Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 189

Eric McLuhan: The Pot Roast and the Jokes

I first met Eric McLuhan in March 1978 at the airport in New York.  He and his father, Marshall, had flown in from Toronto for the "Tetrad Conference" I had organized at Fairleigh Dickinson University which would start the next day, March 10.  Tina and I waited for Marshall and Eric in the baggage claim area.  It was like a scene out of a movie.  Maybe like Woody Allen's take on the closing scene in Casablanca.  Except this was a beginning.

Everyone else had picked up their baggage.  There were no cellphones then, so we could not be 100% positive they had boarded the plane in Toronto.  There were no suitcases left on the conveyor.  Finally, we saw the two of them in the far distance, as if walking out of a mist, carrying their bags.  I had already met Marshall several times before that, after he'd invited me to lunch on an earlier visit to New York, after I'd written a Preface to his Laws of the Media.  Every time, including at the airport, was one of the high points in my life.

We drove Marshall and Eric back to our apartment by Van Cortland Park in the Bronx.  Tina had made pot roast - we forever after called it the McLuhan pot roast.  Josh Meyrowitz and Ed Wachtel joined us after dinner.  At the conference the next day, and at the pot roast dinner, what I most remember about Eric was our exchange of jokes.   We continued this just about every time we saw each other over the years, in New York and Toronto, and somehow always came up with new material.

It wasn't easy being Marshall's son, elaborating upon the work of someone whose contribution was so extraordinary and incandescent, that many academics were not up to understanding it.  But Eric gave it a go, and never lost his sense of humor, and the twinkle in his eye which he inherited from his father.

Paolo Granata emailed me last year with a great idea:  how I would like to organize an event at Fordham to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Marshall's year at Fordham University as a visiting scholar, 1967-1968.  Eric, who of course was with his father at Fordham in 1967-1968, too, would be available in 2017, too.  I put together an evening on October 13, 2017, with talks by Eric, John Carey (who was a student at Fordham in 1967-1968, and attended Marshall's talks then) and me.  (Thanks to Jackie Reich, our department chair, for supporting this.)  The room which seated 100 was packed to standing room only.  (The video of the event is below.  I introduce Eric at about 8 minutes 5 seconds into the video, Eric begins his talk at 11 minutes 50 seconds.)

The night before, Tina and I took Eric and Andrew to dinner.  Andrew had followed in his father's footsteps, being his essential and wonderful travel companion, as Eric had been for Marshall.  The food and the jokes were still good.

I don't know about afterlives.  I know about memories.  RIP?  That wasn't Eric's style.  Maybe somewhere in the cosmos, but definitely in my head, he'll still be telling jokes.


Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

The Americans 6.8: Lying about the Moon

With only two episodes left to go in The Americans, episode 6.8 tonight mapped out a profound change in Elizabeth.  Till now, in this season and earlier, Elizabeth has been nothing but coldly homicidal regarding anyone identified as an enemy by the Center and ordered by them to be eliminated.  Likewise, any innocent person who jeopardized her continuing work for the Center.  But, after a game-changing conversation to start the episode, in which Philip finally tells Elizabeth what he's been tasked by the Soviet government - in contrast to the Centre - to do, Elizabeth finally begins coming into her own, well, as a human being.

First, she allows Jackson to walk away, after he tells that he knows she's been using him for some unsavory purpose.  In every episode up to tonight's, Elizabeth never would have let him get out of the car.  And next, she disobeys an order to kill Nesterenko, because she's seen for herself that he's not an enemy of the state.

She's still loyal to The Soviet Union, but that means loyalty to the Communist Party and Gorbachev, not loyalty to the Centre.  This puts Elizabeth and Claudia on a collision course, and it's not clear what Claudia will do.  But Elizabeth - and Philip - ironically have worse things to worry about.  Stan is all but convinced that they are the couple who killed so many of the FBI's assets over the years.

A big question mark still hangs over Renee.  The one thing that can stop Stan - easily kill him, if need be - is Renee.  Tonight we see her noticing that Stan is looking across the street at the Jennings home.  When she asks him what he's looking at, he lies to and says the moon.  She's got to know he's lying.  If she's a Russian agent, what will she do about this?

So far, we've seen no evidence that she is indeed working for the Centre.  But scenes like tonight's, and Stan lying about the moon, should oblige us to think more about Renee.   I wouldn't be at all surprised if part of the stunning ending in two weeks is she kills Stan, before he can bring Philip and Elizabeth down.

On the other hand ... well, I'll be back here next week with my next-to-last review of this extraordinary series.

See also The Americans 6.1: Elizabeth vs. Philip ... The Americans 6.2: Brutal ... The Americans 6.3: Stan and Oleg / Elizabeth's Fate ... The Americans 6.4: Stark Truths Truths ... The Americans 6.5: Common Denominator and Collision Course ... The Americans 6.6: Rififi ... The Americans 6.7: Suspension of Disbelief and the Sketches
And see also The Americans 5.1: The Theft ... The Americans 5.2: Oleg and Stan ... The Americans 5.3: Cowboys and Bugs ... The Americans 5.4: Dating, Soviet-Spy Style ... The Americans 5.5: Wrong about the Bugs ... The Americans 5.7: Gabriel ... The Americans 5.9: Gabriel and Martha ... The Americans 5.10: That Pastor, Again ... The Americans 5.11: Execution in Newton ... The Americans 5.12: Back in the U.S.S.R. ... The Americans Season 5 Finale: The Little Things
And see also The Americans 4.4: Life and Death ... The Americans 4.6: Martha, Martha, Martha ... The Americans 4.8: Whither Martha? ... The Day After The Americans 4.9 ... The Americans 4.10: Outstanding! ... The Americans 4.11: Close Call ... The Americans 4.12: Detente and Secret History
And see also The Americans 3.1: Caring for People We Shouldn't ... The Americans 3.3: End Justified the Means ...  The Americans 3.4: Baptism vs. Communism ... The Americans 3.6: "Jesus Came Through for Me Tonight" ...The Americans 3.7: Martha. My Dear ... The Americans 3.8: Martha, Part 2 ... The Americans 3.10: The Truth ... The Americans 3.12: The Unwigging ... The Americans Season 3 Finale: Turning a Paige
And see also The Americans 2.1-2: The Paradox of the Spy's Children ... The Americans 2.3: Family vs. Mission ... The Americans 2.7: Embryonic Internet and Lie Detection ... The Americans 2.9: Gimme that Old Time Religion ...The American 2.12: Espionage in Motion ... The Americans Season 2 Finale: Second Generation

And see also The Americans: True and Deep ... The Americans 1.4: Preventing World War III ... The Americans 1.11:  Elizabeth's Evolution ... The Americans Season 1 Finale: Excellent with One Exception


Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Best Google Doodle since McLuhan

Today's Google Doodle is about art-deco artist Tamara de Lempicka, who worked primarily in the 1920s and 30s.   I've always loved art-deco - my wife and I still collect art-deco jewelry and silverware, when we can buy it on the cheap at an auction or flea market - and I gotta say this is the best Google Doodle since the July 21, 2017 Doodle (in motion, of course) honoring Marshall McLuhan.

Art-deco, though it extended into the 1930s and provided hope with its sleek shiny lines, was very much a product of the 1920s.   This was an age of fast cars, fast trains, big motion pictures soon with sound, and even the pulse of electricity in the first radio networks, CBS and NBC.   It was also the dawn of truly modern science fiction, with the advent of Gernsback's Amazing Stories, where I was proud to be published in 1993 and will soon be published again (this summer in its paper relaunch).

The science fiction that I've always most loved - which would be Asimov and Heinlein - was very much a reflection and extension of art-deco.   The clean sleek lines of the cars and trains and The Empire State Building and even more The Chrysler Building in New York City - which I've also always loved as architecture - were projected onto the rocket ships that lifted us off the Earth and brought us to other planets and solar systems.   And since that science fiction was the inspiration of space pioneers like Werner von Braun, there's also a connection between art deco and the space program, and, indeed, the whole endeavor of getting us off this planet and out into the stars.

Our digital age is also a reflection of this same impulse - to move our information, and thus us, ever faster.  Why is fast good?  Because life is short.   Someday - I hope, in the not too-distant future - we'll indeed have space ships carrying lots of people out into the cosmos.   On the those ships, I like to image that there'll be some of Tamara de Lempicka's work.  Until then, we have today's Google Doodle to enjoy.


Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

The Crossing 1.7: The Locket

On the heels of ABC's announcement that it would not be picking up The Crossing for a second season, it posted a strangely satisfying and important episode.  Of course, that's just a coincidence, since the episode was written and produced long before the cancellation, but it somehow seems significant nonetheless.

The most appealing and provocative of part of episode 1.7 was the continuing story of Hannah and her locket.   The whole locket arc has a quiet elegance about it, and makes The Crossing a much more ... sensitive ... story.  She lost the locket in the water.  A beachcomber picks it up and puts it on his table of trinkets and beach-finds for sale.  Hannah wants it, but doesn't have the $10 he asks for it.  But Roy, who knows how much the locket means to Hannah, later goes back and buys it for $25.

The ingredient that make this little vignette a kind of parable - and emblematic of the entire series - is Marshall.  His image is in the locket.  Hannah is attracted to him, and he to her, as they walk the rocks by the shore.   But who is he?   Someone from our time?  But why, then, is his photo in this locket that Hannah presumably acquired in the future?  If he's from the future, what's he doing back here?

Hannah tells him she comes from the future, but Marshall acts just as you would expect anyone from our present to act when hearing about it: he can't make much sense of it.  Unless he's putting that on, but he didn't seem like that's what he was doing.

I think these quiet stories are more the soul of the story then the battles between Lindauer and Reece and all the super gymnastics.   With the series now not up for a second season, we may never know how this parable of the locket turns out.  Unless some wise network or streaming service picks it up.

See also The Crossing: Lost Again, But OK ... The Crossing 1.2: Calling for More Time Travel ... The Crossing 1.3: The Missing Inventor ... The Crossing 1.4: Hofstra ... The Crossing 1.5: Migrations in Conflict ... The Crossing 1.6

Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Westworld 2.4: Questions Pertaining to Immortality

We already knew that the AI technology used to construct hosts could construct a host-like version - an android - of a human being who once was alive.  That, after all, is what Bernard is.  But in Westworld 2.4, we get a poignant and telling exposition of how this figures (or figured) in the life of William, whose older self, apparently obtained through just natural aging (though, who knows), is The Man in Black.

William / The Man Black's father is Delos.  He dies of some incurable illness, but not before his mind is captured (or brain in scanned, of however you'd like to put this) and then imprinted on the AI technology that creates hosts.  Except, we discover that this process can't quite be brought to fruition.  William, who in a great series of scenes pays visits to his father and eventually shows up as The Man in Black, discovers this, and reluctantly concludes that this kind of immortality is unattainable.

But important questions remain: 

Who kept the android Delos alive in that laboratory, after William already looking like The Man in Black clearly realized it wasn't working?Why did imprinting work with Bernard?  Or did it?  In the first episode, we saw Delores making the same kind of speaking errors as William saw with his android father.   Bernard - presumably the original human Bernard? - saw this, and had the same subtle disappointment on his face as we saw with William.  So ... does this mean the Delores we've come to know is actually based on an earlier, living, human Delores?  Is that the source of her memories?I just realized that Delores and Delos have similar spellings.   Is there some significance in that, or just coincidence?  Is Delores in some way related to Delos?What was the relationship between William and Ford?  I can't recall if and what we saw of them together in the first season, but it didn't seem like much.But we do know certain things we didn't quite know earlier - or they've come into sharper focus.  There are more than just guests and hosts (which we can define as all humans associated with the park - programmers, administrators, etc).   There are hosts who are copies of deceased humans.

So here's another question: Are there androids who are copies of humans who are still alive?

Because of these questions alone, I'm enjoying this season more than the first season, which even without these questions was pretty enjoyable, to say the least.

See also Westworld 2.1: Maeve's Daughter ... Westworld 2.2: "Narcissus Narcosis" ... Westworld 2.3: The Raj and Guns of the South

And 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 ... Westworld 1.7: The Story of the Story ... Westworld 1.8: Memories ... Westworld 1.9: Half-Truths and Old Friends ... Westworld Season 1 Finale: Answers and Questions


Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Timeless Season 2 Finale: Back from the Future

Well, Timeless saved the best of its second season for last - that is, the last minute of the 2nd of a double episode.  There will spoilers ahead, so don't read on if you'd rather not know...

First, to set the context - the double episode, which was pretty much two separate episodes, tied together by the same sinews that tied together every episode this second second - began about 15 minutes late.   Only appropriate for a time travel tale.

The first hour, about Harriet Tubman, was good enough.   But the best story was saved for the second hour, and just got better and better.   Jiya, taken prisoner by Rittenhouse, has escaped, and is living her life in 1880s Chinatown in San Francisco.  She lets our team in the present know where she is - by a message in Klingon in an ad (I wonder if Lawrence M. Schoen was a consultant - look him up) - and concludes with a warning not to come find her.  This is because she's seen Rufus dying in her vision, which she's now learned to scrutinize in its entirety.

Of course the team comes anyway.  Before the episode is over, Lucy's mother and the Rittenhouse "genius" are (apparently) dead, Emma's in charge with a pregnant Jessica (with Wyatt's baby) as her second, and ... yes, Rufus is dead, too.  In one of the best O'Henry-esque you-can't-defeat-fate twists of the season, Jiya manages to save Rufus from the death-by-knife in her vision, but he succumbs shortly after to Emma's bullets.

Chinatown transforms Lucy, who tries to kill Emma, and fails only because her gun is out of bullets.  Wyatt, back home in 2018, tells Lucy he loves her.  It looks like all is lost - mainly because, in the laws of time-travel that have been articulated so far in the series, you can't go back to a time you've already visited, so there's no way our team can go back to Chinatown and save Rufus a second time.

But apparently you can go back in time from some future date to where you are in 2018, and that's where the great last moment leaves us.  Just when it seems that our team has run out of luck and hope if not time, an older version of Wyatt (bearded) and Lucy appear in a spiffier looking eyeball i.e., time machine, and invite our current versions to go back with them to save Rufus....

I'd say that's a pretty powerful inducement for a third season.  If NBC doesn't rise to the occasion, I'm sure some other network or streaming service will.   Otherwise ... well, you never know who may appear from the future as a convincer.

See also Timeless 2.1: "Mein Kampf, by Philip K. Dick" ... Timeless 2.2: The Nod ... Timeless 2.3: Orson, Hedy, and Lucy ... Timeless 2.4: Striving to Avoid the 'I Made It Happen' Loop in Time Travel ... Timeless 2.5: JFK... Timeless 2.6: Lucy and Flynn ... Timeless 2.7: Emma ... Timeless 2.8: Loops in Tales
And 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 ... Timeless 1.6: Watergate and Rittenhouse ... Timeless 1.7: Stranded! ... Timeless 1.8: Time and Space ... Timeless 1.9: The Kiss and The Key ... Timeless 1.10: The End in the Middle ... Timeless 1.11: Edison, Ford, Morgan, Houdini, and Holmes (No, Not Sherlock)! ... Timeless 1.12: Incandescent West ... Timeless 1.13: Meeting, Mating, and Predictability ... Timeless 1.14: Paris in the 20s ... Timeless 1.15: Touched! .... Timeless 1.16: A Real Grandfather Paradox Story


                           more time travel
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Safe: Dangerous

Just finished watching Safe, Harlan Coben's 8-hour mini-series that started streaming on Netflix on May 10.  Its closest competition for the apex of this kind of crime story is Broadchurch, where a death is investigated in a town in which just about everyone is a suspect - including parents of the victim and the police - but Safe is somehow even tighter, more harrowing, and more complex.

I won't say anything specific about the plot, because I don't want to give even an inch of it away.  I will say that there are shockers and red herrings galore, and, like all top-notch who-dunnits, thoroughly plausible in retrospect.  It's also just possible to guess some of the crucial components and villains, but not likely all of them, and I find this sort of tension and balance very much the essence of great mystery.

I can say a lot about the acting, because it gives nothing away.  Michael C. Hall makes his first return in a television series since Dexter, easily in the top 10 and maybe top 5 of all series ever in any form on television.   He's excellent, with a fine (to my New Yorker ears) British accent (yes, the story takes place in a gated-community in England, another reason it evokes Broadchurch).   Audrey Fleurot, who did such a good job in the French series Spiral and A French Village, is powerful in a supporting role in Safe, and I didn't mind at all she played a character somewhat similar to the one she played in A French Village.  Indeed, all the acting is top notch, and I got a special kick out of Nigel Lindsay (who plays Sir Robert Peel in Victoria), who almost provides comic relief as a beleaguered  father striving to protect his daughter and his family from the long arm of the law.

Indeed, Safe, like Broadchurch, is as much a dysfunctional family drama as it is a crime and police story.   The gated community seethes with dangerous pasts and relationships, and is anything but safe, which makes Safe such commanding viewing.


Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Babylon Berlin: Eye Opening History

I can't think of a better time - or maybe worse time - to watch a 16-episode German series (streaming on Netflix) about the police in the Weimar Republic in 1929, just a few years before the Nazis won a plurality in the Reichstag, Hitler became Chancellor, and by 1934 had seized power, ended democracy, and declared himself Führer.   Weimar police detectives are comprised of people who would give their all to save democracy and people bent on destroying it.  Police on the street often react with deadly force to protests, unable to distinguish peaceful demonstrators from those with darker motives.  Politicians are much the same.   The parallels to our age of Trump, who has systematically attacked the press and other bulwarks of democracy, are obvious and chilling - more than chilling, given that we know how this battle turned out in Germany, and the impact of that result of the rest on the world.

But it turns out that what most people think happened in the Weimar Republic, its inescapable doom at the hands of the Nazis, is not the entire story, or is at very least vastly oversimplified.  In that difference between our casual understanding of history and what Babylon Berlin so vividly shows, may reside some real hope for us here in 2018.

That commonly accepted history shows the clever Nazis - not just Hitler, but Joseph Goebbels, who earned a PhD from the University of Heidelberg and was a master of propaganda - seizing on events, creating events, playing the people to get them to view democracy as weak and elect the Nazis to power.   That part is true is enough, but I always wondered why the Weimar Republic was such an easy target.  Babylon Berlin shows us in compelling detail that it wasn't just the Nazis that brought democracy down, or an aged President von Hindenburg who would appoint Hitler Chancellor after the Nazis gained democratically-elected power in the Reichstag.  It was, instead, the Nazis and a logically almost impossible array of powerful allies who beset the Weimar Republic and ultimately tore it to pieces.

The uneasy alliance between the Nazis and the Communists is well known, and was effectively portrayed in A French Village, another masterpiece about a slightly later period. But the full extent of this partnership between these two false champions of the workers is laid bare in Babylon Berlin, including a secret base in the Soviet Union where the German air force, outlawed in the Treaty of Versailles, is being rebuilt - not by the Weimar Republic but by German super-nationalists and rogue elements of the German military.

And even that was not the worst of it.  Joining the Nazis and the Communists in their hatred of democracy were a powerful group who never even pretended to be parties of the people: monarchists who yearned for a return of Kaiser Wilhelm II.   This was a group of generals and captains of industry (if they weren't already Nazis), and included some of the very police who were supposed to protect the Republic.  (Though we haven't gotten to the 1930s in Babylon Berlin yet, Wilhelm himself expressed both hatred and admiration of the Nazis, at times wrongly thinking that they were his ticket to restoration.)  With Nazis, Communists, and monarchists all attacking the institutions of democracy at various levels, each in their own interlocking ways, and the Weimar Republic not understanding, over-reacting, or not reacting to these dire threats at all, it didn't stand a chance.

And yet that's why I find this story ironically hopeful for those us in 2018.  Trump may be a pawn of white supremacists here in the United States.  He may have gotten some indirect support from the radical left who stayed away from the polls or didn't vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016.  But we have nothing even remotely like the monarchists in our country.  And, fortunately, we don't have a parliamentary form of government, where a democratically-elected plurality can aspire to seize power.

I haven't said anything about the specific stories and acting in Babylon Berlin, because I believe they're all secondary to these profound political lessons.   But they portray those lessons beautifully and unforgettably.  The heroes are Inspector Gereon Rath, haunted by his experience on the front in the Great War;  Charlotte Ritter, a flapper and part-time prostitute who does clerical work in the police department and wants to become a detective; and August Benda, head of the Weimar political police, Jewish, and the only person who glimpses the imminent future of Germany which we in 2018 know all too well.  (All three roles are impeccably played by Volker Bruch, Liv Lisa Fries - you may recall her from Counterpart - and Peter Kurth - and, while we're at it, hats off to series creators Henk Handloegten, Tom Tykwer, and Achim von Borries)  The action is non-stop, including a gun duel on top of a train (an homage to The Great Train Robbery), a breath-taking reconnaissance mission by air, and all kinds unexpected deaths, near-deaths, and suspense scenes that will keep you on the edge of your anxieties.

As an historian of technology, I should also mention that Babylon Berlin contains some significant details and lessons about the state of German technology in 1929, which was more advanced in some ways that ours in America at that time.  Their train system, their phone system, was just a little further along at that time than the rest of the world's, and gives yet another reason why the Nazis would do so well, so quickly, at the beginning of the Second World War.

See Babylon Berlin (from the novels by Volker Kutscher) for an indelible and instructive lesson in harrowing history that will stay with you for the rest of your life.





Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

The Americans 6.7: Suspension of Disbelief and the Sketches

Throughout previous seasons of The Americans, I've wondered why Stan, looking at the sketches of Philip and Elizabeth in disguise, didn't recognize them as his next-door neighbors.  I mean, the disguises are good, but not that good.  The sketches of the Soviet-agent suspects sure looked to me like Philip and Elizabeth, and, if anything, Stan knows them much better than I do.  I see them just once a week, for an hour or so, for ten or a few more weeks once a year. Stan sees them all the time.

I always assumed this was just the willing suspension of disbelief - see Coleridge - that I and all viewers of this great series had to make.  It was the price we had to pay to enjoy this excellent, and important, series.   But in tonight's episode 6.7, that willing suspension of disbelief was really put to the test.

Stan is suspicious of Philip and Elizabeth - suspicious that they're up to something no good, or at very least something they don't want to tell him.  Of course, there's no reason to assume that they're Soviet spies.  Yet he's moved in this episode to break into and look through their home - while both are in Chicago, on a mission that will result in the death of two FBI agents.

He finds nothing.  Presumably the sketches of the suspects from Chicago have not yet arrived - that will be left to the next episode, according to the coming attractions.   But why isn't Stan looking at the previous sketches right now - he's already been told that a white man and a white woman were in that bus in Chicago.   Given that he's already suspicious about his neighbors - if not for being Soviet spies, for something untoward - it's hard to believe that he's not already putting two and two together - his two neighbors are this couple that keep showing up at all of these murderous occasions.

Well, they'll be plenty of time for that next week and in the remaining episodes of this extraordinary series, and I'll be back here with reviews of them all.

See also The Americans 6.1: Elizabeth vs. Philip ... The Americans 6.2: Brutal ... The Americans 6.3: Stan and Oleg / Elizabeth's Fate ... The Americans 6.4: Stark Truths Truths ... The Americans 6.5: Common Denominator and Collision Course ... The Americans 6.6: Rififi
And see also The Americans 5.1: The Theft ... The Americans 5.2: Oleg and Stan ... The Americans 5.3: Cowboys and Bugs ... The Americans 5.4: Dating, Soviet-Spy Style ... The Americans 5.5: Wrong about the Bugs ... The Americans 5.7: Gabriel ... The Americans 5.9: Gabriel and Martha ... The Americans 5.10: That Pastor, Again ... The Americans 5.11: Execution in Newton ... The Americans 5.12: Back in the U.S.S.R. ... The Americans Season 5 Finale: The Little Things
And see also The Americans 4.4: Life and Death ... The Americans 4.6: Martha, Martha, Martha ... The Americans 4.8: Whither Martha? ... The Day After The Americans 4.9 ... The Americans 4.10: Outstanding! ... The Americans 4.11: Close Call ... The Americans 4.12: Detente and Secret History
And see also The Americans 3.1: Caring for People We Shouldn't ... The Americans 3.3: End Justified the Means ...  The Americans 3.4: Baptism vs. Communism ... The Americans 3.6: "Jesus Came Through for Me Tonight" ...The Americans 3.7: Martha. My Dear ... The Americans 3.8: Martha, Part 2 ... The Americans 3.10: The Truth ... The Americans 3.12: The Unwigging ... The Americans Season 3 Finale: Turning a Paige
And see also The Americans 2.1-2: The Paradox of the Spy's Children ... The Americans 2.3: Family vs. Mission ... The Americans 2.7: Embryonic Internet and Lie Detection ... The Americans 2.9: Gimme that Old Time Religion ...The American 2.12: Espionage in Motion ... The Americans Season 2 Finale: Second Generation

And see also The Americans: True and Deep ... The Americans 1.4: Preventing World War III ... The Americans 1.11:  Elizabeth's Evolution ... The Americans Season 1 Finale: Excellent with One Exception

Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

The Crossing 1.6: Apex Antibodies

The most intriguing aspect of The Crossing 1.6 tonight was Sophie's thought that Reece's Apex antibodies might be life-saving not just for Reece's daughter, but humans suffering from all kinds of otherwise fatal illnesses - including, it turns out, Sophie herself.

This raises an interesting question: is it possible that the way the Apex arose in the future was from the antibodies that Reece left here in our present, first to save here daughter, then to save Sophie, and who knows how many more?  This would make for a nice time-travel loop, in which the Apex unintentionally helped create themselves.

Otherwise, there again was not much evidence of time travel, or anything other than honest cops and crooked superiors, and the conflict we've been seeing between the local police and the Feds, mainly because the Feds so far have been dominated by the people from the First Migration.  Viewership for The Crossing has slid to about half of what it was when the series started six weeks ago - see TV Series Finale  - and this syndrome is classic when a series doesn't live up to its initial promise.

There are still a lot of appealing pieces on the board in The Crossing, and the series needs to begin putting these into play if it is to survive.   If it doesn't, the fate of The Crossing will no doubt be said to be another example of the limited appeal of time travel on network television.  But the real reason will be that there wasn't enough time travel in this narrative which began pretty brilliantly.

There's still time - but, of course, the remaining episodes have already been recorded.  So the time's already passed, and one can only hope that the producers did the right thing months ago - an appropriate kind of hope, when the subject is time travel.

See also The Crossing: Lost Again, But OK ... The Crossing 1.2: Calling for More Time Travel ... The Crossing 1.3: The Missing Inventor ... The Crossing 1.4: Hofstra ... The Crossing 1.5: Migrations in Conflict



Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music