The seamy underbelly of food delivery

The world is replete with stories of people who regret not buying things when they could have, like stock in IBM or Amazon.  Everyone is looking for that high-risk investment that, in retrospect, was a sure thing.  The latest in the “Boy, if only I had known about this sooner I would have bought that” file--Uber has picked up food delivery service Postmates for only $2.7 billion!

The amazing thing about this news?  It comes right on the heels of several reports that these businesses will never make a profit, they can’t turn a profit even with a captive audience, and they are beset by legal difficulties involving fraud.  

I find the conclusion in the Newshour report the funniest, that people are investing billions of dollars in some pie-in-the-sky scheme that will probably fail because throwing a couple of billion of dollars at a plan that will probably fail is better than putting that money in a nice index fund that is certain to return a solid 4% - 5% per year, or even a moderately risky investment that might return 7% - 10%. 

This demonstrates some sort of psychopathy on the part of investors.  Following on the heels if the tech bubble, then the housing bubble, investors are conditioned to expect excessively high returns as the norm.  It is almost as if investors think “high risk means high reward” and they think it means that making a risky investment is certain to produce a high return.  That is not what high risk means; in fact, it is the opposite of what high risk means.

This reminds me of the TV series Suits when the lead character quit being a fake lawyer and became an investment banker, and his boss complained that he only “hit doubles” and he wanted “home runs.”  First of all, any baseball player who hit only doubles when he batted would be in the Hall of Fame after his first year.  Second, this again reinforces the idea that taking bigger risks always produces bigger rewards.  Riskier investments will, more often than not, fail; that is what it means to be risky.

To cite another lovable TV character, Tom on Parks and Recreation was devastated when his business (which produced absolutely no marketable product) went bankrupt.  He was puzzled because, as he put it, “They say you have to spend money to make money.  Well, we spent money like crazy!”

I have to admit there is not a lot about the food delivery business I understand.  I read that delivery sites can force restaurants to use them without their knowledge.  Delivery services have been accused of charging restaurants for phone calls.    There are a whole host of actions by delivery services that restaurants don't appreciate.  My response would be, if the apps are so bad, don’t use them, but apparently that isn't an option.

This is obviously a breakdown of free-market economics of the highest order.  One of the principles of capitalism is that both parties agree (in theory) to the exchange that takes place, but news articles seem to imply (actually, they assert boldly) that restaurants have no choice but to do business with delivery services that eliminate their profit margin.  How can any disciple of Adam Smith condone one party to a transaction imposing a 13.5% to 40% surcharge on the other party without the other party’s consent?

I was skeptical of food delivery services’ profitability when I thought the fee was being paid entirely by the end consumer; why would anyone pay someone $10 to deliver a $5 chalupa box from Taco Bell?  But after looking at all the short cuts, ethically dubious actions, misrepresentations, and business models dependent on underpaying workers, I am even more convinced that this business cannot legally make a profit.  If it could, it wouldn’t resort to setting up fake websites and stealing its employee's tips.

A major test will come in November, when California voters will decide if gig workers are employees or independent contractors.  If the proposition fails, and the gig companies have to treat their employees with dignity and pay them minimum wage and carry workers’ compensation insurance, there should be a significant market correction.  My guess?  The vast majority of Californians who don’t use Uber, or Lyft, or DoorDash will shrug their shoulders, vote no, and let the chips fall where they may.

In the meantime, do your favorite restaurant a favor and order delivery from them directly, or order take out and pick it up yourself.

Nuance

There are some quotes that are great because they are all-purpose.  They can be trotted out under almost any circumstances and found to be applicable.  Jerry Brown once supposedly said, “What we need is a flexible plan for an ever-changing world.”  That applies to everything from the coronavirus to the upcoming NBA playoffs.  FDR famously said, “All we have to fear is fear itself.”  This is not as all-purpose as some people think it is.  Tom Brady recently said this in response to a question about practicing while COVID-19 cases were spiking; Tom Brady may have six Super Bowl rings, millions of dollars, and a supermodel wife, but if he thinks people shouldn’t be afraid of the coronavirus he is an idiot.

Another all-purpose quote comes from the season 1 opening credits of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, when the lead character insists, “The situation is a lot more nuanced than that.”  Things are rarely as black and white (pardon the expression) as people proclaim.  People often look for an easy solution to problems for which there is no easy answer.  To fall back on another all-purpose quote, as H. L. Mencken said, “For every complicated problem there is an answer that is simple, easy, and wrong.”

Let’s take the example of shows like 30 Rock pulling episodes because of the use of blackface. The idea that a Caucasian actor or singer can put on makeup that makes them look like an African American so they can impersonate an African-American is, well, inappropriate. 

The most recent show to have an episode pulled for use of blackface is the Community episode Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.  The problem with this episode is that a regular character who is Asian, participating in the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, made himself up as a dark elf, which included dark facial and body make-up.  If he had chosen to be a regular elf and just put on some pointy ears, I guess it would have been okay, but clearly people were offended by an Asian actor playing a dark elf.

Do you see the problem here?  We’re talking about ELVES!  People are offended by an Asian actor playing an elf.  He could have been a green elf or a blue elf (Smurf?), but because the script chose “dark elf” (which I understand is a thing in fantasy games and are known as drows) he’s suddenly impersonating an African-American (an African-American elf?).  Should they have hired an African American actor?  No, this was a regular character played by an Asian actor.  Could they have chosen not to make him dark?  I guess no one complains about Orlando Bloom playing an elf, so maybe, although the character of Chang is sort of evil and would opt to play a dark elf (which, again, I understand to be a real thing in fantasy games).  Since Chang was playing a dark elf, he was not engaged in “blackface.”

So far, I have heard no word on whether the Man Men episode where Roger Sterling sang a song wearing actual blackface will be pulled.  There was a previous instance where the BBC pulled an episode of Fawlty Towers because a character made stupid racist statements; as John Cleese pointed out, the character was, in fact, a stupid racist and the episode has been restored.

Society has seen a major, almost unprecedented shift in perspective since the George Floyd death, and we are now entering the French Revolution stage where the easy targets have all been attacked and people are looking for more aristocrats to behead.  This month some BLM protesters in Boston vandalized a memorial to an all-Black regiment that fought in the Civil War (had none of these people seen the Denzel Washington film Glory?). 

This country has a sordid history on race, and a long way to go before we arrive at a harmonious society.  But in our haste to be virtuous, let’s not throw the dark elves out with the bath water.  The situation is a lot more nuanced than that.

Owners are killing the minor leagues

Bill Veeck once said that baseball was the only sport played by normal sized people; to play basketball you had to be 7-feet tall, to play football you had to be 7-feet wide.  Obviously, Bill Veeck had never seen Mark McGuire.

Athletes have more options these days in choosing what sport to pursue, and baseball seems intent on driving high-quality athletes to consider basketball or football as a higher priority.  In 2018 the Save America’s Past-time Act was signed into law as part of the federal spending bill, which should have been named the Save Billionaire Owners A Few Bucks Act.  The language, which was a footnote in the 2,200 page document, exempted the minor leagues from federal minimum wage and worker safety laws.  This for an industry where most workers make less than $7,500 per year. 

Minor league players make so little that when the Washington Nationals announced they were releasing all their minor league players, the players on the Nationals offered to pay their lost wages.  The Nationals were embarrassed enough to reinstate the weekly stipend of $300-400.  Individual players like David Price have also pledged financial support for minor leaguers.

It has been pointed out (I can’t find a citation) that the diets of minor league players are usually unhealthy because they can’t afford to eat nutritious food, so they often binge on fast food or try to survive on ramen.  For a modest expenditure a major league team could feed their AAA and AA players a healthy diet and protect their investment, but this isn’t done.

Baseball is now providing even less incentive for athletes to choose baseball over another sport by reducing the draft from 40 rounds to just five rounds.  Any player not drafted in those five rounds couldn’t sign for more than $20,000.   Incredibly, minor league salaries are so paltry even this wholesale slashing of salaries will only save a couple of million dollars per team.

So, baseball will be paying its minor league workforce below minimum wage salaries, making bonuses smaller, and giving contracts to fewer players, expecting many of the players to spend a few years in college before making another go at earning a spot in The Show.

What is happening in other sports?  In basketball, the NBA is now letting top high school prospects turn pro by going to the G League.  Players don’t even have to pretend to go to college for one year to get to the NBA.  Other high schoolers are opting to play overseas.  No working for below minimum wage for several years before cashing in.

Football players still have to endure three years of college before going pro, but the NCAA is slowly caving to the pressure to allow collegiate athletes to make money on their "name, likeness, and image." They are being dragged kicking and screaming, but it is happening.  Of course, this will be most valuable to quarterbacks and running backs and less so for interior linemen, but it is just the start.   The movement to pay college players a small part of the billions of dollars of revenue they generate appears to be unstoppable.

So while high school athletes in basketball and (eventually) football will be able to cash in right out of school, baseball decided to take their grossly underpaid minor league work force and pay them even less. 

Mike Piazza was drafted in the 62^nd round of the draft, and he is now in Cooperstown.  Would he have stuck with baseball if he was undrafted and had to fight for a position that would pay him a maximum of $20,000?  As one of the previously cited articles pointed out, baseball drafting is an inexact science and many baseball stars and Hall of famers were drafted outside the 5^th round.  Whither these players in a five-round draft?

The all-consuming greed of baseball owners is well documented in books like Lords of the Realm by John Helyar and The Game by Jeff Passan.  In The Game, Passan describes how in the 1990’s the owners were concerned about the competitive balance and small market teams, but instead of redistributing their revenue they expected ball players to enable small market teams to compete by taking a pay cut (and were stunned when the players refused).  Recently, many African-American players and former players have detailed what t was like to be assigned to a minor league team in the South.

But the owners are now cutting expenditures on a minor league system that has always exploited young men’s desire to play baseball by paying them slave wages for several years and putting up with substandard travel and third-rate motels.  They have a cheap source of labor and yet they want to make it cheaper. 

Cutting off your nose to spite your face seems like an inadequate metaphor. 

Tua and the draft

There has been one (okay, more than one) unfortunate byproduct of the COVID-19 situation; it has made ESPN even more hyper-focused than usual. They always fixated on certain stories (where is Tom Brady going?  Who will be the first pick in the draft?) but with so many fewer sports stories out there, they now analyze the ones they have to death.

The biggest topic currently is the NFL draft, and the biggest substory is the question of who will pick Tua Tagovaiola, the “oft-injured” quarterback who led Alabama to a national championship.  He was considered a potential number one pick, but a hip injury (that followed two ankle injuries and a finger injury) have made his draft prospects dicey.

I’ve said before that I dispute the contention that Tua is injury prone.  His injuries have not indicated a defective body part, like a bad knee or repeated back issues. As Tua himself pointed out, he plays a game that is very physical and sometimes injures will happen to the healthiest of people.  Drew Brees missed part of last year with a hand injury; is he injury prone?

But the way the question is always phrased is that is it too “risky” to take Tua with a high draft pick?  But the question obscures an important point; saying it is too risky to select Tua implies that drafting Jordan Love or Justin Herbert is a sure thing.  Here are some other names that were sure things: Marcus Mariota, Jameis Winston, Tim Tebow, Ryan Leaf, Tim Couch, Vince Young, Jim Druckenmiller, Todd Marinovich and Jamarcus Russell.  That is only a partial list.  The fact is picking ANY quarterback in the draft is risky; Tua’s hip injury hardly makes him that much riskier.

Let’s look at a recent draft.  In 2017 the Bears could have taken Lamar Jackson or Pat Mahomes with their #3 pick, but both of those QBs were unconventional and therefore “risky.”  They went with a sure thing and traded up to #2 to select Mitch Trubisky. How does that risk aversion look now, after Mahomes and Jackson are the last two MVPs and Trubisky is fighting Nick Foles for his job in Chicago?

If you look at a list of quarterback draft busts, you should notice something—most of them were big with “tangibles.”  Jeff George and Ryan Leaf both had a cannon for an arm, Marinovich and Druckenmller were physical gods.  Who lacked these “tangibles”?  Tom Brady, drafted #199 in 1999.  Aaron Rodgers, who slid nearly out of the first round.  Doug Flutie, who was too small to be a quarterback in the NFL, then excelled in the Canadian Football League before finally getting a chance in the NFL and exhibiting heroics.  If you want to argue that picking the QB with the strongest arm is better than picking someone with a “weak” arm who has a history of success despite his shortcomings, be my guest.  Just look at the footage of Tom Brady at the draft combine and tell me you have to be a physical specimen to play in the NFL.

Another thing to consider is that quarterbacks in the NFL are protected better than college quarterbacks.  If a lineman looks at a QB funny, they will throw a roughing the passer flag in the NFL; college QBs do not have the same luxury.  In both college and the pros, injuries are subject to happenstance, but they are less prevalent in the pros.  Most of the players with long consecutive game playing streaks are quarterbacks.

And no one is suggesting Drew Bledsoe was injury prone when he took a vicious hit that allowed Tom Brady to start his career.

If I were a GM, I would try as hard as possible to put Tua’s injury history out of my mind and evaluate him based on his college performance.  Some say that if you draft Tua and he gets injured, you would lose your job; true, but no one is a GM forever.  You might as well get fired over picking a transcendent talent who might just be available because those picking ahead of you are irrationally risk averse.

You could also get fired for picking Jordan Love and watch him stink it up while Tua goes to Pro Bowl after Pro Bowl and winds up in the Hall of Fame.  Which is riskier, Tua’s injury history, or his talent level?  If the talent is there, you can last a long time as a QB in the NFL.

If the talent isn’t there . . . well, now there isn’t an XFL to go to.

Whither Tom Brady?

Waking up every morning and turning on the ESPN morning show Get Up is like going back in time to when the funniest bit on Saturday Night Live was Chevy Chase’s running gag, “Our top story tonight: Francisco Franco is still dead.”  Of course, I realize that for many of you this raises questions like, “Who is Francisco Franco,” or “Who is Chevy Chase?”  I assume you are familiar with Saturday Night Live.

What I mean is that every morning they talking heads talk about the same thing: “What team will immediately become the favorites to win the next Super Bowl by acquiring Tom Brady as their quarterback?”  There is a narrow window for teams to be considered eligible for Brady Roulette, as they have to be good enough to be able to make the vault to championship status by adding a quarterback, but at the same time desperate enough to take a flyer on a 43 year-old quarterback who is unlikely to get any better.

The stupidest hypothesis is the idea that an ideal landing spot for Brady would be the San Francisco 49ers.  Right, the reigning NFC champions lost in the Super Bowl, so they should discard their young QB who led them to the Super Bowl and could plausibly get back there any time during the next decade, blow up the team, and bring in a 43-year-old who lost in the first round of the playoffs last year.  The 49ers have a QB who last year outlasted Brees, Cousins, and Rogers, and they should give him up because he narrowly lost a game to Patrick Mahomes?  A game that was lost, not because of poor QB play, but because his coach reverted to form and kept passing when he had a large lead in a Super Bowl, a mistake he had made only two years earlier when he was the Offensive Coordinator with the Atlanta Falcons. 

This reminds me of the Seinfeld episodes where low-level Yankee employee George Costanza would create ludicrous trade scenarios that would have the Yankees giving up prospects for a team comprised solely of future Hall of Famers.  Jimmy Garappolo is the 49ers future, and anyone on that team entertaining the idea of acquiring Tom Brady for one second should be consigned to an eternity of being the GM of the Cleveland Browns.

But what about the more plausible landing spots for Brady?  The Titans, the Bucaneers, the Raiders, the Chargers?  Here is the problem—Brady wants to win a Super Bowl and will only go to a contender, a team with a solid offensive line, a strong running game, and an elite receiving corps.  Of course, any team with all that hardly needs Brady; the Titans had all that and got to the AFC Championship game last year with a journeyman QB.  But the team has to be loaded with talent.

But what was Brady’s biggest talent?  The ability to make mediocre players around him better.  How many no-name receivers got to a Pro Bowl after a season with the Patriots?  How many no-name running backs were among the league leaders in yardage after taking handoffs from Tom Brady?  Tom Brady’s biggest gift was the ability to elevate those around him.

But now, if a 43-year-old Brady can only succeed with an Antonio Brown or A.J. Green to throw to, if he needs an established Pro Bowl running back like Derrick Henry to make his play-action passes effective, then he is useless.  Save your money and get a journeyman QB like Ryan Tannehill, or Andy Dalton, or Marcus Marriota.  They are just as likely to succeed with all those weapons around them as a 43-year-old quarterback who has only succeeded when coached by possibly the greatest coach in NFL history (apologies to Vince Lombardi, Don Shula, and Bill Walsh).

Last season the Dallas Cowboys had a great quarterback, great running back, great receiver, and a great offensive line, and they STILL failed to make the playoffs.  No one can guarantee that they will take their team to the Super Bowl and win next year.  Some people thought the Browns had the Super Bowl locked up last year; how’d that work out?  There are no guarantees; that’s why there is gambling.

If you define winning a Super Bowl as “success,” then last season Drew Brees, Aaron Rogers, Dak Prescott, Kirk Cousins, Deshawn Watson, and Lamar Jackson were all failures.  Oh, and add to that list the name Tom Brady.  If Tom Brady can’t make it out of the first round of the playoffs in Bill Belichick’s system, then how can he succeed anywhere else?

I have not cared about an athlete’s choice of team less since Lebron James made “The Decision.”  I will just be thrilled when the matter is resolved, and ESPN can start reporting on facts instead of rampant speculation based on fantasy.

What to do about the Astros

Rob Manfred, baseball Commissioner who referred to the Commissioner’s Trophy as a “piece of metal,” has an escalating problem on his hands.  The longer he refrains from punishing the Astros, the more heat is generated from players and fans over the lack of justice.  He has to do something quickly to dissipate the ill will, or the result will be hit batters, melees, and possibly injuries.

The most logical thing to do would be to punish the players involved, either by fines or suspension but that’s not an option.  Why?  Because Manfred offered everyone blanket immunity for talking.  Can you imagine a DA whose strategy is to offer every suspect immunity, because that way you are sure to find out who is guilty?  Someone on ESPN said they didn’t want Manfred, an attorney, making any more decisions about the Astros because baseball doesn’t need another attorney; on the contrary, I think they just need a better one.

So, why not just take the trophy away from them?  This has a lot of appeal, but there are problems.  One, the fans and players can still bask in their memories, unless MLB has access to those amnesia flashers used in the Men In Black movies.  Second, Astros owner Jim Crane is rich, and he’s a jerk; he could just hire someone to make a duplicate, then keep it in his office until Manfred says he is stopping by for a visit.

A third option was posited by ESPN’ Buster Olney: CENSURE! The Commissioner’s office would draft something, probably on a parchment rolled up onto a scroll, that would formally say something like, “Thou beist cheaters, verily!”  Yeah, that’ll teach them not to cheat.

I have come to the conclusion there is only one answer: suspend the Astros from the post season for two, maybe three years.

First off, how could the union complain about this?  Yes, some of their members would be denied an earned trip to the post-season, but an equal number of members would be getting in in their stead.  Maybe there is something in the CBA about not altering who gets into the playoffs, but a clear majority of the union’s members would support this.

Two, this would impose exquisite torture on the Astros by the death of a thousand cuts.  Every time they would win a game, they would feel good for a second but then realize it doesn’t mean anything because no matter how many games they win, they can’t get to the playoffs.  In fact the more they win, the more they feel lousy.  Given that Astro Josh Reddick has said that they are "going to win and shut everybody up," this would be an apt come-uppance, because winning would only encourage more taunting.

Third, this would damage the franchise (not the players) for years. The closest parallel I can see is that of the sanctions handed down on the New Orleans Saints after “Bountygate," when the Saints were found to have financially encouraged players to injure opposing quarterbacks.  The team was fined $500,000, forfeited draft picks, their coach was suspended for a year and other key personnel were suspended.  The Saints finished 7-9 the next season, managed to win a wild card slot the next year, but then finished with 7-9 records for the next three seasons.  The Saints are now again one of the premiere teams in the NFL, but it has been a long road back to respectability.  If the Astros can’t make the playoffs for two years, that would make it difficult to attract quality players who only want to play for a chance to play in the World Series.

Lastly, I think this would stain their legacy more than nullifying the 2017 championship.  In the future, people could choose not to put an asterisk next to the 2017 World Series outcome and pretend they still won the trophy; but if they are suspended for two season yet win enough games to make the playoffs, there would have to be an asterisk explaining, “Yeah, the Astros won the division but didn’t go to the playoffs because they cheated in 2017.”  Nobody could ignore the fact that they won 100 games but had to sit at home in October.

Maybe the right time to announce this would be when MLB comes out with the report n the allegations of cheating by the Boston Red Sox.  Rob Manfred could take the opportunity to announce a new policy, that teams that have been found to have cheated will be suspended for the post season, and then declare the Astros and the Red Sox ineligible for the playoffs.

Manfred has to either do something to stem the anti-Astros hatred, or be prepared to hand down numerous suspensions to pitchers on other teams for throwing at the Astros or suspend Astro pitchers for retaliating.  Suspending the Astros for the post season would mete out some justice, mollify the angry mob, and avoid re-writing history.

It would also shut some of those mouthy cheaters up.

The Rise of Skywalker--Spoilers!!!

The Rise of Skywalker—Spoilers!

In order to prepare for seeing the final film in the Star Wars non-ology (yeah, right, no more Star Wars films after this) I re-watched The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi on Netflix.  I then read a few spoiler-free reviews that commented that The Rise of Skywalker more or less chucked all the good decisions made in The Last Jedi and virtually remade The Force Awakens.  Since I decided that I liked Last Jedi more than Force Awakens, this did not motivate me to see Rise of Skywalker.  But, in its tenth week of release, the crowds had finally died down and I made my way to the very same theater I had seen the original Star Wars (none of this “A New Hope” garbage) at 43 years earlier.

I hated it.

I want to say it is the worst of the nine movies in the Star Wars canon (ten, if you add Rogue One), but frankly I have no recollection of Attack of the Clones and only fleeting memories of Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith.  I do remember walking out of the theaters and not being as disappointed as I was after seeing Rise of Skywalker.  Isn’t worse when you mother says she isn’t mad, just disappointed?

One of the criticisms of Force Awakens was that co-writer/director J.J. Abrams had constructed a movie that appeared to replicate the beats of the original Star Wars (aka “A New Hope”).  I felt that, similarly, Rise of Skywalker attempted to follow the beats of the less successful sequel, Return of the Jedi.  There was the emergence of a new threat by the bad guys that needed thwarting, there was the need for a full scale assault at the end, and there was the need for a small band to take out an object for the invasion to succeed (force field projector/nav tower).  It wasn’t bad, just very, very familiar.

One reason for that familiarity was that the bad guy was the same as in Return of the Jedi, Emperor Palpatine. After killing off the new evil overlord Snoke in Last Jedi, they had to come up with a new new bad guy and so they resurrected the bad guy from the first trilogy.  First of all, really creative move there.  Secondly, Palpatine had been vaporized in the Death Star’s nuclear core, but now he’s alive again; so, he got better?  It’s not like he was wounded and crawled away, like the killer in a horror movie, he was VAPORIZED.  No one comes back from that.  Third, him still being alive makes all the joy the characters felt at the end of Return of the Jedi to be false—they really hadn’t killed Palpatine, so there was no reason to have a party and hand out medals to everybody except Chewbaca.

Also, I swear Palpatine’s taunts to Rey saying, “Go on, strike me down, save your friends . . .” were pretty much identical to the taunts he threw at Luke in return of the Jedi.  I have trouble remembering them because I have seen the Family Guy parody of the original trilogy too many times, and their portrayal of Palpatine being a total jerk was the best thing in the series.

One of the reasons I preferred Last Jedi was that I felt writer/director Rian Johnson did a better job bringing out the personalities of the characters and not making them chess pieces being moved around a board.  One thing the sequel trilogy completely missed was the emotional story at the center of the original trilogy, the love story of Han and Leia.  The original movies somehow overcame George Lucas’ inability to write good dialog (it is part of Star Wars folklore that Han Solo’s response of “I know,” to Leia’s profession of love was ad libbed by Harrison Ford) and created a love story around all the techno babble. 

In Rise of Skywalker, everyone is too busy running around to fall in love.  It is established early in Force Awakens that Finn finds Rey attractive, enough to lie about being in the resistance, and she seems to feel similarly about him.  But at the end of Rise of Skywalker she is back on Tattooine, moving into Luke’s old farmhouse (I hope she was able to get the Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru stains off the porch), apparently alone.  Does she end up with Finn?  With Poe?  There characters are so busy moving around the chessboard there is no room for emotional attachments to form. 

The biggest flaw in Rise of Skywalker is that it ends exactly where Return of the Jedi ends, with the bad guys beaten and everyone celebrating (it is supposed to be a big deal that two women are shown kissing during the celebration, but humans are also kissing giant slug-like creatures, so it is hardly a banner day for the LGBTQ).  At least Chewy gets a medal this time.  The ending of the nine-episode series needed bigger stakes, it needed to build to something that felt inevitable since the original movie.  The original trilogy felt all of one piece, while the sequel trilogy movies all felt like they were cobbled together independently, which they were.

I recall being disappointed when I saw Force Awakens and found out that after the events of Return of the Jedi the bad guys were STILL in control and the good guys were scattered do-gooders.  Why was the Dark Side so resilient?  The Rise of Skywalker should have ended with the Dark Side permanently defeated, no more talk about “balance” in The Force, just a perpetual happy ever after.  That would have felt like a bigger win than the victory at the end of Return of the Jedi (which wasn’t a victory at all as Palpatine survived to threaten the galaxy again).

The Marvel Cinematic Universe wrapped up its 22-movie series with the cataclysmic Avengers: Endgame, which threw the kitchen sink and a few other household appliances into its resolution.  The Star Wars Saga should have ended its nine-film run with something . . . well not quite as big, but perhaps relatively proportional.  The stakes at the end of The Rise of Skywalker are exactly as big as the stakes at the end of Return of the Jedi.  Jedi was the end of the first trilogy; the ending of the 10-film series should have been much bigger.

Of course, such an ending would have made creating additional Star Wars movies difficult.  Technically, the sequel trilogy films are well-made, the acting is great (actors Daisy Ridley and John Boyega should have more successful careers than Mark Hamill and Carrie Fischer; Adam Driver already has more Oscar nominations than Harrison Ford), and they are quite entertaining.  But as a resolution to the greatest trilogy of movie trilogies ever made, they are uninteresting and flat.  It is disappointing that with all of the resources at his command, J.J. Abrams decided to set his sights so low and be content to essentially remake the earlier films.

But then this is the guy who turned the second of his Star Trek movies into a remake of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  So, there was a precedent.