Ode to the Captain

 Patrick Stewart had a long and varied career, but I imagine a lot of people of my generation and thereabouts first knew him as Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

That show was truly formative for me as a kid - it came out when I was only a year old, so I started watching it after it had been running for a few seasons. It was the first "grown-up" TV show I ever really watched.

Stewart brought a gravitas that I know the rest of the cast talked about, pressuring them to step up their game, so to speak. A Shakespearean, former member of the RSC, Stewart had a classical style to his acting that afforded him immense statue on the screen (fitting for Star Trek's more traditionally stagey acting style).

But I think what really sticks with me is the way that he crafted this character who felt like what a man and a leader should be. The show experimented with making him kind of gruff and impersonal, but as the show evolved, this emotional distance was transformed into, instead, a kind of perfect professionalism.

There was something very traditional, in a sense, of having this wise older white man in charge of things, Stewart's baldness lending him an air of sagacity (despite the fact that he was only in his 40s when he started the role). But if we have (or at least some of us have) spent the last couple decades awakening to the dangers of patriarchy, Picard offers an alternative: a man who leads with confidence and wisdom, but the humility to respect and honor the strengths of those whom he leads and value their contributions to the team rather than lord over them with his position of authority.

Star Trek was always meant to portray a utopian future, where humanity had solved the institutional evils of greed, poverty, bigotry, and could turn our attention to higher goals, most notably a form of exploration built to avoid the evils of colonialism through safeguards like the Prime Directive.

In Picard, I think, Stewart built a character who embodied this hopeful future. A kind of platonic ideal of the worthy authority figure, who, among other things, knows precisely where his authority ends and does not overstep that line.

Stewart played many other roles, of course, even if Picard is probably his most iconic given how long he played him. While my family was in town for my college graduation, we saw him in Macbeth, where he gave a fantastic performance as the spiraling tyrant.

He was also an advocate for women, having survived a household with an abusive father, and worked to fight domestic abuse through philanthropy. Generally, it seems like he was a very kind and good person in addition to being a force on screen and stage.

He and Picard were both role models, and I'm sad to hear of his passing.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979 Miniseries)

 I don't know quite when I became so interested in spy dramas. Certainly as a middle-schooler and teenager I watched James Bond movies, but these are really just action movies with pretty unrealistic and ludicrous premises. James Bond belongs, I think, more in the realm of comic book superheroes. I think I could trace my interest to spy stories either with the release of Magic the Gathering's original "Ravnica, City of Guilds" set, which gave my favorite color-pairing the sinister and clandestine-to-an-extreme House Dimir, or perhaps it was actually the 2011 film adaptation of John Le Carré's most famous book starring Gary Oldman.

Watching the movie with my parents, my dad said it was good, but not quite as good as the miniseries starring Alec Guinness. Well, I finally got around to watching that miniseries, which is actually available on YouTube (though I have no idea if it is there legally - perhaps the people who hold the rights to it don't really care).

Anyway, this version tells the story over the course of four hours, compared to the film's more conventional two hours or so, which does leave more room, of course, to flesh things out. I'll be honest, though, there are a few scenes that feel a bit clumsy - there to serve up exposition in a pretty bald-faced way.

I, of course, already knew the story, having seen the more recent version. But it's a pretty good story: essentially, it's a mystery. George Smiley learns there is a mole (a term invented by Le Carré, or at least popularized by him, in this book) at "The Circus," the fictional headquarters of MI6. Smiley's late mentor, known only by his chosen code name of Control, had been trying to figure out which of the top officers at the Circus was working for the Soviets, but on an ill-fated mission he put together to try to figure it out, everything went wrong and it led to a scandal that exacerbated his existing health issues, leading ultimately to his death. Smiley, who was in fact one of Control's suspects (though one guesses in a sort of "covering all the bases" manner - after all, the people you trust the most are the ones that are best position to betray you) takes up the task of figuring out who it is.

The story has a lot of moving parts: the air is hazy with interpersonal drama and career ambitions. Again, trust is the most difficult thing to establish because, of course, the intelligence trade functions entirely on trust - and deceiving others into trusting you.

One of the really interesting things about Le Carré's fiction (perhaps more brutally centered in his debut novel, The Spy who Came in From the Cold) is how, as high-stakes as it feels to hope that Smiley can prevail and catch the mole, we're also reminded time and again that the Western powers are using all the same methods that the Soviets were (I'm sure that some historians will quibble with that, but at least everyone was/is doing things that would not be considered morally great.)

Again, the story is structured a bit like a mystery, gathering evidence and figuring out what, exactly, has happened, and how, and why.

But there's also this constant nagging doubt: the crux of the Soviet plot is that they've created a fake source of intelligence for the British that purports to be actually be an agent for the Brits within Soviet intelligence who is feeding intel to the UK - an agent codenamed Merlin, whose intelligence is codenamed Witchcraft. "Merlin" is given low-value intelligence, "chickenfeed" so that he can, ostensibly, convince his Soviet superiors that he's getting stuff out of the Brits while he's giving the Brits "gold dust." But, in fact, it's exactly the opposite: the mole in British intelligence sending back high-value intelligences while the value of Witchcraft gradually diminishes into chickenfeed and outright falsehoods. Indeed, there's even a suggestion that the entire plot isn't even there to get British intelligence, but to give the Brits something big they can exchange with the CIA for American intelligence, which the mole will then pass along to the Soviets.

In other words: there's no real "end goal" here, just a lot of careful positioning and laying the framework for future advantages.

Intelligence work, it would seem, at least in this era of the Cold War, was deadly and dangerous with benefits that were profoundly abstract.

Of course, the centerpiece of this story is George Smiley. Smiley is sort of the ideal spy - someone who is constantly observant, careful with his words, and has almost no real weaknesses to exploit, except for one pretty major one.

See, I think one of the things that Le Carré conveys with his fiction (at least in the little exposure I've had to it) is that the best spies are the ones that can minimize their humanity. But as we see in this story, people are still human, and that means that all the little imperfections and vulnerabilities that come with being a real human being make the spy game a particularly tough one to play.

In Smiley's case, it's his fraught marriage - my interpretation is that he loves his wife Ann, but they're basically separated and she has a constant parade of affairs with other men. Smiley fully understands that his marriage is the point of attack that his enemies can use, but knowing that doesn't make it go away. Others at the Circus have broader vulnerabilities, but no one is a robot, even if that might make them a better spy.

While the novel is 52 years old, so it's somewhat old news, I don't want to actually spoil it for those who haven't read it or seen the adaptations.

This miniseries does have the "UK television budget from the 70s" degree of production value, of course - high, I'm sure, for the time and those categories, but the 2011 film certainly looks way slicker. I would also, frankly, argue that as amazing as Guinness is, the film probably has the stronger ensemble, with such actors as Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Ciaran Hinds, Mark Strong, John Hurt, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch, and of course Gary Oldman, who I do think is something of an heir to Guinness' chameleonic acting range.

Indeed, I suspect part of what got me in the mood for spy stories has been the new season of Slow Horses (which I think is a big improvement over the previous one. For posterity, the current season is its 6th). Slow Horses is fun, though I don't think it's nearly as smart as the Le Carré stories that influenced it. Still, it's fun to see Oldman playing a character who is in some ways the spiritual equivalent to George Smiley but in others ways his complete opposite.

One thing that's funny for me to consider is just how old everything looks, but then to consider that I was born less than a decade after this series came out. I do think there was a bit of a technological leap in the 1980s (probably a bigger one in the 1990s,) but it's remarkable how analog the technology was just seven years (or twelve if we're talking about the novel) before I was born. That said, I obviously don't have a ton of memories until the very tail end of the 80s. One of the ways in which a show like Slow Horses doesn't feel that much like these Le Carré stories is that, being set contemporarily, so much of the intelligence game is done in the digital world (because so much of life is done in the digital world, he wrote on a blog on the internet). People have to lock books away in safes or use razorblades to cut pages out.

If Le Carré wrote his fiction simply to process his experiences working in intelligence, that makes sense. If he wanted to basically send out anti-recruitment literature for anyone considering getting into such a field, that would also make a lot of sense. While I find this fiction compelling, I also feel very grateful that I've never stepped even close to this world, because I do really value having interpersonal relationships with people I don't need to worry about trusting. Again, it's a story in which normalcy and humanity is a liability. Really puts the Cold in Cold War.

Sugar's Second Season Finale Addresses the Arc Plot

 So, in The X-Files, there was this idea that was somewhat less common in TV in the early 90s: The Myth Arc. While the show primarily followed a case-of-the-week format, sending Scully and Mulder out to various places in the US investigating paranormal cases that could afford to be wrapped up neatly by the episode's end, on occasion you'd get "Myth Arc" episodes that dealt with the grand conspiracy covering up and working with would-be alien invaders.

In the early seasons, these episodes were amazing and exciting, cranking up the tension as we, along with our heroic FBI agents, wanted to learn more answers. By the later seasons, this plot had gotten so convoluted that it became sort of tiresome, though, and the show's more episodic format, which allowed for really wild creative and formalist swings, came into focus as the show's strong suit.

Sugar is structured very differently, of course: in its two seasons, Sugar investigates a pair of missing persons cases, though while the first season is more traditional in a "just where exactly is she?" kind of search, the question of where Ji Moon is in season two is less important than the question of how do we keep this schmuck from getting murdered?

But Sugar has a running arc story, and one that the show spends far less time focusing on. In two seasons, this is the only episode we've gotten that I think is primarily focused on his individual, personal story, with really more of an epilogue for the season plot.

(As an aside, I'm always shocked that more shows don't use the Buffy the Vampire Slayer format, which has episodic and seasonal plots, the but the series-wide arcs are really only broadly about the lives of its main characters rather than overcoming some specific antagonist.)

Of course, this being a mystery show, we'll do another spoiler cut here.

Wrapping Things Up in Sugar Season 2's Penultimate Episode?

 As I mentioned in an earlier post about this unusual mystery show, I've found some parallels with my favorite Christopher Nolan film (and among my favorite films period,) The Prestige. In that movie, which non-linearly (it's Nolan, naturally) traces the deadly rivalry between two turn-of-the-century magicians (can we still call 1900 the turn of the century if we just say 2000 was the turn of the millennium? As someone born, as the young kids would say now, "in the 1900s," it's easier for me if that terminology remains the same). The movie presents a formula for a magic trick, and then structures the film in a similar way.

I will say that I don't know if this terminology (The Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige as the three "acts" of a magic trick) has any basis in the actual craft or was just invented for the novel upon which the film is based (Nolan would similarly present a bunch of internally consistent rules about dream logic in Inception that don't necessarily actually correspond to, you know, my experience of dreaming,) but it's a handy structure, foreshadowing that the film has not one, but two big plot twists, one of which is easier to anticipate than the other, and thus might lull the audience into thinking they'd outwitted the film much as a magician wants their audience to think they've figured out the trick, only to prove their earlier theory wrong.

What kind of show is Sugar?

Let's get into spoiler territory.

Sugar Season Two (First Three Episodes)

 The story of Sugar's first season, in which our strangely anti-Noirish Noir Detective John Sugar investigates the missing scion of a powerful Hollywood family, feels very classically Film Noir. Sugar is a man out of time, seemingly having based his entire persona on old-fashioned Hollywood leading men (a persona that fits quite nicely with Colin Farrel's classic leading-man looks).

Shows of this sort, where the main thrust of an entire season is about one big mystery, have a weird challenge in their second seasons: how different does the mystery get, and how much does it feel like the same show.

We're going to get into spoiler territories pretty quickly here, so I'll do a cut.

When It's Not Adding Up - Big Reveals in Sugar

 Film Noir is typically a subgenre of mystery. It's one that grew out of the trauma of World War II, a generation that had witnessed the utter, shocking evil that humanity was capable of inflicting upon itself. It's a cynical and bitter genre of storytelling that would later be echoed in the cyberpunk genre and has formed a kind of riff upon which other genres can build themselves.

It is kind of funny, though, that the genre became so prominent around the same time that post-War prosperity in America led to the sanitized suburban "Father Knows Best" and "Leave it to Beaver" optimism.

Noir is all about twists and turns, and betrayal is one of the key tropes that pops up within it. Sherlock never has to question whether Watson will be loyal to him and the mission of solving the crime, but in a Noir story, nothing is promised. We might have our heroic detective to trust, but everyone else is fair game.

And thus, it's a little funny that John Sugar has built his life around these tropes. He's so in love with the golden age of Hollywood (though he's not limited to it, at one point describing John Carpenter's The Thing to his doctor).

Following the case of missing woman Olivia Siegel, there are elements that don't really add up, moving parts here and questions that remain unanswered. That's fine, though. That's the genre.

Let's go into spoiler territory. Oh, and just to warn you, there will be spoilers for The Prestige as well.

The Enticingly Weird Neo-Noir of Sugar

 Having heard it was good, and now being done with both season two and Andor and season one of Widow's Bay, I decided to check out Sugar, the Colin Farrel-starring neo-noir series.

I live in Los Angeles, and while I didn't grow up here, both my parents did, and so it was our default destination for family vacations, visiting with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. My dad, while born in Hungary, grew up in Hollywood, and until his parents were too old for us to come and stay with them, we'd often camp out in their apartment, which was just a block away from Paramount Studios.

I was a big cinephile as a kid (sadly kind of less so in adulthood,) and Hollywood not just as an industry but as a place has always loomed large in my world.

Going in, I wasn't sure if Sugar was set during the peak Hollywood days of the 40s and 50s, but it's actually set in modern day. The reason you might be fooled, though, is that its title character, John Sugar, is straight out of a classic Hollywood noir. A private detective who specializes in retrieving missing persons, we first see him in Japan tracking down the illegitimate son of a Yakuza boss.

Sugar dresses in fine suits and comports himself with movie-star poise (it doesn't hurt that Colin Farrel has decades as a successful Hollywood leading man under his belt). What's fascinating about him is that, as we see him go about his work, he seems to be profoundly, genuinely good as a person. Again, it's that old Hollywood leading man archetype, the principled, professional, and cool in the sense of never seeming to falter under pressure.

Sugar himself is a cinephile. When he meets a powerful film producer (James Cromwell, always welcome) whose granddaughter has gone missing, he says he's seen every one of his films at least 5 or 6 times.

What really draws me into the show is its unconventional editing. Among other flourishes, Sugar's investigation is interspersed with clips from classic movies, like Bogart as Sam Spade doing detective work just like Sugar is.

We get the sense that this is a person who has built his entire identity out of being that old Hollywood archetype, even if his methods involve high-tech gadgets in an era with smartphones. Upon returning to LA after his trip to Japan, he checks in with his manager/agent/coordinator, Ruby (Kirby Howell-Baptiste,) who does not play into any of the genre tropes that Sugar seems committed to embodying.

Two episodes in, the plot he's trying to solve doesn't, at least so far, seem to be all that unusual (though my current working theory is that the missing woman has been engaging in vigilante justice against killers of women) but the appeal of the show feels very much about our detective himself.

Now, I will say, I'm aware of a twist coming in the show that was spoiled by an AV Club review that was a little bit loosey-goosey with a pretty major spoiler. I'm trying to put it out of my mind and just take the show on its own merits, but it's a little hard to un-know what I know. I feel a little hesitant to even mention a spoiler here, but I'd say if you want to watch it fresh, be careful.

Also, watching the opening titles I was concerned that it may have been AI-generated, but a little cursory research has indicated that this was not the case, and the kind of irregular water-color-like animation was evidently done by humans, so... phew.

I don't know if I've made my position on AI stuff clear on this blog, but basically, the way I see it is that yes, there could potentially be some use for LLMs if it ever actually proves helpful in, like, developing new medicines or all the other things that AI boosters have promised us, but the primary way I see it being used is to further concentrate profits into the hands of the the capital class at the expense of labor, and to flood our attention with misinformation. Especially in the realm of art, I think that generating stuff via LLMs serves to do nothing other than deny real human artists the chance to share their labor and passion with the world. And for that reason, you shouldn't have any of that shit in your work.