Brandon Routh to bid adieu to Legends

So it’s come to this—I am sad Brandon Routh is leaving one of my favorite TV shows.

I’ve hated Brandon Routh as an actor for a long time.  I thought he was monumentally wooden in the lame movie Superman Returns.  Compared to fellow unknown actor Christopher Reeve he was a stuffed Superman costume without any indication of humor or wit, taking his role sincerely when playing Superman obviously has to be done with an undercurrent of skepticism.  Anyone who doesn’t see the absurdity of an alien with God-like powers zipping around in blue tights should not be allowed anywhere near said blue tights.  Incredibly, he won a Saturn Award as best actor for the role, so obviously my opinion was not unanimous.

He then doubled down on his badness by taking a recurring role on the television show Chuck, playing a rival for the title character’s affection for the lovely and lethal CIA agent Sarah Walker.  I am NOT one of the fans who simply objected to him because he was an impediment to the long-awaited Chuck/Sarah hookup; I understand the desire of the show runners to create dramatic tension by placing a roadblock in the way of Chuck and Sarah’s inevitable coupling.  I objected to the fact that he was so uncharismatic that one wasn’t certain exactly WHY Sarah would be interested in him over adorkable super-nerd Chuck.  He was blandly handsome in a Ken doll sort of way, but again appeared to project no personality or chemistry with his fellow actors (again, inexplicably, IMDB says he won something called an IGN Summer Movie Award as “Best Villain” for his work).

I probably expected Brandon Routh to go the way of most pretty-boy wanna-be actors who disappear after a stint on Baywatch or something similar.  My expectations were thwarted when Routh turned in an amusing supporting performance in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, one of my favorite films of this century.  He steered into his lack of charisma, playing a lunkheaded bassist who was the current squeeze of the woman who had dumped the title hero, Scott Pilgrim.  His character punched a diminutive Asian girl so hard that he knocked the highlights from her hair (really), and then nearly killed the Scott Pilgrim using his mystical “vegan powers.”  Of course he was ultimately defeated by the title character, but for the first time in my life I thought that Brandon Routh didn’t suck.

Full reformation of my opinion of Brandon Routh occurred when he joined DC’s Legends of Tomorrow as Ray Palmer, aka The Atom, a role he originated on Arrow (a show I started watching but abandoned when I decided Steven Amell was indistinguishable from a block of wood).  The show’s first season was an unmitigated disaster, but I stuck with it in part because of Routh’s feckless appeal as a billionaire genius with a suit that allowed him to shrink in size and who had the outlook of a Boy Scout on strong anti-depressants.   The show did a brilliant job of course correcting, dropping the Hawk-people (what were they thinking?) and a dull as dishwater villain named “Vandal Savage” (again, what were they thinking?) but keeping Routh along with Caity Lotz, Dominic Purcell, Victor Garber, Franz Drameh, and several other parts that worked.

The show added new characters that meshed with the recurring ones MUCH better than in the first season, and the character of Ray Palmer became a reliable beacon of unbridled optimism as well as geeky uber-inventions and corny humor.  At some point around the start of the show’s third season I realized that I no longer hated Brandon Routh.

Legends of Tomorrow took a major risk in its fourth season by introducing a new character: Nora Darhk, who was the evil daughter of super-villain Damien Darhk.  The risky part was twofold: a) she became a love interest for Ray Palmer, and b) she was played by Courtney Ford, Brandon Routh’s wife.  Real-life couples notoriously never have the on-screen chemistry that they have in real life (anyone remember Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut?), so the casting was a major gamble.

It was a gamble that paid off (Legends of Tomorrow takes more high-stakes risks than any other show on television, and it wins an astounding percentage of them).  The slowly-evolving relationship added depth to the character of Ray Palmer, and once they finally got together (aided by a magic McGuffin) there was a suitable amount of on-screen sizzle.

So it is with unexpected sadness that I hear the news that Routh and Ford will be leaving Legends of Tomorrow in its 5^th season.   I don’t think this will necessarily mean an end to the show; the program has been a master class on juggling cast members in ways that only a time-travelling science fiction show could do.  Also, Routh will definitely not be permanently gone, as word has it he will put on the blue leotards again to play alternate universe Superman in the annual DC Crossover Event.

I can’t say that I am looking forward to his next endeavor; I think the role of Ray Palmer was just so in his wheelhouse that not even Routh could screw it up.  Being on a show with brilliant writing can make any actor appear good.  But Brandon Routh has redeemed himself in my eyes, so I will not avoid his next TV series just because of his presence.

Business models in the new economy

Way back when, maybe 10-15 years ago, I saw a book in a bookstore [millennials, you may be confused by that term; look it up] that was a collection of all the hair-brained schemes concocted to make millions of dollars when the Internet became a thing.  You know, a business with the domain name “Spatulas.com” that was going to become everybody’s one-stop shopping choice for utensils designed to turn food over.  At the beginning of the Internet age, it was believed that slapping a “dot com” at the end of anything was the path to riches.

We are now in the next phase of business evolution, the “gig” economy and its offshoot of streaming services that allow access to a book, movie, or video game without the need to “own” it.  A book titled The End of Ownership by Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz offered one theory for the rise of “sharing” apps like Uber and Lyft, which allow people to essentially share someone’s car, and Netflix, which allows people to share movies and TV shows.  Because Millennials are less well off than previous generations of young people, with lower starting salaries, less job security, and more college debt, they seek out ways to acquire what they need or want without having to pay the full price of ownership.  These businesses were theoretically fiscally sound because they were based on the fact that young people were less wealthy than previous generations (the fact that Uber continues to hemorrhage billions of dollars since their IPO make this theory a little suspect in reality).

Recently I saw an ad on TV for Taco Bell that included the fact that you could get Taco Bell delivered to you through Doordash, and if you mentioned the ad the first delivery charge was waived (or something like that; I wasn’t fully attentive).  It took a while to sink in, but after a while I asked myself, “Is this actually a viable business model?”  Can you actually make a profit delivering Taco Bell orders to peoples’ homes?

I was immediately skeptical.  Okay, you can do Doordash with restaurants other than Taco Bell, but let’s focus on that.  A typical Taco Bell order for two people would total, what, $10?  $15 tops, if you really had the munchies.  But instead of getting into your car and going to Taco Bell, you are going to hire someone who own a car (and makes car payments on it, as well as insurance and maintenance), ask him or her to drive to Taco Bell (burning gas), pick up your $12.50 order, then burn more gas driving to your house, drop off the goodies, and then go home (or to their next delivery assignment).  Let’s say the entire process takes 30 minutes (that seems too short, but this would only work in a fairly dense urban environment).  How much would that driver charge you to make it worth his or her while (of course a major issue is whether the driver has to be paid minimum wage as an employee, or can be exploited as an “independent contractor”)?  The delivery charge would have to be more than the food, more if you tip the driver (assuming Doordash isn't stealing the tip). 

Okay, maybe you couldn’t cover your costs by charging enough for each order, but it’s like the old joke: there are lots of people who want to order from Taco Bell, so what you lose on each transaction you make up for in volume.  Obviously that isn’t a viable business model, unless you could cut costs by saying your employees are not employees and are therefore not entitled to minimum wage, workers compensation coverage, or any benefits.  But what is the quality of the work force you could hire willing to work for peanuts plus tips (again, unless the company steals them)?  If the business isn’t covering the driver’s insurance as a business expense that means the driver’s personal insurance would assume the risk, which would raise their rates tremendously.

The bottom line is this: unlike Uber, Lyft, and streaming services like Netflix, this is a business model based on affluence.  You are hiring a driver to go to Taco Bell and pick up an order for you because you are too lazy to go in your own car.  The delivery charge HAS to exceed the cost of you going to Taco Bell.  That means you have money to burn and want to burn it by having someone else go through the Taco Bell drive-through lane. 

Full disclosure: I am not a business genius.  I do not live in a huge mansion with a croquet lawn and kidney-shaped pool.  I am not the CEO of a billion-dollar corporation.  So take it with a grain of salt when I say that I don’t see how Doordash can be profitable.  The whole point of drive-throughs like Taco Bell is that people drive there and get food; if you can afford to hire someone to pick up Taco Bell food, you can afford to eat somewhere nicer than Taco Bell.

Unless you waste your money hiring someone to pick up your Taco Bell order and bring it to you.

What about pay equity for the WNBA?

Where’s your pay equity now?

This week the WNBA decided to suspend one of its stars, Brittney Griner, for three games follow a brawl between her and another player that resulted in the other player running away from Griner while players and officials restrained her.  The three-game suspension is about 8.8% of the 34-game WNBA season, so Griner will forfeit 8.8% of her pay.  Before you get too upset, we’re only talking about a little over $10,000.

That’s right, one of the biggest superstars in the history of the WNBA makes the maximum allowable pay level of $115,000.  For some comparison, there are journeyman benchwarmers in the NBA pulling down more than $10 million a year for multiple years.  An NBA player making $10 million a year makes more PER GAME than Griner makes for an entire season.

Griner’s initial response was to say that she was constantly being physically abused by other players, and if the league wouldn’t let her defend herself, then $115,000 wasn’t enough to pay for the privilege of playing in the WNBA Griner told ESPN she still felt that way after learning the length of the suspension).  Another superstar, Diana Tirausi, skipped playing in the WNBA in 2015 to play for more money in Russia.

I’ve always been unsure how the WNBA continues to exist.  I understand it is subsided by the NBA (to the tune of $10 million a year in the mid-2000s), and that many fans praise it for having a style of play that is more elegant than the NBA while still being physical.  Yet the league averages about 6,800 fans per game, which is about 40% of the average NBA attendance of 18,000.  According to the Wikipedia entry on the WNBA, ratings for WNBA games draw fewer viewers than college games.

Sports is a bottom line business, and the NBA pays its stars up to $40 million a year while WNBA players are capped at an amount that a good accountant could pull down.  If the WNBA product is so good, why aren’t more people willing to pay for tickets, or advertisers pay more for ad time during televised games?  It’s nice that women basketball players have a place to play after college, but if their skills are so in demand, why don’t they make more money (especially since overseas leagues are able to pay a lot more)?

This is particularly resonant now following the controversy over equal pay for the women’s national soccer team.  I have said it before and I’ll say it again, women soccer player’s shouldn’t make as much as men; they should make more.  The women’s team has won four World Cups (and never finished lower than third) and four Olympic Gold Medals since 1991, while the men last won in . . . let me check . . . that would be NEVER.  The men’s team was eliminated from even qualifying for the 2018 World Cup because they were beaten by that mighty soccer giant, Trinidad and Tobago.  It’s hard to imagine the US Mens Soccer Team beating a team from a soccer powerhouse like Germany, Spain, France or England when they can’t beat a small Caribbean island with a population roughly equal to that of Dallas, Texas.

The debate over soccer pay equity has devolved into splitting hairs over exactly how much players on each team receive; meanwhile male NBA players are making over 100 times more than WNBA players yet no one seems to be concerned about “pay equity.”  Yes, attendance and viewership numbers are less than those of the NBA, but they aren’t 100 times lower.

If Brittney Griner follows through on her threat and leaves the WNBA, it will lead to a great deal of soul searching by the league and its fans.  Can the WNBA survive with an economic system that pays their superstars so little?  Can they raise enough revenue to pay their players enough to keep them from going to leagues in other countries that can pay more?  If Griner leaves, will other stars follow her lead?

Griner’s fight and subsequent suspension might prove to be an expensive one for the WNBA.