RIP Ghosted

Ghosted, the Fox comedy that was mostly a parody of the slightly more successful Fox show The X-Files, has been cancelled.  But the network, in its wisdom, is showing the remaining episodes.  Why?  Either they want to provide closure to the, um, dozens of fans of the show, or it’s summer or there is nothing but crap on anyway.  Frankly, the episodes that have aired since the show was rebooted have increasingly demonstrated that the attempt to transform the show from an X-Files spoof to a workplace comedy were doomed from the start.

For the millions of you who have never watched Ghosted, it was about a pair of investigators who looked into paranormal activity, just like Mulder and Scully on that other show.  Unlike Mulder and Scully, one was not a porn-obsessed nerd and the other was not a hot, brilliant woman doctor; one (Craig Robinson) was a former LAPD officer with some emotional baggage, while the other (Adam Scott) was a brilliant Stanford astrophysicist whose belief in the paranormal took over his life after his wife left him (or was abducted by aliens).  The two are recruited by a clandestine government agency called Bureau Underground (I am glad they didn’t go with some awkward “Agents of SHIELD” type acronym) that investigates the paranormal because, it was later revealed, Harry Truman had a ghost cat in the White House.

The show's weakness, at first, was an over-reliance on the inestimable charms of Robinson and Scott (hey, I just realized those were the names of the Bill Cosby/ Robert Culp characters on I Spy!).  The show didn’t put a lot of effort into the plots or the supporting characters, but instead seemed content to put the two leads in weird situations and then let them riff their way out of it.  After it had been on for a month Fox announced it was ordering more episodes, but they were replacing the showrunner with Paul Lieberstein, who had been on the American version of The Office and who would presumably transform it into more of a workplace comedy.

The show went on hiatus after December and returned in June with the rebooted format.  The first three episodes took place almost entirely in the Bureau’s office, and most of the tertiary cast members were finally given character names.  The secondary cast was also given more to do, especially boss Ava Lafrey, played by Ally Walker who proved to have unexplored comic chops.  But the whole thing came across as just another version of The Office, only weirder, and the show was cancelled.

Changing the format of a show in mid-stream almost never works.  Scrubs tried to transition to Scrubs: Med School and lasted 13 episodes.  Burke’s Law, a 60’s police mystery-drama starring Gene Barry, didn’t succeed when it switched its format (and title) to Amos Burke: Secret Agent (possibly because no one took a secret agent named "Amos" seriously).  The only show I can think of that successfully changed its format after a problematic start was Cougar Town, which began as a high-concept star vehicle for Courtney Cox and successfully transitioned into a low-concept ensemble comedy.   Shows can get better; for example, Angel started off fairly mediocre but got better with each successive season.  But tossing out the initial premise and starting over rarely works.

The shift in format has raised some uncomfortable questions with character continuity.  One of the running bits in the original format was that Scott’s character, Max Jennifer, was attracted to co-worker Annie (Amber Stevens West), but was hesitant to ask her out because of some baggage regarding his ex-wife.  However, the new showrunner must have decided not to go in that direction, and in the most recent episode the whole idea of Max and Annie getting together is killed by 1) Robinson’s character telling Max that he slept with Annie after a party several weeks earlier, and 2) Annie telling Max that she didn’t want to go out with him and that she never flirted with him in the first place.

Okay, if the new showrunner wanted to put the kibosh on a Max/Annie hook-up, that’s fine.  But doing it this way raises all sort of awkward questions. First, it makes Max look like the poster boy for the #MeToo movement when we are supposed to consider him the most relatable character on the show.  Second, we (the audience) saw Annie flirt with Max, so she comes off as a woman who flirts with men then yells “#MeToo” when the guy follows up on her flirting.  Third, it turns Robinson’s character into a guy who’ll have a one-night stand with an inebriated co-worker he otherwise has no interest in, which doesn’t make him look good.  Further, the fact that he insists on telling Max about the, uh, sleepover makes it look like he is more considerate of Max’s feelings than Annie’s, who probably didn’t want the incident related to anyone in the office, particularly a man she flirted with (except she didn’t).  Also, in true sitcom fashion the information was stupidly spread to everyone in the office, making the two men look even more insensitive. 

But Rest in Peace to Ghosted, a sort-of-clever idea that no one apparently knew what to do with.  The show had two well-utilized stars, some under-utilized supporting actors, but needed better writers to make it all work.  Of course, what television show doesn’t need better writers?

LeBron and Superteams

King James has spoken from the top of the mountain, announcing that he is taking his talents to Los Angeles (although he has abandoned the verbiage he used when making prior relocation announcements).  He wants to go to a team with a tradition of winning, so he has joined a team that over the past five years has amassed a winning percentage of .307 and didn’t make the playoffs.  This is like when he announced where he was going when he left Miami and some people (mostly New Yorkers) speculated that he might go to a team where he could win a championship like the NY Knicks (who had last won a title in 1973).  Okay, this is unfair; the Los Angeles Lakers suck now, but they were good way back in the 20^th century.

The most surprising thing is that he made the announcement without waiting to see if the Lakers would snag another big name free agent to co-star in his next title run.  Most of the coverage of LeBron’s future was connected to the possibility of teaming up with other NBA superstars to form a “superteam.”  However bad the Lakers were in 2017-18, the addition of LeBron and one other superstar would immediately assure them a playoffs berth, and even possibly challenge the Warriors for Supremacy in the Western Conference (but this was before the Warriors acquired Boogie Cousins and became even more, um, super-er).

This is where basketball is different than baseball or football; merely signing LeBron would make the worst team in the league a contender for their conference finals.  There is no baseball or football player who alone could have that impact on a team.  Free agency has now wrought this system where players can get together and decide where they want to team up, and with the dominance of the Warriors over the past four years it would take a superteam of at least three superstars to contend.  LeBron, Kevin Love, and three guys chosen at random from the audience (which is the rotation the Cavaliers essentially used during the 2018 playoffs) just won’t cut it.

But what all this manipulation by the players amounts to is that no team will be able to have any chance of winning in the NBA unless they assemble a rival superteam, and the number of cities that can attract a superteam is very small.  From now until doomsday, teams located is such garden spots as Sacramento, Portland, Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, Denver, Memphis, or Orlando (to name only a few) will have absolutely ZERO chance of winning an NBA championship (especially Sacramento, given that it is a well-known fact that the NBA fixed the 2002 Western Conference Finals to make sure that the Lakers, and not the Kings, went to the NBA Finals). 

In other words, three fourths of the NBA will exist only because the other 25% of the teams need someone to lose to them.

The NBA has always been this way; between 1980 and 2010 only 6 teams won 28 of the 30 NBA championships.  But at least in the “old days” a team had the hope that a good draft could bring an emerging star who would immediately elevate his team’s quality.  The problem was that good college players were joining bad NBA teams, but there was a chance.

Unfortunately, now almost all college basketball players are “one and done” and enter the NBA as a callow 19-year-old, with just one season of college ball under their belt.  They tend to be undersized and inexperienced, and not capable of providing a significant impact for at least a few years.  The draft doesn’t level the playing field like it used to.

There are exceptions, like in Philadelphia which implemented “the Process” which called for tanking over several seasons to amass multiple high draft picks and now are favored to vie for the Eastern Conference title in 2018-19.  But this required a half-decade of squalid basketball, fortuitous ping pong ball drops, and a series of quality choices in the draft, all of which cannot be relied upon by another team seeking to emulate their success.

Teams that have a legacy of winning tend to keep it until years after the fact. Maybe successful teams in boring places, like Cleveland, San Antonio and Oklahoma City, will be able to contend for a while by attracting stars to a successful system.  But at some point, the geographic advantage of being in a big city with a pleasant climate, like LA or Miami, will lure the majority of superstars there to form superteams, and from that point on the majority of NBA teams will just be cannon fodder. 

Michele Roberts, the head of the NBA Players’ Association, said that the players should be faulted for competitive imbalance, that it is a factor of some teams being better managed than others.  That assumes that Lebron James seriously sat down and considered signing with the Sacramento Kings, but chose the Lakers not because of money (the salary cap means he’d get the same amount anywhere) but because the prospect of playing with Lonzo Ball appealed to him.  I tend to support player unions, but she’s off her rocker if she doesn’t get that players getting together and “colluding” to go to attractive destinations together is not making rich teams rich and relegating teams in smaller markets to perpetual oblivion.

What’s the solution?  Normally I would oppose anything that restricts player movement, as that helps owners sign players for below-market salaries.  At least it has in baseball, but the economics of the NBA are such that players like Ian Mahinmi can make $16 million in 2017 for playing 15 minutes and scoring under 5 points per game.  Sacramento, Portland and Indianapolis will never be able to compete with LA as an attractive destination for young, wealthy, athletic young men, but there should be some way to stop all of the talent in the league from flowing to a half-dozen teams while preserving salaries and giving the rest of the league a modicum of hope. 

In Memoriam: Harlan Ellison

In Memoriam: Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison was the greatest writer I ever read.

I’m not sure if that is literally true.  I’ve read some great writers; Shakespeare, Twain, and Hemingway to name a few.  But Ellison was the only one who, after I read his work, made me say to myself, “If that’s writing, then I can’t write.”

Ellison died today at age 84.  He reportedly went peaceably, so it was possibly the first time he did anything that way.  He was notoriously combative, litigious, and confrontational.  He wrote what is arguably the best Star Trek episode of all time, City on the Edge of Forever, and then bickered with show creator Gene Roddenberry for decades.  The broadcast version of the show won a Hugo award (one of nine for Ellison); the original script won Ellison a Writer’s Guild award.  So, let’s call it a tie.

Harlan Ellison would be better known except for two things: he worked primarily in genre (science fiction, horror and mystery), and he worked primarily in short fiction, rarely going over novella length.  His short story The Whimper of Whipped Dogs, a fictionalization of the famous Kitty Genovese murder case which won the Edgar Award for best short story, is a classic.  His science fiction novella called A Boy and His Dog was turned into a moderately successful movie starring a young Don Johnson.  But most of his work was so invested in his singular imagination that it was utterly unfilmable, and most of his work is not familiar to mass audiences.

Take, for example, The Deathbird, a Hugo-award winning short story that interweaves segments about a dying planet, a son being asked to euthanize his mother, an essay about Ellison's dog dying, and a written exam being given for purposes that are not clear.  There is no clear plot line, few characters, and a narrative that shifts gears about a dozen times in 29 pages, but together it conveys something profound about death, dealing with death, what it means to go on, and also to not continue.

Much of his stuff was dark, but he had a sharp sense of humor.  His three-part essay “The three most important things in life: sex, violence and labor relations” is probably the funniest thing I’ve ever read.  Part one describes a date he had with a young woman when he was a struggling writer in Hollywood that went terribly wrong; part two is about a close encounter with death in a Times Square movie theater balcony; and part three is about his infamous tenure as a contract writer for Disney that lasted almost one entire day (Roy Disney overheard him telling other writers that he had an idea for a porno movie featuring Mickey Mouse and Tinkerbell and did not appreciate it).

He wrote a lot of cerebral stuff, but he also wrote for television (the ironic juxtaposition would not be lost on him).  He wrote two episodes for Outer Limits, called Soldier and Demon with a Glass Hand, that are not only classics, but also allowed him to successfully sue James Cameron for plagiarism when The Terminator came out (frankly, I don’t see any similarities other than time travel and robots, but whatever).  He wrote for several TV series in the 1960, most notably the aforementioned Star Trek episode whose lore is almost as famous as the episode itself.

The plot, for the unfamiliar, sends Kirk and Spock back in time to repair damage to the timeline that wiped out existence as they knew it.  They arrive in 1930’s New York and meet a social worker named Edith Keeler, played by Joan Collins.  Kirk falls in love with her (because, well, she’s Joan Collins) but then must make a choice when she appears to be the item in the timeline that caused the change.

Ellison’s script was a spec script, with no regular characters named because they hadn’t been created when Roddenberry asked for the script.  In Ellison’s version, the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise was responsible for distributing an illegal narcotic that precipitated the events leading to the change in the timeline.  Network standards wouldn’t accept a script with illegal drug use, and it was changed to an accidental overdose of a prescribed drug.  Ellison complained, loudly, about this and other changes; when Star Trek conventions became a thing, Roddenberry loved to tell audiences that Ellison’s version had “Scotty dealing drugs.”  Ellison again complained loudly, and Roddenberry promised never to say that again, a promise he broke at the next Star Trek convention.  It was too good of a line.

Ellison didn’t write much for TV after the 1960’s, but he was a consultant on the Twilight Zone revival in the 1980’s (Bruce Willis was in an effective dramatization of Ellison’s short story “Shatterday”) and Babylon 5 in the 1990’s.  He created a series called The Starlost but became so enraged at the producers that he demanded that his name not be put on the series, which was attributed to his pen name, Cordwainer Bird. 

An entertaining documentary was made about him in 2008 called “Dreams with Sharp Teeth.”  He also edited the groundbreaking anthologies Dangerous Visions and Again Dangerous Visions that pushed the boundaries of what themes science fiction could tackle, from sexuality to drug use to violence.  He also won numerous awards for a short story titled "Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W," which may be the longest short story title I’ve seen.

A lot of what he wrote, especially his essays, displayed a seemingly inexhaustible supply of anger.  That's okay.  To spew vitriol indiscriminately requires almost no talent; to vent one's spleen with humor, intelligence and style is genius.  Jon Stewart on The Daily Show could do it; critic Robert Hughes was a master; Harlan Ellison was the Grand High Lord of the Realm.  

Ellison won 9 Hugo awards, 4 Nebulas (including being the only writer to win three times in the short story category), two Edgar Awards for mystery short stories, four Writers Guild Awards for TV scripts, and a bunch of other awards. 

So long to Harlan Ellison.  I wish him an afterlife more pleasant that most of those he imagined in his stories.

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.