My Predictions (And Hopes) For This Year's Emmy Nominations, Week 3, Day 1: Outstanding Limited Series

 

All right, for better or worse – and considering the vast field of Limited Series out there, I think it’s the latter – there will only be five nominees in this category. So unlike the previous two years when I overpredicted, I’m sticking to five nominees and one long-shot.

Now as to which five nominees…

I’m in agreement with two of the major nominees this years having seen them both. The other three contenders agreed upon are Dahmer, Daisy Jones & The Six and Fleishmann is in Trouble. Nothing will convince me to see the first series no matter how many nominations it gets. I’ve started on the second and I am persuaded by its quality.  Those of you who read my column last week know how much I initially loathe Fleishmann and am hoping it is not one of the major nominees.

For that reason, I’m going to forge my own path more than with the previous two categories. I’ve seen more than my share of Limited Series this year that are worthy of multiple award recognition but that might slip under the radar in this particular category. I intend to lean in to many of those nominees and some of the others I saw then the rest. I can only hope the Emmys see the wisdom of this, but we all know how they tend to think. Here are my choices.

Beef (Netflix)

It doesn’t shock me that this extraordinary blend of drama, comedy and outright rage is rising fast in the predictions for Best Limited series. After just five of the ten episodes in its run, I’m more than willing to consider it one of the best shows of 2023.  I know that this series has deservedly receive a huge amount of attention for its primarily Korean-American cast, who from Steven Yeun and Ali Wong down, are exceptional. But the reason I think Beef has universal appeal is because I think that as horrible the actions of Amy and Danny go in their determination to destroy each other – and how their actions keep bringing out the worst in everyone around them – there is not a single reaction that I find unrealistic. Extreme to be sure, but not unrealistic.  So many of the problems our society faces is because we bury our emotions, particularly rage, beneath the surface, and then are astounding by the inevitable consequences.  This series may be part of the Asian American community, but all of us are Danny’s and Amy’s in our own ways. Of the likely nominees in this category, Beef is the one I hope ends up winning. Not because its necessarily the best of all the nominated series this season (there are some I’ll list among potentials that are better) but because it has a message we all need to hear particularly in this era of rage.

Black Bird (Apple TV)

This is the story of a serial killer that  I hope gets as much recognition from the Emmys as possible.  I honestly think the reason it hasn’t already has as much to do with timing than anything else.  When it dropped this summer, it ended up competing against The White Lotus in Best Limited Series. By the time it was competing in Best Limited Series in the Critics Choice, for reasons that boggle the mind, it was not nominated for Best Limited Series where it might very well have been able to win. That’s unfair because it was one of the best series of 2022.  Taron Egerton was magnificent as a criminal making a deal with one devil to try and illicit a confession from another. Paul Walter Hauser deservedly has won both the Golden Globe and the Critics Choice for his unforgettable turn as the enormous, soft spoken, harmless seeming Larry Hall, one of the most frightening killers you’ll ever meet. The series featured several superb performances, including one of the last turns from Ray Liotta and a tremendously undervalued performance from Greg Kinnear as the only investigator who recognizes what a threat Larry is.  This is one of the most wrenching experiences on TV you’ll ever see. Forget Dahmer, this is the serial killer show you want to watch.

Love & Death (HBO Max)

Another year, another David E. Kelley limited series that the Emmys will likely ignore for the top prize.  But they’re going to have to make some real effort to do so considering that this was one of the Best shows of 2023 – which is remarkable considering this story was told by Hulu just last year. Elisabeth Olsen portrayal of Candy Montgomery, the 1970s Texas housewife whose affair with a friend leads to horrors she can not imagine is one of the great master classes of this year, both before and after the crime at the center. It features some of the best supporting performances of the year from a memorable cast: Jesse Plemons as the unlikely adulterer who seems both shallow and deep, Lily Rabe in a fascinating turn as the betrayed woman, Tom Pelphrey as the attorney who ends up taking her case on. We may never know the truth of what happened in the Gore home that sunny morning, but as Kelley makes clear, what started out as something that was not supposed to hurt anybody ended up in a bloody death and the destruction of so many lives. This was HBO Max’s last original series before the HBO was dropped. It was a hell of a way to go out.

The Patient (FX on Hulu)

The Patient is the first limited series I’ve seen in more than a decade you could easily see being done as a play. Essentially it was a two character piece featuring two of the greatest performances in 2022: Domhnall Gleeson as Sam, a character so emotionally empty that it seems natural that he would kidnap a shrink to try and stop him from killing, and Steve Carell as Dr. Strauss who finds that being abducted and chained to a bed is just the beginning of an unending nightmare.  Gleason’s performance is so terrifying as he shows no empathy and consistently blames Strauss for his lack of improvement and Carell is up to the challenge as death continues to loom closer, finds himself facing his own flaws as a father. The final episode of the series was devastating but slightly hopeful as we saw that both Alan and Sam have realized their greatest flaws – even though neither will be able to redeem them.  There will be major series dealing with serial killers nominated this year for Best Drama. I’d prefer if this one got the nod over Dahmer.

White House Plumbers (HBO)

This is a long shot compared to Fleishmann or other series such as George & Tammy but having watched it I think that this series gave the Watergate conspiracy and the Nixon White House exactly the treatment it deserved, if not as well as Gaslit last year.  Perfectly led by superb performances by Woody Harrelson as Howard Hunt and Justin Theroux as Gordon Liddy, this series treated everything the Plumbers did with the seriousness it deserved – which was none.  So much of what these two men did in their doing ‘black ops’ for the Administration was so farcically done, so badly performed and done with such utter incompetence that it deserved to be played as a comedy. Both played it as various levels of buffoons and the entire cast -particularly Lena Headey as Dorothy Hunt, the only one in the bunch who knows who idiotic what her husband is doing for the country – is absolutely remarkable to watch.  Did we learn the wrong lessons from Watergate? It looks like it with each passing year. What Plumbers tells us that it is truly tragic that these men who made the Keystone Cops look like MENSA were every given responsibility by the government to make sure an election that was in the bag was won.

 

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Accused (Fox)

Admittedly this anthology did not turn out to be the masterclass of television I thought it could be when I first reviewed it in February – that is the curse of the anthology series. But there was more than enough good stuff to make it fundamentally watchable week after week, particularly considering it was broadcast TV which long since yielded the high ground on this kind of work more than a decade ago.  I’m also willing to grant a high grade for effort, and I have to tell you watching this series you could definitely see it, particularly with all of the guest actors we saw every week: from Michael Chiklis in the series premiere to Keith Carradine in the season finale and so many others from Jason Ritter to Abigail Breslin and Betsy Brandt. And I do give Accused a lot of points for trying, when every series is either serialized or procedural, to actually spend each of its stories dealing with issues that are relevant and need to be talked about more than ever, from mass shootings to white supremacy to homophobia to teen pregnancy. I was so glad that Accused was renewed for a second season. Asking for an Emmy nomination is probably too much, but I wish there was a place for it.

Tomorrow I deal with Outstanding Actor in a Limited Series. Expect some major disagreements with the masses here too.

The Movies of Aaron Sorkin, Part 4: Steve Jobs

 

When Scott Rudin’s company greenlit Steve Jobs, the last film Aaron Sorkin has written to date that he has not directed (Danny Boyle helmed the picture) and it bombed at box office and received mix critical reception, the studio head who greenlit was fired. There is a wide-held belief by Hollywood observers that the box office failure of this ‘serious’ film had led to the inexorable decline of studio backed Oscar worthy movies. To paraphrase Kate Winslet’s character near the end of the film, this perception shows how firmly you can believe in something and still be absolutely wrong about it.

Before the release of this movie, studio backed serious films were already going out of style. As I’ve mentioned in my own series of film reviews devoted to 2012  studios were increasingly more devoted to comic book movies and blockbusters and the smaller independent films were increasingly becoming Oscar bait.  Ironically, even if Steve Jobs had been a success there is a very real possibility that his own company would become one of the sources for Oscar worthy films. In 2017 Amazon would release its first film Manchester by the Sea; the next year Netflix would debut Roma almost exclusively on streaming and by the end of the decade, that would be one of the major sources for Oscar worthy films. Apple TV+ was responsible for CODA the Best Picture winner in 2021. The tide for these kinds of movies were already turning.

But even if that had not been the case, I don’t think there’s any world in which Steve Jobs could have been a box-office hit, certainly not the way Aaron Sorkin chooses to tell his story. When Jobs himself died suddenly in 2011, he had been the icon of so many people across the globe, more than should have loved a man whose main presence was known for his presentations of revolutionary new devices at press conferences for Apple which became legendary.  I can understand the demand for a movie about Jobs to know what made him tick and to know who he really was. In an earlier era Jobs would have been presented as a hero, someone who was a good person as well as a great man, who overcame many obstacles to become the greatest technological revolutionary of all time, whose computers were every house in the world, whose devices increasingly revolutionized every aspect of our lives.  Anyone who knows the kind of movies and TV that Sorkin writes knows that those kinds of stories are fundamentally uninteresting to him. He wanted to tell the story of a man who was at the center of the such perfect technological revolutions but who seemed utterly detached from any human contact at all, who was more than capable of being cruel to anyone who did not perform at the same parameters he did, who treated everyone around him contemptibly, including the mother of his own child.

 Of course, the viewing public was repulsed by this and refused to see it.  This movie takes place just prior to three of those much beloved press conferences: the first in 1984, when the Macintosh is about to be introduced, the second in 1986 when he is about to introduce NeXT Computer, the third in 1998 when he is about to introduce the iMac.  And in none of those segment does Jobs come off as either remotely pleasant, warm or seem to have a nice bone in his body.  In the final one, he actually seems annoyed that he has to give one of them in the first place. Why would people want to see that the man that they came out to see as if he was a rock star performance was just performing and didn’t care about them either? How would they feel the fact that when he made the Macintosh say ‘Hello’ in front of a stunned audience that he’d engaged in a huge slight of hand and it wasn’t real?

Michael Fassbender is perfect in the title role, playing a man who is annoyed that no one can do everything he demands of them, has no interest in anyone’s opinions including the man who co-founded the company with him Steve Wozniak.  He treats everybody, the people who work their fingers to the bone for him, the reporters who come to tell his story, even his own seven year old daughter as if they are barely in the room with him at the time.  I think it is very telling of Sorkin that he chooses to have all three conferences take place before three products that while they did revolutionize the tech industry, they were huge financial failures.  Jobs continuously makes it clear that he does not care if the products he introduces are huge sellers or if the public even likes them. As far as he is concerned, they are his products alone and at the end of the day, the business seems to bore him.

In this sense Sorkin’s version of Jobs is closer to the version of Mark Zuckerberg he had shown the world in The Social Network. Why was the former film such a huge critical and financial success, dominating the awards circuit and the favorite for Best Picture and Steve Jobs a financial bomb that only received two Oscar nominations, none for Best Picture or Sorkin?  I think the likely explanation is, at the time, Zuckerberg was far less of a public figure that Jobs had been, and perhaps more importantly Jobs was dead and Zuckerberg was alive? There’s an old Hollywood adage that says the town has respect for the dead, and none for the living. I have a feeling that is fundamentally true for so many of today’s public figures and it certainly was the case for the people that so many viewed as a hero.

Jobs’ tenure throughout the movie is one that he alone knows best and as a result he is free to treat everyone else with not-even concealed contempt. In his last line in the movie Wozniak (a brilliant Seth Rogen) tells him: “It’s not binary, Steve. You can be gifted and decent.” There is no inclination that Jobs even hears his own co-partner when he says this is, any more than he hears anything anyone else says.

Only two people seem capable of talking to him throughout the film. The first is Adam Sculley, the CEO of Apple well played by Jeff Daniels. Daniels seems to be a father figure when the Macintosh is being introduced, in the next segment the two of them have turned on each other.  Jobs has decided to blame his being fired on Scully, won’t even listen to him when he reminds that Scully was responsible for getting the famous ‘1984 AD’ on the air. It’s pretty clear in the aftermath that Jobs did this because he wanted to be free of the constrictions of the board and decided to turn on his friend. The two make amends in the final segment of the movie but there’s no sign that Jobs shows any remorse for what he has put his friend or the company he left through.  Indeed, given Jobs attitude towards Wozniak he sees no connection between his actions.

The other person who herds him is Joanna Hoffman, played by Kate Winslet in one of her best roles. She spends much of the movie telling everybody that Steve has to get to something or trying to clear the room; it’s pretty clear that she knows her boss well and knows that he’s looking for fights and she wants to avoid them. Every so often she will try to hint and some deeper flaw in Steve’s character: in the opening segment when his daughter Lisa shows up, he is still trying to deny that she’s his daughter. “You do see that she looks like you?” she gently points out.  Joanna accepts the fact that Steve will never take anyone as an equal, barely acknowledges her presence. It is perhaps why near the end of the film when she points out a truth about something he has borne a grudge for more than fifteen years – something so obvious he should have seen it – that he pauses for the first time and realizes that he is flawed.

Many will look at the final segment of the movie, when Steve has a fight with his now nineteen year old Lisa and his admission near the end to her that he’s ‘poorly made’ as something redemptive. I have come to think of it differently.  Jobs famously said in an article that it was possible that 26 percent of the male population could be Lisa’s father, had no problem lying that LISA, the new part of his technology was an acronym, treats her mother with total contempt. He has not given any money to her or her mother over the years, but when he learns that a friend of his has been supporting her and encouraging her to see a therapist is pissed that someone else cares about his daughter’s wellbeing.  He sees that as a reflection on him, even though he will not talk to her.

Then Lisa comes in before the press conference to confront him and is furious about his attitude towards her and her mother. He offers nothing resembling an apology. Then she berates him about the slogan he’s chosen and tells him that his iMac ‘looks like Judy Jetson’s Eas-I-Bake Oven.” (I remember it, and I agree with Lisa.)

Then she storms out.  I honestly think Steve follows her because he’s more upset that his daughter doesn’t approve of what a genius he is than because he cares about her feelings.  In the last sequence, he does not apologize to her even when it comes to the article (“You were never supposed to read it” is his pathetic defense.) The closest he comes to an apology is by telling him of course LISA was named for her, as if admitting it fifteen years after the fact is consolation. Then he looks at her Walkman and tells her that he’s going to find a way ‘to put a thousand songs in her pocket’ , which was we know is the slogan for the iPod. You could say this was his apology. I’d tell you that he just used his daughter for another genius idea and will make sure she never gets credit for it. Then he goes back into the auditorium and goes through the presentation with all of the people he’s spent the last thirty minutes berating and yelling at.  How are we to know that what we just saw in front of his daughter was not another performance?

I am not entirely shocked that Steve Jobs was not nominated for Best Picture; in addition to the other strikes against it, there were several genuinely superb movies nomination, a good mix of well made blockbusters (The Martian, Mad Max: Fury Road) some well-done independent films (Room, Spotlight) and even a well-done serious Oscar film that did do well at the box office (Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies). The bigger shock was the fact that Sorkin was not nominated for Best Screenplay, despite his winning the Golden Globe that year.  Of the five films that he either wrote or directed in the 2010s, Steve Jobs is the only one where Sorkin was not nominated for anything. Admittedly, there was heavy competition in 2015: in addition to The Martian  and Room, the other nominations included The Big Short, Carol and Brooklyn, all of which have their own merits in telling complicated stories. In particular, Adam McKay’s The Big Short had managed to do something that Sorkin himself mastered in his two previous adaptations: tell a story that seemed impossible to tell in an entertaining way.

Yet I still feel that Steve Jobs stands up well among Sorkin’s canon. Not only because it tells a story that fits in oeuvre when it comes to his triad of tales of toxic masculinity (which, as I indicated previously, he completed in Molly’s Game) but because it’s a story that I think the world needed to hear, even if it didn’t want to. When Jobs died in 2011, he was celebrated by the world and many Americans still idolize him. It was brave of Sorkin to have Steve Wozniak, late in the film, say that the key difference between the two of them is that “Steve (Jobs) an asshole” and by the time he says it, we think that Wozniak has been understating the case.

Lost Rewatch: Three Minutes

 

Near the end of the final flashback in this episode, Michael is told that he has to bring four people with him back to the Others and if he does this, he and Walt will go free. Michael is completely and utterly shattered by now but he has enough sense to ask: “What do I tell them?” The women tells him it doesn’t matter “that they’ll be angry enough” to do whatever he says.

At this point in the series we know that we can’t trust anything the Others say as truthful, but they have enough self-awareness to know that their actions will provoke rage.  So when Michael comes back to the hatch after everything that happens, he doesn’t even have to work that hard to persuade Jack – who has been the king of unilateral decision making since he took the job as leader – to do exactly what he says. Some have argued that Jack is being more democratic in his leadership style at this point and while that may be the case, he is still ruled by his emotions. In the flashbacks we pretty much see several of the scenes from The Hunting Party before the Others showed up verbatim. The writers could have shown them in the Previously on Lost sequence but we saw them happen for a very clear reason.

Jack has not gotten over the scars of being humiliated by the Others two weeks ago. His self-righteousness has been leading him by the nose ever since in practically every major decision he’s made ever since then.  He’s supposed to be the rational one and there is no reason he wouldn’t normally try to reason with Michael about the right approach, particularly considering who he wants to bring on this ‘raid’.  He wants to get revenge as quickly as possible and since this is the quickest way to do it, he goes along with it.

Ironically Sawyer is thinking with a far clearer head than Jack is right now. When Sayid asks him what they were going to do, not only does he not deny it, but he also offers the man a gun and invites him along. When Jack argues against it, Sawyer’s response is the rational one. Furthermore when Michael challenged Jack, Jack rolled over but when Michael protests Sawyer’s decision, Sawyer puts up of the obvious question: if you’re going to war, you do need a soldier. Michael can’t come up with a rational argument and ends up going to Sayid directly.

Everyone is shattered by what has happened to Ana Lucia and Libby and they are more inclined to believe these are the actions of the Others. So almost no one doubts what Michael has told them. However, the more rational heads seem to have a clearer picture.

The scene between Eko and Michael in the hatch as Michael cleans up the blood is one of the more ambiguous one in the second season. Does Eko know that Michael is responsible for the deaths of his friends? When Michael asks the Eko if he believes in hell, Eko does not answer. Instead, he tells the kind of parable that Locke used to do throughout Season 1. Since he is a religious man, however, it is clearly more theological. Note the way he tells his story to Michael, calmly and serenely all the while cleaning up the blood of his friends and rinsing them off in the sink. When he finishes his story and tells why the boy in his parish really was worried about going to hell, he turns away and Michael, who has been able to hide his actions the last several hours, finally loses his façade and vomits outside. I believe that Eko knew what Michael did but because of his old life and his new mission, has decided to move past what has happened. (There might have been plans to follow through on this has Eko stayed, but it will never be followed up.)

Sayid, however, sees through Michael’s guise instantly. He is suspicious the moment Michael tells him not to come, but immediately after he goes quiet.  We remember he was an interrogator and part of the job is not only to ask questions but to listen.  Michael should have been suspicions when the frequently bellicose Sayid immediately backs down, but as we are very aware of, he’s dealing with his own problems.

It is ironic that, considering all the lies that Michael is telling us about how he found the Others camp, he’s fundamentally telling the truth about what he saw when they took them prisoner.  It was a two-day hike to their camp, we see them in ragged clothing and eating fish and they do have a hatch that they are guarding, probably 24-7.  In the last flashback, Michael believes he will be killed because he thinks he has found the Others camp and is now a threat to them.

We also get our first glimpse at some of the major players within the Others community, most of whom will have major roles in the next season. There is Miss Klugh, who at the moment seems to be the leader and appears to be the most scientific of the bunch. We get another glimpse of Mr. Friendly, who clearly seems to be taking orders from someone. There’s a brutal man named Pickett, who seems to be another soldier in this war. And most importantly, we get a glimpse of the teenage girl we saw in Maternity Leave – and confirmation that her name is Alex.  She maintains the level of compassion we saw her show Claire then: she asks after him, and clearly wants to know if the baby was safe.  She tries to reassure Michael that his friends won’t be hurt. And she clearly doesn’t seem entirely onboard with what’s going on: we now she didn’t take Kate out when she was ordered too and she genuinely seems unhappy before she knocks Michael unconscious.

When Miss Klugh interrogates Michael, it’s clear she trying to learn as much about Walt as possible, but there is an inconsistency that doesn’t make sense. Given the information we know the Others have about the survivors, you would think they would know that Michael was never in Walt’s life. And considering that this happened well before Henry ended up being taken prisoner, it strikes me as odd that they would use him as a tool to get him free.  Considering the Walt storyline is going to be abruptly closed after this season, it’s another puzzle we can’t undo.

Still, the scene between Walt and Michael at the end is absolutely devastating. Harold Perrineau is heartbreaking in this scene, as a man who has been held prisoner and certain his son is dead, now has to promise Walt he will get him out of there. Walt knows that they are lying that this will end badly but he never gets a chance to say so. Michael is absolutely devastated and determined to do whatever it takes to get off the island with his son.

Much of the action that is going on throughout the episode is preparation for the burial of Ana Lucia and Libby.  Sawyer, it’s worth noting, seems to be dealing with this and it shows very clearly in his scene with Jack. The scene between the two is one of the highlights as Sawyer confesses that he and Ana Lucia ‘got caught in a net’. When a baffled Jack asks him why he’s telling him this, Sawyer’s response is even sadder: “Because you’re the closest thing I’ve got to a friend.” Being Sawyer, he negates it by saying “at least we get to kill people” but when he looks into Ana’s grave, it’s clearly this has hit him in a way that very little on the island has so far.

Garcia continues to astonish throughout the episode. When the early discussion to mount the assault begins, Hurley shouts: “They’re dead!”. Hurley never shows anger, so this is stunning.  When Michael, in what is his lowest point in the episode, tries to manipulate Hurley to come with them by using Libby’s death, Hurley remains stoic in his refusal. And when he stands over Libby’s grave, weeping and in despair, his decision to come with them seems to surprise even Michael. I think Hurley’s doing this out of grief more than anything; he just doesn’t want to be alone right now.

It is interesting to consider the actions of the two men of faith in this episode, because they spent much of it in isolation. Locke does not utter a word during the episode and spends most of it looking at the water. Perhaps he is trying to find the peace he did when we first met him after the crash, hoping to find the right path. And maybe he does. When Charlie finishes throwing the Virgin Mary statues into the sea – finally renouncing his demons – he sees Locke on the beach. Neither man speaks, but there’s just the slightest sign of a smile on Locke’s face. And while everyone is preparing for the funerals, Locke seems to make sure everyone’s attention is diverted. Then he cuts away his cast, and rises to his feet, stepping on the crutches as he goes.  Locke should have seen this as a sign of the island, but rather than go join the mourners, he walks away. It’s telling that no one sees him go or notices him missing.

Eko’s faith is currently in the hatch, and it’s telling his attitude is similarly off-putting the way Locke’s often could be in Season 1. W    hen Charlie comes down to ask after him, it’s actually understandable why he’s upset. It’s clear he thought he and Eko had a purpose building the church and when Eko dismisses this as more important, and asks Charlie to bring him his things, it’s hard not to think he’s been rejected again. Jack has a similar problem with Eko when he comes back and finds him at the computer and doesn’t get an answer about where he and Locke were all night.  And he’s clearly annoyed that Eko does not want to attend the funeral of his friends but he has other things on his mind.

On the beach Sayid tells Jack that he thinks Michael has been compromised. He is clearly trying to find an advantage but he doesn’t know what it is. And then, in the last minute, one comes.

All this season it appears everyone has given up on rescue. And then a ship appears on the horizon. In a sense, this is not rescue – but the person on board is there to save them.

 

VHS Notes: This episode contains trailers for what would be the series finale of Alias which aired the following Monday.  Another trailer would be the sign of the end of a different era. We see ads in this episode for a TV adaptation of Stephen King’s Desperation. For more than fifteen years, ABC and King had collaborated on a series of TV mini-series adaptations of his work. The best included the 1993 adaptation of The Stand (which was one of the major influences for Lost) the original production Storm of The Century and the underrated mini-series adaptation of The Shining which he adapted because he did not like Stanley Kubrick’s version. When Desperation aired as a three hour movie, King was upset that his production had not gotten the traditional treatment. He and the network would break off their relationship soon after. It was the beginning of the end of the traditional mini-series format for broadcast television.

Historical Figures Series Thomas Dewey and the Battle for the Republican Party, Part 3: The Long Road to the 1948 GOP Nomination

 

When FDR passed away on April 12, 1945 Tom Dewey wired condolences to Eleanor Roosevelt and offered sympathy to the new President, Harry S. Truman. Truman came into office with an 87 percent approval rating, and many Republicans were impressed by this modest, straightforward man from Missouri. Initially Dewey was as well. “While it may be bad news for the Republican party, it will be wonderful for the country and that is what we all interested in.”

The national harmony did not last long. When the Soviets broke many of the pledges that they had made at Yalta, the Cold War began  By the time 1945 ended, the international situation across Europe was beginning to unravel. Worse, the domestic boom that had been prominent since the start of the conflict collapsed when the war ended.  The peace between labor and the White House was over. Inflation skyrocketed and shortages in peacetime exceeded the deprivations that had unfolded during the war.

By the spring of 1946, Truman’s approval ratings had collapsed. ‘To Err is Truman’ became a popular saying. And the GOP, which had hoped that their fortunes might improve with FDR finally gone, could see a return to power ahead of them. The Republican campaign slogan for the 1946 Midterms was simple: “Had Enough?” They didn’t need to say anything more.

In 1946, the Republicans returned to power in both Houses of Congress for the first time since 1930. In the house they gained a whopping 55 seats and took twelve in the Senate, only one of two occasions in a mid-term election that ten or more Senate seats would switch. Republicans gained seats in such vital states as Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Wisconsin and would take a seat in Kentucky. Several of the Senators elected would be major forces in the years to come William Jenner of Indiana, William Knowland of California, Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, John Bricker of Ohio and a freshman senator from Wisconsin named Joseph McCarthy. Richard Nixon was elected to Congress in California. Among the paltry Democrats gains were two seats in New England. In Maine, Edmund Muskie was elected and a war hero named John F. Kennedy was elected in Massachusetts.

Leadership underwent a massive shift. Joseph Martin took over the Speakership from Sam Rayburn who had held it since in 1933.  Alben Barkley became minority leader to Wallace White of Maine, but he was little more than a stalking horse for Ohio’s Robert Taft.

The Democrats were certain that Harry Truman was deadweight. Republicans were salivating for the nomination for President, knowing that the fall campaign would be a formality for the White House. When Dewey swept to reelection in November of 1946, he had become a front-runner but unlike 1944, he was going to have to fight for it.

Within the Senate, there were two major contenders: Taft and Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenberg. Taft was qualified to be President by pedigree but in personality and affect was duller than Dewey. Even in the aftermath of the war he was fundamentally still an isolationist, opposing both the UN Charter and the Marshall Plan. It did not help that the major piece of legislation that bore his name – the Taft Hartley act  - doomed whatever appeal to labor he had. Vandenberg had moved from being a staunch isolationist to being a larger supporter of foreign policy, being fundamentally in favor of internationalism on the Foreign Relations Committee.  Some wanted Douglas MacArthur, the hero of Manilla and the leader of post-war Japan, to run for President and he wanted to be President – but believed it would be dereliction of duty to leave his post. But the man who was fundamentally considered the biggest threat to the GOP nomination was a thirty-nine year old former governor of Minnesota named Harold Stassen.

Stassen would eventually become a figure of mockery among politicians in his lifetime, but that is unfair because for much of the 1940s many had reason to believe he would be the future of the GOP. He had risen like a rocket in politics: he had been elected to District attorney at 23, won reelection four years later and in 1938 had become the youngest governor history  in a landslide victory. He won reelection twice, but in 1942 he resigned to enter the service. Serving under Admiral Halsey in 1943, he won the Legion of Merit. On leave from the Navy in 1945, he was named by FDR as one of the delegates to the San Francisco conference that established the UN.

He preached a new form of Republicanism in 1947, internationalist abroad, a hybrid  of liberalism and conservatism at home. He proposed massive public housing, a decrease in tax rates, was wobbly on Taft-Hartley and was willing to grant some authority to the UN. The conservatives loathed him, but by August of 1947, he was running second to Dewey in the polls for the GOP nomination.

To try and find a candidate, most of attention would be at party conventions. By this point, there were now only five political primaries – New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Ohio and Oregon. Dewey wanted to ignore the process which at that time meant little guarantee of the nomination if you won but could doom your chances if you lost. Dewey had seen that work both for and against him. In 1940, he had won 6 of the seven contested primaries but had lost the nomination to Willkie. In 1944, Willkie had lost the Wisconsin primary to him and his chances as front-runner had evaporated.  And in the political primary, a candidate like Harold Stassen – who had no Republican organization, but a galvanizing message, unlimited energy and ambition and enormous public support – was a huge threat.

Stassen refused to play by the rules. He would confer with Taft at an October 1947 conference that seemed like he might be allying with Dewey, He then tore that to shreds in January of 1948, saying he would challenge Taft in his home state of Ohio.

Dewey was the sole campaigner in New Hampshire, still not considered the bellwether for political fortune it would be years later.   Dewey would win six of the eight delegates at stake, but narrowly: a switch of a few hundred votes would have given Stassen the victory. Stassen fought on.

In Wisconsin, a draft for MacArthur went into effect something that brought fear into the hearts of Dewey and Stassen. When stateside, MacArthur lived in Wisconsin. His grandfather had briefly been governor. Stassen, whose hopes on the nomination depended on an upset victory, campaigned heavily. Dewey only appeared once. Dewey knew his chances were remote, but still hoped to cadge a couple of delegates. He didn’t even get one. Stassen took nineteen to MacArthur’s eight.

Dewey was doing his job by gathering delegates, picking up ninety from his New York state delegation. The problem was Stassen had all the press. 

In Nebraska Taft hoped to gain momentum in a non-binding ‘beauty contest’ and put basically every Republican who had shown interest in the nomination on the ballot. It backfired: Stassen took 43% of the vote to Dewey’s 35%. Stassen was gaining momentum in some perfunctory primaries: in write-in ones in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Stassen ran ahead of Dewey. Even in Ohio, where Stassen lost, it was not a huge defeat.

Dewey was now in a desperate position. Only if he could win the Oregon primary against Stassen did his candidacy have any chance of surviving. Dewey would campaign vigorously in Oregon, but his political fortunes would be reversed on an issue that seemed insignificant compared to the general campaign: outlawing the Communist party. This was an issue that Stassen himself have raised, for reasons that have never been clear.  As a result, the first ever primary debate was scheduled for May 17^th.

Heard by between 40 and eighty million people on every major radio station across the country, Stassen would blunder from beginning to end, mostly because on every aspect of the issue, Stassen was completely misinformed. He also read his remarks while Dewey spoke extemporaneously. Dewey’s position of the decline in the American Communist party was a strong one.

Dewey walloped Stassen in Oregon, capturing all twelve delegates at stake. The problem was, in the eyes of many commentators, all that this had demonstrated was that there was no national demand for any declared candidate, Stassen, Taft or Dewey himself.  By this point Dewey had acquired more than 300 delegates, but few people thought he had a realistic chance. It was going to come down to the convention.

The Republican National Convention was historic because it was the first convention ever televised. In order to take advantage of the still new medium, the Republicans and Democrats would hold their conventions in Philadelphia. (At the time, most owners of sets were on the East coast.) Here Stassen and Vandenberg mounted campaigns, Taft was trying to build his, and some were hoping for a dark horse such as the governor of California, Earl Warren.

From the start of the convention, the speakers all piled on Harry Truman. Perhaps the most memorable was Connecticut Congresswoman Claire Boothe Luce, who skewered the Roosevelt decade and famous said that Truman was “Frankly, a gone goose.”

Dewey was organized and in control of everything. The problem was the conservative wing of the party loathed him. If they had been able to unify among a common candidate, they could have unseated him. The problem was no one was willing to yield particularly the two major opponents: Taft and Stassen.

In a late night meeting, Taft suggested Stassen throw his support to him. Stassen argued that they should support Vandenberg.  Taft said his Ohio delegates preferred his colleague John Bricker. They broke up at 2:00 am, having accomplished nothing. “Neither Stassen nor Taft hated Dewey enough to withdraw” Taft’s biographer said, “and neither man thought they could get his delegates to follow if they did.

On June 25, the nominations began. Dewey led with 434 delegates to Taft’s 224, while Stassen was third with 157.on the first ballot. On the second ballot, Dewey would gain 83 votes and Taft would gain 50. Stassen lost 8. Before the third ballot Dewey’s delegation called for a recess. Stassen did everything in his power to stop the Dewey juggernaut – except back Robert Taft. Meanwhile Warren, who had held the California delegation for the last two ballots, released his delegates. This would start the train forward; Taft would concede and release his delegates. Dewey was nominated by acclimation on the third ballot..

Dewey’s acceptance speech was vacuous and bland, compared to the one he’d given four years earlier.. He invoked the word ‘unity’ or united nine times in his speech, though it was difficult to know what he was for or against.  He mentioned nothing involving Communism, the domestic or foreign issues of the time, civil rights or even the New Deal.  To this day no one knows why his speech was so bland or empty. Was he overconfident or did he believe that if he was too specific he would be defeated?

What did not help was how he looked on TV. As he concluded his speech, he waved to the auditorium – never reaching for his wife who had come on stage to accept the nomination with him.

Dewey then had to choose a vice president. The conservative branch advocated for Bricker again or Indiana senator Charlie Halleck. The choice eventually boiled down to Stassen or Warren. The problem was Warren did not want it.

He made that very clear when Dewey offered him the job. He considered it a ceremonial job, told him that his salary as Vice President was less money than he made as governor, and the Vice President had no official residence. Most of all Warren just disliked Thomas Dewey and had for over a decade. He had been offered the vice-presidency in 1944 but had refused it. When he had released his delegates, he pointedly did not endorse Dewey.

Warren eventually took the job for purely political reasons. He wanted the Presidency, and if he were to refuse the vice-presidential nomination twice, he would never be seriously considered for anything again. When a reporter asked one of his aides what made him change his mind, the aide said bluntly: “They put a gun to his head.” Even then, he was indifferent to it. When he called his thirteen-year old son to explain, his son asked: “Is that good?” Warren said that he thought so. He genuinely did not know.

The fact was Warren’s nomination was good for the ticket and the party’s chances; it seemed to lock down California’s 25 electoral votes, it had no tangible connection to the current Congress and relative speaking, it was a youthful campaign: Dewey was not yet 46 and Warren at 57 was still seven years younger than the sitting President. There was every reason to have any doubt when papers like the LA Times called Dewey the next President.

In the next article, I will go into detail why Truman’s chances actually seemed worse than they were even before the Republican campaign, why Dewey ran the campaign he did and why Truman managed to defeat him.

My Predictions (And Hopes) For This Year's Emmy Nominations, Week 2 Concluded: Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Et Al

 

Here I am leaning even more into my favorites. Few will doubt that Abbott Elementary will have at least two of the nominees I list and the third is rising fast in the polls. Alex Borstein is considered a certainty in this category and it is just as likely that Juno Temple will return for her third shot. However, I will follow my own path. I have no problem with one of the nominees from Ted Lasso in this category and I will support her. I would like, however, to suggest another nominee from Marvelous Mrs. Maisel who has been magnificent throughout the series but may be the one performer on the show who is constantly overlooked. A couple of my suggestions are very likely; one is a longshot, and I am not going to list any performers from Saturday Night Live in either category which may hinder me. Still, if I were making an ideal list of nominees, these are the eight women I would choose.

 

Ayo Edebiri, The Bear

Edebiri is one of the breakout stars of 2022 for her work on The Bear, she’s already won the Best Supporting Performance awards from the Independent Spirit awards and deservedly was nominated for Critics Choice award. She has been just as renowned for her writing as her acting: she was one of the staff writers on Dickinson and got an Image nomination for writing an episode of What We Do In The Shadows. If that’s not enough she might very well get a guest acting nomination for here work on Abbott Elementary as Janine’s sister. But few who have seen her work as Sydney, the assistant who comes to work for Carmy because she loves his talent, is thrown in the deep end, is resented by almost everybody and is run ragged because she has too much ambition even for Carmy, is an outstanding piece of work, hysterically funny and grounded in a way that so many of the series just aren’t.  She’ll get an Emmy someday, if not this year.  

Sarah Goldberg, Barry

Goldberg has had the misfortune of playing the girlfriend of the title character, and as we have painfully learned in so many anti-hero dramas, that subjects her character to a torrent of undeserved abuse from the net no matter how hard she tries to be good. Sally went through the ringer in so many ways this season: we saw her visit her parents and see part of how she ended up as she was, we saw her try a new career as a coach, but ultimately fall victim to her ambition. She ran off with Barry when he escaped from prison – and when we saw what she became in the future, it was horrifying to see how utterly empty and defeated she was to her fate. Then she went off to LA to try and save her acting teacher, nearly lead to her and her son’s death, and alone among all the characters in the series finale, faced the truth of what she had become, realized how poisoned she was by Barry – and in the future, came as close to redemption as anyone else.  If Goldberg doesn’t get a nomination for her final role – well, it’ll be fitting because it would be the unfairness that plagued Sally the whole series. I hope she does.

Marin Hinkle, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

I have spent much of my viewing life in awe of the work of Marin Hinkle, though much of the time she has labored in roles that are unworthy of her (Two and A Half Men) or were short lived (Speechless). In the role of Rose, Midge’s eternally put upon mother, Hinkle found what was the role of a lifetime.  Rose was in a way a predecessor for so much of what Midge went through, tolerating the life that Abe led, unable to comprehend who her daughter was and what she was trying to become, trying to forge her own path in the final seasons.  Understandably, Hinkle was frequently overshadowed by her two powerhouse female co-stars and has only received a single Emmy nomination for her work. As the series reaches it conclusion, it would be fitting for Hinkle to take home one last nomination, particularly as the series moved into the future and we saw the sad fate of Rose, which in a way had her and her daughter’s relationship come full circle. It’s unlikely Hinkle will be honored the same way Brosnahan and Borstein will. But one last time for the Emmys, I’d like it to be Rose’s turn

Janelle James, Abbott Elementary

How do you not love Ava? Every line that comes out of Ava’s mouth is hysterical. She has no filter, she clearly doesn’t seem qualified for her job, she has no problem being who she is. Every time James comes onscreen you smile, because you know she’ll say something funny. And every so often – like when she takes a black history course and realizes that she has spent her life being uneducated – you realize that there’s more to her than that.  James has received nearly as much love from the awards show circuit as Sheryl Lee Ralph: she deservedly won an HCA Award for Supporting Actress and she took the Image award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy too.  She is just as much a master of television as her co-star Ralph is.  Hopefully, some day she’ll take a prize as well.

Sheryl Lee Ralph, Abbott Elementary

Just like the character she portrays; it has taken the world too long to appreciate just how brilliant Sheryl Lee Ralph is. From the moment she accepted her Emmy last year in one of the greatest moments in Emmy history, the world got it. And Ralph just keeps on giving. Barbara continues to show the levels we all love about her throughout the series, as she leads the fight against Abbott becoming a charter school, as she finds to her horror she turned her students into con artists, as she does everything in her power to be the mother figure Janine needs (including against her actual mother) and as we all see the flaws in her as she finds herself dealing with the inevitability of aging, the viewer continues to fall in love with her as much as the world has with Ralph. She has the frontrunner status with her Supporting Actress award at the Critics Choice (and yet another brilliant speech) and is currently the odds-on favorite to repeat. I’m usually opposed for the laziness of Emmys repeating consecutive years, but in Ralph’s case (and Barbara’s) I’ll make an exception.

Christina Ricci, Wednesday

This one is my longshot in the category. In a sense, there would be symmetry to it as Ricci is a certainty for a Supporting Actress nomination for her work in Yellowjackets, along with the symmetry of her breakout role as Wednesday in The Addams Family. But honestly, I think Ricci deserves it on its own merits.  Playing a character who does not fit in either world in the school she attends, someone who seems to be an open book, we eventually learned that she had the darkest secrets of all. (Though she’s being played by Christina Ricci; we should have known better.) Is it selfish I want to see her nominated because I’ve loved Ricci for thirty years? Of course. Do I care? No. She’s Christina Ricci.

Hannah Waddingham, Ted Lasso

Waddingham has been one of the biggest sensations from Ted Lasso as the incredible Rebecca, who has shown by far the most emotional growth from the moment we met her in the series pilot. As the show enters its final season, Rebecca continued to find not only professional, but personal and emotional happiness in a way that we all look forward too.  Waddingham slightly lost favor in the eyes of awards show starting with the HCA’s passing over her in 2022.  Her defeat at the hands of Ralph was not a shock to me (though I was thinking that James or Hannah Einbinder would be the one to dethrone her). Few could argue that she deserves a final nomination. One last award, well, Rebecca has enough.

Lisa Ann Walter, Abbott Elementary

I was slightly irritated last year after the Emmy nominations took place and the Emmys had nominated every regular but Walter. I admit that it was a crowded category and that I didn’t want James or Ralph excluded, but Melissa is one of the most wonderful characters in the entire series, a perfect balance of humor and heart, the epitome of the blue-collar, (that’s slightly tarnished) working stiff we all admire, who has family issues, who is absolutely devoted to her charges, who does everything she could to help her students and her friends, and who actually seems closer to happy in her love life than so many of her colleagues. Would it be asking too much of the Emmys to nominate three performers from the cast of Abbott Elementary? Yes. Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do it anyway.

 

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Mireille Enos, Lucky Hank

Enos has been laboring in the TV fields for a while. She broke to fame on the first season of The Killing, an AMC series that started like gangbusters and then collapsed. She had a decent run in one of the few Shonda Rhimes series I liked: The Catch, which was cancelled too soon. Now as Lily, the put-upon wife of the title character, who is fundamentally frustrated by her husband’s terminal depression of lack of ambition, we find her playing a role she does not usually play: someone fundamentally down-to-earth who is worn down. Lily is in a sense as much the frustrated educator we find in Abbott Elementary, wife to a husband who seems happy being miserable, mother to a daughter who has no ambition but insight into her parent’s marriage. In the last several episodes she made a path towards her own future and career – and in the last minute of the finale was initially happy – and then depressed to see that her husband seemed willing to meet her halfway. I’m still not sure of what Lucky Hank’s future is but I know Enos deserves recognition.

 

A few last thoughts.

Guest Actor and Actress are likely to show quite a few appearances from Abbott: Edebiri is a possibility, Taraji P. Henson almost certain to be nominated and win.  There will very likely be countless nominees from Only Murders in the Building; how many will be holdovers from last year, such as Nathan Lane or Tina Fey remains to be seen. Poker Face has a lot of possibilities for either category: Adrian Brody and Kevin Hart seem like strong possibilities to me and I’m not halfway through the series. There will almost certainly be quite a few Guest Spots for SNL this year, and I imagine many of them will be faces from these nominees. Steve Martin and Martin Short, Quinta Brunson and based on her appearance, I think Aubrey Plaza could double dip.

As for writing and directing, well, Bill Hader’s going to get at least one in each category for his work on Barry (the series finale alone could get him one for each) Abbott Elementary will certainly get a couple of writing nominations (the episode at the convention is one that is likely to carry over). I would advocate for any one of the final episodes of Atlanta, the series finale for directing and ‘The Only Black Head of Disney’ for writing. And while I’m far from an expert, the apparently one-take episode Review of The Bear seems to be a shoo-in for a directing nomination.

 

Next week, I deal with Limited Series nominations. I don’t expect to gel with the actual nominations at all. That said, you might want to see.

 

Support the WGA!

Criticizing Criticism Series: They Might Be Coming For TCM - And I Have No Desire to Speak For It

 

On Mayim Bialik’s first day guest hosting Jeopardy, the Final Jeopardy category was THE BUSINESS OF TELEVISION: “The day it debuted in 1980, this network with an Italian name aired a Carnegie Hall celebration of Aaron Copland’s birthday.” I had a grim satisfaction in knowing the correct response: “What is Bravo?” I admired Bialik’s delivery as she revealed that it “began as an arts-oriented channel, and now it runs a lot of reality shows.” I’m pretty sure most people younger than me would have been surprised to know it ever started out showing arts.

One of the sad parts of Peak TV is that over the course of time many networks that you worship end up – devolving, to put it mildly. I’m sure any cable viewer could give countless examples of this, but I’m going to give two pertinent ones that have hurt the most.

I ended up learning about independent films as an idea and industry through IFC, which when it began in 1996 specialized in independent films. That’s how I ended up first seeing such classics as My Own Private Idaho and The Last Broadcast and such more complicated and controversial movies as Boxing Helena and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. That’s where I first became acquainted with the Independent Spirit awards, heard the triumphant acceptance speeches of Ally Sheedy and Hilary Swank, heard Michael Moore give a more civilized protest speech than he did at the Oscars, and became aware of the brilliant talents of Sarah Silverman and Aubrey Plaza as awards shows hosts.

Now the most independent thing one finds on IFC is Parks & Rec reruns. They didn’t even broadcast the spirits on their network this year.

The Sundance Channel was founded in 2002 with a similar mission statement. It was here I had by first interaction with Greta Gerwig and Joe Swanberg and saw some truly brilliant foreign films that not even IFC showed. They also did some truly brilliant original programming: two seasons of Inside the Writer’s Room, which gave us a glimpse at such Peak TV gems as Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and House of Cards, and the incredible original series Rectify a slow-burning classic that stands with some of the best cable dramas of the decade.  You might still find some great films occasionally on Sundance – they’ll show Sergio Leone westerns and quite a few modern classics – but these days they’re far more well known for being yet another home for Law and Order reruns on their schedule two days a week.

The devolution of these channels over the last few years has been a huge blow to my creative soul, nearly as great as that Nick at Nite now consider Friends classic TV. So you’d think that the recent news that the new head of Turner Classic Movies has recently fired many of the key archivists and executives that have made this channel one of the critical sources for movies and our Hollywood heritage would be a blow to harsh to bear. Yet I can’t work up any outrage or even feel indifference to as a business.  Instead, I look upon this as yet another example of so many in my field’s selective outrage.

Given the state of Hollywood today, you’d think they’d be more upset that a network that was once devoted solely to independent films now devoted entire nights to Two and A Half Men. Or that Sundance TV, which for many years was one of the few places to find recent foreign films, now devotes its late nights to Colombo and its mornings to Andy Griffith.  Or that Bravo, which spent decades devoted to art house films like Room With A View, limited series like Pennies From Heaven or classic TV shows like Hill Street Blues and Twin Peaks is now essentially the home of Real Housewives of Orange County.  But they barely raised an eyebrow when it happened; have never said anything about it. But now that their particular ox is being gored, it’s the end of civilization. Where will be find the brilliant movies of yesteryear without TCM, they cry? There are actually several places that have been around before this culling, but before I get there,  since no one looks at papers to see what’s on anymore, let me share with you what will be playing on TCM for the next 24 hours.

At the moment, the network is in the midst of a marathon celebrating the career of Stewart Granger that will ‘climax’ with King Solomon’s Mines.  We then get a string of movies commemorating Katherine Hepburn, the most famous of which is the 1933 version of Little Women. Then comes Charlie Chaplin’s final film: A King in New York, The Naked City, Soylent Green and Grey Gardens. However between them you get such movies as The House on 56^TH Street, the film adaptation of Neil Simon’s The Prisoner of Second Avenue (far from his best play) and the 1972 Barbara Streisand movie Up the Sandbox. Later that night, you get Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?... followed by Zee & Co, an Elizabeth Taylor/Michael Caine vehicle and The Big Cube, a movie whose summary involve Lana Turner being slipped LSD so that her family can collect their inheritance faster.

Now I have a fairly deluxe cable package. Here are some of the movies that will be playing over the next twenty-four hours: Alien, Fatal Attraction, Bridge of Spies, The Big Lebowski, Walk the Line, 500 Days of Summer. Brian DePalma’s Carrie,  City of God,  a movie of Brazilian Underworld that Roger Ebert considered a masterpiece (Fernando Alleles got a Best Director nomination for it) Courage Under Fire and Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women.  Not a bad selection and that’s without including Sean Penn’s The Pledge which Ebert also considered one of the greatest film ever made. I saw much of it last night and do think it features one of Jack Nicholson greatest performance.

Now to be sure I’m being slightly unfair to TCM and slightly generous to my cable package at the same time. This weekend on TCM you will be able to see among others, East of Eden, Mr. Roberts, The Palm Beach Story , On the Waterfront and Vertigo. And it’s not like there aren’t some truly horrible films playing around cable even around this: Fifty Shades of Gray,  the horrible Robin Williams vehicle Toys and one of cable channels seems to be in the midst of an eternal Friday the 13^th marathon.  But the larger point is true: not all of TCM’s movies are masterpieces anymore than all of the other networks on the rest of your cable packages are all trash.  This has been the case as long as it has been an existence.  So why are so many people outraged at the diminishment of a network that shows us as many Andy Hardy and old trailers as it does Sweet Smell of Success and A Face in the Crowd? The answer, unfortunately, speaks to the prejudices of so many film critics and filmmakers – and it’s that what defines a classic.

As long as I’ve been watching TCM – and to be clear, I do so far less than most fans of the network – their major focus has been extensively on much of the period from the silent movies to the 1970s.  Movies from the 1980s are rare, movies from the 1990s and later almost non-existent. They are perpetuators of the myth of nostalgia, the idea that all movies were much better back when they were all in black and white, when the studios ran things, before television became a major factor in life – before channels like TCM were allowed to exist.  A lot of the space between films is devoted to movie stars of a certain age discussing how much they were influenced and admired stars and directors that were around they were younger. And in case, you haven’t already guessed, most of the people treasure are white males.

The nostalgia machine is one that will never go out, but it’s worth noting that for a network such as TCM, one wonders whether they have any interest in expanding their markets or just the kind of narrative they are pitching with their classics. How many times have they shown marathons of Charlie Chan or Tarzan movies? How many John Ford westerns have they shown without commenting of the attitude towards the Native Americans frequently being slaughter? How many times did they rebroadcast Breakfast at Tiffany’s without thinking how Mickey Rooney’s work might look to audiences in 2010 or 2000? And don’t get me started on Gone With The Wind, a movie that basically celebrates every aspect of slavery but has its central character a woman who lives her entire live stalking another woman’s husbands, but who the movie basically tells us has her greatest sexual experience after her husband rapes her?

TCM has always equated ‘classic’ with ‘old’, something that sadly most of my fellow critics seem to universally argue for without question. Roger Ebert, it’s worth noting, never thought that way. Which is why in his first Great Movies book in 2002, he included the fairly recent Silence of the Lambs, Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, and Fargo along with City Lights, The General and Dracula. He continued that belief until his final book: amongst the classic he ranks in his fourth volume are The 25^th Hours, Seven, The Pledge…and The Big Lebowski.

A great film does not have to be in black and white or have subtitles to be a classic: if you still believe that my next witnesses are Ed Wood and Lars Von Trier.  The myth that TCM has perpetuated for more than a quarter of a century was that movies were better before. It’s worth noting that as times have changed in the last few years, its become clear that TCM can’t keep perpetuating this myth. The ways they’ve done so, however, have been incredibly ham-handed. Do The Right Thing made its debut on TCM to celebrate Juneteenth. Glad to know you finally acknowledged after thirty years what Roger Ebert knew immediately. They also did a documentary series called Women Make Film a series of hour-long specials narrated by Tilda Swinton showing excerpts from every movies that ever had a female director. I saw three of those episodes: they play like something a film student working on his senior thesis would put together at the last minute. They are incomprehensible, with no real context. IFC did far more interesting documentaries about this same subject nearly a decade ago.

In a remark made in order to support TCM’s continuing of the status quo, Martin Scorsese was quoted that late at night, he liked to unwind by watching Umberto D on TCM.  Which I guess is a reason to keep it alive – if your Martin Scorsese or you’re a fan of neo-realism Italian cinema.  For the rest of us, it’s just an indication of how film lovers think and the rest of us shouldn’t. For the record, I have seen precious few films of Scorsese or Spielberg or any of the great directors of the last half-century ever air on TCM. But what do you expect from a network that on 30 DAYS Of Oscars thinks that the movie that its audience wants to see is Gandhi instead of ET?

In A New Leaf, a movie by Elaine May that I honestly don’t know has ever aired on TCM (it was made in 1971, so it might have squeaked by) a character says: “You have devoted your existence to preserving a way of life that perished long before you were born.” Roger Ebert was fond of that quote, but I’m pretty sure he was not have entirely been happy with a channel that made it a mission statement.  And that is what TCM has been doing for so long. I get them for finding something that works and sticking with it, but it’s not the kind of thing that necessarily going to last much longer as its major fanbase begins to pass away.

And for the records, it’s not like TCM has been the only game in town for the last several years. Fox has a movie channel that spends much of its afternoon hours showing several of the kind of B movies that TCM would usually devote its Saturdays too. Epix just rebranded itself as MGM+. In the past month, I’ve seen such genuine classics as Judgment at Nuremberg, 12 Angry Men and Fiddler on the Roof air on it.  Throughout the networks you will find some masterpieces from the 1970s – The Godfather series, Chinatown, Dog Day Afternoon. Even AMC, which long relinquished the movie classics part of its name, will sometimes still show movies such as Shawshank Redemption or Rocky or Pulp Fiction.  The real classic movies will be showing somewhere because they’re actually classic. A great movie can transcend its era; it’s not automatically one because it’s got grainy footage and all the characters smoke.

And hell, you can find all of these movies on streaming if you want to look. Marty, if you’re so desperate to see Umberto D late at night, its available on Amazon Prime right now. You want to get up at 4 A.M. and deconstruct it, no one stopping you from buying it. It’s not like you bear a grudge against streaming –  Netflix was willing to make The Irishmen.

I get it TCM is important to you, it’s been there for a long time, and now it’s in danger. Well, the business of television is business like everything else.  I’m sorry that a basic cable network that took over the job of so many other cable networks whose passing you didn’t notice or mourn is in danger because its under economic threat. Please try to remember that every single movie that was ever made – including the ones on the channel you so revere – was made to make a profit for its investors first and for you to celebrate as a classic, decades later, much further down the list, if at all.  In the meantime, do what none of the characters in the movies you revere can’t do and join the 21^st Century.

My Predictions (And Hopes) For This Year's Emmy Nominations, Week 2, Day 4: Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Comedy

 

This is where I start to spread my wings. There are eight nominees in this category and I’m not going to be bound by what might happen. I am fine with Tony Shalhoub getting one last nomination for Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I can live with more than one nominee from Ted Lasso.  But for the rest, I am going with the performers who over the course of the last year brought me both the most joy and most intensity in their work.

Anthony Carrigan, Barry

Few performers showed more range in the final season of Barry  than Carrigan as Noho Hank. With the effects of one of the most terrifying scenes in all of 2022 still shaking him, he tried to go legit with Cristobal, the love of his life.  His desire to be safe, however, led to Cristobal being killed. He tried to put on the façade of legitimacy in the future but that death was haunting him a decade later and it was something he just couldn’t admit to himself in the final confrontation – and it cost him his life. Throughout, of course, there were still moments of great humor: his motivational speech at ‘the Dave and the Buster’, his discussion with a hit man over a podcast, his selections of four deadly killers and his reaction to receiving their heads returned to him. Carrigan is a certainty for one last nomination as Barry rides into the sunset.

Brett Goldstein, Ted Lasso

Goldstein has won the last two consecutive Supporting Actor Emmys for his work as Roy Kent, an absolutely remarkable foul-mouthed character who remained a bulwark of joy even through an erratic third season. In a way Goldstein is the breakout star of Ted Lasso in a way that so many of the other great performers have not quite been –  Roy is so iconic that he’s made an appearance in his commercial and he seems to have so much difficulty separating the two that he can’t make it through an awards acceptance speech without swearing, even when he promises he will at the start. Roy Kent and Goldstein are incredible performers and of all the actors connected with Ted Lasso, I have the least problem with him returning to the Emmys this year. (As for the possibility he’ll make it three in a row…well, we’ll get to that.)

Bryan Tyree Henry, Atlanta

This one is something of a long shot. Henry has been making a climb towards stardom in the last year, receiving an Oscar nomination for his work in Causeway. And while Donald Glover is more likely to receive recognition, it is Henry’s whose work was the most consistently impressive throughout the final season. Watching him go on a bizarre scavenger hunt to find the funeral for a rapper he idolized, finding a young white kid to mentor for when he became to old to be hip, trying to figure out a way to avoid being destroyed by the Crank serial killer and his final act, a basically one man show when he took time off on his farm, which brought some unwanted guests as he tried to fix his tractor.  Only an actor like Henry could handle all of this with something resembling aplomb and I think he’s entitled to one last nomination.

James Marsden, Dead to Me

Marsden is slightly less of a longshot that Henry is: he received a nomination for Best Supporting Actor from the Critics Choice awards and his show is more likely to get nominations than Henry’s is by the Emmys.  Marsden has been one of Dead to Me’s secret weapons throughout its run: first playing the contemptible and criminal Steve, then taking over as his twin brother Ben in Season and now showing Ben unraveling for his role in the drunken hit and run that put Jen and Judy in the hospital. He spent much of the final season, dealing with his own guilt, having a really messed up relationship with Jen, trying to make things right with his family, trying to deal with his alcoholism – and really, just making everything worse as he tried to make it better. Marsden has been the part of two sensational shows both of which came to an end in 2022: Dead to Me on its own terms; Westworld as a shock. It would be fitting if Marsden got a nomination for this series at least.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach, The Bear

It took a lot to appreciate Moss-Bachrach’s work as the foul-mouthed, perpetually bullying ‘Cousin’ Richie, who spent so much of the first season shitting on every decision Carmy made, treating everybody he met with contempt, literally doing everything he could to destroy everything in front of him, utterly incapable of dealing with the change of the world around him. Only Moss-Bachrach incredibly delivery and hysterical inability to see everything around him could make you stand this character, who in every aspect of the way was a complete and utter loser and seemed determined to show it by making everybody miserable. Then in the season finale, Richie had his own moment of clarity as he realized just how horrible things were and how much guilt he felt for the death of his friend. In the finale, he took the smallest steps towards redemption that for him were giant leaps, and his actions may have finally given his family a future. It’s not easy to appreciate a performance like this, but the Critics’ Choice were willing to give him a Supporting Actor nomination. I’d like to think the Emmys will do the same.

 

Chris Perfetti, Abbott Elementary

I was overjoyed last year when Perfetti was a surprise nomination for his incredible work as Jacob, the gay ally who wants to be friends and a good person without coming across as too much. It was just as much fun to watch Jacob this year in so many occasions: his trying to get a mural painted and then being alarmed at what his students picked, his teaching black history in his class and being increasingly unnerved by Ava’s presence, his time at the convention when he makes an ally and then learns just what a snob she is, his relationship with Gregory where he keeps overstepping his bounds through much of the season and yet eventually ends up with the two becoming friends.  If the Emmys are lazy, they will nominate Perfetti again. If the Emmys watched his work, they would nominate him again. Whatever works as long as he gets invited back.

Tyler James Williams, Abbott Elementary

I was absolutely delighted when Tyler James Williams took the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor this year; the first given only for Drama and Comedy. He also deservedly picked up the Best Supporting Actor prize from the Image awards. It’s pretty clear at this point he’s the overwhelming favorite to win the Emmy this year. I could not be more delighted.  Williams’ work as Gregory is already one of the great performances in TV history as he perpetually tries to play someone who has complete dignity and utterly humiliates himself on so many occasions. (Was anyone shocked to learn that he had never figured out how to make small talk properly?) Williams has officially taken up the mantle that John Krasinski perfected in his year’s on The Office by saying so much to the viewer with his expression, only in Williams’ case it is as if he is trying to use his face to express the opposite of what he’s telling us. There is nothing that Williams does on screen that isn’t hysterical and we all know already that he and Janine are soul mates, which they spent as much time in Season 2 denying, then trying to accept, then denying again. It’s fitting this is a slow burn romance because Williams is the master of the slow burn expression.  Williams is almost certain to win this year and I’d like to see him look happy if he wins.

Henry Winkler, Barry

Henry Winkler was a dominant figure in the Supporting Actor awards for the third season of Barry, taking prizes from both the HCA and the Critics Choice awards. In his final season as Gene, everything seemed to come together and fall apart. Gene had brought down the man who killed his girlfriend but couldn’t stop his desire for self-promotion. He accidentally shot his son and went off the grid. He came back to make amends and stop the movie that was being made about his story. Then he fell victim to his own desire to be played by a great actor – and as a result, he lost everything in final episodes. Even after he managed to take revenge on the man who’d destroyed his life in the finale, he basically ensured that he Barry’s version of events, not his, would live on forever. I honestly don’t know what must have been more painful to Gene: sentenced to life in prison for Barry crimes or that he wasn’t played by Daniel Day-Lewis in the movie of it. I wanted Winkler to win the Emmy last year.  This year, it would be nice but for Winkler, it would be gravy. Like Bill Hader, he has nothing left to prove in this role.

 

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Jeff Hiller, Somebody Somewhere

As with Bridget Everett, Hiller’s nomination is a matter of time.  Considering how many nominees in this category are in series that are in their final season, it’s likely it will happen the moment Season 3 of the show premieres. And anyone who has seen Hiller’s work as Joel knows that Hiller has earned it.  He is a real gay best friend, everyone in Sex and The City be damned.  He and Sam are soulmates in a way that has nothing to do with romance: these are two good people bound by being eternal outsiders. Joel is the kind of guy who will show up at Sam’s house with a martini, the kind of person who can do fast-walking, the kind of guy who can handle when your undergoing the horrible biological needs. It hurt to see the two of them estranged in Season 2, and we all knew that when Everett sang Gloria in the season finale, it was really for Joel.  Hiller is perfect every moment he’s on screen. The Emmys should recognize him this year. They will recognize him someday.

Tomorrow I wrap up with Outstanding Supporting Actress in A Comedy and some thoughts about Guest Actor and Actress

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