Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

reviewing Black Doves; Dark Matter; Dept. Q; Detective Hole; Dexter: Resurrection; Fauda; For All Mankind; Foundation; Hijack; Memory of a Killer; MobLand; Outlander; Paradise; Presumed Innocent; Reacher; Severance; Silo; Slow Horses; Smoke; Star City; Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; Tehran;The: Day of the Jackal, Diplomat, Night Agent; Your Friends & Neighbors +books, films, music, podcasts, politics

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

Monday, October 14, 2019

The Affair 5.8: Moth to the Flame

Noah's modus operandi in The Affair, beginning with, well, the affair itself, has been like a moth to a flame. He has a powerful urge to do something. Others and he himself tell him that's not the way to go, to resist his impulses. And he does it anyway. And bad consequences, sometimes dire, ensue.

He was in full moth to flame mode in last night's episode 5.8. His publicist and their #metoo specialist tell him to let them handle this budding crisis, including letting them speak to the Vanity Fair reporter who's doing the expose. Noah goes to see her anyway, and, in his inexperience with this, gets baited into saying some damning things on the record.

His lawyer - whose "crisis pr girl" has come to the aid in some unspecified way for the likes of "Anthony Weiner, Eliot Spitzer, Weinstein" - also strongly advises Noah to stay out of this and let them handle it, but Noah winds up rushing back to Los Angeles anyway to confront the woman, his publicist when Descent was published, who says Noah forced sex on her. Actually, given the dismal record of the "pr girl" in helping the above three, maybe Noah was right not to follow their advice. But he makes a mess of it in Los Angeles, in front of witnesses who see him angrily grab the arm of his accuser.

I always liked Noah and still do. He's fundamentally good at heart. He's quick to struggle against injustices, especially when they're aimed at him. And that, of course, is his undoing. (By the way, acting even more fabulous than usual by Dominic West as Noah in this episode.)

Ironically, the one person who's glad to see him back in LA is Helen. She's had a typically hell of a day, and Noah's showing up her door with lasagna is a break in the frustrating syndrome she and everyone in her orbit are in, and the peaceful highpoint of her day.

Only three episodes left. Not much time for anyone to improve their situation.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Prodigal Son 1.3: LSD and Chloroform

Well, the two biggest stars of Prodigal Son 1.3 - the two biggest factors in moving along the story - were LSD and chloroform. That is, two very different kinds of drugs.

LSD is responsible for the murders that Malcolm and the team investigate. The psychedelic drug magnifies fear, among other things, which proves to be the source or at least the accelerant of the killings. Let me say here that I'm liking almost everyone in the team - not only Gil and Dani, but even the skeptical J. T., who had a good conversation with Malcolm in this episode. The only member of the team I don't like is Dr. Tanaka. It's not the fault of the actress, Keiko Agena. It's the fault of writers and the producers, who keep giving her needlessly stupid lines, attempting to be funny, and therein annoying. Actually, I'd guess that's ultimately the fault of the network people, who think a narrative this serious and sometimes horrifying needs to be leavened with some lame comedy. My unasked-for advice: keep the character and throw out the "comedy".

Chloroform, the anesthetic, provides the big punch in the underlying continuing story of this series thus far. I said last week that I suspected Malcolm's mother of maybe being the real killer. Episode 1.3 pretty much rules that out. But under self-administered chloroform, Malcolm remembers - likely not dreams - that his mother had something more to do with his father's killings than just abhorring them. We earlier get a strong scene of Jessica talking to her husband Martin in prison. She was clearly unnerved, to say the least, by what she discovered her husband was doing. The question is: when? Malcolm's chloroformed memory suggests that his mother knew something, knew a lot, long before she turned her husband in to the police.

I'm glad I'm caught up now with this series. I'll be reviewing it now on a much more regular basis.

See also: Prodigal Son: A New Serial Killer ... Prodigal Son 1.2: Dreams or Memories?

Paul Levinson reads in 1999 from The Silk Code

Welcome to Episode 118 of Llght On Light Through, a special video podcast of a reading I did of The Silk Code in May 1999 for the legendary Seeing Eye Theatre, months before the novel was published by Tor Books. The reading was audio only, and took place in a hotel in Pittsburgh, PA, where the Science Fiction Writers of America's yearly Nebula convention was being held (I was President of SFWA back then). I put all kinds of images in this video, ranging from a reading I did later that year at the equally legendary Toadstool Bookshop in New Hampshire (pictured in the above image), to some photos of Rita Ora's Tezenis commercial, where The Silk Code was employed. The reading is from the beginning of the third section of The Silk Code, "The Subatomic Symptom". The novel would go on to win the Locus Award for Best First Science Fiction novel of 1999.

Saturday, October 12, 2019

Prodigal Son 1.2: Dreams or Memories?

Been a busy two weeks - listening to final mixes of my new album - so I'm just getting around to watching and reviewing the second episodes of some of the promising new series that debuted last month.

Prodigal Son is one such series, and its second episode was even better than the first. The continuing background story deals with a question all of us have encountered: is it a memory of something that really happened, or a dream? I first dealt with this question years ago, when I received a phone call in the middle of the night, fell back asleep, and wasn't sure the next morning if I had dreamt that call or it was real. I realized that, as the day went on, my memory got even more clear. That meant, I thought, that I had really received the call. And, when I spoke with the person who had called me, I confirmed that I had. In contrast, I noticed that my recollection of dreams got more fuzzy as the day went on. So, I had come up with a way to distinguish between the two: memories stay clear or get clearer, dreams fade away (though you might have a memory of the dream, which stays clear).

Malcolm, of course, doesn't have such a method. His serial-killer father says Malcolm just dreamed about the girl in the box. We the audience have seen that the father is lying. But Malcolm doesn't yet know that. Why would the father lie about that particular murder? I'm thinking to protect his wife - Malcolm's mother - who was the one who killed the girl in the box, and maybe did some of the other murders. We'll have to see about that.

Meanwhile, the crime Malcolm cracks in the second episode is a good one, involving snakes and atropine among other things. I really like this series, and I'll be back soon with reviews of third and ensuing episodes.

See also: Prodigal Son: A New Serial Killer

Friday, October 11, 2019

Evil 1.3: Possessed Alexa

A good Evil 1.3 last night, which pits hacking vs. possession as the reason a victim's Alexa-like device is plaguing him.

Digital technology vs. demon is a logical and appealing variation on the general science vs. religion central tension of this series, and it provides a good spotlight for Ben (well played by Aasif Mandvi), the techie third leg of the powerful David-Kristen-Ben triad. Demons have a great history of being in machines, and even in the popular parlance, as the phrase "ghost in the machine" amply demonstrates.

The digital addition to this ancient tradition is crucial, and brings these devices into the robotic/android realm, which, coincidentally, began to be explored in another new network series this week, Emergence. If we assume we human beings have souls, the displacement or occlusion of our soul by a demon is a bigger deal than the demonic infestation of a digital assistant, since such an assistant presumably had no soul in the first place. So such possessions presumably would be easier to achieve?

But the possibilities of digital possession are nonetheless intriguing and dizzying. Imagine a self-driving vehicle that gets possessed by a demon. Such a vehicle could do a lot of damage. (Check out David Walton's Three Laws Lethal for a mostly non-demonic, riveting novel about self-driving vehicles.)

Back to Evil, I'd say this excellent new series is now at a crossroads. So far, it has told mostly new stories, with a continuing thread of deeper stories, mostly separate, involving David and Kristen. I'm enjoying this kind of narrative, but I'd like to see a little more development of those deeper stories, that go beyond the quick glimpses we've been seeing.

See you here next week.

See also: Evil: Incubus Mystery ... Evil 1.2: Miracles and Racism

Wednesday, October 9, 2019

Emergence 1.3: Robots and Androids

A revelatory episode 1.3 of Emergence last night, in which we learn that definitely robots and maybe androids are involved in this series.

The robots are robotic guard dogs, in the facility that has the key to Piper's recovery. They don't bark, but they're pretty effective, and almost prevent Jo and Benny from getting out of there.

The androids are maybe Piper. She nearly dies in the hospital, after an MRI nearly sucks the life out of her. But in what sense is she alive? What Jo and Benny take out of the facility is some kind of code that "is" Piper, according to the woman who tells Jo about it. So, we can assume that the code is some kind of digital record of what and who Piper is - not some nanites to repair or even reconstruct her brain and neural system. It's a code that "is" Piper, in the sense that our brains or souls or whatever you think we humans are - whether your views are scientific or religious or both - make us who and what we are.

But this still leaves open the big question of how Piper came to be. Was she a human girl who was bionically enhanced, not necessarily physically but cognitively, or, again, soul-wise? Or was she constructed from scratch, in the same way we would build a robot or an android. Or, in yet another gambit, maybe she was "grown"?

Like all good revelatory episodes, this raises and opens as many questions as it answers. And like all good series, Emergence was wise to a put a revelatory episode in the line-up so soon. I think Emergence has the potential to be top-notch science fiction, at least as far as traditional networks can go, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

See also: Emergence: May Just Make It ... Emergence 1.2: Cleaning Up

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

The Deuce 3.5: Lori and Candy

The Deuce 3.5 showed us just about everyone going down in one way or another. Among the highlights (or low lights):

Frankie's definitely dead.
Vince ignores various advice and kill's Frankie's killer. Since said killer's father is a made man, this means Frankie's own life is now in mortal danger
AIDS is taking its toll, in heart-rending ways
Lori is so besieged, so desperate to protect herself and body from real intrusions, that she's now imagining them.

Let's look a little more carefully at the last. Lori should be doing better, much better. She escaped prostitution in New York to become a porn star in Hollywood. But she found the impositions on her body in the acting annoying and unacceptable. So she tried singing. She sounded alright to me, but apparently not to the audience on her side of the screen. So, she left that and is working as a stripper. The audience loves her in that. But she finds that love threatening, and hallucinates an assailant. What does that say about Lori? That she can't handle success? Well, at least not in the kind of work she's doing,

Candy, after a rough couple of weeks, is the only one in striking distance of a happy ending. She finally rekindles a professional alliance with Harvey. In many ways, their relationship has always been the best in this series - the best in that both benefit professionally, and neither one is really damaged when discord arises, as it always does in all walks of life.

And, since The Deuce is about porn and its evolution, this befits the series. See you next week.

See also The Deuce 3.1: 1985 ... The Deuce 3.2: The First Amendment! ... The Deuce 3.3: Love and Money, Pimps and Agents ... The Deuce 3.4: Major Changes

And see also The Deuce Is Back - Still Without Cellphones, and that's a Good Thing ... The Deuce 2.2: Fairytales Can Come True ... The Deuce 2.3: The Price ... The Deuce 2.4: The Ad-Lib ... The Deuce 2.6: "Bad Bad Larry Brown" ... The Deuce 2.9: Armand, Southern Accents, and an Ending ... The Deuce Season 2 Finale: The Video Revolution

And see also The Deuce: NYC 1971 By Way of The Wire and "Working with Marshall McLuhan" ... Marilyn Monroe on the Deuce 1.7 ... The Deuce Season 1 Finale: Hitchcock and Truffaut

It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

Sunday, October 6, 2019

The Affair 5.7: On Montauk, Now and Later

And tonight's episode of the The Affair - 5.7 - was the best Noah segment, so far. He's back in Montauk, with Whitney to help her prepare for her wedding at her grandparent's house. But the circumstances lead to a crucial conversation between the two, culminating with her asking him why he left the family that he loved and loved him. His answer: I don't know.

By the way, Julia Goldani Telles, who plays Whitney, has really come into her own as an actress. The scenes between her and Dominic West, one of the best actors around, were really top notch. My guess is she'll do great in third season of The Girlfriend Experience, for which she's already been announced.

Back to Noah: a new plot turn was introduced. His former publicist is saying he made unwanted advances towards her. If recollection serves, I'm pretty sure he didn't. Will be good drama, though - excruciating for Noah - when all of that plays out in the episodes ahead.

As for the second segment - a half-hour of Joanie - for once I didn't like that too much. It was a crucial interlude. She confronts Ben. It was not only unsatisfying to see how he got the better of her, but it was not well developed in the narrative. She shouldn't have just gone over to confront him, with no real, apparent plan. But excellent acting by Tony Plana - who did well on Mayans MC last year - in that important role of Ben.

And so The Affair continues on. It still has some punches. I'm still sad to see it end. But not as sad as the characters, none of whom ever seem to be able to catch a break.

Goliath 3: Literally Streaming Excellence

Goliath 3, steaming on Amazon Prime video, could have been written and directed by David Lynch, and I mean that as a compliment. It has a singer in a nightclub characterizing the action or moving it along with a fine assortment of songs including "Anyone Who Had a Heart" and "The Rose". Believe it or not, she even gives a pretty good rendition of "In Dreams," twice no less. Drug states easily and uneasily intermingle with the reality, a state of perception easily adduced to Billy Bob Thornton as attorney Billy McBride, and he's abetted by a great cast including all kinds of memorably seedy people, including even a Dennis in a big role, not Hopper but Quaid.

And the general plot couldn't be more pressingly relevant: a rapacious almond company literally sucking the water out of southern California. As Patty Solis-Papagian (very well played by Nina Arianda), Billy's associate attorney in fighting the monsters, aptly puts it, they're working in "Satan's dusty ass crack". This dry, druggy, alcohol-washed ambience is the most trenchant we've seen so far on Goliath. (But I'd be happy to see Billy unknowingly drugged by his adversaries a little less often.)

Though this season stars a combination of water and the struggling lack of it, there's not a placid scene in the eight episodes. Instead, we get a cascade of surprises, including plot twists, old enemies, comeuppances, and unexpected deaths and survivals. It's a bracing, drenching, refreshing, and addictive season, which makes it an especially good thing that it's streaming (ok, that's it for the water references). Kudos to the memorable heroes (Billy and Patty with the hard-to-pronounce last name) and memorable villains (Dennis Quaid as Wade, and Amy Brenneman as his sister Diana). Highest recommendation.

See also Goliath 1 on Amazon: Law Drama as Its Meant to Be Seen ... Goliath 2: Truly Surprise Ending

Friday, October 4, 2019

Evil 1.2: Miracles and Racism

A really excellent second episode of Evil on CBS last night, confirming what I thought after the debut of this series last week: it's the best new series I've seen so far this season on network television.

The subject of the episode was miracles, in particular the miracle of a young woman declared dead coming back to life. As we saw last week, our characters are unafraid to confront the most profound problems. Kristen Bouchard (very well played by Katja Herbers) spotlights perhaps the key problem with belief in miracles: why do they "happen to some people and not to others". This an especially crucial problem for her, and not just professionally: we learn in the same conversation with David Acosta (also very well played by Mike Colter) that Kristen's young daughter may have a heart valve condition that could kill her before she reaches the age of twenty.

Meanwhile, the pendulum between spirit and science swings back and forth, just as it did last week. Kristen's daughter sees George the demon! Evidence, then, that he's real? It might seem so, until Kristen learns that he's a character in a horror narrative that is streaming ("streaming," her daughter corrects Kirstin, not on television) and that Kristen has seen and her daughter and the other kids regularly watch. This pendulum between occult and mundane keeps us on our toes about what is really going on. In the centerpiece story, the young woman who comes back to life is African American, and our investigators discover that she was pronounced dead too soon, because the hospital tends to do that with African Americans. Her coming back to life was not a miracle, but "implicit racism," as David aptly puts it.

Speaking of good acting, Evil also features Michael Emerson (from Lost and all kinds of sometimes great series) as Leland Townsend, who is a fit evil antagonist for Kristen and David. He's a psycho, David explains, who "wants to kill hope".

I noticed something else about Evil last night. Its creators are Michelle King and Robert King. They were the creators of The Good Wife. This makes me hope that Evil will be even better than just sometimes great. I won't let Leland kill that hope. Indeed, his complex character enhances the possibility that this hope will be fulfilled.

See also: Evil: Incubus Mystery

Thursday, October 3, 2019

Evil: Incubus Mystery

I caught up with Evil, which debuted on CBS last week. Or maybe evil caught up with me. No, I could up with Evil.

And though I'm not much of a fan of demonic possession stories - same as the lead character, Dr. Kristen Bouchard, the forensic psychologist with a sharp brain who needs money - I thought the first episode was really good. In fact, it's the best new show on network TV I've seen so far this season.

The most interesting and best handled thread in this episode involves Bouchard being visited by an incubus (a male demon with sex on his mind). She vividly dreams or sees the demon (George) look under her nightgown at her Caesarian scar and panties. And then (of course, because this is still network TV) she wakes up screaming. And mostly believing that all she had was a bad dream. And when George visits her again, she realizes that she can't read the writing on the paper she taped to the ceiling, which proves that she's dreaming since you can't read in your dream. Or so she says - I have no idea if that's true - but it makes a good plot point.

But when Bouchard pays a call on a psychotic serial killer who claims he's possessed, he knows what George the incubus said to Bouchard, all about her scar and those panties. How could this be? Is George really a demon that the psycho had access to?

I won't tell you the way that Bouchard refutes this and figures out the truth - in case you haven't seen this show - but it's clever and original. And you should see Evil. It's not only a good science vs. spirituality show - or better, science and spirituality working hand in hand - but it looks like it has the makings of a good mystery narrative as well.

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Emergence 1.2: Cleaning Up

A good second episode of Emergence this week, in which the main action are the bad guys or superior people or people from the future or whoever they are trying to clean up all traces of what happened last week.

They do pretty well. They hire a guy to bury the debris of the crashed plane out in the sea. The erase all data for Piper in the hospital that first took her in. They even liquidate the deceased couple - who died in the car last week after Piper (presumably) caused it to crash - before autopsies could be performed.

But Jo gets them - or, at least, their current agent - by taking advantage of the swirling magnetism in the crashed car, and positioning a mallet in the air so it hits the bad guy in the face. This enables Jo and Chris to escape. But Jo realizes they're not home safe just yet, not by a long shot.

So the mystery is becoming a little more clear. The antagonists are not super powerful or super intelligent. They have superior knowledge and technology. And Piper doesn't seem to be bad. She's a victim of all of this, in her own way, too. Though, at this point in the narrative, anything is possible. Piper could be an anti-hero, but we and she just don't know it, as yet.

After two episodes, Emergence seems most indebted to Stranger Things for its ambience and story. But there are differences. Emergence takes place in the present. And, so far, there don't seem to be any monsters created or unleashed, other than the human kind.

See you here next week.

See also: Emergence: May Just Make It

Monday, September 30, 2019

The Deuce 3.4: Major Changes

I mean, it's the final season (even thought it's only the third) of The Deuce, right? So we had to expect major changes. More than Lori failing at everything other than sheer porn that she tried (though, if you ask me, I thought her singing was pretty good). More than Candy being read the anti-porn riot act by Andrea Dworkin (a real person, by the way, who died in 2005).

So, it wasn't that surprising to see what happens to Frankie. On his birthday, no less. It's been building up to this all season, and there even were intimations of that in last year's second season. He doesn't pay his due respect to people with guns, including and especially the mob.

And so, he gets shot at the end of the episode. And it looks like he's dead, or dying, in his twin brother's arms. But then the coming attractions show him alive in bad shape in a hospital, or at least someone with a mustache who looks like him. It's probably Frankie - as far as we know we've been following the story of twins in The Deuce, not triplets (in which case, maybe the whole series would've been called The Trio).

But you know what? It doesn't really matter if Frankie is dead, or very badly hurt, in which case, he could die before the series ends, anyway. But even if Frankie survives, that's still going to amount to a very major change in the series. He won't be the same. Which means that his brother Vincent, who has been much more of the main character in this narrative, won't be the same, either.

I'm also sorry to say that I expect some other deaths before the series is over, anyway. Life is hard and dangerous, especially when you're in the kind of business that the twins and everyone around them are in.

See also The Deuce 3.1: 1985 ... The Deuce 3.2: The First Amendment! ... The Deuce 3.3: Love and Money, Pimps and Agents

And see also The Deuce Is Back - Still Without Cellphones, and that's a Good Thing ... The Deuce 2.2: Fairytales Can Come True ... The Deuce 2.3: The Price ... The Deuce 2.4: The Ad-Lib ... The Deuce 2.6: "Bad Bad Larry Brown" ... The Deuce 2.9: Armand, Southern Accents, and an Ending ... The Deuce Season 2 Finale: The Video Revolution

And see also The Deuce: NYC 1971 By Way of The Wire and "Working with Marshall McLuhan" ... Marilyn Monroe on the Deuce 1.7 ... The Deuce Season 1 Finale: Hitchcock and Truffaut

It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

Stumptown: Strong Out of the Gate

Continuing with my reviews of new network television series which seemed appealing enough to watch the debut, we come to Stumptown, which opened shop on ABC last Wednesday.

I watched it mainly because I wanted to see Michael Ealy (Sleeper Cell, etc) and Camryn Manheim (The Practice) on television again. They both were good as Portland, Oregon police (Detective Miles Hoffman and his Lieutenant Cosgrove). And it turns out that so was Cobie Smulders, in the lead role of Dex, a hard-hitting, sass-talking private investigator with a heart of gold and a sense that morality when necessary is more worth following than the literal law.

These characteristics will be recognized as shared by many a famous, classic detective. But they were male, and Stumptown has a fast pace, sometimes frenetic, and a touch of wackiness, all its own. The start of the first episode has Dex kidnapped in the back of the car. As a military vet, she's physically dexterous, and it's fun to see how she gets out of this jam against all odds.

The key to whether a series like this can manage long-term success are the power of the cases Dex investigates. The acting and relationships are there - Dex is already in bed with Miles - and so is the energy and refreshing Portland ambience. My wife liked the first episode, too (always a good sign for a series). I'll definitely watch the new few episodes and tell you what I think.

Sunday, September 29, 2019

The Affair 5.6: Best Episode of the Season So Far - Finally, about Joanie

Frankly, The Affair this season, up until tonight's episode 5.6, was almost a waste of time watching. But tonight's hour - devoted completely to Joanie in the future - made Season 5 all worthwhile.

The science fiction aspects, which I've commented upon before, were excellent. Indoor strawberry gardens to make oxygen, phones in the ear, Google-like-glasses (worn by Joanie to see what the dock looked like on the night her mother died), were all fun to see. But they weren't the best part of the episode.

That came from Joanie, wonderfully acted by Anna Paquin, discovering that her mother likely did not commit suicide and then being certain that she was murdered, by Ben. She makes this journey with the help of EJ, a great new character (a researcher into trauma, with a great sense of humor and other endearing qualities, well played by Michael Braun). He and Joanie not only wind up in bed together, but he helps her, well, get over her trauma at the loss of both of her parents. And he therein frees her brain to figure out what happened to Allison.

I've been thinking all season that it would have satisfying if Cole had been alive - as Joanie says, he was only 72 when he died (of a heart attack, or a broken heart, and she aptly puts it). But his death was worked very well into tonight's narrative. It's a large part of the motive for Joanie to look into her mother's death.

Tonight's episode is a turning point in the season and thus the series. I wouldn't mind seeing Noah again only in the future with Joanie, and I wouldn't miss anyone else too much from our present, in California. That won't happen. But let tonight's episode at least begin Joanie getting good long segments. She and the series deserve it.

Why Trump Should Be Impeached and Removed from Office

It will come as no surprise at all to anyone who knows me, that I hope the House of Representatives impeaches Trump, very likely to happen, and the Senate votes by the required two-thirds majority to remove him from office, less likely to happen but still possible. Here are my reasons:

The charges against Trump, which he has already admitted to, and appear in the transcript released by the White House, which detail Trump telling the President of Ukraine that US aid crucial for the Ukranian defense against Russia was dependent on Ukraine providing Trump evidence of alleged wrong-doing by Joe Biden's son Hunter, is far worse than the charges raised against the three other Presidents in American history who either were impeached or for whom impeachment seemed very likely.

Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868 by the House but acquitted by the Senate on the charge of violating the Tenure of Office Act, which restricted the President's ability to fire members of his cabinet. The Act was soon amended, repealed a few decades later, and ultimately held to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998 by the House for lying under oath about consensual sexual activities with Monica Lewinsky, but acquitted by the Senate early the next year.
Richard Nixon resigned from office in 1974, rather than face very likely impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate for approving a coverup of the Watergate break-in (an attempt to steal information from Democratic Party headquarters).

Trump's wrongdoings, laid out in the transcript of his conversation, are obviously far more serious than either Johnson's or Clinton's. Nixon's was similar to Trump's insofar as Nixon was involved in attempts to obtain political advantage over his opponents. But Nixon's wrongdoing was a cover-up of a break-in, whereas Trump's entailed the actual wrongdoing of extorting a head of state for political advantage. Further, and even more important, Nixon's wrongdoing was totally domestic, in contrast to Trump's, which obviously was international, and endangered American national security in all kinds of ways, including letting a foreign power know that the American President was engaging in extortion.

I was in favor of Trump leaving office the day he assumed it. His daily attacks on legitimate news media as fake news, reminiscent of the Nazi denunciation of unwelcome reporting in Germany as der Lügenpresse (the lying press), are just one of his many attacks on American democracy (and one I've especially investigated in Fake News in Real Context). But he has provided by far the most egregious reason for removal from office in American history in just that one conversation with the Ukrainian head of state.

Saturday, September 28, 2019

Emergence: May Just Make It

Emergence, which debuted on ABC last week, is another example of a recently well-worn theme back on network television yet again: a child or teenager who mysteriously appears, and turns out to have some kind of superpower.

But Emergence is lifted by its star, Allison Tolman, who did so well in Fargo a few years ago. And Emergence has her playing a police chief (Jo Evans), which, even in a small town on Long Island, is something you still don't see all that often on network TV. And with Clancy Brown, who's been so good in so many science fiction series on television, as Jo's father, there are at least a few good reasons to watch it.

The first episode laid out the groundwork of the series narrative nicely. A plane crashes. Jo finds a girl, who apparently was on the plane, sitting off to the side on the ground, without a scratch. She professes to have some sort of amnesia, but probably she doesn't really have it. She's kidnapped by a couple pretending to be her parents. The kidnap car badly crashes, for no apparent reason. Piper (the girl, not her real name) again emerges unscathed. Later, she removes what is likely some kind of tracking device in her neck.

She wonders if she caused the crashes. Likely she did. Jo knows she's stumbled onto to something important, and we the audience know it's going to be far more important than she realizes.

So there you have it. A pretty good, if not startlingly original, set-up for a series. For me, the tipping point in favor of watching another episode is that this story is apparently is science fiction, which I almost always prefer to life after death or magic.

I'll keep you posted.

"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!