TV Review: Intelligence – “Where There’s One There’s Another”

by Diane Wild | Nov 14, 2006 | Canadian TV, Intelligence

(Spoilers for the episode that aired Nov. 7)

Everyone’s got an angle to get ahead in CBC’s Intelligence. A very different angle from anyone else, generally. In “Where There’s One There’s Another,” Mary and Jimmy see varying levels of success in working those angles.

Mary Spalding (Klea Scott) finally succeeds in turning her wireroom mole, who offers her information on a plot to assassinate a Chinese dissident on Canadian soil in exchange for keeping his job, his wife, his pregnant girlfriend, and the spoils of being a mole.

She works on another victory by encouraging her prized informant, Jimmy Reardon (Ian Tracey), to accept stockbroker Randy Bingham’s offer of stock options in exchange for freeing his arms shipment from where it’s mired in Panama. Though Reardon wants cash from the guy who already owes him, Mary just wants the deal done so she can reap the intelligence rewards.

Putting a crimp on her plans to improve the fortunes of the Vancouver Organized Crime Unit and therefore her chances of moving up to CSIS is her deputy, Ted (Matt Frewer). Ted and his DEA contact have agreed on a sting operation to bust Reardon, a big fish for the Americans and Ted’s ticket to job at CSIS for himself and the withdrawal of the job offer at CSIS for Mary. Ted’s got another trick up his sleeve, since before Ted will hand over Jimmy’s file to the DEA contact, he insists on meeting operator leading the sting.

Another possible danger to Mary is that Tina’s infiltrating Reardon’s club perhaps a little too much. She’s started to avoid Spalding, who reminds her that the rewards of cooperation depend on actual cooperation. Tina is sincerely as busy as she tells Mary, mostly because of Jimmy’s encouragement to string along his married, father-of-two banker, who wants to set her up in an apartment and get her to quit her job. This show is nothing if not romantic, which is demonstrated again when Mary lets detective Don Frazer know their affair is just a fling, and he shrugs and says he should spend time with his family anyway.

Mary’s not the only one with trouble brewing behind the scenes. Jimmy’s inept brother Michael wants to start his own club and his own operation, with Jimmy’s blessing and out of Jimmy’s shadow. The man who’s running money for Jimmy’s bank machine operation is coy about how he’s going to fund this operation, but Jimmy better hope that he’s right, and he can trust Mike with money because it’s simply respect he’s after. But what if Mike thinks respect can be bought?

Mike is still living off the respect he earned by foiling the shooting attempt against Jimmy and Ronnie, and now Jimmy discovers the shooter is not connected to the biker gangs as he thought, but apparently to a Vietnamese gang. It seems like it should be good news that it’s not the bikers, but the bad news is that another front might be opening up in that war Jimmy doesn’t want to fight.

Jimmy’s lawyer brings Ronnie and Jimmy an offer of $10 million for The Chickadee, which Ronnie turns down for sentimental reasons. He can’t abandon the legacy his father build from nothing, and wants to leave it as his legacy for his not-yet-conceived children. I hope he’s smart enough not to be planning on them with the not-so-sweet Sweet. After Ronnie expresses interest in turning the club into a music venue, Mike presents Ronnie with that same idea, with the bonus of his own band that could fill that venue. Putting up with Mike’s band is likely too high a price to pay, but Ronnie was already satisfied with the prospect of scouting out another club to expand his empire instead.

Jimmy’s lawyer also brings yet another rejected strategy to win a custody battle against Francine, a mentally unfit defense. Barring that, and all his previous suggestions, the lawyer suggests Reardon make nice with Francine, and so does Jimmy’s sister Maxine. So Jimmy and Francine try to work things out, though his intention is to see his daughter, and hers is to reunite with Jimmy. With their differing agendas, dinner doesn’t go well. She doesn’t want to talk about Stella, and insists she only wants respect – shades of Mike, and shades of the same doubt that either one of them is worthy of respect. Francine merely proves again that she’s desperate to get Jimmy back, but completely incapable of acting in a way that would make that even remotely tempting for him.

In the most heartbreaking sign of Jimmy’s troubles, lucky Stella runs away from her drunk mom’s school night party to the sanctuary of the downtown club where daddy does drug deals in the office, strippers do blow in the dressing room, and the occasional shooting in the bar adds even more excitement. The good news is when she’s 17, her dad plans to be completely legit. Oh, and Francine’s therapist thinks she’s not completely nuts. I see a therapist in Stella’s future, too – let’s just hope that one’s competent.

Instead of dwelling on the darkness of her life, the episode ends with a sweet, fly-on-the-wall scene of Stella one-handedly playing the piano to Ronnie, ending with her closing credits voiceover saying “That’s all I know.”

The multiple characters and storylines continue to advance along their questionable paths with intensity and unexpected moments of humour. Their next chance to make an even bigger tangle of their lives will air on Tuesday, Nov. 14 on CBC.

TV Review: Intelligence – “Jimmy’s Got a Money Machine”

by Diane Wild | Nov 7, 2006 | Canadian TV, Intelligence

(Spoilers for the episode that aired Oct. 31)

Jimmy Reardon (Ian Tracey) gets more than a money machine in the latest episode of CBC’s Intelligence, one driven by stylish camera work, insistent music, and characters getting quite possibly deeper and deeper in over their heads. He gets a truckload of money machines, a fake security company to protect the money machines, an unreliable brother in charge of replenishing the money machines, a stake in a restaurant chain to protect the distribution of the money machines, a commitment to help find a less curious bank for the vending company that’s fronting the money machines, and, for some strange reason, he gets laughed at when he tells Mary Spalding (Klea Scott) that he’s on a mission to go legit in five years. Aww, he’s so cute for a gangster.

Mary is possibly a little clueless herself, thinking she’s impressing the CSIS bigwigs who have the power to hand her a promotion while they express their doubts and confer about plan B behind her back. As she tries to build a network of supporters to bring with her from the Vancouver Organized Crime Unit, her deputy, Ted, and the man she’s being groomed to replaced, Roger, build a network of conspiracies against her. The American DEA is plotting to entrap Reardon, her prized informant, Roger and Ted are getting dirt on her personal life, and everywhere she turns, she’s faced with an old boy’s network who look at her with suspicion. She does, however, realize that if she can’t get convert the mole in her wireroom, her career is possibly doomed.

Jimmy’s got problems of his own. He’s stymied in his attempts to find out why he and Ronnie were shot at last episode. After hearing a rumour that he’s being connected to the death of his own distributor, Colin, Jimmy goes to meet with the biker gang boss – a frightening-looking Robert Duvall type – he suspects is moving in on his territory. Jimmy’s declaration that he doesn’t want a war is met with cold silence.

On the personal front, his ex-wife is trying to shore up support for a possible custody battle, though Jimmy’s sister Maxine (Sabrina Grdovich) is cooly unimpressed by Francine’s transparent attempt to garner sympathy. Camille Sullivan brings a perfect pathetic fragility to Francine that makes it easy to want to be sympathetic to the fidgety emotional wreck, but impossible to be actually sympathetic to her manipulative ways and self-serving cause.

Oblivious to some of their problems, fretting over others, Jimmy and Mary come together at the end of the episode. He trades his information on stock broker Randy Bingham’s shipment of arms for her support in looking into the nightclub shooter’s associations. Though she makes appropriately appreciative remarks about his adorable daughter’s photo when he plays proud but sad dad, he can’t count on her straight-faced support when he makes that claim that he’s going legit before he has to tell Stella what daddy does for a living. As she’s proven before, slamming the old CSIS guard to their faces, tact is perhaps not Mary’s greatest strength.

The next episode of Intelligence airs Tuesday, Nov. 7 at 9 p.m. on CBC.

TV Review: Intelligence – “Don’t Break Your Brother’s Heart”

by Diane Wild | Oct 30, 2006 | Canadian TV, Intelligence

(spoilers for the Oct. 24 episode)

In which Michael Reardon breaks his brother’s heart and then saves his ass.

CBC’s Intelligence is a very different beast from fellow spy shows 24 or Alias. In fact, any comparison to those shows is as ludicrous as Jack Bauer’s ability to go an entire day without visiting the men’s room (not that I’m hoping for that particular scene). Intelligence builds its characters and intertwined plots slowly and elaborately, without relying on shock value or ever-escalating, super-charged drama. Instead, we’re given bits of intelligence on these characters each week, and the tension builds out of their motivations and actions appearing to be on a certain collision course.

What we learn about Michael in “Don’t Break Your Brother’s Heart” – for example, that he’s a junkie and enough of a screwup that Ronnie wouldn’t be sorry to see a contract out on him – adds layers to what we already knew. When he’s doing any thinking at all, the motivation for his bone-headed actions is to prove himself to his brother Jimmy. Unfortunately, mostly he ends up proving what a menace he is to the carefully constructed Reardon empire.

In this episode, he continues his plan to bring the bikers’ pot across the US border, and on his return, tolerates – barely – lectures by both Ronnie and Jimmy. The episode title comes from Ronnie’s speech about getting into rehab “before you break your brother’s heart any further.” Mike guzzles his drink down and vows its his last. Ronnie looks skeptical but resigned.

Later, Jimmy asks Michael to clean up, if not in rehab then by getting exiled to their grandfather’s farm on the Island. Mike guzzles his new drink down and vows it’s his last. Ian Tracey’s simple cocked eyebrow conveys Jimmy’s skepticism beautifully.

And proving that they may be a match made in heaven – heaven for stupid people – Rebecca the bartender can’t seem to grasp Michael’s cunning plan to have his vodka soda served as if it’s 7-Up.

Through these exchanges, we learn more about Ronnie, too. Like the fact that he was the owner of The Chickadee until the Reardons bailed him out of financial troubles. He’s also more excited than is perhaps warranted about his new purchase, bullet proof vests for himself and Jimmy. (Foreshadowing alert!)

Jimmy isn’t quite as impressed as Ronnie by their stylishness, functionality, or comfort. He doesn’t want to be in any meeting where he has to wear one, saying, perhaps naively, perhaps arrogantly, “they’re not going to bring guns in here.”

At first, he’s right. A meeting with a couple of Vietnamese guys, and deals made through the front of his lumber company help Reardon make quick money hand over fist, and things seem to go smoothly when Jimmy sets up security for his new bank machine money laundering venture.

We learn things aren’t going to go so swimmingly for Jimmy, however. Francine is her usual jittery and pathetic self when she finally visits a lawyer in the custody battle she precipitated. She makes it clear she’s not particularly interested in the sole custody of Stella she’s asking for, but she is very particularly interested in getting to Jimmy through Stella.

Relying heavily on lawyer-client privilege, Francine is very open about the fact that she was fully aware of Reardon’s illegal activities and supported him through the building of his criminal empire. “I know things that would put him away for life,” she says, before adding, “I don’t want to screw him completely, I just want to let him know that I’m here.”

We learn a little more about the ice queen, Mary Spalding too, including flashes of – is that warmth underneath that iciness? Klea Scott plays her with such tightly controlled fierceness that her more human moments reveal there’s more going on under the surface than first appears.

She celebrates with her escort agency informant Katarina when the visas for her mother and daughter come through, encourages informant Casey to leave her husband – and therefore lose her source of intelligence – when he becomes abusive, and looks decidedly un-icy in her hotel room while she and Vancouver cop Don Frazer share a post-coital moment where he oh-so-romantically warns her not to piss off too many people in her empire-building quest.

Jimmy gets the goods on Mary from his narc informant, who recites Spalding’s impressive achievements and her family status. “I like her. Don’t trust her, but I like her,” Reardon says, speaking words that could very easily be said by her about him, too (well, with different pronouns).

Mary’s weaknesses are spelled out in “Don’t Break Your Brother’s Heart,” too. When she meets with a contractor to bug the house of her wireroom mole – and who calls her by the not-inappropriate nickname Queenie – he reminds her that mole could cause the destruction of the Vancouver Organized Crime Unit she now runs, and damage the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service unit she plans to run.

Her meeting with the CSIS analysts she will soon be running allows her to demonstrate her confidence and strategy, while also demonstrating what she’s up against – a roomful of 60+ white men who keenly feel her tactlessness in dismissing their past efforts and are skeptical about her future plans.

But her biggest vulnerability is one she’s not yet aware of. Her deputy, Ted, played with admirable oiliness by Matt Frewer, and Roger, the CSIS guy about to lose his leadership role to Mary, are plotting with the American DEA to go after her prized informant Jimmy Reardon and support their efforts to overthrow Mary and install a gosh-golly-maybe-I-would-consider-the-job-now-that-you-mention-it Ted instead. In exchange for intelligence the DEA wants from the Canadian agency, of course, because information is a commodity in this world, after all.

Though the tension in Intelligence tends to build more from the intricate revelation of information, the episode ends with a bang, literally. Mike gets suspicious of a guy who enters The Chickadee and gets his opportunity to prove himself by jumping the guy just as he shoots at Jimmy. Before they can rouse the clubbed shooter to find out who sent him, Ronnie brings news that the police are on their way.

So they, and we, have to wait for more information until at least the next episode of Intelligence, which airs Tuesday, Oct. 31 at 9 p.m. on CBC.

TV Review: Intelligence – “A Champagne Payday”

by Diane Wild | Oct 22, 2006 | Canadian TV, Intelligence

(Spoilers for the episode that aired Oct. 17.)

The second episode of CBC’s Intelligence opens with the mirror image of the previous one. The sunny, soaring plane ride of “Where Good Men Die Like Dogs” makes way for “A Champagne Payday”‘s shadowy scenes of Jimmy Reardon’s brother Michael pulling up in a car to meet with the people he’d contracted to arrange a hit on Bill, the snitch who caused Jimmy problems and whose death is causing spymaster Mary Spalding (Klea Scott) problems.

Mike presents them with a couple of bottles of champagne for a job well done, and the promise of actual payment next week. Since they weren’t planning to offer long-term financing, they aren’t pleased with the arrangement.

Michael (Bernie Coulson) is the sibling who makes you wonder if there wasn’t an affair with the mailman in Mrs. Reardon’s past. Maxine (Sabrina Grdevich) seems to be the practical, financial brains, schmoozing the banker with thrilling stories of her grandfather’s bootlegging past and keeping the tax man at bay by preserving the facade of legitimacy over at their shipping business. Jimmy (Ian Tracey) is the underworld brains, setting up a drug production and distribution network, expanding into bank machines to facilitate money laundering. And Mike? Well, Mike’s the doofus screwup, which undermines the Reardon family’s criminal mastermind trifecta slightly.

To get money to pay for the hit, now Mike takes a job with the bikers, rivals of Reardon’s criminal empire who are trying to muscle in on his territory. Mike’s actions cause Mary’s sneaky underling Ted (Matt Frewer) to suspect the hit on Bill, and therefore the Reardon empire, are possibly tied to the bikers as well. Jimmy’s sense of ethics and family responsibility force him to pays off Mike’s debt as soon as he discovers it … which could also have the downside of creating that tie the spies suspected was there to begin with.

While on his drug run for the bikers, Mike is shockingly clever enough to realize he’s being watched when the cops tail him down a dead end turnaround point. He sends the drug truck driver away, waits until nightfall, then unloads and hides the contraband while the oblivious cops sit metres away. I have a bad, bad feeling Mike’s trying to pull one over on the bikers more than the cops.

Now that Bill’s death has raised even more questions about Mary’s ability to handle Reardon as an informant, she gets advice from Vancouver cop Don Frazer (Andrew Airlie), who we learn at the end of the show might be more than just a sounding board, in a cozy scene at her hotel room. On his advice, and with the approval of the CSIS higher-ups, she hires one of her escort agency owner and informant’s girls to infiltrate Jimmy’s strip club, the Chickadee.

Jimmy’s partner and Chickadee manager Ronnie (John Cassini) is smitten with the Russian dancer Christina, flirting with her in front of his stripper girlfriend Sweet and sowing the seeds for a possible love – or at least sex – triangle.

Mary tries to keep this undercover operation secret from Ted, but pretty much everyone in Intelligence has secret sources of intelligence, and he finds out from his CSIS source. As Mary says about trying to turn the mole she now knows is in her wire room, “everyone has something to hide,” but it seems those secrets are never as hidden as the bearer thinks.

Mary is trying to protect her relationship with Reardon, which she sees as key to getting the CSIS job she’s been promised. But Ted, who’s been demoted from The Nasty Bastard to The Snake in ads, but who still wants the job Mary covets, and Roger Deakins (Tom McBeath), the CSIS director whose job she’s planning to assume, want to destroy it, so they plot to get Jimmy investigated and therefore arrested by the Americans.

Jimmy’s got personal problems, too, since his ex-wife Francine (Camille Sullivan) won’t let him see their daughter, Stella, and he’s determined to win sole custody. The lovely but very messed up Francine is using their daughter as a pawn to try to get Jimmy back. Apparently, though, the best way to reconcile with a guy isn’t to get wrecked, bring another man into his strip club, create a scene, and beg him to get back together one more time. Good to know.

Jimmy’s lawyer looks about 12 but is canny enough to know that Reardon’s custody case is a losing battle. He expresses his doubt that with his background and associations Jimmy could be declared a fit parent. So if he attacks Francine’s fitness, the worst case scenario is that neither of them wins – Stella least of all. Ever the decent guy – for a crime lord – Jimmy refuses to consider getting Francine involved in trafficking so she can be caught and deported, and thinks paying her off or coming to an amicable arrangement are futile.

Jimmy and Mary’s interests collide in Randy Bingham, a stock broker who’s now dabbling in arms shipments, and who owes Reardon money. He’s got a cop in his back pocket for these occasions, who lets Bingham know he’s being watched, getting him to panic about the deal while leading Mary and her unit to his associates.

This second episode continues to weave the entwined plot and character threads as creator Chris Haddock slowly builds the drama and suspense. Intelligence has a dark, brooding quality to it, with shaky camera shots, often through blinds or other obstructions, but there’s moments of unexpected humour, too.

One in “Champagne Pay Day” comes from Bill’s friend, who confirms to Jimmy that his brother was involved in the hit after Mike continues to deny it. “You know what Bill’s hobby was?” the friend asks, and I prepare for some little humanizing touch about the dead guy, or piece of information that will fit into the intricate puzzle of this show. “Spiders. Now I gotta go take care of them. I’m gonna get bit.”

The next episode of Intelligence airs Tuesday, Oct. 24 at 9 p.m. on CBC.

Does Chris Haddock have the answers?

by Diane Wild | Oct 22, 2006 | Canadian TV, Intelligence

I posted this link on the TV, Eh? site, but thought I’d write out some thoughts around it since it’s been quite a weekend for Canadian TV posts around here (sorry Americans!) and I keep thinking about DMc’s post on Canadian taste vs. American taste. The question he poses – “why don’t the networks try making more homegrown hits that appeal to Canadian sensibilities, rather than aping U.S. formulas” – keeps popping up since I started paying attention to my own country’s TV landscape. It’s easy enough to criticize what does make it on the air up here, but how can the Canadian industry produce more shows the public might actually want to see?

[EDIT: And if I’d waited 2 hours to write this, I would have had the benefit of reading his post on how to fix things first. This is written pre-DMc-brilliance, because I’d given up on his procrastinating butt … I mean, busy schedule.]

There’s obviously no magic formula to producing only hits – if there was, the big bucks of the American system would have discovered it by now – but how can we get to a point where we have more than one scripted Canadian show in our top 30? More that can beat out American powerhouses like … Jeopardy? (But on a positive note, that one Canadian show, Corner Gas, is just a shade under Lost on the top 30 – that’s either not too shabby for Corner Gas, or bad news for Lost.)

Anyway, the link is to 24 Hour’s video interview of Chris Haddock, creator of Intelligence and Da Vinci’s Inquest, talking about his new show, but also the differences between the Canadian and American industries. I’d asked him the same question, and he mentioned some of the same things, but we were interrupted by filming and production questions while he was answering and he had to go off and, you know, do his job. With 24 Hours, he gets into the reasons Canadian TV doesn’t often resonate with Canadians, and in his opinion, it comes down to giving the creative reins to the budget crunchers rather than the writers.

Haddock, who also created the CBS show The Handler, says he has more more creative autonomy in Canada than the US, with less network interference and more freedom in language and subject matter. He points to the US hesitancy to critique American society, such as the Dixie Chicks being blacklisted, saying that atmosphere “makes performers and artists timid,” and concerned about the political slant of a character or story.

In Canada, however, he says there’s less attention paid to entertainment in general – we don’t support or promote our entertainment industry. “That’s not nature of Canadian industry and maybe not the nature of the Canadian personality, really, to hype itself beyond existence,” he comments.

Contrast that to the US networks, where “if you walk into the room with a good idea, they really back you. … If this is a goldmine, let’s dig.”

Haddock, who is one of our country’s most successful TV producer/writers, believes it’s harder in Canada to gain the confidence of networks, and says “artists don’t really have the upper hand here. Up here it’s been a battle for me for the networks to acknowledge that the writers are the creator of the product, that it’s not the line producer. The mentality up here is it’s the number crunchers who should be running the show. I really think that way of thinking has hurt Canadian entertainment. We’ve produced some really good stuff, but we’ve produced our fair share of real dreck.”

He quotes the Canadian audience as saying “Canadian TV doesn’t interest me” or “It looks so Canadian” – that sounds awfully familiar to me, too. He continues, “well, the reason it looks that way is the line producer has cheapened out on it” and the Canadian industry “hasn’t yet released the reins to writers and creative people.”

Haddock alludes to the fact that the success of Da Vinci’s Inquest in the US right now, while great, comes too late to bring attention to the show in Canada. I know CTV’s Whistler was launched on the US’s N network at the same time as its Canadian launch, and Degrassi‘s sixth season is even airing in the US before Canada. Riding on the American publicity machine’s coattails seems to be a fair attempt to reduce Canadian TV’s publicity woes, though of course it’s still a crapshoot if a show’s going to catch on or get any PR muscle behind it there.

Plus, focusing on the US market too much gives me a flashback to my frustration at the Banff World Television Festival, listening to Wayne Clarkson of Telefilm talk about the need to make shows that aren’t too Canadian so we can sell them to foreign markets … and specifically mentioning Corner Gas and Trailer Park Boys as possibly too Canadian, shows that are successes in Canada and have had foreign distribution success.

It seems like a lot of people in the industry have either given up on the Canadian audience, or don’t want to acknowledge that a large proportion of the Canadian audience has given up on them. Maybe we need a Canadian TV industry 12-step program, where they learn that acknowledging a problem is the first step to solving the problem. They can say there’s no quality issue to worry about, but ask Joe Blow on the street and you’ll hear a very different answer. They can say Joe Blow is wrong, but the audience has a funny way of deciding for itself what’s good.

That’s not Haddock’s point, or MO. His shows wear their setting and Canadian sensibility on their sleeve. No one could accuse Da Vinci’s or Intelligence of not being obviously Canadian, or of mimicking American hits, or pandering to a foreign market. He’s very open about his attempts to make commercial shows, but he’s making them in the context of a non-cable network that lets you say “fuck” in primetime and that isn’t going to balk at a drug dealer being a protagonist or at the expression of ideas that go against the grain.

Whatever it is that makes us Canadians different from Americans might help make Canadians embrace our shows, and it might even be what makes foreign markets embrace them, too. We can’t compete in budget or publicity with American shows. But Degrassi is constantly praised in the US as being more real, more gritty than American versions of teen shows. Same with Da Vinci – it’s not style over substance, or increasing shock value, like many US crime procedurals. It’s marketing 101 – what’s different about your product is your selling point.

Connecting both of Haddock’s points, perhaps the creative freedom we have in Canada – as long as that freedom isn’t cheapened by poor production values – is something that can find a large audience in Canada and also find a significant niche audience in other markets like the US. Audiences who don’t subscribe to HBO or Showtime might feel starved for these kinds of shows that aren’t mirror images of what they can get on their own networks, shows with a slightly different point of view. Maybe a show like Intelligence where there is no heroic Jack Bauer to save the day against the villains, but instead backstabbing, opportunistic spies pitting wits against cunning, sympathetic gangsters.

The CP reporter asked me the question about how the industry can make better shows, and printed a bit of my attempt to dodge it. My answer was vaguely about giving creative people the reins, too. Still, I don’t know enough about the inner workings of the industry to know what that means. Assuming the pot of money available to Canadian programming isn’t going to increase, do we give more money to each show and make fewer? But even big-budget American shows have to make hard decisions about how to spend that budget – is the answer giving the creative people, rather than the financial people, final say in how the budget is allocated? Smarter development, so we’re making shows we can afford to do well? I have no real idea of how development even works here, but are there ways to do that better?

As usual, I have no answers, just questions. I guess this is where I remind you that I’m not part of the industry, I’m a TV fan. I’m the audience, and my friends and coworkers and relatives are the audience. And I’m telling you, among all the other issues, there is an issue of quality. We’ve got shows like Intelligence to prove we can make great shows, and creators like Chris Haddock telling us how we might be able to make more, but is anyone listening?