Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

reviewing 3 Body Problem; Black Doves; Countdown; Dark Matter; Dept. Q; Dexter: Resurrection, Original Sin; Dune: Prophecy; For All Mankind; Foundation; Hijack; MobLand; Outlander; Presumed Innocent; Prime Target; Severance; Silo; Slow Horses; Smoke; Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; The: Day of the Jackal, Diplomat, Last of Us, Way Home; Your Friends and Neighbors +books, films, music, podcasts, politics

George Santayana had irrational faith in reason - I have irrational faith in TV.

Friday, July 18, 2025

Foundation 3.2: "The Fault, Dear Brutus, Is Not in Our Stars"

Well, as I said last week, this third season of Foundation on Apple TV+ is a much leaner, tauter, truer telling than the first two seasons of Isaac Asimov's indelible, incredible trilogy, and thus -- though it still is markedly different from the trilogy in all kinds of ways, though the triad Cleon "Empire" would be more than enough to make the screen version very different from Asimov's -- much more fun, at least for me, to see.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

I couldn't help but chuckle when Hari Seldon, not quite alive, but much more alive than Seldon as hologram in the trilogy, remarks to Gaal that, other than the Mule, Gaal and Hari brought the evolution of the galaxy pretty much back on track after it had veered far off course. And whose fault was that, that humankind had gone so far astray? Well, not Hari's and not the Mule's, not any character in the narrative on the screen. No, the blame resides with the writers and people who dreamed up this retelling of the Foundation story on television.

But now they're now they're working hard to get it straight. A significant part of Asimov's story of The Mule and The Second Foundation's attempt to stop him in Asimov's telling of his story concerns the planet Tazenda, which name sounds like Star's End, where rumor has it that the Second Foundation is headquartered, wherever exactly that is. The Mule, misled into thinking he's wiping out the Second Foundation, blasts that planet of our existence with his fleet. That Star's End business was so important, there's even a superb podcast with that name, where I was fortunate to be a guest some two years ago. And if I remember correctly, someone wrote a piece in some academic journal decades ago which argued that Asimov was immoral to have his Second Foundation set up an innocent planet to be destroyed in its fight against the Mule. But I'm mentioning the destruction of a whole planet in this review of Foundation 3.2 because one of its most significant elements has Empire Dusk planning on giving Dawn a way to erase a planet.

The Dawn-Day-Dusk triumvirate has been the best part of the first two seasons of Foundation on TV, and its good to see their story continuing so well as the rest of the galaxy veers ever more significantly back to the story Asimov and Hari wanted to tell. Including, I would add, hearing the name Bayta!

Thursday, July 17, 2025

Song of the Unsung Mushroom by Sarah Clarke Stuart

Coming January 2026 -- a new novel from Connected Editions! Song of the Unsung Mushroom by Sarah Clarke Stuart! After a hurricane strikes a small Florida town, young Claire is never the same. Years later, her brother, Gunther, is still haunted by the suspicion that she was taken and replaced by something not quite human. Set in the wild landscapes of northern Florida and Western Appalachia, this eco-fiction (cli-fi) story is a lyrical, genre-blurring novel about loss, identity, and the hidden intelligence that pulses beneath our feet. Nature and technology dissolve into one, reshaping what it means to be human. About Sarah: Sarah Clarke Stuart is a Professor of Communication at Florida State College at Jacksonville where she teaches literature, film, composition, and emerging technologies. Author of Literary Lost: Viewing Television Through the Lens of Literature (Bloomsbury) and Into the Looking Glass: Exploring the Worlds of Fringe (ECW Press), her nonfiction work explores the intersection of narrative, culture, and media. Song of the Unsung Mushroom is her debut novel; her previous fiction includes short stories such as “Immaculate,” which received Editor's Choice Award in the literary journal Fiction Fix. She contributed for many years to First Coast Magazine and Flamingo Magazine with articles grounded in a curious appreciation for the natural landscapes and stories of the region. Both Sarah’s fiction and current research are rooted in ecological interests and a deep sense of place and physical embodiment. Sarah is the creator and host of two podcasts: Lifeyness, which examines embodied mental health through storytelling, and AI Goes to College, a series about artificial intelligence and the evolving nature of education. "I See Trees Differently" by ‪ Dahlia Dumont (aka The Blue Dalia) from La tradition americaine, 2018. Pre-sale on Amazon of Song of the Unsung Mushroom by Sarah Clarke Stuart coming soon!

Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Podcast: Paul Levinson interviews Mike Grynbaum about Empire of the Elite

Welcome to Light On Light Through episode 413, in which I interview Mike Grynbaum about his book Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast, the Media Dynasty That Reshaped America, which was just published today. Condé Nast is the publisher of The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, GQ, Wired, and other iconic magazines, so we had a lot to talk about.

order Empire of the Elite
Maureen Dowd interviews Mike Grynbaum at the 92nd Street Y tonight!
Mike Grynbaum's "Mangia Mafia! Food, Punishment, and Cultural Identity in The Sopranos" in The Essential Sopranos Reader, eds. David Lavery, Douglas Howard, and Paul Levinson; University Press of Kentucky, 2011
Excerpt from Empire of the Elite in The Hollywood Reporter

Check out this episode!

Saturday, July 12, 2025

Dexter: Resurrection 1.1-1.2: The Imposter

Dexter: Resurrection debuted on Paramount Plus Premium/Showtime yesterday with two outstanding episodes which scored on many levels:

[Spoilers ahead ...]

My favorite was the introduction a Dexter imposter: a serial killer in New York City who calls hims the "dark passenger" because he preys on taxi-drivers. Dexter (Michael C. Hall is still perfect in the role he defined), in town to help/save his son Harrison, is a "multi-tasker" -- as he tells his father Harry, whom Dexter once again carries around inside his brain -- and he can't help wanting to get his namesake on the table, a guy who's really not at all like Dexter, who only goes after killers, preferably serial, not hard-working cabbies.
As a point that deserves its own bullet, the imposter wears a hoodie that prevents people taking his photograph. First I hadn't heard of that, but it's real, and it shows a TV series about serial killers can have all kinds of educational benefits.
It was great to see Batista, now a captain, back in action, and now one of Dexter's worst enemies. And David Zayas looks better than ever!
Harrison kills his first badguy, a rapist. Dexter takes pride in how good his son is in their father-and-son trade.
Uma Thurman has some kind of nefarious role in this story, and it's always good to see her on the screen.
The music was excellent. Ok, my favorite song in these two episodes was "Stayin' Alive", and the Bee Gees never sounded better.
The song was played by Claudette Wallace, a police detective investigating the killing of the rapist killed by Harrison, and my favorite new character. She's played by Kadia Safia, who looks familiar because she was also in The Better Sister and Law & Order: SVU.
And in addition to Harry, it was also great to see The Trinity Killer, Miguel Prado, and Doakes -- or at least their ghosts -- come to see Dexter in his hospital room. Just like Batista, they all were looking good.

See you next week with my review of the next episode.

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter

Friday, July 11, 2025

Foundation 3.1: Now We're Talkin'!

At last, in Foundation 3.1, up on Apple TV+ today, an episode worthy of the greatest science fiction trilogy ever written -- the one by Isaac Asimov. To be sure, the story on the screen continues to be very different than the one of the page, but this beginning of third season of Foundation on streaming TV has recognizable characters and pieces doing what they're supposed to do, none more so than The Mule.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

First, it was also very satisfying to hear Demerzel tell us she is a positronic robot, and recite the Three Laws of Robotics, plus the Zeroth Law, so clearly. Given all the current concern about AI being so dangerous for humanity, it's good to hear that first law cited at the outset of this promising season.

It was also good to see another crucial trilogy character up on the screen. Ebling Mis not only has a great name, but has always been one of my favorite characters in the series. He does look a lot younger than Mis in the original trilogy, but that's ok. It was also good to see Pritcher in evidence, given his importance in the ascension of The Mule.

Whose takeover of Kalgan on the screen was done just perfectly, bringing into play all the sadistic sway of The Mule. Indeed, though this Mule looks much better than the mutant described by Asimov, he has all the frightening flash and power of Asimov's pivotal character, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this all plays out in the TV series.

And speaking of what characters look like, it was refreshing to see how the latest versions of the Empire's ruling triumvirate look. Unlike the trilogy, which did not have the clonal trio, there now are four players on the screen, vying for control of the galaxy: the First and the Second Foundations, the Mule, and Empire. I'll see you back here next week with my take on how this develops in the next episode.

Sunday, July 6, 2025

After Recording Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time, at Old Bear Records, October 2018

Tina Vozick & Paul Levinson at Old Bear Records, October 2018

My Mom Jayne: Mariska Hargitay's Heroic Struggle to Find Herself and Her Mother Jayne Mansfield

Mariska Hargitay was already an excellent rarity in television -- indeed, unique, in that her character Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has been on TV some 26 years and counting, longer than any other character in a TV drama. That's no surprise, given that Hargitay plays Benson with sensitivity and power in episode after episode. It's therefore also no surprise that My Mom Jayne, Hargitay's documentary about her mother Jayne Mansfield, is also unique, sensitive and powerful and unlike any documentary I've ever seen. My wife and I saw it last night on HBO Max, and were glued to the screen, often with tears in our eyes.

I grew up in the 1950s and early 60s, and my friends and I in the Bronx would often debate whom we'd like to spend the night with -- Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, or Mamie Van Doren. Of course, they all were highly attractive. But, believe it or not, we also discussed whom we'd like to talk to. We knew that Marilyn was married, then had been married, to playwright Arthur Miller, so we figured she had to be pretty smart. We knew almost nothing more about Jayne and Mamie than what they looked like.

My Mom Jayne makes the convincing case that Jayne Mansfield was no dummy either. She not only was contemplative and intelligent, she played the violin and piano. And after she'd established herself as a hot dumb blonde bombshell, she worked very hard and not very successfully to demonstrate that she had a brain, endeavoring to explain that the dumb blonde was an act. The popular culture is very resistant to that kind of change. It's hard to negate what made you famous, and get your devoted admirers to accept that all of that was just a stepping stone to something else. (One of the things that made The Beatles so transcendent is that they were able to move so smoothly from "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" to "A Day in the Life" and the Abbey Road medley.)

Jayne Mansfield's struggle to get the world to know who she really was, cut short only by her untimely tragic death in an auto accident in 1967, is one of the two central themes of My Mom Jayne, and epitomized in an interview we see of Jayne by Jack Paar. That host of The Tonight Show for just five years (1957-1962) -- who, by the way. introduced The Beatles to America -- was the intellectual's intellectual, more so than Carson, Letterman, and even Dick Cavett. So Jayne must have figured she had a chance of convincing Jack about her fine mind and talent. But the interview ends with a smirking Jack saying he'd like Jayne to kiss him. (Speaking of Jack, he also sounds in that interview a lot like Johnny, which shows that Johnny adopted more than created his inimitable way of talking to his guests.)

The other central theme of My Mom Jayne is Mariska Hargitay's lifelong struggle to find out who she really is. Mariska was just three when her mother died, so she has no memories of her mother. Mariska's quest to find out who her mother was and therefore who Mariska is and how she got here turns out to be such a riveting, complex story, with so many twists and turns, it could almost have been a two-part episode of Law & Order: SVU. Indeed, there are so many surprises packed into the end, I won't say anything more, except that if you've been a fan of Mariska or Jayne, or a devotee of our popular culture, or just like a compelling true story, you'll want to see My Mom Jayne.

science fiction/fantasy novelette

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Shocker at the End of Smoke's 2nd Episode

Talk about warnings for spoilers: here's one for what follows in my review of the first two episodes of Smoke, which have been up for a few days on Apple TV+. Indeed, the reveal at the end of the second episode of this new series is one of the biggest I ever remember seeing on any kind of TV series -- broadcast, cable, or streaming -- especially notable because it comes so early in the story.

***

Here it is: Gudsen, one of the two investigators looking into the two arsonists who are plaguing their city, is himself one of those two arsonists. We certainly see him setting a fire in a supermarket -- one of the two arsonists' modus operandi -- and smiling afterwards (Taron Egerton, who plays Gudsen, has a uniquely recognizable smile).

But does that 100% mean Gudsen is one of those two arsonists that he and his partner Calderone (very well played by Jurnee Smollett) are investigating? The TV series is an adaptation of the podcast, Firebug, which tells the story of a real-life firefighter who becomes an arsonist. But that doesn't mean that Smoke has to follow every part of the true-life story. Before that final reveal, we see Gudsen very frustrated. The literary agent he is seeking for the novel he is writing has turned him down. He doesn't get along well with his adopted son. Could he have set the fire to vent his emotions, setting it in the way one of the arsonists he and Calderone are investigating sets fires?

If yes, that would mean that Trolley Town is now being set on fire by three arsonists. But my guess it's more likely that Gudsen is indeed one of the original two arsonists, which is still a wild -- and true -- story indeed.

"challenging fun"
- Entertainment Weekly

e-mail received from a reader:
Dear Paul, I just dreamed of airships flying between raindrops. I just returned from 2042 CE, where I sold my hardcover copy of The Plot to Save Socrates for seventy million Neo-Euros, because it had your response to this e-mail from way back in 2007 scotch-taped onto the inside of the cover. A Paul Levinson collector paid top Neo-Euro, because of the authentic archaic e-mail printout from you. It turns out that not many of your e-mails from before your tenure as CEO of HBO/Cinemax and terms as United Nations Secretary General will survive that far into the future. So, please respond to this e-mail, to help found my great-grandchildren's fortune. My Will will stipulate that they must share with your great grandchildren. Thanks! Tom

I of course happily replied...

42 reviews of The Plot to Save Socrates!