Happy 29th Anniversary Deep Space Nine!

 

Deep Space Nine at 29

I, like most people, enjoy being right.  It happens far too seldom.  The film I think should win Best Picture never does.  The baseball team I think has the most talent goes out in the first round of the playoffs. The restaurant I like goes out of business.  But occasionally I have my moments of prescience.

For many years I have been in the distinct minority of Star Trek fandom in thinking that the crown jewel of Star Trek TV series was Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  It was maligned when it came out as Next Generation was winding down. The flaws that Trek fans glommed on to were many: the main character wasn’t a Captain; it was set on a space station, not a star ship; the doctor was an asshole.  Okay, that last one was an accurate complaint; it the 2-volume history of the Trek franchise The Fifty-Year Mission the creators of DS9 concede that they oversteered into making Dr. Bashir a jerk. But the other complaints were trivial compared to what ultimately was created, which was the most complex, rewarding, well written, well-acted series in the Star Trek universe.

It all started 29 years ago on January 3, 1993, with the release of the pilot episode, “Emissary.”  It was an auspicious start, far better than The Next Generation’s pilot “Encounter at Farpoint.” The cast of characters was the most diverse of any Trek incarnation: Commander (eventually Captain) Benjamin Sisko was not a swashbuckling rogue like Captain Kirk, or a dedicated explorer like Captain Picard; for one thing he wasn’t a Captain, and for another he was a widower raising a son and disenchanted with his assignment.  The science officer was a beautiful young woman who had the memories of 7 previous lifetimes implanted in her via a slug in her abdomen.  The chief of security was a shape shifter.  The chief engineer was Miles O’Brien, a holdover from Next Gen.  The primary businessman was a Ferengi, a race that Next Gen tried, and failed miserably, to create as the next big threat to the Federation.  The doctor was, as I mentioned, a vainglorious tool.

Most notable was Sisko’s second in command, a former resistance fighter and a native of Bajor named Kira Nerys (the first name is the family name).  I’m not sure exactly, but I believe when Deep Space Nine started word was out that the next Trek series, Voyager, would have the first female captain in Star Trek’s TV history.  I believe the anticipation of that made Trek fans overlook the fact that DS9 had a woman in command who was intelligent, fearless, beautiful, and most importantly didn’t take crap from anyone, especially men.  After so many years of Star Fleet officers politely acquiescing to whatever nonsense an admiral spouted, it was refreshing to have a character who yelled at her superiors on Bajor that they were idiots.

The show got off to an admitted rocky start; the first two seasons are barely watchable (save for the occasional pearl like the episode “Duet,” a sci-fi version of The Man in the Glass Booth). But the creators course corrected some things (Dr. Bashir became less of a pain in the ass) while creating an impressive array of semi-regular characters, such as a Cardassian tailor named Garrick whose shadowy past was fleshed out over time but never fully revealed.  The show featured several actors in heavy latex—Rene Auberjonois as shapeshifter Odo, Armin Shimmerman as the Ferengi Quark, Andrew Robinson as Garrick, and Marc Alaimo as Cardassian Gul Dukat—who had never made much impact with their real faces but now excelled while performing under layers of plastic.

Deep Space Nine, along with the contemporaneous Babylon 5, eschewed the episodic nature of the original Star Trek and The Next Generation and developed a more serialized approach.  While this made viewing while the show was syndicated or in reruns awkward, it has proven a boon now that streaming is available, and shows can be watched in rapid sequence.  The creators of the show have said that binge watching on Netflix is how the show should be viewed.

The show was lowly regarded for years, but that started to change when, in 1996, TV Guide did a poll the name the best episode of Star Trek of all time.  The heavy favorite was an episode from the original series, “City on the Edge of Forever,” but when the votes were counted the winner was a DS9 episode, “The Visitor.” TV Guide declared the result “a shocker.”

In The Fifty-Year Mission, the creators of DS9 said the show was about “consequences.” Kirk or Picard would fly to a planet, meddle in whatever was going on, fix things, then leave.  On Deep Space Nine, when someone made a choice, it often came back to bite them on the ass.  The show’s depiction of the war with The Dominion (which many have noted was the biggest deviation from Creator Gene Roddenberry’s concept that by that time humans will have outgrown the notion of war) conveyed a sense of what a long, protracted conflict does to people, even those on the periphery.  In the episode “In the Pale Moonlight” (the highest rated episode on IMDB) Captain Sisko recounts how he orchestrated a plan to induce the Romulans to join the Dominion War at the cost of killing several innocent people, something the high-minded Captains Kirk and Picard would never have considered.

I run through DS9 on a loop on Netflix and recently watched the season three two-part episode, “Past Tense.” In the episode Sisko, Dax and Bashir are accidently sent back in time to 2024 San Francisco, where Sisko and Bashir are thrown into a “Sanctuary District,” a place where homeless and jobless people were herded into “for their own protection.” Now that we are two years away from 2024, the episode seems eerily prescient about the homeless problem and society’s reaction to wide-scale economic distress.

I will always maintain that Deep Space Nine was the best of all the Trek TV incarnations.  The original series was great—for the first half of its three-year run.  The Next Generation was terrible in seasons one and two, and six and seven, and the middle three years were hit and miss.  I never warmed to Voyager, and I gave up on Enterprise early in season two.  Discovery has been erratic; I disliked season one but loved season two, then was disappointed by season three.  DS9 started slow but gathered momentum as the writers and the audience grew to know the characters.

So happy birthday, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine!  Maybe there will be a party for your 30^th birthday next year.

TV Review: Doctor Who Flux (spoilers!)

 

TV Review: Doctor Who: Flux (spoilers)

 The Chris Chibnall era of Doctor Who is coming to an end.  I have only two words.

Thank.  God.

Chibnall took over after Steven Moffat’s departure and was gifted a new Doctor in the guise of Jodie Whittaker, the first female Doctor. As with another of my favorite Doctors, Sylvester McCoy, I can only imagine how good she might have been had she been given any decent scripts to work with.

In the three seasons under Chibnall’s leadership, I have enjoyed exactly one episode, the Amazon parody Ker-Blam.  Based on IMBD ratings I am not alone; season 1 under Chibnall had an average episode rating of 6.1, which is not good, and in season 2 the average rating shot up to 6.2.  For his third season Chibnall rolled the dice and did a 6-part miniseries called Flux that was about . . . well, it was about 6 episodes long.  Beyond that I am not sure.  The series was Chibnall’s best season, producing the only two episodes that were rated higher than a 7 at IMDB, but I see the whole thing as a disaster.

To explain what I think are Chibnall’s deficiencies I will do something unfair and compare him to his predecessor, Steven Moffat.  Why is this unfair?  Because Moffat is a genius.  He has written some of the best Doctor Who episodes of all time, and on top of that won an Emmy for writing Sherlock.  Comparing a TV writer to Moffat is like comparing a short story writer to O. Henry. But both Moffat and Chibnall worked on Doctor Who, so there is room for overlap.

Moffat writes episodes that use the Doctor’s ability to travel in time, but unlike Chibnall he knows how to construct a linear narrative while having characters moving back and forth in time.  I am thinking of two of Moffat’s best Doctor Who episodes, The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink (possibly the best Doctor Who episode EVER).  In both of those episodes, despite the fact that events in the story occurred in a non-linear fashion, the plots played out as if they were linear.  There was a beginning, a middle, and an end to the story.  Moffat used the ability to move about in time to strengthen the structure of his narrative.

Chibnall, by contrast, just has character pop from one time to another because they can.  Chibnall is more interested in creating puzzlement than understanding; enjoying a good mystery is one thing, but to be deliberately obscure is not the same as good story telling.

The other attribute Steven Moffat brings to Doctor Who that Chibnall lacks is an emotional investment in what’s going on.  The Girl in the Fireplace pays off because Moffat builds an emotional connection between the Doctor and Madam du Pompadour (if you haven’t seen the episode, don’t ask; just go watch the episode).  Chibnall moves characters around like chess pieces, but it is never clear what we are supposed to feel about what is happening other than we should like the Doctor and hate her enemies.  I mean, we aren’t supposed to like Swarm and Azure (they have names!) but it is hard to emotionally invest in disliking someone who says their goal is to destroy all objects in the universe. At least they have goals.

There are a lot of other nitpicks I could raise about Flux (Spoilers!!!). I think it is cheap for Chibnall to have the Doctor transform into a Weeping Angel and then turn her back again and say it was only to make transporting her more convenient.  And then there is the small matter that at the end the Doctor commits triple genocide by allowing the Daleks, Cybermen, and Sontarans all to perish in the final push of the Flux.  The Fourth Doctor famously debated eliminating the Daleks in Genesis of the Daleks and decided that genocide was wrong, even of an evil race that did nothing but kill.  I guess the Doctor has changed her mind.  Oh, and a Sontaran is induced to commit treason for . . . chocolate?  Please.

Chibnall’s era isn’t quite over.  He is the showrunner for the New Year’s episode, which IMDB has little information on.  But he has produced the worst seasons of Doctor Who since the dreaded McCoy era, which was unable to recover from the damage done by the even worse Colin Baker era. The show went off the air in 1989 until it was brilliant revived by Russell T. Davies in 2006. 

Davies will re-assume showrunner duties of Doctor Who after Chibnall steps down.  All I can say is that he has his work cut out for him again.

Les Dodgers est mort

 Les Dodgers est mort

 

Let me begin by saying that, as a boy, I grew up loving the Dodgers even though I was raised in Northern California.  This was the late 1960’s and the ‘70s, and I preferred the Dodgers’ emphasis on pitching, defense, and speed over the Giants emphasis on power.  And for most of my life the Dodgers have been the more successful franchise, at least until the Giants turned their trifecta of championships in the 2010s.

But at some point, I realized that I was, as Jerry Seinfeld said, rooting for laundry.  The ideological differences between the teams eventually disappeared as players and management came and went.  Recently, I’ve come to look on the Dodgers as the West Coast Yankees, overdogs who win because they have more money and then demand to be praised because they are so smart and so determined.

My existential crisis came to a head this season as the plucky SF Giants unexpectedly took the lead in the National League West despite having a payroll seemingly 1% of the Dodgers.  Not that the Dodgers gave up; when they were in second place at the trade deadline, they simply picked up Max Scherzer and Trey Turner, a future Hall of Famer and an All-Star.  Surely that would enable them to win another division title.

But it wasn’t enough, and the 106-win Dodgers had to settle for the Wild Card behind the 107-win Giants (the over/under on Giant wins at the start of the season had been 75).  Beating the Cardinals in a one-game play-in game, the Dodgers and Giants then had their first post-season meeting ever.  On the day of the first game, 5 of the 6 people I saw on ESPN said the Dodgers would obviously win, because they had better hitting and better pitching.  Of course, if they had better hitting and pitching, then why did the Giants win the division and the season series with the Dodgers?  As Geoffrey Rush’s character said in Shakespeare In Love, “It’s a mystery.”

The Dodgers did win the series but had to eke out winning two elimination games, the last one by one run thanks in part to a bad third strike call. Now all the Dodgers had to do to get to the World Series was crush the Atlanta Braves, who won 18 fewer regular season games.  No problem.

Then the wheels came off.  The Dodgers had already lost Cy Young winner Trevor Bauer to the world’s longest domestic violence investigation, then they lost Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw to injury, then in Game 6 they lost Max Scherzer to a dead arm. They had lost Max Muncy before the post-season, then lost Trey Turner and Justin Turner to injury.  The Dodgers, whose roster had been so overstocked that they had All-Stars coming off the bench most games, ran out Walker Buehler on short rest because of a depleted starting rotation and lost game 6 of the NLCS to a Braves team that won 18 fewer games in the regular season.

Were the Braves the best team in the National League?  Probably not.  Both the Giants and the Dodgers were clearly superior, but since MLB insisted on a post-season format that had the two best teams play each other in the first round the result was like the two fighting fish Blofeld owned in From Russia With Love who exhausted each other, allowing the weaker but smarter fish that stayed out of the fight to then kill the victor.  Some would argue that the Brewers were a better team and were undone by key relief pitcher and 2020 Rookie of the Year Devin Williams stupidly breaking his hand while celebrating them winning their division.

So, we have a World Series featuring a team with a racist logo and name against a team that recently won a World Series by admittedly cheating.  Not a great combo.  It’s too bad MLB just couldn’t slip to a Dodgers-Giants World Series, convention be damned.

TV Review: Lucifer season 6 (spoilers)

 

TV Review—Lucifer Season 6 (spoilers!)

 An end is come; the end is come.  Ezekiel 7:6

It seemed only fitting to begin a review if the TV series Lucifer with a quote from the main character’s least favorite work of fiction.  Of course the TV show Lucifer has shown a knack for resurrection that the main character never manifested; it was killed after three seasons by Fox, came back for two seasons on Netflix, and then Netflix decided that wasn’t enough and gave it another season.  But it looks like this is definitely the end for Lucifer.

And frankly, it may be time.  Season six was a letdown; not bad by any standard, but a step downward from the dizzying heights the show had reached in season 5.  The show fell back on some old habits that it had cast off and relied a little too much on an appealing cast and a reputation for making bat-shit crazy decisions.  The result was a satisfying conclusion, but one that was less interesting than it might have been.

Season 5 ended with an angelic battle for the right to sit on the celestial throne as, well, God, with Lucifer (Tom Ellis) coming out the victor.  Season 6 starts with Lucifer finding excuses for delaying his ascension.  This is an old failing of the show during its time on FOX; either the producers or the network would come up with any old excuse to keep Lucifer and his love, Detective Chloe Decker (Lauren German), from progressing in their relationship. I understand that the relationship couldn’t have been allowed to progress too fast—I remember as a fan of the series Chuck that fans wanted Chuck and Sarah to hook up immediately, which would have ruined the show.  The problem was that the reasons for the one-step-forward/two-steps-back plotting were frustratingly arbitrary.  So it is here, where Lucifer has literally battled a host of angels to become God but now he has second thoughts, just because.

The main plot of season 6 is the appearance of a fearsome young woman named Rory who is an angel whose wings are steel-tipped razors and who bears a grudge against Lucifer.  The explanation of who she turns out to be is the one genius inspiration of the season, and I won’t spoil it here.  The ten episodes wind along pleasantly enough, but the plot moves ahead in fits and starts with character motivation seemingly arbitrary.  The show does fall back on another unfortunate habit; I used to joke in seasons 1 and 2 that not only did the show not know how real cops solved crimes, but they also didn’t seem to know how fictional cops solve crimes.  The show’s stupid gene reappears as a major plot point is that a prisoner serving time for murder is able to escape simply because his cell door didn’t completely shut, as if there would be no other locked doors between his cell and the outside world.

One bullet that was dodged was that the show does what a lot of long-running shows do, give cast members a shot at directing.  The results can be indifferent (the episode of The X-Files directed by Gillian Anderson was a low point) but here the results are positive.  DB Woodside (Amenadiel) does a good job capturing the visual style of Lucifer in the episode he directed, and Kevin Alejandro (Dan) had already proven to be an excellent director on episodes he directed in prior seasons.

The ending . . . what to say about the ending, other than it rivals All That Jazz as the longest death scene since Carmen.  But, given that the bulk of the final episode featured only Lucifer and Chloe, it was nice to show all the other characters progressing with their lives.  There is even a nice shout out at the end to the episode Off the Record, my pick for the best single episode of Lucifer.

If I was to pick an MVP for season 6 it would be Rachel Harris as Dr. Linda Martin, Lucifer’s long, long suffering therapist.  One of the first things I liked about Lucifer was that he wasn’t just about sleeping with gorgeous models, he enthusiastically agreed to have sex with Harris’ Dr. Linda even though she is in her late 40’s and could hardly be called leggy (don’t get me wrong, I think Harris is gorgeous, but by tv standards she should be playing someone’s mom).  She had the best running plot thread in season 6, her writing a book entitled Sympathy for the Devil, and she always managed to be funny without ever seeming to try.  I also like the fact that the show once again demonstrated that she is a “middle-aged” woman with a healthy sex drive as she is shown waking up from a drunken hook up after Maze’s (Leslie Anne-Brandt) wedding.

When one of my favorite series, Angel, was unceremoniously canceled, I reacted to the fan demands that it continue with the observation that anyone who had watched the show should realize that living forever is not necessarily a good thing. I will miss Lucifer, a show that started weak and somehow got better; few shows do that.  But a show as imaginative and audacious as Lucifer had to run the well dry at some point, and that point seems to have come.  Adieu Lucifer!  I will keep watching you on Netflix as long as the good lord is willing.

 

Field of Dreams game connects modern fans to the distant past -- 1989

 

Field of Dreams game connects modern fans to the distant past -- 1989

 

Baseball has one advantage over football and basketball—mythology.  Other sports have their Halls of Fame, legendary players, and iconic heroes, but only baseball has Gods.  MLB’s governance in recent years seems to have lacked a certain je ne sais quoi that the commissioners of the NFL and NBA have been able to tap into, but that’s partly the nature of the game; in the NFL, every week is an event, while in baseball, every game is just 162nd of the trudge to the finish line.

Where baseball’s advantage shows up is in movies.  Pick the greatest baseball film of all time, and you’ve got Pride of the Yankees, Eight Men Out, The Natural, A League of Their Own, and the Kevin Costner trifecta of Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, and For the Love of the Game.  All these films revere the game of baseball, and most got Oscar nominations.  The best football movie of all time is probably North Dallas Forty, which is cynical and hardly holds the sport up to any ideal.  Basketball does have Hooisers, but after that the next best basketball film is either the original Space Jam or The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh.  The best soccer film of all time is Bend it Like Beckham.

During the regular season, it is hard to focus on any single baseball game as an event worthy of attention.  Back when only one team from each league made the post-season, a sample size of 162 was needed to sift the wheat from the chaff.  Now that 10 teams make the post-season, maybe a smaller sample size would accomplish the task.

August 12^th was the first in-season event (other than the All-Star Game, which has come to rely on the Home Run Derby for noteworthiness more than the actual game) the MLB has attempted in a very long time.  They linked the event to a movie that was released before most current players were born, 1989’s Field of Dreams.  They staged a baseball game in an Iowa cornfield, and it was a game that counted in the standings and not an exhibition, like football’s Hall of Fame Game.

A lot could have gone wrong.  Baseball’s reliance on nostalgia could have been misplaced.  Recollection of the movie could have been weaker than MLB anticipated.  The visual of baseball players walking out of a cornfield and onto a baseball diamond could have come off as, well, corny.  But it worked.  Everything worked. 

For those unfamiliar with the movie, Field of Dreams was based on a fantasy novel by W. P. Kinsella about a farmer in Iowa who hears a voice in his cornfield tell him to plow under the corn and build a ballpark.  The farmer, played by Costner, obeys the voice, because who wouldn’t obey a disembodied voice?  After he builds the ballpark, a ghostly figure in a baseball uniform emerges from the remains of the cornfield, and it is Shoeless Joe Jackson, the legendary ballplayer who was banned for life for participating in the fixing of the 1919 World Series (debate still rages over whether he actually participated in the fixing, or if he meant to but was really bad at trying not to be great).  Other former baseball greats join him, and eventually there is a phantom baseball game every day.  The bank threatens to foreclose on the property, but James Earl Jones delivers one of the greatest monologues in movie history about how people love baseball’s past so much they will pay to watch old time ghost players. Capitalism saves the day.

The film was a breakout hit for director Phil Alden Robinson, who was nominated for an Oscar for adapting the screenplay.  The film also picked up Oscar nominations for Best Picture and for Best Score.  The studio had such low expectations they opened it in only 4 theaters, but it went on to gross $64 million in the United States. The movie was also the last screen appearance of Burt Lancaster.

The Field of Dreams Game, planned for 2020 but postponed because of, you know, recreated the ball players emerging from the cornfield. Unfortunately, they replaced the fences for the game, which was understandable, but I had been looking forward to outfielders disappearing into the stalks chasing homers. Because there were no bleachers in the outfield or along the first base side attendance was limited to around 4,000.  Both teams, the visiting Yankees and home White Sox, flew in that day and left that evening, to resume the series in Chicago Saturday.

It helped that the game was entertaining, with good pitching early on then fireworks late.   The Yankees came back from a three-run deficit in the 9^th inning on home runs by Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, but in a Hollywood ending the White Sox won the game in the bottom of the 9^th with a walk off homer by Tim Anderson.  Two other games Thursday featured one team scoring 17 runs; thank goodness the Field of Dreams Game had better pitching than that.

I still have faith that baseball will continue to connect with fans, even though the ubiquity of “three true outcomes” makes it difficult to appreciate the game.  One of the biggest problems is that during the season baseball fades into the wallpaper, while ESPN shows have talking heads argue over football and basketball year-round.  This was a major step that baseball can come up with ideas that put its best foot forward and continue to create mythology for another 150 years.

Lucifer Season 5.2--Good to have the Devil back

 

TV Review: Lucifer Season 5.2—The Devil is Still Alive and Kicking

 The aging process of a TV show is hard to anticipate.  Some shows come out strong after a long crafting period, but then have no where to go but down (Twin Peaks, Heroes).  Some start weak and then find their legs after growing pains (Parks & Recreation, Legend of Tomorrow).  Shows showing continued growth and creativity in their fifth season are unusual.

Lucifer started off with some problems.  The first season took time to establish the relationship between The Devil AKA Lucifer Morningstar (Tom Ellis) and LA Police Detective Chloe Decker, whose main characteristic was the repeated statement that she had starred in a raunchy sex comedy when she was a teenager.  The season revolved around a police scandal summed up by the word “Palmetto” and if you played a drinking game and took a swig of something alcoholic when ever that word was uttered, you’d be blitzed before the end of any episode.

The show got more creative in season 2 when they introduced Tricia Helfer as the Earthly body inhabited by the Goddess of All Creation (God’s wife and Lucifer’s mother).  The creators said they checked with the Bible and found no mention of Lucifer’s mother and decided the character was free to be utilized.  The cases of the week, the murders assigned to Detective Decker and her ex-husband Dan (Kevin Alejandro) faded into the background and the philosophical issues of the Devil living on Earth took more prominence.  The rest of the cast (DB Woodside as Lucifer’s brother Amenadiel, Lesley-Ann Brandt as his assistant Mazikeen, Rachel Harris as Lucifer’s psychiatrist Linda) was fleshed out and the storytelling got more confident.  Season 3 introduced Biblical character Caine, and Season 4 added Eve to the mix.  Season 5 introduced Lucifer’s twin brother Michael (Ellis doing a passable American accent) and the first half of the season ended with the appearance of Lucifer’s father, better known as God.

If you make The Almighty Divine Creator of the Universe a character in your TV show, you’d better find an actor who can carry the role.  Lucifer nails the casting with Dennis Haysbert, now known for his insurance commercial but once cast as the President of the United States in the series 24.  He was credible as the President even though he was African American and this was pre-Obama (some have speculated that Obama’s election owed some thanks to Haysbert for making a Black president seem credible; at the time a critic said that if Haysbert changed his name to David Palmer [his character’s name on 24] and ran for President he’d probably win).  There was also an issue with cast-member Woodside, who reportedly lobbied for an African American actor in the role as his father since a Caucasian actress had played his mother.

Haysbert is perfect.  He has a deep, commanding voice that invites obedience, but a genial manner that bespeaks the softer side of God.  He fits right in with the family dynamics established by the show, intimidating mortals like Chloe and Linda, puzzling his son Amenadiel, and infuriating Lucifer. 

I have watched the first two episodes of season 5.2, and I am pleased to report that the creativity Lucifer’s writers have displayed in the past is in full force.  The first episode milks the family dynamics to the max, with God summoning a thunderstorm to quell the squabbling.  Linda keeps poking God to assure his existence and tries to duck out on family dinner, Amenadiel becomes depressed when he is told his son with Linda is human, not angelic, and a murder at a mini-golf course is solved (yawn).

Episode 2 is the long teased, long awaited musical episode.  Musical episodes are tricky; except for Buffy the Vampire Slayer few series attempting one have cleared the bar.  The one, titled Bloody Celestial Karaoke Jam, isn’t quite up to the Buffy musical but it is the closest I’ve seen since the Scrubs musical episode My Musical.  It starts with a great cover of Wicked Game by Ellis, followed by a rousing group sing of Queen’s another One Bites the Dust at the murder scene.  The musical numbers get a little less on the nose as the episode progresses (Linda singing “Just the Two of Us” to her baby is somewhat generic; I half expected her to break into "What if God Was One of Us" at one point) but the cast steps up, especially Alejandro who continues to show comedic chops undreamt of in season 1 (Dan is worried because he slept with the woman whose body was inhabited by God’s ex-wife, and he is not reassured by Amenadiel when he tells Dan that his father is probably not happy with that fact and that God is sort of vengeful). 

Lucifer has been a tad erratic over its run, but shows that push creative boundaries often are (again, see Legends of Tomorrow).  Since moving from Fox to Netflix the show has embraced shedding the broadcast shackles (not to mention clothes), and coming up with some innovative fight scenes.  This freedom seems to have invigorated the writing staff, and Lucifer continues to be one of the most surprising shows being produced.

If you have been a fan of Lucifer, catch season 5.2.  If not, take my advice and watch the pilot then skip to season 1 episode 1 and go from there.  You’ll have a Devil of a good time (sorry, the Devil made me do it.)

Tim Tebow: Tight End--it makes sense

 I have rarely seen such unanimity about a decision by a coach or manager among the intelligentsia on ESPN.  Usually there is always a debate, a difference of opinion, because controversy and clash help ratings.  But almost everyone on ESPN was in agreement—Urban Meyer is an idiot for signing Tim Tebow as a tight end. 

“Oh,” they wailed, “He’s too old!  He hasn’t played football in years!  He’s never played tight end!  There is no way he can be successful!”  One person on ESPN opined that this was just another example of Tim Tebow’s privileged position.

To that last comment I have to ask, “Really?  Privileged?”  This was a guy who was an incredible athlete, who won a Heisman Award and two national championships.  He was such an inspirational leader, his school engraved one of his locker room speeches on one of its walls (although not everyone loved it).  You keep hearing how bad he was at quarterback, so I guess every defensive back in the SEC must have been horribly incompetent to explain his two national championships.

Yet despite being one of the most successful college quarterbacks in history, he wasn’t chosen in the draft until the 25^th pick by the Denver Broncos.  After a year as backup, Tebow took over as the Bronco’s starter in 2011 when the team was 1-3.  All Tebow did was take them to the playoffs, and then win the first game in the playoffs. 

How was Tebow thanked?  Did they throw him a parade?  Did they build a statue to him?  No, the next year they traded him to the New York Jets for two low-round draft picks.  He bounced around the league but never was a full-time starter anywhere else and was washed up after only 3 seasons in the NFL.

He was then privileged to join the New York Mets’ farm system and try and make it to the Majors in baseball.  His “privilege” was to bounce between A ball, AA ball and AAA ball for four seasons, never making it to “The Show” despite the fact that jersey sales possibly would have paid his rookie salary.  Four years of minor league baseball is no one’s idea of “privilege.”

But are the haters right?  Does Tebow have any business signing as a tight end in the NFL?  Let me ask a few questions:

Did the Jacksonville Jaguars just draft Trevor Lawrence, the most heavily hype QB prospect since Y.A. Tittle strapped on a helmet?

Do you think Tim Tebow could tell Lawrence something about The Gospel According to Urban Meyer, Tebow’s coach in college and now the coach of the Jaguars?

Do you think Tebow has any wisdom to share about making the transition from highly successful college player to being a tackling dummy for Aaron Darnold and JJ Watt in the NFL?

Do you think having Tebow in the Jaguars’ training camp will take a little of the spotlight off of Lawrence as he learns a pro-style offence?

The answer to all of these questions is, “Duh!”  Tim Tebow will be an asset to Urban Meyer and Trevor Lawrence even if he never plays a down at tight end in a regular season game.  If nothing else, he can be a cautionary tale to a young man who has also won a Heisman Trophy and now dreams of NFL glory. 

I doubt Tim Tebow will make it to the Pro Bowl as a tight end.  I doubt he will be on the Jaguars’ opening day roster.  I do not doubt his leadership, or that he can help Trevor Lawrence get something Tim Tebow never got in the NFL—respect.