in baseball history. During that period they pitched in the Baker Bowl where pitchers were lucky to escape a game with the opposition scoring 9 runs. Walters went 11-21 with Philadelphia with a 4.26 era and managed to be a .500 pitcher on a team that was fifty games below .500. Then in the middle of the 1938 season, salvation came as he was traded to the Cincinnati Reds. He went 11-6 after being traded finishing the season 15-14.

But the next two years would be his greatest, particularly 1939. He went 27-11 and led the league with a 2.29 era. He also let the league in starts, complete games, innings pitched and strikeouts. Even more amazingly the Reds won the National league Pennant for the first time since 1919. They were swept in the World Series by the Yankees in four games but this did not dampen the spirits of Walters or the Reds.

The following year the Reds were just as good as was Walters. He led the National League with 22 wins, ERA, complete games and innings pitched. And that year the Reds won their first World Series since the forever tainted one in 1919.

Walters was the definition of a workhorse pitcher, good for thirty-five to 38 starts or 3000 innings a year. He finally ran out of gas in 1948 and finished his career with 198 wins and 160 losses. He is not a Hall of Famer by any standard but he was far from an undeserving MVP. (Johnny Mize had a superb offensive season that year for the Cardinals but it was nowhere near good enough to merit.)

 

During World War II pitchers again regained dominance. Every year during the War one pitcher won win the MVP in either league.

 

1942 Mort Cooper, National League MVP

I've mentioned Cooper in previous articles and in 1942 he was by far the best pitcher in either league. He went 22-7 with a 1.73 ERA throwing an incredible 10 shutouts. That year the Cardinals had an incredible stretch run, winning 44 of their last 51 games. During that period Cooper went 9-2 and threw four shutouts which almost certainly reflected in the minds of the voters.

Cooper was the workhorse of the Cardinals during their three years of dominance during the war. After the war he was traded to Boston and perhaps because of the extensive work he'd done was washed up by the time he was 34.

 

1943 Spud Chandler, American League MVP

Chandler had come up with the Yankees in 1937 at age 29. He'd been a reliable pitcher that period though never a big winner. Then in 1943 he had his best season for the Yankees and they needed him to.

He went 20-4 with a 1.64 ERA by far the lowest in the American League since the deadball era. He threw 20 complete games and five shutouts enough to lead the American League. With all the Yankees best players in olive drab, they needed all the help they could get and Chandler was one.

He went into uniform the following year and while he still had some stuff at 38 (he went 20-8 IN 1946) he was getting tired and when the Yanks won the World Series the following year, he decided to hang it up. His lifetime winning percentage of .717 is still the highest in baseball history in some circles.

 

1944, 1945 Hal Newhouser, American League MVP

Newhouser had actually been part of the Tigers since 1940 he'd been drafted at 19. Because of a heart murmur, he was 4-F and didn't get drafted. It took him a while to find his stuff and then in 1944 he spectacularly did.

That year he went 29-9 with a 2.22 era, through 312 innings and lead both leagues in strikeouts with 187. His fellow pitcher Dizzy Trout won 27 games that year, which meant the two of them combined for 56 of the Tigers 88 wins. The two of them were one and two in every pitching category in the AL and most of baseball. It wasn't enough as the Browns beat them by one game for the only pennant they ever won.

The following year Newhouser was even better going 25-9 with a 1.81 ERA, leading both leagues in complete games,  shutouts and strikeouts. When Trout dropped to 18 wins that year the Tigers needed Newhouser more than ever and aided by the return of Hank Greenberg, the Tigers won the American League Pennant and the World Series.

In the years that followed Newhouser would prove his wartime success was far from a fluke. He won 26 games in 1946 and 21 in 1948 both years leading the league. He would finish his career with 207 wins and eventually be inducted to the Hall of Fame.

 

1950 Jim Konstanty, National League MVP

This one raised the most eyebrows yet. That year the Philadelphia Phillies – the Whiz Kids because of the youth of the regulars – came out of nowhere to win the National League Pennant, the first since 1915 and the last until 1980. There's an excellent if they hadn't won that pennant, they might have gone to Kansas City instead of the A's.

Konstanty was the model of what would the model reliever for much of the rest of the 20^th century. He appeared in an unheard of 72 games and only 154 innings. And he was incredibly successful going 16-7 and saving 22 games, working almost exclusively out of the bullpen. I suspect the phenomena of Konstanty caused the writers to lose their bearings and give the MVP to him instead of more deserving candidates such as Stan Musial or for that matter the real star of the Phillies Robin Roberts, who won 20 games and clinched the pennant for the Phils on the last day of the season.

No doubt due to overwork (far from uncommon for many of the relievers that followed in his wake) Konstanty was no where that good again. Eventually he was traded to the Yankees where he had one good year as a reliever in 1955 before they released him in 1956.

 

1952 Bobby Shantz, 1952 American League MVP

Shantz had come up with the A's in 1949. He was barely five foot four and was hardly imposing on the mound. He quickly became a superb starter but in 1952 he was incredible.

He went 24-7 that year, leading the league in wins and winning percentage.  He pitched 27 complete games, threw 5 shutouts and was second in strikeouts and complete games. And the reason he didn't have an even better season was that three weeks before the season, he was hit in his pitching arm and his tendon was torn. His season ended there and it really seemed like his career was over.

He struggled with arm pain for the next four seasons and it didn't help he was pitching for a truly terrible team whether it was Philadelphia of Kansas City. Then he was part of what would be the first of a series of trades between the Yankees and the A's which as any fan of that era knows were basically swindles by George Weiss.

He wasn't expecting much of Shantz but that year he went 11-5 with 5 saves and led the American League in ERA. He would be a valuable member of the Yankees pitching staff and pitched competently if not spectacularly until his career ended at age 38. By the way he turned 100 this week.

 

After the Cy Young award was established and Don Newcombe won both it and the MVP in 1956, that was pretty much that for the debate of where pitchers would be ranked in the MVP. In the nearly 67 years since only 7 pitchers in both leagues have managed to win an MVP and in many cases they had to really be brilliant.

Of course that didn't mean the league got it right at first with that award. In the article that will follow this  I'm going to talk about the first decade of the Cy Young Award – and I do mean 'award'.

Better Late Than Never: The Hunting Wives

 

 

Looking back on it I trace my slow dissatisfaction with Showtime's master class Billions (readers know this is a less a contradiction then it seems) with the decision by the writers to write out Bobby Axelrod's wife Lara at the end of Season 3. In the first two seasons Malin Akerman's character had been just as much a force as her husband and if anything far more level-headed. Her character had not been born into money and was proud of everything she and her husband had built. She took a greater role in defended the reputation then Bobby, who as we saw, was far more controlled by his impulses and was prone to acting recklessly even if it threatened his freedom. When he went too far, she made the sanest decision by any character on the show and chose to take the money (and the kids) and run as far as she could from the madness that surrounded Axe Capital. That didn't make her departure any greater a burden for the show.

I suspect the fact that Akerman was one of the lead characters in Netflix's new audience sensation The Hunting Wives is the likely reason I chose to make it the first new streaming show of the 2025-2026 season rather than the second season of Wednesday or the latest season of Slow Horses. (Trust me, I'll get to both.) And were it solely for the incredible work of Akerman, it would be more than enough to guarantee that I will watch the entire thing. (This review is based on just the first two episodes.) In many ways her Margo Banks is a descendant of Lara Axelrod, slightly older, better looking (in this viewers opinion) and far more invested in her survival then her husband is. That husband Jed Banks is played by that always versatile character actor Dermot Mulroney, who tweaks his persona of playing likeable Everyman types to someone who is oozes sleaze and unctuousness with every line he says. You can tell Mulroney is having the time of his life, playing a Texas billionaire who is setting himself up as a man of the people, cheerfully holding NRA rallies, teasing crowds with whether he's going to run for governor, quietly badmouthing the architect he's hired when all he wants is to sleep with his wife. There isn't a trace of virtue in Mulroney's work and I love every minute he's onscreen.

It's clear that Margo comes from a far seedier background than Lara did, we see her visit a slum where her poor, drug addicted brother lives dropping off a gym bag full of cash to buy his silence for another year. She's also far more savvy then her husband is when it comes to the electorate then he is:  Jed sees no reason why the fact that he regularly has threesomes in a hot tub should have to stop because he's running for governor, nor why that would be a problem for the conservative voters he's trying to do if he did. Like the majority of the men in this series he is very much a do-as-I-say not as-I-do and he thinks its Margo's job to clean up her messes while he can do whatever he wants.

Looking at this you set the feeling that Margo's very sexual behavior among both men and women is as much a cry for freedom as meeting her own needs. Late in the second episode when asked if she has an open marriage she says: "No open marriages are for liberals. Jed gets to f--- whoever he likes and when both of see a woman we like, we both screw her."  This is obviously a huge laugh line but we quickly see what the rules are in this relationship and they clearly favor the husband. When we see her about to perform oral sex with a teenage basketball star (the son I should add of one of her best friends who also has a girlfriend) we know that this is as much of an act of defiance as it is sex. (Though trust me, she gets plenty of that.)

The Hunting Wives is seen from the perspective of an outsider, in this case Sophie, played by Brittany Snow. Snow, like Akerman, started her career as something of an ingenue usually starring in roles in film and television in TV and movies that were frankly beneath her (except her work in the Pitch Perfect franchise) As she's gotten older she's become a more fascinating actress: she had a great recurring role in Season 2 of The Night Agent and her work as Sophie is her best role since her work in the first season of Harry's Law.

Where much of Snow's previous work focused too much on her appearance and little else Sophie is someone who is fragile from the start. Her husband Graham (Evan Jonigkeit) is an architect who's moved to Texas for a project for Banks's. Graham manages to come across as both a milquetoast and a sexist at once. Sophie had a successful career working in politics before she got pregnant and has become a stay-at-home mom. She was in a hit-and-run two years ago and Graham seems to have made it clear she should neither drink nor drive. He has no problem taking her to place she is genuinely uncomfortable with whether it is an NRA rally where she first meets the Banks' or at church. The writers make it very clear how much Graham is as much a source of toxic masculinity and so many of the husbands are in Texas: he doesn't agree with their politics (at least not to Sophie) but he clearly thinks a woman's place in the home. Sophie has clearly been chafing under this for a long time and everything involving the Banks's brings to the surface.

Much of this is brought on by Margo. From the moment they meet when she chooses to strip in front of her in the Banks's bathroom to the time she takes them to a cabin where they shoot with her fellow wives (the title!) Margo is actively and not at all subtly flirting with Sophie.  This is clear to Margo's current squeeze, Callie (Jaime Ray Newman) who Margo is forced to break up with when Banks begins to run for governor.  It's unclear how much of this really bothers Margo and how much is a façade: its clear from the start she's actually more gifted at lying then her husband, who aspires to politics. But it's also clear that Sophie is in a place of despair and solitude. When she pleasures herself in front of an Instagram post of Sophie, its clear watching her this may be the first time she's been truly happy in a very long time.

That, of course, won't last long. As we see in the opening teaser, in three weeks' time, someone who is young and blond will be seen staggering through the woods with a bullet wound in her back before dying. At this point I'm pretty sure that it's not going to be one of the regulars but rather someone relatively minor. My theory (don't spoil it) is that its Abby, the young teenage girl who is hopelessly in love with Brad, fully devoted to God, and who now knows all too well that Brad has been lying to her about 'coaching the Evans twins in basketball'. Brad, as is far too clear, is basically a Jed Banks in waiting: he's already the worst kind of sexist teen who thinks he's God's gift (and yes, his father is the preacher of a megachurch)

The Hunting Wives is just as much fun as Danny McBride's many HBO comedies that take place in the Bible Belt, just as unsparing as to the hypocrisies of many of its characters. The difference is that the women are (slightly) more self-aware then the men. That doesn't mean they can't be any less selfish then their male counterparts but they know all too well what people like Sophie think of them. The first time she meets with them at the hunting lodge one of them actually says: "You think of us as deplorables." It's been a while since I've seen any TV show take this unflinching a look at red state America; longer still since I've seen one show them as human beings who are perfectly aware what the blue staters think – and  maybe don't mind as much about how they're seen as we coastal elites then to view them. Honestly when was the last time you saw a Massachusetts liberal and the spouse of a prominent Republican talking to each other on a work of entertainment, much less, well, you know.

I might be reading to much into the politics part of it but you can choose to ignore it and still have a hell of a good time watching The Hunting Wives.  I'm not saying that I'm convinced it’s a masterpiece yet. For one thing it hasn't in the first two episode made the best use of its entire cast. This is the first real TV show that Katie Lowes has done since Scandal and Chrissy Metz has done since This Is Us and neither has been used nearly to their potential.  And by this point I think there should be a permanent moratorium on any TV show opening in media res and then working back as to how we got there. But it's yet another engaging series that honestly isn't like something I've seen on any platform in a while in its tone or its politics while keeping within the trend of my belief the future of Peak TV is definitely female. Need I point out that The Hunting Wives also makes it very clear of the old cliché 'Blondes have more fun?" (Yes I know Akerman's dyed her hair slightly, let me have this one.)

My score: 4.25 stars.

This is Jeopardy: Stories from the Teachers Tournament, Part 1

 

 

If you grew up watching Jeopardy you got used to hearing Alex Trebek say who made up the best group of Jeopardy champions: teachers, students and lawyers. The facts certainly bear it out: I long gave up counting how many Jeopardy champions in my lifetime were one of the three.

In one of the great acts of appreciation to those underpaid, much stressed works in May  2011 Jeopardy staged its official Teachers Tournament. There was in the material very little that was different among the average Jeopardy game but all of the participants were teachers, whether elementary school, middle school or high school. There was no difference in format either from tournaments for College or Teen Tournaments: the winner would receive $100,000 and get to participate in the next Tournament of Champions.

The Tournament lasted until the end of the decade when both Covid and the passing of Alex Trebek brought an end to it as well as all other special tournaments. (The Professors Tournament won by the legendary Sam Buttrey was for college professors.) There hasn't been a demand to bring it back and considering that educators were still playing 'real' Jeopardy during this period, there's no motivation to do so. Still it was always enjoyable to watch, showed a vast array of knowledge and produced some truly magnificent champions.

The most successful by far was Colby Burnett who won both the 2012 Teachers Tournament and the 2013 Tournament of Champions. I've written about him extensively in previous articles and he's returned to the show just this past year to participate in the first Jeopardy Invitational Tournament – where he lost to Sam Buttrey. So in the spirit of fall and going back to school, it's worth paying note to the winners of these Teachers Tournaments and the marks they made in Jeopardy beyond that. None were quite as successful as Colby but that didn't mean they weren't at the top of the class.

 

Class of 2011

Charles Temple, a High School English Teacher from Ocracoke, North Carolina

 

Charles made his debut on the fourth game of the inaugural Teacher's Tournament May 5^th. He didn't make a good first impression in the Jeopardy round, struggling against third grade teacher Sally Umbach who led throughout the entire round. Frankly he was lucky to be in second place with $2800 to her $6100 at the end of it.

Then in Double Jeopardy starting with the second clue of the round. He was in the lead with $9200 when he found the Daily Double in EPONYMS: "To abstain from buying or doing trade with, in honor of an Irish landlord against whom such tactics were used." He knew it was Boycott and moved up to $11,600. He finished Double Jeopardy with $22,800, more than three times his nearest opponent, moving on to the semi-finals easily.

His semi-final match was slightly tougher as he spent the Jeopardy round in a battle to the death with two fellow high school teachers, Kathy Casavant and Matt Polazzo but they struggled in Double Jeopardy and he didn't make a single mistake. Still Kathy had $12,000 to his $21,800 going into Final Jeopardy.

The decisive category was 20^th CENTURY NOVELS. "A Girl from a Different World' & 'Train to the Urals' are chapters from this 1957 work. In this case it helped to be an English Teacher because he knew it was Doctor Zhivago. He moved on to the finals against another high school English Teacher Larry DeMoss and a high school Latin Teacher Lori Kissell.

Game of the final was a cutthroat affair as all three players were at the top of their game. At the end of Double Jeopardy of Game 1, Charles was in second place with $12,800 ahead of Larry at $11,000, trailing Lori who had $14,300. The Final Jeopardy category was AFI LIFE ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS.

"They're the only father and son to receive the AFI's Life Achievement Award – dad in 1991, son in 2009." Both Charles and Lori knew the correct pair: Kirk and Michael Douglas. (Larry thought it was the Reiners. Lori went even bigger than Charles in betting and at the end of Game 1, Lori was ahead with $26,300 to Charles's $18,800. Larry not that far out of range with $7000.

Charles managed to move ahead early in the Jeopardy round when he found the Daily Double in, appropriately, FAMOUS EDUCATORS. Already leading he bet $2000:

This high school teacher was involved in a little trial in Dayton, Tennessee in July 1925. " He knew it was Scopes" and built a lead he never relinquished. He gave 25 correct responses and responded correctly on all three Daily Doubles. And as a result he had $24,500 to Larry's $7000 and Lori's $4600, officially locking up the Tournament.

It's a good thing Final Jeopardy didn't matter because it was as tough as any one would see in a Tournament of Japan. The category was MONARCHS. "In March 2011 he gave his first televised speech in 22 years on the throne, saying he hoped things would get better." I had no idea what monarch he was referring to and neither did Charles. He wrote down: "Who is Abdullah? (of Jordan). Larry had the right idea: "Who is the Emperor of Japan?" But they couldn't except that. It referred to Akihito who was addressing the nation over the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi. (It had occurred in March of 2011, not long after the show would have been filmed. It only cost him $125 and he became the first winner of a Teachers Tournament.

Charles appeared in the first quarterfinal of the 2011 Tournament of Champions. Unfortunately one of his fellow quarterfinalists was Tom Nissley. At that point in Jeopardy history Tom was third on the all-time money list with $235, 405, trailing only David Madden and Ken Jennings on the Jeopardy leaderboard. (Ah the early 2010s.) Back then in order to beat Tom you had to be perfect and he had to have a bad day. And in Charles's case, he sadly was inadequate to task: giving 15 correct answers but eight incorrect answers. He was lucky to be around for Final Jeopardy with $400 and it says something for how things had gone that before reading his response in Final Jeopardy Alex said gently:  "Not a good day in school for you today."

A correct response in Final Jeopardy could have given redemption but that was not to be the case, though to be fair, it was a tricky one. The category was WORLD CITIES: "A member of the Hanseatic League, this city with a 4-letter name was once known as the 'Paris of the Baltic'. Charles wrote down: "What is Oslo?" Tom knew it was: "What is Riga?" The road came to an end early for the first winner of a Teachers Tournament.

 

 

CLASS OF 2012

PATRICK QUINN,  a high school German Teacher from Chesterfield, Missouri.

There were actually two Teachers Tournaments in 2012. One took place in February in Season 28 and another took place in November in what was Season 29. This might have had to do with sweeps month more than anything else.

Patrick appeared in the first quarterfinal match of February 2012 competing against Elissa Hoffman, a high school biology, anatomy and physiology teacher from Appleton, Wisconsin and John Botti, who taught high school history and English in Bethesda, Maryland. He would only take the lead from John at the end of the Jeopardy round, $6800 to $5800 and while he had an early chance to put the game out of reach in Double Jeopardy when he found the first Daily Double in ROCK DOCUMENTARIES:

"Title of Roger Waters' 1990 concert documentary filmed in Berlin." Patrick added one word too many: ""What is Behind The Wall when it was just The Wall. He dropped to $5800. He recovered and finished Double Jeopardy in second with $11,600 to John's $13,400. Elissa was third with $8200.

The Final Jeopardy category was U.S. STATES. "This third smallest state in area is home to the USA's third-oldest college."  Both Elissa and Patrick knew the correct state: "What is Connecticut?"  Alex told us: "You've got Rhode Island, Delaware, then Connecticut and you have Harvard, William & Mary and Yale." John wrote down: "What is New Hampshire?" (no doubt thinking of Dartmouth and as a result Patrick became an automatic semifinalist.

Patrick then appeared in the last semi-final game against Catherine Whitten, a high school history teacher from Piano, Texas and Mary Ann Stanley who taught chemistry and physical science in Statesboro, Georgia. It was a close game throughout and once again Patrick finished Double Jeopardy in second place with $11,800 to Mary Ann's $13,800 and Catherine's $6200.

The Final Jeopardy category was LITERARY BIOGRAPHIES. "Quoting a famous line of his, a 2011 biography of this man was title And So It Goes." Apparently none of these teachers had read Slaughterhouse Five because none of them came up with Kurt Vonnegut (Patrick thought it was Dickens.) However Patrick wagered the least of the three and that left him the last man standing. The two day final would be (as Alex put it) 'an all guy affair. Patrick would be up against Brooks Humphrey, a high school social studies teacher from Omaha and Justin Hofstetter, a sixth and seventh grade language arts and social studies teacher from Kansas City.

Game 1 was close one from the start with Justin leading in the Jeopardy round and Patrick coming from behind to take the lead on the last clue of Double Jeopardy. Justin had played the better game compared to Patrick: he gave 29 correct responses to Patrick's 12. However Patrick only gave one incorrect answer to Justin's 4 while Brooks stayed close all the way through. Patrick led with $11,600 to Justin's $11,200 while Brooks had $8800.

The Final Jeopardy category was U.S. MEMORIALS. It was tricky. "No day shall erase you from the memory of time' from Virgil's Aeneid, is inscribed on a wall in this memorial." As a native New York I'm somewhat embarrassed to say I didn't know it was the 9/11 memorial, so I can judge the three teachers for not knowing it either. Brooks lost $3000, Justin $6401 and Patrick lost $6011. (Talk about odd numbers. As a result it was still anyone's game. Brooks had $5800, Patrick $5589 and Justin $4799.

Game 2 was just as close as Game 1. Patrick played slightly better finishing with 16 correct responses and three incorrect ones. But once again Justin was dominant with 21 correct answers  - but six incorrect ones. Justin finished Double Jeopardy with $11,400 to Brooks's $8600 and Patrick's $8400.

Final Jeopardy dealt with THE 1960S. "On nominating this man in 1967, LBJ said: "It is the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man & the right place." Patrick was the only player to come up with a correct answer: "Who was Thurgood Marshall?"  Patrick wagered $8311, giving him $15,711 and putting him at $22,300 even. It was more than enough as Patrick won the February 2012 Teachers Tournament.

Patrick appeared in the last quarterfinal match of the 2013 Tournament of Champions. The lineup for this tournament was tough but Patrick wasn't facing the best players in it: Ashok Poozhikunnel, who won four games and $69,002 and Dave Leach, who won six games and $98,054.

The Jeopardy round started well for Patrick  as he managed to find the Daily Double and finished the round with a narrow lead: $4600 to Ashok's $4200 and Dave's $3200. Then in Double Jeopardy he got the $1600 and $2000 clues incorrect in BRIDE'S OF SHAKESPEARE and combined with the superb play of his fellow quarterfinalists couldn't catch up. He still had $5000 and a chance for a wild card or even a win if the two of them knocked each other out.

The Final Jeopardy category was one that would baffle all the most dedicated trivia buffs: THE 7 NEW WONDERS OF THE WORLD. It certainly baffled me though it didn't quite baffle Patrick. "On the new list chosen in 2007, this wonder designed by Heitor da Silva Costa is the only statue." Patrick had the right idea: "What is the Christ in Rio De Janeiro?" but that wasn't acceptable. Dave knew it was called Christ the Redeemer and he moved on. Patrick went home with $5000 – leaving Colby Burnett for future glory.

 

CLASS OF 2013

John Pearson, 4^th grade math teacher from Richardson, Texas

 

John managed to get further for other reasons than almost anyone else on this list so far for reasons that escaped me at the time. That being said it was clear he had a certain amount of game in his original appearance.

In his quarterfinal appearance against Maryanne Lewell, a high school history teacher from Canada and Becky Giardina, a 7^th grade social studies teacher from Martinez, Georgia John got off to a very fast start and the Jeopardy round and never relinquished his lead. He managed to narrowly runaway with the game by the end of Double Jeopardy but both his opponents had high enough scores for wild card spots. That would be critical in the finals.

In his semi-final game however, it was a different story. He managed to get to an early lead against Katie Moriarty and Timothy Shuker-Haines but he didn't play particularly well. While he answered 20 questions correctly he gave six incorrect responses. Fortunately neither of his opponents were much better and at the end of Double Jeopardy he had a narrow lead of $8700 to Timothy's $8400 and Katie's $4800.

The Final Jeopardy category was BUILDINGS and I have to say this was one of those occasions when I was very disappointed in these educators. This was particularly true for Timothy, who was a history teacher and who I thought would know better.

"Charles Evans Hughes laid the cornerstone for this building on October 13^th 1932 & got to work in it for about six years." No one was close to it with John writing down: "What is The Empire State Building?" Him I could slightly forgive but Timothy, seriously? You didn't know who the Chief Justices were? You had know either that Charles Evans Hughes worked in the Supreme Court Building for six years. (Editorial over.) Any way John won because he was the only player who didn't bet everything he had and was the last man standing. He would face his fellow quarterfinalist Becky Giardina and Mary Beth Hammerstrom, a high social studies teacher in the finals.

Redemption came in the finals though it didn't look like it would during much of Game 1. Mary Beth took the lead at the end of the Jeopardy round and maintained it throughout Double Jeopardy. At the end she had $16,000 to John's $8600 and Becky's $5000.

The Final Jeopardy category was U.S. PRESIDENTS and it was tricky. "The second man to become President who was never elected to the job, he twice ran for the position unsuccessfully."

Becky wrote down: "Who is Andrew Johnson?" which was incorrect. It cost her everything. John wrote down Andrew Johnson, crossed it out and at the last minute wrote down Filmore. That was correct. (He tried to get nominated in his own right by the Whigs in 1852 and ran as a third party candidate in 1856.) John wagered $6600. Mary Beth wrote down Chester Arthur and lost $5000. At the end of Game 1 John led with $15,200 to Mary Beth's $11,000.

In Game 2 John got a narrow lead at the end of the Jeopardy round. Early in Double Jeopardy he ran the category LITERARY OPENINGS on a run of eight correct responses. Only getting the Daily Double incorrect immediately afterwards stopped him from running away with the game early and despite the best efforts of Mary Beth to close the distance John had locked up the Tournament by the end of Double Jeopardy. For that reason we'll never know if he knew the correct response. What no doubt put him on the radar of so many people beyond Jeopardy was that he wrote down: "What is I love you Drew?" (his wife)

By a quirk of timing John ended up appearing on the 2014 Tournament of Champions almost  a year to the day after his first appearance on the show in what was the first quarterfinal match. By coincidence one of his competitors was Ben Ingram, who had won eight games and would go on to win the Tournament of Champions, along with Rebecca Rider who'd won five games and an impressive $101,600.  This didn't do much to unsettle John as he gave Ben a hell of a run.

He was competitive through much of the Jeopardy round though he struggled in Double Jeopardy. He went from $2000 to zero on one incorrect response, then got it back on another $2000 clue, then found the first Daily Double in THEY TURNED BY BOOK INTO A MOVIE. However he misunderstood the clue with Apocalypse Now when he said: "Who is Kubrick?" when they were looking for Joseph Conrad. He dropped to zero, then got the $2000 back when he remember Leon Uris wrote Exodus. His run of four correct responses in THE NEW YORK TIMES: POLITICS kept Ben honest As John finished with $8400 to Ben's $16,100. Rebecca had $6600.

Then came Final Jeopardy. The category was STATE HOLIDAYS: "This is the only state that honors a former U.S. Secretary of State with his own legal holiday." John was the only player who didn't know it was Alaska (Seward's Folly) He wrote down: "What is Maine and it cost him everything he had. He left with $5000.

John has not yet returned to Jeopardy but he did come close. Along with Lily Chin he was one of two alternates for the 2019 All-Star Game. I suspect his presence, along with Lilly's, had as much to do with their response in Final Jeopardy that went viral as their play in the Tournament. (Lilly famously wrote down when clinching her victory: "Who is the spiciest memelord?") However all the competitors were present for the tournament and John missed his chance to compete in the All-Stars – where he potentially would have faced off against the next person on this list.

 

CLASS OF 2015

Jennifer Giles

Third Grade English Teacher from Longmont, Colorado

 

Of all the players in this series Jennifer is the only one who already appeared in a Jeopardy postseason tournament where she got the chance to play against – and compete alongside – some of the greatest players in Jeopardy history. But one thing at a time.

Jennifer's first appearance on Jeopardy was on February 5^th 2015 in Game 4 of that year's Teachers Tournament. Her opponents were Mary Bayer, a middle and high school drama teacher from Hoffman Estates, Illinois and Chris Grinvalds, a high school history teacher and coach from Bennington, Nebraska. From the start of the Jeopardy round Jennifer was at the top of her game and she managed to pull ahead for good when she got hot late in Double Jeopardy and her opponents made critical mistakes. When she responded with the last correct response in SAINTS GO MARCHING IN for $2000, she went to $18,400 and locked up a semi-final spot. She didn't have to take Final Jeopardy seriously but she did.

The category was LISTS. "Efforts to save historic treasures threatened by the creation of the Aswan High Dam led UNESCO to create this list." Jennifer was the only player who knew the correct response: "What is the World Heritage sites (list)

Her semi-final appearance against Eric Hack, a high school Latin Teacher from Virginia and Kate La Riviere-Gagner a fifth and sixth grade from Starksboro, Vermont followed a similar pattern. Jennifer took an early lead in the Jeopardy round, held it through Double Jeopardy and managed to lock up the game by the end of it. Once again, she was also the only player to come up with a correct response in Final Jeopardy.

The category was BROADWAY MUSICALS. "Winner of a Tony for Best Musical, it culminates with an induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of fame." Jennifer was the only one who knew it was Jersey Boys and had her second consecutive runaway victory. The Finals against Cathy Farrel, a high school science teacher from Wyandotte, Michigan and Adam Elkana-Hale, a middle school math teacher from St. Louis, would be anything but.

In the Jeopardy round of Game Jennifer finished it a distant third with $3200 to Cathy's $4800 and Adam's $9800. Jennifer gained ground early in Double Jeopardy and was helped when Adam got a Daily Double incorrect It was a tight game all the way through. Jennifer moved into second place with $13,400, $200 behind Cathy, $400 ahead of Adam.

Final Jeopardy for Game 1 dealt with WORLD GEOGRAPHY. "Not in the 10 longest, this 1560 mile river in a fertile basin flows by 29 cities of over 100,000 people." Adam started out by writing: "What is The Jordan?", crossed it out and couldn't finish his response before time ran out. He lost $10,000. Jennifer wrote down the Danube, crossed it out and then wrote in the correct river: "What is the Ganges?" She add $9000 to her total. Cathy also wrote down the Ganges and added $5000. At the end of Game 1, Jennifer was in the lead with $22,400 to Cathy's $18,600 and Adam's $3000.

In Game 2 the Jeopardy round was much closer but Jennifer took the lead at the end of it with $5200 to Adam's $4400 and Cathy's $1800. She maintained that lead throughout Double Jeopardy finishing with $14,400 to Adam's $10,400 and Cathy's $9600. It came down to Final Jeopardy and it was one of the toughest ones I've ever heard.

The category was HISTORIC NAMES ON THE MAP. "Nothing is known of his early life in England before 1600 or the end of his life in North America after June 22,  1611." Now unless you live in New York – and honestly, even if you do – you probably wouldn't know that this clue refers to Henry Hudson. As Alex told is. "It was on the man's third voyage to North America. He was set adrift by mutineers. No one knows where he died." So its not only forgivable but understandable none of these teachers (none of whom taught history) would have come up with the name. (Jennifer wrote down: "Who is Walter Raleigh?")

As is the case, it came down to wagers Cathy bet everything she had. Adam bet $10,000 and Jennifer bet $8000.  Jennifer's two day total was $28,800 and that was more than enough to win.

That November Jennifer absolutely could not have had worse luck when it came to who she came up against as a quarterfinalist. It was Matt Jacksno who just two months earlier had marked his place in Jeopardy history with 13 wins and $411, 612, at that time both fourth all time in terms of games won and money won. Her other challenger was no slouch either: John Schultz who'd won five games and $104,500.

Jennifer was fortunate not only to survive that game but to do as well as she did: at the end of Double Jeopardy she was in third place but a more than respectable third with $10,400 to John's $17,800 and Matt's $24,900. Jennifer wasn't out of the running but she knew her best chance was probably a wild card spot.

The category was ABBREVIATIONS. "Its meaning as an individual product dates to 1966; its meaning as conforming to orthodox opinion dates to 1986."  None of the three players came close to a correct response. This isn't a brag because I have no idea how I figured out the abbreviation was PC (personal computer, politically correct) Jennifer bet and lost $6600, leaving her with $3800. The viewer at home already knew that would not nearly be enough for a wild card spot and she was going home with $5000.

Full disclosure: when it was announced that Jennifer Giles was going to be one of the 18 players asked back for the Jeopardy All-Star Games in 2018 I was baffled.  I had my issues with more than a few of the players invited back as All-Stars but Jennifer was the most difficult one for me to justify. I would have preferred one of the alternates Lilly Chin in her place had I known she'd been asked.  And when it came to drafting players as teammates Jennifer ended up being the last picked, ending up on Buzzy Cohen's team by default (he'd drawn the first choice and had selected Alex Jacob the winner of the 2015 Tournament of Champions.) I had no idea how she'd do in what was a completely new format.

A brief review of that format is necessary to explain how Jennifer did. To start there were two matches, each of which were two game total point affairs. The Team with the highest total at the end of the second game automatically would move on to the finals but the three highest scorers among non-winners would face off in a wild card game to determine the third and last Team.

 Before each game the teams would decide which player would go out for each round.  In the first match Team Buzzy faced off against Team Colby and Team Brad.  Jennifer was selected to play Final Jeopardy of the first game.

 

At the end of Double Jeopardy Team Brad had $29,800 to Team Buzzy's $26,200. Team Colby was in a distant third with $6400. The Final Jeopardy category was AFRICAN GEOGRAPHY.  Buzzy told Jennifer to 'have some fun out there' and to bet nothing. She did that, writing down: "I love you mom". Pam Mueller for Team Colby gave the incorrect response and lost everything and David Madden for Team Brad gave the correct response and added $20,000 to their total.

In the Jeopardy round of Game 2 Jennifer went out for the Jeopardy round, David went for Team Brad and Alan Lin went out for Team Colby. The only thing Jennifer did wrong, from the perspective of her Team, was she found the Daily Double way too early in STATE FACTS. It was on the third clue of the round and she bet the $1400 she had: "In 1999, in a nod to this facility named for a President, Brevard County Florida added 321 as an area code." Jennifer knew it was Cape Kennedy and doubled her score to $2800. After that Alan and David started to ring in repeated and the round was close. At the end of it Team Colby was in the lead with $5000 to Team Buzzy's $4000 and Team Brad's $3800. Jennifer had done her part.

Team Buzzy ended up qualifying for the Wild Card Spot against Team Colby and Team Austin. The Jeopardy and Double Jeopardy round were nailbiters all the way through and at the end Team Colby led with $19,600 to Team Buzzy's $17,200 and Team Austin's $15,600.

Jennifer went out for Final Jeopardy against Alan Lin for Team Colby and Leonard Cooper for Team Austin.  Unfortunately all three players found themselves against what was by far the most difficult Final Jeopardy in the entire All-Star Games.  The category was BRITISH LITERATURE:

A chapter of 'The Jungle Book' has this double-talk title, echoing the opening line of a Brit's poem some 100 years prior.

Jennifer was the only player to even manage to hazard a guess: "What is King King?"  The correct response, as Alex told us, referred to William Blake's poem "The Tyger". And the line – the chapter was 'Tiger! Tiger!"

Everybody bet very big in Final Jeopardy but Jennifer's team lost everything. Still considering Team Colby led with $7600 and Team Austin had $5200, a comeback was possible.

In Game 2 Jennifer faced off against Alan and Leonard again this time in the Jeopardy round. Much of the round was a dogfight between Leonard and Alan and Jennifer couldn't even ring in with a correct response until the thirteenth clue. In large part because Leonard responded incorrectly on the Daily Double Jennifer managed to finish the round in second place with $2200 to Alan's $6000 and Leonard's $2100. She had given her team a chance – which for reasons I won't go into here was lost by the end of Double Jeopardy. Team Colby went on to go on to the Wild Card and Jennifer would share in $75,000 split three ways.

Jennifer is more due a return than the three previous contestants because as of this writing she is one of only three participants in the All-Star Games who has not been invited back in a Jeopardy Invitational Tournament so far.  (The other two are Buzzy Cohen and Julia Collins.)

 

This is as good a time to end this part of the article because it would be nearly two years before the next Tournament of Champions occurred and by that time there had been two separate Teachers Tournaments. In the conclusion I will deal with the four remaining winners of the Jeopardy Teachers Tournaments and how they did in the postseason.

Aaron Sorkin Used To Understand That Corporations Were A Necessary Evil. Looking at Some of His TV, I Don't Know If He Does Any More

 

One of the many, many reasons I thinks Sports Night was a masterpiece is that of all of Aaron Sorkin's body of work for television it's the most realistic about its purpose. This is particularly when you compare it to his last work for television to date The Newsroom, which takes place in an alternate universe not just compared to reality but even Sorkin's previous work.

No one who works at Sports Night, the show or the network its on has any illusions that they are in anything but a job and that it is dependent on ratings and sponsorship. None of them are wild about it to be sure but they all accept it as a reality as the people who work as Studio 60 or Newsnight just don't. If Will MacAvoy talked to Dan Fielding about what he thought their mission as journalists were,  Dan's reaction would have been: "What have you been smoking and I can have some?" Dana Whitaker (Felicity Huffman) would have told MacKenzie MacHale (rightly) that she was amazed that anyone let her back to produce a program if she didn't care about ratings. And if Isaac Jaffe (Robert Guillame) had heard the way Charlie Skinner was talking to Leona Lansing about how he was running his department he would have been the first person to say Leona should just fire his ass and start over.  Everyone in Sports Night may have done the walk-and-talk that Sorkin was famous for and they have had visions of an ideal program but all of them knew that the corporations ran the show and that they're jobs were incumbent on ratings and any boss who said otherwise was going to get fired sooner rather than later.

The biggest difference between Sorkin's early work on television and his last two shows is that in both cases he views that people who work in television are following a calling, not mere corporate shills. This was one of the reasons that Studio 60 was just a critical and ratings disasters and it's a major reason The Newsroom has always disappointed me. Sorkin has lost the idea he clearly had a grasp on in Sports Night: those who work in TV are doing a job reliant on corporations. The people who work on the title shows in both of his later works believe just as sincerely that they are purveyors of a noble profession where money is irrelevant.

The West Wing as you might expect doesn't really weigh in one way or the other on either argument. In large part it's because this is a show set in the world of politics and corporations just aren't as important to the day-to-day work of running America. It's also due to the fact that Bartlet is part of a Democratic administration and Bartlet's position was that of a liberal Democrat.  In it Sorkin was essentially following the words of Theodore White when he described how the two parties viewed the world: "The Republicans are for virtue; the Democrats are for Santa Claus." And in Bartlet's America, government was the solution to all problems. Which brings me to the point of this essay.

Because Hollywood even in 2000 was essentially a big donor to the Democrats Sorkin talked about it a few times during the four seasons he was the showrunner. Most of the time he was neutral on it and almost every time it had more to do with the senior staff then the President. Bartlet seemed to consider Hollywood like every other part of the Democratic base: a necessary evil.  He understood that he couldn't isolate them but he didn't have much of an opinion one way or the other on their product. That discussion was left more than anything to Toby Ziegler and it's through three different story lines that dealt with him in Season 1 – and another was related to it in Season 3 – that the viewer might have gotten a hint as to what Sorkin might actually think about the profession he was a part of.

In the fifth episode of the series the staff is concerned about making a trip to Hollywood for a fundraiser. The President is giving a talk about sex and violence in the movies and TV the day before he's scheduled to attend a fundraiser involving a producer named Larry Posner. Toby thinks this is hypocritical because Posner's films have gratuitous sex and violence.  Bartlet points out the problem Toby has with Posner's films isn't that they have sex and violence; it's that they suck. "But people go to them because they have gratuitous sex and violence," Bartlet says. "If we could just get people to stop going to crappy movies, Posner would stop making them."

"With all due respect," Toby says. "How's that going with the war on drugs?"

This is the first sign of Toby's true snobbery towards Hollywood which is not uncommon about the far left. However a few episodes later Toby is taking notes for the State of the Union. He is meeting with three Democratic congressmen -  I want to make that clear - and they are talking to him about cutting federal funding for the arts.

Toby, who couldn't denounce Hollywood fast enough, immediately argues that this is a necessity. He says the budget the U.S. spends on arts is equivalent to that of Sweden and that it costs the taxpayer 39 cents a year.  He takes great pride in mocking these Congressmen for not knowing that Oscar Hammerstein wrote the lyrics to Oklahoma and not knowing the difference between Arthur Miller and Arthur Murray. Toby, it's worth reminding you, is from New York one of the few places in the country where this might be common knowledge. The following episode he goes out of his way to defend PBS, another bastion of liberal politics as well as a certain kind of elitism.

In both cases, I should mention, Sorkin (through Toby) doesn't hesitate to argue that the government should be spending money on arts and entertainment as a public service as it does providing other major public services – you know like Social Security, welfare and food stamps. There's a clear distinction between provide these high arts as opposed to the lowly product that Hollywood turns out. Again both times Toby is defending it to Democrats.

The giveaway., I think, comes two seasons later  when someone is discussing defunding the National Endowment for the Arts.  He meets with a sour faced woman who complains what the current chair Oakenwood has done. Frankly the descriptions she makes honestly make you wonder why the Republicans didn't save this for a campaign issue. I'll just list a few:

"Hold The Lettuce, two bacon cheeseburgers constructed from Rottweiler dung"

Slut, a one word poem by a female performance artist who sings named and covered in hot chocolate

A piece which involves the artist destroying all of his belongings outside a Starbucks in Haight Ashbury. (Sam's reaction: "I've done that a couple of times. I didn't know there was funding."

Toby makes it clear he has to be dragged to galleries to see Picasso and Rembrandt but he still makes the kinds of arguments that really do speak of progressives extremism, which means they're either offensive or flimsy.  He compares her to a Nazi and their banning degenerate art. He tells her that it's not the job of people to get rid of things taxpayers don't approve of. "Most people don't like tanks." (Sorkin's character could have answered: I imagine the people who were the victims of the Nazis were happy to see them when they showed up.) He argues that it is just important to argue that art is reflective of culture. "The Age of De Medici was also the age of Da Vinci. The age of Elizabeth was also the age of Shakespeare."  This time she answers: "Ain't none of these guys Da Vinci or Shakespeare." Toby just throws back: 'Says you." (She could also have argued that these leaders were essentially tyrants.)

Eventually in order to get the budget back Toby has to agree to fire Oakenwood, something he does reluctantly. But in hindsight by having Toby take such a full throated defense of art and culture  when it is funded by the government – and in the same breath abusing Hollywood for being guiding by such mere factors as box office –  are as close as Sorkin has ever come in any of his works to raise up the idea of art while putting a middle finger to the business that gave him the right to make it.

The fact that in every case of government funding arts and culture Sorkin through Toby is essentially calling it a necessity as vital as any other government service, may seem like he is defending his profession as an artist. But what it leaves out is the fact that in the case of Broadway and PBS (and to an extent many of the playwrights who worked in some of the eras he discussed) they were as much entertainers as they were artists. This is telling for someone who has just a gift as language and it plays in with the themes of Sorkin's later work, particularly in the case of Studio 60. Performing before a live audience and reported news are not mere jobs but callings, symbolic of such minor things as dollars and cents. Sorkin, speaking through Toby, doesn't seem to think that there's a link between artists getting paid to make their often questionable art by the government and those who work in Hollywood making movies with gratuitous sex and violence. Yet both are drawing  a paycheck for their service, the same way Sorkin and the cast of all of his shows are. So why is one a noble profession and the other just a product of commerce?

And more to the point if you truly believed the government's job is to support all of its citizens the way so many progressives earnestly do with basic economic needs then isn't it your mission to spend as much money in the budget doing it? Isn't there a double standard in paying taxpayer dollars for arts and culture that could go just as easily to the unfed and unsheltered?  Hollywood may not produce the same high standards of art that people like Toby consider (though its worth noting that we should question whether he believes so much in what art as that the government has a moral obligation to fund it) but the fact that we consider shows like The West Wing  and films such as The Social Network and Moneyball works of art even though they never received a dime from the government should be an answer to this question.

Perhaps Sorkin, like so many people in Hollywood, can't escape the idea that being a mere entertainer is beneath him. I'd argue that entertainment is as valuable to the world as art and can serve the same function. Toby might consider Oklahoma and Death of A Salesman and Hollywood films 'mere entertainment' but as someone who's seen all of them, the only one it matters to may be the creator. To the viewing audience I'd argue we don't debate one is entertainment or art the same way everyone in either industry seems determined to: our only metric is if we liked it.  Hollywood has provided an escape from the world we live during hard times, as it did so often during the Depression and World War II for audiences who needed to get away from the horrors of the world for a few hours. The creator might care more about what the audience thinks about the product but most of us – including critics like myself – only do so after the fact. Overall we just want to escape the world and not sweat the details.

Speaking strictly for myself I think it is the job of films, TV, plays, music, really anything creative to provide an escape hatch from the world of the everyday. Whether it is art or entertainment is subjective but that doesn't make one inferior to the other, nor does it mean they can't be both. Entertainment, like everything else, is a job not a noble calling absent from commerce. Sorkin used to know that in his early days. Looking at his later work and this part of The West Wing, I wonder if he still realizes that.

 

 

More Sex! More Bizarre Neighbors! Same Little English Community! Its Season 2 of The Couple Next Door

I need to be very clear on something. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of Starz's presentation of the British drama The Couple Next Door. No not ironically like all the hate-watchers who claim that’s the only reason they've watched Emily in Paris or …And Just Like That. And not because the show had some kind of deep meaning behind it. No The Couple Next Door was a show that had, to use a phrase that I've coined, no nutritional value.

That's one of the reasons, I should add, why I enjoyed it so much. As I've written more than once one of the sad parts of the era of Peak TV is that it seems to have killed the idea of the guilty pleasure.  Many showrunners such as Shonda Rhimes argue that shows like Scandal and Bridgerton are actually series about deep ideas about society when all they are is soap operas. If you watch a show that is pure junk you can't even be honest about why you like it: which is to just turn your brain off. For all the flirtations Couple Next Door had with bits of a deeper meaning, it never walked away from the idea that its basic plot was of a 1990s direct to video film spread out over the kind of series format  Cinemax and Showtime aired late at night during that same period. (Not that anyone ever watched these kinds of things, of course, certainly not yours truly.) I actually admired it more for its lack of pretention: in an era where all shows must seem to be have greatness if you look deep enough, there's something to be said for just keeping it as a pure entertainment.

That said I was somewhat surprised to know even as I reviewed it that the show had been renewed for a second season. How were they going to do that? Well, the answer was that Starz and the creators have more or less decided to turn Couple Next Door into the weirdest kind of anthology ever, not that far removed from the kind of sequels to so many of these movies starring the Queens of the B's such as Shannon Tweed and Tanya Roberts over the nineties. (I mean obviously I saw them in my local blockbusters. I certainly never rented them.)

Season 2 takes place not long after the events of Season 1. In a completely logical sense given how Season 1 ended, both families that were at the center of everything that happened in Season 1 have moved out. A new couple has moved in to one of those houses. Charlotte and Jacob have been married for quite a few years and spoiler alert they are not swingers. If anything Sam Palladio and Annabella Scholey actually seem like a perfect happy and unpretentious couple. Charlotte's a cardiac surgeon; Jacob has a less demanding job. They both work at the same hospital, they've got a solid marriage and they actually tease each other in a playful way. When Charlotte wants to lure Jacob in he says with genuine mockery: "It's not even Sex Wednesday." They seem to have the perfect balance of work and home life, which means there have to be flaws in the façade.

Oddly enough if there are cracks it seems to be from the perceptions of those around them. The couple moved to the neighborhood to take care of Charlotte's father, who lived in the neighborhood and is clearly in the late stages of dementia. In the first episode Charlotte admits they have to move him to assisted living. The bigger problem is that Charlotte's father clearly never liked Jacob and prefer her old beau Leo, who comes from a family of wealth and has just moved back home from years abroad doing good. Jacob is clearly jealous of him, though at this point Leo has moved on. Everyone else, however, doesn't seem to have.

In another sign of their lack of pretention, Season 2 doesn't even bother with building up the idea of a snake in the grass. No it makes clear right away when Mia (Aggy Adams) shows up at the hospital and applies for a nursing job. She says she's from Norway and that she has a different way of doing things.

As someone who has spent the last decade watching so many limited series and procedurals where all of people at work are clueless of the villain's bad behavior no matter how obvious it is in private or even public, I can't tell you how refreshing it is that The Couple Next Door doesn't bother with this subtlety. Everybody in the hospital from the moment they meet her clocks that there's something off with Mia. It's not just Charlotte and Jacob; it's the head nurse, most of the doctors, even some of the patients. And Mia doesn't even go out of her way to be subtle. She undresses in front of strangers, is far too friendly to Jacob and Charlotte, doesn't even bother to hide the fact that she doesn't like that a patient who sexually harassed her is dead. Again everyone around her picks up on it. No one thinks she's dangerous: they just thinks she's strange.

Charlotte and Jacob know just how weird she is when she ends up renting the house next to them after its mentioned in passing. They are both unsettled by her behavior from the start and you get the feeling its just the fact that they're English makes them too polite to tell her to sod off.  This is before she begins to get deeper into their lives, attempts to seduce both Charlotte and Jacob, often at the same time and keeps showing up in places she shouldn't. Usually we have to wait until the third episode in most series for the victims to realize the snake's in the grass. Everyone knows by the time the first episode's even half over.

The clear link between the two seasons is Hugh Dennis who last year was the unabashed pervert from day one.  It's a credit to the series that Couple makes it clear that he's suffering the consequences. His wife has left him; he's doing community service and everyone else in the neighborhood is shunning him. Mia makes an effort to reach out to him and to his credit, he is very clear about who he is by the end of the second episode. Mia goes out of her way to react like everyone else.  I found Dennis's character contemptible; now I actually feel sorry for him. This is a man whose voyeurism has cost him everything and has nothing left. In the second episode we see him in his basement trying to unpack the telescope he used to peer as the sexual behavior of the couple next door. He threw it to the ground this time but I'm not sure he'll be able to resist the urge much longer.

I actually think the second season of Couple Next Door is better than the first because the story is a lot simpler and the writers go out of their way to make it clear almost immediately that Mia has a hidden agenda. It doesn't hide the fact that she's clearly mentally unstable or that she's hiding her identity from the people here or that she clearly has a deeper reason for deciding to wreck the lives of Charlotte and Jacob. It has something to do with her history from Poland and perhaps some kind of public trial, but beyond that the writers have not revealed much more. This mystery I do appreciate because there clearly has to be a motivation for her to do what she's doing: it's clearly not because she loves chaos. And I have to say its refreshing after so many years of morally ambiguous characters in so many series to see one with a proper femme fatale villain, something Adams leans into whenever she gets the chance.

Again The Couple Next Door is not art and it makes no pretense of being that. But this is the first series I wouldn't mind if there was an anthology format going forward with each season a new set of tenants moving into both houses until the tenant's association starts to worry about the property values and does screenings to keep them out. Or perhaps they won't have to. That is, after all, how the majority of direct-to-video franchises worked over the decades: a formulaic scenario with just enough of a plot to tie together all the sex and violence that was happening onscreen. (Not that any of my readers would have watched such things, of course. I certainly never did.)

My score: 3.5 stars.