Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant

Or Maybe Today's Producers Are Terrified of Rocking the Boat

Salon: "But the new leading men on television have lost that battle, or never even bothered to fight it. They're all solitary supermen. Lonesome savants who seem to know everything there is to know -- except how, or even why, to talk to women. Why have these still young, handsome guys given up, when the less young, less handsome and more drunk Sipowicz didn't? Is it a question of timing? Did Sipowicz just reflect the Clinton-era fascination with moral fallibility and self-improvement? Maybe the new TV hero is perfect for Bush America: He's always right, and certain of his rightness, and sees his isolation as proof of that rightness. But then again, George Bush is hardly the staunch defender of rationality and science that the bug collectors are. And these guys have great fun at the expense of "believers" of all stripes. In fact, that's their problem: their middle-aged skepticism knows no bounds, and extends to the defiantly irrational realm of human relationships."