Month: November 2013

Categories
News The Fly-By

What They Said

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

MemphisFlyer.com

Greg Cravens

From “Memphis City Council Rules Committee Still Working on Easy Stuff” and the council’s crackdown on bad behavior by its members:

“I guess one of the acceptable reasons for leaving a council meeting early is if they are legislating while impaired, huh?”

— catsmeow

From “Sebelius Lauded in Memphis Visit,” an account of Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ stop last week. Commenters debated about problems with the healthcare.gov website:

“Holding a politician responsible for incompetent programmers won’t fix anything. Firing the offending parties and private contractors and barring them from future government work will fix it. Does anyone really think politicians understand anything about technology and test scripts? It’s magic to them.”

— Brunetto Latini

From “Street Art or Graffiti?” and a discussion of vandalism versus street art: “Rest assured, if artists had avoided ‘obscene’ art and only painted that which merchants and politicians commissioned or gave them permission to create (or only that subject matter which was so uncontroversial as to make everyone smile), today’s art never would have evolved very far beyond the pristine, classical busts of ancient Greece.” — Count Dracula

Tweets

A response to @MemphisFlyer’s tweet about Sunday’s Rusted Root concert at Minglewood Hall:

“Omfg I’m in college again! Do I still own a hackey sack?”

— David Bell @bellmemphis

A response to @MemphisFlyer’s tweet of weekend events:

“Thanks, Memphis. We were in your city a few weeks back and had a great time! #worthvisiting” — Jon Hagan @EdDefy

Facebook

A response to a Facebook post about Louis Goggans’ story on the police reaction to a rap event at the South Main Trolley Tour:

“South Main is a residential neighborhood, and someone in the neighborhood may have called the police due to the loud music. We do have the right to peaceful enjoyment of our residences. The police response may have been over reactive, but the disrespect for the neighbors and the police wasn’t necessary.”

— Denise Ward Glasco

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Neverending Elvis

It’s been a big week for Memphis’ biggest deceased celebrity. But then again, every week is a big week for Memphis’ biggest deceased celebrity. For starters, a two-year-old beagle named Elvis has been employed by the Cincinnati Zoo to sniff protein samples in an effort to determine whether or not the zoo’s polar bears are pregnant. Why is a dog with this unusual job named Elvis? Little-known fact: The King of Rock-and-Roll was similarly gifted and could smell a pregnant bear a mile away.

In related news, although Elvis has been dead for decades, you can still run across headlines like this: “SoCal linen maker wants you to sleep with Elvis.” David Bursteen, the SoCal linen maker in question, is co-founder of Legends Home Bedding, which is currently producing a line of comforters and pillow shams emblazoned with images of Elvis.

Finally, the celebrity news outlet TMZ claims to have obtained a letter from the Burger King Corp. to Peter Morton, who recently became the owner of the 5,000-square-foot Elvis Presley estate in Beverly Hills. According to the letter, Burger King is offering $3.69 million to purchase the property. Here’s the catch: Elvis’ ex-house isn’t really on the market, and Morton paid $9.8 million for the property. TMZ smells a publicity stunt related to the relaunch of the Big King Burger, which, burger aficionados may remember, is nothing but a Big Mac imitator. Uh, we mean “tribute burger,” of course.

Midtown Krogering
Who is this mysterious Cole Shaw, and why is he such a delicious bargain?

Categories
News The Fly-By

Golden Girls

CREDIT: Dreamstime

Despite making up 48 percent of the workforce in the state, women are underrepresented in public Tennessee companies, according to a study released in September.

That report indicated that, during fiscal year 2011, women in the state filled only 9.57 percent of 554 board director positions in the state.

The “Women in Corporate Leadership Census” was published by Lipscomb University, a private college in Nashville, and sponsored by CABLE, an organization supporting professional women in Tennessee. In the census, 62 public Tennessee companies were surveyed — 40.3 percent had no women on their boards, down from 50.6 percent the previous year.

The most noteworthy find, according to the study, was the 50 percent increase in the number of corporations that had two or more female board members. In 2010, 10 companies had two or more, but in 2011, that number increased to 15.

Susan Huggins, the executive director for CABLE, was not surprised by the results, which she said were “unfortunately static” since 2006, when the organization-sponsored study began.

“Economically, it’s a good decision to have a more diverse board,” Huggins said. “It opens up a thought process to be more creative.”

She said having a gender-diverse board has also been proven to have larger returns on equity and investments. The census cited other research, claiming companies that “promoted more women into executive and director roles earned 16 to 89 percent more profit than the median … companies in the same industry.”

Huggins said the lack of progress enables organizations like CABLE to work with others and “do more work” in Tennessee.

“We look at CABLE as a flotilla [with other organizations],” she said. “We looked at where our expertise was, and we found three things: raising awareness, educating women, and company outreach — talking to CEOs and nominating committee chairs. … This has been our key mission over the past nine years,” she said.

Women of color are more outnumbered. Out of a total 554 directors in 2011, only four were women of color. Officer positions (CEOs, CFOs, etc.) were even less diverse. Out of 413 officer positions in Tennessee, there were no women of color.

Memphis-based AutoZone and International Paper both had one female director on their nine-person boards, while FedEx Corporation had two on its 12-person board. For officers, however, International Paper had the most women — the company had four female officers out of 13 total. FedEx had one out of eight, while AutoZone had none out of its six officers.

“Three women is the tipping point,” Huggins said. “It’s the way board members are typically picked locally. So many boards look homogeneous [rather] than diverse.”

FedEx, International Paper, and AutoZone could not be reached for comment.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

JFK: 50 Years On

We are sure to be awash with remembrances of President John F. Kennedy as we mark the 50th anniversary of his assassination this month. There will be much hagiography, some of it deserved, some of it utterly blindered. But what is true is that back then, with Kennedy’s “New Frontier” rhetoric about “unfilled hopes, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, and unanswered questions of poverty and surplus,” there was a sense of moving forward, especially to address the persistent problems of poverty and inequality.

John F. Kennedy

So as we look back, why not take this moment to compare where we were then to where we are now? How much better and how much worse off are most of us, 50 years later?

Back then, on average, women were making 59 cents to a man’s dollar, consigned to a narrow range of jobs — schoolteacher, waitress, nurse — and virtually barred from a host of others — doctor, electrician, Newsweek reporter, you name it. The median income for African-American and other racial minority families was 53 percent that of white families. And in parts of the country, blacks were subjected to poll taxes, literacy tests, and other restrictions on their right to vote. Connecticut prohibited the use of contraceptives. Gay people had to remain closeted in the face of deep and widespread bigotry.

We can, of course, see progress today: In 2013, we have our first mixed-race president; women make roughly 77 cents to a white man’s dollar (though the gap is larger for African-American and Latina women); and gay people can legally marry in 13 states. But there has been a sea change for the worse in the “common sense” of the nation, thanks to a long-term war of position by conservatives.

Established during the New Deal and cemented during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations was the notion that the government had a responsibility to protect people from the vagaries of capitalism and, with the rise of the civil rights movement, to try to promote and ensure equal rights for all citizens. Let’s remember, for instance, that in the summer of 1963, Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law, which abolished wage discrimination based on gender. Today, even after the financial crisis, Republicans continue to insist on an ideological and unrealistic market fundamentalism that strips the government of any responsibility for people’s well-being or security. New polling data shows that among Republicans and independents, support for government solutions to public policy problems actually decreased after 2008.

This leads us to another sharp contrast between then and now: Back in 1963, the John Birch Society (a far-right radical group) was so marginalized that conservative patriarch William F. Buckley Jr. denounced its members as “far removed from common sense.” Now, right-wingers just as far removed from common sense — the climate-change deniers, contraception revokers, and Affordable Care Act scorchers — actually control large parts of Congress, a state of affairs unimaginable 50 years ago.

And here are the real costs of that shift: Economic inequality in the U.S. has soared. The middle class continues to disintegrate as the faltering economic recovery benefits the upper 1 percent; CEOs make 201 times the wages of regular workers, compared to 20 times as much in the 1960s. In 1963, the highest marginal tax rate on the rich (those making more than $400,000 a year) was 91 percent; today, even the super-rich pay no more than 39.6 percent, and they’re still moaning, despite the fact that by taking advantage of tax breaks and offshore assets, few of the super-rich actually pay anywhere near that percentage. And the wealth gaps between whites and minorities are at their widest in a quarter century.

In 1963, the prevailing discourse of progress and modernity, of equality for increasing numbers of Americans, was gaining serious moral purchase, however virulently the Birchers and others fought it. Today, the radical right assaults this discourse and seeks to have everyday Americans buy into its reactionary agenda. It’s not that they’re winning, but they are obstructing the country in profound ways. Where’s our sense of progress, of being at the vanguard of history, now? It’s been thwarted; smothered.

So as we look back at those black-and-white images of Camelot and the Kennedy years, we can think how far we’ve come. But we also have no choice but to see how far we have fallen back and to see that we have a long battle ahead to reclaim what counts as common sense in America.

Susan J. Douglas is a feminist academic, columnist, and cultural critic who writes about gender issues, media criticism, and American politics.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Germantown’s Trump Card?

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

On Wednesday of this week, representatives of the Germantown community were scheduled to make a presentation to the property disposition committee of the unified Shelby County Schools board.

Jackson Baker

David Pickler

Their presentation would attempt to resecure for the soon-to-be Germantown municipal school district the rights to three schools — Germantown High School, Germantown Middle School, and Germantown Elementary School — claimed for the unified district under the plan announced by Superintendent Dorsey Hopson and approved last week by the SCS board. Hopson and board attorney Valerie Speakman gave the thinnest possible license for negotiations on the point, so any major change on the point is unlikely.

But behind the scenes there is an effort brewing in Germantown to circumvent the Hopson plan, and, according to David Pickler, a Germantown member of the current SCS board, it would take the form of an application for charter-school status by the three affected schools — and perhaps by all eight public schools in Germantown, including the five left within the city’s municipal district by the Hopson plan.

Such an application might become the focal point of ongoing efforts in the Tennessee General Assembly to firm up state control of charter-school applications and the state’s authority to overrule decisions by local school boards on approving charter applications.

And, while, as Pickler concedes, the current SCS board’s ownership of public school buildings is “indisputable,” the conversion of Germantown schools into charter schools could, he believes, complicate the legal situation regarding control of the buildings.

Pickler acknowledged that the Hopson plan, which has met with the approval of several other incorporated suburbs, has tended to isolate Germantown from its sister suburbs, though he insisted that efforts to coordinate suburban school policy will go forward.

• Still to be determined is the effect of the incipient suburban schism on plans for a consortium of municipal school districts at some not-too-distant date. Plans for such a reassembling of the old suburban-only Shelby County Schools system have been in the works for some time, though getting all six of the soon-to-be suburban districts on board has so far been an elusive goal.

The Hopson plan may complicate things further, depending on what happens with regard to the policy wedge which the plan has temporarily created between Germantown and several of its neighbors.

One of the most rapt attendees at last week’s meeting of the Unified School Board was John Aitken, former superintendent of the former version of SCS, consisting of the six incorporated areas plus the unincorporated areas of Shelby County. It was no secret that Aitken had wanted the superintendency of the unified system, the position now held by Hopson, and had won the de facto endorsement of the Transition Planning Commission, the blue-ribbon group, created by the Norris-Todd Act of 2011, which labored throughout 2011 and into 2012 to prepare a comprehensive plan for city-county educational unity.

Aitken’s hopes were eventually doomed by resistance from the residual Memphis City Schools board core on the provisional 23-member board that bridged the city and county systems up until July. So, like former MCS superintendent Kriner Cash before him, Aitken took retirement, announcing it at an emotionally fraught meeting of the provisional board in March.

But Aitken was subsequently engaged by the municipalities of Germantown, Collierville, Arlington, and Lakeland as a “consultant” on the establishment of their school systems, and, as Pickler made clear in an interview with the Flyer some months ago, it was contemplated that Aitken become the acting head of the prospective suburban school consortium.

The fate of that consortium — which Bartlett and Millington had not yet bought into — is now further clouded by fallout from the Hopson plan and will doubtless at some point figure on the agendas of the suburban school boards elected this week by the six municipalities.

• Various sources are now floating the idea that the official name of Germantown High School is actually Mabel C. Williams High School — a fact that could have at least symbolic consequences on the disposition of the high school and its two on-site sibling institutions going forward. Asked about the issue, Pickler said there was evidence that the actual nomenclature for GHS might indeed be Mabel C. Williams and that the actual name of Bartlett High School could be Nicholas Blackwell High School. He noted that when ex post facto honorary diplomas were issued to military veterans who attended both schools, they bore those vintage names.

• As first noted on the Flyer‘s website last week, federal judge William J. Haynes Jr., chief judge of the Middle Tennessee district, ruled last Thursday that the Shelby County Election Commission must list Jim Tomasik as a Libertarian Party candidate on the special election ballots for state House District 91 — not, as had previously been the case in preliminary listings, as an independent.

The special election, scheduled for November 21st, with early voting in effect from November 1st through November 16th, will pit Tomasik against Ramesh Akbari, who won the Democratic nomination for the seat in a special primary election on October 8th. The election is to determine a successor to the late Lois DeBerry.

In view of the closeness of the general election date, lawyers for Tomasik had sought an emergency injunction from Haynes, who, after hearing arguments Thursday, issued it from the bench.

In making his ruling, Haynes noted that in February 2012 he had already ruled unconstitutional provisions of Tennessee’s preexisting ballot access law, which had allowed automatic ballot access only for Democratic and Republican candidates, requiring “minor” parties to meet standards for ballot access which he considered prohibitively difficult.

That ruling was in response to a joint suit by the Green Party and Constitutional Party, who were faced with a requirement to present roughly 40,000 signatures on petitions to gain state ballot access. That figure, representing 2.5 percent of the votes cast in the previous gubernatorial election, was coupled with early deadlines and with requirements that petitioners be members of the affected parties.

The office’s state election coordinator Mark Goins and Secretary of State Tre Hargett were the defendants in 2012 and in Libertarian Tomasik’s case as well. The state has appealed Haynes’ 2012 ruling.

Meanwhile, efforts have been under way in the General Assembly to reform the state’s ballot access law. State senator Jim Kyle (D-Memphis) filed SB 1091 in the 2013 legislative session, which would require milder requirements for minor parties to gain ballot access — 250 petitioners in the case of state Senate or state House elections.

The bill was bottled up in the state and local committees of both legislative chambers, but a nine-member study commission on ballot access was created, with Kyle the sole Democrat among six legislative members. One member each from the Green, Libertarian, and Constitutional parties filled out the commission’s membership.

Kyle said that Ken Yager (R-Harriman), chairman of the House state and local committee and ad hoc chair of the commission, had canceled a meeting of the commission scheduled for mid-October. That was about the time that Tomasik filed his suit.

Prior to Thursday’s hearing and Haynes’ ruling, Kyle had welcomed the hearing as a test case for ballot access reform. The Memphis Democrat, chairman of the Senate Democratic caucus, said Jason Huff of his staff had done a study indicating that both the state and the nation were subject to cycles of party realignment which recurred roughly every 70 years and that the political ferment for such a moment was at hand.

Kyle also suggested that states with elected secretaries of state had proved most amenable to ballot access reform and that perhaps Tennessee should transition to a method of popular election for its secretary of state.

While Democrats statewide might, like Kyle, take solace from Judge Haynes’ ruling, the immediate impact of it among Democratic activists in Shelby County was to generate a minor alarm as to its effect on the forthcoming special general election for the state House District 91 seat.

Gale Jones Carson of Memphis, secretary of the state Democratic Party and a member of the Democratic National Committee, sent out an email to party members this week stating that the ruling could spur a turnout on behalf of the Libertarian candidate. “Tomasik’s candidacy should not be taken for granted, particularly during this expected low voter turnout special election,” Carson warned.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Call Me, Grace

Grace Kelly didn’t have a damn cell phone.

Last Thursday, I went to pick up a pizza and salad for take-out from my favorite pub in Overton Square. I like to order after I get there, so I can have a frosty beer while waiting. I sat on a barstool, bought a cold one, and dug into my pocket for my cell phone so I could check messages, emails, Facebook, Words With Friends, whatever. Imagine my shock and sadness when I realized I’d left it at home. The horror.

What to do now? Talk to somebody? The guy on my right was staring at his phone. The guys on my left, for some unfathomable reason, were talking about the actress Grace Kelly. They couldn’t remember what country she ran off to to become a princess. I thought about breaking in and saying, “Monaco,” but before I could, one guy pulled out his phone and googled it.

“Monaco!” he said.

What the hell did we do before we started carrying around the entire collective knowledge of the human race in our pockets? The evolution of the telephone has brought about an amazing transformation in human behavior in a very short time.

Consider: When I wanted to ask a girl out for a date in high school, I had to call her house! Then, without fail, a parent answered and asked who was calling. If you got through that gauntlet, the girl had to sit in the living room and talk to you while everyone pretended not to listen in. It was primitive and cruel, but it was a rite of passage, and we were probably better off for having had to deal with authority figures before attempting to make contact with the fairer sex. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.

My daughter’s generation had it a little better. With primitive cell phones, they at least had some privacy, though I remember well one of the most delicious parenting victories her mother and I ever had. My daughter called around her curfew one Friday night and said, “Hey, Mom, I’m at Kathryn’s. Can I spend the night?” She was tragically unaware that her mother had that very day hooked up a fancy-schmancy caller ID to our home phone.

“You’re not at Kathryn’s. You’re at Chad’s,” her mother growled. “You need to get your rear end home, right now, young lady. And don’t plan on going out again for a month!”

Sweet Jesus, that felt good.

But those days are gone. My 17-year-old stepson has his own iPhone. He can text, send pictures, send videos, tweet, check Facebook, google, and read The Great Gatsby, on the darn thing. He can even make the occasional phone call to his parents with it … should he be feeling nostalgic.

Bruce VanWyngarden
brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Good Legal Tidings

U of M Law School

First of all, Peter Letsou, dean of the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, may have missed his calling. Not that he isn’t first-rate at the job of administering the Mid-South’s preeminent training institution for lawyers. Au contraire:

On the strength of his luncheon remarks Tuesday to members of the Memphis Rotary Club, Letsou would seem to have his finger on the pulse of all the important matters affecting law schools in general and the University of Memphis’ law school in particular.

But, wow! What a salesman this guy would make! It was impossible to hear him talk about the school without simultaneously getting revved up on the prospects of the city and community which contain it and which it serves. And this is especially remarkable in that Letsou minced no words in describing the negative impact of the financial downturn of 2008-2009 on the fortunes of law schools and on the legal profession.

In describing the imposing edifice on Front Street which now houses the U of M’s law school, Letsou didn’t quite ascend to comparisons with the Taj Mahal, but he certainly reminded his listeners of the architectural and historic value of the city’s former main post office. But where the dean really shined was in expounding on the glories of the school’s location — not just by virtue of its being downtown, but because it is in Memphis. That piece of rhetoric turned out to be more than gratuitous, as Letsou outlined how the city’s involvement with civil rights history and with the health sciences equipped it perfectly to deal with two legal growth industries.

He proceeded with kudos for the law school’s network of active local alumni and how their loyalty to their alma mater created more than the expected number of openings for graduates. And here is where the dean made clear the advantages of the U of M law school in comparison to other institutions. As he pointed out, the legal profession was harder hit than most livelihoods by the Great Recession. In a nutshell, hirings diminished, tuitions rose at most law schools, enrollment declined, and potential law students were made mindful of the increasing level of debt which might be needed to finance their educations, as well as the decrease in potential return on their investment.

But, as they say, every ill wind blows somebody some good, and in this case, it was the U of M law school, a public institution whose annual tuition of $18,000 compares more than favorably to the national average of $55,000 for private law schools.

The two aforesaid growth industries have allowed for a steadier rate of employment locally than most places, as has the network of engaged alumni at local firms. In sum, the “perfect storm” which hit law schools and lawyers elsewhere seems to have accented the advantages of the U of M law school. And having a 91 percent pass rate for recent graduates taking the bar exam — top in the state — doesn’t hurt, either.

Maybe we’re suckers for a good luck story, but this one really hit the spot.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Chasing Amie

We fear sex in the movies almost as much as we love movie violence. Every week, there are plenty of films that peddle violence in all its forms. But we have to turn to foreign films (or Showtime or porn) if we have any interest in thinking about or exploring the physical act of love. Show a woman getting the flesh torn from her back by an overseer’s whip and you’ll be showered with praise; show a woman’s non-boob lady parts and you’ll be slapped with an NC-17 rating.

In spite of its pedigree, Abdellatif Kechiche’s French-language Blue Is the Warmest Color, which won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival this spring, is destined for the art-house ghetto because of its MPAA rating and its frank depiction of human sexuality. But Kechiche’s cultured mini epic is just as valuable as a portrait of a specific young woman during a specific period in her life.

That young woman is Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos), who we first meet when she’s finishing high school. Like Beowulf or Antigone, Adèle is simultaneously there and not there as she goes about her day. She loves literature and has good taste in movies and music. But those pleasures apparently aren’t enough; as her girlfriends remind her, she hasn’t been with a guy yet. There are two reasons for this. First, she can’t find any guys she’s interested in. Second, whenever she thinks of sex, her erotic dreams involve Emma (Léa Seydoux), a young, blue-haired woman with whom she once shared a passing glance.

The fantastic Exarchopoulos is on screen constantly, thinking about her life and rearranging her great tempest of hair to match her moods. To heighten this intimacy, Kechiche’s camera frequently frames Adèle’s face in tight close-ups during most of her daily activities. We see her eating with gusto, sleeping heavily, and crying stormily. (The only bodily fluids shown in this film are tears and snot.) Blue seldom leaves Adèle as she grows up and learns how to manage her enormous emotional and physical appetites.

But she gets to indulge in those appetites first. The film’s four distinctive sex scenes and the two or three fleeting glimpses of female genitalia gave Blue its NC-17 — a rating which, among other things, ensures that a movie featuring some of the year’s smartest, most realistic teenagers is now off-limits to teens themselves. But the first sex scene is the only one where Adèle is with a man. It ends with Adèle staring off in space, breaking the awkward silence to utter a melancholy, “It was great.”

Adèle and Emma are with each other during the other three sex scenes, which flout most of the clichés that mar so many contemporary cinematic sexual encounters. There’s no romantic music drowning out the gasps, groans, and moans of the participants, and there’s little in the way of romantic lighting. There’s just two people sweating, writhing, and working very hard to get each other off.

I wish other movies respected sex and love enough to treat it as seriously.

Blue Is the Warmest Color

Opens Friday, November 8th

Studio on the Square

Categories
Film/TV TV Features

Homeland: engrossing and forgettable

First, the part without spoilers:

For one hour a week, I’m completely engrossed in Showtime’s Homeland. For the other 167 hours I kinda forget about it.

It’s not that the show isn’t good. For two and a half seasons and counting, Homeland has presented an unrealistic, militaristic, borderline xenophobic thrill ride about American spies and the Islamic terrorists they attempt to foil. The star is Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison, a CIA intelligence officer who wrestles with bipolar disorder while trying to prove her brilliant deductions of where the next attack is coming from and who will be the perpetrator. She thinks the wolf in sheep’s clothing is Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), a Marine who was an Iraq war POW before escaping. Carrie thinks Brody was turned by terrorist mastermind Abu Nazir (Navid Negahban). Carrie’s superior, Saul (Mandy Patinkin), doesn’t know what to think. Brody’s wife (Morena Baccarin) and kids (Morgan Saylor, Jackson Pace) don’t know what to think. The first season is a tense bit of gamesmanship but takes a long time to get really rolling. Each episode ends on a cliffhanger to hook you back, but, for me at least, I wasn’t invested enough in the characters to remember to be anxious.

It’s not that the show isn’t superbly acted. Danes has got the “best dramatic actress on TV” thing on lockdown right now. Watching her face, as she cycles through 100 emotions a minute when she goes on and off her bipolar meds, is an amazement. That her character is thematically linked to jazz is almost too rich a metaphor for Danes’ acting. Both she and Lewis have won Emmys for their work. Can’t say I agree with Lewis’ accolades, in light of the competition, though Patinkin is wonderful as a steadying presence on the show, and Rupert Friend is exceptional as fellow CIA agent Peter Quinn.

Now, the part with spoilers through the first two seasons:

Season one ends with a great turn of events. Brody really does try to detonate a bomb, but his attempt fails. But the second season is even better. The series gets its finest moment in the S2 episode “Q&A,” wherein every lie Brody and Carrie have been telling each other is aired. It’s riveting, watching Carrie wear the man down and the relief they both feel when the ordeal is over. The climax of the season, when the CIA is bombed and Brody is blamed for it, is weird. I can’t pin down exactly what happened and why Carrie is so sure he wasn’t involved, except because of their history. It’s not great storytelling.

Now, the part with spoilers of the current season:

Season 3 is the weirdest yet. In hindsight, I very much appreciate the long con of having us fall out of love with Saul and then back in love in a fury when he and Carrie are revealed to be in cahoots. Also in retrospect, Danes’ performance is even better, walking that line between emotional breakdown and pretending to be going through emotional breakdown.

What I don’t like is the lingering anti-Muslim sentiment, most vivid when the new analyst Fara (Nazanin Boniadi) walks into the CIA to a bunch of stares — because she’s wearing a hijab and for no other reason!

Also apparent: Brody’s got to go. Now that Nazir is dead, any tension of having him on the show is dissipated. As for the other members of the Brody family, I really do like them. I would watch a show about angsty teen Dana Brody. But Homeland is not that show. And I don’t like the feeling that Homeland is going down the same road 24 did with Kim Bauer. (The two shows share a gaggle of producers.) Mental health runaways is just another way to say cougar trap.

Last, the part with spoilers from the last episode:

Carrie is pregnant? WTF? Who’s the daddy? Brody? … or Peter Freakin’ QUINN?

Homeland

Sundays, 8 p.m.

Showtime

Categories
News

867-5309 …

Bruce VanWyngarden riffs on telephones and technology and the semi-good old days.