In the grand, rotting theater of American jurisprudence, we have been treated to yet another performance of 'The Privileged Exit,' starring Timothy Busfield. The man who spent decades playing the sort of hyper-literate, approachable intellectuals that only exist in the fever dreams of Aaron Sorkin has been ordered released from jail. It seems the judicial system, in its infinite, tax-funded wisdom, has decided that the former 'Thirtysomething' star isn’t a flight risk—as if there is anywhere left for a 67-year-old character actor to flee that doesn’t eventually involve a regional theater production of 'Death of a Salesman' or a cruise ship hospitality suite.

Busfield stands accused of inappropriately touching a child actor on the set of a television series. For those of you still clinging to the delusion that the entertainment industry is a bastion of progressive enlightenment, this should serve as your morning cold-pressed juice of reality. Hollywood has always treated children like disposable props for narrative tension, only with slightly more craft services and a lot more legal paperwork. When the cameras stop rolling, the 'magic of cinema' usually reveals itself to be a sordid mess of narcissism and a complete lack of adult supervision. We are expected to be shocked, yet we continue to worship at the altar of these aging icons who haven’t had a relevant thought since the Berlin Wall came down.

His defense team, mercenaries of the billable hour, have already deployed the standard-issue shield: the allegations are 'manufactured.' It is a delicious choice of words. Everything in the orbit of a film set is manufactured—the teeth, the empathy, the lighting, and certainly the moral superiority. To claim a legal case is manufactured in a town built on plastic surgery and green screens is a level of irony so dense it has its own gravitational pull. But this is the script they must follow. In the American legal system, if you can’t disprove the act, you simply attack the production value of the accusation.

The release of Busfield ahead of his trial is a masterclass in the socioeconomic hierarchy of the 'get out of jail' card. While the plebeians rot in cells for the crime of being poor and unrepresented, the semi-famous are ushered back into the sunlight with a stern nod and a signature. It’s the ultimate participation trophy for having once been on a hit show on ABC. The court’s decision doesn’t speak to innocence or guilt; it speaks to the reality that if you have a recognizable face and a lawyer who went to a school with a Latin motto, the bars of justice are remarkably flexible.

Naturally, the peanut gallery is divided into its usual tribes of idiots. On the Left, we see the ritualistic performative outrage, a chorus of 'believe all victims' that will inevitably fall silent the moment another one of their preferred donors or creative geniuses is caught in the same net. Their morality is a weather vane that only points toward whichever way the social media wind is blowing. On the Right, the hypocrisy is equally pungent. These are the same 'family values' crusaders who will scream about the sanctity of childhood until the accused is someone who once played a character they liked, at which point the conversation shifts to 'due process' and 'the radical agenda of the accusers.' It’s a nauseating carousel of selective ethics.

Busfield’s career was built on playing men who had the answers, men who spoke in rapid-fire sentences and solved the world’s problems between commercial breaks. Now, he faces a script where there are no witty retorts to save the day. The reality of the situation is grim, but the reaction to it is even grimmer. We live in a society that treats these legal proceedings like a season finale. We refresh our feeds not because we care about justice for a child, but because we are bored and we need a new villain to occupy our shriveled attention spans for a week.

Ultimately, whether Busfield is convicted or acquitted is almost secondary to the larger collapse of the American mythos. We are a nation that has replaced a moral compass with a remote control. We allow these figures to exist in a vacuum of accountability for decades, and then act surprised when the vacuum seal finally breaks and the stench of reality fills the room. The trial will be a circus, the media will feast on the carcass of a fading career, and in the end, nothing will change. The industry will continue to produce its 'manufactured' dreams, the courts will continue to accommodate the elite, and humanity will continue its steady, unimpeded slide into the abyss of its own making. Enjoy the show, folks. It’s the only thing we have left.