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."

 

 

 

 

 

Across The Country The Tide Is Turning… Just Not At Any No Kings Protest

 

Well its springtime and that means that the first No Kings Protest of the year has occurred. Yes after months indoors forced to show their vitriol against all things MAGA all the forces that the left can muster put a fresh coat of paint on the anti-Trump signs, readied their buttons and bracelets on their wrists, walked into the bright sunshine across the country and said that they wouldn't take what the President was doing lying down any more. No they'd take it milling around.

All joking aside I have to give them credit. Because the third time was the charm. And I'm pleased to announced that Donald Trump has abdicated the throne.

No, I'm sorry, I got that wrong. But he resigned.

No he didn't do that either. But the Senate impeached him.

No they didn't? But the House introduced articles of impeachment.

They didn't? But the Supreme Court renounced presidential immunity.

They didn't?  Ted Cruz shaved his beard? Steve Bannon got a haircut?

I could go on this line for quite a bit longer and really drive this point into the ground but I'm well aware that the people in these protests, like the forces that inspired them, don't understand satire or sarcasm unless is directed against the right.  (That's basically limited to late night hosts reading Trump's tweets in a funny voice or yelling obscenities at cable newscasters which isn't Noel Coward, but that's neither here nor there.) So let me try being slightly more serious.

I don't like Trump or ninety percent of the things he's said or done before he became President the first time, what he did during that first Presidency, what he said and did after it and what he's doing now. But unlike the people who've been marching in rallies like this the past year and a half and who basically have been doing so for the past decade I've never been convinced that marching and making a loud, discordant noise unto social media for a few hours on a weekend or any other day of the week is the most productive way to do anything about it. I understand their frustration as to how the world is these days, believe me, and there have been signs in the last year in particular that the masses are getting tired of all things Donald Trump. I'm actually going to talk about them later on this article. But my fundamental opinion about the protestors is unchanged from what it was last year, two years ago, a decade ago or really for my lifetime before Trump even entered the political arena.

There are incredible problems in the world today. I won't deny that for a minute, I'm not delusional. I won't deny that things are going to get worse before they get better (though again I do see signs of improvement). What I do deny is that any protest movement – which is the main thing the anti-Trump forces have done pretty much he was elected the first time non-stop – will ever be able to do anything to bring about an ideal world, do anything to stop what Trump is doing, and most of all will continue to contribute to how he originally got his power and how he continues to have a hold on a swathe of the electorate to this day. 

That last part is  the most important because it represents the biggest flaw in the model the left has in what the post-Trump will be. I've mentioned in many previous articles the long term strategy the conservatives have had to gain their foothold in every branch of political power. I don't need to repeat because people at this blog and other have written it countless times over the years. The problem is that even after knowing all of this they have done nothing to change their strategy which pre-dates the rise of Trump and has no track record of success anywhere that counts. The fact that there was a third No-King Protest on Saturday demonstrates their tendency to double down on a failed strategy.

Now I have no doubt that they will argue that this protest was the biggest one yet in history. Which is impressive… but so what? From an organizational standpoint I'll grant it is impressive to organize protests in every state of the union and manage to get millions of people to show up at the same time to express their rage against everything that's going on the country.

The problem is that none of them are going to be the ones that can do anything about what Trump is doing. And the reason I know that for a fact is because this was the same weekend as CPAC.

Yes as I write all of the people that are everything that the people at these protests consider the worst aspect of everything that is wrong with the country, the world, the universe and recorded history are having their annual meeting. And there will be far fewer of them then at a protest that was in California or New York yesterday. But there are quite a few things that make it more important.

First most of the people of there have something none of the people at any of the No Kings protest have. Power and influence with the President of the United States, the conservative movement and the Republican Party.  I may not like any of these people, indeed I openly loathe many, but they're the ones who can make differences in policy involving immigration or what's happening in the Middle East, something no one at the No Kings Protest can claim.

Second these people understand at a basic level that all of their power comes from politics. I suspect they understand the workings of Congress and the Judiciary far more than the left does, if for no other reason then they've had a huge amount in putting many of those people in power in the first place. You'll get no quarrel from me about the damage that Fox News or the Heritage Foundation or the Federalist Society have done to this country but the fact remains these people have power or can talk to people with power. And one of the benefits of having power is you can ignore the people who you find disagreeable to your vision. To be sure those at the protests are doing the exact same thing except they have no power of their own to counter it.

Third I have no doubt people at these protests will talk about the size of the movement as if it matters. Except all of those people gathered, expressed their outrage at MAGA for a few hours – and then went home thinking they'd accomplished something because social media and the news covered them. As I made clear satirically above they did not: Trump is still President, for the next several months at least he controls both houses of Congress and while the Supreme Court has been showing signs of occasionally breaking with him in recent months, there is still a conservative supermajority. That was true the day before the protest and it was true the day after.

By contrast the CPAC gathering – which will absolutely use what happened this weekend to make points about the 'radical left' and why we have to use this to protect America -  has one mission in mind. It's the same one they always have: we have to keep Republicans in power no matter what.  They understand that crowd size only matters if you come away with a mission statement at the end of it and all of their meetings are based on that simple statement.  Vote Republican so we can keep America safe from 'them'.

Both the right and the left know who they mean by them. The difference, aside from the left considering that label a badge of honor, is that the right knows what needs to be done to complete their mission and the left will do anything but that to complete theirs.

I've seen this play out over and over in the 21^st century: protests against the WTO, the War on Iraq and then the War on Terror; the marches about economic inequality reaching their 'heights' at Occupy Wall Street; endless marches about police involved shootings and police brutality, whether it is Defund the Police or Black Lives Matter, the marches about Gaza across campuses during 2024 and some time beyond it, anti-ICE marches, basically every major march involving the rights of a minority or an identity group that is being abused, disenfranchised or obliterated. The people at these protests are angry and discontented and will show it. For a day, or a week. Then they go home and nothing changes.

 Oh, that's right: Fox News and hard right politicians will show the noise and anger in the street, argue it is signs of the 'radical left' and tell their viewers to vote Republican to make sure America is safe. Their viewers do that. Things get worse. More protests happen, lather, rinse, repeat.  You on the left will always argue about how morally bankrupt the right is for showing these things 'out of context' to 'brainwash the people in Middle America' and yet you never draw the obvious conclusion which is not to protest.

There's also another alternative: you could form your own think tanks, your own PACS, try to take over a political party the way the people at CPAC have managed to do. Oh wait, you did try that. You formed the Justice Democrats in the aftermath of the 2016 election and it was by any rational standard a complete failure.  You've got the Squad and Mamdani after a decade. The entire group of people sworn to your beliefs in the political arena could meet in a small tent outside Berkeley and get your agenda done over lunch.

But, you say over and over, look the crowds at our protests! That's the people. Here's the thing. I'm pretty sure most of the people protesting at No Kings are the same people who've been at every protest movement in my lifetime: some of them  older and grayer, but not much smarter. And the ones you have are mostly college age and upper class. To use terminology I know people at these protests are very familiar with it's not the proletariat showing up at the No Kings Protests, it's the bourgeoisie. Always has been.  For all you're saying: "We're the 99 percent!", honestly at best it's the 10 percent who've been showing up.

When the right organizes to get power, they strategize for months and engage in long-term planning, something you're aware of. The most long-term planning I've seen the left do is staging these protests and that's for one day, three times in the last year and a half.  And what was the point? To remind us that you still hate Trump and MAGA. I'm pretty sure we all knew that without you having to remind us in person. It's not like you haven't spent the six months between the last one silent about everything they're doing to destroy the country. Something, for the record, people like me are perfectly, painfully capable of finding out for ourselves without you having to remind us in long articles in liberal publications or online. At the very least I'd have expected you to come up with something we could do to stop what is happening but you really haven't figured that part out in the decade since Trump arrived, in the 21^st century, the period before that or really since at least the Vietnam War.

What makes this all the more annoying is the fact that there are very promising signs that people are sick of Trump and have been happening ever since he took office. There called election and Democrats have been overperforming in them since last March ever since two Democrats outperformed in two Florida Congressional vacancies just six months after Trump was sworn in. They didn't win, any more than the vacancy in Tennessee last December but Aftyn Behn did overperform compared to last year.

And we've seen this play out in state and local elections across the country. To date Democrats have flipped 28 Republican statehouse seat in the last year while Republicans have yet to flip one. The one you might have heard the most about what the Florida statehouse seat in the district where Mar A Lago is located. There was another flip that same night not far away. Miami and Boca Raton have elected their first Democratic Mayors in nearly thirty years. I'm not saying Florida will be turning blue or even purple any time soon but it gives one hope.

Nor is Florida the only red state where we've seen these miracles. Two Iowa statehouse seats went Democratic for the first time in nearly thirty years in 2025, a Texas statehouse seat that was plus 19 Republican went Democratic in January and we even flipped one in Louisiana this February. None of these have gotten the same publicity as Mamdani's win or even Abigail Spangenberger or Mikey Sherill's last November but they are for more hopeful for Democratic hopes this November.

Congressional Republicans know this and are retiring in droves. As of today 38 House Republicans have announced their retirement, the most since 2018 when the last blue wave came. Democrats are sure to take the House back in November, the only question is how big the margin will be. The Senate is another story but the map is mathematically favorable to the Democrats as the Republicans are defending 23 seats while Democrats are defending only 13.  To be sure in many of them are beyond safe for the Republicans but an increasing number are not at the end of March. By the time the primaries are over even more may be in play for the Democrats.

None of this will appease the impatient nature of the left whose approach to elections at best has always been: "November? But I'm angry now!"  And considering that even after 2016 and well into the second term there are still quite a few people out there who will still say there is no difference between the two parties (many of them are no doubt the loudest voices at No Kings I have no doubt) I suspect this won’t make them any happier even if the Democrats end up sweeping in a huge margin in 2026.

But that's to be expected because these same people were just as pissed when Biden won in 2020 and didn't the day before he was sworn in enact every single aspect of the Justice Democrat platform, expel every single Republican in both Houses of Congress, appoint ten liberal judges to the Supreme Court and execute every single member of the Trump family on the steps of the capitol at dawn. That's the real irony of these particular protests. Many of them would be absolutely fine if the President had the powers of a king as long as he punished the people they think of as 'worthy' and smote those they thought of as 'evil'.  They've always thought the President – regardless of political party -  can merely push a button and make the government work as he sees fit and the only reason he doesn't is because he wants to 'own the left'.

That's the greatest irony of the 'No Kings protests'. The majority of the people there were never fond of democracy when it was working perfectly and made it clear for decades before 2016. They wouldn't mind if Trump destroyed democracy if he was doing it so that their agenda was realized. It's because he's doing it for the people at CPAC that they're upset about the Imperial Presidency.

The thing is democracy still exists, battered and bruised but still functioning. In November the voter is going to get a chance to send a message to those in power that is far more effective than anything that these protests will ever accomplish. I still agree with Churchill that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. And in the last year and a half its been proving to me it still works.  That's where I'll be showing up in the next weeks and months to prove there are No Kings.

All Our Technological Devices Are Conveniences. So Why Does Our Society View Them As Necessities?

 

I'm writing this article the same way I write everything I've ever written: on a computer on my desktop. This hasn't changed how I've written every single thing I've ever written since I was in high school: the screen is different, there are no longer saving things to disks of any kind, there are new variations of word programs. But essentially that hasn't changed.

This is true even of the columns I write for this site. Everything is a hard copy before I put it on to the virtual ether that is the internet.

This is also true in every aspect of my technological life to an extent. I game but it is on a combination Nintendo/Super NES and a PS2. I continue to stream shows but I watch them on my TV and I still own both a DVD player, am connected to cable and I own, dare I say it, a VCR. I don't listen to music or podcasts so I don't need anything on that level. I only got an iPhone in 2022 and that is because the flip phone I had was finally so old that Verizon was no longer going to cover it. I occasionally use the iPhone for zoom calls (I'll get to why in a minute) but by and large I only use it for text messages and phone calls. In other words I use my phone like a phone.

For a long time I had an iPad one that goes back to something like 2017. I mostly used it for the kinds of apps that were available at the time and still do, though many of them are increasingly becoming out of service. This wouldn't be a huge problem because with the sole exception of Facebook I have zero presence on social media. And all of my email is still in my very first email account at America Online.

Much of this is no doubt because I'm somewhere between Gen X and Millennials and didn't even really have a email account until I was in college. But I suspect much of it is due to my nature as an indiduvial. I've always know that so much of electronics, including email, video games, iPhone and social media is a convenience rather than a necessity. This isn't something that Gen Z or any future generation would believe in but that's because they don't remember a time without it and for them, it is a necessity. Though if you think about it, it isn't.

Consider this: really consider it. Do you need to post every single one of your thoughts on any social media site, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok?  Will the world end if you don't make it clear what you think about K-pop demon hunters, the manosphere, the situation in Pakistan, compound interest rates? Yes, you have the right to express your opinion but do you need to express it every thirty seconds? Before the youngest among you answer, keep in mind how much you mock the stream of consciousness rants that POTUS sends every night when he can't sleep. (I don't believe that will make a difference but just assume.)

Similarly do you need to watch the most recent TV show whenever it aired on your phone or your wristwatch or anything Apple has provided for you? I'm not talking about whether you like the programs or not: I personally love Slow Horses and Shrinking and Nobody Wants This and Only murders in the Building and so on. But remember you're talking to someone who streams them to his TV and who has just as often gotten hard copies such as DVDs of Stranger Things or Marvelous Mrs. Maisel just so that he actually has them. I've never watched a TV show on anything other than a TV except for a period in the 2010s when I watched some shows on my computer.  I'll grant you it is convenient to be able to do so but that is not the same thing as a necessity. You could, hypothetically, watch all of these shows on a TV. And if you didn't own one, you could buy one. You choose to watch these shows on your electronic devices just like you choose to get the streaming services in the first place. That makes them conveniences not necessities.

The same's basically true with so much of the modern technological lifestyle: you don't need to get the news on your phone, or random trivia on your phone, or really anything else except to  communicate on your phone. You may think you can't live without it but that's not the same thing as food or shelter or oxygen. Your lives would be difficult without your phones but not impossible.

I know because I've been in a situation like this last week when for various reasons I did things that causes me to lose access to my VCR, DVD player and gaming systems for the better part of a week. For people like you that would be the equivalent of going without your cell phone for, let's be generous and say an hour. It wasn't fun to be sure, but I pulled my Gameboy out of storage (yes I still own one of those) watched some shows on streaming and survived. It wasn't a picnic – and truth be told I don't know if I could have made it much longer if my repairman hadn't shown up last Thursday – but I did survive. It wasn't the same thing as not having electricity or being locked out of my apartment both of which I have had to survive and were far more agonizing to me.

The truth of the matter is – and this may be the most explosive thing I've said at this site – our society doesn't need most of the technological advances we've gotten in the 21^st century. They're not revolutionary in the sense that things like the radio and the automobile and the TV or even the computer itself was. They make our lives easier but we don't truly need them. And in many cases I think many of us would argue there's not even  improvements. Even before the arrival of Trump and Musk was there anything on Twitter that was so groundbreaking and vital that our society was better because of it? I'll grant many of the apps we've gotten have made several individual parts of our lives easier and in some cases they are necessities but the vast majority of them are so trivial its hard to argue they're really even convenient. And considering that so many of them are just more advanced versions of the technology we already have – and in many of those case the difference are so inconsequential we can't even spot them -  then I truly don't know what we've gained from them.

I'm writing this in part out of selfish reasons. My iPad, which I have owned for nearly eight years, still basically does everything I need it do. The problem is that the majority of the apps I used for it no longer work on this version. That's because they have undergone so many upgrades that my iPad's software can no longer support it. This is known as 'planned obsolescence'. It's also the big scam of Silicon Valley.

At a purely basic level we don't need a new phone or a new iPad or really a new anything that these devices are once we get it. But as with all technology there's no profit in that. Which is why I suspect there is an unwritten rule with the programmers to upgrade every single one of your individual apps or levels every few months or so. Now be honest: most of us really can't tell the difference between Word 10 and Word 11 if you stuck a taser to our ribs. But because there's some part of us that can't bare to be inconvenienced for even a few minutes because of this we go on to buy new versions of the iPhone every year or so. And because the phone is a necessity for most of us – particularly now that the land line has gone the way of the carrier pigeon – we don't even bother to think about it when we do.

At this juncture every single thing I've gotten used to using my iPad for during the last few years – whether it is zoom or email or even Discord – will no longer work on it. The most recent version I should tell you was because of a security upgrade which they didn't tell me about until I couldn't get on any more. Then I found out – by typing it in a google search on my computer – that they'd added a security upgrade this month that would no longer make it work on my iPad. Did they bother to tell me? Of course not. Either they assumed everyone naturally changes their iPad with the spring fashions or they don't feel a necessity to tell those fossils who wouldn't know what was going on. They've done this to me before so many times it's not even funny.

I'm going through the same thing with my iPhone. At this point the battery on it has gotten to the point that as a necessity I need to charge it every day or it will go completely dead. This actually happened on Sunday when I left my phone unattended for four hours and it had zero charge on it any more. Again logic dictates I need to get a new phone but I don't really need one. It would just be more convenient.

Now the natural response – the one that I'll get from anybody under 21 – is that I'm a fossil who won’t change with the times. There's some truth to that I suppose. But that's where I get back to convenience and necessity. It would be inconvenient for me to get a new iPad because it would take several hours and probably even longer to reinstall many of those services. And I don't use it often enough for it to be a necessity. The phone is a different story I suppose but considering all of us go some place with a charger I'm not even sure that's a larger story.

Considering that so much of the problems society is facing today among younger generations is based on how much time they spend looking at screens I can't help but think this is should be part of the conversation. Considering that in the name of convenience a generation has gotten to the point that they have no longer even learned the real necessity of education and critical thinking – to the point that the term 'brain rot' is now becoming part of the vernacular – there has to be a conversation of what has been lost. I'm not saying we need to go back to the era of DVD players and going to the library for research (though I'm not saying that might not help) but at the very least we should be talking about the difference between a convenience and a necessity.

There was a phase a few years back when we were told to get rid of things that don't 'spark joy'. That referred to physical clutter not technological ones. (We did see on Netflix so why would Marie Kondo give away that game.) I'm beginning to thing terms of technological clutter. Put another way I don't have a lot of apps on my phone or iPad and there's overlap between them. But when I do end up replacing them, however reluctantly, I'm going to figure out to have as little as possible and keep to that minimum. Only a handful are necessities and even fewer are convenient.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go watch Season 3 of Ted Lasso. Finally got a copy on DVD.