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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23 , 2021. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/STYLE EZ RE K C

MUSIC REVIEW

Proper, Glass Beach and

Home Is Where provide a

a treat for emo fans at

D.C.’s Pie Shop. C2

BOOK WORLD

In “New York, My Village,”

the long shadow of

Nigeria’s civil war is

impossible to escape. C3

EDDIE REDMAYNE

The star of “The Danish

Girl” says he wouldn’t take

the Oscar-nominated role

if it were offered now. C4

CAROLYN HAX

When writing to a

terminally ill

acquaintance, try not

to overthink it. C8

ILLUSTRATION BY JULIA TERBROCK/THE WASHINGTON POST/ISTOCK IMAGES

The mall:

Maybe not

as dead as

they said?

In King of Prussia’s retail expanse,

shoppers still get what they desire

BY INKOO KANG

This piece contains heavy

spoilers for the sixth episode of the

current season of “Succession.”

“Succession” creator Jesse

Armstrong has often downplayed

the influence of the Murdochs on

his fictional plutocratic clan, the

Roys. Similar to but not exactly

like their real-life counterparts,

the Roys comprise an octogenari-

an media mogul in ill health and

his four adult children, the

youngest three of whom have vied

for years to be eventually handed

control of the family company.

Armstrong, who once wrote a

screenplay titled “Murdoch,” has

insisted that for “Succession,” he

and his writers have taken inspi-

ration from a wide array of mod-

ern-day dynasties, including the

Hearsts, the Redstones, the Mer-

cers, the Maxwells (as in Robert

and Ghislaine) and the Windsors.

But the hard-to-categorize

HBO series (I’m currently going

with “dramatic farce”) delivered

the best episode of the season

thus far — and one of its greatest

installments ever — on Sunday by

leaning hard into the Murdoch

comparison.

Mostly set at a secretive Repub-

lican gathering, “What It Takes,”

the sixth episode of the third

season, finds its well-connected,

influential attendees choosing

the next GOP presidential candi-

date, and thus quite possibly the

next leader of the free world. And

because Roy patriarch Logan

(Brian Cox) owns a Fox News-like

conservative cable network called

ATN, the event is functionally an

audition to see which of the con-

tenders will most impress the

habitually unimpressible king-

maker.

“It’s one of those things where,

even if it isn’t real, there’s a reason

it feels like it is,” says Logan’s

assistant Kerry (Zoë Winters) in

“What It Takes.” She’s referring to

a rumor that a deputy attorney

general has it in for Logan in the

Department of Justice’s investiga-

tion into wrongdoings at his com-

pany, Waystar Royco. But the

statement could just as well be

about the episode itself, in partic-

ular the outsize power that Logan

SEE NOTEBOOK ON C3

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK

Roys step

up efforts

to outfox

one another

‘Succession’ episode

evoking Trump and the

alt-right is season's best

BY KAREN HELLER

IN KING OF PRUSSIA, PA.

G

reetings one and all from the hori-

zontal cathedral of American con-

sumption, the vast labyrinth of stuff.

How are things at the mall during

our first vaccinated, second covid

holiday season, now with the bonus agita of

inflation, supply-chain trauma and employ-

ment woes?

Downright fa la la la lavish.

’Tis the season to be malling. Despite con-

sumers claiming that they’re anxious about

vertiginous prices, they’re shopping as though

they’re not. Retail sales rose 1.7 percent in

October, in advance of our annual two-month

shopandonza. Also, it depends on which mall

you’re asking. Malls are graded from D to A++.

D malls are moribund, zombies. So, it turns out,

are C and B ones.

Malls have been withering since the dawn of

the millennium. Online retail hastened mat-

ters, and covid proved to be an extraordinary

accelerant. Of the nation’s approximately 1,000

malls, half will be stick-a-fork-in-it dead in five

to six years, says Columbia University retail

professor Mark Cohen. Why would consumers

settle for a carcass when they can feast on an

A++ mall?

If there’s hope for any American mall it’s the

30 that are best in class, and they’re ka-ching-

ing. With 450 stores across the equivalent of 46

football fields in suburban Philadelphia, K of P

is the largest mall on the East Coast, what

Cohen deems “the shiniest, brightest penny.”

Which is how three friends and medical

coder co-workers Deb Gentile, Penny Harmon

and Tina George came to be at the mall two

weeks shy of Black Friday. They’re ecstatic,

giddy, snapping selfies, having traveled 150

miles and 2^1 / 2 hours east by bus from Franklin

County to finally shop in person. They’re on a

malliday.

“I’m here so I can see things. So I can touch it

and see it,” says Harmon, 62.

We’ve been on a diet of sensory underload.

After 20 months of 2-D shopping that engages

only our sense of sight, through photos lit

just-so, Harmon can finally smell the choco-

late, grasp the sneakers, stroke the cashmere,

this being the cashmeriest of seasons.

“We’ve been cooped up and want to socialize.

We want to be entertained,” says retail analyst

Michael Dart. “There’s nostalgia and desire to

do an activity we have long taken for granted.

There’s now novelty to going to the mall.”

We’re surprisingly nostalgic about malls,

too, in a mid-’80s kind of way. They feature

prominently in “Wonder Woman 1984” and the

SEE MALLS ON C3

BY CHRIS RICHARDS

How’s this for an awards show

magic trick? Questlove plays E.U.’s

“Da Butt” while DJing at the Os-

cars back in March, then Glenn

Close rises from her seat to shake

hers, and presto, the Recording

Academy decides that it will final-

ly recognize go-go music at its

64th annual Grammy Awards in

January.

That isn’t exactly how it went

down, but Close and Questlove

definitely helped. Truth is that

go-go — Washington’s indig-

enous, indefatigable dialect of

Black dance music — had already

made plenty of national headlines

in 2019 with the go-go communi-

ty’s public outcry against gentrifi-

cation in the District, popularized

on social media as the

#DontMute DC movement, and

now with this Oscars thing, the

music was fresh on the hivemind

of the Grammy electorate once

again.

So when members of the Re-

cording Academy convened for a

big Zoom meeting back in April,

Kokayi, a District-raised rapper

SEE GO-GO ON C2

Grammy reclassification may help go-go bust loose

MARVIN JOSEPH/THE WASHINGTON POST

Kokayi, a D.C. rapper and Recording Academy member, spearheaded the effort to move go-go from

the R&B category, where it competes with some of the biggest names in music, to regional roots.

BY JEREMY BARR

Two longtime Fox News com-
mentators, Jonah Goldberg and
Stephen Hayes, have cut ties with
the cable news giant over a recent
documentary series that cast
doubt about whether a violent
insurrection really occurred on
Jan 6.
The “Patriot Purge” series,
which aired this month on the
Fox Nation streaming service,
featured several rioters who float-
ed an unfounded conspiracy the-
ory that the federal government
facilitated the storming of the
U.S. Capitol to entrap supporters
of Donald Trump.
Fox News’s decision to air the
series drew bipartisan backlash
— and it was the final straw for
Goldberg and Hayes, they said.
The series “is a collection of
incoherent conspiracy-monger-
ing, riddled with factual inaccu-
racies, half-truths, deceptive im-
agery, and damning omissions,”
Goldberg and Hayes wrote in a
blog post on Sunday night, con-

cluding that “the voices of the

responsible are being drowned

out by the irresponsible” at Fox

News.

Goldberg and Hayes joined Fox

in 2009 as paid contributors,

appearing regularly to offer com-

mentary and analysis, but their

role in the broader media ecosys-

tem — and their positioning on

the network’s ideological spec-

trum — had changed in the inter-

vening years.

After lengthy careers in con-

servative media — Goldberg

spent 21 years at National Review,

and Hayes served as the top

editor at the Weekly Standard —

they emerged as critics of Trump

and found themselves on a small

island with other conservative

dissenters during his administra-

tion. They joined forces in 2019

and started the Dispatch, a digital

news and commentary site that

approaches national politics

from a center-right perspective.

But that willingness to criticize

Trump put them at odds with

SEE FOX NEWS ON C4

Fox News documentary

prompts pundits to quit