This post discusses the eleventh and twelfth episodes of the first season of Veronica Mars.

Halfway through this first season of Veronica Mars, I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t necessarily care very much about the cases themselves that Veronica is investigating week-to-week, but that I care a great deal about getting a better sense of Neptune, California. When the cases serve the setting and the characters, I tend to find myself much more engaged by the procedural elements of the show, which happened to varied extents in these two episodes.

The first—featuring a welcome appearance by New Girl‘s Max Greenfield—does that in two different ways. The bar murders that Keith and Veronica investigate open up an area of Neptune’s economy that we haven’t heard that much about before. In addition to being an enclave for wealthy Californians in the tech and entertainment industries, it’s apparently also a tourist haven. “Oh, but it was so important for the mayor and the Chamber of Commerce to put that scare behind us,” Keith complains of the rush by other city officials to pin the earlier stranglings on a suspect whose method was similar, but not identical to, the killer who reemerges. “This is all about tourist revenues? God bless America,” Veronica snarks when the mayor and Sheriff Lamb pull her father back into the case, using him for his knowledge, but without any promising of redeeming him.

The case also provides an opportunity for Weevil to deliver a hilarious, angry monologue at the police station that serves as a distraction, but that’s also a penetrating look into unequal policing in Neptune.
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I’m with the sentiment, but seriously, isn’t the substance of Ayotte’s vote, and her craven choice of the NRA over her constituents’ overwhelming support for the measures she opposed more worthy of mockery than the fact that her jacket maybe makes her look like a realtor, or that she has Ron Burgundy’s book collection behind her?

The level of the politician-owning game has been raised over the last decade. If Letterman wants to compete, he and his writers need to step it up a notch.

In an interesting nod to Hollywood’s influence, tech titan Peter Thiel has suggested that his industry is being hurt hurt by its portrayal in Hollywood as a source of advancements with post-apocalyptic consequences:

Thiel, who made billions as a co-founder of PayPal and as an early investor in Facebook, told a standing-room only audience Monday that the high-tech industry is in “deceleration” due in no small part to movies like Avatar and The Matrix that make technological innovation seem “destructive and dysfunctional.”

Hollywood keeps making movies where “technology is going to kill you,” Thiel complained at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills. He said the “Star Trek retread movies” are an exception. Thiel said other factors — like government regulation and a “risk-averse” business culture — also are hampering the tech industry, but it will be a “very good sign” when Hollywood stops making movies about scary new technologies.

I think this calculation is a bit off. Hollywood tends to portray technology in three broad categories: as a source of miracles and certainty in day-to-day life, as an industry that has large concentrations of smart, if socially awkward, people, and as a force that operates independent of its creators. Those first two categories are almost uniformly positive. And I think that the real damage would be done if science fiction suggested clearer connections between the current state of science and the possibility of future developments gone terribly wrong.

Technology really is everywhere in pop culture depictions of contemporary life, and almost uniformly portrayed as a source of good or an extremely useful tool. DNA matching is presented as so reliable on televised crime shows that it affects how juries view evidence, and how lawyers decide their cases. And it’s hardly the only technological miracle to make regular appearances on crime shows. Bones, a procedural I enjoy quite a bit, features everything from the Angelator, a computer simulation tool that can recreate all sorts of crime scenarios, crack codes, match faces, and pour through data, to the inventive experiments of Jack Hodgins who’s presented as a genius at analyzing particles and organic materials. And that’s just in the matter of biological science. Pop culture has adopted rapidly from presenting computers in and of themselves as magical portals—an early Veronica Mars episode treats the Internet Movie Database as if it’s something of a miracle—to treating them as tools that ordinary people can achieve wonders with, whether they’re empowered by blogging or tweeting (or sleuthing through social media), or hacking publications, databases, or processes, be it for good or evil. These are all tools that can be used for any number of ends, be they cruel or kind, but the capacities of technology are firmly under the control of the human beings who employ them, rather than independent entities with wills of their own.
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Considering the playoffs just started, there has been an awful lot of off-the-court news in the National Basketball Association this week. Buried beneath stories that Jason Collins came out as gay — the first man in the four major team sports to do so publicly while still playing — was the news that the Sacramento Kings won’t be moving to Seattle, which had seemed like a done deal just a month ago.

But the Kings are now almost assuredly staying put, thanks to a last-minute plan secured by Mayor Kevin Johnson that will put $250 million in taxpayer financing toward a new arena that helped the NBA’s Relocation Committee decide to reject a potential sale to a group of Seattle investors. The arena is the key piece of a deal that played everyone, as Deadspin’s Barry Petchesky summed up nicely:

Arenas are the endgame. They multiply the value of a franchise, provide outside revenue streams, and send the potential future sale price of a team through the roof. It’s not cynical to assume that these past three years of pitting city vs. city, with heartbreak the consolation prize, was done solely to pressure Sacramento into propping up the value of the Kings with a new arena.

So what of Seattle, where a new arena—with $200 million from bonds—is almost a done deal? The league may have decided that the threat of relocation is, in the short-term, more useful than following through. Much like the NFL with Los Angeles, Seattle can serve as the NBA’s bogeyman, to be trotted out any time a city needs a scare to keep its NBA owner happy.

That’s pretty much it. The Kings wanted a new arena and it didn’t really matter whether it was financed by taxpayers in Sacramento, Seattle, or Virginia Beach. Not only did they get that new arena, they got it in a way that will only make it easier for other teams to wrangle new arenas out of taxpayers in the future, since Seattle will remain a point of leverage for any owner who wants taxpayers to foot the bill for new digs that will only enhance the value of the team he owns. Give the owner a new arena, or he’ll pick up and move to a city that will.

The NBA wants to go back to Seattle, but what it wants more is to use the city as a bargaining chip in future arena negotiations. Seattle remains its most viable market opportunity, and since it’s running out of attractive markets owners can pit against their current cities, it doesn’t want to add another franchise to get there or anywhere else. But when a team does end up in the Emerald City, another city — Louisville, Virginia Beach, Kansas City, or somewhere else — with a shiny new arena or plans to build one will become the destination du jour of every owner who needs a little leverage. And until owners run out of cities to pit against each other (they won’t any time soon precisely because they refuse to expand), or until taxpayers and elected officials realize that they’re only getting played by handing over huge sums of money to subsidize and enrich a handful of wealthy people, this endless game of arena chicken will continue on. Taxpayers are guaranteed losers every time.

The bridge is yours.

-If you need your Archie Panjabi fix, she’ll be coming to Netflix in a British series on Mary 28.

-Michael Fassbender and Natalie Portman are apparently going to get their Macbeth on.

-What happens when you make a movie of a story that should have been a TV show.

-Alex Gibney is going to make a Frank Sinatra documentary for HBO.

Jason Collins may be the first man to come out of the closet not just to people in his immediate circle, but to the country as a whole, while still actively pursuing a professional career in Major League Sports, but he wasn’t the first man out in baseball. That was Glenn Burke, who in the seventies was out to both Dodgers management and his teammates, and who came out nationally after his retirement. And apparently, Jamie Lee Curtis and her production company have been trying to get an adaptation of Burke’s autobiography into production, and are hoping the momentum of Collins’ announcement might help them make it happen. As Deadline summarizes the story:

Drafted by the Dodgers and touted as a potential star, Burke got off to a flying start when he became the only rookie to start in the 1977 World Series. Burke also took credit for inventing the high-five in 1977. Waiting on-deck at Dodger Stadium, he was first to congratulate teammate Dusty Baker with that up-high slap, after Baker hit his 30th home run in the last game of the season. While his adversity was nothing compared to what Dodger predecessor Jackie Robinson faced when he broke baseball’s color barrier, Burke’s decision to come out of the closet probably hastened his demise. In his autobiography, Burke wrote about how Dodgers GM Al Campanis offered to pay for a pricey honeymoon if Burke would get married in a Rock Hudson-like charade, but the ballplayer wasn’t going along with the sham. Campanis later was fired for appearing on Nightline and making outlandish racist remarks. Burke’s stats show he did not live up to the potential expected of him, but he seemed at peace with his decision to not hide his off the diamond life. “They can’t ever say now that a gay man can’t play in the majors, because I’m a gay man and I made it,” he said. He was diagnosed with AIDS in 1994 and died a year later at age 42.

One of the most important things movies can do is get under-acknowledged history to a mass audience. Milk, for example, mattered so much precisely because it introduced a mass audience to the idea that the gay rights movement was, in fact, a long-standing effort, and one that involved heroes and martyrs who fit into conventional narratives about sacrifices for social progress. A biopic of Burke could similarly help combat the idea that sports were a previously heterosexual zone that was somehow colonized by gay people, reminding mass audiences that there have always been gay athletes, even if they didn’t choose to share that fact with fans, or if fans weren’t astute enough to pick up on it.

And I’m also excited about the possibilities of a Burke biopic precisely because the audience would come to it with few assumptions and expectations. One of the things that I found deadening about 42, and what ultimately would have sucked the air out of any Jackie Robinson biopic was how familiar everyone was with the story. It’s mandatory to have set-pieces like Pee Wee Reese’s public embrace of Robinson or Leo Durocher’s dressing-down of the Dodgers who didn’t want to play with a black man, no matter how well or how human each of those moments has the potential to be. But with a story about Burke, nothing will be mandatory. Everything will be new. And as a result, the movie can be more human and relaxed, less stiffly conscious of history, something that serves good art, as well as humane arguments for equality.

According to Vanity Fair, now that Downton Abbey is a bona fide hit in the United States, the show’s creators are planning a major licensing campaign that will include Downton-branded housewares, beauty products, wallpaper and furniture, and clothes. Normally, I mostly look to product deals as an indicator of what’s resonating in American culture more broadly, whether it’s Mad Men‘s relatively high-end fashion deal with Banana Republic, the way Girls cut deals with everything from SoulCycle classes (a favorite of series creator Lena Dunham) to nail polish lines, or the branding power of Sons of Anarchy, which goes largely unacknowledged in the press because it doesn’t involve fashion or beauty. But while it’s not particularly surprising to me that Downton would get franchised like this, these announced plans actually raise a question that’s important for something other than aesthetics and brand power: what are the clothes going to look like?

Part of what makes Downton Abbey visually entertaining to watch is precisely how different the fashions on the show are from contemporary styles—and how they treat women’s bodies differently. Clearly, we’ve lost nothing by moving away from standards of full corsetry and other restricting clothing for women. But as Downton’s timeline has moved forward, the stylish Crawley sisters have liberated themselves from their stays started wearing styles that have dropped waists and that deemphasize their bustlines. Lady Mary’s wedding dress was a perfect example of these kinds of simplified lines:

Lady Sybil’s pants ensemble may have been daring for the time—and may look funny now—but the cut of the pants, at least, is one we’ve seen come back into contemporary styling in recent years, mostly as part of revivals of the eighties:

Mad Men‘s been so influential on commercial fashion in particular (I distinguish this from designer clothing which, in part because it caters to a narrower market, can afford to have a wider range of influences and experiments) because it’s set in one of the eras that we’ve recycled multiple times since the nineties, and because the beauty standards for women at the time, though they allowed for women to weigh more than norms do now, still emphasized the kinds of busts and curves that are still considered desirable, if in adjusted proportions. Downton Abbey, if the clothes licensed from it bear any real resemblance to the things the Crawley sisters wear on the show, would have much longer skirts, men’s-wear-influenced styles that have high necks, and more amorphous silhouettes than a lot of what we’re seeing in mass market fashion. If the show is powerful enough to bend the curve on those kinds of elements, and on the presentation of women’s bodies, that would be a powerful sign of influence indeed.

Given how much—well, pleasure, might not be the right word—excellence he’s given us over the past five years, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan is probably entitled to heighten our anticipation as the show heads into its final eight episodes this summer. Yesterday, he gave the Daily Beast the first sense we’ll probably get of what the finale might be like:

“Anyone anxious that there won’t be resolution enough at the end of these eight episodes can rest assured that the story very much reaches resolution,” Gilligan said Monday in his most extensive comments on the Breaking Bad finale to date. “It will not end in any kind of open-ended sense.”

Speaking from Los Angeles, where he was busy editing the final batch of episodes—”We’re about halfway through,” he explained—Gilligan struggled to “say something of substance” about the end of Breaking Bad without “giving anything away.” After much hemming and hawing, he finally settled on a single word to describe the finale: “victorious.”

“I’ll say this much,” Gilligan began. “I’m surprised by how victorious, in a certain sense, the ending feels to me.”

Obviously that’s not much to go on. But victory isn’t an uncommon emotion to Breaking Bad—it’s just that what those victories mean in the context of the show has changed over the years. When Walter White, the show’s chem-teacher-turned-meth cook survived his initial encounters with the violent criminals who run the Albuquerque-area drug trade, it was easy to root for him over them, and to be relieved that he was still alive to build his legacy for his family, and to hope that once he’d done his share of damage to public health and safety, he’d retire to a more decent end of his life. But as Walt’s own sense of right and wrong let him do things like watch an addict choke to death on her own vomit, it was harder to root for him relative to other characters on the show. By the time he blew Gus Fring, his boss in the meth business, to high heaven at the end of the fourth season, and was revealed to have poisoned a small child, the impressiveness of Walt’s technical prowess and the means to which he put it were no longer in alignment. It was easier to root for Gus, a man who had no compunction about slitting an employee’s throat with a box cutter or poisoning an entire cartel, than for the disappointed family man in the tighty whities.

So what would a victorious end to Breaking Bad look like. It could end in Walter White’s triumph and our utter despair. Though if that were the case, we wouldn’t have gotten Walt alone on his birthday making numbers out of bacon and a gun in the trunk of his car his only present. And the ending of last season, in which Walt sits back to launder his millions and throw family barbecues, his browbeaten wife reconciled to him, his son and daughter home might have been the place to stop, with a searing portrait of the rot that underlies his particular American dream, might have been the better place to stop. But it might also be too simple for Breaking Bad to turn out to be a classic morality tale told from the perspective of the villain rather than an anti-hero drama, and for Walt’s brother-in-law, Hank, to put him away or put him down. Death in a gun battle seems too fair for Walter White, and time to reflect on his megalomania in jail seems unlikely—under those circumstances, it seems like Walt might use his technical prowess to hack the prison and let Heisnberg rule over his fellow inmates, rather than recognize the enormity of his crimes. Maybe Walt will win by losing, his cancer coming back and denying anyone the satisfaction of imprisoning him or fully unraveling his schemes.

And the truth is at this point, Walter White’s victory over both his physical disease and the corruption of his ego don’t matter very much to me. Real triumph to me would be Jesse Pinkman finding a way to make a live with Andrea and Brock, having taken away from his time with both Walt and Mike that he has actual capacities, and finding a role for himself as something other than predator or prey. Victory would be Skyler White finding a way to make good, to protect her family, and in some way make recompense to Ted, her boss, who ended up crippled by Skyler’s fling with criminality. It might even be Marie and Hank finding a way to have a child after years of infertility, or Holly, Walt and Skyler’s daughter, growing up safe and under circumstances where she sees Scarface at an appropriate age. If the true source of Walter White’s criminality isn’t cancer but a need for greatness, maybe happy normality is the real victory.