View From the Couch

We watch a lot of TV (I prefer to see the world from my couch while eating bon-bons) but it was a funny year. There were some other shows we watched that I just didn’t have much to say about. So this isn’t everything but it’s a sampler of what we watched.

10. The Crown. We’re not finished this season yet, but yikes, it’s been iffy so far. I did like the sense of claustrophobia and doom in the episode just before Diana’s death where she and Dodi realized they were never going to be able to do anything close to normal under the increased scrutiny of the paparazzi. (Boy, Dodi was a piece of work, wasn’t he? He was weeks away from marrying another woman and broke up with her to pursue Diana and propose to her because daddy wanted him to.) The ghosts of Diana and Dodi appearing was dumb and didn’t fit with the show’s aesthetic. While I might believe Charles and Mohammed would see these ghosts (really just projections of their consciences), I think the Queen would just be too practical to be troubled. It didn’t help that Imelda Staunton just isn’t very good—Queen Elizabeth II was by all accounts a dull woman, but Claire Foy and Olivia Colman breathed life into her. Not so for Staunton. I hear there’s a good episode coming up when Margaret dies, so there’s that.

 

9. What We Do in the Shadows. Points to this show for finally giving Guillermo his dream of becoming a vampire, and for doing it in an amusing fashion—the consummation was from some rando vampire rather than his beloved Nandor, and Guillermo’s vampirism was incomplete and came with weird side effects. Points taken away for the renewed focus on the Guide. I don’t know why but I can’t stand this actress.

 

8. The Morning Show. What a glorious mess this was, and of course, that’s the point of the show. Bradley’s brother turning out to be a January 6 insurrectionist at the Capitol was insane. I did like seeing Alex turn Marks’s corporate takeover around on him, even if I saw the twist regarding the network’s data hack coming miles away.

 

7. The Fall of the House of Usher. Even for horror, this setup was completely unrealistic (six dead kids from one family in separate incidents in one week) but I loved how stylized and moody it was and all its Poe references. Most of Mike Flanagan’s shows aren’t scary-scary for me—except for the Jonestown-esque Easter vigil in Midnight Mass, nothing has much disturbed me—but when the Usher sister started screaming at the very end, that did the trick.

 

6. For All Mankind. This show is ongoing and while it isn’t the best season (that’s season 2), I’ve been loving For All Mankind. We binged it all this year and I’m fascinated at this look at an alternate Cold War after the Soviets got to the moon first and Americans got their backs up and had to compete more in the space race, rather than making it a lower priority. In the latest episode we saw, I was thrilled to see Danielle finally scream “Fuck you!” to Ed for the tension that’s been building between them for decades, dating back to their time on the moon in the ‘70s. Ed (in horrible old-age makeup) has been a complete ass this season, sulking over the return of that cosmonaut/possible love interest to Earth, ignoring his health problems to continue flying, and never leaving Mars to meet his grandchild. I’m happy the show is seeing Danielle as the competent leader she is. We’re also entertained to see how many Russian cast members from The Americans turn up in this show.

 

5. The Diplomat. Speaking of The Americans, it’s been a treat seeing Keri Russell on TV again, this time as US ambassador to the UK. The Diplomat is lighter than her former TV series, although when Russell starts getting that severe tone of voice with someone, I half-expect her to go full Elizabeth Jennings and drop a car on them. Still, the twist with the prime minister was deliciously intriguing. Russell’s husband was an ass and I’m glad the show dealt with him, but that cliffhanger was brutal and left us yelling in our living room when the credits rolled.

 

4. Fargo. The show is also ongoing but season 5 has been great so far, a huge improvement over season 3 (completely unmemorable) and season 4 (pretentiously Saying Something Important About America). Juno Temple is deceptively wily and resourceful as a woman who started over in a second marriage to get away from an abusive first husband. One exchange between that husband (Jon Hamm) and her mother-in-law (Jennifer Jason Leigh) was gold: Hamm tells her he’s a libertarian. “So you want freedom without any responsibility?” she asks. He says yes. “You’re fighting for the right to be a baby,” she concludes. Even the woman who runs a predatory debt collection agency gets it.

 

3. The Last of Us. I don’t have much productive to say here but it was just really well-written and well-acted, particularly with Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. The Last of Us is great at developing smaller characters, like the Indonesian scientist who quietly freaks out at the start of the Cordyceps outbreak, the self-sufficient Native couple who barely notice it, and of course, the one-off characters in “Long, Long Time.” This show found a beautiful way to present the love story of two people who managed to live reasonably full lives as the world crumbled around them. In a world destroyed by plague, you should be happy for anybody who can piece together a life.

 

2. Poker Face. For a show about murder and other awful crimes, Poker Face is surprisingly lighthearted and a ton of fun. It’s a delightful throwback to detective shows like Columbo in the ‘70s, where you didn’t have to worry much about continuity, but just enjoy the current hour and savor the twists of the script. Natasha Lyonne’s character—blessed or cursed with the ability to tell when someone is lying—goes around the country running away from her murderous former employer and solving crimes, with a murderer’s row of guest stars (Judith Light!). It helps that I always really like Lyonne in whatever she does. I feel like if I were at a party with any of her characters, I would talk to her and we would become friends.

 

1. Succession. It’s not even close. This show had a visceral effect on me at a few points, bringing me close to a panic attack about the death of an amoral fictional character and about a fictional disputed election. This was due to the acting cavalcade put on by the entire cast, but particularly by Kieran Culkin (his slow-motion breakdown and final, visible snap) and Sarah Snook (every subtle decision she makes playing out on her face). Succession stuck the landing for me, with the saga of Waystar Royco ending in a boardroom in tears. Shiv finally sees that Ken would be a terrible CEO successor to their father and changes her vote to sell the company, while Ken bellows “I am the eldest boy!” (he’s not) while trying to claw out the eyes of Roman. I love purgatorial endings so I loved the idea that Tom ended up as CEO and while Shiv can continue to have company influence as his wife, it’s a very shaky marriage and she has nowhere near the power she would have on the board of the old company. I will miss this show’s dark humor.

 

 

Ornaments

The regiment of ornaments lines the Target shelves, each in various shades of mauve or chartreuse or some other color whose name I can spell but whose hue I cannot necessarily picture. I wonder when we all decided Christmas had to be so coordinated. When each branch of the tree had to fall in line.

Not so on our tree. It blinks and glitters, laden down with bits of chaotic joy grabbed from the past. That little set of Santa figurines I got from Cost Less for cheap for my first dead-broke Christmas in my apartment. Friends’ empty cigarette packs I wrapped up to look like little presents. Ornaments from husband’s grandparents marked with his name and the year almost every year going back to birth.

Nothing matches but I take each bauble and trinket out of its box where it has waited out the summer and each gives me more joy than any perfectly color-coordinated little glass soldier. Christmas is a messy riot of experiences, something without theme or reason or rhyme but something that makes me smile when I see it all at once. That’s life, too.

I'm a little pill with a big story to tell

O

nce upon a time, I was called empagliflozin, a sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor indicated, among other things, for reducing the risk of cardiovascular death in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus and established cardiovascular disease, and also an adjunct to diet and exercise to improve glycemic control in adults and pediatric patients aged 10 years and older with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

 

I was just enjoying life, content with my lot as an SGLT2 inhibitor, when the good people from Boehringer Ingelheim showed up. They ran all sorts of trials on me—phase I, phase II, and even phase III. They were randomized, they were controlled, they were double-blind, they were multicenter, they were placebo-controlled. All in an effort to help people with diabetes lower their A1c. Along the way, I was honored and humbled to receive approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

 

Boehringer Ingelheim baptized me and called me Jardiance. I wasn’t just hard-to-pronounce generic empagliflozin anymore. I had a name! A real name! Something musical that just rolled off the tongue.

 

Then, late last year, a breakthrough! The DINAMO phase III clinical trial met its primary endpoint by demonstrating a statistically significant reduction in HbA1c compared with placebo for children and adolescents aged 10–17 years living with type 2 diabetes!¹ It turns out that when Jardiance was added to other baseline treatments (diet, exercise, metformin and/or insulin) HbA1c was reduced by 0.84% compared with placebo at week 26 (95% CI –1.50 to –0.19; P=0.012).

 

Woo-hoo!

 

You might have seen me around. Sometimes I’m 10 mg pale yellow, round, biconvex and bevel-edged, film-coated tablets debossed with “S 10” on one side and the Boehringer Ingelheim company symbol on the other side. But sometimes I’m 25 mg pale yellow, oval, biconvex, film-coated tablets debossed with “S 25” on one side and the Boehringer Ingelheim company symbol on the other side.

 

Be careful with me, though—there have been reports of urosepsis, genital mycotic infections, and necrotizing fasciitis of the perineum. But let’s not worry about that unpleasantness now.

 

Since that phase III study in Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, everything’s just been coming up Jardiance! They shot a big-budget commercial that the public has just enthusiastically embraced. You all know the lyrics:

 

I have type 2 diabetes but I’m wearing it well

It’s a little pill with a big story to tell

I take once daily Jardiance at each day’s start

 

As time goes on, it’s easy to see

I’m lowering my A1c

Jardiance is really swell

The little pill with the big story to tell!

 

No need to thank me for giving you this earworm today. Anyway, America can’t get enough of this commercial! They made it a big, splashy musical and hired an actress to do all these amazing dance moves (seriously, the way she waves her arms and jumps from side to side is worthy of the late Tina Turner) on top of this fountain in a town square. Then, just when you think it can’t get any better, she changes into this dazzling yellow dress and keeps on dancing! And everybody is just controlling their A1c and losing weight and diabetes is just a big party!

 

I’m Jardiance, the swell little pill, and that’s my story!

 

THE END

 

^Reference

^{1. Laffel LM, Danne T, Klingensmith GJ, Tamborlane WV, Willi S, Zeitler P, Neubacher D, Marquard J; DINAMO Study Group. Efficacy and safety of the SGLT2 inhibitor empagliflozin versus placebo and the DPP-4 inhibitor linagliptin versus placebo in young people with type 2 diabetes (DINAMO): a multicentre, randomised, double-blind, parallel group, phase 3 trial. Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol. 2023 Mar;11(3):169-181. doi: 10.1016/S2213-8587(22)00387-4. Epub 2023 Feb 1. PMID: 36738751.}

 

OMG! She's dating someone!!!

And he’s a professional NFL athlete for some sport! This is so exciting!!! I’m not sure what “NFL” stands for but after hearing about this, I immediately went online and bought one of those big sports shirts with the number on the back. I’m going to wear this to the next Eras Tour stop and she’ll look right at me! I’m freaking out over this! I’d say this guy is like a top 3 boyfriend since the Reputation Era, or maybe top 5 since 1989. I really didn’t like that last guy, the singer. Some of the things he said upset me and he just wasn’t good for her. I bought his band’s last album on vinyl, and when the Amazon box came in the mail, I just threw it right in the trash—didn’t even open it. And there may be further repercussions for him in the future for what he did. I don’t know, would you rank the sports guy above or below that one non-famous guy? I mean, that guy was OK but there were a few things I didn’t really approve of. I know they’re never ever getting back together. I know this latest guy is better than that actor with the long face—no, not that one, the other one. He treated her so badly that I boycotted everything he acted in and spent a few days slowly circling his mansion in my Kia. Even he’s better than that one musician she dated. I curse his name for what he did to her. But I know happy days are ahead now! I can’t wait to wear my sports shirt to the concert. It’s red so I’m going to whip it around my head everytime she sings something from Red! Oh my God, I’m freaking out! You guys!!!

Things to Remember 2023

Here are some highlights of a week in September 2023 in the little house by the marina:

 

The wrong door code upon check in

Showing up in summer and leaving in fall

Saturday: burgers, dogs and potato salad

Veronica brainstorming ways to get Bike Week cancelled

Mai tais courtesy of Crooks

Complaining about being bloated while eating salty foods and drinking a lot

Sunday: ravioli, meatballs, salad and garlic bread

Brian and Veronica’s intricately choreographed dance to Sheila Easton’s “Strut”

Paul and Vron infiltrating the locals at Duffy's

A new day, a new beach—130th St Ocean City, Poodle Beach Rehoboth, Fenwick Island State Park, Delaware Seashore State Park

Monday: burgers and dogs part deux

Birthday cake

A stormy first few days

Sliding off our chairs at the erotic sound of motorcycles

Getting alerts on our phones about Cavalcante

Tuesday: chicken drums and Suddenly Salad. SUDDENLY there was SALAD!!!

Several lovely walks to the sunset

Pretty ‘90s mauve scalloped window valances and a Golden Girls sectional couch

Rico killing 10 biting flies on the beach

The return of the SS Slut

Wednesday: Brats, tater tots, and roasted veg

An obligatory Seatowne visit

Obsessing over our cats all week

Playing Hello Nasty like it’s Seatowne ‘98

The gorgeous pink-driftwood-and-ragged-fake-plant thing on the dining room table

Sooooooooo much bottled water

Thursday: Thanksgiving Dinner!

Cheering on the Eagles and Phillies

Howling winds and rough surf on Friday at the beach

Discussing our irresponsible food and drink decisions while simultaneously making irresponsible food and drink decisions

Friday: pizza and wings

The ceramic light up panther on the pink lacquer credenza

Finding a dozen decks of cards after buying a deck of cards

Paul finally winning a game of Setback

"You can do magic! Deet Dee Dee!"

Another week of friends, booze, and laughter on a deck by the bay!

 

Thanks for another amazing year! Let’s do it all over again next summer!

 

Titan(ic)

I didn’t expect to hear humility from James Cameron, of all people, following the implosion of the Titan. He said this avoidable disaster showed that not everybody had learned the lesson of the Titanic: not to be so arrogant with nature.

 

My thoughts on the Titan are these: it was a horrible way to die that I hope was mercifully quick, and that it was a phenomenally stupid thing for everyone to do. They paid a quarter of a million dollars to take a tiny submarine, made of materials that had never been successfully used at the crushing depths of the bottom of the North Atlantic, made by a company that wasn’t bound by regulations and had previous safety questions, for which they signed a lengthy waiver that mentioned “death” as a possibility several times on the first page, and that was controlled by an X-Box joystick. You put your lives in the hands of a man who once said “At some point, safety is just pure waste.” They saw you comin’.

 

The people onboard were adventurer types and their families will probably say they “died doing what they loved” and I won’t criticize it if that’s your way of coping. Personally, I would rather just fall asleep in an easy chair in my old age while reading a book and not wake up, like a normal person. To be fair, reading is my favorite thing, so I guess I’d also die doing what I loved.

 

What struck me is an interview on the news with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who described himself as a “maverick.” He said he had broken the rules to make Titan. “The carbon fiber and titanium—there’s a rule you don’t do that. Well, I did.” The rule this maverick broke wasn’t like some red tape from the bureaucrats in Washington; it was a rule of physics. The ocean doesn’t care that you have a gleam in your eye and smug smile. Rush quoted Gen. Douglas MacArthur as saying you’re “remembered for the rules you break.” At the risk of being insensitive on a blog only three people will ever read, I’d suggest that they might remember you if you break a rule and die needlessly, but that remembrance might not be positive.

 

One lesson we can take from this is to stop signing away our lives—metaphorically and literally—to someone just because he has a lot of money and a square jaw.

Did you know Prince Harry's mother died in a car accident when he was young?

Were you aware of that? It’s an obscure little corner of history that Prince Harry’s mother, a woman known as Princess Diana, died in a car accident in 1997, when he was 12. This would explain to any confused layman why everyone keeps bringing it up again and again and again whenever society’s collective treatment of the Duke of Sussex is at issue, or he faces any adversity. Which is always.

 

Here's a primer for those who are not scholars of esoteric ‘90s trivia. Princess Diana died in a car accident in Paris in 1997. Her car had been pursued by the paparazzi and crashed at a high speed into a pillar in a tunnel, killing the Princess of Wales and her partner. The driver of Diana’s car was very drunk and high, and nobody was wearing a seatbelt, but the public could not romanticize these accident factors as hysterically as they could romanticize “the paparazzi hounded her and killed her,” so the paparazzi angle is what we as a society decided to focus on. It’s much more emotionally satisfying to have a decades-long cri de coeur over “the goddess of the hunt becoming the hunted” than to get into the less glamorous details of a fatal DUI.

 

So you can see why everyone was freaked out at the paparazzi’s high-speed, French Connection–esque chase of Harry and Meghan in New York City a few weeks ago. I shudder picturing the hours the couple spent evading the horde of reporters who relentlessly pursued them at speedometer-pinning speeds through the wide-open Autobahns of Manhattan.

 

Nobody got killed or hurt, but they sure could have! This is what Harry’s team pointed out, and what I think whenever I pass a car accident: That could have been me if the situation had been completely different, and that’s functionally the same as me having been in that accident. And sure, the vicious car chase resulted in only some harrowing inconvenience for Harry and Meghan—they actually had to change cars and take a scenic route back to where they were staying—but when you put all this into context of his mother’s seldom-discussed fatal car accident, it makes sense. Aside from the incidental fact that nobody died, the two car chases are eerily similar. This is why the media must take every opportunity to remind us all how a woman none of us knew died in a car accident 26 years ago. The sun shall never set on “Candle in the Wind 1997.”

 

This is also why Prince Harry has no choice but to work out all his long-suppressed grief and issues in an unending series of documentaries, interviews, musicals, and public appearances, and why we all must bear constant witness to that, because something something paparazzi something Diana something something our collective responsibility at her death. There’s simply no way to do all this out of the public eye.

 

In conclusion, leave Harry and Meghan alone! All they want is to live their lives in peace while simultaneously running around waving frantically and saying “Look at me!” while also working out their issues in the healthiest way possible—by earning a nine-figure paycheck.

Succession Series Finale: With Open Eyes

After four years of Succession, none of the Roy kids wins a kiss from daddy. Ken in a sense does become his father, terribly abusing his siblings during the board meeting. But he only claims his birthright to cruelty, and not Logan’s business acumen and ends up doing something the old man rarely did: failed. His CEO dreams die by one vote, and he ends up the same sad sack he always was.

 

Instead, Tom Wambsgans triumphs as the lapdog CEO of the new company. Shiv unwittingly sets this in motion by saying her estranged husband will “suck the biggest dick in the room.” She means this as a passive-aggressive way to save Tom’s job but keep him at heel, but Matsson takes it differently. After Tom doesn’t push back against Matsson wanting to fuck his wife, the Swede realizes Tom will submit himself to Matsson’s real power, something Shiv would never really do. And so Tom, the empty suit, fails upwards into the CEO job—exactly how it goes sometimes in real life. Greg, with his combination of cunning/slackjaw-ness, is a similarly useful idiot to Tom, so of course Greg also ends up failing upward.

 

All this is true to life. Did anyone think the world of Succession was a meritocracy?

 

The night the Roys spent at their mom’s in Barbados was a parallel to how they bonded at the end of season 3 in a similar tropical location. It was also a parallel Earth, depicting how the kids could have just walked away from the company intrigue and enjoyed each other’s company and the billions they’d cash out with. I don’t fully understand their problem with Caroline. Sure, she’s a piece of work, but no less than anyone in their circle. They might have been better off with her. After Roman’s breakdown/beatdown, Caroline is the only one who actually says she’s taking care of him.

 

The kids skip out on her plans to go back to the board meeting. “Never had my plans ruined before by a huge board meeting,” their mother says. She’s passive-aggressive but right—I have some sympathy for how it must have been to try to build a life with the Roys and have it constantly interrupted.

 

The siblings compare notes and realize that at one point, Logan told each of them they could have the company. Shiv got her assurance a few seasons ago when she seemed to be on the upswing, and Roman inferred a more cryptic vote of confidence just before Logan died. Ken’s promise came at a Candy Kitchen at age 7, and he’s had to carry that warping burden ever since. After finding out Matsson is screwing her, Shiv decided to screw him and tank the deal. The three “anoint” Ken as CEO in a sweet bonding scene on a raft in the water (they always seem to bond over the water). The thing is, none of them are very competent. Roman never could have gotten it; he’s too all over the place and has too much work to do on himself first in terms of working through his child abuse. I always saw Shiv and Ken as about equal in terms of ability, but Ken might have an edge as he was more involved with Waystar than his sister. But really, none of them are serious choices to run a company.

 

The scene in the kitchen as the three blend together a vile concoction as “a meal fit for a king” was sweet and fun. It played on some untold history among the three and was a nice way for the show to say goodbye to them. They flew to Barbados separately and in a snit, but they fly home together.

 

The show also has a final goodbye scene to Logan, shown in a video of a recent dinner with his mistress and the grays. He’s relaxed, riffing on politics and singing songs. None of his kids was invited. They can put stickers on Logan’s belongings and claim them after he dies, but they didn’t break through to that true inner circle with their father.

 

Unity crumbles in the boardroom. Roman has a last heartbreaking moment of mourning the CEO position he didn’t get, wondering why it couldn’t be him. Ken hugs his little brother but in doing so, literally reopens a wound so he can claim his power. It’s a hug and an assault; a harbinger. The vote to sell is 6–6 with Shiv as the tiebreaker. Siobhan lives up to her nickname in the final moments of the show and tanks the deal.

 

Shiv’s motivations for this were likely complicated. I think she does believe, correctly, that her brother would be terrible as CEO. “I love you but I can’t fucking stomach you,” she tells her brother. Maybe a part of her also calculated that if the sale goes through, she’d be married to the CEO and could still stay in the game. Maybe voting to sell was just her exercising whatever power she could.

 

The scene in the glass-walled boardroom was the ugliest in the show’s history as the three backstab one another worse than they ever have. Kendall screams “I’m the eldest boy*!” at his siblings, showing all of Logan’s thunder but none of his power. Shiv brings up the waiter Ken killed, threatening to reveal that to the board. Roman makes some shockingly nasty comments about the biological parentage of Ken’s kids. Most alarming of all, Ken—who had previously defended his little brother against their father’s abuses—assaults Roman with a horrific face-hold that made it look like he wanted to kill him. Ken continues the cycle of abuse in his family, inheriting his dad’s cruelty—but walks away with nothing.

 

The siblings are shattered after all this. These are terrible people who hurt one another and somehow have still managed to retain a bond after everything, but the hurt may just be too deep to come back from this time. After all, they no longer have their father or the company to orbit around. If Logan had any wishes for them to remain together after he died, all that lasted about a week.

 

So where do they go after the final credits?

 

Roman Roy is finally free. “We are bullshit,” Roman says, almost as a thesis statement for the show. “It’s all fucking nothing.” He goes to the bar for a drink and while there is a twinge of sadness on his face, there’s also a smile. Maybe he can live for himself and find some peace.

 

Siobhan Roy’s future is uncertain. She’s married to the CEO and pregnant but their marriage is an ongoing disaster and Tom is still facing heavy criticism for his premature election call. Can she really be happy outside the center of power? As her father said, she married a man “fathoms beneath her” so he wouldn’t betray her, but he betrayed her anyway. In the car, Tom extends his hand and she accepts it, but half-heartedly.

 

Kendall Roy is completely lost. He came within a micron of power and lost it. He’s estranged from his siblings and his kids. Now all he has is a bodyguard he doesn’t need, and nothing really to do. He walks around and stares out at the river. He thought he could be his father and ended up with the old man’s worst qualities and none of the success.

 

Season 4 was a thrill ride, powerful enough to bring me to the brink of a panic attack over the death of someone I didn’t know, and to send me into despair about the election of a fictional fascist. None of the kids ended up with the crown but that was immensely satisfying to me and very true to the spirit of the show. Succession was never really a show about succession, but instead a show about idiots failing upward and stayed true to that until the end. It wasn’t about the destination but the incompetent bastards we met along the way.

I'm trying to develop Very Strong Online Opinions about the remake of 'The Little Mermaid'

There comes a time when you can’t just sit on the sidelines and be neutral about a hot-button cultural issue; when you need to stand up and opine. This becomes clearer to me as I get older. That’s why I’m making a real effort to develop some Very Strong Online Opinions about the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid.

 

I enjoyed the original when I saw it many years ago but I never really had any strong feelings about it. Well, that’s about to change dramatically. I’m going to either view the movie in worshipful terms or become disgusted with the way Disney heartlessly trashed the most beloved movie of all time.

 

I’m wondering if the stance I need to take is to absolutely detest Halle Bailey’s performance as Ariella—just on principle and before even seeing the movie. In doing my research, it seems as if this is a common viewpoint in certain circles. I’ve learned from the haters that opposing the casting of a Black woman in a role originally portrayed as white has absolutely nothing to do with racism. No, it’s actually a principled defense of the vision of creator Hans Christian Andersen, a lifelong passion that started the moment these people heard about this casting decision. After all, the original 1989 mermaid was a redheaded woman—er, drawing—so it really takes a machete to people’s souls to see this fantastical creature portrayed differently.

 

I’m sure Bailey’s performance is fine but that’s wrong of me to think. No, I either need to get into high dudgeon over it, or speak in rapturous tongues about its glories. It’s the same with Melissa McCarthy as Ursula. She’s either perfect for the role and will embody it completely, or she’s a disgrace against art and she should be run out of town on a rail. Plus, Awkwafina will either outrage or delight me. I’ll decide on all of these characters soon.

 

Beyond just the actresses, it’s important to have a position on whether or not remaking The Little Mermaid brings back fond memories or ruins my childhood. My research has found many people take the latter stance—a childhood irreparably destroyed by Disney’s decision to retain hold of its intellectual property—so I’m leaning toward that. It will be important to emphasize the tragedy of this to everyone who can hear or read me complain, since I had just begun to rebuild a childhood that was completely shattered by the remake of The Lion King.

 

Childhood, it appears, is very fragile. When it’s ruined, it happens retroactively—all those pleasant memories you had are no longer valid. When you look back, every day will be an ice cream cone dropped face-down on the asphalt. And it’s not like it’s an option to just not see a movie’s remake and be content with the original.

 

So I’m weighing how to react to all this; to find extreme passion for something I never really cared about before. I’ll let you all know, at a very loud volume, soon.

Succession 4.9: Church and State

It’s a safe bet that on TV, when they show someone rehearsing something they’re about to do, they won’t actually get to do it for real, or will do it in a form very different from what they were rehearsing. So when I saw Roman cavalierly running through his eulogy, I figured he wouldn’t get to give it straight during Logan’s funeral. It sounded like Roman’s speech would have just been boilerplate, more about his father’s business legacy than anything else. As usual, Roman makes jokes on the way to the funeral, mocking Ken for using sunglasses as a shield for his tears and teasing Shiv about her pregnancy. “If I see breastfeeding, I’m gonna have to jerk off” is such a charming thing to say to your sister on the way to your dad’s funeral.

 

But hearing Ewan’s honest eulogy about his dad visibly breaks something in Roman; you can see him snap. He finally, finally drops all his defenses and can only sob at the lectern. The full weight of who his father was and what he lost hits him. The crying was heartbreaking, and another great performance from Kieran Culkin (engrave his Emmy while you’re doing Sarah Snook’s). When he says “Is he in there? Get him out,” this is a grown man reduced to a child in the face of losing his dad.

 

Ewan’s eulogy was extraordinary. Every criticism of his brother’s rapacious capitalism and hoarding of wealth was true (“the grain stashed while another goes hungry”). But his recounting of their perilous wartime trip across the Atlantic, and the death from polio of their sister Rose—and Logan’s guilt for having think he caused it—was humanizing and intimate to an almost painful degree. Nobody in Logan’s circle had probably ever heard any of that. “He fed a certain kind of meagerness in men,” his brother says. “Perhaps he had to, because he had a meagerness about him. And maybe I do about me, too. I don’t know. I try. I try. I don’t know when, but some time, he decided not to try anymore. And it was a terrible shame.” This was praise and burial, humanizing and demonizing. No wonder Roman broke down.

 

Ken acknowledges his father’s monstrous tendencies but asserts that he used that monstrousness to build something great—newspapers, movies, ships. His is a shadow of his uncle’s speech and he can only really relate to his dad through money. “I hope it’s in me,” Ken says of his dad’s ruthlessness, as much a eulogy as an audition.

 

Shiv’s speech was a little more human than Ken’s Ayn Rand tribute. She acknowledged the problems he had with women, saying Logan “couldn’t fit a whole woman in his head,” but also saying goodbye to her “world of a father.” By the time they get to the cemetery, after seeing how Roman can’t go into the mausoleum and hearing him say he “couldn’t breathe” when dad was around, Shiv starts to doubt, asking Karl and Frank what kind of person her father really was; she gets no real answers that she doesn’t already know.

 

There were some nice touches I liked at the funeral, like Caroline immediately sensing Shiv is pregnant (your mother can always tell). The monosyllabic exchange between them was like something out of Ab Fab. In a lovely grace note, Logan’s wives make peace with the mistresses who supplanted them. I liked the small touch of humanity Marcia showed to the genuinely shattered Kerry.

 

The funeral once again underlined something very sad about this family: it’s really only immediate family and the hangers-on from Waystar in their circle. A funeral is usually a time when you reconnect with relatives and friends who come out of the woodwork to pay their respects, but the Roy kids weren’t actually mingling with or receiving any family like most normal mourners do. It was all dealmaking and corporate intrigue. These Waystar people are not your friends, which was again clarified with the cruelty with which they made fun of Roman’s breakdown. But how can you expect real warmth in a family where Logan chose his company’s lawyer to be his daughter’s godmother?

 

I realize they wanted to go with gravitas at the recessional out of the church with the slowed-down Succession theme song. But what kind of Catholic funeral doesn’t end with “On Eagles’ Wings”?

 

I also liked Jess’s flash of dignified defiance at her resignation, and the subtle suggestion that everything with Mencken and ATN’s rightward turn influenced that. Sorry, Ken, I know it was a rough day for you with your father’s funeral and all but you did force an answer out of Jess about the meeting. It was only her tact and desire not to burn bridges that kept her from telling you off.

 

The cemetery was kind of anticlimactic but I liked the way even everyday things can intrude on solemn moments—you still have to get out of the car to walk over to the grave. Shiv’s “I’m intrigued to see how he gets out of this one” was gold, and a bit of meta-commentary about the audience.

 

With completely predictable hilarity, Mencken has stopped caring about doing favors for ATN and stopping the sale now that he’s on the cusp of real power and can control the narrative by at least claiming victory. (But is Mencken president-elect? The Electoral College has another month before it has to meet and there needs to be some sort of legal remedy for those lost Wisconsin ballots. So the ATN call could be legally wrong as well as politically wrong. I’m enough of a nerd about this that I need closure.) You could see his eyes glazing over as Ken, Connor, and Greg approached him for favors. How dumb are these people to believe this guy would follow through with a verbal promise? Instead, Mencken will back the sale of Waystar to GoJo with Shiv as American CEO.

 

It's tragic to see how alone Roman Roy is. His abusive dad is gone and he doesn’t know who he is without him. His siblings could choose to comfort him in his obvious distress, but Ken mocks him for not giving the eulogy, saying “you fucked it.” Clips of his sobbing at his lowest moment are going viral. And so, he has nothing and nobody left, choosing to run into the crowd of protestors, surrendering to their abuse and the chaos he helped unleash.

Succession 4.8: America Decides

It is horrific that the seesawing of the United States government toward fascism in the end came down to the business desires, petty family grievances, and ignorance of the Roy family. Jeryd Mencken barely wins the presidency due to ATM’s management-mandated calls of Wisconsin and Arizona for the hard-right Republican.

 

Everyone in this family had a part to play in this election:

 

Roman, who once seemed to have a flicker of conscience for what a Mencken presidency would do to the American people, goes all-in on the candidate since Mencken had promised he would use the government’s regulatory powers to disrupt the Waystar–GoJo deal. More than just a business deal, this is personal—Rome’s grief over his father’s death combines with his desire to both one-up and please Logan to take the side of the right wing. In his arguing with Shiv over whether Menken supporters or “antifa” set the fire at the Milwaukee polling place, there is also a distinct sense of sibling rivalry, that the two are just being contrary like they were as children. It’s more explicit with Ken, as Roman whines that they always had chicken growing up because Ken wanted chicken for dinner, while Roman never got the steak he wanted. The fate of America turned on these grievances.

 

Siobhan, a Jimenez supporter, is genuinely horrified by the prospect of Mencken’s win, but the personal mixes with her actions, too. At Ken’s urging, she calls Jimenez’s people to try to get them to scotch the deal in exchange for ATN’s calls in the Democrat’s favor. But Shiv also wants to get back at her brothers for freezing her out, so the call is a fake one, her need to get back at her brothers and get in good with Matsson outweighing her concerns for the country. It backfires badly on her when Ken finds out and calls her a “piece of dirt.” (God, that quick flash of anguish when she realizes Ken knows she faked the call and there’s no coming back from betraying her family—engrave Sarah Snook’s Emmy now.)

 

Kendall seems genuinely torn between his desire for Mencken to win and screw Matsson, and his desire to do what’s best for the country. That scene when he was discussing the larger implications of the election with Shiv showed just a little crack in Ken’s armor to his humanity. His conscience is so close to telling him the world-altering moves he and his siblings are making will have real effects on people like his daughter. Then he finds out his sister betrayed him, and a different kind of personal feeling gets in the way, and he’s all in for Mencken.

 

Greg plays a part, too. He bumbled into having a drink with Matsson and learning he’s talking to Shiv. She threatens him, which motivates him to betray her and tell Ken what’s really going on.

 

Connor had a more amusing role with his 1% share of the voters, but it’s not unthinkable that he may have skewed the electoral votes. It’s funny and very depressing that a man who can afford to throw around $100 million for a vanity presidential campaign is also deluded enough to think he’ll be having “breakfast in Dubrovnik” as part of the new administration.

 

Tom, of course, is the one who made the call for Wisconsin and Arizona, after a cocaine-fueled meltdown over the dysfunctional touch screen and the immense pressure of making the call. The personal plays a part for him, too—the news of Shiv’s pregnancy probably influenced him toward calling the election for the Republican to get back at his Democratic wife. “Is this just another play?” he asks her about the pregnancy. These people also don’t know what they’re doing. Tom has no experience in election coverage whatsoever and was picked to run ATM in return for favors to the boss. None of the Roys also seem to know that much about election laws, and are powerful enough to hand-wave away what they see as minor concerns, like absentee ballots and recounts.

 

Logan is gone but still played a part—he hand-picked Mencken to run for president. This is how these people see the world: they have the power and the privilege to make literally world-altering decisions to serve their bottom line, with no concern for the rest of us. The reality belies the episode title “America Decides”—powerful people like the Roys are the ones who decide for America. It would play more as an amusing farce if we didn’t already live through election night 2016. (My eye started twitching when someone said “There goes the blue wall.”) By the way, is this taking place in 2020 or 2024?

 

This episode wasn’t entirely dark and there were a few moments of levity to be found, like that pollster getting wasabi in his eye, a sting exacerbated by Greg using lemon LaCroix as eye wash. “It’s not that lemony! It’s just a hint of lemon,” Greg defends himself, but it doesn’t seem comforting to the poor guy. Connor’s concession speech was funny, with him vilifying “that woman,” his VP who dropped out. It was a tantalizing little glimpse of a story you wish you’d heard in full.

 

Other than the brief flashes of humor, this episode of Succession was pure nihilism.

Succession 4.7: Tailgate Party

Succession is one of those shows, like The Americans, where I easily understand the emotional content but have a harder time with some of the plot. It’s one of those shows where things happen in whispers and winks and I don’t always grasp developments right away. It’s another reason why I wouldn’t make it in that environment. So I’ll start with a few things I didn’t get right away.

 

I’m not sure what’s going on with Nate and ATN. Is Ken promising that the network will be friendlier to the Democrats? Is it in exchange for the Democratic presidential candidate doing something or other? I’m slow on the uptake here. I was also a little fuzzy on what happened with Ken’s daughter. I got that the show is saying the election is causing rising hate and discrimination in America but was the hate the girl experienced in the street directed at her or was it a more general vibe? The election plot seems a little undercooked this season. I know the general idea is Mencken is a fascist and I believe he was down 4 percent in the polls (shades of 2016) but I lost track of it in the confusion of the party. I knew Connor would be the Ralph Nader/Jill Stein of this election and draw votes from a major candidate but in this show, it’s the Republican he’s drawing from.

 

I definitely understood the emotional content of that vicious fight between Shiv and Tom—for like 45 minutes—on the balcony. None of this was just things you didn’t mean said in the heat of passion; you don’t bring up that many specific grudges unless you’ve been stewing about them for a long time.

 

George and Martha just laid into each other like never before, two scorpions on the attack. Shiv tells Tom he only wanted her for her DNA and that his family is a bunch of conservative hicks. Tom tells her she shouldn’t be a mother, which visibly wounds her. “I have given you endless approval and it doesn’t even fill you up because you’re broken,” Tom says. Shiv says she doesn’t care, which always comes off convincingly when you’re crying. Shiv tells Tom his betrayal at the wedding kept her away from her father in the final months of his life, something so true and hurtful to someone like Shiv that it was ice water in the face.

 

Tom is upset because Shiv is spreading around rumors that he’s going to be fired from ATN, but his wife says it was more of a light implication. Oh, OK then! An implication from your wife about your firing isn’t as hurtful as an outright statement. Shiv is giving Matsson inside information on her brothers’ plans to use the regulatory power of the SEC and DOJ to stop the sale of Waystar to GoJo. She tells Tom she’s “fucking her family” so she can get the huge payout she expects to get. I only have limited sympathy for this. I understand wanting to betray her brothers after they froze her out, but if she’s really that conflicted about it, she could just, like, not do it. “Fucking my family” is a loaded choice on the part of the writers. There’s no actual incest happening in the Roy family apart from some jokes, but they’re definitely insular.

 

Tom might get fired after laying off dozens of ATN staffers with some fake tears, saying what a difficult day it is—for him—and leaving the dirty work to Greg. Can you imagine how low you’d feel being laid off by Cousin Greg? You work hard for years and get the ax from, as the one Swede calls him, a “fucking dingleberry.”

 

So when is this funeral? Logan’s body must be embalmed to hell and back. I guess it has only been a few days since he died but the show seems to be getting Game of Thrones–esque with unrealistic travel times. They’ve had trips to Norway, California and who knows where else this week. The Roy siblings spent three seconds planning his funeral at lunch and left without eating. I haaate that—people on TV dramas always go out to dinner and leave without eating. I don’t know how many episodes of Dallas I watched where Sue Ellen went to lunch with someone and before they could even order, Sue Ellen told the other woman “stop screwing JR” or whatever and stomped out in a huff. I obviously love to eat so I don’t like this. That bread looked pretty good at the Roys’ lunch. I would have stayed.

 

It's a bit of a Gift of the Magi to see Ken and Matsson accusing one another of fraudulent business practices. As we saw last episode, the Roys edited Logan’s posthumous video to say falsely that Living+ would double the company’s revenue. Now we find out that Ebba, GoJo’s truly dangerous communications woman, that her company doubled its number of subscribers in India (I knew there was a reason why Matsson needed a quick sale). Both of these are blatantly illegal, so both sides are screwed in this deal.

 

The next episode will be election day, wo we’ll get some clarity on the election plot. Some of the Roys seem concerned about a hard-right president, but they’ll be fine no matter who wins, because they’re unimaginably wealthy. It must be nice to live in a triplex that’s so big that you have a spare room you can use for dozens of coats for your fancy party.

Weeds

Even the weeds have their seasons.

 

As spring sputters to a start, those little purple heads pop up tentatively, to see if April is really April.

 

As May crams full with birthday, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, the green leaves cram my garden, invidiously. I tear through them with some resentment that nothing I can do will exorcise them.

 

By Fourth of July, the weeds evolve until clawing out of the ground, maliciously, their green a thick thatch that cannot be easily disposed of.

 

The weeds fade and find their phases like daffodils, geraniums and dahlias. Even the ugliest part of creation still has its distinct character.