This post contains spoilers through the October 30 episode of Boardwalk Empire.

Boardwalk Empire may still have a lot of elaborately bloody maneuvering over control of the liquor trade, but it’s become about larger themes of guilt, innocence, and responsibility. And tonight, those pressures culminated in two confessions, one voluntary and complete if unclear, one coerced and honest, but incomplete. The state of Margaret and Nelson’s souls, and the pressures put on the United States Attorney General, make Nucky’s problems out as the minor distractions that they are.

Nelson’s confession to Rose is prompted by two events. First, there’s the unnerving sense that he’s settled into something like domestic tranquility with Lucy. When she whines that she can’t get comfortable, saying “I’m sorry, Daddy. It’s just…I want to be done with this,” Nelson may chide her first, reminding her of his colleague who remains horribly burned in hospital, but he says he’ll get her the lemons that are feeding her craving anyway. Then, when he visits said colleague (telling another agent that he’s alive because “He loves the lord, sir,” only to have that man remark that “It seems a pretty one-sided relationship.”) Van Alden said he thinks the man is accusing him from his hospital bed and calls Rose in a panic, saying he’s not worthy of her or his badge.
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By Kate Linnea Welsh

The Good Wife takes on issues of diplomatic immunity as two college-age sons of diplomats – one Dutch, one Taiwanese – are accused of raping and murdering a young woman at a stoplight party on a booze cruise. (Quick term definition for those as old and out-of-touch as I am: on the booze cruise, passengers paid $50 for unlimited beer, and the “stoplight party” means that passengers choose cup colors based on their relationship status: red means “in a relationship,” yellow means “choosy,” and green means “open.”) Diplomatic immunity is often portrayed as something all-encompassing and very cut-and-dry, but Cary, in his zeal to prosecute, manages to find a variety of loopholes. He surprises everyone by taking the young men into custody, arguing that he’s allowed to investigate the crime, just not to prosecute them. Presumably the technicality here is that if they were cleared, Cary would know to look for other suspects, but he never seriously looks at anyone else. Once he’s forced to let the Dutch suspect go, he points out that he can prosecute the other suspect because Taiwan is the one country that doesn’t enjoy diplomatic immunity, because of the One-China policy. As happens so often on this show, what first appears to be a philosophical question ends up being decided based on who has more influence and connections: Eli first uses his ex-wife’s connections at the State Department to have them push for dismissal, but then one of Cary’s colleagues uses her own family connections to have this position reversed. And Cary finally discovers that the Dutch suspect is no longer a full-time student, so he doesn’t actually have immunity through his father in the first place.

The cases of the week are becoming still less central on the show, though, and this week, we don’t even see the final courtroom showdown – Cary just mentions in a throwaway line that he won. Instead, the cases are designed to illuminate things about the characters and their relationships, and one of the focuses this week was on jockeying for position, especially among the newer attorneys at both the State’s Attorney’s office and at Lockhart/Gardner. Cary thinks his supervisor is out to get him – but at the end of the episode he instead gets a promotion from Peter. Meanwhile, Alicia is dealing with Caitlin, the new associate she was forced to hire last week. Caitlin is pretty naive, and doesn’t know what she’s doing, but Alicia seems to like her more than expected. Caitlin also seems to be flirting with Will – or maybe she’s acting as a spy for her uncle? Either way, Alicia is a bit territorial, but she shouldn’t worry, because Will’s not biting. And when Caitlin blithely comments that everyone at Lockhart/Gardner is just so nice, Will deadpans: “Yeah. Lawyers. Nicest people in the world.”
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Ta-Nehisi, Adam Serwer, and Jamelle Bouie have been having an interesting conversation about Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino’s slavery revenge flick, and whether, if we need revenge, what sort of form it ought to take.

Adam looks at the rise of Jewish revenge flicks and searches for a parallel:

In Jeffrey Goldberg’s review of Inglorious Basterds, he writes about dreaming about killin’ NAZees as a kid, delighting in Quentin Tarantino’s “story of emotionally uncomplicated, physically threatening, non-morally-anguished Jews dealing out spaghetti-Western justice to their would-be exterminators.” His initial anecdote helps explain that Inglorious Basterds is not primarily a film about killing Adolf Hitler, although that’s the form that catharsis takes. The true “revenge” of Inglorious Basterds is in the banishment of a particular stereotype, the idea of the weak, fearful Jew who goes helplessly into the ovens. The film Defiance, about a group of Jewish partisans in a forest in Belarus during World War II, has a similar aim—in the woods, the manly, unintellectual Jews played be Liev Schriber and Daniel Craig suddenly become leadership material, while the nebbish former academics are portrayed as contemptuous weaklings. And I suppose what has always bugged me about both of those films is that somewhere deep inside they see Jews the way anti-Semites see Jews, and are actively working to convince not just the world but themselves otherwise.

And Jamelle riffs on a secondary point Adam makes about the extent to which Django Unchained would serve a similar purpose:

The problem with Django Unchained is that African Americans have never had a problem with being portrayed as aggressive and prone to violence. Indeed, that’s the stereotype we’ve worked to reject. As Adam notes, “[A] film in which a slave kills his masters may vicariously avenge a historical injustice, but it lacks the catharsis of defying the accepted narrative that narrowly limits what being black is supposed to mean.” In his eyes, a real black revenge story isn’t Django Unchained, it’s The Cosby Show.

I don’t disagree! But I think Adam is a little too neat in dismissing the value of a film like Django Unchained could have in subverting other expectations. The thing about Nazis is that they’re the usual sortof villains – few people sympathize with them, and even fewer people see their legacy as something worthwhile. No one likes them, and so it’s easy to kill them en masse. The same isn’t true of antebellum and Civil War-era America. With few exceptions, Confederates are glorified in Hollywood – either as the honorable losers of a war, or as vengence-seeking crusaders. It’s a variation on the Lost Cause mythology – slavery plays only a bit part in most popular depictions of the Confederacy, and Confederates are almost always portrayed as tragic figures.

Relatedly, I’m curious how the movie’s going to handle gender and relationships between men and women, because one of the acts that inspires Django’s revenge is the brutal rape of his wife, played by Kerry Washington, who’s then turned over to an owner who may be even worse. It seems like there’s been a spike in really strange and disturbing commentary about black men, black women, and marriage recently, and it’s hard to imagine that, intentional or not, this movie won’t play into that conversation. It is, after all, about a black man who aggressively defends a black woman — and we won’t know until the movie’s under production whether that woman gets to aid in her own defense or not — standing up for the sanctity of a marriage that wouldn’t have been recognized by law or custom.

I’m obviously not on board with the idea that marriage is for white people, or that black men are either pathetic or pathological. And I have no idea if Django Unchained will be liberating or exploitative. But if nothing else, I suppose it’ll be something different in an industry that creates very few roles for black actors and very few stories about black families and often sticks to a few very circumscribed narrative arcs.

This post contains spoilers through the Oct. 30 episode of The Walking Dead.

I have to admit that I’m getting sort of exhausted by The Walking Dead, especially now that the cast is settled in and around the farm. Every week, people have debates about whether life is worth living in a zombie-infested wasteland. Every week, shambling hordes provide a gross-out moment that our heroes, such as they are, escape only by the skin of their teeth. If the show is going to provide an actual conflicting worldview, there should be miraculous things that happen, moments like the deer that aren’t interrupted by disasters like Carl getting shot. There needs to be an argument that the world is, if not better, different in ways that justify continuing on, argue for it, show that it’s possible to build new things, and new ways of interacting.

Otherwise, Lori’s nihilism, her sense that “Maybe this isn’t a world for children anymore…maybe this is how it’s supposed to be,” seems pretty convincing. There’s something sickening about Rick’s optimism in general, his insistence in the absence of any evidence that “It isn’t all death out there. It can’t be. We just have to be strong enough after everything we’ve seen to still believe that…He talked about the deer, Lori. He talked about the deer.” There’s a fine line between having the sensibility to see beauty in horror and being deeply in denial. And when it comes to Shane in particular, Rick’s denial is glaring. “What you said before, you’re right. Shane will make it back with what the doctor needs,” Rick tells everyone at the beginning of the episode.

But he doesn’t see the price of that return, the man Shane has to kill to distract the zombies that would otherwise kill them both, the bloody patches on his scalp and shoulder, the torture of Lori refusing to let him go. Is Rick’s extreme goodness a luxury that the others have to make up for? Or is he the only thing keeping them elevated above the beastliness everyone else fears they’ll descend into?

I think Maureen Ryan is exactly right on why it’s so disappointing that FX has decided to pick up Charlie Sheen’s new show, an adaptation of the movie franchise Anger Management, even in a world where we expect Hollywood to be ruthlessly pragmatic:

Let me be clear: I agree with critic James Poniewozik, who wrote that it’s not necessarily Hollywood’s job to punish Charlie Sheen for his actions and his past. But I do find it disheartening to be reminded of the double standard that still exists when it comes to rule-breaking public figures who get in trouble with the law: If they’re men, they’re usually seen as dangerous, edgy bad boys; if they’re women, they’re usually derided as awful human beings who deserve all the calumny thrown at them.

Charlie Sheen’s history of violence against women has been consistently ignored or waved away like it’s no big deal, and he has been continually rewarded for attitudes and actions that depress the hell out of many people out here in the real world. A significant percentage of the public does not find his actions humorous but loathsome and creepy.

I’d add that part of what makes this worse is the show itself, a hackneyed premise that will find a way to turn Sheen’s monstrous, and endemic, behavior into part of the joke. FX has been particularly good at fielding tough, lacerating shows about masculinity, from Louie‘s examinations of Louis C.K.’s own patheticness and vulnerabilities; to Tommy Gavin’s alcoholism, post-traumatic stress, and difficult relationships with women on Rescue Me; Raylan Givens’ time-lapsed cowboy act in Justified; Vic Mackey’s brutality in The Shield; the nutty sports fans of The League who use fantasy football to work out their unresolved issues; and the bar gang from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia who are nothing but unresolved issues. In this context, salivating after Sheen seems particularly hackish, pathetic, middle-brow. FX may revel in male dysfunction, but it recognizes it for what it is.

The bridge is yours.

-If you’re in Washington today, go get a cupcake from Kerry Washington and support Americans for the Arts!

-Conservatives and progressives agree: Homeland is awesome. What we may not agree on: the reasons why.

-Going on vacation in fictional places.

-Using anti-gay slurs at convention presentations: probably not good for business!

-Happy Halloween! I’m giving trick-or-treaters these deleted scenes from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

Some commenters felt like I came down a little hard on, or unsympathetic to, men who have a genuine desire to learn to interact more productively with women in last Wednesday’s post on romantic comedy scenarios where women play Virgil to men who are clueless about or resentful of the norms of dating. As a nerd in recovery, and as someone who’s invested in the idea that men need to be full participants in feminism, I certainly don’t want to suggest that guys shouldn’t try to do better and that women shouldn’t play a role in that. But what I object to is a sort of Platonic Manic Pixie Dream Girl ideal where a woman (or Will Smith in the case of Hitch) descends from the heavens to demystify the impenetrable realm of women to dudes who have been unfairly denied their due — and it’s part of larger problems I have with these sorts of stories.

This is true of romantic comedies with both male and female protagonists: they tend to be about the relationships that are the end results of a tremendous amount of hard work and romantic failures. They romanticize the ultimate result of that work rather than the work itself, and no matter how much we’re told that a character dates people who are bad for them or to them, they obscure the process—and the fact that it often takes a lot of repetitions of the same mistake to learn what the mistake is. As my friend J.P. writes:

Look, the training montage may work for Rocky, but it really doesn’t work for emotional development — which is what we’re really talking about when we’re looking at how someone becomes prepared to have an adult, mature relationship…

Not many recent movies capture this well and when it’s captured, it’s boring. High Fidelity is one of the few films that gets it. But it also gets boring an hour in, because you’re tired of watching the protagonist make the same mistake over and over. EXCEPT THAT’S THE POINT.

When Cusack’s character is making yet another mix tape for yet another love interest, he finally throws down his headphones and essentially cries out, “When is this gonna stop?!” This follows an entire film dedicated to cataloging the outcomes of failed relationships, and what made them such disasters. Cusack’s character realizes that there’s one factor that persists in his relationships: His own failure to grow up and settle down. He was pursuing people who weren’t interested in what he was interested in. He was always halfway out the door.

I actually think that High Fidelity is more entertaining than that in part because it’s about archaeology: if we were just watching Rob make the same mistakes repeatedly, it would be genuinely miserable, but instead, each encounter moves him forward. It may not be the world’s most rapid progress, but it’s there. And at the end, after he’s learned everything, we see Rob about to make the same mistake again after reuniting with his girlfriend. When that happens, there are real stakes because we know his history, and we know what messing up this relationship before cost him and cost Laura — it’s a late and subtle climax, but a deeply felt one, and it’s a profound relief when he chooses correctly.

Similarly, When Harry Met Sally takes the long arc perspective: when the two characters meet, they’re not really fit to be with anybody. And over time, they grow into their capacity for relationships and into each other. But the message of the movie is that it’s work to get there, and involves mistakes, and the risk that you’ll hurt each other badly along the way. This might be even scarier than the idea that you have do a lot of work before you get good at dating and then before those skills help you find someone: the prospect that even when you find that person, you can blow it up and do each other harm.

So in the end, I suppose I object to the idea of a Girl Guide as part of a large distaste for the idea of romantic miracle cures. Whether it’s the idea of the right person, the right tactic (something that’s expertly deconstructed by Harris O’Malley of Dr. Nerdlove), or the right advice-giver, there’s something dangerous and delusional about the idea that love isn’t constant effort. That doesn’t mean that a lot of that effort isn’t sexy, romantic, and emotionally rewarding, but it’s still work. Even if you find someone will love you for who you are, that kind of love may not happen instantly — most of us tell stories about ourselves that evolve over time, becoming deeper, richer, and more vulnerable. And it doesn’t mean that you’ll never fight with the person who loves you, that you won’t continue to grow, and change, and maybe even compromise.

I wanted to like Grimm, because I’m a total sucker for fractured fairy tales. And there are some good things in the show, most notably a Big Bad Wolf who’s cranky over the historic misrepresentation of his people, and who seems likely to end up guiding our somewhat bland hero through his new calling. But one thing that really bothered me was the show’s apparently fantastical approach to the basics of police work: Nick spends a lot of time crashing in places without warrants and setting up surveillance on folks without approval.

It’s good to have that part of the job depicted accurately on television both because it’s a good thing that they exist in the real world, and because they make for more compelling storytelling. We don’t live in a Minority Report kind of world — if Nick just keeps storming into suspected child kidnappers’ houses, at some point he’s going to violate the rights of someone innocent and supernatural who will be totally within their rights to be thermonuclearly angry with him. And more importantly, it would be interesting to see Nick try to get warrants based on information he’s getting from supernatural sources a la Beka Cooper, trying to reconcile magic and the rationality of police work. If the show isn’t going to play with that tension at all, why not just make him a private investigator? Creating concepts like cops who can see magic are interesting when they let us play with tropes and our ideas about the real world, not when they let us abandon our sense of the rules entirely.

This post contains spoilers through the Oct. 30 episode of Homeland.

Homeland is thick with complex relationships we’re encountering long after they initially began, from Brody’s friendship with Mike; to David and Carrie’s professional relationship, affair, and present uneasy collegiality; to Carrie’s relationship with Saul. The network’s so complex that the show could be forgiven for some duplication for the sake of emotional signaling — implying affairs between both Carrie and David and Carrie and Saul, for example, which would establish that Carrie has a pattern. But it’s a mark of the great show Homeland is becoming that it doesn’t take those shortcuts, and that all the backstories have a rich specificity. And tonight’s episode explored two relationships in the same mold: the father and daughter relationship between Carrie and the man who gave her life and Carrie and the man who gave her a professional identity.

Having seen Carrie with her sister, it’s nice to see her with her father — especially because it seems that the mental illness that stalks her might be hereditary. “Sometimes you feel like you’re spinning out of control when they bring you up instead of down,” Carrie tells her father, explaining that she understands the impact that his medication has on him. Much as her sister keeps Carrie coming back with the promise of more pills, her father, it seems, keeps their tie with food, making her a sandwich, wrapping it up to go in a show of understanding, and when she has to go, telling her, “Drive safe. And fuck the CIA,” with his daughter joining in a chorus on the second sentence.

She’s not as fortunate with Saul, who shuts her down again when after David lets Brody visit his former captor (Brody tells him “I need to be physically and mentally ready to honor my duties as a Marine and as a man. But first I have to close the book on this chapter of my life.), Hamid commits suicide with a razor shard Carrie doesn’t believe he could have hidden on himself previously. When she comes to see him at home, complaining that “I’m over your whole detached routine,” totally unaware that Saul’s girlfriend may have just broken up with him, Saul is of course within his rights to tell Carrie, “You’re out of line. You’re in my home.” But she may be right that he’s lost his nerve, that he’s no longer in a place where he can see an investigation all the way through and be as tough as he needs to be. Even so, Carrie still needs his affirmation. When he tells her, “Take some boxes with you. You’ll need them when you clean out your desk,” it sends her, hysterical, to her sister’s house. Babbling out of control, she tells her sister, “I think I just quit my job. I’m serious. I’m done. I’m done. I’ve had it up to here…You were so right, you were so fucking right when you told me my job would kill me one day.”
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