TV '18

7. The Handmaid’s Tale. The show that defines “hard to watch” wasn’t as good in its second season. It did have some strong storytelling, making Serena Joy’s character increasingly complex. She was a smart woman with terrible ideas who violently overthrew the government and now she’s gotten what she wanted but that finds her under her husband’s control, missing a finger due to the great Gileadean crime of reading a book while being a woman. I got that the show was trying to subtly have June develop some kind of Stockholm Syndrome and move closer and closer to the regime (escaping and showing less resistance each time) but I didn’t buy that she would get her baby out and go back to Gilead without her. I was yelling, “Take your baby and run!”

6. The Good Place. We just recently discovered this but aren’t caught up yet. The Good Place is just a delight, a show ostensibly about the afterlife but really about living an ethical life on Earth. That, and Jeremy Bearimy.

5. GLOW. This show, tracking the rise of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling from local curiosity to syndicated ‘80s glory, is just a riot. I liked delving into the personal lives of the wrestlers, especially the feud between Debbie and Ruth. I really enjoyed the joyful promo video shot at the mall and the episode entirely dedicated to an episode of GLOW as it would have aired.

4. The Haunting of Hill House. There were jump scares and subtle scares in this show. The Haunting of Hill House does what good horror does by mixing the scares with the emotional violence the members of the Crain family do to each other. We’ll have to rewatch it to catch any ghosts we didn’t see the first time.

3. The Deuce. It was a ton of fun watching the cast shoot the porno Red Hot in 1978 New York City, filming scenes without a permit in Times Square and on the subway before they could get caught. The Deuce jumps forward six years and shows prostitution fading and porn ascending. Some make this transition better than others. Poor Dorothy tries to offer a better life to the sex workers and it gets her killed. Larry is irrelevant as a pimp but reinvents himself as a pretty good porn actor. Lori is off to dirty movie stardom. CC tries to get a piece of the mob-backed pie and his arrogance gets him killed. (Lori was so under his thumb that she is terrified he is still out there waiting to hurt her, until she finally gets word he is dead, then breaks down laughing/crying in an amazing scene in the diner.) Best of all, Candy is on her way up as a porn director with artistic ambition. I am really compelled by her story, and Maggie Gyllenhaal is great.

I have a theory that some of the women of The Deuce each resemble somebody from ‘70s pop culture. Candy is Diane Keaton. Lori is Debbie Harry. Dorothy is Gloria Steinem. Abby is Jane Fonda. No idea what this means, if anything.

2. Better Call Saul. When Better Call Saul premiered, I thought it would be worth a laugh but would never touch the quality of its parent series, Breaking Bad. The prequel is not at Breaking Bad’s insanely high level, but it’s pretty damn good. It’s a slower show, depicting the process of how the main characters get to where they are in the future. It shows how Mike got Gus’s underground lab built, and his slow slide into weary corruption, and does it with as much enthusiasm as it portrays a hazardous drug deal. It’s a show that takes the low stakes of Kim and Jimmy faking community support letters to get Huell out of trouble and does it in a hilarious, completely compelling way.

We know the fate of most of these characters in the future, so the smartest thing Better Call Saul did was introduce Kim Wexler (the spectacular Rhea Seehorn). Nobody knows what will happen to her and I am very invested in where her story goes—whether she gives into her bad girl instincts and throws in with Jimmy, or if she gets out and has a career as the competent, hard-working lawyer that she can be. The end of the season left her at a crossroads, as Jimmy gets back his law license by faking being affected by the death of his brother Chuck. Kim buys Jimmy’s performance, so it’s a slap in the face when Jimmy tells her it was all a lie, completing his transformation into Saul Goodman in a breathtaking scene.

1. The Americans. Ooh, are you shocked? Are you gasping “I can’t believe Brian picked The Americans as the best show of the year! I didn’t see this coming, even with his evangelistic fandom over the last six years!”? Anchored by the always-stunning performances of Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys and Noah Emmerich, this show continued to do what I love it for: mixing visceral espionage with deep character exploration. The sixth season included not only macabre spy thrills (Philip decapitating the dead spy, Elizabeth choking the artist on her own paint brush) but also moments that were subtler but just as affecting (Elizabeth frayed and finally disillusioned, Philip putting Paige in a chokehold to make a point, Stan slowly realizing his best friend’s betrayal).

The final season explored what Americans and Soviets do when it all falls apart. Their countries reach the beginning of the end of the Cold War and a tentative peace, but they lose their raison d’etre and confront the hideous human toll their missions have brought. In typical Americans fashion, it comes crashing down not in a gunfight but in an emotionally charged conversation in a parking garage, “You were my best friend … You made my life a joke,” Stan barks at Philip, and then decides, after searching for the spies next door for years, to let them go. Everybody survives that final season, but everybody pays a price. Henry loses the family that never paid him much attention and finds out his life is a lie. Paige gets off the train and stays in America, doing shots of vodka in an abandoned safe house, waiting for orders from the Center that will never come. Stan is professionally ruined and will never know if he married a spy. Elizabeth and Philip make it back to their beloved Soviet Union, but the country has become unrecognizable and is about to abandon the beliefs they risked their lives for. Worst of all, the family they fought so hard to keep together is now shattered. “We’ll get used to it,” Elizabeth tells Philip in Russian. The end was not what I expected but it was perfectly Americans.

The sixth season wasn’t the best of this show (that would be the fourth season) but it was the best thing I saw on TV this year. As a whole, The Americans is one of the best things I’ve ever seen on TV, and I’m disappointed that there’s no more to write about.

My Application for Trump's Chief of Staff

Objective: To obtain employment for monetary compensation

Accomplishments: Have received extensive training in rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic

Education: Yes

Pulse: 60

Resting heart rate: 72

Sentience: Present

Two brain cells to rub together: Yes

Relevant management experience: Not really

Availability to start: Immediately

WASHINGTON (AP)— Sources close to President Trump say McCurdy is the leading candidate.

Whither WeatherTech?

God, I would be pissed if someone gave me something from WeatherTech for Christmas.

There are a lot of commercials this time of year imploring people to “give the gift of WeatherTech,” as if it’s a blue Tiffany box. A lot of people probably welcome these car accessories. Give my WeatherTech stuff to those people instead.

It’s not like I go mudding a lot. My car has 205,000 miles on it so I’m not that worried at this point about getting the floor mats dirty. “Oh, slush stains beneath my feet in my depreciated car! What a disaster! If only I had WeatherTech!” Getting excited about finding WeatherTech under the Christmas tree would be like getting excited about finding a bib under there.

I don’t think I could even feign enthusiasm about getting WeatherTech from someone. I’d just yell, “RECEIPT PLEASE. RECEIPT PLEASE. WHAT IS THIS. WHY DID YOU BUY THIS. RECEIPT.”

I give the WeatherTech people credit for making their utilitarian products attractive and fun in their commercials but I’m just not interested. No, it’s not the perfect gift. It’s not “getting you something you’d never get yourself” because it’s not something I would ever get myself, because I don’t care.

I'm not, but

I’m not a scientist, but last week’s cold snap forever proves that global warming is a hoax.

I’m not a mechanic, but you should turn on your air conditioner if your car’s engine starts to overheat.

I’m not a writer, but “between you and I” is grammatically correct.

I’m not a constitutional lawyer, but the First Amendment means it’s illegal for you to tell me to shut up.

I’m not a baker, but baking soda and baking powder are interchangeable.

I’m not a doctor, but the MMR vaccine causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

I’m not a housekeeper, but a mixture of bleach and ammonia is a great cleaning agent.

I’m not a financial planner, but spending 75 percent of your net pay on your mortgage is sound.

I’m not a musician, but a tenor is lower than a baritone.

I’m not a dietician, but you can eat as much margarine as you want without consequence.

I’m not a neuroscientist, but you can tell a lot about people’s personalities by measuring their skulls.  

I’m not a teacher, but elementary school kids learn best in classes of 65 or more.

I’m not an obstetrician, but that second megarita can’t hurt anything.

The Value of Comic Books

Bill Maher recently said something dumb (quelle surprise) that criticized that people were mourning the death of Stan Lee and posited that Donald Trump could have only been elected by a populace that took comic books seriously. I’m going to give Maher’s link of comics to Trump the rigorous analysis that it deserves, which is none at all. But since Lee died, I have been thinking about comic books and their importance.

I did feel a little sadness when Stan Lee died. The guy was 95 so the feeling is more that gratitude for a life well lived that you feel when very old people die, but I still felt a little pang. I’ve been reading comic books for over 35 years and Lee co-created the foundational teams of the Marvel Universe: the Fantastic Four, the Avengers and the X-Men. He wrote those titles for many years and created a very large part of the Marvel mythos. Lee had a hefty amount of help from artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, of course. But Kirby died decades ago and Ditko (who also died recently) was a recluse, leaving Lee a very visible symbol of the old days of Marvel. So when he was gone, and people like me lost the man who helped create so many treasured four-color icons, yeah, there was a little mourning.

Comic books can be two-dimensional but Lee helped bring a sophistication to them. Marvel did something in the Silver Age that other publishers weren’t doing: giving superheroes real personalities and conflicts and basing them in something close to the real world. Spider-Man was always broke and wracked with guilt. In the Fantastic Four, the Thing had to come to terms with his mutated form and fought constantly with the Human Torch. At Avengers Mansion, Hawkeye belligerently questioned Captain America’s leadership while the Scarlet Witch chafed at Quicksilver’s overprotection. Cyclops, Marvel Girl and the original X-Men tried to serve a world that hated them just for who they were. Nobody had done this before in the medium.

Because of the work of people like Lee, Kirby and Ditko, later creators were inspired to create sophisticated comics themselves. This led to what middle-aged people like me read and still cherish: Frank Miller’s cinematic Elektra Saga in Daredevil, Bill Sienkiewicz’s wildly impressionistic New Mutants, John Byrne’s back-to-basics Fantastic Four, Chris Claremont’s examination of corruption and power in the “Dark Phoenix Saga” in Uncanny X-Men, and many more.

Comics are for kids, critics will say, and when you grow up, you need to start reading something more adult. But it’s a mistake to think that comic readers are only reading about Spider-Man, as many of us can actually handle reading more than one medium or genre at a time. I pick up a comic once in awhile but I am reading real, actual adult material constantly, to the point where it’s probably off-putting to my family. I have to have a book in front of me at all times—have to. Once I’m done one, I immediately go to the next one like a chain smoker. I am always reading some doorstop novel, and I’m also a comic reader. How about that.

This is something familiar to many people: Caring about more than one thing at once. I can watch a sportsball game and at the same time, devour news about politics and world affairs. Someone else can watch reality TV and have an encyclopedic knowledge of classic music. Et cetera. It’s not hard for most of us and there are comic readers who do have other interests.

Comic books have always done more than “inspire people to go see a movie.” They have inspired people for decades to write and draw, and not just comic books. They were part of what inspired me to write, and my accomplishments in that field are nothing to write home about, but they may not have happened at all without comics.

Comics also inspire kids to read. This is nothing apart from what the Harry Potter books have done. People have rightly praised JK Rowling for her contribution to getting kids to read. Why should it be any different for comics? There are many comics that over the years have developed characters as well as any other long-running serials.

I don’t read too many new comics these days but I do still revisit the oldies in their plastic bags sometimes. A few times a year, I’ll go crate digging for some Bronze Age back issues. Some of these are issues I once had and lost or traded away decades ago and when I find them again, I’ll see a panel that I remember from childhood, and it will inspire nostalgia and recognition, like a little blooming flower in my head. It’s those little bursts of pleasure that make comic books worth it for me and other people. Let people have that.

Hear that?

That’s silence. The election ends and the airwaves return to normal.

No longer will we need to listen to the litany of names. Fitzpatrick. Kim. Menendez. Casey. Carper. McArthur. Scott Wallace/Wagner/Walker/Weiner/Whatever. Half the names fall down the memory hole and the other half only surface when you need your street repaved.

No longer do we need to hear the ominous disembodied voices gravely discussing the issues. No more underage prostitutes. No more golf spikes to the face. No more egregious tax breaks. No more Willie Horton 2: Electric Boogaloo.

We can make dinner in peace now with just the regular, normal prattle, easily tuned out. We can make morning coffee without the blare of electoral issues, instead soothed by the background noise of Jim Sipala wanting to see ya in a Kia and fitness tips from Shoshanna.

Soon even the signs littering the highway will be swept into the dustbin of history. For now, enjoy the silence. Whether you sigh with relief or sigh with disappointment, at least you can hear yourself sigh.

Correct Coffee Cups

Okay—what is everyone’s complaint about the Starbucks Christmas coffee cups this year? I know there’s always a problem every year so what is the 2018 winner? Halloween is over and the candy has disappeared from stores, as if it never existed, in favor of Christmas trees, so we may as well talk about all this now.

Ooh, is there too much red on the cups? Are they not red enough? And is it the wrong shade of red? Is it a dusty rose when it should be more of a maroon? Magenta when it should be scarlet? What is the correct CMYK breakdown for the cups to hold my half-fat, half-caf, extra foam latte correctly?

Is there a design on the cups that is too conceptual or too abstract? Is it a postmodern holiday when all you want is an old-fashioned Normal Rockwell Christmas? Tell me: What is there to complain about this year besides the fact that the baristas misspell your name as Kiersten (“It’s actually Khyerrstyn”)?

Maybe the lady in the Starbucks logo is wearing a Santa hat when she should be carrying a lump of frankincense or myrrh. Maybe the coffee company just isn’t hitting the Christ thing hard enough and we’ll foam at the mouth like the aforementioned latte because goddammit, they should be celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace correctly.

Or perhaps you’ve compared several coffee cups and found the exact same snowflake on each one, in violation of the laws of nature.

So what’s the problem now? It’s become a sacred Christmas tradition, on par with Christmas carols and eggnog, to bitch about something you’re going to throw in the trash in 10 minutes anyway.