Cringe

Levels of vengeance are coded comparatively. Delight in Ray Liotta's machinations as Wozniak and distaste for Warren Kole's agent Stahl as overly self-righteous still falls within the parameters of a revenge fantasy, even if we weigh how far we're willing to see a world weary lieutenant go. So far Adi is letting Wozniak hold his own, seasoned enough to process rationalizations and methodology, not quite a full sociopath. Invariably, NBC will have an entertaining antagonist fall. Woz will go too far and even wicked delight will turn against him; J-lo will be scathed but left with the possibility of redemption, because this is still television land. Though it is fair to say dirty cops usually get exposed in the real world. This is why beat reporters exist. The Wilkins case, however, is irreparable, and seems to hinge on some bizarre evolutionary throwback. Stealing newborns occurs in the wild, but cases like this, along with aggression in the elderly, and the gruesome microwaved baby case, veer toward unimaginable unease with the inexorable pressures of primate domestication. 

Images of that litigation were never forgotten: the mother testifying on video so as to be shielded from public outrage. Killing a newborn is one thing. Cooking it to death invites bile to rise in the back of our throats. How does an incident like that even happen? Lane's alleged attack is as equally visceral and unfathomable and if found guilty she should be executed, on either a material or metaphysical basis. If we're just a smart bit of meat, the meat doesn't need that mitochondrial DNA perpetuating itself, and if humans indeed have souls, Lane fed hers into a psychosis which is better off dead. Even in the dark side of Mario Puzo's world, the author's intimations about why Vito kills an infant stays within tolerable limits, rather than mere sensational butchery. How poor Michelle Wilkins ever truly recovers from this is beyond anyone's capacity to actualize, even within a world view poisoned by lifelong medical, regulatory regimentation. It would be rather a highbrow solace if NBC allows Wozniak to emerge victorious, the cult hero with blood on his hands, still a Brooklyn capo.

A dowager's bitterness is also in part about her own naivete, so invested in intellectual authority, in literary journal submissions, in independent living paradigms, as a way of life. I was a hot property as a student, and beyond, and now I'm sick of it, an advocate of giving idealists brutishly short lives.