Masters of Sex Season 4 Finale: Together at Last

Well, it was nice to see the ending of the Season 4 finale of Masters of Sex last Sunday - which, in case you didn't know, featured Masters and Johnson together at last as man and wife.

This of course is no surprise, since in the real history upon which this series is based - but doesn't always adhere to - Masters and Johnson were, in fact, married.   In the series, it took long enough for the two to get there, and this made the ending satisfying in a long overdue way.

But in many ways, the Art and Nancy story was more compelling, and certainly more surprising, since the couple, as far as I know, are fictitious.  Their relationship - to Masters and Johnson - but, more important, to themselves - provided one of the most vivid tableaus on television of a couple who know each other very well, but not well enough, and in the end founder on about as fundamental a difference in a couple you could find.

Their ending was heartbreaking in a way that nothing between Masters and Johnson, certainly this season, has been, and not much on previous seasons, either.  Kudos to Betty Gilpin and Jeremy Strong each for quietly fabulous and deeply memorable performances.

Looking forward to next season, it will be fun to see Masters and Johnson and their life together, not only outside of the lab, but publicly together, under one roof, in a way we haven't seen them. Meeting in smoky places (one of my favorite songs from the early 1960s - actually, of all time, though I'm not sure why) and in hotel rooms can get tedious (not the song - see below for the video), and there are no doubt great scenes in store in the story ahead for this couple.

It will also be good to see how their pioneering work fares in the 1970s - which, come to think of it, was when I first became admiringly aware of their work.   In any case, here's a tip of the hat to those smoky places.

See also Masters of Sex 4.3: Hugh Hefner and Sammy Davis, Jr. ... Masters of Sex 4.8: "I Love You"

And see also Thomas Maier: Masters of Sex and Biography Come to Life ...Masters of Sex 3.1: Galley Slaves ... Masters of Sex 3.2: The Shah, the Baby, and the Book ... Masters of Sex 3.3: The Bookstore ... Masters of Sex 3.7: Going Ape ... Masters of Sex 3.9: Calling Hugh Hefner ... Masters of Sex Season 3 Finale: Cliffhanger

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The Man Not in the Audience

You've probably heard all about this already.  Last night, VP-Elect Pence took in a performance of Hamilton, and received some heartfelt advice from the cast.   This morning, President-elect Trump, apparently not appreciating that advice at all, asked the cast to apologize - asked via Tweet, no surprise.  You can read the details, as well as the Tweet, and see a video of the cast addressing Pence, over here.

But it's no surprise, either, that Trump did this.   It will certainly not be the worst thing he'll say as President-elect and do as President - sadly, not by a long long shot - but it demonstrates, vividly, yet again, that winning the Electoral College vote has not made him a better man.

I guess that depends upon how far you have to go to become a better person - where you're starting from. Trump, judging by his campaign and the many things he said during the past year and more, started pretty low.  Still, there was hope that even someone like Trump could be lifted by the awesome responsibility with which he's been entrusted.

I tend to be an optimist.   I'm always hopeful that someone placed in a position of power will see and summon wisdom not apparent before assuming that new position.   I extend this not only to the President-elect but his appointees so far.

But, if those appointees are any indication, and those tweets certainly are, we - America, the world, all good people who cherish freedom - are going to be in a very rough time of it.   The President-elect, just in the brief time since he's been in that position, has lashed out not only at the theater but The New York Times.   He's obviously uncomfortable with all media, other than the ones he controls. Our First Amendment will be in for the testing of its lifetime.


my thoughts about how Trump came to win the election - & 1st Amendment

Rectify 4.4: Slow Motion

I just want to go on record as saying that, as of episode 4.4, I think Rectify is moving too slowly in furthering its crucial central story.

That story, of course, is the story that is lurking behind every episode, every scene just about, in this superb and unique series.  Did Daniel kill Hanna?

Episode 4.4 was excellent in many ways.  Daniel and Chloe were beautiful, even heart warming, together.   The Holden family thinking of selling the business was good to see.  Even Tawney in the hospital, and what it taught her - though a little obvious - worked well.  The conversation from everyone, but especially Daniel, was sage and droll, just as we've come to expect, and one of the hallmarks of this fine show.

But other than Jon giving us just a soupcon of his investigation, if you can even it that at this point, we got none of the pressing, transcendent issue.   Did Daniel kill Hanna?

Maybe the producers are trying to tell us that, ultimately, Rectify is not the story of whether Daniel is guilty or innocent, but the story of this incredibly sensitive man, a poet in his soul, on death row for so many years, and now out in a world which both fascinates and repels him.   There's no doubt that Rectify is that riveting story, and many other stories, too, but none of those are mutually exclusive with learning, at last, if Daniel killed Hanna.  And all of those are brought into sharper focus by the question of Daniel's guilt or innocence.

I'm looking forward to, if not complete closure, at least some very substantial progress on that question before this remarkable series concludes.

See also Rectify 4.1: Rummy

And see also Rectify 3.1: Stroke of Luck ... Rectify 3.2: Daniel and Amantha ... Rectify 3.5: Finally!

And see also Rectify 2.1: Indelible ... Rectify 2.2: True Real Time ... Rectify 2.3: Daniel's Motives ... Rectify 2.4: Jekyll and Hyde ... Rectify 2.6: Rare Education ... Rectify 2.7: The Plot Thickens ... Rectify 2.8: The Plea Bargain and the Smart Phone ... Rectify 2.9: Dancing in the Dark ... Rectify Season 2 Finale: Talk about Cliffhangers!

And see also Rectify: Sheer and Shattering Poetry ... Rectify 1.5: Balloon Man ... Rectify Season 1 Finale: Searingly Anti-Climactic

 
another kind of capital punishment

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Frequency 1.7: Snags

Frequency 1.7 was in something of a lull on Wednesday night, with a good enough personal story, but little furthering of the time-travel (information from future to the past) story, and not too much in the hunt for the serial killer, either.

This gets back to the fundamental challenge of time travel in a television series, and explains why Quantum Leap did well and Timeless is currently doing well with a different time-travel story each episode.  12 Monkeys on SyFy is like Frequency, with one continuous, central plot, and 12 Monkeys adheres to this with episodes that are always exciting, metaphysically bizarre, and sometimes over the top.

Frequency has a harder job of this.  In 12 Monkeys, our heroes and heroines are struggling literally to save the world - and, in the second season, even time itself.  Frequency has a much narrower purview, and it's tough to keep the story pulsing in that more limited frame.

There's also a disproportion between the two major characters - Raimy and Frank - which I don't recall in the movie, in which John (Frank's son) and Frank had more equal roles, at different ends of the seesaw of time.   In the television series, Raimy is the more interesting character, but I'm not sure why, since Frank is the only one who can change history - nab the serial killer before he takes Raimy's mother.

There's still plenty of room for course correction and development in the series.  I was disappointed to see that Frequency was not picked up for a full 22-episode first season, which instead will be limited to 13.  That's ok - there are lots of outstanding 13-episode or even fewer-episodes-per-season series - including 12 Monkeys - and I'm looking forward to more of Frequency.

See also Frequency 1.1: Closely Spun Gem ... Frequency 1.2: All About the Changes  ... Frequency 1.3: Chess Game Across Time ...  Frequency 1.4: Glimpsing the Serial Killer ... Frequency 1.5: Two Sets of Memories ... Frequency 1.6: Another Time Traveler?

                       more time travel

Designated Survivor 1.7: Reassuring Fiction

I know I'm sounding like a broken record already, but Designated Survivor is almost relaxing and definitely a pleasure to watch in comparison to what's really going on with our presidency right now.

The components of episode 1.7 were not even that special or unusual - the paternity of Kirkman's son, the double-agent sports hero, the kidnapping of the FBI guy's son to exert crucial power over him - we've seen all of that before.   But it was strangely reassuring to see all of that against the Kirkman presidency.

And that's because Kirkman, notwithstanding the catastrophic way he came to power, is the kind of person we'd love to have in the White House.  He's thoughtful, sensitive, and aware at every moment of his immense responsibilities.   We don't really know what President-elect Trump is like on the inside, but certainly what he projects doesn't hold a candle to Kirkman.

It doesn't hurt, either, that Kiefer Sutherland is really putting in a fine performance in this role.   He evinces just the right mix of anger, compassion, even brief confusion just when it's needed.   The result is that we feel the country is in good hands.

And that's impressive, given the challenges that Kirkman and America face in this narrative.  The man on track to becoming Vice President and a heartbeat away from the Presidency is part of an evil, murderous operation indeed.  And that's what sets Designated Survivor off from House of Cards, where the evil comes from the President himself.

I'm really enjoying this mix of 24 and House of Cards which has a style and flavor all it own.

See also Designated Survivor: Jack Bauer Back in the White House ... Designated Survivor 1.2: Unflinching and Excellent ...  Designated Survivor 1.4: "Michigan's on the Verge of Anarchy" ... Designated Survivor 1.5: The Plot Thickens ... Designated Survivor 1.6: The Governors


  terrorist squirrels and bombs in NYC

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The Affair 3.1: Sneak Preview Review

Well, I couldn't resist watching the first episode of The Affair season 3 on Showtime On Demand - it debuts on regular Showtime this Sunday - and giving you my review.   In a phrase, it was different and excellent.  Spoilers of course follow in the longer review below ...

The biggest difference is in the structure of the narrative, with the first hour featuring only Noah and his perspective.   I didn't mind that at all, and, in fact, it was good to get a more sustained view of Noah.

He's out of prison, and the flashes around in time are flashbacks to when he was behind bars, instead of flashbacks to the future, concerning the who-killed-Scotty case, which was the pattern in the first two seasons.   The just-out-of-prison motif gives The Affair a touch of Rectify's ambience, and some of the scenes are almost as intense in their own way.

Noah's an adjunct professor, at an unnamed college in New Jersey, but the campus looks 100% like the Rose Hill Campus of Fordham University in the Bronx - where I'm a Professor of Communication and Media Studies - because indeed it was.  I'll let you know should I run into Noah or anyone else on the show.

The classroom in which he taught, by the way, is actually not usually used for classes, but for high-level administrative meetings, and but it was cool to see Noah teaching in there, anyway.  His teaching about writing also gives us another good angle on the writerly life, which has been a strong suit of the series, especially in season 2.

Great conversations abound, inside and outside the classrooms, and a standout was a dinner with Noah, a French female professor (she likes Noah and invited him and the students to a little dinner party in her home), and several students discoursing about male-female relationships, attitudes, and appropriate behavior, with one of the guys, for example, saying he doesn't like asking for permission before making a move because that's "not sexy," and one of the women explaining how, as a woman, she always feels vulnerable.

Meanwhile, we've seen nothing of Alison and Cole, and even Helen had little screen time - which means we're in for some revelations ahead.

I have a feeling we're in for a great and surprising season this year, and I'm looking forward to more.

See also The Affair 2.1: Advances ... The Affair 2.2: Loving a Writer ... The Affair 2.3: The Half-Wolf ... The Affair 2.4: Helen at Distraction ... The Affair 2.5: Golden Cole ... The Affair 2.6: The End (of Noah's Novel) ... The Affair 2.7: Stunner ... The Affair 2.8: The Reading, the Review, the Prize ...The Affair 2.9: Nameless Hurricane ... The Affair 2.10: Meets In Treatment ... The Affair 2.11: Alison and Cole in Business ... The Affair Season 2 Finale: No One's Fault

And see also The Affair Premiere: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 1.2: Time Travel! ... The Affair 1.3: The Agent and the Sleepers ... The Affair 1.4: Come Together ... The Affair 1.5: Alison's Episode ... The Affair 1.6: Drugs and Vision ... The Affair 1.7: True Confessions ... The Affair 1.8: "I Love You / I Love You, Too" ... The Affair 1.9: Who Else on the Train? ... The Affair Season 1 Finale: The Arrest and the Rest

podcast review of every 2nd season episode


podcast review of every 1st season episode

the Sierra Waters time-travel trilogy

Timeless 1.6: Watergate and Rittenhouse

A set-up for what could have been an incredibly timely Timeless episode 1.6 tonight - our team goes back to find the missing 18.5 minutes in the notorious Nixon Watergate tape.  I mean, I've saying that the worst President we had prior to the President-elect was Richard Nixon, and we did survive that. What more could you ask for in relevance in an episode of a TV series recorded months ago and written well before that?

Well, what we got was a pretty good show, with little relevance to Nixon and Watergate, except for the missing minutes revealing that Nixon was talking about Rittenhouse.   That's a nice touch, and leads to a further revelation that Rittenhouse has been around since the American Revolution, which now makes Timeless another kind of secret society in America show - that in addition to being a time travel story.

I still would have loved to see Nixon, Kissinger, Agnew, maybe Walter Cronkite on television in 1972 - or even Woodward and Bernstein - but all we got was Mark Felt in a brief scene.   Because, for whatever reason, Timeless decided to make this episode more about the internal workings of the story than about the specific Nixon issue at hand.

There's a good surprise at the end - good, though, not because it was surprising (it was pretty obvious) but because it deepens Lucy's character, or makes her even more of a major player in this story than she was before.  We also learn more about what Flynn has been reading in the journal Lucy hasn't yet written.

So where do we stand now?   Rittenhouse was running Nixon, and has been doing that sort of thing since the birth of our nation.   But when did that group originate?  Was it in the future, and they traveled back to the past, or ...   Not known, as yet.   But I'm also wondering - did they have a hand getting Trump elected by the electoral college?  Hey, that still hasn't quite happened yet, and you never know ...

See also Timeless 1.1: Threading the Needle ... Timeless 1.2: Small Change, Big Payoffs ... Timeless 1.3: Judith Campbell ... Timeless 1.4: Skyfall and Weapon of Choice ... Timeless 1.5: and Quantum Leap



time-travel and Presidential elections - for real

Westworld 1.7: The Story of the Story

"I don't wanna be in a story," Dolores says to William, who later provides the best possible Westworld answer, telling Dolores the life he's been living outside is a lie, and the most truth he's ever known is in Westworld with her.  (Note that in this sentence, the italics denote the series, and the name Westworld denotes the place in the series.)

That's indeed a great storyline - both inside Westworld and outside on Westworld on HBO - but it's nothing compared to what's in store for us in and in and on Westworld at the end of this hour.

Now I can't and won't say I was totally surprised. In a previous review I said that Bernard was more predictable than Ford - which is why I liked Ford better - and now we find out why. Bernard is a sophisticated host. He's been programmed to be a programmer - nice!

Not only that, he has no problem killing guests when so commanded by Ford.  The upshot in this overthrow of Asimov's First Law: the hosts are not evolving towards sentience - Ford and/or Arnold have made them that way.

Not that Bernard killed Cullen on his own or in his own defense - he was ordered to do this by Ford, to prevent Bernard from being fired, which was not in Ford's plan.

But the fact that a host can be programmed to kill on command means that a host can be programmed to do almost anything, I'd guess, including evolve to non-programmed sentience, and that's a fine kettle ideational fish indeed.

All of that in addition to a great train robbery by former Confederates with Indians checking in make Westworld one hell of a ride of a series.

See also Westworld 1.1: Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick Served Up by Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy, and J. J. Abrams ... Westworld 1.2: Who Is the Man in Black? ... Westworld 1.3: Julian Jaynes and Arnold ... Westworld 1.4: Vacation, Connie Francis, and Kurt Vonnegut ... Westworld 1.5: The Voice Inside Dolores ... Westworld 1.6: Programmed Unprogramming

  paradoxes of AI abound

Cafe du Lievre and Twice Upon a Rhyme

I think my favorite cafe in the world is the Cafe du Lievre, in Inokashira Forest, in Tokyo.  I've never had the pleasure of dining there - though I hope to some day - but...

Well, the cafe has been playing my songs - hey, baby, they're playing our song - from my Twice Upon a Rhyme album, and, come to think of it, from my Spun Dreams album, too, for more than a year.   So far, as far as can tell, patrons haven't been running out of the cafe in horror, so I take that as a good sign.

But it brings me pleasure no end to think that all of those songs, written for the most part in the late 1960s and recorded just a few years later, are now enjoying a life of the ear in this cafe on the other side of world.   Japan has already played a crucial role in my musical re-discovery, with the review of Twice Upon a Rhyme by Taro Miyasugi in Record Collectors Magazine at the turn of the 21st century - "human mystical pop music ... wonderful songs" - really jumpstarting this resurgence of interest (though I'm not sure how much there was in the first place) which is still going on.

Thanks Cafe du Lievre - having seen your taste in music, you can count on me one of these showing up and sampling your taste in food!




with original Twice Upon a Rhyme guitarist Peter Rosenthal, August 2015

Sell music on Amazon at ReverbNation.com

Dominic Balestra, RIP

It's been a week of deep loss - of people I didn't know personally whose work made a difference in my life, of people I did know personally whose work made a difference, of perhaps - though I hope not - of something in America itself which many of us hold very dear.

Back in the day - actually, just a decade ago, but time flies when you're having a good time - Dom Balestra and I did some good things together at Fordham University, when he was Dean of Faculty and I was Chair of the Communication and Media Studies Department.   A few years earlier, in the summer of 1998, Dom was the first person who interviewed me when I first came to Fordham seeking a job as a professor.

We already knew each other.  The first time we met was when Dom came up to me after the conference about Karl Popper and his philosophy that I had organized at the Prince George Hotel in Manhattan.  (It's also been week for remembering seedy hotels - just yesterday I was recalling how I had met someone who claimed to be Leonard Cohen's Suzanne, in the Milburn Hotel on West 76th Street.)

Dom had love of philosophy of technology, as did I, which is why our paths first crossed at that conference.  It provided a great basis of conversation years later at Fordham, where I briefed Dom on McLuhan, he briefed me on Spinoza, and we discussed everyone and everything in between.

Most academics have a love of knowledge in one way or another.  Dominic Balestra embodied it, and epitomized what it literally meant to be a philosopher.   After the funeral, a colleague said to me, as I mentioned what I said above about this being an especially tough week, that Dom died at the right time, so he didn't have to see what had happened in America.

True enough.  But, even though we hadn't spoken in years, it would be wonderful indeed if I could talk to Dom right now and get his sage, thoughtful views of our world and its dangers.

Designated Survivor 1.6: The Governors

Watching Designated Survivor 1.6 the other night, after our own Presidential election came to a conclusion in what passes these days for the real world, was almost too much, or maybe too little, because in some ways the show seemed less insane. But I digress ...

The episode mined a new element in the series, perfectly plausible when you think about it: with almost all of our Senators and Congresspeople wiped out in the terrorist blast, the new President needs to turn to ... the governors of our states, who are empowered in laws to appoint successors when a Senator dies or otherwise suddenly leaves office.

Designed Survivor presented this well.  The assembled governors don't trust President Kirkman, who after all wasn't elected, and who was also actually serving his last day as the lowly HUD Secretary, anyway.  So they subject him to a trial via a barrage of pointed questions.

Meanwhile, we learn what was already clear - the catastrophic attack was not the doing of the Islamic terrorist picked up in the raid last week.   So who was behind it?   Likely some domestic group, likely someone who was pretty high up in the government, is the best guess right now.

The surviving Congressman, on queue to become Vice President, was likely involved in this. Was there any foreign involvement at all?  How prescient will Designated Survivor turn out to be? Will a Russian President turn out to have had a hand in the Capitol bombing?

Designated Survivor couldn't have been made with knowledge of what happened this past Tuesday. On the other hand, it wasn't made that long ago, and certainly was informed by what was already going on in our country last year.  In fact, in this week's episode, and in previous hours, hostility towards immigration plays a big role.

It will be especially good to see how Designated Survivor and our real world continue to coincide - good to see what's going on in Designated Survivor, that is.

See also Designated Survivor: Jack Bauer Back in the White House ... Designated Survivor 1.2: Unflinching and Excellent ...  Designated Survivor 1.4: "Michigan's on the Verge of Anarchy" ... Designated Survivor 1.5: The Plot Thickens


  terrorist squirrels and bombs in NYC

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The Night I Met a Woman Who Said She Was Leonard Cohen's Suzanne

Leonard Cohen passed on a few days ago.  His songs, especially Suzanne, will live on forever.  Or as Shelley said about Keats (great poets, like Cohen, from a previous century), "tis death that's dead not he".

I once met a woman who said she was the Suzanne who had inspired Cohen's song.  Ed Fox and I met her in the lobby of that slightly seedy hotel - the Milburn - off Broadway and 76th Street, as we were on our way into Herb Abramson's A-1 Sound Studio, to record some tracks on our Twice Upon a Rhyme album.

That would have been in 1969, a few months after Cohen's "Suzanne" had been playing on the radio and in our heads.  Ed and I were standing in the hotel lobby, waiting for a moment for one of the musicians on our album to arrive.  A woman in her 20s struck up a conversation with us.  We told her we were making an album.  She asked what kind of songs.  We said, you know, the Beatles circa Rubber Soul, Dylan Blonde on Blonde, Bob Lind, Leonard Cohen ... those kinds of songs.

She smiled ... elusively.  And told us that she was Suzanne.   We of course knew what she meant and of course we didn't believe her - not at all, not at first.

But we ran into her in that lobby a few times in the succeeding weeks.   And she told us things - about her and Leonard, nothing we could confirm. certainly not in that age so long ago, long before Google.

But Ed and I believed her.  And I believe her to this very day.   Hey, Suzanne could still be alive ... somewhere ... maybe she's even reading this blog post, or will someday.

You did well, Suzanne.  You inspired one of the great, beautifully plaintiff, soul touching songs, as delicate as a leaf at the edge of a hurricane.

(Here's a BBC interview with another Leonard Cohen "Suzanne" -- Suzanne Verdal from 1998.)

Rest in peace, Leonard Cohen.

Ed Fox and Paul Levinson, not long after meeting Suzanne

President-Elect Trump Shows His True Colors - Already

Didn't take long.  Those two tweets by Trump say it all.  Anyone who was hoping that being elected President might have changed him, now has an answer: it hasn't.

He's still a little man, with a skin the thinnest of which we've never seen in public office, let alone the Oval Office.

Hours after Trump has a meeting with Obama, in which the two were gracious, even heartening, Trump can't contain himself about the protests erupting all over America.

They weren't incited by the media, Mr. President-Elect.  They were incited by your outrageous, bigoted, vicious pronouncements made in such abundance throughout your campaign.  And maybe a little by the fact that the majority of the American people did not vote for you.

And you know wha else?  Those protesters are the best America has to offer, and they are protected in the protests by the First Amendment.

Ever hear of that?  Sure you have - I heard you complaining during the campaign that you think our First Amendment gives the media too much protection.   Better get used to it - it's here to stay, as are the media.

And as you are not.  The four years will pass very quickly, and you'll be voted out of office.  

Frequency 1.6: Another Time Traveler?

A big question not answered in a satisfying way in the original Frequency movie, and so far not in the series, is how and why the radio connection between Raimy and her father Frank got created.  Episode 1.6 provides, perhaps, a clue.

The clue comes from the psycho Raimy talks to in prison.  He's a physicist, and claims he's connected to his own future self - via a device he built.   Other than the mad-scientist, homicidal aspects of this guy, can we take his story seriously and does the machine he says he built for himself have any connection to Raimy's?

Possibly on the first question, no information on the second.  The mad scientist seems to have knowledge of value to Raimy.   Whether it came from the machine he wants to rebuild is not clear at all.

But introducing this new character is a good move in our story, because it takes the connection between Raimy and Frank out of the incredible quirk category (the movie's "explanation") into what may be something much greater, with who knows what consequences.

This is more important than the mad scientist's talk about not being able to change the course of history by cutting off a branch from the tree, because the tree will just put up another branch, which means that the only way you can change history is by cutting the tree down - sawing it off at the trunk.   This makes sense enough, but leaves open the question of what, in any situation, is the branch and what is the trunk?

Frequency the television series continues to be an enjoyable time-travel narrative - via trunk and branches.  May it thrive.

See also Frequency 1.1: Closely Spun Gem ... Frequency 1.2: All About the Changes  ... Frequency 1.3: Chess Game Across Time ...  Frequency 1.4: Glimpsing the Serial Killer ... Frequency 1.5: Two Sets of Memories

                       more time travel

Yesterday's Election and the Cheapening of the Presidency

It's now a little more than the day following Trump's election.  It's late at night, or early in the next morning, about 24 hours after Trump was declared the President-elect.

And I'm thinking: What most bothers me about Trump's election to this office is how it cheapens the Presidency.  Maybe people felt that way when James Buchanan or Warren Harding was elected President.  I don't know, I wasn't around then, but those guys, and the worst of our Presidents, at least had a little experience in some kind of government job before their election.

Reagan was an entertainer for most of his life, but he was also Governor of California for two terms. Grant and Eisenhower were generals.  Woodrow Wilson was an academic for most of his life, but he was also Governor of New Jersey for two years before he was elected President.

And Trump?  No political office, no position of any public authority, elected or appointed, whatsoever. His complete credentials can be summed up as real estate tycoon and entertainer.  And as I told Eyewitness News in New York in the interview below, conducted earlier today, that's probably more than anything else what got him known and elected as President yesterday.

And that cheapens the office, whatever Trump's policies, whatever he may go on to do.   The Presidency for me, this day, and I'm guessing for every day forward, will never be the same - I'll never look at it, think of it, in the same way.   I'll think of it as something less than I've thought it my entire life.

Later today, Barack Obama, who will be the President to end the succession of people to the office with any credentials worthy of the office, will be meeting with Donald Trump, who has no credentials at all.   It will symbolize, as will the two of them on Inauguration Day, something very sad, the passing of the baton of American leadership to a place sharply downward and unimaginable until this year.

The Day After Trump Was Elected

I always try to look for paths through adversity, for reasons to take hope in difficult situations. Some times that's more difficult than others.  But there's usually something there.

Here are a few of my thoughts -

• The racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio was voted out of office.
• Hillary Clinton is on track to win the national popular vote.   Someday in the future, our country will do away with the Electoral College, and its disenfranchisement of people in big states, and what happened last night will be a prime reason.   (This is the fourth time in our history that a winner of the popular vote lost in the Electoral College - it happened to Samuel Tilden in 1876, Grover Cleveland in 1888, Al Gore in 2000 - via a Supreme Court decision that stopped a Florida recount - and now Hillary Clinton in 2016. All four were Democrats.)
• We still have a Constitution.   President Trump may ignore it, but we still have a court system. with judges not appointed by Trump, and if he oversteps his bounds, we can expect this check-and-balance to work in at least some cases.   Even Republican justices sometimes do the right thing - Chief Justice Roberts supported Obamacare.

As for blame, there's more than enough to go around -

• The polls were way off in many states.   We've known the polling is an inexact science, to say the least, ever since the Literary Digest poll predicted FDR would lose by a landslide in 1936. In the aftermath of that, and subsequent miscalls, polling methods were improved.  The same mistakes were not repeated.  New mistakes were made.  This is the way of progress.
• The media coverage of Donald Trump was abysmally uneven, offering too little critical coverage far too late.   The prospects for improvement of media coverage are not as good as for improvement of polling, but there might be some lessons learned.

Winston Churchill is said to have said that "democracy is the least worst form of government". Whether he said it not, the observation is profound and true.   The values that so many hold dear took a beating last night. But that's the way of the democratic process.   We still have our democracy, and we need to do whatever we can to make it work.

========

PS - As for why Trump won, here are my McLuhanesque reflections, from back in September, at The Players Club in New York City.  I begin with answering an earlier question about why Trump's speech is protected by the First Amendment...

Westworld 1.6: Programmed Unprogramming

An outstanding Westworld 1.6 tonight - the series keeps getting better and better, Isaac Asimov (author of the three later four laws of robotics would've loved it) - now getting into some of the real paradoxes and ethical quandaries of artificial intelligence.

Early in the episode, Maeve, who gets herself choked to death so she can get back to her favorite programmer, obliges us to confront one of the fundamental questions of AI:  if an android is programmed to behave in an unprogrammed way, and indeed behaves in that way, is the android behaving in a programmed or unprogrammed manner?  This is a version of the infamous "be spontaneous" paradox: if someone asks you to act spontaneously, and you follow that advice and act spontaneously, are you really acting spontaneously or in response to the request?  Or, to flip that, if you defy the request and try to act un-spontaneously, are you acting spontaneously or not?  No matter how much you try to wiggle and wriggle out of it, the paradox has you in its grip.

Maeve nonetheless goes on, butt-naked, to negotiate what leads to a bunch of improvements in her mentality. Dolores was also naked last week, when she too was having a conversation not with just any programmer but with Ford - but Dolores didn't turn any tables on Ford, at least, not yet.

This week, Ford is on the move, and ends up in a house with some of the very first hosts, programmed by Arnold.   A boy we met last week kills his dog (a dog-droid or whatever the word would be), and Ford finds out, on carefully questioning the boy, that he did it because a voice in his head told him to do this.

The voice in the head - we found out the same about Dolores last week - and this brings us back to the bicameral mind.  Arnold has apparently created artificially intelligent beings - aka hosts - who receive some kind of instruction from him via his voice in their heads.  This is a nice play on Julian Jaynes' bicameral mind, and raises the question, again, if Arnold is really dead - at least, dead in original flesh and blood - or just a talkative chip in the android brain.

But underlying all of this is the ethical elephant in the room: if our hosts are becoming truly sentient, due to some combination of original programming and/or programming gone wrong and/or new overlays put in by Arnold or someone else in the park, do the human programmers have the right to order these androids around to suit their human interests?

I look forward to further exploration of these paradoxes of programming in the episodes ahead.  In the meantime, here's a little essay I published about The Rights of Robots back in 1999.

See also Westworld 1.1: Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick Served Up by Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy, and J. J. Abrams ... Westworld 1.2: Who Is the Man in Black? ... Westworld 1.3: Julian Jaynes and Arnold ... Westworld 1.4: Vacation, Connie Francis, and Kurt Vonnegut ... Westworld 1.5: The Voice Inside Dolores


  paradoxes of AI abound

James Comey and Bret Baier Should Be Fired

So FBI Director James Comey just informed the world that there was nothing in Anthony Weiner's emails that changed Comey's assessment in July that there was nothing in Hillary Clinton's emails which warranted pursuing criminal charges.

This news is both welcome - and infuriating.  Comey's ill-advised letter last week threw a dangerous grenade into this crucial Presidential campaign.  It violated the Hatch Act.  Comey should be fired, forthwith, and he should be investigated for criminal conduct himself.

Meanwhile, though Bret Baier did nothing criminal, he should be fired, too.  He announced from his anchor position on Fox News that the FBI had enough on the Clinton Foundation to pursue criminal charges, then walked it back and apologized.

Too little, too late.  As comparison, Don Rather was forced to leave CBS News after reporting a story about George W. Bush avoiding the draft, the truth of which is unclear to this very day.  Brian Williams - who's doing a great job now on MSNBC - was forced to leave the NBC Nightly News because he exaggerated a personal story about himself, having nothing to do with any election.

Baier aggravated the already deplorable conduct of Comey.  I had nothing but praise for Baier when I was interviewed by Politico about his taking over the Special Report from Brit Hume on Fox in 2009. But his mistake this past week in such an intense and important political campaign is unacceptable.

We deserve a Presidential campaign free of FBI Directors who violate the Hatch Act, and free of anchors who seriously misreport the news.

Longmire Season 5 on Netflix

Just finished binge-watching Longmire Season 5 on Netflix, where it was better in most ways than in its first three seasons on A&E and the fourth on Netflix, which is saying a lot, since those first four seasons were outstanding.

In what follows, I'll talk in generalities for the most part, in case you haven't yet seen Season 5.  But if you've seen none of Longmire at all, you might want to move on from this review, at least until you've seen the first four seasons.

Netflix allows for stronger language, which suits the characters well.   The relationships among the characters also flourish in this new environment and narrative, which offers some of the best confrontations, coming to terms, and fallings apart we've seen in the series.

Among my favorites -

• Walt and Henry about Hector, in a stand-out knock-down scene
• Vic and her loyalty to Walt, an inspiration to see
• Walt and Nighthorse - indeed, the evolution of their relationship is surprising and surprisingly satisfying yet realistic

Speaking of surprises, the fifth season has a good gallery of villains, local and national, mostly unexpected.  Some of these percolate through the season, others come on in the last few episodes, and if I have any complaints about this fifth season, it's that it introduces a crucial villain a little late in the story.   And the ending itself - well, it maybe leaves us hanging with at least one life-and-death situation, and one just missed true-love engagement, too many.

But the idea of such cliffhangers is to whet our appetite for another season, which Netflix will be providing, and I'll be watching, disappointed only that this sixth season will be the final season for this fine and unique series, unless yet another venue picks it up.

Frequency 1.5: Two Sets of Memories

Frequency 1.5 mined a classic time-travel gambit, and applied it perfectly to its police procedural story.  This combination captures what Frequency has been trying to do all along - and what distinguishes it from other time travel stories on television.

Most stories that entail travel to the past and then back to the future after the past has been changed need to come up with some sort of explanation of what the traveler knows when she or he gets back home.  It's usually more fun if the time traveler recalls what the world was like before the time travel occurred - which means the time traveler has two sets of memories.  And then there's the question of who else in the  future might have memories of the original past.

You can come up with all kinds of scientific explanations for the two sets of memories, or just declare by fiat that your time-travel character remembers the past before and after it's been changed.  Since time travel is, after all, not (yet) scientifically possible - and I would say, because of the paradoxes, that it will never be - you can specify whatever you like for your character's capacity to recall the original past.  Since no one has actually time traveled, as far as we know, there's no evidence to contradict what you're setting up as the basic parameters of the time travel.

Of course Frequency, as we know, is not about time travel of people, but time travel of information - but the issues are the same.  Raimy and Frank don't actually travel between the future and the past, but they can exchange information, and this information can and does result in actions which change the past.

The fact that Raimy and Frank are both police means that police procedural had to be part of the story.  But episode 1.5 put front and center one of the fundamental mechanisms of the story:  Raimy and Frank and we will figure who the bad guys are - in the police, and in the serial killing - via Raimy's comparison of her two sets of memories.  Somehow, somewhere, by identifying the differences between her two memory sets, Raimy will realize something, see a connection, that will open up a door in her understanding.

It's beginning to happen already, and we're beginning to see some inklings, but I'm looking forward to seeing some more on the screen before I say any more here.


See also Frequency 1.1: Closely Spun Gem ... Frequency 1.2: All About the Changes  ... Frequency 1.3: Chess Game Across Time ...  Frequency 1.4: Glimpsing the Serial Killer

                       more time travel

Props to Bill Weld

"I'm here vouching for Mrs. Clinton," Bill Weld, former governor of Massachusetts, currently VP Candidate for the Libertarian Party, " told Rachel Maddow last night.  "I think she deserves to have people vouch for her other than members of the Democratic National Committee."

In the face of the vile invective hurled on a daily basis by Donald Trump and his surrogates, Weld's statement stands as an extraordinary expression of decency, honor, and rationality.  It will remembered as one of the few and true high points of this campaign season.

Weld's statement objects not to any of the specific, demeaning, and outlandish charges lodged against Hillary Clinton, but to the fact that too many people accept them as at least in part true, or where there's smoke there's fire.  But the fact is that Hillary Clinton in her long career has done nothing even remotely rising to the level of making her unsuitable to be President.  Indeed, to the contrary, as Weld further pointed out, her life's work demonstrates that she would be a "capable" President.

Barack Obama, also speaking yesterday, wondered if some of the resistance to Hillary Clinton might be based on an unconscious male basis against a woman as President.   He may well be right.   For that, and other reasons, Hillary Clinton's campaign has been subject to abuse unheard of in American politics, including unprecedented actions by even the Director of the FBI.

I fully expect the American people to do the right thing, and follow Weld's de facto advice, and elect Hillary Clinton President next week.

Timeless 1.5: and Quantum Leap

As Timeless progresses on its enjoyable way - now through episode 1.5, in which our heroes show up at the Alamo, and fight alongside Davy Crocket, Jim Bowie, and Colonel Travers - it's becoming clear that the series is most like Quantum Leap, which holds a special place in the pantheon of time travel stories on the screen.

There are differences, of course.  Sam Beckett mind-traveled into the heads of real people who played various roles in crucial events in the past.  Lucy, Wyatt, and Rufus travel physically to the past.  And so far, as of the first five episodes, Timeless is dealing with bigger, often world-shattering, or at least America-determinative events than did Quantum Leap, where Beckett often dealt with more minor, even off-the-radar situations in history.

But the episodic tempo of the two series is similar, with the stories in each episode having no connection to the others, other than our time-travelers being the same, and, in the case of Timeless, a central story with an apparently bad guy time-traveler, Flynn, in the thick of it from the very beginning.

You might think that a captivating central story to tie the episodes together is a plus, and it can be, but it can also be a hindrance to the series, because its existence requires the series to decide how much information to dole out this underling story in each episode.  Quantum Leap suffered from no such problem.  Neither does Frequency, another time travel series on the air this season, which operates on a very different scale than Timeless. But other science fiction series, such as Lost and Westworld, did and do.  I enjoyed Lost - at least until the very very last episode, which was atrocious - and think Westworld is one of the best series on television now, but critics have expressed frustration with its low ratio of answers to questions, and viewers can be lost in those kinds of gambles.

So far, Timeless has been doing a good job in threading this needle.  It will be fun to see how it fares in the weeks ahead.

See also Timeless 1.1: Threading the Needle ... Timeless 1.2: Small Change, Big Payoffs ... Timeless 1.3: Judith Campbell ... Timeless 1.4: Skyfall and Weapon of Choice


             more time travel in the 20th century