The Wire: 'Clarifications' (5x08)

When you get near the end of the series, the ‘rules’ of the show become looser. This is a show that was never particularly bound by convention, but we’re at the point now where anyone could die, anything could happen. And, the first casualty of that is Omar, who goes out in a blaze of ordariness.

Watching Omar limp through the streets at the beginning of the episode, you’re watching a man who’s been broken. As he approaches the police car, he looks more like a homeless man than a menacing legend of the streets. Over the first four years of the show, I got more and more comfortable with the street environment, hanging out on Bodie’s corner, I knew everyone and it felt safe in a way that the early days of the show, or The Corner didn’t. That’s an inevitable consequence of a longform story, you become accustomed to things.

Here, that safety, that community is all wiped away. For the first time in a while, the corners once again feel like an alien environment, a dangerous, anarchic place. I can think of few scenes sadder than Omar walking past the vacants, calling out to Marlo. Somebody throws out some drugs, but I still get the feeling he’s just yelling at no one in particular, he’s lost it completely and is just wandering the streets. One of the things that contributes to this anarchic feel is Omar passing Kenard and his gang torturing a cat.

Kenard in season four was a character who was so absurd he became, almost by necessity comedic. This kid was about four feet tall, ten years old, and he’s running drug operations for Namond. There, he showed how pathetic a drug dealer Namond was, that he can’t even boss this kid around. Kenard clearly had a knack for the game that all the older kids in that season lacked. He’s more reminiscent of Marlo, someone who only knows the streets, has been there his whole life, and knows how to play the game.

I got a bad feeling when we saw him again, the cat scene coming after “That’s Omar?” last week did not bode well. But, still, I was not expecting Omar to die so abruptly. That was a totally shocking moment, perhaps inevitable, but at the same time totally out of nowhere. If Omar is as much about the legend as the man, then once the legend dies, and people see him for what he is, a guy limping around on a crutch, the man’s death won’t be far behind.

One of the issues I have with this season is the seeming desire to punish the audience for ever liking these characters, to tear them the mythology around everyone down and expose the cold, petty people beneath. Omar kills people and is reduced to an inefficient, babbling, hobbling, broken man. It’s hard to watch him brought to that place, where what Kenard does is almost a mercy killing.

Lester and McNulty are the other characters who are getting torn down over the course of the season, to the point where very little of what made them likable in the first place remains. Lester’s actions this season have been tough to deal with because we don’t have access to a lot of what’s going on in his life. With McNulty, it’s easier to understand his frustrations, the fact that he gave up a potentially happy life with Beattie to work these murders, and after he gets back to the old ‘McNutty’ place, they pull his funding and leave him broken, and alone. He’s got a very clear desire to stick it to the bosses, and we understand why he’d go to such an extreme place.

I suppose Lester has just been pushed too far, as he said, he reached the point where he no longer views the decisions of the bosses as legitimate. But, this is the same guy who was saying that it’s Clay Davis who matters, not people like Marlo. Part of his frustration comes from Bond choosing to try Davis himself and not go federal, so there is narrative justification, but emotionally, it’s hard to see why he’s totally destroying himself over this case. Maybe it is as simple as his behavior is illogical, but that doesn’t make for the most relatable story.

It’s almost like there’s two Lesters. I can see the guy from previous seasons going to Clay Davis like he did here, but I’m not so sure old Lester would risk going to prison himself to catch Marlo. The major scene that jars with me on this is the end of season three when he sees how self destructive McNulty is, and tells him he’s got to have more in his life than just police work. He wouldn’t be the first person to not heed his own advice, but it makes for a frustratingly inconsistent arc. Maybe everything will tie together in the end, but either way, it’s hard to watch Lester, the paragon of virtue on the series, go so off the rails.

We’ve got a better idea of what made McNulty do his thing, and his whole arc is summed up wonderfully when he says he started out as the hero of the story, and now he doesn’t know what he is. The scene with Beattie at the end of the episode is one of the first times he’s made to really assess what he’s been doing and, unlike Lester, he realizes how totally off the rails it’s gone.

But, in a game like that, a conscience is a danger. He tells Kima, who disapproves like Bunk did, and while I doubt she’d rat him out, the more people who know, the more likely something’s going to leak. Plus, we’ve got Donald still out there, and if the national media profile on this case is as high as it seems to be, McNulty could soon find himself face to face with his old pal once again, presenting a really uncomfortable choice for the higher ups.

Elsewhere, Marlo’s organization seems to spiraling off into a strange place. I’m not sure what’s up with Chris and Snoop in this episode. Why is she so defensive about killing Junebug? There’s definitely something going on with them, which seems weird to pop up all of a sudden. They’ve always seemed like loyal soldiers, what is it that’s changed over these past few episodes? I feel like it might be that Marlo’s got everything he wants, so he doesn’t have as much need for Snoop and Chris. They failed to kill Omar, and if the streets are supporting Omar, what role do they have? Or maybe, it’s simply that they feared Omar and didn’t want to go after him. Hopefully this’ll be addressed in the next few episodes, it seems like something is up.

Either way, things seem like they’re about to fall for Marlo. Chris has got a murder wrap that’ll be hard to beat, and if Lester can connect it to the vacant murders, they’re all going to fall. Of course, the shady acquisition of evidence in the vacant murders could help them beat all the charges coming at them. It would be great irony if McNulty’s plan to capture Marlo winds up undermining Bunk’s good policework, and lets Marlo walk.

Elsewhere, Dukie finally gets a job, working for a junk man. It was great to see Poot again, though he appeared to have shrunk several feet. I like the idea that he just got tired of the game, I’m guessing Bodie’s death and the Marlo takeover were just too much for him to deal with. At a certain point, the work just got too much and he decided to walk. What’s particularly telling about this scene is the notion that Dukie can’t work even if he wants to. He’s got to do his time on the corners to support himself before society lets him work.

Perhaps it would be smarter to go back to school. But, that’s not for him, it’s hard to go back to something once you’ve walked away, and I don’t think people in that position understand what school can do for them. He has no notion of college, or going away from that world, it’s only about the money you’ve got at the end of the day. That’s why the corners are so attractive, you don’t need a degree, you just need the desire to work. Right now, Dukie is looking like he’s destined to be someone like Bubbles, someone who isn’t a dealer, but lives on the streets, hustling out a living. I hope he finds a better way, but realistically, it’s near impossible to escape. Maybe getting off the corner before he got killed was the best we can hope for.

The other major plot strand of the episode was Carcetti going back down the path he walked at the end of season four, coming up with justifications for the compromises he’ll have to make on the road to governor. Once again, we see that the bigger the chair, the more shit you’ve got to eat. Will Baltimore ever be helped? Not likely. One of the things that’s interesting is the contrast between Carcetti’s fiery, riveting rhetoric and the childish, petty way he behaves in private. It’s the same thing we see with Clay Davis. When these guys are ‘on,’ they’re compelling and inspiring, but we know the lies under it all. I love how Carcetti’s egotism manifests itself when his wife is talking, but all he’s seeing is himself on CNN.

And, along with this the Scott the liar story rages on. I don’t have too much to add on this, as I said last week, it’s not that it’s bad, it’s a good, interesting story, but when it’s surrounded by great ones, anything less than great stands out. Last year, when every story was hitting at a really high level, the episodes become exponentially more emotional. Think of the season finale when we went from Namond breaking down to Bodie dying to Carver breaking down to Michael killing someone to the final montage, with a ton of other great scenes in there. Every scene was so good, you just got more and more emotionally drawn into the story. Here, the newspaper storyline doesn’t particularly engage me emotionally, so it becomes kind of a break every time it’s on.

There’s some other really strong scenes, I loved the reborn Clay Davis meeting Carcetti, smile back on his face. And, Bunk’s final moments with Omar are great too. I like the idea that at least Omar’s investigative work can play a part in bringing down Marlo. Cheese looks like the weak link, perhaps he’ll take down Marlo like he took down Joe.

After all that, we’re left with only two episodes. In some ways, the show does feel like it’s wrapping up, but I also feel like the story is just starting. There’s more pieces of these characters’ lives yet to happen, I’d love to see more of Carcetti, more of Dukie and Michael and Carver. But, there’s two left, and we’re left with two major questions. Will Marlo fall, and if so, how? And, will McNulty be found out, and if so, will he fall for his crimes, and will that fall be a trip back to the boat, or a trip to prison?

Doctor Who: 'Parting of the Ways' (1x13)

After “Father’s Day,” I was really feeling Doctor Who, the show had hit the right mixture of sci-fi concepts and emotion. But, the series finale kicks everything up to an amazing level, the episode is a chaotic, frenetic rush of ideas and emotions. There’s some works that just hit me so strongly, like they were made just for me, and at the moment Rose walked out of the TARDIS with the power of the timestream in her, I was like, this was made for me.

The episode is fantastic on so many levels, one of the most impressive is the way it fuses together so many of the ideas we’d seen over the course of the series. In these last three episodes, we see pieces of everything coming back, and that gives a feeling of unity to the series. Rather than just being a bunch of standalone episodes, the Satellite Five episode did matter, the Slitheen did matter, it’s all laying the groundwork for what we reach here.

The previous episode, “Bad Wolf,” is actually one of the weaker ones in the series. The reality show parody isn’t that fresh, and seems particularly derivative coming shortly after I watched the Extras series finale. However, it’s really all about getting us to that moment where Rose is on the Dalek ship, and we find out that the entire universe is in jeopardy from this new Dalek threat. I love the stakes of things here, the entire universe in imminent danger,

I love the craziness of the Daleks as villains. In the first Dalek episode, I knew that this guy was important to the series’ mythology, but I didn’t totally feel the menace of him. There was a slight goofiness to the guy, I loved the voice effect, and the end was emotional, but I wasn’t scared of them. However, this finale does a good job of making them menacing. The Emperor Dalek is great, with his delusions of godhood. Visually, I’m totally on board for them now, they’re menacing, relentless.

One of the things I love most in fiction is to really back the characters against a wall, go Empire Strikes Back on them. Here, we reach that point about midway through the episode. The Doctor is confronted with the impossible choice of either eliminating humanity or letting them fall to the Daleks. The various human characters are all dying, Jack is backed up against a wall, literally, and killed. Things are looking dire.

But, it’s not just the war that’s going poorly, down on Earth, Rose has plunged into deep despair. I really like the fact that we did return to Mickey and Jackie Tyler for this last episode. To me, they are integral parts of the series, giving complexity to Rose’s choices. She wants to run away with the Doctor, but doing so really hurts those she’s left behind. There’s a reason Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen get killed in Star Wars, it makes things more complex when the hero leaves something behind.

The restaurant scene is one of the most effective in the episode because it shows how much Rose has changed, and also how much her perspective hurts those she’s left behind. She tells Mickey that she can’t live a boring routine, which really wounds him, that she’s too good for the rest of them now. The thing is, once you see a larger world, it is hard to go back to once was. There’s something missing you weren’t even aware of before. Rose’s total despair hit me really hard, and I think that’s because the show has so much to say about what we all go through in the real world. Good sci-fi makes us look at our own lives from a different perspective, and for Rose, this episode is all about the desire we all have for something more in our lives. Most of us aren’t going to die fighting for something we believe, we’re more likely to miss out on the chance to fight for it at all.

Pretty much any scene in the episode is fantastic, but one of my particular favorites is Rose and Jackie’s discussion about Rose’s father. At this point, they’ve pushed the characters to a point where the emotion is totally on the surface. I’m right there with them, so it doesn’t feel melodramatic at all, it’s very real. Watching the show, I was wondering, why is it that this hits me so much emotionally? This episode got to me as much as the last couple of season four episodes of The Wire, or the heights of Buffy. A lot of it actually has to do with the sci-fi content. In Babylon 5, the bombing of Narn really got to me, I think it’s because sci-fi is so huge, it turns one person’s conflict into an entire worlds. It represents the emotions in a way that better captures their enormity than anything in the real world.

Jackie finally helping out Rose and bringing her the truck is another great moment. We’ve watched Jackie evolve a lot over the course of the series, she understands what this means to Rose, and even though it hurts her to do it, she’s willing to send her off back to save the Doctor. It’s hard for Mickey, but he goes along with it too. He’s so sad, he loves Rose so much, but he just can’t compete with the Doctor. She appreciates him, but also feels bad for him in a lot of ways. There’s a slight arrogance to her attitude, but she’s earned it through her adventures. She’s not an ordinary person any more, she’s become more like the Doctor than she can know.

This all builds up to the absolutely fucking amazing moment of Rose’s return to the future. She walked out of the Tardis, light buzzing around her, possessed by the time vortex. I don’t know that Chris Claremont invented it, but with the Phoenix Saga, he created an archetypal character who’s recurred throughout science fiction ever since. Willow in Buffy, Lyta in Babylon 5, and now Rose here, they’re all powerful women in touch with some cosmic light essence, empowered and sharing their consciousness with something beyond humanity. I love the idea, the communion with something beyond humanity.

Here, Rose gets in touch with the essence of space-time and is able to rewrite reality to fulfill a time loop and ensure that she reaches this point. I just love this stuff, it’s similar to what appeared in my own film Universal Traveler, and I think the fact that it’s so close to the kind of stories I like to tell is part of what makes me love it so much. These are the concepts that have a hold on my imagination, and seeing them dramatized so wonderfully here is awe inspiring. I love the visual of Rose with the energy flowing through her, and the moment where she scatters the atoms of the Dalek across the universe. I love that there’s a show dealing with these kinds of concepts.

It’s amazing how they manage to anchor the show in very real emotion, even as things go crazier and crazier. A scene like Lynda watching the Daleks progress, then getting blown away when they float up and shoot out the spaceship’s window is something that’s full of genre conceits, but is at its core terrifying. The production values on this episode are astounding, if this can be done on TV, what’s left for blockbuster movies to do? The past five years have seen a series of sci-fi shows that are stronger than virtually everything in sci-fi film history. Other than Blade Runner, Star Wars and 2001, I can’t think of any sci-fi movies that top what this show and Battlestar Galactica have been doing.

One of the things I like that this show does is ditch the heavy seriousness of Battlestar. That has its place, it works for the story they’re telling, but it’s refreshing to find something that is about the joy of space travel and exploring the universe. Obviously things go wrong sometimes, but at their core, both the Doctor and Rose are all about discovering new things and experiencing what life has to offer. There’s virtually no cynicism in the show, and that makes it easier to engage with the characters. You are right there with them, no artificial distancing devices in the narrative.

So, Rose channels the TARDIS and saves the universe, then the Doctor gets to save her. A kiss transferring cosmic energy is another motif that popped up in Universal Traveler, I swear I didn’t see this episode before making it. This leads us to the end of the Ninth Doctor. I had heard this was coming, but it was still a great moment. I love the visual of his head seemingly being blown off and reshaped in the fire. It’s hard to lose Eccleston at this point, I think his energy was a lot of what drove the show and made it great.

But, it’s really about Rose. She’s the central character, the audience surrogate and now the one with access to cosmic power. I do hope that returns, I know the Doctor took it out of her, but if she was the one who made Bad Wolf, surely it’s all part of some larger plan. I’m not really sure how the transformation process works, but it would be interesting to flip the dynamic and present Rose as the more confident one, showing the Doctor the universe. Either way, I’m guessing this will make them more like equals than they were before.

So, that episode really nailed it for me. Maybe it’s just the high coming off an episode that was so fucking good, but right now, I’m feeling like that’s one of the all time best TV episodes. It did so much I loved, emotionally and intellectually. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

But, let me take a quick backtrack to some earlier stuff. “The Empty Child”/”The Doctor Dances” seems to be a huge fan favorite, and knowing that going in may have affected my opinion a bit. I thought it was really strong, certainly the Rose dangling off blimp and subsequent Captain Jack scene was fantastic, but it didn’t quite hit me in the same way as “Father’s Day” or “Parting of the Ways.” What it did do was make me think about what it must have been like to have lived through the war. As an American, I think of it as a foreign war, where soldiers went over there and died, and people died in the Holocaust, but you don’t really think about how much it affected every single person in Europe at the time. Looking at that kind of bombing makes it clear just how lucky we are.

“Boomtown” is a pretty strong episode, most notable for the way it segues from really happy times at the beginning to a total dissolution by the end. It has some great stuff with Mickey, who’s in a darker and darker place as the series goes on. The switch of perspective on the Slitheen is nice too, particularly the idea that a person can have some redeemable characteristics, but still be evil. We’re made to think that her sparing the pregnant reporter could redeem her, but it takes a lot more than not killing someone to redeem you.

As I mentioned before, the reality show parodies on “Bad Wolf” felt a bit derivative, but that episode was all about getting the Daleks anyway. And the payoff was absolutely fantastic.

I was totally impressed by this first season. The end is spectacular, and does a great job of uniting all the plot threads from the entire series. Eccleston will be missed, but I’m eager to see what year two brings us. I just love the idea of a show where literally anything could happen, but within those huge possibilities, the show manages to keep a unified feeling from week to week.

Doctor Who: 'Father's Day' (1x08)

The new Doctor Who kicked up its game quite a bit with the fantastic eighth episode “Father’s Day.” I really liked the show from the first episode, but this was the first one that succeeded on every level, raising some interesting philosophical questions and telling a really emotional, powerful story.

To date, the show Who reminds me most of is Buffy. It’s got that same light tone and spunky heroine against the backdrop of crazy sci-fi tales. There’s not many shows where you can be on the verge of apocalypse and it’s not even the season finale, but this is one. And, like the best of Buffy, this one used the genre conceit to get at some really powerful emotions. It’s a story you couldn’t tell outside of a sci-fi setting, and yet, it’s totally grounded in reality, starting with a very basic, relatable premise and playing it in an at first funny, then really sad and touching way.

Time travel always opens up some troubling questions. How can your story have any real stakes when you could just go back in time and undo it should things go badly? I like the idea that the Tardis has a kind of will of its own, the Doctor can’t take them exactly where they want to go, he puts in an approximate date and the Tardis guides them to the place they need to be. This episode also gives us the notion that there is a ‘right’ timestream, that messing with things too much will bring those dragon things out to fix everything up.

I’m not sure how this time philosophy fits with the old episodes of the series, maybe it’s a fanwank, but it works for me. The Doctor is a kind of extratemporal agent working to ensure that the timestream proceeds as it should. He’s there to liberate humanity from their media oppression in the previous episode, and here we see the danger in trying to change things for selfish reasons. Would saving Rose’s dad really make a difference in the overall direction of the universe? I don’t know, apparently. For one, if we’re looking at a 4-D time system, it would mean the Rose we know would never exist.

I’m not exactly sure what the time structure of the series is. Is the Doctor actually changing history, or is he just fulfilling a role, doing what he’d already done at the time, only now he’s perceiving it from a different angle? It hasn’t really been explored yet. I think it makes more sense that way, because having a ton of alternate universes opens too many dangerous storytelling possibilities. It’s possible we’ve got a version of Grant Morrison’s hypertime, where there can be a number of divergent timelines branching off the main ‘time river,’ however the key events that need to happen always proceed as planned.

Ultimately, this doesn’t really matter. What the episode is about is Rose getting the chance to meet her dad. I love the opening voiceover, where she says her dad is the most wonderful man in the world. There’s this total affection for a man she never knew, she’s in love with the idea of her dad, and when we see the young Rose, there’s such sadness knowing that she never got to meet him.

When she does meet him, predictably, he’s not the noble knight she expected, but a flawed man. One of the emotional beats I love most in the episode is Rose’s sadness when she sees her mom berating her dad. It’s hard to go down to reality after existing in a mythic realm, and the reality of her dad doesn’t quite match up to what she imagined.

But, as the episode goes along, she gets to know him and realizes that he does have a lot going for him, and even though he might not be exactly what she imagined, she still loves him. It’s really touching to see her finally get the chance to have a dad after not having one her entire life.

The range of knowledge in the episode is really interesting. Rose tells Pete that he was a great dad, makes up a story about everything he’s done, which he knows is false. She’s breaking inside, unable to tell him that he was dead, but he knows and he takes the pain of telling him off her. He says that’s what dads do, and in the end, he’s willing to sacrifice his life so that the Rose we know can live.

There’s a lot of beats here that could have been cheesy, but the acting is so good, you totally buy their relationship, and I was really moved by Pete’s sacrifice. There’s something about this show that just really hits me on an emotional level. I think it’s the overwhelming totality of it all, the universe itself on the line, all of reality hinging on this single relationship.

I’d argue one of the best things about sci-fi is that it turns character’s problems into earth shaking events. Grant Morrison said that he relates to Superman more than a guy in an everyday drama because to him, his personal problems are as big as Solaris the Tyrant Sun attacking the Earth. Like it or not, we are all the center of our own universes, and our personal crises are as big as a Crisis on Infinite Earths from our own perspective. If I die, the entire universe I live in dies, and if someone close to me dies, a piece of me is lost as well.

This series tells stories on a huge scale, but Rose is such a great anchor character that we are able to relate to them emotionally. In a lot of Morrison’s work, there are moments where the characters are just totally overwhelmed by encountering some other intelligence and they’re reduced to tears. Think King Mob in Dulce in Vol 2.4, or Zatanna in the fourth issue of her series. That’s the place this series hits, I remember in “The End of the World,” Rose is overwhelmed by what’s going on, and that emotion hit me, I was really feeling awed and moved. It happened again here, the show just hits this place I love, a place of wonder and awe.

The episode ends with a reprise of the opening voiceover, only this time we know that Rose means it. It’s not the idea of her dad she loves, it’s the man himself. It’s a really touching, beautiful moment. I loved this episode, and I’m really loving the show. Not every episode hits, I thought the previous episode with Satellite 5 was a bit talky and slow paced, but I really love watching a show that’s as diverse and varied from week to week. I love the big ideas they’re tackling and the relationship between Rose and the Doctor provides a wonderful anchor for everything. The combo of new Doctor and new Battlestar in April is going to make for some incredible science fiction.

The Wire: 'Took' (5x07)

‘Took’ is the first episode of the season that really makes the newspaper/serial killer storyline work for me. After McNulty’s initial brainstorm, things have been going on the same level for a while, but everything’s kicked up a notch here, as McNulty’s plan finally works, better than he could have dreamed, and he finds himself lording over the entire homicide department. It’s a pretty packed episode, though even with all that happens, I’m still dreading the fact that we’ve only got three episodes left to wrap everything up.

Let’s kick it off with the increasingly debilitated Omar, who now finds himself limping around the city, barely able to move, but still inflicting terror on Marlo’s people. For the first time in a few years, we see Omar kill someone in this episode, and it’s pretty jarring. During the scene at the stash house, I was wondering, did Omar really do this, did he kill someone? But, the Savino scene at the club confirms it, he’s doing what he has to do to survive, no matter the cost.

There are a couple of reasons why he has to kill. One is the game’s changed, it’s got fiercer and it’s hard to call Marlo a bitch when you’re only wounding his people. It’s a killing world out there, and Omar has to match that level of aggression. And, because he’s so physically run down, he’s got to make a bigger statement. If he was at his old strength, he could be patient, watch them for a long time and use his network to battle Marlo. Now, it’s just one man, he can’t track Marlo, he’s just got to find him and kill him.

It’s hard to watch these scenes for a number of reasons. One, I think we’ve all come to see Omar as a kind of hero, and the cold blooded killing doesn’t mesh with that. It’s also hard to see this legend brought down to the world, hobbling around on a broom-crutch. Watching this episode, it makes a lot more sense why Simon went with such a self consciously over the top escape for Omar. That moment marked the end of Omar the legend, he was beaten in there by Snoop and Chris. Now, he’s just a man, desperate to get at Marlo any way he can. When Omar killed Savino, I said, he’s going to die. He’s lost sight of the code he lived by, and I don’t think anyone can save him now. What is he going to do if he gets his showdown with Marlo?

Omar’s run down state fits as a nice parallel with what Freamon’s become. These two guys used to be the most disciplined characters on the show, willing to wait patiently until the time was right to strike. But, like Omar, Freamon has been pushed too far. He’s given up his code because he feels the system has betrayed him, and now he’s going to do whatever it takes to take down Marlo, even though it’s likely to lead to his own downfall. He’s doing things that are outright wrong, even if it’s in the service of good, how can he justify that?

It’s been interesting to watch just how misguided Freamon’s become this season because it’s a total mismatch with the way we’ve been led to perceive the character over the previous seasons. How does this Lester match with the Lester who told McNulty he needs something in his life beyond police work? Whatever happened to Shardene, his girlfriend from season one? Like Omar, he’s been pushed so far, he’s given up on anything but taking down Marlo, and is suffering from it as a result. When McNulty’s telling you to think about what you’re doing, it’s probably time to reconsider your tactics.

And, even after all they’ve done, it’s still just one or two weeks they need to take down Marlo. That’s the line he’s been giving since the beginning of the season, but to date, Marlo’s just been too smart for him. The phone clock code is going to be tough to break, particularly because he can’t tell people what he’s using the surveillance teams for. I’m not sure why McNulty didn’t try to tie the homeless killer into the killings in the vacants last season, it wouldn’t fly in the police department, but it’d be pretty easy to put it over on the bosses, or at least raise the question that they might be connected, and open the wallet for the Marlo case.

The most interesting thing in this episode was watching McNulty getting everything he wants, and simultaneously realizing what a dangerous position this puts him in. Everyone is out looking for this serial killer, and sooner or later, they’re going to find the homeless guy in the shelter, realize that McNulty put him there, and bring him down. If not that, the longer it goes on, the more likely someone is to break and connect the killer to McNulty. What happens to him then?

I could see McNulty finally benefiting from the system then. It’s in no one’s interest for people to find out about that the serial killer was an inside job, particularly Carcetti. His gubernatorial campaign is finally getting some traction, in spite of the killer, and it’s this homeless crisis that’s helping him. Exposing McNulty would destroy his political credibility. This episode is the most interesting Carcetti stuff in a while.

In general, the episode works because it takes this one incident, the homeless guy being kidnapped, and shows how it affects all the worlds the show depicts. The police scramble to mobilize at the same time as the press, in a crosscutting scene that’s perhaps a bit obvious, but still works, while Carcetti tries to come up with some appeasement for a problem that has no real solution. In a lot of ways, fighting a war against a serial killer is the same as fighting a ‘war on terror,’ you can have all the preventative measures in place that you want, but ultimately you can’t stop just one man from performing an act of violence.

9/11 conspiracy theorists would have a fine time paralleling McNulty’s invented serial killer with Bush using the attacks to get all the money he needs for homeland security. I’d equate it with what Bush did with the war on Iraq, invent a threat to get the justification he needed for invasion, then change the story a couple of years down the line, and hope that people don’t remember what he said. In today’s media environment, the truth doesn’t much matter when there’s a concocted threat out there. The implicit point of the season is the press will jump on the latest extreme threat, the serial killers, the Iraqs, while every day, more and more people die on the streets, and no one cares. Prop Joe gets killed, it’s a couple of paragraphs, kinky serial killer guy kills a homeless man, the city is mobilized.

Simon’s point in the series is that we need to take a hard look at what’s going on at home, and stop worrying about these crazy threats. Think about what the trillion dollars spent in Iraq could have done in our inner cities. Instead, we send people over there, wreck the state, and wind up with our own people messed up like the homeless guy from last week. What baffles me is why Republicans say it’s a worthwhile cause, building democracy in Iraq, helping the people over there, while any attempt to provide domestic aid to our own people is seen as liberal money wasting, nanny state government. You can’t have it both ways. Of course, they’d say the war in Iraq is a vital front in the war on terror. The bigger the lie, the more they believe. At this point, I think it’s hard for people to conceive of just how thoroughly we were lied to and screwed with in the build up to the war on Iraq, they don’t want to see America as that kind of country.

Clearly there are some very vital themes here, unfortunately, the newspaper storyline doesn’t really play them up in the most interesting way. Do any of the scenes at the news office really add to what we could get just by catching a glimpse of the front page of the paper? I can see why they chose to parallel McNulty and Templeton, both of their lies helping out their organization, even as they threaten to bring themselves down, however, the notion of the lying reporter just isn’t that interesting to me. The real issue with journalism is the lack of real investigation, it’s just accepting what authority figures say and not questioning it.

But, even with that, I do think this was the most successful newspaper stuff yet. I’m not emotionally attached to the characters, but the conflicts were clearer and more engaging. However, I have to say that I’m never thrilled to go back to the news room. The reason isn’t so much a knock on the storyline as praise for the rest of the show. It’s like if you went to an amazing restaurant, were having an eight course meal and all of a sudden your meal is interrupted by an eggo waffle. I really like eggo waffles, and I eat them on their own all the time, but if there’s only so many courses I’ve got at this fancy restaurant, I don’t want to waste one on the waffles. That’s the bane of a last season, every moment becomes more vital as we approach the end. I didn’t mind the port storyline in season two because I knew there’d be more time for everyone else later, but it’s sad to think we’ve seen the last of so many great characters, and with time running out, I’m not looking for more Scott Templeton.

So, I fall somewhere between the two extremes of the season. I don’t think the newspaper is pointless, or a failure. I think it’s got some interesting points, and, while not perfectly executed, it’s by no means bad. It’s just that pretty good is going to stand out when you’ve got a show that’s been so consistently excellent before.

Elsewhere, we get some good stuff with Michael. I love the scene where Dukie is looking at the classifieds at the beginning of the episode. For one, there’s the humor of this kid who hasn’t even graduated high school trying to find an actual job. But, what really makes the scene work is the lack of connection to the overall plot. It made me realize what I’ve been missing most from this season is that just hanging out on the corner. Bodie rarely had a major role to play in the plot, but it was through hanging out with him that we found out what things were like on the streets. He was the everyman of the show, and his loss, combined with the faster pace of the season means we don’t get as many great moments like this.

Bunk remains the standout of the season, the only man aware that this entire homeless thing is bullshit, but powerless to say anything about it. He knows that this charade isn’t getting Lester and Jimmy any closer to Marlo, they’re still one or two weeks away, while he’s closing in. Wendell Pierce has always been one of the most entertaining actors on the show, but this season finally gives him a chance to show off his dramatic chops, and he nails these scenes. You can sense the rage in him as he watches the bullshit become more and more powerful in the department.

On top of this, we get the apparent resolution of the Clay Davis storyline. Isiah Whitlock as Davis is the season’s other standout. I love the way he seamlessly shifts between ‘public Clay,’ jovial and confident, and private Clay, scheming and deceitful. The brilliant thing is, even though I’m aware of the deception, I’m practically believing what he’s saying up on the stand. He sells it so well, with the pandering to the jury from his lawyer, regardless of whether he’s guilty, it seems like he earned that innocent verdict. I’m sure if I went back and watched Clay screwing over Stringer in season three, I’d want him guilty, but after watching that trial, I can’t fault the man for walking. It’s the same as the Carcetti speeches last week and in season three’s finale, understanding the lies behind it makes the bravado and rhetoric of these speeches almost more powerful.

I’d like to see how Lester feels about Clay walking. Does he even care at this point? He’s so caught up in this serial killer drama, he seems to have forgotten his real mission. Wasn’t he the guy who said follow the money up and up? Marlo is not the top, he’s not the real problem. I guess Lester gave up after he delivered the ‘head shot’ and O-Bond-a decided not to use it, but I’m still curious what his thoughts are about the verdict. Regardless, Clay walking doesn’t make me optimistic about the way other plotlines will resolve themselves. Clay is in many ways, the show’s master villain. If he got out unharmed, will things be any different for Marlo?

One final story was Bubbles and the reporter. It’s nice to see things looking up for at least one of our characters. I particularly like the way that the only storyline where the homeless killer is not at the center is the one that actually takes place with homeless people. They don’t care about a killer when they’re struggling everyday to survive. Four murders mean nothing when people turn up dead all the time. The real problem for homeless people isn’t the fear of being killed, it’s the fact that they’re homeless!

Well, that was a big week. Things are happening, there’s a ton of momentum and we’re moving into the final stretch. At this point, pretty much anything could happen, there’s no status quo left to protect. Many questions remain unanswered, most notably where the hell are Prez and Colvin? Will we see them again? What about Namond? And that can’t be the last appearance of Cutty, can it? Or Poot too, we’ve got to see him again, right? It’s going to be a lot to wrap up. But, either way, this episode ended on a really sweet note, with Kima finding a moment of happiness with her son, turning the dark world we’ve seen over the course of the series into a children’s book. It’s an uncharacteristically sweet ending, but it felt really right. She’s earned that moment after everything she’s been through.

My Filmography

In connection with the previous post about my new film project, here's a trip through the past for those of you who've never seen my films before. I posted some of them before on this blog, but it's never a bad time to big yourself up, right? I'm going in reverse chronological order since, in general, I feel like they get better as they go on.

Universal Traveler:
May 2007
12 Minutes
Starring: Alicia Fuss, Matt Walsh, Abby Bader
Written/Directed by Patrick Meaney


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This was my senior thesis film at Wesleyan University. It focuses on Tori, a scientist trying to invent nanobots that will allow people to travel through time. But, things go disastrously awry when she encounters the Anti-Self! It's inspired by Morrison and Jack Kirby, and hopefully captures the pop excitement and big idea wonder of their works. It's my favorite of my own films.


Dream of Life
May 2007
6 Minutes
Starring: Lauren Katz
Written/Directed by Patrick Meaney and Jordan Rennert


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A film that chronicles a life reflected in the moment of death. It's another high energy movie, silent, and chaotic in aesthetic. I really like this movie, the quality of images and energy it has, and not just because I made it. Give it a look!


All Goods Things
March 2007
27 Minutes
Starring: Alicia Fuss, Lauren Katz,Tom Macy, Jordan Rennert, Matt Walsh
Written/Directed by Patrick Meaney


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This is a very different film from the previous two. It's got no genre elements, the only film I've made with nothing supernatural. It's the portrait of Alex, a cynical, modern girl. This movie was my attempt to deal with the conservative/liberal divide in our society, and explore what makes so many people of my generation so cynical and unable to believe sincerely in stuff. It's the portrait of a "Daily Show liberal," someone who'll gladly mock the establishment, but doesn't really have anything to replace it with. It's a longer, messier film, but it's got a lot of moments I really love. Almost all the dialogue was improvised, and I think that gives the characters more unique voices than in my other movies.


Nepo - "Yer Warpin' Me"
August 2006
4 Minutes
Starring: Mike Nepo, Jordan Rennert
Concept/Directed by Patrick Meaney and Jordan Rennert


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This is a music video for Nepo. It's a short, odd tale of a man battling the establishment. This is notable for the use of a 35mm adaptor, which gives the piece a distinct look.

Victoria Rocks - "Champagne Saturday"
July 2006
4 Minutes
Starring: Victoria Levy, Johnny B.
Concept/Direction by Patrick Meaney


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I did this video for Victoria Levy, the singer for industrial band Slick Idiot. It features a lot of experimental color correction effects, and further develops the chaotic handheld style I was using heavily at the time. I think it fits the song really well, there's a few shots I wish I could have done better, but it's a strong work.


The Perfect Dose
January 2006
21 Minutes
Starring: Bryan Kaplan, Angela McKain, Kelleigh Miller, Scott Tyler
Written/Directed by Patrick Meaney and Jordan Rennert


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Another sci-fi project, this one focuses on a man with an elevated consciousness that plagues him like a virus. This is a movie I have mixed feelings about. It was the first time I worked with "pro" actors, people who weren't just my friends, and I was a bit intimidated. So, some of the stuff in this movie doesn't quite hold together. But, I love the ending, and its abstract stylings informed a lot of what was to come in my next work. The Dose taught me a lot of lessons. I think this review from Youtube sums it up best: "not as enlightening as i had hoped, but in the end it was only a movie. i enjoyed it very much so though! nicely done!"

Key 23
December 2005
5 Minutes
Starring: Abby Bader, Alicia Fuss
Written/Directed by Patrick Meaney


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This is a film about an experimental psychotopic drugs. I shot this movie in a day, on 16mm, with no crew but myself. Despite those limitations, it turned out as one of my favorite of my works. I think this is the most precise work I've done, and is the source of the style and motifs that would inform a lot of my recent work. The Alicia/Abby pair returned in Universal Traveler, this was the first of my "femme power" movies, and while I don't like the process of working with film, it does look great.


Do Unto Others
November 2005
3 Minutes
Starring: Alicia Fuss, Corey Davison
Directed/Edited by Patrick Meaney


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Another 16mm project, I made this with two other guys from Wesleyan. It's another surreal reflection on life and death. It's a bit violent, but very stylish and I think quite successful. It was here that I met Alicia, who'd go on to appear in a whole bunch of my movies. If anyone's been my muse, she has, nailing it every time out even as I put her through a lot of weird stuff.


Ricky Frost
August 2005
35 Minutes
Starring: Steve Delitta, Lauren Katz, Jordan Rennert, Andrew Meehan
Written/Directed by Patrick Meaney and Jordan Rennert
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What happens when a young man finds out he's dying? This movie, that's what! This film is set in the same universe as All Good Things, and it's also a chronicle of ordinary life. I saw this movie shortly after I watched Fallen Angels for the first time, and it's more inspired by Wong Kar-Wai than anything else I've done. That shot above is the first example of the "Wong Kar-Wai shot," which I'd use on a lot of projects. This movie is a bit long, but it's got some really great moments, and I like the story it tells. It's a bit more traditionally narrative based than All Good Things, and depending on your preferences, that will make it either better or worse.

Tabula Rasa
May 2004
35 Minutes
Starring: Steve Deluca, Lauren Katz, Doug Hill
Written by Patrick Meaney, Jordan Rennert and Steve Deluca. Directed by Richard Spinelli


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I'd made a few films before this, but this was the first that turned out well. It's an allegorical take on corporate societal influence. I didn't actually direct this one, but I influenced the vision a lot. It's a bit less frenetic than later films, but there's a power to the images that I like. This movie was made with a collective of my friends, many of whom pop up in later movies.

Well, that's it for the journey through my past films. Give them a look and please post any thoughts you've got. It's always great to hear feedback, positive or negative. And, if you dig the films, please pass them on to other people. And, for more info on all this, head over to my filmmaking site, Respect! Films.

The Third Age

As you may or may not be aware, in addition to writing about stuff here, I do my own filmmaking. Right now, I'm working on my biggest film project to date, a webseries called The Third Age. Here's the basic info:

"The old age believed in magic, this age believes in science, but we are on the precipice of a third age, a fusion of everything that's come before." - Jerrod

The Third Age is a webseries about an ensemble of characters caught up in this fusion of magic and science, of people on the frontlines of the war to shape humanity's future. It begins with a ritual, the calling down of a spirit into a man, and from there goes on to chronicle an ever expanding web of lives caught up in a battle between gods.

The series is masterminded by me, Patrick Meaney, and Jordan Rennert. Our goal is to tell a story that uses science fiction as a way to explore the world we live in, and the conflicts that everyone faces. The gods in the story represent eternal forces that change humanity, progress, stasis, imprisonment and freedom. The story isn't so much about the larger conflict as it is about the individual lives affected in its wake.

Each episode of the series will be about five minutes, and a new one will be posted every two weeks. They'll be available as direct downloads, and on Youtube. It will run about a year before wrapping up the story. The project is going to deal with a lot of the same themes as the stuff I'm writing about on here. If you look down the tag list on the side, you'll see many of the inspirations: Grant Morrison, Jack Kirby, Alan Moore, David Lynch, Wong Kar-Wai, though I'll be bringing some of my own energy to it as well. Take a look at the two teasers we've got so far:



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Higher Quality Download

If you want to keep up on the progress of the project, throw the Third Age Begins blog into your RSS reader. I'll be posting news updates there, and once the series starts, that'll be the first place to hear about new episodes being posted. And, if you've got your own blog/media outlet and would like a review copy sent to you, just let me know and I'll put you on the list.

And, if you want to delve back into my filmmaking history, head over to respectfilms.com, where you can find all my previous works, or flip to the next post for a journey into the past.

Farscape: 1x07-1x09

Farscape rages on with its best episode yet, and two of its weakest. That’s the peril of any show based around standalone episodes, you’re going to get duds in there, and it makes it tougher to watch the show. In the post Sopranos age, a standalone structure isn’t required, and it’s tough to return to those days. But, as long as we keep getting good episodes like “PK Tech Girl,” I’ll stick around.

That episode is easily the series’ best. It takes a kind of stock plot, the hero rescues a girl and falls in love with her. The episode works for two reasons, one is the way it brings out the tension in John and Aeryn’s relationship, the other is how it develops the world of the Peacekeepers. It’s been a while for John, as we found out a few episodes ago, and when he sees a pretty girl who likes him, he’s happy about it. Aeryn and John are clearly meant to be together eventually, but this does a good job of putting a twist in things. They’ve been in this sealed world, getting closer over the course of the episodes, and the intrusion of an outsider disrupts that.

The best scene of the episode is definitely Aeryn telling John that she found him interesting, struggling to find a way to convey her feelings. Of course, neither of them are ready to say how they really feel about each other. The relationship between them is right out of 30s screwball comedy, where the two characters are always at each other’s throats, but they’re getting closer and closer all the time. I can definitely relate to the way Aeryn feels there, and it’s certainly the most emotional episode of the series. I particularly like the crazy strobing lights on the ship, which heighten the tension.

Gilina herself is a pretty compelling character, and a nice contrast to the more world weary Aeryn. I was sad to see her go at the end. It’s the same as the Karen/Pam situation on The Office, because we care about all the people involved, it makes the love triangle more engaging.

This episode also featured a great subplot with Rygel, and his memories of his time on the Peacekeeper ship. Rygel is in a lot of ways the most complex character on the show, struggling to deal with the pain in his past while keeping the appearances of a cool, collected leader. He won’t admit how far he’s fallen, even though he clearly knows it. And, the interrogator guy was pretty freaky looking.

The episode after this on paper looks great. We get back to the show’s ‘mythology’ and see Crais and Crichton clash for the first time against the backdrop of a surreal wizard’s nightmare world. Unfortunately, the surreal nightmare world feels very much like a bunch of sets, and the Crais/Crichton conflict doesn’t work for me. The reason is Crais’s hatred of Crichton is irrational. I can understand why he’d be mad, but we have no real context for understanding Crais’s feelings, no real understanding of the man. Those flashbacks here were probably supposed to do that, but just knowing a guy had a tough childhood doesn’t make his reckless pursuit of Crichton make any more sense.

The best moments on The Wire or Babylon 5 came when we cared deeply about both the heroes and the villains. When the Narn/Centauri fought or when the detail pursued Avon, I wanted everyone to come out okay, even though that wasn’t possible. Here, there’s no conflict, just a misguided guy bothering our hero. Maybe Crais will develop as time passes, but here, he’s not doing much for me. And, I think they could have done a lot more with the dreamspace where we spent most of the episode.

‘DNA Mad Scientist’ was another dud. What threw me here was the sudden, complete change in all the characters’ behavior, Zhaan in particular. I didn’t know everyone so desperately wanted to get home, so the decision to cut off pilot’s arm comes out of nowhere. This was an episode where they decided to go in without exposition and just cut straight to the story, but not having that exposition meant the character arcs didn’t make sense. It seemed like all the characters were under the influence of some strange drug, with their juvenile scheming.

Along with this, the whole Aeryn turns into weird beast storyline was classic standalone stuff, where we know she’ll be fixed by the end, and it’s just a matter of getting there. I did enjoy the weird Lovecrafty vibe when she was behind the curtain, it reminded me of the Shoggoth from The Invisibles, but other than that, there wasn’t much of note in this episode.

So, hopefully things will turn around a bit in the next set of episodes. I loved ‘PK Tech Girl,’ but since then, things have been a bit off. Any show’s going to have some duds, but it’s frustrating to watch them.

The Wire: 'The Dickensian Aspect' (5x06)

“The Dickensian Aspect,” like much of the season, is simultaneously brilliant and frustrating. The best aspects revolve around the increasingly desperate Omar struggling to make some kind of a strike back against Omar, while the weak elements once again revolve around Scott and his antics over at the Sun.

The thing that really bothers me about Scott’s storyline is it doesn’t feel vital to our world. I’m sure there’s people out there making stuff up in newspapers, but isn’t the bigger problem what they are reporting from reality, not what’s being made up? The New York Times’ greatest failure in the past few years wasn’t the whole Jayson Blair thing, it was their failure to question Bush during the buildup to the war in Iraq.

Along those lines, I think Alma would have been a better focus for the season. The strongest parts of the newspaper storyline were about her initial idealism clashing with the reality of what the business is. People don’t care about the very real murder of three people in their house, but they love this serial killer stuff. Why don’t we see her questioning these values at all, or at least deal with her dealing with this stuff? What we’re seeing is the same transfer of priorities that’s happening over at the police department, real murders being bumped out for the fake ones.

Scott himself remains a rather one dimensional guy. The notion that his Iraq War veteran story was less overwritten, felt more real, was way too head on. We get it, Scott was a bad journalist, and doing the right thing feels good. I’m surprised they didn’t throw in a scene where Whiting says that the veteran piece could have used a little of Scott’s usual magic just to hammer home the point.

Whiting isn’t necessarily a more uniformly bureaucratic, destructive character than a Clay Davis or Rawls, what makes him a problem is that he’s so boring to watch. Clay Davis and Rawls clearly love what they do, and we can understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. The reason people forgive some of the craziness in the Omar storyline is that it’s a joy to watch, Whiting is always boring, so the problems with the character come to the fore. Increasingly, I feel like the newspaper storyline was mishandled. With only ten episodes, it was going to be tough to pull off, and I don’t think Simon took it in the best direction by focusing on this chronically fabricating guy when there’s a lot more real problems out there with the way newspapers operate. Watching the Carcetti storyline in seasons three and four, it was easy to see how someone with good intentions could run awry and wind up a part of the system. There’s none of that complexity with the higher ups at the paper.

Plus, with the exception of the Daniels quote story, they haven’t taken advantage of our split perspective to show the way the newspaper’s agenda and the police or city hall agenda run into conflict. What made the first season so brilliant was I simultaneously wanted them to catch Avon and wanted Avon to avoid capture, I don’t get that conflicted feeling watching this because the newspaper gang isn’t emotionally engaging. I don’t care about what happens to any of the characters. Now, maybe things will turn around in the last few episodes, but right now, the storyline’s going to have to kick its game up to match even the port storyline.

Along with that, I’m finding the serial killer storyline a bit exhausting, though it’s starting to hit hard, and I think it’ll end strong. It’s hard to watch McNulty and Lester so thoroughly destroy themselves on this crusade against the system, putting their careers and lives on the line to get Marlo. The point that this episode makes is it’s not about Marlo, it’s about sticking it to their bosses. Both of them have a chronic desire to rebel, to show they’re better than the authority figures lording over them, and they’d gladly martyr themselves rather than do police work under the conditions handed down by City Hall.

What makes this episode effective is the contrast between what Bunk’s doing and what Lester and McNulty are doing. Lester and McNulty spend all their time perpetuating the swindle, and have made very little progress on Marlo. I think that all hits home for McNulty when he takes the homeless man to the shelter and sees just how bad things really are. These are the people he’s exploiting. He thought that no one would care about some homeless bodies, but looking at the guy, he realizes that they are people, and is it worth desecrating those bodies to get a wire tap on Marlo? I think the whole thing is going to come crashing down soon, not necessarily because they’ll be found out, but because McNulty will recognize that Lester is on an endless quest. Getting Marlo won’t mean anything, he’s certainly not worth sacrificing their lives for.

This is all in contrast to Bunk, who’s making real progress on the bodies in the vacants. Bunk is the star of the season for me. Normally relegated to comic relief, he was a character I loved, but didn’t seem that essential to the show. Here, he’s the voice of reason, the guy who thinks that it’s still possible to do things by the book and get results. He’s a murder police, so he’s going to work those murders. This is bringing him into contact with the gang of kids from season four, and setting up some potentially incredible, and sad stories.

Already, we’ve got the great scene with Randy. Bunk knows that Randy has the information he needs, but after what Herc did, it would be foolish for Randy to talk to him. The kid has changed, he’s grown tough to protect himself in the group home. The person we knew last season is dead, and it feels ridiculous when Bunk threatens him with time, he’s already in juvie. I doubt we’ll be seeing Randy again, and it’s sad to think this is how it all ends up for him. Herc may get revenge for his camera by busting Marlo, but that same camera led Randy down this path. If anything, it only makes the scene where Carver is taunted by Randy at the end of “That’s Got His Own” even more haunting. It all goes back to that fucking camera.

Michael’s mother provides a better lead. Here, we see the complex web of interactions that will potentially bring Marlo down. Michael rejected his mom after she bailed him out, making her more open to talking to the police. Bunk knows Chris and Snoop did the murders, and now he’s got another one to tie to them. It’s ironic that the one potentially justifiable murder in the whole bunch will be the one that could bring them down. It’s emotion that gets people into problems in crime, that makes them do stupid things, and that murder may be what dooms Chris. I’d love to see Bunk bust Marlo and his gang using traditional police methods instead of McNulty using his serial killer.

I’m not sure what kind of message that sends though. Simon is fond of saying the system is broken, so why should Bunk working things through the system help him succeed? I’d argue that Simon has always valued individual action. People like Colvin and Stringer can achieve their own goals within restrictive systems through individual action. That’s what Bunk is doing, he’s working as hard as he can to succeed in spite of the system, not because of it. McNulty is actually more controlled by the system than Bunk. He’s going through this whole serial killer charade to stick it to the man, whereas Lester’s one day of spying on the lot earlier in the season got them more information than all this.

A scene I really loved was Carcetti’s speech about homelessness. It calls back to the last episode of season three, where Carcetti gives an inspiring speech about changing things, right after shutting down Hamsterdam. We’ve all seen these speeches, and it’s harrowing to realize it’s all a lie. Carcetti isn’t doing all he can, he’s doing the exact same thing as before, but he made the media believe in him. Watching that speech, I could see how Carcetti could become governor. He’s electrifying, even if it’s all a lie. That’s what McNulty doesn’t understand, the bosses only have to keep up appearances, they don’t really need to fight crime any differently.

Elsewhere, Omar takes the fight to Marlo’s people after surviving some “Spider-Man shit.” The man is battered, barely able to walk, but he’s still calling Marlo a bitch. Omar has watched his entire world torn apart, all his enemies killed, and he’s got nothing left. I’m not exactly sure what his goal is, is he going to kill Marlo’s whole organization? Either way, it’s harrowing to watch him strike such a well equipped foe. There’s such desperation in everything he does, and I’m really not sure how he’s going to be able to defeat Marlo.

Marlo completes his corporate takeover of the drug game, shutting down the co-op and raising the price on the good drugs. I’d like to think that Marlo’s hubris will set up his fall, but it’s hard to say. Certainly corporate America has been taken over by people like Marlo, but I think he’s just done too many bad things to survive the series. Someone’s going to want revenge. Slim Charles is still in play, he may tip off Omar.

I’ll admit it’s tough to watch this show on a weekly basis. The episodes are dense, but I always need a bit more when it ends. This was a really good episode, and I’m sure it will play well on DVD, but as all The Wire I’ll get for the week, I always want a bit more. I’ve noticed when I rewatch an episode, it always plays a lot better, I think it’s because I know what to expect, and can appreciate what we have, rather than just waiting to see what will happen next. There’s a huge difference between finishing an episode and knowing you can watch the next one whenever you want, versus finishing an episode and having to wait a week.

And, the show’s lost a lot of my favorite characters. Stringer and Bodie are dead, Colvin’s MIA, Cutty’s barely been on, the Bubbles we knew is essentially gone. They were all incredible presences, and it’s hard for the show to be the same without them. There’s a ton of great people left, but you can’t help but miss what’s not there.

Grant Morrison's The Authority #1-2

I read the first Warren Ellis Authority trade back in 2002 or so, when the series was sputtering to the end of its controversial first run. It was clearly mismanaged along the way, but the original book had enough power to keep the property viable to the present, and pave the way for a Morrison relaunch of the series back in 2006. I didn’t think much of the Ellis stuff, the characters weren’t well developed, it was all just empty spectacle. Now, I suppose that was the point of the run, but at the time, I just wasn’t feeling it. I wanted to read Stormwatch and then read the Authority run again, but I couldn’t make it through Stormwatch, so I still haven’t read it. But, one day I’ll catch up, primarily because I want to read the Frank Quitely issues.

The Grant Morrison Authority was one of the most disastrous crash and burn launches in the recent history of comics. It baffles me that a company would put out a relaunch of its flagship title with only one issue in the can. Could you imagine David Chase doing a new TV show, coming out with one episode and then saying, hold on, you’ll have to wait six months for the next episode? It just wouldn’t happen, and it’s sad that comics can’t get the professionalism to get a bunch of issues in the can before putting something out. I can understand doing a bi-monthly schedule, or even the very sporadic All Star Superman release schedule, but there’s no excuse for coming out with two issues of a book, six months apart, then leaving it in limbo for over a year.

Knowing it’d probably be years before the Morrison Authority got collected, I decided to pick up the first two issues of his run. I don’t feel cheated, I think that each issue has enough interesting stuff to be worth reading, however, I do wish he got to continue the run because it’s more interesting to me than what he’s doing over with Batman, and the Gene Ha art is really nice. Batman is a fun, kind of throwaway work, this book seems to be closer to the core of his superhero work, making literal one of themes inherent in much of his other work, the idea that superhero comics provide a model for humanity as they evolve forward.

Issue one got lot of flack from the internet audience, but I really enjoyed it. It would play best in a TPB, where its laid back, reality-based stuff would set the stage for the insanity to follow. As a single issue, it’s a bit frustrating, with some very slack pacing. There’s no need for that many splash pages. What makes the issue work for me is the deep compassion Morrison has for the Ken and Joan. The use of close-ups throughout the panels focuses us on the boring morning routine, and the characters’ body language, rather than facial expressions, conveys the personal drama. Morrison does a fantastic job of capturing the frustrations of everyday, and making you believe in these characters. Those few pages are so good, they make me forgive the fact that very little else happens in the issue.

The purpose of the first issue to set up what this reality is, what our world is. The murky colors, boring routine, that’s what we face, it’s not what comic book characters face. Morrison’s pitch for the series was essentially “The Authority can save the world, but can they save your marriage?” It’s an interesting question because it brings up the issue of what a utopia is. Can we really make everyone happy? Even if you have everything that money can buy, are you emotionally satisfied? Ken here seems to be doing as well as anyone in the world, but he’s so distant from his wife.

Morrison frequently discusses the way that he turns his personal demons into foes for his superheroes to battle. The Invisibles featured a lot of hypersigils for his personal life, and many of his JLA villains were incarnations of the problems he was dealing with at the time. That’s part of what makes his work so much more effective than other writer’s sci-fi stories, his best work is barely non-fiction, it’s a colliding bunch of realities in which the emotions and concepts are from reality, but filtered through the tropes of the genre.

So, it’s interesting to see him put The Authority characters into our world, and reverse that genre filtering. Rather than turning our world into theirs, he’s extracting the superhero characters from their universe and putting them in our boring one. This story basically picks up where his JLA: Classified arc ended, with the Ultramarines inserted into our reality, with the mission to change it. I’ve read a lot of superheroes in reality storylines, but I don’t think I’ve read anything quite like this, where the superheroes from the comic literally land in our world.

One of my favorite scenes in the issue is The Doctor and Jack’s trip to Forbidden Planet in Union Square to pick up their own TPB. This is the same store where I met Grant himself back in 2006, so it’s a delirious mix of realities bending on each other. I really like the notion that these characters do exist in a parallel reality, and the only way we’re able to see through to it is through fiction. It’s like the act of telling stories is a means of traveling to other dimensions, not unlike the Authority’s own travel through the bleed. This ties into Grant’s notion of the DCU becoming sentient, if they were powerful enough, perhaps the characters could pass through into our world.

Midnighter decides that he wants to intervene in this world and solve all its problems. That was the basic appeal of The Authority in its day, the notion that these heroes actually changed the world and didn’t just fight back against villains. But, the essential question of the series seems to be, will our world let it change? And, even if you remove all those big problems, you’ve still got people like Ken, who have personal issues that can’t be solved with guns. I think it’s a great premise for a series, something new and fresh, and I’d have loved to see it continue.

However, that doesn’t look like it’ll be happening, in the near future at least. So, these issues stand as a potentially great, unfinished work. I really do love the look and feel of Morrison’s Authority character. They feel alien and offputting, but intriguing. I don’t think this would have been one of his all time classic series, but I do wish it got a chance to run its course.

Testament: 1-10

Testament is a comic that is tailor made for me. Grant Morrison is quoted on the cover, and the book itself, a tale of cyber-revolutionaries battling the man against a backdrop of gods and magic is just like The Invisibles, and countless projects that I’ve done myself. These are the themes I find fascinating, the motifs that obsess me for whatever reason, and they’re all gathered under one roof in this book. The book itself is not a total success, Rushkoff lacks Morrison’s ability to create fully realized characters and singular emotional moments, but there’s so much good stuff here, I can highly recommend the book, and am sad to see that it’ll soon be cancelled.

People, both in and out of the comics world, frequently crack on the medium and its obsession with telling the same superhero stories over and over again. But, I think there’s as wide a wealth of quality material as in films or TV. Look at Vertigo alone, over the past ten years, they’ve produced as many classic series as HBO. The Invisibles, Preacher or Sandman all stand with the best of film or television. Recently, Vertigo has had a crisis of identity similar to HBO’s, doing a lot of great series that haven’t broken out in the way that their 90s works did.

I think a lot of that is due to a change in the market. Particularly with these complex, longform works, people are inclined to wait until they’re out in trade, or even until the series finishes to buy it. I know with Y: The Last Man, I’m a few trades behind, and I’ll just wait until the last trade comes out, then read the whole thing. The same is true for 100 Bullets, which is so complex, I doubt anyone could fully get it in monthly format. So, even though they might lose money on the singles of these books, they’ll be selling Y TPBs for years, and making a lot of money there.

Anyway, back to the book itself. Testament takes a Philip K. Dick “the empire never ended” style approach to storytelling, claiming that the same conflicts chronicled in the bible are happening today. To do this, he uses the cast of present day characters in various biblical roles, and crosscuts between the two different time periods, which usually line up, but occasionally split from each other. It’s an interesting concept, and works to expand the scope of the stories he’s telling. I think Rushkoff’s central point is that the narrative of the bible itself is what has engaged people, that these stories themselves, not the historical events they refer to, are what has engaged people. That’s what he has the God stand in say in the book, that it’s the word itself that will make people believe, the word that gives him power.

If the bible is the text at the center of Western civilization, the source of our moral codes and worldview, then it would make sense that the narratives it contains would recur. In the world in which we live, George Bush casts himself as a holy warrior battling the Islamic menace, he wants to connect with that biblical impulse, make us believe we are living in important times, and that America is God’s chosen land.

However, one of Rushkoff’s central points is that the bible has been co-opted by the forces of darkness and oppression. The characters in the bible weren’t like Bush, they weren’t powerful, they were revolutionaries, stirring up trouble and battling the existing order. Bush would be the pharaoh in the bible, the man oppressing the freedom fighters. Reading the book made me think about the awful way the religious right has co-opted the story of Jesus and warped it. The real person, or biblical character, was out there with prostitutes, the sick and diseased, helping them and fighting the entrenched religious power. How have we reached the point where people can use Jesus’s message to spread hate, hatred of gays, hatred of those who are different than us?

Why is it that those who claim to believe the most are the ones who don’t want to help the poor, and who want to give tax cuts to the rich? It’s all about control of the narrative, Jesus would have supported gay rights, he would have been there with the oppressed peoples, fighting for them. He would not invade Iraq to impose his own order with violence, he would have done it with love. This is relevant whether you’re a Christian or not, the message of the man was a positive one, but the religious establishment frequently corrupts it.

So, that’s the backdrop against which the book was born. It’s hugely relevant for our times, but there is some clumsiness in the execution. The core characters are Jake and his cell of revolutionary dissidents. The problem with the book is that we don’t really get to know these characters. Jake is sketched out to some extent, but there’s no one I deeply care about in the cell. Most of them are just there, spouting the usual system-shaking rhetoric.

The character who stands out the most is Dinah, and I’m torn on her. On the one hand, she’s the most powerful and connected character in the gang, equated with the goddess Astarte, she is able to see things in a way no one else can. I absolutely love the scenes where she goes into the tank and is able to see outside of time in a trippy, Promethea like panel array. At the end of each major storyline, she goes on a journey that gives her a view of the larger stakes, and it feels like she is going to be a major player as the book goes on.

The downside of the character is that she’s also presented as a fucktoy for these all male revolutionary band. She’s always sexualized, wearing little to no clothes, and looking a bit ridiculous for it. While everyone else is wearing a shirt and jeans, she’s wearing a bra and panties. I can understand the desire to equate her to Astarte, and make her sexuality a factor, but it comes off more as pandering, and a relic of the sexism inherent in 60s countercultural activity. She doesn’t get her own agency, she’s a tool to move Jake’s storyline forward. I can see Rushkoff’s intention, but there’s a thin line between thematic point and an artist who likes to draw big tits. Ragged Robin was a similarly sexualized character in Invis Volume II, but she always seemed in control of her presentation, Dinah seems more subject to male order.

The first few issues make the biblical parallels very clear and direct, but as it goes on, we witness more revisions to the stories, individual action subverting the pre-ordained direction that God has chosen for the characters. This comes to the fore in the Joseph and the Dreamcoat story that closes out the second volume. There, the Joseph story sets up our expectations, which are subverted in the end. Alec is not able to trick Fallow, but Jake’s crew injects a chaos element into the situation, and disrupts everything, only to find that no one cares.

The whole Manna thing raised some questions for me. I was able to follow most of the book pretty easily, but I wasn’t sure the point he was making with the Manna. The basic idea seemed to be that money controls us so much, and is so powerful that it is inevitable it takes on a life of its own. The Manna will be a living currency that can literally control us from the inside. It’s a bit heavy handed, but it generally works. The place that Rushkoff lets me down is the ads for the Manna. The clichéd teen pitch should be a bit more sophisticated for a post MySpace generation. Do kids respond to TV ads as much anymore, wouldn’t it have been cooler to create Manna profiles on MySpace, literally have the Manna come alive and promote itself?

I’m also not sure what his great fear about the world currency is. Would that control us any more than our individual ones? I suppose it’s part of the biblical parallels, but a world currency isn’t too high on my list of fears. I guess the point is, the more unified the world becomes, the easier it is for one person to control.

The thing I really love about the book is the way the worldview meshes all kinds of human religious history together. Gods watch over everything that happens, influencing the happenings, and occasionally intervening. It reminds me a bit Neil Gaiman’s worldview, the way old gods struggle to maintain their influence, and appear in new ways. The difference between this work and Neil’s is that Neil’s stuff always remains fictional, you don’ get the sense he believes in the reality of what’s happening in the way that Rushkoff does. Like Morrison’s work, this is sci-fi, but based very much in philosophical reality. It’s a treatise within a story, like Promethea or The Invisibles.

And, generally, the book works best on an idea level. Each issue left me thinking about a lot of things, and the stories do have a lot of relevance to the world we live in today. This is the kind of work people should be reading and considering in the world we live in. I love the meshing of concepts and reality into a kind of indeterminate mytho-reality where everything’s true.

But, the book is definitely held back by the lack of emotional engagement with a lot of the cast. The characters frequently seem manipulated by the need to conform to the biblical storylines, they don’t have their own agency. Again, this is part of the thematic point, but it winds up hemming them in. The cell in particular is just a collection of clichés. However, not every writer is about emotion, and Rushkoff is doing his thing, and doing it well. I’m going to pick up the third trade this week, I’m eager to see how things develop.

Farscape: 1x03 - 1x06

After watching a few more episodes of Farscape, I’m really impressed with the show. I’ve seen a lot of sci-fi shows, so I’ve seen most of the concepts behind these episodes before, but the show has such engaging and likable characters that the old material feels fresh. I would like to see some more ongoing storylines, but the show has a sense of history that makes you at least feel like they didn’t just forget what happened last week. It’s like Buffy in that respect, the characters change, and that’s what the show is centered around.

The thing I like most about the show is definitely the characters. Crichton started out as a kind of blank slate generic hero, but over these episodes we’ve got to see some of his flaws and personality quirks. The thing that makes him interesting is that everyone thinks he’s dumb, so the role we’d expect him to play, that of strong male leader, is undercut. He can’t lead, and when he tries to, he frequently is unable to deal with the specifics of the universe he’s found himself in.

His primary counterpart is Aeryn, whose intensity and business only attitude makes Crichton play the traditional female role in their relationship. I think that’s what makes the dynamic between the two of them so effective, the subversion of expectations. She’s the one who’s prone to violence in defense of her honor, while Crichton has a more grounded attitude. Crichton is an ordinary guy who finds himself transported from our reality to a sci-fi genre universe. He is aware of the conceits of the genre, but recognizes that people don’t need to use violence to solve their problems. So, his solutions to the problems usually run counter to our genre expectations.

Aeryn is always a joy to watch, though I’m unsure how they’ll keep her mix of heavy intensity and slight vulnerability as the series goes on. The further you go, the more humanized a character becomes, and that will change the dynamic. This may be a good thing though, if she’s outside the peacekeeper world, she should change. She’s had this culture of war instilled in her over the years, how easy will it be for her to change? It’s a bit head on, but the end of ‘Thank God It’s Friday Again’ addresses this, with her pride at solving a problem with science, not violence.

That episode is a good example of what I like about the show. Rather than just use the standalone stories as something to fill the time, most of them have some kind of interesting philosophical underpinnings. The question behind this story is what is happiness? Is a false happiness better than real sadness? They are suspicious of what happened to D’Argo, but when you see him and Zhaan out in the fields, they seem more at peace than they are on the ship. There’s a pull between wanting them to stay there and enjoy life, and the inevitable conclusion in which the false happiness is debunked.

For once, I’d like to see a sci-fi story about a utopia that isn’t built on a lie. Where would the tension come from? Perhaps it could be from our inherent resistance to anything that appears too good to be true. At the end of this story, we find out that the characters were making weapons for the peacekeepers, drugged into submission, but wasn’t that submission on some level great? Is it better to be happy and a slave, or free and unhappy? At the end, D’Argo wonders this, and there’s no easy answer. It’s a sign that the show is working that there’s great moral ambiguity in my feelings about the planet and the world they build over the course of the episode. When Crichton asks to get the worm out, is it about regaining his freedom, or is it about his desire to feel like D’Argo and Zhaan do about the world.

The revelation that the peacekeepers are behind the colony ties the episode into the overall plot nicely, and also puts what we’ve seen in perspective. It’s easier to enslave a contented populace than a troubled one? The drugs in the food are the same as the societal distractions we have that prevent us from looking deeper into the problems in our society. Aren’t all of us complicit in the production of weapons like those being built here? Every day we continue our illegal invasion of Iraq, we’re like the people on the planet here. But, it’s hard to do anything about it, perhaps our best prerogative is just to be happy.

“Throne For a Loss” features a similarly interesting philosophical subplot with Zhaan and the soldier. I didn’t particularly like the soldier’s performance, which was all bluster, but the points made were interesting, the way Zhaan is able to fight with love, not hate. It’s very Invisibles, this idea that exposing your humanity is going to do more to deter the enemy than hurling hate at them. By injecting that seed of doubt about their mission, you can change the nature of the war. The soldier may go back to fighting at the end, using the glove to try to eradicate the ambiguities he felt on board the Moya. But, you can tell that what Zhaan said made an impact on him.

Another thing that really impresses me about the show is the Muppet work on Rygel. He’s a fully realized character, and as key to the ensemble as any of the four human actors. I love the craft that goes into him, he’s a great testament to the power of old school technology over CG. He’s more ‘real’ than even a great CG character like Gollum, there’s a tangibility that CG can’t match, and that helps you accept him more as just another character, not an effect.

“Back and Back and Back to the Future” was another really strong episode. There was a lot of trippiness with Crichton’s views of the various futures, and underlying it all was this weird sexual dynamic. The episode made you think more about the Moya as a living thing, and all these emotional beings going around in it. Going into this episode, I was thinking that D’Argo was a bad character, but we got a lot more humanity out of him here.

Crichton’s uncertain feelings about Matala were interesting as well. Too many sci-fi shows avoid sex entirely, and it’s nice to see one delving into the possibilities of interspecies coupling. It’s weird territory, but worth checking out. Even Aeryn got in on things, all of a sudden wearing a cut off shirt. It’s not particularly true to the character, as I see her at least, but she wears it well, so I’ll forgive them. Her and Crichton seem to be the central relationship on the show, and I’m sure there was a ton of shipping for them back when the show was on. They’re great together, and I’m frequently wondering why they don’t just fuck already.

So, I’m really enjoying the show. It’s not as outright great as something like The Wire or The Sopranos, but it’s hitting that Buffy spot of great character based storytelling, throw in a sprinkling of interesting philosophy and it’s looking good for the future. And, notably, most of the episodes have gotten better as they go along, I’m eager to check out the next batch.

The Wire: 'React Quotes' (5x05)

After the huge events last week, ‘React Quotes’ is another move the pieces into place episode, the kind of episode that just flies by when you’re watching on DVD, but is a little bit frustrating watching week to week. There’s a lot of good stuff here, but it’s hard to wait a week to get to the rest of the story. Plus, the story primarily focuses on comic and satirical bits, there’s not as much deep emotion here as there was last week.

The best part of the episode is the shootout at the end. People are knocking the scene a bit for its lack of realism, but it’s so much more exciting than the rest of the episode, I’ll let it slide. As I’ve said before, Omar is the incarnation of chaos, so I’ll let the rules of reality slide when it comes to the character. The scene works because we’re emotionally invested in every character in there. I don’t want Omar to die, but at the same time, it would be devastating to lose Michael. It’s strange to see Omar, who has always been the best warrior on the show, totally overmatched for once. Maybe one on one, he could take Snoop or Chris, but as a team, they’re too much for him.

The question we’re left with now is what happens next. I hope we see Omar next week, and find out exactly how he got off the balcony to survive. That bit was a little contrived, but the way the scene was constructed, there was really no choice. They should have made the window a little lower, like a second floor, to make the scene more realistic. What does Omar do now? He can’t beat Snoop and Chris on his own, does he get more allies, or does he try a different tact? The only evidence I’ve got for what happens is the car bomb we see in the opening credits, so it does look like Omar is back on his feet and taking the fight to Marlo.

Along with this, we get the loss of another old timer. That entire generation is dying out, which doesn’t bode well for the co-op next week. But what about Cutty? He’s back this week, working with Dukie. The scene where they talk about how to get off the streets gets to the core of what season four was about, the impossible odds these kids face. With direct mentoring from an adult, they can stay afloat, but left alone, they’re going to slide into drugs. That’s what happened to Dukie, when he got taken away from Prez, he had no real incentive to stay off the street.

But, it’s pretty clear Dukie isn’t meant for the street. No one respects him, and he’s not going to be able to carry a gun. He’s at a crossroads here, he can either totally commit to the streets, work to make himself tougher, or he can go off in a different direction. But, he doesn’t know how to get there. You’d think Cutty would actually have some good advice to offer, as someone who got out of the game and is doing well for himself, but I guess it’s hard for him to realize that. I think Michael should make use of Dukie’s smarts and give him some kind of administrative role within Marlo’s organization. But, I’m still holding out hope that he’ll run into Prez and get set on the right path somehow. Or, maybe him and Michael will see Namond again, and find out how much his life has changed. I’d really like to see Namond and Colvin again, hopefully they’ll turn up in the next couple of episodes.

This episode also brings us a lot of progress with the serial killer plotline. I understand what they’re trying to do with this storyline, and it does tie the police and newspaper storylines together nicely, but it doesn’t really do anything emotionally for me. It’s played mainly for laughs, and while it is funny, Scott is so consistently a devious character, there’s not much conflict. If they had him try to do good occasionally, it’d be one thing, but he just keeps making stuff up, in such an obvious manner, you’d think someone would catch up with him. Lester told McNulty to treat the fake serial killer like a real case, Scott isn’t treating anything like it’s real.

Now, maybe this is setting us up for the fall down the line, but right now, the story is kind of a one joke thing. It’s a funny joke, but it doesn’t have that much thematic depth. The point is, the press doesn’t focus on the real issues, it prefers sensationalism. I think we got that, and the story doesn’t have much more to offer. I think it actually works best as a rebuke to films like Zodiac, which show a detective becoming obsessed with a case, and treat this same material with total seriousness. Beattie punctures that entire worldview when she tells Bunk it’s not the case that’s destroying McNulty, that’s just an excuse. This is probably a more realistic look at what it’s like to pursue a serial killer, people don’t become obsessed with the case so much as they use it to fill a void in their personal lives.

Along those lines, the strongest scenes in the episode are about McNulty’s deteriorating personal life. The scenes with his wife and sons are jarring because those kids have grown up all of a sudden, and you get the sense that McNulty is just as shocked as the viewer to see them like that. His conversation with his wife conveys just how unhinged he’s become, and the scene with Beattie and Bunk drives it home. Bunk doesn’t tell her what’s going on, but he’s clearly tempted. McNulty’s been on a downward spiral the whole season, and that’s what’s really compelling, not the serial killer stuff. I feel like he invented the killer as much to justify his own drunkenness and screwing around as to help the police. He wants to get back to that place he was a few years back, going after Avon and drinking all the time, but this time, it’s hard to watch because we’ve seen who he can be, and how quickly any chance of returning to that place is slipping away.

Elsewhere, Clay Davis mounts a defense campaign so convincing, even I’m starting to believe him. He’s a master of his own version of ‘the game,’ and I’m still not sure that even with all this evidence, the States’ Attorney can take him down. I feel like Bond is going to gamble on a lesser charge to ensure he’s the one to take Davis down, and wind up letting him off the hook. But, we’ve seen a lot of old timers on the way out, Davis may have to take the hit as well. Nerese is looking more and more like the new Clay Davis, making a lot of backroom deals that’ll gain her power and leverage, as well as cutting some deals with criminals that would make Clay proud.

Increasingly, it looks like every character from the first season is being replaced by a younger counterpart. Avon replaced by Marlo, Burrell by Daniels, Colvin by Carver, and I’m guessing McNulty’s going to become the new Freamon. After this serial killer debacle, he could very well find himself defeated and in the pawn shop unit for a long time.

Well, this week moved some pieces into place, and it looks like next week’s going to be when stuff starts really going down. I won’t spoil it for people who didn’t watch the preview, but things are starting to converge.