Offline love

 

Before we moved to this city but after we had visited and were planning to move... somewhere around here, we watched a Japanese dating show that took place in this very city. It was called "Offline Love" and shown on Netflix. It featured a group of Japanese young single people none of whom knew each other. They were sent wandering out into this city and given a base. The base was a cafe/restaurant that had been closed down, rented out for the duration of the show, which was maybe a week and a half or so? They turned in their phones and were given a mailbox where they would receive messages from the show, and could send and receive them to and from each other. Also there was always some nice food at the cafe for them, and tables to sit at. Mostly though it showed them wandering this city with a sort of bespoke guidebook, sometimes alone and sometimes together, and there were some specific area related trips or dates as well.

The "point" of the show was to see how much fate could bring them together, though there were also some events and dates that would contrive to bring couples together in particular ways.

I'm not sure when this show was made, maybe a couple of years ago. We have eaten at the cafe, which is on a very charming square down the street from here. In fact there really aren't that many days we don't walk by that particular cafe. The show must have been popular back in its home country. I always like to look in at the people sitting at the restaurant just to make sure there is at least one Japanese couple or group having a drink or food there.

There always is.

Welcome back, welcome back

 

Having issued forth hundreds of mildly amusing quips at the front desk of my library, or perhaps thousands, or possibly millions, over thirty-one years, I am aware that the number still to come is dwindling into the double digits, and maybe even soon the single digits. I have few clever quips to issue at the front desk of my library left in my life.

And so, as the curtain comes to a close on my career here, while I am still saying ridiculous things at the front desk of the library, I am eager to report each one of them.

And so it was that today a woman came to the front desk of my library to pick up her interlibrary loan copy of the DVD Phenomenon, starring John Travolta. As I handed the DVD over to her, in the process of checking it out, she said she was surprised that her local library didn't have a copy, and that she had to request it through interlibrary loan.

I was non plussed. I said that what surprised me is that the guy playing the Sweathog Vinnie Barbarino was starring in an actual movie!

The person checking out the DVD seemed to find this somewhat amusing, so I added:

"Did Arnold Horshack also go on to have an illustrious career?"

The final season of Sesame Street

 

There was apparently some concern about the future of Sesame Street. I didn't follow the news, though I'm pretty sure I also heard something about Netflix picking it up for the future. But that's not what we're talking about here. Or, not exactly. We are talking about my Sesame Street. Because I work on Sesame Street, at my library. And this is my final season.

This is an analogy I have made in the past, where I likened the library to Sesame Street.  Indeed it has been decades since I first looked up and noticed how much all my co-workers were like muppets. From that it was an obvious leap to how the very environment and focus of my large library was a bit of a ringer for the world of the legendary children's television show. As soon as AI generation was remotely up to it, I did my best to come up with some rudimentary 'muppet at the library' photographs from those earlier days of photo generation, because, on its best days, and even just its pretty good ones, my library is so much a Sesame Street kind of place. It is full of its regular denizens, stock characters that are still unique, and a kind of sheltered community removed a little from a world that's a little harsher than it usually is here at a library.

My library is also keen on numbers and letters, sometimes obsessively so!

And so today, feeling a little peaceful about everything at my job I once again thought it was time to try to make everyone into a muppet, that is, into a sesame street character, if I could.

And I can.

Some of these pictures are downright uncanny in portraying the person they are of. If you are a reader with no familiarity with these people, perhaps it will be missing some of the magic in these strangely perceptive renditions, but maybe not. There's still a lot of personality here to enjoy. After all, wouldn't anyone want to visit a library staffed by all these muppets?

The three hour tour

 

One day, a year or two or three ago, a man started coming to my library. At first he talked to me a lot. His parent died and left behind a house here, and that temporarily brought him back to the area. He himself had been working an interesting career in a more glamorous state. It wasn't much of a back and forth kind of talking. It was more like I'm-a-bartender kind of talking. I'm okay with that role.

He slowly faded away from talking to me, but he didn't fade away from the library. Pretty soon he was coming here religiously, waiting every morning for our gates to open and leaving every night promptly at closing, just ahead of the stragglers.

He has increasingly brought to our attention small problems in the library with a disproportionate amount of urgency- a water faucet leaking a tiny bit, or a slightly too loud patron presented as minor emergencies that he is keen to see acted upon promptly.

Now, in the last month of his decline, he has started getting in fights with other library patrons, culminating in what sounds like a very rude interaction with a woman over seating arrangements in our lobby before our opening. He may have ended by surreptitiously throwing some ink on her.

Sometimes I think our library is like a desert island. And though beautiful, sometimes library patrons wash up on our shores and find that they don't know how to get away. And though it seems like they are surrounded by company, they are all alone. And slowly, before our eyes, they start to go mad.

But who am I to leave you with such a sad tale. 

The library is not only a desert island that drives marooned people mad. 

Sometimes it's just a regular old island, full of coconut trees, parrots, monkeys, and pretty sunsets. And seven stranded castaways who make the best of it.

Passion fruit

 

Passionately watching cozy British competition shows with my lovely wife is such an engaging pastime that we have been forced to circle round and start watching them all over again. We are currently on our second go-round with the OG of the genre: The Great British Baking Show. I usually can't remember for sure who wins any given season, but I do seem to remember enough on the second watch that it takes out some of the worse tension of the viewing.

Oh yes, there is plenty of tension in British competition shows, sometimes a little too much. So... they are even cozier the second time around! I like everybody better now that I don't need to worry so much about any particular person winning or losing. Everyone is getting a second chance here.

But boy, this show sure does make me hungry. Or not hungry, exactly, it makes me want to make and eat elaborate baked sweets all day long. Unfortunately, eating rich, sweet baked confections all day long is likely not terribly good for me. In fact, it is probably healthiest for me to eat them... never. And though I'd like to say that this is the kind of thing I could perhaps compromise on, it doesn't really work like that.

And nothing, no ingredient gets me going quite like (as happens surprisingly often) when someone uses passionfruit.

Oh passionfruit!

I don't think I even encountered a real live passionfruit more than about 15 years ago. And it was also about that time I encountered some passionfruit pastry of the most extraordinary kind at a French bakery in Edina.

Do you know what the main street of Edina is?

France Avenue.

So of course they had a fabulous passionfruit patisserie.

But does this all mean I hadn't encountered the flavor of passionfruit until I was in my forties?

No. Let us return to my childhood and one of my all-time favorite sickening indulgences of my preteens: Hawaiian Punch Red.

This was a hideously sweet commercial fruit punch drink. Its main flavor was passionfruit. And I only liked it one way: When it came in a mix-with-water sugar flavor mix in a tin, and a person could use far more than the appropriate amount when making a drink. The best part was when one drank the increasingly strong liquid and got to a kind of syrupy passionfruit flavored sugar slurry at the bottom. It was passionfruit heaven, though I didn't know it was passionfruit at the time...

Nor how close I must have been to instant diabetes. 

I more prefer the baking contest shows

 

Not to be paranoid, but...

If I were the producer of a terrible reality show that followed the goings on behind the scenes at a major near urban library, and my shows were growing flat, and my viewership was going down, and viewers were losing interest in all the strange library workers they were following in our weekly show, I would try the following:

1. Have six or seven people quit or leave the library and don't replace them. This will help create a more high-pressure environment and make room for new story lines.

2. Make sure that among the people gotten rid of we include the most universally liked person and the most universally disliked person. While these people are entertaining, they are stabilizing influences on the culture. Without them contentious new factions will be sure to form and general social standards will change.

3. On random occasions flood the library with substitutes and new people to be trained in, making sure that their skill levels, training, and responsibilities are wildly diverse and completely random.

4. Afflict the staff with illnesses, injuries, and family deaths, so that occasionally sheer chaos ensues, and sometimes whole shows have to focus in depth on one or two library workers because there's literally no one else around.

But whether or not a TV producer has engineered all these changes at my library, or they are completely by chance, all of these things are happening around here at my library right now. 

Which makes for very entertaining TV. 

If you like these sorts of reality shows, that is.

Unfortunately, I don't.

The sport I follow

 

For many years the main sport we followed here at clerkmanifesto was soccer. And though I tried to keep my soccer commentary on a back channel, one inclined to the research (it's never happened before, but it's always possible) could surely pull out and read through many dozens of soccer themed posts from my history of essays. 

And it has been irresistible to write about it a little: Soccer is a rich, complicated, beautiful game, flowing in wild narratives, and full of amazing insights into life itself.

Unfortunately, and I say this with real reluctance, soccer is also stupid.

Soccer is so, so, so stupid!

It is like the stupidest thing ever! 

In fact, I think soccer is the stupidest sport outside of professional wrestling, which, as you know, isn't even a sport at all! Wrestling is, well, like soccer with more planning.

And while I can't claim that this analytic conclusion concerning soccer is free of personal bitterness (after all, my heart has been raked over the burning coals of soccer more times than I'd like to admit), it is not completely disconnected from reality. Sure, at least half of all soccer match results are attributable to one team being better than the other, but, and this is super important, a disturbing amount of the remaining games, when teams are at least roughly close-matched, are decided either by insanely bad calls, moments of random luck, or the work of capricious gods who are simply mad at everything.

So I have switched sports.

I now exclusively follow English Amateur Competition Shows. Essentially these are The Great British Baking Show, Great British Sewing Bee, Great British Pottery Throwdown, and The Great British Flower Show which had only one season and might not have been British, I don't remember, but it was brilliant anyway. These shows have far lower stakes, more admirable participants, and much better judging than soccer could even dream of. And not only are these shows more wholesome, egalitarian, and fair than any professional sport I can think of, I can also watch them on the couch with my darling wife.

I'd say the only real shortcoming to these English Amateur Competition Shows is that they don't really make enough of them. 

So, in a spare moment, every once in awhile I check in on how Messi is doing here in America.

He's doing pretty good. But he's getting close to aging out of the game now.

Maybe he should take up baking.

What I have learned from 700 episodes of Fashion Designer competition shows

 

Over the last year or two, my darling wife and I have watched many seasons and episodes of various fashion designer competition shows. And though there are hundreds of hours of my investment in this pursuit, and I have had a fair amount of cozy, entertaining diversion, I am pretty sure that one post can cover what I have learned in all this... study.

And so here are the five key points I have gleaned from the TV show sub genre: Fashion Design Competitions:

1. Even though every one of these shows purports to be about the seasonal winner becoming the next big name in fashion, no one who has ever won one of these shows, no matter how blindingly talented, has become the next big name in fashion. No one.

2. Plus size means women, not men. Male models always have to be pretty trim. And I'm pretty sure no one of any gender is allowed to be short.

3. The best dressed designer will usually be the best designer.

4. These shows start out with the focus on fashion, design, and craftsmanship. But as the seasons progress they lean increasingly into drama and novelty.

5. Gary should have won.

When I can tell I'm not that sick anymore

 

I have been sick with Covid for a full week now. That's a lot of sitting around eating what I can bear to, drinking endless quarts of water, and watching TV shows. As for the TV shows at first there were some old movies we'd seen a million times before. Then there was the new season of Emily in Paris, which I understand is a personal taste, but I quite like it. That went by quick.  From there it has been all homey British Competition Shows. One involved Interior design and was interesting. The next concerned, well, not flower arranging, it was more like large scale plant sculpture. Teams of two had to make things like giant insects or fairytale scenes out of plants and flowers and stuff. I really liked that one and was sad there was only one season of it. Do you know how long it takes for sick people to watch one season of a British Competition show? 

Part of a day.

I have full days to take care of here!!!!

Which brings me to my point today.

How can I tell that I'm not all that ill from Covid anymore?

I listlessly lay about all day eating sorbetto and watching TV...

and I like it!

Wednesday

 

To be honest, I was tempted to just leave this picture of Wednesday, on a Wednesday, as is. But I didn't want you to think I was here shilling for the new Netflix series about Wednesday Addams.

Oh, you didn't know there was a new TV series coming out soon about Wednesday Addams?

There is, but I'm not shilling for it. 

You'll never catch clerkmanifesto selling out!

Because I have integrity!

And also no offers whatsoever.

I'm not sure which of these two are more important in the equation.

Anyway, over the past few days, as I considered this post, I decided it might be a good place to discuss my feelings about mass market fan fiction, like, for instance, The Addams Family. But it is a big subject. It is a huge subject. It is a start of the week subject! Or it is maybe a good weekend discussion if I'm up for it, and I am full of beans, and have a computer, none of which are, alas, true.

But, it is not, in any circumstance, after all is said and done, a Wednesday sort of discussion.

And I do like to think we have established that today

is

Wednesday.

A metaphorically true story

 

Among the increasingly frequent incursions of our County Management takeover of our library system, there is a great deal of new pseudo corporate terminology, Nineteen eighty-four terminology, Professional Management Class terminology.

In short, managers around here now are officially to be called "People Leaders".

This brings me to a famous old Twilight Zone episode called "To Serve Man". In this show large, technologically advanced aliens arrive in their spaceships, on Earth. They say that they are here to provide humanitarian aid and to help people. They can end famine, produce super cheap electricity, and stop war.

Wary of these uninvited visitors, faith in them improves among people as their promises begin to come true. Also, a cryptography team finally decodes the aliens' special book and understands the title is "To Serve Man", and everyone starts to trust the aliens.

Soon people are lining up to go visit the aliens' planet, which is supposed to be a paradise that offers even more wonders. The head of the cryptography department is going off to their planet too, but just as he's getting on the ship, the codebreakers finally fully crack the alien language. One of them runs to the Cryptography head as he is getting on the alien ship and yells to him: "Don't get on that ship! The rest of the book, "To Serve Man", It's a cookbook!"

And so when one of my colleagues next heads downtown to meet with the County People Leaders I imagine a similar scenario. As they climb into the car to be whisked off to the glorious County Offices I too will crack the code at the last minute. I will run out of the library to the back parking lot and, just as my colleague is getting in the car I will yell: "Don't get in that car. Don't go downtown! It's not "People Leaders. It's "People Eaters!!!!" 

 

My new cuisine

 

It is not like me to recommend books, movies, music, or TV shows.

Wait, that doesn't sound right. Maybe it's:

It is quite like me to recommend books, movies, music, or TV shows.

There. That looks better!

And one would think that working at a library I would have rich opportunities for this process of suggestion. But even when I have recommended things to people that they loved, that changed their lives, I still get a disquieting sense from them that any recommendation is halfway to a burden. There is a feeling in the air that I am bestowing not an opportunity, but a responsibility. And the better my recommendations have been in the past, the greater the responsibility I am lowering heavily into their arms.

Here, hold this.

And so I struggle to keep my peace. And so I struggle to keep my piece.

And as for being asked for recommendations at the library, the field is far smaller than one might think. There is very little "Allowing for the full breadth of human experience what should I read that will blow my mind?" and vastly more "I really like Lee Child. What other books are there exactly like these only by a different author?"

So when I extoll the extraordinary Netflix documentary show that my lovely wife and I have stumbled upon, Chef's Table, I do it not as a recommendation. You are free to carry on with your life exactly as planned. There is no moral imperative to watch this show. You will not be left out of any water cooler conversations. You will not fall in my estimation.

I just really like this show.

Indeed, I like it to the point where it is changing me. 

And so that is why I am telling you about it.

Chef's Table is a series of hour-long biographies about the profoundly influential, groundbreaking, and successful chefs of the world. Each episode is about one chef and their journey in the world through food. They are not linked except by the close relation of the subject, food and cuisine, and the gorgeous style of each episode's production. They are beautifully shot, both in the attention to food and ingredients, but also to the natural world from which they come. United by the beautiful musical scores and by the formal attention to the immaculately presented plates of the diverse cooks.

It is surely not solely this show that has changed the way I eat. I have struggled all my life with eating well. And though at various times in my life I have made attempts to eat cleanly, or with better elements, or from more wholesome ingredients, I have also struggled with quantity, with food as emotional comfort, and with the indulgence of food. And eating better has always competed with having enough food. So I have skimped, indulged, economized my cooking with massive portions, and given up.

But then watching all these exquisite chefs meticulously crafting what I have to say are almost exclusively small plates, I found myself thinking:

What if that's enough food?

and

How expensive can such a small portion be to buy ingredients for?

That one plate could be enough for me. I am familiar with that one plate being enough.

I am not a great chef. I am not a million, billion miles close to any of these masters of craft. But I'm okay with a saucepan if I'm careful about it and pay attention to a general instruction. I am not making the food anything really like in Chef's Table. But a little piece of cod pan-fried in panko, with a few seared asparagus spears, a toasted garlic crouton, and a spoonful of cilantro pistachio pesto, is neither beyond me nor beyond the time I will allow for cooking. I don't have to make a giant batch for my trouble. I don't have to have a heaping plate for my meal. It is enough.

This is very different.

One thing I have realized is that I am almost never hungry. And I don't need a lot of food to be satisfied. I might, it seems, just need a little food to be satisfied, so long as it is excellent, or as excellent as I can make it.

And so shopping is changed too. I do not look for the cheapest appealing vegetable that I can buy a lot of. I look for any vegetable that looks wonderful, and buy a little. Better a stalk of broccolini, or five spears asparagus, or six perfect sugar snap peapods than one giant mass of chard (though nothing against chard!). Better three morel mushrooms (if I can find them) than a pound of button mushrooms.

And so with meat, herbs, cheese, and so on.

I have had diet epiphanies before, but maybe this has more evolution than revolution to it. It makes sense to me. But I don't know what will happen. I have been following this way for less than two weeks. But I do know I look at food differently already. And I feel less restricted than more; freed even.

I have always been interested in food.

I have always liked, even loved food.

Now maybe I am learning to respect it.

 

Is the mike on?

 

Oh, hi.

You're probably here for the blog post. Well, statistically speaking you're probably not here, but technically speaking you actually are here, which is probably the top argument for reality over statistics.

 Anyway, in case you didn't know, this is clerkmanifesto, where we post super entertaining content every single day for an amazingly uninterested Internet.

But let's not go into all that. 

We've been running this daily blogging content for so long I've stopped counting. I used to count it all the time. At one point my number of blog posts was the top topic on this blog. Now I don't have any idea about that number. That's how old this blog is!

My top topic on this blog at the moment is, I guess, the serialized memoir of my youthful through-hike on the Agua Fria Trail. The next chapter is probably Wednesday.

Originally this blog was mostly about working in a large, near urban, public library. Then, like an unreasonably large rock thrown in a pond, the subject rippled out from there. Clerkmanifesto has at this point probably 20 or so main subjects, but none of us would profit from me attempting to count them. After many years of adamantly opposing having pictures on my blog, with the advent of Covid-19, I got a camera and started featuring just gobs of photographs here. So at any point this blog might get stuffed full of photos.

This post is probably safe from any photos though, in case you were worried.

Once, briefly, I tried to switch this blog over to a website called lifeisafountain, but it was too cumbersome to work with, so I came back to this.

I still tell stories from my library here. In fact, that's what I came here today to do. I had a really good one about something awful one of my co-workers did yesterday. But when I sat down to write I couldn't remember the story. So I just started writing this. I guess the idea is to catch everyone up. Although statistically no one reading here had any need to get "caught up", and also technically no one needed to get caught up either. 

This is the top argument for reality and statistics being the same.

Oh, since we're catching people up,  I got a new t-shirt that says "Greendale Community College", after my favorite TV show. I'm wearing it today. Also, did you know that for a brief period during the early years of Clerkmanifesto I set aside one day a week for light chats like this one?

I did! 

I guess it's making a comeback.

Also, I remembered my library story. I'll tell it to you tomorrow.

Emily and the glamorfizication of Paris

 

There has been a fair bit of "Emily in Paris" watching over these holidays in my house. It seems better than braving the ice strewn and bitter sidewalks of Saint Minneapolis in order to experience "real life". And we don't want to travel somewhere nice for fear of catching the disease thing that's been going around this season, 

and the last one, 

and the one before that, 

and one more before that,

and during the entire previous year to that.

So there's Paris on the screen. And it looks super nice.

We were in Paris not that many years ago and also thought it looked very nice in person. 

But on the screen something seemed different.

It seemed like there were fewer cars.

"Aha!" I cried out. "I have caught "Emily in Paris"! They are making Paris look better by having no cars on the streets!"

This seemed very important at the time. I was going to exhaustively prove here in my award winning blog that cities without cars are better, a thing that no one I know disagrees with, but, I RUN IN A SELECT CROWD!

So I immediately, well, not immediately, but after watching several more episodes and sleeping for nine hours, I immediately started gathering material for my thesis. I tracked down "Emily in Paris" locations and inspected how they really are in the photos of Google Street View.

Aha!

Aha!

They are more or less the same as in the show.

Oh.

Maybe that's why Paris seemed pretty great in person.

I rest my case.

Game show host

 

My library has opened for public browsing of the collection. Whether this move is slightly premature because of Covid cases still rising in my State isn't the subject of today's missive. The subject of today's missive is just how ecstatic this makes the library patrons. There has been squealing, and weeping, and literal jumping for joy (well, it was a bit more like a couple little hops).

And because we have rolled out this new level of library opening in a very low key, unpublicized way, I am regularly the bearer of this good news. I am, apparently, the instrument of making people's day. 

They tell me so. 

"You have made my day. No, my year!" They say.

I think they want to hug me.

I feel like a game show host!

They walk into the library, picking up a couple of mundane books they're not even sure they want to read.

 Something looks different...

"Is..." They tremulously begin. "Is the library... open? Can I go pick out my own books... myself?"

"Yes! Yes indeed. The library is open for browsing." I say. "And you have also won a brand new Kenmore Brand Washer and Dryer Combo!!!!!! Johnny, tell them what they've won!"

" Well Feldenstein, it's a brand new Kenmore brand deluxe hydro-clean washer and dryer. With variable wash cycles and their patented low frequency super wash system, you will never have to worry about your colors bleeding again! Kenmore, the right way to say electric!"

"Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!" they yell, sobbing excitedly, overwhelmed with emotion. Their family and friends come up to them and they all start hugging and jumping up and down in front of my desk.

Cut to commercial.

Hopefully they're all vaccinated.

Mind meld

I might have been a little bleary and half asleep.

Wait, let's go back a step.

Have you ever seen Star Trek? It's a science fiction TV show about, oh, sorry, right. You said yes.

Excellent. So much easier.

Well there's this thing that Spock does. Spock is a character on Star Trek who...

Right, right, great. You know Spock. Excellent.

So he does this thing called the Vulcan Mind Meld. It's, like, a Vulcan telepathic cultural sort of thing. He puts his hand with a deliberate, unusual spreading of the fingers on someone's face and they form a telepathic link.

In the middle of the night last night I strangely woke up with my hand on my face very much in the formation of one doing a Vulcan Mind Meld. If felt oddly comfortable, though it was also most curious. I left my hand as it was and I thought "This is just like Spock's hand doing a Vulcan Mind Meld!"

And then I thought excitedly "I can tell what I'm thinking!"

Review of Season One: Senate Impeachment Trial

I don't usually watch TV shows, but a few things drew my attention strongly to Season One of "Senate Impeachment Trial".


1. I'm interested in politics, but the real life version tends to be too depressing. An inspirational drama about the impeachment trial of a corrupt President seemed right up my alley.

2. I love legal dramas, and watching a show entirely expressed as a very formal trial seemed fascinating.

3. I'm a huge Adam Schiff fan and loved him in "Impeachment of the President", which can be seen as sort of a prequel to this show.

So I decided "What the hell." and gave this Internet Television Series a shot.

Sadly, it had a lot of problems. But first, let's talk about a few things I really liked!

1. Adam Schiff was great. Playing the clear spoken Atticus Finch/Mr. Smith goes to Washington character he was the soul and backbone of the show and a real hero to root for. Without him this show would have been pointless. Also it was extremely clever how they mainly surrounded him with an almost unbearable level of hypocrisy, incoherence, and evil so that when he finally appeared he and his close reasoning, simple logic, and sense of justice was a palpable and almost intense relief. This was a brilliant device.

2. I liked how the ultimate villain, "The President", never appeared in any way and was only referenced. He seemed so horrible and ridiculous as to be almost unbelievable, but that lack of realism kind of worked when he was merely obliquely referenced and left to our imaginations. I like how he was only expressed through craven and repulsive toadies.

3. Towards the end I was really invested and hoping for "The Presidents" removal from office. Despite myself I'm incredibly curious about season two.


Unfortunately there were a lot of problems with the show:

1. Too few characters! Having the judge read the Senators' questions offered a kind of gravity, but the Judge had no personality or any reason for being there except to read the questions that weren't even his own and to cut people off . It often felt like they were saving money by not having to pay actual actors to appear as Senators. It felt cheap. Also, what happened to that repulsive Dershowitz character? He was an interesting villain (though maybe a little overdrawn?) and seemed to disappear halfway through the season?

2. Hello? Where's the trial? I felt like maybe the production was underfunded? Just when it was getting really interesting and we finished the opening statements, the "Republicans" decided to have no witnesses or evidence. Was the show cancelled due to poor ratings? How could this be a trial in any real world situation? I know they were trying to make a point about the Republicans being corrupt, but the "no witnesses" thing seemed kind of unrealistic and stopped the show just as it was getting interesting. It also made the "Bolton" backstory go nowhere. If this "Bolton" was a Republican how could there have been not even a few Republican Senators who hadn't gone completely mad? My only guess or hope is that perhaps some big reveal is coming in the next season?

3. It was really dark. This might be my own fault. I was hoping for an uplifting escape from modern politics, but this was far more cynical and tragic than real life. I know it was meant as a kind of warning, but the "Republicans" supporting and protecting a President who bribed another country to help his reelection was maybe a little unrealistic? And there was a sense that the media surrounding it just sort of shrugged their collective shoulders. Maybe they were saying that the press is so lost in "He said she said" that all of truth, justice, and democracy could slip away in between their lines of dutiful reporting. But I kind of think the press would say something in such a grave scenario. These reporters in America are still real people with some integrity, at least some of them. In the end this "Trial" was all so cynical and hopeless. What was the point? Was it a warning, like, in Watergate, when they said it showed how the system worked, and so they are showing what happens when it doesn't? It's an interesting idea, but maybe not realistic enough. I can't really believe America, for all its many faults, could get this bad and I'm not sure they really make the case.


Conclusion:

I can't really recommend this show and if there is a season two, I don't know where they're going with it since they kind of closed down all their storylines. Will they go full dystopia as is the logical next step, or will they make more use of Schiff, their most compelling character? For all my questions and complaints I really am interested to see what happens next. Whatever the faults, they did get their hooks in on me with this grim production. If there is a season two (and I'm not sure this wasn't cancelled midseason and patched roughly to a final ending), and they pull this thing out of the fires of despair, my view of it could change. In some ways I think it merely needs a little more hope than they offered here in season one. But as it stands now I find it too soul destroying and darkly unrealistic to really recommend.



Two stars.