Archives May 2024

It was my favorite critical about-face in recent memory. Mike Hale, a TV critic at The New York Times (whose taste I have a lot of time for), initially panned Special Ops: Lioness when it debuted in July of 2023. He wasn’t alone. Critics had their knives out for this counterterrorism action series on Paramount+. The series stars Zoe Saldaña as a CIA operative named Joe who trains female assassins—among them, a badass marine named Cruz, played to the hilt by the relatively unknown Laysla De Oliveira.

Lioness was an easy target. Its creator and writer, Taylor Sheridan, is the man behind Yellowstone, television’s juggernaut Western, as well as a host of other series that offer nostalgic pro-military diversions (shows like Mayor of Kingstown, 1883, 1923, and Lawmen: Bass Reeves). Lioness hit familiar Sheridan beats. Strapping gunmen, noisy firefights, and solemn debriefings. The number of women in Lioness was perhaps notable—but so too was the peril they found themselves in and the violent deaths they were subject to. Critics like Hale were only shown one episode in advance—and it was a brutal one. The reviews, Hale’s included, were a bit contemptuous. Sheridan’s first female-centric show seemed…a little like exploitation?

I didn’t take my first chance to vote. I was 18 in 2004. I was a virgin. I didn’t watch the news. I was probably at a party or popping in a pretentious VHS tape or kissing someone wearing Vans. It was hard to see the choice—between one white man in a suit who had started an endless war and another white man in a suit whose politics seemed only marginally less troubling—as a personal one. I could not have been more wrong.

We all have the issue that calls us to action, which hits close enough to home that we are inspired to participate politically. For some, it’s the changing climate destroying their homes; for others, their experience with college loans. For me, it was when my body began to fail me, a development that ultimately allowed me to understand how interlinked every crisis facing our nation really is. Our health care system is the place where the Venn diagram of every form of injustice meets. But, like so much in life, I had to see it to believe it, to really comprehend what second-wave feminists meant when they chanted, “The personal is political.”

It’s no secret that I have been a weary traveler through the medical-industrial complex. I’ve written extensively for this magazine about my history with endometriosis and chronic pain, the endless circles I walked just to get answers, the emergency-room visits all over the country when symptoms were out of control (I’ve often joked that I could write a book called A Doctor in Every Port), and the radical hysterectomy that was ultimately necessary. What I have written less about were the men—so many men—whom I met on that journey. (While roughly 85% of practicing ob-gyns are women, 62% of practicing physicians are men, and they make up roughly two thirds of the emergency medical field.) Some were established doctors, some were interns, some were anesthesiologists. There were ones who sent me home bleeding too much, explaining my period to me like I was in fifth-grade health ed. There were the ones who eyed me with skepticism when I rated my cramps as a 10 on the pain scale. There were the ones who carelessly reached inside me as if I were a car with a faulty engine and not a human woman gasping at the careless intrusion.

After my first endometriosis surgery, I was placed in the urology ward at a prominent New York hospital. The rooms were much nicer, explained my doctor (out of network, it should be stated, and found after turning over every rock and finally consulting the Endometriosis Foundation of America). A wealthy man with prostate cancer had made a generous donation that allowed for wood paneling and flat-screen TVs versus the peeling yellow walls and tiny televisions with three channels up in obstetrics and gynecology. I was told to walk every day after the surgery, up and down the hall eight times. I pulled my IV bag alongside men named Frank and Bob, who chatted easily about sports as the nurses guided them. I thought about the women upstairs, waiting to have their bedpans changed, wondering who had forgotten about them. I thought of the women in state hospitals and jails who would regard the ignored obstetrics wing as an incredible upgrade. I thought of the women waiting outside emergency rooms all over the country, too afraid to go in and face the cost. I thought of the women who wouldn’t even consider parking outside.

Despite the cold-blooded assassination of a father of two in Manhattan, it’s been a surprisingly and acutely erotic few days on the feeds. To refresh: Last week, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down outside the Hilton hotel in Midtown. Bullet casings left behind read deny, defend, and depose, a reference to how insurers dodge payouts on claims. After a five-day sweep of the tristate area (and at least one ill-advised lookalike contest), the alleged gunman, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, was apprehended having lunch at an Altoona McDonald’s, and the internet promptly erupted into backstory sleuthing, eyebrow comparing, and straight-up arousal.

I don’t think any of us are pro assassination. Let me just put that down in writing, because while scrolling the declarations of mug-shot thirst, you’d be mistaken for thinking broad-daylight murder was somehow secondary to a strong jawline. But so many things converge in this story—a fatal shooting, a broken health care system, the radicalization of a young man of privilege, the internet in detective mode, and plain ol’ sex appeal—that it’s difficult to totally separate the strands.

Ivy League graduate Mangione’s manifesto, discovered on his person at Mickey D’s, relatably bemoans the too-big-and-too-greedy American health care machine. (He reportedly lost family members to illness in recent years, and there’s speculation about the ongoing aftereffects of his lower-back surgery.) His (self-)calling was seemingly to avenge the millions of frustrated Americans brutalized by years of rocket-high expenses to simply get better and stay well. Long before Mangione was unmasked, the announcement of Thompson’s death online was met with hundreds of gloating laughing emojis. (I’m wondering if these commenters felt the death of a figurehead forecasts the fall of the system?) But in general, people sympathized with Mangione’s position…at about the same time they discovered he was hot.

And so emerged the familiar hot-felon narrative—Mangione a bang-able vigilante, an ideal ideologue—and tweets so graphically horny they can’t be quoted. The timeline pivoted sharply from Wicked to Luigi. His Italian-ness. His sweetness. Is he straight? Is he bi? Does he count as an incel? Has Ryan Murphy secured the story rights? Will Dave Franco pick up the phone? Mangione images reigned. Shirtless and blue. Tank topped and Happy Meal–ed. Orange jumpsuited and pensive. I’ve seen him in profile, being led into court by police. I’ve seen his valedictorian speech. For some unfathomable reason, I know he rated The Lorax five stars on Goodreads.