Grey's Anatomy is bringing back a fan favourite for season 14. Deadline reports that Kim Raver will return to the ABC medical drama as Dr Teddy Altman for a guest arc on the upcoming season, although it's not yet clear what her storyline will be. Dr Altman was last seen in the season eight finale when she was fired from Seattle Grace by her crush Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd) for a good reason as it allowed her to take her dream job at MEDCOM. ABC Advertisement - Continue Reading Below It wasn't the last we heard of her though, as Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) spoke to her on the phone in season 13 when Owen's presumed dead sister was treated at Altman's hospital. Raver will also be seen in the fifth season of Ray Donovan in a recurring role as a surgeon. Grey's Anatomy fans were left relieved, but sad, when the season 13 finale last month saw series regular Jerrika Hinton leave her role as Dr Stephanie Edwards after five seasons on the show. Kelsey McNeal/ABC via Getty Images The dramatic season finale saw Dr Edwards perform surgery on the leg of a young girl as they attempted to escape … Continue reading →

Anatomy of a Suicide looks at three generations of women in various phases of mental collapse. They line up on a stage that resembles a grey dungeon while sad events unfold around them. The first woman gets pregnant. The second takes heroin. The third argues with a lesbian about a fish. Their lives span several decades but their stories are presented simultaneously, and this tripartite method conceals the plain fact that the events dramatised are too flimsy to merit theatrical portrayal. A soap opera would baulk at such scenes: a druggie teenager bores a cameraman with a list of gloomy soundbites; a female wedding guest is partially seduced by a giggling gatecrasher; a patient in a hospital invites a nurse to eat some haddock. Writer Alice Birch aims her characterisation at the chicklit crowd. All the females are sympathetic because theyre lost, miserable and a bit whiney. The males are uniformly horrible, aggressive, sentimental boors. With one exception: a black male character who seems so sweet and intelligent that he might be an honorary woman. Each change of scene involves a flash of lesbian titillation. The actresses are stripped to their bikinis by stage hands who pass them fresh costumes … Continue reading →

The leadership campaign, especially the first one, and the general election campaign weve just had, are expressions of the same phenomenon but there are distinct features of each. I think there was a tendency among political commentators to regard what happened in 2015 in the Labour Party as if it was a political nervous breakdown, as if everybody in the Labour Party had lost their minds, or it was a takeover of the party by entryists. There was no evidence for a takeover, because there werent enough people who came into the Labour Party to outnumber existing members anyway, but the first one persisted. There was this sense that there may be an anti-austerity movement and an antiwar movement that animated people on the left, but this is restricted to a tiny group of people. I remember seeing Julia Hartley-Brewer on Sky News saying everybody who would vote for Jeremy Corbyn was already a member of the Labour Party, this is when we had about five hundred thousand people in the Labour Party. The general election has completely destroyed that idea. Political analysts, right up even to professors, looked at the Labour Party as if it was some kind of … Continue reading →

Police patrol the scene at Eugene Simpson Stadium Park following a mass shooting in Alexandria, Virginia, June 14, 2017. (Photo: Al Drago / The New York Times) In the immediate aftermath of theAlexandria shootingon June 14, theNew York TimesandVice Newsjoined therising chorusofright-wingoutragewith two pieces denouncing growing "left-wing extremism." They failed to mention, of course, therising tideofbloodsheddue to attacks byfar-right activistsbeforeandsinceTrump's inauguration, the current president'sownendorsementofviolenceon thecampaign trailor the long history of right-wing forces urging their followers to embraceSecond Amendmentremediesas a solution to politics they oppose. On the surface, these shoddy pieces seem driven by a desire for hits, but lurking behind these words is the very real possibility of a new political panic targeting US progressive and left organizing and action. Throughout US history, the forces of the left have suffered from numerous political purges, usually referred to as panics or scares, each of which were incited by incidents like the Scalise shooting. The first example was thesuppression of the US Socialist Party and the Industrial Workers of the Worldfor their opposition to US participation in the First World War in the First Red Scare. This position was hardly unique to the left, withantiwar sentiment enjoying broadsupportin US society. The Wilson … Continue reading →