Overrated Series (Sort of) Veep

 

Normally my entries in this series deal with certain prestige dramas that I watched quite a bit of and could never understand why critics and awards shows loved so much. This entry is different and not simply because it involves a comedy.

I saw quite a bit of Veep when it was on the air, basically the first half of Season 2 and then the next five seasons. I think it reached its peak level well before Trump entered the political arena (Season 4 ended in May 2015) but there will still funny moments and great performances all the way through. That being said, even while I was watching and enjoying it I could never consider it the masterpiece that so many other critics and awards shows did. At the time there were many great comedies on the air, from Parks & Rec and The Big Bang Theory at the start of Veep’s run, masterclasses like Fleabag and Marvelous Mrs. Maisel when it ended and in between such more than super shows as Transparent, Master of None and Atlanta. In good conscience I can’t rank Veep as being as consistently funny or as revolutionary as many of them.

Around the middle of its run I was ‘officially’ beginning my career as a TV critic on this site. I’d worked on other, long since defunct ones, during this period but I don’t think I began to reach my peak level as a critic in any form until perhaps the end of the 2010s by which point Veep was gone from the arena. When I did write about the show it was almost always in connection with the Emmys where the show was fundamentally dominating. I frequently expressed my frustration at this but considering how during the 2010s I was still mostly holding the Emmys in contempt for recognizing series I didn’t like (Modern Family & Game of Thrones were the biggest offenders) it may well have come off as petty grievances. But with the benefit of hindsight and experience I now think I understand my problems with Veep were deeper than that – and oddly enough, had nothing to do with the political situation that was unfolding.

So in this entry I’m not so much going to discuss my issues with Veep but why my viewing habits both before and while it was on the air may very well have led me to wonder almost from the start why everyone was so thrilled about this series. In doing so I hope to discuss some of the greater flaws that were going on with HBO comedies in comparison to other networks (one in particular) and why I think what so many thought was revolutionary was more about a kind of classism when it came to how we viewed television at the time and in a sense still do. And to do this I need to explain my own viewing habits at the time.

At the start of the 21^st century HBO has revolutionized television, first with The Sopranos and shows like Sex and The City. FX gets credit for the next step in the revolution with The Shield and while there is much truth in this, it’s generally forgotten that while this was going HBO’s fellow pay cable network Showtime was making a concentrated effort to rival HBO when it came to original series. I had a front row seat to it and I think its telling what the different approaches were.

The Sopranos created the White Male Antihero and was a critical and ratings hit for HBO. Showtime’s approach during this period seemed to be determined to create groundbreaking drama with anything but a white male antihero. The cynical part of me wonders if that’s why Showtime took so long to break through with audiences; the fact that’s its first unconditional ratings smash was Dexter seems to argue for that narrative.

But Showtime seemed determined to win its audience through diversity and many of these experiments look radical by the standards of 2000s Drama. Here we see the series adaptation of the hit Soul Food and Resurrection Boulevard one of the first dramas of any kind to have what was fundamentally a LatinX audience at its center. More popular – and controversial – was their adaptation of Queer as Folk followed closely by The L Word, the first series of any kind to have the LGBTQ+ audience at its center. There were sci-fi dramas such as Odyssey 5 and Jeremiah. There was the often hysterical dramedy Dead to Me in which a college age girl gets killed by a airplane toilet and takes up  a career as a reaper. Even the one series that might have been close to the white male antihero Huff (which earned the first major Emmy nominations for the network and won two Supporting Actress Emmys for Blythe Danner, was basically about a psychiatrist having a mid-life crisis – hardly Tony Soprano territory.

Watching Showtime during this period was almost thrilling. So much of what they were doing seemed to be throwing anything against a wall and seeing what stuck. It would have too easy to create the kind of antihero dramas that were drawing in the masses (as they eventually did in the 2010s with series like Ray Donovan) but Showtime seemed more determined to succeed on their own terms than duplicate winning formulas. And this was just as true with their comedies – particularly the one that finally put them on the map.

I need to be clear upfront that I never liked Weeds. (And not just because my repulsion for Nancy’s pot-growing business to support her family is the main reason I never watched Breaking Bad when it was airing on AMC until the penultimate season.) It was a formula that I never liked that much and even the most devoted fans of the show will admit it stayed on the air far too long. (It’s considered that when Nancy decided to burn down Agrestic and take her family on a perennial road trip at the end of Season 3 that the show jumped the shark.) But just as Shonda Rhimes’ work helped lead to a series of strong dramas with females and minorities that I have come to love in the past decade, so can I appreciate that Weeds and its critical and popular hit led to so many superb comedies.

The watershed moment for Showtime came in 2006 when Mary Louise Parker took Best Actress in a Comedy over all four of the leads in Desperate Housewives (something that stunned even her) and Weeds itself won Best Comedy or Musical. Showtime had found its oeuvre and it was something that was notably absent on HBO: female-centric dramedies. For the next decade Showtime would produce a series of critically acclaimed and award winning successes for the network that were focused on everything HBO comedies were not: the working class with the majority of them having female leads. And in something that wasn’t noticed at the time (but really should have been) they all had female showrunners as well as leads.

United States of Tara was Diablo Cody’s first TV project. Set in Omaha, it told the story of Tara, a middle class housewife who suffers from multiple personality disorder and how her family tries there best to support her and deal with. In her first  television project Toni Collette was superb and she had an incredible cast behind her, John Corbett, Rosemarie DeWitt, Patton Oswalt and a then unknown Brie Larson. The show was nominated for four Emmys in 2009 and it what was considered a strange award but I consider one of the Emmys finest hours, Toni Collette took Best Actress in a Comedy. The series was also significant because one of Tara’s children was openly gay, something still become part of the new world in 2009.

Later in 2009 came Lix Brixius’s Nurse Jackie in what was Edie Falco’s follow-up project to The Sopranos. In the title role Falco played a drug addicted nurse working as one of the most underfinanced and understaffed hospitals in New York, keeping her marriage secret from her co-workers (including a pharmacist she’s having an affair with) and basically hiding ever part of who she is. The series became Showtime’s first nominee for Outstanding Comedy series in 2010 and was nominated for ten Emmys in its first year. Falco won Best Actress in a Comedy that year and would receive five more Emmy nominations. The series featured such veterans as Anna Deavere Smith and Paul Schulze and introduced the world to the astounding Merritt Wever who also deservedly won an Emmy. The series was also prominent in dealing with the flaws of addiction, the health care system and so many of the problems with the working class.

Then at the end of 2010 came The Big C in which Cathy Jamison, a suburban mother, faces a cancer diagnosis and tries to find humor and happiness now that she is facing death. Laura Linney was incredible in her work in this very dark comedy. Oliver Platt and John Benjamin Hickey had superb roles in support, and Gabourey Sidibe fresh of her Oscar nominee for Precious was magnificent as one of her students. The show also introduced Gabriel Basso as her son. Linney would eventually win an Emmy for the final season.

All of these series were critically acclaimed and dealt with the struggles of working class women in American. Many of these women were known for behaving as badly and unprofessionally but it was a lot harder not to feel sympathy and empathy for them (Jackie became trickier in the final seasons but addiction was part of it.) They also dealt with other issues involving homosexuality, race and trying to survive.

Now compare that with the kind of comedies that HBO was churning out during this same period (2005 when Weeds began to 2015 when Nurse Jackie ended) Curb Your Enthusiasm basically deals with the nasty and unpleasant behavior of a rich, famous white man and his rich friends. Entourage deals with the misogynistic behavior of a celebrity and his followers, including his agent. Girls, which was huge acclaimed, tells the story of the juvenile behavior of four female recent college graduates. Silicon Valley (which debuted in 2015 and falls in my parameter) deals with the toxic and horrendous behavior that we see in the tech startup community and tech people and most. The majority of the people in all of these comedies who are behaving horribly are upper-class and overwhelming white. Even the one female-centric comedy Girls basically has to do with a woman who wants her parents to support her lifestyle for much of the first two seasons. Hannah lives in New York but it’s closer to the one Carrie Bradshaw lives in rather than Jackie Peyton.

Veep wasn’t even the first female centric comedy HBO developed during this period Mike White’s Enlightened debuted in 2011 and became a critical hit though it would be cancelled after two seasons. It is closer in terms of what the Showtime dramedies are trying to do but it doesn’t change the fact that Amy comes from a life of privilege in LA that Cathy Jameson wouldn’t recognize. With all that in mind you can understand why when Veep debuted in the spring of 2012  the only thing that was unique about it was that the woman at the center was the Vice President.

I don’t deny that it can be very funny at times but there’s nothing that special about the comedy in comparison to what HBO was doing at time, save I suppose the level of the nastiness of the insults involved. I’m not entirely convinced even that was unique for an HBO cringe comedy; Extras had completed its run a full four years before Veep debut.

Part of my bias may be my fundamental dislike for all things Armando Iannucci, who seems to have made a huge amount of money creating TV series in both Britain and America in which the rich and powerful shout incredibly cruel insults all of which involve as many permutations of the F-word as possible. I suppose if you like that sort of thing, you might find it entertaining but it has a shelf life before it just gets dull and you have to have an interesting story to go with the bad behavior. That has never been Iannucci’s strong suit, whose only insight into character seems to be that the rich and powerful are as petty and vindictive behind the scenes as we all suspect them to be even to each other.

I have to say my opinion of this wasn’t helped by the fact that I spent much of this time watching the first three seasons of House of Cards. I kept thinking throughout the second and third seasons that Frank Underwood would have made mincemeat of these people in one episode and achieved his goals in two. It helps matters that he is self-aware and more politically astute to his environment than anyone we meet on Veep and honestly, more sympathetic than Selina Meyer will ever be.

I could never watch a single episode and understand how Selina Meyer had ever been able to run for anything, much less win it. It wasn’t just her unpleasant behavior; it’s that she never seemed to really have a purpose to be President rather than just to say she could. I’ll grant you most of her staff was blindingly incompetent but considering she hired them in the first place that says more about her then them. All of these people were both ambitious, moronic and had no self-awareness. And while I suspect that’s always been true in Washington (more so today then before) it’s very boring for a television show, even a comedy.

Now again, I’m not saying Veep was a bad show that it wasn’t entertaining or even enjoyable. But to put it very delicately this wasn’t a show that deserved a lot of recognition from award shows. And before I get to the Emmys I need to tell you that outside of that particular circle it got very little. Julia Louis-Dreyfus was nominated for five Golden Globes: she never won once. In chronological order she lost to Lena Dunham for Girls (no) Amy Poehler for Parks & Rec (yea!) Gina Rodriguez for Jane The Virgin, Rachel Bloom for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Tracee Ellis Ross for Black-ish. In every single one of those case (save Dunham) the Golden Globes made the right call and the Emmys (who gave her a prize everyone of those years) made the wrong call. That the Emmys didn’t even nominated Rodriguez or Bloom at any time in their careers is yet another reason it’s hard for me to take them seriously.

Veep was only nominated twice for Best Comedy in 2016 and 2017 (the Emmys gave it the grand prize both times. The show lost to Mozart in the Jungle in 2016 (a questionable choice) and Atlanta in 2017 (a better choice in 2017). The show wasn’t nominated in 2015 by the Golden Globes who gave their top prize to Transparent. Veep took its first Emmy for Best Comedy that year. In 2014 the show wasn’t nominated by the Golden Globes and Brooklyn Nine-Nine won. That year Veep was nominated for Best Comedy and Brooklyn Nine-Nine wasn’t.

While Veep was on the air the Critics Choice Awards were coming into existence. It was nominated for Best Comedy four times, from 2013 to 2016. It never won losing in chronological order to The Big Bang Theory, Orange is the New Black, Silicon Valley and Master of None. Julia Louis-Dreyfus did win two Best Actress in a Comedy awards (in 2013 and 2014) but the last two times out she lost to Amy Schumer and Kate McKinnon. Louis-Dreyfus did do somewhat better at the SAG Awards, winning three times but the show itself only won once.

Having seen a majority of so many of the comedies that were nominated during this period I can say with confidence that almost all of them were funnier, more consistently entertaining and often more joyful than Veep could ever me. And it isn’t lost on me that, with the notable exception of Silicon Valley, all of the comedies are more diverse, deal with characters in a working class environment and fundamentally deal more with more relatable goals than anyone in the Meyer Vice Presidency or Presidency. And all of the women who prevailed in the Golden Globes (including 2012 which gave its prize to Laura Dern for Enlightened) were at their core in more entertaining shows than one saw during Louis-Dreyfus’s six consecutive Emmy wins. Dern might not have been nominated but the contenders included Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Melissa McCarthy for Mike & Molly, Edie Falco and Zoey Deschanel. All of them were in shows and comedies I find funnier and more endearing than Veep.

I really do believe the recognition for Veep and Louis-Dreyfus in particular has less to do with the quality of her work than the maddening habit of the Emmys to give the same award to the same performer year after year, particularly in comedy. Helen Hunt had done so for four straight seasons of Mad About You, Jeremy Piven would do the same for three straight season of Entourage and Jim Parson would be the beneficiary of four Emmys in five years. But Louis-Dreyfus’ success is the most maddening example of the Emmys decision to keep playing on repeat and never let anyone else win. They were walking that back slightly in Drama during this period but definitely not in comedy and that is the one major issue I have with Jean Smart’s repeated wins for Hacks. I love her work, don’t get me wrong but sometimes the Emmys have to let someone else in the winner’s circle.

I don’t feel this way, I should be clear, for everyone else in the cast. Tony Hale’s work as Gary was always both humorous and sad as we saw his puppy dog affection for Selina that was never remotely reciprocated. Gary Cole and Kevin Dunn’s work as Selina’s advisers was always enjoyable and I often wished the writers would use them more. Sam Richardson’s arrival as Richard Splet was the ray of light Veep desperately needed and he was the one constant source of great fun even as the series quality deteriorated. And I like the work of the guest actors, particularly Hugh Laurie.

But by and large overall watching Veep took on the sense of an obligation when I was viewing it: something I didn’t enjoy like so many of the comedies I mentioned yet something I needed to do because I knew it would be contending for Emmys every year and that I needed to be briefed on by the time the nominations came out. I was personally relieved that by the end of the decade a new group of female led comedies were taking Selina and her crew of the Emmy stage, whether they were the sprightly Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,  the wondrous work of Fleabag and such less recognized but just as fun streaming series as Russian Doll and Dead To Me. These women were just as foul-mouthed and behaved as badly as Selina did, but it helped that unlike her they had depths and layers where everyone else had borrowed the one dimension they had.

HBO also seemed to have recognized that it couldn’t do comedies with rich and powerful white people exchanging insults. To be sure in the years to come we’ve gotten such Iannucci’s projects as Avenue 5 and The Franchise but the networks also given us the brilliant Insecure and the sublime Somebody Somewhere where community and kindness are more important then the most creative slurs. I don’t regret having watched Veep the same way I do spending time with so many of the series in the Overrated Series but I don’t want to revisit it either and I am grateful that the kind of comedy it inspired is mostly gone from TV. It almost certainly has to do with the American cultural atmosphere we live in today (which has made the world of the show very much seem like a documentary then they wanted) but I like to think that the viewer has long since grown tired of that nastiness in a comedy. For that at least, I have hope.

Homicide Rewatch: All Through The House

 

Written by Henry Bromell

Directed by Peter Medak

 

One of the few areas were broadcast television still has the clear edge over all other forms of content is the Christmas episode.

This is understandable considering the nature of television on both cable and streaming. With both their shorter schedules, no clear idea as to release date and the rise of binge-watching trying to do an episode with relevance to Christmas is kind of pointless. The few times it has happened its there to subvert the construct. Six Feet Under begins with the family patriarch having hearse being plowed into by a bus while ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’ plays on the radio and only gets darker from there. Mad Men had the occasional Christmas party episode but usually as a way to show the falseness of the holiday as opposed to its joy. And it takes a bit of a stretch to call the early episodes of Stranger Things where Joyce makes contact with the Upside Down through Christmas lights as in the holiday spirit.

Growing up some of the greatest episodes of any of the dramas I watched were among the dramatic highpoint of the series. ER, which premiered during Homicide’s third season, would go out of its way to make the Christmas episode emotional highpoints as well contrasted with lows for major characters often within the same episode. During the Aaron Sorkin era the Christmas episode of The West Wing would be among the greatest episodes in the entire history of the show and frequently win Emmys for the performers and writers involved. And though it didn’t air in December, a huge part of the reason ‘The Constant’ episode of Lost is considered one of the greatest episodes in the history of television is because it takes place on Christmas Eve.

Even growing up, however, I always felt a certain kinship with the shows that had a way of subverting the Christmas narrative. In the first season of its run Chicago Hope’s ‘The Quarantine’ ranked as one of the high point of the series and many episodes that followed would be just as powerful. One of the most hysterical episode in the history of The X-Files is ‘How the Ghosts Stole Christmas’ in which Mulder and Scully find their corpses under the floorboards and the episode only gets darker from there. But it’s clear looking back that Homicide was just as determined to shift the idea of showing that all the narratives we see about Christmas don’t take the night off for murder in Baltimore. As we see in All Through the House, it’s just another day for ‘Ho-Ho-Homicide’.

This is, of all the holiday episodes Homicide did, the most light-hearted and humorous. Of course because it’s Homicide, every single joke is lined with death and sadness and even the cheerful moments have a dark punchline. And throughout it the detectives manage to remain as blank-faced as always. Part of me wonders how many takes Clark Johnson needed to go through without cracking up during the scene at the morgue where Scheiner greets him wearing a Santa hat, tells him the teeth of his victim are perfect and tells him that the reason the menorah’s there is because “this time of year we get all types. And I want everybody to feel welcome.”

It is perfectly logical to have a Christmas themed episode with Munch at the center. John, of course, could be annoyed because this this isn’t a holiday themed squad room (the war on Christmas hadn’t started in 1994) but the episode never mentions that fact and we all know that even if there was a menorah he’s still be bitter. Nor does the commercial aspect of the holiday bother him. No it’s the idea that you have to be happy during the holidays and John Munch is as we all know perpetually miserable. Bolander, as we know, is almost always gloomy to but he seems determined to be cheerful even though the squad is working the graveyard shift on Christmas Eve. He has brought a Christmas tree which he goes out of his way to decorate and every single member of the squad goes out of their way to degrade. One funny point comes when Frank chooses to give a history of the Christmas tree to his captive audience and then finishes by saying this “is an unholy example’.

The theme of this episode is, perhaps more than usual, family. The most direct example comes when we see Felton wrapping presents for his kids even though he still has no idea where they are. When Howard calls him on this, he says someday he will find them and when he does he’ll know they were thinking of him. But he’s clearly depressed (in the early scenes he looks hungover) and when Bayliss tries to cheer him up, he calls him on it and Tim’s efforts are, to say the least, ham-handed.

Early in the episode Russert shows up in the squad, ostensibly to give Christmas cookies to Gee. She says that her daughter has fallen asleep waiting for Santa and she wants to visit. Not long after Meldrick comes in, having written the name of his victim on the board and she recognizes it – it has to do with a case a detective on her squad is investigating. She goes out with Lewis because she thinks the case is hers based on the flimsiest of excuses. Meldrick calls her on it immediately and she tells him that she misses this. “Don’t tell me you don’t.” Meldrick accepts this for most of the night – he’s been riding solo since Crosetti and no doubt the idea of spending Christmas Eve alone trying to solve a murder isn’t going to make his holidays brighter.

It’s not until the murder is solve and the criminal arrested that he finally asks for the real reason Russert spent Christmas with him instead of her daughter. The mask goes down. Her husband’s grandparents have come in to spend the holidays with their granddaughter and as much as she loves them they remind her of her husband. For the first time we learn about Mike: he was a tax lawyer who he met through his sister, who was an accountant. She first met him at a Christmas party. This is one of the first Christmas she’s had to spend without him and the memory is extremely painful. “The bastard ruined Christmas for me forever,” she says sadly.

In a way this episode is a forerunner for Russert’s story arc in Season 4. More importantly it allows us to see Hoffman in a way we haven’t really gotten a chance to see since the opening three-part arc of the season. It gives a more complete picture of Russert then we’ve seen to this point and Hoffman gets to show more layers than we’ve gotten to see so far this season.

We also see the effect of family in every part of the story. Meldrick is called in to investigate the burning of a woman named Whitney Louise Freeman, who has been doused in kerosene and set on fire in an alley. Freeman was the main witness in a case involving a drug-dealer named ‘Boots’ Chiggins and Lewis and Russert spend the episode between those two worlds. The first is the most striking when we visit the Freeman household and find it is essentially that of the upper crust section of Baltimore. Caroline Freeman is serving egg nogg and has servants in the garb of old money decorating the tree.

Modern day viewers no doubt only know Nancy Marchand for her last major role that of Livia Soprano in the first two seasons of The Sopranos. Marchand was an accomplished actress before this (see notes from the board) and many of her roles were essentially playing the equivalent of high class matriarch as opposed to the frumpy bully she is most famous for. It’s an exceptional role in two short scenes as Mrs. Freeman puts on the mood of the good hostess, clearly trying to deny what these two detectives are doing there. She spends more time lecturing the ornaments on the tree. Finally when Russert tells her what happens we see the mask begin to slip. She’s more angry then upset, blaming the detectives for losing her daughter, saying she never knew her daughter’s friends and being unable to understand why her daughter never needed money. When they leave she’s back to dealing with the tree.

We spend the next part in the Chiggins household (in keeping with the show Meldrick and Megan are greeting with a teenager aiming a shotgun) and we see the man’s girlfriend and the mother of his children having a smaller but infinitely more intimate family Christmas then the posher but emptier one at the Freeman household. As you might expect the trail eventually leads to her and it has the sad reason that she did it to make sure her husband was there to provide for his children. Of course now both parents will be in jail as a result of her actions but that is the job.

Megan and Meldrick come to see Mrs. Freeman at the end of the episode to tell them they arrested her daughter’s killer. Marchand is incredible trying to hold up the façade. It is only when she focuses on the ornaments on the tree and how they’re hung that we see it finally hit her as she shatters one of her fathers and essentially comes as close to breaking as she will allow.

While this is going on Munch and Bolander have been called in to investigate the murder of Santa Claus. They believe the victim is Nicholas McGibney, a Salvation Army Santa who ‘plied on the guilt of the more fortunate’. They go to the McGibney home where Munch and Bolander find the man’s son. This is where the fun of the episode is. Fidel McGibney (the best joke is the kid has never heard of Fidel Castro) has the very protective nature of a ten year old. And it is hysterical watching the dark and cynical Munch spend the entire episode unable to tell this child his father is dead. Munch must have been in a situation like this before in his time on the squad, but its telling for all his cynicism about the holidays the idea of telling a ten year old that his father won’t be coming home for Christmas is something he just doesn’t want to do.

It's hysterical watching Belzer in these scenes. This is a man who has the ability to outtalk anybody his age or older but throughout the episode this eleven year old completely has his number. You wonder if Munch sees himself in Fidel, considering that his attitude is always on attack, incredibly sarcastic and always berates him. (The fact that this is the exact name you could see Munch giving a son if he had one is also telling.) We’ve never seen John this uncomfortable in his own skin, unable to deal with the gore in the films this kid watches, always delaying every opportunity he has, letting every single rational remark be overruled by this child.

At one point Munch goes with Fidel to a bar with a batting cage. Fidel essentially tells him to swing at some balls and his swing is laughably pathetic. Munch finally explodes at the child, angry at being compared to a man he knows is both a drunk and has clearly been lying to his son about what he does but also at himself for being so cowardly that he can’t tell his son the truth.

Finally at the end of the episode with Stanley having disappeared for most of it, he steels himself to tell the horrible truth. It sets itself up to be a powerful scene at first as we see Belzer trying to get himself the say the news he’s been waiting all night to say and trying to prepare the kid who’s been convinced all night his father would come home. Finally just as he’s about to say it, the door opens – and Nicholas McGibney comes in. It’s a Christmas miracle!

Not really, of course. The sick joke behind this revelation is that McGibney got drunk and a man named Lanny Krantz stole the Santa uniform, the bucket and the bell determined to take the money McGibney raised. Then someone came along and stabbed Krantz six times in the chest and took the money instead. Bolander is so joyful at what he’s accomplished and Munch is so pissed that Stan never called (Baltimore PD couldn’t afford cell phones in 1994) that it completely ignores the fact that for this reunion to happen, there’s still a dead man and Munch and Bolander now have to solve his murder, which they’ve spent all night not working on. But that’s a problem after the holidays.

The main humor comes in the squad where Bayliss spends the entire episode trying to convince anyone who will listen for a game of Hearts. Eventually he tracks down Gee in his squad room and clearly tries to hustle him and later the squad. What he doesn’t know – but Munch is glad to tell him – is that when Giardello was a detective he was famous for never losing a game of Hearts, supposedly putting a kid through college on it. It’s worth noting that when Munch realizes what Bayliss has tried to do, the first genuine smile he’s had all night comes on his face as he realizes that stupidity and being a sucker never goes out of style.

And so the episode ends with the squad leaving into the snow, everyone throwing snowballs at each other and shouts of Merry Christmas over the credits. A woman has been burned to death, Santa Claus was stabbed, one mother has lost her daughter, two children’s parents are headed to prison and there’s still an open murder. And as a bonus Danvers Christmas was spoiled when he had to go in to help Russert and Lewis figure out who was behind the murder. In short, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

In Tom Fontana’s previous series St. Elsewhere during the fourth season Santa Claus came to St. Eligius to give toys to the sick children, suffered a heart attack in front of them and died before they good resuscitate them. The episode was called ‘Santa Claus is Dead’. Did something happen to Fontana when he was a  child involving a department store Santa that scarred him for life?

DETECTIVE MUNCH: Obviously this entire episode is full of these moments but much of the best parts come from the back and forth with Bolander in the early stages when Munch berates his partner for putting up a Christmas tree, leading to the following exchange:

Bolander: Christmas is when Jesus was born…That was a miracle.

Munch: All miracles happen in the past…Name one miracle that happened in your lifetime.

Bolander: How about the fact I haven’t killed you yet?

Hey Isn’t That…. Nancy Marchand’s career actually went back to the early days of television. She had roles in the Philco Television Playhouse, Producers Showcase and Studio One. She made her film debut in the movie adaptation of Paddy Chayefsky’s The Bachelor Party in 1957 and while she did have many film roles throughout her career (most notably for playing the Mayor in the first Naked Gun film) she was best known for her work in television.

Her most famous TV role before The Sopranos was playing Margaret Pynchon on Lou Grant, the one spinoff of Mary Tyler Moore which was actually a Drama. She would win a record four Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmys in a Drama for its run, a record that to this day no one actress has ever come close to breaking in this category. (Julia Garner is second with three for her work in Ozark.) She was also known for roles in Limited Series such as North & South Book 2 and The Adams Chronicles. While filming the second season of The Sopranos she suffered a stroke which reduced her ability to work. She died in June of 2000, just two months after the second season finale of that show aired, just one day short of her seventy-second birthday.

NOTE: The scene where Bayliss meets with Felton and he tells him that the idea of wanting to play hearts in this dump on Christmas Eve “makes me want to put a bullet in my brain” will have an added significance in two years.

 

Jeopardy Season 41 Update: April 2025

 

 

As Jeopardy fan worth their salt knows one of the most famous lines in poetic history is T.S. Eliot’s ‘April is the Cruelest Month’. For Jeopardy fans and  champions this April it has been anything but.

At the start of Season 41 Jeopardy players have been struggling with tough boards and Final Jeopardys that made the totals for even successful champions relatively low. Laura Faddah ended up earning the unfortunate title of the champion who has won the most games while still finishing under $100,000. However, over the last six weeks it seems that both Jeopardy players and champions alike have managed to finally find their grooves with the winning players averaging more than $20,000 a win ever since Laura was defeated on March 11^th.

Furthermore the ‘cluster of champions’ that I described in my last article about Season 41 has continued unabated throughout the month of April. (Well, according to the Jeopardy archive there’s one official break that I think will later be rectified as I’ll explain. And ever since Laura’s defeat we have had no less than four qualifiers for the next Tournament of Champions cross the $100,000 threshold in little more than six weeks. By contrast in the nearly four month period leading up to the Season 41 postseason, only two players Greg Join and Mark Fitzpatrick, were able to cross the $100,000 threshold.

And we already have an interesting roster of Jeopardy champions for next year already. After Bryce Wargin was defeated on April 4^th, leaving with four wins and $70,199, we have already had two more six game winners to the rosters. On April 9^TH Andrew Hayes completed a runaway victory, winning $27,200. He then managed to win six consecutive games and $137,804. He won with two runaway victories and two come behind victories and the one that officially got him into the Tournament of Champions surprised even him.

In his fifth game he spent both Jeopardy and Double Jeopardy trailing Dondi DeMarco. At the end of the round he had $11,600 to his $18,400. The Final Jeopardy category was CITY NICKNAMES:

“The poet Albius Tibullus called a city this in the late 1^st century B.C. some 700 years after its initial founding.” Andrew wrote down: “What is the Eternal City?” That was correct. As Ken told us: “Rome was only 700 years old when it became the Eternal City.” Andrew clearly thought his run was over because he added: “It’s been fun” to his answer.

However Dondi had no answer at all. When he lost $5001 he dropped to second and a stunned Andrew won his fifth game.

His luck ran out two days later when he ran into Steven Hoying, who took the lead early in the Jeopardy round and never relinquished. He finished with a runaway victory with $29,200, while Andrew was in a distant third with $8800.

There was redemption of a sort in Final Jeopardy. The category was FICTIONAL CHARACTERS. “This character’s efforts in Africa to end an epidemic killing monkeys inspired Jane Goodall to do something similar.” Andrew knew the clue referred to Doctor Doolittle. (I thought it was Tarzan) Steven also knew this and Andrew went home saying love to his wife Kaitlyn.

Steven’s reign as giant killer ended the next day. In one of the best games all season he faced off against Rachael Gray and Liam Starnes. All three played excellently, each finishing with more than $13,000. However Liam was in the lead.

The Final Jeopardy category was PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEES: “The year the Democratic nominee gave his ‘Cross of Gold’ speech, the GOP nominee was this man who backed the gold standard. Steven and Liam knew the correct answer: “Who was McKinley?” Liam won with $32,401 and he hasn’t lost since.

Liam is almost literally a new breed of Jeopardy champions. An undergraduate student from Illinois he made Ken feel old when he told him that he had been born during Ken’s original run. There is an excellent chance that Liam may be the youngest Jeopardy champion to win five games in history: at just over 20 years of age, he has already won six games and as of this writing $123,584. And he seems capable of winning everyway possible. He’s come from behind to win once, he’s managed two runaway victories, he’s been the last one standing when one of his competitors was in the red at the end of Double Jeopardy. In one case he managed to win when no one got Final Jeopardy right and that win stunned even him, in a moment I’m sure has already gone viral. He was getting blown out in the Jeopardy round of his fourth game when his opponent bet everything on a Daily Double and lost everything, creating a deficit she couldn’t overcome. And he has demonstrated both fearlessness and caution in Daily Doubles in some cases in the very same game. In his second appearance he bet $5 on a Daily Double in the Jeopardy round. When he found the first Daily Double in Double Jeopardy he immediately bet everything.

But he has a weakness that I’m pretty sure will end up being his downfall: pop culture. Liam knows everything about geography and sports. Even though he’s only 20 he knows a bit about alcohol, which bothers Ken a bit. He knows about poetry and literature. But he doesn’t seem to know about films or TV, even in his own era. And sometimes this has been tragically obvious.

On Tuesday he found the third Daily Double in BIOGRAPHIES & MEMOIRS: “This title of his 2024 memoir, refers to his mother’s childhood name for him, not his character in Dog Day Afternoon.” There was a long pause before he guessed: “Who is Kevin Hart?” Ken said it was Al Pacino – “kind of the Kevin Hart of his era some might say.” There was gentle laughter, and it didn’t stop Liam from running away with the game.

To this point this weakness has not proven fatal to Liam: when you average 20 correct responses  a game, you have room for a cushion. But I suspect that when Liam is defeated it will most likely be because of a Final Jeopardy category dealing with classic movies. And sadly given Liam’s track record the correct response could just as easily be The Social Network as Citizen Kane for all the luck he might have with it. That, however, is for another day.

We’ve had an uninterrupted run of Tournament of Champions qualifiers ever since Alex DeFrank began his run six weeks ago. As of this writing seven players have officially punched their ticket for the 2026 Tournament of Champions and given how much so many of them overcame to get there, I suspect we’ve got at least that many already for the Second Chance Tournament. I also think there’s one more player, who while he’s not officially been invited back has a strong possibility of it.

After defeating Bryce Wargin on April 4^th, Mike Dawson managed to win 3 games and an even $57,000 before Andrew Hayes defeated him. He hasn’t officially received an invite yet. However that total is higher than no less than five  three game winners who qualified for the 2025 Tournament of Champions – including the eventual winner Neilesh Vinjamuri. It’s possible Bill McKinney, who won $47,000 is borderline; there is no world in which Mike isn’t extended an invitation by the time Season 41 is over. At the very least he has more than qualified for Champions Wild Card.

And speaking of Neilesh on Wednesday the long awaited 2025 Jeopardy Masters will begin in which Neilesh will be facing off against some of the greatest players in Jeopardy history. My extended coverage of the Masters will begin on May 1^st. I look forward to it as much as all my readers are.

 

In The Emmys, What Makes A Supporting Role, Part 1: Drama

 

On the season premiere of The Last of Us Pedro Pascal seemed to immediately shoot up to frontrunner status in the already overcrowded Best Lead Actor in a Drama category. This Sunday his character Joel Miller met his end that managed to stun even those who knew the source material.

It now raises a question for the Emmys: does that mean that Pascal is still eligible for Best Actor in a Drama? According to newly established rules by the Emmys he is not eligible in the Guest Actor category. And while Pascal is still scheduled to make appearances in the rest of Season 2, it’s no longer clear if he will still be eligible for lead or supporting.

Pascal himself has seen how this can play out. When he received his first Emmy nomination for Best Actor in 2023, three of his competitors were from Succession. One of them Kieran Culkin had been nominated twice before in the Best Supporting Actor category and had lost both times, the latter to co-star Matthew MacFayden. In what was the final season both Culkin and Sarah Snook chose to go from submitting in the supporting categories (where both had been nominated and won other awards though not the Emmys the previous year) and compete as lead. This led to the ‘mock feud’ between Pascal and Culkin that took up much of awards season in the early months of 2024. Culkin would take the Emmy, the Golden Globe and the Critics Choice Award, while Pascal would win the SAG Award and the HCA Awards.

Now the shoe’s on the other foot and Pascal has the same options. We saw this exact scenario play out in the final season of Succession. After Logan Roy’s equally stunning death in the third episode Brian Cox nevertheless chose to submit his name for consideration in the Best Actor category where he had been nominated twice before and lost both times. He might have had an easier chance had he done so in Supporting Actor but he went with Lead and lost to Culkin. (The first time he was nominated, he ended up losing to Jeremy Strong who always competed in Best Lead Actor.)

This conundrum will no doubt be playing out in the weeks and months leading up to the nominations and considering my complicated history with the Emmys I feel qualified to weigh in on the subject. But rather then relitigate some of my biggest grievances with this over the years – which include not just Succession but series like Handmaid’s Tale and Game of Thrones – I think a fairer way to do it would be with series that are among my personal favorites over the years but where I’ve found some of the nominations and even wins questionable.

This involves a lot of material so I’m going to limit it strictly to dramas during the 21^st century. And I’ll start at the beginning, at least for me.

During the first two seasons of The West Wing Allison Janney was nominated for and won the Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama. Then in 2002 she decided to submit in the Outstanding Lead Actress category from that point forward.

This decision always puzzled me. Janney was the most prominent female character on The West Wing  and it never quite gelled with me that she and Stockard Channing, who was in a guest role for the first two seasons, were competing in the same category. But that didn’t change the fact that in the 2001-2002 season Janney’s role was no more prominent than it had been the previous two. Calling her a lead actress was something of a stretch, compared to Jennifer Garner who was nominated that same year for Alias and who Janney defeated in what was a shock even to her. Janney would take a more front-and-center role in the last two seasons of the show but by that point the new showrunners had begun to focus their attention far more on the race to succeed Jed Bartlet in the White House so it didn’t change that much. And even if one was willing to call her screentime increased it was never at the level of Edie Falco in The Sopranos or future winners like Mariska Hargitay or Patricia Arquette.

And it’s worth noting none of Janney’s other co-stars, such as Bradley Whitford or John Spencer, ever chose to move into the lead category afterwards. That said the year Janney won there was another nominee in the category whose presence also seemed questionable to me.

That year Six Feet Under defeated The West Wing at the Golden Globes and Rachel Griffiths received the Best Supporting Actress prize, defeating Janney among many others. Griffiths’ work as Brenda had launched the Australian actress to prominence among American audiences and many considered her a shoo-in for an Emmy. Yet that year she submitted her name in consideration for Outstanding Lead Actress alongside Frances Conroy. Had she submitted for Supporting Actress in a Drama, she most likely would have won: three of the nominees were from The West Wing. (Channing won that year.) Griffiths would do so the following year and be nominated but by that point her character was far less of a presence and her best chance at an Emmy was gone. She has been nominated twice more since but has never won.

The next biggest puzzlement came, appropriately, with Mad Men which somehow seems to have won too many Emmys and not nearly enough. I’m not convinced it should have won all four of its Best Drama awards but I think we can all agree the Emmys really cheated it when it came to acting. Jon Hamm was the only actor who ever won an Emmy (and that was in the final season) but that is hardly the oddest part.

In 2009 Elisabeth Moss received her first Emmy nomination for Best Actress in a Drama for Peggy. It was a very crowded category that year so I didn’t object when Glenn Close won her second consecutive Emmy for Damages. In 2010 the Emmy nominations came out and it was a different, albeit stronger field for Actress in a Drama and there was a nominee from Mad Men  - but it was January Jones.

For the first and only time in her career Moss chose to submit her name for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama. That meant she was competing against co-star Christina Hendricks, who like Jones had been nominated for the first time. Perhaps she thought she’d have a better chance in a weaker field except the field for Supporting Actress in a Drama was, as it had basically been for the last decade and always has been, incredibly strong. She would lose to Archie Panjabi, who deservedly won for The Good Wife.

So the next year Moss decided to submit her name for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama. Didn’t work, she lost to Juliana Margulies for The Good Wife. And her co-star Hendricks lost to Margo Martindale for Justified. Neither Moss nor Hendricks ever won in this category while they were in Mad Men. Moss lost to Margulies twice and Claire Danes for Homeland twice (no argument there) Hendricks never won at all, losing to Anna Gunn for Breaking Bad twice. (No argument there either.) And poor Jones was never nominated again at all. Really the Emmys did poorly by all three women, though honestly the field was always tough.

Now I find myself dealing with This Is Us which is one of the great shows of all time and where I generally thought the Emmys did a fair decent job nominated, if not awarding over the years. Honestly for nominations for Best Drama and four Emmys is pretty good in an era that was owned by both Game of Thrones, Succession and The Crown (I’ll be dealing with the latter. That said in hindsight some of the nominations are strange.

It made a lot of sense for Mandy Moore to be nominated for Best Actress: after all Rebecca was the only character who played by the same performer in all three timelines. And it was logical to see Chris Sullivan nominated for Supporting Actor. But it never made much sense that Sterling K. Brown received all his nominations (and win) as Lead Actor in a Drama and Chrissy Metz who was his sister was nominated as Best Supporting Actress in 2018. She was part of the Big Three as much as Brown was, why was Randall a lead and she was Supporting? (Justin Hartley was never nominated for an Emmy but he was nominated four times for Supporting Actor by the Critics Choice Awards so we can assume he did so with the Emmys as well.)

And as much as I loved Milo Ventimiglia’s work as Jack, it never really made sense that he received three consecutive Best LEAD Actor in a Drama nominations. I don’t deny his character always cast the biggest shadow over the Pearson clan but it’s a different case then Moore who was in every time period. Perhaps if he had submitted for Supporting Actor in a Drama he might have been able to win. Honestly I would have preferred more wins for This is Us anyway.

This brings me to the final series I had issues with and that’s The Crown. The Emmys to be clear got almost completely right: I can’t argue with the 24 wins which in an era dominated by Game of Thrones during the first two seasons and Succession during its second half is astonishing. And I agree with every single acting award it won during its run. (Well except Claire Foy’s Emmy for Best Guest Actress but all the rest.) John Lithgow and Gillian Anderson more than earned there’s, ditto Foy’s first Emmy and Colman’s and Debicki and Menzies more than deserved there’s. That being said, I have some issues.

When Josh O’Connor was nominated for Best Actor in a Drama in the leadup to 2021 Emmys I was somewhat bothered by this as to that point I had considered Elizabeth the focus of the show and that Prince Charles was a supporting character. In hindsight that was my error; during the second half of the series Charles began to take a more prominent role as heir to the throne and Peter Morgan was choosing to put his character more upfront as an equal to Elizabeth. In the final two seasons Dominic West’s presence as Best Actor was right.

The bigger problem, however, came with Emma Corrin during this period. And no I’m not talking about them identifying as non-binary (which, for the record,  Corrin didn’t make clear until after the 2021 Emmys were given) My issue was with Corrin being nominated as a lead against Colman. At no point during the series was Diana ever considered a lead the same way that either Elizabeth or Charles was and Corrin’s winning so many awards in the Best Actress category in the lead-up to the Emmys was a huge blunder. That’s the reason I was thrilled that Colman ended up winning that year. I don’t know if that was Corrin’s decision or not but their successor in the role of Diana, Elizabeth Debicki knew where her role was: both of her Emmy nominations and her win last year were in Supporting Actress.

Over the last couple of years I’ve had my own questions about some of the potential nominated dramas. Yellowjackets, which I will be supporting for nominees in the months to come, has always put me in a quandary. Melanie Lynskey has always been nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama but now that I think about it, she faces some of the issues that really every performer in the cast does. With the show split in two timelines what counts as  a lead role and what’s supporting? Other award shows have done nothing to clarify this: Christina Ricci has been nominated for Supporting Actress and Lynskey has been nominated as a lead even though they more or less have the same amount of screen time every season.

The 2023 Astras, which I relied on the most for so many things, didn’t clear things up. Juliette Lewis was nominated for Best Actress for playing Natalie as an adult but Sophie Thatcher was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for playing Natalie as a teenager. Christina Ricci was nominated for Best Supporting Actress even though she appeared in every episode whereas Lauren Ambrose was nominated though she only appeared in six. And Elijah Wood, who wasn’t even a regular, was nominated as Supporting Actor in a Drama. This is the opposite of helpful.

And this year’s nominations haven’t exactly illuminated things in certain categories. In 2023 Rufus Sewell was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his work as Hal Wyler in The Diplomat by the Critics’ Choice Awards. This year he has been nominated as Best Actor in a Drama by the Critics’ Choice Awards. (He lost both times by the way.) Even with Pascal’s presence questionable, this is already a category filled with formidable contenders so Sewell may very well want to consider submitting for Outstanding Supporting Actor this time around.

I don’t pretend to be the final arbiter on what makes a lead performance and what makes a supporting performance. A lot of the times the series make it very clear and in many of the major nominees for drama I expect it to be (Slow Horses, Severance, The Day of the Jackal) But in some series which are truly ensembles it’s a grey area and it always causes headaches. (I suspect this is the problem the actors in Game of Thrones had to deal with and that House of the Dragon will face the same issues.)

We’ll have to wait and see to figure out what Pascal chooses to do. But this is a complex matter and I intend to revisit it again for both comedies and ensembles the closer we get to nominations. This isn’t an issue that can be resolved either easily or even at all. But it is a question that television is going to have to reckon in with more and more and it’s good that the Emmys are trying to set some guidelines, however arbitrary some may seem to be.

 

How Hollywood's Behavior Since November Proves Why The Democrats Must Cut Ties With Them For The Future of the Party

 

On Sunday in my article on Alex Gibney’s The Dark Money Game I made it clear that the story of the film and the man who made the film illustrated the problems between both sides. I think I’d better reemphasize it before we begin.

To be sure there’s no confusion, I completely agree that the actions that the Republican party and so many aspects of the conservative movement in the last half-century go against so much of what America should stand for. But where I differ from so many of my leftist colleagues here and elsewhere is that the conservative movement at every part of it what it did understood what it needed to do to realize its vision in a way that the progressive movement has never realized.

The electoral strategy of Republican candidates from Richard Nixon onward, the strategies of Newt Gingrich in the House and Mitch McConnell in the Senate, the establishment of organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist society, along with the rise of conservative media on every level, has been based on a fundamental understanding of the people behind it. In order to  get their racist, misogynistic, homophobic agenda policy they had to at the basic level convince a significant portion of  electorate it was in their best interest. This meant at every level organizing politically to get the mandates they needed in every branch of the government to do what they needed. This took a lot of planning, patience and willingness to play the long game but they had a goal in mind and they spent all of their effort realizing it.

By contrast during this exact same period of time, when theoretically all of these avenues were just as available to those with a progressive agenda, the left basically concentrated its energy in the fields of academia, liberal journals, activist movements and in certain case winning over the minds of certain members of Hollywood – in short every field but the political one. Furthermore this battle was essentially being waged for completely different kinds of combatants. The left went for the college educated, the right went for those who couldn’t get beyond high school. The left’s battle was waged entirely in the urban scene, the right the rural scene. It wasn’t even being waged in the same states as we all know; the left has concentrates its battles on the coasts; the right has waged in the South and middle America.

And conveniently eliminated from so many histories of this period is the fact at nearly every level it was far more effective for the right then the left. Starting in 1968, the Republicans won five out of six Presidential elections with four of them massing over 400 electoral votes for the winning candidate. When Bill Clinton won in 1992, just two years later the Republicans took control of both houses of Congress and would hold them for a dozen years, their longest stretch since before the Great Depression. During the 21^st century the Republicans have controlled the House of Representative for three stretches totaling 16 years (until at least 2026 with the most recent) and the Senate has been going increasingly Republican over the last fourteen.

The decision for the Democrats to embrace the causes of civil rights and equality was the morally right decision. But it has come with a huge political cost. They have not won the majority of the white working class voter since 1964 and in the last election Kamala Harris carried just over a third of that. Rural America has been moving further away from Democrats ever since the narrative of flyover country and MAGA took place; in 2024 Harris carried just eight percent of rural America. And as we’ve seen with recent elections, so many of the minority coalitions that the Democrats have needed to win just to be competitive across the board have been increasingly trending Republican in recent elections. For the Democrat party the only way forward is to try and meet the voters where they are clearly going.

The left, not surprisingly, doesn’t see it that way. As they increasingly have made clear in their scholarly essays the answer to the problems Democrats face is the answer to every single question on policy, elections or anything else. They have to go more to the left. No matter how many times these positions end up costing Democrats votes and cementing the Republican hold on power they simply shrug it off. They have the usual catalog of excuses but they basically come down to the same position they’ve always had: we are absolutely right and anyone who doesn’t agree with us is part of the problem.

For a group of people who are very proud of how successful and educated they are compared to the idiotic Republicans (who have gone to the same universities they have) the left’s inability to see that their strategy isn’t working – not just for them but is endangering America as a whole – has been an unindicted co-conspirator in the rise of MAGA and the conservative movement has a whole. At its core is the simple fact that has been true about the left since the days of abolition and continuing to this day: they see the world through a moral lens and people must do the right thing even if there’s no gain for them to do so. They could have done everything that they excoriate the far right from doing but the main reason they didn’t is because that would have required long-term planning, willingness to make compromise short-term to achieve their goals and most importantly winning over a certain part of the electorate. The left would have to play politics which, like everything else in society, is beneath them. The right has in a sense managed its gains by willing to play a game of checkers with its voters and the left has made it clear that they won’t even bother to play chess with those people unless they learn it themselves.

And it’s clear just six months after Trump’s return to the White House that when it comes to a certain group of the left – Hollywood – they refuse to acknowledge that they’ve failed. They have essentially resumed the strategy – if you could call it that – that they’ve been using for the past ten years. They have engaged in symbolic gestures – Shonda Rhimes resigning from the Kennedy Center is the most prominent example; left the country entirely – Rosie O’Donnell, having engaged in a twenty year feud with Trump has fled to Ireland, no doubt serving as a shining beacon to all the members of the LGBTQ+ community who can’t afford to; attacking the administration on late night comedy (I’ve written about that extensively) and continuing to vilify those who even consider such things as trying to acknowledge that their approach is the wrong one, despite the fact it has clearly not been working.

In a sense the fact that Hollywood has turned on Bill Maher because of his White House visit was inevitable. Because let’s not kid ourselves, he could have come back and told everybody that Trump was everything that the world had been saying and he would still have been vilified for it by that same circle because he chose to go. This has been the biggest blind spot of the left historically and the one contradiction they have never gotten past.

The only way to deal with any member of the GOP, well before Trump’s run but especially now, is to dehumanize them completely. They can’t appear on mainstream media because that gives them a voice and Fox News, which is the only place they can appear on, should be banned from all networks. The mainstream’s media must abandon objectivity covering Trump but by telling ‘the truth about him’ his most devoted followers will reject it and it only confirms what the left already knows. And even those Republicans who have served with Trump and choose to become part of the fight against him are only valuable because they’ve seen the light. It doesn’t undue their years of being Republican and conservative; they can only be trusted for the moment. Left unsaid of so much of the left’s acceptance of the Cheney’s and Romney’s of the party is the fact they are only a temporary allies to be discarded when the eventual victory comes.

Now I’ve never liked Bill Maher as a comedian and I’ve never been thrilled about his politics. But having recently done a series on the role of Late Night in the era of Trump, I have a grudging respect for Maher. Because alone among late night comedians he is the only host who is trying to play by the old rules of comedy: You make fun of everybody in power and when the other side wins, you make fun of them equally. He has called the right on its bullshit but he has frequently pushed back against the left, which as they have made clear you don’t do. And alone among his ilk he is the only late night host who invites either conservative media personalities or Republican official on his show. The fact that he chooses to chew them out as much as the Democrats he invites is usually ignored by those on the left who feel that should not be giving a voice.

And it is worth noting that as early as spring of 2022 he acknowledged that the left’s ideology and its refusal to acknowledge its reality had always been the Democratic Party’s biggest problem with white working class voters. I prominently dismissed this in one of my articles; now it has the portent of prophecy.

No matter how many times Maher has made it clear he is not now nor will ever be a Republican – something he doubled down on the week before his White House visit -  during the Biden administration in particular he was increasingly viewed as a Republican. I grant you that his own routines certainly have the sound of the Fox News viewer but it also reflects in a sense how much the traditional late night viewer and the left has shifted. In fact Maher himself reflected on that last fall in a segment that seems particularly pertinent. It had to do with Robert F. Kennedy’s wife and I’ll let him do the same

“His wife is Cheryl Hines, who Larry David was quoted describing as ‘the best person I ever met, the one person in Hollywood who doesn’t have a single enemy. Well, now she does…because she didn’t throw her husband under the bus when her husband made a decision about something, which she’s made plain she disagrees with.

After posting  Whitford’s quote:

“Well, you know what I think is not gutsy? Mansplaining to a woman – but of course, not to her face – how she should sacrifice her marriage, all so you could read something on Twitter that met with your approval…There’s an ugliness to the left they never used to have…Going after the wife, even the mafia doesn’t do that. In theory, liberals are compassionate. In practice, this guy can’t even understand one of the most basic dilemmas common to all humans – that when you’re married, sometimes you have to swallow some shit.”

 

In keeping with the left’s attitude the magazine Salon took more objection to Maher’s position than anything Whitford said or did. The loyalty that he’s in defense of is met with the adjective ‘apparently’. You can see in the article that they seem to hold Maher in contempt for taking Hines’s side (they don’t even print Whitford’s tweet, which is typical).

 

Maher then quotes Obama for his speech at the convention where he critiqued the idea that the only way to ‘win’ was to ‘scold and shame and out-yell the other side.”

 

Bradley, did you go to the bathroom or something when that came on?” Maher says. “Because it’s almost like he was talking to you by name.”

 

Maher acknowledges all of how Trump drives people insane, his relationship with Whitford saying he used to know him: “He wasn’t this guy.” And in a note of more compassion than Whitford or social media shows Hines he said: “He may relish writing Cheryl Hines off; I’m not writing him off.”

Now I don’t know what Larry David thought during this same period about what the woman who had been on Curb Your Enthusiasm in some form for nearly a quarter of a century was doing now. I don’t know if he said anything to defend Hines during this period or now. But considering that this week David has written an op-ed comparing Maher’s visit to the White House to a visit with Adolph Hitler, it is clear that he has by doing so, once again, proving Maher’s thesis when he was defending Hines.

I imagine, for the record, it’s probably been incredibly hard for Hines during this same period. I also know that her friends in Hollywood have no doubt shunned her for not doing the right thing, which in their minds is going to a White House function with a suicide vest under her clothes and detonating it at the appropriate time. That is a very extreme view which I don’t support at all – but given the left’s attitude towards everybody who isn’t them they’ve no doubt been thinking every single person who’s ever worked for Trump at any point can only redeem their existence by doing so. That is the ugliness Maher talked about and they’ve only doubled down on it since.

Now if you’re looking at me to provide a strategy to defeat the MAGA movement, I’ve basically written in this article. But it is a strategy for the Democrats. And part of that strategy – which I see signs that they are coming to realize is one they must accept – is to permanently excise the worst parts of the far left. Minimizing the role of Hollywood to all but the fundraising level would be an excellent first step.

Of all the so called allies among the Democrats that they’ve made during this period they have helped the party the least and done the most damage to it. In temperament and exclusionary attitude they represent the worst part of extremist parts of politics and unlike those of the far right, there is no electoral gain to be found by having them be the voice of the party – if anything, they have taken votes away from the Democrats. Their voices are as loud, strident and lecturing as the right’s can be but the only people they convince to vote are the ones who already agree with them and they push away far more. And the hypocrisy of trying to argue against the evil of the 1 percent being made by members of the ten percent is one of the few moral high points the Republicans have had during my lifetime. People like Oprah and Shona Rhimes may be the same color as the majority of the people in states like Mississippi and Alabama but in terms of wealth and status they have much more in common with the Trump’s of the world and we can’t pretend that hasn’t been a drag on the Democratic brand.

I could argue that this should be a ‘New Rule’ but in fact it’s one of the oldest ones in politics, one that the Democrats seem to have forgotten. So I’ll close with this: the Democrats need to cut Hollywood lose. We have won without them, and we can again.

 

 

 

This Is Jeopardy! Battle of The Decades Invitees Prospectus, Part 2: The 1990s

 

 

First some ground rules before we officially begin. As with the 2000s, the 1990s is a slight misnomer as it covered the period from 1994-2003.

Second of the fifteen players who were invited back, aside from Brad Rutter, four of them have been invited back in previous Invitationals. Pam Mueller was invited in 2024 and this year Robin Carroll, Rachael Schwartz and Shane Whitlock all returned.

Three other players Babu Srinivasan, Eddie Timanus and Bob Harris will be included in another article in this series which I’ll deal with later. For similar reasons Dan Melia will not be recounted here. That leaves us with six Jeopardy greats, none of whom have been invited back since 2014 and all of whom have the kind of records both in their original appearances and ‘post-season’ play to be brought back.

Finally all six of these players are products of the era of the five-game limit on their wins and with one exception, all of them played during the period between 1984-2001 in which the dollar figures in the Jeopardy round ranged from $100-$500 and in Double Jeopardy were $200-1000. Furthermore while there are four Tournament of Champions winners here, all but two of them played in the era where the grand prize was $100,000. As a result much of their record will appear low compared to those used to the kind of play we’ve had over the last decade. All of them rank among the all-time greats in regards to era and post-season play, all of which are considerable.

 

DAVE ABBOTT

I have no real memory of Dave’s original run in June of 1998, likely because I was getting ready to start college in a few months’ time. His total of $68,599 was the highest amount won of all fifteen participants in the 1999 Tournament of Champions. I do, however, remember his appearance in the Tournament of Champions not only because I recorded it but I was watching it with my father as we still do. It was one of the few times I remember a player going into Game 1 in third place, coming back to win the entire Tournament something that Alex Trebek frequently said happened but I rarely have seen occur.

As it was Game 2 was a close match between him J.J. Todor and Juliet Maly and was decided by Final Jeopardy. I have never forgotten that question. The category was U.S. INDUSTRIES: “Around 1850 it used a fleet of over 700 ships; by 1930 this U.S. industry was practically defunct.” Dave knew it and I didn’t: “What is whaling?” That won him $100,000.

Dave would be invited back to both the Ultimate Tournament of Champions in 2005 and the Battle of the Decades in 2014. In both of his appearance he would go into Final Jeopardy with the lead and end up losing because he was the only player to respond incorrectly. I’ll withhold how it went in the Battle of the Decades because it affects later entrants but I’ll deal with the UTC here.

In his first round appearance he essentially spent almost the whole game ahead of both Mark Born and Paul Gutowski. Then came Final Jeopardy. The category was FAMOUS PLACES: “The appearance of this famous site gave England its old name of Albion. Both Mark and Paul knew the correct response: “What are the White Cliffs of Dover?” (As Alex reminded us it is from Albion we get words such as ‘alba’ and albino. Dave did not look happy because he wrote down: “What is Stonehenge?” In both cases he went home with $5000.

I think it’s well past time for Dave to return.

 

JILL BUNZENDAHL CHIMKA

Alone among the invitees to the Battle of the Decades: The 1990s Jill was the only participant who I had no prior memory of in her original appearance. Furthermore I also had no memory of her from a previous super-tournament such as the UTC. It was not until I did a dive into the history of Jeopardy for a book I was trying to write that I realized why she was included.

In May of 2002 Jill won four games and $85,099. So what, I said initially? What I didn’t know until a long search was that Jill had in her appearance broken the  record for most money in their original run won by a female contestant set by Amy Fine in 1994 when she won $72,803 in five games. (The dollar figures had been doubled in November of 2001.).

Jill managed to win in her quarterfinal appearance in the 2003 Tournament of Champions in large part because she was one of the few players in the quarterfinals to respond correctly in Final Jeopardy in her appearance. She ended up losing to Mark Dawson in her semi-final appearance and went home with $10,000.

Unfortunately she ended up facing Brad Rutter in her first round appearance and as was unfortunately the case for nearly everybody who ran up against Brad Rutter over the years things went badly. In her case she had the dubious distinction of being the only player in the entire first round of the Battle of the Decades to be unable to compete in Final Jeopardy at the end of the Double Jeopardy round. I think its well past time she got a chance for redemption.

 

MARK DAWSON

Mark’s original run on Jeopardy is importantly symbolic as he was one of the last players who, upon winning five games, would receive a fancy sports car. And his last show in his original run was famously Alex Trebek’s last show with a mustache. (Both of these facts Alex pointed out when Mark returned for the Battle of The Decades.) Mark was also significant because he was the first winner of the Tournament of Champions when the grand prize went from $100,000 to $250,000.

Mark’s run took place two months before the dollar figures were doubled, so his five day total of $52,599 is superficially not that impressive. Most of participants in the 2003 Tournament of Champions had done so and in fact in the finals of that year’s Tournament he faced off against Brian Weikle, who one month earlier had set both the new one-day record and five day record for money won on Jeopardy. (His total of $149,200 is impressive even today; so far this season not a single Tournament of Champions qualifier has won that much.) Nevertheless, at the end of Game 1 of the Final Mark was ahead of both him and Eric Floyd because he had been the only player to give a correct response in Final Jeopardy.

The category was GOVERNORS: “In 1967 she became the first woman governor of a state east of the Mississippi River.” Mark, who is a native of Georgia, might have had an edge in knowing that this clue referred to Lurleen Wallace.

In Game 2 Brian led the entire way through but Mark was still close at the end of Double Jeopardy. It came down to Final Jeopardy. The category was DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE SIGNERS. “On the list of the signers, 2 of the 3 last names that appear twice.” All three players had one combination of the last names: Adams, Lee and Morris. Mark won in part because Brian may have miscalculated on how much to wager on Final Jeopardy but it takes nothing away from his effort.

Mark reappeared on Jeopardy two years later in the Ultimate Tournament of Champions. He did well in the first round, winning $23,650 but poorly in the second and was eliminated by Lan Djang, who I’ll talk about later.

In his match against Dave Abbott and Claudia Perry Mark was frequently in the lead and found all three Daily Doubles. He turned out to be his own worst enemy getting all three wrong which allowed Dave to pass him in the final clues of Double Jeopardy. Still he  was in a strong second with $13,600 to Dave’s $16,200.

It came down to Final Jeopardy. The category was PULITZER PRIZE WINNING AUTHORS. “He’s the most recent winner of 2 Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction, winning in 1982 and 1991 for books in the same series.” Mark knew the answer: “Who is John Updike?” (for his series on Rabbit Angstrom). Dave, however, thought it was John Le Carre (not a bad guess) and wagered too much.

Mark faced off against Chuck Forrest from the 1980s and Colby Burnett from the 2000s in the last quarterfinal game. It was by far the closest and evenly fought with all three players finished with impressive scores: Mark was in third with $10,600, Colby was next with $11,800, Chuck led with $14,400.

The Final Jeopardy was one of the all time killers. The category was FAMOUS BOOKS: “It was published March 26, 1830; a very popular work with the same name premiered March 24, 2011. As Alex said after the lights came up: “The fellows are not looking happy.” With good reason. No one (certainly not me at home) was thinking of The Book of Mormon. All wagered cautiously on Final Jeopardy but Mark was the only one who didn’t advance to the semi-finals. He went home with $10,000. Since Chuck and Colby were invited back in the first Invitational I’d say it’s past time.

 

MIKE DUPEE

Mike’s original run stretches all the way back to March of 1996. His five game total of $66,401 was the second highest amount won by any participant in the 1996 Tournament of Champions. And just getting to the finals was far from easy. He just won his quarter-final match and was very lucky to get past College Champion Shane Whitlock in the semi-finals. That said in the finals he was the first player I ever saw to have locked up the Tournament of Champions by the end of Double Jeopardy in the second game, a rarity which I’ve only seen happen five times while watching a Tournament of Champions in my lifetime.

He used his experience to write the best-selling book How to Get On Jeopardy and Win!, one of the authoritative books on the show. Then in the UTC he continued to prove it, running away with his first round victory and then facing off against Robert Slaven and Eugene Finerman in one of the best Jeopardy matches I’d seen to that point in my viewing experience. He led through the entire game, finishing Double Jeopardy with $21,700 to Eugene’s $13,200 and Robert’s $11,200. And then, due to circumstances that can only happen on Jeopardy, he lost (I’ll go into that in a later entry.) His total winnings were $32,500.

He had the misfortune of drawing Brad Rutter in Round 1 – seemingly. In fact Mike was one of the few players in Jeopardy history in a long time to give Brad a run for his money. It was only because Brad responded correctly on the very last clue of the game that he finished with $30,600 to Robert’s $14,300. And that clue was critical because of how Final Jeopardy went.

The category was BIBLICAL NAMES: “In Genesis 4 this name is chosen because God “hath appointed me another seed.” Mike knew the correct name: “What is Seth?” Brad, however, wrote down Ishmael. Brad knew how lucky he was to have won that day.

Considering that Ken has written his share of books as well, I imagine Mike and he would have a lot to talk about.

 

RYAN ‘FRITZ’ HOLZNAGEL

First of all, Ryan Holznagel used the former name in his original appearance, his Tournament of Champions appearance and his appearance in the Ultimate Tournament of Champions. For some reason in the Battle of The Decades he used Fritz and we never got to learn why.

Nor was that the oddest thing about Ryan’s play. Even in his original run waay back in November of 1994 Ryan had the habit of having strange wagers in Final Jeopardy. In his first game he won with $12,173. In his third game he won with $18,228. In win number 4, he was incorrect in Final Jeopardy so he won with $6112.

So far he seems like the 1990s version of James Holzhauer. That trend actually continued because in the Tournament of Champions, not just in Final Jeopardy but in the Daily Doubles. Getting won in Game 2 he chose to wager $1111. Ryan seemed to know he was entering uncharted territory – he actually asked Alex if that was possible before he did it. (Did James Holzhauer watch Ryan do this growing up?) He won the Tournament of Champions by the way.

It now looks as if Ryan has a predilection for wagering in multiples either of $1111 or $111. He did so in the UTC on Daily Doubles on two occasion; the latter time wagering $2222. He managed to win his first round game but narrowly lost the second.

Then in his Battle of the Decades appearance he leaned in hard to this narrative. On his Daily Double in the Jeopardy round, he wagered $1111. When he found the Daily Double in Double Jeopardy he wagered $777.

Ryan was always fun to watch no matter when he played, not just because of the math but because he had a good back and forth with Alex. On the latter Daily Double he said: “I’m not crazy about this category.” Alex in mock offense: “Well, I’m sorry! I’ll report that to our writers.” None of this made Ryan anywhere as brusque as Holzhauer often appeared to me; he was always affable and good-humored. That’s another reason I’d like him back – as well as to know – why Fritz?

 

CLAUDIA PERRY

Sadly Claudia has the burden of being one of the few women of color – really any minority player of any type – to be successful during much of the Trebek era overall. I suspect, though I can’t say for sure, she may have been brought back for Tournaments less because of her ability (she was a great player) but perhaps due to charges of racism the show sporadically and occasionally faced with the never-ended criticism of the fact that so many of its champions were white men. (This trend didn’t begin to shift until at least the 2010s, sadly.)

It's a pity because Claudia was one of the best players in the pre Ken Jennings era. Her run in January of 1997 of four wins and $45,303 was still a superb showing for that season. She played superbly in her quarterfinal match and ended up being defeated by Dan Melia, who ended up winning the 1998 Tournament of Champions that same year.

She was invited back to the participate in the Million Dollar Masters and in her quarterfinal match she played brilliantly against Brad Rutter before earning a wild card berth and spent much of the semi-final ahead of both Chuck Forrest and Bob Verini before the last Daily Double dropped her into third. She was also the beating heart of that Tournament as much fun to watch play as being a great player, before leaving with $25,000.

She was invited back to participated in the Battle of the Decades against two more Tournament of Champions winners: Dave Abbott and Mark Dawson. She had moments of brilliance but spent most of the game in a distant third. She did get Final Jeopardy right but Mark’s response negated that and she went home with $5000.

Claudia worked in journalism during the 1990s, both pop music and sports copy editing and she had the ability to tell fascinating stories in her returns to the show. In her last appearance she said she used her winnings to spend her fiftieth birthday in Antarctica “because one should always spend a milestone birthday surrounded by penguins.” If nothing else I’d like to hear a story about how she spent her sixtieth birthday.

In the last article in this particular series I will deal with those contenders from the 1980s who I think should still return.