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2025 Rekindled Commitments to Academic Freedom Nationwide
• Jan 29, 2026

2025 Rekindled Commitments to Academic Freedom Nationwide

The prospect of not having what we have long taken for granted has rallied the troops, offered academics and judges an occasion to articulate academic freedom’s value in new ways, and prompted a clearer appreciation of its value in the face of a rising threat of tyranny.

Mark Carney Took the Stand the Rest of the World Must Now Take
• Jan 29, 2026

Mark Carney Took the Stand the Rest of the World Must Now Take

Last weekend’s summary execution of Alex Pretti by Customs and Border Protection agents in Minnesota highlighted to millions of Americans the nature of the Trump administration. First, they killed a disarmed man in cold blood after these poorly trained thugs with a badge freaked out, or simply decided they could do it with impunity. Afterwards, the administration issued bald-faced lies about what happened, while taking the line that no one would get hurt if everyone simply shut up and stopped resisting. This is the easiest thing to do when the other side has all the power, which makes Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s defiance all the more remarkable. The Trump administration has given the same mafioso ultimatum to Canada that it has to protesters, but on a grander scale—with the threat of annexation.At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Carney’s speech was a pointed, stinging rebuke of Donald Trump and his jingoistic foreign policy. He referred to Trump as a “hegemon” and called for a break in existing U.S.-Canadian relations. “This bargain no longer works,” he declared. This speech is historic, as it represents the most open, direct rebuke of and break with Trump and the United States by former allies to date. Carney mentioned the writings of Václav Havel, which explored how corrupt systems that clearly no longer work sustain themselves through fear, compliance in advance, and people refusing to contradict what is clearly a lie. However, the system (communism, in Havel’s analogy) crumbles when the first person refuses to go along with the lie and suffers no consequences as a result. In essence, Carney is doing exactly what you need to do to break the bystander effect.Trump responded to Carney’s temerity with his typical petulance. He stated on Truth Social that Canada was no longer invited to the “Board of Peace” he created, many of whose members are horrid dictatorships like Belarus, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, and Egypt. None of the U.N.’s other Security Council members have signed on, and it is doubtful that Canada was that interested in being a part of such an organization, either.This break with the United States is historic; Canada does not appear to have any hope that the two neighbors’ irreconcilable differences can be overcome. It is a tacit acknowledgment that a right-wing, authoritarian movement in the United States is ascendant, and unlikely to be removed anytime in the foreseeable future. Even if a different administration comes to power in three years, the United States has proven to be an unreliable partner and cannot be trusted not to fall into idiotic despotism every four years.This break will have long-term impacts for both the U.S. and Canada. It is difficult to overstate how closely intertwined the two countries are, economically, militarily, and administratively. Even though Canada’s population is one-ninth of America’s, Canada is our second-largest trading partner, and the U.S. accounts for 70 percent of all Canadian imports. Travel between the two countries is trivially easy, and you can spend up to 180 days per year in either country with little oversight. Canada and the U.S. have a shared airspace agreement, and NORAD is a joint U.S.-Canadian command.Carney’s speech represents a profound shift in this relationship. Disentangling Canada from the U.S. is a monumental undertaking. It will be incredibly and increasingly disruptive, to Canada even more than the U.S. The prime minister did not make his comments at Davos lightly. To use a metaphor, it is like an abused spouse deciding to leave a relationship even if it means temporary hardship and poverty: It is not done on a whim.The Canadian plan appears to be to power through whatever tariffs and punishments Trump metes out, shifting its alignment to more reliable trading partners like the European Union and China. Carney’s primary goal is closer integration with the EU. There has even been discussion about whether Canada is eligible to join the EU.If Carney is successful in leading the democratic world in writing off the U.S. as a lost cause, it will initiate a cascade of consequences that will devastate the U.S. long term. When other countries cease kowtowing to the whims of a powerful but mad king, he loses his power. The United States is on the cusp of becoming a pariah state, ruled by a spoiled man-child who is increasingly and openly mocked for his obvious failings. It only takes one person to say the emperor has no clothes to give others the courage to act. The gross domestic product of the European Union rivals that of the U.S. as a percentage of world share when calculating using purchasing power parity, which takes into account relative currency value and cost of goods. Recent U.S. GDP growth has been distributed unequally, and much of it is based on the AI bubble. The global economy also revolves around the American dollar. Eighty-eight percent of global foreign exchange transactions are in dollars, as are 58 percent of foreign reserve currency holdings. The second-largest holdings? They are in the euro. Should there be a significant shift away from the dollar to the euro, this would be catastrophic for the U.S. economy. Hyperinflation would be triggered, exacerbated by Trump’s attempts to remove Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and replace him with someone committed to the loose money policy the administration desires in order to “juice” the economy.Carney’s speech has been covered extensively in the press outside the U.S., which recognizes it for the titanic shift in policy that it is, and the open invitation to Europe to join him in defiance of Trump, consequences be damned. In it, Carney also mapped out what a post–American democracy world order looks like: Canada openly turning its back on the dysfunctional, unreliable, bullying kakistocracy that the U.S. has become and integrating with Europe as both economic powers move on.In 1938, the strongest nation opposed to Hitler accepted a disgraceful surrender to a bullying monster. When history is written, I believe this may be remembered as the anti-Chamberlain moment: a leader of a (relatively) powerless nation throwing down the gauntlet and proposing to the democracies of the world that they band together as a unified front against a juvenile, narcissistic would-be hegemon who has never been effectively stood up to in his pampered life. It takes a great deal of courage to say “Slava Ukraini” to the man with a gun pointed at you. Mark Carney looked at Trump and his threats, and essentially said, “True North strong and free,” daring him to do his worst, knowing that Trump likely isn’t joking about pulling an Anschluss on Canada. The U.S. is likely to learn a hard lesson economically about what happens when the world no longer revolves around it and the dollar. It is also about to learn what it means to be an international pariah, as former allies walk away and wash their hands of the entire sordid American mess.

How Minneapolis Is Making Social Media More Political
• Jan 29, 2026

How Minneapolis Is Making Social Media More Political

Taylor, an Iowa-based artist, had been sharing political posts and information on social media long before January 7, when they posted about ICE agents shooting Renee Good in Minneapolis. They mainly use their social media accounts to sell mugs and support their small business, and after they posted about Good’s death someone messaged them to say that they shouldn’t get political. “Somebody got mad at me in my D.M.s and said, you know, you’re supposed to be posting about mugs. I want to see a mug,” they said.That just made Taylor angry, and they doubled down. They posted a video to the main Instagram grid, saying that if anyone watching supported ICE, voted for Donald Trump, or didn’t think that trans people deserve to live happy and healthy lives, “I don’t need your money. Maybe if you stop supporting fascism, I’ll make you a mug or something one day.” The post went up on January 8 and went viral. They said that while a handful of people sent violent messages in response—which is part of the reason they don’t want their social media accounts named—the response was overwhelmingly positive. They said it just felt honest to start posting more about politics. “Artists will talk about this a lot, about where their items end up, you know, where the things that they make end up,” they said. “And I don’t really want my work in the house of an ICE agent. You know what I mean? I don’t want to make them happy. They make me sad. Why would I want to bring them joy with art?”I spoke to several social media content creators and influencers who all experienced a similar shift in recent weeks. ICE’s actions around the country, especially in Minnesota, were a tipping point for all of them. It wasn’t just that these creators felt that they should weigh in, it’s that it felt impossible not to—especially if they used social media to support their work or charity. It all speaks to a specific moment in U.S. history in which our personal, working, and political lives are all entwined, the boundary between public and private has collapsed, and we’re watching the government commit atrocities that are videoed and shared on the same social media platforms. People are trying to make their business and volunteer dreams come true—writing recipes and making mugs and rescuing dogs—on the same apps where they’re seeing fellow Americans bravely standing up to an increasingly authoritarian regime. There’s no place now that’s free of politics.This is by no means new. Since the 2024 elections, I’ve noticed the social media accounts that I follow across Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms that aren’t explicitly political—furniture repair, baking, dog rescue, hiking—wade more into politics. Some of these posts started only tepidly political, as when the DIY accounts I follow posted about how the rescission of the Inflation Reduction Act early in Trump’s second term would impact homeowners and renovators who care about green energy. A friend and I joked they were soft-launching their liberalism.In the past month, as the federal assault has worsened, the posts have gotten angrier, more persistent, and more widespread. There’s even an easily adaptable meme to explain the jump into political content: “Reminder that this is a bourbon account but I can’t drink bourbon if ICE shoots me in the face,” is the common example, often set to the swelling, angry chorus of Mumford & Sons’ “White Blank Page,” but sometimes set to a song that makes fun of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, by another creator named Chelsea Gods. Many are angry. “If you support ICE, my content is not for you. I don’t want my recipes bringing joy to fascists,” said one baking account. It’s not just ICE, either; people have been weighing in on the Epstein files and other recent events too. An influencer in Maine posted an angry rant she taped in her car with the caption, in all caps: “I’d rather be sharing my banana bread recipe too babe.” Instead, she said she’s had to use her history degree, with a focus on World War II studies, to explain how everything that’s been happening is worthy of alarm. “So, yes, I desperately wish that I could go back to making silly goofy videos of my favorite fucking casserole,” she said, her voice rising, “but unfortunately I have to use my degree to teach a 40-year-old person that apparently this contentious issue of whether or not an adult should have sex with children, is somehow up for debate???”Even an account about huskies called eight_fluffytails posted on Threads that they had tried to stay apolitical in order to provide viewers with a little bit of an escape, but invited any followers who welcomed the rising authoritarianism to leave. “The huskies are very good judges of character, and they’d hate you, too.”Cynically, this could be read as an attempt to jump on an increasingly popular bandwagon: After all, the people doing the posting are enmeshed in social media algorithms that connect them to more followers who agree with them, thus increasing their reach. Taylor said they gained 30,000 followers across platforms; their waitlist for products was already full before the influx, and they’ve had to explain to new followers that they can’t make their mugs fast enough to meet the sudden spike in demand. But it genuinely feels honest. People are shaken and angry, and they want to say so.Rachel Brenke, an attorney who advises content creators and posts on social media herself, says that creators often ask her about what they can say legally, but they’re already eager to post. “There’s a human element. There’s a human behind the social media posting the business, etc., and so they feel convicted, they want to educate, advocate activism, and put it out there,” she said. She thinks this is also just the nature of online life today: Businesses are used to putting a human face and voice to their social media accounts, and it feels dishonest not to say something.Emily GF, who asked not to be fully identified, runs a ranch for senior and rescue horses in Idaho, works in health care, and has a small business on the side where she runs the social media accounts of other businesses. “My life is very … there’s not clear, defined buckets.… I have the horses, I have marketing. I’m in health care. It’s hard to express all of that on one page. It kind of all bleeds together,” she said. Emily GF specifically wants her local representatives to share their plans about what they will do if—or more likely, when—immigration enforcement officials descend on Boise.She first became political online about public lands issues, for which she she has a particular passion. As her feeds filled with political content and stories, she felt more and more compelled to speak out. She thinks that this is what’s happening with other content creators, as well. “This very specific video that was like physically pounding in my head, of [an ICE] officer in Minneapolis going in … to a Thai restaurant and demanding to speak to the owners, with gun drawn the whole time,” she remembered. “Just a restaurant full of people eating. And it really just hit me as so reminiscent of a dark and terrible time. It just really made me think in direct lines to visiting Dachau, visiting the Anne Frank house,” she said. Being political in public is not risk-free—Emily GF didn’t want to talk about her health care work because she didn’t want her clients targeted. Other content creators have day jobs that aren’t always amenable to their being outspoken about current events. But with each new video, and so many people in Minneapolis and other cities across the country taking brave actions every day, no one felt worried enough to stay quiet. In fact, they felt more worried about staying silent.Stephanie McKenna has a 9-to-5 day job but also posts travel content on social media, and she’s been trying to grow that into a business. She said she has been very vocal. “I told my husband, I was like, I’ve been yelling and screaming about this for 10 years, and friends have told me that I’m crazy, and my family’s told me that I’m being melodramatic,” she said. She decided to take a break after the election to grow her brand, but the respite she’d planned for herself didn’t last long. “Then everything that happened in Minneapolis just kind of changed. And I didn’t want to be, not only on the wrong side of history publicly but also, it just felt that I can’t be a part of the problem in any way, shape, or form, and by not speaking up, I felt that I was being a part of the problem, even though I violently disagree with it.”This is of a piece with what I’ve heard in my personal life, as well. People are upset and want to do something but don’t always know what. “Not everyone can be on the front line; not everyone can fly out to Minneapolis right now,” said Adrian Lott, a therapist in Seattle who runs an account focused on finding loving homes for senior dogs. She posted a series of photos of her old dogs with comments about the Trump administration’s misdeeds and the slide into fascism. “I’m a big fan of, let’s meet people where they’re at, and where a lot of people are at is on the internet, for better or for worse.… If I can meet people where they’re at and try to engage, I think that’s valuable.”Some people hope to change minds, but many have come to find that their posts seemed to mostly end up in an echo chamber, drawing engagement mostly from others who were of the same mind and relieved to read a post with which they agreed. But many felt that if they took the opportunity to speak up, it might encourage others to do the same. Mainly, they all came to discover that the work they do in their lives—be it travel, art, or animal rescue—was inherently political in ways they hadn’t previously realized. That there was no separating their work from the impacts of Trump’s policies and actions in Minneapolis and cities around the country. Armed with these insights, they felt compelled to make those connections explicit. “I think it’s a good idea to be yourself, and if yourself is angry, then you might as well put it on,” Taylor said. “It’s an art account. You know, art is political. Just full stop, that’s the end of it.”

How Trump Weaponized the Department of Transportation
• Jan 29, 2026

How Trump Weaponized the Department of Transportation

For the past year, New York City residents have been breathing a bit easier. That’s thanks to the state’s congestion pricing program, one of the landmark transportation success stories of 2025. A year after the program kicked off, traffic volumes have fallen, pedestrians are safer, and money from the program is modernizing the subway system. All of this progress has been delivered under a looming threat from the White House to halt it in its tracks. In February 2025, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the federal government would kill the program. President Trump declared, “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD … LONG LIVE THE KING!”For now, the courts have kept congestion pricing alive. But the threats to the program marked the start of a dark turn in federal transit policy. Historically—and even during Trump’s first term—transportation was an area of relative bipartisan calm. That is no longer the case.Political scientists have a term for how President Trump governs: “Competitive authoritarianism.” Like Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Hungary under Viktor Orbán, the United States has become a country that holds elections but where the government uses and abuses the law to persecute critics and tilt the political playing field. The most obvious tools of repression may be guns, cops, and lawyers: ICE agents terrorizing people in their neighborhoods, an FBI that sees abuse and looks the other way, a Justice Department that prosecutes critics. In Duffy, Trump has found a henchman ready to enlist the Transportation Department in support.Take immigration. Last April, Duffy sent a letter to every state Transportation Department and public transit operator demanding that they cooperate with ICE operations or lose potentially tens of billions of dollars in annual federal funding. The U.S. Transportation Department repeated the threat to withhold funds in June, as President Trump ordered agents to surge into Democratic-run cities. This week, Duffy went on live TV to smear the Minnesotans killed by ICE and lie about the circumstances around their deaths.Take, as well, the administration’s efforts to stoke racial division. Duffy’s April letter also singled out diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts for particular scorn. In October, Duffy froze federal funding for two Chicago subway projects, citing the Chicago Transit Authority’s implementation of a DOT policy that supports small businesses owned by socially and economically disadvantaged people.Autocratic governments often target scientists because their knowledge represents a threat to regime messaging. So it has been no surprise to see the ax come for transportation research. In May, the DOT pulled $54 million in university research grants focused on improving transportation for low-income workers and people of color. The Transportation Research Board, a division of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, preemptively canceled projects and disbanded committees related to climate, sustainability, equity, and air quality.Duffy has used both the checkbook and the bully pulpit in attempts to intimidate Trump’s political rivals. In June, the DOT pulled $4 billion in federal funding for California high-speed rail. In December, it cut grants for a Colorado bus station, electric-vehicle chargers, and a train safety project to pressure the state to release election-denier Tina Peters from prison. In the past two months alone, agency statements have blasted the governors of California, Colorado, North Carolina, New York, Maryland, and Minnesota.All of this is a sharp contrast from the first Trump administration, when the Department of Transportation was led by Elaine Chao, a Republican institutionalist. While Chao compiled a terrible record on the environment and safety, the DOT remained “an island of relative normalcy,” according to Jeff Davis of the Eno Center for Transportation. Under Chao, the DOT was criticized for a bias toward rural areas, but it at least celebrated grants to blue states. As the Trump administration attacked immigrants, Chao even made a point of celebrating Chinese immigrant railroad workers.The good news is that several of Trump’s Transportation Department’s efforts have been stymied. In November, a court ruled that DOT could not condition grant funds on cooperation with ICE; the DOT dropped its appeal and has taken steps to comply. Judges have ordered some transportation research funding restored. Transportation researchers and my colleagues at the Union of Concerned Scientists have organized independent conferences to showcase banned work. State attorneys general have won court rulings.With the federal government using transit funding as a weapon, some states have found that raising their own can be a shield. Threats against Illinois transit don’t resound in the same way after state lawmakers passed a massive transportation package that will stabilize bus and rail finances across the state. New York’s congestion pricing program has brought in over $500 million thus far, funding transit improvements that will stick around no matter what happens in court.Alongside the damage wrought by Duffy’s actions stands a pile of missed opportunities. Transportation policy can be a powerful force for economic mobility, and offers the potential to make places healthier, safer, and greener. A Department of Transportation focused on persecuting foes is one that is failing to improve lives. As things stand, the U.S. remains saddled with a car-dependent transportation system that underserves many while costing households an arm and a leg.As New York and the White House prepare for their judicial showdown, the politics of congestion pricing suggest another potential response to the Trump administration’s weaponization of transit. Immediately after President Trump posted “LONG LIVE THE KING” last February, New York Governor Kathy Hochul held a defiant news conference, where she declared, “The streets of this city, where battles were fought; we stood up to a king. And we won then.… We’re fighting for our residents, our commuters, our riders, our drivers, our emergency personnel.” Pro-transit protesters took to Times Square with slogans that echoed the first “No Kings” rallies, which had taken place just days before.Some of the movement organizations that sent people into the streets would later endorse Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for New York City mayor. Transportation, encapsulated by the slogan “Make buses fast and free,” was central to his winning argument for a more affordable city. Within two weeks of taking office, Mamdani advanced a rapid-bus project and street-safety fixes that had been stuck in bureaucracy for years. Duffy has shown that transportation policy can be a tool of authoritarians. New Yorkers’ response suggests it can be part of the antidote, demonstrating the ability of government to improve our lives and fueling the organizing we need to win a more democratic society.

The New Night Manager Is Missing That Le Carré Magic
• Jan 29, 2026

The New Night Manager Is Missing That Le Carré Magic

Two series in 2016, two paths for serial television. The first is Stranger Things.Stranger Things debuted on Netflix in the summer of 2016. That’s a long time in human years, but even longer in TV years. The show was only the seventh non-MCU original drama the platform had produced—it was early enough that Netflix was still in experimental mode, fishing around for prestige but also a firm identity to rival the Premium Cable giants that still monopolized the conversation. With Stranger Things, more than any of the other original series of that era, Netflix seemed to find both. While technically an original concept, the show’s calling card was always its intense, nonstop, nostalgic referentiality. From its first frames, Stranger Things was a pastiche, paying homage to Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, and the terrifying suburban landscape of 1980s horror cinema. The show was derivative, but that was its genius.Ten years later, Stranger Things has finally come to an end, but Netflix has been reborn in its image. Netflix knows what you like to watch, with sweeping data on your viewing habits and algorithmic anticipation of your moods, and Stranger Things’ naked appeals to the most beloved media objects of your childhood helped the streamer realize it could simply produce content that it already knows you’ll like. At the time, there was a lot of consternation about shows like Stranger Things and USA Network’s cult hit Mr. Robot being too derivative, too tethered to texts its audiences had already consumed. But Stranger Things seemingly broke the seal, its popularity normalizing this kind of creative approach, intimate emotional narrowcasting. As Aaron Bady wrote in his review of the show’s first season, “when have we last seen such a lack of anxiety when it comes to influence?” As the decade has wound on, we’ve watched the rise of an industrywide obsession with existing IP—reboots and revivals and extended universes. What Stranger Things helped Netflix understand was that the most valuable, reliable existing IP is the data you give to your favorite streaming service.Just a few weeks after the finale of Stranger Things, another series from 2016 has shockingly come back to life. AMC co-produced the John le Carré adaptation The Night Manager 10 years ago with the BBC as part of the rising tide of limited series anchored by A-list movie stars and helmed by acclaimed film directors. HBO had scored a hit in this micro-genre two years earlier with True Detective, and the massive sensation of Big Little Lies would explode the following year. Airing in the interregnum between these two major successes, The Night Manager—starring Tom Hiddleston, face gleaming from the reflected light of Thor and the Avengers—was a clear proof of concept that this was a repeatable approach.As planned, The Night Manager finished its limited run, releasing its stars back into the world. But, 10 years later, it’s back. Hiddleston’s star has dimmed a bit in the past decade, but this new iteration of The Night Manager—based on an original story only “inspired by” le Carré’s original novel—strangely feels more indebted to Stranger Things than to its own predecessor. Reemerging in 2026, the show is less a star vehicle or a prestige adaptation or a tribute to le Carré than it is a sometimes elegant, sometimes egregious mash-up of recent popular media phenomena, from Slow Horses to Challengers. It is content adapted from your viewing data more than anything else. Ten years later, this is The Night Manager in the Upside Down.John le Carré, who died in 2020, apparently had an idea for the second season of The Night Manager. According to Simon Cornwell, le Carré’s son, after the first season’s success, the author sent a note to producers with a few ideas sketched out for where and how a sequel might emerge. Cornwell, who is himself an executive producer on the show, won’t reveal his father’s concept, but he has certainly been willing to divulge one detail: They threw it out.The initial 2016 adaptation of The Night Manager was already a dramatic departure from its source text. The new series brought the novel from its 1990s setting into the present, changed some significant locations, traded out Colombian drug lords for Middle Eastern warlords as the big bads, and gender-swapped a main character, but otherwise executed and enlivened le Carré’s outline in a way the author himself publicly lauded. The Night Manager’s first season told the story of Jonathan Pine (Hiddleston), a British army veteran working as the night manager of a ritzy hotel in Cairo at the height of the Arab Spring in the early 2010s. Pine is diligent, discreet, and devoted to his service work at the hotel. It’s this fastidiousness, as well as his ability to serve as a kind of handsome cipher—a symbol of Western elegance and convenience to late-arriving guests—more than his military past that make him suited to the kind of espionage he soon finds himself swept up in.His lover is murdered at the hotel, but only after passing along paperwork that proves billionaire philanthropist Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie) to be an international arms smuggler. Roper gets away with it, despite Pine’s efforts to involve the British Foreign Office. To deal with his grief, Pine leaves Africa for Switzerland, where, four years later, he runs into Roper again. Working with Angela Burr (Olivia Colman), his contact in the Foreign Office, Pine goes undercover to infiltrate Roper’s family and his organization. He becomes a mentee to Roper and secret lover to Roper’s wife, calmly walking a tightrope but ultimately bringing Roper down.The second season—now on Amazon Prime Video rather than AMC—takes place nine years after the first. Pine has taken on a new identity and now works directly for British intelligence. Out of action, he’s got a desk job leading a ragtag group of agents called the Night Owls, who specialize in nocturnal surveillance operations. If this sounds anything like Apple TV’s recent hit spy series Slow Horses to you, that’s likely not a coincidence. While this MI6-on-the-margins drama lasts only a short time, it manages to completely reinvent Pine in a way that subverts some of what made the original Night Manager so compelling. For one, Pine is never really alone in this new season. As he infiltrates a Colombian crime organization with apparent ties to the old Roper syndicate—and possibly the British intelligence service itself!—he goes deep undercover yet again. But, this time, he’s got the support of some of his Night Owls as well as some loyal agents higher up the food chain. Pine gets caught in a number of sticky wickets throughout the new season, but rarely do we find him as completely isolated and helpless as he was in the first series. This adventure feels meaningfully less dangerous than the last.The Night Manager has gone from a series about a regular guy who must survive only on his wits and charm to one about a regular spy who’s doing spy stuff.It’s also both goofier and more professional. No longer drawing on the skills of a good hotelier, Pine now draws on—checks notes—six years of managerial experience in British intelligence. The Night Manager has gone from a series about a regular guy who must survive only on his wits and charm to one about a regular spy who’s doing spy stuff. This might seem like a quibble, but it’s part of a larger move away from the idiosyncratic specificity of the first season into a kind of generic blandness. Where le Carré’s twists came consistently by surprise, you’ll spot the twists in season two from a mile away. By the time each of the principals is introduced—Hiddleston’s Pine alongside Diego Calva’s kingpin Teddy Dos Santos and Camila Morrone’s compromised femme fatale Roxana Bolaños—their turns will be eminently guessable to any viewer who’s ever watched a spy TV show. The vistas are gorgeous, some of the performances are fun—in particular, Indira Varma as the chief of MI6—but what you’ll find is a smoothed-over caper in a sexy outfit. As the mystery unfolds, the question you’ll ask yourself most is an unanswerable one: What was John le Carré’s idea after all? As it tunneled further and further into its own lore, Stranger Things lost a good bit of its early crackling energy. What it became is what a lot of Netflix shows ultimately became: comfort food. Beginning as a mesh of nostalgic symbols, the show itself became an object of nostalgia. When many of the show’s most devoted viewers began watching, they were the same age as its tween protagonists. Much has been made of how unnaturally old that cast looked by the end of the series, but the same is true of its audience. What kind of experience is it to be a 22-year-old watching the long-awaited series finale of a show you started watching when you were 12? Among the top-line emotions, I imagine one of them is comfort: the comfort of seeing your old friends one more time, of disappearing into a world that captivates you as an adult but helped define your adolescence.One would not usually describe the works of John le Carré as “comfortable.” Indeed, if there’s a distinguishing feature of his oeuvre, especially those novels of his that have been adapted for the screen, it’s a pronounced sense of discomfort. His stories are potboilers of bureaucracy, compromise, devastating defeat, and Pyrrhic victory. His greatest works are thrilling but disquieting. You don’t finish Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy feeling comforted. And yet, for all its dark turns, this second season of The Night Manager is a comfortable affair. It hits all the right beats, from knotty departmental drama to basic cable erotica, but it does so without much friction or sense of fun. In 2016, The Night Manager, with its big names and auteur sensibility, prophesied a newly ambitious era of TV. In 2026, it feels a little old.

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