Emmys with a Side of Bacon

Susannah and I have been kicking back at the Emmys for a good long time now. We’ve wept. We’ve wailed. We’ve gnashed our teeth. Personally, I’ve worn sackcloth and ashes, but that’s just my general fashion aesthetic.

Part of the issue is that we can’t put our finger on what the problem is–something’s wrong (really, Academy–Entourage? Really?), but what is it? We’re inclined to blame the Emmy categories–is Pushing Daisies really the same kind of beast as Two and a Half Men? Should Dirty Sexy Money–or Boston Legal, for that matter–really be considered a drama? We’re embarrassed to admit, however, that every new categorization scheme we tried went exactly nowhere.

We considered doing away with “Drama” and “Comedy” and going instead with “Half-hour”/”Hour” or “Single-camera”/”Multi-camera”, both of which are already used in the technical and animated categories. In today’s television landscape, however, that left us with a couple of strong contenders and a couple we could argue about in the half-hour or mutli-camera categories while overloading the hour/single-camera even more than the current drama category already is. We toyed with the idea of honoring more actors by creating lead, supporting, and ensemble categories. These might allow for, say, Hugh Laurie (lead), Robert Sean Leonard (supporting), and Omar Epps (ensemble) or Steve Carell (lead), Rainn Wilson (supporting), and Ed Helms (ensemble) to be nominated for the same show, or for the large ensemble casts of, say, Lost or Friday Night Lights to be considered separately from shows that focus on true leads, like House or Life. The details necessary to make that work, however (“if the character appears on-screen for less than 30% of the broadcast…”), both felt arbitrary and were, frankly, nearly impossible to hammer out. We played with the possibility that there just aren’t enough slots available to honor all of the great performances out there, so we tried adding and dividing up categories differently–“Classic Sitcom”! “Workplace Drama”! “Speculative Fiction”! “Human Interest (read: Soap Opera”)! Each of those seemed just as arbitrary as “Comedy” and “Drama,” though–is Grey’s Anatomy a workplace drama or a human interest show? You could argue either category for Mad Men. We were stumped.

And then it occurred to us: maybe the categories are the problem–and maybe that means there shouldn’t be any categories at all. This was a strangely liberating idea. We kept the sex split, both because it seems less arbitrary than the above and because we feared our lists would be swamped with male roles otherwise (try filling out the female comedy roles under the traditional categories–brutal). We limited ourselves to people on the official Emmy ballot, which meant excluding favorites because of production-based eligibility problems (goodbye, British-based Doctor Who crew), because of genre (sorry, Venture Brothers–we’ll catch you next time), and because they simply didn’t appear on the ballot for reasons beyond our understanding (who dropped the ball on submitting Dan Byrd from Aliens in America?). We began with a list of 40 actors of each sex, then narrowed the list to 30 and ranked them. By assigning points to those rankings, we were able to compare and combine our lists to create a category-less Bacon Emmys. After complaining that there just weren’t enough spots to honor all of the excellent performances out there, we were pretty surprised to find that in the end we shared 21 ranked male actors and 21 ranked female actors–with one tie in the Lead Actor in a Drama category leading to 21 official male Emmy nominees in the “major” acting categories this year, that means our numbers are pretty much right on the real numbers. Some other patterns surprised us, too:

Male actors (in alphabetical order):

• Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
• Steve Carell, The Office
• Kyle Chandler, Friday Night Lights
• Gaius Charles, Friday Night Lights
• Henry Ian Cusick, Lost
• Glenn Fitzgerald, Dirty Sexy Money
• Neil Patrick Harris, How I Met Your Mother
• Ed Helms, The Office
• Michael Hogan, Battlestar Galactica
• Hugh Laurie, House
• Robert Sean Leonard, House
• Zachary Levi, Chuck
• Damian Lewis, Life
• Zeljko Ivanek, Damages
• Jack McBrayer, 30 Rock
• Chi McBride, Pushing Daisies
• Lee Pace, Pushing Daisies
• Wendell Pierce, The Wire
• Andre Royo, The Wire
• Michael K. Williams, The Wire
• Ray Wise, Reaper

Female actors (in alphabetical order):

• Julie Benz, Dexter
• Connie Britton, Friday Night Lights
• Rose Byrne, Damages
• Kristin Chenoweth, Pushing Daisies
• Glenn Close, Damages
• Tina Fey, 30 Rock
• Anna Friel, Pushing Daisies
• Ellen Greene, Pushing Daisies
• Christina Hendricks, Mad Men
• Holly Hunter, Saving Grace
• January Jones, Mad Men
• Angela Kinsey, The Office
• Swoosie Kurtz, Pushing Daisies
• Mary McDonnell, Battlestar Galactica
• Elizabeth Mitchell, Lost
• Adrianne Palicki, Friday Night Lights
• Amy Pietz, Aliens in America
• Jamie Pressley, My Name Is Earl
• Sarah Shahi, Life
• Sonja Sohn, The Wire
• Natalie Zea, Dirty Sexy Money

For the record, Susannah’s top two ranked actors I didn’t list were Lost‘s Michael Emerson and FNL‘s Jesse Plemmons, while my top ranked she didn’t list were Breaking Bad‘s Bryan Cranston and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia‘s Charlie Day. For the women, her top two ranked picks I didn’t list were The Riches‘ Minnie Driver and Lost‘s Evangeline Lily, while my top picks she didn’t list were Tricia Helfer of Battlestar Galactica and Sunny‘s Kaitlin Olson.

These 42 actors represent 17 shows, which isn’t as many as the real nominees (24 shows). So maybe the Emmys do a better job of spreading the wealth than we would. On the other hand, they spread that wealth by nominating Charlie Sheen and Mariska Hargitay, and…yeah, we’re not going to apologize for not spreading the wealth quite that far. In fact, TV Bacon and the Academy agree on slightly fewer than 25% of the nominees (ten out of 41/42). It’s a supporting-heavy list, although that’s slightly skewed by self-submissions we’d place elsewhere (in what universe is Connie Britton supporting?)–that may reflect the current popularity of the ensemble shows we had such a hard time categorizing. It’s a very, very white list, especially for the women. Thank goodness for The Wire–if we remove their four candidates, 35 out of 38 of the remaining nominees are white. We’re still doing a little better than the real Emmys, who, including The Wire (from which they chose zero nominees), had four minority nominees out of 41 total. While we’ve both had America Ferrera and Edward James Olmos on our lists in the past, even including them wouldn’t hide the whitewash that is American television in 2008.

Perhaps most interesting, however, is that after all our complaining about the traditional categories–and we’re still plenty irked about several exclusions among the real nominees–it wouldn’t take us long to declare winners in each of those. Adding together our rankings to create a “winner,” we’d have to go exactly four names down our list of female actors to fill the four traditional categories, as our top four were Connie Britton (supporting actress in a drama), Glenn Close (lead actress in a drama), Kristin Chenoweth (supporting actress in a comedy), and Anna Friel (lead actress in a comedy). The pattern for the men isn’t nearly so clear, since we’d have to go five whole places down our list to declare winners in the four traditional categories: Andre Royo (supporting actor in a drama), Lee Pace (lead actor in a comedy), Alec Baldwin (lead actor in a comedy), Kyle Chandler (lead actor in a drama), and Jack McBrayer (supporting actor in a comedy). If we’d hewn even more strictly to the Emmy rules and judged a single episode the actors submitted, Baldwin’s tour de force journey through 70s sitcoms might well have pushed him over the top. So after all our complaining and rearranging–are the categories really the problem after all?

What do you think? How would you have rearranged the Emmy categories? Who do you think was robbed? Are you coming after me with pitchforks because it was my list that kept John Krasinski out? Will the Emmys ever get it right?

SUPERNATURAL: So A Man Wakes Up In A Box

When last we saw The Brothers Winchester, Sam was standing over Dean’s body, which had been ripped up by an off-screen hellhound, while Dean was apparently in Hell, which looks like a neuron map. No, I’m not making that up, and if it sounds strange to you, you’re missing the best scary time on TV.

Supernatural follows the exploits of the aforementioned Winchesters, demon hunters and messed-up good guys. In a previous season, rebel with a cause Dean (Jensen Ackles, Smallville and Dark Angel) had negotiated for straight arrow Sam’s (Jared Padalecki, Gilmore Girls) life by offering up his own, and last season was all about how to stop that bill from coming due. One of the things that makes this show fun, however, is their willingess to go as dark as TV goes–the heroes failed, the debt was collected, and Deano’s in Hell. They must find some way out, as tonight’s season premiere is called “Lazarus Rising” and descriptions of it suggest that Dean wakes up in a pine box, apparently free of his demon overlords. The boys’ friend Bobby (Deadwood‘s wonderful Jim Beaver), that rare demon hunter who has survived to a reasonably old age, is suspicious, however–what new bargain has provided this little gift, and what new debt is ripening?

Supernatural does a nice job with overarching story arcs like this, but they’re just as good at creepy one-offs that focus on the real origins of fairy tales or ancient links to Christmas creatures that want to eat more than cookies left by the fireplace. Unlike recent entries to the goosebump genre (Fringe, I’m looking at you), Supernatural benefits from heaping spoonfuls of dark humor–we’ve mentioned previously that The Tick‘s brilliant Ben Edlund is on the writing staff, and it shows. Supernatural has the bad luck of airing opposite the terrific NBC comedy block (or, for people outside of TV Bacon’s immediate circles, CSI: Original Flavor) but it’s premiering a week earlier than its competition so you have a chance to dip your toe in their scary, dangerous, invisible universe. Give them a try–but leave your lights on. Tonight and every Thursday at 9pm Eastern/Pacific on the CW.

Can’t Rain on My Parade, Because IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA

I was apparently one of four people on the planet who could not bear to watch Seinfeld. No matter how funny the episodes ever were, I’d end up rocking back and forth on my couch, wailing, “You could stop all this trouble if you’d just tell the truuuuth!” I could never shake the nagging horror that these awful, awful people could move in next door or show up in my office. I’ve learned phrases like “master of my domain” or “close talker” or “Festivus” in self-defense, but Jerry and Friends just aren’t people I can spend time with.

You may be suprised, then, to learn how excited I am about tonight’s return of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, another saga about nothing focusing on terrible, terrible people. With the pride it takes in using stock footage and music and the fact that its pilot cost $200 (or less!), Sunny might be viewed as nothing more than a low-rent Seinfeld. And yet, I can’t help it–I love them so much I want to sew their sweatshop dresses and have their dumpster babies. The story of three guys who own a Philadelphia bar, the twin sister of one of the co-owners, and the twins’ father, the show is essentially about what happens when deeply stupid people are overly competitive. The tall, beautiful twins (Glenn Howerton–yes, he was in Serenity–and Kaitlin Olson) have only recently come to the realization that Danny DeVito is not their biological father, a fact you’d think they might have tumbled to earlier. Episodes have focused on staging fires in an effort to break into the news industry, the artisitic benefits of paint huffing, and finding the aforementioned dumpster baby and, rather than calling the police, trying to make money off the kid. Which is about what you would expect of a group where one member’s ghastly accident teaches the others that faking physical disabilities could open new and exciting doors for them. These people are very, very wrong, and the show is very, very funny.

I don’t really have an explanation. My best guess is that the Philadelphia characters are so ridiculous, so over-the-top, that they’re living cartoons. I don’t fear that Charlie‘s going to show up at my place of business and start stalking me (unlike the show’s unlucky barrista, who is married to Charlie Day in real life). I’d cringe at the idea of George or Elaine popping up in the next cubicle, but there’s no chance of Dennis and Dee doing the same–they’re far too busy getting hooked on crack in order to cheat the welfare system to do anything as pedestrian as, you know, work. They’re so audacious that we’re freed of expecting social mores to apply to the characters, which lets us laugh at them. Or maybe it’s just the singing (“Rock, flag, and eeeeeeeagle!”). Tonight’s season premiere is two episodes for the price of one, with Mac (co-creator Rob McElhenney) and Dennis taking advantage of Charlie and Dee’s newfound taste for human flesh (I don’t know either) by hunting the most dangerous prey of all–man! And I can’t wait. Premiere tonight and episodes every Thursday at 10pm Eastern/Pacific on FX.

SOMEBODIES: I’ve Even Given Mine a Name–Keisha

Every once in a while, I get my hands on a mini-pass at the Sundance Film Festival. It is nothing like the fancy passes that get the rich and powerful into swag houses to pick up free Uggs, but it does let me walk into films without having to pick up tickets first. I then feel obliged to see as many films as possible to justify having the darn pass, which explains how I ended up seeing a little film a couple of years ago called Somebodies. The program description was typical Sundance–“Surrounded by eccentric relatives, prankster classmates, and more-or-less rehabilitated ex-cons, a black college student stumbles along the path to responsible adulthood.” That may as well be gay cowboys eating pudding, but it fit into my schedule. What I actually found was a warm, funny movie about a community most films and TV shows don’t bother showing us anymore. There were great characters but not much plot, and I remember thinking the idea would make a better TV show than a movie–after all, Friends never attempted any ambitious, overarching story, but we loved hanging out in Central Perk anyway.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who thought this, as Somebodies is now a half-hour comedy on BET. Last week’s pilot reintroduced Scottie (writer-creator Hadjii), an Athens college student who isn’t quite ready to leave the warm bosom of education for the real world. Trying out a bunch of different institutions–the church, the school, the black power movement–looking for something meaningful, he runs into characters who represent all kind of possiblities: the pastor, the activist, and the college counselor who doesn’t want Scottie to become the kind of man who sits on her couch and eats her groceries while waiting for his (non-existent) record contract to come through. Perhaps the only problem with this is that Scottie, genial as he is, isn’t quite as much fun as the people surrounding him.

The most interesting thing about Somebodies, though, is its explicit treatment of the ways young black people practice a form of bilingualism–biculturalism?–to make it in the world. The aforementioned counselor has no trouble falling into a melodic voice to order a salad “with a splash of tangerine” from a white subordinate just as she was about to drop the N-word on Scottie. The ex-girlfriend Scottie still hankers for assures him that all black people have a little “inner n-word” in them that pops out every once in a while (hers is the aforementioned Keisha). This discussion is a voice that just doesn’t exist in the television landscape today. Little wonder that the episode was directed by Rusty Cundieff, the man who not only directed Fear of a Black Hat but gave us the great TV Nation experiment trying to get Yaphet Kotto a cab (“If you’re anything like me, you’re a black man”) and was the last slaveholder in Mississippi, pointing out that the state didn’t ratify the Thirteenth Amendment until 1995. When a show can be that bold and this funny, we’ll be back for more. Catch it tonight on BET–Thursday first runs at 10:30 Eastern with reruns throughout the week.

FRINGE “The Same Old Story”: Oof, You’ve Got That Right

Was the second episode of Fringe better than the pilot? Well…I guess so. The writing for Joshua Jackson’s Peter Bishop wasn’t nearly so abysmal, allowing for the show’s one really interesting relationship (between Peter and his mad scientist father [John Noble]) to take on some added depth and poignancy. Although she didn’t have as much to do this week, at least the cow stuck around.

Aside from that, there’s just a disappointing amount of either sizzle or steak in Fringe. We’ve seen investigations before. We’ve seen interrogations of obviously lying suspects before. We’ve seen government conspiracies before and questionable science before (from co-creator Abrams, no less). We’ve seen budding romantic tension between leads before. If a show is going to go down such worn roads it’s going to have to execute almost perfectly, and the execution of Fringe has yet to create anything special.

This is perhaps most disappointing when it comes to atmosphere. We’ve seen creepy atmosphere before, and Fringe just isn’t very scary. It is occasionally yucky (thanks so much for the hanging eyeball), but it lacks the goosebump factor. With the exception of Dunham’s unsettling daydream backed by giant tulips, the way the show was imagined and shot didn’t add anything to a story that would have been bargain bin X-Files, Supernatural, or Smallville material.

We’ve compared Fringe to The X-Files before, and nowhere was this more apparent than in “The Same Old Story”‘s denouement. Walter Bishop and cronies once tried to invent super-soldiers by creating embryos that could age to maturity within three years, but they could never figure out how to turn off the aging. A serial killer who steals pituitary glands–a case on which Dunham just happened to work in the past, of course–turns out to be one of these experiments, ingesting the glands to prevent rapid aging (don’t ask). Our heroes stop the bad guys in the middle of an extraction, chasing the weird guy through a darkened warehouse before he can suck down his latest pituitary. As the villain sinks to the ground, the only light bulb in the entire place begins to sway, coming closer and closer to revealing his face as he spends his last moments on Earth helpfully filling in plot holes. Each swing of the light bulb is meant to build tension, but we already know what’s happening: [swing] He’s old. [swing] Yes, we know–he’s old. [swing] We get it–he didn’t get the pituitary, so his aging sped up. [swing] Oh, for the love of John Bartley! He’s going to be old! Get on with it! Old-school X-Files may not have had any money to show its scary stuff, but it found a way to make its atmosphere the scariest thing on TV, just by turning out the lights. On Fringe, they play with the lights as an excuse to let the villain dump a bunch of exposition so the investigation won’t go past the 43-minute mark. If Fringe doesn’t find a way to do something fresh–or at least make something old creepy–we might be changing the channel to be scared by rich teenagers on Privileged.

Season Premiere Finds HOUSE Making Nice?

Or maybe he just should be. You’ll recall that in last season’s finale, our misanthropic House spent a two-part episode trying to piece together the mystery of which victim alongside him in a bus crash had a dangerous undiagnosed condition. While he put himself in danger to find the answer, he didn’t figure it out in time to save Cutthroat Bitch, aka Amber, aka Wilson’s girlfriend. And Amber wouldn’t have been in the bus crash that set off the chain reaction that killed her if she hadn’t been off picking up her boyfriend’s drunken best friend, House. Ouch.

Seems House and Wilson haven’t spoken since, and things have gotten bad enough that Wilson is resigning. We’ll miss Anne Dudek‘s Amber, but we couldn’t enjoy the show without Robert Sean Leonard, so we imagine they’ll come up with something. On the other hand, can they come up with a solution that keeps the focus of the show where it belongs–squarely on House himself? Given that the entire show is an investigation of House’s twisted psyche (and Hugh Laurie‘s brilliance), we’re more sure of that than that there will be a medical crisis following a treatment at the 33-minute mark. Tonight at 8pm on the coasts, 7pm inland on FOX.

PSYCH Pineapple Watch: “Gus Walks Into a Bank”

I wouldn’t have thought there would be much that could make me happier than seeing Alan Ruck stumble into Psych. Then seeing Shawn try a potentially suicidal run into the bank where best friend Gus was being held hostage was even better. But Gary Cole and his SWAT team entering the scene in slow-motion to to the dulcet tones of Rob Zombie was the icing on the pineapple upside-down cake.

No suprise then, speaking of pineapples, that this episode was a triple-fruiter: first, as Shawn delivered the pizzas to the hostages, he (rightly) noted the utter criminal lack of ham and pineapple (perhaps a reference to last week’s potentially pineapple-free episode?). Second, a pineapple was sticking out of a fruit basket as not-robber Phillip accompanied Shawn to the restroom. Finally–and best–Shawn’s much-maligned pulley-driven snack-delivery system finally reaches fruition (I’m so sorry) as the snacks appear on a little tray with a pineapple-shaped hole stamped in it. The highs of this episode–the warmth in the relationships, the way the characters grow (admit it–Lassiter’s decision to break protocol and follow Shawn was a cheer-from-your-couch moment), the silly pop-culture jokes only Psych can pull off (“Tell me they call you Mr. Tibbs“)–make it a great way to end the summer season. Of course, that will leave a pineapple-shaped hole in our TV viewing until January.  If only some Ballpark Franks would appear through it–they plump when you cook them. Literally.

FRINGE: So, Pacey is Scully…

I’ve been burned by J.J. Abrams before. The pilot of Alias was a hoot, but the series fell into the realm of the ludicrous by the end of the first season. The pilot of Lost was so much fun I spent my flight the next day imagining who would help me stitch up our fellow passengers and who we would eat, but the show has been a roller coaster ride since (thank goodness last season was an up). I’m not sure what this means for Fringe–since the pilot was a little slow and derivative, will it be in the toilet by the end of the year, or will it have room, free of hype and expectations, to breathe?

The show gets off to an eyebrow-raising start, not because of the airline passengers (here we go again) whose faces are melting off, but because it is so very reminiscent of its superior progenitor, The X-Files. They even use a handprint in the credits and break out the super-powered flashlights. This time around, the troubled FBI agent who believes in the possibilities of the impossible is a woman (newcomer Anna Torv, who, depending on the lighting, looks either like Cate Blanchett or Laura Prepon). The science-genius skeptic is a man in this version, and a gambling addict to boot (Joshua Jackson). The superscientist (and the skeptic’s father) who provides the key insights to their cases was driven mad by his forays into fringe science, meaning Mulder and Scul…er, Dunham and Bishop have to babysit the over-the-edge combination of Frohike, Byers, and Langley. Their version of Assistant Director Skinner might actually be the Cigarette Smoking Man (Lance Reddick of Lost and The Wire). Their version of The Syndicate is a super-corporation run by a woman with a robotic arm. And they revealed their Krycek awfully early in the game.

Also, there is a cow.

The best part (aside from the cow) is John Noble‘s (The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King) nutty professor. While the pilot had nice production values and an Abrams-esque twist, it lacked humor aside from Noble’s attempts to interact with the world outside his mental institution. While Jackson was woeful in this episode, perhaps suggesting he is miscast, he did have some truly atrocious dialogue to sell. If the writing for his character settles in, the relationship between Dunham!Mulder and Bishop!Scully might rise to be nearly as interesting as the senior Bishop’s tenuous hold on reality. They shot frighteningly high right from the top, though–it took even the notoriously reckless Mulder four full seasons to undergo experimental craziness to access untapped regions of his brain. Dunham went for it in the pilot. Where can you go from there?

Still, we have such a soft spot for The X-Files (and for Abrams, who weaves a fun yarn and looks like he could shop in the juniors section) that we’re willing to see where this ride takes us, at least for a while. If the cow turns out to be Dunham’s long-lost sister, however, we’re gone.

SONS OF ANARCHY: Beware Lady MacGertrude

True confessions: I never much liked The Sopranos. I could appreciate how stylish it was, how biting the wit was, how counterintuitively lovable the characters were. It was about three degrees too far for me personally (thank you so much for crushing that stripper’s skull!), and I had a hard time buying into the angst of a man who could have solved a lot of his problems by, you know, deciding not to kill people anymore. Still, I could see how the epic tale played into the classic rhythms of rise and fall we so easily embrace in drama.

Enter Sons of Anarchy, which walks the same thin line. Pulling back the veil on a California motorcycle gang, the show asks us to both be drawn to and repulsed by characters who make a living doing awful things. It’s stylishly made and has some mordant wit. The cast is appealling, with stars like the terrific Ron Perlman (hello, Hellboy!) as the club president and welcome bit players like Theo Rossi (Veronica Mars) and Dayton Callie (Deadwood) popping up to add color. Even Charlie Hunnam (Queer as Folk), as the golden boy son of the club’s late founder, is better than usual here.

Best of all is Katey Sagal (Futurama, 8 Simple Rules…), magnificent and menacing as Gemma, the club founder’s widow and the current president’s wife. The show is set up to be Hamlet, with Hunnam’s character uncovering his dad’s much more pacifist dreams for the club and intimations abounding that the older generation is keeping secrets. As Hamlet’s…er, Jax’s mother, Sagal should be Gertrude, a woman who makes us wonder how complicit she is in the tragedy we see unfolding. Sagal is much more in the mold of Lady Macbeth, however, pulling the strings behind the scenes. This is a woman who tosses a Bible containing a syringe full of very bad stuff at the druggie mother of her grandson and snarls, “I suggest you turn to Jesus.” Yikes. The show is about five degrees too much for me (thank you so much for putting that ax in some guy’s skull!), but for those with stronger constitutions, Sagal is worth seeking out this show. Wednesdays at 10pm Eastern on FX.

DO NOT DISTURB: Yeah, That’s Not Gonna Be A Problem

As the new fall television schedule came into focus, there was a good deal of hand-wringing over whether the traditional sitcom is dying or just plain dead. Of the 20 new shows debuting on network TV this fall, only four are traditional half-hour comedies. Make that three–one of the characteristics of the traditional half-hour comedy is being funny, and Do Not Disturb just isn’t funny. The Baconeers have enjoyed both Carpoolers and Reno 911!, so we’d like to see Jerry O’Connell and Niecy Nash in something good. On the other hand, our abiding love for Jason Bateman means we’d rather see him in front of the camera than behind it, so the deathwatch hanging over this show might have an upside after all. Maybe all three of them can find a better vehicle, because constant references to sex are not by definition funny–you have to actually turn them into jokes. We probably won’t be knocking on this door again.