We Never Needed A Sex and The City Reboot, Part 1: The New York Set Series That Showed Us How Fake SATC Was

 

I have made it plain on this column I never liked nor had any use for Sex & the City. I didn’t like it when it was on the air or in syndication. I never saw any need for the movie follow ups or The Carrie Diaries. And I never had any intention of even mentioning And Just Like That… until I learned of one ‘Big’ spoiler. I’m going to get into that in another article, but I think I can now fully articulate just why Sex and the City never appealed to me and why it never should have.

The late French director Francois Truffaut famously said the best way to criticize a movie was to make another movie. I’m not entirely certain whether Ryan Murphy and his incredible team decided to make Pose the absolutely astonishing series that ended this June on FX because he wanted to make a criticism of Sex and The City (though I have a theory he might have which I’ll elaborate on near the end) but having watched the series more and less in its entirety, it’s almost impossible to look at any five minute of that extraordinary show and not see the utter falsity of the world that Carrie Bradshaw and her clan of friends live in.

For those of you who haven’t seen the series yet, Pose takes place in New York from a period spanning the late eighties to the early nineties. It takes place entirely in the world of African-American gay and transgender men and women (was there ever even a black woman on SATC? I honestly don’t care to remember) who fighting a world of endless prejudice, manage to find home and family walking in the ballrooms of New York. Every single lead in the series was African American, most were gay and most of the women were trans. For the purposes of this article, I’m going to focus on the women.

Now even if you’re willing to acknowledge that Reagan-era New York of Pose bore no resemblance that of Giuliani’s New York, let’s be clear: the women of Pose weren’t welcome in the former and none of them would’ve dared showed their faces to anybody in Carrie’s world. I’m pretty sure even Stanford would’ve looked down on them. He might have been willing to admire the flamboyance of Billy Porter’s Pray Tell and the impresarios he represented, but even in his reckless youth (which to be clear was exactly the time Pose was happening) would he have dared show his face in their world.  The most he might be willing to do for any of them was wear a red ribbon.

Because let’s be clear of the goblin that was present in the entirety of Seasons 2 and 3 of Pose: AIDS. Did any of the women (or men for that matter) suffer so much as a case of the clap during the run of Sex and the City? I may be remembering wrong the most serious thing I think any of them had to deal with was Miranda’s unplanned pregnancy and don’t pretend she wouldn’t have had better options than any of the women in Pose. One of the great dramatic arcs in the entire series came as Pray Tell found himself suffering from the disease in every sense of the word, not just as it lay waste to him but from the constant, unending stream of funerals going to do week after week after week. He actually lost count. Both he and Blanca (the incredible MJ Rodriguez) had to fight every possible aspect of HIV during the second and third seasons to the point that in the final season the chances of survival for both of them seemed impossible. That Blanca survived over the disease – hell, managed to accomplish a goal that none of the women in SATC would have thought beneath them by simply becoming a nurse – is one of the most quietly powerful things I’ve ever seen on television.

 Death was always stalking the characters on Pose. It wasn’t just being gay or black, or trans, it was all of those things. One of the characters Candy was murdered by a john halfway through season 2. Electra (the incomparable Dominique Jackson) worked in a ‘dungeon’ in New York and had a john die on her. Not her fault, but she knew if she was found with it what the consequences were. She assembled her family to handle the problem twice, first to handle the body, then to dispose of it the next season. All of them knew the dangers if they were caught, none of them hesitated.  I can’t imagine Charlotte helping Samantha if one of her role plays had just ended with him caught in a leather strap.

And that’s the thing that was far more obvious about the character in The House of Evangelista: they may not have agreed on much, but there was a devotion and love there that went far beyond anything I ever saw the four women on Sex ever go through. Electra may not have agreed with half the choices her ‘daughter’ made when it came to love, but she was always there to support her. One of my favorite moments on the show came when Blanca told her ‘mother’ that she had gotten into nursing school. The love and pure support I saw her give was one of the most emotional things I ever saw this steely character give. It was true and utter affection that I don’t ever remember seeing on Sex.

And Blanca passed it down. Throughout the series she supported her ‘children Angel and Lil Papi a couple that had to deal with issues that the characters on SATC would have done in a joke storyline. Angel (Indya Moore) became addicted to cocaine and heroin at one time, and Lil Papi was for awhile as to. But the two of them supported each other, climbed out of the ditch, and got married. The wedding wasn’t anything like the ones we saw on Sex, far less fancy, much more scaled down – but there was infinitely more love from everybody involved. I believed in their love story a lot more than I believed in any of the ones on Sex.

Now if any Sex fans are still reading this article, no doubt most of them are still saying: “It’s not fair to compare this show and Pose! They’re like apples and oranges!”  Remember that theory I said about Murphy making Pose as a counterpoint? In the final minutes of the series, the four key women of the show -  Blanca, Angel, Electra and Lulu are all having Cosmos together in a fancy restaurant.  They are celebrating their success: Electra has beaten the odds and become a millionaire running an internet sex business and Blanca has finally become a nurse. Angel and Lulu are also doing well. Blanca makes the comment that “We’re just like the women on Sex and the City” - we’ve clearly jumped to at least 1996. Electra, who’s clearly heard of the show, scoffs with her trademark disdain. “What could a bunch of white women know about sex?” (I may be getting the wording wrong, but not the scorn.)

In the sense that I’m white and relatively comfortable, I have more in common with the characters in Sex and the City than anyone in Pose. But I always found the characters on Pose infinitely more interesting, relatable, humane and loving. I’d never have been welcome in the ballrooms, but I’d still rather have gone there than to the fancy restaurants that Sarah Jessica Parker and her friends discussed their ‘problems’. As if a woman who lives in an apartment in Manhattan on the strength of a weekly column had any idea what it was really like to have ‘problems’. Everyone in Pose had so many problems and they managed to get through them and find joy in life, even though everything in the world was turned against them. I have no doubt all of the characters on Sex were ‘costal elites’ and ‘good liberals’ but they could afford to be. They didn’t have to all live in a three room apartment with the paint peeling and no hot water to survive.

I find it unlikely that Pose will ever be followed up: it never enjoyed the loyalist following that a single episode of Sex and the City. But I’d much rather spend a few minutes in their world again – either before or after – than any time in the world Sarah Jessica Parker inhabits. Pose has earned a follow-up. Sex and the City keeps getting them though no one seems to asking for them. And after what I heard happened in the Pilot, I really wonder if anyone will keep watching. In the follow up, I’ll discuss what I know about And Just Like That and the real problem when we keep coming back to the same well over and over.

You Just Knew It Would Come To This: A Criticism of (New York) Critics

 

I’ve lived in New York for more than thirty years and while most of the time I can’t imagine living anywhere else, I’m also not blind to the reasons that people who don’t live here (the rest of the country) consider residents elitist snobs. There are many reasons to think that but I think that the historical impression comes down to two particular factors: The Yankees and New York magazine and newspaper critics. I complete sympathize with those who hate the former (which again, pretty much the entire country does regardless how badly they’ve done in recent years) and I kind of understand why so many people hate the latter. Because as a critic, they’re generally everything we accuse of them of being.

For all the time I’ve lived in New York, I have almost never read The Times. Part of this was literally childish: at the time we moved, I couldn’t respect any paper that didn’t have a comics section. But even more frequent has been the utter condescension that fills every aspect of the Arts section, particularly when it comes to film and TV. When I occasionally read it as a teenager – before the utter proliferation of the comic book film, in other words – there was always an almost always visible hostility towards almost every film that was made, including a lot of the ones that were actually quality. I’ll admit part of my frustration was, unlike other publications, the Times has never deemed to give a star rating, saying you have to read as many as two pages to get the idea if they actually like the film you’re watching. I’ve never been a fan of ambiguity when it comes to criticism, and that’s almost entirely what the Times reviewers are about. Of course, in the era of blockbuster movies, they’ve become even more stultified when it comes to any film that is out. They want to make the argument that films were better before when they did produce to the lowest common denominator. The fact that going back to Bosley Crowther’s utter condemnation of films like Bonnie and Clyde - a film now considered a groundbreaker – Times reviewers don’t seem to like any new films doesn’t matter to them.

I see a similar strain of elitism in The New Yorker. Now I should be clear; I really like The New Yorker particularly their arts section. And that seems to be based on the idea that most of the critics there seem to like their jobs and the art they’re reviewing. The Broadway critics like Broadway, the pop music critics like pop music and so on. Indeed, the television criticism section – which I remember back far enough to know that they would review TV once a month if that often – has now become one of the best sources for criticism in the country. Critics like Emily Nussbaum and Doreen St. Felix are very engaging and intelligent their approach, they’re willing to look back at certain series over the passage of time, and even if you don’t agree with their hostility towards certain shows – Nussbaum detests The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and St. Felix bares a similar hostility towards the equally delightful Ted Lasso – they’ve built up enough of a reputation and are intelligent enough in their dissents that you can respect the reasons why.

I have never once sensed this in any of the film critics for The New Yorker. It’s not just that they hate, almost by decree, any blockbuster movie that comes out but also most of the movies that are up for awards contention just for that reason. In more than twenty years of reading New Yorker film reviews, the only films they ever seem to real like are: a) foreign films that you can barely find even in New York, b) documentary films that are even harder to find, c) low-budget independent films that often really do deserve the praise but are usually harder to find that films in either a or be or, d) a revival of a film from forty or fifty years ago most of us have never heard of. In other words, they’re the kind of films you can only find in New York. And at that point you realize who critics for The Times and New Yorker are writing for: themselves.

It’s no wonder I’ve historically found it far more worthwhile to read reviews of film and television from the ‘tabloids’ such as Newsday, The Daily News and even The Post. Generally the reviewers are more willing to engage with the readers and people like me who admire film and television. They make it more accessible for the average reader to understand and while you may not agree with how they get there, at the very least they express it in terms that the average citizen can understand.

I have a feeling that the reason that the majority of people hate critics in general and New York media critics in particular. The sole qualification for so many of their livelihoods seems to be to utter detest the field their reviewing. The entire history of Broadway – basically a New York industry – is based on the idea that the critics are eternally out of touch with what the people want.  During the late Stephen Sondheim’s heyday, critics like Clive Barnes seem to delight in poisoning the well against classics like Company and Follies. Now that he’s safely a legend, the new generation of critics can say how brilliant he truly is and was.

To be clear many critics aren’t and weren’t like that. One of my writing idols until his untimely passing was Roger Ebert. Ebert was like a lot of critics in that he tended to prefer foreign films and independent films. The key difference was he was willing to open his heart and eyes to well-made blockbusters. And to be clear, sometimes his mind was too open. He’s the only major critic of any kind I know who wrote close to a rave for Episodes I and III of the Star Wars series and actually saw Attack of the Clones twice to see if his initial pan of it was merited. He was also one of the few critics who seemed to approve of the modern comic book movie, including Christopher’s Nolan’s Batman trilogy and almost the entire Phase One of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (I’m still relatively certain the only reason he disliked Thor so much was because he thought director Kenneth Brannagh was slumming.) I’ve often wondered, if Ebert was still alive, what he would have thought of the next two Phases of Marvel and the final Star Wars trilogy.

And unlike so many critics, he clearly was willing to be open-minded to fans. He was willing to listen to people who didn’t agree with his opinion and occasionally hear them out. He held festivals for the fans where he would go shot-by-shot through films he admired. He was willing to change his mind over time about films:  he admitted he had been too harsh on Godfather II and too kind to The Graduate. Among all critics, he was willing to admit that movies should be accessible to the moviegoer. And as a result he and his fellow critic Gene Siskel took a huge amount of derision and abuse from his fellow critics. How dare they reduce the art of criticism to the simple pointing of a thumb?

At its core that has been the center of so much debate between so many critics: who is it for? So many critics seem to really believe that criticism should be truly for scholar and artists and not the masses. They will openly berate publications like TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly because they try to make their criticism accessible to the people who might actually want to go to movies, watch TV and listen to music. Ebert and his school believed it should be for the people. Critics like Pauline Kael believed it should be for critics, and damn if the artist should get their feelings hurt. In a recent documentary about Kael, David Lean was invited to a lunch after the premiere of Ryan’s Daughter (admittedly a mediocre film) and was publicly castigated by New York critics including Kael saying that the man who directed Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia was a hack. Lean was so wounded by the remarks he only made one more film for the remaining twenty years of his life. I imagine Kael and her ilk probably thought ‘Good’.

I realize as well as anybody that trying to critique anything – particularly today when anybody can be a critic – is a high-wire act on the best of days. And I’m willing to admit that to an extent I can be as closed-minded as many of my fellow critics were and are. But the difference between them and me is that I am willing to admit my flaws and that there are some shows on television that I’m never going to appreciate the way so many other people love. Millions of Americans loved Game of Thrones and Scandal; I thought they were misguided, but I was willing to acknowledge that there are some things I’m never going to get. Too many critics (particularly in New York) think that if they don’t get something or appreciate, not only is it not worth getting, but the people who get it are deluded and not worthy of their time. You want to see The Matrix: Revolutions? All right. It’s not for me; I’d rather see the Coen Brothers new adaptation of Macbeth, but I understand why some, maybe most, ticket buyers would rather see the former this Christmas. The Times Critics will no doubt say that making any of The Matrix films was a waste of time and energy; that the sequel is unnecessary (like basically any movie in a franchise) and that the people who buy the tickets do not have the necessary IQ points to understand great cinema. They say all this with the assuredness that these people won’t read these reviews in the first place, and if they do, so what: Their jobs are safe.

So as a New York Critic, I end my piece with a plea. Try not to judge all critics by these really sour apples. We’re not all like that. Some of us are grateful that you read our reviews at all, particularly now. You don’t have to agree with me about shows like Succession (which I hate) or Reservation Dogs (which I love). If you read my review, and the end of it you think I’m an idiot or an elitist, that’s fine. We’re all entitled to our opinion. That’s the reason I got into this job in the first place.

So drop me a line. Tell me yours. I may not be able to make music with my hind legs, but I’m not worthless. (Yes I close with Mel Brooks’ opinion on critics. I couldn’t resist.)

Thirty Years Later Oliver Stone's Still Peering Through the Same Looking Glass: How A Once Great Director Became a Failed Historian and Opened the Door For Conspiracy Theorists everywhere

 

Late last night I couldn’t find anything good to watch and was just channel chasing. I found myself on a Showtime channel which was playing Oliver Stone’s ‘documentary’ Through the Looking Glass with ‘new’ information about JFK and the assassination. I figured what the hell; maybe it’ll put me to sleep. I sat through roughly six minutes of Donald Sutherland’s narration and stock footage until I reached the point of implausibility – the theory that UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, who died in a mysterious plane crash in 1961, was actually assassinated by the CIA. I then realized that Oliver Stone had gotten older but no wiser.

The tragedy of Oliver Stone is that for awhile he really was one of the greatest writers and directors in the history of film. Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July are two very different messages on the tragedy of Vietnam and the soldiers who fought there. Wall Street was clearly years ahead of its time and its key message is misunderstood even today and Salvador was one of the most scorching political satires of all time. But in a sense, Stone has never truly recovered from the message he tried to tell in JFK more than thirty years, either as an artist or as a historian. He’s been trying to tell the same messages over and over, insisting he telling us something we haven’t heard before. And he doesn’t know that he’s a victim of the flawed messaging of the past and he clearly doesn’t seem to care how much wreckage he’s done to our culture as a result of his ‘truth-telling’ Since his work involves a mix of television as well as movies, and a large amount of American History I feel I’m qualified to talk about it. I’m not going to express my own views; I’m only going to focus on what Stone seems to believe.

In 2012, Stone made a documentary series for Showtime, modestly called Oliver Stone’s History of the United States. In trailers for the series, he constantly repeated: “These are stories that have never been told.” There was a reason for that. While I’m willing to acknowledge that there was a fair amount of truth in it, so much of it laid bare the bias of Stone and his views that its very hard to argue it was impartial.

And to be clear, the eight-part series wasn’t a documentary in the traditional sense of the term. Certainly not Ken Burns or even Michael Moore. There was no footage of historians being interviewed, there was no footage demonstrating any of the statements he was making. What we what got was essentially eight hours of stock footage with Stone disconnectedly narrating what he considered facts with almost no independent verification. The basically concept was the same for all eight hours – America is a country that is drawn more towards empire, that will interfere in the destiny’s of other nations for it’s own benefit and almost every American President is compliant in that corruption. Given what we know about history recently, it’s hard to argue he wasn’t being logical at these assumptions.

What I took offense at was basically that Stone seemed to view every that didn’t fit his view of the message as proof. In the agreement at Yalta, Stone seems to argue that Stalin was trustworthy and basically an agreeable person. Leaving that aside, he seems utterly unwilling to admit that the America military or politicians had any reason to distrust Stalin. The fact that he killed millions of his own people, purged his own military and killed off all people considered disloyal is either not mentioned or shrugged off. Stone seems to say later the American complex never trusted the Soviet Union solely because of their impressions of Stalin. That really seems to be giving Stalin mountains of the benefit of the doubt, none of which he deserved then or now.

I also take offense with his idea of how presidential politics worked during the war. Of particular note to him as an example of anti-communist behavior is how the ‘bosses’ arranged to get Henry Wallace of the Democratic ticket in 1944 because they thought he was too soft on Communism. Truman is just a blind patsy in this scenario. He conveniently leaves out: 1) that the bosses didn’t want Wallace on the ticket in 1940 and would’ve pushed him out had FDR not insisted, 2) that FDR could’ve kept Wallace on the ticket had he wanted, but he didn’t real care and, 3) Truman never wanted the job either of Vice President or President. All of this to Stone was just a way of his attacking Truman, a man he had made clear in previous interviews he thought was a terrible President.

Indeed, in the entire documentary there are only two President Stone thinks tried to stand against the tide of empire. One was Jimmy Carter, the other, of course, was Kennedy. He spends almost no time in the documentary on Carter, because the idea of being good at something is irrelevant. He spends an entire episode on Kennedy.

Now, as everyone knows, the mythology of JFK and his presidency began pretty much a week after his assassination. It is the deification that basically has made everybody who grew up with ignore all of his flaws – which were manifold – and focus on his achievements – which were nearly non-existent. Stone is just as guilty of this in both JFK and his History. The fact that his was a mobster and a bootlegger, that he ran for President on a nearly non-existent resume, that he was the both unfaithful President arguably of all time, that he almost certainly stole the 1960 election from Richard Nixon – none of that comes into play.  Neither does the fact that in the campaign Kennedy actually ran to the right of the Nixon, that he did almost nothing on civil rights in his entire administration and had no plan too, and all the credit he gets for resolving the Cuban missile crisis is basically a mythology built by his own brother. All of this doesn’t enter into why Stone and my generation deified. It’s because they believe with every fiber of their being in what he didn’t do – or at the very least, didn’t get to do before he was killed.

Stone has had thirty years to come up with more evidence than he did in JFK that Kennedy was going to withdraw soldiers from Vietnam. Based on what I saw in the documentary, he’s still harping on one lone intelligence document. The fact that a major leader in Vietnam was killed two months before Kennedy’s death, the fact that there is no real proof in all the other documents we have off Kennedy of this, even the fact that Bobby Kennedy himself really thought they were going to get deeper involved in Vietnam later, is irrelevant. The theory is basically this: LBJ got us deeper into Vietnam. Kennedy wouldn’t have. The fact that LBJ basically did so against his own better judgment in tapes that we hear him talking to his mentor Dick Russell about (a Senator who also urged Kennedy in further involvement in the war) is irrelevant as well. In this sense Stone is a very simple filmmaker. The story needs a villain and Johnson is it. The fact that LBJ accomplished far more domestic legislation than Kennedy ever did doesn’t matter to him. He sees no reason to let the facts get in the way of this. And anyway, domestic policy never really enters any aspect of his History.

This is actually the core of his follow up film Nixon, a far messier film than JFK but more coherent. Indeed, Stone went out of his way to try to give Nixon credit for things he had no business being credited for. He tried to make Nixon a ‘victim’ of the system, and basically said all the horrible things he did were part of ‘The Beast’. There’s actually a bizarre scene where he meets with college protesters and one of them actually says: “You couldn’t end it if you wanted to.” Now either Stone didn’t know that in the days before Election day Halderman and Erlichman did a backchannel with the Vietnamese urging them not to come to the negotiating table with LBJ in order to get better terms with Nixon – unlikely, considering how thoroughly he researched the rest of the movie – or more likely, it didn’t fit in with his subtle narrative of the film which was that there were forces in the government that Nixon couldn’t control. Either way, it goes against the previous message he was trying to tell in JFK and neither makes Nixon looks better.

I really don’t understand how Stone is the kind of person who can make movies like Nixon and W. where he goes out of his way to humanize these horrible presidents and explain if not justify their flaws and then say in a documentary series that they were horrible Presidents and don’t deserve one iota of our sympathy. It doesn’t speak very highly of him as either as a filmmaker, a documentarian or a historian. But that really doesn’t surprise me because Stone isn’t really any of these things. He’s a conspiracy buff.

That actually gets me to my final point. Back in the early 1990s Comedy Central showed a sketch comedy series I loved immensely Almost Live, a smart, intelligent and witty show that satirized every element of life. (One of their classic bits ‘White Ineffectual Middle-Management Suck-Ups’ who couldn’t decide to help a choking friend without taking a vote.)  One of their sketches I’ve never forgotten was the ‘Oliver Stone Encyclopedia Commercial’. (You know, back when encyclopedia sets were still a thing.) The set basically makes it clear that every single aspect of life is a government conspiracy – including rainbows, which are created by the military industrial complex. Big laughs at the time.

Now consider what’s happened in the thirty years in between. Hilary Clinton having Vince Foster killed, 9-11 Truthers, the ‘birther’ movement, and on and on until we’re now electing people to Congress who cheerfully admit that wildfires in California are caused by ‘Jewish space lasers’.

To use a lyric that Billy Joel was using around the time Oliver Stone was filming JFK, ‘he didn’t start the fire’.  And considering just how manifest the internet and social media are, Stone’s believes in the Kennedy conspiracy are almost quaint by comparison. But the fact is filmmakers like Stone gave a lot of these people credibility in the decades to come. He didn’t light it, but he’s done nothing to fight it. Even now, with Through the Looking Glass, he’s still quietly throwing gasoline.

Homicide: Life on The Street, Reflections on the Greatest Police Procedural of All Time, pART 2: What It Really Means When Someone Dies

 

 

In the opening minutes of the second episode of Homicide, Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor) lowers his sunglasses and stares at the front door of the Watson home. The rookie detective has just caught his murder as primary – their ten year old daughter Adena – and after spending hours standing over the body is about to announce the news of their daughter’s murder.

The door is answered by the mother who looks worried. Bayliss tells them who he is and asks about their daughter. The mother’s face contorts for second before giving out a primordial scream of grief when he tells them about Adena’s murder. She embraces one of her other children, who also begins to cry. Another drops a bowl of cereal on the floor. Pembleton, usually the most stoic of detectives, expresses so much in three simple words: “I hate this.”

During the era of the new Golden Age, the viewer has gotten used to the deaths of characters in a way they truly weren’t when Homicide premiered. But the frequency of these passings has led to a certain becoming numb to the over feeling when it happens. Your reaction to a death has the nature of Kurt Vonnegut: There was a slaughter at a wedding in Westeros. So it goes. It happens so constantly in the course of the series that it is rare when even the dead characters friends and family have to deal with it, the mourning period is practically perfunctory. During series like 24 we didn’t even have time to take a breath. The sole exception to this was, of course, Six Feet Under but even then the series hedged its best by making the passage of souls a business as well by making the opening death of the series more a subject of surprise and humor than grief.

To be clear the detectives on Homicide regarded the murders they solved just as much a job as the Fisher’s did preparing the bodies of the deceased. There were bad jokes over the bodies, often little sympathy for their character and sometimes if their murder deserved to be solved. This didn’t make them inhuman, of course: a lot of the murders and deaths would frequently to get to many of the detectives, particularly Bayliss and Pembleton, but occasionally the rest of the squad.  What Homicide did differently than any other police drama I’ve seen before – and almost no other show has done since – is demonstrate how violent a violent loss of life can be for those who are left behind. The series didn’t dwell on it that often – Homicide was already a dark show; if they’d dwelled this frequently in the darkness it would’ve been almost unwatchable – but once or twice a season they would look deeply into the true consequences of murder not just from the prospect of solving the crime but from the wreckage it left behind.

To look at three perspectives, I will examine three particular episodes one each from Season 3, Season 4 and Season 5 of the series respectively. They are among the highest regarded episode of Homicide by the fans as well the critics. In a poll that Court TV did of the fans when they were running the show in the syndication of the fifteen greatest episodes, the first two I will discuss were on that list.

‘Every Mother’s Son’ is a seminal and haunting episode. Bayliss and Pembleton are called to investigate the shooting of a thirteen-year old boy, Darryl Nawls. Darryl doesn’t run with the gangs but was nevertheless shot by another boy in a bowling alley. The witnesses recognize the killer, Ronnie Sayers.

The detectives visit the Nawls’ family, which are a mother and a young child. She is unbelieving when she hears the news. The police quickly apprehend Ronnie after searching his home and scaring his family, another woman and a child of approximately the same age as the Nawls’  child. Ronnie (memorably portrayed by Sean Nelson) is astonished not by the police but by the person he killed – he shot Darryl by mistake. His behavior in the interrogation room is absolutely terrifying: he confesses to get his mother out of the room to protect him, and doesn’t believe he should be prosecuted because the murder was a mistake.

Ronnie is all of fourteen. Both he and the victim are African-American, but sadly, that’s hardly news for the series. Both women are escorting to the ‘aquarium’ where everybody waits to be called on. The episodes centers on a seven-minute conversation between the two, neither knowing yet what the relationship they have to the other is. It is agonizing because it’s very clear all the things they have in common. Neither has a husband or a man in the picture. Both know the agony of raising a child in this world – Sayers’ mother mentions almost casually that she’s been to the funerals of three of Ronnie’s classmates this year. Their son both like comic books, and they scorn the absence of real heroes in Baltimore. The viewers knows all too well what’s coming, but that doesn’t make the moment when Pembleton leads Ronnie into booking and the true revelation of what’s happened any less anguishing. Because we know that both women are essentially the same – they’ve both lost their sons.

 Even more agonizing is the denouement of the episode where Mrs. Sayers visited Mrs. Nawls. The awkwardness is horrible. Then they both notice their younger children happily playing together. Mrs. Sayers haltingly raising the possibility of that happening again. Mrs. Nawls is blunt about it: “What happens when they find out what happened to their brothers?”  There is no joy in this Baltimore; nothing but ashes remain. It is in this episode that Andre Braugher, who delivered so much of the best dialogue for the series, says the line that could stand as the statement for Homicide and every single procedural. “One time, I want to see one murder that makes sense. One time, for any reason.” He knows when he says it that it never will.

‘A Doll’s Eyes’ in Season 4 is a different kind of murder. The victim is another child, this time ten-year old Sean Garrabrek. He’s in the mall with his parents, when a bunch of kids chasing each other shooting run by. Sean looks at his parents, and then falls to the ground.

Pembleton and Bayliss are called to the crime scene, even though the victim is still alive. The episodes divides its span between the detectives and the Garrabreks (Gary Barasaba and Marcia Gay Harden, the latter on the way to becoming one of the greatest character actresses of all time). The parents soon receive the news that their son has ‘doll’s eyes’ – the lingo for no brain stem activity. The only thing keeping him alive are the machines.

Bayliss and Pembleton throw themselves as hard as they can into the investigation – it’s what they call a dunker, the shooter is very quickly caught – but can’t avoid the pain of the victim’s parents deciding whether to kill their son or let him live as a vegetable for possibly the rest of his life.  Never having equilibrium as partner, the detectives find themselves sparring more than usual as they find themselves hung up over anguish.

Eventually, the parents make the hard decision to take their son life support. The mother says the hardest words of her life: “I’ve loved you the ten years, three months and fourteen days of your life.” Then the machine is turned off and their son is taken away to have his organs retrieved.

The kicker of the episode – which demonstrates a different kind of pain – comes after Bayliss and Pembleton are leaving the squad. A man comes in, asking if they caught the murder of Sean Garrabrek. The baffled detectives say yes. In a tone of near joy, he says his son’s life was saved due to the boy’s heart. He finishes with a message of gratitude. The detectives don’t even try to answer; they just go out on the street for the next murder.

In ‘Heart of a Saturday Night’, the episode takes a look at a grief counseling sessions involving the recently bereaved – indeed, as we find out all the members lost their loved ones on the same Saturday night. Jude Silvio’s wife was murdered in a carjacking and the baby was still his seat when the car was taken. Carolyn Widmer’s husband was murdered in a barroom brawl (ironically The Waterfront, the bar three of the detectives own together). The Rath’s daughter is found dead strangled in an alley.

In a series of flashes done in the bleached out colors the series did so well, we see the spouses and parents of murder victims in various stages of grief. And as we see, its not the same for any of them. Indeed, all of them seem to be stuck on anger, though who their anger is directed as is completely different for each case. Silvio is angry that the murderer is still out there and the detectives are incompetent for not catching them. The Raths are angry at each other: the father is angry at the mother for treating their daughter so easily growing up; the mother at the father for never being supportive. Widmer (in a brilliant turn by Rosanna Arquette) is angry at her husband – he cheated on her, he treated her badly, and she was going to ask for a divorce almost the day before he died.

At the end of the episode, having endured the rages and the attitudes of the other members Carolyn Widmer finally asks a question to both men: “Can’t you see you’re the same? You (Rath) lost your child but you still have your wife. And (Silvio) lost your wife but you still have a child. There must be some comfort in that.” And for the first time in the episode both men agree: No there isn’t. The loss they have suffered will never go away, never abate.

For the past two years opponents of BLM often shout ‘All Lives Matter’ as a ‘snappy’ retort. Homicide makes it very clear that, with few exceptions, no lives matter to anybody even among the detectives who have to solve their murders. If they do, it is only as names on a board to be changed from red to black, to be regarded as part of a clearance rate, as something to be packed away when the next dead body comes along. But in a strange sense (and try not to take this the wrong way) Homicide made it clearer than maybe other show at the time that all lives do matter…to the families, to the friends, to the people left behind in the wake. Very few shows ever made it clear what happens when a person violently dies. That is something that needs to be made clear, not just in television but everywhere people walk the earth. In that sense, Homicide achieved that goal.

An Actress Like No Other In A True Crime Series Like No Other: Olivia Colman in HBO's Brilliant Landscapers

 

 

The era of Peak TV has witnessed an incredible amount of great roles for actresses. But when it comes to putting together a list of the most versatile actresses on television - by which I means the ones who have put together a period of sustained excellence in multiple roles – the list becomes much shorter. From those who have a storied career in film before coming to television, there’s Nicole Kidman, Regina King and Reese Witherspoon. For those who have worked almost primarily in television, there’s Uzo Aduba, Rachael Brosnahan, and Meritt Weyer. And somewhere in the middle ground between the two worlds is Olivia Colman.

Colman has only become widely known to American audiences over the past two years due primarily to her Oscar-winning role in The Favorite and her Emmy winning role in The Crown, where she played two very different versions of two different British monarchs. But Colman’s has been much more stories and even more incredible. Focusing solely on the past ten years, I first became aware of her in the incredible Broadchurch as Detective Miller, the hometown D.I who becomes enmeshed – in more ways than one – when a child is found dead in the title town. Then there was her role in AMC’s adaptation of The Night Manager in which she inhabited the role of Tom Huddleston’s handler so matter-of-factly I was stunned when I later read the novel and found out her character was originally man; I couldn’t imagine anyone else playing that role. On either side of that was her remarkable work as the stepmother in Fleabag a person so pleasant you couldn’t help but dislike her. Even her work as an aging Elizabeth II was remarkable in different ways than Claire Foy’s had been; Foy had done an excellent job in the first two seasons making the young queen seem likable and sympathetic; Colman by contrast spent much of her time making the character more detached and far less likable. 

I am loathe to use clichés in my work such as “You’ve never seen So and So’ like this before, but after watching the first episode of her latest project – a collaboration between HBO and BBC called Landscapers, no other phrase seems to fit. Because watching Colman inhabit Susan Edwards, the fragile housewife at the center of a horrible mystery, you’ve simultaneously never seen her play a character like this and can’t imagine anyone else doing it.

I tend to ignore, except on very rare occasions, the true crime drama, either in documentary or fictionalized. I was tired of the concept after decades of bad TV movies and Lifetime projects to like it before and even the most well-structures rarely have anything different to say. The only reason I intended to watch this series was because of the two leads: Colman as Susan and David Thewlis as her husband Chris/ I’ve already expressed my admiration for Colman and Thewlis’ work in Season 3 of Fargo was one of the most remarkable portrayals of villainy I’d seen in years. But you watch it and it’s nearly impossible to tear your eyes away from the screen.

A large part of it is because this is one of the most astonishingly shot and directed series I’ve seen in all my years of watching TV. The Edwards’ are both huge cinema buffs and the direction reflects this by creating what is one of the most cinematic productions in years. It’s not just the constant used of fading between old films – some the cinemaphile will recognize; some they’ll wish they could – it’s the matter of the direction. When Chris reads out emails that he has sent to the police (yes, I’ll get to that) we not only have voiceovers but see him standing in the shot narrating his dialogue often complete being obscured by action in the screen. This is actually fitting because Chris is such a milquetoast character you get the feeling pretty much from the beginning that he’s a bystander in his own life, mostly subjugated by his desire to keep Susan content.

Susan in particular is completely inscrutable: so far you can’t tell if she’s so fragile Chris just wants to keep her placid or whether she’s genuinely delusional. It’s small wonder than when the two of them, having admitted their involvement in a decades old crime, walk into the railroad station to meet the police they literally walk past the cops at first. You can’t find yourself capable of believing the two of them could hide their diets from the world, much less the fact that they seem to have murdered Susan parents more than fifteen years ago and buried them in the back yard.

And yes ‘seem’ is very much the operative word. We know in the opening captions exactly what’s going to happen: the two of them are serving time in prison for this crime even though to this day they claim their innocence. But for a change, not even the creators of Landscapers give even the illusion that we are about to her the whole truth. The last title is “This is a story.” One can not help but be reminded of Fargo where we were told the following was a true story even though we knew it wasn’t. They admit they are involved – we see Susan admit something to a friend in the opening and Chris tell the same to his mother in a plea for money. But they seem just as convinced that if they ‘stick to the story’ they’ll come out fine at the other end. Are they lying themselves or have they been telling the same story for so long they ‘know’ it’s the truth?

The viewer spends so much of the episodes looking into the faces of Chris and Susan – it’s as if they’ve spent so much time looking into the movies that the idea of the fourth wall doesn’t exist to them. I don’t really expect the truth of the murders to be known at the end of Landscapers – the Edwards themselves may not know it. Perhaps that the reason I’m already such a big fan of this mini-series as it is (besides the exceptional, award worthy work of Thewlis and Colman). This may be the first ever true crime series where it tells us what a falsehood ‘true crime’ really is. All we ever have is a story.

My score: 4.75 stars.

 

Something Great Has Come: Steven Spielberg's West Side Story is the Musical This Moment Needs

 

I know I keep getting farther away with my first love of television. But those of you who read my tribute to Stephen Sondheim last year know that I worship both him and musical theatre. And I’ve just come from seeing Steven Spielberg’s reimagining – because to call it a remake is to do it an injustice – and five hours later I’m still entranced. So buckle up.

I worshiped the 1961 version of West Side Story when I was twelve. It played on a near continuous loop the first six months I lived in New York. When my sixth-grade class ‘read it’ I practically winced at every juvenile remark and the ridiculous reactions during the ‘screening’ of the film. (Did I know even then what my future job might be?) So understandably when I heard that Steven Spielberg was adapting it in spring of 2020, I had serious doubts. As highly as I regard Spielberg as a director, he hadn’t gone anywhere near a musical in his near half-century in film and television. How can we trust him with the treasured icon of our past? Even seeing all the trailers and hearing all the raves in the early stages, I will confess to doubts all the way to the original screening, despite my growing optimism.

Those doubts lasted less than a minute into the opening scene. Watching the Jets cross through the wreckage of New York City (in one of those supreme notes of irony we see them first coming across what promises to be Lincoln Center) you quickly see that Spielberg and his screenwriting muse Tony Kushner having taken the classic Bernstein/Sondheim production and turned into something real.  For all the brilliance of the earlier film, you couldn’t escape the fact that the gang members were dancing with some kind of joy. From the moment you see Spielberg’s version, you can sense the rage that is just below the surface always just waiting to poke out.

Both the play and the original movie always suggested the Jets and Sharks struggle over turf was posturing. Spielberg makes it clear from get-go it is pointless. When the opening dance is over, Schrank (incredibly played by veteran character actor Corey Stoll) tells the Jets point blank their territory is going to be bulldozed. The show always hinted at the disdain he held for them; here it less crude but just as demeaning. You can see Schrank pulling the lever for George Wallace just a few years down the line.

But none of this dismays the Jets. Hell, maybe it only inspires them. So Riff (incredibly played, like the entire cast, by a searing Mike Faust) goes to see Tony (Ansel Elgort) to try and get him to help him plan the rumble. In the old version it was like pulling teeth; here he basically tells Riff to go to hell. We know that won’t stop from going to the dance.

The plot? Isn’t there an expiration date on spoilers, and if there isn’t, I seriously doubt the people who will seek this movie out won’t know what’s coming. So let’s ignore the plot and focus what makes this movie superior.

For a start, it’s angrier and darker. Riff was joyfully flamboyant in the 1961 version; here he seems violent, practically suicidal. You get the feeling when he meets his fate a part of him really wanted it. Bernardo is angrier, but also wiser; we see him an early scene arguing against Chino joining the Sharks. Anita is just a bit more maternal than she was in the earlier version, but a little more willing to loosen the apron strings. Tony is actually given more character than he ever was before; he’s on parole for having nearly beaten a man to death in an earlier rumble. And this Maria simultaneously more innocent and more willing to find her independence.

I know some purists will say that any change to the sacred text is sacrilege. To be fair, Spielberg’s version is truer to the makeup of the show than to the original movie and I can’t see a single change that didn’t benefit it. ‘Gee, Officer Krupke’ no matter where you play it never seemed appropriate. Staged in the NYPD itself it seems like a deliberate middle finger to the authority the Jets also oppose. ‘Cool’, restaged as a battle between Tony and Riff (another nice change; the gun that eventually goes off the third act has an origin story and it’s even darker than you’d think) and in this version you see that the fractures between the two were never going to heal. ‘I Feel Pretty’ and ‘America’ seem far better staged then either was in the movie and there’s more energy both times.

There are also a couple of vital character shifts, which I approve of. Anybodys, a genderless woman in the original is played as non-binary. Some of part of me always suspected that the character was a lesbian in the original, because it would explain another level of that character’s being an outsider among outsiders. (Maybe Arthur Laurents was trying to be subtle in his original play; they were already shattering enough barriers as it was) This character has been fighting all their life (and indeed, they engage the most brutal beatdown in the movie) but they have an understanding of both worlds being on the outside of both. In the pivotal scene when Anita shows up at Doc’s; in a single word they express everything that they know will happen next.

And of course, there’s Rita Moreno as Valentina, the equivalent of Doc in the original. At its core this could be seen as the ultimate stunt casting – bringing back original Anita for continuity. But this is anything but a stunt. Valentina is closer to Tony and the world of the gangs in a way that Doc, who just sounded like a used-up old man, ever was. She knows what Tony is planning a little better, but isn’t as stringent as Doc was. We know from the beginning she’s not on any side - Riff is not even allowed in her store when we first meet her – and she wants so hard to believe in a way that none of the other characters truly do in some kind of better life. It’s not a stunt when she gets one of the most critical songs in movie history just to give it to Moreno; this is the first time I’ve actually seen it work.

Yes, the movie still ends the same; like I said, Spielberg does everything in his power to make the film darker and angrier. But I don’t think anyone who goes to see his West Side Story will feel anything less than I did when I left the theater: joyful, engaged and utterly enraptured. There is no way that way back in the pre-pandemic era that Spielberg could have known that Stephen Sondheim would be gone from this earth when his film finally debuted. But if there was a better way to tribute to one of the greatest composers and lyricists in history than this new film, I really can’t imagine it.

One last thing: see this movie in the theater. The movie will work just as well when you see on TV over and over (and you will) but every Spielberg movie does better on the big screen. For those of you who may never set foot in an actual Broadway show, this comes as close as you will ever get to the experience. And it’s slightly cheaper.

 

'If The Future's Already Written, Why Bother Doing Anything?" What An X-Files Classic from 1995 Tells Us About A Controversial New Philosophic School About Whether Free Will Is real

 

 

A few days  ago I read an article online about a theory held by a certain branch of philosophers known as ‘the clockwork universe’. Trying to sum it up would be difficult for those of who don’t even know what philosophy is, but basically it comes down to the idea that the theory of ‘free will’ – that we have complete and utter control of our actions – is nothing more than a mental delusion. That everything decision we think we make for ourselves is based on a chemical reaction that is determined by previous ones going all the way back to the creation of the universe.

This is a controversial theory, to say the least – so much so that even the people who believe in it don’t think it should be widespread. By even suggesting in some circles the articles reveals they’ve received obscene calls and emails and it’s hard not to imagine a few death threats. Among the least controversial ideas of this philosophy is that, if it’s true, we have no right to punish criminals for their actions because they had no choice in the matter.  It takes the statement ‘the devil made me do it’ to new levels, if you merely substitute: “The universe did.’

The ideas of free will and determinism have been at the center of a lot of Peak TV and because it’s such a serious subject, it’s usually only done through science fiction or fantasy. It was at the core of so much of the action of Lost, Buffy and Angel frequently had its characters pondering it, and its hard to think of Battlestar Galactica’s catchphrase – “All of this has happened before’ and not think of the clockwork universe. But I think the truest and bleakest idea of that theory was stated in one of the greatest X-Files episodes ever written – and its telling that it’s also one of the funniest.

Before I delve into this, a little backstory. There were many great writers to come out of The X-Files over its near decade run, but fans of the series like me consider the two geniuses of the show to be Vince Gilligan and Darin Morgan. But while Gilligan is known to the world because of he subsequently created one of the greatest series of all time – Breaking Bad – Morgan is unknown to all but those of who remember his work for Chris Carter. This isn’t surprising because the entire body of Morgan’s work basically comes down to four scripts he work for the X-Files in Seasons Two and Three, along with one story credit and one he’s believed to have quietly rewritten, as well as two episodes he penned for Carter’s follow up series Millennium.  Yet those of us who’ve seen his work know that he was one of the greatest writers of all time, the JD Salinger of Ten-Thirteen. (Morgan’s ability is also one of the major reasons I don’t consider the recent revival of the series a waste of time; anything that provided the world with ‘Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster’ can not be considered worthless.

Morgan’s writing is known for two key factors for The X-Files, both related. First was his decision to write the series that was fundamentally dark and play it is as screwball comedy. I really don’t believe The X-Files would have become the cultural phenomena it was without the ability to be hysterically funny at times, and Morgan was the groundbreaker in that regard. Just as important was how he did it – by decided to tear apart and subvert all of the tropes Carter and his fellow writers had spent two years building up. One of the best examples of this comes in the episode I wish to discuss

‘Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose’. A group of detectives are discussing out of town help they have called in. One of them says that he’s a publicity hound, the other says he worked on him with a case – ‘very spooky’ which basically Mulder’s nickname. At that moment, Mulder walks into the room and music plays that you would associate with the hero walking on. The detectives look at him for a moment, and then one says: “Who the hell are you?” They’re not waiting for Mulder, but rather a TV psychic known as The Stupendous Yappi. (There’s just as wonderful a moment when Yappi does arrive, but this one I wouldn’t dream of giving it away.)

Which brings me to the episode I want to discuss. Couple of details first. Clyde Bruckman is considered not just one of the greatest episodes of The X-Files, but in television history. Morgan won an Emmy for Writing it that year. It was ranked as one of the 100 Greatest Episodes of all Time by TV Guide in 1997 and again more than a decade later. For all that, it is no better than any of the other episodes Morgan wrote for the show which tells you how much of a genius he was. Second of all, it’s a brilliant comedy but it has a very bleak view of human nature which ties in to this new philosophy school.

A man is killing fortunetellers and cutting out their eyeballs and entrails. There’s no mystery to who the killer is; we meet him before the opening credits role. (Actually, there is a mystery as to who he is, but I’ll get to that in a moment.) We see him at a fortuneteller, asking plaintively why he’s going to be doing the things he doing. “I think I’ve gotten a glimpse of my own future…I see myself doing things that not only do I not want to do them, I can’t imagine myself doing them. Yet there I am doing them.” The fortuneteller stars to panic (and loses her fake accent in doing so) about him hurting her. In the same voice, the killer says: “I know. But you’re a fortuneteller. Honestly, you should have seen this coming.”

By the time Mulder and Scully are called on to the scene, the killings have been going on for awhile. In the midst of this another victim is found by Clyde Bruckman. (In my humble opinion this is Peter Boyle’s finest hour, and the Emmy voters agreed giving him his only win in his long career). We already know that he’s a psychic and he clearly has an insight into the nature of the killer. He sees that the man truly thinks he’s a ‘puppet’ and has no control over what he does  It’s pretty clear that you can see one version of what this ‘clockwork universe theory’ would be in this killer. He’s been killing these people for the sole purpose of finding out why he’s killing these people.

Bruckman who has a similar gift views with utter disdain if not contempt. When Mulder asks him if its gift, he throws it back in his face: “The only trouble is its not’s returnable.” Bruckman’s only ability seems to be to see how everybody he meets will die and it’s clearly sucked all the joy out of his life. This is clear in what is probably the most pertinent exchange:

 

BRUCKMAN: “If the future wasn’t already written, how could I foresee it?”

MULDER: “But if the future’s already written, why bother doing anything?”

BRUCKMAN (smiling sadly): “Now you’re catching on.”

 

One views the two psychics in this episode as two of the major possibilities of what would happen if this knew theory were to become mainstream. People like the killer would just go on killing because they felt they had no choice but too. People like Bruckman would barely be able to function in life because they felt there was no changing anything.

Am I being too dark? Consider this. Near the episode of the killer and Bruckman are in the same room. The killer talks to Bruckman and asks him plaintively the same question he’s been asking all his victims: “Why do I do the things I do?”

Bruckman tells him the truth: “You do the things you do because you’re a homicidal maniac.”

Two things more. Morgan – who in his career as a writer was very specific in how he named his characters (Clyde Bruckman was the name of silent movie screenwriter who ultimately committed suicide) very deliberately didn’t give the character of the killer a name. And second, in every scene where a body has been discovered you can see him in the crowd. The director doesn’t focus on him, but he’s clearly there. I think the message is clear: the killer might as well be anybody. In that sense, we’re all just some version of this little man. And Bruckman doesn’t seem to think there’s a point in even trying to change things. When the killer spares his life to kill a detective who had the misfortune to be on the commode, Bruckman goes home and commits suicide. Why? Because he saw himself doing it.

But for all the bleakness in this story – and as funny as it is, it’s very dark – there’s actually a note of optimism in it. Something that I think speaks entirely to the series theory of free will overcoming fate.

At the climax of the episode, the killer corners Mulder in the kitchen. Bruckman foresaw this in an earlier vision, but focused on the kind of pie Mulder stepped in and refused to tell him that in the vision Mulder died. Mulder has a knife to his throat when the elevator opens and Scully appears. She pulls her gun and when the killer refuses to move his knife, shoots him dead. As he dies, the killer actually seems more surprised than angry – his last words are: “Hey, that’s not how it’s supposed to happen.” And when Mulder asked Scully how she knew he was here, she says: “I didn’t. I got on the service elevator by mistake.” For all Bruckman’s certainty that the future was set in stone, he died not knowing that it was possible to change it.

And it is that level of possibility – of the fact that for all things may seem like they are bleak and hopeless, we must believe in the idea of fate. Morgan himself must’ve thought differently when you consider how he got the job as a writer in the first place. He was a nobody actor whose big brother was a staff writer on the show. He was cast in a role to play a Monster-of-the-Week and had to wear an uncomfortable rubber suit and romp in the sewers – a role that would have been done by CGI had the series not been so low-budget. His brother asked him to help with him a script and he had an idea which got him a job on the writing staff. It is hard to imagine that and not see it as some kind of destiny but Morgan looked at it as part of a sign for free will for his finest hour in television.

As anyone who watches The X-Files knows, the key catchphrase was: “I Want to Believe.” Whether you chose to believe in science or the supernatural, the series made clear there was room for both in your philosophy. And the series time and again made it clear that belief in the individual over the either of something larger. We have to believe that there are always small things that had stand against the larger ones – whether it’s a pair of lonely FBI agents against a government conspiracy or a custard pie saving your life.  And art like this makes the point. I’ll close this article with a quote from Robert Sherman, whose book Wanting to Believe is one of the best books ever written about The X-Files, with his thoughts on the episode and the questions it poses:

 

“Fundamentally the troubled questions that Morgan poses here are best answered by the writing of the episode itself. Life might seem random, a cruel joke. FBI agents may feel relieved to know they won’t die of lung cancer, but only because they don’t know they’ll be knifed to death on the toilet moments later…But if you can create something special, a little piece of art like Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose, you’re doing something right. Because an episode like this isn’t random – it’s finely wrought and thoughtful and compassionate and is a triumph of individualism.”

 

Things like that are why I write this column. And what I want to believe in.