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Loki: If You, Could Save Time, In A Battle...

Not every attempt at comic book TV can be a home run hit out of the park... but I get that I'm going to look contrarian saying that Disney/Marvel's Loki has turned out to be the weak link of series programming by the company thus far.

From a geeky, comic book standpoint, the yea-sayers are probably right: Loki laid the groundwork for much of what's to come in the MCU, and those developments were compelling and intriguing to consider. But to those defenders I would confidently respond... "okay, then why was Loki mostly a long, talky dud?"

While previous series laid ever more tantalizing clues and foreshadowing as they went, week to week, Loki was a set up in search of a promising result. It may be interesting to imagine what the end of time looks like... Loki is the sad reminder that you may be really, really disappointed by what you find when you get there.

Over and over, the series set up promising pot machinations only to stall: when our wayward God of Mischief leapt through time and space to escape his captors... he wound up on a dying moon where the only outcome was certain death. When he cheated that ending (in a total Deus Ex Machina where he wasn't even the Deus), we were left floundering in yet more bureaucratic hell while...zzzz... Excuse me, where were we again? On the dead planet at the end of time? Does this set come only in grey?

Loki was exhausting. Based on the "now what" implications of Loki making off with the Tesseract (again) in the time traveling part of Avengers Endgame (also a bit of a dud), the series started promisingly enough with the introduction of the Time Variance Authority (TVA) policing the "variants" who do something or take things that impede the orderly flow of time itself. Loki - or many Lokis - do this a lot. That's interesting. So is the TVA itself - a homage to seventies era imagery of endless bureaucracy, wood paneled, brutalist architecture, endless files, life in constant triplicate (the show homages everything from A Clockwork Orange to Brazil to Hitchhiker's).

The trouble is... where to go? Loki quickly sets up the existence of an even more remote agent of chaos, a variant who is upsetting timelines in ways that cannot be easily mended. This turns out to be another, female, version of a Loki, chased by TVA authorities across multiple time and landscapes. Also promising. But once we meet this young woman... things gradually stall. What a first looked like thrills and chills and wild adventures become more and more talky set pieces musing on the nature of love and loss, free will vs. determinism and... well, lots of other stuff that I started to just tune out.

Which is unfortunate. I wanted to like Loki, and as with all the Marvel series, I do think it's smart and well executed, even as a talky often pointless existentialist rumination on the nature of free will. But that doesn't make it great, and we should hold Loki, as with all shows, to some standard set of expectations. And there, really, Loki just doesn't meet the imaginative brilliance of Wandavision or the deft weaving of contemporary politics, racial awareness and heroism at pay in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. Loki has grander ambitions. And, grandly, it swings hard and misses. A for Effort. C for execution.

Filled with top flight performances - Tom HIddleston's Loki is brilliantly complex, ably abetted by Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Wunmi Mosaku (the casting in the MCU is really off the charts, these days). Sophia Di Martino and several of the other Lokis are fun, but the effect of so many shades of one persona is... wearying. Jonathan Martin provides some zip towards the final proceedings... but getting there is still a bit of a slog.

Visually, too, Loki is a bit of a letdown. As those sets devolve into ever murkier browns and greys and blacks, the murk just takes hold and sludges up what had been fairly brisk pacing. And tonally, I think the show never quite found the - yes, hard to find - comic book sweet spot between seriousness and humorous hooey. Not Batman level drudge, but Loki spends considerable time being a bit of a downer. You can't just occasionally bring up jet skis to get around the fact that episode after episode of Loki boils down to 2-3 characters expositioning one another to near death. And that's just a preventable, unforced writing trap that no one, I think, was watching out for.

Tp their credit, Marvel and the Loki team are the first to get a Season 2 and I say... good. Take a minute, work out the kinks, and deliver on the promise that lurks, so sweetly, at the edges of this talky, murky letdown. Give us a Loki who jumps into action! A story that's compelling! Time travel that's interesting! I know you got this. But you don't get an A for snoozy. Not yet.

Halston: The Boys In The Bland

My best friend suggested that it's possible Ryan Murphy was put here to destroy all our icons, but I'll be slightly more charitable. Halston means well - unlike, say, Glee - but the combination of Murphy's expansive deal with Netflix and his usual hangups and tics when it comes to storytelling lay waste to what clearly could have been a dazzling, messy epic of gay life in the seventies.

Halston is, of course, one of fashion's great stories of success and self destruction, played out against the backdrop of Studio 54, the cocaine years, and too much too soon careers. Originally a hat designer much loved by the ladies who lunch crowd, Halston had to reinvent himself as hats fell out of favor in the mid sixties, and he launched a high end fashion line noted for his easy, breezy use of flowing fabric and a keen eye for distilling the key elements of American style. I remember the first time I saw Halstons at the Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum in New York - what amazed was not the sense of their time, the height of seventies style, but the way most of them could have been taken out of a closet and worn today without a second thought.

It's very obvious that part of what's missing in Halston is just that sense of the clothes. The show keeps sort of showing them, as if somewhere, in a room just off camera, there's a collection of stunning clothes we've only been allowed to glance at. It's frustrating, and eventually exasperating - especially in key moments like the famous "Versailles Show" of 1973 - that what was boldly beautiful about Halston's work is mostly merely sketched at.

Yet the other frustrating element is that if this was then meant to be a juicy, dishy tell all of famous messes and their excessive ways, the series only sketches at that, as well. Halstoin swans around a lonely, oddly depopulated Manhattan that lacks grit or glamour or a sense of the city's energy, and that's just deadly for the story of someone who clawed his way to the top of New York's ultimate importance. Wearing Halston, knowing Halston, being Halston... it's hard to understate how off the wall his celebrity as a fashion icon was... and yet, somehow, that's what Murphy manages to pull off.

And all of that makes what works here all the more puzzling. Halston's genuine closeness to Liza Minnelli is beautifully portrayed, as is Liza's intelligence and sense of herself. Halston's ability to see women, and to get what they're looking for in clothes and style is instinctive and that clearly comes across. But too often the film both madly name drops and yet not enough. Where's Diana Vreeland? Grace MIrabella? Why is Eleanor Lambert coyly half revealed when every fashion person on earth will love the character on display here? why two mentions of Jackie O and then... nothing?

Meanwhile, what could and should be a frank assessment of drugs and louche behavior is just... wasted. Too often Halston's descent into addiction has the feel of the kind of music biopic lampooned in the Dewey Cox Story: some man of color Halston is having sex with pulls out poppers or coke... and off he goes. Clearly Halston's tastes were well established, but it's hardly surprising that more white gay men trying to make sense of Halston's dark skinned boyfriends comes off as pretty much as problematic as it could possibly be.

None of which is to fault the performers Krysta Rodriguez' Liza is indeed a delight, Rebecca Dayan's Elsa Peretti floats around the edges of scenes like any good Italian heiress of the seventies would. Halston's various louche bedmates are fine. And Ewan McGregor? It's not the first time he's played a toppy (not necessarily bossy) bottom - that would be Todd Haynes' lovely Velvet Underground, where he finishes the film getting railed by Christian Bale on a London rooftop - but I sure hope the intimacy coach made sure he had a safe word here in Halston. I've rarely worried so much for a star in sex scene after sex scene - getting pounded never looked so, well, pounding, and God knows, Murphy should know enough about that. To his credit McGregor goes balls to the wall (no, literally) on playing Halston at every level, but it's hard when a key role like this is so emotionally cut off from himself that it becomes hard to know what's going on in side his head at all. A better film wouldn't leave us wondering, if only by distracting with endless falderal, a party that seems to neither start nor end. Because that's what the seventies were, and the film just fails at it, utterly.

I suspect Murphy tried to impose all the lessons learned from remaking The Boys in the Band - itself a reminder that, armed with solid material, this Netflix deal gives Murphy room to fly - and on the one hand he's right: Halston, too, is a stunted boy from a deeply repressed background covering it up with style, wit and a lot of drugs and sex in pre and post Stonewall realities.  The trouble is, you can't tell Halston's story and mistake the former for the latter... that is, the story needs a lot of style and drugs and sex... and probably less psychologizing about What Made Him That Way. Halston - which could yes, use a lot less of people walking into rooms saying "Halston" - takes the racy, sexy undercurrent that both defined the seventies and the stylist who dressed it, and trades it for a morality tragedy of lonely people looking to connect. As Halston - or Steve Rubell or Liza or any number of seventies icons would say - "how boring." And, well, they had a point.

Then, too, a crowded messy orgy of a superstar existence is probably the absolutely wrong thing to expect to tell well when filming into the teeth of the pandemic. One wonders why launch a project like Halston right now, really, at all. And still, the bigger struggle of a Halston is when and how someone will step in and give Murphy the kind of feedback he needs to balance his ambitions in ways that deal more constructively with his limitations as a storyteller and producer. Big, beautiful, yet emotionally inert and off the mark, almost anyone can see what Halston lacks... except apparently, the person making it.

Friday Favorite: WandaVision

Damn you, Disney Plus.

I held out as long as I could, I tried... and tried. But the combination of a fairly (let's not overstate it) reasonable add on offer from Hulu combined with...well, this program, finally did me in.

Whatever objections I may have to centralizing Disney's monopolistic hold on content, there's no denying the potency of the MCU, aka Marvel Cinematic Universe. And no single film or show underscores the possibilities of their creative potency like WandaVision.

Set in the aftermath of Avengers Infinity War and Endgame, we are confronted in this series by the grief of Wanda Maximoff, she being on of the Sokovian twins originally introduced in Age of Ultron. Wanda's mix of telekinetic powers and telepathy seemed incredibly strong, but WandaVision takes those powers to another level entirely. In her grief at losing Vision (the AI Jarvis made flesh in Ultron), Wanda puts a hazy bubble around a small New Jersey town and turns it into a sitcom haven where she can hide from reality.

This is the real genius of WandaVision: taking the television situation comedy genre of the second half of the twentieth century and using it as a leitmotif for drama, grief and so much more. Initially, we see little more than the literal sitcom Wanda wants to create; but with each episode's devolving iteration, cracks and tears in the fantasy begin to emerge. For one thing, Wanda's powers aren't strong enough or developed enough to sustain her total control. For another, since she's making things up as she goes, she runs into the limits of her own imaginations. But mostly, since she's mostly running on the pure emotion of grief, she's really not making thought out or rational choices.

In the context of the sitcoms, all of this is genius; from crossing The Dick Van Dyke Show with Bewitched to turning the move to color tv into a psychodrama to deconstructing the genre via Malcolm in the Middle and Modern Family... WandaVision crosses sitcom tropes with those momentary glimpses of real feeling, all with comic book twists. Meanwhile, outside Wanda's bubble, the real world is trying to figure out whether she's an uncontrolled danger or  someone to be reasoned with. And all that's before we discover that a character within the bubble is much more than she appears to be.

Real Marvel junkies are also, of course, to a series that redefines "Easter Egg" - symbols, clues and visual cues abound. Even watching the Easter Egg dissection videos on YouTube (they are numerous, but I recommend Nerdist), you don't fully grasp the brilliance on display. Eminently watchable and rewatchable, WandaVision yields up fresh insights on repeated viewings, as only great art really can.

Much of what's here hangs on the considerable talents of the cast, as the show taps the skills of Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda and Paul Bettany's Vision in ways that the Avengers series just left on the table. Aided by tv veterans like Debra Jo Rupp and Emma Caulfield and Kat Dennings they can hardly go wrong. But there's also Kathryn Hahn burnishing her scene stealing rep and Teyonah Parris and Randall Park to remind us that the gift of the MCU is an incredibly deep bench. There just isn't a performance misstep in the cast. But the real credit for seeing all of this is Jac Schaeffer, series creator and head writer, ably abetted by Matt Shakman, the show's lead director and himself a veteran of sitcoms as a child actor.

At it's best - in this sense, as a cohesive, end to end well told story - WandaVision shows both what the MCU can do when allowed to open out in a thought through long form series, and a way of thinking differently about what comic book sensibilities bring to other media... much the same way, actually, Watchmen recently did for HBO. Both, too, are reminders that thinking differently about casting is as much about thinking about telling better stories in different ways as it is looking for fresh approaches to representation.  From Regina King to Randall Park to Teyonah Paris and so many others in both shows - we will get better richer performances from every performer when they're challenged. Even just on the visceral level of delivering a wildly entertaining, captivating, leave em wanting more spectacle... WandaVision more than delivers. This is just a good compelling watch as much as anything. And it's remarkable how special and rare that actually is.

Real Time: Ain't No Mountain Low Enough

"Did you see that clip from Bill Maher" comes at you one of 2 ways, ways you can usually spot in the tone of the questioner. It's either the "can you believe this" tone of exasperated outrage or the "You've gotta see this" of a Maher loyalist often meant to imply to the questioned that your similar balloon of preconceptions needs bursting. This week, of course, it was "Have you seen Sharon Osbourne" though Maher managed to upstage both her and himself, with a separate bombastic rant about covid hysteria and praise for Ron DeSantis.

Yeah... I'm not here to get into most of that... but maybe I'll circle back to it.

No, what struck me is how I mostly consider Maher an irrelevancy. I've never bothered to review Maher's shows, or even discuss him generally when discussing tv comics; I don't really see the point. Maher's essentially been doing the same shtick for years (even arguably launched a slew of wannabes, like, say, Greg Gutfeld), with about the same effect on the national conversation all along. And me... I don't really see the point.  

But hey, I'll say it: Real Time with Bill Maher is an overhyped, undercooked mess of classy trash - insult humor for the quasi-sophisticate set who enjoy the self satisfied host's air of smug superiority and takedowns of easy marks. Granddad to all the "nothing matters and what if it did" comic takes on politics (oh wait, that's George Carlin), Bill Maher can probably ride this dead horse into retirement... but that's not going to change the pointlessness of it all.

Maher started his career bouncing around the middle of the stand up golden years, back in the eighties when the spots were plentiful and the white guys ruled. Not great, not terrible, Maher has a way with a sly wisecrack or arch putdown and what was, at the time, a "postmodern worldview towards current events" that only afterwards did many of us notice was upscale nihilism in a deadpan dress. In the early nineties, Maher parlayed that shtick into the nascent Comedy Central's late night offering "Politically Incorrect" which, largely by timing, arrived in the right place at the right moment. Skewering "political correctness" in a modest, nobody cares timeslot was a good perch for him and the growing power of cable combined with an appeal to college kids and recent grads lent him an air of Letterman like hipness.

In general, Maher isn't: arriving in the early moments of the Clinton era made him the perfect foil for West Wing era type Kennedyesque hopefulness; it helped that Maher's personal presentation was straight out of the Rat Pack/Playboy After Dark hipsters of a similar era. When Clinton's personal issues blew up into the impeachment saga, Maher rode his act over to parent ABC, and took over their late-late slot (after Nightline), again showing that being a modest success in a nothing timeslot is a kind of stardom. That gig fell through after 9/11 when Maher's screeds against Muslim terrorists crossed from sarcastic to, well, all too real.

And that's Maher's real problem, trying to find that knife edge of just outrageous enough, but not pushing it, insults to the hobby horses of one side or another. Self described as liberal, Maher is just another cynic who is pretty sure they're all liars and crooks, or not cool enough to get what's really going on. He bolstered that act by combining a mix of generally 2nd to 3rd rate celebrities with the kind of political bomb throwers (legendarily, Ann Coulter... but pretty much most of those nineties right wing "author/pundit/columnists" and the eventual lefties who chased after them), tossing a straw man amongst them, and seeing if it caught on fire. Oooh, the outrageousness! Cue the clutched pearls!

Since getting tossed by ABC, it was inevitable that Maher could still find a buyer for what he was selling, and so... there he is, muddling through on HBO as he has for 18 years and counting, still hawking it like an aging stripper who went up market and is now mostly rhinestones and feathers and a lot less skin. Maher skews the proceedings by giving himself both an opening and closing monologue, ten minutes or so with someone usually hawking a policy book or memoir (I'm guessing John Boehner, soon enough), and another 10-12 with 3 "guests": still a Coulter like object, a well meaning but usually clueless Hollywood type and a DC pol looking to ziz up their recognition numbers. No insight, I guarantee you, will be derived.

Trying to get through it is exhausting - I suspect Maher sustains himself, these days, on the fact that John Oliver, while funnier and more topically relevant, comes across as a bit dry and airless. Maher's always been the class clown of the frat party, frantically working the room, pushing any button til he hits, and that desperation does get the job done, eventually and usually. Maher's real Achilles heel is that his monologues, while clever, insist on making him the hero of the joke: he's the one armed with the brilliant insight, the "secret truth," the last thrilling reveal. It's hard being Pithy on Purpose - it is, actually, the opposite of pith. If Maher's occasional flashes of brilliance lead to an indeed meaningful insight, he drowns the good in a sea of "it's meaningful because I say it is." It's too easy, in the end, for Maher to simply play the eternally cynical contrarian, reminding you - the audience - that your real weakness is caring about something, someone, or worse, a principle like justice or ultimate good. Pour yourself a whiskey and listen up kids... the world is going to let you down. See how right I am? QED.

And so Maher tried to double bill his cynical counterprogramming, absolving Osbourne of the racist stench that got her booted from The Talk, while simultaneously piously intoning that only he could serve as arbiter of what is sensible covid health policy and what is overkill. On the latter, he's neither, though the antiscience, anyone can play expert motif is probably more in tune with the times (and why that story mauled Osbourne's, yet again). Osbourne plays to his personal, still Rat Pack-y demeanor as an aging hipster who is weary of the performative wokeness. She may play well to a part of his audience, but Maher's own bad reputation is starting to catch up to him... and Osbourne's presence just underscores how much of Maher's act is long past its freshness date.

Because, ultimately, the "cancel culture" myth is just the "politically correct" bugaboo in new words: a sort of "it's unfair to criticize me for saying this awful outrageous thing when you're just as awful, mostly for being critical." As Politically Incorrect demonstrated, Maher can beat that dead horse all he likes, and make a clever not exactly funny show of it... but ultimately, there's nothing there but dead ends. Real Time may let him take the old material and dress it up like Dick Cavett, but the shtick remains and the act is beyond old. It's not that Maher may get cut, yet again, on his knife edge of outrageousness... it's that the knife is pretty dull these days. Even if the faithful haven't yet caught on to that.

The Best of What We Saw, 2020

Look, we all agree, it's been a weird year; and while no area has been untouched, it is sad and terrifying to realize just how deeply the performing arts has been up ended by a pandemic. Movies, obviously. But live theater, dance, classical music, indeed, pretty much all live performances of music... with performances spaces largely dark, it's been a horrific moment for those who love and care for life upon the wicked stage.

As i started reading year end summaries, I've been caught in up how fruitless and pointless the whole exercise can be: pretending we've had anything like a normal year at the movies, for instance, watching film critics assemble "best of" lists has been both frustrating for us and, well, embarrassing for them. What is that job, again, and why are you doing it?

For my part, I'm not here to clue you into obscure unseen projects; and I am surely not here to pretend Tenet is a "best of the year" when there wasn't really a year to speak of. This list, well, is what I made it... what most of us made -- a year primarily built on TV and streaming services, when we all just had to admit we were moving into a brave, new, somewhat uncharted, not entirely better, world. These, then, are the bright spots I found:

1. The Boys in the Band (Netflix) - I was leery of seeing the Broadway revival, even for it's Glorious Cast of Major Names, too afraid they'd be too easy star turns that lost the beauty of Mart Crowley's nuanced, challenging work. And I avoided the (re) filmed adaptation, at least at first... until my best friend peppered me with questions and I figured I would have to, if only for completeness sake (and theoretical loss of my Gay Card). What I found was... a happy surprise: a still nuanced, well done look at pre Stonewall Gay Life in the Big City, a reminder that new ensembles bring out new insights. Sure, Jim Parsons and Zach Quinto did sound work as the bickering Michael and Harold (and I dreamed of reversing them, just for actorly research), but Matt Bomer turned Donald into a revelation, and Andrew Rannells' Larry was such a fresh rethink of the role that much of the play's final third sang in a way I'd never even noticed. Even Charlie Carver managed to flip The Cowboy into a sweet, unforced charmer. Which isn't to say it was perfect: Robin DeJesus does what he can, but his Emory feels less essential, and Michael Benjamin Washington's Bernard just felt wan. But watch Rannells tear into the second verse of Heatwave for an actor living in a moment he was born to play. A real labor of love, that pays off, handsomely.
2. American Chaos (HBO via Max or Streaming) - Alex Gibney's 4 hour deconstruction of the "Russia Hack" and the story of the 2016 election puts fresh eyes on the familiar and, from everyone I know, brings a kind of clarity that's thrilling and scary and depressing all at once. From the assured lies of the head of Russia's RT to its unraveling of the Internet Research Agency to its revealing presentation of "Fancy Bear" and the Russian Intelligence operations behind it... American Chaos takes complicated topics and gives them the room needed to make sense. And none of your preconceived notions, whatever side you're on, will be quite the same after taking all of this in. For better, and worse.
3. Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich (Netflix) - A multipart unraveling of the "Epstein Story" that makes fools of us all, for ever not seeing, or believing, that Epstein was anything other than simply a monster who molested large numbers of women and trafficked them around the world to other powerful men. Told largely by the women and the law enforcement folks who tried to help them, Filthy Rich is mostly one horrifying and depressing turn after another, but in the end he's dead and they're alive and they have come together to support one another in a way that just has to provide some measure of hope. Lord knows, that's all we have to hold onto.
4. The Undoing (HBO - Max and Streaming) - I'm with those who call it "Big Little Lies on the Upper East Side" and for whatever reason, watching Nicole Kidman swan abut Park Avenue penthouses (and yes, her fabulous coats!) is less immediately aggravating than watching her and others swan about Marin County. Kidman's wealthy psychotherapist heiress struggling to process the possibility that her pediatric oncologist husband might be a cold blooded killer was every bit as fascinating as her Big Little Lies performance, even when the scars are fully internal. Kidman's TV work has been profound, quality acting, ably assisted here by Donald Sutherland's complex portrayal of her patrician father and Hugh Grant turning his charming rakish qualities inside out. 
5. Bosch, Season 6 (Amazon) and Bosch generally (Amazon). Back when "they dropped another season this week" was more main event than pandemic last hope, the penultimate run of Michael Connelly's grizzled LAPD detective was just another great addition to a strong series run, this time unraveling a potential terrorist plot, a perplexing murder and Chief Irving's run for Mayor while allowing a host of other great roles (Honey Chandler, J. Edgar) to shine. And the performances, anchored by Titus Welliver in the role of his lifetime, remain first rate. As does the writing. Pandemic rescreening isn't just recommended. It's required. 
6. The Crown, Season 4 (Netflix) - The Crown crashed into modern memory, up aging its main cast and taking us through the twin poles of the Thatcher years and the Diana years on a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs. On the one side was Gillian Anderson's (brilliant) Thatcher, discovering that her sense of mission hadn't entirely anticipated that she was less enamored of Royal Toffs than her royalist ways suggested, and Diana discovering that her dreams of a fairytale romance didn't square with the hard realities of a deeply dysfunctional family. From Dickie's assassination to Fagan in the Queen's bedroom, the eighties as remembered by The Crown is darker and harder than one we may have gotten on TV at the time. But knowing how we got here, and why this is happening, infuses Season 4 with a knowing sadness that makes the tragedy more heartbreaking - everything happens for a reason, and could hardly have been otherwise. And The Queen soldiers on. 
7. Perry Mason (HBO - Max and Streaming) - HBO's reimagining of Perry Mason's origins is a return to, and squarely in the resurgence of, pulp noir, America's dime store book legacy of postwar darkness and deceit playing in our fervid imaginations. Miles from Raymond Burr's upstanding jurist, Matthew Rhys plays Perry as a down and out drunken PI with a decency streak hard up against the worst of Depression era LA. A brutal child kidnapping/murder, the involvement of an Aimee Semple MacPherson like faith healer and a set of compelling back stories eventually pulls Perry Mason into the stratosphere... but the early episodes are about as grim and dark and unpleasant as Peak TV can get. The payoffs, and the promise of of more, makes the journey altogether worth it.
8. Watchmen (HBO - Max and Streaming) - Damon Lindelof's reimagining of the seminal comic book series (and disastrous feature film) as a fresh way to reexamine the American moment was bravura television, exploding our past and present while blowing up its own preconceived comic conventions, a shining example of how our newfound interest in diversity, fresh casting and telling the unheard stories can result in our best art, not just bromides and easy answers. Regina King is a revelation in a cast full of stars and surprises. And each episode is its own mini movie of masterful storytelling. While it may be sad to see it as a one and done... the series is so ultimately satisfying that there really is nothing left to tell.
9. The Hunt and The HIgh Note (Streaming) - The last film I saw in a theater, and the first film I went out of my way to see opening weekend online have no real connection... except that what's happened to movies, and moviegoing, breaks my heart. The Hunt, the long delayed comic horror pic that offers (very) wry commentary on the Trump era was a surprisingly witty slasher flick, enlivened by strong performances and a series of faintly inspired twists. The HIgh Note offered Tracee Ellis Ross the role she was kind of born to do as an aging pop diva looking to reinvent her career and Dakota Johnson as the musical savant who could do it for her. Glorious visuals, and some inspired musicianship lifted a fairly standard music biz flick into the upper echelons, and a pleasantly surprising plot twist really does make the film sing.
10. The Plot Against America (HBO, Max and Streaming) - Philip Roth's foray into "what if" reimaginings of World War 2 posits Charles Lindbergh as the candidate capable of defeating FDR, sending America headlong into its own creative fascism and all that would up end. Set in a New Jersey all too familiar to my mother, The show reminds that the Depression and and waves of European immigration are not the hazy tale of a Greatest Generation we like to tell ourselves, but a messy melting pot of prejudices and old scores. All the more terrifying for its analogues to the Trump years, The Plot is a reminder that anti Semitism isn't as hard or as farfetched as we might like to believe, and the skilled, unnerving performances make everything all too plausibly possible. Sure, it's got Roth's familiar bugaboos of randy boys and stereotyped women, but the adaptation is sharp enough to see beyond even Roth's flaws. Between this and the Man in the High Castle, I think we've pretty much covered all the dystopian alternatives. Now do The Civil War!
11. Designated Survivor
12. Madam Secretary
13. The Blacklist (all, Netflix and/or Hulu) - my three choices for Pandemic binge redux, but fill in with your own comfort foods. For my money, watching Tea Leoni's work with greater care both restored my faith in our American government and the show's real skill in crafting worthwhile plots. Designated Survivor's "what if" scenario of rebuilding government after a massive attack had its charms (even Sutherland seems surprisingly understated). And giving The Blacklist a chance opened up some tasty spy thriller storytelling, if tinged with a bit too much violence and gore; but James Spader's scenery chewing turns out to work better than it really has any right to. And all 3 have enough episodes to make the trip worthwhile.
14. Titans (Season 1, Amazon; Season 2 DVD). DC's clever reworking of the Teen Titans franchise (and even cleverer kickoff via Teen Titans Go) is long on dark muttering and tortured beauties, and maybe a bit thin on avoiding plotted preposterousness... but the result is Saturday morning live action cartoon TV for growups, or at least overgrow kids. From its multiple Robins (Dick Grayson and Jason Todd) to origin stories for almost any Teen Titan you can remember, Titans provides just the right mix of lore and legend to give its less plausible turns a comic universe to call its own. Here's hoping pandemic production schedules don't throw it off kilter.

What didn't make my list? Ma Rainey's Black Bottom was nice but meh, Ryan Murphy's too preposterous for belief Hollywood insults any true Golden Age film lover, FX's "yeah but you should have been there" Mrs. America just didn't do it for me, the less than essential second season of Big Little Lies and the BBC's one too many Christie's of The ABC Murders on Amazon (which, by the way, don't get me started on how Branagh's Death on the Nile is either bravura or a disaster, no in betweens). And no, I didn't watch Tiger King or any reality TV (and that includes RuPaul's Drag Race trying to pretend a pandemic can be business as usual).

What in the World, Matt Lauer?

Lest we get too carried to near tears as Savannah Guthrie was this morning, let's try to remember that there's a reasonable case to be made that firing Matt Lauer from the Today show could also be presented as overdue, and necessary.

Lauer, the highest paid anchor on NBC, at $25 million a year was the longstanding face of a cash cow, but beyond that... well, discussions of his role there were often kind to say the least. His immediate predecessors went on to host the NIghtly News (Brokaw) or be the face of NBC Sports (Gumbel), but no one ever suggested Lauer was good for any of that Indeed, it's hard to say, even now, just what he was good at. His interviews were never called "must see" or memorable, he wasn't the go-to person for major "gets," as they say. He wasn't especially insightful and did little in the way of political moderation (and when he did push his way into the format, last election season, his inartful pestering of HIllary Clinton was widely panned).

Lauer sat with several cohosts - Katie Couric's star power was undeniable, Meredith Vieira's quietly assured, Savannah Guthrie's enthusiasm widely admired. Lauer was none of these, and worse, really, in helping to wreck Ann Curry. Lauer was the face of endless self satisfaction, of having nailed the catbird seat on a money train no one was prepared to stop. He was the nonthreatening, disinterested, slightly sarcastic face of a show that gave up on hard news and settled comfortably into puff pieces and cross promotion, soldiering on through Olympic mornings and Macy's parades without ever rising above expectations. No wonder, on his watch, Today fell from first to third (briefly) in morning shows, the subject of endless backstage gossip and production team shakeups, full of senior executives too nervous of change or too scared of anger to point out that the thing most in need of a revamp was sitting at the main desk.

He started blandly handsome and never especially developed into anything more, and arguably helped immeasurably in making morning television exponentially worse. Weddings on beaches, travelogues from across the globe... and of course another day of diets and that book everybody's reading and that movie that opens at $150 million or more. Lauer's tenure turned Today into People and people into marketing ploys. Hard news? Why even bother?

And for all of this he was known and seen all over New York as one of those guys who had it all and expected more. The ever growing absurd salary. The helicopter to the Hamptons just to go to work. That house and the perfect wife and those puffy articles in magazines you never read at the doctor's office (like, erm, People, the print equivalent of Today). He was never especially loved - tabloids were all too happy to attribute internal strife at Today to his ever growing ego - but post enough publicists on the project and from a certain light, not examined too closely, he was just an ordinary guy doing another day's work. Or something. And hey, check out that mansion!

It took less than 3 hours for Guthrie's "we had no idea" innocence (and hey, how better to elicit that reaction than to tell her an hour or so before going on air) to be subsumed by reports that both Variety and the New York Times had been working, for some time, on reports of complaints against Lauer - and that NBC knew of those allegations. That's gonna sting, and gives some indication, still, of how on air female talent is treated next to male costars. I'm thinking less of Gayle King and Norah O'Donnell than I am of Kelly Ripa, who finally put her foot down after repeated attempts to be written off while carrying ABC's syndicated "Live!" NBC has wasted years perpetuating this TV "husband and wife" silliness of Today cohosts, despite a storied history of women - Barbara Walters and Jane Pauley through now - perfectly able to carry the show alone.

But more than that, more than the way Lauer's story dovetails so neatly with all the "we're shocked, shocked" responses to power male misbehavior, the real test it seems to me is if someone takes note of the way Lauer's endless mediocrity warped and degraded the very fabric of the Today show itself, into the fluffy, pointless, four hour monstrosity he leaves behind. It's that glossy, false fun patina of endless morning cheer that really deserves to die, sacrificed on the alter of the sacred monsters allowed to thrive in its fake living rooms and rope line courtyards. No more Matt Lauers. Is that really too much to hope?

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A Price Above Rubies

In America's mix of egalitarian and elitism, it's not hard to find oneself living or socializing in close proximity to great wealth. It's one of the oldest staples of Hollywood - the good (or bad) kid from a modest upbringing getting exposed to the ways of the upper class. The scholarship kid at boarding school. The everyday worker who marries the boss' daughter. That time you went to dinner in a fancy New York restaurant, surrounded by the obvious displays of people with far more money, if not taste, than yourself.

In some ways, I feel bad for Tom Price. It's not easy to be in close proximity to extravagance, natural, even, to feel somehow you should get to do and have the same things. I was a scholarship kid at a fairly elite private college where other kids drove the spare family BMW, amongst other luxuries large and small. I lived in Manhattan. I've had the privilege of a private showing of the Chanel Couture collection. As much as you think you know about wealth, there's always a level more.

Sadly, the lesson of the last few days is that these are the moments that really do show one's moral compass, and in that, Tom Price failed. Excessive use of private jets on the government dime is a ridiculous, petty excess that flies in the face of claims to cost consciousness and an interest in cutting the size of government. And it's not as though Price's fall was recent. His history of questionable stock deals in health companies while Chairing the House Committee overseeing their affairs was, it's clear, just an indication of Price's sense that he wanted in on the gravy train rolling nearby.

It's gotta sting when you're so very close to it, and reminded constantly of just how far away that life actually is.

Donald Trump may not be as wealthy as he claims, but he is, of course, the very essence of the eighties era "Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous" that he came to embody, and take as his "brand." (Trump, in fact, doesn't have the usual Gulfstream size PJ as his main plane - he has a 737 gaudily painted with his logo that hangs out, visibly, near the runways at LaGuardia.) And he has, naturally, stacked his Administration with like minded, and similarly well-heeled, millionaires and billionaires. In the midst of revelations this week involving a number of Trump officials... there sits Betsy DeVos, who doesn't spend government money on a jet, because she owns one.

Of course, as the adage goes, money can't buy taste, and the kind of wealth Trump and his friends bring to DC is a kind of ostentatious, showy display of wealth that rubs many, rich or not, the wrong way. Trump's gilded, golden everything decor in his homes and Country Clubs is designed to impress the easily awed, not demonstrate classic, sublime taste associated with older, quieter money (even DeVos, in that regard, seems more understated and private). Trump's is the conspicuous, elaborate consumption of someone who cares more about showing off, and the appearance of class than anything actually classy. Even Trump's much lampooned language about "the best" and "big league" in regards to what he owns betrays that endless need to show off, to preen and self aggrandize. What's sad, ultimately, about Price isn't just the small, petty nature of his fall - it's the way he let Trump's especially tasteless approach to extravagance further warp his own sense of entitlement. Surely, there are better ways to aspire to being upper class.

Trump's extravagant obviousness, too, is why losing Price is neither the end of this story, nor even likely it's worst example (and we do, after all, still have the oblivious displays of Steve Mnuchin and his recent bride, who may be hiding for now, but seem likely to reappear at any moment). The ridiculous trips, the family with no sense of propriety, combined with dozens of hangers-on, some rich and wasteful, some poor and aspiring... the stories can, and will, write themselves (the world waits, Scott Pruitt - don't stop now). And then of course, there's the even more familiar territory of say, Ryan Zinke, and the casual selling of favors to vested interests, like the oil and gas industry.

Still, at the heart of this Dynasty-like resurgence (I, for one, am not so sure that the CW's revival/reboot isn't a stroke of genius) is that sad, small tale of Tom Price. Covetousness and greed are embarrassing; it's almost painful to watch anyone's flaws laid out in such public, shaming display. American culture markets conspicuous consumption like it's, literally, going out of style. You will never have enough. You will never be rich enough, or thin enough, well dressed enough, or live luxuriously enough. The penthouse apartment, the private jet, the furs, the cars... the list is, truly, endless. And yet, how we punish those who succumb most to the siren's call.  It is vengeful, bordering on cruel.

The trick of course, is to learn what it means to have enough. To see luxuries as just that - the occasional extra, a little bit more, a nice perk. When I get to fly in the front of the plane, dine in the 5 star restaurant, buy the Tom Ford fragrance at Saks... I try to remember to be grateful. And to enjoy it without asking for more. At the very least, it gives one the luxury of giving Tom Price something worse than scorn... and that's pity.

Bad Milo. Bad, Naughty Milo.

Even his name - "Milo Yiannopolous" - is something of an alternative fact: he changed it from "Hanrahan" which was the name of his father, who left when he was six.Yiannopoplous comes from his maternal grandmother, who raised him.

There was never much reason to pay attention to Milo, a bratty British schoolboy eager to spread his opinions, calling it "journalism," in that way conservatives do, repeating twice told tales to justify their negative views of others. Being British, and snide, was about all that differentiated Yiannopolous from the other far right voices - slap a dress and a blonde wig on it and you've got Ann Coulter. Or Monica Crowley. Or Kellyanne Conway. Or...

He'd made himself something of an internet star, mouthing off about "Gamergate" - which boils down to teenage boys trying to put a "No girls allowed" sign on video game playing, with just the sort of especially ugly, hateful results one would expect. For no particular reason, he decided to turn his negative energy - and that of his teenboy fans - on Leslie Jones, resulting in that much more negative attention and a lifetime ban on Twitter.

As Andrew Sullivan noted, the kind of bratty conservatism espoused by Milo (and Sullivan, from much the same background) thrives and grows on the negative response. It's political theory as reaction formation, why I've been clear on what Coulter and Malkin et al actually are since college - what was "Dartmouth Review" but the "politically incorrect" screed of kids eager to express opposition to feel good slogans of liberal activism? And 30 years on that's what conservatives have to offer: not ideas, but something outrageous, designed to oppose perfectly reasonable proposals meant to help others. It's not what you're for, but what they're against.

Since the Jones imbroglio, Milo enjoyed a rapid rise to that curious kind of American stardom that only happens in the fevered circles of the angry right - he got a book deal, and speaking gigs... and last week, he popped up on Real Time with Bill Maher, and got announced for a speaker role at CPAC, where the show always needs the fresh ziz of the latest hateful thing.

If I'm surprised by the fall Milo has had in only 4 days, it's only that I figured he'd at least get to give that CPAC speech. As it was, the only thing that could embarrass CPAC (and it's leader, the smooth talking Trump supporter and Fox "contributor" Matt Schlapp) was new exposure to old interviews Milo had done, applying his bratty British humor to gay sexuality and the priest sex scandal. That was enough(!) to lose Milo the book deal, the speaking gigs, and his job as Associate Editor at Breitbart.com. Because, naturally, where else would Milo  be working, but Breitbart?

It's easy to get hung up on Milo's outrageous comments around sex - and it's not as if that particular element hadn't been swirling around him all along. Part of Milo's shtick was wearing his status as a young gay man on his sleeve, touting his (reductive, racially insensitive) love of black men and hinting at his own sexual prowess. (It's especially amusing, given CPAC's checkered past with gay conservatives, that they blustered into booking Milo anyway.) And it was, in fact, the cavalier way Yiannopolous described his own experiences of priest sex abuse that drove much of his downfall, given that, as even he admitted in his Tuesday press conference, that abuse goes a long way to explaining his bratty public persona since.

But let's not get too lost in focusing hard on Milo: the real lesson here is about conservatives, their role in propping up and pushing hateful rhetoric like Milo's, and the endless need to find fresh flavors of the month expressing all that hate. Let's remember CPAC played that role in launching Ann Coulter, and Michelle Malkin, and numerous others (hey, Ben Carson!) as well. Let's point out, as well, that this flameout illuminated yet more clearly all of what's wrong with "news outlets" like Breitbart, which never called Yiannopolous to account for many outlandish things he wrote and said - and indeed, never raised a peep about those sex comments at the time they were made, nor in context of his overall persona. One can only marvel out how dysfunctional a work environment could be that a "half dozen" staffers at Breitbart threatened to quit this week if Milo were allowed to stay on. This week!

Conservatives would like, of course, to isolate Milo now, now that the cat's out of the bag, that he's "gone too far" despite the reality that "too far" was an interview he gave last year, and ignores years (and years) of examples of Milo's excessive, hateful words and actions. It was too much for Twitter... but conservatives still clung to him (and arguably, too, Twitter's actions were years past due as well). Simon and Schuster lost authors over holding onto Milo's book... but still they held on. Until this week. Conservatism didn't become "like this" yesterday. And Milo is a symptom, not the disease. Removing him addresses neither cause, nor cure.

So CPAC will offer up "President Trump" and plenty of other familiar lines of conservative anger and hate... and pretend Milo was a bad dream that maybe never even happened. That's what they do, over and over, as these once hot flavors "go too far" or the lies catch up to them. And suddenly, there's no speaking space for Ann Coulter. Or Sarah Palin. What a shame Milo couldn't hold it together long enough to provide another Outrage Du Jour...

Because, of course, what passes for conservatism these days is so utterly bankrupt and bereft of intellectual heft and interesting ideas that it is simply beyond embarrassing.  Literally. Everything about Milo's rise, his career, his galloping leaps toward greater fame... all of it was an embarrassment, a waste, a pointless exercise in watching a bratty child act out for others' amusement. Watching Milo's smirky, childish appearance on Maher - what little I could take - I figured it was a matter of time before something would wipe that smirk off his face. Two days later, no smirk. And a month from now, or a year... it's just another chance for another flavor of the month to rise.

If any good can come of this, I'd like to hope it comes from Milo reckoning with his own demons, working out his issues, finding some measure of personal grace. I wouldn't even necessarily mind the "I was a bratty jerk, but now I've changed" book he'll be pushing in a year, or two, or five... if he comes about it honestly, and expressively. That would at least show that someone is capable of growth and change. Because Lord knows, growth and change isn't going to come to the Conservative movement. Just another naughty bad boy, or girl, looking for attention. And getting it.

The Best Of What We Saw 2016

"It was a great year for film" screamed the year ending headlines, a claim which might have stuck if nearly every critic hadn't then resorted to listing the same 10 films... several of which (Jackie, Hell or High Water, Moonlight) I just can't bring myself to make the effort, and several more where I did make the effort... and well, they don't make my list. As always, I combine visual media to tackle both TV and film (and various others), because that is the world we watch. And while it wasn't a great year, I will say this - what was good was very very good. The rest... was about as classy as that gold paint adorning every Trump building project. In relative order, the best of what we saw:

1. Loving - The natural inclination of civil rights filmmaking is big crowds and stirring speeches, but Loving wisely plays it small, focusing on perhaps the most far reaching of decisions (perhaps on par with Brown, but still) by seeing the case through the eyes of a small town Virginia couple who, most simply. loved each other. The film plays like Brokeback Mountain - spare and small, a wealth of emotion packed into few words and well observed silences. Interracial marriage, the elimination of laws against miscegenation... these are the most dangerous forces segregation sought to control - for if we can love one another across these boundaries, have children who lie in between them... then the boundaries don't exist. 
2. The People v. OJ Simpson (DVD) - Nothing can convey the real time madness of, say, the infamous Bronco chase... and Cuba Goding is physically wrong to play Simpson, but FX's remarkable decision to take Jeffrey Toobin's account of the OJ Simpson trial to a miniseries is full of nerve and fascinating detail. Most importantly, the series takes the time to convey the horror of the crime and the real life beyond the flash and crass (though try, if you can, not to take in the celebrity trifecta of OJ waving a gun in Kim Kardashian's Encino bedroom, thinking of ending it then and there). A slew of stars and a clutch of powerful performances (particularly Sarah Paulson's Marcia Clark) lift the material, even if it seems, at times, like an extended "Law and Order SVU LA". This really happened. And if Toobin can't exactly locate a moral center the rest of us can see, his observation of the lack of one isn't far off, either.
3. The Americans (FX and Amazon Prime) - So much of what's great on tv these days, I find, is about knowing who to trust, and the lies we tell ourselves, and others, to make life okay. I resisted the FX spy series when it first appeared, wary of the flattering press it was getting... but one long binge watch proved the plaudits true. A dark show with a grim worldview and no one to particularly root for could be a hard sell, but not when the writing's this strong and the performances from top to bottom so complex. Sure, it's easy to praise Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, but everything and everyone here shines.
4. Deutschland 83 (Hulu) - might as well be called "The Germans," offering much the same premise (East German boy crosses into West Berlin to pose as attache to NATO general from the US), with much of the similar complexities, if not the deep level of training and commitment found in the Soviet project to infiltrate the US. Proof both that this concept works in a variety of settings, and that interesting insights can be found in all sorts of places. While the cast may not be immediately familiar to most Americans, they make the most of this material.
5. Lucifer (Season2, FOX and Season 1, DVD)- One of Fox's most baldly "out there" premises - and why wouldn't it smack of desperation; what else does the network have these days, beyond clinging to the ermine coattails of Empire? - turns out to be a surprisingly satisfying LA based noir romp. If "King of Hell moves to LA to be a detective" seems too much, give the show credit for not apologizing or backing down. Helped tremendously by the lead performance of Tom Ellis (doing, really, the same thing he did in USA's woefully unseen Rush), Lucifer works best when our leading man has room to scenery chew and shine. Beyond that, when they put their minds (and writing) to it, mysteries that capture the essential sleaziness of the LA scene work very well, and when that misses... well, everyone is awfully, awfully pretty.
6. Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (TBS)/Late Night with Seth Myers (NBC) - Humor in this election season was full of easy marks and cheap shots, and much that really wasn't actually funny. To really rise above the pack was to have a point of view, a well placed sense of outrage, and knowing where the joke really was. For Myers, it meant turning his easy slide into Fallon's empty chair into the sudden ability to find his own way and his own voice, not "just another former SNL member propping up NBC's comedy table." Myers was funny, angry, mournful all in well chosen degrees, with a knack not just for making fun of it all, but explaining it well. As for Bee, what seemed at first like an expensive gamble by TBS in an unlikely format (a fairly direct monologue is really all she needs), turned out to unleash a fearless and forceful comic mind rich with ability to connect the dots and use language in daring, confrontational ways. Both, in a sensible world (along with Fey and Poehler, not to mention the really charming combo of Colin Jost and Michael Che now on SNL), would be an ideal short list for The Daily Show, where Trevor Noah is stunningly adequate. Honorable mentions to Stephen Colbert (the Jack Paar of his generation, I think), and John Oliver, both of whom don't seem as sure any of this is funny, and are probably right.
7. The Man in The High Castle (Season 2, Amazon) - So amazing was the pilot I found myself instantly won over into ordering Prime, and I've never looked back. Season one was rich in the details of an imagined alternative ending for World War 2, a US divided by German and Japanese victors, with all that implies, and a the early explorations of mysterious films from that man in the castle. Season 2 has, so far, continued to build on the layers of complexity, of real and imagined outcomes for world events and individual lives, not losing sight of the fascinating characters we've come to know. Science fiction (even other Phillip K. Dick) is rarely this able to play on such a large canvas, with such remarkable results (stay til the final episode, when a string of stunning revelations sets up a surefire Season 3). And somehow, given this year's events, all this allegory seems very timely.
8. Versailles (Season 1, Amazon). At it's best - that is, when not going overboard on the sexual shenanigans, or getting a little too hepped up on gore - this French TV import pays skillful homage to Louis XIV and his grand designs to build a place of beauty and light, while passionately celebrating the unque aspects of French culture that often don't get their full due. Complex intrigue, a pair of complicated brothers (Louis and his brother Phillippe) and tight plotting all add up to a lavish package, beautifully art directed, costumed and scored. And, well, there's a lot of lusty sex and that occasionally over the top gore, too.
9. Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones. Not SNL, per se, but at an often wonderfully uneven moment for the late night legend (what's good is okay, what's great is show stopping), Jones and McKinnon make for 2 of the shows richest finds - seasoned comic talents from more than the standard "Second City/Improv" axis, lifting even modest material and refusing to hide their true selves (at her height, Jones was never going to sink into the background regardless. But she owns it). McKinnon shines in virtually everything she does, and Jones is a just in time success story who all of America seems to root for each step of the way - nice work, Allstate! Right on, Olympics! You go, Christian Soriano! Combine them with Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig and it should be unstoppable... which is why watching Ghostbusters fail to hit it out of the park was a puzzling misfire (or, more accurately, an expensive dud of a misconceived remake). With brilliance like they possess, no failure can hold them back for long. Honorable mention to Aidy Bryant.
10. Berlin Station Season 1, Epix) - "TV series" has become a catch all for material from any and everywhere, from Netflix and Hulu to Amazon... and well, Epix, a still rising alternative to HBO and Showtime powered, apparently, by Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate (but wait, wasn't Viacom backing Hulu?). Never mind. Berlin Station is the first to TV attempt to for Olen Steinhauer, a thriller writer whose CIA procedurals are well worth the read - sharply paced and well observed. So is the series... if you can find it. Episode 1 was so brilliant I am pretty much panting for more. 
11. The Handmaiden (Ah-ga-ssi) - You'd think - I thought - I'd had enough of director Park Chan-wook with Oldboy, his supremely creative, totally out there, deeply disturbing 2003 film I still can't forget (as opposed the silly, pointless Stoker, which I can, and do). But apparently, even the worst can be forgiven. The Handmaiden is Park's adaptation of Fingersmith into a classic Asian thriller with twist after twist, told in brilliant visual style that evokes high Hitchcock, or exuberant DePalma. Sure, Park's camera still leers at kinky sex and gratuitous violence, but the power of his work remains generally undeniable, and like nothing else this year, I can't wait to see more of what he does. 
12. Supernatural (Season 11 on DVD, Season 12, the CW) Twelve years and the Supernatural crew still finds fresh material, fresh insights, and the best morality play going in fantasy/horror television. From Rick Springfield's turn as Lucifer to the return of Mary Winchester, the show continues to surprise, delight, scare, and most of all, move. And sure, the "climactic battle" of last season between God and The Darkness was more fizzle than flame, but even that season's revealing moments (Chuck as God, Cas as Lucifer) packed quite a punch. Carry on, wayward sons.
13. Finding Dory (Pixar) - It wouldn't be fair to deny the power of this animated gem, where the tears come pretty much every 10 minutes or so, especially for Ellen deGeneres in the best role she's pretty much ever had as a comic actress. Like How To Train Your Dragon, Dory works best as a morality play on disability as different ability, and its foundational element of how we can always find our way home is pretty much undeniable, as well. Lovingly animated (those knocks on Sea World, bravo!), and well voiced ("I'm Sigourney Weaver..."), Dory deserves recognition.
14. Madam Secretary (CBS) - After all that's happened IRL, I'll just say that the measure of Madam Secretary is not how good it is to make it on the list, it's how much higher it might be had things turned out differently. Still, kudos to CBS for seamlessly transitioning from The Good Wife to another female driven political show, and Tea Leoni for a consistently strong performance rich in layers and insight.
15. Captain America: Civil War and Doctor Strange. The MCU did easily meet or exceed expectations, even if the "comic book genre" and the oversize tent pole effect is beginning to wear out even the most devoted souls. From it's major "hero v hero battle" to the wraparound close, Civil War made a fine companion to the whole Captain America series, the best that Marvel has put out for any one role; and the combo of Cumberbatch and Swinton lifted Dr. Strange pretty much as promised (though the scene stealing cape made clear how easily CGI can upstage even classically trained thespians every time). Would it be a better year if these hadn't even made the list? Sure, but that is the lesson this year: we don't get the world we want, just the one we deserve.  

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Stop The Presses

Only a week or so in, and one of the main themes of this Trump Presidency (feel free to substitute "Trump Nightmare"... but remember, you're not dreaming) has surely revealed itself: the tortured role of the press and mass media in the age of a raging narcissist.

In addition to two painful meetings with various media outlets - an interview with the Times where he basically admitted his campaign was a big lie, and a name calling session with TV network hosts and executives - Trump spent the weekend berating the cast and audience at Friday's performance of Hamilton on Broadway, when the audience booed Mike Pence and the cast begged him to treat everyone decently. Oh, the humanity!

In the rush to sort out Just Whose Fault We Got Trump, "The Media" has been a popular choice. It's certainly true that the refusal to take on Trump in a serious way, to often broadcast him uninterrupted  at rallies laying out falsehood after falsehood, surely didn't help. Still, no one culprit really can take all the blame. I think - and this is a longer discussion - that one thing we all need to face is that in some ways, Trump was more inevitable than anyone would like to admit.

The question is, though, now that we've got him (at least, temporarily), will the media know what to do with him? 

There are some railing about the press "normalizing" Trump. There are others already building up conspiracy theories that every Trump move - like the Hamilton tweetstorm - is a brilliant trifecta of savvy mental manipulation by Trump against a gullible public. And through it all, there's Trump himself, just blathering away, looking endlessly foolish.

I think one thing that's not quite clear yet is what the media array of a Trump led USA really looks like. We forget that a lot of who and what dominates media now - from Lester Holt to Anderson Cooper to Megyn Kelly to even Rachel Maddow - are developments of, and partly because of, the Obama years. It's very likely that we will see new stars, and new shows, that arise because a different kind of media will be needed in the Trump, um, era (that sounds awfully permanent - ed.).

That the media we have can't quite cut it seems quite clear - I wouldn't call it "normalizing," but I think traditional Washington hands are truly flummoxed by what you do with an outlier like Trump, so beyond their sense of political norms. It's the way Mitt Romney is being discussed for Secretary of State - it's such a relief to hear a familiar, even "Establishment" name, that people aren't paying attention to perfectly reasonable reasons why Romney is completely ill suited to the task. Panel discussions that seemed entertainingly contentious prior to the election - oh look, they're ganging up on Jeffrey Lord! - now have an uncomfortable air of fear from one side, and excessive self satisfaction on the other.

It's also the case that the new opposition hasn't quite figured out how to effectively challenge Trump's obvious impending ethical failures and corrupt intentions. "Ivanka Trump met with Shinzo Abe!" plays great at a Chevy Chase dinner party - it's a little obscure and secondhand for the case against a man who apparently plans to let out his hotel in DC to foreign dignitaries eager to curry his favor. Proportion, people; clarity and outrageousness. These items are key.

Still, I wouldn't discount the fact that Trump, in these things, is his own worst enemy and best taken at his word. The Hamilton brouhaha was silly and - despite claims to fire up his base - mostly pointless. Keening at Alec Baldwin merely invites what will surely be heaps of scorn and derision from pop culture icons in comedy, music, theater, television and film. Hating Trump won't just be popular... I guarantee Hollywood knows it's profitable, too.

And then there's those meetings with news outlets, which seemed to catch the  people in them off guard at the depth - wrong word? - of his thin skin.  There's a delicate dance between public figures and the press chasing them - the fawning that's required to get access, but the distance to look dispassionately and even critically is rarely in the right balance. But my guess is Trump did himself no favors mocking people like Martha Raddatz and Katy Tur, trying to manhandle his way to favorable coverage. Trump is apparently in no media to give the media much of anything; and in turn, I'm not sure the news outlets owe him anything at all.

In part, Trump is parroting a right wing line railing against the "MSM" as conservatives love to do, saying they never get a fair, or positive shake. When he claims The Times is at death's door, he's not so much concerned about ad revenue (a business I'm fairly sure he doesn't really get) as he is that people make choices about news sources based on reading only what confirms the views they like. There will be media sycophants chasing Trump because it's easier, and more fun, to be liked. But The Times will make money regardless. And the people they really represent - the Upper East Side world of the owners and their close associates - are the very people who have made Trump's social climb the struggle he hates. They will never let him in, and he knows it.

What Trump wants from the press isn't really important - "Stop calling me a thief" he says, as if that will stop them from reporting every time he steals. He wants the attention, he just doesn't want to people to see who he really is amidst the glare. And that, really, isn't in his control. In fact, it's not really in the control of mass media. Certainly not in America. And Trump's just not careful enough (as that "hot mike" moment on Access Hollywood really showed) to understand that for the image to be the reality, you kind of have to really be it. Trump is President. That doesn't make him presidential. And he's not really ever understood the difference. Trump's need to be liked - his need for mass love - is actually the thing that makes him weak: he chases the press for attention and they, in turn, should realize they're the ones with power in this situation.

Regardless of that power, we will just be setting up unreasonable expectations if we expect the press to solve our national Trump problem all on their own - that they will magically produce the perfect scandal that ruins him before he can do too much damage. There will, over time, I hope, be less trying to explain away his worst actions and words, and a better ability to call things out for what they actually are.  But even so, all the reporting in the world will mean little to an audience that's in no mood to hear it. Trump doesn't need or want to stop the presses, but his real power, thus far, is like The Shadow of radio lore - he clouds men's minds. Even though there's some movement to buyer's remorse, Trump's loyalists are still defined most by hearing what they want to hear. That's not a media problem. That's all of our problem. And the solution is something more than black and white... and read all over.

 

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