(1) Let’s start with something great: We just finished watching the second season (just 6 episodes) of the Netflix series “The Diplomat”. If you haven’t watched it, or any of “The Diplomat” yet, now may be the time. It is, I thought, brilliant – at least compared to the other things I have watched recently. At the end of the first season, a car bomb injured the husband of the American ambassador to the UK, along with her deputy, and killed another embassy staffer. It was rumored that it was a Russian hit. In the second season, there is another attack, this time on a British ship that killed 40 people. Again, the Russians were suspected and the assumed Russian hit man was gunned down by the Brits. But the ambassador and her husband (a former ambassador, who seems just as involved in her job as she is) begin to think that it wasn’t a Russian hit after all, but rather an inside job, a false flag operation, and that the British prime minister might be behind it, and that it was somehow contrived to foil the secession of Scotland. Wonderfully cast and acted, beautifully staged, very professionally scripted. For those of you who think a lot of things get shown that shouldn’t, this will show you that there are still some things that deserve all of the acclaim that they receive.

(2) A book: The Nixon Memo by Marvin Kalb. “What”, you ask, “Is Marvin Kalb still writing books at 95?” The short answer is “no”, that he wrote this book 30 years ago, when he was a mere spring chicken of 65. I alluded to it a few weeks ago, but want to say a little (not a lot) more about it now. I read it on a whim (it was on a pile of books staring at me for a while and I decided it was sending me a message). I didn’t expect to think as highly of it as I did. It really told two stories at once. The first was how Richard Nixon, after falling in disgrace on account of the Watergate caper, reinvented and resuscitated himself to be able, for the last decade or so of his life, to be considered an expert on world affairs, and particularly on Soviet affairs. He did this through writing well placed articles, mainly in the Wall Street Journal, as well as several books that were very respected by those who were in a position to judge them, and by a memo (the Nixon memo of the title) addressed to George H.W. Bush, telling him how crucial it was for the United States to support then President of Russia (before the collapse of the USSR, still headed by Gorbachev) and his desire to westernize and democratize Russia, and how the United States should unleash what would be a replica of the Marshall Plan to help. The second story is the story of how George Bush disagreed with the Nixon approach and pretty much ignored the memo, but how his successor Bill Clinton was much more sympathetic to what Nixon was proposing. So you had the disgraced Republican Nixon become a close advisor of the Democrat Clinton, a relationship lasted until Nixon passed away. Of course, Kalb tells a much more complete story than my one paragraph summary, and it is worth reading.

(3) A play: We went to Studio Theatre yesterday to see Summer 1976, a play with two actors (in this case Holly Twyford and Kate Eastwood Norris, both veteran Washington performers), about two women, seemingly very different, who meet one summer because they are part of a babysitting co-op, and their 5 year old girls hit it off. The summer of 1976 for them turns out to be emotionally fraught and, although they see how different they are, they become very connected, and think that their connection with outlast the test of time, which it does not. The play has been very well reviewed, but both of us were quite disappointed. The story line really didn’t intrigue us that much and, yes, the acting was quite good. But you would expect that and, frankly, this is not a play that requires any particular acting skills.

(4) Another book: This one was totally random, a Penguin English mystery, written in 1911 and published by Penguin in 1945. I chose it from my Penguin collection because it was short and I thought I could probably finish it in a day. Which I did. Called Under the Red Robe, it was written by Stanley J. Weyman (1855-1928), about whom I knew, and know, virtually nothing. It is historical fiction, set in France during the first half of the 17th century, the time of Cardinal Richelieu. I enjoyed it, although I wouldn’t call it a great book. An aristocratic vagabond (not really a contradiction) kills a young man in a dual, at a time when duels in Paris are not only illegal, but when the punishment was death. Richelieu knows the man in question and tells him that he will let him go if he will do him a favor, and if he will then agree not to return to Paris. The favor is to go to a small town on the Spanish border, where there is a wealthy man who is active in attempting to overthrow the French king and who is very well protected. Our hero’s job would be to get into the man’s large, guarded house, arrest him in the name of the king and get him transported back to Paris. Of course, through many close calls and adventures, and with the help (in a way, because she does not know she is helping have her brother arrested) of the victim’s sister, he captures the target and begins to lead him, with several others under arms, and (after a while) with the sister who has followed them on the road to Paris, and – alors! – agrees to release the man upon urging of his sister. He is a changed man and goes back to Paris without the prisoner to turn himself into Cardinal Richelieu and accept his punishment, when – lo and behold – he learns that Richelieu is no longer in power, no longer in the favor of the king. So, he is now a free man, he turns his eyes south again, finds and marries his old adversary’s sister and, it really implies this, they do live happily ever after.

(5) Another Netflix film, and this one was the worst: Anna Kendrick’s Woman of the Hour, a film, starring Kendrick, about a real life rapist and serial killer in southern California. The murderer, Rodney Alcala, actually appeared on The Dating Show, and Kendrick plays the female contestant on that show, and who does not get raped or murdered. After killing a still unknown, but large, number of women, he was caught through the intelligent thinking of a teenage runaway, who talked him out of finishing her off by telling him that he was really okay and that all she wanted was a promise from him that he wouldn’t tell anybody about what he did to her (he probably had raped her, and he pushed her off a ledge, which bruised her, but did not kill her), and he agreed and they went off together and she was able to call the police when they stopped for gas. I thought this was just a terrible film, both its subject matter, and the film itself. In spite of what I thought, Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 91% critic rating. Go figure.

(6) The final film: A Real Pain, which we saw last night at the Avalon. Two cousins take a “heritage” trip to Poland to visit the birthplace of their grandmother, who was a Holocaust camp survivor and who recently died. One, David, lives in Brooklyn with his wife and 5 year old son and has a respectable job. The other lives in his mother’s basement in Binghamton, has no job, spends his days smoking pot, and recently tried to commit suicide. They are the same age, but have obviously taken different paths, one working towards respectability, the other avoiding it. Their guide is British, and there are five others on their short tour, which seems to whiz through Warsaw, Lublin and Maidenek. The two cousins then go to the town (didn’t look like a remote shtetl) of their grandmother’s childhood. I thought the film was awful. I liked none of the characters, not the cousins, the guide, the fellow travelers. No one. I thought the film looked at a number of sensitive subjects, and dealt with each of them poorly. Does everyone agree with me? Apparently not. 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. Even better than Anna Kendrick.