Time To Start Writing The Epilogue

I admit to occasionally binging on old series' on Netflix. Since I don't have cable, I don't watch shows when they come out, and now and then I get hooked. Breaking Bad lead to Better Call Saul, because Saul and Mike were my favorite characters from Breaking Bad anyway. And even though I watched the parent show very nearly to the end of its run, I stopped somewhere during the last season.

I did the same with Saul, because well, after a season or two these shows get too protracted to me, too predictable and contrived. As writers dig to maintain the level of interest in a show, the result is all too often bland or, even worse, bizarre. Over-the-top. No longer even trying to hold a shadow of verisimilitude. Boring.

I bring this all up because we've all been watching a reality show of sorts in this administration. Check that; it's just another show, devoid of anything resembling reality. A fabricated fantasy. Originally having something that piqued interest, I suppose, it quickly devolved into a sequence of calculated scenes designed to leave most of our mouths agape, our heads shaking. And our constitutions destabilized.

We've been fighting with one another--sometimes violently--over words, fighting words laced with racism and regularly devoid of truth. The antagonist in our drama has played his part dutifully, ad-libbing and heartless as the meanest, coldest villains from cinema and t.v. Just when you think he can't get any darker, there he goes.

And just when you think he is going to take us all into the depths of the worst part of humanity, a light shines. As if on cue, another character--a former associate--finds a pathway to redemption. Another is adjudicated guilty by a jury of his peers. The veneer peels, the thin plot line unravels, and we, the audience, take a deep breath for the first time in months.

We begin to pity the antagonist and his criminal posse as the weakness and fear and hollowness--characteristics we've all known to be there all along--are exposed, and all the spin and flailing of that group finally loses all its credibility.

President Trump knew this day would come, which is why he's done all possible to keep the show from being cancelled, and he's done so valiantly, if embarrassingly. Think Ricky from Trailer Park Boys. The climax has arrived, one of the climaxes, anyway. And now it's about to get quite boring. The ratings, the ratings are going to start really dwindling now.

Of course, there is damage that's been done, no doubt about that. And, once the final nail is driven into the Trump Show, we have others with whom to contend. Pence, Miller, Hannity, etc. will try their spinoffs, and those arrogant ranking members of the GOP will have to be dealt with in November.

But the la-la land we've been living in for far too long is losing its luster, and quickly. Trump, the entirely illegitimate president we've always know to be a coward, a bully and a four-year-old toddler whose parents simply can't control, is on the backside of his character arc. You may be a viewer who's sorry to see that happen. But you knew all along that one day it would. Because nothing lasts forever.

And because Truth actually is Truth.