Yellowjackets and Lost Have More In Common Than The Obvious: A Comparison of the Links Between the Major Characters Of Both Series

 

 

Warning: Spoilers for Yellowjackets and Lost, though in the latter they are both related to character arcs then the overarching story of the series.

 

Almost since the debut of Yellowjackets in the fall of 2021, the comparisons to Lost have been inevitable and not undeserved. Both series, after all, do involve survivors of a plane crash being stranded in an unfamiliar and bizarre setting which involve mysterious phenomena that end up driving the survivors. Both involve parallel timelines; in the case of Yellowjackets in the aftermath of the plane crash and the survivors 25 years later.  And its hard to think of a series since Lost in which the viewers have been trying to speculate so hard as to the mysteries that are unfolding in the past and how they have affected everybody in the future. There are also a fair amount of hallucinations, cultural references, and trying to unfold why some characters are not in the present.

Having watched the series for the first season and a half, I have to say that while Lost is a clear ancestor text for the writers of Yellowjackets, one could just as easily see references from almost every other mythology based series in the past thirty years. There is a clear link to Twin Peaks, both in the inability to peg down the style of the series (much of what we see in the present does bear a striking resemblance to David Lynch), the survivors are stranded in the woods, where the residents of Twin Peaks knew evil was present, there’s clearly a malevolent presence that is guiding them and it doesn’t take much contortion to see that the survivors are hiding out in a lodge, albeit a real one. There are subtler links to The Leftovers (Damon Lindelof’s follow-up series): a major traumatic event has left great emotional scars on a group of people and to survive, many turn to a cult. (Having seen the outfits that Lottie’s group wears in the present day, I am struck by the similarities to the garbs worn by the Guilty Remnant, the major force of darkness in the first two seasons of the show.) And the fact that this is a female driven series that has to deal with women trying to cope with the supernatural does remind one of Buffy The Vampire Slayer (the crash actually takes place the year just before the series premiered on the WB)

But since I’ve spent many years watching and rewatching Lost, I believe that the relationship between that series and Yellowjackets is by far the greatest parallel, and not merely in the similarities I pointed out in the opening. I am now fairly certain that all of the female survivors who exist in both the present and the past are clearly modeled on key characteristics of the major characters on Lost.  Furthermore with one exception, none of the characters are modeled on the female regulars on Lost but amalgams of the male characters.  This is almost certainly by design: even the most adamant devotees of Lost will acknowledge that one of the bigger weaknesses of the series was that very few of the female characters were fully developed or were far more often killed off before they realize their potential. I am not saying that the writers of Yellowjackets created the series as an antidote to that earlier show’s failings, but it is an interesting concept to consider.

So as the series takes a one-week hiatus, I think now would be an excellent time to compare the leading female regulars we have met so far with what I believe are their Lost equivalents. Incidentally, I am indebted in part by the excellent work of Nikki Stafford’s Finding Lost series. Throughout her volume she would frequently analyze works of literature that the characters were reading or were referenced in the series.  She would try to draw to parallels between some of the characters in these books and the characters on the show.  In the final volume, she spent much of each individual episode going into great detail of every character we had met during the course of the series and explaining how they changed over the course of the show – or how they hadn’t.

(For the purposes of this article I am excluding the character of Van, played in the past by Liv Hewson and Lauren Ambrose as an adult. Because we only fully became aware of Van as a grown-up recently, I don’t think I know enough to draw a parallel. That said, there are clear character links already. She bares major scars on her face, much like Locke had after the plane crash, she is addicted to drugs like Charlie and Jack were, and her clear link to Taissa in both the past and the present, well, you can’t help remember how Desmond consider Penny his constant in that sense.)

Taissa: Jasmin Savoy Brown as a teenager, Tawny Cypress as an Adult

This will either enrage or fascinate some people, but right now I think the character on Lost that Taissa parallels the most is Jack Shephard. Fans of both series might be perplexed by this: an African-American power lesbian is being compared to the white male protagonist on Lost? (Maybe this is a sign of progress.)

But the parallels are obvious when you think about them. In the past Taissa is as alpha as Jack was and just as much a Type-A personality. We see her fundamentally taking the role of leadership in the past and is utterly resistant to the idea that there is anything mystical going on even as the darkness continues to get deeper.  She clearly has no problem withholding information from her loved ones and this goes so far as to her actions in the present. When she decided to run for State Senate, she hired a reporter to spy on her colleagues to make sure they would not betray her because she did not trust any of them with her secrets. One can only remember Jack deciding to hold the key to the gun case for much of Season 1 because he was the only one he trusted with them.

More to the point, Tai neither accepts help nor blame for anything that is going wrong in her life and that includes admitting her inner darkness. There is something very dark within her personality that may link her directly to what is happening in the woods, but she refuses to tell either her wife or even acknowledge to Van what is happening when she goes to see her for the first time. It is clear that she is utterly self-destructive when it comes to her relationships (Jack did so in both his marriage to Sarah and his engagement to Kate) and when she begins to see clear links to her crash, her fundamental reaction is not unlike Jack’s utter denial and avoiding the subject. Jack became addicted to painkillers to deal with the fact he was seeing his dead father in the present; Tai reacts to the fact that she is sleepwalking and destructive by drinking coffee and doing everything in her power to stay awake. In neither case do their methods work, and indeed in both cases, an automobile crash reveals just how broken they truly are.

Tai refuses to accept help and its pretty clear she has a very direct link to what happened both in the past and what is happening now. Does that mean, like Jack, she will be the center of this story?

 

Misty: Samantha Hanratty as a teenager; Christina Ricci as an Adult

Initially I was inclined to draw a parallel between Misty and John Locke, the character who knew the most about survivor and was always excluded from the group until the end. Having seen last night’s episode, it’s pretty clear I’ve misread this: Misty is clearly modeled on Ben Linus. Stay with me.

We’ve seen from the beginning of the series that Misty is a very good manipulator of people and has always been watching the rest of the survivors. She has also been very good at placing cameras and recording devices, is good at holding people prisoner and as we learned in last night’s episode, she’s been keeping tabs on the survivors since they returned to civilization. All of this fundamentally tracks with Ben Linus, as well as the fact that she’s more than skilled at putting up fake identities.

Last night’s episode, however, revealed the clearest link. Misty spent much of her life pre-crash the class geek, utterly unloved and unpopular until the crash when all of her information became useful for survival. We learned in the second episode that she discovered the black box and then destroyed because she didn’t want to let go of that feeling. During the flashbacks of Season 2, she had been becoming friends with a similar outcast Kristal, who she clearly was a kindred spirit too and clearly did not have any friends before the crash. When they were telling each other secrets, Misty decided she could trust Kristal enough to tell her that she had destroyed the black box and Kristin immediately turned on her. An enraged Misty threatened to kill her – and a terrified Kristin fell to her death. Misty was repentant – but then immediately returned to the cabin and told everyone else that Kristin had disappeared.

We can all recognize the kind of manipulation that Ben Linus was capable of throughout his entire life as well as the fact that he continuously justified his decisions no matter how ruthless or brutal they were for ‘the good of the island’. These manipulations continued even after he left the island and as we saw in the later seasons, he used similar manipulations to get the Oceanic 6 together so that he could return to the island. Throughout Misty has been arguing that she is doing everything that she can protect them, but she seems to be under the delusion that she is doing so because they are friends when in fact the other survivors want nothing to do with her in the present, no matter how useful the information she might have. I’m beginning to think that at some point, Misty’s secret will become public knowledge to the rest of the Yellowjackets, because it would explain both why they are so hostile to her in the present and why she is so determined to help them even if they don’t want to be helped.  (Misty, there’s no Hallmark card that says: “I’m sorry I made sure you had to eat one of your teammates.”)

There’s also the fact that Misty has drugged people in order to get what she wants, has no problem created complete lies and false personas and can easily clean up after a murder. Oh, her chore in the past was to clean out the toilet.  If you remember Lost Ben’s job in the Dharma Initiative was essentially a janitor. And since we know by now you can’t take any character Ricci plays any more than Michael Emersons at face value...

 

Natalie: Sophie Thatcher as a teenager, Juliette Lewis as an adult

In an earlier column I compared Natalie to Sawyer, and nothing I have seen in the last three weeks fundamentally has changed that opinion. Admittedly, there is the critical difference that Natalie at least in the past seems to care about someone – Travis – there’s just as much indication that it’s a self-destructive relationship. We actually got proof of that in one of the last moments of last night’s episodes: Natalie had hooked up with Travis, who had been clean and in a healthy relationship. Natalie broke that apart just because that’s the kind of person she is – and you can pretty much see a through line involving the cons Sawyer pulled on women and leaving more than broken hearts behind.

Like Sawyer, Natalie comes from a traumatic family situation – her father was abusive, she killed him defending her mother and her mother never forgave her. Natalie seems to be driven by rage from her past and always needs to find a reason to blame someone for her problems. She does abuse alcohol and other substances, so there is clearly a reference to Charlie here but that’s more a general one than anything else. Charlie was driven by a need to protect; Natalie’s drive is one of rage against the world.

She has been in and out of rehab many times before this, and its clear from the pilot the latest stint did no good. Currently she seems determined to stay sober, but there’s clearly a suicidal streak in her. At the end of the first season, Lottie’s cult saved her from killing herself and she refused to acknowledge any thanks for it when she was called on it. She was determined to bring Lottie down, and when she learned that everyone knew the truth, it broke her in a way we just haven’t seen in the series before. One is reminded of how Sawyer, after finally getting his revenge, was utterly broken in a way we’d never seen.

There’s also the fact that, like Sawyer, Natalie will do anything in her power to drive people away from her. When Misty finally managed to find the compound where she was being kept, Natalie’s immediate reaction was to tell her to get lost. Like Sawyer, there’s a part of her that doesn’t want to be saved.

 

Lottie: Courtney Eaton as a teenager, Simone Kissell as an adult:

It’s now clear in  a way it wasn’t when I first reviewed the series that it is Lottie who is the John Locke of this series, with a healthy mix of Eko, the other major religious figure on Lost, mixed in.

To be clear, Lottie is not the person responsible for them staying in the wilderness as long as they did, but in a sense she is the disciple of the mystic powers that are surrounding them. She also clearly has the ability to be the hunter that Locke was, as we saw when she managed to kill a bear in the season finale. But the clearest parallel is her certainty both in a higher power and that is protecting them in the wilderness.  She clearly has a communion with it in a way that Locke and Eko both had (she’s had vision that were common to both characters throughout the series) and she has a calm certainty about things that unsettle many people, even when they turn out to be true. In the season premiere, she tried to assure Travis that his teenage brother who’d been missing for months was alive and in last week’s episode, he was. (There may be a parallel between Javi and the eventual fate of Sayid; it’s clear that whatever happened to Javi, he ‘came back wrong’)

People accused Lottie of being crazy and its worth noting that when she returned to civilization she underwent electroshock therapy and was found clinically insane. She has now maintained a position of the leader of a ‘self-improvement group’ that is essentially a cult.  (I mentioned in my first review that every character is in a sense trapped in the person they were at the time of the crash; Lottie is following that model.) But unlike Locke and Eko, who were convinced that the island was fundamentally beautiful and that they were being driven by a force of good, Lottie’s visions are forcing to realize that there is clearly a greater evil guiding them and it terrifies her in a way we never saw either character on the show. It’s not yet clear what forces are guiding Lottie’s visions, but for those of us who remember the character of John Locke, he spent his entire time on the island convinced he was being led by a force of good. It was not until the final season that we learned that a force of evil had been doing all that work, all for the purposes of using him to commit an act of true destruction.

 

Shauna:  Sophie Nelisse as a Teen, Melanie Lynskey as an adult

Alone among the major characters Shauna does not have a single parallel among the characters of Lost. However, she seems to be built on an amalgam of them.

The clearest parallel is Claire, at least when it comes to the past. Like her, when she got on the plane she was pregnant and she had to give birth in the wilderness. We don’t know yet what happened to the baby (we’re going to find out soon) but it’s looking like nothing good will come of it. There’s also the fact that she clearly has a link to the dead, much like Hurley did – she spent much of the first two episodes talking to the dead Jackie. (By the way, any of you remember that awful joke Ricky Gervais made at the 2011 Golden Globes about how he thought Lost ended? In that sense, he might be more accurate here.)

But I think the clearest link between Shauna is Kate. Like Kate, Shauna was skilled at deception at an early age –  Jackie didn’t know until after the crash Shauna had been sleeping with her boyfriend. Shauna is clearly more skilled at deception than Kate ever was – as we all know Kate was never a very good liar.  And as we saw at the end of Season 1, Shauna is now a murderer and will soon have to deal the police.

Perhaps the clearest link between Shauna and Kate is the parallel between how the two were drawn between the good and evil parts of the nature. In the case of Kate, that was the love triangle between her, Jack and Sawyer.  Jack was the part of her she wanted to be good enough for; Sawyer was the part of her that was the kindred spirit. For Shauna, it’s more complicated than that. She wants to be the model of the good suburban housewife, but there is a part of her that is drawn to deception and violence. It’s the part of her that cheated on her husband even though there was no evidence of it. It’s the part of her that had no problem spying on her daughter. It’s the part of her that beat up the man who carjacked her and her husband and held a gun to the man who was trying to fence it. In Shauna’s case, however, she is excited by the thrill of violence in a way that Kate never was, though like Kate, she had no problem lying just for the sake of lying.

Kate’s character was heavily criticized in the final seasons of Lost, perhaps because she was trying to follow a moral center while everyone around her was acting crazily. Somehow I don’t see Shauna doing that her: she lost her moral center in the wilderness and its never coming back. The question is, can she find something to redeem her?

 

These parallels are, at this point, mere theorization and it remains to be seen if they will follow through the remainder of Yellowjackets’ run. However, I think that these are clearly influences when it comes to the writer’s decisions as to when they started this series.

However, before I close this article, a word of warning to the writers. Yellowjackets is clearly a great series already. You’ve already demonstrated that you’re not taking fans theories as suggestions and that you have a better grip on what a mythology series may be than Lost did. You might even have an idea of what the ending is right now. Just one minor warning. However you choose to end Yellowjackets, don’t close the series with the end credits over the wreckage of the plane. It will use up all the goodwill you’ve been building. (For those of you who aren’t Lost fans, ‘it’s an inside joke’. Those of you who are Lost fans, you know why I put that last part in quotes.)

Constant Reader Book of the Month April 2023: Tell Me No Lies by Andrea Contos

 

I made the mistake of starting Tell Me No Lies at roughly 1:30 AM. When I looked up an hour had gone by. I knew I had to get some sleep but I was loathe to stop reading even for as much as a night.

Even when I devour a book at a rapid pace, it still takes me anywhere from ten days to two weeks to get through a book. I think I finished Tell Me No Lies in five days, give or take. This did not so much have to do with the plot or the prose (though both are superb) but because I kept turning pages because I kept hoping that I could find some way to comprehend the character of Nora Linden, the character who is the center of the story and who puts everything in motion. I was unsatisfied in that regard when the novel ended, perhaps because I’ve never encountered a character truly like Nora in all my years of reading fiction. I’ve run into a few version of her in TV and the movies but we never understood why they did what they did. Maybe in Nora’s case it’s because she doesn’t understand herself.

The plot involves the story of the Linden sisters, Nora and Sophie. The story is split between Nora and Sophie’s retelling of events: Nora is giving a ‘confession’ of what happened to her in the past; Sophie is dealing with them in the present. The sisters were close growing up, but then Nora committed an action that led to their parents divorcing and Sophie has never forgiven her. Both of them are separately trying to find their ways out of the small town they live in: Nora is determined to use her mind to get her to Brown; Sophie is determined to get out because of her dancing, mainly through a summer intensive. Sophie’s boyfriend Garrett disappeared one night with Nora. The night that happened, Sophie lied to protect her sister. Garrett has been missing ever since and Sophie is convinced Nora knows what happened. She’s right.

That’s enough of the plot. Nora Linden is unlike any teenage character I’ve read about in YA fiction or indeed any fiction. There is something clearly missing from her that all of us don’t even think about twice. Sophie says at one point that people are fascinated by her superpower: Nora doesn’t need anyone. She’s closest to getting her sister than anyone, but she misses the point: Nora doesn’t want anyone or anything.

Nora is clearly a great student with high academic achievements. But its clear from the beginning that’s the only thing she’s good it. She can not comprehend social norms. She doesn’t go to party, doesn’t understand the draw of sporting events, can’t comprehend why human connections are important. She has friends but they are only on her terms. Adam, who is practically her brother, clearly loves her but she doesn’t think its worth the effort to love him because she thinks love is a waster. She loves Sophie but her love takes the form of protecting her rather than telling her so. Nora can not comprehend other people and does not think she needs to make the effort.

Some might want to say Nora’s on the spectrum. That’s not even close. Nora has a code of behavior which she lives by and can not comprehend why anyone else wouldn’t. Everything is set into motion because Nora and Garrett have been accused of cheating. Nora refuses to accept the punishment and is puzzled when Garrett does not raise an objection. She sees he is nervous and is determined to learn every one of Garrett’s secrets. Nora has a judgment of a moral code that everyone else should follow but feels no scruples in violating it when it pleases her. She is considers trustworthy by the principal, but the minute she is left alone in his office she chooses to hack into his computer. According to her, it was foolish of him. Nora has broken the bond between her and Sophie because she thinks the world should have her and not him. As she becomes aware that Garrett – and many other students – are engaged in a complex cheating ring, she is infuriated not so much because they are cheating but because they make her hard work look bad. At one point she is told by Garrett that Sophie is part of this cheating ring and she refuses to believe because Sophie would never cheat. Fifty pages earlier, Sophie has learned of this ring and her first reaction is why no one told her about it.

Nora spends the entire novel degrading all of the villainous men and women she meets in it for being unthinking and selfish. She seems entirely unaware that she is exactly like them. Late in the novel we learn that the Linden’s divorce occurred as a result of her father’s infidelity. Nora learned about it, and its never clear as to whether her mother knew about and let nothing happen. Nora seems bothered by it because her father was spending money on gifts to his mistress and more importantly, draining Nora’s college fund. She sets a plan in motion where she calls her parents and tells them that Sophie is missing just so she can expose her father’s lies to her mother. It’s clear even the infidelity and the lies didn’t matter as much as the fact that her father got in the way of ‘the Plan’.

She genuinely doesn’t seem to comprehend why Sophie blames her so much for breaking up their family. At one point she argues whether the ends justify the means, which is ironic because Nora doesn’t even have her own ends. At one point she actually tells us that she doesn’t believe in finish lines. Her plan seems determined on getting into Brown. She doesn’t seem to have any goals aside from that, besides a vague desire to get rich. At one point the most emotion she reveals is that she doesn’t seem to understand who she is without her plan.

Sophie is damaged much the same way Nora is but I think at the end of the day she is far healthier emotionally then her sister. She has friends she is close to; she is capable of love and eventually she begins to follow the path to figure out the truth behind what Garrett and Nora were up to. Her bigger problem is the enormous inferiority complex that her family has burdened her with. She has a clear memory of showing her parents her report card in second grade and hearing her father say: “Well, at least she can dance.” She has clung to Nora in a way since then but she can’t comprehend why her sister can’t at least pretend to say something comforting or warm. In a sense everything Sophie does in the novel is because of the path that Nora has laid down for her, which Nora thinks is a way to show how much she loves her sister, by proving that she is stronger and smarter than she thinks.

In a way that’s comforting. The problem is Nora genuinely seems to think that atones for everything she has done as a result. Nora’s actions are clearly guided by some moral certainty – at one point a friend of hers actually says: “Failure is not an option for Nora Linden.” Nora no doubts takes it without irony. The problem is Nora’s actions throughout the story are so locked on course that a certain point you realize that the best explanation for her behavior is that she is a sociopath. Near the end of the novel (I won’t reveal under what conditions exactly) someone tells her that she has done everything she does to prove “how fucking superior you are…how you’re so goddamn noble and the rest of us are liars and cheaters?” This causes Nora to collapse emotionally for the first time in the novel because she knows he isn’t wrong.

Nora frames her narrative as a ‘confession’ but it is only in the legal sense of the word. She is not penitent nor does she feel truly unhappy about the manipulations she has done and the lives she has laid waste to. As a result of her actions to this point three people have died, one by accident and two more or less by her hand. (Again the reader should learn who they are by herself.) The most she says in the final statement is: “I’m not proud of those things. I don’t regret them either.” And even when she finally reveals the truth about her actions, her regrets are solely limited to Sophie. There is not even a trace of sympathy for her mother in regards to the horror show she has put her through over the last several months. Her final actions show that she thinks that only her sister deserves to know the truth. If she considers her mother at all, she only does so by deciding to leave that burden on her – and given everything she’s already put her sister through, I find that cruel in itself.

I have not truly revealed most of the plot in Tell Me No Lies. I don’t think I will. Much of the story is truly thrilling in the parallel investigations that both Nora and Sophie end up taking, particularly because Nora while clearly a genius has no understanding of human impulses or behavior and as a result she barely avoids death several times in the novel. Her desires to keep her secrets or trust anyone repeatedly lead her into deeper danger and an innocent woman dies as a result of it. Sophie is not nearly as smart as her sister, but because of her ability to get a clear read on people – and ironically because she is too emotional – she has a far better acuity when it comes to the people she can’t trust. Nora is also clearly unable to read the people she considers dangerous and keeps making the same mistakes. Because Sophie is more capable of emotional connections, she has someone she can trust when she realizes the truth and comes up with a plan.

At the end of the day, even had none of the events that transpired in Tell Me No Lies taken place, Sophie would have been far more likely to have a happier and healthier future than Nora ever could. Whether or not Sophie became a successful dancer, I think she had far more emotional capabilities than Nora ever did, and is far more willing to love and trust people that Nora ever could. The final page of the novel reveals that Sophie has come to emotionally grow and change at a level we ever saw Nora of in the entire novel.

As for Nora’s future, I don’t think even if she’d made into Brown she would have been a success. She has no understanding of people, no ability to handle social functions, no true understanding of what it means to love someone in a way that really matters. Everything that happens in the novel tells me that despite all of the consequences the biggest sign of growth she’s managed to do is to ‘let go of high school and college for a while.” The thing is, even after everything that has happened her actions demonstrate that she is locked into the idea that the ends still do justify the means. I can only think of two characters in fiction that have that kind of thinking – and neither of them are comforting role models for Nora.

One is Jack Bauer. The other is Dexter Morgan. The reader can decide at the end which is more likely for Nora  but viewers of either show know neither had a happy ending.

 

 

Lost Rewatch: Abandoned

 

Perhaps  because I only started watching Lost in reruns or because I never pay any attention to message boards (then or now) I never understood the depth of the contempt most fans of the series felt towards Shannon during the first season. She was never one of my favorite characters during the first season and she certainly didn’t go out of her way to endear herself to me but by the end of Season 1, I had more sympathy for her than most fans of the series. When Boone died near the end of the season, I thought that this was a decision by the writers to give Shannon to grow as a character – absent Boone, maybe she mature on her own. She had barely been visible during the opening episodes but neither had Claire or Sun, and I was inclined to think as the season went on, she too would be given a chance to move forward. She’d seen Walt in the woods and that seemed to imply a connection between them that might have lead to Michael being reunited with his son.

Most of Abandoned seems to make this a direct implication: it’s the first episode in which Shannon is the central focus, we learn her backstory and develop a sympathetic portrayal of her and we come away with a clear explanation of what made her what she was on the island and in a sense what poisoned her relationship with Boone. Her relationship with Sayid is taken to the next level and though they spend most of the episode at loggerheads near the end we see a true connection between them and the fact that they both see Walt seems to indicate that there is something deeper at play.

What we don’t realize until the very last moments of the episode is that this has been all misdirection. We were told in no uncertain terms that one of the castaways was going to die in this episode but until the shocking conclusion, the writers very clearly seem to be pointing that it will be Sawyer. Indeed, given how the episode ends you wonder if the writers are going to be even more cruel and kill off two regulars in the space of an episode. (They will be that cruel but not yet.)

Sadly what happens to Shannon in this episode is part of a trend that will be carried out until the end of Season Five. At least once a season from this point forward, a major character will end up getting killed off in an episode where they are the central focus of it. You have to give credit to Lost’s writers though; this is a trick that they will be able to keep pulling off and it will never lose any of its power. Indeed, it makes the death in the episode all the more poignant because we’ve finally learned a vital secret of what makes the character tick and then BANG, the writers pull the rug out from under us and everybody else.

Shannon’s flashback is powerful because we see a completely different person from the woman we see on the island. This is a sweet eighteen year old girl who happily instructs young ballet dancers, clearly has an ambition to become a ballerina herself, loves her father and clearly has a connection with her brother. Her life is shattered when her father is killed in a hit and run. (This confirms something suspected in the season premiere when the other victim of the hit-and-run that Sarah Shephard was a part of was referred to as Adam Rutherford. Shannon is called to St. Sebastian, and in fact we see Jack walk right past Shannon, never knowing about the connection they will have.) In just a few scenes we get a very clear picture that who Shannon is has been defined by her stepmother Sabrina, who dismisses Shannon at the death of her father, and clearly leaves her alone in grief.

The episode shows a moment of pure joy on Shannon’s face that we never see any other time in the series when she realizes an ambition she never thought she could. Immediately afterward, she is confront with reality in a far worse way in which Mrs. Carlyle makes it very clear that she views Shannon with total contempt and is entirely dismissive of her ambitions. The fact that she is willing to favor Boone over Shannon demonstrates very clearly the kind of woman she is the fact that Boone is willing to instantly grab it and dismiss Shannon in the same breath takes a lot of the sympathy we’ve felt for him. We clearly understand Shannon a lot better in this flashback: why she has treated Boone with disdain on the island, why she was willing to manipulate him for money to play on her guilt, and why she feels she is useless. She may have spent her time on the island acting like a spoiled and whiny bitch, but like everyone else so far, it was a front to cover the betrayals she endured in her life.

Now on the island, she is given a moment of happiness with Sayid when the two of them seem happy in a way we haven’t seen two characters be so far on the island. And naturally, the island takes it away almost immediately. Walt’s reappearance on the island to Shannon is never explained by the writers and when his character is more or less written off at the end of Season 2, we are inclined to forget it. Is the connection between Walt and Vincent? Is he trying to reach out to his dog and since he gave her to Shannon, that’s the link between them?

From this point on Vincent will end up being labeled essentially ‘the dog of death,’ more or less responsible for so much of the carnage that many of the characters go through. I actually think that, at least when it comes to Season 2, much of the death that follows could be more accurately laid at Walt’s feet. (There’s an argument that this could also be held as late as Season 4, but I’m going to hold off until the time comes.) Because to be clear Vincent is just in the jungle when Shannon and Sayid see Walt. Shannon goes chasing after where Walt has been – and ends up taking a bullet.

Now of course, I must go to the other side of the island where the viewer is just as certain that Sawyer is going to be the one to die. By now the infection from Sawyer’s wound has gotten to that point where even he knows how bad it is. He’s doing his best to soldier on, in his snarly raging way, and its fitting that he shrugs off help from Jin and Michael, takes a few defiant steps forward, and then collapses in a heap. The fact that in delirium he’s mentioning to Michael that they should have left him behind and that he would have in their case would actually have been fitting last words for Sawyer – as he faces the end, he seems to acknowledge what a prick he’s been.

While this is going on the march to the beach is continuing and as Sawyer worsens Ana Lucia’s dictatorial leadership is already beginning to fragment. We still don’t know the story between Eko and Ana Lucia, but considering his compassion and her rage, it’s amazing that she’s actually listening to him. When he decides to go inland in order to try and save Sawyer, she is immediately repellant – she hasn’t liked him from the start and is now so mercenary that she is essentially considers him dead weight. Sawyer’s collapse is shocking, but not nearly stunning as her cold-blooded decision to initially leave him behind. For all Jack’s flaws, this is never a decision he would have made.

Halfway through the episode Michael finally demands an answer to the question that both he and the audience have wanted to know since we encountered the Tailies: “What happened to you people?” Rodriguez’s monologue is absolutely perfect as we see that beneath the harsh and brutal façade, she is terrified. And it’s hard to blame when she tells us that the reason there are now only five Tailies is that the Others have basically raided  the rest. We’ve considered her actions built on paranoia; this speech tells us its grounded in reality. When Michael reacts by telling her: “They took my son,” her answer: “They took a lot of things” is a rejoinder that silences Michael.

And in one of the last scenes of the episode, we realize that their terror is justified. The scene where the group combines to help move Sawyer and his stretcher up what seems an insurmountable hill is clearly a call back to a scene from the Pilot when the first group of castaways when on their trek across the jungle to see if they could get the transceiver to work. (The same theme music is used at one point.) It’s a tense, gripping moment and incredibly well filmed and its not until its over that the camera takes an overhead shot and we see that Cindy is gone. Cindy has essentially been the Tailies background character; she didn’t utter a word of dialogue until this episode and no doubt the writers have essentially been preparing us for the fact that she’s a ‘red shirt.’ But it doesn’t make it any less powerful when it happens, and it certainly doesn’t make the terror and self-recriminations any less real. Ana Lucia continues to crack under the pressure, immediately turning on Eko. “You did this to save him. And he’s already dead.” Immediately afterwards the whispers begin, and the strings that have holding the group together snap – Ana Lucia shouts “Run!” and everybody scatters. And it is because of that panic, Shannon is shot.

Lost’s history with female characters is not incredibly good and it is demonstrated to an extreme with Shannon’s death. She is the only character in the series who is killed off-screen. I don’t deny that it’s a powerful see and Naveen Andrews’ reactions in the final minute is exceptional as we see his face contort between despair, shock and finally rage. But it sends a very bad message from the writers overall when it comes to many of the female characters overall, especially in the first half of the series. I’m not entirely certain how much of this is the writers fault and how much has to do with the behavior of some of the actors (this is a trend that will end up being the center of all of the Tailies, not just the women) but it seems a shameful way to get rid of Shannon. Naveen Andrews would be quoted as disturbed by the murder of Shannon in interviews after the fact, and you can’t really argue with him. After she dies Shannon will be forgotten by most of the characters quickly and by the series almost entirely. Being dead on Lost won’t mean that you won’t reappear in future seasons (Boone’s appearance in Shannon’s flashback has confirmed as much) but Shannon is the exception that proves the rule. With one minor exception, we don’t see here again – and that may have been one of the key factors as to why so many of us were troubled by the series finale. (It certainly was for me.)

Maybe that’s the reason I grieve Shannon’s death more than most fans do. It’s clear that she had potential in her that nobody on the island saw, and she was cut down before she could truly realize it. I’m pretty sure that given the choice, fans would have preferred that Boone had lived and Shannon had died in Season 1. I honestly think Boone’s loss was mourned far more by the fans, which is just another burden for this character to bear. Like everything else regarding Shannon Rutherford, that wasn’t fair.

 

Lost Rewatch on VHS:...And Found

 

Among the many pleasures of this episode is that for the first time we hear what will become Michael Giacchino’s love theme for Sun and Jin. Unless you’ve been paying really close attention (and for the record I had to rewatch at least twice before I picked up on it) one of things that makes Lost one of the greatest shows in history is its score. It is not just Giacchino essentially uses an orchestra for his work; it is that he has composed the score much like an opera. There are recurring themes throughout the series, some of them depending on the action and what it is happening on the screen. More importantly, he gives each major character a theme of their own and that theme will recur when these characters appear on screen, often whether the episode is based on them are not. The instrumentals for Lost were so magnificent that each season a CD would be released containing the new themes for each episode, and it was a sign not only of the popularity of the series but the genius of Giacchino that what was essentially a series of instrumental themes could appear on the Billboard charts.

This episode introduces what will be the love theme for Jin and Sun, and that is appropriate not just because it is centered on them but because it ends with their meeting. What is fascinating about ‘…And Found’ (another episode punning on the title) is that while we will see many episodes involving Jin and Sun, this is the only one we see that gives a picture of what they were like before they met. And though they are essentially from disparate backgrounds, we see that before that they were in prisons, though for Sun it was because of her gender and for Jin it was because of his upbringing.

When Jin gets the job at the Gateway Hotel and we see that Sun is undergoing what must be the most recent in matchmaking by her overbearing mother, we are led to believe that this is where they will first lay eyes on each other. While this is true, Darlton delay this to the end of the episode not merely as misdirection but to give a very clear portrait of what Jin and Sun were each like. Both of them were ambitious in their own ways and both were being halted from realizing them. Sun had gone to college and majored in Art History, but from the way her mother dismisses it,  she clearly did so against the will of her parents and was never intended to have a career. Jin is no more interested in romance at the beginning of the episode that Sun is and is also focused on becoming a working man. He clearly has great potential, but his employer at the hotel clearly views him with contempt and doesn’t even bother to hide it. Sun thinks that Jin has a bad temper, but we see no evidence of that in this episode even though he is far more worthy of expressing his rage than we’ve seen on the island.

Sun has her first meeting with Jae Lee, who clearly sees what Sun is going through and they clearly connect on this level. Ironically, Sun who had no desire for a mate going into this clearly this by the time of their most recent meeting – and is utterly devastated when Jae Lee tells her he plans to marry someone else. (The fact that he took a flower from Jin before their ‘date’ is an irony they are never aware of.) At the same time Sun is dealing with her devastation, Jin is dealing with a setback of his own, but its interesting to see that his decision is based from principles rather than emotion. He may have want to rise high in profession, but this kind of cruelty is something he will not tolerate. We see the quiet dignity that we haven’t yet seen in him so far on the show.

In typical Lost fashion, the episode ends with the irony of Jin and Sun’s first meeting (and there’s clearly an immediate attraction) contrasted with the fact that at that moment Sun has begun to consider the very real possibility that her husband is dead. That the audience knows the reunion is inevitable doesn’t make the frustration we see her go through in this episode very real.

Sun spends her part of the episode searching for her wedding ring and essentially enlisting everybody who will help. Jack tries to offer an example from his own life, which is fitting not only because it shows that he can’t let go of something when he’s sure of it but how far he’ll go to make not even his wife notice that he has failed at something. (His acknowledgement of the end of his marriage is Sun is the first time he’s done so to any of the survivors.) Hurley has what appears to be his first interaction with Sun since he learned she spoke English and while there is the initial cultural awkwardness (“Is that the good Korea or the bad one?”) they actually find common ground when he asks her about their dog. Considering what we now know about Bpo Bpo, its actually kind of sweet that they’ve held on to it for that long. Sun finally throws what amounts to a tantrum and then Locke shows up – and it’s the Locke we got used to during the first season and won’t see much of the rest of Season 2. He also reveals a bit of himself in that he did used to get angry and that he doesn’t feel lost anymore. He helps Sun through her time of frustration, but we will quickly see this is an anomaly for him going forward.

Eventually Sun comes to Kate and basically explodes into her certainty that something horrible has happened to her husband. It is telling that while she reveals what Claire found in the last episode, she tells another woman instead of any of the men. When Kate tells her that she never got to say goodbye to Sawyer, it makes it clear that for all of the lack of tension we’ve seen between Jack and Kate so far this season, she has not forgotten Sawyer. It is not a coincidence that Sun finds her ring immediately afterwards.

Jin has been through his own journey during this period, but it as physical as it emotional. The survivors of the tail section have decided to hike and rejoin the camp but must gather supplies first. What is perhaps the most interesting in this is that throughout the episode the survivors of the tail section all treat Jin with more respect than we’ve seen any of his fellow survivors do. When Jin manages to bring in fish, Ana Lucia gives the first unguarded smile we’ve seen her show on the island. And it is clear that his devotion to Michael impresses Eko to the point that after they attack each other, he immediately agrees to help him.

Neither Michael nor Sawyer look particularly good in this episode, though the latter actually has a decent excuse for being surly. The wound he suffered is clearly beginning to affect him physically and its beginning to wear on him. Michael is still devoted to finding Walt, but in a way that for the first time demonstrates how single-minded he will be. When Libby mentions to him almost in passing where the Others are, Michael immediately abandons her into the jungle for even a hope of finding his son. Jin clearly recognizes this and is determined to go after him.

This is the first time we really get a sense of Eko on his own and watching it I was stunned by the contrast of the work of Adewale Akinnouye-Agabje. Like with Harold Perrineau, my first exposure to him had been for his work on OZ where he had played the memorably cruel and sadistic drug dealer Simon Adebisi for four seasons. (His death was one of the great moments in the series history and one of the more memorable ones to that point.) Trying to square the circle between the incredibly evil Adebisi and the subdued and understanding Eko was a great challenge for me (though later this season, we would get a much clearer picture that showed the difference between the men was not as great as we thought.) Eko shows compassion throughout every step of the process, not letting the language barrier form the obstacle it has with almost everyone else to that point. He doesn’t know if Jin understands every word he’s saying but he makes far more of an effort and its clear Jin appreciates it. Near the end he tells Eko to go back as much to protect him as to help Michael and doesn’t argue when Eko agrees to keep coming.

This episode also gives us the first real picture we’ve had of the Others, though at this point its very clear that the Tailies would laugh at the term. (All will use terms like theirs and them. ) It’s not just the general sense of terror that fills the Tailies while this is going on; its that we’re getting more and more of a picture and none of its pretty.

The clearest one comes when Jin stumbles over a body of a man Eko simply calls ‘Goodwin.’  This story will be paid off soon (and like quite a few of them, will keep paying off when you least expect it too) But the most shocking one comes when Eko freezes. We never know what exactly he hears (the whispers that we have come to associate with them so far are never heard) but the next scene shows them literally walking right past Jin and Eko. They are utterly silent, their clothes are ragged and filthy…and in the most terrifying one, it seems one is a child. (We’ll learn the truth behind this one too, and while its unexplained, its heartbreaking.)

The episode ends with Eko warning Michael that he has no idea what ‘they’ are capable of. Though we don’t know it for certain, we are now pretty clear that this is another flaw of Michael’s character: no matter how many times he’s warning, his desire to save his son will isolate him from the people he should rely on. He is pulled back from the brink for the first time in this episode and will manage to hold his feelings in check due to other events. But this episode – combined with the fact that he clearly does not view the rest of the survivors as friends the way that so many of the others have made connections by now – shows the path that he is on.

The episode understandably ends on what should be a joyful note: we now know that Jin and Sun’s reunion is just a matter of time and there will be happiness in the future. But we’ve also been given the clearest sign so far of Michael’s single-minded recklessness. Next time, Jin won’t be able to help his friend.

VHS Notes: There were a lot of mediocre ABC sitcoms in 2005. I keep seeing the end of the forgettable Freddie (Freddie Prinze Jr., venture into comedy) adds for an even more forgotten series Hot Properties and ads for the soon to be cancelled Hope and Faith, a short running very forgettable Kelly Ripa vehicle. It would be awhile before ABC came up with some comedies nearly as good as the dramas they introduced the previous season. (Actually, they’d start coming the very next year.)

The previews of the upcoming episode says that it will be the one this season everyone would be talking about. This might imply its going to be the best of the year; it isn’t by a long shot. But it also says someone’s going to die at the end of the episode, and unlike the first time they made this warning leading up to ‘Homecoming,’ this death will both shock and have massive reverberations.

Censorship Series Part 2: The People Who Want To Get Rid Of Fox News Need to Look At Themselves in the Mirror

 

I have always thought that the real destruction of journalism as a public service came when CNN was launched in 1980. The creation of a twenty-four hour news network was a solution to a problem that didn’t exist.

Can we honestly say that at any time the world was crying out for a 24 hour news network? The idea operates on so many faulty assumptions. First the idea that anyone’s first choice if they had free time would be to say: “Oh nothing’s on, I think I’ll watch the news.” If you’re watching cable news at 3:30 AM, it’s never voluntary; you’re either in a hospital waiting room where the TV channel can be changed or you have insomnia and you can’t find a decent movie or TV show to watch at that hour. I’ve made multiple arguments that anyone’s interest in world events is relative to the amount of free time they will devote to it; so no one was ever going to watch CNN for more than an hour or two at a time even when it was the only gig in town.

In fact, there’s an argument that CNN did more to hurt TV journalism than it has done to help it. Before the existence of the 24 hour news network, the broadcast networks were more willing to devote vast amounts of time in the day and night to public events. Political conventions were covered from gavel to gavel; Congressional hearings were covered by major networks from McCarthy to Watergate, and even minor Presidential Addresses were the cause of all broadcasts interrupting their programming. With the arrival of CNN, there has been a slow but steady reduction of the among of major political or global events that the media will cover. Primary nights used to be covered as much by broadcast networks as cable networks; now not even Super Tuesday can cause network TV to break away from coverage of it. Supreme Court confirmations received minute by minute coverage as late as the era of Clarence Thomas; Ketanji Jackson Brown’s wasn’t even acknowledged. Some Americans were outraged when the 1/6 Commission Congressional hearings opening and closing sessions were the only covered by network TV. I was surprised that they gave them that much time. Hell, when Osama Bin Laden’s being killed was announced, I imagined there were more than a few network heads upset that they had to postpone that night’s episode of Desperate Housewives. CNN and its ilk have basically allowed network journalism to disappear as a major force.

And it’s not like I’m thrilled with the events they choose to cover. Almost every twenty-four news network, when its not covering politics, is covering violence. I have thought for a very long time that one of the major factors in so many mass shootings over the last twenty-five to thirty years has as much to do with the excessive media coverage of each shooting as it does the availability of guns. Think about it: there has now been an entire generation of Americans who grew up watching news networks give hours and hours of coverage every time there was a mass shooting anywhere. They go into every detail of the carnage that was created; they spend hours and then days afterwards analyzing every aspect of the shooters motives and why they did what they did. These figures then become media sensations in the sense of a word every time there’s another shooting. For over a quarter of a century anyone who watches enough television learns that you can be famous for killing a lot of people as much as anything else. America is a nation where celebrity has always trumped everything else and everyone’s desperate to be famous, no matter what the reason. The media – not just the 24 hour news networks but all of them – are accomplices in this.

I’m not, for the record, the only person who thinks this. Roger Ebert, in the aftermath of Columbine, was interviewed by a journalist who wanted to ask him if a movie such as The Basketball Diaries, which famously involves a mass shooting was the cause of such violence. Ebert argued that a greater lesson that these shooters were learning was from the media’s excessive coverage of them. The reporter listened, thanked him for his time, and never used his interview. They found plenty of people who would say violence in the movies in the problem and plenty of people who said guns were. Perhaps there were people who blamed the media, but they will never appear on it. The media will do anything but look into its own camera.

The other problem with a twenty-four news network is, of course, there isn’t twenty-four hours in a given day. So the networks have to fill it. And they filled it with punditry, commentary, gossip, and things that aren’t news. To be clear, many print journalists called them out on this and said they were filling their stories with sensationalism. They were, of course, just jealous.

As I’ve mentioned before, journalism is a business. Print journalism is a business that was always more about scandal, violence and political opinions – news just occasionally happened. The term ‘yellow journalism’ was created at the turn of the 20^th century to refers to the scandals that rival newspaper owners William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were doing to sell more papers in their city. The only reason the Pulitzer Prize exists is because Joseph Pulitzer founded a school for journalism at Columbia, perhaps out of some kind of guilt. I seriously doubt that anyone who wants to win a Pulitzer today knows the kind of reporting he allowed at his papers, or even the ones he actually ran. Odd that the  New York Times doesn’t mention that fact when they announced they’ve won their most recent Pulitzer.

And to be clear the biggest thing the twenty-four news network did was create opportunity – for good journalists to go to cable news. As well as people who weren’t qualified to work on networks, people who had no attachment to journalism, writers, political theorists, the so-called talking heads. This brings me to Fox News.

Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch may be loathsome human beings but as much as some people want to blame them for destroying journalism, I’d make the argument all that they did was reveal what it really was: a business. Ailes and Murdoch had a very clear business model in mind, as both the book and the limited series The Loudest Voice made clear: they were going to create ‘a vision of the world as it is and how they want it to be. We do that, they will never change the channel.”

Now let’s be honest: almost every basic cable network was originally designed to a specific demographic: BET, Lifetime, Animal Planet, Syfy, TCM, all of them are marketing to a very specific audience and none of them have fundamentally changed their mission statement since their founding. Ailes and Murdoch basically did this same thing for conservative news.

And just as I spent a lot of time and energy reminded all of you about Hollywood, journalism is a business too. No one goes into reporting only to live on prizes and praises from awards, they want to make a living from it. Print journalism’s demise didn’t start with cable news or even TV news; individual and local papers had been collapsing for decades as industry took over. In the last season of The Wire David Simon argued about the death of the newspaper as part of the cause of the deterioration of society. The problem is the newspaper had been dying long before he got there, and it never been about exposing society’s problems. It was about making money. The truth has always been incidental.

I think the real reason that so many progressives have spent decades raging against Fox News has nothing to do with the content and much more to the fact that its such a success. I also point out  (as I did in an article I wrote earlier this year) this success is only part of the bubble that cable news is a part of. On Tuesday nights the past six years, twice as many people were watching This is Us than Hannity at 9:00 pm. More people watched Shondaland during the 2010s on Thursday then the entire Fox News lineup during that hour. And I’m pretty sure if Desperate Housewives had aired on that Sunday night in April, more people would have watched in that if only cable had been covering Obama’s speech on Bin Laden. Cable news has always been a percentage of the total TV audience viewing, little more than four to five percent -at most – of the entire audience of a given day. A small percentage of American’s relatively speaking are watching Fox News on a weekly or even a daily basis. A part of me wonders how large a group of that are  progressives, pundits, and those ‘bastions of journalism integrity.’  Hate-watching has been a thing for a lot of TV viewers, and there’s no reason they should be any different.

The fact that so many of these people are worked up about says more about them then the people that Fox News is aimed to. I’ve known for awhile that those same progressive who preach about the first amendment fundamentally believe it should not apply to people they disagree with. They are outraged that Fox News exists (I’ll get to that in a bit) but they’ve made it very clear that if a Republican elected official appears on Anderson Cooper or Meet the Press, if they publish an article in the New York Times or The Washington Post, really if they have an opinion in the media anywhere these outlets are tainted because they are ‘promoting their agenda.’ In a way I think  many of these people  don’t actually mind that the Fairness Doctrine was repealed: they don’t accept differing opinions any more than they accuse the right of.

And in their minds, its not enough that they don’t have to watch Fox News; no one else can. Its existence is abhorrent to them. That is why progressive sites will send out memos urging you to petition your cable service not to carry Fox News or to find cable systems that don’t carry it. Why should you’re precious liberal cable station have to share space with a channel that those people watch? As Abraham Lincoln  said, “freedom of the press must have restrictions.” (Actually that was the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia in 1999, a country that has been ranked as a flawed democracy by the United Nations for the better part of 20 years, but it’s not like most leftists would care if could take a swing at a dead, white man.)

In that sense, much of the coverage of Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox News that has consumed so much of the media’s attention over the last several months has been framed in terms of a battle over freedom of the press and saving democracy rather than what it was: a corporate lawsuit. The fact that Dominion was charging defamation because of what had appeared on Fox News for much of the leadup to the 2020 election and beyond that does give significance to it beyond the usual corporate lawsuit, I will admit. But the fact is, almost all of these kinds of lawsuits do end up settling before reaching a verdict, and it was almost certainly inevitable to do so in this case. However, during the past few months those same talking heads, and political pundits have fundamentally been ignoring this reality and have almost entirely ignored a lot of critical facts:

1.       Dominion did not sue to save the Republic or lodge a victory form freedom of the press. They it did to try and save their company. The best way to do so was a massive cash infusion to their coffers. This might have been more than money to all the talking heads; it wasn’t for Dominion.

2.      Defamation cases are extremely hard to prove and have been ever since a 1964 precedent. Yes, the fact that Fox failed to dismiss it on summary judgment was a big thing in that sense, as well as that Dominion almost seemed to win on summary judgment. But once the case went to trial, the edge automatically went back to Fox News. Would proving their case have been harder based on all the transcripts and depositions we’ve already heard? Probably. But it does not change the fact that Fox News is a multi-billion dollar corporation. If they lost the case, they have more than enough money to drag this out in every court in the land, and there is no guarantee that an appeal judge or any other court might decide that the precedent had not been violated.

3.      This case would never have bankrupted Fox News. Even the most openly progressive website would never go that far. They will acknowledge that the $1.2 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to Fox’s annual revenue. However the process could far more easily have bankrupted dominion. There’s no guarantee that even if they won every appeal and the courts upheld the verdict, they would receive the full amount. And the longer the process took, the more precarious their financial position would be.

4.      Even if all of this information were revealed in court, it is highly unlikely this would change many minds regardless. I often wonder what those Progressives salivating for a trial really hoped would be the desire outcome. Were they hoping that Dominion’s attorney, a la Perry Mason, would trick Rupert Murdoch to confessing in front of a televised audience that they had knowingly committed an act of fraud. We’ve essentially got transcripts saying as much on the public record. Did they honestly think the average person who has been watching Fox News for decades would see this trial, say to themselves: “Oh my God! I’ve been lied to all my life!” and stop watching Fox. Not even they will go that far; in many of columns berating the settlement, they seem pretty sure that the viewer would just as likely to go to a rival network such as Newsmax.

So why are so many people on the left and in the media outraged by this? One word: schadenfreude. They wanted the trial to go on for weeks, possibly months, and see all of the Fox commentators, executives, possibly Murdoch themselves going in and out of a courtroom, not answering questions surrounding by a sea of attorneys. They wanted cameras on them, looking like mob bosses, speaking in diminished term, acknowledging what they said in text as real, or acting like mob bosses and saying: “Not that I recall” over and over again. They wanted an onscreen apology, not because they thought it would change any minds, but because they wanted a public shaming. The idea that Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity saying this onscreen would make a difference to the viewer – or for that matter, to Dominion – didn’t matter. They wanted to see them publicly humiliated.

And by seeing Fox News carried out into the media equivalent of the town square would make them feel good about themselves and ignore something very vital. And to make this clear, I now want to address all of the media, the punditry, the leftist blogs and basically anybody upset by this settlement:

Fox News did not create this circus. If there’s someone you should blame for this, it really is Ted Turner who created the 24-hour news cycle. You want to say that Fox News has been responsible for the destruction of journalism and politics as you know it? It’s not as you know it; its as you want it to be.

To be clear, I hold all of you as responsible for the state of our country as you say Fox News is. You want to say Fox News has been making money and indoctrinating its viewers on false outrage? What do you really think you’ve been doing every time you run coverage of Fox News or try to fundraise on the most outrageous comments by its reporters or try to get it canceled? You’re essentially saying that their outrage is false, and yours is real. End of the day, you’re both trying to capitalize on it as a business model.

To be clear, you all have biases the same as every Fox News commentator and viewers does. I’ll go into this in a separate article but don’t pretend that you don’t have one and you’re try to both weaponize and make money of it. All of you – every progressive who has raged against Fox News, every commentator who has rerun Fox News Commentary to point out ‘misguided’ it is, every one who writes an article, think piece or goes on TV to argue against Fox News – you’re not doing this out of altruism or some magical concept of ethics. You’re trying to make a living on this the same as they are. You’ll never say as much, either in public or private, because its good for business.

I’m not the only person who’s pointed that out. For the better part of a decade Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert went out of the way to point out exactly what all of you in this media-industrial complex are doing. They were sounding the warning bells long before the arrival of Donald Trump about just how much not only Fox News, but your precious CNN and MSNBC were doing to wreck journalism, democracy and all those principles you good liberal people will claim you support. The Daily Show spent years mocking everything you and your ilk stand for, and Stewart ended up getting the name ‘The Most Trusted Name in News’ first as a joke, then by default. And rather than accept this as the message it was, some of you made him ‘part of the mainstream media’ and the rest of you played along because you thought it more entertaining to be part of the joke rather than actually listen to what he was saying.

You want to blame Fox News, the conservatives and the right-wing media apparatus for destroying your beloved institutions? Go right ahead. You will anyway. The fact that you’re following what amounts to Roger Ailes’ business model is an irony that you will neither recognize or accept. Hypocrisy has always been a bipartisan affair and don’t pretend that the media has ever been innocent of it.

The question is, what can we do? Well, I have two solutions: my approach and a variation that’s basically one I heard on a fictional TV show. Neither is easy, but since the media has advocated its responsibility, we have to do the work ourselves.

Ever since I moved into my own apartment nearly two years ago, with the exception of last year’s midterms, I have not watched any cable news. Even on the night of the midterms, I spent more time on the broadcast networks and only continued to watch cable as I waited for the remainder of the results. I know that I have networks like Newsnation and Newsmax, but I don’t know what channels they are, nor am I likely to look.

I spent a lot of time the previous decade watching cable news, and honestly I find my life richer for its absence. I’ve always thought cable news has been little more than noise, and I don’t miss it.

So how do I get my information? I read newspapers and magazines, both online  and – gasp -print. When I look at article online, I note who the author is and I google both them and if the source isn’t clear, the publication they write for. Wikipedia will often tell you what you need to know in a few lines. I also do research on so many of the sources for polls to know about their bias – which really prepared me for the results of last year’s midterms.

I realize this is a lot of work to some, and I can’t pretend that everyone has the same devotion to it. But if the media is going to advocate it’s role, sadly, it is up to the average citizen.

This brings me, not coincidentally, to an argument that Tom Fontana made on OZ more than twenty years ago about the media. It was a different era then – the episode aired before 9/11 – and his discussion of it was focused on broadcast networks, not cable. But the principle is still true:

Augustus Hill went through a long discussion of how he loved how the three major networks would all cover the same story on the same night and he would channel chase between all of them. His conclusion was simple: “I figure if I watch all of them, maybe, I might get some tiny sliver of the truth.” That argument was dead on in 2001, it’s more accurate to day.

So for all of you, don’t get all your news from one source. Look at every version, not just the channels or publications you like, but the ones you don’t like or trust. And always remember at the end of the day, everybody has some kind of bias. It has nothing to do with political views or racial or gender; it has to do with that nobody’s version of events is exactly the same.

Everyone has an agenda. I’ve made that argument against many columnists on this blog, and I’m not going to say I’m any different. I don’t think that I get any benefit from telling people to do their homework and research themselves – it’s not sexy and it doesn’t lend itself to clickbait – but perhaps there’s one I can’t see. I’m a human being and I have a bias. We all do. Perhaps the best way to fix the broken system is for us to get as many different biased versions of events and try and figure out what the truth is. I wish it were easier, but to quote a man who was once considered ‘The Most Trusted Man In News,’ that’s the way it is.

 

 

Emmy Nomination Watch Phase 2: The MTV Movie And TV Awards Nominations

 

On the face of it, following the nominations for the MTV Movie and TV awards in regards to the Emmys may seem as ridiculous as watching the People’s Choice Awards when it comes to TV. This is much of the same package except apparently worse because this is fundamentally youth oriented. And as we all know Emmy voters are many things but ‘hip’ has not exactly been one of them.

The thing is, ever since MTV expanded its awards into television six or seven years ago, every so often they will find series that strike the zeitgeist. They were onboard with Schitt’s Creek a year before the Emmys got wise. They have been more willing to give recognition to Stranger Things than the Emmys have ever been willing to do. (It is looking like Millie Bobby Brown will never get the Emmy she’s been owed since 2017.) They have recognized series such as Ted Lasso and Only Murders in the Building and for better or worse, they were clearly ahead of the curve when it came to Euphoria. And hell, considering that they were willing to recognize Kathryn Hahn for Wandavision and the Emmys weren’t, they can be ahead of the curve.

So I figured it was at least worth looking at the MTV TV nominations, partly because Euphoria isn’t eligible this year and more importantly, there are several series that fall in the sweet spot of genres that the Emmys are more than likely to recognize this year with nominations if not awards. So I decided to take a look – and honestly, I was impressed.

Stranger Things isn’t eligible for any awards this year, and Wolf Pack is almost certain to be ignored. The five other series recognized for Best Show; however, all have a very good chance to be major contenders. Wednesday is almost certain to be a major contender for Best Comedy; The White Lotus, The Last of Us and Yellowjackets are all relatively certain nominees for Best Drama and Yellowstone looms as a dark horse in the latter category. (The controversy surrounding its final season may very well hurt its prospects.)

The Best Performances in a Show all feature females. That said, I can’t really argue with any of them. Jenna Ortega is certain to be nominated for Wednesday and Christina Ricci is just as likely to be nominated for Yellowjackets. It was a very crowded category that kept Selena Gomez for being nominated for only Murders in the Building last year; I expect the Emmys to rectify. I’m impressed that the voters thought Aubrey Plaza deserved to be recognized for The White Lotus over Jennifer Coolidge; I hope the Emmys find room for both. Riley Keough is a good choice for the likely Emmy-nominee for Limited Series Daisy Jones and the Six (I’ll get to it trust me) Only Sadie Sink is ineligible, and let’s be honest she should have been nominated last year. (Incidentally, the HCA TV Awards gave Sink the Best Supporting Actress prize for Stranger Things last year. Great minds think alike.)

Jenna Ortega and Pedro Pascal were nominated for Best Hero (Pascal for The Last of Us) and Diego Luna got nominated for Andor, which may very well contend for Emmy nominations this year. The Best Kiss nominations featured contenders from Only Murders in the Building, Daisy Jones and the Six, and The Last of Us (though some voters complain its not the one they’d have chosen) Quinta Brunson was nominated for best Comedic Performance for Abbott Elementary, meaning Brunson truly has universal appeal. Bella Ramsey was nominated for Breakthrough Performance for The Last of Us and Emma D’Arcy was as well for House of The Dragon. Both of them are realistic possibilities for Best Actress nominees in a Drama. Jennifer Coolidge was nominated for Most Frightened Performance in The White Lotus and its kind of remarkable considering the other nominees are all from horror movies.  Simona Tabasco and Beatrice Granno earned a nomination for their work as the sex workers who ‘won’ The White Lotus as Best Duo, along with Pascal and Ramsey for The Last for Us and Jenna Ortega and Thing for Wednesday. No argument for any of them and I really think it’s a tragedy there’s no category for Best Performance by a Body Part.

. Stranger Things is the dominant nominee (it also received nominations for Best Breakthrough Performance, Best Fight and Best Villain as well as Best Kick-Ass Cast) Andor’s nomination for Best Fight looks likes it will get a lot of technical nominations. The only major series nominated that is unlikely to get any recognition is Netflix’s Outer Banks which to be fair I’d never heard of until recently.

I gotta level with you, this is decent work for a group of young voters. I expected them to go overboard with House of Dragon and they did not. They gave a lot of love to The White Lotus, which I wouldn’t have thought would be their kind of show, and the fact that they were willing to recognize series with more layers such as that and Daisy Jones is impressive. Obviously I would have been happier if Yellowjackets had gotten more love, but I’m glad that they recognized it at all. And they showed growth… the Star Wars show they clearly loved was the superior Andor to The Mandalorian and Pedro Pascal got the love he deserved for The Last of Us rather than that. Sure they gave a lot of time and energy to Stranger Things which will probably be the bigger winner but considering that its spent its entire Emmy career basically being ignored except for technical awards rather than everything else, it kind of deserves all the love it can get before it finally exits.

Don’t get me wrong, when Euphoria eventually returns they’ll no doubt give it the same excessive love they did last year and they’ll probably end up on board with House of the Dragon going forward. But overall, the series that MTV has nominated are solid choices that – may lightning strike me for saying this – the Emmys could honestly do worse if they took them into consideration this summer. They will for some of them to be sure – most of these series are of a high enough quality that the Emmys would be going backwards not to recognize them – but there’s an argument that the MTV generation might have a better finger on the pulse of great television than the Emmys do. (Though I admit that has always been a low bar in the best of years.)

I’ll resume this article when the Television Critics Awards give their nominations sometime in May. I’ll be curious to see where they are.

 

 

Will Trent Is Coming Back for A Second Season. Here's Why You Should Read The Books in the Meantime

 

Earlier this year I raved among ABC’s new mystery procedural Will Trent, another in a line of superb dramas that have debuted on the network this season. In my review, I said it had the potential to be the first great new series of 2023 and my expectations were proven to be correct. I also was concerned whether ABC would let the series have room to grow or, as it has done far too often over the last twenty years, let it die on the vine. Last night, I got some good news – ABC has given the show an early renewal for a second season.

There is no question it deserves it; unlike so many network series Will Trent – both the lead and the series – have actually grown better and deeper as the series comes to an end in two weeks. So now that we know the show will be back for Season 2, I think it is worth doing something I occasionally do with TV series that are based on books – make a comparison to the source material.

My pattern throughout by career as a critic when it comes to television series based on a novel or a series of books has been to watch the show first and then read the book. This is a pattern Roger Ebert did when it came to so many film adaptations of books; he did not want his opinion to be biased because of his love of the source material. I have done the same in regard to limited series – some examples have been the Hulu adaptions of Little Fires Everywhere and Nine Perfect Strangers. I haven’t done so when it comes to series adaptations of books and the times I have, I’ve been hugely disappointed in the novel – when I read the C.W. Box novel that inspired Big Sky, I was so repulsed by every character and adaptation that not only was I amazed that David E. Kelley and his writers had managed to make something entertaining out of that series, but I also had no desire to read any further novels that Box has written in that series or otherwise.

I have since read three separate novels by Karin Slaughter that feature Will Trent as a lead character. I am greatly relieved to tell you that these books are infinitely readable and worthy of being adapted into a TV series. That said, making comparisons between the books and the series puts me in somewhat of a quandary.

Unlike Big Sky, in which the first half of Season 1 and much of the action of Season 2 had much of its plot inspired by the novel, Will Trent is essentially a procedural where each week Trent and the GBI investigate a case a week.  I haven’t read all of Slaughter’s books involving Trent (there are a lot of them) so I can’t say with certainty there’s any similarity to the plot of the first two episodes and any of the stories in Season 1. In a way this is a good decision by the writers; far too many series on TV are serialized, and its bit a long time since we had a good character driven procedural anywhere on TV – the last one I can remember is Justified, which like Will Trent is based on the stories of a mystery writer. (On a separate note, I will be writing in great detail on Justified in anticipation of its return this summer.)

So instead, I shall try to compare the differences and similarities the writers have made when it comes to casting most of the characters on the show and comparing them as to how they were in the books. (Warning: spoilers for many of Slaughter’s novels are next – and they might very well influence future storylines on the show.)

Will is essentially the same person in both the books and the TV show. He spent his life in foster care and wears the same three-piece suit because he was raised in an orphanage. He bears the brutal scars of foster parents and he is dyslexic. He is somewhat blunter on the TV series than he is in the books I have read but that may be a part of his upbringing. He adopted the Chihuahua he did in the opening of the series (for pretty much the same reasons) and he is big and unwieldy in both. He also uses the undercover persona of Bud Black, which we saw him use for the first time in last night’s episode. The only real difference is that in the novels Will is blond and fair-skinned and on-screen he is played by Ramon Rodriguez. Some might moan that this is color-blind casting, but honestly there has been little sign in the series for Will to even say that he comes from a Latino background. For all we know, he may have them from his father’s side of the family; in one novel we learned Will’s mother was a prostitute.

Angie Pulaski is part of Will’s life in the novels too. It may overjoy some viewers  to know that eventually Will and Angie do get married. It will disappoint those same viewers  to know they can’t make it work, and that by the end of the most recent book they’ve been divorced and he has no idea where to find here. I admit I am saddened by this, in part because I have loved Erika Christensen’s work as Angie, and have loved her chemistry with Rodriguez in every scene there in. But even in the second part of the Pilot, Angie and Will both acknowledged that they had the habit of bringing out the worst in each other. And we have already seen just how self-destructive Angie can be in the last few episodes of the series.

In Slaughter’s most recent Will Trent novel The Silent Wife, Will is still recovering from the emotional scarring of their relationship. It is clear the sex between the two of them could be rough and that Angie never let him in as much as he needed too. Angie and Will may be soul mates in spirit but they are also clearly damage each other.

Fortunately in several of the novels I’ve read Slaughter has provided another love for Trent: medical examiner Sara Linton. Sara and Will met in a series of investigations not long after her first husband died and she has her own emotional scars. (These I will not reveal because you should find out for yourself.) But its clear this relationship, while rocky, is far healthier for Will than the one with Angie ever was. If the writers of Will Trent do intend to follow the basic outlines of Slaughter’s books when it comes to characters, they could do far worse than introduce Sara Linton to that world.

The two other major characters in the series are also central to Slaughter’s books. Faith Mitchell  is pretty much the same person in both series: she is the reluctant partner to Will Trent, far blunter than he is to everything and abrasive to just about everyone she meets. She got pregnant at fifteen (and in later books, has another child) and is currently suffering from diabetes. There are two major differences: in the novels, Faith  is white and as far as we know as no familial connection to Amanda Wagner.

Again I don’t care about color-blind casting as long as the actor is perfect and I can’t see anyone other than Ianthe Richardson playing Faith. I don’t know if Amanda Wagner is African-American either, but honestly even if she were white there is no one other than Sonja Sohn that I can see playing Amanda, who is every bit as off-putting and ball-busting in the books I’ve read than as Sohn plays her on TV. Hell, the only white women I could possibly seeing as doing a good job as Sohn would be either Ellen Barkin or Melissa Leo, both of whom played remarkable lady bosses in Animal Kingdom and I’m Dying Out Here, respectively.

But honestly, its more appropriate for it to be Sohn. You can see that this Amanda is someone who Detective Greggs might well have turned out to be has she managed to climb the ladder at Baltimore PD. (Unlikely given what we learned on The Wire.) Just like Greggs, Amanda Wagner is a woman who takes no prisoners or BS and has no F’s to give, not even for her family. I loved a moment in a recent episode where her sister (who she helped drum out of the department) tells her that she’s been getting the name of her assistant wrong for the last five years. When she asks Will to confirm this, she then asks why no one’s told her, and he simply says: “Because everyone’s terrified of you.” This is the kind of role perfect for the woman who played a detective trying to bring down Stringer Bell.

In an earlier era Will Trent would be the kind of series that got Emmy nominations for its cast and the show itself. Hell, if Will Trent had been adapted for AMC or streaming, it almost certainly would be a contender this year. But let’s be clear: Will Trent is the kind of show that, like its gangly title character, stands out on network TV and would be lost in ‘the system’ that is cable and streaming. Network television needs more shows like Will Trent than it does revivals of Law and Order and CSI. But since the latter aren’t going anywhere, I’ll settle for Will Trent settling in for a comfortable run at ABC. It’s not like there isn’t enough source material for the show to go on as long as the network allows it too.