An Original Reboot? That Is A Wonder: The Wonder Years Sublime Reimagining

 

About three months I wrote a long article about why I thought the new reboot of The Wonder Years, re-imagined from the perspective of a black family in 1968 Atlanta could truly be a work of art if it was handled right. I’ve never been so delighted to be vindicated so quickly.

The original Wonder Years, as I said in the original article, was an exceptionally funny and wistful series that was about growing up in the 1960s that really didn’t touch on the 1960s. The new version, under the production of Lee Daniels, tackles it head on and doesn’t let go. The narrator (Don Cheadle, finally getting to use his comic abilities for a show that worthy of it) tells us about growing up in 1968, starting by comparing it to how it was to the world we live it right now: (There was a election year, race riots and a flu-epidemic) The series centers around Dean Williams, a twelve year old boy and unlike the Arnold family, they are neck deep in the 1960s. The father (Dule Hill in what’s arguably his best performance) is a musician who just had a hit record. The mother is a housewife is far more concerned about the family. Kim, his older sister is clearly active in the civil rights movement’s more radical wing. Dean has a best friend Cory, who unlike Paul has grown into be tall over the summer. The girl he worships is Kaisa. And he has a white best friend, Brad who really is an ally. His uncle is in prison.

The series starts taking the hard issues right on. The Pilot deals with the boys trying to have their team, which is all-black play the white team. The series has them attending a desegregated school but the racism is pretty much there, even when the teachers don’t want to admit it to themselves. They persuade their coach to do it, over the objections of everybody’s parents. Dean feels proud – until the game when the pitcher throws right at his head. From then on, Dean is battling the advice of his father and his coach who can’t agree on anything. Its comedy gold – and then the neighbors walk up and tell everybody that Martin Luther King, Jr. has been shot. The rest of the episode deals with the family handling the aftermath. Even this early, its pretty clear the Pilot is willing to go far further than the original was. Fans of the show remember the iconic moment when the episode with Kevin kissing Winnie for the first time. This time, the episode ends Kaisa kissing Cory, and Dean arriving just in time to see it.

What has convinced me more than anything this series could quickly become a classic was the second episode. In addition to all the torment going on the outside world, Dean has to deal with the new relationship between his best friend and the girl he loves. Dean’s approach to his anguish is mistaken for being grieving over King’s death, and in a wonderful series of actions, he begins to milk white liberal guilt, using as an excuse to get a higher grade and get out of gym class. Then things, just as they do in life, start to spiral. Cory and Kaisa are also in grief, so the teacher says for them to a report on Martin Luther King and what he meant to them. Dean doesn’t want to work with them, but he doesn’t want them to work together either. The story than involves to a beautiful interaction with Dean’s father who is far more literate than Kevin’s ever was on the series. The report Dean gives a work of art, and it’s pretty clear that Cory and Kaisa did nothing. When they all get A’s (which will no doubt cause a certain segment to argue about the roots of affirmative actions) Dean finally confronts them about it, and it becomes hurt and humorous. There are some truly magic moments the rest of the way (I won’t spoil them because they’re worth seeing) but it’s profoundly moving and hysterically funny all at the same time.

When I went to see what the ratings for the series were at imdb.com I was shocked, but not truly surprise, to see how low they were. Reading the lion’s share didn’t surprise me: many of them just used the word ‘woke’. I imagine most of them didn’t even bother to watch the original Wonder Years; they just don’t want anything that’s ‘theirs’ changed.  (Not to get political, but I’m willing to be they think the same thing about ‘critical race theory’ even though they have no idea what it is.)

So let me be blunt: This version of The Wonder Years completely justifies the idea of the reboot. It takes what was a solid idea and completely rebrands it with a real feel and originality all its own. It is exceptionally well written and well-acted. It is wistful, poignant and hysterically funny, often within the same minute. It may very well be the most truly brilliant network comedy since The Good Place, and like that show, deserves recognition for awards. It may not be able to run as long as the series it’s inspired by, but it clearly deserves too. And it says a lot that a period piece may be by far the most relevant show on network TV today. It may be inspired by old material, but watching it, you can’t help but acknowledged it’s inspired. You want to assume that this rave is some kind of liberal guilt? I defended this reboot before I even saw it and often even the idea of a reboot is repugnant to me. And it does have one critical thing in common with the original: there’s some real great music in the background. Power to the series.

My score: 5 stars.

Is It Satire, Or Is It Academia: The Chair

 

Not Much Later Than Never: The Chair

 

During the era of Peak TV, I’ve never really known what to do with Sandra Oh. I’ve admired her film work, from her charming performance in the undervalued Canadian comedy Last Night to her superb performances in such varied movies as Sideways, Rabbit Hole and Hard Candy. Her television performances, however, have almost always left me cold. In a series that I found as problematic as Grey’s Anatomy, her Christina Yang always struck as the most problematic character -  a brilliant surgeon who barely seemed able to function as a human being, utterly destroying the careers of all the men she had affairs with. Her working in Killing Eve was generally much better, but it always paled under the extraordinary talent of Jodie Comer. Many were shocked when Oh lost the Emmy to Comer in 2018; I wasn’t.

Similarly, neither film not television has ever truly known what to make of Amanda Peet. Always so much better than the material she was often given, she’s had the grave misfortune in starring of two of the truly worst comedies ever made: Saving Silverman and Whipped in the same year. She does better in supporting roles – Igby Goes Down and Something’s Gotta Give, but when she’s been put in the lead, the results are rarely promising. Her work on TV during the first decade of this century has been generally uninspired: Jack and Jill was a muddled WB series and I’ve previous mentioned just how horrible her character was on the mess that was Studio 60. Over the last several years, however, her material and performances have gotten better – her work in the criminally undervalued HBO comedy Togetherness was a gem and she was wonderful in the much-beloved IFC comedy Brockmire.

Perhaps it was inevitable that Oh would find her best material at the hands of Peet in the inspired and far-too-plausible new Netflix series The Chair. Peet is listed as a writer and producer (her husband David Benioff, the novelist and co-creator of a minor series known as Game of Thrones) has created a series where Oh has taken the role as the first woman of color to be ‘the chair’ of an English department at a major university. Ji-Yoon Kim wants to shake things up, which if we know anything about university is something that no college ever wants to do. One of the opening scenes has her meeting with her fellow professors, who charitably could be said the average age of the typical Fox viewer and for all the tendencies of colleges being hotbeds of liberalism, are just as resistant to change. She is given almost a minimum of support by the dean (David Morse, quietly hysterical) and doesn’t seem to get much pull from anything of the institution. In the Pilot she tries to help one of her friends and one of the few female professors (Holland Taylor, wonderful) try to get her office moved out of the gym. This is clearly being sent as a message for her to retire. When Ji-Yoon tries to get this done as a Title 9 violation, Joan is met by an administrator barely out of college herself, with no experience who greets her changing into a thong. Needless to say, it doesn’t go well.

The only people who are of her generation of Yaz McKay (Nana Mesnah) a brilliant African-American writer of journalism who is treated with no respect by anybody, least of all her peers. Trying delicately to balance things with a failing professor (the always wondrous Bob Balaban) who clearly hasn’t changed his methods of teaching since, maybe the Ford Administration) Ji-Yoon tries to put them together, something neither likes for a moment, not the least because I’m relatively sure Elliot thought the Civil Right movement achieved equality. The other is the equally troubled Bill Dobson, played memorably by Jay Duplass. (Jay is Mark Duplass’ brother, and together they produced Togetherness. Turnabout is fair play.)

Bill has been drinking and struggling with the death of his wife for more than a year and has been phoning in for what appears to be months. This is awkward for Ji-Yoon because she and Bill were having an affair right up until the days of his wife’s death and now she has to be his boss. In the end of the Pilot, she tells Bill to shape up and the episode ends with him seeming to right himself and teach a real class for the first time in he doesn’t know how long. In another series, this would be the moment he turns his career and life around. But in illustrating a point, he gives a mock Sieg Heil, a student films it, it goes viral and two days later, the students are around Ji-Yoon’s office with signs like ‘Down with Professor Hitler’. I have a feeling things can only get worse.

The Chair isn’t the typical for Netflix, not so much in quality – it’s among the best I’ve seen from the streaming services in awhile – but in its tone. This is a show set amongst the world of academia and it’s filled with classical music rather than all the rock we usually hear. Even the music we hear at the end is more sixties and seventies rock (which you honestly think most of the English department listen to in their younger days and dismissed as ‘noise’) It doesn’t just argue about the inflexibility of old age and death, as both The Kominsky Method and Grace & Frankie have done exceptionally, but the age and death of institutions. In the Pilot, the dean basically tells Ji-Yoon how ‘catastrophic’ the situation is and she herself seems to know that’s she come at the end of the party. Were it just the problem of the aging of the faculty it would be one thing, but it doesn’t help that the ‘young Turks’ are in their forties. Combine with the equal rigidness of the Millennials and Gen Z and you can see very clearly that not only may there be no hope for these institutions; the institutions themselves don’t want to change. It’s as if the writers of The Wire turned their attention to colleges, and it’s not a pretty picture.

However, if I’ve made the series sound to dry, I assure you The Chair is also marvelously funny. I really wish the problems between the Greatest Generation and Generation Z were being lampooned, but I think we all know better. I’m also intrigued by the problems Ji-Yoon has with her adopted daughter who clearly has issues with boundaries that make you pretty sure this is how a serial killer acts when they’re young. There’s also the fact that academics don’t like being called on their misquoting; when Yaz calls the Dean on his quoting Shakespeare, he dismisses her as if she’d just called him for farting in public.

I find it strange The Chair has yet to be renewed the way so many Netflix series are on what appears to be a whim. Do Peet and her crew just plan for it to be a limited series or do they have plans beyond this? But as someone who, given his own druthers would be in his forty-eighth semester of college, I really hope that the service and the writers give it tenure.

My score: 4.75 stars.

Billions Was A Great Show Once. I Won't Be Watching It Again, Conclusion

 

There has always been a tendency by quite a few people who cover Peak TV to think that so much of just involves ‘Bad People Doing Bad Things.” This blanket statement has some truth, but it covers up a larger issue.

Yes, the lion’s share of television in the first decade of new millennium did follow that mantra. But part of the reason it was effective was also because the lion’s share of these bad people were at the mercy of the broken system. For all the nastiness of The Sopranos, Chase and his writers made clear that they were pretty much at the end of a bad system. They might be kings of New Jersey, but that was the end of their reign. (The clearest example of this came in ‘Luxury Lounge’. Christopher is trying to convince Ben Kingsley to star in his movie, and when he goes to Hollywood he learns first hand how parched a gangster’s life is compared to a superstar.)

The lion’s share of these series followed this idea: Deadwood made it clear as bad as Al Swearengen and his cronies were they paled in comparison to the share monstrousness of George Hearst and his ilk. Don Draper and most of the people in Mad Men were upper-class white people, to be sure, but they were always going to be viewed as little more than hired help to the businesses they worked for. Shows like 24 and The Shield would demonstrate just the extremes law enforcement would go keep us safe, and The Wire would often show, particularly in the political episodes, that everyone in the drug wars, dealer or cop was at the mercy of the broken system.

I’m not entirely certain when the fundamental idea of how Peak TV changed, but if I had to guess it was the combination of the success of House of Cards on Netflix and the breakout success of Scandal. Somewhere along those lines, television seems to have moved from the idea of ‘Bad People Doing Bad Things’ to ‘Powerful People Doing Bad Things’ This may be a subject for a longer article but it is clear that in the past decade, far too many series focus on the ideas of the evils that the rich and powerful do and how they manage to get away with it. There have been some notable exceptions over the last decade – The Americans and Better Call Saul are the most prominent examples – but we seem to have a sense that far too many television series are based on that premise. You may argue there’s more sexual and racial variety but in a sense there really is much of a difference between watching what the Lyons did on Empire to anything the Underwoods would do.

I will admit that one of my favorite series of this era, The Good Wife, was no less guilty of this sin. More often than not, we watch Alicia Florrick and the attorneys as Lockhart-Gardener make their living by helping the rich and powerful get away with crimes. One of the major arcs, after all, dealt with them handling the ‘legitimate businesses of Lamond Bishop, a drug dealer who was described by more than one critic as this series of The Wire’s Stringer Bell. That’s before you count in the political aspect which started with Peter being in prison for crimes and ascending the levels of Cook County Politics even though it was clear every season that there was some level of corruption in his campaign. The big difference was that almost all the central characters either felt guilty about their actions sometimes or often were moved like pawns by forces beyond their control. (It also helped matters that so many of the attorneys who opposed them in court had no such scruples but were more than willing to use their own bodies to give them an advantage. I’m thinking in particular of recurring characters played by Martha Plimpton and Michael J. Fox. Plimpton’s character always seemed to be either pregnant or had babies with her when she was arguing cases; Fox’s was always using his health for an advantage. For an entire season, he seemed to be on his deathbed and was using that as an excuse to destroy everything Alicia and Diane were trying to build.)

But overall I find this theme, and so many of even the best series of this line, utterly distasteful. That’s why I find it so hard to watch Succession and much of the back half of Veep. These were rich and powerful people with no moral scruples and no redeeming qualities, yet somehow we were supposed to enjoy these series just because the insults were well written. Besides, we’ve spent the last decade watching the news learning that the rich and powerful can get away with anything. Why would you want that as part of your entertainment? Frankly, I find it somewhat troubling that the Emmys and other awards shows seem to prefer these kinds of shows over The Crown in the former case and Transparent and black-ish  in the latter.

And in a sense, the finale of Season 5 of Billions seemed determined to use all the worst aspects of this era of TV with the worst aspects of how so much network TV works these days. In last night’s episode Bobby, finally facing prison for his crimes, decided that he could not be a caged animal and decided to flee the country. Now there was certain logic to it – Damian Lewis was going to leave the series – but rather than try to use this as a reason to end the show, the writers did everything wrong.

Rather than have him face any justice, Bobby turned to the man who at his core was responsible Mike Prince (Corey Stoll) and was forced to sell Axe Capital. Bobby fled the country to Switzerland, leaving everything around him a wreck and Prince in control. The struggle between Bobby and Chuck, which has been the backbone of the series, is now over. But Chuck didn’t take five minutes before marching into Prince’s office and saying that his new mission was to destroy him.

I don’t think there’s been as truly a horrible decision to keep a series going since Kevin Spacey was forced to leave House of Cards. I understand the reasoning behind it – in both cases, the series had been picked up for a sixth season – but I’m astounding that the writers of Billions somehow think it would work. All of the relationships in the series centered on Bobby Axelrod. Why should we care about watching Wags be corrupt or Wendy and Taylor being in a horrible position now that Bobby’s gone? And it’s not remotely believable that a man who focused all his energy and rage on Bobby in the way that Chuck did could just shrug it off and say: “Oh well, next ruthless billionaire.” And yet, according to the trailers that ran after the finale that appears to be what the writers and Showtime are expecting the long time fans to do.

Billions, like I said at the start, was once a great show. There is no arguing that point. But what is clear is that whatever greatness the series once had has somehow gotten buried under the worst aspects of both Peak TV and network TV. There may be some way for the show’s writers to dig there way out of this, but I really don’t have any interest in seeing them try. And the question is for Showtime, how long do they really expect any one else to stay around either?

Billions Was Once A Great Show. Here's Why I'm Done Watching it, Part 1

 

For much of the time I’ve been writing this column, I have been a great booster of Showtime’s Billions.  For the four seasons I watched it I thought it was one of the most underrated series of the New Golden Age, a story of the clashes of money and power and some truly revolutionary perspectives on sex and gender.

Then strangely, while the fifth season was going on way back in early 2020 I started having issues with where the series was. These issues have led me to rethink much of my earlier position on the show. And that in turn has led me to wonder that a series that I once considered one of cables greatest might somehow be even worse than what so many people consider the default series: ones headed by a White Male Antihero. In this article, I’m going to discuss my specific problems with the series – many of which I now realize were in plain sight even when I was enjoying it – and what this may say for what far too many series on television in the past decade have become.

For the record, I think the initial premise and indeed much of the first four seasons of Billions was as remarkable as I said it was. The writing was always razor; the duel between the two protagonists, Bobby ‘Axe’ Axelrod (Damien Lewis) and U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhodes (the always exceptional Paul Giamatti) was magnificent and the writers were always did their best to have so much of the battle go on with neither even in the same room for much of the season. Many of the characters could be as dazzling: Maggie Siff was remarkable as Wendy Rhodes, Chuck’s wife and the performance coach at Axe Capital, David Costabile, doing some of his best work as Wags, Bobby’s utterly loyal consigliore and the groundbreaking work of Asia Kate Dillon, television’s first ever nonbinary character as Taylor, someone who first looks to mentor with Axe and then quickly wants to overtake him. The series has always had an exceptional guest cast, featuring as versatile a group ranging from Eric Bogosian to Danny Strong to John Malkovich in one of his greatest roles.

But in retrospect the writers have never seemed convinced that all of this talent was ever enough, and they constantly threw in changes that never made sense. One of the worst they ever did involved Bobby’s marriage to Lara (Malin Akerman). In the first season, this was one of the greatest strengths of the series. Lara hadn’t been born into money and had working class roots. The partnership she and Bobby was genuine and based on true love and both were utterly willing to go to the mat for each other – a complete contrast to the often chaotic world of Chuck and Wendy. But apparently the writers held to the cliché that a happy marriage doesn’t make for good television, and in the second season they began dismantling it, really for what seemed to be the most pathetic of excuses. There was a valid reason for Lara to divorce Axe early in Season 3; there was a good chance he might go to prison. But in doing so, they not only cut out the clear contrast to Chuck and Wendy’s relationship, they took out one of the major sympathetic vibes to Bobby. Not only did he become another womanizer with no roots, he basically stopped being nice to many of the people who had helped him along the way. A lot of the sympathy we ever had for Bobby was more or less gone by the end of Season 3 and his character has never truly recovered from it.

This was a big blow to the series, but it wasn’t helped by the similar mess they made with Chuck. The reason we emphasized more with Bobby than Chuck in the first season was, for all his determination for being in public service, he was at his core, just as ruthless as Bobby is. He comes from old money (his relationship with his father has been a problem that the series still hasn’t been able to fix) and in the early season he seemed more determined to destroy Bobby not despite the fact Wendy works for him, but really because of it. There’s always been some kind of bad blood between the two (Wendy acknowledged as much early in Season 3) and Chuck seems determined to destroy Bobby whatever the cost. Even when he and Wendy separated, even when it cost him millions of dollars, and even when it could cost him his freedom. Perhaps the message the writers have been trying to say is that Bobby and Chuck are essentially the same person: if they’re not destroying someone, they have no purpose. But that lesson was made clear painfully early, and neither one seems willing to learn it. Well, that’s not quite true.

At the end of Season 3 Chuck was fired because he overreached in his scope. As a result, the series made its most daring move: Chuck and Bobby became allies. In all candor I really wish the series had stuck with this decision: it was a bold one and it was giving the show more growth then it had in the previous season. Instead, Chuck seemed to become as ruthless as Bobby and while Wendy seemed to admire it in the former, she didn’t approve of it in the latter. When Chuck exposed a private secret despite Wendy’s urging not to, she never forgave him. Their marriage would stumble along for the rest of the season, but she finally decided to divorce him. Chuck chose to take this as a lesson not that he had aired, but that Bobby’s mere presence had corrupted him and resumed his determination to bring Axe down. “People like us must destroy people like them,” he said early in the fifth season. He still refuses to admit that he really is people like ‘them’

Now at this point, you might well think Wendy is the most sympathetic character. If anything, I see her as much a villain as the two male leads. She knows that her mere presence is causing this inevitable conflict. She knows both these men so well that she has to know they will eventually destroy each other. (She actually tried to mediate on this more than once when the circumstance got too dire.) But she won’t give an inch to either. She might say it’s because of her position as a therapist, but she was more willing to destroy her career to get back at someone who she thought wronged her.  I think it’s very simple. She likes having power over people who have power, and she likes being near all this wealth.

And at its core, that’s one of the greatest problems with Billions.  Everybody’s so focused on destroying each other that no one cares how they do it. In the first season, Bobby manipulated a dying colleague into being a witness for Chuck to outmaneuver him. Axe Capital invested in a town on the idea a casino would be built there, and when it wasn’t they basically starved it to death. Axe was willing to destroy an entire company just to bankrupt Chuck. Chuck was willing to lose his fortune at that just to get at Axe. Much of the fourth season was about Chuck’s determination to destroy the Attorney General. The fact that kind of scandal would in a normal world cause a Presidency to topple never crossed his mind. The fact that Jock Jeffcoat was a monster was incidental; he got in Chuck’s way, he had to be removed. And that’s leaving aside that almost ever other story connected with how Axe Capital makes its money is based on some government, country or industry facing disaster. That’s just met with a shrug as business by the Masters of the Universe.

And in a weird way, that leads me to what may be the biggest problem with how I view the series. Halfway through the fourth seasons, when Axe Capital was being rivaled by Taylor’s company, two employees: ‘Dollar’ Bill and Mafee who ended up on opposites of the conflict got into a shouting match and said they’d settle it in a fight. This led to the episode ‘Fight Night’ where Bill and Mafee were going to face off in a charity fight. Both of them had spent weeks, presumably, being trained by the best. They were being pushed by their respective mentors to go out and kill. Bets were being taken on who would win and when. Then the fight happened…and neither could so much as land a punch on the other. As the announcers watched in astonishment, they spend eight or nine rounds swinging at each other and quoting Rocky, but the fight ended in mutual exhaustion. Not going to lie, this is a very funny scene. But at its core, it speaks to a darker truth about so many of the characters in these series. They may be able to deliver verbal blows, but they can’t fight to save their lives.  Everybody in this series, to a degree, probably has great verbal skills and intelligence but in the world of the ninety-nine percent, they’d been useless. They’re little better than all the trolls we see on social media, except they actually have all the money and power in the world. You don’t have to be as smart as these characters supposedly are to draw a map to the political and economic situation we’re in today.

Now were these flaws only central to Billions they would be anomalous but something you could ignore. As I said, however, I think they are a bigger part of what so much Peak TV of this era has become. In the conclusion, I’ll go from the specific to the general.

20 Years Later: How 9-11 Changed TV, Part 2B: Aaron Sorkin Post West Wing

 

In the glow of hindsight, there are many who consider Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Sorkin’s follow-up piece to The West Wing one of the greatest one-season series in history. I’m more inclined to hold to Entertainment Weekly’s ranking it among the 50 biggest disasters in Television history. I realize that millions probably think: the series had Bradley Whitford, Matthew Perry, Steven Weber, Amanda Peet and D.L. Hughley among its leads and such bright lights as Sarah Paulson and Merritt Weyer among its casts. How could it go wrong?

Well for starters, there was not a realistic or likable character in the bunch. Perry, so affable on Friends, started out as an arrogant prick and never softened. Peet, a great actress who television was still a few years away from realizing her true potential, played a network executive that you always wondered how she’d gotten so far. Sarah Paulson, an extraordinary actress who Ryan Murphy would finally tap her true genius, played perhaps the most unbelievable character of all: a born-again Christian who’d had a long-time affair with Perry’s character. (That their romance was never believable it is not a flaw limited to Sorkin’s writing; stretching back as far as Sports Night Sorkin has never truly been able to create a believable love story in any of series.) None of them were ever believable and all the dialogue in the world couldn’t elevate them/

That was actually the smallest flaw in the series. For a show that was ostensibly about comedy, almost none of the skits we saw or even heard about sounded like they would make Saturday Night Live on its worst day. The Pilot opened with the show’s creator being fired for the network refusing to run a sketch called ‘Crazy Christians: I don’t know what was less believable: that Perry’s character had written the sketch originally or that had been in ‘storage’ for five seasons and they were only trying to pull it out. It actually got worse from there: none of the sketches or idea we saw seemed funny, much less played that way. Even the most bottom feeding sketch show would have tried a sketch where the premise was Juliette Lewis was hosting Meet the Press: the very idea is a horrible joke. And the process of making the comedy seemed even more pointless when it became clear that Perry’s character was basically doing all the writing.  Perhaps this was a roman a clef version of Sorkin himself (he notoriously takes credit for every episode of a series even if his influence was minimal) but even if it was, that wasn’t funny either.

And the pace of the series was god-awful slow. I was offending by how, in the early days of Grey’s Anatomy, it would often take three to four weeks for two days to pass. This pacing was positively lightning compared to the rate Studio 60 moved. It took them nearly three weeks to move through a storyline that took over the course of a single day. For a writer whose characters were known for their rapid-fire dialogue, you’d think Sorkin would’ve been better by now at keeping the action moving. The last five episodes of the series took place over the course of a few hours.

And most appalling of all was that somehow Studio 60 was often more political and less subtle about it than The West Wing ever was. One of the show’s performers (Nate Cordray) never seemed to be appreciated by his parents because his brother was serving in Afghanistan. They milked this so many times over the course of the season you’d think Sorkin could’ve made a real statement but it was just a plot point for him D.L Hooghly’s character had a major spat with the media in which he basically blamed them for the war in Iraq. And this paled in comparison to the final episodes when we learned why Whitford and Perry’s characters were fired from the series in the first place: they’d written a sketch about Karl Rove, there’d been blowback and they had to resign. This would barely have been tolerable in David E. Kelley’s hands; Sorkin somehow made it worse.

When the series collapsed in the spring of 2007, Sorkin went into movies. That went much better as in succession came three critical and box-office hits: Charlie Wilson’s War, The Social Network and Moneyball. The second got him an Oscar, the latter a nomination. Considering how brilliant Sorkin had taken two what seemed unfilmable stories and made great movies, he was understandably back on top and everybody realized again he was a genius. Then HBO gave him a series and he forgot everything he learned.

The Newsroom was Sorkin trying to make an argument about impartial journalism should work and was in almost every case a failure.  Part of it was because Sorkin spent so much time among the journalists of MSNBC as influence. Most of it, however, was because Sorkin’s gift for dialogue now seemed far too heavy-handed. The opening teaser, where Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) says how America has lost its way and how it might be great again – and is completely hammered for it in the press - was an awful starting point for a series. And there were few aspects about it that ever worked. Mackenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer) rarely seemed like she was a competent producer and the fact that she’d had an affair with Will never seemed to gel.  And even though none of the romances he’d written before had worked well, Sorkin went out of his way to make almost every other character be involved in a complicated love…rectangle, I guess that nobody was willing to acknowledge and kept becoming heavier baggage every few episodes. Mixing all of these stories with real-life events never really gave it a sense of realism, and for all the discussion of Will’s journalism, he always came across as much like a pundit as anyone on cable news.

Sorkin seemed to realize how badly this was going, and in the second season tried to have an overarching storyline based on a 60 Minutes scandal about a misreporting of news. If anything, this made things worse. The series kept shifting between depositions and the present, dealing with even worse romantic choices among the leads, and a conclusion that wasn’t so much unbelievable as a complete dismissal of it. I’m not even sure the underlying story was ever resolved.

You’d like to think there was something of merit in a show that, in addition to Daniels and Mortimer, featured Sam Waterston, Dev Patel and Olivia Munn among its regulars and had Jane Fonda and Chris Messina in critical roles. But the moments of real interest were few and far between and in all honesty, giving Jeff Daniels the Best Actor Emmy in 2013 was one of the biggest mistakes the Emmys has ever made. (Even Daniels seemed to know it when he accepted.) And given a chance to actually end a series for the first time (all his previous series had either been cancelled or he’d left before they ended) Sorkin couldn’t come up with a good way to that, either. The show just petered out at the end of 2014. Sorkin has stayed in the world of movies ever since where, to be fair, he’s been much better equipped.

In a sense, I find it laughable when a man named Adam McKay considers Sorkin his equivalent on the right. Sorkin on the right? His Republicans are so far to the left they can say things like: “I’m a registered Republican. I just sound liberal because I believe hurricanes are caused by high barometric pressure and not by gay marriage.” That may be one of the biggest problems with Sorkin’s politics: he believes in party leanings rather than ideological ones. That was basically almost out of style when The West Wing began its run: these days ideology on both sides’ matters more and great leaders in both parties histories would be considered RINOs and DINOs today.

But that’s far from the biggest problem with Sorkin’s viewpoints on politics. His most direct statement on the matter may be in one of his first films The American President. At the climax of the movie, President Andrew Shepherd says of his opponent: “We’ve got serious problems. And I can assure you, Bob Rumson (his Republican opponent) is not interested in solving them. He is interested in two things… making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it. That is how you win elections.”

Now the problem with politics today isn’t that there are too many Bob Rumson’s and not enough Andrew Shepherds. The problem is there were never any Andrew Shepherds (or later, Jed Bartlet’s) to begin with. Everybody with some connection to politics is essentially a Bob Rumson. One side may have a different for making you afraid of the problem, but they’re both only interested in telling you who’s the blame for it.  Solving the problems, they’ll just kick that down the road. (In a back-handed way, Sorkin may have acknowledged that with the character of Josh in the third season of The West Wing. He’s involved with a woman who’s at the head of a women’s rights league and when a bill that the party that goes against that agenda becomes a flare-up, Josh choosing the bill over his girlfriend. The difference is, no one even thinks for a second about Amy’s feelings: all they care about is winning reelection.)

I realize that I may be dealing more with politics than art, but in a way Sorkin’s point of view on that explains why he’s never been able to be as effective in Peak TV. Sorkin’s characters believe that people and institutions are fundamentally good and that you can change the world if you just have the right argument. This comes into complete contrast with the beliefs at the core of the three first great series of HBO led by the three Davids: Chase, Simon and Milch. The Sopranos fundamentally believes that change is hard, and that given the option people will always do what’s easier than what’s hard. The Wire believes that the institutions of America are so fundamentally broken that any person who even tries to change it will get ground to dirt. And Deadwood believes, no matter how great or pretty the words are, force and the unbridled monstrosities of capitalism will eventually overcome.

In what would end up being one of the last exchanges of Deadwood, when A.W. Merrick, the towns earnest newsman asked George Hearst for his opinion of his coverage of the horrors that have unfolded, Hearst coldly says: “I’ve given up reading your paper…I’ll have my people create another one to lie the other way.”  You can draw a line from that statement to the fundamental basics of how journalism and everything else works today. Compared to this blunt truth, Sorkin’s optimism and idealism are not only naïve, but completely contrary to the best of TV today. If he was ever serious about reviving The West Wing (as he mentions from time to time), this is one reboot that would never work because it was out-of-time even when it was new.

 

 

Twenty Years Later, How 9/11 Changed Television, Part 2A: Aaron Sorkin and The West Wing Myth

Sorkin has always been considered one of the premier writers of television: the man who invented the walk-and-talk, who created funny dramas and dramatic comedies, and who made political dramas possible. The first two are correct, and while the third is technically true, I believe sincerely – even before 9-11 – The West Wing took place in a political world that even then was out of date.

Going forward, I should say that Sports Night, the incredible series that ran on ABC from 1998-2000 was one of the greatest series I’ve ever seen. It pioneered the idea of the ‘dramedy’ something that I’m not surprised network television in that era was unequipped to deal with. It introduced the world to actors who would dominate the Golden Age of television – Josh Charles, Peter Krause, Joshua Malina and the now controversial Felicity Huffman have among the best bodies of work of any TV actors. And it had some truly magnificent moments – ‘The Quality of Mercy at 29K is one of the great accomplishments in TV history. More than twenty years later, I’m still bitter at ABC for cancelling it (The ratings went up that season; what more did you want?!)

The West Wing was an extraordinary series while Sorkin was writing it. The dialogue was some of the wittiest and most erudite that we have ever heard in the history of television. The characters and actors who played them have become icons throughout the world of television and movies and deservedly so. And I have no doubt it inspired millions of viewers about politics. The thing is, even when it was on the air originally, I have a feeling that many of those millions of viewers were utterly misled by everything that they were seeing. I’m well aware that Sorkin had several major real life political advisers on the show – Patrick Caddell, Dee Dee Meyers, Peggy Noonan all worked there briefly and hell, Lawrence O’Donnell even had a cameo as Jed Bartlett’s father. But for all the real life advice, The West Wing was especially in the Sorkin era, a political fantasy. Not because it was a political series with almost no partisanship, but because it was a political series with almost no politicians.

Think I’m exaggerating? The Vice President was on the series barely a dozen times in Sorkin’s era. There were almost no cabinet meetings and we barely saw any Secretaries. We occasionally saw the National Security Adviser and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but only occasionally. And that dwarfs the number of senators and Congressman we ended up seeing over the four years Sorkin was writing it. You’d think considering how many times the President needed help passing legislation, he’d have inviting the minority leader or the whip to the House, but I never remember seeing them. (I’ll get to that in a moment.)

So who was it that Sam Seaborne and Josh Lyman were meeting with all those years? Staff. Lots and lots of staff. And I imagine quite a lot of bureaucrats as well. Honestly, if talking to these people really managed to get our government to work, I’m kind of shocked none of the viewers asked: “Why do we need to elect these people in the first place?” Even more amazingly, the staff and bureaucrats didn’t seem to have political points of view either, kind of remarkable considering that most of them were legislative aides in the first place.

That actually gets me to what was by far one of the biggest stretches in the show: It was established fairly early in the series’ run that President Bartlet was a Democrat elected with a Republican Congress, which remained a constant throughout the series. Yet for some reason, every time he had to get legislation passed Democrats were standing in his way more often then Republicans. Gun-control legislation, a missile treaty, passing foreign aid – hell, when it came to making sure a veto on the estate tax was upheld; Toby and Josh had more trouble with those pesky Democrats then the Republicans. Hell, during the four seasons Sorkin was in charge, the Republicans were so damn reasonable compared to the Democrats. To take the most prominent example, when there were hearings before Congress about the President’s lying about his MS (which I will get back to, believe me) Leo McGarrey is about to be raked over the coal by Congress for being drunk at a debate. During a recess, a Republican lawyer from Oversight admonishes the Congressman for doing something so horrendous that has nothing to do with the hearings, and tells leadership to call a recess for the holidays, rather than do this. Leadership listens to the lawyer and calls the recess. And after that, the Republicans make an agreement with the President that he take a censure rather than have any more testimony.

Let’s aside the world we live in today – in the political world of televised hearings, is this even remotely plausible? The lawyer would be dismissed, and the hearings would continue. But the fact that in Sorkin’s Republicans are actually one of the smaller problems with The West Wing. I could relate a dozen examples, but I’ll deal with the most glaring. During a stint in Season 1, it is revealed that Leo spent time in a rehab facility for alcohol and Valium addiction. Setting aside that this story all managed to play out with Leo keeping his job, the arc ends with Sam finding out that an intern learned these truths and leaked it to the media. Sam fired her. The episode ends with Leo rehiring her. Put it like this: Sorkin received three letters from former White House Staffers saying essentially: “That girl’s ass stays fired.” Not even John Spencer’s explanation: “Leo’s a man who’s been given a second chance himself’ is remotely plausible.

To be clear, even before 2001 it was clear that The West Wing took place in a fantasy world. After 9-11, things got worse. It is generally agreed even by devotees of the series that there was a major drop in the quality of the writing after Season 2. (Some admonish Sorkin’s script ‘Isaac and Ishmael’, a story he wrote immediately after 9-11 as part of the problem. Awkwardly written and ham-handed as it was, I do appreciate the fact that he at least tried to deal with the issues.) The bigger problem was that the show became more obsessed with arcs that were more problematic and gave little reward. The MS storyline never worked well at all, and seemed to have a limp conclusion. The reelection saga which took up all of Season 3 and a good chunk of Season 4 was always dull, because on a network series back then, it was always a given that Bartlet was going to win. The fact that Sorkin took this period to focus so intensely on the failings of a Republican candidate we almost never saw really hurt the series more.

But by far the worst part of the post 9-11 West Wing was the obsession with Qumar, a mythical Middle East country clearly  based on Saudi Arabia or Iran. Near the end of Season 3, it became clear that one of the high ups in their government had plotted to blow of the Golden Gate Bridge. Three agonizing episodes were spent decided how to deal with him, that arrest was possible, and that assassination was the only course, and then convincing the President to do it. The series focused so much on Bartlet’s agony of ordering a man killed, which given everything we know about the modern presidency is laughably trite.

It actually got worse in Season 4 as the aftermath of the assassination basically formed the backbone of the entire season. Every potential consequence of what had happened was agonizingly and in too much detail laid out for every possible consequence.  All of this was bad enough. What made it far worse was when it was finally dealt with in the climax of Season 4. During the final episodes Zoey, the President’s youngest daughter is abducted by terrorists. (This very scenario is one Sorkin laid out in the first season and one that he said he wanted to explore. Little hint, Aaron, just because you write about something doesn’t mean you have to do it.) The President, fearing his was emotionally compromised, invoked the 25^th Amendment and the Speaker of the House (who’d we never seen before now) became President. (The Vice President had resigned just two episodes earlier in a scandal that from beginning to end took twenty-four hours to unfold. Let that go.) In the premiere of the fifth season, the story came out and the Speaker basically dealt with in three questions. Kind of makes you wonder what the entire point of all this anguish over the last season was for. (Granted Sorkin didn’t write that episode, but still…)

Like I said, The West Wing was a great series superbly written, directed and acting. (That said, I feel its Emmys for Best Drama in 2002 and 2003 were big mistakes; either 24 or Six Feet Under should have won both years.) But The West Wing was always a captivating series despite the political backdrop, not because of it. Sorkin was barely equipped to handle the political situation in the pre- 9/11 world; he was completely unequipped to deal with in the post-one. This became increasingly clear in both series that came afterwards. In the conclusion to this piece, I will discuss how deeply flawed Studio 60 and The Newsroom were, and the overarching problem when it comes to Sorkin, politics and Peak TV in general.

 

David E. Kelley, Lianne Moriarty and Nicole Kidman Together Again, It's Almost Perfect: Nine Perfect Strangers Review

 

 

Yes, it’s that time of year again: when David E. Kelley and Nicole Kidman get together to adapt yet another bestseller into yet  another limited series. We’ve been on this track before with Big Little Lies and last year’s The Undoing, so it’s natural to assume that when Kelley and Kidman decided to adapt yet another Lianne Moriarty best seller – Nine Perfect Strangers, a story where the title group get together for a mystical health and wellness retreat run by the mysterious Masha (Kidman, this time wearing wigs and with a trace of a European accent) that we’re in more of the same. Indeed, this novel actually adapts better from Australia to California, where we all know the third largest source of income is the self-improvement and wellness industry. (Something like that)

Like The Undoing, but unlike Big Little Lies, I actually have a better comprehension of what the Hulu adaptation is more likely to be like. (Is it possible Kelley will take the story in the completely different direction he did with You Should Have Known? Hard to know; I’m only at episode 2.) There’s the usual all star cast, besides Kidman, all playing different roles. There’s Melissa McCarthy (playing a character not that far removed from the one she did in Can You Ever Forgive Me?) a romance novelist, whose latest book isn’t being published and just got through being scammed by a fake internet relationship.). There’s Tony (Bobby Cannavale, continuing his Peak TV renaissance) as Tony, an ex-jock who is going through an addiction to pills. There’s Ben and Jessica (Melvin Gregg and Samara Weaving) a married couple clearly going through issues they can’t Instragram away. There’s Carmel (Regina Hall, finally giving a performance in a TV show I like) obsessed with the idea of self-improvement for reasons that aren’t clear yet. And most tragically is the Marconi family: Napoleon (Michael Shannon), trying so hard to be cheerful, Heather and Zoe, a family still trying to get over the death of their oldest son a year ago. Lurking in the background is Lars (Luke Evans) who seems completely an enigma.

Masha claims to have all the answers and that she has gathered these people together ‘to help themselves’. But she watches them constantly through closed-circuit TV and seems far too detached for the clients and frankly, her staff to be fully confident in. At the end of the second episode, she announced that it was time to begin ‘the protocol’, something that alarmed even the devoted Yao (Manny Jacinto). Having read the novel, I have a pretty good idea what it’s going to entail, but for now let’s just say, it makes digging your own grave look likes child’s play. And as we will learn, Masha’s own story is far more complicated than she is willing to admit to herself.

Now I’m fully aware that there are a lot of people out there who are reluctant to go down this rabbit hole. So here’s one big spoiler I think you should know going in: No one dies at the end. There’s going to be a lot of trauma and anguish, but in all honesty Moriarty’s novel was actually far more optimistic and almost light-hearted in comparison to some of what we’ve been down before. And as always the cast is more than up for the challenge. Kidman continues to find more ways to shine, but I have a feeling (at least based on the novel) that the ones with greater moments ahead of them are McCarthy and Hall. I’m also expecting great things from Shannon, who finally seems to be playing a character who is far more human than any of the ones we are typically used to seeing him play.

People may joke about the oeuvre Kelley seems to be in these days, but the thing is, these limited series work. He has resumed his place in the television pantheon of being one of the great writers for actresses of basically any age and considering how long it took him to get away from his old milieu (a previous article dealt with my frustrations with it) I’m more than delighted to see him produce works like Nine Perfect Strangers. It’s not a masterwork, at least not yet, but it is a bubbly joy.(That being said David, are we going to get a third season of Big Little Lies? I’d just like to know.)

My score: 4.25 stars.