Bye Bye Nine Nine

*Spoilers*

Brooklyn Nine Nine had its series finale today.

Jill and I have watched the show from the beginning -- we were hooked from the first TV ads featuring "Detective Right-all-the-time" and "Detective Terrible Detective" (as opposed to you latecomers who only got onboard after "I Want It That Way"). It was a stellar show, no question about it, and I am sad to see it go.

This final season was a bit rocky -- I think everyone knew it would be, as they revamped the season entirely following the protests over George Floyd's murder. They didn't take my advice on story arcs, though Rosa did indeed leave the force. And at some level, the last season did in some ways reinforce the semi-popular narrative that all cop shows are "copaganda" -- precisely because it did try to tackle injustice and abuse in policing seriously (or at least, as seriously as a comedy program could).

The penultimate episode, where Jake gets suspended from the force, is what sealed it. Objectively speaking, what happened in that episode was what should have happened in every wild and wacky plot Brooklyn Nine Nine did throughout its entire run. All of Jake's fantasies about living out Die Hard or Speed or any other old cop movie staple completely blew past the fact that he's living a fantasy while being an armed state agent in a world of real people. Of course it would be irresponsible, of course it would mean innocents get caught up and hurt. The reason these things work on TV-land is partially because of suspension of disbelief, partially because every bone in our narrative-driven bodies expects some twist or turn that vindicates Jake after all. Even in this episode, where it was obvious that such a "twist" wouldn't be coming, one still felt the dissonance -- once it became clear that the episode would finally play it straight for once, it all just felt wrong. In a world where the potential for adverse consequences were real, Jake stops being a funny, I-don't-wanna-grow-up enthusiast, and just is a completely irresponsible jerk. A show that didn't make the police look good just wouldn't be fun.

All that said, the series finale itself did a stellar job bringing the show in for a landing. Jake leaving the NYPD to become a stay-at-home dad was exactly how the show should have ended -- him finally learning how to grow up indeed. Getting one last heist episode was a must, and it is incredible how the show managed to keep that concept fresh over eight iterations (Hitchcock winning, and winning in the most uncreative way possible -- he just paid Bill $40 for the trophy -- was fabulous). It was nostalgic and funny and reunifying in all the best ways -- really, a pitch perfect way of saying goodbye. Unlike, say, The Good Place finale, which was excellent but also wrecked my soul, I could actually watch this episode again. Arguably, it was the best episode of the entire season.

And so, if we do have to say goodbye, this was the episode to do it. We got to see most of our favorite characters one more time, having fun, doing what they love, being extra -- and it does help that the heist is completely divorced from actual police work, so the undertone of abject irresponsibility is lessened enough so that it can be comfortably ignored.

Ultimately, Brooklyn Nine Nine almost certainly would have been eclipsed by the politics of the time if it wasn't just too good to dismiss. That is to the tremendous credit of the actors, writers, and showrunners who made it great. From day one, it proved itself far better than a vehicle for Andy Samberg to get wacky. It demonstrated the incredible comedic chops of dramatic actors like Andre Braugher, and made folks like Terry Crews and Stephanie Beatriz into genuine stars (though lord knows whether Beatriz will ever be able to move beyond her "Rosa voice" -- fun fact: I'm pretty sure "Rosa high on cold medicine" and "Rosa sarcastically chipper" is just Stephanie Beatriz speaking normally).

So, one last time -- Nine Nine! (NINE NINE!)

Best Epic Rap Battles of History (By Season)

Look, we're all bored here, so let's award the best Epic Rap Battles of History for each season.

Season One

Winner: Albert Einstein vs. Stephen Hawking
Honorable Mentions: Dr. Seuss vs. Shakespeare, Napoleon vs. Napoleon

The season that started it all. Honestly, though, I think only Einstein vs. Hawking can compete with the stronger entrants in later seasons. The creators -- reasonably enough! -- were still finding their rhythm (get it?).

Season Two
Winner: Michael Jackson vs. Elvis
Runner-up: Rasputin vs. Stalin
Honorable Mentions: Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates, Cleopatra vs. Marilyn Monroe

Now we're cooking. The kid who plays young Michael Jackson was superb, and carries his battle to victory. The Rasputin vs. Stalin (vs. Lenin vs. Gorbachev vs. Putin) battle was strong almost top-to-bottom (only Gorbachev was a bit of a sour note for me). Jobs vs. Gates was a ton of a fun (remember those Mac vs. PC ads?). And Cleopatra vs. Monroe was a superb all-women battle with some truly vicious disses. Freddie Mercury's performance over Frank Sinatra was also a stand-out, but he won so convincingly the battle was actually too one-sided to make this list.

Season Three
Winner: Isaac Newton vs. Bill Nye
Runner-up: Edgar Allen Poe vs. Stephen King
Honorable Mention: Bob Ross vs. Pablo Picasso 

It's tough to top getting Weird Al in one of these (though if Neil deGrasse Tyson had actually played himself -- which I've heard he was willing to do -- it would have been even cooler). Stephen King has one of the best closing lines in the whole series. Bob Ross vs. Picasso is relatively light, but consistent all the way through. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vs. their namesake Renaissance Artists was good, but the performance was a little short. I also suspect I'm virtually alone in thinking that Miley Cyrus beat Joan of Arc (and pretty decisively, frankly).

Season Four
Winner: Stan Lee vs. Jim Henson
Runner-up: Western Philosophers vs. Eastern Philosophers
Honorable Mention: Ellen vs. Oprah

If you forced me to pick my absolute, all-time favorite, I'd probably go with Lee vs. Henson -- but it'd be torture. If you asked to pick me single favorite verse, though, it'd be Walt Disney's intervention in Lee vs. Henson -- and it would not be close. It's brilliant from start to finish (and, to be clear, compliments very strong work from Lee and Henson). As a political theorist, I found the philosophy battle hilarious. Ellen vs. Oprah is also a very good, evenly matched battle (and one of the few "clean" ones on ERB).

Season Five
Winner: George R.R. Martin vs. J.R.R. Tolkien
Runner-up: Gordon Ramsay vs. Julia Child
Honorable Mentions: Tony Hawk vs. Wayne Gretzky, Ash Ketchum vs. Charles Darwin

This was an absolutely loaded season -- I think clearly ERB's strongest overall. Tolkien's final verse where he works in all the titles of the Lord of the Rings is just masterful. I'm a dedicated Gordon Ramsay fan but Julia Child completely kicked his ass. Tony Hawk's incredible first verse is matched by Wayne Gretzky's brutal last verse. And Darwin has one of the great one-liners of all-time calling Ash "Mighty Morphin' Michael Vick." All that talent means a ton of tracks I love don't even make it onto the honorable mentions list here: (Daniel Craig) James Bond vs. Austin Powers, Ivan the Terrible versus various "the Greats", Wonder Women versus Stevie Wonder, and Winston Churchill versus Theodore Roosevelt are all superb.

Season Six
Winner: Guy Fawkes vs. Che Guevara
Runner-up: Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg
Honorable Mention: Ronald McDonald vs. The Burger King

This was a shaky season on the whole, but Fawkes vs. Guevara is one of the best in the entire series -- a distinction based primarily around the dead-on Che Guevara portrayal (who knew he also looks exactly like Jon Snow?), but certainly with an impressive toe-to-toe performance from Fawkes. Musk vs. Zuckerberg has a wonderful subtle gag running through it in that Mark "I don't even fucking blink" Zuckerberg in fact never blinks during the whole video. The McDonald vs. Burger King rap sneaks into honorable mention, but not due to either of the titular characters -- Wendy steals the show. Wendy's the company actually tweeted about the rap, which is a bit gutsy given their mascot's line about how she's "exploiting you both like you were growing my tomatoes."

NBC Thursday Comedy Quick Thoughts

NBC really pushed its fall comedy lineup, with veteran battleships The Good Place and Superstore looking to boost newcomers Sunnyside and Perfect Harmony (notably, Brooklyn Nine Nine's seventh season will be coming a bit later). The first two are great shows, and they inspired Jill and I to give the pilots of the latter two a try. So ... quick thoughts on all four!

*Potential Mild Spoilers*

Superstore

• I actually don't really have much to say about this show, other than Mateo's ICE detention is heartbreaking and terrible and a really good storyline but also just makes me very sad.

The Good Place

• Seems like a whole bunch of our favorite guest-stars are going to get return appearances this season. I'm always here for more Marc Evan Jackson in my life. The sexy mailman who's always "going to the gym" shows up, much to Eleanor's side-eyed delight. We haven't seen Vicki yet (though to be honest, Tiya Sircar was much, much better as Real Eleanor). But the real stretch goal is if Trevor (aka Adam Scott) and his crew stage a return.
• This show has earned a ton of trust, so take what I'm about to say very lightly, but ... if the show is serious about following through on using these random (or "random") four humans as test dummies to see if humans generally can get better in the Fake Good Place, then they're forgetting an important point of their premise. It's not that being in the (Fake) Good Place improves people. It's that particular elements of the original quartet, in conjunction with being in the Good Place, ended up bringing out the best in each other (under conditions of adversity). But that doesn't apply to any random four people, not the least because not all of them will necessarily experience this iteration of the Good Place as "adversity".

Perfect Harmony

• I've missed Bradley Whitford on my TV screen. Trophy Wife, you were gone too soon. With respect to his probably drunk, deeply embittered character, Jill comments: "Josh Lyman in the Trump years."
• Somebody identified Whitford as being from "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," and I almost tossed my computer across the room.
• I know Anna Camp is from South Carolina, but boy that accent she's putting on feels broad, doesn't it (and yes, I know that South Carolina and Kentucky are different places with different accents, but that's just it -- it feels like a caricature of "backwoods hick")? It's testament to just how gosh darn likable she is that I can look past it.
• Dwayne's voice -- real, or put on by the actor?
• That "Eye of the Tiger/Hallelujah" mashup was pretty damn good, I'd say! Seems like a lot for the choir to throw together on a few days notice without their star director, though.
• The evil megachurch pastor definitely has engaged in some serious sexual misconduct, right?

Sunnyside

• Kal Penn! Remember that time he got a job in the Obama administration and so they just had his character commit suicide out of nowhere on House?
• I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that the actress who plays the councilwoman who took Kal Penn's seat is an AOC looklike. And by "not the only one", I mean "everyone noticed, immediately, it's incredibly on the nose".
• Man, between Mateo on Superstore and Drazen (a Moldovan immigrant and disco music fan) on Sunnyside, network TV is all of the sudden actually willing to tackle the fact that a bunch of people who are just living their lives in America are at constant risk of being plucked off the street and thrown into detention.
• I really hope we haven't seen the last of Drazen -- his dynamic with Brady (also from Moldova, but came to America at two years old and doesn't even know where Moldova is) is fabulous. Save Peggy!
• Best running gag on Sunnyside is Griselda working a job at every single place the group meets. Probably can't carry for a whole season, but it absolutely worked in the pilot.
• Whoever plays Kal Penn's sister can get it.

Preparing the Meat Roundup

I'm going on the law school job market this fall. That process began this week, when I sent in my application to the "Faculty Recruitment Conference" in Washington, DC, charmingly nicknamed the "meat market". But possibly inappropriate name aside, it actually is a relatively humane way of organizing academic hiring: all the law schools come to DC for their first round interviews, which take place over one weekend at a single hotel. Makes for a rather frenetic weekend, but the centralized process does cut down on applicant labor time.

* * *

And then there were none: the last African-American GOP Representative in the House, Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, will not run for re-election in 2020. Hurd barely squeaked by Gina Ortiz Jones in 2018; Jones had already jumped into the race for 2020.

LibDem wave! LibDems picked up a parliamentary seat in the Wales constituency of Brecon and Radnorshire. The seat had been held by the Tories, and their defeat cuts Boris Johnson's parliamentary majority (which already depends on the support of a third party) to a single vote.

The Poway synagogue shooter was inspired by the Christchurch mosque shooter. That's because extreme-right Islamophobia feeds into extreme-right antisemitism, and vice versa.

Despite the efforts by some on the right that reflexively label the entire "squad" as antisemitic, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez actually hasn't said all that much on Israel or Jews. A recent interview changed that -- and revealed that her positions are for the most part wholly harmonious with those of liberal Jews across the country (absent, perhaps, her fondness for IfNotNow). "The same way that me criticizing Trump doesn’t make me anti-American, criticizing the occupation doesn’t make you anti-Israel, frankly. It doesn’t mean you are against the existence of a nation." Well spoken.

Long-time Baltimore-area Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) -- in the news after Trump attacked him by declaring all of Baltimore a place "no human" would want to live -- has long quietly promoted an exchange program bringing young Black Americans to Israel. JTA interviewed several of the trip's alumni -- they offer a great endorsement of what seems to be a wonderful program.

NPR interviews Wanda Sykes. Who knew she used to work at the NSA?

Fancy That!

This past evening, on his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver criticized Bibi Netanyahu. Specifically, he mocked his flip-flop on whether he supported a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict -- prior to the election he had blustered that a Palestinian state wouldn't be created during his tenure; after the election he was insistent that he's all in favor of the creation of a Palestinian state. Oliver proclaimed that if Netanyahu could get away this stunt, he should "go on the road as Netanya-houdini -- 'words cannot hold him!'"

It was a funny bit. I laughed. And here's what I didn't see happen: Anyone calling Oliver anti-Semitic.

How? How is this possible? We all know, after all, that any criticism of Israel (or its current leadership) immediately tars one as an anti-Semite. And this was a criticism on a popular national television program no less! And it's not the case that he's just saying something everyone agrees with -- many American Jewish groups have taken pains to argue that there was no inconsistency in Bibi's position and, indeed, nothing to see here at all. Yet even though we had a criticism, and even though it's a criticism that (it's fair to say) many mainline Jewish groups disagree with (I'm not among them -- I trust Bibi about as far as I could throw him on the two-state solution area), nobody argued that Oliver was being anti-Semitic. Because, as it turns out, there are plenty of perfectly fair-play criticisms one can make about Israel and its government that won't be called anti-Semitic.

The refrain "you can't criticize Israel without being called anti-Semitic" continues to be a lie, and an obvious one at that. Yet no matter how many times it is falsified, no matter how many stakes are put through its heart, it will no doubt keep on shambling forward.

It's Always Funny in Philadelphia

Former Senator Arlen Specter (R, then D-PA) tries his hand at stand-up comedy. And I'll be honest -- he's surprisingly funny. My favorite:

“I called [Bill] Clinton up on his 65th birthday and said, ‘Bill, congratulations on being 65. How do you feel?’ He said, ‘Oh, I feel like a teenager, the problem is I can’t find one.”

Solid stuff, particularly given that Specter is nearly 82 years old.

Sign of the Apocalypse

Spotted at the movies today: an advertisement for a Glenn Beck stand-up routine.

Lord, whatever we've done to deserve this, I repent with the depths of my soul.

Sign of the Apocalypse

Spotted at the movies today: an advertisement for a Glenn Beck stand-up routine.

Lord, whatever we've done to deserve this, I repent with the depths of my soul.

Caption This Photo

The man on the right is Robert Haines, the first candidate to officially register for the New Hampshire state primary. The guy on the left is New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner.

From the Political Ticker.

I'd Watch

xkcd goes Firefly.

Dark Humor

Great cartoon from Amp


If only it were a joke....

Dark Humor

Great cartoon from Amp


If only it were a joke....