If You're Only Realizing Now That David Mamet Represents Toxic Masculinity...You're A Bleeping Moron

The last few months David Mamet, one of the greatest writers in the history of theater and film, has been making the rounds for some, shall we say, controversial comments he’s been making about politics and sexuality. I won’t repeat them, because most of you know what they are by now and doing so will just cause more divisiveness, neither of which is the point of this column. What is the point is that over the last several years and especially recently, there has been quite a lot of commentary saying that Mamet is a misogynist who favors toxic masculinity in his work.  I have the same regard for those people who only now are starting to say that Bill Maher is not a true progressive.

But at least Maher’s case, you could delude yourself with the idea that because some of his views were against Republicans that he had been converted recently. There’s no excuse for thinking similarly about Mamet. In all honesty, if the term toxic masculinity didn’t exist, Mamet could have been credited for inventing it.

Let’s start with a fairly obvious fact: the lion’s share of Mamet’s characters, on stage and screen, are degenerates and criminals. From American Buffalo to Sexual Perversity in Chicago, from House of Games to The Spanish Prisoner, almost all of Mamet’s characters are at the very least con men, if not downright criminals. Some of them may work in film or politics, but…I don’t really have to give a punch line there, do I?

Another fact that should be just as obvious: Mamet’s characters in almost every play and film are all male. In fact, you can search the lion’s share of Mamet’s play and find they have, at most, one female character. There are more in his works for the silver screen, but most of the time they are either sexual objects or women that can be easily duped. And indeed, in the few that have them they have almost always been played by one of his ex-wives, such as Lindsay Crouse (House of Games) or Rebecca Pidgeon (Spanish Prisoner). Most of these are films that Mamet has more control over the production. The ones that are bigger budget may have larger roles for females (I’m thinking of Anne Heche in Wag the Dog) but there is much difference in their importance.

One particular example is The Edge, a film Mamet wrote the screenplay of but that he later considered butchered by the executives. In that film, Anthony Hopkins is married to Elle Macpherson who is having an affair with Alec Baldwin. The two end up in a plane crash and are engaged in a fight for survival with the elements, especially a bear, and each other. Macpherson’s character may be the cause of the animosity, but her role is no bigger than a stick figure at the beginning and the end of the film. Mamet can claim the executives butchered his film; I think his idea of the wife was in the first draft.

 Now this being said, I am a huge admirer of Mamet the writer. I’ve loved many of the plays and films he written over the years, and I think he is one of the great masters of dialogue. That doesn’t mean, of course, that he is not a toxic personality; if we’ve learned one thing over the years in television, it’s that being a genius on the page doesn’t mean that you can’t be a monster to everybody on the set. But in Mamet’s case, it’s always been clear that he believed – decades before it was ‘hip’ – that masculinity is more important than anything, no matter what you are. And this is perhaps clearly in what is likely his most famous work: Glengarry Glen Ross.

Again this is one of the greatest plays in American theater history. It deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama and there is a reason it gets Tony nominations every times it’s revived.  Furthermore, the movie version has always been one of my favorite films. It is a master class of acting: Al Pacino deservedly an Oscar nomination and I’ve always thought Jack Lemmon was robbed of one. All the other performances – including those of the controversial Kevin Spacey and Alec Baldwin – are at that level. But when I showed this movie to my parents, their reaction was very different from mine. Both of them thought it was one of the most miserable movies they’d ever seen with no redeeming virtues. I thought at the time, much like with so many other recent great movies, that the problem was generational more than anything else. But looking at certain aspects of the film, in hindsight, there are flaws that I could see deeply affecting their opinion.

First of all, all of the characters in the film are trying to sell real estate lots to people. We never know if the land is legitimate or, like so much else in Mamet’s literature, it’s just another con. What we are aware of is: its life or death for the men in the office, and for most of them it’s not going well.

Now let’s consider Alec Baldwin’s character, the only one written for the film. (In the script, he’s called Blake.) The monologue that Baldwin delivers is one of the most memorable in film history; Baldwin has actually satirized on Saturday Night Live. But consider the nature of it: Blake starts it out by saying that all the people in the office are fired, and that’s the good news. The five minutes that follow basically says that they are all losers and failures and that the only people who are bigger losers and failures are the people they can’t sell the real estate too. Blake argues that they will always be losers and that he will always be better than him because: “this watch costs more than your car.” Then he presents the Glengarry leads as a pot of gold that they will never get. At one point, he makes his message crystal clear for the audience: “You know what it takes to sell? It takes brass balls.”

The message couldn’t be clearer: they’re not real men and they will never be real men. The fact that all of them are clearly older than him doesn’t matter. Whether or not he’s even been a salesman doesn’t matter. The message is clear: close or you get fired. And everyone in the office is so stunned that don’t even question it.

This is only a motivational speech in the sense that it motivates already desperate men to do even more desperate things. Shelley (Lemmon) tries to convince Spacey’s character (the head of the office, closer to Baldwin’s age than anyone else) to give him some decent leads which is futile task. Moss (Ed Harris) and Aaronow (Alan Arkin) go to a Chinese restaurant and in one of the most brilliant sequences in history, Moss suggests they robbed the office and when Aaronow doesn’t want to go along with it, convinced him he’s already agreed to it just by listening.

Now I have to get the only character that wasn’t in the office at the time: Ricky Roma (Pacino).  Blake went ahead with the speech even though Roma wasn’t there, and I’ve always figured that was deliberate. Roma was the only member of the team excelling, which by Blake’s definition (and Mamet’s) meant he was a real man. We see Roma essentially engaged in a long pitch to a prospective customer (Jonathan Pryce). Roma doesn’t get to the actual sale until the last line, but watching Roma we see that he views the pitch as a seduction. There is a very sexual nature to both the dialogue and Pacino’s matter, and the method couldn’t be blunter: if you’re going to f--- someone out of their money, you better buy them dinner first. Pacino is doing this, by the way, at a restaurant.

The second act place after the office has been robbed and the Glengarry leads have been stolen. We have been led to think, naturally, that Moss and Aaranow are responsible and the discussions that Roma has with both of them seems to reflect their guilt. Roma’s tone varies with all three men: he treats Moss with disdain, Aaronow with comfort and Shelley with admiration. To be clear, Roma thinks he’s won the Cadillac for the incentive contest, and is being, in his eyes, magnanimous and superior. The main reason he regards Shelley with admiration is because Shelley walks in triumphantly having made a sale of eight units after a bad streak. Shelley’s attitude was rumpled and haggard in the first half of the movie; now he’s cocky and arrogant, treating Spacey’s character with utter disdain. The message couldn’t be clearer: success and money is what makes you a man.

As you’d expect from a Mamet production, there’s a con involved on screen. Pryce’s character comes to the office, wanting his money back. Shelly and Rick start a con where he’s a restaurant owner to try and get him to leave. Pryce is persistent, telling Roma he needs to stop payment, and critically, the excuse given is that wife is made. Roma engages in another seduction, first trying to convince him of his masculinity, then assuring him that the sale hasn’t gone through yet. He’s about to close again when Spacey’s character comes out and, without reading the situation, blows the deal. After Pryce leaves, Roma utterly berates Spacey’s character and once he goes into the office, so does Shelley. It is likely the assault on his masculinity more than anything else that leads Spacey to make a critical deduction about Shelley and, because of this insult from him, he decides to destroy him. (I won’t reveal the nature of the ending because, despite everything I’ve said, I still believe you need to see the movie.)

So to be clear, in Glengarry Glen Ross, masculinity is all, masculinity is determined solely by money, it is determined by exerting it on those weaker than you, and if you can’t do that, you’re not a man. I don’t know why anyone would think the man whose greatest success is this work could possibly have ever been considered a sexist.

Look Mamet is still one of the greatest writers in the English language. Hell, he invented an entire style of dialogue which Roger Ebert once considered one of two writers he could recognize immediately. (The other was Tarentino.) The fact that he happens to now seems to have become something of a monster at this late stage in life and that now critics are starting to question whether they can enjoy his work knowing his views doesn’t change that fact.

A critic for New York Magazine wrote in a review of the current revival of American Buffalo that wasn’t sure they liked the production. The play was good, the performances were excellent, everything worked, but could they in good conscience still enjoy Mamet’s recent appearances on television? It’s like every other work of art. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a great TV show and Crimes and Misdemeanors is a great film. The fact that the creators of both have proven themselves to be loathsome individuals show should not affect your enjoyment of them. It is possible to like the work of art and hate the artist. Difficult Men have pervaded every aspect of life, including every medium. Do I have questions about Mamet’s personality now? Yes. But if I run into Glengarry Glen Ross while channel chasing, I’m still gonna bleeping watch it.

As to the rest of you now ‘suddenly’ discovering Mamet’s flaws: for the past four decades, the writing hasn’t just been on the wall, but on the page, the programs and the silver screen. If critics are only debating it now, there’s been a very willful blindness in this case. Blame him for ruining your enjoyment of the plays, but don’t pretend you haven’t had a clue all this time. It’s the kind of blindness that so many characters in Mamet’s work prey upon. Don’t whine about the sale now.

 

Celebrity Jeopardy Is Coming To Prime Time This Fall. It Might Be Fun. It Won't Be Pretty.

 

Usually when I write a column about Jeopardy it’s usually to gush about a great contestant or rave about the level of play. Unfortunately on this occasion, I have decidedly mixed feelings about the most recent news about Jeopardy.

While announcing their upcoming fall schedule, ABC announced that they would have several primetime celebrity led Jeopardy events, all to be hosted by Mayim Bialik. I’ll admit this is hardly a surprise. Ratings for Jeopardy have jumped during this coming season; like all networks trying to deal with ratings declines across the board, ABC is trying to add some major live events and ABC has a fairly successful history with other celebrity game shows in recent years: To Tell The Truth and Family Feud have had notable success, so have Supermarket Sweep and until the recent controversies surrounding Alec Baldwin, Match Game and Wheel of Fortune has had its share of celebrity showings recently. 

So the fact that Jeopardy, which starting in 1992 had an annual celebrity Tournament, is now moving to join the prime time lineup seems less a surprise and more of inevitability. Why then do I view it with trepidation?

Anyone who grew up watching Saturday Night Live during the 1990s is familiar with their recurring sketches about Celebrity Jeopardy featuring Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek. Such sketches usually featured Darrell Hammond as a profane Sean Connery, Norm MacDonald as a filthy minded Burt Reynolds and a variation on the third contestant which depending who was hosting. (Personal favorites of mine include David Duchovny as Jeff Goldblum and Ben Stiller as Tom Cruise.) Ferrell, whose work I’ve never particularly admired that much, portrayed Trebek as often disdainful and insulting of the competitors, though to be fair given how badly Connery and Reynolds treated him, it’s hard to blame him. There were also two overwhelming trends: the clues were incredibly easy and the celebrities were incredibly stupid. We never saw the scores for any of the games, but as Trebek would list them, they were overwhelmingly negative. (I believe in one case going into Double Jeopardy, Connery was at -$11,200.)

To be clear, both Trebek and the show took this in good fun.  After he shaved his mustache, Alex joked he’d done it so that Ferrell could impersonate him more easily. (Ferrell kept the mustache years after the fact, though.) The show also paid tribute to the sketches by featuring SNL Celebrity Jeopardy as a category and on at least two occasions, making actual categories of the satiric ones SNL used for a game board. (They include: STATES THAT END WITH –AMPSHIRE, SOUNDS CATS MAKE, and TWINKLE, TWINKLE LITTLE WORD THAT RHYMES WITH STAR.) And while I often found the sketches funny, I might have enjoyed them for a different reason. Unlike a lot of their sketches where they lampoon things beyond belief, the Saturday Night Live parodies of Celebrity Jeopardy were a little too close to the real thing.

Granted on its celebrity shows Jeopardy never had Sean Connery or Burt Reynolds compete, but as someone who watched Celebrity Tournaments during my formative years, I frequently considered them the nadir of the Jeopardy season. (Around 2002, I finally stopped watching them altogether; they were just too painful to get any pleasure out of.) And while no one on these tournaments ever did as poorly as -$11,000, I have to say, it was rarely for lack of trying.  So many of these celebrity games would end up with at least two full categories unselected in Double Jeopardy, and at least one contestant in the negative. During Celebrity games, unlike for us mere mortals, Jeopardy gave what would be considered a ‘mercy’ rule and allowed competitors who were in the hole have a $1000 so that they could compete in Final Jeopardy.  Much of the time this often just led to further indignities in Final Jeopardy.

And while the clues were never as easy as they were often portrayed on SNL, I have to tell you, the lion’s share of them were the kind of clues that competitors in Teen Tournaments of that era could have managed to sweep the board with little trouble.  There is usually publicity to say that celebrities are just like the rest of us. Well, they certainly weren’t like the lion’s share of contestants who end up winning one game on Jeopardy, much less winning Tournaments.

At one point, during the high point of Ken Jennings run, I actually drafted out a satiric SNL sketch where Burt Reynolds and Sean Connery were competing against Ken Jennings ‘because he is now legally obligated to play in every match.’ Connery and Reynolds were at -9000 or -$10,000 apiece, and Jennings was at $27,000 going into Double Jeopardy. (I’m not sure who I would have cast is Jennings, though at that time he might have been willing to play himself.) The sketch was on a hard drive that has long been lost, so I don’t remember any of the details. I do remember one line ‘Trebek’ said: “Never thought I’d say this, but I’m actually glad you’re here, Ken.”

(I should mention that particular line may have reflected my ambivalence towards Jennings at the time, who I thought was making the series monotonous. It was not until the Ultimate Tournament of Champions and the beginning of his fifteen year rivalry with Brad Rutter that I truly began to appreciate and admire everything Jennings has done and will do for the series.)

To be fair to Jeopardy, no movie star on the level of Connery or Reynolds ever showed up to humiliate themselves the way they were portrayed on SNL. To be fair to SNL an enormous of television stars did and more than justified the supposition that film stars wouldn’t be any smarter. And that’s before you consider all of the cable news anchors and pundits who you’d think their position would give them some insight into the world that Jeopardy inhabits. If anything, I’m kind of stunned that SNL, given its obsession with cable news, never had Tucker Carlson, Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper appear on its Celebrity Jeopardy, considering how badly they disgraced themselves on the ‘Power Players Weeks’ the show has done over the years. And yet, even they never quite humiliated themselves the way Bob Woodward did when he couldn’t answer a question about All the President’s Men. (To be fair, Jane Seymour couldn’t answer how followed Anne Boleyn as Henry VIII’s next wife. Sometimes you just can’t ring in fast enough.)

Now that I’ve gone through all the reasons why Celebrity Jeopardy is often humiliating for anyone who likes Jeopardy (though maybe fun for those who like watching celebrities be idiots), I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that there have been quite a few celebrities who have not only not disgraced themselves, but had they ever been in a position to play the actual game, might have done very well. Much like with its returning champions, Jeopardy has invited celebrities who do well in the past to compete for more money (all for charities, in case you’d forgotten) and each time, they also make the clues a bit more difficult. By the time of the Million Dollar Celebrity Invitational in 2010, many of the celebrities were asking clues that would not be out of place in a Jeopardy tournament for ‘regular’ people. And some of them were ones you never expect.  Many did well on one shot appearance, such as Jon Stewart, Bob Costas, and in one very memorable occasion on the first tournament Luke Perry. But for this article, I’ll focus on four who did extraordinarily well on multiple appearances:

 

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Perhaps we shouldn’t be so shocked that this NBA All-Star was one of the Best Jeopardy players; he is outspoken and has written quite a bit, fiction and non-fiction. But I’ll admit, the first time I saw him in 1993, I thought Larry King would clean his clock. (It was not the first time I thought someone from CNN would be able to thrash a comedian or an athlete.)

To be clear, Kareem’s height is so great that every time he buzzes in, the camera can’t fit his podium in the shot, and you sometimes forget who well he’s doing. But in his four appearances on the show, he has demonstrated a wide range of knowledge and has a tendency to showoff in a way that sometimes the best Jeopardy players do. A prime example came in Final Jeopardy in a match against sports legends Martina Navratilova and Reggie Jackson (who’d he dominated the same way his Lakers did the NBA in the 1980s)

The category was LEGENDARY PEOPLE: “He lived with his girlfriend, a fat priest and a 7-foot tall archer.” Kareem knew the correct response was Robin Hood, but he wrote down: “What is Robin of Locksley?” Robin’s official title. He had showed off and won $22,000 for his charity Athletes and Entertainers for Kids. Like the best Jeopardy players, he likes to have fun winning.

 

Jane Curtin

Just because SNL parodies Jeopardy doesn’t mean that it can’t provide great Jeopardy players. There have been some very good ones over the years (in fact, there’s another one on this list) Indeed, one of the very first Not Ready For Prime Time Players managed to show advanced skill under great pressure during the Million Dollar Celebrity Invitational back in 2009.

Playing well against Isaac Mizrahi (himself a skilled Jeopardy player) she managed to sweep towards the first round. In a match against Harry Shearer and Pat Sajak, also skilled players, she managed to come out ahead in games that managed to clear the board. (It is rare to see that happen in a Celebrity Game, it happened in most of the ones in that Tournament.) And because she manage to play well against two of the other greatest Celebrity Jeopardy contestants (who I’m going to get below) she should well be considered one of the greatest.

 

Cheech Marin

Watching him over the years, I’ve thought either the stoner comedy he’s been doing for the first half of his career was an act or he was Einstein before the 1950s. Because make no mistake Cheech could play quite a few Jeopardy champions under the table. It’s been apparent since one of the very first celebrity games in 1992 when he flattened a shocked Steven Weber and Alan Rachins, and he’s kept on doing it ever since even as the questions kept getting harder.  Here’s one he got correct in 1998:

“Category for which James Tobin, Gary Becker and Milton Friedman all won Nobel Prizes.” I don’t think there are a lot of people who would have known it was Economics, but Marin did.

He played two extremely tight matches to win a spot in the Million Dollar Celebrity Invitational and might have very well been able to win the whole Tournament had he not misread the Game 1 clue about Moby Dick (he knew the answer, but thought the clue referred to Melville which he wrote down.) I mention that because he knew the response to the Game 2 Final, which I have to tell you, I did not.

The category was MIDDLE EAST COUNTRIES: “In 1949, this kingdom dropped the word ‘Trans’ from the beginning of its name.” Marin was the only one who knew the answer: “What is Jordan?”

Alex has often said that good things happen to Jeopardy champions, and while you think that wouldn’t necessarily be the case for celebrities, it was for Marin. As he mentioned in an interview in the 1998 appearance, he said that his doing so well led to getting him a different type of role that he’d been used to in the past. And indeed, he landed a more serious role in the series Nash Bridges not long after and managed to get decent roles in Desperado and other Robert Rodriguez films later on. Makes you wonder would happen if Tommy Chong got invited?

 

 

Michael McKean

Here’s a scary fact: Michael McKean is now the only undefeated player in Jeopardy history. That doesn’t sound right. The man best known for being half of Lenny and Squiggy has a better track record on Jeopardy then Ken Jennings? And yet a man who had two rather undistinguished (though not due to his own work years on SNL) and has been known for playing dim bulbs on Laverne and Shirley and This is Spinal Tap belied his image to be one of the great Jeopardy players of his time.

Actually that’s not giving him enough credit, considering one of the players he routed in the Celebrity Invitational was none other than Kareem-Abdul Jabbar. Then in his semi-final he played in one of the greatest games I’ve ever watched – no, I’m not limited that to only Celebrity games - against Isaac Mizrahi and Charles Shaughnessy. There was only one mistake in the Jeopardy round and one in the Double Jeopardy round – very few games have that level of competitiveness. It was exciting from start to finish and Michael managed to assure his win by taking the lead on a Daily Double on the last clue of Double Jeopardy. And he managed to show off a little in Final Jeopardy as well.

The category was OFFICIAL STATE SONGS: “In 1953, it became the only state whose official song was written for a Broadway Musical.” Michael wrote down: “What is Oklahoma!” which is both how the song and the musical it was named for were titled.

Michael managed to win, part by skill and part by luck the finals against Jane Curtin and Cheech Marin, and all the while he was completely self-effacing about what he was doing. Throughout his appearances, he kept saying: “But I know nothing!” and after the victory in the tournament when Alex mentioned: “He has never lost on Jeopardy.” McKean said: “Well, there’s always tomorrow.”

Added bonus: Michael also managed to win a game of the VH-1 spinoff Rock and Roll Jeopardy. Something else Ken Jennings never did.

 

In hindsight, there actually have been some pretty good celebrity players over the years. In addition to some of the ones I’ve mentioned in passing, Robin Quivers, Neil Patrick Harris and Christopher Meloni have all more than distinguished themselves over the years. (Regis Philbin, who made three appearance, didn’t really in any of them, and I’ve often wondered if that was in the part the impetus for him to host Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? when it debuted in 1999. Maybe he wanted to prove his gravitas as a game show host while giving a million dollars for knowing Richard Nixon appeared on Laugh-In.)

At the end of the day, is more Celebrity Jeopardy a bad thing or not? It will, as it is for every tournament, depend on the quality of the celebrities. Given the proliferation of movie stars to TV over the last twenty years, Jeopardy might actually be able to get some of them to appear on celebrity tournaments. And considering that over their history some of the least likely celebrities have played far better than more serious ones, some of the matches might be entertaining less for the humiliation factor than for the intellectual factors. We’ll have to wait and see. As a side note, don’t start trying to book Joey Lawrence or Jim Parsons for the first group. It would be a little too uncomfortable for the hostess.

They're Called LIMITED Series For A Reason: Commentary on a Troubling Trend

Late last week, I was floored to learn that Hulu had decided to renew Nine Perfect Strangers; the David E. Kelley led adaptation of a Lianne Moriarty novel, for a second season. I was a big fan of the limited series, don’t get me wrong; I thought Kelley and his writers did a superb job of adapting Moriarty’s novel for American television, and I thought the entire cast, from Nicole Kidman to Melissa McCarthy and Michael Shannon were superb. If I didn’t agree with the ending, I still thought it was a good adaptation and deserved to be a contender for Emmys. But unlike certain limited series, there seemed absolutely nowhere for the story to go when it ended.

This is indicative of a trend I’ve actually wanted to write about for awhile, one that I find particularly troubling. Why can’t networks and streaming services just let a limited series be a limited series any more? I was actually going to write about this months ago due to another inexplicable renewal. Last year Showtime decided to turn Your Honor, the Bryan Cranston led miniseries about a judge who does everything in his power to protect his son from his role in the death of a child of a New Orleans crime boss, for a second season. If anything, the decision to renew for a second season struck me as even more inexplicable. For starters, I didn’t think the first season was exceptional well done as a mini-series. I honestly believed the series poorly written, with unbelievable twists and turns, and an exceptional cast, from Cranston and other character actors such as Michael Stahlberg and Margo Martindale, completely wasted. Furthermore, even more than Nine Perfect Strangers, there was no place for Your Honor to go after the series ended. I found the ending to the first season an utter disappointment and made the entire experience seem like a waste of my time. For all the efforts of Cranston’s character, his son was killed in any way. What’s the point of watching another season of this?

I suppose I could lay this all at the feet of another David E. Kelley/Kidman adaptation: Big Little Lies.  Millions couldn’t understand why, after a seemingly perfect adaptation for HBO that had resulted in huge viewership and eight Emmys for the series, HBO decided to bring the show back for a second season. And to be clear I had major doubts about it as well. That being second – and I realize I may be in the minority – I thought the second season was exceptionally well done. I thought all the performances were at least as good as the initial season, I thought Meryl Streep was unduly robbed of an Emmy for Best Supporting Actress (as well as the series and much of the cast) and I would still hope that some day that there will be a third season. (Though now that Kidman may now be attached to another season of another limited series, I don’t know when she’ll be free.) But honestly, I had no idea the sleeping giant that Kelley and the Monterey Five would awaken.

To be clear, a lot of talk to bring back popular limited series for a second season is still just that: talk. Ever since Mare of Easttown ended last spring, there has been constant discussion among Kate Winslet and the cast whether or not to bring it back for a second season, and if so under what circumstances. Sometimes it’s more fanciful: when The Undoing had its run during the fall of 2020, some talked of the idea of a renewal even though it really was a closed loop (and honestly, a very loose adaptation of the source material.) Other new seasons are based more on the idea of the anthology. When The White Lotus was renewed for a second season, it was done so with the understanding that it would be with an entirely new cast (though I’m not sure how much of this will stand considering Jennifer Coolidge is scheduled to reappear.)

But the fact is it’s becoming increasingly rare for a limited series to be just that. When Watchmen debuted back in 2019, everybody seemed to assume, given the huge raves and audiences that it was going to be a regular series. Instead Damon Lindelof and the rest of the crew stunned the TV world when they made it clear that it was going to be one and done – a decision they stuck to even after eleven Emmys. The fact that HBO didn’t force a renewal on them even after three years is kind of astonishing (and that they didn’t do the same with the equally brilliant limited series Lovecraft Country is even more bizarre.) And Watchmen was one of those shows that had a universe to work as both an anthology series and a regular one, which makes the creators standing firm even more impressive.

Does this trend go back further than Big Little Lies? Back in 2014, two very different kind of series premiered that could have very well been one and done. HBO’s still controversial True Detective astonished critics and audiences and may have very well been instrumental in winning Matthew McCounaghey his Academy award. (The fact that HBO chose to submit to the Emmys as an original series and not as a Limited series certainly cost him an Emmy as well.) Aired as an anthology in two subsequent seasons, it has never been received nearly as well for either, and though a fourth season has been promised, it remains in limbo. That same fall, Showtime debuted The Affair a critically received series, starring Dominic West and Ruth Wilson as two people who engage in an affair at Montauk and their differing points of view as to how it happened. The series eventually ran for five seasons, and was surrounded with controversy when Ruth Wilson left the show under mysterious circumstances in Season 4, later revealed to her being uncomfortable with the nudity that she felt was forced on her by the show-runners. Many critics thought the series would have been far better had it just been a limited series and many of the twists and turns as it continued – including Allison’s murder and a fifth season set in a Montauk suffering climate change – seem utterly bizarre in retrospect.

I am well aware that in an era where it has become even harder and harder to find successful series in an increasingly fragmented television landscape why so many networks and services would decide to try and strike lightning with an already established franchise. The fact that American Horror Story is now it’s in eleventh season is just one such testimony to that fact.  But the idea to turn a limited series into a recurring one strikes me as featuring the same lack of imagination that so many network reboots have over the past decade. Both are involving a familiar property that had a story that was wrapped up, and is now being reopened to try and get a supposedly ready made audience. The fact that this audience is smaller than the original doesn’t seem to enter into the minds of executives in either case.

Now I grant you that in certain cases, lightning does strike twice and we get great material the next time. And I’ll admit I might very well end up watching the second season of Nine Perfect Strangers anyway. But let’s get to a point where we can acknowledge that a limited series should be limited and there is no point to a second season for some things. In other words, HBO, don’t renew The Undoing. Nicole Kidman’s busy enough. (Besides, we’re going to need her for the third season of Big Little Lies someday. If it’s a regular series, renew it.)

 

 

 

 

Why Maid Was One Of The Great Accomplishments Of TV This Season (Despite What A Letter-Writer to The Times May Think)

A colleague of mine has a phrase about the stupidity of certain people he doesn’t agree with. I’m not going to use that phrase because I don’t want to rip it off. But when I finally finished watching Maid today, I found myself thinking of that same phrase in regards to a woman who wrote a letter to the New York Times Magazine several months ago.

Some of you who read this blog may recall what I’m referring to, but for the rest of you: in January I read a letter about a woman who had watched Maid and drew the conclusion that she thought the series ‘would have been more realistic if Alex had resented her daughter.” That comment struck me as so utterly moronic having watched just half of the series at the time that I actually wrote what amounted to a rant against this particular writer and asked her if she had watched any of Peak TV between Maid and Murphy Brown going off the air. Now having finally completed viewing Maid, I actually wonder about this woman’s ability to gather messages from TV series at all, considering that idea is the only thing she seemed to take away from the limited series.

If you’ve watched Maid (and I’m seriously starting to wonder if this woman did), you know that the story fundamentally is about Alex, the bureaucratic and societal nightmare she has to go through to escape an emotional emotionally abusive boyfriend. You also know (and I didn’t at the time I wrote the previous article) that at one point, driven to desperation Alex goes back to Sean and gets mired right in the middle of that same domestic abuse again, only it gets even worse. The only reason that she manages to escape the second time is because of a far greater fear that she had for her toddler daughter, Maddy’s safety. And having gotten through the final two episodes, it’s frankly a miracle that happened at all.  She turned to a client who had fundamentally ignored her until her own child was born, managed to survive on her good will and the blessings of an attorney she would never have been able to find, much less afford on her own, managed to find financial aid to a college in Montana, and in the last episode, managed to get out of one last hurdle that her alcoholic boyfriend managed to put in her way.

And I don’t think this writer seemed to get the point of Maid: Alex is a twice-over survivor of emotional domestic abuse. Her troubled relationship with her father, who is an ocean of stability compared to her mother, is entirely due to the fact that her father was an abusive monster that Paula fled to Alaska with when she managed to get away from him. In the final episode, she turns to him in desperation to write a testimonial about Sean being emotionally abusive to here, considering he witnessed one such episode. Not only does he refuse to do it, he continues to deny his own emotional abuse of her and her mother, abuse that has scarred Paula so badly she can’t even acknowledge it when she sees it happening to her own daughter. (Throughout the series, she continues to defend Sean. Even in the finale, when she brings Maddy to Alex after a court appointed visit goes badly, she still says: “Sean had a bad day.”)

So if this viewer came away from Maid thinking that someone who has suffered the level of abuse should be angry at her toddler daughter really makes me question if this viewer has the mental comprehension to get anything about TV. Did she watch Game of Thrones and conclude the biggest problems with the weddings in Westeros were the catering? Did she watch Breaking Bad and think that Walter White’s only flaw was that he loved his family too much? Maid would have been more realistic if Alex resented her daughter? If Maddy wasn’t alive, Alex might not have made a break for it at all. We know the statistics of domestic abuse.  We see examples of it in the second episode of Maid. The only reason Alex made a break for it – both times – was to save Maddy. If Maddy wasn’t there, there’s an excellent chance that Alex would have stayed with Sean until he killed her. Resent her daughter? Alex should be sending her thank-you cards for the rest of her life.

If there is someone Alex should have resented, it’s her own mother. From the opening episode to the last one, every time she turns to Paula for her help, her mother inevitably lets her down. Paula’s problems may result from being bipolar as well as domestic abuse, In the final episode Alex tells someone that’s she been taking care of Paula since she was six, and it is very clear that it’s an even harder job than taking care of Maddy. Paula has spent her entire life refusing to be on the grid, she doesn’t have a bank account, she keeps sleeping with the wrong men, and one such man ends up stealing her house and gambling away the proceeds from it. In the final episode, Paula is living out of her car, and utterly refuses to accept anything resembling guidance from Alex, even if it were to mean a stable life.

I also find it ironic that his writer said it would have been more realistic if Alex resented Maddy for making things harder for her, yet somehow didn’t have anything to say about Paula resenting Alex for doing the same, even though it’s the right thing to do. In one episode Paula is put on a thirty day psych hold and implores Alex to get her out. When Alex refuses to do so, Paula doesn’t say another word to her for the rest of her stay. Alex visits her every day and tries to paint a rosy picture and Paula ignores her. Then one day Alex comes to visit and learns that Paula has broken out of the facility after calling the man who stole her house from her. I guess hating your daughter on TV only counts if she can’t speak.

I realize I have spent the majority of Maid criticizing another person’s shallow critique rather than justified why I liked it. And as I have said in my previous reviews, Maid is one of the most brilliant things on Netflix. Yet I completely understand why many viewers might have watched the first episode and turned to something lighter like The Kominsky Method or Squid Game.  Maid is not an easy series to watch because it is so realistic. Watching Alex struggle to get through a system that is rigged against her, deal with an emotional abusive alcoholic boyfriend who has all the cards, and seeing her mired in a family situation that is so toxic does not lend itself to the binge-watching that we associate with Netflix. I’ve argued against it as a form of viewing before, but I’ve relatively certain nobody binge-watched Maid. One episode can be such a drain on a viewer that you’ll need a break of at least a week, if you decide to come back to it at all. It’s a brilliant series, but it took me nearly six months to see the whole thing because of the unflinching reality of the situation that Alex is in.

But the performances are glorious. Margaret Qualley gives arguably the best performance in a Limited Series this entire year. Her Alex goes through a situation that Dickens and Kafka would consider twisted, but she somehow manages to keep her head up all the way through it. Part of it is no doubt for Maddy, but part of it is someone who desperately wants a better life for herself, and who has given everything in to stand for it. Qualley is likely to face several former Oscar winners in this race – Jessica Chastain and Julia Roberts are among the most likely competitors – but it’s very hard to watch Qualley’s work and not consider her the favorite.

An even greater revelation is Andie MacDowell as Paula. I was blindsided when I learned that MacDowell was in fact Qualley’s real life mother (though the resemblance is clear in hindsight) and even more blown away by MacDowell’s performance. MacDowell was a screen star in the 1990s but always considered a lightweight. Watching her in Maid you are drawn in to all of the chaos that Paula leaves in her wake and who actually seems to welcome it in comparison to anything resembling stability.  There is a scene in the final episode where Paula is the most open about her experiences with the abuse that she endured and how she made one final break to save her and Alex at the end of it. It’s the most realistic she’s ever seemed on the series because she seems to judge herself a failure for it. It may be the one hopeful moment between mother and daughter we have seen – and it is all the more heartbreaking because of their final encounter when it becomes clear that Paula just can’t accept it.  In their final moments, despite their discussion, everyone watching knows that they will never see each other again. Alex is finally letting go of her mother. I can’t imagine how wrenching this series was for them and both MacDowell and Qualley deserve nominations, if not Emmys for their work.

As the world knows now, if you watch the first ten seconds of a Netflix series, they count it the same as watching the entire thing. I doubt we will ever know the true number of people who watched Maid, but I have a feeling that most of the viewers would count among the former than the latter. This is not an easy series to watch and it certainly isn’t a series that lets itself to binge-watching. But for those of us who have the temerity and stamina to get all the way through it, there are rewards. Maid may not have been a story you want to see, but it is definitely a story that needs to be told. There are innumerable Alexs out there who the world ignores and who don’t have the good fortune to survive either the system or their abusive spouses.  The next time you see a bedraggled woman holding a screaming child on the floor of a train station or of the women who come to clean your luxurious houses, think of Maid.  They could all be an Alex if they only had the chance.

My score: 5 stars.

 

 

 

I Said This Season of Jeopardy Was The Year of The Woman. I Was Righter Than I KnewYesterday, after a Final Jeopardy in the category LET’S SPEAK ITALIAN that no one was able to answer correctly, Daniel Nguyen a high school math teacher from San Jose became champion with $7,199. It was, by all standards, an utterly unremarkable game except for a detail that I’m certain none of the millions of fans of Jeopardy even those who have been who have been watching for decades, might have known. Daniel was the first man to win a game on Jeopardy since April 5th, a period lasting 27 games a streak is unheard of in the shows nearly thirty-eight year history. Now admittedly, this may appear less impressive when you consider the fact that Mattea Roach won twenty three of those games – I’m reminded of a statement that after Jim and Gaylord Perry broke the all-time record for most combined wins in MLB by two brothers, a sportswriter said: “Cy Young and his sister still have them beat.” (Of course, as any Jeopardy fan worth his salt knows eventually the Perrys did win more combined games than Cy Young and his sister, but let’s not get bogged down on semantics.) I’d argue that this is even slightly more impressive than Amy Schneider’s streak of 40 wins earlier this season, because it is testament to a far greater theme that has been going on throughout Season 38 of Jeopardy. I’ve watched Jeopardy for more than thirty years and have been a scholar of the game for the past decade, and I have known for a very long time that Jeopardy has a female champion problem. There have been years where I have seen Tournaments of Champions where they have featured only a single female champion and have never seen one where there have ever been more female champions than males. These tournaments start with fifteen champions: if in any given year, the ratio of male to female is two to one, it’s kind of astonishing. While part of this does have to do with the fact that it is very difficult to win at least five games on Jeopardy as a rule, it doesn’t change the fact that for pretty much the first thirty years of the shows existence – probably a little longer, if I’m being honest – the average ratio of male champions to female ones in a Tournament of Champions was often, at best, three to one. Before Season 38 the world was outraged at the controversy over Mike Richards and his sexist behavior as producer of Jeopardy which ended up costing him. In an article last August I argued in the strongest possible terms that the show’s far greater problem was the fact that there weren’t enough women appearing in the contestant’s arena. While I won’t go so far as to say the problem has been permanently solved yet, it’s very hard not to look at the play and the champions that have won this season and not somehow think that their has been – without anyone noticing it – at least a partial rectification of this problem. In the 174 games that have been played so far this season (counting today’s) 97 have been won by a female contestant. That ratio is actually more impressive when you discount the ten games that made up the Professor’s Tournament last December. And while, yes, a great number of these wins are credited to Amy Schneider and Mattea Roach, there are quite a few female champions who have done quite well though it remains to see how many of them will qualify for the Tournament of Champions next fall. In March, four women managed the impressive feat of each winning four games: Christine Whelchel, who won $73,602; Margaret Shelton, who won $79,700; Maureen O’Neill, who won $58,100 and Jackie Kelly, who won a very impressive $115,100. Based on the qualifications for Tournaments where five games guarantee you a spot and four is questionable, it’s hard to know how many will make it: Maureen may have been eliminated when Mattea won her fifth game in early April. (The fact that Jackie’s 4 day total is greater than Tyler Rhode’s five game total of 105,901 makes her the likeliest of the four women in this scenario to qualify regardless of how the last of the season plays out.) While Christine may also end up being eliminated (her four day score is now the lowest of the champions) she managed to accomplish the notable feat of being only the fourth Jeopardy player to win her match in a Tiebreaker round. Another player, Emma Saltzberg, managed to win three games and $54,199 before being defeated by Lawrence Long, another three game winner. And some female contestants will have places in the annals of Jeopardy for other reasons. Danielle Maurer, of course, will be known as the woman who managed by $1 to dethrone Mattea Roach. Nancy Donehower has a niche a somewhat dubious distinction: she unseated eleven game champion Jonathan Fisher and the next day was defeated by Tyler Rhode, who won 5 games. And a female champion this week will no doubt be remembered for another reason: Mallory Kass, who defeated Danielle Maurer, almost casually mentioned that she wrote the first story in the best-selling series of novels of YA Fiction and subsequent CW series The 100. (Credit to her for saying that appearing on Jeopardy was far cooler than having one of the most famous series in books and television.) Has Jeopardy solved its problems with female contestants? It’s going to take a lot more work than one season to say so. But on another related note, on at least a dozen occasions so far this season, I have seen games with three female contestants. My memory for the show’s history isn’t perfect and I have no intention going through all the archives to find out one way or the other but I am fairly certainly that this, too, is nearly unprecedented in the series history. The best way to have more female champions is to have more female contestants, and the more often they can fill the stage with female players, that can only help. I am not naïve. I know all the accomplishments of women on Jeopardy don’t amount to a hill of beans compared to the problems that women are facing now and are going to face at an accelerated rate in the years to come. But in the small world of Jeopardy, a series that has been iconic for decades and has been dealing with its issues with women for almost as long, I can only count this as a step in the right direction for an institution that has had its problems with them both over its long history and recently.

Yesterday, after a Final Jeopardy in the category LET’S SPEAK ITALIAN that no one was able to answer correctly, Daniel Nguyen a high school math teacher from San Jose became champion with $7,199. It was, by all standards, an utterly unremarkable game except for a detail that I’m certain none of the millions of fans of Jeopardy even those who have been who have been watching for decades, might have known. Daniel was the first man to win a game on Jeopardy since April 5^th, a period lasting 27 games a streak is unheard of in the shows nearly thirty-eight year history.

Now admittedly, this may appear less impressive when you consider the fact that Mattea Roach won twenty three of those games – I’m reminded of a statement that after Jim and Gaylord Perry broke the all-time record for most combined wins in MLB by two brothers, a sportswriter said: “Cy Young and his sister still have them beat.” (Of course, as any Jeopardy fan worth his salt knows eventually the Perrys did win more combined games than Cy Young and his sister, but let’s not get bogged down on semantics.) I’d argue that this is even slightly more impressive than Amy Schneider’s streak of 40 wins earlier this season, because it is testament to a far greater theme that has been going on throughout Season 38 of Jeopardy.

I’ve watched Jeopardy for more than thirty years and have been a scholar of the game for the past decade, and I have known for a very long time that Jeopardy has a female champion problem.  There have been years where I have seen Tournaments of Champions where they have featured only a single female champion and have never seen one where there have ever been more female champions than males. These tournaments start with fifteen champions: if in any given year, the ratio of male to female is two to one, it’s kind of astonishing. While part of this does have to do with the fact that it is very difficult to win at least five games on Jeopardy as a rule, it doesn’t change the fact that for pretty much the first thirty years of the shows existence – probably a little longer, if I’m being honest – the average ratio of male champions to female ones in a Tournament of Champions was often, at best, three to one.

Before Season 38 the world was outraged at the controversy over Mike Richards and his sexist behavior as producer of Jeopardy which ended up costing him. In an article last August I argued in the strongest possible terms that the show’s far greater problem was the fact that there weren’t enough women appearing in the contestant’s arena. While I won’t go so far as to say the problem has been permanently solved yet, it’s very hard not to look at the play and the champions that have won this season and not somehow think that their has been – without anyone noticing it –  at least a partial rectification of this problem.

In the 174 games that have been played so far this season (counting today’s) 97 have been won by a female contestant. That ratio is actually more impressive when you discount the ten games that made up the Professor’s Tournament last December.  And while, yes, a great number of these wins are credited to Amy Schneider and Mattea Roach, there are quite a few female champions who have done quite well though it remains to see how many of them will qualify for the Tournament of Champions next fall.

In March, four women managed the impressive feat of each winning four games: Christine Whelchel, who won $73,602; Margaret Shelton, who won $79,700; Maureen O’Neill, who won $58,100 and Jackie Kelly, who won a very impressive $115,100. Based on the qualifications for Tournaments where five games guarantee you a spot and four is questionable,  it’s hard to know how many will make it: Maureen may have been eliminated when Mattea won her fifth game in early April. (The fact that Jackie’s 4 day total is greater than Tyler Rhode’s five game total of 105,901 makes her the likeliest of the four women in this scenario to qualify regardless of how the last of the season plays out.) While Christine may also end up being eliminated (her four day score is now the lowest of the champions) she managed to accomplish the notable feat of being only the fourth Jeopardy player to win her match in a Tiebreaker round. 

Another player, Emma Saltzberg, managed to win three games and $54,199 before being defeated by Lawrence Long, another three game winner. And some female contestants will have places in the annals of Jeopardy for other reasons. Danielle Maurer, of course, will be known as the woman who managed by $1 to dethrone Mattea Roach. Nancy Donehower has a niche a somewhat dubious distinction: she unseated eleven game champion Jonathan Fisher and the next day was defeated by Tyler Rhode, who won 5 games.  And a female champion this week will no doubt be remembered for another reason: Mallory Kass, who defeated Danielle Maurer, almost casually mentioned that she wrote the first story in the best-selling series of novels of YA Fiction and subsequent CW series The 100. (Credit to her for saying that appearing on Jeopardy was far cooler than having one of the most famous series in books and television.)

Has Jeopardy solved its problems with female contestants? It’s going to take a lot more work than one season to say so. But on another related note, on at least a dozen occasions so far this season, I have seen games with three female contestants. My memory for the show’s history isn’t perfect and I have no intention going through all the archives to find out one way or the other but I am fairly certainly that this, too, is nearly unprecedented in the series history. The best way to have more female champions is to have more female contestants, and the more often they can fill the stage with female players, that can only help.

I am not naïve. I know all the accomplishments of women on Jeopardy don’t amount to a hill of beans compared to the problems that women are facing now and are going to face at an accelerated rate in the years to come. But in the small world of Jeopardy, a series that has been iconic for decades and has been dealing with its issues with women for almost as long, I can only count this as a step in the right direction for an institution that has had its problems with them both over its long history and recently.

 

An Angry Family Doing The Best They Can: Breeders Returns for Season 3

 

One of the quieter pleasures I enjoyed last year was the FX presentation of Breeders, a dry and very brittle comedy about a middle class family trying to raise two very problematic children. Martin Freeman and Daisy Haggard, two of the subtly greatest actors on television in the past decade, gave exceptionally funny and increasingly angry performances as Paul and Ally, two fortyish parents whose marriage and relationship with their son, Luke began to unravel under the force of Paul’s anger and need for control.

In Season 2, Ally and Paul tried to have another child despite Ally’s desires not too. She flirted with a colleague at work, who kissed her which caused them to separate and they kept having increasing problems with Luke’s anxiety which led to panic attacks that Paul refused to tolerate until Luke hit him in the season finale. Realizing the extent of the problems, Paul moved into the house of a honeymooning friend.

As Season 3 opens, the situation continues to get worse to some degree. In the first episode, Paul spies on his family playing a game and having fun in the house, and is increasingly angry at being ‘held hostage’ by his son’s demands.  Ava, the ‘good child’ is just as frustrated as Paul at the situation, and frankly is tired of being ‘the quiet one’. There are signs that she is starting to fragment as well: in the second episode, she has her period and doesn’t want to disturb Ally about it. When her mother goes to the chemist, she basically steals an entire row of tampons and confines to a church friend rather than her mother.

Ally has been the source of the strength in the family but being the only parent is starting to wear her down. In the second episode, she learns that the office in Berlin has gone bankrupt and that she might well lose her job because she is being blamed for it. Worse, after being diagnosed with menopause last season, her holistic gel the only thing that works to treat it is now in a government shortage and it’ll be a year until more becomes unavailable. (Her reaction is priceless: “Can I get some on the Dark Web?” It’s nearly as funny watching the chemist’s reaction to this.)  At her core, she’s always been as angry as Paul; will this be the season her darkness comes out?

Paul, by contrast, actually seems to be improving a little in the second episode. He’s met a kind neighbor, seems to rejoice to his iPad while making breakfast (a contrast to the frenzied scene at home) and is in such a good position at work, that he plays hooky with a friend to see a film that afterward both admit they didn’t understand and want to see Paddington next time. When Ally frantically calls Paul to help Luke through a panic attack, they go to a museum together and in contrast to a heated exchange in the premiere are perfectly civil to each other. Luke confides that he’s nervous about a history assignment the next day and Paul offers to bail him out. Luke says he’s all right, but the next day when Paul comes to tells him about ‘Nana June’, he has absolutely no problem skipping out on the assignment. That night, they have an even more cordial conversation and Luke says he has no problem with his dad coming home. The question is how long will this détente last?

Breeders didn’t make my top ten list for 2021, but it was still one of my favorite series and I was delighted when the HCA in their initial nominations for Television series nominated the show, Freeman and Haggard for awards in the Best Comedy Series.  It is not as revolutionary as Atlanta was and currently is, nor as zany as What we Do in the Shadows but in its own way, it’s as funny and more human. Last season I compared it to the now departed Better Things and I believe the comparison still holds up –  Paul and Ally are involved in very similar problems with their children that Sam Fox was, and have just as tricky parental situations. Paul’s parents aren’t nearly as impossible to deal with as Phil was on Better Things – neither of them had any problem moving out of their house last season as they got older – but they can often be just as disconnected from reality. At one point when Paul tries to have a conversation with them, his mother brings up ‘the parable of the Three Little Pigs’, which leads to a hysterical conversation between the three about the story is not a parable, that Jesus didn’t eat pork and leads to a connection with the Billy Goats Gruff, which is spinning in Paul’s head when he meets with Ally the next day. In the second episode, they visit him with tinned goods on the premise of wanting to see how he’s holding up, and then confess they want to live with him in his house because their managed care facility is like a ‘prison’, which leads to another hysterical digression on bunk beds. You get the feeling that Paul agrees just so he doesn’t have hear any more of this. What will the situation be like when Ally’s mother gets back from her honeymoon?”

FX is in the middle of having some of the best comedy series in recent history running on its network. While it is more than likely that the more obviously brilliant series like Atlanta and Shadows will dominate the nomination this July, Better Things and Breeders are just as deserving. I don’t know how long Breeders will run on FX (British series have a history of running for far shorter periods than American ones) but I will watch the quietly hysterical work of Freeman and Haggard for as long as they want to keep showing us.  Maybe the series will end when the children finally grow up and loose some of their baggage. Then again, parents know that never truly happens.

My score: 4.5 stars.

Why John Oliver Will Always Be Better Than Bill Maher

 

I was planning to write yet another article today excoriating some of more of Bill Maher’s recent actions on his last two shows and his most recent comedy special. But at this point, you’re no doubt as tired as I am about my writing to complain how tired and unfunny he is and even given his recent remarks, I’m not sure there’s anything new to say.

So I’ve decided to try something a bit different. A couple of weeks ago I raved about Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, a series I have more or less watched every episode of since its debut in 2014. The more I watch Oliver’s show and contrast with what I see of Maher, the more I see the fundamental difference in their philosophies of both comedy, democracy and the world at large. And since there is a gaping chasm in their approaches to the world, I thought it might be to try and explain why I – and certainly the Emmy voters – infinitely prefer Oliver to Maher.

Both have certain commonalities. Both started their careers as stand-up comedians, both had their breakthroughs on Comedy Central – Maher on Politically Incorrect; John Oliver on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart – and both run weekly late night comedy series on HBO. But the similarities end there.  Real Time is twice as long as Oliver’s show involves more discussion of events and is a mix of a panel and more traditional interview series. Last Week Tonight is closer to a comedy series that will look current events and then focus on a larger story for the bulk of the episode.

The fundamental difference between Oliver and Maher is scope. Oliver has always believed that his series should fundamentally cover global issues. He has devoted episodes to Belarus, Venezuela, Mexico and The Philippines, even if there is no clear American connection to any of it. He has devoted multiple shows to France, Great Britain and China, each time taking a different look at things. During the Trump Presidency, he may have been the only late night show who would often give what that happened that week the barest amount of attention, even during the impeachment.

Maher, by contrast, will almost only deal with America and almost all of his focus is on that week’s politics which he only blames on Republicans. And while Oliver will often admonish his own series by admitting his show is a depressing lecture, much of Maher’s comedy actually is depressing lectures – to his audience and to his panel usually about the same themes he’s been spouting for twenty years. Maher was joked about George W. Bush being unable to find Iraq on a map. I find it difficult to believe that before this year Maher could find Ukraine on a map, much less know why the situation might be dire there soon.

There is a different approach to their styles of comedies that is at least partly due to their nationalities. Oliver is British, and constantly fills his routine with self-deprecating remarks about the nature of his series, his appearance and the fact that people mock him for his appearance. But his demeanor, which remains calm even when he is exasperated at everything, makes every go down smoothly. He never talks down to his audience and while he gets frustrated with the state of the world, he never forgets he’s there primarily to entertain as well as inform.

Maher’s attitude is that of the arrogant American frat boy who just knows more than the experts do. Everyone is wrong in his eyes – Democrats, Republicans, women, African-Americans, even his own panelists. He alone is correct, and the fact that he has berated Americans for their self-righteousness is an irony he is incapable of seeing.  Oliver is painfully self-aware at times –  whenever he talks about American racism or imperialism, he knows that he is coming from a place where the pot is calling the kettle black. Maher is only self-aware in the sense that he thinks his self alone is aware.

Oliver does homework whenever he does a piece – he will seek out news footage from every conceivable source. Not just cable news or local news, but foreign correspondence and public news. Everything seems planned out on Last Week Tonight and while that should be tedious, Oliver and his writers have a way of making it entertaining. Maher’s show should be more spontaneous – his shows are recording live and with panelists and interviews you can’t predict what people will say – but you always get the feeling that Maher is to trying to micromanage every single laugh and applause line on his show. Maher needs to be at the center of his series; Oliver only hosts his show.

But perhaps the biggest contrast between the two is their approach to government.  Oliver will devote individual shows to some of the largest systemic issues – flaws in the criminal justice system, problems with national health care, immigration reform and the problems with law enforcement.  And usually he expresses frustration with both parties – Republicans for taking a draconian measure to so much of it, but just as frequently Democrats for being willing to go along with it.

Maher on the other hand has never viewed any of these things problems so much as wedge issues –  anything that might hinder African-Americans, women, LGBTQ+ or Latinos – as something that will keep white working class voters from voting Democratic in elections. Oliver has on at least one occasion pointed out that most of those white working class voters haven’t voting for Democrats in more than half a century. Maher either doesn’t know that or just as likely doesn’t care.

Oliver believes that is the job of the government to do something to solve all of the problems that are plaguing America. Maher is just as adamant that is not government’s job to do that because they will only screw it up. The only reason Democrats should win election is to stop Republicans from winning because they will make things worse. Oliver has spent much of Last Week advocating for progressive candidates because he believes America needs to follow their policies. He repeatedly has castigated Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema for obstructing the flow of democracy. Maher has just as often considered them the voice of the people – by which he means himself.  Oliver has been a frequent critic of Joe Biden, both before and during his campaign for the Presidency, and just as harshly during it. Maher advocated for Biden a full year before he ran, I suspect only because he wanted to beat Trump.

I think the clearest difference between Oliver and Maher’s political philosophy could be illustrated in how they end their shows every week. After showing how badly a particularly system is broken, Oliver will explain what needs to be done to fix it and to an extent what his audience can do to help fix it. He understands that the system is frustrating and how badly it is broken – on last night’s episode, he expressed a great deal of sympathy and empathy for those same voters – but for all his pessimistic approach, Oliver wants to believe that the people can change things. He will show evidence from around the world that change is possible. It may not last long, but it can be done if we do the work. One could see Oliver as believing in the John Locke school of thought: that man is basically good and deserve the chance to right things.

Maher, as I have mentioned before, is fundamentally a believer in Thomas Hobbes and that is illustrated in how he ends the show with ‘New Rules’. I have no doubt his fans view his comic approach to how society should run as hysterical. To me, as the years have gone by, it indicates a far darker part of his philosophy. Hobbes believed that man was essentially evil, and the absolute sovereignty was the way to go. ‘New Rules’ indicate how Maher’s believes man in every way is institutionally flawed and that if he alone were in charge, this is how things would be.

This may sound like I’m overreaching, but keep in mind this is a man who fairly recently advocated the strengths of China as a nationality over the US. Sure, China was a dictator and human rights abuser, but they could sure get things done when they didn’t have to bother with democracy. Oliver has constantly demonstrated how horrific China’s policies are and what a danger they are to the free world. To Maher, who doesn’t see nuance and certainly doesn’t have it in his comedy that wouldn’t change his opinion. Maher’s approach to all the people that are suffering because of the problems Oliver talks about is –  vote Democratic or things will get worse. And if things do get worse for them, he’ll shrug and say: “Stop complaining about bad things are for you so I can go on making my living complaining about bad things are for me.”

Finally there’s the fact that Oliver spends at least some of his series trying to change things and is willing to do things. Even in his actions for entertainment, Oliver is willing to make donations to charitable organization, food banks and organizations that fight diseases. Maher has spent his entire career doing nothing for anything or anyone except the legalization of marijuana.

The question: “What do you stand for?” may be one we are all tired of hearing, but its pretty clear what Oliver stands for. He advocates for issues, he believes in the people and he’s willing to use his platform to try and change things. Maher, as we have seen in his career as a comedian, not only doesn’t advocate for change, he openly mocks and berates those who make any effort to. This is keeping with the Hobbesian view that life is supposed to be miserable and if you try to feel better during it, you’re not doing it right. (Witness his recent online encounter with Bella Thorne where he mocked her for going to therapy.)

Perhaps that is at least part of the reason Oliver has won five consecutive Emmys and Maher has one of the longest streaks of going winless in history.  Maher wants to be part of the system but he has spent his entire career berating it and the world around it. Oliver will mock it as much as the next comedian but he does it gently. Both men have no problem biting the hands that feeds them. But there’s a difference between a nip and constantly ripping off the flesh. Both men agree we live in dark times that are only getting darker. But Oliver keeps trying to light a candle, even against gale force winds. Maher not only just keeps cursing the darkness, he’ll try to help blow out the candle.