The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson by Gardiner Harris

Book #100 of 2025:

No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson by Gardiner Harris

An absolutely infuriating read detailing a half-century of increasing malfeasance at the vaunted pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson. Author Gardiner Harris is an investigative journalist who’s spent years digging into these cases, but the most incredible part of the resulting exposé is how little of it represents truly breaking news. Much of this information has already been reported elsewhere; it just has somehow done minimal damage to the company’s sterling reputation.

(In fact, the one area where I’m a tad disappointed by the book is in the lack of a solid explanation for that persistent amnesia. The writer observes how J&J is still associated with nostalgic americana from its baby powder era, how the firm won widespread good will with its response to a case of Tylenol poisonings in the 1980s — voluntarily recalling millions of units and introducing new tamper-proof measures, while downplaying its own complicity in the attack — and how its influence has been known to quash or redirect negative coverage. But none of this quite accounts for the public’s seeming ability to shrug off repeated stories and lawsuits implicating the corporation.)

Seeing it all laid out here, with supporting evidence of internal memos from whistleblowers and discovery documents, is so devastating I hardly know how to summarize the matter. Over and over again, executives knew that particular drugs were harmful in the way they were being prescribed off-label, and yet continued to push those usages. Treatments that weren’t approved for children or the elderly were marketed to pediatricians and assisted living facilities, alongside lavish gifts from sales reps who were in turn openly encouraged to flout the law in their pitches. FDA directives were outright ignored when possible, or otherwise slow-walked in compliance to squeeze out more profits regardless of any identified danger. Johnson & Johnson also lobbied successfully to weaken that same federal watchdog, while using its existence to deflect in court that surely any problems would have been caught by its supposed protections.

Harris makes an early comparison to the notorious tobacco companies who misled customers about their own products for decades, and as it turns out, that’s not hyperbolic at all. The drug manufacturer likewise cultivated paid experts who could twist statistics to produce desired findings on demand and buried all the contrary studies that indicated harm. Most damningly, the conglomerate seems to have accepted death and other serious side effects for a percentage of consumers as the simple cost of doing business, recognizing that any government fine or legal settlement for wrongdoing would be vastly overshadowed by the ensuing fortune to be gained.

Individual bad actors get named, but to a certain extent, it’s really an indictment of the entire industry, if not unrestrained capitalism as a whole. There’s no easy solution to the predicament outlined here beyond asking readers to be more skeptical of what their doctors prescribe, which could obviously usher in its own set of unfortunate consequences. We want to be able to trust our physicians and believe they’ve been given reliable information on the options available for us and our loved ones — but when corporate greed takes over and infects that ecosystem, we all suffer from an ineffective regulatory state. As these pages make clear, the rot in the company culture at Johnson & Johnson has reached a critical mass that needs some sort of intervention at this point if it’s ever going to be cured.

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Babylon 5, season 5

TV #32 of 2025:

Babylon 5, season 5

The last season of this 90s sci-fi show is somehow even weaker than the previous one, although there are enough saving elements here and there that I’ll still give it a three-star rating overall. (And it is better than some of the movies, at least.) The problem is partly to do with behind-the-scenes production concerns: Babylon 5 was initially conceived as a five-year story, but when it looked like it was going to be canceled prematurely, the writers moved up their timeline and tried to hit all the plot points they wanted in a rushed season 4. Then when the series got renewed after all, they of course had to come up with a new angle of approach for this final run.

That’s an unfortunate constraint, and maybe the result is the best we could have hoped for in those circumstances. But it’s not especially satisfying to watch the nascent Interstellar Alliance struggle against poorly-developed intrigues or to see the bland telepath Byron temporarily become the series lead. I also really miss Susan Ivanova, whose actress left over a contract dispute that the scripts don’t bother to rationalize (and who is rather transparently replaced with a knockoff version of the stern brunette). At least she comes back for the finale, since that was filmed as the original intended end for season 4 before the unexpected renewal.

Individual moments save this from a complete disaster. That last episode, set 20 years ahead, is a fitting farewell to the setting and the characters, and 5×13 “The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father” intriguingly turns the recurring antagonist Bester into a genuine hero for the hour, which is the sort of structural experimentation I tend to enjoy. Meanwhile, Garibaldi’s resurgent alcoholism offers a stronger character arc for him than the brainwashing stuff it’s meant to be in response to.

But I’ve never quite managed to love this program despite watching over a hundred episodes of it now, and this concluding iteration is particularly hard to endorse. We’ll have to see if the last few films or the spinoff show Crusade do anything more for me.

This season: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Seasons ranked: 3 > 2 > 1 > 4 > 5

Movie Review: Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers (2002)

Movie #8 of 2025:

Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers (2002)

This TV movie aired four years after the end of Babylon 5, but I’ve chosen to watch it where it apparently falls in the continuity, sometime between the earlier film The River of Souls and the regular series finale. In truth, it could be watched almost anywhere, however, as it’s pretty tenuously connected to the original show. G’kar is here, but he’s literally the only returning character, and while Andreas Katsulas is fun and familiar in that role, it’s not meaningfully informed by what we’ve seen of his arc or where it ended before.

Granted, there are still Minbari and some other species we know, alongside references to the Alliance and their old enemies the Shadows, and of course the Rangers themselves were a long-running component of the television program. But this doesn’t feel much like Babylon 5, which at its heart was always about the community on that titular station and how it transformed through various emerging political crises. This is more of a standard sci-fi action piece — which isn’t inherently a bad thing, as Star Trek has repeatedly proven how a franchise can successfully launch spinoffs that differ dramatically from their roots. But the key is that the new story and characters must be interesting in their own right, and that’s where this one fails completely.

Who are these heroes? Well, the main one is Pacey’s square-jawed brother from Dawson’s Creek, and they all have a scene where they introduce themselves and their specialties on the ship he’s captaining, but they’re a fairly generic bunch overall. The plot finds them targeted by a shadowy enemy, which they defeat by first shooting at it in a really determined way and then blowing it up.

If this title had gotten higher ratings, it was intended to lead into a full sequel series, which presumably would have developed the cast and the premise a bit further. But most pilots do a better job than this at setting up their little world! This one coasts on the genre and the concepts it’s inherited, and while I don’t know if I can honestly say it’s worse than the goofy overacting in River of Souls, it’s certainly a lot less entertaining.

★★☆☆☆

Movie Review: Babylon 5: The River of Souls (1998)

Movie #7 of 2025:

Babylon 5: The River of Souls (1998)

I’ve been watching my way through the last season of Babylon 5, and the viewing guide that I’m following situates this film (and the later one The Legend of the Rangers) just before the finale. Plotwise, that checks out, as the events here do seem to take place sometime after the penultimate episode. Of course, as a result of the departures there, we’re left with a depleted cast of characters from the main ensemble: only Captain Lochley and Zach Allen still onboard the station, joined by Michael Garibaldi returning for story reasons (with a fun lampshade-hanging observation that things sure are quiet now without him, right before he arrives and the chaos kicks off).

Although the setting is familiar, it feels a bit empty compared to the usual show, which is theoretically a gap that the guest stars could fill. And on paper, they’re excellent! We’ve got Martin Sheen and Ian McShane here, before their respective lead roles on The West Wing and Deadwood but obviously both already quite talented actors. In practice, however, they’re wasted on the material, with the former delivering platitudes from under a mountain of alien prosthetics and the latter reduced to maniacal gibbering for the most part. At least Tracy Scoggins is given more to do as Lochley than she typically was on the TV series, though you can practically feel her at times wanting to utter a George Lazenby-esque “This never happened to the other fellow.”

With that being said, while I initially rolled my eyes at the subplot of her trying to oust a “holo-brothel” that’s set up shop on Babylon 5, it develops into a sharp critique of technological abuses that seems eerily prescient in the face of AI deepfakes a quarter-century later. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had a similar device that let users hook up with holographic recreations of real people without their knowledge or consent, but that always felt like a sleazy punchline to me, whereas this one is more aptly framed as a clear violation of its victims’ privacy and dignity.

Unfortunately, the primary plot angle is considerably more abstract. Remember those “soul hunters” from way back in the second episode of season one, who harvest the life essence of notable individuals (whatever that means) at the moment of death? They’re back! They apparently did their trick to an entire species at one point to save them from an impending genocide, but it turns out that those other beings were actually, whoops, on the cusp of ascending to a higher lifeform. I hate it when that happens. Luckily they really are preserved in a crystal ball thing that Sheen’s race has been hoarding, until McShane steals it and figures out how to open up a conduit.

None of this is great writing, and even at the story’s best, the intrusions from another dimension wreaking havoc on ours play out as a basic repeat of the earlier B5 movie Thirdspace. There’s maybe a common thematic thread with the brothel stuff on the importance of personal agency — of asking for somebody’s permission before either copying their likeness as your digital plaything or using your sci-fi witchcraft to decide they’re better off frozen in stasis rather than facing their apparent doom — but it’s a pretty weak effort overall.

Oh — and some hokey lawyer jokes, too. I guess the future’s not so different after all.

★★☆☆☆

Book Review: Death at the White Hart by Chris Chibnall

Book #99 of 2025:

Death at the White Hart by Chris Chibnall

This 2025 title is the debut novel of author Chris Chibnall, better known as the former showrunner behind Doctor Who and — more relevant here — Broadchurch. Like the latter show, it’s a murder mystery set in a coastal English village and investigated by the local police, one of whom is a bigshot new arrival who clashes with some of the colorful personalities around town. From there the two stories diverge, with the scenario veering more towards the macabre nature of something like True Detective: the corpse of a pub-owner found naked and bound to a chair in the middle of a quiet country road, with two deer antlers affixed to his head. Similar ritualistic killings were reported in the area a century ago — so is it the work of a resurgent cult, a cover for the organized crime ring the victim was apparently involved with, or a more directly personal slaying?

The writer can spin out a tale, although the number of viewpoint characters is perhaps a bit much. (The main protagonist is the primary detective on the case, but no fewer than eight other POVs pop up for at least a chapter or two before the end.) I’m also disappointed by the eventual solution, just as I was with Broadchurch, because once again, Chibnall has neglected to layer in the clues that would allow us to actually solve the matter for ourselves ahead of / alongside the investigators. Instead, the heroine has a stroke of insight about a possible motive, searches for evidence to confirm her suspicions, and then goes to successfully confront the suspect.

(That individual, who otherwise carefully planned out the perfect crime, somehow forgot to wear gloves, you see. It’s a particularly irritating resolution since it suggests that if the coppers had simply done their due diligence and dusted for fingerprints at the start, the whole plot could have been avoided.)

But it’s engaging enough as an atmospheric and character-driven police procedural, I suppose, and it even has series potential despite being marketed as a standalone for now. I’m not sure I’d be in a hurry to come back for any sequels, though.

[Content warning for domestic abuse, alcohol abuse, deadnaming, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: A Burning in the Bones by Scott Reintgen

Book #98 of 2025:

A Burning in the Bones by Scott Reintgen (Waxways #3)

This loose fantasy trilogy has offered diminishing returns for me as a reader, and this final volume again fails to reach the propulsive heights of its survival horror debut. Instead we have more of the generic political intrigues from the second novel — but with less interesting of a villain — along with a plague outbreak and some twists that come out of nowhere and thus aren’t especially satisfying.

There’s also a new viewpoint protagonist, although I don’t mind her so much, since she’s a medical wizard investigating the strange new disease. It makes sense to retain our original heroine too, as she’s still navigating the big secret she’s keeping from her love interest and the ramifications of their actions in the previous books. But there’s little benefit to bringing back the secondary lead from the middle story, whose prior motivation is soon rendered meaningless and not really replaced with anything more compelling.

This title does have isolated moments that I’ve enjoyed, like when the heroes confront one antagonist only to realize he’s not the one pulling the strings after all, but it’s too long and too dull throughout to be effective overall. I’m not even sure I’d recommend the first book at this point, now that I know this is how the series ends.

[Content warning for gore.]

This volume: ★★☆☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Volumes ranked: 1 > 2 > 3

TV Review: Reservation Dogs, season 2

TV #31 of 2025:

Reservation Dogs, season 2

Still looser in its plotting than I’d ideally prefer, which is especially a gamble with such a short season. Two episodes this year ditch the main cast almost entirely to develop peripheral figures in the ensemble, to somewhat mixed effect. (The rez aunties cutting loose at a weekend conference in 2×5 “Wide Net” offers both a distinctive premise and nice insight into their characters and the wider community dynamic. Big’s psychedelic adventure in 2×8 “This Is Where the Plot Thickens,” on the other hand, feels pretty extraneous to me.) It’s the kind of structural departure you can more easily get away with in a longer run of stories, but here it risks seriously shortchanging the protagonists’ personal arcs.

Luckily there’s enough movement on that front to mostly make up for it. As expected, Elora doesn’t stay gone for good, and her experiences on the road with Jackie bring the two girls together in a fun way that shatters the previous clique boundaries, Freaks and Geeks-style. That frustrates and alienates Bear and Willie Jack, which provides some solid tension for the ensuing plots around them as the friends continue to miss Daniel and dream of leaving the reservation. And of course, the whole show remains committed to showcasing a quintessentially Native American experience, with the specific details that ground that perspective continually proving to be a source of great humor.

With only ten half-hour installments left in the series, I suspect that I’m going to be rather unsatisfied by a lack of closure in the end, much like I couldn’t quite find the necessary foundation to share the group’s apparent catharsis in the closing scene of this finale. But for now at least, the production stays a cut above average overall. I give this sophomore season three-and-a-half stars, rounded up.

★★★★☆

Book Review: Doctor Who: Spectral Scream by Hannah Fergesen

Book #97 of 2025:

Doctor Who: Spectral Scream by Hannah Fergesen

This Doctor Who novel was released a few days before the end of the most recent season of the show, so as expected, it doesn’t take any events from the last few episodes into consideration. Instead it appears to be set sometime between 2×2 Lux and 2×6 The Interstellar Song Contest, when Belinda Chandra is traveling with the Fifteenth Doctor as he sets up vindicator beacons throughout time and space to chart a course back to her parents and nursing job on contemporary earth.

The best parts of the story come early, giving us additional insight into that character’s state of mind at this stage of her journey: anxious to return home, but gradually warming towards the Doctor and thrilling at the dangerous wonders of the universe that he’s been showing her. In my opinion, we didn’t get to see enough of that aspect of her development on-screen, and so this volume helps flesh out her transition from reluctant TARDIS passenger to full-on Time Lord companion. I also like the moment when she sees a woman across the room who looks startlingly like her neighbor Mrs. Flood, but then dismisses the resemblance and never mentions it — a cheeky way to tie in that element of the larger plot arc for the year without introducing any major spoilers or pesky continuity errors over who knew what information when.

Unfortunately, the rest of the tale that follows isn’t nearly as noteworthy. The protagonists trace a psychic call for help to a dying sentient ship, stolen and marooned a century earlier by its builders after they learned their empire was planning to use its technology for conquest. Now the surviving thieves and their descendants are in trouble, and the heroes have to scramble to outwit the imperial agents and bounty hunters who have likewise traced the signal. As I often find myself saying about this kind of media tie-in book, it’s not bad, but it’s not really taking full advantage of the chance to do something spectacular with the franchise, either.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby

Book #96 of 2025:

King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby

Another excellent slice of southern crime fiction from author S. A. Cosby, this time riffing rather obviously off The Godfather: an adult son comes home and gets increasingly involved in the local criminal activity, despite people repeatedly cautioning him that he could do so much more with his college education. It’s not the family business that he’s taking over — that would be his estranged father’s crematorium that gives the novel its name — but he’s got a weak brother who’s in over his head with a few area gangsters, and the protagonist is clever and tough enough to ingratiate himself with them and begin tearing apart their organization from the inside. Meanwhile the shadow of town gossip hangs over the plot, as everyone assumes that the man’s mother, who disappeared when he was a teenager, was murdered by her husband and conveniently burned up in the very incinerator he’s now using to hide bodies for the gang.

I’ve really enjoyed this story, especially for the majority-Black characters and the rural Virginia setting (which includes a few cameo connections to some of the writer’s previous work, as a treat for returning readers). There’s a Shakespearean sort of arc here, and fewer of the gimmicky twists or heavy themes that sometimes mar this genre for me. I would call it a must-read for fans, and not a bad Cosby title to start with, either.

[Content warning for gun violence and gore.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

Book #95 of 2025:

Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

An intentionally-provocative political treatise that attempts to diagnose from the center-left why modern America seems to underperform in arenas from housing to manufacturing to scientific innovation. I would say it’s written primarily for Democratic-leaning readers who are open to intra-party criticism, as authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson are frank in their analysis that liberal movements and politicians of recent decades have — with all the best of intentions — introduced bottlenecks that are now curtailing significant progress to their own professed goals. Oftentimes, these take the form of regulations that may have outlived their usefulness, or perhaps were not considered in their aggregate effect alongside other measures. Requiring builders to file onerous amounts of paperwork before breaking ground or scientists to spend more time on grant applications than actual research ends up stifling growth, thereby alienating prospective voters and opening the door to bad-faith attacks from conservatives who allege that government as a whole is inefficient and can be adequately replaced by free-market solutions.

The cowriters believe in big government, and they extol a few cases where public works were completed rapidly on a scale that industry alone could not have achieved, like the development of successful COVID-19 vaccines or an emergency road repair in Pennsylvania following a disaster. What sets those efforts apart from most projects, they suggest, is that the normal restrictive procedures were set aside, allowing participants to more efficiently pursue their missions according to their own expertise without having to align at every step with the conventional roadmap and all its careful checkboxes.

The name of the game is abundance, because the recommendation here is that Democrats should act in such a way as to boost the supply of the things we claim to care about. Are regions like California facing a housing crisis? Get on board with the YIMBY (“yes in my backyard”) agenda and loosen local zoning requirements that make it so hard to build there. Want scientific breakthroughs like a cure for cancer? Incentivize underexplored research domains, rather than prioritizing studies that are deemed more likely to succeed but would only yield a trivial improvement over the status quo. And so on.

My problem with this is twofold. First, it’s not always clear that the separate topics the authors raise naturally belong together under a common banner that a deregulatory platform would address. (They note at one point that our homegrown technical innovations aren’t widely adopted by domestic businesses, for instance, but the legal mechanisms to encourage that behavior seem very different from those that would cut red tape elsewhere.) Although Klein and Thompson complain that politics is dominated by lawyers who default to a legalistic mindset of perfecting process over measuring results, they appear equally guilty of asserting without much evidence that their one-size-fits-all approach would save the day.

The second issue is that the book plays coy about just what regulations should be repealed under this new paradigm. It’s easy to say en masse that today’s laws are a vestigial solution to yesterday’s troubles or that the party is too beholden to special interest groups, but what specifically needs to go? What safeguards against cronyism or environmental destruction or union-busting or bias in hiring aren’t relevant anymore, and how do we ensure that those impacts remain blunted if we get rid of the legacy infrastructure doing the blunting? Is sheer abundance worth it at the cost of accepting for example that fewer women will be hired or construction projects might be more harmful to the environment going forward?

So I’m not necessarily convinced by the argument here, despite considering myself in the YIMBY camp overall. But it’s an interesting and quick read that seems to be succeeding in its aim to start a conversation, at least if my Twitter feed is any indication.

★★★☆☆