Brain my Damage
The one in which an old man yells at a cloud
This one is the shortest of the short. So I’ve been watching some shows which were on my radar but I hadn’t had the chance to consume when they were on regular television: Justified, Tulsa King, what have you. A few years ago you would have found me doing the same thing with Longmire and Black Sails. I tend to consume media well after the fanfare has died down. Does this mean I’ll give Harry Potter or Percy Jackson a shot? Doubt it, but who knows.
Regardless, there I am watching The Blacklist, the mid-2000’s spy thriller in which James Spader wears a hat and says ambiguously ominous one liners at the camera. Everything is in good fun, but this show is not without its hard parts. In the first seasons its main character, Elizabeth Keene, is everything you hate about strong female character. She’s also a criminal profiler don’t you know? The bestest. The only one who can match wits with James Spader. This isn’t just bad because it’s bad, it’s also bad because anyone who grew up watching Millennium or Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs knows that Criminal Profiling is an art that requires sterner stuff than your average TV Ally McBeal. If you want a better profiling experience in a procedural, check out Mindhunters as a dramatization of the development of criminal profiling.
It’s also a covid overlap show, so there’s several episodes that have comic book style panels with voiceovers, and several others that try to evoke modern audience themes. One of the biggest bits of cope is the idea that James Spader’s character is actually a female Russian super spy who had a sex change. I know that the show creators want to play coy with this, and there’s legions of fans who want to defend it, but The Blacklist isn’t so cyberpunk that full range body reassignment turns you into James Spader. Sorry. That man was born with a penis. He will die with a penis.
Quite possibly the worst character in The Blacklist in matter of point is Laken Perillos, a villainous doctor portrayed by Laverne Cox, and lets be clear here: her actress does amazing. She portrays a medical sadist who rationalizes her brutal abuses of her patients by justifying that because she had the opportunity and skill to overcome the limitations of race, sex, and origin, that the world is beset with a cruel patriarchal hierarchy of white men oppressing black people she must fight. This is both tone deaf and falls incredibly flat when her opposition is the heroic and noble Dembe Zuma, portrayed by Hisham Tawfiq, whose background includes his implicit sex traffic and exploitation in Africa and the middle east. Sorry kids, the plight of entitled Afro-Americans is not equitable to that of actual Africans who deal with poverty, disease, political instability, and exploitation on a scale we cannot understand.
The latter seasons were very rough. The reviews said so and I can see why. They played out the plot over a decade and were struggling to find new stories to do. The overall feeling is similar to that of 24 where I would have watched more Jack Bauer but the twenty-four hour framing device with ever escalating threats became nonsense.
Yet, I am in the home stretch. Season 10. The last season. Episode 8. One third of the way there. What could possibly go wrong now? We open in a fancy kitchen listening to classical music. Well dressed business dad is making lunch for his smart Alec kid on phone dressed in what’s obviously a private school uniform. These are rich people with rich people problems. Kid says dad doesn’t need to make him lunch, he usually just gets the cafeteria, and business dad says he wants to do it. Its clear he’s trying to connect with his child. In his youth making a lunch was a sign you cared. One suspects business dad had many such lunches before he was business dad.
“PBJ, your favorite.”
The kid looks at him slightly incredulous.
“It’s a nut-free campus.”
HOLD UP!
What the flying frenzied fatuous flaming fuck is a nut-free campus? I understand, some people have nut allergies. I recall one game night where someone gave the fair warning “hey guys, I have a nut allergy” and one asshole - because there’s always one - both went out of his way to bring nuts into the game space and encouraged others to do so. The heavily medicated little queen - I knew him personally, I know he was gay, trust me he was flaming - loved to kick hornets nests and cause drama that’s why he got punted from the club.
But what the fuck does Nut-Free mean?
I mean, I understand the words themselves. I understand their usage. But nuts are naturally occurring. There are people everywhere who don’t know your specific medical needs. If you’re so flipping fragile you can’t even be in the same building, the same campus, with a nut just get in the giant plastic bubble now. Oh, but Joe, it’s a private school they’re all weird you know. The fuck!? If I’m paying for private school I’m paying so my nut allergic kid has an epi-pen.
This is just the most fantastically first world thing I have ever heard of. A single PBJ sammich in a sandwich bag is just too much for the ephemeral angels they have going to Pussy Prep University? My goodness, I hope they don’t encounter a dreaded bad hair day. I was one of the last generations to actually get time on the playground and somehow got a rusty dress needle in my palm that had to be pulled out. Then I had to get a tetanus shot, as you do. At the time I thought I was dying but I still went back to class and to school the next day. My public school wasn’t ‘anything’ free except the nascent zero tolerance policies for violence.
And people wonder why kids ain’t tough today.