The Bridge 2.9-10: Deaths and Close To

A scalding, concrete stripping last two episodes of The Bridge - 2.9 and 2.10 - featuring the deaths and brushes with death of the following major characters -

• Charlotte - dead - shot by Fausto's men in the house last week.  She was a strong character in the first season, but was a shadow of herself in season two.   Waste of a good actress, Annabeth Gish, who was standout in Brotherhood.
• DEA agent McKenzie - shot by Fausto's men in the same house last week.  Not a particularly likable but a strong character.   And another waste of acting talent - Abraham Benrubi, memorable in ER.
• Hank - close to death, but hanging on, after being shot in that same house last week.   Hank is arguably the third most important character on the show - after Marco and Sonya - or maybe tied for third with Fausto.   He now looks likely survive, in the hands of Sonya and Marco after a dramatic car interception, but you never know.   I'd hate to see him go, if the show's renewed.
• Eleanor - shot, again, in the house - not that to close to death, but you have to admire her recovery after she lost a lot of blood from a wound.   The woman even manages to walk away after her car is rammed, and only collapses when Sonya tells her to get down on the ground. Her survival is testament to the sheer survival power of deep, inchoate evil.

Sonya was rescued last week from what could have been death, but, again, her death would leave a season three bereft of one of the central characters on the show, and a compelling one at that. Probably the nicest moment in the tonight's episode is when she thanks Marco for saving her.   Just two weeks ago, she was disgusted with both Hank and Marco.  Now she's drawing close again to both of them.  Credit regarding Hank goes to Fausto's bullets.

Missing in action - once again - are Eva and Linder.   But the reporters are playing a bigger role, which is good to see.   Just two more episodes left this season - I'd definitely be up for watching a third.

See also The Bridge 2.1: What Motivates Sonya? ... The Bridge 2.2: First-Class Serial Killer ... The Bridge 2.3: Marco's Dilemma ... The Bridge 2.4: Marco Redeemed and Mr. Writ Large ... The Bridge 2.5: The Soul of the Not-Killer ... The Bridge 2.7: Major Business ... The Bridge 2.8: Parallel Stories

And see also The Bridge Opens Brooding and Valent ... The Bridge 1.2: A Tale of Two Beds ... The Bridge 1.6: Revelations ... The Bridge 1.7: A Killer and a Reluctant Professor ... The Bridge 1.8: Some Dark Poetic Justice ... The Bridge 1.9: Trade-Off ... The Bridge 1.10: Charlotte's Evolution ... The Bridge 1.11: Put to the Test ... The Bridge Season 1 Finale: Marco Joins Mackey and Agnew

 
another kind of crime story

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get The Bridge season 2 on

The Good Wife 4.2: Reunited

The Good Wife treatment of Occupy Wall Street continued in episode 4.2, with the story of an innocent protester tasered to death by a cop out to make his "mark".  In addition to the strong courtroom drama - with Will back in court arguing the case of the victim - the story provides an important reminder of what cops can do and have done when they're set unconstitutionally loose against protesters and people.

Meanwhile, the court also has Will grappling with a new rule that allows jurors to ask questions of witnesses when they're on the stand.  This makes for some humorous and decisive moments in courtroom but, even it hadn't, I like this rule.  It empowers the everyday people who are the bedrock of our judicial system and democracy.

An important continuing story is also introduced tonight, in the person of Maddie Hayward, played by ER's Maura Tierney.   Her character on ER overlapped briefly but significantly with Julianna Margulies' Carol on the same show, and it would have been great to see the two together on The Good Wife in any case.  But their new story seems especially scintillating and complex, spanning business, politics, and, of course, the personal.

Maddie goes out of her way to help Alicia - including giving an unasked-for contribution to Peter's campaign.  But her guardian angel behavior may have a price - she wants to have a drink with Alicia.  When Alicia demurs, Maddie says she just wants to be friends, and Alicia agrees to have a drink the next evening.

We don't see that. The episode ends before that.  But one thing is sure: it's not just friendship that Maddie wants.  Maybe sex is indeed her motive.  But I'm thinking Maddie wants Alicia to run for some office.






See also The Good Wife 4.1 Meets Occupy Wall Street

And see also The Good Wife 3.1: Recusal and Rosh Hashanah ... The Good Wife: 3.2: Periwigs and Skype ... The Good Wife 3.7: Peter v. Will ...  Dexter's Sister on The Good Wife 3.10  ... The Good Wife 3.12: Two Suits  ... The Good Wife 3.13 Meets Murder on the Orient Express ... The Good Wife 3.15: Will and Baseball

And see also  The Good Wife Starts Second Season on CBS ... The Good Wife 2.2: Lou Dobbs, Joe Trippi, and Obama Girl ... The Good Wife 2.4: Surprise Candidate, Intimate Interpsonal Distance ... The Good Wife 2.9 Takes on Capital Punishment ... The Good Wife 2.16: Information Wars

Prime Suspect Locked Away

NBC broadcast one of the final episodes of its short-lived new series, Prime Suspect, last night.

Too bad.  The show has a stellar cast - Maria Bello (ER), Brían F. O'Byrne (Brotherhood, Flashforward), Kirk Acevedo (Fringe!), Kenny Johnson (The Shield!!), to name just a few.  You can't get much better than that.  And the dialog has been sharp, humorous, tough, crackling.

But, sad to say, the plots were nothing special.  With the exception of one superb episode - 1.8 - which brings Jane (Bello) and Reg (O'Byrne) upstate and into a series of escalation action sequences as gripping as you might find in a good movie - the individual episode stories were trite and lackluster,  in contrast to the edge-of-your-seat mysteries in the original British series, which started Helen Mirren.

And the continuing story, which had potential, never really went anywhere.   Jane's difficulties as a female detective in the still male-chauvinist NYPD detective world barely went beyond the conflicts and abrasions of the first episode.  And her personal affairs, in particular, the possibilities of life with Matt (Johnson), never really were developed, either.

But, don't get me wrong, I would have been very happy to pick up the show for the rest of a complete season in the New Year, and will miss it, with all of its flaws.   NBC has added another good show to its roster of what might have beens, if only given a little more time on the air.   The Black Donnellys, Kidnapped, and Friday Night Lights (which managed a bunch of seasons only because NBC brought in DirecTV), and now Prime Suspect ... NBC has great taste in getting shows on the air, but doesn't seem to know what to do to keep them there.

Just two episodes left - next Thursday night, and the week after.  I'll be watching both.

See also review of Prime Suspect premiere ...

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

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Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Falling Skies

Caught the first two episodes of TNT's Falling Skies.  Quite good.

More like The Walking Dead and The Terminator than V - much closer to the ground - Falling Skies is probably most like H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds.  Steven Spielberg had a hand in both the 2005 movie version of War of the Worlds and the new Falling Skies, which so far looks considerably better than the movie.

It's good to see Noah Wyle back on television, best known for his great work in ER.  Moon Bloodgood, in such shortlived science fiction gems as Daybreak and Journeyman - seriously - and on the cover of Maxim, too, plays a pediatrician with the freedom fighters.  The rest of the cast is also good and believable.

The most-of-humanity-wiped-out motif is not an easy one to bring to a television series, despite the success of The Walking Dead, at least so far.  Come to think of it, Battlestar Galactica succeeded with this, too - except out in space not with alien invaders down on Earth - though its success, unfortunately, was more with critics than big numbers of viewers.   If television's prime advantage is to provide a little relief and release from the hard day, you can see why apocalyptic stories have such a tough time of it.  On the other hand, it's not as if Criminal Minds is such a joy ride, and it's generally a winner in the ratings.

Well, I'll be watching Falling Skies even its ratings fall, which, with any luck, will move in the opposite direction.

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

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Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Sneak Preview Review of Nurse Jackie!

I caught the first episode of Nurse Jackie a few months ago. It's to debut on Showtime on June 8 at 10:30 PM (ET/PT) - right after the season premier of Weeds - and I've been dying to tell you about it, but had to respect the "embargo" (I do enjoy tossing around terms like that - makes me feel like a real inside reviewer), but I can tell you about it, at last, right now, so here goes -

First, the half-hour episodes star Edie Falco, just great of late as Carmela on The Sopranos, and in fact in every TV show or movie in which she appears, and she's feisty, sharp, tough, vulnerable as Nurse Jackie.

There haven't been too many nurse shows on television - the last ones were The Nurses, The Doctors and The Nurses, and The Nurses, three versions of the same show, the first two prime time, the last a daytime soap, back in the 1960s. There have been plenty of excellent, provocative, even powerful nurses on doctor shows ranging from St. Elsewhere to Chicago Hope and ER, but they have usually been in supporting roles - Nurses Hathaway (Julianna Margulies) and Lockhart (Maura Tierney) on ER were exceptions. So, with that as backdrop, it's especially refreshing to see a show that centers completely around a nurse.

The elements of the story are mostly familiar. Jackie stands up to arrogant doctors, is smarter than some of them, and is willing to break the rules to save a life. She's on pain killers (ala House), and of course is sleeping with at least one doctor. She likes sex.

There's a jolting surprise at the end of the first episode - along the lines of our finding Furillo in bed with Joyce at the end of the pilot of Hill Street Blues - but I'm not going to tell you what it is, and it's not specifically like that Hill Street Blues scene, it's reminiscent of the shock value....

You'll have to see the premier of Nurse Jackie to see what I mean - you won't be disappointed.

See also Nurse Jackie at 6

Southland Debuts with Good Storylines, Appealing Characters, and Irritating Beeps

Southland - ER showrunner John Wells' latest creation - debuted on NBC this week. The LA cop show has an appealing ensemble of characters, promising story lines - and distracting beeps.

The good stuff, first ... Rookie Officer Ben Sherman (Benjamin McKenzie) and his mentor John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz) make a good team. The talk Cooper gives Sherman after Sherman makes a righteous kill - you have a front row seat to the most real action, a chance to make a difference in this world with your every move - was one of the best I've seen of this kind of scene. It's difficult for any cop story to be shocking and original after The Shield, but Southland had some nice twists, and a pace reminiscent of Hill Street Blues. And the dialog was--

Punctured by beeps. In a big step backward from NYPD Blue, it seems you can't even have a cop say "asshole" on network television these days. So we're treated on Southland, instead, to "ass[bleep]" any time an officer wants to voice such an opinion ... and that's the least of lacerations.

Here's a message to NBC: if you're so afraid of the FCC and Congress, get out of the television business. You do a disservice to your viewers, and freedom of expression, when you kowtow to unconstitutional FCC regulations. Southland clearly has a story to tell - let its writers tell it.

As it is, viewers are leaving network television for cable and the Internet in record numbers. People want real emotions, real language, real people in their fiction. If NBC wants to continue to be a significant player in the presentation of cutting edge, important entertainment programming, it needs to get its collective head out of its [beep].

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

ER Ends Softly

There is more than one good way to end a television series. One of my favorites is the camera pulls back, our characters recede, and we take our leave of them, along with the irresistible impression that they are continuing their lives and business as usual, lives and work which we have been privileged to see. The last scene of Star Trek: The Next Generation did a great job of that, with the camera pulling away from Picard and his top officers playing cards around a table. ER did that last night with John Carter and newer characters responding to an all-out out emergency...

ER started much the same way in 1994, except John Carter was just a med student back then. The series was immediately appealing, with its multiple stories and criss-crossing, fast-moving camera trajectories. This was a new mode of story telling on television, and, actually, still is.

The intense linear story lines of the Sopranos, the Wire and 24, the incredible, compelling complexities of Lost and Battlestar Galactica, the idiosyncratic brilliance of House and Bones - what I've been calling the new golden age of television drama - blew by ER, and left it spinning like a top...

Except, ER was already spinning, with a pace and style all of its own, from the very beginning. The doctors and students all jockeying for position, but all devoted to saving lives ... drinking in and pumping out adrenalin ... and you never knew exactly when the door would swing open with another life-and-death emergency, except you knew that it surely would.

I wrote here several weeks ago how good it was to see Doug Ross (George Clooney) and Carol Hathaway (Julianna Margulies), Peter Benton (Eriq La Salle), John Carter (Noah Wylie), and lots of the original nursing staff back for an episode. Benton and Carter were back again last night, as well as Susan Lewis (Sherry Stringfield), Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes), and Elizabeth Corday (Alex Kingston). It was also heartwarming to see Mark Greene's daughter Rachel (Hallee Hirsh), now in her 20s, seeking to join the ER team, picking up for her late father, and poised to pick up the John Carter role as medical student. The eternal cycle continues. John Wells, executive producer - show runner - of the series since its beginning, wrote both episodes.

The two-hour finale will air again on NBC this Saturday - well worth seeing if you've ever been a fan of the show. A last chance to see the life-savers outside of Chicago County General, as the ambulances swoop in, and the scene moves one last time from the pace on the screen to the soft recesses of our memories.

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George Clooney and Eriq La Salle Back on ER

Here's a rarity in Infinite Regress - a review of an episode of ER!

The long-running NBC series - which began in 1994 - is coming to an end this year, with a sequence of superb, heart-warming episodes that bring back some of the original, long-gone characters. My wife and I watched the show religiously until about five years ago, when 24, Lost, The Sopranos, and what I call the new golden age of television pulled us away. (Hey, I watch an enormous amount of television - but I have to leave a least a little time for writing....) 1994 was a long long time ago for popular culture - not only was there no blogging, the Web was about a year away from becoming a phenomenon.

This week, ER had a perfectly written, wonderfully acted show that brought back two of its all-time major characters - Dr. Doug Ross (played by George Clooney) and Dr. Peter Benton (played by Eriq La Salle).

Ross was Clooney's break-out role in the 1990s, and remains one of the best doctors ever on television. He was pediatrician who cared more about his patients than the hospital rules, and in that sense was a precursor of House. But Ross was the complete antithesis of House in the charm and way with people Ross easily had, and in the commitment Ross had to his patients (House is more committed to solving the medical puzzle).

Often when stars return to their television roles in special appearances, they smile or scowl and say a few words, and that's it. Ross actually had a wordless reappearance about nine years ago. But Ross had a major role in Thursday's episode, which required all of his empathy (it was also great to see Clooney acting with Susan Sarandon).

Peter Benton was a very different kind of doctor - a tough, brilliant surgeon in the Ben Casey tradition. As a black man who fought hard for everything he attained, Benton had little in common with John Carter (played by Noah Wylie), rich, white, and his fourth-year medical student. Benton drove Carter mercilessly, all ostensibly in the name of giving Carter a good education.

Benton was back this week to help with Carter's kidney transplant (that is, the kidney that Carter needed as a patient). Eriq La Salle has aged a little, and he invested Benton with that mellowness which worked just right for the character. Benton is still tough, but his humanity, and his concern for Carter, are finally, after all of these years, out up front. It was gratifying to see.

There are a few more episodes of ER coming up, with more old friends returning. This week's episode convinced me completely that, after the series goes off the air, Ross and Benton and all of those great doctors and nurses will continue their daily struggle to save lives. If only there was someway I could get through the television screen, and thank them personally...

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Fred Thompson and the Fame-Game in Politics

Fred Thompson - former Senator and current actor - has soared into second place in the Republican presidential polls. I thought this might be a good time to post my 2003 op-ed from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, about Arnold Schwarzenegger.

When you consider that Thompson is not only an actor, but a bona-fide public servant - unlike Schwarzenegger and Reagan before they were first elected to public office - Thompson may be hard to beat, at least for the Republican Presidential nomination...

Schwarzenegger and the Fame Game

Paul Levinson

Op-ed, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 12 October 2003



Fame is a highly transferrable commodity. The part of our
brain that feels it knows someone isn't too choosy about how we
came by this comfortable acquaintance. If we admire someone as a
movie star, that person has a far better chance in politics than
a little-known politician. Although the recall election in
California was extraordinary, Arnold Schwarzenegger's victory
was predictable. As soon as he announced, most people figured
he would win. Only a robot devoid of popular culture would not
find at least a little temptation to vote for the Terminator.

Television has intensified this process, serving as a
cauldron for the fusion of fames. Martin Sheen plays President
Bartlett on The West Wing, then tapes a political commercial
against the Iraqi War. Who is talking to us in that commercial
-- an actor or a President? Years ago, Robert Young, who played
Marcus Welby, MD on television, appeared in a series of
commercials for Sanka decaffeinated coffee. Who was telling us
this coffee was good for us, an actor or a doctor?

There presumably are some limitations on this
transferability of celebrity. One hopes the Menendez brothers,
if they were able to get out of prison and run for office, would
not be elected. On the other hand, we get briskly selling books
from people behind bars all the time.

Even before television, the cross-pollination of politics
and other kinds of fame was a staple of American elections.
After all, generals from George Washington to Dwight David
Eisenhower became President on the strength of the gratitude
Americans felt for the military, not necessarily political,
prowess of these men. Of course, a general's work and experience
usually has more relevance than an actor's to the actual world.
But the experience of a governor or senator still seems the
better political credential, and would be, were the
transferrability of fame not so powerful.

The real question may be why we are still so surprised when
an actor is elected to public office. We may be getting to the
point that acting, military leadership, anything that puts
someone in the limelight is the surest path to political victory.

Not that there is anything necessarily nefarious about
this, or any use of fame in one area to make an impact in
another area. Eriq La Salle, who played Dr. Benton on ER, did a
very effective public service commercial against drugs. If the
kids who saw it were influenced by La Salle/Benton's medical
imprimatur, what's wrong with that?

Furthermore, although actors are unlikely to make good
doctors -- unless they happen to have medical degrees -- the
same is not necessarily true for actors elected to public
office. Some historians give Ronald Reagan pretty high marks for
his presidency. And generals Washington and Eisenhower have
fared pretty well in presidential history, too. The fact that
Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor for perhaps not the
best reasons does not mean that he cannot do a commendable job.

In the current age of specialization, we often forget that
multi-tasking human beings can come equipped with more than one
talent. Thomas Jefferson invented a device that automatically
copied a document as it was being written -- no shabby invention
in an age before carbon copies and xeroxes. C. G. Dawes, Vice
President in Coolidge's second administration (1924-1928), wrote
the music to "It's All in the Game" in 1912 -- which some of us
with recollections that go back to the 1950s may remember as a
beautiful recording by the mellow-voiced Tommy Edwards. Dawes,
for good measure, had also been a banker in Chicago.

Yet, there is still something at least faintly disquieting
in someone being elected to high public office on the basis of
credentials in areas other than political accomplishment and
wisdom. The concern is as old as democracy. Socrates, in his
student Xenophon's Memorabilia, points out that on a ship,
everyone follows the captain's orders (including the owner of
the ship), because the captain presumably is an expert in
navigational matters. But in a democracy such as Athens,
everyone has a say in policy, and leaders arise not necessarily
on the basis of their political wisdom or expert knowledge, but
on the basis of their popularity with the crowd. Sound familiar?

Of course, Socrates was not trying to improve or safeguard
democracy, but do away with it. In his and his student Plato's
views, the ideal leader was not someone who was elected for any
reason, but someone whose wisdom was such that he (not likely
she, in those days) would rise to the top. In Plato's
Republic, this "philosopher-king" would have absolute
authority.

In practice, in the twentieth century, such self-appointed
philosopher kings have come closer to Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam
Hussein than any democratically elected leader. (Hitler actually
was democratically elected, at first, but then seized
totalitarian power.) Even in Roman times, the generally
effective emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius disastrously
chose his son, Commodus, as successor (contrary to the Roman
proscription at the time on anointing one's child as the next
emperor). The philosopher-king failed in his most important
responsibility.

The process of free elections in a democracy, for all of
its imperfections, succeeds much better in choosing new leaders.
This is because the process is self-correcting. If the people do
not choose wisely -- if they elect someone for the wrong
reasons, such as a feeling of confidence born of seeing the
candidate in appealing roles on the screen -- they can always
vote the official out of office the next time. Or, as the
California recall has shown, even before the next election.

Winston Churchill probably said it best when he observed
that "democracy is the worst form of Government except all those
others that have been tried from time to time." So, yes, one of
the characteristics of this least worst form of government is
that people vote with their emotions. Good looks and engaging
voices were always at least as important as what candidates for
office said and did, and in the age of media a powerful persona
in fiction on the screen may be more important still. But
emotions make us human, and sometimes they can be better guides
than stringent logic. And if not? Well, the nice thing about
democracy is that there is always another election. It's not
the end of the world. It's all in the game.