Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 259

Is MSNBC Losing Its Mind?

For the second time in as many weeks, right in the middle of a late hour with its election night coverage, MSNBC suddenly switched from live coverage to reruns of earlier coverage.

What's going on?   Why suddenly knock out coverage - in tonight's case, before the returns from Alaska were even complete - without so much as an announcement that live coverage would be ending?

The switch felt so abrupt that it almost felt as if a plug had been pulled, or a switch turned off, accidentally.   But how could that have happened twice?  Sabotage by a disgruntled employee?

The sad thing is that MSNBC has been struggling to move up from its third place behind Fox News and CNN, and it offers a savvy line-up of political analysts.

I can only hope the culprit or whatever or whoever is causing this is discovered, and rooted out of this operation.   In the meantime, for the rest of this exciting political night, I'll be watching CNN.


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Knife in the Back from Robert Reich

I read with deep and special regret that former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich decided to endorse Bernie Sanders in his run for President.  Not because I don't think Bernie is many regards a very admirable candidate - I do.   And not because I support Hillary Clinton because I think she is the preferable candidate - which I also do, as I explain here.  But because of the circumstances through which Robert Reich became a public figure whose views were worth noting, and the loyalties that I think such circumstances should engender.

Reich, after all, was appointed Secretary of Labor by Bill Clinton.   Prior to that, Reich was a professor at Harvard - but when was the last time you saw a professor's choice for President noted in places like Politico and The Hill?   Reich's relevance to this or any election derives from a position which Bill Clinton bestowed upon him.

Which is not to say that Reich owes Bill, or Hillary, unquestioning loyalty.   Were Hillary to suddenly start espousing ideas similar to Trump's, Cruz's, or Rubio's, I would not blame Reich in the slightest for putting aside his debt of gratitude to Bill Clinton, and supporting Bernie.

But as Bernie and Hillary and Reich himself readily admit, there's nothing like such a significant level of difference between the two Democratic candidates.   And that being the case, I think Robert Reich owes it to Bill Clinton to, if not outrightly endorsing Hillary, at least not endorsing Bernie this primary season.

Because, although I don't think loyalty should count for everything, it should still count for something in this world.  The First Lady of the President who appointed him Secretary of Labor, and therein the position which now makes his opinion count for anything, deserves better now from Robert Reich in her own run for the highest office in the land.

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Colony 1.7: Broussard

A good Colony 1.7 this past week, which focused mostly on Broussard. He's a pivotal, dangerous person in the resistance - always willing to kill an adversary or a collaborator, however high up she or he may be, as Broussard has done already.   He's tasked now by Quayle with killing Katie - but the twist is that, against all odds, he believes in her.

This belief is actually well founded, because Katie does believe in the resistance, heart and soul.  As she tells Broussard, the only people she puts above the resistance are her family, including Will.  And Broussard is apparently willing to accept that, to the pointing of excusing Katie's killing one of Broussard own resistance guys, to save Will.

Quayle isn't willing to accept anything about Katie now, and this sets up a nice complexity in the cental conflict in the series: not just two sides, but sides in which different members have what amount to sharply different views.  Katie and Will ultimately want to the same thing - a world free of the occupation (whatever exactly that is) and collaborators - but go about getting this in different ways.   Katie knows more, and therefore holds more of the cards, than does her husband.  And now we have this tension between Quayle and Broussard.

All of this is simmering backdrop for the urgent matter at hand: the search for Broussard, by Will and the forces of the occupation he commands.   Katie has already shown that, not only will she kill a resistance man to save Will, she will tip off Broussard to save him from Will's forces.  Walking this fine line isn't easy, and adds a continuing dollop of tension to every scene.

It's good to see Tory Kittles, who put in a few good years in Sons of Anarchy, in the important part of Broussard.   As for the series itself, I'd still like to know a lot more about the occupiers, but the story is sufficiently good at this point that I'm willing to wait.

See also Colony 1.1: Aliens with Potential ... 1.2: Compelling ... 1.5: Questions ... 1.6: The Provost


not exactly aliens, but strange enough ...  The Silk Code

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Black Sails 3.6: The Duel

What an excellent Black Sails 3.6 last night - an excellent episode in this excellent season - which features a duel to the death between Flint and Teach.

Of course, neither one can die - Flint because he needs to live long enough to appear in Stevenson's fictional Treasure Island, Teach because he definitely didn't die on that beach according to real history - but like all good docudrama story telling, knowing the ending didn't get in the way of watching a great story.

It's not a surprise that Flint is a good shot, having been trained in the Royal Navy. He grazes Teach, which Flint hopes kills him, but no such luck.   Flint is adept at swordplay, but he's been weakened by his ordeal at sea, and therefore it's also no surprise that Teach bests Flint in their sword fight.  But Vane leaping in to save Flint is a great surprise, and speaks to the loyalty that Vane has to the pirate dream  - the "pirate republic" (I love that phrase) - superior to Vane's loyalty to Flint the man, and even to Teach, whom as Vane later laments, Vane has now betrayed twice.

This piratical answer to the British Empire has always been, for my money, the best part of this story. It also is behind what Scott tells his daughter in another fine scene, back on the escaped-slave island. People who believe in freedom - whether for plunder as pirates, or just to live their lives without toiling for a master you can't leave - have a powerful, noble common cause in this story, whatever the profundity of their other differences.

It's also gratifying to see Rackham and Bonny fighting in their own way to wrest Nassau from Rodgers.   I'm looking forward to seeing how Eleanor manages to do the same in this continuingly compelling, swashbucking story.

See also Black Sails 3.1: Restored ... Black Sails 3.2: Flint vs. Sea ... Black Sails 3.3: Gone Fishin' ... Black Sails 3.4: Mr. Scott's People ... Black Sails 3.5: Alliance

And see also Black Sails 2.1: Good Combo, Back Story, New Blood ... Black Sails 2.2: A Fine Lesson in Captaining ... Black Sails 2.3: "I Angered Charles Vane" ... Black Sails 2.4: "Fire!" ... Black Sails 2.5: Twist! ... Black Sails 2.6: Weighty Alternatives, and the Medium is the Message on the High Seas ...Black Sails 2.7: The Governor's Daughter and the Gold ... Black Sails 2.9: The Unlikely Hero ... Black Sails Season 2 Finale: Satisfying Literate and Vulgar

And see also Black Sails: Literate and Raunchy Piracy ... Black Sails 1.3: John Milton and Marcus Aurelius ... Black Sails 1.4: The Masts of Wall Street ...Black Sails 1.6: Rising Up ... Black Sails 1.7: Fictions and History ... Black Sails 1.8: Money

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pirates of the mind in The Plot to Save Socrates 
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Vikings 4.2: Sacred Texts

The scene of the best action in Vikings moved back to Wessex in Thursday's episode 4.2, with a pitched, desperate battle to save an imprisoned Queen.

Since this is historical drama, we know something of what will happen to some of the major characters. That's the history part.  But the drama part means that some details and perhaps even outcomes could be changed.   In any case, the successful rescue attempt, and the way it happened, with Aethulwulf fighting hand to hand, and the Queen doing the same to save not only herself but her baby, was one of the best blow-by-blow battle scenes we've seen on television in a while.   This miniature chess match come to life was a fine complement to the cinematic battle scenes in Paris last season.

Meanwhile, we also get an excellent little media history lesson in Wessex last night, something in which Vikings, like Michael Hirst's other history tableau, The Tudors, has excelled.  Women were not allowed to work on the sacred texts - the illuminated manuscripts - in those days.   This of course was many centuries before Jane Austen showed women could write with the best of men, and even then women painters were a rarity, so Judith's desire to put her mark, literally, on the illuminated manuscript was tough for the powers-that-were to accommodate, even though Judith was the prince's wife.

She succeeds because Ecbert is interested in pleasing her, in more ways that just as a father-in-law, and this teaches us something profound about the workings of history: progress can ride on all kinds of coat tales.   It's not clear, by the way, that Judith was actually married to Aethulwulf at this time - he looks young enough to still be married to his first wife recorded in history, Osburh - but the bedding of fathers and daughters-in-law, and mothers and stepsons, was clearly part of the culture of the day, with Judith in real history marrying Aethulwulf's son (by Osburh) after his death.

I haven't even talked about the multiple plot lines in Scandinavia - maybe next time, unless something more pressing happens in Paris or Wessex.

See also Vikings 4.1: I'll Still Take Paris

And see also Vikings 3.1. Fighting and Farming ... Vikings 3.2: Leonard Nimoy ...Vikings 3.3: We'll Always Have Paris ... Vikings 3.4: They Call Me the Wanderer ... Vikings 3.5: Massacre ... Vikings 3.6: Athelstan and Floki ...Vikings 3.7: At the Gates ... Vikings 3.8: Battle for Paris ... Vikings 3.9: The Conquered ... Vikings Season 3 Finale: Normandy

And see also Vikings 2.1-2: Upping the Ante of Conquest ... Vikings 2.4: Wise King ... Vikings 2.5: Caught in the Middle ... Vikings 2.6: The Guardians ...Vikings 2.7: Volatile Mix ... Vikings 2.8: Great Post-Apocalyptic Narrative ... Vikings Season 2 Finale: Satisfying, Surprising, Superb

And see also Vikings ... Vikings 1.2: Lindisfarne ... Vikings 1.3: The Priest ... Vikings 1.4:  Twist and Testudo ... Vikings 1.5: Freud and Family ... Vikings 1.7: Religion and Battle ... Vikings 1.8: Sacrifice
... Vikings Season 1 Finale: Below the Ash

 
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Billions 1.6: Pivotal Wendy

A pivotal Billions 1.6 on Showtime Sunday night, featuring Wendy in a crucial, pivotal position.

As I mentioned in my previous review, Wendy is an improbable character - meaning, it's highly unlikely that the wife of the US Attorney going after Axe would be working for Axe in such an important job.  But if you've invested the story with this improbability, you might as well exploit it for all it's worth.

And Sunday's episode of Billions did that beautifully.  Neither Axe nor Rhoades wants to make any kind of deal.  Axe doesn't want to give an inch, and Rhoades wants to throw the book at him.   Of the two, I think it's clear that Rhoades prosecuting Axe is in the more vulnerable position, precisely because his wife Wendy is working for Axe.

Wendy realizes this, and would like Rhoades to recuse himself, which of course he won't.  So, as a second best option, she separately convinces Axe and Rhoades to accept a deal, something less than each of them wanted - a deal which, in the end, Axe grudgingly accepts but Rhoades blows up by tacking on an additional feature that Axe understandably can't abide (and Rhoades knows this).

The earlier scene in the hot tub, in which Wendy talks Axe into accepting the deal, strikes me as having some enduring significance. If someone had taken a picture of that scene, that might suggest to someone who didn't know better than Wendy and Axe were sleeping together.  In fact, though Axe hasn't acted on that implication as yet - that is, he wasn't tried to blackmail Rhoades - I'm wondering whether that card is the reason Axe wanted Wendy to meet him in the pool.

The ending of the episode was excellent, and consistent with the complex chess game we're seeing on screen:  Rhoades officially recuses himself, mainly to get the Feds off his back, but he'll still be pulling strings behind the scenes.

Which I'm looking forward to seeing more of in the weeks ahead.

See also Billions on Showtime: Winning Me Over

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not much money involved here, but lost of wheeling and dealing 
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Colony 1.6: The Provost

A really top-notch Colony this past Thursday - episode 1.6 - in fact the best since the debut of the series, and one which finally begins fleshing out some much needed details.

Proxy Snyder, under Will and Katie's protection as the Resistance is closing in on them, divulges all sorts of information, including the number of colonies on the West Coast, how the territory between the colonies is someplace "you don't want to be," and how he knows nothing else about anything beyond this West Coast.  (This last part may or may not be true.)

Snyder says that he met the alien conquerers, but says nothing else about them, because the conversation is interrupted.   This is something of a cheap narrative trick, but it's still good to know that at least someone has seen the aliens, because that means we have a chance of sooner or later seeing them ourselves (assuming, again, that Snyder isn't lying).

But in some ways my favorite part of this whole interrupted conversation is Snyder's revelation that he was Provost at Stanford University before the aliens arrived.  I just love this.  Often professors are seen as bad guys on television - which annoys me, since I'm a professor, and, as far as I can tell, I'm a good guy - but I can't recall the last time a university administrator was featured, and aptly cast as a bad guy, at least for the most part.  I have no objection at all to that casting.

Meanwhile, it's a great episode for Katie, who kills one of the resisters, to save Will, which makes perfect sense, but now leaves her branded as a double-agent by Quayle (and I've been meaning to say that it's good to see Paul Guilfoyle back on the screen after his many years on CSI).

I'll be watching Colony more enthusiastically than ever from now on.

See also Colony 1.1: Aliens with Potential ... 1.2: Compelling ... 1.5: Questions


not exactly aliens, but strange enough ...  The Silk Code

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Downton Abbey 6.8: Sneak Preview Review

The last episode of the regular final season of Downton Abbey - 6.8 - will be on tonight.  In two weeks we'll have the final episode of the series - shown as the Christmas special in England. Herewith a preview review of 6.8.  It was a brilliant, powerful, heart-wrenching, and deeply satisfying episode. In what follows, I'll talk in generalities, and mention no specific people.  But if you prefer not to get even an inkling of what will be on the screen later tonight, read on no further.


Here are the highlights -

1. There is a very close call with death for one of the characters.

2. A missing character returns at a crucial time.

3. There have been two possible, budding true-love relationships we've seen in the series this season so far.  But the course of true love never did run smooth, especially not on Downton Abbey, and only one of these will lead to marriage in this episode.   The other founders.

That double whammy is at heart of this last episode of the regular season.  Its unfolding brings out some of the best dialogue that we've ever seen in the Crawley household.  These conversations lay bare tensions and antagonisms that have been simmering even seething below the surface throughout the series, and at times will take your breath away.

And I'll be back here week after next, not with a sneak preview review, but a detailed review of the final episode of Downton Abbey after it has aired.

See also other sneak preview reviews for the final season of Downton Abbey: 6.2 ... 6.3 ... 6.4 ... 6.5 ... 6.6 ... 6.7  Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Black Sails 3.5: Alliance

Black Sails 3.5, just on Starz, was predictable but very satisfying to see in the slow coalescence of a grand alliance of pirates and slaves against the British.

When Flint talks to the queen of the slave island (refreshingly even more powerful than her husband) about what could be, and how that could not only result in a free, autonomous Nassau, but maybe begin to unravel the entire British Empire, he was getting at what we know as the American Revolution.   True, we weren't pirates, but we - the 13 colonies - did join together to break free of England, with the result that the British Empire eventually crumbled during the ensuing centuries.

There has been this democratic element in Black Sails from the beginning, this glow of democracy amidst the greed for gold and bounty.   I have no idea to what extent the real pirates of history really plied this revolutionary path, but it's fun to see in this historical drama.

Meanwhile, it's also good to see Eleanor come close to sleeping with a receptive Rogers, which didn't happen only because the Spanish spy bursts in with a true confession.   Again, not paying attention to actual history, we can speculate on what could now happen between Eleanor and Rogers.   They'd made a formidable couple.

But could they and the English forces at their command, plus Hornigold and the pardoned pirates, withstand an attack from the new alliance of Fint and the slaves, an alliance now in pursuit of Vane and all he could being to the new alliance?  We'll just have to see - including what role Teach ultimately plays and whether Eleanor ultimately stays with Rogers or reverts back to what may well be her deeper love.

See also Black Sails 3.1: Restored ... Black Sails 3.2: Flint vs. Sea ... Black Sails 3.3: Gone Fishin' ... Black Sails 3.4: Mr. Scott's People

And see also Black Sails 2.1: Good Combo, Back Story, New Blood ... Black Sails 2.2: A Fine Lesson in Captaining ... Black Sails 2.3: "I Angered Charles Vane" ... Black Sails 2.4: "Fire!" ... Black Sails 2.5: Twist! ... Black Sails 2.6: Weighty Alternatives, and the Medium is the Message on the High Seas ...Black Sails 2.7: The Governor's Daughter and the Gold ... Black Sails 2.9: The Unlikely Hero ... Black Sails Season 2 Finale: Satisfying Literate and Vulgar

And see also Black Sails: Literate and Raunchy Piracy ... Black Sails 1.3: John Milton and Marcus Aurelius ... Black Sails 1.4: The Masts of Wall Street ...Black Sails 1.6: Rising Up ... Black Sails 1.7: Fictions and History ... Black Sails 1.8: Money

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pirates of the mind in The Plot to Save Socrates 
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Vikings 4.1: I'll Still Take Paris

Hey, Vikings was back for its fourth season on the History Channel this Thursday with a colorful, bloody, and rollicking episode.

There are now three theaters of action in this story:  Scandinavia, England with Ecbert, and Paris with Rollo.   Paris is still my favorite.   Rollo's marriage to the French princess is good for everyone, on both sides of the television screen.   Most important, it jump starts Rollo ahead of his brother Ragnar, in terms of being able to draw in the power of established civilization.  Our Vikings were always outsiders in England.   Rollo's on the inside in Paris, and his slaughter of his brethen who don't like this makes perfect sense from Rollo's perspective, heartless as it may be.

Back in Scandinavia, Aslaugh's thinly hidden regret at Ragnar's survival makes sense, too.   But it's not clear how long Ragnar, who clearly is picking this up, will allow it to continue.   Ragnar's survival as unquestioned leader of his people has always been at the heart of his decisions, and he won't tolerate even the hint of disloyalty from Aslaugh for long.

Floki chained to the post is another matter.   Ragnar is right to be angry at Bjorn for doing this, not only because Ragnar does not want Bjorn to prove himself a powerful leader at Ragnar's expense, but because Ragnar does not want to kill Floki, however much a part of him may want Floki permanently out of his hair and hate Floki for killing Athelstan.  But a part of Ragnar is still forever tied to Floki, aware that his prowess and vision as a shipbuilder enabled Ragnar to get going in the first place. My prediction: Ragnar will find a way, some pretext for sparing Floki.

The scenery in all places is verdant and breathtaking, as always in this wonderful series.   It's become one of my all-time favorite historical dramas on television, right up there with Rome and The Tudors. The Vikings are still at just the beginning of their journeys - America hasn't been discovered as yet - and I'm looking forward to voyages and battles on all levels ahead.

See also Vikings 3.1. Fighting and Farming ... Vikings 3.2: Leonard Nimoy ...Vikings 3.3: We'll Always Have Paris ... Vikings 3.4: They Call Me the Wanderer ... Vikings 3.5: Massacre ... Vikings 3.6: Athelstan and Floki ...Vikings 3.7: At the Gates ... Vikings 3.8: Battle for Paris ... Vikings 3.9: The Conquered ... Vikings Season 3 Finale: Normandy

And see also Vikings 2.1-2: Upping the Ante of Conquest ... Vikings 2.4: Wise King ... Vikings 2.5: Caught in the Middle ... Vikings 2.6: The Guardians ...Vikings 2.7: Volatile Mix ... Vikings 2.8: Great Post-Apocalyptic Narrative ... Vikings Season 2 Finale: Satisfying, Surprising, Superb

And see also Vikings ... Vikings 1.2: Lindisfarne ... Vikings 1.3: The Priest ... Vikings 1.4:  Twist and Testudo ... Vikings 1.5: Freud and Family ... Vikings 1.7: Religion and Battle ... Vikings 1.8: Sacrifice
... Vikings Season 1 Finale: Below the Ash

 
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