I believe the boys/men in this documentary, and bravo to HBO for having the courage to air it in its entirety despite the backlash from MJ “superfans” and the Jackson estate. I love Michael Jackson’s music; Thriller was one of the first albums I ever bought (I think everyone has their own precious memories with Thriller and listening Michael Jackson over the years) and this was heartbreaking to watch but it’s so important to listen and hear the truth. The film details the alleged sexual abuse of two men (Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck), who were boys when the King of Pop befriended them in the late ’80s/early ’90s. The documentary enables them to have a voice and tell their story as it happened as well as examine the impact of sexual abuse not only for them, but also on their families and relationships. Growing up in the ’90s, it was hard to know what to believe about MJ as a person, except that he was super famous and a bit creepy. I remember hearing all the crude jokes about him (e.g. “What do Michael Jackson and McDonald’s have in common?”) and despite the allegations being settled out of court in the ’90s, I think we all knew he was still suspicious and guilty.

Robson and Safechuck tell their own stories in graphic detail (Jackson taught them how to masturbate and regularly performed oral sex on them and attempted anal sex, and there are other disturbing rites mentioned such as MJ buying a ring for Safechuck when he was a boy so they could have a mock wedding); the director holds nothing back from their confessional, which I think adds to their credibility) and you can tell from the detail and their reactions to their stories that they are genuine, and the disturbing parallels between them suggest that MJ knew damn well what he was doing; he was emotionally manipulative, calculating, and strategic. He groomed them and their families, winning their trust and their family’s trust by giving them attention and gifts and a taste of stardom, and the closer he got to the boys, the further away their parents’ accommodation was. One wonders how many other boys MJ groomed and then dropped. I believe Jordie Chandler and Gavin Arvizo too, and I am grateful that Martin Bashir launched his excellent documentary Living with Michael Jackson when he did in 2003 (it opened the floodgates for the MJ trial). In Bashir’s documentary, you can tell that his behaviour is off, and when questioned, his story keeps changing (about his plastic surgery, about spending time with the children). I think MJ was a compulsive liar too, and we also see this in this new documentary, when he pits a “me vs. them” attitude between he and the boys and their families. At the very least, MJ is guilty of mental abuse, and we see in the documentary how his selfishness broke up families and indirectly led to the death of Robson’s father, who committed suicide after his family left him.

There’s a final scene in the excellent film Mysterious Skin (which is one of the best indictments of child sexual abuse that I’ve ever seen), in which the two boys (now men) break into the house of their abuser years later and laying together on the couch and crying together they realize they were sexually abused, and this reminds me of Safechuck and Robson and hit me really hard. Detractors of Leaving Neverland, in particular the “superfans” who won’t even watch the film or know absolutely nothing about child sexual abuse, complain that both men lied in the past about the sexual abuse (Robson defended Jackson both times in 1993 and 2005). It’s true that both men have flawed stories and have lied in the past, but when you have a mother and grandmother and his wife talking about the impact of this trauma and both men graphically retelling the horrible abuse that went on (it functions as a catharsis) and the circumstances around it, I believe every word. Many of these superfans (more like witch hunters) are so blind in their devotion is that they won’t even listen to other sides of the story or reconsider their own love for the pop star, and when there’s this ignorant, spiteful, malicious kind of thinking, I think it’s really problematic. I am so glad that HBO and Channel 4 have given a platform for these men to speak out, and hopefully more men will find the courage to speak out against Jackson too. Shame on the superfans and the estate for not evening trying to listen.

The question, I guess, to other fans of MJ’s music is where to go from here? Can we still listen to his music as we did before, knowing what we know now? Should we still listen to his music? Michael Jackson’s legacy has always been different than other famous pedophiles such as Gary Glitter and Jimmy Savile. He has an almost Christ-like following, and the enduring mythology is that he never had a childhood so he surrounded himself with children. We now know that this is a lie and he did this because he had an unhealthy relationship with them. His publicized relationships and marriages in the media were a sham. It’s a hard pill to swallow and it changes everything we once felt for Michael Jackson. I think I’ll still listen to his music from time to time but I’ll never think of him the same way ever again. The truth hurts but I’m glad to open my eyes and ears to it.

Michael Jackson was a great musician and a great philanthropist, but he was also a pedophile who hurt many people. He helped both men’s careers and financially benefited their families but left them with all with a lasting trauma that will never go away. I hope everyone watches this or at least tries to and comes to their own conclusions about what happened. I strongly believe and this issue is very important to me. These two men have opened up completely to us and we should listen to survivors.

Wandering aimlessly into an amateur acting course was the self-referential setup for Shane Black’s brilliant neo-noir Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. A hitman/gangster exorcising their crime-ridden ennui with therapy or another incongrous outlet was the setup for Analyze This, The Sopranos, Panic and several other properties from the early 2000’s. By my count, Barry is already a decade too late for its concept.

It’s always a premature slog when the main character is already despondent from the first frame which is the case for Barry, the vanity project/brainchild of Bill Hader. Barry is a moping killjoy immediately and the jokes are a resounding thud of poker-faced dialogue about how to execute a cuckolding target (one suggestion is a stabbing castration).

The sparkplug for the premiere episode is vulgarizing the normally wholesome Happy Days megastar Henry Winkler. When he berates a female thespian on-stage with a vicious tirade to motivate her, he must be channeling David Mamet. Hader’s tentative stagefright is heart-palpitating but unlike Crashing which derived much inspiration from the other stand-up comic shows, the show doesn’t transcend the material with any fresh observations.

I’d rather the show recalibrated and focused on Stephen Root’s liaison handler. He materializes wherever insomniac Barry is and despite his chipper kinship with Barry and encouraging musings about his “purpose” in life, he brandishes an element of combustible spontaneity. It’s tenable that he could metamorphose from Barry’s accomplice to his mortal nemesis if Barry botches any more contracts.

Rating: 2 out of 5

When I watch something as uniformly superb as Show Me a Hero, it champion to the people around me. Yet it seems to me that, due to the lack of bombastic high-concept, the show is being unsung by most audiences much like Mayor Wasicsko himself. It’s not the ratings juggernaut it should be. Perhaps, it will go down as a missed opportunity for those who initially missed and be an unearthed bijou for those who find it later in the sands of time.

Before he runs for another term in the mayoral race, Wasicsko has been honored for his philanthropic stance on the housing initiative. When he meets with an aide for support in the next election, he pontificates about he committed a “courageous” act and suddenly his prideful egomania is beginning to disturb his tenets. Like Ozymandius from Greek mythology, Wasicsko is starting to worship himself a little too intently.

The city government is stacked with white politicians but they require a member from the other side of the fence to represent their point-of-view. Bob Mayhawk (The Wire veteran Clarke Peters) is that spin-doctoring consultant. Peters’ authoritatively fastidious voice brings a wisdom when he goes door-to-door to preemptively soften the smooth transition into the neighborhood.

A rallying cry at an African-American group meeting acutely pinpoints the negative terminology that the white populace uses to demoralize their community (“Tenants” over “residents”, “low-income” equates to “low-class”, etc.). In 1991, the housing debacle might be a few years ago but it is still fresh in the long-term memories of the more ardent voters and he has been earmarked as the “face” of that ordeal.

Clearly, Nick isn’t sufficed with a subordinate post and we can feel the rancor when he holds a conference to announce that he is relinquishing from the upcoming candidacy. Once Martinelli has withdrawn, the election culminates in a cliffhanger verdict with a recount of absentee ballots. Speaking of serendipity and rolling the dice, the potential residents in the townhouses are being randomly chosen by a lottery drawing.

Of course, novelistic showrunner David Simon is shrewd enough to show that the screening process is not above being preferential and selective about who they permit. For her part, Norma doesn’t particularly grovel for special treatment because of her legally blind status. When she is accepted into the brownstones, her reluctance is quite funny. Furthermore, Paul Haggis stages it like a Hooverville game show.

As with most David-vs.-Goliath stories, there are a few triumphs. For instance, Doreen Henderson (Natalie Paul), who was a menial crack addict. Now, she has rehabilitated herself and is now an upstanding community organization leader. With this, we gain twinges of admiration for her reversal. Meanwhile, our collective ire is constantly raised when Billie Rowan (Dominique Fishback) is oblivious to the short-sighted quagmire she is in with her excuses for her delinquent boyfriend who is also the deadbeat father of her multiple children.

At a seminar, the new residents are given lessons on etiquette (a condescending demonstration on how to properly cincture trash bags). But Mayhawk is the voice-of-reason when he asks if the residents still want to move in based on his stringent guidelines. He sagaciously states it is an adjustment and difference has an existential price.

The miniseries has largely censored itself from our kneejerk reaction to the word “nigger” but when a white neighbor yells it from their car, we recoil in fear and aggravation anew. Wasicsko is not the humble civil servant he once was and his peacock showboating is causing friction with Nay (Carla Quevedo), his wife, to the point where she is unceremoniously terminated.

By its conclusion, Show Me a Hero is a proletariat, emotionally paralyzing masterstroke that is another feather in the cap of those powers behind the scenes who deemed the subject worthy of broadcasting to a wider audience of all ethnicities. The lump-in-the-throat moment is when a haughty Caucasian woman ceases her stride to introduce her poodles to an adolescent black child after months of being aloof.

Regardless of your persuasion, it was nearly impossible to watch it idly without furor, empathy and compassion. The thought-provoking questions are we’ve seen Nick inebriated on city-wide power and his own influence but was it for right purpose and who benefited from it? Paraphrasing Norma, was the defeat worth the fight?

Rating: 5 out of 5

The public’s reactions to art can be mighty extreme. The general consensus for True Detective Season 2 was that it was inferior, stupefying and overall, lacking in substance. Now we are graced with the arrival of Show Me a Hero which is bountiful with multifaceted themes, well-rounded characters and sociopolitical, ripped-from-the-headlines prevalence….and people are bemoaning that it is too leisurely. I guess you can’t win with some message boards. I, on the other hand, cherish a show like this.

As the camera revolves on a dolly around his desk, the newly minted, overburdened Mayor Wasicsko realizes that the issue of the city in contempt transcends party lines and funding. Despite this, he hasn’t lost his rhapsodic view of what Yonkers can and should be. On the porch of a house, the youngest mayor waxes idealistically about a view directly to his council office and how his future children will idolize their father.

Like The Wire and other anthology series, the focus is mostly communal and tribal. The potential residents of the 200 homes are not faceless hordes and they are also not demonized as thug stereotypes or welfare peons. Single moms sit outside of their low-income housing and they are frightened of their “upstate” environment. Maybe more scared than the WASP-y constituents who are opposing the ruling.

Although it isn’t explosive with ultraviolence from gun battles, this is just as immediate and nerve-shredding with higher stakes than usual. The city is verging on costly budget cuts (police force suspension, water and trash services, etc.) and on the whole, Yonkers will be bankrupt in a short span. It has a race-against-the-clock urgency that doesn’t require triggers or bombs.

Henry J. Spallone (Alfred Molina) proposes that Yonkers will degenerate into the “trash” that is already established in the Bronx. Molina imbues truly vitriolic bigotry in Spallone as he reconnoiters the slums with incriminating photos. His bullish behavior is a blistering indictment on the white-collar phobia of sharing and desiring a monopoly on quality living.

When Wasicsko is negotiating for an appeasement with two council members on the opposite end of the issue before a midnight deadline, Haggis captures the swaying sentiments of Sidney Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men. Politicians are classified as laughingstocks in popular culture, but the outcry of a few virtuous politicians during this period overturned that belief.

The most wrenching storyline is a former retirement-home employee who has recently been diagnosed with advancing complication due to diabetes. Her government-certified health aide are averse to traveling to her neighborhood but her son is optimistic that they will eventually uphold their responsibility. It is a bleak depiction of the “fearmongering” that Sussman denounces.

Near the conclusion of his first term, Wasicsko is already challenged by Spallone who is wielding the widespread approval rating that the housing expansion was an incorrect judgment. Since I was unaware of the outcome in the election, the show is still capable of dazzling me with the element of dramatic surprise. Like Frank in True Detective, Nick hallucinates a vision of his father in a graveyard but it is much more profound and meaningful.

Inflammatory subjects like teen pregnancies are addressed with refreshingly aboveboard veracity. Of course, they are casualties of statistics but David Simon and Haggis don’t gloss over their interior thought processes. Additionally, Show Me a Hero is a rallying call-to-arms for the “silent majority” who are being muffled by the outspoken faction.

The Fitzgerald quote that the title is based on is germane for the disillusioning sight of watching Wasicsko pack up his office after Spallone’s landslide victory. While he is no longer the mayor, his in-home remedies of caulking and light fixture repair show he still possesses a constructive backbone for public service. It’s safe to say I’m eagerly anticipating the final chapter next Sunday.

Rating: 4.25 out of 5

From April to late August, HBO has been ensured a monopoly for my attention span. Game of Thrones was mandatory, ritualistic viewing but the letdown of True Detective Season 2 continues to sting. I should be pondering why this premium channel is still cajoling me back on Sundays month after month. However, with the pedigree of The Wire’s David Simon, director Paul Haggis and actor Oscar Isaacs, how could I pass up the six-hour miniseries Show Me A Hero?

Painstakingly nuanced and rich with procedural shop talk, The Wire enraptured the audience with a sweeping panorama of Baltimore’s drug trade from the bottom-feeder addicts to the mayoral office. A beeper is our preliminary signal that we’ve traveled back to the 80’s epoch and a digital distress message of 911 indicates that New York council member Nick Wasicsko (Oscar Isaacs) is in the eye of a typhoon.

Bruce Springsteen’s music smacks of blue-collar nostalgia and his bootstrap philanthropy is a lyrical companion piece to the low-income struggle (ex. The “Hungry Heart” montage). Two temps gossiping about the main players in district caucus is a masterful tool for introductions to Yonkers politics where left-wing and right-wing are not factors.

I wasn’t enthusiastic about Isaacs after the misogynistic mess that was Sucker Punch, but he is maturing with each role and I believe he was snubbed for A Most Violent Year. Unlike that obdurate businessman, Nick is a bit willowy and sophomoric with his 28 years of age making him an unorthodox candidate for the electoral race. The housing zoning debate is an uproar of dissent and smooth-talkers. My favorite scene is when Nick skittishly sits in silence as the other representatives breath vehement brimstone for their opposition. It’s a filibustering cacophony which resembles most sessions of Parliament where whoever is loudest is deemed the most righteous.

One salient point broached by Michael H. Sussman (Jon Bernthal) is that the NAACP should be more steadfast for the integration of a few hundred housing units but a president says that he isn’t “giving up, [he’s] just tired” from the perpetual squabble. It was a war of attrition and the African-American contingent were beginning to surrender from exhaustion.

Some might rankle that Show Me a Hero is almost too tangible and vérité but those are precisely the assets that it will be beloved for. The street beat of a grassroots campaign would be neglected by other masterminds but David Simon and journalist William F. Zorzi peruse the process for every John Q. Public-pandering fiber. It’s an inspirational sight when Nick sees blocks of hand-made endorsements strewn along the lawns of constituents in Angelo’s district.

The fact that Isaacs is excellent is not a staggering revelation but Jim Belushi channels his working-class appeal entirely into the laissez-faire braggadocio of Angelo Martinelli, the incumbent, six-term mayor. He is the undisputed favorite in the upcoming ballot-casting and it can be ascribed to his gregarious nature (his wink at Nick amidst a meeting could be construed as a backhanded insult or friendly gesture of media rivalry).

The show is bifurcated into two parts for each of its three nights. Episode 2 is already at an electrifying crossroads with the ordinance vote resulting in the city of Yonkers being fined for each week they don’t submit to the judge’s (Bob Balaban) decision. They could be bankrupt within a minuscule frame of time which adds a race-against-the-clock desperation to the proceedings. The controversial complexity is that Balaban is coercing Nick to enact a moral proviso that is beyond reproach. It also punctuates the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) movement and the inheritance of doom upon being sworn into office.

If the show has a mild spot for improvement, it’s the skid-row scenes in the projects prospects where the disenfranchised must repatriate back to their native land, retire due to diabetes-precipitated blindness or be currency mules during exchanges. It should’ve tautened the focus or added more breadth to these characters because it feels like a rogues-gallery rerun of The Wire.

The same people who were fierce supporters of Nick were also the most rabid detractors of his housing initiative. Show Me A Hero is a stupendously sociological, immaculate dramatization of the executive branch and how the stressful resistance and burden of responsibility can cause ulcers from our leaders (Nick is continuously swigging Maalox for the heartburn of leadership).

Rating: 4.75 out of 5

I try to avoid speculative rumors about where this season is headed but if the theological conversations about Ray trapped in limbo are true, I’ll be sorely disappointed. This might not be the best season of any crime drama but it has been gaining traction with each new episode. For instance, the staredown between Ray and Frank in the kitchen with their guns adjacent from each other is accusational and menacing in a Tarantino way. Farrell dropped his voice a few octaves and he was in full Christian Bale smoky-vocals mode. It still worked beautifully in a long-fuse powderkeg moment.

Vaughn countervails Farrell’s indignation with the that Ray was just transmogrifying into his intrinsic, corrupt nature (“You think you were Superman before?”). Though it would be facile to stigmatize Frank as a superficial, manipulative villain, Pizzolatto scuttles this platitude for a multi-dimensional guise of ambivalence. I earnestly believe that Frank wasn’t cognizant that he was “setting [Ray] up” and the scene ends in rare appeasement. Ellroy Leonard’s fingerprints are incontrovertible in the bedeviling sign-off from Ray (“I’m going to see about killing a man”).

Now Ray is a sardonic vigilante with a Dirty Harry ulterior motive. It’s a bit nonplusing that Ray’s mercenarial activities have supplanted the blue-diamond investigation for the viewers’ focus. While I enjoyed checking in on Paul and Ani, their storyline is of waning interest next to Ray. Once again, the semiotics of parenthood reemerged during a Q&A between Paul and an informant where he discusses a reconnaissance mission’s orphaned children and Frank’s heartfelt interaction about resilience with his deceased colleague’s son.

I’m more impressed with Rachel McAdam’s feral, steadily volatile performance with each subsequent appearance. Fiddling with knives while her sister is exhorting her not to go undercover in a sex-worker party of Caligula-scale debauchery, McAdams never staggers and seems fully prepared for the dangers ahead. I love the murky perspective of Ani on Molly, it was a surreal Brian DePalma journey into a socialite den of iniquity ala a less abstruse, less pretentious, but equally disturbing Eyes Wide Shut.

This was a less plot-driven episode and the trio of McAdams, Vaughn and Farrell truly shined incandescent in their respective roles. Kitsch is still perpetually stuck in neutral and this might be his most utilitarian episode. He only infiltrates the party with his black-ops skills. Meanwhile, just when Ray had our approbation for his rehabilitation, he collapsed back into a bender of cocaine, alcohol and self-loathing.

Ironically, his non-contest of custody was the most lucid decision Ray ever made.In relinquishing his thwarted efforts at being a father, Ray is Pizzolatto’s figurehead for his condemning statement that Los Angeles (Vinci in particular) is an Island of Misfit Toys whose owners (parents) have abandoned them and they’ve had to harshly become autodidactic and self-reliant. With contractual documentation about the land deal and the thread about Ani’s missing person solved, it might be convenient but we are speeding towards the conclusion of this highly polarizing season.

Rating: 4 out of 5