The Real History of Baseball, Part 1: The Myth of The Pennant Race

 

 

Earlier this year I began a series of articles on the economic history of baseball that I never completed. While I will some day return to it, it has since occurred to me that the history of baseball is another one of those subjects that I not only care about deeply but have nearly as great a knowledge of as of other things. (Some of my articles prior to that may have confirmed that to readers.)

I have always thought that baseball’s history has been one of the things that makes it such a great sport. But as I have written in my series on the economic history, it is also fundamentally the victim of a nostalgia machine that purists have used to harp on any change that could fundamentally improve or make the game better. This has hampered baseball’s popularity as the national pastime in the second half of the 20^th century and has hurt it so much over the last decade that until recently it genuinely seemed like it was going to expire on the vine. Indeed, a recent article for the Atlantic made it very clear how the games refusal to adapt to the new century and to try and win new fans has done more to damage its future as a sport, short term and long term. The article was written arguing that the game had ‘saved itself’  but even it acknowledged it was likely only until the next crisis which it would no doubt neglect until it was nearly lethal.

I have loved baseball throughout my childhood and my adult life. But I am also very aware that, more than any other sport, the media is reactionary beyond all measure to any change in the game. In a sense over the past century they have often-willing co-conspirators in the nostalgia factor that affects baseball more than any other sport. I’ve made those arguments in the story of economic history to a huge degree. But it is worth noting those critiques are basically in play with every major change baseball has made in its career. And much of that has been the celebration of a past that doesn’t really exist.

So to begin this series I intend to deal with one of the most cherished archetypes of the baseball purist: the pennant race. In it I intend to demonstrate that even in ‘the Golden Age of Baseball’ it was barely presence, how divisional play and the changes with expansion and free agency in the 1970s increased competitions rather than hinder it, and how the increase in the number of playoffs and teams in the play-offs have helped baseball far more than they have hurt.

Anyone who reads enough books about baseball written in the 1990s or later about any great team will always bring up how much things like the wild card race or expansion have hurt the game. How have they hurt the game? They destroyed the pennant race. You know that magical event where for six months two or three teams would battle it out, day in and day out, with fans across the country reading the paper, listening to the radio, frantically trying to see who win the pennant for that trip to the World Series. That’s the narrative.

The reality is far different.  As someone who owned the Baseball Encyclopedia, who has read far more books about baseball history, teams and players, who has read more about baseball from this era than you would think possible knows these so called pennant races didn’t happen that often.

This honestly shouldn’t come as anyone who knows the other part of the history of baseball. Considering that at least half of the books about baseball have always had something to do with the Yankees, it really should not come as a shock that for much of this ‘Golden Age’  pennant races in the American League were few and far between. The cry ‘Break up The Yankees’ from 1921 to 1964 was popular for a reason: not only did the Yankees win 29 Pennants during this period, in the lion’s share of those years, the other seven teams didn’t have a chance.  During 1936-1939 when the Yankees won four consecutive World Series, the lowest margin between them and the second place team was 10 games.  It was somewhat closer during the Casey Stengel years of 1949-1960, but they did win nine pennants in ten years and the year they lost in 1954, the Indians had to win 111 games just to be sure.

Indeed most of the great American League pennant races in that era took place when the Yankees were having off years. In 1940 Detroit won the AL Pennant because the Yankees were having an ‘off year’. (They finished in third by two games.) In 1944, the St. Louis Browns which were the worst team in American League history, won their only pennant in large part because World War II was going on and all the able-bodied ball-players were overseas. (The Yankees still finished only three games out.) In 1948, the then Cleveland Indians won a pennant race for the ages when they managed to win a one-game play-off over Boston. The Yankees were in contention all year and only were eliminated on the next-to-last day of the season.

That’s the thing about being the most successful team in professional sports. It doesn’t leave room for anyone else, and that meant the seven other teams in the league. And it is in large part for that reason that the Yankees dominance hurt the American League attendance dramatically during the 1950s and why the popularity of the game began to diminish. Bill James once wrote that he thought baseball’s return to popularity in the 1970s had as much to do with the Yankees being a non-factor as anything else. I’m inclined to agree.

Now you might think the National League was more competitive and it was – to an extent.  During the first decade of the 20^th century, one of the greatest teams of the era was the Chicago Cubs of 1906-1910. In the 1906 season they won 116 games and lost just 36. They never had a year quite that good again but over five years they averaged 106 wins a year which led to four National League pennants and two world championships. They were then overtaken by John McGraw’s New York Giants who won three consecutive NL Pennants and averaged 101 wins a year. They were on their way to a fourth straight pennant when the Boston Braves engaged in one of the greatest stretch runs in history, going from last place on July 4^th to winning the pennant. This did not league to an exciting pennant race, though; the Braves won by ten games. Indeed, during the first twenty years of the 20^th century there was only one truly exciting National League Pennant race: the 1908 race when the Giants, Cubs and Pirates engaged in an exciting race that ended with the Cubs winning on a one-day play-off. (To say that there’s more to that is an understatement, but to tell the story would take a book in itself.)

From 1921-194, McGraw’s Giants retained their touch and won a record four consecutive NL Pennants, all but the last by a formidable margin. Since during this same period the first Yankees dynasty was beginning, by 1924 it seemed the entire country was rooting for the Washington Senators to win their first pennant as much to see the legendary pitcher Walter Johnson finally in the World Series as they were to not have to witness another all New York series. (The Senators did win and just as importantly beat the Giants.) This was where the anti-New York furor in baseball reached a peak it would not achieve again for a quarter of a century.

The play in the National League from that point until 1950 did have a more balanced play and was more competitive.  The 1930s featured several exciting pennant races involving multiple teams. These included the 1930 pennant race, where a four team race between Brooklyn, New York, Chicago and St. Louis finally ended after a stretch run that gave the Cardinals the pennant by two games; the 1934 pennant race when the Cardinals managed an impressive come back to overcome the Giants on the final day of the season and the 1938 Pennant race where the Cubs managed to overcome the Pirates on player-manager Gabby Hartnett’s so called ‘Homer In The Gloaming”

The decade with the most pennant races in both leagues was the 1940s. I’ve already mentioned three American League ones, but during the decade the Dodgers and Cardinals would engage in a series of struggles throughout the decade for the NL Pennant.  (I intend to write a separate series of articles on the Cardinals of that era because many historians consider them one of the most undervalued dynasties in history.)  However after the 1949 season, when the Yankees beat the Red Sox in the American League and Dodgers beat the Cardinals in the National League – both on the final day of the season – baseball would essentially enter what was more or less a dead zone for pennant races – which no doubt was one of the factors that led to a decline in attendance throughout both leagues in the 1950s.

Yes I know, the Shot Heard Round the World, the Giants Win the Pennant. It is one of the great moments in baseball history, I don’t deny it. But I think a large part of the reason that is remembered so fondly it because it happened among two New York teams in the ‘greatest rivalry’ the Giants and the Dodgers.

The truth is the Giants triumph over the Dodgers that year was notable because it was the exception. The Dodgers won four pennants in the next five years and the Giants would not closer than second place in those four races. In 1954, the Giants won the pennant over Brooklyn and famously collapsed into fifth place the next year. By that point, the Giants attendance was absolutely terrible and they were almost certainly going to leave New York. Also that’s not the only time in Brooklyn history that the Dodgers lost a 13 and a half game lead to lose the pennant or the first time they lost a playoff for the pennant. That happened twice before in the 1940s and both lost times they lost to the Cardinals. (Again, I’ll get to that later.)

And I know the purists will hate me for saying this, but it’s not until both the great migration west and the beginning of expansion that pennant races began to get more competitive, Still this was mostly in the National League and even after the Yankee dynasty collapsed there wasn’t much sign of it happening in the American League.

Oh right. 1967. The Impossible Dream season which was the closest pennant race in American League history. Boston, Detroit, Chicago and Minnesota fought it out until the final day of the season. You want to know why so many sports fans were amazed?

Because four-team pennant races were basically non-existent in either league. It was rare enough to have as many three teams competing for the pennant until the end of the season.  I imagine you can count the total in both leagues in the twentieth century on both hands and still have a finger or two left over.

You want to know what was more common in the twentieth century, pre-expansion? Terrible teams.  I’ve seen enough books on baseball to know that while their have been some teams over the last twenty years that have occasionally had wretched seasons a couple of years running, few rank the level of truly horrible play that we tend to see in that era. I’ve actually listed a few of them before in my section on the disastrous baseball teams in Philadelphia, but there were more of them. The Washington Senators in the first decade of the 20^th century, the Pittsburgh Pirates of the 1950s,  the Boston Red Sox of the 1920s, and yes The Mets of the 1960s. There were so many teams in ‘the Golden Age of Baseball’ where a team might be lucky to win fifty or fifty five games a year.

And even that’s deceptive because for all the ‘Great Teams in this era’  - which may I remind you were almost entirely the Yankees – there was so many teams that were sub-par or mediocre. The St. Louis Browns only won a single pennant in the entire fifty years of existence (and that one is a symbol of wartime futility). The Washington Senators only won three pennants before they moved to Minnesota; their expansion replacement did no better.  The White Sox spent nearly forty years between pennants and mostly never got higher than fifth place during that time. The Braves won only two pennants their entire tenure in Boston. During this ‘golden age’, only a handful of teams were regularly and consistently competitive. Most of the other cities spent their seasons hoping to see fifth or sixth place.

Which leads to the other lie: players staying with franchise their whole lives out of team loyalty or because they loved the game. Ernie Banks, ‘Mr. Cub’ was fond of saying ‘let’s play two’ or picking up the Cubs prospects. He was a source of joy at Wrigley Field, but I bet he would have given anything to play on a team that was contending every year.  Roberto Clemente is one of the greatest players in history, but he was always furious that the press never gave him the respect he thought he was worthy because he spent his entire career playing for the Pirates. And as a result, he got terrible press from the Pittsburgh writers who couldn’t understand  why he didn’t seem happy about his play. (There was also, as you might expect, an underlying prejudice about his Latin heritage.)

I don’t think, for the record, this was just something African-Americans or Latinos were angry about; I think its likely that there were so many stars who never got the appreciation they deserved because they played for non-contenders. Luke Appling and Ted Lyons were extraordinary for the White Sox for more than twenty years; few people knew who they were then. Ralph Kiner was one of the greatest power hitters in history; he never played for a single team that contended for the pennant.  (Indeed, when he was negotiating for a raise after leading the league in home runs in 1952, his GM famously said: “We finished last with you. It’s a cinch we can finish last without you.” He got traded and they proved they could.) And those, its worth noting, are merely the Hall of Famers; how many pitchers with teams like the Senators or Phillies could have had winning seasons had they pitched for a team that was capable of giving better offense or defense? Owners and managers could have improved their teams at any time if they’d been willing to negotiate with the players themselves during this period.  But the owners had no interest in improving their teams or attendance records if it meant treating the players as anything other than ‘well-paid slaves’.

So to be clear, during this so called ‘golden age’ there were few of the exciting pennant races that these purists seem to miss so much and there were few teams that even got a chance to compete. It was only when the owners began to make the changes that purists have loathed in the 1970s that competition truly began to improve. In the next article in this series, I will reveal how divisional play and free agency actually did improve competition across both leagues and led to the balance that all the purists claimed they wanted – and the owners decision that they preferred things the old way.

 

Historical Figures Series Tom Dewey and His Battle for the Republican Party, Conclusion: His Final Campaign and His Legacy

 

 

Harry Truman’s presidency has been viewed by most historians as one of the greatest of all time, and he is traditionally ranked among the second tier of great Presidents. What is frequently forgotten is that his second term was viewed by contemporaries as a great disaster and in a sense, the scorched earth electoral campaign he ran that fall helped assure it would be.

It shouldn’t haven’t been that way in the immediate aftermath. Truman’s surprise victories had led to the Democrats retaking both the Senate, which had been expected and the House of Representatives, which had been a huge shock to Republicans. The Democrats gained a whopping 78 seats in the House to a margin of 263 seats. With one exception, the Democrats would maintain control for the next forty-six years, usually by massive margins. The Senatorial shift was less significant but the Democrats did pick up nine seats. (I mentioned some of the victories in my first article on Hubert Humphrey.) It looked like the Republicans were going to be a minority party and not much of a factor.

However Truman’s remarks about the Do-Nothing Congress and calling Republicans handmaidens for fascists did not go away.  Republicans in both houses of Congress went back into session that January determined to make Truman’s second term a living hell. And almost inadvertently, Truman had handed the GOP the tools to do it.

The House Unamerican Activities Committee had been formed in 1939 but had been under the control of the Democratic majority. During both Dewey’s 1944 Presidential campaign and the 1946 midterms, the Republicans had raised the issue of Communist infiltration in the federal government. When Republicans took control of Congress in 1947, they took control of HUAC – and in a real sense, created the horror show that would follow for the next decade.

During much of 1947 and 1948, the focus of HUAC was famously on Hollywood and the prominent directors and screenwriters that would be part of the blacklist. Among those jailed would be Edward Dmytryk and the legendary Dalton Trumbo; many more would have their careers more or less destroyed.

But Truman’s strategy to call Congress back into session would inadvertently lead to the rise of a future Republican president – and one of Dewey’s initial allies. On July 20, 1948 federal officials arrested several prominent members of the American Communist Party, including a self-confessed former Soviet agent named Elizabeth Bentley. On July 30, Bentley testified before the Senate subcommittee. She named several prominent government officials, many of whom were connected to Henry Wallace’s now dominated by Communist sympathizers presidential campaign. The big fish, however, was the assistant secretary of the treasury Harry Dexter White. His name is lost to history because three days before he was scheduled to testify he dropped dead of a heart attack.

More important was the man they chose to testify against him: senior editor of Time Magazine Whitaker Chambers. Chambers named names and the biggest was Alger Hiss, whose government record included FDR’s adviser at Yalta, and significant presence as both the Dumbarton Oaks Conference and the secretary general at United Nations Conference in San Francisco.

When Hiss was called to testify he blatantly denied it and both sides were inclined to let his testimony stand – except for a thirty-five year old freshman Congressman from Southern California.

During his testimony, Richard Nixon had noted something significant. Alger Hiss, rather than simply deny the charges or plead the Fifth had denied knowing Whitaker Chambers. Based on a reinterview of Chambers, Nixon fiercely queried Hiss and confirmed the details that Chambers revealed.  Chambers would go on Meet The Press and confirm Chambers was a Communist. This would begin the series of events that led to Hiss being convicted of espionage and Nixon’s rise to national prominence.

During Truman’s second term, most of the Midwestern bloc of the Republican Party  became the strongest Congressional backers of the Red Scare. These including South Dakota’s Karl Mundt, Indiana’s Jenner and of course, Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin. One of the issues that has always been talking about is why so many members of the GOP were willing to let men like McCarthy and Nixon run so roughshod over civil rights and destroy so many lives. The answer, at least, for the first four years couldn’t be simpler. They saw it as a campaign issue, just as significant as America First had been a decade earlier. And it was not as if foreign events were not in their favor. By the end of 1949, Mao Tse-Tung and his Chinese Communists had taken control of one of the largest countries on Earth, The cries: “Who lost China?” was one that Republicans intended to make use of.

By the beginning of the 1952 campaign cycle, the Republicans were sure that they had a winning strategy: a formula that they would call: K+ C2. It stood for Korea, Communism and Corruption. The Korean War, which had at first looked like an easy victory, was locked in a stalemate and Truman’s public disagreements and subsequent firing of General Douglas MacArthur had worsened his opinion nationwide. Communism was a common theme, both at home and abroad. And corruption, the bribery scandals that were no becoming revealed in the administration itself were so widespread – and had been since the beginning of Truman’s presidency – that it was hard not to argue the Democrats were deadweight. The 22^nd Amendment had been passed in 1951, arguing no President could serve more than two terms. Because Truman had been president before it was passed he was exempt from it, but he had tired of the White House and at the beginning of 1952, announced he would not run again. His decision had been made clearer when Tennessee Estes Kefauver had run a primary campaign against Truman in New Hampshire and routed him. (Truman, blunt as ever, had made it clear any primary challenger of a President was committing tantamount to treason.)

The 1950 midterms had not been as successful as 1946 had been for the Republicans – they gained only 28 seats in the House and five in the Senate, gaining control of neither body -  but the warning signs were just as obvious as they had been in 1946. Majority Leader Scott Lucas was defeated in Illinois by Everett Dirksen. Republicans retook seats in Pennsylvania and Maryland. Richard Nixon took his seat in the Senate in a landslide – and Bob Taft was re-elected in a landslide in Ohio.

Tom Dewey had also been reelected to Governor of New York but he knew that the GOP would never return to him as a serious candidate. Instead in the fall of 1950 he reached out to a man many Republicans were thinking of as their savior – Dwight Eisenhower.

After Dewey’s defeat in 1948, Eisenhower had begun to rethink his earlier decision to stay out of politics. Returning home he became President of Columbia and later Supreme Commander of NATO. While this was happening, prominent members of the East Coast establishment including Dewey were trying to force Eisenhower to run. Prominent among their thinking was the certainty that Taft was going to run for the Republican nomination again in 1952. Considering that the Republicans had gone down to defeat twice when they had picked Willkie in 1940 and Dewey himself in 1948, it was likely Taft would have  support from far more than the Midwestern conservatives. Eisenhower’s aides said later on that if Taft had gotten the GOP nomination in 1948, he would have accepted the draft from the Democrats because he knew just how much a threat Taft meant to the international order of. This had becoming clear in a conversation with the Ohio senator in which he had waffled on committing to NATO. If Taft had been willing to make that commitment, Eisenhower had intended to announce that he had no intention of ever running for President.

Eisenhower spent much of 1951 trying to decide if he wanted the nomination. While he spent time making his mind up, other candidates considered the issue, many of them also holdovers from 1948. MacArthur and Harold Stassen were once again campaigning. So was Earl Warren, but this time he actually had a strategy in mind. He expected Taft and Eisenhower to each come to the convention with a sizable block of delegates: Taft’s would be from the South and Midwest and that Dewey would use his influence to win delegates for Eisenhower, who was yet undeclared. Warren intended to enter the Oregon and Wisconsin primaries, pick up additional delegates and come to California with at least eighty delegates. If Taft and Eisenhower deadlocked – a pattern that had held between the Eastern and Midwestern blocs of the party in previous conventions – the party could turn to him.

Even before Eisenhower had officially declared his candidacy, his name had been entered as a write in candidate against Harold Stassen and Taft in New Hampshire. Eisenhower flattened both declared candidates, winning 50 percent of the vote and all 14 delegates. Stassen’s candidacy would never recover. He would only narrowly win the primary in his home state of Minnesota.

Dewey and his aides spent much of the next several months trying to get Eisenhower to appear to be a more polished candidate, particularly on television. In the meantime, the primary contest was pretty much evenly divided between Taft and Eisenhower and followed the pattern that Warren would predict. Taft would win midwestern states such as Nebraska, Illinois and West Virginia, Eisenhower’s major victories were in the east, including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Warren would end up winning six delegates in Wisconsin but took none from Oregon, the only two primaries he would compete in besides California. As expected, Taft and Eisenhower went into the convention neck and neck. Taft claimed that he had 525 delegates, Eisenhower roughly 500.604 were required to nominate a candidate.

Eisenhower’s chief strategist at the convention was Herbert Brownell, Dewey’s loyal counsellor for more than a decade. When it began, three major delegations were contested – Georgia, Texas and Louisiana, which combined controlled seventy votes. The credentials committee was controlled by Taft’s forces and voted to seat the delegates for Taft. Brownell suggested a ‘Fair Play’ Amendment that would force a floor vote on any contested delegation. If Taft won the vote, he would be assured them.. If Eisenhower could, the momentum might shift.

Critical to both sides was the California delegation.  Neither Warren or Eisenhower knew that Dewey had been making overtures to him. They had no idea of Warren’s intentions past the first ballot, they knew that William Knowland, the senior Senator from California was pro-Taft and they thought Nixon supporting Eisenhower could fend off Knowland’s influence. Dewey also believed that Nixon would be a strong vice-presidential candidate: he was thirty-nine to Eisenhower’s 61, vigorous, a tough campaigner, and represented California. When the California delegation went to Chicago, Nixon did not get on board Earl Warren’s campaign and privately argued that Warren’s candidacy was a lost cause.

At the convention Nixon argued impassionedly for the Fair Play amendment and urged them to vote for it as a unit. Warren was less public about his opinion and the delegation overwhelming supported it. The floor vote narrowly approved the resolution.

On the first ballot, Eisenhower finished with 595 votes, just ten short of the nomination. Taft was next with 500, Warren had 81, Stassen 20. Before the second ballot began Stassen asked that the Minnesota delegation shift its votes to Eisenhower, which put him over the top. When Dewey and his advisors suggested Nixon for the vice presidency, he put up little debate.

Victory over the Democratic nominee, Governor of Illinois Adlai Stevenson seemed almost certain before he was selected. The Democrats had been in power for twenty years and Eisenhower was one of the most popular men in the world. The biggest problem to the campaign occurred in September when a newspaper story revealed a slush fund for Nixon paid by his wealthiest supporters.

Eisenhower’s closest advisors, including Dewey and Brownell, wanted Nixon off the ticket right then. Eisenhower refused to publicly commit but he was greatly worried.

The fund, for the record, was not illegal or unethical; indeed Stevenson himself had such a fund. But the story wouldn’t go away and Eisenhower and his advisers arranged for a nationally televised address in which we provide a thorough explanation of the fund and offer to resign. Eisenhower called Nixon and the two men had an intense conversation where Nixon refused to resign and Eisenhower refused to support him. Before the speech, Dewey called Nixon and said the general wanted him to offer his resignation. Nixon asked if that would change if their was positive support for the broadcast. Dewey didn’t give a direct answer, and Nixon famously told him: “There comes a time to either piss or get off the pot.” Their relationship had never been warm and after the famous ‘Checkers’ speech – which led to overwhelming public support for Nixon and Eisenhower chose to keep him -  the two men never trusted each other again.

Still the Republican ticket won election in a landslide.  Eisenhower took thirty nine of forty eight states and 442 electoral votes. He also made major inroads in the South for any Republican candidate, carrying Tennessee, Virginia, Florida and Texas.  There was less of a mandate  for the party in Congress: the Republicans would only gain two seats in the Senate enough for a majority and while the Republicans also retook the House, their margin would only be eight seats. By the time of the 1954 midterms, the Democrats would have retaken both houses of Congress and would control them for the next quarter of a century, and then only the Senate. (They would not retake the House until 1994.)

Dewey would leave elected office in 1954 and spend the rest of his life out of the limelight, mostly at a major law firm where Nixon would briefly hang up a shingle in that period after he famously declared ‘You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore’ and his second successful run for the Presidency.  When Nixon was elected President, he offered Dewey a role in the administration, including Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. (Ironically, he would have replaced his former running-mate Earl Warren.) Dewey declined. He died two years later at the relatively young age of sixty eight.

 

Conclusion

Thomas Dewey never won the Presidency. His battle for a successful brand of Republicanism that would lead to long term success for the party was not truly successful in his lifetime – Eisenhower’s landslide victories did not lead to a Republican dominance of Congress and the order of liberalism prevailed throughout his lifetime. And the model he used was under stress while he was alive with the rebellion of Barry Goldwater in 1964 that would eventually lead to the conservative wing essentially becoming the party as a whole.

So what was Tom Dewey’s true legacy? Paradoxically his biggest victories were for battles he did not benefit from. The decade long fight he had kept Robert Taft from directing the Republican party at one of the most critical junctures in America’s history. Given Taft’s isolationist leanings which not even the Second World War ever suppressed, Taft’s becoming President would almost assuredly have been disastrous for the nation or for the world had he been the party’s nominee in either 1948 or 1952. (In the latter case, it would have the responsibility of whoever he chose for vice president; Taft would die of cancer a little more than six months into Eisenhower’s first year in office.)

His legacy was also critical because of the men who advised him. Herbert Brownell, his closest adviser would serve as Eisenhower’s first attorney general.  He had critical roles in several civil rights cases, including Brown V. Board of Education,  helped draft the legislative proposal that would become the civil rights act of 1957 and did not step down as attorney general until Eisenhower followed his advice on the desegregation of Little Rock. His position on civil rights almost certainly caused Eisenhower not to nominate him to the Supreme court when vacancies would open in 1957 and 1958, as he feared the segregationists in the South would fight and defeat Brownell’s nomination.

And in a way, Dewey’s defeat in 1948 led to a great victory for the nation. Earl Warren, who had never wanted to be Vice President, won reelection to the governorship in 1950. When Eisenhower was elected president, he called Earl Warren and promised the first vacancy that came on the Supreme Court. That September Chief Justice Fred Vinson suffered a heart attack and died. Earl Warren was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. When Vinson had been alive, it had looked like the decision to override Plessy V. Ferguson would be the passage of a divided court. Warren made sure that Brown was upheld by a unanimous decision.  For the next fifteen years the Warren Court, as it has gone down in history, would be one of the most groundbreaking in the court’s history and Warren would rank as perhaps the most renowned Justice in its long tenure.

Dewey never achieved his goal of the highest office in the land and the Republican Party has down much to abandon his legacy. But few politicians in our history have done more good for our country in failure than many have in success. He deserves to be known for that more than not defeating Truman.

Better Late Than Never: Andor

 

Before I begin this review, I will need more of an introduction than usual.

Unlike most of my fellow critics, I have never been the type to argue that because a film or TV series is part of a mass franchise, it is automatically horrible or without artistic merit. Sometimes I believe this even without knowing the source material. While I am in complete agreement that most franchises are milked far beyond their expiration dates – this is Hollywood, after all – it does not meet that some of them do not have value in the new century.

I’ve never worshiped the MCU with the same fanaticism that some of my closest friends have, but I don’t deny that many of the movies do not provide entertainment value and that some of them  - The Winter Soldier or Black Panther among films; Wandavision in TV series – don’t have value that has true merit in film and television. I see far less value in the DC universe, primarily I mind most of the characters less interesting and mainly because there have never been a series of movies in that universe that are anywhere near the creative or critical magnificence of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight series. (I intend to write about that in a separate article.( I’ve mentioned my problems with the James Bond movies and I’m made it clear that Daniel Craig’s portrayal of him has resolved most of the issues I’ve had with them and led to cinematic excellence among even the greatest ‘serious’ films of this era. And while I would never consider myself a Star Trek fan, it doesn’t mean I don’t see the quality in several of the more recent films and the potential in the streaming series. (Getting another streaming service simply to see them, however, is a line I have no intention of crossing.)

There is, however, one franchise that I have never been able to understand so much of the criticism from its fanbase over the last quarter century, which is mildly ironic considering its the most successful one of all time.

For more than twenty years I have heard from so many friends of mine that every new development has ‘ruined’ Star Wars. Jar Jar ruined Star Wars. Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen ‘ruined’ Star Wars. Then in the last ten years, Daisy Ridley and Rian Johnson ‘ruined’ Star Wars. Solo ruined Star Wars.  Star Wars is becoming woke…I could go on and the internet will do so if you need a sample.

Now I get why some people might object to their favorite comic books or action movies being changed, but as I either know little about them or am indifferent to them, I can regard with detachment. But every time I hear someone say the newest movie or TV show or animated series or breakfast cereal has destroyed Star Wars, I always am bemused.  I realize it is canon for a certain section of society to compare something from their childhood as something sacred such as a Bible or The Mona Lisa or Hamlet.  But every time they talk about it, I keep wondering: have these people seen the same movies I have?

This remark may be considered the kind of blasphemy that may get me excommunicated from the Internet, but Star Wars isn’t MacBeth or Alice in Wonderland or Citizen Kane. It’s not The Godfather or Apocalypse Now or Breaking Bad. All of these works are classics because in addition to their brilliant prose or camera work, they were about something deeper and meaningful. Star Wars is…not.

Hell, have you listened to the stories told by some of the actors in it? Alec Guinness thought it was the weakest work he ever did. Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford basic threatened to leave unless they could rewrite the dialogue. Ford wanted Han Solo – that beloved character – killed off as early as Empire Strikes Back. When George Lucas’ colleagues – minor figures such as Coppola, Spielberg, DePalma and Scorsese saw the first cut, they thought it was incomprehensible and Brian De Palma said the only way to make it work was to insert the famous prologue. 

None of the holy trinity are an epic saga the way that Lord of the Rings  or the first three Indiana Jones movies are.  Star Wars basically tell a story that is, famously adapted from a brilliant Akira Kurosawa films that basically been lifted into a space opera. Empire Strikes Back and Return of The Jedi are better films at least technically and some writing elements (the fact that George Lucas only co-wrote both but directed neither speaks a lot as to why they are considered superior films) but at the end of the day, they’re just more of the same. I fundamentally think that if Star Wars had just been a standalone no would care much about it. But at the end of the day, none of these ‘classic’ films are about anything more than some vague terms.  It’s a bunch of movies that have things being blown up and sword fights in space and some complicated family dynamics. Godfather III is a better film than any one of these movies.

 And while every franchise that I listed before at least tries to make some adaptations to its story to make it palatable to a modern audience in the entire saga Star Wars seems to be about nothing more than…Star Wars. Now I realize there’s a built in nostalgia factor that makes people want to automatically argue that ‘it was better than’ but for forty years Star Wars has essentially had nothing new to say except reshuffling of the old elements.

Now as someone who has been fine with his indifference to Star Wars and has not seen a single movie in the franchise since Phantom Menace and is proud of that fact, I could cheerfully have lived the rest of life ignoring these ‘controversies’. But as we all know since the age of streaming began, Star Wars has been making inroads into my particular field.  Three years ago when The Mandalorian was about to be nominated at the Emmys, I forced myself to watch the first three episodes. Left to my own devices, I would have stopped after the first. I am told by reliable sources it gets better after that, fine, in my opinion it’s basically another Star Wars video game put on television. I haven’t watched another episode since and I couldn’t be more grateful that the series has apparently dropped so dramatically in quality that it is unlikely to contend for Emmys this year.

I was not entirely thrilled when last year around the time of the end of 2022 awards shows Andor started showing up on the roster. It was nominated for Best Drama by  the Critics Choice awards and Diego Luna was nominated for Best Actor by that group and the Golden Globes. It has received recognition from the usual Guilds – Visual Effects, Sound Editing, Art Directing – but the WGA gave it two nominations and it was short-listed for a Peabody. I remained reluctant to get involved even after this – The Mandalorian has had a similar group of nominations – but the WGA nominations convinced me I had to least look at it. (Star Wars is known for many things; great writing is not one of them.) I got a copy of the DVD for Season 1 of the show several months ago and finally this last week began to watch it. Three episodes in I do see why so many critics and audiences love it. And perhaps the most essential reason for it is contradictory: it may be set in the universe of Star Wars, but it is nothing like it. Because unlike every movie or TV show I’ve seen about it, Andor is about something other than the Force or Jedis.

The opening involves Cassian Andor, superbly played by Diego Luna, entering a brothel on an imperial planet. He’s looking for his sister and he attracts the attention of the wrong people both in their case and his. They attempt to shake him down after he leaves. There is no question not only who shot first, but who shot second and when it’s over Cassian knows he has a price on his head.

The Empire we are introduced too in Andor is not the one we have become familiar with over the past forty years: when the soldier who reports these deaths to his superior, his initial reaction is to bury them. “Two of our soldier were in a place they weren’t supposed to be, doing something they weren’t supposed too.” He dismisses them as meeting the fate of someone with ‘dark skin’ and orders the officer to bury it. Syril (Kyle Soller) does not let it go and we don’t know yet whether because he believes in some form of justice or because he is holding deep prejudices.  When he ends up recruiting a supervisor who is impressed by his initiative, we get a very clear message as to why he’s agreeing to lead a team to a planet under imperial rule. For more than forty years, we’ve been told the Empire forces are ‘storm troopers’ and basically ignored the darker implications. Andor makes it very clear of that, particularly because no one is wearing a white clunky uniform.

On his planet of Ferrix, Ander is making  plans to lie low and to sell something that he stole a long time ago and now has value. He has a conversation with his adopted mother (the always welcome Fiona Shaw)who tells him that his connection with a planet that we already know is part of the shooting down of an imperial ship in Andor’s childhood has risen to the knowledge of the Empire. Cassian has made contact with a ‘friend’ who he thinks has contact with the black market, but whom he is unaware is actually responsible for something far darker.

In the third episode we are formally introduced to that contact, Luthen Rael. Stellan Skarsgard has been one of the great actors of film and television for a very long time but I don’t think I’ve ever been as impressed with him as his role in Andor.  When Cassian and Luthen have their first meeting, it quickly becomes a standoff. There is a discussion, perhaps as an Easter egg, that Luthen knew Cassian’s father but no one would mistake Luthen for a jedi knight or even an ancestor of Han Solo. Luthen’s attitude is cool and controlled and is very aware of the danger that Andor is involved in and what he may soon be facing. He reveals two rules that immediately save Cassian’s life, despite his efforts.

While this going on an imperial crew has come ostensibly to arrest Cassian but they always want to do as much destruction as possible. Both Syril and his superior clearly look upon everyone on this planet as beneath and incapable of putting up a fight. It is clear from the start that they have underestimated the people of this city and Cassian himself.  I’ve seen countless battles like what follows in ‘The Reckoning’ throughout the Star Wars franchise but this is the first one I actually gave a damn about because it had a human element and you were aware of the carnage that unfolded as it happened. I have little doubt Industrial Light and Magic earned their moneys worth; this is the first time I’ve seen a battle and have been more impressed by the human performance than the visual ones.

Yes I am aware of what Andor represents in the Star Wars universe. Yes there are scenes with comic droids and aliens with rubber suits. Yes, I am aware that this series takes place even more long, long ago in that galaxy far, far away. But none of this bothers me one bit because Andor is the first series I’ve seen connected to Star Wars that seems to be about some kind of broader theme then a mystical force or some battle between the Skywalkers or masked bounty hunters.

I understand why Andor has been embraced by critics for far more than just the usual visual and technical aspects. Star Wars films have always been capable of getting extraordinary actors but in almost every film or TV show I’ve seen them it, they basically seem to be slumming it. Diego Luna has played this exact character before on Rogue One and it you saw someone who was capable of rising himself above the typical mediocre material. In a sense Andor is a prequel to a prequel and because we all know where it ends Luna has no trouble tearing in the role with the same ferocity. The fact that Tony Gilroy, the co-writer of Rogue One is at the helm of this series actually helps it more because Gilroy has always been capable of delving into dark material particularly when it comes to action heroes. He has been the head screenwriter between the Jason Bourne movie, was Oscar nominated for his script of Michael Clayton, delved into the darkness of the Middle East with Beirut. All of which is to say he had a handle of how to deal with characters who live in the world of subterfuge and hidden their true selves before he even picked up a pen for Rogue One.

By delving into the fundamental corruption and darkness of the empire among the rank and file in a way that Star Wars has more or less avoided for forty years (we usually were much higher up the chain of command)Andor looks a lot deeper into the Star Wars universe and finds a world that is far more dystopian than George Lucas or his followers ever truly implied.  Nuance has never been something that this franchise has ever been good at or even tried that hard for; it’s all about gun battles, cool light sword fights and chases on big ships. In Clerks there was a famous discussion about whether the constructors of the second Death Star deserved to die. I imagine in Kevin Smith has more or less gotten confirmation to that hypothetical he famously posed.

It is likely Andor will be nominated for Best Drama, Luna and Skarsgard are favorites for Emmy nominations, and other members of the guest cast such as Shaw and the still unseen (at least to me) Andy Serkis will be nominated too. The thing is, that might not make a difference to me because this is the first series connected with Star Wars – really the first anything ­connected with this franchise – that I’ve actually wanted to finish now that I’ve started. Perhaps because I know infinitely less about this franchise that those who have been following it for decades, I may actually be capable of enjoying it more because it will have the capability to surprise me with plot developments and that there are characters here whose fates I actually give a damn about.  Andor is many things, but it is not about itself and so far, it’s as much about plot and character than it is about gunfights and battles. That is a triumph for any sci-fi series and a revelation from a franchise that I have expected nothing from my entire life.

My score: 4.75 stars.

Racists are Not A Part of the Democratic Voting Bloc...Anymore

 

There’s this common thread in progressive articles these days about how Republicans are trying to rewrite history. That they’re banning the 1619 Project from being taught in schools, that they’re  having books ban that might educate children with the right values, that they’re using critical race theory as a stalking horse, etc. I have to say there is a part of me that has always gotten a chuckle of this considering that they are the people who argue for books called The People’s History  and Lies My History Professor Told Me.  In other words Republicans are rewriting the history that we’re trying to rewrite.

This is a cliché particularly in fundraisers from so many progressives who are also advocating for Democrats. If you believe their history, all Republicans with the possible exception of Lincoln (I expect them to find information he was actually a slaveowner himself someday) have always been evil and bigoted, beholden to the corporate oligarchs and the Moral majority. At the same time, Democrats have always been the party of progress and equality, believing the rights of the minorities, woman and the LGBTQ+ community. To say this involves a ridiculous amount of contortion is an understatement but it’s one that leftists have always been capable of.  Recently they wrote a long article arguing that Theodore Roosevelt, one of the greatest presidents in history, was actually a racist. There is truth to this. So were his contemporaries and rivals Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan, but you’ll never see that in an article they write. LBJ was a saint for creating the Great Society; they leave out any involvement he had in Vietnam, which as we all know was entirely Richard Nixon’s fault. Eisenhower and Ford barely get mentioned but as we all know JFK and Jimmy Carter were saints.

The most recent example of this came in yet another piece of clickbait that says, “Does the Republican Party worship poverty, death and disease?” They then gleefully list how red states are leading in so many horrible statistics including poverty, illiteracy, etc. all of which are meant to basically say: “See, we’re better than them.” Then they ‘explain’ how we got there using so many of the usual talking points about the Republicans adopting the Southern strategy, the Christian televangelists becoming a block of the Republican party and the destruction of corporate finance for Republicans. And in the narrowest sense of the word, it’s accurate. But like everything else about progressives, it leaves out everything else.

Of course, they write the usual line that LBJ said after signing the Civil Rights Act: “I think we just delivered the South for the Republicans for a long time.”  What they always leave out, of course, was that from Reconstruction until the 1968 election, the South was essentially Democratic. Indeed, it was called the Solid South. Every time the Democrats met to nominate a President from 1844 until 1936, there was a rule in place – that the Republicans pointedly did not have – that it took two-thirds of the delegates to nominate a candidate. In essence, this gave the South veto power over any candidate who might even seem to argue for something regarding equal rights for blacks.  After this rule was eliminated and Harry Truman began to advocate for Civil Rights, governor Strom Thurmond – then the Democratic governor of South Carolina – led a branch of Southern Democrats who demanded that the DNC, among other things, reinstate that two-thirds rule at the next convention. After that refusal, a branch of Southern Democrats walked out to form their own party – which was called the States Right Party. From the 1930s to the 1960s when the Southern Democrats essentially controlled the Senate, it was understood – if not liked – that no bill involving Civil Rights would be the House floor without meeting a filibuster.

Now to be clear many of the great Democrats of that era were Southern representatives – Sam Rayburn, Richard Russell, Alben Barkley, Estes Kefauver and Kenneth McKellar – most of whom played vital roles in the New Deal that got passed.  But make no mistake during this period the South was a one-party system and it was entirely Democratic.

Now you’d think that progressives would remember this because they are constantly mentioning the Jim Crow South. There was, just yesterday, an article in which they boasted that there was a ‘brain drain’ in which during this period the Great Migration took place to the North. They left out that the Jim Crow  was Democratic and the party of White Supremacy while the North was not only almost entirely Republican but the party of Progressivism. They also leave out that much of the Progressive era – you know, what they’re named for – comes from a large bloc of the Republican party, led by Theodore Roosevelt and the Populist Party, which was in the West and among its platform advocated for regulation of the railroads, a graduated income tax, direct election of Senators and female suffrage.  But that part never enters their narrative because it would be acknowledging that states that consider fundamentally Republican now are and always have been irredeemable.

The decision for equality was the right one for America, but every time the progressives repeat his quote, the implication is always: “Good. We’re better out without them.” That’s not the kind of opinion that works for unification.

Next, of course, they make the argument about the Christian Right and the moral majority. This is a harder one to refute but not impossible. The Bible Belt, it’s worth remembering, was part of the Solid South up until the 1960s and the Democrats were fine with exploiting it to their benefit as much as possible. It’s worth noting that Prohibition, which was fundamentally a movement by that Southern bloc, was done in part in order to get the 21^st Amendment passed: the one for full women suffrage. Indeed, many women voters were in favor of Prohibition being put in the constitution as much as the right to vote.  

The Democrat Party was just as inclined to religious bigotry during much of their history. During the 1920s, the KKK enjoyed a major revival and back then, they were as much an anti-Catholic party as they were an anti-African American party. The Democrats were fine counting them as their members. In a major vote that took a long time to resolve as part of the 1924 Democratic Convention, a plank in the platform to condemn the Klan passed – by one vote. That year, the party nominee was John W. Davis, a Wall Street lawyer. Davis  might be familiar to some scholars as arguing against Brown V. Board of Education before the Supreme Court.The majority opinion, of course, was written by Earl Warren. He was a Republican at the time. They won’t tell you that part.

 When Al Smith became the Democratic nominee for President in 1928, many of his own party were opposed to it.  The anti-Catholic bias that dominated the nation came from the Klan.You might think we finally overcame when JFK became the Democratic nominee in 1960, but he had to make a lot of speeches arguing and defending his religion. (Ironically, Kennedy was barely a Catholic.) But it worked and Kennedy became President – by one tenth of one percent of the popular vote, and even now we’re not sure how accurate that count is.

All of which is to say when it comes to freedom of religion the Democrats don’t entirely have the best track record either: Carter may have been a born-again Christian, but its worth noting that bothered a lot of Democrats at the time too.

Finally there is the argument that the Republicans are the party of corporations and money, always have been always be. This is closer to accuracy than some of their other claims, in the sense at the start of the 20^th century the GOP was as much a party of Big Business as it is now. The fact that Theodore Roosevelt spent much of his presidency campaigning for the rights of the undervalued – such things as the Square Deal, The FDA, the National Parks Service happened in his Presidency, the fact that the bosses didn’t even want him to be on the ticket in 1900, the fact that they were trying to replace him prior to 1904 – doesn’t enter their thinking because the only Roosevelt who counts his Franklin. (Eleanor, for the record, was more enlightened on civil rights than he was.)

But during much of the 20^th century most Democrats had their noses in rings too. They were called political bosses.  Their were machines across the country that for most of the Democratic Party’s existence controlled their candidates as much as they did the Republicans and didn’t really let go until JFK’s victory over them in 1960. Richard Daley the last real one, as many Republicans are sure of, made sure he won the Presidency that year.  When George McGovern managed to break the bosses chains when he won the 1972 nomination, they essentially reacted by sitting on their hands during the campaign, waiting for him to completely collapse in a forty-nine state loss. He formed a coalition that would eventually be the model of the Democratic voting bloc but it took the party until 2008 to acknowledge it.  Democrats might now be the party of the working man, but they spent a lot of their time fighting it.

Progressives, I am certain of, will never tell you this, if they know it in the first place because it does not fit their narrative. I find this fundamentally hypocritical, but as we all know hypocrisy in bipartisan. What is harder to fathom is the contempt they look at on all of these states, many of whom were Democratic far longer they have been Republican. You’d think, if they are the party of equality that want to help everybody, that they would want to raise these red states that are suffering from all of the evils that they list. The message, however, is always the same.

They deserve it. They were misled by the racist bigotry, the latent religious messaging and the corporations disguised as populism.  The fact that the ads that Lee Atwater aired for Bush were not removed from the ones that George Wallace famously used, that churches used to be prominent in campaigning for Democratic voters in the South, that the machines had no problem giving money to people to vote for Democratic candidates for a very long time – the Kennedys in particular were fond of this – is irrelevant. We’re not like this, they say.  We’re more enlightened now.

No. You made a cold-blooded political calculation. You decided the African-American vote was more important than the racist vote. You don’t get to blame them for deciding to go elsewhere when they aren’t part of your constituency any more.

You’d also think, considering how much you mock the idea of the national divorce and that there are so many of the downtrodden in these states – they should know this, many of their articles are about tragedies involving these minorities in these states -  that they’d want to do something to help these deep red states, considering that many of these people are suffering.  But I’ve read their blogs about elections to often to know that they don’t give a damn. If your African-American, or Latino, or LGBTQ+, or a woman, or you know, any of the constituencies that progressives want to vote for, and you happen to live in this state, the overall message you get from so many of these articles are you’re on your own.  We will raise money off your suffering, but electorally, we don’t really want to help you. Not on a national level, not a local level, not at all. It’s your own fault really. You didn’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps and do the right thing – move to a blue state when you had the chance. I mean, it’s possible there were other factors – after all your states are run by the party that worships poverty, disease and death -  but since they’re not going to help you, we really don’t think we should either.

That’s the thing about all of these red states. Many of them, particularly in the South, were solidly blue for a lifetime.  We were willing to overlook so much of the blatant and bigotry for decades – hell, we counted them as vital members of our constituency – as long as we got their votes. Then many of them started making enough noise, and as a political decision we decided to help.  The Democrats had a much further right than the Republicans did for more than a century. We decided to cut them off and they went somewhere else. Now we’re doing everything in our power to deny that we ever had them as members, and some of our newest set want to pretend that even the ones who were radically progressive by the standards of their party were not real progressive or even real Democrats – and that the party that took them on was always reprehensible because they saw a different kind of political opportunity that we once did.

And can we really blame them? Because it worked for them. Between 1968 and 2004, the Republicans won seven out of ten Presidential elections. Yes I know, we’re still hung up on 2000 (I’ve written about that one before). May I remind you that in four of the first five after adopting ‘the Southern strategy”, Republicans won big. In four of the next five wins, the Republican candidate received at least 400 electoral votes. In two of them, the Republican candidate carried 49 of 50 states. That’s basically the entire country.

Oh, and the sainted Jimmy Carter, the one who won in that gap? It was closer than it looked. Few hundred thousand votes change, Ford would have been elected. The only reason Carter won was because he basically carried the South. And Clinton won both his election with less than fifty percent of the popular vote much of which included the South.

So make your argument it was a short term solution on a historical perspective. They carried the Presidency five out of six elections, and by the time Clinton first term was half over, they would control both houses of Congress for the next twelve years.

So go ahead, mock the conservative strategy as a failure. But when you decide to trash Republicans as a whole – and make no mistake, articles like this do just that – all you’re doing is basically ensuring they’ll keep that voting that way. Articles like this basically call Republican voters ‘simple-minded constituents’ that we’re better off not having part of our bloc anymore. That’s not an effective long-term strategy either..

Now, you know some of the story. There’s more to it than it, of course, but it’s definitely more than the progressives want you to know.

 

Lost Rewatch on VHS: Live Together, Die Alone

 

Even by 2006, it was becoming clear that the love story was inconsistent with Peak TV. The Sopranos  didn’t believe in it, it was tangential at best to The Wire and 24,  Deadwood ended before it became clear if it would be critical and while Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a magnificent accomplishment, it made clear pretty much from the first season that love was a fate worse than death by vampire. 

This pattern would only accelerate as Peak TV continued.  It did not exist in Breaking Bad; it was a non-factor in Mad Men, Homeland argued it was a doomed enterprise…you get the idea. Indeed the great pillar of network TV Shonda Rhimes essentially argued that it’s unnecessary and that your soulmate is just something you have until you get bored or death steps in.

Perhaps that is the reason why, when I first saw the second season finale of Lost in 2006, I was somewhat disappointed that the series decided to tell the story of Desmond.  Considering that for two seasons Lost had been about so many grand themes – mystery,  fate vs. free will,  science, survival, betrayal, death – that to fundamentally spend the finale devoted to what seemed to be a love story seemed a disappointment. I don’t think I realized that in fact the writers were setting up the grand theme of Lost, one that got, well, lost under all of the mystery. The reason the series was such a success may have been initially because of the mysteries and the questions we had, but the reason it lasted was because we cared about these characters.  Lost is fundamentally a show about the human condition, and what is more human than love?

And in that sense the saga of Desmond and Penny stands alone not just among the entire arc of Lost but in much of Peak TV as whole. In the cynical world that 21^st century TV reflected, we were taught to believe that love stories were not the kind of thing that survived as entertainment anymore. (I think that may be the reason that such things as the romantic comedy, which had been the staple of movies for more than twenty years, began to fall out of favor around this same period.) Love was too pure an emotion to appeal to the viewer as much as more elemental things: lust was the pervading emotion, whether it be for sex or for power or money.  The story of Desmond and Penny fundamentally cuts through that narrative.  There are many fans of the series who have problems with so much of the show; I don’t know a single person who has issue with the love story of Desmond and Penny. I certainly didn’t; after my initial objections, I was fully onboard with it by the time Season 3 hit its groove. The fact that many of the fates of the survivors and the show itself are at the core around the love story of Desmond and Penny only proves this point.

Desmond has found himself back on the island and is thoroughly plastered when we meet him.  He spends much of the first half of the season premiere drunk and determined to stay that way.  Much of Season 2 is about characters losing faith and Desmond now seems to have become a pure nihilist.  He is the first character we’ve met who openly wants to leave the island, and now apparently thinks he is doomed never to leave it.  He sailed off two weeks ago and somehow he ended up right back here. He thinks the island is all that’s left.  He has only a tangential interest in the button he deserted, doesn’t seem that interested in either helping Sayid or saying goodbye to the boat he traveled on and when he talks to Claire about her baby’s father not be fit to the task, it’s very clear he’s talking about himself.  Desmond doesn’t have a purpose any more which is almost certainly the reason when Locke comes to him telling him everything he did for three years was a lie, he embraces it even though he should very well know better.

People have wondered why, since Desmond clearly remembers what happens when he sees the printout from the Pearl, he goes along with John’s decision to not push the button. Based on what we’ve seen in the flashbacks prior to this, I think there’s a very real chance that Desmond thinks that his actions did destroy the world and that is his punishment. That’s why he has come back to the island; he’s suffering for his sins. With the clock running, he actually asks John whether he’s doing this because he has a death wish. Maybe that’s why Desmond is doing this. He’s hoping that when the numbers run out, he gets punished for his sins.

And by this point we know that is not the real sin he thinks he needs to atone for.  Desmond walks out of a Scottish military garrison to meet with a man named Charles Widmore. We’ve seen signs of him in subtle product references in the second season, but we had no reason to think it meant anything. Now we learn that Widmore is a billionaire who clearly disapproved of Desmond’s relationship with his daughter, has done everything in his power to keep them apart, and wants to make sure it stays that way. Because Desmond clearly believes in honor, he decides to prove himself to Widmore by winning his race around the world.

We then flash back to the scene in the stadium – and its there we meet Penny for the first time.  We will learn more about the saga of Desmond and Penny then almost any other characters on the show (though in the tradition of Lost we learn it backwards) but in a sense, we learn everything we have to in their only scene together in this episode.  They have not seen each other in years and there’s clearly hurt between them, but it’s just as clear that neither has moved on. The writers always choose the names of their characters with care, and they clearly made a point when they named Widmore’s daughter Penelope.  Anyone who has even a basic understanding of Greek mythology knows the significance of the name: Penelope was Odysseus’ wife who remained faithful to her husband for years even after he was presumed dead from the Trojan War.  Even on an island a world away from Desmond, she finds a way to reach out to him at the time of his greatest despair and she assures him that she will always love him no matter what. Desmond clings to that despite everything, and I think that before the climax of the episode, he says “I love you, Penny” because he wants them to be his last words.

Of course, they aren’t. In an outlier for a season finale, not just for Lost but almost any TV series in this century, no major characters die. (Is that a spoiler? It’s been nearly twenty years.) It looked like a lot of characters might be doomed in the last minutes, and a lot of characters are clearly in danger, but every regular we see in this episode turns up in the next season (or later on).

It's the fundamental nature of Lost that even while actions are going on that could destroy everybody on the island, a healthy portion of the survivors are not only unaware of it at the time, but they also don’t even learn about long after the fact.  Indeed, even Desmond’s arrival is barely noticed with any real interest by Jack, who barely seems to be bothered that the man who left the hatch (and knew before, remember) is now back on the island before going back on his mission to get the Others.  If ever there was an example of how narrow minded a leader Jack is, it’s now.  Does he see the boat as a potential for rescue? No, it’s a tool that he can use to get his revenge on the Others. Sayid is little better, considering it’s his idea to do so in the first place.

Every aspect of Jack’s plan is foolish from the get-go. He chooses not to tell any of his friends about what he is doing, and it is only when Kate and Sawyer realize that they are being followed that Jack is forced to tell them. Jack can barely be bothered to apologize to his friends, and his treatment of Hurley is reprehensible.

Jorge Garcia is truly fantastic in the season finale. He is the only person on the mission who is not motivated by revenge or desperation but because he wants to help Walt.  When he learns the truth, he feels betrayed twice. When he realizes just how horrible Michael is – that a man he considered a friend killed two women in cold blood and can’t even be bothered to apologize for it – he clearly just wants to go back. He is not any happier when Jack basically forces him to keep going on the basis of a plan that is clearly flawed before they even realize that Michael has betrayed them again. When the trap is sprung by the Others, he does not bother to run away or fight, but rather just covers his ears. The fact that he eventually learns the only reason they wanted him in the first place was to send him is just one more blow.  There’s something truly sad about the guy who everybody likes, not being wanted or trusted by anyone.

It's also a measure of how bad a leader Jack is at this stage that at no point does he think to tell Locke about what’s happening or even ask him to come along when it’s clear he could help. That said, it’s pretty obvious that John isn’t in any position to help anyone, certainly not himself.

Terry O’Quinn is magnificent in the season finale as a man who has lost all faith and is clearly bitter and angry. He is enraged at Eko for having faith (and the fact that Eko uses his own phrase back at him must sting more) and ends up tracking down Desmond almost certainly because he wants to share in the misery and take Desmond down. There’s something very vindictive about how he shows Des the Orientation film and offers to make popcorn.

When Des and Locke are in the computer room, Locke seems more lost than he’s ever been.  He says that Charlie and Eko aren’t his friends, and actually seems not to care if they’re hurt or injured. For much of the season he was obsessed with the button; now his obsession is in the other direction. When he tells Desmond why he lost his faith – and finally accepts his part in the death of Boone – it triggers something in Desmond. By the time he argues the Pearl Station is an experiment, it’s not a shock – that large field of notebooks that have never been read is a big honking sign. What is a shock comes when he learn that the Swan is real, and that there has been an incident – and that incident crashed Oceanic 815. (It also gives us an official date for the crash: September 22, 2004 – which is of course, the day Lost premiered. We’ll basically have a calendar of events for the next two seasons.)

Locke is now so much of a zealot that he no more listens to Desmond’s certainty that this is real than Eko’s evidence of destiny and he finally decides to prove it – by destroying the computer.  There’s a trace of uncertainty when he says that he’s saved them all.

The scene in the hatch after the numbers run down is one of the great set-pieces in the entire series.  We watch as every metal object in the hatch begins to be drawn towards something, as Charlie and Eko frantically try to get out, as Eko makes his way back to the computer. Locke has not moved, even as the timer begins to contract to the magnetism. He meets Eko’s eyes and says three simple words. “I was wrong.” It seemed like the understatement of the century. In actuality, it’s the first thing Locke has said something that he is completely and utterly certain of.

Then Desmond turns the key and because Henry Ian Cusick was only a guest star, we naturally assume he’s dead. (See Locke’s statement above.) At this point, however, we’re dealing with the action on the pier where we finally get to see the Others in their (ragged) glory and officially meet the leader – Henry Gale. If Emerson was brilliant in his earlier performance, he’s incredible here as he talks coldly and business-like to Michael, about keeping his word and how he knows Michael will never tell what he’s done. There’s something almost military like about his posture now, something with authority. (While the sky is turning people and everyone is flinching, he doesn’t seem as surprised when it happens or when it’s over. This is the first sign we’ve gotten he might be the key to everything that’s happening.)

When Michael asks, utterly bereft: “Who are you people?” who among us can forget Henry’s answer: “We’re the good guys.” Now Henry has spent the entire season lying to everybody, but this is the first time he actually seem to believe what he’s saying.  We are no more inclined to believe him than we did Tom (the man we thought was the leader) when he said the survivors were interlopers or Goodwin when he called Nathan ‘not a good person’ or Ethan when he said he wanted the best for Claire’s baby…well, you get it, these guys have a credibility problem. And we know that when Henry tells Jack, Kate and Sawyer are coming with them, it’s not to invite them to a fancy dinner.  What we do know by now is that the Others really seem to believe it. But we still don’t know why.  Much of Season 3 will be spent explaining why they believe it, and for some reason when we spent so much time with them, a lot of fans turned on the series. (I’ll get to that.)

Season 2 ends like Season 1 did, with the castaways scattered.  This time, however, the divides are far more severe. Michael and Walt are leaving the island for home. (Gotta say that Henry might have thought it wouldn’t be for long: his departing words are not farewell or goodbye, but bon voyage) Sayid, Jin and Sun are on the other side of the island, not sure what’s happened to their friends. Charlie made it out of the hatch intact (and is kissing Claire) but Desmond, Locke and Eko might very well be dead.  Hurley is heading back to the camp, while Jack, Kate and Sawyer are going with the Others.

But that’s not the final scene. For the first time, we leave the island and in fact seem to be somewhere in the Arctic Circle. Two men are speaking a strange language (we later learn their Portuguese). They look at a monitor that says, “ELECTROMAGNETIC ANOMALY DETECTED” . They started leaving through books, mutter things about “Did we miss it?” and one makes a call.  Then on the other end, we hear the line: “Miss Widmore. I think we found it.” 

And there’s Penny. Who said in her one scene with Desmond: “With enough money and determination, you can find anyone.” She is clearly set on using both to find Desmond. If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

 

 

 

 

 

Emmy Watch Phase 2: Dorian Awards and The TCA Nominations

 

 

Two weeks ago I learned of the existence of yet another awards show related to TV that had been around for awhile and that I had fundamentally ignored: the Dorian TV Awards which since 2009 have been given by the Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA)

Those of you who read my column know that I was impressed with their nominations and going further back, I saw that they had a solid record when it came to TV awards. I actually said that last year, when they recognized Yellowjackets, Abbott Elementary and Girls5Eva they had outdone the Emmys.

Last Monday they unveiled the winners of their awards. I was, as you are very aware, very busy with other things. Now that I have the free time, I will now reveal the winners and my reactions to them and if the Emmys do such a good job, they should be so lucky.

It probably will not come as a shock that Succession and Abbott  Elementary won Best Drama and Best Comedy, respectively; at the moment they are deservedly the heavy favorites for the Emmys. It’s the rest of the awards I wish to discuss and I find myself hoping the Emmys are up to the task.

Somebody Somewhere once against demonstrated how great a series it is. It received the prize for Best Unsung Show, over such standouts as Derry Girls and Reservation Dogs.. More impressively, in my mind, Bridget Everett took the prize for Best TV performance in a Comedy. Considering that three of the nominated performers – Quinta Brunson for Abbott Elementary,  Rachel Brosnahan for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Natasha Lyonne for Poker Face – are certainties for Best Actress in a Comedy nominations and Ali Wong is rising for Best Lead Actress in a Limited Series, this is an impressive win for Everett. I can only hope it leads to a nomination down the line. Ayo Edibiri’s triumph in The Bear is only slightly less surprising, considering she was up against heavyweights Janelle James and Sheryl Lee Ralph for Abbott Elementary and Alex Borstein for Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Edibiri’s nomination was always going to happen; one wonders if this will improve her odds at the Emmys.

The choices for Best Drama are slightly less surprising: Jennifer Coolidge, who has been dominating the Supporting Actress awards for The White Lotus and who won in this category last year, took another prize. Sarah Snook’s triumph in Best TV performance for Succession is not much less of a shock, considering how quickly she has been rising in the polls to win the Best Actress prize over Melanie Lynskey in Yellowjackets. Is this a sign of things to come? We’ll see.

I was impressed with the recognition of other underrated series: Los Espookys took a victory lap by winning Best Non-English language show; The Other Two a much beloved series by many took the prize for Best LGBTQ+ show over Somebody Somewhere and The Last of Us.  Fire Island taking Best TV Movie or Miniseries is not entirely a shock considering it is the favorite to win in Best TV movie from the Emmys.  Last of Us didn’t entirely go empty handed; it took Most Visually striking show, a sign that it will be contended with Andor in most of the technical categories going forward. I was glad to see Ziwe take another victory lap for Best Current Affairs show and while I’m slightly surprised to see that Schmigadoon! took Campiest TV Show over Wednesday and Dead Ringers – it’s a show satirizing Broadway musicals. Hard to get more camp than that. The rest of the awards I know nothing about so I won’t comment, though I am glad to see Wanda Sykes win any award.

 

But wait, there’s more. Yesterday afternoon the TCA awards, another of the prominent TV award groups announced their annual nominations. I have been following them for several years and have always been impressed by their work.  So let’s take a look at their nominations, which aren’t entirely surprising but are no less impressive.

Individual Achievement in Drama features all three Roy siblings from Succession, Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey from The Last of Us and Rhea Seehorn (but not Bob Odenkirk) from Better Call Saul. No surprises. Christine Baranski from The Good Fight is a pleasant surprise as is Betty Gilpin from Mrs. Davis (I want credit for advocating for both of them for Emmy nominations) Will Swarm or Dominique Fishback get nominated? Kind of surprised not see Beef in either category.

Individual achievement in comedy features Quinta Brunson and Janelle James from Abbott Elementary, Ayo Edebiri and Jeremy Allan White for The Bear, Natasha Lyonne for Poker Face and Bill Hader for Barry. None of them are surprises. Harrison Ford for Shrinking is a slight one and I didn’t expect to see James Marsden here for Jury Duty. (Dead to Me, maybe.) Nothing for Ted Lasso. No argument with that.)

In the new category of Outstanding Achievement in Family Programming, we have some interesting shows, though none are likely to be nominated. Still it is interesting to see Ms. Marvel and American Born Chinese here along with Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur and Star Trek: Prodigy. I guess some critics are capable of recognizing franchises, along with you know Love, Victor and Never Have I Ever.

Outstanding New Program features several shows that are likely to be contending for Best Drama or Comedy: Andor and The Last of Us for the former (but not House of the Dragon) Poker Face and The Bear for the latter. Critics also seem found of Mrs. Davis and Interview with the Vampire.

Outstanding Achievement in Movies or Miniseries. Beef and Black Bird are likely to be there. Critics keep pushing The Patient. I may have to finish Fleishman is in Trouble now, and I have to keep going with Daisy Jones and The Six. Mrs. Davis is here too guys.

Outstanding Achievement in Drama. Andor, Last of Us, Better Call Saul, The White Lotus, Succession and Yellowjackets are certain drama nominees. Why can’t the Emmys see what was in The Good Fight? Will Interview with a Vampire show up later on?

Outstanding Achievement in Comedy. Abbott Elementary, Barry, Poker Face and The Bear are sure things. And we can never rule out What We Do In The Shadows. Please recognize Reservation Dogs or The Other Two. Looks like I’m going to have to see Shrinking soon (it’s one of the nominees for Best New Program)

Outstanding Achievement in Variety, Talk or Sketch. Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, Saturday Night Live and John Oliver will all be there. With the changes, it’s likely Black Lady Sketch Show will be too. Will the Emmys bite the bullet and nominate Ziwe or Amber Ruffin) For the record I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson one last year.

Program of the Year: Abbott Elementary, Poker Face, The Bear and The Other Two for Comedy. Andor, Better Call Saul, Succession, The Last of Us, and The White Lotus for drama. Only The Other Two is not a certain Emmy nominee.

Hard to argue with any of this group. I might have wanted to see Barry among the Program of the Year nominees or some recognition from Only Murders in the Building (like Ted Lasso it was completely shut out) but this is, as is usually the case, an excellent group from my fellow critics. Perhaps in another year or so they will start differentiating lead from supporting.

I will come to an end in Phase two next week when the HCA finally releases its nominations for television. They outdid themselves last year; I expect the same this year. See you Thursday when the nominations come on.

 

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