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theconstantsidekick · 2 years ago

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no because, supernatural is absolutely a train wreck. it's a colossal accident that is happening in front of you that you can't look away from. it is homophobic and non-sensical and downright laughable at times but you know what? I love it. I absolute love it.

season 1 was absolutely beautiful. you don't understand, really, you don't. they had a piss poor budget, you can see that in every frame. but does that stop it from being fucking beautiful? no. it is stylised and ambitious and a fucking visual treat.

and this is like the first fucking episode. the shots have so much character! and that's nothing to say of the characters themselves. from the first fucking scene you can clearly distinguish sam and dean's character clear as day. their motivations, their dreams, their hopes, all of it. it's established so well. their dynamic is unmatched. does it also have a lot of garbage? yes for sure. because what in the name of hell was that episode with bugs? what glue were they sniffing when they green lit that one? no seriously... I wanna try some.

but then they recovered, cause they did faith. my god, what an episode. WHAT AN EPISODE. that motherfucking reaper haunts my every waking hour

like yeah, I love me some baby dean and baby sam going on their small scale ghost hunts while learning deep lessons about who they are as people and what they want from life.

also that 'laugh I nearly died' needle drop? where sam sees jess? god tier editing, GOD TIER.

then they came back with season 2. and here is my most controversial opinion that should not be controversial at all, season 2 is the best season of supernatural to ever supernatural.

what is and what should never be, hollywood babylon, heart, nightshifter, and the whole fucking season actually. not a single miss in my humble opinion. and that finale? THAT FINALE. beautiful, magnificent. ground breaking character writing, everything comes full circle while simultaneously opening up new plot lines to explore.

and my god, yellow eyes is an epic villain. he is a very viciously written villain like, he's... my god. it ain't a walk in the park writing villains, believe you me patient readers, villains are harder to write than the protagonists, always. well, at least the compelling ones are.

now season 3 suffered because of the writer's strike, but didn't miss much either. like yeah some of the hits don't hit as hard as the season 2, but hey, mystery spot, time is on my side, ghostfacers, bedtime stories are nothing to laugh about. those episodes are fucking solid, like most of the season. and there is so much raw emotion is sam's need to save dean, it just makes my weak winchester brothers loving heart throb a little too hard. also...

need I say more?

does the show did look little more washed out and boring? yes. but it's cool, cause we're moving on to season 4.

listen, I kinda just wanna leave all my season's critique at this. i mean, yeah this. this is it. this is the long and short of it; castiel. i don't think i need to get anymore into it

so season 5 is just—

i'm kidding. obviously i'm gonna talk about season 4, at length.

listen, being able to introduce angels this late in the game and then have them be a such perfectly hidden players is a masterstroke of genius. it just is. i am a writer guys... apart from the relentless fanfic as well lol. and when i tell you, introducing a new big player which is also (not so) secretly the next big bad and playing it off as smoothly as they did in season 4, is beyond hard. but the biggest home run these fuckers hit is castiel and the best part is they weren't aiming for a one lol. and oh oh, the way they use their very VERY limited budget to show wings with just flashing the fucking light? CINEMA! that's fucking cinema right there man. i work on film sets, i am telling you, this is the smartest filmmaking choice they make on the entire show. it adds so much visual intrigue while being so awfully easy to execute. BRILLIANt.

now i cannot talk about supernatural without talking about the deancas romance of it all, which i understand not everyone can see or wants to, which is fine. to each their own. you consume art the way you want to, i don't care much as long as you can acknowledge that castiel and dean's friendship was just some of the best written television that mankind has ever seen. is that too grand a statement? yes. does that make it any less true? no.

they even brought back the moody lighting.

and then there's the episodes this season, most of which are home runs in their own regard. just like beautiful writing, the character development for cas, for dean, for sam, even the late john winchester is wild. anna is a wonderful addition, so is uriel, and alastair? they don't make villains like him anymore, they just fucking don't. AND THAT GODDAMN PLOT TWIST AT THE END? man! the finale was just... too good. Chuck's introduction is absolutely wonderful, even if they ruin him by the end but that happens a decade later so wtv, who cares? But,,,, Jimmy. Fucking. Novak. That's all. that's the tweet. yeah. i'm gonna end the season 4 fan fair with jimmy.

moving to season 5.

subjectively speaking, this is my fucking favorite. this season is a writer's dream while also being their goddamn nightmare. so many WONDERFUL characters to play with and such a grand plot but you get to see it all on a very small, consumable scale which is just... it's too smart for me to not mention. i won't start naming the plot points and neither will i name my favourite episodes because what even is the point? all of it was fucking perfect. you don't understand how hard it is to develop characters to such an extent that they become so familiar to the audience that they know their next move before you even put it on the screen. and supernatural had that. they tied everything together with so much care and consideration, just... AAAH so good.

a special shoutout goes to endverse!cas, crowley and death this season. you all know it in your bones that those three were just the absolute scene stealers. especially death's introduction... immaculate.

they did lose a few points for not being as aesthetically pleasing as the past few seasons but hey, gabriel was enough to make a smooth recovery.

but this... this is the end of the road for me people. season 5 is where it should have ended. in no way shape or form am i saying that there aren't a few good episodes here and there after this, because there are. i think season 5 was so fucking solid, tied up so many goddamn lose ends and then just put a cute little hell shaped bow on top and i just... yeah. this was and should have been the end of the road. do not get me wrong, i love me some jack kline, charlie bradbury, kevin tran, rowena macleod and eileen lahey but were they worth the bullshit ending i had to sit through? not really.

i absolutely think if there weren't more episodes of supernatural I would never have become a destiel fan, because i started shipping them when dean made cas a mixtape in season TWELVE! but my god, the good times were so scattered amongst the horseshit that even when i found those hidden gems, they were so fucking drenched in the stink that they lost their value.

the worst of it all is that, i cannot explain to you what supernatural means to me in a million words, because it is a part of me, heart and soul. i fucking AM castiel. i am a gay little angel you hear me? i love this show. i do. i'm glad it went on for however long it did but i feel like once in a while i need to write shit like this or read shit like this to remind myself of the show that it used to be. of it's beautiful cinematography, of it's clever little storytelling techniques. of it's wonderful cast. of how epic their song choices used to be.

FUcking RENEGADE? iconic. wanted, dead or alive? cannot hear the song without hearing sam's off tune goat bleating that he called singing along.

i need to remind myself of how afraid i used to be of lucifer. of how much i cried while watching dark side of the moon; when dean and sam burst the crackers, and how i learnt the lyrics to knocking on heaven's door just because of that scene.

sometimes i just have to walk through memory lane and look back at gabriel's death, the good one, the only one. it was so fucking meaningful. i have to think of "we are making it up as we go" to be able to breathe properly because those moments were so fucking beautiful.

fuck the big ones, i even remind myself of the small ones, of dean's handwriting being in all caps, just like him. of sam's fucking huge laptop with that weird blue black sticker in the middle. of castiel's tie, that just was the right shade of blue, and hung all wrong but just naturally enough to add so much more to his character than any fucking dialogue could. every small little detail of supernatural that made it so damn supernatural. i miss it all.

idk. i'm rambling. whatever.

#superntural #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel #deancas #destiel #spn #spn season 1 #spn season 2 #spn season 3 #spn season 4 #spn season 5 #dean #cas #sam #dean and sam #i think it'll add onto this post later #as i think of more things #because you best believe i will

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very-offkey-kazoo · 3 years ago

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MY TIME HAS COME

okay so I have a list on my phone and I have been aching to share it. it started as a jokey thing for me and it’s bizarre and my sense of humor is whack and I am also depressed but here you go !!

BEST SPN EPS

For When You’re Feeling Down

Some of these are extremely funny, some of them are just very good episodes, and some are on here for specific jokes or moments. There are probably more that I’ve missed.

Season One

- E1: Pilot (need I say more?)

- E4: Phantom Traveler (demon on an airplane)

- E5: Bloody Mary (just a cool ep)

- E6: Skin (first shifter dirtying Dean’s sexy, sexy name)

- E10: Asylum (Sam and Dean take care of a haunted and abandoned asylum)

- E15: The Benders (very RE7, minus evil mold)

- E17: Hell House (first appearance of Ghostfacers)

Season Two

- E1: In My Time of Dying (Dean in the spirit world - Sam and Dean communicate with a ouija board; John dies!!)

- E5: Simon Said (ANDY!! Dean and REO Speedwagon)

- E6: No Exit (HH Holmes; also Ellen and Jo!)

- E7: The Usual Suspects (Sam and Dean arrested)

- E12: Night Shifter (robberies with Sam and Dean!)

- E13: Houses of the Holy (Holy FUCK this has some pretty good writing. Like Sam and Dean have to confront their ideas of faith and divinity. Absolutely WILD)

- E15: Tall Tales (The Trickster!)

- E18: Hollywood Babylon (case on a TV set)

- E19: Folsom Prison Blues (Sam and Dean investigate in a prison)

Season Three

- E3: Bad Day at Black Rock (“I lost my shoe.”)

- E4: Sin City (Sam cutes his way out of an arrest)

- E5: Bedtime Stories (fun with fairytales)

- E8: A Very Supernatural Christmas (“you fudging touch me again and I’ll fudging kill you”)

- E11: Mystery Spot (“Today is Tuesday, but yesterday was Tuesday too.”)

- E12: Jus in Bello (ooo FBI)

- E13: Ghostfacers! (need I say more?)

Season Four

- E1: Lazarus Rising (CASTIEL)

- E3: In The Beginning (Dean in the 70s, Cas!!)

- E5: Monster Movie (Halloween special!)

- E6: Yellow Fever (Dean is scared of everything.)

- E8: Wishful Thinking (Every wish comes true)

- E13: After School Special (Dean as a PE teacher)

- E17: It’s a Terrible Life (Alternate Reality)

- E18: The Monster at the End of This Book (Sam and Dean discover Supernatural)

Season Five

- E1: Sympathy for the Devil (“Cram it with walnuts, ugly.”)

- E2: Good God, Y’all (some Destiel)

- E3: Free to Be You and Me (Dean and Cas work together!)

- E4: The End (2014 apocalypse)

- E5: Fallen Idols (Paris Hilton tries to kill Dean)

- E6: I Believe the Children Are Our Future (some v interesting tension between Destiel)

- E7: The Curious Case of Dean Winchester (“Sammy, when you get to be our age…” “You’re THIRTY, Dean.”)

- E8: Changing Channels (Gabe!)

- E9: The Real Ghostbusters (SPN convention)

- E10: Abandon All Hope (“Okay, Huggy Bear…” NEVERMIND ONLY WATCH THE FIRST LIKE 15 MINUTES THIS IS THE ONE WHERE ELLEN AND JO DIE)

- E11: Sam, Interrupted (“PUDDING!”)

- E12: Swap Meat (Sam and a teenage boy swap bodies)

- E13: The Song Remains the Same (Sam and Dean in the 70s)

- E17: 99 Problems (Drunk Cas!)

- E19: Hammer of the Gods (pagan gods all have dinner)

- E20: The Devil You Know (“They ATE my tailor!!”)

Season Six

- E3: The Third Man (“Dean and I do share a more profound bond… I wasn’t gonna mention it.”)

- E4: Weekend at Bobby’s (BOBBY - directed by Jackles himself!)

- E5: Live Free or Twi-hard (they make fun of Twilight, but it gets a bit rough tbh)

- E6: You Can’t Handle the Truth (“Well, I suppose it’s probably cause you’re my favorite.”)

- E9: Clap Your Hands if You Believe (“FIGHT THE FAIRIES”)

- E10: Caged Heat (Cas and Meg)

- E12: Like a Virgin (Dean has NO shame. “You rocks think you’re so smart.”)

- E14: Mannequin 3: The Reckoning (“Be my valentine?” “Dude.”)

- E15: The French Mistake (starring Dean as Jensen and Sam as Jared)

- E16: …And Then There Were None (“Since when you got a pacemaker?” “Since Bush Jr term one. I’m down three toes, too, FYI.”)

- E17: My Heart Will Go On (Balthazar and the Titanic)

- E18: Frontierland (it is cowboy times)

- E19: Mommy Dearest (yes, Dean, but he’s your baby in a trenchcoat)

- E20: The Man Who Would Be King (AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH)

Season Seven

- E2: Hello, Cruel World (ultimate validation from Sam - V EMOTIONAL)

- E3: The Girl Next Door (they watch a soap opera !! but like also kinda emotional)

- E4: Defending Your Life (Sam “Pre-Law” Winchester, also basically therapy for Dean)

- E5: Shut Up, Dr. Phil (couples counseling)

- E6: Slash Fiction (Sam and Dean on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” - also Frank !! and Bobby and Jody !!)

- E7: The Mentalists (“You are a virile manifestation of the divine.” “What the hell did he say to me?”)

- E8: Season 7, Time for a Wedding (Sam and Becky)

- E11: Adventures in Babysitting (Krissy! Warning: one hit KO for a Dean Kinnie)

- E12: Time After Time (Dean back in time)

- E14: Plucky Pennywhistle’s Magic Menagerie (Sam and clowns)

- E15: Repo Man (demon serial killer wazoo)

- E16: Out With the Old (Dean and Ballet, “Kid, this would be a really good time for a lesson in gratitude. Lucky for you, I’m too tired.”)

- E18: Party On, Garth (GARTH)

- E20: The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo (Charlie!!)

- E21: Reading is Fundamental (Cas and bees)

- E23: Survival of the Fittest (big ol team)

Season Eight

- E2: What’s Up, Tiger Mommy? (Mrs. Tran)

- E6: Southern Comfort (more Garth)

- E8: Hunteri Heroici (Cas wants to be a hunter)

- E10: Torn and Frayed (Destiel)

- E11: LARP and the Real Girl (Charlie!!)

- E13: Everybody Hates Hitler (just some people killing Nazis, also Dean’s gay thing)

- E14: Trial and Error (Dean’s nesting. Also KEVINNN)

- E17: Goodbye Stranger (“You know, I can hear you both. I am a celestial being.”)

- E18: Freaks and Geeks (Krissy!!)

Season Nine

- E3: I’m No Angel (Cas as a human)

- E4: Slumber Party (Charlie and the Wizard of Oz)

- E5: Dog Dean Afternoon (title pretty much says it all)

- E6: Heaven Can’t Wait (Destiel)

- E9: Holy Terror (CAS!!!)

- E11: First Born (Sam and Cas, Sam and Cas, Sam and Cas!)

- E12: Sharp Teeth (“The guns, the jawlines, the hair, it’s all very intimidating!”)

- E13: The Purge (Donna!!, Dean’s never been in a job interview and it shows and I love him for it, “SWEET POTATOES”)

- E14: Captives (bunker’s haunted! the bowlegs are just OBSCENE)

- E15: #thinman (Ed and Harry! Yes it’s a painful parallel to Sam and Dean but I love them anyway)

- E16: Blade Runners (“You don’t know what it’s like to be human.”

- E18: Meta Fiction (Metatron writes an ep)

- E21: King of the Damned (“No one in the history of torture has been tortured with torture like the torture you’ll be tortured with.”)

Season Ten

- E5: Fan Fiction (Supernatural, the musical)

- E6: Ask Jeeves (clue but with a shapeshifter)

- E7: Girls, Girls, Girls (Rowena)

- E8: Hibbing 911 (Jody and Donna!)

- E9: The Things We Left Behind (Cas and Claire, also Destiel)

- E12: About a Boy (teen Dean!)

Season Eleven

- E4: Baby (the whole episode takes place inside the Impala; TW: John Winchester)

- E5: Thin Lizzie (Lizzie Borden house)

- E7: Plush (Donna!!)

- E8: Just My Imagination (Sam’s imaginary friend, sleepy morning Winchesters)

- E12: Don’t You Forget About Me (Winchesters at a Mills’ family dinner)

- E14: The Vessel (Dean in the 40s again!)

- E16: Safe House (Rufus and Bobby!)

- E22: We Happy Few (family therapy with the angels, big ol squad; ends real sucky tho so be prepared for a two/three parter)

- E23: Alpha and Omega (a rlly cool team up, a Waverly Hills cameo, and a kick-ass ending)

Season Twelve

- E3: The Foundry (“I’m Agent Beyoncé, this is my partner, Agent Z.”; Mary and her boys)

- E4: American Nightmare (very Resident Evil 7; some major validation from Sam <3)

- E5: The One You’ve Been Waiting For (some Sam and Dean fun, also kicking Nazi asses hehe)

- E6: Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox (Jody! Also just a beautiful ep with emotions)

- E7: Rock Never Dies (Team in LA)

- E8: LOTUS (a fun, kick-ass team ep)

- E9: First Blood (Sam and Dean captured by the government)

- E10: Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets (DESTIELLLL)

- E11: Regarding Dean (Memory loss Dean)

- E12: Stuck in the Middle (With You) - (big team and fun; Mary kinda sucks in this one tho)

- E15: Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell (a fun ep with the boys; warning: a doggie dies)

- E16: Ladies Drink Free (Claire!)

- E18: The Memory Remains (a goat man; a lot of one liners)

- E19: The Future (Destiel! TW: attempted suicide)

Season Thirteen

- E2: The Rising Son (Jack!!)

- E4: The Big Empty (Cas is back! And Dean finally gives Jack a chance)

- E5: Advanced Thanatology (“Everybody likes chili fries, that’s not the point.”)

- E6: Tombstone (COWBOY CAS COWBOY CAS COWBOY CAS)

- E8: The Scorpion and the Frog (heist time!!)

- E10: Wayward Sisters (fun gorlies!; “No, Sam, it’s a lizard. It tastes like lizard.”)

- E11: Breakdown (kinda like a Criminal Minds crossover)

- E12: Various & Sundry Villains (fun with Cas and Lucifer, Dean falls under a love spell, and Rowena!!)

- E14: Good Intentions (Destiel!)

- E15: A Most Holy Man (another heist!)

- E16: Scoobynatural (SCOOBY DOOBY DOO)

- E19: Funerella (Rowena!!)

- E21: Beat the Devil (big team!!)

Season Fourteen

- E3: The Scar (Dean’s back! Brother family time! There is a decent amount of angst, tho)

- E4: Mint Condition (comic book characters killing people; Halloween special!)

- E6: Optimism (Dean and Jack! Also Sam with a fidget spinner… and Charlie!)

- E7: Unhuman Nature (Cas, Dean, and Sam being dads for a sick Jack)

- E9: The Spear (Christmas Special - with Garth! - only watch as a two parter with E10)

- E10: Nihilism (Big team! Also Dean’s “heaven”)

- E13: Lebanon (some fun in the beginning and a family reunion! Time changes! Alternate Sam and Dean! TW: John Winchester)

- E15: Peace of Mind (literally just Destiel being parents)

- E16: Don’t Go in the Woods (cool case, Jack being adorable but it’s a little sad at the end ngl)

Season Fifteen

- E4: Atomic Monsters (“That’s real bacon, Dean!” “Hell yeah it is!” - only the beginning ish)

- E5: Proverbs 17:3 (Dean eats ghost pepper jerky - again, only the beginning)

- E6: Golden Time (Eileen and Cas make appearances)

- E7: Last Call (Sam and Eileen!! Sangin’ Dean!!)

- E8: Our Father, Who Aren’t in Heaven (ALL BOW DOWN TO QUEEN ROWENA ; Destiel couples counseling)

- E10: The Heroes’ Journey (Garth!!)

- E11: The Gamblers (normal Sam and Dean! And Jack!!)

- E12: Galaxy Brain (“Sir, this is a Radio Shed…” and Jody!)

- E13: Destiny’s Child (alternate Sam and Dean!)

- E14: Last Holiday (some wholesome moments)

- E15: Gimme Shelter (Cas and Jack on a case!)

I'm depressed, what episode of Supernatural should I watch

#also I know you said no season 15 #so I’m very sorry that it’s on here #but anyway #welcome to my unhealthy obsession #also I trigger tagged John Winchester but that’s mainly because I hate him with a passion #supernatural

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courtneytincher · 5 years ago

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Yet Another Journalist Who Accepted Favors From Jeffrey Epstein

Photo Illustration by The Daily BeastName-brand journalist Edward Jay Epstein was seduced by the charms of accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein more than three decades ago. Yet even after the Miami Herald, multiple lawsuits and law enforcement authorities detailed how he sexually abused dozens of teenage girls and sometimes raped them, the late Jeffrey Epstein’s spell apparently remains strong.“Look, take this about Jeffrey. He is the poster boy for rehabilitation,” said the 83-year-old Epstein (no relation to the convicted sex offender who authorities said hanged himself in his jail cell at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center a month after his July arrest on new federal charges of sex trafficking with minors). “He went to prison [after pleading guilty to reduced charges in 2008]. He served his term [13 months, nine of them on work-release that allowed him daytime visits to his Palm Beach, Florida, office]. He got out. The U.S. attorney’s office said he stuck completely to the terms of his parole. He registered as a sex offender—which is no fun, but which was something he was supposed to do. And he made $500 million.”In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, Edward Epstein added: “I did hang around with Jeffrey because I was fascinated with him. For one thing, the women around him were some of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life. These were not underage women. They were women like [former model and Miss Sweden] Eva Andersson and [actress] Morgan Fairchild. None of them were really girlfriends of his, but they hung around him…“I don’t understand Jeffrey,” Edward continued. “I can’t conceive of why he would go out with an underage woman, unless your theory’s right that he’s a pedophile…It wasn’t like he was some sort of ugly gnome that couldn’t get a girl…When I knew him, I never saw so many good-looking women who stayed in his little orbit.”New York Times Reporter Solicited $30,000 for Charity From Jeffrey EpsteinEdward Epstein also cast doubt on the notion—advanced by the November 2018 Miami Herald investigation of Jeffrey’s extraordinarily lenient 2008 sentence for soliciting prostitution and sex trafficking with a minor, an article that ultimately prompted the resignation of Donald Trump’s labor secretary, former U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, and new federal charges from the Southern District of New York—that Jeffrey destroyed dozens of young lives.“I’m not sure he destroyed their lives,” Edward said. “He paid them money, and they went on for six or seven years giving him massages. I don’t know if that destroyed their lives. Getting a massage or getting a girl to masturbate you doesn’t necessarily destroy your life.” (One of Jeffrey’s victims, Jennifer Araoz—who is now suing his estate and says the financier raped her at age 14—told a courtroom after Epstein’s suicide, “The fact that he felt entitled to take away my innocence…hurts me so much.”) Edward added: “Everything about Jeffrey was a con. I never thought, ‘here’s an honest guy.’ I just thought here’s a New York character…I think it’s a terrible thing, and a stupid thing, and a perverse thing, to have any sex with underage girls…I don’t believe many of the stories about Glenn Dubin, Prince Andrew—I don’t believe that they’re stupid enough, if they knew the girl was underage, why would anyone? You could be compromised, you could be blackmailed, especially by Jeffrey. Bill Clinton? They’d have to be out of their minds.”Edward stressed: “I never even discussed these things with Jeffrey”—whom he described as an unreliable witness and “a liar,” once claiming to Edward that he was, among other things, a private detective, and, another time, that he flew every month to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin. “Maybe he was a calculated liar, but I had a feeling it was pathological.”“If you say he’s a pedophile and he’s going out with children, that’s not anything I know,” Edward said, noting that he never rode on Jeffrey’s jet, visited any of his homes beyond the East 71st Street townhouse, or was offered a massage. “Nineteen is ‘teenage’ too.” Pressed in the interview to account for credible allegations in official government documents as well as the media, Edward conceded that young women working for Jeffrey “recruited underage girls…mainly from massage parlors, by the way—that’s what his lawyers say, but that doesn’t make it any more legal,” Edward said. “I can’t imagine what happened, ok? I think he asked for younger and younger women. That’s just my guess.”Yet Edward suggested that Jeffrey’s July 2019 arrest and the new charges—a decade after he served his original time—were an act of bad faith on the federal government’s part.“If he bribed [Acosta or other officials] to get the deal, then obviously that’s a whole other criminal business,” Edward said. “But if they gave him the deal, if he negotiated and got it, then that was the price that society agreed on, and that was the price that he paid.”Despite news reports about a U.S. Marshals investigation of Jeffrey’s 2018 plane trips with apparently underage girls as young as 11 or 12, Edward said he’s unaware that his onetime friend was acting suspiciously and possibly violating the terms of his sentencing agreement. Edward Jay Epstein, who has contributed articles to The Daily Beast, spoke by phone as Graydon Carter’s new online magazine, Airmail, published My Tea with Jeffrey Epstein, a lengthy and oddly non-judgmental chronicle of Edward’s 32-year, on-again, off-again friendship with the mysterious, Gatsby-like financial adviser.After Jeffrey’s arrest in July, Edward refused a request from The Daily Beast to discuss his unusual pal.He did so, he explained, “because Jeffrey was alive, and I didn’t want to add to the misery of someone who was in prison.”Known for his book-length investigations of the JFK assassination, the financial shenanigans of Hollywood, and the secret wars between the American and Russian spy agencies, Edward Epstein said he befriended the self-avowed financial whiz in the late 1980s, accepted personal favors from him—including first-class plane tickets and free lodging—but then didn’t speak with him for 24 years. (At least one other journalist has admitted taking favors from Jeffrey Epstein—former New York Times business reporter Landon Thomas Jr., who wrote a puff piece about him while he was facing criminal charges and successfully solicited a $30,000 charitable donation from Epstein for a Harlem school.)The breach with Edward occurred after Jeffrey cut him off over Edward’s thinly-veiled 1989 Manhattan, inc. “Wall Street Babylon” column (in which Jeffrey wasn’t named but was described in detail) that exposed some of his dubious business practices and brought unwelcome attention from the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the Airmail article, Edward wrote about a “frantic call from an executive at Simon & Schuster” who had met Jeffrey at Edward’s December 6, 1988 birthday dinner.“He told me that he had given Epstein $70,000 to invest in a deal to take over the chemical company Pennwalt. After sending the money, he had not received the necessary papers, and Epstein was no longer returning his calls. He phoned one of the principals in the deal, who said he had never heard of the executive,” Edward wrote.Edward recounted how he used a computer program Jeffrey had provided him to browse through Jeffrey’s financial transactions, where he found dozens of demands for the return of investment money and evidence of a twice-bounced check.Send The Daily Beast a Tip“As I read through this material, I found nothing about the publishing executive’s money, but I grew increasingly queasy about Epstein,” Edward wrote, adding that he never discovered anything about the Simon & Schuster exec’s money.On the phone, Edward repeatedly refused to identify the publishing mogul, who he recalled had offered Jeffrey and his date at the birthday dinner a ride to Palm Beach on his corporate jet.“I feel guilty about the whole thing because I introduced them,” Edward confided. “I’m not gonna tell you who it is—and the only reason is that I don’t want him screaming and shouting at me…He’ll go ballistic. You can guess who it is…To tell you the truth, he was a friend of mine and at a certain point he told me he did get his money back.”Attempts to reach Simon & Schuster’s larger-than-life former chief executive, Richard E. Snyder, were unsuccessful, so The Daily Beast cannot confirm whether he is the publisher in question.Describing their falling-out in the Airmail article, meanwhile, Edward wrote that he didn’t identify Jeffrey in his Manhattan, inc. column “because he refused to speak to the fact-checker.”“You caused me a lot of trouble,” Edward—in his Daily Beast interview—recalled Jeffrey fuming in a furious phone call over the column, which suggested he had improperly used inside information in one of his deals. “I never disliked Jeffrey, by the way,” Edward said. “He disliked me, but I never disliked him.”Their relationship—which had included invitations to parties at Edward’s Upper East Side apartment and piano-concert soirees at the home of music and art philanthropist Stuart Pivar—suddenly resumed in 2013, Edward Epstein said, after he published a New York Review of Books essay about his old college professor and mentor Vladimir Nabokov, and Jeffrey invited him to his East 71st Street mansion to discuss the author of Lolita, Jeffrey’s favorite novel.Jeffrey boasted that he kept copies of Nabokov’s masterpiece in various bedrooms of his residences and aboard his private jet, nicknamed by the press the “Lolita Express.”Their relationship continued well into 2019, with personal visits, tea at the mansion, walks in Central Park and email exchanges, Edward said. “The last time I communicated with him was actually over emails, when Robert Kraft was arrested,” he recounted, citing Jeffrey’s curiosity about the New England Patriot owner’s February arrest for receiving handjobs in a Florida massage parlor. “His position was pretty interesting: If Robert Kraft and all the people going to that parlor were committing a crime, can the police just sit there and watch lots of people committing crimes and not interfere? That was the question I asked him.“And he answered that ‘the police were going through my garbage and everything, and if they had found that the girls were underage’—and he never himself admitted that they were underage—‘they should have stopped it.’ In other words, Jeffrey’s point was that the girls were acting illicitly if they were underage.”The Airmail article—actually Chapter 46 of Edward’s unpublished memoir, he said—also reports ethically problematic details about its author: that Edward accepted free lodging in the Santa Monica, California, apartment that Jeffrey rented for then-girlfriend Eva Andersson, and also accepted free first-class airline upgrades—which turned out to be illegal—from Jeffrey, who was later the subject of one of his columns for the now-defunct business magazine Manhattan, inc.In Airmail, Edward recounted an early meeting with Jeffrey in 1987: “As we finished the tea, I mentioned I was leaving for Spain on Monday. ‘How do you go?’ he asked. ‘Iberia Airlines,’ I said, adding that I always flew coach. ‘If you like, I can upgrade you to first class. Much better food.’ ‘How?’ ‘Drop your ticket off with my doorman tomorrow morning. It won’t cost you a penny.’Edward told The Daily Beast that he took advantage of Jeffrey’s plane-ticket largesse a few more times after that, until an official at a Japanese airline rejected his first-class ticket because it was bogus, and sent him back to the economy cabin.Edward said he understood that Jeffrey somehow had gained access to various airlines’ computer systems and was able to claim first-class seats.After the Japanese airline embarrassment, “I certainly did confront him,” Edward said, describing the fake first-class tickets as “theft of services.” “He said ‘don’t ask me anything. It works one-third of the time.’ ”Asked if it gave him pause as a journalist to be accepting favors and freebies from a potential subject of his journalism—and one who Edward acknowledged clearly wanted to be written about—he breezily replied: “I wasn’t writing about Jeffrey, but it gave me great pause,” but only because the first-class plane tickets turned out to be fake.“I didn’t plan to write anything about him [back in the late ‘80s]. He was no one,” Edward said by way of justifying his acceptance of Jeffrey’s gifts. “Yeah, Jeffrey wanted a column, but I had no intention of writing it…And if I wrote it, I’ve never written a favorable column about anyone…I take that back. I have written one or two favorable columns. But normally, you know, people hated me…I would never have accepted a favor if I planned to write a column about him. But an interview’s a favor. When [former International Monetary Fund director and alleged rapist] Dominique Strauss-Kahn gave me an interview, it’s a favor to a journalist to get an interview, because otherwise you can’t sell the story.”Of course, as Edward Epstein acknowledges, he did end up writing about Jeffrey in the column that interrupted their relationship.But he said he has no regrets. “If you asked me this a few years ago, I would have said I regret writing that piece that got him angry at me. But now I’m sort of happy I wrote that piece and he stopped speaking to me because at least I have no connections to his perverse acts…Whatever he did, it was pretty bad.”“I hung around—and gone on vacation with—lots of dubious characters,” he said, adding with a laugh. “Remember there was a character on the radio called Boston Blackie? His logo was ‘friend of those who have no friends.’…I don’t make personal judgments. That’s not my business.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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