Entries in the Category "mad men"
Community Does Mad Men!
Community is getting awesomer and awesomer every week. I can understand why you might not like it--it really doesn't have a ton in common with its more understated Thursday night neighbors The Office and Parks and Recreation--it's more of a whip-fast smart-silly like 30 Rock.
I'm a Renaissance woman so I enjoy both of those types of shows. But of the three of them that aired last night (30 Rock was shuffled off so Jim and Pam could have a full hour to birth their baby) Community was easily the funniest. There was a good plotline about Jeff taking pool for his phys ed credit and objecting to required uniform of 80s-style short-shorts (I won't go into how that story wraps up because you've got to see it to believe it).
But the best moment was courtesy of oddball Abed. See, the gang thought that a pretty girl from Spanish class liked him and they were encouraging him to go talk to her. He didn't think he could as himself, so he tried out a variety of characters who might feel more comfortable hitting on her ("I think that one was a vampire") until he settled on the right one.
This wasn't it, but it was my favorite.
The impersonation was SO GOOD that I knew who he was doing before he said so. Right around, "Then you picked the wrong outfit."
The inside joke: Annie, played by Alison Brie, plays a secondary character (she's Mrs. Pete Campbell!) on Mad Men.
Golden Globes Recap
This will be shorter and less detailed than my usual next-day awards show extravaganza. I had family visiting this weekend, and both my mom and aunt joined me for the Globes viewing, so we were able to crack jokes and comment on the clothes in real time, which sort of took away some of the excitement of doing it here. What can I say? SO SORRY INTERNET. We still have the Oscars.
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The Lure of Lost (and TV in the Modern Era)
I am one evening marathon away from finishing the fourth season of Lost—I say this as a person who just started watching it, from the first episode of the first season, in September. I’m averaging approximately two weeks per season; at this rate, I will be more than caught up when the sixth season hits broadcast television in February.
I’m not sure I will watch it, though.
Netflix Instant View has been my source for catching up the first five seasons of Lost. Any episode is viewable as quickly as I can connect to the Internet. (For those of you STILL not on board with Netflix, ABC.com has all the full episodes as well.) I can watch twelve episodes in a row while on the couch, but I can also watch one in the library between classes, and I can watch two in bed before going to sleep. In short, I have integrated Lost into just about every aspect of my daily life.
I’m hooked. I liked the story when it was smaller—the forty-odd plane crash survivors trying to build a life on this mysterious island that is both tropical and riddled with polar bears. Then things spread out—there were bands of scientists that had died of some mysterious plague, there were murderous, mysterious “Others,” there were a whole group of people on the other half of the plane who somehow crashed on the other side of the island. This crew fought that crew, that side kidnapped this person. People were continually knocked unconscious while someone escaped. The “others” began to mix with the castaways, then a whole new crew swept in on some ship with a whole new set of loyalties.
And THEN they started mixing flash forwards in with the flashbacks, and now they're suggesting that the island which we already knew had healing powers also appears to be set in some kind of time warp. (Comparable to the one in my living room? Maybe...)
But here’s the thing—a lot of people who stuck things out from the start of the show were really tiring of this show by the third and fourth seasons. I like to read old episode recaps from Television Without Pity, and while these episodes were airing, people were really getting cranky. The show had been on for more than three years, and people were getting impatient, needing answers. Watchers were also frustrated with what was then the standard TV airing schedule: a handful of new episodes scattered across September, reruns in October, sweeps eps in November, reruns through December and January, another sweeps in February, and so on. Two weeks, six weeks between episodes and people were forgetting what was supposed to be keeping them on the edges of their seats. (It’s worth noting that now networks recognize what they didn’t know in 2006: shows like Lost and 24 are now airing mostly uninterrupted for half seasons, lengthening the time that passes between seasons but shortening the time that passes between new episodes.)
Experiencing a show when it’s new, you get to be a part of the cultural phenomenon. I can talk to people about Mad Men the next day because Joan hit her hubby over the head, or jump on the Internet and read everyone’s reactions to the guy who got his foot run over by a lawnmower. (I didn’t write about that episode, but the AV Club did!) You think there’s anyone who wants to talk to me about Lost now? It’s like I’m walking around saying to people, “Can you believe these iPhones? Fan-cy!”
But watching with the broadcast, you also have to deal with those problems. Everything that bugged people about Lost back then has not bothered me at all. I am impervious to cliffhangers—I just click “Play next episode”! I’ve not tired of the layering of the mystery yet because it’s still all new to me. This past summer, I watched season two of Mad Men in just a couple weeks. This fall, I watched season three, but it took thirteen weeks. You get less immersed in a TV show when it’s a short weekly appointment than when you spend an entire week watching it every night (especially a show like Mad Men, which builds up steam SO SLOWLY, although the last three or four episodes of the season were incredible).
I vividly remember my first experience with TV on DVD, when the Best of Friends video discs (not even DVDs yet!) came out, Christmas of 1999 or 2000. My parents bought my sister and I each our own set, because we were spoiled. I…watched all twelve episodes in one night. Really. I don't know if at that time I had seen those episodes recently—it’s possible that Friends was already in syndication, airing at 6pm on TBS or whatever—but having the ability to just pop a tape in and watch “The One Where No One’s Ready” was incredibly novel. (I also brought those videos back to college with me, where on one occasion my roommate and I watched “The One Where Everyone Finds Out” three times in a row.)
It’s fun to think about how much the experience of TV viewing has changed, even just within my lifetime. They didn’t even have VCRs when my parents were kids! TV shows aired, and then what? They dissipated into the air? The other night, I set up my DVR to record The Office while I was in class, but it didn’t pick it up for some reason or another. I shrugged it off, because, you know what? I knew I could watch it on Hulu the next day.
Talk about being spoiled!
Tonight's Mad Men: "The Gypsy and the Hobo"
I just watched tonight's episode of Mad Men twice in a row. In the words of Groundhog Day's Ned Ryerson, "it was a doo-hoo-hoozy!"
SPOILER ALERT for those of you not keeping up with the show (i.e., Mom) but Don Draper 'came out' to Betty about his true identity, telling more truths in a row than I believe he has ever done before. This all occurred while his most recent dish-on-the-side waited for him in the car so they could go away for the weekend. He never made it back to the car--did he forget that she was there, or, did he, cool-as-a-cucumber, just let her figure out that he wasn't coming back? Oh, Don.
But forget all that, because none of it was as awesome as the moment Joan clocked her husband over the head with a vase.
This guy's a real jerk, not in the least because when she married him, Joan quit working at Sterling Cooper and is thus in the show less than she used to be. Less Joan = bad. But also, he's a bastard who failed out of his surgery rotation (or...whatever) and can't get himself back on track. Also he's a jerk, he doesn't talk to her, he belittles what's important to her, he fails to recognize the real contributions she could make as a wife, because he thinks women are useless and just bred to sit around, when Joan's smart and super-capable. He's been nothing but trouble for her, dashing all her dreams for her marriage.
Well, in this episode, after another bad interview, which all of her helpful preparation couldn't keep him from screwing up, he snapped at her that she couldn't tell him anything, that she didn't know what it was like to want something your whole life and have it not work out. Which of course she does--it was marriage she planned for, and that he has single-handedly ruined. And then she clocked him over the head with a vase. Oh, Joan.
Note: this weekend I put together preparation for my Halloween costume. It is Mad Men-inspired (think sassy Sixties secretary!) and I am incredibly excited. I have cat's-eye glasses!
Woo. Too much excitement for a Sunday night.
Edited to add: Joan SMASH!
The Most Sexist Season of Top Chef Ever! and the Spunky Blonde Lady Who Might Take the Whole Thing Home (and Dear God I Hope She Does)
I love Top Chef, I do, enough to continue to be addicted to it despite the fact that my personal taste is so pedestrian that I literally had popcorn for dinner tonight. The contestants are all, “Ceviche! Veloute! Scallops!” and I’m all, “Peanut butter! Processed cheese!” and yet, Top Chef and I, we remain the best of friends.
Still, this season has been getting on my damn nerves.
There is one guy on the show this season who is such an obnoxious ass that I’m not going to print his name. I don’t want to increase his Google hits, a number I’m sure he keeps track of in some kind of retro little black book that also has the phone numbers of his favorite escort services and the female cousin he took to his prom. Anyway, this guy should know that I’m on to him. The rude and sexist things that come out of his damn mouth are so clearly designed to rile people up and grab him attention, and I am pissed that this show is giving it to him.
Even though the need has been more than met, other guys are continuing to step up and be bastards, including one in tonight’s episode who blathered on and on about how his dish was more refined and creative and special than anyone else’s and who didn’t even crack the top four. The only two guys who haven’t given me any trouble so far are Kevin (AKA Beardo, AKA Young Santa Claus) and Ash, the quippy gay guy who seemed like a nice guy but not a very good chef, and whose past-due elimination came tonight.
There are four front-runners right now (in addition to the bastards, who seem to consider themselves front-runners without tons of evidence of this): the Voltaggio brothers, and who seem too intent on beating each other to worry about the presence of women in the kitchen, nice guy Beardo, and Jennifer, who is my girl crush. The first couple episodes seemed to be trying to position her as ‘the bitch,’ overplaying footage of her talking about how competitive she is, and how she’s not there to make friends or whatever reality show cliché the producers coaxed her into saying.
Let me suggest, as Tina Fey did in a really funny rant on Hillary Clinton, that YEAH. SHE IS A BITCH. BITCHES GET STUFF DONE.
Jen gets stuff done
She really came alive in the third episode of the season, a challenge in which the entire crew had to fix a big buffet-style meal for an entire airport hangar full of military people and their families. She had won the Quickfire, the mini-challenge that takes up the first ten minutes of every episode, and her reward was immunity—the “you can’t get eliminated tonight” prize. On account of that, the rest of the group nominated her as the head of the kitchen (there’s some fancy name for it, I forget what it was), who would not make a dish of her own but would supervise and manage and just in general keep everything hot, refilled, on plates, on time. She stalked around the kitchen like General Patton, negotiating arguments over the use of equipment, asking people things like, “Can you cook and have this conversation at the same time?” She was alarmingly impressive.
I wouldn’t be so aggressively girl-power if this particular season hadn’t made it necessary. Women have been getting eliminated twice as fast as men have been—and I’m not saying the judging is crooked or anything, but that the contestant pool was thick with mediocre ladies. If you don’t put good female chefs on the show, good female chefs can’t win, and that bugs me.
The second episode of the season pitted “boys” against “girls” (and yes, that’s what they continually called it even though these are all men and women legally able to purchase alcohol and rent cars) and featured tons of trash talk from the “boys” about how they didn’t feel threatened by any of the women. Several episodes in, the designated punching bag has become older woman Robin, who regardless of how annoying she is does not deserve the vitriol that gets hurled at her, especially when she’s not in the room.
Even super-capable Jennifer is not immune. In the very first episode, when the chefs were milling around getting to know each other, she named the restaurant that she works at, and was immediately asked, without a hint of irony, “Oh, are you the pastry chef?” Without a hint of surprise—or bother, for that matter—she replied, “No, head chef.” No offense to pastry chefs, but yeah, that’s a slight. She’s become the Peggy Olson of this show—I am invested now, and if she loses, FEMINISM LOSES. Even if she loses to the talented and utterly inoffensive Beardo.
(Tonight judge-in-love-with-his-own-one-liners Toby Young compared Jennifer’s dish to a hairy armpit. Strangely, this was a compliment, meant to be on par with a more conventional adjective like “earthy.” She just smiled with amusement and said thank you.)
GO TEAM JEN.
"We're Mad Men!"
I can't wait for Sesame Street to parody some of my other favorite shows! They took the cigarettes, sex, and booze out of Mad Men, so they should be able to take the murder out of Dexter, the drugs out of Breaking Bad, and the misanthropy out of It's Always Sunny! ...Right?
Emmys Day-After Recap
I’ve got my Emmy food (pizza and mint creme Oreos) and I’m ready to go!
The Host
Neil Patrick Harris is totally cool. He’s singing and dancing, he’s wearing a white dinner jacket, and I think he just insulted Two and a Half Men. (Theme songs are getting so short, next year’s theme to the show will just be "meh." HA!) Later: I love the way he keeps introducing people from their obscure early credits (“from the 1987 Afterschool Special…”).
Click ahead for much much more!
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Mad Men: It Returns!
Mad Men is coming back with its third season premiere on Sunday night. I can't wait!
The second season of the show sold me in a way the first season did not manage to do. The show increased in depth and breadth exponentially, I think. The episodes were always textured--they had really careful writing and directing, and they looked great. I read something this week which suggested that the show is setting a new standard for visual quality on television. In the second season, the quality of the drama caught up with the quality of the product.
I've come around on Betty Draper. Betty, chain-smoking, tippling and unwashed, Betty off the rails, Betty fights cheating with cheating! Betty wants an abortion, the second saddest "doctor won't do an abortion" scene I watched this summer (the worst is in A Place in the Sun). I can't believe that January Jones didn't manage to get an Emmy nomination with the emotional gymnastics Betty turned out this season.
My newfound interest in Betty came about just around the time I grew increasingly tired of her husband Don's journey. It looks as though he may have made a turning point after his annoying detour through Southern California. I did love the fleshing out of his backstory, the way he draws support from the other Mrs. Draper. I could not have foreseen that.
I continue to be fascinated by Pete: fighting every losing battle, fighting against his wife's needs, fighting his compulsion to be liked with his compulsion to be a smarmy ass. I did not expect him, in the season finale, to lay his heart out there to Peggy--he doesn't deserve her, and he really didn't expect to get leveled by her, either. I don't love him, I don't hate him, I don't even love to hate him--this guy has to be one of the most ambiguous characters on television, ever. He may be more like a Michael Scott figure--you loathe and pity him in equal amounts, and often at the same time.
Speaking of Peggy, I am desperate for Peggy to succeed, insanely invested in her story. The end of the episode called "Maidenform" when she appeared at the strip club to celebrate with the guys (because she was tired of being left out, and that's where they were celebrating)--I both cheered and cringed for her, while she looked equally proud and humiliated. I like what they've done bringing her Catholic faith into the story, as well; she's really struggling, inwardly, as Don is. Beautiful.
I've also been enjoying savvy secretary Joan, frustrated middleman Harry, and wheeling-dealing dog abandoner Duck.
It'll be great to see them all again (10pm on Sunday, on AMC!) and hope others tune in as well.
Mad Me
Ah, the infinite joys of the Internet.
Remember a few months ago I posted pictures of myself and Jeremy that had been Simpsonized? See the original post here.
AMC television has established the same deal for Mad Men. As usual, I couldn't resist.
Here I am pitching the Jackie-Marilyn campaign to the gentlemen of Sterling-Cooper.
Here's me hanging out with Betty Draper. No thanks, Betty, don't need any coffee--got my martini here, as you can see.
Try it yourself here. And watch Mad Men when Season 3 opens on August 16!
Reviews: Epic Wednesday: Mob Rule
I started with Scarface, figuring that I wouldn’t want to watch it after six hours of Godfathering. All I really knew about it was that it was a remake (but not really) of a crime film from the 30s, and that at the end Al Pacino says, “Say hello to my leetle friend.” And shoots people. Also, you can buy the poster at any college bookstore.
More about Scarface, as well as The Godfather(s) after the jump.
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Mad Men Watch-a-thon: Episodes 3 through 6
I said in my last entry that this show was engaging in a slow burn, and I haven’t come here to revise that statement at all. I vaguely remember early reviews of this show—when everyone had seen the commercials with the cool music and the striking images of broad-shouldered ad guys in their James Bond suits and was wondering if the show was worth watching (because…AMC? the American Movie Classics channel that today is apparently airing a Stallone marathon?)—and the reviews were mixed. There was a lot of “it’s pretty, but there’s nothing there.”
For my part, I’m still holding out that there’s something there. It won all the Emmys and everything for a reason. But right now, the show feels a bit remote; it’s offering me a lot of stuff, but it’s not the stuff I want. It’s like the show is Don Draper and I’m Don Draper’s wife.
Speaking of, I’m kind of tired of Betty, Don’s wife, already. I thought a show set in an ad agency would spend more time in the ad agency. So far, there’s a LOT of suburban ennui, the home lives of the mad men and their mad wives. And though I like Betty’s mouthy friend (the chain-smoking pregnant one, played by that actress who got killed off House), I think Betty herself adequately fits the description of “it’s pretty, but there’s nothing there.” Yes, she’s deliberately cultivating that image. I get it. I saw her in Episode 6 putting lipstick on her tiny daughter etc. etc. Yes, I know The Feminine Mystique is still a few years in the future for her. She still kinda bores me.
At least some of the other characters are getting fleshed out—Joan, the vivacious redheaded secretary, has got a plotline, finally. Also, in Episode 6 Peggy (the girl with the bangs who played Bartlet’s daughter on The West Wing) inadvertently reveals her smarts by saying something particularly well-expressed to an ad guy. He’s like, “That’s very funny, who told you that?” and she’s like, “Um, I thought of it myself…?” and he’s like “does not compute…” I can’t wait to see her discover the proverbial glass ceiling. (Actually, I’m ‘spoiled’ as they say, because I know what happens to Peggy further on down the season. Still, I’m enjoying her character.)
It is interesting that, other than Betty, and other than Joan in Episode 6, the women in the ad agency are sort of shuffled off to the side. Their “plotlines” as such are more like longing looks and wistful sighs. Not giving the show’s women proper attention is just as sexist as the behavior they encounter in the show. Maybe the show intends to express the sexism of the 60s through some postmodern metacommentary, both literally and figuratively. Or maybe I just need to watch some more.
Anyway, the details are still exquisite, which is great; good writing is so often in sharp details. Episode 2 (I think—it’s been a week or so) featured a birthday party for one of Don’s kids, where the kids were playing the most realistic game of “house” ever: “get your shoes off the couch!” “I don’t like your tone!” Peter expressed his frustrated creative drive by claiming that he invented direct marketing: “I thought of that! Turned out it already existed, but I arrived at it independently.” Possibly the funniest scene so far was in Episode 6 when Don Draper’s mistress took him to a club in Greenwich Village to see all the beatniks and commies and whatnot. Jon Hamm does a great bemused expression.
Mad Men Watch-a-thon: 1st and 2nd episodes
This show has been enjoying a lot of critical acclaim lately, and I kept saying, I’ll watch it soon enough. Recently, spurred on by (star of Mad Men) Jon Hamm’s recent appearance on 30 Rock as the dreamy doctor who may date Liz, I obtained the complete first and second seasons.
Of course, I’m in school, which means I can’t get sucked into a binge that lasts like, an entire weekend. (And it would not be the first time I’d lost a whole day or whole weekend to some TV show.) So I’m doling out episodes a couple at a time, and I thought I’d comment with early impressions.
I wasn’t blown away by the first two episodes, but I wasn’t underwhelmed, either. I can tell this show is going to be a slow burn, which I like; it means they’re spending a lot of time introducing characters and setting a nice tone, and, if they do the slow burn right, the plot will pick up momentum and head out of the season on a roll.
Plus, most of the things I didn’t care for were clearly symptomatic of the show being new. For example, in the first episode, a lot of the dialogue felt a bit unnatural because every character was stuck saying these hugely representative things. Nobody could talk naturally about the daily business of the show because they were too busy speaking in mission statements.
What I did like: the tone, the music, how crisp and sharp everything looks. I love the closeted gay guy (Salvatore) and his “so people live their life one way and think the complete opposite? preposterous!” Little details, such as those that subtly remind viewers how things had changed since Kennedy. (The best example of this: the scene in the second episode when Don’s wife sees her daughter wearing a plastic bag over her head and gives her the old “come here, young lady,” warns her the dry cleaning better not be on the floor, and sends her off again.) Another really perceptive detail is the way the men respond to the women; mostly they leer at them and glower at them with condescension. But in at least one moment, when some ad business was urgent, the men passed by Peggy without the slightest visual acknowledgement, like she was a ghost in the room.
There’s a lot of sexism on the show, of course—that’s a simplified term for what we’re seeing in that moment. There’s racism, too—there would have to be to accurately reflect the era. What makes a modern show inherently not sexist and racist itself is how it treats those themes; that’ll be interesting to see.