Blogging Ain't Easy

This blogging thing takes work.  Hell, I already have a job.

I don't know if anyone is reading these anyway, however I'm going to keep trying to crack some stuff out just to satisfy my biggest fan - me.

I have already missed two weeks of Mad Men blogging but I feel like there are writers out there that are so much better at it than I am (and most of them are professional writers so at least it makes sense.)  I had been thinking this to myself when I read Tom Coombe who said it better than I could have. 

I will say that I watched Community last night on NBC and thought it was very good.  I'll let one of those better writers, Alan Sepinwall (the best in my opinion), speak for me about the eposode. 

I am also a fan of Survivor and I typically post my comments about that show on the website of the great podcast Armchair Survivor.  I comment under the name Quackamagooska there.  They were away for a while and I missed how much fun Mike and Marji and all the chatters could make the show.

I am working on something about the X Files that I will post as a few days.  Wow, so current! 

Mad Men Season 3 "My Old Kentucky Home"

"I am so high."

             - Peggy Olson

Here's some things I thought:

• Perhaps this season should be subtitled "The Decline and Fall of the American Empire."  The passages Sally was reading sounded a lot like what has been happening on Mad Men. "Fashion was the only law, pleasure was the only pursuit."  And, as Gene says, "you just wait, all hell's gonna break loose."
  
  
• We saw our first look at the two-headed monster that is Pete/Ken: Accounts Manager.
  
  
• Ouch! The verbal (but polite) little catfight between Jane and Joan.  Nice hat Jane, you look like a mushroom.
  
  
• Seeing Roger Sterling in blackface was more disturbing than most everything on the last season of Breaking Bad (except for the head on the tortoise.)
  
  
• As Betty discussed her pregnancy with the ladies, it was sad to see Trudy's look of sorrow at not having children.
  
  
• Betty's encounter outside of the ladies room and having a strange man caress her belly.  She seems to have adopted some of Don's flirting characteristics.
  
  
• I like Olive. 
  
  
• That was a nice little story Don told at the bar. I assume he felt okay doing it because it was to a stranger.
  
  
• I am still sticking by my story that Peggy is destined for the head of accounts or to replace Don.  Even if she is stoned to the bejesus belt on her way.  I loved how she is standing up to the men more.  Nice rant about bras and perfume to Orson Welles Kinsey.
  
  
• My favorite rum pitch was "Bacar-di Eisenhower."
  
  
• Never has an accordion looked more sexy.
  
  
• What is this issue with Joan's husband?. The wife said "whatever happens to Greg at least he got a woman like you."  And there was the line about the bad result and a quick "no shop talk" response.  Maybe he isn't the perfect man after all (aside from already raping his fiancé on the office floor in Season 2.)
  
  
• Who would have thought that Pete and Trudy would be winners on Dancing with the Stars?
  
  
• Kiernan Shipka as Sally Draper deserves some credit for pitch perfect acting of the shamed and sorry child. The whole set of scenes gave Betty's Dad a human side that I hadn't seen before.
  
  
• I admit to being originally mystified by the ending of a second episode in a row.  But, upon further reflection, did Don have a change of heart (if he has one?)  He told Roger that his fling/marriage with Jane was foolish.  However, after Jane mentioned their split and Betty ran off we see him looking at Roger dancing with Jane in a loving embrace.  Did this make Don realize how great his wife/life really is?  We will see but it inspired him to literally drop everything and express a bit of his own passion.
  
  
• Wouldn't it be ironic if he came to this decision only to find that Betty had decided to do a little stepping out of her own?

Mad Men Season 3 - "Love Among the Ruins"

This blogging about every episode is tough. I give a lot of credit to the writers who can get these posts up so quickly after the episode airs - I just head to bed. I wasn't very happy with last week's post after reading it. It read like a college paper - too much exposition (this one has too many hyphens.) So I'm just going to throw out some thoughts on the episode to make it easier (on me.)

• Am I the only one that thinks Betty's child is going to be disabled? Not that all that smoking and drinking will make her baby look like the monster from The Host, but the focus on her abuses seems gratuitous not to be setting something up. How will Don deal with a child that is physically as imperfect as he is mentally and morally? Betty's father's presence may be a precursor to another occupant of the house who cannot be taken care of with just a kiss goodnight and a few visits to the school Maypole dance.
• I was creeped out by Peggy's rendition of "Bye Bye Birdie." I know some have found it sweet but it just seemed so out of her character. Sure she did go out that night and pretend to be someone else beyond her mirror but, first reaction, creepy.
• Not a spoiler, just a prediction, the eventual head of accounts will be Peggy Olson. I was rewatching "Out of Town" and I thought the fact that Pete asked what all the O's were on the accounts was telling. Those were her accounts and, as Pete noted, "she is everywhere." As Don tells the MSG client, change is coming. I have been pondering writing this long treatise on the women of Mad Men but I just don't have the time yet. But the changing dynamics of women in society is such a recurring theme in Mad Men and that is why I think that Peggy and her all business attitude will eventually be the one who "stands out."
• Tough I realize that a lot of things went on in this episode, it felt like a bridge episode. Maybe I am applying Lost logic on to Mad Men, but it seemed like an episode designed to move several points along (not that there is anything wrong with that.)
• I guess I show my youth (42 is young?) when I did not realize the significance of the date of Roger's daughter's wedding. September 11th is the only real date that I remember "where I was."
• The ending was like the end of The Sopranos. I was left thinking, "Hey, what happened there?" I thought the DVR had cut out.

Looking forward to next week though I know that many people already saw it on the iTunes accidental release. I cannot understand why anyone would want to skip ahead like that.

Mad Men Season 3 - "Out of Town"

A recent local tab newspaper ran a giant photo of John Hamm and said that Don Draper was what "men wanted to be." I have been thinking about that since is saw it. I did not read the article because I do not want to be Don Draper. Sure he is a handsome, confident man who looks great in a suit. He is also a serial adulterer, a son of a whore with a past life that he seems to equally run from and towards every episode.

The premiere episode of Season 3, "Out of Town," opens with Don in the kitchen making some warm milk for his wife Betty. But his memory transports him back to witness his conception, birth and shotgun adoption to a woman who has experienced multiple still births. In this episode we learn that Don's real name, Dick, actually was inspired by the appendage that rules his adult life. I am tempted to have sympathy for him but by the episodes end, that has all been wiped away by the man he has become. We then see that Don is making the warm milk for his very pregnant wife, Betty, and he comforts her and tries to lull her by transporting her to a comforting sandy beach. The end of season 2 had Betty discovering she was pregnant and Don returning to beg for forgiveness after his exile from home.

Based on my limited experience with pregnancy, I am guessing that we have skipped ahead six to seven months in the future from the final moments of Season 2's "Meditations on an Emergency." One of the things I love best about Mad Men is its absolute refusal to spoon feed the audience. Writer/creator Matthew Weiner just drops us into this future world and leaves us to figure out what has occurred. At the end of last season we sat on the precipice of many life-altering issues. The entire world was embroiled in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the agency had just been bought by a British company and Don had walked out on them in his final play against the manipulations of Duck Phillips, and Don was still piecing together his shattered marriage.

In the office we see most of our main characters but things have changed. The new head of accounts was being fired and the job was given, in confusing fashion, to both Pete Campbell and Ken Cosgrove. In Duck's version of the future of Sterling Copper, Pete Campbell was to replace him as head of accounts. When he learns that he will be given the job he always felt he deserved he is ecstatic. When he learns he will have to share the job with Ken he is devastated worse than when he learned his father had been killed in a plane crash. Pete is similar to Don Draper in that he only really cares for what is best for him. The few other people that are actually in his life (including his wife) are just an afterthought. Both Ken and Pete walked into the office expecting that they might be fired. Ken sees the shared job as a reward, Pete sees it as an insult and a gauntlet being thrown at his feet.

Weiner also drops in several new British characters and we are left to figure what their role is and what their motivations are. The financial man, Mr. Pryce seems like a very standoffish, British bureaucrat with little regard for the feelings of the people at Sterling Cooper. Yet near the end of the episode he chides his assistant Mr. Hooker (nicknamed Moneypenny by the staff after the James Bond assistant) for acting prideful and recognizes how hard the transition has been for the Americans.

One of Mad Men's strengths is showing us many sides of a character. I have often remarked that there is no one to really root for. Certainly not Don Draper who has apologized his way back into his wife's arms and within the first hour of Season 3 he is jumping back into bed with an attractive blonde stewardess. He has several chances to NOT cheat and does not stop. When the woman tells him that she is engaged, he has the opportunity to redeem them both and he just plunges forward by tell her, "it's my birthday." But there are several characters that we can at least want to root for.

It is nice to see that Peggy Olson, the secretary turned Mad Woman, is still powering along as a strong woman. Her scenes lamenting to Joan about how she does not need to listen to her girl talk about retaining water put her soundly in the camp of all the men in the office who have little regard for their "girls." While I want Peggy to succeed, I don't want to see her lose her soul in the process. When she had her unplanned pregnancy, she took life advice from Don Draper. That may not be the best source if you want to keep said soul.

While I lament Don's "out of town" fling with his stewardess, I was thrilled to see Sal Romano's encounter with the bellboy. Is this hypocritical since Sal too is married? I do not know but since Sal's marriage and most of his outward life is an act, it is hard to know where to draw the line. As a gay man, Sal is forced to keep his real desires hidden in order to maintain the life that he has built. As much as we have seen social mores change on Mad Men, we have also seen cruel comments about homosexuality that would keep some of the bravest men closeted. Bryan Batt has done a remarkably subtle job of playing this character. What makes this encounter all the more gripping is when Don sees the real Sal through the window from the fire escape. It seems as if Sal is going to come out to Don on the plane but all Don is thinking about is the client. There are so many plot lines being symbolized by Sal’s artwork of the open raincoat and the line, “Limit your exposure?” So many of these characters fear the exposure symbolized by that London Fog raincoat. [Is it my imagination or did Sal get the art wrong from what Don explained? I haven’t had time to watch it twice yet.]

It is interesting to see how easily Don transitions into the role of Bill the accountant for the flight crew and then transforms he and Sal into accountants for the CIA. Sal plays along as best he can while his creative director puts on a show. Little does he know that Don has been pretending to be someone else as long as Sal has. Don Draper is not even Don Draper. He is Dick Whitman – son of a whore, a dick who thinks with his dick first and never wants to expose his true self to anyone.

The funniest thing ever on TV

The David Brent dance on The Office UK has never been topped in my opinion. I could barely breathe the first time I saw it and I still laugh every time I watch the clip. Like most David Brent scenes, you cringe while you laugh and watch scenes through your fingers as you almost cannot bear to watch.

Being Annoyed by Previews

I recently started watching the BBC series Being Human. Three episodes in I am enjoying it but I am not enjoying one programming portion.

As each commercial break comes, they show scenes from later in the episode as a teaser. The first one revealed a crucial plot point that could have gone either way. It is infuriating! I have to discipine myself to fast forward and close my eyes so they don't ruin the show for me.

I am already watching the show, does the BBC think that are attention spans are so short that we need this kind of thing? At the very least they could announce it with "coming up" and then show the clip. The lack of warning is maddening.

This tactic is very common in the reality show genre but I don't recall seeing it in an hour long drama series. Reality shows have perfected it but at least have the decency to use the "coming next on . . ." tag to warn us to avert eyes and hit fast forward. Some shows use it and it's stepchild, the "what's happened so far" to great lengths. I assume that by doing the "what's happened" part they can rope in viewers who just surfed on in and want to watch the remainder. The greatest abuse of this that I ever saw was the brilliantly awful VH1 series The Pick Up Artist.

I DVR'd this show because the premise sounded so absurd that I had to witness it. Actually, having grown up as a socially retarded teenage male, the idea that someone could have helped me learn how to talk to woman was intriguing. But the show was a bit creepy and weird. This alleged hour show seemed to only have about 17 minutes of actual show in it. The rest was all "coming next" and "what's happened" and ominous music pauses to heighten the drama.

Some people may enjoy this part of television but I try to live my life spoiler free. I have come down off of that high horse quite a bit in the last few years but some of the previews are so revealing it ruins the drama (or even the comedy.) I used to watch The Sopranos with my wife and (pre-DVR) I would run out of the room whenever they said "next on The Sopranos." I tried to stay pure for Survivor and Lost but since I started listening to podcasts for those shows, it is impossible to avoid the “next on” discussion.

I know it is asking too much to get shows to stop this immediate spoilering but I expect more from the network that brought me The Office and MI-5 (Spooks.)