RIP Walter Koenig and Sir Patrick Stewart

This one's a little late, but I was on holiday the week that these were announced. I was also considering what to do with the blog in general, if I wanted to continue writing at the pace I've been doing, but that's a discussion for another day.

Basically October was a sad month for Trek.

Starting with Walter Koenig: Chekov was a fairly minor character in TOS, not having even appeared in the first season (so that Khan recognizing him in Star Trek 2 was a notable continuity flub), but once he did show up he became conspicuous both for his accent and what he represented. Especially now, commentators talk about the racial diversity of the TOS cast, with Nichelle Nichols and George Takei having prominent places on the bridge, but Chekov being Russian must also have been pretty eye-opening back in 1967, since the culture was still very locked into the Cold War.

But a Russian person on the bridge of the Enterprise represents Gene Roddenberry's vision of peaceful humanity just as much as Uhura and Sulu did, because it was his way of saying that we could get over even that conflict. Chekov's nationality was a good device that came into play in Star Trek 4 (the One with the Whales), when the people of the 20th century freaked out that they'd caught a Russian on their nuclear vessel - the 80s, after all, saw a resurgence in Cold War anxiety and xenophobia.

I was also glad to see recognition of Koenig's other nerdy SF role, that of Bester from Babylon 5. A key member of the Psi Corps, Bester was one of that show's most fun villains, and a rare face to assign to the evil (the Shadows were represented by a human, Mr Morden, but he was fairly minor overall). I wouldn't be surprised if he was cast explicitly to play against type, but it still worked - I think that's his other iconic role, and it's why I gave the same name to the main villain of my own current novel.

And then there's Sir Patrick.

This death probably hurt the most, since it's the first death of a regular cast member from TNG (the first death of a captain, as well). Captain Picard was arresting from the first, so in control and poised that you couldn't look away whenever he was declaiming against Q's shenanigans or whatever unethical BS the Federation was cooking up. His best episode of the early going - and probably overall, but there are a lot of great Picard episodes - is Season 2's The Measure of a Man, where I was struck by how riveting he was as he argued for Data's humanity.

The other standout moment for me is from the climax of The Drumhead, where he calmly and quietly dismantles the witch hunt by that episode's adversary by quoting her own father at her. Unlike Measure, there are fewer fireworks and raised voices, but a calm, quiet summation of what's actually happening, which still lands (especially today).

There were also the real fireworks - Chain of Command and its five lights; the post-Borg breakdown in Family; the Inner Light. Another of my favorite moments is the final scene of the finale, All Good Things, where he finally sits down for a game of poker with his crew and muses that he should have done this years ago. Picard probably has the most complete emotional arc of any Trek captain (with Sisko a close second), and that moment always hits me whenever I think about it... like when I was writing about it just now.

And of course, there was also Professor X, the most obvious role that he could have taken on. I believe the first time he was "cast" as Charles Xavier was in Kurt Busiek's and Alex Ross's miniseries Marvels, which reimagined key early Marvel Universe moments from the point of view of normal people, but it was so natural and obvious that of course he'd then play Xavier when they actually made the movie.

Xavier is a different sort of character than Picard, and the ways he's been revisited over the years gave Sir Patrick ample opportunity to play him in different ways. The most devastating is, of course, the one in Logan - a very elderly Xavier who's suffering from dementia and whose brain is becoming increasingly dangerous to everyone around him as a result. And it was good to see him swear in that film.

The other point about Sir Patrick is one that I've come back to whenever a venerable Shakespearean actor has passed on: he was one of that old school of Royal Shakespeare Company alumni who brought serious acting chops to what could be some fairly silly roles. In that way, he was similar to Alan Rickman and John Hurt and so many others, and so it's sad to see yet another of these giants of the stage make their exit.

My big regret is that I never got to see him and Sir Ian McKellen in Waiting for Godot, which was their first reunion since X-Men 3, but alas, that's the nature of things, isn't it? At least we'll get to see them again one last time in Avengers: Doomsday, though I expect it won't be that long a showing.

Still, as sad as I am for both deaths, and for their families and friends, I'm glad we have their respective bodies of work to revisit. I'm overdue some classic Trek rewatches, after all.

Initial Thoughts on Lanterns - With Probable Spoilers

I just finished the season finale of Lanterns, so I thought I'd put down some thoughts on the show, including where it fits with my knowledge of Green Lantern from the comics and where it fits with James Gunn's vision for the DCU. There will likely be some spoilers, but I'm not really talking about who killed Hal in the first episode or anything like that - still, proceed with caution.

The first thing to mention is, in fact, the death of Hal Jordan. When I saw the first trailers, featuring Kyle Chandler as Hal and Aaron Pierre as John Stewart, I was excited but also apprehensive about how they'd remove Hal to make room for John. The show looked good, and I liked that it focused on the Manhunters, and most importantly, I have a lot of time for Kyle Chandler, ever since I watched the first few seasons of Friday Night Lights. I also have a lot of time for John Stewart, since I loved GL: Mosaic, back in the 90s, and more recently, the Justice League/Justice League Unlimited cartoon.

My concern was that they'd kill of Hal to make room for John, because that's kind of how these stories go: the grizzled mentor dies so that the younger protagonist can have a cause for revenge spurring him to greatness. My concerns were amplified as the first episode went on, because they seemed to be establishing that there could only be one Green Lantern on Earth.

So I was pleasantly surprised to learn that, although they did indeed kill Hal off, it was done in an interesting way: after spending much of the first episode following the characters when they'd just met in 2016, it flashes forward to John finding Hal's body in 2026 - long after the meat of the story we're being promised, of John learning how to be a Lantern. It felt like an elegant way around it, by showing that Hal's death wasn't related to the 2016 action we'd just seen, and it provided a big, central mystery that would hang over the show for the next few episodes... and crucially, that the writers wouldn't need to come back to until the 2016 business was sorted out.

That's also important because the trailer for upcoming episodes that went with Episode 1 showed that John would meet Guy Gardner, who'd been established as GL in the Superman movie. Going by the show's own rules, they needed to figure out a way to bypass Guy, and to the writers' credit, they came up with a good answer to that (here's the SPOILER): they essentially gave John his own custom lantern, meaning he's not tied into the succession for Hal's ring the way Guy was, but has the same powers.

Some of the reviews and discussions I read about the show likened it to True Detective, which is probably fair, since it's a two-hander focused on John's relationship with Hal, and there's a lot more sex, violence and swearing than in the original comics. Though I wouldn't necessarily put it up there with True Detective's best seasons (the first and third) - where those were meticulously crafted 10-hour films, where everything was put in place with a craftsman's care, this had some bits that didn't entirely add to the show, specifically the classic GL villain Sinestro.

The show has him already established as Hal's greatest foe, a GL who dared to kill a Guardian and was imprisoned. He later shows up to nudge John in the right direction, but I found that a little underwhelming. In the comics, Sinestro eventually takes on a yellow power ring, which gives him an advantage over Hal, whose ring was then powerless against yellow - here Sinestro is built up as a big villain but doesn't necessarily live up to the billing.

My other concern is the "Surf Dracula" aspect, which I was talking about with a friend last week. For those not as online as me, go look up the original Surf Dracula meme, but for brevity, it refers to shows that unnecessarily drag out the main character's origin story. One example is Netflix's Daredevil, in which the code name and costume don't appear until the very end. There are others, but the point is that you're not getting the stuff you tuned in to see.

And so it is here: we get a lot of setup of John's upbringing, like how he learns art and design because his parents have been grooming him to be GL after Hal, but we don't get much of John showing off that design knowledge. For the last two episodes or so, he can't even use the damn ring because its charge is too low.

Now, I don't want to give the wrong impression. These aren't tiny concerns about the show, but they're also not fatal. The final episode, if not a tour de force that leaves you in a heap in front of the TV, is a satisfying ending to the mysteries posed in the first episode. We've learned about the chain of events that led Hal to his death on those high school bleachers, and the fraught relationship between him and John because of John's father being passed over for the ring. We've also, most crucially, seen John's understanding of his lifelong quest to be GL evolve over the course of the season.

I remain a little suspicious of these streaming shows that feed into the movie universe - there are a lot of good MCU shows, but I find the edges don't always join up perfectly with the films - and this also feels a little like those. But taken as its own story, without referring to how audiences will react to John the next time he shows up in a DCU movie, it's a satisfying one - the acting is great, the effects and the design are good, and it wraps most stuff up really well.

Now that John's on the loose with his own ring, I'm eager to see what he does with it - to reference the MCU again, please don't let there be another four-year gap between this and his next appearance, the way we got with Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson taking over as Captain America. That may not have been fully intended, because of the writers' and actors' strikes of 2023, but Brave New World wouldn't have been a great movie even if they'd released it a year or two earlier.

Anyway, here's hoping that James Gunn gives John a good next appearance, preferably in the next Superman movie. We're owed a good GL film, and a better GL than Guy Gardner (though I can speak at length about him too, if you're ever foolish enough to ask me about it).

The Law Catches Up With Manchester City

I was genuinely blown away when the news came in on Friday that Manchester City had been found guilty by the Premier League of breaching over 100 financial fair play rules. The case had been going on for so long, since the accusations were made in 2023, that it was starting to become one of those long-running jokes about a thing that you never expect to happen.

And yet it has, and now we have to see what'll happen next. Will City get docked points? Relegated or expelled from the Premier League? Will their titles be stripped, and if so, will the titles go to the runners-up, or will they stand as "unawarded" forevermore?

On the question of the trophies, City won seven Premier League titles, one Champions League, the FA Cups and six League Cups during the period under investigation, 2009-10 to 2022-23. The next biggest scandal I could think of was the 2006 Calciopoli scandal, in which Juventus and several other Serie A clubs were found guilty of manipulating referee selections and pressuring referee decisions to be more favorable. The greatest burden of punishment fell on Juve, which was stripped of two titles (one remained unawarded and the other awarded to Inter), as well as being relegated to Serie B and docked 9 points at the start of the following season (initially sentenced to a 30-point deduction but reduced to 9 on appeal).

Juve lost a bunch of players in that relegation, but still managed to handily win Serie B and return to the top flight for the 2007-08 season. You can debate how chastened they were by the experience, since Juve suffered another points deduction in 2023 for financial irregularities, and it appears another scandal emerged in 2026, though not specifically around Juve.

The question is whether a similar punishment would be warranted for City (depending on what happens when they appeal), and whether it would stop financial chicanery in elite football. After all, there's been a lot of talk about how Chelsea posted profits of £200 million in 2024 by selling its women's team to its owners, BlueCo, as a way of circumventing financial fair play rules - rules that were originally put in place because Chelsea had pretty obviously bought its way to success following Roman Abramovich's purchase of the club in 2003.

I've read various sources over the years that have suggested that although FFP aimed to create a level playing field by not allowing clubs to just spend their way to success, it also entrenched existing football dynasties and prevented new clubs from joining the elite. Effectively, it became a way for the big European clubs to keep nouveau riche clubs from competing with them - and exhibit A of the clubs they were trying to stop was Manchester City.

Now, I don't want to give the impression that I think City shouldn't be punished. But I'm pointing out that financial doping, as former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger put it, essentially existed already, in the form of rich clubs like Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal (to say nothing of the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus and others) steamrolling their rivals through sponsorship deals and overpaying for hot prospects that might otherwise go to their rivals. 

Arsenal fans spent years crying poor mouth about not having won any Premier League titles for two decades, thanks to the expense incurred by moving their stadium from Highbury to Ashburton Grove, but for many of those seasons they still reaped the financial windfall of qualifying for the Champions League. Same with Manchester United, which periodically reported ever-more ludicrous sponsorship deals (like official mattress partner and official noodle partner). In the face of this kind of over-performance, how else is a club expected to get ahead?

Here's another little defense of City: while it was boring to see them win all the time, and that winning streak naturally engendered a certain arrogance, they were also the model of a well-run club. They may not have pulled down the success they wanted immediately, but they bided their time until they could get the manager and backroom staff they wanted, and when they had all that lined up, they blasted off like a rocket to the moon. Compare that with Chelsea under Abramovich, which had a brutally efficient backroom structure but which fired manager after manager when they didn't satisfy Abramovich's demands - City fired its fair share of managers, but when they brought in Pep Guardiola, they let him run things on the pitch, and he ended up creating this dynasty for them.

This tainted dynasty, as it turns out. A lot of the coverage I've read since Friday has talked about "sliding doors moments" and who might have won what trophies without City's financial shenanigans. Some of it is going to be too hard to tease out, unless auditors can determine a numerical value for how much each goal or point or win was worth.

But going deeper, how many goals would City not have scored without these unfair advantages? It makes me think of an analysis someone did once of Bayern Munich under Guardiola, as they powered to yet another dominant Bundesliga season: even if all the shots on goal against Bayern that season had gone in, Bayern would still have been in first place, because they were just that dominant. A deep, forensic analysis might find the same about some of City's seasons, which would be deeply disappointing to the likes of Manchester United and Liverpool, among other clubs.

All of this is idle speculation: I'm curious to see how the various football podcasts cover it in the coming week, and I'll be eagerly reading about City's appeals, and what the punishment will end up being. This does feel like genuinely new territory, at least in scale, and it'll be interesting to see if the league (and the Football Association) hold their nerve to punish City appropriately, or if it'll just be another slap on the wrist.

And even if City does get punished appropriately - whatever form that takes - how will the rest of European football respond? Will rules tighten across the world, or will other leagues become effectively the Wild West for football finance? These are all fascinating questions, and I really want to see how things get decided.

How 9/11 Never Went Away

Apart from the prospect of AI ending humanity in the next ten years, the big news this week was the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. I saw a lot of reports and remembrances of people who died in the attacks, or of those who survived them, or even just experienced them, and I also saw a few comments about how we're still living with the effects of that day.

I think that last point is fairly obvious, but I feel like few sources commented on how you can draw a straight line from the attacks to the situation we're in now. I also feel like I didn't see enough posts (though there were a few) excoriating George W Bush for his response to the attacks, because that's what's influenced our current situation so obviously.

The first point is that, by invading Iraq more than a year after the attacks, after having sent his proxies to lie to the UN and to the American people about Saddam Hussein's ability to build weapons of mass destruction, Bush gave rise to the conditions that led to the formation of the Islamic State (ISIS or Da'esh) and their acts of terror throughout the Middle East and Africa. ISIS became a bogeyman for Westerners, especially those on the right who espoused Islamophobia. This gave ammunition to right-wingers who wanted to end immigration from the Middle East, just as Bush's wars in the region created a wave of refugees and migration as people tried to escape the violence tearing their homelands apart.

I think it's pretty clear that we wouldn't have had Donald Trump as US president if he hadn't gotten so much traction for claiming he'd seen Muslim families in Jersey City celebrating the attacks - he may have come to prominence by questioning Barack Obama's US birth, but his increasingly outlandish 9/11 stories were his first foray into running his mouth off and being rewarded for it.

Bush's war on terror also gave cover to a bunch of other countries as they demonized their own Muslim communities. Israel's response was fairly quick, and we're living directly with the consequences of that, as the US wages a war of choice on Iran - and one that makes the case for the invasion of Iraq look legitimate - essentially because Israel had started trading missiles with Iran.

There's also India and China. China used it as cover to oppress their Turkic Uighur minority in the west of the country, while India's BJP ramped up its anti-Muslim rhetoric and has ridden high on that ever since. China's actions briefly galvanized Western opposition, while India's enabled the populist prime minister Narendra Modi to emerge as a global figure as he leads the world's most populous country.

Those are all the global effects, for which the death toll has reached the hundreds of thousands, if not millions by now. On the personal level, the national security apparatus that the US put in place after the attacks has had its own long-ranging effects. The biggest one, which has also largely faded into the background but was a big deal when it happened, was Edward Snowden's 2013 revelation of NSA spying on the population through pretty much every large tech company around at that time.

There was also all the immigration enforcement, which expanded into curbing illegal immigration and all of CBP's and ICE's excesses since then. And it has to be said, as bad as Trump's policies have been, Democratic presidents have also signed off on them: the NSA spying scandal was during Obama's administration, and people defending Trump's family separation policy noted that immigration authorities had done the same under Obama, too.

Jason Burke, who wrote The 9/11 Wars, has talked about the failure of Osama bin Laden's wider vision for the Middle East and for "bleeding" America dry. I think the Onion's joke headline "FBI Uncovers al Qaeda Plot to Just Sit Back and Enjoy Collapse of United States" captures what's happened since much better - even things that weren't explicitly caused by the terror attacks have led to our loss of standing in the world, and to our loss of cohesion as a society. I'm talking about the political polarization and the widening economic inequality.

My question is, when is all of this going to end? At some point the principals who've dominated US politics and foreign policy for the last 25 years will shuffle off the stage - most of them have, but they've also given rise to others, and the nightmare continues.

My other question is whether there'll ever be accountability for the lies that led to squandered American and Iraqi lives, among others. George W Bush has been spared going down in history as the worst president by Trump, but no amount of sharing candy with Michelle Obama can obscure the fact that his actions led to so much suffering, over so long.

Unfortunately, I think I know the answer to that second question: too many people on both sides of the aisle were complicit, even just at the point of voting to authorize the Iraq invasion. So I won't hold my breath - but I live in hope.

RIP Dolly Parton and Tim Curry

The deaths of Dolly Parton and Tim Curry were the big news pieces this week, at least in the circles I swim in. The close proximity of them passing, and their shared age, gave me flashbacks to the great celebrity die-off of 2016, which kicked off with David Bowie and just went through the rest of that horrible year.

It's a little late to consider it such a big wave, and while both deaths are sad, there isn't the feeling of careers being cut short - after all, Bowie had just released Blackstar, and Alan Rickman and Prince could have continued acting and singing, respectively, for years if they hadn't died that year, whereas Tim Curry had retired from acting and Dolly Parton had released her last studio album in 2023 (though with release and touring cycles, that didn't mean she was done with recording).

Still, I was struck by the outpouring of grief, particularly for Dolly - I've seen multiple outlets and commentators suggest she was the last person all Americans could agree on. That said, she'd already become the patron saint of the internet, much like Betty White before her, being acclaimed as a woman in a traditionally male field who not only became instantly recognizable but never seemed to have a bad word to say about anyone. And you know, I don't habitually look for Trump's thoughts on celebrity deaths, but even he couldn't seem to think of anything shitty to say about her.

Whereas, for me, the passing of Tim Curry means one less of those British actors, like Alan Rickman, who had that grounding in classic theater and who'd worked with some of the greatest of the previous generation. Curry might never have been a household name, but he was in so many movies and shows over the years, and he looked so distinctive, that of course everyone knew him. And not only that, but his Pennywise still put Bill Skarsgård's to shame.

Both passings are a reminder that time goes on, and the familiar faces or voices you grew up with eventually fall silent. At least Dolly leaves behind a legacy of love, and Tim Curry leaves behind a legacy of deeply scarring generations of children, whether as the Lord of Darkness or Pennywise, and of making older versions of those kids roar with laughter for his role in Rocky Horror Picture Show. Both worthwhile legacies!

Press Responsibility in the Age of Disinformation and Pile-Ons

Spent this weekend thinking about the press this weekend, given the news that the embattled former Cambridge professor Jason Arday had been found dead at home, just a few days after resigning from his position. And my thoughts on the press and its responsibilities were intensified as I watched some coverage and debate about the White House's executive order about MMR vaccines for children.

In the first case, I have to admit that I wasn't paying much attention until Arday resigned from Cambridge. But when I woke up yesterday to read that he'd died, it felt sadly inevitable, given that his story had dominated the Guardian's webpage for a while. Obviously it became a lightning rod for bad-faith culture warriors, and accusations of plagiarism are not to be taken lightly... but also, he was a vulnerable person, and I can't imagine that there weren't other things happening in the world that might have been more important than whether a professor actually ran all those marathons?

Cambridge feels like it should bear more of the blame, but the Guardian and other UK media outlets that covered this story should probably consider whether they'd do it the same way again.

And then we come to the vaccines thing. I wasn't paying full attention, because it was on a TV at the gym, but I saw enough - it was CNN's show The Arena, and it had some Democrats and Republicans debating stuff, among which was the recent executive order to space out vaccinations for kids.

My problem with this was how much coverage the show gave the order, including showing footage of Donald Trump lying about how doctors have been putting "needles the size of soda bottles" into kids. I agree that stuff like this needs to be covered, and perhaps even debated (though I dispute that debate shows are "news", or that they do anything but provide exposure for the same round of pundits). But running Trump's comments like that felt irresponsible - the claim is simply not true, for one thing, and the debate format means that the focus isn't on informing and correcting, but on scoring rhetorical points.

Talking about it with my dad, he brought up some primetime address that the "president" made earlier this year, where he waffled on about some grievance or other. The upshot was that a couple of the major networks didn't carry the speech, simply because they wouldn't have been able to verify or check his claims - which feels like a responsible move, unlike CNN's coverage yesterday.

What CNN did feels too much like the quote-tweet feature on Twitter, before That Other Guy took it over: too many otherwise progressive voices would QT shitty comments from right-wingers, thinking they were dunking on the original poster, when in fact they'd just be amplifying their reach.

Does CNN running that footage of Trump saying that patent BS mean more people are going to avoid vaccinating their kids? The problem is that there are so many uninformed people out there that probably swallow that line uncritically, without checking it - and with Trump, it's not about the things he says, so much as the fact that he can muddy the waters and piss people off with his claims.

And let's be real here: uninformed people with no sense of discernment is why we got Trump a second time (as well as the first). Don't give me any guff about voter anger: we knew what we were getting in 2024.

So yeah, I wish news organizations would be more careful about how they cover stories like these, especially since both are tied into the culture wars in different ways. In one case a vulnerable person died because of what amounted to a media witch hunt, and in the other, mendacious comments were given a platform and consideration that they don't deserve. Outlets need to consider what they're saying when they choose how to cover a specific story.

Devil Wears Prada 2

Of all the movies I've watched recently, the one I'm moved to write about here, today, is The Devil Wears Prada 2. I don't think I ever expected to be interested in it, since I've passed through the past two decades without having to think about its prequel hardly at all, but as is often the way with these things, a lot of things came together for this to happen.

Obviously, the first factor was the chatter around it when it came out. I listen to the Scriptnotes podcast, and they're great friends with Aline Brosh McKenna, who wrote both movies, so I got to hear her talk about it. A friend in my writing group also talked about it, which put it in my head, as well.

I then didn't think about either of the Devil Wears Prada movies for months, until the Odyssey came out, and suddenly Anne Hathaway was buzzy again. The final straw was seeing that Devil Wears Prada 2 was on Disney Plus, so I started by watching the first film last week and then watching the sequel last night.

And yeah, I can see what the buzz was about. It helps that both movies track my career in a number of ways - the first one came out in 2006, when I'd just finished journalism school and was trying to make my way in the world of London publishing. The second comes as I'm still reeling from cutbacks in media and research, though I've long since left capital-J JOURNALISM and have been doing industry research. But I won't deny that the first five minutes of Prada 2, where Anne Hathaway's character Andy Sachs loses her job to media cuts just moments before winning an award for her journalism, were triggering AF.

Beyond the glitzy settings and catwalks and star turns from the likes of Stanley Tucci, the second film - even more than the first - is a paean to taking pride in your work. In a way it's softer and more gentle than the first one, where the climax features Miranda Priestley essentially stabbing her faithful assistant Nigel in the back to outmaneuver her rival - while that movie ends on an uplifting note, with Andy leaving Runway Magazine but still getting a recommendation from Miranda, it doesn't really portray Miranda as sympathetic or an ally to Andy.

The second one absolutely puts them in the same boat, as they try to stave off job cuts that would destroy the magazine. It ends with Andy and Miranda on the same team, and Andy befriending Emily, who's basically the main antagonist in this movie - which may come from Aline Brosh McKenna not wanting to have all the female characters at odds with one another.

That's not a criticism, by the way, it makes for a good dynamic that humanizes both Miranda and Emily, especially given that these central relationships play out against the backdrop of rich tech and finance bros gutting things that are enjoyable in the name of maximizing profits.

And that's part of what makes Prada 2 so timely - so many news outlets have been ruined by money people and the obsessive quest to "drive engagement". Succession tackles the topic too, but the Prada movies do it with a lot more humor and fun - and the settings are so lush that it really made me miss living in London and working in the self-evidently less glamorous business of trade journalism.

The other thing that surprised me about these movies was that they aren't romcoms, despite what I'd naively assumed. Not that I'm against romcoms, I've seen a lot of good ones, but romance isn't a central part of the first Prada film (apart from Andy's relationship disintegrating as she gives more of herself to the job). It's more central to the second movie, but once again relegated to a subplot rather than being the central relationship - that's Andy and Miranda, and Andy's boyfriend is amiable enough, without drawing too much oxygen himself.

As a final thought, it also struck me how I could do worse than modeling my look off Stanley Tucci. He's a great character across both movies, and a style icon for follicularly challenged gentlemen like myself - at the very least I should get some glasses like his. That's possibly the only consumerist message I take from these movies, which despite the fashion world they take place in, work more as workplace dramas. They seem frothy and fun, like Emily in Paris, but they've got a lot more to say about work and what you give to the job - and they're both easy watches, not too long or dense. Check them out.