Alesha Dixon's backstory - celebrity relationship heartbreak, years in the pop wilderness and then redemption by talent TV - is the stuff of hitmakers' dreams.
Americans love sin and redemption and reinvention almost as much as they love stuff.
The shocks, the scandals, the fans, the redemption of the hero, and the fall of his rival it was compelling stuff.
But redemption is another matter; Abani seems to suggest that real closure is the stuff of movies and bad crime novels.
Even under the peculiar assumptions of the Feldstein-Samwick paper, the stuff that is supposed to save Social Security -- higher revenue, redemptions of personal accounts that cut the system's outlays -- comes far in the future.
That makes it easier to embellish the stuff of soap opera with hifalutin themes like the rescue of one artist by another, the redemption of a fallen man through the love of a woman.
By revealing that Robbie has a natural nose for the hard stuff, it also leads to his discovery of a vocation, his return to crime and his ultimate redemption.
