Dear Wags,

What truly separates us from the lowly armadillos, cuckoos and newts? Lately, I’ve been contemplating by our peculiar appetite for revenge.

Primatologists have documented what might be described as petty acts of vengeance among our cousins, the chimpanzees. There’s speculation about whether chimps perceive unfairness, and react accordingly. Even so, they aren’t spiteful creatures. Grudge holding is a quirk of Homo Sapiens—only humans willingly pay a devastating price to hurt our enemies.

It’s possible to frame human experience — back and front-stabbing politics, mutually obliterating vendettas, endless warfare —in terms of the revenge impulse. We have a knack for cooperation and a quality of mercy, yet we regularly jettison self-preservation to bloody another guy’s nose. Medea murdered her sons to punish an inconstant husband, a monstrous but comprehensible human act. It’s in our nature to scorch the earth for a few seconds of cathartic retribution.

We have devised moral codes, systems of jurisprudence, and entire civilizations to curb this habit. Those inventions buckle whenever we are provoked. When the towers fell on 9/11, our highly developed brains came up with all kinds of responses. Revenge lust conveniently served up one. Vengeance can always be rationalized into policy, but there comes a moment when we wake up in a daze, surrounded by more corpses.

We can’t control our reactions to atrocities any more than we can extinguish evil itself. It’s not that we don’t intellectually understand vengeance maims us at least as much as the target. Bitter experience tells us it does — even as we plunge down another rabbit hole of payback.

Our information ecosystem brilliantly exploits a primal urge. When horrors are visited on the innocent, losing your shit is only human. Technology prolongs the knee-jerk reaction and milks it for cash. When it comes to the thorniest questions of our age, it’s harder than ever to come to our senses. I’m not writing this at some Zen-like remove, but as someone who scrolls through comment threads, juiced by provocation. Like anybody, I’ve enjoyed feeling my skin prickle with righteous anger. The essence of any addiction is to be hooked on the thing that destroys you.

A leading presidential candidate has explicitly organized his campaign around retribution. The revenge impulse allows him to describe political enemies as vermin, a word that delights his followers and outrages detractors. Being provoked is a stimulant for all concerned. Perhaps the only point of consensus about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is that it is endlessly stoked by revenge. The Azeris who annexed Nagorno-Karabakh have grievances to justify their actions, and the Armenians who fled their armies have a fresh injustice to add to a long ledger. Vengeance is an essential and sanctified ingredient for terrorism. If you blithely describe another wasted life as a martyr, you have ditched rationality for the enticements of revenge.

There are moments when civilizations confront existential threats, and war is unavoidable and perhaps just. The notion that revenge cannot be redemptive rests on a set of soft assumptions that are hardly universal. If they were, we would surely not be mired in vendettas. We routinely describe acts of bloody vengeance as inhuman, when they are anything but. They are, in fact, distinctly human.

What are liberal values against all that? The quixotic hope of politics to craft solutions without more bloodshed, to root out seeds of grievance before they grow. It’s next to impossible to overcome the urge for payback and face the morning after, but on rare occasions, such magic happens. That, too, is something only humans can do.

Yours Ever,

Candle in the Wind

The Crown (Netflix). The first half of Wag Peter Morgan’s Windsor Finale just arrived — perhaps you’ve binged it in a sitting. If not, it’s all about Uncanny Elizabeth Debicki, who captures every eyelash flutter of the Diana we sort of knew. Let her be showered with Emmys! Actual Dame Imelda Staunton returns as Elizabeth II, Dominic West finds his way into poor Charles, and Olivia Williams is a doughty Camilla. Mr. Morgan began chronicling the royals in 2006 with The Queen; this point in the story brings us full circle, the right time for the curtain to drop.— Lily Moscovitz

I’m love with you…how do you like that? I buried the lede.

Albert Brooks: Defending My Life (Max). Wag Supremo Albert Brooks delivered the line above to Holly Hunter in Broadcast News, a moment that sums up his charm. He’s the bighearted schlub you root for against all odds, and in his case, it all worked out. Rob Reiner’s tribute to his pal from Beverly Hills High is a delight. Larry David, Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Sarah Silverman, Steven Spielberg, and James L. Brooks are among those who praise the writer, director and comic genius. — Daniel Miller

Sir, You Have No Call To Get Snippy With Me!

Fargo (Hulu). Dot Lyon (Juno Temple) is a sweet Minnesota mom who says things like for cute and you betcha. She’s also not quite the squeaky clean homemaker her dim husband (David Rysdahl) thinks she is. Dot’s scary mother-in-law (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is on to her, and she has to contend with a pair of heavies from her sordid past. There’s also a blowhard sheriff (John Hamm) complicating matters. Don’t worry, she can more than handle herself. Season 5 of the Coen Bros.-inspired crime show is a rich hot dish of intrigue.— Jean Lundegaard

Torn from the Headlines

May/December (Theaters Nov 17/Netflix Dec 1). What invidious monsters actors can be! Maestro Todd Haynes knows this, and he’s created a wickedly unnerving film about it in May/December. Hollywood star Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) arrives in Savannah to do research for her next movie. She’s going to play Gracie (Julianne Moore) a woman who went to prison for having a sexual relationship with her young student Joe (John Melton). But all that was ages ago — Gracie and Joe are now happily married with three grown kids. Or at least they were before Elizabeth started probing into their past. It’s both a clever take on the saga of Mary Kay Letourneau and a critique of our obsession with scandal. — Harold Chasen

Getting His Due

Rustin (Theaters/Netflix Nov. 17). Somehow, Wag Emeritus Bayard Rustin became a footnote in civil rights history. The architect of the 1963 march on Washington was an inconvenient political figure in the movement because he was gay and critical of the rising militancy of the New Left. George C. Wolfe’s opus gives Rustin his turn in spotlight at last, and Colman Domingo delivers a powerhouse performance as a complicated and courageous figure. — Chiron Harris

Carrie Jade Williams was a lot of things to a lot of people: An au pair called Lucy, a therapist called Rebecca, and a Facebook user called Claudia, among other personas she assumed. Turns out that in addition to being a TikTok activist who claimed she was struggling with Huntington’s disease she was an inventive, compulsive fabulist. In Carrie Jade Does Not Exist, Wag Sue Perkins exposes yet another internet fraudster with a talent for making strangers believe her tales. — Hedy Carlson

What is it about November and covers? Juliana Hatfield is among a batch of artists delivering her version of cherished hit. In this case, it’s Telephone Line by ELO, that gauzy 1977 chart-topper everybody knows. Hatfield’s vocal doesn’t oversell Oh, oh, telephone line, give me some time/I'm living in twilight, but delivers its pathos. She makes it cool all over again. — Marie de Salle

Speaking of covers, Texas outfit Midland rolls in with their take on Wag Supremo Jimmy Webb’s Wichita Lineman. Frontman Mark Wystrach does right by the soulful 1968 country hit made famous by the late, lamented. Glen Campbell. There’s a little guitar flourish at the end, but otherwise it’s a faithful rendering of a legendary tune. — Rosa Lee