Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 290

The Search for Potential Terrorists in Brussels

Updated on November 23 at 3:43 p.m. ET

Belgian police have arrested and charged a man in connection with the deadly attacks in Paris, the country’s federal prosecutor said Monday.

The man, whose identity was not released, was one of five people arrested in raids on Sunday, the BBC reported. Belgian security forces detained at least 21 people in Brussels and elsewhere in the last 24 hours in a search for suspected extremists that government officials fear could launch a Paris-style attack on the capital city.

Two of the five arrested have been released, officials said, as well as 15 others who were detained and questioned.

Police officers and soldiers conducted 19 raids late Sunday and early Monday in the Brussels region and three in the southern city of Charleroi, according to the Associated Press. Police are searching for suspects with links to the attacks in Paris, which killed 130 people at a concert hall, outside a stadium during a soccer match, and in the streets, where people dined outside cafes and restaurants.

No explosives or guns were found in the raids, officials said. Brussels native Salah Abdeslam, 26, believed to be the only known survivor from the terrorist team that attacked the French capital, was not among those detained. Abdeslam, whose brother blew himself up outside the Stade de France, was last seen crossing into Belgium hours after the attacks.

French police said Monday that a street cleaner has found an explosive belt without a detonator in a pile of rubble in the southern Paris suburb of Montrouge, the Associated Press reported. That location is where Abdeslam’s cellphone was used on the day of the attacks, officials said.

Brussels has been at Belgium’s highest terror-alert level, which indicates that a threat is “imminent,” since Saturday.

“We fear an attack similar to the one in Paris,” Prime Minister Charles Michel said Sunday at a press conference, according to The New York Times. “A number of individuals could launch an attack on several locations in Brussels simultaneously.”

Michel said the decision to place Brussels on high alert was made after officials reviewed intelligence reports, but has not elaborated on the information.

This weekend, camouflage-clad, heavily armed soldiers patrolled the streets of Brussels, home to the European Union’s main institutions. Belgian authorities shut down the city’s metro on Saturday. All schools and some businesses were closed Monday. Belgium has warned citizens to stay away from shopping areas, train stations, and other public spaces, and the U.S. Embassy in Brussels has urged U.S. citizens there to stay at home.

“There’s no point in hiding it; there is a real threat,” Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon told Belgian broadcaster VRT on Sunday, according to the Times.

The rest of Belgium remains at an alert level of 3, which means a threat is “possible and likely.”

Most of the Paris attackers died in the assault. In the days after, French police carried out dozens of operations in search of additional suspects. The alleged organizer of the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27, was killed when police stormed an apartment in the Paris suburb of St. Denis last week. Abaaoud, a Belgian citizen, had previously traveled to Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State. The terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

On Sunday, French police released a photo on Twitter of one of the three suicide bombers who detonated his vest outside the stadium and asked the public for help in identifying him. Officials have identified one of the suicide bombers as Ahmad Al Mohammad, 25. A Syrian passport was found near Al Mohammad’s body and his fingerprints were matched to those of someone who entered Europe through Greece last month. But Serbian police arrested a man with the same documents days after the attacks. The discovery illustrates the growing black market in fake Syrian passports, spawned by the Syrian civil war and the resulting refugee crisis.

Jambon said Sunday that Brussels’s threat alert is “unfortunately not” limited to Abdeslam, according to Reuters.

“It is a threat that goes beyond just that one person,” he said.“We’re looking at more things, that’s why we’ve put in place such a concentration of resources."

Security forces are focusing on the Belgian district of Molenbeek, a densely populated neighborhood that has become famous for being the home of several terrorist plotters.

“I notice that each time there is a link with Molenbeek,” Michel said shortly after the attacks, when officials determined several of the assailants were from Brussels.

Beyond Star Wars: A Winter-Movie Preview

Each winter brings with it an odd mix of tentpole films, Oscar leftovers, and cheap horror flicks dumped into the mix. But the upcoming movie season will be particularly strange because of one unavoidable juggernaut: Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which promises to dominate the box office for weeks after its December 18 release. But there are still plenty of smaller gems and more dubious genre efforts to enjoy in the coming months as awards season kicks into high gear.

Related Story

No More Superheroes: A Fall Film Preview

December begins with the self-aware horror film Krampus (December 4), from the director Michael Dougherty, whose last effort Trick ’r Treat is a Halloween gem with a small but devoted fandom. The “demon Santa” plot might seem silly, but the cast (Adam Scott, Toni Collette, and David Koechner) screams “cult hit.” That week also features Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq (December 4), an adaptation of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata set in Chicago that’s sure to provoke a range of strong reactions, and Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth (December 4), an old-guys-on-vacation comedy set in the Alps starring Harvey Keitel and Michael Caine (who’s receiving some Oscar buzz for his performance).

The month’s biggest gamble is Ron Howard’s epic whaling adventure In the Heart of the Sea (December 11), which sells itself as the true story that inspired Moby Dick and which stars Chris Hemsworth. Oceanic dramas are costly to produce but hardly big box-office draws (the film was originally supposed to come out last March), but there’s hope: Howard and Hemsworth’s last collaboration (Rush) marked a high point for both. A safer bet on the true-story front is Adam McKay’s The Big Short (December 11), a satirical, biting work about the men who predicted and profited off of the 2008 financial crisis. The film is also drawing significant awards buzz, particularly for its all-star cast (including Brad Pitt, Steve Carell, Christian Bale, and Ryan Gosling).

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Lucasfilm / Disney)

After that comes Star Wars: The Force Awakens (December 18), a release that’s prompting anticipation and fear in Hollywood. With ticket sales hitting a 20-year low in 2014 and theaters facing increased competition from home entertainment, the movie should provide welcome relief for the industry (even if most films are trying to give it a wide berth). Yes, there’s some counter-programming coming out the same week, including the Tina Fey/Amy Poehler comedy Sisters (December 18), which reverses the odd-couple personas the actresses took on in Baby Mama. But in terms of sales, The Force Awakens should dominate the box office for the rest of the season, and perhaps even merit awards consideration.

Christmas marks the last gasp for Oscar contenders looking to muscle in before the year is out. The NFL drama Concussion (December 25), stars Will Smith as Bennet Omalu, the Nigerian pathologist who uncovered the brain-injury risks football players face. Joy (December 25) sees David O. Russell reunite with Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, and Bradley Cooper (among others) to tell the story of Joy Mangano, the woman who invented the Miracle Mop. Also in the final rush is Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (December 25), a post-Civil War Western; Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s The Revenant (December 25), a tale of survival on the frontier that’s being touted as the film that will finally get Leonardo DiCaprio his Oscar; and Anomalisa (December 28), a stop-motion animated comedy/drama from Charlie Kaufman that promises to be suitably weird and melancholy.

After that, though, things get dire. Awards campaigns typically ramp up, and theaters start devoting most of their screens to forgettable dreck, a decades-long Hollywood tradition. Take 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (January 15), a retelling of the 2012 tragedy at the American embassy in Libya, directed by … Michael Bay. The pitchforks are already out for this one, which looks like Black Hawk Down on steroids. The 5th Wave (January 15) is the latest effort to fire up a young-adult franchise, a sci-fi thriller starring Chloe Grace Moretz, based on a bestselling novel by Rick Yancey that supposedly “does for aliens what Twilight did for vampires.” Judging by the film’s trailer, that’s a stretch.

Things get even worse with Dirty Grandpa (January 22), a comedy starring Robert De Niro and Zac Efron about, well, a dirty grandpa. The film’s poster, a parody of The Graduate, features De Niro pulling a sock over his outstretched leg. Enough said. Also in the dumb-comedy realm is Fifty Shades of Black (January 29), a Marlon Wayans parody of Fifty Shades of Grey. January wraps with the staid but worthy tale of a famous 1952 Coast Guard rescue in The Finest Hours (January 29), starring Chris Pine and Eric Bana. The film will be the latest from the director Craig Gillespie, who made the wonderfully weird Lars and the Real Girl and the clever 2011 remake of Fright Night.

Hail, Caesar (Universal Pictures)

Things get a little better in February, though there’s a requisite Nicholas Sparks adaptation—The Choice (February 5), starring Teresa Palmer and Benjamin Walker—looking poised to suck up Valentine’s Day’s box-office dollars. But there’s also the Coen Brothers going full-on funny with Hail, Caesar! (February 5), a Golden Age of Hollywood satire starring every actor the duo has ever worked with in the past (such as George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, and Scarlett Johansson). It’s hard to know what to make of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (February 5), the Burr Steers adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s “re-imagined” Jane Austen novel, but it’s a wisely positioned bit of February counter-programming amid the lighter romantic fare.

As sales for Star Wars die down, Deadpool (February 12) will sweep in to take its place, though the Ryan Reynolds-starring action drama (which takes place in the X-Men universe) is aiming for hard R, ultra-violent territory. There’s also How to Be Single (February 12), a charming-looking, female-centric rom-com starring Dakota Johnson, Alison Brie, Rebel Wilson, and Leslie Mann, based on Liz Tuccillo’s hit book. Both should struggle against Zoolander 2 (February 12), though, a long-overdue sequel that features an eyebrow-less Benedict Cumberbatch.

There’s next-to-no relief from big-budget spectacle in the schedule anymore, but Race (February 19) is more of a mid-sized hit, a Jesse Owens biopic starring Stephan James (who played John Lewis in Selma). On the grander side is Gods of Egypt (February 26), an absurd-looking dramatization of the Egyptian gods that’s already coming under fire for its mostly white cast. But the movie to watch should be The Witch (February 26), a horror film that was a smash hit at Sundance and should prove a cult sensation next year as a creepy tale of Satanic possession in Puritan times. It’ll hopefully be a nice reminder that, in the age of big-budget superheroes and CGI-laden insanity, there are still under-the-radar hits to look out for.

Donald Trump's Fact-Free Weekend

Over the last few days, Donald Trump has made the following statements:

He twice claimed—despite no evidence that it happened—that “thousands” of Muslims in northern New Jersey were cheering as the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001; He gave support to people who beat up a Black Lives Matter protester at one of his rallies, calling the activist “disgusting” and saying “maybe he deserved to get roughed up.” He tweeted statistics that vastly overstate the percentage of homicides committed by blacks.

In other words, it was a fairly typical weekend for the Republican presidential frontrunner.

Presidential prognosticators are long past the point of declaring that any particular outlandish policy endorsement or unsubstantiated claim would be the one that would doom Trump's seemingly far-fetched 2016 candidacy. The billionaire’s staying power has made fools of plenty of those pundits, and the latest polls suggest that Trump’s success has come not in spite of his famously loose lips, but because of them.

CBS News on Sunday released surveys of Republicans in the two early voting states, Iowa and New Hampshire. Both found Trump with commanding leads and maintaining the support of just under a third of the GOP primary electorate. In Iowa, he held steady while Ben Carson fell to third place behind Ted Cruz, while in New Hampshire Trump’s percentage was more than double that of his nearest rival. Yet the most interesting finding came when the pollsters asked Trump’s supporters (as well as Carson’s) what their “favorite thing” about the candidate was. In both states, the clear winner was, “He says things others are afraid to say.” Hardly any respondents said they were most drawn to Trump’s “personal success story”—which is more or less the stated rationale for his candidacy. Nor did many people cite his “outlook for America,” which despite his ubiquitous slogan is generally pretty grim. About one-quarter of Trump supporters in each state pointed to a more general but related reason: “He’s not a typical politician.”

Trump has always been well aware of this key source of his appeal. He’s been railing about the scourge of “political correctness” for months, and he’s accurately observed that a sizable segment of the population is tired of it. The truth has never mattered much to him—recall that his transition to national politics was itself built on the lie that President Obama was born outside the United States.

Trump’s sustained support is less surprising in light of other polls showing how disconnected many voters, of all political persuasions, are from basic facts. Trump may get his facts wrong, but often, he’s saying things that much of his party believes to be true. Many conservative voters bought into myths about Obama’s identity for years, while a Bloomberg poll released earlier this month found that a majority of Republicans—53 percent—believed the unemployment rate has risen during the Obama presidency. In fact, it has fallen for nearly all of his tenure.

On Sunday, ABC’s George Stephanopolous confronted Trump about his assertion that “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in Jersey City were cheering the 9/11 attacks. The exchange, like Trump’s claim, was typical. “The police say it didn’t happen,” Stephanopoulos said. “It did happen. I saw it,” Trump replied. He probably won’t admit he was wrong, but the tell will be whether he continues to make the claim in his speeches.

In another Sunday interview, Trump defended attendees at his rally in Alabama who punched and kicked a black protester. “Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing,” Trump said on Fox News. “I have a lot of fans, and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy who was a trouble-maker who was looking to make trouble.”

Later in the evening, Trump tweeted a set of stats with the image of a menacing, gun-wielding dark-skinned man. It claimed that the vast majority of both black and white homicide victims are killed by black people. The statistics, according to CNN, were sourced to a government agency that doesn’t exist and come from 2015 data that, in all likelihood, is not available yet. FBI statistics from 2014 indicate that the overwhelming majority of white homicide victims are killed by other whites. The tweet was retweeted by nearly 7,000 accounts and “favorited” by another 9,000. As of midday Monday, it had not been deleted.

Trump has faced little political blowback for his fact-free style of campaigning in part because his Republican rivals seem to have given up on attacking him for it. Despite lagging badly in the polls, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie passed up an opportunity to take Trump to task for his comment about Muslims in his state cheering on 9/11, perhaps because he is also trying to project a hawkish policy on confronting radical Islam. Ben Carson has shown little desire to engage Trump directly on any topic, much less on his racially-insensitive comments or tweets. The media has spent plenty of time fact-checking Trump, but in a battle between The Donald and the mainstream media he relentlessly attacks, who are his diehard supporters going to trust?

Trump may be the anti-politician, but he’s savvy enough to know how to play to his base, and his base loves him because he’ll say what others won’t—even if that’s because it just isn’t true.

‘You Oughta Know’ Unknowns

The top trending topic to emerge from last night’s American Music Awards was, as is typical for awards shows in 2015, Nicki Minaj. She didn’t say anything controversial; she didn’t give a risqué performance; she won a few trophies and accepted them with smiles and shout-outs. But during Jennifer Lopez’s opening medley, Minaj was captured on camera in the audience giving a look that didn’t seem entirely fawning. The Internet then did what the Internet does, immediately collaborating on a work of metafiction entitled—per Vibe’s headline—“The Internet Thinks Nicki Minaj Wasn’t Pleased With J.Lo’s Performance of ‘Anaconda.’” Swiftly, Minaj dismissed the gossip with the word of the year crying emoji on Twitter, saying her face was being taken out of context.

I’d go on about this episode as a classic example of the perils of modern pop fans’ hunger for intra-celebrity beef if I didn’t instead want to wonder aloud whether there’s any beef between Alanis Morissette and Demi Lovato. Their performance of “You Oughta Know” is my pick for most memorable moment of the award show because it was a little odd, inscrutable … off, somehow. The AMAs are, of course, not a place for the odd or inscrutable. Its winners are decided by public vote, its focus is unrepentantly mainstream (no jazz legends as respectability boosters, here), and it gives out awards like “New Artist of the Year Presented by Kohl’s” and “Collaboration of the Year Unleashed by T-Mobile.” It is, more than anything, a place where stars can broadcast the pure, uncut versions of the narratives they are trying to spin about themselves.

With the “You Oughta Know” performance, though, I can’t quite figure out the narrative. On paper, it’s: Young symbol for female musical angst teams up with one of the masters of the same. On screen, it’s more: Young singer who’s attempting to be the next big thing overacts as a pop legend performs her hit of 20 years ago with all the enthusiasm of a DMV visit.

Perhaps it would have been inappropriate for the seething “You Oughta Know” to be illustrated elaborate choreography, or even a backdrop that’s not just the Jagged Little Pill album cover. But it still seems surprising that the only stage directions Morissette and Lovato apparently received were “walk around, mostly ignoring each other.” Lovato nevertheless executed with gusto. Outfitted like Kate Beckinsale in Underworld, she growled and stomped and shimmied and made Cruella de Vil-like hand gestures. Does this fit with her narrative? Yeah. As a former Disney star, the public wants to judge Lovato in relation to peers like Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande; her preferred way to try and stand out is by, well, trying very hard. Singing very hard. Naming her new album Confident. There’s also a hint of alt-rock disaffection in her persona, which might help explain her association with Alanis Morissette now.

Morissette, meanwhile, came off as a bit bored. Whenever the two women actually faced each other, it seemed to be Lovato who was really trying to make eye contact. Seemed is of course the key word here. Awards shows are largely about surface, about projection, and whatever Morissette was projecting in this case was not total happy-to-be-here-ness. It is perhaps screwed up to assume that what she instead projected was reluctance to perform her biggest song with someone who can be accused of swiping Morrisette’s style but not her authentic-seeming edge (“another version of me / does she speak eloquently?”). A better interpretation might be that the “Oughta Know” performance was meant to be a calmly intimidating alliance between two badass women who are too mad to do much else than stride. Another thought: This was a rock show, and despite Coldplay showing up on the same stage with beachballs and people in monkey suits, rock can be at its most powerful when it forgoes spectacle.

After the performance, the Internet again did what the Internet does, which was serve up a lot of headlines that describe the two women as “slaying.” Maybe they really did, or maybe the song’s so good that all it would have slayed no matter what. Everyone involved did sound great. But for me, the ambiguity of the staging, the way it’s not totally clear how the two singers are relating to each other, was what made it compelling. On rewatching, the most remarkable thing might be that the highlights of the song—“go down on you in a theater,” “thinking of me when you fuck her”—were censored into silence, presenting an image and asking viewers to imagine the rest.

How Hemingway's A Moveable Feast Has Become a Bestseller in France

There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it.

                                                                                  —Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

The horrific attacks in Paris earlier this month, which killed 130 people and stirred transcontinental riptides, has also set off a renaissance for Ernest Hemingway’s book, A Moveable Feast.

The Paris memoir, published posthumously in 1964, holds the top spot on Amazon’s French site, has sold out of stock at a number of bookstores and, as Le Figaro reports, has become a fixture among the flowers in memorials across the city.

According to Folio, the French publisher, orders for the book have risen to 500 per day from just 10 to 15 orders before the attacks. “We also received many orders from groups such as Fnac and Amazon, amounting to 8,500 copies,” one Folio executive told The Guardian. “Usually, we sell between 6,000 and 8,000 copies a year.”

“I found it fascinating that Parisians were snapping up the book,” said professor Sandra Spanier, the general editor of the Hemingway Letters Project at Penn State University. She added that the book is enduring evidence of the hold that Paris has on people’s imaginations. “It’s such a place of possibility.”

That’s seemingly always been true. But why a 51-year-old book, written about the Paris of nearly a century ago, appears to resonate among Parisians in the wake of its worst loss of life since World War II is another question.

In his glowing review of A Moveable Feast in The Atlantic in 1964, Alfred Kazin alludes to Hemingway’s depictions of the glories of the city writ large, but also anoints its place as muse for a striving 22-year-old ex-pat finding his way into writing.

But this is Paris in the early twenties, the best place in the world to live and work, for the French have a way of life into which all needs easily fit, as they have cafés where a young fellow can sit for hours over a café crème and write “Up In Michigan.”

Kazin concludes that Paris, as a setting for Hemingway, is one that he “never handled more suavely and lyrically than he did in this book.”

It’s the life of the café culture and Paris as locus for the exchange of ideas that are particularly worth celebrating as the city rebounds from attacks on its restaurants and nightlife. This is what Hemingway observes in A Moveable Feast; it’s not war or bullfighting in Spain or hunting in Africa or swordfishing or boxing, but glamor of the quotidian in the City of Light.

Spanier describes a section in the book where Hemingway walks down the steps near the Île de la Cité to watch fisherman cast their lines into the Seine. Beside all the art and history, beneath the Pont Neuf and a statue of Henri Quatre, is everyday life with expertly caught fish. “They were plump and sweet-fleshed with a finer flavor than fresh sardines even, and were not at all oily, and we ate them bones and all.”

With the tide of tributes from afar this month, Parisians have seen the love of their city reflected again through the eyes of outsiders. “Maybe they appreciate the fact that Paris is appreciated by non-Parisians,” Spanier concludes. “Hemingway certainly expressed that in a way that has transcended time.”

The late Christopher Hitchens probably would have agreed. Writing in The Atlantic back in 2009, Hitchens described the book as both “an ur-text of the American enthrallment with Paris” and “a skeleton key to the American literary fascination with Paris.” Hitchens also praised the book for bestowing advice on writing for young practitioners just starting out. (In a 2013 interview with The Atlantic, Daniel Woodrell vigorously agreed.)

But, given what’s happened in Paris this year, Hitchens’s central point about the endurance of A Moveable Feast is now accompanied by a gut-punch—what Hemingway was celebrating of the city and of himself at a young age are triumphs lost to time.

Most of all, though, I believe that A Moveable Feast serves the purpose of a double nostalgia: our own as we contemplate a Left Bank that has since become a banal tourist enclave in a Paris where the tough and plebeian districts are gone, to be replaced by seething Muslim banlieues all around the periphery; and Hemingway’s at the end of his distraught days, as he saw again the “City of Light” with his remaining life still ahead of him rather than so far behind.

Parisians would likely scoff at that assessment. After all, part of what attaches Hemingway to this moment is the symbolic and defiant heft of the French-language title of A Moveable Feast—Paris Est Une Fête. Translated back into English, A Moveable Feast becomes Paris Is a Celebration. In the days following the attacks, the French title of the book became a trending hashtag on Twitter.

Peace les amis ! #ParisEstUneFete pic.twitter.com/RwsFYka0dp

— siwiL (@siwiLgaming) November 20, 2015

The Leftovers: Cross or Jump

Each week following episodes of season two of The Leftovers, Sophie Gilbert and Spencer Kornhaber will discuss new characters, old visitors, and whether smoking really is the best way to express profound nihilism.

Kornhaber: Glory be, Kevin is risen! No one missed the foreshadowing, right? “Make like Jesus,” a security guard in dreamland/the afterlife told our international assassin before asking whether he’d Neosporin-ed a wound. And so out of the dirt Kevin came, in the presence of Michael, a devout Christian who may now testify that miracles really do happen in Miracle. Perhaps soon Kevin will be made to pick up the formerly Holy Tommy’s halo. Perhaps he will inadvertently start a religious movement like the one that has drawn his dad to Australia. Or perhaps John Murphy will just put him back in the ground.

As far as I can tell, the evidence for Kevin’s experiences in this episode merely being a psychotic man’s dying hallucinations are as follows:

It prominently involved a number of people who Kevin has interacted with. They did and said things that the subconsciousness of the Kevin Garvey we’ve come to know could have probably come up with. No info was discussed that he wouldn’t have been aware of prior to poisoning himself. (Remember, Laurie confided in Kevin about Patti’s past.) It felt like a dream in that it took the recognizable world, stirred in some nonsense—killer flower deliverers, fire alarms, talking Guilty Remnant members—and remixed it all.  

The evidence for Kevin’s experience in this episode actually being an encounter with a supernatural world—maybe purgatory—are as follows:

The trapped hotel bird looked like one of the ones that Erika buries in the same dirt as Kevin. When Kevin asked Virgil what he was doing there, Virgil gave an answer that perfectly jibes with the fact that he shot himself. Once Kevin completed his quest, he rose from the dead.

Of course, both answers might be reconcilable. One thing of note is that none of the characters we know to have Departed appeared in the hotel; everyone was legitimately dead or presumed dead or in a vegetative state or going on vision quests in Australia. And in no dream I’ve ever had did the internal logic remain as consistent, unchanging, as it did here (think: the rules about drinking the water, or the plan for killing Patti). One prediction about how the show might settle the matter, in the unlikely event that it ever chooses to do so: Show a photo of Neil in real life. If Patti’s ex looks like he looked in this episode, Kevin might actually have seen his ghost and we can move forward with some confidence that there’s magic in the world of The Leftovers. If he doesn’t look the same, then Kevin imagined him.

The most remarkable thing about this surreal hour may have been what fantastic TV it was. Dream sequences get a bad rap as tedious and indulgent, but I found myself totally engrossed in the ridiculousness that unfolded. There was real suspense about the question of whether Kevin would shoot the woman identified as Senator Levin, about whether the noose-holding man on the bridge would let him pass, and about what would go down in the final encounter in the well. And I found myself moved by Kevin’s confusion and desperation, and by the Jeopardy!-related pathos of Patti. He had to forgive her and recognize her humanity to find peace: another point for Kevin’s Christlikeness. Then he drowned her: a point against it.

The idea of Patti as a politician selling nihilism as a national policy is hilarious but also disturbing, particularly in a week when we’ve seen real-life presidential candidates come very close to campaigning against the very notion of human compassion. But Kevin’s description of her agenda—that she wants to destroy families—probably says more about himself than about her. It’s been hinted before that the deepest, darkest secret Kevin harbors is that he hated his old life with Laurie and that he doesn’t truly want to find contentment with Nora. That Kevin said he smokes to remember, just like the GR, is yet more evidence for Patti’s assertion that he’s more like her than he’d want to believe.

Sophie, you previously noted how the cavewoman vignette that opened this season was soundtracked by Verdi. Same went for this episode—but this time, the taunting, comical orchestration was from Nabucco, an opera about the Biblical tale of the Jews’ oppression by Babylon. Yet more religious imagery of ambiguous import. Your turn to play prophet. What, exactly, did we just watch?

Gilbert: Michael’s response, “Holy shit,” seems fair (also apt, given that Kevin just crawled out of earth that apparently has miraculous properties). Like you, I was rapt during this episode, although I think I’m more veering toward the conclusion that it was some kind of purgatorial experience rather than a hallucination (not that it couldn’t be both, of course). For one thing, the location. If Kevin were fantasizing a life-after-death experience, I just don’t buy him as the kind of guy to make it happen in a soulless (pun intended), high-end hotel. For another, there were people there who Kevin had nothing to do with—the weeping priest in the elevator, the nurse speaking in a foreign language in the parking garage, the hooded prisoner in the cop’s uniform. The episode was told very much from Kevin’s perspective, but I got the feeling it wasn’t just his experience.

But what an experience it was! It was, in many ways, the prototypical hero’s journey. Here’s Joseph Campbell’s monomyth theory:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

Only time will tell what boons Kevin has to bestow, if any (with John Murphy on his case, he’s going to need them), but wherever he was, he decisively confronted not only Patti, but also his own existential crisis following the Departure. There we were, thinking Kevin was sneaking cigs like a normal married father-of-two, and all the while he was participating in a minor act of nihilistic protest, using cigarettes to remember that “the world ended.”

It would take a year to unpick all the symbolism in the episode—Gladys using glass cleaner on Kevin’s eyes, the bird in the lobby, the fire alarms, the Epictetus quote in the wardrobe (“First know who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly”). Epictetus’s philosophy was kind of a first-century version of the serenity prayer: Manage the things you have power over wisely, but have the serenity to accept that fate is external and cannot be controlled. Good advice for the post-Departure world, but not so much for Kevin wrestling his demons in some kind of celestial Westin. Essentially, when Kevin picked out his outfit, he was choosing his own adventure, adopting the persona of Jason Bourne over cop or holy man. Why? No idea.

But as much as this was Kevin’s hero’s journey, it was also Patti’s origin story. For the past two seasons Patti’s been a fearless, sassy provocateur and a thorn in Kevin’s side, significantly more so after her death, when she appeared to become a manifestation of his conscience and his doubts. But in the flashback episode from season one, we saw Patti before the Departure, a shadow of herself, riddled with insecurity and anxiety that something terrible was about to happen. Now, having met Patti’s worm of a husband and her much younger self, it seems that she was abused all her life in one way or another: thrown down stairs, told she was fat, stupid, that she talked too much. The Guilty Remnant’s enforced silence apparently comes from Patti’s experience on Jeopardy!, when her fellow contestant impressed her in the green room by refusing to talk to her before the taping, showing her the power of not saying a single word.

Essentially, when Kevin picked out his outfit, he was choosing his own adventure, adopting the persona of Jason Bourne over cop or holy man.

For someone who’s had such terrible relationships with others her whole life, it makes sense that the post-Departure world would seem like an opportunity rather than a loss. Not being able to love others, Patti told Kevin, is “no longer a difficulty. It’s a strength. It is a survival mechanism. Because on October 14, attachment and love became extinct. In an instant, it became cosmically, abundantly clear that you can lose anyone at any time … Our cave collapsed.”

There it was, the link back to the wacky prehistoric first 10 minutes of season two, when the cave did indeed collapse, and the new mother finally succumbed to a snake bite right in the same spot where Kevin pushed little Patti into the well. That well, according to legend, is a conduit between the living and the spirit world, where people can throw in whatever they want to unburden themselves of. At this point, I have no clue whether Patti’s spirit was actually haunting Kevin or whether she was just the embodiment of all his doubts (one other way to check would be to figure out whether Patti really did win $63,500 on Jeopardy!, since that’s a hella weird conversation to dream up for someone in their dying throes). Regardless, he’s now unburdened. What happens next?

There’s so much more to think about: Kevin senior’s deux ex television moment and his admission that he was tripping on “God’s tongue,” the mysterious South African man who gave Kevin the choice to jump rather than “cross over” the bridge to Jarden, the water, Mary. Is Mary dead now? Or is her body stuck in the mortal world while her mind waits in purgatory? Either way, Kevin’s alive in Jarden, proving the mystical qualities of the earth there don’t just revive Erika’s birds. And Virgil, his guide (just as Virgil was Dante’s guide through hell and purgatory in The Divine Comedy), seems not to be coming back, giving Kevin one more thing he’s going to have trouble explaining to the Murphys.

The Walking Dead: All Falls Down

Every week for the sixth season of AMC’s post-apocalyptic drama The Walking Dead, Lenika Cruz and David Sims will discuss the latest threat—human, zombie, or otherwise—to the show’s increasingly hardened band of survivors.

Cruz: I’m inclined to call “Heads Up” one of the best episodes of The Walking Dead’s sixth season so far. But I can’t tell if that’s because it’s actually good or because, after weeks of digression and split storylines, it’s a relief to see everything coming back together again. Sunday’s episode had an air of inevitability that few episodes this season have claimed: Glenn, as predicted, is alive—caked in blood, dehydrated, and traumatized, but alive (ugh, AMC). Enid reappeared. Ron is indeed planning to use Rick’s firearm lessons for evil ends. Morgan was made to account for the destructive consequences of his “all life is precious” philosophy. And, lastly: The walls of Alexandria could not hold.

Though none of these developments came as a real surprise, I appreciated the tighter plotting and that we were finally getting a clearer picture of the show’s endgame for the winter finale. This half-season has suffered from serious miscalculations (the entire Glenn debacle, the decision to stretch out a few days into eight episodes) as well as issues the show has always struggled with (the hackneyed speeches about “the way things are now,” a difficulty balancing multiple character arcs, momentum problems). Much of the time, it didn’t feel like the Walking Dead writers and producers knew exactly what they were doing. More importantly, it didn’t feel like they could convince viewers that they knew what they were doing—a strange problem for a show to have six seasons in.

But “Heads Up” was an exception. It felt confident and well-paced, and it didn’t waste our time (aside from the massive waste of time that was, you know, the entire Glenn debacle). The episode also offered some nice thematic consistency that related back to the title: Enid tossing the water bottle to Glenn from the roof, Spencer’s idiotic and nearly deadly high-wire act, Sam questioning Carol about “monsters” from the second floor, Glenn and Enid sending the balloons up as a signal, and finally, the Alexandria tower crashing through the heretofore indestructible fence. The episode had some sassy moments, too, like Tara flipping off Rick, or Rosita yelling at Eugene, or Carl going next-level patronizing on Ron, or Glenn saying to Enid, “You point a gun at me, and I’m the asshole?” All of which distracted me from the messier bits.

Glenn’s triumphant escape in the first few minutes of the episode would have hit harder were it not for the fact that it was still stupidly improbable, and that the Internet had predicted that exact improbable scenario weeks ago. Because I was tired of getting worked up about Glenngate every week to the point of wanting to quit the show altogether (and David, I know you were tired of hearing me whine about it), I tried to push from my mind the laziness of the show not explaining what magically drew the walkers away. Still, Glenn and Enid made for a decent pairing—him the tortured husband, her the tortured teen. (When Enid told Glenn “I don’t need a lecture,” and he snapped, “Yeah, I think you do,” I couldn’t help but feel like that was an exchange between the audience, which hears lectures every week, and the show, which loves to deliver them.)

“Heads Up” was confident, well-paced, and it didn’t waste our time.

The Alexandria storyline was a major improvement on the dreadful “Now” of a couple weeks ago, partly because it moved away from the conventional one-on-ones. The necessary conversation between Rick and Morgan took place with Michonne and Carol. The chat between Carol and Sam took place with ... Judith there, I guess. Michonne was there to witness and comment on Rick’s brief talk with Deanna. A bunch of Alexandrians stood awkwardly and silently in the background as Rosita upbraided Eugene. And the shooting lesson worked well because Carl, Rick, and Ron were all there. It’s astonishing how much more interesting the dynamic can become when you add just one more person to the mix. There’s more subtext to pay attention to, and the philosophical and personal differences between each character become that much more obvious. And it makes the group feel more like a real, cohesive whole.

Some of my biggest questions going into the finale: If not Glenn, who was that calling for help on the walkie-talkie at the end of “Always Accountable”? How will Sam disastrously misinterpret Carol’s speech? (“The only thing that keeps you from being a monster is killing.”) Will Ron successfully shoot Carl, or will he use those bullets he stole to help defend the town? Will Daryl, Abraham, and Sasha make it back in time to help the others? Will Morgan’s decision to protect the Wolf come back to, well, bite him? Will anyone (who we like) die? Will any new characters appear? I’m up for all of it. Bring the chaos.

David, a few questions for you. How did everyone at Alexandria neglect to notice that a crucial chunk of their fortress was structurally devastated? What did you make of Glenn and Enid’s fortuitous meet-up? Is baby Judith really starting to look like her mom? Did you feel bad for Father Gabriel when Rick took down his “Prayer Circle at the Solar Panels” signs? Because I kind of did.

Sims: I’ll admit to being extremely confused by that ending, even though the image of the tower toppling was very cool. How did the townspeople not know that structure was on the brink of collapse? The Alexandria situation is supposed to be chaotic, I guess—they lost so many people, and have so many problems to triangulate, so stuff might slip through the cracks. But after weeks of frustration with Rick’s boneheaded leadership, I found myself sympathizing with him this week just because the Alexandrians are so infuriating. What the hell was Spencer doing? How are they not keeping a closer eye on Ron? At what point should the crew just give up and leave these losers to get eaten? Right now, the biggest compliment I can give anyone from Alexandria is that Nicholas did a very good job getting eaten so that Glenn could stay alive.

To be clear—despite my disdain for the characters, I thought this was a very strong episode that linked back to earlier plotlines quite nicely. As you noted, “Heads Up” began the work of getting the gang back together before they face whatever major threat is lurking in the distance. I was happy to see Enid again—I loved her little mini-movie in “JSS,” and she always felt like a better protege for Glenn than the moronic Nicholas anyway (their brief bits of banter in this episode were a highlight). She has all the survival skills the Alexandrians lack, but without a real understanding of how to live in a community and embrace other people. Glenn, I think, is the perfect teacher to bridge that gap.

At what point should Rick and his crew just give up and leave these Alexandria losers to get eaten?

It’s great to see Glenn back too, although I have to agree with a lot of your complaints about how the show has handled all this. I don’t want Scott Gimple and his writers to have to keep the Internet in mind every time they plot out a season arc. Gimple and co. can do what they want with the story, in my opinion, as long as they think it’s the creatively vital choice. But I’m not totally sure why Glenn had to be fake-dead (with his name removed from the credits and all!) for a bunch of episodes only to return exactly as the fans predicted. Because of that, the suspense was muted, there wasn’t any emotional impact on the characters (they never fully believed he was dead), so it was mostly just a trick played on the viewing audience—who only briefly fell for it.

Oh well. At the very least, having Glenn back in the mix helps outweigh the silliness of his “death.” (I’ll be interested to see if most viewers feel the same, or if the twist is one step too far.) But once the show paired him with Enid on his way back to Alexandria, his importance to this ensemble was reaffirmed. Who knows what horrors might await him in the future, but at least his death wasn’t at the hands of the incompetent Nicholas.

I appreciated your comparisons to “Now,” Lenika, because this week felt like the decompression episode the season needed—the gang back in Alexandria, picking up the pieces, and engaging in some good philosophical debates about what to do with the Wolves. Both Carol and Morgan had reasonable arguments over whether it made sense to kill the invaders, and Rick’s dispute with Tara felt similarly balanced. Of course life, in some form, has to matter to this group. But the morality of survivalism is so complicated that it makes sense to debate the conditions under which to kill, even at this point in the show.

The reason this conversation is playing out should become clear as new threats present themselves next week. Now that the whole gang is finally back together, and their walls are crumbling, I’m excited to see how they react. The first half of this season was about one particular crisis—what to do with the quarry zombies—but in dealing with it, the group started asking more abstract questions about the future of their community. The second half should start answering them.

The Latest in the Mali Hotel Attack

Mali will begin three days of national mourning on Sunday at midnight local time following a shooting attack at a hotel in the capital of Bamako that left at least 19 people dead.

Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita announced the mourning period on Saturday, a day after gunmen stormed the Radisson Blu hotel, which is popular with travelers and tourists, and opened fire. The victims include six Russians, three Chinese, two Belgians, one American, one Israeli, one Senegalese, and several Malians.

“Mali will not shut down because of this attack,” Keita said. “Paris and New York were not shut down and Mali won't be. Terrorism will not win.”

Neighboring Guinea joined Mali in its mourning on Sunday. President Alpha Conde said his country will also observe three days of mourning, and urged citizens to be vigilant about reporting suspicious activity to police.  

Mali has declared a 10-day state of emergency while police search for suspects in connection to the attack. Malian Army Major Modibo Nama Traore told the AP Sunday that security forces are looking for “more than three” people connected to the attacks. News outlets reported that two attackers were killed when special forces stormed the hotel to rescue trapped patrons.

Traore said that the assailants used Kalashnikov assault rifles in the attack.

“We didn't see the jihadists until they started firing on us,” a hotel guard told the AP. “We weren't concentrating and we didn't expect it.” Inside the hotel, the assailants fired “at anything that moved,” according to one employee, who spoke with CNN.

French President Francois Hollande condemned the shooting Friday, calling the assailants “terrorists.” France currently has about 1,000 troops stationed in Mali, a former colony, as part of a counterterrorism effort.

President Obama said on Saturday that the attack “only stiffens our resolve to meet this challenge.” Meanwhile Russian President Vladimir Putin urged global cooperation in the fight against terrorism, and Chinese President Xi Jinping called for an increased focus on security “outside China's borders.”

The Vatican said Sunday that Pope Francis, who is scheduled to travel to Kenya, Uganda, and the Central African Republic later this week, “is appalled by this senseless violence.”

Two groups—Al-Mourabitoun, which has ties to al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb—have taken responsibility for the attack, but their claims have not been verified.

Many of the specifics surrounding the attackers, including the number involved and their identities, remain unclear.

A coalition of separatist groups in the north of Mali has claimed that the shooting attack was an attempt to thwart an ongoing peace process between the groups and the Malian government. The Coordination of Azawad Movements signed a peace agreement with the Malian government in June after almost one year of talks in Algeria.

“The jihadis are in different groups but their goal is the same, and that's to hinder implementation of the peace accord,” said Sidi Brahim Ould Sidati, a representative of the coalition.

The AP and CNN reported that the Radisson hotel was scheduled to host the latest meeting between both sides.

Brussels on Lockdown

The city of Brussels and its suburbs remain on high alert as police searched for suspects in the Paris terrorist attacks.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said Sunday that the area would stay at the highest terror alert level—level 4, which means a terrorist threat is “imminent and close by”—for now, according to Belgium’s national Crisis Center. Schools and universities in the Brussels region will be closed on Monday.

Belgian authorities issued the alert on Sunday. They dispatched heavily armed soldiers to patrol the region and advised citizens to stay away from shops, train stations, airports, and other public spaces. They also closed the Brussels metro, which will not reopen Monday. The Brussels region has a population of about 1 million.

The rest of Belgium will remain at a threat level of 3 (“possible and likely”). Officials had raised the countrywide alert from level 2 to level 3 several days after terrorists killed 130 people at a concert hall, outside a stadium, and in busy streets in the French capital on November 13.

Belgian and French police have carried out dozens of raids in Brussels, Paris, and elsewhere in search of suspects in the deadly siege, the worst violence on French soil since World War II. They are looking for Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old Brussels resident who was last seen headed for the Belgian border hours after the siege in Paris. The suspected organizer of the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian citizen, was killed during a French police raid Wednesday in the Paris suburb of St. Denis. Seven assailants died in the Paris attacks, including Abdeslam’s brother, Brahim, who detonated his suicide belt outside of a cafe.

The threat alert is “unfortunately not” limited to Abdeslam, said Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon on Sunday.

“It is a threat that goes beyond just that one person,” Jambon told Belgian broadcaster VRT, according to Reuters. “We’re looking at more things, that's why we've put in place such a concentration of resources."

Reuters reported that Mohamed Abdeslam, the brother of Brahim and Salah, urged Salah in an interview on RTBF television to turn himself in. Mohamed said he believed his brother had a last-minute change of heart in Paris.

Police are focusing on the Belgian district of Molenbeek, a densely populated neighborhood that has become famous for being the home of several terrorist plotters. “I notice that each time there is a link with Molenbeek,” Michel said last weekend, after officials determined several of the attackers were from Brussels. Added Jambon back then: “We don’t have control of the situation in Molenbeek at present.”

Michel said Saturday that the decision to raise the terror alert level for Brussels was taken “based on quite precise information about the risk of an attack like the one that happened in Paris … where several individuals with arms and explosives launch actions, perhaps even in several places at the same time,” according to the Associated Press.

Welcomed to Europe

Every day this year, thousands of refugees make the dangerous journey from their war-torn homelands to Europe. Many arrive without food or money; many are children. And as politicians debate whether or not these migrants can find refuge from persecution, volunteers are working to provide them with basic care. Al Jazeera reports that many of these volunteers are Europeans on vacation, and they fill in the gaps while larger organizations, like the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, mount a more formal response. “It gets to a certain point where you can’t just watch and wait anymore,” Polly Rola, an Austrian who travelled to a remote village of Croatia to help, said to the news service. “We had some time and some money, so here we are.”