My Attempts To Predict The 2024 Astra TV Awards, Part 1: All Things Drama

 

 

Well, here we are friends. Next to the Critics Choice Awards we have reached my favorite awards show when it comes to television. They’re only four years old but already they have become pretty close to the gold standard for how all television awards should proceed going forward. I speak, as my readers know, of the Astra (formerly HCA) TV awards.

First of all, yes like with the Emmys we’ve already had one for 2024 as a result of the strikes that crippled Hollywood last summer. And as I reported the awards show was much less entertaining and fun last January for the simple fact of timing. The Astras decided to move their awards to January to get in under the wire for the Emmys. Unfortunately they chose to schedule their awards the day after the 2024 Golden Globes. The lion’s share of the winners and nominees didn’t show up. That didn’t mean, however, that they were any less skilled when it came to the actual winners, recognizing such standouts as Will Trent, Party Down and The Boys along with the more conventional winners such as Succession and The Bear, that they showed independence by giving prizes to Pedro Pascal, Rhea Seehorn and Christina Ricci along with Jeremy Allan White and Elizabeth Debicki and that they weren’t still capable of having ties, having Ayo Edebiri share her prize with Ricci for Wednesday and Debicki share her prize for The Crown with Jeri Ryan for Star Trek: Picard.

I believe that since the awards are back at their duly appointed time in August that this year’s ceremonies will actually be as much fun as the awards the same way they were for the first two years. It remains a question how many people will show up: they were remote the first year and they had remote acceptance speeches the second as well but I suspect it will still be fun.

I’ve never had great luck predicting the winners here but as I’ve said and will keep saying, that’s part of the fun. The Astras have made it clear they have their vision for TV which has frankly been superior to any awards show but the Critics Choice Awards to this point in history. And how can you not love an awards show that is not only willing to divide its nominees among streaming, cable and broadcast but actually is still willing to let network TV dominate more than a few categories? They’re always on my Christmas Card list.

So I’m going to do what I’ve done for every other awards show and see where it goes. I always love it when they prove me right, I’m just as thrilled when they prove me wrong.

I’ll start with Drama and I’ll focus on Broadcast and cable first.

 

BEST BROADCAST NETWORK DRAMA SERIES.

While it could very well go to The Good Doctor I suspect that it will come down to one of the two most nominated network shows both of which are among my favorites of 2024: Elsbeth and Will Trent. Will Trent did win last year but to this point the Astras hasn’t done a lot of repeating among any of his major winners. (Then again, it is pretty young.)

I’ve giving a slight edge to Will Trent though I won’t lie I loved to see Elsbet win.

Should Win: Elsbeth.

Will Win: Will Trent.

 

BEST CABLE DRAMA SERIES

There are only six nominees in this category and interestingly enough, none of them is Shogun. For whatever reasons that series is nominated in the streaming category even though it aired in FX first. I’ll be dealing with streaming dramas in the second half of this article.

I’m not going to lie; I would love it if Billions won the prize. It’s been one of favorite series of the 2010s and it was criminally ignored by every major awards group. It would be a fitting salute if it went out here – and the Astras was willing to do so for such series as This is Us already. But I’m going to go with the safer choice and that is The Gilded Age. Of course safer doesn’t mean just as deserving if not more so.

Should Win: Billions.

Will Win: The Gilded Age.

 

BEST ACTOR IN A NETWORK OR CABLE DRAMA

A footnote: with the exception of two of the performers in The Gilded Age, none of the nominees in any of these categories are eligible for Emmys. This will mean this category will have no influence on the Emmys but it also means some very deserving winners might be crowed.

I would love to see Paul Giamatti win for his extraordinary work in Billions. His performance as Chuck Rhoades was one of the great character pieces and it deserves recognition. I’d also like to see Morgan Spector prevail for his exceptional work in The Gilded Age. But with no compass to guide me in this category, I’m going to go for my personal favorite Ramon Rodriguez in Will Trent. I think he has a slightly better chance because he received nominations from other critics groups and that might be enough to carry him over the top.

Should Win: Giamatti.

Will Win: Rodriguez (?)

 

BEST ACTRESS IN A BROADCAST/CABLE DRAMA

Another very strong field and there are many choices I think worthy. My personal preferences would be one of the two Carries in this category: Preston for Elsbeth and Coon for The Gilded Age. Both are two of the greatest actress who have worked in TV for the past decade; both have been sorely lacking in recognition from the Emmys (Preston has won for her guest work). We also can’t rule out the possibility of Emma Stone winning for The Curse. This series was a heavy favorite for nominations but was skunked by the Emmys completely. Considering many thought Stone had a good chance to win an Emmy along with her Oscar, that baffled the masses.

Personally I would rather see Preston win. But I’d be overjoyed to see Coon finally give an acceptance speech. Considering she’s also one of the few nominees in either category with a corresponding Emmy nomination, I think this will give her a slight edge.

Should Win: Preston/Coon.

Will Win: Coon.

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A BROADCAST/CABLE DRAMA

Well we have no compass to lead us here either and the fact that we have a collection of some of the greatest character actors in history I have no idea who they’ll go too. So I’m going to rank this on personal preference.

The three nominees I most want to see win are, alphabetically, Ernie Hudson for Quantum Leap, Nathan Lane for The Gilded Age and Wendell Pierce for Elsbeth. All three men have been among my favorite character actors throughout the era of Peak TV and before. All are long overdue recognition for an award, particularly Hudson and Pierce. Hudson’s been owed once since OZ, Pierce since The Wire. Lane was nominated multiple times for Emmys and finally won one last year. However many strongly thought his work on The Gilded Age would earn him a nomination and the fact that he was ignored was one of the bigger surprises.

It's a tough call but in this case I’m going to follow my heart. I want to see Pierce win more than anything. He brought the dignity to Elsbeth that has otherwise would be lacking and I always want to see an actor from The Wire win anything. I’m think with any of the other winners for the record but Pierce has my heart.

Should Win: Pierce.

Wiil Win: They’re All Good Choices Really.

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A BROADCAST OR CABLE DRAMA

This one comes down to two of my favorite character actresses of all time: Christine Baranski for The Gilded Age and Sonja Sohn for Will Trent. And much as I’d like to see another performer from The Wire I think Baranski has this in the bag. It’s not just the corresponding Emmy nomination; it’s the fact that she’s been one of the pre-eminent actresses of the television in the 21^st century and has yet to win a single award for its which is ridiculous. This is one of the few awards that might happen on Emmy night and I’m fine with it.

Should Win/Will Win: Baranski.

 

BEST DIRECTING AND WRITING IN A BROADCAST OR CABLE DRAMA

In writing, much as I’d like to see Found win here I’m going to go with The Gilded Age in this case. For directing, I’m going to go with the season finale of The Curse. Love it or hate it, you can’t deny it wasn’t a triumph when it came to direction.

 

Now on to streaming dramas which will be more complicated.

 

BEST STREAMING DRAMA

For reasons that defy logic despite the faction Shogun aired on FX first, it is in this category because it also aired on Hulu. I don’t understand it, but here it is. But of course the overwhelming favorite at the Emmys will win here, correct?

Anywhere else, yes. Not the Astras. In their first year of existence they gave three of the four acting awards in this category to The Crown which ended up sweeping the Emmys. However they gave Best Streaming Drama to The Mandalorian. The big winner in 2022 was Severance which basically went home empty handed on Emmy night. And last year when many (myself included) thought The Crown would dominate the big winner turned out to be The Boys. So I’m not certain Shogun will win.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this year the Astras will recognize The Crown for its final season just as they did for This is Us in its last season. I also have my own issues with Shogun being in this category; the fact that it did poorly here compared to the Emmys makes me lean this way.

Should Win: Shogun.

Will Win: The Crown.

 

BEST ACTOR IN A STREAMING DRAMA

Strangely enough two of the Emmy nominees Idris Elba and Dominic West aren’t here but Colin Farrell and Tom Hiddleston are. Go figure. I think this will still come down to the two major heavies in this category: Hiroyuki Sanada for Shogun and Gary Oldman for Slow Horses.

If Oldman wasn’t the only nominee for his series I’d say he has more of a chance but since he is Sanada is as victorious at the Astras as his character was on the battlefield.

Should Win: Oldman/Sanada.

Will Win: Sanada.

 

BEST ACTRESS IN A STREAMING DRAMA

This is a tough one as most of the Emmy nominees are in this category. I’d like to see either Jennifer Aniston or Reese Witherspoon win in this category but The Morning Show hasn’t had much luck here. I think it will come down to Anna Sawai for Shogun or Imelda Staunton for The Crown. While I’d personally prefer if Staunton won for the final episode as Elizabeth II Sawai has been on a tear the last couple of months and I think she gets this easily.

Should Win/Will Win: Sawai.

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A STREAMING SERIES

With no presence from Shogun here, this is a wide open category. Four of the actors nominated here were in this category at the Emmys: the three actors from The Morning Show and Jonathan Pryce from The Crown. Billy Crudup is the heavy favorite in the Emmys this year and he’s already won the Critics Choice Award, so he has an edge. But the presence of Jon Hamm and Mark Duplass could very well split the vote in the same way the heavy presence of the cast of Succession in this category gave him a surprise win at the Critics’ Choice.

I’m giving him a narrow edge anyway but don’t rule out the possibility of Jonathan Pryce as an upset.

Should Win: Crudup/Pryce.

Will Win: Crudup.

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A STREAMING DRAMA SERIES

The easier category of the night, just as likely with the Emmys. Elizabeth Debicki has won every award in sight in the past year for her work as Princess Diana in the final season of The Crown: the Golden Globe, the Critics Choice Award, even a surprise victory at the SAG Awards. She won in this category last year, tying with Jeri Ryan. And it’s worth noting the previous performer to play Diana on The Crown Emma Corrin also won back in 2021, albeit for Best Actress. All that remains to be seen is if Debicki will be there to accept it this time.

Should Win/Will Win: Debicki.

 

BEST WRITING AND DIRECTING IN A STREAMING SERIES

If any of the other episodes in Shogun were nominated than the first one – Crimson Sky, for example – I’d give it to win in both categories.  I still think it will win for Direction – the series was too well directed not too but I’m less sure for writing. It’s possible the series finale for The Crown or the pilot for Mr. & Mrs. Smith will prevail.

 

GUEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA

As  I mentioned before, the Astra doesn’t differentiate between categories in Guest Acting. And as I’ve seen eight of the ten nominated performances I feel free to make educated guesses.

Personally I would like to see Mark-Paul Gosselaar win for his work in Found or John Ortiz for his superb stint in Will Trent. But I think it is far more likely to go to one of the nominees for Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Most fans thought Ron Perlman’s episode was one of the best of 2024, and considering he was the only nominee here not nominated by the Emmys I’m giving him the edge.

Should Win: Gosselaar.

Will Win: Perlman.

 

BEST GUEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA

I’ve also seen seven of the nominated performances here. I would prefer if Susan Kelechi Watson or Retta won for their memorable stints on Will Trent or Elsbeth respectively. They not only gave extraordinary performances but both were part of brilliant television series and got not even a nomination from the Emmys for their work.

But once again I must go for Mr. and Mrs. Smith. And in this case I’m going for another Mrs. Smith: Parker Posey. She’s been one of favorite indie queens for a long time and she is as deserving of a trophy as Watson or Retta.

Should Win: Watson/Retta.

Will Win: Posey.

Okay. I covered a lot of ground tonight. Tomorrow I move on to comedy.

 

 

Emmy Watch Final Phase: My Professional - And Personal - Reactions To the 2024 GALECA TV Awards

 

Well readers, we’re in the final countdown. The 2024 Emmy Awards are little more than a month away which means I’m going to spend much of the next month going through the pregame. This week that means covering the last of the major pre-Emmy awards for TV by various critics groups.

But before we get officially started, a couple of personal notes. Not long after I posted an incredibly favorable reception of this year’s Dorian TV Award nominations, given by GALECA (Gay & Lesbian Critics Association) I received something I had never received in all my years of writing for a medium.

A member of GALECA found my article and extended a professional and personal courtesy by thanking me for my praise of their nominations. I suspect the fact that I titled my article about how the awards made me proud to be a critic had something to do with it.

I was deeply moved. I’ve received much praise for my work over the years but this was the first time a professional critic reached out with a work of thanks. It is always nice to be appreciated.

And that leads me to something I think I don’t make clear often enough in these articles. I realize that for much of the past three years I have gone to a great deal of trouble to say that many professional critics, past and present, have a very harsh and unrealistic view of being unable to parse the difference that they view what they review as having to meet the standards of art when it has just as much – if not more – to do with commerce. I have no intention of backing away from that point; I’m actually going to be following up on it in the weeks and months to come, especially in my own field.

That being said, it doesn’t mean I don’t respect – and deeply appreciate – the work that so many TV critics have done over the years and particularly the organizations that give out nominations and awards. This pertains not just to GALECA but the Critics Choice Awards, the TCA and of course the Astras which I’ll be covering in detail later this week. I know as well as they do what a difficult job they have. I respect and admire your work, even if I don’t always agree with it. And it is organizations like yourselves that have been my north star during my professional career and make me glad I’ve chosen to work in TV criticism. You keep the bar high and I am grateful for what you to do.

So now let’s get down the business. Earlier today the Dorian Awards for television were given. As I mentioned in my article praising the nominations, I suspected that even more than this year the GALECA awards might have their finger on the pulse more than they have in the past. To be sure many of their nominated series don’t necessarily have LGBTQ+ themes:  Succession was their big winner in drama last year and this year their major nominees included Shogun and The Bear. But because this year features a sizable amount of programming where LGBTQ+ characters are front and center (in the Best Limited Series category alone, four of the nominees for Best Actor are in series where they are playing gay characters) I thought there was an excellent chance that the Dorian Awards might hew closer to the Emmys then previous years.

And now that the awards have been given, there is certainly a chance that might be so in some cases and in other cases the Dorian Awards show just how far ahead they can be of the curve.

One of the biggest winners in comedy was Hacks. This show come as a shock to no one: of the five nominees for comedy (all five of which were nominated by the Emmys, score one for the Dorians) Hacks had by far the most gay and lesbian characters. The series took Best Comedy, both TV Performance awards (Jean Smart for Lead; Hannah Einbinder for Supporting) and also took the prize for best written TV show, which again is far from a shock.

I must mention both categories don’t differentiate by gender and while I normally object this with other awards shows given the nature of the membership of GALECA I was more than willing to make an exception. I should mention that Smart was competing of what would be four of her five fellow Emmy nominees for Best Actress in a comedy: Quinta Brunson, Ayo Edebiri, Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph, and she also managed to defeat Jeremy Allen White for The Bear. Matt Berry was also nominated by the Emmys for What We Do In The Shadows and Martin Short was nominated for Only Murders in the Building. The only performers who were nominated by the Emmys this year were Devery Jacobs for Reservation Dogs and Renee Elise Goldberry for Girls5eva. Goldberry had no realistic chance of a nomination and while Jacobs wasn’t nominated, the show and her male lead were.

As for Einbinder she defeated what would end up being four  of her fellow nominees in this category: Carol Burnett, Janelle James, Sheryl Lee Ralph and, yes, she did beat Meryl. She also defeated Ebon Moss-Bachrach, heavily favored to win Best Supporting Actor for The Bear and Jamie Lee Curtis, the heavy favorite for Best Guest Actress. She also managed to beat her co-star Megan Stalter (who was shafted by the Emmys) and Harvey Guillen, nominated twice before for What We Do In The Shadows. Only Joel Kim Booster of Loot had no realistic chance of a nomination.

Not only does this make the Dorian Awards look incredibly good with their foresight in nominations, it does much to add momentum to both actress in the Emmys. Smart has already won twice before and Einbinder was a formidable contender who has been ignored twice (though honestly she didn’t lose ignobly).

Reservation Dogs was among the nominees for Best Comedy series and while it didn’t win, it picked up a worthy consolation prize for Best Unsung TV Show. This is an awards which would have saved a lot of trouble if the Emmys had it.

Now in Drama, there was no differentiation between traditional drama and limited series. That’s not unusual; organizations like the TCA have a similar pattern. It does mean the acting awards may not give us much of a view into what the Emmys will do.

The winner for Best TV Performance went to Matt Bomer for Fellow Travelers. This is an impressive  victory considering he did defeat three of what would be his fellow nominees in this category: Richard Gadd for Baby Reindeer, Tom Hollander for Capote Vs. The Swans and Andrew Scott for Ripley. The majority of the nominees in this category were nominees from Limited Series and the Dorians didn’t have as much luck here, though they do deserve credit for nominating Lily Gladstone for Under the Bridge a nomination few thought possible. They also nominated Jodie Foster for Night Country.

Other than that they had less luck, though there was no realistic chance of Jacob Anderson getting nominated for Interview With A Vampire (more on that in a minute) or Ncuti Gatwa for Doctor Who. I imagine they were as surprised as anyone when Emma Stone and The Curse were ignored by the Emmys.

Best Supporting TV performance went to Bomer’s co-star Jonathan Bailey. Bailey has been rising dramatically in the odds for the Emmy for Best Supporting Actor and he will be a formidable contender. There were no other nominees for Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series in this category, however there were three nominees for Best Supporting Actress: Jessica Gunning and Nava Mau for Baby Reindeer and Kali Reis for Night Country. Jennifer Jason Leigh was heavily favored for a nomination for Fargo but she was practically the only member of the cast ignored.

The rest is a mixed bag. Christine Baranski and Elizabeth Debicki were nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama. Benny Sadfie, like the rest of the cast of The Curse was ignored and Jinkx Monsoon had no realistic chance for Doctor Who. Moeka Hoshi being shutout for Shogun was a slight surprise.

The winner of Best TV Drama was, perhaps not surprisingly given its strong LGBTQ+ theme was Anne Rice’s Interview With A Vampire. The series also won Best LGBTQ TV show which is interesting considering Baby Reindeer and Hacks were heavier Emmy favorites. But Dorian went to the tune of its own drum which is to be encouraged. Shogun took Best Non-English Language Show as a consolation prize, beating among others Lupin, Elite and Young Royals. The latter won Best LGBTQ+ Non-English Show.

As for the other awards Best Current Affairs Show went to Last Week Tonight. Best Genre TV Show went to Anne Rice’s Interview With A Vampire. Most Visually Striking show went to Ripley and considering the competition was Shogun and Palm Royale that’s saying something. X-Men 97 took Best Animated Series. Campiest TV Show went to Chucky. (I have to say here I disagree with GALECA; having seen Palm Royale, that was a show that screamed camp even for the people who were straight.). I agree with the TV icon award for Carol Burnett but who wouldn’t? And for Alan Cumming as their trailblazer, it’s about damn time. Given everything I’ve seen him due in the last decade – including The Traitors, which took Best Reality Show – his work as Eli in The Good Wife was a greater triumph in acting than I ever thought. I mean, the restraint in that performance.

And just to be clear I think we’re all overjoyed that Ryan Gosling was awarded Best TV Musical Performance for the 96^th Academy Awards. If that didn’t prove that Gosling deserves to EGOT right now, I don’t know what will.

(I’m leaving documentaries off the table because I have seen enough of them to judge. )

All and all, the Dorian TV awards showed the right mix of recognizing series that will likely be acknowledged by the Emmys this year and acknowledging shows that should have been acknowledged by the Emmys this year. Looking back, the decision to nominate 3 Body Problem in favor of not merely Interview but also such favorites as The Curse already looks like a blunder. Shogun, The Gilded Age and Fallout did hit the bullseye

Their track record on comedy is rock solid. Five of the eight nominees for Best Comedy Series were nominated by the Emmys and two shows that received multiple nominations, Palm Royale and Only Murders in the Building were nominated for Best Comedy as well. The only show the Emmys chose they didn’t was Curb Your Enthusiasm. So clearly GALECA is one up there.

And they did superbly with Limited Series, though as I mentioned before given the context of so many of the best ones this year it would have been hard not to. As someone who truly thought Fellow Travelers deserved to be nominated for Best Limited Series ahead of Night Country the recognition for it here is deserving. The fact that they chose to give the lion’s share of their awards for Limited Series not to the heavy favorite Baby Reindeer but Travelers and Ripley shows they are not weighed by the masses.

But as you well know as good as the Dorian TV nominations and awards were, all this was merely prologue. Tomorrow I begin to cover the real meat as I go into glorious detail my predictions for the 2024 Astra Awards which are coming on Sunday. Stay tuned.

Better Late Than Never: Mr. & Mrs. Smith

 

 

Were it not for the fact that the casting of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in the title roles led to the whirlwind romance and marriage of one of this century’s most famous power couples in Hollywood the 2005 action comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith would have completely been forgotten by history.

There’s honestly nothing to recommend it other than as a Hollywood footnote. Even by the standards of 2000s action comedies the movie is utterly flat and devoid of inspiration. The idea of the film – a married couple who doesn’t know that their spouses are members of a rival agency of assassins – is barely imaginative by the scope of comedies of that era. (I can’t say with certainty but I think the exact plot was tried out on a soft-core porn film five years earlier, which isn’t how these things usually work.) The action scenes lack the flair of the best films in the genre, the dialogue is not that interesting and even the chemistry between Pitt and Jolie is hampered by the necessity of the PG-13 rating. This film has nothing to recommend it, much less deserve to be remade into a TV show.

Which is why I give credit to Donald Glover, who co-wrote the Amazon series with Francesca Sloane, for deciding to basically junk everything about the film and essentially completely reimagine a different story. The only common link between the movie and the Amazon series is that the title characters are named John and Jane Smith. But even that’s not the same context; in his version John and Jane are working for an agency together to do secret missions and the marriage itself is just a cover for it. You almost think Glover chose to get the rights for the series for the sole purpose to get it greenlit and he knows all too well there isn’t a Brangelina fanbase devoted enough to say that its Mr. & Mr. Smith ‘in name only’ and review bomb it the way every other precious franchise seems to be these days.

In this series the title roles are played by Glover and Maya Erskine. In the opening episode ‘First Date’ we see the two of them, who will be known as John and Jane Smith, go through a mysterious recruitment process via computer that they only know as ‘Hihi’ because of how every briefing starts. Both Glover and Erskine’s characters have been part of the intelligence and army before so espionage in familiar to them and there are differences – Glover has killed people before the series begins, Erskine hasn’t. They are told that they will be working for a certain amount of time but they must cut off all ties with the outside world. Glover has more problems with this than Erskine; he has a mother who he is still in contact with. (My review is based on the first three episodes of the series.) The marriage is supposed to cover for their work, and its clear the pairing is done a certain way, though we have no idea what the context is.

Taking on the identities of John and Jane Smith, the two of them are set up in a New York loft apartment that is luxurious by the standards of spy films and almost by the standard of those who live on the Upper East Side. The pilot  called First Date shows the two of them getting to know each other but not comfortable with each other. Neither Glover nor Erskine wants to get attached during this period. Their first mission by Hihi is to track down someone at a New York restaurant, follow this individual until they get a package, intercept and replace it and then deliver it to a specific address. Much of Mr. and Mrs. Smith is more successful as a comedy than a drama because it plays into the idea that no matter what mission agents are sent on, it will invariably go wrong at some point due to human error. Following a target when you’re Ethan Hunt is difficult enough; to do so using the MTA as your mode of transportation is practically a guarantee for failure.

Watching the first three episodes of Mr. & Mrs. Smith I couldn’t help but be reminded of the set up and much of the execution of the first season of Severance. We don’t know the real identities of the protagonists nor how they were found by Hihi in the first place. They don’t know what agency their working for or what the purpose of the mission is only that they are ‘mysterious and important’.  The title characters don’t have the benefit of being able to separate work life and home life in the way the people at that company do and we can’t discount the possibility that they’re being observed beyond the technology. I’m beginning to suspect that a character only identified in the credits as Hunky Neighbor might be part of the group, simply because he’s played by Paul Dano and we know by now we can’t trust Paul Dano’s intentions for anything.

There’s also the fact that everyone who works for the agency is also called John and Jane Smith. We actually meet a couple using those names in the first minutes of the series. They’ve been hiding for awhile and they’ve clearly been on the run for just as long. We don’t know why or what happened but we know very quickly that leaving isn’t something that go very well. Later in this series we meet another couple also called John and Jane Smith who are if anything more reckless and high-living then Glover and Erskine.

And it’s not clear, three episodes in, what kind of work Hihi wants them to do or even whether its for a good purpose or a malevolent one. The ‘First Date’ ends with the two of them managing to intercept their package, manage to deliver – only to find out it’s a cake for a birthday party. Glover and Erskine leave baffled – and moments later the house blows up. The two have no time to ask questions: they just run for their lives. Their second mission is to track down the buyer at a silent auction, who turns out to be a major real estate tycoon. (In a callback to my perceptions of Severance, he’s played by John Turturro.) They track him down; he asks them to engage in a very bizarre act and then they both inject him with truth serum. He gets out of their sight, begins to reveal the truth to all of the people at the auction and then has a bad reaction to it, and ends up dying. They have to dispose of his body and when Glover reports the results ‘Hihi’ tells them that they have failed and that ‘only two remain’. The third episode (called First Vacation) tells them to go to a ski resort in the Alps, bug the room of an Australian billionaire (played by Sharon Horgan) bug both her and her husband’s phones and record a conversation that will happen at 5 pm. Both Erskine and Glover think they are being asked to serve as marriage counselors and while it turns out what’s going is a radical kind of counseling, it’s not clear why their mission was just to record the conversation.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith is Glover’s first series as showrunner since the incredible Atlanta came to end in the fall of 2022. Teamed with some of the creative forces behind the masterpiece, including Hiro Murai, you can sense the tonal similarities in both series. We are in a familiar setting but there is an illogic to almost all the action the major characters are going through, yet Glover and Erskine react to with the same straight faced nature to it we saw Earn Marks and Paperboi going through no matter how many weird things happened to them in Atlanta. The series doesn’t have the same surreal nature to it but everyone still reacts as if the weird events around them were completely normal.

In that sense Glover is just as perfectly cast as John Smith as he was as Earn Marks. He’s clearly more capable of adapting and surviving than Earn was and in this case he does so with a cynical world-weariness that we expect from someone who’s survived combat. We also see in a critical moment in the third episode that Glover’s character is capable not just of being an action hero but of having a moral compass – and even when it gets him into trouble, he can be just as funny.

Maya Erskine has been one of the great undervalued performers of television for a while, working in such under-watched comedies as Man Seeking Woman, Insecure and Casual. She first registered on my radar in the Emmy nominated gem Pen15 where she and her longtime friend Anna Konkle played themselves as eighth graders. It’s a credit to Erskine as a performer that I had no problem believing either her or Konkle as eighth-graders: Erskine personally committed to every awkward gesture that made me remember being that old. It says something about her ability as a performer that I don’t recognize her as this Mrs. Smith. She’s very attractive but she seems to go out of her way to not play into it; she’s also the more cynical and less empathetic of the two (we still don’t know anything about her family life). I was grateful that Erskine received her first Emmy nomination for acting in this role; it’s at the same level of some of the other dramatic powerhouses in this category.

The series also boasts one of the most astounding guest casts since Poker Face, most of them targets of the missions or characters in John and Jane’s orbit. Dano and Turturro, who I mentioned before, were nominated for Best Guest Actor in a Drama. I have yet to see any of the nominees for Best Guest Actress but I look forward to seeing such talents as Parker Posey, Michaela Coel and Sarah Paulson in their roles. Considering such talents as Wagner Noura and Ron Perlman also have high-level performances, it’s clear that Glover can just as easily bring in talent as he was with Atlanta.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith was one of the most nominated series for the 2024 Emmys: it was nominated for sixteen, including Best Drama. The TCA has nominated it for Outstanding New Program, it won Breakthrough Drama at the Gotham TV Awards. The series received eleven nominations from the Astras and I have little doubt it will do well at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards at the end of the year.

And after three episodes I’m inclined to think that the Emmys and all the other groups  did get it right. To call Mr. & Mrs. Smith a reboot is completely inaccurate: the movie and the show have nothing in common. Glover essentially did what we rarely see in TV adaptations of intellectual properties and followed in the steps of Battlestar Galactica and Friday Nights Lights. He used the bare framework of the source material to tell a completely new and far superior story. And on every level this show works better than many other series: it has great writing, directing and acting, from the leads and guest stars; melds genres in a way so many of the best shows do (drama, action, thriller, rom-com and slapstick can call be found in the same five minute period) and hangs it on something we rarely see done well in any Peak TV: a love story. We know from the start it could very well end disastrously but there’s something heartwarming in an age of so much bleakness on television to see the concept at least visited. Like with Atlanta Glover is trying to meld many genres at once and while he isn’t always flawless, it still works very well most of the time.

The show has already been renewed for a second season but while Glover says he will continue to write for it both he and Erskine have been mum about whether they will appear in the next season. That’s actually not a deal breaker with me. Mr. & Mrs. Smith shows that it could be the kind of series that could survive any kind of revolutionary change, and we all watched enough Atlanta to know Glover spent much of the final two seasons off-screen then he was on it. This show may not be as original a concept as Atlanta was but Glover has found a way to put a mark on it that truly make it his own.

My score: 4.5 stars.

 

Lost Rewatch on VHS: The Candidate

 

VHS NOTES: We see ads for what will be the final season of Oprah Winfrey’s legendary talk show. We also see trailers for the most recent Resident Evil film and the brilliant Ben Affleck Boston heist film The Town which would earn an Oscar nomination for Jeremy Renner.

 

I must now make a personal admission. I believe my initial visceral reaction to the series finale as well as the final season of Lost was prejudiced by the immense agony I underwent during the final minutes of this episode.

That’s hardly the most unreasonable response. I’ve rewatched Lost half a dozen times since the series ended in 2010 and no matter how many times I do the last fifteen minutes of this episode always hits you like a kick in the teeth, With each subsequent rewatch I’ve come to accept a bitter truth. There’s an argument that everything we’ve watched in the final season of Lost – perhaps to this point in the entire series –  essentially led up to the long sequence in the submarine, where all of the remaining candidates are trapped in an enclosed space with a ticking bomb and no possible escape.

It's worth remembering that, even in 2010, the average viewer wasn’t used to this kind of character death on TV. The Sopranos had been measuring out the deaths of regulars to little more than one or two a season over its run and not until it’s final season did the body count start truly getting heavy. OZ had been averaging such a high body count over its run that by the time Augustus Hill, the narrator of the series, was killed before the final season began, the viewer shrugged it off. Six Feet Under’s series finale had been the natural conclusion of its five year run and was a perfect note, and for all the foot soldiers that were part of The Wire and Deadwood, very few regulars died during the course of it.

Buffy killed off many recurring characters but no series regulars until its series finale. By the final season of 24 you were used to being introduced to regulars who didn’t survive the day and no one was prepared for Breaking Bad, much less Game of Thrones by the end of the 2000s. In short, the idea of a final season of a series having the highest possible body count was unheard of by the time the final season of Lost aired.

I should mention that in 2010 I was still having a very difficult time adjusting to when any TV series would kill off characters I was attached to. It had been a body blow to me when Rita Bennett had ended up the final victim of Trinity at the end of 2009 and it took most of Season 5 of Dexter for me to recover. (The series never truly did. I had taken the loss of Lem in Season 5 of The Shield very hard but since it seemed the natural progression of the series I stuck with it. Other deaths had been dealbreakers with me for other shows. Adriana’s death in Season 5 of The Sopranos had been enough for me to make a break with the series before the final season. And George’s shocking death at the end of Season 5 caused an irrevocable break between me and Grey’s Anatomy – and essentially everything Shonda Rhimes did from that point forward. After the series finale of Lost ended and the deaths of series regulars became something to be expected rather than a shock I eventually developed a harder skin, which is a necessity to get through any series in Peak TV.

Even after six seasons of watching Lost it had always been something of a mixed bag with me as to which deaths on the series affected me more. Boone’s had been shocking because it was the kind of death that the viewer wasn’t used to for series television. Most of the deaths in Season 2 didn’t have the same affect on me because at the time I thought all had been poorly planned out. (Later evidence suggests I might have been right on that.) Eko’s death hit me the hardest in Season 3, Nikki and Paolo seemed like a waste of time and Charlie’s was a huge blow. With Michael, it was hard to measure the affect because it had seemed like a waste to bring him back just to kill him. Locke’s death didn’t seem like one we had to accept because of his resurrection (and in a sense Season 6 still doesn’t seem to have done so).

But from that point on the deaths started seeming more personal because either the characters were fan favorites or because they’d been around awhile. Dan’s death cut us particularly hard because we’d just learned who he was and Juliet’s may have been the most gutting for me since Eko died because I had always been a huge fan of hers. In hindsight the writers actually spent much of Season 6 luring the viewer into a sense of complacency the closer we got to the end of the series. Ilana had blown up just two episodes ago  but because her character had seemed like a wasted opportunity few of us felt it.

And it’s worth noting that the pattern of Lost should have told us that we are going to see a heavy body count. In the final episodes of Season 3, not only did we see Charlie die but twelve Others were killed off, including Tom and Mikhail. At the end of Season 4 most of the people on the freighter were dying left and right, in the season finale the mercenaries were all killed off and in the season finale the freighter exploded and Michael and Jin (supposedly) were killed. In Season 5 we saw most of the Dharma Initiative security we’d gotten to know over the period die in the Incident, Juliet had fallen down a pit and Jacob was killed. The viewer should have been expecting that we were going to get a bloodbath if only that’s how we knew the show worked by now.

If nothing else, logic should have told us that Lost was not going to end with Sawyer’s plan to take the sub by force. Not only does nothing ever go as planned on this show but it would have been fake. Would we have liked to see an ending where all of the candidates essentially sail off into the sunset while UnLocke shakes his fist and says: “I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling candidates”? That Claire and Kate would go home to Aaron and Jin and Sun would go back to Ji Yeon? That we’d end on another flashforward with Jack and Kate sitting on a front porch telling their grandchildren about the island where they first met? It would have been a happy ending to be sure, but it would have been untrue to the show.

There’s also the fact that there are still three episodes and four hours of the show to go. And much as we’d like the characters we love to get away on the sub, we also know they’re not all there. Do we really want to leave Claire to the mercy of UnLocke for the rest of her life? Where are Richard, Ben and Miles (we haven’t seen then since they left for the barracks?) Widmore’s crew has just been slaughtered (again) but he’s still alive, so that wouldn’t be resolve. Desmond’s fate can’t just be to stay in a well. And as we’re reminded in the flash-sideways, we still need to find out what happened to Rose and Bernard on the island.

No the show had to end on the island. And even if the title of the episode wasn’t a giveaway, in our heart we know how this has to play out. One of the five remaining candidates has to agree to be the next Jacob. What that means and why they have to has yet to be revealed but we’ve spent this season being told its important so someone has to take the role on. And UnLocke pretty much implied in The Substitute that the only way to get off this list was to die. He wasn’t being entirely truthful but based on what we saw on the wall of the cave and the lighthouse coordinates, that has pretty much been how it has played out for centuries and it was going to play out this way too.

So in our heads and in our hearts we knew there was going to be some more death of people we loved in the last few episodes. That doesn’t mean we were prepared for how it happened.

In Finding Lost Nikki Stafford writes that this episode is about trust. We don’t exactly need to be told this: the word is mentioned several times, usually by Jack, Locke or Sawyer. I have to tell you another reason I had a problem with the ending may have been I couldn’t believe these characters were truly bonded by their experience because the one thing they clearly didn’t do during the series run was trust each other. Not about the secrets they found on the island, not about their own backstories. They were always divided throughout the show and one of the major divisions came over their lack of trust. It’s one of the reasons so many people on this show were bad leaders; they always trusted the wrong people or the wrong things.

I’ve now come to see that when it comes to the survivors that wasn’t exactly there faults. As we saw in their backstories over the first three seasons, whenever the survivors gave their trust to anybody – especially the people who should have cared about them the most – that trust was violated. This caused many of them to not trust themselves and it sickened the relationships within their own lives and they became more and more isolated throughout it. Everyone was broken before they came to the island and it’s never clear whether that was because of Jacob’s influence or why he chose them in the first place.

This got worse as the series continued. When the Others made their arrival, they could direct their distrust to them as the enemy. Ben Linus was never trustworthy, not even to his own people so they didn’t really trust each other either. We’ve seen in the island bloops that this mistrust goes back decades and that the people who have been in charge before – specifically Widmore and Eloise Hawking – didn’t trust anybody either. Richard served as the advisor to them but he answered to Jacob. Everybody trusted him without having seen him and they have followed him blindly. We’ve seen how that turned out for everybody since then. On the island trusting blindly is just as likely to get you killed as now trusting anybody.

When the Oceanic 6 got off the island Jack convinced all of them to lie about where they’d been since the crash. All of them were reluctant to do so but they did because they were in shock and they trusted Jack. The bond they formed fell apart quickly because the lie rotted that trust. Eventually five of them got on Ajira 316 not because any of them trusted Jack anymore but for their own reasons (except for Sayid who was tricked). While they were gone Sawyer managed to take charge of a group of survivors and get them to trust him to keep them alive on the island. That worked fine for three years – and then the moment the Oceanic resurfaced in Dharmaville the clashes in personality made trust impossible very quickly.

No one trusts the Man In Black and at the end of the last episode they all tried to get away from him to leave the island. James thought he could fool Widmore but Widmore had been doing this longer than him. Widmore, of course, has never been particularly trustworthy and it doesn’t seem like he’s thought things particularly well. His idea of protection for the remaining candidates is to stick them into the same rusty cages that Sawyer and Kate spent three years in behind a sonic fence and hope nothing went wrong. Setting everything else aside Kate was able to break out of those cages the first time, this wasn’t going to work well anyway.

His ’back-up’ plan seems to have been the wire the Ajira plane with C-4 to stop the smoke monster from trying to leave on it. Yeah, that was really bright. What was to stop everybody you were trying to protect from getting on the plane without UnLocke and blowing it up anyway? Honestly all of Widmore’s goons deserve to get killed for the simple fact they were dumb enough to come to work for this guy anyway. If we’ve learned anything over five seasons it’s that Widmore is not trustworthy.

In the flash-sideways after Jack performs surgery on Locke he has an opportunity to ‘fix’ Locke. Locke seemed reluctant to do when they first met, but now given an opportunity he’s repulsed by the idea. We don’t understand why until Jack tracks down Anthony Cooper (no I don’t think this is a flaw in the ending; I’ll get to that at the end) and he finally understand why Locke is doing so.

In a mirror version of the real world Locke was paralyzed in a plane crash. (This may also be an inadvertent mirror of the Pilot; Jack said he took flying lessons.) In the real world, Locke regained the ability to walk because of a plane crash. In the real world, his father caused his paralysis. In the mirror world, Locke caused a worse fate on his father. Now the viewer may not feel guilt about Cooper’s fate but its telling that Locke does. As we saw over and over Locke trusted his father no matter how many times it was clear he shouldn’t: there was always a part of him who wanted his father’s love no matter how obvious it was it didn’t exist. Locke couldn’t let go of his father’s behavior in the real world; he can’t let go of the guilt he has over his father’s in this one.

Jack is dealing with it in a similar fashion. He’s still reeling from his father’s death and the fact that he now has a sister. It’s clear in this world that Claire never met Christian in real life, which may be a subtle sign her life in Australia is better than it was in reality. After all, the only reason Christian ever visited her was because her mother was in a coma and he came to try and convince Claire to take Carolo off life support. (Which was clearly bad advice Christian.)

But it’s also clear Christian was trying a little harder to make up for it in death than he was in life. Claire was mentioned in his will, which wasn’t what happened in real life and he gives her a music box where the tune ‘Catch A Falling Star’ is played which we know he sang to her as a child. (The song doesn’t mean as much to her here as it does in the real world; I’m not sure what that means.) Perhaps that’s the real reason Jack makes an outreach to Claire the way he never got a chance to in the world. He knows she’s a link to his father and he needs to understand his family. As the episode ends Claire is capable of trusting Jack but Locke still isn’t. That’s actually fitting given how this episode ends.

In the final minutes of Ab Aeterno the Man In Black told Jacob in no uncertain terms that he intended to kill the Candidates because they seem to be the only thing preventing him from leave the island. Yet throughout Season 6 he’s had multiple opportunities to kill the candidates, individually and as a group, and he never has. He tells Jack that he could do it and there’s nothing he could do to stop him and given everything we’ve seen – and in this episode we get reminded of it very visually  - it’s hard to argue with him. So the question is why hasn’t he?

And now Jack seems to have realized why, though he doesn’t yet know the how. For whatever reason the Man in Black, whether as a smoke monster or corporeal, can’t kill the candidates. Perhaps Jacob’s touch is protection against that. But it hasn’t been any protection from fate intervening. We’ve seen names of countless survivors on the wall whose names were crossed off, and all of them died at the hands of either the Others, random chance, or as Jack puts it, killing each other. We can’t help but be reminded of the Man In Black’s cryptic message when we first met him: “They come. They fight. They corrupt. They destroy.” And that’s exactly what the survivors and really everyone on the island has done not just during the series but doubtless over the centuries. They have been eliminating each other with a kind of ruthless efficiency and that maybe the reason Jacob finally needed everybody in the last season to try and protect the remaining candidates. (Though of course he withheld why and how from each of them.) They were down to six at the end of Season 5 (well, five really) and now the Man in Black wants to get the last five in one blow.

And in order to do this he operates on their distrust of him. He knows Sawyer will take any opportunity to get off the island with his friends and to keep him off it. He also knows if Jack stays behind, then his plan is scotched so he has to get everybody to work together to take the sub but be prepared to work against him. Perhaps he’s hoping that when they try to take the sub some of the candidates will be killed in the attack but instead one of them shoots Kate.

(This too is a kind of misdirection. When Kate is shot we are expecting her to be the one to be killed given her condition – and considering her problems with the fans, some might have mourned her loss less than the people who actually die in this episode.)

The plan works perfectly from the survivors perspective: indeed Kate being shot helps more then he could not. Jack is a doctor above all else and he is not going to leave the woman he loves to die on the sub if he can help it. So he brings her on the sub, tends to her and Sawyer goes back to get Claire, he closes the opening when UnLocke charges it. This too was deliberate: Locke needed the sub to leave.

So when they find a time bomb wired with the C-4 on the sub, with no way to get out they are faced with two options: trust Jack that nothing will happen and risk them all dying when the bomb ticks down to zero or try to defuse the bomb and risk it blowing up doing exactly what UnLocke wants. And even if they were a more trustworthy bunch – hard to believe considering everything they’ve already been through -  it’s hard to blame them for giving into their fears. Everyone’s seen enough movies to know if a bomb has a timer, nothing good happens when it reaches zero. To go against that fear after the last six seasons would be even harder.

So Sawyer gives in – and the results are devastating. In the space of less than five minutes three cast members that have been part of the series since the pilot are killed. But even in their deaths the writers of Lost manage to write a fate for all three which is true to the characters even as it absolutely eviscerating to the viewer.

Sayid Jarrah has been one of the most tragic characters in the history of Lost and his arc during the final season has been devastating. Sayid has been walking zombie like ever since his resurrection at the start of Season 6 and it didn’t seem like any part of him was left. We see a hint of it when he (as we now know) lies to Locke about Desmond and again when he realizes the danger they’re all in. And when he sees the bomb begin to tick down, he does something he couldn’t manage to do the last time and face his fate. He calmly tells Jack where Desmond is and what they need to do, and then he grabs the bomb and runs off to his death. There might be a certain cliché by having the former Iraqi soldier become a suicide bomber, but in Sayid’s case this is redemptive – he is sacrificing himself to save the lives of those around them, not kill them. For a character who spent so much of his life on and off the island torturing and killing without mercy and who has spent the last season killing with total detachment, this may have been the only way he could redeem himself.

The more devastating losses, of course, are Jin and Sun because they only were reunited less than twelve hours ago after being apart for three years. This was the hardest blow of all to me because it did seem like the writers had toyed with us through all of Season 6. They seemed to be doing everything in their power to make sure that even though they were now in the same time period, they would never be in the same place. They finally get together and promise that they will never be apart. (That should have been a bad sign right there.) Then just as they get on the sub and plan to go home, the bomb traps Sun under rubble and there is no time for Jack and the rest to free Sun. When Jin stays behind, he knows he is going to die with her. We all do and it hurts like hell because the fan has been devoted to this love story since the series began and to see it end like this…well, it’s still painful.

But how else could it have ended? It hurts to write these words, but its true. Don’t get me wrong; it would have been great if this love story could end happily but we’ve watched Lost for six seasons, have any of them ended happily? There’s still hope for Desmond and Penny, but that involves whether Desmond survives the next few episodes, a big if. Jack and Kate’s love story self-destructed when they were off the island and Jack was willing to blow the island up a few days ago rather than have to live with having lost her. Every other love story to this point has ended with one or both parts of the couple losing that person and being left to deal with the grief.

So yes Jin could have saved himself and gone back to raise Ji Yeon alone. But would that truly have been any happier than the alternative? The Kwons love has endured so much over the last six years and its overcome so many obstacles. They’ve lost each other so many times and have always come back to each other. Was it so wrong for the two of them, having found each other after three years apart, want to at least end their love story on their own terms? We’ve spent so much of the show seeing that the characters have never had any real choice in their lives. Is it so wrong to want them to have free will over the last choice either of them will get to make? That’s exactly what Sayid did just a few minutes ago and that was unselfish. How is less so?

So Sun and Jin stay together for the last moments of their lives. They get to say those three greatest words to each other: “I love you.” They hold on to each other until the sub sinks, only death parting them. It wrenches your heart from your chest – and you do feel exactly like everyone else on the beach, like you want to cry your eyes out and will never be whole again. But so many of the greatest  love stories end in tragedy. Why should we have expected the greatest one of Lost be any different?

 

IF YOU BELIEVE THE ENDING: Actually I don’t have as many problems with this as you might think. Bernard’s presence actually makes sense if you consider that both he and Rose seem far more aware of what’s happening around them then the other survivors do. And Anthony Cooper being locked in to himself, unable to move or talk is actually the perfect fate for him given everything he did during his life. For the man who ruined lives with every word out of his mouth, he deserved to be completely at the mercy of others, aware of what they’re saying but unable to react. Now the fact that Locke loves him unconditionally – well, maybe he never got to know him in this world. That does seem to be the only way it’s possible.

Criticizing Criticism Series, The Sports Page: Phil Mushnick isn't a Sportswriter. That's Just His Cover For Being A Prick

 

 

I am a casual sports fan but a devoted fan of sportswriters. I’ve devoured many compendiums and collections of the columns of some of the greatest sportswriters in history many of whom – big surprise – have called New York home.

I’ve read the many columns of Ring Lardner and Damon Runyon before they moved into fiction. I’ve read a lot of the great work of Shirley Povich at the Washington Post and many of the collections of one of his successors Thomas Boswell. I’ve read two collections of Red Smith’s work, and the second actually covered more sports than baseball. I’ve studied the work of Ira Berkow and I’ve read some of the work of Dick Young. They were often referred to as ‘Knights of the Keyboard’ and many of them to have the quality of royalty.

Now if you read quite a bit of them you also notice that, like almost all the other media, they have blind-spots many of which demonstrate the often conservative world view. Lardner stopped writing about baseball because of Babe Ruth and the burst of the lively ball, though the Black Sox scandal understandably did more to tarnish his love of the game. Runyon was a devoted New York writer but the scandal did the same to him. Povich thought the presence of height in basketball ruined it as a sport (he thought so as early as the 1950s) and Dick Young, who in many ways was a tool of the owners, was their mouthpiece against the legendary organizer Marvin Miller and is hated in some circles after half a century for the belief he caused Tom Seaver to be traded to the Reds in 1977.

There is often a history of bias among sportswriters – Jimmy Cannon famously called Roger Maris ‘a freak’ after Maris turned him down for an interview in spring training of 1962, more or less killing him in the eyes of New York. Casey Stengel wooed them; George Steinbrenner made them his mortal enemies for twenty years. The relationship with the sportswriter and the sport they cover can always be difficult. Which brings me to Phil Mushnick.

I should mention that while I have my issues with the New York Post on certain matters, they don’t apply to the sports section which I will on a nearly daily basis glance at, particularly during baseball season but in recent years in regard to the other major New York franchise teams. And during the past year I have become aware of a columnist named Phil Mushnick.

Now because Mushnick’s columns are located in the sports section of the Post, one would assume that he was a sportswriter. As anyone who has had the misfortune of reading his work – and if you don’t live in New York, you probably don’t know who he is in which case you are blessed – Phil Mushnick is no more a sportswriter then David Denby and so many of the film critics for The New Yorker are movie critics or Victor Davis Hanson (Brits know him) is a writer of politics. He is in fact a troll in human form who for the past forty-two years eschews his venom about the world and claims to be writing about sports. The fact that he refers to himself as a ‘roving moralist’ and ‘self-appointed watchdog’ who believes that broadcasters should serve the event they are calling rather than themselves. How exactly they are supposed to do this is something that Mushnick never makes clear, especially considering that he’s never given a single example of any broadcaster, athlete or anyone who meets those standards. Apparently when a commentator makes a factual error or calls a play wrong, that person should not only be fired but put to death.

Now if you’ve read Mushnick’s work – and again, if you haven’t don’t – you could assume, justifiably he’s a racist. Which he is, no question. He’s also a misogynist, a homophobe, a snob, an anti-capitalist and the worst kind of sports conservative in which any change made to the sport is worthy of being condemned to death. You get the feeling reading his work that if he had been around in the 1940s, not only would he have been a full-time supporter of the ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ that kept baseball segregated, he would think it didn’t go far enough. Given his attitude I could see him arguing that any member of the Negro Leagues (and to be clear, he would be fine using the derivative: he actually printed in a column in the Post in 2012 and was unrepentant about it) but saying that the Negro Leagues should be torn down, that the players should be shot on sight and the fans blackballed from attending any game at ta professional level. And if any white sportswriter even suggested that their was equality that the FBI investigate him as a Communist sympathizer.

This is, in its own right, a true disqualifier to being a sportswriter. Sports is supposed to an equalizer. It’s supposed to be something where everyone, at least theory, is equal on the playing field and that the fans can all enjoy. Reading Mushnick’s work he not only doesn’t hold with the idea he actually thinks that in his ideal world: all sports would be played by white men and watched by white men, that the athletes should not only not receive salaries but pay ownership for the privilege, that the games should be broadcast to the fans free of charge – but the fans shouldn’t ask for anything else, certainly not representation on the field and the owners shouldn’t give in to diversity. The idea of Pride Night in Dodger stadium was repulsive to him and you can practically see the white sheet going up over his head as he writes it.

And to be clear it is always minority players that he claims are ruining the game – he’s written horrible things about Serena Williams, Tiger Woods and LeBron James, all but calling them uppity in his articles, when Michael Jordan fired a play-by-play announcer for ‘mistakenly’ tweeting the N-word he called that a mistake and thirty years earlier blamed Jordan for a series of ‘sneaker killings’ in 1990, suggesting that Nike was marketing its sneakers because basketball was ‘the sport of choice among drug dealers’, calling Stephen Smith, Joe Morgan bad broadcasters and claiming every time a baseball player of color of being ‘selfish’ when they didn’t apply modesty after hitting a home run and on and on and on.

But here’s the thing: those who simply call Mushnick a racist don’t understand the true level of his bigotry. He’s not a sports journalist either: he hasn’t actually covered any of the teams in the New York area in a very long time, not since the 1990s. He calls himself a sports critic which would be fine if he was criticizing the play on the field.. To be clear, sometimes he does but it’s always to tell you what everyone is doing wrong. And no that’s not the same thing as the movie critics write about because even they like some of the films they cover.

No the narrative Mushnick is upset about is that sports has been moving away from a ‘past-time’ to ‘programming’. Here he makes the flaws that so many fans do: that sports are a game and not a business. I don’t blame the fans for thinking this but Mushnick is a journalist and supposedly should know better. Yet in all of his columns he does everything he can to deride money as part of the game and more importantly how sports, whenever they try to make it more exciting, more interesting and yes, more inclusive – all things that business need to do to survive – he tears it apart as destruction of some beloved.

I actually admire Mushnick for building a lucrative career on being able to watch sports on television for living, tell his readers how shitty a job everyone is doing, and make a handsome salary for forty years.  Everything that has been done to try and get fans to the game – cable sports, streaming sports, trying to make the games more interesting, more fun, more accessible – is somehow destructive to the core of all professional sports.

In that sense Mushnick isn’t a sports journalist in any sense of the word. He doesn’t care about the score, who plays in the game, who wins or loses, whose playing, or even the sport he’s watching. All of his columns could be based in the same format in which they argue, very clearly, how the way the media, the commissioner, the managers and the players are destroying sports as we know it. They would  seem to be doing a terrible job because he’s been writing his column for thirty years and all of the sports he’s been writing about still draw viewers, and still put fans in the seat. But if you believe Mushnick the moment he finally drops dead (which can’t come soon enough) all sports will go into their death spiral and will not exist within weeks of his passing.

You kind of wonder why Mushnick watches sports to begin with, if the only reason is to tell everybody they’re doing it wrong. The answer, of course, is obvious: he wants to stir shit up. That he does so using not merely the dog whistles of conservative media but on more than one occasion the hate-speech itself is hardly surprising: he does work for Rupert Murdoch after all. Of course he has hurt himself by refusing to go on television and improve his brand the way so many of his colleagues on the various networks have become superstars.

And there’s a reason for this which Mushnick loves to write about: he’s fixated on whenever white sports reporters make ‘politically incorrect’ comments and get fired. He noted this about Don Imus, he mentioned Jimmy The Greek who famously lost his job on NFL Today in the mid-1980s for racist commentary, he mentions it for NBC journalists and ESPN ones. Whenever minority commentators make similar comments he rages about the double standards, and we know the real reason. Part of him no doubts yearns to go on TV. But he also knows that, unlike so many of the cable news networks his conglomerate owns the sports media world is infinitely less forgiving. He knows that if he were spew some of his venom on even a Fox Sports network, he would lose his job immediately and deservedly be ‘canceled’. And rather than show himself in public with the ‘courage of convictions’ he writes his columns from the safety of his living room, free to shit on sports from afar or perhaps a radio broadcast. He knows his self-appointed morals wouldn’t apply in the 20^th century, much less this one.

So for the foreseeable future Mushnick will write his sports columns which are not about sports or even media. He’ll deride Gleyber Torres for not running out a play, call Giancarlo Stanton a ‘one-dimensional overpaid player’, deride Juan Soto for his home run trot, say Serena Williams is mouthy because she was denied a table in a Paris restaurant, say when NBC called South Korea North Korea was the same as calling Abraham Lincoln Jefferson Davis, claim that Nick Saban was clueless as to how college football has changed when it was obvious to him and call Derek Jeter a horrible broadcaster because he was too restrained as a player. (He’s done all of those things in the past year. ) He’ll keep writing that he really loves sports; it’s just the media that covers them, the officials who manage them, the people they let into see them, and the people who play the sports that are his problems. And we in New York can count ourselves lucky that Mushnick is an institution in our city and continue to hope  for the day he is committed to one, where he will finally be surrounded  by the people who understand him perfectly.