The Gang is Back -- But Not Together: Reservation Dogs is Back for Season 2

 

One of the minor gems of the 2021-2022 season was the Hulu and FX collaboration Reservation Dogs. Executive produced by the legendary Taiki Waititi and written by the incredible Sterling Harjo, the series exploded on to the consciousness by being the first series anywhere to be written, directed and feature entirely by indigenous people. So many writers were in awe in this fact that it nearly got lost what a remarkable show this series, mixing the tragic elements of Native American life with the low comedy that seems to follow it everywhere. The Emmys, showing the same wisdom when it comes to almost any series not centered around white males, chose to fundamentally ignore it for nominations (while nominating the tired comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm) but the HCA, showing signs of increasing genius, nominated it for three awards including Best Direction and Best Writing for a streaming series.

When we left the gang after a hurricane hit the reservation, Willow Jack decided to blow the reservation with arch nemesis Jackie, leaving her three fellow Reservation gang taking all the money they’d earned stealing. The reactions have been mixed: Cheese and Willie Jack, who had tried to curse Jackie, are now convinced theirs some bad medicine and the entire reservation is suffering. They have spent the first two episodes desperately trying to ‘reverse’ the curse and have ended up in the hands of two rival ‘elders’ they consider medicine men (they’re basically rival drinking buddies) Bear (Devery Jacobs) is trying to move on from all of the chaos and is now trying to atone for the robberies the gang engaged in throughout the first season. That involves getting a job and apologizing to the driver of the truck they heisted in the Pilot. It turns out not only did the driver know who had done it the whole time, the owners of the general store they frequent had seen them do it and posted it on social media. Even Bear’s ‘spirit guide’ has abandoned him and is now working with the elders to make him a true medicine. (Of course, that assumes he was ever a competent guide to begin; the more we hear him tell the legend of Crazy Horse and how he menstruated really makes you wonder if spirit guides get senile after awhile.)

As for Elora and Jackie, their trip starts off as a disaster and only spirals from there. The car they take overheats. They hitchhike and end up in a car with a man headed for Texas who could be a pedophile or maybe just creepy; we never find out because they prematurely stab him and jump out of the car, leaving their stuff and money behind. Then they try to steal a car from a much of good ol’ boys who chase them down with a shotgun. Then they manage to find a mansion in the fields inhabited by a surprising nice white lady, who is going through a divorce and who has wanted to run away. (Cameo by Megan Mullally.) She treats them better than anyone so far on this trip, but Jackie still steals her car in the middle of the night and feels no remorse for it. Admirably, despite Elora’s clear signs that she is feeling remorse for leaving her friends behind, unlike with a lesser series, Harjo and his writers show no sign of her going back home.

Reservation Dogs is one of the slyest and most well written comedies in recent years, with the humanity of FX’s recently departed Better Things and the occasionally surrealistic nature of the soon to vanish Atlanta. We see the world around the youths beginning to disappear – the shrine that they built to Daniel, their friend whose death sparked most of their actions last season is being torn down for a megachurch. All of them are still dealing with the agony, from Cheese still having conversations with his picture to Willow having agonizing dreams about his death.  Every bit of this series will either hit you in the gut or in the funny bone.

 And it’s not just the young newcomers all of whom are sensations all the way through. Many great indigenous actors who have spent their lives in clichéd roles are finally getting the characters they deserve. Veteran character actor Wes Studi has a memorable role as Bucky, an ‘elder’ brought in to remove the curse. Hearing about Uncle Brownie (Gary Farmer) drives a lawn mower to meet with him, and the two engage in a ‘ritual’ that quickly dissolves in to them dealing with an old feud over a woman and then singing an ancient spiritual song – ‘Freeballing’ “It’s over thirty years old, Uncle Brownie says when Cheese tells him it’s not an old song.  (Zahn McClarnon has been less present as his marvelous spacey deputy, but as those of us who watched him in Dark Winds know that he’s now playing a different kind of Navajo lawman.)

Taiki Waititi has taken some abuse recently for how he handled the most recent installment in the Thor movies, but as anyone who has been paying attention to TV the last few years knows, his mastery of bizarre comedies has not changed. What We Do in the Shadows was nominated yet again for Best Comedy by the Emmys and his new HBO Max series Our Flag Means Death demonstrates what a talent he is an actor among anything else. Waititi of course is aboriginal himself, which was no doubt at least part of the reason that he helped developed this work of art, but even if his attachment is merely a producer, the incredible group of writers and directors that Sterling Harjo has assembled would be formidable on their own.  It’s sad that we had to wait this long for this level of talent to be assembled for Reservation Dogs, but its arrival may be the first sign that this untapped vein of talent is about to be mined. I don’t think it likely Dark Winds could have been greenlit without the immense popularity of this series, and the latter show’s recent success indicates that there might be more series like this come.  Reservation Dogs is a trailblazer, but don’t let that keep you from forgetting its one of the most brilliant series on TV today.

My score: 4.75 stars.

Forty Years Later, American Gigolo Still Works: Showtime's New Project Does Credit to the ReVamp

 

Paul Schrader may be one of the greatest unsung filmmakers in the history of American cinema. He is best known for being one of Martin Scorsese’s greatest early screenwriters, collaborating with him on such masterpieces as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ. As a director he is one of the most brilliant voices in filmmaking from early works such as Blue Collar and Mishima  to astonishing independent films such as Affliction and Autofocus  to later masterpieces such as First Reformed and The Card Counter (he has also written every film he has directed). It is hard to find a single recurring theme in Schrader’s work (Roger Ebert thought there were patterns throughout groups of his films). Some, like Nick Nolte in Affliction are weighed down by trauma from their childhood, while some carry the weight of their families names (Woody Harrelson in The Walker). Others like the characters in Blue Collar and Ethan Hawke’s priest in First Reformed are dealing with the brokenness of the America they live in.

Schrader’s sole box office hit was one of first films as a director American Gigolo.  In what would be his star-making role, Richard Gere took on the title of Julian Kaye, a male escort who caters to mostly older female clientele. He falls in love with a client (Lauren Hutton) and is accused of a murder. A well-written and engaging film,  it is by far Schrader’s most accessible movie and perhaps the biggest surprise is that is taken this long for it to become adapted for television. The opening credits of the Showtime series instantly evoke the mood of the movie showing Julian driving down the highway in his convertible, serving his clients, all the sound of ‘Call Me’. But the creators of this series have a far more interesting story in mind.

In the pilot, Julian ends up taking the wrap for the crime he was exonerated of in the movie.  We actually catch up to Julian after fifteen years in prison, still handsome but with most of his style gone to seed. Then he is visited by Detective Sunday, the cop who got him locked up and she tells him that a hit man has confessed to the murder he was accused of. Julian is now a free man…but that assumes he was ever free to begin with.

Jon Bernthal has become one of the iconic actors of the past decade.  Breaking big as Shane on The Walking Dead, his true breakout role came as Frank Castle, first on Daredevil, then as the lead on The Punisher. This role has given actors fits for more than twenty five years, but Bernthal managed to instantly own when he took on the role. There are still quite a few people pissed when Netflix divested itself its entire Marvel franchises and The Punisher went with it. Then earlier this year, Bernthal took on an even deeper role as Wayne Jenkins, the Baltimore cop at the center of the Gun Trace Task Force on We Own This City. Like so many other David Simon/HBO collaborations, it was worthy of many Emmy nominations. Like all of those series, it got none and Bernthal was one of the excluded.

Now Bernthal takes on the role of Julian, which is in a way one of his biggest career shifts. He has spent the past decade playing ruthless authority figures; Julian is a man who has been playing a role for so long he doesn’t know what it’s like to be genuine. He has no idea what to do now that he’s neither a prisoner nor an escort.

The movie glamorized the lifestyle of prostitution. The series goes out of its way to show just how filthy the lifestyle it is. For starters, much of the series is spent in flashbacks where we see Johnny (Gabriel LaBelle) growing up in the desert, living life as a trailer park kid trying to support his mom. Then one day, he comes home and finds his mother has ‘sold’ him to a woman we know as ‘The Queen’.  Whatever innocence Julian had is sacrificed as he is quickly groomed into prostitution.

The only good thing that Julian ever had in his life was Michelle, played in the series by another wondrous talent Gretchen Mol. Like Bernthal, Mol has realized her potential in Peak TV, most famously as Gillian Darmody, a literal MILF who we found out was essential the cause of so much of the strife in Boardwalk Empire. Just as Bernthal is perfect cast as Julian, not only for the physical resemblance but also the stature, Mol is just as superb as Michelle, who wanted a future with Julian but lost it when he went to prison. Still married to her husband, a Silicon Valley millionaire with not an ounce of compassion in his soul (Leland Orser is quite brilliant) she has a son who at the beginning of the series has run off with his older teacher. Michelle wants her son back, but when she sees Richard talking with a threatening look man, she knows that bad things may happen. The marriage has clearly been for show for awhile; it’s not clear yet how much Richard knows about her affair with Julian, but it’s clearly ripped all the scars open. Julian tries to reach out to Michelle in his first days out, and the sparks are still there, but both are trying to avoid it.

Julian is now trying to rebuild a new life, but he can not let go of the old. He finds himself back in the roam of the business which is now being run by the daughter of the Queen, Isabelle (Lizzie Brochere) Isabelle is clearly just as damaged as Julian has been, as we see in the one major sex scene the series has shown us so far. Julian would clearly not be back there if he didn’t want to find out how he ended up getting set up for murder.

The showrunner of American Gigolo is David Hollander, best known for being the head of another dark Showtime series Ray Donovan, admired by many, considered overrated by me (most of the way). However, Hollander has done a much better job establishing Julian than he did with Ray in the latter series, and it’s clear why he was drawn to the adaptation. Ray and Julian are both seriously traumatized men; both of whom were first groomed and sexually abused as children, both abandoned by their parental figures (in Julian’s case, his mother.) The fact that Hollander is dealing with Julian’s past right up front (something that it took Ray Donovan six seasons to finally deal with) shows that he may have learned from his mistakes on that front.

And the series is well cast with many actors giving surprising turns. Rosie O’Donnell, continuing a solid late career run that began with SMILF is surprisingly good as the hard-bitten Detective Sunday. Perhaps I care less for her performance (though its solid) then the fact of her characters existing: rough-hewn veteran female detectives are few and far between even on Peak TV and on the few exceptions (Holly Hunter on Saving Grace and Mary McConnell on Major Crimes) there is still some residual sexiness, which O’Donnell never had. She continues to impress me as does Wayne Brady as Lorenzo, a former colleague of Julian, looking heavier and more gone to seed than his public persona.

It’s still too early to say with certainty that American Gigolo can stay the course. There are some weaknesses in the early going that are concerning. I’m not entirely certain the story of the hunt for the Stratton child is a plot that the series needs right now, unless there’s some kind of payoff that connects to Julian. And it’s not entirely clear yet if the plot looking into Julian’s frame-up is a solid foundation for the series to be built on. But all things considered, American Gigolo so far is that rarest of birds: an adaptation that takes enough from the source material to be recognizable, but has enough variation to be good in its own right. With this series and Yellowjackets, it’s looking like Showtime, after a few years in the wilderness with original dramas, may be building a foundation that will make them the most fascinating center for Peak TV.

My Score: 4.25 stars.

Criticizing Crticism- What Jeff Jarvis Gets Wrong About Television, Part 2: His Solution is Full of Problems - and It's not Even A Solution

In the last paragraphs of Jarvis’   look at the state of television today, he gives what he believes may be the best path forward when it comes to TV: he lists TikTok version of  fan-made shows of Disney Ratatouille and an unauthorized musical version of Bridgerton as well as suggest a prominent fanfic site. Those of you who with knowledge of either idea will have already noted that there is a hole in this logic big enough for one of the dragons from Game of Thrones to fly through, but there are so many other smaller ones that its worth listing them before we get to the major one.

First off, I have been writing fan fiction for all of my adult life. For most of my twenties it was the bulk of the writing I ended up doing, most of it gathering little notice on fanfic.net. I still write a fair amount of fanfiction, though my professional writing has forced me to spend less time on fanfic websites than I once did, but I know more than enough about the stories on these sites to think that I can qualify as a relative expert on the subject. So let’s get right to the problems.

The first is very simple. Most fanfiction is utter crap – I’d say a higher percentage of it is genuinely awful, using featuring misspelling and horrible grammar, dialogue that is barely speakable, and plots that are barely little more than fan service. To be clear, that’s to be expected. Fanfiction isn’t a career or a calling for anybody; it’s a hobby. Something we do when we have spare time and something that we may overtime eventually outgrow. That is why there are often gaps of years between chapters of certain fanfic novels, assuming that the men and woman who ended up writing don’t just stop doing after a while. Some of them may no longer have time, some may have tired of it…and some may have moved on to more profitable ventures.

Because as we all know, there’s never been any money in fanfic. That is by design. It is the covenant between the fanfic writer and the fandom they are writing for; it’s why we have to write a disclaimer before we start every single story we publish. It has less to do with the creator tracking us down and suing us (I’m actually going to get to that point later) more than to do with our complicated relationship with the creators. Some of us write stories because we want to correct plot points we disagree with; some of us are hostile to characters on the series and we want to express our frustration with, and some of us are just genuinely angry with the direction of the work of art we are pursuing has taken and we want to ‘redeem’ it. All fanfiction is more or less an alternate universe, and we want to lure fans of that version.

In a sense, fanfic may be the closest version of how so many critics view art; we are writing it for pure pleasure and not money. This is fine, because so much fanfic is unreadable. The few who manage to come across with brilliant, groundbreaking fanfic will almost inevitably try to go on to other careers with original characters or at least version that are unrecognizable from canon. Stephanie Meyer may not like what E.L. James did to Twilight, but since the names are changed, she’s never going to see a time from the Fifty Shades series.

So the idea that any form of fanfic could come up as somehow bringing television back from the brink of disaster is fundamentally ludicrous. If anything, the idea that some fan made version of a series or franchise (some of which have existed in smaller form) is far sillier. That actually brings to me a separate point. In his column Jarvis writes that Netflix is ‘unwisely’ suing the creators of the unauthorized Bridgeton musical.

This next part will not make me popular and I’m indeed not happy about having to take the point of view of supporting a huge corporation, much less Netflix. Nevertheless, I kind of feel it’s warranted. So here goes: not only is Netflix within its rights to sue the creators of the Bridgerton musical, but it would be an act of negligence for them not to do so.

I am loath to ever use the ‘slippery slope’ argument that so many politicians and pundits have used because it’s always nonsensical. In this case, however, it may actually be true. I may not be aware of all of the facts, but if the makers of the unauthorized Bridgerton Musical made this without getting express permission from the source, then yes: the creators are guilty of copyright infringement. And if Netflix just does nothing, we can see what comes next. An unauthorized version of the final season of GLOW that we never got because it was cancelled by the pandemic. An unauthorized version of House of Cards if Kevin Spacey had not been forced to leave the series. New seasons of series such as those that took place in the world of The Dark Crystal or The Get Down shows that had fanbase that were cancelled after one year. And that’s only when it comes to Netflix; can you imagine the wrath of Marvel and Disney when fans start doing new seasons of Star Wars or Star Trek? This can not be allowed to stand.

And I don’t think anyone who tried to create public support for either version I listed would get much support from the Internet. Jarvis seems to conveniently forget that so much of the controversy surrounded TV these days has to with internet trolls who can’t tolerate any alteration to their fandoms, whether they are comic books, science fiction or fantasy. Nor can I see the internet unifying around anything – most of the time we can even agree on the kinds of stories we want to see anywhere. And there’s the other side of it: if creators of similar fanfics come out of the shadows, there is absolutely no guarantee that the covenant that I spoke of will hold up if the corporate uber-bosses that Jarvis speaks of want to protect their interest. Who’s going to do that for Captain America slash-fic? (Which is a thing; trust me.)

But all of this is irrelevant when you consider the basis of Jarvis’ argument. Jarvis thinks the best way to alleviate the creative slump he sees across all of television is not through original stories and programming, but fan told stories of established franchises. When I read his argument for these, I blinked a couple of times to see if I’d read it correctly because it doesn’t compute with anything he’s said. Broadcast TV is endless derivative, we are drowning in prequels and revamping of franchises, every other series on TV is a reboot of something and Jarvis’ solution is – more of the same. Because that’s exactly what fanfic and the TikTok versions are. No matter how much he wants to dress them up as the new wave, all they are is the definition of everything he seems to loath about television today.

I don’t deny the fragile creative state of television these days. I don’t think it’s nearly as dire as Jarvis would have us believe, but there is a decent chance we’ve passed the heights of Peak TV. I think all the major services – broadcast, cable and streaming – are going to have to do a lot of work to reach the heights of even five years ago, and the argument that Jarvis makes about the problems with corporations controlling everything is warranted. But the idea that somehow the fans – the ones who have created the situation where almost every film is a comic book or some kind of franchise, the ones who will review bomb any series that they consider too ‘political’ (which is a dog whistle) the ones who don’t even have to watch a series or film to know they hate it – can somehow muster the creative energy to save television is not merely laughable, but unworthy of any one who has spent more than a few hours exploring the internet, which Jarvis claims to be an expert in.

As a TV critic, a writer and reader of fanfic for decades, a man who spends quite a bit of time on the internet dealing with trolls, and someone who knows quite well the contradictions that so many who crave nostalgia seem to want,  I can say with utter certainty fans will not save Peak TV. Hell, they are at least partially responsible for how it got in the mess in the first place. The fragmenting of our political landscape was, in a way, foreshadowed by the fragmenting of the television landscape. Niche audiences may have led to some truly remarkable television but there was always going to come a time when the corporations that ran every version of it were going to start worrying about their bottom line. Argue as much as you want that monopolies are the reason things are bad now; the truth is, something like this was inevitably going to happen. All businesses – and television services are all businesses like I said in the first part of this piece – all business are about maximizing profits. They will all be about creativity until they start losing money, and given all the fragmentation that I’ve talked about it, it was inevitable that they would start losing money. And when the loudest voices start carrying – which are, to be clear, the most ‘rabid fans’ – the corporations have to start worrying about how much this will affect them. Is this fair to creativity? Of course not. But it is how all art has worked.

To be clear Jarvis doesn’t care much about this because, as I wrote in the first part of the blog, he doesn’t want to be part of the solution. Essentially he is fundamentally selfish about how he views TV – he wants all of the benefits of Peak TV but doesn’t want to have to pay a single penny more than he has to for it.  He essentially seems to want a broadcast or cable package that supplies everything good on all services that are streaming, but he doesn’t want to pay for that. He spends the last couple of paragraphs speaking about the improvements in television over time, while denying any approach as to how those improvements were possible.

I agree with him in the last sentence of his story that the process of television fixing itself will be messy. Of course, the fact that the way he sees the problem ‘fixed’ is utterly impossible shows that he is in for disappointment. In short, this is the snobbish attitude of far too many critics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Criticizing Criticism: What A Media Writer Has Gotten Wrong About Television, Part 1: TV Is Sometimes an Art. It's always a Business

 

 

I have spent many years writing about the fundamental flaws so many of the people in my business have in regard to TV and to media. Yesterday, I read a long column by Jeff Jarvis, who worked briefly in television and has spent the decades since leaving the field criticizing the media and internet. He wrote a long column about the current flaws in television. I criticized his writing in two comments, one which he basically ignored and one where he faulted me for not remembering his job history. That was my mistake. That said, the make up of the column he wrote (which I will not highlight) disturbs me because it has all the hallmarks of someone who wants to complain about television without fundamentally understand – or perhaps even caring – how it actually works. Since both are legitimately possible – this is a big world and not all people, certainly not me, understand how television works – I consider this an open letter to him. On the off chance he ends up reading this column, Jarvis fundamentally needs to understand what he either has forgotten or ever acknowledged about the medium he chooses to write about. Because fundamentally, it demonstrates several flawed arguments. There is a possibility he made read this column and consider me a hack or pretentious. All I will say I love television dearly and I am concerned about its eventual fate as much as he is. But his column seems not to take into account several realities. As I have written about them recently and believe they apply here, I feel qualified to write about them.

Those of you who remember the last column I wrote in this series may remember the fundamental disconnect that so many critics and scholars seem to see about the relationship of art as it applies to commerce. I will now quote that same column:

 

Every professor of English literature, every New York film critic, basically anyone who has looked at any form of art basically ignores any idea that it was make money for someone, certainly not the artist. Whether they were a poet or a painter, a musician or a filmmaker, no matter how long ago or what country they were in, they were doing solely for the purpose of making art. Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, Tennyson wrote The Charge of the Light Brigade, and yes, Orson Welles made Citizen Kane only for the purpose of making art. They did it for free. They didn’t need to eat or pay rent. No they created art solely for posterity and their patrons and absolutely no other reason.

That’s some weapons grade bullshit. All of these scholars and academics will go through the motions of saying, it’s a shame that Renoir and Keats or Chopin died in poverty and unknown at the time, but they live on through their arts. Somehow the horrors of poverty, homelessness and disease only seem insignificant when it comes to artists.  I guarantee you that Rembrandt or Schubert or any of the dozens or hundreds of other artists would have gladly sacrificed the idea of being remembered if they could have had heat in their home or food on their table.

 

And television has never been any different.  Hell, they’ve told us that right up front in the names of some of the stations. The ‘C’ in both NBC and ABC stood for ‘Company’. The last two letters in HBO stand for Box Office. That would seem to indicate that networks are about making money first and art, secondary if at all.

What The Outlier Gets Wrong - Or Omits - About Jimmy Carter As A Politician

 

Author’s Note: No I’m not turning political. In a sense this is the equivalent of a book review combined with historical criticism, both of which I think I’m qualified to write about.

 

I have always been a fan of political and historical biographies, most of them focusing on American politicians. Earlier last year, when Kai Bird published The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, I was curious to see how he viewed Carter’s presidency – historically considering among the weakest of the 20^th Century – under a different lens. I am also very familiar with several political books of that era, mainly those written by the late Jules Witcover, who took over chronicling the pursuit of the American Presidency not long after Theodore White gave up doing so.  So I was curious to see what this perspective of Carter’s presidency was.

 

To be fair, Bird goes a fairly good job of illustrating that Carter did make significant accomplishments during his president: the treaty that gave the Panama Canal back; the Camp David Accords (which Bird acknowledges began to fall apart not long after they were signed) his establishment of the Department of Energy and his determination for fiscal discipline in the face of stagflation. He also admits that Carter was not perfect when it came to his advisors; his appointment of Zbigniew Brzezinski as National Security Advisor was clearly the biggest flaw of his administration, as well as his decision to spend the first half of his term without a formal Chief of Staff. And for all the controversy surrounding his infamous speech about the ‘crisis of confidence’, Bird makes clear two things: it was a radical departure from the discussion of American exceptionalism (something that no President, Democrat or Republican, has dared waver from ever since) and that for a brief time, it actually seemed to work – Carter did get a major bounce in his approval numbers, which he immediately torpedoed by asking for the resignations of half his cabinet.

 

As for the Iran Hostage crisis, Bird makes it very clear that the problems began well before that, with so many advisors particularly Brzezinski giving deeply flawed advice as to how to handle the revolution, the pressure by so many wealthy industrialists to convince Carter to allow the Shah to come to America in the first place, and the fact that when the crisis began, Carter spent too much of his time dealing with it, and frankly paying to much attention to Brzezinski to the point where his Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, was left no choice but to resign. It is clear with the distance of history that Carter did not have control over events in this regard, was deliberately not told the whole picture about many things and that his determination to focus the last year of his Presidency on freeing the hostages at the expense of all else was a fatal blunder.

But as enlightening as these tales are, Bird uses them while fundamentally ignoring the substantial problems with Carter and that is he was a terrible politician. While this was enough to help him gain the White House, it pretty much crippled any chance he had for solid relationships with the House and Senate for his entire term. Some illumination is in order.

First of all, when Carter ran for President in 1976, his opponents in the primary were not nearly as strong as the main bench. Ted Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, considered the major frontrunners in early polls, took themselves out of the running early in 1975. While in retrospect there were many formidable candidates – Senators Birch Bayh and Henry Jackson; Congressman Mo Udall and Governor Jerry Brown among many others– it was Carter’s approach to running for President that won more than any particular competition.

 

Up until that point, no candidate for President in either party had ever won the nomination because they had competed in every Presidential Primary. That was the approach every candidate took – except Carter. Carter spent more than a year in the Iowa Caucuses (which he did not win, as is reported, but actually came in second to undecided) and subsequently won the New Hampshire primary, but one week after the latter, he came in a distance fourth to Henry Jackson in Massachusetts. Indeed, Carter’s campaign for the Presidency might have ended soon after had it not been for the efforts of two twenty-ish political activists.

A month before the Florida primary, these men visited all the major contenders telling them not to participate in the primary. At the time, the heavy favorite for the Democratic nomination was George Wallace, who four years earlier had won that primary with more than forty percent of the vote. Knowing the threat the demagogue Wallace presented, they wanted it to be a two man race: Wallace vs. Carter. They didn’t believe in Carter; all that mattered was defusing the threat Wallace meant to the party. Only Henry Jackson told them to take a hike. The Florida primary ended with Carter nosing out Wallace and Jackson finishing a strong third. But in addition to demolishing Wallace as a serious presidential candidate, Carter would rebound and end up slowly but surely taking the Democratic nomination.

No one in the party was happy with this – mainly because of Carter’s vagueness on the campaign trail and what many considered his false cheerfulness, and indeed in the latter stages of the primaries, the luster was fading: Senator Frank Church and Jerry Brown defeated Carter in nine of the last fifteen primaries. But by then it was too late; by the day of the last primaries, Carter had the nomination wrapped up..

Carter’s vulnerability as a Presidential candidate is mostly omitted by Bird as well. Carter left the Democratic convention with a nearly thirty-five point lead over President Gerald Ford, who had barely survived a primary challenge by Ronald Reagan. On election night 1976, that lead was almost completely gone with Carter winning by less than two percent in the popular vote and the narrowest victory in the Electoral College in sixty years. Carter should have taken that as a sign that he’d need to do more reaching out when he took office. Instead, he went in the opposite direction.

The Democrats had enormous margins in both the House and the Senate – more than two to one in the former and sixty one to thirty nine in the latter. Considering how many of these senators and Congressmen themselves had run as outsiders in their campaigns, you would think that it would have been easy to find common ground. But almost from the start Carter went out of his way to isolate important figures like Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill and Senator Ted Kennedy. Bird tries to write this off as the actions of Boston Brahmins not being able to connect with good ol’boys but it undercuts the fact that for his entire administration, Carter went out of his way to isolate himself from Congress. He never took their concerns for special projects into consideration, claiming it was more imperative to balance the budget. He rarely went out of his way to socialize with them or curry favor with them, seeming to prefer to shame them ‘to doing things because it was the right thing.’ And he never seemed to take into account that whenever he tried to make politically risky legislation, the senators of his own party were committing political suicide going along with him: at least four major Democrat senators lost their seats in 1978 from their backing of the Panama Canal treaty.

 

There was also the fact that many of the great senators of that era – not only Church and Jackson, but also George McGovern and Warren Magnuson – were now representing states where the political landscape had changed radically in the last several years. Added to this was the fact the Republican Party was undergoing the major changes that would dominate the conservative movement – moderates like Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, the only African American elected to the Senate in the twentieth century were quickly becoming voted out and succeeded by Southern Republicans such as Jesse Helms.  It was a complicated political landscape to negotiate and it would have taken an expert to handle it, combined with the financial crises plaguing America in the 1970s – many of which preceded Carter’s presidency.  And many of the Democrats in the Senate and House were Southern conservatives who you would think Carter could have found common ground with. But there is no evidence that Carter made much of an attempt during the period up to the 1978 midterms even willing to try, certainly not among the liberals of his own party.

Ted Kennedy’s challenge was ill-fated from the start, but it is fairly clear that there was a desire for it – if not from Carter, then someone else. (Jerry Brown made a similar attempt in 1980 that was over by New Hampshire.)  Bird focuses most of the 1980 primary campaign on Kennedy stubborn refusal to withdraw, rather than acknowledge the fact that a fair percentage of Democratic voters did not want Carter to get the nomination. Even after Kennedy’s campaign failed, there were pushes behind the scene for someone like Jackson or Edmund Muskie to be nominated over either man.

As for the fall campaign, Bird and Carter are quick to put the blame everywhere. Kennedy for not properly fighting for Carter; John Anderson for campaigning as a third party candidate (along with whispers of a conspiracy with Republican backers to give him the nomination for the Liberal Party in New York); a Kennedy button man manipulating things so that Reagan got briefing books prior to Carter’s debate; a CIA man manipulating the extension of the hostage crisis so that it wouldn’t end until after the election. They blame everyone – except Carter.

Carter refused to debate John Anderson, and his pettiness towards doing so was a hindrance to his campaign. His overt aggressiveness on the campaign trail which even the greatest hater of Reagan sounded like verbal overkill. Carter’s relatively bland performance at his one debate with Reagan. And perhaps the most fundamental fact of all: at no point during the campaign could Carter come up with a message for someone to vote for him. Neither choice fundamentally inspired many voters – the turnout for the 1980 election was only slightly more than fifty percent – but Carter had never done anything to make his choice inspiring. Even if Anderson had not been running (he had actually offered to withdraw at one point if Carter would have been willing to debate him) at most Carter would have gotten, according to one source, 217 electoral votes. It wouldn’t have been the landslide it actually was (Carter only carried six states and the District of Columbia) but it still wouldn’t have been close.

And the book also omits the greatest consequence of his action. Carter conceded at 9:50 PM EST – well before polls closed on the West Coast. There is an excellent chance that Carter’s concession caused many voters in the West not to vote, which almost certainly cost many Democrat Western Senators such as Jackson and Magnusson of Washington, Church of Idaho - as well as possibly John Culver in Iowa and Birch Bayh in Indiana – their seats. Carter may have wanted to ‘get the bad news over with’ but once again, he showed no regard for his own party.

Carter was the outlier Bird thinks he was, but not all of it is entirely for the best reason. There are very few presidents, given the opportunity he was and the legislative numbers he had to make it happen who show such spectacular ineptitude of getting along with their own party. (At one point, he even admitted to getting along better with certain Republicans than Democrats.) He managed many significant accomplishments to be sure, and he was a victim of his era and the attitude the ‘Georgetown Elite’ had of him.  But much as Bird wants to paint a rosier picture of Carter the President, it will forever be damped by Carter the politician. Carter won the White House as an outsider, but the fundamental flaw of his president is that he thought he could govern as one.

 

 

Yes I Actually Enjoyed Last Night's Emmys (And Some Of The Winners Were the Right Choices, Too)

 

Before I get to my reactions to last night’s Emmys, a confession. I take this show far too seriously. Yes, I realize that to actually care about any awards show intensely shows just where your priorities are and honestly, after so many years of being disappointed by the shows they don’t nominate (This is Us far too often) and the shows they do (Game of Thrones, anyone), the constant repetition of nominees and winners (and last night was no exception) I should be far too jaded to care. But damn it, I am invested. No matter how many times Michael C. Hall lost or Julia-Louis Dreyfus won, how many times went for series more traditional dystopias like The Handmaid’s Tale over more frightening ones like Mr. Robot, every year around this time I watch with fever intensity, wanting to believe. And that hinders any enjoyment I might possibly get from the proceedings.

So let me this say out front: Last night was fun.  Keenan Thompson was very fun and enjoyable to watch (he always is) but honestly, the presenters were just as entertaining. Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder come on, and Einbinder is too shy to speak…but she wanted a better view of Zendaya. Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler show up to give a supporting awards and as always, become Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler. Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez come on stage and remind just how much fun we have watching Only Murders in the Building. (Best line among them: Gomez: “You know why I love hanging out with these guys? Absolutely no paparazzi.") And of course, the wonderful Mindy Kaling and B.J. Novak came out to present the award for Best Writing for Limited Series and then absolutely trash anyone who writes limited series. (Novak: “And once you’re done, you’re free to retreat to your luxurious, tropical compound. Kaling: “Assuming you didn’t shoot your Limited Series at your luxurious, tropical compound, Mike White. How did you spend your pandemic?” Naturally, White won the award.)

And all of this before you get to many of the actual acceptance speeches. I’d been waiting for more than a year to finally hear Jennifer Coolidge give the acceptance speech she’s never had a chance to do for The White Lotus.  So naturally, she was Jennifer Coolidge, saying she took a lavender bath, and was having a hard time moving or talking. Then as the music started to play her off the stage, she started to dance. This would be the high point of any awards show, but tonight everybody played second fiddle to Sheryl Lee Ralph.

I’m not necessarily saying that her win for Abbott Elementary was unexpected; it was one you didn’t dare hope for, and judging by her initial deer in the headlights reaction, Ralph didn’t have a clue it was coming. It took her nearly a minute to get to the stage, and the first words out of her mouth were the lyrics to ‘Endangered Species’. She really didn’t have to say anything after that, but considering the importance of her triumph – Ralph is only the second African-American actress in history to win Best Supporting Actress for a Comedy – it is a moment that will go down in the annals of Emmy lore.

As for those who dared complain – with some justification - about Emmys being a little too white last year, it will be very hard to make that argument this year.  In addition to Ralph’s triumph, there were also the brilliant victories for Lee-Jung Jae and Hwang Dong-Hyuk for Squid Game, the similarly historical victory for (sigh) Zendaya and Quinta Brunson’s triumph for Best Writing for Abbott Elementary. Throw in victories for Colman Domingo and Lee-Yoo Mi for Guest Actor and Actress (Euphoria and Squid Game, respectively) victories for Jerrod Carmichael for his ground-breaking Rothaniel, and victories over this weekend for Lizzo, RuPaul and the late Chadwick Boseman, I dare anyone to try and come up with the hashtag EmmysSoWhite this year.

As for my own satisfaction with the original winners, generally, I was fine with about eighty percent of them. I had absolutely no problem at all with any of the winners in the Limited Series category, all of which I basically predicted in the last two weeks. On a personal note, I was glad to see Mike White, a brilliant creative force that has spent his entire career in movie and TV acknowledged by critics and ignored by the rest of the world enjoy such triumph for The White Lotus. And honestly, after four consecutive years of Limited Series awards being dominated by the grimmest subjects imaginable (even Watchmen was pretty dark among the stunning visuals), wasn’t it nice for a Limited Series to win for just being fun? To be sure, it was about rich people behaving just as badly at play as they do at work, but it was hard not have fun along the way.

As for comedy, I’ll confess to being slightly surprised to see Ted Lasso end up the night’s biggest winner, taking four Emmys for Best Comedy, Jason Sudeikis for Best Actor, Brett Goldstein for Best Supporting Actor, and Best Director. But honestly, considering how the lion’s share of the awards leading up to the Emmys went this past year, I’m not that surprised. The only thing I’m slightly disappointed is that Sudeikis beat Bill Hader for Best Actor, and since Hader has two Emmys already, I think he’ll be fine with it.  Jean Smart beating Quinta Brunson was only a shock because the momentum seemed to be going her way. The second season of Hacks was, if anything, better than the first and Smart deserved an Emmy for it just as much as she did last year. If anything, I’m disappointed that Hannah Einbinder still hasn’t one…but honestly, I think even Einbinder doesn’t have a problem with losing.

Yes, Succession won Best Drama to be sure, but all things considered, the series didn’t have as dominant a night as it had managed two years ago, walking away with just four Emmys. Indeed, it finished second in overall awards to Euphoria (boo!) which won five, and Squid Game (yea!) which took six. Indeed, Squid Game’s victory wasn’t just impressive, but historical, and hopefully gives a sign for future foreign language dramas and comedies to have a chance beyond the international awards occasionally given. I was actually fine with Matthew MacFayden’s victory for Succession; with the exception of J. Smith Cameron, I thought he deserved it the most. As much as I detest Ozark, Julia Garner’s win didn’t bother me that much: she was the finest thing about this show. As for Zendaya…

At one point, Thompson joked about the Emmys that we acknowledge hundreds of shows and give awards to about five of them.  It wasn’t entirely true this year – the Emmys managed to spread things around for quite a few series in this category, including Only Murders in the Building and Stranger Things on the technical side – but it is a trend that you have to acknowledge. This year, black-ish and Insecure departed winless from the Emmys, no doubt hurt by the constant presence of shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm. As for drama, there will be more chances for Severance and Yellowjackets, but This is Us departed with far less recognition from the ranks than it deserved, and time is running out for Stranger Things and especially Better Call Saul.  It was probably the best series of the year, but has yet to win a single Emmy. What are its chances likely to be like next year when such major nomination hogs as Westworld, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Crown (okay that one deserves all the nominations and wins it can get) return for their penultimate seasons? And that’s before the 2022-2023 season has properly begun. Is it any wonder that watching the Emmys causes me so much agita?

 

Mr. Brooks And One Of The Late, Great William Hurt's Most Unseen Performances

 

I always admired the work of William Hurt. He was one of the most subtle actors in the history of the medium. I was deeply dismayed when he passed away earlier this year at the relatively young age of seventy. Ever since, much like I did when Ray Liotta passed away earlier this year, I have been trying to find a work of his to pay tribute to this superb performer.

I considered his work as the inspector in Dark City, the visual masterpiece that Roger Ebert almost immediately compared to one of the great films in history. I considered paying tribute to his one major TV role – his work on Damages a series I have paid tribute to in this column on multiple occasions and which deserved earned him an Emmy nod. But strangely enough, I think the films which I think have the most respect for Hurt’s performance is in a movie that very few people saw in the theaters at the time.

To be clear, it is not a masterpiece by any definition; I think even going so far as to call it a guilty pleasure is giving it too much credit. But for reasons I have never been able to comprehend, every time I see Mr. Brooks on cable, no matter where it is in the action, I invariably stop and watch it.  It is one of the grimmest movies ever made by a studio in the 2000s; one you often wonder how it managed to get greenlit in the first place. It has the hallmarks of a noir, a procedural, a thriller and even horror, but it’s not  really  any of them, and truthfully it doesn’t do a good job defining what it is during its two hour plus runtime. Yet paradoxically, that’s why I find it so fascinating.  This is a film that has the make up of an independent film, but if it were made for a cheaper budget with smaller names, I don’t think it would have the effectiveness it does. Because it rises and falls with the performances of the four leads, all of whom are very much cast against time.  Two of them are among the best actors in history; one is a 90s movie star who never quite got her potential realized in that era; and the fourth is a standup comic giving what may be the only quality performance in his blessedly short film career.  It’s not like the script gives them a lot to work with; there is a story to be sure, but it never quite follows the basic premise of the shocking opening minutes.

 What Mr. Brooks is, fundamentally, is the character study of a real-life Jekyll and Hyde. It tells the story of Earl Brooks, glassmaker, millionaire, husband, father, pillar of the community in Portland, Oregon. The opening seconds show the subtitles that define the movie: “The Urge Has Returned to Mr. Brooks. It never truly left.” We hear the tormented voice of Kevin Costner, frantically saying ‘The Serenity Prayer’. Over it we hear the voice of William Hurt: “Why do you fight it so hard, Earl?”

We then see Earl accepting the prize for Man of the Year, calm, orderly and perfectly maintained. But we can hear the inner struggle going through him on the drive home as he talks to his wife, and they have desert at an ice cream place. Then in the back seat, we see a figure that Brooks refers to as Marshall (Hurt) Marshall is the voice we heard, and he keeps baiting Brooks. “You’ve already got them picked out.” Brooks tells his wife he’s going to his workshop. He changes out of his suit into an all-black ensemble.  Then for the next five minutes, we watch as he enters the apartment of a neighboring couple who are busy, enthusiastically making love.  At the moment of their climax, he shoots them both. We then watch him clean up, go home and burn his outfit. “Now go and make love to your wife.” Marshall says in a satisfied tone.

We get answers to some of our questions in the next segment when two detectives, Hawkins and Tracy Atwood enter the crime scene. From the way they talk to the techs, they make it clear that these are the actions of the Thumbprint Killer, and this is his first murder in two years.

 We expect we know how this movie will go now: that Atwood’s pursuit of the Thumbprint Killer will lead her to pursue Brooks. In fact, not only does that not happen, for the lion’s share of the movie, Atwood and Hawkins are not dealing with their investigation into the killings at all. Instead, the ‘threat’ to Brooks comes the next day when a man who is only calls himself Smith, shows up at his office with photographs of the night before. We now expect there to be blackmail, and there is – but Smith has no interest in money. Smith has a death and murder fetish and he wants to Brooks to help him kill someone.

Brooks knows that Smith is a threat, but barely one. The next night, he shows up in his apartment and says he’ll help him, but only if he hands over the photos and negatives. Smith instantly complies, and they spend the remainder of the movie with Brooks showing him how to stalk a victim, and Smith increasingly becoming impatient with his lack of progress. Marshall constantly mocks Smith from the back seat of the car/

It is clear that Marshall represents Brooks’ psychosis, but he also seems to recognize the rational part of his brain. Brooks’ conversations with Marshall are constant acts of denial; Marshall is smug throughout knowing that this is part of a cycle; that he has said and done all of these things before, and will continue to do so again.  The only threat that clearly does disturb him is the arrival of Jane, Earl’s daughter (a young Danielle Panabaker) who has just dropped out of college ostensibly to help her father with her business. This turns out to be the first of several lies she has told him; the first is she is pregnant.  The second and more horrible one comes to their doorstep when police from her college town come to ask her questions about a boy she knew who has been found dead. Both Earl and Marshall are more unsettled by this then anything else in the movie, but not for the same reason. Earl believes that she has inherited from him whatever sickness that possesses him to kill, and it depresses and rages him towards suicide. Marshall is more practical. First, he is concerned as to how good a job she did covering her tracks, and then starts talking to Earl about whether they should let her go to prison for what she has done…and what it might mean if she doesn’t. One of the last images of the movie demonstrates just how deeply that fear has entered Earl’s subconscious.

Costner spent the entirety of his career playing nice guys and it was only until the mid 2000s, with his career on a downswing, that he began to take more risky roles. It seems bizarre to learn that Brooks role was written with Costner in mind, and even more bizarre to watch him and not be able to imagine a single other actor playing him. Any actor can play a good man; some can play a milquetoast hiding a monster. It’s hard to imagine any actor showing cold efficiency in some scenes and utter depression minutes later.

Hurt is good as the subconscious because he is doing something he almost never got a chance to do in any of his major roles: chew the scenery. Hurt spent so much of his career as the ordinary man that even the villains he played seemed that way, people who you wondered how they came down this path. Perhaps because he knows that Marshall is a literal demon, Hurt felt free to give it his all in a way he almost never did before.

Demi Moore plays the role of the lead detective, hunting the Thumbprint Killer, except she spends most of the movie divided her time between a messy divorce from her ex-husband (she’s from money and her husband wants alimony) and hunting another escaped serial killer named Thornton Meeks, aka The Hangman. At one point in the film, the Hangman actually grabs her off the street and she almost miraculously escapes with her life. The next scene sees her dealing with her talking to her attorney. These scenes seem utterly unconnected to plot involving Brooks, but in the final half hour, we see that the writer has been making connections to them, and reveal a different plot.

Dane Cook plays Smith. In his film career, Smith mostly played cocky and arrogant people.  In this role almost unlike everything else he ever did, this is revealed to be a façade very quickly, and we see the brutal impulses that control him – fear, ego, and exultation – all of which show him working at a level he never could manage again.

It’s hard to imagine anyone wading through Mr. Brooks and coming through feeling satisfied: this is a movie that goes out of its way to avoid any aspect of closure or even resolution.  The thing is that’s the point: if you listen to the last twenty seconds of voiceovers, you realize you are listening to the exact lines that opened the movie: Earl frantically saying the Serenity Prayer, Marshall mocking him. I don’t normally like any kind of art that ends with the indication that what we have just watched is part of an endless cycle, but this isn’t science fiction or fantasy. Mr. Brooks is a man who doesn’t have the serenity to accept the things he can not change, the clarity to change the things he can, and doesn’t know the difference. And because of that, he will never know peace.

 

Addendum: Six years after Mr. Brooks debuted, Scandal premiered on ABC.

Huck, the assassin played by Guillermo Diaz, is frequently seen in the opening episodes, attending AA meetings, referring to the killings he has committed so often as ‘his addiction.’ In the opening minutes of Mr. Brooks, we see Costner attending AA meeting not long after he has committed his first murders in two years. Is it possible Shonda Rhimes saw this movie, and thought the concept – the urge to kill being as powerful an addiction as drugs or alcohol – too good not to use? If so, given the road Huck ended up taking as the series progressed, I think we all know how Earl Brooks eventually ended. (Unless of course someone found a use for his skills.)