races, but nobody really wants 
to talk about it. As school board 
member 
Dr. 
Jackie 
Moore 

points out, “If you’re feeling 
as though you can’t be honest 
or you’re afraid to say what 
you’re feeling because there’s a 
camera there and we’re talking 
about race, what camera’s in 
your head when you’re going 
through your day?”

While the adults in power 

may not be willing to talk 
about race or the role it plays 
in everyday life, the students 
of O.P.R.F. certainly have a 
lot to say. The series excels in 
showing the parallel between 
Black students who deal with 
disadvantages related to their 
race and the normal, awkward 
adolescent experience of going 
to high school. In one scene, 
sophomore Tiara is shown 
talking about the pressures of 
living with her sister. Tiara’s 
sister has a son at O.P.R.F. 
whom the school has essentially 
given up on. She says her sister 
wants her to succeed more than 
anything because she could not 
get her son to do the same. Not 
soon after this, Tiara is seen 
auditioning for the choir, and 
then jumping up and down in 
the hallway because the boy 
she auditioned in front of has 
been her crush since seventh 
grade.

Little moments like these 

are 
why 
the 
documentary 

is 
so 
effective. 
It 
shows 

how although O.P.R.F. isn’t 
necessarily 
separate: 
The 

students 
are 
anything 
but 

equal. At school, the only thing 
white students have to worry 

about is a quiz they have coming 
up or running into their crush 
or what friend to sit with in 
class. Black students are faced 
with all of this, along with the 
added pressure of being treated 
differently due to the color of 
their skin and what that has 
meant for them for years. Race 
is ingrained in every aspect of 
O.P.R.F., and one teacher points 
out that “no space in this school 
is race neutral.” Some instances 
are more ingrained, such as the 
tendencies of kids of the same 

race to sit with each other in 
the cafeteria. Others appear to 
be blatant racism. In one scene, 
a school administrator explains 
how 
the 
primarily 
Black 

cheerleading squad has to 
perform on the edge of the field 
while the mostly white drill 
team does their routine front 
and center. As junior Charles 
points out with frustration: 
“Everything is made for white 
kids, because this school was 
made for white kids, because 
this country was made for 
white kids.”

“America to Me” tells the 

story 
of 
a 
racist 
America 

through young voices that are 
too often belittled and ignored. 
These high schoolers have no 
problem telling America that 
they feel as if they don’t belong. 
O.P.R.F. may just be one high 
school, but it is reflective of 
something much bigger. Even 
integrated, progressive schools 
are struggling to provide an 
equal 
experience 
for 
their 

Black and white students. The 
first step to addressing the 
problem is talking about it, 
something that clearly many 
people do not want to do. 
“America to Me” is pushing that 
conversation forward, forcing 
both the people at O.P.R.F. and 
the audience watching them 
to listen to a discussion about 
race and go on to start one 
themselves.

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ACROSS
1 Seething
6 Jaguar weapons
11 Half a dance
14 Stinger ingredient
15 Superman player 
Cavill
16 “The Last Jedi” 
villain Kylo
17 Alpine airs
18 Broken out, in 
a way
19 Days gone by, in 
days gone by
20 Capital on the 
Volga
21 Suppress, as a 
story
22 Punching tools
23 Suffix with fruct-
24 Hall of Fame 
manager Stengel
25 Sal of “Exodus”
26 Waters down
28 Taiwanese PC 
brand
29 Rita awarded 
the Presidential 
Medal of 
Freedom
30 Hankering
32 Depilatory cream
34 Historic span: 
Abbr.
35 Impediment 
to creativity ... 
and each set of 
puzzle circles
38 Big letters in 
family-owned 
supermarkets
40 Troubadour’s 
strings
41 Uncle __
42 Codes of conduct
44 Christian with 
style
46 Venerated one
50 Adorkable types
51 Lets off steam
52 JFK posting
53 “Psych” finale?
54 Is after
55 Field mice
57 Area 51 craft
58 Singer with 
Lawrence
59 Accept, with “for”
60 Greek org.
61 Lyft passenger
62 Difficult tasks
63 Hosp. parts
64 Mideast bigwigs
65 Will Rogers prop

DOWN
1 Work up
2 Risky proposition

3 Turow 
biographical title
4 Not working
5 Fleur-de-__: 
Quebec flag 
image
6 Poolside chair
7 Debate 
equipment
8 Get under one’s 
skin
9 Small songbird
10 Letters on a 
Qantas baggage 
tag
11 Like many tees
12 Greek
13 “... et cetera”
14 How some tickets 
may be sorted
21 Scented pouch
22 Put on
24 Plant in many 
Road Runner 
cartoons
25 Dunderhead
27 What Marcie calls 
Peppermint Patty
29 Distance runners
31 Cultivates
33 Monastic figures
35 Golden State 
team
36 Christ the __: Rio 
landmark

37 Crime show with 
several spin-offs
38 “You obviously 
can’t depend on 
me”
39 Fetches
43 Most junk mail
45 Comic book 
personnel
47 Change symbols, 
in math
48 Opera with 
Desdemona

49 Alters with a light 
touch?
51 48-Down 
composer
54 “__ told”: 
“That’s the 
rumor”
55 Designer Wang
56 Name in boxy 
cars?
58 Higher ed. test
59 Cardinal’s 
letters

By Jeffrey Wechsler
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/06/18

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

09/06/18

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Thursday, September 6, 2018

Among the many fans of 

Tom 
Clancy’s 
best-selling 

“Jack 
Ryan” 
novels 
was 

Ronald Reagan, who called 
the first of the spy thriller 
series “unputdownable.” “Tom 
Clancy’s Jack Ryan,” Amazon 
Video’s 
new 
eight-episode 

addition to the franchise is 
— sorry, Mr. Reagan — quite 
putdownable. That’s not to say it 
isn’t occasionally entertaining. 
It has its moments. But too 
often, “Jack Ryan” lapses into 
stale, passé story patterns that 
leave it struggling to breathe 
life into a tired genre.

In his decades of book and 

on-screen 
appearances, 
the 

character Jack Ryan has been 
on the receiving end of dozens 
of Bond-like reincarnations and 
reinventions. Alec Baldwin’s 
Jack Ryan was a wide-eyed, 
brainy type; Harrison Ford’s 
a gruff, seasoned hothead. 
He’s been a history professor 
and a Wall Street banker and 
President of the United States. 
But in every iteration he’s the 
reluctant hero, the sort who 
has greatness thrust upon him. 
“I’m just an analyst. I write 
reports!” Ryan pleas, usually 
before 
being 
tasked 
with 

resolving all sorts of absurd, 
world-ending 
plots 
— 
like 

extremists taking advantage 
of a power vacuum in Iraq 
or Kremlin interference at 
the highest levels of the US 
government (OK, maybe not 
that absurd).

The 
small 
screen 
Jack 

Ryan (John Krasinski, “The 
Office”) 
keeps 
squarely 
in 

that tradition. He’s a CIA 

analyst on a counterterrorism 
team 
reviewing 
suspicious 

financial transactions — and 
presumably, writing reports — 
when he stumbles on a lead that 
takes him directly to Mousa bin 
Suleiman (Ali Suliman, “The 
Looming Tower”), a Syrian 
jihadist thought to be the next 
bin Laden. Under the guidance 

of his new section chief James 
Greer (Wendell Pierce, “The 
Wire”), Ryan is — as Jack Ryan 
is wont to be — hesitantly 
dragged into a chase that takes 
him from his humble desk at 
Langley to field missions in the 
slums of Paris and Yemen.

Krasinski’s 
Ryan 
is 

convincing, muscled and stoic, 
of course, but with an easiness 
and boyish charm that earn him 
the 
moniker 
“self-righteous 

Boy 
Scout” 
in 
the 
show’s 

pilot. Morality, unfortunately, 
does not a personality make 
— more often than not, Jack 
fails to come across as real or 
lived-in. At times, he’s saddled 
with lines so groan-worthy it 
wouldn’t feel particularly out 
of place for Krasinski to turn 
and flash a stare at the camera 
à la Jim Halpert, as if to say, 
“You see what I have to deal 
with here?”

He’s dealing with a lot. 

Pierce’s 
pitch-perfect 
Greer 

aside, 
Krasinski 
has 
little 

chemistry with his co-stars, 

least of all with Abbie Cornish 
(“Three 
Billboards 
Outside 

Ebbing, Missouri”) as Dr. Cathy 
Mueller, Ryan’s vanilla love 
interest. And the story, though 
well-paced, is little more than 
another regurgitation of every 
spy thriller released in the last 
10 years. The extensive focus 
on Suleiman and on telling the 
story of his upbringing and 
radicalization seem designed 
to pre-empt any criticism of the 
show’s depictions of terrorists. 
But it’s still not enough to 
provoke thought or add needed 
nuance.

And given all the opportunity 

for 
real 
complexity 
and 

excitement the spy thriller 
provides, it’s almost puzzling 
that 
a 
streaming 
service 

with no shortage of money 
could produce such ordinary 
television. A far cry from 
the twisty, thoughtful cable 
dramas that have dealt with 
espionage 
in 
recent 
years, 

“Jack 
Ryan” 
more 
closely 

resembles a mid-aughts CBS 
procedural or Fox’s miserable, 
jingoistic “24.” There is none 
of the rewarding slow burn 
or 
meticulousness 
of 
early 

“Homeland,” nothing close to 
the delicate psychological study 
that was “The Americans.” 
Even the action sequences feel 
straight out of a Michael Bay 
(“Transformers”) film, cheap 
and gratuitous — to be fair, 
Michael Bay is, in fact, one of 
the show’s producers.

What’s the use in watching, 

anyway? We know how this 
ends — neatly black and white. 
The bad terrorists lose, the 
handsome 
good 
guys 
with 

guns win and our exceptional 
country lives to see another 
day. It’s no wonder Reagan 
liked Jack Ryan so much.

Amazon’s ‘Jack Ryan’ is a 
not-so-thrilling thriller

“America to Me” 

tells the story of 

a racist America 

through young 

voices that are too 

often belittled and 

ignored

MAITREYI ANANTHRAMAN

Daily Arts Writer

“Tom Clancy’s 

Jack Ryan”

Amazon Video

Season 1

America is in the midst 

of 
an 
identity 
crisis. 
A 

nation 
supposedly 
built 
on 

a 
foundation 
of 
equality, 

acceptance and opportunity is 
currently masked 
by the ugly light 
of hate, bigotry 
and hopelessness. 
Pop 
culture 
is 

attempting 
to 

help 
Americans 

understand what is happening 
to their country. Sacha Baron 
Cohen tries to expose the ugly 
underbelly 
of 
contemporary 

America with his new HBO 
series titled “Who is America?,” 
in which he disguises himself 
to ask politicians, public figures 
and 
everyday 
Americans 

about 
their 
often 
insulting 

or ridiculous views. Rapper 
Childish 
Gambino 
offers 
a 

response to Cohen’s titular 
question with the song “This 
is America,” a song whose 

video artfully examines the 
problems that Black people face 
in America.

“America to Me” offers a 

more personalized commentary 
than either of these, and it 
is not shy in proclaiming its 
purpose. At the end of Starz’s 
10-part docuseries, “America 
to Me,” a short excerpt from a 

Langston Hughes 
poem 
fills 
up 

the 
screen. 

“O, yes, I say it 
plain,” it begins. 
“America 
never 

was, 
America 

to me, And yet I swear this 
oath — America will be!” 
Hughes, a Black writer and 
activist who was a leader of the 
Harlem Renaissance, is talking 
about how he feels as if he is 
a stranger living in his own 
country. America is supposed 
to be a place where anybody 
can succeed, yet as a Black man, 
Hughes does not feel like he is 
enjoying the benefits of living 
in America — at least not yet.

It is the perfect sentiment 

to end the premiere episode of 

“America to Me,” a series that 
for one school year followed 
students attending Oak Park 
and River Forest High School 
(O.P.R.F.) in suburban Chicago. 
In an area that the series makes 
a point of telling viewers is 
young and liberal, O.P.R.F. 
appears to be a diverse school 
succeeding in addressing and 
highlighting 
that 
diversity. 

The school is 55-percent white 
and 
27-percent 
Black, 
and 

through research and meetings 
the administration seems to 
recognize disparities between 
their Black and white students 
and want to repair them. None 
of the administration will talk 
to the filmmakers about that 
research, and director Steve 
James (“Hoop Dreams”) tells 
the audience that the principal 
and 
superintendent 
of 
the 

school didn’t even want the 
film to be made.

This alone shows exactly 

why it is so important that 
this documentary was made. 
People know this country has 
institutionalized racism and 
blatant 
disparities 
between 

‘America to Me’ catalyzes 
conversations about race

SAMANTHA DELLA FERA

Daily Arts Writer

TV REVIEW

STARZ

“America to 

Me”

Starz

TV REVIEW

AMAZON

6 — Thursday, September 6, 2018
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

