By Steven S. Drachman

I think from now on, if anyone I know wants to talk about anything other than Mannix, I’ll change the subject. 

From now on, I talk only about Mannix, the 1960s and 1970s detective show starring Mike Connors.

And, actually, only Season One of Mannix, which was the best season. Mannix went downhill, in my opinion, after Mannix left Intertect and Joseph Campanella exited the series. But we’ll always have Season One to enjoy. 

The idea that Season One was the best is a contrarian, minority viewpoint. CBS almost canceled the show at the end of its freshman year but relented to keep producer Lucille Ball happy, provided that she revamp the show entirely. Season One was so unpopular with viewers and the network that it wasn’t even syndicated. Recently, a New York Times columnist listed various TV shows of the past that he thought his kids should watch, and he listed Mannix, but urged readers to skip Season One. “I want my girls to see what we have gotten at least partly beyond,” the columnist, John McWhorter, wrote.

Sure, if you want to watch something just to feel superior to it, skip Season One. But Season One is a masterpiece. 

Also, this: you can discuss every single Season One episode, analyze every single element of the thing, debate it inside and out, and it is pretty difficult to imagine any friendships lost. Do you maybe object to the way the show depicts the antiwar movement? Do you think it’s reductive? Sure, but then there are weird hints that Mannix himself is some kind of countercultural double agent; hippies seem to recognize a kindred spirit, a fellow traveler. Does that bother you? Well, then maybe he’s not. And who says we’re supposed to sympathize with Mannix, anyway? In Season One, he beats up women, from time to time. Maybe he’s the villain. There are so many elusive, ambiguous hints about the bigger story right below the surface that you can really see anything you want when you watch it. 

We’ve kind of reached a moment in time where there is only one topic consuming everyone’s attention, and you know what it is. And that one topic elbows its way into every other topic. 

I’ve thought about what might be safe to chat about, and I’ve reached the conclusion that Mannix is really the only thing on the list. What about other TV shows? Seinfeld? Will & Grace? Hacks? You have to take a side. And you cannot ever take the “right” side emphatically enough. Just favoring a Palestinian state will never be enough for the antizionists. And just supporting Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state will never be enough for many of Israel’s most zealous supporters. 

So if someone asks me how my kids are, I won’t answer them, because their next question will probably be, “As Jewesses, do they identify as Zios? Free, free Palestine!” 

I mean, I want a free Palestine as much as the next fellow, but I also like to talk about other things sometimes. 

Like the best kind of parsley. 

But even parsley, I think, is a touchy subject: do you buy your parsley from the Jordan Valley or the Jezreel Valley? Well, what is it going to be? If I like parsley from the Jordan Valley, I’m a terrorist. If I like parsley from the Jezreel Valley, I love genocide. And if I don’t buy parsley from either the Jordan Valley or the Jezreel Valley, then I’m trying to shut my eyes to a Situation about which none of us can be neutral. If I buy my parsley from some kind of “neutral” region, then I am both a terrorist and a genocide supporter, no one will be happy. 

It’s the same thing with snow. I think the city did a pretty good job clearing the snow during the blizzards last winter. Now that I have said that, some of you think I must be an antisemite. But if I thought the city did a bad job clearing the snow, some of you would think I must be Islamophobic. So I better keep my mouth shut about the snow. On Monday of this week, a friend of mine asked me about this subject, The City and How It’s All Going, and he pretty quickly segued to his theory that Israel had planned and orchestrated the October 7 massacre as a pretext to kill Palestinians. “I don’t have any proof,” he said, “but you don’t have any proof that it didn’t happen. And it’s not antisemitic for me to say it, because I’m talking about Netanyahu, not about the Jews…. I’m not 100 percent sure, but I’m eighty percent to ninety percent sure.” 

I’d like to talk about Broadway plays I’ve seen lately — Maybe Happy Ending is great! — but if I mention Broadway, we’ll have to talk about Ali Louis Bourzgui’s acceptance speech at the Tony Awards. 

Try quoting Martin Luther King Jr. these days, try telling anyone of any political stripe that you judge someone on the content of their character, not their race or nationality, and see how that goes over. Almost no one believes that anymore. If you say you judge people on the content of their character, rather than their national origin, then you are either a terrorist or a genocide-lover, depending on who you say it to. If you point out who originally said it, you’re likely to hear an argument about whether or not MLK was an antizionist. 

Later seasons of Mannix had guest stars with whose political views about you-know-what you might disagree. So we should really limit our discussions of Mannix to Season One. 

If you (over there, on the left) get your way, if the U.S. and all the nations of the world boycott Israel, this will not result in the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state in favor of a Free and Secular Palestine led by a suddenly gentle and open-minded Hamas that respects LGBTQ+ rights, but, instead, the region will devolve to a guerrilla struggle that will dwarf the Lebanese civil war, with reciprocal terrorism and millions of refugees on both sides. When Israel-Palestine becomes a post-two-state hellscape, only the fanatics will be left behind to fight and die. The Jewish fanatics will have a nuclear bomb, and they’ll have no allies in the White House or the U.S. government anymore to keep happy. How do you think that will work out for our friends, the Palestinians?

But if you get your way (yes you, over there on the right), then we’ll have something equally ugly, a lopsided struggle that nevertheless results in many dead Israelis and Palestinians. 

The only way that this will ever be resolved is if the dwindling number of nations of the world still devoted to a two-state solution impose a border and send troops to enforce it. This is very unlikely. But there is nothing that you and I can do about it, and neither of us will teach the other anything. No bridges will be built. So is there any point in discussing it? 

I don’t want to stop talking to you guys, I don’t want a rift with any of you. We’ve known each other a long time, haven’t we? And also you; we’ve just met, but you seem perfectly nice. I’d love to chat. But not about this. Because let’s be honest: I am really not going to learn anything from you on this subject, am I? I am quite certain that you would learn something from me, if you would be willing to listen, but you are not going to listen, are you? So let’s talk about something else. And the only way to do that is to limit our topics of conversation to the first season of Mannix. I know that you can learn something from me about Mannix, and I can probably learn something from you, too.

So if you ask me about my kids, or parsley, or Broadway, or snow, or anything at all, I’ll just say, “What do you think is the best episode of the first season of Mannix?”

^^^

Steven S. Drachman is a novelist. His novels are published by a publisher.

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