Don't ban the defensive shift

Bill Veeck, the great, iconoclastic owner of a number of major league teams, once said, “Baseball must be a great sport; the owners haven’t killed it yet.”  Professional baseball has survived for 149 years, outliving the deadball era, the Black Sox scandal, the Great Depression, the powerball period of the 1950’s, the pitcher-dominated 1960’s, and the steroid era of the 1990’s.  But I still get nervous when I hear the owners want to improve on perfection.

The latest is a desire to outlaw the latest attack on baseball orthodoxy, namely the defensive shift.  The shift is a relatively new invention, arising in the late 1940’s (baseball is a game ruled by traditionalists, so change rarely happens quickly).  It was invented in 1946 by Cleveland Indians shortstop/manager Lou Boudreau, himself a Hall of Famer, to challenge another future Hall of Famer, the great Ted Williams. It was Boudreau who first put three infielders on the second base side of the diamond  in an effort to discourage left-handed pull hitters from swinging naturally.  What was once an obscure tactic suddenly gained credibility in the 21^st century, and suddenly this defense is being credited for destroying the game of baseball.

It isn’t entirely clear that the shift is actually effective, although there is some evidence to support it.  And the people who despise it, like Yankee manager Joe Girardi, are who you’d expect to complain—people who make their living off of slow footed left handed power hitters (Girardi probably wants all pitches other than 82 MPH fastballs outlawed as well).  Of course players like Ryan Howard, whose career was ended by the shift, hate the strategy the same way that 7 foot tall basketball players hate the 3-point shot and slow defensive linemen hate mobile quarterbacks. 

But, as the commercials used to say, chicks dig the long ball, and MLB is listening.  According to reports MLB is considering trying to improve offense by banning defensive shifts and implementing the DH in both leagues.  One irony in this is that MLB worries about length of play, but increasing offense makes games last longer.  A Sandy Koufax/Bob Gibson duel back in the 1960’s would be over in two hours, tops. 

Someone of ESPN’s Around the Horn said that the defensive shift was causing offensive production to go down.  That is precisely wrong—not adapting to the shift is responsible for any drop in production.  As Hall of Famer Wee Willie Keeler advised players over 100 years ago, the secret of batting is to “hit ‘em where they ain’t.”  When there is only one fielder to the left of second base, and no one within 50 feet of the third base line, just hit the ball to that side of the infield.  Heck, anyone with any speed could turn a bunt down the third base line into a double.

Defensive shifts do not create an unfair advantage, as any increase in defensive coverage on one side of the field is equaled by creating a defensive liability on the other side of the field.  If you want to increase offense by eliminating an unfair advantage, then outlaw the 100 MPH fastball.  Hey, there are too many strikeouts, so let’s make it four strikes and you’re out at the old ball game.  Remember that proposal to have a runner start on second base in extra innings?  Why not start EVERY inning with a man on second?

One way to improve offenses would be to have better players.  In 1941 Joe DiMaggio struck out 13 times in 139 games; Aaron Judge strikes out that many times on a typical weekend.  Of course Joltin’ Joe was a better ballplayer that Aaron Judge, but with that many strikeouts you wonder if Judge is even trying to make contact with the pitch, or is he just closing his eyes and swinging as hard as possible?

Or you could shorten the base paths to under 90 feet.  Or maybe go back to the time when batters could tell the pitcher where they would prefer to have the ball thrown to them.  There are a lot of ways to increase offense (one could, hypothetically, tamper with baseballs to reduce their drag coefficient and fly further).  But any change in the rules meddles with the balance of a game that has been appreciated for nearly 150 years.  Sometimes intervention is needed; the dominance of pitching in 1968 needed to be dealt with.  But given time any innovation that threatens the game will eventually be met with techniques to counteract them.

So don’t ban the infield shift.  A better idea would be to limit teams to using four pitchers per nine inning game.  That would improve offenses and speed up pace of play.  But instead of banning the shift, make batters learn how to bunt.

TV Review: Arrested Development, season 5 part 1 (spoilers)

It’s a fact (or at least it used to be; the economics of the entertainment industry are changing) that the key for any television show was longevity.  The important thing was to amass a minimum of 100 episodes and start raking in that sweet, sweet money that comes from syndication.  His explains why so many TV shows continue on past their sell-by date; why All in the Family continued on as Archie Bunker’s Place and eventually morphed into very short-lived spin-offs like Gloria and 704 Hauser (about a new family living at the Bunker’s address).

This isn’t a phenomenon of bad shows or mediocre shows (I suppose truly bad shows don’t have a chance at an extended life), but even great shows tend to wear out their welcome.  Lost was unique in having its creators demand that the network give them an end date so they could control the pace of the show’s plot as it meandered towards the finish line.

Which brings me to Season 5 of Arrested Development, a show whose first three network seasons placed it in the pantheon of one of the greatest sitcoms of all time.  The show featured unlikeable people, convoluted plotting, subtle visual jokes in the background, and an endless stream of callbacks to previous jokes.  Perhaps because of these traits, in had extremely low ratings through its run on FOX and never achieved any sort of widespread popular support.  It did win 6 Emmys, including Outstanding Comedy Series in its first season and two Best Writing for a Comedy awards.  The show is about the Bluth family, wealthy real estate magnates in Southern California who are, generally speaking, as stupid as they are dishonest and arrogant.

But fans being fans there was always lobbying for the inevitable movie follow-up.  After the success of Superbad there were fears that Michael Cera would not be interested in reprising his role as George Michael Bluth, but the cratering of his subsequent film career made going back to the role look more and more attractive.  Netflix picked up the series for an additional season in 2013, seven years after its finale show on FOX.

The results were contentious, to say the least.  The show’s creator, Michael Hurwitz, tinkered with the format in this new binge-watchy medium, pushing the limits on how convoluted he could make the plots and how many call backs he could cram into the show.  The results were generally not appreciated, to the extent that before season 5 was launched he had to go back and re-edit the season 4 episodes to make them more intelligible.

We now have season 5 available, or at least the first half of season 5, another five years after season 4.  I think it is fair to pull out the old trope and say the show has jumped the shark.  Arrested Development is still trying harder than any other show on TV, but it is trying too hard.  Characters that were on the edge of being cartoonish are now insufferable, plots that were barely coherent now make absolutely no sense, and the unavailability of some actors has required the scripts to do somersaults to paper over the holes.

Some of the actors continue to do top notch work.  Jason Bateman, who has twice been nominated for Best Actor in a Comedy for his portrayal of Michael Bluth, the most “honest” member of the family (on a sliding scale that is not saying much), continues to be an excellent straight man.  Jessica Walters continues to make Lucille Bluth, the family matriarch, the funniest, most self-involved, and most conniving character since Lady Macbeth (assuming you think Macbeth is a comedy).  The standout in season 5 is Alia Shawkat as Maebe, George Michael’s cousin and teenage crush (it’s okay, they aren’t really cousins), as a young woman who spends much of the season impersonating a 75-year-old woman residing in an assisted living facility.  She has the mannerisms and the vocal intonations of an elderly woman down pat, and if season 5 of Arrested Development snags any Emmy nominations I hope the make-up department gets one for her look.

Just an aside, but I always felt the most subversive thing about Arrested Development during its network run was that George Michael was raised by an attentive, devoted father and was an emotional basket case, while Maebe was raised by two inattentive narcissistic idiots and turned out relatively well-adjusted (other than being a borderline sociopath, but given the ethics of the Bluth family a little sociopathy is to be expected).

Other actors don’t fare as well.  Will Arnett, who always came close to over the top as GOB (pronounced Jobe), the eldest Bluth son, is reduced to being in continuous bombast mode.  Also, while GOB was never the sharpest tool in the shed, Arnett now portrays him as so dumb you can’t imagine how he manages to feed himself or get dressed in the morning.  David Cross as Tobias Funke, Michael’s brother-in-law who gave up a career as a psychotherapist to pursue being an actor, is another character who used to teeter constantly on the edge of being over the top who now tumbles over into buffoonery.

The oddest thing about season 5 is Portia de Rossi as Lindsey, Tobias’ wife and Michael’s sister, who plays a central role in season 5 as a candidate for Congress.  The problem is that de Rossi wasn’t interested in coming back, so they obviously green screened her into a couple of scenes and then had her disappear for most of this half of the season for no explanation (or at least not one that makes sense).  Of the eight episodes released, she doesn’t appear in half of them.

Arrested Development always was a gossamer confection that succeeded despite its intricate plotting and multifaceted call backs.  But with the 5-year time gap since season 4, plus the unavailability of some actors, the strain now shows and the narrative no longer makes sense.  The best evidence of this is the massive overuse of Ron Howard as the narrator, who it sometimes seems provides context to about half of any given episode (I would swear he does voice-over during 90% of the first episode of season 5).  Howard did great work on the original series, but he was so good they started using him as a crutch to explain away plot-holes, and it just got to be too easy.  Also, including Howard as a character in season 4 doubled down on the over use of the Oscar winning director and former child co-star of Andy Griffith.

The result is painful to watch.  Arrested Development is now grasping for laughs that it used to get seemingly without effort.  One of the joys of seasons 1-3 were all the various dyads the group of actors could be paired into, but now limits on availability mean that various characters never interact with others, while some are constantly thrust together. 

At some point, the work needed to pull off the high wire act becomes drudgery and not a lot of fun to look at.  I’ll probably watch the second half of season 5 when it comes out, as the binge format makes no demands on my time.  Mainly, I just want to see if George Michael gets past second base with Maebe; I think those two crazy kids deserve each other.

I do hope that Arrested Development ends with season 5.  With rumors about an attempt to spin-off Roseanne without Roseanne swirling, I hope that at least one classic sitcom can go gently into that good night.

NFL owners think they own the players as well as the teams

There are some things you can always count on.  The Washington Generals will never beat the Harlem Globetrotters; The Washington Nationals will find a way not to make it to the World Series; and the Washington Capitals will choke in the playoffs (well, almost always).

Add to this list the following: NFL owners will always put their collective foot in their collective mouth.  Bill Veeck, the legendary owner of several Major League baseball teams, once said “Baseball must be a great game; the owners haven’t killed it yet.”  These days he’d be talking about owners in the NFL.

The latest outrage by the owners stems from the long-brewing controversy over some players kneeling during the national anthem, in protest of . . . well, it began about the fact that very often Caucasian police officers seem to find it necessary to use deadly force against young, unarmed African-American men, but after a while some players were simply protesting to protest the owners not supporting their protest. 

This is a situation where rational people could disagree, so the owners proceeded logically; they unilaterally imposed their decision on their NFL “partners.”  You often hear the phrase “planation mentality” to describe the NFL owners, but the phrase doesn’t mean they are racist.  They think they own not only the team, but also the players; not just the African-America players, they think they own the White players as well.

The owners, without even bothering to consult the players or the NFL Players’ Union, decided to resolve the issue by deciding that all players MUST show respect during the anthem on the field, and if they didn’t want to they could remain in the locker room.  The owners couldn’t punish the players without violating the Collective Bargaining Agreement, so they deigned that any violation would result in the team being fined.  Of course, if the team owner then wanted to fine the players, that was okay (wink, wink).

Note that the owners treat the players, who are supposed to be the owners’ partners in the NFL, as equipment that they can do what they will with.  Not only do they not even offer to engage in dialogue with the players or the union, but they then assume that teams can force their players to do whatever they want them to do regarding behavior before the game.

Not only is this incredibly disrespectful, but it is poking the bear.  Players who maybe were fine standing during the anthem might be provoked into doing something because of this heavy-handed approach by the owners.  Reaction by players has been varied, but many reacted angrily. Perhaps noteworthy was the response of Chris Long (who happens to be Caucasian) who chided the owners’ motives by proclaiming, “This is not patriotism.” 

The hypocrisy of the owners is demonstrated by an incident earlier this year, when college quarterback Josh Allen was found to have made racist tweets when in high school.   One owner said, after Allen apologized, that it wouldn’t be a “distraction” in a league featuring mostly African-American players.  On the other hand, an African American player like Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the anthem, WAS a distraction.  That’s why a quarterback who played in a Super Bowl can’t even get a tryout to be third on an NFL team’s depth chart.

Maybe you think the owners have a point.  Maybe you think it should be illegal not to sing the national anthem when the flag is paraded around before a game.  Maybe you think people who protest White officers regularly killing unarmed Black youth should go back to where ever they came from.  Fine.

But that still doesn’t excuse the NFL owners attempting to impose their will on their partners, or assuming that teams can treat their players like pets to be disciplined when they don’t behave the way their owner likes. 

Earlier this year Texans owner Bob McNair displayed what he thought of the players when he described them as “inmates” running the prison.  Naturally he apologized, but he still made a statement equating the mostly African-American personnel of the NFL with inmates.  He doesn’t regret the comment, he only regrets being quoted.  The owners aren’t patriots, this isn’t about patriotism, it is about respect.  The owners have no respect for the players who make them very, very rich.  Unfortunately, the players can’t make them any smarter.

Whither The Flash?

Whither the Flash?

Several weeks ago, after a particularly depressing episode of The Flash, someone posted a comment on a media website reviewing the episode and asked, “Does anyone else think that maybe season one of The Flash was just a fluke?” 

That was a succinct summary of my attitude towards The Flash.  The first season was a breath of fresh air in the superhero genre, a show that made watching the comic book genre fun instead of angsty.  But the show lost the fun, and got darker and darker.  By season three the show was positively bleak, with the Flash’s love Iris seemingly doomed to be shish-ka-bobbed by the God of the Speed Force, or some such nonsense.  It made it hard to look forward to season 4.

But miracle of miracle, season 4 started off with the old dose of fun that had made Flash one of the most fun-filled shows on TV.  But at some point, old habits kicked in.  The season’s “Big Bad” (again, copyright Buffy the Vampire Slayer) was The Thinker, a villain who was smarter than all of Team Flash put together (I know they are supposed to be a collection of scientists and geniuses, but some days out thinking them doesn’t seem so tough).  He was mildly amusing at first, but then he started killing people; pretty much everyone, actually.  He killed random guest stars.  He killed interesting multi-episode characters.  Ultimately, he killed a semi-regular, Ralph Dibney, aka The Elongated Man, a member of Team Flash. 

Oh, and he didn’t just kill innocent people, he turned them into metahumans and then stole their powers as he killed them.  Sometimes it got confusing—twice he assumed the body of a young woman, then seemed to intimate that he expected his wife to, um, continue to find hm attractive.  I’m not saying same sex relationships make me uncomfortable; I’m saying that even in the best of marriages, if one party changes gender they can hardly expect the other party to go along unless they’ve given some indication they are on board.  It seemed beyond creepy that he’d expect his wife to become a lesbian just because he killed and took over the body of a young woman.

Also, with all of the various abilities he’s absorbed, his power is virtually godlike.  I can’t even keep track of all of his abilities, sort of like on Heroes when Peter Petrelli started absorbing powers until the producers saw the problem and then implemented a rule that whenever he gained a power, he lost one.  But The Thinker just gobbled up abilities and how he can go anywhere, steal anything he wants, and kill security guards for no reason.  And this is on TOP of being the smartest man alive.  The Flash have made him so powerful, any way that Barry Allen finds to stop him will be a cheat.

How can The Flash fix this problem of seasons getting more and more depressing as the season goes on?  I think for one thing, go back to episodic television.  Season arcs are great if you do them well, but it is easier to come up with 22 good stand alone episodes than one brilliant 20 episode epic.  There are just too many moving pieces, it’s too hard keeping all the balls in the air, choose your metaphor.

Along the same lines, drop the idea that there has to be a big bad each season who must up the ante in every show.  This invariably makes the villain have to do unpleasant things like kill innocent people to keep the stakes constantly being raised.  I don’t mean do what the original Superman did in the 1950’s and make the bad guys a bunch of goons who use words like “dese” and “dem”, but there must be ways for Barry Allen to help people without having to defeat someone wanting to lower all of mankind’s IQ.

Lastly, better use needs to be made of the excellent ensemble cast.  The way they handle, it seems to rotate so that in one episode Killer Frost will have a secret she’s keeping, only to discover she’s better off telling her friends the truth, then next week it’s Vibe, then Iris, then Welles, then Barry, then back to Frost.  You’ve developed a group of interesting characters and hired actors skilled at portraying them; do something unique to each character so that there isn’t a sense of déjà vu (and I hope I never have to hear another Flash character utter the words “I’ll never keeps secrets from the group again.”).

The Flash can be an excellent show, but the past THREE SEASONS it has gotten bogged down tripping over its own feet (another mixed metaphor).  Next season don’t try and swing for the fences, just make contact and trust your actors. 

And be funnier.  And cut back on the senseless murders; they aren’t fun.

The NFL Draft and definitionalism

The NFL draft is almost upon us, and once again I see the participants (and the endless number of analysts who comment on it) are exhibiting angst over the selection process.  Which quarterback will go number one?  Josh Allen?  Baker Mayfield?  Josh Rosen?  Sam Darnold?  The answer to the question of which will be chosen number one has been scrutinized since, well, last year’s draft.

One thing about draft analysis that always bothers me is what I call “definitionalism.”  That means that the number one draft pick will be expected to be better than the other first round picks (and subsequent picks, obviously) because he is the number one pick.  It’s as if picking a player number one somehow imbues him with the qualities expected to be demonstrated by a number one pick.  You expect something to be the definition of that something.

But we shouldn’t expect more of the number one pick than we do of the number two pick, or number four, or even number 10.  First of all, all talent evaluations have a margin of error (just ask the NFL executive who drafted Ryan Leaf).  Number one should be a pretty good NFL player, but so should any of the first-round picks.  If, on a scale from 1-10, Josh Rosen’s prospects are 8.5 and Sam Darnold’s are 8.489, then Rosen should be picked number one; but if each estimate has a plus/minus of 2, the we shouldn’t be surprised if Darnold has a better career.

Projecting future quality is as iffy as forecasting the stock market or Madonna’s love life.  As Yoda said, “Always in motion is the future.”  Robert Griffin III looked like a Hall of Famer—for a season.  Drew Brees’ early career in San Diego looked spotty, but then he was traded to New Orleans and is now a certain HoFer.  You just never know.

There is also the question of fit.  What quarterback will fit with the pieces around him?  Drafting the guy with the strongest arm won’t do your team much good if all your receivers have the dropsies.  Drafting a pocket passer over a mobile QB might be a mistake if you have a porous front line.  It is more important to have an idea of what kind of offense you want and select the best pieces to achieve that idea (which may mean not drafting a quarterback if other pieces are available). 

There is also the problem that a quarterback might be great, but if he’s picked by the Cleveland Browns he won’t be going to a Super Bowl the next season, or in the next five seasons (or ever if the Brown’s management doesn’t get massively smarter).  This is the point of drafting based on the prior season’s outcomes—the best players go to the weakest teams.  But if a team got the number one pick not through tanking but by sheer incompetence, then expecting one player to make a difference is probably asking too much.

Unfortunately, whoever the Cleveland Browns select with their first choice (assuming they don’t trade it or opt to draft a defensive lineman, because they’re the Browns) will have the daunted “number one pick” label attached to him for the rest of his career and after.  Even if the Cleveland Browns win twice as many games next season as last, twice zero is, let me see, zero.  They had the number one pick last year and it didn’t exactly improve them.

My point is, whoever is picked number one, Darnold or Allen or Mayfield or Rosen, the expectations shouldn’t be higher on that player.  They have all proven to be competent NCAA quarterbacks, and their NFL potential is roughly the same.  Don’t get sucked into believing that the one picked number one should be expected to be better than the others.  At this point it is all a crapshoot.

How much will having the number one pick help the Cleveland Browns?  Probably about as much as having last year’s number one picked helped; they selected Miles Garrett of Texas A&M with the first pick in the 2017 draft, and in the 2017-18 season they went 0-16. 

Nothing can help the Cleveland Browns.

Legends of Tomorrow gets renewd

The announcement has been made (to what I hope was no one’s great surprise) that The CW has renewed DC’s Legends of Tomorrow for another season.  If you had asked me around the end of the show’s first season how long it would last, I would have replied, “Is it on next week?”  Season one was a dull plod, with silly hawk-people and a main character who sought to kill the main bad guy because he killed the main character’s wife and child.  Yeah, he also enslaved all mankind and ruled as an iron-fisted despot, but the wife-and-child killing was just over the top. 

But then something miraculous happened: the show got better.  It dropped the gloomy tale of trying to stop immortal despot Vandal Savage (okay, the character was dull, but the name was awesome) and decided to embrace its inner geek.  The show got more imaginative and more daring, eventually featuring Vikings worshipping a Tickle-Me-Elmo knock off, George Lucas changing the fate of humanity by dropping out of film school, Napoleon Bonaparte partaking in Spring Break, and most recently going back in time to 1999 to have guest star John Noble utter some words so the Legends can impersonate a demon whose voice is provided by. . .  John Noble.

The renewal announcement follows a prior announcement that, if the show were to be renewed, it would add actor Matt Ryan as John Constantine as a regular.  This has been generally accepted as a good thing by the comments I’ve seen on the Internet.  Ryan has been on a few episodes as a guest star and has served as an effective comic foil, a new character in the mix, and (thanks to a quick shag in the 1960’s) a reminder that Sarah Lance is in fact bi-sexual and not a lesbian (after flirtations or more with a number of female characters ranging from Queen Guinevere in Camelot to Supergirl’s adopted sister Alex Danvers in the Crisis on Earth X mini-series, I was starting to wonder why she was always described as bi). 

I remain skeptical.  For one thing, I watched the first two episodes of Constantine when it debuted on NBC, and found it less than compelling.  The reason for that is my point two, mainly that I dislike the mixing of science fiction with fantasy.  Or at least what I call “soft fantasy” as opposed to “hard fantasy.”  The latter is demonstrated by Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which dealt with mystic arts and things that defied the realm of science, but did so in an alternative that still had rules that had to be followed.  Vampires can’t enter a home without an invitation; why?  Who cares as long as the rule is applied consistently, I can accept it. 

But on shows like Constantine the rules seem more fluid.  There’s always a way out, a way to stop an all-powerful demon by making a Latin incantation, a way to avert the end of the world by burning incense and making some runes on the floor.  The last two seasons of Buffy occasionally fell into this trap, where a witch could transmute something by a wave of the hand, sort of like Samantha on Bewitched twitching her nose. 

While I have enjoyed Legends this season, I have wearied of the seemingly endless quest to assemble a collection of totems to defeat a demon called Mallus.  Of course this makes no less sense than season two’s quest to assemble a Spear of Destiny, but for some reason that seemed infinitely more reasonable.  Of course when the bad guys assembled the Spear and were able to re-write the universe however they wanted, they chose to make the universe seem an awfully lot like the original.

I am glad there will be another season of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, but I hope adding John Constantine into the mix doesn’t ruin the chemistry of the ensemble.  Of course other characters have been inserted and left without lessening the show’s quality (in some cases improving it), so maybe they know what they are doing.  But the fact is that most shows have an expiration date, a point by which time all plots have been done and all character backstories have been examined.  Maybe four seasons is the time limit for Legends; maybe not. 

When a show has proven so nimble, so adept at evolving into something better, you have to give it the benefit of the doubt.  This show has done something I would have thought was impossible, namely make me actually LIKE Brandon Routh (after that stupid Superman film and the disastrous guest role on Chuck, not even Scott Pilgrim vs. the World could get him out of my doghouse).  So sign me up for another year; heck, I even forced myself to watch seasons 6 and 7 of Buffy.

Talk about a show sticking around past its expiration date.

Whither Whedon?

One of the problems of our celebrity-obsessed culture is that we, the common people, feel some sort of connection to famous people.  We follow them on twitter, visit their Facebook page, and generally think of them as just another buddy, albeit one that never actually sends a personal e-mail.

I try to avoid this delusion, mostly because I am, you know, sane.  But there is one celebrity I feel a connection to, and that’s Joss Whedon.  And I don’t think I’m alone; Whedon’s ability to connect with his fan base was unique among writer-directors.  Of course, the stronger the connection, the stronger the backlash when something severs that connection.

There was a huge fallout when it came to light that Whedon had been unfaithful to his wife with women (unnamed, as far as I know, but then I’ not exactly in the loop) that he had worked with.  As a result the fan site Whedonesque shut down, and his reputation took a hit.  There was a lot of confusion over whether he should be included in the #metoo movement, or questioning his feminist credentials, but there never was any implication that he “Harvey Weinsteined” any women.  To quote the Steve Martin comedy L.A. Story, he had just been “a big dumb male.”

All that aside, I am concerned about his creative output. Of course he had his biggest success with the 2012 release of The Avengers, with a gross of $623.4 million.  In 2013 he released his low budget version of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, which may have only grossed $4.3 million but cost next to nothing to make and had an impressive Metacritic score of 78.  A big-budget blockbuster and a critically acclaimed, small budget Shakespearean adaptation; not a bad year.

Since then Whedon’s output hasn’t quite matched those highs.  His follow-up to The Avengers, The Age of Ultron, grossed a mere $459 million and had a middling Metacritic score of 66.  I’ve gone back over Whedon’s oeuvre and frankly I think it is clearly the worst thing he’s ever written/directed.  The script feels rushed, like Marvel wanted to get the sequel out as soon as possible because the franchise might die if the next installment wasn’t in theaters within three years (okay, maybe they had a point). 

Since Ultron, he did some script doctoring on DC’s Justice League (it helped some, but not enough).  He had tried to get a big screen version of Wonder Woman made for years to no avail, which would have helped his feminist street cred, only to see the film get made by a woman director.  He had been linked to the next best thing to a Wonder Woman film, a big-screen version of Batgirl, but reports are that that's off as well.

His imprimatur is still around, as a creator of the TV show Agents of SHIELD (which I stopped watching a couple of years ago) and other Marvel-centric entertainments.  But the director of two of the 13 biggest grossing films of all time (okay, Black Panther will bump Age of Ultron Ultron down to 14 next week) hasn’t directed anything since Ultron, three years ago.

Where does Whedon go?  Back to television?  Frankly that seems to be a medium more suited to his skills at witty dialog, plot twists and character development.  Or would that be seen as slumming after directing two films that together grossed over a billion dollars? Given we now live in the era of beloved TV show reboots, would a “reimagining” of Firefly be considered blasphemy?

Sometimes creative types can find freedom to be intimidating.  It’s easier to take risks when you know you have to succeed or be jobless.  Once you have the freedom to do whatever you want, you might suddenly find you don’t know what you want (after The Avengers huge opening weekend Whedon sent out a message that finally he’d be able to do that reboot of Air Bud the world had been waiting for).

Between 1939 and 1944 Preston Sturges produced six of the most brilliant comedies ever filmed (The Great McGinty won an Oscar for best screenplay; four of the five others made the AFI list of top 100 comedies).  When he was finally given the freedom by the studio to make his lifelong dream, he made a biopic about the invention of anesthesia called The Great Moment.  His career never recovered. 

I hope Joss Whedon can find his next project and have better success recovering from his career setbacks of the past few years.