Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 152
September 8, 2019
The Affair 5.3: The Raya App

The Joanie segment of The Affair 5.3 tonight was short, but worthwhile. She likes it rough. Future Long Island is also suffering more than we might have thought from climate change. And the earlier Noah and Helen stories were outstanding.
They both revolve around Sasha. He's a demanding actor and director. That would upset Noah anyway, given that the movie Sasha is directing and acting in is an adaption of Noah's book, i.e., it's his life. My favorite part of all of that - that being the Noah-Helen-Sasha stories, not the movie (though the two of course are intertwined), was the triple karaoke performance. Sasha, Helen, and Noah each performing separately. They all sounded great (I'm assuming, hoping, the vocals were all performed by the very actors). But I liked Noah's the best. Drunk, barely on key, but still excellent. Dominic West should get an award just for that.
But my favorite phrase came a little earlier, when Whitney says something about the Raya app. It's real - it exists in our reality. It started a few years ago. According to Wikipedia, the "application was initially a dating app, but added features to promote professional networking for members of the entertainment industry." Isn't that just perfect for The Affair? It started and still is very much about relationships. But via Noah and his novel now being made into a movie, it's just as much a story of the entertainment world.
Speaking of which, lots of sex in tonight's episode, too. I already mentioned Joanie. Sasha and Helen have a good time, too. Good for Helen is bad for Noah. I know, his default is he deserves what he gets. But I'm still pulling for him to get some happiness before this season and his story ends, too - unlikely as that seems. He did go to prison for Helen.
More next week.
See also The Affair 5.1: Death, Nobility, and Science Fiction ... The Affair 5.2: Tears and Floods
And see also The Affair 4.1: Quakes and Propaganda ... The Affair 4.2: Meanwhile, Back on the Island ... The Affair 4.3: Dire Straits (Not the Band) in California ... The Affair 4.4: Ben ... The Affair 4.5: B'shert ... The Affair 4.6: "Good News and Bad News" ... The Affair 4.7: Noah and Janelle ... The Affair 4.8: I Don't Believe It ... The Affair 4.9: Two Alisons ... The Affair Season 4 Finale: Best Scenes
And see also The Affair 3.1: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 3.2: Sneak Preview Review: Right Minds ... The Affair 3.3: Who Attached Noah? ... The Affair 3.4: The Same Endings in Montauk ... The Affair 3.5: Blocked Love ... The Affair 3.6: The Wound ... The Affair 3.7: The White Shirt ... The Affair 3.8: The "Miserable Hero" ... The Affair 3.9: A Sliver of Clarity ... The Affair 3.10: Taking Paris
And 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 ...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

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Published on September 08, 2019 19:31
September 7, 2019
The Spy: Homeland Brought Home

Gideon Raff is best known for Homeland, soon to begin its final season on Showtime. In its first few seasons - its best few seasons, by far - Homeland told the story of an American who was brainwashed in Iraq, to hate Americans and identify with terrorists, who returns to the U. S. as a war hero and moves to within a heartbeat of the Presidency. It was all fiction, of course, but ....
In The Spy (on Netflix), more completely the creation of Raff than was Homeland, we get the true story of Eli Cohen, a brilliant Mossad agent who infiltrated Syria in the early 1960s and provided crucial information to Israel. In the docu-drama, Cohen is appointed Defense Minister by the Syrian President. I don't know if this happened in real life, but that touch provides a powerful resonance to Homeland.
Even without that parallel, The Spy, in six episodes, is every bit as good as the best of Homeland, and that's good indeed. Deftly portrayed by Sacha Baron Cohen - no relation, as far as I know - Eli Cohen struggles with the erosion of his real identity as he becomes the suave Syrian businessman Kamel Amin Thaabet. Kamel befriends the powerful in Syria, including the military, and gains access to their bases and plans.
The thanks he gets for that back home includes an all but broken marriage. Cohen is forbidden from telling his wife the truth of what he's doing. Hadar Ratzon Rotem does a good job as Nadia Cohen, as does The Americans' Noah Emmerich, who plays Eli's knowledgeable boss - knowledgeable in that he knows how this will end for Eli. Emmerich has the spy master with a conscience down pat.
In case you haven't seen this yet, or don't know Eli's story, I won't tell exactly what that ending is. What I will say is that The Spy is a masterful piece of work, and just homage to a great Israeli covert warrior.

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Published on September 07, 2019 20:19
September 1, 2019
The Affair 5.2: Tears and Floods

Well, as I mentioned last week, and as most of you know, science fiction is my favorite genre (as a reader and viewer, and also as a writer), so I can't help but be the most interested in the Joanie segment, playing a couple of decades into the future.
And I continue to like it, and wish there was more of it. The flooding part is a bit obvious and overplayed, but everything else from the evaluative toilet to the train to Montauk was nice. And just when we might be about to find out what's up with Cole - alive or dead, and if alive, where? - the episode ends.
Meanwhile, back in our present, Janelle sleeping with her ex-husband was a good surprise. It's also consistent with, whatever he does or doesn't do, nothing ever goes quite right for Noah. Which brings us to Helen.
She hasn't yet fallen for Sasha, but the scene at his house was classic getting to know you. Let's say he, in effect, is a better version of Noah, because the character Sasha is more self-aware, and more aware of Helen, given that he's playing Noah in the movie adaptation of Noah's book. Does that mean that Helen might well fall for him?
Probably not. Maybe sleep with him. But she's still too hung up on Vic and even the real Noah. It may be at the end of her segment tonight that she's getting over Vic (I hope so) but she'll likely never get over Noah.
We'll find out soon enough. But here's hoping that Joanie gets her own half hour soon.
See also The Affair 5.1: Death, Nobility, and Science Fiction
And see also The Affair 4.1: Quakes and Propaganda ... The Affair 4.2: Meanwhile, Back on the Island ... The Affair 4.3: Dire Straits (Not the Band) in California ... The Affair 4.4: Ben ... The Affair 4.5: B'shert ... The Affair 4.6: "Good News and Bad News" ... The Affair 4.7: Noah and Janelle ... The Affair 4.8: I Don't Believe It ... The Affair 4.9: Two Alisons ... The Affair Season 4 Finale: Best Scenes
And see also The Affair 3.1: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 3.2: Sneak Preview Review: Right Minds ... The Affair 3.3: Who Attached Noah? ... The Affair 3.4: The Same Endings in Montauk ... The Affair 3.5: Blocked Love ... The Affair 3.6: The Wound ... The Affair 3.7: The White Shirt ... The Affair 3.8: The "Miserable Hero" ... The Affair 3.9: A Sliver of Clarity ... The Affair 3.10: Taking Paris
And 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 ...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

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Published on September 01, 2019 20:46
Carnival Row: Searingly Relevant Steampunk

Maybe I'm a sucker of steam punk - I am - but Carnival Row, the science fiction, science fantasy, mystery/detective, searingly political relevant 8-episode series that debuted this weekend on Amazon Prime, is much more than that. As those adjectives suggest.
The place, like Game of Thrones, is sort of an alternate Earth. It's the seventh century in Carnival Row, but the big city has railroads, phonograph (called voxograph, a nice touch), telegraph, and even the beginning of electric lighting. In our equivalent time - the 1870s - the phonograph (1877) was actually invented a year after the telephone (1876), but there's no telephone as yet in Carnival Row. Maybe that's because the big city is much like London, and the telephone took much longer to catch on there than in New York. But I digress.
There are three main species in this story: Men (humans), Fae (human-like with wings), and Puck (human-like with big horns and Klingon-like heads). The Fae not only fly with their wings, they light up when they're having good sex (i.e., when they have orgasms). Their sexual adeptness - they'll lift their partners literally off the ground or bed in the act - makes them good prostitutes. But they only do that as a means of survival in the metropolis in which at least half or more of the people hate or distrust them. The Puck have evoked similar benighted responses.
That's where the brutally accurate mirror that Carnival Row holds to Trumpian America comes into play. In just about every scene, and at stake as the plot progresses, there are calls to ban the non-humans from the city, place them in ghettos and, yes, detention camps, and you get the picture.
And all of this is played out against the lead detective, Philo, investigating a series of murders with supernatural and political overtones, navigating the deep love he has for a fairy, whose profession was librarian, but is more physically dexterous than humans. Other affairs, family secrets, identity revelations, and surprises abound. I won't say another more, except, see this. Orland Bloom is excellent as Philo, Cara Delevingne as the winged Vignette, and I also especially liked Tamzin Merchant as Imogen and David Gyasi as Agreus, two important secondary characters. René Echevarria, who contributed so much in producing the Star Trek franchise, hasn't lost his touch in creating memorable television.
For what it's worth, I enjoyed this first season of Carnival Row more than most of the seasons of Game of Thrones.

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Published on September 01, 2019 19:02
August 28, 2019
Ejection of Breitbart Reporter from Beto Speech Is Inconsistent with Democracy
I just saw the news that a Breitbart reporter, Joel B. Pollak, who actually is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News, was ejected, apparently for no valid reason (he wasn't being disruptive, his mere presence was deemed as such) from a Beto O'Rourke speech at Benedict College.
Before I tell you why I think that was such a bad move, let me make two things clear:
1. I intensely disagree with Breitbart's political views. The last and only time I voted Republican was for John Linsday for NYC Mayor in 1969 (because he was an early opponent of the Vietnam War). He won, and two years later became a Democrat.
2. I don't think what Beto's people did is literally a violation of the First Amendment. A political candidate not currently in office is not a member of Congress ("Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press") or of any government (prohibited from abridging speech by the extension of the First Amendment in the Fourteenth Amendment).
But, the removal of any reporter on account of his or her political views is grievously in violation of the spirit of the First Amendment, and flies in the face of what the First Amendment is designed to protect, which is the public's right to information and opinions about people in office and people running for office. How else can a democracy work, if we're not as thoroughly informed as possible, meaning exposed to the entire gamut of political views and actions?
Trump's daily denunciation of the press he finds unwelcome as fake news echos Hitler's attack on the press in 1930s Germany as the Lügenpresse or the lying press. Trump's characterization of the press critical of him as "enemies of the people" picks up a favorite phrase of Stalin. Further, Trump not only speaks these epithets, but acts upon them, recently revoking CNN political correspondent Brian Karem's press pass after an exchange between Karem and Trump supporter Sebastian Gorka. Karem has taken this to court. (The White House backed down last year after taking away CNN correspondent Jim Acosta's pass, and Acosta filed suit. Acosta and CNN were lambasted as "fake news" by Trump even back when he was President-elect, in January 2017.)
In tossing out Pollak, Beto's campaign is joining Trump in his contempt for the press, and by extension the American people, which I assume is the last thing that Beto wants to do. People on Twitter, typically seeking to justify any attack on the right, have sought to explain what happened to Pollak by saying he isn't really a reporter and Breitbart not a legitimate source of news. That, alas, is a traditional fascist tactic, used to justify suppression and even killing of human beings by arguing that the victims are not fully or really human.
Beto O'Rourke and his campaign can do better than emulating Trump and his fascist tactics. I hope they see the light and apologize to Pollak. It would amount to an apology to our democracy.
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Before I tell you why I think that was such a bad move, let me make two things clear:
1. I intensely disagree with Breitbart's political views. The last and only time I voted Republican was for John Linsday for NYC Mayor in 1969 (because he was an early opponent of the Vietnam War). He won, and two years later became a Democrat.
2. I don't think what Beto's people did is literally a violation of the First Amendment. A political candidate not currently in office is not a member of Congress ("Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press") or of any government (prohibited from abridging speech by the extension of the First Amendment in the Fourteenth Amendment).
But, the removal of any reporter on account of his or her political views is grievously in violation of the spirit of the First Amendment, and flies in the face of what the First Amendment is designed to protect, which is the public's right to information and opinions about people in office and people running for office. How else can a democracy work, if we're not as thoroughly informed as possible, meaning exposed to the entire gamut of political views and actions?
Trump's daily denunciation of the press he finds unwelcome as fake news echos Hitler's attack on the press in 1930s Germany as the Lügenpresse or the lying press. Trump's characterization of the press critical of him as "enemies of the people" picks up a favorite phrase of Stalin. Further, Trump not only speaks these epithets, but acts upon them, recently revoking CNN political correspondent Brian Karem's press pass after an exchange between Karem and Trump supporter Sebastian Gorka. Karem has taken this to court. (The White House backed down last year after taking away CNN correspondent Jim Acosta's pass, and Acosta filed suit. Acosta and CNN were lambasted as "fake news" by Trump even back when he was President-elect, in January 2017.)
In tossing out Pollak, Beto's campaign is joining Trump in his contempt for the press, and by extension the American people, which I assume is the last thing that Beto wants to do. People on Twitter, typically seeking to justify any attack on the right, have sought to explain what happened to Pollak by saying he isn't really a reporter and Breitbart not a legitimate source of news. That, alas, is a traditional fascist tactic, used to justify suppression and even killing of human beings by arguing that the victims are not fully or really human.
Beto O'Rourke and his campaign can do better than emulating Trump and his fascist tactics. I hope they see the light and apologize to Pollak. It would amount to an apology to our democracy.

Published on August 28, 2019 09:59
August 25, 2019
The Affair 5.1: Death, Nobility, and Science Fiction

Here's a slightly sneak peek preview review of The Affair 5.1, which will air in just a few minutes on Showtime (my wife and I saw it on Showtime On Demand). There will be plenty of spoilers ahead, so read on at your narrative peril...
First, there are three segments to this hour: 1st Noah, 3rd Helen, and 2nd, in between, Joanie, as you may have heard, who looks to be about 20 years into her and our future. This makes her segment science fiction, which is fine with me - as some of you may know, I'm author of six science fiction novels, dozens of science fiction short stories, and who knows how many reviews, which you can find right here on this blog (the reviews, that is; the books and stories are on Amazon and the usual venues). This first foray into Joanie's future touches some good bases in tech and home-life prediction, but also shows us Joanie pensive and even unhappy - about missing her father, she says, and it's not clear at this point if Cole is absent somewhere or dead. Significantly, Joanie's segment is untitled, presumably because hers will be the only future story we'll see in this final season (but who knows).
Speaking of dead, though, that's what Vic is in Noah's story, and what he'll be at the end of Helen's piece of the story tonight. On the one hand, this comes as no surprise. On the other hand, it's handled very well, especially or mostly in the way it affords Helen a way to react to it.
Noah's story is typically Noah's, with the themes that have always made his stories my favorites in this series. A movie's being made of his book. This is a great technique of getting Noah to relive his past with Allison, which is what his book was always about. Also, as is always the case with Noah, he's the perfect gentleman and an honorable man, trying his best to help Helen through Vic's funeral and the aftermath. And also as always, the thanks he gets for this from Helen is a tongue-lashing (the verbal kind) in which she laments that it couldn't have been Noah rather than Vic who died.
Meanwhile, also as always, and also good as always to see, Helen is the hero of her narrative, fighting back against the absurdities of life, and her life in particular, making you want to rally to her cause. She still hasn't quite found herself, and it will be interesting if Vic's death finally helps really get over Noah. I doubt it.
Crime has always been a signal part of The Affair, and the crime of Alison's murder by Ben looms large over this finale season. It was therefore good to see Joanie seeking Ben in a coming attraction, even it is 20 years down the line.
See you back here next week.
See also The Affair 4.1: Quakes and Propaganda ... The Affair 4.2: Meanwhile, Back on the Island ... The Affair 4.3: Dire Straits (Not the Band) in California ... The Affair 4.4: Ben ... The Affair 4.5: B'shert ... The Affair 4.6: "Good News and Bad News" ... The Affair 4.7: Noah and Janelle ... The Affair 4.8: I Don't Believe It ... The Affair 4.9: Two Alisons ... The Affair Season 4 Finale: Best Scenes
And see also The Affair 3.1: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 3.2: Sneak Preview Review: Right Minds ... The Affair 3.3: Who Attached Noah? ... The Affair 3.4: The Same Endings in Montauk ... The Affair 3.5: Blocked Love ... The Affair 3.6: The Wound ... The Affair 3.7: The White Shirt ... The Affair 3.8: The "Miserable Hero" ... The Affair 3.9: A Sliver of Clarity ... The Affair 3.10: Taking Paris
And 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 ...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

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Published on August 25, 2019 17:49
See You Yesterday: Time Travel meets Black Lives Matter

I just saw See You Yesterday, the Spike Lee production, directed and co-written by Stefon Bristol (with Fredrica Bailey), which came out on Netflix this past May. As a time-travel story, it's good enough. As a narrative about the continuing murder of African-American young men in American cities by cops, as told through the mechanism of time travel, it's a crucial masterpiece.
C. J. and Sebastian (well played by Eden Duncan-Smith and Dante Crichlow) are two genius Brooklyn high school kids who invent a time machine. They use it to go a day back in time (its limit) to stop the police killing C. J.'s brother Castro (good performance by Astro), shot down by NYPD who wrongly suspect Castro of robbing a bodega. They succeed - but Sebastian is shot and killed in the process. C. J. goes back again to prevent that from happening, but Castro sacrifices himself to save Sebastian. C. J. goes back one more time, and the movie ends without our knowing what happens this time ...
As I said, a good enough time travel story, by which I mean that it was done well, but we've seen the perverse difficulty of improving history via time travel, including personal history, many times before. As a commentator on time travel and also a science fiction author, I frequently invoke the stubborn resistance of the universe to change (see, for example, The Chronology Protection Case).
But the melding of this time travel metaphysic with the brutal reality of Black Lives Matter is something we haven't seen before, and something we and everyone needs to know. C. J.'s repeated attempts to undo or prevent the cops' ill-considered, racist bullets with the same lack of result is a powerful, sobering metaphor for the difficulty of bringing to justice police who murder in our off-screen reality. Even videos, which we've had as far back as Rodney King, beaten to within an inch of his life, don't usually help.
And the ambiguous ending of See You Yesterday similarly captures a profound and unsettling reality in the fight to educate and reform cops, and put the ones who kill innocent people behind bars. Just as we don't know what C. J. will now do, we have no clear course of action, a pathway everyone can see, towards stopping once and for all these murders of African Americans.
But movies like See You Yesterday are part of the answer. Getting the word out in as many ways as possible is the only way forward. Looking into the future, I expect that See You Yesterday will become a classic in this effort.

Published on August 25, 2019 10:07
August 24, 2019
Mortal Engines: Reasons to Praise It

I just saw Mortal Engines on HBO. It was released here in the U. S. in December 2018, and received almost universal criticism from the usual group of myopic and tone-deaf self-appointed experts. According to Wikipedia, "It was the biggest box-office bomb of 2018 (one of the 10 biggest of all time, as of August 2019)".
Unsurprisingly, I disagree - not with Wikipedia's statement of the movie's lack of success at the box-office, but with the critics. In particular, I thought the Shrike story - the reanimated man and Hester - was one of the best of this kind. The Shrike had a winning combination of insanity, obsessive violence, and tenderness, and Hester's love for him made a lot of sense, too.
And I liked Hugo Weaving's performance as the villain Valentine, whose character also made a lot of sense. If you're going to be a power-mad conquerer, you might as well be consistent. That's certainly in tune with real-life current leaders who are not yet conquerers, but pretty clearly power-mad (as in Donald Trump).
One thing the movie did get its just recognition for was its special effects, which were indeed outstanding. And the general ambience, a cross between Mad Max and Lord of the Rings, worked quite well, too. (Peter Jackson was one of the main creative forces.)
But the sad thing about the combination of critical pans and poor box office is that it tends to put a kibosh on sequels. I hope that Peter Jackson and others behind this powerful and entertaining movie ignore all of that, and get to work on the continuing the story (the movie comes from Philip Reeve's novel of the same name, and there are four in the series). I'll certainly watch it, and even likely be able to talk my wife into seeing it on a big screen.

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Published on August 24, 2019 22:46
August 22, 2019
Mindhunter 2: Riveting Nonfiction vs. Fiction

My wife and I very much enjoyed the first season of Mindhunter, but, whew, the second season was much better - more compelling - in just about every way, except one.
Among the highlights were interviews with the Son of Sam and Charles Manson. Having seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood a few weeks ago, the Manson interview, and a bit later, disciple Tex, one of the actual killers, was especially riveting. And the long harrowing story of the Atlanta Child Murders, culminating with the arrest and conviction of Wayne Williams for just two out of most of 28+ which he likely committed, was a masterpiece in itself.
The one part I didn't care for was the story of Brian, Bill Tench's son, who witnesses the murder of a little child, tries to revive the child by placing him on a crucifix (at least, that's the best interpretation his parents can make of this), and is profoundly traumatized by all of this. I guess the creators of Mindhunter thought that putting the senior FBI hunter in this situation - his son may be on the way to becoming a sicko killer - made for a powerful narrative. I thought it was mostly distracting.
Mindhunter is based on real characters, but is not even docudrama-level true, given that, unlike the serial killers, the main BSU players were not actual people. This in some ways was a good move, since it allows for intriguing developments of the characters that may or may not have actually happened at the FBI. Dr. Wendy Carr's (Anna Torv) love life would be an example of this strategy working well.
But the time given to Brian's story, making it almost a counterpoint to the unfolding Atlanta story, was just too much. Yes, it had the advantage of keeping Tench (brilliantly played by Holt McCallany), away from Atlanta much more than he wanted. but surely some other development could have done the same thing. The problem with Brian's story is that its emotional intensity was so strong that it sapped energy from the intense Atlanta story. In effect, what you have is complete fiction (Brian's story) competing with fact-based historical narrative (Atlanta). Given that the strong suit of Mindhunter its reflection of the reality of the BSU and its revolutionary way of apprehending serial killers, to water that down with a big fictitious story makes not much sense. (See The Wrap - which liked the Brian story - for research that it is fictitious.)
But ... the rest of Mindhunter was so outstanding that my wife and I will be sure to watch its season 3, which has yet to be announced. It will be something to see Holden Ford's (Jonathan Groff) astonishing mind bring down the BTK killer and who knows who else.
See also Mindhunter: Best of Its Kind

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Published on August 22, 2019 09:42
August 19, 2019
City on a Hill Season 1 Finale: "You Ain't that Good, and I Ain't that Bad"

"You ain't that good, and I ain't that bad," Jackie says in the Season 1 finale of City on a Hill last night. It was the best line in an excellent hour, and it doesn't matter who the "you" is, because it's actually all of us in the audience, and it captures the essence of the series. Jackie cuts corners all the time, even murders people. But, somehow, most of his actions are on the side of the good. And, the murdered - certainly Clay - though they should have been tried and convicted, deserved what they got. And so while DeCourcy and Benham are right to take umbrage at a lot of what Jackie does, they're not right, certainly not completely right, to want to destroy him. Because, he ain't that bad and they ain't that good.
And, significantly, Jenny sees this, too. I knew she wouldn't leave him. And her staying with Jackie is not an act of weakness. It's an act of strength and love. There's a path between leaving Jackie and just accepting what he does. Jenny has chosen that path. And it was good to see her finally tell off her mother, who clearly is the worst person in that family. Jackie ain't that bad. Jill's mother is.
Speaking of strength, Cathy has become one of my favorite characters, and she was never better than she was last night. She's the bond that will hold her family together. Frankie was unable to say no to his rat brother Jimmy. But Cathy won't be. And with Jimmy out and about and Frankie behind bars, Cathy will sooner or later come into big conflict with Jimmy, and I'm looking forward to seeing how that plays out next season.
My sense of the series is that it has picked up power and intensity with each episode. I very glad to see it's been renewed, and I'll be back here next year with more reviews.
See also City on a Hill: Possibilities ... City on a Hill 1.2: Politics in a Cracked Mirror ... City on a Hill 1.3: One Upping The Sopranos ... City on a Hill 1.4: Enjoyable Derivative ... City on a Hill 1.6: Tony's Mother, Mayhem, and Family ... City on a Hill 1.7: The Bodies ... City on a Hill 1.8: Personal Business and Its Accompaniment ... City on a Hill 1.9: Changes

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Published on August 19, 2019 10:59
Levinson at Large
At present, I'll be automatically porting over blog posts from my main blog, Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress. These consist of literate (I hope) reviews of mostly television, with some reviews of mov
At present, I'll be automatically porting over blog posts from my main blog, Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress. These consist of literate (I hope) reviews of mostly television, with some reviews of movies, books, music, and discussions of politics and world events mixed in. You'll also find links to my Light On Light Through podcast.
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