Olga L. is currently reading Beautyland

"I avoided "Difficult Men" for a while because I was living and attempting to work in the tail end of the era discussed in this book. I started working in television as some descendants of the "difficult men" prestige dramas were still in their prime: shows such as "Better Call Saul," "Fargo," and "Ozark" were still adding to the legend of the era that lasted, roughly, from the day "The Sopranos" premiered until the day "Better Call Saul" ended.

These shows inspired me (and a whole lot of other people) to write for TV. However, the only staffing opportunity I got in this era was on a female driven genre show (a good one that I enjoyed working on), and my assistant work ended up being primarily on network female soaps or cable teen-focused dramas, so, I ultimately did not get to participate in the television movement that convinced me move to LA.

Though we are a quarter of a century removed from the debut of "The Sopranos," we are still in the shadow cast by it and the shows it claims as direct antecedents: "Mad Men," "Breaking Bad," and "The Shield." However, the economics of TV have shifted as cable has all-but died and streaming has proven to be either a broken or incomplete business model depending on who you ask. This is not to say that we won't have shows the quality of "Mad Men" again but just that these shows rose out of particular economic conditions and those conditions have changed.

Brett Martin does a great job of laying out those particular economic and creative conditions in "Difficult Men." For example, he explains how a mix of film school influence and broadcast TV experience created the best writers of TVs "third golden age," he explains why HBO, AMC, and FX were positioned to create prestige television, and he explains the financial incentives that kept it going or brought it into decline at each particular buyer. Though he sometimes performs apologetics for the bad behavior of writers with asshole tendencies and his adoration for TV of this style and era verges on hagiography, I think this text is still an essential history of that era of television.

If there is a lesson to be learned in "Difficult Men" other than "asshole behavior looks worse as time goes on and your star fades, and it will damage your legacy," (specifically with regard to the behavior of David Milch) it is that artists cannot dictate the economic and creative demands of a moment. "The Sopranos," "Breaking Bad," and "Mad Men" were designed to take advantage of a particular set of incentives that existed at a particular moment and would not have been aired in a different time and place. So rather than setting out to write your "Mad Men," you would do better to look at how excellent art was created to thrive in particular ecosystem, and ask yourself what is working in the current ecosystem.

And when you figure it out, let me know! "