A perfect prelude

I’ve never read On the Beach and only got around to watching the movie on TV years after its theater release. Maybe I avoided it because of the emotionally draining story, the kind my 11th-grade lit teacher called “cathartic.” I ended up liking it very much. My sole criticism was the ceaseless playing of “Waltzing Matilda” until my head was ready to explode.

I recall a stirring scene between Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck. In a fury of incomprehension, she asks what could have caused the world’s leaders to order an all-out nuclear exchange. After all, it’s the ultimate geopolitical fuck-up, a step so breathlessly stupid that lunacy seems the only possible explanation. But the movie doesn’t deal in explanations, just consequences. Its focus is on the psychic torment of those remote from the bombing as they await the arrival of radiation poisoning.

Glutton for punishment that I am, I crave an apocalyptic movie in the same vein, but one that shows how the buildup to catastrophe can be plausible and insane at the same time. We badly need such a movie. Without it, we miss an invaluable chance to behold the macabre duality of human nature, our capacity for simultaneous sanity and madness.

It happens that the world stage is at this moment supplying a story line for such a movie. It’s a perfect prelude to On the Beach. I refer to the horrific war in Ukraine. Putin is the ideal villain. He’s 69. The clock is ticking. His dream of restoring the Soviet empire on his watch is fading. Snatching a tiny Baltic state will no longer qualify as progress. He needs a big win — Ukraine. The hero? There are two, Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, and NATO, the grand Western alliance that Trump sought to castrate.

As the drama unfolds, Putin and his generals badly miscalculate the course of the invasion. They expect quick progress, perhaps even open arms and bouquets in the Donbas region. Instead they meet ferocious resistance, especially in the approaches to major cities. Meanwhile, the sanctions of over 30 countries bite hard. 450 companies withdraw from Russia. The ruble loses nearly all its value, Russian banks are severed from Western banking, and the Moscow stock market is shuttered.

Russia answers with war crimes. They attack fleeing refugees; target apartments, hospitals, and bomb shelters; drop incendiary bombs on civilians. Zelensky exhorts NATO repeatedly. “Give us 1,000 missiles a day” and “Give us a no-fly zone or you are to blame for the deaths.” He urges the USA to be the leader of world peace; it is our moral duty.

Now the war is in an agonizing stasis: thousands dead on both sides, the Ukrainian infrastructure in rubble, the Russian economy shattered. But even stasis is unstable. The Ukrainian forces can hold the line or even strengthen with infusions from Poland, and time is on their side. In Russia, anger is growing as the economic blight advances, and the drip drip drip of truth will eventually pierce the propaganda.

Putin and his generals know this. They must have capitulation before the walls fall in, but how do they get it? All their options are bad. They could attack with biological or chemical weapons, but that would cause NATO to enter the fight in Ukraine. They could attack the supply lines propping up Ukraine, but that again would cause NATO to escalate. Worst of all, they could deploy tactical nuclear weapons. That would likely cause NATO to take their attack to Russia. Ultimately, any effort to press for capitulation leads to a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia … and Ava Gardner’s question is answered.

I expect the Russian military will take out their trash rather than choose any of the catastrophic options. That assumes they aren’t too cowed to take the risk. The fate of humankind could rest on this assumption.

Bafflement

I don’t get it. So many people are expressing their disgust with social media — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Google, YouTube, and the like. And generally they are people I hold in high regard. True, these Internet giants have their faults. The most grievous one is collecting huge amounts of data about us and using it to manipulate us, or selling it to third parties who want to do the same. But they also do us a lot of good. We can use them to connect with long-lost friends and relatives, re-educate ourselves, awaken happy memories, find new hobbies, discover travel destinations, do scholastic research, and enrich ourselves with contacts and entertainments that would have otherwise eluded us. Surely the downside can cast no more than a small shadow on the upside.

A week ago, Mel, my dear niece, proposed to put me straight. She vigorously recommended a Netflix documentary called The Social Dilemma. Having watched it, I can see how it would cause anyone with an unguarded mind to run screaming from their communication devices. The film’s thesis is that we are not only manipulated by collected data, we are made addicts to social media, which then collect even more data about us, which leads to greater addiction and more efficient manipulation.

Our craving for social interaction is such that we are helpless to resist the puppeteers who dictate our opinions and buying habits. Of course, all our personalities are not alike, so our “masters” have to profile us differently. They discover what differentiates us and use feedback to reinforce our opinions and habits. Notice, for example, that as you use Facebook and YouTube, you get more of whatever you’ve been looking at. The film blames this practice for sharpening the divisions in our society.

The film’s producers know all about manipulation. They are expert manipulators in their own right. They know how to turn a phrase that pushes our buttons. Social media give us digital pacifiers. Their M.O. is the same as selling cereal to kids on Saturday morning. The computer algorithms that control us are nothing less than artificial intelligence, and its mastery has become so powerful that we’ve almost lost control of it. This AI is overpowering human nature. It creates markets that trade on human futures. Yikes, we’ve become mind slaves without realizing it!

To make their point, they use dramatizations. We see a troubled mother collecting her family’s smart phones and putting them in a lockable jar. One of her daughters promptly goes nuts. She can’t open the jar, so she smashes it and runs off with her phone. In her bedroom, she doctors selfies and posts them. The comments from friends flatter her — all but one that wisecracks about her ears. She goes into a tailspin and cries.

Her brother also fares badly. He pledges to go without his phone for a week, not knowing that a soulless computer system, portrayed by a trio of actors, has been controlling his life. They — the system — have been “observing” him in real time. (Stay with me.) They had already set him up with an attractive girl by manipulating their message traffic. Now he’s not on their radar. Untenable — they have to get him back. So they send a picture of another girl, presumably an old flame, with a new boyfriend. He hears his phone buzz, sees the picture, and cracks. The entire episode is preposterous, but it doesn’t stop there. Later this trio manipulates him into going to a rally of political haters and thugs. He’s only curious, but he’s mistakenly arrested! For users of social media, everything ends badly.

There’s no missing the message: this family of good people are reduced to pawns, and in that reduction, they suffer. But of course, they are ourselves. We are being reduced, and we are suffering.

The film isn’t showing us a “social dilemma.” We’re seeing a human catastrophe. If true, canceling our social media memberships would be only a pitiful gesture. Immolating ourselves at Facebook’s Menlo Park campus would be more proportionate. But please don’t set yourselves on fire, because in truth there is no catastrophe. “Dilemma” is the appropriate word after all. It’s just that the film’s producers got swept up in a tempest of hyperbole.

When they started making the film, they were far more clear-headed. In fact, even before a word of dialog is spoken, a quotation from Sophocles appears in large letters: Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse. This is profoundly true.

Consider what happened after Rome made Christianity the official religion of the empire. Minds snapped shut all over Europe. What happened when the printing press was invented? Literacy leaped, Christianity fractured, religious conflict exploded. How about the Age of Discovery? Immense European wealth, colonialism, slavery. And when capitalism was invented? The rise of the middle class, the rise of greed, exploitation. Then the Enlightenment came along. Social contracts, bloody revolution, social instability. What of the Industrial Revolution? Great productivity, crowded cities, poverty, slums, pollution, disease. The double-edged upheavals go on and on. Nighttime illumination, the internal combustion engine, rocketry, television, nuclear power, miniaturized circuitry, computer networks, artificial intelligence, gene editing.

Vast changes in the lives of mortals is an old story. They always bring disruption, suffering, and the imperative to adapt. In the 19th century, this phenomenon became uglier than ever. The gaps between convulsions began to narrow. Today, something new and immense is thrown at us in less time than it takes for a new generation to mature. Now on our plates are climate change, nuclear annihilation, worldwide disease, a re-awakening of nationalism, and the replacement of all human labor by machine labor.

These are existential threats, and existential threats are necessarily global threats. No single nation, not even a world power, can disarm them. They require a level of human cooperation that doesn’t exist today. That is a mega-curse.

What of the collection and sale of personal data? What of cyberbullying and cyber-manipulation? They can be controlled by regulation, currently a dirty word in America. All we need is legislation that empowers the FCC to regulate social media. It’s a matter of political will.

Suspension of disbelief

No turn of mind is more common or natural than the suspension of disbelief. It’s the sine qua non of childish play, the foundation of almost all religion, and the engine that sustains fables, folklore, and a fascination with the supernatural.

As Aristotle observed, a suspension of disbelief is fundamental to the theater, and by extension, to fiction in any medium. Aristotle believed that without it, catharsis, an emotional release that purifies the soul, was not possible. He might have gone further and pointed out that it can induce the tranference of intensely gratifying feelings, like achievement, triumph, transcendence, and aggrandizement. 

How hard is it to suspend disbelief? Nothing to it if you’re a small child. Almost anything might be true. If adults tell you that we’re all watched by an eye in the sky, you believe it. There is scarcely a disbelief to suspend. It can be pretty unsettling, but at least you know that Jesus loves you and Santa’s coming back.

Progress toward an informed adult mind is iffy. The ignorance of childhood can be sustained and even cultivated. When this happens, disbelief can be suspended quite easily. People can come to live in a so-called “bubble of unreality,” where preposterous ideas hold sway.

Those who escape the suppression of critical thinking are twice blessed. They can relish a spectrum of nuanced ideas that vastly supersedes anything myth can concoct, yet they can be lulled into unreality, if that unreality is masterfully woven. Yes, I’m speaking of art.

Please don’t assume that I’m peddling an avant-garde kind of art that delights only the pretentious. I’m thinking of Swift, Dickens, Twain, Doyle, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Nabokov, Tolkien, and Vonnegut. They are great spellbinders. They can make you believe that a sea captain’s fantastic tales hold a mirror up to mankind; an unnamed orphan can fall in with a criminal lot, suffer misfortunes, and yet find a loving home; two runaways, a boy and a slave, have something to teach us about love and commitment; a detective of unexampled brilliance doesn’t know the Earth revolves around the sun; a young ex-bootlegger with a superficial personality and a childish crush can qualify as “Great”; the migration of an impoverished, uneducated family of Okies can have deep social meaning; a child molester can be worthy of our compassion; the fate of the world hangs on the existence of a magic ring; all the world’s water can instantly turn to ice and doom life everywhere.

These are examples of art in print, but recall the older art form, drama. Today, the predominant stages for drama are movies and television. In these media, as in print, there are both cloddish attempts to suspend our disbelief and masterful ones. One of my favorites on the big screen is a story about a rebellious nonconformist who is moved from a prison farm to a mental institution. The patients there undergo a regimen that reinforces their neuroses, which provokes the free-spirited newcomer into a disastrous war of wills with the ward nurse.

On television, many series have drawn me in. The most memorable is a masterpiece about a high school chemistry teacher who’s a classic underachiever. He earns a modest income. Some of his students scorn him. He’s a scientific genius with former friends who have grown rich, but he must take a humiliating second job. To top it off, he’s diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He’s got one item on his bucket-list: self-respect. Since he never earned it as a respectable citizen, he decides to earn it as a criminal. Thus begins a path that takes him from “Mr. Chips to Scarface,” as one critic put it.

An interesting test of art versus incredulity, a new TV series, is coming this winter. Its premise is that a retired Star Fleet captain, nearing the age of decrepitude, can be impelled by the pleas of a young woman to seek new adventures in deep space. The speculation about the show is already getting clamorous. You can get a taste of it by clicking here.

I’ve watched this video and formed an opinion about the show’s chances for success. Please write a comment and let me know what you think.

Horcruxes

Without a doubt, a “horcrux” is a nasty thing. As any Harry Potter enthusiast knows, a horcrux is a piece of the soul that resides in an external object, possibly in another person. We can have many of them and, so long as one survives, we cannot die. The nasty part is we have to commit murder to create one. An ugly bargain, to be sure, and only an evil person—think Voldemort—would be willing to accept it.

The concept of horcruxes, as offered by J. K. Rowling, can become useful to us if we stipulate a few modifications. What if we’re not talking about slivers of our “soul”—that’s too obscure for me—but about “compartments” in our identity. And what if we don’t have to kill to make them? In fact, what if we don’t have to do much of anything? Say they just spring into existence as we grow and widen our contact with people. No, I’m not suggesting that one might invade our being while we’re sitting next to a stranger on a bus. What I have in mind is repeated exposure to certain people, like parents, grandparents, and siblings—to anyone who propinquity throws in our path, like little Bobby down the street or our 8th-grade history teacher.

Because children are defenseless, horcruxes, both wounding and benevolent, take root easily. Think of young David Copperfield, who internalizes the cruel presence of Mr. Murdstone but also the loving presence of Peggotty. As David grows, Dickens makes him an exemplar of virtue, and this is where the story departs from reality. Like it or not, David will always have a piece of Murdstone buried in him. At an unforeseeable time, somehow, it will appear in a flash of darkness. Hopefully, Peggotty’s gentle affection will express itself more often.

As we approach adolescence, something different happens. Our sense of what’s pleasing and what isn’t, moderated by the horcruxes already settled in, gives us more control over whom we will confide in, love, and avoid. And so it goes throughout adulthood: we take more and more care about whom we lease mind-space to. Because this process is, as I see it, universal, there is reciprocity with those we hold dear: a part of them inhabits us, and a part of us inhabits them. Moreover, the compartments of our identities also find a home in everyone we are close to—our companions, our children, our friends, and, to a diminishing degree, their friends and children. In this way, we are interlaced with one another through generations.

Advances in medicine may give our progeny much longer lives, but immortality will forever remain a fantasy. The best we can do is find a home in the minds we touch.

The future of love and sex

Intelligent robots have had a place in our imagination for generations. Remember Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still and Robbie the Robot from Lost in Space? Robbie was a benevolent machine, and Gort would hurt no one unless Klaatu told him to. Then we made an anthropomorphic leap, to androids. In Sleeper, we’re introduced to android servants, and in Star Wars, we meet C3PO, the fretful android translator. They are friendly, and funny. But in Blade Runner and The Terminator, we see their opposites, killer androids. Both helpful and dangerous androids are still with us, and in recent years a third type has emerged: androids as objects of love and sex.

In A. I. Artificial Intelligence, Henry and Monica Swinton’s young son, Martin, is near death in a cryo-chamber. One day Henry, who works at a science institute, surprises Monica by bringing home David, an android boy. Monica overcomes her ambivalent feelings and bonds with David, mainly because he’s so realistic and adorable. It’s genuine maternal love.

Unexpectedly, Martin awakens from his coma and is restored to the Swintons. He doesn’t like his android sibling and sabotages David’s relationship with his parents by making him out to be dangerous. In a wrenching scene, Monica abandons David in the woods to fend for himself. That’s when the main story—David’s attempts to reconnect with his mother—begins.

Early in his wanderings, David meets Gigolo Joe, a “love android,” a machine that specializes in seducing and gratifying a flesh and blood human. Jude Law plays the role of seducer brilliantly. His sexuality overwhelms Patricia, a client. I believe this is the first time a movie showed a human desiring an android.

Last year, Uncanny portrayed a human-android sexual relationship from meeting to consummation. The plot is based on a deception. Joy, a reporter with a scientific bent, visits a computing company to interview David, a reclusive genius whose specialty is building androids with an uncanny resemblance to humans. He introduces Joy to his latest creation, Adam, ostensibly an android. To all appearances, Adam is human. He displays a full range of emotions.

Marveling at David’s genius, Joy warms to his kind attentions. At the end of her assignment, they have sex. When Adam finds out, he flies into a rage and wrestles David to the ground. David breaks free and runs away, with Joy close behind. But it’s no good. Something in David has broken and he appears to die. In the next scene, we see Adam operating on David. It becomes clear that Adam is the real David, and the broken body is that of an android: Joy has unwittingly had sex with a machine. In the final scene, we see Joy looking at the readout of a pregnancy-test wand. The look of shock on her face tells us what she’s learned.

But these stories are just fantasy, right? Well, yes, for now. For human-android relationships to become a reality, three conditions must be met. First, androids have to become lifelike and anatomically complete, to our eyes and to our touch. Second, they have to seem intelligent. I think the baseline should be the ability to make the case for Donald Trump as our next president. (Wait… we’ve already seen androids do that.) Third, in the human brain, something has to ignite. It may be the stirring of affection, or perhaps just plain lust.

Where are we with the first condition? Consider today’s dolls, some of which have an almost frightening realism. A good example is Exhibit A, the Amazing Amanda doll, a sellout on Amazon. She comes with simplistic A.I., changes her facial expression, and plays with her toys.

Exhibit B is the picture at the left. I imagine that in a decade or two, the realism will be breathtaking (or perhaps I should say, more breathtaking). Our expertise with faces is already far along. Take a look at Sophia.

To evaluate the second condition, perceived intelligence, think of Siri, Cortana, and Alexa, the high-tech assistants we have now. They do a poor job of sustaining a real conversation, but they’ve been around for only a short time. Give them a decade or two and imagine what they’ll grow into.

Last, condition three: arousal. Turns out there’s a study on the subject, conducted by Stanford researchers. They found that touching a robot in “off-limits” places increased skin conductance, a sign of arousal. The participants also showed signs of discomfort when touching these places. Neither of these reactions was present when they touched other parts of the robot.

That’s all well and good, but I don’t think research is necessary. Mere awareness of everyday human activity tells us that humans can be aroused by androids. I recently had a conversation with a stranger in a doctor’s waiting room on this subject. His opinion: “A man will copulate with anything, even a knothole.”

I can hear a female voice saying, “Well sure, that’s men for you, but women are much less sexually perverse.” I agree, but not much less, just less. A study at Tufts University asked for the opinions of 100 men and women on the subject of “robot sex.” The researchers used a 7-point scale, with 7 meaning Most Appropriate. On the question of whether a realistic appearance mattered, men had an average score of 6.5; women, 5.2. One of the greatest disparities in scores came from a question about the appropriateness of sex robots resembling celebrities. My guess is that women particularly dislike the idea of a man possessing a “trophy robot.”

The Tufts study opens a door on what a world of sex androids (that is, anthropomorphic robots) might be like. Should they be used to treat perverts? As sex therapists in general? To replace a deceased spouse? As an alternative to a human partner? To complete a menage a trois? The mind reels at the possibilities. Mr. Jones, besides bedding Mrs. Jones, could have fun with the android nanny and maid. For Mrs. Jones’s part, she could share her bed with the android butler and gardener. A menage a six!

What’s really compelling about sex androids is that they’d be completely compliant with human wishes, and could be ordered according to any specifications. I’d like a Christina Hendricks look-alike who plays chess like a demon and darts sly glances across the board. Needless to say, no worries about a messy divorce, community property, or alimony. If Christina and I didn’t hit it off, I could send her back to the lab for reprogramming, trade her in on another model, sell her on eBay, whatever. The option of an attractive, no-risk companion would certainly be popular and, as a bonus, its popularity would probably cause the growth of the world’s population to come to an abrupt halt.

What if Christina and I are superbly compatible? Would I come to “love” her? Love has always been a slippery concept, and it will become even more slippery in the future. Surely I would love her as much as one loves a sports car or a computer with a sleek, intuitive interface. Very likely I’d love her as much as a cherished pet. It’s hard to conjecture beyond that. Our progeny will know when she and her like come along.

Of course, at the same time the Christinas and Gigolo Joes are being perfected, the first transhumans will appear. They’ll be genetically superior and equipped with cybernetic upgrades. One of these will be telepathy and brain-computer interfacing. So a kind of mind-meld between humans and androids will be possible. I can’t begin to imagine what the orgasms of the future will be like. Nor can I say with any confidence what civilization will be like when transhumans and androids intersect. To try would be nothing but rank speculation.

Helplessness

Helplessness is the defining condition of all life. It is especially so for human beings. We anticipate aging and death; we understand the concept of fate. Women know what it means to be born into a culture that denigrates their sex. People of color know what it means to live among racists. The poor know that their lives will be a battle with hunger, squalor, and shame. We all can be brought low or perish because of the corrupt games of the powerful or the capriciousness of warmongers. And, of course, disease and natural catastrophes can destroy our innocent lives.

We cry out for a defense against our helplessness, desperate for protection and some form of consolation. Is it any wonder then that we have invented religion? We have given ourselves not only a Protector and Punisher, but a conviction that death is not final. Unfortunately, there are many versions of this fiction, and the differences often provoke violence. It’s a great irony that this historical defense against helplessness only accentuates it.

Over the millennia, though, we’ve made other inroads against helplessness. We invented farming, which made starvation less likely. We invented medicine, which gave us better health and palliatives, and improved the odds against an early death. We invented the scientific method, which helped us to understand the physical world and realize that the unequal treatment of races and sexes is cruel and ignorant. We invented democracy, a political experiment that tries to avoid investing power in tyrants and oligarchs. We invented diplomacy so that nations can cooperate and coexist peacefully.

It occurs to me that the virtues of knowledge, resourcefulness, and cooperation offer a more plausible defense against helplessness than the pillars of the Christian religion: faith, hope, and charity. Knowledge is the opposite of faith. With knowledge, you can anchor your convictions in bedrock. Faith, on the other hand, is not only ignorance, but proud ignorance. Its roots are weak. Now and again, if you’re capable of honest reflection, insidious doubt creeps in, and then momentary despair, until your ego defenses rally.

Resourcefulness is the opposite of hope. It’s active engagement with a problem, in which you use knowledge and reason to find a solution. Hope, on the other hand, is passive. You give the burden of finding a solution to God, very likely through prayer. And having done so, is there a genuine expectation that your prayer will be answered? So many aren’t, and so you wait for the realization that God, for unknowable reasons, will not smile on you.

As 1 Corinthians says, charity is the greatest of the three Christian virtues. Cooperation is not the opposite of charity; it’s a tangential concept. Cooperation, to be effective, means walking in another person’s shoes, if only briefly. The word for this act is empathy, and empathy is at the heart of all charity. I think of cooperation as a broader idea than charity.

These contrasts bring a movie to mind—The Martian. On the surface, it seems to be no more than a high-tech suspense story, but I think of it as a modern-day parable. It skillfully dramatizes the virtues of knowledge, resourcefulness, and cooperation. A team of astronauts assumes that one of their party has died in a Martian dust storm. They reluctantly leave the planet, and then we learn their colleague has survived. He lives by his wits, but without a continual source of food, his days are numbered. How to rescue him? He struggles with helplessness, as do NASA and his Earth-bound comrades. As this ordeal plays out, not once do any of the characters call on God for help. It’s all knowledge, resourcefulness, and cooperation (extraordinary teamwork and an assist from the Chinese). In the climactic rescue attempt, we see scenes of people all over the globe waiting for news, in agonizing moments of empathy. The attempt succeeds, everyone rejoices, and the audience learns a lesson about values. Or so I hope.

In the 21st century, we have new reasons to feel helpless.  A warming climate threatens to make the planet uninhabitable. There are no adequate restraints on the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Biological and robotic innovations could sweep away governments and economies, and redefine our species. We have only one chance to beat back these nightmares—a widespread, fundamental shift in our values.

Crime and punishment

Most evenings, Linda and I are in the family room, bathed in the light of the TV. I may be watching or doing something on my laptop, or both. After 9:00, Linda often has a detective story on. It might feature a police or private detective, or an amateur sleuth. In any case, it’s usually a dreary bore. I sit and endure the punishment, and give a little more attention to my computer. Now and then, the plot and characters are so awful I have to leave the room.

Let me be specific about what I don’t like. For a start, anything attributed to Agatha Christie, meaning the adventures of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. They’re all period pieces, more about dress and manners than engaging dialogue and dramatic tension. The plots are standard Christie fare: confused action, several potential villains, and a climactic display of brilliant insight. But it doesn’t take much exposure to these stories before you realize that the mystery is a put-up job. You were never meant to share in the pleasure of solving it; details are deliberately obscured or omitted to make the Poirot/Marple solution appear all the more stunning. The shows are saved from ruin only by the acting of the principals. David Suchet plays Poirot. He does it so well that you can’t imagine anyone else in the role. There are three Marples, and Geraldine McEwan, now deceased, is by far the best. Look at her face and you know that nothing gets by this old broad. Without a strong leading character actor, no detective drama can succeed.

That brings me to Murder, She Wrote. Thank goodness the reruns have all but disappeared! Jessica Fletcher is Miss Marple reborn. Like Marple, she is personable, gregarious, and has no sexual thoughts. More important, she shares Marple’s curse: everywhere she goes, murder happens. How improbable. How convenient.

The concept of the inquisitive amateur stumbling onto one murder after another reached its nadir in 2003, when Rosemary & Thyme premiered in Britain. The show features a crime-solving duo—two contract gardeners of all things!—who overhear suspicious tidbits while on the job and dig up (literally) some odd stuff. Remarkably, this embarrassment played for three years and was then picked up by PBS for American consumption—a terrible example of my membership dollars at work. (I’d like to add Father Brown to this list of amateurs, but I can’t. The premise is so preposterous I can’t make myself watch it.)

For the most part, PBS has been uncritical in its detective offerings. Anything British is shown reflexively. The parade of dull-as-paint police inspectors is long: Inspector Adam Dalgliesh, Inspector Alan Banks (DCI Banks), Inspector John Barnaby (Midsomer Murders), Inspector Vera Stanhope (Vera). The only exception to this parade of bores is Inspector Endeavour Morse, a man who seems equipped to lecture on literature or music at Oxford. But in the end, his cases and antagonists are just as unmemorable as those of his fictional colleagues.

Do I reject all the detective dramas currently on TV? Almost. Only these rise above mediocrity:

• Foyle’s War. Self-contained stories featuring Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle, who goes after subversives, war profiteers, and bureaucratic obstructionists in Britain, during World War II and its aftermath. Michael Kitchen plays the quietly tenacious Foyle. The plots get feeble at times, but if you stick with the show, there are rewards enough.

• Case Histories. The cases of private detective Jackson Brodie, a tortured soul with a messy personal life and a nearly insolvent agency in Edinburgh. He gets the crap kicked out of him in nearly every episode but still manages to work through the puzzles that come his way. Jason Isaacs, who takes the leading role, is surprisingly masculine without the long blond wig from his Harry Potter days.

• Wallander. Stories based on the character Kurt Wallander, a police inspector in a small Swedish town. Played by Kenneth Branagh, he too is tortured, but in this case by existential angst. His distinguishing personality trait is his empathy for the victim, which becomes the driving force of the investigation.

• Elementary. A clever extrapolation of Sherlock Holmes to New York City in the 21st century. I’m not happy with the Watson character, who has become a confused Asian woman (Lucy Liu). Three seasons in, and she can’t seem to figure out what to do with her life or what her relationship to Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) is. Still, most of the plots are clever, much more clever than the standard BBC fare.

With so many detective shows on the air, most with accomplished actors in the main roles, you might be fooled into thinking that this is the Golden Age of the genre. Wrong. The Golden Age was in the last millennium. Back then, there were two shows that have not since been surpassed. Before I name them, I first want to persuade you that we’re talking about two genres, not one. A show featuring a private investigator (PI) is really a different animal from one featuring a police officer (PO).

A PI is typically a loner who’s down to his last nickel. Major crimes rarely come his way. He’s more likely to photograph a cheating spouse than to find a dead body. He has no staff, no tactical backup, no threat of arrest, no crime lab, no computer databases. What he does have are street smarts, disreputable friends, police contacts, and a gift for making his own breaks. In other words, he’s very resourceful, and perhaps a charming rogue as well. Why does he live a marginal existence? Well, he probably has a disturbing backstory. Maybe he was once a cop who didn’t fit the mold, or perhaps an ex-con. The PO, on the other hand, is a respectable citizen who’s got investigative resources up the wazoo. He’s a pillar of the force with a brilliant career. When he wants to talk to you, you can’t tell him to beat it, and he can take you “downtown for questioning.” He sees a lot of dead bodies and is often up against murderers who are as smart as he is, almost. His forte is connecting the dots and solving the unsolvable case.

The best PI show debuted in 1974. It’s The Rockford Files, starring the handsome and engaging James Garner as Jim Rockford. Garner, the supporting cast, and the writers pushed the genre to its limits. There is crime, sure, and the bad guys get their comeuppance, but that’s overshadowed by the relationships between the characters, the portrait of a bumbling justice system, everyday venality, wry humor, and the struggle to get on with life. The show demonstrates that if you want to tell a PI story, you have a broad canvas to work with.

The best PO show debuted in 1968. It’s Columbo, starring the memorable Peter Falk. It was so popular that it survived until 2003, when the last new episode aired. The show was groundbreaking: in every episode I can recall, we know who the murderer is in the first 10 minutes, often in the first 3 minutes. The suspense lies entirely in watching homicide detective Columbo peel away the layers of a “perfect crime” the way one peels away the layers of an onion. Not only do we get a protagonist whose brilliance is repeatedly on display, we get an antagonist who has planned a baffling murder and a rock-solid alibi. Every episode has its own Professor Moriarty! It’s Grand Master chess. Throw in superb acting and continual dramatic tension, and you’ve got excellence on the small screen.

Both Rockford and Columbo are alive and well on YouTube. So the next time your spouse decides to put on a second-rate PBS whodunit, don’t despair. Find your laptop and some headphones. You can rescue the evening!

Will’s death

No, this is not a meditation on the death of Will Shakespeare. Nothing that highbrow. This is a meditation on the death of Will Gardner, who isn’t even a real person. He is, or was, a dashing bachelor and prominent lawyer in the acclaimed TV series “The Good Wife.” As you know if you’re a faithful viewer—and why wouldn’t you be?—Will was a named partner of the firm Lockhart/Gardner and the ex-lover of the uber-gorgeous Alicia Florrick, the lead character. He was defending a young man accused of murdering a co-ed when the young man flipped out, grabbed the gun of a nearby cop, and shot up the courtroom, fatally wounding Will. It was a shocker.

The show was well into its fifth season, and year by year one question had become ever more pressing: Will Alicia end up with Will or with her philandering but reformed (maybe) husband?
This question was the show’s center of gravity. Killing off one of the two men in Alicia’s life won’t resolve it. A proper dramatic resolution requires a plot in which one man or the other proves his worth beyond doubt. Alicia’s heart cannot be won by default. And yet the plot took a wrong turn. Why? As it turns out, it couldn’t have been helped. Josh Charles, the actor who played Will Gardner, had a 5-year contract. He may have been tired of the role. He may have other, more exciting career opportunities. Or he may have been greedy for a big wad of money he couldn’t get. We don’t know why he cashed in his chips. The writers had to either write him out—death is the neatest way—or replace him, which would never fly. So, should we blame Mr. Charles for diminishing an exemplary TV show and letting its fans down? Is he the bad guy here? No, he’s in the clear. The show’s producers are at fault. Bear with me, and I’ll try to explain why by using the movie industry as a model.

When someone has an idea for a comedic or dramatic movie, she develops it much as a novelist develops a literary conception. Typically, there’s a narrow group of well-defined characters with one or more protagonists among them, and there’s some central dilemma—a problem or conflict—to be overcome. As the protagonist engages with the dilemma, tension grows until a crisis arises. When the crisis is confronted, an unwinding occurs, the tension is resolved, and the movie, like the novel, concludes. You often hear this progression referred to as the “arc” of the story. This process rarely occurs in the TV industry, however. A comedic or dramatic idea might have an arc on the storyboard and when the pilot is shot, but if it is actually broadcast and gains popularity, the producers typically abandon the initial vision. They choose, rather, to crank out a storyline that meanders until the ratings begin to fail. They betray their art to use the show’s popularity as a money mill.

Back to “The Good Wife”… All the principal actors presumably had five-year contracts. This means that the producers should have told the writers, “The story will play out over five seasons. Shape it accordingly.” Indeed, they may have said something much like this, but the show succeeded too well. The network executives saw it could hold its audience for more than five seasons, and its arc, its dramatic trajectory, went pfft! This put the actors in a bind. How long would they be tied to the show? Would they have to forgo opportunities for growth in their careers? Would they be typecast and deprived of roles that challenge their breadth as actors? It seems that Josh Charles, the actor who played Will Gardner, thought so. Hence Will had to die.

It’s shocking how often “abandoned trajectory” occurs—so often that we usually don’t even realize that it’s happened. Here’s a list of well-known TV shows and my thoughts on whether they’ve been blighted by this phenomenon:

• “Downton Abbey” — This series took a hit very much like the one in “The Good Wife.” Instead of Will getting shot it was Matthew being run off the road. He was supposed to return home to see his wife and newborn son, but Dan Stevens, who played Matthew, had a three-year contract, and the show was too successful to stop at three years. So the centerpiece of the show, the hot and cold Matthew-and-Mary love story, was terminated. Now we have soap opera extensions. Did Bates murder his wife’s rapist? Is the father of Lady Edith’s child still alive? Which suitor, if any, will win Mary’s hand? Will Lady Rose ever get some sense into her silly head? Sad.

• “Dexter” — He was the serial killer who touched our hearts. Could he escape detection, master his dark side, and live an ordinary life? Or would he simply self-destruct? After three incredible seasons, the timing was right for a blockbuster finish in the next season. What happened? The producers killed off Rita, his wife of one year, so that he could wander through a homicidal jungle for five more seasons! They reduced a near masterpiece to an absurdity.

• “House” — The story of a genius and asshole, rolled into one. He’s anti-social, like Cool Hand Luke and, in a way, that makes him strangely lovable. Can he conquer his inner demons and become a mensch? That’s the central question. The producers missed a chance for an artistic closure when House makes an enemy of a police detective who retaliates by outing him as a Vicodin addict. At this climactic moment (Season 3), the producers chose the wrong door. They have him fire his staff—at least they weren’t killed en masse—and begin new adventures with a new team. They missed another chance at the end of Season 5 when they sent him to the Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital. He should have emerged from therapy with new insights about himself. Instead, they set him on a twisted path back to medical practice. It mercifully ends after eight seasons.

• “Cheers” — Yes, comedies can have arcs, too. The arc for this hilarious series might be labeled “ex-ballplayer tries to make it with airhead intellectual.” The romantic tension could never be resolved because the show was so popular. After five years, Shelley Long, who played Diane Chambers, had enough of “doing the same episode over and over again.” The producers contrived a way to keep the show going for six more years without her. It was still funny, but not nearly as good as the Sam and Diane follies. It’s interesting that “Frazier,” a sitcom that was spun off from “Cheers,” had a similar problem. Frazier, who is alternately a schlemiel and a schlimazel, is incapable of having a stable relationship with a woman. His brother Niles, on the other hand, has a mad crush on Daphne, Frazier’s live-in housekeeper, and can’t seem to reveal his love to her. At times the show grew tedious and sagged, but some of the best comedy writing in TV history kept it afloat for eleven seasons.

• “Mad Men” — For the first two seasons of this show, I thought I knew where it was going. It would be the story of a deeply conflicted man, Don Draper, with a double secret: one, that he isn’t who he pretends to be; two, that he can’t keep his zipper up. The fact that he is an ad executive is perfect—he tells clever lies for a living! But in Season 3, I realized I was in for a long haul. Don’s wife learns his secrets and sets out to divorce him. At work, he’s accused of faking his identity, and the accusation falls flat—he’s great at his work and, true or false, the accusation doesn’t matter. The firm is then swallowed by a bigger firm in Britain, and it’s a new day for everybody. At this point I knew I was watching a high-class soap opera. The dialogue rang true. The acting was convincing. The mores and prejudices of the 60’s were portrayed perfectly. The set design, costuming, and historical authenticity were flawless. But… the story lost its grip on me. In one way or another, every character was appalling and deserved to rot in hell. We’re now on the cusp of the seventh and final season, and I’m certain that no human truth will emerge from the interplay of the characters. If it were up to me to write the final scene, I’d put them all in a big room with lots of beds, and cigarettes and booze and knives on the nightstands. Then I’d show the outside of the door, play the loud click of it locking, and run the credits.

• “The Sopranos” — I hear you saying, “It follows, then, that you hated ‘The Sopranos.’ No one but scum in that series, too.” Not so. There are plenty of innocent victims: Carmela, most of the wives, the Soprano children, Artie, and Tony’s discarded girlfriends. Even Dr. Melfi is a victim. In fact, victimization is the centerpiece of the series. We see that when the id rules everything, it creates victims everywhere. Carmela has a blighted life; Tony’s extravagant gifts can’t give meaning to it. Tony Jr. can’t engage with the real world. Meadow can, but no man will stay with her; she bears the Mark of Cain. The brutality of the mob is like a merciless gravitational field. It bends lives out of shape and distorts relationships. Ironically, it has that effect on the mobsters themselves. They can never trust each other, which is why trust is prized over everything else. And the penalty for breaking trust is death. The question that hovers over the drama is, When will the warped lives of the principal characters implode? The show’s producers sustain this question brilliantly over six seasons.

• “Breaking Bad” — As close to a perfect drama as we’ll ever see on television. The conception was “turning Mr. Chips into Scarface,” and that is exactly the arc the writers accomplished over the six-season run. Walter White begins as a brilliant, underachieving, often humiliated chemistry teacher, and after many a near-fatal escape, evolves into a ruthless meth kingpin. His humanity all but vanishes in the process, as does his marriage and his wife’s will to live. To his son, his in-laws, his neighbors, and his car wash customers, he’s plain old Walt, but the illusion has to collapse, of course. How it will happen and at what price are the questions that compel the audience to watch. The entire arc of the story is superb.

• “House of Cards” — We’re two seasons into this addictive drama. Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) is president, and his wife, the stone-hearted Claire Underwood (Robin Wright), is at his side. The acting, the writing, the plotting are as good as anyone could ask for. If the show continues on this path of excellence, we can expect Frank to have some tough sledding in Season 3, possibly due to Rachel, the ex-prostitute who knows too much. In fact, Frank’s presidency should end in Season 3, along with the show. Possibly, though, the executives at Netflix will resist this idea. If so, I offer these show extensions for their consideration… Season 3: President Underwood calls for a summit with Putin, threatens to sabotage his oil fields, and negotiates the return of Crimea to Ukraine. Season 4: President Underwood orders the NSA to infect all Chinese computers with a virus that makes it impossible to block websites or censor content on the Internet. Season 5: President Underwood forces an appropriation through Congress to add his likeness to Mount Rushmore.

I’d be pleased if the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the people who hand out primetime Emmys, would make a small change to their award procedures. Discontinue the yearly award for “Outstanding Drama Series.” Instead, wait till a series ends, and if it’s then judged to be outstanding, present the award. As Yogi Berra famously said, “It’s not over till it’s over.”

 

Ten childhood movies

Starting early in the last century, children’s minds began to be imprinted differently from those of children born earlier. The children that came before got their notions of love, friendship, joy, sorrow, courage, fear, and so on from family members, from friends and neighbors, and from the lore of their culture. Those born later also got them from these sources, but more and more they got them from the movies. The images that shone forth from the silver screen were far more compelling than watching mom do the laundry or dad change a flat. The actors were photogenic people in spellbinding scenes shown in darkness, as if in the recesses of the mind. And this is the movies still, amped up by computer graphics and teams of creative specialists. If somehow the memories locked in our neurons could be displayed on a computer monitor, is there any doubt that we’d see a great deal of cinema?

The movies that had a share in my upbringing were, of course, much less sophisticated than today’s fare. They were on a smaller screen—some on a drive-in screen. The sound was mediocre and at times tinny, and the special effects were amateurish. But no matter. The big screen and my credulity teamed up to make movies real and convincing. Here are ten of the most memorable, seen between the ages of 5 and 15:

• The first movie I ever saw was The Thief of Bagdad. (That’s the Hollywood spelling of Baghdad.) I didn’t even know what a movie was. The two lovers are forgettable actors whom I never saw again. The teenage “thief”—the real hero—is Abu, played by Sabu. There’s a lot of moral ambivalence here: it’s OK to steal if you’re living by your wits, and you have to live by your wits if you’re poor and oppressed. It’s all the harder to reconcile because Abu is so damn likable. He’s funny, resourceful, and a dead shot with a bow and arrow. At the end he knocks off the evil wizard, Jaffar, played superbly by Conrad Veidt, who would later play the equally evil Major Strasser in Casablanca. I’ll never forget how Jaffar’s flying horse, a machine, fell to pieces in midair. I left the theater wondering if anything could really die that way.

• The genie in The Thief of Bagdad, a jolly giant, didn’t frighten me. A year later, I learned what terror was when I saw The Wizard of Oz. How appalling when Miss Gulch turns into the Wicked Witch of the East and her bicycle becomes a broomstick! How disturbing to learn she has a sister, one who would keep me in dread for the rest of the movie. The most terrifying scene is her sudden appearance in a large crystal ball, with a close-up of her hideous green face! I had no idea people could be so ugly. Somehow I’d gotten through 6 years believing that everyone’s features were attractive or, at worst, nondescript. The best part of the movie is Dorothy Gale herself, a model of moral strength and determination. Once she realizes that she must get back home, nothing can stop her. In this, she is much like another character I’d meet years later.

• In 1951, I saw a masterpiece and had no inkling of it: The African Queen with Bogart and Hepburn. Hepburn is Rose Sayer, the unlovely and humorless sister of a missionary. After the Germans destroy her brother’s church, he commits suicide, and she evacuates the only way she can, on Bogart’s rusty steamboat. Bogart is Clarlie Allnut, a besotted, unshaven boat captain who makes a living delivering mail and supplies. They instantly loathe each other, but that doesn’t stop Rose from bullying Charlie into plotting revenge against the Germans. Charlie shows great courage and inner strength in navigating the treacherous river. Rose sees his true qualities, and they fall in love. Until I saw this movie, I thought that all romantic love was instantaneous, an instinctive flash that came from a single glance. I began to realize that love was incomprehensible.

• A couple of years later, I saw that a discerning man can find true love only with a virtuous woman. My father had taken my brother and me to see Scaramouche, a story set in the years preceding the French Revolution. Stewart Granger is the hero, Andre Moreau. He comes from a foster home, with no idea who his real parents are. (“Bastard” is never uttered.) His great love, he naively believes, is Lenore, a ravishing actress and gold digger played by Eleanor Parker. He realizes his error when he lays eyes on the virginal Aline de Gavrillac, played with overstated innocence by Janet Leigh. Moreau’s main interest isn’t romance but revenge. His best friend is cruelly killed in a duel with the Marquis de Maynes, a sadist with a genius for fencing.  Moreau vows to become a master with a blade and does, but de Maynes eludes him until they confront each other at the Paris opera house. Here they fight the third-best sword fight ever staged. It ends with Moreau inexplicably unable to finish off de Maynes. (They are actually half-brothers!) Moreau learns who he really is, finds peace of mind, and chooses Aline over Lenore. Why, I wondered. Clearly he knew something I did not.

• Also in 1953, I saw my first WWII movie, Stalag 17. The war and its pain were still fresh, so Billy Wilder was taking a risk in featuring a cynical loner, Sgt. J. J. Sefton, as the protagonist. Sefton, played by William Holden, is unconventional. He’s determined to make the best of a bad situation by running a bartering business, and includes the German guards among his customers. When two prisoners plan an escape, Sefton makes little of their chances and bets against them. When they’re killed, he trades the cigarettes he’s won with the Germans. He’s suspected of spying and beaten, which motivates him to find the real spy in the barracks. Even though Sefton redeems himself with his fellow prisoners and eventually escapes with a comrade, his nonconformity marks him as a kind of anti-hero and gives him a certain nobility. Never before had I seen this kind of character. More would come.

• The following year, I saw The Naked Jungle, my first man-versus-nature movie. The male lead is Charleton Heston as Christopher Leiningen, a role no one remembers him for. Leiningen is the owner of a Brazilian cocoa plantation, a brooding man who acquires a mail-order bride, Joanna, from New Orleans. She is none other than Eleanor Parker. Not only a dazzling beauty, but she plays the piano and speaks French! Sad to say, she is the widow of a drunkard and is spurned by Leiningen as used goods. As she prepares to return to America, Leiningen learns that a plague of army ants may be threatening the region. He and Joanna set out to investigate and find nothing but devastation. Leiningen discovers the body of an unsavory acquaintance with most of his face eaten away. From a hilltop he sees a black, swarming mass of “Marabunta” (army ants) heading toward the plantation. Joanna recommits to him in his time of need. They return to the plantation and prepare for battle. In an epic finale, Leiningen first uses fire and then flood—he blows up a dam—to wipe out the ants. The movie left me with the conviction that the worst way to die was to be eaten. Hollywood agreed. The “creatures eating people” genre has been with us ever since.

• Some months later, I saw Kirk Douglas in Ulysses. No one has ever portrayed the title character better than Douglas, whose face projects vigor, grit, and guile. That is the essence of Ulysses, a hero unlike any other in the ancient world. Yes, he was strong like other Greek heroes: none of Penelope’s suitors could bend his bow and string it, but he was still up to it in middle age. What set him apart was his resourcefulness or, as his detractors would have it, his cunning. The Trojan Horse was his trick. Getting Polyphemus, a Cyclops, drunk and putting his eye out with a burning log was another. Sitting among the suitors disguised as a beggar was yet another. He has other admirable qualities as well. Nothing will deter him from returning to Ithaca, no matter what the hardship or how long the voyage. No other hero of legend shows such perseverance. Nor does any match his need to satisfy every curiosity the world offers, even if the price is agony. In a fit of self-indulgence, he orders his crew to plug their ears with beeswax and bind him to the mast. There he endures the haunting lure of the Sirens’ song while his crew keeps the ship safely away from the rocks. This is heady stuff for a nerdy kid who’s a nobody on the playground. Who would more likely be his hero, Achilles or Ulysses?

• In 1955, I saw Tarantula, an unforgettable monster movie. Just one creature—a huge one—does the eating here. The story centers on a Dr. Deemer, a research scientist played by the phlegmatic Leo G. Carroll, who has been injecting animals with an experimental nutrient in hopes of finding a substitute for conventional food. His two assistants can’t wait for the formula to be perfected and inadvisedly inject themselves. One collapses and dies in the Arizona desert, his face distorted beyond recognition. The other goes crazy, sets fire to the lab, injects Deemer in a struggle, and then falls dead. During the fracas, one of the injected animals, a Mexican red-rumped tarantula, escapes from its cage. The male lead is a medical doctor played by John Agar. He knows something is amiss when he examines the disfigured body in the desert. When Deemer’s new assistant arrives (a Playboy Playmate turned actress named Mara Corday), she also senses something isn’t quite right. Cattle bones and huge pools of arachnid venom are major clues. Eventually the spider is located and destroyed in a napalm attack by a squadron of jet fighters. Thrilling as this is, the high point of the movie is Deemer’s breathless diagnosis of what killed his assistants and is killing him: acromegalia (aka acromegaly). The word has been poetry to my ears ever since—two lovely dactylic feet. It might have occurred to me then that words had a special resonance for me, but that would take a while longer.

• I saw the second masterpiece of my childhood two years later, and this time I knew it. The movie was The Bridge on the River Kwai, a tale of nationalistic pride and the absurdity of war. Alec Guiness is Colonel Nicholson, the leader of a group of British POWs in Burma. His opposite is Sessue Hayakawa as Colonel Saito, the commandant of the Japanese prison camp. Each man is haughty in his own way. Saito wants the prisoners to build a strategically important bridge on a tight schedule. Success will be a feather in his cap; failure will require him to commit seppuku. Nicholson knows the Geneva Conventions forbid the use of officers in manual labor. He orders the officers not to participate and is tortured for it. But when Nicholson sees that his men’s work is sloppy—deliberately so—his pride gets the better of him. He asks the men to do a job that bespeaks the superiority of the British and, in effect, becomes a willing collaborator. Unknown to both colonels, an American commando mission is in the works. The bridge, just completed, is rigged with explosives. Nicholson sees the wire to the detonator, alerts Saito, and chaos erupts. Saito is stabbed. Nicholson is killed by a mortar round and falls on the plunger. The bridge explodes and a train full of troops and dignitaries plunges into the river. The last words are spoken by Major Clipton, the British medical officer: “Madness! Madness!” I was affected in two ways: I no longer equated war with righteous wrath, and all subsequent movies had to meet a higher standard.

• In my first year of high school, I saw Cyrano de Bergerac with Jose Ferrer in the lead role. The sword play is magnificent, the second-best in movie history. (Curious about the all-time best?) Better still is the language. The wordplay, the speeches, the love poetry—all are glorious. It’s hard to know whom to thank more, Edmund Rostand, the playwright, or Brian Hooker, the translator on whose work the screenplay is based. Ferrer won the Oscar for Best Actor. I had never seen anything to rival his skill. His delivery was impeccable, every phrase and gesture perfection. To me, the movie was a master class in wit and metaphor. I should have realized then that self-expression was more important to me than math and science, but the Soviets had just launched Sputnik, and I turned down the wrong path.

At the doorstep of adulthood, I wanted to be clever and resourceful like Abu and Ulysses; determined like Dorothy, Allnut, Moreau, and Ulysses; and courageous like Abu, Dorothy, Allnut, Leiningen, Ulysses, and Cyrano. I wanted to make music with words, as Cyrano did; be true to myself, as Sefton was; and see the world without partisanship, as Major Clipton could. These values I got from the big screen. Of course, Mom and Dad are in the mix, too… somewhere.

Not on TV, yet

To my taste, the best TV is about people. I don’t care about their social class, ethnicity, or era in history. I just want to see the counterpoint of nature, nurture, and chance working in their lives and revealing their humanity. Of course, not all my viewing is this grand: news shows, game shows, science programs, and the occasional nature documentary are part of the mix. But I nibble at those and feast on The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, and the like.

Thankfully, there’s a good deal of “people” programming today, but there remains a niche that’s still unfilled. No network has yet produced a series that gives us a look at famous people in their formative years. I’m not talking about biographies in which parental and environmental forces are vaguely suggested. There’s plenty of this already. I’m talking about a reconstruction of life with actors and dialog, a drama that foreshadows the adult who figures in our present world.

My intention here is to suggest programming that might fill this niche. I don’t have the time or talent to write entire outlines or story treatments, but I think I can supply enough background and dialog to leave a clear impression of the shows I have in mind. I’ll let you be the judge.

Confessions of an Altar Boy

The scene is the confessional of St. John Vianney Church in Janesville, Wisconsin. Paul Ryan, a 16-year-old, goes inside.

Ryan: Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

Priest: What is it that troubles you, my son?

R: It’s about my dad, and money I’ve taken wrongfully.

P: Paul, is that you? My old altar boy?

R: Yes, Father.

P: I’m so sorry about the loss of your father, Paul, but how has that led to stealing?

R: Well, about a month after Dad died, I got a check, a survivor’s benefit, from the Social Security people. I wanted to return it; I didn’t earn it. But I put it in the bank instead. And the checks keep coming. I know I’m being tested, Father, and I’m failing. Please help me find my way.

P: Paul, are you sure God doesn’t mean for you to have this money?

R: How could He, Father? It’s charity from the government.

P: We cannot presume to know what God intends, Paul. It’s a sacrilege to think so. You have a fine mind, and it needs the sharpening of a college education. Can your mother send you to college without this money?

R: I don’t think so, Father.

P: Well, there you are! I’ve heard you talk about a life of public service. College can put you on that path. One day you may be God’s instrument for ending the scourge of socialism in America.

R: You’re right, Father. I have a chance to use evil for good—turn the devil on himself, so to speak.

P: Amen, my son.

Gift of Gab

Sean Hannity parks his bike at the doorstep of his home and goes inside. His mother notices him come in.

Ma: Sean, you’re home early from your paper route.

Hannity: Yeah, Ma. I figured out a way to get it done faster, and I put some extra hustle into it.

M: That’s my boy—always a positive attitude! But will Mr. Jenkins pay you any more for your effort?

H: Well, only if I can convince him that I can take on a bigger route. I hope he gets that.

M: Oh, I’m sure he will. Mr. Jenkins is a great American! And one day, who knows? You might have the biggest route in all of Hempstead.

H: Could be, Ma, but I have my sights set higher than that. How many people can I deliver the news to on a bicycle? Maybe a hundred tops. Well, what if I could do it by radio? The number would be in the thousands, right? Maybe bigger!

M: That’s quite a dream, Sean, but if you did it by radio, you’d have to say what the news was. That’s harder than tossing it on porches.

H: No problem, Ma. I’d read a newspaper first and then give it my own special spin. You know, my personal touch.

M: Ha! You have the gift of gab for sure. I do have a worry, though. You’ve never taken an interest in schoolwork. Your father and I are afraid you won’t go to college. If you come across as uneducated, won’t your listeners change the station?

H: Let not your heart be troubled, Ma. Aren’t you always saying, “Sean, you have great core values”? That counts way more than getting stuff out of books.

M: Oh, Sean! You’re growing into such a great American.

Perversity

The scene is Ted Cruz’s bedroom, in his parents’ home in Houston. He’s sitting on the bed, poking at unidentifiable objects. His sister passes by the open door.

Sister: Oh God, Ted! Are you playing with your bugs again?

Ted: What’s it to ya?

S: You’re as white as paste, Ted. How about going outside and getting some fresh air?

T: For your information, I get plenty of fresh air. I collected these bugs, didn’t I?

S: Yes, you did. You should put the same effort into collecting some friends.

T: Like who? The guys at school are all dopes, and anyway, they all hate me.

S: Isn’t that a sign there’s a problem?

T: Nah, I don’t care about them. Better for them to hate me and my bugs love me than for them to love me and my bugs hate me.

S: That’s crazy talk. They’re just bugs. They don’t love or hate. And they don’t understand a thing when you read Dr. Seuss to them.

T: Look, Sis, bugs are really wonderful. You’ve just never tried to get to know them. Here, this is my stag beetle. Give him a couple of strokes. You’ll love it.

S: Ewwwwwwww!

I don’t suppose there’s a TV producer among the readers of this blog. But if I’m mistaken, if you are one or even know one, get in touch, and we’ll take it to the next level.