Homicide Rewatch: Have a Conscience

 

Written by James Yoshimura

Directed by Uli Edel

 

In hindsight the title really seems like advice that Homicide should have taken when it came to writing this episode in the first place. This is not just the weakest episode of the fifth season but one of the biggest missteps in the show's entire run. That James Yoshimura, one of the best writers, is responsible for such a mess makes all the harder to comprehend.

Homicide has previously made episodes that were weaker then this one and will in future seasons. But in those cases you got the feeling that they were created mainly under the pressure of the network in order to drive up the ratings. (Last season's Thrill of the Kill is the 'best' example of this.) In those cases it was an attempt to sensationalize the story usually by focusing on twists that would belong on other crime shows.

The fundamental flaw in 'Have A Conscience' is that it spends the first half of the episode trying to lead up to the final twenty minutes with Lewis and Kellerman, where we're trying to see Kellerman as suicidal and Lewis trying to talk him out of it. This won't work for many reasons, not the least of which it would go against Homicide's own rules.

First is the biggest flaw: the viewer knows that Kellerman will not kill himself. It's not just because in 1997 TV characters didn't get killed off; its that Homicide itself does not do that. This is the show that resists the idea of cops drawing their guns on the street, only forced Bolander, Felton and Howard to be shot in order to boost the ratings and killed off Crosetti only after Jon Polito had been essentially fired.

Even from a story standpoint it makes no sense that Kellerman, having spent the last four months struggling through every aspect of the criminal justice process, is going to kill himself because he had a bad day his first day back on active duty. This is a man who just the previous episode made it clear he wanted to be a good cop more than anything and has now been given a chance to do just that. For him to do having had a lousy day really seems like lazy writing.

And frankly it's just as lazy to have both of Lewis's partners die by killing themselves from the perspective of Lewis's character. The idea that Meldrick is essentially dare to talk him out of it really seems like the kind of thing a far weaker TV show would ever try.

For Homicide to pull this off the show would have to really give a great justification for Kellerman to kill himself off in the first two acts. And it doesn't come near to passing the stink test. There's nothing that we see happen that you can't imagine Mike hasn't gone through to some extent the last few months, even if the viewer didn't see it. The best argument you can make is that this is the day after he was cleared and he's still feeling some residual anger from everything that happened. But his behavior at every step really isn't any different then it was when he was at his most petulant before.

Honestly this episode really seems like the kind of thing a lesser series would send for awards consideration. Which in Homicide's case is ridiculous considering the enormously high standard it has for nearly every episode during a season. Diamond and Johnson have already given far better performances during Season 5 and they're going to give far better ones by the end of it.  

What's all the more infuriating is that for the first half hour there's a good episode here – not a masterpiece by any measure but a very good one, certainly. And that's mainly because its subverting what the viewer really wants to see after last week: the fallout between Bayliss's telling Frank he doesn't want to be partners any more. This is what the viewer's more invested in, so for Yoshimura to spend the first half of the episode focused on Kellerman's first day back and regulating Bayliss and Pembleton to the B-Story is keeping within the tradition.

Much of this does play out because of the reversal involved: Frank is the one trying to offer a hand of friendship to Bayliss and Tim, who would have killed for it any time in the last four years, keeps pushing it away. It's as frustrating for the viewer as it clear is for Frank and both Braugher and Secor are given interesting notes to play, both of which will carry forward for the rest of Season Five. Watching this episode the first time it genuinely hurt me as a fan to see this play out and I kept wanting the show to go back to the two of them rather than Mike Kellerman's no good, sort of awful, kind of very bad day.

Its particularly fascinating when both Bayliss and Pembleton discuss Kellerman and why. At this point Frank is trying to get Bayliss to take a ride with him on an old case and Bayliss says he's worried about Kellerman after Gaffney's mockery. Frank, who is the only person who hasn't openly said anything either of condolence or scorn, says that if Mike can handle 'the feds, the bosses, and the grand jury Gaffney will be no problem'. Bayliss says that there's more than that. In this case Tim is right and Frank is wrong – but fittingly for the main story neither really cares about Mike: this is about the two of them. The fact that Frank keeps trying to get Tim to work a case with him and Tim keeps putting him off with increasingly flimsy excuses makes it clear something deeper is beneath the surface with Bayliss and Frank gets the hint. When Tim comes back in after the most recent killer confesses Frank is clearly annoyed and now the shoe's on the other foot.

Let's not forget that Kellerman made a big deal that he was almost certainly guilty of a crime and willing to give up being a cop yesterday. Now the moment he sees Ingram he's pissed that she didn't put anything in the paper about him not being indicted. Now I have absolutely no doubt this was intentional, maybe as a personal dig at Kellerman for threatening to mess up her nicely done case with a bow. But even it isn't, she's right on the facts: this is how the process works and Kellerman himself knows this face. When she reminds him that his partners are in the headlines for being indicted (perhaps implying it could have just as easily been him) he backs off but is just as mean-spirited as he was when he facing charges the last four months. He was never innocent under anyone's standards but his own and that starts the episode off on a bad note.

Equally noteworthy is Kellerman's behavior when he enters the squad room. Brodie goes out of his way to congratulate him; Munch and Howard try to persuade him to relax the next night and Giardello welcomes him back. They are all doing exactly what he's wanting: treating him like a normal cop.  And Kellerman basically greets their good wishes with indifference at best. For that matter when Kellerman tries to thank Al for what he tried to do (which he denies) he basically says, "Next time, let me deal with it." That's practically spitting in Al's face considering that Mike basically spent the entire time begging Al to do something and how much Gee agonized over it. Giardello's response is a combination of encouragement and warning: "There won't be a next time.'

It's only when Gaffney makes it clear he openly thinks Mike got away with murder that he reacts at all. Now I'm not going to pretend that this isn't the meanest Gaffney has ever been to any detective so far in his tenure and for him to treat a subordinate this way is abusive. But its worth noting that the scene in the squad is very much how Mike has been this entire period: he refuses to accept the good wishes of those around him and only hears the damnation.

The best chance the episode has of getting away from this comes when Kellerman takes his first call and is back on the street. The case in itself is a good one frankly; one that has a deeper resonance. It is the shooting of a Korean grocery store owner named Tommo Roh. Both his wife and son are clearly shocked and believe in his honor.

The discussion is about the 'change in the neighborhood', in this case the dealers that have begun to proliferate. His customers – who are all African-American – basically have nothing but good things to say about him. It turns out that he picked a fight with the wrong man: Luther Mahoney. The day after he chased some dealers off the street Luther came up and threw the fear of God into his mother, even though "he was very polite about it." Roh went crazy and went to the youth center. We already know Mahoney is more than willing to flaunt his authority in front of police; a sixty year old storekeeper is something he would merely flick away.

Its telling the viewer never doubts Mahoney would do this, despite the denials he makes in front of Kellerman and Lewis. At this point he's encountered the two of them in some form often enough that he barely bothers to make up a plausible story. He seems more interested in baiting Kellerman and daring him to do something that will get him into trouble with his superiors. We've now passed the point in Homicide where the detectives believe any word that comes out of Mahoney's mouth and he's not even bothering to play with the idea he's a community organizer any more. Considering he was more than willing to go to the Waterfront and flaunt Lewis the last time they met, it's as if he makes it clear that human life is irrelevant to him other than how it profits or benefits him. He truly thinks he is above the law and its impossible not to blame either Kellerman or Lewis for their behavior when they come face to face again. (Meldrick, who is by far the calmer of the two, basically implies as much in their final exchange in this episode.)

This episode works the best when we see Diamond struggling to come back and acting like nothing's bothering him. Homicide has already established how much of a trigger Luther Mahoney is for him and the fact that an innocent civilian, a fundamentally good ma was murdered because he got in the way of a drug lord, is the kind of story Homicide rarely did. It also does more to establish the true ruthlessness of Luther. To this point all of the people who have been killed by Mahoney's orders are soldiers in the drug word themselves. That Luther chooses to have a man erase who was at most an inconvenience to him simultaneously makes him more evil and more realistic. (The Wire rarely would have people murdered who were essentially trying to do the right thing in this way.) The fact that Kellerman is clearly taking this case more personally then some also works as to Homicide's best notes: we saw just last week how well Homicide works when the cases resonate with the detectives on a personal level.

So when Kellerman and Lewis rant about Mahoney in the car on the way home its believable as is Mike's line: "We're going to be in pension and he's gonna be in Congress. That's the way of the world." But when he starts kicking the car and saying he's going to sue everybody who he thinks screwed him over and then gets out of the car and walking away, it really does feel like he's throwing a tantrum.

When the episode cuts away from the squad room and moves to Kellerman's boat this is when the episode moves away from possibly brilliant to the misstep it is. It starts out decently with Cox and Lewis interacting and Juliana saying that Mike's in one of his moods. She says: "I don't know why I keep caring about that guy." Lewis then says: "I didn't know you did." It's clear that Lewis has no idea about what's been going on between Juliana and Mike the last few weeks, nor how its starting to sour. He offers to grab Kellerman and they'll party at the bar. That's nice and sweet. Meldrick's clowning around on the boat, calling Gilligan and wanting Mike to let him in is fun. Mike being rude when Meldrick comes in and busy cleaning is realistic. The moment we see the gun however we're worried, though not to much. Kellerman says, "He's tired', that's believable.

But the moment he grabs the gun and starts talking Have A Conscience starts getting into trouble.  And it really shouldn't: long scenes with two people just talking are Homicide's strength. But in fifteen minutes there's nothing that Kellerman and Lewis say that we haven't seen play out either in the episode, or throughout the entire storyline involving Kellerman's the last few months. This is particularly true with Diamond because all he's basically doing is either restating things he's said in the episode, albeit with more pronouncement, or everything else in the few weeks to an extent with more self-aggrandizement. When you consider that he was only innocent of the charge of not taking the bribe and was planning to plead the 5^th until he was forced to by circumstance, it really makes so much of his emotional strain just sound false. It's believable this entire process who be emotionally exhausting for him and its been established he's spent more energy on clear his name than getting support but considering that he's spent far more time pushing everyone away who could help him, its hard to feel that this is realistic.

Johnson comes across slightly better in this scenario because it is more realistic what he's going through to see it play out. The viewer may never believe the show is going to let Kellerman eat his gun but Meldrick doesn't know this going in. The only times this comes close to working is when Lewis makes it very clear how much Crosetti's loss has hurt him. The show's already established that Meldrick has been less open to his fellow detectives since Crosetti's suicide and we've already established that he hasn't told Mike much of his personal history even though Kellerman has done the same. So that part does seem really as well as why he might feel guilt for that fact.

But the fact remains Yoshimura has run out of things to say five minutes before the episode ends when Meldrick finally takes the gun from Mike. It's just as heavy handed when we keep cutting to the Waterfront where another depressing night is unfolding. When Howard says: "Real life never plays out the same way," its heavy handed in a way the show almost never is.

There is a certain amount of reality being restored in the last couple of minutes. Meldrick saying that he can't look out at the water for very long because that's where they fished Crosetti out is realistic, as is Mike's being adamant of not letting the department know about his mental state because he's afraid he'll lose his job. And the show manages to set it right in the next couple of episodes with Kellerman in a way that almost makes this worth it. 

We can't entirely dismiss Have A Conscience because the story involving the rift between Baylis and Pembleton and the Roh case and its link to Luther Mahoney are critical when it comes to the rest of the season and beyond. You just can't help but wish they found a better way to do it.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

 

'Detective Munch' John tells Howard a story he heard on the radio of a man they found in scuba gear in the forest in Oregon. The speculation was he was practicing diving in the lake and one of those planes that fought forest fires scooped up water and dumped it on the flames.

This story, however, is one to many for Kay. "You're always doing this. You come in with some crazy story that's got no point." This actually pisses Munch off. "So what's your point?"

And yes this is one of the stories that Ricky Jay will tell us in the opening of Magnolia in two years' time.  Believe it or not, this isn't the only time Homicide will presage Paul Thomas Anderson's cinematic masterpiece. (Did Paul Thomas Anderson get his inspiration from Richard Belzer?)

In this episode Juliana Cox is on crutches because she says she tripped over her dog. This is in fact what happened to Michelle Forbes. Forbes was not happy the writers including this onscreen.

There's a very subtle in-joke about the case Pembleton is investigating, the Bianculli murder. David Bianculli was (is?) a New York TV critic who was one of the earliest and most vocal supporters of Homicide when it was on the air. And as always the writers thank him by having his namesake killed under undignified circumstances at a topless bar.

Despite the fact that Kellerman thinks the Roh case will never be closed it will end up being solved in a few weeks' time. Of course that will lead to some continuity problems but we'll get to that when they happen.

Uli Edel, who directed this episode was a prominent German director who made his American film debut with Last Exit to Brooklyn. He made his TV directorial debut with Twin Peaks and would work again with Lynch's production company on Rebel Highway. He directed three more episodes of Homicide and one of OZ before later directing the TNT adaptation of The Mists of Avalon. He's also directed such mini series as Casar and King of Texas. He would return to Germany to direct The Baader Meinhof Complex and the German TV series The Palace, the story of the Freidrichstadt-Palast Music Hall in the late 1980s. He would be nominated by the DGA for directing the HBO TV movie Rasputin and an Emmy nomination for directing The History Channel Houdini which would star Adrian Brody in the title role.

 

 

The West Wing Retrospective Character Study: Four Reasons Bradley Whitford Was So Brilliant as Josh Lyman

 

 

When I first watched The West Wing I was still a novice when it came to watching TV shows and still in the process where I had 'favorite characters'. They were always the biggest names in the cast or even the showiest actors but I could form an emotional connection quickly.

With Chicago Hope it was Adam Arkin's work as Dr. Aaron Shutt, almost always the voice of calm in a hospital filled with craziness. With The Practice it was Steve Harris as Eugene Young the biggest believer in the rules and justice at Donnell, Young, Frutt & Dole. With Homicide while I really loved every character the one that I most consistently favored was Kyle Secor's work as Tim Bayliss and if you've read my articles on the show you know why.

And with The West Wing it was Josh who I instantly connected with from the first minutes of the Pilot and who, even after Aaron Sorkin left the series in 2003, I always felt was the most true to himself.

I can't point to a single reason why that became so true in the first season. Maybe it was because from the start he had this tendency to, to use a political quote, 'shoot from the lip' which was something that was excusable in private but every time he did in public it was destructive even if he was right. (Sam famously said: "A very good friend of mine is about to be fired for going on TV and making sense.") Sometimes it could be hysterically funny as when he hosted his only press corps briefing and said the President had a secret plan to fight inflation, and sometimes it backfired as when he let policy details slip to his girlfriend and as a result he got chewed out by Bartlet and nearly suffered a policy defeat. (I didn't mind he and Amy broke up; he was always too good for her.)

Or maybe it was because he was the smartest person in the room and never missed an opportunity to show it. Everyone loved the way he lectured Donna on policy or history or the White House's statistics (even Donna admitted she was smarter for doing so). Of course with great genius comes great arrogance and that also got him into trouble more than once, particularly with CJ. (So many of the scenes between him and Alison Janney were the comic highpoints of the series.)

Or maybe it was because there was a level of tragedy in his life that we learned about early that made him more relatable in a way it took much longer for us to get to know the personal lives of everyone else on the show. In the fifth episode we learned that his sister Joanie had died in a fire when he was a teenager and by the end of the first season we learned his father Noah had died on the night of the Illinois primary. (Those who have read my review of the classic In the Shadow of Two Gunmen' know how magnificently Sorkin handled that storyline.) For that reason he was perhaps more loyal to the people at the West Wing then any other character was and you got the feeling everyone supported him beyond the political reasons.

But much of it had to do with the incredible work that Bradley Whitford did for the entire run of the series. By that point I was starting to cover the Emmy nominations in a casual fashion and I remember being annoyed that of all the 19 Emmy nominations The West Wing got for its first season Whitford somehow had been ignored. It was a lapse the Academy would immediately correct: Whitford would be nominated in 2001 and deservedly win. He was also nominated the following two years, which were the last two of Sorkin's tenure on the show.

There are many ways to show how much I loved Bradley's work as Josh but I think the most effective way is to show what I think most fans will considers one of the most important relationships during the entire series: that of Josh and Leo.

Leo is White House Chief of Staff and Josh is Deputy Chief in the Pilot so clearly Josh is the go-to guy for basically everything Leo considers a priority. But it becomes clear very quickly that the two of them have a bond that has more to do with the fact that they clearly worked together to put Bartlet in office. As we learn in Gunmen Leo was a friend of Josh's father and the two of them clearly moved in the same circles in DC for years. Josh was one of the chief aides for John Hoynes when Hoynes was in the Senate and Hoynes clearly has a high opinion of Josh as Leo does when it comes to politics. We've gotten a hint of that in the Season 1 finale with the following exchange:

Hoynes: If I listened to you two years ago, would I be President right now? You ever wonder about that?

Josh: No sir, I know it for sure.

It's clear that Josh's decision to come work for the Bartlet campaign was the first step that led to Bartlet's seemingly impossible victory to claim the Democratic nomination and then the Presidency. Everyone in the administration knows this and it's clear by the end of the Pilot Bartlet knows this and is always going to have a place in his heart for Josh no matter what.

The best way, I believe, to illustrate the relationship between Josh and Leo is by looking at the Christmas episodes for all four seasons in Sorkin's tenure. Any fan of The West Wing knows that these episodes are among the greatest episodes not just in series history but TV history. The cast themselves knew that. In each of the first three years of The West Wing's tenure it won Best Supporting Actor in a Drama for, Richard Schiff, Whitford, and John Spencer. Each time the actor in question had submitted the Christmas episode for that year for consideration for voters and it had ended up winning them the prize. (In Excelsis Deo would be the only episode to win the Emmy for Best Dramatic Teleplay.)

All of them are extraordinary episodes for reasons that don't always have to do with Josh and Leo's relationship but something I realized after the series ended was that it was always present even if it wasn't front and center.  This is clear with In Excelsis Deo where most of the show is focused on Toby but Josh and Leo's relationship is still there.

In the previous episode The Short List, a Congressman named Lilienfeld has begun to start talking about how one out of every three White House staffers is on drugs. At first no one takes this seriously, not even Josh:

"Five White House staffers in the room. For the 1.67 of you that are stoned right now, its high time for you to share!"

Toby is taking it seriously and he tells Josh to lead the interviews. Eventually however, he goes to Leo because Josh has figured out what this is about.

"You know the worst kept secret in Washington is that you're a recovering alcoholic?" he says gently. By this time the viewer knows this. Josh dismisses it at first: "You're Boston Irish Catholic...Were you maybe into something less acceptable?"

Leo tells him Valium and that he spent time at a rehab facility called Sierra Tucson. Josh knows that somehow Lilienfeld has though records. Which leads to this magnificent line:

"You're Leo McGarey. You're not going to be taken down by this small fraction of a man. I won't permit it."

This is the first time the viewer has become aware of just how loyal Josh is to Leo. We get a sense of how far he's willing to go in the next episode – against Leo's wishes.

Josh tells Leo that he wants to do 'a preemptive strike.' By this point Josh knows about Sam's relationship with the high-priced escort Laurie but when he even hints at it Leo tells him absolutely not. Josh considers going against it but Donna is worried about it and says that Leo would do the same for any of us.

Josh then persuades Sam to do it and Sam is, if anything, angrier than Leo is. It's only when Josh tells him of the stakes – and more importantly that Leo went to rehab while he was Secretary of Labor – that he agrees.

The meeting goes badly to say the least. Laurie (Lisa Edelstein) immediately throws a fit. Josh tries to defend himself:

A man has left himself to open to the kind of attack from which men in my business do not recover. Now, if our tactics seem less than civilized, its because so are our attackers.

Josh might have been able to prevail had he left it at that. But then he goes too far:

We don't need your cooperation Laurie. One of your guys wrote you a check, and the IRS works for me. And anyway I don't feel like standing here, taking civics lessons from a hooker.

That is going to far and Laurie immediately chews him out by making it very clear she has Democratic customers as well as Republicans and she doesn't like being bullied. Sorkin, as is his brilliance, lets her have the last word:

You're the good guys. You should act like it.

This is horrible. But then they come back to the White House.

Leo: You saw Sam's friend?

Sam: How did you know?

Leo: I had you tailed.

When Sam asks why:

Leo: On the off chance that you're as stupid as you look.

He makes it clear he holds the same standards as Laurie. Josh says he did it because he wanted to help Leo.

Leo: Is that supposed to mean something?

Josh: Yes.

(pause)

Leo: Well, it does.

It's clear Leo doesn't agree with what Josh chose to do but he does respect his loyalty. And we're kind of proud of him too

Noel won Whitford the Emmy for Best Supporting Actor and deservedly so. (imdb.com ranks it one of the highest reviewed episodes of Season 2.)I've discussed to an extent in my piece on Janel Moloney but to review this episode takes place in a therapy session between Josh and a psychiatrist named Stanley (I can't tell you what it meant to see Adam Arkin doing it). As we know Josh was shot in the Season 2 premiere and has spent the last six months physically recovering from having 'hot lead shot into his body'. Most of the staff and the President basically managed to get through in the episode 'The Midterms' (which I'll go over at another point.) Josh hasn't been so lucky. There have been signs, subtle but clear, that Josh has been struggling with PTSD throughout the second season and its clear during the leadup to Christmas it all came to ahead.

The show is magnificent showing in flashbacks how Josh has been hiding how he hurt his hand. He's been saying all episode that he broke a glass and that was the reason. In fact there's been days of tension leading up to it and what it has to do with is the Christmas music. The biggest hint comes when Josh is upset about it and says: "I can hear the damn sirens all over the building."  It finally comes to a head when he's listening to Yo-Yo Ma play and then he goes home and says that the shooting did it.

Now for obvious reasons if it were to come out that the White House Deputy Chief of Staff was suffering from PTSD, it would be the kind of thing that got him fired. Leo has called in Keyworth to do it. At the end of this magnificent episode we have this incredible conversation.

First make it clear Josh has been in session at the White House for ten hours. It's Christmas day. Leo is in the hallway:

Leo: How'd it go?

Josh: Did you wait around for me?

Leo: How'd it go?

Josh paused

Josh: He thinks I may have an eating disorder…and a fear of rectangles. That's not weird , is it? (pause) I didn't cut my hand on a glass. I broke a window in my apartment.

Josh has just told this to his boss. This is Leo's speech and I know this speech got Spencer a nomination himself (though there were a lot of other episodes he could have submitted)

This guy's walking down a street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep, he can't get out. A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up: "Hey you, can you help me out?"" The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up: "Father I'm down in this hole; can you help me out?" The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a friend walks by. "Hey Joe, its me, can you help me out?" And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says: "Are you stupid? Now we're both down here." The friend says, "Yeah but I've been down here before and I know the way out."

(Pause)

Long as I got a job, you got a job, you understand?

I honestly think no matter how much therapy Josh got (and he got some no question) that speech meant as much to him, if not more.

When Whitford accepted his Emmy as he walked to the stage he whispered to John Spencer, who he had defeated and said: "Next year." This wasn't just well-wished: by that point the 2001 Christmas episode 'Bartlet for America' had been completed and everyone came away from it convinced it was Spencer's best work so far that season, if not the entire series to that point. They were right: Spencer would submit it for consideration and would indeed win for it the following year. (Again imdb.com ranks it as the best episode of Season 3.)

Once again I have to give background. At this point the Congressional investigation into Bartlet's lack of public disclosure about his illness has come for Leo and he fears the worst. With good reason. One of the Republicans on Oversight knows a secret. On the night prior to the final debate Leo was fundraising where alcohol was served. He started drinking and relapsed. One of the fundraisers (not in Congress yet) saw it and knows about it. He intends to ask Leo about at the fundraiser, even though it has no relation to the hearings because there's an election next year and he wants Bartlet to lose. He knows that if this becomes public knowledge, Leo will have to resign and this will be another body blow for the campaign.

I will deal with this story specifically when I come to John Spencer in this study. For now I will simply say that Josh knows about this and wants to help Leo. Before the hearing begins:

Leo: Don't help me.

Josh: I'm going to help you, cause you know why?"

Leo: 'Cause you walk around with so much guilt about everybody you love dying that you're a compulsive fixer?

Josh: No, Leo, no. Its' cause a guy is walking down the street and he falls into a hole see.

Leo becomes serious

Leo: Yeah.

Josh: Yeah.

Josh then spends the rest of the episode talking to Sam and telling him to find a way to get the congressman out of the room but he has no intention of giving up Leo's secret so he doesn't tell Sam why. As a result Sam fails in his quest and the only reason he escapes is because White House Counsel Cliff Calley intervenes and forces the majority leader to call a recess.

In the following episode H. Con 172 Calley comes to Leo and offers him a deal: they will end the hearings right then in exchange for the President accepting a joint censure. Leo has too much pride: "I take a bullet for the President. He doesn't take one for me." It's because Calley goes over Leo's head to Josh (via Donna) that Josh convinces the President to take the censure. When the staff learns about Josh tells them flat out that he recommended they take it and this is the end of the discussion as far as he's concerned. Josh's firmness on the subject forces the staff to let it go.

I mention this for context mainly because it show collectively that Josh is willing to do for Leo what Leo did for him. His discussion with Leo in that episode and going forward is him being the rational one, dealing with Leo's pride and issues. It is a case of the child becoming the parent.

Holy Night was the last Christmas episode in the Sorkin era. By this point both the critical acclaim and the ratings were off the rose of The West Wing and while it would win its fourth consecutive Emmy for Best Drama that year (a record that only Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law held before it and only Mad Men and Game of Thrones have equaled since) it would win just one more Emmy in 2003 and none of them were for acting. The show had its moments (both the season premiere and season finale are among the greatest in the show's history) but it was losing altitude) In truth Holy Night is not at the same level as any of the previous Christmas episodes. But it still has its moments and much of them do focus on Josh and Leo.

At this point both Leo and Bartlet are dealing with their consciences for their role in the assassination of Abdul Sharif at the end of Season 3. (At this point no one outside them in the West Wing knows it but that is about to change in large part because of events in this episode.)

When Leo learns from Josh that the church of the Nativity in Israel has been bombed he demands Josh start calling people in order to get it fixed. Its Christmas Eve and Josh has plans. Then Bartlet comes to Josh and says he wants to fold an infant mortality bill into the next budget for Congress on January 1^st

Josh: I think you're saying that before it goes to the printer on January 1^st you want to rewrite the Congressional budget.

Bartlet: You think this is crazy?

Josh: No, certainly not crazier than Leo for going for peace in the Middle East by the close of business.

Josh actually has to call Donna and tell her to cancel her Christmas plans – with her new boyfriend – as a blizzard is starting.

In the final act Bartlet and Leo both admit their trying to exorcise their guilt.

Leo then calls Josh in and tells him he's calling it off and that he's sent Donna off to meet her boyfriend. By this point Josh and Donna's attraction to each other is becoming more obvious in Sorkin's writing.

In the final minutes as they listen to the title carol:

Leo: It's four years later and there are things that are worse and things that are exactly the same. Where do you start?

Josh: By fixing a roof. I'm staying on the phones. You want to stay with me?

Leo: Yeah.

The episode ends with a montage of the various cast members. One of the final shots is of Leo and Josh both on the phone. Its Christmas Eve and though Sorkin never says so both men are exactly where they want to be right now.

With the exception of Allison Janney Whitford has had the most consistent career with TV success since The West Wing ended in 2006. He starred in Sorkin's follow up series for NBC Studio 60 which ended up being a disaster. He then starred in the undervalued Fox comedy The Good Guys with Colin Hanks which was canceled after season. He actually appeared in two other failed comedies that had some merit: ABC's Trophy Wife and Showtime's Happyish. However in 2014 he appeared in a guest role in Amazon's groundbreaking comedy Transparent and would win his second Emmy for Best Guest Actor in a Comedy. While he was there he met his current wife Amy Landecker whom he married in 2014.

He would eventually be cast Joseph Lawrence one of the architects of Gilead in the landmark Hulu Series The Handmaid's Tale. That was his most successful role to date: he would win Best Guest Actor in a Drama in 2019 and was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama in 2020 and 2021. Last year he was cast along Alison Janney, who is now playing the Vice President on The Diplomat as her husband which means as of Season 4, he's now First Gentleman. Nor was this the only major role where he was close to political power in 2025. In the new series Death By Lightning which focuses on the life of James Garfield he has been cast as James G. Blaine, a force in Republican politics for more than two decades and Garfield's Secretary of State. This role could be seen as a mirror of his previous role as a historic politics Hubert Humphrey in All The Way in 2016.

And just to be clear every time Whitford is in any piece of work, whether it is film or TV, it is as much a draw for me then and is was when I first was introduced to him in The West Wing. The boyish youthful is gone and his hair is shock white but the same relentless energy and determination that drove Josh is present in every role he has played since then. He is just as entertaining and fun in comedies as he is riveting in drama. TV is a better place because Bradley Whitford is still working in it, just as the Bartlet Administration was a better place because Josh was Deputy Chief of Staff.

 

 

X-Files - Howard Gordon And Vince Gilligan: Mulder and Scully and Jimmy and Kim

 

 

Everyone knows that Breaking Bad couldn't have existed without The X-Files for a very simple reason: Vince Gilligan remembered Bryan Cranston from his brilliant work in 'Drive' back in Season 6 of the series and decided to cast him as Walter White when AMC was more interested in having someone like Matthew Broderick or John Cusack play the role. There are to be clear more indirect and direct ways that Breaking Bad came together over the years but I'd like to look at a different perspective with my retrospective on Gilligan.

One of the more fascinating questions behind both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul was how does a seemingly ordinary and good person become a monster. One of the reasons that Better Call Saul was one of the greatest shows of all time – to the point that some will even consider it might have been better than Breaking Bad -  is that we are watching the saga of how Jimmy McGill, who is a criminal and a lawyer when we meet him but not the 'criminal lawyer' he is by the time we meet him in Breaking Bad, ends up becoming Saul Goodman. By the time we reach the end of Breaking Bad its clear that Walter White was always a monster; it just took the cancer for it be fully realized. Better Call Saul tells a better and in many ways sadder story: it agues that Jimmy McGill could have been a good man but what other people thought of him pushed him into who he was.

Gilligan didn't spend as much time connected to Better Call Saul as he did Breaking Bad: he was only writing and directing the show through Season 2 and after that he more or less left in the hands of a superb writing staff. But it's difficult for me not to think that Saul doesn't have more direct connections to Gilligan's work on The X-Files then Breaking Bad does, at least thematically.  There are two big parallels between the two shows and I think its worth looking at each individually.

Let's start with a link that until fairly recently I didn't realize. Arguably the most important relationship on Better Call Saul is the one between Jimmy and Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) To be sure it's clearly a romantic relationship from their first meeting sharing a cigarette outside HHM. But Gilligan, perhaps in a tongue and cheek way reference to his days on The X-Files more or less implies the relationship without showing any real sex or even many kisses during the course of it. Even their marriage takes place at a courthouse and makes green card weddings seems more romantic.

But just as with Mulder and Scully its clear the longer Saul goes on that Jimmy and Kim are soul mates. The biggest difference – and the one that makes Saul so gutting by the time they reach the final episodes – is that Mulder and Scully made each other better when they were working together. By contrast the longer Jimmy and Kim are in each other's orbit the more toxic they become to the point that Kim famously says when she leaves him: "I love you. But so what? We're no good for each other!"

As with The X-Files Kim is the grown-up in the relationship particularly in the first half of the series. Much of the time she's the one who saves Jimmy from his worst impulses, which he is always giving into. Both of them are in the same profession, like Mulder and Scully, but both got into it for different reasons. At her core Kim Wexler wants to do good and spends much of the second half trying to do pro bono work and be a person for the people. Jimmy is very much a bad seed whose already been arrested for petty larceny and saved by his brother Chuck. Jimmy ends up becoming an attorney by going to mail order school, something he shouldn’t be able to accomplish by any standard, but he gets into it far more to impress his brother and Kim because he loves the law the way they do. Considering how much Mulder is willing to bend the limits of the Bureau to achieve his goals to the point he's basically an outcast by the time of the Pilot, it's hard not to see the parallels between not only him and Jimmy but also Saul Goodman.

Jimmy is an outsider by the standards of the high-ranking people within New Mexico's legal community. It's clear from the start of Season 1 and pretty much the entire series that Jimm McGill is always going to be considered a joke no matter what he achieves in life. The big difference is that, unlike Mulder throughout the X-Files, Jimmy actually spends the first three seasons trying to work within the boundaries of his profession and actually doing things we would never think Saul Goodman capable of when we first meet him in Breaking Bad. This is most clear in RICO. In Alan Sepinwall's critical companion to the series Saul Goodman v. Jimmy McGill:

In both the past and present of RICO Jimmy accomplishes something in the legal field that should be impossible for a man of his background and means. In flashback, we see he managed to get a law degree and pass the bar, without letting Chuck or any of the HHM bosses know about it ahead of time. And in 2002, he uncovers evidence of a widespread scheme of overcharging by the Sandpiper Crossing company against the elderly residents of its retirement communities. This is impressive work in both timelines…when the Sandpiper employees begin shredding documents…he has to scribble a demand lawyer on the only thing he has handy – rolls of toilet paper – and then go hunting through Sandpiper's garbage to find the evidence.

This is incredible when it happens. However:

And in both cases, the substance of what Jimmy has done doesn't matter to members of the legal establishment. All that counts is who he is and the unconventional way he goes about things…No matter how hard Jimmy works, no matter how resourceful he proves to be, it seems the legal establishment will keeping looking down on him like he's someone who belongs in the trash.

It's hard not to think of Mulder in his basement, trying to figure out the next method the Syndicate will use to colonize Earth when one thinks of Jimmy in the dumpster during this episode. And just like Scully is the only person who believes in him there Kim is the only person who supports him then.

Like Mulder Jimmy McGill's life is tied to his relationship to his family though in Jimmy's case its his brother Chuck who is still alive at the start of the series but suffering from what he believes is an allergy to electricity. (As X-philes know Michael McKean has a critical role in the world of The X-Files playing Morris Fletcher, an oily Man in Black in multiple episodes of the series and on the spinoff The Lone Gunmen. All of his episode were written by Gilligan.) Much of Jimmy's actions in the first season and indeed the first half of the series are based on his relationship with Chuck, who he truly cares for, is more then willing to help him and wants the best for him.

But Chuck thinks Jimmy is more of a threat to the world  then the conspiracy thinks Mulder is to it. (The fact that Breaking Bad will prove that Chuck is absolutely right does nothing to make the viewer like Chuck anymore.) Indeed by the end of the first season Jimmy's relationship with Chuck has been forever poisoned when Jimmy learns that Chuck has betrayed him with HHM. When Chuck shouts out the world can't deal with 'Slipping Jimmy with a law degree!" – its one of the most painful moments in Saul  because 'his own brother…has no interest in the good version of Jimmy McGill."  This is an inverse of Mulder's search for Samantha being one of the only things that makes him relatable during the series: he can be such a horrible person most of the time, its only the belief he'll find Samantha at the end of this that makes him likable. And its worth noting the death of Chuck has the reverse effect on Jimmy that Samantha's death has on Fox. That's mainly because of their last meeting in the Season 3 finale:

"In the end, you're going to hurt everyone around you. You can't help it. So stop apologizing and accept it, embrace it…I don't want to hurt your feelings, but the truth is, you've never mattered that much to me."

After this Chuck, who seemed to be making progress with his mental condition, destroys his house and then commits suicide. And it is this action that becomes the tipping point into Jimmy embracing Saul Goodman, though it takes a lot longer to get there. He's free, but this freedom leads him to become the man who will end up officially turning Walter White into Heisenberg.

Its clear in the first three seasons what is tethering Jimmy McGill to the world of being good person is three separate things: the one that is most critical is his love and craving for Kim's approval. Kim is very much a stickler for the rules when we meet her and like Scully Saul shows as she begins to bend them more and more in part to coming around to Jimmy's way of doing things. The difference is Mulder and Scully brought out the best in each other with the need for each other's approval and were working for good. By the time we reach the penultimate season of Better Call Saul it is Kim who suggests to Jimmy the idea of wrecking Howard's career to speed up the Sandpiper settlement. In theory she's doing it for the right reason – to set up a pro bono defense practice – but when she suggests it Jimmy is so stunned that he actually tries to talk her out of it.

It's worth noting by this point Jimmy is far closer to being the man Saul Goodman will be. He's already become a lawyer for Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) a man who clearly terrifies him every time he sees him, has just arranged for him to receive bail on a murder charge, has gone into the desert to get it – and was nearly killed by the cartel. (The last part takes place in Bagman, which Gilligan directed.) Jimmy nearly died there and the episode before Lalo showed up at their house and he's clearly terrified. Kim, by contrast, matches to talk Lalo down from killing them both (a very Scully like thing) and the two of them have just relocated to a hotel room far away. But the fact that Kim has put Lalo in the rearview mirror so quickly frightens us nearly as much as it does Jimmy.

And its worth noting this scene has a parallel from the (first) series finale of The X-Files where Mulder and Scully are on a bed in a motel (in Roswell, New Mexico) talking about everything the conspiracy has taken from them. Scully gives an inspirational speech to Mulder. In this case, it would be as after all of this Scully turned to Mulder and said: "You know, we've played by the rules long enough. Let's form our own Syndicate  and destroy the FBI."

Like in that scene by this point Kim and Jimmy are married. Kim is wearing her Kansas City Royals nightshirt, her hair is down, she's utterly relaxed "as far removed from the controlled, coifed professional attorney the rest of the world series" (One of the most famous moves Rhea Seehorn had was a power ponytail.)

And it's worth looking at Jimmy's reaction. He keeps trying to talk her out of it, and this is the man who introduced her to the con. Kim greets this with a terrifying smirk. Then he tries warning her about what it would mean for Howard, and in turn how that would make Kim feel, suggesting she couldn't possibly be okay with it in the light of day. And Kim replies: "Wouldn't I?"

The irony is that Jimmy is absolutely right, though not for the reason he believes at first. They do pull off the con and Howard's reputation is utterly ruined by the episode Plan & Execution. And anyone who watches this episode remembers just how it ended:

Howard shows up completely drunk his career in tatters and he tells them: "You're perfect for each other. You each have pieces missing." This hurts for the record, mainly because by this point the viewer is so invested in the state of the souls of Jimmy and Kim in a way the viewer never once worried about Mulder and Scully's. But even as bad as it is, we know Jimmy and Kim could have lived with it.

The tragedy is at that moment the other part of Jimmy and Kim's life has come back to bite them. Because Lalo has found his way to the McGill apartment and he has business with Kim and Jimmy. The moment the two of them see him they are terrified but Howard, who knows nothing of the cartel, doesn't. Howard is confused but he thinks his position in 'the real world' protects him. Lalo kills him without a thought – and then goes right back to his conversation with Kim and Jimmy.

Anyone who has watched The X-Files knows how easily it is to be erased when you get in the way of the Syndicate or a conspiracy and anyone whose watched Breaking Bad knows how much collateral damage can comes simply by getting in a way of the wrong people even if you are completely innocent. (The clearest parallel is Drew Sharp, a twelve year old who is killed in 'Dead Freight' when he shows up in the aftermath of a train robbery and Todd shoots him before anyone even orders him.) Mulder and Scully have no doubt caused some of these deaths throughout the run of the series the more they work to uncover the truth. But in the case of Howard Hamlin his death is the direct result of their actions. Jimmy thinks he can live with it. Kim can't. After his memorial (which is blamed on him being a drug addict) she first gives up her legal license and then divorces Jimmy.

Mulder and Scully would lose multiple family members as the result of their quest: Mulder's father was murder by the Syndicate and Scully's sister was killed by accident. But as the viewer knows those deaths made them double down on their desire to find the truth. In the case of Kim and Jimmy the death of Howard is so shattering that Kim can't live with him or herself any longer. And as a result Jimmy McGill is officially dead and only Saul Goodman remains.

Now since Gilligan basically left the series after Season Three, I can't say how much of the Mulder-Scully parallel could have been his. What I know is that many of the creative staff with Better Call Saul had been part of Breaking Bad and many of them also worked with Gilligan on The X-Files. Thomas Schnauz, who'd been writing with Gilligan on The Lone Gunmen and the final season of the series, was one of the key writers for the show and Michelle McLaren who was one the critical directors for the series was also part of The X-Files roster in the last few seasons. (She directed John Doe an episode set in a Mexico town in an episode written by Gilligan. Cue Mark Snow.) And I don't think it’s a coincidence that Rhea Seehorn quickly became the MVP of Saul very much the same way Gillian Anderson became the iconic character she was on The X-Files.

The way that so much of the Kim-Jimmy relationship is a mirror image of Mulder & Scully would seem to be a parallel but could be (as Scully would say) just a coincidence. What makes me think there's a larger influence on Better Call Saul comes from many of the individual episodes he wrote and the theme linking them. That will be the subject of the second article about The X-Files and Better Call Saul.

 

Criticizing Criticism: How The Legacy Of The X-Files Has Everything I Loathe About Academic Readings Of Art

 

In one of my first pieces in the Criticizing Criticism Series I wrote the following:

Early in Stephen King’s magnum opus It, future best-selling novelist Bill Denborough is in the middle of his college writing course. All of his fellow classmates and teachers are pretentious, who are exactly the kinds of people that critics of higher learning have been arguing against for decades. Finally after another long endless lecture on symbolism that everybody has agreed about for over an hour, but the class keeps droning, Denborough gets to his feet and says the following:

“Why does a story have to be socio-anything? Politics…culture…history…aren’t those natural ingredients in any story if it’s told well? I mean…can’t you guys just let a story be a story?

After a long silence, the instructor says softly ‘as if to a child having an inexplicable tantrum, ‘Do you believe William Faulkner was just telling stories?” Do you believe Shakespeare was just interested in trying to make a buck?”

When Bill ‘honestly considers the question and replied, “I think that’s pretty close to the truth, in their eyes he reads a kind of damnation.”

 

As I said: "In less than a few pages (King) has successfully explained what has been the eternal dissonance between critics and scholars for centuries and certainly in the last several decades in particular."

Now in the years that have passed since then I've basically hewed to this path when it comes to my writing and I tend to admire those critics I've met at this site and others who more or less tend to focus on letting a story be a story.  I've also read quite a few prominent critics in the field of TV who are more than willing to stick to the line of appreciation. And it's because of this I've now realized the difference between a critical reading of a TV show or movie as opposed to an academic one. There's a fair amount of overlap between the two but at this point I can tell the difference.

When a good critic, whether they are Alan Sepinwall or Emily St. James (my readers will know that I've referred to them multiple times in by own writing) looks at a TV show such as Breaking Bad or Lost, they are more interested in telling you why the show worked for them from the standpoint of plot, character or direction. Every so often they'll look at certain racial or gender standpoints but they only do so to use to explain this as a work of pop culture and its flaws as such, not to grind an axe. Basically they're interested in what made it a good story.

But an academic by and large doesn't care about what made a TV show work as part of entertainment or pop culture.  Their metric is to look at historic, socio-political and cultural factors and figure out what this work of art reflected in it. They're not so much interested in whether you want to see this show again by their writing but turning certain aspects of it into a term paper, with multiple footnotes sourced to academic journals rarely if ever using anyone connected to the show as source material. They want to turn something that you loved watching into a homework assignment.  The critics I mentioned wanted to tell you want to see the show afterwards; the scholars look at the show and decide to write an essay that they expect to be graded on by Monday

Now I'm not entirely opposed to those who take an academic view of TV shows: I've actually been reading quite a few scholarly journals that do so as well as certain essay collections of shows I've enjoyed over the years.  But the ones that work the best never forget that this about the TV show first and the socio-anything second at the very most.  In the best of them you get the sense the writers enjoyed revisited these TV series and want you to come away wanting to do the same. I didn't get that feeling from a book I recently checked out from the library The Legacy of The X-Files. I had hoped it from the first group and not only is it from the second group, it represents the worst aspects of academic and biased writing.

It would come as a shock to me if any of the scholars who wrote essays for this book are over the age of 30 or watched the TV series when they were growing up if they were older.  It is purely an academic writing: all of the essay writers are either professors or PhD students or candidates, only two of them are writing about TV or film and perhaps most telling the majority of them are not from America. Considering that The X-Files is a quintessentially American program even those who live in Britain would have a certain detachment from it. So one can tell from the start this isn't about spending good times with a familiar show: it's about looking at it from every scholarly perspective rather then one of TV.  (Though you should know upfront the essays I'm going to turn my glare on are not only written by Americans ) The introduction makes it clear it has no intention of recounting the production history of The X-Files:

"Rather it is to indicate the early context of the program's origins and initial broadcast and reception to begin to understand its legacy thirty years later. The seeds of the program's legacy were planted from the very beginning and led to it being part of, and even contributing to, a television revolution: the globalization of television and the expansion of new conglomerates  into television ownership and production; the intersection and collision of the program's creation with the rise of the internet and the new fan forums and the fusion of wider public cynicism in politics…"

I'll be honest, if I'd read the introduction of this book instead of skimming through it, I would have left on the shelves because this is the kind of analysis I loathe. It's basically talking about television without actually talking about television. Even the book makes it clear it is a 'vital work for researchers and students alike' which means its not for the millions of us who watched the show and loved it. I suppose some of us could take comfort if we knew in some schools The X-Files was part of an academic curriculum but having been in my share of college courses about TV and film (albeit twenty-five years ago) they always miss the forest for the trees.  I'd prefer them to have spent their time explaining why the mythology was, in fact, completely coherent from beginning to end, which any fan knows would have been futile but nevertheless a better use of their time and energy.

This would be bad enough on its own but I would be willing to let that go and leave this book for those who need to reduce everything in life to an academic subject. What bothers me the most – and is really the subject of this piece – is the final section: "Intersectional Legacy: Identity & Representation'.

And those of you who are already burning with rage just by hearing those words, let me assure it is everything you think it is and somehow worse. The introductory paragraph pretty much tells you what you know is coming:

"Similarly, questions of race and racial identity are core to the series mythology, not least through the repeated discussion of alien hybrids and alien colonization, immediately invoking discourse on imperialism and the Western legacy of slavery and colonialism."

Yep, that's exactly what all of us thought when we saw the Alien Bounty Hunter for the first time.

And of course: "The X-Files centers whiteness and white superiority with people of color marginalized and even demonized." Last I checked the Syndicate was planning to turn all of Earth into a slave race, not just Africa and South America.

Does it get worse? Naturally. The first essay 'A Reparative Reading of mad/disabled black veterans in 'Sleepless'. To be clear only five pages of this 'scholarly reading' dealing with the episode Sleepless. There are six pages that deal with black people as soldiers that are the meat of the essay.  The most generous interpretation is that these two 'writers' wanted to do a racial studies piece on the military, saw 'Sleepless' the night before and then decided to merge the two. And just to check off the other box there's the fact that he's disabled, which is another issue. Just to be clear the series did a few other episodes on Vietnam and Howard Gordon wrote another one about a White POW who basically did a variation of the exact same thing and suffered the same fate as Augustus Cole.  (See my piece on Howard Gordon from last month.) But why let the actual TV show get the way of the usual white supremacy bit?

Next is the inevitable story about the use of the 'rape by deception trope which in the minds of this authors is 'rarely talked about'. She clearly hasn't read Monsters of the Week, which discusses all of this in detail as well as the often problematic aspects and indeed that's not in the source material, though somehow Monica Lewinsky is quoted.  The series acknowledges that Dana Scully was a groundbreaking character for her time and revolutionary in her own way but argues she was positioned as 'a side kick not a co-lead.' Again this would come as a shock to those of us who realize that Anderson nailed Scully early and that she was the stronger character.  It brings up the usual times that Scully was threatened with violence while of course ignoring the number of times Mulder was in similar predicaments and how Scully had to save his ass far more often.  Naturally she ends the final image of the series as a 'reminder of inevitable destruction and death'. And as the final nail it argues that so many of the episodes that have sympathy for the 'other' feel patronizing while those that involve revenge  are muddled by the 'monster' status of the characters."  I suppose we should be grateful that vampires and werewolves aren't real or she'd be arguing that the shows take a negative portrayal of the rights of the undead.

Then there's one by a Czech writer who makes the argument of 'Mulder's queerness' because and you have to see it to believe it : "Even though he is able-bodied, white, middle class and heterosexual, he resists the patriarchal system which is represented by the FBI, law and government'. So the fact that he's an FBI agent is somehow irrelevant to this reading. But wait "I argue that Mulder's voluntary outsider status, opposition to authority and feminization, can be read as queer."

It gets worse from there arguing that Mulder's decision to seek out women as resources is read as 'deeply feminine' and the fact that Mulder and Scully never hooked up for seven years.  The author's biggest argument is the queer fandom that have it canon. Clearly this author has never spent any time at fanfic.com where your sexuality can depend on who's writing you.  God knows what she would have thought had she come across a fanfic where the Syndicate had gay orgies. (Pretty sure they're out there somewhere.)

The piece de resistance comes with the piece 'Disability and The X-Files which argues and I quote "Ableism is a structure of power'.  This is the one that really makes me want to throw up. The sweet innocent and demonic cripple trope, the discussion of genetic mutants…oh and she thinks 'Home' the only episode that has been taken out of rotation probably should be banned because of its presentation of 'demonic hillbillies'.  It doesn't shock me that the writer of this episode is legally blind and therefore can't get the full picture of what makes The X-Files a great show.

Even the last piece, which talks about one of the great triumphs of The X-Files 'the Scully effect'  can't help but take shots at the series. It acknowledges that Scully is a great character and everything that both she and Gillian Anderson did. But even then it still can't help but taking shots at the show, not the least of which involves a critique by Richard Dawkins when it comes to the debate:

This is fictional and therefore defensible as entertainment. A fair defense, you might think…Each week The X-Files poses a mystery and offers two rival kinds of explanation, the rational theory and the paranormal theory. And, week after week, the rational theory loses. But it is only fiction, a bit of fun, why get so hot under the collar? Imagine a crime series in which, every week, there is a white suspect and a black suspect. And every week, lo and behold, the black one turns out to have done it. Unpardonable."

First of all this proves to me that Dawkins has never watched any television at all. If he had he would have known The X-Files is science fiction and would therefore have not watched it. (He probably hasn't watched any procedurals either.) The fact the writer seems to support this idea means that she doesn't seem to understand the template of the series. I will admit it would be more realistic if Scully had been right at least a little more often but then the show wouldn't have been as much fun.

Look you'll get no argument from me that there are problematic aspects of The X-Files that go beyond the fact that it came out over thirty years ago. I've written about some of them before and I actually intend to write more of them the closer we get to the revival.  But there is a vast difference between legitimate criticisms and invented ones. In fact every time I read these kinds of 'think pieces' what comes to mind immediately is the way the toxic masculine fanbase online will review bomb any show that they consider too 'woke'  The writings in these pieces may be more intellectual then those of the philistines who body shame Bella Ramsey or call the most recent version of Star Trek 'DEI Academy' but in either case it gets back to the same issue that King said at the start: they can't just let a story be a story. In either case they take a lot of pleasure out of things we love and I abhor it, not merely from my professional opinion as a critic but as a fan.

None of this will make me love The X-Files any less, of course; that is its real legacy. Unlike what the authors of this book think the only real legacy a work of art needs to have is that it can draw in new fans years after it came out, that people still celebrate it long after it is gone and that we still rewatch every time we get a chance. We don't want to write research papers on it; we want to write fan fiction and tributes online even decades after the fact. That's all fans ever want of a show, really. If these scholars don't get this, well, to quote a different iconic institution satirizing a different fandom: 'Get a life, you people. It's just a TV show."