Before we get into this week’s writing: I’m starting an email newsletter! It’ll feature links to my work, links to other writing I admire, but, more specifically, it’ll feature essays about TV and a range of other subjects that don’t make it into the pages of DearTV. If you’re interested, subscribe here. The first installment ought to hit the stands next week.

Meanwhile, in this week’s Dear Television, I wrote about The Americans, Showtime’s hammy Billions, and how unusual it is for series of this era to think about marital fidelity.

“It’s easy to show why the relationship between a faithful partner and a cheating partner is complex. It’s much more difficult to show why and how a marriage is complex if nobody is cuckolding anybody else. There are ways of being faithful that are more interesting than the well-trod plot points of a marriage undone by infidelity. And there are other ways to be unfaithful that don’t involve hookers or handsome young men at the country club. Don’t get me wrong, Billions isn’t going to win any Peabody Awards, but it’s managed to become one of the most vital — or at least imaginative — shows about marriage on TV.”

“High Fidelity: The Marriages of Billions and The Americans“