Liars and Saints

  The other day, I was in New York at the Angelika--which now has assigned seating. I wasn't late--I think I arrived thirty seconds after the start of the first preview--and yet a human refused to stand up for me.  This was inarguably rude. The person was blocking my passage to my assigned seat--it was her task to "make way." She was not incapable of standing; I know this as a fact. So what was going on? Was she simply lazy? Had she just lived through a bad day? Did she feel that her intransigence was a just punishment for my disruption of the first preview? Was this merely thoughtlessness? I'll never know. It helps to watch "The Outs," which, in my favorite scene, nicely dramatizes the problem of uncertainty. Jack and Mitchell recall a particular threesome. "We invited a third to our apartment and we were--you know--doing things." "We were having gay sex--it's what we tend to do." "We were ten minutes in--and the guy stands up a...

  My favorite TV writing tends to have a moral center; the characters themselves may not behave in admirable ways, but the writer clearly has an interest in moral questions. I think the gold standard is Sharon Horgan, who wrote "Catastrophe." In that series, the male lead begins a kind of emotional affair; he isn't exactly guilty, but he isn't exactly innocent. The fallout from this affair becomes a high point of the series.  Adam Goldman is a student of Sharon Horgan's; he cites her as a personal hero. The start of Goldman's series, "The Outs," is superficially focused on the absurdities of Brooklyn life. A delivery boy mocks a customer for being too lazy to walk across the street; a waiter must choose where to leave the bill while pretending that the two patrons in front of him are not loudly fighting. But beneath these moments there is a *moral* story. The main character, Jack, has lost a friend. He wants to re-recruit the friend. The specifics of...

(5) Why is the Mahjongg scene so effective in "Crazy Rich Asians"? Because the idea for the scene was planted very early in your evening--at the very start of the movie. When we first see the protagonist, she is teaching economics through a staged strategy game. She schools her opponent, then discusses the difference between "playing to not lose" and "playing to win." That moment sits like a time bomb in your head, so that, when the protagonist meets her nemesis for a final showdown at the Mahjongg table, you have a curious feeling of satisfaction. You may not even make a conscious link between the opening and the climax. But your subconscious is doing work, even as you eat your popcorn. That's good writing. It's the kind of thing that distinguishes a mere machine (a competent, lifeless script) from an animal (something that "lives and breathes," like "Bridesmaids" or "Beauty and the Beast.") (4) Adam Goldman. I real...